“I guess that’s it, then,” I said, as the anchor went on to another story. I leaned forward toward the VCR and my back rebelled. I must have winced, and Mike saw it.
“Let me see that burn,” he said. “Take your shirt off.”
“I’ll survive. How often should I put that cream on?”
“Let me see the burn.”
I unbuttoned my shirt and threw it on top of the surfboard screen. “I can see that comes in handy.” Mike looked at my back. “Whoa. You should have gone to the hospital with this.”
“I had a fire to investigate, remember?”
“Yeah, Officer Macho, I know.” He pointed me toward the surfboard screen, and my bed beyond it. “Lie down so I can put some of this cream on you. You’ll never be able to get it on right by yourself.”
“Really, I can…”
“No arguments.”
I shrugged, and walked over to the bed. It felt terrific to lie down, and I was afraid I’d doze off, leaving Mike Riccardi to have his way with me. Well, that might not be so bad.
There was no chance of that, though. The cream smarted, making me recognize nerve endings in my back I’d never known existed. Mike’s hands, though, were sure and strong. “Your muscles are so tense. You ever get massages?”
“Once in a while.”
“I get one every week, or else my back tenses up just like this. We’ve got stressful, physical jobs, you know. Chasing down crooks and dragging heavy equipment around. You’ve got to take care of your body if you want it to last.”
“I take care of my body,” I yawned.
“I can see that.” He’d given up applying the cream by then, and he was gently massaging my shoulders. The ceiling fan above us moved the air around lazily, tickling my bare back and floating scents of aloe, smoke and salt water around us.
“That feels really good,” I said.
He leaned down and kissed the back of my neck. “You like that?”
“Yeah. I do.” I made a half turn so that I was facing up toward him. I hooked an arm around the back of his neck, pulled his face closer to mine, and kissed him. “I like that, too.”
“Mmm,” he said, licking his lips. “I can still taste the grappa.”
I sat up and unbuttoned his shirt. He had well-defined pecs, and small nipples only a little browner than his skin. I began exploring his hairy chest with my tongue and my teeth, and he shivered and groaned lightly. It took us a while to strip totally naked, after an intense exploration of each other’s bodies, kissing and licking and rubbing and even biting a little. His cock was average sized, though standing out straight from his body it looked plenty big enough. I leaned down and took him in my mouth, and I felt his whole body go tense.
“Oh, man,” he said.
I sucked him for a minute or two, then moved back up to kiss him again. And so we went for at least the next hour or so, learning the intimate geography of armpit and ass, cock and mouth, nipples and knees. I’d had relatively little experience with men by then; you could count all the men I’d slept with on your fingers and toes and have a few left over. Neither of us were particularly well-versed in what to do, but we managed, and we both made up in ardor for what we lacked in technique.
Finally we both brought each other off, him first, then me a moment later, cum spurting on our hands and stomachs. I pulled him close to me then, hugging him fiercely, feeling his long, hairy body connecting with mine at a hundred different points. I nestled into his shoulder, smelling the last vestiges of his cologne, my lips nuzzling his neck. He held me gently, careful of my burns, and I fell asleep.
When I woke the next morning it was already light, and I was alone in bed. I had no idea how long Mike had stayed. There was a note on the table that read, “Awesome! I’ll call you today. Mike.”
I felt alive, sexy, energized. I twisted around to see my back in the mirror and the burns looked less red and angry than they had the night before. I took a quick shower and applied the cream myself, as best I could. I kept smiling, wondering when I would see Mike Riccardi again.
The morning passed in a blur of busy work. I called the hospital and found that Gunter had been discharged, and Robert’s condition upgraded. My father had been moved from intensive care to a regular room, and my mother said he was breathing more easily. There were still a lot of tests left to do, though, and the doctors hadn’t said when he could go home.
Sandra’s parents had arrived late the night before, but after Cathy had appeared on all three of KVOL’s newscasts, the doctors were paying attention to her and she and the Guarinos were in a stage of truce. Sandra had shown more activity, moving and blinking her eyes, though she hadn’t woken up yet, and everybody was feeling optimistic.
The police artist brought me a composite sketch, based on what Gunter and I had both described, and what Tatiana had drawn herself. I couldn’t be completely sure, but I thought it looked remarkably like the guy I’d seen at the party. But was he our bomber? So far the only thing indicting him was his sweatiness.
A fax came in from Mike Riccardi, listing all the ingredients in the bomb. Depressingly, I recognized almost all of them, and knew that you could find almost everything on the list in any ordinary kitchen or garage. But just seeing his name at the top of the fax gave me a nice little boost.
Lidia came by with a copy of the autopsy report on Wilson Shira I’d asked her to pick up at the medical examiner’s office. She seemed excited by the chance to participate in the investigation, or maybe it was just seeing Doc Takayama. Apparently he’d taken the time to go over the report with her. I figured it was seeing him that brought that sparkle to her brown eyes, rather than the details of the charred corpse. I wondered what they’d talk about if they ever went on a date, if they’d share notes about dead bodies over pasta and wine, like Mike and I had.
I was happy to see that she and Doc were taking an interest in each other. “So tell me, officer, did you dig up anything by canvassing the offices around the Marriage Project?”
She pulled out her note pad. “By the time of the party, all the offices in the area were closed, so I couldn’t find anyone who had been around who hadn’t already spoken to an officer.” She looked up. “But I did find something interesting.”
“Spill.”
“Around three-thirty the receptionist at a computer place across the street was coming back to the office with cappuccino for her boss, and she saw this pickup truck slow down, and a guy in the bed of the truck started throwing paper bags on the sidewalk in front of the Marriage Project. She’s pretty sure he broke a window there, too. Then the truck drove away. She said she was so surprised that she didn’t think to get a license number.”
“We’re tying the pieces together, Lidia.” I told her about the paper bag Robert had given me. “Good work.”
“Anything else I can do to help?”
I handed her the list of ingredients Mike had faxed over. “See what you can do with this. Most of the stuff is pretty common, but you never know when you’ll come up with something.” I thought for a minute. “It’s a long shot, but my friend Gunter says the tuxedo the sweaty guy was wearing looked rented.” I handed her the yellow pages and said, “Want to give it a try? You can use the desk over there.”
Within a half-hour, Lidia had a list of formal wear rental places, and she left to show around the sketch of the sweaty guy. She agreed to stop downstairs and leave a stack of the sketches for the beat cops on all three shifts; maybe one of them might recognize our guy.
I spent the next hours on the phone. I found out the fingerprint lab had lifted one print, probably a middle finger, from the paper bag that had gone through the window of the Marriage Project’s office. They were running it through their computers, but since it was Friday, they didn’t expect to get a match before the first of the week. They also had the piece of pipe Mike’s investigators had found, but they were still working on it.