Lost Souls

by AJ Lange

  Matt wished, not for the first time, that he could read Gavin’s thoughts. He considered himself more well-read than Gavin, but Gavin was no slacker in the academic arena himself; he could write circles around Matt, for example. He sort of wanted Gavin to write it all down, what he was thinking, feeling, about Matt, about them, so Matt could analyze it. Gavin had a way with words that cut straight to the heart of an issue, excising all flowery exposition and punching bare emotion from the reader in a few lines. It was beautiful, really.

  Just one more beautiful thing, to add to the list of beautiful things about Gavin DeLuca that Matt had begun compiling in his head. Like a goddamn preteen girl, he scoffed to himself. It was true though; there were plenty of admirable qualities about the fifteen-year-old in front of him. Matt knew it, the staff knew it, hell, the entire female population of camp knew it. The only difference between Matt and them was, Matt had firsthand knowledge that not all of Gavin’s virtues were visible from the outside. All in all, he might be more than a little happy to have a few hours alone with Gavin tonight, uninterrupted. They could find their footing again, fix the awkwardness that had sprung up between them in the past few weeks. And maybe it would settle the butterflies that had started erupting in his stomach whenever Gavin looked at him with that slow smile.

  “Hey, did you know Eliza was flashing her tits behind the tool shed for cigarettes this morning?”

  The words were so far out of left field that Matt shook his head to clear it, thinking he had missed some important lead in to the conversation with his musings. “Excuse me?”

  Gavin turned and began to walk backward, agile and annoyingly attractive, his carefree movements making it hard for Matt to concentrate. “Eliza? Hot chick from tent six?”

  “I know who Eliza is,” Matt frowned. And there it was, that DeLuca ‘charm’ he had so aptly forgotten while he waxed poetic about Gavin’s taut, brown skin in his head.

  “Cody said she was lifting her shirt, no bra, one peek per cigarette.” Gavin leered, wagging his eyebrows. “Cody said there was a line around the shed seven deep.”

  Matt narrowed his eyes. “That’s disgusting.”

  Gavin shrugged, neatly turning back around. “Hey, I might have taken a look, if I had a cigarette.”

  “Now you’re disgusting. She should have more respect, and even if she doesn’t, you should have more respect for her.”

  “Yeah, okay Matt.” Gavin stopped and waited until Matt was beside him, shoulder to shoulder on the trail. “You’re telling me you wouldn’t like to get up close and personal with a couple of bare titties like Eliza’s? Even free of charge?”

  “No,” Matt said honestly.

  “Why not,” Gavin asked, clearly baffled. “Where else are we gonna get to see ‘em?”

  “You’ve already seen plenty, in that pile of skin mags your dad keeps out in the garage in his toolbox.”

  Gavin scoffed. “That’s not the same, these were live and in 3-D!” Matt was silent and Gavin bumped his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

  Matt shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “No, something. What.”

  Matt glanced at Gavin out of the corner of his eye. Gavin had a tell; when he was worried about something he chewed his bottom lip. Matt suspected he had been able to call bullshit on Gavin’s bluff a thousand times throughout their lives because that lip was being worried through strong, white teeth. The way it was now.

  He took a deep breath. “I’m not really interested in boobs, Gav.”

  They walked in silence for several feet. Matt wondered if it had really been that simple, if he had just turned a corner, left a life that he wouldn’t be able to go back to.

  “Not at all,” Gavin finally asked. “Not even Heather Morgan?” Heather was the prettiest girl in their class. She had always been the mark Gavin used to measure all other girls against.

  “Nope,” Matt said, suddenly feeling very free. “She’s your idea of perfect, not mine.” He could feel Gavin’s eyes on his face, but he wasn’t quite ready to meet them yet. They were at their tent now and Matt jogged up the steps. Gavin followed, reaching forward quickly to lift the flap before Matt could grab it. Matt hesitated, the olive canvas casting Gavin’s face in shadow. He was closer than Matt had realized; he could count the freckles on Gavin’s cheeks.

  “She’s not my idea of perfect either,” Gavin said quietly.

  Matt swallowed. Then he ducked under the flap, heart hammering in his throat.

  Present

  Matt stood in the living room, and he knew he was stalling. He wished that he had a cell phone, a device he normally loathed, so that he could call Gavin later, when he knew he’d be lonely and tired. When he needed the strength Gavin’s voice had always given him. Not for the first time in his life, Matt realized how fruitless his yearnings were. Gavin could follow him, own him, slay him, but Gavin could never really have him. No one could.

  Matt’s fate had been decided years ago, by people and circumstances Gavin would never know about. Matt had spent his entire adult life running from it, and part of his childhood too, but that was over. It was time to end this, once and for all.

  His traitorous heart tightened; he wished he could see Gavin’s face one last time. He wished he had given in last night, when he had stood over Gavin’s bed and watched him sleep. His handsome face had been relaxed, the lines between his brow smoothed, stubble darkening his jaw. Matt wished he had climbed under the sheets and coiled around him, let Gavin love him.

  He steeled his jaw. This was defeat, he recognized the taste of it, sour in the back of his throat. He needed to be stronger, at least for a while more. He picked up the plastic sack of supplies and looked around the room, making sure not to leave anything behind.

  He swore when it hit him: the letter.

  “Fuck.” The words echoed in the empty room. In the aftermath of finding Leanne, and then everything that had happened in the hospital, the letter in his jacket pocket had been overlooked. The letter and the jacket, both wrapped tight in a sterile plastic hospital bag...on the floorboard of the Jeep.

  He would have to leave without it. He hoped like hell whatever was inside was vague enough to be indecipherable to anyone but him, but he knew the likelihood of that was slim. It was Gavin, and the letter was a link to the biggest secret Matt had ever kept from him.

  “Fuck,” Matt whispered again, resigned. If Gavin had the letter, then Matt had less time than he thought, because no way in hell would Gavin let a clue that big go unnoticed.

  Matt locked the front door when he left, and he didn’t look back.

  “You need to go home and have Matt come down to the station and give a statement.”

  Gavin and Dom were sitting in an unmarked car in front of the hospital.

  “I thought you didn’t want me involved in this,” Gavin said, resting his elbow in the open window, eyes scanning the people as they left the hospital entry, always studying, looking for discrepancies, things that didn’t fit the normal space of the time or place. Matt used to call it his cop face.

  “Do you want Danny to send one of his flunkies to your house, and grab him? Maybe rough him up a little? Because he always hated Matt. You know that.”

  Gavin’s jaw tightened and he sat up straight. “He wouldn’t do that. Not in my house.”

  “You so sure about that?” Dom’s face was grim and Gavin knew he was right.

  “Take me back to my car.”

  Gavin drove over the speed limit and didn’t give a shit. No one would dare pull him over, his beat up Jeep was too recognizable. The dread that had been plaguing him for nearly twenty-four hours was heavy in his gut; something was wrong. He had missed something obvious, too caught up in the past. Too fucking in love with Matt’s face, gorgeous and familiar and right there, and he had let something significant, distinct, slip past him.

  Gavin knew when he pulled into the garage that Matt was gone. He could feel it in his bones.

  The house was empty, silent
. He made a single pass to the bedroom and back, and noted subtle differences: the couch was cleared, the extra blankets and pillow stacked neatly on a cushion; the kitchen was clean, two coffee cups in the dish drain. There was a single folded slip of paper on the kitchen table and Gavin’s fists clenched tight before he reached for it.

  Gavin,

  Thank you for everything. I shouldn’t have burdened you with this.

  I waited for what seemed like forever to see you again, and I wish it had been under different circumstances.

  I never stopped missing you.

  M

  Gavin’s first instinct was to crumple the paper into a tight ball, frustration swamping him, but he refrained, folding the paper into a neat square and sticking it in his pocket.

  I never stopped missing you.

  “Goddammit,” Gavin swore. He stalked back out to the Jeep, Detective DeLuca taking over, pushing Gavin under, needing the rigid control his professional role would give. He started the car and backed out of the garage. When he paused at the street, his eyes fell on a corner of plastic peeking out from under the passenger seat.

  Matt’s belongings, from the hospital. He put the Jeep in park, a sharp tingle at the base of his spine, that thing that never failed to let him know he was on to something important, vital, in an investigation.

  He grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from the glove box before he opened the bag. Inside he found only Matt’s jacket and dress shirt, the items he had been wearing when he found Leanne. Both belonged at the station, part of evidence; the hospital should have given them to Gavin that night, not Matt, but Gavin had learned a long time ago that normal people didn’t think like cops. Unfortunately. Many cases would have been solved early, saving taxpayers millions of dollars, saving families the trauma of a long, drawn out case, had the regular Joe’s who came in contact with murderers in the aftermath of their crimes used a little common sense.

  Not that Matt was a murderer. Gavin would never believe that, not until he saw Matt standing over a body, bloody knife in hand, and maybe not even then.

  He drove to Matt’s house, stepping over the crime scene tape and nodding at the CSI unit on the scene. They were meticulously dusting for prints, a pair of them in the foyer and more in the kitchen. He could hear footsteps overhead as well.

  “Mr. Laurel return yet,” he asked the blonde kneeling by the front door.

  “Not while I’ve been here, and I’ve been here since six a.m.,” she said, eyes never leaving her task.

  Gavin grunted in response. His eyes scanned the living room, noting the perfect symmetry of the decorations on the fireplace mantel, the orderly tidiness of the room itself. Oddly, there were no photos and he thought of his own living room and the multitude of frames scattered over every surface.

  Wait.

  Gavin left hastily, throwing an order over his shoulder to call his cell if Laurel showed up. He thought he might have gotten a handwave in return, but he wasn’t sure. CSI and homicide weren’t exactly chummy, odd since they worked in such close capacity, but true. They didn’t go for drinks or hang out after work; each department did their job and relied wholly on the other, and intermingling always felt a little bit incestuous.

  Or maybe that was just Gavin’s antisocial nature at work. Dom liked to say Gavin only shared himself with the people who could never really get too close. There was probably some truth to that statement, but Gavin never planned to let Dom know he was right. Dom had always been a smug bastard.

  He didn’t bother parking in the garage, taking the steps two at a time before unlocking his front door. In the living room he walked right up to the bookcase, scanning the shelves.

  The photo of him and Matt, aged fifteen, the heat of the summer sun beating down on their bare backs, the very day Gavin knew he had fallen hopelessly in love with his best friend, was missing.

  So was the book of poetry Matt had given him for his twenty-first birthday.

  He sighed in relief. Matt was still gone, and Gavin understood instinctively it wasn’t just a trip to the grocery store, but it didn’t matter because Matt had left a clue. Maybe unintentionally, but then they had been reading each other since they were five years old.

  And Matt had just asked Gavin to follow him.

  Gavin was lying in the dark, waiting for the clock to advance to some hour past the godforsaken two a.m. it seemed to be stuck on, so he could get up. He was going after Matt today. When his phone buzzed on the nightstand, his pulse leapt. The screen flashed an unknown caller message.

  “DeLuca.”

  For a moment the line was silent and he listened hard for any background sounds that would betray the caller’s location.

  “Hi.”

  It was so incongruous that Gavin had the hysterical urge to laugh. He had been lying in bed for the better part of three hours trying to sleep off this man’s voice and face, needing just a few hour’s peace so he could fucking concentrate, goddammit, and yet he could still shatter him with a simple Hi.

  “Where are you,” he asked, skipping over pleasantries. God willing, he would give Matt all the pleasantries his body could withstand. Just as soon as he found him. He figured he had seconds before Matt hung up, and his mind raced for a way to convince him to let Gavin help.

  “You know I can’t tell you that,” Matt said, voice low and tinged with regret.

  “Yeah, well, I can’t sleep without you.” Gavin pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing like hell he didn’t sound like a bitchy lover.

  Matt chuckled, and the sound sent a flicker of heat up Gavin’s spine. “You’ve been sleeping without me for five years, Gavin. ”

  Gavin exhaled, slow. “Maybe I’m tired of it.”

  They sat in the quiet, letting the admission settle over them.

  “Gavin...” Matt stopped himself, sighing. “I think my ninety seconds are up.”

  “You want to give me a number so I can reach you?” Gavin fought a twinge of panic.

  “I’m standing next to a dumpster, babe,” Matt said quietly.

  Gavin closed his eyes, letting the last word roll through him. One word with the power to ease five years of misery.

  “Then go buy another one, goddammit, and call me tomorrow,” he said gruffly, realizing he had just given consent, which could also be interpreted by those in his line of work as ‘aiding and abetting’.

  Fuck it. Maybe his desired end result wasn’t the same as Burke’s, but Gavin didn’t really give a shit about that right now. His priority was Matt, and the more contact he had with him, the more Matt would reveal, until Gavin gathered sufficient detail to find him.

  Gavin’s end game was always going to be finding him.

  The line clicked in his ear and he knew the call had ended.

  Chapter 6

  She was tall, with long, blonde hair that curled around her shoulders, bouncing against her back as she walked around the car. She wasn’t who he had been waiting for, far too young and fresh. But he liked the simple irony of this even better.

  He hadn’t thought of little Dominic Lorello in years.

  He had sat, a mere half block from Angelo and Antonia DeLuca’s home, all morning. In such a quiet neighborhood, he was surprised he hadn’t been approached yet, a stranger in a strange car, parked for an extended period. But it was a lazy sort of fall day, and perhaps everyone was at work, or simply too busy with life to notice him.

  And he had perfected the ability to go unnoticed, so he couldn’t lay blame with the sleepy houses and their occupants.

  They were simply no match.

  Gavin was surprised when he woke up bleary but refreshed a little after ten a.m. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept more than six hours in a row without the assistance of a little (or a lot) of alcohol or Tylenol PM. He dressed and made himself an egg and coffee for breakfast before going out to the Jeep and retrieving the hospital bag.

  He spread the contents on the plastic-covered kitchen table, gloving his hands so as not to t
aint any evidence. He went through the pockets of the jacket first, pausing on a folded envelope with no return address. The rest of the contents amounted to a dollar and thirty cents in change, a coffee shop receipt (nonfat vanilla latte and a cinnamon cake donut), and heartbreakingly, a snapshot of Gavin. It was tucked into the inside pocket of the jacket, the one that buttoned closed, a small compartment most people never used.

  The picture was one Matt had taken in their old apartment; Gavin was probably twenty-five or six. He had been caught mid-laugh, holding a bowl of popcorn in one hand and a football in the other. Matt had been carrying this photo a long time, apparently, the edges well worn, pale and fading from rubbing against the material of the pocket or the occasional fingertip.

  Gavin carried one like it in his wallet.

  He tucked the photograph in his pocket but returned all of the other items, save the envelope, to their original placement. He studied the letter carefully. There was something familiar about the handwriting on the front, Matt’s name and home address in precise block lettering. When he turned it more into the light from the window to read the postmark, he froze. Cedar Falls, Tennessee, dated two days before Leanne’s murder.

  Gavin stared out of the kitchen window, internal debate raging. He should replace the letter in the pocket he had found it in, take the whole bag down to the station and enter it in evidence. Bud would have his badge, at the very least, if Gavin dirtied up even one sliver of this investigation.

  Instead, he boiled a pot of water and steamed the envelope open. He hadn’t tampered with a glued flap like this since high school, when Dom had his first girlfriend and he would write her the most superfluous, exaggerated love poems Gavin had ever read. Gavin might have altered a few lines here and there. Just to spice things up for his friend.