Naive

by Charles Royce

  “How you holding up?” Shawn asks, noting that Micah’s demeanor does not match the situation.

  “I’m practicing.” Micah forces a grin.

  “What the hell are you practicing?” Shawn places his notebook and laptop on the table between them. He touches it. This is quite possibly the ugliest piece of furniture I have ever seen, he thinks, noticing the newer light-maple slats that have been interwoven with the dark oak table base. The whole piece is covered in a light coat of army-green stain that looks like someone has simply shellacked piss over the top, hoping it would bring the look together.

  “Hmm, let’s see,” Micah says. “A gay guy who’s been all over the news for killing his partner, about to be shipped off to the Manhattan Detention Office or God forbid, Riker’s Island … I’d say I’m practicing my ‘Don’t fuck with me’ stance, what the hell do you think I’m practicing?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Micah. You’ll be fine, I mean, look at you,” Shawn sits down, squirms, tries to make the most of a small bistro chair. “You’re short, sure, but there’s not an ounce of fat on you. Who would want to mess with that?”

  Micah ignores the comment. Statements about his physique have always made him uncomfortable. “I really don’t know how we got here, Shawn. I mean, one minute everything was fine, and the next I’m trying to save my husband then end up being hauled away for killing him.”

  “You didn’t kill him.”

  “I know that!” Micah barks, startling Shawn. He lowers his voice. “At least I think I do.”

  Shawn places his bag on the table with a loud thud and an even louder glance.

  “I’m sorry I raised my voice. Thank you, thank you, Shawn, for helping me.”

  “No worries, buddy. Lennox was a dear friend, one of the best people I have ever met, and I know how much he loved you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay, let’s start from the beginning,” Shawn says. He pulls his laptop and legal pad from his bag. “Is there anything else you remember from that night?”

  Micah leans his full torso against the table in front of him, elbows supporting him, and runs his fingers through his hair. “Well, before I got home, the only weird thing was I couldn’t get ahold of Lennox. I called a couple of times, I think … or texted, I can’t remember how many times.”

  “Think, Micah. Remember. Details can be important.”

  “Well, I texted twice, I think. And I definitely called him once and left a message.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Something like ‘Where are you? You said you’d be here.’ I sounded kinda angry, I’m sure, like frustrated meets worry, ya know?”

  “Yes, okay, good, that’s good to know, and completely understandable. Okay, continue.”

  “Like I told the police, James West was asking about Lennox at the party, which seemed strange to me, cuz he never asks me to get Lennox to come find him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, our conversations are always very surface-y and trivial. It seemed a little heavy for the moment, especially since he was in event mode, meaning he needed to talk to everyone, be the life of the party. So why the need for business, especially through a third party?”

  “I’m still not clear.”

  “I dunno. Just trying to make sense of what happened, who else could have done this.”

  “I see. Okay, so James West was acting a little weird, that’s good. We’re already exploring some sort of company angle.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Jenna told me about an alleged bookkeeping scheme.”

  “That Lenny was involved in?”

  “Potentially. We’re looking into it.”

  Shawn does not want to tarnish Lennox at this crucial point in someone’s grieving process. Nor does he want to tell Micah of a possible link between the two murders that happened that night. He changes the subject.

  “Tell me about who saw you at the party, when they saw you, what time you arrived, what time you left, all that you remember.”

  “God, I have relived this over and over.” Micah sits up. “But I understand. I said good-bye to Lennox around 7pm, maybe 7:15? I remember it being around 7pm, and I was at our condo waiting for him to finish getting ready, but he said to go on ahead because he had to meet someone real quick.”

  “Wait, meet someone? This is new. Do you have any idea who?”

  “Actually, no, I don’t. Since the thing with Josh, I’ve been working on just trusting him, ya know? So even though I was curious, I didn’t ask. I just figured it was a work thing.”

  “You didn’t have a fight or anything?”

  “No, we’d been doing really well, like really well.” He thinks of the night before the awful event, how Lennox had been so loving, as if he knew it was the last night he’d have the chance. Micah begins to feel teary but snaps himself out of it, blinking and shaking his head at the same time.

  “That’s good,” Shawn says. “We’re pulling the videos from anywhere near your place, so if we can find he last person who saw him alive, then maybe we have something.”

  “That’s good, that’s good. The video to our place hasn’t worked for a while, but I’m sure the whole block has cameras. Nine-eleven initiative and everything.”

  “Yep. Okay, go on.”

  “I catch a cab outside my place, going uptown, probably around 7:20, 7:25.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so. But I’m sure I’m on the cameras.”

  “Good, good. You got to the event around what time?”

  “Traffic wasn’t bad, so I’d say around 7:45?”

  “Again we’ll pull the videos, maybe look through some social media photos to make it definite. Go on.” Shawn is busy typing everything into his laptop.

  “We were supposed to meet Jenna there at 7:30, so I was looking for her at our meeting point just next to the red carpet, but I didn’t see her. I did see Josh, though, looking fucking dapper as ever.”

  “Ha ha, well, he was the man of the night, according to the Post AND the Times.”

  “Fuck off,” Micah says with a half-smile. “I ran into him, like literally, partly by accident, partly on purpose. Okay, mostly on purpose.”

  “Oh my God, you are a child.”

  “Then I saw you trying to talk to Meryl Streep. Did you have any luck with that?” Micah looks at Shawn.

  “As a matter of fact, she looked at me.” Shawn smiles.

  “Well, there you go, lucky bastard.”

  “I didn’t see you there, so I can’t really vouch for that, but I’m assuming you ran into Jenna at some point?”

  “Well, first I talked with James West, the CEO of Élan, who asked to talk to Lennox, I told you about that. Kinda strange. Then I ran into Jenna.”

  “And what time was that?”

  “Oh, wait, I texted Lennox before that at some point, I’m not really sure. They took my phone, otherwise I’d tell you exactly.”

  “Okay, don’t worry about that. I’ll have the files from the police on Wednesday, that’ll tell me exactly when.”

  “Okay. Jenna and I talked a little bit, maybe laughed just a little at you and Haylee trying to talk to Meryl. Then around 9:00pm, everyone started gathering for the programmed part of the evening, you know, presentations and sizzle reels and shit. But I called Lennox right before that, he didn’t answer, so I started getting worried. I left, took a cab and got home maybe around 10?”

  “It took an hour for you to get home?”

  “No, no, it didn’t take that long.”

  “So what happened between 9 and 10?”

  “Oh, shit. You’re right. I must have the timeline wrong.” He pauses and works through the times in his head. “I remember checking my time on the way to the event, around 7:45, and remember thinking I was already 15 minutes late. Then on the way home, I checked my phone and it was 9:55 somewhere along the way.”

  “This helps a little. I guess we can fill in the
blanks when we get a better idea of time stamps from videos and cell phone records.”

  “This is the timeline I told the police though. Roughly, I think.”

  “Don’t worry, you were a mess, and timelines are totally fuzzy after a trauma. Trust me, please don’t worry about that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then you got home. Now here’s where I need as many specifics as possible.”

  “Well, I remember as the cab was pulling in, I looked up at our place and saw that the lights were off. But the shades were still up. If Lennox had left, he woulda pulled the shades down. He always does that. So I figured he might have fallen asleep or something.” Micah loses himself in thought. “Honestly, I pictured Lennox having someone up there, that’s where my brain went. That’s where it always goes, ever since …”

  Shawn fills in the subsequent silence with his own knowledge of the Lennox-and-Josh-cheating-saga. Shawn snaps his fingers. “Micah, I need you to concentrate. What happened when you got out of the cab?”

  “Right. Okay, I searched for my keycard, swiped it, and went through both sets of glass doors. I went up the elevator, hoping it wouldn’t make much of a sound, cuz if there was someone up there, I wanted to catch them in the act.” He pauses and looks at Shawn. “I know, I have serious issues.”

  “You’re being honest. And this will go a long way, if only for me and the way we play this. You didn’t tell the cops or the detective any of this, did you?”

  “No, no, I was way more vague. In fact, I didn’t even remember any of that when I talked to them.”

  “Okay, good. Go on.”

  “The elevator doors open, and everything is dark. I keep the lights off and sneak around the corner to the bedroom. I’m about to peer into the room when I hear a gurgling sound from the living room. By instinct I know it’s Lennox, and I rush over to him, thinking he’s choking on something. He is lying there, barely moving, and I freak out.”

  “Freak out? How so?”

  “Well, all I could think about was getting whatever it was out of his throat, and just started pounding him and pounding him. Over and over.”

  “Jesus.”

  “I know!” Micah looks at Shawn, whose cheeks are slightly raised, eyes at half-mast, nostrils pinched. Micah agrees with the disgust and begins to feel his eyes well up. “I did kill him, didn’t I?”

  “Micah, no. No! Of course not! He’d been stabbed thirty-three times, for God’s sake. He was already near death. I’m not sure there was much you could do to save him, and you did what you thought was right.”

  “But it wasn’t. Right, I mean. I didn’t do the right thing. I deserve this.”

  Shawn feels the need to lighten the dark turn the conversation is taking. “Friend, stop. You did not kill Lennox. You tried to save him. And from now on, this is what you say, again and again. ‘I did not kill Lennox.’ Any mention of you killing Lennox, or even thinking that you killed Lennox is off the table. And especially this ugly-ass table. Am I clear?”

  “Okay, okay.” Micah laughs through some sniffling and wipes his nose on his sleeve.

  “Now. Is there anything else you remember?”

  “He was naked.”

  “Naked? Why? Wait, you said he was getting ready for the event. Did he just get out of the shower?”

  “Maybe. Before the shower, he said he was gonna take his time, eat a snack, ‘mosey on over there,’ I think are the words he used. I kinda just yelled from the elevator door on my way out, I needed to meet Jenna at the event, so I didn’t pay attention.”

  “You don’t think this was sexually related, do you?”

  “I don’t think so, but honestly I have no idea.”

  “Well, once we get the autopsy results we’ll know for sure. Anything else?”

  “No, not rea—wait, there were some weird flashing red lights in the corner of our living room, you know, where the living room meets the kitchen?”

  “Cop lights?”

  “No, I hadn’t called the cops at that point.”

  They both pause in silence.

  “Weird,” Shawn says, typing ‘red lights’, then formatting it in a red color with an underline. Red lights in the corner, what the heck? He begins tapping on his laptop. “Micah, is there anyone else who could have done this?”

  “His fucking ex-boyfriend maybe? It would explain why Lenny was naked.” Micah watches for Shawn’s reaction, which is nothing more than a closing of the eyes. “Come on, Shawn. Heck, I don’t know. It wasn’t Josh. He is way too much of a wuss. Plus, I saw him at the event.”

  “I’ll definitely put my men on it. No stone unturned.”

  Shawn types again and then turns to Micah, watching to see Micah’s reaction to what he was about to ask. “Hey, you don’t think he was doing drugs again, do you?”

  “Who? Lennox? Hell, no. He was working that program better than even me. And he had two sponsees who called him every day. He’d go out and meet with them all the time. In fact, maybe that’s who he was supposed to see that night!” He throws his hands up and back. “Oh my God, I’m a horrible person.”

  “There could be a sponsee who saw him that night too?” Shawn begins typing frantically. “Do you know their names?”

  “Just their first names. Talbot and Frank. Frank’s last initial is ‘J’ I think, not sure about Talbot.”

  “Good, good, this is good. There could be a shit ton of people we could at least throw at them as having access to Lennox that night, and work on potential motives.”

  “Christ, Shawn, that’s awful.”

  “Not as awful as your spending the rest of your life behind bars.”

  Micah nods and looks down. Shawn continues typing.

  “Why would you ask about the drugs?” Micah says. “Cuz if he was, well …”

  Shawn looks up. “Well, what, Micah? No stone unturned.”

  “Well, there’s this letter Lenny wrote, said if anything ever happened to him, to read the letter and it would lead you right to him. ‘Him’ meaning whoever did him harm, I guess.”

  “Micah, what the hell? You’re just now bringing this up? Something did happen to Lennox, Micah. He was brutally murdered, in case you forgot. And you basically confessed to it.”

  Micah releases his tense grip on his chair and looks up with tears in his eyes. “Shawn, if Lenny was even thinking about drugs again, then this guy woulda known about it. Hell, he could even be the cause.”

  “What guy?”

  “The guy in the letter! He’s definitely the one that woulda killed Lennox, if he had reason to. Lenny was petrified of him.”

  “By ‘what guy’ I mean do you know this guy’s name? Where he lives? What the letter says?”

  “I never read it. The envelope was sealed, and I buried it in Lenny’s files.”

  “Buried it how? Where?”

  “The only thing I know is that this guy had something to do with Lennox’s past. The drug stuff. All Lennox told me was to file the letter under some silly title that didn’t mean anything.”

  “Micah. For God’s sake, what title is this goddamn letter or fucking folder under, so I can go find it?”

  “Oh my God, geez.” Micah, feeling annoyed, grabs Shawn’s pen and searches for a nearby sheet of paper. Feeling Shawn’s impatience, he begins to write on one of the light maple slats on the wooden table between them.

  “Okay, so it’s a folder, and it’s under this … okay, well, it’s not really a title, it’s more of a picture. Lennox told me exactly how to draw it.”

  Micah scribbles the outline of a skinny house, colors it in, then draws a thick line through it.

  C h a p t e r 1 8

  “At approximately 10:50pm on August 17, I was called to the home of Micah Breuer and Lennox Holcomb, to ascertain the events that had unfolded at 142 Henry Street earlier that evening.” Detective Bronson Penance addresses the slew of media that have gathered to hear an update on one of two murder cases that had happened in the city on the same night. A bo
uquet of microphones is directly in front of him, with the Seventh Precinct brick façade in the background. A crowd of both local and national media has overtaken the entire parking lot outside the station.

  Dressed in a light tan summer blazer, Detective Penance straightens his black-and-white-striped tie and looks directly into a camera in front of him.

  “Upon entering, we found Lennox Holcomb, age thirty-six, brutally stabbed and dead on the living room floor of his home at the Garfield Building in lower Manhattan. The suspect, Micah Breuer, was taken downtown for questioning, and confessed to the murder of his husband of two years, Lennox Holcomb, the victim. Micah Breuer is currently being held in custody, and murder charges are pending.”

  No stranger to media press conferences, Detective Bronson Penance is adept in interacting with the media, and prefers being the one on camera. He has experienced too many untrained police commissioners and other personnel divulging information too early, resulting in botched cases before they had even started.

  Having been prodded by influential players like Elaine and Wallace Holcomb, Penance feels pressured into this particular media event. Yet he also wants to fulfill his responsibility of getting ahead of public opinion, to secure a quick conviction should the case go to trial.

  “What evidence do you have that Micah Breuer is the one and only suspect?” asks a reporter from the Times.

  “Blood evidence and a confession.” He flinches, but the statement is factually correct.

  “Two murders in the same night. Both victims worked at Élan International. Are the two connected?” asks a reporter from CNN.

  “At this time, we’re pursuing the two murders as being separate cases, with no known link other than the fact you just stated.”

  “My sources say there were drugs involved in the Micah Breuer/Lennox Holcomb case. Do you have any comment on that?” The Times reporter presses closer.

  “That information is part of an ongoing investigation, and we cannot divulge any details at this time.”