by Michael Nava
“Mr. Rios,” she said, “you do know where he is. At least tell him he’s better off talking to me than to someone else who might not understand his situation.”
The elevator bell chimed and the doors opened. I got on it and left her there watching me.
It was getting toward dusk when I began my climb into the San Bernardino Mountains to Lake Arrowhead. I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn’t see the red light in my rearview mirror until the sheriff was almost on top of me. I pulled into a turnaround, rolled down my window and waited.
The cop came over, leaned into my car and said, “Good evening, sir, may I see your license and your registration?”
Wordlessly, I handed them over.
He glanced at my license, then at me, and spent a moment longer on the registration. “You come up here often, Mr. Rios?”
“No,” I said.
“You have to watch your speed on these mountain roads,” he said, handing me back the papers. “I’ve been clocking you going five to ten miles over the posted limit. I think we can let it go this time, but I’d like you to be more careful.”
“I will, Officer. Thank you.”
He smiled. “You take care now.”
I waited until he’d disappeared behind a bend before I started up again. The road flattened out and I was in a forest of tall pines. I kept the window down and felt the cool, pine-scented air on my face. I was thinking about leaps of faith. Life was full of them, though one seldom realized it except in retrospect. For me, coming out was a leap of faith, and then getting sober. Both events had changed my life in ways I could never have anticipated, but at the time it had seemed as if I hadn’t had any choice in either matter. Now I knew better. The leap could be refused. Chris had refused it, but then had changed his mind. What was it? Zack? The onset of middle age? Some combination of the two? I wish he could have seen his way clear to talk to me. More than the mystery of his death, it was the mystery of Chris’s life that had me out here on this unfamiliar road as darkness fell.
I came to the fork in the road described by the map Bligh had given me and went off to the right. Through a screen of trees, I could see the lake. Dusk had settled on the water like the wings of an enormous bird. The water lapped against the shore while the great, dark trees creaked overhead and a sliver of moon climbed the autumn sky. To my left, a clump of mailboxes marked the presence of houses. I slowed and looked for a private dock. When I found it, I turned off the road and headed up the hillside on a rutted, rocky path. I drove past a post with numbers on it and turned right until I came to a clearing, where I saw a car. I pulled up beside it, cut the motor and got out. It was so still I could hear the murmur of the water. From the edge of the clearing I saw Bligh’s cabin. Yellow lights burned in the windows. I made my way down a rocky trail to the front door. Music played from within. I knocked at the door. The music stopped.
After a moment, the door opened and he stood behind the screen in a pair of sweatpants, his face and chest bathed in sweat.
“How did you find me?”
“Sam Bligh,” I said. “Let me in, Zack. We have to talk.”
13
HE STEPPED ASIDE TO let me pass. I followed him through a narrow kitchen gallery into a big square room with walls of rough-hewn wood and a stone fireplace, blackened with use, where a fire burned brightly. The room was furnished in chintz and wicker, bright rag rugs on the floor and geological survey maps on the wall. Against one wall was a rack containing a set of dumbbells. The twenty-five-pound weights were in the middle of the room; evidently I’d interrupted his workout. He picked up the weights and put them in their slots on the rack, then turned to face me. He was nervous but not exhausted and frightened, as he’d been when he came to my house. In the orange flicker of the firelight on his body, I saw him as if for the first time, drawn by the power of his extraordinary male beauty; the sinuous lines of his chest and ridged belly, the thick corded veins of his arms, the planes and hollows of his face, the long black hair, the startling blue eyes. He radiated pure sexual energy. It completely submerged his personality, leaving only his physical presence, like a blank screen for the projection of fantasy. Bligh’s video, so preoccupied with the mechanics of sex, had completely missed the point of Zack’s eroticism, but Bligh himself, apparently, had not, nor, I imagined, had Chris Chandler.
“I’m going to sit, do you mind?” I said, to break the silence.
He shook his head. “You want a beer or something?”
“No. We have a lot to talk about, Zack.”
He sat down, cross-legged, on the floor, and waited.
“The police are looking for you,” I said. “They found out that Chris changed his will to make you a beneficiary. Did you know that?”
“You mean, I would get something if he died?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Did you know he’d done that?”
A pause. “I didn’t want him to,” he said, “but he made such a big deal out of it. He said it was to show me that he was serious about us, when I asked him why we couldn’t move in together after he moved out of his house.”
“Do you know how much you were in the will for?”
“I didn’t want to know,” he said, a trace of anger in his voice. “I didn’t want to think about him dying. I just wanted to be with him.”
“You told me he didn’t want to move in with you right away because he was concerned about his wife and his son.”
“That’s what he said,” Zack replied.
“You didn’t believe him?”
“Sometimes it seemed like he wasn’t telling me everything,” he said. He got up from the floor in a single fluid movement and went over to the fire and poked at it with an old rusted poker until it flared again. With his back to me, he said, “Chris had secrets.”
“Like what?”
“Me,” he said, turning, tapping his chest. “I was his secret from his wife, right? I figured he must have kept secrets from me, too.”
“You think he was seeing someone else? You think that’s why he didn’t want to move in with you?”
“He told me I was imagining things,” Zack said. “He said we could live together after he divorced her.”
Bay hadn’t mentioned anything about a divorce and I made a mental note to find out if he had started proceedings.
“Is that why you thought he wanted to see you the night he was killed, to tell you he was involved with someone else?”
He turned back to the fire and said, “I never believed he left her for me. I’m the kind of guy you keep around for a piece on the side. You don’t marry me.”
“Changing his will didn’t convince you he was serious about you?”
“He could’ve changed it back.”
“Bligh says the two of you were in love,” I said.
He turned around and folded his arms across his chest. “Sam was jealous. He didn’t know Chris.”
“You were Bligh’s lover before you met Chris.”
“Sam got me off the streets,” he said. “He helped me kick a speed habit. He gave me a place to live and got me a job at the restaurant. I owed him big time. I was ready to pay him back, any way he wanted.”
“He wants you back,” I said.
He snorted. “I think Miss Tommy might have something to say about that, but if that’s what Sam wants, I guess I still owe him.”
“What is it with you, Zack? Don’t you have a life of your own, or is it just what other people want from you?”
“You remind me of Chris,” he said in a hard voice. “You’re smart. You’re educated. You can just reach out and take what you want. The only thing I’ve ever been any good at is sex. Everyone wants to fuck me. It’s been like that since I was a little sissy the other boys took around back for blow jobs. That’s how I got things. That’s how I still get them.”
“What did you want from Chris?”
The hardness went out of his face. “Sam was half right. I was in love with Chris.”
“Did you want him to take care of you?”
“No, I wanted to take care of him.”
“How?”
“Sometimes, when we were alone, he cried,” Zack said. “He just starting crying, and when I asked him why, he said it was because it was all so hard.”
“What do you think he meant by that?”
“Keeping his secrets,” he said. “Damn, it’s tough being a fag. People hate you who don’t even know you and the ones who know you, they’re worse. Like his fucking son, what’s his name, Joey. He got my number and called me and started screaming about how I stole his father. He said if I didn’t let Chris come home, he was going to kill me.”
“When did this happen?”
“I don’t remember, but it was after Chris moved out, so it must have been a couple of weeks ago.”
“Did you tell Chris?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I told him and he called Joey from my house and yelled at him. I could hear Joey yelling back at him, calling us cock-suckers and saying he hoped we got AIDS. That really pissed Chris off. He said he was sorry he had a son.”
“Then what happened?”
“His wife got on the phone and he asked me to leave so he could talk to her. Afterwards, he came and found me and we went at it like he never had sex before.”
“Zack, do you remember telling me that when you left Chris’s chambers the night he was killed, you left the obelisk there?”
He looked at me blankly. “The what?”
“The pyramid, the thing that was used to kill him. You said you left it there.”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he whispered. “The sharp end was stuck in his neck, here.” He touched the base of his neck. “I took it out and left it on his desk.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’m positive.”
“But I told you on the phone, it wasn’t there the next day when the police found him.”
He shook his head. “I know you said that. But I left it, I swear I did.”
“With your fingerprints on it?”
He stepped back as if I’d taken a swing at him. “I didn’t think about that.”
“If you handled it, your prints would have been on it. Are you sure you didn’t take it?”
“I wasn’t thinking about my fingerprints,” he protested. “I just wanted to get out of there before someone came.”
“Well, someone took it,” I said, “and if you left it there, that can only mean someone came in after you left. Did you see anyone else around the court?”
He thought about it and shook his head.
“Think about it,” I said. “From the moment you parked your car to the moment you drove out of the garage, did you see anyone at all?”
“Well, yeah, when I was leaving the garage. I almost had a crash.”
“What happened?”
“I was so scared I went out the wrong way and I almost hit some guy, but he saw me and backed up so I could get out.”
“Did you see him?”
“His lights were in my face.”
“What about the car? You must have seen it when you drove past it.”
“I don’t remember,” he said. “No, wait.” He closed his eyes. “It was a big car, a four-wheeler.”
“What color was it?”
“I didn’t see the color, but it was dark.”
Immediately, I thought of Joey Chandler’s black Jeep Explorer. “Would you recognize it if you saw it again?”
“Maybe, I only saw it for a second.”
“And the driver was male? Are you sure of that?”
He thought about it. “No, I didn’t see his face, just a shape. Big shoulders, so I figured it was a guy.”
“Old? Young? Tall? Short?”
“He was sitting down,” he said. “Let me sleep on it. Maybe it’ll come back to me.”
I could hear the fatigue in his voice, so I let it go for now. A dark, four-wheel-drive vehicle. A driver with big shoulders. It wasn’t much, but it could’ve been Joey. I didn’t say anything to him, because I didn’t want to taint his recollection before I could prod him for more details.
“This is what we have to do, Zack,” I said. “We have to go back to L.A. and tell the police everything you’ve told me before they start concentrating on you as their main suspect.”
“What if they arrest me?”
“They don’t have sufficient evidence to arrest you. All they know is that Chris left his wife for you and put you in his will. They can’t place you in the courtroom unless you tell them, or they find the murder weapon with your prints on it. But assuming that the murderer came back and took the obelisk, it’s unlikely they’re going to find it unless they also find him. Either way you’re in the clear.”
“I shouldn’t tell them I found Chris?”
“If they had anything that put you in the room around the time he was killed, there would already be a warrant out for your arrest.”
“Won’t they find my fingerprints on the door or the desk or something?”
“That only proves you were in the room at some point and you told me you visited him occasionally.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I did.”
“Anyway, if the killer took the trouble to go back for the obelisk, he probably also remembered to wipe the doorknob and any other surface where he might have left prints.”
“That makes sense,” Zack said. “So what am I going to tell the police?”
“We’ll work on that on the drive back into town.”
The fire was almost out. He switched on a lamp and grabbed a sweatshirt from the floor and pulled it on.
“I’m beat, Mr. Rios,” he said. “I can’t talk to the cops like this. I’ll be better in the morning.”
I saw his point. Talking to the cops was going to be tricky, and I needed him to be rested and alert. A long drive in the middle of the night would only fatigue him further. On the other hand, he’d skipped on me before and I had my doubts about leaving him here alone. I told him so.
“Then you stay here, too,” he said. “The sofa folds out.” He smiled. “I’ll give you my car keys.”
“Keep them,” I said. “All right, we’ll drive into town first thing in the morning.”
“Listen,” he said. “I’m starving. Why don’t you relax and I’ll make something to eat?”
We ate scrambled eggs and bacon, played cards and then around midnight he made up the couch for me and went into his bedroom. I undressed and got into bed. I couldn’t sleep. I’d told Bligh I wouldn’t represent Zack if I believed he’d killed Chris, so I had to ask myself what I thought. The answer was, there was still a sliver of doubt in my mind about his innocence. I couldn’t explain why, except that for it to have been someone else required some fancy moves; the murderer would have to have killed Chris, left before Zack arrived, and then returned after he left and gone undetected both times. In my experience, killing was rarely that complicated. On the other hand, after twenty years of listening to alibis, I had an acute sense of when I was being lied to, and either Zack was the best liar I had ever encountered or he was telling me the truth. I doubted it was the former. There were also better suspects than Zack; Joey Chandler, even Bligh. Had it been Joey whom Zack had seen driving into the garage? What about Bligh? Someone who lived right on the fine line of legality probably had as many friends who fell on one side of it as the other. I let it go. The police could figure out who killed Chris, that was their job. My concern was to clear Zack and then walk away from this case before it got any uglier.
At some point, I dropped off. A little later on, I awoke with a start to find Zack pressed up against me, his hand cupping my genitals.
“What do you think you’re doing, Zack?” I said, rolling away from him and sitting up.
“Don’t you want to?”
“I don’t have sex with my clients.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“That’s not the point. Go back to bed, all right, and we’ll forget
about this.”
“I want to pay you for helping me,” he said.
I laughed. “And here I thought it was because I was irresistible. Don’t worry about my fee. Bligh offered to pay it.”
“I don’t want to take anything else from Sam,” he said.
“That’s fine,” I said. “You and I can work it out later. Right now I want to get back to sleep. You should, too. We’re going to have a long day tomorrow.”
He got out of the bed and said, “Most guys don’t turn me down.” Before I could answer, he kissed me and said, “Thanks.”
“Any time,” I muttered, as he trotted off back to his room.
The sheets smelled of him. It took me a while to get back to sleep.
14
WHEN I WOKE UP the next morning, it took me a moment to remember where I was. The cabin was bright but chilly and the only sound was the sweep of the wind through the trees. I sat up, yawned and checked my watch; it was a little after seven. We could make it back to the city by noon if we started now. I got out of bed, pulled on my clothes and went to wake Zack. A thin, shrill noise sounded from far off. I knocked at Zack’s door. The noise became louder and I recognized it as a siren. Zack stumbled to the door, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
“What’s that noise?” he asked.
“It sounds like a siren,” I said. “Get dressed.”
He didn’t move, because now the siren was at the bottom of the road. Then, abruptly, it stopped, and cars began to rumble up the hill toward us.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Get some clothes on.”
I went into the kitchen and looked out the window to the clearing where our cars were parked. I saw the flash of black and white as two patrol cars pulled in beside them, and then I heard the crackle of police radios carried through the still air.
“Shit,” I said. “Zack, get out here, quick.”
He came into the kitchen tucking his shirt into the pants. A couple of sheriffs were making their way down the path toward the cabin. Behind them I saw Yolanda McBeth.
“That’s the homicide detective investigating Chris’s murder,” I said, pointing her out. “You don’t talk to her.”
