Читать книгу Deliver Me From Evil - Mary Monroe - Страница 18

Jail was the last place I wanted to be. I tried not to even think along those lines. And, it made me angry when Wade brought it up.

“Can we get down to business? I’m naked and smelling like hell, and I want to take a shower. Now what is the deal with Jesse Ray?” I barked. I wanted to make sure that Wade knew I was angry and impatient.

“I told him I’d call him again so I could prove that you are still alive. In the meantime, Jason’s going to make sure he sees them pictures we took first.”

I didn’t like to think about the pictures I’d posed for. I had been hoping that we would not have to show them to my husband. As strange as it seemed, even to me, I wanted to make this monkey business as painless as possible for Jesse Ray. But I knew it was going to hurt him like hell to part with half a million dollars. That part couldn’t be helped. Besides, I was in a lot of pain myself and had been for a long time. And, the money from Jesse Ray was the only thing I knew of that could ease my pain.

And, speaking of pictures, yesterday was not the only time that I’d posed for pictures for Wade. One night a few months ago, in a room at the Marriott—paid for with one of my credit cards at that—I’d allowed Wade to take some Polaroids of me. Not a few head shots of me grinning into the camera like a drunken fool, but shots that were so sexually explicit that I could only stand to look at them that one time. Even though I looked much younger in each picture, and in a couple, I didn’t even look like myself.

That same night Wade made a video of us making love. I had protested and tried to get out of doing that, too, but after he’d plied me with about a gallon of wine, I became putty in his hands. He’d whined and pouted so much about needing something to help him “get through the days and nights” that I couldn’t be with him that I’d agreed to do it just to shut him up. Since he had promised me that it would be a one-time thing, and that the video would not end up on the Internet, I’d put on the performance of a lifetime.

I didn’t like what I’d done, and the next time I saw Wade, I made him give me the pictures and the tape. As soon as I got home that day, I fed the pictures into my shredder, and I ripped the video apart, disposing of the pieces in four different Dumpsters in Oakland.

When, and if, we got the money from Jesse Ray and I made it to Sacramento to start my new life, one thing that I was sure I’d never do again was let somebody photograph me, naked or any other way. The world had become too small, so I didn’t want any new pictures of me floating around that might end up in the hands of somebody who knew me. My break from Jesse Ray had to be complete in every way.

“How?” I asked Wade.

“How what?”

“How is Jason going to show my husband those pictures? He can’t go up to him in person! And, if he mails them, it could take a day or two before Jesse Ray receives them. Who knows who else might see them first.” I rose from the bed, rubbing my stomach with one hand and clutching the telephone in my other hand so hard, my fingers tingled. “And what if they find Jason’s and your fingerprints on those pictures? With all this DNA shit going on these days, a serious criminal doesn’t have a chance anymore. All they need is a drop of sweat, a strand of hair so tiny that a naked eye can’t see it, or a piece of lint off—”

“Listen up! DNA, BNA, triple A, or any other kind of A. Fuck it all. Look, baby.” Wade paused and let out a deep breath. “In the first place, I got enough sense to wipe them pictures off real good before we do anything with them. In the second place, I doubt very seriously that our boy is going to call the cops. Fingerprints is the last thing we need to worry about. We need to focus on getting that money and getting the hell up out of Berkeley.”

“Then how will you get the pictures to Jesse Ray? He’s got cameras all over that video store. Even if you or Jason go there in a disguise to deliver those pictures, these investigators these days have come up with all kinds of ways to identity folks in disguise.” I stopped to catch my breath. “Even if he doesn’t call the cops now, he probably will once he delivers the money and I’m safely returned. Jesse Ray worked too hard to get the money he’s got. He is not going to let it go that easily.”

“We’ll worry about crossing that bridge when we get to it,” Wade snapped. “Me and Jason will be back at the motel in a couple of hours. What do you want me to bring you to eat? You must be hungry as hell by now. You want some tacos? Some ribs? How about a bucket of KFC?”

“A sandwich will do,” I mumbled. “And while you are at it, pick me up some deodorant and some clean clothes. And don’t forget some underwear.”

It was the middle of May. Even though Berkeley was breezy throughout the day and near a lot of water, including the San Francisco Bay, the weather was fairly hot. The sun was already beating down on the cheap motel. The thin plastic curtains on the motel windows didn’t keep the sun’s blinding rays out. I was sweating everywhere on my body.

I had not cleaned myself since I’d left home the morning before, and I had not showered after my bedroom romps with Wade in his mama’s house and in the motel. I was beginning to feel and smell pretty ripe and musty. I was a clean woman. I was used to taking a shower every morning and a long, hot bubble bath every night. There was nothing more disgusting to me than the smell of day-old sex and dried cum caked up on my thighs and face.

I took a quick shower, and I do mean quick. The shower area had water bugs crawling up and down the moldy walls, and roaches sliding across the plastic shower curtain, and the hot water was almost as cold as the cold water. I almost fell when I noticed a used condom in a cracked soap dish on the windowsill.

After I dried myself off with one of the stiff towels in the bathroom, I slid back into the same clothes that I’d worn the day before and stretched out on the bed.

I could not relax or get too comfortable, because I had so many disturbing thoughts swimming around in my head. As hard as I tried to focus on the present situation and my future, my past came back to haunt me again.