So Nude, So Dead Read Free

give them wings, just enough to blow off the tops of their heads. Not too much. Not the big fix, the lethal dose an addict never woke up from. Just enough to give them a kick, a kick with an iron shoe behind it.
    Each holding a loaded hypodermic, they walked to the bed, and emptied the syringes into their arms.
    “Man, this is one big shooting gallery,” she shrieked.
    “The biggest, the biggest,” he screamed with her, the drug beginning to take hold.
    “I’m pulverized! I’m swinging. Man, I’m stoned!”
    “Flying, flying, flying up there! Man, watch out, watch out for me in my brand-new Cadillac.”
    The Cadillac dream had taken over then, with Ray behind the wheel. That was all he remembered. It had been one hell of a fine fix.
    He went through the bureau again, the closet, the bathroom, even the shower. He went through her purse, scattered her underwear all over the floor, tossed his own clothes off the chair, his shirt, his socks, looking for the elusive candy tin with the white powder in it.
    “Eileen!” he called, unable to contain himself any longer, wanting to wake her, needing the shot now as a man on a desert desperately needs water. No kicks this time, no kicks involved at all. This was life and death. This was the difference between being able to breathe, and dying.
    “Eileen! Wake up, wake up. Help me.”
    He was shivering now, barely able to keep his body steady. He walked rapidly across the room and stooped over the bed.
    “Eileen!” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper, a light sweat covering his body with a cold film. “Eileen.”
    He reached down and touched her shoulder gently, his fingers trembling. “Eileen. Eileen, snap out of it.”
    He shook her more violently, his lips moving frantically, gulping great gulps of nothing in his throat. “Come on, kid,” he pleaded, “come on now, let’s go, come on.”
    With a sudden violent movement, he ripped back the sheet, exposing the length of her body relaxed against the whiteness of the bed. He shook her again, and his eyes traveled down to the hollow of her navel.
    He noticed the holes then.
    They were small holes, just to the right of her navel. They were rimmed with red, and there was a dried river of red across the flatness of her stomach. The redness stretched out beneath her, staining the sheet in gaudy brilliance.
    Her shoulders were quite cold.
    A horror that was worse than the drumming need for the drug seized him. He realized then that Eileen Chalmers wasn’t breathing.

Chapter Two
    He didn’t touch anything. He didn’t touch a thing, even though his mind told him his fingerprints were probably scattered in a hundred places all around the room.
    He backed away from the bed, still trembling from the shock.
    So that’s what bullet holes look like, he thought. Round and small, and they spill blood over bellies, they kill pretty young girls. He walked back to the bed and pulled the sheet up over her breasts, hiding the ugly holes in her stomach, hiding the blood stains.
    “I have to get out of here,” he said aloud, surprised at the hoarse sound of his own voice. He bit his lip, set his teeth tightly. That’s all the cops would need, all right—a hophead to pin this on. Under the influence of narcotics, Ray Stone, hophead. He washed his hand over his face, trying to wash away the title he’d given himself. But I am a hophead, he argued, forgetting the dead girl completely. He had reached the point where he could admit it freely, say it as casually as he would say “I am a boy scout” or “I am an Elk,” wasn’t that it? No, no, that wasn’t! That wasn’t it. He could never say it like that, never. He would always carry the shame, always wonder if it showed in his eyes, always roll up his sleeves only so far when washing his hands, afraid the telltale scars would show.
    He remembered the dead girl abruptly. He had to get out of there in a hurry. He had to get out of there, and he had to get a shot before he blew up