Chapter 18: Willow
Willow Lane just could not sleep.
She looked at the green digits of the hotel clock, which read 11:30 p.m. “Shit,” she muttered to herself. She wore nothing under the stale hotel sheets. The firm sheets felt every smooth curve of her Irish-white skin. Freckles lined her upper chest like spatters of mud and oil. Despite the restless night she did come away with a recollected dream. It was of the woman. Chase’s woman. Rachel. The two had only met breifly and even in that time spoken few words. On any other occasion, Willow would have been more aggressive to bring Rachel to the hotel with her. But, the current circumstances required sensitivity. Still, the thought of Rachel with her… Willow reached between her legs and slid a hand along the soft slope of her inner leg. She allowed her hand to find the wet folds and her pinky finger brushed against the firmness of her buttocks. She ached for a woman’s touch. She closed her eyes, bit her lip, slid her finger over the most delicate part of her body. The shiver of scintillation aroused her even more and then she stopped.
Willow teased herself, but she wasn’t ready yet. She shoved the covers off her naked frame and stomped to the bathroom. After she relieved herself and washed up, she donned a pair of black jeans and a short sleeve black shirt with vertical white stripes. She grabbed her camera, cell phone and wallet before she tossed open and then let the hotel door slam shut behind her.
Willow climbed into her car, and pulled a snub nose .38 revolver from her glove compartment before she drove fearlessly into the night toward Arcadia and Theroit’s Bar.
After spending months embedded with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, fear was not something Willow ran from. Nevertheless, she called her boss; glad he didn’t answer which allowed her a chance to avoid yet another speech about avoiding danger just to get a story. As soon as his voicemail beeped she left a message.
“Yeah Artie. I’m on my way back to Theroit’s just outside of Arcadia. No street address I know of and this town has no street signs if you can believe that. In addition to the others reported missing, I’m now looking for a woman named Rachel who I was talking to about two hours ago when her phone went dead. I haven’t heard from her since, and the cops here ain’t worth a damn. Now if you don’t hear from me every thirty minutes, get that state cop you are cool with to come fish my ass out of some alligator’s snout.”
She hung up her phone when she arrived at a fork in the road. Memory told her to veer left, but when she started to move, a flash of white out the corner of her eyes forced her to hit her brakes.
She turned to see a lone little girl with blond pigtails clad in a white dress shaking her head. Her little body seemed to glow beneath the pale moonlight.
“Your dead,” she said quietly. The child nodded her head. Willow blinked and the child was gone. “Now ain’t that something,” Willow said putting the car in drive. In any other setting the young child would have seemed out of place. In Arcadia it seemed that Arcadia would seem out of place without the haunting image of a child lingering along the side of the road.
Once the bar came into sight, Willow killed the headlights and parked right before a street lamp illuminated the bar’s gas pumps. A chorus of chirping crickets greeted her as she stepped out into the thick air. A mosquito buzzed near her ear while she tucked the gun into the waist band of her pants, slipped her wallet into the glove compartment and pocketed her cars keys. She heard something splash its way into the water and reached back into the car for a thick wooden bat.
The moon’s blanched light shined down over the roof of a houseboat as Willow shrugged her shoulders and breathed in deep to ease the tension. Carefully she walked, and her eye caught a small trail of glass.
She kneeled down to examine the fragments under the light of her cell. She followed the trail on her haunches, when a larger piece with dark lettering caught her eye. getting closer to the river, and took a photo. The large piece was from a whiskey bottle and a dark residue clung to the bottle left corner.
“Now what do we have here?” she mused recognizing blood.
She took a photo. The sudden brightness momentarily blinded her, and she dropped the bat to rub her eyes, while a shadow quietly crept up behind her and picked up her bat. Willow heard the crack in the wood flooring a fraction too late. Fuck! she told herself. Then she could hear the air cycling over the rounded edges of the bat and driving straight toward her head. She ducked, but not fast enough as the edge slammed across her cheek. Willow fell back and rolled. The second swing came harder.