Agoraphobia and Ecstasy Ch. 11-20

"Quiet place?" I asked, jerking my head Mira's direction almost so imperceptibly I didn't think she'd see it, but I knew he would. I'd asked a thousand times, and he had never agreed, his standard too high to let me "degrade" myself with other men. This time I saw a recognition in his eye I'd never seen before.

"Switch hitting?" he asked, peering over my shoulder at the brazen beauty waiting for me.

"Please! You know me!" I scowled. "I'll let you take me to dinner." Whatever it was Mira needed to talk about, I couldn't be seen in public with her, and I couldn't take her to my place.

"Fine," he said, slapping the key in my palm. "But don't make a mess."

Mess? In a bachelor pad? I chuckled at the thought and took the key, winking at him. It may have been a decision I'd regret, but if dinner with Siphon, a good friend of mine, was what it took to get my sister's best friend out of the club and out of my life, I'd say the sacrifice was worth it.

Turning, I jingled the key in the air, and Mira smiled brightly. I glanced around the room, making sure no one else had seen me with her, and then I motioned for Mira to follow me out the door and around the corner. Her heels clicked on the pavement as we walked, and I felt like I was being followed to the principal's office by an angry teacher whom I'd pissed off. I'd had that experience more than once.

Once inside the small apartment, I sank into the sofa and tried to calm my vibrating insides. I hadn't seen Mira in nearly seven years, and I would have liked for it to remain that way, but it appeared that my past was beginning to catch up with me. And when she sat down across from me and laid her purse next to my clutch, I felt my drinks coming back up--probably from nerves.

"Excuse me," I muttered as I rose from the sofa and raced to the bathroom. My eyes blurry and my head throbbing. I had to make it through this one night and then I could just disappear again. No more talk of Nanette, no remembering what had happened. No more triggers that would send me to the arms of the first man who batted his baby blues my direction.

I emptied the contents of my stomach and used Siphon's toothpaste and my finger to clean my mouth. When I was satisfied that I wouldn't completely repulse her, I slipped back out to the living room where Mira sat with a beer in hand and another on the coffee table. The drugs were still in full swing in my system, but I was surprised by how clean Siphon's place was. Not at all what I thought it would be.

I sat next to Mira and downed the beer as quickly as I could while she stared at me. "I can't believe I finally found you."

"I wish you hadn't." I set the beer bottle down and swallowed hard. My body was on fire. It didn't matter what conversation I had with her, if this drug was anything like ecstasy, I wouldn't remember it anyway. And Mira shouldn't be here. I'd left her in my past where she belonged. Chief reason numero uno why I didn't do relationships. She scooted closer to me and took my hand and I felt electricity jolt through me. Not specifically because of Mira--the drug was killing me. I needed release so bad, even a blast from my past would do. Damn I was glad Siphon had walked away when he did. I'd have been spreading my legs to him for sure.

"Daph, everyone misses you. I missed you." Her soft kiss on the back of my hand took me back nearly a decade to the sandy earth beneath the live oak tree in Virginia where we went to summer camp. My body tensed, preparing to be freed from its torment.

I remembered the softness of her lips, the way her fingers worked my body just perfectly and I leaned in to have her again, the way we did when we were younger. Mira responded, just as I hoped. The tenderness of her touch, the caress of her breath over every inch of my body and she had me screaming loud enough to drown out the club music from across the parking lot and behind closed doors. Mira's body was as perfect as it always had been; she tasted like nectar of the gods as I drank from her. I pushed away every ounce of bitterness I still held over the way she broke my heart because she wasn't ready to come out to her parents.

It wasn't the no-strings sex with a sculpted man that I craved, but it was release.

***

Somewhere around 2 a.m., after the longest most painstaking discussion I'd had in years, I strolled into Déjà Vu and slammed the keys down on the bar, which was now clean and void of customers. A few couples still lingered in the back on the red sofa doing things not appropriate for a public place, and the D.J. had all but gone; only a few speakers stacked by the door remained. It was shut-down time and Siphon and his partner, Will, were cleaning up.

I slid onto a bar stool and tapped my fingernails on the smooth wood. My skirt rode up and the cool seat chilled my thighs as I waited for Siphon to finish his task. He strolled over to me with a smirk on his face and leaned on the bar across from me, towel slung over his shoulder, striking blue eyes locked on me. I could tell it had been a stressful night for him despite the look he was giving me. He did that, tried to mask his stress and keep a smile on his face at all times. I think it was the bartender part of him, always wanting to be friendly and smiling for the customers, but when it came down to it we were friends, and I could see right through his charade.

"Rough crowd?" I asked, sliding the keys toward him.

"It was a very busy night with the new DJ here." Siphon picked up the keys, jingled them while giving me an inquisitive look, and pocketed them.

"I don't kiss and tell," I replied to his prompt, winking, hoping to God--or gods--that he didn't ask what had happened. I was very glad when he changed the subject.

"So about dinner..."

I sighed. Right at that moment I hated myself so much. If I had been seeing a shrink they would have told me that I used sex as a way to deal with my stress and mask my insecurities and lack of confidence, to control things I could control in order to give myself the feeling of power as if I were really in control of things I couldn't control. I know--I've already diagnosed myself plenty of times.

Shaking my head at him I silently scolded my intoxicated self for ever bringing it up because I knew I would have to bring the keys back and face him, and I knew he would never forget. I also had a gut feeling "dinner" would turn into "dinner with a sleepover" and my inebriated self had banked on that mental manipulation of Siphon's emotions in the moment I lacked control.

"Right, dinner..." I bit my lower lip wishing I could somehow back out of the deal, but he was quick to box me in, and I knew I would never get a better friend.

"I was thinking I drive us down to Clinton. We can go to Nola's and have a nice dinner, then drive out to the college. They are having this open-air art exhibit this weekend. I think it would be nice. I have the day off on Saturday. Will is covering for me. I could pick you up at four-thirty and we could have an early start?"

His eyes looked so hopeful, like a young child asking their parent for a snack right before bed when all the lights have been shut off and there is no way in hell the kid is getting food, but the parent relents and heads toward the kitchen. And that is exactly what I did. I folded like a cheap suit.

"I don't do relationships..." It was all I could muster up. The same line I'd fed him for years now every single time he'd put pressure on me to go on a date with him, and here I was agreeing to a goddamn date with the only person in the world I found intimidating. I could take any man at any time for a one-night stand and be fine to walk away, but these eyes, these baby blues were staring at me after I'd agreed to dinner with him.

"Listen, what do you think we have right now, Daph? You come in here night after night. We talk and laugh. We have inside jokes. I've opened up to you about things I've never told anyone. You have done the same with me, right? What do you call that--in your professional opinion?"

He had me there and it irked me to no end. I don't do relationships. It was my mantra, the thing I said when I left every single man who asked me for my number. It was the thing I told the barista who flirted with me at Starbucks. It was what I'd told every guy who'd ever asked me out, yet here I was staring into the face of a relationship.

It definitely wasn't the type of relationship Siphon wanted to have with me, but it wasn't the threatening kind--at least I didn't think it was.

"Fine. Four-thirty, what should I wear?" I felt my clutch vibrate but chose to ignore it for the moment, focusing all my attention on the very real threat in front of me. How on earth would I get through a night with him and keep my ridiculous attraction to him under control? The last thing I needed was a complication.

"Wear something really nice. Not 'work and being professional nice,' fancy-dinner-out nice. Okay?" He smiled and pushed himself back from the bar.

I felt my heart lurch inside of my chest momentarily and then distracted myself by reaching for my clutch and opening it, only to find Mira's phone there instead of mine. She was calling me on her phone from mine. Fuck, this night couldn't get any worse.

13

The doorbell rang as I hit enter; the trap was ordered. A nice rodent trap to sit out on my patio and lure the damn squirrel and catch it, hopefully to transport it to the farthest side of Utica away from my home and never to be seen again. I pushed my rolling chair back from the desk and stood, pinching the creases on the front of my pantlegs before strolling toward the door. I already knew who it was before I opened it. I'd hired Neil, the teen who lived across the street, to take some photos for me of Kevin's house. Neil needed the money, and I needed the legwork done, and even though he was a horrid photographer, at least I would have a better visual than I could get from the street.

I'd driven past the Myung house but found it to be shrouded in large bushes and overgrown trees with little visual of the actual house--or windows that had a view inside--from the street. I needed something better to go on, pictures in the windows, pictures of the backyard, anything. And Neil was the perfect candidate because he already had proven he was willing to do very sketchy things in order to make a buck--like the time he rifled through a congressman's trash can to get me information that would later lead to the congressman's confession of an affair--not the lead I was hoping for but enough to make the man resign.

I opened the door to a very nervous-looking, lanky blond. His forehead glistened with sweat, which I was certain was from anxiety and not from the scorching heat of the early August morning. His hands shook as he reached the camera toward me without a word. His face was pale, green almost, and he swallowed repeatedly, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"You got what I asked?" I took the camera from him and offered a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill which I pulled from my wallet. He acted like I had the plague as he plucked the money from my hand and took a step back, his lips curled downward, and he jammed the money in his own pocket.

"Y-ya," he stuttered.

"In the windows, and in the back yard...? What's wrong?" I tucked the camera under my arm and put my wallet back into my pocket.

"I did exactly what you said, and when I was looking in to the one window... Well you'll see it on the camera. I think the dude is into some really messed up shit." Neil scraped his palms down the front of his shirt and drew the back of his arm across his forehead. "I'm not going back there, dude."

"What happened?" Curious, I waved Neil in and trekked across my miniscule home to the computer where I ejected the memory card from the camera and turned to look over my shoulder at Neil who was still standing in the open doorway. "Come on then. And shut the door behind you. I have a...pest I'm dealing with right now who got in the other day, and I don't need that happening again."

Neil staggered in and shut the door, and I turned my attention to the computer, pulling my chair forward to sit in it. With the memory card inserted I waited for the dialogue box to pop up and clicked through the files. Most of them were pictures of the small Spanish-style home, cloaked in shrubbery and overgrown trees. It looked like any other home in the neighborhood it sat in, bar the unkempt landscaping, and I was beginning to wonder if it was a dead end until a photo popped up that Neil had taken through a window into a well-lit back room.

The photo showed three computer screens set up in a semicircle around a keyboard, all of their screens black. Behind the photo was a corkboard with a few photos pinned to it. One of them was a woman who looked familiar in a tight-fitting red dress with a plunging neckline so revealing I had to put my thumb over it--no one should show that much cleavage. The picture was small and hard to make out, so I focused on the bed across the room, which had at least twenty large bags of a blue-green substance, though I couldn't tell what it was. And though that might be incriminating enough to have Mr. Myung arrested, it was technically illegally obtained evidence. I need something that could pin him to any connection he had with Daphne, any way to connect him to the string of disappearances.

Something churned in my gut when I sensed Neil standing behind me. I could tell he was leaning over my shoulder watching me click through the photos, and I wanted to ask him to back away--who knew what germs he was breathing into my air space. When I glanced over my shoulder, I could tell his nerves had not calmed down and his anxiety sweat reeked.

"What happened?" I asked again, wondering what could have been so disturbing to set him off.

"Look," he said, taking the mouse and clicking a few times, pulling up a picture of something far more sinister.

The photo on my screen was another picture peering into a window, this one much more dim, only the light from outdoors illuminating the room. There were seven large black crates with padlocks on them, and the one nearest the window was sitting open. You didn't have to be a weapons expert to see that inside the crate were several, maybe a dozen or more, powerful guns--big ones. I'm not a gun guy, but I would say those guns were probably military grade. And the stack of cash on a dresser across the room spelled trouble for anyone who knew about the stash.

"He saw me," Neil muttered as he stood up and took a few steps back out of my comfort zone, allowing me to breathe a fresh breath. "He saw me, and I bolted. I only got a handful of pics of the backyard, and then the old man came out of the garage, and I knocked over some dumb tree in a planter and ducked through the hedges, but he saw me. What if he finds out who I am and comes after me? I've seen shit, Kenji. They're gonna kill me!"

"Relax, Neil..." I stood up and reached for his shoulder to give him a reassuring pat, but seeing the sweat stains in his armpits I pulled my hand back and grimaced. "He is never going to recognize you, okay? You're fine. Just go home and take a shower."

It took me another twenty minutes of coaxing to convince Neil he was safe, but he finally left me to my work, just in time to hear the chime of my computer announcing a video call coming in--Gary and Barbra--what could they want now?

After securing the deadbolt in place I shuffled back to my computer and donned my headset, the kind with the swiveling arm that folds down with a microphone on the end. Sitting down, I clicked on the flashing icon and the screen opened to show the dreaded duo on my screen, already bickering with each other per usual.

Barbra was a real piece of work, harping on Gary for his parking job next to her oversized SUV. She was a single divorcee who sucked the alimony money from her ex-husband's bank yet still took the generous Tribune salary, which afforded her the resources to buy the luxury Cadillac tank of a vehicle that she always double parked, and still griped about others being "on the line, and in my space."

Gary's face was three shades of red when he turned to me and muted Barbra's channel. She was looking off into the room she was in and probably didn't even notice what he'd done, as her mouth kept flapping despite the sound of her prattling going silent.

"Kenj, we have a change of plans now." Gary sorted and stacked a few papers on his desk and then picked them up, straightening and tapping them on their edge before sliding them into a folder. He looked hesitant but continued to speak. "Sheffield pulled the plug. Detective States called with an update that they don't believe the cases are linked and they will be handing off the investigation to county because all of the people were either from out of town or just moved here. They believe the cases would be better handled by authorities local to where these people lived, citing past connections and such. Nichols wants you to write up a brief press release with the new development."

I looked at Barbra's screen and noticed she was now shouting, her own face red as she stared at the camera from only inches away. She'd obviously noticed that she'd been muted and was not happy about it. Gary looked at me patiently as if waiting for a response, but all I could think about was Daphne and how the connection to Utica was there. I didn't dare release my source to either of the two of them--at least not until I had more concrete evidence. There was something strange going on, especially if Daphne was with one of the victims. I had to dig deeper.

"We're going to put you on an environmental story now, Kenji. We want that ready for print in a few weeks, but it will take some digging." Gary's sudden shift made me jolt back to the conversation.

"No! I have a source with valuable information," I blurted out, gritting my teeth after I had.

"Who's the source?" Barbra's voice grated on my nerves as she began her assault. "Because I have my sources that say you spent petty cash to buy a rat trap instead of securing a PI to do the investigating you should have been doing. I told you, Gary, when you went to Nichols in the beginning to fight for this twit to work from home that he was no goo--"

"Sorry about that," Gary said. I glanced over to see the microphone icon on Barbra's screen was now crossed out, indicating she had once again been muted. "I'm not sure why Sheffield forces me to bring her into these meetings anyway. So listen, about that source. You track down the leads, but write that environmental report. If you think you're on to something, you have to follow it. But don't leave the other story hanging or Nichols will have my neck, got it?"

"Yes, sir," I said, swallowing the notion of working two stories at the same time.

"Good then. I will send over the files about the environmental thing--some government thing about the wildlife area near I790. You'll see in the files. Just need a write up and a few photos. You can probably handle that from your car I think? If not you can take a photog with you to snap a few shots."

I nodded at Gary, slightly perturbed by the sudden change of gear, but I understood this was how the news world worked. Still, it wouldn't stop me from investigating, even if only to put Daphne's heart at ease. Sighing, I said my goodbyes to Gary and ignored Barbra's livid Karen face as I closed out of the window, the picture of Kevin's bedroom still up.

Curious, I clicked back a few photos to the one that had the picture of the woman pinned to the bulletin board and zoomed in, thinking it was a photo of maybe his girlfriend. I wasn't sure. I noticed it was a few photos stacked together and overlapped, the quality of the picture was impressive, losing no detail the more I enlarged it, though the face of the woman was a little blurry. I could see the neon lights of the sign clearly though, Déjà Vu, the club where one of the victims had been reported as missing.