Page 47 of On Your Knees

“The crime scene photos.”

I stare at him. I can’t say yes and I can’t say no, so I don’t say anything. He opens his messenger bag. He knows that he’s hooked me.

I sit down.

Jensen pulls a manila envelope from his bag. I hold out my hand.

He hesitates. “Have you seen these before? I mean… they’re of your father.”

“Obviously.”

“I just mean that they’re graphic.”

“Give me the fucking pictures.”

Jensen hands me the envelope. I reach inside and find a stack of paper. It’s thick and feels glossy, like paper from a home photo printer, which means he likely has digital copies. I pull out the stack of pictures.

I’ve seen a thousand pictures of Paul. I saw dozens last night combing through articles. I pride myself on my ability to look at him without reaction. But I sure as fuck have a reaction looking at these.

“I tried to warn you,” Jensen says with some kind of fake sympathy that makes me hear myself. I’m breathing hard. I cut it off. I make myself go still.

I stare at Paul’s slack, pale, handsome face. I stare at his wide, unseeing eyes. He’s lying on his back in the alley, with the pockets of his bloody chinos turned out and his button down more red than white.

My stomach turns even as my dick tries to stiffen in the cage. I hate that it happens, but it’s an automatic response. I go through all the pictures. Other angles. Closeups. His neck. His hands. His bloody groin.

Jensen says, “All that blood and look how little is on the pavement. He died somewhere else and was moved there.”

I’m back to the first image, but I don’t really see it, not as it is. In my mind, Paul is on his side, half curled up around the wounds.

Jensen says, “It’s so obvious that the police must have noticed. And then there’s the fact that the coroner found indications of sexual contact.”

I fucking hate it, but at those last two words, my cock reacts. The cage stops it, but it still makes my stomach roil.

Somehow, I manage to sound normal when I say, “So you think he went into an alley, got blown or something, then got murdered.”

“I think he got blown—or something—got murdered and then went into the alley.”

“And you’ve built this story around your perception that there’s not enough blood on the pavement.”

Jensen says, “And the fact that the coroner noted sexual contact and yet, for some reason, there are no test results for DNA samples from semen or saliva. It’s almost like the coroner’s investigation was sabotaged.”

“That’s quite the conspiracy theory, and yet you seem to have no guess as to why there would be a coverup.”

“Oh, but I do. I have reason to believe that Paul Castle was… a different man behind closed doors.”

Inside my mind, a door closes somewhere behind me. I almost flinch but manage to stop myself.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I think you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” I reply, but my voice has gone strange, kind of hollow. Or maybe it just sounds that way because I’m so far away from it. I’m in a dark room, kneeling on a cold, hard floor.

“Paul had certain… habits, didn’t he?”

I hear footsteps behind me. They’re echoing from a long way off. My dick throbs sickeningly in its cage. My hands tighten on the pictures. I stare at Paul’s dead body covered in blood.

He’s on his back in the alley.