Read Online The City Under the Skin by Geoff Nicholson - Free Book Online

pretending to be. Either way it was impressive. From his quasi-fetal position, Zak couldn’t tell exactly what was going on above him, but he sensed that his assailant was moving away.
    â€œGet out of here. Go on,” the woman shouted. “And shame on you.”
    Billy Moore was calm, and he didn’t seem remotely ashamed. He straightened himself, ran a hand through his hair, though, in fact, his assault on Zak had left him entirely unruffled. It seemed he was about to leave the store, just as he had been told to do, but the woman wasn’t finished with him yet.
    â€œAnd that poor creature from the other night,” she demanded, “the one you put in your car, where is she now? What have you done with her?”
    Zak was certain these questions would not be answered, and that even asking them was a very high-risk activity.
    â€œIt’s none of your business, is it,” said Billy Moore, flatly.
    She marched up to him. She was carrying a backpack and she swung it in a wide, shallow, urgent arc, slamming it into the side of Billy Moore’s head. He flinched, surprised but certainly not hurt: not even conspicuously angry. He looked at her sadly.
    â€œYou know,” he said, “there are some guys who pride themselves on never hitting a woman. I’m not one of them.”
    He delivered a single punch, not nearly as hard as either of the ones he’d landed on Zak—something more delicate, something for the ladies, but not a bitch slap either, more of a jab, a straight shot with a closed fist that landed neatly on the woman’s left eye. Her head snapped back, her spectacles went flying, and she went down too, ending up on the floor, not far away from Zak. Billy Moore showed just a modicum of concern as he watched her fall, but once he was satisfied that she hadn’t cracked her skull open, that she was down but not completely out, he was content to unzip his jacket and leave. He’d driven away before either of his victims was able even to contemplate getting up from the floor.

 
    10. DEVIATION
    â€œWhy did you come back?” Zak asked when he could finally breathe and speak. “I thought the place gave you the creeps.”
    â€œIt did. It does. And I don’t know why, and that kind of intrigues me in itself.”
    They had, in due course, managed to raise themselves from the floor, inspected their own and each other’s injuries. Both had facial bruises that would soon flower into black eyes. They had even managed to introduce themselves: “I’m Zak Webster”; “I’m Marilyn Driscoll.”
    â€œYou said you didn’t know what you saw the other night.”
    â€œI still don’t,” said Zak.
    â€œI can help with that.” She took a scuffed, bestickered laptop out of her backpack. “I took some pictures. They’re not great, but they’re a start.”
    Zak was inclined to ask, “The start of what?” but he held his tongue. He also wondered why she’d been taking pictures. Was she a tourist? A street photographer? A student of urban renewal? He didn’t ask any of that either. Recent events suggested he might be much better off not knowing what he’d seen, but it was already too late for that.
    Marilyn Driscoll brought the laptop to life, and there on-screen appeared thumbnails of the pictures she’d taken on what Zak was increasingly, and ever less ironically, coming to think of as “that fateful night.” She clicked through a handful of quickly taken, not especially clear images. In one of them Zak could see himself standing in the doorway of Utopiates, looking awkward and profoundly unphotogenic. He didn’t like seeing pictures of himself at the best of times. They moved on to another image, one that showed the battered Cadillac: that wasn’t exactly fascinating either.
    Then Marilyn brought up an image of the driver and zoomed in on his face. That was more