by Kris Ripper
“I can tell when something is wrong, and I’m looking at it right now.”
I sighed and set down my bag at my feet. “Nothing’s wrong, really. There’s some stuff going on, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with me, I swear.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It doesn’t! Also, I, uh, I’m kind of seeing someone.”
“Seeing someone!” She sat back, folding her hands over the book in her lap. Spanish romance novels, always Spanish romance novels. “Go on, mija, tell me everything.”
After all these years, Abuela doesn’t really expect me to date a man, but I still feel like I’m letting her down a little every time I have a girlfriend.
“Her name is Alisha.”
“Alicia,” she said, pronouncing it as she would in Spanish.
“Alisha,” I corrected. “English spelling. And she’s—she’s really great. She wants to go on adventures and travel everywhere. And she’s spontaneous and a little bit wild and she’s not afraid of anything, Abuelita, you know?”
“Yes, very much. She’s a good girl, this Alisha?” This time she said it carefully, tripping a little on the slurred “sh” in the middle.
“She’s fantastic. We have so much fun together.”
“And she makes you smile, mija, I can tell.” She patted my cheek. “Where did you meet?”
“I have no idea. We’ve always sort of moved in similar circles, but we’ve never really talked until recently. Then, I don’t know, one night we kind of hit it off.”
Abuela nodded seriously. “That is sometimes how it happens. Your abuelo had been my neighbor for many years before we married, and we were very lucky. One day, after we had been married, we realized we liked each other very much.”
“After you’d been married?”
“It wasn’t as bad as you make it sound. We ‘got along well,’ as your mother would say.” Whenever Abuela pronounced the English words Mom insisted on, she did it with a little sneer. “But then we found things to like, even love, when we looked at each other. It was very precious, mija.”
I can’t imagine getting married for family reasons. Abuela always says it isn’t as if she and my grandfather’s marriage was arranged, exactly; both of them knew they’d have to marry someone, so they opted to choose each other before the decision was taken out of their hands. I used to think about that, when I was younger. What it must have been like, fifteen years old, conspiring to marry a friendly neighbor just because you had to marry someone.
“Tell me more about this Alisha.” Abuela touched my hand. “And get us some of those disgusting cookies tu papá eats.”
“Oreos coming right up.” I got the package down from the cabinet. “I’ll tell you more about Alisha, but you have to catch me up on the ladies.”
“Oh, the ladies! You won’t believe it. This young man Dotty is seeing? Asked her to marry him!” Abuela threw her head back and laughed. “I wish I had seen her face, chiquita!”
“Me too.”
We ate cookies and talked a fair amount of smack about the ladies. I told Abuela more about Alisha’s travel plans, and she held my hand as I talked, and told me that she couldn’t wait to see the pictures.
I almost clarified that Alisha’s plans were for solo trips, not couple trips, but then I figured there wasn’t much of a point. It didn’t hurt anyone if Abuela imagined me and my girlfriend off traveling the world having adventures, right? And actually, that was a pretty cool thought, if I disregarded things like keeping my job. For a second I let myself picture that, packing my bags, boarding a plane, sitting beside Alisha with her guidebooks out.
Stepping out onto a street in some faraway place with no idea what came next.
Obviously it couldn’t really happen, but even thinking about it made me a little bit giddy.
After I kissed her cheek and said good-bye, I picked up burritos and brought them to Alisha’s, where she told me all about her next fantasy trip.
As far as I was aware, nothing much was happening with the case. Togg’s updates mostly covered the same territory on repeat, and Detective Green hadn’t contacted me again, so I had no new information to go off. As expected, the Costellos didn’t return my call. I figured I’d head to Club Fred’s with Alisha on Friday and I’d ask around, see if anyone else had talked to Steven Costello the night he died.
On Wednesday we were hanging out in my room, about to decamp for her place, when she brought up going to knitting group. I hadn’t gone since Honey died, and hadn’t planned to go back again, at least until it hurt less.
I blinked. “But do you know how to knit?”
She shrugged. “You could teach me.”
“I . . . guess I could.” I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to walk into the yarn shop and not see Honey there. “I don’t know. You wouldn’t rather stay home?” I waggled my eyebrows at Alisha, hoping she wouldn’t realize I was trying to distract her.
Fat chance. Her eyes narrowed on me, and all that focus I loved when we were in bed, or dancing, or even talking, now felt like a weapon.
I looked away.
“Why don’t you want to go to knitting? I’ve seen your yarns”—she gestured toward my stash—“and that bag with your socks, or scarf, or whatever it is.”
“Hat.”
“You don’t want to finish it?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to finish it. It’s like . . . I don’t know.”
“Babe. Come on.” She grabbed my hands and pulled me until I was sitting next to her on the bed. “I miss Honey too. I didn’t know her as well as you did, but I still can’t believe she’s dead.”
God, there was no hiding from she’s dead. I gnawed on my lip for a minute. “She invited me to knitting, you know? She taught me how. And I didn’t really care about knitting, but Honey was sort of like . . . a mentor to me. I’d watch her move, and listen to her voice, and sort of . . . build myself. I’d think, Honey crosses her legs like this, maybe I’ll try it this other way. Almost like we were . . . inverses. Even though that’s not true. It was a kind of tool I used, when I was trying to figure out who I was.”
Alisha brought my hand to her lips and kissed it. “I can’t imagine losing someone like that.”
“I feel like I should have appreciated her more. Thanked her. I don’t know.”
“I’m sure she knew how you felt, Ed.”
“I’m sure she didn’t. I don’t think Honey had anyone like her when she was younger.” Which made me even sadder. “It was such a long fucking time ago. And it kind of sucks to be trans now. But back then?” I shuddered. “It was really hard.”
She put an arm around me. “I’m glad we’re alive now. I know everything’s not perfect, but it feels a little less deadly. Most of the time.”
“Except when it’s not.”
“Yeah. But I think not knitting ever again probably isn’t the solution. You know? Like, making socks is a good thing. Especially if Honey is the reason you know how to knit. That makes it more powerful.”
I tried to imagine it. Holding Alisha’s hand. Walking down the street. Walking into the yarn shop. Jaq and Hannah would probably be there. Mildred might be, and if Mildred was, Zane would be next to her.
And an empty spot on the sofa where Honey used to sit. Unless someone took her spot, which would be worse.
“Maybe next week,” I said. “I just can’t do it right now.”
“Yeah, okay, babe.” She squeezed my shoulders. “Let’s go make guacamole at my place, all right?”
“Sounds perfect.”
It was pretty much perfect. Now I had to come up with a reason not to go to knitting next week, but I had some lead time.
I spent the better part of the week fulfilling my assignments at the paper, dodging increasingly frequent looks from my editor, and ignoring Caspar (who DGAF about some asshole killing queers, no offense). Just after lunch on Friday I checked Togg’s site again and stopped breathing.
Arrest Made in Local Murder Case.
My first t
hought was Oh, thank god. Then I saw who they’d arrested.
Tom Krayak. Longtime bartender at Club Fred’s.
I didn’t know Tom all that well, but he knew I’d rather drink whatever was on tap than a fancy microbrew. I didn’t remember when he’d started working at Fred’s, but it must have been years ago. He’d definitely been there for as long as I’d been going consistently. After I graduated from San Francisco State and moved back in with my folks, I’d needed somewhere to escape to, and more often than not, it was Club Fred’s.
Tom? Tom was a killer? That couldn’t possibly be. I couldn’t believe it. Though even as I started to defend him in my head—he was always kind, he was incredibly good-looking, he was the friendly side to Fredi’s prickly bartending—I realized that serial killers almost always had people defending them for similar shallow reasons.
But Tom?
I scanned Togg’s post for hints, but it was brief and unemotional, only stating the facts. Tom Krayak, longtime bartender, had been arrested around 11 a.m., Friday, August nineteenth. Today. A few hours ago.
Damn, Togg was fast. For a second I forgot to feel outraged and freaked out because I was so busy appreciating how quick Togg got information up on his site. I bet the Times-Record hadn’t even realized an arrest had been made yet. I’d checked in with Rodriguez after talking with Detective Green the other day, and he said as interesting as the theory that the murders were all connected was, it wasn’t news until there was some evidence supporting it. Then he’d thumped his hand down on my shoulder and told me, kindly, to get the fuck back to work.
Tom couldn’t be the killer. He couldn’t.
Except.
He worked at Fred’s full-time, was there most nights. He was always there on event nights. Club Fred’s locked up at one thirty in the morning, and no one cared if you were still in the middle of your beer. Fredi made it clear that poor time management was not her fault, and everyone knew it.
She locked up alone, I was almost certain. I’d been there, staggering out with the final customers, and I’d seen Tom leave at the same time. Maybe there were certain nights he helped close, and others when he left at one thirty sharp. I hoped for his sake that Fredi kept schedules somewhere accessible.
I wanted them to find the killer. But I really, really didn’t want it to be Tom. I wanted it to be someone nobody knew. I wanted it to be someone straight, someone who targeted the community from the outside, someone I could feel free to hate. Intellectually it made more sense that the whole thing was an inside job, that no angry straight white boy was lurking in the shadows outside Club Fred’s, successfully luring so many people to their deaths, part of me still grasped for that to be true.
Tom was a fixture. He’d consoled me after breakups. He was the guy who laughed at your jokes, even when they were bad. Handsome, charming, and fuck, he totally fit the profile of a serial killer. How was that possible?
Togg’s comment section was filled with people expressing everything from relief to outrage. I couldn’t tell from the unemotional reporting what Togg felt, except that the unemotional reporting was an exception, not the rule. He was hiding behind objectivity.
I opened a message. How convincing is their case against Tom?
Convincing enough for them to get an arrest warrant.
Tell me something I don’t know.
But is there anything actually linking him to the crime scenes, or is it circumstantial? When he didn’t write back immediately I added, As much as I want this guy caught, it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea it’s Tom.
You and me both. I don’t know yet. I’m trying to get more information, but my sources have locked down. Keep an eye on the site. You’ll know when I know.
Right. I signed out of everything and sat back, staring at my coffee cup, my part of the table, my phone. The calendar above my head, which was still on July because I hadn’t bothered to change it.
Find the destination of your heart. That fucking cruise ship had never looked so good.
Fredi put up a Closed sign over the door on Friday night, but Alisha and I tentatively showed up on Saturday.
We weren’t the only ones.
Tom was still in jail. He couldn’t post bail until he saw a judge, and they’d arrested him Friday so they didn’t have to put him in front of one until Monday. It was a tactic I understood, but the weekend felt longer now that someone I knew was the one being held.
He was engaged. Carlos wasn’t at Club Fred’s that night, but a whole lot of people were, and for a group that big, the place was alarmingly subdued.
Zane was the first person we saw, and she gave us both hugs. “You don’t believe it, do you? Because I’m telling you there’s no fucking way Tom killed anyone.”
I hugged her back. “But doesn’t he have an alibi? Carlos is always here with him.”
“Yeah, but Carlos goes home first. He doesn’t stay for the whole shift. He crashes, and Tom comes home when he’s off, but because Carlos doesn’t even really wake up, he can’t say for sure when.” She lowered her voice. “I think we convinced him not to lie to the cops, but it was touch and go. This is really fucked up.”
Alisha was absolutely convinced of Tom’s innocence, which made things easier with Zane. They talked about lack of evidence, and how useless Tom’s fingerprints would be since he’d probably served every one of the victims. I stood there, listening, feeling like a horribly disloyal friend. It wasn’t that I believed he did it, exactly, but whatever assurance both of them seemed to be running on that he couldn’t have done it eluded me.
Why couldn’t he have done it? Because he seemed like a nice guy? They always seem like nice guys. That’s how serial killers were successful.
But I couldn’t say that. And I still had too many questions to feel confident that the police had found their man; after a long shift at work, Tom decided to beat four people to death? Why those people? He and Honey had been friends. And why would he pick the event nights? Surely he’d’ve been smart enough not to kill where he ate.
Most people weren’t dancing. A few oblivious couples were on the floor, but everyone else was clustered here and there, talking, casting looks around like they didn’t want to be overheard.
“Carlos is inconsolable,” Zane was telling us. Her attention was suddenly caught by someone over my shoulder. “Philpott, you son of a gun. Long time no see.”
“Hey, hon.” The guy smiled and kissed Zane’s cheek, then Alisha’s. “Heard you found yourself a man.”
Alisha laughed. “You’re such a gossip. Have you met Ed? Ed, this is Anderson Philpott. He ran the high school newspaper for a few years when we were in school.”
I nodded. “Good to meet you.”
“We’ve seen each other around.” He shook my hand. He was short, with dark hair and an old scar running from his ear down his neck. “It feels like a wake here tonight. How is Carlos?”
“I was just telling these guys. He’s terrible, but wouldn’t you be?” Zane shook her head. “This is all so fucked up. Tom’s one of the best guys I know. There’s no way he hurt anyone.”
“I hope it all gets straightened out soon,” Anderson replied. “Fredi looks like she hasn’t slept since the arrest.”
We all glanced over at the bar, where Fredi was mechanically serving drinks and not making much of whatever anyone said to her.
“Fredi can’t possibly believe Tom would do this,” Zane said.
Anderson shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. If he didn’t, she’s still gotta be wondering if people will want to buy drinks from him after all this. Whether he’s guilty isn’t the only thing at play. I’m gonna keep walking around, but it was good seeing you guys.”
“You too,” she replied, still distracted by watching Fredi. “I’m sure she wouldn’t fire him over this. I mean, it’s Fredi. She’s not worried about people buying drinks.”
“I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation,” Alisha murmured, shifting closer to me. “Tom’s always
been such a nice guy. And I can’t—I really can’t—believe someone’s actually killing people we know. That’s so wrong.”
I put my arm around her. “Everyone who dies is someone that people knew.”
She shot me a look. “Yeah, in the abstract. But this is really happening. I wish we could just go away and not think about it.”
“That wouldn’t change that it was happening though.”
Zane shook her head. “You’re having two different conversations. Alisha’s talking about taking a break from reality, and Ed, you’re talking about being unavoidably entrenched in it. When really we’re all somewhere in the middle, entrenched and trying not to think too hard about the whole thing.”
“It’s like that thing your mom says.” Alisha poked me. “Don’t make me do the Spanish, I’ll screw it up.”
“De dinero y bondad, siempre la mitad.”
“Uh—” Zane frowned. “Always in the middle of money and something else? My Spanish sucks.”
“More like strive for the middle of things, you know? Don’t go to the extremes.”
“Exactly what we should be doing right now. We can’t help that Tom’s in jail, and ignoring that this horrible thing is going on isn’t going to change it. But dwelling on it won’t help either.” Zane pulled us in for a three-person hug. “This is awful.”
“It really is,” Alisha said.
I couldn’t help feeling like the thing they thought was awful had to do with Tom’s arrest, and not the four people who’d already died. I didn’t say anything.
“More fucking beer. I’ll get the next round. Oh, hey, look who finally decided to come out tonight.” Zane greeted Jaq and her girlfriend with hugs.
“So what the fuck do we think of this current bullshit?” Jaq hugged Alisha and me as well.
Zane threw her hands up. “It’s ridiculous!”
“No one who knows Tom could imagine he killed anyone.” Jaq sniffed at Zane’s drink and wrinkled her nose. “Carlos? Carlos could beat someone to death. Tom feels shitty if he kills a spider.”
Hannah shrugged. “Not to defend the police, but I can see how Tom is an appealing suspect to those who don’t know him.”