What Hides Within (24 page)

On the couch, Morgan kissed his cheek and cradled under his arm. The two settled in comfortably, a brief moment of tranquility soon to be spoiled.

"When was the last time you spoke to Derek?"

"That motherfucker!" Clive yelled, throwing Morgan off him and leaping from his seat. "Did he do something to you? Did he touch you?" His face filled with signs of rage. "I swear to God, I'll kill him."

"No, Clive. You've got it all wrong," Morgan said. "Please, sit back down."

Clive paced a bit, then slowly complied. His mind was difficult to settle. It leapt impulsively to unsubstantiated conclusions, promulgated by an unknown darkness within him. His suspicions were beyond his control.

"Clive, Derek's dead."

Clive's sneer curled into a devilish grin. "You're kidding," he said. His grin quickly vanished as he realized she wasn't.

"That can't be true. I just talked to him . . ."

When had he talked to him last? A week ago? More? He couldn't remember. It had been longer than usual.

"How?"

"They didn't say. Apparently, he died in his sleep. They found him in his bed."

"Who's they?"

"The police. Well, I think someone said his mother found him." Morgan's eyes filled with fresh tears. "Clive, he's been dead for days. The cops said he died sometime early Sunday morning. They found him lying on his bed, still in his pajamas. They didn't get to him until Wednesday."

Clive recalled that he hadn't spoken to Derek since last Friday. It wasn't uncommon for Derek to disappear for a while, only to resurface with over-embellished tales of his glorious sexual conquests. Had he thought about it earlier, he probably would have assumed Derek had been busy, or getting busy, with Morgan. He was glad he hadn't thought of it earlier. Those two together wasn't something he preferred to think about. But the last time he saw Derek, he was with Morgan. And they were intimate right in front of him. At the time, Clive had wished Derek dead.

Some wishes do come true
, he thought.

Clive gasped at the realization. He
had
wanted Derek out of the way. He hated Derek for violating Morgan. She was his and no other's. Derek needed to disappear. Derek was in the way. Now, he wasn't.

His thoughts invoked strange possibilities. He remembered going home that night. He couldn't remember leaving his apartment, so he assumed he must have just gone to bed. Yet, he couldn't be certain what he did. He couldn't remember most of it. Why couldn't he remember?
Could I have actually had something to do with this?

"Was he murdered?"

"I don't know, Cli. Maybe. If so, the cops weren't going to tell me."

"Why did they call you then?"

"Maybe they wanted his friends to know. I have no idea. His obituary will be in tomorrow's paper."

"Maybe they wanted his girlfriend to know," he muttered under his breath.

Morgan evidently caught it. "And just what is
that
supposed to mean?"

"Oh, give it up, Morgan. I've seen you two all over each other."

Clive's frustration grew. He'd been waiting for the chance to confront her about Derek. There were so many questions for which he needed answers. The one he asked, however, was the most spiteful.

"How could you sink so low?"

Morgan's arm flailed forward, her open palm connecting hard with Clive's face. He rolled with it, and when he returned upright, a handprint reddened his cheek. He grinned and gritted his teeth as though he'd taken some sinister delight in it. Indeed, he had.

"You think I slept with Derek?" Morgan shouted. "You stupid, ignorant, obnoxious, little . . . Where the hell do you get off accusing me of that? Where's your head at, Clive? I've been in love with your sorry ass for years. Are you truly that dumb or blind that you haven't noticed?"

"Yeah, what a way to show your love for me, fucking my best friend. I saw you two hooking up last Friday."

"I flirted with him to make you jealous, douchebag."

The bite in Clive's remarks began to take their toll. He could see Morgan's anger subsiding, replaced by depression. He tempered his contempt.

"It's not like you cared, though. You were too busy with that bimbo from work to care."

Clive's voice lowered with Morgan's. "I saw you two on Saturday. I saw you kiss him."

"Where? What are you talking about?"

"I came by here last Saturday night. You kissed him on your front porch."

"You've been spying on me?"

"Of course not! I just came by to . . . thank you for the party," he lied. "Anyway, don't try to turn this around on me. What you did is unforgivable."

"I didn't kiss him. I was smelling his cologne. He wore this awful shit one time, and I was checking to see . . . oh never mind, Clive. It's a long, dumb story. The point is that I never kissed, fucked, blew, jerked off or did anything else sexual or even remotely intimate with Derek. Use your brain, Clive. You know me. I didn't even like Derek. Yes, I'm sad he's gone, but my tears, Clive, are for your loss. Not that you deserve them."

Clive stared crossly at Morgan. Her gaze was stern but sincere, hurt but compassionate. She seemed to be telling him the truth. He could feel his own heart soften a bit.

"I wanted him to die for what I thought you two were doing."

Now, Clive was close to tears. Guilt swelled up from his stomach into his throat, choking him in his own remorse.

Morgan seemed taken aback. "You don't know anything about his death, do you, Clive?"

The sickened look on Clive's face served as his response in the negative. Any feeling daring to release itself was quickly succumbed by Morgan's preposterous inference. He couldn't have had anything to do with it. So he didn't remember the night. He must have fallen asleep early. He would have remembered something like that.

To remove all doubt, he replied, "No, Morgan. I stayed home Saturday night."

"I thought you said you saw him here."

"I know what I said, Morgan. I did see him here. Then I went home. That was the last time I saw him. So, obviously,
you
were the last one to see him . . . alive, anyway."

"He left here before nine. Who knows who he saw or where he went after that? And if you must know, we were booking a paintball party for you. He came--"

"I'm sure he did."

"Fuck you, Clive. I already told you, I never slept with Derek. I didn't kiss him, either. He came here. We did what we had to do. He left. End of story."

"Whatever. Nobody knows how he died?"

"Maybe his heart gave out on him."

"At thirty-one?"

"Happens all the time, doesn't it?"

"Well, at some point last Saturday night, after he left you here, he went home and died in his sleep. Why couldn't I just as easily assume you had something to do with Derek's death as you seem to assume I did?"

"Because, Clive, unlike you, I don't have a motive."

A wicked smile curled on Morgan's face. She looked at Clive with what seemed to be guilty pleasure. Clive found it oddly appealing.

"Did you seriously want Derek dead because you thought he was with me?"

Clive turned away, ashamed. He wouldn't give her the pleasure of an affirmative answer, though his body language revealed all.

"I didn't want to kill Derek," he blurted, unsure of his true desires. "He was my best friend! One of the few friends I have. Yes, I was bothered when I saw you two together. I went home to be alone."

Well, alone with Chester
, Clive thought.
Wait a minute . . . Chester! Wasn't that the night Chester went silent? Where the hell was Chester?

That familiar howling, high-pitched squeal coursed through Clive's skull. Chester was laughing.

I was wondering how long it would take you to make the connection. Do you know how hard it's been to keep my mouth shut? There's a load off my chest.

Chester's mirth sent tremors through Clive's brain. It was louder, more potent, than before. His nose began to bleed, pressure building inside his skull. The migraine he felt dulled the world around him.

"You!" Clive shouted. "You did this!"

Morgan crossed her arms, apparently misconstruing Clive's accusation as meant for her. Her face reflected her doubt and frustration.

"I didn't know our secret meetings weren't secret, Clive. Derek and I just wanted to do something nice for you. That's it. Nothing else was going on. Clive, are you listening to me?"

Morgan's words trailed off into silence. Something was wrong. Clive filled with rage and horror. He barely noticed Morgan gently caressing his shoulder.

"Clive? Are you okay? Jesus, Clive. Your nose is bleeding. I'll get you a tissue."

Clive reached out his hand to stop her from leaving, but he was too late. Chester's incessant laughter clouded his mind and slowed his senses.

I only did what you told me to do. You said you wanted him out of the way. Now, he's out of the way.

"That's not what I meant," Clive said.

Really? Don't delude yourself. You knew damn well what you were saying. You knew damn well the feelings you had behind the words when you said them. And you knew damn well that this would happen. If you choose to blind yourself to whom you are, then that's your prerogative. You may have everyone else, even yourself, fooled, but you can't fool me. You wanted Derek dead. You just didn't have the balls to do it yourself.

Chester's laughter bellowed even louder through Clive's head.
But I was more than happy to oblige you!

"No!" Clive's body fell limp to the floor, temporarily paralyzed by the deafening noise in his head. It made him wild, baseless. His cognitive processes slowed, reverting him to a more primitive state. Soon after, his thoughts went blank, his brain unable to function at any human level. It had been taken over by a malevolent being, a murderer no bigger than a nickel. His faculties were no longer his to control. Instinct and raw human nature were his sole capabilities.

***

Morgan returned with a wet face cloth. Seeing Clive on the floor, she rushed to his aid. After helping him to his knees, Morgan pressed the warm towel to Clive's upper lip.

An unexpected pain shot through her wrist. Clive had it clenched in his grip like a vice, and he wasn't letting up. The cloth dropped from her hand. Squinting from the pain, she looked into Clive's eyes. Something animalistic resided behind his cold stare, something vicious and empowered. When Morgan met it, she wasn't afraid. In fact, she found it exhilarating. He looked as though all seven deadly sins had incorporated themselves into his corporeal form. Such strong emotions, all for her. She owed him the same. In his being, Morgan saw his chaos. And she wanted him all the more, her Clive.

He stood Morgan up with violent sexuality. He ran her into the wall beside the couch.

"Clive, don't," she faintly protested as she slid one leg up the back of his. She didn't want Clive to stop, although she could feel something wrong in it. She liked the fact that it was wrong. Her teeth dug down into her lower lip as she tried to hold back her own animal. She reached for his belt buckle.

But Clive was in control. He spun her around, sandwiching her between his body and the wall. He tore down her sweatpants and panties. She could feel him enter her seconds later, her body warm and inviting. He was hard, and she was wet. She had never before been so afraid and so impassioned. Never before had she dreamed Clive could be so fierce, that he could hurt her, want her, take her. Never before had she felt so alive.

As her face scraped up and down her living room wall with each unsympathetic thrust, she smiled. She had won. Finally, Clive was hers. Her heart was at peace. She loved it, and she loved him. And if it took Derek's death for her to get Clive, then so be it.

Dead people didn't bother Reilly. She'd seen too many to remember and did her fair share of poking and prodding. But those who chose to spend their lives surrounded by the dead, to earn their livelihood carving up cadavers and draining their blood like wasteful vampires, those types were beyond her comprehension. Reilly could deal with the dead, but she couldn't stand their caretakers. So when one called her at the precinct requesting her immediate attention, Reilly needed to coax herself into doing her job.

She got to the morgue a little after 6:00 p.m., having first stalled for nearly an hour. As she walked into a building as lifeless as the majority of its occupants, she felt out of her element. She followed a man in scrubs into the "ice block," her name for the room in which the morticians kept their human filing cabinet. No doubt, Reilly intended the term to describe the demeanor of those still living in that room rather than the dead themselves.

An unrecognizable body lay sprawled out in a shallow vat atop a flat, metal examining table. Whatever privacy the decedent had coveted in life had now been desecrated. He laid naked, subject to uncompassionate scrutiny down to his most private of parts. Whatever indecencies he'd done in life would now be revisited upon his corpse. His body would be sliced and diced, inspected and dissected, and by one without a glimpse of pity or even false concern.
What do the dead care, anyway?
Reilly wondered.
They're dead.

"How are you, Detective Reilly?"

Dr. Rosetta Hawthorne ate a cucumber sandwich beside the horribly disfigured cadaver. The body lay in what appeared to be a giant, clear-plastic foot tub, similar to the kind dirt-conscious people step into before entering a pool. His face was contorted, the pain of death wrenching it into something Halloween-ish. Flesh, muscle and hair were missing in patches, bone let free to breath. Most of the eyes, nose and throat were gone.

The un-picturesque picture disturbed Reilly. She feared she was needlessly being exposed to some rare, flesh-eating parasite. Something was eating away at the body. She had no desire to be its next meal.

"I'm here, so things can't be going that well," Reilly said.

"Humph. I see your point. I haven't seen you since that little girl was brought in. How's that case going?"

"Well, we have a suspect. Ironically, he's a suspect in another, bigger investigation, so I've had to back off him. Shouldn't be long before we get him, though, if he's our guy."