by P. A. Brown
“You aren’t going to pretend it was a mistake, are you?” Chris moved around so he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He could have reached out and touched David. He didn’t. “Because we both know what it was, and it wasn’t wrong.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I remember how good it was.” This time he did touch David, laying his fingers over the hand holding the cat, his skin feeling like liquid heat. “I know how you made me feel. I want to feel that way again. Please, David. Make love to me.”
Sweat popped out on David’s forehead. He abruptly turned toward the door, where he gently set Sweeney down in the hallway and shut the door. When he turned back Chris was staring at him with so much desire in his blue eyes that David could have drowned in them.
“I hope you brought protection with you,” David said. “Because I know I don’t have anything.”
“Hey, I was a Boy Scout. I’m always prepared.”
Before he could return to the bed Chris knelt in front of him and wrapped his arms around David's waist. He used his teeth to tug open the buttons on David's stiff work shirt and buried his face against the thick fur on David's stomach. He growled and bit at the soft tissue around his navel. Abandoning his teeth, he deftly slid open the zipper of David's wool pants and pulled them off, along with his boxers, exposing a massive erection that rose out of its nest of thick black hair and was so stiff it bobbed against his belly. Tiny drops of pre-cum glistened on the barely exposed head. He shoved the foreskin back with his lips and ran his tongue down the shaft then back up, circling the fat mushroom-shaped head before opening his throat and taking the whole length in, suppressing his gag reflex as he deep throated him.
Above him David moaned and rocked his hips in that ancient rhythm of need, hands twined through Chris's short blond hair. But before he could explode, Chris pulled back, rocking on his heels to look up at David. He stood in one fluid motion and leaned over to kiss David gently on the mouth.
“Keep that thought.” Then he was gone.
He returned less than a minute later with a handful of condoms and the lube. He knelt back down and grazed the throbbing head of David's cock with his teeth and his tongue.
David jumped when he ripped open the package and enfolded his cock with latex and lube. He scrambled back on the bed and pulled David down beside him. David's hands were busy, exploring every cranny of Chris's body, probing each orifice and drawing sighs and groans from his lover.
“Fuck me, David. I want to feel you inside me.”
David rolled Chris onto his belly and raised his hips into the air. He parted his butt cheeks and positioned his cock head at the entrance, gently pushing past the hard muscle guarding it, then easing into his dark channel. He gripped Chris’s shoulders and bit his back as he began to move, first with measured, steady strokes, then rapidly pistoning in and out, grinding his cock up Chris’s ass, one hand wrapped around his cock, the other bracing himself on Chris's shoulder.
Under them the bed rocked, pounding into the bedroom wall, the quilt slithered to the floor. Chris was moaning a litany of need, begging for harder, faster, deeper. David obeyed. He bit and sucked on Chris’s neck and Chris didn’t care if he gave him a hickey, if he was marked up for all to see. David was branding him. David owned him.
He shouted when his orgasm shattered his last breath into a whispered groan. David emptied himself into the condom and they rolled apart then found each other again.
David peeled the condom off and tossed it into the bedside garbage. He pressed his mouth to Chris’s unshaved throat where he could still feel a pulse throbbing.
Saturday, 1:35 am, Piedmont Avenue, Glendale
“You weren’t really a Boy Scout, were you?”
Chris felt way too enervated to do anything but drift in and out of sleep. He barely felt the towel David retrieved from the bathroom to wipe his damp skin. David’s words were soft puffs of sound in his ears.
“For about five minutes,” he murmured. “I’m not a bug person. Camping just makes me itch. But I did learn how to be prepared.” Chris played with the thick hair on David’s chest. “So, you have any luck tonight? You and Mr. Sensitivity.”
“Besides finding out your friend split, no. We recovered his car. We may find something to link some of the victims to it. That would be a break.”
“I still can’t believe Trevor did any of those things...How can someone be that way and it doesn’t show?”
“The experts will tell you psychopaths don’t empathize with anyone. But a lot of them are smart enough to fake it. No one around them catches on, at least not right away.”
“But not all people like that are killers, right?” Chris shook his head tiredly. “God, Trevor just didn’t seem that... monstrous. He knew Des. They were friends...”
“Guys like that don’t have friends, though on the surface they might seem to. They’re empty.”
It was too depressing a topic to continue, so Chris didn’t. He snuggled under David’s quilt, content to have David’s arms around him. Soon the older man’s soft snores provided another sort of comfort and Chris drifted off.
When he awoke the space beside him was empty. He groped across the still warm sheets, then sat up when he heard banging noises coming from the kitchen.
He grabbed his pajama bottoms from where he had discarded them the night before, then found the top, and did half the buttons up before venturing out of the room.
He found David, fully clothed, crouched in front of an open cupboard, dragging things out and piling them around him on the floor. A large cast-iron frying pan waited on the stove top already filled with six slices of bacon. A bowl holding four eggs and a loaf of white bread sat on the counter top beside a battered toaster oven.
A kettle steamed gently on the front burner.
Suddenly David sat back on his haunches, triumphantly clutching a drip coffee pot.
He handed it to Chris.
“I knew I had this somewhere. Coffee’s in the freezer, so it should still be good.
Filters are above the stove. Get that started while I put this stuff back.”
Chris blinked at the clock over the sink. “You do realize it’s six o’clock, right?”
“Sure, I’ve been up since five-thirty.”
David finished putting his pots and pans back in the cupboard and stood up. He quickly found the filters and the frozen ground coffee and poured the boiling water through.
He sat opposite Chris. “Why don’t you go back to bed then?”
“What are you doing up?”
Chris was afraid he knew the answer, but he still felt disappointed when David said,
“I have to go in to work.” He reached out and took Chris’s hand. “But I swear I will get off early. We’ll make an early night of it. Tomorrow I’ll drive you to the airport.”
“What do you have to do today?”
“Talk to some of the victims’ families. We’re still trying to link Trevor with them.”
“And if you can’t?”
“Nobody, no matter how careful they are, can interact with a crime scene and not leave something behind. Just like they always take something with them. If Trevor was part of this, we’ll find proof. And once we find it, he’s ours. We were thwarted before because we didn’t have any viable suspects. We’ll get him, Chris, don’t worry.”
“I hope so,” Chris said. He squeezed David’s hand. “I’ll have some of that coffee, if it’s ready.”
“Pack,” David said. “Get ready for your trip. I’ll be back by four.”
An hour later Chris was crouching over Bobby’s Palm Pilot. He called up a list of recently accessed data and found that Bobby kept a journal of sorts. Opening it he paged through the entries, most of which had to do with either jobs or the assorted men in his life. By the time Chris came across his own name his eyes had grown bleary with trying to read the small print.
Bobby didn’t pull any punches. He liked florid description. Lots of it. Chris would never th
ink of his dick in quite the same way again. Hearing a noise from the front hall, Chris quickly closed the program and deactivated the Palm. He looked up to find Sweeney watching him from the kitchen doorway.
“Busted.”
Sweeney crossed the floor and rubbed against his ankles. He resisted the urge to pick the animal up. Instead he turned to his laptop and went online. He took a look at the L.A.
Times archives which gave him a brief obit for the failed actor Robert Allen Dvorak, dead at the age of twenty-one. Another life ruined by the Hollywood machine. No mention of the porn. Go figure. But if Bobby had been an “actor,” had any of the others?
Again he plugged in his Tools CD and went searching the inner web that was the Internet.
Jason Blake and Bobby Starrz. He gave both names to his search spiders. Multiple links filled the screen.
He stared at the first link. Both names were in boldface, along with two other names Chris recognized—Jeff Charette and Frank Barker. He remembered Jeff from that leather bar. The guy had been into the gear big-time. Chris didn’t gig himself out, but he liked the look on certain guys, and Jeff had been a prime cut of meat. Frank was another Nosh Pit regular, a party animal with a penchant for fucking in public places. Chris’s fingers caressed the ice-cold keyboard. What would he find on the other side of those innocuous looking links?
A fifth name puzzled him. Daniel Anstrom? Who was Daniel Anstrom?
His BlackBerry buzzed.
He’d had all his calls from his landline forwarded to his handheld, so it could be anybody. Somebody taking a survey. Charities asking for more money. Even his mother checking up on him.
But he knew who it was.
He reached out and scooped up the small handheld device. It barely had enough weight to register in his hand. The display lit up. Unknown name. Unknown number. Not really, he thought. He knew exactly who it was. He activated it. Took a deep breath.
“Bellamere here.”
“Chrissy,” Trevor’s voice sounded tense. “Hey, man. Miss me?”
“Sure,” Chris struggled to keep his voice level. “Where are you?”
“Around. Got things to work out. You know how it goes. But you and me, we’re gonna get together soon.”
“I don’t think I can do that—”
“Sure you can.” Was it his imagination or did Trevor sound pissed? “You owe me one, Chrissy.”
Chris tried to sound casual. “You in town, Trev?”
“Oh, I’m around. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.”
“Trev—why don’t you tell me where you are. I could come around today—”
“Today’s not good, man. Not good at all. But I’ll let you know when it’s time. You just keep thinking of Trev. We’ll be together soon.”
Trevor hung up.
A shaking Chris immediately dialed David.
“The party you are attempting to reach is not available—”
The officious prick who answered his call at the Northeast station wouldn’t tell him anything. Just that David wasn’t available. An attempt to his cell met with failure.
It was the tension of waiting. Of wondering what Trevor was planning, of what he might already have done...Chris tapped the enter key on his laptop and the web page opened.
The linked images were thumbnails, with just enough detail to tease the visitor into wanting more. There was no way to see enough detail to know who lay behind each thumbnail. But the site’s creator had helpfully named each link. He stared at the one labeled Bobby Starrz.
He called the station back, hoping to get someone more helpful. The same prick answered. No, Detective Laine was not able to take a phone call. If it was important police business he should leave a message. Someone would get back to him. He stared blankly at the laptop’s fifteen-inch LED screen while the officious voice droned on...“If this is an emergency call dial nine-one-one...”
Did he really want to see this? Was he a coward if he didn’t look? David saw this kind of stuff every day. He could look at it and still come to Chris with a gentleness Chris had only ever dreamed of in a lover.
Chris left a message with the prick, then hung up and clicked on the image of Bobby.
Instantly another page opened.
The Carpet Killer clearly knew something about computers. He had used a web cam to capture his atrocities, then made skillful use of some kind of Flash technology to both mask and enhance the images. Chris thought of Trevor, involved in professional filmmaking, picking up tips from the old pros with no idea how he was using their suggestions.
Though he forced himself to examine each streaming video several times, tried to ignore the look of tortured pain and the terror of Bobby and the others as they were sliced and raped, first by a penis, then by a knife blade. Chris barely kept his lunch down. He never saw the Carpet Killer’s face.
The phone rang fifteen minutes later. Chris jumped a foot off the chair. Hastily he wiped tears from his eyes and fumbled to grab the receiver.
Thank God, it was David.
“He called,” Chris’s voice broke. Then he froze. He couldn’t talk about what he had seen over the phone. Not when the images of Bobby’s last few minutes still burned in his mind with cold neon brightness. What could he even tell David? He needed to find the source of the website if he was going to be any help at all. Surely he could do that much at least.
“Trevor, he called.”
“We’ll be right there.”
Twenty minutes later David and a reluctant Martinez filled the kitchen. Chris’s BlackBerry lay on the table. It had remained stubbornly silent since Trevor’s call.
“Any idea why he called you?” Martinez’s gaze skittered from Chris to the BlackBerry, with the occasional side-trip toward David, who seemed oblivious to his partner’s probing looks.
“Who’s your service provider?” David asked.
Chris told him.
“We’ll start monitoring incoming calls, maybe catch him if he calls again.” David slammed his fist into his open palm. “Damn it, I should have anticipated this. I knew he had a fixation on you.”
Under Martinez’s watchful eyes Chris didn’t feel at ease comforting his lover. He stared down at his own hands, rubbing the flesh of his thumb uneasily.
“We can’t anticipate them all, Davey,” Martinez said. “This guy’s a loose cannon.”
David’s cell phone rang. He spoke briefly.
“Our warrant for the car and the storage locker came through. Let’s check that out before we go any further. You”—he looked steadfastly at Chris—“call your service provider and see if you can talk to anyone who can take your authorization to monitor your cell. We’ll call them, too, but it helps if the owner cooperates. They may still demand a court order, but we’ll try to work around that for today.”
Chris nodded and looked at the kitchen clock. Eleven-thirty. His flight left at nine the next night. Soon he’d be in Denver and for five days he wouldn’t have to watch his back.
“If he calls, assume we’re monitoring and keep him on the line.”
Another nod and Chris followed them to the door, debating whether to pull David aside and tell him about the websites. Martinez left first. David half shut the door behind him and turned. He wrapped one hand around Chris’s arm.
“I know, I know,” Chris said. “Don’t leave the house. Don’t show my face in the street. Keep him on the phone—” David silenced him with a finger to his lips. Then he pulled him into his arms.
“I’ll get a patrol car to swing by as often as possible, but they won’t let us assign someone full-time.” He tilted Chris’s head up. “I love you, Chris.”
Before Chris could do more than stare in stunned silence, David was gone, closing the door firmly behind him.
Saturday, 11:50 am, Laurel Canyon Boulevard, Los Angeles As they drove toward Judge Harris’s to secure the signature on the warrants, David stared out the car’s window. Warm air flowed over his flushed face, doing little to cool h
im.
What had possessed him to say he loved Chris?
He’d just complicated things tenfold. Chris had been fooling around, having fun seducing the cop-in-the-closet, making him admit how much David wanted him. Nothing more. Chris was a well-heeled, stunningly beautiful man; someone who had it all. Why would he be interested in having a dull, stick-in-the-mud detective in his life?
David mentally kicked himself. Well, no getting around it, he’d done it now. Maybe it would just speed up the process. Chris was bound to start distancing himself now. He’d have no choice; unless he was cruel enough to play with David’s heart, and David didn’t think that was Chris’s style.
Too bad he’d promised to be home early, had told Chris to wait for him. He could have pleaded workload and hung around the station all evening, until he was sure Chris was safely asleep. Tomorrow he was leaving. In a week there would have been no reason for Chris to look him up when he came back. They all could have saved face.
But David always kept his promises.
They called a tow truck on the way out to Trevor’s apartment. They would examine the car in situ, in the hopes that it might offer up some evidence they could use immediately; then it would be towed to the police impound lot, where the true forensic work would be done.
Martinez parked three spots over from the abandoned vehicle. David popped the trunk and hauled out their camera, checking to make sure it had a full charge, then dragged out their evidence kit. Martinez grabbed a pair of gloves and drew them over his thick fingers. David would take his pictures first.
The city-run tow truck bounced into the lot and the driver greeted them with a laconic nod. He immediately produced a shimmy and while David circled the car, shooting a round of film, he popped both doors open.
“She’s all yours, man,” the driver said, wiping a layer of sweat off his brown forehead with a greasy rag he pulled from his overalls.
“We’ll let you know when we’re done,” David said.
The driver retreated to the cab of his truck where he promptly dug out a Gents magazine and fell to reading sideways.