It’s been nominated for Love Romances Cafe’s 2009 Best GBLT Novel. I’m pumped. It’s also been nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel (Arthur Ellis is the biggest Canadian mystery award) and the Daphne du Maurier award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense.

Check out my web site for more information on this and all my other novels, http://www.pabrown.ca

“L.A. Boneyard is phenomenal! Full of suspense, murder, mystery and even explicit sex, Brown left nothing out! What more could you ask for in one book?” Read the rest of the review: http://bk-walker.livejournal.com/6013.html

“The crimes are as turbulent as the gay-cop emotions in this CSI-meets-butch-guys-in-love romantic thriller. Pat Brown has as
sharp an eye for crime-scene forensics as for the ins and outs of gay love among LA’s men in blue.”
—Richard Stevenson,
author of the Don Strachey PI novels

L.A. Boneyard, book 3 in the L.A. series, is getting rave reviews. To learn more and find reviews and buy links visit: http://www.pabrown.ca/laboneyard.htm

BLURB:

Evil is pursued from a shallow grave in Griffith Park, to the streets of West Hollywood into the dark heart of the gang-infested streets of East L.A.

Detective David Eric Laine is no stranger to violence and brutality, but even he is taken back at the sheer viciousness of the murder of two pregnant Ukrainian women. This was just the beginning of a baffling case which would lead from their shallow grave to a bucolic bungalow community in West Hollywood, tree-lined and tranquil, to the heart of the gang-infested streets of East Los Angeles, and points in between.

EXCERPT:

Friday, 8:20 AM, Vista del Valle Drive, Griffith Park, Los Angeles

Something had done a number on the corpse.

The early morning call-out had been brief and to the point.
Griffith Park. Shallow grave. Mutilated arm. Probably wild
animals.

LAPD homicide detective David Eric Laine hoped it was
animals. He crouched beside the makeshift grave, behind the
screen of freshly broken branches and crushed vegetation,
studying the exposed arm with the manicured nails and winking
diamond ring; the animals had nearly worked off the bone.
Wondering what her final moments had been like. Knowing it
had been ugly. He looked beyond the grave, visualizing. Had he
raped her? Had that been the last indignity she had suffered,
before the ultimate one?

Overhead, dense black clouds roiled across the western sky,
a late Pineapple Express had roared in last night, straight from
Hawaii, promising more rain in an already wet spring. The
chaparral and Ceanothus had started their seasonal bloom, thin
green shoots emerging from what had once been desiccated
limbs. Under foot the moisture retaining hydro-mulch, spread
after the ravaging 2007 and 2008 fires, soaked his feet, chilling
his skin. The steady thump-thump of the LAPD airship called
in to do an aerial survey echoed his heartbeat, driving him
relentlessly, as unforgiving of failure as he was.

David scanned the ground, taking in the fresh horse tracks,
and the fading coyote spore. The animals had scattered when
the woman who found the body nearly rode her horse over
them. She stood with her shoulder touching her horse’s neck,
the animal’s reins still held in her gloved hand. Blindly she
touched the burnished chestnut coat, seeking comfort. David
turned away; he had nothing to give her. His promises were for
the dead. They didn’t ask for guarantees. They didn’t get angry
when he was called away in the middle of the night to do his
job.

“So what have we got?” he asked.

The first officer on the scene, Donald Lessing, pulled out his
notes, “I received a call at seven-fifty-six AM that a body had
been discovered in a shallow grave. My partner and I were
dispatched, and arrived about fifteen minutes later.” He
indicated his partner, a paunchy, silver-haired Asian, who was
adding a second loop of barrier tape to keep out the curious,
then indicated the equestrienne, “We found Mrs. Rosenfield
right about where she is now. She was pretty upset.”

“I’m sure the last thing she expected to find was a dead
body on her morning ride.”

“Yes sir.”

Nothing could be done to process the crime scene until the
photographers had taken their shots. Everything had to be kept
intact to preserve possible evidence. They had the time; the
body wasn’t going anywhere. In the distance, thunder rumbled.
He amended that, maybe they didn’t have so much time.

David studied the dark, crouching clouds, and wondered if
Chris would get over his snit long enough to close the windows
against the coming rain. Otherwise their newly refinished oak
floors were going to get a soaking. One more thing for Chris to
get pissed at. He retraced his steps and approached the horse
and rider.

He pulled out a notebook and twisted his arm around to
check the time, only to discover he wasn’t wearing his watch.
Right, he’d stuffed it into his jacket pocket after he’d left an
angry Chris in bed this morning. Chris always seemed to be
angry these days. He got that way when he was between jobs.
He drew out the Rolex Chris had given him for his fortieth
birthday and wrote the exact time, the crime scene location, and
his own name and rank. David studied the watch ruefully. He
had told Chris a gift like that was too extravagant, but Chris
wouldn’t listen. “You deserve it,” he had said. “You put up with
me for four years, didn’t you?” Still, David took it off when he
could; out of sight of Chris, who took it as a personal affront
when he didn’t wear it all the time. David was a Timex kind of
guy. Even after four years he never got comfortable with the
easy wealth Chris displayed.

Mrs. Rosenfield looked young. David doubted she was more
than twenty-five. Under normal circumstances she would have
been attractive–large, doe eyes, soft hair flying loose from
under her riding helmet. But now her face was pale, and her
eyes were glassy with shock. David pushed aside his sympathy
and assembled his cop face; the one Chris hated so much,
claiming it made him look cold and robotic. Well, there were
times when cold and robotic was the right way.

She wore a tailored riding outfit and boots that gleamed,
even in the sunless light. A pulse beat in her throat, like a
wounded animal.

“Mrs. Rosenfield,” he said. “I’m Detective David Eric Laine.
Could I have your full name, please?”

“Danielle,” she said. “Just call me Danielle.” Her gaze darted
toward the grave. “Who is it? Do you know–?”

“No, ma’am, Danielle, we don’t know that yet. Can you take
me back to when you first spotted something out of the
ordinary?”

“S-sure.” She visibly collected herself, her hand going out to
stroke her horse’s neck. “Toby and I were on our morning ride,
when these coyotes came racing right out under our noses–I
thought they were attacking us at first. You hear about how
bold they’ve gotten over the years.”

“Yes, ma’am.” What coyotes could do was frightening. What
people could do to each other was so much worse. “What
then?”

“Once they ran away I realized they were just as scared as
we were. I was going to head back home. I’m supposed to be to
work at ten.” She shook her head, a strand of hair falling over
her eyes. She swept it aside with a kidskin gloved hand. “I guess
I should call my boss. I don’t think I’ll be in today–” Her voice
broke.

“Yes, ma’am,” David said gently. “What was the first thing
you noticed before the coyotes appeared?”

“Toby spooked.” Rosenfield grimaced. “I guess when he got
wind of them. He nearly dumped me. That was when I saw the
arm. I screamed. That must have scared them away without
taking…taking it with them.” The grimace deepened and the
flesh around her mouth whitened.

More thunder cracked, closer this time. She looked around
uneasily.

“Anything else you can recall about your ride?” David asked
even more gently, knowing she was very close to losing it.
“Before you noticed anything amiss?”

“We rode by the Roosevelt Municipal golf course,” she said.
“I go that way all the time. Usually it’s so peaceful…”

“You see anybody on the links?”

“Two players, and a caddie.” Rosenfield squinted as she
recalled her morning. “I don’t pay much attention to the
golfers, unless they’re driving carts. Sometimes they spook
Toby.”

“Would you recognize the golfers if you saw them again?”

“W-what? You don’t think they had anything to do with
this, do you?”

“It’s just standard procedure,” David assured her. “Look, I
know this is tough. Even cops can have a hard time stumbling
across something like this. If you like, I can give you the
number of a victim’s support group. They can help you with
this, if you want.”

“T-thank you. I don’t think that’s necessary…”

David handed her the card anyway. “You might change your
mind. I hear they’re good.”

She slipped the card into her jacket pocket. He knew she
wouldn’t call. He’d seen it before. Misplaced pride would keep
her from seeking help. “What did you see then?” he prompted.

“I didn’t know what it was at first, then I thought it was a
mannequin.” She gave a short bark of laughter, quickly stifled.
“That someone had stolen a storefront dummy and was playing
a gag. It was only after I saw the teeth marks that I knew.” She
swallowed convulsively and David wondered if she was going to
be sick. The human arm had been heavily gnawed by strong
jaws. He distracted her as smoothly as he could.

“I need you to come down to the station, to make a formal
statement. I can send someone out to get you if you like–”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll drive myself. Will I have to go to
court?”

“I won’t lie to you. It depends on the D.A., and whether a
suspect is found, and it all makes it to court. But I’m sure
someone from the prosecutor’s office will be in touch with you
if it becomes necessary.”

David watched her stiffly remount her horse and urge it
back onto the trail. They broke into a fast trot before they were
out of sight. He very much doubted she would ever ride this
peaceful trail again.

Out of the corner of his eye, David saw a white Pontiac
Firehawk, splattered with debris from the previous night’s rain,
pull up beside the LAPD crime scene van. It was driven by a
lithe, dark-skinned Latino man, with that young urban scruffy
beard thing going on. Chris, always quick to adopt new fads,
had tried it once, until David complained that it was like kissing
five o’clock shadow, all day long, and he reluctantly shaved it
off.

The Latino climbed out of the low-slung car. He surveyed
the scene of controlled chaos with dark eyes, taking in
everything in a sweeping glance, before he shrouded them with
a pair of Ray Bans. He looked like he just stepped out of GQ,
sharp creases on his wool dress pants and sedate black and blue
tie. He wore his gold detective’s badge on a chain around his
neck. David caught a glimpse of his Beretta nine under his
LAPD blue nylon wind breaker. Incongruously, he wore a pair
of hand-tooled black and blue Tony Lamas boots instead of the
usual military gear most new detectives favored. David wouldn’t
be surprised if he had a closet full of Levis and Stetsons at
home. He was a tall man, though not as tall as David’s six-four,
dark-skinned, with high cheek bones. His eyes were dark and
dangerous. Too dangerous for David’s taste.

The guy was going to spell trouble.

Already the eyes of the two female SID criminologists kept
straying his way. David had heard rumors about the guy, even
before he was assigned to Northeast; he’d ignored them at the
time, like he ignored all the trash talk around the squad room.
In the stories the guy was a wannabe actor. David had heard–
and dismissed–the story about his involvement with a
producer’s wife that had ended messily. The tabloid press had
been all over it. Maybe the guy had a problem keeping his dick
in his pants. Maybe he was only guilty of bad judgment. He
wouldn’t be the first. Cops and badge bunnies went together
like chili and fries.

David extended his hand and introduced himself. Might as
well give the guy the benefit of a doubt, he didn’t like it when
people jumped to conclusions about him. Being one of the few
openly gay detectives carried its own baggage. “Glad to have
you on board.”

“Thank you, sir,” the detective said. “Detective Jairo Garcia
Hernandez.” He pronounced it Yairo. “Most gringos call me
Jerry.” His smile was all teeth and David knew he was being
tested by the new D.

He’d nip that one in the bud before it went south. “I think I
can handle Jairo.” He gave the word a Spanish lilt. The guy
wasn’t going to catch this gringo ignorant of the language.
Good looking or not, he was just another rookie D.

Jairo saw the Rolex on his wrist and whistled. “Nice watch.
Your wife give you that?”

“No, I’m not married,” David said. Deciding to make small
talk, he ventured, “You?”

“Yes.”

“How’s that going for you?” Cops loved marriage; so many
of them did it so often.

“Fine.” Jairo grew defensive. “You gonna tell me that’s
gonna change? Already got that from my smart-ass sergeant
first time I showed up for roll-call.”

“It’s hard,” was all David said. “Marriage is a work in
progress.”

“So you were married? She divorce you?”

David shrugged. He finally slipped the Rolex off and tucked
it back into his inner pocket, over his heart. It would be safer
there, away from nosy rookies. “It’s complicated.” Then he saw
Jairo had noticed the plain gold band he wore on his left ring
finger. The gold band Chris had given him following the first
year they had lived together. He closed his hands into fists, but
made no attempt to hide the thing. What was the use? He was
almost as notorious in the LAPD as Mark Fuhrman.

Jairo’s disingenuous eyes widened. “You’re the… you’re
him.”

David saw something glitter on the ground at the entrance
to the crime scene, and crouched down to study it. It was a
bottle cap. Still, he signaled a photographer over to take a
picture. Sometimes the littlest things proved useful. Sometimes
they were just litter. All around them crime scene techs were
placing evidence flags, and doing their best to catch everything,
before the skies opened up. He was glad to see that the victim’s
hands had been bagged, covering the ring he had seen earlier.
“You can say it, you know.” David stood up and brushed debris
off his pants. “I’m the gay cop.”

Jairo flushed and looked away. “Yes, sir.”

Now what was that all about? Surely as soon as he knew
who his latest senior partner was going to be, Jairo would have
known all about David’s sordid “secret.” He would have found
all kinds of officers eager to share the scuttlebutt about who
he’d been saddled with. “That’s Detective, Hernandez.” David
was already beginning to miss Martinez, his partner of ten years.
He had been reassigned to South-Central, for the next six
months, to work a gang detail. They had forged a tight
partnership; a partnership that even David’s abrupt outing over
four years ago had not disrupted. David wasn’t looking forward
to breaking in the new kid, even if he was, as rumor also
claimed, top of his graduating class. Good grades, like good
looks, weren’t everything.

He moved around to stand beside the grave again. A tarp
had been laid over the torn earth to protect against the coming
storm. He thought he could still see the outline of the arm. He
glanced sideways when a flash of lightning illuminated the dense
brush. He almost felt sorry for the boots who was going to have
to guard this site all night.

He turned back to face the grave and its nameless victim.
Jairo came up to stand beside him. David kept his eyes on the
tarp, ignoring the man beside him.

“I’ll find him,” he promised.

Cover for L.A. Boneyard, the latest in the L.A. series

While this is going on a cover is worked on. I have very little to do with this beyond making some suggestions on what I want the book to look like. I make no attempt to design the thing, or create any of the graphics or title text or layout. I enjoy the chance to collaborate with the chosen artist, but this is not my area of expertise. I’m a firm believer that covers are key to book sales – especially if you are an unknown name. J.K Rowlings doesn’t have to worry about what her covers look like, she has only to put her name on it. Few of us have that luxury. So I want the best cover possible.

A few authors who take on the roll of editor, graphic artist, publisher and book marketer are successful at it. The vast majority are not. They waste their money and the paper used to print their books on. The world is full of more badly written, badly edited books today than ever in the history of publishing. Why? Because anybody can publish a book today. Harsh words, but true. Everybody who owns a computer has some kind of word processing software. Having the software does no render the user capable of creating good fiction. Owning a web cam or movie making software does not make a person a film maker. Owning desktop publishing software does not make someone a graphic designer. Like bad books, I think there is a surfeit of bad book trailers out there on YouTube.

I’ve spent the last month or so studying the trailers that people are producing and had pretty much decided not to bother trying to make one. Almost all the ones I saw were simply not exciting. They didn’t catch my attention and I couldn’t see why they would create any kind of interest in the book they were selling. Then I saw some that did work, and when they did, they were phenomenal. I’m now sold on book trailers as another marketing tool, IF THEY ARE WELL MADE. No, maybe there’s no quantitative statistics on how much they boost book sales. But then I don’t think there’s any data on how much anything we do boosts sales. Ads in the New York Times don’t sell books, TV ads don’t sell books, book tours sell a few books, but I doubt if any of them pay for the travel expenses. Reviews alone don’t necessarily sell books. In fact no one know what sells books. Not the big publishers, not the book stores, not the man on the street. I use all the tools available to me in my price range to get my name out there. In the end though, all I can do is write a damn good book and hope it finds its readers. I’ll leave all the other tools I want to use in the hands of the experts who know what they are doing.

Pat Brown’s latest release Geography of Murder is now available in ebook from MLR Press.

Jason Zachary finds himself with a map straight into a murder rap when he runs afoul of Santa Barbara detective Alexander Spider, charged with the murder of a man he’s never met.

****************************

I threw my arms over my face to block out the brilliant light that flooded my eyes. I yelped at the sharp burst of pain it brought on and sat up in bed.

“What the fuck-?”

Under me the bed rocked and rolled. Outside I could hear the high-pitched wail of a gull scream and the gentle, slap of water against fiberglass hull. I was on a boat. Whose? I rolled over to escape the relentless light and bumped up against warm flesh. Oh shit, what had I done this time? Another black out? My last memory was leaving the Vault near midnight. I could have sworn I was alone. Wait – hadn’t some cute, hunky blond guy waylaid me in the parking lot? The guy beside me was definitely not the blond from last night.

I blinked and stared into his slack face, searching for a clue as to who he was and why I was in bed with him.

I blinked again. I tried to place the face. He was old. At least sixty. Wrinkled face. White mat of chest hair over a flabby paunch, tiny shrunken cock. Faded tats up and down his skinny chest and arms. A leather dog collar. Black leather harness strapped to his thin chest and nothing else. Not the type I usually slept with. Not the type I ever slept with. What would ever possess me to let a loser like this fuck me? I don’t think anyone had that much money.

Then a flash of ice poured down my spine and lodged in my gut. The old man was dead.

I scrambled back, but didn’t get very far before hands grabbed me under my armpits and hauled me off the bed. I squawked and tried to swing at my attacker who spun me around and threw me to the floor. One hand shoved my face into the teak deck, redolent of varnish and wood, the other one pinned my arms behind my back. Cold metal snicked around my wrists. What-? A knee landed on my kidney knocking the breath out of my lungs, stopping my protest.

Before I could refill my lungs I was jerked to my feet and found myself staring into a pair of cold gray eyes behind wire frame glasses. He had full lips and a lean, lightly freckled face below a harsh Marine cut. He was a redhead. The freckles didn’t fit. They gave him a boyish quality that didn’t go with his grimness. He was taller than me by several inches. He had a massive chest that would have split bricks.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Detective Alexander Spider. SBPD. Who are you?”

I gaped at him. “What the hell kind of name is Spider?”

“My father’s,” he snapped.

I tugged at the handcuffs holding my arms behind my back. My shoulders ached from the unnatural position.

“Who is he?” Spider asked.

It took me about two seconds to realize he meant the body on the bed. I glanced over at the dead man but still didn’t recognize him. Not enough to put a name to him. So how had I ended up in bed with him? And whose bed was it? Not mine. I lived in a dump on Los Cerrados Street. I worked at the harbor, at Channel Charters taking tourists out to the Channel Islands for bird-watching trips. I had snuck a trick onto one of the boats more than once. It always impressed the cute twinks and guaranteed a hard fuck, but I hadn’t done anything like that last night. Had I?

Spider pushed me around, forcing me to look down at the corpse.

He looked over my shoulder, toward the galley. I caught movement there and realized a second cop was busy photographing everything in sight, including me.

“Who is he?” The detective’s voice broke through my confusion. I jerked around to look at him, thinking frantically.

I searched my memory for something, anything that would tell me who the dead guy was and why I was with him. As distasteful as the thought was I even took minute stock of my own body trying to detect any signs I’d been fucked by the guy. Nothing. I couldn’t see any signs of sexual activity. So whoever the blond guy I thought I had been with, we hadn’t done anything either. No half empty drinks. No used condoms. Thank God there were no lines of coke anywhere or those little glassine packs I get my beans and Oxy in. I could just imagine how that would go over with this law jockey.

He jerked my arm up. Shards of pain shot up my shoulders. “Who is he?” he shouted.

Finally I found my voice. I tried to shake him off, but his grip was like a steel band. “Let me go. I haven’t done anything-”

“You always sleep with corpses?” He leaned in so close I could see the dark rims of his irises behind his glasses. His nostrils flared and he showed the tip of his teeth in a feral grin. “Who is he? Why did you kill him?”

“Kill – I didn’t kill anyone. And I don’t know who he is.”

“What are you doing here? You meet him here or did he bring you? Where’d he find you? Hades? Wildcat? The Vault?”

If I’d been thinking straight I might have wondered how he knew so much about the local bondage scene, but I was too confused, and face it, scared. I was in the middle of something I didn’t understand, being grilled by a man who, it was fast becoming clear, wanted to pin this mess on me.

I glared at him, trying to look tough. “Why would I kill somebody I don’t know?”

“We’ll get to that. What is your name, sir?”

That threw me a bit. I’m not used to being called sir by too many people. Under normal circumstances I might have looked behind me to see if he meant someone else. Instead I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off. He pulled at my aching arms again, stopping the words in my throat.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “What’s your name? Or do I need to pat you down and find your ID myself?” His gaze slid down my skintight, pocket-less pants and bare chest and his mouth twisted in a grimace. “Guess that would be a waste of time. One last time. Who are you? I want your name.”

“Jason,” I said. When that didn’t satisfy him I added, “Jason Aaron Zachary.”

Another cop entered the cabin. Female this time. She ignored me.

“ME’s here,” she told Spider. “You ready for him?”

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s get this mutt out of here.”

“This mutt isn’t going anywhere without a lawyer,” I said, bracing my feet as though I thought I could keep the two of them from moving me. It didn’t help that Spider looked amused and totally unthreatened.

“Oh, don’t worry. You’ll get your phone call. You can make two or three for all I care.”

“Am I under arrest?”

Spider looked genuinely puzzled at my obtuseness. “Yes,” he said, then read me my rights off a card he pulled from a leather folder. When he asked if I understood, I numbly nodded yes.

I vacillated between apathy and terror. I darted glances at the body of the old man on the narrow bunk. It lay on top of a dark navy sheet, which I belatedly realized had darker spots smeared on it. I looked down at my latex-clad legs. Striped Parade pants was about all I had on. What the hell? I only wore my fetish gear on hot dates when I was enticed by someone with deep pockets. My shirt, socks and brand new Captoe boots had vanished at some point. My gaze fell to my crotch and saw the same dark spots. It was the red smear on my stomach that tipped me over. I stared at it in horror. I was covered in still wet blood. His? Mine? Dizziness swept through me. I swayed on my feet, hyperventilating. My stomach threatened to empty itself. Spider grabbed my shoulder and shoved my head down.

“Bend over. Head between your knees. Take deep breaths.”

I did as he ordered and the dizziness and nausea faded. I took a final deep breath and straightened, refusing to meet his gaze, sure I’d see contempt there. Or worse, pity.

“Come on,” he said gruffly. “We’ll talk down at the station.”

“Let me get dressed, at least-” I looked around for the rest of my clothes. I couldn’t have come here like this, could I have? It had been cool last night. Where was my shit?

They both ignored me.

I protested the whole time they dragged me through the cockpit, out onto the carpeted deck and the stern loading platform. I squeaked with every step I took. The sound was loud in the enclosed boat. It didn’t get much better when we stepped out on the deck. The rising sun was a curdled lozenge of yellow light over the mountains. A nearby forest of masts rose through the early morning fog. It must have been around seven. Around us, the sounds of an awakening dock were muffled by the dense air. Boat engines rumbled and turned over, voices shouted orders. Metal squeaked and booted feet slapped the wooden pier. A pair of pale-blue costumed figures carrying cases threaded through the clutter on the docks,. They passed us then disappeared into the belly of the ship. They looked like space aliens.

Tendrils of fog curled around my bare feet. A large, white-headed glaucous-wing gull hovered off the port bow then drifted toward shore. Its familiar kak-kak-kak followed us as Spider pulled me off a boat I now recognized: Cutting Edge, the Catalina 50, largest yacht in Phil’s fleet. We moved so fast I kicked and tripped over gear and flotsam left out on the dock. They showed no regard for my rapidly bruising bare feet. I was stuffed into a black and white cruiser under the curious eyes of the entire population of Santa Barbara. I saw Phil Collins, Channel Charter’s owner. My boss. My former boss, by now.

With my hands cuffed behind me, I had to lean forward on the already uncomfortable seat, which smelled vaguely of piss and vomit. The strain on my shoulders increased with each pothole and manhole we hit. Ten minutes of silence and growing fear later, we pulled up in front of a white stucco two-story building. I was dismayed to see a Channel 3 news truck and a cluster of people with cameras and microphones. How’d they get here so fast? The uniformed driver in front of me swore, then Spider was beside my door. He pulled me out into the glare of lights and shouting voices.

“Is it true you were found with the body of George Blunt?” someone shouted.

I stared at the woman who had thrown out the question. George Blunt? Who was George Blunt? Was I supposed to know the name?

I’d never been to the Santa Barbara police station. Lucky me. Spider led me past a front desk manned by a big-bellied desk sergeant, and through a warren of offices and cubicles. Posters and public service announcements covered the walls. A cacophony of ringing phones and voices filled the crowded room. A cool wash of air blew in whenever the main doors swung open. I was shivering by the time Spider led me into a tiny closed-in room. A woman in a white smock came in after us and used swabs to collect blood from my stomach and hands. When she produced a needle, I balked.

Spider shook his head. “I will compel you to give us blood for tox testing. You’re under arrest. You can’t refuse.” Then he nodded at the white smocked woman who deftly withdrew a vial of blood and slapped a band-aid over the puncture mark. I glared at Spider. After she was gone Spider pointed at a chair on the other side of a small metal table. I sat, the back of the chair cool on my spine. My latex leggings clung to my thighs but provided no warmth. I felt naked – hell, I damn near was naked. My shriveled dick pressed up against the latex. It was obvious I had no underwear on.

At least the cop came around and took the cuffs off. I leaned over the table, rubbed my wrists and tried to look tough. He took the seat opposite me.

I very much doubt Stephanie Meyers ever met a vampire, let alone fell in love with one. Or that Douglas Adams ever had dinner at the restaurant at the end of the universe (though it sounded like fun) I doubt Isaac Asimov traveled to distant planets or knew any humanoid robots, good or bad. And I certainly hope no one thinks Thomas Harris ever dined on anyone’s body parts. And does anyone believe that Laura Baumbach and Josh Lanyon were major drug dealers in Mexico before they wrote Mexican Heat? If they were, I’d like to hear that story!

I’ve never killed anyone, brutally or otherwise. But I write about it all the time. I’m not a cop, I’m not a medical examiner, or a serial rapist/murderer or a gay man, but I write about all of those things. My books are full of dead and dismembered corpses and the people who pursue them. At one time in my past I used to write Science Fiction, but I’m pretty sure I never made a Jump in hyperspace or ate at a restaurant on a space station circling an alien planet light years from Earth but they were both featured in a trilogy called Flight of the Necromancer I wrote years ago.

My point? The world would be a much drier and less colorful place if writers had to experience something before they could write about it. I’ve never killed anybody but I know I’ve had moments where I wished someone would die – have even gone so far as to savor a fantasy about it, but I know I’d never do it. I imagine most people have felt similar urgings. We are all human, we share emotions and needs that cross racial, sexual and geographic bounds. Somethings are universal, some are cultural. I can explore the universal ones in many forms and with a wide open, exploring mind. The cultural ones are less open to me. I’m quite sure I couldn’t write about a Hindu untouchable kid growing up in Calcutta and I wouldn’t try, though Arthur Golden didn’t feel those restrictions when he wrote the critically acclaimed Memoirs of a Geisha, so I supposed I could try.

What I do write about are gay men and their relationships and lives. To date I think I’ve been fairly successful, judging by the comments I get from reviewers and readers alike. They like and believe in my characters Chris and David and hopefully will feel similar things for Alexander Spider and Jason Zachary in Geography of Murder to come out soon from MLR Press.

Mostly I write what I like and what I want to read. I think that’s a better maxim than write what you know. A whole lot more fun, too.

In-the-closet detective, David Eric Laine has kept his desires secret. Until he meets Christopher Bellamere, proud and openly gay. When a series of horrific torture/murders of gay men leads the police to Chris David is torn between his attraction for the most beautiful man he’s ever met and his fears that he’s a vicious killer.

***************

Chapter One

Saturday, 12:25 a.m., North San Miguel Road, Eagle Rock, Los Angeles

THE JOHN DOE had been dead for days.

Flies buzzed around the corpse, crawling over sunken eyes and up collapsing nostrils. From the doorway LAPD Homicide Detective David Eric Laine could see the skin sloughing off dehydrated muscles. He held his breath against the stench. After fourteen years on the force he figured he had seen it all. But sometimes the doers still managed to surprise him with their brutality.

The body had been posed on its back, legs splayed on the blood-soaked rug, hands already bagged to preserve evidence. He knew death had occurred somewhere else. The lack of blood anywhere but on the carpet, and the body itself, confirmed that. Abruptly he turned away. John Doe wasn’t going anywhere; he could concentrate on evidence the killer might have left behind.

This was no drug buy gone sour, or a bad domestic. The way the body lay in the hot, breathless room, empty eyes staring at a filthy window, told him this was worse. He knew the rug had been used to carry the body to this dump site. Just like the others. David felt a familiar tightening in his gut. He had hoped they’d been wrong about the last body, found less than a month ago in a similar state. He had hoped then that there would be no more.

Now he knew how naïve that hope had been.

Physical damage to the John Doe was extensive. Vivid purple abrasions marred the pale skin above the Adam’s apple and dozens of shallow cuts covered the victim’s chest and arms.

If he was anything like the others, he had been a good-looking youth. So how did he end up in a slumlord’s firetrap, dying to satisfy some twisted freak’s perversions?

David smeared wintergreen under his nose and the smell of decay faded, though he knew it would cling to him for hours, haunting his restless sleep. Assuming he got any in the next forty-eight hours.

He pulled on a Tyvek sterile suit, complete with plastic booties, and ducked past the crime scene tape. Teresa Lopez, the deputy coroner from the Los Angeles Coroner’s Office, nodded at him. A few strands of white hair spilled from under her sterile cap and framed her lined fifty-year-old face.

She smiled at him, but as usual he pretended not to see the question in her eyes. He knew her interest in him was based more on the fact that he was one of the few unattached men she met on a regular basis rather than any kind of physical attraction. He knew only too well how he looked. Either way, that was a road he wasn’t going to travel, no matter how safe it might make him.

Darkness engulfed the apartment when Larry Vance, senior technician for the Scientific Identification Division, ordered the lights cut. He scanned the floor with his handheld ultraviolet light. Vance was little more than a trace himself. Thin and sinewy like catgut, he always seemed able to insinuate himself into small places and find what others couldn’t.

The hiss of traffic on the nearby 134 came through the dirt-spattered window. The only furniture in the room was the threadbare rug under the body and a single ladder-backed chair near the bathroom door.

Officer Kurt Henderson, who had been first responding officer, appeared in the doorway. David nodded at the muscular black cop. They had crossed paths before. David tried not to stare at the striking dark-skinned black man. He kept his face neutral when Henderson nodded at him.

“Where’s the building manager?” David asked.

“Partner’s babysitting him downstairs.”

“Name?”

“Collins. Harvey Collins.”

“Get him.”

Henderson left. Waiting in the hallway for him to return, David reviewed his notes. At ten minutes past midnight, the switchboard at the Northeast Community Police Station on San Fernando Road had received a frantic call. Responding to it, Henderson and his partner had found Collins in the hall and the body in Room 317.

Henderson returned, leading a heavy-jowled Anglo.

“Mr. Collins? Detective David Eric Laine.” David suppressed his sympathy for the traumatized man. Better for both of them if he did this as dispassionately as possible. “I need to clarify a couple of things. How did you come to find the body?”

“I got a phone call.” Collins said. “I checked it out.” He swallowed and rubbed his bulbous nose. His gaze tracked around the hallway, settling everywhere but on the open door to the apartment.

“What phone call?”

“He said the police were too slow, that I gotta call them.”

“What time was this, Mr. Collins?”

“I always watch the news at ten…KTLA. It was right after that was over. He told me the police had to find this body.”

“So that would have been around eleven, eleven-ten?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And you waited over an hour to call 911?”

Collins’s jaws worked around something bad-tasting. “Hey, I thought it was a crank.”

This got better by the minute. “Did you recognize the voice? A former tenant, maybe?”

“I don’t think so.”

“When was the last time the unit was rented?”

“Two months.” Collins scrubbed his hand through his thinning hair. “The last guy did a midnight run on me end of June.”

“Anyone look at the place since then?”

“Nobody who’d do this.”

David didn’t pursue the non-answer. He’d get to Mr. Collins’s evasions later. Maybe they were just the usual lies and half-truths everyone tried when faced with suspicious cops. Sometimes he saw the lies before they formed. Sometimes he saw lies that weren’t there at all.

“Place is unfurnished. That the way you rent it?”

“Sure, tenants gotta bring their own stuff.”

“What about the chair?”

“Must been left by the last tenant.”

“The fly-by-night one?”

Collins scowled. “Yeah. Him.”

Lopez, the coroner, emerged from the apartment. Her stained Tyvek suit ballooned off her undersized frame. “We’re ready to bag it.”

David motioned to Henderson. “Take Mr. Collins back to his apartment. I’ll be along later to get a written statement. We’ll get a list of incoming calls, see where our helpful friend called from. See if you can get a list of tenants, too. Past and present.”

His cell phone rang. He held up one finger to stall Lopez.

“Laine here.”

“Davey,” the voice on the other end said. It was his partner, Detective Martinez Diego. No one else had the temerity to call him Davey. “I’m stuck in traffic. Looks like a semi was dancing with a pickup out here.” Martinez grunted. “Pickup lost.”

“Lopez just called me back in to the apartment.”

“How’s it looking?”

“Like our guy.” David glanced at Lopez, then looked away from the friendliness in her dark eyes. “Same injuries. Body wrapped in a rug.”

Martinez swore, then said, “I’m clear here. I’ll be there in two.”

David hung up and clipped the cell back onto his belt.

Lopez raised one silver eyebrow. “Martinez?”

“On his way.”

“So how’d you luck into this?” Teresa glanced over her shoulder at the room behind them. “Spending too much time loafing at your desk?”

“Just finished a drive-by on Drew when the call-out came.” David gave her a thin smile. “I think the watch commander’s words were ‘Sleep can wait. Get your ass over there now, Laine.’”

“They’re working both of you too hard. When was the last time you went home?”

“What year is this?”

“Seriously.”

He shrugged. “Goes with the territory, right?”

David reentered the apartment.

Silver powder coated doorjambs and window ledges, revealing the smudges and swirls of the usual collection of latent prints a place like this collected. SID had set up spotlights. Larry had replaced the UV scan with a handheld vacuum, which he ran over the carpet and floor, collecting and labeling bags of debris.

David scanned the room, along the walls, up toward the unlit ceiling light, then back to the corpse, where the fly feast continued. Then his gaze flew back to the light fixture, a simple white shield over a single light bulb. A shadow on one side drew his eye.

David heard Martinez and one of the EMTs joking and laughing about their respective families before he ducked past the crime scene tape. His Tyvek suit clung to his beefy form.

“You starting this party without me?” Martinez asked.

“Just warming things up.”

Martinez, David’s partner for the last five years, peered down at the body. “Looks like somebody let their party get out of hand.”

Teresa approached, stripping off one pair of stained gloves and replacing them with clean ones. “You’re late, Martinez.”

“We got reporters outside. They wanna know if this is their Carpet Killer.”

Teresa winced. “‘The Carpet Killer.’” She shook her head in disgust. “Whatever you call him, he’s got four now in six months, raped and butchered. The first one we know about was back in March. Prolific guy.”

Martinez paced the narrow confines of the apartment. He elbowed the bathroom open to look inside.

“He likes what he’s doing. Methodical.” David looked back at the light fixture. “And organized. Can we get a ladder in here?”

A technician entered carrying a folded stepladder under his arm. David pulled on his first pair of thin latex gloves and clambered up the rickety steps. He withdrew a thin leather billfold from the fixture.

“I think our doer likes being recognized for his talents.” He held up the billfold. “How can we give him proper credit if we don’t know the identity of his victims?”

Back on level ground, he flipped it open under Martinez’s speculative eyes. The face that stared back at them from the California driver’s license was significantly better looking than that of the damaged corpse at their feet, but the match was obvious.

“Jason Blake,” David said. “Anaheim.”

They both looked at the chair. It had already been printed.

“Check the seat for footprints,” David said.

A technician hurried to comply.

Martinez reached past David and flipped up a second row of various cards. He tapped a plain white card with a rainbow on the upper left corner. “What’s PFLAG?”

“Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays — actually it should be PFFLAG,” David murmured, feeling the heat on the back of his neck when both Martinez and Teresa looked at him.

“Dios, there’s an organization for everything,” Martinez said. “How the hell do you even know that?”

Lopez saved David from answering. David was saved from answering by Lopez

“You better see this before we bag him,” she said.

While Martinez took his initial impression of the corpse, David changed gloves. The powdery residue inside them felt cool against his damp skin. At only 2 a.m., heat already filled the room. The day to come promised to be another L.A. August scorcher. If the body hadn’t been phoned in last night, it would have been found soon anyway. By tomorrow the whole building would have known about it.

He knelt, knees popping in protest. At thirty-seven old age was creeping up on him.

The rich stench ripened in the expanding heat. David loosened his tie and tugged the stiff collar away from his neck. Already sweat saturated his armpits; the hurried shower he’d had earlier that evening seemed a dimly remembered luxury.

“Someone brought him here several hours after death,” Lopez said. “This guy’s careful — and he plans.”

“Scary thought.”

“He’s a scary guy.”

On the other side of the body, Martinez squatted, arms resting on his knees while he studied the corpse. He tilted his head sideways. “Ever notice how much more violent faggots are when they kill each other?” Martinez said.

“We don’t even have any proof our killer’s gay.”

Martinez gave him the look. “Yeah, like some straight mofo’s going to get his kicks this way.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Hey, Lopez. What can you tell us?”

“Rigor has settled out.” Teresa demonstrated by bending the corpse’s right knee. “Livor is almost entirely on the buttocks and feet.” She lifted one foot and indicated the purplish marks on the bottom of the victim’s foot where the blood had settled after his heart stopped pumping, technically known as livor mortis.

“Meaning?” David asked.

“He was in a crouched or sitting position for at least two hours following death.” She ran a gloved hand up the right arm, touching a ring of bruised flesh around the slender wrist. “Bound.”

David met Teresa’s eyes. “Like the others.”

“‘Fraid so.”

“Full rape kit run?”

“Already collected some swabs and I’ll do a pubic comb-out at post. Tox screen, too.”

With a technician’s help Teresa rolled the body over.

“Calliphora activity is only starting,” she said, referring to the fly family most commonly found on corpses. “The first instar is approximately seven millimeters in length. That puts death about three to four days ago. We’ll hatch some of these out to verify species.”

David caught his breath when she finished rolling the body onto its stomach. A seething mass of tiny maggots spilled out onto her gloved hand. Almost gently she brushed them aside, revealing a yawning wound between the dead man’s buttocks.

“Just like the others. Your killer’s penetrating them anally with a knife. And this poor guy was very much alive when he was doing it.”

I have to confess I didn’t spend the whole time talking books. I spent a few nights in the hotel bar (those Midori coladas are something else), snorkeling, kayaking, and chasing sea turtles and those little tiny geckos that are all over the place. Cute little buggers.

On a personal note, on the way back home I stopped over in L.A. (again) only this time instead of sitting in the airport for hours, I got to meet our own Ann Hoyt and have a Starbucks with her. We’re already making plans to go the next LCC in L.A.

Now that I have your attention…

Writers get asked all kinds of questions, some so often they’ve become cliches: where do you get your ideas, how long have you wanted to be a writer, when are you going to write a real book – this usually comes when you write what people think is fluff, like romance or chick lit or in my case, m/m stuff with lots of hot man on man sex. Horror, that’s not real writing!

But I get one question most female writers don’t: how can you write about gay men having sex with other men? I started writing what’s known today as m/m, much of it erotica which includes some pretty graphic sex scenes years before it became popular. So how can I, female, write such personal accounts of men? I mean what do I know about cocks and balls and cock rings and the like? Back when I started reading it – in the early 80′s – and later when I started writing it, it was important that no hint of my sexuality be revealed. No problem since I have an androgynous name. Back then it was unheard of for women to read, let alone write gay sex stories. Now you get publishers who are putting out calls specifically for women to write this stuff. Talk about turn around. Me, I’m just writing what I want and I’m happy that other people seem to like it too. I finally caught the beginning of a trend instead of coming in as an also ran.

So, how do I write it? It’s all in my head. I think sexuality is a lot more fluid than most people want to admit. Labels like straight, gay, lesbian, bi… whatever you choose to call yourself or others call you, are just that: labels. Attempts to slot each of us into neat little categories so we’re easier to understand. I don’t think most of us are that simple. We may project that simplicity since we don’t want the world to know our dirty little secrets, but we all have them. Not that I’m saying that every straight person secretly wants to sleep with a gay or every gay wants to have sex with someone of the opposite sex, but sexuality isn’t as binding as we make it out to be. So I’m able to project what I feel onto another person. It’s not much different than getting into any character.

I also believe that most sexual pleasure occurs in the brain, not the gonads. Paraplegics can engage in sexual acts, have intercourse and orgasm – the experience is entirely in their head, because their bodies may respond, they just don’t ‘feel’ the sensations like someone who’s not paraplegic. Arousal occurs in your brain above all, the physical stuff is just incidental. How else to explain how you can be aroused by the lightest touch of a lover on your arm, when the exact same touch at any other time, by anyone else would not do anything to you? Which is probably a good thing, otherwise you’d never be able to enter a crowded elevator again! It happens with your lover because your mind is anticipating what is coming and primes your body for it. You arouse yourself with anticipation. The same touch from someone you detest will make your skin crawl. Sometimes just the sound of your lover’s voice, a smell you relate to them or a glimpse of them across the room will arouse you.

I find I am able to get into the heads of my characters, be they male of female. And when they feel arousal I feel it in a visceral way. All in my head, all translated onto the computer screen. I don’t try to analyze it very much. It might stop working if I did that. All I know is I can see, hear, smell what my characters are experiencing. And apparently, from the emails I get, so can my readers. Nothing thrills me more than having a reader that my story turned him on.

I also write about some pretty nasty crimes being committed and do my best to get into the head of the bad guys so they’re not just card-board baddies. It doesn’t mean I have to kill someone or torture puppies to put it in my books. Although to be honest I’d probably have a harder time writing about a puppy abuser than a human one. Oh well, we all have our hot buttons.

Let’s just say I don’t entirely buy that old axiom: write what you know. Learn to expand your horizons. Here’s another cliche for you: think outside the box.

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