A Tangled Truth (Stonewall Investigations Book 3)

by Max Walker

  “No!” And I didn’t have to look to know what happened, the loud crack told me all I needed to know. Gina’s phone had taken a tumble straight down to the hard floor, facedown. We all held our breath as Gina picked it up and turned it over.

  “Ohh, no. Ms. Cromwell, I’m so, so sorry.”

  The screen was a dense spiderweb of cracks. Completely unusable. I looked to Gina, who was holding her composure very well for someone who seemed to be attached to their phone. Of course, she could just buy another one in the afternoon, but it was still an inconvenience.

  “It’s totally okay,” she said, shaking her head and looking up at the waiter. “Trust me. I’ve been wanting a new color anyway, so now I have an excuse.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He looked like he was on the brink of tears.

  “It was a mistake. Happens to everyone.” She was smiling. The waiter apologized a few more times and went back into the restaurant, his head dropped no matter how many reassurances Gina gave him that it was okay.

  “Well, that’s a first,” Gina said, laughing as we settled back in. “Poor guy.”

  “I think he thought you were about to flip the table.”

  “I would never,” she said. “Unless your name is Angela Freeman and I find out you just slept with my boyfriend while we were all vacationing in Greece.”

  “Wow,” I said, “Angela Freeman sounds like a bitch.”

  “Huge,” Gina said, laughing, drinking more of her mimosa.

  I had to get back on track, even though I had a feeling things just got derailed. I had no idea if Gina backed up her phone or if the picture was gone with the cracked screen. “Okay, so, Johnny.”

  “Right, Johnny. Mr. Brown Shit Stain on this Earth, Johnny.” Her anger was apparent in her voice.

  “Harassment isn’t the only thing I think Johnny’s responsible for. I have reason to believe that Johnny may have something to do with the death of his two ex-wives.”

  “Oh my god, seriously?” Gina leaned in over the table, her sunglasses dipping down on her nose. “Fuck, I knew it. I knew it.”

  “You’re talking about what you saw on his laptop.”

  “Yeah… wait, how do you know about that?”

  “Your agent told me. He told me how the police didn’t seem to do much with it.”

  “Nothing,” she spat. “He has the chief in his back pocket. Gives him all kinds of shit and backstage passes.”

  “That’s where I come in,” I said. “I can change all that. I can do something about this guy. I just need that picture.” My eyes darted to the dead phone on the table. “Please tell me you still have it.”

  She rubbed the back of her neck. “I… um. No, I don’t.”

  “What? We can probably fix the phone. It’s just the screen. We can have it replaced, and everything should be the—”

  “I deleted it, okay?” she sounded more frustrated with herself than anyone else. “I was scared of having it on my phone. It was giving so much negative energy, and I thought that if the cops had it, then that was it—what was I going to do with it?” She shook her head. “I was scared of Johnny. If he was buying this stuff, then what was stopping him from using it on me?”

  “Do you remember what it was? What he was ordering?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “GHB.”

  I need to get that photo.

  “When did you delete it?” I asked. Maybe there was someone who could restore it. Nothing was ever truly deleted; it was just shoved somewhere deep and inaccessible unless you had the right tools to access it.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Like a month ago?”

  “So, pretty recent,” I said, getting my hopes up.

  “I guess,” Gina said, her hopes clearly shot.

  My phone buzzed again. This couldn’t be ignored. I had to put whoever was calling me on my blocked list because this was ridiculous. I pulled my phone out and went to reject the call when I saw a familiar name on the screen. It was Zane from Stonewall calling me. Why was he trying to get a hold of me so badly?

  “Sorry,” I said, pointing to my ringing phone.

  “Oh, of course, go for it.”

  I stood up and started walking out of the patio area. When I was out on the street, I answered the call.

  “Mark,” Zane said. His voice was raspy. “Jesus, Mark, I don’t even know how to say this.”

  Something in my body screamed out that this was all wrong. It was a primal piece of me that twisted my stomach and made my palms sweat. My mouth was as dry as the desert surrounding me while I waited for Zane to speak. He wasn’t speaking. Why wasn’t he speaking?

  Please, say it.

  Say what I know you’re going to say.

  Destroy the world around me in one sentence.

  “Collin,” I said when Zane didn’t.

  “He’s gone, Mark. He’s gone.”

  I crumpled like I was shot in the chest. I fell back, hitting a bike rack as I fell to the floor, still holding the phone to my ear but not hearing anything else that was coming out of it. All I heard was the ringing in my ears as if a bomb had been detonated feet away from me. People came to my side to help, and somehow I was standing back up and being guided to a bench. Someone was asking me something, her face going in and out of focus for me. Her lips were moving, but nothing was registering.

  It didn’t matter.

  The words “He’s gone, Mark. He’s gone” drowned out even the loudest sounds.

  Nothing mattered.

  25 Liam Wolfe

  The water from the pool shimmered, reflecting the sunlight up and bouncing it off my sunglasses. I was floating around on a huge floatie shaped like a watermelon. The pool was huge, so there were two other oversized floats drifting around. A winky emoji was at the far end of the pool while a cartoon unicorn with a rainbow horn floated toward me. My hands and feet were dipped in the warm water, my body fully relaxed. I had brought a pair of hot-pink swim shorts that I hadn’t worn yet and was quite happy with the way they fit. I couldn’t wait for Mark to get back from his interview so he could get in the water and take them off me. After he commented on how nice they looked on me first, of course.

  A lazy smile played on my face, the kind that grows out of nowhere from thoughts that spread warmth from the tips of your toes to the top of your head. I couldn’t believe how happy I was, even with how terrible things still were. If this had happened at any other time in my life, I would be a complete wreck right now, sitting in the corner and pulling out clumps of my hair. I’d be panicked. My future would seem obliterated.

  Not with Mark back in my life though. He not only gave me hope, he gave me strength. I felt like I could take on the world if I had to. There wasn’t as much fear anymore, and that was a blessing. Pure fucking blessing.

  I heard the ding of the house alarm letting me know the front door had opened and closed. Mark must be back. I wasn’t expecting him for at least another hour, so this was a little weird. I flopped off the watermelon and swam over to the edge of the pool, where I grabbed onto the ledge and pulled myself up. I reached for the white fluffy towel I’d set on the lounge chair and dried off my head and upper body as I walked back into the house, wrapping it around my waist by the time I entered the living room.

  “Someone’s home early!”

  No one answered. I looked around the living room, not seeing the smiling face I expected to see. I didn’t see any face. No one was there.

  “Mark?”

  That’s when I saw him. Initially, I missed Mark because I wasn’t looking down at the floor. Mark had slid down the closed door and sat on the ground, his stare empty and pinned straight ahead. Then there was a pang of something that contorted Mark’s face. I realized he was holding back a heart-splitting sob.

  Something was terribly wrong. The way Mark’s face twisted like he was feeling physical pain… it clawed at me. “Jesus, what happened?” I shot over to his side, my towel falling to the floor in the process. He was paper pale and had a slight
tremble in his hands. They were clear signs of shock.

  Fear grabbed me by the throat. “Please, Mark, what happened?”

  I got down to the floor and reached for his hands. They were cold and warm at the same time, wet with sweat. “Collin…” he said, and that was it. All that needed to be said. Mark collapsed onto me, heaving cries that took the breath from the both of us. I held him up, even though I felt like the ground was swallowing us slowly, taking its time, chewing us bit by bit.

  “Oh, Mark, no. No.” More cries. I could feel his pain as if we shared a connection that went beyond this plane. And every cell inside of my body wished I could somehow make this better, fix it for my Mark. But I knew there was no way. Nothing could fix this. There was now a gaping hole that would never be filled.

  It felt like a very long time before we finally moved from the doorway, like years had passed. It had only been minutes though.

  I knew how much Collin meant to Mark. He stepped into the best friend role that Mark had been needing to fill for such a long time. And he was such a great guy, too. We had hung out on a few different occasions, and each time left me liking him more and more. It reminded me we had plans to see a new Broadway show we were all excited about that was due out in a few weeks.

  We had already bought our tickets.

  “He wasn’t supposed to go like that,” Mark said, shaking. We were standing in the living room now, the sunlight breaking in through the windows and making the scene seem morbidly cheery. “He must have been so scared.”

  There was anger forming now. Rage. This was unfair. Collin was one of the good ones. He didn’t deserve his legacy to end with a dagger through his forehead. No one deserved that, but Collin, he was the one who was supposed to stop it all. He was going to put an end to the Unicorn and banish a cloud of fear that had been hanging over the community for years.

  Turns out, he needed saving just as much as we all did.

  I swallowed a knot made of thorns. “He must have been so close. So damn close. Someone’s going to pick up the case and finish it. For him.”

  Mark shook his head. His eyes were red. Seeing him like this felt like being dropped through a log shredder. “Whatever he knew dies with him, Liam. You know that. It’s done. No one’s taking the case now. Until the killer makes a grave mistake, no one’s putting a name to it.”

  “You need to have some hope, Mark. You taught me that. You told me that you can’t see beauty if you focus on the fear. Remember?” I moved closer to him. “Take that one step further. You’ve got to see the hope past the despair. This darkness, it’s only temporary. The sun always comes out. There’s always light. Even in the farthest corner of space, there’s some kind of light shooting from a star millions of miles awa—”

  “Pretty words don’t help right now, Liam.” There was an edge to Mark’s tone that wasn’t there before. “I don’t have hope. There’s no reason to have hope. I have a fire now, and I have fuel. I’m going to channel it all on your case. And that’s it.” His hand was balled into a fist. The rage that followed grief was a seductive mistress. I could see her cloud his vision, making him see red when there was a full spectrum of colors in front of him. He shook his head and moved past me in a bolt of movement, almost knocking me over in the process. I turned and followed him into the backyard, where he began pacing. I had never seen Mark like this, and frankly I had no idea how to handle it. I was scared I would do something wrong, which made me freeze, but then that made me feel like I was doing something wrong. It was a feedback loop that had me immobilized while Mark processed his turbulent emotions.

  “He was only thirty,” Mark said, stopping near the edge of the pool, his hand covering his mouth. “He had just found someone. He had so much going for him.” Silent tears streamed down his cheeks. “Fuck. Why, Liam? Why?”

  “I…” I felt like a fish out of water. How was I supposed to answer? I began pulling on my earlobe, almost tugging it off. “I don’t know,” I said, completing my last attempt. Being honest was the only way to go right now. “I don’t know, Mark. But what I do know is that you aren’t alone through all this. You’ve got me, and I’m never leaving you. Not again. Not ever.”

  He looked at me, and I saw a flash of the hope he had declared dead moments earlier. But it was only a brief flash. He looked away, his jaw clenched, the muscles twitching underneath the still freshly shaven skin.

  “Do I know that for sure?”

  “Huh?” My eyebrows almost flew off my head. That question caught me by complete surprise.

  “How do I know you won’t leave me, Liam? You’ve done it before. Your lifestyle is vastly different from mine. Just look around at all of this. Compare it to my apartment with an AC unit that doesn’t even work half the time. What stops you from leaving me once the case is closed and your name’s clear?”

  I felt like he had reached through the feet of distance between us and slapped me. “Mark… I wouldn’t… no. Just no. I don’t give a fuck about any of that material crap. What we have goes beyond everything else, it always has.”

  “How do I know that? How do I know you’re saying the truth? I knew the fifteen-year-old Liam, but I barely know this Liam. This playboy director who’s slept with more guys than I can count.”

  That hurt. It was a sharp stab, and it was magnified by the fact that it was coming out of Mark’s mouth. “I’m the same guy I was at fifteen, Mark. Yes I’ve fucked around, but that doesn’t detract from how I feel about you. If anything, it gives me full confidence that this is meant to be. The fact that I’ve never felt this way with anyone I’ve ever been with before—you’re my one, Mark. I know that now, and I’m not taking that for granted.”

  Mark stayed silent, his eyes boring through me. Those dual-colored eyes that could hold such an immense softness were now harboring a chilling emptiness. I felt an urge to shrink back. That was something else about Mark. His eyes could be as intimidating as they were hypnotizing.

  “I haven’t given you any reason to believe otherwise,” I continued, not backing down. This was Mark for God’s sake. I needed to talk sense into him. “I’ve seen what my life looks like without my career, without a prospect at directing anything else, what I thought was my one greatest passion in my life. I’ve felt that deep fear, but I haven’t been lost to it because you were there to help me. You always pulled me out of the darkness. I want to do that for you. I want you to trust me, know I won’t hurt you.” He was clouded by the loss of his best friend, that was clear. I just had to break through that cloud somehow. “Please, Mark. Please. I love you. With my entire heart. My soul. With you in my life I can’t lose. You have to know that.”

  And that must have been it. Something clicked. He shook his head, tears coming more freely. He crossed the distance between us and kissed me. In that moment, we shared a lifetime’s worth of pain. I held him; he held me.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mark said into my neck. “I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, rubbing Mark’s back, anchoring him down. I understood where the outburst came from, and I would never hold it against him. I preferred he let out whatever was on his mind instead of holding it all in.

  Together I knew we would get through this storm, and together I knew we would see the rainbow on the other end.

  26 Mark Masters

  TWO WEEKS LATER

  The days following a profound loss don’t feel like days at all. They feel like someone else’s borrowed time, like you somehow jumped into someone else’s body and asked to borrow it for a while. Nothing really made sense, and nothing made you want to make sense of it. There was a thick haze around everything, like you were looking through glasses smeared over with Vaseline. The funeral was one of the hardest parts—if anything could even be classified as “harder” than the last. It was all difficult. Having to see his sister, his mother and father, having to hear their cries. I had Liam there with me, which gave me some semblance of strength. But
still, my heart felt shredded. He was such a good man, and the world deserved to have him around for so much longer. He was bound to make such a difference.

  Going back into Stonewall a few days after the funeral was also a surreal experience. Sitting in my office with the door open had me constantly looking up and expecting to see Collin walking by, making a goofy face or knocking on the doorframe and asking what I wanted for lunch. Of course, that would never happen again. It was a thought that infiltrated my mind on a constant basis. Concentration was hard to find, especially since I was starting to feel like the Johnny investigation was falling apart, which chipped away at whatever resolve I had left. Gina couldn’t figure out if she had the photo backed up somewhere, and even if she did, the police had already seen it. It was like she said, what good would it do when the police chief was in Johnny’s back pocket?

  Still, I worked hard, even through the dark shadows that seemed to follow me like starved lions from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep. This was Liam that was on the line now. Even though the police found nothing substantial in the allegations and closed their case, I knew there was still a cloud hanging over his name, and I needed to clear it.

  I sat in my office, reading over the email again. As I read it, I felt sicker and sicker. How could anyone believe these things about my sweet Liam? He had been the reason why I got out of bed since Collin’s death. He was always there, kissing me awake and making me coffee and breakfast and making sure I was smiling for at least a moment before I started the day. He was there for me when I needed someone to just sit in silence with, and he was there for me when I wanted to play a video game to try and get my mind off it all. He was always there for me, and through it all, he showed himself to have a heart of pure gold. How could someone believe that he would steal from people or lash out at anyone?