Til Darkness Falls, page 31
But that was the problem. Brian couldn’t be certain that he’d be the one doing the persuading. He was deathly afraid that once those gorgeous blue eyes were fixed on him he would cave, that he’d be willing to accept any bullshit the other man threw at him just because he’d be so desperate to believe it. Love made him vulnerable, and even though he recognized his weakness, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to stand firm against it.
Brian glanced at his cell phone, which was sitting on the computer table next to the keyboard. The message light was still blinking. He’d turned off the ringer after the first two times Alrick had called lest he give in to the temptation to answer. Brian wasn’t certain why the other man hadn’t just come to his apartment, demanding to know why Brian was avoiding him. Maybe that was the answer to all of his questions right there. Maybe the other man didn’t give enough of a damn to even be angry at his disappearing act.
Ten messages, Brian thought after checking his call log, and all of them from Alrick. Brian cleared the message indicator. Well, maybe he cared at little, or at least as much as he needed to in order to keep up his cover.
He loves me, he loves me not.
Shaking his head in disgust, Brian decided that he’d done all he could for today. Spinning around in circles wasn’t getting him anything except a crushing headache. The web browser was still displaying the popular search engine he had been using. For no apparent reason, his gaze wandered away from the computer and over to his phone. Some sort of idea was trying to form, but he was too tired and wrung out to realize what it was.
The message light came on again as he picked up his phone off of the table. He glanced at the call log. Alrick again. Damn, the man was persistent, a quality he usually admired, but at the moment, it was a royal pain in the ass. The last thing he wanted to do was talk to anyone named Ritter.
Brian gasped as the thought finally gelled into something coherent. “Hell,” he mumbled softly, “it just might work.” He glanced at the computer clock again. Only twenty minutes until he’d be kicked out by the prickly old man who was in charge of the computer resource room. It was a long shot, but what did he have to lose at this point?
Rosamond Ritter.
Alrick had told him that his sister was married, but maybe she still had some records online under her maiden name. Brian entered her name into the search dialogue box and let his finger hover over the Enter key.
“Here goes nothing.” There were a lot of results, but only one stood out. Brian clicked on the link for a global White Pages site. “Rosamond Meier, néé Ritter, Potsdam, Germany. Well, fuck me.”
“Sir.”
Brian jumped when a wheezy voice spoke directly behind him. Crap, had the old man heard him cuss?
“We’re closing now. Please turn the computer off before you leave.”
“Okay, thanks.” Brian turned and watched the librarian shuffle away. He printed out the webpage and shut the computer down. Grabbing the paper from the ancient printer, he folded it and stuck it in his back pocket. It was only a short walk to where he’d left his car in the library’s parking lot. Once he was in the driver’s seat with the car door closed, he sat motionlessly for a long moment.
Should he do this? Should he even try it? What if he’d found some other Rosamond Ritter, not Alrick’s sister? He could be bothering some poor woman for nothing while earning himself one hell of a phone bill. But what if it was her? What if he called her and ended up outing her brother to her? Even if he was innocent of everything else Brian suspected him of, Alrick might never forgive him for telling his sister that he was gay. Of course, it was possible that she already knew that and a whole lot else about her brother.
Brian forced himself to admit the real source of his fear. He didn’t want to call her and have her tell him that her brother had being playing him for a total fool.
It was seven o’clock, meaning that it was already the middle of the night in Germany. He might as well take the night to sleep on his decision. Brian chuckled humorlessly, knowing what he was really going to do. He was going to stay up until it was a decent hour in Western Europe and call her at the first opportunity. He’d acted like a pussy for so much of his life, letting people walk all over him. Even becoming a cop hadn’t completely cured him of the gutlessness that was such a debilitating part of his character. It was time to man up and figure out once and for all just where things stood between him and Alrick.
After grabbing a quick dinner of greasy take-out, Brian went back to his apartment, keeping an eye out for a familiar car. But Alrick wasn’t lying in wait. Brian tried to ignore his aching disappointment at the blond’s continued absence. He exchanged his sweater and jeans for a T-shirt and pajama bottoms and settled on the couch, setting his phone and the printout on the coffee table within easy reach. The pajamas were the same pair he’d worn during their idyllic weekend in the country. Had that only been a few days ago? It seemed like another lifetime. He turned on the TV while he ate and chugged down a liter of pop, hoping that the caffeine would keep him awake.
It was hard going. The abrupt shift from the intoxicating high of admitting that he’d fallen in love to the excruciating pain of finding out that the man he loved might be a cold-blooded assassin had left him exhausted. Shaking his head sharply, Brian rubbed both hands over his face, trying to keep himself awake. His eyes ached with a burning dryness that clouded his vision. The show on TV wasn’t holding his interest, and soon, not even his swirling thoughts were enough to overcome his need to sleep.
Brian heard a loud snort as he jerked. He started to sit up but stopped abruptly, wincing in pain at the crick in his neck. Damn, he thought, so much for staying up. Something black and white from the early days of moving pictures was showing on the television. Stretching to wake himself up, he reached toward the coffee table for his cell phone. He glanced at the time and did some quick math, realizing that it was shortly after ten in the morning in Germany.
He only allowed himself one deep breath before reaching for the print out. If he took the time to think about it too hard, he would just chicken out. It took two tries to dial the number correctly, the extra digits for the international call tripping him up. The line started ringing before he was completely ready, but he tried to relax and not focus on the dozens of possible ways that this could go.
“Hallo?”
It was a woman’s voice. Brian panicked. Shit, of course she’s speaking German. “Um, hi. Er, I mean hello. Do you speak English by any chance?”
There was a long pause on the line. Brian almost hung up before the woman spoke again. “Is this a joking?”
Good, he thought, she speaks English. Sort of. “No, uh, Fräulein.” He remembered Alrick calling Angela that and figured it meant something like “Miss.” Or at least he hoped it did. “My name is Brian Macon. I’m an American police officer—”
“Mein Gott! You say your name is Brian Macon?”
“Um, yeah?” Completely taken aback by her reaction, he sat on his couch, eyebrows raised up to his hairline as he waited for her to continue.
“It is you who mein Brüder, Alrick, has come to love, ja?”
All of his niggling doubts instantly fell away. She could have been lying, but he had called her completely out of the blue. There was no way she could have been expecting him to contact her. Her response was simply too spontaneous, too unrehearsed to be anything less than genuine. Brian sagged in the cushion as relief flooded his body, making him feel weak. “I hope so.”
“You love him too?”
Brian held his breath and took the plunge. “Yeah, I do.”
“This is very good. I am very happy you call. Alrick is, um, how to say, he has trouble.”
“He’s in trouble?”
“Ja, in trouble. You help him?”
His relief at learning definitively that everything he felt for Alrick hadn’t been a lie began to fade. It appeared there was still more he needed to hear. “If I can. How is he in trouble?”
“Ach du Scheisse! My English is no good.”
Brian laughed, trying to sound reassuring. “Your English is a lot better than my German.” His attempt at humor didn’t ease her frustration.
“You are nice, but this is hard to say.”
He heard another voice in the background, a male voice. Rosamond turned away to speak to whomever was in the room with her. A minute or so passed before she came back on the line, accompanied by the sound of another receiver clattering off of the hook.
“You are there still?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Gut. Mein Mann, er, my husband is on the phone now. He speaks good English. He will help me.”
“Hallo? I am Heinz, Rosa’s husband.” The man’s accent was thicker than Alrick’s, but he spoke confidently.
“I’m Brian, um, Alrick’s—”
“Yes, I know who you are. Rosa has told me all about the man her brother has fallen in love with.”
“Heinz.” Rosamond’s tone held a note of warning. There was some conversation exchanged between them that Brian couldn’t follow. He felt his stomach twist as he guessed that Alrick’s brother-in-law was none too thrilled with the fact that he was gay.
“No, do not misunderstand me,” Heinz said, as though he had read Brian’s mind. “I do not care about his love life. It is only that I am very angry at what Alrick is doing.”
Rosamond said something else to her husband, sounding very upset and reluctant. A shaft of ice ran down Brian’s back, but he forced himself to speak.
“Exactly what is he doing? Please, Heinz, that’s why I called.” Brian took a deep breath and pressed forward before he lost his nerve. “I know about his tattoo. It’s identical to the symbol on your army’s sharpshooter medals. He told me that he was only in for the required nine months, but he served longer than that, didn’t he? He was a marksman?”
The line was completely silent for a long moment, neither Rosamond nor her husband making a sound. Brian looked at his phone, but it was still counting up the minutes of his call. He was just about to ask if they were still there when Rosamond spoke.
“So you know everything.”
Brian almost ended the call right then. He didn’t want to hear anything else. Shit, he thought, his chest heaving as he felt himself hyperventilate. His heart was beating so hard that his ribs ached. He wanted to tear it out of his chest to stop it from beating, to stop it from hurting. But this was why he had tried to reach Alrick’s sister in the first place. He needed to know the truth. There was no use turning back now.
“I know he’s an assassin, that he’s the hit man I’ve been hunting for weeks. But heaven help me, I need to know why.” Brian’s voice cracked, his ragged tone grating even to his own ears. “I’ve only known him for a short time, but I know that I didn’t fall in love with a goddamn killer.”
Rosamond broke into sobs. Her husband said something soothing to her. Through the unintelligible jumble, Brian caught one word. Liebling. He felt like he was going to be sick all over again.
“Alrick is good man!” Between her thickly accented, broken English and her tear-filled voice, Brian could barely understand her.
“Yes, he is a good man.” Heinz was calmer, but his words were clipped like he was trying to control himself but was finding it difficult. “My wife loves him very much, and he has always been good to me and our son. But he has fallen into something terrible, and we do not know how to make him stop.”
“Why?” That was the question that threatened to rip him apart. “Why is he doing this? He’s not a murderer.” Brian repeated the conviction like a mantra.
“My father-in-law, rest his soul, was a very stubborn and proud man. I knew him only a short time before he died, but I know that he loved his children and was determined to give them a good life. He was a carpenter and owned his own business, something he intended to pass on to Alrick. But after the Wall fell, the economy became very skewed. Many people began to shun local businesses and tradesmen, preferring goods from the West. My father-in-law’s business began to fare poorly, and he went into terrible debt.”
Rosamond interrupted, her voice dripping with anger. Heinz murmured something reassuring before continuing. “She wants you to know who owns her father’s debt.”
“Who?”
“The Russians.”
Brian felt his jaw drop. “The Russians? You mean like the Russian mafia?”
“Ja, that is it exactly. When Alrick was a young man, he was offered a scholarship to attend a very prestigious music conservatory after he completed his commitment to the military. But his father ordered him to enlist past the end of the usual period. Rosa was vehemently opposed, wanting Alrick to fulfill their mother’s dreams for him. She had died only a few years earlier, and Rosa tried to fill her shoes, but their father was adamant that Alrick give up his scholarship. He was in the army for ten years before he was finally discharged.”
Brian’s head was swimming with an odd mixture of excitement at learning more about the man he loved and sadness that Alrick had been forced to abandon his music. But mostly, he was afraid what else they might tell him.
“Why did he leave?”
“Because of an evil man!” Rosamond broke in with a shout and followed it with a curse and what sounded like a spit.
“Alrick’s superior tried to rape him one night in his barracks.”
“What?” Shock spread through Brian, filling his veins with ice. “He was raped?”
“No, but only because some of the other men in his unit came in and stopped it before it got that far. Alrick fought the man off, but his attacker somehow managed to get his gun.”
Brian gasped. “He shot him?!”
“Nein, though what he did was in many ways much worse. He smashed Alrick’s left hand with his own gun, crushing his fingers almost beyond the doctors’ abilities to heal.”
I was in a car accident several years ago and broke several fingers on my left hand. It has made playing… rather difficult.
Another lie, but Brian understood why Alrick had told it. He remembered how distraught the other man had been at not being able to play for him that night in his hotel. The pain and the memories of what had caused it must have been equally horrendous.
“That’s why he couldn’t play for long.”
“He play for you?” Rosamond’s tone was hushed with surprise.
“Yes, though it caused him a lot of pain.” He heard her begin to cry again. “What? What did I say?”
“Alrick has not played for us since he was injured,” Heinz explained. “We thought he had given it up entirely.”
“It is because he love you, Brian.” Rosamond sounded utterly certain, but Brian was still trying to process everything. He wasn’t ready to give her the answer he knew she was waiting for.
“What happened after the attack?” He tried to pretend this was just like any other investigation, hoping the familiar process would keep him grounded long enough to finish hearing what Heinz and Rosamond had to say.
“There was an inquiry, of course, but Alrick’s superior lied at the hearing and said that it was Alrick who had tried to seduce him. It was his word against Alrick’s.”
Brian could guess at what happened. He’d never witnessed anything as egregious as this, but he remembered a young female recruit from his class at the Academy who’d had an affair with one of their instructors. When they got caught with their pants down, the instructor had thrown her to the wolves. She’d accepted a disciplinary remand to keep from being thrown out, but he’d heard that, even all these years later, her career hadn’t moved much beyond traffic and parking enforcement.
“That is when Russians get to him.”
“What do you mean, Rosa?” Brian instinctively used the diminutive her husband and brother called her by. Alrick had been right. She reminded him a lot of Angela, and he knew he could come to like her very much.
“After he recovered, Alrick drifted for a time. He could not work at his father’s store because his motor skills had not recovered enough, and he could not play the cello. He had no aim, no purpose. I do not know exactly how they approached him, but the man who gave him his first job, Viktor Privalov, is the same man who is in charge of the debt. This Privalov came to visit my wife while I was away from home.” Heinz’s voice dripped with rage. “He told her he had turned her brother into a hired killer so that Alrick could make money more quickly to pay off his obligation.”
Brian understood the man’s anger. He could only imagine how he’d feel if one of his loved ones were put in such a dangerous and upsetting situation. “Did their father know about this?”
“No. He went to his grave never knowing a thing. He was a lucky bastard, I think.”
Brian expected Rosamond to jump to her father’s defense, but she said nothing. He didn’t blame her. How could you defend a man who had forced his son into a life of crime?
“But now, Alrick, he want to stop. He want to stop the killing.” Rosamond’s urgent tone reflected her anxiety. “You will help him do this, Brian.”
“How can I help? Hell, it’s my job to arrest him!” Brian thrust his hand roughly into his hair, frustrated with his own uncertainty.
Heinz murmured something to his wife. She was silent for a moment, but when she spoke, her words were the clearest Brian had ever heard them. “That is how you help. You make him stop. Because of you, he want to stop. He tell me this.” Rosamond took a deep breath. “You make him go to jail. Then he will find Frieden.”
“Frieden?”
“It means ‘peace’.” Heinz’s tone was heavy.
“Please, you help him. He love you. You love him.” Rosamond sniffed, but her voice remained strong, her determination to free her brother his terrible burden unshakable. “Only you can save him.”
Brian wanted to reassure her, to promise her that he would do as she asked. He knew what he should do, what he had sworn an oath to do. He just didn’t know if he could. Confronting Alrick with what he knew would be hard enough. If he was really a victim of such fucked up circumstances, was it right that he spend the rest of his life behind bars? Because that was what bringing him in would mean. Brian didn’t know if Rosamond realized just what she was asking him to do. He would be doing his job, but he would be ruining both of their lives.
