Spin Out

by James Buchanan

  “Chris?” Another level of color dropped out of the boy’s skin.

  “Yeah, he’s living down in Cedar City these days.” Let that thought hang heavy between us for a bit. “Had a talk with him about things.” I rocked back in my chair, crossed my arms over my chest and stared down the bridge of my nose at Cooper. My expression and my tone went grim. “Boy had a lot to say.”

  Cooper tried to put up a brave front and stare me down, but his eyes kept drifting back to the rifle. “Oh.”

  I’d snared him, now it was time to pull the noose tight. “Trey and I had a nice chat as well.”

  “About what?”

  “About Lane.” I took it slow. “About what Chris saw.” Gave my words time to sink in as I talked. “See I tracked Chris down just after Christmas and he told me all about the fight y’all had, and the rifle.” The trick to playing someone is to tell them what you know and imply that you know a heck of a lot more than those little bits. “How you tossed it out the window and where.” Then sometimes, you had to throw in a bit of fibbing. “Trey, well, he’s saying a lot of things, about you, how it was all your idea and everything. I’m fair certain he’s gonna lay it all on you, but I know…” Actually, I figured that weren’t a lie. Trey came across as the type of fellow who’d throw a friend under the bus if it saved his own skin. “I know you ain’t that kinda man.” Figured also that Cooper knew that about Trey as well. I offered him his way out, “So why don’t you tell me your side of the story. You ain’t the sorta fella who would decide to leave his friend’s body up out there for the coyotes and crows and not feel bad about it all.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sounded like he knew all about what I was talking about.

  “Let me start it out for you.” I leaned in and folded my hands on the table. “You all found Austin up there. See, I talked to him too. Austin I mean.” Now I gave him his second out. “And things, well, they just got out of control, didn’t they?”

  Cooper sagged into himself. “Yeah.”

  “So why don’t you tell me what happened.” I smiled, all friendly like. “Give me your story so I know your side of things.”

  “Shit.” Cooper propped his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. “Damn, it all just went wrong.”

  I prodded. “What went wrong?”

  “Everything.” That came out all mumbled through his fingers. “Nobody meant to do nothing.”

  “I understand that.” Gave him a little sympathy so’s to keep Cooper talking.

  Now Cooper rocked back, stared up at the ceiling and huffed out, “Trey got pissed. He got like he does.” A world of loss blew across his face. “Like my dad does when he’s all wound up. We didn’t mean to do nothing. I didn’t do nothing.”

  I leaned in. Spoke soft. “What’d you not mean to do, Cooper?”

  “None of it.”

  Hated repeating myself. “So what happened up there?” Somehow I had to pull what I needed out of Cooper.

  “It was all just a mess.” The boy darn near sobbed it out. “Nobody meant for nothing to happen.” He spent a fair moment just rubbing his face with his palms, then he dropped his hands and maintained, “It just went all wrong.”

  “What went wrong?” I tried to keep the frustration out of my tone.

  “Everything.” I gave it maybe a minute before Cooper completely broke down. “All of it.”

  I don’t know how many more rounds of that we finally played. By the time I gave it up, Cooper was crying and I was ready to beat his head against the table. I mean, I didn’t show it, but even my patience only had so much give. And this loop Cooper’d gotten himself on, well I think we both needed a break so he could step back from it a moment. It’s just one of those senses you develop as an officer. Some folks you have to push right up, so that they’re looking at that thousand foot drop before they’ll come clean. Others, like Trey, well they’re willing to risk the fall ‘cause they think it’s like a painting on some cartoon, an illusion of sorts. And then there’s guys like Cooper who fall apart at the mention of the cliff and they ain’t even nowhere near it. Someone like that, you got to give them a bit of space to process it all.

  I gathered up my stuff and the rifle and told Cooper I’d send in a pop and some chips or something in a bit. Then I got myself on out of that room. Shut the door behind me and leaned on it. Sheriff Simple, Jess and Kabe all looked up from the monitor. I don’t know as I’d have let my boy stay, but since it hadn’t been my call, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over the decision.

  “Please, Heavenly Father,” I sent up a short prayer as I pushed away from the wall and took the couple steps over to the viewing console, “make that idjit come to his senses so I don’t have to go through more of that.” I dropped the file on the desktop before I pulled the evidence tag off the lever on the rifle.

  Jess picked up the file and used it to point towards our section of the building. I nodded a yes to his unspoken offer to file it back in the cabinet for me. Jess headed out. Probably had a hundred things to do that this little party sidetracked him off of.

  “That’s it?” Kabe used his heels to roll his chair back. “You’re not going to, like, get him to confess?”

  “No, boy.” I grinned as I started to tuck T’s rifle back in its case. “It ain’t like TV. Even when they confess, most guys don’t come out and say ‘I shot him,’ or nothing like that.” Be nice if they did. Once in a while you got someone either so guilty or so drunk they’d spill like that…but not most folks. “They give you enough to know they’re guilty, but most can’t admit what they done to you, heck, most can’t admit it to themselves.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Well.” My boss answered that question. “We got enough to hold them for a while.” He set about making sure the recording had taken and then buttoned up the console. “Let’s see what a night in county lockup does.”

  I liked the idea. “Put ‘em through booking and get ‘em some stripes.”

  “Stripes?” Kabe looked at me all funny.

  “Black and white.” Some places went for orange or blue jumpsuits. A lot of jails in Utah, like Garfield County, wanted to remind the inmates they weren’t wearing hospital scrubs. “Just like the old movies.”

  My boss finished up with the computers. He swung his chair out, rocked back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Shall we take ‘em on the long walk?” He had a snake-bite grin on his face as he asked.

  It was Sheriff Simple’s turn to get one of Kabe’s confused as all get out looks. “What?”

  He laughed. “We walk ‘em down the tier and let them get a taste of what’s going to happen.”

  “Look, see, there’s two ways to get to booking.” I pointed off in the direction of the of the Garfield Sheriff’s office. “We go through that door, across the lobby and past dispatch to this long hall that ends at booking.” Then I swung my arm off to indicate where the rows of cells sat just beyond a thick, concrete wall. “Or, we go out that door, through sets of security doors with the jail guys opening each door for us with their keys. And then we walk past all the cells and through another set of doors, across the yard and into the back end of booking.” I knew that Kabe, having been in prison, would understand the whole emotional impact we wanted from that journey. Although, we didn’t give everyone that treatment. “You come in on a DUI, you get the shortcut. These boys, we want them to see, hear and smell where they’re going to spend the night before we give them their stripes.”

  Sheriff Simple jumped in again. “The guys we have here on contract, they ain’t hard, but they’re gonna have their fun with two young’uns coming in. Cat-calls, threats and the like. They don’t get much fun. And they like to have their jokes.”

  “Probably hole one of them up with Karl, maybe put Cooper in with him.” I shrugged. “‘Cause Karl will tell him what he’s seen and been through.” For someone as edgy as Cooper, Karl might just get what I couldn’t. “Man’s seventy-somet
hing now, half blind, mostly deaf, couldn’t hurt a flea if he tried, but he’s a lifer. He’s a trustee, maintains the outside grounds for us.” I kinda needed Kabe to know I wasn’t throwing Cooper to the sharks. “State sent him here to keep him from being abused.” Karl, under the supervision of the greenest corrections officer we had, kept the grass mowed and the flowers around the entrance nice come summer. “He will fill that boy’s head with things most folks just don’t want to know about.” All sorts of things I kinda knew Kabe seen firsthand. Not that he’d told me, but my boy tended to talk in his sleep. “Scare Cooper through and through and maybe he’ll give it up in the morning.” I looked at the room holding my other suspect. “Trey, I think, we’ll just put him alone with his thoughts.”

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Chapter 22

  Kabe’d come over for dinner. I don’t right remember exactly how we arranged that’d he’d come on back to my place once he and T took the rifle home—I knew it happened when I asked him to bring it by that morning. As for the why, he’d said something about needing to talk and I’d jumped on it.

  I’d shoved the chicken that we hadn’t had for Christmas—rubbed with spice and an onion, apple and celery jammed inside—in the crock-pot that morning. That and succotash thrown together from things in the freezer and cans in the pantry made up our meal. We didn’t hardly say nothing as we ate.

  But then, as I filled up the sink to soak the dishes, Kabe hit me with, “Why the fuck would you have sex with me if you knew it could cost you your job?” Okay, so it was going to be both guns a blazing. “What the fuck was going through your mind?”

  Wiping my hands on a towel, I turned around to face him. “I don’t know.” It was all I had to offer. ‘Course the fact that he’d started with that question…well, I guess it spoke a lot to the problems we had.

  First, he glared, then he spat. “You had to know something!” He leaned against the edge of the breakfast bar and stared, hard.

  I thought about it. Then I thought about it just a might longer. Finally, I heaved up a sigh. “I was lonely.”

  Kabe looked at me like I’d done lost my mind. “Lonely?”

  “Don’t make it sound so stupid.” Tossed the rag back onto the counter without looking. “I don’t mean like I just don’t got no one to hang out with.” I stepped up and rested my weight on my knuckles propped on the kitchen table. “I’m talking deep down, why am I bothering to get up every day? lonely.” Hoped he understood, ‘cause I had to rush it out just to get past that thought. “I’d come home from work and I got my house and its empty.” I swung my arm out to indicate the space. “This big hollow shell.”

  “That’s worth losing your job over?” He rolled his eyes. “Seriously?”

  Okay, so he didn’t get it. Growing up where he did, San Francisco and the heart, if not soul, of the gay world, I could see it. “Do you know how empty, empty it is?” I had to remind him that those of us between coasts often lived different lives. “I mean, I’ve been living here since I was little and there ain’t nobody here I can really talk to.” I stood, stuffed my hands in my back pockets and heaved up another deep breath. “About me. The only one who ever figured any of it was Fred.” Lord knew I’d never spoken a word to Fred about my predilections. “Not like I ever talked to him about nothing, he just guessed about me. But it’s like I was all alone on this island surrounded by folks I just couldn’t talk to. The closest real friend I got is seven hundred miles west of here.”

  “And that,” Kabe slid his glare to study the grain in the logs making up the exterior wall. “That’s supposed to make you being a jackass okay? Hiding big shit like losing your fucking job from me?”

  “No. You’re right, doesn’t make it right.” It didn’t mean I’d done right. It did mean I had to explain. “See, look, you don’t know how black it got.” I stepped up next to him. Didn’t touch him, but my voice dropped low. “I’d get so, I don’t know, but I’d get to a point where I’d head into Vegas, maybe meet up with Dev and go hunting tail.” I’d never, ever told nobody what I was telling him. “It felt so desperate. I’d come home and well, while I didn’t have blue balls anymore, I probably felt worse than when I left.” Black times then. I’d kept at it, because that’s all I’d ever hoped to have.

  “Oh, come on.” Kabe rolled his eyes and tossed his head. “It’s not special…” He whined that last bit out, like he was taunting me about being too emotional.

  “No.” I corrected. “I cain’t say I’m one that feels I have to have some connection to every guy I do.” I didn’t. I mean, I wanted someone special, but I’d never figured to find him. “Still, year, after year of half the time hardly remembering whether the last buck’s name was Craig or John.” Sometimes the sex made it worse rather than better.

  I started pacing. Maybe my feet might keep pace with my thoughts. “Only thing that kept me from going over was prayer.” And, Lord knows, I’d prayed three, four times a day about it. I spun and stared at him. “Then I’d get back on the beat and pull a buckload of overtime. I volunteered for every type of special training I could think of.” Gave him a little shrug. I felt helpless trying to put it in words so’d he’d understand. “Figured if I didn’t have nothing at home, well at least I had the department and could treat all the people ‘round here as family.” Still, that weren’t the half of it. Real quiet, I added, “I’d get to where I’d feel I just couldn’t go on no more.’

  That unwound all the attitude out of Kabe’s body. More sincere then I think I’d ever heard him, he asked, “What do you mean, ‘couldn’t go on?’” The boy’s voice was darn near a whisper.

  I kinda snaked my hand out to slide it along his leg. “It was like I was standing at the bottom of this big well and I couldn’t even see the sun or any little bit of light.” Wanted, no needed, to touch someone when I dredged this all up. “Honestly, it’s why Dev’s like my big brother or something.” When Kabe didn’t pull away, I leaned into him and nuzzled into his neck. “‘Cause when I’d get that low somehow he’d pop up and have some cockamamie reason to drag me off somewhere.” Almost dime-on, Dev would hound me on the phone or online and get me pulling junk outta my closet. “Pretty much, one of the few people that kept me sane.” Dredged up a big ol’ huff of breath. “But, you know, he’s got his own life, job and family…in and out of boyfriends like some guys change shirts. So it weren’t like I could count on him to always be there.”

  Kabe twisted and mumbled, “Shit,” as he tucked his hands in my back pockets.

  Now that I’d started, I couldn’t quite stop. “Look, you go out to that scene that’s okay—for what it is. No way, no how would I ever get involved with anyone I met like that.” The words had been locked inside me for so long they bubbled up like hornets out of a knocked down nest. “The real life stuff, Lord, I cain’t claim to have been exposed to the best parts of that. Show up to some bar or bathhouse in Vegas. Sometimes with Dev, lot more times on my own.” I wrapped my arms around him and held on like a gale was about to blow through. “Do a few quickies, but they ain’t guys I’m interested in for more than just, well, sticking my dick somewhere. No place to even start to get to know someone. At least not for me.”

  All gentle, he asked, “I was different?”

  “Well, there you were,” I shrugged, the gesture lost in how close I was to his body, “you up here and not me down there. I mean, when I first saw you, I was hot for you. But that I stuck in my pocket.” I had. Getting with him just seemed too risky on a hundred different levels. “Two months I lusted from a far and didn’t do no more than have you in my dreams. I never figured to do more than that. Not then, not ever. Just figured I couldn’t risk it and it weren’t worth it no how. If I wanted my pecker sucked, there were a lot less risky places to do it.”

  When I fell silent for a bit, Kabe prodded, “What changed?”

  I knew—exactly—the moment I fell for him. “When we’re up on the mountain getting ready to go down for that woman�
��s body, you remember, you smiled at me.” It was like the sun had touched the earth and been born in his body. “That’s when I think I really lost my reason.”

  “Because I smiled?” Kabe just sounded confused at that. “That made it all worth it—risking getting kicked off the force?”

  “Because,” I tried to tame that whole whirlwind into a sentence, “when you smiled at me right then, I saw something.” I’d seen more than just something, I’d seen a possibility of everything. “See, there’s this light I feel inside of me whenever I look at taking on a mountain and pitting my soul against the rock. It’s like a passion, like I sometimes get for you.” Rubbed my face against his and just breathe in his smell. “And that light, that I feel down in here,” I pushed my fingers against his sternum, “there it was, all up in your face. And I’m thinking, he understands.” Oh, Lord, did he ever. “He feels the same thing I feel. When we went back up on the mountain the next day, I really wasn’t planning anything other than to actually go find that camera, but also just kinda be with you.”

  I’d been playing with fire, I’d known it, but I hadn’t figured on getting burned by it. “By the end of the day…” How to put it in words so’s he’d understand? “See there was this ache inside me and it had been there so long that I didn’t even really notice it anymore, until the moment it wasn’t there.” It’d been like someone unfroze my chest and my heart finally started beating. “I’m sitting with you, not doing much of anything at all except talking and being out under the sky and I realized I liked you. I could be your friend. And then a part of my mind starts thinking on, well he’s gay and he seems to like me and I could actually be together with someone.”

  I don’t think Kabe could quite handle all that at one go. His voice got a little loud and he snapped my arm with his fingers. “So it was just the sex.”

  “No.” Hadn’t been at all. “Not just about bumping uglies. I’m thinking things like I’m going to have to take you down the Navajo Trail to see Wall Street Canyon ‘cause you’d think it was just as awesome as I did. One reason that, no matter how hard she tried, Jesse Dane never had any chance with me—”