Micah (3 page)

There was the issue of her brother. He
really hated that she spent so much of her time with him, and him
being a cripple and all. The two of them did a great deal together,
and they looked alike…so much so that he sometimes came home with
pictures of the two of them and would be sad to cut her brother
out. It bothered him when he had to shred so many pictures when
he’d spent so much time taking them for her. He knew that as soon
as they were wed, he’d be able to convince her that the brother
would have to go. There just would not be time for him and the
cripple. She would completely understand.

“
She’ll be here soon
enough, and then I will take as many pictures of her as I wish.”
His voice echoed around the dark room, and he wondered yet again
why he couldn’t enter her room. He supposed it had something to do
with their mother—his brother and him—and the way they’d been
raised by her. Never enter a room that a woman slept in. It was
just not done. He’d even tried to go into the big house she shared
with some other people, but there were cats running around; little
ones, of course, but he was terrified of them all the same. He was
actually afraid of all four-legged creatures.

The house she stayed in when she
wasn’t working was large, but not the part that she seemed to spend
a great deal of time in. It was hard for him to make this house,
their house, look like that one, as the one he was in now was much
larger. The furniture was harder to match up, and the curtains, the
ones he had here, didn’t work, as she had only the one window and
he had four. The kitchen, after much deliberation and aggravation,
was just left alone. He thought she’d enjoy the bigger room anyway
when she cooked their meals.

She shared her home with others, four
to be exact. That was another thing that bothered him a great deal.
Two of them were males, and when they were in the yard together,
coming or going, one or both of them would hug her to them and
sometimes, much to his dismay, they would kiss her on the
cheek.

Closing his eyes, he tried to think of
her when he’d left her. She’d been walking to her house today.
Another man had left her with a hug at the steps. Then a man, a big
man—the one that lived there too—came out and kissed her forehead.
He would put a stop to that soon enough. No one would kiss her but
him. And then it would only be in greeting.

Not that he didn’t like sex. It was a
beautiful stress reliever. But wives did not have the kind of sex
he liked. That was from the ones that took money. He liked his sex
to be private and the woman to dominate him, so much so that he
would be sore for days afterward. His true love would not have to
do the things that the woman he knew did to him. It would be
unseemly.

His cock stretched in his pajamas, and
he scolded it. He was too tired to find anyone tonight, and he’d
driven enough. But his cock wouldn’t listen, and he had to stroke
it several times before it was fully hard.

“
I will take care of you
now, but you will behave in the future.” He got up to go to the
bathroom and to find his clothing. He was pulling on his diaper and
putting his sucker in his mouth when he realized how excited his
cock was. “You are an evil thing, you are.”

His diaper fit him tightly now that he
was stone hard. He wanted to simply give it what it wanted, but he
was slow to do so. As he poured the baby lotion over his appendage,
he thought of how a woman would smack his bottom for being so
naughty, and she turned into his love.

“
No.” But the image was
there. She was there with her small stick and her apron. As he
closed his eyes, his appendage in his hand, he nearly came from the
thought of her swatting him. His cock stretched painfully until he
felt the sticky wetness on his fingers. Fisting himself harder now,
his cock and balls hanging from the front of his diaper, he felt
tears stream down his face as his love beat him harder. The stick,
a hickory one, was going so fast that he nearly screamed each time
it hit him in his mind.

When he tightened his fingers around
his cock, his other hand cupped his balls so tightly that he was
nearly sick from it, and his semen shot from him as if it had been
fired from a cannon. He watched as it spewed forth and dripped down
the towel and wall of his otherwise pristine bathroom. The relief
was sudden and profound. He had to stand holding onto the wall, his
legs were so weak. And when he took a step, he was shaking
too.

Taking off the used diaper, he stuffed
it in the trashcan under the small sink. His body, nearly too weak
with the release, wanted to crawl into a ball and rest. Staggering
to the bed, he crawled in, not even bothering with putting his
pants back on. He was so relaxed that he closed his eyes and fell
into a deep and quiet sleep.

The news the next morning was filled
with death and mayhem. It was really nothing new, but the same
scenes from the day before…even the week before really. As he ate
his breakfast of bacon and eggs with sliced ham on the side, he
wondered if his love was going to be safe today. He would have to
take extra care to keep an eye on her until it was time for her to
come to him. And that time could not come soon enough.

~~~

Micah Bentley listened to the woman
telling the officers about her missing husband. One second he was a
virtuous man, the next a smelly bastard who drank too much beer and
farted a great deal. And she had to knock him around on occasion
just to keep him in line. Marital bliss this was not.

“
Don’t even have the
gumption to find himself a job that he’ll hold down for more than a
paycheck or two.” She glanced at his empty chair. “Course when he
did get himself a gig, he worked hard at it. Good thing we had them
rentals. Don’t know what we’d have done had Daddy not left them all
to us.”

“
You said he was out
collecting rent. Do you know where he was headed?” The officer
looked at him when the woman, Mrs. Daniel Danbury, didn’t answer
him.

“
Mrs. Danbury, this would
go a good deal faster if you were to give us a list of who he was
collecting from.” She glared at him, and Micah felt his panther
start to curl around him. “I’m just trying to help find him. If
you’d like, we can go downtown and you can tell this to another
officer. I’m sure there are any number of them there that would
help.”

“
You think he’s some sort
of deadbeat. Well, he is I guess. But he’s my deadbeat, and I’ll
tell you right now, he’s not out at that woman’s house fucking her.
She come on to him, not him to her.” Micah had to cover his mouth
to hide the smile. If he had to fuck this woman, he’d need to have
his balls scrubbed directly afterwards and take all sorts of drugs,
even though they never worked on his kind. She was one nasty bitch
with her hair hanging down her back in a stringy mess. Her face
looked like she’d had jelly donuts and hadn’t bothered with a
napkin when she’d dripped them down her several chins. There was a
thick mustache across her upper lip, and a good start on a gray
beard on her chin. And Micah had to really work at not looking at
her teeth. He was sure that they’d never seen a toothbrush, much
less a dentist. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it looked like the
gown she had on had been her attire for several months. “He loves
me.”

“
I’m sure he does. And why
wouldn’t he?” Why not indeed, he thought. “But a list would help us
narrow down our search to find him. Three days is a good long time
for him to be missing.”

“
It is for him. Last time
it was a few hours, but he was only down at the local having a
beer. This time, though, he’s not even called me one time. And when
I call him, all I get is it going to that voice capture thing.” It
took Micah a few seconds to realize she meant voicemail. “And then
there’s the radio.”

“
The radio?” She nodded
and said nothing more. “I don’t understand. What about the radio?
The one in his car?”

“
Of course not. I don’t
allow that sort of thing in this house, and he don’t listen to that
trash in the car either. No, the radio like that there.” She
pointed to the officer’s walkie-talkie. “Got himself one of them
when we was without our phones for a time. Don’t need no service to
make that work. I keep getting these here voices I don’t know. Not
my husband, anyway.”

He asked her to get it as well as the
list. While she was gone, he looked around the house. He’d have to
call in the odor when he left. There was a definite odor of meth
around the place. As he moved to look at the pictures that were
spread all over a shelf made from bricks and wood, he wondered what
the hell these two saw in each other.

Daniel was a little rail thin man. He
looked, with the mustache that he was sporting in most of the
pictures, like he might have been a fan of Hitler or a child
molester. There was a name for that sort of look, but for the life
of him he couldn’t remember what it was. The thick bush sitting
over Daniel’s lip made Micah think of all sorts of names, not a one
of them even close to being nice. A ball cap was on his head in
most of the pictures, even the wedding photo with the current—but a
much thinner—Mrs. Danbury standing beside him. Micah thought the
woman had gained a good three hundred pounds since they’d said
their “I do’s.” As she came down the hall, her smell preceding her,
he stepped back to where he’d been and waited.

The list wasn’t long. In fact, he
could have memorized the two names on the list and wouldn’t have
had to take the dirty paper from her. The radio was something that
might have been in an Army surplus store, yet it seemed to work
just fine. The person at the other end spoke before Micah could ask
anything about it.

“
Hey there. You about
ready to come on down here and let me fuck you?” The woman’s voice
was harsh with drugs, he’d bet, and Micah asked the woman where she
was at. “I’m on down here on Tenth. Got me a tight pussy for the
likes of you.”

Mrs. Danbury huffed and walked away.
Micah smiled as he told the woman that he was more into couple sex
than just a single person, and his partner was a male. She told him
just what he knew she would. There was a guy involved with her and
she had to ask him if it was okay to split her work up. Apparently
her pimp didn’t care much for double teaming.

“
You come on down here,
big boy, and I’ll make sure he knows what’s what.” Micah looked at
the officer, who had gone pale. He hated rookies almost as much as
he did his job. “We be at the corner of Tenth and Sandalwood in
about an hour.”

“
We’ll be there.” He let
go of the talk button and asked his rookie if he had street
clothes. The look on his face would have been priceless if the
situation weren’t so serious.

“
You can’t mean that I’m
going to have sex with you and a woman. I have a wife and a child
on the way.” Micah wanted to let him think that was it, but shook
his head. “Good. I’m new at this job, but I’m going to draw the
line at having sex.”

“
I’m sure you are, but I
still need you in plain clothes. We’re going to the address and see
if she knows anything about Danbury.” He looked as if he might
break something as he thought this over. “We’re
pretending.”

“
So you want me to just
look like we’re having sex with her.” Micah nodded and wondered,
not for the first time since he’d been assigned to watch over
rookies, where the hell these kids were coming from, and decided
that someone must be recruiting them right out of grade
school.

“
Yes. I want her to think
we’re both having sex with her.” The rookie nodded and stood there.
“Well? Do you have plain clothes or not?”

“
Yes, sir. I have a lot of
them. Only two uniforms though. I didn’t count on them being so
expensive, so I could only get the two. My wife has to wash them
out nearly every night now. It being hot and all.” Micah put his
hand up when Rookie looked like he was going to explain to him the
weather changes as well as why it was hot.

“
In a single word, tell me
where they are.”

“
House. But I—”

Micah put up his hand again. “I’ll
take you there and you can change. Do it quickly and without
telling your wife. I have an hour, not the rest of your
life.”

Ten minutes later, armed with the list
and the radio, he dropped off Rookie. Micah decided then that he
was going to call all of them that. It would save him time from
figuring out who the hell he was working with today. Christ, he
hated his job.

Micah pulled out his note pad and
flipped to the back as soon as Rookie got out of the car and ran up
to his house. If he retired at sixty-five, he only had another
thirty-four years of putting up with this crap.

“
If I’m not shot in the
head with a silver bullet before then. And that is looking like a
done deal daily.”

Chapter 2

Joey watched his brother. He could
tell he was tired, and he looked kind of upset about something.
Their mom was moving around the kitchen talking about some sort of
charity event that one of them was going to be required to escort
her to, but Joey was keeping an eye on Micah. He had only three
weeks left until he was quitting his job, and Joey was worried
about him. Grandda came into the room and hit them both on the back
of the head.