Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
Logan
Two phone calls.
That was all it took to find Clay’s address.
The benefits of knowing the right people.
Less than twelve hours after our disastrous first meeting in the hotel, I stood outside Clay’s apartment building, staring up at the floor where I knew he lived.
I’d already been there for fifteen minutes, and my feet felt rooted to the sidewalk.
If I waited any longer, I may as well just give up and leave. Standing there in indecision wasn’t doing anyone any good.
Taking a deep breath, I approached the building. The front door was locked, and required someone from inside to buzz me through. There wasn’t a doorman or anyone I could reason with, so I fell back on the tried-and-true method of pushing all the call buttons at the same time. In a building this big, someone was always expecting a delivery or a guest. I only had to hit each button twice before getting the telltale click of the door unlocking.
Clay’s address was on the twelfth floor, right in the center of the building. In my years working for the FPA and as a detective in Maryland, I’d been to a lot of decrepit places, and this building was right up there with the worst of them. It had obviously been written off as a lost cause by the health department years ago, and I doubted a safety inspection had been done in the last decade. It was a miracle the place hadn’t been condemned already, but someone must have been making money off the people living there in order to keep it around.
Based on the sounds I could hear through the paper-thin walls, there were almost as many humans as rats who called the building home, way over the legal occupancy limit.
There was no elevator, so I had to climb up to the twelfth floor. The staircase was the worst part of the building, filled with dirt and rubbish, and suspicious red stains on the walls that I tried not to think about.
I didn’t even dare breathe through my nose. The building also had no air-conditioning, and the San Francisco heat made everything smell ten times worse.
Despite being in good shape and regularly hitting the gym, I was panting by the time I reached the twelfth floor. If Clay had to climb these stairs every day, he must have the legs of an Olympic athlete.
The door to Clay’s apartment was barely hanging on its hinges. There wasn’t even a point in knocking. I could have forced my way in just by breathing too hard on the door, but I knocked anyway for the sake of politeness. Though I rapped my knuckles against the doorframe, rather than the door itself.
Almost immediately, the door flew open.
“What?”
I stared at the unknown man for a moment, trying to figure out what to say. The man, who I hoped was Clay’s roommate, was obviously high off his ass. He swayed where he stood, clinging to the doorframe for support, and couldn’t fully focus on me.
“I’m looking for Clay Dahler.”
“Who?”
Just in case Clay’s roommate didn’t know about his job, I didn’t dare call him Blue Steele. Instead, I gave a detailed description of Clay.
“Oh, him.” The man pointed over his shoulder, nearly losing his balance in the process. “Yeah, over there.”
Then he wandered away from the door, as if completely forgetting I existed.
It wasn’t exactly an invitation to come in, but I’d take what I could get.
The door to Clay’s room was no better than the front door and gave little resistance as I pushed it open.
The room inside was small, made even smaller by a piece of plywood dividing it in half. At some point the plywood had been broken and patched back together with duct tape, so it stood in a jagged zigzag rather than a straight line. One side of the plywood was stuffed to the gills with junk. Old lawn chairs, pizza boxes, broken lamps, and even a collection of car parts were all tangled together. It looked more like a dumping ground than a place where someone actually lived.
The other side of the plywood was drastically sparse in comparison, holding only a mattress, a clothing rack, and a couple of crates. It was also blessedly occupied. Clay’s familiar figure sat on the mattress, curled into a ball with his arms around his knees as he leaned against the wall.
I couldn’t tell if he was asleep or not, so I knocked on the wall near the door to get his attention.
“Clay?”
Clay’s head shot up and he stared at me with wide, frantic eyes.
“What the hell?”
I barely had time to duck as he chucked something at my head. It flew by too fast for me to see what it was but based on the crashing sound I heard when it hit the wall, it wasn’t something I wanted making contact with my skull.
“Clay, wait.”
“I can’t believe you, bastard,” Clay screeched as he threw something else at me. “You actually followed me. Fuck off and get out!”
I ducked again and this time I stayed down in a crouched position, hoping it would make me seem less threatening.
“Clay, please. If you want me to leave, I’ll leave. But just hear me out first.”
“Why should I?”
He’d run out of things to throw at me and seemed to be contemplating whether he’d be able to pick up the clothing rack and wield it as a weapon.
“I’ll pay you.”
I’d blurted out the words before I could actually think about what I was saying, and I immediately wanted to slap myself. Yet, surprisingly, it was enough for Clay to calm down and stop plotting how to bash my brain in.
“What do you mean?”
It was the best response I’d gotten so far, so I rolled with it. “I’ll pay you for your time, and I won’t come near you, if you’ll just listen for a few minutes. All right?”
Clay eyed me up and down, and I noticed the side of his mouth twitch like he was trying not to smile. I probably looked ridiculous, sweaty and disheveled from my climb up the stairs, and crouched awkwardly on the floor like I was hiding from an incoming missile.
“How much?”
Quickly searching my wallet, I pulled out all the bills I had.
“A hundred bucks.”
I could see the wheels turning in his head as he eyed the cash.
Eventually making a decision, he kicked one of the milk crates over to me.
“Put the money in there, then slide it back over. And you stay on that side of the room. If you take one step toward me, we’re done.”
Following his orders, I handed over the money without moving my feet so much as an inch. I also stayed crouched. It was an uncomfortable position, but it seemed to help Clay feel more comfortable in my presence.
As soon as he had the cash in hand, he quickly counted the bills then stashed them under his pillow. The action reminded me of a squirrel burying nuts for winter, which shouldn’t have been as endearing as it was. If I’d had any more money on me, I would have handed it over just to watch him hide it again.
“Okay,” he said, once the money was secure. “You’ve bought my time. Now talk.”
Shaking my head, I pulled out my phone. “I don’t need to talk. I just need you to listen to something.”
I set the phone in the middle of the floor, as far as I could reach without moving my feet, and hit play on the video that was already cued up.
“ Hey, Clay. Long time no see. Heh. That sounds too casual, doesn’t it, but what do you even say in a situation like this? ”
Clay’s reaction to the sound of his brother’s voice was as dramatic as it was instantaneous. He drew back from the phone like it would explode until his back was plastered to the wall.
“It’s a recording,” I assured him as I hit pause on the video. “I figured a live video call would be too much, but hopefully, this can help prove that your brother really did hire me.”
Well, he hired the Roth brothers, who then asked for my help, but Clay didn’t need to know those details.
Slowly, Clay pulled away from the wall and reached toward the phone with trembling hands. I didn’t move a muscle, I barely even breathed, as he held my phone up closer to his face and started the video again.
“ What do you even say in a situation like this? ‘I miss you’ doesn’t cut it. Sometimes I wonder if I even remember you accurately. After so long, you feel more like an imaginary friend I once had, rather than a brother. I keep all your old stuff in a box in the attic, just to prove to myself that you’re real. That you might come home someday. ”
I stopped listening and tried to block out the words coming from the video. It had been Sebastian’s idea for Jason to record something, and I was ashamed that I hadn’t thought of it myself. Ever since I’d received the video, I’d been dying of curiosity about what it contained, but I hadn’t watched it. The message on that video wasn’t for me, and that hadn’t changed even now that I was in the same room. I considered stepping out, but I was too afraid to leave Clay alone in case he ran away again. So, instead, I turned away to face the broken plywood divider and hummed to myself.
Yet, despite my efforts, I couldn’t help overhearing some parts of the video.
“ The private investigators I hired won’t tell me what happened to you, but I’ve done my own research. There’s only so many reasons for a kid to suddenly go missing like that. ”
I started humming louder and bit the inside of my cheek against the shame I felt intruding on a private moment like this.
While I hadn’t watched the video, I’d seen the timestamp and knew it was about ten minutes long. We were coming up toward the end of the video when a new sound caught my attention. A soft, wet sniffing sound came from behind me. It was so quiet that at first, I thought it was a part of the video. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Clay sitting in the middle of his mattress, phone clutched tightly in his hands only a few inches from his face, and tears quietly streaming from both eyes.
“ I don’t care what the truth is. I don’t care what you have or haven’t been through. I don’t even care if you never come home or even want to see me again. All I want... all I want is to know that you’re safe. That you’re out there somewhere, living a good life. ”
Clay gasped and bit his lip, trembling from head to toe. The phone slipped from his fingers onto the mattress as heaving sobs wracked his chest. He curled up and cried into his knees, creating a perfect ball of misery.
I didn’t dare stand up for fear of startling him more. So, I stayed crouched on the floor, awkwardly Spiderman-walking my way over to him. As gently as I could, I put a hand on his shoulder.
As soon as I touched him, his body reacted like it was spring-loaded. Except, instead of moving away from me like I expected, he pounced closer and buried his face against my shoulder. I held him as he cried, feeling his tears soaking through my shirt as I stroked his hair. While he no longer looked like the child he’d once been, in that moment, he still felt like that scared little boy.
“I won’t tell you that it’s going to be okay, because I can’t guarantee something like that, and you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. But I promise that your brother is telling the truth. All he wants is for you to be safe and happy, whether that means returning to your old home, or finding a new one somewhere else. Whatever you want.”
After a few minutes, Clay’s sobbing calmed down enough for him to speak, though his tears never fully stopped.
“I-I want... to go home.”
“All right.” I squeezed his shoulder in what I hoped was a comforting gesture. “If that’s your wish, then it’ll be done.”
“No, not all right.” He shoved me away, though not very hard. It was more of a dismissive gesture than an actual attempt to make me leave. “How am I supposed to get there?”
Grabbing the cash that I’d given him out from under his pillow, he threw the wadded-up bills at me. “A hundred bucks isn’t gonna cover it. Even a bus ticket would be more than that. It doesn’t matter if I want to leave. I can’t. I’m stuck here.”
Gathering up the discarded bills, I smoothed out the wrinkles from the paper and placed them back into his hand. “Don’t worry about the money. I’ll take you there.”
His tears finally stopped though their ghosts still left tracks down his cheeks, and he looked at the bills in confusion.
“What? You’ll... but Jason lives in Maryland. That’s all the way on the other side of the country.”
“Do you have any ID?”
Clay shook his head, staring at me like I was some strange creature in a zoo.
He could stare all he wanted. I was too busy making plans. “Without ID a plane ticket is out of the question. But I have a car, so long as you don’t mind a bit of a long car ride.”
His blue eyes were wide and glittered with his recent tears. The genuine confusion on his face made him look much younger than the sultry vixen that first showed up at the hotel. It reminded me that, despite everything he’d been through, he was only twenty-three.
“I can pay you.” He offered up his fist of bills.
Shaking my head, I closed his fingers tighter around the bills and pushed them toward him.
“No need. Your brother already hired me.”
Or, close enough. Jason Dahler had paid Alias Investigations , but I wasn’t seeing a dollar of that money. Nor did I intend to ask for any payment. This was a personal mission.
Clay wiped the remains of tears from his face, and some of the sharp intelligence returned to his eyes. “My brother paid you to find me. I doubt that included a personal escort. What do you want?”
Looking directly into his eyes, I answered as sincerely as I could. “I want to take you home.”
Only once I heard my own words did I realize the double meaning and hurried to correct myself. “Your home. I want to take you to your home.” As I stuttered through my explanation, I waved my hands in front of me as if that could fend off any misunderstanding. “In Maryland. Where your brother is waiting. Nothing more.”
Clay still didn’t look convinced, but he also didn’t seem to be afraid of me anymore, so I considered it progress.
“Fine,” he finally said. “Give me some time to pack up, and we can leave.” We both looked around the small space that barely counted as half a bedroom.
For the first time since meeting him, Clay looked embarrassed, and a blush turned his cheeks a fetching shade of pink.
“Well, you probably won’t need to wait very long.”
I patted him on the shoulder, but quickly drew my hand back when he shied away from my touch.
“Take as long as you need. I have to make a phone call anyway.”
As Clay started packing his meager belongings, which would probably fit into a single trash bag, I retrieved my phone from the floor and stepped out of the apartment into the building’s hallway.
The phone rang several times, nearly switching over to voicemail, before it was finally picked up.
“Logan, you asshole.”
I leaned against the brown-stained wall and took comfort in my friend and fellow detective’s familiar voice. “Hello to you, too, Roland. Why am I an asshole this time?”
“You never take personal time. Even when you got shot by that trigger-happy pimp, you wouldn’t use your vacation days. Then you suddenly leave without warning and don’t even tell me where you were going, and I’ve got to take over your unfinished work.”
I laughed, certain that even if he couldn’t see me, he would know I meant it in a friendly way. “Don’t give me that crap. I just wrapped up my most recent case, so there shouldn’t be much work for you to take over.”
I could hear him pouting through the silence. “Fine. What’s up? Why are you calling? Something wrong with your ‘vacation’?”
“Well... I need you to talk to your brother for me.”
The tone of his silence changed, and now I knew he was scowling. “Depends if you need me to talk to him as my brother, or as our Boss.”
“Whichever option will let me take more time off without repercussions.”
His sigh was so loud, I could almost feel his breath through the phone. “Fine. If it was anyone else, I’d say no. But it’s you. You wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. How long do you need?”
“At least a week.” I pictured a general map of the road we’d have to take to get from California to Maryland, and the distance we’d have to travel. “Actually, probably more like two weeks.”
“And are you going to tell me what’s so important that you have to disappear for two weeks?”
“Sorry. Can’t say.” I looked back at the door to the apartment where Clay was packing inside. “But, trust me. It’ll be life changing.”