Boy Crucified (17 page)

“About five hundred feet away from where you found Frankie Peters. Looks like he was rolled down the hill there, or so I’m told.”

I tried to recall the surroundings. Frankie had been found on a bluff overlooking the river. If you kept walking about thirty feet beyond Frankie’s body, there was a steep incline going down to the bank. Whitehead must have been dumped over the bluff and down into the brush along the river, which would have made it impossible for us to see him.

“How do we know it’s Whitehead?” I asked.

“Wallet in his back pocket,” Harlock said.

I hung up and offered Daniel a helpless shrug.

VIII

“I’
VE
been down there, and he ain’t pretty,” Georgina Durmount said, picking burrs and dead leaves off her pants. “But we decided to wait anyway, just in case you wanted to have a look.”

We stood on the bluff, looking down at the scene. The tech guys combed the area for clues. The body itself could not be seen from this height. Dressed in slacks and a tie and nice shoes, I did not much feel like clambering down the bluff to look at a dead body, especially since my shoulder was aching from the syringe wound.

“I’ll go, boss,” Daniel said.

“I’m sure I can manage,” I replied.

“Got a bash on the back of the head,” Durmount said. “Half his skull is caved in. But the body is so bloated and discolored that you may have to wait for an autopsy if you want to learn more.”

We weren’t likely to find anything the tech guys hadn’t already found, or would, but even so, I wanted to have a look for myself, so I rolled up my pant legs. Durmount led us down the path that had been made by the other investigators, and it was steep. I found myself grasping shrubs and saplings and hoping I didn’t tumble down the hill like a middle-aged fool. Since it was October, I was not worried about snakes or other wildlife, although the deep grass was not much to my liking. In fact, the farther Mother Nature stayed away from me, the better. On the other hand, I didn’t mind Daniel Qo keeping close, always ready to grab for me should I go plummeting down the hill. Nice to know someone was looking out for me.

Durmount was right. There was not much to see. And what we did see was not worth the effort. As a body decomposes, gases are released, which causes swelling and discoloration. The eyes sink in, losing their fluid. Skin begins to slough off. Insects make a mess of things. Flies lay eggs in orifices like eye sockets or nostrils, giving rise to maggot infestation. We were seeing all this now, making it all but impossible to see anything else.

I glanced at Daniel. His face seemed rather pale. He was new to this. No doubt he’d attended an autopsy or two, but decomposing bodies in the field were another thing altogether. He looked like he might be sick. I put out a hand to touch his arm, to reassure him. He offered a tight smile.

I stared down at Whitehead. I was reminded of why Westerners are so fond of embalming. Anything to stop this natural, but gruesome, process.

I looked around.

The tech guys had found nothing but a piece of two-by-four that looked like the murder weapon. One end was bloody. The other end, we hoped, might have fingerprints.

Their initial assessment was that Earl Whitehead had been hit over the head, then pushed down the bluff. The board had been tossed after him. They had arrived at this conclusion after finding a spot on the bluff above, where a significant amount of blood had dripped on the ground and seeped beneath the dead leaves. I wanted to ask why they had not found this spot the first time around, but did not.

Whitehead was still wearing his religious garb. The material of his habit was twisted around his legs, revealing old, scuffed black shoes and dirty white socks. He lay face down, the bashing on the back of his head clearly visible. In life, he had not been a very large man.

“Well, if you have any ideas, I’m all ears,” I said to Durmount.

She offered a sympathetic smile. “From the condition of the body, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had been killed the same night as Frankie Peters. I’ll be able to date it more exactly when I can take a better look at the insect activity.”

“Don’t even start with that,” I said.

“Maybe your new partner might find it interesting,” she replied, nodding at Daniel.

I rolled my eyes.

“Insects arrive at the scene of a death with almost clock-like precision,” she said to Daniel. “Flies usually come first, sometimes within minutes, laying their eggs. From the eggs come maggots, about twenty-four hours later. From the size of the maggots, we can determine how old they are, how many days they’ve been alive.”

“And thus, how many days the body has been lying here,” Daniel added. “I read about that.”

“Reading is one thing,” she said. “Other insects play a part. Worms, beetles—lots of beetles. They usually show up about twenty-fours after death. I’ll spare you all the gory details, and just say that having a look at the insect activity is a very useful tool in determining exactly when someone has died.”

“I’ve read about that too,” Daniel said again, looking even paler.

“Well,” Durmount said, smiling, “ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.”

“And what will you do now?” he asked.

“We’ll bag the body, take along as much of the scene as possible to preserve the insect activity and any trace evidence. I’ll examine the body, although I suspect the cause of death is pretty obvious. I’ll want to rule out any other cause, such as asphyxiation or drug overdose. Sometimes postmortem wounds are inflicted in an attempt to confuse us, making it seem like the victim died one way, when in fact he died some other way.”

“Since we found his wallet,” I said, “that suggests the motive for his murder wasn’t necessarily robbery, not that a monk is going to have anything worth stealing anyway. How did we find his body?”

“Guy came down here fishing,” Durmount said.

“This late in the year?”

She shrugged.

I remembered the autopsy report for Eli Smalley that was in my briefcase, and told her I wanted her to have a look, to compare the findings to those for Frankie.

“Leave it on my desk,” she said, a bit wearily. “It’s going to be a long evening.”

As we turned and headed back up the hill, Daniel bent close to me and whispered, “
That
was charming.”

“
That
is what you signed up for,” I replied.

“Is it too late to change my mind?”

“Yes. On
that
and other things.”

This produced the hint of a genuine smile.

IX

D
ANIEL
and I parted ways, and it was close to ten by the time I got home, only to discover my mother sitting on my sofa, watching my television, the volume too high for my liking. The sight of her made the pit of my stomach cold and small.

She stared at the idiot box, her face haggard, old. She said nothing and did not seem to be aware of my presence. She was lost again, lost in her own world, in her own thoughts, lost in a place I could not follow—a place where none of us could follow.

I preferred her this way, always had.

“Did you take your meds?” I asked.

She did not turn to look at me, did not acknowledge me, her attention fixated on the flickering screen, looking at things only she could see.

I went up the stairs, tuning her out. I spent a long time in the shower, thinking about Eli and Frankie and feeling that I wanted to cry. I knew what sexual abuse could do, and I hated to see it happening to kids who couldn’t defend themselves, couldn’t make it stop, who didn’t know how. It was such an ugly, horrible thing to get caught up in. It was an invasion of your deepest, most private parts, in more ways than one. It did damage psychologists could only guess at but never really comprehend. It struck at the core, at who you thought you were as a person, at how you perceived and understood yourself. The ramifications went on and on.

It was not possible for my mother to be around and for me to not think about it, to not remember what she had done. After a long time in the shower, I put a towel around my waist and went to my bedroom and crawled into bed. I thought about Daniel Qo and what I wouldn’t give to have him lying in the bed next to me, naked, horny, ready to take me to much sweeter, comforting places. I wanted to lay my head down on his belly and nurse at his cock like a child sucking a pacifier. I wanted to nurse myself to sleep with that flesh in my mouth. Or we could lay curled up, as Billy and I had once done, his hardness inside my ass, his warm arms holding me as we fell asleep, locked together as one body—“the two shall become as one.”

It made me horny, thinking about it, but I resisted the urge to roll back the covers and help myself. Far better, I thought, to wait for Daniel Qo, to wait for the next time his warm lips were wrapped around my cock.

The thought of it was soothing.

Better yet, I could hold Daniel in my arms and make love to him, pushing my hardness deep into his insides, making it last as long as humanly possible. We could spice it up with poppers, make a night of it. What would it be like, fucking Daniel Qo, making those lovely muscles tense with the initial pain, having him completely at my mercy, spread-eagled on the bed while I hovered over him, pile-driving my way to a massive orgasm?

Billy had taught me exactly what that would be like. I hadn’t been much of a fan of anal sex until Billy showed me the possibilities. With Billy, it was a quick first fuck, a little siesta, then a long-haul fuck that got better and better the more I got into it. He knew how to make it last. By the time he was finished, we were both sweating and exhausted and utterly spent.

What would a night like that be with Daniel Qo?

Thinking about it made me so horny I couldn’t help myself. I pushed back the covers and took hold of my cock and started stroking it, feeling a little foolish but desperate and needy and heedless. I wanted Daniel Qo to be sitting on my cock, humping me, pumping his slender hips up and down, getting me off while I stared up at his lovely muscles, his brownness, his maleness, his dark nipples, the curve of his jaw, those flashing white teeth. I wanted to stare up at him and know that he was mine—all mine—and that he would keep fucking me until I was satisfied and spent.

I was gripped by a frenzy of lust; I hadn’t experienced such lust in a long, long time. It made me feel young, powerful, desirable. It made me feel complete, somehow, like a real person, not the shell of a person I’d been since Billy had died. I wanted to live again. I wanted to fuck again. I wanted to fuck and be fucked, risking my heart, my soul, my privacy, opening the doors, letting someone in, letting myself be swept away by their beauty and charm.

The semen spilled out on my belly with a bit more vigor than usual. Instead of getting up to clean myself off, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

CHAPTER FIVE
Dies irae

I

D
ANIEL
was in the office when I arrived the following morning.

“Hey, boss,” he said, flashing those white teeth.

“Hey,” I replied, sitting down at my desk.

He was beautiful, sitting there like he owned the place, like he knew how much I liked seeing him there. Bastard. He smiled at me as if he knew my secret thoughts.

Just you wait
, I thought.

“Got plans for this weekend?” he asked innocently.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s about time I fucked somebody’s brains out. I might head over to 38
^th
Street.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there,” he said.

“If you do, your ass is grass.”

“And you’re the lawnmower?”

“Something like that.”

“Dirty old man.”

“Or maybe I’ll just stop by your place.”

“Maybe I’ll cook you some Chinese food.”

“Maybe I’ll bring lots of K-Y.”

“Maybe I want you to.”

I paused, looking over to him.

“We could get into trouble, talking like this,” I said.

“So why don’t you just ask me out and be done with it so we can get on with the day’s work?”

“Inter-office romance is frowned upon.”

“What they don’t know can’t hurt them.”

“I don’t want it to get awkward.”

“Neither do I. It’s just, you’ve got this older-man thing going on. I’m having a hard time thinking about anything else except you. It’s kinda crazy. So what do you say?”

“About what?”

“You were going to ask me out.”

“I was?”

“You know you were.”

I find confidence attractive. I like a man who knows what he wants and is not afraid to go after it. Still, the warning bells were going off. Sleeping with your partner? Not a good idea. Not impossible, of course, and Daniel and I wouldn’t be the first to go down that path, but still, not always such a good idea.

“Well?” he prompted.

I gave him a long stare.

“It’s not a lifelong commitment,” he said with a smile.

“Perhaps I need something a bit more substantial than a one night stand,” I countered.

“And you’re the only one? What, am I just a slut?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Daniel laughed. His eyes were filled with merriment.

“What?” I asked, indignant.

“You’re so cute. Old fuddy-duddy. That’s what I like about you.”

“We’ll see how old I am.”

“I hope so. So. Is it a date, then?”

“Sure,” I said. “Can we get on with the job now?”

II

I
CHECKED
my e-mail to see which companies wanted to help me increase my breast size, or which ones were advising me that “she needs at least eight inches”—who, precisely?—not to mention the refinancing and debt consolidation messages. After plowing through all of those, there wasn’t much left.

Jensen had sent a message informing me of a meeting this morning at seven thirty, and I looked at my watch. I had about fifteen minutes to spare. We were scheduled to discuss the case and compare notes, given the “intense media interest”—and, speaking of, there were numerous interview requests from all sorts of people, all of which I ignored.