Full Release by Marshall Thornton (free novel 24 TXT) 📗

violence involved. Had it surprised Eddie? Had he just expected a simple squeezing? Had he thought it would be like holding his breath?

I tried not to look at his face, but failed. His eyes were partly open; the blue of his irises seemed even more striking with the discoloration of his skin. I’d never seen a dead body before. Not in person. Eddie looked like something on display at a wax museum. He didn’t look real. They pushed him into the back of the van.

“Was he on FaceSpace or any place like that?” I jumped. Detective Tripp was back. I hadn’t noticed him walking up to me.

It seemed a weird question. It didn’t make much sense to buddy up with a dead guy. “I don’t know. Why?”

“It’s the new place to leave your suicide note.”

“Oh my God.” I thought about it for a moment and asked, “He didn’t leave a note inside?”

“We didn’t find one.” After a pause, he said, “We did find your friend’s wallet. His name was Javier Hernandez.”

I was shocked, though I shouldn’t have been. The little sex game we’d played should have clued me in. “He told me his name was Eddie.”

Tripp looked at me. I could tell he thought I was holding something back. His eyes were kind. I wanted to tell him everything I’d left out. But it seemed harmless enough. Eddie being a masseur didn’t have anything to do with him killing himself -- people with nicer jobs kill themselves all the time. I kept quiet.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Hanson coming out of my house and into the garage. She had a cell phone glued to her ear.

“We noticed some bruising around his neck. Looks to be a few days old. You know anything about that?”

“He said he tripped. I didn’t believe him.”

“He might have tried a few days ago. Sometimes it takes people a few times to get it right.”

“There’s an overnight bag in the bedroom. Is that Javier’s?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “What else did he have with him?”

“That was pretty much it,” I said, not mentioning the massage table. It would bring up too many embarrassing questions.

He took a cell phone out of his pocket, one of the older flip phones that didn’t do a whole lot. “Is this Javier’s phone?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. He never used it in front of me.”

Detective Tripp flipped it open and scrolled around. After a minute or so, he looked up at me. “You said he called you. I’m not seeing a call.”

“I--I don’t understand. He called me.” I stood there dumb, then pulled my own phone out of my pocket. I turned it on and hit icons until I got to Recent Calls. I found the calls I got from Eddie. I showed the phone to the detective. He was staring at it when Hanson came over.

“We almost done?” she asked.

“You got a big date?” Tripp came back at her.

“Gang shooting. Truman High. I figured you’d want in, so I said we’d go.”

Tripp’s face got hard. “Kids?”

“Two.”

He turned to me and said, “Can you come to the station tomorrow and make an official statement?” When I nodded, he asked for my phone numbers. I gave him all three. Home, work, cell. Hurrying, he gave me a business card.

The detectives left shortly after that, but it was nearly eleven before the other officers finally finished. I was exhausted and starving. I wished I had the money to go to a hotel and order room service. I didn’t, though, so I had to go back inside. Even though they’d taken the tape down from the garage, I didn’t bother to put my car inside. I didn’t want to go in there.

With my remote, I tried to close the garage door. The door moved down its track a foot or so and then, with a grinding thump, stopped. I walked up to the door, bent down and looked up at the garage ceiling. A chunk was missing from the opener’s track. Stupidly, I hadn’t actually put that together with the piece of metal attached to the belt Eddie had hung himself with. The track would have to be replaced.

I stepped into the garage. Hanging from the track was a cord used to manually pull the door down. When I pulled it, the door slid down all too quickly, shutting with a bang. The garage became very quiet. It was the last place in the world I wanted to be right then. I hurried through, past the spot where Eddie had died, and into my kitchen.

I began looking around my house, afraid of what I’d see, my imagination running wild. Everything was exactly as I’d left it that morning. Except I had the feeling that things had been moved and put back in almost but not quite the right place. Of course, that was easily explained. Tripp and his partner had been wandering around, looking at my things, assessing their possible involvement in Eddie’s suicide. It was an eerie feeling.

As hungry as I was, I couldn’t eat. I wasn’t sure I could sleep, but there wasn’t much more I could do other than go to bed. I could have a drink, I supposed, but on my empty stomach it would likely make me sick.

I found my phone and called Peter. It didn’t even ring. Instead, it went right to voicemail. Apparently things were going well with the guy he’d met in the parking garage. I left a brief message. “Can you call me? Something bad happened.” A few minutes later, I called his voicemail back. “I’m okay. Something bad happened. But not to me. Well, sort of to me. I’m okay. Just call me.”

Of course, I had other friends, but none I could call so late at night. Well, none that I could call when I was in trouble. Before Jeremy, I’d been good at friends. I’d had a nice circle of four close friends and at least a dozen solid acquaintances. There were