Free Contemporary Gay Romances by Felice Picano

“You’re not one hundred percent accurate, you know.”
    “If that’s what makes you feel good to believe, you go on ahead,” I told him back.
    When blondie stepped back inside the house her suit was even tighter on her than before, and her stains was actually standing up to look at me.
    “The Underwear Man has struck again,” I told the sheriff, before she could say a word. “This time it’s a girl missing.”
    He looked almost angry. “Why in hell didn’t you say something?”
    “Just got the message this minute,” I lied. “I guess it come in along that cell phone call.”
    He looked at me funny. But she took control of the situation. “Is she still alive?”
    “Yes ma’am.”
    “Can you tell where they are?” she asked.
    “Where’s she been snatched from?” Sheriff Longish asked.
    “Lake Geneva Village Mall.”
    “She’d been left inside a ‘cerulean’ Chevy Cobalt sedan,” I added. And rubbing it in, “I told you he favored light blue.”
    “You got a map in your mind’s eye yet?” he asked me, kinda roughly.
    I was going to say maybe I do and maybe I don’t and what’s it to you, when blondie asked, “What else can you tell us?” Being all nice to me.
    “He’s gonna let her go,” I told blondie, ignoring the sheriff.
    “What? Why would he do that?”
    “Onaconna she’s peed herself bad. He hates peeing like that,” I said.
    “Weren’t there urine traces on the others?” Sheriff Longish asked her.
    “Nothing substantial or long standing, no. Maybe at the moment of…”
    “He hates the smell of it,” I repeated.
    “You go,” Sheriff Longish told blondie. “I’ll stay with him. Just in case…”
    “Hold on!” She called on the phone: “What make and color is the vehicle?” she asked, and when she was answered, she did something with her lip to show I was right. “Jackson, we think he’s ditched the child. Headed south on…”
    “Southeast,” I corrected.
    “Headed southeast on…” She looked at me for confirmation. “Is it 207? The road from the Lake Geneva Village Mall?”
    I nodded yes.
    Twenty minutes later, they found Liza Beth Morgan, aged six years and four months, sitting on the side of the road, unharmed, hysterical, covered from the neck down in her own urine. They didn’t find Underwear Man, as he was long gone.
    “You just earned yourself a government commendation,” blondie said to me.
    “What good is that piece of paper? It ain’t money, is it? You can’t eat it, can you?” Granny-Mama would wonder aloud later on when she saw it arrive by special delivery mail. But blondie already had something else on her mind involving me. I could tell, because the stains were getting bigger and nastier.
     
    *
     
    Granny-Mama couldn’t understand why I would agree to it.
    “They’ll give you plenty of money, if’n I do,” I explained. “Enough to get that big screen Hi-Def television you been after. And then some.”
    “The kind they show in the newspaper?” She’d tacked that ad over her bed like it was some movie star.
    “I’ll make sure they get you that very one,” I told her.
    She thought a bit and said, “Well, then, all right. What about you?”
    “I guess I’ll have to take my chances,” I told Granny-Mama.
    “You’re a lucky child. Nothing bad can happen to you, if you will it so,” she insisted.
    I got doubles of Rocky Road for dessert then, messy as I can be with it, onaconna she was already contemplating watching Wheel of Fortune on that big TV.
    Next day they came out in three big white vans with turning TV mesh dishes on top and seven other vehicles, KRUF, KTAK, and even the big TV station from Gainesville, this being the biggest story from the area since the student murders a quarter century ago.
    I was dressed just like we’d discussed in pale blue shirt, with dark blue pants and even blue running shoes, although I’ll never run in them. My hair had been barbered by a pretty woman from the TV station, and blondie