Author's Note: And it begins...
"There's been an accident--one so troubling I dare not even write it down. At least, not yet. Some secrets should never see the light of day, but remain hidden, lest they destroy all who behold them. But our small community has been struck by the loss of one of its own, in a most tragic and untimely way..."
--excerpt from the private journal of Ephraim Barton
Smoky Hills Part 17
Fetching Trouble
With a full schedule of filling out forms and applications, taking Trowa to physical therapy three times a week, and slowly cleaning out the upstairs bedrooms and making them livable, Heero had little time over the next couple of weeks for running with the dogs.
It was just as well. Thor's foot had healed nicely after a few days of rest, and Trowa removed the stitches and declared him fit as a fiddle again. But while the dog had been convalescing, Trowa had recovered enough use of his knee that he could help Heero put up some fencing in the back yard to contain the two dogs.
It made mornings a bit easier, since the dogs could be let out to pee by themselves, while the two men made breakfast and planned their day's activities.
"--after we get back, I'd like to move my stuff to one of the upstairs bedrooms," Heero was saying.
Trowa gave him a surprised look. "You don't like bunking with me?" he chided.
"Of course I do," came a mildly amused reply. "Reminds me of clown school, back when we were kids."
Trowa rolled his eyes. "Ugh! Don't remind me! If I never have to glob on face paint again, it'll be too soon. That's why I became an acrobat! Less makeup."
"Fancier clothes," Heero teased. "You liked the tights."
Trowa smacked him with a spatula, and went back to scrambling eggs.
"I'm moving upstairs for two reasons," Heero went on. "First off, your leg has recovered enough that I don't feel I need to be in the same room to help you if you need to get up for anything during the night."
"And--?"
"And secondly, it'll give you a break from being woken up so often."
Trowa scowled at him. "That's not a bother," he insisted.
"Maybe not to you--"
"Heero, I don't like the idea of you having one of your nightmares and waking up alone." The green eyes softened with concern. "And don't tell me they've subsided, because I know how often you wake up gasping for breath, in a cold sweat--"
"Okay!" Heero said sharply. "I get the picture. I know how I am when I wake up. You don't need to remind me."
"It's just--I want to be there for you."
"You have been." Heero shrugged, pouring their coffee and setting it on the table by the plates. "But sooner or later I have to deal with this on my own."
"Have you been taking your sleeping pills?" Trowa asked tartly, knowing full well that there were too many left in the prescription bottle.
"Sometimes," Heero hedged. "But they make me groggy, and like I said, if you needed help during the night--"
"Well I don't any more. Take the damned pills!"
Heero frowned at him. "You know I hate medications."
"Sometimes you need them." Trowa pulled his own bottle out of a shirt pocket. "Like me. I wouldn't have made it through the injury, the surgery, or these past few weeks without some kind of pain relief. And as glad as I'll be when I can stop refilling this damned bottle, I understand that the meds have helped me a lot."
"At least you can see an end in sight," Heero pointed out. "My psychiatrist said it could be years--" He stopped, closing his eyes in frustration, and then opening them and fixing an almost pleading look on Trowa. "Just, stop pushing, please. If I want to try sleeping without the pills, I will. I exercise all day. Between running and working around this place, most nights I fall right to sleep as soon as I hit the pillow."
"And then wake up three hours later--"
"Not always." Heero scowled in warning. "I'm going to do this my way, Trowa."
His roommate nodded. "I know that. Stubborn as ever." He dished up their breakfast and handed over the plates before following Heero to the table to eat.
Right after breakfast, they brought the dogs in, and loaded themselves in the car to go to the physical therapist's office, which was about an hour away. It seemed nothing was in close proximity to Smoky Hills. The place was, as Heero continued to observe, like a little bubble of time that the rest of the world had bypassed.
They drove past the post office on their way out, and Heero's glance was drawn to the now-familiar Jeep.
"Soooo--" Trowa drawled carefully, noticing the look. "Maybe we should stop and get some stamps or something."
"Nice try."
"What 'try?' I was just making a plain old suggestion." Green eyes widened in all innocence.
"I've got a suggestion for you," Heero said darkly. "When we get home, you gather up all those letters from Relena that you haven't thrown out like I asked, and you take them to the post office."
"I can't drive yet," Trowa said, patting his weak knee.
"I'll drive you. And you can go inside and visit with Duo to your heart's content."
"Duo, huh? When did he become Duo?" Trowa asked, deftly putting the ball back in Heero's court.
A faint blush crept up Heero's cheek. "I bumped into him in the grocery store awhile ago. I told you that. We talked for a few minutes."
"And yet you still haven't taken the plunge--"
"Look, Trowa, it's pretty obvious the guy has issues with some of the lower life forms in this town. Do you really think he needs a dysfunctional boyfriend on top of that?"
"You aren't dysfunctional."
"Yes, I am. Just ask my therapist."
Trowa didn't bother to carry on the age-old argument. He pulled out the journal he was currently reading, and pointedly opened it as if to deliberately distance himself from his partner.
"That reminds me. Duo said his boss at the post office knows a bit about document restoration," Heero spoke up, nodding towards the leather-bound book.
Trowa peeked up over the edge. "Really?"
"Yes. And you'll never guess who the postmaster is related to."
Trowa raised an eyebrow curiously, and when Heero didn't elaborate, he sighed loudly. "Well?"
"The Winner family."
"No shit?"
Heero shook his head. "His name's Quatre Winner, of the Winner family. Although, I was also told he's not on the best of terms with them."
"Really?"
"Really." Heero frowned slightly, as if thinking of something else. "I wonder why."
"Well if he's gay, like you said--"
"I don't know that for sure," Heero said quickly.
"Yeah, but you thought he might be, that first time you went to the post office. Maybe you were right. I can't imagine the head of Winner Industries would like the kind of publicity having a gay son would cause."
"You sound disturbingly like the bigots in this town," Heero warned.
"I'm not saying I agree!" Trowa retorted. "Just that there's still a public bias against homosexuals--pretty much anywhere you go."
"Well, it might account for how the son of the richest man in the country ended up working in a two-person post office in the middle of nowhere," Heero conceded. "Last I heard, he was off in some exclusive law school."
"Reading tabloids again?" teased his roommate.
"It was a snippet in the Wall Street Journal," came a dry response. "Years ago. Frankly, I'd all but forgotten Winner had a son, since all the recent corporate news has focused on the big man himself, and his board of directors. I guess I just assumed his son was in there somewhere, or off jetting around in Europe or something."
"Guess not," Trowa shrugged. "So--are we gonna stop for lunch on the way back? I'm really dying for someone else's cooking--"
"God," sighed Heero. "Fine. We'll stop. Anyplace but McDonalds."
~*~
They ended up at a small diner halfway between the therapist's office and home, though by that time Trowa was so worn out from the exercises he'd been put through that they got their food "to go," and ate in the car.
The green-eyed man was half-dozing in his seat by the time they got home, and leaning heavily on his crutches on the way in.
"Go lie down for an hour, why don't you?" Heero suggested to Trowa, while he was opening the door to let Thor and Balder out into the back yard. "I'll wake you for supper."
Trowa would have argued, but he was honestly too tired to bother. The workout program that the physical therapist put him through taxed his muscles and endurance to their limit. Most days the ride home was enough rest for him, but this had been the first day of a new set of strengthening exercises for his knee, and he was particularly spent.
"Sounds good," he yawned. "But don't work too hard while I rest."
"Who, me? Never!"
Heero waited until his roommate hobbled down the hallway to his room, and then chopped up some chicken and vegetables for an easy stir-fry dinner, threw some laundry into the wash, and finally headed upstairs to finish preparing the bedroom he planned to move into that night.
It was a small, cozy room, on the shady side of the house, away from the driveway and any possible disturbances. He hoped that the solitude and silence would help him get back into something resembling normal sleep patterns.
They'd managed to salvage a couple of braided rugs, that had only minimal rodent damage, and after several days of airing them out on the line, Heero had picked one with muted greens and blues to cover the cold wooden floor of his chosen room.
He'd given the faded walls a nice coat of medium blue paint, and hung the only picture he'd brought from his old apartment--a print of one of Katsushika Hokusai's wave paintings. For some reason, he found the image both pleasing, and soothing.
The dresser was one they'd found at a tag sale for twenty bucks, and it was coincidentally a shade of green that brought out the color in the rug. And since Heero had a dark blue comforter, the whole room came together nicely. It already felt like a space of his own, and despite Trowa's concerns about him sleeping alone, Heero hoped for restful nights there.
He'd already carried a chair up to the room, and figured if he just hung a mirror, and vacuumed out the fireplace, it would be ready to inhabit.
Of course, as usual with his best-laid plans, the project multiplied as he went. Vacuuming the fireplace turned into scrubbing it with a brush, and then inspecting the flue with a flashlight, to be sure nothing was nesting above the damper.
And by the time Heero finished that, and washed the soot from his hands and most of his face, it was almost dusk, and time to make dinner.
He clattered down the stairs, and knocked on Trowa's door. "Time to wake up, sleepyhead! I'm going to let the dogs in and start supper."
He heard a muffled reply, and continued on his way to the kitchen, opening the door to the fenced-in area. "Thor! Balder! C'mon boys."
He was greeted by an empty yard.
"What the--?" He blinked in disbelief, and looked again, as if the two huge hounds would suddenly materialize right before him.
Then his eyes lit on a pile of dirt and a big hole under a corner of the fence, and he muttered an expletive.
"Wha's up?" came a sleepy voice from behind him. Trowa had hobbled up using just one crutch.
Heero just gestured wordlessly, not trusting his voice.
"They--got out?"
"Yes!" he snapped, grabbing a leash off the hook on the wall, and heading for the front door.
But when he opened it, both dogs were sprawled comfortably on the front porch, looking up from under their bushy eyebrows with expressions of canine innocence.
"You! You--!" he sputtered, his grip on the door white-knuckled.
"Calm down," laughed Trowa, having once again hobbled along in his wake. "They're home and they're obviously okay. Just let 'em in and worry about yelling at them some other time."
Heero just turned and stalked back towards the kitchen, tossing the leash aside and fixing his attention on something that couldn't run away at inconvenient moments--like dinner.
He faintly heard his roommate talking to the dogs in a highly amused tone, and then he heard the padding of large paws and the clink of toenails on wood.
He pulled out the frying pan and set it on the stove, and turned to get the food out of the refrigerator.
When he did, he happened to notice Thor gnawing on something. "What have you got?" he demanded, glaring at the dog, who immediately stood up and began walking towards him with its prize clutched in massive jaws.
"Thor--put that down!" Heero scolded. The big wolfhound dropped the object it was carrying, and it fell to the floor with a clatter.
"What the hell is it?" Trowa asked, walking over to examine the dingy brown object.
"Probably a stick," replied the Japanese man, turning back to the skillet.
"Didn't sound like one." Trowa bent over and poked at the long, straight object and frowned, picking it up between two fingers. "Heero--it's not a stick."
"Hn," came the disinterested response.
"I think it's a bone."
Heero glanced over a shoulder. "It's filthy then. He must've dug it up somewhere. Throw the thing away before he makes himself sick."
"Must be a cow bone or something," Trowa concluded, eyeing the length and thickness with a frown.
"We're on a farm. That's very likely."
Trowa grimaced. "You'd think if they buried a cow out here, the coyotes or other scavengers would've taken care of it." He set the dirt-encrusted object on the counter, going after some newspaper to roll it up in before putting it in the trash.
While he was shuffling through the recycling for paper, Heero walked past to toss the wrapper from the meat into the garbage, and stopped when his gaze fell on the bone.
"Trowa, wait."
The recovering acrobat paused in the act of reaching for the bone. "Wait for what?" he chided. "You said it yourself--it's filthy. I don't wanna leave it cluttering up the counter--"
"It's not a cow bone," Heero said flatly, a slightly sick look on his face. "It's human."
Trowa did a double take, looking warily at the thing. "Are you sure--?"
"I worked homicide for five years. Yes, I'm sure."
Trowa looked over at Thor, who was sulking in the corner after losing his favorite new toy. "Where d'you suppose he got it?" The green eyes widened. "Oh shit; you don't think he's been digging in a cemetery around here--?"
Heero shook his head, staring closely at the bone. "Unlikely. The cemeteries around here are ancient. I'm pretty sure any bones would be far more deteriorated than this." He glanced up with a frown. "And the modern cemeteries--the bodies are in sturdy coffins, and buried too deep for something like a stray dog to dig them up." His frown deepened. "This is something different."
Trowa's gaze snapped up to Heero's face. "What are you saying, Yuy?"
"I'm saying that whatever body this came from was probably buried in a shallow grave without benefit of a coffin--which suggests--"
"A murder?" Trowa finished for him.
Heero nodded.
"You can't be serious!" Trowa blurted. "I know you were a cop, Heero. But that's in the past--in Sanc; you can't be seeing a crime around every corner any more."
"I'm not." Heero looked up at him with a very serious expression. "Believe me, Trowa. I want to put that life behind me. I'm the very last person who wants to turn up a dead body out here in the middle of nowhere. Honest." He looked once more at the dingy, gnawed length of bone on the counter. "But this is a human bone, and there's no innocent explanation for it ending up in Thor's mouth."
"Shit." Trowa looked over at the big dog, who'd given up his pout and settled down for a nap. "What do we do?"
"Well, it's a bit dark to go out tonight to try to see where Thor found this--but I suppose I could take a stab at it in the morning."
"If only we knew where the original Dekim's father kept his still--" Trowa mused, his mind beginning to race with possibilities.
"His what?"
"His still. It's mentioned briefly in one of the later journals--something about Dekim's dad making moonshine out in the hills."
"And what would that have to do with Thor finding a bone?"
"Well--maybe someone went snooping."
"Are you suggesting your ancestor murdered someone on the property and stashed the body?" Heero asked in horror.
Trowa shrugged, looking a little troubled. "Times were different back then--with Prohibition and all. You never know."
"Did he say that in the journal?"
"Well, no. That particular journal has some water damage, and I only got to read a few pages. I think it was my grandfather's, and he was writing about his father--but I can't be sure."
"Then stop jumping to the conclusion that you had a homicidal great-grandfather, would you?" Heero said in exasperation.
"How else would you explain the bone Thor found?"
"I wouldn't. I'd leave that up to the local police," Heero replied. "First thing in the morning, I'll look for the rest of the remains. And if I don't find them, I'll just take this bone down to the police station and let them handle it."
"You think the cops in this hick town will have the resources for a case like this?" Trowa asked skeptically.
"Depends," Heero shrugged. "If they have anyone serious on the force, they'll be responsible enough to call for assistance if they need it. At the very least, they'll need the help of a forensic lab. I'm sure the State has one."
"Just what we need--people traipsing all over the property looking for clues," Trowa said with a frown. "Heero--"
"We don't even know that Thor was on our property when he dug up the bone," Heero pointed out. "And I'll tell that to the police. The most they might do is ask us to show them where I take the dogs running, since that's part of Thor's normal range."
"And if they want to look in the barn?"
"We'll deal with it," Heero said firmly. "Don't worry about things that may not happen, Trowa. Let's just take it a step at a time, okay?"
The auburn-haired man gave a wry smile. "Like my knee, eh? One step at a time."
"Yes, just like that."
TBC...
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