Psychic Detective 15 By Jake Preston
This is a work of erotic gay fiction, intended for readers who enjoy a murder mystery in which fully developed characters interact sexually and in other ways. Their sexual encounters are sometimes romantic, sometimes recreational, sometimes spiritual, and almost always described explicitly. My attention is equally divided between narrative, character development, and sex scenes. If you don't care for this combination, there are many other excellent "nifty" stories to choose from. And remember that while nifty stories are free, maintaining a website is not. Please think about donating at http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html
Writing is usually a solitary avocation, but not necessarily so on nifty.org, where a longer story appears in installments. If my characters and my story grab your attention, you can always intervene with suggestions for improvements. All sincere comments will get a response!
Jake, at jemtling@gmail.com
Chapter 15 Dragnet Squad: Göran Svenson and Pete Durham
Sheriff Andrews called a staff meeting to update his officers and decide how to proceed. He praised Patrolman Peter Durham for undercover work that resulted in clues to the mystery of 'Albino'. Andrews and Jackson disagreed about next steps. Andrews wanted to send emails to college presidents and social science departments in a five-state area- Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Jackson wanted to assemble a team of volunteers trained to visit social science departments. "We could start with the colleges closest to Joseph, and range widely from there," he said.
Svenson kept silent in this argument between peers. They settled on a compromise. Andrews would have his staff send emails with pictures of the suspects attached, while Jackson, Svenson, Durham, and Ron Chisik would follow up with campus visits. "Sheriff Jackson's in charge of the Dragnet Squad," Andrews said. "I want you to visit colleges in pairs. I don't want anyone going alone, because the men we're looking for are dangerous."
The Dragnet Squad began their work by checking college websites. "There's a problem with websites," Svenson said. "They present photos of permanent college faculty members, but they don't normally include adjunct instructors, and they never include doctoral candidates. Albino Perp and his partner are under the radar. But while you're conducting your computer search, you should make a list of Anthropology departments that advertise study programs on Native American culture. It's a roll of the dice, but I'm willing to gamble on visiting doctoral programs in Anthropology as the most efficient use of our time. If that doesn't pan out, we can start looking at college instructors." Svenson and Durham would travel west, to visit campuses Coast in Washington, and in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Jackson and Ron Chisik would travel east and south to Idaho and Wyoming, then north to Montana.
The evening before his westward journey with Svenson, Durham went to Rudy Finnegan's house. He didn't want his car to be seen, so he jogged in sweats. Rudy offered him a naked massage. "It's been almost a week," he said.
"Yeah, but you know, Rudy, I'm still trying to figure this out in my mind," he said. Rudy challenged Peter to a Zen-fuck: "You concentrate on total relaxation while I enter your body and slow-fuck," he said. "You'll get in touch with your submissive side."
"You sly fox, Rudy!" Durham exclaimed. "You want to condition me to be a total bottom, don't you?"
"You're half-way there already," Rudy replied. "That night when I plucked your cherry, you let me breed you till morning. Let's make it official. You've got the hottest smokin' ass in Joseph. Let's let it sizzle!"
Rudy played on Durham's feelings, bending the patrolman to his pleasure. Durham enjoyed the paradox: "The more things seem designed to gratify you, the more they appeal to me," he said.
"That's because we're made for each other," Rudy said. "This dick was made for your ass."
"Is that a doctrine of Zen?" Durham asked.
Rudy ignored Durham's attempt at humor. "When I fuck you, Peter, you'll concentrate on serenity while your ass transmits pleasure to the rest of your body. You'll get horny, but you won't cum. That way your mind will be eroticized when we talk about the experience later."
Durham relaxed. Frontally on the bed, he let gravity settle him. Rudy sprawled over him. Durham felt his body as a diffused weight of sensation. Its shapeless serenity was interrupted Rudy's breath in his ear, but sufflation merged into an undifferentiated cloud of feeling. The slide of Rudy's cock in his cleft was absorbed into the generality of feeling. Durham's concentration was broken when Rudy's cock stretched his sphincter and nested in his anal canal, but he kept still and let the feeling merge with the warmth of Rudy's torso over his back. "Feel the pleasure radiating from your culo," Rudy whispered in his ear. The energy of Rudy blazoned his mind, each shock a new ember in a bonfire of lust. Their union ended un-zenlike in humping furious and long, and in Rudy whispering in Durham's ear, "Linger in the moment, bred by Big Red."
La Grande was Svenson's and Durham's first stop. Eastern Oregon College was an hour and a half drive from Joseph. They had no Anthropology department, just one anthropologist in a Social Science department. No matter. Officially, the plan was to investigate the hypothesis that Albino Perp was a doctoral student in Anthropology- possible at large universities- but while they were on the road, they decided to check out small colleges, too. It wouldn't be unusual for a doctoral candidate to have a teaching job at a small college.
No one in La Grande recognized the killers in the photos. They drove across the desert to Bend, where they made another fruitless stop. After a mountain crossing, they checked in a motel with two double beds in Eugene.
Rudy Finnegan was the only person who knew that Durham was gay. Durham belonged to the thirty-percent minority of men who are impervious to detection by gaydar. Svenson hadn't seen it. In their motel room in Eugene, he was first in the shower. He took the bed by the picture- window, and lay in the middle with a towel draped over his midsection and his head propped up by two pillows while he read a book- it was Adventures of Jake Preston, A Gay Picaro in the North Country. The bedcovers were folded over, inches below his groin. Durham emerged from the shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. He walked past the unoccupied bed, and stood over Svenson. "Are you planning to hog the bed?" he asked.
Svenson couldn't conceal his surprise. He smiled and moved over. Durham's towel dropped to the floor. He borrowed pillows from the vacant bed and lay next to Svenson. He looked over Svenson's shoulder while Svenson turned a page in his book. "What's a picaro?" Durham asked.
"What's a hog?" Svenson quipped back.
"A motorcycle, except when it's a pig," Durham said.
"Actually, the verb 'hog' has nothing to do with pigs. It's a verb that goes back to Germanic, 'hugian' in Old English, meaning 'to seize something', but I believe that the modern English form is borrowed from Danish. It's the same word as 'hug', which means something like this," Svenson said, drawing Durham's naked body close in a body-hug.
Durham looked at him funny. "How could you know that?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Svenson replied. "I went to college, you know."
"All right then. What's a picaro?" Durham asked again.
"It's a fictional character who travels from one place to another getting in and out of trouble," Svenson said. "He's a hero who makes mistakes, but he survives his escapades because he's a good person."
Durham read the title of the chapter that Svenson was reading: "'How Jake Two Spirits uttered an oracle from Manitou'- Are you and Jack into Indian mysticism?"
"We are," Svenson replied. "Mysticism: it isn't something that begins in mist and ends in schism. For me, Gitchee-Manitou is the ideal conception of God. The name means 'Great Spirit'. In popular discourse he's personified as male, but in Ojibwe mysticism he's double-gendered as male and female, and yet a Spirit unconfined by human anatomy. The Ojibwe never worshiped idols, so they never needed a commandment prohibiting the fabrication of graven images. The Ojibwe represent Manitou as a single God, not divided into parts like a Christian Trinity. By comparison, the Trinity is a polytheistic relic. In other religions, including Judeo-Christianity, human sacrifice lurks in the background. The Ojibwe never practiced human sacrifice. They never practiced sacrifice of any kind. It never occurred to the Ojibwe that the Creator-God would require sacrifice. No daughter or son of the Ojibwe was ever stabbed or burnt on an altar to calm a storm, or change the weather, or win a battle."
"I didn't realize that you were so spiritual," Durham remarked. His lust for the body receded when Svenson opened a window to his soul- until sexual desire came rushing back with the knowledge that sexuality was part of Svenson's personality, too.
Svenson changed the subject. "There's something else I like about Adventures of Jake Preston," he said. "The novel is set in Lake Ashawa and on the Iron Range. "I live in Duluth now, but I grew up on a farm not far from there. It reminds me of William Krueger mysteries like Iron Lake and Vermilion Drift. He gives fictional names to real places. Iron Lake is really Lake Ashawa. Vermilion One is really the Soudan Mine. Originally it was called the Breitung Mine. I like reading books when I can figure out the real-life identities of fictional settings."
Svenson cited other examples of fictional place-names while pretending not to notice Durham's erotic distress. The modest motel doubled as a literary salon in which Durham's uncovered dick was the elephant in the room. Svenson took mischievous delight in making him wait. "Preston writes in an extravagant style," he continued. "He uses literary allusions, and difficult words. Sometimes I suspect that makes up words." To illustrate the point, he read a few passages aloud. "I remember a computer-based study that showed that in popular culture, the best-selling books limit their vocabulary to the eighth-grade reading level. Preston does the opposite. That's another reason why I like him."
Svenson put the book on the bedside table and turned out the light. They pulled the bedcovers snug to their shoulders. Durham sidled toward Svenson. Arms and legs touched. Durham made a slight rotation toward his bedmate and pressed a hand on his abdomen. Svenson placed a hand over his. In response to this quiet encouragement, Durham's hand roved Svenson's torso. Svenson placed his right hand on Durham's leg and moved it to his inner thigh. Durham fingered Svenson's left armpit. Durham's had moved from Svenson's pit to his left nipple. He fondled it erotically. Durham fondled Svenson's cock. It throbbed in his palm. His thumb was bulboursly moistened. Gently he cupped Svenson's scrotum and fingered the outline of his testicles. They turned toward each other in a light embrace and shared a tender kiss.
"I didn't see this coming," Svenson said softly.
"I've been planning it ever since we left La Grande," Durham said. "I heard a rumor from Paul Gorman that you're a psychic."
"The more I deny it, the more people say it's true," Svenson said. "Sometimes at a crime scene I see things intuitively. That comes from empathizing with victims and imaging criminals who would do things like that. They're not psychic visions. Maybe they're insights, but they don't apply to boyfriends. I don't trust my gaydar."
Rolling in bed, Durham applied lessons learned from Rudy. He rimmed Svenson. He resisted at first when Svenson offered to reciprocate. The feeling blew his mind once he allowed it. It was his first time getting rimmed. Svenson kept the action oral. They 69'd and fellated to completion. It was Durham's first time to receive a blow-job. Later, in après-sexe pillow-talk, Durham told Svenson about his sexual adventures with Rudy. Svenson wasn't impressed. "I don't mean to sound like a sex column, Peter, but you have a right to expect reciprocation in bed," he said.
"Look at my situation," Durham replied: "A gay cop in conservative Joseph, even with artists living there, it's still conservative. It's not as though I can cruise for boyfriends. Under the circumstances, Rudy seems like a godsend."
"You need someone your own age, Peter," Svenson said. "What about Ricky Eagle Cap? I've seen how he looks at you when no-one's watching. I've noticed it twice. He probably assumes you're straight, or else he figures he's not in your league."
"Ricky? I had no idea," Durham replied. "Yeah, I think Ricky's a nice guy, and he's sexy. Do you really think he'd be interested?"
"I think you underestimate your own sex-appeal," Svenson said. "But you'll have to talk to him, because he wouldn't dare approach you."
"That's embarrassing," Durham said.
"What?"
"The idea that Ricky Eagle Cap thinks I'm out of his league. That's embarrassing," Durham said. "Why would he think that?"
"You look cute when you're embarrassed," Svenson replied.
"Maybe you could talk to him for me?" Durham stammered.
"I could do that."
Next morning, Svenson and Durham visited the Anthropology department on the University of Oregon campus. Outside the department office in the lobby, a museum-style display case caught Svenson's attention. He studied the Native American textiles and artifacts while they waited to see the Chairman.
The Chairman recognized 'Albino Perp'. "He was a graduate student about eight years back," he said. "He earned his Master's degree, but he didn't qualify for admission to our doctoral program. He got what we call a 'terminal MA'." What was his name, Svenson wondered. The Chairman checked his computer for the names of MA alumni. "Howard Coleman," he said. To confirm the name, he checked his grade books from 2002 to 2004.
"I have two more questions," Svenson said. "Did Coleman have a male friend who he hung out with, a constant companion?" If he did, the Chairman was unaware of him. What was the second question, he asked. "Just this," Svenson said: "How long has it been since you've had Indian artifacts stolen from your display case in the lobby?"
"That happened in 2009. Almost half our collection went missing. How could you know about that?" the Chairman asked.
"The burglar broke the side window on the left. You had it replaced," Svenson replied. "I'm planning to ask the Lane County Sheriff to send Forensics to collect some of your artifacts for study. I think we'll be able to match them with artifact-fragments found at two crime scenes, in Eagle Cap and on the Island of Eight Eagles. By the way, would you have a copy of the police report? I'd like to collect that as evidence, too. Of course I'll get a certified copy from the Police Department."
"As I remember, Coleman thought it was unfair that we gave him a terminal MA," the Chairman said. "He might have gotten into a doctoral program at another university, but I don't know where."
"What was the topic of his MA thesis?" Svenson wondered.
"Religious rituals in the Pacific Northwest," the Chairman replied. "He argued that tribes in the Pacific Northwest practiced ritual human sacrifice, based on analogy to Aztecs and Maya. The argument as a whole was based on analogy, without the support of evidence from Indian nations in the region. Maybe his faculty committee shouldn't have approved the thesis. They did, but they didn't accept him into the doctoral program."
"Human sacrifice, hmmm,"- Svenson repeated the phrase. "I can't vouch for the Pacific Northwest, but I can testify that the Ojibwe people have no recollection of human sacrifice. The real question is whether they practiced ritual sacrifice in any form. I don't believe that 'sacrifice' is a religious concept in Ojibwe."
"I wish you had been on Coleman's MA thesis committee," the Chairman said.
The department's MA and PhD theses, bound in green cloth covers, were displayed in alphabetical order on shelves attached to the inside wall in the secretary's office. Svenson found Coleman's thesis in the MA section. He paged through it. Then he asked the Chairman if he could borrow it. "I'll mail it back when I'm finished," he said. "Or better yet, I'll return it in person, when I come back to deliver some of the artifacts that Coleman stole from your collection."