So Weeps the Willow - 15. Discovery - Chapter 5

Discovery 5

Eddie Warner was the opposite of Natalie Howe; he was strikingly handsome, almost too much so. He was about six feet tall, slim, though rangy with muscles that were proportional to his build. His face was fine-boned, but with a broad, jutting chin and high cheekbones that gave his smooth, tan skin enough edges to be masculine. His smile was charming, but he looked devastated. Even though his features were lovely, he looked smudged with grief.

Still chatting on his cellphone, Murphy brought the young man into the conference room. Rush soaked up the witness’s sadness. The detective introduced himself and Warner shook his hand. He sniffled and wiped his eyes repeatedly as they waited for the associate to finish his phone call. Rush felt as truly uncomfortable as the other man looked.

“Sorry about that. It was my boss, so I really couldn’t avoid taking it,” Murphy explained, taking his seat at the conference table. “Mr. Warner, we are so sorry for your loss.”

“I can’t believe it. Jake was so upbeat when I talked to him. We were going to try and make things work. Since he’d stopped drinking, he was so much happier. That’s why we broke up in the first place, and now he’s gone.” The man started leaking tears all over again.

“When you saw him the night before his death, you mean?” Rush wondered, because this had happened a while ago. Why was he now reacting so dramatically now?

“Yeah,” Warner choked out. “We broke up a few months before it happened, because I couldn’t stand him getting wasted every night. I never stopped loving him. I just couldn’t watch him throw his life away. Now he’s gone.”

Murphy looked as uncomfortable as Rush felt. He pushed the box of tissues over to the upset man. “I’m so sorry.”

“Tell us about the night before the accident,” the detective ventured. “Did he call you or…?”

“We made plans, but I got busy at work and couldn’t see him. So, the night before he was found, I saw how upset he was and called him. He said come over. I did and we had a really good conversation about him going back to school. Jake was feeling so good and he was putting his life back together.”

Rush realized the young man was rambling a bit. “You went to his apartment and saw him?”

“Yes, I called him after I realized how he was riled up, and he said to come over. I drove to his apartment and we sat at his counter and talked. He showed me the email from his college advisor. I can’t believe he’s gone. I mean, he was so excited to get back to work. I think that experiment of his really made the difference.”

“What experiment?” Rush asked, confused.

“His sobriety. He stopped drinking and recorded his thoughts and feelings. That got him thinking about going back to school. Jake is really smart. He always did well, at least until the drinking took hold of him. I couldn’t watch him drown in booze like his mother did.”

With that, Warner started crying again, whimpering like a child. Rush saw Murphy get up from his chair and gesture to the detective. Rush stood and joined the attorney at the other side of the room.

“I don’t know if he has anything to add to your investigation. He’s obviously a mess.”

Rush agreed, but added. “Let him settle down for a few minutes, then I’ll see if he can continue.”

Murphy said, “According to the police report, Warner and Odgen met at eleven at night and talked for about thirty minutes or so. When Warner left, the victim told him he was going to bed.”

“I don’t remember seeing that. Where is that in the report?”

Murphy reached into his briefcase and grabbed a folder. He thumbed through a few pages, then pulled out a slim document. “This was in the supplemental police report. It was only after Warner stepped forward that they knew about him.”

Rush took the report from him and began reading, “What did the report say about the heater” he asked, “Did Warner see it?”

“No, he denied seeing it. He said the apartment was pretty cool, and the victim was wearing a hoodie and sweats. He claimed he’d never seen a heater like that at Jake’s apartment.”

“They never lived together, did they?”

“No, but Warner said he spent many nights last winter in the victim’s apartment and never saw it before. It’s in the witness statement in the report.” The associate looked over Rush’s shoulder at the witness. The detective turned and saw Warner was silently sitting at the table, hands folded, and seemed to have calmed down.

“Do you want to try one more time?” Murphy asked.

“Yeah, I better follow up. If he never saw the heater, it’s doubtful he has much to add, but I have to ask.”

Murphy nodded and the two men walked back over to the witness.

“I’m sorry about that.” Warner sniffed as the attorney and detective settled at the table. “I’m still in shock I think.”

“It’s okay,” Rush assured him. “It’s hard when a loved one passes.”

“Thanks,” Warner mumbled, wiped his eyes and looked at the detective. He asked, “Do you think if I’d stayed that night, Jake would be here right now? He asked me to stay, and I said we should take it slow.”

Murphy answered him quickly. “If you stayed, you might be dead too.”

“If I’d been in bed with him, he wouldn’t have needed that heater,” Warner said, his voice trailing off.

“You can’t think that way,” Rush said. “According to your witness statement, you’d never seen that heater before?”

Warner shook his head, and whispered ‘no’. “There is radiator heat in his apartment. In fact, sometimes in the winter when the day was mild, he’d crack the window to let in some fresh air. The building is always really warm.”

“The boiler wasn’t on yet,” Murphy said. “Ostensibly, that’s why he needed the portable heater.”

“I don’t know.” The man was swallowing back tears again. “When I saw he was upset, I knew I had to see him, you know, in person. Now, I wish I’d never left.”

Rush thought maybe the man was off on a tangent again. He had to ask though. “You keep saying how you ‘saw’ how upset he was. Were you Skyping or something? How did you ‘realize’ Ogden was having a hard time?”

Warner looked a little surprised at the question. At first, he just blinked and swallowed. “I read it in his blog. Like I said, he’d been doing an experiment with quitting drinking and recording his efforts in a kind of online journal. I read he was upset with me, so I called him.”

Rush looked at the attorney. Murphy was as shocked as the detective.

“You mean there’s a record of the last few days? There’s something he’s written?" Rush asked.

“Yeah, let me show you.”

***

Rush finished drinking his glass of iced tea. He fidgeted under his man’s gaze. Ben had been at him for the past couple of hours, trying to get him to talk about the case. In a way, it was good to have a sounding board. Ben created a sense of urgency for him. Why he needed that sensation was unknown, but he felt something was happening. He needed to process things, the blog, the ex-boyfriend who visited him last, the feeling something was missing. Ben’s presence and badgering was a welcome distraction.

When he’d been with the agency, there was a kind of cadence or rhythm to a case. You could sit on facts for months fixating, and not sense anything had changed. Then, from time to time, he’d retire a case and then another case would suddenly become resolved. Popping up from nowhere, it was surprising. And bewildering. It seemed weird, but the truth of the matter, like justice, rolled like waters and only in accordance to forces beyond man’s control; gravity, weather, physics, and the hearts of man. All this was very high-minded and philosophical, but it didn’t mean much, well, literally.

This case, which wasn’t even technically a case, felt like it was sliding into action sooner rather than later.

“What did you find?” Ben asked, again, this time waving a wire whisk at him. Flecks of white béchamel dotted the placemat in front of him. There were splatters of the white stuff on Ben’s apron as well.

Clay was also looking at him, heavy-lidded and pretending the slab of cake under his fork interested him. There were red dabs of compote on his lips. The teen licked his lips, cleaning the cherry sauce and flecks of yellow cake from his face. There was a glob of creamy white ice cream balanced on the fork and poised before his lips. He finished, swallowed, and set the silverware down with a clank.

“Yeah, what’s with you tonight? I heard you talking about this case you’re researching and some interview that’s got you all rattled. What’s that about?”

Rush smiled and shook his head. “Nothing’s going on. Don’t you have homework, Clay?”

The teen picked up the utensil, licked the coated tines, and lifted the large plate still laden with dessert off the table. “Can I finish my dinner in my room then?” he asked, roughly exaggerating his tone.

Rush could see the glint of amusement in the boy’s eyes and nodded. Ben flicked the whisk at him dismissing Clay. Quickly, he exited the room.

Ben sat down at the table and looked into Rush’s eyes. “What did you find?”

Rush considered lying, but he knew Ben would know. He finally opened his mouth to speak.

“The guy who died left an online journal of sorts. He had been blogging about quitting drinking.”

Ben gestured for him to continue, impatiently, as if to say, he already knew that part. Well, he did.

“Most of it was about how he had a hard time stopping at first, but he soon got his drinking under control. After he did, the last day, there are people he IDs as having issues with him. It changes things, I think.” Rush drank from the melting remnants of the tea, mostly water.

“How does it alter things?” Ben asked. He furrowed his brow.

Rush didn’t answer at first. He took another sip, but the water was now gone. Only the tinkling of the remaining ice broke the silence in the room.

“I think there were people who didn’t like him much. I think there’s more to this than a guy dying from carbon monoxide poisoning from a kerosene heater in September. It’s … fishy.”

Ben sat up quickly. “You think it’s a murder?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. It’s just not right. There are things that seem so weird.” Rush stopped talking because his words couldn’t convey his impressions, not accurately. The dead man’s note about the bucket disturbed him. It didn’t bother him particularly for generic reasons. It bothered him because it bothered Jake. ‘The tales dead men tell’, he thought from out of nowhere.

Ben took Rush’s hand and patted it, like he did quite often. “What is it? You know if you say things out loud, they start making more sense.”

“Or they sound crazy,” Rush chuckled. Then he nodded and looked at Ben’s face, but not his eyes. He couldn’t do that right now. “I will tell you, but you have to promise not to laugh. If I say it and it sounds nuts, at least give me that, okay?”

Ben promised him.

It came out of the detective in a kind of explosion. “There was a bucket the night before he died and it shouldn’t have been there!”

Ben reacted automatically; he pulled back. “What do you mean?”

Rush allowed his argument to continue, unrestricted. “Jake writes in his blog there was an empty bucket in his apartment. He wrote that he didn’t know how it got there.”

Ben tilted his head and said, “Maybe the landlord or the maintenance people left it there. It’s not an unusual item. Most everyone has a bucket, and it’s not strange for people fixing things in an apartment to use one. Like for a plumbing job or for washing something. I don’t get why this is bothering you.”

Rush continued without pause. “If Jake had a maintenance issue or a plumbing deal, he would’ve mentioned it. Then he wouldn’t have said it was there, because it wasn’t something that mattered. Instead, he gave the impression the bucket shouldn’t have been there because it was out of place. It was something incongruous to his life.”

“Was there something in the bucket that bothered him?” Ben continued, “maybe it had water or smelled or, oh -- I don’t know.”

“No. It was empty. That’s what made Jake anxious I think. You see, if you read the reports, you know the apartment was very small, an efficiency, and there wasn’t a lot of room. If it was his bucket or something left by the caretakers, he’d have made a point of it, somehow, or not. Jake wrote it was odd there was the existence of a bucket, with nothing in it, left in his apartment.” Rush paused and looked over Ben’s shoulder. “Do you see where I’m confused?”

Ben sighed. “I guess I’m lost. I don’t know what an empty bucket could mean. The guy died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a heater either he or someone he knew had tampered with. Damaging the shutoff switch is what killed him, so what does a pail have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know,” Rush answered, his voice trailing off. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything.”

“I thought talking about things would help,” Ben said. He stood up from the table, picked up the whisk, and walked to the sink. “Sorry.”

“No,” Rush said. “I think telling you helped. To be honest, I think Jake was right. There was no reason for an empty bucket to sit in his little studio apartment. No reason, whatsoever.”

Ben turned on the hot water and started washing the whisk.

Clay was around the corner listening. Rush had an interesting mystery. He loved mysteries.

Later that day

Ben finished answering a couple of new emails and filed away a letter from one of the firms they had contracts with. The letter had been addressed to Rush, and Rush only, thanking him for his work serving deposition notices to reluctant litigants. Most letters were written exclusively to Rush, who as the detective and listed name on record, seemed correct.

Ben was rarely named in letters or even emails. For the most part, it seemed he was absent in this partnership. No, he wasn’t absent. He was ‘the secretary’ or the ‘lackey’ in the minds of their clients.

It galled him sometimes.

He worked as hard as Rush, sometimes even harder on the skip traces, finding these deadbeats and losers. Rush would do the job, then get the credit. Ben was nothing more than his office drone.

No. “Stop that.” Ben heard his voice out loud.

“What?” Clay asked from the doorway of the office.

“Nothing. I was just feeling sorry for myself,” Ben answered without turning. He could feel a tickle in his throat. The tickle was expanding into his cheeks.

“Are you okay?” Clay asked, coming into the room. Ben felt the teen’s arms around his shoulders, his cheek on the top of his head. He felt the kiss of Clay’s lips through his hair.

He sighed.

“When I start feeling down, I listen to music. It helps sometimes.”

Ben laughed a little, thinking of the booming, disjointed hip hop that would echo out of Clay’s room after a long day or when he’d been told ‘no’ about something. That’s the kind of therapy teens needed.

“Thanks Clay. I doubt listening to Notorious B.I.G. or the Black-eyed Peas would help me much.”

“Who?” Clay asked.

Ben turned, and the teen giggled and said, “Just kidding. I know who all the old bands are.”

“They’re not that old,” Ben smiled. “Well, maybe not old, old.”

Clay pulled back and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re not still upset about the guy who kissed you and pretended you didn’t exist, are you?”

Ben shook his head, but then considered. Was the kid onto something? Why had his reaction been so severe especially given how it was so long ago?

“Because, we love you, Rush and I. We’d never pretend you don’t matter.” Clay grinned and trotted out of the room.

Ben looked at the computer screen. Blank. Empty. Without definition, form, or expression.

He thought about Rush’s confession about this new case, the poor guy who died of CO poisoning. Earlier today, Rush had poured his thoughts out for Ben to analyze. He’d listened to each and every comment. Rush never treated him like a lesser partner. Maybe the clients ignored Ben, but certainly Rush was there engaging him all the time.

Clay was the same. Clay cared enough to make him feel better, part of things, not his caretaker, but his friend. The teen saw he was hurting and tried to help.

Clay worried about him. The kid who’d been tricked out as a young teen by his older, pervert boyfriend, was concerned about him. The child who was ignored by his father and kept at arm’s length by his mother, approached him and offered his comfort and care.

Ben shook his head.

He knew exactly what had bothered him about remembering Tanner and the hurt of being ignored, forgotten. For the first time, ever, he had something real. Rush depended on him. Rush loved him and wanted him in every part of his life. Clay cared for him, listened to him, and needed him.

Ben was starting to rely on them too. He wanted Rush’s arms around him, his words and his presence. He liked Clay’s hugs, his excitement, and his constant craving for attention. They cared for each other, and that was far scarier than it should be. Ben overreacted because the fear was real. They all needed each other, and yet, what did that mean? They were three men living in a house together, Rush being Clay’s foster parent and Ben being his partner.

Rush was at the center of things, but who was he? What was Ben except Rush’s business and life partner and Clay’s …what? Clay’s friend? Clay’s semi-foster parent? This uncertainty was driving him nuts.

Ben heard his phone ring, but he knew that wasn’t the end of his ponderings, or his doubts.

***

Twyla finished cleaning out her mother’s sink, rinsing the cleaning powder residue down the drain. Right now, Winnie was sleeping -- well, passed out, on her couch.

Wiping her hands dry, she leaned back against the counter, tiredly. Life at home had been so challenging, dealing with her drunken mother was a respite, and realizing that made her sad.

It was so hard watching her husband struggle with his fatigue, nausea, and depression from the chemo.

This was preferable, because here she could clean her mother’s filthy kitchen, remember her brother’s death, and not worry about Steve. It was different. It was separate from her life with the kids and medical treatments and a future that looked lonely and bleak.

It wasn’t going well. Nothing really was.

Looking around the room, Twyla noted the peeling paint, grease-stained tiles, and smelled the smoky residue of tobacco. It was a pathetic room, messy even after her cleaning.

Twyla sighed and started to leave the apartment. The sight of a drawer partially open made her pause. She tried to close it, and something caught, jamming it. Pushing it firmly didn’t help. Something was lodged in the track of the drawer runner.

She pulled the drawer out and then slammed it back in. Once again, it thudded and clunked, without closing completely.

Twyla shook her head and almost left the room. She couldn’t though. It was a task uncompleted, and that bugged her. What was wedged in that drawer?

She pulled the handle and at first saw nothing, except…what was that? It was a small, piece of paper bunched up in the back of the drawer. It was holding up the works, as it were.

Twyla tugged on it, trying to pull it free. The wad of paper was very tightly fixed in place. She wiggled it, and finally it moved. One last pull released the object. She was about ready to throw it in the garbage when a moan erupted from the living room.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Winnie asked, calling to her. Silence followed for a moment. “I need a drink.”

Winnie whined, her words slurred. “I miss my son.”

Twyla thrust the paper in her jacket pocket and hurried out of the apartment. She needed to see her husband, and get away from that woman.