Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Liam
I tear open the door to the medical examiner’s office and look in at Jesse. “I hear that you found traces of rust in the headless horseman’s hair,” I announce. Really, my acting skills are just sublime.
“How can he be the headless horseman if all he has is a head?” Jesse sassily asks.
“Because we have the wrong half of the horseman,” I explain.
He just sighs. “I got you donuts. There’s an extra one in there for Matthew.”
“Oh, don’t you want to give it to him?” I ask, unsure why I’ve become his errand boy. Does he not understand how blackmailing works? Maybe Robinson should give him a lesson or two because that man is fantastic at having my coffee ready on time.
“Give me what?” Matthew asks as he walks in.
“Jesse wants to give you his cream stick.”
“I’m listening,” Matthew says while Jesse glowers at both of us.
Jesse clears his throat. “Anyway, I found the smallest trace of what I believe is rust in the hair of the victim… killer… what do we call him at this point?”
“Headless horseman’s head,” I say.
“How do you accomplish anything?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m honestly not even sure why I try when I could be playing Minesweeper. Like at this point, we know the guy deserved to die, so why do I waste my precious minesweeping time finding his killer?”
“I feel like we should just pretend we didn’t hear any part of that,” Jesse says.
“Rust… so trauma from some kind of blunt object, then,” Matthew muses, successfully pretending not to hear me. “So maybe like a bat or rod.”
I stare at Matthew, wondering why he went with two unlikely items. Does he think someone was just trekking through the zoo with their favorite rusty bat strapped to their back in case they needed to beat away some lions?
The look I’m giving Matthew seems to make him reconsider all of his life choices before he hastily continues, “A hammer would be small and discreet and not at all uncommon. Especially with the crew who’d been working with the lights and were there fixing things.”
“No, no, I liked your baseball bat theory best,” I say with ample sarcasm. “You just never know when you might need to smack off a polar bear.”
“I’m ignoring your sassy ass.”
“Let’s see if we can check the equipment,” I say.
“Let’s go, Matthew. You can be like my sniffer dog.
Wait… don’t forget to grab Jesse’s cream stick.
Look at the way you’re holding it… I’m not quite sure he likes his cream stick to be squeezed like that.
It is making the cream come out, though, so maybe I’m wrong. ”
“I’m going to push you in the fucking lion’s den and look the other way,” Matthew growls.
“I’ll lock up here and join you,” Jesse says, and when I reach for the donuts, he pushes them out of my reach.
I give him a look. “Jesse… I think you are highly confused.”
“I’m thinking I’m not,” he counters, but he eventually slides them over to me so I can grab one for me and one for Gabriel.
Boy, do I love blackmail.
“I think we did a splendid job on getting the info about the hammer to spread quickly around the zoo,” Gabriel says. “But when you call in a tip, how are you planning on sounding like an old man?”
“I have a voice changer. I’ve used it to scam your father into not asking me to go fishing,” I inform him.
“You’ve done what?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not even sure if worry is my issue. I’m very fascinated by how this worked, and whether I can use it to get out of that horrendous dinner I have to do with my aunt next month.”
“I will make her never speak to you again if you would like,” I offer.
The look on Gabriel’s face oddly informs me that would be a no. “Definitely not where I was going with that. You are… beyond helpful.”
“Thank you.”
I step into the house he’s in the process of moving out of and stare at the massacre laid out before me. “Gabriel… I think you’ve been robbed. They just… they threw everything everywhere. We should call the police.”
“We are the police, and no… I just… for some reason I thought if I just emptied all of the closets and drawers into the living room, I would sit down and sort through things at night while I watched TV. And you want to know what I’ve done every night instead?”
“Been strikingly beautiful?”
“I’ve lounged on your couch stuffing my face with whatever gourmet meal you made for the night. You know you don’t have to make Michelin-starred food for me every night, right? We can eat like… a burger or maybe tacos or something.”
“I like putting you in a food coma so you don’t want to come over here and sort this shit.
Really, I could hire someone to do this.
” The last thing I want to do after a long day of work is sort through all of this stuff when I could simply pay someone to do it for us.
And then I could spend that time loving on my sweet Gabriel.
“No! I want to sort it before it ever reaches our house since there’s so much of this I don’t need.
” He grabs a couple of boxes before looking around the massacre for somewhere to sit.
He teeters a bit when he tries to fit in the four-inch by four-inch space, then nearly sits on a small footstool that’s been flipped upside down.
“We should have sex. Even your ass is looking for something more fun to do,” I say while he battles off the footstool that just gave him a surprise jab in the ass.
Gabriel starts laughing as he shoves the stool back. “You weren’t supposed to see that. And it just grazed my ass.”
“It was aiming right toward the great beyond,” I say.
“Please don’t ever call it the ‘great beyond’ again.”
“Cave of wonders.”
I get a pillow with Lucy Fur’s face on it thrown at me for that one.
“I’m going to explore your ‘cave of wonders’ if you don’t shush it.” He says this like it’s a threat, but I would enjoy it significantly more than I’d enjoy any of this.
“I would let you. I would let you do anything you’d like, Gabriel. Take me now.”
“I’m not sure if that was romantic or concerning. I’m leaning toward concerning, but knowing your personality, I’m going to pretend it’s romantic.”
I watch as he lines up the two boxes and a trash bag. On one box, he writes “Donate,” and on the other, he writes “Junk I Must Keep.”
I pick up a grotesque lint ball off the ground and toss it toward the trash bag where it gets intercepted by Gabriel’s hand. It’s honestly quite impressive and makes me question if he’s part vampire with such quick hand movement and perception.
“You can’t throw that away!”
I narrow my eyes, confused if I’ve accidentally tossed a precious heirloom in the trash bag. “I can’t throw that… ball of… lint and dust bunnies away?”
“It’s not! It’s the first toy Lucille Pawl ever played with when she came home with me. She loved it so much,” he says as I watch it plop down into the “Keep” box. I stare at it while I question where exactly this “necessity” will go in our house. Hopefully into my trash can.
I try again with a stick that looks like it somehow got carried in from outside, possibly hanging from someone’s shoelace that they didn’t notice. Into the trash it goes where it is immediately plucked out and placed in the keep pile.
When Gabriel looks up, he catches my eyes. “Lucille really likes that stick. Sometimes she carries it in her mouth like a dog.”
“When was the last time she carried that stick?” I have surely been around long enough to have witnessed such a thing if it was ever going to happen again.
“Time is not important.”
“Uh-huh… so like… we’re talking years ago. Good thing we’re keeping it, then. Boy, oh boy, the memories this stick holds.”
I pick up a shirt that is very much too small for him.
It’s threadbare enough that it definitely doesn’t need to be donated.
My hand hovers over the trash bag before I catch him staring at me.
Then I shift it over to the donate pile but still, those eyes…
And then only when it hovers over the keep pile does he smile and relax.
“Let me guess, one time Lucy Fur hacked up a hairball on it.”
“NO! My mom got me this shirt after I passed all these super-hard exams.”
“I see. My parents gave me a mansion, and I’ve just rented it out to some old guy who is probably going to die in it at this rate.”
Gabriel hesitates. “You still have your parents’ house?”
“Yeah.”
“Why did I not know this? And why didn’t you move into that?” he asks, eyes searching mine as I realize that he seems to think this very mundane thing is a big thing.
I shrug. “It’s a bit far from work.”
“Some guy rents it, then?”
“Yeah. He has dementia so sometimes he forgets to pay me. Last month he gave me forty cents and told me that I should be married at my age and if I’m that desperate, maybe I could find a ‘street corner lass’ to love me for my money. Will you, Gabriel, be my street corner lass?”
“What other weird building do you own that you’ve never mentioned?”
“I think that’s it.”
“You think?”
“Gabriel, you’re hanging on to a ball of lint, a stick, and a t-shirt that you haven’t been able to wear since the seventh grade, and you think I’m the odd one?”
“Yes! Having a whole-ass house and never mentioning it is a bit strange.”
I rise to my feet and then pick Gabriel up off the floor.
“I think we’ll just hire someone to sort this.
There’s only one thing here I want to take with me,” I say as I set him in the “Keep” box.
He laughs when I try to fold in the flaps, but they’re straining as is and definitely aren’t going to fold over him.
“Beautiful. I think I’ll take this box.” Kneeling in front of the box, I grab his legs that are sticking out and pull them toward me so they’re spread around my waist. I give him an extra tug so my dick presses against his ass that’s hanging out since the box is much too small for his entire body…
even if it results in his upper body sinking down into the large box while he laughs even harder.
“No! Liam! We’ll never finish this if we just fuck like rabbits every time we try!”