Lie With Me (Stonewall Investigations Miami 2)

He shook his head. “All I know is that the shorter of the two men was the one who killed Derrick.”

“And you heard voices. Did they speak a lot?”

“Well, one did. He was the one yelling the homophobic slurs at us while he beat us. The other one wasn’t saying a word. I think… I don’t even remember him landing any kicks now that I think about it. He was a lookout, maybe?”

“Possibly.” The truth of the matter was that there were an infinite amount of “maybes” right now.

“There were no cameras in the alley they pushed us into, so no footage. Unless you can do something with the recurring nightmares I get. That footage is incredibly clear.”

“I will do everything in my power to help stop those nightmares, Oliver.”

He managed a weak smile. It was such a contrast to the bright and eye-crinkling grin he had given me on the night we first me.

“Thank you, Beckham.” He adjusted in the chair, the wood legs creaking as he moved. “And there’s something else…” Oliver chipped at the blue paint on one of his fingernails. “One of them said my name. I told the cops, but they said the assailants probably heard Derrick shouting it. I don’t think so, though. I remember it happening at the very beginning. They knew me. As much as they hated me for being gay, they also hated me for something else… I think whoever attacked us, whoever killed Derrick, they know me…”

Well, that certainly made this case incredibly complicated, as if it hadn’t started that way to begin with.

“Do you have any suspicions as to who those two could have been?”

Oliver shook his head. “I’ve been thinking on it every day since that night happened. I can’t think of anyone in my life, currently or from the past, who’d want to hurt me like that. I don’t make enemies, and I absolutely hate fighting or arguing. Even when someone’s in my face about to throw punches, I’ll still back off with my tail between my legs.”

“Has anyone gotten in your face like that?” The question was part of my job, but for some reason, a flare of defensiveness rose inside me.

“My neighbor. He was a homophobic rhino hemorrhoid.”

That got a laugh out of me while setting off alarms at the same time. “So you and him argued a lot?”

“Yeah, it was a rough year. Until my lease ended and I bounced. He would yell slurs through his window as I walked by, and my rainbow flag was always thrown on the ground and stepped on whenever I’d put it up.”

“Could he be—”

“I don’t think he’s one of the assailants. He’s got a huge beer gut, and his voice is pretty distinct. I would have recognized him if he were one of the guys.”

I jotted down some quick notes in a blue notebook that always sat at the ready on my desk. Even though Oliver might have exonerated his sewage twat of a neighbor, I still wanted to have a sit-down chat with him. In the heat of the moment, Oliver might not have gotten all the details about his assailants.

I wrote down his neighbor’s name and address. We talked for another hour or so, sifting through every fine detail of Oliver’s memory. At times I could see the pain reflected on his face as clear as the Miami sunlight streaming through the window. We would have to stop for him to collect himself. I had a box of tissues that was used quite frequently throughout the meeting. especially when the conversation honed in on Derrick.

It viscerally hurt me to see Oliver in such visible pain, as batty as that sounded. I was normally a pretty empathetic person, but when I was on the clock, I tended to store that empathy away so I could focus solely on the facts and not be swayed by fickle emotions. It was a technique that helped me close my cases with mostly positive results. And once the case was closed, then I’d allow myself to feel the swell of good emotions that usually followed.

It was different with Oliver.

With him, I was becoming fully entwined before this meeting was even over.

Bloody hell, who was I kidding? I had been fully entwined since we first met back in that pub weeks ago.

8 Oliver Brightly

How? What? Who and when?

My head was about to explode with questions, but they weren’t about my case. The questions swirled around Beckham and why the universe was bent on crossing our paths. This was beyond a happy coincidence.

This was an ecstatic epiphany.

A glorious accident.

A what-the-fuck-is-going-on and where-the-fuck-are-the-cameras moment.

I had to keep it all in, though. I didn’t want to seem like I was overly excited or anything. Beckham was the epitome of cool, calm, and collected. I couldn’t come back into his orbit and start blabbering and tripping over my words, so I managed to keep things under control for pretty much the entire meeting. The fact that I was basically reliving one of the most fucked-up nights of my life also factored into my level of focus. I used up a few tissues and had to take one or two breaks, but overall, I made it through without breaking down which was really all thanks to my rock-star therapist.