Busted (33 page)

“Oh, how cute!” Joan said, as Joe finally got to his office. “A teddy for that little girl?”

Joe gave her as best a smile as he could muster, but it wasn’t much. “No,” he said. “This one’s for me.”

“Oh, Joe,” Joan said, her voice thick with sympathy. “Not again.”

“Again,” Joe said. He shrugged. “That’s the way it works. You know. Five months is almost forever in gay years.”

“Don’t—” She started to say, but Joe cut her off.

“Really, I’ll…” he had to stop himself before his voice broke. “I’ll be fine. Besides, we’ve got work to do, right?”

“Right,” Joan said. She’s seen Joe hide behind his job, whenever something happened that he couldn’t fight and couldn’t change. She hated it, but there was nothing she could do besides give him a little space and a little peace.

Joe walked into his office and quietly shut the door. He leaned back against it, his hand still on the cool knob and his eyes shut. He told himself it shouldn’t hurt, not really. They’d only been together a few months, and not even seriously. There was no reason for his breath to catch and his chest to ache. “It was only the sex,” he whispered to himself, though he didn’t really believe it.

Worse than that, the scene going through his head wasn’t Alex rejecting him and running in the club parking lot. It was Chris in Steve’s back yard spitting “What would you know?” at him.

“God
damn
it!” Joe shouted, and pitched Snuffles as hard as he could across his office. The poor bear hit the wall with a quiet thump and fell to the ground. It slumped over, its single button eye barely showing but seeming to give Joe a sad stare.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” Joe said to the toy. “He abandoned you, too, didn’t he?”

Joe felt a little stupid talking to the bear, but not enough to stop. He picked Snuffles up and set him down in a corner of one of his shelves, next to a tiny smiling Buddha. He fussed over the bear for a minute, straightening the worn checkered ribbon around his neck and brushing out his napped fur.

“There you go, buddy,” Joe said. “Place of honor.”

Snuffles didn’t say anything, but Joe was pretty sure he didn’t mind the accommodations at all.

* * *

Snuffles made the rest of the day go by better than Joe had expected. Whenever the pain threatened to overwhelm him he caught sight of the beat up bear sitting on his shelf. He didn’t make things better, but at least they were a little less bad, and that was enough to let Joe lose himself in his work and not think about Alex and how he’d run.

The solace only lasted until it was time to go home, but by then the pain had settled down to a low, deep ache in his chest. He spent the drive to his apartment
 
trying to figure out when things had gone so wrong. He’d thought that he and Alex were doing well. Sure, Alex wasn’t the deepest thinker, and he wasn’t much for serious things, but running so hard he left nothing behind? Joe couldn’t understand that, and it worried at him.

His introspection was interrupted when he got home and the sight of an unfamiliar green door greeted him. “Oh, just great,” he grumbled. His door had been a dark blue when he’d left that morning, which meant the apartment complex had followed through on their promise to replace the thing. “I’m probably locked out now too.”

Joe put his key in the lock and, to his surprise, it worked. The door was badly fitted and he had to shoulder it open, scraping it across the floor with the sound of metal on wood as it swung. On the ground in the hall was an
omamori,
a paper Japanese good luck charm he’d found in San Francisco and had hung on the door over the harlequin mask. The
omamori
was torn nearly in two, and the mask was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, son of a bitch,” Joe muttered as he bent down to pick it up.

"Well, hello there," came a voice from behind him. "This is convenient. Can I come in? I'm with the power company."

A wave of vertigo swept over Joe. He staggered a little, his head suddenly filled with cotton. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to steady his stomach and clear his head, but it wasn't working. If he hadn’t been so close to the ground he might have fallen over. As it was he had to put his hands on the ground to keep his balance.

“I… I’m sorry, I’m not sure…” Joe trailed off as he tried to stand, the world spinning around his head.

"Well, aren’t you quite a surprise," said the voice. It was closer, though Joe couldn’t tell how close exactly. He grabbed onto one of the stools in front of the bar and pulled himself up onto very shaky legs.

When he finally opened his eyes he saw someone standing by the door. He was pretty sure it was a man, grey haired and deeply tanned, but his vision was blurry, and he was having a hard time focusing. Something in his right hand gave little flashes in the morning sunlight, but Joe couldn't make out what it was.

"Hello, Joe," the man said. He stood up and looked straight at Joe. There was a big grin on his face. It seemed like it stretched out past the edges, but that wasn't right. It must have been his eyes.

"Have we… met?"

"We’ve run into each other a few times," the man said. "It’s because of you I’m even here, and that is so very nice." His grin got wider, though Joe couldn't figure how that could be possible. Joe squinted, trying to get a better look at the man, but he wasn't having any luck. Maybe there's a gas leak in the complex, he thought.

"I don’t have to wait with you," the man said as he took a step closer. "And… I think I might not have to wait ever again."

“That’s… good?” Joe said, stumbling over the words. His head was swimming. Something wasn’t right about the whole situation but he couldn’t tell what.

“Oh, yes, very good,” said the man. “Why don’t we just walk into the living room? We need some space to do this properly.” He held a hand out to Joe and helped him stand.

Joe’s muscles seemed to turn to jelly at the man’s touch, though that didn’t seem to matter. Despite looking so old the man was surprisingly strong, and he hauled Joe to his feet.

“It’ll just be a moment longer,” the man told Joe. “Then you won’t have to worry about anything ever again.”

That sounded very nice to Joe, and with a goofy grin he let himself be led into the living room. It was a bit of a mess; when the workmen had been there they’d apparently dome more than just replace the door, and his coffee table had a small pile of the talismans and charms that had decorated the back of the door and the walls of his entry way. In front of it all, chin on the table and forehead against the pile, sat his black and white enamel harlequin mask. Its back was to the room, the blackened iron back showing a reversed face that sent a foreboding shudder through Joe’s mental fog.

“They made a mess,” Joe remarked as he took another step forward.

“That they did, but soon it won’t matter at all,” replied the man. Joe could only see the back of his head, but he swore he could see the man’s grin edge around the sides of his face. “One more step should do,” he said.

Joe obliged, but there was something brown and squishy beneath his foot foot and when he stepped on hit he stumbled and fell, smacking his head against the coffee table with a painful thud. The pile of charms cascaded down on top of him, and as they fell the breeze of their passing seemed to blow the mental fog away.

“Wait, what?” Joe asked as reality reasserted itself a little. He tried to push himself up but the mask was under his right hand and it slid on the carpet, throwing him sideways. The motion was enough to save Joe's life. The old man gave an inhuman snarl and lunged forward with the knife, but as Joe slid to one side the knife missed his throat and cut deeply into his left shoulder. He gave a strangled cry and batted the man in the head with the mask he still held.

Joe struck the old man across the temple with the edge of the mask hard enough to draw blood. The man’s head seemed to warp as if it were made of rubber, stretching out before snapping back like some cartoon parody of reality. The mask rung with the blow, filling the apartment with a deep resonant tone, one that went on and on even after the mask slipped from Joe’s hand to fall to the carpet.

The man screamed and clutched at his head where Joe struck him. The scream was bizarre and painful to hear, almost like two throats were howling in unison, one human and one shrill and birdlike. The man turned and ran, taking the last of Joe’s confusion with him.

Joe fell to the ground, his left arm limp. He could feel the blood running down his arm and soaking his torn shirt. The pain was excruciating, worse than anything he’d felt in years. Dropping the mask Joe grabbed at his shoulder with his right hand, trying to hold the wound closed and staunch the bleeding. His vision wavered again and his stomach heaved as he shifted and lurched to his feet.

Getting to the phone in the kitchen was an exercise in willpower and flaming agony. His right hand was warm and wet, the blood dribbling down his hand and dripping off his elbow as he walked, the twelve steps seeming more like twelve thousand.

He managed to knock the receiver off the hook and he slid to the floor after it as it dangled from the knotted cord just above the linoleum tile. He tried to move his left hand to dial, but his arm was numb from the pain, an irony he might appreciate another time. Grabbing his wounded shoulder with his right hand he gave a low, strangled scream as he moved the recalcitrant limb to the phone. Dialing took nearly all the willpower he had left, and he counted the seconds as each one passed with a thump of his heart as it seemed to splash his blood on the tile.

“911, what is the nature of your emergency?” asked a tinny voice from the speaker after what seemed like forever.

“I’ve been stabbed,” Joe said, just before he passed out.

* * *

Chris slumped in the passenger seat of the car as Steve drove the two of them back from an uncomfortable meeting with the Middletown medical examiner. The man had been unwilling to talk to them over the phone, so they’d gone in person to visit, and while that had proved fruitful everything else about the afternoon had been quietly miserable. He still hadn’t shaken the funk that seeing Megan had thrown him into, and Steve had been surly ever since he’d gotten back from lunch. The combination made for a bad time.

His moping was interrupted by the trill of Steve’s cellphone.

“Russell,” Steve snapped as he tapped his earpiece and connected the call. Chris watched him listen for a second before he reached down and flipped on their flashing lights.

“Thanks,” Steve said as he tapped the headset off and

"What's going on? Dammit Steve, where the hell are we going?"

"Hospital," Steve said. He was driving like a madman, weaving in and out of traffic and easily doubling the speed limit as he pushed their car hard.

"Why are we going to the hospital?"