Shattered Glass(39)

“Darryl! Visitor,” Griz called out over his shoulder and poured cherries from a large jar into a little container. A skinny boy about Peter’s age danced around the corner, lowering a set of headphones and looping them around his neck.

Darryl Boerner was on the feminine side of cute, with bright green eyes and wispy thin blond hair. He wore leather chaps, the hot pink variety, with matching pink short-shorts underneath. His arms and chest were bared around a vest that appeared to be a matching set with the pants. Old scars from track marks littered his inner elbows and arms.

“Why, hello there.” He leaned right across the bar so, should either of us move an inch, our noses would touch. His lip gloss smelled fruity. “You rang, handsome?”

I flashed my badge again. He glanced at it with distaste and then back up to me, smiling in a manner I assumed was supposed to be seductive. There wasn’t enough gay in the world to make me hit that. “Peter said you’d have something for me,” I said placidly.

“So you’re the gorgeous little detective,” he mused. Tilting his head and twirling a bleached strand of shoulder length hair, he eyed me like I was a glazed donut. “Peter always did like ‘em manly and pretty.” He propped up his elbows on the wood and placed his chin delicately on the back of his hands. “I have something for you. Now what are you giving me, hmm?”

I slid a hundred bucks across the bar. He dropped a hand to cover it, and then tucked it somewhere. I refused to check, or even imagine, where. “Well?” I asked, doing my best to be devastatingly handsome.

“My, my, so impatient. For a hundred more you can to join me downstairs for about an hour.”

“I’m spoken for,” I lied, trying not to grit my teeth. “Just the info.”

“Lovely, isn’t he? Our little Peter Rabbit.” He reached out to trace the top of my hand. “And so sweet. Had a face like an altar boy when he was just twelve. They loooved him to pieces. That delightful red hair, blue eyes so innocent, those darling little freckles. Made him call them daddy. He used to tell me they liked him to cry. Don’t, daddy. Please don’t, daddy,” Darryl parodied in a soft high voice. The way Darryl said ‘loved’ made me want to get descriptions and kick off a pedophile-murdering rampage. “Does he call you daddy?”

“The info,” I reminded him, this time there was a distinct bark in my voice. Nausea had welled up in my throat. Acid reflux of the emotional kind.

You know what was sick? What my selfish fucking brain was thinking? If Peter had been checked for HIV. That was my first thought when I heard he’d been raped at the age of twelve. I disgusted myself.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, sexy,” Darryl said airily and picked up a napkin. He wrote an address down and slid it over to me. “Iss’s stepbrother’s house. Took me there once. Told me I was his special little boy.” He batted his lashes, and I resolved to never do that again to Luis. “My phone number’s down at the bottom. If you ever want me to call you Daddy.” I didn’t even want to think about that. “Detective…?”

‘Yeah?” I looked up from the napkin.

“You hurt my Rabbit, and they’ll write horror films on what I’ll do to you.” The way he said it was so casual, I could almost feel my skin crawling away.

“And what if he hurts me?”

“Chance you take with boys like us, ain’t it?” He waved a few fingers at me, “Buh bye now,” before putting his headphones on and dancing his way back from where he came.

I headed for the entrance. Luis hadn’t moved. His gaze was fixed on the disco ball above his head until I approached. “Get it?” he asked.

“Got an address.” I held up the napkin and had to restrain myself from running out the door to vomit. I needed those terrible images of Peter with sick old men out of my head.

Three hours later, the crime scene techs had cleared out of the stepbrother’s house. We had two more victims, both adult women, safely being handled by victim services. But best of all was the brand new evidence on Alvarado, his step-brother, birth father and two cousins. And I had the added bonus of knowing Peter had been partially vindicated before I actually dated him.

I went home and showered until my skin felt relatively clean. It took a lot of scrubbing—until my skin was as pink as Peter’s.

In a rare physical manifestation of human compassion, I ended up vomiting into the toilet until every wretch ended up dry.

My job sucked sometimes.





You

I dreamed of Peter in bursts. Things that made me wake up in a sweat and, at least once, near tears. I didn’t cry. Ever. Not because I found it particularly unmanly or weak, but because, despite my naiveté with Peter, I was jaded as hell. With a little introspection I could have figured out that what I felt for Peter was compassion, but that would have required delving into the emotional shithole that was my black soul.