by P. A. Brown
Both David and Martinez peered into the hot, musty car.
David tried to imagine Trevor helping some guy he had just slipped Ketamine to into the passenger’s seat. Strapping them both in. Already anticipating the evening to come.
Driving where? Back to here? David glanced up at the three-story walk-up. Not here. Not if he held them for hours, as the medical examiner claimed. He had to have a stash site.
Someplace more private, where he could take his time—have his fun.
Maybe a clue to the location of that place could be found in this nondescript-looking vehicle. A map or an address. A name.
They had already done a title search on Trevor’s name and come up empty. If Trevor Watson owned property anywhere in Southern California, it wasn’t registered in his name.
Did he have access to someone else’s property? They’d had no luck tracking down any of Trevor’s relatives. He hadn’t provided any contact information to his employer and the landlord didn’t have any names.
“Finished here?” David asked.
Martinez nodded, and David went over to let the tow-truck driver know they were ready. David shot more images once the car was removed—of the oil-covered pavement underneath the vehicle. Then they did a quick walk around, making sure nothing was overlooked.
Within twenty minutes they were back on the road, heading for Mascot Self-Storage, on North Hollywood Way, where the landlord had stored Trevor’s belongings.
They met with the manager of Mascot’s and showed him the warrant. Overhead a Boeing 767 with the American Airlines logo on its tail flew low, bound for the Bob Hope Airport. The manager eyed the warrant grudgingly and tottered out of his air-conditioned office and headed for the rows of low sheds that housed the eight-by-ten storage units that he leased by the month.
In unit 25 they turned on the single overhead light, which cast a yellow glow over the stacked boxes that lined two walls. A few rag-tag pieces of thrift-shop furniture filled the rest of the space.
“Got a couple of folding chairs we can borrow?” Martinez asked the manager.
Reluctantly the manager left, returning moments later with a pair of folding metal chairs with plastic lattice covering, one orange, the other blue.
Martinez took them, unfolded them, and plunked them in the middle of the cement floor. After dragging down several boxes they sat down and methodically began to go through each one. The job was tedious—sorting through mounds of dirty dishes, curios, and books that had been haphazardly packed. Whenever they came across paperwork they set it aside. Bills and receipts might be used to plot Trevor’s movements over the last few months.
Once they had culled several boxes of paperwork, the search began in earnest.
There was too much to sort through in one afternoon. In the end they did a quick sort, arranged everything by year, and tossed everything back into a box, each box holding at most two years’ worth of paper. Then they lugged the whole lot down to the station.
By the time they got four D’s working on resorting everything by month it was going on three-thirty.
David stretched, wincing when his back creaked and popped in protest. He had already told Martinez earlier he had to be home by four. Now he caught the other detective’s gaze.
“If you catch anything interesting, call me. See if you can contact Anstrom’s parents while you’re at it. Maybe we can run up there later.”
*****
At four o’clock sharp David locked his front door behind him. From the living room he heard one of his radios playing. It had been changed from KZLA to something louder. Chris emerged from the bedroom, and David stared at the vision in front of him.
Chris had changed from his red silks into a pair of skintight jeans that hugged his muscular thighs and clearly outlined the shape of his half-erect penis. The jade green shirt he was wearing stretched tight across his chest, showing off his sculptured body. Again David marveled at how utterly perfect he was. And how completely out of place he looked in David’s shabby surroundings.
“Hi,” Chris said.
He looked at one of David’s treasures, a Dutch cuckoo clock he had found in a North Hollywood flea market years ago and had painstakingly restored. It even kept reasonably accurate time.
“Right on time,” he said.
“I promised.”
“I’ll have to get you to promise things more often then.”
David swallowed, but his throat had gone dry.
“I remembered that you had tickets for the game tonight.”
David groaned. “Damn,” he said softly. “I completely forgot about that.”
Chris feigned a look of disappointment. “Oh,” he said. “Is there something else you’d rather do?”
David wasn’t sure what to make of it when Chris moved closer. His breath was warm on David’s face. His body radiated heat and the erotic smell of aftershave and soap.
David remembered how he tasted, the sounds he made when he came, how tight he felt buried inside him. He closed his eyes, fighting the memories.
Knowing it could never be. He was so far out of Chris’s league it was a joke to imagine he could have a lifetime of this. He shook himself like a dog.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Chris smiled. “Surely you remember. No baseball game. We have to find something else to fill our time...” He circled David, forcing him to turn to keep face to face with him.
He brushed his hip against David's, edging closer with each turn.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day. I’ve never had anyone prey on my mind like you do, Detective David Laine. Why do you think that is?”
David opened his mouth to speak, to tell Chris this had to end here, now, but nothing came out. Chris didn’t wait; he shoved his mouth over David's, pushing his tongue past David's teeth, tangling with his tongue, tasting him. David’s resistance vanished in a wave of lust.
Chris broke away long enough to whisper, “Fuck me, David.”
David growled and dragged Chris into his arms. “Screw the game. It’s only baseball.”
Sunday, 7:55 am, Piedmont Avenue, Glendale
Chris shut the bedroom door behind him, taking care not to wake David, who was still sleeping soundly, despite the hour. After last night, Chris wasn’t surprised.
Chris hadn’t wanted to say anything about his find the night before. Between making love and cooking an intimate dinner for three—Sweeney insisted that pork tenderloin was vastly superior to dry cat food and wouldn’t take no for an answer—the right moment hadn’t arrived to show David the grisly playground Trevor had put online. So far, Chris’s attempts to trace the site’s origins had met with failure. Even at ARIN, the American Registry for Internet Numbers, the vast on-line repository of domain names, he had drawn a blank. Which meant the killer was spoofing his IP address. Every computer connected to the Internet had a unique IP, or Internet protocol, address, usually supplied by their Internet service provider. The killer was obviously skilled enough to fake his own IP so he couldn’t be traced. He was using a labyrinthine technique to conceal his location behind legitimate addresses. He may even have jacked other machines and was using them as relays to host his site—if he activated enough of those and he could rotate the site’s actual location often enough to avoid detection by nearly anyone.
But Chris wasn’t just anyone. He dug into his bank of software tools and with some programming tweaks, set his own snoopers spidering along the Internet conduits. Sooner or later he would narrow the search down to something useful.
Two cups of coffee later, nothing had come back. With a sigh he rinsed his mug out and logged off. Maybe something would turn up before his plane took off.
Either way he was going to have to tell David. David emerged half an hour later, wearing a bathrobe and blinking owlishly in the morning light. He smiled when he saw Chris. Then the smile slipped.
“What is it?” Chris explained his discovery of the trophy website and his technical sea
rch for the domain.
David exploded when Chris finished telling him about the website. “Dammit, why didn’t you say something earlier—”
“I was trying to find out where it originated from. It could literally be anywhere in the world. I didn’t think that was very useful to you. Besides,” he playfully traced his finger up inside David's robe, stroking warm skin. “We got kind of sidetracked there.”
David brushed aside his hand. “We have our own people who can do that—Never mind, tell me how to get to this site.” Chris wrote the URL down on the back of a piece of paper. David slid it into the pocket of his robe.
“Stop this, Chris. This is police business, we can get warrants—”
“How do you get warrants for something in cyberspace when you don’t even know where it’s located? I wanted to find out where it was coming from—that would have been a big help, right?”
“Well, yeah...But we can use the images, too. We can pick up location cues of the backgrounds. Maybe even sound cues—”
“I want this guy stopped. I hate what he did to Bobby, what he’s done to Des, and the others—all six of them. I hate him. I want him dead—”
“Don’t say that. I can’t operate that way. I’m mandated to uphold the law—” David froze. “What do you mean ‘six’?”
“Kyle, plus there were five on that horrible web site...” Chris looked away. “I knew them all, except that one guy. Daniel? I never heard of him.”
“Five? Do you remember their names?”
“I—”
“It’s important, Chris. Who were they?”
Chris squeezed his eyes shut. Names. “Jason Blake,” he whispered. “Bobby. Jeff.
Frank—”
“Frank?” David was scanning his notes, frowning. “I don’t have any Frank listed anywhere.” He snapped the notebook shut. “It must be our last John Doe. We never did get an ID on him. What was the last name? Do you remember?”
“Frank,” Chris said. “Frank...Barker.”
David scribbled the name down on the same paper Chris had written the website URL.
“All I want to do is help,” Chris said.
“Yes, well, you can help me by staying out of this. I’ve got enough things to worry about.”
Chris bristled at the censure. For his part, David barely finished his coffee before he left the kitchen. Chris heard him in the living room making a phone call. No doubt to his partner. A couple of minutes later Chris heard the downstairs shower go on.
He was tempted to follow; he didn’t want his trip to start with bad words lingering between them. Then his BlackBerry buzzed.
He activated it.
It was Phil DePalma, from Pharmaden.
“Hey, Chris,” DePalma said. “I was hoping I’d catch you at home.”
“What’s up?” Chris couldn’t imagine what DePalma wanted—all their dealings had been through DataTEK Systems and Petey.
“I’ve got six more servers coming in next week and I’m going to need help setting them up...”
“And you want my help? Sure, just call Petey—”
“I don’t want DataTEK involved,” DePalma insisted. “I want you.”
“Well I don’t know, Phil...”
“Just think about it, will you? I can guarantee you lots of work, either here or at one of our sister companies out in the Valley.” Chris’s mind spun. Get out of DataTEK? He’d thought about it often, but never all that seriously.
“Listen, can I call you next week? I’m heading out of town for a couple of days.”
“Sure, sure. If you can get back to me by Thursday that would be great. We need to make a decision by Friday.”
“It’s in my calendar.” Feeling a bit bemused, Chris disconnected.
Then he jogged upstairs to finish his packing.
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CHAPTER 23
Sunday, 5:20 pm, Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood DAVID TOOK THE surface streets to LAX. South on La Cienega and over to Manchsester where they swung west. Chris leaned back in the passenger seat and closed his eyes, feeling their passage down the wide street. The sun’s rays left warm tracks on his skin where it poured through the window. David wove handily in and out of the early-evening traffic. At some point he turned the radio on. Pearls of wisdom fell from Shania’s unblemished lips.
It was pleasant to relax and remember the last two days. Sex with David was beyond incredible. He had a way of making Chris feel like nothing existed but his pleasure. His needs. It got better and better, hotter and hotter, and that had never happened before, not with anyone.
Even now he could feel David’s touch, arousing him. He sighed, “David.”
“Wake up, sleepy-head.” David’s voice held a rich undertone of amusement.
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
“You have a very romantic snore.”
“And I don’t snore.” He looked around in consternation. They were in the Marina del Rey parking lot in front of the Waterfront Bar & Grill. “Do I?”
The hand on his knee moved to cup his chin. “Would such a perfect mouth ever do anything so vulgar?”
Chris straightened his spine, stretching his back muscles. They creaked alarmingly. “I was not sleeping.”
“Come on, Rip, let’s go snag ourselves a table before they’re all gone and I end up eating at McDonald’s. I get enough of that with Martinez.”
David pulled the car up to the curb, got out, and tossed the keys to the parking valet who caught them and waited patiently for Chris to climb out.
The evening was wonderful. From their window seat they had an incredible view of a forest of masts backdropped by a sky spun with webs of red and gold.
They watched, enchanted, as a sixty-foot sailing yacht glided past. The deck blazed with more lights than the annual Christmas tree display on Rodeo Drive. A flag waved limply off the stern, a red maple leaf on a white field. The gilt lettering on the stern said Executive Decision. Lithe young women prowled the deck clutching untouched glasses.
Men who weren’t much more substantial moved among them. Chris swore he could hear the Krug’s Clos de Mesnil bubbles popping.
“Looks like fun,” he murmured.
“You think so? Why’d you never buy yourself a boat, then?”
Chris shrugged. “It looks like fun to go out like that when someone else is driving.
I’m not the nautical type.”
“I didn’t think you ‘drive’ a boat.”
“My point exactly. If I go to sea, it’ll be on a luxury ship where I’ll sail to exotic ports and let someone else do all the work.”
“You’re a spoiled brat.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
David sighed. “On my salary, yes.”
Chris stared out over the blood red ocean at the departing sailboat. “I’m not looking for a daddy,” he said quietly. “I don’t care how much money someone has.”
“What are you looking for?”
A lean-hipped black-and-white clad waiter came around with menus and a wine list.
Chris took the wine list, studying it while he considered his answer. He knew the future of their relationship—if they were to have one—rested on his response. And for the first time in his life he found he didn’t want to blow this man off. He wanted a chance to make it work.
To become what, he didn’t know. But he wanted the chance.
After he selected a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon that gave excellent quality without breaking the bank, he raised his eyes to meet David’s.
“I’m looking for the same thing you are, I think. Someone who’s there for me, even if one or both of us is working a twelve-hour shift and I’m cranky and bitchy when I get home. Someone who forgives me when I do something stupid, like forget his birthday or burn dinner the day the in-laws come to town.” He picked up the pepper mill and twisted it in his hands, sprinkling black flakes of fresh cracked pepper on the white tablecloth.
Instantly the sharp smell of
pepper tugged at his nose. “Does your whole family know you’re gay?”
David nodded. “They’ve learned to live with it. My sister seems to have less trouble than anyone else.”
“What would they do if you wanted to bring a friend for, say Christmas dinner?”
“I’ve never asked.”
“My sister’s okay with it. My parents...” Chris shrugged. “Well, that’s another story.”
Their waiter returned and they ordered. David got the daily special, Angus New York steak with grilled portobello mushrooms. Chris opted for Cuban black bean soup and blackened swordfish.
The sommelier brought the wine. After pouring them both glasses, Chris raised his to David. “To the future,” he said. “May you catch all the bad guys and still have time left for all the good things in life. Like us.”
David was being cagey. He smiled and dutifully sipped his wine. “The future.”
The food was exquisite. The wine was everything the reviewers had promised.
Outside, the last strands of sunlight drenched the sky in blood-orange red, finally fading to purple and midnight blue. A few feeble stars tried to show past the overwhelming light show cast by ten million Southern Californians.
They finished the bottle of wine. David refused a second one. Instead they settled on coffee, Chris his espresso, David a freshly roasted Colombian.
“You drink that,” David said. “You won’t be sleeping tonight.”
Chris grinned. “Trust me, after last night, I’ll sleep just fine.” He reached across the table and touched David’s fingertips. “I wish you were coming with me. Maybe next time?”
“You do these often?”
“Couple of times a year. Becky and I trade off. The next one is January, in Vegas.
Think you could handle that?”
When the bill came Chris didn’t protest when David reached for it. He knew a bit about pride and if David could keep his by paying for dinner, then Chris wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. He hoped there’d be plenty of future opportunities where David wasn’t so touchy about money.