Chapter 36: Introspection and Retrospection

Johnny was on his own in the house for the first time since earlier in the day of the assault. It was a little after four, and Detective DeVito was coming at six. Johnny fervently hoped that Mike would be back by the time DeVito showed up—he didn't relish the idea of being grilled by this guy without someone else present. He briefly toyed with the idea of telling DeVito he needed to cancel their appointment, but decided that no, he preferred to get the interview out of the way. It would just be rehashing the same old shit anyhow, he reminded himself, so no big deal. And he wasn't a suspect, so it wasn't like he needed a lawyer.

Johnny's mind was swirling with the events of the day. It was a bit difficult for him to believe that it had only been twenty-four hours since he was released from Rampart, but it was true. He'd gone straight to Roy's and slept until supper time, and then had stayed awake until around nine, when Jenny had sent him to bed. And eleven hours later, when he and Mike had finally gotten out of bed, he only made it a few hours until he needed to sleep again.

And it was after that morning nap that Johnny had his worst misunderstanding with Mike ever. Sure, they'd fought about things before—but usually minor things that could be easily repaired. And for sure, Johnny had seen Mike angry before—usually he fumed, but sometimes he yelled, too. But that morning was the first time Johnny had ever been the object of Mike's anger.

"Is that what we are to you? Dirty laundry?"

The icy coldness of Mike's voice when he'd hurled those words back at Johnny was nothing close to anything Johnny had ever experienced from him before. Johnny had explained what he'd meant, and Mike had been suitably apologetic about misunderstanding, and about not recognizing the emotional toll of the assault. But the substance behind Mike's angry retort left Johnny with some things to think about.

Johnny was happy with Mike—of that, he had no doubt whatsoever. He couldn't imagine living without him; didn't want to think about how he'd be now if the accident eighteen months ago had been just a little worse, if the car had been going just a little faster, if Mike had been thrown a little farther, or landed a little harder. But when he was brutally honest with himself, Johnny had to admit that even though he was happy, his life was nothing like how he'd imagined it would turn out.

Perhaps it was the influence of being close friends with Roy, the quintessential, All-American Family Man. He had a wife with whom he had a solid and loving relationship, he had a satisfying career, great kids, a nice house—the whole package. And even though Johnny was only a little younger than Roy chronologically, he always considered himself to be Roy's junior in many ways. So in a sense, Johnny had "grown up" with Roy as a model for how a satisfied and happy adult should live. And certainly, when Johnny had been twenty three years old, and had imagined what his thirty-three-year-old self might be doing in ten years, his current life was nothing like what his younger self would have sought.

He'd always imagined that he'd finally find a girl who could take him seriously for who he was, and would understand his job, and who would find him attractive. He'd imagined that she might be a career woman, and might want to wait a while before having children. He'd imagined that maybe she'd be a nurse, or a teacher, or a chef, or an accountant, or any number of things.

But never, ever did his younger self seriously entertain the idea of settling down with a man.

He'd never denied his own sexual orientation. In fact, he'd realized early on in his adulthood that his encounters with men were easier, held less pressure, and were generally more successful than his encounters with women. Perhaps it was because when he got together with a man, in Johnny's own mind—and usually in that of his partner's as well—the hook-up was for fun, for mutual gratification, for stress relief, but not for keeps. Twice in twelve years, Johnny found himself dating the same guy for a few months in a row. The longest he'd ever dated one woman exclusively was three months, and those relationships had all petered out on their own. He'd had a near miss with a woman he'd actually asked to marry him, after having known her for only a few weeks, but had found out in the nick of time that she wasn't who he thought she was. And other than that one time, he'd never really considered settling down.

Until Mike.

They'd come together almost by accident, when, in a moment of stress, Mike had said something about himself that could have been interpreted any number of ways, and Johnny had taken a huge chance and followed that remark with an unambiguous statement about his own sexual orientation. From that moment, when the invisible wall between them had been lifted, it was like they'd never not been together. And, for about a year after they got together, Johnny was too happy, too caught up in love, to question whether he would feel fulfillment in a life that didn't come close to meeting what he'd imagined.

Johnny had always imagined he would get married someday—and he'd always imagined that defining moment, where he would ask a woman he loved to commit herself to him for the rest of their lives. He'd imagined they'd have children, and that maybe he'd get some nieces and nephews in the bargain, and of course some in-laws, who probably wouldn't like him.

But it didn't work out that way. A year after that invisible wall had disappeared, Mike had nearly gotten killed when an inattentive driver hit him on the scene of an MVA. As soon as Mike was out of the woods, and Johnny could think about something other than whether Mike was going to live or die, Johnny realized he'd settled down without even noticing. He'd settled down with Mike, and, after nearly losing him, Johnny was desperate to have some promise of permanence, some symbol of the fact that they both knew that only death would separate them. And he'd gotten it, when Mike said 'I do' and slipped a ring onto Johnny's finger.

Johnny knew his life was great, but it wasn't anything like what he'd imagined.

There were parents-in-law, who surprised Mike by showing up for their backyard ceremony. and surprised Johnny by actually seeming to like him. There were a niece and a nephew, who Johnny would probably never meet, as Mike's brother had made it completely clear he wanted nothing to do with him. There was a sister-in-law, who lived in New York and only made it to California once a year.

There wouldn't be any children, of course. And every now and then, Johnny found himself thinking about that cold, hard fact of life. Sitting on the couch right now, thinking about how different his life was from how he'd imagined it would be, was one of those times. Every now and then, Johnny found himself mourning the loss of something he'd never had.

It didn't happen often—usually Johnny could think of some trigger that brought up the thought. And today's trigger was his fight with Mike that morning, which was causing Johnny to do some serious thinking.

Was he ashamed, like Mike had first suspected, of the fact that he'd settled down with a man instead of a woman, like he'd been supposed to do? No, he could answer himself honestly on that one—definitely not.

Did he have some regrets? Possibly, but none that were even close to making him want to leave and start over somewhere else—not even close.

Was he acutely aware, on a daily basis, that he wasn't following the rules of society? And did his breaking of the rules lead to consequences, pain, awkwardness, and frustration? Every single damned day.

So, he asked himself, had he been honest with Mike that morning? Yes, he had—he wasn't ashamed of them. But were there things about settling down with Mike that bothered him? There were, and they weren't likely to ever go away. Would he ever leave Mike to try to fix any of those things? No chance in hell. Did they still bother him, even though he knew he'd never try to change them? Yep.

Johnny sat on the couch, head spinning with a dizzying matrix of ups and downs, highs and lows, satisfaction and regret, for over an hour. The sun had crossed behind the house, and, with the plywood over the window, it looked more like it was eight thirty in the evening than five thirty. Johnny was so immersed in his own thoughts that he didn't realize how dark it had gotten in the room.

Johnny became dimly aware of the sound of a vehicle in the driveway. He was jolted out of his reverie by the realization that it could be the detective, but then the front door opened and Mike came in. Mike stopped short in the living room when he saw Johnny, sitting cross-legged and motionless on the couch in the exact place Mike had left him ninety minutes earlier.

"Uh-oh. Sitting in the dark and brooding, huh?" Mike said. "That's a bit of a role reversal. Should I be worried?"

Johnny gave an honest answer. "I have no idea. It's usually you doing the brooding, so I'm stumped."

Mike snorted. "I'll remind you how it goes. When it's me brooding, it usually ends up with you talking me out of a funk, and then me talking you into the bedroom, and then us having scorching hot sex."

Johnny squirmed. "I bet we can manage the first part, but, uh …"

"Geez—no, I know. Sorry, that was a dumb-ass thing to say." Mike sat down next to Johnny, and brushed his too-long hair away from his eyes. "A penny for your thoughts."

Johnny considered evasive maneuvers, but realized Mike deserved to know what he'd been thinking about. "Not sure they're worth that much. Just kind of going over our, uh, misunderstanding this morning. Thinkin' about life, and stuff."

Mike nodded. "I was thinking about that in the truck on the way home. I'm really sorry about what I thought, and what I said—I should've known that wasn't what you meant."

"Nah, I'm not worried about that any more—I was more, just—ah, I dunno. It's dumb. Never mind." Johnny shook his head. "Just brooding, I guess."

"Well, whatever it is, it's gotten you pretty down. So, at risk of perpetuating this weird role reversal, I'm asking you to please tell me what's going on in that shaggy head of yours. I doubt I'll think it's dumb—remember, you're looking at the grand champion of looking on the bleak side," Mike reminded him.

Johnny considered that fact. "All right. But don't take this the wrong way, okay? I don't want you to think I regret being with you—because I don't. It's just that … my life didn't turn out the way I thought it would."

"You mean you never thought you'd settle down?"

Johnny hesitated. "I kinda did, actually. I kinda figured, someday I'd find a woman who didn't think I was an idiot, and get married, and, well …"

"Have some kids?" Mike added quietly. "I know you think about that."

"Do you think about it?" Johnny asked. "I mean, it's pointless, because we can't, but do you?"

"Not really—I always knew I wouldn't be with a woman. I mean, I know there's plenty of guys like me who get married, have kids, the whole nine yards—but I just couldn't do that." Mike shook his head. "It'd be a total sham, and I don't do shams."

"Me neither," said Johnny. "But, you know, I go—went—both ways, so I coulda done it, and it wouldn'ta been a sham." He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to clear away the cobwebs. "And like I said—I don't regret being with you. Don't ever think that."

Mike captured Johnny's slender hand with his broad one. "But a consequence, for you, of our being together, is that you won't have children," Mike said. "You can regret that, and not regret us. I can understand that."

"You can?" Johnny looked at Mike. "You really can?"

"I really can," Mike assured him.

"Then you're one step ahead of me, as always. I'm still tryin' to wrap my head around all that stuff."

"Well," Mike said, turning Johnny's hand over in his own, "I've had a lot more of my life to think about it. You always thought you'd settle down with a girl, but then—surprise!—you ended up with me, and there's some consequences to that. I've had my whole adult life to think about the results of not following the rules of society, but you never thought you'd have to deal with any of those things. Not once you settled down and got married. And now the very ugliest, the sickest consequences have been piled on us over the last week—Jesus, has it only been a week? So it's no wonder you're thinking about that stuff right now."

"I'm glad I ended up with you," Johnny repeated. "No matter all the shit that happens." He sighed heavily. "Like that detective coming soon. Man, I hope we didn't make a mistake, having him come here instead of us goin' there."

"I'm pretty sure we didn't. For one thing, if it'd been there, it wouldn't have been 'us.' He would've put you in an interview room, and it would've been you and him. Here it's both of us, and it's our turf."

Johnny frowned. "You're talking like you're expecting there to be a problem. I'm just dreading it because I don't wanna hafta dredge up all that shit yet again. I mean, does he seriously think I'm gonna have anything new to say?"

"Well, he did say there were some new questions that came up after they talked with the suspects. So maybe one of 'em spilled something that they need to follow up on, or something like that," Mike said, still holding Johnny's hand.

"I guess. But why just me? Why did he say he just wanted to talk to me, and not to us?" Johnny could feel his heart rate increasing, and scowled as he realized how worked up he was getting.

"Sorry, babe; I just don't know. But I'll be here, all right?"

"I know you will." Johnny carefully, but shakily, drew in a deep breath, partly to calm himself, and partly to try to relax the muscles in his torso that had tensed up and were tugging on his sore ribs.

Mike leaned in and put his forehead to Johnny's, and kissed him gently. "I'm gonna make coffee for this cop—don't have any donuts around, so the coffee's just gonna have to do it. You want any?"

"Yeah—I'm gettin' sleepy again already, if you can believe that. And I guess it would be poor form to fall asleep during the interview, right?" Johnny looked up at Mike. "You're still not having any, huh?"

"Nope—doctor's orders. Plus—well, I still never really filled you in on the whole coming unhinged thing," Mike said from the kitchen, loudly enough that Johnny could hear him without getting up. "I mean, I told you about my rant to Dr. Early, but I never really told you what I did to Wes Harris—I was thinking about that on the way home, too." Mike finished setting up the coffee maker, and, suddenly remembering they would have to eat eventually, stuck Jane Stanley's casserole in the oven, and sat back down with Johnny.

"I'll tell you, I really freaked him out—freaked myself out, too. He walked into my office right as I was throwing my phone across the room because that asshole had just called me. Static in the background and everything. So, I nearly pelted Harris with the phone, and all he did was to ask me why I was acting like such a lunatic. And what did I do? Good old calm Mike Stoker practically shoved poor Wes down into a chair and ranted to him about how some asshole from the department who doesn't like that you and I are together has been fucking with our lives. And I put all my favorite pictures of you and of us right in front of him on my desk, and said if he didn't like it, he could jump out the window, and so could everyone else in the department."

Johnny's eyes were wide. "Okay. Wow. That's not like you at all."

"Nope. And the next thing—this was really weird—five seconds later, I was deadly calm again, and got right back to business as usual." Mike shook his head. "It's like it was a movie I saw, not actually something I really did."

"That's like how it was when those guys took me down in the alley," Johnny admitted. "It was like I was standing there watching, from the other end of the alley, but also feeling everything at the same time." He shuddered. "And in about ten minutes, I get to go through it aaaallll over again. Goody."

Mike didn't say anything for a few seconds. He knew this interview, no matter what DeVito asked, was going to be really hard for Johnny. "What do you want me to do, I mean, while he's here? Would you rather I were in the other room, keeping an eye out and an ear open from a distance, or—"

"No!" Johnny exclaimed. "No. In fact …" Johnny looked around at the arrangement of the living room. "You know what? Let's move things around a little. Let's put the recliner way off on the side, and the other comfortable chair way on the other side, and then we'll put the uncomfortable chair right there across from the couch, and give him that one."

Mike raised an eyebrow.

"I mean," Johnny added, "not to be mean, but if we give him a cushy chair he might stay forever. And I guess we can't not give him coffee, if I'm having it, but no ashtray."

Mike started moving the chairs around. "We don't let people smoke in here anyhow, Johnny. We don't even have any ashtrays."

"Yeah, I know, but, like, if there's not one there, then he knows he shouldn't get too comfy, right?"

Mike shook his head, smiling. Johnny wasn't making a whole lot of sense, but was sounding more like himself. "I guess so." He pushed their least comfortable chair into position across from the couch. "How's that?" he asked. "Besides underhanded, sneaky, and devious, that is."

"Perfect!" Johnny glanced at the clock in the dining room. "I guess he could be here any second. I oughta take a leak before he gets here." He laboriously rose from the sofa, and headed down the hall to the bathroom. He took care of business, and was relieved to see that although there was still blood in his urine, it didn't look any worse than it had the day before, despite the fact that he'd been moving around a lot more. As he was washing up, he heard the doorbell. He dried his hands and shuffled back down the hallway, feeling odd wearing his shoes in the house.

Mike answered the door, with Johnny standing just behind him.

"Detective DeVito?"

The man nodded, but didn't move forward, as Mike was standing in the middle of the doorway. "I'm Mike Stoker. No offense, but can we please see your ID? Anonymous harassment has a way of making you paranoid."

The man pulled an ID wallet from his pocket, flipped it open, and handed the gold shield to Mike. He looked at it and passed it to Johnny, who stepped forward and passed it back to the detective. "John Gage," he said, extending a hand.

"Tom DeVito," the detective said, shaking hands with Johnny, then Mike, who stepped aside and let him in.

Mike showed him to the living room. "Watch your step—there might still be some glass around," he said, ushering DeVito to the chair Johnny had selected for him. "Coffee?"

The detective looked surprised. "Sure, thanks. Black. Probably had too much already today, but that's the way it goes." He turned around to look at the boarded up window. "Too bad that happened on a Friday. Probably no chance of getting it taken care of till Monday, right?"

"Not unless we wanted to pay triple," Johnny said.

"I did notice the paint is gone from the house—I was out here yesterday morning, and it looked pretty awful. How'd you get rid of it so fast?"

Johnny grinned. "Buddy from the fire department borrowed sandblasting equipment from his brother, and with an entire shift of firemen, we made quick work of it. I mean," he amended, "they did. I'm still not supposed to do anything, with the cracked ribs and all."

Mike came back in and set a mug in front of DeVito, and another next to Johnny on the side table, where he wouldn't have to bend to reach it. He sat down on the couch next to Johnny, and watched as DeVito opened the notebook he'd been holding since he came in.

"All right. Let's get down to business," said DeVito. "We interviewed both of the suspects in your case thoroughly last night, and are satisfied that we have the right people in custody, and that there's nobody else we need to be looking for. The first guy we picked up, Torrelli, claims no personal knowledge of either of you, and also claims that he had nothing to do with the assault. He admits he was there, but denies laying a hand on you. So the first thing I want to hear from you, Mr. Gage, is as detailed a description as you can give of the assault, with emphasis on anything you can recall clearly about who did what."

Johnny shook his head. "Man, I don't think I can tell you anything new. I already told Houlihan everything I remember—everything. There was the taller guy, who was wearing cowboy boots with pointy toes. The shorter guy was wearing black sneakers."

"All right," said DeVito, "those are good details. What happened first?"

"They both grabbed me—I'm sure of that. There was one guy on one side of me, and the other guy on the other side. I got, uh, slammed up against the wall, and—"

DeVito interrupted. "Were they both touching you at this point?"

"Yeah, definitely. Look," Johnny sighed. "I told Houlihan all this before, all right? Why do you have to ask me again?"

"Because I need to establish exactly which parts of the assault had both men involved, all right? So let's continue. You were up against the wall, and you're sure they were both in physical contact with you at that point?"

"Yes! Jesus." Johnny tried to take a deep breath to calm himself, but stopped short. "All right. At that point I kicked out backwards, with both feet, hard enough that both my feet were off the ground, and there's no way just one guy coulda held me up against the wall for that, all right? And plus, I could tell one guy had one side of me, and the other guy had the other, all right? So yeah, it was definitely two guys."

"And you did try to fight back," DeVito said as he wrote something in his notebook. "I didn't have that detail before."

"Of course I fucking tried to fight back! Jesus Christ! Did you think I was just gonna stand there and take it?" Johnny was breathing hard, his ribs stabbing him with pain on every breath.

"You didn't mention it before," DeVito said. "Let's move along. You kicked backwards from the wall. Then what?"

"They pinned me up against the wall even tighter. The tall guy talked right in my ear."

"How do you know it was the tall guy?"

"Because," Johnny said, starting to sound like he was talking to a preschooler, "he talked right in my ear. I'm six one. The shorter guy was maybe five seven, five eight. He wouldn't have reached."

"Okay—that's another good detail. What did the tall guy say, as best as you can remember?"

Johnny looked to Mike for support. He really didn't want to recount the exact words, but he knew he had to. Mike nodded. "It's okay, Johnny. They're just words."

Johnny sighed, and continued. "He said—and I don't know if this is exact, but it was something like this: 'You didn't listen to us. You were supposed to quit, and scram, but you didn't listen, pretty Captain.' And that's how I knew it was the same guy—because of what he called me, and because he was repeating what he'd said on the answering machine."

"Did you recognize the voice?" DeVito asked.

"It was hard to tell," Johnny admitted. "But the other guy—he talked next—I knew when I heard his voice that he wasn't the one from the messages."

"Okay—let's make sure we're not skipping ahead. So the taller guy talked, and then what?"

"That's when they slammed my head into the wall real hard. At the same time as he said 'Captain'— bam!"

"Could you tell who was holding, and who was slamming?"

"No," Johnny admitted, "but there were definitely four hands on me, or I wouldn't have still been there."

"Staib isn't a small guy, and he looks pretty strong—he might've been able to hold you on his own."

Johnny gaped at DeVito. "Are you clear on what I do for a living? I have to be able to drag a guy bigger than me, in full turnout gear and an air pack, out of a burning building, by myself. So no—he wouldn't have been able to hold me on his own."

"All right—then what happened?"

"The other guy said something like I could try to get a look at them, and right after that, they turned me around and slammed me into the wall again."

"They turned you around—so your back was to the wall?"

"Yeah, that's right."

"That might've been a good time to try to fight back again," DeVito added unhelpfully.

"Now, wait a second!" said Johnny.

"Detective, that was completely unnecessary," Mike said coldly.

"Mr. Stoker, I'm asking the questions here," DeVito said, without looking at Mike.

"That wasn't a question," Mike pointed out. "And I think there wasn't time to fight back, from what I heard."

Johnny continued. "Yeah, I woulda fought back if there'd been more than half a second before they punched me in the gut and knocked my wind out."

"They?" asked DeVito. "Did they both hit you?"

"It was the tall guy. He hit me in the gut, twice. Knew exactly what he was doing, to knock the breath right outta me. The short guy shoved me down on the ground after that, and I couldn't breathe, couldn't move. Then they started kickin' me."

"Do you know who kicked you where?"

"The eye was definitely the sneaker, because I saw it comin'. I don't know what kind of shoe got me in the kidney, but the ribs—that was definitely the cowboy boot. Whatever hit me was sharp, and hard. Not a sneaker."

DeVito wrote some more in his notebook. "Okay—so you're sure that each one of them definitely kicked you at least once?"

"One hundred percent positive," Johnny said.

"We'll need to talk to the doctor who treated your rib injuries, to see if he can say whether that injury is consistent with being kicked by a cowboy boot, since you couldn't see that one coming," DeVito said. "The medical records we got reported on the injuries, but not about what kind of shoe could've caused them."

"Fine by me," Johnny said. "Dr. Kelly Brackett, at Rampart. You already have a signed release to get medical records; I'll sign something else for Rampart if they need me to for him to be able to talk to you."

"Then what happened, after the three kicks?" DeVito continued.

"I knew my ribs were broken, and I still couldn't breathe. I heard someone shout at the other end of the alley, and then I think the guys left."

"You didn't see them leave?"

"No—I hadn't breathed for a while, and I was pretty close to passin' out. You know—when you start to kinda get tunnel vision?"

"And did you lose consciousness at any point?" DeVito asked.

"No—I was able to breathe again shortly after that guy Robert showed up."

"All right," DeVito said. "I think that's all I need in that area. Let's move on."

Johnny frowned. "I don't get it—what else do you need to ask about? They didn't do anything else to me after that, and I was at Rampart pissin' half my blood out when they trashed the house."

DeVito looked up from his notebook. "When we interviewed Mr. Staib, we were trying to get an idea of what his motives were for the series of crimes. He told us a lot before he lawyered up, but there were some things we wanted to follow up on with you."

"Okay, like what?" Johnny asked guardedly.

"First of all—you reported to Deputy Houlihan that you'd remembered that a girl you'd dated had a relative with possible ties to the fire department."

"Yeah, Lynn Nolan." Johnny shook his head. "Man, she was weird."

"We'll get to that," said DeVito. "Your association with her may be relevant. Staib is her half brother, and he mentioned that you dated her quite a while ago, and that you broke off the relationship, and that some time after you did so, she discovered that you were in a relationship with Mr. Stoker, and she was apparently quite upset by that. We need some clarification on the sequence of events, please."

Johnny squirmed. "Look—this is getting awful personal. Is it really relevant?"

"We need a timeline. When you were dating Ms. Nolan, were you already involved with Mr. Stoker, or not?"

"Not," Johnny said coldly. "Jesus. What kind of person do you think I am?"

"We just have to nail these things down," DeVito said, "because a jury, especially with your type, is—"

"My type?" Johnny interrupted. "Excuse me?"

DeVito looked at him sharply. "You dated women, and now you're living with a man. One of the suspects is convinced that your behavior towards his sister contributed to her mental breakdown, so in order to understand his motives, we have to understand exactly what happened between Ms. Nolan and yourself, Mr. Gage."

Mike interrupted again. "What, to see whether he deserved to get the shit beaten out of him in an alley? Is that it?"

"To get a conviction, juries need to like the victim, or at least be sympathetic towards the victim, Mr. Stoker. If this case goes to trial, I can guarantee you the defense will do everything they can to paint Mr. Gage in a bad light."

"And are you trying to get a head start on that task?" Mike asked, looking calm but sounding deadly.

"No," DeVito said. "I'm trying to get a picture for whether a jury is going to be sympathetic to Mr. Gage or not, and for that, I need to understand his perspective on the events with Ms. Nolan."

"Look," said Johnny, wanting to defuse the situation, "here's what I can tell you. I asked her out, and we went out a couple times. I wasn't dating anyone else at the time. But we didn't exactly hit it off. For one thing, I like to have my privacy, have my space, and she wouldn't let me. I didn't call her any more, but she kept showing up at my place, managing to run into me at the hospital, that sort of thing. She started leaving presents for me—in the hospital, at my apartment, and she showed up at the station a couple times, and stuff like that."

"This was after you broke off the relationship?"

"Yeah, and I kept tellin' her to lay off, but she wouldn't. I finally told her I'd call the cops if she kept showing up at my place or puttin' stuff in the squad while it was parked at the hospital, and she finally got the message."

"And you weren't involved with anyone else at that point?"

"No!" Johnny said, obviously frustrated. "I mean, I probably had some dates during that time, but nothing serious."

"Did she know you dated men as well as women?"

"Are you kidding me?" Johnny said. "Nobody knew that—not then."

DeVito wrote something in his notebook. "Mr. Staib claimed that some time after you broke off the relationship with Ms. Nolan, she discovered that you were, and I quote from his interview last night, 'shacked up with another guy.'"

"It woulda been probably a year and a half later, if she found that out the way everybody else did," Johnny said, "which she probably did if she was still working at Rampart."

"And how did she find out?"

"I don't know for sure—I didn't have any contact with her, of any kind, after I told her I'd call the cops if she didn't quit. And, I know you're gonna ask, so here's the timeline. Six months after I told her that, more or less, is when I got together with Mike. Then a year or so after that, he got hit by a car at an accident scene, and got busted up real bad—woulda died if the paramedics hadn't been right there already—and when he was at Rampart for rehab a month or so after that, I was there too, of course, and people started to put it together, all right? And that was eighteen months ago. Is that enough?" Johnny asked, figuring he knew the answer already.

"A couple more questions. Before Mr. Stoker's accident, I assume it was not common knowledge in your workplace that you two were involved with each other?"

"No," Johnny said. "Not exactly something you'd advertise, right? A couple close friends, is all."

"And you hadn't planned on making your relationship common knowledge?"

Johnny rolled his eyes. "Look. You're a cop. Not such a different line of work from ours. Would you, if you were us? How many gay or bi cops you know who are out?"

"Uh, I really doubt that any of my colleagues are—"

Mike laughed aloud. "Seriously?" He shook his head. "Sorry—go on."

DeVito cleared his throat. "What I'm trying to establish here, Mr. Gage, is whether it was reasonable for Mr. Staib to attribute his sister's mental instability to anything in your treatment of her."

"I'd say, from my experiences with her," Johnny said dryly, "that she seemed pretty mentally unstable already, what with pretty much stalking me. I seriously doubt that finding out I swing both ways would have pushed her over the edge all on its own—that's quite a stretch."

"Let's expand on that point," DeVito said. "You said you 'swing both ways'—does that mean you have interest in both men and women?"

"Yes," Johnny sighed, "that's what that means. I don't see how it's relevant."

"If you'd had no interest in Ms. Nolan, but had used her to, say, cover something up, that would look bad to a jury. Make them less sympathetic to you." DeVito wasn't looking up when he said that, or he would've had his eyes poked out by the needles Mike was shooting at him with his glare.

"Why am I starting to feel like I'm the one on trial here?" Johnny muttered. "This is fucking ridiculous." He wriggled around to try to get into a more comfortable position, but didn't find one that worked.

"Regardless," said DeVito, "let's continue. When you first approached Ms. Nolan, did you ask her out on a date because of genuine interest in her?"

"Yes, though I wish I never had," Johnny said. "No, I never asked a girl out as a cover. That's not the kind of guy I am." He grabbed the couch pillow next to him and hugged it to his chest, bracing his ribs.

"And since you've been involved with Mr. Stoker, have you dated any women?" DeVito asked.

"Hold it," Mike interrupted. He turned to Johnny. "Your ribs okay?"

"Nope, still broken," Johnny said from between clenched teeth. "Let's just get this over with, okay?" He looked back at DeVito. "In answer to your question, no, I have not. Because (a), I don't cheat, and (b), you can ask my coworkers from that time—some of them pestered me constantly about how I must've given up on ever getting a date again. And no, the ones pestering me didn't know I was off the market. That good enough for you? Or do you want names of the guys who were giving me shit? Or would you like the name of every female in L.A. that I haven't gone out with in the last two and a half years?"

"No need to get hostile, Mr. Gage," DeVito said, shifting slightly in his chair. "I just need to establish the facts."

"I have a question, actually," Mike said. "Why do you need to establish these particular facts right now? These guys haven't even been arraigned yet. We don't even know if there's going to be a trial, so why are you worried about this stuff now?"

DeVito put his notebook away, and sighed. "Look. I don't have anything personal against you." Johnny snorted, but DeVito chose to ignore him. "It's just that when my boss looked at this case, one of the first things he said was, these guys aren't gonna be popular victims."

"So, you have to be 'popular' to be protected by the law?" Mike asked, voice completely cool.

"No—the law protects everyone equally," said DeVito.

Johnny scoffed out loud that that statement. "Man, you've never been to a reservation, have you—no, never mind, I don't wanna know. But I get it—what you're sayin' is, a jury's gonna think a couple fags were askin' for it anyhow, right, so why should the DA put much effort into the case?"

"I didn't say that," said DeVito, who was silently wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into here. He hadn't been expecting these guys to be so sharp, based on the transcript of the interview with Stoker last night. Frankly, he'd come across in yesterday's interview as a bit crazy, but seemed perfectly normal today. And—meeting these two in person for the first time was … enlightening. They weren't anything like what he'd imagined. He shifted again in his chair, which was about as comfortable as the ones they put suspects in in the interview room. And then, he looked around the living room, and realized there was no way this was the normal placement for such a chair. His estimate of the intelligence of his victims just rose another notch as he realized how he'd been set up.

"Can I offer a suggestion?" DeVito said.

Johnny raised an eyebrow that he was sure was so loaded with skepticism he was amazed he could lift it, but Mike replied verbally. "We're all ears," he said, arms crossed.

"If this case comes to trial—which it will, unless both the suspects go for a plea bargain—be prepared for questions like I just hit you with, and worse. The defense attorney will try to run you both through the mud. But if you answer him just like you answered me now, but without being as pissed, he won't get far. Okay?"

Johnny and Mike stared back at him, not totally understanding.

DeVito tried again. "I don't blame you for being pissed at my questions, but I had to ask them. But if you're prepared for that, or worse, from the defense attorney, and you can answer them honestly, as you did, and without emotion, which I don't blame you for, you'll paint a good picture for the jury, of a couple of mostly-regular guys who just got handed a lot of shit by a couple of maniacs, all right?"

Mike frowned. "In the courtroom, shouldn't the prosecuting attorney try to quash any irrelevant lines of questioning? Like anything at all about our relationship?"

DeVito shook his head. "It's a game, Mr. Stoker. Both sides play the same game—try to make the jury like their guy better than the other guy. And sometimes the game is played by allowing irrelevant lines of questioning, if your side thinks it will paint a better picture."

"Stupid system," Johnny muttered.

"It certainly comes across that way at times," DeVito said, again trying to adjust himself into a comfortable position in the chair.

"One more question for you," Mike said. "How likely do you think a plea bargain is at this point? I mean, they both confessed to a lot of stuff, right?"

"Hard to say," DeVito said. "I can't say too much about it, but I wouldn't be surprised either way. Right now we're trying to play them off each other. But we won't know till Monday."

"Fair enough," Mike said. "Are we done here?"

"Not … quite." DeVito looked at Mike this time. "Wesley Harris," he said. "Do you work directly with him?"

"I do," Mike said, not sure where DeVito was going with this.

"I'm instructing you not discuss anything about this case with him. You can work with him, but keep your conversation topics off of this case or anything having to do with it," DeVito said.

"Why?" Mike asked.

"I can't say, right now. I just need to tell you that you shouldn't talk with him about the case."

"Okay," Mike said. "I won't. But what if he asks me something? I mean, he did me a huge favor by taking that guy down last night. Seems like he deserves to—"

DeVito interrupted. "He's been instructed not to speak with you about the case either, so that shouldn't be a problem."

"All right!" Mike threw up his hands. "Okay! My lips are zipped."

"Thank you," said DeVito. "And now, unless you have any questions for me, I think we're done." He looked back and forth between Johnny and Mike. "Okay. Someone will be in touch after the arraignment. Please don't get up, Mr. Gage; I'll see myself out."

But Mike walked him to the door. "Johnny will be at home on Monday, and I don't know if I'll be in my office much, so if someone can call here after the arraignment, that would be great."

"We'll do that. Have a good evening."

Mike watched as DeVito walked to his unmarked sedan. He really had no idea whether to hate the guy, or to thank him. He stopped in the kitchen, turned the oven down, and set a time for forty-five minutes. He went back into the living room, and sat down with Johnny again.

"Well, that pretty much sucked," Johnny said. "I just want this to be fucking done, Mike."

"I know ya do, babe. So do I."

Mike maneuvered himself to one end of the couch, and propped a large cushion between the armrest and the end table. He positioned himself sideways, with his back against the armrest, and his outside leg off the couch. "C'mere," he said, helping Johnny scoot backwards, so his back rested against Mike's chest and his feet were towards the other arm of the couch. Johnny leaned back into Mike's body, and let out a sigh.

Mike folded his arms around Johnny, making sure to avoid the area of the cracked ribs. He could feel Johnny starting to relax the muscles of his ribcage, starting to breathe normally instead of from his shoulders and upper chest, the way he knew he always did when his broken ribs were bothering him what seemed like decades ago. Johnny put his forearms over Mike's, twining their fingers together on one pair of hands.

"Better?" Mike asked.

"Yeah," Johnny said through a yawn. "It's turnabout day, for sure—me sitting in the dark and brooding, you being the human chair for the guy with busted ribs."

Mike laughed, but gently, so he didn't jar Johnny. "I forgot we called it that, back when you used to do this for me."

"Mm," said Johnny. Mike felt him relax even further, and just held him as he drifted off into sleep. And, seeing and feeling how peaceful Johnny was, Mike wished that a timer was not going to go off in forty-five minutes, because he wanted to sit just the way they were, forever.

TBC