Watching Trin by Freya Barker
Chapter 13
Trin
Bodhi is quiet, one hand on the wheel and the other loosely resting on my leg in silent comfort.
I’m a mess. I held it together until we got into his truck, but then the floodgates opened. He didn’t say a word, just started the engine, put his hand on my knee, and started driving.
I drove out here with Vic and Pops in her car. After we left, Bodhi loaded Pops’s bags, the small TV from his bedroom, and his chair in the Jimmy and followed us. While Pops was having lunch, the three of us quickly got his room sorted before joining him in the dining room, where he’d struck up a conversation with another gentleman.
The killer is, he didn’t even flinch when we showed him his room. He just sat down in his chair and reached for the remote. Jason had suggested the transition might be easier if we didn’t put too much emphasis on the fact this was a change unless Pops brought it up.
He didn’t. He just waved us off when we told him we were leaving and would see him tomorrow. That was almost harder than if he’d put up a fuss. A blessing for him, I guess—the lack of recognition—but a blow to us.
Vic and I briefly hugged in the parking lot before she headed back to work. Grateful for the distraction, I’m sure. I climb in the truck with Bodhi, dreading the empty house I’ll find when I get home.
“Where are we going?”
I wipe at my eyes with the tissues he thoughtfully produced earlier. Looks like he just missed the logical turnoff to the house.
“My place. Well, my temporary place. It’s on the river. I thought I’d feed you, maybe go for a walk.” He glances over to me. “I can have you back home before Tuck gets off the bus.”
He doesn’t say it, but somehow seems to know instinctively I’m not ready to face the silence waiting at home.
It suddenly occurs to me with Pops out of the house, Bodhi won’t be around anymore either. He’s only stayed a couple of nights, but I liked having him around.
Another wave of sadness washes over me.
Last night had been so nice; just us two with soft music in the background, a little conversation, and a bit of making out on the couch. He didn’t hold back on his kisses—my body still responds when I remember the blatant hunger he didn’t bother to hide—but he kept the petting strictly PG. There may have been some exploration but only over the clothes. Had it been up to me, I would’ve stripped us both bare. I even started to a couple of times but he’d retrieve my hands, immobilize them over my head, and proceed to drive me crazy with only his mouth and his weight pressing me into the couch.
“I’m sure you’ll have to get back to work as well. I can’t tell you how grateful I am for these past days. I don’t know how we’d have managed without your help.”
He throws me a faint smile.
“Oh, that reminds me, I have to get your mother something to thank her,” I quickly add.
“No, you don’t.”
I glare at him. He doesn’t get to decide that. Nira was a great help, and it’s none of his business whether or not I order her flowers or something.
“Of course I do, and I will,” I respond stubbornly.
He turns into what looks to be a trailer park. A nice one, with lots of green space between units and tall trees providing shade. Parking his truck in front of a modest trailer with nice gray/blue siding, he kills the engine and turns to face me.
“You don’t have to buy Mom anything, you can give her what she’s dreamed of for years.” When I scrunch my eyebrows, not understanding, he clarifies, “For me to bring home a girl for a family dinner.”
“Wait. What?”
He grins and grabs my hand.
“Dinner. My parents’ place. Sunday night.”
Before I can even respond, he’s already out of the truck and rounding the hood to my side.
“This is roomier than it looks from the outside,” I comment when we walk in the door. “You mentioned this is temporary?”
He moves through to the kitchen and starts pulling ingredients from the fridge.
“My apartment got flooded and it turns out the place needs major renovations, so my landlord lets me stay here until the next tenants get here in November.”
“That’s in a month,” I point out.
“I know. I’m gonna have to find something else. Maybe it’s time to buy something.”
“What would you be looking for?” I ask, taking a seat at the small round kitchen table.
While Bodhi throws together an omelet and pops a couple of open-faced, grilled cheese sandwiches in the small oven, we talk real estate. He shares he’d like something within fifteen minutes of the firehouse, but outside of town. Turns out he’s always wanted a dog but never felt right about getting one without space for it to roam. He doesn’t care whether it’s one level or two, as long as he has good views, a little privacy, and maybe a detached garage/workshop to tinker on projects.
“Like the dirt bike?”
He looks up from his lunch and smiles.
“Yeah. Been a long time since my dad and I worked on cars or bikes. He and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, but we always had a love for engines in common. It’d be nice to be able to do some of that at my own place.”
After lunch he takes me for a walk along the river, as promised. I’m glad for the zip-up hoodie he gave me to wear, the wind is much chillier down by the water. With my stomach filled, my hand warmly engulfed by his, and the fresh breeze in my face, I’m feeling a lot better. This was just what I needed after this morning’s emotional overload. No demands, no expectations, just an uncomplicated afternoon spent in good company.
When Bodhi takes me home after, he follows me inside but stops in the hallway.
“Will you be okay?” he asks, pulling me flush against him.
I nod. “I’m fine. Tucker should be home in half an hour.”
He briefly tightens his arms around me.
“Good. Call me if you wanna talk. I’m heading in to catch the second half of my shift tonight but even if I’m busy, should you call, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“You don’t have to do that. You’ve already done so much.”
“Not doing it for you,” he corrects me. “I’m doing it for me. I enjoy being around you and it’s tougher than I thought to leave. Knowing you have me on speed dial, should you need me, makes it a little easier.”
It feels like a balloon is expanding in my chest hearing that. It makes me a little nervous, but at the same time tentatively hopeful. Maybe the time is right, and maybe Bodhi is the one.
“Okay,” I concede.
The next moment he’s kissing me and my arms wind around his neck, my fingers curling in his hair. On those relatively rare occasions I’ve kissed someone since Tucker was born, it was an almost thoughtless step as part of a physical need for release.
Bodhi doesn’t kiss with any purpose but the kiss itself. Savoring my mouth with the soft glide of his lips, the exploring stroke of his tongue, leaving me boneless yet anchored in the moment.
When he finally lifts his head a few inches and I open my eyes to find his drinking me in, that balloon expands a little more. How is it this beautiful man can look at me like that?
“My weekend officially starts on Sunday. Tell Tuck I’ll come by to work on the bike a bit. Mom will expect us around five.”
That’s a whole four days away. I swallow the flash of disappointment at the idea of having to wait that long to see him, and plaster on a smile.
“What can I bring?”
“Just you.”
He tucks a wayward strand of hair behind my ear and plants a kiss on the tip of my nose. Then he lets me go and turns, reaching for the door.
“Until then, stay safe.”
He glances at me over his shoulder, a smile playing on his lips.
“Oh, you’ll see me before then, Katrina.”
* * *
Bodhi
“Roadkill!”
I close the door on the equipment compartment where I just returned the chainsaw and turn to see Detective Jay VanDyken heading my way.
We were called out to the scene of what we thought was a straightforward truck versus motorcycle traffic accident. Often messy and with less than a favorable outcome for the biker, but this call turned out to be a bit out of the ordinary. There’d been a crash, we could tell by the burned rubber on the asphalt and the scattered debris field. From the looks of it a high-speed impact ejecting the unfortunate rider, propelling him over the guard rail, and down the cliff on the other side.
About fifteen feet below the road, his fall had been broken by a tree branch, which had partially sheared off, probably by high winds in that storm a few weeks back. The sharp end of the mangled limb speared the guy through his torso, holding him immobile.
By some miracle he was still alive and alert when we got to the scene. Sumo and I quickly rappelled down and were able to stabilize him, fit him in a harness, and cut the branch from the tree. The guy lost consciousness during that ordeal, having lost a ton of blood already, but he was loaded quickly into the ambulance and taken to Mercy, a length of the branch still embedded.
“Hey, Jay. I’m guessing since you’re here this is a confirmed hit and run?”
“Looks like it might be more than that. One of the witnesses claims the other vehicle hit the bike intentionally, never even slowing down.”
“Jesus,” I mumble under my breath.
Even in a relatively small community like Durango, you get to see all kinds of human depravity in this line of work.
“Yeah. I hope our victim makes it. Forty-four and a father of three. The guy is a podiatrist, for fuck’s sake. The bike is his hobby. What kind of enemies can a podiatrist possibly make?”
I’ve got no answer to that. I just hope we got here in time to give him a decent chance at surviving this.
“Anyway, reason I wanted to check in with you is the car you guys fished out of the river. That case got dropped in my lap and I was hoping you could walk me through how you discovered it. I know you were working a water rescue and one of the victims got stuck.” He pulls out a small notebook and flips through the pages. “Yeah, Tucker Paige? Did you see what he got stuck on?”
“Side mirror.”
“Right. Do you remember if it was broken already? I was looking at the wreck earlier and noticed it was hanging by a thread. I was wondering if that happened at the time the car hit the water or—”
“I think I may have done that. I had to yank pretty hard to get the kid loose.”
“Is he okay? The kid?” He wants to know.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” I tell him, thinking about Tuck.
“Good. Okay so that confirms my suspicion.”
“Which is?”
“That car is showing some damage, but none of it consistent with an accident, or going through a guardrail. Honda didn’t install airbags in the Civic prior to 1994, so any impact from hitting the water at high speed alone would likely have smashed the driver’s chest or face into the steering wheel, leaving damage. The only damage the autopsy showed was to the back of the skull. Blunt force trauma. It smells like foul play, especially since it looks like the car was eased into the water.”
“Do you know the identity of the body?”
“Not yet, but we know it’s a female, late teens or early twenties. The lab is working on the rest, but they’re swamped. In the meantime, we have a good idea of when, based off the DMV records we were able to find with the recovered VIN. Last time the license plate was renewed was in March of 2001.”
The year I graduated high school and the year I decided to become a firefighter after seeing the heroics of the New York Fire Department play out on our TV when the Towers went down. I’m sure more happened that year but those two things stand out firmly.
That year had a lasting impact on my life, but at least I’m still here.