Ray finished his note taking and watched through the front window of the office as Ethan got into his little sports car and drove away. He crossed his arms over his maroon, button-down shirt and leaned on Misha’s desk.

“What do you think?” she asked from behind him. She was chewing gum and tapping away on her keyboard as she transferred the paperwork information into their electronic database. It was easier to exchange notes with the police department this way when it was time to hand over any info regarding illegal activities his clients or the people they were having investigated might be doing. It was also easy for a perp to bust in and destroy hard copies if they discovered Ray was on their case, which is why he had Misha type up any notes. She had tried once to explain backup drives and cloud storage to him, but it had given him a headache, for which he had prescribed himself a glass of Scotch and Jethro Tull’s Aqualung vinyl on the record player. As long as she knew the files were secure, somewhere out of reach of the all-seeing eye, and could be accessed in an emergency, he was happy with the system.

“If I know anything about couples, and you know I do, those two have some things to work out besides just being stalked,” she said, briefly glancing up from her computer. She gave him a pensive look, like she was ready to say something but decided against it.

Ray wondered where she got her ability to read people and empathize, as most of the time she was extroverted and rather pushy in her efforts to help people, but he hazarded a guess that it had a little bit to do with being a mother and anticipating the thoughts and feelings of her children.

“I agree. Can you start digging into both of their social media accounts? I want to eliminate that it’s one trying to scare the other off from the wedding. I don’t think it is, but let’s check this off. Do it discreetly, though, and I will follow up with the other suspects.”

“Other suspects? What other suspects? You have a list already?”

“Yes, of course, Misha.”

“So, when does that leave you time to visit the vineyard?”

He had her full attention now. He was hoping she would have forgotten about the birthday gifts so he could slide into this next case harassment-free, but it seemed she wasn’t letting him off the hook from his impending vacation.

“It will have to be after this one, Mish.” He used her nickname in an attempt to soften her up a bit. “This is time sensitive. Do you want me to be the cause of them breaking up?” he asked. It wasn’t a fair card to throw down, but she had that look in her eye like she was ready to back him into a corner. As it was, he had already started backing towards the safety of his office so he could retreat for a few moments while the fire in her eyes died down. He threw out one last Hail Mary. “That’s a lot of responsibility to shoulder, even for me. I promise to go after this case is resolved.” He held up his hands in a sign of truce as she had stood and put her hands on her hips. She didn’t say anything for a moment, so he grabbed his jacket from the peg just inside his door and walked steadily toward the door without making eye contact.

“I’m going to go see Ferguson to follow up on the initial reports. Mind locking up on your way out?” He didn’t wait for her response, knowing he would only end up cornered again. He heard her faintly call out to his back that she’d see him in the morning, and he waived his hand over his shoulder before climbing into his pickup truck.

Ray drove through the busy late afternoon streets until he reached the downtown precinct. He parked his car in the visitor’s lot, got out of the fully restored ’57 Chevy, and shut the navy blue and white door. He loved classic trucks. It was a hobby of his, to go to the car shows, but he rarely had time to go anymore. He used to go with his dad, who’d had a cherry red, 6-cylinder, ‘51 pickup, but sold it to help pay for his mama’s cancer treatments when she got sick. Ray was always on the lookout for it to see if it went on sale, but the man who bought it still wasn’t willing to part with it, though he was getting on in years. Ray assumed it was for sentimental reasons, much the same as he felt.

Ray waved to an officer who was manhandling a grungy youth from the back of a cruiser across the parking lot. The kid was sporting cargo pants and a leather jacket emblazoned with a swastika on the back. Ray raised his eyebrows at the kid in disgust. He hated that some of the newer generation ascribed to hateful rhetoric without having a clue about what it really meant. He hated to be predisposed to judgments, but there were some things that just screamed ignorance.

The officer nodded back and, as they walked up the split path with a small oasis of shrubs in the middle, they fell in stride with one another. The kid was cursing up a storm and calling the officer some names that made even Ray cringe, and he had heard a lot in his days on the force.

Officer Wendel was young and seemed to take it in stride as he said, “Morning, Knott.”

Ray had met him briefly when the kid was new to the precinct. Ray had been on his way out of the force when Wendel was on his way in. The last few weeks had been blurry, as he had been working a high-profile undercover case, so he only vaguely remembered him.

“Morning, Wendel,” he said. The simple exchange seemed to set the youth off as Ray pulled the door open for Officer Wendel and held it while he wrestled the kid inside. “Got a live wire, huh?” he commented, not really expecting Wendel to answer him, but he did grin at Ray.

The two nodded as Wendel veered off to booking on the first floor and Ray hit the elevators, waiting patiently for the doors to open. He hit the button to take him one floor up to brass, where he would find Ferguson’s office. He nodded to a few people he was familiar with and stopped by the desk of an old buddy who was close to retirement, Harold Johanson. He had been Ray’s mentor until Ferguson had partnered up with him. Harold had never aspired to the captain’s position, being content to schlep through the paperwork with the rest of the squadron and traipse the familiar beat.

“How’s it going, Harry?” Ray clapped palms with the beefy guy. Harry sported a handlebar mustache, which was gunmetal gray, along with the rest of his wispy hair. He’d been working on a bald patch when Ray had joined the force, and now he had just a few stray hairs left. Ray wondered if the perps were making him pull his hair out, the brass, or his old lady, who was a nag back in the day and probably hadn’t changed with age. She was his third wife and, for whatever reason, Harry had found her more tolerable than the other two. He had once told Ray it was because she was genuine, kept him straight, and cared more about his blood pressure than his pension.

“Not bad. Same old shit, different day.”

“Fair enough. New case?”

“Nah, just looking through some cold cases to pass the time. Ya know? I’m on my way out, figured I’d try to wrap some things up before I go.”

“Harry, you’ve been on your way out for a decade now.”

“Yeah, yeah. A man’s gotta call it quits at some point.”

“They set you that retirement party, you let me know, okay, Harry?” Ray clapped his shoulder and Harry’s paunch belly jiggled as he laughed.

“Can do, Ray.”

Ray smiled as he moved towards the back office. Harry would be one of those men who came to work the day he died. One day, someone would find him sitting at his desk just gone. He was a lifer and always would be. Ray made his way through the bullpen, nodding here and there.

Ray stopped outside Liam’s door and knocked. He had a standing invitation to come in and visit or consult whenever, but the door was partially closed and he wanted to respect the sanctity of office etiquette.

“Enter.” One word, this didn’t bode well. Liam was typically the outgoing and talkative type, so something was up. Ray pushed through the door and found his longtime friend and partner sitting behind his desk looking haggard and tired.

“How’s it going?” Ray asked, taking a seat in the cushioned, beige chair in front of the oak desk. He knew without asking when Liam glanced up, his brown eyes piercing his own, that whatever it was had been keeping Liam up at night. Without saying a word, Liam tossed a folder across his desk. Ray leaned forward and flipped it open, glancing down the cover sheet. Kids. Man, he had hated the cases involving kids. They were the worst and the hardest to cope with in the middle of the night, when there was nothing but darkness and your own thoughts.

There had been a rash of missing boys between the ages of five and seven within the last year, all centered around one neighborhood. The lead suspect in the case was a local gardener who had access to all of the houses the kids lived in, but when they searched his house, there was no evidence of the kids anywhere, despite the police having found trace amounts of soil and manure which were the same brands that the gardener used.

“How did he explain the dirt?” Ray asked. Liam would know he was talking about questioning the gardener.

Ray had a momentary lapse in concentration as he wondered what it would be like to brush up against Liam’s barrel-like chest. It had a light smattering of curls, which peeked up under the collar of his shirt, and Ray imagined rubbing his chest against Liam’s as he took his time kissing his former partner. Ray shook his head and pretended he was squinting down at the folder in his hand. He did have a moment where he had a hard time focusing on the page, so he dug his glasses out of his pocket and put them on. His right eye had slightly blurred vision from the damage it had taken from the knife of the Switch Slasher Killer, as the media had dubbed him. The case had effectively ended his career.

The SSK had been stalking gay couples, sneaking into their rooms at night to tie them up and torture them before killing them. A criminal profiler had told them the SSK was probably a middle-aged man who was gay but hadn’t come out yet. Due to religious reasons or family upbringing, he was probably in severe denial and, therefore, lashing out because he couldn’t emotionally handle his sexual identity.

Liam had volunteered to be the partner in this undercover assignment. It had surprised Ray. In all the time they had been partners, he had never talked about his personal relationships. Ray knew where the guy lived and about his hobbies and all that, but he had only said that he had been in one long-term relationship, and it had ended badly. Ray hadn’t pressed for further details. But after that weekend, Ray had to wonder. Liam had slipped into the persona of a gay man in a relationship so naturally it had been hard for Ray to separate the lines of reality and what had been staged for the sake of the assignment.

Ray shifted in the chair uncomfortably as he recalled the few kisses that had been exchanged that weekend. It hadn’t gone any further than that. It hadn’t needed to. They had planted themselves in the middle of the inner city’s LGBT community and built the persona of a couple, Jake and Doug from the East Coast, and the San Francisco LGBT community had fallen in love with them. They fit like two peas in a pod, and it had only been a week after establishing their supposed lives that the SSK had struck, attacking them in the night.

Ray not only loathed the SSK for the fact that he targeted gay couples, he also resented not being able to remain on the force with Liam because of the attack. Ray still recalled the memories of that undercover assignment, which had gotten him through the long nights after he was attacked. They had just gone to bed when the SSK had snuck into their makeshift apartment bedroom to attack. He had severely injured Liam, who had been able to bounce back after a few weeks medical leave, while the seemingly minor injury that Ray had sustained was actually a lot worse than they had originally thought.

What really bothered Ray was that the SSK had gotten away. He and Liam had theorized for a while after that they had scared him into silence, or perhaps wounded him so badly that he was physically unable to kill anymore. Ray wasn’t so certain. He felt like the SSK would be back. It was only a matter of time, and he found it more offensive that he could no longer be on the case to bring him down when he returned.

Liam’s reply jolted Ray out of his reverie. “He said anyone in the neighborhood who went for a walk in their gardens could be the perp. He used the same soil for every job he had in that area because it worked well with the indigenous plants. He had a point, though.” The slight lilt in his tone was a remnant of his days in Hocking Hills, Ohio, where he had been raised in a Scottish-American family that could trace their roots back for generations. That, and Liam’s chestnut hair and broad stature, were evidence he had come from heartier stock.

“Mhmm. I see that. Who was working this case before it landed on your desk?” Ray asked.

“Benson.” Liam responded.

Ray cringed. Benson was a top-grade asshole when it came to the job. He was the reason people loathed police. His ego got in the way of his civic duty, and he gave the rest of them the bad rep that people sometimes associated with cops. It had been all Ray could do not to deck the guy before he phased out into the private sector. Benson was always keen on pointing out that, now that he was a private dick, he was the bottom of the barrel. He guessed Ray had been forced into retirement by the brass for some epic screw up. Ray somehow managed to keep his mouth shut, but it was only a matter of time before he would let a right hook fly. Unfortunately, it would now be considered assaulting an officer if he did, but he’d take the first-time offense misdemeanor if he ever got pushed that far. He had been grateful he hadn’t seen Benson in the bullpen when he walked in.

“According to this cover sheet, none of the victim’s security alarms were triggered when the kids were taken?” Ray asked.

“No, why?”

“Plain as day. Your man is going to be someone in the security company who installed all of these alarms. They’re all from the same company. Look for a local guy who is doing jobs in the neighborhood. He would be walking in the flower beds, supposedly to get access to the eaves of the homes to do the installations, but he’s more likely than not casing the homes as well.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. You sure you don’t want back on the force?” Liam asked his friend. He got up and strode across the room towards his personal coffee maker and poured Ray a mug of the good stuff.

Ray sipped it gratefully and then replied, “Nah, you know why. I won’t pass the firing range test. Can’t carry a piece, can’t walk a beat.”

“You’re a detective, Knott. Always have been, always will be. You wouldn’t be working a beat. That’s for the newbies. Besides, you have a concealed weapon permit for the investigation service.”

“It’s different, Liam, and you know it. Here, I wouldn’t just be responsible for my own actions and choices. I’d have a partner to think about, and the precinct. If I screwed up because of depth perception…” Ray sat back in his chair, rubbing his jaw with his free hand. He glanced down at himself, realizing how haggard he looked. He still dressed the part, in bad suits and a rumpled tie, but the appearance was sometimes what people took comfort in.

“Alright, alright. I won’t push. Again, for today. But thanks for the tip. I’ll ride Benson’s ass and then make him a desk jockey for a week or so for the obvious oversight.” He grinned at Ray, who grinned back. He couldn’t ask his best friend to abuse his position of power, and Liam never would. He respected the badge, but he could bust the guy’s chops for the screw up. “So what brings you in today?” Liam asked, as the tension from his shoulders seemed to ebb slightly.

“Young couple. Ethan Reynolds and Derrick Marlow. Someone has been throwing bricks through their window with nasty messages telling them to get out. It has Derrick ready to bolt, and the kids are set to be married in two weeks.”

“Yeah, yeah. I saw something about it.” He reached his hand into a stack of folders on the corner of his desk, and Ray noticed he had to tug out a thin folder from almost the bottom of the pile.

“Work starting to pile up, huh?” Ray commented casually.

Liam glared at him. “When you’re brass, the work never ends. Okay, looks like Samson was working the boys’ case. He’s pretty new but, to be fair, there wasn’t a lot to go on. We cataloged everything, and the only thing forensics was able to get is that the notes were written on generic computer paper. The only trace on the paper was green Styrofoam, of all things, which is weird. I would have figured food stuffs or even trace amounts of liquids to have seeped into the paper, but there wasn’t a lot to go on.”

“Styrofoam?” Ray pondered this. There could be thousands of possibilities for Styrofoam to be present on the paper. Even packing peanuts could be the cause if the paper was shipped with something that required padding. There were just too many possibilities on this one. “Any suspects named in the report?” Ray asked hopefully. He would start there if there were, but Liam shook his head and took a sip of his own coffee.

“Nope. Samson interviewed the people who had been invited to the barbecue, but there wasn’t anyone who stuck out over the other. I’m sorry, Ray. Wish I could be more help on this one,” Liam said genuinely.

Ray smiled. In a way, it was bad that there were no leads, but it was also good to start his own investigation without biases mucking up the case. He tossed the Benson file onto Liam’s desk and said, “That’s alright. Appreciate you taking a look. We’ll just have to kick it old school on this one.”

“You set up a sting or a stakeout, I want in. Gimme a call and I’ll come down,” Liam said with another grin.

Ray nodded and stood. “I’m thinking a little of both. Those boys need an excuse to let loose and party. I think yours truly has just become their eccentric uncle from the East Coast, come to throw them a whopper of a bachelor party. Then, of course, with the booze flowing and the music going, maybe I’ll get some interviews in and catch a clue. People’s tongues loosen up when the drinks are going. The stakeout will be the after party.”

Ray looked out Liam’s bay window and gazed at the Golden Gate Bridge. Being a resident of San Francisco, he often took the picturesque bridge for granted, but sometimes he could appreciate the beauty in the masterpiece, just like his plan. He was at liberty to be a little laxer with the rules than the precinct, and a party that openly proclaimed the love between two gay men was just the thing to rub the stalker’s nose the wrong way.

Ray felt an internal pang that Liam hadn’t made comment about the couple being gay. He wondered if and when they were ever going to talk about the week they had spent together. Some things were, perhaps, just not in the cards, and maybe Liam was one of those things. Ray was just going to have to content himself with wanting from a distance while still calling Liam one of his few friends. Misha was a friend, he supposed, but she was more like a pesky niece to whom he felt a paternal responsibility. Of course, he would never tell her that.

“Alright, you set this party up, I want a phone call, and I’ll come down and scope the place out.”

“Sounds good. Just ditch the tie. It screams cop.”

Liam snorted and quipped, “Yeah you might consider the same, only yours being so wrinkled screams bum.”

Ray tipped his head back and laughed. It felt good to laugh, and he so rarely did now. He wasn’t sure if he saw a strange, longing expression on Liam’s face when he glanced back as he exited the office. He shrugged it off, figuring it was his blurry vision and own pining for something he couldn’t have.

When Ray hopped back in his truck, he enjoyed the sunset while he drove to the outskirts of San Francisco. He always felt lighter around Liam, like he could be himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel that way around Misha. It was just that she had so much in her life right now, and he didn’t want to bother her with an old man’s misery. That’s what he felt like some days. An old man. But if Misha ever heard him talk like that, he cringed at the thought of how she’d ride up one side of him and down the other and tell him forty-five was the new thirty or some bullshit like that.

As if sensing his internal dialogue, his cellphone rang. It startled him, because he was never on it unless she was the one calling him. He preferred a landline. It was just a quirk. The weight of the receiver and the limitations of the cord somehow felt grounding. Like there were some things left to hold onto in a world that had gone weightless and wireless. He was grateful she had opted for a simple flip phone. Anything more, or smarter, would have freaked him out, and he wouldn’t have used it.

“Hello,” he barked into the receiver over the roar of his truck’s engine.

“So, word is…” Misha started.

Ray pulled off on the side of the road and cut the engine so he could hear. He was always a big believer in staying off the phone while driving, and he wished the rest of the motorist population would, too, but if wishes were horses, he would be retired on a ranch somewhere instead of trekking around the streets of San Francisco looking for creeps and criminals. He tuned back in to Misha.

“Both men seem pretty much on the up and up. They have a pretty close-knit group of friends, and there doesn’t seem to be any animosity on social media with them or any of that group.”

“Yeah, but would someone really air their personal grievances for all and sundry to read?”

“You’d be surprised. Last week, Jacinta’s friend’s friend’s second cousin on their auntie’s side gave birth to her baby at a concert, and kept partying until someone complained to the bouncer that there was a crying baby and called nine-one-one and reported her. And it was all over her accounts because she was mad she couldn’t see the last thirty minutes of the concert.”

“That’s just…”

“I know, right? People will be all on their phones posting when they have to go to the bathroom and everything. I have seen more selfies of girls in the bathroom than I care to admit. Apparently, that’s where it’s happening though. People will put anything on the internet.”

“So it’s safe to say, if they were fighting, someone would have known about it?” he asked. He wasn’t entirely sure what she was on about with social media. He needed her to get to the bottom line of this conversation before he got a splitting headache.

“No, they weren’t fighting. Your man is someone on the outside. Besides, I know Dr. Marlow. He’s the vet who looks after my baby.”

“You bring your children to a vet?” Ray asked incredulously.

“What? No! I bring my dog to the vet, Raymond Knott. Good Lord, man!” she screeched into the phone.

In Ray’s defense, it had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. He tried to avoid this crisis by changing the subject quickly. “Okay, also, how fast can you throw together a bachelor party for Derrick and Ethan? I want to set up a sting for this Saturday, but it needs to have enough interest in the community to get the perp to attend. Ferguson and I are going to casually interview people and then set up a stakeout to watch for the person to try again.”

“Bring my kids to the vet. You know damn well you aren’t getting out of this one, Ray. To the vet. Damn, man!”

“Misha, I didn’t mean —I’m sorry, okay? It was an old man’s brain messing up and making his mouth say something stupid,” he said, exasperated. She grumbled another minute, and Ray pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing the headache back. Why did he have to open his mouth and insert his own foot sometimes?

“Well, I’ll forgive you ‘cause it’s your birthday, and you just told me you going to get your party on!” Misha exclaimed excitedly.

“Well, yes. I mean, it isn’t for me. It’s for Derrick and Ethan. But I thought I could mingle a bit and see if I can pick up on anything,” he said. There was a pause on the other end as Misha seemed to be thinking something over.

“Ray, when was the last time you went to a house party?”

Crap. He was cornered again, and he wasn’t even at the office.

“Umm…”

“And don’t tell me it was a disco party back in the day.”

“Hey, I’m not that old!” he exclaimed.

“I didn’t say anything,” she laughed. “I was just picturing you with a blowout.”

“Blowout?” he asked.

“Afro. You could have rocked it.”

Ray chuckled. “Alright, afros aside, can you put together a party that will have a reputation that will ensure the perp will come?” he asked again.

“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Misha sounded affronted.

“Yes, I—”

“Don’t you worry. You’ll have your party. You let me take care of that,” Misha told him.

Ray was sure she was already on her phone texting someone based on the amount of tapping he heard coming through the line. That, and she had that tinny sound, like she had put him on speaker. “Well, I’m going to get back on the road. I’ll see you tomorrow and will hopefully have some more leads to follow up on,” he told her.

“Mhmm. If that’s your way of apologizing for forgetting your hat, you aren’t off the hook,” she said. He heard a low chuckle on her end, and then the phone clicked and there was nothing. Crap. Busted again. He sighed and flipped the phone shut, tossing it on the seat beside him. He’d have to deal with that ominous sound tomorrow.

Ray pulled into the driveway of the gated community and buzzed Ethan and Derrick’s house. Ethan asked who it was, his voice tinny through the speaker and, once Ray identified himself, buzzed him in. The large, wrought-iron gate swung forward slowly, and he drove carefully over the threshold as the gates swung back into place behind him like large folding arms crossing over and waiting for an explanation of his presence as he crept forward. It was like the gate had eyes and was watching him. It was interesting to Ray how he felt uneasier driving into a place that was supposedly more secure than its surroundings than he would if he were leaving.

He steered his truck around the cul-de-sac and found Ethan and Derrick’s address. He took note of the twenty or so other houses in the neighborhood, all with perfectly manicured lawns and sedans sitting outside in the driveways. Several of the neighbors peered at him curiously, and the pastor of the church that was at the apex of the cul-de-sac was out in the church’s front gardens, weeding wayward plants. Ray noted there were several landscapers attending to the front gardens and lawns of the people in the community. He noticed there were a few utility workers present as well. He made a mental note to write down the names of the companies as he passed by their trucks so he could question them all if necessary.

What bothered Ray about the neighborhood was that everything seemed to be in place, but the atmosphere was such that he wondered if anything would dare be out of place. Ray put his truck in park on the side of the street, despite there being plenty of room for him to pull into the spacious driveway. He did it on purpose, and shut and locked the truck door before he made his way up the walkway to the house.

Ethan greeted Ray at the front door. He walked into the spacious foyer, where he kicked off his boots. A small dog came yipping at his heels.

“Sunshine, enough,” Ethan scolded.

The dog continued to bark viciously until a softer voice called from the kitchen, “Sunshine, come here, baby.”

The dog immediately ran to the voice, despite continuing to growl at Ray. The man picked Sunshine up carefully, as there was a small bandage on the dog’s side. Ethan led Ray to the kitchen, where a tray of coffee, cookies, and other refreshments was already set out. The other man, young, maybe late twenties, who Ray assumed was Derrick, sat at the bar waiting for them.

Ray held out his hand. “I’m Ray Knott. Pleased to meet you.”

The young man took his hand, but Ray noted he first looked at Ethan, who smiled encouragingly at him.

“Derrick. Derrick Marlow,” he replied. Ray smiled as Ethan seemed to relax slightly. “Thank you so much for coming, Detective Knott. We’re so glad you can look into our case so quickly.”

“Thank you for having me,” Ray said genuinely. Then he gave them the biggest grin yet. “I am happy to tell you that my colleagues and I have come up with a plan. We will be throwing you a bachelor party this Saturday. I hope you won’t mind showing me around your lovely home so I can get well acquainted with how we might corner the stalker and bring him to justice.”

Both men stared at him open-mouthed as he took a sip of the coffee that had been offered. He was waiting for their reaction to the news, because it told him a lot about how dire their situation had become. If they hadn’t even considered something like a bachelor party, then they were on the edge of giving up everything they had worked for, their hopes and dreams and, more importantly, each other.