Highway Butcher – Chapter Eighteen

**If Bo were a real person, today would be his 36th birthday! So here’s an extra long chapter for you ❤

NOT EDITED

Chapter Eighteen

Friday: June 19, 2020

8:00 PM; LOS ANGELES, BO AUSTEN’S HOUSE, DINING ROOM

After Jensen’s supper delivery arrived — tacos — Bo dove into the case file. It was an incredibly thin file, and what was there wasn’t much, but something would just about always be better than nothing. Something was still a stone to turn. Jensen sat across from him at the table, quietly picking at the tortilla shell of his taco rather than eating it.

“Did you eat something before I arrived?” Bo asked without lifting his head.

“No.”

“Just… not hungry?”

Jensen lifted his shoulders. “Finding anything helpful?”

“In which sense?”

“I… I dunno. Does it say anything about me being found?”

“It does.”

“What does it say?”

Bo cleared his throat. “I assume you held onto this without opening it because you knew it would be difficult to sit down and read what happened, see what the scene looked like. So I feel like I have to ask. Do you want to know? Or are you just making conversation?”

“I need to know who actually loves me and who’s using me as a pawn in some fucked up game of petty spite. O-or if any of them love me. If I’m a pawn to all of them.”

After a moment, Bo nodded. “According to the reports given by Aaron Wellendorf — the other detective on the case — and the three officers present at the crime scene, Wellendorf used a long piece of floss to undo the chain lock on the door, Kathy found you hiding beneath the table in the kitchen area. She had Wellendorf carry you downstairs, and he handed you off to Jamal, who took you to the hospital to be checked out and then to the police station to wait for social services.”

“So she didn’t… didn’t save me,” Jensen whispered.

“Well, I… I suppose that depends on how you define ‘save’.”

“How about doing the bare minimum of carrying me out of the crime scene after finding me staring at my mom’s headless, rotting corpse?”

“Th-then I suppose it was Detective Wellendorf.”

“Oh, my God. He’s a murderer. A murderer had more compassion for me than Kathy did?”

“Well I… I-I don’t think they knew about the… the homicides, umm… at the time.”

“No fucking shit.”

“I-I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to say. I didn’t mean to—”

“No, I’m sorry. You’re not doing anything wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just…”

“It’s a lot to take in,” Bo said after a moment. “I know.”

Jensen picked a few more pieces of his tortilla away from the main taco, dropping each little flake onto his plate. “Does it say anything else in there about me?”

“No. I mean, it details when they questioned you about your mother and father, but that’s it.”

“What did I say about my dad? I don’t…” Jensen closed his eyes for a moment. “It’s been so damn long ago. I don’t even remember, you know, having one. Not really.”

“Uh… it doesn’t look like you specifically mentioned a father, just a man who would come over and watch you sometimes when your mom left the house, and he’d bring you groceries and give your mom money.”

“Like… like child support?”

“I don’t know. That’s a possibility. A kind neighbor or your maternal grandfather, maybe. A boyfriend. There are many potential realities.”

“D-does it mention anything bad?”

“I mean…” Bo lifted his gaze to the younger man’s face. “That depends on your definition of ‘bad’.”

“A-about my mom?”

“Like what?”

Jensen chewed on one side of his bottom lip for a moment. “L-like, I dunno. Umm… sex work? Drugs? Anything like that?”

“No. Do you… remember her doing drugs? Or sex work?”

Jensen shook his head.

“May I ask why you’re concerned about it then?”

“Wh-when Kathy was drunk — like really drunk — she’d talk about how my mom was a druggie whore a-and was putting my life at risk all the time so she could get high and stuff. And I just… I don’t know. I-It was so long ago. I don’t have many memories of her. S-so I don’t know if it’s… I don’t know. It could all be true, you know? Mom choosing sex and drugs over me. Maybe one of those men killed her. I dunno. Kathy—”

“First of all, I hate to tell you this, but Kathy is a manipulative liar. She would tell you anything if it allowed her to dig her claws into you deeper. Telling you that your mom chose drugs or prostitution over you was a way to tell you that you weren’t worth anything to your mom. A way to tell you that Kathy was the only one who thought you mattered. It was to isolate you and keep you that way.” Bo touched his fingers to the open folder in front of him. “If there was any indication that your mom did drugs or sex work, those angles would have been investigated. If they couldn’t be investigated, they would have, at a minimum, written it down. I can’t tell you how happy those detectives would have been to write your mom off as just another ‘hooker’ who bit the dust. There is absolutely no notation of that in this file.”

“Oh, my God,” Jensen whispered. He buried his hands in his hair, eyes focused on the wall behind Bo. “H-how would we find out more about me? About who took me and why and… and stuff like that?”

“That would be an entirely different file with an entirely different department. We’d need to find your caseworker and—”

“Gabby. Jamal’s married to her.”

“He’s… he’s what?”

Jensen’s green eyes snapped up to Bo’s face. “What?”

“He’s married?”

“Umm…” Jensen swallowed. “Uh, yeah? I-I figured you’d know that.”

“No,” Bo whispered. He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t worthy of… information like that.” He cleared his throat. “How recent is that?”

“They were… Well, Kathy always said they were screwing around when my mom died.”

“Well, Jamal sleeping with your social worker definitely makes a few things make sense. Jupiter.”

“Like what?”

“Like how he managed to get Kathy approved to adopt you, for starters. He was still just a police sergeant back then. But sleeping with someone who had direct control and say over your case…” Bo lifted his shoulders. “It just makes a few things make more sense to me, is all.”

Jensen finally pulled his hands out of his hair, scrubbing them down his face instead. He dropped his elbows to the table, forearms thudding against the surface not long after. “I haven’t been to the Pitman Estate in a long time, but he used to have file cabinets in his office, full of shit about his kids and the kids and families on his list. I—”

“His list?”

“His… Yeah. His, umm… He has a list of people he, like, promised to keep safe. Kathy’s one of them.”

“Which is why when she wanted you, he made it happen.”

“I guess.”

Bo looked down at his watch. “Well, by the time we make the drive to the Estate, Jamal would have already flown in for the night. And I can only assume his secret wife is off work and there, as well. But tomorrow…”

“We what? Break in?”

Bo lifted one of the papers in the file. “It wouldn’t be your first burglary, would it?”

Jamal stared at him for a moment before shaking his head. “No.”

“I’ll tell David I’m taking the day off from his case tomorrow and—”

“I’ll go by myself. One person is less noticeable than two. I can do it.”

Bo raised a brow. “Are you sure?”

Jensen nodded. “I’m good at what I do.” Bo snorted, regretting the sound immediately. He closed his eyes, a hand moving to his stomach. His pain meds weren’t doing quite as great of a job at managing things as whatever pain-sedate cocktail they had concocted for him while he was still in the hospital. It was still manageable, but manageable rarely meant good. “Are you okay?” Jensen asked.

“Yes, just… did a bit more standing and walking around today than I should have.”

“Do you want something for it? I have…” Jensen leaned forward. “I have weed,” he added in an odd little stage whisper.

Bo laughed, another sound he instantly regretted. But it still felt… nice, despite the pulling pain in his abdomen. “You’re running quite the criminal enterprise, Jensen.”

“I’m diversifying. And pot is way more legal than the whole breaking, entering, and thieving thing.”

“I can only assume your pot wasn’t bought at a local dispensary. Where do you meet your guy? A bridge or the park?”

“Umm.”

“Mmhmm. Thought so.” Bo offered a smile. “I really do appreciate the offer, though. I’m just… not certain which pain medication the hospital has me on, as David is responsible for dosing it out, but I do assume it’s not approved for consumption with the addition of weed.”

“Oh. Yeah. Duh. That makes sense. Sorry.”

Bo shook his head. “Don’t be. It was sweet, in a… weird, illicit little way.”

A smile tugged at one corner of Jensen’s mouth before it disappeared again. “I know that file is thin. It was my first thought when I… found it. There’s basically nothing there. But is any of it, I don’t know, conductive in the sense of an investigation? Like, at all? I mean, i-if you were working the case, and that was all the evidence at the scene, what would you do next?”

“Well, quite frankly, my next step would be to ensure the measurements are entirely accurate so I could do my best to calculate the height approximation of the killer.”

“Based on my mom’s…” He cleared his throat. “The victim’s blood spatter?”

Bo nodded, hoping like hell his face didn’t bear the same expression of pity he had always hated seeing on others, directed at him. If it was present, Jensen didn’t seem to hate it. Or if it was present and Jensen was opposed, he hid it well. Given Jensen’s history with lying, hiding his hatred didn’t seem likely. Bo figured that was a good thing, at the very least.

“Did the lab guy back then make any height guesses?” Jensen asked.

“He listed an approximation as inconclusive, which I’m… honestly not sure I’ve ever seen before.”

“So what does that mean? I mean, I-I know what inconclusive means. I’m not stupid. I just—”

“I don’t think you’re stupid, even if you didn’t know what it meant,” Bo interrupted, his voice soft. “It could just mean he wasn’t very skilled in that particular area of forensics. Everyone tends to have a thing they’re really good at and a thing they’re the least good at. People in the forensic field are no different.”

“What’s the thing you’re very skilled at?” Jensen asked.

“That depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

Bo shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He tried to convince himself it was pain rather than the question at hand. He pulled his hands off the table, dropping them to his lap so he could tug on the rubber band around his wrist without an audience. “I’m not sure I can provide a direct answer to that.”

“Why not?”

“I am… very much not my biggest fan. Asking me to identify something I’m good at is only a step beneath asking me to confirm I’m the happiest man alive.”

“Well, I think you’re good at… analyzing cold cases. And tackling men taller than you to the ground. And stealing their guns.”

“And inviting my stalker to my house, apparently.”

Jensen smiled, gaze drifting off to look around the kitchen. “Speaking of.”

“Yes?”

“Why are you selling the place? It’s beautiful.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Complicated, or depressing?”

At the very least, Jensen was finally picking up on Bo’s general vibe these days. “Depressing.”

“Because you weren’t planning on being around much longer?” Bo closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry. I-I start picking at things when I’m scared or nervous. I don’t mean to be an asshole.”

“You’re not an asshole. Not as far as I’m concerned, anyway. Why I’m selling the house doesn’t necessarily make me feel any type of way. Thinking about what David’s face did when I told him why is a… a different story.”

“And that’s why you’re alive. Right? Because of the faces your friends make when you…?”

“Yes.” Bo cleared his throat. “I… I will not be the person who does that to their faces ever again. I can’t, even if I won’t be alive to see it happen to them again.”

“Someday, I hope you’re alive because you just truly love your life. But for right now? I’m glad you have people that love you enough that they’re helping keep you here.”

“Thank you.” Bo cleared his throat. “I know this is tough. Your mom’s case, I mean, and everything that comes with it for you. Are you… ready to move forward, or do you need some more distraction time first?”

Jensen offered a nearly sheepish smile. “So I’m not very subtle, huh?”

Bo smiled. “Oh, not in the slightest.”

Jensen snorted. “Damn. Was really hoping for subtlety.”

“I do it too. Switching to avoid the conversation. No longer responding to avoid the conversation. So if you need to spend a bit more time talking about me instead of you and your mother, I… I understand.”

Jensen seemed to weigh his options for a moment. “They weren’t able to find my dad?”

“Not that the file states. Which…”

“Which what?”

“It feels… inappropriate to answer that.”

“Why?”

“Because it has to do with Kathy.”

“Part of the point of all this is to find out if she’s been manipulating me and lying to my face this whole time, remember? I-if she is, I wanna know. I need to know.”

Bo cleared his throat. “Kathy was… known to occasionally omit information from her reports, thus leaving it out of the official file.”

“Why? And why would Jamal allow it? Isn’t the station, like, his baby or something?”

“It is, but I’m not sure that he knew she did it. Or at least, I don’t think he knew she did it intentionally. He knew she was an alcoholic, and I imagine he believed the omission was related to that. Once he found out about the missing information, he usually backlogged it into the report. But if Kathy believed leaving the information out of the file would benefit her in some way, she made sure not to include it. Oftentimes, that was so if the case was passed to another detective, they wouldn’t have a crucial piece of evidence or testimony to solve the case without her. It was to make sure Jamal kept her on a case even if she was noticeably drunk.”

“That just… That doesn’t sound like the Kathy I grew up around,” Jensen said. “And I know you’re gonna say that the brain makes us forget some stuff and remember other stuff and that I’ve just convinced myself she was great, but it just doesn’t sound like her.”

Bo shook his head. “Frankly, it wouldn’t shock me if it doesn’t sound like the Kathy you knew. She presented herself differently to different people. She treated Jamal differently than her biological parents. She treated the Taylors differently than Jamal. She treated Dallas differently than the other detectives. She treated the analysts differently than the dispatchers. She treated me differently than the other analysts. She’s always been that way. She treats you whatever best serves her. At the time, if treating you well served her, she likely did. I don’t think you’re crazy for remembering the good parts of what was an incredibly traumatic childhood, even if some of the good parts were because of Kathy. Manufactured or not, those good things you remember likely happened. They just may have been followed or preceded by typical Kathy behavior. It’s impossible to know. Well, without the invention of time travel, that is.”

“You should work on that. The time travel thing,” Jensen said. He shifted in his seat, looking down as he picked off another piece of his tortilla. “And thank you. For saying that about me not being crazy and stuff. It all makes me feel so fucking crazy. I-I went and spoke to her recently at the prison, and she’s just… a completely different person than the Kathy I see in my mind. Her eyes were so cold and uncaring and… I don’t know. It feels like I’ve been dropped into an alternate reality where she’s just this horrible monster instead of a woman who took me in and made sure I was safe and cared for.”

“That’s how I felt when she started sleeping with Dallas. Once she realized he and I were friends and that he didn’t find it funny to pick at me, she’d treat me pleasantly as long as he was around, but the second we were alone, that sickeningly sweet smile would disappear and she’d go right back to the Kathy I knew. How quickly that switch occurs is…”

“Alarming,” Jensen filled in. “Terrifying.”

Bo nodded. He touched his fingers to the file again, drawing Jensen’s attention to it rather than his face. “How would you like to come with me to the apartment? I haven’t been that way in a long time. I don’t even know if it’s still standing or if it’s been demolished and replaced with something else. But we can find out.”

Jensen picked another piece of tortilla away, finally sticking one in his mouth instead of into his discard pile. “Let’s go.”

Across town, after dropping Bo off for phase one of Jamal’s ‘have Jensen infiltrate Bo’s life’ plan, David had headed to Denzel’s house. Out of the two, Denzel intimidated him less than Renee. Renee was sweet, caring, and loved Bo more than life itself, but there had always been a certain edge to her, hidden somewhere just beneath the surface, that kept most of David’s curiosities at bay. Denzel, however, was a walking stereotype for Midwestern Father of the Year. He had spent most of his life working in a factory, and when he hadn’t been doing that, he’d been one of Bo’s biggest cheerleaders. If he was hiding some scary edge, he hid it even better than Renee.

David knocked on the door and shoved his hands into his pockets. It took a few minutes, but Denzel eventually came to the door. “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

“Shit, no, I’m so sorry. He’s okay. He’s fine. I-I just came straight from work, didn’t have time to change out of the suit. He’s okay.”

“Jesus Christ, David.”

“I’m sorry.”

Denzel let out a breath. “If he’s not with you, where is he?”

“Jamal’s hired BFF plan has officially been put into effect.”

“Ah,” Denzel whispered. “Right. So he’s with, uh… Taylor?”

“Yeah. Jensen Taylor.”

Denzel nodded. “You know anything about him?”

“Not much. If I run anything on him at the station, it’ll be tied to my name and land on Jamal’s desk. I already push my luck with that man enough as is.”

Denzel chuckled. “I know you do.” He nodded his head back toward the house. “You wanna come in?”

“Yeah, thanks.” David stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “I wanted to ask you something, if that’s all right.”

“Shoot.”

“Bo told me Jamal used to be at your house all the time. In the morning before he was supposed to be awake. At night when he was supposed to be sleeping. Says he’s pretty sure you guys didn’t know he knew. He got the impression he wasn’t supposed to know.” A pause. “What the fuck, Denzel? D-does he have some sort of dirt on you guys? Is he still holding something over your head? Controlling you? Making you do little favors for him?”

“Ah.” Denzel chuckled softly, shaking his head. “Now I know why you didn’t go to Renee.”

“She scares me a little. You don’t.”

“Mm.” Denzel headed into the kitchen. David kicked off his shoes and followed. “How much of what I tell you is between you and me?”

“I’m not involving Bo in anything. He’s got more than enough shit going on.”

“How much of it makes it back to Jamal the next time you’re angry with him?”

“None of it. I promise.”

Denzel nodded. “Bo’s mother was a drug addict.”

“I know.”

“The day she… got rid of Bo, it wasn’t because she dropped him off at an adoption agency. She left him with her dealer and told him to get whatever he could for Bo and to… put that amount toward her next purchase.”

David reached out for a chair, barely making it into the seat. “Sh-she sold him?”

After a moment, Denzel nodded. “The dealer was, umm, one of Jamal’s. I mean, not his dealer. One of Lucchese’s people and someone Jamal worked with. He called Jamal, Jamal… paid off the tab, picked up Bo, and took him home while he figured out what to do. W-we…” Denzel lowered himself into the chair across from David. “Before Bo, Renee and I had adopted a little girl whose mother was an addict, and she was born addicted to heroin. She died due to complications of that addiction.” 

“I’m so sorry, Denzel,” David whispered.

Denzel drew in a long breath, whispering a, “Yeah,” with the exhale. “We never knew who her birth mother was. She was left at a fire station when she was only a few hours old. But, uh, when Jamal took Bo and took him to his doctor to make sure everything was okay, umm…”

“They were related?”

Denzel closed his eyes before nodding. “Bo is our little girl’s half-brother. Same mother, different father. Wh-when Jamal asked if we wanted him to do what he could to make sure we got Bo, we couldn’t say no. I just… He… Jesus.” Denzel scratched the back of his head before dropping both hands to the table. “Jamal made sure that woman would never find Bo or who had him. He made sure Bo’s biological father would stay away too. We wanted to make sure he had the least amount of trauma going forward as we possibly could, so when he got a little older and didn’t really remember how he was abandoned, w-we lied. Jamal told us… to lie, and we did. He said it was better for Bo, better to think that his parents left him safely on the stairs of an adoption agency than selling him for drugs. What could have happened to Bo had that dealer not been one of Jamal’s friends is…” He swallowed. “We wanted the best for Bo, and it meant Jamal was at the house frequently to check in and make sure everything was going well and that Bo was doing okay. In the beginning, he paid for Bo’s therapy sessions and just about every damn thing he needed. Renee and I had both lost our jobs after our daughter passed, and… and Iamal made sure Renee got back into nursing and that I got back into factory work when I refused the bodyguard shit he runs. He took care of us, and he took care of Bo. And then he, well, you know all about that. The drinking after Baker ran away. Renee and I didn’t know how bad it had gotten between him and Bo. We would’ve stepped in if we’d known. It wasn’t until you took him to the hospital when he tried to…” Denzel shifted in his seat, one leg bouncing beneath the table. “We didn’t know. Not until then. We talked him into changing departments, and he went to Clinstone for what was supposed to be a fresh start.”

“I know you would’ve stopped it if you could have,” David said after a moment. “So Bo doesn’t…? He doesn’t know about any of that?”

“If he remembers any of it, he’s never told us. He remembered when it first happened, but that kind of faded as he got older. I don’t know what his childhood therapy sessions were like. They seemed to help him once we found the right therapist, but what he told the therapist or what she told him, I… I don’t know. Maybe he’s simply lied to all of us the way we’ve all lied to him.”

David’s brow furrowed. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“I’m not accusing him of being some criminal mastermind, David. That boy is the reason I live and breathe. But if Bo remembers how he actually was ‘surrendered’, and if for even a second, he thought telling everyone he didn’t remember would make it less painful for those around him, he would have. That’s who he is.”

Unfortunately, Denzel wasn’t wrong. Bo would do just about anything to spare others of being uncomfortable with his trauma. If it meant shoving it down and lying about it, he would. But it just didn’t seem… possible. “He was sincere.”

“Hmm?”

“When he told me about seeing Jamal in the house a lot when he was young, he was sincere. I asked him why he trusted Jamal, and he told me about seeing him at the house, how if you guys trusted him, he should too. He’s been on a big… honesty kick lately, where he doesn’t really hide what’s going through his head as long as it isn’t related to a crime scene and as long as I ask him a direct question. He didn’t know why he felt compelled to trust Jamal, aside from the fact that you guys did. If he knew, he would’ve told me.”

“Good,” Denzel said after a moment. “I always hoped he didn’t remember it. Begged God to make sure he didn’t remember it on more than one occasion. We hoped thinking that his parents made a measured decision to leave him at a safe location because they knew they couldn’t provide for him would be good for him. It has to be better than knowing the truth. I mean… which do you wish you knew?”

“Yeah,” David whispered. He cleared his throat. “So, umm… you must’ve known Jamal before Bo, then. Right?”

“Yes. Jamal was in and out of different states all the damn time. When… when Belle died, I tried to cope so many ways, but the only one that allowed me to bury it for any time at all was alcohol. It was the same for Jamal back then.” A pause. “And now, I suppose. But, uh, one of those nighs, Jamal was drinking at the same bar I was. I couldn’t tell you if I got into a fight with a guy and Jamal stepped in, or if Jamal got into a fight and I stepped in, but it was one of the two. I told him about Belle, and he told me about his late wife, Janice, and we just… I don’t know. It was probably the first human interaction I had after Belle’s death. Renee spent most of her time locked up in the bathroom or the bedroom. Neither of us was doing much eating, sleeping, or talking. Jamal kept tabs on us, helped put us in therapy, and a few years later, when Bo ended up in his care, he said he couldn’t imagine a better place for him to go.” After a moment, Denzel shook his head. “If I hadn’t been drinking my life away that night, I never would’ve met Jamal, and I never would’ve met Bo. Never would have had the honor of having him as a son. I don’t know what that would be. Divine intervention?”

“Bo would say it was the butterfly effect.”

Denzel chuckled softly, nodding. “Yeah, he sure would. Maybe he’s right. Maybe our lives truly are dictated entirely by the paths our choices unfold before us.”

“Maybe. If they are, I’m glad Bo’s path crossed with yours and Renee’s.”

Denzel smiled. “I’m glad ours crossed with yours. It’s good to know Bo still has someone out there taking care of him when he won’t let us do it. Thank you for keeping an eye out for my boy, David. And for Renee and me. I appreciate it.”

“My pleasure, Denzel.”

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