It still bugged me that Nate appeared to have been looking for me the night he died. It wasn’t that I felt responsible, because I felt I acted in the most professional way with the information he presented to me in his office. I never received his email that reached out to me for help because it was captured by our server for review. Still, a man was dead and just maybe I could’ve prevented it. I kept those comments to myself because they weren’t beneficial to the investigation.
“That sums up my thoughts exactly. What about the task force? Any opinions on them?” I asked Dorchester.
As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized that I hadn’t told Josh about my run-in with Paul from the task force and that we’d hooked up once a year ago. I had planned on telling him when I left Cincinnati, but then I got busy reading the reports and interviews and forgot about it. Then I stopped by the post office on my way home and picked up the change of address card. Once I held that in my hand, my mind was too busy figuring out a way to start the future I wanted, not focus on an incident from my past that was barely a blip on my radar.
Paul wasn’t even really on the task force, I told him I was in a relationship, and nothing else was required to my way of thinking. I mean, Josh hadn’t told me about the guy from college that he said treated him worse that Billy Sampson, which was hard to believe. Hell, I was almost afraid for the college guy’s safety once I found out how he treated Josh. I reasoned that telling him would cause more harm than not telling him.Where could I go wrong with that kind of logic?
“I think they’re all stand-up people,” Dorchester replied, bringing me back to the present. “I just think there’s not a lot to go on until someone coughs up a lead. It’s like a tightly knit sweater that holds together nicely until one tiny string comes loose and then it begins to unravel. We really need to find that loose string.”
“Or help it come loose,” I added.
When we arrived at the police department, I noticed that some phones had been added to the room we used the prior day. I knew then it was going to be an unglamorous day of making phone calls to try and schedule second interviews with people. If we didn’t have luck getting them by phone, then we’d hit the streets and do it in person.
“The hard part will probably be tracking down the employees since they would’ve found new jobs after Nate was killed,” I said out loud to the group after we’d left voicemail messages for almost every person on the list. The only people we reached by phone was Nate’s lawyer and his silent business partner, but I guess that really didn’t count since we talked to their personal assistants who promised to get back with us with a time we could meet.
“The club didn’t close,” Harris said casually. “Bandowe hired someone to manage it temporarily until the sale of the business goes through.”
“Where is that in the notes?” I asked him.
“I didn’t really think it was that pertinent.” Harris sounded a touch defensive, which wasn’t my goal at all. The last thing I needed was to alienate the people on the task force.
“I apologize if that came out sounding critical,” I told him. “I was making sure that I hadn’t overlooked something or that I wasn’t missing a page. That’s all.”
Harris relaxed a bit and said, “It’s all good, man. It was something that I learned from Paul, not as part of the investigation. The club did close for a while so maybe I should’ve said it reopened instead of implying that it never closed.”
Until evidence to the contrary was discovered, I was convinced the club was at the root of the case. Maybe not because of any illegal activity coming from it, but because of how successful it was. Or, he chose the wrong person to take to his office for a one-off fuck. The emails that Nate received didn’t have a religious puritanical feel to them. The one email referred to him having a beautiful cock and it was a shame it belonged to a piece of shit excuse for a man. Had it been from a person who was offended about where Nate stuck his dick then I thought it would’ve said so, they definitely wouldn’t have referred to his cock as beautiful.
“What about the kid they tracked the emails back to? Um,” I flipped through the notes until I came to his name. “Owen Smithson? What connection did he have to Nate, if any? Did he have a family member or friend who worked at Vibe or liked to go there? Do we know yet if the same caliber gun was used in both shootings?”
“The M.E. reports both state the gunshot appears to be from a forty-five. The shots were fired from close range and exited their skulls. Neither bullet was found on the scene which indicates it had been removed by the shooter. The details in both shootings are too similar to be a coincidence. The only difference was the location–Owen was killed in his apartment and Nate was killed in his car,” Jade said.
“Owen didn’t have any connection to Nate or the club that we could find,” Harris added. “We looked hard, but there was nothing. It would appear that someone hired him to send the messages and pictures then eliminated him when he’d outgrown his usefulness,” Jade told us.
“The only similarity between Nate and Owen was that they were both adopted, but not through the same organization. Nate’s adoption was private where Owen was adopted after spending several years in foster care. Neither of their stories would be considered unique if they hadn’t been killed by the same person.”
“There’s something more there,” I told them, although I couldn’t tell them why I thought so. “Why hire Owen? How’d they find him?”
“He hung out at a cyber café a lot and the guy might’ve found him there.”
“Or woman,” I reminded him.Weaker sex, my ass!
We hung around the station for a bit longer waiting on voicemail messages to be returned then hit the streets to knock on doors when no one called us back. We only caught a few on our list at home and learned absolutely nothing new. The one good thing I took away from the interviews we were able to conduct was that it didn’t appear that anyone was trying to hide anything from us. I got the impression that they really did want us to solve Nate’s case.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was too early for the club employees to show up, but it was late enough that I wanted to start heading back home to Josh. It wasn’t that we had anything exciting planned, but I looked forward to our night anyway. I quickly learned to expect the unexpected from Josh and whatever happened would be wonderful.
Then a lightbulb went off in my head. The best way to get some questions answered was from the inside. I wondered how Josh would feel about dinner and dancing on a Friday night or even a Saturday if he was too tired after being on his feet all day. I mentioned it to Dorchester to see what he thought about my idea.
“I don’t see how it could hurt. You can have a fun time with your guy even if you don’t learn anything new,” he said.
“True,” I replied. He was right, what could it hurt?
Fast forward and I knew exactly how it could hurt. Josh couldn’t wait to go dancing with me Saturday night and was even more excited when I told him I’d be doing a little investigating too. I had to ask him to change his outfit three times because each one of them looked like some cheesy undercover ensemble you’d expect to see in a comedy spoof about undercover work. The last one was the worst and it made me think we would end up looking like a modern day Starsky and Hutch. As funny as his first few outfits were, it was the final one that caused me so much pain.
“I’m not changing again,” Josh said firmly. He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me with eyes that grew a darker hue when he was horny or angry. I knew damn well he wasn’t horny, as for me… those tight jeans were going to be the death of me. I knew every eye in the room would be on his ass and I didn’t like it one bit. “There’s nothing wrong with this one.”
I realized why his eyes looked bigger and darker. I had never seen him in eyeliner, not even when I saw him that one time at Vibe. I wondered if it was something he only liked to do on occasion or if he was testing me, perhaps both. “You’re wearing eyeliner,” I said. I would not fail if it was a test. “It makes your eyes look bigger.” I walked to him and tilted his chin up slightly so I could have a better look. “Just make sure you keep those beautiful eyes on me.”
My answer seemed to appease him and we set off for the club. Josh was right about what he said earlier about there being nothing wrong with his outfit. I just didn’t like the idea of the attention he was going to get, but that was my problem, not his. I would just have to step up my game so that he was too busy having a good time with me that he wouldn’t notice anyone else, which meant I was going to be forced to dance.
