Chapter 8 - The Stands.
Brian walked out through the main hospital doors at a little past seven am. As soon as he was on the sidewalk he pulled out the pack of cigarettes he had in his coat pocket and his lighter, flipped a cig into his mouth and lit up. The feel of the slightly acrid smoke filling his lungs was instantly calming. He took repeated puffs as he shuffled slowly towards the parking garage, stubbing out what was left under his boot heel when he eventually reached his car.
Brian was so tired that he wasn't sure that he could manage the ten minute drive back to the loft. He slouched in the driver's seat, letting his head fall forward against the steering wheel. He only meant to rest his eyes briefly, but within seconds, he was fast asleep.
The vibrating against his hip from the cell phone in his jeans' pocket woke him with a start. With a sigh he leaned back and pulled the phone out, flipping it open and pressing the button to answer the call without looking at the ID. He pinched the bridge of his nose at the same time to try and quell the incipient headache he could feel coming on.
"Kinney," he mumbled into the phone, noting by the dashboard clock that it was almost eight am already.
"It's Horvath," the gruff voice of the dectective answered. "We've come up on a problem, Brian. I can't seem to locate that suspect you suggested we check out."
"You mean Hobbs? Why not? I thought you said you had his address and shit," Brian demanded, the worry he'd been just barely suppressing for days now making his voice sound even more strident than usual.
"Well, it seems this Hobbs guy moved out of his old apartment right after his parole ended and didn't leave any forwarding address. And, the job info we had was bogus too. He was fired from that job a few months even before he moved," Carl confessed.
"Fucker!" Brian exclaimed. "What about his family? He used to go to school with Justin. You should be able to track him that way,"
"Nope. Already tried that," Carl confirmed. "His parents claim they haven't had any contact with him in almost a year. They didn't act like they were lying, but, well, you never can tell . . ."
"Shit, Carl! I have a bad feeling about this," Brian responded with a stab of anxiety to his gut. "First the bombing, then Justin goes missing and now you can't find Hobbs. . . "
"Any word from the kid?" Horvath asked, his failure to negate Brian's chain of logic only adding to the worried man's sense of panic.
"No. Nothing. No one's actually talked to Justin since Thursday night. Except for a couple of suspicious text messages that Emmett got, nobody's even heard from him."
"We'll, I'm headed over to get a statement from Honeycutt about that mugging next thing," Carl assured the younger man he'd come to see almost as a son. "I'll ask about the texts while I'm there. I've also got a couple of uniforms still checking some other leads on Hobbs, but in the meantime, if you have any ideas or if you hear from Taylor, let me know. Okay?"
"I was just in with Emmett less than an hour ago, Carl. He's got a concussion and was still pretty groggy. I don't know how much help he'll be."
"Shit. Well, maybe by the time I get there he'll be in a little better shape and will have remembered something useful. I have to get a statement from him anyway."
"I'm still at the hospital, Carl," Brian replied with a heavy sigh of exhaustion. "Mind if I sit in on your interview with Emmy Lou? I have a couple of questions of my own about those texts."
:::::::::::::::::::::::::
The sun was just coming over the bleak winter horizon as Hobbs trudged up to the highest tier of seats in the empty bleachers, his steps ringing hollowly on the aluminum risers. It was fucking frigid outside today. The sleet and rain of the past few days had finally blown over and without the cloud cover holding in some of the residual warmth from the ground, it was even colder out this morning than it had been last night. The weak sunlight shining down on him seemed to give no heat whatsoever. Hobbs didn't really mind the numbing cold though. The cold outside matched the dead, numb feeling inside him this morning.
He was fucked! So totally and completely fucked! He'd turned into one of the freaks. It didn't matter how hard he fought it, those thoughts kept surfacing. He'd tried to block them out with booze and sex, drugs, porn, strippers, hookers, everything. Nothing worked. Now it seemed he couldn't even get off to the sight of a hot blonde dancer without Taylor taking over his mind.
His humiliation was now complete. Up till now he'd managed to hide these unclean thoughts away from the rest of the world. Hobbs had never let anyone else see that side of him. His friends and family might have teased him but he'd always denied everything. He'd never allowed anyone to see the truth.
But now that stripper knew. He hadn't even realized that he'd blurted out HIS name until he noted the dancer's demeaning look as she practically ran from the room. He'd zipped his pants up quickly and stumbled out of the club, trying to ignore the snide giggles from the football blonde who was whispering to the bouncer as he made his way towards the exit.
He'd felt like every one of the patrons and staff were watching him and laughing at him as he left. What had the bitch done, made a fucking announcement as soon as she scurried out of the room? Goddamned fucking bitch. She was a fucking stripper - she had no business judging him when she was just a glorified whore. But no matter how low she was, he felt lower still. She knew about him now. She had all the power now and he had none.
Chris hadn't wanted to go back to the Pit after his celebratory night at The Daily Grind had turned into just another shameful memory.
He'd spent the rest of the night just driving aimlessly around town, ending up at a greasy all-night diner around four thirty. When the crusty grey-haired waitress had started giving him the evil eye an hour and a half later, he figured he could no longer continue to sip at his fourth cup of coffee without getting booted. He got back into his truck and started driving again. But no matter how far he drove he couldn't outrun his degradation.
Somehow, without intending to, he'd ended up back here. At first Hobbs had thought briefly about going back to the cage and taking out his frustrations on Taylor, since that faggot was the cause of everything. But something had caused him to detour here instead - to his old high school football field.
He'd spent a lot of hours in this very spot over the years. This had been where Chris had liked to sit whenever he was waiting for practice to start or anytime they'd had breaks during the countless hours of training each football season. When the weather was nice, he and his friends had eaten lunch sitting out here. He'd hung out after school here, made out with various cheerleaders in these stands, even done his homework sitting here. He couldn't even count the number of days, hours, and minutes he'd sat in these stands over his lifetime. Sitting here again was comforting and familiar.
Looking back, he couldn't remember even one time when he'd been unhappy while sitting here. Hobbs had put in four wonderful years on the St. James' football team. It had been hard work sometimes, but he had thrived in that atmosphere. He'd started off as a skinny, uncoordinated freshman and ended up as the starting quarterback by halfway through his Junior year. This had been his kingdom. He had practically ruled this school by his Senior year. And if he'd been the King and the school his court, then these bleachers would have to be counted as his throne.
Even after he'd graduated, he sometimes still came back to watch the team play - always sitting in this row of the bleachers. The coaches still greeted him fondly and would reminisce about the year they'd won the State Championship in their division - an incredible achievement for a small private school like St. James' Academy. When he was sitting here watching a game amid the crowds of alumni, students and parents, he could forget about his failures, at least for a few minutes.
"Chris fucking Hobbs?" a familiar voice hollered from the foot of the grandstands. "It is you! You old dog. What the hell are you doing back here at St. James?"
"Trey Anderson?" Hobbs shouted back with a grin as he recognized his former teammate. "Wassup, Dude? What brings you back to the old alma mater?"
The tall, slim dark-haired man climbing up the bleachers smiled welcomingly as he neared where Hobbs was seated. "I'm interning as a student teacher here now. I'll be getting my B.A. in Math Education in June from Carnegie Mellon. I just have to survive the rest of this semester working as old man Dillon's classroom slave."
"You're gonna be a math teacher?" Hobbs kidded his buddy with a mock punch to the man's shoulder as the newcomer sat down on the bench next to him. "Didn't you fail Algebra II our sophomore year and have to retake it over the summer? How the hell are you gonna teach that shit when you hated it?"
"Yeah, well, it turns out I don't hate math, just math teachers," the passionate, young soon-to-be teacher propounded. "Most old school math teachers are just plain shitty at being educators. Dillon's a prime example of that type - brilliant at math, maybe, but doesn't know shit about how to teach the subject. He thinks once the kid's memorized the multiplication tables it should all just be intuitive after that and he can just jump right into calculus proofs. The program I'm in now teaches you HOW to teach math so it's fun for the kids."
"Fuck that," Hobbs groused. "You'd have to be fucking brilliant to make that shit 'fun', man."
"Let's just hope I can save legions of future sophomores from having to deal with repeating Algebra II in summer school. That was the longest goddamned summer of my life," Trey laughingly replied. "But, I had a lot of incentive to pass the class since my dad threatened not to let me go out for football that fall if I didn't."
"Good thing you did, too," Chris grinned back at his buddy. "What would I have done without my favorite wide-receiver? Nobody else in the Division was half as fast as you. I needed you to catch the winning pass that clinched the Championship for us that year."
"Shit, that was a great game, wasn't it?"
"Hell yeah! We were great together," Hobbs reminisced in an enthusiastic good-old-boy voice. "So, are you still playing ball?”
“No way, man,” Trey huffed. “I might have been fast enough for a high school wide-receiver in a small division, but no way was I fast enough to keep up with the big boys in the college leagues. Besides, I couldn’t rest on my laurels as a high school football star forever, could I? I mean, we all had to grow up and move on eventually, right?”
Hobbs didn’t reply to this joking cliche and the conversation died for a few moments as the two men stared out across the deserted playing field in silence. Out of the corner of his eye, the newcomer could see Hobbs frowning. Struggling to fill the silent void, Trey thought he’d try a different tack.
“So, what are you up to these days? You were headed off to Arizona right? How did that turn out? I never did get to say goodbye to you after graduation because of all that shit with Taylor . . .” The glare that the scowling blond man shot him killed off this line of discussion as well, and caused the conversation to lag once again.
“Um . . . So, I hear we’ll be working together a bit,” Trey tried again to initiate conversation. “I heard you’re working as an assistant coach with the Junior Varsity team. I’m going to be working special teams with Coach Ryerson. I get additional credit for it towards my teaching certificate. So, uh . . . when practices start up again in April we’ll be hanging out together a lot, I guess . . . Well, I better be going I suppose. Dillon has me working on this project I need to get ready for tomorrow’s class and I’ve got plans with my girlfriend later today so I need to get started . . . So, see you later, dude.”
Since Hobbs wasn’t doing much more than sit there and glare, Trey decided to give up on the attempt to chat. The tall trim man levered himself off the cold bench and started to clomp back down the stands, heading towards the back of the St. James’ school buildings. He looked back once but all he saw was an angry, sour faced, slightly pudgy former jock still sitting on the bench above him. The character he saw no longer resembled the man who was once his friend and the star quarterback of the high school football team with a glorious future ahead of him.
:::::::::::::::::::::::
Warm, soft lips. Cinnamon scented breath. Whisper light kisses trailing down his neck. Large, tenderly caressing hands roaming down the exposed skin of his shoulders and arms. He could still feel little electrical tingles on every millimeter of skin where those hands and lips had touched.
Brian.
He was safe. Brian was there and would protect him. The all-encompassing feelings of caring and safety suffused his being, chasing away lingering worries, the pain and the fear of the unknown. As long as he had Brian, he would be okay.
*Slam* Justin was jerked awake, torn out of the comforting arms of his dream by the noise of a door slamming. Loud footsteps approached where he'd been lying and then, after some clicking and clanking, the metal grating he'd been resting against disappeared. The sounds were still overly loud and distorted but coming through slightly clearer than before, despite the ongoing ringing in his ears.
His body automatically rolled backwards as the support behind him was removed. It was daylight now and the few dim dusty windows allowed in enough light that he could finally see a little more of what was around him. Then, as he rolled, a shaft of light beaming down into his face from the window behind caused him to squint and blink until his eyes could accommodate the new brightness. The suddenly blinding light reminded him of the throbbing pain in his head and Justin groaned loudly.
He wasn't left to peacefully contemplate his aching head for long though. A shadow moved rapidly to block out the beam of bright sunlight. Justin opened his eyes wide but could only see a hulking dark shape haloed by the sun. He was just opening his mouth to ask the unknown figure for help when his world exploded with fresh stabs of pain as the stranger kicked him violently and repeatedly in the lower back, legs and shoulders.
The agony-filled young man was too weak to fight off this new attack. All he could do was to curl up into a tight little ball, covering his face with his left arm as best he could, and wait it out. Luckily his already overloaded senses quickly blocked out the sharp new pains. The blows soon became duller and his body felt numb. The light began to get fuzzy around the edges and the room began to fade.
His sense of hearing lasted longer than his other senses though. Long after he could no longer feel the pain or see the dingy room, he could still hear a loud voice wailing in contorted tones. It sounded like the words were being muted and the syllables drawn out too long, but somehow he could still understand their meaning.
"Why? Why, you goddamned faggot son of a bitch. Why did you do this to me? You've ruined everything. You ruined ME! Why? Why? Why . . ."
:::::::::::::::::
"I'm sorry, guys, but that's all I remember," Emmett repeated for the third time as Detective Horvath took notes and Brian looked on from a chair in the far corner of the hospital room. "I drove up to the address that Justin texted me. I saw him walking down the path towards my car. I got out to run around to the passenger side so I could move some shopping bags that I'd left on the front seat and . . . That's all there is. Next thing I knew I woke up here with Debbie crooning over me. I never even saw the person who hit me."
So far Horvath had been asking all the questions, but suddenly Brian piped up from his corner. "How do you know it was Justin?"
"What do you mean, Brian?" Emmett countered, his confusion clear on what you could see of his bandaged countenance. "I saw him. He was standing on the porch of the house at that address and when I stopped the car he started walking towards me."
"Are you sure it was Justin that you saw walking towards you?" Brian demanded insistently. "Did you see his face?"
Hmmm . . . No, I guess not . . . Now that you mention it, I never did see his face. He had the hood of his sweatshirt up because of the cold." Emmett said, his voice sounding more unsure now.
"What made you think it was Justin, then," Brian kept on pressing for information.
"Ummm . . . " Emmett screwed up his face at the effort of trying to remember until all of a sudden he thought of something and a smile came to his lips. "The sweatshirt! It was the same one I gave him for Christmas. You know that pretty powder blue cotton one I picked up when Teddy and I went to the 'Sexcapades'. The one with the ‘You Are Here’ logo. I just had to get it for Justin because I knew that shade of blue would be perfect with his eyes. Don't you remember how much he loved it? Plus, the logo was done in these glow-in-the-dark colors so if you wear it out clubbing you get to see the picture under the black lights. Remember?"
“Yeah, I remember the shirt," Brian said with a familiar smirk and a shake of his head as he remembered the tacky shirt that Justin simply adored wearing.
"That's why I was sure it was Justin. He was wearing that sweatshirt. I remember thinking that it was cool that I could see the glow-in-the-dark logo even from my car," Em assured the other two men. "There can't be that many of those shirts out there, right?"
"But you never saw his face or heard his voice?" Brian insisted once again.
"Well, no. I guess not."
"It wasn't him, Carl," Brian said with conviction turning to face the skeptical detective. "Justin doesn't have any friends in that neighborhood that I know of. Plus, if Justin had been there he wouldn’t have just let someone bash Emmett. And the guy that reported the attack didn’t say anything about anybody else at the scene except for the guy that came after Em. Someone's got Justin, Carl. They've taken him and they're using his cell phone and now his clothing. It's the only explanation. Otherwise he would have called me by now."
"Come on, Brian. You can't be sure of that. The homeless guy that called in the report has disappeared and even if he hadn’t I doubt he’d be a reliable witness,” Carl reasoned. “And, from what I heard, you and the kid aren't together anymore. Maybe he just isn't calling you back cause he's pissed at you again."
"No. He's not pissed at me anymore. We talked after the bombing the other night. I told him . . . We . . .” Brian's face crumpled up in pain as he remembered the fear and the pain and the joy of his last conversation with his erstwhile lover. "He knew I wanted him back. He would have called me," Brian finally admitted in a pained, hushed voice.
"Well, anyway . . . Regardless of the state of your love life, Kinney, I agree there's something odd going on here," Horvath conceded. "One of the prime suspects we have for the bombing at Babylon disappears and it just happens to be someone with a known history of aggression against Taylor, who coincidentally has also disappeared. Then several of Taylor's friends start having unexplained mishaps - first Michael's IV machine is tampered with, then Honeycutt gets mugged. I’d say it’s worth checking into further. But I want you to promise me you’ll let me handle this, Brian. I don’t need you interfering. Do you hear me?” Carl nailed Brian with his most authoritative glare, causing Brian to fake a sickly sweet smile, clearly evidencing his lack of innocence even before the fact.
Carl folded his notebook and stuffed it back into the inner pocket of his overcoat. The three men traded a few more pleasantries and jokes and then the detective headed out of the hospital room with an assurance to Emmett that he’d get back to him as soon as the cops had anything. Brian was sitting in his corner being as inconspicuous as he could, just waiting until Carl was gone. As soon as the seasoned detective was out the door, though, Kinney pulled out his cell phone and started dialing a familiar number.
“Mars?” Brian said into the phone as soon as the call connected. “How’s the security system set-up at Justin’s coming along? . . . Great. I’ve got one more thing I need you to do for me on this. Are you in your office? . . . I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Brian commanded and then ended the call.
“What in the name of all that is queer are you up to now, Brian Kinney?” asked the patient who was lounging in his hospital bed, now sporting a mischievous smile as he watched his friend.
“I think I have a plan, Emmy Lou,” Brian grinned as he rose from his chair, neared the bed and gently patted Emmett’s shoulder. “I’m going to set a little trap for our Sunshine thief . . .”
:::::::::::::::::::::::