Restoration 01 - Getting It Right (3 page)

The chances of recovering the owner’s stuff was slim, but the department had to go through the motions and at least file the proper paperwork saying they’d tried.

With his email checked, his attention refocused on the shower running less than twenty feet away. Over the years, James had crashed at his place more times than he could count. He’d showered at James’s place just as often. So why did the mental image of James naked in his shower suddenly make something inside his belly twist up tight?

He couldn’t let his mind go back there. Not with James still in his house. Nate opened up Solitaire and played until the water shut off. A few minutes later, James appeared in the office doorway. Wet hair was plastered against his head. He’d put his super tight black jeans back on, along with one of Nate’s college sweatshirts, and he looked more awake than he had fifteen minutes ago.

“You brewed your coffee too weak,” James said, “so I poured the rest of it on your bed.”

“Thanks, bro.”

“No problem. Are you going to sit there all morning in your underwear or drive me back to my car?”

For the first time in his life, Nate pushed away a surge of self-consciousness at sitting around in his boxers. He hadn’t even noticed it until James pointed it out, and he fought to keep his expression neutral. “My underwear is a lot more comfortable than my dress slacks.”

“Then drive me in your skivvies, as long as we’re on the road in twenty minutes.”

“Why twenty?”

“Because I still have to go home, change into decent work clothes and then get across town to my office by eleven forty-five, and it’s already after ten.”

“Okay, okay. Fuck.” Nate made a show of getting up slowly. Stretching his arms over his head. Mostly to mess with James.

James stared at his stomach, bared when his T-shirt rose above the hem of his boxers.

Shit. Post-kiss Nate wanted to yank the shirt down and hide what James seemed to be admiring.

But so far James didn’t know they’d kissed, so he had to do what Pre-kiss Nate would do. He made a show of scratching his stomach. “A few more crunches and a little less alcohol, and maybe you’ll have a pack like this.”

James didn’t have an extra ounce of fat anywhere on his body, but the joke did the trick.

It broke the oddness of the moment and shoved them both back into comfortable roles. “Eat me, Wolf.”

“You’d like that.”

“Not even on your best day.”

Nate chuckled and elbowed his way through the office door.

“Twenty minutes,” James shouted at his departing back.

“Twenty-five,” Nate countered as he shut his bedroom door.

After a very cold shower, Nate dressed in his usual work suit and tie, then hustled James out to the pickup. They weren’t running late, but for the first time in, well, ever, he couldn’t wait to get away from James. He wanted to fall headfirst into work today and forget about the awkwardness of last night.

“You in the side lot?” Nate asked.

“Yeah.”

The side lot was a public parking lot a block away from Pot O Gold. Nate had patronized the place once, the night he and their small group of friends went out to celebrate James’s thirtieth birthday. The bar had been an intense scene. Their friend Elliott had ribbed Nate incessantly until he agreed to dance a few songs with them. He’d had fun, despite being groped a few times by some of the regulars who seemed to know James and were eager to buy his straight BFF a shot or six.

Speaking of friends, he needed to call Elliott and see how Doug was doing.

Nate pulled into the public lot. James’s black hardtop was easy to spot among only a half dozen vehicles. He stopped behind the fender. It was his last chance to tell James the truth about last night’s kiss. He hated lying. Except if he did tell James they’d kissed, he’d have to lie and say it been a drunken thing that meant nothing. Nate wasn’t entirely certain what it meant, other than a possible end of their friendship as he knew it.

He valued that friendship too much to risk it. The kiss never happened. No feelings involved. Period.

“Look, Jay, you ever need to vent about Price, you know how to get me, okay? That’s heavy shit to try to deal with on your own.”

James nodded slowly. “Thanks. Seriously, for everything.”

“I’ll put it on your tab.”

With a smile and a laugh, James got out. Nate waited until he’d unlocked the door before leaving the lot and heading for the station. He only got halfway there before his phone rang with the work tone.

“Detective Wolf,” he said. “I’m ten-eight. Go ahead.”

“Possible one-eight-seven at the corner of Anchorage and Lower Oak Street, behind the old tannery. Adam-422 already on scene.”

“Ten-four. I’m about seven minutes out.”

“Acknowledged.”

Perfect. Only eleven in the morning and his day was starting with a homicide. He pulled his dash light off the floor of the passenger side, slapped it down and turned it on. He hated that thing, but he’d need it to get on-scene in less than ten minutes. Not that the body was going anywhere, but the longer it laid out the greater chance of evidence being destroyed.

He found the old tannery easily enough. A big brick building that hadn’t had an actual tenant in decades, decorated on most sides by graffiti that no one cared about enough to wash off. Anchorage was little more than an alley running behind the tannery. He parked near the city police car already on scene. On the street behind him, a few people were hanging out on their stoops, curious about the police activity. He pulled a pair of latex gloves and a few plastic baggies out of his glove box.

Two city officers were standing on either side of a crumpled male body. Nate recognized them by face, but had to glance at their name tags. Dennis and Pfieffer. The body lay facedown, curled on the sidewalk like someone who’d given up walking and decided to take a nap. Only trouble with that scenario was the guy was dead, and he was also naked.

“Who called it in?” Nate asked.

“Nine-one-one from a lady named Becky Sturgis,” Dennis replied. He was the older of the pair, his belt a little tight around his gut. He carried years of experience in his gray hair and wrinkles. “Lives across the street there. Said she spotted him from her porch and figured it was a good idea to report a naked person sleeping on the sidewalk.”

Nate grunted as he snapped on his gloves. He squatted near the dead man’s head, trying to ignore the faint odor of rot. No need to check the pulse. Skin had already settled into a mottled greenish-purple color on the bottom, pale on top. The body had released its waste there. Fixed lividity. He guessed the time of death had been at least six to eight hours ago. No blood pool. No obvious signs of trauma, either.

Nope, that wasn’t quite right. He gently lifted one of the body’s wrists. The stiff limb resisted. Bruising there, as if he’d been restrained. The other wrist had similar discoloration. No marks on the throat, so strangulation was out. Possibly poisoned or asphyxiated.

“I’m assuming we haven’t found any clothing nearby?” Nate asked. “Anything with

identification?”

“I took a look around the area, sir, but nothing,” Pfieffer replied.

The
sir
made Nate glance up. Pfieffer was young, probably only a few years on the job.

Shorn blond hair, narrow face, eager to please. He was in the make-it-or-break-it part of his career, when new officers either decided to switch jobs or to absorb all the ugly that came with it and keep going.

“Coroner’s on the way,” Dennis said. “So is forensics.”

Nate put baggies over the body’s hands, just in case anything useful was under the fingernails. He’d have to wait for forensics to get back to him on a cause of death. While he didn’t prefer the sight of a body riddled with gunshots or knife wounds, it made certain aspects of investigating easier.

“Who are you?” he whispered. “And why are you dead?”

James was making it through his half day at work with very little finesse. His assistant, Gina Alfonso, kept him supplied with coffee and Rolaids, and she didn’t question him when he sent her off for a bowl of egg drop soup to help settle his stomach.

He had to keep himself focused during his appointments. His patients were important to him and, Price or no Price, he wouldn’t let their care suffer because of his own issues.

His first appointment at twelve thirty had been simple enough. He’d been counseling Laura Golding for three years, and she’d made terrific progress since her first appointment. At twenty years old she had come forward and admitted to her mother that her former stepfather molested her when she was eleven. After an intense first few months, James and Laura only saw each other every two weeks now. She was working on her masters in American History, with the goal of being a college professor one day.

“Are you all right, Dr. Taggert?” she had asked once their time was officially over.

“I’m fine, Laura. Why?” Automated response. He didn’t share personal things with his patients, and he was anything but fine.

“I don’t know, you seem off today. Sad.”

“It’ll pass. I don’t want you worrying about me. You concentrate on that paper you’re writing.”

And that was that.

Fortified by the egg drop soup, he brought in his three o’clock.

Will Madden seemed to shrink a little bit more every time he came to see James, which had been twice a week for the past three months. And there wasn’t much to the kid to start with.

Sixteen and five-foot-nothing, Will had been brought to him by a social worker. Kate Alden had referred clients to him before, often abused teens, because she knew those cases were important to James.

Will’s story had horrified James and, after seven years as a therapist, it took a lot to do that. Will’s mother was an alcoholic who had lived on child support and disability after a slip at her old factory job wrecked her back. The accident left her addicted to painkillers, which turned into a heroin addiction. By the time Will was thirteen, he was fending for himself while his mother spent all of her money on drugs. No one noticed when he dropped out of school midyear.

James had always blamed the school system for that one. How did someone not notice when a thirteen-year-old stopped showing up for class?

Because of her expensive addictions, bills piled up and rent notices started getting pasted to their front door. Just after Will’s fourteenth birthday, his mother had sent him into her bedroom, where a man three times his age was waiting. Will was told to take off his clothes, before he was raped in exchange for an envelope of money. The faces of the men changed, but once, sometimes twice a week, Will was sold by his mother for her drug money.

For two years.

One of the men who’d regularly paid in drugs to rape Will was a dealer named Spax, who’d recently come under the eye of the state police. They’d put a tail on Spax, who had led them to Will’s house. They obtained a warrant to search the house, hoping to find something to force his mother to cooperate. What they found was a strung-out woman, a few grams of heroin and a terrified, abused boy no one remembered existed. After a few days in the hospital, which was where James had met him, he was put into emergency placement.

Will was in hell, and James was struggling to get him back out.

“Come in and have a seat,” James said.

Will didn’t speak, or nod, or even make eye contact. He shuffled over to one of the office’s long sofas and sat down on the corner. He wore his standard uniform of baggy jeans and a sweatshirt, despite the warm spring day. His shaggy brown hair spilled over his eyes, hiding them from view.

James sat on the opposite sofa, giving Will space. He didn’t take notes with Will. Every moment of this case was scorched into his memory. “What did you have for breakfast today, Will?”

One slim shoulder lifted in a shrug. Food was a struggle for him. For years he’d survived on bologna sandwiches and peanut butter, and now eating was more of a chore than a pleasure.

Twice already his foster mother Jennifer had taken him to the hospital for forced treatment.

James had been furious when he heard that Will had endured a feeding tube. He understood the need, but he’d still dressed Jennifer down for doing it without him present. The second time, James was there to talk Will through it. To explain why they were hurting him.

Neither ordeal had convinced Will that real food was a better option.

“Did you have breakfast?” James asked.

“Scrambled eggs.” Will’s voice never went above a whisper. “With pepper.”

“How did you like them?”

“They were okay. Jennifer makes them fluffy somehow. I like pepper.”

“That’s good. How about yesterday? Do you remember what you had for breakfast

yesterday?”

“No.”

“Lunch?”

Will picked at the knee of his jeans. “One of those canned shake things. It was really sweet. Jennifer wouldn’t let me leave the table until I drank the whole thing.”

James didn’t like Jennifer forcing Will to do anything, but a nutrition shake was better than a feeding tube. “How did that make you feel, Will? When she made you do that?”

“Stupid.”

Will’s response to most emotion-based questions was “stupid.” “Why did you feel

stupid?”

“Because I can’t eat unless someone makes me, and that’s so stupid. I’m stupid.”

“You aren’t stupid.”

“Yeah, I am. I am stupid.”

“Why do you believe you’re stupid, Will?”

“Smart people ask for help.”

James heart ached for the absolute desolation in Will’s voice. “Asking for help has nothing to do with intelligence. You were very young, and you were emotionally abused. You didn’t know it was okay to ask for help, or to say no. That doesn’t make you dumb or smart.”

“Then what does it make me?”

“It makes you a victim, but that is nothing to be ashamed of. Your mother violated your trust. She broke an unspoken promise between parent and child to protect you.” All words he’d spoken before, in different variations, and he’d say them again and again until Will finally believed him.

“Victim.” Will spoke with so much scorn that James paid closer attention. He’d gone completely rigid, his back straight, his jaw clenched. Odd.