Sleepwalker Read online

  Sleepwalker

  Gay Mystery Suspense

  Jordan Castillo Price

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  www.JCPbooks.com

  Sleepwalker. ©2010 Jordan Castillo Price. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-935540-14-4

  Electronic edition 1.2, formatted 2019 contains minor text updates

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  About the Author

  About this Story

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  1

  HOW MUCH TIME ACTUALLY passes in five minutes? Depends what you’re doing, I guess. Staring into the eyes of a guy you’re about to get naked with, five minutes probably seems like it’s there and gone in a heartbeat—but when you’re wandering through a hundred thousand square feet of dead animals and crushed dreams, five minutes can stretch to fill an eternity.

  I checked my watch to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong, that George hadn’t skewed my vision, blurred something, scrambled the numbers. But no. Five minutes had passed. Nearly four hundred minutes to go until I could wander home in the cold, gray dawn. Fifty minutes until I allowed myself to take my “morning” break, which actually happened closer to midnight. No one would know if I took my break early...probably. Unless Luke or Bridget checked the security footage—and we were so understaffed, I couldn’t imagine they’d bother—but it’d be my luck that on the night I started to goof off, one of ’em would happen to click somewhere random on the playback and land on the precise second I cut myself a little slack.

  Overnight lighting in the museum is low, but not pitch-dark. If tightwad Bridget could’ve figured out a way to leave the Faris Natural Sciences Center running on a single nightlight, she would have. But our insurance agents weren’t keen on leaving valuable artifacts, what few we owned, in the dark all night long. The Center could only afford a single night guard—which wasn’t nearly enough for a three-level facility—but at least that single guard wasn’t expected to have night vision. Not for $9.58 an hour.

  Even though I could see in the low light, the bare minimum that Bridget could get away with and still retain our insurance, I hit every corner of the third-floor display room with my flashlight anyway, then the locked emergency stairwell door and the gap between the display cases. The plexi bounced the light back at me briefly, until I shifted the angle so the beam fell on the inhabitant rather than the case. The Rock River Beaver stared back at me with his vacant glass eyes, and bared his long, yellow-brown teeth at me. Still not moving. Yet.

  Though it was the biggest taxidermy beaver in North America, it wasn’t the size of him that was spooky. It was the expression on his face, something between a smile and a hiss. There was a gleam in his dusty glass eye that seemed to say, Watch your step, buddy-boy. I can put my teeth right through your arm.

  “A full can of Pepper Shot says you can’t.”

  I sighed. Another stellar moment for the security cameras to catch—me, talking to a beaver that’d been dead nearly as long as I’d been alive.

  Since George took up residence with me, my impulse control just hasn’t been what it used to be.

  I moved through to the pre-colonial section. The People of the Plains tended a cellophane fire. Not moving. Rocks and minerals of the tri-state region—hell, no one ever went in that alcove at all—not even us guards. I shone my beam at the floor and the dust was evident even by flashlight. The crap in the building generated dust like nobody’s business, but also, I suspected that Bridget had cut back on the cleaning crew in an attempt to squeeze even more blood from the turnip.

  The Illinois Riverbed in dramatic cross-section. Nothing moving there, either. Fossils. Fossil castings. Diagrams explaining the fossils. Infographics explaining the fossil castings. Not moving.

  The broad marble staircase led down into the atrium, a big, hollow-sounding place where a live sycamore grew, spindly and stunted, reaching listlessly toward the skylights where daylight would begin trickling through in another four hundred minutes or so. My cousin Alex said that tree would be twice the size if it was outdoors as God intended. I probably then asked him where he’d gotten such cutting insight into what God intended, and then he’d likely clammed up, figuring it was some oblique reference to George.

  When there’s a “George” in your life, suddenly everyone assumes everything you say is an oblique reference to it.

  Second floor. I checked the Petroglyph Alcove, noted that someone with idle hands and a ballpoint pen had changed the lettering in the sign from “Cave Art” to “Cave FArt” yet again—and even though I’d seen it a million times before, it still made me smile. Not that it was all that clever, as far as vandalism goes. I supposed my level of amusement said something about my maturity, or lack thereof. Even so, I dutifully made a note on my pad to let the cleaning crew know—if the cleaning crew hadn’t been laid off. In which case, I’d need to tell Bridget.

  Administrative offices—locked. I pulled the keyring taut on its retractable tether, unlocked the door, then hauled it shut behind me. Once upon a time the pneumatic closer at the top probably worked, but like anything else non-essential in the museum, its repair wasn’t high on the list of fix-it priorities. The door led to a room that used to be a waiting room, but had since been repurposed into a break room with a mini-fridge, a water cooler and a microwave.

  I suspect there was no need for a break room in the Center’s original design, since a food court had been envisioned in the atrium. What had looked promising on the drawing board and what actually came into being were often two different beasts. It’s possible they’d served hot dogs or frozen pizza once upon a time, but I couldn’t remember ever having eaten there. I couldn’t even recall seeing them with their roll-down window guards rolled up. One metal-accordioned window displayed the T-shirts for sale by the ticket counter, and another featured science projects from the Faris Middle School. Better than two empty gaps, I supposed.

  At least the ad hoc break room itself was still in decent repair. It didn’t get the punishing traffic of the public parts of the building. Not that “traffic” was generally all that heavy, but you’d be surprised how much wear and tear the occasional field trip put on the building.

  Although it was too early to take my break, I thought a sip of water might keep me going until it was time to put my feet up and take my pill. I went into the minuscule staff break room, held a mug under the water cooler spigot, and flipped up the tab. Or I tried to, anyway. The watercooler tab was taped down.

  A note from Bridget hung from the cooler that read, “Use the sink. Water for guests.”

  The sink? There was no kitchen sink in the ex-waiting room. The only tap was in the staff bathroom. Bathroom water.

  More annoying still, it wasn’t even a hand-written note, something she could’ve dashed off in a sudden fit of extreme miserliness, but a typed and printed communiqué from her computer. She’d actually gone back to her office and typed something up to keep me from having a glass of paid water.

  Oh, screw you, Bridget.

  My eye twitched. Down, George. It’s not worth it.

  I glanced at my watch again and decided that the world wouldn’
t end if I took my Neurontin half an hour early—with bathroom water.

  I checked my watch. Ninety minutes down. Seven long, lonely hours to go. You’d be amazed at how long seven and a half hours can be.

  2

  IT WAS THE LAST SWEEP of my shift. First floor—easy. Most of it was locked off, hadn’t been used in nearly a decade. Second floor—more to see here. Denizens of the Sky. Cave FArt. Stairwell atrium with stunted tree. I rounded the corner and continued my second-floor sweep expecting more of the same, nothing moving but the sluggish churn of the fountain on economy mode.

  The light was on in the Admin office.

  My heart did a weird fluttery thing as I tried to remember if I’d left it on. I’d never before rounded the corner by the dimly-lit Illinois Riverbed and saw a wedge of light shining out from beneath the staff door. I’d never left that light on. Never.

  Although, I could have.

  I checked my watch. My hours all seemed to be present and accounted for—but what if George had snuck in for a ten-minute quickie, then snuck out again, leaving me none the wiser? Who knew what I might have gotten up to?

  I might have poured myself some guest water from the water cooler, for God’s sake.

  My hand hovered over the doorknob, and I second-guessed myself. What if it hadn’t been me? What if some idiot was looking for a safe full of money, some idiot who didn’t realize the take at the door was less than a hundred bucks a day. Some idiot with a gun.

  I pulled my pepper spray and pressed my ear to the door. If he was a burglar, he was a really quiet burglar. I eased the break room door open, and heard a burst of muted clacking coming from the hallway beyond. If he was a burglar, he’d broken in to use our computers. Didn’t he know they had newer CPUs at the library which opened in...I checked my watch. Three and a half hours.

  Another burst of keystrokes. I should have put my pepper spray back in its clip, but the urge to find Bridget typing up another one of her love letters at the crack of dawn wouldn’t let me put it away just yet. If I nailed my own boss with Pepper Shot, I could always claim I’d thought she was a burglar, right?

  I passed the break room and rounded the corner of the hallway fully poised to blast Bridget in the face, but instead of Bridget, I found Luke Presioso hard at work in his office—the office next door to Bridget’s. At six in the morning. Luke, with his bright white teeth and his male model looks – Luke, who never came in before one, because he said that people didn’t take fundraiser calls before lunch.

  I shifted my weight and my clothes rustled, and Luke swiveled in his creaky pneumatic chair. “Web.”

  Luke called me Web, short for my last name, Weber. Everyone called me Web—everyone but Bridget, who called me Dan.

  I’ve never corrected Bridget.

  Luke glanced down at the Pepper Shot, which I re-holstered as unobtrusively as I could. I doubt I would have ever actually sprayed anyone, even Bridget, but it’s not every day you threaten to incapacitate management. “I probably should’ve called if I was coming in before opening,” he said, “shouldn’t I? Didn’t occur to me.”

  “No biggie.” I took off the khaki security guard baseball cap and flexed it in my hands. A baseball cap and a clip-on tie were a bad enough fashion statement as it was, and no matter how often I tried, I could never squeeze the damn cap into a shape I liked. The uniform always made me feel like a supreme dork. “Thought you were Bridget, typing me another one of her manifestos. Is it really six, or is my watch broken?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” He motioned at the chair beside his desk, and I sat and twisted the cap, glad for something to do with my hands. “Listen, someone from Mid-American is scheduled to visit us on Thursday. There’s grant money that we might be able to get our hands on, enough to plug the hull of this sinking ship for a couple of years.”

  Holy cow. Bridget made it sound like we’d be just fine if we all used less toilet paper and turned down the thermostat a couple degrees. “Don’t sugarcoat it, man. Tell me how you really feel.”

  Luke laughed and leaned back in his chair. Tanning salon? Maybe—or maybe it was his Italian blood. He was fortyish, with dark hair and dark eyes to match his Mediterranean skin, and just a few grays starting to sneak through at his widow’s peaks. A good-looking guy. And probably straight—but that didn’t mean I couldn’t look.

  “Is there anyone you can talk into coming and acting like they’re interested in this place?” he asked. “A decent attendance would make a big difference. There’s always some parent-teacher conference thing going on when I need a good school visit.”

  “I’ll see. But pretty much everyone I know would be at work.”

  “And what do you say to a double shift that day? Marvin looks like he’s about a hundred years old—and we should probably have more than one guard on, anyway. You need money for a haircut?”

  Money would be nice, but I didn’t want a haircut—and George wouldn’t be too pleased with me for pulling a double. I didn’t mention George, though. I couldn’t afford to get canned. The Faris Natural Sciences Center was the only job within walking distance from my apartment that offered health insurance.

  Luke didn’t wait for me to answer. “D’you think we could find a temporary guard? What about your cousin—he’s just about your size. Your uniform would fit him. Would he stand in? He wouldn’t need to do any actual duties, just park himself in a visible spot so that it looked like we had more of a staff.”

  “It’s getting pretty dusty upstairs....”

  “The check for the cleaning service bounced.”

  “Oh. Well...it’s bad up there.”

  “You’re telling me. The taxidermy’s overdue, too.”

  Taxidermy’s a bitch to keep clean. Dead animals are cobweb magnets.

  “Here’s what we’ll do...” he said. “Focus the detailing work on the second floor. Keep the lights low on three, tell the MAHPS guy we’ve got photosensitive artifacts up there.”

  “People of the Plains? Good luck with that.”

  “There’s an old redneck in Iowa who’s supposed to work taxidermy magic. We’ll get him out here to give the furballs a going-over. If he knows what he’s doing, he’ll be faster than those kids from the biology department.”

  A year and a half ago I’d been one of those kids from the biology department. Back when I still had aspirations of being something other than a security guard. Or a vegetable. I didn’t mention it to Luke...and he didn’t seem curious as to why I had the sudden strong urge to resume my rounds.

  I went upstairs and did a double-sweep of the third floor so I didn’t have to keep encountering that wedge of light shining out from the door to Admin. The People of the Plains could do with a little TLC from a qualified professional. The Kickapoo woman’s hair was going prematurely gray with cobwebs and dust, and her bare legs had dried trails on them that suggested she’d been spat on.

  At the end of my shift, as I watched Marvin plod up the marble atrium stairs, I decided that although Luke was an asshole for bringing up the biology department, he was right. Marvin did look like he was a hundred. Ninety-five, at least—though I think he was closer to a leathery, chain-smoking seventy-one.

  I checked my watch. Ten after seven; Marvin was late to relieve me. I used to toy with the idea that he was later each day by some incremental amount, say two seconds, which would add up to a minute a month. But watching him shamble up the staircase, I decided that maybe he actually left his house at precisely the same time every day, but hadn’t realized he was getting slower and more arthritic as the year wore on.

  He touched the brim of his baseball cap and said, “What’s new, Web?” Those were his standard three words, and my standard reply was that I had a date with two eggs over easy and a cup of decaf at Pat’s Diner, but today there actually was news. “Some big shot’s coming to the museum on Thursday. Luke’s here already with his panties in a twist.”

  Panties? Okay, that was a weird way to put it. I blamed George, who’s conv
enient to blame since he can’t actually defend himself.

  “Hope he don’t ask me to work a double,” Marvin said. “I’m too old for this. Should’ve retired five years ago.”

  “And someone wrote ‘Cave FArt’ again.”

  “Fuckin’ kids.” That was the standard response to “Cave FArt.” Marvin and I liked our routines.

  “All right, then.” I gave Marvin a half-wave he couldn’t see, since he was already making his laborious way toward the second floor. “Have a good one.” He raised a hand in return anyway, like he trusted me to wave whether he’d been looking or not, and plodded on toward the office.

  My cousin Alex was pulling out of the driveway when I got home. He stopped halfway to the sidewalk and rolled down his window, and I took the travel mug of coffee off the car roof and handed it to him.

  I could see the sun glinting off his scalp through his short black hair. I think he’d been going for some kind of slick, corporate look, but the barber’d taken his hair way too low, and instead Alex looked like he just rolled out of prison and slapped on a suit so he could find a job.

  Our whole lives, everyone’s told us we look like brothers. Same dark hair and dark eyes, same chin, same crooked smile, like we’d just broken the rules and we were waiting for you to figure out exactly how.

  Alex didn’t smile much anymore. He had a pissy expression on his face when he dropped the cup into the cup holder. I didn’t take it personally. He’d been pissed off so long his face had frozen that way.

  “You wanna play security guard Thursday?” I asked. “We need to look staffed.”

  “What time?”

  “First shift, maybe second.”

  “I suppose I’m sick of being the only one around here who doesn’t get to bring weapons to work.” Alex ran his hand over his buzz-cut and gave it some thought. “Maybe the new guy can cover me. Lemme see what I can do.”

  I rapped a couple of times on the hood and said, “Later.” I didn’t care if he filled in or not—and maybe I should. Maybe I should be worried that without this grant, the Center might close its doors and become nothing more than a big, empty three-story building with a stunted sycamore inside.