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  A Forest of Corpses

  by P. A. Brown

  MLR Press, LLC

  www.mlrpress.com

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  A Forest of Corpses

  by P. A. Brown

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  To all my wonderful American friends

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

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  A Forest of Corpses

  by P. A. Brown

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  Spider

  Jason

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MLR Press Authors

  the trevor project

  * * * *

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  A Forest of Corpses

  by P. A. Brown

  FOREST OF CORPSES

  p.a. brown

  mlrpress

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  A Forest of Corpses

  by P. A. Brown

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2010 by P.A. Brown

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Published by

  MLR Press, LLC

  3052 Gaines Waterport Rd.

  Albion, NY 14411

  Visit ManLoveRomance Press, LLC on the Internet: www.mlrpress.com

  Cover Art by Deana C. Jamroz

  Editing by Kris Jacen

  * * * *

  ISBN# 978-1-60820-164-8 Issued 2010

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  A Forest of Corpses

  by P. A. Brown

  Acknowledgments

  Carol Percer for reading the very raw draft of this book and offering invaluable help on its growth and to Ann Hoyt for telling me about mountain quail chicks and screaming rabbits.

  To my editor Kris Jacen, Deana for her great cover art, J.P.

  Bowie, and Laura Baumbach for taking me under her wing as one of her authors. AJ Morgan, Corky McGraw, and Nix Winter for their invaluable insights into the world of pleasure and pain and bondage.

  To GaywritersandReaders and all their support and good times, and CrimeSceneWriters for getting the police and forensic stuff right.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  A Forest of Corpses

  by P. A. Brown

  To all my wonderful American friends

  [Back to Table of Contents]

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  A Forest of Corpses

  by P. A. Brown

  Spider

  Nobody died today.

  That's a good day in my books, but I knew it wouldn't last.

  Westside had a major hard on for Eastside. War was brewing. Fideo and his WS crew shot up the East Beach, then a week later, on Memorial Day, did the same at a market on Anacapa Street. That time their aim had improved. They dropped two Eastside bangers and a ten-year-old boy out buying milk for his grandmother. Both OGs made it. The kid didn't. Chalk it up to collateral damage from the drug war.

  We canvassed the market and caught a couple of witnesses who saw the whole thing. So we nailed Fideo along with two members of his posse, and tossed their cholo butts in jail. Fideo lawyered up with a good uptown legal beagle, but still sat in lockup, no bail. Then another drive-by took out witness one. Suddenly our only remaining witness "made a mistake." The paperwork wasn't dry before the scrotes were back in the hood and the witness was in hiding. Fideo rode with his ese through his hood, crowing how he beat 5-0. His street creds firmly embellished by his latest exploits, he was back, and he was stronger.

  And took up his business of dealing drugs, death and taxes without losing a night's sleep.

  Miguel, my new partner, snapped his frustration. "How can we stop these people if no one will testify against them?"

  I shrugged. "It bites, I agree. But look at it from their side.

  Hard to testify from a pine box."

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  "God will take care of them."

  "Right." I rolled my eyes, making sure he couldn't see the gesture. "I'm sure Mr. Gillespie's family feel the same way."

  Gillespie had been witness number one, a businessman leaving a wife and two young kids behind. He told me when I interviewed him the first time he had to talk. That it wasn't right that these men could terrorize a neighborhood and get away with it. What kind of example did that set for his kids?

  Well, I guess his kids learned a valuable lesson there. But probably not the one their old man wanted to give. We had gone to Gillespie's funeral yesterday, per department regulations. Not surprising, no one from Westside showed or sent their condolences. Not that there was much we could have done if they had. As usual, we had no proof that put any Westside banger anywhere near the vicinity of Gillespie's untimely death. What we had were two bullets from a 9 mil that couldn't be tied to any other crimes. A clean gun for a clean hit.

  There was a time when my frustration level would have surpassed Miguel's. Those days are long gone. First thing you learn on the job, leave it at the station. Taking it home with you is the surest way to give yourself high blood pressure and a date with your own duty weapon, or your cardiologist.

  There was a time I used to share my world with dead people. The homicides I couldn't solve would follow me home and make me hold them in my memory. The more brutal they were, the more they clung to me, needing closure I couldn't give them.

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  Then Jason burst into my life, unasked and unlooked for. I hooked him up and tossed his ass in jail for the murder of a man it turned out he'd never met. A lot of people would have flipped me the bird for what I did, but Jason wasn't like that.

  There wasn't a vengeful bone in his perfect body. Instead, once he was released from jail, we'd gone out to dinner, ended up back at my place with my dick up his ass, and my heart in his hands. I realized then I never wanted to let this guy go. It took me months to be able to admit my feelings to myself, let alone to Jason. Then, I damn near fucked what we had up permanently when my petty jealousy turned me into a dangerous fool. It probably would have served me right if Jay had told me to fuck off when I got up the nerve to follow him to Los Angeles. He didn't, and here we are, two months later, sharing a bed and a bath, and hopefully, a future.

  Sometimes my dead people still come around to stalk my dreams, but now there's an anchor to hold onto when I wake up in a cold sweat, with my heart pounding and my mouth dry with unspoken fear; there to whis
per soothing words, not press me for explanations I was loathe to give anyone. Even for Jason I didn't show weakness.

  He gave me back my life. So why can't I give him the one thing he wants? Because I'm a fucking coward who's afraid of losing control again? Afraid? Fuck that. Alexander Spider isn't afraid of anything. Or anyone.

  The morning after Gillespie's funeral I got up before Jason.

  Dressing after my shower, I stood over our bed, studying him while I buttoned my shirt. Sometime during the night he had kicked his covers off, exposing his delicious butt, and all I had 11

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  to do was reach out and stroke the peach soft skin. I knew my touch would instantly wake him up, and I had no trouble imagining those sleepy eyes falling on me and that slow, sexy smile he only gave to me. We'd both been too tired last night to do anything but fall into bed. There was nothing sleepy about my body now. My dick pressed painfully against my briefs and I shifted, trying to ease the sudden constriction.

  I knew he didn't have any classes until ten, so unlike me, he didn't have to get up at this God-forsaken hour. For one hot minute I almost gave in, ready to tumble him over onto his stomach and spread his legs, no questions, no words. It would take me two seconds to pull my cock out, another two to be inside him. It would be rough, but rough didn't bother Jason. Neither did the bareback sex we now indulged in since our last tests had given us both clean slates. Just the thought of my naked dick inside him made my balls ache and tighten.

  I knew he'd submit to me willingly, hell, eagerly, but a part of me always held back. When I was tempted to let go, like I knew he wanted, all I could do was see him hanging from my straps, barely conscious as I punished him for a sin he never committed. I had done us both harm that night. I was still paying for it.

  I let my hand fall to my side, then with a muttered curse, spun around and left the room, carefully shutting the door behind me. Tonight, I'd make sure I wasn't too tired when we went to bed. Then I'd do it right. Something we'd both remember in a good way.

  As usual, I beat Miguel in on Monday morning. I guess Bible study kept him up at night. I barely glanced at my 12

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  newly assigned, wet-behind-the-ears partner when he arrived, and still managed to think black thoughts. Though I kept telling myself my former partner, now boss, Nancy Pickard hadn't deliberately assigned Miguel Dominguez, savior of sinners and sodomites alike, to me for some do-him-good-reason or, God forbid, do-me-good reason. She would never be so cruel. So far I'd kept him at arm's length, and he seemed content to read his Bible to himself during coffee breaks. But ever since we had been assigned as a team, there had been a growing furrow between his eyes that deepened every day. His brown eyes had a decidedly hornet-mad look, as though he wondered just what that brown stuff was he had landed in, and how much longer he'd have to put up with it.

  I'll give him one thing, he was too professional to voice his feelings aloud. Which is about the only thing that made me think this partnership might work. I didn't want to get into a pissing contest with the guy, but I was the boss here, and he'd better not challenge that.

  I pulled a nine-day-old blue crime book out from under a stack of files folders and unfiled reports, and opened it to the first page. I tapped my booted foot on the scuffed linoleum floor while I studied the chrono report, which included the transcript of the original 9-1-1 call. The call that had brought out the first uniformed cops early one morning nine days ago, and marked the beginning of our, so far fruitless investigation, that had come in at oh-four-fifteen. An hysterical woman, later ID'd as Rebecca Long, had called from Milpas Market, reporting shots fired.

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  I flipped through the CR, the one I put together from the reports I had collected from everyone involved in the case, from the first responder who had answered the original 9-1-1

  call, to the second one that had come in last night.

  First officers on the scene after that first call, a rookie and his training officer, had discovered a cooling corpse in the back stall of an East Beach rest stop, where the homeless often hung out during the day. It was the first call Miguel and I had gone on together. Our third homicide to date. It was our first unsolved. The other two were down as closed, but with no convictions in sight, not very satisfactory. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.

  I flipped the page. A booking photo of the old, dead black man, from a previous arrest for vagrancy, stared up at me, showing serious signs of the chronic alcohol abuse and malnutrition that marked him even then as one of the multitude of Santa Barbara's homeless. So what had possessed someone to put a pair of slugs into a man who had nothing and whose biggest offense was probably his hygiene—or lack of it? I'd probably never know what was behind this senseless killing. But I'd be happy tossing the mutt who was responsible into Pelican Bay for the duration of his miserable life.

  Of course I had to find the guy first. And the problem with crimes that had no obvious motive, was there were also no obvious suspects.

  I dragged a yellow legal pad over and dug a Bic out of the chipped coffee mug I used as a pen caddy. Chewing on the already battered end, and tapping my restless foot on the 14

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  floor, I read through report after report, studying the crime scene photos and scene sketches, notes I had jotted, notes from Miguel and everyone we had interviewed. Finally I scanned the twenty-page autopsy report, trying to niggle out the one overlooked detail that would give me the lead I needed to clear this case. It wasn't there. Or maybe my mind couldn't focus.

  Against my wishes, it kept going back to this morning's missed opportunity. I had met Jason seven months ago. After a rocky beginning, we had become lovers and, I thought, friends. Then a couple of months ago we'd taken the next step and moved in together, something I hadn't done with anyone in over five years. Something I gather Jason had never done. We were still feeling our way around that. Still in the honeymoon phase, I guess you could say. I only had to remember this morning to bring that home. I couldn't remember a time or a person who had made me feel the way Jason did. Sometimes that made me nervous. I had one failed marriage behind me. I wasn't sure I was ready for another one, even with someone as perfect as Jason Zachary. I also knew there was no way I was ready to send him away. By this time I sported a low grade, painful erection as I thought about the sounds he made with my prick down his throat, or pumping up his ass. I shifted in my chair, trying to give space to my swelling dick. I tried to concentrate on the words and images in front of me, using the tip of the pen to guide my wandering eyes over the pages of the murder book, and the excruciatingly detailed coroner's report. Hard to believe more 15

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  detail could go into a man's death than he'd ever earned in his life.

  My efforts to forget Jason weren't working. They rarely did.

  I squinted and stared harder, as though I could force some meaning to come from the combination of words in front of me. A shadow fell between me and the nearest light source.

  Even before I looked up, I knew who it was.

  I glared over my glasses at Lieutenant Nancy Pickard, my boss and ex-partner.

  "You ever consider getting reading glasses there, Detective? Or maybe bifocals?"

  "I don't need no fucking bifocals," I snapped, since the same thought had been going through my head. But that would mean admitting I was getting old, and I wasn't ready to go there. I was barely thirty-three—hardly old, right? "Did you want something, Lieutenant?"

  "What are you looking at?" She leaned over to study the pages of the murder book. I leaned away from her, my arms crossed over my chest. "Which one is this?" she asked.

  "The Isaac Simpson case."

  "The homeless guy in the john?"

  "
That's the one."

  "Any new thoughts on it?"

  I braced my booted feet on the floor and unfolded my arms to lean toward her. "No." I tapped my chewed up pen on the page we were both staring at, the one that detailed the autopsy report for the hapless Simpson. "This might give us something." I pointed to the recording of the 9-1-1 call.

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  "Not sure what it is yet." I filled her in on the circumstances of the call.

  "Let's hear it."

  I signaled Miguel to come around and join us. Once he was standing behind Nancy, I punched the on button. A scratchy smoker's voice barely identifiable as female came out of the speakers. The voice was low and indistinct. I'd have to send it down to the lab to see what they could do with the quality.

  But for now all three of us strained to make out the mumbled words.

  "They're the devil, Momo. He didn't have to die. It wasn't right. He promises he stop them." The voice went off muttering and mumbling into incoherence. Then, "Stop them." A wail like a thousand cats being tortured made me wince and pull back. Nancy did the same. Only Miguel didn't react. His eyes narrowed when they met mine.

  "Who is Momo?" he asked.

  "The victim?" I said. "Isaac Simpson? Her invisible playmate?"

  "Any idea who the caller was?" Nancy asked.

  I shook my head. "Call came from a payphone near Milpas Market. Maybe another witness? I was going to head out there this morning." I threw another look at Miguel, who watched me without blinking. He nodded once, then spun around and returned to his desk. "You and me," I said across our desk.

  Nancy looked pleased. "See that I get a report ASAP."

  Since I doubted anyone higher up was breathing down her neck on this DB, this had to be personal. Face it, Mr. Isaac 17

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  Simpson would barely register on any one radar in city hall. I knew for a fact none of the local news media had gone beyond a mention of the homicide on their back pages.