Lover Avenged

FIFTY-THREE

As a cold day dawned and clouds dappled across a milky blue sky, José de la Cruz drove through Pine Grove Cemetery’s gates and wound around rows and rows of headstones. The tight, curving lanes reminded him of Life, that old board game his brother and he had played when they were kids. Each player got a little car with six holes and started with one peg to represent himself. As the game rolled on, you moved around the road track, picking up more pegs to represent a wife and kids. The goal was to acquire people and money and opportunity, to plug the holes in your car, to fill those voids you started out with.

He looked around, thinking that in the game called Real Life, you ended up plugging a dirt hole by yourself. Hardly the kind of thing you wanted your kids to know right out of the box.

When he came to where Chrissy’s grave was, he parked his car in the same place where he’d been until around one a.m. the previous night. Up ahead, there were three CPD police cars, four uniforms in parkas, and a stretch of yellow crime scene tape that wound from gravestone to gravestone in a tight box.

He took his coffee with him even though it was lukewarm at best, and as he walked over, he saw the soles of a pair of boots through the circle of his colleagues’ legs.

One of the cops looked over his shoulder, and the expression on the guy’s face forewarned José about the condition of the body: If you’d offered the uni an airsick bag, he would have blown out the bottom of the damn thing. “Hey…Detective.”

“Charlie, how we doing?”

“I’m…good.”

Yeah, right. “You seem it.”

The other guys glanced over and nodded, each one of them wearing an identical my-balls-are-in-my-lower-intestine look on his puss.

The crime scene photographer, on the other hand, was a woman known for having issues. As she bent down and started snapping, there was a little smile on her face, like she was enjoying the view. And maybe going to slip one of the candids into her wallet.

Grady had bitten it hard. Literally.

“Who found him?” José asked, crouching down to examine the body. Clean cuts. A lot of them. This had been done by a professional.

“Groundsman,” one of the cops said. “’Bout an hour ago.”

“Where’s that guy now?” José got to his feet and stepped to the side so the cock-sogynist could keep doing her job. “I’m going to want to talk to him.”

“Back in the shed having a cup of coffee. He needed it. Shook up bad.”

“Well, I can understand that. Most of the bodies ’round here are not on top of the graves.”

All four of the unis looked at him as if to say, Yeah and not in this condition, either.

“I’m done with the body,” the photographer said as she put the cap on her lens. “And I already snapped the stuff in the snow.”

José walked around the scene carefully so he didn’t disturb the various prints or their little numbered flaggings or the path that had been made across the ground. It was clear what had happened. Grady had tried to run from whoever had gotten him and failed. Going by the blood streaks, he’d been injured, likely just to incapacitate him, and then moved over to Chrissy’s grave, where he had been dismembered and killed.

José went back to where the body was and took a gander at the headstone, noticing a brown streak that ran from the top down the front. Dried blood. And he was willing to bet it had been put there on purpose and when it was warm: Some of the stuff had dripped down inside the inscribed letters that spelled out CHRISTIANNE ANDREWS.

“You get this?” he asked.

The photographer glared at him. Then uncapped, snapped, and recapped.

“Thank you,” he said. “We’ll call you if we need anything else.” Or find any other guys hacked up like this.

She glanced back down at Grady. “My pleasure.”

Obviously, he thought, taking a drink from his coffee and grimacing. Old. Cold. Nasty. And not just the photographer. Man, station-house java was the absolute worst, and if he hadn’t been at a crime scene he would have ditched the swill and crushed the Styro cup.

José looked around the scene. Trees to hide behind. No lights other than on the road. Gates locked at night.

If only he’d stayed a little longer…he could have stopped the killer before they castrated Grady, fed the SOB his last meal, and no doubt enjoyed watching him die.

“Goddamn it.”

A gray station wagon with a county crest on the driver’s door pulled up and stopped, a guy with a little black bag getting out and jogging over. “Sorry I’m late.”

“No problem, Roberts.” José clapped palms with the medical examiner. “We’d love to get an estimated time of death whenever you can.”

“Sure thing, but it’s only going to be rough. Maybe a four-hour window?”

“Whatever you can tell us would be great.”

As the guy sat on his haunches and got to work, José looked around again, then went over and stared at the footprints. Three different kinds, one of which would match Grady’s. The other two would have to be cast and researched by the CSI types who were due any moment.

One pair of the unknowns was smaller than the others.

And he would be willing to bet his house and car and the college funds of both his daughters that they would turn out to be a female’s.

In the study at the Brotherhood mansion, Wrath was sitting upright in his chair with a death grip on both of the arms. Beth was in the room with him, and he could tell by her scent that she was scared shitless. There were other people, too. Talking. Pacing.

He could see nothing but blackness.

“Havers’s coming,” Tohr announced from the double doors. His voice quieted the room like a mute button, cutting off every voice and all the sounds of movement. “Doc Jane’s on the phone with him now. They’re going to bring him in one of the ambulances that has a blackout screen, because its faster than Fritz picking him up.”

Wrath had insisted on waiting for a couple of hours before even Doc Jane was called. He’d hoped his vision would come back. Was still hoping.

Praying was more like it.

Beth had been so strong, standing at his side, holding his hand as he struggled against the darkness. But a little bit ago, she’d excused herself. When she’d come back, he’d smelled her tears even though she’d no doubt wiped them clean.

That was what had made him pull the trig on the calling the white coats.

“How long?” Wrath asked roughly.

“ETA twenty minutes.”

As silence reigned, Wrath knew the other Brothers were around him. He heard Rhage unwrap yet another Toostie Pop. And V light up with the rasp of flint and an exhale of Turkish tobacco. Butch was chewing gum, the subtle snaps coming rapid-fire, like his molars were tap shoes on a hardwood floor. Z was there, and Nalla was in his arms, her sweet, lovely smell and occasional coos coming from the far corner. Even Phury was with them, having elected to stay the day, and he was standing with his twin and his niece.

He knew they were all there…and yet, he was alone. Utterly alone, sucked down deeply into his body, imprisoned in blindness.

Wrath cranked down onto the chair’s arms so he didn’t scream. He wanted to be strong for his shellan and his brothers and his race. He wanted to drop a couple of jokes, laugh this off as an interlude that was going to pass soon, show that he still had his sac and shit.

He cleared his throat. But instead of something along the lines of, This man walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder… what came out was, “Is this what you saw.”

The words were guttural, and everyone knew who they were addressed to.

V’s answer was low. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit.” Wrath was bathed in blackness, his brothers around him, no one able to reach him. It was what Vishous had seen. “Bull. Shit.”

“You sure you want to do this now?” V said.

“Is it the vision.” Wrath released the chair and slammed his fist onto the desk. “Is it the fucking vision?”

“Yes.”

“The doctor’s coming,” Beth said quickly, her hand smoothing down his shoulder. “Doc Jane and Havers will talk. They’ll figure this out. They will.”

Wrath turned to where the sound of Beth’s voice had come from. As he reached out for her hand, she was the one who found his palm.

Was this the future, he thought. Relying on her to take him when he needed to go somewhere? Lead him like a fucking cripple?

Keep it together. Keep it together. Keep it…

He said those three words over and over again until he didn’t feel so much like he was going to explode.

And yet the impending detonation came right back when he heard Doc Jane and Havers enter the room. He knew who it was by the fact that everyone else once again stopped in the middle of what they were doing: No more smoking, no more chewing, no wrappers unfurling.

All quiet except for breathing.

And then the male doctor’s voice. “My lord, may I examine your eyes?”

“Yes.”

There was a shifting sound of clothes moving… Havers was no doubt taking off his coat. And then a soft bump, like a weight had been put down on the desk. Metal against metal-the lock of a doctor’s bag being released.

Havers’s well-modulated voice came next: “With your permission, I’m going to touch your face now.”

Wrath nodded, then flinched when the soft contact came, and for a moment, he had hope as he heard the click of a penlight. Out of habit, he tensed, preparing for the light to hit whatever retina Havers was going after first. God, ever since he had memories, he could remember squinting at light, and after his transition, it had gotten much worse. As the years had gone by-

“Doc, can you get on with the exam?”

“I’ve…my lord, I’ve finished.” There was a click, presumably Havers turning off his light. “At least with this part.”

Silence. Then Beth’s hand gripping his harder.

“What’s next?” Wrath demanded. “What can you do next.”

More silence, which somehow made the darkness even blacker.

Right. Not a lot of options. Although why he was surprised he hadn’t a clue. Vishous…was never wrong.