CHAPTER 8: THE SHATTERED CASE (THE PI)
The PI, frail and wiry, Holt, who dug too deep. Innumerable photographs of Mann were taken from dark alleys. Notes scribbled down, conversations about Cassette's "safety." Mann found the very evidence under a dumpster, which Holt thought safe. The papers crumpled yet so damning, and blood sang in Mann's ears with fury. "He scratches at your edges, Cassette, a flaw in the case, and I will crush it underfoot"-crossed Holt to a dive bar, tailed him to his car-a decaying sedan standing as a tomb in the shadow of a junkyard.
Mann was fast, blindsiding Holt. He clutched his keys ineffectually; a chloroform rag pressed against Holt's face until his struggles began to fade and his body felt heavy against the driver's seat. Now dazed, Holt began to tie him down-wrists tied to the steering wheel, ankles tied to the gas and brake pedals-while Mann's head slid forward helplessly as he groaned awake with panic. "You should not have looked, Holt," Mann said, in a voice like velvet, and slammed the door while the pleading of the man was swallowed by the junkyard silence.
The compactor stood hawkishly like a beast made of rust and steel, greedy with open jaws. Mann climbed into the control booth, steady hands gripping his levers, and started it-groaning gears, a metal shriek as the walls came closer. Holt was thrashing as the screams pierced through steel-crunching sounds and echoed of the sound of paper crushing. The glass shatter in the moonlight as shards rained down, while Mann was watching, awestruck and transfixed, as the roof began to give in, generating a damp crack across Holt's skull, leaving his brain and blood to flow down the wreckage. The compactor dimmed with more engine whine as it flattened him further-ribs cracking like twigs, gut spilling in a dark deluge, his last breath-exhaled wheeze, swallowed by the groan of contorted metal. "He marred your melody, Cassette, a skip I smashed smooth. My love's a hammer to keep you pristine, and my song's only shell."
That night, he returned to her, with the junkyard echo still on his ears, and found her in the bath, steam wafting, her skin a flush pink. She smiled and beckoned him in; he disrobed and slid in behind her, the water lapping around their bodies as he pulled her back against his chest. "You're tense," she murmured softly, and he barely kissed her neck, trailing slow kisses down the nape while his hands cupped her breasts with teasing thumbs till a deep sigh came forth from her lips. "You fix me, Cassette," he breathed, a velvet knife, as she turned to straddle him; water lapping wildly in response to their earnest collision of lips-hot, desperate, her tongue a flame he pursued.
He lifted her onto the tile, pinning her between the wall and herself, hands gripping her thighs, kissing her deep, her taste mingling with the steam—sweet, alive, his. "You're my vault, Cassette, locked tight in me," he growled, fingers digging into her hips, guiding her against him, slick bodies enraptured with pleasure. With a sharp inhale, she moaned, her nails raking down his shoulders. He thrust into her, brutally possessive, all the while cresting her cries—"Mann, yes"—a prayer to which he answered with every thrust. Her release gripped him like a vice, pulling through him, and he held her close as he panted, forehead pressed against hers, a specter of the PI's blood on his knuckles that she didn't see. "No one will ever pull us apart, my muse," he whispered, kissing her quivering lips, his love the dark note that bound them tight.
One night, Cassette's voice trembled as she gave an account of her ex, Ryan-bottomless man who tore her apart with cruel words and even colder hands that bruised her, bruises she hid all through winter underneath scarfs. His jaw was tight as Mann listened; her tears soaked his shirt as she curled against him on the couch. "He inverted your spirit, Cassette-a knot in your thread I'll pull at," stroking her hair away from her face with fingers brushing across the pulse at her throat. That name snagged in their harmony, and Mann had found him days later-a lanky figure with a cigarette hanging from his lips outside a dive bar, a smirk cut across Mann's mind like a scar.