Phoenix: A Hunter Novel

by J. V. Speyer

  “Arthur Kingston.”

  Boom-Boom closed his eyes and stood stock-still in the middle of the room.

  “I read your file, such as it was. You were in overcrowded conditions, and your condition deteriorated. You defended yourself against some of the other patients, who were violent. This got you labeled as violent in turn. And you developed a fondness for fire—not because you were looking to be destructive, but because resources weren’t enough and you were cold.”

  Boom-Boom nodded and looked down at the floor.

  “You died in isolation and neglect. But, my friend, you still helped me. A hundred years after your death, you still reached out and helped.”

  Boom-Boom opened his eyes and nodded.

  “I don’t care what people told you at the time, Boom-Boom. They didn’t spend enough time with you to know you. I did. Captain Lightfoot did. Mike did. Millie did. We all know the truth. You’re a good man. You deserve to be known and cared for and to be warm.”

  Donovan couldn’t see Boom-Boom, and he didn’t know anything about the guy other than what Luis had told him. He still spontaneously got up and grabbed a throw from the back of the couch. He pressed it into Luis’ hands.

  “Christ, Luis. If he’s cold, give him a blanket.” He was blinking furiously, like he had something in his eye.

  Luis held the blanket out to Boom-Boom.

  The ghost took it. “Thank you.”

  Nothing burned that night.

  If Donovan were still just a detective, he could have taken family leave to stay home with Luis and help him around the house until he was able to be better on his feet. Technically, that was still an option. Unfortunately, there was still a cop killer on the loose in the western part of the state, someone who’d killed one of Donovan’s own men, and he couldn’t just hole up at home and expect the case to solve itself.

  Even if he wanted to—which he mostly didn’t—Luis would never respect him again.

  Fortunately, they had Jose. Donovan still didn’t feel like he knew Jose well. They hadn’t met while Donovan was in college, and Donovan had made excuses after he and Luis got back together. Now he had an opportunity.

  He also had a wedding to plan.

  Donovan’s colleagues and subordinates had plenty of advice to give. Some left copies of wedding magazines on his desk. He tried to read them, he really did. He even shared them with Luis and, occasionally, with Jose or Patricia, when they were around. The only problem was that most of those magazines were geared toward brides.

  “I mean this dress would definitely hide the cast.” Luis peered at a floor-length chiffon thing with a crinoline. “The garter’s going to be a bit of an issue, but we can figure it out, I guess. The article on updos is wasted, but I can definitely figure something out with the veil—but wait. Where’s a guy supposed to put his gun in this number?”

  At first, Jose had turned scarlet when Luis started in about the dress. Then he burst out laughing. “You’re too hairy to make it work anyway.” He ruffled Luis’ hair.

  “Oh, but I’d wax. It’s a special occasion.” He fluttered his eyelashes, and then he joined in the laughter. “I’ve done drag for a case, but it’s not a look that’s ever really worked for me, I’m afraid. Although it might be fun to watch certain people’s heads explode, that’s not what this is about.”

  Donovan laughed and settled in. At least Luis could keep his sense of humor about the whole thing.

  He didn’t know how long he’d be able to keep it up. Patricia had been delighted when Donovan told her about his intentions. She’d been eager to start the planning process. Of course, for Patricia, who’d been raised in a strictly Catholic family, that started with booking a church. And while the Church had made great strides since Donovan’s childhood on the subject of homosexuality and those experiencing same-sex attraction, Patricia was unlikely to find a Catholic church in the greater Boston area willing to marry two men.

  She tried. Donovan and Luis whispered about her efforts, which were heroic. She even denied one church a police detail at a funeral, which tied up traffic for eight hours as a result and got a phone call from the governor himself.

  Donovan cocooned himself in the bedroom with Luis that night, hiding from news reports of traffic still being snarled in South Boston. “I know she means well. I do. It’s just . . . I don’t think she’s ever found a problem she couldn’t bulldoze her way through before.”

  Luis chuckled. “Patricia is a force of nature. In her head, a wedding means a church, a priest, flowers, people in uncomfortable clothes, and a drunken uncle trying to steal the beer from an open bar.”

  “You mean it’s not?” Donovan rolled over to look Luis in the eye. “Don’t get me wrong. The wedding is one day. I want to be your husband, and that one day is only important to me because it’s the day that makes it all official.” He rolled back over and stared at the ceiling. “I know it’s . . . it’s kind of trivial in the bigger scheme of things. There’s a lot we need beyond just marriage. But I honestly never thought I’d have the opportunity to think about getting married, so I didn’t sit around planning my wedding, you know?”

  Luis molded himself into Donovan’s side. It was such a comforting gesture, one Luis had been doing for as long as Donovan knew him. “I think young girls get encouraged to think of a wedding as the end-all, be-all because traditionally it’s kind of the end of their lives. They’re Mrs. So-and-So after that, and then just Mom. It’s getting better, but that’s still the expectation. Men of every orientation are less trained to focus on that day.

  “But also, marriage isn’t just about the wedding. It’s about having the right to be my health care proxy, if something terrible happens. It’s about your dad not having the right to chase me out of your hospital room under the same circumstances. It’s about having the same rights to survivorship benefits after we’ve built a life together as everyone else.

  “The actual ceremony, the actual date? They don’t mean much, not to me. What do you actually want from the wedding?”

  Donovan thought about it. “I mean, I want to celebrate us. I do. But I also don’t need that to happen in a big blowout kind of way. You’re still hurt so there’s not going to be a lot of dancing. We can postpone the reception, maybe?”

  “I do like to dance.” It was dark, so Donovan couldn’t see anything on Luis’ face to indicate how he felt one way or another.

  “I know you do.” Donovan kissed Luis’ forehead. “And you’ll get back to it. I know you will. Maybe we could do a quiet small thing? And have a nice dinner somewhere after because I do think we’re something to celebrate. And then maybe in the spring or summer we can do a real reception, like a party with a bunch of family and friends and stuff.”

  Donovan could hear the smile in Luis’ voice. “That sounds nice. It would be good to have the important part taken care of, you know?” He cleared his throat. “As it happens, I might know a judge.”

  Donovan couldn’t help but laugh. “Let me guess, the subject has already come up.”

  “Well, he did come to the hospital and everything.” Luis cleared his throat. “I might have been feeling a little anxious. You know, getting the important part over with, like you said.” He swallowed, hard enough that Donovan could feel it. “I was scared, in that place. I mean, sure, I could have sat back and waited for rescue, but since when does anything work out right in a hostage situation? I had the ring and everything. I just didn’t know when to say it.

  “And then I was holed up in that place, and there were all these people who never got the chance. And I knew damn well I didn’t want to wait anymore. Even if you said no, you were going to know how I felt. I don’t want to hold anything back. Who does that benefit?”

  Donovan blinked back tears. He couldn’t imagine what it had been like in that place, in the dark. Luis had been able to put himself on friendly terms with all the ghosts he encountered, or so it seemed, but it had to have been terrifying. And of course he wouldn’t just sit
there and wait to be saved. Donovan wouldn’t have either.

  “I don’t really want to wait and do some fancy thing.” Donovan’s mouth felt dry suddenly, but he pushed past it. “I don’t need the church part. It might be nice to give my mom that comfort, but let’s face it. I can’t change who I am, and while it would be great if I could change attitudes at the Vatican, I don’t see it happening. And I ain’t waiting until it happens.”

  Luis chuckled a little. “I’m a little worried about giving Patricia a stroke. I love her. I really don’t want to see her get hurt about this.”

  “Right?” Donovan winced. “How soon do you think you’ll feel up to going to the courthouse?”

  “They voted to convict Gelens. His sentencing is Friday. What if you and I grabbed Patricia and Jose, and they were our witnesses? It gives us time to deal with the paperwork and everything, and then it’s done and over with.” Luis hesitated a little bit over his words, like he wasn’t sure how Donovan would react.

  Donovan didn’t hesitate at all. “Perfect. All we have to do is figure out how we’re going to tell our folks.”

  Luis laughed. “I think Jose will be thrilled I don’t scare him with another threat to wear the white dress.”

  “My mom might be kind of disappointed you don’t. She’s still dreaming of her fairy-tale wedding.”

  “Notice how I didn’t make that joke in front of her.” Luis wrapped his arm around Donovan’s middle. “For one thing, the dress costs extra if you’re over five foot six.”

  “Really?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Another agent from the BAU got married. I learned all kinds of things. Two thousand dollars on top of the regular price if you’re over five six, and another two grand if you’re over a size eight. What a racket!” He scoffed. “Although I might be able to find some of the underpinnings in my size . . .”

  Donovan frowned. “What, the hoopskirts?”

  “Er, no.”

  Donovan’s tired brain caught up with him. “That might be interesting.” He laughed.

  Jose, as it turned out, was perfectly content with the idea of letting the judge marry them and doing a party later on. “Eduardo and I did something similar. We’re both older, obviously, but we’re long past the point when we might need to go showing off or anything. I’m as religious as the cat, and Eduardo left the seminary in disgust thirtysomething years ago. So I don’t think either of us would have considered a church wedding to begin with.

  “Is that something your mom is going to be a stickler about though?”

  Donovan winced. “Yeah, well, I mean she’s from a pretty religious background. So she has her feelings. And I don’t want to stomp on them, but I want to be realistic here.”

  Jose patted him on the back. “I’ll talk to her. It will probably go down easier coming from someone who isn’t her son.” He winked. “And someone who’s been through it before.”

  Donovan could have kissed him, but it would have been weird.

  Before he could take steps toward damage control, Donovan and his team made some progress in the Southwick case. He and Agent Holcombe both expected the killer to leave the state because, even though the FBI was involved, tracking murderers across state lines was more difficult by several orders of magnitude.

  Instead, an alert security guard at a construction site near Worcester caught two young men trying to dispose of something in a cement mixer. He apprehended them and alerted police.

  The item turned out to be a gun, which upon ballistic examination turned out to be the same gun that murdered Fitch, maimed Nguyen, and wounded Alex.

  Donovan got to Worcester faster than he’d driven at any time other than when he’d gone to supposedly rescue Luis. He brought Alex Morales with him, to hopefully identify the suspect.

  And identify Alex did. With one arm in a sling, he pointed directly at the sullen young white man with bad hair and bloodshot eyes and said, “Yeah. That’s the guy who shot me.”

  Because Donovan never did get to meet the smart criminals, said cop killer shouted, “And I’ll do it again, pig!” Then he dove for Alex.

  Alex had his gun, but it was secured. Alex used his good hand to grab the suspect by the hair and drag his face down to his knee, which he brought up to meet it.

  The suspect collapsed onto the floor, unconscious and with a bloody nose.

  The constant hum of adrenaline that had buzzed under Donovan’s skin left him. It was over.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Luis had never sat through a sentencing and twitched so much. He had to force himself to keep a somber face during the victim impact statements. It had never been a problem for him before, no matter what else was going on in his life. The victims, and the people they left behind, came first every time.

  Today was different, but Luis was going to do his damnedest to not let them know.

  Morello had somehow talked Sullivan into allowing a statement from Gelens. Luis wondered who had thought that would ever be a good idea, but he guessed it wasn’t his call to make. He suspected Gelens had lied about his own contrition to get Morello to ask.

  And when Gelens took the stand, he proved Luis right. He pretended to read from a piece of paper Morello handed him, and then he crumbled it into a ball and tossed it to the side. “Who are we kidding here? You’ll put me away. So what? It doesn’t give you your kids back. Not the ones I killed and not the ones I just used on camera for entertainment. Yeah, I know they’re kind of screwed up right now. I didn’t need any of you whining up here, shaking your fingers at me to tell me that. The thing is, I don’t care. No one cares.

  “Okay. Sure. That guy in the suit.” Gelens pointed to Luis. “He might care, just a little. But you know what? He’s so weak he got taken out by a tiny woman and a glass of water. You think he can save you or your kids? Please. Someone else is going to come along and do it all over again. And while the stupid bitch couldn’t manage to take him out entirely, this guy can’t even walk anymore.”

  Luis’ father’s voice cackled from deep inside its cell in Luis’ brain.

  Morello, back in his seat at the defense table, buried his face in his hands. Donovan, beside Luis, flushed scarlet. Jose, on Luis’ other side, growled as the rest of the crowd muttered. Luis just stared Gelens down. Maybe another day he would have been more affected.

  But now, he reached out and took Donovan’s hand. When he did, their rings connected. It was a tiny sound, more felt than heard, but Luis took all the strength he needed from it. He could keep his back straight and his head high as Sullivan banged his gavel on the bench.

  “Order in the court. Bailiff, remove Mr. Gelens from the stand and put him in his seat. Agent Gomes, this is highly unusual. But since you were specifically cited in his . . . outburst . . . I’d like to give you the opportunity to respond.”

  Luis took a deep breath. Gelens didn’t deserve acknowledgment. Still, he squeezed Donovan’s hand, grabbed his crutches, and approached the microphone that had been set up for the victim impact statements. “Thank you, Your Honor. I, um, I don’t need defending. I honestly don’t care what a guy like Santo Gelens thinks of me. I don’t. I’ve been called worse by much more interesting and important people.

  “I do want to address part of his statement. I testified in this trial because I was the lead investigator on this case. I was the lead because I’ve worked with the Child Pornography Task Force in the past. Yeah, I know that my agency has gotten some negative press lately. So has all of law enforcement. Some of it has been pretty well deserved, let’s face it.

  “But do you see those people over there, the people I’m sitting with? You’ve got a sample of law enforcement officers from Miami, the Massachusetts State Police, and Boston Police. Every last one of them would do whatever it took to help those kids, to save those kids, and to take down people who hurt kids. Every one of them, and everyone they know or work with, cares.

  “I wouldn’t be here today if a law enforcement officer hadn’t recognized the potential dan
ger I faced as a young child and had taken it upon himself to keep me safe.

  “My agency has an entire task force dedicated to fighting the exploitation of children. They work with hundreds of dedicated state and local agencies, along with volunteer organizations, fighting exactly this kind of thing. Yeah, I personally am going to be out of commission for a while.

  “But don’t think for a minute that means there aren’t plenty more where I came from. We’re like a hydra. Cut off one head, three more spring up in its place, and they’ll be pissed. All you families, all you survivors—you all know where to find me. I’ve still got my phone. I’ve still got email. If you need anything, I’m still around. And if I can’t get to you in person, I’ll send someone who can. We are not abandoning you because something happened to me.”

  Gelens turned around to sneer at Luis, but Luis didn’t care. Gelens was going off to the federal high-security penitentiary in Waymart, Pennsylvania. Luis was going back into the judge’s chambers to formally commit the rest of his life to the man he lived. Gelens was going to spend the rest of his life watching his back because people who hurt kids the way Gelens did tended to live short and unpleasant lives in prison. Luis was going back to school, keeping his dream job while he did so, and living a family life he never dreamed possible.

  While Luis hobbled back to his seat, leg burning and throbbing at the same time, the assembled family and survivors applauded. Luis hadn’t looked for that. He’d just wanted to give the families something to counter Gelens’ poison. His cheeks burned almost as much as his leg by the time he got back to his place on the bench, and he tried to avoid drawing attention to himself when he got to his seat.

  Jose patted him on the back. “I’m proud of you, son.”

  Luis could have floated off the bench, just from those words.

  Sullivan allowed the applause to die down before clearing his throat. “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts does not have a death penalty option, Mr. Gelens, but you were tried under federal laws and convicted under the same. Your murders are considered aggravated and are federal offenses because they occurred during the commission of federal crimes—specifically, production of child pornography.