Page 4 of Copper

Aaron’s already paid me and tipped me an extra fifty bucks, but he throws down an extra twenty-dollar bill on the cushion he just vacated like he’s tipping the sofa. He looks at the floor, but I know his face. He’s sad.

“Thanks, Lucy. Always a pleasure to catch up with you.”

I don’t take it right away. I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me lurch for money from my high school boyfriend like a starving person served the first meal they’ve seen in weeks. I won’t dare grab that twenty while Aaron watches. I’d rather die than show him my desperation.

“Don’t call me that here. I don’t call you Sheriff Dwyer when I suck your dick.”

“To be fair, you didn’t call me Sheriff Dwyer when you sucked my dick a long time ago.”

“Well, you weren’t the county sheriff then, were you?” I ask with a grin.

He smiles back and reaches out his index finger, tilting my chin up so I can’t look away. “What should I call you when I come to see you, Lucy?”

“You need to call me by my stage name, especially if you ask for me. Peter will know, but the other girls won’t know me by my real name. I don’t want random guys to overhear it, either.”

His face softens, and I know that look. Protective. He doesn’t like me working here, and he doesn’t want other men to know my name. “What’s your stage name?” he asks.

“Copper. You need to call me Copper here.”

Chapter 3

Aaron

She’sabrasiveandfuckedin the head about something lately, but I can’t get her out of my mind. Not that it’s a new feeling. She never left my brain, even when I was married to Cynthia for a decade. Even when I saw her at our ten-year reunion with that shit-stain husband of hers and sporting bruises barely visible in her low-back dress. I wanted to reach out and run my hands over the purple blotches the size of a man’s fist, like my touch could magically heal her.

I’d heal every part of her if she’d let me – if I knew how to even propose helping her. I continue to frequent the club, knowing full well she’s in some kind of financial trouble. The cop in me thinks it’s legal issues. Something feels off about all of this. She moved back in a hurry without Beck. She’s quiet and closed off now. Whatever it is that haunts her, it’s dark. There’s something she doesn’t want to tell me. I can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t want to tell anyone, or she doesn’t want to tell the sheriff.

Lucy. My sweet, sunny Lucy with the dark cloud over her head since the world – and probably that fucker she married – kicked her in the throat. Sweet Lucy that used to scrawl my name on her notebooks inside pink hearts. My girl who gave me her virginity the same time she took mine in her twin bed.

The girl that got away.

I drop my keys on the counter and open the fridge as I play my voicemail messages. Two came in while I was at the club with Lucy, and I was too frazzled by the intense orgasm to listen to them on the drive home. It’s like that every time I see her now. It takes an hour after I see her to process simple directions or thoughts. I don’t even have to get a hell of a blow job for my brain to be scrambled. I ran into her at the grocery store last month, and we had a five-minute conversation on bran flakes versus Frosted Flakes. When I got to the self-checkout station, I tried to pay the bill with my library card. I was lucky to make it down the stairs to the main club on my wobbly legs tonight.

I hate that she works at the club, but what am I going to do? Go in there and cover her with a trench coat and tell her she never needs to work another day in her life because I’ll take care of her? She’s not my sweet ex-girlfriend now. She’s hard. Determined. Something happened to her. I asked her what happened to make her strip when I got her up to the VIP room before she blew me, but she dropped to her knees, avoiding the question and driving me insane at the same time.

She moved back to town after living in Chicago with Beck for years. I used my resources to find out she now lives by herself in a two-bedroom townhouse that’s affordable and has utilities included in rent. She used to drive a BMW while she was married but now drives a Honda with a registration showing she purchased it a few months ago when she left Chicago. She also goes into the city once or twice a month, faithfully making the forty-five commute, rain or shine.

Fuck if I know why. Is she looking for her ex?

“Yeah, boss,” my deputy’s voice sounds through my phone. Mitchell’s voice is low through the speaker, which means he was still at the station when he left the message and didn’t want to be overheard. “We got some info on the Cannon case. Detective Coleson found some paperwork in the office drawer. We’re still working on the laptop, but there was a paper trail for a transaction from an offshore account. Guess who it’s from? Murphy Beckett. We’ll dig deeper. If we find something, I’ll call.”

The message finishes, and I clap my hands. Murphy Beckett is the president of the local motorcycle club. We’ve suspected him of general shittery for about three years and have never caught him. There have been whispers of drugs, trafficking women, and a few unexplained bodies have turned up in his territory. It’s possible George Cannon may be one of those bodies. We’ve been trying to nail Murphy on being a satellite seller for one of the big Chicago dealers and filtering drugs out to the housewives in the suburbs. If he’s killing men like George Cannon, or having them killed by hired help, we’ve been building the wrong case against him.

The second message starts, and Pearl’s voice fills the kitchen. “Hi, Daddy! Grandma wanted to know if we could stay a little longer on Sunday to go roller skating. Is that OK? Text Grandma.”

I fire off a text to my late wife’s mother that she can keep my daughters longer this weekend and take a beer into the living room. Settling on the couch, I blow out a sigh. If I could get Murphy Beckett on some shit and connect him to George Cannon, I can put him behind bars faster. The world would be that much safer and girls like my daughters the world over would be safer.

If I could only get Lucy to do more than suck my dick, my life would be perfect.

Chapter 4

Aaron

“Holyfuckingshit,”Imumble, turning my head and covering my mouth with my forearm. You never really get used to the smell.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the reaction every person that’s come in has had,” Detective Coleson says, waving his hands around the room. He straightens his tie like one does when a superior walks into a room. “The smell was bad for a few days before the landlady let herself in and found him.”

I usually let the detectives do their job while I do mine, but violent deaths in a county outside of a large city require press conferences. I need to know what’s going on before I make an ass of myself on TV. Unfortunately, I’m the guy they interview.

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