Chasing Suspect Three Read Free Page B

the book cover was slightly smaller than the book. It
didn’t quite fit. She flipped through. It wasn’t a printed book of
poems at all. It was handwritten with a few blank pages at the
back. It appeared to be someone’s diary.
    She scanned a few pages and could see they
were well-thumbed. In the margin of the first page was boldly
written: “Crazy stuff this guy!” Her curiosity easily
overcame her guilty voyeuristic feeling, and she couldn’t stop
reading. The first sentence started, “After the first date, he
finally got around to what I wanted when I first saw him!” She
shouldn’t be reading this; she snapped the book closed. Who on
earth had written this?
    Slowly she opened it again. The page began to
describe occasions of intimacy in lurid detail. Her head started
feeling warm before she had finished the first page. This was
blatant erotica. Not particularly well-written. Nevertheless, it
was all there with no attempt at delicacy.
    A tense feeling of shock and embarrassment
came over her. After a few pages, she felt light-headed. The words
began to blur. She slammed the book shut and jerked her hand away
as though it were hot. She glanced around even though she knew no
one was watching. She placed the book back in the trash and stood
there in the kitchen looking up at the ceiling and regaining her
breath.
    A moment earlier, she had been embarrassed
for reading some other person’s erotic thoughts, now she was
uncomfortable recognizing it had excited her. Then the excitement
left her as quickly as it had come, as a disturbing thought rushed
into her mind. Could the exceedingly capable male whose activities
were described be Chip? Instantly, the diary was no longer
titillating—it was horrible.
    Chip would never participate like that. It
couldn’t be him. He certainly had never asked Sandy to abandon
herself to the extent just described. Was this somehow her fault?
Was there another sexual level she should have taken him to? Where
was the edge of normal, the line you’re not supposed to cross?
    It couldn’t be Chip in the diary. But if not,
why had the woman given it to him? Her head was then full of
images, and it was Chip with his faceless no doubt beautiful
partner.
    After a moment, she reached back down drawn
like a magnet and again closed her fingers around the book. Did she
hold in her grasp an erotic log written after each steamy episode?
The uninhibited thoughts the woman had spent hours reliving and
carefully documenting? Happenings most women have never experienced
and most would never care to? The writer might well have kept it
bedside ready to relive the lascivious memories.
    Considering the effort and emotional energy
needed to create such a personal document, it seemed incredible the
writer would let it leave her hands and so easily give it away.
Perhaps this replay of the sex they had shared was to be a clever
aphrodisiac given to Chip in the hope of arousing his interest
enough to desire her again. If she wasn’t writing about Chip, then
why give it to him? He’d read it and realize immediately that he
wasn’t the male depicted. She’d come off kooky and he would
distance himself from her even more.
    This was becoming ridiculous. Get real. It
was none of her business. The male wasn’t Chip. So what if the sex
wasn’t mainstream? The diary characters were still consenting
adults enjoying each other’s body; why deny it? The episodes were
no doubt exaggerated. Indeed, the woman could have fabricated
entire fantasies. Even if true, Sandy didn’t know if Chip was the
man depicted.
    He didn’t seem secretive about meeting the
woman and receiving the book. He might have thrown it away not
noticing the diary hidden under the poetry book cover. Perhaps he
did read it and was unmoved and disinterested, as it had nothing to
do with him.
    She remembered he had graciously overlooked a
major indiscretion of hers some months ago; the least she could do
was accept this situation with a degree of