"I asked you a question, boy."
"No one told me a fucking thing now put the knife down."
His hand was shaking furiously, the knife flipping back and forth like a leaf in the wind.
"Fucking cop," he whispered through gritted teeth.
"Woah, seriously. I said I was a cop... WAS."
The knife flipped back and forth some more and I tried to swallow down the raging anxiety within me.
"WAS!"
It must have been the terror in my eyes or maybe he just came to his senses but at last, just when I was sure he was either about to have a heart attack or kill me, he let the knife drop onto the table and slumped back into his chair. Deflated, he dragged a hand down the front of his face and let out a long sigh that seemed to never end until I realized he was crying. Tears streaked his dirty face leaving tide marks on his skin.
"I'm so sorry," he sobbed.
I was really starting to lose the will to live at this point. Couldn't I just have a normal day for once?
"I mean it," he sniveled into his hand. "Fuck, life on your own really takes it outta you. Really makes you feel as though you're going crazy. You must think I'm a psycho. Just this crazy old guy who... who makes really bad eggs."
He smacked his hand up against the rim of his plate and it went flying up into the air before smashing against the wall. The fragments were stuck to the tiles with yolk and hot sauce, sliding down slowly until at last, they reached the floor. Across from me, Cooper still cried. It was painful to watch a grown man just crumple and fall apart like that, torn apart by his own paranoia. It hurt just to see the way his shoulders heaved up and down as he cried into his filthy shirt.
"Dude..." I said but he continued to cry.
Either out of the excruciating sensation of awkwardnessor because I maybe actually wanted to comfort him, I stood up and bent down to hug him. But this time there was no back slapping or clumsy masculinity, I held him like I meant it and let his tears flowed into my shirt. He sobbed some more, clawing at me. It felt like cradling a child.
"Hey, it's okay. I get it. You've been through some stuff."
He whimpered in response.
This guy is truly broken, I thought to myself. Poor man.
"You can trust me," I said. "For what that's worth. Besides, you saw what a wreck I was when I showed up, no cash, no phone, no car, just the clothes on my back and a whole lotta sun burn. If I was still a cop I'd be hiding my badge up my ass right now and believe me, nothing ever goes up there."
He laughed a little and looked up, drying his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he said for what felt like the hundredth time. "You must think I'm an old kook."
"I do," I said, finally letting him go. "But I'm happy to be here and I'm all cracked up myself. We can be nuts together. Just two Americanos down in the desert losing their minds."
He smiled and his eyes lit up. It was as though twenty years had been wiped from his face.
He sniffed and wiped his eyes dry like a big kid realizing the scrape on their knee wasn't so bad.
"That sounds kinda nice," he said. "Just two of us."
I watched him for a moment, noticing how tired his movements were but at the same time, they were now more fluid as though the tension had been released from his old muscles. It struck me how sad he must have been. How lonely and afraid he was with nothing but him, this vast expanse of land and his animals. The chickens who were his friends.
"By the way you make really fucking good eggs," I told him.
"Ach!"
"No really. Way good. And the hot sauce? It's a perfect touch. The cherry on the cake."
"Oh stop."
"I mean it!"
He looked over at the fragments of porcelain scattered across the floor with yolk stains still stuck to the walls.
"Fuck," he breathed. "I'm a mad man."
"You're just a tired man. A lonely man."
He nodded in agreement but kept his gaze stuck to the wall.
"I'm lonely too. The loneliest person you've ever met."
"But you're here now," he said. "We can be buddies."
"We could. But I could be in a room full of people, a city full of people and still feel so completely alone."
He turned to me and narrowed his eyes, cocking his head to the side with his hair sticking up on end so he looked like an inquisitive pigeon.
"You remind me of someone."
"Someone nice I hope."
His eyes glossed over and he looked out the window out toward the chickens without answering.
"You wanna meet the horses?" he asked.
"Sure," I smiled. "Let's go."
~
It felt like we'd been walking for miles but it was only five hundred yards from the house to the stables that were shrouded by the only trees in the region. The two horses were sleeping, their giant bellies moving up and down with each breath.
"My boys," said Cooper. "This one is Reginald and this one is Mercy."
"They're beautiful. And they're big fellas too."
"I treat them well," he said, leaning over to pat the nearest one on the head. "You gotta treat them well. They deserve the best."
"Are you a father?" I found myself blurting out at random.
He looked a little bewildered at the question.
"Me? A father? No. The only kids of mine with two feet are the chickens. Now, why would you ask something like that?"
I walked away, scuffing up my boots with the sand.
"I dunno. You just seem like the caring type. Like you'd be a nice dad."
"A nice grandad maybe."
"Yeah, totally."
I hadn't thought about my own dad for a long while but suddenly he was in my mind and I had the strongest urge to see him although I knew I couldn't.
"You have a nice dad?" asked Cooper.
"I had one," I said. "He was awesome."
"I take it you don't have him anymore?"
For years I had learned to get on with things and keep my feelings to myself but now down here with just this mysterious man, I felt as though I didn't need to do a damn thing I didn't want to. I could let it all out, cry if I wanted to, hit things if I wanted to. I felt as though he would understand.
"Cancer," I said, my throat pulling itself tight. "He died... he died..."
I found myself choking on the urge to cry. What the fuck is wrong with me? I thought. I hadn't shed a tear for my old man since I was a kid but here I was, wiping salty tears from my cheeks with a sand covered hand.
"He died of bowel cancer when I was twelve."
"Aw, geez, I'm sorry."
"It's fine."
"No. Really. That must have been awful."
"It was."
Now it was my time to totally lose it and I fell against the wooden fence and sobbed into my hands.
"Fuck, what's wrong with me? I'm over him. Completely over him."
I felt the heat of a hand on my back and looked over my shoulder to see Cooper with a concerned look on his face.
"We're both a couple of nutters," I tried to laugh. "Just two weirdos crying."
"It's good to cry."
"Yeah. It is."
When the tears dried, I felt as though a knot of darkness had taken flight from my body. I was lighter and more relaxed.
"Sorry," I said. "I don't know where that came from."
"Don't be sorry," he said, reaching into the top pocket of his checkered shirt for a pouch of tobacco.
He rolled a skinny cigarette that was soaked with his sweat at one end so it lay floppy between his fingers as he handed it to me. I noticed his nails were bitten so far down he was bleeding. I wondered what he had to be so nervous about.
"Thanks," I said, reaching for a lighter.
The smoke burned my throat as I inhaled and I coughed as I felt the sting in my lungs.
"What the hell is this stuff?"
"Locally grown tobacco," he explained. "It's not the best but it's all I have."
"It
's like smoking pubic hair."
"You're saying that like you have some sort of experience."
He laughed and walked over to the horses to give them one last look before he closed the stable door over.
"Anyway," he said as he let the shade glide over his beloved horses. "Thank you for thinking I'd be a good father. It's never something I ever thought I could be."
"Why's that?"
He chewed on his bottom lip and began rolling his own cigarette, his whitish tongue reaching out to lick the thin paper.
“Men like me don’t become fathers,” he said. “Well, not when I was back home.”
I didn’t know what that meant but nodded anyway, encouraging him to talk.
“Of course, in an ideal world, if the sun always shone, money grew on trees and the grass was made of cotton candy there would be someone I’d like to be parents with.”
“Oh? An old flame?”
“A boy named Eugene,” he said, breathing in smoke. “I would have done everything for that boy and in a way I did.”
Chapter Two
Lincoln
I didn't know what was overwhelming me more, the sound of Schiele screaming or the smell of decay. Etta lay in front of us, her body half slid out of the ice amidst a puddle of water that mingled with her rotting skin. She was blue, as blue as the Earth itself only more beautiful. Her complexion was marbled with veins, her eyes a milky white, sunken in disk of mulch but I could have stared into them forever. The stench of death was so strong in the air it made my eyes sting and made Cynthia giddy while her husband retched.
He was on his hands and knees screaming like an infant. This was someone who had seen everything the world of science had to offer and he'd studied it all through a microscope until he had the deepest understanding of life itself at a molecular level. But seeing death now, for real, in a way that was less than academic or medical was making him lose his mind. I could see how the panic intensified throughout his body. He was shaking, crying, clutching his chest as though trying to fight off a heart attack. He may have seen everything but he hadn't seen this.
Clenching his eyes closed, he mumbled to himself as he tried to cope with the vision of Etta. I looked back over to her and saw her breasts were beginning to separate from her ribs so that they were gliding down toward us, the ducts beneath the fatty tissue hanging around the edge of her nipples like gristle.
Turning my attention back to Schiele, I tried to hear what he was mumbling. For a few seconds, I was sure he was praying and that only made the moment more absurd. I burst into a flurry of short fired giggles and he looked up, horrified. It was only then that I could hear what he was saying.
"Fucking mad man.Should never have come here.Fucking crazy bastard. The rumors are true. The rumors are true. The rumors are true."
There were no prayers of mantras escaping his lips, only the ramblings of a man who was confronted with the worst of humanity. Me.
"This is what you wanted the Tricepthial for," he said, his entire face trembling as he tried to keep his gaze away from Etta.
But it was impossible. Inevitably, he had to look at her. She was right in front of him, her flesh only inches away from his knees. When he looked down at her face, the exposed bone of her cheek protruding up through her skin like the peak of a mountain, he finally lost control of his stomach. He shuddered once, screamed once more, then reached to the side and vomited into the melting ice cubes.
"Good Lord, Gustav," his wife tutted. "You're acting like you've never seen a dead body before."
"Not... like this..."
He struggled to his feet, staggered backward and leaned against the wall. All the while, looking at Etta as though she was a monster. Bastard, I thought. Does he not know true beauty when he sees it? She is a goddess and he dares to vomit beside her.
"You're... You're... Bosworth, there are no words to describe how truly despicable you are."
He heaved again and tried to be sick but only a long strand of bile came from his lips like watery egg yolk. I watched in horror as it came within a few inches of Etta's face.
"Hey! Will you have some respect?" I shouted and he blinked a few times to clear the tears from his eyes.
"Respect," he repeated. "Have you lost your fucking mind! Wait, don't even answer that because it's obvious you have."
He continued to ramble but I didn't hear what he was saying because I was too busy watching the case of Tricepthial. Through all the commotion, the screaming, the sickness and the panic, he'd managed to hold onto it the entire time.
"Honey, will you calm down?" Cynthia suggested, standing up to comfort Schiele. "Isn't this what we wanted? A chance to do real research on death?A real chance to witness it like no other?"
He looked at her as though he was seeing her for the first time and he thought he was just as insane as me.
"That's what you always said. I should never have brought you here."
He held the case even tighter and fumbled for the door handle.
"You're just as sick as him!"
He cracked the door open and we were all graced by the fresh scent of clean air. Perfume from the roses in the garden danced into the room along with the smell of heat and chlorine from the pool.
Schiele moved to exit the room.
"Hey!"
Before I knew it, I was panicking, lunging at him, trying to grapple the case from his arms. He was stronger than I expected, way too strong for an old skinny guy like him. I yanked on it, kicked him in the shin, slapped him across the face and dug my knee into his ribs but still, he wouldn't let go.
"Help me!" I called to Cynthia but she just watched from the sidelines, entertained at the spectacle.
Schiele and I continued to struggle with the meager amount of energy left in my body soon dissolving as I thrashed my limbs. When everything I tried failed, I resorted to animalistic tactics and bit him hard in the face. He screamed but still, he wouldn't let go. Exhausted, I tried my hardest to latch onto the case but he was now on his feet, overpowering me and making his escape up the stairs.
"No!"
I chased after him, my burning limbs failing me as I tried to keep up.
"Schiele you motherfucker you get back here!"
But all I heard in response were his lightning quick footsteps scurrying up toward the hall.
"Fucker!"
"You stay away from me, Bosworth."
I followed his footsteps into the kitchen. He was sprinting toward the patio doors, the case cradled against him like a baby. He struggled with the handle, desperate to free himself from the house but the more he pulled at it, the more it locked shut.
"Fuck!"
A long stream of spit was trailing from his mouth to his shirt as fear and anger took over. He tried his hardest to open the door but only locked himself inside some more.
"Let me out!" he screamed.
"By all means, please leave anytime you want."
But I knew he wasn't going anywhere. The key fob was in the top drawer beside me. I sauntered over to it, plucked it out from the assortment of menus, pens and Etta's hair ties and dangled it in front of him. His eyes widened in horror as he saw the fob between my fingers.
"Hand it over!" he yelled, the spit swaying from side to side like a great, swaying pendulum.
"Sure," I replied, affecting my most reasonable voice. "How about a trade? You hand me the Tricepthial and I give you the keys. Sounds good, right?"
"Sounds perfect," came a voice from behind me.
Cynthia was in the doorway. She gave me a nod of alliance and winked.
"Whose fucking side are you on?" bellowed her husband. "You lunatic!"
"Calm down, honey. Don't you realize this is everything I've ever wanted? The rumors have been circulating for years. This billionaire serial killer working beneath the radar under a shroud of wealth. It always seemed so ludicrous, didn't it? It couldn't possibly have been true but I needed to know for myself."
Her words echoed around the room.
Rumors... There was that word again. How long had people known? And what did they want to do about it?
"You're a rockstar," she said and wound her arm around mine. "You make the greats like Gacy and Bundy look like amateur mad men but you're pure class. Just look at you, handsome, okay I mean you were handsome when you had a little meat on your bones but you can get back there. You're rich as shit too, own everything, can do anything you want and you killed because why? Because you thought you were doing the right thing and you knew you could get away with it."
I was bemused and it dawned on me that she wasn't just tagging along with her husband to meet some collector. She was here just for me. I realized that not only was she the craziest person in the room, but she was also most likely the smartest.
"You may be shocked, Mr. Bosworth but I've been following you for a long time. Messages have been appearing on forums for years, stories from girls in the underworld who spoke of a wealthy doctor and inventor who had the ability to make girls go missing. But of course, the girls needed to go missing, didn't they? They hurt little children. They were evil."
Schiele was frozen to the spot with his mouth dropped open and I couldn't move either because I was starting to realize I wasn't so smart or secretive as I thought I was. People knew what I was doing. People who weren't believed but they knew nonetheless. Murmurs must have been circulating the internet like an urban legend.
"You're the best, Bosworth," purred Cynthia.
She placed a hand on my chest and I could feel the heat from her body and smell the sweat on her powdery skin. Everything about her stank and made me nauseous. Everything about the moment made me want to melt into the ground and disappear forever because nothing I had planned was coming to fruition and I was still no closer to holding Etta.
"Just... give me the Tricepthial," I told Schiele.
Slowly, he swiveled his eyes in his head toward me but remained frozen.
"You'll never get it," he croaked. "You evil, psycho, son of a bitch."
"Schiele, if you don't hand it over I'm going to come and take it from you."
"And I'll help him do it," chimed in Cynthia.
He looked at her with pure hatred in his eyes.
Jewels And Panties: (Book 1-15) Billionaire Romance Series Page 71
