Male/Male Mystery and Suspense Box Set: 6 Novellas

by Lanyon, Josh

  Dan’s eyes followed my tongue as I licked the whipped cream from the spoon. “I had counseling after I made the decision to be open about my sexual orientation on the job. Law enforcement is still a conservative and fairly homophobic profession; it wasn’t an easy decision.”

  “What made you decide to come out?”

  “It wasn’t that I wasn’t out, but I was very careful to keep the boundaries distinct between my personal and professional life.”

  That sounded uncomfortably familiar. “Don’t ask, don’t tell?”

  “Right. Which to a degree I still believe in. I don’t feel like it’s anyone’s business who I sleep with.” He sighed. “And…law enforcement is, in general, kind of a macho gig. We’ve got more than our share of assholes on the force, so I guess I was glad to not have to take a stand. But I had a situation come up: a homicide suspect recognized me from a gay bar and tried to…let’s call it ‘negotiate’ with me.”

  “You could have been undercover,” I pointed out.

  He smiled faintly. “I could have, but I was a regular at that bar, and we both knew it. I realized I had to come clean to my superiors—had to put it all out on the table.”

  I wondered what I’d have chosen in that same situation. “Were you tempted to go along with the blackmail?”

  “No.” He met my eyes levelly. “I knew once I started down that slope there would be no stopping. I wasn’t about to endanger a job I love. I was never ashamed of being gay.”

  “And what happened after you came out?”

  “A few guys were assholes and a few guys were stand up, but mostly nobody really gave a damn. Except the brass. They saw an opportunity to reverse some of the bad press and capitalize on how diverse and sensitive the new LAPD was.”

  “Did the counseling help?”

  “It did.” His gaze was curious. “You do all those public service announcements advising teens to seek counseling. You don’t have faith in the process yourself?”

  “It’s not that. If I had been able to talk to someone when I was sixteen…things might have gone differently. Now I don’t need someone helping me understand what I’m afraid of.” I was no longer talking about being gay, and we both knew it. I added, “And I don’t think my fears are unreasonable.”

  He was smart enough to leave it at that.

  When we got back to the house I turned on the phonograph and put on the 1954 recording of Louis Armstrong playing W.C. Handy. I carried a stack of prospective screenplays Steve had sent over earlier in the week onto the deck and settled into the lounge chair, smearing suntan oil over my shoulders while the music wafted out through the open sliding door.

  It was cooler today, the sun slipping in and out of clouds; the salty wind off the water had a nip to it. I wiped my hands together and leaned back in the chair, reaching for the first screenplay: Favored to Place. My eyes focused on the brown rag hooked to the deck railing.

  Not a rag.

  More like…a large toupee or something…furry.

  I dropped the script from nerveless fingers. The pages fluttered in the breeze.

  Far overhead I could hear a seagull crying. What a weird sound that was. Like mewing. Like a cat. Like a fluffy brown cat. Or a fluffy brown dog.

  I stood up fast, but my foot hooked and I tipped the lounge chair over, sprawling on the deck. I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me.

  “Dan,” I yelled breathlessly. “Dan! Dan!”

  In the distance I could hear a jaunty trumpet sashaying into the opening notes of “Loveless Love.”

  Along with the sudden lack of oxygen, I couldn’t seem to get my footing. I kicked away the cushions and chair—unable to tear my eyes away from the thing nailed to the deck railing. Nailed by its tail…

  The screen door opened and Dan stepped out. “What the hell—?”

  I scrambled to my knees. “It’s the dog,” I gasped. “Mrs. Wiggly’s dog.” I pointed, hand shaking.

  The consternation on Dan’s face changed to something else. Something dangerous.

  “Get up,” he said. He reached down and hauled me to my feet. “Inside.”

  He thrust me through the half-open door, stepped in behind me and locked it. Guiding me by the arm, he edged me back a few steps. “Stay away from the door, stay away from the window.”

  “He k-killed it,” I chattered. “While we were at brunch. He’s watching the house. Why would he do that? That stupid little dog. How c-could he know— But I didn’t want that!”

  Dan brushed past, lifted a gun the size of a small cannon out of the clutter on the middle bookshelf, and I realized in a distant sort of way that although he had seemed to dismiss my fears he was, in fact, on high alert.

  Moving past me, he unlatched the door. “Don’t open for anyone but me. Understand?”

  I stared at him.

  “Sean,” he said sharply. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I sucked in a quavery breath. “I understand.”

  “I’ll be right back. Lock the door behind me.”

  He stepped out. Gestured to the lock. I moved to the door and fumbled it locked. He motioned to me again, and I backed out of sight of the door.

  Hearing his footsteps on the deck, I went to the window and, staying to the side, watched him cross the deck fast and jump down to the sand below.

  He disappeared from sight.

  Chapter Five

  The scrape of a key in the lock brought me to my feet. Dan stepped inside, caught sight of me and stuck the gun in his back waistband, walking across to me.

  “He’s long gone.”

  “It’s Hammond,” I said. “I know it.”

  “Shhh.” He took me in his arms. “Sean.” He held me tightly; I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. I didn’t want to.

  “He’s alive. I know it.” I spoke into his chest, the words vibrating against the strong thud of his heart.

  “It’s not Hammond.” He stroked my back calmingly. “This isn’t Hammond’s MO.”

  I raised my head. Met his eyes. “It has to be.”

  “Sean, over a dozen witnesses confirm that he went into the aqueduct. He couldn’t have survived that crash. It’s not possible.”

  “Then where’s the body? Why hasn’t the body shown up yet?”

  He said patiently, “It washed down the aqueduct and lodged somewhere. I don’t know. But I do know that whoever is doing this, it’s not Hammond.”

  I was struggling against a riptide of emotions: fear, frustration, bewilderment all dragging me further and further from shore, from safety, from sanity.

  “Then who?” I cried, trembling. “Nothing else makes sense!”

  “You’ve got to calm down.”

  “How can I be calm when you can’t—or won’t—see what’s happening? What does it take to convince you? He’s out there. He’s coming for me.”

  His hands clamped on my shoulders, anchoring me fast. “He’s not getting you. No one is getting to you. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I stopped Hammond, I’ll stop this freak too. He’s not getting near you.”

  “He’s already near me!” I couldn’t help it. My control was slipping. I heard my voice shaking and wild. “He’s out there now. How could he know about what a pest that damn dog was? Tell me that? He had to have heard us. He could be listening to us now. This place could be bugged.”

  “Jesus, Sean.” He pulled me close, holding me against him like he wanted to smother the words spilling out. “Stop it. Sweetheart. Stop. You’re making yourself sick.”

  He kept murmuring words I couldn’t comprehend, but I understood that he was petting me, quieting me, and after a while I stopped ranting, stopped trembling, finally managing to slow those panicked shallow breaths that were making me lightheaded.

  We moved over to the sofa. He left me for a moment or two. I scrubbed my face, wiping away tears I didn’t remember crying. I rested my head in my hands and tried to think. Nothing made sense. The postcards had stopped but H
ammond had escalated to violence. It had been all threats up until this point. What had changed?

  Dan sat down beside me. Set a glass of water on the table. He held a small brown vial that I recognized from my bathroom cabinet. I had news for him; those pills were well past their expiration date—like me apparently. I watched him shake two tablets into his palm.

  “I don’t want those.”

  “I know. But you need them.”

  I gave him a hostile look. Anything I said now would be put down to my irrational state of mind. I held out my hand. He dropped the pills in my palm, I popped them into my mouth, took the glass of water he handed over. I washed the pills down, handed him back the glass, stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes.

  Dan brushed my hair from my forehead. I kept my eyes closed, rejecting that light, tender touch.

  “Just relax.”

  Yeah. Right.

  “Everything will be okay, I promise you.”

  I swallowed. Didn’t answer. Kept my eyes closed. He said that a lot: I promise you. But what did that mean? He couldn’t promise me anything. Not when he didn’t even believe me—when his main concern was to shut me up.

  He kept stroking my hair. I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to be comforted by him. I didn’t like the fact that his touch seemed to find a way through my defenses, that he seemed to be able to converse with me through his fingertips and my nerve endings. I tried to shut out my response, but my scalp seemed to tingle beneath the deft fingers threading my hair. The tears stopped leaking beneath my lashes. The torpidity lurking at the edge of my consciousness eddied around and sucked me down.

  * * * * *

  When I opened my eyes it was dark. I was lying on the sofa in the living room. Someone—Dan—had tossed the lambswool throw over me. The lights were off, but there was a fire in the fireplace. The shadows changed against the walls, flickering and indistinct. Never two the same—like Rorschach plates.

  I turned my head. Dan was sitting in one of the chairs before the fireplace. His profile looked flushed in the firelight. He was staring at nothing in particular. I wondered where the gun was now. On TV and in the movies cops shoot people all the time. Dan told me he had only drawn his weapon a dozen times—and he’d only fired once. That was when he had shot and wounded a robbery suspect. He had been off-duty at the time. He had earned a citation for bravery, but there had also been an Internal Affairs audit.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  His head snapped my way and he stood up. I didn’t want that. It was hard to keep the walls in place with him near me, and I wanted the walls up. It was safer behind the walls.

  “How are you feeling?” He started to sit on the edge of the sofa, but I sat up, moving away from him.

  “Groggy. Sorry for the…hysterics.”

  “Sean.”

  I cut across his compassion. “What happened—while I was out?”

  “I called the sheriffs and filed a report. Then I walked down to Mrs. Wilgi and told her what happened.” He added, before I did more than look at him, “A deputy stayed here at the house until I got back.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t thinking about who had been watching over me; I was thinking about poor Mrs. Wilgi who had loved that ugly little dog as though it had been her child.

  “No one is taking this threat lightly, Sean.”

  I refused to look at him. “I know.”

  “I’ve been thinking that it might be a good time to move back to the house.”

  I shrugged. “What’s the difference? He knows where I live.”

  He didn’t speak for a moment, then he said, choosing his words, “If this is not Hammond, then he may not know that you have a home in the Hollywood Hills.”

  I laughed derisively. “If? You mean you’re willing to consider the idea that Hammond may not be dead?”

  “Yes.”

  That surprised me, and I did look at him then, trying to read his expression in the gloom. His eyes glittered in the glow from the fireplace—a little spooky.

  “Are you humoring me?”

  “No.”

  Some of my tension drained away.

  “What changed your mind?”

  “I don’t know that my mind has changed—but I’m keeping it open. I agree with you that it is highly unlikely you would attract two aggressive stalkers in this space of time.”

  Tiredly, I thought this over. He didn’t think I was crazy; that was good, right? The fact that someone was out to get me: not so good. “When you said it wasn’t Hammond’s MO, what did you mean?”

  “Hammond was what we call an Attachment Seeker. Killing the dog is more the action of a Rejection-based stalker—except the dog wasn’t yours. You didn’t even like the dog, so as threatening as the action seems, it could be perceived as a service to you.” Wearily, he added, “Which still doesn’t make sense psychologically.”

  “It makes sense,” I said. I’d done plenty of reading on stalkers all on my own. “He sees himself as rejected. He didn’t get what he wanted from me and he’s moved from simple stalking to intimidation and threats. Rejection-based stalkers are the most likely to turn to violence. Isn’t that true?”

  “Yes,” he said reluctantly.

  “If he’s watching me, he knows that you and I are involved now. That could be the catalyst.”

  “Hammond wasn’t gay.”

  “Maybe he was a closet case.”

  “Either way,” Dan said, “We need to think about how best to ensure your safety. I think moving back—”

  “I don’t think the locale matters. We’ve got a great security system here and I can see anyone coming from a mile away.”

  He looked unconvinced but didn’t argue, and I guessed that he didn’t want to pressure me when I was already emotionally distressed. That’s one of the perks of having a history of breakdown. People don’t like to upset you unnecessarily.

  “All right. We’ll leave it for now. I’ve already spoken to my captain and we’ll have someone from Special Investigations here tomorrow on security duty.”

  “Who? I don’t want some stranger in my—”

  “Listen,” Dan said crisply, “We’ve got to have someone here during the day, and it can’t be me.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “Because we’re involved now, chief. There are protocols that have to be followed in order to authorize protection for you. We’re dealing with government bureaucracy, among other things.”

  “What other things? If you were the best person for the job before—”

  He drew a deep breath. “It’s…like a doctor operating on a family member. I can’t be objective about your safety; I don’t have any emotional distance, which means I’m not the best person for the job now.”

  I opened my mouth to argue and he said, “I don’t tell you what roles to take in your career; how about you don’t try to tell me the roles to take in mine?”

  His tone was even and he was still sort of smiling, but he was dead serious. I stared at him. Finally lifted a shoulder.

  Sergeant Jack Markowitz had apparently transferred in from a neighboring police state—to his iron-jawed dismay. Tall, trim and no-nonsense, he showed up at the beach house at the crack of dawn on Monday before Dan left to drive into Hollywood. They greeted each other tersely, stepped out front briefly to discuss “the case,” before Dan came out to the deck to tell me good-bye.

  “Stick close to the house today—and stick close to Markowitz.”

  I raised an eyebrow and he said, “Not that close.”

  Markowitz watched stonily from the doorway as we kissed.

  “Can I fix you some breakfast?” I asked my new bodyguard after Dan drove off.

  “No. Thanks.” Markowitz managed, looking like breaking bread with me would choke him.

  I spent an uneventful morning working out and reading through the stack of screenplays Steve had sent over. Most of them seemed to consist of roles for strung out smart-asses; I began to think bei
ng typecast as a gay man wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  At ten o’clock Maria let herself in the back door, like usual, and Markowitz scared the shit out of all of us by throwing down on her. Once we got that sorted out, Maria, with a lot of muttering under her breath, got busy vacuuming, and Markowitz amused himself “checking out the perimeter” for the nth time.

  By eleven o’clock I knew it was going to be a very long day.

  Steve called after lunch. “I’ve got good news and bad news. What do you want to hear first?”

  I didn’t know if I could take any bad news at the moment. “What’s the good news?”

  “Winston Marshall, the guy producing The Charioteer, has invited you to dinner tomorrow night.”

  I felt like someone turned the lights on inside me. “For real? Where?”

  I expected to hear Spago or Musso & Frank Grill, but Steve said, “At his place in Bel Air. Lenny Norman will be there too.”

  “Does that mean—?”

  “I don’t know what it means,” Steve admitted. “I can tell you that Marshall likes your work. He was very interested when I said you were hooked on the idea of playing Laurie. The bad news is he didn’t know you were hooked before because Lenny Norman hadn’t mentioned it to him—and that’s because Norman doesn’t want you. They’re looking at David Cort for the role.”

  “David Cort,” I echoed. Davie Cort would be perfect for Laurie Odell. I could see him already in the khaki wool Battle Dress uniform of the period. He was the right age, casually attractive, a decent actor—and English. I felt nauseous.

  “So is that the bad news: they’re pretty much decided on Davie Cort?”

  “No.” Steve paused and I could feel my already wrenched nerves strrrrrreeetch another foot on the rack. “Um…have there been any more postcards?”

  “No.”

  Silence.

  I said, “But someone killed my neighbor’s dog and hung it on our deck.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ!”

  “You said it.” I glanced at Markowitz who was out on the deck using binoculars to check out the bikini-clad women far down the beach. A real security threat, those teeny little swimsuits.