Sommers leaned against the sofa armrest without inviting them to sit down. Kelly cast a glance at Monica, who stepped forward and plopped down on the nearest armchair. Sommers winced slightly as she lifted a stone statue off the end table. “Whatcha got here?” she asked curiously, turning it over in her hand.
“Could you not…” he said, attempting to retrieve it.
Monica examined it closely; it was a phallus with a mounted pair of wings. “Now that’s something you don’t see every day, huh?”
“It’s a Dionysian fertility symbol, and quite a valuable one,” Sommers snapped, snatching it back.
“Whoa, easy.” Monica held both hands up. “I wasn’t going to break it.”
Kelly sighed. She definitely didn’t regret leaving Doyle behind—she could only imagine his reaction to Sommers. But bringing Monica might have been a mistake, too. However, interviewing a suspect alone was a strict Bureau no-no, both for her own safety and to guard against any claims of brutality or corruption. Normally, she’d be partnered with another FBI agent by this point in an investigation, but these days the Bureau was spread thin investigating thousands of accusations from people convinced their neighbors were terrorists. In the current political landscape, the discovery of five skeletons that might have been buried for years was a low priority, especially if most of them turned out to be young gay hustlers. “Mr. Sommers, when was the last time you saw Randy Jacobs?”
“I can’t say for certain,” he hedged.
“It’s important that you try,” she pressed.
“What’s this all about, anyway?” he asked. “What’s Randy done now?”
“He went and got himself killed,” Monica piped up.
“What?” Sommers seemed to fold into himself as he reached for the armrest and lowered himself slowly onto the couch. Kelly scrutinized the shocked expression on his face. If he was acting, it was a good show.
“Calvin? Everything okay?”
Kelly turned. There was a good-looking kid standing in the doorway, clad only in white board shorts that hung low on his pelvis, exposing a glimpse of plaid boxers. His hair was bleached blond, skin deeply tanned with a smattering of freckles. He was barefoot and looked as if he’d just woken from a nap.
“It’s nothing, Jim. Go on out to the pool, it needs to be skimmed again.” Sommers flicked a hand toward the boy.
The kid’s gaze drifted over Kelly and Monica, sizing them up as a smile spread across his face. He scratched himself absentmindedly and stayed where he was.
“Jim, please.” Sommers’s voice assumed a pleading tone.
Jim rolled his eyes and mock-saluted. “Yeah, right. Skim the pool. I’ll get right on that.” He turned on his heel and sauntered away. A door slammed at the rear of the house. Through the wide-paneled windows across the back of the room, Kelly watched as Jim pulled on a pair of sunglasses and flopped down on a cushioned chaise longue next to the pool.
She glanced back at Sommers, who looked wildly uncomfortable. A small bead of sweat worked its way down his forehead. It was hard for her to believe that in this day and age he was still so frantic to keep up appearances—for God’s sake, wasn’t gay marriage even legal in Massachusetts? Unless he was hiding something else. “Mr. Sommers, your sexual orientation isn’t really my concern. We’re here to find out about your relationship to Randy Jacobs, and when you last saw him alive.”
“Looks like you already found a new friend,” Monica noted, arching an eyebrow.
Sommers looked defeated. “I can’t believe he’s dead,” he murmured, examining his hands, then running them across his face and through his hair. “God, he was just a child. How did it happen? Drugs?”
“I’d rather not get into that just yet,” Kelly said before Monica could disclose any more information. When questioning potential suspects, she preferred to keep them in the dark as much as possible to see what they let slip.
Sommers stood and went to the rear window, facing away from them as he crossed his arms over his chest. “I met Randy in the spring, at Club Metro in Northampton. They have a…special night on Wednesdays.”
“A gay night?” Monica asked.
“I suppose you could call it that. Anyway, he was a little rough around the edges, but sweet. I ended up taking him in. His teeth were a mess, Dr. Glendale really worked wonders with him. And it wasn’t cheap, let me assure you. He lived here until about a month ago.”
“So what happened?” Monica asked.
“I had to go to Manhattan for a show—I own a gallery there. My assistant generally manages things in the summers, but we had an artist emergency.” He waved a hand in the air and started pacing. “When I got home, Randy had clearly had other…guests here. That was one of my rules, no company when I was out of town, I’d made that clear from the beginning. Anyway, I threw him out.”
“Huh. He must’ve liked that,” Monica said.
“He was extremely upset. We’d discussed having him come to New York with me in the fall, perhaps going back to school…” Sommers’s voice trailed off.
“Did he become violent?” Kelly asked.
“Randy? No, he was hardly the type. He begged for a second chance, but…you should’ve seen the state the house was in, not to mention what they did to the Mapplethorpe…no, it was truly unforgivable. He left reluctantly, but quietly. I changed the locks the next day and haven’t seen him since.”
“And this was…”
“Ah, let’s see.” He tapped a finger against his forehead. “The opening was on the seventeenth, it must have been the twentieth of July, sometime around then.”
“Anyone we can verify that with?” Kelly asked.
“You can speak with my maid, she’ll be here tomorrow morning, or you can try her at home. Here, I’ll get you the number.” He went to a credenza in the corner of the room and slid open a drawer, flipped through an address book and scrawled a number on a scrap of paper.
Kelly accepted it. “Anything else you can let us know about Randy? Friends he might have had, or where he went after he left? Or did he leave anything here?”
“No, nothing. And as far as I know, Randy had no other friends. He was a lonely boy, a sad case, really. He ran away from home when he was thirteen, and from what little he told me I gathered that his family situation was not ideal. Now, unless there’s something else…” He moved toward the front door.
“You won’t be leaving town anytime soon, will you, sir?” Monica asked as they followed him out.
His shoulders tensed again. “Why, am I a suspect? Because if so, I can also get you the number of my attorney.”
“Please just let us know if you decide to head back to the city,” Kelly interjected. She’d like to keep pressing him for information, but without more evidence linking him to Randy she didn’t have grounds, plus he was already threatening to lawyer up. Better to come back once she’d dug further into his background.
The door closed behind them with a slam. As they walked back to the car, Kelly heard a raised voice coming from the backyard. They both stopped to listen. It sounded as though Sommers was dressing down Jim.
“Someone’s got a bit of a temper, huh?” Monica said in a low voice.
“Sounds like it. I want a full workup on him, see if he’s got a record here or in New York. We should also try to find out who some of his other charity cases have been, and if any of them are still around. Also, let’s confirm the dates of Randy’s departure. Would you mind calling the maid?”
“Nope, if you drive I’ll try her on the way. I’d like to catch her before Sommers does,” Monica said. “Be an interesting coincidence if more of his boys have gone missing.”
Kelly looked at her watch. “We should head back to the office, see if Doyle has dug up anything else.”
“Doubtful,” Monica snorted. “Best he can do is give you an update on the doughnut situation in the break room. What about this Club Metro?”
“I was thinking the same thing. Tomorrow night is Wednesday, we’ll go see what we can turn up. If Randy was turning tricks there, someone might have seen something.”
“Are we taking Doyle?”
Kelly smiled slightly. “Northampton is in his jurisdiction. I’m sure he’d be offended if we didn’t invite him.”
“Oh boy.” Monica slapped a hand on the dashboard. “Doyle at a gay club. This could make my whole week.”
He heaved the last bag into the open truck bed and slammed the hatch. Taking a moment, he leaned against the bumper and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. It was still unbelievably hot, despite the late hour. On a night like this it was hard to believe that fall was just around the corner, but any day now he’d wake up shivering, wishing he hadn’t left the AC on. He checked his watch: time to get going, there were only a few hours left until dawn.
Leaving the driveway, he automatically started to turn left, swore under his breath and corrected the wheel, yanking it to the right. His forehead crinkled with annoyance. It wasn’t like him to make a mistake like that, heading to the old site. He was getting rusty. Which would have been fine, before; now that the others had been found, he’d have to be more careful. The discovery of the bones was puzzling. Based on what he’d managed to glean through various sources, the body that initially set off the search was probably his last, the boy with the big sad eyes. Which was surprising, he’d taken his time with that one, buried him deeply. And more perturbingly, he’d been found in the wrong place.
Animals, probably, he thought, shrugging it off. And it hardly mattered, that site was pretty much tapped out for him now. He rarely used it in the summers anyway, too many campers, lots more than there used to be. It irked him that they swarmed his forest, trampling over his graves. He sighed. He was getting too old for this, when it really came down to it. It took a toll on him, staying up late. The killing was fine, he still had the energy for that. More than that it gave him energy, stripped the years away.
But the aftermath of dealing with the body, painstakingly removing the eyes, hauling it out to the woods and burying it; he winced slightly as he circled his left shoulder and felt a twinge. He’d reinjured it, just as he’d feared. He’d better ice it when he got home. Maybe it was time to schedule that surgery the doctor had recommended.
He glanced over his shoulder at the pile of bags in the truck bed. This had been a good one, satisfying. The boy had even made the mistake of spitting on him at the outset. Not by the end, though, by then he could have gotten him to do pretty much anything. He recalled the boy’s small voice, begging for his life, and repressed a smile. His eyes slid across the paneled interior to the clock: 3:00 a.m. If he hurried, he’d get enough sleep to make the church’s pancake breakfast in the morning.
Seven
“Stop pouting, Doyle. I’m sure someone’ll ask you to dance if you just give ’em a minute.” Monica tapped him playfully on the arm.
“They better not,” Doyle grumbled, gnawing a wad of gum. He appeared physically uncomfortable, as though he was trying to shrink into himself. He was rhythmically wincing in time to the driving bass that pulsed through the nightclub. Club Metro was situated on Pleasant Street, a few blocks off Main, in the section of Northampton where quaint antique stores and church spires ceded to industrial warehouses. The hour-long drive from Pittsfield had been oppressive for Kelly, thanks to the palpable tension between Monica and Doyle. Doyle had initially been reluctant to join them but Kelly had insisted, threatening once again to pull rank. She would have preferred going without him, but the club was in a different jurisdiction and they’d be joined by another Massachusetts cop. Kelly was hoping that having Doyle along would smooth over any turf battles.
“What, your dance card full, Doyle?” Monica said. “Shame. In that outfit, you could be the belle of the ball. I didn’t know they still sold Members Only jackets.”
Doyle stormed off in the direction of the bar. Kelly’s eyes panned across the crowd as she followed him. She should’ve reined in Monica, but she had to admit to deriving pleasure from seeing Doyle so out of place, especially after the way he’d been treating her for the past two weeks. Despite the loud music, the club was relatively quiet. There were only a few dozen patrons, mostly older men in tight jeans and Izod shirts. Most held a cocktail in one hand as they shifted their weight slightly from side to side, eyes continually roaming the room as if someone new might materialize if they just kept looking. Kelly felt some of those eyes settle on her and Monica, and she self-consciously tugged at her shirt collar. They were dressed plainclothes so that they wouldn’t stick out like sore thumbs, but Kelly had the feeling they’d been spotted anyway. She and Monica were both wearing jeans and T-shirts, and Doyle had on khakis and a jacket despite the warmth of the night. The Northampton officer, Bennett, had done the best job of blending in, wearing a pair of ironed board shorts and a tank top. He was in his late twenties, with a square jaw and black hair shorn close to his head. Of all of them, he seemed most at home here.
“Slow night,” he commented, glancing around the room. “Season’s winding down, doesn’t look like many of the boys are around.”
“How many are there, usually?” Kelly asked as they approached the bar.
Bennett grinned at the bartender and nodded. “What’s up, Tony. Can I get three Sam Adams?” The bartender eyed them a second longer than necessary, then went to retrieve their order. Turning back to Kelly, he shrugged. “Depends. Height of the summer, anywhere from thirty to fifty of them work the crowd.”
“Didn’t know there was such a scene here,” Monica said. She looked bemused as a drag queen in four-inch stilettos sashayed past.
“Oh, absolutely. The women’s college down the road has a lot to do with it. Northampton is known for being an enclave of tolerance in what is still a pretty conservative part of the state.” His eyes fixed on Doyle, who stood a little apart from them. Bennett dropped his voice to say, “I’m sure you’ve probably noticed the attitude of the other units.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty hard to miss,” Monica said. Doyle glanced over at them, then focused back on his beer.
Bennett sounded bitter as he continued. “Truth is, there have been rumors for years about these boys going missing. Every once in a while we put up flyers, send out alerts to other departments. But a bunch of gay hustlers…”