This is the first of an intended three-part story.
Thibodaux, Louisiana – Sunday August 1st, 1984
He knew the path. He’d traveled it many times before, once a year, at least, to pay respects to his ancestry. Even though it was dark, his feet found the way, sure enough. His flashlight cut through the last memorials to the dead, terrible geometries of granite and concrete, like a surgical incision as he made his way to the back of the graveyard, where new death met old.
“Detective Pitre?” asked the officer who had discovered the scene.
He turned his thoughts to police procedure to fight the churl in his stomach. It hadn’t been long enough for death to set its stench, but the unforgiving knowledge that it was soon to come roiled him. “What to do first,” he asked himself silently. “What SOPs exist for crimes that are anything but standard.”
“Detective Pitre?” the officer asked again, this time with a more interruptive tone.
The sound of an outside voice shook him back to the present. He could tell from its intonation that its owner was awaiting instruction.
“Where’s Leblanc?”
Leblanc Landry was Lafourche Parish’s lead evidence analyst. He flashed his Maglight side to side, briefly lighting the row of headstones. Leblanc had a reputation for exactness. Those familiar with his work swear his camera knows no error. “Honed as the eye of a hawk,” so the distinction went.
“This might take a while,” Leblanc said, as he extinguished his flashlight. “I don’t think I have enough evidence bags to process this scene.”
The wind rose and rattled through the brush that bordered the cemetery. “Nothing feels more alone,” Pitre thought to himself, “than a night wind that unsettles the living but leaves the dead settled.”
“Detective Pitre!”
Pitre turned to see the captain of the local police department standing in the gorge between two old headstones, his figure appearing briefly before swinging into shadow.
“One second, Captain,” he replied, then turned back to the first officer.
“Listen. Do the best you can. I have no advice, and I certainly don’t have any expectations on this one.”
“Race?” The Captain asked Pitre as he walked over to him.
“Which victim?”
“There’s more than one?” the Captain asked, coming shock beginning to leak into his intonation.
Pitre breathed out long and slow and pointed to the scene, the deliberateness in his breath telling the story before the Captain looked around at the carnage.
What he saw jarred his senses. As an officer of the law, he liked to think himself immune to shock, but the Captain was not prepared for the display before him. Three women, shaved bald, lined in a row, sitting as if asleep upright against headstones, in various stages of decay, lacerations scythed in hapless patterns across their naked bodies. “A pageant of gore” is how the newspapers would later describe it.
“All blond,” Pitre offered, as if further detail could lessen the weight of the spectacle.
“How can you tell?” the captained asked in a whispered silence. Respect for the dead took many forms in Thibodaux, and suspended volume was the Captain’s offering.
He caught what he’d missed on second inspection. A less trained eye would have overlooked it altogether. Golden tresses of hair spindled over each victims thigh like a skyline etched into the skin, eventually weaving together into thick braids that terminated between their legs.
“Mother Mary,” the Captain breathed, his face turning pale. “Don’t tell me he shaved their heads and stuffed the..”
“Appears so,” interrupted Pitre. “The Boston strangler tied bows around the necks of his victims. Guess he decided to make this his calling card.”
“He?” questioned the Captain. “How do we know the perp is male.”
Pitre spat out the corner of his mouth before gathering his thoughts. “Let’s walk and talk Captain.”
Three Days Earlier, Thursday, July 28, 1984
Midnight on Bourbon Street, the crystal tinged light from Galatoire’s restaurant streaming through its frosted glass onto the sidewalk around her. It was Acadia’s usual beat. Small puddles formed in the holes on the sidewalk from the midweek rain. She carefully dodged them, guiding the spikes of her heels to stability and safety as she bustled back and forth along the street. “To and fro the women go,” she rhymes internally in her head, quoting one of her favorite poems, matching the pace of her stride. “A well-read hooker. Who would think it?” She smiled quirkily at the anomaly.
Across the street, the door to Tickler’s bar swung open onto the sidewalk, followed by a face that’s quickly recognized. Finding work was Acadia’s sole focus, but it was clear the situation dictated some effort toward small talk.
“Have any luck tonight, Helene?” Acadia shouted across the street.
Helene stifled a yawn. “None. I was down at Maison Bourbon earlier listening to that horn player they hired last month. He can play as good as they say.”
Acadia bent her head to light a cigarette before replying, the smoke from her exhalation introducing her words. “That horn may be the only thing getting blowed tonight from the looks of it.”
“With that type of mouth you’d think you’d stay busy out here,” Helene jabbed back with a roll of her eyes. “You’re awful. And you’re on your own. I’m calling it a night.”
“Yea, yea. Be careful going home. It’s dark out here, ya know” Acadia offered, almost out of habit.
“You too, sweetheart.” Sweetheart. Helene’s go-to nickname for all of her fellow night girls. The men aren’t calling after them to love on them, so I might as well instead, she reasoned. “And happy hunting and happy fucking!” she called over her shoulder as she disappeared down the street.
Acadia had heard the line a thousand times. Among prostitutes that worked the square, it was the standard bourbon street goodbye. Working nights was dangerous, she knew, but in her current mood she wished the dark of a New Orleans night was total. Reflection came natural to her after dark, and she didn’t need the roar of a horn or the blare of neon to usher along her thoughts.
Attitudes were different in the square. A girl could make a good living in her line of work. Shame might characterize the gig for some girls, but the people of New Orleans were slow to judge. “No scarlet badges in this town” she often joked to herself, but had their been a ceremony for one, she’d have been first in line for the stamp. She enjoyed her work. The financial autonomy, physical empowerment, and creative expression it provided was far from degrading, as she often reminded those that dared to question her decision.
She stubbed out her cigarette with her heel on the cement and headed off toward Toulouse Street while she considered Helene’s decision to clock out early. “Beamed ceilings, brick walls, and balconies all over this town, but a John for the night not to be found.” She smiled wryly at herself as she turned to walk toward her apartment. “Take that, Eliot. How’s that for a rhyme?”
The click of her feels against the pavement was interrupted by the sudden encroachment of low beams. Acadia turned her head in time to catch the side profile of the Oldsmobile Delta as it hugged the corner of the intersection and turned up the street. The car slowed to a creep as it approached her, and Acadia glimpsed its driver lean over the passenger seat to roll down the window as it inched along side of her.
A gravelly voice, heavy with burden or bourbon one, steady in intonation: “You’re too pretty to be on the street.”
Acadia feigned flattery as she halted her strut and turned to face the speaker. She could never fathom why men who are about to pay for sex wasted time on pick up lines, especially predictable ones at that. Intention aside, there was truth to the line. Blonde hair that framed her face and touched her shoulders, a pert nose that turned upwards ever so slightly at the tip, and curves in all the right places screamed “girl next door” rather than “lady of the night..”
She approached the open window with a determined gait, leaning against the frame of the car and pushing her breasts together to spill out from her top as she’d done hundreds of times before. It was her experience that some men preferred what happens next to be direct and transactional while some men want a pinch of seduction, no matter how counterfeit. She decided to employ the latter.
“Oh yeah?” She inquired with a raised brow and a veiled tone more humid than the New Orleans night. “And what are you going to do…rescue me?
The driver responded by springing the passenger side handle, the heavy door inching open. “Get in.”
Acadia swung the door open fully, the familiar creak of rusty springs overshadowing the clangor of live music discharging from the jazz clubs. “What’s your name, sugar?” Acadia asked, the words slipping from her lips as she slid onto the leather bench seat that had been cracked by time or use.
“That don’t matter,” the man replied, his head fixed forward. “Alley good for you?”
“That don’t matter either, sweetheart.” Acadia returned his words with a devilish grin.
The man released the break and the car began a purposeful roll toward the alley. Acadia began to feel that mixed rush of risk and revel that accompanied her calls. She poised herself as the car made the turn and came to a halt in the alley. The incandescent gleam of street-side signs illuminated the opening to the alleyway, but darkness otherwise reigned over the scene. “I did pine for total darkness…” Acadia quipped to herself as she looked around the shadowy gulch before making the options known.
“So,” she began, drawing her legs up underneath her on the seat and turning toward the figure in the passenger seat. “It’s $25 for me to jerk you off, $75 for a blowjob, and $150 for me to fuck you. It’s an extra $25 on anything if you want me topless. And no kissing under any circumstance.”
The catalog of services hung in the air long enough for Acadia to wish she had another cigarette. Fidgety was not her nature, but lengthy pauses was not her fancy either. Finally the man spoke.
“Your call. Decide how much you want to make tonight.”
His manner of speech was inflexible. Changeless tone and a steady affect. “Not the mannerisms of a man about to get his cock sucked,” Acadia mused in an attempt to soften her disturbance at the prospect of making the decision on the table. It had been a slow night, though, so she regained her nerve with her resolution.
“Tell ya what, hun.” Her expression showed no affliction about her actions as she hooked her thumbs under the straps of her top and slid the thin slices of fabric off her shoulders. The penumbra of the buildings that lined the alley and the obscurity of the night partially concealed her exhibition but her breasts were on full display. Round, full spheres, so perfectly formed they appeared to be poured on like a fine wine, the curvature of their shape it’s own aesthetic geometry. The summer night was otherwise warm but a breeze cut through the open window and teased her nipples to a peak. “Why don’t we start slow and see where it leads? Her words were dense with possibility as she scooted across the bench seat toward the driver.
Her hands bridged the space between them and found the hem of his shorts, pulling them down his thighs to pool around his feet in the floorboard. These final moments before contact operated differently on Acadia than other girls, or so she thought. It was a stage formed by equal parts fascination and suspicion upon which her soul performed after seemingly taking flight from her body. The dark of the alley prevented sight so her hands were left to accomplish the function of vision.
Her hand didn’t stumbled around his lap long until it found his cock. “Wow.” She said, her exclamation reaching an abrupt stop. Wow, she thought again to herself as her fingers encircled his shaft. Her hand migrated north toward the head of his cock as she took in his size. “9 inches” she guessed silently, her lips mouthing the syllables with suspended sound. It wasn’t just the length that impressed her. His girth was equally imposing. She could wrap her hand around the circumference but not without concentration and effort. It was the type of balance in a cock that seemed to generate its own energy, its own pull. “And this,” Acadia said in response to her earlier comment with an eager, almost hopeful smirk so free of inhibition that she would have sworn it was visible even in the dark, “might lead us all the way.”
“My name is Acadia,” she told him as she continued stroking his cock with unpoliced movements, twirling her thumb over its head on every upstroke, collecting his precum and distributing along its form. “Just in case you’re a moaner.”
Acadia closed her eyes and opened her mouth as she leaned her head toward her target. Her lips found his head and sealed around it. She positioned her body in a way that allowed her to drag her nipples over his thigh as she sucked his cock. This was as much for her own benefit as his. Her nipples were particularly responsive to tactile stimulation, and through experience, she had learned that the smooth resistance of skin against her trawling nipples offered a pleasure not to be taken for granted.
She’d been called greedy before. A “greedy cocksucker” if she was quoting past lovers verbatim. True, Acadia did find gratification in giving pleasure and that was reflected in her efforts. She worked her mouth up and down his cock unabashedly, flattening her tongue along the bottom of his shaft on down strokes and swirling her tongue over his head once she reached that peak on her way back up. She considered it an exchange, a translation of bliss from her mouth to his cock and then back to her again.
The man remained unusually stoic, despite the warm wetness enveloping his cock. Acadia decided to commandeer the response she felt due. With seamless fluidity, she slid her hand down the base of his shaft to cup his balls, heavy orbs abounding with heat, dual harbors of his most intimate essence, and snaked his cock into her throat, sucking him in until her lips rested his pubic mound. “There we go” she praised herself as she felt his cock flex against the glossy lining of her throat.
Breaking his seeming impassivity, his hand moved to grip her head, curling in her hair until forming a fist, holding her in place. Acadia interpreted this move as an erosion of his resistance and began bouncing her head in short, economical rebounds against his hand, massaging the head of his cock with her muscular tube.
Psychological pressure, the constant suppression of her own needs in fulfillment of her call’s desire, was the true hallmark of Acadia’s work. Those critical of it often doubted the possibility of self-enjoyment, but there was no forgery in Acadia’s euphoria. If anything, Acadia struggled to hide her satisfaction. Sometimes, try as she might, she simply couldn’t, and she’d lose her professional tact.
As adeptly as she swallowed his cock, she freed herself from his grasp with equal skill and sat up in the seat beside him. Her mouth hung open still and her chest heaved as she gasped in air that had been so pleasurably denied. With a sudden shimmy, she shed her skirt like it was a second skin and straddled his waist. “Fuck me,” she instructed him, as she leaned back against the steering wheel in preparation. “Get me off and I won’t even charge you.”
Her heart jumped into her throat as she positioned his dick against her opening. Her thighs trembled imperceptibly as her petals blossomed over the head of his cock. She placed her hands on each side of his shoulders as she lowered herself down his length, her eyes closing in triumph when her pelvis met his. She never doubted that she could take all of him, but she didn’t expect to feel so full.
Sex in the front seat of a car was frantic. Ragged at times. But Acadia began a deliberate rhythm with her hips, rocking into his mass and compelling his cock deeper inside of her pussy as if their was a knot in her body she was trying to untie. “Oh, fuck,” she moaned into the vehicle’s cabin, her breath becoming labored as she increased the speed of her hips.
“No talking,” the man uttered. Acadia had been absorbed into the delightful friction of their bodies, but his first words pierced her concentration. There was something unnameable in his voice, too transparent to be treacherous, yet too vacant to be trustworthy. It unnerved her, but the thought of a hindered orgasm unnerved her more.
“Fine.” She repositioned her feet to rest on the leather of the bench, her pussy never losing its grip on his cock. “But don’t cum in me. Give me a warning.”
With renewed purpose, Acadia began thrusting her sex onto his sturdy shaft with unconfined force. At the bottom of each descent, she squeezed her pussy around his cock as firmly as she could, pulling him more fully inside of her. She tossed her head back as she rode him with abandon. “If he’s just going to sit here, I’ll do all the fucking myself” she thought to herself.
Her impending climax flared through her body like a contagion. The sound of the impact of her wetness against his steeled flesh reverberated throughout the car. She was almost over the edge when she felt his cock begin to pulse inside of her. “What are you doing?” Exasperated confusion dominated her voice. She felt the warmth of his cum flood her pussy as she abandoned her own orgasm, that known world left unvisited. A steady surge of juices seeped into her body.
“You son of a bitch!” She howled as she beat her fist against his chest. “I told you not to fucking…”
Like a coiled spring, his hand shot to her throat, clenching her trachea closed, canceling her protest as the sounds died out in her larynx.
“I told you no talking.”
Acadia’s panic increased with his pressure. She thrashed against him, striking at his hands, his chest, his neck, and his face. She tried to scream but could barely emit a gurgle, a strained seep of air passing through her lips. Her back crashed against the horn on the steering wheel but sound stilled to a vacuum in her ear before a buzz, like a string waiting to be plucked, overtook it. Through half-conscious eyes, she thought she saw a sated sneer, a look of cold impatience, as her body fell limp against him.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/sgug46/and_the_willows_did_weep_chapter_1_mf_crime
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