Love, Like Water (32 page)

“No. Loved. Past tense. It’s done, Uncatuck. Trust me. He’ll be glad to see the back of me.” He zipped up the duffel and looked back at Tucker, who almost cried at the misery in his eyes. Tuck didn’t know what was worse, that or the dead look he’d had when he’d arrived. “It’s really better this way. Thanks for lending me Tonio.”

“Well, I ain’t about to make you walk to Albuquerque.”

“You could just have him take me to Miller and I’ll catch the bus.”

“No. At least this way I’ll know you got where you were going, and didn’t wander off into the desert somewhere.”

“You’re still angry about that.”

“You bet your ass I’m still angry about that! I’m angry about a lot of things, son!” He saw Joshua flinch and lowered his voice. “Sorry, son.”

“No, I shouldn’t be such a fucking wimp. I used to have guts. Not anymore.”

“No.”

Josh froze, and looked up at him. “What?”

“No, you don’t have any guts anymore. If you had, you’d stay and work this out with Eli.”

“There’s nothing to be worked out. Trust me—Eli’ll be more relieved than I am to see the back of me. Ask him.” Josh didn’t even look insulted or angry, just tired.

“You know, I thought you going back to the Bureau was just a ploy to get Eli’s attention back. That you and he had some kinda falling out, and that you were trying to play games. But it wasn’t, was it? You been serious the whole time.”

“Dead serious.” Josh gave him a thin smile that Tucker didn’t know how to read. He remembered Eli talking about Josh being like one of the abused horses they brought in, but no horse was ever as stubborn and difficult as Josh was being. “I don’t play games, Uncatuck.” He shouldered the duffel, picked up his backpack, and left the room.

Tucker followed him down and outside, where Tonio waited beside the Silverado. Josh tossed both bags into the back of the truck, then turned and held out his hand to Tucker. “Thanks for everything,” he said stiffly.

“Shit,” Tucker said, and pulled him into his arms, hugging him tightly. After a moment, Josh’s arms came around and hugged him back, hard, as if he were Josh’s lifeline in a storm. He clung to Tucker a long moment, then let him go, backing up and getting in the cab without looking back.

Tucker watched the truck drive away, then glanced over at Eli, who was sitting on the porch. “And I’m pissed at you, too,” he said irritably. “How could you just let him walk away from you like that?”

“Uh, Tuck?”

“What?”

“You might want to keep your voice down.” Eli waved his hand, and Tuck turned to see Ray, Manny, Billy, Chico, and Fred—their live-in hands—all standing not too far away and watching with interest.

“Oh, don’t worry about us,” Fred said cheerfully. “We figured out you guys were doing the horizontal mambo
weeks
ago. Shit, Eli, it ain’t like none of us didn’t know you was queer. The news been calling your attack a gay bashing so I think it’s pretty obvious.”

“And you’re okay with that?” Tucker asked curiously.

“Well, we purt much think it’s gross,” Chico said, “but hey, you ain’t never put the make on any of us, so that’s okay. Manny saw Josh going into your house one night and we figgered it out. We knew even before the news. Besides, there’s a limited number of women in Miller to date, so more for us.”

Manny scratched his chin. “One or two of the locals have said something, but they’re mostly just fishing for information. We told them you was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. You were waiting for Josh. So we’re good.” He waved his hand. “Just don’t give us no details,
comprendes
?”

“
Comprendo
,” Eli agreed, but then his face went still. “Don’t matter anyway. It’s done.”

“Well, long’s you don’t come looking in the bunkhouse for his replacement,” Manny said. Chico clipped him in the head. “Ow, what?”

“They busted up, you stupid fucker! Show some class.”

“Get back to work,” Tucker said tiredly. “I’m done with all this bullshit. Eli, you come in and I’ll teach you how to work the computer. Since you drove off my office clerk, you get to fill in for him.”

“I didn’t drive him off. He left.”

“Shut up.” Tucker stomped back up the stairs and into the office, turning on the computer with more force than necessary. A minute later Eli limped in. “Sit.”

Eli obeyed, setting his cane to the side. Tucker leaned over him and started teaching him the banking program.

About an hour later he was ready to kill someone. “Jesus, Eli, don’t you fucking know how to use a fucking computer? Good Lord, you’re only thirty-three—didn’t you kids grow up knowing how these fuckers work?”

“I don’t think I ever heard you swear so much, Tuck,” Eli said. “In answer to your question, no, the little one-room schoolhouse I went to didn’t have a computer and I dropped outta high school before they could teach me. Got my GED without one, and my classes in AH were mostly hands-on. Not much call for computers on the rodeo circuit, and since I came here you took care of all that. I can do a Google Search and answer e-mail, and I don’t even
get
e-mail these days. Someone wants to talk to me, they call or text. So no, I’m not so good with ’em.”

“Shit.” Tucker dropped into one of the side chairs and rubbed his forehead. “Damn, I wish Josh hadn’t taken off like that. What the hell did you say to him?”

“Nothing.” But Eli’s face had gone closed and hard, and Tucker knew there was something going on.

“Come on, spill.”

In answer, Eli turned back to the computer. “Speaking of Google Searches—I came in here last night to look something up,” he said. “Well, this morning, really. About four. Couldn’t sleep.” He typed something one-handed, then clicked the mouse a couple of times. “Here. Look at this.”

Tucker got up and came around the desk to look at an article Eli had brought up. It was about a murder a couple of years ago in a Chicago warehouse. The woman, a Lina Santiago, had been five months pregnant. The picture of her in the article looked like a high school photo: laughing face, silky dark hair, bright eyes. “You think
Josh
did this?”

“He
said
so. A woman, Tuck. He killed a
pregnant woman
.” Eli rubbed his face with his good hand. “I can’t… I just can’t justify that. He killed men ’cause he had to, I guess, like a soldier or something, but this was a woman… and a
baby
. I don’t know how I can deal with that.”

Tucker read the article silently.

Eli went on, “I mean, I s’pose it’s sexist or something, but it’s so much worse when it’s a woman, y’know? But this… Jesus, Tuck, at five months she’d be showing. It wouldn’t be like he killed her not knowing.”

“The heroin….”

“This was before.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“He said so.”

“Yeah,” Tucker said heavily. “I got that.” He straightened. “Well. That explains why he left. Guess now that you know, he figures there ain’t nothing worth staying for.”

“Tucker.” There was a world of hurt in the voice.

“Yeah,” Tucker said. He put his hand on Eli’s shoulder. “Yeah.”

Chapter 29

“I
LEFT
the ranch.”

“Oh? When was that?”

“Wednesday.”

McBride’s eyebrow rose. “I knew you were planning to, but didn’t Eli just get home Tuesday?”

“Yes. That was why. He knows the truth about me now, and won’t want to have anything to do with me. I figured it was better to just get out of there.” Joshua stretched his legs out in front of him, studying the toes of his boots. When did cowboy boots start feeling so much more comfortable than sneakers? “I talked to Greene and he said the Bureau would pop for a week or so at a hotel, just the same as if I were working out of state. Since I’m still on contingent assignment to the Chicago office, I’m technically out of state, so.”

“How do you like living in a hotel?”

Joshua shrugged. “It’s quiet. Boring. When I was in rehab they warned us about being bored—that that was almost worse than being tired or stressed out for relapsing.”

“Do you worry about relapsing?”

“Every fucking minute.” Joshua sorted through his tangled thoughts, then went on, “I didn’t when I was on the ranch, so much. The couple weeks I was with Eli… I pretty much didn’t even think about the smack. But now? Yeah. I’m worried. I’m bored and lonely and I got all the back pay from when I was on assignment sitting in a bank account just waiting for me to get to it. And all cities are alike—I know just where I could go to score some.”

The psychologist only nodded.

Joshua went on, “I had therapy in rehab, you know. Every day, several times a day. One on one, group, it didn’t matter. We talked about shit endlessly.”

“Do you feel that that therapy helped?”

“Yeah, I guess. It helped me deal with the killing, anyway. Part of the reason I walked away from the Bureau was that I couldn’t bear to think of taking another life. I couldn’t go back to that, couldn’t go back to being a cop, couldn’t….” He stopped, took a deep breath to steady his voice. “I never wanted anything except to be in law enforcement, and for three years everything I did went counter to my beliefs, to my training, to my morals. I turned myself into someone else, someone I didn’t like, didn’t respect. I don’t know how I didn’t just go under completely, but I didn’t. Every night after I got back to that shithole of an apartment, I made my report. Every night before I put my laptop back in its hiding place, I wiped the browser history, wiped the files, wiped everything that could possibly betray me, either as an agent or as a gay man. While my
compadres
went home to sleep off another night breaking every fucking law known to man, I went home and downloaded.” He snorted. “The only sex I had was with porn sites, and even then I had to make sure I deleted the browser history. My screensaver and desktop was titty porn shots, in case anyone found where I hid my computer. It was a shitty way to live.

“’Chete thought I had a thing for Lina Santiago. Of course I didn’t, but I liked her. She was one of his runners, but she was in love with a member of another gang, real
West Side Story
shit. That’s who her baby daddy was. ’Chete found out and had me start narking on her. I found out she was skimming and passing it on to her lover—they were going to take the money and run. Not soon enough.”

He rubbed his face. “I’ve come to terms with the others, but I will never forgive myself for Lina.”

“What happened to the lover?”

“What else? He came after ’Chete. I shot him too.”

“Are you still dreaming?”

Joshua frowned. “What?”

“Are you still dreaming? You said you had had a couple of bad dreams while Eli was in the hospital, but you haven’t mentioned it since.”

“Off and on.” Joshua realized he was sitting hunched over and made a conscious effort to straighten up. Hunching was something he’d done a lot of in rehab, and the physical therapist there had told him that it wasn’t healthy, either physically or mentally. It was his making himself small, to hide, to disappear. “Yeah, I’m still having them. Once I get back to work it’ll be better. When I was working on the ranch, I hardly ever had them.”

“When you were working?”

“Yeah.”

“Same time as when you were with Eli?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Look, can we not talk about Eli?”

“Of course,” the shrink said. “We can talk about whatever you want.”

“The thing is that me and Eli, we’re done. It’s over with. I can’t let him be part of me anymore. I need to let him go.”

The shrink nodded.

“It doesn’t matter how much I miss him. How much I miss the ranch, you know? ’Cause it’s done. He’s part of the ranch and I’m not.”

“Would you like to be?”

“What?”

“Part of the ranch?”

Joshua stared at him, and to his horror, he felt tears on his face. “No,” he lied, and ran his sleeve across his eyes. “No. I don’t want that. I’m not meant for the ranch. I’m meant to be with the Bureau. I can be of use there. Yeah, I’ll probably never be more than an analyst, but that’s okay—I’m not sure I want to do fieldwork anymore. I’m good. It’s going to be okay.”

Silently, the shrink nudged the box of Kleenex toward him.

“This is fucking
stupid
! I lived for three years in hell and never broke down. Why the fuck am I breaking down
now
?”

“Because you can?” McBride said. “Because you’re safe now, and can afford to let go?”

Joshua wrapped his arms around his head, hunched over in his chair, and howled.

Chapter 30