Past Sins

Chapter 1 The jagged ring of the landline next to my bed startles me, and I shudder awake, my heart pounding like a scared rabbit. Half asleep, I fumble in the dark for my phone. “Yeah,” I say into the wrong end of it, and flip it upright so my mouth is connected with the mouthpiece. I mumble, “f**k,” but I can hear my superior rattling on in my ear about a dead body. “Ballinger?” the chief of police, Danny Barton, says. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m here.” I knuckle my eyes and squint through the hazy shroud of sleepiness to the time clock radio on my nightstand. Two A.M. “Where?” I ask my boss who sounds chipper, as if he’s slept for ten hours. I hear voices from other officers and radios squawking in the background. “Twelve Firewood Road. Apartment two. By the railroad tracks.” I want to tell him I know where it is; I’ve lived in this backwoods town for five years. But I let the chief ramble. He likes to hear his own voice: a tough-as-nails narcissist, and womanizer. As the chief talks, I hear the guy I met at Luscious’ bar last night sitting next to me, and I feel the ends of his sandpaper fingers brushing my naked back. I lean forward and close my eyes, and the incessant nattering of Chief Barton’s explanation of tonight’s grisly crime scene makes me edgy. I knead my sweaty forehead. I can feel the oscillating draft of cool air from the floor fan blowing across the swampy-damp room. My skin prickles. Chief Barton’s deep voice drills the facts of the case: The killer’s M.O., religion motivated. A dead girl, post-adolescence, her body positioned on the hardwood floor inside a pentagram, outlined in blood. He tells me she’s clutching a rosary. He says, “I’ve tried to pry it from her hands and bag it for evidence, but it’s affixed with glue.” My head is still fuzzy with sleep, and I want to pull the bed sheet over my head and forget about my job and the crazy people in it. I feel the bed sheet slipping from around my waist as my night visitor curls his body up against mine. My body tenses from his touch. Rain slashes the glass doors leading outside to the balcony. I can smell the musky heat of my one-night stand behind me, and feel his moist mouth on my lower back. His kisses are gentle, but he is making me increasingly anxious. I shift, sigh, and reach out to put a hand between us as if I’ve got an itch to scratch. He recoils back onto his side, and I hear him moaning and complaining. Chief Barton is still talking, warning me not to eat before I arrive at the scene. I tell him I don’t usually eat until the sun comes up. I’m grumpy, and hate being woken in the early hours. But murder never takes a f*****g holiday. “I’ll be there within the hour,” I say. I hang up before he begins to protest, and I stay hunched over on the edge of the bed, my head hanging in my hands. The gears of the fan rattle in the corner of the room, rain spraying in from the opened balcony doors. I hear raccoons in the trees, and a bicycle circling down the street. Then Scott breaks the silence next to me. “Another nightmare?” I let out a long sigh and shake my head. But he doesn’t see me answering him in the dark. So when he repeats the question, his tone edgy and annoyed as if I’ve ignored him, I say, “No, it’s work.” After a long pause, he asks, “Thanks for letting me stay here last night.” I reach for my water glass on the nightstand. There is just enough tepid fluid to wet my dry lips. “I need to go,” I say, flipping on the lamp next to the bed, globing our faces in honey light. I walk across the room for my uniform pants and shirt. My Glock is in the bottom drawer where I keep my socks and underwear. “You’ve got to go,” I say, half turning to him in the amber pool of light. “Now?” he says, annoyed. “It’s two o’ clock in the morning.” I bend down to pick up his muscle shirt and pink frilly shorts from the floor and toss them to him on the bed. He sighs, deeply frustrated. I sit on the footstool to tie my boots. “Can I see you again?” he asks, pulling his T-shirt over the grooves of his swimmer’s build. I pretend I don’t hear him. When he stands to get into his shorts, he says, “I really like you, Jack.” I swallow back ingrained images of my deadbeat father, the man responsible for my dismal childhood. “Listen, Scott. I’m not somebody you want to be with.” “It’s Steve, and I don’t agree.” I clench my hands together until my knuckles pop. “It was a one-night stand. That’s all.” “Then why did you let me spend the night?” Anger swells inside me, and my father’s bearded face flashes across the veil of my thoughts. I don’t answer him. “Your generosity is overwhelming,” he says, grunting. I hear the sarcasm in his biting tone, as I stand and head to the closet for my raincoat. “We both need to go.” “Is it because of my pink hair?” Steve says, coming up behind me, puncturing my safe space with a hand on my back. I turn and gaze in his direction, trying not to make eye contact. “What?” “My hair? Is it too weird?” “No. Your hair isn’t the problem.” Steve fingers his Justin Bieber bangs. He is young enough to be my nephew. “It’s my favorite asset,” he says, trying to lighten the mood. “It’s not that.” “Then what?” A pause, then, “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me in public?” I hear my father whispering in the back of my mind, spewing his venomous hate and ignorance. Faggot. Loser. Waste of life. You won’t amount to anything. I grab my raincoat and climb into it. Turning to leave, grabbing my car keys on the kitchenette counter, I feel Steve’s hand on my arm. “Please, Jack. Give us a chance.” “I’m going to be late,” I say, pulling away from him and shutting off the fan and closing and locking the balcony doors. On my way past Steve, I turn off the light and show him the way out of my apartment. I lock the door and head down the carpeted corridor to the stairwell, Steve following a mile behind me, his footfalls heavy.