Chapter 1

Tuesday April 18

“Lexi Green - Private Investigator”. That’s what it says on my brand-new business cards. It’s stupid, but I’m giddy at the notion of having my own business cards.

Technically, my title is “junior computer forensics technician”. I joined a startup P.I. firm in January, fresh from college, thanks to a recommendation from my unofficial mentor Oliver. Since then I’ve been sitting in a lab in Las Vegas repairing hard drives and tracing access logs. Believe me, I have learned a ton! My supervisor Brandon seems to know every exploit in the history of computing. But part of the deal, when I joined, was that I would get experience with the whole range of investigative practices. That’s why I’m on the road today, heading to Albuquerque.

The client is the estate of one Peter Hartman-Gill. They’re trying to get the insurance company to pay a sizeable life insurance benefit for Peter’s husband, Eldon Hartman-Gill, who went missing a few months back. Normally a person has to be missing for seven years before they can be declared dead, but there is some financial pressure in this case: Peter will require twenty-four-hour nursing for the rest of his life due to brain damage suffered last year in an attack by a drug-crazed homeless person. Icepick to the head. The estate wants proof of Eldon’s death so that the insurance money can pay for Peter’s care.

Peter and Eldon both worked for a Denver think tank - the Rocky Mountain Erudition Society. Everyone I talked to there is quite sure that Eldon is, indeed, dead, but nobody was willing to explain why they believed that.

The estate lawyers gave me access to Eldon’s personal email and social media accounts. Somebody obviously went through and deleted much of last year’s content, so somebody has something to hide. Eldon was traveling with Peter’s sister, Silvia Hartman. His credit card trail ends in Albuquerque in December, so that’s the place to look.

It will be too late to interview anyone by the time I reach town, but hopefully if I can find a suitable sports bar, I can score a little masculine attention for the evening. I think I’ll practice my Boston accent this time.

Wednesday April 19

Mission accomplished in terms of getting laid last night! I found a nice-looking bar and entered as Allie, Red Sox fan. After some mutual checking-out, I ended up having drinks with Logan, who was celebrating his one-year anniversary as a dentist.

“Okay, tell me honestly,” I asked. “What kinds of secret pervy things do you think about doing to your patients while they’re laid out in your chair, completely trusting? Maybe sometimes drugged?”

“I’m a professional!” He insisted. I gave him a look that scolded him for a boring answer. “Well,” he amended, “I do have one patient: seventeen or eighteen, rather well-endowed, who never wears a bra. It can be rather distracting.” He smirked.

“Okay! Now we’re getting somewhere!” I told him before finishing my beer.

“But I would never dream of taking advantage of a patient,” he insisted.

I cocked my head. “Do you think you might take advantage of a non-patient?” I smiled suggestively.

“I might...”

“And do you have the key to the office?” I pressed.

“I do.”

So I followed him in my own car to his office. He had to take time to disable the alarm, and then more time to prep an exam room. I made good use of that time checking myself in a mirror. Long drives with the windows down are fun, but they can take a toll on your appearance. I’ve been wearing my hair in pigtails lately for that reason. It’s not especially long, so I’ve basically got two cappuccino-brown tassels toward the back of my head, about level with my ears. My glasses give me enough sophistication that it doesn’t look like I’m pretending to be a schoolgirl.

There was some kissing at first, leaning against this cabinet or that wall. The real fun began when I lay in the chair. “I’m going to need a bib,” I told him. “I expect I’m going to be drooling.” So he put a paper bib on my chest, secured in place by alligator clips and a chain around my neck, and at my instruction, he lowered the head of the chair as low as it would go. I handed him my glasses which he put on the counter.

“So I’m supposed to close my eyes, open my mouth, and say ‘ahh’, right?” I joked. “And then you put your tool in it?”

I did close my eyes and listened as he took off his pants. And I did open my mouth when I felt him nearby. He stood above my head and pushed his warm, solid cock into my mouth until it met my tongue. He moaned as my lips and tongue got to work.

He was clearly very concerned about crowding me. I actually had to lift my head to get enough of his dick in my mouth to use my tongue effectively. That became uncomfortable quickly. I grabbed his hips and pulled down. “Come on, fuck my face!” I tried to say in that garbled full-mouth language that any good dentist comprehends. “I can take it!”

Reluctantly, he squatted lower. I pulled him down even more. Eventually, he had confidence enough to penetrate my mouth deeply, with my tongue keeping the fit snug. I did drool; I did gag; and I did choke. But there was no real distress and I made sure he understood that by holding him there. Finally, he loosened up and let instinct move his hips. His balls tickled my nose and he fucked my mouth, groaning more and more urgently. Spit was leaking all over my face and neck. He announced that he was going to come but again I held his hips, and so he let a big, thick load flow with a mighty moan.

The plan was to keep it in my mouth, but that turned out to be difficult in that position. The effort did make me choke, but he came to my rescue with the spit sink, so we both watched his spunk circle down the drain.

We smiled at each other for a moment. “So do you kiss girls after they’ve sucked your dick?” I asked. He handed me a tiny cup of mouthwash. I think that was more of a joke than any real prudishness. We definitely kissed after that though, and I could tell that he liked my minty mouth.

I unhooked my bra and took it off from under my blouse, and then I lay back down on the exam chair and closed my eyes. “Okay, so say I’m your braless cheerleader, drunk on laughing gas. What does the devil on your shoulder tell you to do to me?”

He started with my face and hair - just touching, caressing. When he moved a hand to my chest, I wasn’t even sure he’d done it at first - his touch was that light. But I really liked the way he touched my hair.

He got up to do something. I kept my eyes closed to maintain the surprise. Then he used both hands to unbutton my top, starting at the bottom, opening it up enough to touch my belly. I heard a soft whoosh and felt a tickle of air in my belly button. With a peek, I saw that he had the air-and-water gun in hand, and was wearing a visor with magnifying lenses and a lamp.

His hands slowly climbed the ladder of my buttons, undoing them one by one and exploring the uncovered skin and ribs with his fingers.

Once my breasts were free, he leaned in close. I felt a tiny trickle of water on my left nipple, and then puff of air. I had to laugh - it tickled! And it was cold, so my nipple stiffened up. And he was watching it happen up close and magnified. I could feel his breath on the side of my boob.

He gave my nipple a tiny kiss and then sprayed more air. I wiggled in my seat. He did it over and over until I told him - with a big grin on my face - “Okay, okay! That’s too much!”

So then he took off my shoes and undid my jeans. I played my part as dead weight and made him work to get them down from my hips, but pretty soon he had me stripped with my legs open. He tickled my labia with his air gun and made my pussy gush.

With his left hand resting on my mound, his thumb and forefinger opened me up and exposed my clit. The first blast of air made me jump. “Mmm! Too much!” So he pulled the gun back, and then he swiped and swished at just the right distance, treating my clitoris to a delight I’d never felt before. He drove me wild with nothing but puffs of air. It was like cunnilingus from a cloud! I was moaning out of control, one hand in a death grip on the armrest while the other squeezed my breast. And again, his face was right there, watching every little twitch with scientific eyes. When I came, my whole body shook.

When I opened my eyes again he was unrolling a condom onto his dick. He climbed on top of me and we tried to do it missionary-style in the chair, but that was doomed: the chair was too narrow and there was too much stuff all around. But after we traded positions, reverse cowgirl was a success. With my feet on the floor and my hands on his shins, I was able to squat up and down on his cock while he squeezed and slapped my ass.

I couldn’t keep that up forever, though, so we finished standing, with me bent over the sink and him giving it to me from behind. I came instantly and then glanced back: he was still wearing his visor. We went at it for a little while longer, neither of us trying to be quiet at all.

“Yeah, that’s it! Drill me, Doctor!” I joked. He was clearly getting ready to pop, so I kept repeating, “Yes, doctor, yes!” All the way through my next orgasm.

Not long after that, he came, and so there was nothing left to do but kiss for a little while, and then go our own ways.

Eldon’s rental car had been found, ransacked, in a bad part of town, four days after he was supposed to return it. The company gave me the address where it was found, but they won’t give me the GPS data without a subpoena, and I didn’t get the sense that anyone would be open to an under-the-table deal. The thieves had probably moved it, so all I learned was a general area of the city.

Eldon and Silvia had left plenty of stuff in their hotel room, so they had obviously expected to return. The hotel kept their stuff isolated for a time, as is their policy, but then added it all to their lost and found collection. The assistant general manager remembers some strange things among their belongings: carvings with fancy symbols etched or painted in. He said it looked like stuff you’d buy at a Renaissance fair. Those items had disappeared from the lost and found quickly.

After a considerable amount of time scouring the lost and found, I found a jacket matching one from Eldon’s online pictures, and a notebook in the pocket. It appeared to be a surveillance journal: places, times, license plate numbers. There were two names in it: Laurel Reiser, who apparently lives nearby, and Imogen Kent: “brother’s friend”.

It was late enough that I didn’t have time to research Ms. Reiser online if I wanted to pay a visit today, so I went to her home unprepared and rang the doorbell. A good-looking middle-aged man answered.