by Dale Mayer
“All the time. Beat him, burnt him, wailed on him, starved him, choked him. It depended on how drunk she was that day, whether her latest boyfriend had broken up with her or not.” She shook her head. “What would have been one of the worst things for most guys, ended up being one of the most freeing things in his life. No, I certainly don’t excuse the man who molested Mouse. Right or wrong, according to Mouse, that relationship helped him sort out his sexuality.”
“Mouse appeared to be fairly well adjusted to being homosexual,” Laszlo said.
She glanced at him in surprise. “You knew?”
He nodded. “We all did. It was fine with us.”
She continued to stare at him.
He tilted his head to the side. “That bothers you?”
“I’m trying to figure out if I believe you,” she said shortly. “You’re very much macho males. He had little luck with strong men accepting him for who he was.”
“Strong men wouldn’t feel threatened,” Geir said with a dark overtone. “Only men who are afraid of their own sexuality have trouble accepting others.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she studied the two of them with interest. “He was really in the navy with you two?”
Laszlo nodded. “We were part of an eight-man unit. He was with us for a year.”
“How did he die?” Her stance relaxed, her anger easing.
“Our vehicle was blown up,” Geir said. He shook his head. “It happened so fast that I don’t think he knew anything hit him.”
“He was killed, and you weren’t?”
Laszlo shook his head. “No, we weren’t. But we didn’t get off easy.”
“Neither did Mouse,” she said stiffly as if struggling to come to terms with the news.
They nodded. “We’d have done anything to get him back. But it wasn’t to be. Neither of us could attend his funeral. We were still in the hospital. It was touch-and-go if we’d live. I wonder if his mom knew.”
“She never said anything to me. Maybe not to anyone.”
“She should have known. The military would have informed her,” Geir said. “But, if she had no love for him, maybe all she cared about was knowing where he ended up. He did get a military burial.”
“I didn’t know,” she said, her voice softening.
Something in her tone had Laszlo looking at her sharply. “Would you have gone?”
She nodded. “I would have. I knew him well as a boy and as a young man coming into himself. I was here around the time Mouse and Poppy, the only name I knew the molester by, came together. I remember the joy in Mouse’s face when he later found his first real boyfriend, and he felt like somebody cared for the first time. That he wasn’t a freak of nature and that maybe, just maybe, he would make something out of his life after all.”
“Any idea who his boyfriend was?”
She thought back. “I remember his first name was Lance. The two left town together I believe.”
“I know it’s not a question you want me to ask, but I have to, just to know. This guy wasn’t a john, was he?”
It took her a moment to understand, and then she shook her head. “No. To the best of my knowledge, Mouse never entered the sex trade.”
“Would you know?”
Her mouth opened as if to say, yes, then it snapped shut. “No, maybe I wouldn’t. He kept telling me that I was too young to understand. At the time I was angry at him for dismissing me so easily. We’d been friends for a long time. But I do understand he changed after he found his first true boyfriend. He looked happy and smiled a lot more. He was more relaxed. He tolerated his mother’s fits more.”
“Did she still hit him after that?” He watched as she tilted her head, casting her mind back into the past.
“You know, I’m not so sure she did. He was almost fifteen, growing very tall. His mom was not that big. At some point it was beyond her ability to hurt him physically. He always said he wanted to kill her but that her better punishment would be to live long and suffer more.” She smiled a bit. “Mouse was a really good kid. But she had twisted him in some ways that it’s hard to imagine how it manifested inside.”
“Did you see him again after he left?”
She shook her head. “No. I always wanted to. I always wanted to catch up with him and see how he was doing, what he was doing. But he never contacted me. I was probably part of the life he wanted to leave behind. That’s the problem with being childhood friends. When people leave, they leave the best and the worst behind.”
“And you? Did you never leave?” Laszlo asked.
She just gave him a blank stare.
He tried again. “Has anybody lived in the house since the mother died?”
She shook her head. “Vandals come and go.”
“Do you think anybody would mind if we walked through?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know who even owns it anymore. Probably the city, along with half a dozen other destroyed homes in this area. The vandals took anything of value a long time ago. By the same measure you shouldn’t leave your truck here for too long or it will be stripped.”
The two men nodded.
“Thank you for speaking with us,” Laszlo said. He walked past her and up the sidewalk of Mouse’s house. He turned to look behind to see she was following him. “Are you waiting to see if we steal anything?”
“There’s nothing in there you’d want to take,” she said. “But it occurred to me, I haven’t been inside either. And this might not be a bad time to take a walk down memory lane and say goodbye to Mouse.”
He held the door open for her. As he walked in, he called out, “Hello, anyone home?” But no reply came. Most of the windows were missing; the doors hung askew. He doubted he’d find anything in this wreck, but that didn’t mean he would waste an opportunity to make sure while he was here.
Knowing she watched everything they did, he did a slow scope through the living room. There were still old pictures on the wall but nothing that showed family, nothing that showed a home or where they might have been before or after this. The furniture was beyond decrepit and stained. There was a coffee table with two storage areas at each end. He bent down and opened each cupboard to check what was inside, only to find them empty. He wandered the room but didn’t find anything personal, nothing that pertained to Mouse.
He headed to the dining room next. There was an old cabinet. The surface was scarred and chewed up, as if somebody had used it for woodworking. Laszlo bent, checked the interior of those cupboards and kept going.
When he reached the kitchen, he stopped. Several of the cupboards hung askew. “How much of this damage happened after she was dead?” he asked no one in particular.
“I think those cupboard doors used to fall off all the time,” she said. “I remember once, when they fell, she blamed Mouse. And she beat him pretty good for it.”
The two men went through all the cupboards, checking for anything that would jump out at them as being important.
“For a friend you’re awfully curious about what’s in every corner of his house,” she said, suspicion in her voice.
Laszlo nodded. “We’re looking for anything that would explain some mysteries about his life.”
“What mysteries?”
He glanced at her and smiled. “Well, you’re one of them.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“It’s obvious you don’t belong here. I’m trying to figure out why you’re slumming for the day.” He turned and planted his hands on his hips and stared at her. “Care to share?”
She shoved her jaw out at him. Somehow the pugnacious look appealed to him. That just meant there was something definitely wrong with him.
Chapter 3
Minx stared at him. How had he figured that out? She pinched her lips together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right there, that’s a lie,” the one man said. “You’re just as suspicious of me as I am of you.”
She glared
at him.
He shrugged and turned back to doing what he was doing. But it looked like they were already done in the kitchen. The accident explained his single black glove … and potentially the gait she noticed at various times. As if he were stiff and sore. She had meant what she’d said about the accident being hard on Mouse—he’d died after all—but obviously these men had paid dearly as well.
There wasn’t much else to the downstairs—a hall closet and a front closet. She watched as they inspected both of those. She was trying to figure out what was going on. Unless there was something suspicious about Mouse’s life or death, there was really no reason for this in-depth look into his childhood.
It was painful for her too. She didn’t want to remember all the times she’d held him in her arms while he had cried. How many times she’d cleaned up his scratches and wounds and gave him food she’d stolen from her own house. She’d been slightly younger but old in so many ways. And she owed Mouse. He’d saved her when no one else would.
At the same time, she hadn’t done anything to find him after he had left. He had crossed her mind many times, but she had never gone looking. Why was that?
Probably because she was afraid of what she would find. She didn’t want to know he had died of an overdose somewhere or had been hit with a sexually transmitted disease and then died wasting away in a hospital bed all alone. So many things were wrong with his childhood that she knew could make a serious impact on the type of man he became later. She’d certainly studied enough personality disorders, personality traits and psychological issues people had from child abuse.
But, for some reason, she hadn’t allowed herself to find out what had happened to Mouse. Inside, a part of her was still that young girl looking at him as he left the life he had and being so proud because he did leave. Being so hopeful his life would turn out to be that fairy tale she wanted it to be for him. And yet, she must have known inside it wouldn’t happen. “I’m a counselor,” she said abruptly.
Laszlo, about to step upstairs, stopped and looked at her. “Were you Mouse’s counselor?”
She shook her head. “No way. I’m younger than him—than he would be—and I told you how I haven’t seen him since he left. Mouse and I were childhood friends. This is his house. The deserted one beside it”—she turned and pointed to the dilapidated building beside them—“was mine.”
“So why are you back here, dressed like you should belong?”
“I was transferred to this area. They wanted me to do more outreach in the neighborhood. I was struggling with the whole concept. I came from here—it’s not where I wanted to return to.” She saw no judgment in Laszlo’s eyes.
“Why would they want to send you back here?”
“I think to get me to quit,” she said honestly. There was a certain amount of relief in telling somebody. Particularly when that person didn’t know anything about the situation.
“Why would they want to do that?” The second man stepped up beside Laszlo.
She studied him a moment. “What’s your name?”
“Geir. And this is Laszlo.”
She frowned. “Like the mechanical gear?”
He shook his head. “It’s a Ukrainian version. G-E-I-R.”
She nodded. “Interesting. I’m Minx. Minx Montgomery.”
“That’s an unusual name too.”
She nodded. “It is. But then our mothers were not exactly the staid upstanding citizens of the world. Mine was more interested in drugs than beating on me.”
“Is she still alive?”
Minx shook her head. “She died of an overdose seven years ago.”
“Were you still here?”
She snorted. “No, I did the same thing as Mouse. As soon as I could, I booked it. In my case, I contacted an uncle.” She glanced down at her shoes and smiled. “It was the best decision I ever made.”
“Your uncle was a good guy?”
“He is a good guy,” she corrected. “And the only family I stay in touch with.”
“Did he have any idea what your life was like?”
“No, he’d lost track of his sister a long time before. People pick and choose who they want to stay in touch with. My mom and I didn’t make the grade.”
“You mean you and your uncle didn’t make the grade,” Laszlo corrected.
She chuckled. “Very true. My mother was a very unhappy soul.”
“And why are you back here then?”
“Because I did keep track of another friend,” she said. “She wanted me to move closer. So I did. But that didn’t work out. I moved out within a couple months to the other side of Dallas and worked at a private school, then moved on soon afterward to working for a counseling service connected to the city foster care system. I’ve been in the same job for five years now. But then I got into trouble with my bosses and got transferred to this division, as they decided I needed to reconnect with the streets. Aka I got shunted to the less desirable location for making trouble.”
“Do they know your history?”
“They might, plus this is a tough area, and they can’t get anyone to stay in this division. It takes someone with a lot of acceptance and patience,” she admitted.
“Why?” Geir asked.
There was something about the taciturn man in front of her. He was very direct with his questions. Normally she’d have found him off-putting, but she liked him.
“Because my boss was harassing me. He wanted sexual favors in order to keep my job. He thought I should stay late and let him have his way with me because he said so.” Her voice contained disgust. “Pardon the crudeness, but there’s just something about that type of asshole that brings out the worst in me.”
“Did you go to the cops?”
“Not then. And my supervisor told me to stay quiet. Said my boss was sorry and not responsible for his actions. I went above that supervisor, and so my supervisor got in trouble, and the guy who was sexually harassing me got a rap on his fingers. Next thing I knew, I was getting a transfer. It was either take it or quit. Obviously I took it.”
“And?” Laszlo asked, a look in his eye that said he’d already caught on.
She shrugged. “And then a few days ago I called the cops.”
He nodded. “Good girl.”
She sneered. “I haven’t been a girl for a long time.”
“Nope, and that wasn’t meant to be sexist, but it was the right thing to do. And I’m glad you did it.”
“Why? I’m not sure it was. But I was feeling so stuck.”
“No, you’re not stuck. It’s your choice. You can stay. You can leave. You can move to another city. You can move to another state. I don’t know where your uncle lives, but you can always go back where you have somebody who cares.”
“It’s one of the things I was thinking about as I stood here, watching you park your truck. At first I thought you were cops. But I figured something else was going on. You really don’t have that cop look to you.”
They both stared back at her, their faces bland.
“What are you? Naval inspectors or detectives or whatever the hell they’re called? NCIS, is that it?”
“No, we aren’t. Mouse was a friend of ours, and there’s a mystery in his life that needs to be solved. So we’re trying to do him a solid and figure it out.” At that the men clammed up.
She sighed. “And that’s all I get to know, is that it?”
“That’s it,” Laszlo said cheerfully. “And what about you? You just going to stand here beside your mom’s old house and watch the world, trying to figure out where you fit in now?”
“I’m trying to figure out what to do now that I’m pretty much persona non grata since I went to the police.”
“That figures. So maybe you do need to change states.”
“Still have to have references,” she said quietly. “Although some parts of the world have a bigger need for my type of skills than others.”
“What about your friend you came here to stay with?”<
br />
She shook her head. “She isn’t the same person anymore.”
“Sounds like a story is there in itself,” Laszlo said.
She nodded. “There is, but it’s not any more pleasant.”
“Care to share?”
“No, I don’t. If you’re not sharing, I’m not sharing.”
“Good enough.” At that Laszlo ran lightly up the stairs to the second story.
She followed. As soon as they opened the first door, Laszlo pinched his nose. “Time has not taken the smell from in here.”
They could see the soiled bedding that had seen much better days. The ceiling held more moldy stains than white surface.
“Wow, this is pretty bad,” she said.
“If it was good, it wouldn’t still be here,” Geir said. “And even a bed or mattress in that kind of shape would have been stolen a long time ago if there wasn’t something else going on here.”
“She died of alcohol poisoning but wasn’t found for several days,” Minx said. “That’s what you’re probably smelling, although I didn’t think body odors stuck around that long.”
“It tends to permeate everything—mattress, bedding, walls, ceiling.”
They stepped back out of the room and closed the door. There was only one other bedroom. Laszlo walked toward it, and Minx said, “That was Mouse’s.”
He nodded and opened the door, stepping inside. Geir followed.
Hesitating, but not knowing why, she trailed behind them.
The room was small, only a mattress on the floor, a blanket that was torn, old, crumpled in a corner. They explored the otherwise bare room, stopping to look at the writing on the walls.
She came up behind them. “Maximum pain,” she read out loud. “That was Mouse’s motto. Maximum pain.”
The two men turned to look at her. “Why?”
“Because his mom would always hit him at special points that would give him maximum pain. She’d take out his funny bone. She’d burn him along his nerve endings. She’d place his hand on a hot stove, and, when it was barely healed, she’d do it all over again for maximum pain.”
The two men stared at each other, their gazes hard.