by David Horne
It was a woman. In the wash of the LED light, his eyes darted from the man to the woman, she had a pale and angry grimace. In defense, she doused Joshua in bright light; the flashlight in her hand had a higher lumen than his meager light.
“Josh, everything okay?” Trevor called as he ran down the side yard toward them. He had a flashlight and a cell phone. “There’re two people here,” Trevor said. Joshua realized he was still on the phone with the dispatcher.
Another joined the scream of the police siren. More than one patrol car was on their way. Joshua stood close to Trevor, slightly in front of him, protectively. In case either the man or woman had a weapon, he’d do everything in his power to make sure nothing happened to Trevor.
“They want us to go back to the house and wait.” Trevor was reiterating what the dispatcher told him. Joshua wanted to take in as many details about the man and woman as he remembered. It was hard to see anything now she’d turned her flashlight beam into a weapon, and the black motes in his vision wouldn’t subside.
The flickering lights from the police cruiser bounced off the fence and side of the house as the car pulled into the driveway, the headlights shone a clear path between the house and fence. Two police officers rushed toward Joshua and Trevor.
He stepped back, pressing against Trevor, away from the older couple who had trespassed in the night. The other patrol car showed up. Two more police officers rushed down the side yard. More flashlights and bewildered faces peered at each other.
***
“What’s going on?” Joshua asked. It’d been two hours since he caught the burglars. It was impossible to sit down. No matter how many times Trevor asked him to sit on the couch beside him, Joshua continued to pace the living room floor.
Nora looked exhausted. It was after four in the morning. She rubbed her face several times watching Joshua pace. She’d explained it once. It didn’t sink in. “It’s her house, Dad.”
“Why is she there in the dark, in the middle of the night?”
Nora shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. She’s already left.”
“This doesn’t make sense.” Trevor, the more rational, level-headed part of them, blinked at Nora sympathetically. “I know she’s Stuart’s wife. You said they checked on the deed to the house. But I agree with Josh.”
“I know.” Nora had reached her limit. She’d arrived twenty minutes after the call. She’d monitored the activity around her father’s house. Since his brush with death, Nora had put the word out among the officers to keep her posted. The call came from dispatch shortly after Trevor called for the intruders next door. “But she’s got a legal right to be on the property. I don’t care what time of day she came.”
“Why now?” Joshua threw up his hands defensively. “Why does she come now after Stuart’s dead?” He looked at Trevor sitting in the armchair in a robe. He was looking for support and Trevor raised his eyebrows and nodded in agreement.
“It’s suspicious,” he added.
Nora glared at him. “Not you too.”
She stood up from the couch. “Look, I get you’re upset. I get that you can’t stop being a cop. But you know as well as I do, you can’t do a damned thing about her being next door,” she said. Nora took a breath. She swayed a little in front of her father. He softened looking at her. “Jane Stickels is legally allowed to be next door. She’s considering pressing charges against you two for attacking them.”
“Wait, that’s not what happened,” Trevor responded defensively.
Nora held up her hand to stop him from expounding on it. “It goes like this: while it’s strange, even suspicious they’re lurking around the property in the dark, they can file charges against you both for harassment and trespassing. After talking with her for a few minutes, I get the impression she’d do that because she’s a bitter old woman.”
“Who’s the guy with her?” Joshua asked.
“Dad, I’m not getting into it. I don’t know his name. I don’t care.” She moved around Joshua and walked toward the front door. Trevor stood up to escort her. “I’m going. Get some sleep.” She kissed Trevor on the cheek. “Everything good here?” she asked.
“All good,” Trevor said.
Nora looked at Joshua. He did his best to smile for her. “Goodnight, Dad. Thank you, Trevor.”
“Of course,” he whispered.
When they were alone, neither of them spoke to each other for a long while. Trevor went into the kitchen to wash the glasses on the counter. Joshua wandered in to lean against the wall, watching him. When Trevor finished the dishes and toweled off his hands, he turned to Joshua.
“So, the middle of the night, she decides to start crawling through a boarded-up house.” Trevor vocalized what both of them were thinking. Even Nora admitted it was suspicious. It wasn’t illegal, just weird.
“So I’m not alone on this?” Joshua asked. He had a look on his face like he expected Trevor to be angry with him. Trevor crossed the space to embrace him.
“No. I’m with you.” He breathed deep. Joshua held Trevor tight. “Now and forever.”
Chapter Thirteen
After the rough night, Joshua needed to clear his head. Unfortunately, in wandering out of the house, lost in his thoughts, he neglected to tell Trevor where he was going.
He drove to three different locations. In a fifteen mile circumference to the retirement community of Celebrate, Virginia, where there was a plethora of shopping locations. From giant department stores to small convenience stores, Joshua was on a mission. It was his last stop that he found what he wanted.
“You got any cheap cigars?”
The convenient store clerk looked up from the smartphone. He was in his mid-twenties, the kind of person who missed athletics in high school and missed out going to college. The store wasn’t well-traveled. The type of place people stopped into along the north side of Warrenton when they needed gas. Unfortunately, the pumps were aluminum boxes without hoses. A small hand-printed sign let people know only after they stopped, the store had no gas.
“We got some back here, somewhere.” He dropped the phone into the pocket of the orange smock and bent down to look at the center shelves behind the counter where the tobacco products were kept.
“These would be cheap cigars. They come in a red plastic bag. Five to a bag.” Joshua leaned over the counter on his elbows to watch as the clerk dug through the canned tobacco.
“Yeah, I think I know what kind.” He lifted the package to show Joshua.
“That’s it.”
When the clerk stood up, he rubbed the package against the dingy smock. “I don’t know if these things are any good.” The layer of dust transferred from the face of the plastic to the waist of the smock. He dropped the pack on the counter.
“Did another guy come in here a few weeks ago to buy any?” Joshua looked eagerly at the clerk hoping the young man had the sense to know some of his customers. “He’d be an older, heavy-set guy, balding with a mustache.”
The clerk shook his head. “No, don’t remember seeing a guy.” He frowned, pointing at the pack. “You want to buy these?”
“Yes.”
The clerk scanned the package and read the amount on the register. Joshua paid in cash. When the clerk handed back the change, he added, “Not too many people want cigars anymore. I didn’t even know we had those. But I remember a lady came in to buy a pack.”
“A lady?” Joshua repeated hopefully.
“Yeah. I remember because I thought it was weird that someone bought cigars in a plastic bag. And it was weirder that it was some lady that bought them.”
Joshua nodded, pulling the bag off the counter. “Thanks for your help.” He looked up, scanning the ceiling and corners of the store. “Do those work?” He pointed to the security cameras situated around the store.
The clerk followed his line of sight and shrugged. “I think so. The monitors are in the back office. I see the live feed when I’m back there.”
“Do you think t
he store servers store the data?”
“I’m not sure. Why are you asking?” The young man snickered. “You planning on robbing me?”
“No. I was just curious.” He held up the old package of cigars. “Thanks.”
Wandering from the store into the bright Virginia sunshine, Joshua went to his car and drove home.
***
The look on Trevor’s face told Joshua everything he needed to know before words were exchanged.
“You didn’t take your phone again.”
He started to make an excuse, in that he forgot, the phone on the nightstand. It was an old excuse, and Joshua didn’t want to be reminded that he wasn’t thinking clearly. Instead, he carried the package of cigars to the breakfast nook and dropped it on the table.
“You’re not taking up smoking in this house.” Trevor was adamant about smoking in the house. Even guests had to leave a twenty-foot perimeter from the house if they wanted to smoke.
Instead of feeling an irritation toward Trevor, Joshua smiled lightly as he grabbed a glass and the pitcher of unsweetened iced tea in the refrigerator. “I'm not taking up smoking; don’t worry.”
The look on Trevor’s face suggested that worrying was all he’d done throughout the last few weeks.
Joshua padded the tall chair at the table next to him when he sat down. “I want to talk to you civilly about all this.”
Trevor moved across the hardwood floor and sat timidly on the chair across from Joshua. He picked up the package of cigars. “These things will give you cancer just looking at them.”
“I had to do a lot of driving around to find them.”
“Now you want to explain to me why you’re hunting cheap cigars.”
“This is something that I need you to understand.” He folded his hands on the table. He watched as Trevor pushed away the baggy of individually wrapped cigars with a generic logo embossed on the foil necks. “You and I used to talk about cases sometimes when they were frustrating to me.”
“Yes,” Trevor said softly. “You used to say that I had a linear logic that helped put things into perspective.” He half-smiled and said, “I think you were just flirting with me.”
“I was.” Joshua returned the smile and then sipped at the cold drink. “I also respect you enough to know you understood how difficult my job was when I worked long cases.” He pointed to the cigars. “A long time ago I had a case with Larry,” he started.
Trevor nodded. “The one you thought was arson when you have no evidence.”
Joshua stopped talking and waited. The troubling look that crossed Trevor’s face made him realize they’d already had a similar conversation about it. He felt Trevor’s hands grasp his lightly. “I’m sorry.”
“Did I tell you what I thought about the case? That I thought it was an insurance scam from the wife?”
“No, you didn’t tell me—”
“Please don’t do that, Trevor.” He shook his head. “I know when you’re lying to me. Your voice changes when you lie. Did I tell you or not?”
Trevor nodded. “Yes.”
“These cigars are the same cigars. The same brand from the old case.”
“Okay,” Trevor agreed because the look suggested he didn’t know what else to say.
“I think the same thing happened to Stuart.”
“You said that too.”
“I know I said that!” He clenched his teeth and leaned against the sway back high chair. He let go of Trevor’s hand. “I get that you think I’m losing my mind. I know I forget things sometimes. I forget my phone. I forget to tell you where I’m going. Sometimes it just feels like I’m a kid in this relationship and you’re the adult.”
“That’s absurd. You’re older than me.” He tried a smile for Joshua.
“Not by much.” Taking a long breath, organizing his thoughts, Joshua closed his eyes and spoke. “I’m scared. I know I put on a gruff exterior, but this thing has me as scared as it does you and Nora. I don’t want to live in fear, Trevor. I want to enjoy our time together, however much time we have left, and I want to be by your side the whole way.” He shook his head, opening his eyes. “I feel like this is something I have to do. The similarity from Stuart’s death jogged my memory, and I started remembering the old case.
“I feel like if I can close one case, the other will happen too.”
“I understand. It’s good logic.”
“There’s my man,” Joshua said, “Logical and sane.”
“What can I do?”
“You can be my brain for a while if you want to do something. I want to present this to you so you can see things that I’m seeing.”
“I admit the business last night was scary and a little fishy. I hadn’t seen Jane in so long that I didn’t even recognize her. And who was the guy she was with? He was a lot younger than her.”
“I think she’s looking for something in the house.”
“Well, she has to show proof of ownership to the county before she’s allowed back in there again.”
“They haven’t been back since I left today.”
Trevor shook his head.
“I don’t know what she wants.” He pushed the bag of cigars toward Trevor. “I think she bought these to kill Stuart.”
“That would do it.” He flicked away the bag. “I feel like they’re killing me just looking at them.”
“You have a Ph.D... You saw how strange they were last night. This isn’t over.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
Joshua left the table. He went to the office, collected the old case files and returned to the breakfast nook. He presented the records to Trevor. “Take a look at these. Read them. See if you see what I see.”
“You started a file on Stuart,” Trevor pointed out.
“I did because I wanted to look at it the way I used to see things.”
“You miss it, don’t you?”
“Of course, I miss being a cop.”
Trevor gave him a crossed look. “I’m not encouraging you if I do this. You’re not going all vigilante on me, are you?”
“No.”
“And no gun,” Trevor added. Joshua knew Trevor wasn’t interested in guns. For all their years together, that part of Joshua’s life, the free time he had when he wanted to go to the shooting range, or when he carried a service weapon for years, they were on both sides of the spectrum. The academic, Trevor did not need a gun. A professor at college, they were protected, as much as he considered, by campus security. It wasn’t a debate he had to think about, even when it was political. So they had their own venues that they shared with others. Joshua liked the tours of the museums. Trevor had all access to some of the largest museums in Washington DC. His credentials and expertise got him into backrooms and expositions before the general public. It was fun. It was something Joshua liked sometimes.
Then there were other times when he wanted to load his service weapon and unload it into a paper target. He liked the smell of cordite and gun oil. He liked how his hands rang like a bell after firing several rounds into the targets. He was a good cop, he was a great detective, and he felt blessed to know how to use a firearm, even if he never had to use one in all the years he was on the force.
“No guns.” He had a partner again. Albeit, a more exciting and charismatic and devilishly more handsome partner than his former of many years on the job.
Chapter Fourteen
At three in the morning, Joshua slipped from the bed. He’d been awake for over an hour. Trevor finally unknotted himself from being wrapped around Joshua’s torso, and he had to wait, listening to Trevor’s even and deep breathing to know the man was asleep before he eased out of bed.
He dressed in cotton sleep pants. He put on deck shoes in the kitchen, wore a t-shirt, and grabbed the small flashlight before he slipped out the sliding back door to stand on the porch in the dark. The night was quiet. He heard the cacophony of peepers from the swamp at the bottom of the neighborhood. There were no cars on the
streets.
It was risky, he knew. It was illegal, he understood, he needed to know what Jane Stickels and her male friend were looking for in Stuart’s house the night before.
The sheriff’s office put the neighborhood on the patrol list. Nora mentioned the Fredericksburg police department had a cruiser parked on an access road to Celebrate, Virginia to deter lurkers. Joshua knew it was a dummy car; the kind used to deter speeders. He hadn’t seen a deputy cruiser in hours. From the quiet hush of the neighborhood, he was the only person awake.
Quietly, he eased along the fence. It was routine now. He’d done it so many times; it was simple to find the shadow that ran the distance of the wall to the front yard, where he crossed over and ducked under the ‘caution’ tape. Again, he went down the side of the house to the back door.
The way was blocked by the sheet of plywood. There was a board that was supposed to be over the plywood nailed to the framework of the house. When Joshua squatted, using the limited ambient light to examine the area around the back of the house, he saw the board lying on the flagstones outside the home. He didn’t think much about it. He hadn’t processed all the scene last night, and now he knew he couldn’t trust his memory.
With his fingertips, Joshua pulled at the bottom half of the plywood. It came away from the door. Carefully, he slipped through the opening and let the plywood flap close behind him.
Inside it smelled like spoiled food and smoke. He waited in the pitch black, listening to the house. He could only hear the hammering of his excited heart. Whether or not he was too old to investigate in the dark didn’t matter to him. At that moment, Joshua was doing something he wasn’t supposed to, and he’d never felt so alive.
When Joshua flicked on the flashlight, playing the beam over the ruins of the hallway, he had a flash of memory from the fire, how he’d fallen, choking in smoke, unable to breathe. It tightened up his chest.
Then he heard something fall. The sound of a book falling from a shelf and something followed it. Frozen to the spot, trying to reason what he heard, the moment Joshua realized it was the patter of running feet, he saw an explosion of white and dropped to the floor.