by Elle Keaton
Let Dickson file a complaint; it wouldn’t stick. Everybody and their brother knew what kind of person he was. Beto’d been doing the city a favor. Dickson was exactly the kind of person he was here to get rid of. He had a suspicion that when the shit hit the fan, Dickson would be one of the first to go. He was hopeful, at least.
Something colder than the pouring rain brushed against his free hand. He twitched it away, focusing on what Nguyen was saying: The only person dealing with a hostile work environment was Beto, and she knew it. Cold-wet touched his hand a second time. Impatiently he looked down and behind himself, and his heart skipped a beat.
A large, very wet dog stood just behind him. It held its body almost entirely still, expectant but not aggressive—he hoped. The last thing he needed was a dog bite to add to his late-night fun.
“Look, I gotta go check this out.” He backed away a few steps. The dog stayed where it was, still watching him. Impossible as it seemed to him, the rain began to fall harder and faster. Beto’d grown up in Southern California—not the fun part with sand and surfer boys, but still, not much rain. The amount of rain that had fallen in the past forty-eight hours was beyond the scope of his imagination.
“My office, first thing tomorrow morning. I don’t care if you’re working this call all night; be there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t ma’am me.” The connection went dead.
“Yes, ma’am,” Beto said to empty air. It was the little things that made this job tolerable.
* * *
Shoving the phone back into his pocket, Beto turned his full attention to the dog. “Perrito, what are you doing out here this time of night?”
The dog, of course, didn’t answer. It simply continued to stare at him with what Beto could only catalog as a demand. Or a plea?
The animal was damn big, seventy or eighty pounds, and lean, with one pointy ear and one that half flopped. It turned away from him and began trotting slowly in the other direction, stopping to look back at Beto after a few steps.
“Christ.”
He didn’t have time, but instinct nagged him to go after the dog. The first responders wouldn’t be done with the accident scene any time soon.
Taking a deep breath, Beto followed the dog. After fourteen years in police work, twelve as an investigator, he’d learned to trust his gut. It, she, he thought, trotted off to the side of the road and into the tall grass along the shoulder. His leather shoes would be ruined after this, and he was going to have to send his suit out to be cleaned. He was losing a battle in his private war against jeans and flannel. Skagit weather was not for the meek.
* * *
The dog kept trotting ahead and then returning to his side, its body language screaming, “Hurry.” Beto tripped on the uneven grass, nearly ending up facedown in the muddy meadow off the county road. It was pitch dark, and the lack of moonlight wasn’t helping him find his way. His feet were soaking. Jerry would have thought it was funny, told Beto it served him right for being a clotheshorse in a job like theirs. Jerry was dead, Beto reminded himself. Dead and buried from a fast-spreading cancer doctors and shitty health insurance hadn’t been able to do anything about.
Brain trust, use your goddamned cell phone.
Right. Beto rolled his eyes at himself. His cell phone had a light app or something. Jerry was always nagging him to keep up to date. If he’d been using his head, he would’ve snagged a flashlight along with his raincoat. Stopping for a second, he got his phone out again.
Using the phone as a flashlight, Beto picked his way in the direction the dog had gone. It probably wasn’t something he should share with the SkPD psychologist: When he talked to himself, he heard his dead partner’s voice talk back. Probably bad enough that he talked to himself.
* * *
First his light landed on the dog waiting for him about twenty feet ahead, then on the still form just beyond it.
“Shit.”
The dog whimpered. Lowering itself onto its stomach, it crawled forward to press its nose against a pale, outspread hand. There was no response Beto could see in the rain and dark. He knelt next to the body, his knees sinking in the wet ground, afraid to move whoever it was. Placing two fingers against their wrist, he felt a faint but erratic pulse. The dog let out another whimper before scooting closer to press against the person, trying to warm them or maybe comfort them.
“Shit, shit, shit.” He felt around for his phone, hoping he hadn’t dropped it in a puddle.
Beto only had to wait one ring. “I need an ambulance.” He gave them the general area and confirmed he would wait; then he took his raincoat off and covered the person, victim. He suspected it might be too late. He couldn’t tell if they were male or female. The only hint he had was long blond hair; their face was mostly turned the other direction and partially pressed into the mud, and a lot of people, men and women, had long hair these days. As long as there was a pulse, he wasn’t moving them. He did brush away as much of the mud and grime from the face as he could, praying the responders would arrive sooner rather than later.
It always felt a bit funny when he forgot the church scorned him and he accidentally prayed, wanting the reassurance he’d grown up with that prayer would do something, could be heard. Like somehow the god he’d given the finger to years ago might respond this one time. Didn’t matter; this person needed a prayer or two, and Beto might as well put his request in. Maybe someone would listen.
* * *
The ambulance guys were two men he knew and liked enough. They were efficient and kind, and they avoided the gallows humor many EMTs fell into after a few years on the job.
“I don’t know, it’s going to be touch and go.” Rich looked up from where he was kneeling. Beto didn’t have to ask what that meant. Whoever the victim was probably wouldn’t make it to the emergency room. The dog began to howl, as if it had understood what Rich meant.
“Is there a wallet? Any ID?”
Once they lifted the victim onto the gurney, Rich gently felt around the man’s—Beto thought—jeans pockets for a wallet. “Nothing easy to find.” He pushed the gurney into the ambulance, climbing in after. The other EMT, Mark, shut the doors behind him.
“Shit.”
“What’re you going to do about the dog?” Mark asked. He’d been quiet up until now.
“I don’t know. Where’d it come from? The scene I was responding to seems too far for someone with a mortal injury to crawl, right? Those two,” he waved a hand in the general direction of the totaled late-model sedan, now a pancake, “robbed the Stop-and-Go on the other side of town, peeled out, and were going fast enough along here to flip the car and likely kill themselves. There was nothing in the call-in about a third person involved.”
“Hit and run?” Mark hypothesized as he strode around to the front of the ambulance.
“Hit the vic and not the dog?” Seemed farfetched.
“If the dog wasn’t on a leash.” Mark climbed inside, slammed the driver’s side door, and gunned the engine, heading off toward St. Joseph’s.
Beto stood watching as the ambulance drove away, red lights flashing but no siren blaring. The dog had tried to get in the back with the victim but had listened when Beto commanded it to stay with a hand on the back of its neck. It had taken the ambulance ten minutes to get there. Ten long minutes while Beto stood guard over the barely alive victim, praying they held on to their soul long enough for help to arrive.
* * *
The coroner’s team was still busy with the accident scene. As the driver and passenger had been in the act of fleeing a crime scene, their dead bodies had priority, but it was possible they had hit this guy with no wallet and no leash for his dog.
“You call animal control?” one of the guys asked. A reasonable question, but his tone rubbed Beto the wrong way.
No, he hadn’t called animal control. He was tired and frustrated. The deceased were criminals, but even so, there would probably be people mourning their deaths.
At least he wouldn’t be knocking on doors later this morning delivering the news. Someone else would be doing that; he had to be in Nguyen’s office so he could listen to her rant.
“No. I’ll do it later.”
The sun had come up enough that Beto didn’t need his cell phone to get back to the car without stepping in a hole and breaking an ankle. The dog followed him, tucked in close to his side. Back at the cruiser, he unlocked and opened the back door, and the dog jumped into the back seat as if she belonged there. Both he and the EMTs had checked; she had no collar, and he hadn’t noticed one at the scene.
With the dog safely in the back, he pushed the car into drive and pointed it in the direction of St. Joe’s. Were tonight’s events related somehow? The dog and the possible hit-and-run victim and the minimart robbers—it seemed a lot to think they’d all been within a half mile of each other by chance. Beto did not like coincidence.
5
Carsten
* * *
Carsten struggled to awareness. He’d been dreaming about … something; the dream faded away as the banging sound that had dragged him from unconsciousness intensified.
“Jesus Christ, what?”
His heart pounded in time with his head; he’d been up late surfing the internet after working too long a day to be disturbed this early. Whoever was at the door would pay for waking him. This was Carsten’s first day off in weeks, and he’d fully intended to spend the entirety of it in bed, alternately watching porn and Game of Thrones. Goals.
“Just a damn second,” he yelled in the direction of the front door. They obviously weren’t going away. A pair of pajama bottoms lay in a pile on his bedroom floor. Carsten grabbed them, tugging them on as he hopped out of his bedroom and across the tiny living room. The door shook under the beating it was taking. “Stop fucking pounding on the door!”
A voice on the other side said something, but Carsten couldn’t make out the words. He opened the door with more force than he intended, and the door handle slipped from his grasp, slamming against the wall. He groaned. One more thing for the management company to ding them for when the lease was up.
Regardless that the door pounding had woken him from a dead sleep, the man impatiently waiting on the other side stole Carsten’s breath. Forget porn or a random cable show starring sexy people who had a lot of sex before killing each other, he could look at this guy all day. It was the suit from the bar. How in the hell had he found Carsten?
They stared at each other for a heartbeat before Suit broke the silence.
“Is your name Troy Bakker?”
So, not looking for Carsten after all. He should probably feel relieved he didn’t have a stalker, but someone looking for Troy was even worse.
Carsten turned away from the door, knowing the guy would follow. He didn’t need to see a badge to know he was a cop; the man oozed it. Probably he hadn’t noticed at the bar because of that stupid drink. Behind him the front door shut quietly, and soft footsteps followed Carsten to the tiny kitchen. His heart pounded as he tried to think how to answer.
“I need coffee. Would you like some?” He snagged the bag of beans from the freezer and spooned enough for the eight-cup coffee maker into the grinder. He looked over at the other man. “Yes, no?”
There was a short silence before he answered, “I could use a cup.”
“Take your coat off and have a seat.”
Carsten snuck a closer look at his guest; the cop looked exhausted. Carsten didn’t recognize him from SkPD. He must be newer to the force. Didn’t matter.
The cop didn’t sit, or take his coat off. Carsten wanted to see what was hiding under there—a reward for being dragged out of bed. Instead the man stood in the doorway taking up all the space. More than he needed, anyway, since he wasn’t that big a guy. Carsten wondered if looming was something they learned in cop school or if it came naturally.
“You want to go put on some clothes? Or do you always greet people at your door in nothing but pajama bottoms with cartoons on them?” He squinted, trying to see what was printed on the fabric of Carsten’s sleep pants.
Carsten looked down to check what he was wearing. “Power Rangers? Today the answer is ‘Yes.’” He waggled his eyebrows. “Do you need me to put on a shirt too?” Carsten couldn’t help flirting a little. Worry about why the police were here looking for Troy was making him twitchy.
A light flush crossed the cop’s cheeks, but he ignored Carsten, instead reaching into his coat and pulling out a thick black wallet. He flipped it open so Carsten could see his SkPD badge.
“Beto Hernández, SkPD. Does Troy Bakker live at this address?”
“Carsten Quinn, lovely to meet you—officially.” He drew out the word. “I sublet from Troy.” Best to stick to the truth.
“But he doesn’t live here?”
“Only when he’s between …” Boyfriends was too much, too meaningful to attach to what Troy did. “Other housing,” he finished. Carsten stalled further questioning by pressing the power button; the burr of the coffee beans grinding filled the small kitchen. Dumping the freshly ground beans into the filter, he filled the carafe with cold tap water and poured it into the reservoir. With nothing left to do, Carsten propped himself against the counter. “Why all the questions about Troy?”
He wanted to ask if Troy was okay, but he doubted the police would be visiting if he were. If something had happened to Troy, they were done. Carsten might as well start packing and head as far away from Skagit as he could get.
“Does he have family in the area?”
Falling drips of coffee hissed against the bottom of the hot carafe, a symphony Carsten usually enjoyed. The very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach began to feel like acid.
He figured sticking as close to the truth as he could was still the best choice. “Troy doesn’t talk about family. I don’t ask. Family can be a touchy subject for people like us.”
Detective Hernández moved out of the doorway into the kitchen. He still didn’t take his coat off. Carsten felt exposed now with only sleep pants on; he’d lost his advantage and was wishing he’d grabbed a sweatshirt when the cop had suggested it.
“Girlfriends?”
Carsten shot the man a look; could he not use his detecting skill and see the apartment was not the home of straight men? The walls were covered with Carsten’s work, as well as that of photographers he aspired to be as good as. Most of the shots featured naked or nearly naked men, together and alone—all very suggestive and worshipful of the male form.
Hernández followed Carsten’s gaze, raising his own eyebrows. “You don’t have to be gay to appreciate photography. I don’t recognize all the artists, though.” He had very sexy eyebrows, Carsten decided. Maybe it was the suit that made them so attractive.
“No, Troy doesn’t have girlfriends.”
Hernández opened his mouth, presumably to ask another question, but Carsten beat him to it.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re here at the butt crack of dawn asking about Troy?”
Hernández’s posture changed, morphing into something more formal. “It’s possible Troy Bakker was involved in an accident last night.”
The air left his lungs in a whoosh. Carsten felt like he’d been sucker punched. They’d both known what they were doing was a long shot. Carsten didn’t want to think about Troy being dead, or how he’d gotten there. He really wished he had a shirt on.
“What kind of accident? What happened? Is he okay?” No, stupid, of course he isn’t okay if a cop is here asking about him.
“At this point we’re not sure how he sustained his injuries. It’s touch and go.”
Carsten found himself moving in the direction of his bedroom. Once inside, he glanced around, not sure what he needed. A hand holding a blue T-shirt appeared in his vision. Carsten took it gratefully, pulling it on over his head. It was one thing to help your sometime roommate plan revenge, another to have cops wake you before coffee to tell you he was most likely dead. Dea
d echoed around inside his head.
“Are you ready for coffee? I really need coffee.” He needed to hold on to something. Coffee would give him time to think.
“Sure.”
Carsten dragged a thick gray sweatshirt on over the T-shirt. The sweatshirt was one of his oldest, soft and worn. It made him feel safe. If there were such a thing as safe.
Back in the kitchen, he poured a generous amount of coffee into two large mugs. One mug was purple with a rainbow unicorn on the side; the other had “Everyone should believe in something. I believe I will have another coffee” written on it. He gave the unicorn to Hernández.
“What can you tell me about Troy Bakker?” Hernández had a nice voice, smooth and deep, or at least low toned.
“I don’t know. What do you want to know, other than he doesn’t have girlfriends. He definitely has male friends.” Short, simple, truth.
“How do you know him?” Hernández asked.
“We met at a shoot. Troy wanted, aspired, to be a photographer, and I helped him build a portfolio. A mutual friend must’ve introduced us. I don’t remember who.” He remembered exactly who.
Carsten remembered him and Troy laughing that they looked enough alike to be related. But Carsten had grown up out on the Olympic Peninsula, not Skagit as Troy had.
“Some of the work on the walls is yours?” Hernández looked surprised and thoughtful.
“Yeah.”
“So you met on a shoot and decided to get an apartment together?”
“Later on, yeah. I was looking for a place; everything is so expensive. Troy got wind of it and offered this place.”
“When I first asked, you said he was only here when he was between ‘other housing.’” Those eyebrows again.
Carsten stalled, taking a sip of his coffee and thinking about his answer. The hot liquid warmed him from the inside. Hernández took a drink of his and watched Carsten.
