Indirection, page 8
part #1 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
“What the fuck is he going on about?” JD screamed.
“I have no idea,” North said. “I’m talking about the meditation bullshit. Yoga. Incense. Breathing exercises. Make them stand on their heads or something so they’ll shut the fuck up.”
“Really?” Shaw wrinkled his brow. “Right now? Doesn’t that seem, you know, a little…” He wiggled his fingers.
The wild, growly noise North made in his throat was very satisfying. Shaw hid his own smile.
“I’m having a heart attack,” Mary Angela shrieked. She slipped out of her chair and rolled onto the carpet squares. Her black velour leisurewear picked up lint and torn pieces of papers.
“Stay in your fucking seats,” North roared.
“That was very loud,” Shaw said as he jogged toward Mary Angela; the other panelists were moving toward her too. “You did an excellent job using your diaphragm.”
“Jesus Christ,” North muttered. “If the rest of you can’t stay in your seats, at least hang back so he can take a look at her and she can get some air.”
“Is he a doctor?” Clarence asked.
“You’re supposed to put heart-attack victims upside down,” JD shouted. “Upside down. Bend her over the chair.”
“No, no,” Heidi yelled. “On her side. Her side!”
“Shut up! All of you shut up!”
Silence blanketed the room. Outside Wormelow Tump, someone was playing tinny music. Selena, all these years later, was still dreaming of you. Mary Angela didn’t look good. She was sweating and trembling, her pupils were dilated. She moaned and then farted.
JD’s leathery face contorted with a struggle. A giggle slipped free. JD was still giggling when Mary Angela scrambled onto her hands and knees and puked. Everyone else backed up, and several people gagged.
“What’s wrong?” Shaw asked as he knelt next to Mary Angela, helping her lie down away from the vomit. “What hurts?”
“My head,” Mary Angela said. “And my chest.”
“Show me.”
“I’m having a heart attack. I’m dying.”
Clarence wobbled, but when Shaw looked up, he just waved a hand. “I’m dizzy, that’s all. And my head’s killing me.”
“Me too,” JD said on the tail of his words. “And I might throw up.”
“Then find a corner and shut up,” North said.
JD’s shoulders drew up, but she didn’t say anything else.
“Show me where it hurts,” Shaw said again.
Mary Angela touched her stomach, even though she had said chest, and Shaw glanced up at North and frowned. North shrugged.
“How many of the rest of you are feeling headaches, trembling, stomach or chest pains? Or dizziness?”
A murmur of assents ran through the crowd.
“We’ve been poisoned,” Serenity wailed. “Someone’s trying to poison me.”
“Oh shut up.” Heidi glanced around. “All of us?”
Nods confirmed her words.
“Where did everyone eat breakfast?” Heidi asked. “No, it couldn’t be that because Scotty had one of his very specific vegan meals. What about the water?”
“What water?” Clarence said.
“The bottled water at the panelist table. Did we all drink some?”
More nods.
“You weren’t a panelist,” JD said, pointing at Heidi. “Why would you be feeling sick? That’s suspicious.”
“For the love of God,” North said. “This is not a drawing-room mystery.”
“They always provide a bottle of water for the moderator,” Heidi said. “Believe it or not, we’re human beings too.”
Serenity sneered at that, but her gaze went quickly back to Mary Angela.
“It may be a heart attack,” Shaw said, “but it doesn’t sound like one. It sounds like you were all given some sort of stimulant.”
“Like cocaine,” Serenity said. Then she flushed, brushing back some of the black bob with a gesture she had probably meant to look casual. “It feels like that. Not the good way, but my heart is pounding, and I’m shaky.”
“All right,” Shaw said. “We’ll tell the police. They’ll take you to the hospital anyway, but at least we can help them—”
“I want to know right now.” Mary Angela sat upright, reaching for her purse. “I might be dying. I want to know right this minute.”
“For a woman just having a heart attack, you’re sure hopping around,” North said.
She ignored him, digging through her voluminous purse. She emerged with a capped plastic cup and an oblong object in sealed packaging. “If it’s just cocaine, I want to know.”
“Is that an over-the-counter drug test?” Shaw asked.
“I deserve to know. I have a right to know. If I’m dying, I want to—”
“All right, all right,” North said. He glanced at Shaw.
“I don’t think it’ll hurt,” Shaw said. “Although I’m sure they’ll test her again when they get her to the hospital.”
“I want to go to the bathroom,” Mary Angela said.
“I want to be tested too.” JD elbowed Serenity out of her way. “I want to know if I was drugged too. I have a right—”
“Unless you’re conveniently carrying around your own drug test,” North said, “be quiet and sit down.”
An unspoken question made everyone look at Mary Angela. Her eyes bulged, and her hands curled protectively around the plastic cup and the foil-wrapped testing device. “It’s for my daughter.” Her voice was stiff. “I always have to have one on me.”
“I’ll take her,” Shaw said, extending a hand to help Mary Angela to her feet. “If you think you can keep this rowdy bunch under control without me.”
North crossed his arms.
“I know it’ll be hard, but it’s time for you to stand on your own two feet.”
North slowly extended a middle finger.
“I believe in you,” Shaw said with what he hoped was an encouraging smile.
North was still swearing enough to blister the air when Shaw let the Wormelow Tump door fall shut behind him.
“He’s very creative,” Mary Angela said hesitantly.
“He spends too much time on Urban Dictionary. Let’s find a restroom.”
They found a family restroom, which consisted of a single room, and Shaw insisted on keeping Mary Angela’s purse when she stepped through the door.
“Just in case,” Shaw said.
“In case of what?”
He smiled, and he held on to the purse.
She locked the door. The water ran. A few minutes later, she opened the door. “Well?” she asked, giving her bottle-blond hair another tug. “Want to see?”
The plastic cup had been set aside and capped, and the testing device—a dip panel—lay flat on the countertop. Shaw started a timer on his phone. Four minutes and forty-three seconds had passed when the amphetamines band began to turn pink. Over the course of the next minute, the color deepened. Shaw read the other labels on the panel, twelve in total: THC, Cocaine, Opiate, Methamphetamines, Oxycodone, Amphetamine, Barbiturates, Benzodiazepines, Methadone, MDMA, PCP, and PPX. Only the amphetamines band changed color.
“All right,” a man’s voice, familiar, said from outside the bathroom. “Both of you come out of there.”
Shaw opened the door and found himself face to face with Jadon Reck, his former boyfriend, lead detective on the Metropolitan Police’s LGBTQ crime squad.
Chapter 10
BACK IN WORMELOW TUMP, Shaw waited for the explosion.
Jadon stayed behind while his partner, a woman named Cao, herded the remaining panelists downstairs and into waiting patrol cars. He was watching North and Shaw, hands on his hips, his face an unreadable mask.
“We’re not under arrest, are we?” Shaw asked.
Jadon let out a weary breath. His face looked thin, and dark hollows marked his eyes; he’d been beaten and tortured in September, almost killed, and the effects of the attack still showed in his body.
“I know we’re not,” Shaw said. “Logically, I know you’re probably just going to take us down to the station to talk to us. But you look really, really angry. Maybe. Or sad. Or like that one time we listened to deconstructed bluegrass until you told me you had a headache and you needed some quiet. So, you know, it’d be nice to hear you say that we aren’t under arrest.”
Nothing.
Jadon had very nice eyes; Shaw was currently being reminded of this fact. They were a soft brown, matching the darkly sandy coloring of his hair and skin. Like a very hot beach bum had gotten drafted into the NFL, built up lots and lots of muscle, and then decided to go cop. And the man knew how to wear a suit.
“Eyes off his junk, if it’s not too much to ask,” North said. His hand settled on Shaw’s shoulder in a way that was unmistakably possessive, and Shaw was going to tell him exactly how dehumanizing that was, and how it sprang from a culture of toxic masculinity, as soon as he stopped liking it so much.
“Actually,” Shaw said, “I was looking at his legs. His thighs, in particular.”
“That’s not better.”
“Does it help if I tell you it’s purely physical?”
“No.”
“I’m objectifying him as much as I can, North.”
“You know what?” North said, his eyes moving to Jadon. “You can have him.”
“Pass,” Jadon said, some of the stiffness in his face and posture relaxing into a smile. “Why should I not be surprised to find the two of you caught up in this?”
“Hi, Jadon.”
“Hi, Shaw. North. Want to tell me what’s going on here?”
So they told him.
“All right,” Jadon said. “We’ll take it from here.”
“Of course,” North said. “We wouldn’t dream of doing the Metropolitan Police’s job for them.”
“Guys, come on. You’re not going to make me be a hardass about this, are you? Your job’s over. You can wrap up and go back to your normal work, the corporate stuff you’ve been doing.”
“A hardass?” North’s eyebrows arched. “Gee, Shaw. We don’t want that, do we?”
“Be nice. Jadon, our job isn’t exactly finished. We were hired to find Leslie Hawkins and see if she’s behind the threats Yasmin was receiving. We still haven’t been able to track her down.”
“And now it’s gone beyond a case of harassment,” Jadon said. His voice was level. His eyes were not. “If the toxicology tests come back the way we expect, it’ll be assault, possibly attempted murder. I’m going to ask you one more time to be professionals about this and let it go. Your part is done.”
“Exactly,” North said, his hand tightening on Shaw’s shoulder. “Our part is done, Shaw. Time to leave it to the Metropolitan boys.”
“North,” Shaw said quietly.
“No, he’s right. We’ll just hang back. When they fall assbackward the first time they turn around, we’ll just be sitting back and watching.”
Shaw groaned.
Jadon opened his mouth, but before he could respond, his phone buzzed. He checked the screen. “Cao’s waiting for us; let’s go. I’ll try to make it as quick as possible.”
“One-liners from the Jadon Reck Bedroom Collection,” North said.
“Enough,” Shaw whispered furiously.
Whether it had been North’s remark or simple logistics, they were at the police station for hours. Jadon’s partner, Detective Cao, was too thin to be called athletic, practically swallowed up by her polyester suit. Acne scars pitted her cheeks, and the incredibly tight ponytail made things worse somehow. She must have known about their complicated history with Jadon, including the fact that they had been responsible for his last partner’s arrest, but she didn’t let any of it show in how she treated them. From the beginning, when she informed them that their conversation was being recorded, through the questions about their involvement with Scotty’s poisoning, she was quiet and professional. When she had finished the questions, she led them to a desk in the LGBTQ squad room, where they waited. And waited. And waited.
“Fuck this,” North said, standing. “Let’s call an Uber.”
“I don’t think we should—”
“I know what you think, but I’m done sitting around with my dick in my hand.”
“Freshman year, you were sitting around with your dick in your hand every time I went in your room. You seemed to like it back then.”
North grunted.
“Literally every time. I had to start knocking, North. I was visually traumatized.”
“Normal people always knock before barging into someone else’s bedroom, Shaw. And it was one time, and I was checking myself. For cancer.”
Shaw nodded. “With lube.”
“God damn it.”
They were making their way toward the door when Jadon stepped into the squad room. “Oh. Good.” He shook his head. “Sorry about the wait; we had another attack, and I was shuttling your friends back to the hotel. I’ll give you a ride.”
“Another attack at the con?” Shaw said. “What happened? Who?”
“No, sorry. I’d say it’s an ongoing investigation and I can’t comment, but you’ve probably already seen it in the papers: someone is attacking gay youth.” Jadon paused. “It’s bad. This guy is escalating. He’s going to beat one of these boys to death pretty soon.”
Shaw and North shared a look. “Hustlers?” North said.
“It’s an ongoing investigation,” Jadon said with a sharp smile. “I can’t comment on that.”
“But it’s two in the afternoon,” Shaw said, glancing at his phone. “Are boys hustling in broad daylight? And someone drove up and attacked one of them?”
“The attacker takes them somewhere else. And this happened last night; someone just found the boy today.” Jadon set his jaw.
“Bad?”
“The way the kid looks, it might be a homicide case by tonight.”
“Is it always the same kind of boy?” Shaw said. “Dark-haired, fair, redhead, skinny, young?”
Jadon nodded. “I’m tempted to say that’s the only good part—random attacks and killings are a cop’s nightmare—but there’s nothing good about any of it.”
“What do they look like?” North asked.
For a moment, Jadon’s gaze hovered on Shaw, then he shook his head.
“You don’t seem to have any trouble answering Shaw’s questions.”
“That’s because I like him. Come on, I’ll drop you at your car. Sorry again it took me so long.”
“Another one-liner from the Bedroom Collection.”
Jadon drove them back to the Royal Excalibur, and he stopped his car at the GTO. He looked each of them in the eye and said, “Stay out of this. Get in your car and go home, refund these nice ladies whatever money is left over. The next time, I’m not going to be talking to you as a friend.”
“Aye aye,” North said, opening the car door.
“Shaw, please talk some sense into him.”
“Good fucking luck with that one,” North said.
Shaw and North made a show of getting into the GTO, starting the engine, and backing out of the parking stall. North took as long as possible to complete each step. By the time the GTO was pointed toward the garage’s exit, Jadon seemed to have run out of patience—or another emergency called. He merged out into traffic.
“What a fucking walking ball-blister,” North said as he parked the GTO again. They got out, leaving the tote bags full of books in the car this time, and headed toward the Royal Excalibur.
“You’re supposed to be nice to him,” Shaw said, poking North in the ribs as soon as Jadon was out of sight. “You’re supposed to be civil at the bare minimum. He’s our friend.”
“He’s your friend. Or something. And he shouldn’t look at you like he’s planning on fucking you into your next existence. And he also shouldn’t ask for a dick-measuring contest when we’ve done his job for him God knows how many times over the last few years.”
They were approaching the hotel’s parking-garage entrance when quick footsteps sounded behind them.
“You have to solve this!” Yasmin scurried toward them, carrying the smell of cigarette smoke with her. “You have to. You have to figure out who did this!”
“What are you—”
“They made me go down for questions too. I just got back.” She drew in a shivering breath, glanced around the icy concrete shell, and said, “God, I need a smoke. Do you mind?”
“Well, actually,” Shaw began.
“Fantastic.” Yasmin worked a pack of Virginia Slims Silver out of her purse. She lit one, turning her back to a gale of freezing wind that whipped through the garage, and drew hard on the cigarette. “Oh. My. God. One pack a day my fanny.”
“Yasmin, we’re happy to do what you hired us to do.” Shaw sidestepped to avoid an eddy of smoke. “Find Leslie, I mean, and figure out if she’s behind those threats. But what happened today, the attack on Scotty and the other panelists—”
“What do you mean? Someone tried to kill Scotty.”
“But at least one other panelist tested positive for amphetamines,” North said. “And they all reported the same symptoms. Someone could have been lying, of course, but what makes the most sense is that all the bottles were tainted. That would be one way to be sure that a target, if there was one, got the drugged water.”
“But someone tried to kill Scotty. How can you ask if there was a target?”
“Because maybe they were all the target. Or maybe someone else was, but Scotty was affected more strongly. If all the water bottles were tainted, then a lot of possibilities open up. We don’t want to focus exclusively on Scotty. Not yet, anyway.”
“You have to solve this,” Yasmin muttered around feverish puffs. “You have to.”
“And we’ll do our best to do what you paid us—” Shaw said.
“Not that. I mean, yes, you need to find Leslie and see if she’s behind this. But you have to solve the whole thing.”
“That’s really something the police—”
