“They aren’t all like that,” Nikki sighed. “Some of
them are more interesting, and you know it. You’ve just got to show them the
brilliant gal that I know and occasionally have kinky sex with.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Kristina said. “I am pretty
brilliant, and not all murders are straightforward. I want to do something that
interests me, you know? I want to do something I’m good at. I want to get my
doctorate. I want to be able to run my own museum. I want to have my life mean
something, be something, you know?”
“I do,” she replied. “That’s why I’m a coroner. I get
to help figure out whodunit, just like you want to. Really, how many mysteries
can you get into running a museum?”
“Probably not as many as if I worked as a homicide
detective,” Kristina admitted. “But I’ll talk to your chief about it later, if
I want. I really can’t handle TAing, studying for my doctorate, and applying
for a new job, all at the same time. Plus, isn’t detective work kind of a
career thing that you have to put in several years as a cop first to get? I’m
more about committing or enabling petty crime than stopping it. Can you imagine
me as a police woman?”
“Are you trying to turn me on?” Nikki said with a
grin. “You could get a pair of handcuffs, read me my rights, and then violate the
hell out of them, and preferably me as well.”
“Is sex all you can think about?”
“No, sometimes I think about BDSM,” Nikki quipped.
“And I think sometimes, you do too.”
“Maybe more than sometimes,” Kristina said. “Maybe a
lot of times.” Nikki grabbed Kristina by the wrists and pinned them to her
pillow. She crashed her mouth into Kristina’s and positioned herself on top of
the other woman. Kristina suppressed a moan and wedged her foot against Nikki’s
chest, kicking her off. Nikki fell backwards off the bed, which had no
footboard, as she pulled Kristina with her. Kristina wrenched her wrists out of
Nikki’s hands and grabbed her by the neck, crashing their mouths together again
into a violent kiss. She rolled out of the bed and onto the floor, grabbing a
pair of mostly clean jeans off the rug in front of the dresser. She tugged them
on over her legs and buttoned them up before yanking the middle drawer open and
grabbing a shirt. It was a dark maroon T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of some
store whose name eluded Kristina, and it went rather nicely with the jeans, as
far as Kristina knew about any of that stuff.
“You’re no fun,” Nikki moped as Kristina pulled the
shirt over her head. “But I hope you enjoy yourself tonight.”
“Thanks,” Kristina replied as she smoothed out the
wrinkles in the shirt as she grabbed her coat off the floor, closer to the exit.
“I’ll probably be back around two AM. I can drive there myself. I’ll drive home
too. I don’t plan on getting too crazy. I do have about twenty more papers to
grade before Monday.” And with that, Kristina marched out the door to go out to
the bars for the first time in months.
***
Kristina had
never been out to the Dingy Den before. She’d heard of it – mostly because it
would be impossible not to – and she’d always wanted to go, but all the other
times, she’d come up with so many good excuses:
As she walked down the brightly lit street on the way
to the bar, her hands curled around her keys. She didn’t expect to need a
weapon, but in Morhurst, you never knew what to expect, and it was always good
to be prepared. She took her hands out of the pockets of her peacoat, holding
her car key between her pointer and middle fingers, again, just in case.
It was mid-November in Western New York, and the
peacoat was essential at this point. Buffalo had gotten slammed with snow not a
few days earlier, and if Buffalo was getting snow, Devlin couldn’t be too far
behind. They’d already gotten a light dusting this month, but nothing that
stayed. Still, it was an ill omen, and Kristina had lived in Devlin since she
enrolled there at eighteen, almost a decade ago, so she knew what to expect by
this point.
The Dingy Den looked pretty close to what she expected
from Morhurst. It was a sturdy old building built of brick, nestled in between
two others practically identical to it. The door was heavy and made of old oak,
and the windows were made of some pretty impressively thick-looking glass. The
sign was newly painted, and the words were scrawled on it in swirling blue
letters on a black background. It had a very ethereal feel to it, which was
weird for a bar.
At the door, Kristina produced her driver’s license
for the bouncer, one of those gym rats who looked like they could bench press a
car if they wanted. He took it, looked at the not-so-recent picture of the
innocent sixteen-year-old girl with mousy brown hair and braces, and took a
look at Kristina. She ran a hand through her pink hair and sighed, trying to
cover her exasperation.
“I haven’t bothered to update my driver’s license
photo in a long ass time,” she clarified. “It’s me though, I promise. I can
show you my Devlin ID if you need more proof.”
“No, this should be okay,” he said, and handed her
license back to her. “You’re not driving home right?”
“No, I’m meeting someone inside whose driving later,”
she lied, and took her license back. “I’m pretty responsible.” That part, on
the other hand, was probably true, or at least as true as a statement like that
could be.
“Have fun,” he said, and waved her inside. The inside
was decked out with old-fashioned LPs all over the walls, signed and hastily
scribbled by various artists. Kristina doubted the authenticity of most of
them, especially the most prominent one, the White Album, which hung above the
bar. It was supposedly signed by all four Beatles, but Kristina didn’t believe
for a second that a one of them had ventured into Devlin, not even for gas, but
it was an amusing visual, so mission accomplished, she supposed.
The walls were also made of brick, and all along them
were corkboards peppered with flyers, business cards, lost cat posters, and the
like.
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