He blushed and looked away from me. “The drinking made him mean,” he said, “and I think he was using drugs too.” He played with his cup. “I found a little bottle of white powder in his pants pocket when I was going through them before I put them in the washing machine.”

“Cocaine?”

“I didn’t ask. I washed his pants and put the bottle back in his pocket.”

“Why didn’t you leave him?”

His gaze seemed to go inward and after long pause, he said, “I thought that’s how things were supposed to be. Fight, make up, fight some more.” His face, when he looked at me, was pleading. “You’re gay. Isn’t that what it’s like when you live with another guy?”

He was so young and he’d been even younger when Bill Ryan had taken him hostage in the name of love. It was a scenario I had seen before, usually with women abused and manipulated by their husbands or boyfriends until their emotions were so twisted, and their wills so broken, they saw no way out. Except, sometimes, by killing their abuser.

“You didn’t think there was a way out, did you?”

“I was afraid he would kill himself if I left him.”

“Did he tell you that?”

He nodded and then added, quietly, “I loved him. You have to believe me.”

“I do.”

“Everything got worse after Waldo died. It was like he couldn’t let me out of his sight, even for an hour.”

“Why?”

“AIDS,” he said. “He told me he had to protect us from getting sick.”

“By keeping you locked up?”

“He wasn’t making a lot of sense by then.”

“What happened the night he died?”

He froze. “I can’t talk about that with you.”

“I told you, Nick, I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I can help you.”

“It’s private.”

“But your family knows.”

He looked startled. “That’s my family. You’re a stranger. I shouldn’t have talked to you at all.”

“But you did,” I said. “I can tell you want to get this off your chest. It’s eating away at you.”

He gazed at me, understanding dawning in his dark, luminous eyes. He said, incredulously, “You think I killed him.”

“Did you?”

He bolted from his chair, knocking the coffee cup over and spilling the last of his coffee on the table.

“Nick,” I called to his back as he fled into the rain.