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Well, that night, that was what I was doing, and Cleo lay behind me in Tweety while I was doing it.
I’d scored a dog-walking gig with Cleo, who was half Labrador, half chow, and I understood her struggle, because she was always at war with the two parts of what made her, never knowing if she should be overexcited and unconditionally loving (Lab) or a diva ice queen (chow).
I had more personalities than that, so we vibed.
I’d walked Cleo before, so her owners knew me, and they were all the way down with how I went about taking care of her when they were away, this time, for a long weekend.
The way I took care of her was, I just took her and she stayed with me. No reason for me to head to their house three times a day for a walk and not enough playtime, if her parents were groovy with that. She slept with me. She went to work with me. And she alternately ignored and loved obsessively on me and anyone in her vicinity.
Her parents were thrilled I’d signed on to take the gig last minute after they requested me, because they knew they got the added benefits for their girl when they got me, and only had to pay dog-walking (not sitting) fees.
I was thrilled because I dug Cleo.
Also because they always left me a twenty-five percent tip.
This would score me over two hundred bucks, which wouldn’t cover the dress and shoes and Havaianas I didn’t need that I bought at the Rack that day while lugging around Feather and Dusk with Luna, but it would help.
Now, with a free evening, I was doing what I often did during free evenings.
I was sitting in my car in the parking lot of The Slide, a strip joint on Van Buren on the east side of downtown, which was where the first woman worked who went missing.
I was waiting for him and watching him, because, since the first time I laid eyes on him, I had a bad feeling.
Or watchingforhim to come out of the club.
Cleo wasn’t watching. Cleo was flat-out in my back seat, snoozing.
Along with watching, I was thinking.
I had no idea what to do about the feeling I had about this guy. That feeling being something that cautioned me not to get close, absolutely not get caught watching him, and one hundred percent not to do something stupid, like follow him.
However, to move this forward and maybe find out what the hell was going on, I had to dosomething.
That something could not be in Tweety. In fact,Ishouldn’t even be there in Tweety.
They had cameras outside the club, and I parked at the very edges, as far away from lights as I could manage, so maybe those cameras wouldn’t catch me. Even so, Tweety gleamed bright and cheerful like a beacon. I also never went inside the club. But someone would eventually notice me hanging out there yet not patronizing the establishment, if they hadn’t already.
And women were going missing.
They were strippers and sex workers, so, as per historical protocol, the powers that be didn’t feel inclined to knock themselves out figuring out where they’d gone.
But I scoured theArizona Republicon the daily, and these police bulletins garnered attention in the form of short articles about the women who’d disappeared.
Sure, the info shared was minimal, and the news was treated almost as an aside. And it didn’t happen daily, weekly or even monthly.
But by my estimation, seven strippers or sex workers had vanished in a little over two years (those being the ones who were reported missing, considering the occupations, there might be others who were not), and that seemed like a lot to me.
I was about to give up, go home and pour myself a glass of wine while I considered for the millionth time dismantling the wall I’d painstakingly crafted, and thus at long last abandoning this mission, when he came out.
Not tall, not short. Not young, not old. Not handsome, not ugly.
But he was bad to the core. I felt it, even in a car a parking lot away, staring at him through my windshield.
He gave me the shivers.
He was talking to the bouncer just outside the front door, and I knew it was time to leave.
“Ready to roll?” I asked Cleo.
