Page 27 of Artifacts

Thatbeing the supposed curse or haunting. Darrell didn’t have the heart to tell Aldric that the assault he’d suffered plus the graffiti to a mid-range antique store hardly constituted a priority case to the detective handling it for the SAPD. There’d been no high-value robbery, and Intrinsic Value was not what could be called a high-level target.

“Or I could just go work in the store. It’s my Saturday off, but there’s always something to do there.” Aldric mumbled the last bit into the silence Darrell had left.

“Or, who better than to help you be a detective than an actual police officer?” Darrell grinned, loving how Aldric’s shy smile in answer spread into a wide, joyous one that took over his face.

“I was planning to walk there, along the path to the museum stretch. It’s pretty beside the river.” Aldric breathed on his glasses and rubbed the lenses with the hem of his Henley.

“That so?” Darrell guided him as they left the food kiosk and turned so that they’d leave the residential complex by the exit that came out near the riverbank. He paused. “There’s a bike rental right here in the complex, two walkways along from mine, if you want to ride.”

Again he surprised himself. He’d be packing them a little picnic next. Oh, wait. He’d kind of done that last night, right?Last night.He caught up with what he’d just suggested, after what he’d done last night. Aldric had taken his first cock. His virgin ass had been tight—and not to boast, but Darrell was a good size. The last thing the newly fucked Aldric needed was to sit on a narrow bike seat, for shit’s sake.

“Or the kayak rental station is just over there,” he continued. “Do you kayak? I haven’t done it in a while. It’s great exercise.”

“I like walking. You like sports, right?”

“What gave me away, all the equipment in my apartment?”

“And the trophies. I noticed them this morning.”

Yeah, last night they’d been in too much of a rush to take in the finer points of his interior décor. “I grew up in a family of sports nuts. Competing was mandatory.” Mention of his family made him keep a look-out as they walked down the steps to the walkway alongside the river. Although it wasn’t likely any of them would be here, downtown, on a Saturday morning, and the thought of any of them anywhere near a museum was laughable.

“You said your family was traditional. Military, you mentioned?”

We’re at the ‘tell me about your family’ stage?Darrell considered brushing the question off like he would have with a hook-up, but Aldric wasn’t that. He wasn’t a one-and-done. The urge to answer him truthfully was impossible to fight off. “Yes. My father was a decorated Battlefield Airman in Special Reconnaissance, then was asked to help develop and run some of the training courses at Lackland. It’s his tenth year doing that now. My older brother followed in his footsteps, as hard as that is, as Chief—my father—has big shoes to fill. Well. That’s what we’ve been hearing ever since we were kids. Travis, my brother, he’s just joined the Night Stalkers. And my younger brother— Oh, you get the picture.”

“So you’re the rebel.”

“Not ‘the middle child’? The ‘odd one’?” He did the quote marks.

“Family labels.” Aldric’s lips thinned. “Like, ‘afterthought’. Or ‘surprise baby’.”

He gets it.Darrell nodded, quick and tight. So there was a generation gap and a half between Aldric and his parents?They must be a helluva lot older.And yet, Darrell would have bet Aldric could probably bring a guy home to them, as a boyfriend or significant other, somethinghe’dnever be able to. He hardened his heart and nodded at the fortress-like dark brown building up the grassy slope, on the landscaped lawn.Looks like a fort and was a former brewery. San Antonio in a nutshell.

“I haven’t been here since a school trip,” he confessed as they walked in through the metal detector. A flash of his badge got him his gun and all the metal contents of his pockets back, unlike Aldric, who had to exchange his huge bunch of keys for a reclaim ticket. Darrell looked for the entrance desk. “And I can’t remember any of it.”

“It’s probably changed since then, anyway. They get new artworks all the time.”

“And new rooms,” Darrell said, spotting a sign for a space bearing the nameBuckman Room. “Is all the stuff he gave in one place?”

“No, I don’t think so. Look.” Aldric indicated the list of donors in the program he’d just bought. “Seems he’s given paintings to several collections. Want to go on a trail, find all the donations he made? It’s not canoeing or off-roading, but…” He’d ducked away before Darrell could protest that he wasn’t just some knuckle-dragging jock and he did in fact like culture.

He might like it, but he didn’t think he understood it, or any kind of connection between the pictures the late Mr. Buckman had gifted the place. He and Aldric traipsed from nineteenth and twentieth century European art to American, and Darrell admitted defeat. The most he could come up with was that the art looked sort of three-dimensional.

“You know how macho guys think it’s a sign of weakness to look at the instructions when they’re building something or putting something together?” he asked. “Call me a nerd, but I’d better see the specs on this.” He studied the relevant paragraph. “Oh, Jesus. I can’t even pronounce this.”

“Me neither. But it’s explained, see?” Aldric pointed lower down the page and his finger brushed Darrell’s thumb. It felt good.

“‘Deceive the eye’.” Darrell almost fist-pumped in triumph. “Ithoughtthree-D! ‘Realistic imagery creates optical illusions that depict objects existing in three dimensions.’”

“It really does.” Aldric indicated the hundred-year-old painting of a street urchin levering himself out of a fallen-over wooden box, although Darrell couldn’t imagine why he was in there to begin with. The kid’s hands grasped the sides of the container, which was also the picture’s frame, and one foot stuck up, its toes poking out of the painting as he heaved himself up to make his escape. Or at least, they seemed to. The longer Darrell stared, the more details he marveled at.

Now Darrell knew what he was looking for, spotting links between the donated artwork in the modern and contemporary exhibition halls was easier. He put out his hand to stop loose fifty-dollar bills from fluttering away from the roll that was pinned to a brown panel on the wall, only to feel stupid when that was a trick-the-eye painting too. The jumble of drink cans and snacks, jutting out from the wall and about to fall, didn’t fool him after that.

“So let’s see the Buckman Room,” he suggested. “Buck sure liked tricks and puzzles.” And had been generous in donating so much to the museum and city in his later years, although Darrell would have put money on the guy being ruthless when he was younger, getting his business off the ground and making his fortune in a cutthroat field.

“Yes. Seems— Oh,enigma!” Aldric stopped halfway down the stairs, and a woman tsked as she nearly banged into him. He colored. “The name of his company. It’s enigma, backward!”

Darrell had to chuckle, more so when the Buckman space had a painting taking up one wall of it. As in paintedontothe wall, its doors, windows and hallway to another room all fake. The shelves and cupboards on it weren’t solid, either, or the objects hanging up on it or off it. He nudged Aldric to look at the table at one end of the room, with its pack of cards and mess of papers, ribbons and scissors apparently left lying around on it.

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