Minot, North Dakota
When he woke up, Dale saw his wife was wearing white lace garters with a matching bra.
“I died and went to heaven,” he said.
“Good response,” Emily said.
She had been brushing her hair in front of the mirror. She picked up the cup of coffee she had poured earlier and brought it to him.
Dale looked into the cup, saw it was half filled, and said, “What happened to the rest?”
“We don’t have time for the rest,” she said. “Drink up.”
He followed her instructions, then set the cup on the night table.
“Use the bathroom now if you have to,” she said. “I have a nine o’clock meeting at the office.”
Dale jumped out of bed and headed for the bathroom. He wondered what was going on until he remembered the stunt Emily had pulled during the summer when she had shown up at his job naked underneath a raincoat. It was something he never could have expected back then. Just the thought of it now excited him.
That day she had made love to him in one of the janitor closets in the basement. Now at least he wouldn’t have to worry about someone walking in on them.
He was still hard when he came out of the bathroom. Emily gave him an approving wink.
“Very good,” she said. “Now, we have exactly twenty-five minutes before I have to leave.”
Dale looked at the clock and saw it was ten to eight. “You’ll never make the meeting on time.”
“Not if you’re gonna talk I won’t.”
He went to her and they began kissing. Dale stole looks at his wife’s body in the mirror as he groped her. She pulled him to the bed and Dale tried to go down on her. Emily stopped him. She motioned for him to lie on his back and then mounted him. She removed her bra and leaned forward enough to tease his lips with her nipples. Then she reached back and fondled him with her right hand and guided him inside her.
Emily closed her eyes as she rocked back and forth. Dale grew conscious of the time and started to buck underneath her. She met his thrusts and soon had his shoulders pinned with both her hands. She leaned into him until she felt the first rushes of orgasm. She was loud when she came. Dale was caught up in the moment. He tried to keep her on top, but she rolled off and lay on her back.
When he tried to climb on top, Emily turned away.
“Later,” she said. “I’m too tingly now.”
“Later?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“After dinner, I promise.”
“Jesus, Em, this isn’t right.”
“It was great, honey. Thank you.”
“But I thought it was for me.”
“It was for both of us.”
“But I didn’t come.”
“Not this time. Tonight you will.”
Dale sighed.
“Don’t be a baby,” she said. “You made your wife very happy this morning.”
“I have a feeling it wasn’t me.”
“It was, trust me. It’s nice to know I can still excite you.”
“In that outfit, Jesus Christ’d get excited. I can’t believe I have to think about it all day.”
She rolled onto her side to face him. “That’s the point, detective. You’ll think about it and then it’ll be that much better.”
“Yeah, great, thanks,” Dale said. He saw the time on the radio clock. “Aren’t you gonna be late?”
Emily saw the time and waved it off. “I have a few minutes.”
“Don’t you have to shower, get dressed?”
“Nope.”
“Nope, you don’t have to shower; or nope, you don’t have to get dressed? You’re not going to work like that, I hope?”
“Yep, it’ll be under my dress.”
“What?”
“It’ll be under my dress.”
“Something else for me to think about?”
Emily leaned over to peck him on the lips. “Who ever said cops were stupid?”
Dale watched his wife roll off the bed, grab a dress from the closet, and head into the bathroom. Then he looked down, saw he was still hard and cursed under his breath.
* * * * * * *
He was cranky the rest of the morning. His mood didn’t improve when he was called to the scene of an apparent train accident victim under the Broadway overpass. A hobo had probably frozen to death too close to the tracks and was hit by a train. His body had been severed in half.
“How the hell do you get hit by a train?” Dale asked no one in particular.
“You get drunk and then freeze to death,” Ekroth answered. “Or maybe you fall asleep before you freeze to death.”
Dale hadn’t seen the sergeant drive up. He shook Ekroth’s hand. “I thought you were in later today?”
“I was supposed to be,” Ekroth said. “Couldn’t sleep once the sun came up.”
“You should try using shades.”
Ekroth nudged Dale with an elbow. “Come on, let’s grab some coffee. They’ll be scraping that poor bastard off the tracks the rest of the morning.”
Dale followed Ekroth to a Mr. Donut near the university campus. They sat at a table and ate a donut breakfast.
“Some kids found another body late last night,” Ekroth said before taking a bite from a donut. “It’s up at the morgue now. Couple, three shots in the back of the head.”
Dale was listening. “And?”
“Black feller with cornrows.”
“Williams? The flyboy?”
“Looks like it.”
Dale looked ready to jump. “Shouldn’t we get over there, the morgue?”
Ekroth waved it off. “Body isn’t going anywhere and the ME said it’ll take a while for it to thaw. Some kids found him near a drainpipe half a mile from Fifty-two. Frozen solid. We’re trying to keep a lid on it, but the kids that found him will probably blab it anyway.”
“Executed, huh?”
Ekroth nodded. “Got me to thinking,” he said. “That thing up in Mohall, that doctor’s wife they found murdered up there.”
“Not for us to think about,” Dale said. “Not our jurisdiction.”
“Yeah, but the woman and her husband lived here in Minot.”
“Wasn’t she caught in a kind of compromising situation? I mean, the doctor didn’t seem to know where his wife was. Didn’t he put out a missing person report or something?”
“He was visiting her hometown in Montana. Even bought her some presents from her old high school. A hat or something. Pretty convenient, you ask me.”
“Could be. So?”
Ekroth dunked the last of a donut in his coffee. “This is still North Dakota,” he said. “That woman one day, the Barron kid, then this feller they found at the drainpipe, whether it’s Williams or not.”
“Except Barron is an overdose.”
“Probably.”
“I’m back to so,” Dale said. “What?”
“And this mess this morning,” Ekroth said.
“The poor slob probably froze to death before the train got him.”
“Probably froze to death first. Maybe so.”
Dale rubbed his face. “I’ve already had a rough morning,” he said. “You’ll have to be more specific about whatever is bugging you.”
Ekroth shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just a lot of death, I guess. These aren’t the usual highway accident fatalities. There’s been a lot of curious death for here. Makes a man wonder.”
“That it?” Dale asked. “That’s what you were thinking about?”
“That’s it.”
Dale shook his head.
“I didn’t say it was anything profound,” Ekroth said.