Chapter 7
When Death took you, I didn’t notice.
You left me behind you.
In the rain.
Tossed aside without looking back.
Now you’re back in my dreams, telling me you’re sorry.
I need Death to come and take you back again.
—Letter to My Mother
THE dog was back. Again.
This time, however, he was on a leash, with a lanky, pretty-faced singer skulking in behind him, humming an old rock song that tickled Kane’s memory.
He’d spent the rest of the afternoon chasing down Vega’s foster kids and writing reports. When the lab technicians showed up to catalogue the walls and remove Cynthia Vega’s body, Kel waited in the living room while Kane walked the remains out to the curb. They were silent on the way back to the police station, but once they sat down across from each other at their desks, they both breathed a soft sigh and forged ahead, scrambling to find answers in the muck Vega made of so many lives.
When he finally got free, Kane headed for his workshop. A quick text to Miki, and he picked up his tools, needing to lose himself in the wood. A single chirp on his phone made him look up, and he smiled for the first time since stepping out of the unmarked police car and finding Cynthia’s body swinging from the light fixture. Miki was promising him company and some food. Kane replied, asking for a little time to shake off the day. Miki’s vow to bend over and kiss it better gave him his second smile… as well as a quick erection he needed to lose before stepping up to a power tool.
Kane almost didn’t hear them approach. The lathe wasn’t loud, but the constant hum and the sound of the wood peeling away from the chisel often masked everything but a cacophony. He finished the pass he’d started, then switched the power tool off, taking his foot off of the pedal to let it wind down to a standstill. Shoving the safety glasses up onto the top of his head, Kane grinned and nodded a hello at the young man hovering at the threshold of his studio.
Kane was surprised at the time when he glanced at the clock. He’d gotten over to the art co-op after work, intending only to put in a couple of hours, then see if Miki wanted to grab something to eat. Somehow, ten o’clock crept up on him and smacked him unawares. Or at least he was unaware until he moved, and then the strain of working the hard wood became apparent, and his shoulders whined in protest.
Miki rattled the brown paper bag he brought with him. “Hungry?”
“You cooked?” Kane grinned at Miki’s derisive expression.
“You crazy? I poison a cop and they’ll shoot me,” he sniped playfully. Dude trotted in behind Miki as he made his way through the studio’s shotgun layout. Sprawling out in a metal folding chairs Kane brought in for him, Miki dug out a couple of sandwiches from the bag and held them out for the other man. “Pastrami or roast beef?”
“Sauerkraut on the pastrami?” Washing his hands in a work sink, he dried off and used a shop towel to dust off his shirt and jeans.
“Doesn’t that make it a different type of sandwich?” Miki curled his lip at the idea. “And why would you put that shit on a sandwich? Kim chee, maybe, but sauerkraut?”
“With kraut, it’s a Reuben,” Kane replied. He was okay with pretending they’d not spent ten minutes of their lives with Miki holding onto the cop for dear life, but his body burned with the memory of Miki’s lithe body pressed into his. “Well, and it would have some Russian dressing on it too.”
“Then no, this is a pastrami sandwich,” he said, waving it at Kane. “Take it or leave it.”
Kane took the pastrami, opened it up, and grabbed a few packets of brown mustard from the bag. He spread the mustard, then stopped to watch Miki as he arranged barbeque chips on his sandwich. One of the kettle-fried potatoes made it into Miki’s mouth, and he chewed noisily while he placed the sourdough slice back on top.
The young man caught Kane watching him and visibly moved the chip to the side of his mouth, speaking out of the side of his lips. “What?”
“Do you eat Captain-Crunch-and-sugar sandwiches too?” Kane chuckled when Miki gave him a quizzical look. “You are one strange kid.”
“Not much of a kid,” Miki pointed out. “I’m twenty-six. Maybe. Pretty sure. Whatevers.”
“You know what ‘whatevers’ means, don’t you?” The cop bit into a pickle spear, enjoying the garlicky snap. Miki shook his head, and he waved the end of the pickle at the man. “It means ‘fuck you’.”
“Nuh-uh.” Miki shoved Kane lightly with his hand, barely nudging him. “Christ, you’re like trying to move a tree.”
“Genetics,” he replied. “That, and in our family, the strongest survive.”
“Even the girls?”
“Especially the Morgan girls,” Kane teased. He liked coaxing Miki’s skeptical glances into the barest of smiles. “Ryan’s the youngest, and even Con’s scared of her. She bites.”
“Ryan’s a girl? Shit, and I thought my name was fucked up.” He made short work of half of the sandwich, then picked out the tomatoes from the rest. “How many kids did your mom have?”
“Eight,” Kane said, counting them off in his head. “Six boys and two girls. They were thinking about only having one after Quinn, but that one turned out to be twins. Mom was ready to get Dad clipped after Ian snuck up on her after Braeden and Riley. She made the appointment when she started throwing up because of Ryan.”
“Aren’t you guys Catholic? Irish or something?” Miki nodded to the gold cross at Kane’s neck. “Isn’t that against the rules or something?”
“Yeah, but so is murder, and that’s pretty much where it was heading if Dad didn’t go in.” Kane grinned. “Only fair. Mom went through the pain of childbirth. Dad could sit on frozen peas because his nuts got trimmed.”
“You guys talk about stuff like that?” He handed Kane the other half of his sandwich when the man finished off the last bit of the pastrami. “Don’t give me any shit about the chips. You don’t like ’em, don’t eat them.”
“I’ll give it a go.” He nodded. “And yeah, we talk about everything in our family. Nothing’s sacred.”
“Do they know?” Miki hesitated, then waded in carefully. “About you liking other guys. Like that, I mean.”
“Yeah, eventually,” Kane admitted. “Quinn… he’s the runt… came out to me first. He was scared a little bit, so he thought he’d try it out on me. I thought he knew I’d been with both… guys and girls… but he didn’t. So, Q had a bit of a shock. Then I told him if he wanted me to talk to the family with him, I would.”
“You weren’t going to?”
“Never really thought about it, I guess.” He shrugged and bit into Miki’s leftover half sandwich. The chips were weird, a sweet onion-spice taste on top of the roast beef, but it was doable. “I figured if ever I found that one person to introduce to the rest of the asylum, they’d figure it out then if he was a guy.”
“How’d they take it?” Miki leaned back in his chair. He tossed a piece of crust over to Dude. The dog caught it in midair and fell down over it, rolling the bread into crumbs.
“That dog’s fucked in the head,” Kane remarked. “How’d my family take it? Dad was… it was hard for him, I think, but he took it pretty good. He kind of adjusts in midstream and keeps paddling. But Mom… she started crying. I think she was… angry.”
“Angry? How come?” Miki leaned forward to tug on the dog’s ears and pursed his lips to make noises at Dude.
“Don’t know.” Kane concentrated on eating the sandwich as slowly as he could. “But then Ian spouted off some shit about Mom blowing the ten percent rule for homos, and she flew across the table to beat him with the wooden spoon she had in the veggies. Peas were flying everywhere, Ian was screaming blue bloody murder, and Mom was yelling at him that I was his brother, and he better get his shite together or she’d get it together for him.”
“Fucking hell,” Miki muttered.
Kane waved the remainder of the roast beef at Miki and grinned easily. “Never piss off an Irishwoman when she’s made a Sunday roast and two of her sons have just told her they’re gay.”
“I’ll try to remember,” Miki drawled. “Maybe you shouldn’t have done it on a Sunday.”
“Seemed like the best time. Most of us are there then.”
“You guys were older though, right? Like out of the house?”
“Yeah,” Kane said, nodding. “I’d been with someone for a bit, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Quinn was solo. He just needed it out there.”
“What did your dad say? Afterwards, I mean.”
“Honestly? Right then at the table? Nothing.” Kane leaned over and fed the dog the last of the bread. “Later, he asked me if I was being safe. He was worried more about that than anything else. Dad doesn’t… it’s not like he goes out and starts giving you a piece of his mind. He’s one of those stone-faced guys you go to when your life’s gone to shit, and then he says a couple of sentences and boom, things are all good.”
“He wanted you to use condoms?” Miki laughed. “That’s kind of funny.”
“More like he wanted me to take care of myself. To fall in love or at least give a shit about who I was going to bed with. A lot of gay guys he knew something about were sluts.” He shrugged. “Dad always said we needed to at least like the person we were with. He doesn’t care if we weren’t married before we had sex or if we fucked a guy. That’s not important to him. He wants his kids to be happy. Unless we’re doing a sheep, in which case he’ll disown us, ’cause you know, we’re Irish, not some Scot come down from the hills.”
Miki snorted. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Dad thought it was.” Kane nudged him, and Miki bent sideways to avoid his sharp elbow. “What about you? Tell anyone?”
For a moment, Kane wondered if Miki even heard him. The singer stared out of the open dock door, watching the boat lights move on the water. At his feet, Dude snored loudly, twisted partially around the chair’s metal legs. Miki shifted in his seat and rested his hands on his knees, seemingly enraptured by the flickers of life going on outside of the studio’s rolling door. Somewhere out in the darkness, a horn blew, a low and mournful sound carrying over the water.
“Just Damien, really,” he finally said. “I… wasn’t sure I was gay. Not after… you know. I used to wonder if I was just fucked up and didn’t know what I wanted because of Carl and Shing….”
Kane didn’t say anything when Miki’s voice trailed off, but he reached over and touched Miki’s thigh. “Dude, if you want to talk about anything, you can. Anything, okay?”
“Dog can’t talk. You know that, right?” Miki gave Kane a sly, mischievous glance. “I don’t think he’ll cough up anything to you. He doesn’t normally like cops. You… he might make an exception.”
“Asshole.” Kane chuckled. “I’m serious.”
“Yeah, I know.” He ran his fingers over Kane’s, tracing the man’s knuckles. “This thing… you and me….”
“What the hell is it?” Kane finished.
“Yeah, kind of.” Miki squeezed Kane’s hand once, then let go. “A week ago, you were screaming at my head. Now, we’re sitting here having dinner while you’re making salad bowls. It’s kind of weird. Not bad… but weird.”
“Salad bowls?” Kane clutched at his chest and gasped. “Ah, ‘the tongue like a sharp knife, kills without drawing blood.’”
“You sound like Yoda.”
“You don’t know Garbo or Buddha? God, we’re going to have to get you some schooling.” Kane threw his head back and laughed.
“Hey, public school,” Miki said, making a face. “Well, when I went.”
Hooking his arm over the back of Miki’s chair, Kane leaned over, brushing his fingers on the man’s shoulder. “What did Damien say when you told him?”
“He told me I was stupid if I thought he didn’t know, and that I was a fucking idiot who should get as much cock and ass while I could.” Miki tilted into the crook of Kane’s arm. “Damien could be a dick sometimes.”
“Yeah?” Kane made a face. “But you guys were close. He couldn’t have been a dick all the time.”
“Actually, no. He always was a dick,” Miki replied. “But he made me feel safe, you know? Like I could depend on him to take care of any crap that came along. D was good like that. He was a cocky, arrogant shit but never to me. Never to the other guys either. We were… tight.”
Kane was about to respond when he heard Miki whisper, nearly too soft to hear.
“I miss them.”
“Yeah, Miki,” Kane bent closer and pressed his lips to the man’s temple. “I know, man. I know.”
“You had a shitty day too, huh?”
Kane was going to say that Miki had no idea, but it hit him that it’d been Miki’s face in those photos, those scraps of time captured for a couple of sick men’s pleasure. Truth was, his shitty day was nothing compared to all of those shitty days the other man had lived through.
“Yeah, I did,” he admitted. “But it got to be a damned sight better once you got here.”
MIKI opened the refrigerator door and stared at its echoing whiteness. Except for a few bottles of beer and some questionable condiments, his icebox was dead empty.
Over the past week and a half, he and Kane had fallen into a routine. The cop would get off shift and head over to his workshop for a few hours to detox San Francisco out of his system, then Miki would amble over with Dude and takeout. Last night, they ate Chinese, picking at each other’s food while arguing about science fiction movies. Miki’s deep love for Bladerunner took a pounding from Kane’s opinion of the movie, and he scoffed at the cop’s fondness for Empire Strikes Back.
“Well, shit, I forgot to order groceries,” Miki growled and slammed the fridge door shut. “Fucking Kane. All of this shit with Shing and Carl is making me nuts, and you’re not helping.”
The cop was taking up too much of his thoughts, especially in the middle of the night when Miki’s suddenly aware dick twitched and throbbed at the thought of Kane’s cocky grin and deep blue eyes. He tried palming himself for the first time since he woke up in the hospital, but his skin was too sensitive. The tingling nerves short-circuited, and the soft velvet head ached when he brushed it lightly with his fingers.
In the shower that morning, the washcloth became a rough caress, and Miki could nearly feel Kane’s callused hand on his cock.
He shot off without even so much as a few strokes, splattering the shower wall with enough come to clog the drain.
And his dick still ached when he thought about Kane.
“Stop thinking about him. Food, Miki, it’s not going to just walk through the door. Get some stuff for sandwiches. That’s easy.” He stopped and tried to think of what one of his foster mothers tried to pound into his head about her religion. “Isn’t that what Jesus made? Sandwiches? Tuna fish and bread, right, Dude? Fuck, I’ll ask Kane. He’s got that God thing down.”
Dude had no opinion other than to flip over to the other side of the couch. Flopping down on the cushions, Miki reached for his Vans and tugged them over his heels. His wallet was missing, then found again, buried underneath the notebook Miki’d been scribbling thoughts down in. There were beaten-up notepads all over the living room, some neatly arranged in a milk crate while others were left to fend for themselves. Only a few were dog-chewed, their corners indented and marked from Dude’s sharp teeth.
All held pieces of Miki’s pain, and now one held whispers of something more… of wanting to be touched and kissed.
Miki flipped through the pages of his newest book. He’d started the first page off with how he felt being alone without the others shadowing behind him. In truth, he’d been their echo, reflecting out into the audience what the three wanted him to be. They understood Miki loved the music and words but hated the noise of being in a band. Having so many eyes on him made him nervous, and he was glad when the lights blurred out the audience and the only thing he could see was the stage and the men who stood by him.
He missed writing songs with Damien. The words that seemed to tear free from his brain were often tinted with how he was feeling, and his best friend had taken his meanderings to turn them into pieces of art Miki didn’t even recognize. The sweet ache of Damien’s guitar created something out of the nothings Miki found inside of himself. He missed spending the hours hunched over a guitar and piano, arguing about how something sounded in his heart compared to the tones Damien’s sharp mind crafted.
They got drunk over words and music, sometimes talking about stupid things until the wee hours of the morning when the moon was no longer visible from the narrow windows of the band’s shared loft. He woke up on egg-crate foam they eventually used for soundproofing, sometimes more hungover from the music than the whiskey they drank the night before. But Damien had always been there, even when the sun was hidden behind the clouds; a brash, self-confident soul mate willing to do battle with the shadows curdling Miki’s life.
“You’d hate him, Damie,” Miki whispered, clutching the notebook in his hands until it was nearly bent in half. “Or you’d both bully the shit out of me. He likes the car you bought me. The cops still have it. Fuckers. I used to hate walking by it, but now I hate them for keeping it so long. It’s mine. Fuckers need to give it back. I’m going to have to ask Kane about that.”
The tears came, as hot as when he’d shot off thinking about Kane’s mouth kissing his neck. Ducking his head, Miki laughed when Dude swam across the couch on his belly and shoved his tongue up Miki’s nose, licking furiously. After shoving the canine lightly aside, Miki ruffled the dog’s back and wiped his face.
He rode the wave of sorrow, letting it wash over him. There wasn’t a need to sink into its darkness, and Miki breathed a sigh of relief, emerging from his memories of Damien and the others with a smile. He made a promise to call Edie later to check on how she was doing, and opened the notebook to a blank page and scribbled down a quick list of things he wanted to eat over the next few days.
“Okay, Dude.” He sniffed, shaking off his melancholy. “I’m going to hunt and gather. Guard the house. Don’t let anybody in.”
The dog was already asleep before Miki grabbed his keys off of the table. Wiping at the tightness in his nose, Miki opened the front door and nearly stepped into the mess left on his stoop.
He was good about keeping Dude inside, taking the dog out for walks every few hours, so he was pretty sure the terrier had nothing to do with what looked like chewed-up meat on his sidewalk. Wrinkling his nose, he looked down again, trying to make some sense of what he was staring at.
The plastic bag it’d been in was from an Asian grocery store down the road. His jaunts with Dude had strengthened his leg enough that Miki’d been debating going over the few extra blocks to grab some things, figuring he could catch a cab back. Something had torn apart the handles of the bag, more than likely another dog or one of the cats roaming the neighborhood. A bright pink, bulbous object was seeping out of a hole in the side, its precarious balance on the sidewalk edge losing to the pull of gravity.
It plopped out of the bag before Miki could head back in to grab something to clean the mess up with, bouncing slightly against the cement before coming to rest in the damp greenscape. Light stretches of fibrous tissue clouded the oval chunk, and curled swirls of darker pink were visible through the filmy patches.
“What the fucking hell is that? A gizzard?” Miki curled his lip in disgust when a darker crimson mass slithered free of the back, oozing out in a sticky rush. It fell apart when its tissue caught on the rough cement, exposing the crushed remains of a man’s fingers it’d been wrapped around.
They looked like they’d been chewed off. He could count at least six pieces, each nearly bleached white from blood loss, but Miki couldn’t be sure how many there actually were. The skin at each joint was frayed, exposing pink-tinged bone, and the three tips that had nail beds were empty of the actual fingernails, bits of torn cuticle clinging to the depressed, pale surfaces.
Choking back the bile hitting the roof of his mouth, Miki gritted his teeth and made it as far as the garage before losing his coffee on the sidewalk. In the time it took him to dial Kane’s cell, he threw up twice more, his stomach twisting on nothing as he gagged. Panting through his mouth, he listened to Kane’s phone ring, and then sighed in relief when the cop’s deep, Irish-soft voice murmured hello.
“Kane.” Miki swallowed, tasting nothing but bitter and horror on his tongue. “I… um… need some help, man. I think that asshole left pieces of someone on my porch.”