(33) I am what I am

~ Quinn ~

“Damn it! The description of the man the waiter at the Pelican saw with Ward fits Blair. Why didn’t I see that when I met Blair at the club?”

“Because your mind wasn’t on the murders then. You were there to relax and unwind. Besides, did he really look the way that waiter described him?” Jack replied.

“Yes, well sort of, delicate, the blond hair.”

“And how many men fit that description, especially in a gay bar?”

“Well not a lot, but enough, yeah. Okay. Point made.” I sighed deeply.

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that he’s not the killer. I trust your instincts and if you say he doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d do something so vicious, you may be right. I gather from what you said, Bonnie agrees with you, from her point of view of him.”

“She does. So if he’s not the killer then what’s going on with him? We’ve pretty well established a connection between him and Ward, as tenuous as it may be right now, and then there’s Freer. The only ones not connected with him are the punks, but I suppose they could be if they tried to attack him, though why he’d have been in that part of town makes no sense.”

Jack started pacing. “Let’s look at this from a whole different angle, Quinn. Blair’s pretending to be a woman. Assuming he’s not totally insane and thinking he is one, what would drive him to do that?”

“He’s hiding from someone. Someone who he’s terrified will find him for some reason. And with his looks he knew he could pass as a woman as a way to disguise himself.”

“Exactly. An ex-boyfriend, a family member, someone he was involved with in a criminal activity.” I stated to bristle at that and he shook his head. “You don’t know anything about him, Quinn, so don’t rule that out.”

“Okay. Say we’re on the right track on this, why did he run this time?”

“He met you. Not the cop you. Did you even tell him that’s what you were?” I nodded. “And did it faze him?”

“No, not really. He seemed more interested in whether it was like the movies than anything else. He sure didn’t seem to be afraid because of it.”

“All right, so he ran either because he didn’t want you to know what was going on with him, the masquerade and the reason behind it, or he didn’t want you to become involved because it could put you in danger, too. Make sense?”

“Makes sense. What doesn’t is the fact that at least two men he knew were killed and then violated in such a strange way. Unless… Oh hell, hell and damnation.”