Night Passage (A Jesse Stone Novel)

walked out of the woods, cut through the high-school football field, and walked back toward the town hall in the lavender twilight.

27
     
    Cissy Hathaway lay facedown on the bed, her face buried in the pillow, holding on to the white iron headboard, while Jo Jo Genest spanked her naked backside quite gently with a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. Each time he struck her she made noise into the pillow and her body twisted as if trying to get her grip loose from the headboard.
    The room was small and spotless. The walls were white. The floor was polished oak. There was no rug. Opposite the foot of the bed was a chest of drawers painted white, and on the wall beside it was a full-length mirror with a white plastic frame. There was no night table, no lamp. The overhead light was very bright above them. Jo Jo’s naked body under the bright overhead glistened with sweat. The muscles and veins were so prominent, stretched so tight against his white skin, that he seemed an anatomy specimen as he sat beside her on the edge of the bed, hitting her gently while she sobbed and moaned into the muffling pillow.
    Finally she twisted, releasing her hold on the headboard for a moment as she rolled onto her back, her body arching toward him. She gripped the headboard again and raised her knees and he eased his huge body onto her.
    “You’ve got me now,” she gasped. “You’ve really got me.”
    Later, standing on a chair at the foot of the bed, Jo Jo aimed carefully through the Polaroid camera at Cissy Hathaway, naked on the bed. Jo Jo snapped six pictures and placed them carefully on the top of the dresser while they took form. He stared at himself for a moment in the mirror. Then he brought the pictures to the bed and held them up for Cissy to see. She looked at them intently.
    “Take more,” she said and assumed a different pose. “Different.”
    “Boy, you are some sick bitch,” Jo Jo said.
    His pale body seethed with muscles, the veins in his arms distended from steroids. He crouched at the foot of the bed and took some pictures. Then he stood, and reloaded the camera, and went to the far side and took some pictures. He continued to move around her, snapping pictures and letting them cure on the bureau top while he took more. As he snapped, Cissy arched her body into different positions. Finally he ran out of film. He went and stared down at the twenty-four pictures of Cissy that lay faceup on the top of the dresser. He picked one up and touched it to see if it was dry. It wasn’t quite, so he blew on it and put it back down.
    Behind him on the bed, Cissy said, “Show me.”
    Jo Jo turned and looked at her for a moment, and shook his head, and brought the pictures to the bed. Sitting on it while she lay back against the pillows, he held the pictures up one at a time. She studied each one carefully, her eyes shiny, her breathing shallow.
    “Hard to figure,” Jo Jo said, “how you ended up marrying a geek like Hasty.”
    “I don’t feel comfortable,” she said, “that you have those.”
    “You want to keep them at your house?” Jo Jo said.
    “No, you know I don’t dare do that.”
    “Want me to burn them?” Jo Jo said.
    “No.”
    “Then I guess you’ll just have to be uncomfortable, huh?”
    Cissy nodded. She seemed disoriented. Her manner was vague. Her eyes were wide and her pupils were so dilated that she seemed almost to have no irises. She got off the bed and began to dress while he carefully stowed the pictures of her in the top drawer of the dresser.
    “See you next Thursday,” he said.
    She didn’t answer.
    “Your old man ever wonder where you go on Thursday nights?” Jo Jo said.
    “No,” Cissy said. “Hasty always conducts field training on Thursday nights. I’m home before he is.”
    “He ever wonder why your ass looks so red?”
    Cissy hated it when Jo Jo talked so coarsely. But she tried not to show it. If she showed it she knew he’d just do it more.
    “He rarely sees me undressed,” she said.
    “Well, ain’t that a trip,” Jo Jo said. “Everybody else in town sees you that way.”
    “Must you?” Cissy said.
    “Well,” Jo Jo said with a wide grin, “maybe not everybody, but I’ll bet I ain’t the only one, am I right?”
    Cissy shook her head without answering.
    “Well, I’m not,” Jo Jo said. “One guy once a week ain’t enough for you. Maybe you do different things. Maybe Thursday’s your night for rough trade. But I’m not the only guy.”
    A flush