The Ninth Man (22 page)

Ed brought his palms off the dresser and folded his hands, loosely, between his legs, his wrists on his thighs.

“The defense rests,” he said.

I found myself putting on the socks I was taking from the dresser when I’d found Glenn’s photo. Ed was right, of course. I did care for him, more than I could ever remember caring for anyone before.

I reached for my pants and slipped them on. But Ed had killed eight men! Regardless of what complete shits they might have been, did they deserve to die for what they’d done? What about their friends and lovers…didn’t they hurt, too?

Standing up, I walked to the open closet and took a shirt off a hanger. It was very improbable that the police would ever solve the case. The deaths had stopped; there wouldn’t be any more—I believed Ed on that score. The debt had been paid. The police, increasingly relieved as time wore on with no new cyanide deaths, would put the entire string of deaths into the “Unsolved” file and get on to other things.

Why had I never thought of Ed as a suspect? That part was easy—like Martin Bell and Gary Miller and everyone else, including the police who never questioned the deaths too closely, I’d believed what I wanted to believe. And I’d wanted to believe Ed was not involved.

Buttoning the last button of my shirt, I realized I had one left over. Looking down, I saw the bottom of the shirt was uneven. Sighing, I unbuttoned from top to bottom and started all over again.

What good would turning Ed in—or having him turn himself in—do? Would it bring any one of the eight men back? If I were Ed, wouldn’t I have done exactly what he did?

I suspected very strongly that I might.

Tucking in my shirttail, I zipped up my fly and reached under the bed for my shoes.

But could I let somebody who had caused eight deaths go scot-free? Just because I might love him?

Sitting back down on the edge of the bed, I put my shoes on, wiping a smudge off one toe with my thumb. I’d been a loner most of my life. I could be a loner again, and I’d survive. Sure, and I could be Robinson Crusoe if I had to be, or a monk. But did I want to? I had a pretty good idea of what life could be like with Ed, if I’d let it be. The question was, did I want it? Did I want it bad enough?

Getting up from the bed, I walked toward the door. Ed was still sitting on the dresser, watching me.

“I’ve got to think,” I said, opening the door. “We’ll talk when I get back, okay?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

I closed the door behind me and leaned my back against it. I was dizzy, and my legs felt like they were going to give out. What in hell was I going to do? Go against everything I’ve prided myself on all my life—doing what had to be done just because it was right? Or spend the rest of my life going to bed alone with my principles, dreaming about someone and something I’d let slip away? What the hell should I do?

But I didn’t have to ask, really. I knew the answer.

Pushing away from the door, I walked down the hallway toward the elevator.

About the Author

If it is possible to have a split personality without being schizophrenic, DORIEN GREY qualifies. When long-time book and magazine editor Roger Margason chose the pseudonym “Dorien Grey” for his first book, it set off a chain of circumstances which has led to the comfortable division of labor and responsibility. Roger has charge of day-to-day existence, freeing Dorien―with the help of Roger’s fingers―to write. It has reached the point where Roger merely sits back and reads the stories Dorien brings forth on the computer screen.

It’s not as though Roger has not had an uninteresting life of his own. Two years into college, he left to join the Naval Aviation Cadet program. Washing out after a year, he spent the rest of his brief military career on an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean at the height of the Cold War. Returning to Northern Illinois University after service, he graduated with a B.A. in English and embarked on a series of jobs that worked 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 LA-based international gay men’s magazine.

Tiring of earthquakes, brush fires, mud slides, and riots, he returned to the Midwest, where Dorien emerged, full-blown, like Venus from the sea. They’ve been inseparable (and interchangeable) ever since.

Roger—and Dorien, of course—moved back to Chicago in 2006, where they now devote full time to writing.