Triangulation, p.7
Triangulation, page 7
part #2 of Borealis Investigations Series
“Send me a list of people.”
“I can do better than that. I’ve gotten you an invite for Josh Liebowitz’s brunch. They’ll all be there, the lying little hypocrites. I’d like to look Adam Johnston right in the eyes and hear him try to explain again about how Puddles just needed a trim and he’d be sure to make it to brunch next time. I’d like to shove one of those satay skewers down his throat and watch him choke.”
“Send me the address, then.”
“Of course. Josh uses e-vites.” Teddi gave a brittle laugh. “Can you even imagine?”
“I need to get going, Teddi.”
“Tell me, though. Just one thing. Shaw and this . . . police officer. I’ve seen him of course. One understands—one can understand perfectly well—what Shaw’s thinking. But just a minute ago, I heard the claws come out. What do you think about the two of them?”
“Goodbye, Teddi.”
“You know I’m only asking because I’ve always thought you and Shaw—”
North disconnected the call and tossed the phone on the seat beside him. Somehow, the heat seemed to have gotten worse in the last few minutes: outside the caravan, the light breeze had stopped, and the smell of diesel exhaust came in on every breath. The reflected sunlight on the Caravan’s hood was like a welding torch; it burned into North’s vision, floating there even after he closed his eyes and turned his head.
Something that Teddi had said lingered. Not that stupid stuff about Shaw, even though North still held that perfectly clear image in his head of Shaw and Jadon at the 22 Rue bar, Jadon leaning in, laughing at something Shaw had said, his hand coming up to tuck a loose strand of hair behind Shaw’s ear. Christ, this heat, North thought. This heat made him feel like he could spontaneously combust, and even though it was late July, the worst of the heat felt like it was coming from inside him.
No, Teddi had said something else. Something at the end. They’d all be terrible at poker. That was interesting. Those words tickled something at the back of North’s head. He didn’t know many good liars. Shaw was a terrible liar, for example. And Tuck was a terrible liar too, although Tuck seemed to think he was very clever.
To be fair, North thought, sliding sweaty hands along the steering wheel, to be fair, Tucker was glib, and glibness could be confused with cleverness. Tucker always had an easy, ready answer. North could point out something—a wrinkle in one of Tucker’s stories, for example—and Tucker would have an explanation. And then he’d have another explanation. And another. He plastered the explanations on until the original wrinkle was lost under inches of more lies. It had been funny at first, almost endearing, except for the fact that North had known that Tucker was lying.
North always knew when Tucker was lying. It wasn’t hard to tell. North didn’t even need those little, inconsistent wrinkles in the stories Tuck told, although they helped. No, North always knew when Tuck was lying because Tuck had a tell—although North had never thought of it this way, not until Teddi’s words. They’d all be terrible at poker. Even if Tucker had been planning the lie for weeks, he always gave himself away by clearing his throat. Just the other day, when North had found the bikini briefs, North had asked what Tuck had been up to that day. Tuck had given his usual explanation: the office, the links, drinks with the boys. Any other day, it would have been the answer North expected. But Tucker had cleared his throat before diving into the lie. And North had already known. He had the dirty underwear as proof.
As North guided the Caravan up the ramp and onto I-44, he broke into a sweat. Not a summer-sun sweat like the one that had wet his shirt and dampened his hair in the July sun. Now he found himself in a flop sweat, his body spitting out adrenaline. His rational mind knew that this was just biology, a survival instinct. But his rational mind wasn’t in charge anymore. Fear billowed through his brain, a blank, irrational cloud that drifted to fill every corner. Something was coming, something terrible, something North wasn’t sure he could face.
He drove faster. Fifty-five. Sixty. Sixty-five. Seventy. At seventy, he was passing most of the other drivers on I-44, and even with rush hour, even with construction at the Shrewsbury exit, he found himself cutting toward Webster Groves faster than he liked. He was running from something, from a realization that chased after him. But he also knew, deep in his gut, that he was really running straight toward the thing he wanted to escape.
Tucker always cleared his throat before he lied. It was a tell.
And then, all around North, the city’s south side faded away. Square miles of industrial complexes, corrugated buildings, sheet metal roofing that glowed white in the July sun—it all became gray and distant, as though North observed it through smudged glass.
That night in the spring of freshman year. That night North had begged Tuck to find out if Shaw was interested in him. That night Tuck had gone down to Shaw’s room, talked, laughed—North could hear them from where he sat on his bed, the door propped open, the words indistinct but the voices carrying easily down the hall. North remembered his heart beating an insane rhythm against the inside of his chest. He remembered the bedframe slick under his hands, and his fingers smelling like iron when he cupped them over his mouth and tried to control his breathing. He had been nervous, yes. But he had also been excited. He and Shaw had been dancing around each other for eight months, and now, tonight, North was finally going to know if it was just flirtation or if there was something else, something real.
Tucker had come back to the room. He had stood in the doorway. He had shaken his head once, and North’s whole world had crumbled like a tower of blocks slapped by a toddler.
But Tucker had cleared his throat.
Before Tucker had said anything, before he had done anything except shake his head in commiseration, Tuck had cleared his throat.
The realization stole the air from North’s lungs. For a long moment, he kept the Caravan in its lane only through muscle memory and luck. All around him, the world had taken on a shimmering, spangled haziness; distantly, he realized this had happened to him before, when he had passed out. North forced himself to breathe. He sucked in air. He steadied his shaking hands on the wheel. The world cleared. A little.
Tuck had lied.
The first, brightest question, was: had he even asked Shaw?
No. Of course he hadn’t.
And that explained so much. That explained why Shaw had never said anything. Shaw loved to talk. Shaw loved to process. Shaw loved to work everything out with agonizingly long discussions. If Shaw had known that North had crushed on him, they would have talked about it. At length. For the last eight years. But Shaw had never breathed a word.
A second realization hit North so hard that he actually made a noise, a whimper in his throat that would have embarrassed him if anyone else had heard it. Because a few weeks after Tucker had lied to North, Shaw had been attacked in an alley. He had been on a date with Carl, a boy who lived two floors below them. It had been Shaw’s first real date—the first significant one, anyway. And it had ended with Carl dead and Shaw half butchered, traumatized.
What would have been different? North’s breath whistled on his next exhalation. What would have changed? Would North have been on that date with Shaw? Would North be the one dead in a Central West End alley? Or would Shaw have died? Or would they have spent the night in their room, a sock on the door?
The reality of what Tuck had stolen from North kept crashing in. Now North was thinking about spring at the end of senior year, when he had been drinking on the Sigma Sigma roof with Shaw, just bullshitting each other the way they always did, enjoying Shaw’s company because this was as much of Shaw as North would ever be allowed to have. And then he had climbed in through the window to score another bottle of Absolut, and somehow Tucker had been there. Looking for them. And everything that had been building between North and Tuck exploded at that moment. North remembered knowing that Shaw was on the roof, hoping that Shaw could hear. He remembered the petty vengefulness of saying, He’s sweet, but a little too soyboy for me. And then Tuck had kissed him, and North had hoped, even during the kiss, that Shaw would see. North had realized he needed to move on.
But none of that would have happened if Tuck hadn’t lied four years earlier. North drove the Caravan. As the city’s industrial lots gave way to the innermost ring of suburbs, the minivan began to shake. The wheel bucked under North’s hands. He knew something was wrong with the van, something serious, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He didn’t really see the Elm exit when he left the highway; he just glimpsed blurred sections of the tree-lined streets until he was pulling into the long drive, passing the Japanese maple at the front of the lot, and approaching the detached garage.
The Caravan was hissing now, and steam—or smoke—billowed up from under the hood, blocking North’s field of vision for moments at a time and then clearing when an eddy of air shifted. Today, because it was a beautiful, clear, inferno of a July day, Tuck had left the Beamer outside, and North fed the Caravan more gas. He was going to hit the Beamer so hard the thing couldn’t even be used for scrap metal.
Instead, though, the Caravan gave one final lurch and died. It rolled a few more feet from its momentum, nosed up against the Beamer’s bumper, and settled into place with a heavy clank. For fuck’s sake, North thought. That probably hadn’t scratched the paint.
He tried the key in the ignition. Nothing.
It didn’t matter. North slid out of the van and started around the back of the tall, old house. None of this mattered. The beautiful—and expensive—house in Webster Groves didn’t matter. The Beamer Tuck had to have didn’t matter. The Caravan that North drove as Tuck’s way of punishing him for Borealis, for the Marvin Hanson case that had gone so spectacularly wrong, and now, North realized in a kind of dreamy clarity, for Shaw, all these years Tuck had been punishing him for ever wanting Shaw—the Caravan didn’t matter either. North was done with all of it.
He hit the kitchen door at speed, and it bounced hard against the wall. The crack resonated through the house.
“Hello?” That was Tuck’s voice. Worried. From the front room.
North thought he might kill Tuck if he saw him. He thought it was very possible. So he took the stairs two at a time to the bedroom, found his gym bag in the closet, and began dumping clothes into it. He wasn’t even sure what he was grabbing; his vision had gone blurry again, the way it had on the drive. He just yanked handfuls of clothing from the closet and the drawers.
Tuck’s footsteps sounded on the stairs; it was easy to tell they were Tuck’s because he was still limping, even three months after his bad fall. His arm was still stiff, too, and his mobility limited. It had been a real bitch for his golf game, Tuck had said. North tried to laugh as he thought of this, but the sound didn’t come out right. He crossed their room, slammed the door, and thumbed the lock.
“Hey!” Tuck’s voice came closer. “North? What’s going on? Hey. Hey, open up.” He hammered on the door.
North kicked open the door to the bathroom, ignoring Tucker’s pleas, and gathered toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant. He probably needed more than that. He was sure he needed more than that, but he couldn’t think of what it might be. He dumped the few articles he’d gathered in the gym bag and zipped it up. He grabbed his pillow and put it under his arm. He took one last look around the room, caught a glimpse of himself, his shoulders heaving, his face red and wet, in the standing mirror. He walked over to it and forced himself to meet his own gaze. He ran his fingers under his eyes until the skin was dry.
“I’m going to kick this door down, babe. I’m going to do it. You’re freaking me out. Will you just—what the fuck, you know? Come on, babe. What the fuck?”
“If I open that door and you’re standing there, I’m going to kill you.”
For a moment, stunned silence was the only answer. Then Tucker began to laugh. It was hard laughter. Corrosive. “I knew I’d been too fucking easy on you. I knew I’d been soft. Open this fucking door. Right. Fucking. Now.”
North looked at himself again. He had this idea that if he could just follow events back to their cause, if he could know where they’d gone wrong, he could go back in time and make them right. But that wasn’t true, of course. His eyes spilled over, and he had to turn away from the glass before he did something stupid like punch it or kick it or scream. Nobody could go back in time. And what was the point anyway? Things hadn’t gone wrong—they’d been wrong from the start. Because of Tuck.
North opened the door, and Tuck charged into the room. His first blow was glancing, a loose fist that barely caught North’s cheekbone. It still snapped his head to the side. Tucker swung again, but the follow-up blow came from his still-healing arm, and he barely got the punch as high as North’s chest; the thick muscle there absorbed the force, and North grunted in annoyance. Blinking to clear his vision, he gathered two handfuls of Tuck’s Chouteau Sigma Sigma shirt and hurled the other man onto the bed. Wood creaked; springs groaned. Tuck let out a cry and screamed, “Oh Christ, my shoulder, I think you broke my shoulder, oh fucking Christ—”
“Shut up.”
“Jesus, North, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you fucking retarded?” Tuck slid along the bed, obviously trying to get himself upright without putting weight on his shoulder. “Help me up you fucking retard. Jesus, my shoulder, I swear to Christ if you—”
North crossed to the bed before he could stop himself. One hand wrapped easily around Tuck’s throat, and North found himself squeezing. He was surprised—shocked, really—at how easily cartilage and flesh crumpled under his grip. Tuck must have been shocked too; his eyes blew open, and he tried to suck in a breath.
“I said, shut up.”
Tuck gasped and wheezed; spittle flecked the back of North’s hand. It would be very easy, North thought, to end it right now. He even thought he might get away with it, but he was practical enough to realize that some of that was the adrenaline talking—plenty of people thought they could get away with it in the heat of the moment. Tuck’s panic must have increased, and maybe he had seen some of North’s thoughts cross his face because he began to claw weakly at North’s arm with one hand, his stockinged feet kicking North’s shins.
“You get one chance to tell me the truth. If you lie, Tucker, I’ll know. Do you understand me?”
North relaxed his grip, and Tuck sucked in a long breath. Then, raising himself on one elbow, he said, “You stupid motherfucker. I am going to beat the shit out of you. You think you can raise a hand to me? You think you can—”
In spite of everything that had happened, North wanted to laugh. This whole performance was unreal. And then again, maybe it wasn’t. After all, they’d been playing the same parts for so many years now that Tuck probably couldn’t wrap his tiny brain around the changes. For the first time in his life, North hit his husband: a backhand strong enough to split Tuck’s lips. Long, comet-tailed drops of blood spattered the fucking seven hundred-thread-count Pottery Barn sheets Tuck had insisted they needed.
Hissing, Tuck managed to turn his head. “I’m going to beat your ass until you can’t sit for a week. Fuck, I might not let you sit for a fucking month, North. I’m going to—”
Another blow. A slap, this time, hard enough that Tuck’s eyes went swirly and North hoped that he might have knocked a tooth loose. Fuck Tuck’s teeth. Fuck those fucking veneers that he’d needed.
“One chance, Tuck. Do you understand?”
Tuck’s eyes were still rolling; he looked like he was trying to scrabble away, but he was still too dazed.
North caught a handful of Tuck’s waspy blond hair and shook his head. “Nod.”
Tucker nodded.
“Freshman year, when I sent you to ask Shaw if he was interested in me, you lied. Tell me the truth, Tuck, so help you God.”
Blood spilled down Tuck’s chin. He was crying, and the red prints of North’s blows stood out on his face. After what felt like an eternity, he nodded.
“What did you tell him?”
“What the fuck, babe? What the fuck is wrong with you? Jesus, are you out of your fucking mind—”
North’s field of vision narrowed to a bloody tunnel, and he started hitting. He wasn’t sure how long it went on, only that when he had finished, Tuck’s nose was broken, and more of those long, bloody meteors had ruined the bedding. Tuck was sobbing.
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing.” More sobs shook Tuck. “I didn’t say anything about you. We just talked, you know? And then he asked me about you because he knew I’d been talking to you, and I told him he should stop acting so obsessed with you because it was never going to happen. I told him he was embarrassing himself.”
North released Tuck’s hair so quickly that Tuck’s head bounced off the mattress. Stepping backward quickly, North shook out his hand. His fingers ached. He gathered up the gym bag and kept walking backward. His voice sounded steady when he spoke, but he kept moving backward. He was afraid that if he stopped, he would start hitting Tuck again and he wouldn’t be able to stop.
“He didn’t even know,” North said. “He never even knew.”
Tucker was curling up on their bed, sobbing wildly—not out of remorse, North knew, but out of pain and shock and humiliation.
“He never even knew,” North repeated to himself. It sounded like someone else talking. Someone who hadn’t lived through the last eight years. Then, more loudly, he said to Tuck, “We’re done.”
North backed away. When he bumped into the door jamb, he turned on his heel and ran from the house. He grabbed the keys to the Beamer as he went, and as he was pulling out of the drive, his phone began to ring.
Chapter 8
THE INDOOR SHOOTING GALLERY smelled like smokeless propellant and, disturbingly, Detective Jadon Reck’s sporty cologne. The big man stood behind Shaw, his body wrapped around Shaw’s, his arms on Shaw’s arms, his hands on Shaw’s hands, guiding, adjusting, teaching.
