Welcome to Blissville

by Walker, Aimee Nicole

  I glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw the captain sneer, but he groused, “Yes.”

  “What the hell did you ever do to make the sheriff dislike you so damn much?” Adrian asked.

  It took the captain a few seconds to acknowledge the question, but then he said, “I went to the University of Michigan.”

  I recalled seeing Sheriff Tucker’s large Ohio State University diploma hanging on the wall and smiled. “Ahhh, that explains it,” I said.

  I admit I was a bit freaked when Gabe told me that my nemesis had sent a photo of Gabe and me to the paper with a threatening message. I mean, I didn’t want shitty pictures of me being sent to the paper. I had an image to uphold in my town. Then Gabe told me what a good picture it was of us and I went from being alarmed to wanting a copy for us. Gabe promised I could have it once it was no longer evidence. I planned to frame the photo and set it at my station for everyone to see. I could tell he was frustrated with me and my lack of concern for my safety, so it was quite refreshing to hear that Adrian was thinking along the same lines as I was.

  I took the threat seriously, at first. Hell, whoever it was trashed my pretty Princess and it pissed me off. Other than that, it had been photos and a few vague threats. If someone really wanted to hurt me, like Oscar Davidson did when he realized I’d given a description of him to the police, they wouldn’t send one warning after the other. Oscar gave me no warnings; he broke into my home and would’ve killed me had Gabe not shot him. I applied the same logic to the new disturbance in my once orderly life and found comfort.

  I still shivered hard every time I thought about Oscar Davidson, which became less frequently as time passed by. He wasn’t coming back from the grave to kill me and whoever was sending these so-called threats didn’t really want to kill me either. I don’t know why I was so certain, I just was. Also, as sure was my belief that Billy Sampson was behind it all. The timing was just to convenient for me.

  It wasn’t arrogance on my part that Billy was jealous of Gabe and me or that he wanted me all to himself that was guiding my beliefs, it was just my vast experience with bullies–namely him. First, it was my theory that Billy would fall into his old habits–not that I believe he’d outgrown them–once he returned to Carter County. Second, seeing me happy would piss him off. I lived my life happily in the open while he pretended to be something he wasn’t. That had to really pinch his pecker. Throw in the fact that he was using drugs and you had an unappetizing recipe for harassment.

  I could tell that Gabe was starting to come around and think like Adrian and me. It didn’t make him feel better because he felt the drug usage made Billy even more unstable. He was holding out hope that the drugs in Billy’s system matched the ones found at the school so that he could be brought in and questioned. According to Gabe, it could be weeks before he got the results back because nothing happened quickly for small town law enforcement agencies when they had to rely on overburdened and underfunded state labs. He reminded me that real police work didn’t look anything like the CSI shows I had loved so much.

  The only thing I could do was be more aware of my surroundings. The weather had been too cold and the sidewalks too slick to run outside and I’d been forced to run on a treadmill at the gym. March was right around the corner and, even though it was a tossup month–meaning all four seasons could occur in one day–it was a big step in the right direction to getting back out in the fresh air to run. I would, however, miss hearing the grunts that escaped Gabe when he lifted weights.

  Just knowing he was hot and sweaty in the same room as me made it hard to keep my focus on my pace and breathing when I used one of those preset options on the treadmill. Fuck, it had me running on an incline so steep that I looked like that cliffhanger game on The Price is Right. The last thing I needed was the annoying-ass music they played during that game in my head, but it’s what I got. Instead of going over the edge of the cliff like the mountain climber in the game does when a contestant can’t guess the price of the items correctly, I was in jeopardy of face planting on the treadmill in a crowded gym. I made a mental note to bring earbuds to the gym with me the next time so I could tune out Detective Sex Sounds, focus on my running, and avoid getting an inconvenient hard-on.

  I never ran with earbuds in my ears. Once, I came out to my parents–as if they hadn’t already known–my father took me aside and had a very serious conversation with me. He told me that, although moms and dads all worried endlessly about their children, parents of minorities had added concerns. He explained that some people would hate me just because I existed. That may seem like a horrible thing for a father to tell his son, but his exact words to me were, “I can’t allow my boy to become a heartbreaking statistic. If something happened to you, it would kill your mother and me. Pay attention.” By then, I’d already experienced plenty of hateful things said about me and to me, so I knew what he was talking about, yet, I had never been physically hurt in any way. It took me years to understand that verbal abuse was equally as damaging, if not more, than physical abuse.

  I took my dad’s words to heart that day. Some people might’ve had the impression that I was a flighty person without a care in the world, but that was the furthest thing from the truth. I was usually hyper aware of my surroundings and had developed a Danger, Will Robinson radar. It was going crazy one night when I took the trash out after the salon closed. Gabe normally insisted on doing it, but he was on the phone with his mom and I wanted to get it over with so I could go upstairs and enjoy the rest of my night.

  I wasn’t scared when I felt Billy’s presence because I knew that Gabe was a loud scream away. Even so, I wanted to deal with Billy on my own once and for all. The motion detector lights that Gabe installed on the corners of the garage came on as I was putting a lid on the trash can. My heart sped up, but my mind remained calm.

  “He must not really give a shit about you,” Billy snarled from behind me. “Either that or you’re really fucking stupid. I think it’s a little bit of both. Someone’s threatening to harm you, yet, here you are in the dark all by yourself.”

  I slowly turned around and faced Billy. I was shocked at how sick he looked. There were large bags under his eyes, his pupils were blown, and he shook all over like he couldn’t wait for his next fix. “Let me guess, you were just in the neighborhood?” I asked sarcastically. We both knew better.

  “You might say that,” he told me. The sneering smile slipped from his face and all I saw was unbridled rage. “I never knew you were such an exhibitionist, Josh. Do you like leaving your bedroom curtain open for people in the neighborhood to watch you and your detective having sex? Is that part of your gay agenda?”

  There was so much wrong with what he had said that I wasn’t sure what to address first. I decided to take them in order so that I didn’t miss anything. “I’ve never been an exhibitionist and the only home on this block with a view into my bedroom window has been vacant for months.” I cocked my head to the side and added, “That means your perverted ass has taken advantage of the situation. You’ve been watching me and Gabe through my window just like you’ve been following me around and leaving those stupid photos behind as a warning. The newspaper stunt was over the top, Billy.”

  I won’t lie, it made me sick to my stomach to realize that someone so twisted saw something that was so beautiful and pure with love. I needed to move on or risk not finishing what I had to say about his hateful comments, although I figured it was like talking to a brick wall.

  “And, wanting to be treated equally and accepted as who I am isn’t an agenda, Billy. I love Gabe and he loves me. We just want to live peacefully and be able to enjoy the same things that straight couples do.”

  “You’re disgusting and I hate you,” Billy snarled, taking two steps closer to me.

  “Oh, I don’t think you hate me at all. I think you hate yourself. It’s too bad that you hide behind lies and drugs. Besides, if you hated me so much then you wouldn’t be trying to break Gabe and me up wi
th your stupid Nate Turner copycat shit. No one is falling for that stunt; we were just waiting for you to fuck up and tip your hand. Sort of like right now.”

  “Shut up,” Billy said between gritted teeth. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Oh, I know plenty. I hate to break this to you, but you’re not that special or unique. You’re no different than any other guy who’s ashamed of who he is and who he loves.” I’d been accused of not knowing when to shut my mouth once I started slinging snark everywhere and that could probably be classified as one of those times.

  “I said shut the fuck up.” That time Billy screamed the words. I knew it was loud enough to get Gabe’s attention, but I couldn’t be distracted by that. I saw in his eyes that he was ready to act on his aggression and I was ready for him.

  Billy took a step toward me while he reached for me. I brought my knee up and racked his balls hard enough to send them bouncing off his internal organs like a pinball game. “Fuck!” he roared. When he doubled over to grab his nuts, I brought my knee up to his nose. I heard the sickening crunch of cartilage breaking, followed by the gush of his hot blood all over the knee of my pants before I was able to pull back.

  Billy fell to the ground howling and writhing in pain, unsure where to grab–his aching nuts or his gushing nose. Gabe came running out of the house with his gun drawn, but holstered it immediately when he saw that Billy was prone on the ground. He reached for his next best weapon instead, his cellphone. “I need a car sent to Josh’s house,” he told the dispatcher. “One car,” he clarified, “and probably an EMT.”

  Luckily, only one squad car and one ambulance responded like Gabe requested. The EMTs stayed long enough to staunch the flow of blood from Billy’s nose then he was hauled away in the back of a squad car, crying and snotting about the pain he was in. I had zero sympathies for him.

  “Remember how Laura told me that Billy had disappeared for a few days?” I asked Gabe, after we were alone again in the warmth of my home.

  “Yeah,” Gabe replied, looking me over. “Get these jeans off,” he said rather forcefully.

  “I’m not really in the mood right now,” I replied sardonically.

  “Josh, you have his blood all over you,” Gabe said.

  In all the excitement, I had forgotten that he bled on me. I followed Gabe to the bathroom and peeled my clothes off before stepping inside the shower.

  “Can we get back to the bombshell Billy dropped before I kicked his ass?” I asked Gabe.

  “His nuts,” Gabe corrected absently as he began washing me. It was obvious that Gabe was focused on fussing over me and I wasn’t about to refuse his soapy hands on my body.

  “I still knocked him on his ass,” I argued.

  “True.”

  The hot water and Gabe’s hands melted the last bit of tension that remained in my body. I knew that a heavy exhaustion would follow when the adrenaline from Billy’s failed assault faded. I needed to tell Gabe what I learned before I fell asleep because I didn’t want him to be caught by surprise if it came out later when Billy was being questioned.

  “Billy’s been watching us,” I told him.

  “I’m glad you were right about him being the one behind the pictures. As disturbing at it was, he’s not nearly as dangerous as whoever killed Nate. They weren’t playing around,” Gabe said.

  “It’s worse than you realize, Gabe. He’s been squatting at Bianca’s and watching us through my bedroom window. He…”

  “That son of a bitch,” Gabe growled. He balled his fists at his side and his chest bellowed as he breathed hard with fury. I wasn’t worried that he would hurt me, but I thought my carefully chosen bathroom tiles were in jeopardy of getting punched.

  I covered his fists with my hands in an attempt to calm him and save my tiled wall. “It’s my fault,” I told Gabe. “If I hadn’t been so enthralled in seeing the light from the full moon on your skin…”

  “Stop,” Gabe said, shaking his head. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to stop until he spoke again. “You’re not to blame for any of this,” he said, cupping my face. “You’re not the only one who was seduced by the light and shadows the moon brings out in your room. He was the wrong one, not us.”

  Gabe kissed me fiercely in the shower and made me forget all about Billy and his hate. We turned off the shower, toweled off, and made love in the moonlight once more. I held tight to Gabe’s body as he moved inside me, loving every expression that crossed his face and word of devotion that left his lips. What we shared was the greatest of gifts a person could ever receive in life.

  Later, a thought occurred to me as I laid my head on his chest and listened to the comforting sounds of his steady heartbeat. “Gabe?”

  “Yeah, Sunshine.”

  “In the past few weeks, you’ve referred to this place as your home, but tonight you called it my house. Which is it?” I bit my lip in the dark while waiting for him to answer the question. I don’t know why it mattered so much or why I needed an answer in order to fully rest, but I did.

  “One represents the reality of our situation and the other represents the future I wish to have.” Both the timbre in his voice and the meaning of his words caused me to wiggle with joy against him. “You better settle down there before you wake my dick back up,” Gabe warned. “You’re going to need a good night of sleep for the day you’ll have tomorrow.”

  I thought about it for several seconds, but that’s all my mind needed to conjure up a billion things. I didn’t miss a birthday, anniversary, and I knew for a fact we didn’t have dinner plans because it was one of my late nights at the salon. “What’s tomorrow?”

  “Babe, the cops and an ambulance were here tonight. It’s going to be wall-to-wall with people in your salon tomorrow.”

  Relief didn’t begin to describe the emotion I felt when I found Billy crumpled on the ground from the beat down Josh gave him. I felt even better when I learned from Josh that Billy basically admitted in a roundabout way that he was the one behind the pictures. He didn’t come right out and say it, but he didn’t deny it when Josh confronted him either. All of that faded when Josh told me about Billy squatting in Bianca’s house and watching us through his bedroom window. Josh had tried to blow it off like it didn’t bother him, but I knew better. Billy was a hurtful reminder of his past and someone he wouldn’t want to spoil something that we cherished together.

  Damn that Billy! I fucking hated that he saw Josh in a light that I was positive others had never seen, especially not him. With me, Josh was free to be himself without fear of judgment or scorn. With me, Josh let down his guard and showed me everything he felt. With me, he wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable. He radiated lightness that threatened to outshine the moonlight he loved so much. Those things were for my eyes only, and Billy Sampson violated that. For that reason alone, I was glad Josh kneed him in the balls. From the sounds that came out of Billy, he would need to have them surgically reset.

  For obvious reasons, I knew I wouldn’t be involved when Billy was being questioned or during the search of Bianca’s house for evidence he might’ve left behind there. I was fine with that for a few reasons. One, I wasn’t going to give his lawyer a legitimate defense or a jury a reason to toss out the charges against him due to my relationship to the victim. It was a line cops should never cross, but it was harder than people realized to take a step back and let others take the lead when it involved someone you loved. Two, I trusted my team, which made being relegated to watch the interview through the monitors under supervision tolerable.

  Captain Reardon gave up his chance to play bad cop, which I secretly thought he enjoyed a lot, to keep an eye on me so that I didn’t fuck up the investigation. Not only was Billy a suspect in Josh’s harassment, but he used police evidence to do so when he put that picture of a dead Nate Turner in that envelope and placed it on Josh’s bed.

  Adrian took the lead and Officer Wen played the role of bad cop in my absence. I couldn’t help but gloat when he limped in
to the interview room. Billy was brought in, looking more haggard than a college co-ed coming off a weekend bender. Both of his eyes were black and his nose was swollen from where Josh broke it. He was covered in a sheen of sweat and grime that made my nose twitch. “I hope they let him brush his teeth before he was brought in.” I was taking a page from Josh’s playbook and cracking jokes to cover my nerves. The guys had just returned from executing the search warrant and I was curious to know what they discovered in Bianca’s house.

  “Not likely,” the captain replied. “See, it’s not so bad being on this side of the monitor sometimes.”

  “Billy, I know you’ve been read your rights, but I’m going to read them to you again.” I listened to Adrian read them off to Billy and then sat a little closer when Billy waved off his rights to an attorney. “You’re being arrested for the stalking and harassment of Joshua James Roman, breaking and entering at the residence located at two twenty-five Elm Street.” Adrian took a pause and looked down at his notes. “You’re also being arrested for tampering with evidence and impeding an investigation. The DEA will be here later this afternoon to formerly charge you with possession of drugs with intent to distribute, and suspicion of drug trafficking. Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer present?”

  “Holy fuck!” I said in disbelief. I looked over at the captain.

  “That’s fucking bullshit,” Billy roared. He tried to pull free from his bonds, but he didn’t get very far. His hand and ankle cuffs were connected to a chain that was anchored in concrete. “What drugs?”

  “The huge stash of drugs we found with your personal belongings in the house on Elm Street,” Officer Wen said. “Forget about the drugs for now because the DEA will be asking about them. We want to question you about your harassment of Josh Roman and find out what you know about Nate Turner’s death.”

  “What?” Billy honestly sounded shocked.

  “We’re not playing around here, Billy.” Okay, Adrian was playing bad cop too. “You were the person who discovered Nate’s disabled car along the side of the highway. We just want to make sure you weren’t the one who put a bullet in his head.”