Third You Die (Kevin Connor Mystery)

by Sherman, Scott

  “Every cell in my body knew it was wrong. But I was weak. Weak and afraid. Everything else is just an excuse.”

  “He never stopped loving you,” I told her.

  “I know. He told me.”

  “In the note,” I affirmed.

  “No.” A small smile through her tears. The first time I’d seen her lips curl upward. “On the phone. About a month ago.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve been a stupid, frightened woman, but I was getting stronger. A few months ago, my husband came home with brochures from church. For a ‘conversion camp.’ ”

  “I know,” I said. “Richie told me about it.” Another bending of the truth. It was Lucas who’d relayed that story to me. But you figure out how to describe Lucas’s role in all this. Tell me a good way to explain Richie’s adulterous relationship with a guy he met while shooting skin flicks. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

  “I always suspected Ellen—his sister—was in touch with Richie. My husband had warned her not to be, of course, but she’s a grown woman now. Living on her own. And she is strong. Stronger than me. She confronted me about the camp. How could I even consider such a thing? she asked. She called it ‘torture therapy.’

  “She was right. I told my husband the idea was off the table. It was the first time in a long time I’d said no to him. But I insisted. I told him if he even called them, I’d leave and move in with Ellen. I used a word I’d heard on Judge Judy’s show. I said it was ‘non-negotiable.’

  “He spent a few days yelling, slamming doors, and grouching even more than usual. But eventually, he promised me to drop it.

  “I got Ellen to give me Richie’s number. She’d told me she warned him about the possibility of being abducted by the camp’s ‘counselors,’ and I didn’t want him to worry anymore. No, more than that. I wanted to be the one to take that burden off his shoulders.”

  The tears continued to stream down her face. The front of her robe looked like she’d spilled a glass of water on it, soaked as it was in her sadness. But her voice was even and clear.

  “I’d given him so little,” she said. “I’d failed him so. Having this one thing to offer him, this tiny piece of good news, was a start, I hoped. A chance for me to begin making it up to him.

  “We talked for hours. Hours. He was so happy to hear from me. So happy. As if I weren’t to blame. As if he didn’t have every reason to hate me.

  “But he didn’t hate me. I don’t know why, or how, but he said he understood. I’ve never been prouder.

  “He told me all about how he was trying to make it as an actor. About the temporary jobs he took to keep himself afloat. The office positions, the sales work. But his dream was to be on screen.”

  Of course he told her that. I used to tell my parents I made my living as a computer consultant. It seemed easier, and kinder, than telling them I earned my wages as a rent boy.

  You can only get away with that for so long, though. Like snow in the city, the lies start out white but get dirtier and uglier over time. Soon, you’re standing up to your ankles in nasty slush, your feet wet and cold. What you save in convenience you lose in integrity.

  It was a lesson Richie didn’t live long enough to learn.

  Mrs. Dawson’s call to Richie explained why he’d told Lucas he was no longer worried about his parents trying to “deprogram” him. I wondered if it also hadn’t been the catalyst in his telling Lucas he needed to take a break from seeing him for a while—at least until he made a decision about Charlie. Nothing like a call from your mother to get the guilt train running down the track. It was also around the time Richie was talking about getting out of the jizz biz. Maybe he was reevaluating everything.

  Which, as far as I was concerned, made it even more unlikely he’d killed himself while all doped up—whether by accident or on purpose.

  Mrs. Dawson encouraged me to talk. How did Richie look? Was he content with his life? Had he found friends? Did he have someone . . . special? Was it me?

  I stuck as close to the truth as I could. She accepted any evidence of Richie’s happiness with the joy of a person dying of thirst receiving a glass of water.

  She brought out pictures. Richie as a baby. Richie in the tub with his sister. Richie dressed like Batman for Halloween. Richie’s high school yearbook, where he appeared as a freshman.

  Wait.

  I looked at the cover of the yearbook.

  For a moment, it seemed to come alive, wriggling in my grasp like a magical tome in a Harry Potter novel.

  My hands were shaking.

  With excitement. With fear. With the shock of discovery.

  Tony was right.

  People kill for one of three reasons.

  Money.

  Sexual jealousy.

  Thrills.

  Now I knew which one got Richie murdered.

  “This may seem strange,” I told her, “but can I take this?”

  “My lord,” she said. “After all you’ve given me? The gift of your coming here? Showing me that Richie had friends who cared enough to reach out like this? You can have them all. Hell, you can have the whole fucking house!”

  Her eyes flew open in shock and she made a sound that scared me. A startled, staccato bray than soon turned to laughter. A lovely laugh at that, musical and joyous, which had me laughing, too, although I didn’t know why.

  “I’ve never,” she said, trying to get the words out between laughs, “used the . . . ‘F word’ before. In my whole . . . life! It feels . . . it feels like . . .” She couldn’t find the word.

  I could. Another “F” word. It felt like freedom. Freedom to do and speak as she pleased.

  But she’d have to figure that one out on her own.

  Mrs. Dawson had a lifetime of subservience and suppressing her feelings to put behind her. I had the impression that before the year was over, that god-awful recliner, along with its toxic occupant, would be living somewhere else.

  39

  The Final Link

  In the past, this is when I’d have done something stupid. Namely, gone after the killer myself. That kind of thing has gotten me in trouble before.

  It turns out that most murderers aren’t particularly friendly when confronted with their crimes. Go know.

  This time, though, I wasn’t about to make the same mistake. I had a cop living right here with me—one who was already on the case. When the right time came, I’d tell him my theory about who’d killed Brent and why. I might as well let him do the confronting—after all, he got paid for it. Plus, as I may have mentioned before, he carried a gun.

  It wasn’t the time, though. First, there was another victim I had to get out of harm’s way. The poor guy had been through enough, recently. I had to warn him.

  “It’s good to see you,” Lucas said, giving me a warm hug. Unlike the first time we met, though, this hug was meant for me, not Brent. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Thanks for having me over,” I said. “We have to talk.”

  “Sure,” Lucas said, looking a little nervous. “About what?”

  “Brent.”

  “Well, I figured that. Listen, my boyfriend’s home. He’s in his office here—he won’t hear us. But if he comes in, change the subject, okay? I don’t think he wants to hear me talking about other guys.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I absently noted his use of the word boyfriend. I supposed it made sense. Sugar daddy might have been awkward to say. Employer? I realized I didn’t know the proper etiquette here. I supposed boyfriend was as good as anything.

  Lucas led me to the living room where we’d talked the first time. After some small talk, I got to the point.

  “I don’t think Brent’s death was an accident.”

  Lucas paled. “What do you mean?”

  “I think he was murdered. Because he had a secret. A secret he was about to reveal. One that would have cost the person I think did this to him a lot of money. It would not only hav
e wrecked the guy’s business, it probably would have sent him to jail, too.”

  “A secret worth killing for . . .” Lucas whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Lucas’s coloring went from chalky white to crimson in an instant. “Who? Who do you think did this, Kevin? Because, I swear to god, I’ll kill him myself.”

  I’d forgotten how quickly Lucas lost his temper. “No, I’ll go to the police. Don’t screw up your life for revenge.

  “But I wanted to tell you before I went to the authorities. You may need to take steps to protect yourself when this comes out.”

  “You think I had something to do with . . . you think I could have ever hurt . . . ?” Lucas spoke with unmistakable outrage, the cry of the falsely accused. He looked ready to spring out of his chair.

  “No,” I interrupted, holding up my hands in the universal gesture for “I surrender.”

  “I know you wouldn’t have hurt him. I’m afraid, though, that you might wind up getting hurt before this is all over.”

  Now Lucas looked confused. I wasn’t sure I could blame him. “I don’t understand. You think whoever killed Brent would want to kill me, too?”

  “No,” I said. “Let me tell you what I found out.”

  But, first, I had to tell Lucas about the conversation I had with Brent after the taping of my mother’s show. How he said he had information that could destroy SwordFight and would threaten to use it if he had to.

  “You think he told them, right?” Lucas asked. “And they killed him rather than let him go public with whatever they had on him?”

  I nodded.

  “Who?”

  “Mason, probably. It’s his business. Although he might have had Pierce do the dirty deed for him.”

  “But what was the secret?” Lucas asked. “And how does it involve me?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  I took from my backpack the high school yearbook I’d gotten from Brent’s mother.

  “Look,” I said. “This is from two years ago. Brent wasn’t a senior when his parents kicked him out of the house. He was a freshman.”

  “So?”

  “He wasn’t eighteen when he made his first films for SwordFight. He was sixteen.”

  Lucas fell back into his chair as if he’d been shot. “Fuck.”

  Fuck was right. Ever since the rise, fall, and semi-rise back up of Traci Lords, it was common knowledge that filming and distributing sexual depictions of minors was a pretty serious crime. I Wiki’ed her after discovering the truth about Brent, and found out that between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, she’d appeared in roughly one hundred adult movies.

  The owners of her movie agency were arrested. They and other companies involved in films with her spent millions of dollars defending themselves in court. They also had to go to the expense of making sure that hundreds of thousands of her videos and even magazines in which she appeared were removed from store shelves. My understanding was that they avoided being prosecuted on the more serious charges of child pornography. Perhaps because Traci presented them with a fake ID and they could claim they didn’t know her true age.

  I didn’t think that was the case with Brent.

  He’d said something that nagged at me. In the middle of talking about how he had the dirt to ruin SwordFight, he mentioned something about how they’d “helped” him. At the time, it didn’t make sense. Isn’t helping someone usually a good thing? How did that relate to whatever leverage he had?

  Unless, what they’d helped him with was illegal. Like, covering up his real age. Mason was gaga over Brent. All that “flesh impact” and such. I was pretty sure he had the savvy and connections to set up Brent with a fake driver’s license, Social Security number, and whatever else he needed to establish a new identity.

  I couldn’t prove it, but maybe the cops could.

  Even if that could never be ascertained, though, just the fact that they’d sold movies of him at all was probably enough to destroy their business and get them imprisoned. Plus, this new information also provided Tony with what he said was missing: motive.

  In this case, money.

  One of the Big Three.

  I hadn’t realized how much this all was weighing on me. Laying it all out for Lucas was kind of therapeutic. Somehow, not being the only one to know made me feel better. I felt myself relax into the sofa as I realized I no longer had to carry Brent’s secret alone. I hadn’t realized how tense I was until I felt myself start to calm down for the first time since I saw that yearbook yesterday.

  Unfortunately, my peacefulness didn’t last long.

  No sooner had I started to feel comfortable when I saw Lucas bound from his chair and come running at me as he swung up his arms.

  40

  Flashpoint

  Damn it. Had I figured wrong? Maybe Lucas was involved in Brent’s death. How else to explain why he was charging me like a mad bull?

  I knew a lot about self-defense. But in the seconds I had before he reached me with almost a hundred pounds of muscle in his favor, I wasn’t sure what I could have done. He was hurtling forward and would pin me through sheer momentum and gravity. Fear seized me before he did.

  And seize me he did. But not in an attack. In a grateful embrace.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Oh, Kevin, thank you. If those bastards hurt him, I want them to suffer. I want them to pay. If it hadn’t been for you, they would have gotten away with it.”

  “You’re welcome,” I choked out, breathless from his crushing bear hug. Maybe he was trying to kill me.

  He let go. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to crush you.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’m sure the ribs will heal. But, now, you need to think about yourself, Lucas.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, Mason may have made and sold a film with a sixteen-year-old star, but you screwed around with him onscreen.”

  “Is that illegal?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. But you should. Do you have a lawyer? An agent? Anyone you could ask?”

  “I don’t.” Lucas looked thoughtful and then grinned. “I have something better right here. My boyfriend. He knows everything about the industry.”

  “He does?”

  “He’d better. He’s one of the biggest directors in the biz.”

  Really?

  “I’ll go get him.” Lucas trotted down the hallway.

  I thought about leaving before Lucas returned. I’d delivered the message I’d come to give. I didn’t need to meet the “boyfriend,” or whoever he was. I also wasn’t interested in getting to know anyone else in the adult film industry. I’d spent enough time swimming in that pool. Maybe it was better to get out before I drowned.

  But I didn’t want to be rude.

  “Kevin,” I heard from behind. “I knew we’d meet again.”

  The voice was honey and silk, warm, sweet, and with a distinctly Latin sensuality.

  It was also familiar.

  By the time he’d come to face me, I’d almost placed it.

  Kristen LaNue.

  The last director Brent had worked with.

  Of everyone I’d talked with at SwordFight, he was the only one who seemed to regard Brent as anything more than some commodity meant to be used and sold.

  How had I not known Lucas was living with him?

  I looked around. Other than the picture of Lucas’s brother, there were no photos anywhere. No posters of Kristen’s films. Not even the Adult Video News Award I’d heard he’d won for Best Director.

  No sign of Kristen anywhere except . . .

  Oh, yeah, the bathroom. The towels. I’d thought they were designer linens from a line meant to evoke the concept of good hygiene.

  But “KLN” wasn’t a play on “clean.” It was the owner’s monogram.

  I rose and gave him a hug. We exchanged brief greetings.

  “What,” Kristen said, sitting next to me, his face drawn with concern, “is this that Luc
as is telling me? It’s . . . incredible. Can it be true?”

  Lucas settled next to him. Close, but not touching. I tried to get the vibe between them, but couldn’t. Was this a partnership of convenience or was there real love here? Beat me.

  I filled Kristen in as best I could.

  “My god,” Kristen said when I was done. His pallor was like chalk, his lips tight and trembling. “Lucas was with him on film. I filmed it. We thought he was a man, not a boy!”

  He drummed his fingers on his knee. “Mason knew. He must have known.”

  Lucas bobbed his head up and down. “Yeah, I think so, too. He’d do anything for a buck.”

  Kristen took Lucas’s hand in his. “That bastard,” Kristen hissed. “He’ll get us all thrown in jail.”

  Lucas moaned and looked ready to cry.

  “Sweetheart.” Kristen took Lucas’s hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed the meaty knuckles. “We’ll be fine. I promise. But we need to talk to my lawyer.”

  I stood. “I have to go to the police,” I said. “But I wanted to let you guys know first. Give you a chance to make sure you’re covered. You’re not the bad guys here.”

  “We’re not,” Kristen agreed. “My baby wouldn’t hurt a fly. Would you, mi amor?”

  Lucas put an arm around Kristen. “I’d never hurt Brent,” he said. Then, almost as an afterthought, “Or you, Kristen. Ever.”

  “I know.” Kristen patted his shoulder, and Lucas laid his head on it. They looked like they needed time together, alone, to console each other and figure out what to do.

  “I have to go,” I said. “But will you fill me in on what your lawyer says? I won’t talk to the cops until the end of the day. That should give you enough time.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” Lucas said. “I owe you twice now, man. We’ll call later.” He started to stand.

  Kristen held him down with a hand on his knee. “Actually, Kevin, can you stay for a bit? It may be helpful for you to talk directly with our lawyer. He might have questions we didn’t think to ask.”