Inevitable Case

"You don't have to pay me nothin'," he muttered.

When we got up to the seventh floor and entered my apartment, we both could hear the heavy breathing and groans coming from my bedroom.

"Shit," I said.

"You runnin' a brothel from here?" Spencer asked, smiling wickedly.

To wipe the grin off his face, I fucked him on my kitchen table, him belly down on the table, and me hunched over him, with one leg on the ground and the other one raised so that my foot was on a kitchen chair, to give me extra leverage in the thrusts. His leg was trapped over mine, opening his buttocks wide to me, and I held his wrists with one beefy hand and trapped his arms behind his back. His wrists were bound over his head by the set of handcuffs he'd seen me carrying and insisted on trying out.

I fucked him hard, and he claimed to be loving it.

I was still covering his back and panting after the finish when a twinky young Hispanic poured out my bedroom, buckling his pants, with a T-shirt over his shoulder. He stopped, wild-eyed when he saw Spencer and me—and especially when he saw the handcuffs in use. His hands went to his neck, which he rubbed hard, twisting his neck this way and that, and then, suddenly, he bolted for the apartment door and was gone.

Spencer and I had our pants back on and were sitting at the kitchen table, when my brother, Liam, sauntered out of the room. He was dressed in black trousers and a black, silky shirt, and he was adjusting his clerical collar. Seeing us, he just smiled. I had the impression that he gave Spencer a bigger smile than he did me.

"Father William," I said in a stern voice, emphasizing the "father," "I think I've told you I didn't like you using my apartment for your special sessions." I always used the long form of Liam's name, his church name, when I wanted him to know I was serious about something.

"Your apartment was close by, and the young man was in special need," Liam answered breezily. "Who is this beautiful angel gracing your kitchen?"

"None of your—" I started to say, but Spencer, wide-eyed and mesmerized answered for himself.

"I'm Spencer. Spencer Prentice. I work at the Escafe coffee bar off the Avenue of the Americas in Chelsea."

This was more information than Spencer had ever given me.

"Don't even start, Liam," I growled. "He's off limits. I doubt he's even a Catholic. You're not a Catholic, are you, Spence?"

"I could be," Spencer said in a small voice, turning his face to me only briefly before turning back to goggle at Liam. It wasn't just that Liam was a priest, I didn't think. He'd also gotten the looks and dancer's body that had been denied to the big lug that was me at birth.

"Uh, forgot something," Liam said, as he turned and reentered the bedroom. When he came back out, he had a red sash, which he wrapped around his thin waist and tucked in. "I spread the bed back to where it's more presentable than I found it," he said. "You going to take young Spencer back there now and fuck him silly, Mike?"

"Get out," I growled. "More none of your business, bro." I knew I was doing a lot of growling, but Liam got under my hide. He always had. Everyone thought he was so good. I was the only one who could see the truth.

"Can I sit in the corner and watch?" he said. "I'll be very quiet."

"I said it's time to leave, Father William," I answered.

He laughed and left. Spencer's eyes followed him all the way out of the apartment. Then he turned to me, and said, his voice incredulous. "He really a Catholic priest?"

"Yes, he's really a Catholic priest."

"He really your brother?"

"That too, regrettably."

"He's hot."

"He's a priest. Hot shouldn't come into the conversation."

"And you're really a vice cop?"

"Not exactly. I'm a vice homicide cop. Just on loan to street vice for the night."

"And a vice cop sampling the goods should come into a conversation?"

"I don't always have to have a conversation with the guy I fuck. You and I don't talk much, do we?"

"He's hot and you're cool," Spencer said, his eyes shining and glassy. "I've been fucked by vice cops before but I've never been fucked by a Catholic priest."

"Neither have I, Spencer, Neither have I. Now do you want me to take you somewhere?"

"Yes, into your bedroom," Spencer said. "I'm hornier than hell."

"So am I, Spencer. So am I."

We were both at the top of our arousal meter. I fucked Spencer harder than I'd ever fucked him before, and when I was afraid he'd break, he egged me on. He didn't break. And he loved what I could do with four sets of handcuffs.

* * * *

I got back to the Vice Homicide unit before Paxton and Mullins got back after the discovery of Spencer's body in the Bronx junkyard. That gave me time to package up the original rosary found at the scene and send it off to the lab at my former precinct in the Bronx. They were used to doing analysis favors for me both because I got along with them famously and cultivated their goodwill and because the Vice Homicide lab was notoriously uncooperative. I was head of the unit, so all paperwork on lab results would come to me.

When Mullins and Paxton rolled in, a good three hours later, I was on the phone to our own lab—which already had a tech unit out at Spencer's apartment taking fingerprints. I had escaped a bullet, I realized, by never having gone to wherever he lived. But right now I was hassling the head of our lab enough to make him dig in his heels and balk at my demands to fingerprint the rosary I had bought and wiped clean chop chop.

"I can get more cooperation out of the South Central general lab," I said into the phone loud enough for the guys to hear me as they entered the office, to which the lab chief did what I wanted—told me to use the South Central general lab then.

"No cooperation from our own lab," I said to Mullins and Paxton as they settled into their desks. "So I'm sending this rosary you found to South Central."

"Works for me," Paxton said.

By sending the rosaries separately to two labs outside of Vice Homicide, I retained control over which rosary to put into evidence. Paperwork by the Vice Homicide lab would automatically go into the evidence file. I would personally receive the results from outside labs and could suppress one and accept the other without an anomaly showing in the case record. I had to enter anything coming from outside labs to the case file myself.

"The ME kept you waiting for hours, did she?" I asked them.

"No. She arrived soon after you left," Mullins said. "We got a lead on where the victim worked and went over there. A coffee joint called Escafe. Not far from here. In Chelsea." They both rolled their eyes at the mention of Chelsea. We all knew what kind of guy could be found there—and we all joked about it. "Like we thought, he moonlighted as a rent-boy. I wouldn't be surprised if everyone working in that place rented by the blow job after hours."

"Anything they can tell you about who he had been seeing there?" I asked, trying to make my voice seem casual.

"Not much. A couple of the workers said Parks had been gaga over a customer lately. A big bruiser. But nobody could say much about the guy."

"Parks?" I asked. But I immediately saw my mistake. Their Parks was my Prentice. I rushed on. "Maybe we should have the beat cops out there check in every once in a while with the staff to see if the guy comes back."

"Yeah, I'll take care of that," Mullins said.

Sounded just fine to me. I'd be finding myself another place to get coffee. I'd never go near Escafe again.

"What do you suppose this is for?" Paxton asked, holding up an evidence bag with the red sash in it that Spencer had been strangled with. "I thought it was a scarf, but it seems to be some sort of sash instead."

"Beats me," I answered, keeping my voice from cracking. "Send it along to South Central analysis. I'm sure the killer was careful enough not to leave prints, but maybe the lab can say what the sash was for."

Of course, even I could say what the sash was for. It was worn by a popular order of Catholic priests in the New York metropolitan area. The last time I'd seen one like that, my brother had wound such a sash around his waist after I'd caught him fucking Spencer. And that was the last day I'd seen Spencer alive.

* * * *

Mullins had been morose all morning at the unit as we suddenly were up to our keisters in what we had already started to call the Red Scarf Murders and, when he'd complained about the "fuckin' Inevitable Cases," I'd sent him into a foul mood by pointing out that whore and street rent-boy murder cases were likely to predominate in a special Vice Homicide unit. He was relatively new to the unit, but that this hadn't dawned on him before was an index to how bright he was. No one beat him in tenacity and willingness to wear out the shoe leather, though.

The third young, small rent-boy had been found in and around the Bronx area strangled in flagrante delicto with a red scarf or sash. It was only later that we changed "red scarf" to "red sash," as the signature—which we took as a mocking of us—quickly narrowed down. It was later yet that we were to identify a red sash with an order of Catholic priests in and around the New York metropolitan area.

I would make the connection faster than the other guys. But I would keep it to myself. It haunted me from the last moment I saw Spencer alive, which was later in the day that we met together in the precinct and decided, finally, that we had a serial killer on our hands.

I left the precinct early, the meeting and the intensive planning we had done on how to proceed—knowing that the serial killer had given us very little to go on—having worn me out and left me with a headache.

I heard them immediately when I entered my apartment. Liam was using my bedroom again as a convenient love shack, isolated away from his life as a priest at the Saint Barnabas Catholic Church in the Bronx, not more than two blocks from where we'd both grown up—to pursue entirely different professions, if twins in our sexual preferences.

The door to the bedroom was ajar and I couldn't help myself from walking over and peering into the room. Liam, naked and lithe in contrast to my rugby-player build, was on his back on the bed. Spencer, also naked, small, willowy, blond, perfectly formed, was riding Liam's cock. He was saddled on the rod, which I knew to be longer if not as thick as mine, and facing away from Liam's head, his hands gripping Liam's bent- and spread-legs kneecaps. Liam had the ends of the red sash to his priest's vestments fisted and the sash itself looped over Spencer's throat. Liam was using the sash like reins to guide Spencer back and forward on his cock. The two were so engrossed in their grunting sex ride that they couldn't have been aware of me standing at the door.

I didn't stand there long, but broke away with a low groan of despair and disgust, trudged to the refrigerator, and pulled out two beers. I was on my third before they were done, and Spencer, tucking his T-shirt into his shorts, came out into the room.

To his credit, his initial glance at me was one of embarrassment and guilt. He quickly covered that with an expression of nonchalance. He said nothing to me, but turned and went to the door to the outside corridor. He turned back, though, when I called out his name.

There was so much I could say to him, not the least that I didn't consider him just a sexual-release toy—that I felt so much more deeply for him—but I was so keyed up and trying so hard to hold my emotions in check and not to lash out that I simply said, "You have to be careful out there, Spencer. And you have to tell the other young guys to do the same. There's a serial killer out there preying on guys just like you. There have been three murders in the Bronx in the last week."

I didn't mention the red sash part. I should have. But I just couldn't. Not because of Spencer but because of . . . I found I could not let myself even start to form the implications.

"I don't go to the Bronx," Spencer responded. His mouth formed a word to say something else, but he didn't say anything. Giving me a hurt look, he turned again and was gone. In his wake, my brain was screaming out the word "inevitable."

I would have given anything to know what he wanted to say to me but didn't. It was the last time I saw him alive. I certainly had more to say to him than I did. Things might have gone differently if I'd told him I was falling in love with him.

I had more to say to Liam when he emerged from the bedroom, adjusting his clerical collar and his sash. I had no trouble unleashing my anger on my brother.

"He was off limits. Surely you knew that," I yelled at Liam.

"Why, just because you were nailing him yourself?"

"Because he means more to me than that," I retorted. "You've done this before. You've always wanted to take what I had."

"He came after me," Liam said. "I didn't see your brand on him."

"Came after you? He found where you lived and worked? He came out to the Bronx, to Saint Barnabas?"

"He told me where he worked and he did so in a way that I knew he was propositioning me."

"So, you came into Manhattan and went after him. Even knowing he was with me. Get out, Liam. And watch your back, man. I don't know what you're into, but—"

"What I'm into? What do you mean? You've always known I fuck men."

I wanted to tell him, to unleash my suspicion. And God knows I was mad enough at him to let it all out. But I just couldn't. Still, I was working up to it and had muttered, "You need to watch yourself from me," when he exited the apartment and shut the door between us. Even when I'd said it, I knew he'd misinterpret my meaning.

* * * *

Neither Paxton nor Mullins were in the office when I came in, which was strange but was just as well. I'd stopped in the mailroom on my way up and found that both of the rosaries were back from their separate labs. I entered; sat at my desk; put both reports, with rosary attached in an evidence baggie, in front of me; and went through my opening-up ceremony in slow motion. I didn't want to look at each report but I knew it would be best if I did and made whatever switch was necessary before the other guys arrived—from wherever they were. They both usually arrived at work before I did.

With trembling hands, I opened the most definite report envelope—the one from the South Central lab, where I'd sent the rosary I'd bought. I knew what the report would say, and that's what it did say—that the rosary had been cleaned of any prints—but in opening it first, I could hold off my fears from looking at the other report for a bit longer.

Spencer entered my mind again. Spencer folded up, naked, in the backseat of the Lincoln Town Car in Pedersen's Junk Yard in the Bronx, the red, choking sash, around his throat. The last thing Spencer had said to me was "I don't go to the Bronx."

But Spencer did go to the Bronx—or was taken, supposedly willingly to the Bronx. What could have been in the Bronx to lure him there? I couldn't think of it being anything other than Liam. Liam lived at the rectory of the Saint Barnabas Catholic Church. Just a few blocks from Pedersen's Junk Yard. Not that far from either of the three other places the bodies of young, small rent-boys had been found: in an abandoned building, in a park, in an alley behind a liquor store.

"He came after me." That's what Liam had said. I couldn't get the implications out of my mind.

My hand wavered over the closed envelope attached to the rosary found at Spencer's murder scene, the rosary I'd sent to the Bronx lab. My hand was trembling; I was having trouble opening the envelope, and then I heard them, talking excitedly in echoey voices as they mounted the stairway outside the door to the Vice Homicide unit—Mullins and Paxton.

Quickly, I opened the center drawer to my desk and swept both evidence bags in, shutting the drawer as the two entered the office.

"What's up, guys?" I asked. "You're late."

"No, you're late, Kavanagh," Mullins shot back. "We've been downstairs at booking. We caught a break in the Red Sash Case."

My heart rose to my throat. Paxton took up the discussion.

"Bronx precinct caught a guy practically in the act. Would you believe it's a Catholic priest?"

The heart in my throat started throbbing.

"Well, a defrocked one," Mullins cut in. "A stripped priest living on probation in the rectory of that Catholic church not far from that junk yard where we found number four."

"Saint Barnabas?" I asked, barely able to get the words out. My heart had receded a bit from the "defrocked" information, but not much.

"Yeah, guy named Hubert. Was calling himself Father Hugh, but the charge sheet says Hubert Hastings. A record for pedophilia, and the church cut him out of his priest role but is letting him live at that church while he's on probation."

I was in control enough now to discuss the circumstances of the arrest, but just briefly. The guys wanted coffee.

"Want us to fill your cup?" Mullins asked as they turned toward the door. The break room, where the coffee urn lived, was down a flight.

"Naw, thanks, I'll get a cup later," I said. I, in fact, was badly in need of coffee just then, but handing my cup to them would have shown them how badly my hand was trembling.

As soon as they were through the door, I slid the desk drawer open and took out the lab report on the rosary I'd sent to the Bronx. Hubert Hastings. The prints had been identified from his incarceration for pedophilia four years earlier. He'd been in prison up to a few months ago—landing back in the Bronx before the serial murders had started.

My ragged breathing made me aware of how long I'd been holding my breath. Home free. Or was I. Were we? What did this actually close out about where Liam stood?

I had no idea—and probably wouldn't until time had gone by without another red sash-signature murder. I'd be on pins and needles for months.

Whatever, it would never bring Spencer back to me.