Stain of the Berry (37 page)

"You couldn't keep your big nose out of my business, could you? Well, if you get into my business, sister, you gotta pay the price," he told me with the ringing conviction of someone who can only see things one way: his own. "I just wanted to get these dumb bastards back, that's all, but you started poking around, so you're gonna have to go down too, pretty one.

"Myyyyyyyy, you
are
happy to see me!" Jin had reached back with his other hand and had begun massaging my crotch. I became uncomfortably aware that, at some point during the time I was unconscious from a blow to my head, my attacker had undone the zipper to my pants. "Guys like you...you and Jared Lowe, and those fucking laughing hyenas Duncan and Richie, and the bus driver-did you know they're fucking each other by the way? Richie and the bus driver-guys like that, guys like you..

.you never even look at guys like me. You never give me.. .us a chance. Well, honey, you really should, just let Jinny give you some loving...and you'll never wanna go back to those vanilla clone-boys."

I stared up at him; I tried to wriggle my thighs and hips but with the full weight of Jin-slight as he was-on my chest, hands and ankles bound, and my head buzzing like an electric saw, I was pretty much immobile. Jin blew me a kiss and began to shuffle his way down the length of my body, like a bear climbing down a tree, taking his time as he moved over my hips, pushing himself against me, thrusting his hands under me, massaging my butt cheeks. I had never been in this kind of situation before: completely helpless, being molested. I felt as if I might vomit, from my predicament, the bonk on my head, the molestation or maybe all of the above. I heard Jin's feminine laugh and then, with surprising strength, he flipped me over. My stomach lurched and again I had to swallow bile that burned in my throat.

From my new position, my left cheek thankfully cushioned by a stray clump of grass, I saw a large stick off to one side from where I was lying. It was too dark to make it out for sure, but I thought one end looked wet, sticky...with my blood?

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Jin laughed some more and then began doing what I hoped most he would not. I felt the scrape of fingernails against the skin of my bare hips as he slid his beringed, taloned fingers beneath the waist of my pants and Calvin's and began to pull down.

"Jinny is going to show you what you've been missing, what all the boys like you have been missing."

His voice had lost its feminine purr, replaced by something rough and raspy, overflowing with naked desperation.

My mouth gagged, I heard screaming inside my head. I had to resist this. I had to buck upwards or roll away or do something! I tried to force my body but my head, it hurt so bad...

When I came to, I think only seconds later, Jin had been successful in pulling my pants and underwear down to my knees. He was now on top of me, rubbing the length of his slim frame up and down my own.

"Are you ready? Are you ready for me?" his hateful voice gurgled near my ear.

I wanted to fight. I wanted to yell out. I wanted, God help me, to kill this person. This person who had done the unspeakable to Jared. This person who was responsible for the death of two women, maybe others. This person who was about to rape me. Kill. I wanted to. But my body was not responding. My head seemed unconnected to the rest of my body. Had he knocked the sense out of me? Was I paralyzed?

No, I couldn't be, I could feel every inch of him on top of me. I could feel his hands exploring me, everywhere. I could feel the tears beginning to form in the corner of my eyes. There would be no help for me, no rescue. I'd sent Darren and the cops to Jin's apartment. They'd never find me here.

Again I woke up. How long had it been this time? Not long, I thought. Jin was still on top of me and as far as I could tell, nothing had happened. Yet. I was falling in and out of consciousness... one more time and who knew...

"You're going to love this, I promise," Jin told me, his breathing growing laboured with his ministrations.

I could feel his clammy skin against my own. No.

No!

"Noooooo....," Jin screamed.

In my disoriented mind I chuckled thinking Jin's pleasure had peaked too soon.

But then he screamed again and there was nothing pleasurable or orgasmic about it. Jin was in pain. I felt him roll off me, yelp some more and then hop to his feet. I didn't have enough strength to get onto my back, so I tried to move my head as much to one side as I could to see what was happening. And there, surrounding us like a pride of angry lions circling for the kill, were the fine folks of Hagar's Heath, most brandishing either a flaming torch or weapon of some sort-shovels and rakes and what appeared to be long, narrow sticks with blackened ends, which I only recognized in the seconds before I passed out once again: they were threatening Jin Chau with the sharp, poker-hot ends of wiener roast sticks.

The people of Hagar's Heath kept Jin on the wiener stick, so to speak, until the cops arrived for him and an ambulance for me. I was treated for concussion and kept overnight in the hospital. If I'd been more in control of my consciousness, I'm sure I would have balked at the idea-as tough guy PIs are supposed to do-but instead I spent a carefree, happy, drug-induced night of sleep at RUH. Early the next morning I was back to playing tough guy and was changing from the drafty hospital smock into my own clothes 157 of 163

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(which I'd found in a Sobey's bag at the bottom of my room's closet) when the door swung open to reveal Constable Darren Kirsch.

"Quant," came the gruff greeting as he walked into the room in his big he-man way.

I looked away at first, an unexpected jolt of embarrassment and shame passing over me like a hot flash.

Kirsch knew what had happened last night, knew what had been done to me by that creature, for all I knew he was the one who found me there, laying on the ground, naked from the waist down.

"Quant?" he said again, this time with surprising gentleness. He closed the door behind him so that now it was just the two of us in that overbearingly small, stifling hospital room. I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"You're okay, you know. When we arrived you were unconscious, but the locals, they took good care of you."

My chest heaved with a deep sigh. I wasn't exactly sure what Kirsch meant; I could only hope that maybe the Hagar's Heath villagers had covered me up, pulled my pants up, so when the cops arrived-guys I'd once worked with-they hadn't seen me lying there like that, a helpless victim. Maybe, maybe I realized too that I’d been very wrong about the people of Hagar's Heath. I'd promised myself I'd never go back there. But I would, to thank them.

I turned to face the dark-featured Kirsch, a contrived look of calm plastered on my pale face. "Tell me,"

was all I said. I knew the cop would understand.

He took back his hand and walked a few steps away to a safer, manlier distance. "They found something called a 'Hate Journal' in Jin Chau's apartment. In it was a list of everyone who'd been on that bus stranded in Davidson several months ago. The names were ranked in order, starting with who he hated the most to who he hated the least.

"The names were cross-referenced to another list of all the means of harassment he'd come up with to seek his revenge on them. He was very organized about the whole thing. But why these people, why the harassment, why he hated them so much, we're not sure yet. He hasn't stopped wailing and railing yet."

'I know why," I sad flatly. I told Darren about the seemingly innocent game of Tequila Pigs and Truth or Dare that unwittingly began the devolution of Jin Chau's damaged psyche. "He wanted vengeance and retribution for the ridicule he suffered during the game and...I'm betting if we were to ask Beverly or some other brain-studier type person...during his entire, sad lifetime.

"I'm guessing Tanya Culinare and her girlfriend, Moxie Banyon, were somewhere near the top of his list?"

Darren moved his shadowed jaw up and down. He'd obviously not been home to shave since sometime the day before.

I explained, "Tanya and Moxie had singled him out during the game of Tequila Pigs. We'll never know exactly how it happened, but there were copious amounts of alcohol involved, drugs too, and I can imagine that Tanya and Moxie, perhaps a bit out of their usual characters and blissfully unaware of how their actions were affecting Jin, acted cruelly towards him, set him up for embarrassment, then laughed at him. From what I knew of them, neither of those two women were the type of people to be intentionally cruel, but in those circumstances, maybe they were. Maybe to a regular person their actions wouldn't have seemed as devastating, but to someone like Jin, a damaged soul, someone who lived his life in constant defense of who he was and couldn't help being, it was, simply, the final straw that broke the camel's back."

"That was why he went after them so aggressively?" Darren asked.

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his public revulsion at the thought and refusal to do it."

Kirsch continued to nod. He told me, "Next on the list were Kim Pelluchi and Guy Marcotte-who Jin referred to in his journal only as 'the bus driver'-so he possibly did not even know the guy by name."

"That's explains why Guy Marcotte didn't experience or report any incidences of harassment; Jin didn't know his name or where to find him."

"Makes sense," Kirsch agreed.

"But wait," something did not add up. "If that's true, what was Jin doing outside Guy Marcotte's trailer last night if he didn't know his name or where he lived? Was it Richie? Did Richie tell.. .oh my God, Richie. He was going to see Jin...is he okay? Did Jin...?"

"Richie Caplan is fine," Kirsch assured me. "He actually never got to see Jin. By the time he got to his apartment, Jin had already left."

"But then how...?" Eureka. I love moments like this. "I think I have this figured out."

"Care to share it, Sherlock?"

"In a way it
was
Richie's doing that Jin found Guy - and me. During the course of his harassment, Jin'd been tailing Richie and as luck would have it, he followed him right to the doorstep of - guess who - Guy Marcotte."

Darren looked doubtful.

"You see Richie and Guy had sex that night in Davidson, in the room they were sharing with Jin. Guy insists they thought Jin was asleep, but I kinda have my doubts about that. Apparently it was Guy's first time with another guy and neither he nor Richie was in the mood to wait for a better time or place.

"Imagine Jin's excitement at having found the man who belonged to the unknown name on his hate list.

Could be that last night he was checking Guy out, no doubt planning how he'd exact his revenge on his new subject."

Darren finished up for me. "When along comes Russell Quant, troublemaker," Grrrrr, "getting too close for comfort, and another one of those unattainable kind of gay guys who habitually scorn him. So, no dummy him, Jin decided to capitalize on opportunity and went after you."

Not my luckiest day.

"What about the other Pink Gophers?" Kirsch wondered. "They were lumped together at the bottom of the list. They suffered the least at Jin's hands: mild harassment, hang-ups, that type of thing."

"They were probably included just because they were there that night during the Tequila Pigs game. I'm sure they smirked along with the others and did nothing to protect Jin or stand up for him, so that qualified them to be on his naughty list."

There was one person we hadn't talked about and I wondered where he was on Jin Chau's Journal of Hate list. "What about Jared? Was he on the list?"

"Jared's name was all alone at the bottom of a well-worn page, written in caps, with the 'a' shaped like a heart." He gave me a lopsided look. "I suppose that means he was in love with Jared Lowe?"

"Yep. During the game, Jin announced that he wanted to have sex with Jared."

"Oh Keeee-rist!" Kirsch's face contorted. "What the hell kind of screwed up game is this?"

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I ignored that, knowing that Darren Kirsch was just the type to have kissed a few maidens in his younger days during illicit late night games of spin-the-bottle or naked Twister. I knew, as sure as I know my name is Russell Quant, that Jin had fallen in love with Jared-I could attest that this was not a difficult thing to do. But somewhere along the way, Jin's bruised and battered and diseased mind turned that love into hate. It consumed him, threatened to wreck him and, in self-defense, all he could think of to do was destroy it-and Jared along with it.

"We've learned more about Moxie Banyon," Darren informed me. "Her doctor had diagnosed a heart defect shortly before she died. We can't be one hundred per cent certain, but the police were able to trace Jin's whereabouts and they know he was in Moose Jaw around the time of Moxie's death. And they know he had access to a gun." Man, a lot happens while a guy's taking a nap in the hospital; the cops had been admirably busy. "The theory right now is that Jin figured out Moxie's schedule, knew she'd be alone in the pool after closing that night and confronted her, probably using the gun to get her undivided attention.

None of the people who were at the pool around closing time could identify Jin, so he may have been in disguise. When he was certain no one else was around, he used the gun to force her into the deep end of the pool. Even for a strong swimmer treading water can be difficult for prolonged periods of time, but for Moxie who was probably frightened out of her wits, a poor swimmer, and had a weak heart, well, it would have quickly become near impossible. Jin couldn't have known about Moxie's heart condition, but it worked in his favour."