In Corpore Sano - Part Seven

[tekuno]

For once, not much more to say. I thought about extending this part to include the actual interactions with Paul, and didn't. Some of you will like part 8 a lot. But we still have a lot of plot to go before the end. This story, like Caveman, is turning out longer than I had originally envisioned, not that that's a problem, exactly, but it does kind of feel like both of them are dragging because the big critical reveal/climax/whatever is still so far away...

Oh, well. Another story part, of something other than this but the specifics will depend on which one I feel like writing, will be up by, oh, late Friday night.

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In Corpore Sano
Part 7

This story has been completed. Content warnings and general description are included with the prologue, general commentary is in the comments following the epilogue.

Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Epilogue

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After a frenzied round of back-and-forth with the owner to arrange cover for the bar, Inspector Anderson took me off to the police station.

Like a lot of people, I had never actually had much to do with the police before, and was uncertain of what to expect. Was I going to sit under a hot, bright light in a darkened room? Or maybe I'd be across a table from someone in a room with a one-way mirror. Should I send for a lawyer?

I was getting pretty nervous by the time we reached the police station. As it happened, I ended up sitting in a visitor chair next to Detective Anderson's desk, which was almost disturbingly clean, in a room which was brightly-lit and airy and which was also almost disturbingly clean. From his personal appearance, I would have expected untidy piles of paper and overflowing ashtrays on a beaten-up old desk in a smelly basement office with peeling wallpaper, and maybe a bottle of cheap whiskey tucked in a drawer. The only concession to the sort of casual slobbishness I expected from his appearance was the fact that he acquired a toothpick from somewhere and chewed on it as we talked. If his enunciation had been lazy before, now it was practically unintelligible.

Still, it was a bit nerve-wracking to be taken there spontaneously. And I showed it. By the time Inspector Anderson had his notebook out and had managed to find a pen, I was half expecting to be handcuffed.

"Settle down, kid-- I mean, Mister Gwinnett. Y'aren't unner arrest."

"Um... good?"

"Why'n't ya tell me, in y'r own words and with asmch d'tail 's you c'n mnage, wht happend th' day you saw D'tective Beaufort."

"Okay, uh... it's been a while, so I don't know how much I can remember, but..."

"'S okay, just tell me what you c'n think of. Oh, wait."

He reached over and pressed a button on a device on his desk, and a red light started shining on it.

"Well, I came in to work as usual, about the same time of day as I did today, and he was talking to the guy who was working the bar before me, like you were doing."

"Same guy?"

"No, the one you talked to was in San Francisco that day. He got back a couple of days later. We had three staff out, two on vacation and one injured, and I was working extra shifts around then to help cover. Detective Beaufort had been in the restaurant once before, and I recognized him, although I didn't know who he was until that day. He asked me if I could identify a man from pictures. I thought the man was familiar, but I couldn't remember who he was. He -- Detective Beaufort, I mean -- gave me his cell phone number and said to call him back if I figured it out. And then he left."

"And that's all?"

"Well..."

"What?"

"I, uh... this is a little embarrassing. He and I recognized each other from the eHormone dating service. You see, I'm, uh, gay, and..."

"Okay, yes, I get it. So?"

"So he, uh, he gave me his home phone number before leaving, and said to call if I was, er, interested."

"And?"

"Well, I was. Interested, I mean. But I didn't get around to calling for a few days, and he never called me back."

"Ah. Anything else?"

"Um... well, the, er, the guy in the photo, I remembered where I had seen him before, but--"

"What?"

"It's a little embarrassing. You see, I had this nightmare a few months earlier, the guy in the photo was at the restaurant with this other guy I used to know back in high school, who had shown up again, and he was already dead. And then he -- the dead guy, I mean -- nodded at me. It's hard to convey the atmosphere, but it was really creepy."

Inspector Anderson sighed. "Jussa dream, huh?" He clicked his tongue and made another note.

"Well, yeah, I may not like Paul very much, but I doubt he's having dinner with dead people."

"And anything else?"

"Well, it might just be paranoia, but that night I thought I saw somebody standing in the street outside my house, watching it."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, but I didn't see the guy's face, and when I got to the door he was gone."

"Hmmm."

The inspector stared down at his notepad blankly for a while. Finally, I ventured a question.

"Can you tell me what this is about? Or shouldn't I ask?"

"Hmph. I don' see any reason why I can't give ya some info. 'S not like you couldn't fin most of it out if ya started digging anyway. 'Specially since you've seen all those photos. J'y'ever lookit murder stat'stics, Mister Gwinnet? Y'know, how many people get killd each year n'town, stuff like that? When th'say 'crime's up' 'r 'crime's down', what they really mean's that th' numbers've changed.

"Nemor Sands has about av'rage crime rates f'r 'n 'mer'can city of its size. Which's t'say: we get a lotta murders each year an' a cert'n number'f missing persons. But th' raw nummers don't really c'nvey the whole story."

The inspector leaned back in his chair.

"Most murders are, well, obvious. Even 'f we dunno who did it, we know approximately wha's going on. So, drive-by shooting, we know there'sa guy out there somewhere witha gun. Usually c'n spot th'motive, too. I mean, mebbe we dunno th'specifics, bu' whenna guy gets shot's usually 'causa somepin we c'n figure out without much digging. Drugs, or women, or debt, or gang affiliations.

"Now, starting with th'guy ya dream'd about, th'one we found innan unnerpass, there's been about thirty percen' more missing pers'ns each month, an' we're finding extra bodies, too. Somuvum prob'ly match up, but there's no way to be sure."

"Couldn't you just ask the families of the people who disappeared?"

Inspector Anderson looked at me.

"These aren'tchur reg'ler bodies, kid. We aren't ev'n really sure what's killin'em."

"But the faces--"

"Ain't got faces. We know they're hum'n 'caus'a th'bones and th'DNA, an' thass 'bout all y'can say."

"So you're actually finding--"

"They're dead. REALLY dead. Let's just leave it at that, 'kay kid? Now, all'a this start'd aroun' th'time'a th'dead guy unner th'bridge. So we been lumping 'em t'gether. An' D'tective Beaufort goes out t'interview a buncha folks with c'nnections ta diff'ren missing folks, an'e dissapears, 'imself. So y'can 'magine we're a li'l int'rest'd in anyone'e saw that day."

"Well, I definitely saw him, but he walked out of the bar."

"Yeah, I know, kid. He came back t'the station, filed a report, an' lef' fer th'day. Ever since 'e vanish'd, we've been revisiting all th'folks he innerview'd. Yer th'last'v'em. We di'n't know yer name b'fore now, y'were just list'd as 'bartender'."

"Wait, then why did you ask about my name at the restaurant?"

The inspector grinned. "'S'a li'l cruel t'tell ya without his permiss'n, but Beaufort hadda pad 'a paper in'is 'partment nexta th'comput'r, an'e wrotecher name out five times."

"Er."

The inspector grinned a little wider. "An'e drew a li'l heart there, too. We thought mebbe he wen'out an' metcha."

The whole prospect was so embarrassing that I uncomplainingly signed a summary of the interview, left my contact information with the inspector, and headed back to work without really processing anything. After all that time spent obsessing over the detective's "rejection", he had actually been on the verge of contacting me.

Or maybe stalking me. Then again, given my history, how would I tell the difference?

It wasn't until I was at the gym the next morning that the connection dawned on me. I was flexing in the mirror after my arm routine -- I was finally, at long last, reaching the point where I was really beginning to consider myself "big" -- when the significance of Inspector Anderson's various statements lined up -- the police had an unusual number of missing persons, of whom Detective Beaufort was one, and they had unusual corpses. The obvious inference was that some or all of the missing persons were dead, including Detective Beaufort.

As if that weren't enough to put me off my workout, I suddenly realized that Paul was grinning at me in the mirror over my shoulder. I spun around and started to back away, but stopped when I took in Paul's body.

Paul had grown. A lot. He was, if anything, bigger than me now. He was in a tank top and mesh workout shorts, and he stretched both out considerably, and there was something else different about him which didn't strike me at first. He looked me up and down, and conspicuously adjusted his shorts; it was clear that he was either amazingly well-hung or keeping a pair of socks in them.

"Well, Scott, you're certainly looking good." He flexed. "So am I, don't you think?"

Part 8

[Eliswansigurado]

Eagerly awaiting the next installment!!

[tekuno]

I had a request by PM to finish A Lucid Account faster -- and there's only one part of that left anyway -- so this is temporarily on the back burner. Don't worry, I haven't abandoned it.

[nnnrg]

wrong thread, see ahead... (good story btw)