Safeword
Authors: A. J. Rose
Safeword
AJ Rose
Published by Voodoo Lily Press
Copyright 2013 by AJ Rose
All Rights Reserved
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Special Thanks To
Jennifer P., for all the support, ideas, and stepping outside her comfort zone to help when I needed it most, as well as the rather distracting distractions that distracted so beautifully. The ride on this ship is fascinating. Amy P., for the cheerleading, late night brain seshes, her silly jokes, and remembering that criticism is just as important as praise but keeping a good balance between the two. Also for saving my readers from the most boring scene on the planet. You all dodged a bullet. Whew! Kate Aaron, for the slaps about the head when my questions would begin to border on ridiculously insecure, and for the brilliant little nudges and “what ifs” that kept me on track. The extra creep factor in this novel is from her wicked mind.
Dedication
As always, for Fen, without whom I wouldn’t be writing again.
Three months ago
“WE GO now live to Jan Aldrich at the scene. Jan?”
“Thank you, Mark. In the three weeks since twelve-year-old Jeremy Trexall disappeared, police and St. Louis County resident volunteers have been working non-stop in their search for him. That search ended today, in a quiet Chesterfield neighborhood at this house.” The camera panned to the right, showing an innocuous house in Anywhere, Suburbia, only remarkable because of the bright yellow crime scene tape strung from tree to tree, blocking off what I knew to be hoards of press and curious onlookers lining the once-quiet street. My partner, Myah Hayes, and I continued to watch the wall-mounted television in the briefing room, surrounded by everyone in the building not required to man phones. The unnatural silence in a room full of cops spoke of the gravity of what we were hearing.
“An anonymous tip brought St. Louis County police to investigate a vehicle potentially matching the car two school children remembered idling near the convenience store where young Jeremy was last seen. When police spoke to the occupants of the home regarding the vehicle, they made an astonishing discovery; not only did they find Trexall alive, but another teen at the residence identified himself as Marshall Schofield, a Colorado boy who went missing near Fort Collins in 2009 at the age of thirteen. The owner of the house, David Strange, has been brought into the St. Louis County police department for questioning. The DA’s office has yet to determine if Strange will be charged in the disappearance of the two boys, and police will only confirm Strange is a person of interest with information potentially relevant to the case. Meanwhile, the boys have been taken to an area hospital for evaluation and have since been released into the custody of their families.
“The excitement of finding Trexall and Schofield alive is palpable as crime scene technicians arrive at Strange’s residence to process the scene.” I noted a familiar head of blond hair above the emblazoned yellow CSI on the back of one of the techs and watched as my brother, Cole, slipped into the house on TV. “So far, officials are saying little about Strange or the environment in which the boys were kept. The families of both children could not be reached for comment, and a staff psychologist at the hospital where Trexall and Schofield were taken assured us their care was of the utmost concern. Still, there’s new hope in Chesterfield tonight, thanks to the potential tragedy averted here. Two children who vanished, seemingly without a trace, have been returned to their parents, where they belong. For KSMV News Channel Eight, I’m Jan Aldrich. Mark?”
The news anchor’s voice faded into the background as the room erupted in conversation. Myah turned to me and raised her chin toward the exit, leading the way through the crowd and back to our desks. The October sun touched the tops of the trees, streaking gold through the blinds and painting patterned light across the squad room.
“Looks like another DeGrassi in the limelight again,” she sighed, sitting in her desk chair. It creaked as she twisted from side to side, loud in a room made eerily quiet by the absence of other investigators. Cole was lead CSI for the St. Louis County police department, and in a case this high profile, that had already splashed across national news websites, there was no doubt in my mind he’d take point on this one. Every tiny sliver of evidence would be scrutinized to the point of absurdity. Cole wouldn’t leave it to just anyone.
I shrugged, my usual response when my fifteen minutes of fame were brought up anywhere other than privately. “Yeah, looks like your dinner plans are off.”
“Ah, well. The life of cops.” She eyed me shrewdly, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her desk. “It’ll be a media circus around here for several days. You okay with that, Gavin?”
“What choice do I have?” I asked, fiddling with a pen while studiously not looking at her. “Besides, it’s not my face the cameras will be shoved into. Stevenson gets all the love this time.”
“Thank god for that,” she quipped, gathering three weeks’ worth of accumulated information that had spanned our desks since the second young man disappeared. Homicide had been called in on the search because, more often than not, abductions became recoveries, not rescues. “I’ll just put this over here on Stevenson’s chair.” She wheeled almost gleefully across the maze of desks and slapped her manila folder onto the chair of the investigating officer who’d cracked the case, dusting her hands off as she pushed her knees back beneath her desk.
What Myah left unspoken was the fact that any breaking cases in our jurisdiction in the three months since I’d returned to the job from an extended leave of absence garnered me attention from the media whether I was involved in them or not. They wanted my opinion on the victims, on the judicial process, or on the perps my colleagues arrested. They wanted me to compare what I’d gone through with every new case that came along. They wanted me to dissect for them the motives of every arrestee to funnel through Second Precinct. Long ago, I’d memorized the number for STLCPD’s press liaison. Now, when a microphone was shoved at me, I recited it as if it were my name, rank, and serial number.
“Really,” Myah said again, her voice tinged with concern. “If they’re too in your face, I’ll take care of them, okay?”
Irritation had long since given way to resignation. Ever since my boyfriend and Dom, Ben Haverson, and I had been found bound by chains to his loft ceiling and gagged with our eyes duct-taped open, forced to watch each other’s torture at the hands of a sadistic and grief stricken man, I’d become glass in everyone’s eyes: breakable to the point where I wondered if I’d ever be left to simply do my job again. After months of therapy and rehashing what happened to us in nauseating detail, my job was something I needed, a distraction that gave me focus. Being a homicide detective for STLCPD was what allowed me to exert a small amount of control over a chaotic world.
Of all the people who handled me with care, Myah was probably the most justified. She’d been first on the scene where a killer intended to exact revenge on Ben and me for the death of his son, a death five years prior to our attack, one neither of us had anything to do with, but in the eyes of a mentally imbalanced father, it hadn’t mattered. Ben and I were part of the BDSM lifestyle he’d abhorred, and therefore had become viable targets. Myah had been my rock nearly from the beginning, from the second murder all the way to now. She’d seen everything I faced, and judged me not one iota for what happened.
She was the only one. Even I judged myself. Hell, I was my own worst critic.
“Okay, Myah. You can be my hero again. Save me from the big, bad reporters.”
The corner of her lips quirked up. “Can I punch Jan Aldrich in the face?”
I laughed, a sound that rarely escaped me these days. “You call her The Walking Mouth now, just imagine how much she’d squawk if you did punch her.”
“I’d do it for you, buddy boy,” she smiled at me, batting her eyelashes, clearly enjoying my lighthearted tone.
“Quit flirting with me.” I pointed my pen at her. “You’re my brother’s girlfriend, which almost makes you my sister.”
“Besides, Myah,” Arnold Stevenson said, coming into the room at the head of a phalanx of cops, smirk firmly in place. “Your
assets
aren’t the right configuration for DeGrassi’s tastes.”
Myah laughed. “How would you know, Arnold? Have you finally seen a woman naked?”
“Har, har.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder and I stiffened, heart galloping as it rose to my throat, though not because of the ribbing. Truthfully, I appreciated Stevenson’s jokes, even his bad ones, especially because he never made jokes at Myah’s expense. Plenty of the other boys in blue thought it perfectly fine to turn her model-quality looks into a debauched punch line, forgetting she was one of the smartest detectives on the force. Stevenson never stooped so low, and so was head and shoulders above everyone else in the department.
No, it was the shoulder slap that bothered me. His hand was heavy, and while strong and good natured, it anchored me to my chair.. A flash of panic rose in my chest, and suddenly, I had to stand. I tried to do it in a way that didn’t look like I was flinging off Stevenson’s touch, though that’s exactly what it was.
“Well, you’re about to get your assets dragged through the mud―I mean, press―so you might want to consider more than Head n’ Shoulders and a Bic disposable before you go on camera.” I roughly patted Stevenson’s cheek. Middle-aged, with only a slightly receding hairline, Stevenson was a pleasant man with a ready smile and a keen intellect. He was also a loner, no wife or kids that I knew of, and chained to his desk. There wasn’t a more dedicated, though lonely cop. His merry eyes crinkled at the corners at my joke. “It was a good find, Arnold,” I said, lowering my voice. “Those boys owe you their lives.”
Stevenson gripped my elbow, squeezing once and letting go. I clenched my jaw and swallowed nausea. “Just taking a cue from you and Hayes. World’s better with you in it, DeGrassi.”
“All right, let’s get back to work,” Lieutenant Talcott’s voice boomed over the conversations in the room. “Any of you poor slobs thinking about getting out of some overtime this week better think twice. It may not be a homicide, but it’s a priority.” Lieutenant Talcott groused. “We need to find out everything we can on Strange. Where he works, every sick day he took for the last five years and if they coincide with other disappearances, who he hangs out with, what his neighbors think of him. Marshall Schofield was nabbed from Colorado, so we’re looking at nationwide disappearances. I want to know everything about those boys being in his house, and I want to know it yesterday. Someone find this Carter Black witness, pronto. Both boys said he was at the house, had some contact with them, but he didn’t act like he knew who they were or why they were there. I want to hear what Black has to say. Maybe he can tell us something that’ll put Strange in a sling.” The crowd dispersed to their desks quickly, and the sounds of typing and phone calls resumed. The lieutenant turned to Stevenson, who still stood beside me. Talcott had been promoted during my leave of absence, and his word now, more than ever, sent people scurrying to do their jobs. Sergeant Kittridge, his replacement, joined us.
“Stevenson, you did good,” Talcott praised. “Let’s follow through on this one and get some answers on what happened to those boys. We get solid enough evidence, maybe we can save the taxpayers the burden of a trial and get this guy to confess.”
“Yessir,” Stevenson answered, all business. He went back to his desk to prepare for Strange’s interrogation.
“DeGrassi, think you and Hayes can handle the scene, overseeing the evidence collection? Find out about where they were held?”
It was a big step, considering I’d been on desk duty for the last three months. Myah came to stand beside me. As my partner, she’d been stuck at her desk as well once her temporary partner had been reassigned upon my return, and while she staunchly brushed off any guilt on my part for chaining her to paperwork, I knew she was eager to get back out there. Three months of computer research had us both chomping at the bit for some freedom.
“Absolutely, Lieutenant.”
“We need you to give Stevenson something he can use to lean on this guy. I mean it; it could be horrible. If you aren’t ready, say so now.”
“I’m good, Lieutenant Talcott. If I have any trouble, I know how to handle it.” My shrink, Dr. Laura Ribaldi, had taught me multiple techniques to stave off panic, and the attacks had become less frequent, nearly stopping altogether once I’d resumed work. I still had my skittish moments, but those around me had become accustomed to my twitchiness. They knew better than to touch me. Well, most of them.
“All right. Get yourselves out there.” With that, he turned on his heel and walked out of the squad room.
“You got this?” Sergeant Kittridge asked, eyebrow raised. While he wasn’t my favorite person on the planet, he was mostly professional. I got the distinct impression I made him uncomfortable, and I half wondered what he’d heard about me before taking the position. It was Kittridge’s promotion from Fourth Precinct Homicide to Talcott’s old spot that gave my former partner, Trent Sawyer, a chance to redeem himself after I requested a new partner. Before that, Trent had been shuffled to Vice, a job I knew he detested. Trent was a vocal guy, and I’m quite sure he blamed me for being kicked out of the running for the Sergeant promotion. I didn’t give a shit. I blamed him for the end of my marriage, not that it had been much of a marriage in the first place. He and my ex-wife, Victoria, deserved each other, though whether they had become a real couple after the divorce was final, I’d never bothered to find out. Still, Kittridge had to have heard something, not to mention all the media attention I’d only recently left in the past, save the dogged determination of The Walking Mouth to get me to agree to an exclusive interview.
“I can handle it, Sarge,” I assured him. “It’s not a homicide, so it’ll be a breath of fresh air.”
“Okay,” he agreed, his reluctance obvious. “Maybe that’s good, then, getting a case like this to get you back in the field. We need all hands on deck anyway, and at least this one you know comes with a happy ending.”
