Skin and Bone

by TA Moore

  Cloister looked from the door to Javi and hesitated. He wanted to ask. This morning Javi was fine. Even his usual paranoia that a cup of coffee would send the wrong signals was on hold. Now he was all sharp impatience and icy reserve.

  Cloister didn’t know whether he’d get frostbite or draw blood if he kissed Javi.

  He wanted to ask, but he didn’t—old habits and the fear he wouldn’t like the answer. Instead he just shrugged and left. The click of the door behind him sounded final as he headed for the elevators.

  “Deputy Witte,” Ms. Daly said as he passed her desk. She craned her neck briefly to check at his heels. “No dog today?”

  “Going to get her now,” Cloister said as he hit the flat metal button to call the elevator.

  Daly sniffed and looked back down at the forms she’d scrawled her signature over. “Try that order again. I’ll have to vacuum less.” She scratched her temple with the butt of the pen and then looked up again. “Although I suppose we won’t be seeing you as much around here in future.”

  Cloister might have questioned that, but the elevator arrived a second later. He stepped out of the way to let a clerk with a stack of files pinned between his forearms and his spotty chin sidle onto the floor.

  “This is half the case files you requested for review,” the clerk said as he gave Cloister a dubious look and then shifted his attention to Daly. “We still have to pull the rest.”

  “For goodness sake,” Daly muttered as she popped up from behind her desk and hurried over to grab some files before they all toppled onto the floor. She sorted them briskly, put three piles on her desk, and kept one in her arms.

  The opportunity to ask her to explain had gone. Cloister got on the elevator, hit the button for the ground floor, and waited for the doors to close. Despite the “have some pride” hiss from the back of his brain—it sounded like his mom, her voice hard as she marched down the street past clucking neighbors who smiled to her face and muttered behind their hands—he looked through the glass doors at Javi.

  Javi’s head was bent over his desk, his dark hair fallen forward in thick waves. He didn’t look up.

  Idiot.

  Cloister snorted and leaned against the back wall of the elevators as the doors slid closed. He folded his arm across his chest and braced the plaster cast against his shoulder.

  That voice sounded like his mother too. She was always helpful like that. Cloister let the sour feeling gnaw at him on the short ride between floors. Then he banished the self-pity as the doors opened.

  So Javi blew hot and cold, but someone had left Janet Morrow to die in the rain like a doll they’d gotten tired of. On any measurable scale, her problems were more important that Cloister’s.

  He didn’t need the dry echo of his mother’s voice in his head to tell him that.

  If there was a link between Janet and the Lopez kids, he’d find it.

  AFTER TWO days and far too many emojis Cloister still hadn’t found the link.

  He sat on the beach, a mile away from the trailer park, and ignored another beautiful California sunset in favor of his phone. He swiped the screen—the sand was gritty under his thumb, and any new scratches were lost in the ones he’d gotten used to—and watched the last seven months of her life play out, one disembodied part at a time.

  Janet Morrow’s Instagram was a carefully curated collage of bits—feet in patent leather Mary Janes, a hologram-nailed thumb hooked into a braided belt, a tattooed collarbone, and rolls of textile fabric. The only photo that didn’t match the theme was a blurry selfie taken with a mildly perplexed-looking silver-haired man in a natty suit, where Janet leaned in from the side in a flash of red hair and a long arm. It was an awful picture, but she looked happy.

  But it didn’t seem likely that Tim Gunn had been involved in an attempted murder that happened in Plenty.

  By comparison, the Lopez stepsons had a dozen social media accounts between them, full of the sort of messy group shots and ill-advised videos their teachers probably warned them against. The Lopez boys liked baseball, the beach, and, surprisingly enough, their stepmom. Girls too, for one of them, but no there was no mention of New York, redheads, or any comments about anger or getting even. He’d pulled their juvie records as well and talked to the school’s principal. The older boy had been caught with an open container in his vehicle, and the younger one had been reprimanded after a fight in school—nothing beyond the pale.

  According to Principal Vasser, for two boys whose father had killed himself—a year ago, at his office in San Diego. Cloister had sent for the files just in case—and whose mother showed no interest in reclaiming custody from their stepmother, they were doing as well as could be expected.

  That could mean either there wasn’t a link or there was one and Cloister just hadn’t found it. It was possible. He didn’t use social media—no Facebook, no Twitter. His only presence on Instagram was the occasional photo shoot for the sheriff’s department’s official account. Those were mostly of his legs and his dog.

  Digital ties were still ties. Besides, what would he put on there? The adventures of a beachside insomniac?

  He wasn’t familiar with the online network, so he might have missed something. He wanted to believe he had. If the Lopez car really had been picked at random, their only lead was a dirty, decades-old business card and that bloody scarf Hewitt handed in. It wasn’t much. Janet’s clothes had been all over the street. The homeless man Hewitt focused on might just have picked it up.

  Bon barked at him.

  “Sorry,” Cloister said absently as he locked the phone. He set it down on the chunk of driftwood he leaned against and bent to grab a long, salt-dried root of seaweed from the sand. It was sandy, slobber-sticky, and too light to throw, but Bon didn’t seem to care. Her new rubber toy, a twist of heavy, textured rubber that was advertised as indestructible, had been abandoned on the beach for an hour. She huffed at him and hopped eagerly from foot to foot on the hard-packed sand as she waited for him to get on with it. “You ready?”

  He cocked the stick back over his shoulder, and Bon scuffled backward as she anticipated the throw. Sand coated her paws and lower legs until she looked almost like a black and tan.

  “Bleib,” Cloister said sharply as he threw the stick. It arched through the air and dropped down into the surf. Bon quivered with the desire to go, but she obeyed the “stay” command and held her position. She focused on Cloister as he held up his hand, palm out and steady. “Good girl. Good dog. Sit.”

  She planted her backside in the sand, hard enough to jar, and her eyes didn’t leave him.

  Cloister held his hand until he was sure she wasn’t going to move until he said okay. Then he dropped his hand in a brisk gesture. “Good, Bon! Bring!”

  She took off at a dead run, a black dart that arrowed down the beach with a wake of sprayed sand behind her. The surf had picked up the stick and washed it out. Cloister watched as Bon splashed out after it, all aggrieved sneezes when the water got in her nose. She finally fished it out and dragged it back with the wet, rooted end trailing in the sand.

  This time Cloister didn’t make her work for it. He chucked it down the beach as far as it would go. She hared off after it, and Cloister watched her play until his phone abruptly rattled to life. It nearly vibrated itself off the side of the log. Cloister grabbed it and answered the call on the way to his ear.

  “Where are you?”

  The voice was Javi’s, the number—Cloister double-checked to be sure—wasn’t.

  “Crossed your mind I’m dodging your calls?” he asked.

  “No, I just broke my phone. Should it have?”

  Cloister felt the brief urge to claim he had been, but that would be the conversational equivalent of stiff-armed shove.

  “No,” he admitted instead as he brushed sand off the knees of his faded jeans. “I just missed a couple of calls, Agent Merlo.”

  Javi sighed an exasperated hiss into Cloister’s ear.

  “I said sorr
y about that,” he said. “Things had me on edge, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

  Bon loped up to him and dropped the well-chewed stalk of seaweed at his feet. She backed up three steps and looked at him expectantly. Her tongue hung out of a toothy grin as she panted.

  “Yeah,” Cloister said. “And I said I didn’t need anyone to take care of me.”

  He dug his booted toe into the sand under the stalk and gave it a kick. It didn’t go far, but Bon shot off after it. She pinned it down with her paws and growled at it.

  “You have a broken arm—”

  “Wrist,” Cloister corrected him. “And I’ve had worse.”

  “I just thought it would make sense if you stayed at my apartment for a couple of days,” Javi said. Despite it being the third time he’d made the offer, the words sounded as though they had to run a gauntlet to make it out. His voice was stiff and resentful. “You’re barely a functional adult with two hands, Cloister, and you’re down to one. What’ll you do if you have to open a can of dog food? Use your teeth?”

  Cloister snorted. He’d be offended if he hadn’t opened a beer that way the night after he lost the fight with the bottle opener.

  “First time I slept with you, you made me sleep on the couch,” he said. “Now you want me, my dog, and a change of clothes all cluttering up your place? You were really going to be okay with that?”

  “No,” Javi said, his voice dry as salt. “It sounds horrible, but I have dealt with worse. I don’t want you to get hurt again, Cloister.”

  There was something raw in Javi’s voice when he said that—an aftertaste of blood. It hung between them for a second—one of them incapable of offering more, the other incapable of accepting what was on offer—and then Javi roughly cleared his throat.

  “But you’re a free agent,” he said. “If you want to get gangrene and lose a finger, it’s down to you. That wasn’t why I called. Stokes finally got back to me, and he’s back in town. If you want to sit in on the interview, meet me at The Quail off Main in two hours.”

  The Quail. Of course that was where Sean Stokes would want to meet. He was a man with expensive tastes that he could afford to indulge since his divorce. The Quail was an “authentic” old Plenty dive that someone had turned into a theme pub and built a hotel around. It was all original scored wood floors and counters framed by copper-clad tables and walls of IPAs.

  “Classy,” he said. His voice was so carefully neutral it felt pointed.

  “Yeah, you should probably wear the uniform if you want them to let you in.”

  “Sure that’s not just for you?”

  There was a pause. It was stupid, but Cloister could swear he heard the curve of Javi’s slow, dark smile down the line. A sharp prickle of awareness crawled down Cloister’s spine and clenched around his balls. “I prefer you in nothing, but as long as it’s not from the recycle bin, I’m happy.”

  He hung up.

  Cloister breathed out slowly and glanced at Bon, who carried the chewed-off stump of her makeshift toy back to drop at his feet.

  “Don’t judge,” he told her. “I can’t help what I find hot.”

  Bon cocked her head from one side to the other and then dropped her nose to push the root at him.

  “Later,” Cloister told her. He braced his elbow on the driftwood log and pushed himself up. It hurt. The sand was damp, and his hip was stiff. It was awkward, but he did it. He didn’t need anyone’s help. He didn’t need anyone. Cloister had to believe that. It was bad enough when you loved someone and they let you down. If you believed they loved you, that would be worse.

  Cloister patted his thigh. “Come on, Bon. We’re going to dinner. You need your fancy harness.”

  She nudged the roots again and looked up at him hopefully. When he ignored the hint and waved his hand back up the beach toward the trailer park, she sighed heavily and delicately picked up the salt-toughened bit of flotsam in her front teeth. She loped off up the beach, businesslike as always once she had her orders.

  Cloister started to follow her but stopped. He shaded his eyes with his hand and looked out to sea at the sunset he’d been ignoring. The sky was painted shades of red and gold, clouds torn across the horizon like streamers.

  It was beautiful. Cloister knew that, but he could never quite bring himself to appreciate it. Sunrises he could enjoy, but sunsets were just a taunt that he wouldn’t sleep again. He absently scratched at the cast, worked his thumb down under it as far as he could reach, and thought about hard, hot metal cars and why he avoided calls from the one person he wanted to hear from.

  There were times he thought he was okay. Sure, he couldn’t sleep, but who could these days? Then someone would go missing or an anniversary would roll around, and he wouldn’t be. All these years, and some part of him was still stuck back there in the night he couldn’t—or maybe his mom was right, and it was wouldn’t—remember. It might always be.

  Maybe that was why he wanted answers for Janet.

  A tug at his arm made him look down. Bourneville had his cast in her teeth as she tried to pull him up the beach. Cloister laughed and wiped his hand over his face—staring at the sun made your eyes water, who knew—and went along with her.

  He hoped she was just hungry and that he hadn’t worried her. Apparently he did that to too many people.

  “Okay, okay.” He stooped down to grab the untouched rubber toy from where she’d dropped it and let her walk him up the beach. “Let’s go get gussied up to spend this week’s rent on a beer.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THERE WAS sand in Cloister’s cast. He stood in the lobby of The Quail and tried to discreetly work it free. The grains had inched down past his wrist and into the crease of his palm, where sweat had turned them into a sticky, gritty paste, just out of reach no matter what end of the cast Cloister itched at. It wasn’t unbearable—yet—but he couldn’t quite shake the echo of Javi’s warning about gangrene. If Cloister somehow got sand-induced sepsis, he’d never live it down.

  “Something wrong, sir?” the host asked as he returned to his station. He peered nervously at Cloister, as though he weren’t sure whether to be dismayed at the bruises or impressed by the uniform. “Do you need a… ummm… toothpick?”

  Cloister had to admit he was a little disappointed that the kid didn’t sound snottier. How was he supposed to properly hate a place for being pretentious when the staff were pleasant?

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Is Mr. Sean Stokes here?”

  The waiter blinked and nodded. “I’m sorry. Yes, he is, but Agent Merlo isn’t here yet. My manager has set aside a private room for you, if you’d like to wait there.”

  Cloister raised his eyebrows. “The dog or the uniform?” he asked.

  A quick grin skated over the waiter’s face and away again. “A little bit of both. Sorry. If you’d follow me.”

  He grabbed a menu out of habit and led his way through the maze of tables. No one looked at them as they passed—they were engrossed in their plates of pasta or steak—but whispers eddied behind them like a boat’s wake.

  “What are the police doing here?”

  “That man in the back room, I think I saw him on the news. Something to do with that drug….”

  “What do you think is going on?”

  Then a child’s voice cut through the speculative murmur with a straightforward question and the threat of tears. “But why can’t I pet the puppy?”

  Cloister had to bite the inside of his cheek to hold back a laugh. He dropped his hand to give the fuzzy tip of Bon’s ear an affectionate tug. She still had it. Children—and adults who should know better—always wanted to pet K-9 dogs. The K-9s were all well-kept and well trained, which could pass for friendly, but Bon always got more than her share because she was the cutest.

  The waiter opened the door to the private room and ushered Cloister in. It wasn’t much of a private room—the walls were just smoked glass and die-cut copper dioramas.

  Stok
es looked up from his menu. The last time Cloister saw him, the cop-turned-PI was hungover and in yesterday’s underwear. He’d upgraded to a suit that even Cloister could tell was fancy for this meeting. A dark gray vest was buttoned closed over his chest, and he’d rolled back the sleeves of a silk shirt to flash the heavy watch on his wrist as he waved his hand to the chair opposite.

  “Deputy Witte,” Sean said. He grinned as he gave Cloister a once-over. “You look like someone rode you hard and put you away wet.”

  Cloister raised his arm to show off the heavy cast. He’d grabbed a black cover from the pharmacy on his way home, to cover the multicolored “Get well soons” on it. “If your horses end up in plaster, maybe you need more lessons,” he said.

  The smile spread into something that reached all the way to Sean’s eyes. He set down the menu, glanced at Bourneville, and shrugged. “That decides it,” he said. “I’ll have one of the BrewDog ales. Surprise me. What about you, Witte? Are you on duty, or would you like a drink?”

  Cloister pulled out a chair and sat down. He glanced at the menu on the way down. It wasn’t priced, just a list of beers, a subsection for whiskey, and bar foods that included a haggis pakora.

  “If you’ve got any, I’ll have a Bud,” he said. The waiter caught back the rueful sigh at having to take that order to the bar as he scribbled it down.

  “My treat,” Sean said. “I’m flush at the moment, until my ex’s lawyers get wind of it.”

  “In that case,” Cloister said, “two Buds.”

  The waiter hesitated for a second and then promised to be right back and ducked out. Bourneville sat down next to Cloister and yawned, all white teeth and wide, wide jaws.

  “So, Witte,” Sean said as he hooked his arm over the back of his chair and raised his heavy, bar-straight eyebrows expectantly. “Is all this because you think I fucked your boyfriend? Because I haven’t. Yet.”

  He winked, smirked, and looked almost aggressively punchable. Cloister just laughed at him. It wasn’t the reaction Sean expected, and he narrowed his eyes as he stared at Cloister. It took a second before he decided whether to be pissed off at a joke at his expense or be amused in turn. He settled for amused.