by John Inman
Yeah, right. Chaz had never been one to pamper himself with regrets.
I finally gave up and tapped the disconnect button with a trembly finger. Before Dario or I could exchange a word, the phone lit up and vibrated in my hand. I jumped, and it clattered to the floor between my legs. The ringtone sounded while it still vibrated and flashed. Days earlier I had set it on every method of incoming alert it offered, not wanting to miss even a single call from Dario. I stared at the damn thing now like it was a striking rattlesnake someone had tossed in my lap. Then I realized it must be Chaz returning my call. I grabbed it up, and sure enough there was Chaz’s phone number staring me in the face.
When I pressed the phone to my ear I heard a voice that was butch, businesslike, terse. A familiar voice. A voice I hadn’t expected to hear again so soon.
And it sure as hell didn’t belong to Chaz. My rant died in my throat. “Detective Stone?”
I had no idea what he was doing with Chaz’s cell phone, but it was him, all right. There was no mistaking that officious, no-nonsense, Dragnetty voice. Apparently he was reading my name and number on Chaz’s screen. To say I was thunderstruck was a gross understatement.
“Mr. Johnny?”
“None other,” I growled.
“What’s happened?” Stone asked. “Why did you call this number? Why do you even know this number?”
My fury bubbled over like a pot of soup left on the stove too long. “Because the owner of this phone is an ex-friend of mine who also happens to be the asshole who just dangled my poor cat off the twenty-third floor balcony in a pillowcase tied up with binder twine and stabbed poor Bucky with a fucking knife and who smacked me in the jaw in a blackout, then ran off like a little pussy! Hell, he’s probably even the asshat who keyed the paint job on my car that day when I was shopping at the mall. That’s why!”
I stared at Dario while all I heard on the phone, which was still plastered to my ear like a mollusk stuck to a rock, was a whole lot of nothing. I seemed to have rendered Detective Stone as speechless as a proverbial—stone.
“You might want to run that by me again,” he finally said, his words measured, calm, officious, but somehow I had a feeling he was as flabbergasted as I was. He just hid it better than me.
“Chaz is the stalker!” I bellowed. “Chaz is the one who stabbed Bucky!”
In my mind’s eye, I could envision Detective Stone plucking his finger out of his ass as the truth hit him. Or maybe not. I can be sarcastic and less than charitable when it comes to the police.
“Are you talking about Charles Long?” he asked as if trying to keep up.
“Yes, Detective! Chaz. Chaz Long. He’s an old friend of mine. But he’s also the one stalking me. I didn’t know it until tonight.”
I heard a siren in the background. Not my background, Detective Stone’s background. Then I realized I could also hear the same siren through my balcony door, rising up from the street below. It would seem our two backgrounds were one and the same. I couldn’t help wondering what I had interrupted.
“Run that by me again,” Stone said for the second time with teeth-grinding patience. “What makes you think Mr. Long—Chaz, as you called him—is Bucky’s attacker? Bucky said it was a woman who stabbed him.”
Dario had rested his hand on my ankle. His touch was meant to calm me, I suppose. Oddly enough, I think it did. I took a deep breath and tried to unravel my thoughts.
“Detective Stone, trust me when I tell you Bucky was wrong. It wasn’t a woman; it was a drag queen. Chaz used to work a drag show back in college. Bucky was doped up, and it was dark, so his mistake is understandable. But it doesn’t change the fact that a drag queen attacked him, not a big, mean woman, like he said. I had an argument with Chaz tonight at the restaurant where Dario works. He was drunk. Crazy. Later when I came home, my condo had been broken into again, and he had stuffed my cat in a pillowcase, tied it up, and left it hanging over the side of the balcony.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s fucking nuts!” I screamed, losing control again. I sucked in a deep breath while Dario patted my ankle, and when I thought I maybe wouldn’t have a heart attack after all, I asked, “What are you doing with Chaz’s phone?”
Detective Stone didn’t sound happy. “I tugged it out of his pocket after he was knifed in an alley downtown. They just took him away in an ambulance.”
“What!”
A silence settled around me that was so intense I could hear the blood pulsing through my skull like water through an aqueduct. Even Dario’s querying look didn’t drag me out of the fog I had suddenly landed in.
As if I wasn’t befuddled enough, the detective then asked the last question I expected him to ask. “Tell me, Mr. Johnny, was Mr. Long in drag when you saw him tonight?”
“Uh, no. Of course not. Why?”
A brief pause, and Stone said, “I didn’t think so.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he was still wearing the same clothes he wore when he was with you, and it sure as hell wasn’t a dress.”
“How do you know they were the same clothes he was wearing when he was with me?”
“Because he was attacked less than a block from the restaurant. He still had a credit card receipt from Sombreros stuffed in his pocket.”
An even deeper silence moved in while I gnawed on the inside of my cheek.
Stone filled this silence with an observation. “He’ll survive, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Um, no, Detective. That’s not what I’m wondering at all.” It should have been, but it wasn’t.
Stone and I seemed to be on the same page at last. He answered my next question before I asked it. “You’re wondering how I got to him before the paramedics.”
“Yes.”
He grunted. I wasn’t sure what the grunt implied. “I was summoned here by a text, Mr. Johnny. From this phone. When I arrived, not more than fifteen minutes ago, I found your friend bleeding in an alley off E Street, right where the caller said he would be. He was tied to a dumpster with binder twine. He had knife wounds on his arms and face and stomach and a lump on the side of his head as big as an egg. He was unconscious. There was a brick lying on the asphalt beside him. I assume he was hit with that.”
“My cat was tied up with binder twine.”
“Small world.”
“What did the text say?”
Stone let only static connect us for a moment. I imagined him wondering if he should answer my question or not. Finally he did, albeit grudgingly. “The text said, ‘Stalker, two. Cops, zero. The writer is next.’”
I closed my eyes against the words. “The writer….”
“Yes, Mr. Johnny. Unless there’s another writer involved in this criminal clusterfuck, I can only assume the texter is talking about you.”
“Great.”
Much to my surprise, I learned Stone had a sense of humor. A dry, nasty one too. “Thought you’d get a kick out of that.”
I couldn’t even begin to process what the detective had told me. So I didn’t try.
“Why would the attacker send you a text? How did he even know who you are?”
“Excellent question. If you figure it out, let me know.”
“And Chaz will survive?” I asked, only because I felt I had to say something.
“Yes, Mr. Johnny. He’ll survive.”
“But we’re yet to see if I will.”
Stone wasn’t finished being funny yet. “Yep. That’s pretty much the gist of it.”
Once again an all-consuming silence settled over me. The siren in the background was no longer wailing. Chaz was on his way to the hospital. At least it wasn’t the morgue. I wondered how serious his injuries were. I wondered when I would find the time to apologize to Chaz for thinking he was a psychopath, knife-wielding, cat torturer. I wondered when Detective Stone would get his first gig date at the Comedy Club in La Jolla.
“But this means…,” I finally sta
mmered. Then I stopped stammering and let the statement slough away, because I realized I didn’t know what it meant. Or perhaps I was just unwilling to admit it.
Detective Stone knew, and he didn’t mind admitting it at all. “Yes, Mr. Johnny, it means your friend Chaz isn’t the stalker at all.” Stone let his breathing take over for a minute—I could hear it rasping through the phone—before he lowered his voice and said quietly, and with perfect, deadly diction, “It means, sir, that people around you are running a high risk of injury, and I can only assume that sooner or later you are about to be bumped up to the next slot on the stalker’s attack list, like the text said you would be. Oh, and by the way, it’s looking more and more like the stalker really is a woman. Don’t you agree? We have no reason to disbelieve Bucky now, do we?”
“I—I guess not.”
“Maybe when your friend Chaz wakes up, he can tell us more.”
My mind still wasn’t exactly tracking. “That’d be nice,” I said, mindlessly agreeing.
“Are you home?”
“Yes.”
“Is your boyfriend with you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’d rather have you both in the same location. What I want you to do is lock yourselves in until I have some time to work on this. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t even answer your door. I’ll call you back with more information soon. I’m going to follow the ambulance to the hospital and see if I can learn anything from your friend when he wakes up. Going to the hospital and interviewing your buddies while they’re being stitched up for knife wounds is getting to be SOP where you’re concerned, Mr. Johnny. I have to tell you, I don’t like it much. I’m starting to think you should have reported those threatening e-mails to the police a long time ago.”
I lowered my voice in quiet fury. “The police wouldn’t have come!” I spat out the words like watermelon seeds. “You know it as well as I do.”
He grunted again. This time I knew what it meant. It was a grunt of acquiescence. He was reluctantly agreeing with me.
“Stay home. Lock yourselves in,” he ordered, his demeanor once again brisk and bossy and butch. If I wasn’t in love with Dario, I might have found Detective Stone sexy as hell. When he wasn’t being annoying, that is. “I’ll call you as soon as I learn anything.”
“All right,” I said, dragging the words out of a voice box that seemed to be on the verge of shutting down for the night. “Thanks, Detective. Please be careful.”
He clicked off without responding, and I lifted my eyes to see Dario staring at me. “We’re in deep doodoo, aren’t we?” Dario asked.
“No,” I said in my best reassuring voice, dredged up from sheer imagination, the best of intentions, and two years of college drama classes. “We’ll be fine. We’re just waiting for Stone to call us back.”
“Is your friend going to live?”
I nodded, although it seemed odd to have Chaz called “my friend” when two minutes earlier I was convinced he was a psychotic stalker. “Stone said yeah. Chaz will be okay.”
“So he isn’t the bad guy.”
“No,” I said. “No, he isn’t the bad guy.”
Dario groaned. “That means we’re back to square one.”
“Pretty much.”
We were still sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch. Dario narrowed his eyes and gripped my ankle like his hand had suddenly turned into a steel pincer and I was the prize in one of those claw machines they have at the county fair and he was about to pull me up by my feet and drop me down the chute.
Dario’s Mexican accent had never been more pronounced when he asked, “So who the hell’s the stalker?”
Before I could admit I didn’t have the vaguest idea, Clutch shot out from underneath the sofa and tore off into the bedroom, thumping through the condo like a distraught water buffalo. Dario clutched his heart, it startled him so, and we both let loose with a nervous laugh.
A sudden rapping at the front door killed the laughter dead.
With my throat as dry as dust for some bizarre reason, I turned to stare at the door. I was pretty sure my heart had stopped. That couldn’t be good.
When a voice pleaded, “Help me, Robert,” from the hall, I leapt to my feet, dragging Dario up beside me to keep him close. The voice had been soft, unrecognizable, neither masculine nor feminine. The only aspect of the voice I truly recognized was the fear in it. After all, I was beginning to understand fear very well. I was becoming an expert on the subject. Fear for myself. Fear for Dario.
Fear of whoever the hell was standing outside in the hall calling my name.
Quietly, as if creeping up on a rabid dog, Dario and I approached the peephole in the door.
Dario’s voice was a tremulous whisper. “In case we get killed in the next few minutes, I want to remind you I still love you.”
“Good to know,” I said, leaning in to peer through the hole in my front door.
Chapter Fifteen
MY HEART thudded into hyperdrive when I saw who stood outside.
It was Bucky, and even fisheye-lensed through a peephole, I could see he was scared to death. Not knowing he was being watched, he did a nervous little tap dance as he scanned the hallway—first in one direction, then the other. He looked like a cat jittering his way across a bowling alley, looking everywhere at once, trying to avoid the balls flying at him. Any more skittish and Bucky would have vibrated his way out of his clothes and found himself standing on my doorstep naked.
I reached for the doorknob, but Dario grabbed my arm. In a panicky whisper, he hissed, “Remember what the detective said. Don’t let anyone in!”
“It’s Bucky,” I frantically explained. “Something’s wrong.”
I shook off Dario’s hand and yanked open the door.
“Bucky! What the hell are you doing here? Why aren’t you in rehab?”
Bucky jumped when the door jerked open in front of him. He was still hopping nervously around on the balls of his feet, but he didn’t step forward or try to enter. I guess he was waiting for an invitation, although I’m pretty sure if I had been as terrified as he seemed to be, I would have already dived through the door and flown into the bedroom to crawl under the bed with Clutch.
A sheen of perspiration shimmered across Bucky’s upper lip. His crystal blue eyes were wide and gawking. They were still darting up and down the hall, when he could tear them from my face for a moment. The bandages on his arm were gone now, but the cuts from the attack two weeks earlier still shone red and angry on his forearm. The scars would be with him forever. The scars of his meth addiction still peppered his face as well. I wondered if he would ever be rid of them.
He had yet to speak, so I asked again. “How did you get out of rehab?”
“It’s not a lockdown!” he cried, as if it should have been obvious. “I fucking left!”
“But why? You were doing so well with your treatment.”
He finally made physical contact. Ignoring Dario, who still clung to my arm, Bucky reached through the door and grabbed my shirt. His voice cracked with fear. His eyes were wild and terrified. “I left because she was coming for me.”
“Who was coming for you, Bucky? What the hell are you talking about?”
His eyes got even bigger and his voice turned into an anguished wail. He pulled my shirt together in a clump of sweaty wrinkles in front of my sternum. “Her! The woman who stabbed me! Please, Robert, you have to let me in. She’s coming. I have to hide.”
I stammered out an apology. “Of course. Of course. Come inside.”
Obviously still worried about what the detective had said, Dario whispered my name as a warning, but I ignored him. Realizing I wasn’t going to listen, he finally acquiesced and stepped aside as well. Once we were squeezed to the side of the doorway, Bucky took advantage of the opening we made and raced through it like a greyhound.
Once he was in, I closed the door and shot the dead bolt home, locking the three of us inside.
Bucky stood i
n the middle of the living room, staring down at the coils of twine and the wrinkled pillowcase lying inside the balcony door. I watched as his eyes skittered to the railing outside, then as quickly skittered back to me.
Oddly, from one heartbeat to another, Bucky didn’t seem frightened any longer. Suddenly he seemed—calm.
It was then that I knew. I knew everything.
Reaching out, I grabbed Dario’s arm and pulled him close.
“WHERE’S YOUR cat?” Bucky asked with a wily smile. His nervousness was gone completely. Not a shred remained. Imagine that.
Dario stood at my side, looking confused. I tugged him backward as I surreptitiously reached behind me and groped blindly and calmly for the door, trying to ignore my heart galloping, trying to reach the knob before Bucky knew what I was doing.
“Don’t try it,” Bucky said softly, his head tilting as if he was wondering what in the world I thought I was going to do. He looked smug, now. And faintly amused.
Dario eyed first me, then Bucky. He wore the expression of a man being lectured to in a foreign language. Obviously nothing was making sense. Nothing was getting through.
“What’s happening?” Dario asked on a quiet breath. “Robert? What’s going on?”
I edged closer to him and slipped an arm around his waist, holding him tight to my side where I hoped he’d be safe, and where I could also prevent him from doing anything reckless.
“Baby,” I said, my eyes never leaving Bucky’s face, “I want you to meet my stalker.”
Dario blinked while Bucky’s lips spread wide in a slow grin. The grin warped into a jaw-splitting smile that put every one of Bucky’s ruined teeth on full display.
“What about the woman?” Dario breathed the word as if he expected her to come crawling out from under the bed with Clutch.
“There is no woman,” I said quietly. “There never was. Bucky lied.”
“But, but—”
At any other time, Dario’s stammering disbelief might have been comical. Under the present circumstances, it just seemed sad. I took a firmer grip on his belt, still not sure what he would do. His sense of loyalty to me was clearly no match for the craziness in Bucky’s eyes. I didn’t want him getting hurt. And the same went for me. I didn’t want to get hurt either.