by Rhys Ford
“It’s the you being pissed off part I’m concerned about, because Vicks alluded in his investigation notes that you had a hot temper, one fueled by ego. His theory was you and Harold’s wife cooked up a plan to kill him but she double-crossed you.” O’Byrne’s expression shifted, going a neutral so flat Rook’s hackles rose. “See for me, the box didn’t make sense. Why send it? And did it come from Natterly’s? So I contacted the auction house and spoke to a Jeremy there. He said you weren’t scheduled for a delivery, so why did you open it? Do you know Jeremy? Would he have a reason to lie?”
“Jer? No, he’s the other Natterly in the business. Davis’s the guy in charge. He’s the one I usually deal with. I do business with him about as often as I brush my teeth. The box had Natterly’s labels on it, so that’s why I didn’t think anything about opening it up.” His brain kicked in, trying to come up with a name, anyone who’d be ballsy enough to kill a cop and cold-blooded enough to send his head to the last man Vicks threatened to kill. “Manny said it was dropped off by the delivery guy, a courier, but that’s normal too. No sense using a shipping service when Natterly’s about two miles down the road. They have their own guys to cart stuff around the city. Lots of business in Tinsel Town. People like the past here. He does good business.”
After unfolding a piece of paper she’d tucked into the back of her notebook, the detective slid it over for Rook to read. It was definitely a copy, one made off of the shop’s own machine, judging from the familiar black splotch on the upper right corner, an imperfection the technician valiantly struggled to correct, but the machine’d faithfully captured a scalloped blemish on the original, darkening one side of the paper. Handwritten, the blocky words were sharp black slashes and bristling with menace, assuring Rook Vicks would never bother him again.
“What’s this?” The words were chilling, intimate, and cloying. Rook didn’t want to touch the note, much less have its contents burned into his brain, but his eyes kept moving over the message, unwilling to let go. “What the fucking hell is this?”
The note was short, but not very sweet, although the person digging the pen into the paper probably didn’t think so. Rook, it said in long, hard lines, Vicks said he was sorry about trying to set fire to your shop. It won’t happen again.
His breath couldn’t seem to leave his chest, and he choked on the lump of air in his throat. Coughing, Rook’s eyes watered, and his fingers slipped the paper back across the table at the detective.
“Jesus, I…,” he stammered. “Where was this?”
“This was in the package along with Vicks’s head. As you can see, it’s addressed to you.” O’Byrne’s eyes burned with a dark fervor, a predator sighting on its prey. “So you tell me, Stevens, who do you know can kill a man in cold blood, saw off his head, and then mail it to you with a love note attached? Because I think if you can answer that, we would have found who killed your cousin, Harold.”
ARCHIBALD MARTIN was used to getting his own way.
It was clear he’d grown up with an entire set of silver crammed into his thin-lipped mouth and expected to be obeyed after issuing an order. Shadowed by a phalanx of serious-faced people in suits Dante assumed were lawyers, Archie marched into Potter’s Field with a gleam in his eye and all intentions of doing battle.
He met his match in Manny.
It was an interesting standoff. One despotic, overindulged head of industry crossing swords with a Latino former drag queen bearing breast cancer scars and a fierce protective streak where his loved ones were concerned. Archie might have gone toe to toe with the thickest-skinned hard-nosed men ever to walk the earth, but Manny’d taken Death down and had no intention of letting Archie railroad him.
Or that’s how it played out in Dante’s head. The reality of it was they’d taken one look at each other and bonded over the one thing they had in common—Rook Stevens.
“He needs to be moved into the house. At least until this thing blows over. All of the… you too. I’d feel better if I knew you were safe. I’m old. People need to understand my heart can’t take much more of this shit,” Archie groused, pacing in front of a long counter filled with fuzzy round balls, ray guns, and decoder rings. Gesturing toward the office door, he turned on one of his lawyers, a florid-faced man whose wide-eyed expression made him look like one of the alien-fish masks hanging on the shop’s walls. “Go in there. See what that detective’s up to, and—”
“She’s questioning Rook, Archie,” Dante interjected. “Standard procedure. And you’re going to have to leave the shop before they kick you out. It’s a crime scene.”
“The lady cop…. O’Byrne said we could wait here.” Manny tsked. “Only the receiving room is a crime scene. Well, and upstairs.”
“Great, tío.” He threw his hands up, more to tease his uncle than anything else. “Now you remember things people tell you.”
“Don’t get smart with me. And Archie, you’re not going to get him to go with you,” Manny said with a shake of his head. “The boy is stubborn. He won’t like being chased out of his house. We might be able to get him to come to our place, but probably only for a night.”
“Doesn’t like to give up control,” the old man grumbled, leaning heavily on his cane. “Okay, Sanders, why don’t you take the other two and see if we can’t get some idea on what they’re doing with the murder case. The sooner we get that woman out of my house, the better. I don’t know what I was thinking letting her stay with me. She runs the staff ragged.”
Dante bit his cheek to keep from commenting, but he caught Sanders rolling his eyes as he left the store with the other suits Archie dragged in. Hank caught the door for them as they stepped out, waiting for the way to clear before coming in. Nodding to his partner, Dante murmured a soft “Excuse me” to Manny and Archie. The old man waved him off with a shake of his cane, not stopping to take a breath as they continued to talk.
“Not sure those two should be in the same room as each other.” Camden eyed the older men chatting quietly near the counter. “Hell, I’m not so sure they should be in the same state.”
“They’re trying to come up with a way to manage Rook. That’s going to be a test of the irresistible force paradox I don’t want to be around to see.” Dante jerked his head toward the front door.
“You’re sexy when you talk science stuff.” Hank leered playfully.
“Shut up, pendejo. Let’s get someplace we can talk.”
The cool night air was a relief after the stuffiness of the overheated store, and Dante sucked in as much of the cold as he could. His throat throbbed slightly where Rook’d bitten it during their lovemaking, and the ache was a good one, reminding him of the man he’d brought into his life. Or, to be fair, the one who’d slithered in through an open window and took up residence while Dante’d been busy trying to arrest him for a murder he hadn’t committed.
“Thanks for coming down,” Dante said as he fell into step next to his partner. A taco truck worked a corner a few storefronts away from Potter’s Field, and Camden headed straight for it. “I guess we’re going for something to eat?”
“Drink,” he corrected. “I know those guys. They make a damned mean horchata.”
“You know it’s probably all just the same stuff they sell in those bags you can get downtown, right?” Dante snorted at Hank’s disgusted scoff. “You know it is.”
“They add something to it. Maybe more cinnamon. Just shut up and let me have my fantasies,” Hank grumbled. “I don’t say shit about you thinking Rook’s going to settle into the white picket fence, two-car garage life you’ve got going.”
“I think I gave that up a couple of days ago,” he admitted softly. “I told Manny I’d be home in half an hour, and he called me afterwards to ask where the hell I was. Thought I was in traffic or caught up in a case.”
“And you were at Rook’s loft, huh?”
“Yeah. I was.” The truck’s line was long and slow, winding around an electrical box painted like a calavera. The artist’s attempt at Catrina
was a decent one, her hat crowned with red roses and oddly enough, a taco stuck into the band like a feather embellishment. Shaking his head at the art, Dante scanned the crowd, listening to the conversations around them.
The nearly East-Hollywood neighborhood seemed on the brink of gentrification, but it was also a part of the city destined to attract a blend of oddballs and wedges of ethnicities. The taco truck with its aroma of caramelized onions and browning carne asada was set up in front of a boba shop who’d sent out a young Korean girl with a shy smile and warm face to hand out half-off coupons to the people standing in line. Around its edges, the neighborhood still clung to some of its dirtier habits, a couple of porn shops and the occasional street-corner preacher, but for the most part, it fit around Dante much like Rook did, comfortable but always slightly unpredictable.
But right now, a bit too unpredictable for Dante’s liking.
“I think I agree with Manny and Archie. I don’t think Rook should be up in that apartment. Vicks’s head… all of that… something’s off.” Dante tried to put his worry aside, but it was too strong, digging its claws into his head. “He’s not going to want to leave. Rook’s stubborn. There’s a note. To Rook. A scary one. One that my gut says is going to escalate into something more fucked than what we’re in right now.”
“Did he see it? The note, I mean. Not the head.” Hank made a face. “Couldn’t miss the head from what you said.”
“No, he didn’t, but I’m sure she’s going to put it in front of him to get a reaction. O’Byrne showed it to me before she went into the office. Vicks either got in the way of someone or something. The writer claims Vicks did the firebombing, which knowing him, maybe isn’t too much of a stretch. He was pissed off Rook slithered out from between his fingers, but… I don’t know.” Recalling the sticky affection inferred in the note and the bloodstains around the paper’s edges, Dante’s guts twisted with worry. “It was all very watching-you-through-your-window, and those kind of things never end well. I didn’t recognize the writing, but that doesn’t mean jack shit. I don’t know anyone he deals with on a daily basis, and that’s kind of scary if I think about it too long.”
“You can say that about any relationship. You think my wife knows about the people I come into contact with every day?” Hank pointed out. “You, sure…. We’re attached at the hip, but everyone else? She knows I work for a guy named Book, but beyond that, she probably couldn’t name one person in the bull pen besides you. Big question right now is what are we going to do? Shook down Sadonna, got nothing from her. Now Vicks is dead, his body’s missing, and your boy’s going to have to be looking over his shoulder until we find out who did it.”
“O’Byrne wants us off the case,” Dante said, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets. “She thinks Book’s crazy for letting us dig into this.”
“What do you think?” Camden shuffled forward a step, smiling at a pack of kids in front of him. “Should we keep going at this? Because I’m up for whatever you want to do.”
“What do you think?” He chuckled when his partner shook his head at him, then sobered as he sifted through his emotions. “My gut says trust O’Byrne if she gets the case, but my ego… man, my ego says I want to chase this guy down and drop him. He killed a cop, Camden. Sure, Vicks was a dick and that asshole spent his last couple of hours on this Earth fucking with Rook, but he didn’t deserve what he got.”
“So the game’s afoot, then. Good. Because while your gut is trusting O’Byrne, mine’s saying the thing with Rook is going to take a back seat to Vicks’s murder.” He pursed his lips in thought, rocking back on his heels. “Nighttime. Not many domestics work at night. Maybe after O’Byrne cuts your boy loose, you and I should go pay a visit to Harold’s housecleaner. See what she has to say about this whole mess.”
“That’ll probably piss O’Byrne off,” Dante warned him. “You know she’s going to get tapped for this, and we’re just going to be getting in her way. You sure you want to be with me on her shit list?”
“Yeah I’m with you,” he shot back. “She might not know it, but I like her. I think Book’s going to be stepping down in a couple of years, and he’s going to want someone to step into his shoes. I’m backing O’Byrne, but she’s got to know we’ve got her six just like we’ve got to know she has ours. So before we go any further, you and I fill her in on what we’ve got, then take off. What do you think?”
“Agreed.” Dante nodded. “She should be about done with him. There wasn’t enough time for Rook to kill Vicks and package him up, so he’ll be cleared, but there’s someone out there with a cop’s blood on his hands. I just want to catch him before it’s Rook he’s gunning for.”
Eleven
“I STILL think this is a very bad idea. You can’t even use the bedroom until the hazmat people go over it. Why would you go to a hotel when Grandpa’s got a huge empty house?” Alex shouted from his perch on the edge of the loft’s long couch. “And Dante’s okay with this? He’s going to let you do that? Because the house has things like a security gate and sometimes even guys with guns around it.”
There were a lot of things Rook liked—maybe even loved—about the cousin he’d shaken out of his family tree in the last few years. Alex Martin was smart, geeky, adorable but awkward enough he came off as endearing rather than an asshole like the rest of Archie’s spawn. But sometimes that stumble of foot-into-mouth tendency in Alex’s brain brought Rook up short.
Rook stared at the empty duffel bag he’d pulled out and put on the bench in his walk-in closet. He hadn’t put anything in it or even opened a drawer to see what he had that was clean, but as soon as his boyfriend bit his lower lip after Rook told him he wasn’t staying at Dante’s or Archie’s house, Rook knew he’d made a mistake.
Dante and Alex were right. He couldn’t stay in the loft or sleep in the bedroom, and despite his outward calm, he was more than a little freaked out.
He just hated admitting it.
It was well into tomorrow. If the people poking at things in his bedroom ever cleared the scene and if he could stand the smell of puke in the air and a faint hint of bleach, Rook could stay in the living room and not be anywhere near the bed where he’d unwrapped the remains of a man’s life. The dead didn’t bother him, not normally, but this one did. He’d seen death before, too many times to count if he stopped and thought about it. Carnies were too poor for doctors, and a trip to the hospital was a declaration to have affairs in order, because the sick were never coming back. There’d been summers on the circuit where he’d knocked on a performer’s trailer door only to find them bloated and ripe, their corpses cooked in broiling heat. It was a hardscrabble of a life, one usually leading to a death from disease or booze and drug addiction. He’d wanted more than that for himself, but today broke him.
But he wasn’t going to show it. Especially not to Alex. Tucked out of Alex’s sight behind the bookcases cordoning off the living space, he shouted, “Did you just say… let?”
When Rook peeked out of the closet, the look on Alex’s face was priceless. His owlish blink behind the faint sheen of his spectacles and the hesitant curve of his lip while he sucked in his breath to contemplate his options would have been comical if it hadn’t been countered by the scowl on Archie’s wrinkled face as he let himself into the loft.
In his relatively short time as a sentient living creature, Rook’d never met anyone who thought and felt like him. Alex came close, or so Rook let himself believe, but as he’d allowed himself to feel something for the Martins he’d met, it was Archie who simply got him.
Sure, the old man was cantankerous and a bully. He’d grown up on the opposite of the soup kitchen table, and his idea of struggling was running out of cream cheese for his morning bagel, when Rook’d fought for every scrap he could shove into his mouth from the moment Beanie popped him off her breast. Rook longed to be a better person, someone like Alex, who saw the world bathed in bits of sunshine, and where there were shadows, it just meant he had to work that
much harder to make it better. The reality? Archie was who Rook feared he’d become if he didn’t let people into his heart.
The fright in Archie’s eyes—so much like his own—smarted and left a sour taste in Rook’s mouth. He’d put that terror there, and an icy sliver gouged out a piece of Rook’s heart when Archie blinked, struggling to get his emotions under control before anyone saw him crack.
“Hey, Grandpa.” Alex gracefully slid from the couch and strode over to Archie’s side. “I was trying to get Rook—”
“Alex, can you give me a moment with your cousin alone?” Archie patted Alex’s arm with shaking fingers. The gilding light from the Edison bulbs tinted Archie’s skin to parchment, picking out the watercolor wash of his veins along the back of his hand. Alex hesitated, sliding a worried glance at Rook, his expression nearly a mirror of Archie’s. Then their grandfather sighed softly and asked, “Please?”
“Of course, Grandpa.” Alex’s next look was harder, bristling with a firm warning, not something Rook would have thought his cousin had in him, but there it was, edged sharp and steely, promising consequences if Rook crossed any lines. “Is James still talking to Dante and O’Byrne?”
“If O’Byrne is that hatchet-faced woman with a stick up her ass, then yes,” Archie muttered. “Go on. And can you see what kind of tea Manny made for me? I’m going to ask Rosa to get me some. Settled my head some.”
“Sure.” Pressing a light kiss on his stooped grandfather’s temple, Alex said, “Don’t chew off too much of his ass. Martin meat screws with your digestion.”
Rook waited until Alex slid the heavy loft door open and left before he padded past the couches and stood toe to toe with his cantankerous grandfather. Archie grunted, clasping his hands over his cane’s handle, leaning on it for support. Rook wasn’t fooled. For all the years Archie wore on his skin, he was a hell of a lot stronger than he looked.
Usually.