Urge to Kill

The poses were mild, without leather, chains, or whips. More like the sort of thing you’d see in Playboy. A younger Zoe who looked amazingly like the fifties pinup Bettie Page, mostly because of her similar hairdo. Zoe in a bikini, making a perfect O with her lips and pretending to be shocked and afraid. Zoe with her breasts exposed, smiling seductively and hugging a pink sheet to her lower body. Zoe seated nude in a wicker rocking chair, pretending to knit. Zoe wearing nothing but high-heeled shoes and bending gracefully to touch her toes. Zoe, Zoe, Zoe…

Quinn realized he had an erection. That bastard Beeker. What if his patients knew about his kinky other self? Or maybe they did. Maybe because of his predilection for kinky sex he crossed the line with his patients. Maybe those were his patients in his photographs.

Maybe they’re his patients. Jesus!

Quinn’s cigar, propped in the ashtray, had gone out. He relit it and shut down the computer.

He sat smoking for a while, thinking as he stared into the haze of his exhalations, as if the smoke were made up of his musings and might reveal some meaning.

He wanted to see Zoe and knew that if he called her she could be talked into inviting him to her apartment. But he didn’t want Beeker to be a part of their relationship in any way. Better if he waited a while, until the photos he’d just seen had faded in his memory.

He could wait for a while to see Zoe again. Certainly until dinner.

Later on, he’d see Beeker.

62

As soon as Lavern carefully and quietly closed the door behind her, she heard her husband’s voice: “You’re late and you’re drunk.”

“I was with Bess.” The first person Lavern could think of who’d back her up. “We sat in the restaurant after dinner and talked, and time flew.”

“You were drinking.”

She knew there was no way he could know for sure if she was drunk, as she’d just come in and the living room light hadn’t even been turned on. She was facing absolute blackness and could only be a dark silhouette against the dim light of the hall. Hobbs was completely invisible in the dark. “We had wine for dinner, then a few drinks afterward. That’s all.”

She didn’t tell him she’d skipped dinner and drunk alone, and then with a man in a lounge far from the neighborhood where she might have been recognized and word might get back to Hobbs. Nothing had happened between her and the man (Victor something, she thought, but maybe not…), and in fact both had been too drunk to do anything about it if they’d felt any real sexual attraction. They’d been asked to leave and objected mildly, then were actually hurried and pushed from the place by a burly bartender.

Victor (or whoever) had thrown a punch at the bartender that was so ineffective it had been ignored, and there they were out on the sidewalk, barely able to stand.

Lavern had leaned back against a streetlight, closed her eyes, and almost passed out. Or maybe she had briefly lost consciousness. When she opened her eyes, Victor was gone. A man who might have been Victor was crossing the street at the intersection half a block down.

Too far away for her to catch up with him. All that effort…

Well, the hell with Victor.

So Lavern had walked, too, in the opposite direction, weaving noticeably at first and attracting attention. People slowed when they saw her approaching and veered out of her path. They seemed to be ashamed of her, embarrassed for her.

Screw you! All of you!

A woman in a gray business suit gave her a disdainful glance. A teenage boy with baggy pants low on his pelvis kept a hold on his fly and grinned at her as he bopped past. Fellow clowns and rebels.

After a few blocks she began to sober up; she could feel it.

On the cab ride home she’d impressed the driver with her terse and logical conversation about everything from politics to professional basketball. Pretty damned good! She was sure she’d reached the point where it wouldn’t be obvious that she’d been drinking.

She’d been wrong. Hobbs must have smelled liquor on her breath, maybe on her clothes.

“Shut the goddamned door all the way and come in here,” he said.

She obeyed, and at the click of the door latch the lights winked on in the living room, temporarily blinding her.

She gasped. Hobbs was standing ten inches from her and had flipped the wall switch.

The punch came out of the blinding light, smashing into her left ear and sending her reeling against a table, overturning it.

Hobbs was on her so fast she didn’t have time to think about the pain. His initial punches were wild. Then his fist landed on her ribs, which were still perhaps cracked from her last beating. That pain jolted through her, and she was sitting on the carpet, unable to breathe. Hobbs rested a foot on her shoulder and shoved her down so she was lying on her side.