by Adira August
“Must have been a real relief to find an adult who didn’t just blow you off,” Hunter said. “Sometimes, when I was young, I thought I was the only one in the world who knew things other people didn’t.”
Asher scowled. “I told him stuff. About Minnie.”
Hunter shrugged. “That makes sense, if he was interested in the same kind of thing.”
“But I shouldn’t have. It was supposed to all be secret. … You think he’s using me to spy on Minnie.”
It was a statement, and Hunter knew better than to deny it. “I do think he’s using you, but I’m not sure what for. Were there other things he asked about, besides Minnie?”
“He never asks about anything! Just listens to whatever I talk about. Nobody ever listened to me like that. He smiles all the time. Like it makes him happy to be with me. ”
“But he doesn’t feel happy to you, does he?”
A long hesitation. Asher cocked his head and his eyes slid off Hunter’s face. He looked sad. “You were ten, too, weren’t you?”
Hunter resisted the impulse to push away from the boy. “I was ten when my dad died, if that’s what you mean.”
Asher nodded. “Me, too.” He cocked his head, still looking at the wall over Hunt’s shoulder. “But your dad loves you. He did before, too. When he was here.”
When Asher finally looked at him, Hunter saw an endless chasm of darkness in his eyes—an abyss a boy could disappear into forever.
Hunt sat forward and put his hands on Asher’s shoulders, bent down a little to see as far into him as he could, to fill him with the strength he knew he’d need.
“You don’t get to die, Asher. Not now, not until it’s time. This kind of pain, the pain of no love, of being alone, the empty agony of it no one else understands, you don’t let that kill you. You hang on until you grow up. You hang on because you know, Asher, you know that it’s love that sent my father to you, love that fuels it all, and you are fucking surrounded by a cloud of people who care about you, admire you, love you, and lead you.”
Tears tracked down the boy’s face. Hunter understood. People on the other side couldn’t hug you.
Hunter let himself smile a little. “And besides, there’s going to be a girl, soon.”
“No there’s not,” Asher said in a tone close to normal teenaged disdain. “Girls hate me.”
Hunter let him go and sat back. “Girls are fascinated by the stuff you can do. Just don’t be so good at it.”
“What?”
“Take it from someone older and wiser. Get some Tarot cards. Doesn’t matter that you don’t need them. The cards make people feel okay with the reading. It’s the cards doing it. You’re just reading them instead of being somebody who freaks them out.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Girls are very interesting people, Asher. They have a different perspective. They’ll come to you for readings. Leave out the bad parts, though.”
“I can get the cards online?”
“Is there anything you can’t get online?” Hunter stood up. “Tell you what. When this investigation is over, I’ll take you to lunch. You and Cam. I know a psychic shop on East Colfax. Best to see the cards and handle them before you pick them. My treat.”
“Okay. Sounds weird, though.”
Hunter laughed. “I know. Finish your movie.”
“Do you think the investigation will be over soon?” Asher realized he wanted very much to spend an afternoon hanging around with Hunter Dane and Camden Snow.
“I think so. I just have to talk to someone.” He opened the door.
“Who?” Asher asked.
“Jason Furney.”
“CAN I ASK SOMETHING?” Twee folded her hands on the table, looking earnest.
Hunter paused halfway back to the table.
Leon nodded.
“Why did you put that thing under him?”
Leon’s face froze.
Twee reached past Merisi and put a hand on Leon’s. “A million holes, okay? A million ways we know you’re lying.”
Leon’s face closed up. “I want a lawyer.”
“I think you can find listings online,” Hunter said. He sat down with the others. “No idea where to find a phone directory, anymore. The library’s just up the street; they can probably help you.”
“I don’t have money; you have to get me one,” Leon said as if Hunter should know better.
“That’s for people who are under arrest and are charged with crimes. You came in voluntarily and you’re free to leave at any time.” He gestured at the door. “It’s almost closing time, Mr.Hughes, and I want to talk to your old boss before I go home. So, unless there’s anything else?” Hunter took a swig of water.
“I killed him.”
“I believe you.”
“Then you have to arrest me!”
“Ms. Natani?” Hunter said.
“No reasonable likelihood of successful prosecution,” she replied. “Don’t have the evidence to arrest him.”
“Doctor Gordi?”
“The times that the body was in different positions according to this witness are impossible, according to the evidence.”
“Ms. Twee?”
“The witness doesn’t have critical information about objects in the PEV with the body that had to have been placed there deliberately.”
“You’re right, you know,” Hunter said to Leon. “You could have come back in that PEV and gotten home and probably no one would notice anything out of the ordinary. But then, how would you have moved the car? So that wasn’t your plan.”
“You don’t know.” Leon said.
“Yeah, I do. You didn’t want to be noticed. But hitchhiking up Bear Creek Canyon is a sure way to get noticed by everyone, including one of the deputies. They all know you, right? Know everyone at Minnie Houston’s?”
Leon remained stubbornly silent.
“You had help. My bet is on Houston as planner,” Hunter said. “Natani, how’re you coming with that warrant?”
“Good to go any time,” she said.
“She didn’t know anything about anything!” Leon snarled at him.
Hunter pointed at the screen.
Cam touched a key.
The image was huge and dark and grainy, but unmistakably Minnie Houston in her papasan chair with the afghan pulled up to her neck. One side of her face was blotchy with bruises that showed as black stains. Her eye was swollen shut, her lower lip split open. The afghan failed to hide the elongated stains around her neck from fingers that would have cut off her air.
Leon’s hands flew to his face, and his head dropped.
“Gordi?”
“The victim had hair and skin caught under one of his fingernails. The hair did not belong to a human of African ancestry.”
“It’s Minnie’s hair, Leon. He was hurting her. You saved her. Someone helped you. I do believe you killed him. What I don’t know is if you commited a crime when you did.” He nodded to Cam. “Look at the screen, please, Leon.”
He peeked and saw Minnie’s image was gone. He dropped his hands, defeated.
On the monitor was a slideshow, frame after frame of the men Merisi and Twee had gotten images of.
“Please tell me the names of these men, Mr. Hughes.” Hunter’s tone made clear it was an order, regardless of the wording.
Leon started naming them, talking about them, about how they suffered, who they killed, how Minnie and her work helped them. How Asher could deliver messages from the other side, telling them what the dead had to say, how they were at peace, if they forgave their killers. Once he started talking, he told them everything about the men and what they did together.
The last shot was daylight. It wasn’t a still frame, but a moving shot up the hill from the path, holding for a few seconds on the apparently empty deck railing and hot tub. The top of a man’s face appeared, and the image froze.
“Max,” Leon said, h
is contempt obvious.
“Go on,” Hunter said.
“That’s Max Thomas. Said he was career Army officer. Military Intelligence Officer, my ass. All bullshit, we said.”
“We?”
“Me and the guys. You know your own, right? Who’s served, who’s put their ass on the line.” He looked to Hunter who said nothing, but agreed.
“So, this Max. He lived there, too?”
Leon shook his head. “There’s empty properties between Ms.Houston’s and Davey’s. Max has a camper on one of ‘em up near the road. Said he’d marry Ms. Houston, but wouldn’t until she went public.” He looked like he wanted to spit. “Almost got her killed is what he did!”
Leon shook his head. “But he makes her happy.”
“He’s the one who helped you.” It was a statement.
Leon’s lips pressed.
“Hey, that’s Jason!”
Every head swivelled to the boy paused halfway to the hall door. He looked abashed.
“Sorry, I had to use the bathroom. But … that’s Minnie’s. What’s Jason doing by the hot tub?”
Cam’s fingers were already flying over his keyboard. Images and websites popped on and off the big monitor until the Army 201 file for Maxwell Dean Thomas. West Point. Captain. Retired. There were pictures.
Asher finally noticed Leon and wandered up to the table.
“You got the wrong one,” Leon said. He caught sight of Asher. “Hey, li’l dude.”
“He’s passed,” Asher said about the man on screen.
Cam searched. Driver’s license from Virginia, vehicle registration on a 2015 Chevy pick-up. Google Images brought up a grinning Max Thomas holding an enormous brown trout in his arms. He was standing behind a pick-up truck with a camper shell. Part of the license plate was visible. Three numbers matched the registration.
“That’s his camper, but that’s not Max,” Leon said.
“Asher?” Hunter asked.
Asher shrugged. “I never saw the camper Leon’s talking about. Or that man in the picture.”
Hunter got up. “Natani, get Virginia on Maxwell Thomas’ whereabouts. Twee, rip every fucking thing we found in that cave apart. Merisi, get Jeffco up to Houston’s for a welfare check, warn them Max/Jason is wanted as a John Doe for felony murder.”
“Warrant will be up in ten,” Natani said.
Hunter grabbed his jacket from his office. “Leon, you’re under arrest for interfering with a crime scene and being held pending Jefferson County’s decision to charge you. Merisi, drop him off at the jail.”
Mike Merisi was already on the phone with Jeffco, he nodded.
“Then see if you can find the camper and this Max/Jason John Doe. Keep me informed of every step, I’m going to Houston’s.” Hunter rapped the table, considered, and walked away.
“Dane!”
Dan Gordi was still with them from a box in the corner of the screen. Cam enlarged it.
“Don’t forget that your victim was armed,” Gordi said.
“Where’s the gun, Leon?” Hunter asked.
He shook his head. “He had it when Max drove him off in the cart.”
“So you did take the guy’s car to pick up Max?”
Leon nodded.
Hunter was out the door. He almost ran over Asher in the hallway. “Where’re you going?”
The boy looked embarrassed. Hunter shut the door behind him and called for the elevator.
“I have to go to the bathroom. Bad,” Asher said.
“Go, then. But don’t go back in Ms. Natani’s office when you come back.” The elevator door slid open. “I need you helping Cam while I’m gone. You know what everyone looks like. He’ll keep in touch with me.”
“Okay.”
The elevator door closed and he pushed “1”. Descending slowly, Hunter’s sense of impending danger increased. He wished he’d taken the stairs.
MERISI UNLOCKED Leon’s cuffs in the holding area, while he waited for the sheriffs to come for him.
“Nobody’s advised you yet,” he said to Leon, searching him.
“Right.”
“So anything I ask and you say, we can’t use that in court, you understand?”
Leon shrugged. “I guess.”
“Why’d you come in and confess and then lie about it?”
“She’s hurt real bad and I didn’t want anyone botherin’ her. If it was just me, and you had me, she could heal up and move on.”
“Who’s the guy you killed? Why would he be attacking an old woman?”
Leon shifted toward Mike with an in-your-face expression. “How about you answer a question. Why’d Ash think Max was a guy named Jason?”
“You call him ‘Ash’?”
“Yeah. What kind of name for a man is ‘Asher’?”
“And you never heard of anybody named Jason Furney?”
Leon grinned and laughed out loud. “Oh, man, I thought detectives were s’posed to be smart! Jason Furney’s not a person.”
“No?” Merisi wondered if Leon was protecting someone else.
“It’s an operations code name.”
“You mean like ‘Shock and Awe’?”
“Just like it. ‘Cept the point is to avoid both those things.”
HUNTER’S CELL sat in the charger/holder on his dash with the volume turned up. Hunter sat in the driver’s seat dealing with a pressing sense of urgency by reviewing his actions, assumptions and conclusions. Or trying to.
Urgency was winning.
Coming out of the the building to find a flyer stuck under his windshield wiper, he’d yanked it out so hard he tore it. He’d had to chase a piece blowing around the lot and run it back to a trashcan, before he could get going. And now, he sat in rush-hour traffic three blocks from the office, unable to shake the idea he would be late. Late for what, he had no clue. But the tension wouldn’t leave him.
Hunter lived in a recreational marijuana state. He knew it would quell the urgency, but it wouldn’t assist in the life-or-death decision making he sensed was approaching. Cannabis wasn’t an answer, but Hunter knew how to get endocannabinoids and a few other calming, focusing chemicals working in his brain.
He thought about Cam. Cam’s palm against the inside of his thigh. Warm and strong and so close … Tight pressure between his legs caused him to shift - “Don’t” - His cock pulsed. He felt the cascade of endorphins take the stress like water sluicing over his skin took the lather.
He wanted this case over so he could be naked under Cam. Or naked on top of Cam. Or in any close proximity to Cam, who should be naked, too.
Traffic moved; he shifted into first.
Jefferson County Sheriff’s were not fools, Hunter knew. They were close to the development, familiar with the principals in the case. He’d left nothing undone. His team was on top of it.
He shifted into second, traffic moving more steadily.
Asher, Twee and Cam were safe at the office. He had no reasonable explanation for his growing sense of helplessness.
His cell sounded. Cam.
“Go ahead,” he answered.
“Fairfax County in Virginia has Maxwell Thomas listed as missing. Sort of.”
Hunter shifted into third as he got on Sixth Avenue westbound, a street that became a highway. “Is that an official designation in Virginia?” He flipped his visor down against the setting sun.
“‘Undetermined’ is the word,” Cam came back. “His ex-wife reported him missing about a year ago. His friends said he went on an extended fishing trip when he retired. Like across the country and up into Canada. His cousin said the ex is a bitch. His house payments are up-to-date. But his mail’s been stopped for a year with no forwarding address. Fairfax County and the U.S. Post Office would like a shout if we run into him.”
“Can we check his cell phone activity?”
“Natani’s looking for a friendly judge, but Virginia couldn’t get one. No evidence of foul p
lay and the guy’s an adult. He can go fishing for a year and not talk to his ex if he wants to.”
“Okay. Listen, I haven’t been to Houston’s place from the road, how is it marked?”
“It’s not. Take a right when you enter the development. You can’t miss Morganfeld’s. Houston will be the next drive on the left.”
“Thanks. Keep me posted.” Hunt switched off. He shifted into fourth as he passed the Jefferson County line, and made a new call.
“Merisi.”
“Location?”
“Approaching Dinosaur Ridge.”
“How the hell did you get so far ahead of me?” Hunter squinted at the hogback in the distance.
“I have a siren.”
“I want you operating on an assumption, tonight, detective.”
“Have been for awhile,” he came back. “I have dinner plans and I am not missing them. Also, Leon told me something.” He explained about Jason Furney.
“Huh. So what’s with the books?”
“I don’t know; neither did Leon. Said Max liked leaving them around. Like it was a private joke. I wondered if it was a signal of some sort to some handler with access to police evidence reports. To show he’d accomplished the task.”
“An interesting idea. I’m thinking it belongs in a movie plot.”
“This whole case is a movie plot.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Hunter admitted. “Okay. Meet me at Houston’s. Jeffco should get there ahead of us. If not, wait for me.”
“Ten-four,” Merisi responded, tongue-in-cheek, and clicked off.
Mike Merisi absolutely intended to get to Houston’s before Hunter Dane, even though traffic had slowed on the hogback road into Morrison and the entrance to Bear Creek Canyon. He was fairly certain Dane would take the highway as much as possible. But even though Merisi’s siren wouldn’t help on the narrow canyon roads, he still had enough lead to beat his boss to the development.
Mike Merisi grinned. He did like beating Hunter Dane.
“WES.”
“Yeah, Sarge?” Deputy Westin snapped a belt keeper and shut his locker door.
The duty Sergeant handed him a call slip. “Dispatch held this over from day shift. Denver wants a welfare check on number twenty Hanging Valley and a locate on a male.”
