Dating Rules And Pretty Fools – Ch. 20
By Laura S. Fox
Copyright © 2024 Laura S. Fox
All Rights Reserved
Gay Erotica
Intended for Mature Audiences Only
This story will contain graphic depictions of sexual intercourse, strong
language and it is not meant for readers who are less than 18 years of age.
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Chapter Twenty – Like
Snuffed Out Candles
No sign of Jackie's
blabbing to others about double identities and whatnot, at least not on the
guy's phone. Hudson worked quickly, one hand on the wheel, the other on the
extra burner he had with him in case of an emergency. As soon as the gruff
voice at the other end answered, he didn't waste a moment.
"I'll need Room B," he
spat.
"How soon?"
"I'll be there in
fifteen."
"Okay."
"The captain shouldn't--"
"Yeah, I know. I wasn't a
moron, last time I checked."
Hudson held the curses
climbing up his throat in check. Gavin was an asshole, but he was right. Also,
he was a dependable asshole for all the times they needed to circumvent the
usual procedures to get things done.
Gavin didn't even offer
him the courtesy of a perfunctory `bye'. Knowing the gruff officer, he was
already on the job, doing what was needed. Hudson wasn't particularly fond of
going off-script, but if there was one guy who could help him save the case –
no, not the case, just his undercover op – Gavin Stetson would be that guy.
Jackie groaned, drawing
his attention. Well, there was no way of telling how long he'd be out of it,
and Hudson hadn't meant to hurt him too much. The way he saw it, the youngster
was his lifeline, and, even if Jackie didn't know it, that went the other way,
too.
He stopped the car behind
the station, using the back entrance to get inside. Carefully, he extracted
Jackie from his seat and dragged him along as Gavin opened the door for him.
Room B was the closest for the kind of thing he had in mind, and also out of
the way enough not to draw too much attention from other people working at that
hour.
"Damn it, West," Gavin
said and moved the toothpick he liked so much to chew on from one corner of his
mouth to the other. "Can you at least bring them in while still conscious?"
Hudson threw his
unconventional friend and colleague a look that conveyed most of what he was
thinking. Gavin looked fairly unimpressed. He helped Hudson move Jackie
quickly, and soon they had the guy inside the interrogation room, his wrists
secured to the table with handcuffs. Gavin took it upon himself to pat Jackie's
cheek and shake him until the other came to.
"What the hell?" Jackie
murmured and, as he tried to straighten himself up, realized he was restrained.
He did what anyone under the same circumstances would, he struggled to get
free, his eyes bulging out of their sockets, his mouth open wide while his
brain forgot how to curse.
"Looks like we've got a
lively one," Gavin said cheerfully. And then, turning toward Hudson, "What did
this one do?"
Hudson set his jaw hard.
No point in admitting his mistake; Gavin would never let him forget it. "I need
to show Jackie here a few pictures."
Gavin stood and crossed
his arms. "So?"
Hudson gave his friend a
good hard stare. Gavin took the hint and moved away, shrugging. He waited until
his friend was out of the room to give Jackie his undivided attention again.
His eyes fell on his unexpected hostage's hands, the way they still squirmed
although there was no possible way for him to get out of there.
"If this is your idea of
fun, Vegas, I don't like it," Jackie said morosely. He shook his head, trying
to clear it of booze and misunderstandings.
Hudson didn't have time
for that. He slapped the table with both palms, right in front of his prisoner,
startling him. "Look here, asshole," he said in a low menacing growl, "who did
you talk to about me?"
"What the fuck do you
mean? No one," Jackie said defensively. "I saw you leaving with Otis, kissing
him in the street. And I thought you were my friend. Where the fuck are we? Are
people into this kind of thing now? Interrogation rooms? I don't like what you
did with the place."
Jackie sounded fearful,
but there was clearly a part of him, sly and ready to help him wiggle his way
out of it. Hudson had no intention of letting him escape. "I'm not playing."
"What? What do you mean?
Shit, is this real?" Jackie made another attempt to free himself, while his
nostrils flared. The alcohol haze was lifting and fear was taking over. "Then,
I need my fucking phone call! And a lawyer!" His voice rose, while his eyes
darted around, looking for something to hang his hope on.
Gavin walked in, with a
folder in his hands. He took turns staring at Hudson and Jackie but held his
tongue for once. He put the folder down on the table and stepped back.
"Why are there two of you
here? Are you going to play good cop, bad cop with me now? I'm not telling you
nothing."
"We haven't asked you
anything yet," Gavin said, the irony in his voice evident.
Hudson opened the folder
and looked inside. He took one picture and placed it in front of Jackie.
"Do you know this guy?"
Jackie set his jaw hard,
and Hudson expected resistance. But the green eyes full of fear moved to the
table and took a look at the displayed picture. Jackie looked up and then down
again. "Yeah, I know this guy. We call him Bang-Bang."
"Okay." He looked over
his shoulder at Gavin, who quirked an eyebrow and offered him nothing more.
"Why Bang-Bang?"
Jackie raised his
shoulders and let them fall. "Because he likes getting gangbanged."
"One of the models,
then?" Hudson continued.
"Yeah," Jackie replied as
if his interrogator was hard in the head and couldn't see the obvious.
"Is he still with your
club then?" Hudson asked, slowly showing his teeth.
Jackie threw him an
unpleasant look in return. "No, and you probably know that. Since you're
obviously a cop."
"He doesn't miss much
this one, does he?" Gavin said with a snort.
"Neither of you is the
good cop, right?" Jackie shot in a quarrelsome manner just to show that he
wasn't as scared as he looked. He wasn't good at it.
"Tell me," Hudson
continued patiently, "where is Bang-Bang now?"
"How should I know? He
graduated, took his money and dashed. Doesn't even bother to call, the
scumbag," Jackie commented.
Hudson searched the young
face for any signs of lying. But all that met his eyes suggested that his mark
was scared and wanted to get out of there. He chose another photo from the
folder, careful not to bring out too much at the start.
"What about this one?"
Jackie leaned over the
table. "That's Stud," he said. "Come on, Vegas," he tried to play it cool, "all
these guys are legal. Don't tell me you think they're underage or something."
Clearly, he was searching for a reason why Hudson was keeping him there, asking
him about these guys. "Like Stud here. He has a dick as thick as a baby's arm."
Hudson closed his eyes
for a moment as he focused his mind on not dwelling on how Stud looked in the other
pictures stashed inside the folder in his hand.
"Don't tell me, he
graduated, too," he said through his teeth.
Jackie, seemingly more
and more in control of his own emotions, shrugged. "Yeah, this is a business
where new faces are in high demand. But you wouldn't know that, since you're a
cop," he spat again, narrowing his eyes.
"Damn, you broke the
kid's heart," Gavin commented.
That was his colleague's
due. He got to watch and be a part of it. And run his damn mouth all he wanted.
Hudson ignored him and picked another photo from the several inside.
"Do you know him, too?"
Jackie didn't make a fuss
and looked at the face in the picture for a bit longer than at the others. They
were all ID-like photos, magnified for the sake of creating a profile for all
the victims identified so far.
"The hair's wrong,"
Jackie said quietly, "but I always thought that kind of platinum-blond could
only come from a bottle. But I can bet my ass this one's Sweetheart." He looked
at the picture, his eyebrows furrowed.
Hudson hovered closely.
"What about him? What happened to him?"
"Graduated," Jackie
replied, but this time, there was a flair of stubbornness in the way he said
it.
"What was your
relationship with him?"
Jackie shook his head and
tried to touch one of his ears, only the handcuffs preventing him from doing
so. He was searching for a lie, and Hudson had just gotten the tell.
"No relationship," Jackie
said promptly.
"Really? You keep telling
me how much you score with the models," Hudson taunted him, hoping for more.
"So? It's all wham, bam,
thank you ma'am," Jackie replied, increasingly irritated. "What's to say about
all that?"
"Have you heard from any
of them since their graduation?" Hudson asked.
"No. But it's their
fucking business. The boss gave them good money, and now, they're all too good
for the rest of us," Jackie expressed his frustration. "If they did something
shady, that's not the boss's fault, Vegas."
"Vegas," Gavin echoed and
snorted.
"Yeah, like that's not
even your real name," Jackie continued, all riled up. "Fucking cop."
Hudson opened the folder
again, debating on how to proceed. He knew how, of course he knew, but that
didn't mean that it would give him any pleasure. Quite the opposite.
"Give me the key," he
told Gavin without looking at him.
He used it to free
Jackie's hands, watching his temporary hostage rub his wrists.
"What the hell, man?"
Jackie murmured. "All this to ask me about some dudes from a lifetime ago? By
the way, you know I'm going to tell the boss everything. Man, he's not going to
like it."
He made a move to get up,
interpreting this small mercy as being let go. But Hudson had something
different in mind. He began to take picture after picture out of the folder and
throw them on the table.
"They graduated? That's
what you're saying?"
Jackie was still holding
one wrist with the other hand. He stopped and looked at the pictures, bending
over as if he couldn't understand what he was seeing.
"What the hell, man, are
these... shopped or something? The fuck you're making me look at this shit? It's
like--" He stopped abruptly and looked closer at one.
Hudson didn't move a
muscle. He just watched, waiting. Jackie touched the bottom edge of one picture
with his fingers and a tremor began shaking his whole hand.
"These are fake," he
said, but it was clear that his confidence was crumbling.
Hudson knew, without
looking, which of those horrible pictures had held Jackie's interest. He
reached into the folder and selected another. He placed it next to the other at
which Jackie was looking. "In case you were wondering where the rest of him
is," he said quietly.
Jackie moved violently
away, his face pale, sweat gluing his hair to his forehead.
"Sink, over there," Gavin
said sternly. "Fucking operation shock and awe," he commented as Jackie threw
himself at the sink and began retching.
Hudson moved to his side
and held his forehead. Jackie's skin was dead cold, and his entire body was
shaking. Then, he said something he never said lightly. "I'm sorry you had to
see that."
"Aww," Gavin the asshole
intervened, "are you two going to get a room already?"
"We just did, so leave us
the room, please," Hudson shot at his colleague. "Also, how about you make
yourself useful and print out those forms?"
"Okay, boss," Gavin said
mockingly but walked out nonetheless.
Jackie was barely keeping
himself upright, so Hudson took it upon himself to steady him.
"Is it true?" Jackie
asked in a raspy breath. "Is he... dead? All of them, dead?"
Hudson filled a cup with
water from the sink and handed it to Jackie. "Rinse," he said.
Under the circumstances,
orders like that were the easiest to follow. Jackie obeyed like a young child.
And then, he filled the cup again himself and drank, the sound of his gulping
the only thing breaking the silence of the bleak interrogation room.
***
The stew wasn't half-bad,
Otis decided, although he would have preferred to call it half-good instead.
But how good was half-good? By the rules of mathematics, somewhere in the
middle, and he liked to think that his stew was better than that. The correct
way to describe it, he thought, after some deliberation, was above decent.
Would Hudson be all right
with above decent stew? The deplorable state of the small refrigerator his
neighbor had in his apartment should be enough of an argument that his tastes
wouldn't be particularly refined. However, Otis didn't want to jump to
conclusions and then see Hudson unhappy with his stew.
With measured moves, he
picked up each piece of cutlery there was and examined it with a critical eye.
Now that he had a boyfriend, and not just a temporary one, he definitely needed
to invest in some proper spoons and forks.
He looked out the window.
It was getting late, and Hudson had said that he would be home in time for
dinner. Otis consulted the clock on his phone dutifully. His boyfriend must
have gotten caught up in something. According to the internet, phoning to check
on your partner too often, too soon, too annoyingly, was a sign of clinginess
and frowned upon by boyfriends all over the world.
That meant that he would
just have to wait. In the meantime, he had to busy himself with something, so
he returned to his phone. Having a boyfriend came with a wide range of
responsibilities, one of them being getting to know the other's hobbies. How
difficult was it to learn how to fire a gun?
***
Hudson gathered up all
the pictures from the table and stashed them back in their folder. Their job
was done. More difficulties would follow, but he believed himself to be a good
enough judge of character. The captain would never approve of this kind of
unconventional approach, but he did close an eye or two when needed, for the
sake of results. Nonetheless, Hudson preferred that the man who trusted him so
much didn't learn about his going off-script in this particular case. Gavin was
trustworthy.
And that left him with
just one wild card to handle. He didn't say a word as Jackie moved back to the
table and sat on the chair of his own accord. Leaning over and covering his
eyes, the young man was rocking his body to comfort himself, as little as that
was possible.
"Who did this?" he asked
in a raspy voice. "I hope you guys are chasing the fucker who did this. That
you caught him already."
"We haven't yet," Hudson
said. "And it's not a single person doing this."
Jackie looked up. There
were lines etched into his face that hadn't been there before. "What do you
mean? Isn't some sicko, some serial killer or something, doing this?" His eyes
trailed to the folder in Hudson's hand and then moved away. His face was turning
green again.
"No, it's worse than
that."
"What could be worse than
that?" Jackie whispered and huddled in on himself. A pained moan escaped his
throat, and he rested his forehead against the cold table.
Hudson got up and locked
the door. Gavin would get the message and wait until the door got unlocked
again.
"How long have you known
Watkins, Jackie?"
"The boss? I told you. Since
I came into the city. You don't think... the boss has nothing to do with this,"
Jackie said with conviction.
Hudson didn't offer a
reply, knowing very well that his silence was as good as an answer.
"No, you really can't
believe that," Jackie continued his protests. "What? Do you have like a beef
with him or something?"
"When the same MO is
noticed in a string of homicides," Hudson recited, "the first thing on the
order of business is to identify similarities between the victims."
Jackie watched him with
the eyes of a wounded animal. "They all worked for the boss. That's your
similarity?" he spat. "It could be just any lunatic."
Hudson sighed and ran one
hand over his face. This job was ninety-nine percent suffering; the rest, if
you got lucky, was the satisfaction of putting bad people behind bars. But the
rest was dealing with the scumbags of the earth, and the hate, the pain, and
the misery they brought on others.
"How do you explain that
their disappearance are linked to what you call their graduation?"
Jackie's eyes grew wide.
"You don't think I had anything to do with this?!" His body began shaking
again, his eyes wandering frantically over his surroundings. "Not him, why did
it have to be him?" he mumbled and hid his face.
"What was he to you,
Jackie?" Hudson asked, as gently as he could.
A shake of the head was
the immediate reply. Negation rising from hurt so extensively that it couldn't
be processed.
"Did you sleep with him?"
Hudson continued.
"It was more than that,"
Jackie lashed out and then, with a pained groan, he grabbed tufts of his hair
and pulled, twisting furiously.
"Then you should help me
bring down the ones who did this to him," Hudson said. "They didn't graduate.
You can't continue to tell the same lie to yourself. And your boss, Watkins, I
bet he knows very well. He knows what happened to them. Even more, he's the
reason why this happened to them." The gentleness had gradually faded from his
voice, making room for harshness, and he smacked his hand on the closed folder
to get the other's attention.
"But the boss--" Jackie
said and swallowed thickly, "no, it's not... it can't be. But even I was there,
and then, the boss didn't let me work with that guy, and yeah, I mean, there
were some others who asked for weird stuff, too--"
He was babbling, and
there were many things Hudson wanted to extract from that mind, but not as
addled by grief as it was now.
"How well do you know
Watkins, Jackie?" he insisted again.
Jackie stopped rocking
his body. His eyes kept darting to one side, but then they returned to the
folder under Hudson's hand. "There must have been others, like those weirdos,"
he whispered.
"Like the one who liked
you cold, right?"
Jackie nodded.
"And how did they meet these
boys? Who introduced these so-called clients to Elliot, Fergie, and Henry?" He
used the victims' real names, aware of their impact. They were walking a thin
line here. And he couldn't hold Jackie forever. Continuing his undercover op depended on how things stood once they were ready to
call this meeting over.
Jackie pursed his lips
and squeezed his eyes shut, but there were tears running down his cheeks now,
and he couldn't hold them back. "Henry," he said, "that's Sweetheart. He was
always so nice. Damn, he was so nice to everyone. Never hurt a fly in his life,
that one, I'm sure. Why, why would they do that to him?"
Hudson leaned over the
table. "These are people who cannot be called human beings. Help me catch them,
Jackie."
"Like how? I mean, what
the hell do I even know? If I'd continued to work for clients, they would've
gotten me, too. I would've been in one of those pictures now." Jackie started
heaving.
Hudson caught his
shoulder and squeezed hard to pull him back from the dark place threatening to
engulf him. "But you are here," he said firmly. "And because you're here, you
can make a difference. You can help me get them, put them behind bars--"
"Like hell, I want to
kill them!" Jackie reacted, pushing his arm away. "I'm going to get a fucking
gun, and I'm going to blow his head off! Not Henry," he began weeping again,
"why Henry?"
"Watkins is not alone in
this," Hudson said.
Jackie raised his eyes to
stare at him and wiped them with the back of his hand. "If you know so much,
how come they're still free? They shouldn't be fucking breathing!"
"You're right, Jackie.
But we need evidence. And we need to know who else is in on it. Do you know of
anyone with a metallic voice? Someone who talks like he has a robot stuck in
his throat?"
Jackie shook his head.
"No, I have no clue about anyone like that. Is that the scumbag who killed my
Henry?"
Hudson didn't want to
talk more about what he knew without having Jackie's signature on the right
papers.
"I want your help. And I
know you want to help me. So how about we strike a deal, you and me?"
"How? I'll do it," Jackie
said, closing his fists.
Hudson walked over to the
door and unlocked it. Gavin walked in ten seconds later, with the print-out in
his hands.
Jackie stared at them for
a while, still twisting tufts of his hair from time to time. "I'm becoming a
snitch?" he asked bitterly.
Hudson exchanged a glance
with Gavin. It was all down to what Jackie was going to say next.
"Can I get a pen?" Jackie
asked, stretching out one hand.
***
Waiting was difficult,
and one of the most difficult things when you had a boyfriend who was late for
dinner, Otis decided. He looked at his phone and pondered over whether certain
circumstances were considered appropriate for placing a call to inquire about
how long he would have to wait until Hudson got home.
What if he forgot? Otis
felt the familiar squeeze in his chest, as the memories threatened to overtake
him. His mom had used to forget about him for long hours every day. She was too
busy drinking herself into a stupor, grandma had said. Otis had learned the
meaning of that expression later, when he started to learn how to talk
properly. Stupor was a good word to describe what happened to her during those
times. While growing up, Otis had learned ways to unlock the door to the room
where she pushed him to be left alone so that, yes, she could drink herself
into a stupor.
A paper clip had become
his closest friend. For hours, he scraped the insides of the lock with the
deformed little thing, listening carefully to every sound. It had taken him
many months to figure it out, but in the end, he had become an expert. By
instinct, he hadn't told his grandma that he knew how to pick a lock. It
sounded like something only scoundrels would know, and he didn't want his
grandma to think that about him.
With the faithful paper
clip hidden in his pocket, he quietly walked around the house. His mom, luckily
for him, was a noisy sleeper and if she woke up, she usually knocked over
various things in her path, a chair, a cup from the counter, to alert him that
she was no longer deep in her slumber. As soon as he heard her, he rushed back to
the room and closed the door. He counted on her not realizing that the door was
unlocked, due to her state of confusion caused by the alcohol.
And then, the confusing
part would begin. She would drop to her knees and hug him.
I'm
a good mom, right, Otis?
He'd never known what to
say back. She was simply mom, not good, not bad.
Dwelling on the past was
good in small amounts, as grandma said. Otis shook his head and turned his
attention to his phone. If there had been a reason for his delay, Hudson would
have called. Maybe he couldn't call. Maybe he was caught up in something... but
what? A late night photoshoot with sexy men?
Otis surprised himself
with the way he pursed his lips until they hurt. Was what he felt right now...
jealousy? But taking pictures of handsome men wearing nothing but collars and
other things was Hudson's job. Otis would be a very unpleasant boyfriend if he
got jealous over his partner's occupation.
Still, the images that
came to his mind did nothing for his nerves. He got up from the bed and walked
to the door. Maybe Hudson was right at the door, and he was working himself
into a jealous fit over nothing.
There was no one at the
door, nor walking down the hallway. Disappointed, Otis closed the door and
returned to the bedroom. Then, he asked the internet how long he was supposed
to wait until calling a tardy boyfriend.
***
Hudson checked his phone
and frowned. Damn. Things had gone out of his mind completely. And he couldn't
take that call in front of Jackie and Gavin, for a number of reasons. How crazy
had he been to get involved with his cute neighbor while undercover? Crazy
didn't cover it. And now he was faced with an incredible dilemma. Anyone would
tell him to back away and do everything necessary to get Otis out of his life
and himself removed from the other's life.
But was that really an
option? Jackie knew Otis. No, even more, Jackie knew that he was the boyfriend
Otis had talked about. There was no coming back from that. To protect him, he
couldn't just call it quits and hope for the best. This whole undercover op was a mess by any standard. The problem was, as always,
the human element.
He needed to send a quick
text.
"Hey, playing Pokémon can
wait," Gavin warned him.
Displeased and unable to
hide it, Hudson put the phone away. Otis would chew him out for sure, but this
was one of those situations that made it impossible to act the boyfriend part.
The life of a cop. He was wrong to involve Otis in it, and now as it had been
for some time, it looked like it was too late.
He followed Gavin and
Jackie, whom they were both flanking, down to the other room to finalize all
the details. Jackie was walking with his shoulders hunched, like a man heading
to his execution. Maybe only now it was starting to dawn on him the kind of
dangerous situation he was getting himself into, by turning into a snitch for
the police. Watkins must have protected his protégé for reasons only he knew
until now, but Hudson doubted that this kind of betrayal – if discovered –
would be brushed over. Yeah, after all, Jackie was right to walk like that, as
if he was climbing onto the gallows.
Tonight, after all the
ups and downs he had suffered, he had gotten himself an informant. He was yet
to find out if he still had a boyfriend after missing dinner and being an
asshole by not even calling. Worse even, he had just let the other's phone
calls go unanswered. Would Otis understand?
***
Hudson wasn't picking up.
What did that mean? Otis plopped down on the bed and puffed out his cheeks.
Usually, he was too busy getting into evening learning of various words and
other things, but that held no appeal right now. And learning about guns had
proven quite boring.
How little he knew about
relationships. Did everyone go through these strange sensations? He didn't even
know if he had reason to worry. What if Hudson had gotten hit by a car? Then,
Otis would have to search for him at all the hospitals in the city, like he had
seen in movies. But the city was quite large, and there were several prominent
hospitals, as well as numerous clinics.
No, he wasn't supposed to
think about bad things. The nice lady who had helped him with speech therapy so
patiently had guided him away from dark thoughts.
Life
is not all about pain and suffering, Otis...
Even as he had listened
to her soothing words, he still felt the taste of ashes in the back of his
throat.
But what was the
alternative? Otis considered. A problem needed to be looked at from all angles.
The first thought that had crossed his mind was that Hudson was surrounded by
sexy models and enjoying their attention. In some movies, the jilted wife often
discovered that her husband of twelve years or more was having an affair with
his secretary.
But Hudson didn't have a
secretary, which was a good thing. Also, suspecting his boyfriend of cheating
was a nasty thing to think.
There could be a large
number of other reasons why Hudson was so late. Three hours late. The stew was
cold. Otis needed to go to sleep, because even one night of bad sleep could
wreak havoc on one's health. Still, as he changed into his night clothes and
lay in bed, he doubted that sleep would come quickly tonight.
He turned on one side and
focused on the lessons he had learned a long time ago from the therapist and his
grandma. One had to think happy thoughts to push away the darkness. Beautiful
thoughts were like an incantation that could dispel curses, which were the bad
thoughts.
His mind continued to
churn. Hudson was at the supermarket, debating what kind of milk to buy. They
didn't have his favorite brand, and it was so late that the personnel had left
and locked him in. Otis found himself laughing at the ludicrous scenario
playing in his head.
He couldn't stop
worrying, it seemed. He turned on his back and put his hands behind his head.
If happy thoughts were important to chase away stupidity, maybe he would just
think... He munched on his lower lip. He knew. He'd think of all the nice things
Hudson had told him lately.
His phone buzzed, making
him jump to pick it up.
I
hope you're already sleeping, but anyway, good night, Otis. Feel free to
strangle me tomorrow. I bet that stew was a blast.
TBC
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