The Hell You Say (16 page)

I had trouble with the whole lost disk bit. Accepting that there had been a disk, why would Savant have carried it around with him? And if he had been nuts enough to carry it around, how could he have lost track of it? Wasn’t the most likely scenario that he had mislaid it before he ever got to Cloak and Dagger?

He had been late arriving that night, I remembered. And he had arrived with a posse.

How well had he known the women with him? Were they friends, acquaintances, or just chicks he’d picked up along the way? Would Bob know? Would Bob tell me if he knew?

Would Bob shoot me for asking?

About then I remembered that I had come downstairs for a non-crime-related purpose.

I picked myself off the carpet, stretched, reflected that another thing I had been neglecting was my tai chi. I wandered into the stock room, where I sat stiffly at the desk, signed onto the computer.

I don’t have a problem with shopping. I don’t have a problem with malls at Christmas.

But shopping in the malls at Christmas -- yes, that I do have a problem with. I shop online.

I surfed the ’Net for a while, trying to come up with ideas. When you’re a guy, you get extra credit for any sign of thoughtfulness, and I’ve earned a lot of mileage out of chocolates, flowers, and gift certificates. But buying for one’s new supplementary family members seemed to require more effort. I reconnoitered for a moment, then recalled one of those universal truths about chicks of a certain age: anything vaguely reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn is going to be a hit.

I browsed a few pages further, then settled on a retro designer silk scarf for Natasha and a cloisonné compact mirror for Lauren. Emma was easy: five 1946 blue board editions of Nancy Drew novels. And for Dauten, a silver whisky flask. True, he didn’t strike me as a whisky flask kind of guy, but after months of living with Lisa, he might discover the comfort of always having a drink close at hand.

I pressed yes for gift wrap, yes for second-day shipping, and sat back feeling self-congratulatory.

The Hell You Say

97

Smothering a jaw-cracking yawn, I clicked to open my e-mail. Nothing particularly interesting. I yawned again, reviewed blackster21’s e-mail.

What do you know? Along with the usual offers of home loans, university degrees, and penis enlargement, was an e-mail with the cryptic header: Your Question.

I studied it warily. No sign of an attachment. It had been sent by [email protected].

I clicked. Immediately my entire screen went red.

“Shit!”

I hit alt+control+delete and jumped about a foot as someone right next to me screamed.

Heart hammering, I absorbed the fact that the scream came from my computer. As I stared, the screen filled with an ominous Grim Reaper figure. Scythe in one skeleton hand, hourglass in the other, it drifted slowly toward me, the hooded skull filling the monitor screen. Then it disappeared. Ghostly shrieks of laughter vibrated my modem. My entire screen went black. The computer turned off.

* * * * *

Like I hadn’t enough excitement for one night. I scowled at my reflection. Foaming at the mouth. How appropriate.

Then the front door slammed. It was like one of those goofy campfire tales: I’m on the first step…

I bent over the sink, rinsed my mouth, and spat. I wiped my face on the towel draped around my shoulders.

He was pouring himself a brandy from the liquor cabinet. He had discarded his jacket, but he was still wearing his shoulder holster.

“Hey,” I said, leaning against the door frame leading into the bedroom.

“Hey.” He knocked back the brandy. Bared his teeth. He set the glass down, advancing on me.

I held my ground. Studied him quizzically. I wasn’t sure what he had in mind, his expression was kind of grim for romance. He reached me, his fingers digging into my shoulders.

Pain is not my scene. I tried to slip out from under his grip. He pushed me back toward the bed. I lost my balance, exclaiming, “Jeez, Jake --!”

He went low for a tackle, hoisting me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, surprising a laugh out of me.

“D’you mind, asshole?” I protested, upside down.

98 Josh Lanyon

No reply. We got to the bed in about three steps, and he flung me down. The pillows bounced, the mattress springs squeaked in maidenly alarm. Jake’s hand went to his belt buckle.

“Whoa. You mind disarming first, cowpoke?” I sat up, reached for the fastening on his shoulder holster.

His eyes met mine. There was something unfamiliar there. I felt a prickle across my scalp.

He yanked off his trousers and shorts, and pounced, pushing me back into the pillows.

His mouth covered mine hungrily. Toothpaste and brandy. I gave up on the holster, preparing to give as good as I got.

What I got was a fast, fierce, mindless fuck: sweaty, bruising, and a little weird. I don’t mean that in a bad way -- I enjoy sex for sex’s sake as much as the next guy -- but I can’t say that it was exactly Chicken Soup for the Gay Man’s Soul, either.

We wrestled around some, Jake not hurting me, but not holding back either. He flipped me over without much of a tussle, pinned me, pushed my legs apart and up, and then shoved two slick fingers inside me. I jerked with surprise more than pain. He worked my prostate with ruthless efficiency, taking my breath away, even if I’d wanted to protest, which I didn’t particularly. I grunted in helpless, mindless response, and he withdrew his hand and crammed his cock in my ass.

I rammed him, giving into the aggression and hunger -- his and mine -- and he shoved back. We pushed each other, each time a little harder and a little further. It could have been play, or it could have been the prelude to a brawl. He pounded into me, and I drove right back at him.

The hardest part was the silence. Not just the lack of words, because Jake communicated a lot of the time simply through touch. But tonight the touch felt distant, almost impersonal. He brought me swiftly and adeptly to orgasm, and that I did resent a little -- as much as you can resent that kind of teeth-rattling sensation -- and then he yelled and came himself, in fierce surges of ropy semen.

When it was over, Jake sprawled on his back, staring blankly at the ceiling.

I studied his profile. I knew it so well: that unyielding jaw, the hard sensual line of his mouth, the faint laugh lines spreading out from his eyes -- not that he laughed a lot.

How’s Kate? I wondered. How’s that pregnancy thing going? Does she have any idea what you do on Monday and Wednesday nights?

When is this going to end?

Filled with sudden, overwhelming lassitude, I closed my eyes.

Next I knew, the bed springs were pinging again. I opened my eyes. Jake sat on the edge of the bed, his back to me, head in his hands.

The Hell You Say

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The white bandages taping his ribs were stark against his skin. The last hours couldn’t have done him much good, but I didn’t think his pain was physical.

I waited for him to get up and walk out, but the next moment the light snapped out. He flopped back.

Within a minute, his snores were gently ruffling my hair.

100

Josh Lanyon

“You feel okay?” Showered and dressed, Jake stood at the stove, turning bacon with a spatula when I walked into the kitchen the next morning.

I shrugged the rest of the way into my shirt. “Fine. Why?” He’d set a clean mug out for me on the counter, and I poured coffee from the machine.

I glanced his way. He turned down the gas on the stove. He looked more relaxed than he had the night before -- maybe it was the absence of firearms.

“You were restless last night. Tossing and turning. Talking in your sleep.”

I sat down with my coffee. “I hope I didn’t spill my girlish secrets.”

“Your girlish secrets are safe with me.”

That kind of line works better with a smile, but Jake was not amused by references to my feminine side. He set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me. “Eat. You’ll feel better.”

“I feel fine,” I said, irritably this time.

Jake had this Nero Wolfe-ian attitude about food. He thought a growling stomach signaled serious illness. In less than a year, I’d had more lectures from him on the importance of breakfast than I had from Lisa during my entire childhood.

He piled his own plate from the pan on the stove, sat across from me, leaning on his elbows the better to intimidate his food.

We ate to the homely sounds of the dishwasher running and coffee machine percolating.

I was deep in thought when Jake’s voice yanked me back to awareness.

“So what’s on your mind? You’re usually chirping and chattering around here in the morning.”

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“Well, thank you,” I said. “I appreciate the flattering comparison to Tweety Bird.” I forked in a mouthful of fluffy, scrambled eggs. He was a good cook, and I did appreciate the fact that he fixed me breakfast and did my dirty dishes -- and saved my skin on occasion.

I said, “To start with, I think your new partner Rossini smells a rat.”

“Let me worry about Rossini.”

“Happy to.”

“What else?”

“Oh, so we’re talking about this now?”

“We’re talking about whatever is freaking you out.”

“Freaking me out?” I murmured politely.

“You know what I mean.”

Well, actually…no.

But in the interests of keeping it civil, I said, “Okay. What does Angus say?”

“I didn’t interrogate Angus -- and we’re not discussing the case except as it directly affects you.”

“What does Angus say?” I repeated.

Grudgingly, he replied, “He says he didn’t do it.”

“Do you believe him?”

“We’re investigating his story.”

“No, I mean do you personally believe him?”

“Don’t be naïve. My personal feelings have nothing to do with it.”

“Come off it, Jake. You’re always talking about a cop’s instinct. You know Angus. What does your gut tell you?”

“Nobody ever really knows anybody,” Jake said.

“You’d be the expert on that,” I said shortly. “I still think you can know people well enough to tell whether they’re homicidal maniacs.”

“Tell that to the neighbors of the serial killer of your choice.”

“Does he have an alibi?”

“We’re checking into it.”

“Did he --”

Jake cut across. “Let’s cut to the chase. He hasn’t said anything about any cult or coven.

In fact, he clammed up at the suggestion.”

“What does that tell you?”

“That he decided not to waste his breath and our time.”

I nodded. Speared a bit of bacon.

102

Josh Lanyon

“I suppose it’s occurred to you that he’s not likely to back our story of casual acquaintances?”

He didn’t respond.

“Okay, answer me this. If she was killed between six and ten o’clock, how would Angus have got back to Lake Tahoe in time to call me at eleven-thirty?”

Jake took a long, deliberate drink of coffee, set down his cup without haste. “Have you ever known me not to do my job?”

I flashed onto the memory of him wiping the doorknob at Angus’s rental. Did that count?

“Well…not exactly.”

“Then chill. Have a little faith in the system. If he’s innocent, it’ll come out. If he isn’t innocent, he deserves to fry.”

“He deserves to fry? Welcome to the Age of Enlightenment. Happily, we gas them here in the Golden State, remember?”

Jake shook his head, not bothering to reply to this old argument between us.

I said, “How much of a fair trial is he going to get with the cops already convinced he’s the man and a public defender straight out of law school?”

Jake raised his brows. “For your information, he doesn’t have a public defender. Martin Grosser has officially taken his case.”

“Martin Grosser, the major league media lawyer?”

“You got it.”

“Pro bono?”

“I guess. I wouldn’t know.” Jake added grimly, “I’m on the other team.”

I chewed this over. After a time I noticed Jake watching me with that sardonic expression.

I pointed out, “You were the one with the theory that Angus was on the fringe of something bigger. A coven would have thirteen members. Maybe that doesn’t qualify as an actual cult, but --”

“The unofficial view is that Angus and his girlfriend acted on their own in the killings of Kinsey Perone, Tony Zellig, and Karen Holtzer.”

Like Daniel and Manuela Ruda, a husband-wife team in Germany who stabbed their best friend sixty-six times, then drank his blood -- claiming the Devil made them do it. But even the Rudas appeared to have connections to underground occult groups in Britain.

“Does that mean you have a different take on it?”

He rose, dumped his dishes into the sink, ran water. A well-trained and completely house-broken male: La Cage aux Folles meets Leave It to Beaver.

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He turned and faced me. “Look, I’m not discussing the case with you. You’re a witness, remember? A hostile witness at that.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he stopped me with a quick, rough kiss that tasted of coffee and bacon.

“Stay out of trouble,” he said.

A moment later, I heard the front door slam.

*****

Like the majority of writers I knew, published and unpublished, Ted has a day job. He works as a computer programmer and freelance web designer. I pay him a nominal fee to maintain the Cloak and Dagger Web site -- and to bail me out of disasters like the present one.

“How bad is it?”

He chuckled. “Not that bad, just mean. Very mean.” He swiveled in the chair. “It’s a freeware prank program. It automatically launched when you opened the e-mail. Do you know who sent it?”

I shook my head.

Ted made tsking sounds. “You should never open e-mail from an unknown address.”

I didn’t bother to reply. Half the e-mail I got was from customers whose e-mail addresses I didn’t recognize.