Forever

by Pati Nagle

  Pati Nagle

  Evennight Books

  Cedar Crest, New Mexico

  Forever

  Copyright © 2013 by Pati Nagle

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portion thereof, in any form.

  ISBN: 978-1-61138-343-0

  Published by Evennight Books, Cedar Crest, New Mexico, an affiliate of Book View Café

  December 2013

  Publication team: Deborah J. Ross, Nancy Jane Moore, Chris Krohn

  20131209PGN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  for Eric

  Acknowledgments

  Heartfelt thanks to Nancy Jane Moore and Deborah J. Ross for editorial feedback, to my esteemed colleagues in Book View Café for advice on everything from the cover to the end notes, and as always to Chris Krohn for proofreading and being the ideal writer's spouse.

  = 1 =

  Her throat was torn out. I could tell, though she was face-down on the steps to a service door outside Clark Hall. The way her head was lying was ... wrong. Worse, she looked familiar. From one of my classes.

  Glasses, broken, a few inches from her head. Blood pooled on the concrete steps, so dark it almost looked black. Coagulated. She’d been there a while.

  A lump of something red lay not far from her shoulder—at first I thought it was a rag. Then I realized it was meat.

  Oh, god.

  I stepped aside and lost my breakfast. Stumbled away from the mess, leaned my hands on my knees and took a few deep breaths. Heart still pounding, I took out my phone and dialed 911.

  A bird somewhere nearby sang a cheerful morning song. I glanced back toward the body—Kimberly Darrow, I suspected—and turned my back on the short stairwell, one of three on the west side of the chemistry building. A wall of adobe-colored stucco masked each of them. I’d come to catch up on some lab work before going to my physics class, glimpsed a booted foot as I approached, and gone closer to look.

  “911, what is your emergency?”

  I inhaled, coughed on bile, and spat. “I just found a body.”

  “Where are you?”

  “UNM campus, outside Clark Hall. West side.”

  I looked back at the stairwell. Noticed a backpack now: black, with Lobo stickers on it. Couldn’t see much of her face, but the short red hair and the thunder thighs made me pretty sure.

  “Name?”

  “Kimberly Darrow, I think.”

  “No, your name.”

  “Oh. Harrison. Steve Harrison.”

  “What number are you calling from?”

  I gave it to her. “It’s a cell phone.”

  “Are you sure the victim is dead?”

  “Pretty sure, yeah. Her throat’s ripped up bad—I don’t think she could breathe.”

  “Is she bleeding?”

  “There’s blood, but it doesn’t look fresh.”

  “Campus police are on their way. Please stay on the line.”

  “OK.”

  Feeling pretty shaky, I moved around the corner to the south side of the building and sat with my back against the wall. My mouth tasted like bile. I wanted a drink of water.

  So the campus killer was back.

  There’d been a series of rape/murders the previous fall. They stopped abruptly after a couple of months, but the killer had never been caught. Some sightings of a creepy guy with long, white hair had been reported. Then a couple more killings in the summer, but the victims were men. The police hadn’t said it was the same killer, but it had pretty much the same effect on campus, only now everyone was scared, not just the girls.

  I had my own thoughts, based on personal experience. They didn’t quite fit with the rapes.

  The bird twittered again. I looked up at the nearby trees, trying to spot it. The leaves were just beginning to get a yellow tinge, flickering in the morning light.

  I wondered what Kimberly had been doing by Clark Hall. It was across campus from the dorms, where I was pretty sure she lived. The only place I’d seen her was in the 100-level physics class I was student-assisting, and that was also across campus. I’d graded her papers, and talked to her maybe three times about assignments.

  “Steve?” said the dispatcher.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you see anyone else in the area?”

  “No.”

  “The police should be there soon. They’ll want to talk to you.”

  “OK.”

  I heard a siren not thirty seconds later. I stood and stepped out into the sunlight, blinking. Not even eight, and the day was heating up. September in Albuquerque was always either roasting or pouring rain. If the state fair was running, more likely the latter, but not today.

  A campus police squad came into the parking lot and two cops got out. I stepped forward.

  “They’re here,” I told the operator. “Can I hang up now?”

  “Yes.”

  I put my phone away and waited, keeping my hands in sight. One of the cops had short brown hair and a nice build. The other was beefier, with a blond buzz-cut. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and stopped in front of me.

  “You Steve Harrison?”

  I nodded and gestured. “She’s around the corner, there. Second stairwell.”

  The brown-haired cop headed for the body.

  “Watch your step,” I called after him. He glanced at my former breakfast and detoured around it.

  “Tell me what happened,” said Buzz-cut.

  I told him what I knew. He listened, nodded occasionally. I could hear the first cop talking on the radio.

  “So you know her?” the cop asked when I stopped.

  “Not really. She’s in one of my classes.” Was.

  I wondered if I should have tried to revive her. No—not in the condition her neck was in. No chance.

  “When’s the last time you talked to her?”

  I blinked. “I’m not sure. Maybe last week?”

  “When was she last in your class?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “You talk to her then?”

  “Not this week. There’s a hundred students in the class.”

  He nodded, holding my gaze. Said nothing for a few seconds, then asked, “So where were you last night?”

  “At home. My apartment.”

  “You got a roommate?”

  “No.”

  Another nod. “OK, we’ll need you stay here until we can get your fingerprints.”

  Holy crap! He thought I did this? Holy freaking crap!

  “I have a class at nine,” I said, my throat tightening.

  “Yeah? Well, you might miss it. Sorry.”

  He didn’t sound sorry. He gave me a long look, then went to join his partner.

  I stepped to the building and leaned against the stucco wall. They couldn’t seriously think I’d killed Kimberly.

  Queasiness settled in my stomach. I told myself to stay calm, but I felt alone, and wanted to alert someone to what was happening.

  Who, though? I wasn’t dating anyone. My advisor probably couldn’t help.

  Amanda Richards. She’d get it. She’d been through some tough stuff over the summer, and I’d helped her out a little. Stuff involving a woman with long white hair.

  I sent her a quick text:

  FOUND BODY @ CHEM LAB - MIGHT NEED HELP.

  Her answer came a minute later:

  OMW. HANG TIGHT.

  I put away my phone and felt better.

  Paramedics arrived, bringing cases of equipment. I stayed out of the way. They hustled toward the stairwell, then returned at a walk for more gear, with body language that told
me there wasn’t any urgency going on.

  More police came. A lot more. The parking lot looked like Christmas.

  Some of them went into the building, and I heard the commotion of the place being locked down; standard procedure in case of violence on campus. Clark Hall was full of dangerous chemicals, some of which could be used as weapons. People began coming out of the building. So much for chemistry classes today.

  Other police showed up to work the crime scene. One of them, a nice female cop who actually smiled at me, took my fingerprints. “It’s just so we can eliminate you,” she said.

  Yeah, I’d heard that on TV, in a million crime shows.

  “Did you try to revive her?” she asked.

  “No. Didn’t seem like there was any hope.”

  She gave me a sympathetic nod, handed me a couple of packaged wet wipes, then went away with the card of my prints. I took out a wipe and cleaned the ink off my hands. It was sticky, took some work, and both the wipes.

  The cop came back with a long cotton swab. “Need you to open your mouth, please.”

  DNA test. Well, that should exonerate me. I complied, and she left again.

  I took out my phone: 8:57. Looking like I’d miss my class, unless they were done with me.

  Buzz-cut came back, carrying a clipboard. He made me tell him again what I’d seen, when I’d arrived, name, address, phone, all that. Wrote while I was talking, asked me several of the questions a third time, then handed me the clipboard.

  “Sign here.”

  I read his notes, which were reasonably accurate. I signed my name.

  “OK, you can go.”

  I watched him walk away. Initial confusion gave way to relief. Maybe they didn’t suspect me after all.

  I took out my phone. Twenty past nine, and it would take me at least five minutes to walk to the Physics and Astronomy building. Probably not worth it.

  “Steve!”

  I looked up and saw Amanda hurrying toward me from the parking lot, accompanied by a guy whose face I would never forget. My heart started pounding harder than it had when I’d found the body.

  He was slim, with high cheekbones, green eyes, and long russet hair pulled back in a pony-tail. My looks put me in the pretty guy category, but his put him at the top of that class. He moved with captivating grace. European, I had thought when I first met him over the summer, partly because of the name.

  Lomen.

  His gaze locked with mine and he slowed. My body’s reaction was immediate and intense. I forgot about everything else but the desire to touch this incredibly beautiful man.

  Amanda ran up and caught me in a hug. She smelled like cocoa-butter lotion. “You OK?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for coming.”

  Lomen’s gaze shifted to the crime scene, and a slight frown creased his brow. I glanced that way and saw yellow tape around the stairwell. I hadn’t noticed them putting it up.

  I looked at Amanda. “They said I could go, so I called you out for nothing. Sorry.”

  “Not for nothing,” Amanda said. “Jeez! It must have been awful.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “You need a ride somewhere?”

  “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d really like a cup of coffee. Kind of jangled.”

  “Sure.”

  We walked down the street to her car, which gave me plenty of time to feel guilty. I was jangled, it was true, but more than that I wanted time in Lomen’s company.

  I’d first met him while rescuing Amanda from a white-haired, female attacker who had stalked her into the women’s restroom at Zimmerman Library. Well, if you can call it meeting: Lomen immediately took off after the attacker while I worked on stopping Amanda’s neck from bleeding.

  It was later, at the hospital, that Lomen and I had been in Amanda’s room for a while. We didn’t talk much then, either.

  I didn’t need to talk. I knew.

  I’ve been told I’m too picky. Maybe so, but I refuse to settle. I want more than just sex. More than a night or a weekend. That makes me unlike most guys my age who are gay. It also guarantees that I’m alone more often than not. I don’t care.

  “Frontier OK, or you want to get farther from campus?” Amanda asked as she unlocked her car, a well-traveled Camry.

  “How about The Range?”

  Another twinge of guilt. The Frontier was right across Central Avenue; The Range would take a few minutes to drive to. A few more minutes in Lomen’s space.

  It wasn’t unreasonable. I could have picked someplace a lot farther away.

  Lomen insisted that I get in the front seat beside Amanda. My back prickled with awareness of him behind me.

  I wondered why Amanda had brought him—not that I was complaining. He was part of Len Whiting’s set, and Len was Amanda’s best friend. I hadn’t seen much of them since that day last summer. I’d run into Amanda a couple of times on campus, and seen Len and her boyfriend Caeran—who looked so much like Lomen that I’d wondered more than once if they were brothers—one time in the library. I hadn't seen Lomen at all since the day Amanda was attacked.

  I had thought about him a lot, though.

  Besides being gorgeous, he seemed like someone I could care about. He’d defended Amanda against an attacker armed with a knife. For a brief moment of dismay, I wondered if he and Amanda were a couple, but no. The way he had looked at me...

  I wanted to know him better. And I’d be delighted to explore any kind of knowing he might be interested in.

  As we headed north, my gaze fell on the Sandia Mountains rising above Albuquerque to the east, a mass of stone jutting into the sky, higher but less rugged than the mountains I’d grown up with further south. The trees up there would be turning soon.

  In a few minutes we were pulling into the parking lot at The Range. The smell of coffee and cinnamon rolls hit as soon we I walked in. My stomach grumbled, but I wasn’t ready to face food yet.

  I felt kind of disconnected, walking into the restaurant as if it was a normal day, as if I hadn’t just found a dead body. The décor, done by a local artist, was all turquoise, pink, and purple, with blue coyotes hanging from hot air balloons. It made the morning seem even more surreal.

  We sat in a booth and a waitress brought us menus and asked what we wanted to drink. Amanda and I ordered coffee and I asked for a glass of water, too. Lomen opted for hot tea. I glanced at him, but he was reading the menu.

  Beside him, Amanda leaned toward me, eyes wide behind her glasses. “What happened? Do you feel like talking about it?”

  “I was heading for the lab to do some work before class, and she was just lying there.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “Pretty sure it was Kimberly Darrow.”

  Amanda frowned. “Don’t think I know her.”

  “Neither do I. She’s in the physics class I’m assisting.”

  “Physics, not chemistry?”

  “Right.”

  “Then what was she doing by Clark Hall?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  I glanced at Lomen again. He was still gazing at the menu, but I had the feeling he was listening.

  “And you’re sure she was dead?”

  “Her throat was torn out. I think her neck was broken, too.”

  Lomen’s gaze shifted to me. “Torn?”

  I looked back into those green eyes, wanting to drown in them. “Yeah,” I said in a low voice. “Ripped. Not just a knife.”

  Amanda’s attacker had used a knife. One small, clean cut. Of course, I had interrupted her, and Lomen had come in right after me, at which point she abandoned her prey.

  “Did they ever catch that woman?” I asked, still gazing at Lomen.

  He blinked, then looked back at the menu. I turned to Amanda. “The one who was after you?”

  “She was caught,” Amanda said in a small voice.

  I hadn’t heard anything about it on the news.

  Our drinks arrived in colorful mock-Fiesta-ware
mugs. We were silent while the waitress set them before us.

  “So, have you decided?” she said with a cheery smile.

  “You hungry?” Amanda asked me.

  I had a mouthful of water already. I shook my head. Amanda handed the menus to the waitress.

  “Just the drinks for now. Thanks.”

  Deprived of the menu, Lomen stared at the table top. Avoiding my gaze?

  Crap.

  I drank some more water, grateful for the clean, cold taste of it. I swished it around, trying not to make a production of rinsing my mouth. When I felt fresher I sipped my coffee. Too strong. I added some cream, stirred, sipped again.

  “Did you see anyone?” Amanda’s voice was low.

  I shook my head. “It looked like she’d been there a while.”

  Amanda traded a glance with Lomen. “Seen anything else...weird...lately?”

  “Compared with a corpse? No.”

  Amanda picked up her orange mug and took a long pull. I got the impression she had something more to say, so I waited.

  “Well.” Amanda cleared her throat. “I’m sorry that happened to you, and I hope it all works out all right, but I’m actually glad you texted me. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you.”

  That caught me off guard. We weren’t friends, really. More like acquaintances. Amanda worked at the library, and I occasionally bugged her for books that other people were late in returning. Other than that one day when she was attacked in the library restroom, we hadn’t done much more than exchange passing hellos.

  I waited. She took another swig of coffee.

  “Would you maybe be interested in a part-time job?”

  I thought about the lab, and my assistant-teaching, and my double major. “I’m a little booked up.”

  “This is a start-up. It’s pure research. Not lucrative, but interesting.”

  I remembered the conversation she was referring to, in her hospital room last summer, about career possibilities. The smart path for me was into some lucrative science, like pharmaceuticals, but I was drawn more toward innovation. Hence the double major in physics and chemistry. I was still trying to make up my mind.

  “I’m listening,” I said.