Jason

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 rock 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 arm pits 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 ketones, 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 red-head. 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 and forced 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. 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."