Naive

by Charles Royce

  NAÏVE

  By Charles Royce

  Copyright © 2019 by Chutter Hill Publishing, Nashville, TN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  This novel, Naïve, is the first book of a trilogy. The next book, Transparent, will offer another story from a different perspective, with some repeating characters and overlapping timelines, while the finale, Synchronicity, will bring both stories to a climactic end.

  This edition of Naïve copyright © 2019 by Chutter Hill Publishing

  Excerpt from Transparent copyright © 2019 by Chutter Hill Publishing

  Published in the United States of America.

  Excerpt regarding visible wavelength hyperspectral imaging is paraphrased from an interview with Dr. Meez Izlam for the Northern Echo, October 29, 2013.

  Names: Royce, Charles, author

  Title: Naïve, a novel / by Charles Royce

  ISBN: 978-1-7343357-1-2

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Transparent by Charles Royce. This excerpt has been written for this edition only, and may not reflect the final content of the upcoming edition.

  DEDICATION

  For my mother, who I miss every single day.

  GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO:

  My beautiful partner Chris, who, even though my writing is far from his genre, is never slow to give me insight and praise for accomplishing my goals. I love you and am so happy to share this life with you.

  My mother-in-love, Carol Smith-Merkulov, whose experience in criminal law and devotion to this process has helped in ways I will cherish forever.

  My editor Jamie Chavez. You, my longtime friend, are the real deal. Your humor, expertise, and attention to detail is just what I needed to push me further. I have learned so much and love working with you. Your talent and your fingerprints are all over this book.

  My friends who took the time to read fledgling drafts of this novel—Matt, Ruben, Jennie, Jonathan, Chris and Carol—your encouragement and love are what keeps me going. I adore each one of you!

  To Kelly Oechslin: I started creating this trilogy about ten years ago and put it down because it was too hard. Thanks to your inspired talent, I gained the courage to revisit this world and fell in love with it all over again. You showed me, all of us, how to be a bona fide author. Thank you.

  To Pete Wilson: You spoke directly to my heart when you asked us all to remember our early passions, the ones we’ve had since we were children. For me, those passions were singing and writing. I cannot begin to tell you how much the truth of your words has manifested in me. Thank you.

  To my family and friends who’ve seen me through it all, and loved me because of it. You know who you are.

  C h a p t e r 1

  Ghost sits in front of his computer, counting his money as if it were the last on earth.

  The room is dark, although it is mid-afternoon. He is huddled at a desk in front of a cracked, mustard-yellow wall interrupted only by a single tiny window, haphazardly covered by black velvet curtains. Light trickles in above and below, revealing only the slightest details of him and his workspace.

  A sea of splotchy pigmentation drowns his body, leaving only tiny islands of light pink skin. Wiry white-blonde hair bursts from his scalp straight toward the sky, as if scrambling to escape its host. Thin freckled arms sneak past the openings of a dingy white tank top. A tattoo on his left shoulder blade is a childlike drawing of a skinny house with a pointed roof and a curved wavy base. A thick horizontal line runs straight across the middle of the strange icon, giving nublike arms to what resembles a ghost in the most minimal of ways. Underneath the illustration is a strange mix of Italian and French, incoherent, partially eaten away by a circular scar.

  He lays a third stack of hundred-dollar bills on top of two others.

  “Daddy!” A ten-year-old voice cries out in an all-too-familiar screech from down the hall.

  Ghost mumbles under his breath, then jerks the top bill out from underneath its currency strap. He shoves it in his pocket and returns the remainder to the pile, making sure all corners meet perfectly. He wants to answer his son, but he knows he must log in to his email first. Part of the deal.

  He turns to his laptop, an obsolete behemoth by worldly standards, an extravagant necessity by his own. The screen is blurred by filth and neglect, barely alive, yet manages to breathe an eerie glow, outlining Ghost’s body from the waist up. He begins to type.

  I-T-S D-O-N-E.

  C h a p t e r 2

  “No! NO! Don’t you do this!” Micah screams, pounding on his husband’s blood-soaked chest. “Don’t, don’t, please God, please!”

  He is straddled over Lennox’s naked, almost-lifeless body, screaming and pounding. Over and over.

  “Baby, please! Don’t. Please God help me, please God PLEASE!”

  Micah rolls up his sleeves. He places his hands together and forces his weight onto Lennox. Lennox gurgles, but then his body goes limp. Sensing that what he’s doing is working, Micah presses down with the disoriented strength of a madman, over and over. Over and over.

  The day they first met.

  The fight.

  The wedding day.

  Their life flashes before Micah’s eyes as he continues the chest compressions over and over.

  “No! NO!”

  Over and over.

  “Please, baby!

  Over and over.

  “Stay with me! Please God.”

  Micah continues to press. He is only five-feet-nine-inches, but with solid muscular density. He begins to feel his weight crushing Lennox.

  He slows down. He stops and lets out a deep sigh, releasing the only breath he’s taken for the last few moments. He unclenches his hands. Lennox does not move again.

  Out of breath, Micah sits back and looks around his living room for his phone. He moves his legs in order to stand but slips in the crimson pool that has collected around them. He falls back onto Lennox.

  He thinks about trying to get up again, to search for his phone, to call 9-1-1, to do something. but he’s exhausted. He rests his head on Lennox’s chest and pulls his husband’s arm around his own. He closes his eyes. As he lies there on top of his partner, his frantic efforts shift to peaceful resolve.

  The day they first met.

  The fight.

  The wedding day.

  A loud beep brings him back to his current situation. He opens his eyes just in time to see a series of three blinking red lights flashing from the corner of the room. But the flashing red lights do less to confuse Micah than snap him out of his trance. He jolts up, remembers his phone is in his back pocket, pulls it out and dials.

  “9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

  Micah is winded, trying to come up with the words. My husband is dying, or My husband is dead? The anger of his confusion and desperation boils and explodes in a frantic display.

  “Please help me! My husband! Something’s happened here! I tried to save him. He was alive. Oh God, please come, please! Maybe you can help him!”

  “Sir, please slow down. Did you say something’s happened to your husband?”

  “Yes! I got home, and he was just lying there.” He looks down and utters, “Blood.” Micah stares at his hands and arms, his chest and legs, all saturated. “Oh my God, I think he’s dead! Please hurry!”

  “Sir, what is your location?”

  “142 Henry Street, #7, corner of Rutgers.”

  “We have an ambulance on the way, sir, and police are very close.”

  He unclenches his grip on the phone. Micah looks back at Lennox, lying
in what is a river now. As the adrenaline subsides, reality sets in. Micah begins to wail.

  “Oh God, how did this happen? I don’t understand!” Micah hears himself talking out loud, but he’s still on the phone.

  “Now, I need you to calm down, okay? Is there anyone else in the house?”

  Micah pauses in mid-breath. “What?”

  “Sir, could the person who did this still be there?”

  Throughout the ordeal, this is the first time the idea has even crossed his mind. The killer could still be here.

  “Oh my God, I have no idea.” Micah’s voice is now softer.

  He looks around their condo. Lennox loves this place, Micah remembers. The century-old brick walls that perfectly frame the twenty-two giant vertical windows on all four sides, the Manhattan skyline visible to the west and northwest, the two-hundred-year-old church with the bell tower (which they both had secretly wanted to climb) resting peacefully in the windows to the north, the fire-red brick apartment building to the east, and of course the magnificent views of the Manhattan Bridge over the East River to the south and southeast. Lennox had always wanted a full-story condo, with an elevator that opened right into the middle of his home. He was overjoyed when he found one in the Garfield Building, a little-known landmark from the 1800s on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Micah had come to love it, mostly because it had made Lennox so happy.

  “Do you have a neighbor or a nearby friend you can go to right now, until help arrives?” The 9-1-1 operator, impatient for Micah’s safety, interrupts his memories.

  “I think I’m okay.”

  “Just to be safe, could you find a place to hide, maybe lock yourself in a bathroom, please sir?”

  Micah thinks the idea atrocious. After all, he has just tried CPR on his dying husband, now he’s supposed to hide? His friend Jenna lives just across the street, next to the church with the bell tower. She could be on her way home by now, he remembers, having just left her at the event they were both attending earlier in the evening.

  “Yes, I have a friend who—”

  The doorbell interrupts him. He looks toward the security system, a sleek metallic-chrome console, which is now reflecting the red-and-blue lights flickering through the front windows.

  “I think they’re here,” Micah says to the operator.

  He hangs up and rushes to the call box next to his elevator door. As usual, the video is not working, but the audio is. Micah presses, and by rote he mumbles, “Come on up.”

  Micah presses to listen, only to hear shards of the building’s front door glass falling to the ground. Micah releases his finger from the buzzer, noticing his own bloody fingerprints wherever he touches. Seconds later a giant boom right next to him makes him jump.

  They’re trying to bust open the elevator.

  He presses the elevator OPEN button so no more damage will be done to the place. Lennox will not be very happy.

  Lennox.

  Two police officers try to enter as the elevator opens, but only one makes it through first.

  “He’s right over there,” Micah says, pointing to the far window behind the sofa. He places his finger in his mouth to bite the nail but is startled by the metallic taste. He closes his eyes in disbelief at what is happening. He tries to catch his breath. He feels like he’s suffocating. He wrestles his blood-soaked tuxedo jacket from his thick arms and throws it on the floor in front of him.

  The first police officer, a heavyset woman, ignores Micah, steps over the jacket, and walks in the opposite direction of Lennox’s body. She begins to secure the rest of the house, pushing Micah into the wall that houses the security mechanism and the light switches as she bulldozes by. She puts on her gloves, walks into the first bedroom and begins to check the closet, then under the bed. Micah leans forward to track her while keeping his vantage point from the elevator in the center of the room. After all, there’s a possibility Lennox could still be alive.

  The second policeman, Officer Mateo Palino, a burly six-foot-two Italian-looking fellow, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a set of blue rubber gloves. He walks past Micah toward Lennox, who is lying still on the floor. He turns around.

  “Do you have a code that unlocks your private floor, sir? EMT is close, and I want them to be able to use the elevator with the stretcher.”

  “Yes.” Micah turns around to press the key pad.

  “Sir, wait,” Officer Palino says. “We have to be careful here with fingerprints. Do you mind giving me the code?”

  “It’s 925411. I’ll still have to let them in, but at least they’ll be able to get the stretcher up here.”

  The officer’s latex fingers punch in the code. He rushes back to Lennox.

  Micah watches. As if in slow motion, the officer follows the river of blood toward Lennox, past the soaked black office chair that has clearly been moved from behind the desk to the far west corner of the living room. Bloody tracks end right beside the naked body. Lights from the ceiling beam down onto the scene, illuminating the dust still swirling about in a traumatized dance from the night’s events. The rays are bathing Lennox in evening peace from the neck down. A cold shiver touches the very center of Micah’s neck, causing a chill that undulates down his back.

  This could be it, Micah thinks. He could really be gone.

  Officer Palino pushes down on Lennox’s neck with two fingers. Micah squints to see the officer’s reaction.

  Is he really dead? Did this really happen? Micah doesn’t know what to think.

  The elevator dings. Micah reaches down without looking and presses OPEN. An EMT team, complete with a stretcher, appears.

  “Hold up.” Officer Palino raises his palm. “Secure?” he yells to the large female officer who has just finished checking the condo.

  “Secure,” she answers.

  “Okay then, come on through. Crime scene protocol. Wear your fucking gloves.”

  Micah walks toward the officer, who has relocated to the center of the living room. “Is he—”

  “Dead? Yes. Well, I’m pretty sure. Waiting on confirmation.”

  “Oh God.” Micah collapses onto the couch, streaking the blood starting to cake on his hands onto the sofa arm as he goes down. The officer notices.

  “I wouldn’t. Jesus. Stand up, please.”

  Micah stands up.

  The officer takes off his gloves. “Sir, I’m Officer Mateo Palino from Seventh District Precinct. What is your name?”

  “Micah. Micah Breuer.”

  “Mr. Breuer, can you tell me what happened here?”

  Micah clears his throat. Where do I begin?

  “Well, I was at an event,” he says, “wondering where my husband was—”

  “And that’s your husband right there?” Officer Palino bobs his head in the direction of the body.

  “Yes.”

  “Subject is confirmed dead.” The head EMT takes off his gloves and motions his team to exit the premises.

  “No, dear God!” Micah begins to move toward Lennox.

  Officer Palino stops him with an upraised arm. “Sir, this is officially a murder scene. I’m gonna need you to stand still, please.” He leans in and puts his hand on Micah’s shoulder. “Now, I’m sorry for your loss, but I need to ask a few questions.”

  Micah nods.

  “You were at an event, wondering where your husband was …” Officer Palino continues, as the female officer moves into position beside him.

  “Yes, I couldn’t get ahold of him. I was worried. So I left and came home. I walked through the elevator, yelled for him. Nothing. That’s when I heard something like someone clearing his throat. I walked into the living room and saw him on the floor. It was dark, I thought he’d collapsed from choking or something, so I ran over to him and started doing CPR.”

  “CPR, like breathing into his mouth?”

  “No, like chest compressions, over and over. It was working at first, but then he just … stopped … breathing.”

  The elevator door dings
again.

  “I’ll get that,” says Officer Palino, who wants to keep his crime scene as pristine as possible. He presses the OPEN button. The elevator reveals a tall man in a buttoned-up black overcoat.

  Detective Bronson Penance walks toward them as the elevator doors close. “Just came from Union Square, some hotshot from uptown gunned down in the street. Busy night.”

  Detective Penance is 44 years old with salt-and-pepper hair, medium length, slicked back. His crystal blue eyes reflecting the lights from the ceiling as they scan the room. He takes notes in a small black book he’s pulled from his coat pocket, then walks with confidence toward Officer Palino, who motions with his head to join him elsewhere. They veer together to the opposite corner of the room, away from Micah and in a whispered hush, Officer Palino begins to share the information he has collected.

  Micah looks down at his hands, which are beginning to crackle from the dried blood. He jiggles his wedding ring right-to-left with his thumb to release it from its crusted bondage. For a second, he thinks about going to the bathroom to wash his hands but remembers Officer Palino’s reprimand from the last time he tried to do anything normal, like sit on his own sofa. Micah turns and looks at Lennox, his partner of four years, his husband of two.

  The day they first met.

  The wedding.

  The last time he saw him alive.

  Micah begins to weep.

  Detective Penance walks over to the dead man’s body, past the desk, noting the bowl of half-eaten cereal still on the glass desktop. He continues past the green velvet sofa, situated behind the desk to signal the start of the living room, and onto the thick grey jute area rug, which is soaked in blood. Being careful not to touch anything, he bends down to examine Lennox. Skinny man, but built, he thinks. Poor guy. After only five or six seconds, he gets back up, nods to Officer Palino and walks toward Micah.