There was something else, though, something beneath | the surface fear of alcohol abuse that troubled him as he stared at the bottle, and it had to do with the wine itself.
Daneam.
Lezzie label wine. He'd heard of it, perhaps even seen a bottle here and there, but it had never been available, to ] his knowledge, to the general public.
And he could've sworn that he picked up this bottle at | Liquor Shack.
But he couldn't remember for sure.
He rubbed his eyes, massaging them until they hurt. The effect that the wine seemed to have on him was different than that of any alcohol he'd ever drunk before. Instead of feeling lonely and alone, cut off from everything except himself and his sorrows, he felt ... connected. To who or what he didn't know, but the feeling of communing with others through the wine, through his intoxication, was there, and it was creepy.
He also felt ... well, sexually excited. That was not something that usually happened either. To others, maybe, but not to him. He'd always found alcohol to be anything but an aphrodisiac. A de-sexualizer, if anything. Yet he was sitting here now with an erection, aroused after remembering the one time he and Laura had tried something kinky. She'd wanted him to cuff her to the bedposts and rape her, roughly, and he'd been happy to oblige, but when it came down to it, when she was manacled and spread-eagled before him, he'd been too inhibited and hadn't been able to maintain an erection.
Now, though, thinking back on the incident, he had no problem keeping up his erection. It pressed painfully against his slacks, and he thought that if Laura was here right now, he'd throw her on the fucking floor and shove it up her pussy until she screamed.
He picked up the bottle. It felt comfortable in his hands, familiar, and he supposed that he'd held it as he drank the wine, though he could not remember doing so.
Blackout.
What the hell was happening here?
The phone rang, He sprang to his feet, instantly sober, already striding out of the kitchen toward the telephone in the living room. The phone never rang unless it was someone from the station calling him in, and some cop's instinct, some perpetually responsible part of his brain automatically kicked into gear, immediately negating the effects of the alcohol.
He caught the phone halfway through the second ring. 'Horton.'
'Lieutenant? This is Officer Deets. I'm on-site and patched through the station. We, uh, have what appears to be a double homicide here--'
'Cut the police talk. What happened?'
'Two teenagers. They were torn apart.'
Horton's mouth was dry. 'Where?'
'On South Street.'
'I'm on my way.'
Searchlights, flashlight beams, and the blue-red strobes 1 of patrol cars lit the lonely section of road between the^ entrance to the Daneam vineyards and the old Mitchellj ranch. Horton stood inside the roadblock next to the meat truck and lit up. The inhaled smoke felt good in his lungs. Warm. He exhaled, looked toward the Dodge Dart, where Mccomber and another uniform were dusting for prints. Someone had spotted the car a half hour ago and called in. Both sets of parents had already phoned the station hours earlier, worried about their kids, and when the plates of the abandoned vehicle matched the kids' plates, Deets and Mccomber had been sent out.
They'd found the bodies in less than five minutes.
Or what was left of them.
Horton took a deep drag on his cigarette, trying not to think of that assembled pile of flesh and bone they'd bagged and packed in the meat truck. An adult was bad enough, but teenagers, kids ... He looked up at the stars, wondering for the zillionth time how, if there was a God, /
He could allow shit like this to happen.
He hated this fucking job.
They'd finally gotten a break, though. And, amazingly, old dickhead Deets was the one who'd found it.
A weapon. With prints.
Bloody prints.
He tossed his cigarette onto the asphalt past the road-'j block and walked back over to the black-and-white. The; weapon was still on the hood where he'd left it, bagged,3 tagged, and ready for the lab: a Daneam wine bottle.
He picked up the bag, thought of the bottle still sitting!] back on his kitchen table, and shivered.
'Lieutenant!'
Horton jumped at the sound of the voice, nearly? dropped the bag. He feigned calmness, looked back to-i| ward the evidence officer. 'Yeah,'
he said.
'You through with that?'
Horton looked down at the bag in his hand and nodded| slowly. 'Yeah,' he said. 'I'm through with it. It's all yours.';!
April awoke feeling hungover and horny.
She rolled over and squinted at the clock on the dresser but could not tell if it was eight-thirty or nine-thirty. Reaching down, she felt around on the floor next to the bed until her fingers found the wine bottle. It was not quite empty, there were still a few drops left, and she held the open neck of the bottle above her mouth and let the drops fall onto her lips and tongue.
God, it tasted good.
Her left hand slid under the sheet, between her legs. Lazily, she began rubbing herself. She was already wet, and there was a tingling within her vagina that she recognized as the need to be filled.
She'd give anything to have a hard cock inside her right now.
From the front of the house, from the kitchen, she heard the sound of the sink running, heard the rattle of silverware on pots and pans. She stopped fingering herself and let the bottle fall to the floor again.
She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, then sat up, leaning against the headboard. She thought about last night, about what Margaret and Margeaux and the others had told her.
Dion?
It didn't seem possible.
She didn't want it to be possible.
That was the truth. That was the reason she'd gotten so drunk last night. She'd told herself even as she downed the first bottle that she was tired of being good, that she simply wanted to cut loose after being straitjacketed for 80 long, but the fact was that she was drinking not to feel good but to forget, trying to numb her brain and block out what they'd told her about her son.
Because she knew it was true.
That was the bottom line. She knew it was true. She'd always known, perhaps, on some subliminal level. She'd been surprised, but she hadn't been shocked or disbelieving when the others had sat her down and explained it all to her, and she'd believed it instantly. All of it.
'Mom?' Dion knocked on the door of her bedroom.
She didn't answer.
'Mom? It's almost ten. Are you getting up?'
Ten? She squinted at the clock. It hadn't said nine thirty. It had said nine-fifty.
'Mom?'
She felt again that tingling, that maddening need between her legs, and she kicked off the covers and stood naked facing the door, not saying anything, half hoping that Dion would open the door and walk in and see her, but when he called 'Mom?' again and started to turn the knob, she quickly said, 'I'm up!
Don't come in! I'm not dressed!'
'Okay.' She heard him move away, down the hall, and she felt ashamed that she would even consider exposing herself to her son. What could possibly make her act this way? What was the matter with her?
But she knew exactly why she had acted that way, she knew exactly what was the matter with her, and as
