Fated (2 page)

As if Isaac could read the thoughts straight from the expression on Hart’s face, his eyes widened, and his pupils dilated. He took a shuddering breath.

Fuck.

Hart put his hands over Isaac’s, squeezed them lightly, then gently moved them, letting the dirty shirt fall into place again.

Immediately Isaac took a step back. “I’ll get started on the grouting, then.” There was a wistful note to Isaac’s voice, a tinge of disappointment chilling the air in the bathroom that had slowly begun to smell of their mingled sweat and antiseptic.

“You don’t have to. I’m sure you can think of more fun things to do with your Saturday.”

“I’m right where I wanna be,” Isaac said, the little grin returning.

Hart rolled his eyes. “I could use a drink first.” He certainly needed it from the way his voice sounded like he’d swallowed gravel. He bent down to put the kit away.

A brief beat of silence, and then, “Yeah. A tall drink of water.”

Hart turned around and rolled his eyes.

“Or beer?”

“Not at ten in the morning. Jesus. Is that what they teach you at grad school?”

“Like college was such a long time ago for you.”

“Eleven years ago, you were twelve. I’m an old man to you. You can have lemonade like a good boy.” Hart ducked past the tickle attempt Isaac aimed at his ribs.

They sat on the kitchen counter because the kitchen table and all its chairs were residing in the garage until the tiling was done.

“So what’s next?” Isaac swept his arm around in a wide arc. “Once the grouting’s done?”

“Upstairs bathroom, I think.” Hart drank from his coffee and nearly burned his mouth when Isaac pulled a comedy horror face. That bathroom meant stripping painted-over wallpaper from a layer of tiles that would have to come off the wall too, only to replaster the walls and paint them again. The floor luckily wasn’t tiled, but Hart knew from experience that linoleum could be just as much of a pain to remove. All the old fixtures would have to come out too, and Hart suspected a mold problem behind the shower wall. Not surprising in a one-hundred-year-old cottage. He wiped his scalded lips. “You don’t have to help, you know.”

“I like helping you,” Isaac said as he pressed his cool lemonade glass against his flushed cheeks. “I’m just over tiling for now.”

“We could always do one of the spare bedrooms. Repaint, take out the carpet, put down a hardwood floor.”

“In that order?”

Hart gritted his teeth, then laughed under his breath. “No, probably not.” This kid knew him too well. “You tell me what we should do next, then.”

Isaac tipped the rest of his lemonade back and then put the glass in the sink between them before hopping down. He wandered over to Hart’s dearest possession: a huge tropical aquarium set into the wall so anyone could see the fish from the kitchen or the living room. Unperturbed by the hard work going on around them, they swam back and forth in streaks of marvelous color.

The Bristlenose Catfish, Isaac’s favorite, sucked on the glass, and he crouched down to look at it. The silence that fell was a charged one, no sound apart from the refrigerator and the aquarium filter, and Hart’s barriers began to rise. When Isaac turned around, chin lifted, eyes wide with defiance or a little bit of fear, Hart inwardly flinched. This dance of flirtation and rejection had started when Isaac moved back home from college two months ago, and Hart didn’t know how much longer they could go on like this. Isaac lived right across the street, so avoidance wasn’t an option.

“I think we should—”

Hart’s phone rang, startling Isaac into silence and giving Hart an excuse to leave the room. Relief flooded through him, even if the area code lighting up his screen could mean nothing good.

The relief proved short-lived.

T
HE
HARDCOVER
with worn edges lay beneath a pile of old newspapers: a teetering little tower topped off with an empty coffee mug. Weeks-old black rings inside it served as an echo of a man drinking coffee in the morning, not so much sorting through as discarding most of his mail. In a minute Hart would put the mug in the dishwasher and erase another mark of his father, Professor Jonathan Hart, who’d lived in this old house on the other side of the Mountain for over half a century before perishing quietly without so much as a good-bye. Whatever he’d expected of yesterday’s phone call, that hadn’t been it. The large house on the edge of Brightly had been empty for less than twenty-four hours, and already it began to feel cold and abandoned. The drive there had only taken Hart three hours, but he felt like he’d driven all night.

Hart suppressed a sigh so he wouldn’t end up blowing air into the old rotary dial phone tucked against his chin. Isaac’s voice on the other end wobbled. The uncertainty of it brought into his mind the image of a sixteen-year-old Isaac standing on his porch, bright-eyed and already lovely, even though his body still had that teenaged coltish build. Hart had agreed to let him mow the lawn, and their friendship had started.

It was time to interrupt before the apologies could gain momentum. He’d called his own landline to test his father’s old phone, not expecting it to work. Isaac being awake at this hour of the morning to begin with spoke volumes of remorse. Hart suppressed a yawn, realizing only now that he’d been up all night after driving straight here.

“Listen, Isaac, I have to go. It’s no big deal, I promise. It’s only a fish. It’s not your fault. Keep on house-sitting for me, will you? I’m counting on you. I should be back in a week or so.”

Breaking off Isaac’s good-byes, Hart replaced the horn on the antique phone. On the desk his cell phone started ringing, the captain’s face lighting up the screen with a scowl.

“Captain, you promised me a week. It hasn’t even been one day.”

“I know.” A sigh rattled through from the other end. Hart could almost smell the blue smoke coming off the cigar. The no-smoking policy had bypassed Captain Otis Johnson completely, and no one seemed to have noticed, even though it had been in effect for ten years. “I’m awful sorry to do this to you, Lieutenant.”

Hart closed his eyes and sank down into an old and very familiar desk chair. He pressed the meat of his palm against the wrinkles between his eyebrows, careful not to disturb the tower of clutter. The oncoming headache promised to be a hefty one. No one’s fault but his own, Hart supposed. After the three-hour drive through the Mountain separating Brightly from Riverside, that bottle of red last night had Chateau Migraine written all over it.

“Another suspicious death?”

“An attempt this time.”

Despite himself Hart’s spine straightened. “This one’s alive?” A victim capable of giving even the barest description would be a huge break in the Tattoo Murders Hart had been working on for the past year.

“What happened?”

“Don’t get too excited. The victim’s in a coma and on life support. Chances of him pulling through are slim.”

Well, shit. Hart deflated, the leather seat creaking as he sank backward. “If he’s not going anywhere, can’t it wait until I’m back?”

“That’s just it.” Hart listened to the captain inhale, puff out, and cough mildly. The soft crackling of the burning cigar reached Hart over the phone. He imagined Captain Johnson staring at it, wondering while he caught his breath whether he shouldn’t think about quitting after all. The captain thought about thinking of quitting quite a lot. “This one’s over where you are.”

“Here in Brightly?”

“Yes. Twenty-four-year-old male….” Hart could tell from the change in tone that the captain was reading through his file. “Found by a Mr. Jackson. Local grocery store owner heard a noise behind his shop as he was locking up, went out thinking he’d scare off alley cats. Looks like he scared off the killer instead. He didn’t see anyone but the victim.”

“How did you find out about this one?”

“Brightly’s superintendent told me when we spoke yesterday morning. He mentioned the kid when I asked him how things were going.”

“And you’re sure he’s one of ours?”

“No, but I want you to check it out anyway. You know, see if he has a—”

“Right. So that’s what? Number five?”

“If he dies, yeah. You know I wouldn’t normally ask you at a time like this, but—”

“But since I’m here,” Hart said. “It’s fine, Captain, really. I’d like to take my mind off emptying out my father’s house, anyway. A good old attempted murder should do the trick.” The captain’s laugh turned into a nasty cough. Hart held back the advice he’d given before. It never was welcome. “So what can I do? This isn’t my jurisdiction.”

“I thought you’d be on board. Don’t worry about jurisdiction. I worked it out with the police superintendent of Brightly.” Hart managed not to groan, but only just. “He agreed to let you ask a few questions as long as you take their chief inspector with you. Ask for Freddie when you get to the station. You start tomorrow. See what you can do, Lieutenant. The kid’s name is Drake.”

“All right.” Hart cast around, his eyes falling on his father’s engraved fountain pen. Knowing exactly what the engraving would say, he quickly reached for a Bic that leaked a bit at the tip instead. “Shoot.”

O
LD
COFFEE
rings turned out to be more stubborn than Hart expected. A search for detergent revealed a new sponge and an unopened bottle of dishwashing liquid under the sink. Hart stared at both, eyes flicking from one to the other. It seemed such a waste to open either when they’d hardly be used. He hadn’t planned on being here long enough to warrant more than an occasional run of the dishwasher.

Hart ripped the plastic from the sponge, let the tap run itself hot, and decided to leave the detergent unopened. He’d get the stains out with nothing but elbow grease and water, while trying not to think of the dirty dishes Isaac might be leaving in his own sink at home.

Hart yanked his hand out of the too-hot water.

Isaac,
fuck
.

Hart had lied to him. The little red Hi Fin Lyretail Swordtail might have been just a fish, but he’d been the first. The start of a hobby that brought peace to a burdened mind. Something to ground him when work pushed his limits.

Still, just a fish. Hart exhaled and reached for a worn blue towel, one of many he’d found in the exact same drawer they’d been in when he left home almost fifteen years ago. He wiped the drops off the counter, caught the one on the cabinet door before it hit the ground, and set to cleaning the mug, taking care not to spill any more water.

When all this was over, when he could go home again—his real home, the one he’d been living in for the past seven years—he would go to Aquatropica and buy a new Swordtail. Maybe an orange one this time. Or yellow.

He left the kitchen and flicked on the lights in the study down the hall; two old lanterns screwed into the wall with low-wattage bulbs cast the room in the colors of an early sunrise. The heavy curtains still stopped the morning light from coming in, so he went over to the large double window to open them and turned the lights off again.

While the coffeepot sputtered in the kitchen, he plugged his laptop into a socket beside his father’s old armchair. Its thick armrests were worn on their round ends, the leather lighter there than in the deep, concave seat. As he straightened, the coffeemaker puffed its final loud caffeine bubbles until the noise petered out to nothing, and the house around him was suspended in a pocket of silence.

For a moment Hart could hear the ghost of footsteps on the wooden staircase curling its way down to the front hall from the landing two floors up. Those footsteps would make their careful, slippered way around the little towers of books on the carpeted steps, all the way into the kitchen. The fridge would open and close. A mug like the one he just spent ten minutes scrubbing clean would be lifted from a kitchen cabinet, and Mr. Jonathan Hart would always pour milk before coffee.
The reason, my boy….

“Is that you can still take out the milk if it’s too much.” Hart’s voice broke in the silence. There would be no footsteps coming down today; there was no one here in the old mansion but Hart himself.

“Shake it off,” he mumbled, and he went to pour coffee into the mug he’d just cleaned.

Bringing his laptop had been a spur of the moment thing, but he counted himself lucky to have it as he booted up. There was no computer to be found in his dad’s house.
I don’t trust them, Son. One day they’ll take over the world.

It saved a trip to the police station, asking for whatever old monstrosity might be available, if they’d even give him access to one. An outsider asking for favors hardly made for a good start. When the laptop booted up, he opened the folder he’d named Tattoo Murders. It contained a file for each of the victims: four of them over the span of a year. Mona O’Keefe had been the first, a year ago last August. Two others followed over the span of four months, and then a new one last month. There was no rhyme or reason to these murders. None that he could see anyway, and he suspected that in their oddity lay the key.