“Seriously, no,” Nick said.
Crash stopped tapping his fingers on the edge of the drawer and turned to look at Nick head-on.
“You honestly mean to tell me you have no interest in seeing the handiwork of Sparrow Falls’s number one murderer?” Crash asked.
“Which one?” Nick asked. His curiosity had been piqued at that and even though he cursed himself and told himself no, he was still intrigued. The look on Crash’s face said that he was well aware of that, too.
“The classic, the old guard,” Crash said. “None of that slash and tear shit for this good old boy, no, sir. I find it all rather elegantly grotesque.”
There it was again: Crash being a fucking head case, but Nick didn’t actually note any admiration in his voice despite his words. It threw him for a loop, but Crash threw him for a loop. He was impossible to get a read on outside of this guy is crazy. But even that didn’t put Nick off the way it initially had because Crash had shown him that he wasn’t all crazy; he was also a little lonely and in need of a friend.
Nick was yet again reminded of Nancy, Hylas and Wes, all of whom kept saying he was actually a nice guy. He had his moments when he wasn’t so nice, but there were times and situations where Nick caught a glimpse of the person he could have been—maybe should have been. Times like when he was talking to Crash and arguing with himself about whether or not he should shag ass out of there or stay and talk because Crash wasn’t that bad after all, he was only a little eccentric.
Still, maybe he should make his excuses and leave, come back some other night when dark temptation wasn’t lying on a slab in the morgue with the oddball attendant offering him an up close look at it. Then again, the serial killer Crash was talking about had been active since Nick was in high school. He had never been caught, they had never even come close to catching him.
People whispered about voodoo and Devil worship, plain old generic witchcraft. The small Wicca community had gotten up in arms when it was suggested they might have something to do with it. They had staged a memorable protest on the grounds of the town square (triangle), pacing around in robes whilst chanting, Do no harm. Do no harm. They seemed to have made their point because at least to Nick’s knowledge, Wiccans had never again been bandied about with the other theories about the killer.
The killer was a part of Nick’s history, his young adulthood and late adolescence. He had been front page news for a long, long time and even after all the miles between himself and Sparrow Falls, Nick still remembered that. He couldn’t think of his hometown without thinking about the scores of bodies piled up on the pages of his life story. The new killer had touched Nick’s life in a very personal way with both Hunter and Chantilly Washington.
The old killer had seeped into the very pores of Nick’s existence like a slow stain. He was very much a fixture of Sparrow Falls, having touched not only Nick’s life, but the lives of every resident in some way or another. If they hadn’t lost someone to the killer then they likely knew someone who had or at the very least had seen news coverage of the murders in the local paper for a large chunk of their lives. There were some people who could not even remember a time when he wasn’t there. Even more than the vague memories Nick had carried with him even after leaving; the history of it, of the way the killer had touched so many lives—even more than he had taken—lurked behind Nick’s temptation to sneak a peek.
“Shit,” he said.
“Good to know you see it my way,” Crash said. He began to lower the zipper on the bag. “He’s already been autopsied, so this is totally kosher, in case you’re wondering. Well, not totally kosher, I’m not supposed to be flashing the corpses around to people, but here’s a secret between you and me—the cameras in here have been out since August. No one will ever know.”
Nick moved closer by inches until he was standing right beside Crash. The first thing he saw was the chalk-white face, made even whiter in contrast with the black bag. It was a young man, androgynous and lovely, almost fey in appearance. There were no flower petals spilling from his sewn-up lips, but Nick knew about them and could easily imagine them there. The wax was gone from the corpse’s eyes, save what had been caught in his eyelashes. It had glued them together in black swoops on his cheeks. The empty holes of his gauged ear piercings were like small, blind eye sockets.
The zipper lowered more and he recoiled as the bag fell open to reveal the surgically precise line curving over the young man’s throat. It had been sewn closed, but it was still horrible to look at. Crash was watching him, gauging his reaction. Waiting to see if Nick would freak out.
He would not. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he didn’t want someone to see him do it. It wasn’t about Crash, it was a lesson he learned when he wound up rubbing elbows with drug dealers and cartels. If you see something, don’t flinch; no matter how horrible it is, don’t look away. Even if you want to scream, bite your tongue and hold it back. He had known through some kind of sick instinct that if he had shown his revulsion and gobsmacked horror at the things he was occasionally forced to witness then he would have been lying there with the dead and if not, then he’d have had a ditch of his very own to rot in not too long after. One thing he was glad of was that no one had ever asked that he touch one of the bodies he’d had the misfortune of seeing. He might have given it all away then.
“More?” Crash asked.
Nick nodded; he might be able to take it, to look right into the cold, dead face of it, but he never had trusted himself to speak, not when he was sober anyway. And he was still curious, compelled by some twisted urge to see up close the handiwork of the bogeyman that had become a part of his mental scrapbook.
Crash pulled the zipper down farther. The action was almost tender, considered, like he was undressing the dead man, though his eyes never left Nick. He could feel Crash’s gaze on him, boring into the side of his face, but he didn’t flinch from that either. The Y incision on the torso had cut through an elaborate geometric tattoo around the man’s collarbone that angled down into a point. It looked like lace made of small triangles and curving lines; in a few years it would have been faded and blurred, but it was still fresh, new enough to be strikingly pretty against the creamy white of his skin.
Even in life, Nick could guess that the guy had been pale. He was tall and willowy thin; his ribs jutted against his skin sharp as saw blades. The sealed rifts on his arms were almost alarming in how pink and raw they looked against such pallor. Nick could hardly imagine how red they must have been when he was first discovered. Even with all of his blood gone, cuts like that would have exposed muscle, would have gone right down to the bone. There had to have been some color left that deep down. The cuts extended from his wrists to the crooks of his elbows, so straight the killer might have used a ruler to guide his blade. Or maybe it was just a case of practice makes perfect.
“More?” Crash asked.
Nick nodded, aware of the sound of his own breathing, the maddening tick of the clock on the hideously painted wall. Water dripped in the big industrial sink that stood in the corner of the room, each drop of water like the thud of a stone against the stainless steel. The zipper was the sound of tearing fabric, each row of teeth parting a hum along the fine lines left in Nick’s jaws from old fractures. He could have been this kid if he had been a little dumber, a little skinnier, a little more vulnerable looking. Even with the way he looked, he hadn’t escaped unharmed living the life he had; he hadn’t got off scot-free. Looking at the angled cuts on the young man’s inner thighs, his penis a limp afterthought against his shaved pubic mound, Nick thought, No, this still could have been me.
He thought it and he wondered how it had come to pass that it hadn’t been him. That was the hinge his fascination with the serial killer swung on. Nick had been a prime target back in the good old days of yore; he had led a high risk lifestyle. He was a sex worker, a drug user, an all-around risk taker when it came to things like his health and his life. And yet, he had been passed
over by that hunter of human beings, the man who cleaned up garbage people so well he even emptied their veins.
“More?” Crash asked.
“No,” Nick said. There was nothing left to see but the guy’s bony knees and the razor edge bones of his shins, the blue-white of his feet.
“You sure? He got the arteries in the tops of his feet, too.”
“I said no.” Nick said it through gritted teeth and had to close his eyes, tell himself to calm the fuck down.
He never wound up on the slab because he had been smarter, wiser than this sad young husk of a human being. Nick was still alive because he knew how to stay alive, despite all of his risky behavior. He had never once opened himself up to such violence or even the potential of it because Nick, unlike the whip-thin, pretty dead boy, could fight back. He’d never had the obscured remains of track marks dotting his inner arms or freckling his white-white thighs.
He might be deluding himself, lying to make himself feel better—his luck hadn’t run out yet, not completely. Telling himself that was easier than acknowledging that one day it would, that maybe luck was allotted. He might have gotten a bigger share than the guy he was staring at, but eventually his would run out like everyone else’s and probably a hell of a lot faster because people like Nick used up their luck at an astonishing rate. He reached out, pinched the zipper of the bag between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it up, making sure to keep his hand above the cold, still body. He could still feel the icy draft wafting up from the corpse, touching the tips of his fingers like Jack Frost had his dry ice lips wrapped around them. The bag closed over the guy’s lovely, bloodless face and as Nick once again consigned him to darkness, he found himself stupidly wondering what color his eyes had been.
“You need a drink,” Crash said. “Give me a minute to swap out this guy and Jeb then I’ll take care of you.”
Nick didn’t say anything, didn’t even try to argue because it was true; he did need a drink. He stood back and watched Crash move the young man’s body to an autopsy table long enough to get Jeb over to the drawer so he could put him in it. He did it all with quick efficiency, moving Jeb’s bulk around like he weighed nothing, hefting the fey boy up into the high drawer like his skin and bones were only a sack of feathers. He did it with respect, not something Nick would have expected. Given the little he knew about Crash he would have thought he’d fling them around like glorified sides of beef. It was one more reason Nick thought he had misjudged Crash.
“All right,” Crash said after he had slammed and latched the locker drawer on the murder victim. “Drinks.”
“I brought punch,” Nick said.
“Good to know,” Crash said. “I have the vodka to spike it with. I don’t mind drinking it straight, but mixing it will stave off my getting hideously drunk on the job.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Only occasionally,” Crash said. “I get bored down here and since the cameras are kaput, I see no harm in having a drink some nights. It isn’t like anyone will notice.”
He picked up a cup of punch where it sat on the desk, sniffed it and then bounced lightly on his feet.
“Sherbet punch with cranberry juice,” Crash said. “I love this stuff.”
“Really?” Nick asked. “It looked kind of nasty to me.”
“It definitely is that. Which is why I love it,” Crash said. He opened his bottom desk drawer, produced a fifth of vodka from it and liberally spiked both cups of punch. Before putting the bottle away again, he took a long swig straight from the neck. “Woo! That hits the spot. I like cheap vodka, too. This bad boy is only six dollars and fifty seven cents at the Winn-Dixie and it is grand.”
“That makes no sense,” Nick said. He sipped his punch, found that it wasn’t that bad and sipped again. “It is decent for welfare vodka.”
“You don’t look like the sort of guy who is willing to spend fifty dollars on a fifth of vodka,” Crash said.
“I don’t drink vodka,” Nick said. “But no, I’m not that sort.” He liked whiskey, but only good whiskey and seldom ever treated himself to a bottle of it. On the other hand, he was also blessed with a fondness for cheap beer. Nick liked to think that balanced things out because at least he could keep a twelve-pack in the fridge.
Crash picked up one of the cookies Nick had brought and bit right into it.
“Did you wash your hands?” Nick asked.
“No,” Crash said. “Why?”
“That’s gross.”
“Why is it gross?”
“Because you’ve been handling dead bodies.”
“Only the bags,” Crash said. “I never touched the bodies.”
“Are those bags clean?”
“Clean enough.”
“Yeah, that is fucking gross.”
“Would you feel better if I washed my hands, Nick?”
“Yes. Yes, I would.”
“Then I will be right back,” Crash said. “I didn’t realize you were too much of a lady for all this business of keeping the dead.”
Nick snorted and leaned against the wall by the desk. The big clock said it was eight minutes until midnight, until the beginning of a new year, and it was going to find him standing in the Sparrow Falls morgue. It felt like a rather inauspicious beginning. When Crash came back, Nick asked if he wanted to step outside for some fresh air and a smoke.
Crash wiped his hands on the thighs of his white uniform pants and said, “Sure, why not?”
Outside it was cold and loud, the sounds of fireworks crackling through the air like static bullets. They walked across the street to Margie’s Florist where it was dark; the light in the little parking lot had been burnt out for years. Fireworks lit up the sky above them, brilliant in their sparkling glow, and Nick started to smile. He had not seen fireworks in a long time and they were beautiful, the light and color and sound, the reek of gunpowder in the air, the faraway sizzle of fuses as they were lit. The ratcheting pop-pop-pop of a pack of Black Cats being set off all at once. The whistle and explosion of bottle rockets.
That reminded Nick of the man in the ER earlier that night and he was about to relate the story to Crash when from all around them came voices both distant and near chanting, 3-2-1, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Just like that, the old year was over and the new one was beginning. The night came alive with cheering and the crackle of more fireworks, the colored light show even better than before as people set off their biggest and best, the ones they had saved all night for that very moment.
Nick turned to Crash to wish him a happy new year, spirits buoyant and a smile on his face. Before he could speak, Crash took his face in his hands and pulled him in for a deep kiss. Nick stiffened at the touch of his lips against his and he almost pulled away. He was not used to being kissed, he had not been kissed in so long that he barely remembered what it was like. He and Ioan had kissed a few times, but they never made a habit out of it. Before and after that, Nick was a whore and almost no one ever kissed whores.
It was the knowledge of where their mouths had been, the vague knowing that their lips and tongues had traveled to strange places on even stranger people. It was that a whore was nothing more than a fuck doll, the only difference was they were warmer and more flexible than the average plastic-rubber-vinyl Butt Fuck Biff was. A whore was a toy that would stroke your hair or hold your hand or call you a bad, bad dirty boy. It would even say I love you if you told it to. But you still didn’t kiss a whore because no one made out with their toys, they only played with them then put them away when they were done.
He kissed Crash back though, out of surprise and not knowing what else to do for a moment. He kissed Crash back because he was curious—and curiously starved for that most basic of intimate contact. Nick was well acquainted with whips, chains, handcuffs, butt plugs, spankings, foot worship, double penetration, prostate massage, angry men with fists that could lash out quicker than anyone would ever have thought. He knew sex, from plain old vanilla to the rockiest of rocky road. But
he no longer knew what it was like to stand outside in the cold on New Year’s Eve and kiss someone for no reason other than it was midnight and that’s what people did.
Nick pulled away as he realized that he had never known what that was like. All the sex, all the bed partners, all the filthy kink and dirty talk and he had still missed out on so much. It was sad to finally have that click after so long and on such a beautiful night.
“Why did you do that?” Nick asked.
“Because I wanted to,” Crash said. “I’ve wanted to for a while, but you were not amenable to my overtures.”
“In English, please.”
“I wanted to kiss you, but you wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with me because you thought I was creepy.”
“I still think you’re creepy.”
“Yeah, but you talk to me now. I consider it progress.”
Nick made a soft sound of amusement and licked his lips. They tasted faintly of sugar cookies and vodka.
“Have dinner with me in a couple of days,” Crash said.
Nick put his hands in his pockets and watched the bright lights in the sky. He sighed, breath curling out of his mouth in a frosty cloud. “You don’t have to buy me dinner first,” Nick said. “If you want to fuck, we can fuck. I remember you saying so a while back. So, why not?”
Crash wasn’t so bad, he thought he’d been right about that. Hell, he could fuck him for free. He’d been blowing Wes with no charge since before Christmas; he didn’t see any reason not to add another to the list. He liked Crash and he was hot; Nick really didn’t see the harm in it. Except it did beg the question: Was this what transitioning from prostitution looked like? He had been thinking more and more often of how he was too old and only a little while ago had acknowledged his luck would run out sooner rather than later. The idea didn’t sit well with Nick, he didn’t want to go from fucking lots of men for pay to fucking lots of men for nothing. Going from a whore to being a garden-variety slut did not feel like a step up or a step in the right direction.
Shades of Night (Sparrow Falls Book 1) Page 22
