Leather Maiden by Joe R. Lansdale Read Free Book Online

right? And that you will be able to nose it out because you used to be a real reporter. No emphasis, mind you, on the used to be.”
    â€œGuilty,” I said.
    â€œOf course you are,” he said.
    Mercury turned to his computer, tapped the keyboard, brought up some information about Caroline Allison. There was a lot of it. It was much more than I had. I said, “Can you print this out for me?”
    â€œSure.”
    He scanned through some of it, came to her photograph. A head shot. Her hair was as yellow as sunlight, her eyes so blue they broke your heart, her skin looked soft and warm as a spring day. And her mouth. Men would have ideas about that mouth, and so would a lot of women.
    â€œJesus,” I said.
    â€œLooks like a movie star or a model, doesn’t she?”
    â€œShe is stunning.”
    â€œCan you believe she was a history major?”
    â€œSaw that in Francine’s note,” I said.
    â€œGirl like that doesn’t strike me as someone that would spend her time in the library behind the stacks. A face like that, there had to be some party girl inside. There’s some devil in those eyes, don’t you think?”
    â€œI suppose.”
    Of course, from the moment I realized she was a history major, I had thought of my brother, Jimmy. She had been in his department, and most likely he had taught her, or knew her. And, of course, he would have known about her coming up missing, about her never being found. It was another lead-in, another angle. I filed that in the back of my mind.
    Mercury reached in his shirt pocket, pulled out some greasy glasses, put them on, tapped at the keyboard some more, scanned through more files.
    â€œGirl like that, in high school, you’d think she’d be more popular than a free back rub, but guess what, there’s hardly anything about her in her high school annual.”
    â€œYou have it?”
    â€œI have it scanned in. I’ve looked through it. I think she was a member of the history club, and that’s it. No Most Beautiful. No Most Likely to Succeed. No Most Popular. And except for the history club, where there’s just the one picture of her and some other students, there’s little to nothing. She wasn’t too popular. Way she looked, that’s peculiar.”
    â€œPeculiar, but not incredible,” I said. “Sometimes people are afraid to approach the good-looking girls, maybe even give them the ass end of things because they’re jealous. Print it out for me, if you don’t mind. All of it.”
    â€œI’ll have it by the end of the day.”
    â€œPerfect,” I said.
    â€œYou need any more information, drop in anytime. I’m here late at night, sometimes midnight, two in the morning. I don’t sleep that good, so I work.”
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    That afternoon, the file Mercury had made me was on the corner of my desk. I picked it up and went through it.
    Good. He hadn’t added information about flying saucers and lake monsters. It was just the straight goods on Caroline.
    Sweet.

8
    I took off at four-forty-five. From Gabby’s ads in the Yellow Pages, I knew she was open until five. I drove by there and saw that hers was the only car parked out front.
    I parked, took a deep breath and went inside.
    When I came in I could smell some kind of strong disinfectant and the pungent smell of wet dog coming from somewhere, and then she came walking through a door that led to the back, rolling her sleeves up, ready to go home. She was whip-lean and her hair was still long and dark brown and time had done nothing to her, except make her look better. I felt a little nauseous and my throat grew tight. I stood by the door and didn’t move, and soon as she saw me her body twitched, then deflated a little.
    â€œCason, you shouldn’t be here.”
    â€œI just wanted to say hi.”
    She shook her head, looked at the floor. Somewhere from the back of