Fifteen #3
“But the woman, Sam. She could’ve been hurt worse than she was.”
“Baby, you could’ve been killed! And Rego James… Shit! I swear to God, when I get outta this bed, I’m gonna chain you up! Nobody puts me through it like you—nobody!”
I smiled down at him. “Maybe because you love me the most.”
He took my face in his hands, and I closed my eyes, letting him touch my cheek, run his fingers over my eyebrow, down my throat, and across my collarbone.
“Dane, call a doctor in here to check him out. I wanna make sure he’s okay.”
“I’m okay,” I assured him, wanting to put my head down so badly. I was so tired.
“Mom, come take this coat off of him, please.”
I let Regina gently ease me out of my new old jacket and peel off the sweater underneath so I was down to my T-shirt.
“I smell bad,” I mumbled. “I should go home and—”
“Just lie down a minute, Jory,” I heard Thomas order as he steadied me, at the same time lowering the bar on the side of Sam’s bed. “Have you got him?”
“Yeah,” Sam answered, and I felt his hand in my hair as his other smoothed down my back, pressing me against him before he enfolded me in his arms. “Lie down, baby, close your eyes.”
“But, Sam, I—”
“Baby,” he soothed me, “you’re killing me. Please lemme hold you just for a minute.”
My eyes drifted closed, and I realized that the warmth radiating off Sam was amazing. The way he stroked my shoulder, rubbed his chin in my hair, pressed my hand down on his chest… All of it was so soothing, so comforting, my body got heavy fast. I never wanted to move.
“Baby.” He sighed heavily, and I felt his lips on my forehead. “Stay here. Just rest.”
I couldn’t argue, didn’t want to argue. I just wanted to lie in his arms, have him hold me for the rest of my life. Nothing mattered but that.
It was his tone that woke me.
“Just fuckin’ pray that you have this guy found by the time I can get out of this bed,” Sam growled, and his voice was full of a sort of quiet rage.
It was scarier than if he’d been yelling.
“You left Jory out all alone on the fuckin’ street for a week ’cause you can’t fuckin’ find him, and now you tell me that he alone found the place where he was held, and the guy that all along he said he heard killed was in fact killed, and the goddamn body is still there.
” He was seething, he was so mad. “This is what you’re fuckin’ telling me?
Jory found the crime scene all by himself? ”
“Sam, we canvassed the neighborhood where the car was left, where Jory told us it was, but no one talked to us. You know how that works, and the car thieves he found, he didn’t even tell us about them, so how—”
“All you had to do was follow him, keep eyes on him. How hard was that to do? If all you’d done was that, he would have led you right to the guys. To Rego’s guys.”
“Shit,” Hefron groaned.
“As it was, Jory had to bargain with a guy who runs drugs and prostitutes just to get what he needed, while you and Moore were sitting on your asses!”
“Sam—”
“Are you kidding? Did you somehow forget who fuckin’ Rego James is?”
“No, Sam, I’m very well aware who—”
“I suppose you would’ve liked your wife in his place, or your kids, or—”
“Sam, I fuckin’ get it, all right? Jesus, I get it!”
“Goddamn it, Jim, how many of his boys have we fished out of Lake Michigan because he strung ’em out, had them turning tricks for him, and then when they weren’t pretty anymore, he gave them over to some fuck makin’ a snuff film or some bondage shit that went way wrong?
How many tweakers is he responsible for?
How many guys sell their bodies for him?
And he had Jory alone in his place without anybody fuckin’ knowing shit about it?
He could’ve been raped or…” Sam trailed off, taking a breath.
“And he’s all beat up. Doc says the eye should’ve had four stitches for that cut, but as it is—nothing to do now but leave it. Where the fuck were you?”
“Sam—”
“Fuck you! Fuck Moore, and fuck those idiots that were supposed to be watching out for Jory instead of jerking off in the car in front of the apartment when he went out the window! How fuckin’ hard is it to watch one guy? He’s not fuckin’ Houdini.”
There was a long silence.
“He kind of is,” Detective Moore said quietly.
“I agree,” I heard Chloe Stazzi, Sam’s partner, say gently.
“He’s good, Sam. He knows people and how to play them.
I mean, I personally have no idea how he got out of Rego’s club in one piece.
Everything we know about Rego… guy who looks like Jory goes in, he’s selling his ass by the next day, or worse, never seen again. ”
“That’s what I’m—”
“But what I’m trying to tell you,” she said slowly, soothing him, “is that you need to give Jory far more credit. He’s actually very smart. He’s shitty at knowing his limits, but so are you.”
I felt him take a deep breath and clutch me tight. “I’m here at least another few days. You guys gotta watch over him, especially now that we know Greg Fain had a partner that killed him.”
“God bless dental records, because that was all that was left.”
“That guy was soup,” Chloe groaned. “It was disgusting.”
“Who fills an outdoor freezer with hot water and then puts a body in there?” Hefron asked.
“A fuckin’ psychopath that hopes the body will never be found,” Sam answered, rubbing his cheek against my forehead.
“Why didn’t he just bury the body?” Chloe asked.
“Ground is cold and hard now.” Hefron sighed loudly. “Too much time and effort. This just keeps getting bigger and weirder instead of starting to make sense.”
“What’d you find on Greg Fain’s body? Anything?”
“Jory’s phone was in the pocket of his jeans, but maybe when he and his partner took it off him, he just kept it. I doubt it was actually placed there like the other items we’ve found.”
“Did you find any other prints anywhere at the house?”
“Nope. There are no prints anywhere but in the shed. There’s no evidence at all that either Jory or Caleb were ever in the main house.”
“Shit. No blood, nothing?”
“Trace amounts of Caleb’s and Jory’s blood were found in the shed, but nowhere else.”
“And Greg Fain?”
“His blood’s in the shed too, but again, nowhere else.”
“How is that even possible?”
“This guy’s careful, Sam, really careful.”
“And the ME figures Fain died how?”
“He took a bullet to the head—thirty-eight, as far as we can tell. Must’ve been a helluva mess.”
“Which somebody must’ve cleaned up really good, since there’s no sign of it anywhere.”
“Right.”
I shifted to move, and Sam massaged the back of my neck.
“Beat it. I wanna talk to Jory.”
But I didn’t get up. I found myself too exhausted to move. I just took a deep breath and fell back to sleep.
It worked out well, because when I woke up an hour later, Sam was asleep and everyone else was gone.
Major surgery being completely draining, when I moved off the bed, he didn’t wake up.
I told the officers outside the door that I had to get something to eat from the cafeteria.
Since neither of them could move from guard duty on Sam’s door, I was free to take the stairs without any interference.
Nothing had changed—Sam was still the focus for the cops, not me.
I got back in my rental car and drove off the hospital lot, and even though I thought maybe someone would be watching me, nobody was.
When I made it home, I parked around the block from my apartment.
I got back in the same way I had left and was showered and changed and repacked an hour later.
Back in the car, I drove toward Oak Lawn as I called Caleb.
“Hello?”
“Caleb, it’s me.”
“Jory, you’re driving me nuts.”
“That seems to be the general consensus, but listen, I need you to be on the phone with me when I go into the house. Will you do that?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I found the place where we were held today.”
“Jesus, Jory, who are you?”
“Knock it off.”
“You are seriously scary. You found the place?”
“I found it, and I told the police, and they got the body of one of the guys that held us.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No.”
“Jesus, I had no idea you fought crime on the side.”
“Shut up. I just ran down a lead.”
“Ran down a lead?”
“What?”
“You are seriously fucked up. Your ass should be home hiding in the dark.”
“Whatever. Listen—”
“Who was he? The guy that held us, I mean?”
“Some guy named Greg Fain.”
“Name’s not familiar.”
“I didn’t think it would be, but that’s not what I wanted to ask you about.”
“What do you wanna ask?”
“I think you and me would know better’n anybody what to look for in the house.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“So I’m on my way to look around, and when I get there, I’m gonna call you, and as I’m walking around, you can tell me if you remember anything.”
“Maybe I should just come.”
“Are you up to doing that?”
“Yeah, I’m up to it, but, Jory, maybe we should wait, huh? And go with somebody?”
“Why? The police have already been all over the place—it would just be you and me, and with our eyes, we might find something they missed, ya know?”
“Fine. I’ll play along. I want this shit over with too. I’ll call you as soon as I hit town tomorrow.”
“You went home?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“I just thought you were here in Chicago.”
“No.”
“Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Don’t call Dane, all right?”
“No, I won’t.”
“I’m still gonna go now, so—”
“No, just wait for me.”
“I can’t—I mean, what if there’s something there that can help answer the question of who tried to kill Sam? I have to know.”
“So now it’s about Sam instead of Dane?”
“I don’t think the guy’s ever gonna hurt Dane. I think it’s about making Dane suffer, not killing him. He wants to kill me and you and Aja and now Sam… How long are we gonna let this go on, C?”
“C?”
“That’s you, asshole.”
He chuckled. “You’re the only one who likes me this much.”
“Shut up, everybody’s crazy about you, but listen…I’ll call you in, like, an hour when I get inside the house, all right?”
“You are completely deranged, you know that?”
“I do know that.”