Interruptus

Blair couldn’t sleep. For someone with supersonic senses, Jim could sleep like the dead, through anything. He said it was a learned skill from having to sleep through anything back in the day. He could be ass deep in leaches and still catch some shut eye Jim claimed. Blair was sure this was a slight exaggeration. Tonight he couldn’t shut his brain off even though he tried all the relaxation techniques he could think of. Well almost all the relaxation techniques, he thought wryly looking over at his lover.

Jim was possessive, even in his sleep. Sprawled on his belly, he still managed to have some of Blair’s hair was trapped under his head, one arm across Blair’s stomach. First Blair tugged and reclaimed his hair, then he eased Jim’s arm off of him before sitting up.
“Sandburg.” Jim sighed deeply.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“With all that tossing and turning, are you kidding?” He sighed again and rolled over on to his back. He scrubbed his face. “What time is it anyway?”
Blair glanced at the clock on his side. “Early, a little after 4 am.
I can’t stop thinking about that impression the coroner’s office took. That blade seems familiar…really familiar. I should know what that is.”
“It’ll come to you.”
“Yes, I know, but it won’t let me sleep either.”
“C’mere.” Jim commanded, tugging him back down, making him lie on his stomach. He propped himself up on one elbow and began to massage Blair’s back from neck to buttocks.
“Hmm, that feels good.” Blair groaned.
“Simon would be impressed with your ‘round the clock police work.” Jim said pressing his thumb into the pressure points along Blair’s spine.
“I think Simon suspects something.” Blair said in an abrupt non-sequitur.
“Hmm?”
“I think the Captain suspects something’s going on between us.”
“Why, did you say something to him?” Jim asked idly.
“No. It’s just that he caught me staring at you at work the other day.”
“Staring?” Jim said, amused. “Sandburg, you are a horny bastard.”
“Well, I couldn’t help it. You were wearing that tight blue turtleneck on that hard body of yours. That with the shoulder holster had me thinking all kinds of nasty thoughts. Then I saw him watching me watching you. He looked at me, he looked at you, he looked at me looking at you… then he got interrupted by his secretary.”
“The turtleneck and the shoulder holster, huh?” Jim laughed.
Blair rolled over to face his lover. “Maybe you could wear it to bed. We could play cops and vulnerable graduate students.”
Jim guffawed. “I think we’re doing that already!”
Blair sat up, pouting a little. He finger combed his unruly hair and Jim found himself the one staring this time. He shrugged.
“So what if Simon suspects. He won’t say anything or come out and ask. That’s too risky - like asking a woman if she’s pregnant and she’s just fat.”
He lay back watching Blair school his hair into a ponytail.
“As long as he doesn’t know officially then he doesn’t have to deal with it officially.”
“Officially deal with what?” Blair asked.
“He’d have to split us up for one thing. Partners can’t be partners, you know what I mean? It disrupts efficient function blah blah blah.”
“Then he mustn’t ever find out officially.” Blair hesitated, frowning.
“Jim, do you think he’d have a problem with…us?”
Jim shrugged. “Hard to say. We’re not the only queers on the force. I’ve never heard him say anything one way or another about that. I guess he doesn’t care who you fuck as long as you do your job.”
Blair was silent, deep in thought over some matter.
“Chief?”
“I was thinking about that last body, Jim. I’m thinking I know that weapon, the shape of it. This guy reminds me of something, but I can’t put my mind on it. The method is familiar, I just can’t place that blade…”
“It will come to you.”


Later that day, that evening Yancy Tate picked up the paper on his porch and scanned the front page on his way to the car. He almost dropped his giant thermos of coffee. As it was what he read brought him up short.
“CASCADE SLASHER?” The header read.
The article went on to describe the discovery of another body, this time down by the pier. The police theorized that someone surprised the man as he was climbing aboard his boat.
His boat?!
Yancy came up on him breaking in to the cruiser and stopped a crime from happening. How could it be his boat, he was breaking in! Yancy’d watched him carefully; he’d cased the vessel, climbed aboard and looked in all the windows before selecting one in the cockpit to jimmy. Stupid cops got it all wrong. And they wouldn’t let him in their fucking academy? Amateurs.

The man hadn’t even heard Yancy coming. Years of training and he had ninja stealth. He came up on the fool and before he even knew it he’d grabbed the man from behind and slit his throat. As old as it was, that knife was as sharp as hell and his neck opened up like paper; he almost cut off the man’s head! Then he just let him fall from the deck to the water.
“Couldn’t have been his fucking boat.” Yancy muttered to himself, tossing the paper on to the vacant passenger seat and starting the car “You don’t break in to your own fucking boat.”

He carefully pulled away from the curb on his way to his second shift at the museum. Just a security guard, but it was as close to being a cop as he could get working for this security firm. He would be the best damned guard they’d ever employed. And he was doing pretty well too. He’d been at the museum a while now, always second shift. He liked second shift for a lot of reasons; mainly because he never had to fight traffic to get to work, he had his days to himself, and second shift was quiet. Well, where he worked wasn’t nearly as busy as working the main building, but Archives and Storage was busy enough during the day with the technicians, archive workers, restorers and preservationists running around like mad ants. In the evening the only noise was the hum of compressors that kept the climate controlled rooms optimum for their contents. The warehouse might seem ominous to others but he liked the nighttime there; it was his kingdom and he kept it safe.

He was keeping Cascade safe too. Last year he even made the paper when he saved some woman from being robbed or worse. He was walking to his car and heard a scream from the park across the street. Without consideration for his own safety, Yancy ran into the dark park to help. The poor woman was struggling with an assailant when he came upon them. Fortunately, in addition to his security training, Yancy had some years of martial arts and was able to overwhelm and subdue the attacker. He called the police then. They were impressed - even though they berated him for risking his safety by going after the mugger before calling them. The woman was grateful, and he got a good write up in the paper. Hell, his boss even gave him a bonus - after all he was still in uniform when he made the morning news so the company got some free publicity.

He didn’t remember when he started parking on the far side of the park from the museum warehouse. He told folks it was so he could get some exercise walking, but truthfully it was so he could patrol the park when he went off shift. Things were going pretty good, his sector of the park stayed quiet and safe. Then he accidentally killed that guy.

The guy must have been pretty desperate to try to rob him. Maybe he was a drug addict. Yancy tried to warn him off, telling him he didn’t have any money but suddenly the guy charged him with his piece-of-pipe weapon. Reflexes kicked in and Yancy took him out with a spinning back kick to the head. He missed the head and felt his booted heel connect with the guy’s throat. It was a well practiced move with a lot of power behind it and it crushed the guys windpipe. Yancy watched helpless as the guy choked and wheezed and sputtered and died with a mix of horror and fascination. There wasn’t anything he could have done, there’d been no time. And none of this would have happened if the guy didn’t try to rob him. He kind of panicked then. What would the cops say? Assault with a deadly weapon maybe since he knew martial arts? So he ended up just leaving the guy there in the park.

That was how it started. The first killing had been by accident, but the second killing was on purpose. That guy deserved to die for beating up on his girlfriend. She ran and he chased her, and Yancy chased him. He was almost on the girl and Yancy, desparate to stop him, threw the wakazashi - the Japanese short sword he’d borrowed from Museum storage that night. It must have been providence that he’d chosen to borrow it that night. He’d intended to take it home to practice with, but it turned out to be the weapon to stop that woman-beating asshole. It stopped him cold that’s for sure. Yance’s experience with throwing stars sent the blade straight and true, and it buried itself in the jackass’s back. He dropped like a stone. The girl never heard a thing, just kept running.