The Definitive Albert J. Sterne

by Julie Bozza

  “Really,” Fletcher confirmed.

  “If that’s all you wanted to say, I’ll retire for the evening.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. Those people are willing to be our friends when we have damned few, and none in common except Mac. They’re entitled to be treated with respect and maybe even gratitude.”

  “I don’t have a reason to make an effort. You think you need something from them, but I don’t.”

  “Yes? What do I need?”

  “The same as from me - assistance in chasing your pet murderer.”

  Fletcher grinned humorlessly. “And it really burns you up that I value their help as well as yours, doesn’t it? Your pride is your most unattractive trait, Albert.”

  “Why don’t you drop this petty argument about official and social dealings with the mundane and the gullible - and shout about the real issues?”

  The grin grew wider, encompassing some mad sense of satisfaction. “I’d love to, Albert - if I knew what they were. Tell me. You’re the one who’s been in a foul mood all day. You tell me what the real issues are.”

  Albert glared. “What makes you think -”

  “It’s so easy, really, to goad you into blurting out the truth. Yes, there’re real issues behind all this garbage. But you’re the one who knows what they are.”

  Silence for a while, then Albert said as evenly as he could, “You don’t understand me as well as you thought, otherwise you’d know the answers already.”

  “But I know some of your secret places all too well, don’t I? Places you won’t look at, let alone admit to.”

  “That’s enough.”

  Fletcher nodded knowingly. “Finally abused the privilege of your friendship, have I? Stepped well and truly over the line?”

  “Many times,” Albert coldly informed him.

  “But we’re both still here, aren’t we? I’ll tell you something, Albert, anyone else would have called it quits by now - the argument, the relationship. It just wouldn’t be worth all the aggravation.”

  Albert looked elsewhere. “Perhaps you want a medal for endurance.”

  “Both of us endure. Why? Because there’s something between that us we both want.”

  “Indeed.” These last twenty-four hours of bitterness had left Albert weary, weary beyond all sense. But he wouldn’t sit down now, that would be too much a gesture of conciliation and weakness.

  Never worried about such things, Fletcher sat, and sipped at his coffee, staring at the table and avoiding Albert. Quietly, Ash said, “Tell me about the real issues, Albert. Shout about them if you want.”

  “So much for your famous instincts,” Albert taunted. “If they won’t serve you now, how can they ever be of any use? How can you rely on them?”

  “I never said I was omnipotent!” Fletcher was definitely feeling defensive, glancing his resentment, then hiding his face. “But maybe,” he added, “maybe I’m too subjective about you. Maybe I’ve lost my judgment.”

  “Don’t you think your subjectivity should help your insight? No wonder you waste most of your time in self-doubt.”

  Silence, as if Ash was too wounded to reply. But then he said, “Tell me why the sex last night scared you.” Calm, level, on the offensive. Maybe he had only pretended ignorance and defensiveness in order to draw Albert out. Albert wished he could despise this man and his manipulations. Fletcher was continuing, “Why did it mean so much? And when we made love afterwards, in the bathtub, why did that scare you even more?”

  Anyone else would call it quits, Albert reminded himself. Why don’t I? He ground out, “I wasn’t the one who ran away to sleep in the guest room.”

  “I wasn’t running away. I was giving you space.”

  “Then give me some space now, Ash.”

  The man frowned up at him as if Albert was a tricky case that needed to be solved. “No,” Fletcher said. “And I shouldn’t have last night, either. You weren’t rebuilding your dignity - it was your defenses against me.”

  “Wrong again, Ash.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t think I am.”

  The fury, which Albert had sorely missed that evening, abruptly returned, hot and potent. If you think I’m well-defended right now, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.

  “I’ve handled this badly.” Fletcher was musing. “All of it, from asking for the sex in the first place, through every reaction since. What would have happened, do you think, where would we be now, if I’d done the right thing last night, and not given you any space?” He gazed up at Albert, thoughtful. “What would we have between us today? The truth, I imagine, and I bet it would be pretty wonderful.”

  A number of sarcastic observations occurred to Albert, but he couldn’t find the voice for them. Fletcher’s hot blue eyes were too busy taking him apart and re-making him in some petty pretty wonderful image. Albert dearly wanted to halt any such speculation.

  “As it is, what do we have between us but space?”

  “Then why don’t you do the expected thing,” Albert said, “and call it quits?”

  “Why don’t you? Because you still wouldn’t change it even if you could.”

  “I told you before you shouldn’t rely on that.”

  “But I do, I continue to rely on it.”

  Why? Albert wanted to ask both Fletcher and himself. Why can’t I finish this? For a disorienting moment, he thought of that photo of Miles and Rebecca hidden away in his study. He even turned as if he’d go to it and ask, because surely they had an answer if anyone did. But then he was overwhelmed by the foolishness of such a gesture. There could be no answer from a photograph, from two people who had been dead for decades, or from the child he had once been. How futile and sentimental. Nevertheless, the urge remained, and he had to force himself to face Ash again. “This discussion is pointless,” he said, suspecting his voice betrayed his weakness. “I suggest we retire for the night.”

  “Albert, if you’d -”

  “Perhaps you would like to sleep in the guest room again,” he suggested with forced urbanity.

  Fletcher stood. “All I want right now -”

  “If you find it unsatisfactory -”

  “Stop it! Just stop it, Albert. I want you to listen to me.”

  The very air threatened with all the truths and ultimatums that had been spoken, and all the many more that had, until now at least, been left unsaid. The air was so thick with them, Albert found it difficult to breathe.

  “If you can leave me,” Fletcher said quietly, “after all that’s happened - I mean, if you can go to your bed alone right now without some kind of reassurance from me - then you’re far stronger than me.”

  “You said you relied on me not changing this.”

  “Give me a break, Albert. Pretend I deserve it.”

  “I don’t see -” Albert started. Why verbalize what was so disastrously evident? “I will not be fair to you,” he said, surprising himself. “I will not.”

  Fletcher was frowning. “All right,” he said quickly, offering reassurance to someone who would give none. “It’s all right.”

  But Rebecca and Miles had expected a lot from Albert, and they always expected him to be fair. He raised a hand to stop Ash from moving, either closer or away. And, at last, Albert said, “You’ll visit for the weekend, in a fortnight’s time?”

  “Yes,” was the immediate and relieved reply. Then Fletcher was saying, “Goodnight, Albert. How about I lock the place up for you?”

  No.

  “Trust me.” Fletcher essayed a smile. “You go on to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  After a moment Albert nodded, then walked to his bedroom. With the door safely closed behind him, he forced himself through the night’s routine: hang and fold his clothes; dress in a clean pair of pajamas; brush and floss his teeth. All the while reminding himself that he hadn’t forgotten to check the house, Fletcher was doing that. Briefly, he listened to the footsteps from one room to another, Fletcher testing each window, each door. Then Albert
turned his bedroom lights out, arranged himself in the bed, and waited for sleep to grant him oblivion.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WASHINGTON DC

  JANUARY 1985

  Arms sliding on treacherous white marble, hands grasping for holds that weren’t there, legs wildly swinging over empty space: Fletcher clung to the ledge of some damned stupid Washington monument, trying not to think of the stone pavement far below. Albert was standing above him, mere inches outside his arms’ reach, mocking Fletch for his weakness, taunting him.

  It was all very well attempting to goad Fletcher into scrambling up. The angry desire to save himself, if only to throttle Albert, might give Fletch the necessary adrenalin, the strength and determination. But that wasn’t what he needed from Albert. And Fletch had rarely responded to or even cared about Albert’s scathing insults. Instead, Albert was supposed to help him, supposed to reach for him, lift him up off the edge of the abyss. That was why they’d become lovers, wasn’t it?

  “You love me, Albert,” Fletcher reminded him, gasping for breath. Albert poured more abuse on him. Didn’t Fletcher have the imagination to want something different, better? Would he never break free of his disastrous, middle class notions of romance? Couldn’t he make his own mold, his own pattern, rather than forever trying to conform to society’s discards? “Help me, give me your hand,” Fletcher tried again. “If you love me, do it.”

  “No. Climb up here yourself. Forget your weakness, and find your fortitude. You’re as bad as Drew Harmer. Throw out all the Prince Charming garbage - you don’t need anyone else to save you. Rescue yourself.”

  “You’re hardly my idea of Prince Charming,” Fletch found the breath to mutter.

  “Exactly,” Albert said.

  Fletcher couldn’t take this. His fingers were cramping and bruising from trying to dig into solid marble, the muscles of his back and shoulders were a-fire. Might as well get it over with - there was nothing for him, no reason not to. “If you love me,” he said to Albert.

  And he fell.

  Albert didn’t even care. Sneered down at Fletch falling as if this was only what he’d expected. The bastard.

  Fletcher screamed in defiance and outrage, and then in fear. The stone pavement loomed below and behind him. He cried a protest against waiting for the sickening crunch and splatter of his blood and bones and brain against that cruel surface. “No!” His imagination of it was worse than any reality could be.

  “No!” Darkness instead of harsh sunlight stabbing off polished white marble; a bed and quilt rather than stone. A bedroom that should have been familiar. He was alone, and that in itself was something wrong.

  Fletcher rolled onto his back, drew the covers up to his chin, then lay still, breathing hard, trying to sort some sense out of all this fear.

  The details soon coalesced out of the darkness: Albert’s guest bedroom. Fletcher should feel safe here. In fact, after that troubling variation on his old nightmare - Yes, it was only a dream, Fletcher, he reminded himself - he probably felt safer here alone than in the haven of Albert’s room, Albert’s arms.

  Wonderful, he thought with dry despair, even that safety is gone now. If Albert showed up, having heard Fletcher cry out, Fletch suspected it would take a conscious effort of faith on his part to welcome the man. That was ridiculous. Do I even have that much faith left?

  It was some hours before Fletcher fell asleep again.

  Breakfast was a silent meal. Fletcher watched Albert warily, trying to shake the last feelings of uneasiness from the night’s restlessness. There were more important things to deal with than his latest dream, despite the memory of the expression in Albert’s cruel, cold, hard eyes.

  For instance, how were they to survive the Sunday of this ghastly weekend when Albert appeared so fragile that one wrong word might shatter him, when the man seemed completely unaware that he was at all vulnerable? And when Fletcher himself required reassurance, someone to tell him his doubts were unfounded, even someone to provide simple distraction?

  Fletcher began to talk, one of the monologues that he usually used over the phone, intending to chat about anything impersonal. But he soon found himself saying, “Everything’s pretty damned grim at the moment.” Surely it wouldn’t hurt to talk about work. “Caroline’s money laundering thing is proceeding according to plan but I can’t stay interested. I’m getting nowhere with this serial killer. It’s ludicrous, trying to solve it on my own. There are hundreds of possible leads to chase up, thousands, though none of them were promising enough for the Bureau to keep the case open, all the real ones were dead ends. If I’m very lucky, one of these unlikely ones might give me a hint of the answer. So I fritter my time away, turning from lead to lead, suspect to suspect, trying to guess the right one, letting my instincts choose for me - and not really following up on any of them. I exhaust myself and all for nothing. This would have to be the most unproductive time of my life. And now you, love,” Fletcher said, looking at Albert. “Everything feels so wrong between us. What we have, under all the trouble, is precious.” And he said, worried that his tone sounded irresolute, “I won’t give up on it.”

  Albert looked away, as if bored at going over old ground.

  “I won’t give up on the serial killer, either. I just have to - in both cases - find a way to the heart of the matter.”

  Well, he’d had an effect: Albert was distant now, instead of hurt and immediate. That wasn’t good but if Albert needed his defenses, then perhaps he should have them.

  There was one message to get across while he could. Fletcher said, very gently, “I don’t want you to feel you’ve let me down, Albert.”

  The man stared at him as if Fletcher had gone crazy. “And how have I done that?” he demanded.

  Fletch shook his head, and lied. “You haven’t. I misinterpreted what you’re feeling.”

  The stare grew suspicious and then slowly became uninterested.

  All right. Albert had expected Fletcher to end this relationship some weeks ago, which was perhaps a reflection of what Albert really wanted. Maybe, if Albert couldn’t end it, he trusted Fletcher to do so. Be brave, Fletcher admonished both Albert and himself, have mercy. When Albert had first consciously realized he was in love with Fletcher - it had been a beautiful spring day, out in the garden, Fletch remembered - Fletcher had seen Albert as forever asking a question to which Fletcher was the answer. It had been so tempting to meet the problem with its solution. But now he figured he wasn’t really the right answer and maybe Albert was no longer asking. Despite all of which, this was still the most successful love affair Fletcher had ever had, which wasn’t saying much, but he was grateful nonetheless. “We don’t make each other very happy, do we?” Fletcher observed quietly.

  Albert immediately retorted, “Happiness was never my goal in life.”

  That surprised Fletcher enough to threaten a smile, but he quashed the impulse. It seemed, yet again, he had goaded Albert into revealing something of the truth.

  And, even more surprisingly, Albert actually continued the thought. “Only people like McIntyre are mundane enough to set happiness as their goal.”

  Fletcher nodded, thoughtful. All right, he would take that as license to continue the relationship rather than break it up. So be it. So help them both.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  COLORADO

  MARCH 1985

  “What do you know about Xavier Lachance?” Caroline Thornton asked.

  Fletcher essayed a boneless shrug. When it was just the two of them in the relative privacy of Caroline’s office, and work wasn’t a burning urgency, then they would both sprawl back in their chairs - Caroline’s was a high-backed executive model, Fletch in a lowly visitor’s chair - and talk lazily at the ceiling. This would often occur first thing in the day, as both were slow starters by preference, or after lunch. Or, in this instance, around eleven o’clock on a Monday morning.

  It wasn’t that Fletcher felt lazy today, though. Instead, he was restless
with the first stirrings of spring and he knew that Caroline would indulge his lack of focus to a certain extent, whether she condoned it or not.

  On consideration, Fletcher thought that friends was too warm a description of their relationship, but he and Caroline knew each other passably well and had successfully worked together for more years than he cared to remember right now. They shared a random but enthusiastic exercise regime and were able to - this was the best part - relax with each other. They didn’t socialize much, though, simply having a drink together if necessary or sharing a meal if convenient. Fletch had never met any of her family or friends or boyfriends. He smiled a little, wryly - on the other hand, Caroline had certainly met Albert, though how could she ever suspect that he was Fletcher’s boyfriend? What an expression. It suggested a levity, a lightness of heart, that was certainly not present in the relationship.