And Then She Was Gone by J. Daniel Sawyer

Author:J. Daniel Sawyer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: mystery & thriller
ISBN: 9781456417109
Publisher: AWP Mystery
Published: 2010-10-07T05:00:00+00:00

12:45 AM, Monday

Third street, south of 80. The kind of neighborhood where you didn’t used to be able to walk alone at night, it had managed to hang on to the air of an impending mugging as it gentrified.

The entry took me up to the second story bar in the club, a stadium box affair with comfortable diner-style seating and some couches arrayed in a large L stretching its arms down the north and east walls of the club. The elbow of the L had a woman suspended in a rope harness from the ceiling and a man tied to a cross, being flogged.

Long bay windows looked down onto a choked dance floor below. With an hour left till the bar closed, people of all shapes and sizes were lined up to get their last drops.

I shoved my way through to the west end of the club and took up a spot between a couple other voyeurs (of the strictly amateur variety) on the west gantry.

If the girls didn’t stop on the way here, I should have beaten them by about fifteen minutes.

The press of flesh below me moved in time with the heavy industrial sounds deafening me even through my ear plugs. The spontaneous choreography was directed by a twentysomething kid in dreds spinning in the DJ’s nest below the bondage arena.

From my position, I could see all three entrances to the dance floor, so I switched between them every few seconds, watching for three girls wearing faces that looked like they came off the same assembly line.

But something kept me coming back to the DJ. He was sixty feet away and under red light, so I couldn’t see very well, but something about him was damn familiar.

By my watch I had maybe ten minutes before the girls got here. I left my place on the gantry, scuttled down the stairs and weaved my way over to the DJ booth.

The DJ was queuing up a pair of vinyl platters while the current track played out. I leaned over the partition and waved a twenty to get the his attention. “Hey!”

“Yo!” He pulled the headphones off and leaned over to me.

“Head Like a Hole?”

“You got it.” The guy took the twenty from my hand and gave me a wink, then went back to his vinyl.

I knew that face. I’d been seeing it all weekend. But the voice sounded creepy-familiar too. Shouting over the din I couldn’t be sure if I was right. I had to be sure.

“Hey!”

“Another track?”

“Nah. Putting together an event, need a DJ. You do swing?”

“Sure. I’ll spin anything. When and where?”

“Next month, Alameda.”

“Grab a card.” He pointed to a stack of cards at the other end of the partition. “I might be booked up already. Email me with a date. See what we can do.” There it was, that easy authority. The rich baritone. I suppressed a shudder.

“Great, thanks!” I slid along the partition and grabbed a card. Mr. Gravity, Disc Jockey and Event Producer. And he had the same voice as the guy in the shed.

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