“Remember how Laura told me that Billy had disappeared for a few days?” I asked Gabe, after we were alone again in the warmth of my home.
“Yeah,” Gabe replied, looking me over. “Get these jeans off,” he said rather forcefully.
“I’m not really in the mood right now,” I replied sardonically.
“Josh, you have his blood all over you,” Gabe said.
In all the excitement, I had forgotten that he bled on me. I followed Gabe to the bathroom and peeled my clothes off before stepping inside the shower.
“Can we get back to the bombshell Billy dropped before I kicked his ass?” I asked Gabe.
“His nuts,” Gabe corrected absently as he began washing me. It was obvious that Gabe was focused on fussing over me and I wasn’t about to refuse his soapy hands on my body.
“I still knocked him on his ass,” I argued.
“True.”
The hot water and Gabe’s hands melted the last bit of tension that remained in my body. I knew that a heavy exhaustion would follow when the adrenaline from Billy’s failed assault faded. I needed to tell Gabe what I learned before I fell asleep because I didn’t want him to be caught by surprise if it came out later when Billy was being questioned.
“Billy’s been watching us,” I told him.
“I’m glad you were right about him being the one behind the pictures. As disturbing at it was, he’s not nearly as dangerous as whoever killed Nate. They weren’t playing around,” Gabe said.
“It’s worse than you realize, Gabe. He’s been squatting at Bianca’s and watching us through my bedroom window. He…”
“That son of a bitch,” Gabe growled. He balled his fists at his side and his chest bellowed as he breathed hard with fury. I wasn’t worried that he would hurt me, but I thought my carefully chosen bathroom tiles were in jeopardy of getting punched.
I covered his fists with my hands in an attempt to calm him and save my tiled wall. “It’s my fault,” I told Gabe. “If I hadn’t been so enthralled in seeing the light from the full moon on your skin…”
“Stop,” Gabe said, shaking his head. I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to stop until he spoke again. “You’re not to blame for any of this,” he said, cupping my face. “You’re not the only one who was seduced by the light and shadows the moon brings out in your room. He was the wrong one, not us.”
Gabe kissed me fiercely in the shower and made me forget all about Billy and his hate. We turned off the shower, toweled off, and made love in the moonlight once more. I held tight to Gabe’s body as he moved inside me, loving every expression that crossed his face and word of devotion that left his lips. What we shared was the greatest of gifts a person could ever receive in life.
Later, a thought occurred to me as I laid my head on his chest and listened to the comforting sounds of his steady heartbeat. “Gabe?”
“Yeah, Sunshine.”
“In the past few weeks, you’ve referred to this place as your home, but tonight you called it my house. Which is it?” I bit my lip in the dark while waiting for him to answer the question. I don’t know why it mattered so much or why I needed an answer in order to fully rest, but I did.
“One represents the reality of our situation and the other represents the future I wish to have.” Both the timbre in his voice and the meaning of his words caused me to wiggle with joy against him. “You better settle down there before you wake my dick back up,” Gabe warned. “You’re going to need a good night of sleep for the day you’ll have tomorrow.”
I thought about it for several seconds, but that’s all my mind needed to conjure up a billion things. I didn’t miss a birthday, anniversary, and I knew for a fact we didn’t have dinner plans because it was one of my late nights at the salon. “What’s tomorrow?”
“Babe, the cops and an ambulance were here tonight. It’s going to be wall-to-wall with people in your salon tomorrow.”
RELIEF DIDN’T BEGIN TO describe the emotion I felt when I found Billy crumpled on the ground from the beat down Josh gave him. I felt even better when I learned from Josh that Billy basically admitted in a roundabout way that he was the one behind the pictures. He didn’t come right out and say it, but he didn’t deny it when Josh confronted him either. All of that faded when Josh told me about Billy squatting in Bianca’s house and watching us through his bedroom window. Josh had tried to blow it off like it didn’t bother him, but I knew better. Billy was a hurtful reminder of his past and someone he wouldn’t want to spoil something that we cherished together.
Damn that Billy! I fucking hated that he saw Josh in a light that I was positive others had never seen, especially not him. With me, Josh was free to be himself without fear of judgment or scorn. With me, Josh let down his guard and showed me everything he felt. With me, he wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable. He radiated lightness that threatened to outshine the moonlight he loved so much. Those things were for my eyes only, and Billy Sampson violated that. For that reason alone, I was glad Josh kneed him in the balls. From the sounds that came out of Billy, he would need to have them surgically reset.
For obvious reasons, I knew I wouldn’t be involved when Billy was being questioned or during the search of Bianca’s house for evidence he might’ve left behind there. I was fine with that for a few reasons. One, I wasn’t going to give his lawyer a legitimate defense or a jury a reason to toss out the charges against him due to my relationship to the victim. It was a line cops should never cross, but it was harder than people realized to take a step back and let others take the lead when it involved someone you loved. Two, I trusted my team, which made being relegated to watch the interview through the monitors under supervision tolerable.
Captain Reardon gave up his chance to play bad cop, which I secretly thought he enjoyed a lot, to keep an eye on me so that I didn’t fuck up the investigation. Not only was Billy a suspect in Josh’s harassment, but he used police evidence to do so when he put that picture of a dead Nate Turner in that envelope and placed it on Josh’s bed.
Adrian took the lead and Officer Wen played the role of bad cop in my absence. I couldn’t help but gloat when he limped into the interview room. Billy was brought in, looking more haggard than a college co-ed coming off a weekend bender. Both of his eyes were black and his nose was swollen from where Josh broke it. He was covered in a sheen of sweat and grime that made my nose twitch. “I hope they let him brush his teeth before he was brought in.” I was taking a page from Josh’s playbook and cracking jokes to cover my nerves. The guys had just returned from executing the search warrant and I was curious to know what they discovered in Bianca’s house.
“Not likely,” the captain replied. “See, it’s not so bad being on this side of the monitor sometimes.”
“Billy, I know you’ve been read your rights, but I’m going to read them to you again.” I listened to Adrian read them off to Billy and then sat a little closer when Billy waved off his rights to an attorney. “You’re being arrested for the stalking and harassment of Joshua James Roman, breaking and entering at the residence located at two twenty-five Elm Street.” Adrian took a pause and looked down at his notes. “You’re also being arrested for tampering with evidence and impeding an investigation. The DEA will be here later this afternoon to formerly charge you with possession of drugs with intent to distribute, and suspicion of drug trafficking. Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer present?”
“Holy fuck!” I said in disbelief. I looked over at the captain.
“That’s fucking bullshit,” Billy roared. He tried to pull free from his bonds, but he didn’t get very far. His hand and ankle cuffs were connected to a chain that was anchored in concrete. “What drugs?”
“The huge stash of drugs we found with your personal belongings in the house on Elm Street,” Officer Wen said. “Forget about the drugs for now because the DEA will be asking about them. We want to question you about your harassment of Josh Roman and find out what you know about Nate Turner’s death.”
; “What?” Billy honestly sounded shocked.
“We’re not playing around here, Billy.” Okay, Adrian was playing bad cop too. “You were the person who discovered Nate’s disabled car along the side of the highway. We just want to make sure you weren’t the one who put a bullet in his head.”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Billy said with his hands up, it seemed as if all the fight had drained from him.
“So we’re not going to find the gun that killed Nate Turner in your truck, home, or storage unit?” Wen asked.
“No,” Billy said.
“Do you admit to stalking and harassing Josh Roman?” Wen asked.
“I do, but not for the reasons he thinks,” Billy said defensively. “I only did it to cast doubt about Detective Wyatt’s character once I learned about his history with the dead guy. I hate that dickhead.” The feeling was mutual.
There was no way that Billy would admit to being obsessed with Josh, but I knew differently. I might’ve bought the smoke and mirrors thing if he hadn’t taken up residence in the empty house across from Josh so he could watch us having sex. I saw the possessive gleam in his eye the time I found him standing in Josh’s kitchenette. I suspected the investigators knew the truth but chose not to call him on it. He’d be more likely to cooperate because of that decision.
“So, for my benefit, I want to recap what you’ve said to us this morning and you tell me if I misunderstood you,” Adrian said. “The Feds will be here soon so I want to wrap up things on my end before they take you away.”
“They weren’t my drugs,” Billy said defensively. The panic he must’ve felt was making his voice rise in pitch. “I know fucking well this is some kind of conspiracy. There’s no fucking way I tested positive for drugs on my random drug test and I never had any drugs in my possession while I was at the house on Elm Street. Those drugs were planted there after I was arrested. Someone is making me the fall guy for their drug business.” He might’ve been more convincing had his body not betrayed the obvious signs of withdrawal.
“You’ll need to tell that to the Feds,” Wen told Billy.
“Billy, I need you to focus on what I’m asking,” Adrian told him. “Did you begin harassing and stalking Josh Roman to put attention on Detective Wyatt’s connection to Nate Turner, and did you make it look like it was the same person who stalked, and later killed, Nate Turner?”
“Yes.”
“Those are all the questions we have for you at this time,” Detective Wen said. He motioned for the guards to come get him and take him back to his holding cell.
“What’s with situation with the DEA?” I asked the captain when the interview was over.
“The drugs found on Elm Street and the ones found in the school were packaged in the exact same way. I am positive once the Feds run tests that they’ll confirm they’re from the same batch,” Captain Reardon said.
“Do you think it’s at all possible that Billy and Nate were trafficking the drugs together and it had something to do with Nate’s death? Is Billy Nate’s killer?”
“The only thing we can do is talk to the CPD and find out what they know, if anything, about drugs being trafficked through Nate’s club. If the guy was into prostitution to make extra cash, then I don’t think drug running is too farfetched. The two often go hand in hand. The more we know about Nate the more it will help us find his killer,” Captain Reardon replied.
“I realize that Nate’s club was on the river, which would be appealing for trafficking, but there’s something this county has that makes it even more enticing,” I said. “Think about how many major interstates and highways run near here. I need to dig deeper into Billy’s past to know what he’s been up to before he returned to Blissville.”
“You can’t be involved in that investigation,” the captain reminded me. “I’ve already talked to the sheriff and we’re going to pool resources and form a task force between us and CPD to solve Nate’s homicide. There’s nothing that truly ties Nate to the drugs. We’re going to go with the assumption that the two incidents are separate. So, you’re going to lead our task force unless we do find a connection to Sampson. I’m going to let the DEA handle the investigation regarding the drugs found in Billy’s possession and the school locker. They have resources that we don’t have. Billy can scream that they aren’t his drugs all he wants, but all the DEA is going to see his connection to a woman who has access to the school.”
“Yes, sir.” Captain Reardon rose to his feet, but before he could leave I asked, “Can I ask you something, sir?”
“Yes, Gabe.”
“For my own sanity and assurance, can I see the evidence that was collected from Bianca’s home on Elm Street?”
The captain thought about it for a minute and then nodded. “You can see pictures of the evidence,” he amended.
It twisted my guts to see how obsessed Billy really was with Josh. There were two dozen photos taken of him, but luckily none of them were the two of us having sex. It was doubtful Billy wanted a photographic reminder of just how far Josh had moved on. In the solo pictures of Josh, he could convince himself that he was just waiting for them to resume whatever fucked-up relationship they’d had in the past. It was also pretty obvious to the cops who did the search that Billy’s claim about just using the situation to his advantage was a lie because mixed with the photos of Josh on the bare mattress was an open bottle of lubricant.
It was a good thing the captain hadn’t let me see those photos before the Feds took Billy away because I wasn’t sure the rage I felt would’ve been quieted by my sense of right and wrong. I seethed at my desk for hours, ignoring everyone around me as I wandered how far Billy would’ve escalated his obsession of Josh. What had he planned to do the previous night when Josh was outside alone? I made myself physically sick as I turned the same thoughts and questions over in my mind.
Yet, something in the back of my mind nagged me when I looked at the photos, but I was too damn angry to focus. Then it hit me. There was a silver pair of scissors in the photos of evidence that were similar to the pair that Josh had given Georgia when she’d replaced his old pair with a pair of blue ones when he opened the new location of his salon.
Back when Georgia was killed, I assumed that stylists only had one pair of scissors they used, but I knew better after the recent haircut Josh gave me. Josh had a black leather case that unwrapped to reveal several sets of shiny blue scissors in various sizes, each of them with Jazz engraved on them.
“Adrian,” I said suddenly and loud enough to startle him.
“Yeah?” he asked, clutching his chest.
“Come look at this,” I told him.
Adrian came around to my desk and looked at the picture. I pointed to the scissors and said, “I can’t tell from this picture, but do those look engraved to you?”
He squinted then replied, “They sure do.”
I picked up my desk phone and dialed the salon because I knew Josh wouldn’t answer his cellphone if he was in the middle of a color, cut, or style. “Hi, Chaz, it’s Gabe.” He was happy to hear from me and wanted to chat but quickly realized, by the tone of my voice when I asked for Josh, that I was all business.
“Hey, babe,” Josh said into the phone. “What’s wrong?”
“How many pairs of scissors did you give Georgia when she gave you the blue set?” I asked, getting straight to business.
“Two,” he replied slowly, as if confused why I would ask. “The set she gave me was several steps up from my old ones.”
“That’s what I thought. Thank you, Sunshine.” I hung up the phone without saying goodbye and looked at Adrian. “I think we know who ransacked Georgia’s mansion.” It looked like Billy helped himself to a little souvenir in the process. “Now we just need to figure out why.”
Unfortunately, the only person who knew the truth had left with the DEA hours before and I worried that we’d never get another shot at talking to him.
I LOOKED AT MY cordless salon phone in disbelief when I
heard a click followed by a dial tone. How dare he call me up, get me excited with the sound of his voice, call me by my special name, and then hang up without a goodbye? I wasn’t having any part of that rudeness and my mind began spinning a plan that would make him think twice before he hung up on me again. Hmmm… sexy music, my sexy beast handcuffed to a chair, and a seductive torture he’d never ever forget. Oh, the possibilities were endless.
I handed the phone to Chaz who raised a brow that I could only answer with a shrug because I had no idea what was going on, but he could bet his ass that I would find out. My ears picked up bits and pieces of the conversation going on between the four clients in the salon. I stopped what I was doing and stared in shock at what I heard.
“It’s more about the texture for me more than the actual taste,” Esther said sitting in Meredith’s chair.
“Yes, Esther,” Jessica said from Marci’s chair, “not to mention how thick it is no matter how much I whip it before I put it in my mouth.”
“I know! I swear, I gag on the thickness of it sometimes,” Missy said from Heather’s chair.
“I hate it when it’s chunky,” Alice said with a shudder from my chair.
Meredith looked up from straightening Esther’s hair and laughed when she saw my expression. “They’re talking about Greek yogurt, baby.”
“Oh,” I said in relief, “I thought you all were talking about cum.”
Seven sets of eyes widened in shock, make that eight because I couldn’t believe I said that out loud. I blamed Gabe for forgetting my filter and decided to add time to his torture before I let him come later that night. In the meantime, I had an apology to make for my crude words, “Ladies, I apologize…”
They all burst into laughter, some of them so hard they had to wipe their eyes. “Sweetheart, we hear the way your bird talks. We know he got it somewhere,” Alice said when I resumed my position at the back of her chair so I could continue cutting her hair.
Something to Dye For (Curl Up and Dye Mysteries, #2) Page 19
