The Definitive Albert J. Sterne (32 page)

But Garrett grinned. He’d kept the local paper so he could begin looking for a long term contract or a business for sale. This would work out. The Oregon police had missed him, just as law enforcement had missed him every time before. Garrett was too clever for them. Life was good.

“A dollar for a cup of coffee, mister,” a clear voice said, as if no reasonable man could refuse such a request.

After a couple more paces, the tone registered with Garrett and he came to a halt, turned back to the group of street kids sitting on the sidewalk. He wasn’t disappointed in what he saw.

“My name is Zac, and I’m a caffeine addict,” the guy confessed, straight-faced.

Garrett laughed and Zac’s companions all quietly chimed in, playing along. He asked, “That’s more urgent than your addiction to food, is it?”

“Yeah, mister. Wouldn’t miss a dollar or five, would you?”

“Five? What’s that - inflation?”

“No - a refill for half price and tax and a gratuity.” The guy finally lost his poker face and smiled, then stood as if too polite to continue the conversation on such an unequal basis.

Garrett definitely liked what he saw. There were five kids, three of them boys, all in their mid to late teens, all in torn black and ragged denim, just the wrong side of dirty. Their hair provided as much variety in cut and color as you could get within the range of punk styles. The guy talking to him, perhaps the oldest of the lot, was handsome despite all that; his features were regular, his skin good and his expression unguarded. As for his hair, it was bright red with no attempt to look natural, generous curls on top and tumbling down the back, and closely shorn over each temple. The other four kids sat there, lined up against an empty ruined shop, huddled against the cold, watching warily. Garrett was used to being accosted by strays of all age groups on his walk home from work. Most of the time he ignored them but if they met certain criteria  …

“You’re a man of style,” the guy was saying easily, either comfortable with or oblivious to Garrett’s silent appraisal. “Surely you understand these things.”

“What - that coffee and hair dye are higher priorities than food?”

Zac shrugged, offered a smile. “I  try for the lot. Want to help me reach the third?”

“Sure. Walk home with me. Bed for the night, whatever food you can find in the fridge, we’ll have some pizza delivered, and as much coffee as you can drink.”

“I only asked for a dollar,” the kid said in mild, unthinking protest as if he had some residual scruples.

“Did I leave that out? Bed, food, pizza, coffee, money for you and your friends.”

“In return for what?” Forget scruples - he was suspicious now.

Laughing again, Garrett didn’t even bother looking around for people who shouldn’t overhear. “Sex, of course. Nothing you can’t handle.”

Zac looked down at the other kids, and they stared back at him, waiting for his reaction.

Garrett couldn’t read their faces, didn’t know whether they were supportive or not. He said, “Come on - your friends will think you’re crazy if you turn down easy money. I’ll walk away and they’ll call you ten kinds of fool.”

The guy turned back to him. “I have my pride, mister.”

Putting on his most irresistible smile, Garrett promised, “You’re going to enjoy every minute of it. Trust me on that. We won’t do anything you don’t want to.” When Zac still didn’t agree, Garrett pulled his wallet out, offered a fifty-dollar bill. “Down payment.”

Zac reached for it, pure instinctive need, wavered; then made the decision and took it. “All right.” He cast a look at his young friends, worried but defiant, and stepped away.

“I’ll bring him back tomorrow morning,” Garrett reassured the kids, who remained blank and wary. One of the girls was standing, as if unsure whether to interfere. Garrett smiled again before she could say anything, and turned to walk up the street beside the guy, his heart singing. He still had it: the charm and the nerve; the ability to entrance and entrap. He had it in spades.

Having taken exactly what he wanted from the young man, Garrett felt expansively magnanimous. He could afford to be generous now. In fact, he liked to be.

It was dawn, and neither of them had slept. Garrett ran a warm bath, eased the guy into it and soaped him up. He’d only broken the skin in two places, which was quite good considering. The guy’s real hurt was from being fucked raw. And despite all they’d been through, Zac let Garrett kneel here by the bath, so drained he simply accepted the thorough and careful washing, apparently too dazed to consider how easy it would be for Garrett to push him below the surface, hold him down while he tried to breathe water.

But what would be the point? Sure it would be interesting to watch, good to feel the guy struggling under his palms, wonderful to dig his fingers in as panic widened Zac’s eyes. Garrett’s hands itched, and he even took hold of the boy’s shoulders.

No: it was more important right now to retain the control. He needed the control, to savor the power rather than let it devour him.

Difficult, once he’d had such a nice idea, to let it go.

“Stand up,” he said, gruff. The boy did so, weary and beaten beyond protest. Garrett pulled the plug, fetched a towel and dried the kid off. And then he took a lovely long time examining the bruises that were already beginning to show, tending to the two patches of roughened, bloodied skin.

By the time he’d done, the guy had regained a little awareness, and was looking at him as if this was the weirdest experience of the whole night. Garrett grinned at him, letting his eyes sparkle. “Coffee before you go? I  guess you’ll want to skip breakfast.”

Zac nodded, dumb. When Garrett let him be, the guy struggled awkwardly into his clothes, then trailed after him into the kitchen and obediently swallowed the two cups of coffee Garrett poured for him, though he seemed to have a hard time stomaching it.

The streets were just beginning to come alive when Garrett drove Zac to the old shopfront where he’d found him. There was no sign of the other kids amongst the few passers-by. “Where are your friends?”

It took a moment for the boy to speak his first words through swollen lips. “Here’s fine.”

“No, I want to make sure you’re all right. Where do they hang out?”

The kid, slumped in the passenger seat, turned further to look out the side window so that Garrett couldn’t see his face.

“You don’t have to worry about me coming to find you again, Zac,” Garrett said. “I  had what I wanted. Now it’s over and I’ll take you to your friends. They can look after you.”

“Here’s fine,” the guy repeated. And he added a dull, “Thank you.”

“Don’t be a fool.” Reason touched with amused impatience. “Just tell me where they are.”

The boy sighed, surrendering the last of his streetwise instincts to a more persuasive force. Garrett grinned, loving this thorough defeat. Turning stiffly to the front again, Zac let his head fall back, eyes closed. “Next left,” he whispered, “middle of the block, there’s an old wooden house.”

Garrett quickly found the ramshackle place down a narrow street little better than an alley, then helped the guy out of the car. The girl came out, the one who’d wanted to interfere, took one look at Zac and glared at Garrett.

“He’s going to be fine,” Garrett said placatingly, his hands refusing to let the guy go. “Don’t make this into something it’s not.”

“Zac?” she asked. “What’s he done to you?”

The guy shook his head, docile in Garrett’s grasp.

“Just let him get some sleep today, he’ll be fine,” Garrett continued.

“Will you?” she asked Zac. He nodded, and the girl turned, angry. “There are laws against this, mister.”

“Oh come on, there’s no need to start all that. I  gave the kid the best meal he’s had in months last night, gave him a bath this morning. He’s not really hurt.”

“Not really hurt?”
she repeated, incredulous. “Look at him!”

The other kids were there now, including two Garrett hadn’t seen yesterday, listening from the doorway, hovering in consternation.

Zac whispered, “It’s okay, Patrice.”

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Garrett said, finally handing him over to the girl’s support. He reached for his wallet, slipped a fifty-dollar note into the guy’s hip pocket, pressed another into the girl’s hand, held one more out to the nearest kid, who reluctantly drew forward to take it. “It’s okay,” Garrett said again in his most reassuring voice.

“It’s not okay,” the girl said, though her anger had been disarmed and resentment seemed to prevail. Perhaps she wished she could afford to not accept the money. “It’s assault, it’s  … rape.”

The kid winced at the word and she took him deep into an embrace.

“You don’t want to get into all that. The kid will be fine, no real harm done. And if you’re talking law, then Zac consented to have sex with me, as you witnessed yesterday - and sex between men is illegal down here, so your friend will be in as much trouble as me. And it’s the word of a street kid against a man with friends and money in all the right places. Just let him sleep today and be sensible about this.”

The girl was still glaring at him, but she was almost beat. Garrett knew his arguments were mostly a bluff but it all rang true in her ears.

“Trust me. You don’t want to see me again,” Garrett said. He reached to grasp the kid’s elbow, dug his fingers in. “Tell her.”

“We don’t want to see him again,” Zac said quickly, weakly.

“Good. And you won’t. It’s over. Just calm down and let it go.” And, after she’d finally nodded, Garrett pushed another fifty dollars into the kid’s pocket, more than willing to pay for his pleasures, to grease his way through potential difficulty.

Taking the young man had been good, Garrett reflected, unable to stop himself grinning at the memories: Zac crawling away from him, blindly trying to get free; clawing at the sheets until he ripped them, hissing and growling like a wild thing with its leg caught in a trap. Garrett laughed. He’d had a great time and he’d gotten away with it yet again - stopped himself from killing the kid, ensured the whole thing would remain a secret, bribed Zac’s friends so they felt like guilty accomplices. He laughed and declared, “That was great, kid,” and he took Zac’s head in both hands, kissed the unhappy lips, bit at them, bruising them one last time.

There was someone walking past the alley mouth but Garrett didn’t care. He loved the disgust on the kids’ faces, Zac looking ill with it all.

He waved a farewell, climbed into the car and drove to work, picking up the newspapers on the way.

“Good morning, Mr Garrett,” Kenny murmured in that soft full voice of his.

“Morning, Kenny.” Garrett paused, waited expectantly. “Today of all days you’re not going to ask me?”

The young man eased into a wide smile. “You got lucky last night, sir?”

“Yes, Kenny, I damn well did.” And he couldn’t stop grinning about it. So many weeks since the deaths in Oregon, and no sex in the meantime. He’d almost been too worried to even think about it much. He’d spent hours sitting in his living room, hands full of jewelry from dead boys, clutching at it in a state of mild panic. Ridiculous way to live his life. He’d just have to be more careful from now on, that was all. He’d lost the threads of it, let a few stitches slip. There were some things he still wasn’t clear on, like the who and when and how of the blood and the body in the cellar, but he’d gotten away with it all, and it was time now to live again.

He spread the Oregon paper across his desk, skimmed the front page. And there, with headlines blaring, was an article about the murder of a school boy. His body had been found dumped in the river, he’d been sexually molested and beaten to death about six weeks ago. The police stated they felt there was no connection to the four bodies found early last month, though the previous case or cases remained unsolved. This new victim had been identified as Jack Brooks.

Garrett frowned. Surely he’d known a Jack Brooks, the kid had lived nearby, delivered the papers on his bike each morning. Could it have been the same boy? A serious kid, only about thirteen years old, poor thing; studious with dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses, and a smile that needed coaxing. Who would have killed him? Six weeks ago Garrett had just arrived in Louisiana, after a meandering trip through the States.

The frown deepened. Today was the fourth day of winter, and he’d already been in Louisiana for six weeks? That couldn’t be possible. He’d killed the first boy during the early days of fall, during the second game of the football season. The second one should have been four weeks after that, and the third one after another four weeks, which left most of November - yet he’d been here since late in October.