“Damn, Trey, it’s too early for murder after a night like I had.”
Trey turned to a bleary-eyed Karl. “Really? I lost track of you once I came down from my meet-up with Demi’s folks. Are you saying that you and Kitty…” He didn’t know how to end the question.
Karl gave him a smug look. “I’m not one to tell tales out of school. Let’s just say I made progress on that front.” He glanced around. “How did we catch this one? It’s a little out of our district?”
“We haven’t yet, officially. I got the call from Demi. He, Jase and Emil’s sous chef, Damien, found the body. I’ve put a message in to the lieutenant to square it with him.”
“Is that wise? I mean, if the kid’s involved…” Now it was Karl’s turn to run out of words. “You don’t mean it’s”—his voice dropped—“our old space friends making trouble?”
“Nah.” Trey made sure no one was about. “Demi would have said. It’s just an ordinary murder.” He frowned. “At least, I think it is. Come on. No sense standing around with our thumbs up our asses.”
The back of the church led them directly into an open room. It held long tables on one end and a variety of scarred and rickety-looking ones scattered along with mismatched chairs around the rest of the room. It was easy to see how it functioned as a place to serve the needy a quick meal.
None of that held his attention for long, though. The priest lay sprawled across the room in a pool of blood. He didn’t need Demi’s otherworldly sense of smell to detect the metallic scent of the stuff. He zeroed his gaze on the victim’s throat and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding when he saw that it had been slashed, not ripped.
“That answers that, I guess,” Karl observed. “Just plain old murder.”
“Yeah.”
Trey trod lightly toward the body, peering at it as best he could without disturbing the coroner, a new guy named Vincente, and the rest of the crime scene crew that was already in the process of collecting evidence. He squatted down on his haunches and focused on the neck wound.
“Looks like a single slash,” he observed to no one in particular.
“Yes,” Vincente agreed. “No hesitation cut, just a quick one, deep enough to nearly take the head off.”
Trey winced. “Christ, who’d do this to a priest?”
“I doubt the motive was money, given the poverty of this area,” Karl chimed in.
“I see no signs of a struggle.” The coroner stood and quickly made the sign of the cross. “It’s a terrible thing, a priest of all people. I can’t fathom it, not that any murder makes sense to me.”
Vincente sighed. “I’ll know more once I’ve had him on my slab, but I’d say he was grabbed from behind and killed within seconds—no time to fight back, not likely to have been able to utter a sound. Not that there would have been anyone lurking around to hear.”
Karl grunted. “One of his flock, maybe. I bet a lot of these kids are on drugs. Maybe it was a simple matter of robbery after all.”
Trey stood. “How much could a parish priest have on him?”
“A few bucks, but then that’s all it takes for a few tabs of Molly.”
On the surface, it sounded plausible. He’d seen strung out people kill for less. Still, it didn’t quite sit well with him. “Let’s go talk to the boys, see what this Damien in particular knows.”
Leaving Vincente and his team to carry on, they left the scene and headed in the direction the boys had gone. They found them huddled together in the vestry between the back room and the small chapel. The sous chef, Damien, was sandwiched between Demi and Jase. They were giving the grieving boy as much comfort as he supposed they could, patting his back and murmuring soft words too low for Trey to make out. Damien’s head was bowed and he was obviously crying.
Trey hated to intrude on the kid’s misery, but such was the nature of his job. “Hey, guys.”
Three heads popped up. Demi’s face lit up for a second, making Trey feel ten feet tall, before his expression turned somber again. Jase’s gaze didn’t quite meet Trey’s, but then again, Emil’s boy was always skittish around him. After the life he’d led as a trafficked teen, that wasn’t surprising. It was Damien who kept Trey’s attention, though. Of any of them, he was the one most likely to know something of value.
The sous chef wiped the tears from his eyes and took a notably deep breath. “You want to speak with me, yeah?”
Trey approached. “That’s right. I need to know exactly what happened here this morning and what you can tell me about who might want this Father Ted dead.”
The boy shook his head. “No one. No one would want to kill him. He was an awesome man, really caring. He made a difference for lots of kids like me, making sure we didn’t go hungry, at the very least.”
He paused, shuddered then continued. “He helped many of us get off the streets, stop, you know, turning tricks for food and a bed.”
“Huh.” Trey eyed Karl and could see the wheels turning inside his partner’s head. “He took a personal interest, did he?”
Damien’s eyes narrowed. “Not like you’re implying.” He huffed. “I mean, I know what’s happened with lots of priest, but Father Ted wasn’t like that. He was a genuinely good man, no funny business. No weird vibes. Just real concern and a dedication for helping homeless kids survive in ways that didn’t involve selling themselves. He made me see that I had more to offer, motivated me to apply for a decent job. That’s what led me to Emil.”
“Okay.” He rubbed his chin while considering how best to proceed. It really wouldn’t be appropriate for him to interview Demi, and he wanted to speak with Damien alone besides. “Hey, Demi and Jase, will you please take Sergeant Anderson somewhere else so he can run through what happened with you?”
A quick flash in Demi’s eyes indicated he wasn’t happy about that plan. To his credit, he quickly banked it, though. No bratty comeback, which delighted Trey.
“Sure.” Demi stood.
So did Jase. “I’ve been here before and that door leads to a small office.”
Trey waited until the three of them were out of sight before sitting in the spot vacated by Demi. “I know this is hard, Damien.”
The boy eyed him. “It fucking sucks.” He heaved a sigh. “But, while cops aren’t my favorite people given my past experience, I do know that you’re a friend of Emil and his family, so I trust you. And, I do want to help catch whoever did this. Ask me whatever you like. I’ll answer as honestly as I can.”
“Good. I appreciate it.” Taking out his notebook and pen, he started running through the usual questions. “When you arrived, did you notice anyone or anything out of the ordinary?”
Damien shook his head while he stared at the back of his hands. “Nothing. The alley was empty, which it always is this time of day. Father Ted rides—rode—a bike. He always brings it inside because he wasn’t naïve. This is not the kind of neighborhood where you leave stuff outside.”
The boy sat up suddenly. “Wait. I don’t remember seeing it where he usually keeps it over by the serving tables.” His shoulders slumped. “Then again, maybe I just missed it, because all I could focus on was him lying there.”
Trey said nothing. His cop’s eyes had taken in the entire scene and there had been no bike. It was possible the priest had stored it somewhere else. He’d have a good look around, but it was also likely the killer had taken it. If so, that probably indicated that one of the priest’s flock was the culprit. A street kid could use a bike. Or, someone wanted him to think that was who to look for. Trey couldn’t rule out anything.
It was gratifying, as well, that this was something utterly human. He wasn’t seeking an alien vampire for this crime. God, how his life had changed.
“Tell me about the way Father Ted ran his outreach program. Did he go into the streets himself, approach the kids directly?”
Damien nodded. “Yeah, he did. He used to hang out in what he called his priest-lite mode. He wore the collar so that we knew whe
re he was coming from, but also dressed down in jeans and kicks that looked as old as he did.”
Trey tapped his pen as he pictured the man. Hard to tell someone’s age when their face was a grimace of deadly pain and fear. “He was, what, late thirties, early forties?”
“I guess. Sorry, but if you’re older than twenty-five, you’re like middle-aged in my book.”
Trey winced. Not that he was surprised by Damien’s viewpoint. He’d held the same one when he’d been in his early twenties. He didn’t mind time marching on, felt just as young and liked the wisdom he was acquiring with each passing year. But for his unfathomable relationship with Demi, he wouldn’t be giving his age any thought at all. When he pictured being with that boy, however, he felt every one of his years as if they were dog ones.
“No worries. So, what was his usual pitch when he approached kids? What did he say to you, for example?”
A ghost of a smile crossed Damien’s lips. “He’d start with ‘Are you hungry?’, like any teenager isn’t always. Then he’d take you to a nearby diner and buy you a burger or whatever.” He pulled his gaze up toward Trey. “Of course, I thought he was just another trick. Some guys are skittish or think they have to butter you up by feeding you first.”
“His collar didn’t alleviate your concerns?”
“Nope. You know how it is on the streets. Trust no one and every guy is either a mark or a source of danger. I was really surprised when he ended our meal by giving me a card for a shelter catering to LGBTQ kids. Then he gave me another one for the soup kitchen. You have to leave the shelter during the day and it doesn’t provide meals.”
“I think I know the place.” Such shelters were few and far between when it came to this part of the population.
“I almost threw them away, pissed because while the meal was nice, I’d hoped to make money by at least giving him a blowie. In the end, it was a good thing I shoved the cards in my back pocket, ‘cause the next guy who approached me tried to beat the crap out of me and not pay. I could take the one, but not the other. I went to the shelter out of a desperate need for a safe place to lick my wounds.”
This wasn’t a new story. Trey had heard variations of it throughout his career as a cop. He imagined most of the boys working at Lux had similar ones. Mackie certainly did, as did Jase. The fact that the latter boy’s abuse had occurred in nice bedrooms and not the streets hardly mattered. In many ways, the Stelalux family had done more to help humans than their own kind.
Damien continued his story without prompting. “Anyway, I came here the next morning and got to talking more with Father Ted. I eventually ended up helping out and realized I liked working with food. I’ve been trying to help whenever I can now that I have my life on track. Emil’s been really generous, too.”
Sniffing back tears, he ended with, “I just can’t believe he’s dead. Who would do such a thing?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out. Did you ever know of him having a run-in with any of the boys? Pimps? Drug dealers?”
“Not that I can think of,” the boy replied with a shake of his head. “I mean, maybe he ruffled some feathers, you know? But to kill him like that?”
He shook his head again and swiped at new tears making tracks down his face. “It was such a good night at the club. I love the new kitchen and it was awesome to be there, cooking with Emil. Coming here this morning with all the amazing leftovers felt so good. I was riding the high after being up all night, but it was all good because I know how much the kids count on this. Oh, shit! They’ll all be coming around expecting to fill their stomachs and on top of everything else, they’re going to go away hungry.”
Crap. Trey hadn’t thought about that. Maybe he shouldn’t even care, given the gravity of the murder. Still, he could only imagine how dependent some of those kids had become on this handout.
He stood. “Let’s go get the others and see what we can do about that. If you think of anything else, call me, yeah?” He held out his card.
With one last wipe of his face, Damien took the card. “Absolutely.”
Karl and the others were easy to find. Seeing Demi again goosed his spirits in a way that made him feel guilty. He tried to ignore both reactions as he ushered the boys outside. As Damien had predicted, there were a couple of dozen teens milling about at the mouth of the alley. Some were openly crying, testament to how news of the murder had spread already. Hard to hide the coroner’s wagon and the rest of the official vehicles and investigators.
His arrival was met with some openly hostile looks. A couple of kids took off, as if worried he was there to hassle them. He couldn’t blame them for their distrust, given how often beat cops did stop and frisk these street teens, and for good reason. Drug use was rampant, as was prostitution. People like the late Father Ted were often the only thing standing between these tossed-away waifs and exploitation or even death. He tried to adopt an air of friendliness and non-aggression, but no one was buying the act. Gazes were averted, at the very least.
Although it earned him a few skeptical looks from his own people, he let his actions do his talking for him. He wanted to interview more than just Damien about the priest’s recent movements and possible enemies. He knew that if he took one step closer to the huddled group, they’d all scatter like birds. So, biding his time, he instead allowed the boys to take the food they’d brought and carry it down to the street. He stationed a uniform nearby to keep an eye out and left Damien in charge of dispersing what he had in an orderly fashion. It was a Band-Aid on the problem, but something told him Emil would be starting a new venture at the club involving homeless kids getting free meals. Fortunately, that wasn’t going to be his headache, but this goodwill gesture would hopefully be remembered if he started chasing down leads among the homeless youth of Boston.
Before he could get back to work, however, Demi broke free and approached. He shot Trey a shy smile. “Thanks for this.” He gestured to the pile of food. “It will help make Damien feel better and some of these kids really look like they could use it.”
“Yeah. It’s hard for people like us to remember that not everyone has a family that takes care of them.”
Demi nodded solemnly. “I know. I never used to, but ever since…you know, Wales, I’ve really come to appreciate how great my fathers are. And you are too,” he added with a fetching flutter of his lashes.
That coy look gave Trey’s dick all kinds of bad ideas. He cleared his throat and said, “I don’t know about that.”
Demi stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Please don’t be nervous about…you know…” He licked his lips, a provocative move that could have been staged. Trey’s cock didn’t care whether it was or not.
“My fathers told me about the talk they had with you, and it explained a lot about how I’ve been feeling lately. It’s hard to believe that the one thing I want more than anything is actually going to happen in a few days.” He put his palm against his flat stomach, drawing Trey’s gaze. “I have to confess I’m nervous, though.”
Trey chuckled briefly. “Me too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
Demi’s eyes got misty. “That’s so sweet but you shouldn’t. I trust you, Trey.”
The simple statement of confidence made him feel ten feet tall. He made an aborted movement to touch Demi’s face before remembering where he was and who was watching. “You leave all the worrying to me. I won’t let you down. Now, go on. We’ve both got work to do.”
“Yes, sir.” A few more battings of his eyelashes and Demi practically skipped away.
“Dare I ask what’s going on?”
The sound of Karl’s voice so close startled him. “Nothing. Not yet, anyway,” he added as he turned to go back to the crime scene. “I may need your help in a few days.” The big event was being planned for the following Friday. He both wanted more time and less to pull his shit together.
Karl shrugged and swatted Trey’s arm. “Sure. You know I’m good for whatever
. I’ve helped you fight aliens, haven’t I?” he said in a voice too low for anyone else to hear. “It can’t be any harder than that, can it?”
Trey rolled his eyes as much at himself as his partner’s question. “No comment.”
“Oh, now my curiosity is piqued. What’s up?”
“I really can’t get into it now.” He blew out a breath. “I promised Harry and Lucien I’d do this thing, and it’s making me a little crazy already.”
The details were sketchy in his mind. The idea was for him to have close family members with him when he accepted Demi from his fathers. And, there was no way he could ask his actual brother to do it. There would be too many awkward questions for which there would be no acceptable answers. At least Karl was in the know, even if he might not fully approve of what Trey was about to do.
“I’ll explain later. Let’s go do our best for Father Ted. If he’s the good guy that Damien believes he was—and, God, I really hope so—I want to find the fucker who did this and put them in a cage for the rest of their life.”
* * * *
Dafydd slipped into the kitchen with quiet steps. In the few months since he’d been living at the club, he’d learned how to maneuver around the building unheard and unobserved. He preferred his solitude, and even though he’d been assured that he was not a prisoner and free to come and go as he pleased, old habits died hard. He’d spent centuries as Dracul’s slave and now really only knew one way to live. Alex and the others treated him with the utmost respect, and still their presence caused an animalistic fear to rise in him. He was tired of being afraid and not yet ready to decide what he would do with his life. He’d only ever contemplated escape or death. Nothing beyond that.
He hadn’t run into anyone since leaving his room. The fact that he had a private space like that—beautiful, quiet and in which no one entered without knocking and invitation—was a blessing. He appreciated that fact. And it had been easy to go on these morning forages unremarked while the club had been closed for business. With the opening the previous night, he’d worried that his privacy had come to an end. Even within the private areas, he’d assumed members would wander about, leer at him, make his skin crawl—but no.
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