“Better than what I had before…’cause I didn’t have anyone before,” he said, pushing his half-empty plate away. He’d eaten more in the past half hour than he had in the past two days, and his stomach rebelled at shoving any more into it. “Frank was… kind of like just there. He’d tell me kind of what to do, how to get what I needed. Shit, when he found out I liked the drums, he hooked me up with all kinds of guys to teach me.”
“What about school? No college?” Connor chewed another mouthful and glanced at Forest’s plate. “You going to finish that?”
“Hell, no. You want it?” At Connor’s nod, he pushed the plate farther over.
“Thanks,” Connor said as he scraped Forest’s leftovers onto his plate. “So school?”
“Yeah, school,” Forest snorted. “I went. Kind of. I pulled a GED as soon as I could, then got out. College isn’t something I wanted to hook up into. I could barely go to high school. My head’s too busy. Too much damned noise, you know?”
How could he tell the cop about how he’d sit in class and hear the tap of feet on the floor and get frustrated from the lack of pattern? Even the scrape of markers on a whiteboard shattered his focus, especially when his history teacher bent over to pick up a dropped pen. The man’s ass had been extraordinary, and Forest couldn’t remember how many times he’d prayed for an earthquake to jostle the markers to the floor during a test.
Frank got it—the lack of focus on things Forest couldn’t get to stick in his head—and he’d been understanding when Forest trotted home a report card with a full range of the alphabet. He’d been great at math, aced the two business classes he’d taken, but the rest of it was crap. Even the music classes were a struggle from the moment he walked through the door and found his teacher had a fierce disdain for blues rhythms.
Forest watched in silent amazement as Connor reached for the pan of fried potatoes and helped himself to another two spoonfuls. “Hungry?”
“It’s been a long day,” the man grunted. “There wasn’t any sign of meth in the prelim lab tests, and the only Marshall we could shake out of the grapevine turned out to be a guy who’d been popped for possession a few days before. So either it was a case of mistaken identity or something else. I’m guessing something else because someone went through a hell of a lot of trouble to murder your da and then either hide it or cause some major shit around it. The question is who did it?”
“You said the guy who tipped you guys off is missing. Think he knows?”
“Don’t know,” Connor replied ruefully. “I’d like to tell you we’ll find him, but guys like him crawl back into the sewers like roaches when the lights are on.”
“Yeah, I know how that is,” he mumbled. There’d been a time when he was a roach. Now Forest wasn’t exactly sure where he stood in the sewer food chain, but the light didn’t bother him as much anymore. “This other inspector—the not your sister one—is she even looking?”
“Truthfully, downstairs is a crime scene now too, but it’s Kiki’s. You’re better off with her and Duarte.” Connor pointed to the frying pan in front of him. “Eat some bacon at least. You look like you need a couple of pounds on you.”
“Dude, I’m too full. Not even one thin mint hungry,” he complained back, pulling up his shirt to pat his stomach. “If I’m lucky, the whiskey’ll just go around it and get me drunk.”
He didn’t miss Connor’s glance at his stomach nor the man’s nostrils flaring. Tugging his shirt back down, Forest wondered if Connor thought he was hitting on him. Unable to think of anything to say, he reached for his glass and drained it, letting the whiskey burn through him.
“You can take the futon,” Forest offered, glancing over his shoulder at his living space. “I can move some of the kit to the side. I’ve got a roll of foam and a sleeping bag in the closet. I can crash on that.”
“Nah, I’ll take the floor.” Connor stood up and began to stack the dishes. Forest reached to help, but the man shook him off. “I’ll go wash the dishes, and then we can polish off that whiskey. Maybe I’ll even teach you some Gaelic.”
“But—”
“Let me do this, Forest,” the man rumbled. “Just this once, let someone else help you.”
“What? And get used to that?” He tried to laugh it off and moved to take the plate from Connor’s hand, but the man gently pushed him back onto the barstool.
“Yeah, maybe you should,” Connor murmured. “Maybe it’s time you learned what it’s like to be taken care of.”
Chapter 6
Kid’s good, Miki. Young but good. Frank’s finally got a decent drummer in here.
Yeah, Dave. He’s okay.
Keeps up with me fine. He could be your drummer after we hit it big and I go raise llamas or something.
You’re not going anywhere. And who the fuck in their right mind wants to raise llamas? They look like they’ll bite your head right off.
—Conversations at the Sound
THE LONG-GONE morning after the shooting, pancakes, and unrequited lust, Forest had woken up alone. Alone with two empty whiskey bottles, an empty sleeping bag smelling of Irish cop and bacon. His dick was rock hard, and it clearly remembered being so close to that cop but having nothing done to it.