Full Release (11 page)

“I cleaned my living room. I live here. Isn’t that okay?”

“Not just the living room,” Tripp said. “We’re not finding fingerprints anywhere in your bedroom, either.”

“I only cleaned the living room.”

They stared at me. Like they expected me to confess something.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You think I’m trying to wipe away fingerprints? That’s crazy. I live here. It’s logical my fingerprints would be here. And you know Eddie was here. I told you, he spent the night. It makes sense that his fingerprints would be here. So whose fingerprints do you think--”

Something occurred to me. I flashed on walking into my house feeling like someone had been inside. “Someone’s been in here. Yesterday. I wasn’t sure, but now I am. They must have come in to wipe everything down. To get rid of their fingerprints.”

Hanson looked at me like I’d just claimed I could make a nuclear bomb out of laundry detergent, string, and a can of baked beans.

“Or you wiped everything down so you could say dumb ass things just like that,” she said. “Some time between Wednesday night and this morning, you got nervous. Figured you need a back-up plan. Wiped everything down so it would seem like someone else had been in here.”

“Or someone else has actually been here,” I said. “Someone was here the night Eddie--”

An officer walked over holding one of the boxes from the garage. He whispered a few words to Detective Hanson and then put the box on the table. She looked inside, then began to take DVDs out of the box and spread them across my dining table. The DVDs were pornos depicting bondage, water sports, fisting.

“Those aren’t mine,” I said quickly. “They belong to my ex. He’s curious.”

Actually, Jeremy was something of a sexual dilettante. He liked to know about fetish behavior, he liked to give it a try, but he never settled on just one thing. His little performance the other morning wasn’t out of character. Not that it made it any more fun to think about. But nothing stuck with Jeremy. The little I knew about the fetish world suggested people found what they liked and stuck with it. Jeremy was a tourist.

The look on Hanson’s face made it clear that, in her opinion, kink was kink. If she could prove I liked any kind of fetish behavior, it meant that I would have enjoyed squeezing the life out of Javier Hernandez.

“Do I need a lawyer?”

“Guilty people need lawyers,” Hanson said. “Are you a guilty person?”

She had me trapped. She’d decided I’d done it, and if I asked for a lawyer that just proved it to her. I was screwed either way. They didn’t seem to be arresting me, they hadn’t read me my rights, they hadn’t offered to provide a lawyer...so, if I asked for a lawyer now it would cost me money I didn’t have.

“I don’t have to answer your questions, do I? Legally, I mean.”

Hanson and Tripp looked at each other. He answered, “That’s right. You can refuse to answer questions.”

“I refuse then.” If I really needed a lawyer, I could figure out how to get one later. In the meantime, I shouldn’t make things any worse. “I’m not saying anything else.”

“You’re not helping yourself,” Detective Hanson said.

I kept my mouth shut.

After a few moments, they walked away, leaving me alone at the table. I couldn’t believe they thought I killed Eddie. I watched an officer walk out of the house with my laptop. I looked at the search warrant that I still held in my hand. What guarantee did I have they wouldn’t fake evidence? For all I knew, they’ve been sitting in my bedroom looking up websites on “scarfing” just so they could say that I was into that.

Wow, I couldn’t tell you the number of times I’d heard stories about the police faking evidence and never once believed them. But now, it was suddenly a very real possibility that they operated exactly that way. And if they did, I was sunk. I was going to jail. My life was ruined.

Somehow, I had to protect myself, but I had no idea how. A lawyer was out of the question. I might be able to handle some of this on my own, but how would I do that without my computer? Or even my cell phone? I looked up and Tripp was staring down at me. I hadn’t noticed his footsteps as he walked over to me. His jaw was set in a very deliberate way. “Where’s your mattress?”

I couldn’t answer that. It would just me look worse.

“She thinks I killed him. What do you think?”

He gave me a hard look. A chill ran down my spine. “I think Javier was alive when he was hung. That means he was strangled into unconsciousness somewhere else, possibly the bedroom. Then he was dragged out to the garage and hung.” He left an uncomfortable pause. “When a person loses consciousness, they void their bladders. They defecate. Is that why you had to get rid of the mattress?”

“You were in here that night. Did you notice anything?”

He frowned at me, angry. Then pulled himself together. “Matt, if you made a mistake. If you and Eddie were messing around and you fucked up...you need to say that. You need to say it now. The longer you keep that quiet, the worse it will be for you.”

All I could think was how kind his eyes were, how comforting his voice was. Even though he was accusing me of murder, he remained kind. If I had made a mistake, I would have confessed it right then. But I hadn’t.

“I told you what happened.”

Chapter Eleven

The police left around eleven that morning. After shutting the door behind them, I spent an hour doing nothing but panicking. Pacing around my house, staring at the mess the police had made, thinking, “I can’t go to jail. I can’t.” I’d been a fan of
On the Inside
, a pay TV show about prison life, but that didn’t mean I’d be able to do it myself. Besides, no matter how bad they made it look on TV, it sounded even worse when you read about it in the newspaper. I was terrified.

I had to get a grip on myself and do something. Something constructive. Without showering or changing my clothes, I walked out of the house and got into the car. Then I drove to the Horizon Wireless Store on Sunset to get my phone replaced.

After I explained that I needed a new phone, the twenty-something, tattooed clerk looked at me, waiting to hear the story of how I lost, dropped or otherwise disposed of my last phone. I’m sure he’d heard some good ones. I, however, was in no mood to tell him the police had confiscated mine.

I could have gotten free flip phone (though it would have still cost about fifty bucks, which I thought was a lot for a free phone), but I was used to having a smart phone and I didn’t have my computer so I upgraded to an Ollea 3000. It would provide me with Internet access, and I’d be able to get my email. I’d miss my laptop, but I’d be able to function.

Horizon Wireless, AKA the Evil-Cell-Phone-Company, added a couple more years to my contract and nailed me for more than two hundred bucks (the water bill would go unpaid this month). The good news was they shut off my other phone. At least the police wouldn’t be able to run up my bill calling long lost relatives all over the world.

Having made a couple decisions, I felt better. Sure they had nothing to do with keeping me out of jail, but they were decisions, right? I got into my car and read the box to figure out the phone’s features. I’d bought the car charger, so I plugged it in and turned the phone on. I wanted to call Peter. I needed to talk to a friend. But I couldn’t remember his cell number. I’d plugged it into my phone when he gave it to me and never thought about it again. Crap. I called information to see if his landline was listed. It was, so I called that. I left a message. “Okay, so something else bad happened and this time it did happen to me. I don’t have your cell number. Yes, I lost my cell phone. I’ll explain when you call. So, call. Soon.” When I hung up, I wondered if he ever checked his landline for messages.

Suddenly, I remembered Eddie’s second phone. As far as I knew, the police hadn’t found it when they searched my house. And they should have. It should have been there somewhere. Unless Eddie’s killer took it. Did his killer have the phone? Had he destroyed it? Thrown it down on a cement driveway and stomped on it, or tossed it into a sewer? But why do that?

The phone company tracked all calls. It wasn’t as though any information on the phone couldn’t be gotten from them. Well, that wasn’t completely true. There’d be an address book of some kind. Which might be backed up on Eddie’s computer. Or there could be photos. Even video. You couldn’t get those from the phone company. But anything like that would likely be on Eddie’s computer, as well.

I began to relax and walked back to my car. The police would get Eddie’s phone records soon enough, and they’d see calls from the killer. How long would that take, I wondered? On TV it was practically instant. But in the real world it would take, what? A week? Two? Six months? Of course, there would be calls from me and to me. That’s what they’d be most interested in, since they thought I did it. They might not even look at the other calls.

Pulling away from the curb and into traffic, I wondered if that was why the phone had been taken. So that the police couldn’t look at the calls until they’d zeroed in on a suspect. Until they were only looking at calls from me. Whoever the killer was, he was organized and logical. Had he planned to frame me before he killed Eddie? Well, no, if Eddie’s death was sexual, he wouldn’t have known. So, it wasn’t planned. In fact, it was likely an accident. So, he’d improvised the whole thing after he strangled Eddie. He made it look like suicide and then at some point realized that wouldn’t work, so he switched directions and made it look like I’d done it.

At what point? The police figured out it wasn’t suicide after the autopsy. Is that when the killer changed his plan? Did he have access to the autopsy somehow? Did he work at the morgue? Or the police station? Maybe he Googled what he’d done: strangulation. He might have run across the information that bruises formed even after death. Something that was news to me. But then I wasn’t the one trying to save my ass. Except now I was. Shit. I needed to get a lot better at this.

By the time I got home, I had an idea, a way to make the whole thing go away. I ran into the house and packed up my gym bag. I grabbed a clean T-shirt out of the closet. I figured I should probably wear a different pair of shorts, just for the sake of variety.

When I dropped my shorts to the floor, a clanging noise reminded me that Eddie’s keys had been in my pocket the whole time the police were searching my place. In all the excitement, I’d forgotten to give them to Tripp. I wondered whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. If I’d pulled the keys out of my pocket in the middle of all that it would have just made things worse. Tripp would have asked where I found them, and if I’d told the truth it would have fit right in with what he thought happened. Maybe forgetting had been a good thing. But why hadn’t Tripp asked about them? Or Hanson? That seemed odd.

I took the keys out of my shorts and put them into the bowl by the door as I headed out to the gym. Driving to West Hollywood, it hit me that I hadn’t been arrested. That had to mean the police didn’t have enough evidence and that they’d be trying to find more. I didn’t think they’d find more, but then I’d have said that before they came up with the evidence they had. Somehow, I had to fight back. I had to find a way to convince them I was innocent.

It was nearly six when I pulled into the gym’s parking garage. I was there to find Stripes so he could provide me with an alibi and the whole thing could be over. When I saw him at the gym, it was usually around the time I got out of work. Of course, it was Saturday, and a lot of people changed their workout times for the weekend. I did. Sometimes I skipped weekends all together. So, there wasn’t any guarantee I’d find Stripes. In fact, trying to find him was probably a long shot.

Before I got out of the car, I remembered something. I’d spoken to Peter on my cell while I was at the gym. Which probably didn’t mean much, since my telling him I was at the gym didn’t prove anything, but what about the call? Could they trace the call somehow and prove I was there? Did it even matter, I wondered. I’d made the call either at six or shortly after. It wasn’t a long call. If it finished at 6:05 or 6:10, I’d still have had time to get home and kill Eddie, wouldn’t I? What I needed was someone who could place me at the gym between seven and seven-thirty. Which is why I needed to find Stripes.

I grabbed my gym back and jumped out of the car. At the front desk sat the same girl with the tattoos and
The Great Gatsby
. Even though a couple days had gone by, she was at about the same spot in the novel. It wasn’t a very long book; she should have made more progress. I held out my card so she could swipe it. When she didn’t look up, I asked, “Is Myrtle dead yet?”

“Myrtle dies?”

“Could you swipe my card?” Diffidently, she took the card and swiped it. “Was the scanner working last Thursday?”

She shrugged. “Got me.” Then she scowled at me. “You shouldn’t have told me Myrtle dies. I was hoping for a happy ending.”

“You should have scanned my card the last time I was here.”

Giving me an even dirtier look, she glanced at the computer screen and said, “Your membership expires in three weeks. Two hundred and sixty-eight dollars. Do you want to pay now or next time you come in?” About six responses popped into my head, all of them full of curse words. Deciding to go with classy, I turned and walked into the men’s locker room.

Some days the gym swarms with hot guys; on other days the place could be an old age home. That day it was the latter. After I changed, I hurried up to the weight floor and walked the track that circled the floor. I made two circles before I saw Stripes. My heart leapt a little when I saw him doing pull downs in the center of the floor. I took a deep breath. Everything would be all right. Hopefully, someone would go to prison for killing Eddie, but it wasn’t going to be me. My alibi was pumping iron in front of me.

I turned off the track and headed across the weight floor. When Stripes stood up, finished with the pull down machine, he turned and saw me coming. Instantly, he turned away and headed for the leg press. He climbed onto the machine and tried not to look at me, even when I stopped right next to him.

“I’m gonna do three sets and then I’ll be done.” He still didn’t look at me.

I gaped at him. He was pretending not to know me. “Um...I think you remember me,” I said.

He turned and looked right at me. “No, I don’t think so.”

I lowered my voice. “Last week. In the shower.”

He climbed off the machine after having done only a half dozen reps. “Here you go. It’s all yours.”

I stood there fuming, then followed him. He was out on the track jogging. Falling in behind him, I trailed him by about fifteen feet. Most of the outer walls were covered with mirrors, and as we turned a corner, I caught his eye in the mirror. His face reddened with anger.

As we came around again, he veered off the track and made a beeline for the stairs. Slowing to a walk, I stayed right behind him. He hurried down the stairs to the locker room. When he got to his locker, he turned and saw that I’d followed him.

Quickly, he spun his lock and put in his combination. Opening his locker, he grabbed his gym bag and shoved his street clothes into it. I couldn’t believe it. That was how much the guy wanted to get away from me. He wasn’t even going to take a shower, though he obviously needed one. I opened my locker and, like Stripes, shoved my clothes into my gym bag. I was after him moments later.

Catching him in the parking structure, I called out, “Excuse me? Why are you being like this?”

He spun around, angry. “Look. That’s it. That’s all I do, okay? I’m not gay. I just do a friendly little jack off now and then. We’re not gonna go on a date. We’re not gonna hook up some place else. And we’re not gonna end up in some fag marriage. Okay? You got it?”

“I’m not trying to have sex with you,” I explained.

“Great. Have a nice day.” He turned and tried to storm off again. I stayed with him.

“Let me explain. That day, while we were doing what we did, a friend of mine killed himself in my house, except he didn’t kill himself, it just looked like he did. The police think he was murdered and they think I had something to do with it. I need you to tell them you saw me here.”

“I have a wife. I have kids. Sorry.” He took out a set of keys and opened the door to a minivan.

“You don’t have to tell them what we did. You can tell them something else. Tell them we talked in the hot tub, tell them we worked out together, I don’t care as long as you tell them I was here.”

“I don’t even remember what day that was. Sorry.”

He slammed the door of the minivan shut and started it up. As he pulled out, it occurred to me to try and memorize his license plate. But what would be the point? If I told the police this guy had seen me at the gym, he’d tell them he hadn’t. He’d made that clear. That would only make me look worse.

It was dark by the time I drove home from the gym. I couldn’t believe Stripes had turned me down. What kind of person did that? He knew I was at the gym that night. I didn’t believe for a minute he didn’t remember. But he wouldn’t tell the truth, wouldn’t even tell a convenient lie. I couldn’t believe it. Then I start laughing. This was a guy, a married guy, a “straight” guy who liked to jack off in the shower at the gym, and I’m wondering why he doesn’t have what...integrity? What kind of an idiot am I?

That was it, though. My one big idea for solving the whole mess. I had no idea what to do next. I was about to get out of the car when my new phone rang. Unfamiliar with the new phone’s ring, I jumped. Then I snatched it off the console and answered.

“For Heaven’s sake, what happened now?” Peter practically screamed into the phone, as though I was doing this all on purpose just to annoy him.

“The police think Eddie was murdered.”

“Murdered? You said he hung himself in the garage.”

“Actually, he was strangled in my bed then hung in the garage,” I explained.

“Clearly, he was killed by an over-achiever,” Peter said.

“I’ll make that suggestion to the police.”

“You have my keys don’t you? Go stay at my apartment.”

“Thanks, but I don’t want to leave my house.” Not to mention Peter lived in a squalid, tiny apartment filled with nothing but a mattress, a television, a DVD player, and his wardrobe. It was a little too much like prison for my current situation.

“Someone was killed at your house, though. I wouldn’t be able to sleep. God, who do they think did it?”

“Me.”

“Are they stupid!?”

“Thank you for saying that, Peter.”

“Oh, well it’s not just loyalty. I mean, you’re an accountant. Accountants don’t kill people. Don’t they know that?”

Chapter Twelve

Walking into my house, I decided I needed to do one of two things. I either needed to figure out who killed Eddie or prove it wasn’t me. There were just too many possibilities for who might have killed him. A client. There could be hundreds. Someone he was seeing. I had no idea how many guys he’d dated the way he dated me. He could have an old boyfriend. He could have a dozen old boyfriends.

It would be easier to prove it wasn’t me. Somehow, I needed to find an alibi. Other than Stripes. As near as I could tell, since I didn’t have access to the autopsy, Eddie was killed some time between two in the afternoon when he called me and eight when I got home. But wait, if he was killed between two and five thirty, when I could prove I was at work, then the police would be leaving me alone. He must have been killed between six and eight. The phone call I’d made at the gym cut down the time I had to fill from seven to eight. I either needed to prove that I was somewhere else or that I couldn’t have been at the house.