Unquiet (8 page)

If only. If only.
If only he hadn’t lashed out at Eliot like that in the equipment shed, was able to put aside his selfish hurt and pride long enough to see Eliot’s actions weren’t normal. If only he’d tried harder to get Eliot’s parents to see there was something wrong with their son. If only he’d done something about Eliot’s blatant cries for help, like the night on the ledge.

“You were just a child yourself, Loren,” his therapist had told him, her voice gentle. “Your friend obviously has a serious mental illness, one that you in no way would have been equipped to handle. That was his parents’ job, not yours. The burden was theirs, not yours.”

At face value it made sense, and it was probably true, but Loren wasn’t able to forget hurling those vicious words at him—“you crazy son of a bitch”—how he’d turned his back on him when Eliot needed him the most.

The computer chirped a little tune at him as it finished booting up, flashing the password prompt, and Loren signed in with his badge number, mousing over to the search function. He typed “Eliot George Devlin” into the search window, plus Eliot’s date of birth. A few seconds later, Eliot’s current home address, telephone number, and rap sheet appeared, and Loren scrolled down in disbelief—drunk and disorderly, trespassing, criminal traffic, resisting arrest.
Jesus, Eliot
, he thought with sorrow, then in the next instant pounded his fist on the desk in a fury.

Why was this happening? Hadn’t anyone gotten Eliot any help in all these fucking years? Loren was able to go on with his life after what happened, and he’d managed to carve out some happiness for himself with both his career and a long-term relationship that came to an amicable end a few months ago. And meanwhile Eliot was down here in Phoenix, getting arrested, his life seemingly having gone nowhere.

There was one definite way he could think of to get some fucking answers, so he looked up Dr. Rebecca Devlin’s address and scrawled it on a piece of scratch paper before clicking into the police department’s shared database and opening up a blank CI Report form. For the next fifteen minutes, he typed busily as he proceeded to “wash” the information he’d gotten from Slats out into written form while it was still hot in his mind.

When it was finished, he wrote a short e-mail to his ATF handler and attached the report to it, sending it up the chain to the people far above his pay grade who made the decisions on where to go from here. He could tell Slats was a little disappointed when Loren didn’t pull his gun and run out of the bar while shouting into his cell phone for backup as he charged to the rescue. Unfortunately life wasn’t like
Law and Order
, everything tied up in a neat bow during a one-hour episode. Bureaucracy happened, just like shit did, and Loren suspected Slats was more motivated by the thought of some sort of reward than any true altruistic desire to help.

Powering down the computer at last, Loren snatched up Dr. Devlin’s address and banged out the door.

“HOW MUCH
you make tonight, sweet thing?”

Eliot looked up from sorting his cash into piles and shrugged. “About a thousand, give or take a few hundred.”

JJ stopped wiping down the bar top and leaned against it, sipping a beer. He poured Eliot a shot without being asked, and Eliot downed it before shoving one hundred dollars in the bartender’s direction. JJ grinned and stuffed it into his tip jar.

Eliot handed him another one hundred dollars. “Give this to Benny,” he said, meaning the DJ, and JJ winked at him before sliding the money into the cash drawer to give to the other man later. It was 3:00 a.m. and the club had just closed for the night, the last patron having been shooed out by JJ just minutes earlier.

JJ leaned back across the bar, reaching out and trailing his fingers over Eliot’s bare arm suggestively.

“Great set tonight, Angel. I think my dick has a permanent zipper mark imprinted on it, you had me so fucking hard.” Eliot smirked at him, and JJ leaned a little closer, whispering, “You gonna spread for me tonight, pretty boy? Come on, you know I had you beggin’ for it last time.”

“Nah,” Eliot said, just to be an asshole, seeing the flare of frustrated anger in JJ’s eyes and loving it. “I’m done here. See you next time, man.”

Eliot pushed back from the bar without another word and headed toward the deserted dressing room, where he scrubbed off the body glitter with some baby wipes and then pulled on a T-shirt and jeans, stuffing his cash in his front pocket.

He waved at the other two men as he left, ignoring JJ’s sullen pout, pushing through the front door into the night. It was mid-October, and the desert nights were cooler but still plenty warm. Eliot walked the streets for a little while, his sexual compulsions eased for the moment, all the alcohol he’d drunk keeping the black demon quiet.

He wandered into a twenty-four-hour bodega and bought two tall boys and a bottle of cheap vodka, slipping a couple of twenty-dollar bills into the bottom of the brown paper bag as he made his way to the park two blocks over. Actually “park” was a generous word for the patch of brownish green grass that stretched about half a block through this rundown old neighborhood, but Eliot knew just where he was going.

He walked over to one of the rickety benches that ringed the park, nudging the shopping cart full of trash and other bits and pieces of a shattered life out of the way so he could sit down. A man with long matted gray hair sat on the other end of the bench, rocking, muttering to himself, and Eliot perched next to him, ignoring the stench of a body that probably hadn’t seen soap in months.

He pulled the tall boys out of the bag and set them aside before unscrewing the cap on the bottle of vodka and folding the brown paper bag down around it so just the opening showed through the top. Eliot leaned closer and put the whole thing in the other man’s shaking hands. Seeing he wouldn’t be able to lift it to his mouth without dropping it, he wrapped his own fingers around the man’s filthy hands and helped him guide it to his lips.

“That’s it, Sam,” Eliot murmured. “Take your medicine. And there’s some food money in the bag for when you’re feeling better. Don’t let anybody take it this time, just leave it in the bag, okay?”

The man took a few more gulps of vodka, and before long his hands steadied enough so he could hold the bottle on his own. Eliot let go of him and popped the top on one of his own cans of beer. Sam began muttering and rocking again as he drank, “Can’t find her. Can’t find her. I left and when I came back, she was gone. You seen her? She’s so sweet. So precious. You seen her?”

Eliot drank beer and sat next to the insane old homeless man, feeling the black demon roil restlessly, starting to whisper in his ear. The calm before the storm.

All of a sudden Sam grabbed his arm and leaned in, hissing, “Am I crazy? She said I’m crazy.”

Eliot gave a sad smile and patted Sam’s hand. “Yeah, man, we’re all crazy here.” Sam subsided and Eliot drank, wondering if anyone would bring
him
vodka when he was the one rocking on a bench in a forgotten park.

We’re all crazy here.

LOREN RANG
the doorbell and rapped on the front door to the large and impressive Scottsdale home, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. It wasn’t even 7:00 a.m., but Loren couldn’t wait any longer to talk to Eliot’s mother. He’d killed a few hours in a nearby diner, ordering a breakfast he didn’t touch, frustrated as hell he couldn’t just go over at 4:00 a.m. and roust her out of bed. He wasn’t a grief-stricken seventeen-year-old fool anymore, and he was going to fucking get some answers.

He heard the clicking of heels in the entryway, and then the door opened a fraction, a green eye peering out.

“Yes?” a feminine voice said, her tone wary. “What do you want?”

“Dr. Devlin, I’m Loren Smith. Do you remember me?”

The eye widened and the door swung open. Eliot’s mother stood there, dressed in a sharp navy-blue suit, perfectly coiffed, her mouth open in shock.

“Of course I remember you, Loren,” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“May I come in?”

“Well, I’m on my way to work. I have an important meeting with the chief of plastic surgery and I—”

“It won’t take long, Dr. Devlin.” Loren, as a cop, was used to insisting, and he took a step forward, forcing her to take a corresponding step backward or else have him tread on her toes. Her lips tightened a fraction but she gestured him to come inside.

“Of course,” she murmured. “Come have some coffee.” She spun on her heel and headed off toward what was presumably the kitchen. Loren pushed the front door closed behind him and followed the scent of a subtle but no doubt expensive perfume back into the depths of the house.

And what a house it was. Large vaulted ceilings, marble floors, a curving staircase that led up to the second floor. The kitchen Loren entered was bigger than his entire apartment, and Dr. Devlin gestured him to a barstool at the huge island in the center. Loren sat, waiting while Eliot’s mother poured him a cup of coffee he didn’t want, the gallons he’d already drunk at that diner roiling in his stomach. He took it, though, murmuring his thanks.

They sipped in silence for a moment before Dr. Devlin took a deep breath and asked, “Why are you here, Loren?”

“I saw Eliot last night, at a strip club,” he murmured, and Eliot’s mom closed her eyes, her lips trembling.

“He wasn’t a patron. He was onstage, dancing,” he added.

“And why were
you
there? What are you even doing here in Arizona?” she snapped, setting her coffee cup down with a clink, her eyes challenging. Loren just looked back at her steadily, and she couldn’t hold his gaze, turning her head away.

Loren didn’t owe her any goddamned explanations, but he said, “I’m on loan to the police department here, and I’m working undercover in a joint operation with the ATF. I was meeting a contact at this club. I saw Eliot, and he—he didn’t even seem to recognize me.” The words came out as a painful rasp, and it was his turn to swallow and look away. Eliot had been on his fucking
lap
, for Christ’s sake, grinding his crotch down into Loren’s, and there wasn’t a shred of recognition on his face.

Dr. Devlin looked at him again, her green eyes, so like Eliot’s, filled with a reluctant compassion. She picked up the cell phone at her elbow and made a call, murmuring something about pushing her meeting back an hour. When she hung up, she refreshed both of their coffees and said, “Come into the living room, Loren.”

He followed her into an enormous formal living room that looked to him like something straight out of a home decorating show. He didn’t mean to gape like a yokel, but it was hard not to. Expensive art hung on the walls, the blond and gleaming hardwood floors covered with plush Oriental rugs.

“You have a beautiful home,” he managed, just to be polite, and she murmured, “Thank you,” as they both settled into some antique wingback chairs. Loren hoped his chair would hold him, grimacing as it gave an alarming creak under his muscular weight.

“Dr. Devlin,” he began, and Eliot’s mother held up her hand.

“Please, Loren, call me Rebecca,” she said. “We’re both adults here.” He nodded, and she continued, “Loren, has anyone shared with you what Eliot’s diagnosis is?”

Loren shook his head, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice as he replied, “Nobody would talk to me after his hospitalization, remember?”

She bit her lip.
Loren
fucking remembered how he’d shown up every day at the Devlins’ front door the week after it happened, pleading for answers, begging for information. No one would tell him anything, just that Eliot was alive, until one day, beside himself with grief and frustration, Loren threw a punch at the front door and kicked over a few potted plants.

Louis Devlin, Eliot’s father, called the fucking cops, and Loren’s
own dad
showed up, having recognized the address when it came from the dispatcher over the police radio. He took a weeping Loren home, bandaging his torn and bloodied knuckles tenderly before letting his scared and brokenhearted son cry in his arms. If nothing else, at least the whole thing brought Loren closer to his parents.

He cleared his throat and said huskily, “But my therapist said it sounded to her like bipolar disorder.”

Rebecca nodded. “Yes, Bipolar Disorder Type 1. It used to be called manic depression. Do you know what that is?”

Loren clenched his teeth; goddammit, he wasn’t a fucking child. Of course he knew what that was, even if he wasn’t an expert. Hell, he’d arrested people before who were in the grip of a severe manic episode and were out of control.

All he said was “Yes. I know what that is.”

“Eliot is also rapid cycling, which can be much more difficult to treat. His moods shift very fast, and it’s hard to get his brain chemistry stabilized before it’s shifting again.”

“But it’s going on ten years, Dr.—Rebecca,” Loren said in a quiet voice. “I’ve seen his arrest record. His last arrest was just four months ago. Why isn’t he any better after all this time?”

“He’s been better, Loren,” she said, defensiveness dripping from her tone. “He’s had periods of remission, but they don’t last because he won’t stay compliant, and he won’t quit drinking. I can’t hold him down and force his pills into his mouth, or stop him from finding alcohol somewhere.”

Loren had plenty to say about that, but he could tell Rebecca was getting ready to shut down and maybe end the conversation, so he switched tactics.

“Tell me about what happened the night he tried to kill himself.” He saw her lips tighten. “Please, Rebecca. I was his best friend for twelve years, and I was completely pushed aside with no explanation, much less given a chance to come to terms with what happened.” She still didn’t answer, and Loren whispered, “I cared about him, Rebecca. So much.”

Her eyes met his, and Loren could see that there was a sheen of tears in them. “You were a very good friend to him, Loren,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you when you tried to articulate your concerns about him. The signs were all there, and as a physician, I should have been more aware of them and more willing to listen. I’m sorry.”