Midnight Grinding (30 page)

“Maybe he was just bored,” suggested Lowery. “Or curious. And, like the proverbial cat, his curiosity ended up killing him.”

“But not without some help,” said Blakely.

***

It was the following morning when they made their move, with the assistance of the Jacksonville Police Department.

“It still sounds pretty crazy to me,” said Detective Art Stafford as they pulled up in front of 577 Oceanview Drive.”

“I don’t know, Art,” said his partner, Steve Kraft. “We’ve had some weird cases ourselves. Remember when that teenager disappeared for three weeks and then showed up in the middle of that shopping mall, claiming he’d been abducted by aliens? And the polygraph claimed that he was telling the truth?”

“That kid was a nutcase,” said Stafford.

“We’re not here to argue whether this case is plausible or not,” Lowery said from the backseat of their unmarked car. “We’ve got arrest and extradition warrants for this Susan Graham and that’s what we’re here for. So let’s get to it.”

“Okay,” said Stafford. “But I hope you guys aren’t making fools of yourselves.”

The four men left the car and walked up the concrete sidewalk to a clapboard house painted coral pink. The front yard was decorated with pink flamingoes standing on wire legs and seashells collected from the beach, which was just a stone’s throw away.

They opened the screen door and paused for a moment, unbuttoning jackets and unfastening holsters. Then Stafford knocked on the door.

They heard someone stir inside, but no one answered the door.

He knocked louder. “Miss Graham, this is Detective Stafford of the Jacksonville Police. Please open the door…right now.”

They half expected some resistance, but they were surprised. They heard the rattle of a chain being disengaged and then the door opened.

Susan Graham didn’t look like a murder suspect. Instead, she looked like a sadder, heavier version of Phillip Bomar. Her shoulder-length hair was a lusterless red, she wore tortoise-shell glasses, and her plain face was pimply and utterly devoid of makeup. She wore a Miami Dolphins T-shirt, white shorts, and green flip-flops.

“Come in,” she said softly, almost in a whisper. The two Atlanta detectives received the same impression. She was shocked and scared by their appearance on her doorstep, but there was a grim acceptance as well. In a way, she had hoped to get away with her crime scott-free, but in another she knew that she never would.

The four policemen stepped into a cramped living room decorated with second-hand furniture and the type of framed prints you can buy at Wal-Mart. The only point of sophistication in the entire room was a desk bearing an expensive Hewlett Packard computer and laser printer. Taste wise, it was as far from Phillip Bomar’s upstairs office as you could get. But it still held the same dreary air of isolation.

“Susan Graham,” said Lowery. “Were you acquainted with a Phillip Andrew Bomar?”

“Yes,” said the young woman with a sigh. “But only through the Internet. I never actually met him in person.”

Taylor took the CD-ROM from his jacket pocket. “And did you mail Mr. Bomar this?”

Susan Graham stared at the disk for a long moment. “Yes, I did.”

The lieutenant showed her the papers. “Miss Graham, I have a warrant for your arrest on the charge of the willful and premeditated murder of Phillip Bomar.”

She stared at them silently, then began to back away. “Okay,” she said in resignation. “I did it. I admit that. But before you take me, let me tell you
why
I did what I did.”

“Maybe you ought to wait until you talk to an attorney, Miss Graham,” suggested Detective Stafford. “This is a serious crime you’re being charged with.”

“I know how serious it is!” she snapped at him. She stopped her slow retreat and stood in the center of the living room. The computer was to her left, while a doorway leading into the back of the house stood to her right. “Just let me tell you and get it over with, okay?”

Stafford shrugged and looked over at Lowery. “It’s your ballgame, pal. If she wants to talk now, that’s okay with us.”

Taylor took a micro-recorder from his pocket, showed it to the young woman, and turned it on. “Be advised that anything you now say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

They stood and waited, giving her time to gather her thoughts. Then Susan Graham began to talk.

“I met Phillip on the net. We were both lonely and we just sort of lucked upon each other by accident. We found we both had a lot of the same interests and started talking to each other through the computer. I fell in love with him and told him so. But then I guess he got scared. He refused to communicate with me anymore. For a couple of weeks, I left messages on his E-mail, but he wouldn’t answer them. I was crushed at first. Then I guess I sort of lost my temper.”

“You were aware of his condition?” asked Lowery.

She nodded. “He told me about it a week or two after we started talking.”

“And you sent him this CD-ROM out of spite? For dumping you?”

Tears began to bloom in Susan Graham’s eyes. Slowly, she began to back toward the doorway. “Phillip was stupid! So damn stupid! He didn’t know how lucky he was!”

Taylor shucked his revolver from his holster and held it at his side. “Stay where you are, Miss Graham.”

But she ignored him. Step by step, she made her way toward the far end of the living room. “He didn’t realize how much we had in common!” she sobbed. “He didn’t realize just how much alike we were!”

“Miss Graham—” called the police sergeant, raising his gun.

Suddenly, she turned and ran through the doorway and down a short hallway to a bathroom. By the time they got there, the door had been slammed shut and locked from the inside.

“Open this door, Miss Graham,” called Lowery. “Or we’ll be forced to break it down.”

For a moment, there was only silence. Then a long, mournful scream shrilled from the opposite side of the door.

“Let’s do it!’ said Taylor. He and Lowery kicked at the door three times before the doorframe splintered around the lock and the door slammed inward with a crash.

The four detectives crowded through the doorway and stopped. They stood frozen in their tracks, staring at the mess on the bathroom floor.

“Oh dear God,” said Lowery.

Detective Stafford’s eyes grew wide with shock, unable to comprehend what he was looking at.

“What happened?” he demanded to know.
“What the hell happened to her?”

***

At the request of the Jacksonville coroner, they stepped into the lab.

“There are a few points that I need to clarify before I proceed with the autopsy,” he said. “This was the condition you found her in upon entering the bathroom?”

Lowery, Taylor, Stafford, and Kraft took a step closer. They stared at the naked body of Susan Graham lying on the stainless steel gurney. “Yes,” Lowery said, speaking for them all.

“And it was only a matter of seconds between the time she locked the door and the time you gained entrance?”

“That’s right,” said Stafford.

The coroner shook his head. “I don’t understand. I simply don’t understand how this could have taken place in such a short period of time.”

Ken Lowery and Ed Taylor stared at the fatal injuries that had taken the life of Susan Graham.

The coroner pointed them out with a rubber-gloved hand.

“Severe lacerations of both wrists, resulting in massive blood loss.”

No razor blades or sharp objects had been found in the bathroom.

“Indications of strangulation and rope burns around the throat.”

No rope or cord had been discovered, either.

“And this,” said the coroner, shaking his head in bewilderment. “A circular wound to the right temple and severe hemorrhaging of the brain. Like a bullet hole, but with no evidence of powder burns around the opening of the wound.”

They had searched the bathroom several times. Absolutely no gun had been found.

Silence hung in the room for a long moment. Then Lowery spoke. “She was right then.”

“About what?” asked Stafford.

Lowery glanced over at his partner. He could tell by the look in Taylor’s eyes that he had come to the same conclusion. “She and Phillip Bomar
were
a lot alike. But in all the wrong ways.”

WHOREHOUSE

HOLLOW

Back in high school, I was always puzzled by the apathy and lack of drive that seemed to rule some of my classmates. Oh, there were those of us who had big plans and wanted to bust the world wide open following graduation. But there were an equal number who seemed content to simply do as their parents had done…digging ditches or tending the home, forever with a load of clothes in the washer and a passel of young’uns underfoot. (Not that there’s anything wrong with either. I was raised to believe that any work, if hard and honest, is honorable work.)

I reckon it was just that utter absence of ambition that perplexed me so. The most promising students and athletes just seemed to throw it all away. It was as though their zest for life had been siphoned completely out of them.

Just as they had promised Coach Winters, the Bedloe County Bears delivered the final victory of that football season, as well as the coveted mid-state championship.

Not that such an accomplishment was anything new for the elderly coach or the annually-changing team that he had commanded for nearly twenty years. Under the stern training and no-nonsense guidance of Bud Winters, the Bears had won every single game, both at home and away, as well as the mid-state championship since the autumn of 1973. Exactly how such a feat was accomplished consistently, year after year, was debated by sports fans and neighboring high schools throughout the state of Tennessee.

Even some of the major colleges in the area, such as Vanderbilt and UT in Knoxville, had attempted to analyze the mixture of skill and pure luck that seemed to bless Winters’ team of beefy farmboys on a puzzlingly regular basis. In fact, entire theses had been written by a number of graduate students, attempting to theorize exactly what the Bears possessed that no other high school team in the state seemed to. But, in actuality, no one really had a clue.

No one, that was, but the members of the team itself. Those strapping, young men who made up the ranks of the victorious Bears certainly knew what the motivation of their unequalled stamina on the gridiron and their infallible will to win was due to. And that magical motivation could, quite simply, be summed up in two words.

Whorehouse Hollow.

Unbeknownst to those who spent their free time debating the phenomenon of the Bedloe County Bears—from blue collar workers in sleazy honky-tonks to state senators at their posh and manicured country clubs—there was one factor and one factor only that made the team an unbeatable winner each and every season. And that factor was plain and simple horniness.

When fall training began on the football field of Bedloe County High every September, the inevitable pep talk was given. Coach Winters drummed the importance of team spirit, organization, and brute force into those young minds. The talk was taken patiently as always, the new members of that season’s team squirming on the risers of the wooden bleachers until that anticipated promise was made by the crabby, cigar-puffing coach. Then the old man would smile and give them what they had been waiting for. “Do it for me, boys,” Coach Winters would say, “Win that mid-state championship for me this year just like all the years before, and at the end of the season, you all will be rewarded. And I reckon you all know what that reward will be, don’t you?”

Snickers of dirty laughter and sly looks were always exchanged by the members of that year’s incarnations of the Bears. Yes, they all knew what the coach’s payment for a successful season of winning was. It had been the same for the past twenty years. A couple cases of Budweiser…as well as a trip to Whorehouse Hollow.

For a team of teenaged boys with a field of wild oats to sow, such an offer of free beer and unlimited sex was enough to drive them toward an ultimate victory. And that current year, like every one before, proved to be no exception.

***

Boisterous laughter and shrill rebel yells echoed through the boys’ locker room following that final game, as well as words of congratulation and customary pats on the butt. The Bears had done it once again. They had annihilated the Crimshaw County Cougars, 28 to 0, and taken the mid-state championship, no contest.

A season’s worth of hard work had finally paid off. Now it was time to relax and enjoy the spoils that victory had netted them. Namely the night of debauchery that Coach Winters had promised them that first day at practice.

Among the eighteen seniors who gathered in the locker room, peeling off their sweaty, grass-stained uniforms and taking their turn in the showers, only one seemed to lack the air of excitement that the others shared. Tony Frazier, star quarterback of the Bears, sat on the bench in front of his locker. He grinned triumphantly and exchanged high-fives with his fellow teammates, but, inwardly, he was having second thoughts about the anticipated fulfillment of the coach’s promise.

Tony wasn’t like most of the Neanderthals who made up the ranks of the football team. Unlike them, he had a head on his shoulders, as well as high ambitions beyond the realm of the rural Tennessee high school. Tony was a straight-A student. He was bound to graduate with honors and, hopefully, with a football scholarship to one of the big Southern universities as well. Strangely enough, despite the longstanding winning streak that Bedloe County boasted, not one player in a span of twenty years had gone on to play college football. Tony couldn’t understand exactly why. It seemed like, when scholarships were being awarded at all the other high schools, the star players of the Bears always turned down the opportunity. The reason? Plain and simple apathy. After the big win, the members of the Bedloe County Bears always seemed to lose their drive. Just like the alumni before them, they graduated from high school and led dismal and lackluster lives. They either married too young, ended up with a passel of unwanted kids, and spent their days working their fingers to the bone at some dead-end job, or ended up drinking themselves to death or landing in prison. Exactly why those gallant warriors of the gridiron succumbed to such paths was as much a mystery as their constant wins of decades past.

Tony Frazier vowed that he wouldn’t end up like that. He was going to march across the football field on graduation night, proudly accept that football scholarship from Principal Allen, and then go on to a future as a pro player. He wasn’t going to let the apathy that cursed most of the good old boys in Bedloe County infect him. He was a lover of life and expected only the best for himself in the years to come.

As he finished undressing, he noticed his teammates as they entered and exited the stalls of the boys’ shower room. Most of them already sported raging hard-ons in anticipation of the night to come. All they had on their minds were a couple cans of Bud and a trip to the most infamous whorehouse in Bedloe County.

Tony had heard the stories, passed down in whispers from upperclassmen the year before. The stories of Whorehouse Hollow and the old two-story mansion located deep in the depths of the woods south of town, and how the madam, Fanny Eldritch, and her twelve beautiful daughters awaited the wants and needs of the county’s horny men, willing to do anything for only a few measly dollars. The pleasures that Whorehouse Hollow boasted were legendary. They said that Fanny and her girls knew everything imaginable about getting a man’s rocks off, and put that well-honed knowledge to good use. What they could do with their hands and mouths—as well as other bodily orifices—well, it just had to be experienced to be believed.

No wonder the Bedloe County Bears had enjoyed such a solid winning streak. Each and every new team that Coach Winters put together were enticed by the carnal pleasures that Whorehouse Hollow promised at the end of the season. The winning machine that made up the high school football team ran off of one chemical and one chemical alone: pure, 100 percent testosterone.

Tony jumped when he felt a strong hand on his broad shoulder. He looked up to see Coach Winters standing over him. The elderly man grinned paternally down at the quarterback, grinding the butt of his Tampa Nugget cigar between the stubs of his tobacco-stained teeth. “Whatcha doing sitting here, Frazier?” asked the coach. “You’d best get in there and shower. You wanna be fresh and ready for all that hot tail you’re gonna find down there in the Hollow.”

“Yes, sir,” was all that Tony said. He forced a grin and left the bench. As he headed for the scalding spray of the showers, he looked back over his shoulder. Coach Winters continued to grin at him, hands in his pockets, his eyes like tiny black marbles beneath those bushy gray eyebrows. Something about the coach’s expression disturbed Tony. It was almost predatory in nature. He had seen it before, both during practice and in the heat of the actual game. The coach was a man who enjoyed winning at any cost, that was plain to see. And when the winning was over, Winters like to gloat. The coach savored making the opposition feel as insignificant as a maggot in horseshit, while he himself felt ten feet tall and invincible.

As Tony found a vacant stall and began to soap himself up beneath the hot spray of the shower, he began to wonder if he could actually go through with that night’s secret trip to Whorehouse Hollow. He thought of his steady girlfriend, Pamela Sue Cripps, and began to feel a pang of guilt nag at him. Tony had gone with the pretty blonde since the start of the school year and he really cared for the girl a lot, maybe even loved her. One thing was for sure and that was that Tony saw more in Pamela Sue than any of the other girls he had dated in high school. In fact they had never made love. Their intimacy had never gone further than kissing or petting. She simply didn’t feel comfortable going all the way and Tony, respectful of her feelings, had never forced the issue.

Now here he was on the verge of cheating on her with some whore he would encounter in some sleazy one-night stand. It just didn’t seem right. It seemed somehow dirty and shameful. But he certainly couldn’t make his feelings known to the other guys. They would rag him about his reluctance for the rest of the school year and he simply didn’t need that kind of hassle. As he began to lather his lower abdomen and legs, Tony felt himself become suddenly aroused. He closed his eyes and imagined how tonight would turn out. Although guilt cast its shadow his way, Tony was still a red-blooded teenage boy. His hormones kicked in and he fantasized about Fanny Eldritch and her voluptuous daughters. He imagined the paleness of creamy skin in the moonlight, the solidity of firm flesh and muscle against his body, and the warm wetness of lips and tongues teasing him, from head to toe.

Tony looked down at his crotch and saw that he had hardened, just like all the others. He fought hard to drive all thoughts of Pamela Sue from his mind.
Just one night,
he told himself as he stepped from the shower and vigorously toweled off.
Hell, what could it hurt? She’ll never know.

“Let’s hurry it up, boys!” called Coach Winters from the locker room. “Fanny and her gals don’t like to be kept waiting!”

A cheer of primal lust went up from the ranks of the Bedloe County Bears. And, like it or not, Tony Frazier’s was among them.

***

A half hour later, they were on their way.

Coach Winters had borrowed one of the Bedloe County school system’s big yellow buses to take them to their intended destination. After stopping off at a tavern called the Bloody Bucket and purchasing two cases of Budweiser tallboys, as promised, the coach headed the diesel due south along U.S. Highway 70.

After a few miles, fertile farmland gave way to dense forest. Without warning, Winters jerked the wheel to the left, pulling the bus onto a long stretch of uneven dirt road. “Next stop…Whorehouse Hollow!” he called out.

The eighteen young men—half drunk and horny—whooped and hollered in reply as the bus left the familiarity of the open highway and began to descend deeper and deeper into unknown territory.

Tony nursed his can of beer quietly, choosing not to drink quite as freely as the others. He had almost talked himself into enjoying this brief adventure back in the high school locker room, but now he began to have reservations once again. This time it didn’t involve Pamela Sue. Rather, he thought back to the old tall tales and ghost stories that his Grandpa Frazier had told him when he was just a kid. Hackle-raising stories concerning an old house deep down in the south woods where a witch and her brood of daughters lived. The old man had been half senile, so sometimes the details of his tall tales varied a bit. Sometimes he claimed the daughters were vampires, while other times he said they were ghosts who would suck the very life from a man if they got a hold of him. Tony shook the creepy stories from his head, telling himself they had been nothing but hogwash. More than likely the tales had been concocted by the menfolk of Bedloe County, hoping to discourage curious children from exploring the vicinity of Whorehouse Hollow. It wouldn’t have done to have little Junior sneaking around the Eldritch house at night and accidentally catch a glimpse of his papa with his pants literally around his ankles.