Busted (2 page)

Joe wasn’t alone in the cell. The other occupant was sitting in the corner and looked like he needed both walls to help keep him upright. He was dressed in jeans and a ratty black t-shirt with a flannel shirt unbuttoned over the top to complete the ensemble.

“Hey man,” said his cell-mate in a cheerfully slurred voice. “Bad date?”

“Date. Hah! The bastard fucking pulled me over for speeding, then
arrested
me. And now he’s pretending he doesn’t even know who I am!”

The man nodded. “Cops,” he said, as if the word summed it all up.

Joe slumped down onto the bench. “Bastards,” he said, agreeing.

They sat in a companionable silence for twenty minutes before Joe’s cellmate was released, but it was almost an hour before someone came to get Joe. More than enough time for him to stew.

Joe couldn’t figure out what sort of game Alex was playing. It had to be a game – this just wasn’t like him. Alex was happy and cheerful and a little flighty, and some days acted more like a six year old kid than an adult. If he hadn’t been sitting in the lockup in the city jail there was no way Joe would have ever believed that Alex was a cop.

He
was
sitting in the lockup of the city jail, though, and Alex
had
put him there.
And
he’d had the gall to seem pissed that Joe had the nerve to intrude on his other life, the one he’d never bothered telling Joe about. By the time a young officer had come to fetch him it was all Joe could do to not rip the man’s head off. He fumed as he walked out of the cell and down a hallway, barely acknowledging the man leading him into the interrogation room.

It had a single long wooden table with a few chairs in it, one corner piled high with file folders and empty coffee cups. An ancient tape recorder lay buried under the folders. Officer Gagnon sat behind the table, his hat laid neatly next to a yellow legal pad and pair of pens. On the wall behind him was a small camera with a red light blinking slowly over its lens.

“What am I here for?” Joe demanded as he stormed into the interrogation room. His escort trailed behind looking sheepish.
 
“Am I under arrest? Do I get a lawyer? This your idea of a joke?”

Gagnon
 
was on his feet before he could think. “Sit,” he thundered, his finger stabbing at the chair in front of him.

“Great,” grumbled Joe as he threw himself into the chair. “I’m getting locked up for giving bad head.”

He got a glare for that. “Everything said in here is recorded, so I suggest you watch what you say.” Gagnon
 
nodded at the officer who’d escorted Joe in. He looked relieved and darted out of the room.

“Then what am I here for?” Joe snapped.

“Suspected driving under the influence,” replied Gagnon. Which was true enough, Joe was behaving erratically, at least as far as he was concerned.

“Influence of what?” Joe demanded. “I was at a wake, the one
you
said you couldn’t go to. You
know
I don’t drink.”

“I know nothing of the sort, and I don’t know you. You’re potentially in a lot of trouble Mister Hennessey. Driving under the influence, threatening an officer, and assault.”

“What do you mean you don’t know me? Dammit, Alex, this has gone way past far enough. I was at Jill Sorenson’s goddamn wake, the one
you
wouldn’t go to. I hate those things; there’s no way in hell I’d drink at one.” What he saw when he was drunk around happy people was bad enough. The thought of being even a little drunk around the dead made Joe shudder.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Gagnon’s reply was cold. That just fanned Joe’s fury.

“Just before you
fucked
me Tuesday. Bastard! I think it was your last time, Alex,” Joe shouted.

“I don’t know you, and my name
is. Not. ALEX!
” Gagnon shouted back.

“Bull
shit
. You’re Alex fucking Gagnon! We’ve been dating for almost four months. I’ve left clothes at your goddamn apartment, you’ve got three moles in a straight line on your ass,” Joe shouted. By now the two were standing inches apart. “Your dick’s uncut and bends a little to the right, you don’t like peppermint, and sometimes you sleep with a beat-up brown teddy bear named Snuffles!”

When Joe said that Gagnon went pale and sat down hard.

Joe stopped abruptly. Furious or not, Gagnon’s change of demeanor took him off guard and had him a little worried. Worse, Joe knew he’d been telling the truth. He
always
knew when people were telling the truth. A gift from the Little People, passed down his mother’s family, or so his Gran had told him when he was young. He’d been too busy being mad to notice.

The door opened before he could say anything, and another man came in. He was dressed more casually, in jeans and a button-up white shirt, but his body language still screamed ‘cop’.

“Detective Russell,” Gagnon said, his voice a little weak.

“Chris, can I talk to you a minute?” he asked.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Gagnon said to Joe as he got up.

“Fuck you,” Joe spat back.

When the door to the room had closed behind them, Steve Russell turned on his partner

“What kind of game are you playing, Chris? They’re gonna have your ass for this!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chris Gagnon replied.

“Listen, I don’t give a damn who you want to screw, but playing mind games with your boyfriend at the station’s going to get you tossed off the force!”

“
He’s not my goddamn….
” Chris took a deep breath and calmed himself. “He’s not my boyfriend. I don’t have a boyfriend. I don’t know who the hell he is.”

“Then why does he have a picture of you in his wallet?” Steve demanded.

“What?”

“I was going through his stuff,” Chris said. “And I found this.”

Chris held out a picture. It was small and flimsy, the kind you’d get in a mall photo kiosk. Joe was in it, as was Chris. The two were tangled together, Joe squirming and laughing as Chris nuzzled into his neck.

“No,” Chris said softly. “Oh no. No, no, no…”

He looked up, almost panicked. “Never mind. Let him loose. I’ll take care of the paperwork tomorrow. I… I’ve gotta go,” he said, before bolting down the hall.

Steve watched him go with some bemusement.

“Mister Hennessey,” he said, as he opened the door to the interrogation room.

Joe glared at him. “What?” he snapped.

“I’d like to talk to you about this,” he said, as he slid the photo across the table at Joe.

“What about it?” he asked.

“When did you have it taken?”

“Three weekends ago,” Joe replied. The detective’s steady voice was calming his anger. “We were camping in New Hampshire and thought it would be fun. Is there a problem?”

“You tell me, Mister Hennessey. Three weeks ago my partner was home with the flu.”

Joe snorted. “Flu. I bet.”

“Yes, flu,” Steve continued. “I know, my wife tended to him while he was sick, and his son stayed with us.”

Joe looked at Steve in astonishment. “Wait. Flu? He was fine, we were in New Hampshire. Kid? What? I don’t understand.”

“Detective Gagnon was definitely home three weekends ago, in bed, alone, and quite sick.”

“Oh, god,” Joe said, letting his head thump to the tabletop. “I think I tried to jump Alex’s twin brother.”

Steve laughed out loud. “Chris’ll live,” he said. “Since you’re free to go, let’s get you back to your car.”

“Thanks,” Joe said, smiling weakly.

Thursday
morning Steve caught Chris at the coffee machine. True to stereotype there was a box of donuts next to it, but since they were plastic, decorative, and someone’s idea of a joke that was probably okay. The muffins, on the other hand were real, and could clog an artery from ten feet away.

“Only two more days of traffic duty, man,” Steve said as he poured himself some coffee. It was black, strong, and would melt pennies. It was just the way he liked it.

Chris just grunted as he poured his own cup. He hated traffic duty with a passion. It meant too much driving, too much sitting on his ass, and too many people trying to lie about how fast they were going. The itch he got at the back of his head when people lied to him always gave him a headache.

“It’s your own fault,” Steve said. “You shouldn’t have told the Captain to fuck off.”

Chris gave Steve an evil look. “I was sick, he was wrong about the Ramirez murders, and he was being an ass.”

“He’s always an ass. Besides, it was only a hunch,” Steve said. “You didn’t have any proof.”

“I was right, though. They were on the run from a gang in Phoenix.”

“Yes, Chris, you were right, again, like always” Steve said, reaching for the last chocolate, chocolate chip, walnut muffin. Chris snatched the thing off the plate and took a bite, looking straight at Steve.

“Bastard,” he said, without heat.

“Yeah. And?”

“You never told me you had a twin brother,” Steve said.

Chris paused at the sudden change of subject. “I don’t.”

“But that picture Hennessey had…”

Chris threw his coffee cup into the trash. “Shit, you’ve known me since I moved here when I was eleven. I don’t have any family left. The picture’s fake.”

“So why did he have it?” Steve asked.

“How the fuck should I know?”

Steve was tempted to push. He was a detective and hated not knowing things, but Chris wasn’t having any of it. He was even crankier than normal, and Steve knew from long experience that pushing wouldn’t get him anywhere.

“Ah, it’s not important. Guess he just thought you had a cute ass.”

“Hey! When have you been looking at my ass?”

“Never said you did,” Steve replied with a smirk. “Maybe he just doesn’t have any taste.”

The question did still nag at Steve, though. Their office was a big open room filled with pairs of desks. He and Chris shared a pair, and the desks reflected their personalities. Steve’s was littered with folders, scattered pads with notes scrawled all over them, and empty Styrofoam coffee cups that had the edges picked at. His computer was covered in post-it notes, and the keyboard had paperclips and chewed pencils. The only real clear spot was around the framed picture of his wife, son, and daughter that stood at one corner.

Chris’ desk was just as full, but tidy. One side of the desk was taken up by reference books stacked two feet tall, topped with piles of manila folders. Three towers of nested coffee cups rose up, reaching towards the ceiling, throwing shadows across the collection of small spiral-bound note pads. His computer was clean, its screensaver showing a picture of a smiling, darkly tanned, raven haired boy of about four.

Sitting at his desk after Chris had gone off to serve his time doing traffic duty, he pulled out a folder, grabbed the keyboard, and started looking.

There wasn’t anything for an Alex Gagnon he could find in any of the state databases. No surprise, though he had hoped. He was tempted to pull up Chris’ information, but he was afraid that’d raise some flags. He didn’t want to have to explain why he was snooping around in the records of another cop.

Joe Hennessey was another mater. Chris had brought him in, so he was fair game. Steve had his address from his driver’s license, and it only took a minute to pull up the information for him. There wasn’t much — a four year old speeding ticket and another from 1992, but that was it. No other arrests or other involvement that would’ve gotten him into the system.

All of this just fed Steve’s suspicion. There was
something
going on. He’d seen his share of guys on all sorts of crap, and while Joe had been angry he hadn’t been drugged up. Chris had been behaving really strangely too, even more strangely than he usually did.

Steve pulled up the video feed for the interrogation room, making notes as he did. As he watched he realized it was a good thing that Chris had let Joe go – it was clear that he wasn’t handling himself at all well. He was rattled, though only someone who’d known him forever would be able to tell. Someone like Steve.

He re-watched the last few seconds of the tape, right before Steve had walked in. Something Joe had said had gotten to Chris, and gotten to him badly. “
and sometimes you sleep with a beat-up brown teddy bear named Snuffles!
”

Steve stopped the tape. Frozen on the screen was Chris, and he looked… terrified. Interesting.

* * *

Thursday evenings Joe went clubbing. Not anything serious, and since he’d started dating Alex certainly not to get laid, but just fun. Drink some, dance some, be around people and have a good time. He enjoyed it, and what was wrong with that? He could lose himself in the music, let the last bits of his work day drain away, and just relax.

It had been a kind of shitty day at the office, but then the previous night had been kind of shitty too. When Detective Russell had dropped him back at his car he found the driver’s side window still open, and the front seat was soaked. He got to drive home sitting in wet and remembered he needed a towel in the morning only
after
he’d gotten in. Things had only gone downhill from there.

It didn’t matter, though. The music washed over him as he stepped into the club and it took his stress away with it. Joe smiled and started to move with the beat as he walked into the building, pushing his way through the small crowd towards the bar. Behind it was a short, heavily muscled man wrapped in a black t-shirt so tight it showed his navel ring, and his brown hair was just long enough to flop over his left eye.

A smile lit up his face as he caught sight of Joe.

“Joe! You want the usual?” He didn’t wait for the answer, filling a glass with ginger ale even as he spoke.

“Thanks Tony,” Joe said, draining it in a single long gulp.

“When’re you going to move up to real drinks?” Tony asked.

“When you stop needing alcohol to look better,” Joe replied, handing the glass back for a refill.

They did this just about every night the club was quiet enough to joke around. In truth Joe didn’t drink because of what he saw. Most people got a buzz with alcohol, but Joe wasn’t most people. When he drank the world got a little shady, the shadows started to move on their own, and the ghosts and monsters started coming out.

It wasn’t just alcohol. He’d been knocked out to have his wisdom teeth yanked in college, and the things he’d seen as he woke up had given him nightmares for years. Joe wasn’t sure if the monsters he saw when he was drunk were real or only in his mind, but it didn’t matter; it was more than enough to keep him sober. If he wanted a high he had to dance, and he was okay with that.

“Saw Alex in here earlier,” Tony said.

Joe perked up. Alex was exactly what he needed.

“Thanks, man,” he said, dropping a five on the bar.

Tony cheerfully flipped him off as he swept the bill into the tip jar stuck back amongst the vodka bottles. Tony never let him pay for soda, so Joe always left a tip and ran before he could hand it back. Joe didn’t care, his job paid more than well enough to afford a few bucks for drinks.

Joe scanned the dance floor looking for Alex. He found him, the sole shirt in a clump of half naked young men, his dancing wild and graceful. Joe smiled for a moment before he slid in behind him, wrapping his arms around Alex and kissing him on the shoulder. Alex moved his head obligingly to one side, giving Joe clear access to the side of his neck.

The body under Joe’s arms was well muscled with just a little bit of padding, the body of someone who worked, not worked out. Not perfect, not cut, but strong and a little yielding, comfortable to be against. Joe nuzzled into Alex’s neck, his hair long enough to brush his shoulders and tickle Joe’s nose, just enjoying being wrapped around the man he loved. And he did love Alex, deeply, though Joe hadn’t yet come out and said it.

Alex slowed his dancing but didn’t stop. The two of them swayed together like that for a while, moving towards the edge of the floor as they did. Alex had his eyes closed, enjoying Joe’s ministrations. When the song stopped, Alex turned in Joe’s arms and the two kissed.

“I missed you, babe,” Joe said as they came up for air.

Alex smiled. “You look like you had a tough day. Let me make it better,” he said. Alex stroked Joe’s shoulders, tracing out the tension that was in them. Joe sighed and purred as the fingers ran across him. It was a rare moment when Alex’s attention was on him, not the other way around. Casual, and nice, and a little sweet. Not like with Chris; the man had been so intensely focused on him it had been a little intimidating. And, in hindsight, a little arousing.

Joe pulled back abruptly and smacked Alex on the shoulder.

“What was that for?” Alex asked. He smiled at his boyfriend anyway. The smack hadn’t hurt, it was just Joe’s way of getting his attention.