Scene of the Crime

I fed her cereal and milk, hoping she could keep it down. Between small bites, she muttered. "Gotta mail the money." Then, "Help pay for the funeral." She looked at me hopelessly. "Gotta do what we can." Unblinking, tears flowed down her cheeks. "I'm a whore now, Davey. I fucked lots of guys, and I've got to fuck lots more, until it's all paid for."

She wobbled in the chair, and I barely managed to get her back to bed. Her grip on my hand was unbreakable, so I lay down beside her and drifted into a troubled sleep.

It was dark when I woke up, and the bed beside me was empty. I found her in her kitchen, huddled over a cup of coffee, a half eaten breakfast on the plate in front of her. She'd showered recently, but not brushed her hair. She wore an old fleece robe belted tightly around her like it was mid-winter.

"What day is it?" she muttered.

"Tuesday night. Wednesday morning, really."

She nodded, like I'd given her vital information. After an almost unbearable silence, she added, "When did I get home?"

"Early Monday morning."

She nodded again. "Pretty fucked up, isn't it?"

I didn't answer. She wasn't expecting me to. She swallowed coffee. "Did I bring home money for the family?"

"Yeah. I guess."

"Did you mail it?"

"Not yet."

She tensed. "Can you do it today? Please?"

"Sure. Cheri -"

She shook her head violently. "Not now. Don't ask. I can't. I'll tell you, but not now. I'm too sick." The chair scraped harshly as she pushed it back and lurched to her feet. "I'm going back to bed."

I left her a note on the refrigerator. I found the parents' address and mailed the money order from a box across town in an envelope without return information. I ran a few essential errands, made it to a doctor's appointment, and was reprimanded for not taking better care of my arm. I did a little grocery shopping and came home to an empty house. I'm not sure whether I was disappointed or relieved.

I nosed about in the bedroom and discovered the new purple mini-dress and another load of dirty clothes had been washed and put away. Makeup was littered across the bathroom vanity, and the room smelled of cigarette smoke, despite the vent fan which was still running. Cheri never smoked. Wherever she'd gone, she hadn't left very long before.

She came back around seven that night, wearing more clothes I'd never seen - a tight black AC/DC tee-shirt, cropped to bare her piercing, some tight cut off denim shorts and high heeled ankle boots.

"Ta-da," she sang, breezily, twirling in front of me. "I went shopping."

She looked great. It wasn't her old conservative look, but wasn't slutty, either. Her makeup wasn't overdone, but was still sexy. In her eyes, for the first time in over two weeks, I saw my wife. "You look like you're feeling better," I smiled. "I like it."

Her smile faltered. "Really? I look okay? Not like . . ." Her voice faded.

I stood and swept her into a one-armed hug, smelled her fresh scent, only mildly tainted with the aroma of tobacco. "You look gorgeous, honey."

Her arms slithered around my neck. "Do you still love me?" she asked my chest.

I lifted her chin. I kissed her. I think it was our first real kiss since the accident. She seemed stunned for a moment, then returned it with gentle passion. I pulled back a few inches. Her light red lipstick was slightly smeared, and her eyes glistened with tears. "Yes," I whispered. "I do still love you. I'll always love you, Cheri."

Our lovemaking began softly, grew organically. It was unforced, except for a few awkward moments we quickly got past. Her little breasts were delicious, her denuded pussy tasted clean and sweet with her copious nectar. She was all moans and sighs and passion. Because of my arm, she had to ride me, and I ignored the fact that, while this was a new position for the two of us, she was extremely skilled at it. Her eyes, when they were open, were locked with mine. It was, truly, lovemaking, not fucking. We climaxed together, a long, rolling climb, and equally glorious descent. She collapsed beside me, cuddled tight.

Her voice was muffled by my good shoulder. "When I woke up and you were gone, I got really scared. I just knew that you were so sickened by what I'd done that you'd left forever. When I looked in the mirror I felt like I was seeing at my own ghost. I looked dead. I wanted to be dead. I searched in the medicine cabinet for your pills and saw that you'd moved them somewhere. If you hadn't . . ."

She cleared her throat. "I ran to the kitchen. I think I was looking for a knife." She pulled back a little, and her eyes were awash with love. "Then I saw the little post-it stuck to the fridge." She pulled herself hard into my side I grunted with pain.

"Oh my God! I'm sorry, baby. I -"

I shushed her, kissed her forehead. "It's okay, love."

She stared at me. "Say that again."

"What? It's okay?"

Tears streaked with mascara ran sideways over her cheek and nose. "You mean it, don't you? That this - all of it - is going to be okay?"

I grinned widely. "Yeah. I guess I do."

We made love again, just as tenderly as before, and woke entwined.

Over morning coffee, she became nervous. "I have to go back again. Friday afternoon at four. Larry promised me it's the last time."

The bright Thursday morning darkened. I swallowed. "The same place?"

She shook her head, stirred more sugar into her coffee. "I'm supposed to go back to the salon where they did my new nails and piercing." She gave me a quick, wry glance. "A full makeover this time, Larry said." She tried a sideways grin. "I can hardly wait."

"What happens then?"

"I get whored out until Sunday night, I guess."

I went past her bitterness. "No. I mean, after this weekend."

She shrugged. "He said they'd delete all the videos. That we'd have suffered enough."

I cleared my throat. "Well, he hasn't lied to us yet, has he?"

She rose and threw her coffee into the sink. "No. He's been a real prince."

Thursday wasn't what you'd call pleasant, but, all told, it wasn't a disaster, either. Cheri's anger seemed therapeutic. She was crude in an all new way, but it didn't sound forced. She told me, in fits and starts, about what she could remember of the past weekend.

"They kept me pretty fucked up most of the time. Some cocaine, lots of booze, and what I think was ecstasy. They made me smoke a cigarette every half hour. Made me inhale. Said I should my tricks imagine me smoking their cocks." She wrinkled her nose. "It made me sick at first, then it turned into just another prop, like fixing my lipstick after every fuck." She fidgeted. "Thinking about it makes me want one. How fucked up is that? Addicted to nicotine."

I shrugged. "Go ahead, but maybe on the deck instead of in here."

"No," she said with determination. "Cherry's the smoker. Not me." She looked sheepish. "That's what they call me. Cherry."

Later: "I don't know how many there were. Other than the three stooges, maybe a half dozen or so. I don't even know how much they charged."

She did cave after I opened a bottle of wine, and we went out on the deck so she could smoke. She was visibly nervous. "You're staring at me."

"Sorry. It's just weird. You handle it like you've been smoking for years, not a few days."

She glanced down at the tent in my shorts and blew smoke at it. "So you think it's sexy, huh?" She squirmed in her chair. "One guy wanted me to smoke while he fucked me." She went shy. "I think I came that time." She looked horrified. "Oh, David! I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that!"

I gave her a crooked smile. "It's all right. We can't have any secrets, love. And I think they made you equate smoking with sex. I bet you're a little damp down there, aren't you?"

She took a final deep drag and ground the butt out with her flip flop. Her words were punctuated by smoke. "I'm a fucking swamp, lover." She wriggled her way onto my lap. "I feel nasty. Wanna fuck?"

Her kiss was wanton. I had to admit I liked the way she tasted. And, that time, we did fuck, not make love. It was awesome.

Friday was much more tense. Cheri started drinking vodka after lunch. I couldn't fault her. It wasn't nearly as bad as the weeks before. By three, she was half drunk, grouchy, but doing her best not to vent at me. She kept looking at the time on her phone.

"Do you, uh, need to get ready or anything?"

She glared at me, began some sort of sharp retort but swallowed it. "No," she sighed blowing a harsh breath. "Just that ugly fucking purse. They said everything else would be taken care of. Fuck. Let's go. I want to get this nightmare over with."

She directed me tersely to a run-down looking salon, otherwise saying nothing. After I pulled to the curb, she just sat there for a moment. Finally, she opened her purse and fished out a cigarette. She took a hard drag. "Fuck. Here we go. Cherry time."

Her goodbye kiss was desperate. "I love you. See you Sunday sometime."

But she didn't. My phone woke me from my stupor on the couch at 2:15 a.m. I didn't recognize the number, but knew instantly that it had to be bad news. It was.

"Davey," said a very tense voice, "this's Larry. We got us a really big problem."

I was instantly wide awake. "What happened? Is she okay?"

"I hope to Christ she is, but Paul sure as shit ain't. He was outside her motel room when three biker-types jumped him. Kicked him shitless and stole Cherry. Kidnapped her. Paul's at Cox in intensive are."

"What motel?" I put him on speakerphone and was scrambling to get dressed.

"Days Inn on Battlefield - but don't go there. Cops all over the place. Meet me at that bar where you dropped her off last week. You still got that .38?"

"Yeah."

"Better bring it. And load it this time."

"Larry, if she's hurt, you might not want to see me with a loaded weapon."

"We'll find her, man. I swear to God, we'll find her."

I've got to give the asshole credit. He did find her. It took until Tuesday, but he and his buddies organized the raid like a military operation. It was, in a way - nearly all of the dozen friends he brought with him were combat vets and armed to the teeth. Most of them had fucked Cherry, as it turned out, and didn't appreciate human traffickers stealing their favorite new whore.

It eleven p.m. It was the first rainy day we'd had in weeks. The abandoned, graffiti covered warehouse looked like something out of Blade Runner. The ground floor windows were all boarded up, and those above gaped like dead eyes, their glass mostly broken by rock throwing vandals over the years.

"They's a meth lab in there, and a room full of women waiting to be sold off," a giant black guy named Burt whispered to the group gather behind another derelict building. He looked and acted like a very serious drill sergeant.

"Somewhere's on the first floor. 'Sposed to be only six or eight guys inside, but they'll all be cranked and mean as snakes. Automatic weapons. Be damn careful what you shoot at - hit some of them chemicals, the whole fuckin' building could blow up. Larry, your bunch go through that big roll up door on the south end. Me and the rest'll take down the office door on the east side. We're gonna have to shit and git. After the fireworks start, every cop in Springfield's gonna be on their way. Questions?"

There were none.

Not one of them challenged my right to be there, despite the fact that I'd never in my life been involved in anything vaguely like combat. Other than the one asswipe that Larry'd slapped the shit out of Monday, none of them made disparaging comments about the whore's wimp hubby tagging along.

Larry looked a little ridiculous wearing a football helmet as he tucked himself behind the wheel of his almost new Ford F-350. There was nothing funny about either his eyes or his cocked and locked AR-15. I was right behind him in my little Toyota, bathed in cold sweat, my tiny looking .38 in Cheri's seat. He was running at least thirty miles an hour when hit the big metal door, built to admit semi's, and went through it like it was cardboard.

God must have been on our side. The lab was only about fifty feet beyond the hole where the door had been, and, instead of going for their weapons, the men in the area scattered like rats as our armed force stormed in and fanned out. I was out of my car, screaming my wife's name, shining my big maglite around like an idiot. An eternity-long fifteen seconds later, there was a short burst of deafening automatic weapon fire from the other end of the cavernous void, a man's scream, then equally deafening silence. Someone yelled my name.

He was beside a cage built of welded re-bar about half way down the length of the building. Within, a dozen or more shapes huddled against the far wall. By the time I got there, he was using massive bolt cutters on a padlock securing the gate-like door.

As I stormed through the door, one of the shapes separated itself from the massed bodies. A naked woman slammed into me and latched on like a lamprey on a shark. Without thought, I picked her up and ran for the car like Usain Bolt. Less than ninety seconds after Larry demolished the door, I was squalling away, blindly following the planned escape route.

Fifteen or twenty blocks from the scene of the crime, I finally felt safe enough to glance her way. We were passing under a street light, and at first thought I'd made a horrible mistake.

The woman curled against the passenger door looked nothing like Cheri. The hair matted against her face and scalp was platinum blonde. Her face was a mass of bruises, and her left eye was swollen shut. The right side of her mouth was scabbed over and her lips twice their normal size. Dark contusions decorated her torso like obscene tattoos. Heavy gauge metal rings gleamed from both nipples.

Her teeth were chattering and her one eye was staring wildly at me. Her voice was a mere croak. "You came for me. I knew you would. I never gave up." She weakly reached out toward me with a hand bearing chipped and broken dragon length red nails.

I tore my eyes away from the apparition beside me and tried to focus on the road. "There's a blanket in the back seat. Bottles of water and some sandwiches in the old cooler."

With a tortured groan, she turned and leaned between the seats, one of her tits pressing against my arm. She fumbled and cursed, trying to open the water. She gulped it, spilling more than she swallowed.

"I need a fucking straw. And a cigarette. Can we stop somewhere?"

The next two weeks were pretty much straight out of hell. She clung to me like I was life itself. She panicked if she awoke and I wasn't beside her. She followed me from room to room. I treated her inflamed nipple piercings with antibiotic cream, but the closures had been somehow sealed and I couldn't open them. One of her front teeth was gone, knocked out in one of her beatings. Cheri's bruises turned an ugly purple and yellow. I was pretty sure she had broken ribs. When I demanded she see a doctor, she flew into hysterics.

"No," she screamed. "I can't let anyone see me! They'd call the cops. No!" Her single eye looked like that of a trapped animal. She was pouring cold sweat. I relented.

Rather than provide their prisoners food, her kidnappers gave them a pipe and meth. To ease the nightmarish withdrawal, I fed her my pain medication. Then, I had to wean her off those. She pretty much chain smoked every moment she was awake. The house reeked.

She wasn't sane. As I put together her story, assembled from bits and pieces of her delirious ramblings, I understood why.

At the salon, they'd fed her an endless supply of tequila shots, bleached her hair, plucked her eyebrows into a high arch, and gave her a spray tan. Larry had left her a sequined red mini-dress that was barely street legal. By the time he picked her up, she was almost too drunk to walk.

He'd apparently taken her straight to the Days Inn, where the three stooges, as she called them, had triple penetrated her for hours before loading her with coke and beginning the endless line of johns. Everyone except the stooges had to use condoms. No glove, no love. There were smoke, drug, and fast food breaks, some naps, but it was otherwise non-stop fucking all day Saturday and Sunday. That was the mundane part.

She vaguely remembered yelling and the sounds of a brutal fight before she was violently jerked from bed, and beaten unconscious. She came to in the cage, naked, being nursed by a young woman who spoke only some asian tongue. There were ten women of various races in the pen, but she was the only caucasian. One black woman - child, really - warned her to do whatever their captors demanded, or they'd fuck her up bad.

And they had. When three of the men came to drag her out of the cell for what they called fun and games, she'd resisted. Thus the lost tooth. They'd thrown her on a filthy mattress and repeatedly raped her until she passed out. That'd been repeated several times. As the only blonde, she'd apparently been very popular. Every time, she'd tried to fight, and every time she'd been punched, kicked and raped anyway. The nipple piercing had apparently been done on the second day of her ordeal, but she didn't remember it.

By the end of week one, the swelling and bruising had pretty much gone away, and there were occasion glimpses of the old Cheri in the wreckage I'd brought home. She still vacillated between mania and depression, still begged me once in a while to go out and buy her "some of the good shit to smoke," and promised to fuck me blind if I'd give her another taste of my opiods.

It was around then that, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a warm, wet mouth on my swollen cock, and her her murmur, to my dick, between licks and kisses, "Oh, baby, feed Cherry that meat. Fuck Cherry's mouth hole, lover. So good. So fucking good."

I fumbled for the bedside lamp switch. By the time I found it, she had me buried down her throat. Gasping, she pulled back and glanced up. She done full face makeup, and I could smell liquor on her breath. With a loose grin, she dove back down, easily swallowing me. I tried to pry her loose, but she refused to give up her prize. God help me, but I came down her throat and she drank me dry.

"Ah," she said, lighting a cigarette. "Just what I needed." Then, as if awakening from a bad dream, she blinked repeatedly and started crying hopelessly. I took the cigarette away and cradled her in my arms as she wailed. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

That was a bad day.

"I've got to do something about this fucking hair," she muttered as I climbed out of the shower on Monday morning of week four. She was wan without makeup, fully clothed in one of her old summery dresses, but her tits wobbled, unrestrained, beneath it. She was right. Her dark roots were in glaring contrast to the rest of her silvery locks.

She gave me a little lost girl look and swallowed with effort. "Do you think it's safe for me to, you know, get out of the house?"

Despite my fears, I tried to reassure her. "Sure. Make an appointment. I need to run some errands and go by Bass Pro. Make sure I'm still an employee." It'd been a challenge to hang onto my job. It was still tenuous, but probably salvageable.

There was still fear in her eyes. "Are you sure I'll be okay?"

"Positive."

She gave my still wet body a hard, tight hug. "I'll never be able to tell you how much I love you, Davey. You've saved my skanky ass time after time. Without you, my corpse would be rotting in some ditch by now."

She made an appointment - not at the dive salon on the south side - for one o'clock. She chain smoked the whole way, shrieking and nearly jumping from her seat when a siren wailed past on a cross street, asking me three times if her nipple rings were visible through the armored bra she was wearing. I dropped her off, not without reservations, and watched nervously glance in every direction before darting into the shop.