The Chilling Spree (26 page)

“It was,” he whispered.  “I couldn’t
stand to see what Joanne was doing to him.  Remember when I
told you how I met him?”

I frowned.  “You didn’t know you had a
half brother before he came here to perform?”

“No,” Alex said.  “In fact, I would’ve
never known if she hadn’t showed up that night.”

“Oh boy,” Johnny murmured. 

Alex glanced at Johnny.  “Oh it was
probably worse than you could ever imagine, Commander Orion. 
As clubs like mine go, we’re pretty tame.  I’ve had rules from
the beginning about how people act when they’re here.  No sex
in the club.  No lewd behavior.  We aren’t
animals.”  Another tear streaked down his cheek.

“Of course not,” I said.  “Tell me what
happened the night you met Bobbi, Alex.”

“He was almost done with his act when this
woman came barging into the club.  I figured it might be a
wife who got wise to her husband’s extracurricular interests, you
know?”  He shrugged.  “I’ve never understood living a lie
like that, but whatever I guess.”

Immediately my head leapt to Crevan and
Belle.  “It’s not as simple as we’d like it to be, is it,
Alex?”

“No,” he gazed at me with true
understanding.  He wasn’t talking to the judgmental
enemy.  “So she heads for the stage screaming at Bobbi. 
And then she spots me, right?  She stopped dead in her
tracks.  I thought she was having a seizure or something.”

“Wait.  You didn’t recognize your own
mother?” Johnny asked.

“No.  Why would I?  Dad led me to
believe that she died a long time before… shit, I don’t even think
I was in kindergarten yet when she just disappeared.  I had no
idea who she was at first.  Let’s just say the years were not
kind to my mother.”

“What happened when she recognized you?” I
asked.

“Like I said.  She started shaking and
turned red, like a heart attack or stroke or seizure or
something.  She was just pissed off, it turned out.  She
pointed at me and sort of hissed
you
!  What would you
do, detective?”

“I’d probably clarify that she meant
me.”

“Exactly.  So I stepped up, you
know.  I’m not exactly the shy, retiring type.”

I grinned.  “No, I don’t suppose you
are.”

“She starts saying this shit about how she’s
not gonna let me corrupt her son.  Now, I used to be quite the
player, but Bobbi wasn’t my type in the first place.”

“Your type being what?” Johnny asked.

“I like men,” he shrugged again.  “No
desire to hook up with the impersonators.  I get the draw,
obviously, because they are a huge part of the business I do here,
but they’ve never been my thing.  So I was pretty damned sure
that she was wrong.  And then before I could even defend
myself, she shrieks that she should’ve drowned me at birth.”

“You’re kidding.”

He looked at Johnny.  “No sir, I’m not
kidding at all.  I thought,
what the fuck
,
who is
this bitch
?  And then just like that,” he snapped his
fingers, “I recognized her.  Not that it was necessary. 
She said she wasn’t gonna let me turn her real son into a freak
like I am.”

“What did Bobbi do?”

Alex drifted back in time and relived the
memory with a faint smile.  “He looked as shocked as I did,
I’m sure.  The little shit jumped off the stage and let her
drag him out by the ear practically, but he sort of turned his head
over one shoulder and grinned at me.  I knew he was as
delighted as I was that he wasn’t alone anymore.”

“You felt alone?”

“At that time, yeah,” he said. 
“Detective Eriksson, you’ve met my father.  He’s this pillar
of the medical community.  Some say he’s the best vascular
surgeon in the country.  I love my dad, and he’s always been
supportive of me, but I don’t think he ever really forgave me for
this place.”

“The club?” I asked.

“Yeah.  I mean, he bought it for me,
but then shit hit the fan after we opened.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because there was an uproar over what I
named it.  When he bought the place for me, it was with the
understanding that it would be a very respectable club for guys
like me.  We were going to show this city that we’re not a
bunch of perverts, out of control and all that.  It’s part of
why I’m such a stickler for how the customers behave while they’re
here.”

“But your dad didn’t approve of the name,”
Johnny said.

“He never said one way or another,” Alex
admitted.  “But I know that it caused him some grief at the
hospital.  Mostly, it was on account of people like Hellfire
and his ilk.  There’s a lot more of them running around
Darkwater Bay than you might imagine.”

“I think of all people, Johnny and I
understand what you mean more than others,” I said. 
“Obviously your father wanted to protect you, Alex.  He made
sure that Joanne didn’t continue to be a negative influence in your
life.  He’s still a very well respected surgeon too. 
Chief of vascular surgery no less.  This business clearly
didn’t hurt his career.”

“No, I guess not, but now Bobbi…” he choked
on his grief again.  “People are gonna say that Bobbi got what
he deserved.”

I thought of the message carved into the
young man’s abdomen. 
Abomination
.  A little bit
of indignation boiled in my belly.  Who gave anyone the right
to decide what was appropriate and what wasn’t for someone
else?  Science, the only thing in the world that made complete
sense to me, had offered more than compelling evidence for the
biological root of sexual orientation.

“Detective Eriksson?”

“Don’t worry,” Johnny said.  “She’s got
a bad habit of zoning out sometimes, Mr. Waters.  It doesn’t
mean she isn’t focused on this investigation.  On the
contrary, it’s usually a good sign.”

I looked at Johnny sharply.  Was he
remembering something else?  Not a good time to ask. 
“Alex, if we can show you pictures of some of the protesters from
Foundations Baptist Church, do you think you would be able to
identify the most vocal of the group?”

“Not by name, but there are some faces I’ll
never forget.”

“You have seen this guy you call Reverend
Hellfire, right?” Johnny asked.

“Once or twice.  I think I’d know if he
was at any of their protests.  He hasn’t been, Commander
Orion.  At least he wasn’t at the one that got violent in
October.”

“Alex,” I began carefully, because it was
clear to everyone that we were probably looking at a hate
crime.  Still the question had to be asked.  “Were any of
your customers giving Bobbi attention that was out of the
ordinary?”

“Like… stalking him?”

“Or making him uncomfortable,” Johnny
suggested.  “If he was as popular with your clientele, it
might not be so unusual that he get a little more attention than
your other performers even.”

“Right,” Alex scrubbed the back of his right
hand under his nose.  “You think there’s some remote
possibility that professional jealousy or a customer who had too
much interest in Bobbi might be a factor.”

“It’s a possibility that we must at least
consider, Alex,” I said.  “Does anybody fit that
description?”

“The performers could get bitchy with each
other, but nothing that I think would’ve ever escalated to
murder.  As for the patrons of the club, I have such a strict
hands-off policy, if they were inclined to get creepy, they
wouldn’t have done it here.”

“And would Bobbi have told you if something
happened to him away from the club?” I asked.

“Yeah, while he lived with me.  Since
he and Sasha hooked up, I’m pretty sure that he would’ve told him,
and it would’ve stopped immediately.  Sasha’s not the kind of
guy you’d wanna mess with, Detective Eriksson.  I’d say he’s
on par with Commander Orion’s size.”

“How long did Bobbi live with you?” Johnny
asked.

“He moved in – at my insistence – a couple
of months after we first met.  Does that matter?”

“Probably not, but we need to know as much
about your brother as possible, Alex.  How old was Bobbi at
the time he started living with you?”

“Not quite eighteen.  He kept running
away from home.  I guess things became pretty untenable with
Joanne and Randy after she dragged him out of here.  He
would’ve ended up peddling his ass down on Mercer Boulevard if
someone hadn’t taken him in.  At least with me, I knew he’d
finish high school and have the freedom to explore his… well,
sexuality.”

I recalled that Mercer Boulevard was
Darkwater Bay’s version of a red-light district, and shuddered.
Poor kid probably had few options if his parents didn’t approve of
his sexual orientation. “I suppose your mother and her husband
didn’t react well to that either.”

“They hauled me into court and ended up
getting smacked down by a judge,” Alex said.  “He emancipated
Bobbi so my mother had nothing to say about what he did from that
day forward.”

“I see.”  I felt fingers flipping
through a file in my mind of all the children I’d seen slaughtered
by parents for no rational reason whatsoever.  Could we be
missing something big regarding Bobbi’s relationship with his
parents, that they might’ve additionally laid some blame for the
direction in Bobbi’s life as it had been influenced by Kyle
Goddard, his best friend?  “Alex, out of curiosity, what is
Joanne’s objection to homosexuality?”

He blinked several times.  “You mean,
do I think she could’ve killed her own child?”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Oh.  Well, I guess her hang-up isn’t
much different than Hellfire’s.  She thinks we’re unnatural,
an abomination that God will one day remove from Earth.”

Johnny’s shoulders tensed.  He recoiled
away from Waters, marginally, but I noticed it immediately.  I
knew that he was reliving the grisly crime scene we witnessed
tonight too.

“One last question,” I said. “And I
apologize, Alex; I know how difficult this is for you.”

“Anything I can do to help, detective,” his
eyes welled with tears again. “I hope you believe that I want you
to catch whoever did this more than anything.”

“We got Bobbi’s pre-show routine from the
staff here at The Cockpit before you arrived. My question is, by
the time he was ready for his pre-show drink, was Bobbi actually
ready to go on stage?”

Johnny’s eyes widened when Alex answered
with a slight frown, “Of course he was. Bobbi would’ve never
allowed anyone here to see him during his transition process.”

“So dress, makeup, hair, it would’ve all
been –?”

“Of course. What are you saying, detective?
Exactly how did my brother die?”

Johnny’s eyes met mine. He obviously died
ready for his show, and the crime scene we witnessed – unlike Kyle
Goddard’s – was designed to reveal what Bobbi was immediately,
rather than waiting for the autopsy.

I suspected that he wanted the city to know
without a doubt this time, that his crime had a specific target.
Hard to miss it this time, when the victim was a performer at The
Cockpit, a club notorious for drag shows.

Hate crime? All doubts evaporated. It was
just a matter of zeroing in on which group of intolerant bastards
decided to take action. And from what we’d learned so far, my
suspicions leaned in one very specific direction. The connection
between Kyle and Bobbi made it obvious.

At least, that’s what I believed
tonight.

Half the bar was emptied by the time Johnny
and I exited Waters’ office with more questions than answers. 
CSD was still processing the dressing room, and Maya hadn’t
absconded with Tippet’s body yet.  I asked one of the
uniformed officers to drive Alex home.  After all the vodka he
consumed, he wasn’t safe to drive.

Crevan met me near the bar.  “We’ve got
three dozen statements, probably a hundred more men to interview
after the funeral tomorrow, Helen.”

“Good.  Are they cooperating?”

“In a frightening and eerie way,” he
said.  “I never would’ve thought we’d find potential witnesses
so cooperative in a place like this.”

My eyebrows inched upward.  “A place
like this?  Are you stereotyping, Crevan?”

“You would’ve never believed I would have a
little bit of bias on this subject.  Am I right?  Because
of my dark side, I should be pumping a fist in the air and
celebrating the sexual liberation and social superiority of my
people.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Maybe it is what I meant.  I came over
here tonight expecting to find… I’m not even sure what.  And
what do we get?  Respect.  Cooperation.  Some
seriously subdued behavior.  Except from the owner of the
place.”

“Believe me, he’s subdued now.”

“Has Johnny mentioned the plan now?”

I glanced down the hallway.  “He’s
talking to Forsythe.  We have a few new leads.  I’ll let
him tell you what he plans to do next.  I honestly have no
idea.”

“What do you think we should do?”

“Crevan, don’t ask me that.  This is
Johnny’s case, and I’m not going to be anything than supportive of
how he wants to handle things.”

“Good to know, Doc, but I think I can defend
myself,” Johnny murmured over my shoulder.  His fingers curled
around my waist.  “Did you get Waters sent safely home?”

“Yes.”

“I’m taking you home now,” he said. 
“And before you start arguing, might I remind you that you’re still
supposed to be inactive, and I have it on high authority that you
haven’t made it to any of your physical therapy sessions this
week.”

I hadn’t even thought about
therapy. 

“All right,” I said softly.  “But will
you at least tell me what the next steps are?”

“Crevan and Tony are going to the Tippet
residence to make a formal notification, and set up a time that we
can meet with them tomorrow,” Johnny said.  “We’ll talk to
Sasha Kravchenko after that.  Meanwhile, the interviews we
didn’t complete with the patrons present tonight will be conducted
at Downey Division.”