“Damn it, Dan. Don’t you listen? Philip,” the older man answered in a gruff tone, tugging at his belt to lift his dirty jeans higher. “You know, that guy who liked thecompanyof young, pretty men.” His gaze slid to me, and I straightened, raising my eyebrows in challenge. Had he seen me with Philip? If he did, then he would need to die, too.
Dan snorted. “He liked them too young if you ask me. Sometimes I questioned their age.”
I agreed. I’d heard around town that Philip enjoyed hitting on boys who were too young, and when they had nowhere to go, he took advantage of that need for food and warmth. Usually I didn’t care about what other people did, but it was easier to kill the termites of the city so that when they went missing, no one would care enough to search for them.
“Serves him right. He was bound to get knocked off, wasn’t he?” The older man’s mouth twisted in disgust and he huffed.
“Careful, Bob. You don’t want to say that stuff around the boys in blue.” Dan shrugged and glanced at me again from the corner of his eye. I cocked a brow at him but didn’t look away. I didn’t care if they knew I was listening intently. I never understood the social norm of pretending you weren’t eavesdropping. It was stupid. People like this spoke loudly to be heard.
“What do I care? I’m saying what everyone else is thinking.”
I peeked at the brute cop from the corner of my eye, and he’d moved nearer to us without me realizing. He was close, his thumbs hooked into his utility belt and mouth pursed until his lips turned white. The giant towered over us and made Bob cringe away.
“What is everyone thinking?” the cop asked, his attention directed at me, even though he was talking to the truckers. I stared back into his brown eyes, curious about him. While the other cops and CSI people paled at the sight of my art, this one held interest in his gaze. He appreciated my work. And it didn’t hurt that he was good-looking, too—tall with wide shoulders and light brown hair that bordered on ginger. He wasn’t stacked with muscles, but he looked sturdy, like those strongmen who could lift a lot of weight at competitions. He would be able to heave me up easily, and the thought sent a spike of pleasure through me.
Bob let out a strangled laugh. “Nothing—” His gaze dropped down to the brute’s shiny gold badge. “—Officer....”
“Rogers. Oh, it was something.” The brute—Rogers, apparently—smiled, but as pleasant as it seemed, something sinister lay beneath the niceties. An emotion Ididrecognize. The fakeness of the action was so familiar that I felt like I was staring into a mirror. “I’ll be conducting interviews, and I’d like to know more about the victim.” He pulled out a notebook from his belt and flipped it open. “Tell me about him.”
Bob glanced at Dan nervously, and Dan shrugged again, helplessness on his face. I stepped in closer, and Rogers’s attention snapped to me, a sharp warning in his gaze. He’d told me to get lost and I hadn’t listened, and he looked meaner than I remembered an hour ago. I smirked at him, and he nodded. It was almost as though we were having a wordless conversation.
Keep your mouth shut, his eyes said.
What’s the fun in that?I asked him with a wicked smile. I didn’t know Rogers from anyone else surrounding me, but he was different. I had to appreciate a man who viewed my work with pleasure.
Rogers clicked the end of the pen on the notebook, popping out the ink tip, before he focused back on the truckers. “What was he like and how well did you know him?”
Bob grunted uncomfortably and shifted his weight between his feet, scratching at the gray beard on the side of his face. “Not well. You get to know the regulars around here, but Philip kept to himself mostly.”
Dan nodded. “He wasn’t a bad guy, nice when you talked to him.”
“He liked whores, you know?” Bob huffed. “Young boys that look like him.” He finally nodded toward me, and I raised my brows in what I’d practiced as innocent.
“Like me?” I pointed at my chest. “I never met the man you were talking about.”
“Never said you did.” Bob glared at me and crossed his arms. “I said he liked boys who look like you.”
“Stop talking to him,” Rogers said gruffly, earning a wide-eyed glance from Bob. “I was talking to you, not him. Tell me everything you know.”
I rolled my eyes but let them speak, watching Rogers with interest, taking in the faked empathy as he jotted down notes. His pen was much nicer than mine. Could I steal it without him seeing? I had a feeling Rogers paid attention a lot more than others I’d taken stuff from. Every so often his attention strayed to me, a warning in his gaze, but I merely smiled. My focus didn’t divert from him; I was completely obsessed with watching.
By the time he was done with Bob and Dan, he didn’t stop to ask me any questions like I’d expected, just left the way he’d come, and Dan sent me a confused frown. I supposed he would’ve picked up on the fact that Rogers should’ve questioned me, too. Bob was either too dumb or didn’t care, though. He grumbled about cops before he yanked up his belt again as he left.
Dan slid in next to me. “Are you sure you didn’t know Philip? Thought I saw you talkin’ to him a couple of nights back.”
“You thought wrong,” I said simply, turning my back on him and walking closer to the line of tape the police had rolled out in front of us. Rogers was over near the tall blond cop again, and they were deep in conversation, but I didn’t miss every glance he sent my way, couldn’t look anywhere else. Sooner or later, someone would notice me staring, but I didn’t care.
I never understood why certain things were right and others were wrong, and my siblings used to give me hell for it. I was part of triplets, and my brothers, Beach and Sparrow, were what most people considered normal. They fit in with everyone else and were even popular.
My parents loved them in ways they hadn’t me. They’d pretended to care for me and put on a great show in front of other people, but I’d always been too different for them, and as a result, they’d tried to control me. I was told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. I’d been given curfews and rules my brothers didn’t have to follow.
My parents had been afraid of me—until I ended their fear and control for good.
I smiled at the thought of all my other artwork. My mother and father were my first, and one of my greatest pieces. The cops had found out the truth about them in the process of the investigation—how many people truly hated them for undercutting the poor. They weren’t good people. Not like me.
I was doing what I was made to do: rid the world of evil.
A news van pulled into the lot, and that was my cue to go. I smiled at Rogers when he finally glanced at me again, and with a small flutter of my fingers, I turned and left the scene. His gaze bore into my back and excited tingles swept down my spine as I hurried toward the highway. With a crime scene investigation underway, the cops were redirecting the vehicles to the next truck stop, which meant it was easy to hitch a ride. The second driver I met along the side of the road pulled over to let me in, and about ten minutes later we stopped at my favorite gas station.
