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Something had happened up there in Canada -- that much Ray knew. Something big, something serious, something that was still aching and raw. He had no idea how Kowalski had managed to stay alive in undercover gigs for so long; the son of a bitch wore his pain like a hairshirt, like a new tattoo so fresh it was still oozing blood.
Normally Ray might've kicked Kowalski when he was down, but getting shot and forced into semi-retirement had mellowed him some, so he didn't say anything.
Wasn't like there was much he could say, anyway. After Stella dumped his ass and sent him crawling back to Chicago, he wasn't exactly in a position to sling mud at Kowalski for his failures. After all, neither of them had got the girl in the end.
Neither of them had got the Mountie, either.
--
"A bowling alley, Ray?" Stella demanded, three months after they bought the place, staring at him like he was stupid, which was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stella made him feel pretty stupid. "Come on. Did you really think we'd be happy running a bowling alley?"
Ray didn't say anything, just stood awkwardly in their bedroom, hands on his hips, head bowed, watching as she folded clothes into suitcases and placed Prada suits inside garment bags. And no, he had to admit, none of them looked like the sort of thing one would wear at a bowling alley.
"I'm a lawyer; you're a detective. We were kidding ourselves. You have to realize that," she'd said, like of course he had to have realized that, of course, not like she was asking him to understand, telling him anything new, breaking some hard glassy slab of truth over his head like a piece of the wedding china they didn't have.
Ray scrubbed a hand over his face, rubbed his jaw, and looked out the window. There was a palm tree at the end of their driveway. Six months in the south and he still wasn't used to the damn things. Palm trees, oranges, hundreds of matching ranch-style houses in cotton candy colors: every time he walked outside he felt like he was trapped in a 1960s beach movie, or maybe a cartoon.
"Ray," she said, her voice a cracked whisper, and there was weight behind the way she said his name, the weight of decades. He wasn't even sure she was addressing him in particular. Then she started talking, saying words like impulse and foolish and mistake, but Ray just kept looking out the window, staring at the palm tree, contemplating the surreality of his life.
There was something very final about the sound of the zippers on the luggage. He didn't even hear her say goodbye.
The first night was bad, real bad, and he barely made it into work at the alley the next day, hungover and unshaven and shooting Langoustini death glares at anyone who dared to get in his way or act like anything was out of the ordinary. But after that, it never happened again. He was fine. He was clean, sober, and prompt, came into work every day until the place sold -- cheap -- a few weeks later.
He went back to Chicago, stayed in a hotel for a week, then moved into the first non-shithole apartment he could find. Bought a bed, a chintzy used sofa, some end tables. Ate a lot of take-out Chinese and tried not to think about Fraser ordering a whole spread of food in letter-perfect Mandarin.
He went to see his family once, but the noise and the hugs and the stares, both pitying and disappointed, were too much. He went in to see Welsh, who didn't bat an eye and didn't say a word about Florida or Stella, just offered him a place back at the 2-7 anytime he wanted to take it. And what did is say about him that he preferred Welsh's welcome to that of his own kin?
Last he heard, Stella had got a job at a firm in New York. The divorce papers came in the mail. He signed them and sent them back without really reading them.
--
Ray was sick of early retirement and wanted his old job back. Kowalski must have been sick of being an unwashed, unemployed reject from Canada, and wanted his old job back. What with both of their old jobs being the same damn job, Welsh, the sadist, decided to partner them up.
Ray protested, to say the least. Kowalski threw around some swear words, and when he ran out of words he threw Welsh's stapler, which hit the wall and broke and sure as hell didn't get either of them onto the lieutenant's good side. Looked like Kowalski's months mushing around (messing around) with Fraser hadn't done anything for the Polack's anger management problem.
Welsh didn't give them any time to sit around and antagonize each other; he tossed them a case right away and put them to work. It was a good case, too, something nice and dark and ugly for them to lose themselves in, a kidnapping. They started tracking down leads and interviewing witnesses, and they had a fight about whether it was the cousin or the ex-boyfriend which almost ended in a brawl before they figured out the cousin and the ex were in it together.
So they made the arrests and knocked the two losers' heads together until they figured out where the girl was stashed, and then they rode in on their white fucking horses and rescued the damsel, and Welsh said, "Good work, gentlemen," and clapped them both on the shoulders just like Fraser had back in the Hotel California, the first time they met face to face.
Kowalski must have been thinking the same thing because he shot Ray a sullen glare and then stared at the ground for a while, not speaking. Ray watched him leave the station later, head still hanging, saying goodbye to no one, looking nothing at all like a guy who'd just solved a major case and possibly saved a woman's life.
Not that it was any of Ray's business, but he looked like a guy who still wasn't over Benton Fraser.
--
"Shit," Kowalski was saying next to him. "Shit, shit, shit--" Then he was gone, lurching away, staggering out of Ray's line of sight.
Ray ignored him and stared impassively at the body on the alley pavement, going over the details like a grocery list: Caucasian female, late twenties to early thirties, partly clothed, mostly disemboweled. Her head was twisted to the side, neck clearly broken, sightless eyes staring a direct perpendicular line to the opposing brick wall. Hard to tell before the ME got a look at her, which wouldn't be until the next morning, but she'd probably been dead before whoever killed her started messing around with her intestines. Or at least knocked out. Jesus.
Bodies didn't bother him these days. Pre-Vegas Vecchio's stomach might have turned a little at the sight, his heart might have clenched a little, his fingers might have twitched, moving of their own volition to make the long-accustomed sign of the cross. Armando Langoustini had beaten that out of him. Post-Vegas Vecchio was a different story.
Still, he turned his head and inhaled a deep rush of fresh air before crouching in front of the corpse, and he didn't let himself breathe again until he was upright and out of range. The smell was one thing that even Armando couldn't help but be sickened by.
Busboy at the Indian place next door had called it in, but the kid didn't have any priors, was shaking like a sapling, and according to the uniforms who'd got there first, had already puked twice, so Ray had a good idea that he wasn't the kind of guy who could gut a woman and play with her innards. No ID on the body and no missing persons report, but she was still stiff so she probably hadn't been dead long enough for someone to miss her. If there was anyone to miss her; the track marks on the inside of one pale arm said junkie and the cut of her skirt made Ray think she might be a pro. On the plus side, that meant they might be able to ID her from her fingerprints. A camera snapped and flashed nearby. Ray squinted, rubbed his forehead, and turned to Kowalski, who was some distance away, spiky head hanging, leaning with one hand braced on the brick wall.
"Squeamish?" Ray asked. It came out more gently than he'd intended it.
"Screw you," Kowalski muttered, and then shook his head like a wet dog and started walking towards the car -- Kowalski's car, a 1967 GTO, which Ray had to admit was nearly as beautiful as his sweet Riv had been. Both of them. Before Fraser got both Rivs blown up. Not that he was bitter. Ray followed and took his accustomed position in the passenger seat.
Ray might have thought that Welsh was piling all the shit on the two of them as punishment for leaving if he didn't know that every other cop in the city had just as many open cases sitting on his or her desk. Cases just as bad, too. They were working ten- and twelve-hour days just to keep their heads above water. Murders, rapes, kidnappings, arsons, assaults, and last week a rookie from the ninth got shot to death during a drug bust gone wrong. Everything bloody and bruised.
It couldn't just be his imagination that Chicago was uglier without Fraser around.
At least the work didn't leave them time to fight. It barely left them enough time to think. Apparently Ray and Kowalski worked good together under pressure, when they couldn't afford to pick at each other. Figuring he was stuck with the guy, Ray had decided to be the bigger person, to put the past behind them and try to maybe even be friendly with Kowalski, so one morning last week he'd brought a peace offering to work in the form of a second cup of coffee from the place where he usually got his morning jolt. Kowalski had given him a suspicious glance and a muttered "thanks" and then just sat the cup in a corner of his desk until it cooled to undrinkable temperatures, whereupon he tossed it in the trash. Like he figured Ray had poisoned it or something. What a nutbar.
It was a Friday evening in November, long past quitting time and unseasonably warm. Ray rolled down the window as they drove. A week or less and it would be freezing outside; a few weeks after that and they'd maybe see the season's first snow. Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Florida anymore. Kowalski stopped at a red light and Ray, feeling like he was trying to coax some kind of feral cat, asked without looking at him, "You want to grab a bite or something?"
Ray could feel the tension radiating off of Kowalski from the other side of the car. For a moment Kowalski didn't answer either way, and Ray was about to tell him to forget about it when Kowalski said, "Sure, okay," and floored it the moment the light turned green.
Ray just shook his head and looked out the window at the passing city. He shouldn't have been surprised that Kowalski was a Fraser-grade freak, too.
They agreed on a fast place, which Ray figured was a good idea; you never knew when a friendly dinner with your new partner might turn into a fist fight, especially if your new partner was as loose a cannon as Kowalski. They talked about work over greasy diner food, about the easy cases, the old cases, the ones that looked funny in retrospect and not the ones that gave you nightmares for years after. It passed the time and broke the silence, anyway. Everything was fine until Kowalski said something that reminded Ray of this case he'd worked with Fraser in a mental hospital once, and Ray laughed and started to say something about it, but then Fraser's name passed his lips and Kowalski shut down like someone had just sucker-punched him. Jaw tight, eyes looking anywhere but at Ray, face dark, and the words died in Ray's mouth, leaving a taste of rot behind.
He felt like he should say something, but what was there to say? Sorry? Forget that. He'd worked with Fraser for two years, longer than he'd worked with any partner. Most of Ray's cop stories had something to do with Fraser. Used to be Fraser was the one thing he and Kowalski could almost sort of bond over without wanting to break each other's teeth. If Fraser was taboo now, then what the hell were they supposed to talk about?
It's not like Ray even knew all that much about Kowalski besides the fact that he was a cop. And that he'd been married to Stella for fifteen years, which Ray guessed told him a lot. He knew that Kowalski was a Cubs fan and a Hawks fan, and that he boxed sometimes, that he even used to coach some kid down at his gym. So there was sports, maybe; they could maybe talk about that. He vaguely knew most of Kowalski's employment history -- he'd seen the files (but not the photo) before they pulled Kowalski in to replace him -- enough to know that Kowalski didn't suck at his job and was maybe even kind of good at it.
So maybe Kowalski wasn't a total stranger, and maybe there were other things besides Fraser that the two of them could talk about, but there was no getting around the eight-hundred-pound gorilla dressed in Mountie reds sitting in the corner of every conversation.
--
To be fair, Ray had already had two years to get used to Fraser not being there, and he hadn't even been sleeping with the guy.
Sure, he'd missed Fraser like hell when he got to Vegas, but time had passed and the hurt had faded. It was awful to have to leave him like that, without any warning or even a real goodbye, but that was the job, and if anyone understood the job, if anyone understood what it was like to have to travel thousands of miles away because they didn't want you back at home, it was Fraser. So Ray had left, said farewell as best he could, and learned to cope.
Kowalski was different. From everything Ray'd heard about the two of them after his cover was blown, Fraser and Kowalski had been thick as thieves for those two years -- maybe too thick, if you believed some of the rumors. But then he and Stella made off to Florida without seeing either of them again and that was the last he thought about it. Until the letter came.
Fraser must have gotten Ray's forwarding address from the station, or maybe from his Ma, because one day about three months after they moved to Florida, a white envelope showed up in his mailbox, postmarked Fort Good Hope and bearing Benny's neat script. He'd grinned, carried the rest of the mail inside, and then opened the letter.
He'd stopped grinning real fast after that.
There was a part of Ray that had always thought of Fraser as sort of asexual. He knew he wasn't really being fair to the guy, but Fraser's track record with women was something else, and that wasn't even taking Victoria Metcalf into consideration. It wasn't like Ray blamed Fraser; going through that kind of thing (and nearly dying both times) would put anyone off of romance for a while, if not forever.
But Fraser deciding to shack up (literally; Ray had seen the kind of places Fraser lived in) with a guy? It didn't fit. Whenever Ray tried to picture Fraser actually settling down with someone, he always imagined some pretty girl Mountie, like the Dragon Lady but without the talons: someone sweet, someone polite to the point of aggravation, someone just as freakishly obsessed with saving the world as Fraser. Basically, Benny in a skirt.
A guy did not fit into that scenario, not for someone like Fraser. Guys were what you did when you were a horny teenager, waiting around for the right woman to sweep off her feet, or when you were lonely and desperate for something, some kind of touch or release. You didn't move in with them, you didn't play house with them, you didn't get your happily ever after with them, like Fraser seemed to be trying to do with Kowalski -- not if you were a guy like Fraser, anyway. Guys were something you were supposed to grow out of, but then Fraser'd had a really weird childhood, so maybe he never got past that. Or maybe it really was all about Victoria; maybe she'd fucked him over so badly that he couldn't trust himself with women anymore. Maybe Fraser thought he'd already had the "right woman" and blown it. With Fraser, who really knew? The point was, he was weird, but Ray never thought he was weird that way.
There was something even weirder about the fact that Fraser had decided to settle down with the guy who'd worn Ray's name and Ray's badge and Ray's life for two years. It made him feel a little funnier about the whole thing.
But Fraser was his friend, his best friend, so he got over it. Didn't say a word about it to Stella -- which maybe should have been a sign about the two of them -- and wrote Fraser back a nice, friendly e-mail. That was the last he'd heard of either of them until he got back to Chicago and saw Kowalski's hangdog expression and prickly rage and put two and two together.
He almost felt sorry for Kowalski, but it was a sneering kind of pity. After all, hadn't Ray himself just got dumped by the woman of his dreams, and was he moping? No, he was not. He went to work each day, did his job, and went home with the satisfaction of knowing that he was his own man. He couldn't believe this was the guy who had been picked to replace him. How the hell had Fraser been able to stand it?
Whatever had happened with them in Canada must have been one hell of a blowout. Ray was a little curious, sure -- who wouldn't be? But Kowalski wasn't talking and Ray sure as hell wasn't going to call Fraser to get the juicy details, because there was no way into that conversation that didn't involve the words "Stella" "divorce" and "complete fuck-up" in some combination, and Ray wasn't ready to go there yet with Fraser or anyone else.
Anyway, he wasn't worried -- not about Fraser, at least. He'd assumed that Fraser had come to his senses and sent the Polack packing. Nobody in their right mind would ever break the heart of Benton Fraser, and whatever else he might have to say about Kowalski, the man wasn't crazy. Not that kind of crazy, anyway. Ray had met that kind of crazy -- let it sleep in his sister's bed, even -- and Kowalski wasn't it. So there was no way that Kowalski, as a more or less sensible human being with a pair of functioning eyes, could have been the dumper and Fraser the dumpee. No way was Fraser left alone up there in Canada unless that was exactly the way he wanted it.
Unless Ray was wrong.
--
Debra Dunwich, aged thirty-four, five arrests for solicitation. Apparent cause of death: broken neck. Partial postmortem removal of the intestines. No signs of sexual assault.
"Bingo," Ray said joylessly when Kowalski dropped the ME's report onto his desk. As if it wasn't bad enough that they'd have to interview Ms. Dunwich's "colleagues" now, the odds of their finding any leads had just gone right out the window. With Debbie's particular mode of employment and no prints or DNA evidence recovered from the body or the scene, the investigation was fucked from the get-go. Maybe they'd turn something up in the autopsy, if they could manage to find some family who could sign off on it, but until then, there wasn't much they could do.
They hit the streets that evening anyway, walking a few blocks' radius from where the body was dumped, and while they found a lot of pros who knew her, nobody could tell them a thing about who she'd been with that night. Ray did the only thing he could do, which was to tell the working girls to call him if they noticed or heard anything and to be careful in the meantime. Right, "careful." Kind of an oxymoron in their profession. He felt like an idiot as he handed a CPD business card with his number on it to anyone who'd take it.
He didn't ask Kowalski if he wanted to have dinner that night, or a drink, or anything like that; he just got into his own car, a beige Honda so embarrassingly dull he felt compelled to wear sunglasses to hide his face whenever he was in it, and drove straight back to his apartment. There was a bottle of Sangiovese waiting for him on the kitchen counter and a plate full of leftovers in the fridge from the last Vecchio family dinner he'd forced himself to attend. He hung up the suit jacket he'd been wearing, loosened his tie, and freed the top several buttons of his shirt, and then he ate and drank and drank and ate in front of the last half of a football game until the warmth of the food and wine radiated outward from his stomach, filling the rest of his body, making him loose-limbed and content, letting him forget about work, giving his mind permission to wander.
It chose to wander, naturally, to the subject of Stella. He hadn't seen her in six weeks, hadn't touched her in longer than that, but the vision of her came to him as clear as if she were seated on the sofa next to him. The scent of the expensive perfume she liked, the softness of her hair, and Ray was just far enough around the bend that he could think of her without the hurt, with only the memory of affection and the slow burning of lust.
He'd spent the last month and change walking around like a ghost in a fog, disconnected from the physical world, but he'd just reached his breaking point and his body was hell bent on announcing its presence and its need. Drowsy, languid, he rubbed the back of his still-tense neck, the hard jut of his collarbone, and then permitted his hand to travel downward until he could unbutton his slacks and reach inside. He was half hard already, and his cock jumped a little when he took it in his hand.
He closed his eyes, feeling the flush on his face, as much wine as arousal, and shoved his pants and underwear out of the way. He thought about Stella, beautiful Stella, with her soft skin and curves, and tightened his fist around his dick. He wished he had something to ease the way so he didn't rub himself raw, but he was already too far gone to really care. Stella with her cool blue eyes and searing hot mouth, her perfectly shaped breasts with their dark nipples, her slim belly, the V of her thighs. She always made love shamelessly, unselfconsciously, and he'd loved that about her, that she wasn't afraid to let him look at her and touch her, run his hands up and down the lovely expanse of her body -- that she wasn't ashamed to bow her head and take him into her sweet pink mouth ...
Ray fisted his cock and released a groan of pleasure that turned into a groan of complaint as the blond in his fantasy blurred and the hair shortened and suddenly he had Kowalski in his head, looking as sullen and jittery as he ever had, and fuck if that wasn't the biggest turn-off Ray Vecchio had ever had the misfortune of imagining while jerking off. Except that he hadn't gone soft -- yet -- and he wasn't freaked out by the phantasmal Kowalski interrupting his masturbation session so much as he was annoyed.
Ray opened his eyes and looked around the dark, empty living room, hand still wrapped around his cock. It was no real surprise that he'd think of his partner now after spending all day working with him; besides, Stanley Raymond Kowalski had always been between him and Stella from the minute he'd learned her last name. After all, she'd been with the guy for nearly twenty years. Took his name and didn't give it up after the divorce -- didn't give it up for Vecchio, either, and even though he understood her reasons, that still stung even now when it didn't much matter anyway. He'd been her first everything -- first kiss, first date, first fuck, first husband -- as early and as long as they'd been together, Stella probably learned everything she knew from and with Kowalski: everything about marriage, everything about being in love, everything about sex.
Ray tugged at his cock again, experimentally, and found it still hard, the persistent bastard, precome welling up at the slit. He smoothed his thumb over the head before sliding his fist down and up the shaft again.
He sped up the movements of his hand, hoping to get this over with before it turned weird. His other hand moved between his legs and under his dick to cup his balls, their weight warm and grounding. This was him, just him. Him and his hand and a dizzy, drunken fantasy about the latest woman to leave him high and dry.
He wasn't at all sure who he was thinking about a few minutes later when the pressure broke and he came, shuddering, all over his hand and white oxford shirt, but he knew it was a blond.
Five minutes to clean up after himself, another few to clear the dinner detritus, and five more to wash up and change into pajamas before turning down the sheets on his bed and crawling inside. He felt better: better about life, better about the job, better about everything. Jerking off alone wasn't exactly the height of personal success, but at least he could still go home and turn his brain off for a while and just let his body take over. When you stopped being able to do that, that's when you were well and truly fucked.
He fell asleep and dreamed fitfully, in motion: short scenes of chasing Fraser across rooftops, beautiful green Buick Rivieras rolling on highways, polyester bowling balls spinning down shiny wooden lanes. The sudden rattle of his cell phone on the bedside table jolted him back into consciousness with a start and he blinked rapidly in the dark before he could determine the source of the noise and silence it by answering. They'd found another body.
--
Jesus. He'd be damned if the girl didn't look like Frannie had at sixteen, seventeen, when she was still gangly and awkward with adolescence (as opposed to the gangly and awkward she had going on now) and Ray would have killed any guy who so much as looked funny at her. The girl was even dressed the same, in the same skimpy hooker clothes that Ma would never let Frannie leave the house wearing. Ray had to close his eyes for a brief second to remind himself that she wasn't Frannie, that Frannie was alive and well and at home on maternity leave from the station, that this was just some poor girl who happened to have dark hair covering her face and entrails hanging out of her abdomen.
Kowalski had disappeared pretty much as soon as they'd got there and seen the body, which was fine with Ray, because looking at Kowalski made his head hurt almost as much as looking at the dead girl did. In the cold light of morning he was sort of pissed off at Kowalski for fleetingly invading his drunken dirty porno fantasies, not to mention driving him to drink in the first place. If Fraser was around, Ray might have had someone to actually talk to about how much work sucked and his life sucked. Of course, if Fraser was still around, work and life might not have sucked at all. But Kowalski wasn't Fraser, and Kowalski was here and Fraser wasn't, and while Ray wasn't completely sure how that was Kowalski's fault, he was damn sure that it was.
Not even the fresh cup of coffee Kowalski had handed him upon picking him up in the GTO was a good enough peace offering.
So they had a serial killer, maybe a psycho, the kind who picked easy targets and then left them out in the open. Seemed counterintuitive, to go after the last people anyone would miss and then dump them where they'd be spotted by the first person to walk past. The guy was either crazy, arrogant, stupid, or desperate -- none of which helped Ray figure out who the hell they should be looking for.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and then stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. The weather had taken a turn; a cold front had come in and now the wind nipped at his exposed neck and ears. He looked over at Welsh, who had taken enough of an interest in the case to make a personal visit to the second crime scene. The lieutenant looked like he'd aged ten years in the two and a half that Ray had been gone, but then what with one thing and another, Ray wasn't exactly a beauty queen himself these days.
"Detective," Welsh said dryly, ambling towards him, "I don't suppose you have any leads on the last murder I assigned you?"
"No, sir," Ray answered stiffly, looking back down at the body. A pair of guys in charcoal jackets were trying to pack her up so they could transport her to the morgue.
"Did you at least attempt some sort of investigation?"
Ray bristled, just a little; he'd sort of figured that Welsh would have lightened up on him over the years, but time only seemed to have toughened him further. "Yes, sir. Detective Kowalski and I canvassed the area where the victim used to work as a street walker in search of witnesses, but were unable to locate anyone with any information about the crime. As there was no material evidence recovered from the body or the scene, pending an autopsy, the case has gone cold."
A breeze blew past them, propelling along a crisp brown leaf and what looked like the flimsy plastic lid from a fountain drink. He was going to have to buy a scarf. Maybe he'd just wait and let his mother buy him one for Christmas.
"How are you and Detective Kowalski getting along?"
The question shouldn't have surprised him; it was natural that Welsh would want to keep tabs on their partnership to make sure it was functioning (as well as could be expected, at least) and that they actually managed to get things done -- which they did, actually, just not this case. Not yet.
"He's a good cop," Ray said to his shoes, only half lying.
Welsh seemed to take the answer in stride. Ray looked up in time to catch him nodding at nothing. "Good," he pronounced. "Keep me informed as to your progress, Detective."
Kowalski came back in time to see the zipper pass over the girl's pale face, sealing her up in black plastic until the ME could take a look at her. He was smoking the end of a cigarette. Ray blinked at him.
"I didn't know you smoked."
Kowalski took a long, mean-looking drag and then tossed the butt to the ground, smashing it under the toe of his boot. "Yeah, well, there's lots of stuff you don't know about me, Vecchio."
Ray rolled his eyes. "Yeah, like how the hell you've stayed employed for so long without ever looking at a dead body," he said. "Let's get out of here and see if we can wrap up that Henderson thing, okay?"
Mrs. Henderson was in lockup on suspicion of blowing Mr. Henderson's chest open with a double-barreled shotgun. This suspicion was largely fueled by the fact that she'd called the police to report that she'd killed her husband, and had been found in their bedroom standing in front of the body with both hands on the gun and spatters of red all over her face and blouse. Bruised face, blank-eyed, arm in a sling, Mrs. Henderson was merely the latest in a long line of battered women who had recently got fed up with their abusive partners and decided to take justice into their own hands. It was almost a movement in Chicago -- there was even a legal defense fund which had already bailed three women out pending their trials. Ray was sympathetic to their cause, really he was, but there was still something deeply unnerving about sitting across from Candace Henderson in the interrogation room as she dully explained how she retrieved Harold's gun from the closet and pulled the trigger after eighteen years of marriage.
Still, he got it. He hadn't been there exactly, but from the sound of it his old man could have given Henderson a run for his money. Ray wasn't too old to forget the impotent rage that followed witnessing his father's drunken antics, or the way he'd wanted to grind Frannie's ex-husband's face into the nearest brick wall. If he was Candace Henderson, he couldn't honestly say he wouldn't do the same damn thing.
The guy sent over from the DA's office didn't seem to share Ray's point of view. He and Candace's lawyer haggled over charges of murder or manslaughter while Ray leaned back against the wall and watched.
"Six months ago this might have been Stella's case," he said to Kowalski, who was leaning on the wall a few feet away, head ducked, arms crossed over his chest, wearing that goofy-looking shoulder holster over his worn grey T-shirt.
"Stella would've gone easy on her," Kowalski said quietly. "She always had a thing, you know? For battered women."
Ray nodded, even though Kowalski wasn't looking at him. He'd known that about Stella -- hadn't known a lot about her, but he'd known that much. Kids, too: she hadn't wanted any (and with her job, not to mention both her husbands' jobs, who could blame her?) but she would always go to the mat when there was a kid involved, doing whatever she had to do to get justice.
He hoped she was happy working in the private sphere, in the big time. He guessed everyone got a little burned out eventually.
--
Another prostitute was what he'd expected. He would have been fine with another prostitute -- not fine, but Christ, it wasn't like he hadn't seen two dozen dead hookers already in his life. But the little kid lying flat on his back in the middle of the park, eyes open and glazed over, gutted like a fish -- Ray hadn't signed on for that.
He hadn't signed on for that.
Except that he had, hadn't he? Because he'd joined the force knowing what it would mean, knowing that he'd be knee-deep in blood and shit for the next ten or fifteen years at least, until he got old or shot and had to be put behind a desk for the rest of his days, where he'd only have to look at the shit and file the shit instead of having to wade through it. Except that he'd already been shot, and retired, and he still came back. He came back, and for what -- for the privilege of seeing this kid, this boy who couldn't be more than twelve and never should have been out alone in this or any other neighborhood, sliced open and lying on the grass with dew soaking through his clothes?
Bile rose in the back of Ray's throat and he spat over his shoulder to keep from puking.
Kowalski, for once, was actually within sight and doing his job, sort of. He was talking to the small crowd of gawkers that had started to gather around the yellow crime scene tape, trolling for witnesses and from the look on his face, not turning up too many. The dingy, beat-up brown leather jacket he was wearing was totally inappropriate for the temperature. Then again, Kowalski had lived with Fraser in the Yukon for six months, so maybe he was used to it, maybe cold didn't get to him anymore, the way it did to Ray, who'd just spent half a year living in the damn tropics. Maybe Kowalski had built up some kind of resistance during all those weeks he spent mushing with Fraser, camping with Fraser, sleeping with Fraser. Ray blinked and focused on the bloody corpse at his feet.
The kid's shirt was lying a few feet away and his pants were undone, but Ray doubted it was a sex thing. Same MO as the last two, except this time the choice of victims couldn't have been more different. Debra and Shelley had been street walkers and addicts; this kid was dressed (from the waist down, at least) like an average kid and looked perfectly normal and healthy, aside from the whole not-breathing-and-disemboweled thing. Wrong age, wrong sex, wrong race even, because Debra and Shelley (and why the hell did he have to think of them like that, huh?) were white and the boy on the ground was black, or had been before death turned him a kind of greyish blue. Serial killers -- and that's what they had now, no goddamn doubt about it -- normally picked victims with the same skin color. Was their guy getting creative, or desperate?
Ray's phone buzzed in his pocket and he answered it without looking, eyes still stuck on the dead boy, which is how he managed to nearly throw up again when the familiar voice on the other end of the line said, "Ray?"
"Fraser," he said after a moment's stunned silence -- low enough, thankfully, that Kowalski didn't turn around and look his way.
"Ray!" The sheer joy in Fraser's greeting was infectious and Ray found himself smiling automatically in response. God, how long had it been since someone sounded that glad to be talking to him? His own mother hadn't been that happy when he came back from Florida. It was enough to make Ray forget why he'd been avoiding a phone call with Fraser in the first place. He stepped away from the body, both for privacy and so nobody would look at him grinning over a dead kid and think he was some sort of maniac, then ducked under a piece of yellow tape and walked down a hill towards a playground, empty now and unlikely to be patronized again before spring.
"How are you, Ray?" Fraser continued, with only the subtlest trace of concern underlying his tone. Ray had got a new phone and number when he got back to Chicago, which could only mean that Fraser had got his number from someone at the station or someone in his family. Which meant Fraser knew he was home. Which meant Fraser knew that he and Stella were quits.
"I'm good, Benny," he answered, and then amended: "I'm all right. Been worse, you know?"
"I'm glad you're all right," Fraser said, solemn but warm. "And your family?"
"Great, they're great. Frannie's got a new baby, but you probably already know that, right?"
The conversation suddenly got awkward, which wasn't fair, because Fraser already knew he'd been dumped -- they should have bypassed any awkwardness right there.
"How are you?" Ray blurted, trying to hold up his end of the discussion.
"I'm quite well." Fraser's voice was bright, cheerful, rehearsed. And it wasn't even a lie; Fraser was probably quite well physically speaking. But of course that wasn't what Ray was asking.
"Hey, I'd like to talk, Fraser, but you kind of got me at a bad time," he said, and then summarized the shit stain that was his life at the moment, which included explaining the two (three) dead bodies he'd have waiting for him in Mort's basement now. "Why the hell would anyone do something like that? I mean, you want to kill a person, you just do it. You don't do it and then hang around to play doctor with their internal organs," Ray said with Langoustinian pragmatism. "You might mess with the body if you wanted to send a message, sure, but what kind of message does 'Hey, here's some intestines!' send?"
"Well, Ray, disembowelment has historically been used as a kind of torturous execution for crimes such as regicide and treason. Perhaps the person you're looking for is seeking some sort of vengeance."
Ray walked closer to the empty playground, taking stock of the equipment. Tube slides and open slides and jungle gyms with monkey bars. Three black-seated swings hung uselessly from chains. There were two more designed for tiny kids off to the side, little plastic buckets with leg holes in the front. He remembered taking Maria's kids to a park like this once or twice, pushing them in the swings while they shrieked and squealed.
"Nah, these aren't personal, Fraser. We can't find any connection between the victims. He must be picking them randomly."
"Then perhaps the postmortem mutilations are a result of past trauma the killer experienced, or ... ah."
"What?" Ray asked. "What's 'ah'?"
"Oh, it's probably nothing."
"Fraser, spit it out already, would ya?"
Fraser hesitated for an entire second -- Ray counted -- and then said, "Anthropomancy."
"Anthro-whatsis?"
"Anthropomancy, Ray, a very ancient method of divination which was once used by a number of cultures around the world. It was believed that skilled practitioners could foresee the future by sacrificing human beings and interpreting their entrails."
"Jesus, Fraser, that's sick."
"Indeed. Variations on the practice involved tearing open the body of living human beings to observe the workings of their organs, as well as their screams, as they died."
Ray yanked the phone from his ear and rubbed his face. "Let me guess: you learned all about this from your grandma's library. Never mind, don't tell me -- I don't want to know. So who would do this kind of thing?"
"Well, it's thought that at one time or another, the Sumerians, Babylonians, Celts, Inca, Egyptians, and the Greek all practiced some form of divination by human entrails. Herodotus wrote that King Menelaus sacrificed children in order to discover his destiny. It's also believed that the Roman emperor known as Julian the Apostate had large numbers of children killed so he could read their entrails. Some historians--"
"I don't want to hear about history, Fraser. If I wanted to hear about ancient history I'd call up Mrs. Higgins from tenth grade. I've got a real, live sicko out there right now, hacking people up left and right, and I have to find out who he is and stop him before he does it again. So say this guy is some kind of freaky homicidal fortune-teller. Where do you start looking for someone like that? Carnivals?"
"That seems unlikely. Although you might try looking into local organizations or businesses interested in the study of the occult or occult-related practices. While the killer likely acted alone, it's possible that he or she crossed the path of some relatively mainstream group before acting this way."
Ray shoved the phone between his shoulder and ear and pulled a pen out of his coat pocket along with a notepad, on which he dubiously wrote occult hangouts. At least it was a start -- they didn't have too many of those. "Thanks, Fraser."
"Not at all, Ray, it's my pleasure."
There was something just a little too earnest about the way Fraser said it. "It's Dullsville up there, isn't it?"
Even across three thousand miles of electromagnetic radio waves, Ray could hear Fraser's sigh. "I don't mean to complain, of course, but the work has been somewhat ... less stimulating than my work with the Chicago Police Department. Still, the Northwest Territories aren't without their share of crime, Ray. In fact, just last week Albert Amaamak was found cavorting without any trousers in the local ... but I shouldn't keep you. I know you have work to do."
"Thanks again, Fraser," Ray said, smiling. "It's good to hear from you. Keep in touch, okay?"
"I certainly will. Ray--"
Fraser's voice cut out so abruptly that Ray pulled the phone from his ear to see if the connection had been dropped or something, but the seconds were still ticking away on the screen. "Yeah?"
"How is he?"
Ray stopped and had to think for a moment before he could even figure out who Fraser was talking about. The dead kid? Albert Amawamamack or whatever his name was? Oh. Welsh or his Ma must have told Fraser who Ray's new partner was, too. He had no idea how to answer the question.
"You mean Kowalski?" he asked, stalling for time. A gust of wind blew past and the swings proved true to their name, lilting in all directions.
"Yes. Ray Kowalski."
"Uh. He looks all right to me. I mean, for a guy who dresses like a bag lady. But don't worry, I'm working on getting my good reputation unsullied."
Fraser, to his credit, at least tried to chuckle.
"Look, I know it's none of my business, Benny," Ray said without a trace of humor, "but all I want to know is -- did he hurt you? Because I swear to God, if he hurt you somehow--"
"Ray, Ray, no," Fraser said, his voice tired. "It wasn't like that. In fact, I'm afraid it was rather the opposite."
Ray walked over to the monkey bars and reached up and grabbed one with his unoccupied hand. He'd rather have been holding a gun, but it didn't look good to be a lone guy in a suit on a playground with a loaded weapon in one hand, even if he did have a badge to go with it.
"There were," Fraser continued, "forces beyond either of our control. But the responsibility ultimately lies with me. It was my fault."
There was a part of Ray that automatically wanted to assure Fraser that it wasn't his fault, even though he still had no idea what went down and hell, maybe it was Fraser's fault. But Fraser was the guy who wrote himself official reprimands for treading on flower beds in the pursuit of armed felons. His perception of his own culpability in most things was a little, um, skewed. Plus Ray didn't think Fraser believed that there were forces beyond his control; he sure as hell hadn't acted like it when Ray was working with him.
"Ray, will you tell him," Fraser said and then paused. "When you see him, would you tell him ... that I hope he's well?"
"Sure," Ray said. Like hell he would. Hey Kowalski, just got a call from your ex-boyfriend up in Canada. He says he hopes you're well! He wasn't even sure who he was protecting: Kowalski from getting hurt, Fraser from sounding like a doofus, or himself from getting in the middle of it (or getting popped in the nose by Kowalski). In any event, that was not a dispute he wanted to get in the middle of, or at least no more so than he already was.
"It's been good talking to you, Ray," Fraser said, and once again Ray had to wonder if the person saying his name was actually talking to him or to someone else.
"You too, Benny," he said. "We'll talk again soon."
He dropped the phone back into his pocket and turned around to head back up to the crime scene. Kowalski at least had to be wondering where he was by now.
A glimpse of red caught the corner of his eye and he turned instinctively toward it, walked over and crouched in the hilly playground sand. A child's coat, not new but in good shape. He'd bet dollars to donuts that its owner was being zipped into a bag just over the hillside at that very moment.
He made it all the way to the grass on the other side of the swing set before he threw up.
--
"Let's go," Kowalski said. "You look like shit, you know."
"Thanks," Ray rasped. His stomach had stopped heaving and the seasick sensation had abated for the moment, but his head was throbbing and there was only so much the Breathsavers he'd bummed off a uniformed cop could do for the taste in his mouth. He was absentmindedly aware of Kowalski's hand on his shoulder, guiding (shoving) him in the direction of the car.
"They ID the kid yet?" Ray asked. Between talking to Fraser, puking up his meager breakfast, and hiding in the playground until he could scrape up enough of his dignity to show his face back at the crime scene, Ray had been gone for nearly forty-five minutes. Time flew when you weren't having any fun.
"They got a missing persons report that matches. The mom's coming in to look at the body." They reached the car where Kowalski, thankfully, took his hand back. Ray had been worried that he would try to open the door for him or something stupid like that. God, he'd never again be able to mock Kowalski for being the squeamish one in their partnership.
"I might have a lead," Ray said, then pulled out his phone and dialed the station as he dropped into the passenger seat and watched Kowalski start the car. He had Frannie's replacement look up occult, which turned up four book and supply stores in Chicago, then told Kowalski to head to the nearest address.
Kowalski gave him suspicious looks out of the corner of his eye. "You think this is some kind of cult thing?"
"Occult," Ray corrected. "I just have an idea. It's not like we've got anything else to go on."
Ray had sort of been expecting a dank, dark little place tucked into the basement of some sex shop or something, so he was a little taken aback by the bright, welcoming lights of the Magickal Arts Store, not to mention the letter "k" in "magick." The place had billed itself as Chicago's one-stop shop for "occult and metaphysical supplies," whatever that meant. The inside looked like the bastard child of a Medieval workshop and a Barnes and Noble. As if to mess with his mind further, they were greeted right off the bat by a perky blonde in a retro sun dress who called herself Georgia.
"Can I help you gentlemen?" Georgia asked. Ray was just glad to hear that her accent was 100% Chicago.
He pulled out his badge and explained what they were looking for. Her bright customer service smile faded as he told her about the murders and mutilations until she finally nodded, her expression dark.
"I read about those two women in the paper this morning. What makes you think there's a connection to us?"
"We don't," Ray said, only sort of lying. He'd worked with Fraser long enough to know that half the time the guy was right on the money, and half the time he was talking to the ghost of his dead father. You never could tell with Fraser. "We're just looking for information. Something about -- uh, prophecy and stuff. Predicting the future."
Georgia gave them each an odd look, turned around, and glided across the room to a heavily stocked book shelf before returning a moment later.
"This is the guy you want to talk to," she said, dropping a heavy book into Ray's outstretched hands.
He looked at the cover: Encyclopedia of Divination, Prophecy, and Parapsychology by Dr. Gordon Thayne. "What the hell is this?"
"Dr. Thayne's latest book," Georgia said. "He's a professor at Northwestern, a specialist in the occult. He'll be able to tell you exactly what to look for. He's even helped the FBI on cases before. He's a genius," she finished, and if she gushed anymore Ray would have to start looking for a mop. Georgia probably thought that dropping the FBI's name would somehow appeal to them.
"Northwestern, huh?" Kowalski asked, staring at a glass display case of gnarly looking bottles that probably contained something like eye of newt.
"Uh-huh. He just gave a lecture there last week on the history of omen texts." She called over her shoulder to a mousy teenage boy who was shelving books at the back of the store. "Hey, you went to Dr. Thayne's lecture on Wednesday, didn't you?"
Mousy glanced up from his stacks momentarily, light gleaming off the lenses of his glasses. "Uh, yeah." He shrugged. "It was okay. Crowded."
"You know this Thayne guy?" Kowalski asked the kid, who shook his head.
"Just his name. We stock all his books."
"He's a genius," Georgia repeated. "He's even kind of a psychic himself. He told me that my ex was cheating on me and a week later, I found out he was right."
"Know anything about these murders?" Kowalski asked.
"Just what I saw on the news," Mousy answered, sounding indignant. "Every time someone dies in a weird or gross way, you cops start blaming people like us. Just because we don't follow the same beliefs as you doesn't make us murderers, you know."
"All right, all right," Ray said. "How much for the book?"
Georgia rang him up at the counter. Mousy coldly offered them a bag.
"Okay," Kowalski said when they were back in the car, "I'll bite. What the hell do Gordon Thayne and his encyclopedia of creepy stuff have to do with the dead bodies I've been looking at for the last week and a half?"
“First of all, you haven't been looking at them. I've been looking at them while you run away like a scared teenage girl under the pretense of interviewing witnesses. And second,” Ray said, resisting the urge to parrot Fraser's response at Kowalski, "it's just a thing -- taking out a person's intestines like that. Like reading the patterns left over by tea leaves, or the lines in someone's palm."
"Like a fortune teller?"
"Yeah, like that."
"And you figured this out when, exactly? When you were reading the patterns left over by your regurgitated cappuccino?"
"Hey, I know stuff!" Ray insisted. "I wasn't born yesterday. I've been a cop for fourteen years, Stanley."
Kowalski barked a laugh and shook his head. "Whatever, Armando."
They had to go back to the station before they could make the drive out to Evanston, not only because Ray was starving, what with having skipped lunch and left most of his breakfast by the playground at Lazarus Park, and not only because he needed to brush his damn teeth, but because the woman who might be the dead kid's mom was coming in to look at the body, and he had a feeling Welsh would frown on them blowing her off for what he'd probably dub their "witch hunt."
Ray hated watching people ID bodies. He wasn't sure which was worse, watching someone ID a loved one's body or having to sit down and tell someone that the loved one was never coming home. Either way, there always came a point where all you could do was just sit there and watch someone's heart shatter.
The mother of Jaden Taylor, twelve years old and small for his age, didn't look like a woman who was easy to shatter, but Ray had seen grown men come apart at the seams under better circumstances and Ms. Taylor was no different.
Fuck, he wasn't good at this, he was not good at this, and where the hell was Fraser when you needed him? Fraser had always been the go-to guy for grieving; between the Canadian politeness and all the death he'd seen in his life, he was a master of consolation.
Ray, on the other hand, always felt like a total clod in these situations. He stood aside awkwardly as Jaden Taylor's mom crumpled to the ground before being hoisted back to her feet again by the uniformed cops on either side of her.
They got her story after a female uniform led her away, sobbing. She'd called the police a week ago to report Jaden as missing. She worked nights while her boyfriend looked after Jaden and his baby sister; when she came home from work and checked Jaden's bedroom, a window was open and he was gone. The mom thought her ex, Jaden's father, had snatched him, and the cops couldn't find the dad or any evidence to the contrary -- which didn't explain how Jaden had ended up dead and mutilated the same way as the first two victims.
Ray got up in the middle of reading Taylor's original police report and stalked into the men's room, leaving Kowalski at the desk. Toothpaste and breath mints had finally banished the sour taste from his mouth but he still looked and felt like death warmed over. He ran water in the sink and splashed a little on his face, taking care not to drip onto his shirt, and then leaned over the sink with both hands braced on it, head hanging. So long, Armando. We hardly knew ye.
Humanity was overrated.
The bathroom door creaked and opened and Kowalski slipped through it. Ray watched in the mirror as he leaned against a wall and stuck both hands in the pockets of his jeans.
"You don't think it's a copycat, do you?"
"No." Like he knew. It made no sense, none of it made sense. You just didn't switch from hookers to little kids, no matter how much of a psycho you were -- it didn't fit any definition or explanation of a serial killer Ray had ever heard of.
"You think he ran away and our guy nabbed him?" Kowalski asked.
"Maybe." The report had suggested that home life for the Taylor family wasn't exactly up to snuff, that maybe Jaden had taken off on his own. You could never tell for sure though. Ray would have bet that half the cops on the force would have called CPS on his own family when he was growing up. Maybe they even would have been right.
"Look," Ray said, "all I know is that somebody's mutilating these bodies for a reason. What that reason is, I don't know, but if we figure it out, maybe it'll point us back to the killer." He pushed away from the sink and grabbed a paper towel. "We gotta talk to this guy at Northwestern."
Ray was almost out the door when he was stopped by Kowalski. He looked down at his shoulder, where Kowalski's hand was. Kowalski snatched the hand back, but Ray didn't move. "Are you okay?"
"I've got a stomach virus. Twenty-four-hour thing. I'm fine."
"Are you okay," Kowalski asked pointedly.
Ray shot him a glare. "I'm fine," he said, just as pointedly. "What are you, my mother? Fraser?"
Kowalski stared back at him levelly, then did a weird half-shrug and bounced on his feet a little like a boxer, like a dancer, like a guy with a live wire under his clothes. For a moment Ray was afraid that Kowalski was going to pop him one, but Kowalski just said, "Fuck you, Vecchio," and pushed past him, shoved open the door, and left.
But he was waiting by his desk when Ray came out of the bathroom a minute later, wearing his jacket and jangling his keys in one hand. Ray didn't apologize.
--
Thayne was actually in his office when they got to Evanston, in a building that looked appropriately enough like an old castle to give Ray the chills, unless that was just sense memory from his own short-lived college days.
Thayne looked so much the part of a professor that he might have been a caricature. He was a slight man with thinning gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. He was wearing a lopsided bow tie and a tweed jacket -- like anyone seriously wore tweed when they weren't shooting pheasants in the English countryside or something.
He didn't seem surprised to see them, but then again, Georgia had said he'd collaborated on cases before. She'd also said he was a psychic, but Georgia had struck Ray as being a little loopy. At least he was a gracious host; he had a small sitting area in his office, chairs and a sofa, and he gestured for them to sit there instead of forcing them to talk at him over his desk. He even offered them coffee, which they declined.
Thayne listened soberly and attentively as Kowalski described the circumstances of the killings, wrapping it up with a "My partner here seems to believe that the mutilations are somehow related to the stuff in your book" which left little to the imagination about what Kowalski thought of Ray's (Fraser's) theory.
"Divination," Ray said defensively. "Predicting the future through human sacrifice. That kind of thing."
"Anthropomancy?" Thayne removed his glasses and set them gingerly atop a pile of books that sat on the table next to his chair. "Detectives, that's a very ancient and archaic theory of prognostication. It was never particularly widespread. I consider it quite obscure -- an historical footnote, really. If you have time to read my encyclopedia, you'll find that I discuss it only briefly. There has been no documented practice of it for centuries, and for good reason: it doesn't work. For all intents and purposes, it's the diviner's equivalent of bloodletting as medical treatment, or dunking a suspected witch to see if she floats. It simply isn't done anymore."
"That's why it's not done anymore?" Kowalski demanded. "'Cause it doesn't work? How about 'cause it kills people?"
Ray leaned back in his chair and felt his fingers itching for the cup of coffee he didn't have. This was new to him, letting the other guy play Bad Cop for a change. With Fraser he had always been the one to get in the perp's face. Of course, in Vegas he'd had people to do that sort of thing for him -- to do everything for him. But this wasn't Vegas.
Kowalski wouldn't have lasted ten minutes out there. He was all jitters and spasmodic motion, no coolness, no deliberation. You had to be smooth, classy, even if you were the guy in charge of turning other guys' faces into pulp or making people disappear in the Nevada desert. Kowalski's jumpy brand of action fit him just fine in Chicago, though, and Ray could tell that it was part of what made him a good cop. You couldn't predict what he was going to do next.
"Naturally, that's also a reason why those practices have passed out of fashion," Thayne said. "Our particular culture has evolved to a point where we place greater value on human life and sovereignty. I'm afraid perceptions of what was 'humane' were rather different sixteen hundred years ago. This is not to say that there aren't subcultures who may still practice human sacrifice, only that you won't find them among traditional occultists and students of the arcane. As I'm sure you know, they are very peaceful, harmonious people."
"Oh yeah?" Kowalski had the case files with him. He got up off the couch with a quick movement and leaned over Thayne, opening the folder and spreading the crime scene photos out. "How about this?" he asked, jabbing a finger at one of the pictures. "Does this look peaceful and harmonious to you?"
Thayne flinched only slightly. "Detective," he said mildly, giving Kowalski a cool look, "if you wanted my professional opinion on the crime scenes, you need only have asked." He retrieved his glasses, put them on again, and studied the photos in front of him. He didn't look the least bit unnerved by them, which was more than Ray could say for either himself or Kowalski, although he did blink twice when he uncovered the first photo of the kid. Not that that meant much. Thayne apparently wrote about things like this for a living. And there wasn't much they could have gleaned about his involvement either way; Ray had seen killers have all kinds of weird reactions to photos of their own handiwork.
"Ah," Thayne said, and in front of him, Kowalski visibly twitched and then sat down again. "Now I believe I must disagree with your original assessment, gentlemen. This is very sloppy handiwork. I'm no expert in pathology or criminology, but in my experience, when one wishes to cut open a human body for a specific purpose, prophecy or otherwise, one goes about it somewhat more delicately than whoever mutilated these unfortunate people."
Kowalski leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "In your experience?"
Thayne smiled thinly. "My academic study of ritual sacrifice, of course. Although naturally I also took biology courses in school during which I dissected animal cadavers. That's a kind of divination, too -- not magical, of course, but practical. When one wishes to learn something from a body, one is sure to be careful and methodical in the process." He frowned at the photos in his lap. "I don't believe your killer took much care at all."
"So you'd be more careful, is what you're saying," Ray offered.
Thayne cast him a pitying look and then closed the folder and handed it back to Kowalski. "Am I under suspicion?"
"Not yet," Kowalski said. "Although we do hear you're some kind of psychic."
"Me? Oh, no," Thayne said. "If only I were. To tell you the truth, I couldn't even manage to keep up with my own class schedules if I didn't have an assistant to keep my calendar for me. I'm afraid that my reputation came about purely by happenstance. A lucky guess here, some common sense there, and suddenly all your students expect you to give them the week's winning lottery numbers."
"But you wish you could predict stuff, right?"
"Who wouldn't wish to know what lies ahead? But if you're implying that I would resort to murder to attain that ability, then I'm offended, Detective Kowalski."
Kowalski glanced at Ray and shrugged without moving a muscle. They had nothing on Thayne. Having a bunch of theories about carving up bodies wasn't really enough for a warrant and the guy was cool as a damn iceberg. Maybe the autopsy would turn something up, maybe not, but there wasn't anything more they could do in Evanston.
"We'll call if we have any other questions," Ray said, rising to his feet.
Thayne, civil even now, stood with them and extended his hand for each of them to shake. "I'm sorry to have discouraged this part of your investigation, I truly am. I can see how invested you were in the idea of an occult aspect to the crimes. But sometimes that in which we believe more than anything is what we would do well to trust the least."
"That's not bad," Ray said. "You should write fortune cookies."
"Thank you," Thayne answered placidly. "I'll keep it in mind."
He walked them to his door. Thayne probably thought he was being polite but Ray wondered if he just wanted to make sure they actually left the building.
"I hope I've been able to direct you more accurately on your path. I'm confident that you'll find justice for these victims, Detective," he said, looking squarely at Kowalski as he stood outside the door, "and peace for yourself, as well."
"That guy is some kind of witch," Kowalski muttered as he stalked down the hall away from Thayne's office. "Not a psychic, my ass ..."
"Yeah, like it takes voodoo to tell that you're fucked in the head," Vecchio retorted. "Anyone with a pair of eyes and three brain cells could figure that out."
"Not that," Kowalski snapped and then stopped walking, right at the end of the hallway in front of the double doors that led to the stairwell, and put a hand on Ray's chest to stop him, too. "Don't bullshit me, Vecchio," he said in a low, simmering voice. "This cult crap. It wasn't your idea, was it?"
Kowalski stared like he could slice right through Ray with his eyes alone. When Ray didn't answer, he added, "You called him, didn't you?"
He could lie. If there was one thing Ray Vecchio knew he could do really well now, it was lie. But he also knew better than to bullshit a bullshitter, and even if Kowalski was a mess now, he must have been good at undercover work at some point. Crazy, but not stupid.
"He called me," Ray said.
It sounded lame even to him and Kowalski must have agreed, because he shook his head and slammed the bar on the stairwell door so hard that the sound of it echoed down the empty hall, and then he stomped down the stairs, leaving Ray behind. Ray would have just let him go and have his fit, except they'd taken Kowalski's car and he still had the keys, and Ray wasn't sure that Kowalski wasn't nuts enough to ditch him in Evanston. He sighed and followed.
"Lighten up, Kowalski," he said a minute later, as they left the shadows of the building and walked out into the early evening dusk. "So I got a tip from Fraser! What's the big deal?"
Kowalski didn't answer. He just kept walking, jaw clenched and silent, until they got to the car. Angie used to do this to him, the silent treatment, and he'd liked it about as much then as he did now.
"What is this? You're punishing me for taking Fraser's phone call?" he asked, sliding into the passenger seat and shutting the door. "For talking to him? For listening? For not telling you all about it? What?"
Kowalski turned the keys in the ignition and gunned the engine before turning to stare daggers at Ray. "Not one more word, okay? Not another fucking word." He faced forward and again and peeled out of the parking spot.
Ray rolled his eyes. "Hey, he was my partner for two years. I'm not going to cut him off just because I got stuck working with you."
Kowalski flinched a little and Ray bit his tongue a little, wishing he hadn't said it like that. Working with Kowalski wasn't half bad, really. And he hadn't had to chase anyone over the roofs of multiple buildings yet, so in a lot of ways, it was better working with Kowalski than it had been working with Fraser.
"He's the smartest guy on the planet," Ray offered, trying to reason with Kowalski. "We know we can trust him. So what's wrong with consulting him once in a while?"
It was like talking to a wall. "Look, all I did was tell him about this weirdo case we'd been working on. Just small talk. I didn't even ask him to help or anything. Then he starts talking about human sacrifice and ancient history and stuff like that and it sounded good, all right? It's not like we had anything else to go on!"
They'd pulled onto the freeway. Ray frowned out the window at a passing road sign and then sighed. "Where are you going?" he asked tiredly. "You're going the wrong way."
The sun had mostly set; only a dim glow could be seen on the horizon ahead of them. "You're going west. You forget how to get back to Chicago or something?" The silence was starting to irritate him. "Turn the car around, asshole!"
"Hey," Kowalski snarled, snapping a glance at Ray before turning back to the road, "you work this case your way and I'll work it my way! Okay? Got it?"
"And your way is what, getting us lost in the middle of nowhere? I don't have time to go road tripping with you! I got a psycho on the loose, cutting up people's bellies back in Chicago! Which," he added, "is south, not west."
But Kowalski wasn't turning or stopping or possibly even listening; he had his eyes forward and his speedometer pushing eighty and Ray might as well have not even been in the same car for all the attention Kowalski wasn't paying him.
"You know, people know I'm with you," Ray said conversationally. "If you're planning on whacking me and dumping my body in a cornfield somewhere, they're gonna figure out who did it."
Then: "Kowalski. Kowalski. Hey, Stanley!"
A few miles later, he tried again. "Ray."
Eventually he gave up, leaned back, and decided to let it be. Kowalski had to stop or run out of gas sometime.
--
Ray only noticed that he'd fallen asleep when he jolted awake. They were still moving, but slower now; a glance outside told him that they were rolling down a two-lane stretch of rural road. The headlights of an oncoming car dimmed as it approached, passed, and disappeared. He rubbed his bleary eyes and squinted at his watch in the darkness and found that less than an hour had elapsed since they'd left the college.
"You got any particular destination in mind?" he asked aloud, wincing at the sleep-roughness of his voice.
"Never," Kowalski said.
He might not have been looking for a particular destination, but he apparently had a general kind of place in mind because he slowed down and then pulled off the road in front of a building that looked to be some kind of cross between a dive bar and the Unabomber's shack, with a couple of neon signs in the windows advertising cheap American beer. A hole in the wall that looked like it was built as a hide-out for maniacs -- yeah, of course Kowalski would head straight to a place like this to get shitfaced.
He parked the GTO in front of the bar, turned off the ignition, and got out without saying a word. Ray sat in the car and watched him walk across the gravel pit that was supposed to pass for a parking lot. Like clockwork, the moment Kowalski disappeared through the front door was the moment Ray's phone started to ring.
"Vecchio," he said dully.
"Ah, Detective. You don't know how it pleases me to hear that you're still on this mortal coil."
"Somewhere west of Skokie, actually. Sir, I think he might actually be crazy."
"Who might?"
"Kowalski, sir."
"It's nice of you to finally notice that facet of your partner's personality," Welsh said. "I can tell you two are really bonding over this case."
"Sir?"
"Don't let him commit any crimes against himself or other persons and whatever you do, don't let him go back to Canada. I'm tired of losing good cops to Canada. Take tomorrow off and I'll see you both back in my office the next morning. Oh, and Vecchio," Welsh said, his voice softening, "they rushed the autopsy on the Taylor boy. Cause of death was a fractured skull and the cuts to his abdomen were definitely postmortem. Turned up some strange findings -- the ME couldn't estimate a time of death. They're still running some tests on tissue samples."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
"I'm serious: either of you goes to Canada and neither of you has a job when you come back."
The line went dead and Ray rubbed his forehead. Then he got out and headed for the bar, because what the hell else was he supposed to do, just sit in the car while Kowalski drank himself into a stupor? Besides, who knew what kind of trouble Kowalski could get into in there, in some redneck bar in the middle of nowhere? Kowalski was like a damn Roman candle about to go off.
It was the kind of place that played "both kinds of music"; where the décor consisted of rusting license plates and plastic steer horns mounted on the walls, peanut shells and dirt covering the floor. He passed a beat-up pool table on the way in. There were tables set up, some of them even occupied, and a long wooden bar. Half a dozen patrons looked silently up at Ray as the door swung shut behind him, then turned back to their drinks, apparently losing their interest in him. No stage, just an empty, cleared away area where Ray guessed old guys in covers bands played sets of Roy Orbison for their wives and buddies, and a dusty jukebox in the corner, where Kowalski was standing, looking annoyed.
Ray took a seat at the bar and watched Kowalski peruse the song selection. He kept making faces at the machine like it had insulted his mother until he finally punched in some of the keys and walked triumphantly to the bar. Christ, this was perfect, this was exactly how Ray wanted to spend his evening: watching Kowalski get drunk and maudlin while some hillbilly drawled about losing his dog or his truck or his woman.
Minor chords thrummed through the wall-mounted speakers as Kowalski plopped down on the bar stool next to Ray and flagged down the bartender, who made his way over to them at a nearly glacial pace.
"Two whiskeys, neat," Kowalski said.
"I'll have a beer," Ray interjected, giving Kowalski a dirty look. "Whatever's on tap."
"Who said one of those was for you? Two whiskeys and a beer," Kowalski informed the bartender, who remained mostly expressionless throughout the exchange.
Neither of them spoke until their three drinks arrived, whereupon Kowalski stared at the top of the bar and said, "We gotta work this thing out."
Ray took a sip of his drink. "Favorite bar or something?"
"Never been here before in my life." Kowalski looked up, his gaze grey in the light. "I just had to get out. Out of town, out of my mind--" He waved his hand, the gesture unclear. "Sorry."
"Asshole," Ray muttered, shaking his head, but he couldn't help smirking a little -- because it was weird, and he was pissed off, but he had to admit it was kind of funny, too.
There was a huff of laughter next to him. Ray turned to find Kowalski grinning sheepishly at him, which made him look ten years younger, elbows on the bar top, one hand wrapped around each of his two whiskey tumblers. Double fisting, they called it, which sounded ten different kinds of dirty and wrong, but Ray laughed anyway, looking at Kowalski with his two drinks and his sharp edges and his ridiculous smile.
They laughed until the absurdity of the situation ran itself out and dissipated, and when their mouths could take natural shapes again they drank, almost in unison. Ray wanted to ask what the hell was up, but the question was already out there and Kowalski would answer it soon enough. Right then it was kind of nice to just sit there in the warm, dingy glow of the bar, him and Kowalski, listening to steel guitars on the jukebox, cut off from the rest of the world and ignoring all the weight of the history between them. He finished half his beer and Kowalski the first of the two glasses in the interim.
"Welsh called," Ray said. "They have some preliminary stuff about the kid. Says it was a skull fracture and the cuts were postmortem, but they haven't been able to get the time of death. They're still running tests."
Kowalski nodded and then inexplicably said, "He wouldn't come back."
It took Ray a moment to catch up. Funny thing about Kowalski going postal like this: in all the chaos Ray had almost forgotten what caused it in the first place.
Kowalski's smile was bitter now, his eyes blank as he stared straight ahead at the opposite wall. "Once he was up there, I mean. Up north. Nothing but snow in every direction for miles. He said he was home. And he wasn't gonna leave it again."
Kowalski took a draft from the second tumbler and made an undignified face. "I thought, okay, fine, I'll stay. What have I got waiting for me back in Chicago, right? I wanted an adventure, looking for the Hand of Franklin. Shit. But it wasn't an adventure like all that, it was -- it was me riding in a sled and tripping over my snowshoes and freezing my ass off every night and not being able to do a damn thing but lean on him.
"At least in Chicago it was like we were almost on the same level. I mean, he was still Fraser -- still larger than life and better than just about everyone, but Chicago was my turf. He was better than me at some things but I was better than him at other things, and it evened out. We were like equals. Up there, it's different. It's completely fucking different. It's another world. And I couldn't hack it." He bristled and looked hard at Ray before turning back to his remaining drink. "I tried. I made it longer than most people would, that's for sure. But nothing can live up there. Nobody can live up there, nobody except the Inuit and Benton Fraser, and do I look Inuit to you?"
Ray looked at the top of Kowalski's head. "Polish Inuit, maybe."
"Polish--" Kowalski shook his head, a long-suffering expression on his face. "That's hilarious, Vecchio. Polish Inuit. Christ." Kowalski quickly ran his fingers through his hair. "The point is," he said, "I am not Inuit. I am not Benton freaking Fraser. I'm Ray Vecc--"
He chucked bitterly, head hanging. "I'm Ray Kowalski," he corrected. "Guess it's a good thing I never slipped when I was actually undercover, huh?"
Kowalski knocked back the rest of his second whiskey and waved a finger at the bartender, who nodded imperceptibly. "I'm not saying you can't talk to him. I'm not--" He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "It's just that I came three thousand miles to get away from the shadow of Benton Fraser and he's still managing to show me up and be so much better at everything, so that we have to depend on him just to do our fucking jobs, and that's why I had to leave in the first place.
"Wasn't good enough for Stella, wasn't good enough for Canada. Story of my life." A new glass arrived and Kowalski raised it, toasting the thin air before putting it to his lips.
Ray had listened, more or less silently, working on his beer and trying to not look too horrified as Kowalski downed drink after drink. Not that he blamed Kowalski necessarily, because he'd worked with Fraser, too, and he remembered what it had been like to always feel like you were second best. To feel like you were useless without Fraser to lead the way, to feel dependent on him on the better days and totally helpless on the worst. And he'd never tried to live up there with Fraser; unlike Kowalski, he'd never really been in position to feel just how much he and Fraser weren't equals.
Ray looked at Kowalski, who was slowly rotating his latest half-full glass with his thumb and middle finger, and felt a sudden dizziness that had nothing to do with his beer. Because Fraser might be smarter and stronger than anyone else, including the two of them, but Kowalski -- Kowalski was Vecchio's equal.
Fuck. Ray Kowalski was Ray Vecchio's double.
He watched Kowalski tip the tumbler to his mouth again and swallow the burning liquid, saw the long line of his throat moving and the slight grimace on his face before it smoothed out again. Kowalski slammed the empty glass down with more force than necessary and waved at the bartender, who ignored him this time in favor of talking to a couple sitting at the other end of the bar.
"I'm a fuck-up," Kowalski said, turning to Ray for a moment. "You wanna talk to Fraser, talk to Fraser. He's crazy about you, you know -- always said you were his best friend. And he really is the smartest guy on the planet. You did right by asking him about the case. Hey!" Kowalski waved his arm and shouted at the other end of the bar. "You think we could get some service down here?"
The bartender turned around, the guy he'd been chatting with stood up slowly, and Ray's stomach sank. The second guy must have been six-foot-four and over two hundred pounds of muscle -- and he didn't look happy. Shit, Ray thought, I knew it, I knew the stupid bastard was spoiling for something, and here it comes. Kowalski, though, didn't seem the least bit intimidated; he turned around in his seat as Muscle Guy approached and stared right at him, chin up, eyes narrowed.
Muscle Guy stopped just inside the invisible line of too close and stared down at Kowalski, poker-faced. "There a problem?" he asked.
"Yeah, there's a problem," Kowalski said while Ray sat next to him and cringed. "I want a drink and this guy's too busy screwing around to get me one."
"You wanna watch that attitude, son. You're not from around here."
"Oh, yeah? Watch this," Kowalski said, and flipped the guy off. He wagged his finger back and forth rhythmically, like a metronome -- tick, tock, tick, tock, and that was as far as he got before Muscle Guy grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and hauled him off his bar stool.
"Aw, Jesus," Ray said, but the complaint was lost under the crackle of a broken whiskey glass and the wet sound of a fist hitting a face.
He was pretty sure Muscle Guy threw the first punch, but he couldn't be sure, because Kowalski came right back at him so quick that Ray couldn't really tell who had the advantage. Kowalski fought fast and dirty for a trained boxer, as much claws as fists, maybe just because Muscle Guy had at least forty pounds on Kowalski and looked like he bench pressed beer kegs in his spare time.
"Hey, come on!" Ray half-shouted, trying to intervene as best he could, but since he really didn't know on whose behalf he was intervening, it didn't go far. He took a quick step back as they dropped to the ground, Muscle Guy first and Kowalski half on top of him, both grunting and yelling and taking one of the freestanding bar stools down with them.
The rest of the bar's patrons, good ol' boys the lot of them, pushed their chairs out the way and stood up. A couple of them started advancing on Ray and the two meatheads scuffling on the floor below him and he raised his hands in surrender.
"Whoa, whoa, hey," Ray protested, glancing back and forth between the pair of guys coming after him and Kowalski getting pummeled at his feet. He ducked, grabbed Kowalski under the arms and hauled him to his feet. He felt Muscle Guy get in another punch as he more or less dragged Kowalski out the front door and down the wooden steps to the gravel lot, where he shoved his still-struggling, panting partner up against the side of the GTO.
"Nice work, Stanley, just impeccable work in there! You feel better now? Happy?"
"Not yet," Kowalski said, and then he grabbed Ray by the collar and kissed him.
Which might have been the least surprising and surreal thing that had happened to them that day, actually. He knew Kowalski liked guys, or at least liked one guy enough to move to Canada with him, so the prospect was out there. And he knew Kowalski was nuts, which he'd been reminded of pretty much every few minutes since they walked out of Thayne's office in Evanston.
Ray had even sort of known that Kowalski was a good kisser, because Ray had spent a long time kissing Stella, who was an excellent kisser and had probably taught Kowalski everything he knew, or vice versa. So it didn't come as much of a surprise when the first touch of Kowalski's lips was soft but insistent, his tongue slick and eager, not demanding entrance but making Ray want to let him in, to want it without even thinking about it. His own mouth opened unconsciously and Kowalski licked his way inside before Ray could even think about what was happening, what Kowalski was doing to him, what he was doing to Kowalski. It was freezing outside, all around them, but there, right there where their mouths were pressed together, was so much warmth Ray felt it all the way down to his toes.
Or as far as his dick, at least. Which wasn't surprising, either.
What finally snapped him out of it was the metallic taste that invaded the sweeter flavors of Kowalski's mouth. He pulled away and stared at Kowalski, who was leaning back against the side of the GTO, face flushed, hair even crazier than usual, nose dripping blood.
"Jesus," Ray said. "Look at you -- you're bleeding, for Christ's sake!"
Kowalski blinked and touched his upper lip with two fingers, then stared at them in the darkness. He reached into the pocket of his jeans and came back with a wad of napkins, but only succeeded in making the mess on his face worse.
"You're a fucking wreck," Ray informed him.
Kowalski stared back, a little wild-eyed, then shrugged and said, "I'm not fucking yet."
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Ray demanded, ignoring the way his heart started racing at the suggestion. "Do you have any idea where we are? You're gonna get us both killed with this shit!" He spun and looked back at the door of the bar, which thankfully remained closed. Apparently the regulars didn't think the pair of them were worth following, at least not in this cold.
"So let's go somewhere else," Kowalski said, tossing the keys to the GTO at Ray without warning. "I saw a motel a mile back."
Ray had barely managed to catch the keys before he caught what Kowalski was saying, whereupon he fumbled and dropped them. "Are you--" he stared to ask and then shut up, dumbfounded. Kidding? Serious? Still gonna respect me in the morning? Missing him that much?
"Drive," Kowalski said, walking around to the passenger side of the car.
He did.
--
He half expected Kowalski to jump him as soon as the door closed behind them, had been waiting for it even, anticipating it the entire time they were in the car and when he went to pay for the room. Imagining Kowalski plastering himself against Ray, all wandering hands and wet mouth, had kept him hard since they left the bar.
When they got inside, though, Kowalski made a beeline for the sink, which sat under a mirror on the opposite side of the motel room. He spat into the basin and filled a glass with water from the tap, then brought the glass to his lips and spat the water, too.
Ray slid the chain lock in the door and didn't bother hitting the switch next to it. The curtains were off-white and flimsy and did little to black out the light from either the moon or the fluorescent security lamp hanging over the parking lot. The effect was to cast the room in a kind of underwater, silvery blue glow.
Kowalski's reflection was pale but composed as Ray approached. Their eyes met in the mirror, and not for the first time Ray had to wonder what kind of drugs the CPD had been on when they pulled this guy in to play him. They couldn't have found two white guys in their thirties who looked less alike. What insane set of circumstances had to come together to bring them here, in the same hotel room, about to do what Ray was pretty sure they were about to do? With the same ex-wife and the same ex-partner, the same loneliness and longing?
Ray stared at Kowalski, at his eyes reflected in the glass, until Kowalski turned around and kissed the last bit of coherency and sanity away.
He forced Ray to walk backwards until they met a wall, and then he pushed Ray up against it and kept kissing him hotly, wet and focused, scraping Ray's face a little with his stubble. Ray gave back as good as he got, grabbing Kowalski's ass and dragging him forward until he could feel the hard swell of Kowalski's cock under his jeans, grinding their dicks together through all their layers of clothes. He bit Kowalski's lower lip, his jaw, his ear, and then worked his way back down again, kissing and sucking like he was starving for it, which maybe he was. He needed this, needed it so bad the sharpness of it made his head spin a little. He hadn't realized just how much he'd needed it until then, but he was starting to figure out now that things had a way of spiraling dangerously out of control where Kowalski was involved.
Kowalski tugged at Ray's belt buckle until it came loose, pulled the end of Ray's shirt out of his pants, and then slid his hands under the hem and over Ray's chest. His fingers were cold and Ray gasped and jerked away for a moment before they warmed up, and then they slid down the front of Ray's pants, right under the waistband of his underwear, and he was gasping for a whole different reason.
Ray's own hands went to the front of Kowalski's jeans, shaping him through the denim, reaching down and cupping his balls. Kowalski pressed his face to Ray's neck, groaned, and gave Ray's cock a firm squeeze, which was all he could really do from that angle. Ray rushed to unfasten his pants and give them both a little more room, then Kowalski started stroking Ray's cock from root to tip, jerking him hard and steady and just slow enough to drive Ray crazy with wanting him.
Then Kowalski let go. "Come on," he said, pushing away from the wall and practically hauling Ray after him. He reached down, peeled his shirt over his head, and tossed it to the ground, and then sat on the edge of the bed, bending to unlace his boots. Ray started unbuttoning his shirt, because while undressing each other was hot and all, so was actually being naked, and that was going to happen a lot faster if they each took care of their own clothes. It was also going to happen faster if he could stop staring at Kowalski long enough to focus on getting his shirt off.
He was slipping out of his shoes and letting his pants slide to the floor when Kowalski grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him around, and kissed him again, desperate and frantic and so fucking hot Ray could hardly stand it. He wrapped a hand around the back of Kowalski's neck as fingers hooked under the band of Ray's underwear and slid them down his hips, down his legs. Kowalski growled into the kiss, sank to his knees right there in front of the bed with Ray still standing, and pulled Ray's cock into his mouth.
"God!" His legs were trembling with the strain of not thrusting, of holding back and holding still when all he wanted to do was just rock back and forth into the hot, wet cavern of Kowalski's mouth. Kowalski gave head like a fucking angel, soft lips and strong tongue and long, hard strokes up and down the length of Ray's dick. He sucked hungrily, urgently, working the base of Ray's dick with one hand while the other gripped Ray's hip hard enough to bruise. Ray stared down at Kowalski's blond head, at his own shiny cock sliding in and out of Kowalski's mouth, and -- okay, it had been a while since he'd been with anyone but his own hand, but he shouldn't have been on the edge of coming this soon.
Kowalski pulled back and let Ray's dick slip out of his mouth with a wet, dirty sound. "Bed," he ordered, so Ray immediately turned around, yanked the cheap comforter off, and lay down on his back with his legs apart and his dick curving up over his belly, a hand wrapped around it, because he couldn't not touch himself at this point. Kowalski climbed to his feet, wincing a little and working his jaw, looking sheepish. "Sorry," he added, "guess my knees aren't cut out for that kind of thing anymore." He turned his gaze to Ray, who sat silently and breathed hard as Kowalski's eyes roamed over his body, lingering on his dick and turning hot again. "Yeah," Kowalski said quietly, then climbed onto the bed, braced himself on one arm, and bent to take Ray into his mouth again.
He slid down the shaft until his lips touched Ray's hand and then licked at Ray's fingers. The combination of Kowalski's hot tongue against the underside of his cock and at the fragile skin between his thumb and forefinger was strange but no less of a turn-on, and then Kowalski's spare hand slid down to cup Ray's balls, rolling them gently, and Ray nearly lost it right there.
"Hey," he said, half babbling, "I'm gonna -- you -- oh, God," he managed, and then it was over, just like that: he was shaking and spurting into Kowalski's warm mouth and Kowalski was just taking it, taking everything, swallowing and holding Ray in his mouth until he was spent.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a blowjob that almost completely knocked him out. It had been years, though, he was sure of that. He might have fallen asleep, he wasn't sure, but he when he came to, Kowalski had climbed all the way up onto the bed and was rocking lazily against him, rubbing his dick on Ray's hip and breathing shallowly.
Ray pushed himself onto his elbows and leaned over, licking his hand and then grabbing Kowalski's dick. Kowalski groaned at the contact and thrust into the circle of Ray's wet fingers.
"What do you like?" Ray blurted, ignoring the flood of warmth to his face, which Kowalski probably couldn't even see in the darkness, and forging ahead. "I mean, what do you want? What can I do? Because I gotta tell you, it's been longer than I care to think about since I last did this sort of thing."
"This is good," Kowalski said -- breathlessly, like he really meant it. Ray tightened his grip a little and Kowalski moaned. "Yeah, like that. Harder."
Ray jerked him harder and pressed his mouth against Kowalski's neck, sucking and licking, scraping his face on Kowalski's two-day stubble. Kowalski rocked into his grip and they moved together in perfect rhythm until Kowalski froze, stiffened, and came all over Ray's hand and arm.
Ray got up, pleasantly loose-limbed, and washed his hands in the sink by the bathroom. Kowalski didn't move a muscle, not even when Ray brought him back a towel to clean himself up.
Getting in bed with Kowalski the first time had been easy, but this time was a different story. No distractions now, no desperation to get off, just the two of them sharing a bed, side by side. Ray stood at "his" side for a moment, trying to convince himself that he was being stupid. Eventually exhaustion won out and he crawled under the sheets, elbowing Kowalski in the back so he'd move over.
"I gotta know," Ray said a minute later, staring at the ceiling.
Beside him Kowalski barely stirred, and his voice was even. "This isn't about him. It might have been before. It isn't now."
"Okay," Ray answered, figuring he was probably lying -- and deciding he didn't care.
--
He woke up in the middle of the night, unfamiliar mattress making his back ache, and found Kowalski sitting at the table across from the bed, hunched over Thayne's encyclopedia, flipping the pages and reading by lamplight. He'd bothered to pull his underwear back on, but nothing else. Ray stared silently at the curved ridge of his spine, the slope of his naked back.
"Hey," he said, squinting into the light.
Kowalski glanced up quickly, like he'd forgotten Ray was even there, and then turned back to the book. "Thayne wasn't kidding," he said. "There's barely anything in here about cutting up people's guts. It's not -- you know. Significant."
Ray moaned and buried his face in the pillow. "Why else would someone kill three people and try to take out their intestines? Black market organ transfer gone wrong?"
Kowalski closed the book and stared at its cover. "Forget about that for a minute. The kid died from a skull fracture. Why would someone kill two adults the easy way and then kill a kid the hard way? You knock someone in the head and they might be fine in an hour. You break someone's neck and they're pretty much fucked."
"Maybe he didn't read the latest edition of the Psychopath's Guide to Axing People. How should I know?"
"Maybe he didn't."
"That was a joke, Kowalski."
"No, listen. You said they couldn't get a time of death, but they knew the cutting was done after he died. I've seen this, I --" Kowalski looked at Ray. "Jaden's mom said she worked nights. Who watched the kids while she was gone?"
"There was a step-dad or a boyfriend or something," Ray said, but Kowalski was ignoring him, already reaching for the case notes he must have retrieved from the car while Ray slept.
"What if we're looking at this backwards? What if we've been so worked up about what our guy did to the bodies that we couldn't see anything else?"
"What are you--"
Kowalski leaped to his feet and started pacing. "Most child abuse deaths are from head injuries. Someone knocks the kid into a wall and he stops breathing. Whoever -- the boyfriend or someone, I don't know -- they freak out and stick the body somewhere for a week, somewhere cold, and then pretend like the kid got snatched while they try to figure out what to do. How to make it look like someone else's fault. That's why they know he was cut up postmortem but can figure out when he died -- because it happened days before anyone took a knife to him."
"Kowalski. Ray."
"The kid didn't die last, he died first. It's him, it's the boyfriend, or maybe even the mom, but it's someone who knew him. Vecchio," he said, and then reached down and tossed Ray's shirt onto the bed, "get your stuff, we're leaving."
Ray sat up in bed but made no further attempts to move. "You do realize how nuts that idea is, right? You're saying that whoever killed this kid then killed two hookers to throw us off his scent."
Kowalski threw Ray's pants at him and reached for his own. "I've seen people who killed their kids and burned the bodies for nothing more than the sympathy. Killing two hookers to cover up murdering your girlfriend's little kid sounds totally reasonable next to that. Why else would he be dumping the bodies right out in the open? He wanted them to be found.”
Kowalski started stuffing the papers and crime scene photos back in their folders. “We go back, we check the priors of anyone who would have had contact with Jaden before his mom reported him missing -- a hundred bucks says the guy's got a record of abuse and assaults as long as my arm. And a big fucking refrigerator somewhere that nobody else ever uses."
"It's five in the morning," Ray said, as reasonably as he could under the circumstances. "What are you going to do at five in the morning?
"If I can, get a warrant," Kowalski said, zipping his jeans and reaching for his discarded shirt. "Get the fuck up, Vecchio!"
It was clear that if he didn't, Kowalski was prepared to leave him in the motel and drive back to Chicago alone, so Ray groaned and rolled out of bed.
Kowalski floored it all the way back to the station, eyes straight ahead and silent. With virtually no traffic in the way, they made it in even less time than Ray had expected, and parked easily in front of the building when the sky was still the color of a bruise and the sun had yet to rise.
Dragging a judge from her bed at the crack of dawn was never Ray’s favorite way to spend a morning. He didn’t like waking Jaden Taylor's grieving mother, either, but he'd be lying if he said he didn't get some sick pleasure out of arresting her boyfriend, especially after the son of a bitch tried to bolt out the back door, like he could actually escape on foot from Ray, Kowalski, and the two fresh-faced uniforms just starting their shift. Donald Carroll was a scrappy little fucker with panicky eyes, two prior arrests for domestic disturbances, and three for soliciting sex from street walkers. He was fast, too: nearly made it over the chain link fence behind the house before one of the new guys managed to tackle him and drop him to the ground. He tried to bite one of the uniforms on the arm and kept up a frenzied stream of expletives as he was hauled to the back seat of the cruiser and locked inside.
The dead kid's mom stood shell-shocked in the living room, wearing a faded nightgown and holding a screaming infant in her arms. Ray's heart broke a little, watching her. He hoped she had someone to call. From the look on her face as Carroll was taken away, that person wasn't going to be a lawyer.
At ten in the morning, Ray stood across from Kowalski in the station with a desk between them, three-quarters asleep and his whole body aching, not really sure whether they had nothing to say to one another or everything to say to one another.
"That was good work," Ray finally managed.
"I had a hunch." There were rings under Kowalski's eyes, stark against the surprising paleness of his face. One eye was darker than the other, probably bruised from the punch-out in the bar in Nowheresville, and his nose was swollen a bit.
"It was a good hunch." He looked down at his clothes, the same clothes he'd been wearing yesterday and most of last night, now wrinkled and probably stinking to high heaven. "Listen. Last night--"
"Don't," Kowalski said. "Just don't. It's my fault. Shouldn't have happened, won't happen again. If--" He coughed and grimaced. "If you want Welsh to split us up, I get it."
"Do I look like I want that?" He honestly didn't know; he'd slept for two out of the last thirty-six hours and by now he probably looked like he wanted to shoot everything in sight, including Kowalski, even if he didn't actually want that at all.
He couldn't even begin to sort through what he wanted.
"I'm going home," Kowalski said in lieu of a real answer.
Ray watched him go, and then rubbed uselessly at his eyes and grabbed a cup of awful, bitter coffee from the machine in the snack room before staggering outside to his own car. He was lucky he didn't kill anyone on the drive back to his apartment, or collapse before he reached his own place with his own bed -- where he slept, dreamlessly, for ten unbroken hours.
--
It was late evening when he woke up, and dark again, and for a moment Ray had no idea where he was, what time it was, or what woke him. He had no recollection of that morning, of falling into bed alone, so the first thought that came to his mind was of the motel, and Kowalski -- of the way his hand had wrapped around Ray's dick last night, the way he'd looked with Ray's dick in his mouth.
Ray groaned and sat up, his entire body aching, then padded to the bathroom. He hadn't showered or shaved that morning before crashing, and he smelled like ... well, like Kowalski. Like sweat and sex. His reflection in the bathroom mirror was like a ghost.
He showered and toweled off quickly, thinking about what Kowalski had said earlier at the station. Ray was getting better at making sense of Kowalski, but he couldn't tell if what he'd said earlier was just residual awkwardness or something more like regret. He knew the mechanics of loneliness and desperation, and maybe last night had been as simple as that: Kowalski missed Fraser, Ray had been there and willing, the end, let's never talk about it again. But Kowalski hadn't apologized. And he'd said that it wasn't about Fraser anymore, and Ray wanted to believe him -- as much as he could believe that anything between them wasn't about Fraser. Of course, if it wasn't about convenience, and it wasn't about Fraser, then maybe it could be about him.
It took six rings before Fraser answered, but they must have got caller ID up there because he didn't waste any time on formal greetings. Something twisted in his gut when Fraser said his name and he gripped the phone hard.
They talked pleasantries for a while, the weather, what Fraser was getting up to with the northern locals, how Frannie and the family were doing. When Fraser asked about their case, Ray explained it as well as he could, leaving out the details of who figured it out and how -- and Fraser didn't ask.
Ray paced the room and listened as Fraser told a story about an unruly ermine -- some kind of weasel, apparently -- who'd moved into a crawlspace under the RCMP detachment and couldn't be relocated for love or money, chuckling at all the right places.
"I bet you miss Chicago sometimes, huh?" he asked. "Miss working real cases with actual detective work?"
There was an achingly long silence on the line. For a moment Ray thought he could hear his heart pounding in his ears, even though he knew it was just his overworked imagination.
"The work I do now is very different from the work I did while liaising with the Chicago police," Fraser finally answered, sounding like an actor reciting lines he'd said a dozen times before. "But it's no less important, certainly not to the people who live here, and in that sense I find it very rewarding."
"So you don't think--" He swallowed hard. "I mean, you don't have any plans to come back and see us?"
"Of course nothing would please me more than being able to visit you and ... the rest of my friends in Chicago," Fraser said, the strain in his voice barely noticeable. "Although that in itself is a challenge, as there are very few permanent officers stationed this far north, and we're very widely distributed, geographically speaking. But ... I won't be back on any permanent basis, Ray. This is my home. This is where I belong. I need to be here. And I'm needed here, too."
Ray stopped pacing and sat down heavily on the edge of his bed, overwhelmed by something he couldn't put a name to. Relief, followed almost immediately by surprise and shame, with a little bit of terror thrown in for good measure. Fraser wasn't coming back. And it sucked, because Fraser was his friend, the best friend he'd ever had, and Ray missed him, but at the same time, Fraser was right. He did belong up there. He needed the north as much as the north needed him.
"I'm exactly where I want to be," Fraser said.
"Yeah," Ray agreed. "I think I know what you mean."
--
Thirty minutes later he was in front of Kowalski's door with two hot coffees and a paper bag full of breakfast pastries and bagels, even though it was after eleven at night and for all he knew Kowalski was fast asleep or even gone. But Kowalski opened the door in the middle of the fourth knock, and when he saw Ray there his mouth fell open, soft and vulnerable. He was clean shaven and wearing different clothes, but he didn't look like he'd slept for more than a few minutes, if he'd slept at all. Ray felt a small, irrational urge to press him up against the wall next to the door and plant his own mouth over Kowalski's.
Instead he handed Kowalski one of the coffees and said, "I don't want Welsh to split us up."
Kowalski accepted the cup and eyed Ray up and down. "And you're not gonna kick my ass?"
"What, you didn't get your fill of getting your ass kicked last night, with that guy in the bar?"
"This better not be decaf," Kowalski said, opening the door wider for Ray to come in.
"Did I wake you?" Ray asked as he made his way to Kowalski's kitchen, taking stock of the place and noticing how eerily its emptiness resembled his own apartment. "Kind of sparse, huh? Mine too. Haven't really replaced or unpacked anything yet. Not sure I'm going to."
"Vecchio, what are you doing?" Kowalski had followed him into the kitchen and was holding his coffee in one hand while rubbing the back of his neck with the other.
Ray lifted the paper bag. "I brought food."
"Yeah," Kowalski said, "why?"
Because he didn't feel like having to break in a new partner. Because they didn't have to talk about last night, but they couldn't just brush last night under the rug like it never happened, even if they wanted to.
Which Ray actually didn't. Because he maybe wouldn't have minded it happening again.
"Because I haven't eaten all day and I'm starving," Ray answered. "Thought you might be, too. And because I usually don't go to bed with someone before I buy them dinner."
"This is breakfast," Kowalski said, opening the bag and pulling out a danish.
"Are you always this literal?"
"I'm tired," Kowalski said, taking a bite out of the danish and chewing it thoughtfully. "You know, normally I'm not such a cheap date."
"This isn't a date," Ray quickly said.
"Okay," Kowalski shrugged, "it's not a date. Neither was last night. We'll just say you were slumming and leave it at that."
"It's not like that." Vecchio stared hard at Kowalski, because this was weird and awkward but he needed to know if they were on the same page. "If you don't want last night to happen again, it doesn't have to happen again. But we both have to work with someone, and I've got a feeling you and I work together better than most people. I think we understand each other. That's all."
"If I don't want it to happen again?"
Ray ducked his head. That was the crux of it -- and anyway, Kowalski had started this and Ray wasn't going to finish it for him.
"I'm not exactly a 'happily ever after' kind of guy anymore," Ray said to his coffee cup. "Let's just see where it goes, okay?"
Kowalski didn't speak for a long time. Silences didn't bother Ray, but after a while, he had to look up.
Kowalski was staring at him, his face cool, but there was something bright and amused behind his eyes when he said, "I'll think about it."