Shadows Fall (23 page)

“Nuh-uh. Good here. Sleep.”

“Are you saying I fucked you into unconsciousness?” Charlie asked, feeling rather proud of himself.

He was met with nothing but the sound of soft snores from underneath him.

****

Sometime during the night, they’d managed to turn themselves so that they were actually lying longways on the bed, under the covers with their heads on the pillows, like normal people. When Charlie was awakened by the sound of his phone ringing, Titus was completely wrapped around him like a spider monkey, as if seeking his warmth.

Since it was the ringtone of an actual telephone, he knew it was work related, and he had to take it. Charlie tried to gently disentangle himself from Titus, but he still managed to wake him up.

“What happened? I’m up, I’m up!” Titus said when he was startled into wakefulness.

“Whoa, easy there,” Charlie said, laughing. “You always wake up like that?”

“Uh, no. I’m not much of a sleeper, so I was confused. Didn’t know where I was for a second.” He reached under the covers and closed his hand over Charlie’s semi-hard cock. “Maybe I need a reminder.”

Charlie swooped in and teased his lips open, plunging his tongue inside Titus’s mouth. All too soon, he had to pull back. “Sorry I woke you. Just got a call from work. I have to see what it was about.”

“Be my guest,” Titus said, still stroking. “Don’t mind me.”

Charlie’s laugh rumbled in his chest as he slapped around in the dark until he found his phone. He fumbled with it until he got the screen to light up. He’d missed two calls from Karen Johanssen. Sighing, Charlie pulled back the covers and climbed out of bed.

“It was the M.E. I’ve got to call her back. You want me to leave the room so you can get some more sleep?”

“Hmm… no. I’m awake now. I’ll wait until you’re done so I can give you a proper good morning—or whatever the hell time it is.”

“Yeah, sorry about. It’s five a.m. Dr. Johanssen keeps weird hours.”

Charlie pulled his track pants back on and sat down on the bed with his back against the headboard. He pulled up the caller I.D. and hit ‘return call.’

Karen answered on the first ring. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for like an hour!”

“Try twice in five minutes. If you’re calling me this goddamn early on my supposed day off, you’d better have something for me, Karen.”

“Oh, I got something. Not sure if it’s relevant to the case—you’ll have to decide for yourself—but it’s something I’ve never seen before.”

Charlie’s interest was officially piqued, along with annoyance. Karen always liked to have a good lead-in for her discoveries, when he’d appreciate her just getting to the point. “Well let’s have it, then.”

“Well I just got the PCR results back on Brandon Meyers, and I was definitely right about the HIV.”

“Okay… we were operating under that assumption already.”

“Yes, but if he had HIV, he was likely getting treatment for it somewhere, otherwise he’d probably be a lot worse off. We’ll probably find traces of antiretrovirals in his blood. Anyway, if that’s the case, you could track down wherever he was being treated and see if they have any new information.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m not sure if that’s cause for a five a.m. wakeup call.”

“I’m not finished,” Karen said in a voice laced with annoyance.

“Sorry, Doctor. Please continue,” Charlie said, rolling his eyes at Titus, who graced him with a smile.

“I found something else on the PCR results. Brandon Meyers had two different blood types.”

“What? That’s impossible. It’s got to be a mistake with the lab.”

“That’s what I thought too, at first. So I had them run it again. The results were unchanged.”

“What could cause something like that?”

“I don’t know. I’m guessing it’s some kind of genetic anomaly. I need to do some research, see if I can find any other documented cases. But the thing is, I’m willing to bet that since Brandon Meyers is HIV positive, we’re not the first ones to discover this aberration.

“Is it a motive for murder? Maybe, maybe not, but if you can figure out who else knows about this, it might give you something more to go on.”

Charlie’s heart beat faster, adrenaline surged through his body with the possibility of a new lead. “You’re right. Looks like I’m not taking a day off after all. I’ll start looking into Brandon Meyers’ HIV treatment first thing.”

“Good luck, Charlie.”

“Thanks, Karen.”

Charlie ended the call and looked over at Titus. The other man was staring at him intently.

“Good news?”

“Maybe. Not sure, but it could be a break in the case.”

“Brandon Meyers.”

“Yes.”

Titus sighed and looked down to where his fingers fidgeted with the sheets. “I keep wondering if… maybe if I’d gone in there sooner, instead of… ignoring the bad feeling I had for so long… What if I could have saved him?”

Charlie stroked Titus’s smooth jaw. “More than likely, you would have become a victim too.” He swallowed hard at the thought of Titus being hurt. “That would be… I wouldn’t want that.”

“Yeah, I guess. So you might have new evidence?”

Charlie nodded.

“And if you find evidence about Brandon Meyers’ case, it could help you catch the serial killer.”

Charlie gave Titus a long look. He couldn’t remember if he’d told Titus that he thought Brandon had been killed by the Queen City Slayer, and he wasn’t sure how much he should say. It was an open investigation in which Titus was a witness, after all.

“I don’t know about that,” was all he could think of to say.

Titus’s brow wrinkled, he seemed confused. “But you said all the victims had those carvings on their necks, the signature, and he had that.”

Charlie froze. Now that, he knew he hadn’t said. “I never told you about Brandon having the markings.”

Titus screwed up his face and looked toward the ceiling like he was thinking really hard. Then he shrugged. “I guess I saw it when I found him.”

Pulse pounding, Charlie slowly turned to face Titus. This couldn’t be right. Surely he wasn’t… he hadn’t… “No, you didn’t. Brandon Meyers was found with his head turned to the left. Unless you touched him, moved him, you couldn’t have seen it. You couldn’t know that, Titus.”

Titus paled, and his face fell. He cast a nervous look at Charlie. “Oh.”

“Yeah, big ‘oh.’” Charlie sighed and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. He didn’t want this. He’d already come to care for Titus so much in a short period of time. Titus couldn’t be involved in this. He just
couldn’t.
“Titus, I think we’re going to have to go back to the station. I can’t ignore this, no matter how much I want to.”

Titus lowered his eyes and began shivering. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Deep down, Charlie still didn’t believe he could be part of this, but he definitely knew something. He just had to figure out a way to get it out of him, hopefully without hurting Titus, and without destroying this tenuous connection they’d formed, because Charlie wasn’t ready to lose him yet. He didn’t know if he’d ever be.

Chapter Seventeen

Oh, god, the look on Charlie’s face when he’d realized my mistake? That broke my heart. I couldn’t believe everything had gotten so screwed up, so fast. I never asked for this ‘gift’ I had. Most of the time I just wanted it to go away. Unfortunately, somehow I’d wound up as a murder suspect in a case my… lover was investigating—only me.

Suspect.
That was what I was now. Charlie hadn’t said it—he was still sticking with ‘material witness’ under suspicion of obstruction of justice—but DeRossi had. DeRossi hated me. I wasn’t sure if it was because he really thought I’d done it, or if he sensed something was going on between me and Charlie.

I was in an interrogation room, a much larger version of the one I’d been taken to before, with Charlie and his partner. In fact, it seemed like more of a conference room, except for the ever-present two-way mirror. They didn’t say it was two-way, but what other reason would there be for a mirror in an interrogation room. DeRossi was sitting across the metal table from me, while Charlie paced the room. I’d been given water after I snubbed the P.D.’s rotgut coffee.

Whatever the reason, Sonny DeRossi was going at me hard, having me repeat my statement over and over again, and waiting for me to slip up. I didn’t. I couldn’t, because it was the truth—minus one detail. But then, he’d always circle around to the one question I couldn’t answer without either implicating myself, or admitting that I’d seen Brandon Meyers’ ghost. Which option did I want, jail or the nuthouse?

I’d put on the pendant, the one that allowed me to hear the
mule
, because the only way I could see to get the focus off of me was by providing the cops with information they didn’t have. It might not get me out of the obstruction of justice charge
or
keep me from revealing my secret, but it could possibly buy me some time.

It was a good thing I had the necklace on, because they were all in there with us. All five victims stood against the wall, shoulder to shoulder, like some kind of macabre police lineup. My eyes kept drifting over to them, making contact with each one. Brandon Meyers had a look on his face, something akin to sympathy. Good, maybe we could help each other.

“Mr. McGinty!” DeRossi’s voice pulled my attention away from the restive spirits. “Am I boring you?”

I winced. I really wasn’t doing myself any favors. “No, sorry. Just tired. I had a late night.”

I look pointedly at Charlie, and he had at least the good grace to look sheepish. I knew it wasn’t his fault that I was there—that was all on me—but I didn’t want him to forget what we were to each other.

De Rossi scowled at me, planted his hands on the table, and stood up. “I’ll ask you one more time. How did you know that Brandon Meyers had the marks on his neck?”

I took my time to answer, stared at the large bulletin board set up on the far wall. It was something right out of a movie scene, with crime scene photos, headshots—victims or suspects maybe, it was too far away to make out any details—and even a map of Charlotte with pins in various locations, connected by red marker. It was a real, honest-to-god murder board.

DeRossi cleared his throat, and I turned back to him. “I guess I just assumed. I don’t know.”

He nodded angrily and pushed away from the table. “You. Don’t. Know. That’s a hell of an assumption to make. I don’t believe you.”

“DeRossi,” Charlie warned, turning a helpless look my way. “Take it easy.”

There was movement off to my right; Brandon Meyers had stepped forward. He was inches away from me when he reached out and laid his spectral hand on my shoulder. Suddenly I was assaulted with rapid-fire images, like a whole movie made out of a collection of one-second clips. I had to dig my fingernails into my palms to jar my senses enough to be able to concentrate on one image at a time.

I was no longer in the interrogation room. I was in Brandon’s apartment, seeing through his eyes. I was sitting at what looked to be his kitchen table, which was piled high with overdue medical and utility bills. There was a stack of prescription bottles that I somehow knew were antiretrovirals. I was holding a business card and a letter with shaky hands.

Unable to make out the text of the letter through the hazy quality of the vision, I concentrated on the business card. The name of the business was
SevenTek Industries
, and there was a smaller subtitle that read
Independent Human Genetics Laboratories.

What the fuck?
I thought. There was nothing else on the front of the card, and I couldn’t see the back. I had no idea what Brandon was trying to tell me by showing me this scene. I searched my mind to try to make it fit with anything Charlie had mentioned about the investigation but I couldn’t.

Surfacing from the vision was like drowning and then suddenly being pulled out of the water. I took in a great gasp of air, realizing I hadn’t been breathing. Sonny DeRossi was staring at me like I was a lunatic, and Charlie was standing in the corner on the phone, but eyeing me warily. I was still unfocused, like I was walking in a dream—or really drunk. My vision tracked slowly, making me dizzy, so I concentrated on Brandon’s face and ignored DeRossi in favor of straining to hear Charlie’s murmured conversation.

“This is not a good time, Karen,” he said. “We’re interrogating a… suspect. I—you what?”

He listened for a few more seconds before speaking more sharply. “Then how do you explain one man having two different blood types? Isn’t that genetically impossible?”

Follow the blood.
A jolt of pain shot through my body originating from the point where Brandon was touching my shoulder, as I remembered the spirit’s words. Through the fog of agony, a single word imbedded itself in my brain, one I could barely define:
Chimera
.

I tried to push it out, and the pain increased at intervals until there was nothing I could do but let it out. “Chimera,” I whispered.

DeRossi’s gaze snapped to my face. “What did you say?”