14. Ethan
FOURTEEN
Ethan
Patrick eyes me in the rearview mirror. “So what the hell is going on?
I drop my gaze to my phone. “Your job is to drive, not ask questions.”
“Where’s Levi?”
I pretend to scroll on my phone. “Is something wrong with your hearing, Patrick?”
He repeats more firmly, “Where’s Levi?”
“Still asleep. Now mind your own business. You’re so goddamn nosy.”
“Says the fucker who contacted my sponsor yesterday. You know I hate when you do that. I’ve got it, Ethan.”
“And I’ve got this, so drive the goddamn car and leave me alone.”
Patrick glares at me in the rearview, but I pretend not to see it.
I don’t give a shit how pissed he is, neither about me contacting his sponsor nor about my 9 a.m. meeting.
Patrick doesn’t know it’s a meeting, not for sure, but it’s pretty obvious.
I never go to the park, and in my jeans, I’m clearly not intending to exercise.
As we near the park entrance, Patrick asks, “Do you want me to come with you?”
My heart skips. Patrick knows more about my past than most people and I’m sure he’s guessed a few things that I’ve never said, but there’s a lot he doesn’t know, and I don’t want him to.
“No,” I reply. “Stay with the car.”
“And where will you be, exactly?”
I slide my phone into the inner pocket of my jacket and prepare to get out. “Nothing is going to happen.”
“Ethan—”
I open the door and get out when the traffic forces Patrick to stop. “I’ll text you when I’m done,” I tell him as I shut the door, cutting off his swearing.
I get on the main path that runs along the water, which is crowded with walkers and joggers. I check my phone because this asshole hasn’t given me his location yet. The fact that he’s paranoid enough to think I might ambush him makes me paranoid. Not about an attack but about what he might have.
Normally, I blow off journalists. They’re never deterred by words, only by an absence of information.
Or by money, but that’s Ruby’s department.
If Jensen hasn’t approached her yet, he certainly will.
As Paul’s widow and a current member of the High Castle Church board, she’s a much bigger target than I am.
The only reason I’m meeting this guy is to find out what he knows and what his angle is. But what’s really bothering me is that I spent half the night fighting the impulse to contact Ruby, like I fucking need her or something.
That, and the fact that all this bullshit took me away from Levi. I couldn’t stay in bed with him. I had to get up. I had to move. I had to think about what the hell Jensen might have or whom he might’ve talked to.
I don’t remember all of the night. I know I worked out for a few hours. I know I combed through everything online about Paul’s death to see if anything stood out to me. That’s where I lost track of shit. I don’t know what I did.
I halt in the middle of the path. Heart pounding, I try to think back. I told Patrick that Levi was still asleep, but was he?
Yes. I fucking know he was. I put his phone on the nightstand on top of his book. I left him a note. I know I did. But an image flashes through my mind: the bed soaked in blood, the sheets twisted, the knife—
No.
That isn’t real.
That’s not what I saw. That’s other things mixing in.
Even so, I send Levi a text: Are you up?
When he doesn’t reply immediately, I almost call him, but then bubbles appear as he starts typing. I close my eyes, swaying in relief.
His message comes through: I’m up.
Bubbles appear and disappear, but whatever he’s typing, he doesn’t send.
I text, Did you find everything in the kitchen?
Levi replies, Yes. Thanks.
I type, Good. Read your book.
Bubbles appear and disappear again. It goes on for a while, but all that comes through is, Okay.
I wince at the awkward message thread. I’m not used to texting with people, and he obviously isn’t either. But he replied to me, and that’s what matters. That bloody image was… something else.
Another message comes through, but it’s from Jensen, giving me his location.
I stow my phone and rejoin the flow of pedestrians, moving along the pier to the path that Jensen described.
He’s easy to spot, sitting conspicuously on a bench in a cheap suit with a messenger bag at his side, obviously looking for someone.
He doesn’t recognize me with my hat and sunglasses. Most pictures of me are either from black-tie events like Ruby’s charity dinner last week or from Paul’s old broadcasts and press releases, and I was younger then. Smaller.
Jensen startles when I come to stand in front of him. He has a soft, nerdy look, and his neck cranes back as he stares up at me through his glasses. I’m standing too close for him to rise from the bench. He fidgets at my looming presence. I don’t say anything. I just let him sweat for a moment.
Jensen finally manages, “Mr. Castle?”
“How did you get my number?”
He blinks his wide, anxious eyes. “I have to protect my sources. I’ll protect you too. I just want to talk.”
I snort at the absurd idea of him protecting me and move to sit beside him on the bench. “So what makes you think everyone lied?”
“I just want to get your perspective. You were, what, fifteen?”
“There must be twenty articles about Paul’s death, which was sixteen years ago.
The only reason to drag it up is that you think you found something.
You asked me why everyone lied. I was, as you said, fifteen and I wasn’t there, so I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
That’s why I’m here. To ask you: what the fuck are you talking about? ”
“You’ve never found the whole thing suspicious?”
“What’s ‘the whole thing’?”
“A famous televangelist, at the height of his career, walks into an alley on a Thursday night and gets stabbed six times by a homeless man, who flees the scene only to fall in a culvert and break his neck?”
I let the story roll past me. I’ve heard it a hundred times.
I shrug.
Jensen prompts, sounding more confident now that he’s in the swing of things, “Nothing to say?”
“You said something was suspicious then regurgitated the words of other journalists. What do you want me to say?”
“The claim is that he was preaching.”
I scoff, “That’s what preachers do, Mr. Jensen. Ever been to church?”
“Too many times, Mr. Castle. But he was preaching in an alley. Supposedly.”
“Ministering to the poor has a long history.”
“That wasn’t really Paul Castle’s schtick though, was it? Where were the cameras and dancers and millions of paying subscribers?”
I sigh. “Surely you realize there are dozens of articles about the High Castle Church and its income. This isn’t the hot take you think it is.”
“I think you misunderstand me, Mr. Castle. My ‘hot take’ is that Paul wasn’t there to minister to the poor. I think he wasn’t there at all. At least, not until he was already dead.”
I frown, exposing my surprise. “And what makes you think that?”
“The crime scene photos certainly suggest it.”
My heart skips. “And how did you get access to those?”
“You’re more concerned about my sources than my facts?”
“I don’t think you have any facts. I don’t think you have any photos. Do you really imagine that you’re the first journalist to come at me with some bullshit that you think is going to poke a hole in me so that you can catch a few bloody drops of gossip in your hands?”
Jensen wrinkles his nose then has to fix his glasses. “That’s quite an image, Mr. Castle.”
I stand from the bench. “Don’t contact me again.”
“You don’t want to see?”
“See what?”
“The crime scene photos.”
I stare at him. I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, so I don’t say anything. He opens his messenger bag. He knows that he’s hooked me.
I sit down.
Jensen pulls a manila envelope from his bag. I hold out my hand.
He hesitates. “Have you seen these before? I mean… they’re of your father.”
“Obviously.”
“I just mean that they’re graphic.”
“Give me the fucking pictures.”
Jensen hands me the envelope. I reach inside and find a stack of paper. It’s thick and feels glossy, like paper from a home photo printer, which means he likely has digital copies. I pull out the stack of pictures.
I’ve seen a thousand pictures of Paul. I saw dozens last night combing through articles. I pride myself on my ability to look at him without reaction. But I sure as fuck have a reaction looking at these.
“I tried to warn you,” Jensen says with some kind of fake sympathy that makes me hear myself. I’m breathing hard. I cut it off. I make myself go still.
I stare at Paul’s slack, pale, handsome face. I stare at his wide, unseeing eyes. He’s lying on his back in the alley, with the pockets of his bloody chinos turned out and his button down more red than white.
My stomach turns even as my dick tries to stiffen in the cage. I hate that it happens, but it’s an automatic response. I go through all the pictures. Other angles. Closeups. His neck. His hands. His bloody groin.
Jensen says, “All that blood and look how little is on the pavement. He died somewhere else and was moved there.”
I’m back to the first image, but I don’t really see it, not as it is. In my mind, Paul is on his side, half curled up around the wounds.
Jensen says, “It’s so obvious that the police must have noticed. And then there’s the fact that the coroner found indications of sexual contact.”
I fucking hate it, but at those last two words, my cock reacts. The cage stops it, but it still makes my stomach roil.
Somehow, I manage to sound normal when I say, “So you think he went into an alley, got blown or something, then got murdered.”
“I think he got blown—or something—got murdered and then went into the alley.”
“And you’ve built this story around your perception that there’s not enough blood on the pavement.”
Jensen says, “And the fact that the coroner noted sexual contact and yet, for some reason, there are no test results for DNA samples from semen or saliva. It’s almost like the coroner’s investigation was sabotaged.”
“That’s quite the conspiracy theory, and yet you seem to have no guess as to why there would be a coverup.”
“Oh, but I do. I have reason to believe that Paul Castle was… a different man behind closed doors.”
Inside my mind, a door closes somewhere behind me. I almost flinch but manage to stop myself.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I think you know what I mean.”
“I don’t,” I reply, but my voice has gone strange, kind of hollow. Or maybe it just sounds that way because I’m so far away from it. I’m in a dark room, kneeling on a cold, hard floor.
“Paul had certain… habits, didn’t he?”
I hear footsteps behind me. They’re echoing from a long way off. My dick throbs sickeningly in its cage. My hands tighten on the pictures. I stare at Paul’s dead body covered in blood.
He’s on his back in the alley.
He’s on his side on the floor.
“What really happened that night?”
“I was fifteen. How would I know?”
I slide the pictures back into the folder and stand from the bench, nauseated by my throbbing cock.
“I think you do know,” Jensen says, not bothering to reach for the envelope, confirming my suspicion that he has digital files. “I think a lot of people know.”
“Then talk to them. Don’t contact me again.”
I walk off, ignoring Jensen as he calls after me. He has the sense at least not to follow.
I check the car’s location on my phone and head toward it. I think about having Patrick take me to my house outside the city. Images are flashing in my mind, and I need to get them out of myself. My studio is the safest place for that.
The problem is, that’s not where I want to be.