Redirection

by Gregory Ashe

  “He seems sweet, but he’s not exactly hot. Those clothes. And his face, you know?”

  “Ok.”

  “He’s not in your league.”

  “Let’s not talk about Shaw.”

  The railroad bell was ringing steadily now. An eye of harsh yellow light rounded the tracks in the distance, headed toward them. Midges zoomed and swept in front of the Cayenne, battering the windows. That hospital smell of bleach and blood and death clung to North’s clothes. He buzzed down the window. The midges were in his hair, brushing his nose and mouth and eyes, but the syrupy heat was better. Even with the stink of exhaust and hot metal, better. He wanted out of these clothes. He thought maybe he’d burn these clothes.

  “I hate hospitals,” he said.

  “I’ve never spent much time in them, thank God. What’s the problem? Don’t tell me you faint when you see blood or needles or something like that.”

  “It’s the smell. My mom was sick; that’s what it makes me think of.”

  “Oh.” In a subdued voice, Will added, “Sorry.”

  North shook his head. He buzzed the window back up, but the midges were inside now, one of them droning by his ear. It competed with the train’s rumble along the tracks, the pseudoseismic feel of its approach, and the ring-ting-ding of the crossbuck’s bells.

  “You need to think about something else,” Will said, and he began unbuttoning his shirt. “That’s what you need: a distraction.”

  North stared at him. Will gave a crooked grin, with too much sex in it to be called boyish, as he shrugged out of the button-down and let it puddle against the seat behind him. Every inch of him was cut perfection: his pecs, his abs, the hint of his groin where the chinos rode low. The seat belt running between his pecs accentuated the stiff, dark brown nubs of his nipples. The patch of hair under the woven belt, right at the center of his chest, had obviously been groomed into that neat inverted triangle.

  “Touch me,” Will said, seizing North’s hand and bringing it to his chest. “Yeah. Like that.”

  “Dude,” North said. “What did you not understand?”

  “You’re playing hard to get. That’s hot.”

  “I’m not playing anything.”

  “And you’re loyal. God, do you know how hard it is to find a guy who won’t turn around and stick his dick in the next available hole?”

  “You know what? I’ll call an Uber.”

  Will undid his belt. He was still holding North’s hand.

  “You were really nice to me back at the hospital,” North said. “Don’t ruin it right now. I’ll jump out and call an Uber, no hard feelings.”

  “The good guys always play hard to get,” Will said, popping loose the button on his waistband. He shoved the chinos down one handed, hooking the elastic band of his briefs under his balls. Shaved balls. A nice dick, already hard. “Until they’re buried in my pussy. Then they tell me whatever they think I want to hear. They make all sorts of promises. And stupid me, I believe them.”

  “All right,” North said, breaking Will’s hold. “This is—”

  He stopped. Will was stretching back. The kid had abs for days. One hand was curled loosely around the shaft of his dick, his thumb spreading pre across the tip. Part of North’s brain registered that even though it was dark, they were still in public, and Will seemed to have zero inhibitions. But another part was focused on something else.

  “No scar,” North muttered.

  Will’s whole body tensed. Then he dropped down into the seat. He wiped his hand on his thigh. “What are you talking about?”

  North reached for the door. And then he thought about what would happen if he got out of the SUV: Will would run, and the prosecution would continue to focus on Tucker, and even though the case wouldn’t hold up for murder two, it probably would get him for voluntary manslaughter. He let out a shaky breath.

  “God damn it,” Will said, his tone easygoing as he threw his head back. It bounced off the seat. “How?”

  “Rik’s son, his real son, had an appendectomy.”

  “Jesus. I knew that. I did it all right, and a hot guy made me fuck up. Story of my life.”

  “Where is the real Will Slooves?”

  Will—not Will—shrugged.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “God, don’t be dramatic.” He drummed his fingers on the wheel, frowning at the brake lights. The train was still coming. The crossbuck jingled frenetically. “Are you sure you don’t want to mess around? Because I could still definitely get off.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Will Slooves.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. What’s your real name?”

  “As far as anybody knows, as far as anybody cares, I’m Will Slooves. I even got a driver’s license to prove it. Want to see?”

  “What’s your game here? I know you’re not Will Slooves. I saw the medical records, and you don’t have the scar, and you told me a few minutes ago you’d never spent much time in hospitals. But you found that box, and you found the birth certificate, didn’t you? You put those photographs of yourself as a kid in there. Easy. You had access to the house; you were living there. All you had to do was get some pictures of yourself and drop them in there for us to find.”

  “My mom has them in a Facebook album.”

  “Why didn’t you destroy the medical records?”

  “Backup. I thought one day I’d do up a fake scar and then push and push until you confronted me. I didn’t need to; those cops never had a second thought about who I was.”

  “All right. So who are you?”

  “I’m Will Slooves. I’m Will Slooves. He was my dad, and my dad is dead.” He sounded like he was testing out the phrases, trying to find the right delivery. “He was my dad. He was my dad.” Then he grinned and winked at North. “He definitely liked when I called him Daddy.”

  “You framed Tucker.”

  Will shrugged.

  “And you’ve been in town way longer than we thought.”

  He drummed his fingers on the wheel again. His gaze was unfocused. The train was a yellow eye sweeping along the tracks.

  “Why? Because you were jealous?”

  Muscles tightened in Will’s jaw.

  “Daddy got tired of your little-boy pussy? Daddy wanted a real man?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Or maybe Daddy’s little boy was getting too old. Maybe his pussy was all stretched out and—”

  Will spun and slapped North, a big, open-handed crack across the mouth. It split North’s lip, and he tasted blood.

  “Shut up. Shut up. He…he was always the one saying things. He was always the one making promises. He said he loved me. He said he was going to leave Jean for me. He said it all would have worked out the way we wanted, only he had to move here, and he didn’t want to ask me to move with him. So he didn’t ask me, and I came anyway. I was going to surprise him. And the first night, the first night, he was sticking it to an eighteen-year-old. I stood outside the door at that shitty motel, and I heard him say, ‘Tell Daddy how much you need his big dick.’” He let out a burst of empty laughter. “I found him the next day. We talked. He said he was done with me. That’s how he put it. ‘I’m done with you.’ Like I was a toy he didn’t want to play with anymore. I thought maybe if he knew who really cared about him, he’d realize what he was losing. I stuck around. I watched. Tucker, Tucker, Tucker. It was Tucker more often than not. I stood outside the motel again. I listened to them, all the ways they said I love you. So I made sure Tucker found him with his dick in that teenager. And then I tracked him down at a club. I said, ‘I still love you.’ And he tried to walk away from me. I grabbed him; I just wanted to talk. He punched me.” Will traced a spot on his cheek. “He told me to go home. And then, that night, I met that guy. The friend. And he told me Rik was getting a divorce. And he was so angry, wanted to hurt Rik so bad, and I gave him the video. I thought if somebody else sent it, he couldn�
�t trace it back to me. If it scared Rik and he called things off with Tucker, maybe he’d want me again. But part of me knew it was all a lie. I knew Rik was leaving Jean. He was going to be with Tucker. Tucker, Tucker, Tucker. And that wasn’t going to happen. That was not going to happen.”

  He was blank and still, a machine powered up but that had reached the end of its code. The rumble of the tracks matched the frantic thud of North’s heart.

  “So you made a plan,” North said quietly. “You already knew the motel Rik liked to use. You went to his house. You figured out where his spare key was hidden. Maybe Rik even told you. And you stole Jean’s flunitrazepam. That night, at Teddi’s party, you used the fob you’d stolen to break into the Beamer, and you swapped Tucker’s Viagra for the roofies. The pills must look similar.”

  “Close enough.” Will’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “He was drunk. The garage was dark.”

  “We couldn’t figure out how someone had doped him because you tricked him into doping himself. You followed him to the parking garage, and when he staggered off to the motel, you got into the BMW again. You swapped the Viagra back so no one would know what you’d done. You stashed those pictures of Rik under the seat. And you took a driver from the trunk. Then you walked to the motel and beat Rik to death.”

  Will nodded. His face was still blank. When he spoke, his voice sounded detached. “Mom had been hooked on those pills for years. He complained about it.” He blinked once, slowly. “The next morning, I woke up. I still had little droplets of dried blood on my face. His blood. I cried so hard. You’ll never believe how hard. You’ll never understand, nobody will ever understand, what that did to me. He loved me. My daddy loved me. And I’d done that to him. And then I realized I hadn’t done that to him. Tucker had done that to him. Tucker had found out about us, tried to keep us apart. And then Mom made herself sick, and I had to move into the house to take care of things. That’s what Dad wanted. He told me if anything ever happened to him, I was supposed to take care of Mom.”

  “Drop the act,” North said. “There’s no point now.”

  “I was home. I’d been gone for years, and I was home. They had their bedroom downstairs. I had my bed up in that little white room. Dad had loved me, but he’d been hard on me. He was hard on me because he loved me so much. When I struck out at my first Little League games, he made me practice two hours every night for a week. But he took me to the movies the next week, after I got a double, and he put his arm around my shoulder. He gave me the talk when I was thirteen. I remember my first wet dream, Daddy wrestling me. When I told him about it, he ran his hand over my wet sheets, and then he taught me how to touch myself so I could make it happen whenever I wanted.”

  “Jesus Christ.” North studied Will, trying to get a read, but his expression was still lifeless. Only his eyes were bright with whatever fantasy he had woven himself into. “What about the money that you put into Tucker’s account? Where’d you get that kind of cash?”

  Animation came back into Will’s face. He shook his head slightly, let out a juddery breath, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “What money?”

  “What about tonight? Why were you at the hospital? Why were you so worked up when they wouldn’t let you in to see Jean?”

  The only answer was the screech of the train along the tracks, the crossbuck’s mindless ringing, Drake.

  “Here’s what I think. I think you can put on the crazy show three times a day if you want, but I think it’s all about sex and money. I think you killed Rik because of the sex. And I think when Jean OD’d, you saw your chance at a lot of cash. What are the police going to find in Jean’s will? Did she leave it all to her beloved son, Will Slooves?”

  Will’s expression closed. His tongue came out to touch his lips. The dash threw a curve of light across his dark eyes.

  Metal squealed against metal as the train raced toward them, swallowing up the crossbuck and Drake and everything else.

  “Yeah,” North said. “That’s what I thought.”

  He was reaching for the door, unsure of his plan, when Will twisted the wheel and hit the gas. The Cayenne shot left, breaking out of the line of cars and cutting across the asphalt toward the train tracks. The force of the acceleration pinned North against the seat. Shock dulled his reactions. Will must have had the pedal to the floor, and the Cayenne had some serious pickup. They hit the track ballast at close to forty miles an hour.

  North had managed to grip the door handle, and he yanked on it now. Locked. He got the lock and yanked again. The door opened, but he was fighting the air pressing against the side of the car. The train was nothing but a trembling light about to swallow them up.

  The Cayenne was going close to fifty when it hit the first rail. The SUV juked right, doing a little hop, and Will yanked the wheel to steer them toward the tracks again. Instead, he tipped the Cayenne, and they rolled onto the tracks.

  For a moment, North was weightless. Then he crashed against the roof of the car, his neck taking his weight, pain lancing down his spine. The Cayenne was still rolling. The passenger door flew open. The force of the movement carried North out into the night. He hit ballast, then weeds and dirt. He felt like he was watching from miles away as the train collided with the Cayenne, and the SUV burst apart in a shower of metal and glass. North was vaguely aware that he himself was still moving. If a train is going toward St. Louis at sixty miles an hour, and a private dick is moving toward a utility pole at forty miles an hour. Then everything went black.

  Chapter 31

  NORTH MANAGED THE SECOND step up into the Aldrich home only because Shaw was supporting most of his weight. He gritted his teeth against a groan.

  “There,” Shaw said, stroking his arm. “Last step. You did so good.”

  So good in shawspeak apparently meant fucking awful, because the two steps up from the walk had left North with cold sweats and the shakes. He stood there a moment, leaning on his cane and letting Shaw hold him up, and tried not to puke. Or pee himself. Or both.

  The days in the hospital had been pleasant at first. Then less pleasant. Then fucking annoying. And it was only a broken leg and sprained shoulder. Oh, and a concussion. And all the cuts and bruises. And that piece of glass that had gone pretty deep in his back. But North had jumped at the earliest release possible, on the condition that he would spend several days recuperating at Shaw’s house. He was now thinking a few more days in the hospital wouldn’t have killed him.

  The Aldrich home was perfect and polished and quiet. The whisper of good air conditioning with the smell of sandalwood. The gleaming wood floors. The accent tables with their modern sculptures and textile art and folk carvings. The Cure was playing over the in-house sound system, which was a good sign that Shaw’s parents really were still on their trip. If Wilson and Phoebe had been home, they’d probably all be listening to somebody play a ukulele with a pick held in his asslips.

  “I moved the guest bed down to the main floor,” Shaw said, “but the only space big enough was the living room. We just have to make it down the hall. A little bit farther, and you can stretch out.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “I’ll bring down my dressing screen so that you have some privacy.”

  “Shaw, I am not going to lie around in my jockeys, scratching my balls, while your mom makes waffles.”

  “My mom doesn’t make waffles anymore because it’s a feminist imperative, but you actually do scratch your balls a lot, and I’ve been meaning to talk to you about a fungal cream—”

  “Stop talking.” Footsteps moved behind them, then a grunt and the sound of something hitting the floor. “And why the fuck is he here?”

  “Great question,” Jadon said under his breath. It was his day off, and he was wearing a tank and shorts. The tank said MUSCLE across the front, and it was doing a great job of showing off his chest and shoulders and hints of his wide, dark nipples. The shorts were barely long enough to get o
ut of ball country, which was annoying because Jadon had fucking perfect legs. Toeing the duffel bag he’d carried in from the car, he said more loudly, “Apparently I’m the valet. And you don’t have jockeys.”

  North narrowed his eyes.

  “Shaw spent last night at the hospital texting me a list of every piece of underwear you own.” Jadon shrugged. “No jockeys.”

  “What the actual fuck?”

  “Jadon offered to pack some clothes for you. He needed to know so he could plan.”

  “Actually, I didn’t need to know. I told him to stop texting me so I could sleep. Then he started sending pictures.”

  North’s face heated.

  “Do you really have the red ones with the little thing at the front that looks like a dragon? Or was that just a guy who looked like you?”

  “Jadon, give us a minute.”

  “Don’t go,” Shaw said. “He’s thinking about behaving badly.”

  “I’m not thinking about it. I’m going to murder you. Go fetch a stick, Jay. Keep yourself busy for the next ten minutes.”

  “You’re grumpy because you’re hurting and—”

  “I’m grumpy because you sent pictures of—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Someone.”

  “It’s a very good picture. Very flattering. And red is a strongly sexual color, which is so important because of your drooping daisy syndrome and—ow, ow, ow, Jadon, help!”

  “You know what?” Jadon said. “Watching him tear your balls off is actually better than therapy. I should just do this once a week.”

  Finally, when Shaw was good and squalling, North let him go. Shaw barely managed to hide his grin at the last moment, transforming it into an indignant glower. Jadon still wore a wry smile.

  “One of you dipshits help me up the stairs,” North said, hobbling forward on the cane.

  “The bed—”

  “For fuck’s sake, Shaw, I’m sleeping in your bed, with you, and if you don’t like it, then you can sleep behind a dressing screen in the living room while your parents have a key party with the Waldorfs.”