A Dangerous Thing (The Adrien English Mysteries 2)

She was young and she was lovely and she was dead. Very dead.

And this was bad. Very bad.

What had once been Lavinia was now an ungraceful sprawl of long blonde hair and long white limbs—and then Jason’s horrified brain recognized what his eyes had refused to see: Lavinia’s slender arms ended in two bloody stumps.

I stopped typing, read it back and winced. Poor Jason. We had been stuck discovering Lavinia’s body for the past two days and we still couldn’t get it right.

I hit the delete key.

Lousy as was Titus Andronicus, my second Jason Leland mystery, Death for a Deadly Deed, was even worse. I guess basing Jason’s second outing on Shakespeare’s infamous play was only the first of my mistakes. I was still brooding when the phone rang.

“It’s me,” Jake said. “I can’t make it tonight.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Silence.

I let it stretch, which is not like me, being the civilized guy I am.

“Adrien?” Jake asked at last.

“Yo?”

“I’m a cop. It’s who I am. It’s what I do.”

“You sound like the lead-in to a TV show.” Before he could hit back, I added, “Don’t sweat it, Jake. I’ll find something else to do tonight.”

Silence.

I realized I’d deleted too much from my manuscript. Was I supposed to hit Edit and then Undo? Or just Undo? Or Control Z? Word Perfect I am not.

“Have fun,” Jake said pleasantly, and rang off.

“See ya,” I muttered to the dial tone.

These dreary dumps I call my life, as the bard would say.

For a moment I sat there staring at the blinking cursor on my screen. It occurred to me that I needed to make some changes—and not just in Death for a Deadly Deed.

Swearing under my breath, I hit Save and closed the document. Exit and Shut Down. See how easy that was?

I went downstairs to the shop where Angus, my assistant (and resident warlock), was slicing open a shipment of books with a utility knife.

“Hey, I’m going out of town,” I announced as Angus gazed entranced at a best-selling cover featuring a blood-spattered ax.

I wasn’t sure if I had a dial tone or not. He didn’t blink. Angus is tall, rawboned, and pale as a ghost. Jake has a number of unkind sobriquets for him, but the kid is smart and hardworking. I figure that’s all that is my business.

“Why?” he mumbled at last.

“Because I need a vacation. Because I can’t write with all these distractions.”

At last Angus tore his bespectacled gaze from the gory dust jacket. “Why?”

After a couple of months I was becoming fluent in Anguspeak.

“The way it is, man. Can you keep an eye on things?” Keep the Black Masses to a minimum and not eat all fifty boxes of gourmet cookies in the storeroom?

Angus shrugged. “I guess. Class starts back up in two weeks though.”

I’ve never been able to ascertain exactly what Angus is studying at UCLA. Library Science or Demonology 101?

“I’ll be back by then. I just want to get away for a few days.”

“Where are you going?” This was the most interest in my actions Angus had shown in two months.

“I own property up north in Sonora. Accurately, outside of Sonora near a little town called Basking. I thought I’d drive up there.” I added, “Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“It’s four-thirty now. It shouldn’t take me more than six or seven hours.”

Angus mulled this over, absently testing the point of the utility knife with his thumb.

“It’s not like you to be impulsive, Adrien,” was his verdict. “What do I tell that cop of yours?”

“He’s not my actual personal property,” I said shortly. “He’s a public servant.” In more ways than one. “Anyway you won’t have to tell him anything because I don’t plan on seeing him anytime soon.”

“Oh.” Angus looked down at the knife with a small smile. Tiffs among the faggots were apparently the stuff of quiet merriment.

I left Angus with visions of dismemberment still dancing in his head and went to pack. It didn’t take long to throw a couple of pairs of Levi’s and a toothbrush into my Gladstone. I emptied the fridge into an ice chest, dug out my sleeping bag and tossed computer disks and a couple of CDs in with my clothes and laptop.

By a quarter after six I was fighting the workday traffic as I headed the Bronco out toward Magic Mountain and the 5 Freeway. Over the pass it was bumper to bumper, but what the hell, I had a thermos full of Gevalia Popayan coffee, Patty Griffin’s Flaming Red rocking on the CD player, and I was heading in the right direction—away from Jake.

*****

Outside Mojave I pulled in for gas at a quaint filling station surrounded by Joshua trees and stacks of old tires. An enormous purple gorilla balloon floated overhead as an advertising gimmick. I pumped gas and enjoyed an Apocalypse Now sunset while the giant balloon bobbed gently on the desert breeze. For some reason the grape ape reminded me of Jake.

Jake. If only it were as easy to leave behind my preoccupation with Jake as it was to leave the city lights now twinkling in my rearview mirror.

Two months earlier Detective Jake Riordan had saved my life in what the papers unimaginatively called the “Gay Slasher Killings.” When it was all over, Jake had received an official reprimand from the LAPD brass—and I had received an overture of sorts from Jake, a homosexual cop buried so deep in the closet he didn’t know where to look for himself.

Riordan was tough and smart and handsome; and, other than that self-loathing hang-up, pretty much all I could have asked for in a potential mate. But gradually little things—like the fact he couldn’t bear to touch me—began to take their toll. Okay, I exaggerate. He did put an arm around my shoulders once when we were watching a PBS documentary on hate crimes against gays. And he had taken to hugging me goodbye. It wasn’t that Riordan was a virgin. Far from it. He was heavily into the S/M scene. But when it came to face-to-face, eye-to-eye, mouth-to-mouth, the Master turned into a schoolboy.

Witness our first and only necking session.

Riordan’s mouth was a kiss away from my own when he gave a strange laugh and pulled back.

“Shit. I can’t do this.” He ran a hand through his blond hair, looked at me sideways.

“Can’t do what? Kiss me?”

He shook his head and then nodded.

“My mouthwash isn’t working? What’s the problem?”

Jake made a sound that was supposed to pass for a laugh. He didn’t answer.

“Why, Jake?” I asked quietly.

He blurted, “I open my eyes and I see the pores of your skin—your skin’s okay, don’t take this wrong—but you’ve got five o’clock shadow. You smell like aftershave. Your lips —” He gestured briefly and hopelessly. “It’s just—you’re not a chick.”

“You noticed.” I sounded flippant but I was thinking hard. “So this is a new experience for you? You have sex with guys but you don’t —”

“It’s nothing like this,” Jake interrupted. “This is like dating. This is ... weird.”

Yeah, and whips, chains, scourges and blindfolds were normal?

“I could let you tie me up and beat the shit out of me, but will you still respect me in the morning?”

“I don’t want you that way,” he said. “I know you. It wouldn’t be the same.”

Swell. He preferred humiliating strange men in costume to kissing a man he knew. And presumably liked.

“Let me get this straight. You don’t want to have sex with me?”

“Obviously I want to have sex with you.”

Obviously. What was I thinking?

“But?”

He said impatiently, “I don’t know! Why don’t we watch a video or something?”

We watched a lot of videos. I was now an expert on the films of Steven Seagal and Vin Diesel, and I’d seen more Super Hero movies in the past month than I’d seen my entire childhood. It wasn’t all cinéma vérité. We even went out for a couple of tense dinners. I guessed that Riordan was wary some of his copper pals might spot him fraternizing with a known homo, although he was too gentlemanly to say so aloud.

Mostly we talked. At my place. Behind closed doors. Not exactly heart to heart, but Jake talked about his work and his family: Mom, Dad, two brothers (one in the Police Academy) all under the delusion that James Patrick Riordan was as straight as the proverbial arrow.