Nurture

by Sarah Masters

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Questioning.” Dull and flat, the word fell between us, and my insides fell with it.

  “I didn’t…” Tell me you believe me.

  This time, he didn’t read my mind. His eyebrows came down. He tugged at me again. “Come on.”

  “Victor?” Connelly’s voice rumbled quietly under the hubbub of the room. “What’s going on?”

  “Questioning now. They’re railroading.” He didn’t look at me. “I’m to bring him. They won’t let me stay.”

  Connelly nodded. “Figured as much.” He rose and yanked me up by one arm along with him. “Let’s get this done, then.”

  They hauled me out of the room, down a grungy corridor where doors opened off each side at intervals. The floor tiles were coming up, and the paint was dull. Halfway down, they both stopped, and I was wedged between them.

  “Who’s doing it?” Connelly asked.

  “Captain’s looking for a volunteer. I expect he’ll get more than a few.”

  “He will. I’ll get us in there.” Connelly wrinkled his brow in thought. “And by us, I mean me. We can’t risk letting it get away from us.” When Vic said nothing, Connelly made a sharp sound in his throat. “Vic. We can’t let it get away from us, or we don’t stand a chance of saving him. You get that, right?”

  My blood ran cold and my palms began to sweat as I watched them discuss me like I wasn’t in the room.

  “I know,” Vic snapped. “I fucking know. I don’t like letting him out of my sight.” He stared at me, making my skin warm under his scrutiny.

  Connelly looked from him to me then back again. “Not that I think this is a good idea, but you had better not be wrong about this, Victor.”

  “I’m not wrong. Go.”

  Connelly was most of the way back to the squad room when Vic spoke again. “Jim.”

  Connelly turned, shook his head and said, “You’re welcome.” Then he disappeared back into the milling officers gathering around their captain.

  “What did you say to him?” Vic swiveled me around to face him.

  “Nothing. I—”

  His frown was so dark it stopped me speaking.

  Then I said, “He asked…where I was, what I did last night. He asked where Carl was.”

  “What did you tell him?” He enunciated every word, like I was too slow to understand.

  “I don’t know where Carl is. I was at home. Carl left, Brian came by later, picked me up—”

  “How much later?”

  I remembered the feeling of my arms slowly going numb, tied above my head, the sharp sting of the belt across my chest, the force, the fists. It was a long minute before I answered. “I don’t know how much later. It was dark. Lil hadn’t gone in for the night shift yet. He was at home when Bri and I got there. Lil bandaged me up.” I held up my wrists as evidence. “Then it was a while before he left for work.”

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know!”

  He shook his head. “Why doesn’t anyone ever look at a clock?”

  “Everything would be so much easier for you,” I muttered.

  His eyebrows went up in surprise. He actually chuckled. “It fucking would be.”

  I followed his quick glance down the hall, then back the way we’d come to the door Jim Connelly had closed behind him. We were alone.

  Vic rested a hand on my shoulder. “You listen to me, Paul. Whatever they ask, you stick to facts. Tell the truth.”

  “But—” I weighed the humiliation of telling him against the chance they would see reason without my ever divulging all the gory details. “I don’t remember the time. I don’t even know if I actually slept at Bri’s after Lil left. I don’t know what time I got up this morning. I don’t. You said you’d be there.”

  “But I have to follow orders, and right now orders say no.”

  “What? In the interests of a fair trial?” I scoffed.

  “In the interests of clearing this up without more scandal to the department.”

  “That’s not good for me.”

  Vic’s face went bleak again. I didn’t like that dark look on his features. It didn’t suit him.

  “No. That’s not good for you. But lying, holding back, will only make it seem like you’ve got something to hide, and that will be worse for you.”

  I nodded. I’d gone a little numb to the shock of what was happening to me. I couldn’t even contemplate how long I’d been sleeping with a murderer. How many times after Jason died had I taken Carl back when I knew he was bad for me? Bad for a whole lot of people, it turned out. “Do you know what happened to Carl?”

  “Believe me, Paul, if I knew where he was, he would be here and not you.”

  “No. I mean before. Do you know why? Why is he…the way he is?”

  “Who knows? Because he was younger than you when his abuse started? His father was more vicious than yours? He didn’t have a Brian in his life?” Vic shook his head. “Who knows why people do what they do. Why they fall for the wrong people.”

  He turned me so I couldn’t help but look at him, and once again find myself and simultaneously lose myself in those eyes.

  “Or the right ones,” he added.

  My gut clenched and this time, it had nothing to do with fear. This sensation was wholly different from being sick over Carl. “Vic?”

  “You listen to me.” He moved his hand from my shoulder to the back of my neck where he left it, warm and strong.

  I could feel a callous on his palm, the pads of his fingers resting just behind my ear.

  “Even if they don’t let me in, I will be right on the other side of the glass. Jim will be in there with you. We won’t let them manipulate you. Whatever happens.”

  He pulled, and I stumbled.

  It wasn’t odd to lay my head against his chest. It should have been. My cuffed hands were pressed between us, trapped against the firm muscle of his thigh. He ran little circles over the side of my neck with his thumb.

  “Your partner says I’m not really your type.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say in that fantastic moment, so divorced from reality.

  Vic’s rumble vibrated right through me. “I don’t know what happened, Paul. I don’t even know you, except what I’ve observed watching Carl, and what Brian and Lil have told me.”

  I waited for him to say something else, but he seemed to be finished.

  “Why do I trust you?” I tried to tell myself I’d trusted Carl, too, and look how that had turned out. But no, what Vic inspired was something Carl had never given me—calm. Even cuffed and terrified, right then, in that hallway, I felt safe, and it wasn’t a feeling I was at all used to. It wasn’t just because he had a badge, either. My father had been a cop. He’d also been an over-stressed, lonely, volatile man full of dangerous edges and hidden traps.

  “You can trust me. And you can trust Chewie. Jim. Let him help. Listen to him.”

  “I want you there.” For the barest moment, I worried it sounded pathetically frightened the way I’d said that, but then, when he stroked his hand down my back, I found I didn’t care if it did. “I can’t…”

  “Yes, you can. Just tell the truth. As much of it as you can, as accurately as you can.”

  “You don’t understand.” I would have tried to catch his eye, make him see I was serious, but what I had to say next I could barely say out loud, never mind while I watched his expression change from helpful to horrified at how much of an idiot I actually was. “I can’t tell them what he did.” The memory of the cold hate in homophobic Simpson’s eyes sent a chill through me. “Before he left.” I swallowed hard then took in a deep breath, afterward spilling it all out as fast as I could. Still the words left the acrid taste of fear and anger on my tongue and an empty pit of loathing in my belly.

  Vic had stopped moving his hand. His entire body was stiff. He said nothing for too long.

  I twisted from him. “You see?” I asked, bitterness spitting out over him with
the words, “And you’re supposed to be on my side. I can’t tell them that.” Then I realized the expression on his face wasn’t disgust. It wasn’t horror that I’d let it happen. It was rage, and it wasn’t directed at me. “Vic?” I stepped farther back. I knew that twist of features too well. My father, Carl—they wore that mask a lot.

  Vic didn’t actually let me out of his grasp. His face was a grimace of anger but it softened almost immediately when I pulled at his grip, frantic to get away. He let me go, but I didn’t move.

  He cupped my face with his free hand, tipped it up so I couldn’t turn away from him. “That’s just something else I’ll make him pay for, one way or another.”

  “Please don’t.” I didn’t want that twisted expression on his face, ever. “I just want it all over.”

  He nodded. “Me too. I know it’s hard, but you can’t not tell them.”

  “Hard?” I wanted to turn my back on him, but I couldn’t make myself.

  “Impossible, then. But you have to. The whole truth. He’s the one who did this. He put you here. I know it. I just have to prove it. They have to know what kind of a man he is. When the proof comes, it will be that much easier to convince them.”

  “And what if the proof never comes? What if he just never shows up?”

  “Paul, he will. Because the one thing a guy like that can never stomach is to lose the thing he sees as his greatest treasure, the thing he thinks he’s doing it all for. He won’t run away without you.”

  I wanted to be sick all over again. The thought that Carl did any of those things because of me turned my stomach. Maybe Vic saw that in my face, maybe he misinterpreted it. I didn’t know.

  He just hugged me close again and whispered, “You’re safe. I am not letting him close. He won’t touch you ever again.”

  Like I was a damsel, needing his protection. I had no desire to be the pathetic creature who longed to believe that kind of promise, who needed it, but there it was. And I did want to believe it. I did want to hide there inside his arms and never come out. Of course, I couldn’t stay there. Too soon he was moving back, clearing his throat, and leading me off down the hall and into a small room with a one-way glass wall, a table and chairs, and all I could think was how much it shouldn’t remind me of every movie set and every cop show I’d ever seen.

  In the end, they didn’t let him in, and maybe that was better for both of us. If he’d had to stand there while I recited everything Carl had said and done the night before, and he’d had to watch me reveal every bruise while in the same room, I don’t know if either one of us would have been able to remain calm. I’d seen his distress over how Carl had treated me twice now, and I didn’t think he could hide it. I didn’t see how Vic’s feelings could be interpreted as good for either my case or his career. And after Connelly had drilled me through the horrific scene for the third time, I had to suspect he’d deliberately placed Vic on the other side of that glass to protect his partner, at least, if not me.

  After the tenth, twelfth—I’d lost count—time I’d told my story, and they’d prodded for more details, some trip-up to latch on to, I was so tired I could barely think straight. I almost didn’t notice the urgent knock on the door when it came.

  It was Vic, hurtling inside, his face completely too pale to be good. “Jim.”

  Connelly pursed his lips, turned his head. “What?” Maybe he was tired too. Maybe he just liked being surly and difficult with Vic.

  “I need you. We have to go to the hospital. There’s been another victim. Brian Jacobs. Only this time the bastard missed. He didn’t quite kill him.”

  There was a lot of commotion after that. A lot of white noise I didn’t hear after Vic had said Brian’s name, in conjunction with ‘victim’, ‘hospital’, and ‘not quite dead’.

  “We have our guy, Bradley.” This buzzed through my mind fog from the other cop, Simpson, who had been backing up Connelly’s questions with more and nastier ones of his own. He pointed at me. “You brought him in yourself. We just have to find the hole in his story.”

  “There’s no hole,” I insisted.

  Simpson stood. “You go ahead and believe that.” He turned his back on me. Clearly, I was nothing to him but a bit of grunge someone had dragged into his presence. He turned his glare on Connelly, ignoring Vic with the same disdain he’d shown me throughout. “We have enough to book him, and you know it. Go on ahead, off on your little expedition. We’re done here anyway.” He took hold of me then and dragged me to my feet, sticking his face too close to mine. “We’ll figure out where the lies are, punk. Don’t think we won’t.”

  He was towing me out. Past Vic, still too pale, and Connelly, tired, frustrated and clearly furious with everyone.

  “Wait!” I hauled myself free of Simpson’s grip and turned to where Vic was already hurrying away. “What about Brian?” I called after him. “What happened?”

  Vic glanced back, stopped, and I saw his fists were tight, his shoulders hunched forward. “I don’t know. I have to go find out. Paul…”

  I clenched my teeth. He had to leave me there. There was no choice. If Brian was hurt, he had to go and find out what happened. I nodded. Simpson was dragging me away, not back to the squad room, but deeper into the building.

  He wasn’t gentle about tossing me into a cell populated with a few surly men. “Have fun with this one, assholes,” he told them, talking about me like I was nothing more than a useless dog for them to torment. They leered at me, managing to appear both bored and menacing at once.

  He tapped the opening in the barred door, reclaiming my attention. “I’ll take those cuffs now.” A nasty grin spread over his face as he glanced past me, to the men sprawled in the cell behind me. “Or would you rather keep ’em? I hear you like it that way.”

  I stuck my hands through the slot without lifting my eyes to his ruddy face.

  “Say please,” he said.

  “Fuck you.”

  Complete silence greeted my outburst, forcing me to glance up. The nasty grin only widened as he peeled his lips back from his teeth, and his eyes gleamed meanly. It was a far more frightening expression than anything I’d seen on Carl’s face. There was no rage there, no manic disregard for me. It was just calculated, premeditated cruelty.

  “Think you got your pronouns mixed there. I’m sure someone will be pleased to open up that pretty ass of yours, freak.” He made no move to unlock the manacles.

  Pride had kept my mouth shut through the worst of what Carl could throw at me. He was one man, and something still human in him had stopped him before he’d ever hurt me beyond forgiveness. There was none of that here. A quick glance over my shoulder at the men lounging against the bars told me that, acting or not, it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t say. I was screwed.

  “Please.” The worst part was not being able to meet his eye.

  Snickers all round.

  God. Fuck, let these assholes be posers.

  This was a police lock-up, not high-security prison. They were here for misdemeanors, public displays of drunkenness, petty theft. God, I hoped so.

  For a split second, I thought he would walk away, leaving me there, cuffed and helpless. He didn’t, but the roughness he employed to free me opened up the cuts on my wrist—I felt the thin scabs peel away beneath the bandages. I had the irrational thought that the scent of blood would mark me as easy prey. Irrational, because I was pretty sure there were a lot of things about me that marked me out even without that.

  I made a point of ignoring the other men. They made a point of watching my every move. I felt like an idiot, but I kept my back to the bars anyway, and glared through rows of cells to the window at the farthest end of the room. The sky was dull, gray and overcast, and from where I sat, I watched the last of the grungy light fade away. All through the cavernous room, sounds of voices and laughter floated. Lights had been turned down, enough to make it hard to see beyond the next few cells, but it wasn’t exactly dark. This was a small taste, I knew. Nothi
ng compared to what it could be like, would be like, if Vic didn’t manage to make them understand that I was telling the truth.

  Please. Fuck. Let him figure it out.

  I picked absently at the ragged bandages as time passed. My cell mates speculated loudly and lewdly as to how and why I happened to have acquired them in the first place. I kept quiet. Dinner was brought, though I didn’t eat much, or argue when one of the others took my tray before I was done.

  Vic will fix this. I kept telling myself that as I watched the bruiser eat my meal. It was one meal. The only meal I would miss for being here—Vic was not going to let this happen.

  It must have been some sort of signal, because as soon as the dishes were gone the scathing speculation about my sexual practices quickly escalated. I crouched with my back pressed hard against the bars in one corner of a bunk and hoped to hell it wasn’t going to turn physical.

  That’s when Connelly appeared. His huge form striding down the row of cells turned my roomies as docile as lambs well before he got to our door. He made quick work of getting the guard to open it.

  “Come on.” He nodded at me. “Someone here to pick you up.”

  Just like that, it was over. I glanced at the far away window and the deep gray-brown of evening lit by orange streetlights.

  “Who?” It couldn’t be Vic, or he would have come down here himself. At least, I had the sudden revelation that I hoped he would. Brian was apparently in hospital, and if so, Lil would be there too. I didn’t know anyone else who cared enough.

  “Let’s go,” was all Connelly said.

  It wasn’t like I was going to quibble. I followed him back down the long, echoing hallway, away from the jeers, toward freedom.

  Chapter Nine

  The motel stank of stale liquor and cigarette smoke. Carl had stopped off to buy some new clothes, lube and condoms before finding this shithole and signing in using another of Paul’s credit cards. He switched on the light and gazed around, disgusted by the squalor. It reminded him of where he’d just been and everything he strove to get away from. He wanted things clean, orderly, right. He laughed, the sound dry and without feeling.