“Nothing will happen to Josh,” Adrian said. He took a long breath and said, “Look, something isn’t right here. There’s something different about the M.O. on this one, partner. If the person thought you were involved they’d be threatening you, not Josh. Nate didn’t mention anyone he cared about getting threatened to you nor does it appear he did to the CPD. That’s not the only thing that bothers me,” Adrian said.
“What else, buddy? I’m grasping at straws here.”
“Okay, I don’t mean this to sound as bad as it’s going to, but here goes. If this person was really intent on hurting Josh, then they would’ve done it by now. Instead they issued a warning, then a second warning, and now a third warning? Come on. It’s like those movie villains who never stop talking.” Adrian deepened his voice into his best villain voice and said, “I’m going to kill you, but not until I tell you everything I did wrong from the third grade until now. In fact, chances are you might die of boredom before I pull the trigger.”
As tense as the situation was, I couldn’t help but laugh at Adrian and acknowledge the truth in his words. Being objective when it came to Josh’s safety, was the hardest thing I’d ever tried to do. I realized that breaking up with him wasn’t the answer, but I wondered if he’d let me put him on a plane and send him to his parents.
We showed our badges to the receptionist and she directed us where to go. Myrna Evans’ office was similar to something you’d see on TV. The wall between her office and the reporters’ cubicles was made of glass so she could keep an eye on them.
I knocked on her glass door and she waved us in then rose to her feet. “Detectives,” she said, greeting us. She gestured to the items she mentioned on the phone that were on her desk. Sure enough, there was a picture taken from the night before in Josh’s salon. It was of the kiss we shared after Josh had confessed why he’d chosen the majors he had. His words gutted me, but the love and passion in his kiss stitched me back together. At first, I could only stare at how beautiful and happy we looked. We were opposites in our builds, our coloring, and even our personalities, but we meshed. Dear Lord, did we mesh beautifully. Buddy was curled up at my feet to protect me in case Josh tried to cut my hair in a cut that didn’t flatter me, or so Josh had said.
“You should frame that one and hang it up,” Adrian said beside me.
“It’s a lovely picture,” Myrna agreed, “but the message that came with it isn’t.”
“Off the record?” Adrian asked. She nodded and he said, “We are taking this very seriously.”
“I’d hate to see anything happen to him,” she said. I expected her to say something like she didn’t want to find a new hair stylist, but instead she said, “He worked here during high school and he was such a delight to be around.” I was glad to know that people saw Josh as more than someone who styled their hair.
“He is that,” I agreed. Adrian and I slid latex gloves on then placed the photo, message, and the envelope in an evidence bag. “We’ll need you to come down to the station to be fingerprinted,” I told Myrna, “so we can determine if there are any prints besides yours on these items.” Myrna agreed to stop by the station on her lunch hour.
“Partner, this seems personal; like someone doesn’t want you with Josh,” Adrian said as we left the newspaper office.
Billy Sampson’s face came to mind and I couldn’t discount the fact that he was appearing at places that either Josh by himself or the both of us were. Josh was adamant that he left the grocery store without the diapers he said he was buying and I had a hard time believing that he was retrieving things from a storage unit at the exact same time that Josh and I went to see Charlotte. There was too much coincidence for my liking.
“I’m going to call the newspapers in Cincinnati to see if any of them received threats about Nate’s life,” I told Adrian. I silently made a note to call the office manager of the storage unit and find out if Billy did own a unit there or he followed us. I could pretend to be him and ask when my next bill was due and see if I got a response.
The captain was waiting for us when we got back to the station, coat on and ready to go. He surprised both Adrian and me by getting in the back seat of my car. Adrian shrugged and rode up front with me out to the sheriff’s department. Once we arrived, the captain’s countenance changed completely. He’d always been very professional, but he looked like a total hard ass when we walked in.
“I’m here to see Sheriff Tucker,” he announced crisply to the desk sergeant. Hell, I was ready to salute him.
“He’s been expecting you,” she said politely. “I’m sure you know the way.” I heard a buzzing, followed by the sound of the door unlocking.
The captain pushed the door open and we followed behind him like little chicks to the back of the department. Before we reached the sheriff’s door, it flew open and the somewhat jovial guy I had met weeks ago was replaced by a brittle, angry man. Wow! These two had serious family issues.
“You’re late,” Sheriff Tucker declared.
“We’re right on time, sir,” Captain Reardon replied. The growled emphasis on the word “sir” made it obvious that he wasn’t feeling the respect the word implied.
“If you’re not fifteen minutes early then you’re late. That was something my daughter knew before you came along,” the older man snarled. I figured his daughter’s supposed tardiness might have more to do with being a busy working mom, but I wasn’t going to open my mouth.
“We’re here to talk about what you know, if anything, about Nate Turner’s homicide and how it might relate to the threats being made against Josh Roman,” Captain said. I liked his no-nonsense attitude because I wasn’t in the mood for their pissing contest.
I heard a loud ruckus and shouting in the main room and opened the door to look out. I was a cop; it was automatic to look into situations involving angry voices. I saw Billy Sampson dressed in street clothes heading to the front door with a cardboard box in his arms.
“Fuck you all,” he yelled as he left the station.
“What’s that all about with Deputy Sampson?” I asked the sheriff, careful to keep the disdain from my voice.
“Former deputy,” he corrected. “He’d been acting erratic lately, missing work, and being belligerent. I suspected drug usage, but I didn’t know for sure until his random drug test came back positive.” I nearly snorted out loud. Random drug test, my ass.
“What kind of drugs?” I asked.
“He tested positive for quite a few of them,” the sheriff said. “We offered to put him on leave until he completed a rehab program, but he refused. He denied he’d had the drugs in his system and said we were trying to railroad him out of the department, but couldn’t say why we would want to do that.” He shook his head. “It’s really sad.”
“Sir,” I said kindly, “we have an evidence locker full of drugs that were found in the school system where his mother works. I think that’s a tad too coincidental. Perhaps we’ll find that these drugs came from the same batches if we test our drugs against the ones in his system.”
Sheriff Tucker thought about it for a long time before he said, “Okay, we can do that.”
“Now what about the Turner case?” Adrian asked.
“Well, boys, I’d like to be able to tell you that we had something to go on, but we really don’t,” Tucker said. I noticed that we got more out of him than snarled responses if Adrian or I asked a question, rather than the captain. “No fingerprints other than Nate’s were in the car, we sent a sample of the paint transfer left on the bumper from where the other car struck his to the state lab in Columbus for analysis, but nothing has come back yet. The CPD didn’t have any leads for us. I hate to say it, but unless something breaks loose for us, Nate Turner might end up as a cold case.”
As the brother of someone whose killer was never brought to justice, that didn’t sit well with me. We thanked him for the information and he promised to email a copy of Billy’s drug test results to us so we could compare. None of us
wanted to think an officer of the law was involved in a drug ring, but we couldn’t rule anyone or anything out.
“Sir, can I ask you a personal question?” Adrian asked once we returned to my car.
I glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw the captain sneer, but he groused, “Yes.”
“What the hell did you ever do to make the sheriff dislike you so damn much?” Adrian asked.
It took the captain a few seconds to acknowledge the question, but then he said, “I went to the University of Michigan.”
I recalled seeing Sheriff Tucker’s large Ohio State University diploma hanging on the wall and smiled. “Ahhh, that explains it,” I said.
I ADMIT I WAS a bit freaked when Gabe told me that my nemesis had sent a photo of Gabe and me to the paper with a threatening message. I mean, I didn’t want shitty pictures of me being sent to the paper. I had an image to uphold in my town. Then Gabe told me what a good picture it was of us and I went from being alarmed to wanting a copy for us. Gabe promised I could have it once it was no longer evidence. I planned to frame the photo and set it at my station for everyone to see. I could tell he was frustrated with me and my lack of concern for my safety, so it was quite refreshing to hear that Adrian was thinking along the same lines as I was.
I took the threat seriously, at first. Hell, whoever it was trashed my pretty Princess and it pissed me off. Other than that, it had been photos and a few vague threats. If someone really wanted to hurt me, like Oscar Davidson did when he realized I’d given a description of him to the police, they wouldn’t send one warning after the other. Oscar gave me no warnings; he broke into my home and would’ve killed me had Gabe not shot him. I applied the same logic to the new disturbance in my once orderly life and found comfort.
I still shivered hard every time I thought about Oscar Davidson, which became less frequently as time passed by. He wasn’t coming back from the grave to kill me and whoever was sending these so-called threats didn’t really want to kill me either. I don’t know why I was so certain, I just was. Also, as sure was my belief that Billy Sampson was behind it all. The timing was just to convenient for me.
It wasn’t arrogance on my part that Billy was jealous of Gabe and me or that he wanted me all to himself that was guiding my beliefs, it was just my vast experience with bullies–namely him. First, it was my theory that Billy would fall into his old habits–not that I believe he’d outgrown them–once he returned to Carter County. Second, seeing me happy would piss him off. I lived my life happily in the open while he pretended to be something he wasn’t. That had to really pinch his pecker. Throw in the fact that he was using drugs and you had an unappetizing recipe for harassment.
I could tell that Gabe was starting to come around and think like Adrian and me. It didn’t make him feel better because he felt the drug usage made Billy even more unstable. He was holding out hope that the drugs in Billy’s system matched the ones found at the school so that he could be brought in and questioned. According to Gabe, it could be weeks before he got the results back because nothing happened quickly for small town law enforcement agencies when they had to rely on overburdened and underfunded state labs. He reminded me that real police work didn’t look anything like the CSI shows I had loved so much.
The only thing I could do was be more aware of my surroundings. The weather had been too cold and the sidewalks too slick to run outside and I’d been forced to run on a treadmill at the gym. March was right around the corner and, even though it was a tossup month–meaning all four seasons could occur in one day–it was a big step in the right direction to getting back out in the fresh air to run. I would, however, miss hearing the grunts that escaped Gabe when he lifted weights.
Just knowing he was hot and sweaty in the same room as me made it hard to keep my focus on my pace and breathing when I used one of those preset options on the treadmill. Fuck, it had me running on an incline so steep that I looked like that cliffhanger game on The Price is Right. The last thing I needed was the annoying-ass music they played during that game in my head, but it’s what I got. Instead of going over the edge of the cliff like the mountain climber in the game does when a contestant can’t guess the price of the items correctly, I was in jeopardy of face planting on the treadmill in a crowded gym. I made a mental note to bring earbuds to the gym with me the next time so I could tune out Detective Sex Sounds, focus on my running, and avoid getting an inconvenient hard-on.
I never ran with earbuds in my ears. Once, I came out to my parents–as if they hadn’t already known–my father took me aside and had a very serious conversation with me. He told me that, although moms and dads all worried endlessly about their children, parents of minorities had added concerns. He explained that some people would hate me just because I existed. That may seem like a horrible thing for a father to tell his son, but his exact words to me were, “I can’t allow my boy to become a heartbreaking statistic. If something happened to you, it would kill your mother and me. Pay attention.” By then, I’d already experienced plenty of hateful things said about me and to me, so I knew what he was talking about, yet, I had never been physically hurt in any way. It took me years to understand that verbal abuse was equally as damaging, if not more, than physical abuse.
I took my dad’s words to heart that day. Some people might’ve had the impression that I was a flighty person without a care in the world, but that was the furthest thing from the truth. I was usually hyper aware of my surroundings and had developed a Danger, Will Robinson radar. It was going crazy one night when I took the trash out after the salon closed. Gabe normally insisted on doing it, but he was on the phone with his mom and I wanted to get it over with so I could go upstairs and enjoy the rest of my night.
I wasn’t scared when I felt Billy’s presence because I knew that Gabe was a loud scream away. Even so, I wanted to deal with Billy on my own once and for all. The motion detector lights that Gabe installed on the corners of the garage came on as I was putting a lid on the trash can. My heart sped up, but my mind remained calm.
“He must not really give a shit about you,” Billy snarled from behind me. “Either that or you’re really fucking stupid. I think it’s a little bit of both. Someone’s threatening to harm you, yet, here you are in the dark all by yourself.”
I slowly turned around and faced Billy. I was shocked at how sick he looked. There were large bags under his eyes, his pupils were blown, and he shook all over like he couldn’t wait for his next fix. “Let me guess, you were just in the neighborhood?” I asked sarcastically. We both knew better.
“You might say that,” he told me. The sneering smile slipped from his face and all I saw was unbridled rage. “I never knew you were such an exhibitionist, Josh. Do you like leaving your bedroom curtain open for people in the neighborhood to watch you and your detective having sex? Is that part of your gay agenda?”
There was so much wrong with what he had said that I wasn’t sure what to address first. I decided to take them in order so that I didn’t miss anything. “I’ve never been an exhibitionist and the only home on this block with a view into my bedroom window has been vacant for months.” I cocked my head to the side and added, “That means your perverted ass has taken advantage of the situation. You’ve been watching me and Gabe through my window just like you’ve been following me around and leaving those stupid photos behind as a warning. The newspaper stunt was over the top, Billy.”
I won’t lie, it made me sick to my stomach to realize that someone so twisted saw something that was so beautiful and pure with love. I needed to move on or risk not finishing what I had to say about his hateful comments, although I figured it was like talking to a brick wall.
“And, wanting to be treated equally and accepted as who I am isn’t an agenda, Billy. I love Gabe and he loves me. We just want to live peacefully and be able to enjoy the same things that straight couples do.”
“You’re disgusting and I hate you,” Billy snarled, taking two steps closer to me.
“Oh, I don’t think you hate me at all. I think you hate yourself. It’s too bad that you hide behind lies and drugs. Besides, if you hated me so much then you wouldn’t be trying to break Gabe and me up with your stupid Nate Turner copycat shit. No one is falling for that stunt; we were just waiting for you to fuck up and tip your hand. Sort of like right now.”
“Shut up,” Billy said between gritted teeth. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh, I know plenty. I hate to break this to you, but you’re not that special or unique. You’re no different than any other guy who’s ashamed of who he is and who he loves.” I’d been accused of not knowing when to shut my mouth once I started slinging snark everywhere and that could probably be classified as one of those times.
“I said shut the fuck up.” That time Billy screamed the words. I knew it was loud enough to get Gabe’s attention, but I couldn’t be distracted by that. I saw in his eyes that he was ready to act on his aggression and I was ready for him.
Billy took a step toward me while he reached for me. I brought my knee up and racked his balls hard enough to send them bouncing off his internal organs like a pinball game. “Fuck!” he roared. When he doubled over to grab his nuts, I brought my knee up to his nose. I heard the sickening crunch of cartilage breaking, followed by the gush of his hot blood all over the knee of my pants before I was able to pull back.
Billy fell to the ground howling and writhing in pain, unsure where to grab–his aching nuts or his gushing nose. Gabe came running out of the house with his gun drawn, but holstered it immediately when he saw that Billy was prone on the ground. He reached for his next best weapon instead, his cellphone. “I need a car sent to Josh’s house,” he told the dispatcher. “One car,” he clarified, “and probably an EMT.”
Luckily, only one squad car and one ambulance responded like Gabe requested. The EMTs stayed long enough to staunch the flow of blood from Billy’s nose then he was hauled away in the back of a squad car, crying and snotting about the pain he was in. I had zero sympathies for him.
Something to Dye For (Curl Up and Dye Mysteries, #2) Page 18