Indirection, page 24
part #1 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
“How did that make you feel?”
“Furious. I was so angry I wanted to kill him.” She seemed to hear what she had said, swallowed, and looked at them with huge, pleading eyes. “I didn’t, though. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Scotty.”
“Were you angry because you were jealous?” Shaw asked.
“Don’t be stupid. I didn’t want anything to do with Scotty. He was an attention whore, a jerk, a scumbag. I was furious because he was such a hypocrite. He acted like he was better than everyone, and part of what made him better than anyone—according to him—was that he was a gay man writing in a gay genre. And then, secretly, he was—I don’t know. Bi. Demi. Pan. Whatever label you want to put on it, he was fake.”
“But not you.”
Mary Angela grabbed a remaining French fry and dragged it through a drying patch of ketchup. She looked at the limp piece of potato, grimaced, and dropped it on the plate again. “Do you know who I am? I mean, I know you’re not in the genre, but do you know?”
“You’re very successful,” Shaw said with a smile. “I like your books, and I’m not just saying that.”
“I write good books. I’m smart. I took classes. I went to workshops. I learned the craft, and I write about things that I care about, things that I love. My daughter is gay, not that it matters. My first book? I broke the top ten. Book two? I hit number one, and I held on to it for over a day. That’s basically unheard of. And for Scotty, it all happens magically, easily, with a wave of his gay magic wand. These dumb, stupid bitches who read this genre, they get their motors cranked knowing that an authentic gay man is writing this stuff, and that’s all that matters. I bust my butt writing good books, and they do well, and I’m proud of that. But Scotty? He could shit in a bag, and these bitches would buy ten thousand copies of it.”
“And you decided Scotty didn’t deserve all that success,” North said. “Not if he was faking it. You decided he ought to be punished.”
“He did need to be punished! He’s awful. You heard about what he did yesterday with Serenity’s book? He did that to everyone. He humiliated us. He was a literary writer, in his own opinion, and the rest of us were hacks. And the whole time, he was a fake. You saw the email; I asked him what he thought Josue would do if he saw that video, and he freaked out.” She was silent for a moment, her expression thoughtful. Somewhere behind North, a woman was cackling, her laughter drowning out the clink of knives and forks and glasses. “I don’t know if he really loved Josue or if he just needed him to keep his image alive, but I know he was scared enough to pay. Until this week. He told me he was out of money. He said he wasn’t going to pay anymore. He said Josue was bleeding him dry, and he didn’t care what I did. I wasn’t so sure about that, so after our fight, I sent him the video again, just as a reminder.”
“What about the death threats?”
“What about them?”
“Who did you tell about them? Yasmin said she only confided in—”
“God, you can’t believe a word Yasmin says. She told everyone. Everyone. Anyone who would listen. She thought it was so exciting. She thought it would bring up the con’s attendance.”
“Ok. So you sent that video to Scotty as a threat,” Shaw said, “and then the death threats started, and then, what?”
“And then Scotty died,” Mary Angela said with a ghoulish grin. “Not that I had anything to do with it, you understand. I preferred him alive. Dead men can’t pay.”
“That’s not much of an alibi,” North told her. “It sounds like you had a serious motive: you tried to blackmail Scotty, you failed, and now you were vulnerable. If he went to the police, you’d be ruined. Who would pay for all that expensive rehab your daughter needs? Better to get rid of him.”
“No,” Mary Angela said. “No, I didn’t. And you can’t prove that I did.”
“What do you think he meant about Josue?” Shaw asked.
With a bitter smile, Mary Angela said, “Do you know what romance is? Whatever makes them buy the book. That’s what Scotty was selling, and Josue was part of it. Every workout video they did together. Every public appearance. Every time Scotty pretended to jerk Josue off in public. Every kiss. That was Scotty doing his marketing, his branding. At some point, Josue must have realized that Scotty was a piece of shit, and he started demanding his cut.” She shrugged. “That’s what I think, anyway. Now, what do I have to do to convince you to leave this alone? I know we can work something out. A little help with your retirement planning, maybe? Or a trip? Somewhere you’ve always wanted to go? I could—”
North stood, pushing back his chair so that it squealed on the tile. He glanced at Shaw. “How do you feel about blackmailers?”
“Not great,” Shaw said as he rose. With an apologetic grimace, he said to Mary Angela, “Bad history.”
“Yeah. I fucking hate them. So, Mary Angela, here’s the good news: we’re not going to do a single fucking thing about this from here on out.”
The relief in her face was transparent, almost glowing.
“And here’s the bad news,” North said through a hard smile. “We already forwarded your email and the video to the police. Have a great fucking life.”
“No,” Mary Angela said, “hold on, you can’t—”
By then, North and Shaw were already making their way through the press of bodies. When they emerged from the pub, Shaw caught North’s arm and kissed him on the cheek.
“That was amazing,” Shaw said.
The flush started in North’s chest.
“You are amazing,” Shaw said.
“You didn’t do too bad yourself.”
“And the part when you said, ‘And here’s the bad news.’ You sounded so trade. My little gay-boy heart just about exploded.”
North rolled his eyes, trying to work his arm free.
Laughing, Shaw pulled him down and peppered him with kisses, and for some reason, North found it hard to mind.
Chapter 29
THEY FOUND KAREN IN her room. A roller bag propped the door open, and from where Shaw stood in the hallway, he could see Karen fumbling with the strap of a garment bag. When North raised his eyebrows, Shaw nodded, and North rapped on the door.
Karen jumped, and a tiny squeak escaped her. Dropping the garment bag, she glanced over at them, automatically retreating a step. Then she seemed to recognize them. She swayed, leaned heavily against the bed, and then shook her head.
“Go away.” The words sounded a little mushy. “I’m leaving.”
“You might not want to do that,” Shaw said. “I think the police are going to want to talk to you.”
She shook her head, gave another faltering step, and had to catch herself again. “No. No way. I’m leaving.”
“Everybody says they’re leaving,” North said, “and then they stick around. The whole lot of you can clear the fuck out for all I care.”
He grunted when Shaw poked him in the side.
“We know about you and Scotty,” Shaw said quietly.
Karen was trying to yank a zipper tight, and she shook her head furiously at the words. She gave another yank. The zipper refused to budge. And then she began to sob.
Shaw looked at North.
“This is your goddamn mess,” North said.
Sighing, Shaw headed into the room. He stopped in the bathroom long enough to pluck several tissues from the box, and then he made his way to the sleeping area. He sat on one of the beds; Karen had fallen to her knees, the upper half of her body supported by the mattress, the whole frame shaking with her crying. Up close, Shaw could smell the alcohol on her breath.
“Do you know about pressure points?” Shaw asked her. He took the hand that was closest to him, and he spoke as he used his thumb and forefinger to gently apply pressure. “You’ve got a lot of them in your hands. This one is for your eye, so maybe it’ll help you stop crying. And this one is for shoulder strain, because I don’t think this bed was ergonomically designed for crying. And this one is to help you refresh your aura. And this one is to help you relax. Oh, and this one is to help you relax too! North, I forgot there were two.”
North’s face was strangely unreadable. After a moment, he rolled a shoulder, as though that were some kind of acknowledgment.
“And this one is for your pancreas,” Shaw said. “Or gallbladder. Sometimes I mix them up.”
Sniffling, Karen raised her head. “That feels nice,” she whispered.
“North doesn’t like it. He wouldn’t even let me try.”
“That,” North said, his voice surprisingly rough, “is because you came at me with those needles that are a mile long.”
“It works better with the needles,” Shaw said. He took a tissue and wiped under Karen’s eyes. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
She nodded and accepted a clean tissue, cleaning her face as she spoke. “Thank you.” A silent sob rippled through her, but she held herself together. “It doesn’t seem real. And I’m not…I’m not handling it very well. As you can tell.” A burpy laugh escaped her.
“Why don’t you sit down,” Shaw said, “and tell us about it?”
Karen sat on the bed next to Shaw, and after a moment, she leaned her head on his shoulder. “He was so shy at first. In private, I mean. We were at a workshop, and he got assigned to be my mentor, and as soon as we were behind a closed door, he was a different person. That annoying overconfidence disappeared. He looked nervous. He talked in spurts—like he’d been holding it in for a long time, and all of a sudden it was escaping. We were supposed to workshop a short story for two hours, but instead, we just talked, and by the end, he’d told me all of it: he thought he might be bi, he was deeply unhappy, he didn’t know how to stop being this asshole public persona he’d gotten trapped in.” Unable to see her face, Shaw could still feel the smile. “I was probably sixty-percent in love with him by the time we went back to the main group. We stayed in touch. We talked on the phone because he was so worried about email and text, about someone finding out. And then I really did fall in love.”
“It sounds like you had something very special with him.”
She nodded into his shoulder. “He was such a good guy. He didn’t know how to get out of the trap he’d made for himself, but we were figuring it out. We were working on it.”
“How long were you together?”
“Seventeen months. We met at the workshop, like I told you. Then, at last year’s Queer Expectations, we…we moved forward with our relationship. It was the first time we’d seen each other in person since the workshop, and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We were like teenagers.”
“What about Josue?”
“I felt terrible about that. Josue loves him, he really does. And Scotty loved Josue. I mean, not in the way Josue wanted, I think. That was always the problem. They had a connection, but Scotty knew he wasn’t just gay, and he needed to explore, grow, learn more about himself.”
“Stick his dick in everything that moved,” North said, “and make sure he kept sticking his dick in things that worshipped him.”
“That’s not what Scotty was like,” Karen snapped, her too-wide mouth hanging open in outrage. “You don’t understand. You have no idea what we experienced—love, true love, with all the passion and all the power, something neither of us could deny. He was trapped in a loveless marriage, and then we found each other, and what we felt was beyond anything either of us had ever experienced.”
“I know a little something about loveless marriages. And I know that the one who cheats, he’s usually fifty-one percent of the problem. You thought he was hot. You liked that he was into you. Fine. But save the rest of it, all the soulmates bullshit, for a book pitch with JD. Scotty had an affair with you, plain and simple.”
Sniffling again, Karen pulled her long, auburn hair over one shoulder. She studied North. Then she said, “I told Scotty that people would react like this. People would never forgive him for being bi.”
“The problem isn’t that he was bi. The problem is that he was a cheating, manipulative, abusive—”
Shaw closed a hand around North’s wrist. North cut off, swallowing, and looked away.
“We’re getting off topic,” Shaw said. “What happened after last year’s Queer Expectations?”
“We were in love.” Karen cast a defiant look at North, but the blond man was still fixated on the particleboard dresser. “We knew we had to make arrangements so that Scotty could end his marriage gracefully and keep his career going. He was having a really hard time with his writing; the stress made it impossible for him to create something new. He was even talking about hiring a ghost writer. Buying a manuscript. I wouldn’t let him do that; he’s a genius, and I didn’t want him to sully his reputation. I offered to give him one of my manuscripts instead, and he could do whatever he wanted with it.”
“Wouldn’t that sully his reputation too?”
“Not at all. It was just raw material; he could do whatever he wanted with it.”
“Is that why you told everyone that he was editing one of your books?”
A tiny smile pulled at her mouth. “That was Scotty’s idea. He wanted us to be able to see each other without anyone asking questions.”
“And he wanted you to write a book for him,” North said. His gaze moved back to Karen. His eyes were clear, his face unreadable again. “Right?”
Karen ignored the question. “We concocted that story about him editing my book so that we could visit each other, spend more time together. Then he was worried someone might figure out what we were doing, so we had to pretend to call the whole thing off.”
“So you saw each other how many times over the last year?” Shaw asked.
“Half a dozen, I think.”
“Did Josue know what was happening?”
“I don’t know.” She touched her puffy nose. “He…might have. I’ve thought about that a lot since last night. Someone wanted me dead. Someone wanted to punish me, just like someone wanted to punish Scotty. I heard them fighting.”
“Wednesday night,” Shaw said. “When you snuck out of your room.”
“We were going to…spend some time together. Josue was supposed to be getting drinks with friends. But I got there, and I could hear them screaming at each other through the door. Scotty had already told me about several fights they’d had. Oregon isn’t a community property state, and Scotty was determined to hold on to his books and the royalties, no matter what else he had to give up.”
“You’re talking about their divorce?”
“Right, they live in Portland, and Scotty knew Josue would argue that he had contributed significantly to Scotty’s work because Josue is greedy; all he does is spend Scotty’s money. Scotty hoped he could walk away with his book rights intact at the very least.”
“So you want us to believe, what?” North said. “That Josue killed Scotty rather than let Scotty walk off with all that money?”
She nodded, wiping gingerly at her swollen nose with a tissue.
“And what did you do after you heard them fighting?” Shaw said.
“I went back to my room.”
“You didn’t go downstairs?”
She was still for a moment, the tissues still pressed under her nose. Then she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, I’m wondering if you realized Scotty wasn’t ever going to leave Josue, and maybe you decided to punish him.”
This time, she was quicker. “Get out of my room.”
“Do you have any Adderall?” North said. “Other amphetamines? What am I going to find if I poke around in your bathroom?”
“I want you to get out of my room. Leave. Right now. Or I’m calling security.”
“Sure,” North said, “right after I have a peek in your bathroom.”
“Get out,” Karen screamed, stumbling to the phone on the desk. “Get out, get out, get out!”
“We all need to—” Shaw began.
A knock interrupted him. The roller bag still held the door open, and in the doorway stood Jadon and Cerise.
“Detectives,” Karen said, “thank God, I want these men—”
“Leave this hotel right now,” Jadon said to Shaw, “or I’m placing you and North under arrest for obstruction. Do you understand?”
“Josue—”
“Josue is sitting in an interview room right now,” Jadon said. He was clearly trying to control himself, but the volume had slipped up in his voice. “I won’t tell you again.”
“Obstruction,” North said. “Obstruction, obstruction, obstruction. Oh, wait. You mean, that charge that’s practically impossible to prove?”
“Let’s go,” Shaw said.
“The one that’s a misdemeanor.”
“North, enough.”
Ugly red patches colored North’s face, but he followed Shaw from the room. When they passed Jadon, Shaw waited for the collision, but Jadon turned sideways to clear a path.
On the elevator ride down, North shouted and punched the elevator wall. The steel panel flexed and buckled, and then he swore and shook out his hand.
“We were so goddamn close. Fucking Jadon fucking Reck.”
“I want you to know how proud I am of you,” Shaw said. “Particularly that last part, when you summoned the emotional maturity of a toddler and managed not to smack Jadon with your shoulder.”
After a moment, the flush climbing higher in his fair skin, North said, “I miscalculated. I thought he was going to get in my way again at the last moment, and then I realized too late that he was going to act like a fucking adult.”
Shaw considered this. “Is it weird that I’m actually relieved? I thought maybe something was wrong with you.”
“What the fuck are we supposed to do? We need to talk to Josue, but they’ll have him in that interview room all night. They’ve got Karen. I bet they have Brendon too. The little love triangle finally collapsed, and I’d bet money one of them killed Scotty, but we can’t get at them. Christ, I’m so foggy I can’t think. Maybe I should get an Adderall scrip.”
