Chapter 8 As Brian pulls up to the cabin, he gets out of the Jeep stretching his legs. He looks at Justin, who is also climbing out of the Jeep and staring back up the drive, with a transfixed look on his face. Brian looks in the direction Justin is looking and sees nothing, yet Justin is still gazing up the drive as if he sees something. Justin is having one of his waking dreams. As he stares back at the drive, he sees a 10-year-old boy, himself, as he runs after the police car that has his mother in the back seat. He sees the social worker grab him and forcefully put him in the back seat of the car. He watches as he sees his sister put in yet another car, never to see her again. Brian walks up to Justin and touches him on the arm, and Justin flinches. Seeing Justin's eyes suddenly start to focus on him, Brian says, "Grab your stuff. Let's get inside where we can get a fire started and get warm. We need to get settled in. I need to go into town and buy some groceries for us for a few days." Justin grabs his duffel bag and backpack out of the Jeep and follows Brian into the cabin. "There's two bedrooms upstairs. Take one of them. I'll get a fire started down here." "Brian, why are you doing this for me?" "Don't ask me, Justin. Quite frankly, I really don't know. I met you one week ago, and now I'm totally fucked. We'll talk about this later, okay?" Justin nods his head and starts to head upstairs. "Look, I'll be back in about 30 minutes," Brian shouts after him. "I'm going to get those groceries. Just settle in and relax. There's no phone here, no television. I'm going to see if there's anything in the papers about this, although I don't know if any news from the Pitts will be in the Portland Press Herald up here. I'll be back." Brian sees Justin look at him from the top of the stairs, and then he heads into one of the bedrooms. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Stockwell," Charlie says into the cell phone, "I think I've got a lead on who might have the kid." "How did you come up with this tidbit of information?" "I've been checking out the other units in the building. There's only one unit where the newspapers haven't been picked up from the newspaper slots, and that's the loft right below Robert's. It belongs to one Brian Kinney." "Meet me at the building at 10:00 tonight. We're going to have ourselves a little search of Mr. Kinney's place. Let me see what I can find out about him on my end. Being a cop has its privileges." "I'll meet you at 10:00 then." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- As Justin walks into the bedroom, he throws his duffel bag and backpack onto the floor and flops onto the bed. Why do I feel so exhausted? All I've done is sleep for the past 48 hours. Maybe it's all the nightmares. Why do I keep thinking back to my family? What's making all of those memories suddenly come up again lately? Why is Brian helping me so much? God, if there was a man I could fall in love with, it would be him. I felt something the moment I saw him. The minute he touched me it was like electricity running through my body. Jesus, Justin, just shut down for once and get some rest. Justin starts to drift off as he hears Brian re-enter the cabin and call his name. "Justin, are you all right?" "Yeah. Just resting. I'll be down later." As Brian scours the paper and sees nothing in it about anything suspicious going on in Pittsburgh, he decides it's time to contact Carl and find out what the hell is going on. If I'm going to put my ass on the line for practically a total stranger, I've got to find out where we stand right now, he thinks. Jesus, Brian, what's up with you? You don't do shit like this for people. You don't know this kid. You shouldn't give a shit. What's with you? Yeah, he's got a great ass, and I've wanted to have a piece of that ass from the moment I saw it, but not at this cost. Brian walks outside and digs out his cell phone from his coat pocket, dialing Detective Horvath's private line. "Carl, it's Brian." "Where the hell are you? Do you have Justin with you?" "Yeah. Did Mikey tell you about my call to him the other night?" "Yes, he did. What the hell are you thinking? The kid is a fugitive, not to mention a murder suspect." "Carl, he didn't kill the guy. It was an accident. He pushed him and the guy hit his head." "Oh, really? And I guess the kicking and stomping the shit out of him was an accident, too? Did his foot just happen to slip about 20 times?" "There's a lot of history there, Carl. I'm just beginning to understand a very little bit of it. Hopefully tonight I'll understand more." "Well, I have to tell you, Brian, Justin was mixed up with a very nasty bunch. The guy's name was Robert Norris. I don't know if you recognize the name, but he was, purportedly, a fine, upstanding businessman in the community. It seems he kept his other life very secret. He was heavy into vice and drug trafficking." "Justin hasn't told me about any of that yet. All I've gotten so far is that he was this asshole's private little side of ass." "That's not all he was, Brian. We found a stockpile of videotapes. I can only say some very interesting people paid this kid visits, and he has them all on tape. Let me just tell you that two judges and numerous city officials are under house arrest right now for having colluded with this Norris character. The FBI is doing a raid right now on his business offices. We're hoping to find some sort of documentation on who else he might have had on his payroll. For all I know, he had cops on his payroll. I have to be careful around here and make sure I don't let anything slip about you and Justin. Brian, there were some missing tapes. It looks to be about three. I don't know if Justin has them and why he would take those certain ones. Apparently he feels he needs them for some reason. Maybe you can get something out of him about those." "Carl, I can only tell you I'll try. The kid has been pretty out of it lately. He's pretty beat up, too. Norris apparently didn't care if the kid wanted it or not, he just took him. That's what was happening the night he died." "Do you mean to tell me he was being raped?" "I don't know, Carl. I can't say yet, but I know it wasn't pretty." "Brian, you aren't going to tell me where you are, are you?" "Not yet, Carl." There was a long pause, and then Carl suddenly blurted out, "Are you where I think you are?" "I don't know, Carl. Where do you think I am? I'm not a fucking mind reader." "Are you at the cabin? That's the only place I can think where you'd go in this situation." "I'm not going to say yes, and I'm not going to say no." "Fine. Let me find out from the FBI what's going down. Please call me back tomorrow morning when I have some more information, okay?" "All right." With that, Brian cuts off the connection on the cell phone and walks back into the cabin. All right, Justin, time to fess up and find out what the hell is going on. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian looks at his watch and sees that a couple of hours have gone by. Jesus, is the kid sleeping again? Might as well get some dinner started. Well, master chef Kinney, what will it be? Campbell's tomato or Campbell's chicken noodle? I think I can manage opening a can and adding water. That shouldn't be too difficult. As Brian stands at the stove stirring the soup, he hears a yell come from upstairs. Brian runs to the bottom of the stairs as he sees Justin come out of the bedroom with a wild look in his eyes. "Are you all right?" "Yeah. Just a bad dream." "Well, come on down and have some soup. You haven't eaten since Sunday." Brian turns his back and Justin comes down the stairs and follows Brian into the small kitchen/dining area. Brian spoons out the soup and sits down opposite Justin. "Do you want to talk about it?" "About what?" "Listen, Justin, don't be a wise ass, all right? I'm too tired and too fed up with this whole God damn situation right now to play some childish game. What was the dream? Maybe if you talk about it, you won't have it anymore." "It was about my family." "So there is a family?" "There was a family." "What happened to them?" "Well, my father is dead, my mother is in prison for killing him, and I haven't seen my sister since I was 10 and social services took us away from home." And where did this sparkling example of a family live," Brian asked with a smirk. "You have no right to say that about them," Justin hissed at Brian. "You didn't know them, you don't know the circumstances. She was a great mom. I loved her very much. My sister was fantastic. My dad . . ." "What? Your dad what, Sonny Boy?" "I don't want to talk about it." "Listen, I've put my ass on the line for you. I've known you one God damn week, and find myself in a load of shit. I have every right to know what's going on here." Justin drops his spoon and pushes the bowl away from him. He looks at the table, not able to look Brian in the eyes, and starts to softly talk. "I was adopted. I don't know who my biological parents are. Mom and dad had a farm just outside of Youngstown, Ohio. It was only a small farm, but it was great. I was eight when dad started taking me into the barn." As Justin starts down this road, all Brian can do is listen. When he gets to the part about his father and the barn, Brian has a feeling deep in the pit of his stomach where this is going. "He -- he touched me and made me do things to him for two years. I never told anyone. He always told me -- he said he loved me. Then one day we were in the barn and he was touching me, and I heard my mother scream. Before I knew what had happend . . ." Justin pauses and takes a quick look at Brian before diverting his eyes again. "Before I knew it, she had picked up a pitchfork and stabbed him in the back with it. I can still see his blood seeping into the straw at my feet. When I started kicking Robert, that's what I saw when I saw his blood pooling around his body." Justin stops talking and puts his face in his hands, covering his eyes. "Everytime I've closed my eyes the past two days, all I see is the blood in the barn, and then the blood in the loft. I can't get the blood out of my mind. I see it everytime I try to sleep." Brian sits there staring at Justin. He is trying to get his breathing under control, feeling the need to hit whoever did all of this shit to this beautiful and smart kid. All right, Brian, get ahold of yourself. You don't do love. You don't do relationships. What the hell are you thinking? "So the police hauled your mom off. What happened to your sister?" "I don't know. They put us into two separate foster homes. I never saw her again. I was 10 when it all happened. By the time I was 13 I had been moved to a foster home in Cleveland. I had a wonderful social worker there," Justin says with a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "He paid me $10 everytime I sucked him off. That went on for a whole year. I saved up quite a bit of money that year. When I turned 14 I decided it was time to get the hell out of there." "Where did you go?" "Where does every runaway go? I went to New York City." "Is that where you met this Norris guy?" With that last question, Justin looks up quickly at Brian. "I never told you his last name, Brian. Who the fuck have you been talking to? Did you call that cop friend of yours? Are you turning me in?" Brian can see that Justin is ready to bolt, so he decides to tell Justin the truth. "Yeah, I called Carl while you were asleep. I didn't tell him where we are. I told him what happened. He said all kinds of shit is going down right now. They found the videotapes. The FBI is raiding Norris' offices -- in fact, it's probably already happened." Justin sits there studying Brian's face. He has the face of someone who doesn't lie about anything; if anything is brutally honest, no matter who it hurts. As he sits there, he decides he believes him. "Okay, I believe you." "So what happend in New York?" "I lived with some street kids. We squatted at a few abandoned buildings, dug in the trash for food, pan-handled. I even tried hustling. That's when I met Robert, and he took me to Pittsburgh. I was 16 then." "Why didn't you ever leave, if things were so bad?" Justin stiffens his back and finally meets Brians' eyes again. "Are you going to judge me?" "No. I was just curious. If things were actually so bad, why the fuck didn't you just the hell out of there?" "What makes you think I didn't try?" "Yeah, so what happened?" "I ran away twice. The first time I made it to Philadelphia. They found me and brought me back. I couldn't walk for a week that time. The next time I tried was about six months later. I only made it as far as the train station when one of his cops picked me up. That time he almost killed me. I was in bed for three weeks then, with a doctor coming in everyday to check up on me. So, Brian, are you going to ask me again why I didn't leave? Does that satisfy you?" Brian could feel Justin's anger flowing off of him like a heatwave. He is actually starting to feel guilty about asking that question. Cowboy up, Brian. You don't do guilt, he said to himself. "So what kind of business was Norris involved in that he needed the cops?" "It was only a few, but one in particular. His name is Stockwell. He's on the drug task force. Whenever they do a drug bust, they keep the drugs for evidence for only so long. After the trial, they're sent to the incinerator. Stockwell would swap out something else for the drugs. It was mainly cocaine he was dealing with, so just some white powder would do. The night before Robert had his . . . accident, I heard them talking after -- well, I heard them talking. Stockwell said that procedures were changing in the department, and that they were starting to test the drugs before sending them to be destroyed. It was just random tests, but he was getting nervous about being caught. Robert talked him into just one more job, and then they would work out another scam." "Justin, Carl said there were some missing videotapes. Who are they of?" "Did Carl tell you what was on the videotapes?" "Yeah, he did." "The tapes I have are of Stockwell and me. I thought I could use them if he came after me -- use them against him to leave me alone." "Where are the tapes?" "They're upstairs in my duffel bag." Brian runs his hand over his face trying to absorb all of the information that has just come his way, suddenly feeling very exhausted. "Listen, I know it's only 8:00, but I'm exhausted. Let's head to bed. I need to talk to Carl tomorrow to find out what the FBI found. We'll take it from there." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stockwell pulls up behind Charlie in front of the building. They silently enter the building, head to the floor that has Brian's loft on it. Charlie picks the lock and they head inside. Stockwell walks over to the office area, opening drawers and looking through all of the files. As he sits on Brian's office chair, he scans all of the photos on the desk. He picks up one in particular. His eyes widen as he recognizes Carl Horvath standing there with a group of people all looking very happy. This Brian Kinney must be one of these other guys. Jesus, Kinney has a connection with Horvath. As Stockwell sits there, he tries to remember any conversation he has had with Horvath. Then he remembers Carl talking about a cabin in Maine that he and some friends had purchased, offering it to cops if they needed to get away, just as long as none of the group was using it then. "Charlie, I know where that little shit is hiding out." "Where?" "He's up in Maine." Stockwell re-opens the drawer, remembering he saw a file labeled real estate. He picks it up and opens it, thumbs through the material. Looking up at Charlie he says, "And I have the location right here."