Indirection, page 27
part #1 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
He was looking right at Leslie when the figure in the gimp mask drove a knife into her side.
Leslie’s head whipped around in almost comic surprise, and she staggered to the left. Then she started to fall.
North sprinted toward the gimp.
A woman screamed.
Jadon shouted, “Stop! Police!”
“Shaw!” North shouted without looking back.
“I’ve got them,” Shaw called after him.
The gimp was already running back down the hallway. It was the main thoroughfare, connecting the lobby with the Camelot Public House, the Round Table, and the Kayak’s Coffee. Even with the convention attendance substantially reduced, the hall was beginning to fill with people, and North had to twist and dart. The Redwings pounded the red carpet. The gimp had a lead of thirty yards, but North, even in boots, was faster.
North’s brain tried to catch up with his physical reactions. Someone had tried to kill Leslie. Again. Someone wanted her dead. It wasn’t a spree killing. It had to be motivated by fear—fear that Leslie knew something, fear that Leslie could reveal the killer. The gimp’s zippered mask hid their features, and a bulky, shapeless coat disguised their body. They were short for a man, average height for a woman, and that meant they could have been just about anybody at this con.
Thirty yards closed to twenty-five. Twenty-five closed to twenty.
Ahead, a woman in Cleopatra getup—kohl, a golden snake armband, a jade pectoral—was being carried palanquin-style in a sex sling. The bearers were extremely well-muscled, extremely hot guys; North registered them long enough to worry that Shaw might have an aneurysm if he saw them. Worse, he might try to arrange his own sex-sling palanquin for his birthday or his grandparents’ anniversary or a goddaughter’s christening.
“Make way,” the woman was screeching. “Make way for the Queen of the Hags.”
North darted, trying to avoid the sex sling, but the woman shouted something, and the bearers turned sharply, so that they blocked most of the hallway. North cut hard to the right, caromed off the wall, and barely recovered his balance. He kept running.
Twenty yards had opened to thirty again.
“Stop!” Jadon shouted farther down the hall. “Police!”
More screams rang out.
North tried to hit the gas, but weeks of little sleep and pushing himself had sapped his reserves. His chest burned. A stitch pulled in his side. He was vaguely aware that he was gasping for air, and a tiny part of his brain swore he’d trash the American Spirits stashed in the GTO’s glovebox as soon as this was over.
Then he forgot about everything except the tower of diapers that had moved into his path. It was clearly some sort of take on the diaper cakes that, for one unending week, Shaw had been obsessed with on Pinterest. Behind the mound of diapers, a larger-than-life poster showed, on one side, a very attractive young man dressed in a suit and glasses. An incomplete speech bubble said, Daddy…. On the other side of the poster, the same young man was now naked except for an adult diaper, and he had a slightly shamefaced look as he tugged on the waistband. The speech bubble finished here: …change me! Four women in dresses that looked like they’d come from the Disney princess line were carrying the diaper cake and poster, oblivious to North.
“Out of my fucking way,” North tried to shout, but he was out of breath, and he barely managed a croak. He clipped the side of the diaper tower. Someone squealed. Behind him, he heard the patter of diapers hitting the ground.
“Police,” Jadon was shouting. He sounded closer. “Police, what the fuck—move it! Police!”
North made a mistake: he looked back, unable to resist the prospect of Jadon weaving his way through a flood of adult diapers. When he glanced forward again, wearing a smirk inside, he saw the erotic cake. Two young guys, obviously hotel staff, stood frozen in the middle of the hall. Right in North’s path. The cake had been shaped and decorated to look like a man’s ass, hands pulling apart the cheeks to expose his hole. North had one suspended moment to question what the fuck he had gotten himself into. Then he hit the cake.
The force of his momentum ripped the tray from the men’s hands. The cake hit the floor first. North landed on top of the cake, face buried in it. Swearing, he stumbled upright, wiping frosting and trying to blink his eyes clear.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he screamed.
The gimp was gone.
Chapter 33
“HE KEPT TRYING to sneak away,” Shaw was explaining, pointing to Brendon, who was massaging his knee. North guessed that was because Shaw had kicked him. “Josue, on the other hand, was a model citizen.”
Josue sat with his head in his hands; he didn’t even seem to have heard Shaw.
“Is that a—” Shaw blushed. “Do you have a dude’s frosted hole on your face?”
North glared, scraping more frosting from his face.
“That’s probably not what you wanted to hear right now,” Shaw said.
“Not really.”
“I should have said, ‘Is that a gentleman’s iced anus?’”
North pushed Shaw out of his way, leaving a handprint of frosting on the fuchsia turtleneck, and smiled grimly at Shaw’s squawking. He crossed to stand in front of Josue.
“Let’s talk.”
Josue looked up; he was obviously tranqued on whatever cocktail of legal and illegal stuff he’d been able to get his hands on. Glassy-eyed, he mumbled, “Cops want me to go to—”
“The cops are busy right now. They’ve got a stabbing victim who might not make it.” Heated by North’s skin, some of the icing was beginning to liquefy, running down into his eye. North flicked it away. “And if you’d asked me fifteen minutes ago, you and your fuck buddy,” he waved at Brendon, “would have been at the top of my list of suspects. So get your ass up, and let’s have a chat.”
“And a shower,” Shaw whispered helpfully. Whatever he saw on North’s face made him say, “It’s the presidential suite. They’re going to have a killer shower.”
The sugary mess was starting to itch, and North realized Shaw might have a point. While Shaw conducted Brendon and Josue toward the elevator, North jogged back to the GTO and got a clean tee from the trunk. They went up to Josue’s suite, and Josue waved North toward the bedroom and the shower.
North threw Shaw a questioning glance. When Shaw rolled his eyes and nodded, North passed through the double doors into the bedroom. Clothes covered the floor. Suitcases lay on their sides. The bedding was a tangled mess. The suite’s décor might have been presidential—the damask rose carpet, the expensive wallpaper, the brass fixtures and the chintz sofas and the Pre-Raphaelite knockoffs. But Josue was living like Shaw freshman year. Or, North thought more carefully, like a man sinking into a bottomless grief.
The bathroom continued the slightly outdated but expensive motif: marble, brass, damask roses printed on the towels. North showered with some sort of gel that smelled like sweetened ginger, dried himself, and dressed in his jeans and the clean tee. The Carhartt coat and his other shirt would need laundering, but at least he didn’t have to spend the whole day smelling like buttercream and scratching himself like a crazy man. He spent a few extra minutes poking through the toiletries. Three toothbrushes. Three different brands of deodorant. Three travel bags. One of the bags held condoms.
When he went back into the suite’s sitting room, Brendon and Josue sat together on a chintz sofa, and Shaw was holding a ceramic lamb.
“—and you get lambchops by cutting here, here. Now, if you didn’t know about how Big Meat is putting mind-controlling hormones in your lambchops, you’re in for a treat, because I memorized a four-hour lecture on—oh, hi, North.”
“How long have you two been boning?”
Brendon jerked his head in an automatic no; Josue stayed still, gaze locked on the damask rose carpeting.
“We already know about Scotty,” Shaw said.
This time, Josue flinched.
“Can’t you leave him alone? It’s bad enough he was tortured by that…by that monster,” Brendon said, tossing his head to shake his long, silky black hair out of his eyes. “The police are treating him like a criminal, and the two of you want to drag out everything in his life and put it on display. How would you like that?”
“I don’t cheat,” North said. “You two got into this mess on your own.”
“Oh really? You think you’re so much better than us? You don’t have any idea what it was like for Josue, being in love with someone who thought you were disgusting, who wouldn’t look at you, wouldn’t even touch you unless it was a performance—”
“Brendon,” Josue said, the word coiled and venomous. “Shut. Up.”
Brendon leaned away from Josue, sulking into the sofa’s arm.
Josue’s eyes came up. North met his gaze, held it, and waited. Outside, the dull roar of a vacuum announced housekeeping’s progress along the hall. The white noise went so perfectly with the suffocating, cloistered moment that North was shocked to realize that it had begun to snow: fat, white flakes falling in dense flurries on the other side of the glass.
“You know?” Josue asked.
North nodded.
“God.” Josue shivered. “It’s like letting out a breath. Like I’ve been holding my breath for six years.”
“Scotty’s been cheating on you for six years?” Shaw said.
The surprise that transformed Josue’s face contracted into a smile. “Oh my God. You don’t know. You’re fishing.”
“Karen told us about the affair.”
If anything, Josue’s smile got bigger, and he waved the words away with one hand. “She’s just the latest one. She’s actually a fairly decent person. She felt bad about it, you know? The sanctity of marriage and all that.” A burst of laughter, shockingly loud against the vacuum’s distant hum, broke free, and Josue’s smile got wilder. “Some of them got off on that part. On me knowing. On finding little ways to rub it in.”
“So how long has Scotty been carrying on with other people?” North asked.
“Since puberty, I guess. He never stopped. We started our relationship six years ago. Got married five years ago.”
“And he never stopped seeing—”
“Women,” Josue interrupted. His smile was too big now. His eyes manic.
“He was straight?” Shaw said. “But I’ve seen you guys. Your interviews. Your post-workout videos. You’re cute. You touch each other. Scotty is very…hands-on with you.”
“What did you call it?” Josue said to Brendon, who was picking at the stitching in the chintz upholstery, eyes focused on his work. With a soothing noise, Josue reached over and took Brendon’s hand, squeezed it, and said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m scared. These meds are making it difficult to feel…to feel things the right way. Don’t be mad.”
Brendon looked up, jaw set, eyes hard.
Josue kissed his cheek, and Brendon sighed, features relaxing, and squeezed his hand back.
“A performance,” Brendon said, shifting to sit pressed against Josue. “Scotty loved to perform. And he knew how to entertain people. How to make them laugh. How to make them love him. How to titillate them.”
“Groping me in public,” Josue said. The wild excitement in his face had dimmed; he looked tired and glassy eyed again. “Talking about our sex life, which was nonexistent, with the whole world. Sticking his tongue down my throat, humping me, peeling my clothes off. He had no interest in men. Not sexually, anyway. I was a prop. A convenient one.”
“Why’d you put up with it?”
“It was an acting job. I’m an actor.” His lips twitched in a zombie smile. “Role of a lifetime.”
“And,” Shaw said quietly, “you were in love with him.”
Even buried under the zannies, the heartbreak still shone in Josue’s eyes. After a few labored breaths, he nodded and wiped his face. “Nobody knew the real Scotty. When it wasn’t a show, when he wasn’t turning it on for everyone else. He was funny. He was sweet. He was charming. The first year, I messed up. A lot of times, actually. I kept thinking he was just confused. That he wanted more than what we’d agreed on. But then I realized he really was straight. He didn’t want to fool around, no matter how drunk or high he was, not except…not except the one time. But even if he didn’t mean to, he made me fall in love with him. And then, even though it hurt worse than anything I’d ever been through, I kept loving him. And then I started hating him, and even then I loved him. And then I realized I had to get out of this. I’d do anything to get out of this.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Josue said, shifting on the chintz cushions. “I didn’t do anything to Scotty. I can’t even begin to process the fact that he’s dead.”
“It’s not that hard to process.” North dropped into a chair and leaned toward Josue. “He treated you like shit. You were desperate to end things. He had a fuck-ton of money. You were an out-of-work actor without anything on his resume for the last six years except making Instagram workout videos. Now, by a miraculous coincidence, the guy who tortured you and took your life away for six years is dead, and you’re rich and have a hot, new boyfriend.”
“No,” Josue said.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Brendon shouted, rising from the sofa to jab a finger in North’s face.
North swatted his hand away. “Come on, guys. You see how this looks. How much have the police already sniffed out?”
“I told them the same thing I told you,” Josue said. “They knew about Karen, so I told them.”
When North looked at Brendon, he sagged onto the sofa again, nodded, and looked away.
“Well, you’re very fucking lucky that somebody decided to do a public stabbing. At the very least, it suggests someone else is involved—”
“We’re not involved,” Josue said.
“We had nothing to do with any of this,” Brendon shouted, half-rising again.
“Sit down, dumbass,” North said. After Brendon had dropped onto the sofa again, North said, “The police aren’t going to let you go that easily. You’re nice, juicy suspects. Right, Shaw?”
“The juiciest,” Shaw said with an eager nod. “And Jadon and Cerise are very, very good, which means if you did this, they’ll find a way to prove it.”
“They’re not that good.”
“They’re very good, North. Remember when Jadon caught that guy who was spray-painting homophobic slurs on houses in Lafayette Square?”
“I surely fucking do remember it,” North said. “Because we’re the ones who tipped him off about who was doing it. We handed him that arrest on a silver platter.”
“Only because it was his birthday!”
“Hey,” Brendon said, snapping at them, “what the hell are you guys—”
“Grab your panties and hold the fuck on,” North told him. “We’re in the middle of something. Shaw, he’s not that good of a detective. That’s a fact. He’s decent looking. Fine. He can have a semi-polite conversation in public. Fine. But let’s not go overboard and pretend he’s this amazing detective.”
“He dug up all that stuff on the Slasher and those dirty cops.”
“Yeah, and he almost got himself killed.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Shaw waved both hands. “Yeah.”
North blew out a breath and slumped back in the seat. “I made my point, then.”
“And I made my point.”
“All right.”
“All right.”
“What the fuck—” Brendon screamed.
“Why did Scotty tell Mary Angela that you were bleeding him dry?” Shaw said, the question launched suddenly and unerringly at Josue.
Josue shrank into the cushions, shoulders curved. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—”
“You threatened him,” North said. “How much was he paying you?”
“When Scotty and I made our arrangement six years ago, it wasn’t about money. It was about—”
“I’m talking about recently. When you decided to get out. How much were you squeezing him for?”
“You don’t have to—” Brendon tried.
“Two thousand dollars a month,” Josue whispered.
“Jesus Christ,” North said. “That’s more than I take home most months.”
“That’s because you always make us pay the bills,” Shaw said. “It’s always something. Gas, water, electric.”
“Of course I pay them. They’re bills.”
“Yes, but you pay them every month.”
“Do you not understand how utility bills work?”
Shaw raised his chin. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
“Will you please tell him?” North said to Josue.
“You—you do have to pay them every month,” Josue managed, staring at Shaw.
“Duh,” Brendon added.
“If you would just install that waste-water recycling—” Shaw tried.
“No, Shaw. I’m not drinking my own pee. Or your pee. Or anybody’s pee, for that matter.” To Josue, North said, “You realize that’s an additional motive? Scotty was being blackmailed by two people. Mary Angela has an element of logic to her argument that killing Scotty would have been the same thing as killing her golden goose, even though I don’t think that really puts her in the clear. You, on the other hand—well, you just took possession of all of your joint property. All those books. All those royalties. Everything. You became an independently wealthy man, and you’re free of Scotty. We’re right back where we started unless you can give me someone else.”
Josue glanced at Brendon; the photographer shrugged and, in a tight voice, said, “You haven’t listened to anything else I’ve said. It’s only going to make you look worse.”
For a moment, Josue was still. Then he lifted Brendon’s hand, which he was still holding, and kissed his knuckles. A reluctant smile splashed across Brendon’s face, and then he was serious again.
