Adrien English Mysteries: A Dangerous Thing & Fatal Shadows (21 page)

“Let’s talk about this!” Bruce made a sudden gesture. There was a bright pain beneath my ear.

At the same instant Riordan yelled, “Bruce -- I’ll blow your fucking head off!” He was standing just a few feet from us. The gun aimed at my head seemed huge. I could look right down the barrel. It was like a tunnel.

Riordan said, “I’ll splatter your brains all over that goddamn wall.” He sounded a little breathless.

“I don’t care,” sobbed Bruce. He could cry and still hold the knife in place. The pain at my jaw seemed to pause. I could feel something hot trickling down my neck. Jesus, had he cut my throat?

“Yes, you do. You want all the world to know how smart you are. You want Adrien to know how smart you are.”

“Wrong again. WRONG! You don’t know shit!”

“I know that I’ve radioed for help. I know that in minutes this place will be swarming with cops. Listen.”

We listened. The wail of sirens had been growing steadily louder, but I don’t think I’d heard it until then. Now it was earsplitting.

Bruce’s hold shifted. “It doesn’t matter.” He said, and all at once he sounded calm.

Serene. Not a good sign, I recognized instinctively.

I met Riordan’s eyes. Up until now he had not looked directly at me. I didn’t know if I was reading him right or not, but I dug my fingers into the pressure point of Bruce’s forearm.

At the same time I hooked my right foot around his and yanked him off balance. Textbook Tai Chi. I couldn’t believe it when it worked.

There was an incredible explosion that seemed to ricochet off the walls. Plaster peppered the side of my face and hair. The arm holding me fell away. The blade at my throat dropped, scratched a crescent across my chest and ribs, tore the fleshy part of my forearm as it sliced downward.

I stumbled away in a kind of daze.

128

Josh Lanyon

Riordan fired again looking like a poster boy for the NRA. Perfect stance. Perfect aim. As I stared a great red bloom seemed to blossom in the center of Bruce’s chest. The crimson spread. In slow motion he slid down the wall. Languidly he sprawled onto the carpet. Red black smeared the wall behind him. The bedroom door opened, swinging silently wide.

Bruce’s fingers slowly released the knife, uncurling gently. The eyes behind the mask were closed.

The dead don’t close their eyes. As this thought ran through my brain, Bruce’s eyes opened. They gazed at the carpet with a fixed look that living eyes never have.

“Okay, baby?”

Riordan was walking toward me. I realized he was talking to me.

I rummaged around inside my head. Found words. “Yeah.” My voice cracked and I had to try again. “Thanks. Thank you.”

His hand slid across my bare shoulder, fastened around the back of my neck, drew me forward. I reeled against him, my head resting for a moment in the curve of his neck and shoulder, tried to catch my breath. His heart was thudding a million miles an hour. His chest rising and falling. Neither of us said a word.

The sirens sounded like they were in the kitchen. The banging on the front door seemed to shake the whole house. Riordan holstered his gun, pulled his ID, and stepped in front of me as the front door gave with a crash and a dozen uniforms burst into the living room with weapons drawn.

* * * * *

“It was a righteous shooting,” Chan said for the third time.

It was close to dawn. I was dressed. My chest was taped and my arm and throat bandaged by the paramedics. I had answered a million questions, and now I stood with Chan outside the house while the crime scene team bustled about their grisly business.

Black-and-whites were angled all over the street. The Landis yard and sidewalk had been sectioned off. Even at this hour of the morning a crowd was forming behind the yellow crime scene tape. Overhead, birds were starting to twitter in the trees.

“I’ve been writing a book myself,” Chan said confidentially, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “I was wondering if you might be willing to read it sometime. You know, give me your honest opinion.”

“Sure.” Vainly I searched the swarm of uniforms and plainclothes for Riordan.

“It’s a police procedural.”

I nodded, not listening.

Riordan materialized before us. He said to Chan, “I think I’ll drive Mr. English home, Paul.”

Fatal Shadows

129

Chan had a funny look on his face. “Uh ... What about IA?”

“What about ’em?”

Chan glanced at me and shrugged. Flicked the cigarette onto the porch and ground it out with his heel.

We slipped under the crime scene tape. Made our way through the crowd that parted warily before us. In silence we walked down the shady street to where I’d left the Bronco --

a lifetime ago.

Riordan reached his palm out. I handed my keys over. He unlocked my door. Walked around, unlocked the driver’s side, and climbed in beside me.

He started the engine.

I said, “I don’t know your first name.”

“Jake.” He looked at me briefly. Looked away.

More silence while the engine warmed. Riordan yawned hugely, scrubbed his face with his hands. His glance slid my way. “You know, this won’t be an easy thing, Adrien.”

An officer-involved shooting was not going to be fun, righteous or not.

“The investigation you mean?”

“No.” He gave me that crooked smile. “No, I don’t mean that.”

I stared out at the first blush of sunrise lighting the surrounding Chatsworth hills.

Despite myself, I started to smile.

A DANGEROUS THING

Chapter One

She was young and she was lovely and she was dead. Very dead.

And this was bad. Very bad.

What had once been Lavinia was now an ungraceful sprawl of long blonde hair and long white limbs -- and then Jason’s horrified brain recognized what his eyes had refused to see: Lavinia’s slender arms ended in two bloody stumps.

I stopped typing, read it back and winced. Poor Jason. We had been stuck discovering Lavinia’s body for the past two days and we still couldn’t get it right.

I hit the delete key.

Lousy as was Titus Andronicus, my second Jason Leland mystery, Death for a Deadly Deed, was even worse. I guess basing Jason’s second outing on Shakespeare’s infamous play was only the first of my mistakes. I was still brooding when the phone rang.

“It’s me,” Jake said. “I can’t make it tonight.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Silence.

I let it stretch, which is not like me, being the civilized guy I am.

“Adrien?” Jake asked at last.

“Yo?”

“I’m a cop. It’s who I am. It’s what I do.”

“You sound like the lead-in to a TV show.” Before he could hit back, I added, “Don’t sweat it, Jake. I’ll find something else to do tonight.”

Silence.

I realized I’d deleted too much from my manuscript. Was I supposed to hit Edit and then Undo? Or just Undo? Or Control + Z? Word Perfect I am not.

“Have fun,” Jake said pleasantly, and rang off.

A Dangerous Thing

133

“See ya,” I muttered to the dial tone.

These dreary dumps I call my life, as the bard would say.

For a moment I sat there staring at the blinking cursor on my screen. It occurred to me that I needed to make some changes -- and not just in Death for a Deadly Deed.

Swearing under my breath, I hit Save and closed the document. Exit and Shut Down. See how easy that was?

I went downstairs to the shop where Angus, my assistant (and resident warlock), was slicing open a shipment of books with a utility knife.

“Hey, I’m going out of town,” I announced as Angus gazed entranced at a best-selling cover featuring a blood-spattered ax.

I wasn’t sure if I had a dial tone or not. He didn’t blink. Angus is tall, rawboned, and pale as a ghost. Jake has a number of unkind sobriquets for him, but the kid is smart and hardworking. I figure that’s all that is my business.

“Why?” he mumbled at last.

“Because I need a vacation. Because I can’t write with all these distractions.”

At last Angus tore his bespectacled gaze from the gory dust jacket. “Why?”

After a couple of months I was becoming fluent in Anguspeak.

“The way it is, man. Can you keep an eye on things?” Keep the Black Masses to a minimum and not eat all fifty boxes of gourmet cookies in the storeroom?

Angus shrugged. “I guess. Class starts back up in two weeks though.”

I’ve never been able to ascertain exactly what Angus is studying at UCLA. Library Science or Demonology 101?

“I’ll be back by then. I just want to get away for a few days.”

“Where are you going?” This was the most interest in my actions Angus had shown in two months.

“I own property up north in Sonora. Accurately, outside of Sonora near a little town called Basking. I thought I’d drive up there.” I added, “Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“It’s four-thirty now. It shouldn’t take me more than six or seven hours.”

Angus mulled this over, absently testing the point of the utility knife with his thumb.

“It’s not like you to be impulsive, Adrien,” was his verdict. “What do I tell that cop of yours?”

“He’s not my actual personal property,” I said shortly. “He’s a public servant.” In more ways than one. “Anyway you won’t have to tell him anything because I don’t plan on seeing him anytime soon.”

134

Josh Lanyon

“Oh.” Angus looked down at the knife with a small smile. Tiffs among the faggots were apparently the stuff of quiet merriment.

I left Angus with visions of dismemberment still dancing in his head and went to pack. It didn’t take long to throw a couple of pairs of Levi’s and a toothbrush into my Gladstone. I emptied the fridge into an ice chest, dug out my sleeping bag and tossed computer disks and a couple of CDs in with my clothes and laptop.

By a quarter after six I was fighting the workday traffic as I headed the Bronco out toward Magic Mountain and the 5 Freeway. Over the pass it was bumper to bumper, but what the hell, I had a thermos full of Gevalia Popayan coffee, Patty Griffin’s Flaming Red rocking on the CD player, and I was heading in the right direction -- away from Jake.

* * * * *

Outside Mojave I pulled in for gas at a quaint filling station surrounded by Joshua trees and stacks of old tires. An enormous purple gorilla balloon floated overhead as an advertising gimmick. I pumped gas and enjoyed an Apocalypse Now sunset while the giant balloon bobbed gently on the desert breeze. For some reason the grape ape reminded me of Jake.

Jake. If only it were as easy to leave behind my preoccupation with Jake as it was to leave the city lights now twinkling in my rearview mirror.

Two months earlier Detective Jake Riordan had saved my life in what the papers unimaginatively called the “Gay Slasher Killings.” When it was all over, Jake had received an official reprimand from the LAPD brass -- and I had received an overture of sorts from Jake, a homosexual cop buried so deep in the closet he didn’t know where to look for himself.

Riordan was tough and smart and handsome; and, other than that self-loathing hang-up, pretty much all I could have asked for in a potential mate. But gradually little things -- like the fact he couldn’t bear to touch me -- began to take their toll. Okay, I exaggerate. He did put an arm around my shoulders once when we were watching a PBS documentary on hate crimes against gays. And he had taken to hugging me goodbye. It wasn’t that Riordan was a virgin. Far from it. He was heavily into the S/M scene. But when it came to face-to-face, eye-to-eye, mouth-to-mouth, the Master turned into a schoolboy.

Witness our first and only necking session.

Riordan’s mouth was a kiss away from my own when he gave a strange laugh and pulled back.

“Shit. I can’t do this.” He ran a hand through his blonde hair, looked at me sideways.

“Can’t do what? Kiss me?”

He shook his head and then nodded.

“My mouthwash isn’t working? What’s the problem?”

Jake made a sound that was supposed to pass for a laugh. He didn’t answer.

A Dangerous Thing

135

“Why, Jake?” I asked quietly.

He blurted, “I open my eyes and I see the pores of your skin -- your skin’s okay, don’t take this wrong -- but you’ve got five o’clock shadow. You smell like aftershave. Your lips --”

He gestured briefly and hopelessly. “It’s just -- you’re not a chick.”

“You noticed.” I sounded flippant but I was thinking hard. “So this is a new experience for you? You have sex with guys but you don’t --”

“It’s nothing like this,” Jake interrupted. “This is like dating. This is ... weird.”

Yeah, and whips, chains, scourges and blindfolds were normal?

“I could let you tie me up and beat the shit out of me, but will you still respect me in the morning?”

“I don’t want you that way,” he said. “I know you. It wouldn’t be the same.”

Swell. He preferred humiliating strange men in costume to kissing a man he knew. And presumably liked.

“Let me get this straight. You don’t want to have sex with me?”

“Obviously I want to have sex with you.”

Obviously. What was I thinking?