Day 15

They kept on talking for another two hours, but were eventually interrupted when Danny heard his parents return from The Aspens; through the open window overlooking the entrance front of the house, he could hear his father's voice complaining about something.

Ash noticed Danny tense up at the sound of the voices, and fell silent, joining into the listening... the sound of tires on gravel, a segmented automatic garage door opening, car doors opening and closing, and a querulous male voice, too far away to make out the words but close enough to hear the irritation, answered by a quieter female voice.

"I hope I didn't park wrong," Ash said when the voices disappeared and Danny visibly relaxed, as if the string that was holding him on point had been cut, "I tried to get as close to the edge of the gravel as possible."

"Unless you left your car horizontally across the driveway, you're fine," Danny assured him, "He's just complaining because he wasn't expecting a car in the drive, and anything he's not expecting is cause for alarm."

"I should probably go," Ash said, sensing that the spell had been broken by the arrival of Danny's parents; for though Danny was no longer listening intently, he seemed a little more distant and guarded than he had been before.

"Wouldn't you like to stay for dinner?" Danny offered, "We usually just forage among the leftovers on Sunday, but I suspect Tia has more experiments to dispose of."

"No, thanks," Ash got up and started gathering his things, "My Mom will be expecting me pretty soon, we usually eat around seven and I didn't tell her I'd be gone this afternoon. Would you like me to pick up your homework for you tomorrow?"

"Oh, that's so sweet of you!" Danny was touched by the offer, "You don't have to go to all that trouble."

"It's no trouble," Ash said simply, tucking his long hair behind his ear and looking at Danny with both eyes.

"You're very kind," Danny assented quietly, aware that this gesture meant more than it seemed on the surface... he knew it meant that they were now friends, and that Ash trusted him.

"I'll see you tomorrow then," Ash shifted uncomfortably, apparently unsure if he should shake hands or hug or just wave.

"Tomorrow," Danny put out his hand, thinking that would be the easiest form; Ash had a strong grip but his hand was small and delicate -- it was like holding a live bird. The other boy smiled and scuttled out of the room with his bag and jacket dragging after him.

When Mrs. Espinosa came up with Danny's dinner, she helped him into the bathroom to eliminate and wash up before eating, and promised to come back before bedtime to help him take a bath.

"Tia! I'm too old for you to be giving me a bath," Danny was slightly shocked by the suggestion.

"You think you can get in and out of the tub with your foot like that, and not get it wet?" she challenged him.

"It's not a cast, Tia. It's made of steel, I'm pretty sure it can take a little water. Or else I can just take it off."

"No you won't take it off, the doctor didn't say you could," Mrs. Espinosa scolded him, "I'll draw your bath and go get a bath-stool so you can keep it elevated. You can do the rest, Mister Grown-up."

"Thank you, Tia," Danny reached out and grabbed her hand, pressing it to his cheek, "Thank you for taking care of me today, I really appreciate it."

"Anything for you, my sweet boy," she leaned down and kissed him on the forehead, "Now you eat that up and I'll be back in an hour to help you with your bath."

*****

The next day was unseasonably warm, and Danny's attic room was roasting hot by midday, so he asked Mr. Espinosa to help him onto the sleeping porch outside his room; it was essentially outdoors, open on three sides to catch the breezes coming off the lake, with transparent cotton gauze screens to keep the insects out. The handyman not only made up Danny's cot into a comfortable daybed with pillows and quilts, but he even brought up some wicker lawn furniture, chairs for visitors and tables to put his books and stereo and computer on, to turn the empty space into a nice little room.

Danny was happily ensconced on the porch near the rail, shirtless in gray and white floral board shorts, looking out over the lake, sipping a lemonade and reading Persuasion; he heard someone enter his bedroom, and thinking it was Ash, called out, "I'm out here, come join me!"

"Good afternoon, Mr. Vandervere," Officer Pete Kelly stepped through the French door onto the porch, his peaked hat in his hand.

"Oh! Officer Kelly! I wasn't expecting you," Danny smiled graciously through his surprise, "May I offer you some lemonade?"

"No, thank you. How's the ankle?" the man seated himself in an armchair facing Danny.

"Much better, thank you; but Mrs. Espinosa thinks I need to keep it elevated at all times and has kept me bedridden since I came home Saturday. I'm thinking about bribing my doctor to tell her to let me get up."

"Have you given any more thought to the questions I asked you earlier? About your relationship with Mr. Janacek?"

"I want to tell you something," Danny hesitated, staring into his glass, "But I don't want it to get me into trouble, and I don't want it to prejudice you against Mr. Janacek."

"You were having an affair with him," Officer Kelly guessed what Danny wanted to say.

"How did you find out?" the boy was wide-eyed with shock.

"I didn't, I just now guessed."

"Well, how did you guess?" Danny wondered.

"I know Janacek was gay; and though it's hard to tell at your age, I think you may be gay as well," the policeman shrugged, smiling to show the boy he wasn't being judgemental, "It's the first thing that came to mind when you said you didn't want to prejudice me against Janacek. It is very easy to construct a prejudice when a grown man seduces a boy your age."

"It was I who seduced him," Danny insisted hotly.

"Why?" Officer Kelly wanted to know.

"I don't know," Danny shrugged, looking back toward the lake, "Because he was there, like Everest. I could see he was attracted to me, and I liked him, so I pursued him."

"I have a hard time believing that."

"Oh, come now, Officer," Danny looked at the man sternly, "You know perfectly well that a man like Mr. Janacek would never in his wildest dreams think he had a chance with a boy like me. I'm beautiful, young, and extremely sexy if I do say so myself; and I belong to the most powerful family in town. He wouldn't ever have approached me, he would have just kept gazing and fantasizing. But with my looks and my priveleges, if I want something, I simply get it. That probably makes me a not-very-nice person, but I can't have you thinking ill of Mr. Janacek. He was a very sweet man and he resisted me as hard as he could, but I bulldozed right over his moral convictions just to have my own way."

"Oh, hey, don't cry," Officer Kelly started forward with alarm, looking around for a box of tissues, "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Danny snuffled into a napkin from the lemonade tray, "I'm a bit of a crybaby, the waterworks come on without much prompting."

"Well, then, to return to the main point," the policeman measured his words, hoping he wouldn't set the boy off again, "Is there anyone who knew about this affair? Any of your friends, or his?"

"I never breathed a word of it to anyone until just now," Danny said after thinking it over carefully, "And I can't imagine him telling anyone, it would put him in a terribly awkward position."

"Do you have a boyfriend who might have found out?"

"I have a boyfriend," Danny said, not very pleased with the connotation, "But he doesn't know anything about the people I'm sleeping with. And if he did, he'd just break up with me. He's very sweet and gentle, he scoops up spiders on pieces of paper and carries them outside instead of squishing them; he'd never be able to strangle a man, and certainly wouldn't be able to drag a dead body through the woods. Did Mr. Janacek have a boyfriend? You say you know he was gay."

"There is a man he lived with. I don't yet know the exact nature of their relationship, but I assume they were lovers, or partners, or what-have-you. He hasn't said he knew anything about you. Nevertheless, I am looking into his whereabouts on the night in question. But in the meantime, I need to follow all leads."

"Of course,' Danny agreed, "And speaking of which, I have been thinking about the other question you asked me, if I could think of why someone would leave the body where it was... and I have a theory."

"OK, shoot."

"What if the killer was trying to drag the body into the lake, intending to send it to the bottom where it wouldn't be found for months, and then to sweep over his tracks to conceal the place the murder happened? But I interrupted him before he got all the way down the path. What if the killer was right there where the dragging trail stopped when I came around the bend, and he didn't get a chance to finish the job or cover his tracks? I made a lot of noise, screaming and carrying on, a herd of elephant could have been in those woods and I wouldn't have heard them."

"That's a very good theory," the officer was impressed, "It covers a lot of the factors and is wonderfully feasible. But the forensic evidence shoots it down in one: the body was there where you found it for at least three hours, the dew had settled on his back and the surrounding ground, but not underneath the body, and the weather people assure us the dew settled between three-thirty and four a.m."

"That's very inconvenient," Danny quoted from a movie, Evil Under the Sun, though the officer didn't get the reference.

"Time of death was most likely a little after midnight, and there is some evidence that the body lay in the underbrush near where he was killed for a few hours before being moved."

"That's awful," Danny shivered at the thought.

"The place where he was killed is a well-known cruising ground," Officer Kelly watched Danny closely to see if he knew what that phrase meant.

"I've heard about it," Danny admitted frankly, "from several men I know. I've never been up there, though."

"On a temperate Friday night, the place would have been jumping, so to speak; whoever killed Mr. Janacek would have to hide the body immediately, or it would have been discovered much earlier. Which leads me back to my theory, that someone put that body there so you would find it."

"I just honestly can't imagine why anyone would do that," Danny shook his head in disbelief, "What possible purpose would be served?"

"It might have been a warning," the officer suggested, "or, as I pointed out earlier, a gift."

"Well, then, it was a failure either way. I can't take a warning when I don't know what I'm being warned against, and I am certainly not grateful for such a gift."

"Perhaps the warning is to keep it in your pants," the officer joked.

"Do you think so?" Danny didn't hear the humor in the man's voice, and took the suggestion seriously, "I hadn't thought about that. Do you think any of the other guys I've been with are in danger?"

"Oh, I don't think so," Officer Kelly tried to reassure him, though making a note of the suggestion and the reaction to consider later, "Though on the topic, and please don't think this a purient question, how many guys have you been with?"

"I can't say it out loud," Danny blushed, "You'll think I'm a horrible slut."

"While it's really none of my business, I feel it's my duty as a police officer to suggest you refrain from seducing any more adults," the policeman said as gently as he could, "Stick to your own age, OK? You'll be a lot safer."

"It will break their hearts," Danny laughed ruefully, "But I think you may be right. It isn't nice to put men in such a legally perilous position. Though I think you've been here long enough now to know that my father would never allow you to prosecute someone if it meant my name being put in the record. Yet he could hurt them in other ways, so I think I should take your advice."

"That's a good lad," the officer reached over and tousled Danny's hair, a gesture he'd been resisting but couldn't hold back any longer.
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