Zipper Fall (32 page)

“She is— Hell. She was the spirit of this place,” he said, his shaved head gleaming under the fluorescent lights. “Our trainer, Craggs, he thought she had everything she needed to break through and go pro. She had the visibility, the charisma, everything. Then this one guy showed up, started flirting with her, and she got kinda distracted, y’know? She’d skip workouts to go out partying with him….” He cleared his throat and flashed a loaded look in Jack’s direction.

“Yeah. She seemed really happy.” The bitterness in Jack’s voice exceeded that of the coffee scalding my tongue. “She thought he was ‘the one.’”

“He’s still around,” I mused. “Question is, how to get him to jail.”

“To jail?” Carlos’s eyebrows rose, his tan forehead scrunched in lines. “For what?”

“Well… it so happens that Chico, here, made a startling discovery regarding the gear she used the day she died.” Jack’s voice was impassive, controlled. He handed the large plastic bag with Celia’s gear over to Carlos. “Go ahead. You tell me. What’s wrong with this picture?”

A
N
HOUR
had passed; Craggs was on his way to the gym. So was Jubal Lupine, the detective who wanted me to tell him how I got shot in the rear two weeks prior.

We waited, alone with our thoughts, until Chico stood and stretched his toned arms all the way up, letting his T-shirt ride up and show his pierced navel. “No point just sitting around,” he said, not marring his lovely face with a frown. He tossed his hair to the side, shooting a challenging look in Carlos’s direction. “Will you at least let us boulder while we wait?”

What transpired next was rather amusing. Carlos’s gaze locked with Chico’s in a silent struggle. His lips widened in an easy grin. “Sure, you can climb if you’re bored. Although… I better go supervise. Gym policy for newbies, you see.”

The air was charged as they stared at one another. There was challenge and defiance, and competition so thick you didn’t need a rock wall to get high.

“I’ll come with you,” I announced, eager to get out of the cramped, stuffed little room.

“You don’t want to stay with me anymore?” Jack whispered.

“Not this second, no. If I don’t feel like sitting next to you, it’s your fault.” And it was. My shoulders were sore, his grip marks were developing into bruises, and nothing would ease my foul mood like an easy climb with a few stretches afterward.

He pulled me down by my hand and kissed my shoulder lightly. “Sorry, Goldilocks. Got carried away.”

“Would you two just get a room?” Tim snarled, unaccustomed to neither Jack nor any public display of affection. Tim, unlike us, was an intensely private sort. He didn’t care what we did on our own time, as long as he wasn’t personally exposed to it.

O
NLY
an hour later, the little office was packed even tighter than before. I opted to stand to make room for the proprietor, Craggs. He was a big guy with long, corded muscles and a black ponytail, and his face was as weathered as the rocks he probably climbed on his days off. He was pissed off royally and his anger simmered under a veneer of manners as thin as new-formed ice.

“So you’re saying my star climber, the one I’ve been working with for years, got offed by this upstart who joined the gym not too long ago?”

Jack nodded. “That’s the theory right now.”

“And he’s supposed to be this fabled legend I never got to see in real life? The phenom who did all those magazine interviews years ago?” Craggs fingered the too-thin rope, spitting on his fingers. “Let’s see if this stains like Chico said it would.” It did. “Fuck.” His quiet, measured expletive sliced the air. “And she was so fearless.”

“Maybe too fearless,” Chico said. “Did she trust others easily?”

“She just hit it off with Risby. They were a natural team. He said he’d never climbed before, and I chose not to say anything. He was catching on awful quick for a newbie, but you notice things. No newbie can hang off his fingers, no matter how strong they are. You gotta get used to that.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Jack let out a low, pained growl.

“I figured she must have noticed, too. She looked so happy, y’know? And… I figured, why be a cock-blocker? If the guy was dumbing down to keep her happy, chasing after her, well… she was more than okay with it, so I let it slide. And then Carlos came on board. He’s from out West, had been climbing out there for years, and he recognized him. Risby Haus must have moved east and landed in Pittsburgh some time after he retired from climbing. Now it comes out that he’s the Demon of Santa Teresa.
Fuck
!” Craggs whirled and threw his massive fist into the wall. He made a hole in his office wall.

I think we all wanted to do that.

“W
E
NEED
a motive, guys.” Detective Lupine got there within half an hour and, his voice patient and calm, tried to instill order in a hornet’s nest. “Why’d he kill his girlfriend, again?”

Tim cleared his throat. “She might have been a whistle-blower…. Remember that Provoid Brothers securities scandal?”

Lupine nodded.

“I’m a reporter and was working that story at the time. There were some deaths in their accounting department. I’ve tried to track down the apparent accidents and suicides this morning, but it’s not hard to find someone nowadays. I found one of Celia’s friends from work. A senior accountant, Joanne Tovissi. She used to report to the Vice President of Operations—Kevin Toussey was his name, I think. He’s the one who didn’t end up serving time due to medical reasons. Sudden blindness and some other stuff.”

Everybody sat still in expectant silence.

“So where is she?” Lupine asked.

“Joanne Tovissi popped up in a Google search. Her memorial service was held two months ago. She was run down by a speeding car—there was no license plate.”

O
NCE
the furor died and the people stopped shouting over one another in an effort to work through their countless speculations, Jubal Lupine threw a wet blanket on the whole party.

“Unfortunately, this gear will never be admitted into evidence,” the detective said with a mournful expression. “Had the police collected it at the time her body was removed, it would have been okay, but the local force sees the occasional climbing accident and has little patience for out-of-towners getting killed on their watch.” He sighed. “The only way to nab him is to have him confess.”

“I can arrange for that,” Craggs growled.

“No you can’t. I’m her brother, it’s my job.” Jack almost rose out of his seat.

“Not like that, you ass—gentlemen.” Frustration and poorly concealed amusement warred on Lupine’s face as he shot Reyna, the only woman in the room, an apologetic look for his slip of tongue. “It has to be coaxed out of him so it’s voluntary. It has to be wiretapped. I can get a warrant for that, but as soon as you lay even the small finger of your left hand on him, if it’s part of a police action, you’ll get his admission thrown out of court.”

“So I can work him over afterward?” Jack asked, his eyes glinting like hard ice.

“I won’t comment on that. I’m depending on you guys to not be stupid.” He looked around, taking in our determined faces. “I guess that’s too much to ask with your bunch, though.”

M
Y
BATH
water was cooling. I turned on the hot water tap again and slid under, enjoying its soothing warmth on all the parts that ailed me. My mind whirled. Risby would have to be coaxed to ’fess up. This didn’t include violence, but it might include being wily. Of all of us, I was the one best suited to do just that. My climbing skills, my looks, and my determination would help me take care of this pesky problem before Jack lost his patience, hunted down the traitorous asshole, and tore him asunder with his own two bare hands. The law took dim view of such acts of personal vendetta—Jack didn’t want me in jail for burglary, but by the same token, regardless how I felt about him at the moment, I didn’t want him in jail for murder.

A plan began to form in my mind as I swirled my hands through the water, watching the gentle waves travel out, then bounce back to me. I’d need to employ serious safety precautions. My mind followed various avenues of attack, paying special attention to defense. There was a way to make Risby talk. When I watched him climb that one time—and only one time, but still—I thought I’d noticed he seemed to have made an effort to flirt with me. It wasn’t anything obvious, just a meeting of the eyes and a quirk of a smile where there didn’t have to be one. I wasn’t entirely sure yet, but something told me that Risby Haus might swing both ways.

J
ACK
burst through the door, kicked his shoes off, and dumped a shopping bag on the dining room table. “Dinner!”

The clothing and personal items I’d brought in my huge duffel were all organized and stowed away; I was sprawled on my bed wearing Jack’s new navy bathrobe, reading a climbing magazine. “Coming….” My lack of excitement for dinner had a lot to do with my general avoidance of conversation with my mercurial lover.

My head was still a bit sore from my hangover, but that had been my own doing.

My boundaries had been violated with the way Jack had approached me in Chico’s shower.

My shoulders bore bruised imprints of his hands.

Worst of all, I didn’t need to check with my friends to discover what possible words I might have exchanged with Jack the night before. The telephone call was etched into my memory.

In vino veritas.

There is truth in wine. Thinking back to the beginning of our unlikely relationship, I reviewed the milestones of our association one by one. The events were a comedy of errors and a compilation of embarrassments. The last of which was being held captive in a friend’s shower, Jack’s intent eminently clear. The memory of an angry Jack jumbled my conflicted feelings into a tangled mess—and considering the extent of the measures to which I had stooped in my pursuit of Jack Azurri, the situation had a sense of surreal poetic justice about it. Now he was pursuing me and I had the proverbial tiger by the tail.

Below the waist, I approved of his vigor. Above the waist, I had a hard time reconciling the attentive, generous, and gentle lover who was Jack Azurri with the possessive, primal beast that had tried to lay claim to my person, my schedule, and my independence. He had given me a glimpse of his dark side. His angry side, his violent side. That side was part of him, but I had said I loved him—and I had to make sure my statement held even now, under the light of new revelations of Jack’s somewhat volatile nature.

“Hey, Wyatt….” There was a soft knock on my doorjamb. I caught a glimpse of his chestnut hair as he peeked through the open door. “Dinner’s getting cold.”

“Yeah. I heard.” I flipped the magazine face down to mark my page.

Jack’s eyes lit with interest. “Hey… we could go climbing together, y’know. I haven’t been able to, lately, but… I really miss it.” He was asking to enter into my world.

I nodded. “Okay.”

I followed him out to the dining room, remaining silent and assessing: Could I love the bad with the good? Could I tolerate his fierce possessiveness along with the fatal attraction, the gentle caring?

My internal alarms screamed “Danger, danger!” as I hurtled through unknown space, lacking a reliable navigation system. Capturing his heart seemed to have come with a lot more complications than just breaking into his house and taking some cash out of his freezer would have done.

The scent of Indian food hit my nostrils. My favorite dishes were set out on the table in an elaborate gesture of apology. Dark saag paneer with its glistening cheese, orange tikka masala with fragrant jasmine rice, buttery naan flatbread. Cardamom and coriander and love.

I stopped in my tracks, motionless in the doorway. There was a candle on the table, its flickering light illuminating a sad supermarket rose in a washed-out mustard jar.

“C’mon, Wyatt.” He wrapped his arm around my shoulder, gently leading me to a chair. There were no words, but the apology and regret in Jack’s eyes spoke volumes.

Maybe I didn’t have to move back into my solitary apartment with no bed.

Maybe I could stay.

I
WOKE
up once again, restless and tired at the same time. Gray light of the early dawn filtered through the sheer curtains, leaving my room calm and cave-like. Six in the morning on an overcast Sunday, and my mind just would not stop spinning. I’d been like that all night long. It had been hard to fall asleep; yesterday was so busy and confusing, I needed more time to process it all. Usually, that meant just falling asleep and waking up with a clever insight or two.

Not this time. This time, small sounds kept waking me in the middle of the night. The building elevator. Jack tossing and turning two rooms away. Somebody flushing the toilet one floor above us.

My door was closed. Unequipped with a lock. Every time I woke up, I looked at the door, making sure it was still shut. At that time, I didn’t know why.