A Killing in the Valley

by JF Freedman

  “No, of course not.” Luke hesitated. “Is it a woman?”

  “A woman?”

  “A woman who can’t afford to be associated with you publicly.”

  “Like what, a hooker? I’ve never paid for sex. I don’t need to.”

  “A married woman.”

  Steven rocked in his chair. “Oh, mother. That’s a good one. You think I might be willing to get convicted of murder to protect some married woman’s honor?”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  Steven shook his head. “I’m respectful of women, and I believe in keeping a confidence, but no way would I give up my life so some married lady doesn’t get in trouble with her husband.”

  “Level with me, Steven,” Luke implored. “You didn’t have an affair with a married woman that you’re covering up.”

  Steven shook his head forcefully. “I’m not saying I haven’t fucked married chicks, but I wasn’t boning one that afternoon.” He grimaced. “I wish I had been. Then I’d have an alibi you’d believe.”

  “What about with a man?”

  It took a second for the words to sink in—then Steven shot out of his chair. “Are you insane?” His face was beet-red. “Are you fucking out of your mind? You’re accusing me of being with a man? Having sex with a man?”

  “I’m asking. I have to cover all the bases.”

  “Well, the answer is no!” Steven shouted. He backed away from the table as if Luke was contagious with some infectious disease. “You think I’m gay?” he asked in disbelief.

  “I don’t think anything, Steven. I’m asking. I have to ask.”

  Steven’s eyes went dead. “I am not gay. I do not fuck men. I do not let men fuck me, or suck me, or do anything sexual with me.” He fell back against the kitchen counter. “Where the fuck did this bullshit come from? Did somebody in Tucson tell Kate Blanchard I was gay?”

  Luke shook his head. “No. But there was an inference.”

  “From who?” Steven demanded.

  “One of your coworkers. There was no accusation of anything,” he reiterated. “It was more of an impression. Kate felt strongly enough about it that she thought we needed to pursue it. So I am.”

  Steven groaned. “Was it Levine?”

  “Levine was one of the paramedics you worked with last summer?” Luke asked. He knew, but he wanted to hear it from Steven.

  “Yes,” Steven said grimly. “He was my trainer. I worked under him.”

  Maybe they had hit pay dirt, Luke thought. “What about him?”

  Steven took a deep breath to gather himself. He sat down again. “After I finished my last shift on my last day of work, we went out for drinks. All the guys and women I’d worked with. It’s intense, what we do, you form tight friendships. I was close to almost all of them, Levine included. He was like a big brother to me, because of being my trainer.

  “I knew he was bent that way, but he’d never made a move on me,” he continued. “I didn’t give a shit, I’m not homophobic, I have gay friends. You do your thing, I’ll do mine, we respect each other.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table. “We hit a bunch of bars, having a good old time, getting more and more shitfaced. None of us were on call, so we didn’t have to monitor how much we drank. Which was a copious amount. By the time the last group staggered out of the last bar, nobody was feeling any pain. None of us were in any shape to drive, so we grabbed a couple of cabs. Levine and me live in the same area, so we shared a cab. He was going to drop me off, then continue on to his place.”

  Steven stopped to refill his glass from the tap. He drank half of it down in one swallow, then continued.

  “By the time we got to my apartment, I was blotto. I couldn’t walk on my own, I could barely sit up in the cab. All I can remember is Levine getting me out of the cab and helping me to my apartment. We got into the apartment—he had to put his hands in my pants pocket to fish out the key—and I collapsed on the sofa. I share the apartment with Tyler, but he was off visiting his family, so we were alone.

  “I just wanted to crash. I didn’t give a shit about taking my clothes off or anything. I’d deal with it in the morning. Levine was standing there—I could hardly make him out, he was real fuzzy-looking, that’s how drunk I was—and he’s saying he’ll put me to bed. I kind of mumbled thanks, but you don’t need to, and then he’s taking off my shoes, and my socks, and he’s helping me out of my shirt. I’m lying there like a flounder, too drunk to stop him, and not figuring it out, what’s going on. It’s like my mother undressing me when I was a kid.”

  He paused again before continuing. “So then he pulled my pants off and I’m sitting there in nothing but my Jockeys, and he started to take them off, too, and I’m drunk as hell, I’ve never in my life been that drunk, but I knew what was going on. I grabbed his hand and pulled it off my shorts and told him he didn’t need to do that, that was enough help. He stopped for a minute, and I’m thinking—don’t forget, I’m bombed out of my gourd, I can’t think for shit—that it’s cool, he’s going to leave. And then he leaned down, and he pulled them down to my knees, and he grabbed my cock, and he said, ‘It’s beautiful. I knew it would be.’ Like he was talking about the Mona Lisa or something.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, a nervous gesture. “I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. You know what I was thinking, in my totally inebriated state? That I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He was my friend, and I liked him. I knew he was gay, but he’d never made a move on me. But here I was, drunk, naked, and he couldn’t resist the temptation.”

  Steven stopped again to drink more water. “I’ve never told anyone this,” he said to Luke. “Not a soul.”

  “I’m your lawyer,” Luke assured him. “Anything we talk about is privileged.”

  Steven breathed a sigh of relief, “That’s good to know.” He put his glass down.

  “I knew what he was going to do—go down on me. One part of me thought, why not let him? It wouldn’t mean anything, and he’d be happy. I was leaving the next day to go on the trip with Tyler, I didn’t ever have to see Levine again. But the other half of me freaked. Getting sucked off by a man? I couldn’t deal with it.”

  “So what did you do?” Luke asked.

  “I kicked him in the face. Right in the nose. I broke his nose. The poor bastard started bleeding like a stuck pig. There was blood all over his shirt. He ran into the bathroom to get a towel. I pulled my shorts back up and put on my pants.

  “He came back into the room with a towel covering his face. He took it away from his face, which was covered with his blood, and he said, ‘I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?’

  “We stared at each other for a couple of seconds. Then he turned and ran out. And that was the last time I saw him.”

  Luke felt as if the air had been sucked out of the kitchen. “You haven’t heard from him since?”

  “No.” Steven looked away, toward the hills outside the window. “I’ve played sports all my life. The jock world is real harsh on gays—you’re a former jock, you know about that. It’s like if you’re not ranting against homosexuals, your own masculinity gets called into question. You know what I’m talking about—if you really want to insult another athlete, you call him a faggot. Yet at the same time, there’s constant intimacy and nudity in the locket room.”

  He turned back, looking hard at Luke. “But there’s a line, and you never cross it. I’ve played grab ass in the locker room—every athlete has. But it never, ever becomes sexual. That’s one reason it freaked me out. But there was another one, that’s even more important, because it was personal. I was a victim. If I had been a little more wasted, or if I wasn’t a six-two, hundred-ninety-pound man in great shape, I wouldn’t have been able to stop him.”

  He shuddered, thinking back on it. “And so was he, by the way: a victim. He never would have made that kind of play for me when we were sober; but drunk, he couldn’t restrain himself.” He shook his head sadly. “The poor bastard. He
must have been as freaked the next morning as I was.”

  Quite a story, Luke thought. Telling it took some heavy cojones. “That’s a compassionate way to look at it,” he told Steven. “Personally, I’d have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who tried to assault me, no matter what the circumstances.”

  He gathered up his files. “I guess we can put that issue to bed. I’m glad we got it out in the open. But I’m going to say this again, Steven. If there’s anything you haven’t told us, don’t hold back.”

  Steven shook his head forcefully. “There isn’t.”

  “Fair enough.” Luke put the files back in his briefcase and stood up. “I’ve wrung you out enough for one session. We’ll talk again in a couple of days.” He gave Steven a friendly tap on the shoulder. “Hang in there, man.”

  Steven’s response was both blunt and cheerless. “Do I have a choice?”

  Sophia disengaged from Jeremy and sat up on his bed. “Let’s take a break,” she said, fanning herself. “You’re getting me awfully hot, Jeremy,” she teased him.

  “Maybe you should take off your blouse,” he suggested, trying to sound cool and casual.

  She made a face at him. “You know the rules,” she reminded him. “This time, anyway,” she added with a broad hint. Even though she wasn’t very experienced, she knew enough about boys to know you keep something in reserve until you’re sure you’re ready to commit. To complicate matters, sooner or later he would know the real reason she had come on to him, and that would kill the romance, unless they were able to work past that. A dubious possibility. More likely, he’d be enraged with her for conning him. Which was why she was silently chastising herself for her lack of honesty.

  But it couldn’t be helped. She had a mission that was more important than Jeremy Musgrove’s feelings. If, in the end, it was a misunderstanding, she would explain why she had done it. Until then, she was going to push this as hard as she could.

  “Want something to drink?” he asked her.

  “Okay. But no alcohol.”

  She had driven herself over to his apartment after play practice, and she didn’t want to have anything on her breath, in case she got stopped on the way home. She wasn’t old enough to drink legally, and she wasn’t about to chance losing her license because of a beer or shot of tequila.

  She pretended not to notice the erection straining his pants as he got up and went into the kitchen. He returned with a can of Bud Light for himself and a Coke for her. They sat on the bed with their backs to the headboard. She was wearing jeans. He ran his hand along her thigh.

  “When is this play of yours?” he asked.

  “Weekend after next. There’s three performances—Friday and Saturday night, and Sunday afternoon.”

  “Can I come to one?” He sounded genuinely interested, rather than a canned response that might help him get into her pants.

  She turned to him in surprise. “Sure. It’s only a high school play, but I’d definitely like you to.”

  “Which one?”

  “Any of them,” she answered. “Maybe Saturday. I think that’ll be the best. Get rid of opening night jitters.”

  Kate was coming Friday night. She wasn’t ready to have her mother and her new boyfriend (okay, that was a stretch, but he was showing the signs of wanting to spend a lot of time with her) in the same space, especially if she wasn’t around to monitor whatever conversations they might have about her. She absolutely didn’t want him to know that her mother was a detective on the Maria Estrada murder case. That would freak him out, and would derail her scheme before she could get it rolling down the right track.

  “A week from Saturday, then,” he acknowledged. “I’ll put it on my calendar.”

  “So how’s school?” she asked him, deflecting the conversation back to her agenda. “Getting any better?”

  “I’m getting through it,” he answered dully. “Some days are better than others.”

  She leaned on her elbow and stared at him. “I think you’re more bummed-out about your roommate bailing on you than you’ll admit. I’ll bet that’s a big reason you’re down.”

  He stared at her. “You’re pretty wise for a girl who’s still in high school,” he said. The tone of his voice made his remark both a compliment and a puzzled observation.

  She blushed. “Not very. I just know what it’s like to lose a friend unexpectedly.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, well, you’re right. It did bother me. Still does. I wanted a roommate. Now I’m off-campus and I’m living on my own.”

  “What was his reason?”

  “He couldn’t get some of the classes he wanted, which meant he wasn’t going to be able to graduate on schedule. And there were personal reasons, too.”

  “Like what?” She kept her tone easy, so he wouldn’t realize she was pumping him.

  Either he didn’t notice her pushiness, or he didn’t want to call her on it. Or maybe he had been wanting to vent about this, and he’d finally found a sympathetic ear.

  “Some trouble involving a girl.” He took a hit off his beer. “I shouldn’t talk about that,” he said guardedly. “It isn’t my business, and I don’t know for sure.”

  “Boys have girl trouble, girls have boy trouble,” Sophia agreed. “That’s what screws the human race up ninety-nine percent of the time.”

  “Speaking from experience?” he asked. He was trying to keep it light, but she could hear the anxiety. The unasked questions: is there someone else out there other than me? Am I going to get dumped? Am I going to be hurt?

  “Not personally,” she answered. “I haven’t gotten close enough to a boy yet to feel the pain of unrequited young love. But I’m sure I will someday, and I’m sure it’ll hurt. It happens to everyone, doesn’t it?”

  “I hope not to you,” he said sincerely.

  You are such a sweet puppy dog, she thought. The perfect starter boyfriend.

  She knew she could push him further. He was afraid of saying “no” to her. “So this girl who messed up your roommate’s mind,” she continued. “What’s his name again?” He hadn’t told her.

  “Peter,” he answered. “Peter Baumgartner.”

  “Peter, right. Was it a girl from school or a girl from home?”

  “Neither one,” he answered. “He met this girl, nothing much happened, and then things turned to shit.”

  “She dumped him?”

  “She died.”

  Sophia gave out a low whistle. “What happened to her? Some kind of accident or something?” She hesitated. “Was he with her when…”

  “She died?” Jeremy shook his head. “No. I don’t know what happened to her,” he continued. “All I know is she showed up dead, later on.” He wrapped his arms around his legs, as if to form a protective shell. “He only met her once, for a couple of hours. I was with him, so I met her, too. It’s one of those incredible things you hear about, but you never expect it could happen to you—being around someone who died. Someone young.” He turned to her. “Like you.”

  She involuntarily jerked back from him. “Like me how?”

  “She was your age.” He paused. “I think she went to your high school.”

  Sophia inhaled and exhaled slowly. “You’re not talking about the girl who was murdered this fall, are you? Maria Estrada was her name.”

  Jeremy licked his lips nervously. “I didn’t know her name. I didn’t even know about her dying until weeks later—I don’t read the newspaper much or watch the local news. I’m still not completely sure.”

  “But your roommate must have known about it,” Sophia pressed. “If her dying—being killed—caused him to leave school.”

  Jeremy shook his head obstinately. “It’s not like that. It’s not that simple,” he insisted. “It’s like all this shit was coming down on his head, and then this girl he’d met one time turns up dead…”

  “The police say she was murdered,” Sophia interrupted.

  “Killed, murdered, how do they know?” he countered. “They
weren’t there, and dead women tell no tales. The point is, he had been with her just before she died. He was afraid of being connected to it.”

  “Do the police know about this?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “No.”

  “Why not? Didn’t you go to them? Did he go to them?”

  “No,” he answered obstinately.

  “Why not?” she asked again. “It could be important.”

  “Or it could get us into a shitload of trouble for nothing. Hell, I’m not positive the girl that was found out on that ranch is the same girl we met. Who my friend met,” he quickly readjusted.

  “How could you get into trouble?” she pressed. “Do you know anything about how she died? I mean, was killed?”

  “No, I don’t. But we were with her…he was,” he corrected himself again. He wiped his face in his hands. “I shouldn’t have told you this,” he lamented. “I should have kept my mouth shut.” He wheeled to face her. “Are you going to tell anyone about what I just told you?”

  “Who would I tell?” she parried. Knowing full well who.

  “The police. Who else?”

  “But you didn’t have anything to do with Maria getting killed.” She paused. “Did he? I mean, does your roommate know anything about it?”

  Jeremy looked away. “No. He doesn’t.” He looked back at her. “It’s irrelevant now, which is why I didn’t go to the police when I finally figured out who that girl might be. Might be, I want to be clear about that. I don’t know for sure.”

  Yes, you do, she thought. You’re perfectly clear about it. As clear as my friend Tina is. Who didn’t go to the police, either.

  “You should talk to somebody about this,” she told him.

  “Like who? I shouldn’t have even told you. Shit,” he groaned.

  “I’m not going to tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she assured him. Which was a blatant lie, she couldn’t wait to tell her mother. “But you could tell a lawyer. Lawyers are sworn to secrecy.”

  Jeremy stared at the ceiling. “Like I said, it doesn’t matter anymore.”