The Angel Singers (33 page)

I was almost to the point of drifting off to sleep when one more thought jarred me wide awake.
Was
that Eric’s car I saw out the window? More than an hour after he’d left to go home? Where had he been, and what had he been doing?

And then I knew.

*

I was getting out of the shower when Jonathan woke up. He looked surprised to see me out of bed before he was.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I woke up early and thought I’d beat you to the shower.” Actually, I hadn’t slept at all, and I’m sure it was only my high level of adrenaline that kept me from feeling like a zombie.

I was putting on my pants when Jonathan got out of bed and headed for the shower. I desperately needed an excuse for my next move and found it when I remembered the ream of paper I’d left in his car.

“Oh,” I said. “I just remembered, I left that ream of paper in your car. I’m going to run down and get it before I forget it.”

“Okay,” he said. “The garage is open.”

Since he usually had Joshua with him, heading for or returning from day care, he’d gotten out of the habit of locking the garage despite my repeated urging that he do so.

Jonathan’s garage was three spaces down from mine. With not much room for anything but the car, we didn’t store anything really worth stealing there, which is another reason he always gave for not locking the door.

I went immediately to the driver’s side and looked in the window. Nothing looked amiss. I moved around to the passenger’s side and did the same thing. Nothing. I knelt down and looked under the car as carefully as I could. No problems.

Feeling rather like an idiot, I opened the front passenger door and bent to reach under the front seat for the ream of paper.

Then I saw it—a pair of thin wires running alongside the passenger’s side of the transmission “hump” and up the firewall, across to the ignition. Jonathan would never have noticed it.

What was I feeling? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was watching someone else’s movie, reading someone else’s book. Instinct took over.

I stepped back from the car, carefully closed the door and went to the rear tire. Unscrewing the cap from the intake valve, I used one of my keys to press down on it and heard the hiss of escaping air. I kept pressing until the tire went flat then replaced the cap and left the garage.

Jonathan was heading for Joshua’s room to wake him up.

Setting the ream of paper on the coffee table, I said casually, “You’re going to have to take my car today. You’ve got another flat tire.”

“Drat! How did that happen?”

“Probably ran over a nail,” I said. “I’m in no rush to get to work, so I can change it before I go.”

Joshua appeared behind him, rubbing his eyes.

“‘Morning, Joshua,” I said. I was truly amazed at how calm I was.

He didn’t acknowledge the greeting but merely padded toward the bathroom, followed by Jonathan. He stopped at the door and turned to him.

“I can do it!” he said, and Jonathan made a dramatic stop-in-mid-motion.

“Yes, sir!” he said, giving a smart military salute. “But leave the door open. I don’t want you to miss anything.”

*

Breakfast over, the two Js prepared to leave.

“I’ll walk down with you,” I said. “I need to check to see if there’s anything in the car I might need.” I knew there wasn’t, but I didn’t want them anywhere near Jonathan’s car.

“Let me see how bad it is,” Jonathan said as we neared the garages. I lifted the door to his garage, but only high enough he could see that the tire was flat.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, quickly re-closing the door. “I’ll change it in no time and take the flat in for repair. It’ll be good as new tonight.”

Moving to my own garage, I lifted the door and entered to make a quick check, ostensibly looking for anything I might need. I paid special attention to the steering column and the ignition. Nothing out of the ordinary. I’d known there wouldn’t be.

“Okay,” I said, opening the driver’s side rear door for Joshua to get in, “I’ll see you tonight.”

We exchanged hugs, and they left. I closed the door behind them, went to Jonathan’s garage and locked the door then went quickly back to the apartment. I was pretty sure Marty wouldn’t be in yet, but dialed his number anyway.

A voice I didn’t recognize said, “Detective Gresham’s desk.” I told him it was imperative I speak to Detective Gresham immediately. I was told he was probably on his way in as we spoke, and I asked that he call me the minute he got in the door, stressing the urgency of the request.

“Is it something someone else can help you with?” the voice asked.

“No,” I said. “It’s in regard to one of his current cases.” Giving him my home number and being assured that Marty would get the message as soon as he came in, I hung up.

*

As I waited for Marty’s call, my calm was replaced by a welling anger that soon grew to fury. Eric Speer, Jonathan’s “best friend,” the guy who’d been coming on to me and the guy I’d been defending and ruling out as a suspect because he was Jonathan’s friend, had just tried to kill not only Jonathan but Joshua. I couldn’t end that sentence with an exclamation point. There wouldn’t be enough exclamation points or boldfaces or underlinings or italics or second-coming type large enough to express what I was experiencing.

We always cleaned out the coffeepot before leaving for work, so I busied myself making a fresh pot and trying very hard to get my emotions under control. Had Eric been standing in front of me right then, I honestly don’t know what I’d have done. Sometimes I frightened myself, and this was one of those times.

After what seemed like an hour but was probably only ten minutes, the phone rang, and I raced to pick it up.

“Dick, it’s Marty. What’s going on?”

“I need the bomb squad, for starters,” I said.

“Jeezus! If you’re near a bomb, get the hell away right now. If you’re not, stay where you are. We’ll be right over.”

“No sirens, please,” I said. “I don’t want to panic the neighbors. I’ll meet you in the alley behind my apartment.” I gave him the address, which I was sure he already had.

We hung up, and I went back into the kitchen for another cup of coffee.

*

Okay, no point in dragging it out, or outlining all the details. The police arrived with the bomb squad, the bomb was disconnected from the starter and taken into the armored bomb disposal truck for dismantling. A city tow truck appeared to haul the car to the city’s impound lot where it could be dusted for fingerprints and gone over carefully for detailed evidence needed to convict Eric on a charge of attempted murder.

But it wasn’t simply attempted murder. Eric had killed Grant Jefferson and Crandall Booth just, I was certain, as he had killed his family many years earlier. I’m sure you had already figured that out, not being anywhere near as dense as I sometimes can be.

After the bomb squad and other units had gone, Marty, Dan Carpenter, and I went up to the apartment for my statement. I told them everything. I could tell they were
not
happy with my having not told them some of my suspicions before, but since they
had
only been suspicions, they didn’t say anything, and let me talk.

When the door closed behind Marty and Dan, I went back to the kitchen, poured the last of the coffee into my cup and took it into the living room, where I stood in front of the window, looking down at the street.

The hardest part was yet to come: telling Jonathan that his friend had tried to kill him.

Over the years I have developed the ability to get one step ahead of my reaction to emotional situations I fear I can’t handle. I’m somehow able to move out of myself, take a step back, and observe the situation with the objectivity of someone watching a movie of someone else’s life. I honed it with the death of each of my parents. I did it now.

That Jonathan and Joshua might well have died had I not seen Eric’s car drive by the front of our building was something I simply refused even to allow myself to contemplate. I was well aware that, somewhere in the deepest dungeons of my mind, uncontrollable fury was shaking the bars of its cage, shrieking to be let loose; and I knew I could not let it. Instead, I found myself objectively thinking that I knew enough of jealousy and loneliness and frustration to understand the core of Eric’s motivations for killing. There is no way, I convinced myself, that Eric could be sane. I even felt sorry for whatever had happened to him as a child to lead him on the path he’d pursued.

So, when Jonathan and Joshua got home, I greeted them with an extra-large group hug but said nothing.

“You’re home early,” Jonathan observed. “Did you get the tire fixed?”

“No problem,” I said.

*

Luckily, since our local early-evening news follows the national news, we usually turn off the TV to start fixing dinner as soon as the national news ends. I made sure we did so that night. I had also, before Jonathan got home, taken the precaution of disconnecting the telephone, and was relieved he didn’t try to call anyone.

We sailed through dinner and play/study time and Joshua-ready-for-bed time and Story Time, and Jonathan and I returned to the living room to sit on the couch.

“So, how was your day?” he asked.

Taking a deep breath, I told him.

*

I think we’re all so used to detective novels and action films building to a rousing thunderclap ending that we tend to feel a bit let down by the realization that real life doesn’t work that way. I suppose if I had confronted Eric as he was in the process of planting the bomb, there might possibly have been some sort of dramatic, adrenaline-charged physical confrontation. Perhaps, as I had him pinned to the garage floor, even a dramatic, tragic-but-passionate kiss before I called the police. I’m just as glad there wasn’t.

In real life, the story doesn’t end when the credits roll; there are always a few loose ends to tie up before closing the book on a case. For example, within forty-eight hours after Eric’s arrest, Marty called to tell me that a search of a Dumpster behind Eric’s apartment had yielded wadded pieces of duct tape, wire scraps, and other things left over from making the bomb planted in Jonathan’s car and matching those used in the bomb that killed Grant Jefferson. They also found a tire iron in the back of his car that, despite apparent efforts to wipe it clean, contained traces of blood and matched the fatal wound on the back of Crandall Booth’s head.

The chorus survived, as I was sure it would, and life went on. Eric was tried on two counts of murder and one of attempted murder and convicted.

*

One night shortly after the verdict was announced, as Jonathan and I lay in bed, he turned to me and said, “I’m thinking of writing to Eric in prison.”

That brought me awake in a hurry. “Why in the world would you want to do that?”

“Because he has no one. He’s never really had anyone. He killed Grant and Mr. Booth to protect the chorus, which was the only family he really had, and he tried to kill me so that he could have you. Can you imagine how terrible it must be not to have anyone at all? That’s so incredibly sad.” He was quiet a moment, then said, “And besides, he may not have been my friend, but I was his.”

“I know, babe,” I said. I pulled him to me and held him until we went to sleep.

About the Author

Dorien Grey started out as a pen name, nothing more, for a lifelong book and magazine editor who wanted to write his own novels as a bridge between the gay and straight communities. However, because he was living in a remote and time-warped area of the upper Midwest where gays still feel it necessary to keep a very low profile, he did not feel comfortable using his own name—a sad commentary on our society, he admits.

But as his first book, a detective novel, led to the second and then the third, he found Dorien slowly became much more than a pseudonym, evolving into an alter ego.

“It’s reached the point,” he said, “where all I have to do is sit down at the computer and let Dorien tell the story.”

Dorien’s “real person” had a not-uninteresting life. Two years into college, he left to join the Naval Aviation Cadet program. He washed out and spent the rest of his brief military career on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean. The journal he kept of his time in the military, in the form of letters home, honed his writing skills and provided him with a wealth of experiences to draw from in his future writing.

Returning to college after service, he graduated with a BA in English and embarked on a series of jobs that led him into the editing field. While working for a Los Angeles publishing house, he was instrumental in establishing a division exclusively for the publication of gay paperbacks and magazines, of which he became editor. He moved on to edit a leading L.A.-based international gay men’s magazine.

Tiring of earthquakes, brush fires, mudslides, and riots, he returned to the Midwest, where Dorien emerged, full-blown, like Athena from the head of Zeus.

He—and Dorien, of course—moved to Chicago, and devoted their energies to writing. He completed ten books in the popular Dick Hardesty Mystery series, and numerous stand-alone works of fiction and nonfiction.