Eight
My phone woke me at seven.
“It’s Saturday morning,” I complained to whoever it was.
“Oh, now you answer your phone? What about last night, asshole? You totally blew us off.”
I processed the voice, tried to think of what I was supposed to have done on Friday night instead of being out with my boyfriend, Sam Kage, his partner, Chloe, and her boyfriend, Jason. It took me a couple of minutes for my brain to kick in and remember.
“Oh, Ev,” I groaned. “You had a guy for me to meet.”
“That’s right, I did,” my friend, Evan Rheems, scolded me. “C’mon, Jory, if you didn’t want to go, all you had to do was tell me. You know I would never make you meet somebody who’s not cool.”
“Oh no? I have two words for you—Mark Dade.”
There was a long silence before: “Screw you, J, that’s not—one pervert does not negate my entire record of great hookups.”
I chuckled, because he was being very defensive. “You suck at setting me up, and you know it.”
“But that’s no excuse to—”
“I’ll make it up to you,” I soothed him. “How ’bout I take you and your lovely boyfriend out for dinner next week? I promise to—”
“No,” he grumbled. “We’ve gotta pick up Loudon’s mom at the airport. She’s in from Bloomfield Hills for all of next week, and sadly, she hates going out and loves to cook. The week after we’ll make a plan.”
“Bloomfield what?” I asked, hung up on that part.
“Hills. It’s in Michigan.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t stifle the laugh. “Well, I am sorry I blew you off. I didn’t mean to, but Sam’s back and I—”
“What?”
“Sam.”
He caught his breath. “What?”
“Evan,” I warned him.
“You know another Sam?”
“We both know I don’t.”
“Oh God.”
“Stop.”
He was starting to breathe hard. “So the Sam.”
“Yep.”
“Police detective Sam.”
“Yes.”
“As in, the-guy-I-hate Sam?”
“You don’t hate him.”
“Oh no, I’m sure I do hate him.”
“Well, stop, ’cause he’s gonna move in,” I said, deciding at that moment that he could.
What was I waiting for, a shining light from heaven?
I was madly in love with the man. He was, in fact, the only man I had ever loved.
To make him wait through a period of dating to move in with me was a stupid waste of time.
The man wanted to be with me—who was I to say no?
“Jory!”
“Sorry, Ev.” I smiled into the phone.
“He’s moving in?”
I chuckled.
“Jory, catch me up.”
“It’s too early for this.” I laughed, because he was starting to hyperventilate.
“Sam Kage is back, and I’m gonna live with him since I love him.
So you don’t hafta worry about me anymore, you don’t hafta set me up on blind dates anymore.
Call me when Loudon’s mother leaves and we’ll all have dinner, okay? Okay. Bye.” I hung up.
It took him all of twenty-three seconds to call back.
“What?”
“What? Are you kidding?” He was yelling. “Are you kidding?”
“Evan, don’t have a—”
“Sam Kage? Are you kidding?”
“You’re repeating yourself.”
“Sam Kage?” He wheezed. “Ohmygod… Sam Kage?”
“Evan, you know I love him.”
“He nearly killed you last time, and I mean literally almost killed you! It was his fault you were shot and kidnapped and—”
“Evan, you—”
“Ohmygod, are you serious? Sam Kage!”
It took me half an hour to get him not to pass out, and then the phone was finally taken away and I was talking to his boyfriend, Loudon, who had to have me explain the whole story to him before he could offer his partner any solace.
It was hard to try and explain to anyone else how I could still love Sam Kage after all we had been through, but I tried to make Loudon understand over the phone.
If I could get through to him, he would in turn get through to Evan.
As usual, in direct contrast to Evan’s the-sky-is-falling mentality, Loudon was his logical, thoughtful self.
He would reserve judgment until he met Sam.
As soon as his mother left, they would have us over for dinner, as inquisitions needed to be performed in private.
In the meantime, there would be a moratorium called on blind dates for me.
When he hung up the phone, even after all the talking, I was still able to roll back over and go to sleep. It was a gift.
I had gone home to shower and change and was getting ready to leave my apartment when I heard Sam come through the front door. I had given him a set of keys the day before.
“Hey,” I called out from the bedroom as I straightened my tie and buttoned up my suit jacket. “I thought I wasn’t gonna see you until tonight
He appeared in the doorway. I saw him in the mirror, but he didn’t say a word. He just stood and stared at me. After a minute I smiled as I turned to face him.
“What are you doing here?”
He looked me up and down, absorbing me, his eyes pained, his jaw clenched.
“Sam? What’s wrong?”
He moved suddenly, really fast, and as soon as he could reach me, yanked me forward into his arms and clutched me so tight he squeezed the breath right out of me.
“Sam, you’re scaring me.”
He held on, pressing me close, his face buried in my hair.
“Honey, what’s wrong?” I soothed him, laying my head on his chest. “Please tell me.”
He shoved me out to arm’s length, his fingers digging into my biceps. He was tense and worried and his breathing was shaky.
“Sam?”
“Listen to me.” He dragged in a breath. “Do you remember back when that whole thing was going on with Dominic, and during that time someone was killed at your old apartment in Oak Park, the one that was just the single room?”
Did I remember that apartment? Yes. Of course. It was the first place I’d ever lived all by myself. “The apartment you hated?”
“That’s the one.”
“I do, but I don’t remember there being a murder there.”
“Probably because I told you about it, but you never saw the place after that.”
That made sense. “Okay.”
“Well, a guy was killed there, and at the time, we thought it was all connected to the Minor case. We thought then that Roman had that guy killed because he thought he was you.”
“That’s awful, but you’re saying what now? That it wasn’t connected?”
He nodded.
“Explain.”
“Here’s the thing, back then, before Dom was in custody, everyone assumed that both those murders—there were two, one in 1999 and one in 2000—were about Roman hunting you down. But it never made much sense as Dom knew where you were the whole time. Roman wouldn’t have had to guess where you were.”
I eased free of his hands, walking a few feet away only to turn and look at him. “Dom’s been in custody for the last three years.”
“That’s right.”
“Which means he’s been questioned about everything by now.”
He nodded.
“Tell me.”
“The fact of the matter is, neither Dominic, Roman’s old man, nor Roman ever knew anything about the murder in Oak Park.”
“Okay.” The hair was starting to stand up on the back of my neck. He was searching my eyes. “You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah, we’re sure.”
“And the second one?”
“The second one was the same. There were no ties to them, but it seemed like witness intimidation at the time.”
“While it’s weird about the murders ending up having nothing to do with the Minor case, or Dom, that still doesn’t explain why you’re bringing up something that happened three years ago. What’s the point?”
“Because we found another guy this morning, cut up just like both the other victims.”
“Cut up?”
“Yeah. Just like the first and the other two.”
“So now there’s four dead men?”
He ignored my question. “We found your driver’s license in his wallet.”
I was suddenly freezing.
“When did you lose your wallet, J?”
I racked my brain. It had been ages. “I dunno, right after you left, at least three years ago. It was my blue one that I loved, the one Dane gave me.”
“I figured. It still had your old address on it, from that apartment Dane put you in, not where you live now.”
“Sam, what’s going on?”
“We’re not sure.” He huffed, walking to my bed and sitting down on it. “All we do know is that this one, along with other murders, has nothing to do with the Brian Minor case at all. They never did.”
I thought about Brian, about my friend Anna, his then wife, and her beagle, George. Funny that even though that night had been a horror, everything else paled because that was the night I’d met Sam Kage. Meeting him had been the most important moment of my life, when everything changed.
“Jory?”
“Sorry,” I said, looking at him. “Are you gonna get in trouble for being with me, since it sounds like I might be in the middle of another case?”
“No. Like I said, these murders have nothing to do with the Minor case.”
“That part’s good. That means we’re not doing anything that could jeopardize your job or—”
“Jesus Christ, J, who gives a shit about me?” he yelled, raking his fingers through his hair. “You’re the one I’m worried about! You’re the one everybody… Shit! Did you fuckin’ hear what I said? We found your license on a dead guy just this morning. Your goddamn license!”
“I heard you,” I said softly, walking around in front of him and stepping between his legs so he had to lean his head back to look at me. “Now tell me about the others.”
He took a deep breath. “Well, counting Trey Hart—”
“Is he the one that was killed in my old apartment?”
“Yes.”
“He was the first man killed?”
“That’s right.”
“Sorry, go on.”
“All in all, as I said, there have been four murders stretching over a three-year period.”
I held his gaze. “And?”
“And nothing. Four men are dead, but because the first one seemed connected to the case with Dom at the time, no one looked any further. The second might have been a case of mistaken identity as well, but the third and fourth ones seemed random.”
“But no one thinks they’re random anymore.”
“No.”
“How did you all come to that conclusion?”
“Because the third victim was killed this year, well after the Minor case was closed.”
I nodded. “How come no one made sense of this before?”
“The crimes were attributed to other things, and the gap between the killings was so long. Hard to make connections when the men were killed in different parts of the city and at first glance there didn’t seem to be any connection.”
“Until now.”
“That’s right.”
“Why now?”