Dead of Night by Michael Lister

Author:Michael Lister [Lister, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael Lister
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

Today Natasha Leone’s coffee truck, Mug Shots, is at the end of Beck Avenue in St. Andrews in the parking lot of the Tap Room.

I’m walking there to see her when Clyde pulls up next to me in a dark ash-gray metallic Chevy Tahoe with illegally tinted windows so black nothing can be seen inside.

Rolling down the window, he says, “Mr. Owens is in the back. He wants to talk to you. Get in.”

It’s a violation of my probation to be anywhere near Logan Owens but I open the back door and get in.

The huge vehicle is spacious and comfortable, its climate perfectly controlled.

I sink into the leather seat and glance over at Owens.

He is a young, thin, pale white man with freakishly light blue eyes and wild bleached-blond hair. He’s wearing dark shades and staring straight ahead.

I have a strong urge to reach over and strangle him with my barehands. I resist it.

Obviously, the anger management counseling is working.

Apart from a brief random encounter at a bar called the Lie’Brary and a confrontation in my apartment where he set me up to get video footage he could blackmail me with, this is the only time I’ve been around him since my trial when his award-worthy performance helped send me to prison.

“Clyde has relayed your information about Destiny,” he says, “but I want to hear it from you.”

“She’s not having an affair,” I say.

It’s surreal to be sitting here talking to the predator I hospitalized and who in turn sent me to prison and is now blackmailing me with the threat of sending me back.

Unlike previous times we’ve interacted, there’s no emotion in his voice. There’s no indication we even have a history. It’s as if this is parenthetical to all that, and though this is highly personal to him, it’s not personal between us. Between us it’s professional, impersonal, an exchange of information.

“You’re sure?” he says.

“But,” I say. “The work she does . . . giving guys a type of girlfriend experience . . Several guys. Every night. That’s like . . . multiple affairs on a daily basis.”

“That’s work.”

“It is,” I say, “but . . . to be able to do work like that . . . What does that take? She’s a good person. She is. And she’s not having an affair . . . But if you’re this concerned about it . . . why get involved with a woman who does the kind of work she does?”

“I’m already involved,” he says. “And if I marry her she won’t do that kind of work any longer.”

It’s beyond bizarre to hear him talking about marriage and seeming to care if his stripper girlfriend is going to be faithful. I first met him while working on a case of a missing teen. She was missing because he had her. He was drugging and raping her and keeping her imprisoned. When I found her with him and saw what he had been doing to her, my rage took over and I beat him so badly he almost didn’t survive.

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