by A. J. Thomas
He came right out with it. He told him about how he was recovering from the surgery, about the dead feeling in half of his right hand. He admitted that he didn’t know if he would ever be able to hold a gun or restrain a suspect again.
As he spoke, Captain Jenkins pulled a handwritten list toward him and added an item to the bottom. “So,” he said slowly, “you feel like you’re going to be a liability when you come back?”
“I can’t hold my Beretta,” Christopher admitted. “I’ve dropped it each time I’ve tried.”
“You been to physical therapy? Gotten some tips for different grips? Tried working with your left hand at the range? You know, switching to a revolver might do the trick. More control with your left hand, if you don’t have to keep your thumb out of the way of the slide.”
“Ah, no, sir, I haven’t even been cleared to start physical therapy yet. I went back to the doctor and got the stitches out three days ago, but he said that he wants me to wait another week at least. I’m more than willing to try a revolver, though. I’ve had my Beretta for so long, I didn’t even think about switching. I might go pick one up today and take it out to the range.”
Jenkins nodded. “If you’re up for it. Something to try before you decide to start applying for disability, anyway.”
“I’ve got to try! As of Monday, I’ve used up four weeks of disability. I’ve only got two more before I’ve got to submit a medical clearance form or apply for permanent disability.”
“You’ve got three more weeks, now.”
“I do?”
“We can always have you come back on limited duty too, and there’s no time limit for that. Plenty of time to give that shoulder a chance to rest. Keep me posted on how it comes along, and we’ll just play it by ear when you get back. We’ll reschedule your promotion interview when you get back to town too.”
“Back to town? I’m going somewhere?”
“Sit down, Chris.”
Chris. Not Hayes. Christopher bit the inside of his cheek and sat down in one of the chairs in front of the man’s desk. Even after he sat down, Jenkins just stared at him. Christopher felt like he should be confessing to something, but he couldn’t think of any pranks or jokes that the other man didn’t already know about. Whatever was on Jenkins’s mind, it was bad.
“I can’t wait until we switch back to nights,” Jenkins began. “Nights are simpler. Not stuck here plowing through administrative reports.”
Christopher knew Jenkins wasn’t the type to stall unless he was working up to something he really didn’t want to say. “You wouldn’t want me to try physical therapy if I was being fired,” Christopher said aloud.
“Fired? No.”
“Sued?”
“No, you’re not being sued. When I came in this morning, I had a long voice mail from a sheriff in some hick town in Montana, believe it or not.”
“That new housing development out in Mira Mesa?”
“No. The state, smartass. This guy’s been calling for the past week trying to get ahold of you, and people have been taking messages, but near as I can tell, they all wound up in that black hole on your desk. Anyway, I called him back to tell him you were out of commission for a few weeks.” The silence bloomed again as Jenkins paused and seemed to consider something. “You need to call him.” He picked up the phone on his desk, glanced at the list in his other hand, and dialed a ten-digit phone number before passing the receiver to Christopher. “I’ll give you a minute.”
Christopher held the receiver to his ear and noticed the click of the door as it shut behind Jenkins. The phone was answered after the fourth ring. “Sheriff Brubaker,” a gruff voice wheezed.
“This is Detective Christopher Hayes, San Diego Homicide. I’m just returning a call—” He stopped when a muffled curse and a series of thumps sounded through the phone. “Hello?”
“Ah, sorry. I dropped the phone. Mr. Hayes?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
“Christopher Malcolm Hayes, younger brother of Peter Eugene Hayes?”
“What has he done this time?”
“The Christopher Malcolm Hayes who grew up down in LA?”
“San Diego.”
“Eh, close enough. Mr. Hayes, I’m afraid it’s my duty to inform you that we found the body of Peter Eugene Hayes late Tuesday morning in Lone Pine State Park. Our coroner hasn’t completed her report yet, but it appears that he took his own life. The only contact information, for anybody, that we found among his possessions was your name. Are you his closest family?”
“I’m his only family,” Christopher whispered.
“Well, I’m sorry someone couldn’t tell you in person. His body is being held in the coroner’s office. Do you have a funeral home down there that can help you with this?”
Christopher fell back into the chair, jarring his shoulder but not really noticing. “I’m sorry, you said he killed himself?”
“It appears so, yes.”
“Killed himself?” As his brain began to function again, Christopher quickly buried his emotions as deep as he could. The same rage that always consumed him when he thought about his big brother threatened to escape from the cage he had trapped it in years before, and that anger was somehow magnified now, and tinged with a pain he felt stupid for feeling at all. Peter wasn’t worth getting upset over. Hell, Peter wasn’t even worth mourning.
“Yes, sir. Do you have a mortuary service affiliated with your family’s church or anything like that?”
“Our family’s church?” Christopher barked out a laugh, desperately trying to bite back the anger. He shut his eyes against the flashes of memories assaulting him. He had outrun those memories a long time ago, and he wasn’t ready to let them catch up with him. He bit the inside of his cheek and forced himself into work mode. “No,” he managed calmly. “I’ll have to contact someone to make arrangements for his disposition.” The phrase came out automatically. It was what he usually said himself when contacting a victim’s next of kin. Saying it now almost felt like cheating. “Elkin County, Montana?”
“No, sir. Town of Elkin, Baker County.”
“I should be there in a day or two.”
“You driving or flying?”
“Flying, probably.”
“Nearest big airports are in Missoula and Kalispell. Missoula’s got daily flights. It’s your best bet. We’re about four hours north. Stop in to the sheriff’s office when you get into town, and we’ll help get you sorted out.”
“I’ll be there by Monday morning. Thank you for letting me know.” Christopher hung up the phone and wandered out of the office in a daze.
The people around him seemed to be moving in slow motion. He made it about four feet before his legs collapsed under him. Instead of hitting the floor, he found himself being carefully set in a chair. Jenkins’s grim expression faltered as he held Christopher upright in the chair. Everyone else was staring at them. Jenkins quietly met Christopher’s gaze, forcing his attention to focus on him.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Jenkins muttered quietly, “I should have told you myself. I’m a coward. Are you all right, Chris?”
When Christopher didn’t answer, his captain patted him on the back. “Do you want me to call Ray? I would have called the chaplain, but—”
Despite the way the world was spinning, Christopher still managed to glare at him.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.” Jenkins nodded, not at all upset by his expression. “Hey, McClure, get him a glass of water.”
A foam cup from the water cooler showed up in his hands.
“I’ll put in the paperwork to get you three weeks of paid family leave, on top of the two weeks’ temporary disability you’ve got left before human resources needs that medical evaluation done—five weeks total. Do you think that’ll be enough time? It’ll give you more time to heal, at least.”
Christopher tried to focus on the question, but somehow he couldn’t come up with an answer. He was not all right. He wanted to punch something, or
to run until he dropped, or both. He felt like a terrified twelve-year-old boy hiding beneath a dumpster and watching his seventeen-year-old brother, a monster one moment and overcome by guilt the next, stalking along the alley searching for him.
“Find Delgado,” Jenkins said to someone behind him.
“He called in sick.”
“If he’s not hospitalized, get him in here,” Jenkins growled. “Send a couple traffic officers to his house if you have to.”
“No!” Christopher shook his head, forcing the memory of his brother’s long blond hair back into oblivion. “No, I’m okay. Just had a bit of a shock. I’ve got to go get a plane ticket.”
“You sure? I can send a car to get his lazy ass out of bed. He just called in to get out of training, anyway.”
“That’s all right. I can drive, I just need a minute.”
Christopher just had to force himself not to think. He made it home, booked a plane ticket online, then found himself leaning into his fridge, debating between finishing the six-pack of beer on the bottom shelf or lacing up his running shoes again. The beer won, but only because he knew he needed to sleep while he could. But finishing off those three beers didn’t knock him out for long. He was wide-awake and fidgeting on the couch by three in the morning. By four, he was packed and ready to go, and then he unpacked his running clothes and shoes and raced out the door, determined to kill the last few hours before he had to leave for the airport.
After his run, he swung by Ray’s apartment to ask Ray to pick up his mail for him. As always, he was careful to avoid going anywhere near Ray’s bedroom, and he wasn’t too surprised when he heard someone shuffling around the bathroom and someone else shuffling around the bedroom at the same time. He couldn’t bring himself to shout out his usual warning when he barged through the front door, but he also didn’t go out of his way to avoid making noise in the kitchen. He got himself a glass of water and then began digging through drawers in Ray’s desk for a pen and notepaper.
He was damn lucky his brain was still effectively shut down from his run.
As he began to scribble a quick note, soft footfalls came to his attention and a body, a very male body, padded out of the bedroom in a pair of dark briefs and nothing else. “Oh, hell,” the young man said. Christopher’s face must have betrayed more shock than he intended. The nearly nude young man looked terrified and hurt. “He said he wasn’t seeing anybody!”
There was an almost naked man in Ray’s kitchen. No, Christopher corrected himself, an almost naked boy. He looked like a surfer, with gel-spiked blond hair and exhausted hazel eyes.
Christopher’s totally straight partner had brought a boy home last night.
Christopher forced himself into his work smile. “Yeah, he lied. He’s seeing every willing man and woman in San Diego. Not me, though. I’m Christopher. I work with him. I’m just leaving Ray a note, don’t mind me.”
The panic faded from the young man’s expression. “I’m Ian. I guess I should put some clothes on.”
Christopher shrugged and plopped the key to his apartment on top of the note. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got to run anyway. Tell him I’ll see him in a few weeks when I get back to work?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Nice meeting you.” Christopher even managed to wave before he headed out the door. He forced himself to walk, and specifically not to think, as he headed to the elevator.
Part of his brain registered the sound of a door opening and then closing behind him. He pushed the button again, then twice more. “Hayes!” Ray called. “Hayes, wait! I can explain!”
Christopher pushed the button harder.
“Wait a second!” Ray grabbed him by the elbow and spun him around to face him. “Just wait, will you!”
“What is it?” Christopher asked, forcing his voice to stay low.
“I know what you’ve got to be thinking, but this isn’t anything serious, I swear!”
“I have never known you to be capable of serious, so I wasn’t assuming. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you, Delgado.” Christopher pulled his elbow out of the other man’s grip and started to step into the elevator.
“No! Damn it, Hayes, would you— Hey, stop!”
Christopher felt Ray’s hands on his shoulders, spinning him around again and pinning him against the wall beside the elevator. Then his partner, the man he had spent four years stealing glances at, four years not allowing himself to fantasize about, was kissing him. Ray’s lips were grinding against his, his tongue delving into his mouth with a demanding insistence. Ray’s very frank arousal was grinding against him so hard that the force nearly lifted him off the ground. Christopher found his body responding, but the adrenaline transformed what would have been lust under different circumstances into rage. He found his fingers trailing over Delgado’s bare chest, tracing muscles he had always wanted to feel, until he could get a grip on the other man’s shoulders. He shoved him away as hard as he could.
It was all too much. Christopher’s career was teetering on a knife-edge. If his arm didn’t recover, he would either have to look for a new job or risk getting other officers killed. The only family he had in the world was dead, and he didn’t know if he should be celebrating that fact or be angry about it, but no matter what he was actually feeling, he had to go pretend to mourn the bastard who had made his childhood a living hell. And now, after watching his best friend bring home at least one new girl each week for the last four years, as a constant reminder of just how straight he was, the asshole had the nerve to think he could run out on his last one-night stand and start fucking around with him.
Christopher threw every ounce of his strength, and every shred of anger, into a punch to the gut, then a roundhouse punch to the jaw that sent Ray flying into the wall. He felt the tendon in his shoulder catch halfway through the roundhouse, and he nearly screamed as a lightning bolt of pain stabbed down the tendon into his right arm. He gritted his teeth and stepped into the elevator, ridiculously thankful it was empty, and hit the button for the lobby.
He had a plane to catch and now he would have to unpack his luggage to dig out a painkiller before he went to the airport.
After two short flights and a layover longer than both flights combined, Christopher picked up a rental car and directions.
“Elkin?” The woman behind the counter at the rental agency said the name like it left a nasty taste in her mouth. “It’s out past Hot Springs, up Highway 93. You don’t want to make that drive tonight.” She shook her head. “The road gets icy around the lake when it gets cold, and it’s already below freezing up north.”
“This late in the season?” asked Christopher, oblivious.
“When you get high enough into the mountains, spring likes to take its time. Your best bet is to go up tomorrow afternoon. That would give traffic and the weather a chance to clear the roads.”
After Christopher carefully tested out just how slick the roads were when he got out into the parking lot, he suspected that the woman’s warning had more to do with his California driver’s license than the weather. Still, it was nearly ten o’clock and the prospect of arriving in a small mountain town, which might not even have a hotel, at two in the morning wasn’t appealing after the day he’d had. He programmed the rental car’s GPS to take him to a hotel for the night.
He drove through the city of Missoula, surprised by just how lively the town’s nightlife was. The downtown area was packed with pedestrians. The few cars on the road were an even mix of luxury-brand SUVs and police cars, all inching their way through town as partiers wove their way through the line of traffic. While stopped at a light, he arched an eyebrow at the sight of two young men making out outside of a dark bar. He watched as a few other couples, all male, walked into the bar holding hands.
Five blocks ahead, he found a hotel closer than whatever the GPS was leading him to, so he turned the machine off and pulled in to get a room. After he got checked in, he spent a whole two minutes sitting on the end of the bed
and staring at the black television set across from him.
He sat back against the headboard and tried to relax, but as soon as his body stopped moving, his mind starting running in circles. He’d avoided thinking about his partner all day, but now the memory of those lips and that tongue came back and threatened to suffocate him. He kicked his shoes onto the floor and shut his eyes, only to see Ray again. Not Ray sitting at a bar and laughing with him, or shooting rubber bands across his desk. He saw Ray naked, hard, dripping and breathless from wanting to fuck him. He tried to imagine old lovers, old one-night stands, but his brain kept inserting Ray’s face, Ray’s body, into his memories. Just as it had when Ray kissed him that morning, his cock got hard instantly.
He adjusted his cock through his pants, thought about jacking off, and then stood up and slipped his shoes back on. He was not going to jack off while thinking about his partner. Even if his partner was willing to cross that line, Christopher wasn’t.
He crushed his eyes shut and took a few deep breaths, getting his body under control. He let the anger that had been boiling inside of him escape just a little. Just enough to make him remember that Ray was an asshole. The man was hot, Christopher wouldn’t deny that, but he also slept with every girl, and apparently everyone, who caught his attention. There was no way Christopher was going to blow his job and their friendship just because Ray’s attention had somehow shifted in his direction. He couldn’t deal with all of the emotional bullshit that would come up when Ray brought home someone new within a week. And someone else a week after that.
It had been too long since Christopher had gotten laid. That was the only reason he could come up with for feeling so angry over Ray kissing him. If it hadn’t been so long, he wouldn’t have gone from exhausted to ready to fuck Ray in the hallway because of one stupid kiss. He would have just laughed it off and walked away.