Restoration 01 - Getting It Right

by A. M. Arthur

  After a deep inhale and a long, slow exhale, Nathan said, “I was still mad about what happened on the parking garage roof. Pissed off and hurt that you rejected me when I’d admitted something so intensely private, and this isn’t me blaming you. It’s how I felt.” He picked at nonexistent lint on his trousers. “When I was info-gathering for the Spokes case I got to talking to a pro named Wily. He was smart and not just street-smart. He didn’t buy that I was a friend trying to track Spokes down. I didn’t admit to being a cop, but he knew I wasn’t like him. We bullshitted for a while. He was nice, good-looking. Clean.”

  James didn’t like where this was going but he had no power to alter their course.

  “Wily asked why I looked so sad, and I told him I got rejected by a guy I’d loved, mostly subconsciously, for a long time. The truth. Wily said the guy was a fool and offered me a free blow job to cheer me up.”

  He needed to hear Nathan say it. “And?”

  “And I said yes. I don’t know if I did it to punish you, or to prove something to myself, but Wily put a condom on me and blew me in the alley behind the 7-Eleven.” Nathan spoke so plainly, as though he was reading the ingredients on a cereal box. No emotion. Not regret or shame. Not even pride. Nothing.

  No hint as to how James was supposed to feel about this, because his own emotions were failing him. Numbness crept in around the edges. He’d pushed Nathan away that night. He had no right to get mad about Nathan finding comfort elsewhere. James had had more sex partners than he could count. He couldn’t be jealous over one guy sucking Nathan’s dick.

  Oh yes I can.

  “A fucking hooker, Nate?”

  Nathan flinched, the first real sign of regret creeping into his eyes. “I never gave him money, and he didn’t ask for any. It was just something between…acquaintances.”

  “Acquaintances shake hands, they don’t suck each other off.”

  “So you got to be best buddies with all the guys you’ve fucked over the years?”

  “That’s not the same.”

  “Sure it is. You weren’t the first guy to suck my dick. Sorry, James, but you gave up that right when you pushed me away.”

  “I’ve explained that!”

  Nathan slapped his open palm against the dash. “I’m not telling you this to pick a fucking fight, okay? I tried not to think about it at all until recently.”

  “Why? What changed?”

  “Besides us?” Nathan didn’t hide his sneer. “How about I found out that Wily was the third victim of our serial killer? The case I’ve been working since I got back.”

  A flare of sympathy dimmed some of James’s outrage—but not all of it. “That sucks, Nate. Did you tell anyone else about your connection?”

  “Hell no. There is no connection. Wily died weeks later in a different part of town. Look, he’s been on my mind ever since I found out he was dead, and I wanted you to know this. I don’t want to keep secrets from you. Of all people, James, I need to be honest with you.”

  James couldn’t fault Nathan the way he wanted to. Nathan had only been back a little over a month, and that wasn’t enough time to expect him to unpack every little thing he’d kept to himself. James had imagined this secret to be so much worse than a consensual blow job, and he was fucking relieved it was so small.

  Relatively speaking.

  It was big for James, who’d been proud of being the only guy for Nathan. The only guy he’d been with. And now that wasn’t entirely true anymore.

  “You know,” Nathan said, “I honestly can’t tell if you’re mad at me or not, and that’s not normal. So are you mad, or what?”

  “I don’t know what I think right now.” And that was the truth. After his dramatic showdown with his mother, he didn’t have the strength to fight with Nathan. He wanted a drink, and then sleep. Definitely sleep.

  The drink was a bad idea, but he still fucking wanted one.

  “You’re still not coming inside, are you?” Nathan asked.

  “No.” James didn’t have to think about his answer. More than ever, he needed to be alone for a while. “I’m sorry, but no.”

  “Right. Call me later, okay? Or tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ll call, I promise.”

  Nathan took his time getting out of the vehicle. Prolonging the goodbye or searching for some other argument to keep James there, he had no idea. James wouldn’t stay. He needed to think, plain and simple.

  I need a drink.

  He couldn’t have one if Nathan was around playing his conscience.

  Nathan didn’t say anything else. He tossed a sad smile James’s way, then shut the door.

  James watched, his heart beating too hard, too fast, as Nathan walked up the short path to his side of the duplex. In only a moment, the front door swallowed him up.

  I should go in with him.

  “Fuck it.”

  Quarter to eight on a Sunday. James did a three-point turn on the quiet street and headed to a nearby liquor store that stayed open until eight o’clock. Moving on some part of his lizard brain that wanted this to happen, James was in and out of the store right before it closed down for the evening.

  He drove back to his apartment building on autopilot. Parked. Then he sat in his idling vehicle with the brown paper bag on the passenger seat, while his thoughts tumbled around in his head.

  Nathan had let a hooker suck him off.

  His mother was delusional and he’d basically cut her out of his life.

  He was an alcoholic and he’d just bought a bottle of Bushmills.

  He craved that burn.

  It terrified him too.

  James tugged his phone from his pocket and dialed. Two rings and it switched over to voice mail.

  He hung up.

  “Fuck this.”

  He tucked the bottle under his arm and headed for the stairs. If Wally called him back before he got to his apartment, fine. If not? He had a date with his Irish whiskey, sobriety be damned.

  Five steps from his door, an unfamiliar voice called out, “Excuse me?”

  James paused, annoyed at the interruption. A young man he didn’t know was walking toward him, hands tucked into the pockets of his loose jeans. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, sorry to bug you, but I’m down the hall and I locked myself out. Do you happen to have the super’s number?”

  Idiot.

  “Sure, somewhere inside,” James said. “Give me a second, okay? I just got home.”

  “Of course, no rush. I appreciate it.”

  James unlocked his door, aware of the young man hovering nearby, watching him with an unguarded smile. As though he had a secret he couldn’t wait to share. It prickled at James’s sense of wrong. The neighbor didn’t try to come inside, though. He lingered in the doorway while James rifled in a drawer for the information he’d tucked there when he first moved in.

  His phone rang during the search. Wally calling him back. James silenced the call. He didn’t need to vent about the whiskey purchase with his neighbor standing right there.

  “I like your place,” the stranger said.

  “Thanks.” James found the sheet of paper he needed.

  “Drinking alone tonight?”

  He’d come a few steps inside, and that ticked James off. He hadn’t been invited.

  “That’s the plan,” James said. “What did you say your name was again?”

  His neighbor grinned, and something in that wicked smile made James’s insides wobble.

  “I didn’t, Dr. Taggert.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Nate paced his living room like a caged lion, angry and unable to breach the walls around him.

  Stuck in a situation he hated and didn’t have a clue as to fixing it. The night hadn’t gone anywhere close to how he’d expected and fessing up to the blow job while sitting outside had not been the plan at all. He’d wanted to do it inside so he could explain properly.

  Instead he’d blurted it all out like a teenager who’d been c
aught with his hand in another kid’s pants.

  James Taggert was the most important person his life, but goddamn he could also be the most irritating.

  Stubborn, stubborn fool.

  The only positive side to the night had been James’s refusal to be reeled in by his mother’s drama. Walking away from someone you loved who was obviously hurting was never an easy task. Walking away from a parent had to be excruciating.

  And then James had gone and walked away from Nate.

  Again.

  Circumstances were far different from that night five months ago when James had let Nate walk away from him, but the feelings were the same. Anger. Embarrassment. Confusion.

  He’d told James something intensely private— again—only to be rebuffed.

  Again!

  Both of them were good at their respective jobs, but when it came to communicating with each other? They fucking sucked at it.

  Nate’s answer last time had been to throw himself into his work. Tonight he didn’t have an active caseload, and he wouldn’t have gone out alone anyway. He’d learned his lesson. But he needed something to do other than prowl around his own house and hope he managed a few hours of sleep.

  “Why the fuck? You aren’t him.”

  Nate stumbled over the edge of the area rug and caught himself on the arm of the couch.

  Phantom pain spread from his neck to the top of his head. The damp, oily smell of the street choked him. More pain in his arms and legs. His ribs were on fire.

  “Why the fuck? You aren’t him.”

  Footsteps and gravel and being dragged and the cold, hard van floor.

  Another snap of agony from that first blow to his head.

  “Stop it!”

  The memories drifted away like a spring fog, leaving Nate shaking and nauseated, huddled on the floor against the side of the sofa. The voice was unfamiliar, gravelly like a hoarse whisper. It had come between that first disorienting sniff of chloroform and being shoved headfirst into a car. During the initial struggle. A small bit of memory he’d lost to the trauma of the attack.

  The guy who attacked me didn’t want me. He wanted someone else.

  It was the only thing that explained the words. Nate hadn’t been the target that night.

  So why beat the shit out of me?

  He hadn’t seen a face, and the voice had been distorted. Nate had been on the street, hanging with other hookers, dressed like one.

  “Shit, dude, we could pass as brothers. Throw that line at the johns. They’d pay extra to fuck brothers.” Wily. Joking about how they’d looked so similar. The short black hair. Tan complexion. Similar height and build.

  “He was after Wily,” Nate told the living room. “He fucked up and got me instead, and then he killed Wily later.”

  But the attacker hadn’t killed Nate, only brutalized him.

  I might have died if I hadn’t been spotted in that alley. I’d have died, but I wouldn’t have been raped and stabbed in the ear like those other boys.

  “Fuck me sideways.” Nate tried to stand, but the room swayed so he stayed put. His case was related to the serial case. He’d been a mistake, he was positive of it. Serial killers lived for their patterns. This killer had broken his pattern because he’d grabbed the wrong victim. He hadn’t wanted Nate’s case to muck up the pattern he began with Spokes, and then went on to establish with Kincaid, Wily and Tate.

  Almost nine o’clock. Did he wait and go see Danvers first thing? Call him now and throw the theory at him to see if it stuck? Run the whole thing by Carey first?

  God, I wish Jay was here so I could talk this out with him.

  As though conjured by his thoughts, his phone buzzed with a text. Nate nearly dropped the thing twice before managing to check the message.

  James: Need you baby please. Please come.

  Nate’s heart twisted. James was drinking again, he had to be, the asshole. Nate wanted to ignore the message but he cared too much to leave James at the mercy of his own demons.

  Nathan: Are you home?

  James: Yes.

  Nathan: On my way. Stay put. Don’t do anything stupid.

  No reply.

  Nate called, but James didn’t pick up. So much for his case breakthrough. Time to go babysit his drunk boyfriend.

  He knocked and rang the bell when he arrived at James’s apartment. “It’s me, open up.”

  Pounding on James’s door was getting really old. Nate tested the knob. It turned easily.

  The dead bolt wasn’t fastened, so the door opened with no fuss.

  “Jay?”

  He found James sitting in the middle of the sofa, skinned down to his boxers, arms and legs akimbo, an open bottle of Bushmills on the coffee table next to a double old-fashioned glass.

  The closer he got, the harder Nate’s heart pounded. The bottle was nearly two-thirds empty, and James had the glassy-eyed, sallow-skinned appearance of someone who was about six drinks past the stopping point.

  “Christ, what did you do to yourself?” He had to get James’s head over the toilet and vomiting up some of that liquor before he passed out completely.

  A distinct clack and snap of the dead bolt jolted surprise up Nate’s spine. He turned, hand instinctively going to his hip for a weapon he hadn’t carried in months. The figure standing by the door couldn’t have shocked him more if it had been Wily’s ghost himself.

  “Grant? What the hell are you doing here?”

  Grant Pfieffer grinned lazily as he raised a .38 and aimed it at Nate’s chest. “Waiting for you, of course.”

  Nate clamped down hard on the icy fear trying to wrap around his guts. He didn’t know what was going on, or why a fellow officer who’d just gotten off two weeks of undercover work was in his boyfriend’s apartment. He glanced at James, who was so out of it he didn’t seem to know anyone was there, much less had a gun.

  “If you wanted to chat, you could have called,” Nate said.

  Pfieffer chuckled. “This requires a more personal touch. I’m tying up some loose ends before I leave town.”

  The truth of the situation smacked Nate upside the head. Dread coiled inside him and made it difficult to breathe. “You killed those men.”

  The sly grin was as good as a yes. “You are a very good investigator, Detective Wolf, I’ll give you that. Normally I can manage more kills before I have to move on, so bravo. Head of the class, I assume?”

  More kills. “You’ve done this before?”

  “Sure I have. In case you hadn’t guessed, my name isn’t Grant Pfieffer and I’m not twenty-two. It’s amazing what you can do with a little computer know-how. New identity, clean record. Watching the game from the inside is a fantastic high.”

  The killer had been under their collective noses the entire time, laughing at them.

  Taunting them. Hell, they’d put the killer under-fucking-cover to catch himself. The truths kept punching Nate in the gut and he pulled out another one, because he had to know.

  “You’re the one who attacked me,” Nate said.

  Pfieffer shrugged. “That was unfortunate, but it’s what you get when you dress up like a hooker. You were a mistake, and I made another mistake by not making sure you were dead before I left you.” He had the gall to laugh. “You’re so much prettier now.”

  Nate resisted the urge to fly at the guy. He didn’t want to hear explanations or know how his twisted mind worked, but he needed time. Time to distract him and get a weapon. The table lamp base was nice and heavy. “Why did you kill them?”

  “Why not?”

  He couldn’t hold back a disgusted grunt.

  Pfieffer moved a few feet closer, the gun never wavering. “Bad answer? Have you ever killed someone, Detective?”

  “No.”

  “You should. There’s no greater high than holding someone’s life in your hands. That moment when they wake up from the chloroform and realize you’re inside them. The fear. The fight. The greatest orgasms I’ve ever had are the ones that oc
cur in the moment of death. When that file slides home and the body clenches up tight with the shock. It’s stupendous. Who wouldn’t kill for that?”

  He’s insane. This is insane.

  Nate considered trying to get at his phone, but the moment his hands disappeared from sight Pfieffer would notice. He was crazy, not stupid. Pfieffer had come here with a plan.

  “So what now? You could have gone to my place and murdered me. Why here?”

  “I could have, but there’s no artistry in that. I don’t want your death tied to my pretty young men.” Pfieffer circled the living room so he was standing on the opposite end of the couch, with James and the coffee table between them.

  James’s breathing was shallower, his skin impossibly pale. Alcohol poisoning. He needed a hospital.

  “If you want to kill me then do it, but James needs a doctor,” Nate said.

  “Oh, I know we overdid it a bit, but I needed him docile. He’ll live long enough to get this done.”

  Overdid it. Hatred boiled in Nate’s blood. “You forced him to drink all that?”

  “Forced is such a harsh worse. I encouraged him.”

  “With your gun?”

  Pfieffer smiled. “Now, now, I’m not foolish enough to bring my own gun here. This is your gun.”

  “My gun is in Danvers’s office.”

  “Your service piece is, yes, but not the backup gun you bought and have kept stashed in your locker all these months, just waiting for you to return to active duty.”

  Shit. Nate hadn’t checked on that gun in a couple of days. The gun in Pfieffer’s hand looked very much like the Smith & Wesson he’d used as a backup piece for the past six years.

  He could still be bluffing. The man was obviously a born actor.

  “What do you want?” Nate asked.

  “We’re going to create a scene that, to any good detective, will look like a lover’s quarrel gone wrong. Is it true that Dr. Taggert there is an alcoholic? I bet the fact that he came home tonight with the whiskey pisses you off.”

  Nate wasn’t taking the bait. “He was doing well until you put a gun to his head and forced him to drink.”