The Watcher: Reanimation; [Griffin/Joel NC-17] PART ONE
Fandom: The Watcher
Author: abrandnewboom
Don’t know, don’t own.
Rated: NC-17
Pairing: (Slash) Griffin/Joel
Summary: Serial killer David Allen Griffin died in the warehouse fire that night. Or did he? Meanwhile former FBI agent Joel Campbell is spiralling deeper and deeper into madness and paranoia. Griffin comes back to fix what's his.
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There was one certainty in Joel Campbell’s life. Amongst the rattling bottles of lotensen and acebutolol pills, and the sterilized needles that Joel needed to bring his mind back down to earth out of cloudy agony, there was one rock solid fact that he could cling to. One that he hadn’t had before he’d moved to Chicago. The act of fleeing from his past itself had been a viciously stirring reminder of his sins. He was better now and his nerves improved daily knowing that one fact, his saving grace: David Griffin was dead.
Well, at least that’s what his hospital psychiatrist had told him, cheerily scrawling out a prescription for anti-depressants.
Smoke on the water, blood on the sheets, gun to the roof of your mouth, blown out of a building by an immense fireball, comfortably dead. He thanked whatever gods were out there for this mercy, not for the sake of the poor young women, but for the sake of his own disintegrating mind.
In the water that night it had all come to a head. The tense encounter with Griffin in the candlelit storeroom had all but thrown him off the deep end. He could barely find the mental strength, the necessary motivation to speak up for Polly’s life. He’d lost the will to fight. Forcing the both of them out of the window had merely been an act of instinct.
He remembered too well the taste of Lake Michigan, oil and silt filling his mouth, suffocating his tongue and throat. Granted reprieve to breathe, he’d choked on the scent of flesh. Charred human meat, the end result any living, breathing, killing, loving creature met after facing down a kerosene explosion. No matter how charismatic the inhabitant of the body had been. He was the one who’d had to lift the corpse’s head, had to see the searing damage done to the dark features. It was his duty. And now so was the task of identifying the cadaver in the mortuary, apparently.
The boys on the networks couldn’t track Griffin’s connections far enough back to find a family member, a lover or a friend. Ironically, no-one had known the man for any greater length of time than Joel.
---
[NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, CHICAGO; SPRING, 2000]
Hollis was visibly uncomfortable as he approached Joel’s hospital gurney. It was three days since the fiasco, and merely hours since Joel had woken from his own exhaustion and drug induced coma. As soon as he’d roused his first question had been a short desperate, “Griffin!?”
Nurses who’d caught the news broadcasts over the last couple of nights assured him that the killer was dead, but the creases in his brow hadn’t eased at all.
“Hope you’re not putting your room service and masseuse on the department’s tab,” Hollis said as greeting.
He looked around at the tubes and beeping machines clustered around the bed, dwarfing his friend’s tired frame. Taking in his sullen face and what appeared to be an entire pharmacy arranged on the nearby table, the officer sobered up quickly.
“So how the hell are you, Campbell? From what that Polly tells me, you took a hell of a beating – and she didn’t mean just the physical,” he said.
Joel didn’t answer, except with a minute acknowledgement in the lift of an eyebrow.
“Griffin, man…” Hollis exhaled slowly through his nose, shaking his head. “What a sick fuck.”
Joel nodded distractedly, sipping cold coffee left on his table since early that morning through a straw, perfectly willing to let his friend ramble on.
“But back to the real business.” Hollis said suddenly. He hesitated before continuing: “Griffin’s dead, as I’m sure you know…”
Joel did know; he’d seen him in the water, and nurses and doctors had reminded him countless times. All the same, he still half expected to have someone sprint up to him with another FedEx envelope, wide frightened eyes, and the news that the chase was still on. Joel didn’t know if he could keep pace with Griffin any more. He’d moved to Chicago in the first place because he’d felt his reactions were slowing. In his heart, he could not face any more letters, phone calls, cards, photographs or deaths. He needed Griffin to be gone.
“…but we need you to come in and ID the body. Turns out you’re the only living person out there who’s known Griffin in the flesh for more than a couple of days. I’m sorry, Joel, but we have to lay this thing to rest.”
Joel had turned away, towards the window. His room had an excellent view of downtown, almost all the way to the scummy polluted harbour that stagnated around the burnt out warehouses.
Despite his unease about Griffin, since events had escalated somehow all the tension had slowly ebbed out of the air around him. His whole body, itching as bullet wound, gashes and burns healed, seemed to have relaxed; flattened like a limpid balloon in the first warm day Chicago had seen since the previous autumn. This was the first warm Chicago day Joel had ever experienced. His early winter move and settling in period had been drowned in smog and drizzle. The days he’d spent chasing Griffin had seemed to consist of a solid week of dashing through frigid streets and alleyways that had stunk of piss and damp pavement.
This momentary atmosphere of rest was his; wrought and deserved by his efforts alone.
“Okay,” he told Hollis, turning back to meet his eyes with a rare half smile. “They should be pulling all of this shit out of me by tonight, because that’s when I’m leaving.”
A passing doctor frowned in disapproval, but accepted his patient’s statement without objection. The last time Mr. Campbell had been admitted in such a precarious state he’d torn his own IV out and pulled all the monitoring patches off without the help of a nurse barely an hour after regaining consciousness. Then he’d seen fit to leave running, without signing himself out, and definitely not physically fit enough for release. That Campbell was willing to stay even a few hours longer after waking from a coma was certainly better than nothing.
Hollis looked encouraged. “Good man. The morgue will be expecting you tomorrow at eight. I’ll meet you there.”
“Yes.” Joel agreed absently.
Hollis lingered at the door to the white room, “I’m sorry about you having to do this for us, Joel. I know we’ve asked too much from you as it is.”
Joel turned over to face the window again. “Well, I guess you guys were lucky that I was around, then.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Well, I have to get back. Paperwork.”
Joel nodded at his window. He looked like a very old child under the white blankets. He seemed a lot smaller than Hollis remembered him at their first meeting.
Hollis left quietly, leaving his friend to heal.
Joel kicked thin scabbing legs at his heavy blankets, throwing at least two layers to the linoleum floor. He closed his eyes carefully. He didn’t want to waste a free bed. Maybe when he woke up again the nurses would willingly disconnect his forearms and let him leave. He felt like chowing down on some familiarly cruddy Chinese takeout, and he knew the perfect restaurant opposite his apartment building.
---
The morgue was lit by at least twenty fluorescent tubes emitting stark glaring light. Somehow it still managed to look seeped in darkness, the stainless steel walls, drawers and fittings reflecting dark replicas of the every form in the room. The reflections stretched and rippled in warped imitation of life as Joel picked his way through the autopsy room.
Joel stepped up to a wall of chilled drawers, black lace-ups knocking unexpectedly loud on the linoleum. The footfalls echoed out the doors, down the corridors and trickled back to Joel’s ears. Leaning closer to inspect the steel a shadowy figure loomed a short distance from the profiler. Bending closer clarified the image, but two dents in the steel surface obliterated the poor creature’s eyes entirely; leaving them as two pools of empty darkness in a face uncomfortably similar to the one Joel met some mornings in the mirror.
Obviously Joel was merely looking at his own reflection, but the missing eyes lent the figure a despairing soulless air that was too empty to consider a part of him. He wasn’t that empty of life yet, was he?
Someone cleared his throat impatiently, and Joel stepped away, watching the image in the metal skulk back into his own blurry cold land at the same time Joel stepped back into his own reality.
The mortician tapped his fingers on the steel frame of a stretcher. It was draped in white and pushed to the side of the room to make way for black bagged new arrivals.
“This one’s been sitting here two days now, we want him in the ground A-S-A-P, if you know what I mean?” The man wrinkled his nose.
Joel took an immediate dislike to him, but raised a hand to greet Hollis who was juggling a stack of paperwork.
“Death certificate and authentication of identity,” he explained, swearing in exasperation as a sheaf of documents slipped to the ground.
The mortician’s nametag, embroidered into his grey coveralls read ‘Mallory’. Joel watched him as his fidgety fingers pushed back his greasy dark blond hair. Dr. Mallory licked a finger and plucked a paper from Hollis’s dog-eared stack.
“I can sign this one right now. He’s very definitely dead.”
“Hang on, don’t you have to be a doctor or something to-”
“I am. Just in an alternate practice.” Mallory smirked, scrawling away at the document. “Now, cause of death…”
“Burnt alive,” mumbled Hollis.
“Not so hasty: This young man was much more complicated than that. Certainly the fire got him in the end but he was also full to the gills with every kind of drug you can think of. Personally, I’m surprised he didn’t drop dead from toxicity long before you blew him up.”
“We didn’t ‘blow him up’,” interjected Hollis.
The Lieutenant was beginning to go red in the face.
“He blew himself up, and almost took an innocent citizen and an officer of the law with him, so I’d thank you to-”
“I’m sure your department’s hero stories are very interesting, officer, but you’re here to get my signature, so let’s get on with it. I’m sure you gentlemen, like myself, have much more pressing matters to get on with.”
Hollis seethed. Joel’s head throbbed, threatening migraine. He wanted nothing more than to get home and pass out on the sofa.
“Anyhow,” the misplaced doctor continued, “he’s certainly down as a victim of severe burns and extreme bodily trauma in my book. After all, the drugs didn’t roast or shatter his bones six ways from Sunday.”
“You all right there, Campbell?” asked Hollis.
Joel wanted to vomit.
He shouldn’t be feeling this way. He’d seen terrible things in his career. He’d heard gorier analyses of many, many deaths, but for some reason hearing these things about Griffin’s corpse, to be standing beside his shroud, it seemed inherently wrong. Unreal. Sickening and frightening.
He could feel the flames licking at his back once more, the way his limbs had flailed uncontrollably, windmilling through cold night air, the rush of the shockwave rustling his hair. It was impossible that such an unfit slob such as himself had managed to survive the explosion – and yet not Griffin, who he knew from sight was well built with a strong constitution. It was too strange.
He pulled his nerves together and coughed. “Y-yes, go on, then.”
Mallory’s eyes flickered at him through thick-lensed glasses as curiously as Joel imagined the man would consider a particularly well mutilated homicide victim. “Hn. Well, ordinarily we’d simply x-ray the subject’s teeth and run it through the national dental and medical records database, but in this particular case, it was impossible.”
“What do you mean?” interrupted Joel. He had a sick feeling that he already knew the answer.
Hollis and Mallory exchanged a vaguely co-operative glance.
“Fact is, Campbell, the explosion…” Hollis mimed some exploding and smashing gestures, “completely crushed Griffin’s skull and jaw.”
“Very interesting case,” Mallory added excitedly, “under incredible pressure the bones were utterly fragmented, almost disintegrated. I’m sorry I can’t open up his mouth for you to see, but we only just finished cleaning him up again…”
Joel’s mind reeled at the detailed description of Griffin’s wounds. He still couldn’t accept that this level of damage could have been inflicted on his adversary - Griffin always found a way to slither away from the scene or found some way to protect himself from harm, at least until the heat had gotten to him, he supposed…
Joel knew he wasn’t thinking straight. But, something was off.
Mallory unexpected whipped the shroud from Griffin’s cadaver.
Joel held his breath, as he used to as a kid whenever he passed the local graveyard. The older kids had told him he had to do it to stop the spirits of the dead from possessing your body. But it was a stupid tradition, and ultimately impractical in his line of work. The dead couldn’t hurt you. The dead were the only part of Joel’s high risk occupation who hadn’t managed to hurt him.
He sucked air into his lungs, a deep filling breath, and turned to confront the remnants of the man who had haunted his footsteps for so many years.
The man under the sheet was almost unrecognizable; the damage done to his skin was so extreme. But he had Griffin’s height, the same build, although he looked slighter without the heavy black coat. The few patches of skin untouched by fire were as sallow as Griffin had been, and he still possessed almost all of his lank black hair. His facial features were utterly destroyed, and it was easy to see what Mallory had described of the fragmentation of the skull. The killer no longer had a nose or the high cheekbones Joel remembered, and the skin of the face was alternately a crispy black and shiny lobster red, blistered into open wounds.
If Joel ignored the damage, he could almost make out Griffin’s features. On the other hand, Joel had been seeing Griffin just about everywhere he looked. Every tall man on the street was Griffin. The orderly who’d hailed him a cab at the hospital had smiled at him kindly with Griffin’s open grin.
Joel looked hard at the corpse before him, comparing the body with his memories of Griffin at the graveyard and in the car, the close up glances he’d gotten as Griffin had picked him up and thrown an arm around him at the warehouse, only days earlier.
The trouble was that this husk lacked the vital spark of life that brought personality. It didn’t have a soul anymore. Griffin’s body didn’t seem the same man to Joel without the winning smile, the earnest charisma, the playful lilt of his voice teasing him down the phone line. All of that life was lacking in this shell, and it was hard to believe it had ever been there in the first place. But that was death for you.
“Positive id?” Hollis asked, patiently, drumming a tattoo on his own thigh with his paperwork.
Joel became mildly aware that his colleague and the mortician were staring at him. There was an eager hopefulness in Hollis’s face. It was time to end this.
The memories of falling from the window, and seconds later, the split second view he’d had of Griffin plummeting after them, almost in the midst of the fireball made his mind up for him. This was the body he’d seen in the water.
“It’s him.” He covered the body quickly. “Give him a decent burial for me.”
Mallory chuckled, “Our department doesn’t fork out for burial plots for murderers. This guy’s got no next of kin, so he’s going downtown to the warehouse.”
“He’s just going to lie on a slab, decomposing until he’s forgotten about?”
“You got it. Now can I show you two the door, or can you find it on your own?”
Hollis rolled his eyes and departed, “Come on, Campbell, I’ll buy you a celebratory drink…”
Joel stopped at the door and looked at Mallory. The mortician cocked his head.
“Can I help you with anything else?” he said wryly.
Joel felt in his jacket pocket for his wallet. No doubt he was going to need it.
“I want him buried.”
“That’s a strange thing for an FBI agent to do for a serial killer.” The mortician’s glasses glinted as brightly as all the metal surfaces in the room.
Joel shrugged, “We knew each other for a long time.”
“Is that so...Take it up with reception.” With a final curious glance at the former FBI agent, Mallory busied himself with sliding Griffin’s body into a chiller locker.
Joel did so, sending Hollis on ahead to a bar. He reasoned that this was the least he could do for a man who had traveled halfway across the country to ‘save his pathetic life’, as he had put it.
It was too bad that now he’d won, he’d lost any chance of feeling alive again.
---
[TWO WEEKS PREVIOUS]
Joel had less than twenty-four hours to track this poor young woman down. Eleven now, actually. He stood in front of the assembled taskforce, knowing that if these people didn’t do exactly as he told them, as soon as he told them; another girl would die because of him.
Joel wasn’t holding out all that much hope of saving this woman, but as he had for every single pawn that Griffin had played before, he was going to put his entire being into the case.
“I assume you’ve all read the copies of the case records and profile that I have distributed, and the directives that I have assigned.”
The room collectively nodded.
“Well, then you know who you are dealing with and what is at stake here. Get to it, and fast.”
The room emptied out apart from Hollis and Joel.
“We’re on supervision and smarts, then?” Hollis tried to joke.
“I am,” Joel responded blandly, staring at the blown up photographs on the wall, “I don’t know what you think you’re supposed to be doing.”
Hollis swallowed the backhanded insult and let Campbell off this time. He was a very sick and stressed man. One had to make allowances.
He flicked through the case files, scanning the pages again and again, and waiting for some sort of lead to jump to his attention.
Something on the profile sheet hooked him in for a second.
“Campbell,” he ventured.
“What?” Joel didn’t turn from his close up analysis of the photographs.
“You’ve said here that Griffin is more likely than not a homosexual-”
“Yes.”
Hollis got a mischievous glint in his eye. “Well, maybe it’s a stupid question, but don’t we have exclusively female victims? Plus they’re usually found in some form of undress, usually topless. Where’d you get this idea, exactly?”
Joel sighed. “Firstly, the victims are never found to be sexually violated, ever. You know that.
“Right. No touchy, no feely.”
“There is no semen or evidence of any sexual activity found on the scene, ever. And also, if you must know…” “Tell me already, Campbell.”
“Griffin is trying to mock me. By killing all these girls that he has neither a want or need for, he’s telling me, ‘look, I can do whatever the hell I want, and you can’t stop me’. But one day soon, he’ll get it wrong. He can’t run forever.”
Hollis relented with his playing-dumb act. “I don’t think my head’s entirely big enough to wrap my head around that psych babble logic of yours. Joel. But I’m thinking maybe you could have figured it out fairly easily from his constant calls and letters. He’s got some kind of crush on you, Campbell.”
Joel almost smiled at Hollis’s schoolyard crush theory, but it did actually hold water. “Whatever,” he shrugged indifferently. “Same song, different tune.”
“Oh, by the way, Joel, you left this behind with the first photo. It’s that love letter of yours...” Hollis slid the envelope across the table and refocused on studying his own batch of photographs.
Joel sighed and tucked the card into his folder.
---
[CHICAGO; MID SPRING, 2000]
The spring heralded her triumph over winter by delivering victorious eruptions of flowers and greenery on every patch of soil that sheltered between concrete slabs and structures.
The bird population exploded and black ice stopped forming on the footpath outside Joel’s apartment building. The tentative sun got over it’s stage fright and finally crept into full view, framed each morning between the East side skyscrapers.
The Chicago police department had told Joel to go home and enjoy his retirement, but a month of sitting around his empty apartment doing nothing but watching Jerry Springer reruns and the pigeons that congregated around his street’s lone transient was driving him stir crazy.
He’d managed to convince Hollis to bring in the paperwork from the Griffin case (Hollis still hadn’t gotten past the first page) with the bribe of a free lunch. He figured the sooner he could get it all down on official, watermarked paper, the sooner he could begin to forget about the last five years of his life.
At the same time Joel was considering going back to the workforce. If not as a federal agent, then just in the Chicago foot force. He’d probably fail the physical, he countered in his own thoughts. And in the back of his mind, he knew he didn’t want to chase bad guys anymore. He’d lost his trained ability to see perps as two-dimensional criminals. Griffin had become all too real a person to him.
Nonetheless, Joel brought up the suggestion at the Vietnamese restaurant as Hollis sipped tea (He’d gotten used to it, thanks to Joel’s single minded dedication to the restaurant.).
At first Hollis has shaken his head, and given him a very definite gruff “No” as an answer.
Joel persisted, leaning across the table, “Look, Hollis, I’m going crazy cooped up in that room over there. Just give me something to do. You know exactly how capable I am.”
Hollis frowned, “That’s exactly why I don’t want you on my force. No offense, but you get way too intense about catching your felons. It intimidates all my officers. They don’t need that kind of pressure.”
“You’re saying you won’t hire me because I’ll show up your officers?”
“Precisely.” Hollis banged his glass down on the table to reinforce the point, grinning. “Why don’t you get a hobby? You’re retired, no unfinished business. Take a pottery class or something. Get a dog. Walk it.”
“I’m allergic. And the only thing I’ve ever done well is detective work. Just let me help out. Assign me your paperwork; you don’t even need to give me a patrol shift or put me on the payroll. I don’t need the money.”
“You know, you’re a really strange guy, Joel.” Hollis said, laughter twinkling in his eyes. “But if you really want menial paperwork, I can give you that. You can come down to the station now and then. Just keep out of the way. And maybe put in a good word with Diana for me.”
“Thank you,” said Joel, awkwardly. He meant it.
“Yeah, well, least I can do, Campbell.”
Joel had nodded, relieved to have the begging over with. At least he’d have something to keep him occupied.
---
[CALIFORNIA; HIGH SUMMER, 2000]
The man that Joel Campbell knew as David Allen Griffin stood on the tourist thronged boardwalk that ran along the back of Santa Monica Beach. He didn’t look at all out of the ordinary, apart from the fact that rather than admiring the beautiful beachside sunset behind him, he was staring wistfully inland in a north easterly direction.
Most of his minor burns and abrasions had healed over the last five months, and though the bullet wound in his shoulder that Campbell had given him still twinged when he raised his arms, he was just about in top shape once more.
His only lasting damage was a nasty facial burn that spanned the skin from his hairline to his cheekbone on his left side, puckering the skin around his eye slightly and leaving the rest of the afflicted area pink and shiny. It was easily disguised by letting his dark bangs fall into his face, but David was worried that it made him more easily recognizable and memorable to witnesses.
He also had to admit a certain amount of vanity. His charming looks had gotten him far, and more concerning; what would Joel think when he saw it? Because he would be seeing the blemish, and very close up indeed, if David was to have his way. Only a few months and it would be time to bring a man back from the dead for Joel Campbell…
David allowed himself a grin of anticipation before stripping off and heading out into the surf with his rental board to catch some long neglected waves.
The water had been his natural element as a kid on the West Coast. He’d surfed every weekend and a lot of weekdays and filled in the rest with guitar practice while his father spent all his time down at the police station. Yes, believe it or not, his old man had been on the force. The most anal cop in the shop had spawned himself a killer. It was almost ironic. It was the only thing David could really still laugh about when he thought about those years. All the wonderful things hurt too much to remember.
When his dad finally signed him up for the Alaskan Military School after a terrible year that had seen David lose pretty much everything he’d ever loved, David had shrugged and finally moved on. He exchanged his dented up board at the surf shop for a skateboard and a handful of fivers, passed his guitar on to a bum outside the cemetery, and started hitchhiking across the states. When he’d spent all his money he used his charm as currency, fooling the gullible and elderly into taking him in, and eventually began leaving the next night with the silverware.
After the eighth ridiculously successful con job, David had to assume he’d inherited his old man’s street smarts plus more. But he certainly had no intention of getting himself caught up with rival crooks, let alone the cops. He cultivated a rash of below board acquaintances without becoming entangled in any particularly clingy relationships, and continued to drift, eventually settling back on the West Coast, in Los Angeles.
That was where the killing started.
The first one had been an accident. Wasn’t it always that way? He was a charming young man of twenty-seven who spent his time crossing old ladies over busy city streets and giving directions to tourists for a couple of dollars as a tip. She was a do-gooder in her early thirties, estranged from family and friends, new to the impersonal city. He saw her buying coffee for the homeless, looking horrified, as if she’d never met the impoverished before in her life.
He watched her make the lonely trek up to her apartment from work every day for a week, and then set himself up in a makeshift bed in her front doorstep. It was a cinch. As soon as she stumbled over him the next morning she took him in, gave him free range of the apartment, and hurried out to fetch him some fresh breakfast and the daily job listings. All in the name of charity, of course. It had nothing to do with his dazzling smile, or the shaggy black hair that made him resemble a large friendly dog.
At any rate, while she was around the corner at the paper stand, he was tossing her jewellery into a backpack and heading for stage exit right. Unfortunately she’d forgotten her purse. (David hadn’t. It was in his pack now.) When she walked in on him as he sacked her dresser drawers, he lunged at her, panicked at the knowledge that his gig was up.
An extension cord was a foot away, so he took the most logical step; he strangled her.
Griffin wiped down the entire scene before leaving. It took him six hours to finish to his paranoia heightened standards, and then he quietly vanished out the fire escape into the twilight.
He hunkered down on the bad side of town for a year, but as time moved on, he realized that he’d escaped once again. It appeared that Lady Justice was indeed blind.
He didn’t kill again for five years, when he murdered a lonely middle aged woman for the diamonds her dead husband had gifted to her. He’d learnt by then, thanks to mob acquaintances, of the effectiveness and entertaining value of piano wire, and that life was so much easier if he kept his fingerprints off of everything in the first place.
It was then that he received the greatest media coverage, and had handed to him on a platter the most delectable prize of his life. A profiler by the name of Joel Campbell was on his case, and he was at least as good as Griffin was. David was intrigued. So as a gift to his new friend, Joel, he set up a target group and set to work at slaughtering them.
He had to admit, Joel had pulled out all the stops in Chicago. But he knew that if he hadn’t given Joel the twenty-four hour handicap and photographs he would have left unscathed – or not left at all. He could have gotten his hands on Joel within days, but it would have been too easy.
And this way, his reappearance would cause Joel a shakeup like nothing he’d felt before.
---
[CHICAGO; LATE AUTUMN, 2000]
Joel woke with a start, instinctively throwing his body to the floor. He crashed against folders, files and crumpled Coke cans. His bedside table came with him, shattering his alarm clock and lamp. Joel scrambled up, carelessly brushing glass aside. He stared around the apartment with bloodshot eyes.
It was eleven in the morning, he saw once he glanced at his watch. The digital clock had flashed its last digits and gone out. Probably a good thing, seeing as its alarm obviously wasn’t enough to wake him out of medicated slumber anymore.
He…he could have sworn there was someone else in the room with him. He’d distinctly felt a cold, frozen hand trace the muscle of his calf. A cold breeze blew against his bare back. Turning, he found the window was open. He didn’t think he’d left it open the night before. Joel was usually meticulous about locking up and safety measures. He always remembered the details of things.
But he was having a bad run. For all he knew he had opened it in the middle of the night, or he hadn’t shut it properly after downing his sleeping pills. He had to ease up on using them. They made him too careless and the increased doses he was taking to get the same results varied depending on how well he could count the milligrams at that particular hour. If he wasn’t careful he’d find himself in a coma one of these days. Not that it would be much of a change from his everyday life.
Get up, medication, find something – anything – to distract him during daylight hours, take more medication, hopefully eat a full meal at some point, try and fail to fall asleep of his own accord, toss back his Seconal, pass out, and then start all over again.
Every morning Joel was getting up earlier when he didn’t take the pills, and after the nights that he did, he barely made it out the door by noon. Sleeping was the only thing he could bear to do in his apartment. Far from a sanctuary, the silent empty rooms only served to remind him of the years of regular evening phone calls in San Francisco, calls he’d dreaded receiving, calls he found himself expecting nowadays.
If he got home and wasn’t exhausted to the point of passing out he could all too easily find himself watching his telephone for hours on end, counting down the seconds until it might ring, every single time, wrong. Off by a million seconds. Joel wasn’t going to receive any calls. He knew that.
Joel, struck with a ridiculous impulse, righted the fallen phone, and yanked its cord from the wall. At least he knew he definitely wasn’t going to receive any calls for now.
He turned to the half open window and with the same deliberate movements, scooped up his canister of sleeping pills and tossed them into the street. Horns blared, but the little bottle shattered into little plastic slivers on impact, showering the ashfelt with an isolated hail of tablets. The bum from the Vietnamese dumpsters darted into traffic to collect a handful before it was all pulverized under the tyres of passing traffic.
Joel really couldn’t care less. He pulled on his better black suit, and went to church.
There was no harm in trying, was there? And if God was a merciful one…maybe he’d give Joel a hand. Maybe he could become a born-again with a mission in life. Something that would keep his hands and his head busy.
Joel didn’t know who he was trying to kid. He knew it would never work, but he’d tried everything else. The church seemed to be the one busy organization out there that didn’t care how damaged its congregation was. But he could barely sit through the two hour service. There was a man sitting two rows ahead and three people to the left who wore long black hair. He was wearing a thick black overcoat over a bulky frame. He knew it was Griffin; it had to be Griffin –
He slowly rose to his feet, and his quivering hands went to his belt for a gun that wasn’t there, that he had hesitantly handed back to Mitch months ago.
An elderly woman in the row behind Joel cleared her throat. She couldn’t see the priest through Joel. A few men and women turned their heads to see what was going on. The man with the dark hair also craned his neck to see.
He wasn’t Griffin. He looked nothing like him.
Joel beat a hasty retreat, stumbled past a row of old knobby knees and silently slipped out the chapel doors into the glaring sunlight.
He went straight to the police station and sat in an empty storage office until midnight with a stack of paperwork before him, staring into space through bloodshot eyes.
---
Joel sat bolt upright in bed. Fucking nightmares. Just Griffin in his head all night. Griffin as he was in that elevator, Griffin pointing his own gun at him, Griffin twisted and burnt in the cold lake water. He shuddered and heaved himself out of bed. Time to get out of the apartment.
There were files waiting at the station, they were due to be filled in and sent off – what time was it anyway?
Noon again. Jesus. Joel hauled ass down to the station, and trudged purposefully into his dark temporary filing office.
Seconds after sitting down Ibby put his head around the doorway. He seemed surprised to see Joel.
“Campbell, what the hell are you doing…?”
“Sorry, Chief. I slept late.” Joel mumbled, pushing another stack of paper into his outbox.
How was it that he could do all this, but not unpack his own fucking apartment, or even bother with opening his mail? Maybe it was that these files were full of people. Some of them terrible people, some of them innocent. But still all real people. No real person ever wrote to Joel…so why bother opening mail?
“Jesus, Campbell – Joel. You’re not late. You don’t even work here. How long have you been coming in here, right under my nose?”
“Hollis is doing me a favour. Something like three months.”
“Jesus Christ. Fucking Hollis.” Ibby massaged his scalp. “I’m sorry, Joel, but I think maybe you should stop coming in…Go home. Get some sleep; you look like you’ve been up for days.”
Ibby guided Joel gently into the hallway.
“No, I can’t, I-”
“You what, Campbell? Seriously, I can’t have you coming in here. I don’t care if Hollis promised you the moon in exchange for filing his shit. You gotta rest. Take a fucking arts and crafts course. Just stop coming into the station at five in the morning or whatever the fuck has been going on. You’re not meant to be here.”
Ibby coaxed Campbell right out to the street and hailed him a cab.
“Ibby, just listen to me. I need this. You can see that, right?” He stared straight up into Ibby’s face, refusing to climb into the taxi.
His bloodshot eyes and the puffy skin around them betrayed any calm exterior Joel maintained. His hands were shaking. He had to do something with them. He’d tried folding origami for hours on end, writing letters his dead parents would never receive: he just couldn’t keep them still for five minutes at a time.
“Just go home, Joel.”
Ibby pushed the ex-agent into the taxi and slammed the door before striding back into the station to have a word with Hollis.
Joel persuaded the cabbie to let him out in the central business district. He figured he needed a walk in the fresh air to clear his spinning head. He hadn’t had time to down his pills in his rush to the station. He sat on one of the new benches on the path beneath the shade of a young, green honey locust. Digging in his trench produced a couple of pill canisters which he finished off and hefted into the nearest trashcan. One glanced off the lip and clattered on the pavement. Joel got up and retrieved it on his way, roughly going in the direction of his block.
He was halfway home when a man in a business suit bumped into him, or truth be told; Joel had probably stumbled into his path without realizing. He was woozy enough to in the heat and with the calming effects of the anti-depressants suddenly setting in.
He looked up at the guy – his face was grim and a little disgusted – Joel hadn’t showered in a while. He had carefully combed and gel slicked black hair. Long black hair like…Griffin’s. Joel grabbed the man’s collar instinctively, but all of a sudden his facial features blurred. Joel blinked furiously, clutched at the material he was stretching.
When the surroundings were still again it wasn’t Griffin. Didn’t even look like him. It was some bemused and angry young white collar worker. Joel dropped his jacket like it was burning through his fingers. Dodged around onlookers and sprinted for a block and then kept going until his stomach seized up.
He had to walk a long time before he figured out where he was. When he eventually got back home he made sure to listen at the keyhole on the door to his empty apartment. What if…what if Griffin could come back? Could appear anywhere? Like he was in Joel’s head.
He went back to the station days later to plead his case. Ibby stared at his shaking hands and Mitch pursed his lips when he interrupted their meeting to deliver a file, but the final word was once again, a yes. A yes stemming from pity, but Joel couldn’t care less at this point. The precinct was just somewhere to hide from his memories, after all.
No one talked to Joel in the hallways or stairwells anymore (he wouldn’t get on the elevator any more - it reminded him of Dr. Bielman’s building). They all knew he was just a broken crazy man and that in any other situation he’d either have been placed in an institute, or he’d be sleeping in the local park.
---
[NORTH WEST CHICAGO; WINTER, 2000]
When Joel dragged his bones back from the precinct on Sunday evening it was long past one in the morning and he was just too exhausted to bother with even his usual paranoid check of the apartment. He’d asked for work and the department had given it. He’d received a stack of arbitrary paperwork as high as his arm was long. Joel had gotten stuck into it and refused to let it be until it was done. It was a way to fill up the empty days.
The studio apartment, on the other hand, was dark and untouched. His year’s worth of dust had settled in well with a decade’s worth of other peoples’ dust. No doubt all the previous tenants had been just as depressed and rundown by life as Joel was.
The place felt soulless, as if no-one had ever lived there. Joel wasn’t there much anyway. He mostly used it as a dumping ground for all the crap he picked up throughout his career: borrowed office cutlery, paperwork, inconclusive evidence, boring but crucial textbooks, and letters from college friends he’d never responded to or even seen in the last ten years.
His head was absolutely killing him. He rummaged in the pile of junk that buried his coffee table, successfully finding a sealed syringe and meds, both intravenous and pills. He put the needle on the kitchen bench for later and popped a small handful of the pills. Pulling a now flat bottle of Coke out of the refrigerator, which was bare excluding the soda, perishable medication and some suspiciously furry boxes of takeout, he swigged straight from the bottle.
He put it back and sat blandly at his little one-man breakfast table, ignoring the small mountain of mail that had been constructed over the months. Ordinarily he’d have been able to sit there for at least a couple of hours on end, reminiscing and beating himself up over his past, but today he uncharacteristically felt like lying down for while. Just a nap. This was weird, because usually he couldn’t sleep at all at night. Even with the drowsy side effects of his usual chemical cocktails he had always found it a struggle to merely calm his breathing and keep his eyes shut for more than five minutes.
Even now, half a year after - actually, it was seven months, he’d counted them. Several times. …A half a year since the phone calls had stopped keeping him awake at night by necessity.
It was getting closer to a year since he’d last heard David Allen Griffin’s voice.
But tonight he could barely make it to his single bed without passing out. He scarcely had the presence of mind to pull the nest of blankets over him. He quickly fell into a numb sleep. He’d even forgotten to take off his scuffed black shoes and grease-stained tie.
A man with dark hair combed over his face stirred in a jumbled corner of the apartment. He smiled softly at the man in the bed. Joel wasn’t particularly observant when there wasn’t an innocent’s life in the balance. David was much better at that full time observance kind of stuff. He’d certainly observed enough of Joel’s routines to know about his penchant for coke. He also knew the precise dosage of flunitrazepam to hit him with. The Chicago drug scene was a great deal more user-friendly than he’d given it credit. He’d forgotten it was the birthplace of house music, after all.
To tell the truth, it was a little depressing to see the new lows Joel had managed to fall to in David’s absence.
Nonetheless, David considerately removed Joel’s shoes and clothes for him, as well as his own before climbing into bed with the suddenly sleepily affectionate man that he’d pursued for years. There really was nothing like an accurate dosing to get a guy in your arms.
---
His eyes slid open, dipped out, and focused.
David, – Griffin, he’d meant - was smiling at him. He felt arms around his waist and sleepily enjoyed the warmth of the larger man. He could absently feel fingers running down his spine and over a bare buttock.
Joel’s blood ran cold. His throat locked up. He could suddenly taste vomit in the back of his throat. He didn’t remember going to sleep without any clothes on, and he certainly couldn’t think of any reason why a dead man would be running warm gentle hands over his thighs.
“What have you done?” he managed to rasp, breaking through his woozy state. He tried to jerk away, out of Griffin’s reach, but his body wouldn’t co-operate. He felt as bad as if he’d run a thirty mile marathon and then been hit by a truck at the finishing line.
David – the dead man – kept smiling gently. “I came back to you, Joel. I heard you needed me.”
Joel stupidly thought ‘he came back from the dead for me?’ but his logical mind dismissed the sleepy thought. Obviously Griffin had somehow survived the fire. This meant – this meant that the body Joel had been hesitant to identify at the morgue had not been Griffin’s after all. He felt a smidgen of smugness at knowing that his instincts had been right.
Of course being right was completely irrelevant at the moment.
“What are you doing here, in Chicago?” Joel asked, with the appearance of calm. Best to get as much information as possible to ensure a fast recapture.
Griffin stroked his hair, fluffing it up and then smoothing it out to his liking. He liked Joel when he was all pliant and affectionate under the influence of drugs, but nothing beat the straight-talking tactics that the intelligent man tried to use in conversation to get information.
“I came for you, of course. It seems you just can’t live without me, Joel.” David smiled widely at his captive, and leaned in to kiss him for what must have been the hundredth time that night. Unfortunately for David, with the roofies wearing off fast Joel wasn’t nearly as willing to respond as he had been previously.
David sighed and pulled back from obviously fearful, but unrelenting lips. “Oh, Joel, you were so less inhibited before you fell asleep on me…”
Joel’s eyes widened in shock, “It was in the coke, wasn’t it?” he asked quietly. Fucking unsealed liter bottles.
He could move one of his hands under the blankets. If he could get enough force behind it, he had a chance of hitting Griffin in the face or somewhere equally vulnerable, and making his escape.
“It was,” David agreed, placing his hands firmly over Joel’s. “Now, I feel I must warn you that if you make any attempt to escape I’m going to have to tie you up. And it would be very inconvenient for me to have to tie you to a chair when I’d so much rather have you on your bed.”
Joel swore inwardly. He’d have to wait for an opportune moment, or hope that Hollis picked today to swing by for lunch. This was very, very unlikely. Especially now that everyone thought he was fucking crazy.
David pushed Joel’s hands above his head and pulled the blankets away from the both of them. Joel was mildly surprised to see that Griffin’s body was nigh unblemished apart from a single circular scar on his shoulder. (Blown there by him, Joel remembered. Too bad he hadn’t aimed a little more to the right.) There was also another lump of scar tissue on his neck. Pens were nasty when handled with force.
It appeared as though he hadn’t even been privy to the explosion at all – until a hank of Griffin’s black hair swung away from his face. The skin of one side of his upper face, his left side, was shiny with scar tissue. It wasn’t altogether disfiguring or alarming, but it was a shock to see on such a handsome man.
David noticed his staring and made a face at him. “So you noticed that. Don’t worry, it’s meant to heal slowly, or so I’m told. It’s nothing like the job I did on my stunt double.”
Joel nodded imperceptibly to himself. That explained a lot.
David attached himself to Joel’s neck, biting it fiercely before moving far south to mouth the near-permanent bruise on his abdomen kept livid from constantly injecting. David’s fingers were roaming uncomfortably close to his lower areas, so he tried distraction:
“I had to identify your body.”
Griffin sat up immediately, only slightly miffed at being interrupted.
“Oh, boy, I’m sorry. I never thought they’d make you do the visual checks.” He gathered the limp ex-agent up in his arms for a brief one-sided embrace.
“I was the only witness who had met you without strangulation, you realize…”
Joel was formulating another half plan. Perhaps he could bargain his way out of this situation. Perhaps if he promised not to report Griffin – but that would never work. He had a duty to go to the police immediately, especially since he had been mistaken about the body in the first place. But how was he to know how many people Griffin had already alerted to his survival?
Brokering that kind of deal would be pointless without more information about Griffin’s current vulnerabilities. If everyone already knew, he had no bargaining chips. Not to mention how hard it would be for him to convince the precinct that Griffin still lived without the man in handcuffs at their door. And if he fumbled the escape he risked Griffin killing more innocents in his rage.
He’d have to sit it out.
David chuckled, “No wonder you’re all messed up again. Good thing I’m not really dead.”
Griffin went back to pressing his lips to Joel’s bruised belly with relish. “You know, you were quite the doll last night. All I had to do was run my hands down your sides and you were practically spreading your legs for me.”
Joel flushed at the thought. He couldn’t remember doing anything of the sort, but he knew the kinds of street drugs that could make it possible.
A rough palm rubbed his crotch, and two fingers pressed into him from behind. He yelped loudly in pain. Griffin…had definitely been telling the truth about the previous night’s activities.
David pressed his lips to Joel’s ear. He whispered more comforting noises than he did words, mixed in with the odd detail Joel couldn’t even imagine from the night before.
The criminal lifted his counterpart away from the pillows, setting him in his lap instead, his fingers still pushing from below. Joel flopped against David’s chest, his body bone-tired from movements he couldn’t recall.
He was breathing in quick heavy bursts, his thin chest heaving. David could feel Joel’s heart fluttering rapidly against his own skin. He frowned. Only a year ago he’d made allowances for Joel’s precarious mental health, giving him extra clues and time in their killing game. Now he seemed to have shrunk in size by at least a third, he was frighteningly pallid by the light of early morning, and he wasn’t even fighting against David’s touch anymore, even after making allowances for the side effects of his drugging.
This was still the same Joel that David had fallen for, but only a shadow of him. He might have to fix him this time without his signature psychological prompting. Multiple homicide cases were obviously too much for Joel to handle nowadays. It would have to be a one-on-one, step-by-step, hand-in-hand project. David smiled again, rubbing Joel’s lower back comfortingly. That suited David just fine. He’d waited far too long to have Joel all to himself. And this broken Joel was just far too pretty for David not to take advantage of him.
Joel’s eyes slipped shut as the pain in his backside became too intense. He fell forward against David, and was sickeningly relieved to feel the man catch and clasp him easily. The pressure receded, and suddenly David was caressing his face. He blinked at the dark haired young man.
“I forgot that you’ve never done this sober,” David said, “don’t worry, you’re very good at it, trust me.”
What? thought Joel, confused from just listening to Griffin, did he think I was worried I wasn’t pleasing him? The thought was more likely than not correct when Joel considered it. After all, no matter how intelligent David was, he only believed in whatever made him happy.
The pressure returned once more, but it was softened by some form of lubricant that Griffin had fumbled from the blankets.
David kissed at his ears some more, whispering and groaning. “Just lift your hips for me, that’s right, Joel…Now doesn’t that feel better?”
Joel couldn’t hold back a gasp of pleasure as Griffin’s fingers curled slowly inside of him. He whimpered and buried his face in the large man’s shoulder, ashamed of his reaction to the killer’s ministrations.
David kept going, pleased by Joel’s cries. “See, you’re fine now. That was beautiful. Look up at me. Now, Joel.”
Joel kept his face down-turned in a last ditch attempt at resistance.
Griffin chuckled and shrugged. “Alright then, buddy. But you’ll be looking at me in a second, whether you like it or not.”
He pulled his wet fingers out of Joel and lifted him up, careful not to grasp at his bruise. He lined him up and pulled him back down, firmly planting him on his cock. Joel shuddered at first, overcome by the pain and heat, but when David allowed him to lie back against a small mountain of blankets, wrapping his legs around his waist rather than painfully raised, he calmed.
To his annoyance he found that he was looking up at Griffin after all.
David secured Joel’s scrawny legs about him and leaned forward, initiating the first thrust. Joel called out incoherently, much to his embarrassment and David’s delight. David set a deep but slow rhythm, aiming to wring as much response from Joel as humanly possible.
With every deep thrust he breathlessly told Joel how good he was being; how beautiful he looked when he cried out, how his moans made him want to come. His hands went to Joel’s face, and held it still, watching every flicker and roll of Joel’s eyes, every gasp and mutter from his mouth. He held out until Joel had spilled his seed onto his own stomach before letting himself release into Joel with warm spurts, still rocking rapidly against his boney hips.
Joel was crying as he came. Fat salty hating tears that stung his eyes. Punishment enough, really. Part of him thought this was mildly pathetic, but another tired and retired part of him was simply glad to provide David with a reason to carefully pull out and gather him in his arms once more.
David rocked him slowly, wiping the messy white gunk from Joel’s body with a sheet.
“I never expected you to cry,” he confessed ruefully to the older man. “I imagined you making a lot of delectable sounds that I was lucky enough to be right about, but I didn’t mean to make you cry. It didn’t hurt that much, did it, Joel?”
Yes, it had hurt that much, Joel thought bitterly, keeping quiet. He desperately tried to regulate his breathing. He couldn’t tell whether the warm wetness running down his thighs was blood or just come. It was too embarrassing to check with Griffin there watching. He shifted in discomfort and immediately regretted it. His ass was burning, it felt rubbed raw (and it probably was, Joel conceded).
But, he’d been subject to far worse pain in his life. He’d been shot in the line of duty more than once, the last time by Griffin, ironically enough. He passed every day hemmed in by the threat of incapacitating migraine and nausea.
Life hurt.
It hurt a great deal more than what David was doing to him. And yet, he only wept now? So, no, it wasn’t the pain at all.
David kicked the wet sheet to the floor and curled his hulking frame protectively around his older captive. “You don’t have to be ashamed that I made you enjoy it. Heck, you can call it in to your police friends as rape. I won’t tell them anything about us,” he promised Joel with his deceptively warm brown eyes.
His hands were everywhere again, cupping here and there, and trailing tenderly across expanses of skin. Joel shuddered involuntarily. Griffin had hit the nail on the head, once again proving he was up to par with Joel’s own thinking.
How could Joel even show his face to the world now that he’d effectively betrayed every member of society? Enjoying the touch of the man that killed those Joel was sworn to protect - that was high treason. Even if he’d wanted to hit the beat again, it would be unthinkable now. He’d have to give up Hollis’s paperwork, it wasn’t right for someone almost in league with a killer to be reading and writing confidential federal documents.
There was really nothing to go back to; nothing to live for. These tears were out of despair and self pity, and it was indescribable how humiliating it felt to have David Allen Griffin, of all people, rubbing his back and telling him that everything was going to be alright.
After a few minutes Joel’s tears slowed and disappeared, leaving a much quieter and submissive man in David’s arms. This was both worrying and a complete turn-on for David, who missed Joel’s uniquely brilliant mind, but also adored the role of dominancy over him.
“Well, I suppose we’d better get you cleaned up,” he said, hesitantly. David didn’t really want them to get up. But he supposed that Joel couldn’t get up to much if he stuck to him like glue. And he was a tricky and resourceful man, as the pen wound in his neck had once told him. “Would you like a shower?”
“No…a bath.” Joel muttered irritably into his sweaty pillow.
“You don’t have a bath, Joel. What kind of first timer would I have to be to not notice the fixtures in your bathroom?”
David helped Joel stand upright, but the frail man staggered, still dizzy from the drugs. David wrapped his arm around Joel’s ribs and half dragged him to the small bathroom instead.
They had to zigzag across the apartment to make it through the piles of paperwork and unpacked belongings. When they finally reached the tiny bathroom, Joel couldn’t stand alone at all. David pushed him into the shower stall where he slumped to the floor. Then he turned on the water, full blast. It was ice cold.
“J-jesus Christ…!” Joel yelped, scrambling against the wall, in a futile attempt to move out of the spray.
David shrugged, a little smile spreading across his face. “Oops. My hand slipped.”
Joel gritted his teeth and noted aloud, “…acts on impulse…”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” Joel acclimatized to the frigid water. He lifted his face up to the thundering droplets, letting them wash away sweat and saliva, and dually block out any sight of Griffin.
David stood in the open doorway of the shower, unwilling to close the curtain. He gripped the edge of the stall, visibly working at keeping his temper.
“What was that you said?”
Joel didn’t answer, whether due to the sound of the water, or mere ignorance, David wasn’t sure. But he reached into the shower and dragged Joel out from under the spray, flinging him against the opposite vanity with bruising force. Joel’s abdomen glanced off the countertop, leaving him grasping at the purpled skin, and sucking in rapid gasps of air.
“Don’t you dare try to fucking psychoanalyze me, Joel. You are not in control of this situation. I would have thought you’d learnt that lesson from last time…”
Joel squeezed his eyes tight shut, the pain of the blow to his stomach blanking out any other feeling. No, he hadn’t forgotten Griffin’s words in the car. He’d just…it was in his nature to antagonize his subjects to force them into showing a weakness. Evidently timing had never been his forte. Joel was always too late…as Lisa’s death had shown him. Just as Jessie and Ellie, and a dozen other girls’ deaths had shown him up as a failure. He couldn’t save a girl by himself, even if his life depended on it.
“Now, Joel, I’ll play nice, if you play nice. Understand?”
He’d have to…
“Understand?”
“Yes.” He’d have to go along with Griffin’s whims. Indefinitely.
David frowned, but this was the best he was going to get out of Joel. It was good enough for now. He supposed you had to break ‘em to build ‘em back up again…Wasn’t that what they said? Or something.
Joel was shivering under the vanity, arms curled protectively around his bruised abdomen. He was all ribs and spine and bruises. He was a bag of bones. David took pity on the pallid man. He picked him up off the floor and pulled him back into the shower. Seated in the metal base, he nudged the knob up to warm and slid under the spray, setting Joel comfortably against his shoulder.
“See, this is nice. I can be nice, Joel.” David murmured, trickling water down Joel’s arms and chest.
Joel shuddered involuntarily, and flinched away completely when Griffin’s hands slicked over his stomach. It hurt to be touched there. It just reminded him of the prickling tips of his needles. He saw Griffin frown when he jumped away and hoped the bastard wouldn’t hit him again. He was almost relieved to merely be pulled close again, to be soaked clean under the warm water, trapped and encircled by unyielding arms.