Walk among us (4 page)

WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

Chapter Three

Calvin swiped his credit card, tapping it impatiently against the edge of the reader as he watched the cashier finish bagging his art supplies. They weren’t what he wanted. Wal-Mart wasn’t exactly a cultural mecca. But the pencils and sketchpad he’d purchased would more than suffice until he got home. Then he’d transfer everything to the proper medium, and Matthew Soto would be immortalized forever.

Matthew Soto. A mystery if he ever saw one.

He thanked the cashier politely and strolled toward the exit, but his thoughts were elsewhere. They lingered on sad, brown eyes, too soft to be a murderer’s. They dwelled on long, work-rough fingers, too hot to be entirely natural. Broad shoulders. His quiet voice. Matthew was nothing like he would expect to find in Watson Park, nothing like he’d assume a killer to be. If it wasn’t for that one damning fact, Calvin held little doubt he would have pressed the flirtation as far as he could. He suspected that Matthew might have actually welcomed it.

His cell phone jangled as he was fumbling with his car keys. The number on the display was local, but unknown.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Schumacher? This is Detective Griesler. Do you have a minute?”

Calvin frowned as he tossed the bag into the backseat of his rented Mazda. He hadn’t really expected the detective to call, in spite of his warning they might. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a few more questions.”

Fear sliced through him. Had someone else seen Matthew after all? Or had the waitress overheard something she shouldn’t have? Calvin cursed himself for sticking around Krauss’s instead of picking something up at Kroger’s and going back to the house. “About what?”

“The man who was killed.”

He tried not to sigh in relief. “I told you…” Sliding behind the wheel, he slammed the door behind him.

WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have in the parking lot. “I didn’t know who it was.”

“What do you remember the other guests saying about him?”

What did that have to do with anything? But Calvin wracked his brain, picking out the few details he could. “Nobody could agree on who he was, though,” he finished. “But that shouldn’t matter, should it?

You can ID him from dental records or fingerprints or something like that, can’t you?”

Detective Griesler sighed. “We didn’t get a chance to, no.”

His use of the past tense made Calvin stiffen. “Did something happen?” He already knew the answer.

Matthew had told him twice there wouldn’t be a body.

“Nothing we won’t fix,” Griesler said. “Thank you for your time.”

He sat in his car long after they’d disconnected, staring blankly out the windshield. The questions refused to be ignored, no matter how much he tried to reason with them. Each one would shout, then retreat while another laid claim to his attention, until his head throbbed and his eyeballs ached. What did it even matter?

If he called Griesler back and told him he should look into a Matthew Soto, would they be able to do anything about it without physical evidence? Besides, he’d already promised Matthew he wasn’t going to say anything. Calvin was a lot of things, but the few shreds of honor he had left were precious to him.

Metal rattled outside his window where somebody shoved a cart into the holding section, banging it against the others already waiting there. The sound grated down his spine. Shoving the key into the ignition, he sparked the engine to life, throwing it into reverse. Where had Matthew said he lived? In the area. What did that mean?

He picked up his phone, and with one hand punched the number for directory assistance. An operator came on, but when she asked for what he needed, he hesitated. The details he had were scanty, strokes of an incomplete painting waiting for somebody else to finish the composition.

But they would have to do.

“I need a number for a Matthew Soto. S-o-t-o. I don’t know the exact city, but he’s local.”

“One moment.”

He coasted to a stop at the exit to the main street. Electric hum filled his ear, filled his head, but he refrained from pulling out of the parking lot until he had an idea about which direction he was going.

“I have one Matthew Soto, sir. Would you like the number, or do you want to be connected?”

Calvin paused. He needed to think this through. Soto was a killer, whether the police had a body or not.

Confronting him in the dead of night was stupid, no matter how he looked at it. Just because he wanted answers didn’t mean he was willing to gamble with his life to get them.

“The number’s fine.”

He scrambled inside the Wal-Mart bag for one of the pencils, scribbling Matthew’s number down on the back of the receipt. Thanking the operator, he disconnected and tossed his phone onto the passenger seat.

Even though he’d made his decision, he was still torn. Nothing waited for him at Ted’s house except dark WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

memories and darker shadows. Matthew’s couldn’t be any worse. Logic warned him to be careful, but his gut told him he had nothing to fear. Matthew had had multiple opportunities to hurt him and had never taken the chance.

He’d never been cornered on his home turf before, either.

Headlights appeared in his rearview mirror as a car pulled up behind him. Swearing under his breath, Calvin turned right onto the main road and toward Ted’s house. He drove a little too fast and a little too recklessly to get to it, the night slashing across his windshield in alternating stripes, but he knew that if he didn’t, he’d pick his phone up and call Matthew.

There was only one problem.

When he reached the driveway, he couldn’t find the nerve to get out and walk up to the front door.

It was just a house, a small one at that. It looked like most of the other houses on the block, single-story, boxy, with the chain-link fence and a sign announcing a dog that hadn’t lived there in years. Ted had, though. He’d been worse than a dog. He’d turned and attacked Calvin without warning when he’d learned about his son’s sexuality.

But Ted was gone, and the house was Calvin’s, and any monsters that might have frightened him away existed only in his imagination.

Next door, Eli’s porch light flipped on. Calvin blinked against the shift in illumination, grimacing when Eli opened the inside door and stood on the other side of the screen. He waved to Calvin with the hand not holding the beer bottle. In a minute, he was probably going to step outside and invite Calvin in. The only way to escape the inevitable was leave or go inside Ted’s house.

Calvin grabbed the shopping bag and killed his headlights. The key ring weighed heavy in his coat pocket as he jogged up the short path, but he found the tarnished key for the front door as if he’d never moved away from Watson Park. In, turn, lift up to jiggle the sticky tumbler, push.

Darkness yawned back at him as he slipped inside.

He turned on only the lamp next to the couch. Any more would invite Eli to try and share his grief again, and Calvin didn’t have the stomach to deal with it a third time. Collapsing in the corner of the sofa without the broken spring, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. That was a mistake. Without reality to intrude, his mind’s eye conjured a man too broad to be gentle, too gentle to be threatening, even with a gun visible in a shoulder holster. Calvin’s body tensed as imaginary Matthew smiled at him, and it hardened some more when hot, rough hands reached out to take the pencils from his lax fingers.

“You want to draw me?” imaginary Matthew asked.

Calvin nodded.

“You have to know me.”

“I want to.”

“No, you don’t. You’re afraid of me.”

WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

“Because I don’t know you.”

“It’s a catch-22, isn’t it?” Imaginary Matthew skimmed his palms up Calvin’s arms. When he reached the
shoulders, his path veered inward, fingertips sculpting over Calvin’s collarbone. “I could kill you and
make your body disappear too.”

Calvin tried to swallow and couldn’t. “I don’t think you would.”

“There’s only one way for you to find out.”

Calvin forced his eyes open to stare up at the plastered ceiling.

It was going to be a very long night.

***

Dawn was pale and crisp when Calvin escaped Ted’s house. He looked like shit and felt even worse, but tossing and turning on an uncomfortable couch didn’t do much in regards to beauty rest. It didn’t help that every time he finally managed to drift off, erotic dreams of a certain Matthew Soto left him aching and unsatisfied. By the time he gave up, his neck felt like it would have a permanent bend in it, and his skin perpetually tight. A shower might have eased the worst of it, but he had no desire to stay longer in Ted’s house, no matter how inappropriately funny he thought it was to jack off in his father’s shower to thoughts of another man.

He dropped in at the closest McDonald’s and nursed two coffees and a hash brown before finding the courage to head out to the funeral home. The director tried to talk him into another package that would mean standing at the graveside again for hours, pretending to care more than he did, but Calvin cut him off before he got too far. He wanted this done. Over with. Not even the temptation of possibly running into Matthew again could coax him into returning to the cemetery.

He had the man’s phone number. All he had to do to see him again was call.

Griesler stalled him when he tried to get permission to leave Watson Park.

“This is an ongoing investigation, Mr. Schumacher. Your cooperation is vital.”

Calvin gripped his phone and stared through his windshield. “I do have a life to get back to, Detective.

And I’ve told you everything I know.”

“But your flight doesn’t even leave for two more days. Is there some reason you absolutely have to return to Chicago instead of staying here?”

The only reason he had was the only one he couldn’t give. He hung up, wishing he’d had the balls to stay in New York City in the first place.

He went back to Krauss’s for lunch, but if he’d harbored hopes of running into Matthew again, they were dashed when he saw only semis parked in the lot. The waitress was a different one than the night before too. A few carefully worded questions about Matthew prompted a smile and another endorsement, but that WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

was the extent of any new knowledge.

The answers he sought could only come from one place. Any sort of peace would only be found after he’d talked to the man himself.

It was nearly three o’clock before he worked up the courage to dig out the receipt with the phone number on it. It might not even be the right Matthew Soto. Calling might prove the same dead end as parking in his father’s driveway or staring at an empty page in a drawing pad with a pencil in hand.

The other end of the line rang.

Again.

On the fourth ring, someone picked up.

His body flushed at the sound of Matthew’s soft voice.

“It’s Calvin Schumacher. I need to see you.”

He never would have found the house on his own. Maybe if his rental had GPS in it, he could have done it.

But the directions Matthew dictated to him over the phone had him pulling off the highway ten minutes outside of Watson Park, and then winding down a two-lane road with tall trees on both sides. Dusk stole what little sunlight filtered through the branches. By the time he found the driveway, the partly cloudy sky was nearly pitch black.

Matthew lived in a two-story farmhouse, complete with small barn set further back on the property. The porch light was on, illuminating the porch that ran the length of the house. Screens protected it from the night bugs, but it was the figure sitting on the top step that Calvin noticed as he bounced up the dirt drive.

His forearms rested on his knees, and his obsidian gaze tracked the car’s path as it came to a stop.

Matthew didn’t stand when Calvin got out, and he didn’t rise as he approached.

“The body’s gone.” Calvin didn’t bother with a greeting. “Just like you said.”

“Did you doubt me?”

“How was I supposed to believe you?”

The cant of his mouth might have been a trick of the light. “It’s funny how an artist can find faith in beauty, but not in the word.”

An odd choice of phrase, Calvin thought. But it didn’t change the fact that Matthew hadn’t answered his question.

“The police never identified him. How did you know that?”

“I’ve already answered these questions. Asking me again isn’t going to change what I said.”

When Matthew rose and turned to go back into the house, Calvin darted forward and grabbed his arm. He yanked him back, forcing their eyes to meet, but didn’t let go, even when he felt just how hard the muscle was within his grip.

“You said he wasn’t human. A monster. Tell me what that means and I’ll leave you alone.”

WalkAmongUs:ACallingofSoulsstory

The smile this time was no illusion. “That’s not exactly incentive,” Matthew said softly. “I like your company.”

Though the other man hadn’t moved, Calvin felt the pressure of a foot against his own, a ghost of a memory taking form without any additional contact. “Then let’s try this. Tell me what that means and I’ll stay.”

The offer took Matthew by surprise. His nostrils flared, and his gaze ducked to the hold Calvin still maintained on his arm. Calvin thought that might be it, that he’d pushed too far and Matthew was going to either snap or make it more than necessary for him to leave.

Neither happened.

“What it means is exactly what I said. There’s no body because it never really existed. The monsters I mentioned are literal, not metaphorical.”

The chilly night cut into Calvin’s lungs with each breath, but it wasn’t enough to make him retreat to the warmth of his car. Neither was the answer that wasn’t really an answer.

“I saw it,” he argued. “We all saw it. The police hauled it away.”

“But you didn’t know it. Nobody recognized him.”