Chapter Two

The body, they had said, was a mess. A bloody, gut-wrenching mess. The gallery of ghouls had assembled before Ed even got there: two uniforms, the medical examiner, a department photographer, and an evidence technician.

Ed Comparetto had been in the detective division of the Chicago Police Department for just two years, and reporting to scenes like this still caused his gut to tighten with apprehension. He recognized the lurid dichotomy: the desire to flee and the even stronger desire to see what had happened, the carnage that had been wreaked.

This time, this hot August morning, where the temperature was already nearing ninety-five degrees and the humidity was higher, Ed had no great desire to hurry inside. He dreaded what he would find in the little one-bedroom apartment, dreaded it enough that his palms were sweating and an iron band was tightening across his chest.

But he knew from the practice he had already gone through, as first an officer and then a detective, that others didn’t need to pick up on the fear and the queasiness. It was all a matter of appearing confident, of putting one foot in front of the other and training his dark brown eyes on whatever atrocity he was forced to greet.

He would tell others that it got easier and would joke along with the other guys after hours, making black humor of corpses sitting for days in bathtubs, housing project stabbings, and gunshot victims riddled with holes like a slab of fucking Swiss cheese. Except Swiss cheese holes didn’t have gunpowder burns around the edges.

He steeled himself, taking a breath, getting down deep. Even though no one would say it to his face, Ed knew they were all looking for telltale signs of weakness, to expose him as the pansy they all knew he was. Ever since he had publicly come out in a Windy City Times article on gay officers on the Chicago police force, there had been a certain coldness toward him. Nothing overt, save for the rose someone had once tenderly placed on his desk, but enough reticence for him to know that his action had caused a change in how his peers and even his superiors regarded him. He supposed it could have been worse, but Ed still sensed they were all just waiting for a fall so they could say he didn’t really belong with them, not with real men, men used to dealing with murder and mayhem on a daily basis.

And now one of his own had fallen, which was probably why his supervisor had called him at six thirty that morning, exhorting him to get out and investigate this new case. He’d answered the phone while still clutching at the pillow beside him as if it were a person. Perhaps Ed’s homosexuality could finally come in handy. Maybe Ed would have some secret knowledge that could make him know, at a glance, why a twenty-eight-year-old bartender in Rogers Park had been stabbed, mutilated, and God knows what else.

Inside, inside, he urged himself. Get it over with.

He crossed the threshold. Lingering in the air was the smell of butyl nitrite, and the first thing he spotted was the little brown bottle, overturned on the rug. The smell, with its powerful association with sex, brought an almost surreal aspect to the crime scene. He noted, too, the small glass pipe on the desk, the baggie for the world’s tiniest sandwich, and the butane torch. At least the victim didn’t have to worry about getting arrested for possession, or an overdose.

Ed had seen the room a hundred times before: the second-hand furniture, the twenty-five-inch TV screen, the decent stereo system, plants, framed Chicago Film Festival posters on the wall—all the trappings of a downwardly mobile gay boy.

The thought of this particular gay boy, Tony Evans, suddenly overwhelmed Ed, gave to the surroundings a sense of poignancy. Tony would never again sit on these chairs, water these plants, or gaze upon the muscular bodies depicted on his posters.

Tony was in the bathtub, and Ed turned right and headed back to the little hallway that led to the bathroom. Outside the room a young uniform, his ruddy Irish complexion drained of color, held his stomach.

“You wanna take it outside?” Ed squeezed the guy’s shoulder. “Go on now. You’ll feel better.”

“I’m supposed to tell you the guy who found the body is here. He’s waitin’.”

Ed nodded. “Good. I need a minute alone, so why don’t you run along. Thanks.”

Ed watched the officer’s retreating figure with more than a little longing, wishing he could go with him. But the bright yellow rectangle that was the bathroom’s entrance beckoned to him. He already knew, from his supervisor, that the victim’s friend had discovered his body in the bathtub, where the water was stained deep crimson from all the blood; that the victim’s penis had been severed from his body and jammed up his ass; that the fingers from the victim’s right hand had been removed and had not been found at the time his supervisor had phoned; that a silk red and white polka dot tie had been wrapped around his neck and had been, most likely, the instrument which had brought about death.

Knowing all this made nothing easier. In fact, it made Ed’s legs suddenly fill with lead. Taking each step was work, and he was grateful he would have at least a few minutes alone with the body.

He breathed in again, noticing how his exhalation came out with a quiver. He would have to watch that. Taking a notebook and pen from the inner breast pocket of his sport coat, Ed forced himself to enter the bathroom.

The first thing he noticed was his own reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror above the sink. His dark features, brown eyes, and short, curly black hair made a sharp contrast to the paler than usual pallor of his skin. His breath was coming in small, short rasps. He took a while, studying his reflection, because he didn’t want to look around. As long as he stared into the mirror, the corpse in the tub had nothing to do with him. All the things he had already heard about the condition of the body were nothing more than words—cold, clinical, as precise as they could be.

Ed knew the body would be a whole ’nother story. Corpses had a way of bringing everything into sharp focus, giving all the forensic terminology and police lingo dimension and reality. And the worst part: one glance was all it took to make it real, to bring home the fact that this was a person who had suddenly lost everything. And for what? For a reason no one might ever know—no one save for the person who was out there now, a nameless fiend, licking his wounds and remembering. He had to be remembering.

Ed looked.

His mouth went dry. His scalp itched. He reached out to grab the sink, to clutch its cold porcelain edge. Steady, steady.

The tub appeared to be filled with blood, the water exposing the pale body beneath its surface through a red filter. Blood, in little Jackson Pollock flecks, spattered the tile wall above the tub, and Ed found himself concentrating on these tiny constellations of gore, again training his eyes away from the atrocity in the tub.

The blond hair still retained its sheen; death had not caused the myriad spikes to fall. But the hair was the only thing that remained remotely human about this…this thing in the tub. The tie, like a coiled snake, still hung limply around the neck, slipping down toward the shoulders. A pale ring of red encircled the guy’s throat, a ghost of former abuse. His eyes bulged outward, staring up at the ceiling: blue filmed over with yellow, bearing mute yet horrified witness to their owner’s final hours. The body was already starting to bloat, and the wounds inflicted on it looked clean, bled dry, barren holes through which life had passed.

Ed turned and let out a small choking sob. He stifled it quickly, stiffening his spine, gathered in his quivering breaths, and headed out.

At least the air would not be suffused with death outside, even if it was hot, even if it was so sticky it was almost palpable.

And he could talk to the friend who had discovered the body.

What would he say?

*

The guy was a mess of a different sort. From a distance, he appeared almost a boy, no more than fourteen or fifteen years old. A lithe body, at best only five five or five six, topped with a shock of golden hair hanging straight and almost covering his eyes. As Ed drew nearer, the eyes revealed themselves to him in all their pain, red-rimmed, the palest of blue irises floating in a bath of warm wet. Salt tears tracked down his face.

An officer murmured something in the boy’s ear, and the boy tried to rein in his tears, straightening his shoulders and drawing in great quivering breaths. He met Ed’s eyes, waiting with an expression revealing both curiosity and despair.

“Hi, my name’s Ed Comparetto.” Ed moved closer and extended his hand as he reached the boy. The hand that barely gripped his was small, the bones beneath the pale, soft flesh like bird bones, tiny and fragile. “I’m a detective with the Chicago Police Department, homicide division.”

The boy—and Ed mentally corrected himself, because this was no boy at all, but a man—the man was perhaps as old as his midthirties. Close up, tiny crow’s feet surrounded the red-rimmed eyes, and the face had a certain weathering that came only with age.

The man nodded mutely, as if he didn’t know what to say.

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Timothy. Timothy Bright.”

Ed jotted the name down, wondering if it was real. It sounded too much like someone you’d see as one of the dancers in some Broadway show. “Timothy, would you like to walk over here and sit down? You’d probably be more comfortable.”

Timothy followed as Ed led him to a stoop next door. A big maple provided a little shade but not much relief from the heat. Ed waited as Timothy drew in a few more quivering breaths, listening and hoping that soon the time would come when the breathing would return to normal and he could proceed with his job. Already, he knew the potential existed to invest too much in this case, and he wasn’t interested in comforting Mr. Bright, who looked as though he needed it.

“So, Timothy…” Ed cocked his head. “It’s okay if I use your first name, isn’t it?”

Timothy nodded, and Ed was once more amazed by the pale eyes, so pale they appeared almost colorless vessels through which light passed.

“I understand you were the one who, um, discovered the body? Is that right?”

Timothy sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Ed handed him a Kleenex from his breast pocket.

“Why don’t you tell me about that?”

The voice that began, hardly more than a whisper at first, had a reedlike quality, a breathy, womanish voice that must have caused poor Timothy no end of grief.

“Tony was my friend. I’ve known him since the day he moved in. Six months ago. Still spring…a warm day, sunshine like you would not believe. Yet there was a chill underneath it all, as if the weather was a lie. Which it was, of course. Spring is like that.”

The more Timothy talked, the more wooden and monotone he became. Ed began to wonder if he would need some treatment for shock before the day was through. And he didn’t want to slow the wandering words, didn’t want to make this guy face the suffering that lay in wait for him like a razor-toothed beast of prey.

“I noticed him right away, well, because I notice a good-looking man, which Tony was.” Timothy paused. A car with a loud muffler passed. He shrugged. “I guess these aren’t the kinds of things you want to hear about.”

“I want to hear whatever you think is relevant. Take your time.”

“Well, anyway, I thought I’d be bold, because that’s just how I am, and I walk right up to him and I go, ‘Howdy, stranger, looks like you could use some neighborly help.’ ’Cause, see, he was all alone and trying to lug furniture off this U-Haul. Sure, I felt sorry, but my reasons for offering to help were entirely selfish.

“Anyways, the two of us sort of became friends after that. Went out a coupla times or two, but you know, things just never went in that direction.

“We kinda got in the habit, a ritual you might call it, of having breakfast together on Fridays. It happened once or twice by coincidence, and then we just sort of decided to always do it. It’s so hard to stay in touch with friends, y’know…unless you make a little effort.”

Ed traced a line across his pad. “So that’s why you came over this morning?”

“Yeah, of course.” Timothy stopped, eyes welling again. He stared at a squirrel across the street, watched its twitching tail as it clung to the side of an oak. He sighed. “I had my own key, so I just went in. Lots of times, with Tony being a bartender and all, he might not be awake yet. So he gave me a key, and I would come in, have a cup of coffee, read a magazine until Tony got up.” Timothy laughed. “Sometimes, he never did. But that was okay with me. Because that’s how it is with good friends. You know?”

Ed didn’t know, but he said, “Sure.”

“So I didn’t bother ringing the doorbell or anything. I just let myself in and hopped right up the stairs.” A smile played about Timothy’s lips, a smile borne up by memory, by a closeness, perhaps, that had once existed and would never exist again. As Ed watched, the smile disappeared. Who could smile, remembering recent events? Timothy hung his head and pressed the palms of his hands against his eyes. “Shit,” he whispered.

Ed leaned close, so the warmth of his arm pressed against Timothy’s cool, bony arm, frail and hanging out of an oversized T-shirt sleeve. “Take your time.”

Timothy shook his head. “I don’t know if I can do this.” His voice had suddenly gone hoarse.

Ed placed a hand on Timothy’s shoulder and squeezed. “Sure you can.”

Just when the pause seemed to linger a little too long, as if Timothy would never find his tongue and speak again, he started. “You know, I’ve always believed I have psychic abilities. Nothing too loony or anything, but now I doubt it. Because I felt nothing as I went up the stairs. Not a thing. You know what I was thinking about?” he asked, then, more urgently, “Do you know what I was thinking about?” The voice became shrill, forcing Ed to give some sort of reply.

“What?”

“I was thinking about how I wanted pancakes! Pancakes, and Tony was lying in there…” Timothy bit his lower lip, and Ed could see how hard he was trying to hold everything back.

Ed also knew how much the guy wanted him to let him off the hook, to tell him he could do this later if he wanted. But his newly honed detective’s instincts told him that if he did that, details would be forgotten or rearranged by a cooler and more rational mind. But the details that seemed bizarre or out of place could be just the information Ed might need to put the puzzle together. “Just go on. It’ll do you good to get it all out.”

“I put my key in the door and went in. It was quiet in there, but I just figured Tony was sleeping. That’s the way it happened half the time anyway. So I sat down. There were a coupla magazines on the coffee table, so I put up my feet and started working through the Gay Chicago classifieds. You wouldn’t believe some of the bizarre shit people will advertise for, shit they’ll do for strangers sight unseen.” Timothy stared up at the white-hot sky, as if the rest of his story were written there.

Ed glanced at the same sky and felt cold in spite of the heat, imagining Timothy Bright in the living room while a corpse lay in the next room, mutilated and steeping in his own blood.

“Um, so I got up to get some coffee. I knew where everything was, and I knew Tony wouldn’t mind. I knew Tony would need a cup when he got up, just as much as he’d need a smoke…” Timothy’s voice caught, and he choked back a sob. He bit his lip and continued. “Anyway, on my way out to the kitchen, I decided I needed to pee before I got started.”

And that was when Timothy Bright’s face went blank. It was almost as if some sort of cover slid down over his features. Color and emotion drained from his face, and his eyes went utterly blank. He began to tremble.

In spite of himself, and knowing it was against everything he’d learned as a detective on the force, Ed slid his arm around Timothy, gave his shoulder a hard squeeze.

The action did not faze Timothy Bright. He continued to stare with a deadness in his gaze that was chilling.

After a while, he turned to Ed. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t think I can go on.” He bit his lower lip to quell the trembling. “I can’t relive this. I’ll go out of my mind.”

Questioning like this was always the hardest part of Ed’s job. The homosexuality the two men shared made it harder, for some reason Ed couldn’t quite fathom. He wanted nothing more than to tell Timothy Bright to forget it, to go home and mourn the loss of his friend. “Timothy, you have to go on. Number one, it’s going to do you good to get it out.” Ed shook his head, hating his job for just a moment. “And number two, because if you don’t, I’ll have to take you down to the station, which will probably be a lot less pleasant than sitting here.” All of this was true, but it didn’t stop Ed from feeling like a ghoul, a traitor. “Just take your time. When you’re ready, I’ll listen. And hey, if you wanna cry or anything, don’t be embarrassed. It happens all the time.”

Timothy stared at him. He nodded slowly. “I had to pee, and I turned around. I went into the bathroom, expecting nothing more than Tony’s usual mess.” He started crying then, really crying, warm tears flowing and his nose running. “What do I need to tell you this for? You saw yourself, didn’t you? Tony was lying there in the tub in his own blood, with his dick cut off and his fingers cut off. It felt like he was looking at me, staring at me. Do you know how that felt? Could you even imagine? I thought he was looking at me. Me! As if I could help him or something.”

Timothy lowered his head and covered his face. His shoulders moved up and down with the force of his grief. After a while, he was again able to talk. “That’s when I walked into the living room and called 911.” He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “I never called it before; I thought it was a stupid TV show.”

“Did you notice anything odd, anything unusual?”

“You mean besides Tony’s bloody corpse in the bathtub?” Timothy shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t know. I got kind of upset, you know. I wasn’t exactly taking in the details.”

“I know it’s hard, Timothy.”

Timothy massaged his temples. “I don’t know. The phone felt sticky.”

“Sticky?”

“Yeah, tacky, you know. I don’t know why. I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”

There was activity to the east of them then. Neighbors and passersby had gathered outside. Channels Two, Five, and Seven had all managed to get wind of what was going on while Ed interviewed Timothy and had pulled their vans up amid the whirling blue lights of squad cars and emergency vehicles.

They were carrying the body out, sheathed in an opaque black plastic bag. Timothy looked too, and the sight caused him to suck in his breath. “Oh God,” he whimpered. “Oh no. Oh no.”

Ed stood and groped in his inside breast pocket for a card. He held it out for Timothy. When he didn’t take it, Ed pressed the card into his hand, curling his fingers around it. “You hang onto this. If you think of anything else, call me. Day or night. My cell is on there, as well, so you can call me there too. And….” Ed bit his lip. “And, um, don’t plan on going anywhere for the next few days. Okay? I’m afraid we’ll be needing to talk to you again.”

“Sure.” Timothy clutched the card and stared at the pavement, where a group of red ants swarmed over a melting Popsicle.