Living in Sin
Copyright© 2025 by Al Steiner
Chapter 8: Naked in the Eye of the Storm
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 8: Naked in the Eye of the Storm - Two single-parent sheriff’s deputies move into a wealthy, uptight neighborhood and accidentally set off a storm of paranoia, lust, and suburban meltdown. As judgmental neighbors spiral, sexually frustrated housewives come calling. Amid threesomes, gossip, and chaos, Scott and Maggie discover their friendship hides something deeper. Darkly funny, raw, and fearless, Living in Sin is a satire of morality, desire, and the lies we live behind picket fences.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa
Samantha Belkin was sore in the best way possible. Not the kind of sore that came from jogging too far or standing in stilettos for too long. This was deep, intimate soreness. Her thighs, her hips, her neck—hell, even her jaw. A reminder in every step, every shift of her body, that she’d been thoroughly and skillfully fucked within an inch of her life that morning.
And now here she was, standing in the pickup line at Thomas J. Brookfield Elementary, pretending to be just another suburban mom waiting for her brood to be released from academic captivity. The sun beat down on her shoulders through the dappled shade of an ornamental pear tree. The other moms clustered a few yards away, all iced coffees and fake laughs and passive-aggressive praise for each other’s Lululemon.
And Samantha?
She wasn’t even hearing them.
Her eyes tracked one thing, and one thing only: Scott Dover.
He was walking across the parking lot now, that slow, confident stride like he wasn’t in a hurry for anything. She felt her stomach flutter just watching him. God, he was handsome. And competent. And filthy. And generous in all the ways her husband wasn’t. She knew exactly what that body felt like. The way his hands fit around her hips. The way he growled when he was close. The way he tasted her like a man starved. The way his cock felt buried in her ass and thrusting.
Her thighs pressed together slightly at the thought. A pulse of fresh ache fluttered up her spine.
Don’t smile. Don’t glow. Keep it cool.
That was the rule. Every time. After a session, they didn’t talk. They didn’t flirt. They nodded. Went to separate corners. Played the part. And she was fine with that. Truly. It kept things neat. Except she wasn’t fine right now. Because the next session was days away.
Scott worked the next four nights. Every week, Thursday through Sunday. She knew his schedule as well as she knew her kids’ dentist appointments. The earliest they could do it again would be Tuesday morning, and even then, he’d be dragging after his last shift. Bleary-eyed, grumpy, smelling like sweat and coffee and cop. But maybe...
Maybe if she asked him nicely. Maybe if she said pretty please in just the right tone, wore the right panties, kissed him like she meant it...
Maybe he’d give her a Tuesday session this week. She’d bring it up. Subtly. Later. But now—she would wait. She would play it cool as a cucumber.
Except Scott wasn’t heading to his usual spot on the far side of the concrete planter near the library entrance.
He was coming toward her. Not just walking by.
He stopped.
Right next to her.
Samantha’s heart skipped. Was he going to suggest another session tomorrow even though he worked tonight? She hoped that was what he wanted. Yes, she was sore and fucking him again tomorrow would be mildly painful and make her weekend a drawn out experience in muscle pain. But she would say yes. Oh yes she would.
Scott didn’t say anything right away.
He just stood there, close enough that their arms almost touched. Close enough that Samantha could smell the faintest trace of the soap he used. That clean, masculine scent that still lingered on her thighs like a memory.
She kept her eyes forward, heart pounding.
And then—without turning—he spoke, low and quiet.
“We’ve got a little problem.”
Samantha’s stomach fluttered. Not in the sexy way. The other way.
She turned her head slightly, not enough to be obvious, just enough to glance at him. “What kind of problem?”
“A big one,” he said. “Look around.”
She did.
Her gaze swept across the courtyard, past the moms loitering under the shaded awning, past the iced coffees and oversized handbags and overpriced athleisure.
And then she saw it.
Judith.
At the center of a cluster that was larger than usual. Seven women? Eight? Maybe more? All gathered tighter than normal. Faces close. Postures stiff. They weren’t laughing. They weren’t performing the usual theater of faux relaxation.
They were watching. Not openly. But unmistakably.
Their eyes flicked toward Samantha and Scott and then snapped away like rubber bands when Samantha tried to meet their gaze.
“What the fuck,” she whispered. “What’s going on?”
Scott exhaled slowly. “Judith knows.”
Samantha felt her throat tighten. “Knows what?”
He gave her a look.
“Oh,” she said. “No. No she doesn’t. She can’t. That’s impossible. We were always very careful.”
“She knows,” he said, still calm, still maddeningly matter-of-fact. “She called the department’s internal affairs division this morning. Reported me for ‘serious misconduct.’ Used your name. Said I was having an affair with a married woman. She didn’t say she saw anything physical, but she claims she’s been tracking our comings and goings. She made a spreadsheet.”
Samantha felt like the sidewalk dropped out from under her.
“A ... spreadsheet?”
Scott nodded.
“Of us?”
He nodded again.
She opened her mouth. Closed it. She was suddenly ice cold despite the heat on her shoulders.
“She’s been watching me?” she asked. “She’s been—tracking—Jesus Christ.”
“She’s been watching both of us,” Scott said. “And based on what she turned in, it sounds like she’s been doing it for a while.”
Samantha’s vision tunneled. Her ears rang faintly.
This couldn’t be happening. This was just gossip. Judith was a drama queen. This was nothing.
Except it wasn’t nothing. Judith knew! She had no proof—nothing that would stand up in court—but she knew. And she was telling everyone!
She swallowed hard. “Scott ... if this gets back to my husband...”
Scott didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Samantha stepped slightly away from him, suddenly hyper-aware of how close they were standing.
“There’s a clause,” she said, voice low, tight. “In our prenup.”
Scott looked at her.
“If he can prove I cheated,” she said, “he doesn’t have to give me anything.”
It’s just a standard prenuptial agreement, he’d told her upon insisting she sign the document prior to any wedding planning taking place. You will be well taken care of in the event we divorce ... as long as the divorce is not due to infidelity on your part. I’m sure you understand.
And she had understood at the time. And she had never objected. She had been 23 years old then, with no real concept of what true sexual frustration really was, no real concept of how good relieving that sexual frustration by letting a good looking, younger cop rail her would actually be.
Samantha’s heart was jackhammering in her chest.
The air felt suddenly thinner. Hotter. Her blouse clung to her back, her neck prickled, and the ache in her thighs—the soreness that had felt like a trophy just minutes ago—was now a liability. A mark of guilt. Of stupidity.
She wasn’t thinking about Scott anymore.
She wasn’t thinking about his hands or his tongue or his cock or the delicious, depraved things they’d done in his bedroom that morning.
She was thinking about the house. The car. The country club membership. Her bottomless credit card. The Christmas trips. The Business Class vacation flights. The joint investment accounts. The health insurance.
Her entire life.
Her hands clenched into fists.
“We can’t see each other again,” she said flatly.
Scott didn’t respond.
“I’m serious,” she went on, her voice low, sharp, urgent. “We can’t talk. We can’t wave. We can’t even look at each other. Not here. Not anywhere.”
He was watching her, still calm. Still maddeningly unreadable.
She didn’t care.
“You need to deny everything,” she hissed. “If anyone asks, you say it’s a lie. You say Judith is insane. You say she made it up because she’s a bored, delusional hag with too much time on her hands. I don’t care how you do it. Just deny.”
She took a step away from him, then another. Like he was radioactive. Like standing near him might get her subpoenaed.
Scott’s eyes didn’t leave her, but he didn’t follow. He didn’t argue. He didn’t try to explain. Of course he didn’t.
She wasn’t thinking about what he was risking. What he could lose. She didn’t ask if he was going to be investigated. If he was going to get suspended. If the call to IAD had triggered anything serious.
She was too busy picturing herself in a one-bedroom apartment with three kids and a Honda Odyssey she could no longer afford to put gas in.
From her new spot several feet away, she folded her arms and stared at the school entrance like it owed her an explanation.
When the bell rang and the kids began to stream out in chaotic, sweaty little clumps, she didn’t even glance in Scott’s direction.
She kept her face smooth. Kept her spine straight. Kept her eyes on her kids.
Like nothing had happened.
Like he was a stranger.
The kids exploded through the front door like they’d been shot out of a cannon.
Backpacks dropped. Shoes kicked off. Voices overlapping with the chaotic urgency only elementary school children could manage after a long day of enforced stillness.
“Snack!” Katie yelled, already beelining for the kitchen.
“I’m changing first!” Chris called after her, backpack half unzipped and dragging.
“Five-minute window,” Scott said, tossing his keys in the bowl by the door. “Clothes off, hands washed, snack prepped. Then we pivot to homework.”
“Pivot?” Katie echoed, wrinkling her nose. “Like ... basketball?”
“Exactly like basketball. I expect nothing less than varsity execution.”
They peeled off, the sounds of doors slamming and cabinets opening trailing in their wake.
Scott sighed and leaned against the hallway wall. The coolness of the paint helped. A little.
The bedroom door down the hall creaked open. Maggie emerged, hair wild, eyes half-lidded, legs bare save for a pair of crimson panties that made zero effort at subtlety. Her T-shirt—one of her old academy ones—barely skimmed her hips.
She padded into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge without comment. Then, opening the pantry, she retrieved a half-eaten bag of trail mix, stuck her hand in, and popped a few chocolate-covered raisins into her mouth.
“You’re up early,” Scott said.
“You’re loud,” she replied around a mouthful. “I was trying to sleep like the dead. What happened to your smooth dad re-entry skills?”
“Blame the pick-up line. It was ... eventful.”
Maggie leaned against the counter, arms crossed, water bottle tucked in the crook of one elbow. “Yeah?” she said. “How’d your little talk with Samantha go?”
Scott shrugged. “I’m pretty sure she broke up with me.”
Maggie blinked. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
He opened the fridge, pulled out the chocolate milk, gave it a sniff, and put it back. “When you’re boning a hot MILF behind her husband’s back,” he said, “you kinda have to accept up front that it’s not a forever thing. You don’t get to complain when the ride ends.”
Maggie snorted. “You say that like you’re some kind of MILF-master. This is your first time being the side piece, remember? You’ve barely earned your kneepads.”
Scott gave a tired smirk. “Sure. But I’m a quick study.”
“She just threw your ass away,” Maggie said, picking another handful from the bag. “Cold. Doesn’t that hurt? Even a little?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
She squinted at him. “Not even a twinge?”
Scott didn’t answer. Instead, he glanced toward the hallway where the sounds of pseudo-sibling negotiation over yogurt pouches were reaching critical mass.
“I’m gonna put them on autopilot for a bit,” he said. “Try to catch some sleep before shift.”
“Copy that,” Maggie said, saluting lazily with her water bottle. “You’re still first-in if the unholy kid crisis occurs.”
“Understood,” Scott said.
He wandered down the hallway and found both kids in the family room now—Katie mid-bite into an apple, Chris eating crackers out of a bowl like it was an Olympic event.
“Alright, hooligans,” he said, leaning in the doorway. “I’m taking a nap. That means you’re in charge of yourselves.”
Chris gave him a sidelong glance. “What if the house catches on fire?”
“Use the extinguisher and don’t wake me unless the flames reach the hallway.”
Katie giggled.
“And if I hear a single scream, crash, or glass of milk hitting the floor, I’m sending you both to juvenile hall for a week.”
“A week?” Chris asked, mock offended. “That’s a violation of due process.”
“You don’t get due process in this house,” Scott said. “You get vibes and judgment.”
“We’ll be quiet,” Katie promised.
“We’ll be awesome,” Chris added.
“Homework, chores, screens,” Scott said. “That order. Stay cool.”
They both nodded solemnly, like the future of national security depended on their ability to not start a wrestling match during long division.
Scott retreated to his room and shut the door.
It was instantly darker. The blackout curtains did their job. Three fans hummed from opposite corners—oscillating white noise overkill, but necessary. He stripped down to his boxers and dropped onto the bed, the cool sheets a small mercy.
His eyes closed.
And for a few minutes, everything went still.
But sleep didn’t come right away.
Instead, he lay there, body relaxed, mind turning. Not racing. Just turning.
I’m pretty sure she broke up with me.
The words echoed back in his head, calm and casual on the surface—but something clung to them. A weight he didn’t want to name.
It didn’t hurt.
Not really.
It just ... stung. In that slow, distant way that things do when you realize you were more invested than you let on.
Nothing a few drinks at The Chambers after shift wouldn’t fix.
He turned his head into the pillow, let the fans do their work, and finally let the day go.
Fade to black.
That night, at 2315 hours in Northwood, Scott had just cleared a nonsense DV report—verbal only, no crime, no injuries, both parties mad that the other still existed—when the next call blinked onto his MDT.
[DISPATCH – 2223 HOURS]
CALL TYPE: 415, 242– Domestic Dispute
LOCATION: 2300 Grand Avenue, Space #62, Sequoia Mobile Estates
DETAILS: RP reports male subject assaulted, bleeding from the head. Unknown suspect. No weapons seen. No further information.
UNITS ASSIGNED:
15-A-1 (Dover) – Primary
12-A-1 (Winslow) – Cover
Fire and EMS staging
Scott allowed himself a tight smile. Thursday night perk. He got to run a call with Maggie.
They didn’t get to work together often—just once a week when their shifts lined up—but it was always a relief when she got assigned with him. Clean. Fast. Trusted. Plus, they could decompress over bourbon after shift at the Chambers.
He did not need to check the map overlay. Anyone who had worked District 1 for more than a week was familiar with that address. The scuzzy trailer park sat in a liminal space—technically county jurisdiction, but close enough to the Heritage border to borrow all the worst traits from the city’s Highland neighborhood. Highland was a war zone on a good night. Sequoia was where people went when Highland got too uppity.
He pulled to the shoulder just outside the park’s main entrance and went dark. No headlights. No spotlight. Just parking lights on and dome dimmed.
The place looked exactly the way it always did: broken chain-link fence, crooked mailbox row, a sagging sign that once read Sequoia Mobile Estates but now said EQUOA BIL ES in peeling vinyl.
It was the kind of trailer park you never heard John Mellencamp singing about in his little ditties honoring the simple folk of America. Brother John would likely want to order an airstrike if he ever laid eyes on the place.
He waited.
Two minutes later, Maggie’s Tahoe eased up behind him and stopped. The familiar shape in the driver’s seat gave him a little wave through the windshield.
Scott clicked into drive and pulled in.
Sequoia had no real layout—just a lopsided loop of gravel and cracked blacktop with a dozen offshoot lanes crammed with leaning single-wides and sun-faded RVs. The whole place smelled like deep fryer grease, stale beer, and whatever was leaking from the communal dumpsters.
Trailer #62 sat dead center of the main strip, three doors down from the overloaded utility pole and just across from what might have once been a playground—now just sand, trash, and a half-buried swing.
The porch light was out.
A few cracked doors. One curtain twitch. Someone’s TV glowed from an open window, flashing white-blue-white like a cheap strobe.
Scott angled his Tahoe to the curb in front of the trailer next door. He put the Tahoe in park and stepped out. His seatbelt had already been undone back when he first pulled into the park. It was a habit ingrained in the academy and he did not even remember doing it. He closed the door and locked it with his fob, leaving the engine at idle and only the parking lights on.
Maggie joined him at the front of his vehicle. Both of them had gun hands free and eyes on the single wide they had been dispatched to. Both had their flashlights in the left hands—the non-gun hands. Another ingrained habit thanks to Sergeant Gimme Thirty.
They stood at the front of Scott’s Tahoe, shoulder to shoulder, both angled toward the warped single-wide like it might twitch. No lights, no sound from inside. The screen door hung askew and the porch step looked like it had been kicked one too many times by someone in steel-toed boots and a meth spiral.
Neither of them spoke at first. They didn’t need to. The ambient sound of Sequoia filled in the silence—dogs barking in the distance, a baby crying somewhere behind them, the dull electric hum of a gutted fridge being used as a tool cabinet. Somewhere, something clanged against metal. Could’ve been a wrench. Could’ve been a femur. No way to tell.
“Been here before?” Maggie asked, eyes still forward.
“Not this one,” Scott said. “Hit plenty of others, though. I think there’s maybe six trailers in this whole park I haven’t walked up on at one time or another.”
Maggie nodded. “Same.”
Scott tilted his head toward the side of the trailer. “Came here once for an assault. Early in the shift—maybe 1830. Still daylight. Bubbas and Bubbettes hadn’t tucked in yet. Victim had some minor bump on his noggin, nothin’ serious but you know how those jail nurses are. Had to wait for EMS to bless him.”
“They weren’t staged?”
“Of course they were. But it was one of those nights. Too many calls and not enough units to cover them all. They get that shit the same as we do. They got pulled for an overdose or some shit like that. The next unit was coming from fuckin’ Heritage City. I waited almost twenty minutes.” He paused, adjusted the angle of his light. “Eventually, the Whiskey-Tango crowd here just ... accepted me.”
Maggie glanced over. “Accepted you?”
“Yeah. Like I was part of the tribe. They stopped watching me. Stopped guarding their behavior. I got to observe them in their natural habitat. It was like a fuckin’ National Geographic special.”
She raised a brow slightly. “And what did you learn?”
Scott was quiet for half a beat. Then, dryly: “It was a deeply moving experience. It was at that moment that my last remaining shred of the possibility of a kind and benevolent god fell away like a leaf from a fuckin’ tree.”
Maggie snorted once—short and clean. “You have a hell of a way with words.”
Scott shrugged. “Juries love my reports when they put them up on the big screen,” he said.
“I bet they do,” she said. “Should we go see what this bullshit’s about?”
“Why do we have to do it?” he asked in a faux whiny voice.
“I ask myself that every time the fuckin’ MDT beeps.”
They both turned on their body cams. It was required on every contact with the public that occurs in a legal fashion. Failing to do so without good reason was something that got flagged by one hundred percent audit.
Once the camera were on, they knew they were onstage. Their every move, every word was subject to intense scrutiny. They dropped into on-camera mode in a way that method actors would instantly recognize. They were in the zone.
They approached without speaking.
Flashlights down. Beams tight.
The trailer loomed in front of them like a patient with a poor prognosis—sagging, patched, and listing slightly to one side. A rusted old Pontiac sat on blocks nearby, its hood missing, its interior gutted. A fly-ridden trash barrel leaned at a forty-five-degree angle under the front window.
They climbed the warped steps—three in total—each covered in faded, synthetic green turf that might’ve once been festive but now looked like something you’d bury a lawn gnome in. It crunched under their boots.
At the top, they peeled to position automatically—Scott taking the left, Maggie the right, neither one in front of the door, neither one speaking. They didn’t have to. Years of training and habit made their movements silent, synchronized, clean.
They stood still for nearly a full minute, listening.
Nothing.
No voices.
No movement.
No television. No muffled crying. No barking dog.
Scott leaned slightly forward, angled toward the doorframe.
Then—three sharp knocks.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
“Sheriff’s Department!” he called, firm and clear.
Footsteps. Slow. Heavy.
The door creaked inward.
And there she was.
A woman in what could loosely be described as her late forties—though that number might’ve been generous. Or wildly off. In Sequoia, age was more of a theory than a number. Her hair was brittle and streaked yellow. Her eyes were bloodshot. She was tremendously overweight, packing close to three hundred pounds on a five-four frame. Attempting to cover this mass of flesh was a nightgown that should have been arrested on sight, its neckline hanging low enough to cause concern. Her skin was pale, patchy, and glistened faintly with sweat. One bare foot was visible, toenails yellowed. A lit cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth, ash long enough to qualify for an engineering certificate. The odor of stale and fresh alcohol radiated off of her in waves.
Scott kept his voice professional.
“Did you call us tonight, ma’am?”
She exhaled a cloud of smoke straight up, eyes half-lidded. “Naw. My old man did. He’s okay now.”
“We got a report of a head injury,” Scott said. “Is he here?”
“He’s gone to bed,” she said, like that was the final word. “We’re good now. You can go on.”
Scott didn’t budge. “Ma’am, I need to check on him. Just to make sure he’s alright.”
She shook her head, flabby jowls wobbling. “He’s fine. Just got a little riled up. He’s a drunk, you know.”
Smoke drifted from her nostrils like she was the final boss of a cheap haunted house.
“We still need to check on him,” Scott said again, firm but neutral.
“I told you,” she said, one hand on the door, the other holding the cigarette. “He’s in bed.”
“I need you to go get him out of bed,” Scott said. “If you don’t, we have legal cause to enter your residence and make sure he’s okay.”
“You makin’ that shit up?” she asked.
“Nope,” he said simply.
The woman grumbled something unintelligible under her breath and turned away from the door.
“Hold on,” she muttered. “Goddamn ... my fuckin’ taxes are paying for this shit.”
Scott wanted to make a remark about how she had likely never paid any taxes in her life other than those attached to liquor and cigarette sales, but he kept the thought internal. Their body cams were on. Never say or do anything that you wouldn’t want to see on a YouTube video in a few weeks—or in the IAD headhunter computer screen in the interrogation room.
She waddled down the darkened hallway with the lumbering momentum of a capsized freighter, her nightgown clinging wetly to her back in the hallway’s glow. They watched as she reached the far end of the trailer and opened a narrow door.
“Cleatus!” she hollered, voice a chainsaw screech. “The fuckin’ cops need to see you! Git your ass up!”
Movement.
A low groan.
Then the shuffle of bare feet on linoleum.
Cleatus emerged into the hallway light, squinting and shirtless, wearing a pair of stretched-out gray sweat shorts with what looked like a suspicious mustard-colored stain near the waistband. His man boobs were bigger than Samantha Belkin’s woman boobs. His gut hung down over his waist. A dirty towel was wrapped like a turban around his head, secured with a clothes pin.
Tattooed across his chest in faded prison ink were the words WITE POWOR, spelled just like that—no H, an extra O. The font was jagged and hand-poked, tilted awkwardly around the terrain of his hairless chest. Scott figured if he had paid more than five bags of Cheetos for that ink, he had been ripped off.
He stared blearily toward the door.
“I’m fine,” he grunted. “I’m goin’ back to bed.”
Scott kept his tone neutral. “I need to see under the towel, sir.”
Cleatus grunted again. “It’s nothin’.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
With a heavy sigh and an eye-roll that could’ve powered a turbine, Cleatus walked over to the doorway. He then peeled back the towel.
Beneath it was a three-inch laceration on his forehead, crusted and wet, the skin jagged and purpled. As the air hit it, it welled up again—slow, red, and stubborn.
Scott nodded once. “Go ahead and put that back on.”
Cleatus did, grumbling.
“What happened?” Scott asked.
“Fell,” the woman barked from just behind him. “He fuckin’ fell, that’s what.”
Scott held up a finger—just a subtle stop gesture—and glanced sideways.
Maggie stepped forward, voice level and dry. “Ma’am, what’s your name?”
“Darla,” she snapped. “Darla Anne fucking Templeton.”
“Anyone else in the home tonight, Darla?”
She shook her head. “Just me and Cleatus.”
Maggie nodded once. “Would you mind if I speak with you inside? Just you and me.”
Darla eyed her suspiciously.
“Why?”
“Just a few questions. Won’t take long.”
Another long drag from the cigarette.
Then, with the resignation of a woman who’s been to this rodeo far too many times, Darla exhaled a smoke stream and stepped aside.
“Fine,” she muttered. “But make it quick.”
Scott led Cleatus out onto the porch. Maggie stood next to the battered couch while Darla sat on it. Neither party could hear the other.
The trailer’s interior was what she expected. The air was thick—humid and sour, with the cloying overlay of fried grease, old cat piss, and the chemical tang of off-brand air freshener. The carpet was matted down and discolored, its original shade lost sometime in the Reagan administration. An ashtray the size of a salad bowl sat on the coffee table, overflowing with crushed cigarettes and a plastic lighter that had melted into the Formica.
They conversed in the narrow living room, the flicker of a muted TV casting seizure-light off a pair of nicotine-stained blinds. Maggie kept her tone even, her voice quiet. Nothing aggressive. Nothing pushy.
They talked. At first, it was the usual script. He fell. He was drunk. He tripped over the fucking dog. There was no dog. I mean the cat. That’s kind of a big mislabeling of an entire animal, isn’t it? That kind of thing happens when people are not telling the truth.
Maggie let her talk. Let her build her scaffolding. Let the contradictions start to lean just enough. Eventually, Darla gave up the charade and shifted into a new version.
It was better.
Not good, but better.
Coherent. Functional. A story. And like most stories in Sequoia, it probably orbited the truth without quite achieving impact velocity.
Just outside the trailer, Scott spoke with Cleatus.
They stood at the bottom of the front steps, away from Maggie’s interview, away from the light. The towel had been re-wrapped. The blood was holding.
Cleatus had a voice like someone gargling roofing nails. His breath smelled like warm Old Milwaukee and whatever he’d used to wash down his last pain pill.
He also started with “I fell.”
Scott didn’t argue. Just asked follow-ups. Asked about angles. Heights. Momentum.
Cleatus got irritated. Got vague. Got defensive.
And then, maybe just out of spite, he shifted his story.
Scott listened, let him ramble, and nodded at the right times.
Another version. Another maybe-truth.
Eventually, they both wrapped up.
Maggie exited the trailer, wiping her palm against the outside of her thigh like she could scrub off the interior.
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