Praise for Andrea Speed’s
Infected Prey “When I picked up Andrea Speed’s Infected, I definitely did not expect to completely fall in love with the writing, the characters, and the plot.” —Blackraven’s Reviews “…a masterful job…” —Dark Divas Reviews “If you are looking for a fascinating mystery suspense story with shape-shifters that actually shift, pick up a copy of Infected: Prey.” —Literary Nymphs
Bloodlines “The deep emotion and love that Paris and Roan have for each other comes through from some very vibrant, strong, and powerful story telling.” —Whipped Cream Erotic Romance Reviews
Life After Death “This is a book that a reader should not read fast. Instead, sip it like a fine wine and draw it out to savor the experience for the full effect.” —Whipped Cream Erotic Romance Reviews
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com
Copyright
Published by Dreamspinner Press 4760 Preston Road Suite 244-149 Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Infected: Freefall Copyright © 2010 by Andrea Speed Cover Art by Anne Cain
[email protected] Cover Design by Mara McKennen All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/ ISBN: 978-1-61372-249-7 Printed in the United States of America First Edition November, 2011 eBook edition available eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-250-3
Dedication
Thanks to my mother, Charlie and Derek, the CXPulp crew, Ruth, Rachel, and everyone at Dreamspinner. I think I’ll thank Terry, Brandon, and James, too, just to blow their minds. But this is really for my loyal readers. Thank you so much.
Book One
Freefall
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1 What Would Wolves Do THE loneliest time in the world was 2:45 a.m. It was long enough after the bars closed that everyone who had a place to go (or thought they did) and was physically able to leave was gone, so all that was left were the chronically homeless or the blind drunk, who had a tendency to drift into shadows or cars or parks, effectively disappearing. You could wander entire blocks and feel like the last man on earth. Then you entered a convenience store, the last glowing beacon of humanity, and the feeling fled under florescent lights highlighting aisles and aisles of unnaturally colored snack food. It made you want to be the last man on earth. Maybe it was that, or it was his latest case, which was just one fucking depressing surprise after another. He nodded at the Pakistani clerk, a sad-eyed man slumped at the counter, idly watching a portable TV that sounded like it was tuned to a Law and Order repeat (sure, why not? They could play that fucking show twenty-four hours a day for a month and never run out of different episodes), and then went to the back, where the cooler cases were. Roan had already decided this case was over, prematurely ended due to unexpected weirdness. He had been hired by his client, one Holly Faraday, to tail her husband, Dallas Faraday. Over the past couple of months, Dallas had been working later and later, and she’d discovered, by finding a bill he’d thrown away, that he had maxed out his personal credit card—the one with the hundred-thousand-dollar limit. She confronted him about it, and he made up some phony story about outstanding student loans and a bad bet, but it made no sense to her. Then he drained their bank account, seemed to always have an excuse not to sleep with her, and one of her favorite coats—some ludicrously expensive Prada thing—
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disappeared. She figured he was having an affair (in spite of his denials), and that maybe he was being blackmailed, which would explain why his money was being spent so freely and mysteriously. Roan doubted it was blackmail, as shows and mystery fiction had overstated its use. Dallas was in the higher echelon of the middle class—he was an upper management drone at Columbia Mutual—but he was hardly someone worthy of blackmail, unless it was a family member extorting him for money (when blackmail was involved, it was never complete strangers who had lucked into dirty secrets). So he’d started following him. Of course he wasn’t working late like he’d told her. Roan discovered he’d actually been fired from his job at the beginning of the week—and uncovered Dallas’s secret life. First of all, he had herpes. Roan caught him buying Valtrex, and he also caught him taking some in the front seat of his Lexus, washing it down with his latte. He didn’t take pictures of that, although it did explain his lack of sexual interest in his wife. Why wouldn’t he tell his wife about it, though? He might have exposed her to it already; she might already have it. It wasn’t fair to keep that information from her. Dallas drove around for a bit, withdrawing money from two different ATMs, which was suspicious. Roan began to wonder if he was a sex addict, “addicted” to prostitutes (which would explain the venereal disease). He then drove down toward a formerly seedy but now gentrifying part of the city and visited a woman who lived in a ground-floor apartment. He got telephoto pictures of a not-so-subtle cocaine deal—he was buying himself some nose candy from a frizzyhaired blonde woman who looked like the perfect stereotype of a soccer mom, save for that tattoo (he wasn’t sure what it was but guessed it was probably a cactus). His new camera had such high resolution that he was able to see it was purely powdered stuff, not crack or crystal. Very old school. The woman didn’t look like Tony Montana. Her place wasn’t that posh, either. A very small-time dealer. Dallas ended the night at a kegger taking place at an off-campus house outside the local college, where there was no way in hell he was invited (he was about fifteen years older than everyone else) but they were all too drunk to give a crap about the skeevy cokehead cruising the coeds. He abandoned his stakeout there, as there was no way to watch for long without being noticed.
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But that explained the money and possibly the herpes. Dallas had a major drug habit. How he’d suddenly found nose candy about ten years after it became antiquated Roan had no idea, but it was still an addictive motherfucker. But none of this was part of the moral quandary that had haunted him the rest of the night. Should he turn the photos over to the cops? If she had been a small-time pot dealer, it wouldn’t have even occurred to him. Hypocritical, but there it was. Most potheads were harmless, simply because doing harm would have meant getting off the couch. And dealers who did their business in dime bags were generally rank amateurs, usually high school or college kids, no one very hardcore. But once you vaulted into the harder stuff—be it the crack dealers or the pot-growing operations that took up an acre or two— things got exponentially more dangerous, mainly because the amount of money involved also increased. Money was the key. Not too many people got worked up over twenty dollars worth of pot. But make that twenty-five-thousand dollars worth of pot (or whatever), and yeah, people cared very much. That’s when guns and violence entered the equation. Potheads generally didn’t do anything but act stupid and eat Twinkies. Cokeheads could go fucking nuts. Staying up twenty hours in a row and eating nothing but coke could do that to anyone. Amphetamines made you feel invincible and stupid enough to believe it. A small-time coke dealer still might be trouble. At what point in his life had he decided he didn’t want to seem like a narc? It was too late—he’d already been a cop once. That stained you as a “narc” for life. He eyed all the sodas through the glass doors of the cold case and decided he wanted something else. He just didn’t know what. He was tired and thirsty and hungry, and it was a long drive home. He’d told Dylan he was on stakeout duty, but he may have showed up after work anyways, as he had his own key to Roan’s place. Sometimes Dylan made him dinner, and even though they were vegetarian things, they were usually pretty good. Dylan’s job made him a night owl by default, so at least they had that in common. He’d know if Dylan was addicted to coke. Roan himself had to be really careful about when and how many pain pills he took, as Dylan was suspicious enough about his relationship with pills anyways. And
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they didn’t even live together. So how did Dallas get away with being a cokehead and Holly never suspecting a thing? That didn’t make sense. He’d be nervous and shaky, probably more high-strung than he was before, possibly losing weight or at least his appetite. And that’s not to mention the other side effects that could result, such as spontaneous nosebleeds. She’d noticed the changes in money and some behavior, but not all? Why not? Oh sure, some people seemed to miss a lot, but Holly had struck him as sharper than that. Perhaps he was wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. He’d just decided on a bottled green tea when he heard the chime of the door’s bells, followed shortly after by a rough male voice shouting, “Empty the fucking cash register, now!” Roan turned, and had to take a couple of steps back to the end of the candy aisle to see what was going on. A guy with a nine millimeter, black hoodie-wearer with the hood pulled tight around his face, so agitated that he seemed to be rocking back and forth even as he stood still. Speak of the devil—it was probably a methhead. They could become a serious case of twitches, tics, and shivers. Coke was bad enough, but meth was hell, a quick trip to the grave. He heard the high was spectacular, and it must have been for people to deteriorate so fast. Roan had actually decided to let the robbery go, as it was too dangerous to the clerk to go after him here and now. He could follow him outside and confront him there. He knew the streets were fairly deserted, and the chance of collateral damage was almost zero. But the guy thought the clerk wasn’t moving fast enough and smashed him in the head with the gun. “Don’t fuckin’ try anythin’ with me, towelhead!” the guy snapped, reaching over the counter. “Stupid shit,” Roan muttered under his breath. This could have gone smoothly. No one could have been hurt. But he decided to be even more of a fuckhead than he already was. Roan knew if he started running, the guy would hear him and turn, so he had to buy some time. He stepped into the candy aisle and tossed the bottle of tea. It was a dead shot. It hit him square on the back of the skull, and even though the glass bottle didn’t break, Roan heard the terrible thunk of impact, and the guy pitched forward across the counter, although he didn’t drop the gun. “Fuck!” he roared. The bottle shattered when it hit the floor.
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Roan had started running, but he could tell from the smell the robber was giving off that he was amped up and probably relatively impervious to pain. He started turning, gun out, and Roan realized he’d started running too late. The guy would have time to shoot him before he reached him. So he lunged for him. He didn’t ram into him—somehow he landed with his feet on the edge of the counter, bracketing the man’s chest, putting him in a good position to grab the man’s gun hand and punch him in the face with his other hand. He felt a tooth give under his knuckle. “Motherf—” The guy began struggling, and Roan snapped his wrist like it was made of plywood. He let out a horrified yelp, and Roan slammed his forehead down on the man’s face. It hurt like a motherfucker, and he saw stars, but the robber got it worse. Roan let his arm go so he could slide to the floor, and Roan instantly grabbed the edge of the counter, where he had planted his feet. Was this defying gravity? He supposed not, but it was pretty close. He was balancing— easily—on the very edge of the counter. He could see the clerk behind the counter, crouched down with a thin trickle of blood dripping from his scalp. His eyes were wide and definitely startled, like he wasn’t sure if he should be more afraid of Roan or the guy with the gun. “You call the cops?” Roan asked, finally feeling the strain on the backs of his legs. For a second he just stared at Roan like he couldn’t believe he was for real, then gestured to something under the counter. “Got a button back here.” “Good.” Roan dropped back down to the floor, careful to avoid the robber, who was already coming around. Roan kicked him over onto his face and put a foot on the back of his head to keep him down, leaning back against the counter to wait. “Don’t struggle. I have your gun now.” Actually, it was still on the counter where it had fallen, and Roan had no interest in it. He didn’t need it. The clerk stood up at some point, turning the set’s volume down to almost nothing, and eventually asked, “How did you do that?” Oh no. “Do what?” “That—that jump. I’ve never seen anyone do something like that
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outside of movies. Are you a gymnast or something?” The jump? The jump. Staring down the aisle, he realized his lunge was done about, what, twenty feet from the robber? More or less? He should go for the long-jump competition. Roan wanted to say, “No, I’m a cat,” but managed to fight the urge. It was for the best. “Not exactly.” He didn’t know he could do that. But if he could jump from a third floor and manage to land on his feet (and not break every bone in his legs), why couldn’t he do this? It was a minor variation on a theme. He wasn’t sure if he wanted the cops that showed up to know him or not, but as it turned out, the difference was split. It was Thompson and Bragg, two cops he had seen involved with crowd control at one of the Church of Divine Transformation protests he was called in to help patrol—they all knew of each other, but didn’t really know each other at all. Thompson was a rock-solid, six-foot-three, two-hundred-pound guy who bore a very minor resemblance to a young Jim Brown, a reference that Thompson totally didn’t get when he mentioned it. It made Roan feel so very old. Bragg was an attractive, slightly heavyset woman, ten inches shorter than her partner, who seemed to show no emotion whatsoever, no matter the situation. Thompson was a bit more jovial, but in a way that suggested that he and Bragg had worked out their whole “good cop/bad cop” routine in advance. Bragg took his statement while the EMTs bundled the suspect off to the emergency room (broken wrist, possible concussion), and Thompson interviewed the clerk, who was actually the owner of the shop—it seemed he had a hard time getting people to cover the night shift. (No, really?) He gave Thompson an earful on shitty police coverage and response time, but Thompson took it all with the same good humor he took everything. Roan got his tea. As soon as the cops arrived and took over, he got another bottle from the cold case. He offered money, but the clerk/owner waved it away. Maybe a free drink was the least he could expect. Maybe he should have tried to get a frozen burrito thrown in as well. Bragg asked him if he carried a gun, and he opened his jacket and showed her the Sig Sauer in his belt holster. That made her raise a painted eyebrow at him. “You didn’t pull it?”
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“Why? Get in a gun fight with a civilian right there?” “When you hit him with the bottle, you could have just as well have shot him. There’d have been no fight at all.” Roan scoffed. “Kill a guy for trying to rob a store? I don’t think so.” She kept giving him that stare, like she couldn’t believe he was for real. It was then, inside the store, that Thompson let out a startled laugh and said, “Lisha, you gotta see this! This is fucking awesome.” Thompson was watching security camera footage of the incident. He looked up and met Roan’s eyes. “How’d you fuckin’ do that, man?” “Pilates,” Roan replied, deadpan. Thompson thought about it for a moment, thinking he was serious, but then he realized he was being sarcastic and laughed, shaking his head. “You’re crazy.” He felt like it, but he knew Thompson meant it in a humorously complimentary way. Roan hoped that footage didn’t end up on YouTube too. Roan drove home, listening to the Deftones and trying to stay awake. You’d think that his adrenaline would be high, but it wore off very quickly. He was tired and kind of drained. It was a shitty tail, and it had been a shitty couple of weeks. It was one of those times when he wondered if he should quit this job entirely, and then he’d wonder what he could do instead and reconsidered it. He was only qualified to be a smartass, and amazingly, no one paid for that. Well, very few at any rate. The house was dark when he got home, but Dylan’s beater car was in the driveway, and he’d left the porch light on for Roan. He unlocked the door to a quiet house that still had the smells of recent cooking lingering in it. From the scent alone, he guessed it was something Moroccan, as he could smell peppers and cumin and couscous. Other things too—was that raisins?—but those were the dominant smells. There was a note from Dylan on the breakfast bar that he read while listening to the messages on his answering machine. It was short, saying Dylan had tried to stay up and wait for him, but he was tired, so he ate dinner and went to bed, but he’d left him dinner in the fridge. Fair enough. The messages were nothing remarkable. Unless
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Dylan had erased it, this was day number two without a death threat from an anonymous guy he'd started to think of as Mr. Asshat. He should mark it on the calendar. But while it seemed good on the surface, it could be terrible. Maybe Mr. Asshat had gotten bored. Or maybe he’d decided that the time for talking was done, and the time for action was nigh. Fuck it— he’d find out soon enough. There was a brief tug of war between hungry and tired, but tired won, so he simply went upstairs, letting the dim moonlight illuminate his path. He didn’t really need to see anyways; he knew this house, how everything was laid out. He didn’t need to see to know what was where. Once he made it to the bedroom, he quietly stripped, piling his clothes on the chair before slipping into bed beside Dylan. Roan had bought new sheets and blankets, an attempt to move on even in a merely cosmetic sense, and he still wasn’t used to the feel of them against his skin. It was weird what you got used to without realizing it. He didn’t want to wake Dylan up, but the shifting mattress seemed to do it, and he turned toward Roan and opened his sleepy eyes. “Hey there.” He must have glanced at the clock on the nightstand behind him, as he quickly added, “Wow, that was one long tail.” “Yeah.” Dylan cupped his face in his hand as he brushed one of his legs against his. This was still nice; he still missed the warmth of another Human being when it wasn’t there. “Anything happen?” He wanted to say, “I’m a hostage situation away from superherodom. Do you think I have an ass for spandex?” But instead he said, “Nope, not really. How’d your night go?” “Oh, dull. It was a really slow night for some reason.” “Cock ring show in town?” He smirked, too tired to laugh. “I think I’d have been informed if there was. I’m glad I grabbed one of your books before I left, ’cause I ended up reading most of it. Not that the boss was happy about me reading on the job, but there was no one to serve drinks to for long stretches.” “Tell him reading makes you look smart, and smart guys are hot.”
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“Only to some.” “I don’t like himbos.” He kissed him softly on the bottom lip, letting his hand trail down his chest. “I know. It’s very sweet of you.” “I’m a weirdo.” “Stop that,” Dylan said mildly. He snuggled closer, and Roan put his arms around him as Dylan nestled his head into his neck. He must have washed his hair before he went to bed, because Dylan’s hair smelled faintly of green-tea conditioner. Roan could hear birds start chirping outside, as it was just about four in the morning, and out here some of the songbirds beat the sun by a good hour. Not many, though, so it wasn’t too distracting. He concentrated on Dylan’s breathing as it slowed and deepened as he fell back to sleep, and tried to copy him. He was tired, and yet not quite tired enough to fall asleep. Maybe because somewhere, in the back of his mind, he had this awful feeling that something bad was going to happen, that he had dodged so many bullets that his luck was bound to turn. You could fight a lot of things, but odds and entropy always got you in the end. Roan just wondered who Mr. Asshat was, and what they would do when they finally decided to pull the trigger.
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2 Exodus Damage ROAN dreamed that he was pleading to someone that he was trying. He didn’t know who, or what it was about, but, with jumbled dream logic, he was sure it was the most important thing in the world. He was desperate to convince this person he was trying, and he could feel his heart pounding even in his dream, anxiety spiking and punching through the dream state. So when his alarm went off, he felt like he lurched out of sleep, the beeping so annoying he wanted to slap it across the room—and almost did, but decided he didn’t want to spend any more money on replacing broken alarm clocks. He turned it off and lay there for a moment, aware he was sweating and his heart rate was just starting to slow. Birds were chirping loudly outside his window, but it was a gloomy day, so light was filtered, as if through a dirty aquarium. He heard soft footsteps in the hall, so he wasn’t surprised when he heard the bedroom door open. (He really needed to oil that hinge.) Dylan padded in and asked, “You awake?” “Sadly.” Roan heard a rustle of paper and smelled that curious soy ink newspapers used now, and Dylan asked, “Were you ever going to tell me about this?” Roan opened his eyes and saw that he was holding out a folded square of the paper, opened to the inside of the local section, where they had these tiny articles about the crime beat. There was an article titled “Robbery Thwarted By Customer.” Oh terrific. Hadn’t it happened too late to make the morning paper? How fast was their turnaround time? The small article—and it was printed in small font— was only two paragraphs long, identified him and the would-be robber
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by name, but they couldn’t just leave it at names. Oh no. He was identified as “Roan McKichan, a private investigator with ties to the police department.” That would come as a shocker to most of the police department. He looked up to see Dylan looking down at him with his dark eyebrows raised curiously. He wasn’t quite angry, but he was clearly wondering if he should go there. Roan sighed and rubbed his eyes, buying time. “It wasn’t a big deal. It happened on my way home. I just didn’t feel like talking about it last night. Or this morning. Whatever.” Dylan sighed, crossing his arms over his chest. He looked only slightly more awake than Roan did, dressed in sweatpants and an old “Ski Mojave” T-shirt. Roan could smell eggs and toast, and hoped he’d made huevos rancheros. “Technically, it’s afternoon, but I made breakfast anyways. Wanna join me, hero?” That last bit was weary, not sarcastic, so he took that as a good sign. He assured Dylan once he joined him downstairs he’d tell him everything, which would give Roan time to edit his story. He took a quick shower, washing away the sweat and letting his adrenaline levels even out. He didn’t know why fragments of such a banal dream could disturb him so much, but it did. An anxiety dream? Who was he failing? Dylan? He knew that one already. If he was going to be troubled by dreams, they could have the decency to tell him something new. He really wanted codeine. He briefly considered even just popping half a Tylenol codeine, which was the equivalent of scarfing a baby aspirin, but ultimately he decided not to. He could at least try, for Dylan, even if he didn’t know it. He tossed on some old jeans and a tank top, mainly because they were the first items he pulled blindly out of the drawer. He was greeted by the sharp scent of dark espresso and the mellow sounds of Sun Kil Moon on the stereo, as Dylan usually liked to listen to music when he cooked, and he had gotten the espresso maker out of the closet, unaware that it had been a wedding present from Paris’s parents to the both of them. Roan was sure if he told him he’d put it away, but Roan had never told him. Dylan had made a kind of tofu scramble that was better than it
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sounded, and Roan told him an abbreviated version of what had happened at the convenience store last night. He stopped it at the throwing of the tea, implying that stunned the robber enough that he was able to subdue him until the cops arrived. He didn’t see it as lying, more as just simply not admitting he was getting more freaky as he got older. Dylan did have some good news, although he didn’t seem very thrilled about it. He’d got a showing at a downtown art gallery, but not one of those smaller avant-garde places where he often had showings. It seemed the “big” city gallery had decided to highlight local artists, and he was chosen after someone else fell through, and one of the artists actually in the show recommended him. It’d be in two weeks, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to do it. He was sure that no one in the gallery actually knew who he was, save for Reiko, who had recommended him. He felt like he was being tossed scraps, and on top of that, he had no idea what he’d show. Roan encouraged him to pick out his most “meaningful” pieces (Dylan said he didn’t have favorites, as he just couldn’t judge his own work that way), and to include at least one of his “bleeding hardware” series, if only for him. He was promising he’d go with Dylan to the debut showing, and Roan had no idea what he’d wear to an art gallery soiree (in fact, he was relatively sure that none of his clothes were nice enough), when the phone rang and probably saved him from sinking into even deeper trouble. It was a man who identified himself as Chris Spencer and wanted to make an appointment today, as he had a case for him. Roan was going to fob him off on Fiona to set up an appointment, but he sounded desperate, and Roan couldn’t kid himself—he needed the money. So he said he’d meet him at the office within the hour. He didn’t need to tell Dylan, as he’d heard what Roan said, but thankfully he didn’t blame him at all. He totally understood needing the money. Once he changed into slightly more presentable clothes and checked the weather, he decided to take his motorcycle anyways, as he felt he needed to get some better adrenaline going. He had a black leather trench coat that Paris used to tease him was de rigueur for the “stylish gay Nazi” and wore it, in hopes it would keep some of the sputtering rain off. The results were mixed. The office was supposed to be closed today, so Fiona wasn’t here
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(he hadn’t expected to get through with the Faraday case so quickly), and as he opened the place he realized he missed her. It was nice to have someone bright and sarcastic hanging around the office, keeping him on his toes. Also, keeping him mostly sober. He had time to put on a pot of coffee and call Holly Faraday. Accidentally, he called her home number and got her and Dallas’s machine, so he quickly hung up and called her work number. There he got her voice mail system. Did no one answer their phone anymore? He left a bland message, identifying himself and asking her to call him as soon as she could. It was unlikely anyone would intercept her work voice mail, but he still had to keep client confidentiality. He was finished with that when a man came through the door. He was a bit on the short to average size, about five five and one hundred and forty pounds, wearing a brown-plaid flannel shirt and heavy work jeans, with scuffed brown work boots to match. He was blandly handsome, not a bad-looking guy, with nut-brown hair and piercing blue eyes in a pleasantly round, open face. He was also carrying a JackBauer-style man purse, but Roan tried not to hold that against him. He had a strong grip when he shook his hand. Although no one else was here, he invited him back into his office out of habit. Roan took his seat behind his desk, where he felt most comfortable anyways, and Spencer took the seat in front. Roan had barely gotten settled when Spencer blurted out nervously, “Will you hear me out before turning me down?” Oh, that was never a good sign. Spencer told him his five-year-old son had gone missing from Bishop Park eleven years ago, and the whole thing had become a “cold” case at the police department several years ago. There was a sketch of a possible suspect, but it was so vague it could have applied to almost any white male, and no evidence was ever found. It was like his son, Keith, just stopped existing, dropped off the face of the earth. “If it’s a cold case, and eleven years old, I don’t see how I could help you,” Roan told him honestly. “Any evidence that may have existed is long gone, and if the cops couldn’t find anything back then, I can’t believe I’d find anything now.” Spencer nodded through this, his eyes occasionally moist but
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tears never falling. “I know. I know it’s more than likely you won’t find anything, but I want to make one last effort at it to tell myself I tried. I don’t want to be haunted to my grave by it, like Elliot, although I can’t see how I wouldn’t be.” “Elliot?” “Keith’s father.” Roan stared at Spencer curiously until he added, “I was Keith’s mother back then.” Okay. He loved it when things got complicated for no reason at all. “Female to male?” Spencer nodded. “I transitioned four years ago. I was in therapy before Keith’s disappearance—I was a depressive, an alcoholic, just so miserable. I got married impulsively at a young age and got pregnant, hoping that that would make me feel more feminine, because I never did feel like a woman, and I tried so hard because I got tired of being taunted as a ‘dyke’. But it didn’t work, I felt even more like a failure, and I know some of the guilt I feel about Keith’s disappearance is that I was a horrible mother and didn’t deserve him in the first place.” He paused briefly, closing his eyes, forcing back the tears. Then he continued. “After his disappearance, my marriage to Elliot, which was dicey anyways, just fell to pieces. We blamed each other and both crawled into separate bottles. I ended up in the hospital, and it was there that I first met someone who was transitioning, male to female in that case, but I realized that maybe I would be happier if I actually was a man. I saw a therapist about it for three years, because I didn’t want to do it just because I hated myself so much after Keith’s disappearance, and then there was the thought that if he reappeared miraculously after all these years, he wouldn’t recognize me as a man. But I lost all hope after the police made it a cold case. I did research, and I knew that—any television shows aside—cold cases usually ended up permanently buried. One or two might get solved, tied to another murder or rape case, but it was the police equivalent of the dead letter office. Once a case ended up there, it was lucky to be heard from again. It was funny, but Elliot wasn’t really surprised at my sex change. He said he always figured I’d have made a better guy.” He smirked in a bittersweet way. “My family didn’t feel that way—my mother still won’t talk to me. My sister does, though, she and her husband are pretty cool about it and my partner, Fletcher.”
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“You’re gay?” Well, why not? The funny thing about switching gender was it didn’t mean your sexual preferences changed. If you liked women before, you would after; if you liked men before, you would after. Gender really wasn’t tied to sexual identity, although some frightening people insisted the opposite. He smiled. “I like men. I like being a man. I’ve never been happier. Well, within reason.” Spencer’s smile faded, and he rubbed his eyes. “Every year, Keith’s birthday rolls around, and I find myself staring at birthday cakes in bakeries, wondering if he’d be into sports or cars, or be the total opposite of me and be into musicals and fine arts. Maybe all of the above. Maybe he would have been a Renaissance man. Is a Renaissance man.” The accidental shift in tense made something in his jaw twitch, throat muscles briefly spasming, and he took another moment to get his emotions under control, hands knotting anxiously in his lap. “I guess I rediscovered hope when I heard that story of that kidnapped boy who was found living with a sex offender several years after he disappeared. Do you remember that?” “I do, I read that in the paper. But you do know that—” “Such discoveries are rare? That most kidnapped children are killed shortly after their abduction? Yes, I know. But after Elliot died— two months ago, in a drunken driving accident—I started talking to the detective who had the case. He told me they really hated cases of missing children going into the cold case files, and he was trying everything he could, but nothing new had come up. He told me he was talking to a friend of his at the local paper, hoping to get an article published about it, but so far nothing’s come of it.” “Who’s the officer?” “Sadowski. Umm… Gabriel Sadowski, I think.” Roan nodded. “He’s a good one.” And he was. He was one of the last old-fashioned cops, although not old fashioned in the “let’s beat up some black guys and queers” way. He was one of those nose-to-thegrindstone detectives, one who followed any lead, no matter how slim, and really worked the snitch angle by being kind to his street contacts. He had to be nearing sixty though, on the verge of retirement. Spencer opened his man purse and started pulling out Manila envelopes, putting them on his desk. “I have copies of all the files I was
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able to get. He couldn’t allow me access to all the case files, but he let me see some.” Roan inwardly groaned. He didn’t want to take this case. All he could do was take his money—there’s no way he could find anything that Sadowski didn’t. The boy was gone, probably having already rotted away to bones in a shallow grave somewhere, and he’d only be found by chance. But… maybe he could talk to Sadowski. Maybe he could point him in directions he wasn’t able to follow. Spencer really did seem genuinely miserable, and how awful would that be, to have your child disappear one day and then never be seen again? They may as well have never existed at all. Maybe it would have been kinder for everyone if they hadn’t. Roan slid papers out of the envelopes. Initial police reports, transcripts of the original 9-1-1 call, and anonymous tips (all of which were disproven), the initial sketch, as described by a woman at the park that day who saw a boy who may have been Keith leaving with a man (a man who looked a bit like ’80s era Tom Petty, or every other white guy arrested on Cops), pictures of Chris (then Christine) and her husband Elliot—a true study in contrasts. She was a slightly hippie-ish looking woman, somewhat plain, with long brown hair and a troubled gaze, while Elliot was a handsome black man who’d made an unfortunate choice in eyeglasses or was just a really big Elvis Costello fan. And pictures of Keith (whose last name, like Chris’s at the time, was Turner), a chubby-faced boy with café au lait-colored skin, doe eyes, and a frizzy nimbus of fine black hair. Roan mentally ordered himself not to get sucked into this. He could be no help at all, and this would make him feel horrible for not being able to help Chris. But as he was sliding the papers back in their envelopes, he said, “You know you’re probably paying me for doing nothing.” Oh goddammit. Spencer nodded. “I know. Money isn’t an issue for me. I work for the Sanitation department, and Fletcher works for the DOT. We’re not poor.” That must have been nice. Sanitation department? He wasn’t a garbage man, was he? Well, what if he was? It was a good, solid job, just a tad on the stinky and unsung side. “I’ll do this job for one week.
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In that time, if I can’t find anything new or promising, we’ll put a stop to it. Okay?” Spencer gave him a heartbreakingly sad smile. “Okay.” They got the formalities out of the way, and Spencer paid the upfront part of his fee in cash, as he didn’t carry any checks with him. Once he was gone, Roan started poring over Sadowski’s case notes, which were austere but always straight to the point. He was very much a “just the facts, ma’am” type, and Roan appreciated that. Some cops got purple prose-y, imagining that they would eventually become Joseph Wambaugh, or most likely nowadays go into TV scripting, but there was a very good reason there weren’t a plethora of cops turned writers. If they could’ve written their way out of a wet paper bag, would they have become cops in the first place? Apparently Sadowski had been very interested in a known child molester who lived within two blocks of Bishop Park at the time, a man named Roger Jorgenson, but at one hundred and eighty pounds he didn’t at all resemble the thin, weedy guy described by the witness. Still, Sadowski thought the eyewitness was “unreliable,” although he didn’t say why (that was the drawback to his austerity). But his mother had given him an alibi at the time, and while Sadowski was able to get a search warrant, all he turned up was some child pornography magazines in the house (which was a parole violation). Nothing that could tie him to Keith. But Sadowski seemed to think he knew more than he was saying. Why? He didn’t say in any of the notes… or at least none of the notes he gave Spencer. Roan was reaching for the phone when it rang, nearly making him jump. Man, that was creepy when that happened. He picked up the receiver, and the coincidence of it all got creepier still—it was Murphy. “Hey, Roan. You know a guy named Dallas Brian Faraday?” “Hello to you too,” he replied sarcastically. Dropkick just wasn’t much for foreplay. Poor Kim. “And I don’t know him per se, but I know of him, yes. Why?” She sighed. “He’s a client?” “No. His wife is, if you must know. She hired me to find out if he was cheating on her or not. Why?” “Because he was just found dead on Townsend Beach with a
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bullet through his brain and your business card in his pocket. Was he cheating on her? Did you tell his wife?” Roan held the receiver away for a moment, staring at it, waiting for it to become something else. But it didn’t, because he wasn’t asleep and he wasn’t dreaming. What fresh hell was this?
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3 Waiting for the End of the World ROAN thought it would eventually make sense. So far, that theory was not only unfounded, but seemed like strangely naïve optimism for him. The scene was a clear-cut murder, as there was no gun, his clothes looked “disturbed,” and he had a bloody nose. Of course, after Roan told Murphy what Dallas had been up to the night before, she wondered if the nosebleed was simply due to too much cocaine. There was no time of death yet—the beach was extremely cold, and that could fuck up the lividity a bit—but the best guess was somewhere between seven and eleven thirty, which was when the body was discovered by a man with a metal detector, looking for whatever the hell he hoped to find (coins, beer bottle caps, the hubcap off a ’73 Chevelle) on a rather remote stretch of beach. He told her of Dallas’s itinerary the night before, including the cocaine dealer’s place and the college kegger where he last saw Dallas. Could he have been one of the last people to have seen him alive, besides the killer? It was a creepy feeling. Not entirely new. Just out of habit, she asked him what he was doing between the hours of Dallas’s death, and he told her he was sleeping at home, and Dylan could corroborate his story. She said that wouldn’t be necessary, which wasn’t a surprise. They both knew if he was going to kill a guy, he wouldn’t be following him around and documenting it with a camera the night before. That was just asking to get caught. Once again, he tried to call Holly, and once again he got nothing but machines. He dug out her cell phone number from the paperwork she’d filled out for him, but when he called it he got yet another voice mail system. She worked for an advertising agency, Messner Klein, so he imagined she was busy, but this was verging on nuts.
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Roan wondered if Dallas had really pissed someone off last night. Did he hit on a girl with a jealous boyfriend? He’d heard of people getting killed for much less. But why take him out to Townsend Beach? Were they hoping his body would be washed away by the tide? And where in the fuck did his business card come from? Holly wouldn’t have given it to him. Had he found it? Was he suspicious? But if he was suspicious that his wife had hired a PI to tail him, why go out on a binge? It didn’t make sense. He decided to stop thinking about it and get back to the case he was currently being paid for. He called Sadowski, and miracle of miracles, he was actually in and picked up his phone. Roan told him he wanted to discuss the Turner case, which led to him saying that he couldn’t talk about any of his cases, and then Roan mentioned that Chris Spencer had hired him to look into it. Sadowski was quiet for a moment and then asked Roan to meet him at a coffee shop a couple blocks away from the station house in twenty minutes. Roan agreed. The coffee shop, despite its proximity to the police station, was not a cop haunt, mainly because most cops still favored the mud variety of coffee, the unpretentious, non-five-dollar cup of joe. It made it an excellent place to talk about police stuff. Once Roan had closed up his office and took the bike out there, Sadowski was waiting for him. He was a solid guy, six foot even and about twenty-five pounds overweight, most of which he wore in his gut, and the way his rumpled white dress shirt fit him, it looked like he was trying unsuccessfully to smuggle a watermelon through Customs. Despite his age, he had a relatively full head of brown hair, graying at the temples and sides, although his close-cropped beard and mustache combo remained a youthful light brown. His eyes were the color of coffee, and while they were heavy-lidded and sleepy—much like his personality—he knew that was slightly deceptive. Gabe Sadowski was always alert, always knew what was going on around him. He had requested the transfer to the cold-case section when regular homicide started to burn him out. Gabe sat at a corner table, nursing a small cup of coffee that both looked and smelled very plain—the closest to mud this shop had. He eyed Roan as he sat down and said, “Look at you. Is it me, or are you agin’ backwards?”
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“It’s you.” “Aww, fuck. I guess I have to break down and get those fuckin’ bifocals.” He fiddled nervously with the lid of his cup and then asked, “So how’s life outside the force treatin’ you? I heard about last night.” Oh shit, he should have anticipated that. Roan shrugged, glanced out the window at the people walking by. Was everybody talking on a cell phone? “It was just bad timing. Guy caught me in a mood to scrap.” “They’ve been playing the security video at the station all day. There’s a general consensus that Matthews oughta hire you back, ’cause you’re probably the closest thing to a superhero any of us are ever gonna see.” He groaned and rubbed his eyes, just to avoid looking at Gabe. “I don’t know what happened. I’ve never done that before. It was weird and I’d rather just drop it.” “Okay, Batman. Or should that be Catman. Is there a Catman? Or is it just Catwoman?” Roan fixed him with a harsh stare, mainly because Gabe was grinning about it. “I’m surprised the guys aren’t calling me Catwoman.” “Now that you mention it, some of them are.” “That figures.” “If it’s anything at all, you’re a better actor than Halle Berry. You also do your own stunts, so that’s cool.” He narrowed his eyes to deadly slits. “You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?” Sadowski chuckled like a drunken uncle at Christmas, but then shook his head even as he tried to suppress a smile. “Roan, I ain’t makin’ fun of you. If anything, I wish I could do shit like that. Looks like fun.” “The price you pay for it isn’t, trust me. So how is life at the shop?” That seemed to sober him up a bit. “Same old shit. You haven’t missed much. People seem to get fuck crazier every goddamn day. I don’t even recognize the world anymore.”
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“You’ve been on the job too long.” He rolled his eyes and slumped back in his chair. “Tell me about it. As soon as I hit the big six-oh, I’m out of there. I’m takin’ my gold watch and goin’ home to drive Ellie nuts.” “How is Ellie?” That was Gabe’s wife of twenty-eight years, one of the longest marriages that Roan personally knew about, besides Gordo’s and Connie’s. “Still humoring me. For some goddamn reason, she’s taken up cake decorating. And I don’t mean a frosting rose or baking cakes in the shape of a clown, I mean making these three-tiered things that look like Victorian mansions or some such shit. I asked her what’s the point of this, especially since it takes people three seconds to destroy what you’ve worked on all day, but she said that’s not the point. She’s startin’ to sell the cakes out of Cammy’s and Lani’s bakery.” “Lani’s in the bakery business?” “Oh yeah. Didn’t I tell ya before? She’s opened a place called Hey Cupcake about a mile or so away from here, in the … y’know, ‘rainbow district’.” The rather obvious—and G-rated—nickname for the gay ghetto part of town, where Panic, the nightclub where Dylan worked, was situated. Gabe’s daughter Alanna (Lani) was a lesbian, which was probably why Gabe was more decent to Roan than most of the older cops. “Do cops get a discount?” “Only me. Maybe she’ll give you one, ’cause… well, you know.” “Gay unity?” Gabe gave him a caustic look, mainly because he knew he was being teased. “Actually, ’cause you left the force. But bein’ a queer duck couldn’t hurt.” “Queer cat, actually.” Sadowski looked out the window and shook his head, trying to hide the fact that he was smirking. “Don’t ruin a good phrase with literalism. Jesus.” This was nice and all, chummy, but Roan knew time was starting to get away from them. Gabe’s lunch hour was rarely that long. “So what can you tell me about the Keith Turner case?”
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Gabe seemed to shrink in his seat as if deflating, his head hanging down for a moment as if in genuflection. He seemed to steel himself before saying, “I fucking hate these cases. Logically, I know that people can live their lives and just disappear without anyone noticing. I know it’s gotta happen all the time, and maybe two out of three people who actually go missing ever get reported to police. I got that. But I still fucking hate these cases. The kids that go missing and the bodies that never get a name. I asked to be transferred to cold cases so I could put some of these suckers to bed, y’know, but it’s never enough. There’s always some that’ll do nothin’ but break your heart. For me it’s the Turner kid, the Paulin kid, and Eden that’re just gonna haunt me.” The Paulin kid was a reference to a six-year-old girl, Tiffany Paulin, who went missing nearly a decade ago, while Eden was just a name slapped on a skull and a few random bones churned up at a construction site nearly twenty years ago. The skull and intact bones were identified as a probably Caucasian female, somewhere in her twenties, but she was never identified by anyone. A “facial reconstruction,” an attempt to give her a face that someone might recognize, turned out to be a waste of money. She had never been identified, and the more the years passed, the more likely it was she’d never be recognized. Damage to the bones unrelated to crumbling and natural damage suggested she was murdered, but without an identity, no one knew where to look for her killer. She was on the list for their local serial killer, but after they caught him and he cut a plea bargain, he claimed to have never buried any victim in that area (Eden Creek) in his entire life. And it would be farther out than his identified range, so it was always a long shot. Roan pulled out his tiny notebook, the one he usually carried in his pocket, as he had quickly jotted down some things he wanted to ask Gabe about. “Why did you consider the one eyewitness unreliable? Do you remember?” Gabe made a show of looking at his notebook, his smirk almost hidden by his facial hair. “You don’t got a PDA or a CrackBerry?” “I can throw this across the room when I get frustrated and not have it shatter into a million pieces.” “Smart.”
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“So, the witness?” “Right. Shit, I’d never forget her—I remember all the nonassuming crazies. She was this little blonde thing with a baby in a stroller, totally a MILF, and she seemed like a helpful, concerned mother. Except she thought the Turner boy was Mexican, not mixed race, and she started talking about how the park had been in decline since all the Mexicans started moving in—I shit you not, it came out of nowhere—and all the fags started taking over the park. She said she figured a fag had grabbed the boy ’cause they like to fuck ’em, and then she went on to tell me how in high school this boyfriend of hers told her that fags sometimes fucked dogs when they couldn’t find a kid.” Roan winced and shook his head. “Jesus.” “She told me how I should just lock all the fags up, and what was wrong with society when it allowed them to roam unchecked and grab kids and rape them. I mean, once she got this spiel going she sounded like a weird cross between Pat Buchanan and Anita Bryant.” “Sounds fun.” “I just remember staring at her and feeling eighty different kinds of sorry for that kid. What’s he gonna be like, growin’ up with a mother like that?” “Probably a Larry Craig in the making.” He snorted a laugh as he reached down beside his chair. “That’s prob’ly a best case scenario. I was thinkin’ he’d be more like those skinhead fuckos they pulled in last month for stompin’ that homeless guy to death. The shit comin’ out of those kids’ mouths—and the girl was pregnant! A fuck crazy world.” Gabe pulled a PBS tote bag into his lap and opened it. “Nice bag,” Roan said, unable to suppress a smile. He gave him a frown and a dirty look before pulling out papers and slapping them on the table. “I couldn’t walk out of the station with a buncha files crammed under my arm, could I? Levin had this bag in her desk and she let me borrow it.” Roan grabbed some of the papers and looked at them. They were Xerox copies, but he recognized what they were immediately. “Is this the rest of the case file?”
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He nodded almost spasmodically, emptying the tote bag. “I couldn’t give ’em to the mother, but you’re an ex-cop. I know you’ll dispose of this properly.” “Shred it and pretend I never saw it in the first place.” “Correctomundo.” Cold case or not, the case was technically still open, never closed. These files should have been totally off limits to him. Gabe was risking his job by giving him this. “Wow, I had no idea you’d give me the keys to the kingdom. Thank you.” “If you can find anything new about this case, I will kiss you in front of the squad room. On the lips. Hell, find something actionable and I just may give you a hand job.” “Not a blow job?” “Don’t push it.” He sighed wearily and balled the tote bag up in his meaty hands. “Give me somethin’ new, man. Get this out of my nightmares.” He sifted through the papers until he found one specific one and held it out to him. “Here’s the other reason I felt the crazy MILF was unreliable. There was a guy—what d’ya call it, busking?— busking at the main entrance where the MILF claimed to see the longhaired fag—her words—leaving with the boy. The guy was a burnout type, playing an acoustic guitar, and he said he’d been there since eleven in the morning and saw the Turners enter the park. Mainly ’cause he noticed Elliot Turner. He thought he was one of the bestlooking men he’d seen that day.” “Warn the MILF to guard her baby.” “Exactly. Anyways, he said he saw everyone who passed by him, and he didn’t see any long-haired guy with the Turners’ boy. He didn’t see the Turner boy pass his way at all after entering the park. He didn’t seem crazy or stoned, and he actually had a pretty decent reputation in the neighborhood—he was a park afternoon staple. A lot of the joggers knew him by name, and he them. His record was clean. He seemed saner and more reasonable than the MILF.” “But you circulated the sketch anyways.” “We had less than zero. We were hoping that maybe this would make someone come forward, remember that they saw something… but no. Leads evaporated, and it was like the kid just stopped existing.
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Everything we tried to jump-start this investigation just fizzled out. We searched every inch of that park with search and rescue volunteers, we shook down all the known preds in the area, and we got a fuckload of nothing.” “You investigated the parents?” He shrugged. “SOP.” Standard operating procedure. “Their story played. They took Keith to the park to play on the swings, and they sat on a bench across from the children’s playground, where they started arguing. The marriage was tanking, and they were fighting over money, the usual. We got three eyewitnesses who remembered them arguing, just the two of them, for perhaps ten minutes. It was about then that Chris—female at the time, as you know—decided that she was going to go home, so she went to collect Keith from the swings. But he wasn’t on the swings. Both parents started searching for Keith—two eyewitnesses on that one—but couldn’t find him. The 9-1-1 call was made about ten minutes later.” “What about the families?” Gabe started sifting through the copies, picking out the ones he wanted. “Stickier, but no reason to suspect that one of them grabbed the kid. Turner’s parents weren’t thrilled that he married a white gal—a white Presbyterian gal, that mother was a full-on Baptist—and Spencer’s mother—her father was dead—was even less thrilled by her daughter hooking up with a black guy. The siblings of both didn’t really give a damn. The hang-up seemed generational.” Roan glanced at his notes. “You were suspicious about Roger Jorgenson?” “Uh, was he the sex predator?” At Roan’s nod, Gabe nodded back. “Yeah, yeah, slimy creep. Like all of ’em, really, but there was something kinda… slippery about his answers. Nervous—beyond the usual. I don’t think he took Keith, but I think he was at the park that day, watchin’ the kids, and I think he might have seen something. But he didn’t want to say anything ’cause he wasn’t supposed to be there, and who knows, maybe he didn’t want to squeal on a fellow kiddie fiddler.” “You tried to deal with him?” Gabe gave him an evil look both before and after taking a gulp of
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his coffee. A tiny bead of liquid was suspended in his mustache. “Of course. Deal, cajole, appeal to his better side—ha!—threaten, sweettalk. Nothin’. He just didn’t like cops and didn’t have a better nature.” Roan glanced at the papers as he gathered them up. Eleven years of notes. Good thing he liked to read. “He still live around here?” Gabe wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, catching that drop of coffee. “Nope, he’s dead, died a few years ago. Had a heart attack. His mother sued the ER, claiming malpractice, then she died of a heart attack. It made the papers. Didn’t catch it?” “If it was a few years ago, I did then, but I have no memory of it now.” Roan arranged the papers in a loose pile, with no logic to them whatsoever. He just had to hope he could pull them into some kind of proper order later. “Are any of the witnesses listed here still alive?” Gabe shrugged. “As far as I know, Jorgenson and Elliot Turner are the only dead people involved with this case, but I never did keep up with MILF or the burnout or the guy walking his wiener dog.” He looked at his watch, an old Timex that was nearly covered by his arm hair, and said, “Gotta go. I got to go talk to a lawyer, and you know how it is with them. You know the drill with this stuff, right?” “You didn’t give me these, I’ve never seen them before, I never saw the file, I’m just an incredible investigator.” “You got it.” Gabe levered himself out of the chair, rising to his feet, grabbing the tote bag before it hit the floor. “Good luck, Batman, you’re gonna need it.” “Give my best to Commissioner Gordon,” he said, as Gabe made for the door. He got nothing but an amused snort in reply. He started reading the first few pages and wondered what the fuck he could do. So far, it looked like the investigation was pretty solid. Was he really prepared for failure? Could he take it? Roan knew he could get too personally involved in these cases, and he told himself to back off, but it was never that simple, was it? He already felt he had to turn up something, but he also knew he probably wouldn’t. If he was smart he’d quit now… but he wasn’t renowned for his genius. His cell phone went off, and he dug it out of his pocket by the third ring. It was Dylan. “Hi, uh… are you busy right now?”
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“Not at the moment, no.” “Do you think you could drop by my place this afternoon? There’s something I wanted to show you.” “If it’s what I think it is, I’ve seen it. It’s very nice though. Wouldn’t mind seeing it again.” “Very funny. I’m serious, Ro.” “Me too.” Dylan sighed, and Roan grinned, wondering if Dylan knew he had just become a pleasant distraction from an unpleasant reality. “Enough with the double entendres. It’s for the gallery showing. I need your opinion on it because… well, you are the picture. I want your consent before I submit it.” “Is this the sketch you drew of me sleeping?” “No, this is a painting. You haven’t seen it.” For some reason that sounded slightly ominous. But how could it be? The sketch he’d done of him was very nice; he hadn’t even been drooling on a pillow or anything. “It’s your painting, Dyl. I’m not gonna tell you not to use it.” He hesitated. “You might. Please come see it.” He really didn’t like Dylan’s sudden squeamishness—this was making him nervous. Did he paint him killing a bus full of nuns or something? Fucking Robert Mapplethorpe? Dylan should have known better than to be so vague, because now he was getting paranoid. “What did you do to me?” “It’s nothing bad… or at least, I don’t think it’s bad. You still might not like it.” Oh, this didn’t sound good. “Am I naked?” “No.” “Shooting Dick Cheney in the face?” “No.” “Why not?” “Every time I try and draw Dick Cheney, he ends up looking like the Penguin from the old Batman TV series. I have nothing against Burgess Meredith.”
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“Yeah, well, I guess I don’t either.” He sighed, wondering exactly what Dylan had done to him on canvas. “I’m in the area, so I’ll be over in a few minutes. Is a quickie off the table?” “Yes, mainly because the table’s too flimsy to take it. We’ll have to move it to the couch.” “Fine by me. See you soon.” He ended the call and started gathering up his papers, wondering how unflattering Dylan’s picture of him could possibly be, when his phone rang again. He thought Dylan was calling to rescind the invitation—maybe he’d decided to hide the painting rather than show it to him. “Yeah?” “You have Elijah Prophet’s computer,” a voice said. It was being processed through a voice changer, which you could buy at a spy store or a toy store. It was a cheap one; the guy sounded like Darth Vader with a severe case of asthma. “Return it, or we will take it by force.” “Whatever. Get a better voice changer and call me back.” “You ignore us at your peril.” “Do I? What d’ya got, boy? Whip it out and show me, or fuck the hell off before I rip off your face and eat it.” He flipped the phone shut and dropped it in his pocket, picking up the piles of paper. Once he’d gathered them up, he noticed a female barista who had been walking by had stopped and was staring at him, looking shocked, probably due to his threat. He flashed her a friendly smile and headed for the door. What? He never said he was Miss Congeniality.
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4 Bitter for Sweet IT WASN’T far from the coffee shop to Dylan’s place, but he still sat in the parking lot for a moment, looking over the first pages of the case file. It was better than reading them at the light. From what he could tell, in the early stages, this case was solid; everything was done by the book, everything was done right. If it kept up this way throughout—and with Sadowski part of the investigation in the early stages, it was likely—then there’d be nothing to look for. The problem with some cases was that you could do everything perfectly, you could do everything by the book, collect evidence, do everything you’re supposed to do… and still be unable to close the case. It was the hell of it all, proof that life was indeed unfair. Having everything and yet nothing all at once seemed like a violation of some natural law, a slap in the face of physics, but it happened quite a bit. If cop life was exactly like a procedural television show, as soon as you had carpet fibers or blood splatters you’d have enough to slam a case shut—but it wasn’t that way in real life. Sometimes you had almost nothing and could close a case; sometimes you had everything, and it wasn’t enough. It seemed like a grotesque joke. But that was life. The first guy you genuinely fall in love with turns out to be a tortured alcoholic who almost but never quite gets his shit together; the guy who you feel is your soul mate, a bullshit term you always dismissed as romantic fantasy, dies too young because his stupid fucking infection eats him from the inside out. And now you were with a beautiful young guy whom you liked an awful lot but just couldn’t love, because your soul felt burnt. He felt a great deal of affection for Dylan. He kind of wished he could love him, but Paris seemed to have taken all the love Roan had with him. He knew he should be fair to Dylan and cut him loose, but Roan was a fucking
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coward and sure he couldn’t take being alone at the moment. Dylan had helped save his life, and he wasn’t sure he was strong enough yet to maintain it on his own. Horrible. If Dylan looked back on this one day and hated his fucking guts, he wouldn’t blame him in the slightest. He put the papers down and headed in to face Dylan. His apartment building had had several identity crises over its many years of existence, which was probably the only excuse for it having a sort of sprawling H shape, like an old-style hotel, whitewashed exterior walls so bright they seemed to glow, and a red Spanish-tiled roof that would have made more architectural sense in California than here. To add to the overall dissonance, the apartment building was named The Elysian. A lot of artistic types lived here, which was pretty much code for nearly everyone being queerer than a four-dollar bill. It explained the mural in the main lobby, which was abstract, swirls and blobs and waves and splatters of colors in patches that almost suggested a more traditional painting seen far too close up. Dylan admitted “helping” a bit with it, but said there were a number of people involved in it, a sort of building-mural party. Roan passed someone’s lovingly tended rubber plant (it was well over six feet tall and still climbing) as he took the staircase up to the second floor and drifted down the red-carpeted hallway like a ghost, hearing Suzanne Vega coming from one apartment on his left and Blaqk Audio coming from one apartment on his right. Nothing quite said gay like that audio battle. Dylan’s apartment was at the end of the hall, the one with the best view of the street, and Roan had barely finished knocking when the door swung open and he was greeted by Dylan. “Oh no, it’s the fuzz,” he teased, grabbing him by the front of the shirt and pulling him into a long, sweet kiss. Dylan hadn’t shaved this morning. The stubble lightly scraped his face, and Roan held him by the hip as he gently shoved Dylan back into the apartment and walked in, kicking the door shut behind them. So he didn’t think he was joking about the quickie, huh? That was nice to know. But twinges of guilt competing with the lust made him break away from him. “You greet everyone who comes to your door like that?” he teased, smoothing back Dylan’s attractively mussed hair and smiling at him as he rested his forehead against his.
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Dylan had been working with charcoals recently; Roan could smell it on his skin. And it would have to be his skin, as he was shirtless and barefoot, wearing nothing but comfortable old jeans that had several stains and holes in them and just loosely hung on his hips. In other words, he was brain-meltingly sexy in a very uncalculating way, although he must have had some idea of the effect he had, since the sight of him shirtless could make only slightly tipsy men give him a twenty-dollar tip. No matter how Buddhist and Zen he was, he had to know he was a sex bomb. Dylan slid a hand under his shirt, up his back. “Only you and the pizza boy.” “Very funny. So where’s this painting you were talking about?” Dylan groaned dramatically and dropped his head onto his shoulder. “You won’t let me butter you up first, huh?” “Literally or figuratively?” As Dylan slipped out of his arms, he raised his eyebrows suggestively. “You’ll have to let me do it to find out.” “There’s always a catch.” There was little actual doubt where the painting was, as there was an easel set up in front of his television, covered with an old sheet whose spatters of various colors attested to its new life as a drop cloth. Roan took a step toward it, and Dylan matched him, blocking his way. “Can I preface this with a few things first?” Dylan asked, hands raised slightly in a gesture that was both placating and meant to stop him. He grimaced slightly, as if embarrassed, and then continued. “Painting sometimes helps me understand things. Sometimes I’m not sure how I feel about certain things until I draw or paint it out. It’s like I have to get out of my own way before I can see things clearly. I wanted to do a portrait of you—not a sketch—because you have the kind of face that an artist dreams of, you know. Sharp angles that aren’t severe, and a face that’s equally feline and vulpine while being undeniably Human. Just very, very striking. But I knew you wouldn’t be crazy about it, so I decided to just do it on my own and keep it to myself. It was cathartic, though, and helped me sort through my feelings for you. You don’t know this, but they were kind of conflicted. I do like you—I love you, even though I know you’re not ready to hear that right now—
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but sometimes you freak me out a little.” “Only a little? Are you paying attention?” “You do know you have a death wish, right?” Roan scoffed, caught off guard, and studied Dylan’s face to see if this was a joke. But his deep brown eyes reflected a sort of earnest sincerity that was painful to look at. “Are you shitting me?” “Roan, if you’re honest with yourself, you know it. I am not trying to pick a fight with you or second-guess you. I’m just saying….” He paused, sighing, running a hand through his hair. “You know I’m not a weak guy. I have to keep in shape because, sadly, right now a good deal of my paycheck depends on my physical appearance. But remember the night you first kissed me, when you were dosed at the rave? You grabbed me so hard I had bruises in the shapes of your fingers on my arms for almost a week. For so long I had wanted you to kiss me, but it seemed like karma was trying to warn me about being wary of what I wish for, because you threw me so hard against the wall I thought I broke a rib. Then you didn’t just kiss me; the whole time you were growling. Not sexy growling like when you get aroused, or a regular person imitating a growl, but big angry thing outside the tent growling, and when you bit me, I was half convinced you were going to rip out my jugular. I wanted you but, god, you scared the living shit out of me. So I found myself dealing with conflicting feelings, and I wasn’t sure how to reconcile them. It was sort of comforting to realize you didn’t know how to do it either, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized you were actually trying to fool yourself. You refer to the lion in you as another, as something you fight and share your body with, but you’d never be afraid of a lion, Roan. Why would it come out if you were on liquid X or vitamin K or whatever you were dosed with? That didn’t make sense. The only thing that did make sense, that made all of this fall together, was the lion was simply you. You liked to think it was its own separate thing, and it is when you transform and the virus takes over, but the rest of the time it’s just a part of you that you ascribe to the lion. It’s all you. You wouldn’t be afraid of a cat, but you’d be afraid of you. The drugs would shut down your inhibitions, bring things forth, but not the cat. It’s like your id, your shadow self, that you’ve channeled into this thing you call the lion, but it’s not that. You’re the detective, Roan—put it together. You know I’m right.”
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Roan couldn’t believe he was hearing this. He couldn’t actually decide how he felt about any of this. Enraged? Disbelieving? Maybe a little bit scared? All of the above? His heart was pounding, blood roaring in his ears, and he settled on anger, because it was easiest. Anger was always easiest, his default setting. “What the fuck do you have under the sheet? A psychology dissertation?” Roan must have spit out the words pretty hard, because Dylan seemed to flinch slightly, glancing toward the threadbare carpet. Were there tears in his eyes? If so, he quickly blinked them away, and Roan wasn’t sure he’d seen them. “I just want you to know that I love you. All of you. I wish you could accept yourself as easily.” He reached behind himself blindly and pulled off the sheet, letting it fall to the floor. What Roan saw was a portrait of himself from the shoulders up, larger than life in order to fill most of the canvas, which had a black background to highlight the face. He was just staring straight ahead, and Dylan had done an unbelievable job of capturing his face, especially since he hadn’t sat for the portrait. He’d even painted in the scar. Roan could have been looking in a mirror… well, one half of a mirror. Only the right side of his face was Human. There was a subtle blurring and shifting, and the left half of his face became that of a lion with mostly tawny fur, but its mane was shot through with fur the exact color of his hair. And not only that, but the Human half of the face had a lion’s eye, and the lion half of the face had a Human’s eye. It was so subtle that he almost didn’t realize it at first. The morphing was almost computer perfect, really—he looked like the lion; the lion looked like him. It was almost impossible to separate the two… which was undoubtedly the point. But as the shock rippled through him and started to wear off, he became aware of the fact that there was no way Dylan could have painted that mane on speculation. He felt a cold chill that seemed to start in the center of his spine and spread throughout his body, diffusing like a drop of blood in water. “You’ve seen me transformed,” he said, and gave Dylan a sharp look. “I told you never to go into the basement when it’s my time of the month.” “I’ve never—I stayed on the stairs. I never went down to—” “What the fuck were you thinking?” Roan exploded, aware his
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anger was way out of proportion to what was essentially water under the bridge. But he didn’t care. His heart was racing, and he was vaguely aware that the painting, for whatever reason, scared the shit out of him. “The cage door has been broken before, and so has the basement door! Do you think I want to come to and find that I killed you?” Dylan was shaking his head, eyes wide with surprise. He had expected a possibly negative reaction, but probably not this. “Roan, I was very careful. I wasn’t there long, I stayed on the top half of the steps—” “I don’t give a shit! That was fucking dangerous, Dylan! I don’t want your blood on my hands.” Dylan took a deep, calming breath, and his expression took on that Zen-like look that it always did before he shared wisdom that was far beyond his years. “Roan, this isn’t what you’re really angry about. Let’s—” Dylan put a hand on his shoulder. That was a huge mistake. Roan jerked his arm away violently and backed away from him. “Don’t touch me unless you want to pull back a bloody stump.” “Okay. I understand that—” “You don’t understand shit! You don’t know me at all.” “You’re right,” he agreed reasonably. Dylan didn’t know it, or at least wasn’t consciously aware of it, but he had his own version of the cop voice. “I don’t know you, not really. None of us can completely know another person. We can’t inhabit their skin, see from behind their eyes. We can only guess, project, do the best we can. I love you, Roan, and I want to be a part of your life if you’d let me. But you’re in so much pain—” “Fuck you! I don’t need this bullshit,” he snapped, turning to go, stalking toward the door. “Do whatever you fucking want with your painting—it’s your painting. But don’t expect me to be around to see it.” “Roan, please don’t go away angry.” “Too late,” he said, opening the door and storming out like a big old drama queen. He was absolutely furious with himself, with Dylan, and he wasn’t sure why. The painting upset him, but why? He wanted to rip it off the easel and put his fist through it, then tear the remains
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into confetti. And he wasn’t sure why. The hell of it was he was absolutely enraged, and he didn’t know why. Was it Dylan’s know-it-all attitude? His sense of unearned wisdom? His implication that he didn’t fight the lion but fought himself? How would he fucking know? The stupid bastard wasn’t even infected, didn’t live with this goddamn thing hijacking his DNA and turning his body inside out for the sheer fucking fun of it, making him a freak who actually had to worry about ripping out his stupid boyfriend’s fucking throat when the virus took over, or worry about ripping a robber’s head off his shoulders like a bottle cap even when the virus was dormant. He was starting to become something else, and Dylan had no fucking right to imply it was just him, that it was all his hang-ups or his “shadow” or whatever the fuck swamping him, and that he just thought of it as the lion because it made it easier to excuse, easier to blame, freeing himself from any responsibility. It couldn’t be that simple, could it? Nothing was that simple. Nothing. Except this was exactly what was necessary, wasn’t it? It was time to break away from Dylan, let him go. If he was smart, he’d call him to meet for coffee tonight, somewhere public and neutral, and tell him he couldn’t be in this relationship. Roan stood on the sidewalk outside The Elysian and wondered if Connor had ever thought that, that Roan should break away for his own good, just grab his shit and run for the hills. Could you be self-destructive and not be aware of it on some level, even if only for a single fleeting moment? This was bullshit. He wasn’t Connor, he didn’t have a fucking death wish, and he wasn’t his own worst enemy, or whatever it was Dylan was implying. Being a Buddhist didn’t make him the fucking Buddha; he couldn’t see into Roan’s mind, and he had no enlightenment to offer him. Roan headed for his car, only wanting to crank up These Arms Are Snakes, bury himself in the sonic wash of their chaos, and pop a couple of codeine, if only to take the edge off his anger. He really needed to go home and work the heavy bag, although that wasn’t what he really wanted to do; he wanted to get into a fight, a big one, burn some of this adrenaline off. But for the life of him, he had no idea why he was so mad.
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He noticed there was a buzzing against his side and realized it was his cell phone, set on vibrate, going off in his coat pocket. He pulled it out and answered with a sharp, “What?” “Whoa, who pissed on your Wheaties?” Murphy replied. He sighed through his nose and rubbed his eyes. “What is it, Dropkick?” “Are you actually being pissed at me? Really? Considering you stood me up?” He suddenly remembered he’d agreed to meet her at the office and give her copies of the photos he took last night, trailing Dallas Faraday. “Oh shit, is it three-thirty already?” Even as he asked, he looked at his watch and indeed confirmed it was a quarter to four. “God, I’m sorry, Murph. I got… caught up in something.” “It sounds like you’re gonna bust a nut. What the hell’s going on with you? Those church assholes still threatening you?” “Oh, yeah, but they’re gnats. Who gives a fuck about them? Look, I’m not far from the office. You still there?” “Sitting in the parking lot, feeling like an ass,” she confirmed. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said, heading down the sidewalk and reaching into his pocket for his keys. “I’m really sorry, Murph. Today’s been kinda shitty.” As if to confirm that, a young man suddenly veered into his path on the sidewalk. Roan stopped short of a collision, but he knew instantly something was wrong. For one thing, he was infected and hadn’t showered in maybe a day, so the scent of his strain—cougar— was strong on him. But not strong enough to conceal the scent of gun oil. He had a hand in his coat pocket and the flat, dead-eyed look of a suicide bomber. Roan instantly knew who he was and why he was there even before he said, “We warned you.” Roan grabbed for the man’s weapon as the concealed gun went off.
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5 Bad Sects ROAN had grabbed the gun barrel hidden in the man’s windbreaker pocket just as the guy pulled the trigger, but the odd thing was he didn’t realize it. It was an unconscious reflex, one that had reacted to the danger faster than he ever could have consciously. Roan had shoved the barrel aside as the gun went off, and he felt a deep pain in his hand—like a wasp sting, hot and sharp—while he heard the sound of glass breaking somehow over the ringing in his ears, as well as the sound of someone’s startled yelp on the sidewalk behind him. He was within kissing distance of this guy now, and noted he couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, his short black hair greasy, as if he hadn’t washed it in a week, his face cratered and pockmarked with old acne scars and angry red bursts of more recent acne still blooming on his cheeks. His eyes were an uncomplicated blue and as empty as a bar after three in the morning. He was quite plain, and even with some photoshopping, he’d never be a handsome man. Or a sane one. The man pulled the trigger again, but by this time Roan had the gun aimed away, and he was vaguely aware of a dull metallic noise as the bullet slammed into a parked car by the curb. Roan had dropped his phone, dimly aware that Murphy was still talking, and drove a fist into the kid’s stomach, so hard he doubled over and all the air seemed to leave him in a rush. He grabbed the kid’s greasy head and drove a knee hard into his face. Roan heard something crack and then felt warm blood gush down his leg. He threw the kid on the sidewalk and ripped his hand out of his pocket, pulling out the gun as well. The kid started to move, but Roan kicked him in the stomach, making him gag. “Don’t even think about
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moving, motherfucker, or I’ll stomp you into a fucking stain.” Roan retrieved his phone, which somehow hadn’t shattered and was still working, and as he brought it up to his ear, Murphy was still talking. “—ere? Roan?” “I’m here.” “Did I just hear gunshots?” “Yeah. One of the cat cultists just tried to kill me.” “What?” “Traitor!” the kid screamed hoarsely from the sidewalk. He was still curled up in fetal position, looking up at him with accusing eyes, but his eyes were fixed on his piece-of-shit Saturday night special, which Roan was now holding on him. “You will die in agony just like your faggot boyf—” That was as far as he got before Roan kicked him in the face. He didn’t know if it knocked him unconscious or just stunned him, but he shut the fuck up. “Holy shit, I’m calling it in,” Murphy said. “Where are you? Are you hurt?” He reeled off the address and only then noticed that his right hand—the one holding the Saturday night special—was bleeding like a stuck pig, splattering his blood all over the sidewalk. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized it was numb, but he could move all his fingers and still had a hold of the gun, so he must have been kind of okay. “He needs an ambulance more than me, but I think he nicked my hand.” “Nicked it? As in with a bullet?” “Yeah.” “Roan, oh my god, were those gunshots?” Dylan asked, exploding out of the apartment building. He was still barefoot but had shrugged on a gray sweatshirt. He just stared at the tableau in front of him for a moment—the guy curled up on the sidewalk in a small puddle of blood, the blood gushing from Roan’s hand and the gun in it—and seemed to understand that yes, he had indeed heard gunshots. “Fuck. Were you shot? Is he shot?” “No one’s shot,” he assured him. “Except a car. Which doesn’t count.” A slender, bald black woman wearing worn jeans and a paint-
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splattered T-shirt advertising a “Dykes With Bikes” rally came out of the apartment building and asked, “Dylan, what the hell was that noise?” Dylan jerked his head toward him, and Roan smiled at her. “Hi. Sorry, this guy just tried to kill me.” She stared at him with wide brown eyes. “Are you shitting me?” She glanced at Dylan, and he shook his head no, he wasn’t shitting anyone. Dylan then said, “De’Andra, this is my boyfriend, Roan. Roan, De’Andra.” Roan nodded to her, keeping his phony smile pasted on. “Nice to meet you. I’m not usually beating down a punk-ass bitch.” His would-be assassin spit out a mouthful of blood and a tooth and ground out in a raspy voice, “Traitor. Fucking race traitor.” “Race traitor?” De’Andra repeated. “We’re both infected,” Roan explained. “Only he’s a religious nut bag.” They could all hear police sirens approaching, and presumably an ambulance as well. “This isn’t over,” the kid gurgled, staring up at him balefully with one eye. The other was facing the sidewalk. “You’re right, it’s not,” Roan agreed. “You’re gonna die, you arrogant fuckhead—” “Shut the fuck up, pendejo!” Dylan exclaimed angrily, walking over and kicking him in the back. Of course he was still barefoot, so it didn’t have a great deal of impact, but it was more symbolic than anything else. They exchanged a glance over the kid’s body, Dylan’s eyes sad, apologetic, asking for forgiveness. Roan felt bad, not sure why he was angry at him. Oh yeah, that painting. Why did it piss him off so much again? Damn, he still didn’t have a hold of it. Rather than give Dylan much of anything, he crouched down and asked the kid, “Who do you work for? Heather or David?” Those were the two still fighting for the leadership of the Church of the Divine Transformation: Heather Dow, Eli’s last girlfriend, and David Harvey, a former assistant of Eli’s. The kid spit blood at him. It mostly missed. “Go fuck yourself.” Finally a police car screamed up to the curb, just behind the car
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that had got shot (the bullet had taken out the passenger-side window), and a couple of cops got out. One of them, a young guy whose brushcut hair was almost totally hidden beneath his cop cap, pulled out his gun and shouted, “Drop the weapon!” “Holster it, Tim, this is McKichan,” the other cop, Stephen Kwan, snapped. Kwan was a fairly tall, broad-shouldered Asian man with a raw-boned face and a cynical attitude he wore like a lead cloak. Unlike his young partner, “Tim,” he was wearing his bulletproof vest. Tim seemed reluctant to do it, but had to comply as Kwan wandered into his line of fire. “I take it this is the guy who attacked you?” Kwan asked, although it almost wasn’t a question. “This is him. This is also his gun. You might want to put on your gloves before you take it from me.” Kwan looked at his bleeding hand carefully, pulling out latex gloves from a pocket and snapping them on. “Yeah, I see that. He bite you or somethin’?” “Nicked it.” Kwan raised an eyebrow as thick and black as a permanent marker line. “Another slug? Wow, Roan, you swallow a magnet?” “It’s starting to feel like it.” “Don’t touch me, you fucking pigs!” the kid shouted hoarsely, as Kwan took the gun from Roan’s hand. Kwan snickered. “That’s right, guy, butter us up. That’ll look good on your record.” “Be careful,” Roan warned them. “He’s infected.” “Well, shit,” Kwan sighed. “Tim, read him his rights, but first… Roan, can you…?” “Yeah, sure.” Roan stepped over the kid and turned him over so he was facedown on the sidewalk. Roan knelt on him, putting his knee on the small of his back and pinning him down, dropping his cell phone back in his pocket. He struggled, but Roan grabbed his arms as he cursed and spat and held them so Tim could slip the plastic ties on him as he mechanically recited the kid’s Miranda rights. An ambulance pulled up, screaming, to the curb, and it looked familiar. Indeed, Shep, Dee’s EMT partner, hopped out of the back as the doors opened, but Dee didn’t come out after him. No, this time he
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was accompanied by a reasonably muscular Latina with her hair cut in an unflattering bob. Her face was too round to carry it off. “I knew it,” Shep drawled, his voice still carrying a trace of a Southern accent. “Shooting in broad daylight, you’re involved. I must be psychic.” As the woman started toward him and the kid, Roan said warningly, “We’re infected.” She paused, then shrugged, continuing onward. “That’s what the gloves are for.” “You make any aggressive moves, I’ll Taser your ass,” Kwan threatened the kid, pulling out his Taser and showing it to him. “In fact, I might just do it for fun. Call me a pig again.” The kid sunk into a sulky silence. Kwan wasn’t bluffing, and they all knew it. Shep motioned Roan over to the ambulance rig, and he went, dimly aware that Dylan was following him. Roan sat on the back bumper as Shep cleaned off his hand with bottled water to look at the wound. It turned out it wasn’t a nick—there was a hole in the flesh between his thumb and forefinger, about the size and shape of a pencil hole, the flesh around it flash burned by the powder. Dylan, who sat on the bumper beside him, out of Shep’s working area, gasped upon seeing it. “Holy shit! That must hurt.” He shook his head. “It’s numb.” “Shock,” Shep said, carefully examining the wound, judging what it needed. “Sometimes after bodily trauma you feel nothing. For up to an hour. Then it starts hurtin’ like a motherfucker.” “Where’s Dee? You two not working together anymore?” Shep looked at him from beneath his bushy blond eyebrows. He was a rangy guy but solid, not too skinny, and reasonably goodlooking, with brownish-blond hair and gray-blue eyes, good-looking enough that Dee often remarked it was a tragedy he was straight and married. For his part, Shep thought that was funny, which is probably why they’d been able to work together. “You don’t know? He’s on sick leave. Lupe’s filling in for him.” “Sick leave? I didn’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while,
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though. Nothing serious, I hope.” “Naw, just the flu. We got exposed to it a couple weeks back when we picked up this lady that collapsed in her home. I didn’t get it, but he did. Them’s the breaks, I guess. I think I’m gonna wanna take you in for this, Roan. It’s too small technically for stitches, but there’s no way it’ll close on its own in anything less than a few months. They can use some surgical glue to shut it.” Taking him in meant taking him to the hospital, but Roan was already shaking his head. “Just pack it with gauze. I’ll be okay.” Shep raised an eyebrow at this, and Dylan said, “Hon, now’s not the time to be macho. You were shot in the hand.” “I have surgical glue at home in one of the emergency kits,” he said, and Dylan gave him a look like he knew he was lying. “It’s gonna save me a couple hundred dollars in medical bills if I do it myself. Believe me, I know how to do it. I’ve been infected all my life, and under siege for about half of it.” Dylan seemed to concede the point, although again it seemed he knew Roan was lying. Maybe this was his way of asking forgiveness, by forgiving him for being such an asshole. It was a very Buddhist way of thinking… well, as far as Roan understood it. Maybe it was just Dylan being generous. Shep snorted in disbelief. “I’m gonna hafta record you as leaving against advice. You know that, right?” “I know.” “You know what Dee’s gonna do to you when he hears about this?” Roan sighed and nodded. “I’ll batten down my hatches.” Dylan slipped his hand inside his good hand, fingers entwining with his and giving him an encouraging squeeze. Why was he mad at him again? “I think this guy needs a dentist more than a hospital,” Lupe, the fill-in paramedic, reported. She’d shoved a small twist of gauze up inside each of the boy’s nostrils, and they were already turning red. “Looks like he took a puck in the face.” “He attacked me,” the boy shouted, blood drooling down his chin.
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Shep scoffed. “Sonny Jim, he has a hand wound. Any numb nut who’s seen an episode of CSI knows hand wounds are generally defensive wounds. Try that again.” Shep prepped a needle and injected him in the palm of his hand. Roan knew it was a painkiller and was secretly thrilled, but he also knew it was probably just a localized one, akin to Novocain, nothing he’d feel beyond the wrist. Shep then attached sterile cotton balls on both ends of the wound (blood made them stick), and started wrapping his hand with sterile gauze. Blood was starting to seep through already. Kwan hauled the boy up to his feet by his plastic-tie cuffs and asked, “What’s your name?” “I wanna lawyer,” the kid replied, still sullen. Kwan was patting down his coat, reaching into his jeans pocket, and the kid tried to squirm away, exclaiming in disgust, “Fuck, you’re a butt pirate too?” “I’m lookin’ for your wallet, asshole. Don’t flatter yourself.” “I patted him down,” Tim said nervously. “I didn’t feel a wallet.” “You gonna give me a name, or do I call you Dickwad all the way to the station?” Kwan asked. The funny thing about Kwan was he seemed to be in a perpetually bad mood. He’d been on the force for twelve years, and you’d think maybe he was bitter and burned out by the job, but oh no—he was always like this. He was born a grumpy bastard, and he would probably die a grumpy bastard, outliving them all and dying at the ripe old age of one hundred and twenty-two. Everybody knew the grumpy, sour bastards lived longer than anyone. But besides that, he was a remarkably fair cop. The boy seemed to think about it for a moment, then muttered, “Rollo Tomasi.” Kwan scowled and looked at all of them. “Why does that sound familiar?” “It was a name used in L.A. Confidential,” Roan told him. Another team arrived, this one to secure the scene and collect forensic evidence. Not that there was much to collect—just blood splatters, maybe the bullet that took out the car window. “Oh hey, so you’re a highbrow punk-ass bitch, huh?” Kwan said to the boy, getting uncomfortably close to his face. That was just a favorite interrogation technique of Kwan’s, invading a person’s
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personal space, and it worked fairly well. No one liked a cop breathing down your neck. “They’re gonna love you in lockup. C’mon, Dickwad, move your ass.” He started shoving him toward the patrol car, and Tim moved ahead to open the rear door. Kwan shoved the kid’s head down, perhaps more brusquely than necessary, and all but threw him in the backseat, Tim slamming the door on him so fast it almost caught the kid’s foot. “You know what this was about?” Kwan asked, turning toward Roan. His eyes seemed to catch Dylan holding his hand, but his eyes remained impassive as they flicked back up to his face. “He works for someone within the Church of Divine Transformation. They’ve been threatening me for a couple weeks now, ever since it got around that Eli left me his computer.” “It’s a computer. Big fucking deal.” “The hard drive has dirt on all the members prior to Eli’s death. And I mean quality blackmail material.” He grunted in dark amusement. “Someone fucks a sheep, and ’cause you know, you’re a dead man?” “They want it back. Either to destroy it or keep others in line. Probably the latter more than the former. Knowledge is power.” He shook his head and looked back at the squad car. “Violent religious fanatics give me the willies. What the fuck is wrong with these people?” Roan shrugged. He’d been asking himself that ever since his brief stint in the foster home of a devoutly religious couple who saw his infection as demonic possession and tried to have him exorcised. “Everyone needs to believe in something, even if it is totally bugfuck nuts.” “You don’t believe in that shit?” Kwan asked, referring to the kitty cult. “Fuck no. I believe in entropy. That makes everything else irrelevant.” “Wow, that’s really nihilistic. Congrats.” Kwan turned back toward the cop car and told Tim, “Let’s roll.” He paused by the driver’s side door and pointed back at him. “Know the drill?”
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“As soon as I’m patched up, I’ll come down to the station and make a statement.” “There you go.” He got in the squad car and drove away without a second glance. As soon as he was gone, Dylan turned to him and asked, “Why do I have a feeling that kid was lucky not to have gotten the full Rodney King?” Shep snorted a laugh as he wrapped medical tape tightly around the gauze, making a semi-tourniquet in an attempt to staunch the blood flow. Roan shrugged his good shoulder. “Eh, Steve’s not that bad. He just seems unpleasant.” “Seems or actually is?” “Little of both. Depends on the day.” As soon as Shep was done, he gave him the spiel about keeping his fluid levels up and told him the common-sense stuff that no one should have to be told, such as if bleeding continues or his hand goes numb and he can’t move his fingers, he should report to the hospital immediately, yadda yadda yadda. Roan thanked him and got up, pretending he didn’t get a bit of a head rush just doing that. Dylan stood with him. He let go of his hand but kept a hand on his arm, in case Roan needed the help. He would have resented it if it wasn’t simply done out of kindness. He managed to convince Dylan he’d be okay while he went back up to his apartment and got his shoes and coat on, and while Dylan was gone, Roan found his car and dug out the bottle of Tylenol-codeine in the glove compartment, popping three tablets and washing them down with a bottle of water stashed beneath his seat. He knew once he could get home, he could partially transform and heal some of the tissue damage. Maybe not all, but enough to make it a minor thing. He just didn’t know when he’d have the chance. Dylan insisted on coming to the station with him, and when he saw he intended to drive, he indignantly shoved Roan over into the passenger seat and did the driving. Roan was fine with that, mainly because his bandaged hand was as insensate as a frozen hamburger, and the codeine was starting to kick in, a warmth spreading from his gut outward. The good part here was he didn’t have to hide being stoned, as
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Dylan didn’t know that Shep had only given him a localized painkiller. Things were chaotic as usual at the station, and as such he was not the star of the freak show, just a minor player, and he was actually grateful for that. During all the formalities of giving his statement, he overheard Kwan talking to a cop he didn’t recognize. The kid who shot him had been identified, as he was in the system—he’d been processed several times as a juvenile for petty shit, mainly vandalism and drunk and disorderly: Nolan Morse. (What a name. He might have decided to become homicidal if that was his name, too.) Now he could figure out who wanted him dead, the Dow sect or the Harvey sect. Whoever Morse was attached to was the motherfucker who’d been phoning in death threats. Now, all he had to do was figure out who Nolan was working for. Once Roan was done giving his statement, he excused himself to use the bathroom and ducked into an empty hallway to make a call. He punched up the number of Rainbow’s aunt and left a message for Rainbow, asking her if she knew or could find out whose side a church member named Nolan Morse was on. He didn’t say why, because Rainbow knew better than to ask, and he knew she could find out, because even those in the church who didn’t like her (very few) saw her as completely harmless. She was one of those hippie-ish “earth mother” types who never wanted to hurt anyone. But the world was an awful place, and sometimes bastards—like him—would use that to their advantage. He then went to the bathroom and discovered that his bandage was starting to soak through. It hadn’t done so all the way, but there was a deep-red splotch starting to bloom beneath the snowy-white bandages. He knew all he needed to do was go home, but would he be able to convince Dylan of that? As it was, he managed. The drugs were really kicking in now. He was tired and almost nodding off on the drive home. Dylan was concerned, thought he should take him to the hospital, but he assured him he could take care of it at home. Roan went upstairs but convinced Dylan he would be willing to drink some of his “special” green tea, which Roan was fairly certain was made from a heretofore undiscovered kind of straw, so Dylan stayed downstairs for the moment. Roan ducked into his bedroom and hid in the bathroom, where
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he braced himself before punching the bathroom counter with his injured hand. The drugs Shep had injected into his palm and the codeine conspired to keep the pain from reaching his brain, but he broke the bandages and tape open, causing blood to spurt out, and finally the right synapses started firing. He concentrated on it, focusing on the pain, forcing the change. He watched the bones in his hand shift beneath his skin like it was flimsy paper, the muscles twisting and warping, but it was easy to shut off the change. He thought it was the drugs, but he didn’t know for sure. The hole was no longer all the way through his hand, but the skin was still torn on both sides, suggesting he hadn’t held onto the change long enough, and the pain in his hand was now molten. But it was good enough, so he stripped off the bandages and threw them away, ransacking his medicine cabinet to find some gauze. He wrapped it around his hand but couldn’t duplicate what Shep had done. He just had to hope Dylan didn’t notice right away. Dylan came in as he came out of the bathroom, holding a cup of tea that smelled faintly of fruit and burnt hay. “Is everything okay?” “Considering,” he lied, stripping off his shirt and only just then noticing he had blood on it. God, he was tired. Was the room starting to spin a bit? Roan managed to collapse on his bed as Dylan continued to stare at him in concerned disbelief. Roan wondered what he was going to do when Dylan called him on his shit.
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6 Something Bad Is Gonna Happen ROAN found himself sitting at a round patio table under a glaring sun, a paper coffee cup in his hand. He looked down to find the cup completely empty, even though he seemed to be in the outdoor section of a coffee shop. He was wondering why he didn’t get a table with an umbrella when he suddenly became aware that the seat across from him was taken. It was Paris sitting there, his long black hair glossy in the sun, his mirrored sunglasses strangely reflecting nothing at all. “You have to stop,” he said, his Canadian accent oddly pronounced. It was really weird, because as far as he knew, Par had never had an accent at all. Sketch-comedy jokes aside, he’d never once said “aboot.” “This is the time to leave, Roan. You can’t do this anymore.” He looked down at his cup to find it was now full of something red. Punch? “What are you talking about?” Paris pushed his sunglasses up to the top of his head, and for some reason there was an almost hair-thin trail of blood trickling from his right eye. Paris, for his part, didn’t seem to notice. “You. You have to put it away now.” “Put away what? What are you talking about?” He heard a dull noise and looked down to see he had somehow dropped his cup of punch on the ground, and the liquid was no longer red but clear, like water. When he bent down to look, he noticed a lion sprawled on the road, seemingly sunning itself, its tail flicking in a lazy yet strangely metronomic fashion. He looked around to see if people were freaking out, but bizarrely, he was all alone. Roan woke up, suddenly panicked. “Dylan?” he asked, instantly wondering why he was panicked and why he’d said that. God, he hated
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these fucking weird codeine dreams. He sat up and rubbed his eyes and realized someone had undressed him and tucked him under the covers. Wow, a couple guesses who that was. It was dark now, no light coming through the open curtains of the window over the bed, and as he stumbled to the bathroom, he wondered why codeine always gave him dry mouth. His hand was throbbing, but it wasn’t so bad. He thought about taking another pill, but he felt so logy he wasn’t sure the others had completely worn off yet. He heard noise downstairs, a television, and smelled tomatoes and spices. Dylan? But it was dark—shouldn’t he be at work? He threw on a pair of sweatpants and went downstairs to find out. From the stairs he glanced down at his television and saw that Dylan was watching Doctor Who as he cooked. Roan was nearly at the base of the stairs when Dylan finally noticed him. “Hey, should you be out of bed?” “I was shot in the hand. I’m not an invalid. If I play my cards right, I won’t even have a limp.” Dylan gave him a warning frown, tearing a sheet of aluminum foil off the roll. “You must feel better. You’re back to being a smart-ass.” “Hard to keep a good smart-ass down.” As he entered the kitchen and went to the fridge, he saw a couple of pans on the stove, steaming away. He’d almost forgotten he had pans like that. “Smells great. What is it?” “Penne alla puttanesca.” “Wow, I love puttanesca sauce.” “I know, that’s why I made it. It’s ready if you’re hungry.” Roan pulled an old Gatorade bottle from the back of the shelf and gulped it down. It was disgusting, but he had to admit he felt a little less logy afterwards. And as disgusting as it was, he drank it all. He had to get his fluid levels back up; he probably hadn’t lost that much blood, but he was bleeding pretty good there for a while. “Yeah, I guess I am, thanks.” He paused for a moment. “Doesn’t puttanesca sauce have anchovies in it?” “Mine doesn’t.”
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“That’s what I thought.” Roan got a plate down from the cupboard—at least he remembered where they were—and helped himself to a ladle full of pasta (whole wheat, of course, and probably organic; he was dating a hippie) and sauce, which were in separate pans. The sauce smelled really good, anchovies be damned. He sat down on the couch with his food and a bottle of pomegranate-blueberry juice and saw that Dylan had brought in all the papers from his car. The Keith Turner files. He started reading them while eating and felt himself getting sucked into the dry recitation of facts, which broke people’s lives down into vanilla data that made them as flat as the page he was holding in his hand. “Weren’t you supposed to work tonight?” Dylan scoffed as he collapsed in the love seat across from him, a bowl of pasta in his hands. “Yeah, my boyfriend’s been shot, I sure feel like pouring drinks for horny, lonely men. I called Casey to take my shift for me. We just switched. I’ll cover a Tuesday for him next month.” Casey (bar name: Rod) was the only straight bartender to ever work at Panic. He used to be a bartender at a “regular” bar but figured he could make more money if he took off his shirt and flirted with guys, so he did. He had a reputation as a cock tease just because he was straight, but it was also because he got huge tips, as some gay guys held on to this fantasy of “converting” (or at least nailing) a good-looking straight guy. Roan wasn’t sure how he felt about that—it was dishonest as hell and the equivalent of being gay for pay, and yet it was refreshing to meet a straight guy so secure in his own sexuality he didn’t feel the need to beat up any guy who dared to make eyes at him. “This is really good. Thanks.” “You’re welcome. I’m glad you felt well enough to come down for it. I was going to put it in the fridge and save it for you for when you felt better.” Roan felt the same free-floating guilt that he often felt around Dylan. He was too good for Roan, and he suspected they both knew it. Dylan was still wearing his worn jeans from earlier, but he noticed he was wearing his Pansy Division tour T-shirt and wondered if some of his blood had gotten on Dylan’s shirt. It was possible.
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They ate in silence for a while, the television giving the illusion of life while he was sucked into the paperwork and savored the sauce on the pasta. Damn, if you poured spicy tomato sauce on a shoe, he’d probably eat it. But eventually the words began to blur together on the page; it didn’t help that most cops had awful handwriting. He paused in reading to give his eyes a rest and finish off his pasta. He was contemplating getting another helping when he noticed Dylan was frowning faintly at the pages he’d just put down on the sofa. It was a distracted frown, one suggesting he was lost in his thoughts, and the thoughts weren’t pleasant. “Did you look at these?” Roan wondered. He glanced up at him, making the slightest noise of surprise. “Huh? Oh, no, just the top page. Why do you have a file on the Keith Turner case?” “You remember it?” He made a strange noise deep in his throat. “How could I forget? I searched the park.” Roan put his plate down. “You did?” “I was a volunteer with Search and Rescue until I went to college and decided to “reinvent” myself. You should have seen me when I was younger, Ro—I was a Goody Two-shoes to make Ned Flanders ill. I was so hurt by people making comments about me being the son of that psycho cop who killed his wife, an abusive monster just waiting to happen—like father, like son—that I decided to become the most perfect, upright person on the planet. I got straight A’s, I was on the Honor Roll, I won a spelling bee, I came in second in the regional science fair, I was a Stepford kid. When I got to my teen years, I worked summers as a lifeguard, and I worked with Search and Rescue as soon as I was old enough to be accepted. We once searched the woods near Pinecrest for a lost hiker, but that was pretty much the biggest thing we did before we got word of the Turner case.” Dylan put his bowl aside, rubbing his temple as if recalling it was giving him a headache. “I was horrified that someone grabbed a kid in broad daylight, so close to his parents. What kind of creep kidnaps kids? But I was also a little terrified of coming across a dead body. Worse yet, a dead kid. I got into it to help people, not shatter them.”
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“But you didn’t come across a dead body.” “Yeah I did. A raccoon.” He grimaced both at the lame joke and the memory. “No, the park was a bust. We searched for anything that could have been a clue. We were trained to notice small things in wooded areas that might give us a direction or some idea if a person had been there or not, but that park was a mess. This was before the ‘renewal project’, where they remodeled it. There was undergrowth so thick in some of the interior areas that it was like wading through molasses, and all the trash of eons seemed to blow in and get caught. You had your usual stuff—fast-food wrappers, cigarette butts, cans, gum—and the stuff the closet queens who’d troll the park late at night looking for an anonymous fuck would leave behind: condoms, tubes of KY jelly, even underwear. I spotted a nipple clamp, but back then—and this is how naïve I was, I was even repressing my own sexuality at the time—I had no idea what the fuck it was, and neither did my search partner, Sophie. We decided it was some kind of roach clip, as we occasionally came across drug paraphernalia, but mainly those glass pipes and aluminum cans turned into bongs. The park was so messy in these undergrowth areas that we had no idea what could be relevant or not. It all looked precisely the same age, none terribly recent. We all wanted to find something so badly, you know? We all wanted to be the one who found something that would lead to that kid being found and returned to his family. We started the day scared we’d find a corpse, and ended the day depressed that we were absolutely useless. I quit Search and Rescue shortly after that, ostensibly because I was preparing to go off to college, but if I’m honest, it was that. I didn’t want to have to go through that again. Selfish of me, wasn’t it?” “No. These are the shitty cases, the ones involving kids and violence.” As soon as Roan said that, he realized they had that in common: they had both been touched by violence as children. It was a connecting thread between them, raw and terrible, and one they didn’t talk about much. Roan wondered why he was more broken than Dylan was. He nodded. “I couldn’t be a cop. Well, for several reasons, but that stuff would just kill me. I noticed you never answered my question.” Roan actually had to remember what question had spurred
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Dylan’s confession of this new, odd connecting thread between them. “Keith’s mother hired me to see if there was anything I could dig up on this case before he gives up on it completely.” “You changed the pronoun.” “So did he. He’s a man now.” “Oh. Sex change?” He nodded. “Yep. Still into men, though.” “How does he look? Convincing?” He shrugged. “Probably needs another hormone shot or two for the voice, but he’s a pretty good-looking guy, so yeah.” Dylan smiled faintly. “Should I be jealous?” “You should never be jealous.” Dylan stared at him for a moment, head canted to the side, and asked, “Why do I sometimes feel like I have no idea where I stand with you?” “Because I’m a depressive dickhead and I don’t like talking about my feelings.” Dylan straightened up and gave him a funny look, like he had just admitted that he once shot a guy in Reno just to watch him die. “Holy shit. Did Shep slip you some sodium pentothal?” “I do have moments of honest introspection. They’re just few and far between.” He neatened the pile of papers, restraining the urge to collapse at Dylan’s feet and ask him to help him because he had no idea what was wrong with him, that he felt he had lost control of himself at some point and was now careening toward a chasm with broken brakes. But he didn’t do that, as he wasn’t sure that was true. Or what Dylan could possibly do to help him even if it was. “You’re not always a dickhead,” Dylan said, getting to his feet. He grabbed his bowl and came over and got Roan’s plate without being asked. “Although sometimes I do wonder how I got stuck with such a macho asshole.” “I’m dynamite in the sack.” “Well, there is that.” He put the dishes in the sink and started putting the rest of the food away. Roan eventually got up and helped
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him. They functioned in silence, rinsing off the dishes and stacking them in the dishwasher, sealing up leftovers, and it could have almost been a picture of bland domesticity. Roan really wanted a Vicodin, even though his hand was hardly throbbing at all. As soon as they were done, Dylan turned off the television and took off his borrowed T-shirt, hastily folding it and putting it on the arm of the loveseat. “I’m going to take a bath and go to bed. Want to join me?” Roan looked at him for a moment, feeling the siren call of chemical bliss, as well as the small pang of simple desire for this beautiful man and his emotional comforts. He owed him more than he could ever pay, and he would be kinder to him later on than Vicodin would be. “Yeah, I think I do.” Dylan gave him a small, almost heartbreaking smile and headed upstairs. Roan followed, worrying about what Dylan’s reaction might be if he saw his hand without the bandages on it. Well, he’d cross that bridge if he came to it. Roan didn’t think he’d fall asleep, but he did drift off for about an hour or so and then just lay there in bed for a while, holding Dylan and listening to him breathe. When he was sure he was in a carbohydrateand-sex-induced coma, Roan got out of bed carefully, making sure he did nothing that might wake him, and headed downstairs. Part of him wanted to grill Dylan about what he may have seen at the park, what might have seemed like nothing then but might be a vital clue now… except that was pointless. He probably could only recall it because it was traumatic, but if pressed for more details he wouldn’t be able to come up with anything, or at least not anything that wouldn’t be automatically suspect, due to the fickle nature of time and memory. Besides, he was right: between now and then, Bishop Park had changed. They had torn out one entire area and relandscaped it, put in a new bike path, got rid of most of that tangled undergrowth, installed fancier-looking lights. Time had moved on, as it always did, and altered the landscape. The problem was, Keith Turner hadn’t. Missing people were in a special kind of limbo: they never aged, they never changed, they always remained as they were when you last saw them until they were discovered, if they ever were. He felt bad for everyone left
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behind, because never knowing for sure seemed like the worst punishment of all. He got a microbrew from the fridge, a pale ale whose taste was so fragile that he sometimes questioned whether it was beer at all, and then wandered off to the downstairs bathroom to peel the gauze off his hand and pop a Vicodin from the medicine cabinet. He felt virtuous because he only took one. The case, as presented in the files, was by the book. It wasn’t shoddy, it wasn’t half-assed, it wasn’t stained by incompetence. Everyone involved had done the right things. The wonderful, special hell of it was that they’d done everything they could and it didn’t matter a good goddamn. They might as well have done nothing at all. He wasn’t sure how to tackle this case. Where did you start when you had nothing? When time had moved on and washed away even the slimmest of hopes? If he thought about it too long it’d drive him crazy. If he was tackling this like any other criminal case, he’d go to the scene of the crime, and that’s what he’d have to do here. It didn’t matter that Bishop Park was nothing like it was eleven years ago. He needed to go back to square one and see if there were any moves from there. When you had nothing, you had no choice but to go back to the beginning and start over again. He finished off most of the beer before going back upstairs. He dressed quietly in the dark, both touch and memory allowing him to figure out what he was grabbing before he adjusted to the darkness, and before leaving he grabbed his long leather coat, his Sig Sauer in its belt holster, and his retractable metal baton. The area around Bishop Park had changed since Keith was taken. When Chris and Elliot lived there, it had been a blue-collar neighborhood edging toward poverty, but then the downtown corridor changed, the gays taking over some of the run-down area and gentrifying it, bringing in businesses and real estate wheeler-dealers in their wake, and now the area was upper middle class, with a milliondollar condo set up on its northernmost edge. The irony was the gays who had done most of the neighborhood fixing had been priced out of the market and shoved deeper into the interior, along with the Hispanics and the blacks. The area was now mostly white and Asian, and straight enough to be marketable to tourists. But the park was an ironic
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counterpoint to it all, in that there had been much in the way of gang and drug activity, with a couple of spectacular acts of violence that led to the park being locked up after midnight. The closet-queen cruisers had moved on to Silver Lake Park, from what he’d heard, so Sadowski’s MILF probably would have been pleased by that. But it was probably her kids who were responsible for all the violence in the park, as the “gangs” actually seemed to be made up of bored white kids who enjoyed beating the shit out of random people and filming it on their camera phones for later posting to YouTube, and occasionally killing each other or some poor homeless son of a bitch to prove how tough they were, or some similar bullshit. He didn’t pretend to understand the dynamics of it or the lure of it. He’d been in a ton of fights in his life, but almost none by choice; it was a last resort, a method of protecting yourself or someone else. Although he’d been occasionally tempted, he never hit someone because he just decided he wanted to. (Okay, well, that drunken redneck he beat the shit out of might argue with that.) Going to the park at night, especially late at night, was a remarkably idiotic thing to do. But he’d never claimed to be a genius. His eyes had adjusted to the dark long before, so he stood beside the bed for a moment, looking down at Dylan as he slept. He looked oddly content and younger than he actually was. Untroubled. Roan genuinely hoped he was; he wished someone had actual, genuine inner peace. He hoped Jason still didn’t haunt him, like Paris haunted him. Roan stroked his hair gently and kissed him softly on the forehead before leaving the room. He considered leaving him a note but decided against it. Either he’d be home before he got up or he wouldn’t. Either he’d be here or in a hospital or a jail cell; it didn’t really matter. Dylan would be disappointed with him or he wouldn’t. Flip a coin. Roan decided to take the bike, as it was a clear night, and it would give him greater maneuverability on streets that probably had a higher than average ratio of drunk drivers. He felt pretty good, actually, which was either the Vicodin really kicking in or his own sense of self. After all, if a lion couldn’t survive a city, he deserved whatever he got.
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7 Fighting in Built-Up Areas AS IT turned out, night air and driving a motorcycle woke you up a bit, even if you were on Vicodin. Roan wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Ultimately he found himself looking around at the streets, which looked somehow more seedy and yet prettier at night. Warm lights in crumbling buildings looked welcoming, while garish neon looked jewel-toned, giving glamour to the shabbiest bar. And of course it was an empty world, full of cars but mostly devoid of people, at least at this time of night and in certain areas. But the bars weren’t out yet, and when they were, humanity would return in a flood, loud and bright and raging. Sometimes he felt like an alien. He’d watch these people and not quite understand why they did what they did on a gut level—on an intellectual level he could break it down most of the time, but that was different than instinctive knowledge. He wondered what it was about him that made him feel that way: being an ex-cop, being infected, being gay, having a bad childhood, all of the above, or maybe none of the above. When you came down to it, it might just be a basic malfunction of personality. Not a shock either way. Within a block of Bishop Park, the lights became bright halogens and sodiums, security lights that mercilessly scrubbed the shadows away, and it was like entering an embalmed part of the city, well preserved but rather lifeless. Lights were on in glass and steel condo towers that looked just like office buildings, something he found monumentally depressing. Who’d pay so much money to live in a place that would remind you of a dreary office? Maybe because most of these people didn’t work in dreary offices, or at least not on the lower floors where all the peons were. Not that this place was safe—far from it. Most of the cars parked on the street were of the middle to lower end variety—Kias, Hondas,
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Nissans, Fords. The Lexuses and BMWs and Saabs were in underground or covered garages, somewhere safe from ’jackers and thieves. Even so, Roan drove past one Mitsubishi that had been liberated of its CD player, the glass gone on the driver’s side. The next block over, he heard a car alarm screaming futilely into the night. The park looked charming, almost quaint behind its locked funereal gates, old-fashioned style streetlights painting light on a tall old oak that must have been here since the very beginning of the park. Roan took no chances and brought his bike up on the sidewalk with him, killing the engine and getting off, but never far from the bike as it rested on its kickstand. Most people didn’t know what a Buell was, but as soon as they saw the bike, they wanted it, and that was before they even knew about the street-racer qualities it had. If he ever needed to engage in a high-speed chase, he was ready. Paris’s muscle cars were good for ramming things Road Warrior-style, but the bike was better for catching that tanker. God, he was such a geek. He stood at the gates, hands around the cold metal bars, and took a deep breath. Inside he could smell exhaust and earth, the green scent of foliage and relatively healthy plants, and other things. For instance, someone was or had very recently been smoking in the park—he caught pot as well as crack. Pot, a heavy resinous scent; crack, a sharp scent that made his sinus passages buzz. If he listened very hard, ignoring the thunderous bass of a car on another block and the startled whoop of yet another car alarm, he could hear whispery trails of laughter, mocking and hard. The park looked deserted, but it was far from it. Somewhere beyond the buttery pool of light and the stately oak, the bored, affluent teenagers who wanted to rebel but hadn’t quite figured out how were waiting, smoking up and seeing if something would happen to break their boredom. A lot of times they thought they were copying the behavior of “ghetto” kids, people harder than them, but that was an insult to everyone who had been raised in an actual ghetto. They were simply spoiled brats who were mean and hard well before their time. They’d make even meaner and harder CEOs someday, maybe even politicians with “tough-talk” rhetoric who would grow doughy on hefty campaign contributions from companies that
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wanted the poor kept down at all costs. Wow, what a mood he was in tonight. And he’d just got laid! You’d think that would make him nicer. Roan leaned against the gates and sighed. As easily as the kids hopped the fence, he could too; maybe even easier, since he had the whole cat thing going on for him. And for that very reason, if they decided to take him on, he would kick their asses. He would hurt them, possibly quite badly, and he would never even need to pull his baton or his gun. If he went in, he’d trigger a fight he didn’t need to have. What did he think, that he was going to teach these kids a “lesson”? You couldn’t teach anyone anything if they never thought they needed to learn. He would just be a story, nothing more, an excuse for a scar or two. Worse yet, the playground that Keith had been snatched from was gone. It had been moved to another area, expanded, put in a clearing where everyone could see anyone come and go. He wouldn’t benefit at all from any of this. The place where Keith was taken had been given back to the forest, as if that sacrifice would make the trees give him back. It hadn’t worked. Where did he think he was going with this? There were no clues, no leads, no nothing. He was chasing a ghost. Worse yet, a ghost that hadn’t been seen for ages, one that had sunk back into the ether. He wanted to give Chris Spencer some peace, but he wasn’t sure anyone could. Standing there, listening to the noises of the night, the chorus of alarms and engines and car stereos, he realized he did have one single avenue left to explore: Roger Jorgenson. Sadowski was sure he had been here but hadn’t talked because he didn’t want to put himself at the scene and get in trouble, or maybe because he was protecting a fellow predator. But what if he knew the predator? What if he was a friend? That was a huge leap, as Gabe had included some files on Jorgenson in the Turner files, and he was a stereotypical pedophile. Meaning no real friends, or at least no adult ones besides his mother— he wasn’t even attempting to be seen as normal. (Some did; some were married with kids and had a genuine social circle of friends, contrary to
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most stereotypes. But there was a segment that never even tried to pass.) But what about cellmates? Jorgenson had been arrested and was technically on parole at the time of the incident. Who had Jorgenson shared a cell with? Roan looked at his watch, which never failed to amuse him. During office hours, when he was actually in, he wore a relatively nice watch: not expensive, but nice and professional looking. During off hours or stakeouts or days off, he wore things that he found funny, which was why he was wearing a plastic Simpsons watch that had been given away as a fast-food promotion. He’d picked it up at a Goodwill for a dollar. Yes, it was stupid and immature, but it always reminded him to lighten up. How serious could you be, wearing a plastic Simpsons watch? If he pressed a button, Bart and Homer would briefly argue with each other. Damn, he was a hopeless geek. Might as well get a big G tattooed on his forehead: it could stand for both gay and geek. Besides that, the night shift would be on at the station. Presuming no major changing of the guard, Marcos should be there, and he’d probably be willing to let him have a look at some old files. Marcos was another long-timer, like Sadowski, who willingly took the thankless night shift because his wife was gone (left him for a fitness instructor), and he had no kids, and he had nothing waiting for him at home except a dog with a bad hip and a cat with one ear. There was always something rather sad and quiet about Marcos’s personality, but that was also what put him in the small category of cops who didn’t give him shit because he was gay. Marcos wasn’t a judgmental type; he seemed too tired to bother. Roan got back on the bike and kicked off the kickstand, walking it back out to the street before starting it, revving the engine for a moment just to make the bored teens curious about what they’d missed before driving off into the night, headed toward the station. Well, not directly. Soon enough he came across a road blocked off due to a tremendously nasty-looking car crash, one involving a squashed Datsun and a huge semitrailer. Glass littered the road like ice crystals, and emergency flares lit the scene in blood red. Cops and firefighters stood off to one side, discussing the use of the Jaws of Life, and Roan saw no one he recognized, so he did a U-turn and headed
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toward the main thoroughfare, figuring he’d take the long way around. He was back in the middle of the city as some of the clubs started shutting down, and traffic became wild and woolly. As it was, he had to piss, so he stopped at a Taco Bell to take a leak and pick up a soda, just because he wanted to have to take another piss in twenty minutes or so. Also, the caffeine seemed to cut through the Vicodin, but he wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing. With the downtime, he decided to check his messages, which he had ignored earlier so he could have dinner and a romantic interlude with Dylan that should have been more life-affirming, but for some reason he wasn’t shaking his ennui. If great sex couldn’t shake your funk, you were one pathetic bastard. There was the predictable cussing out from a stuffy-sounding Dee, although after dressing him down and letting him know that when Roan came to visit him—and he made it known Roan would damn well be visiting Dee if he knew what was good for him—he was bringing him a pizza and he was going to bring it soon, as Dee had news for him. Roan wondered what the news was, as Dee didn’t hint. Nothing in his voice indicated it was bad news, so he assumed it was good. Or at least he hoped so. Rainbow was on there as well. She’d heard he’d been shot and was worried about him, although she knew he’d walked away, leading to this odd statement on her part: “Of course he wasn’t going to kill you like that. You’re hardly an ordinary lion, are you?” He’d have laughed if her simple, earnest statement hadn’t made him want to burst into tears. She then told him who Nolan seemed to have sided with. He couldn’t say he was surprised. At least he knew who he was paying a visit to tomorrow. He watched from the windows looking out onto the streets and ventured out as soon as the traffic thinned out once more. It still wasn’t great, but better than before. He was idling at a light where the main thoroughfare met Weston Boulevard and heard something that caught his attention. Even through his helmet he could hear an angrily shouted “Fucking faggot!” and saw someone stumble across a parking lot set out around back of the closeddown punk CD store (damn, Roan used to love it, but the combined pressures of the economy and downloadable music had crushed it). He knew he should just stick to heading toward the cop shop, but he
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wondered if someone was taking their frustrations out on a Boulevard boy. They weren’t all like Fox and Cowboy. They couldn’t all take care of themselves, as one of the “friendly” local police had shown. There was nobody behind him, so he pulled off into what passed for an alley (it was actually a never-used side street that had originally been built for loading trucks, when there were actual businesses here), and parked the bike as he clearly saw what must have been a fight. There were a few guys, a frat-boy type with a solid build save for a soft gut, an older guy who had the look of a hard-drinking trucker type, and a guy who was somewhere between their ages and wearing more plaid than was probably allowed this side of Canada. As he entered the parking lot, he saw these three were fighting one guy, as another was splayed out on the broken blacktop in an ever-increasing pool of blood. He looked badly hurt, which should have been enough to stop the fight, but he got the sense most of the participants were drunk and angry. The angry drunks were the absolute worst. “Knock it off!” he shouted in his stern cop voice, but no one was paying any attention to him. The older guy had a metal pipe or a crowbar—it was too poorly lit here to tell which—forcing Roan to intervene. He grabbed the pipe and ripped it out of his hands, saying, “What the fuck’s the matter with you?” Roan didn’t get an answer. What he did get was swung at, as the guy turned and took a poke at him, but he telegraphed the move in a way that only the drunk or the sloppy possibly could. Roan tossed the pipe aside so he wouldn’t be tempted to use it and stepped back, avoiding the clumsy swing and letting the man stumble as his momentum carried him forward. Only then did Roan step in and deliver a short sharp punch to the solar plexus that dropped him immediately to his knees. “Don’t fuck with me,” Roan warned him belatedly. “Motherfucker!” the frat guy roared, charging at him. Roan easily sidestepped him, and as he stumbled off into a wall, warned him, “I’m here to stop the fight, asshole. Don’t make me kick your ass.” “Oh wow,” a strangely familiar voice said, chuckling faintly. It was Holden—he was the standing man in the fight, the one called the “fucking faggot.” He looked really different, so it was hard to see him in the clinging shadows of the claustrophobic parking lot. He was no longer dying his hair a florescent peroxide blond but had let it go back
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to his natural brown-blond color, and he was no longer spiking it like Bart Simpson, either. He almost looked normal, which was really weird. “You guys are in trouble. You don’t mess with the toughest homo in the world.” Was that a reference to him? Roan would have asked, but just then frat boy grabbed him around the throat from behind, trying to get him in a choke hold. Roan threw his elbow back hard and rapidly, hitting bone several times and sending a numbing shock up his arm, but it was worse for the frat boy, who made noises of pain before Roan heard bone starting to crack. With a gagging noise, he shoved Roan away, releasing his choke hold and bending over, spitting out blood and grabbing his face. “Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed, but his speech was so mushy and slurred it sounded more like “sumavabish.” “Fucker!” the guy in plaid screamed as he rushed him, but he shouldn’t have done that, as he gave Roan fair warning. As Roan spun to face him, he pulled out his metal baton, and with a flick of his wrist he extended it out to its foot-and-a-half length and brought it up to meet the man as he ran in for what was most likely supposed to be a fullbody tackle. The metal baton smashed into the side of the man’s face, where the jawbone met the skull on the right-hand side, and the resulting snap was loud and sickening. On one level. Roan was kind of surprised to realize he also felt a sick, almost amused triumph as the guy instantly dropped to the cracked asphalt, howling in pain and holding onto his lopsided jaw as if trying to keep it attached to his face. Roan looked over at the frat boy, oozing blood himself, and the old guy, who was just finishing puking on the lot. “Anybody want some more?” The puking guy was too busy heaving to answer, but the frat boy looked at him evilly, eyes glittering like the glass from a broken taillight, but they flicked between him and his baton, still held at his side, ready for the next attack. He wasn’t going to make a move while Roan had a weapon, and they both knew it. The kid would have shit himself if he knew he was also carrying a gun. There was an inherent dark thrill in totally controlling a scene. And Roan owned this one. The fight was over. “What the fuck was this about?” he asked Holden. He could see
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the hustler out of the corner of his eye, kneeling next to the boy in the pool of blood. “These motherfuckers jumped Ponyboy,” he snapped, making a violently dismissive gesture toward the fallen drunkards. “I was just coming out of a bar across the street when I heard some guys laughing over some other guys beating up a fag in the old parking lot. So I figured I’d join the party and beat me up some rednecks. I didn’t know it was Ponyboy ’til I got here, though.” “Who the hell’s Ponyboy?” Roan asked, not recognizing the nickname. Well sure, he recognized it as coming from an S.E. Hinton book, but not in a Boulevard-boy context. “He’s just a kid. Came here last year from Minnesota. He was running from something, but he never said what.” “Ain’t no way in fucking hell you’re a butt pirate,” the frat boy slurred, still glaring at him in a belligerent manner. If looks could have killed, Roan would have been an interesting stain on the crumbling brick wall behind him. Roan matched him glare for glare, resisting the urge to tap the baton against his leg like a riding crop. “Ahoy, matey.” “Told you he was the toughest homo on the planet, fuckwit,” Holden spat. “Well, thanks for finding my epitaph,” he told Holden sarcastically, although honestly, he could have done much worse. As it was, that wasn’t too bad. Police sirens cut the night, shredding it to ribbons, and when he was sure that the frat boy had no chance of making a run for it, he compacted the baton again and slipped it into his coat pocket. “What is that?” Holden asked him. “Retractable metal baton.” “Really? Where do you get those?” “I bought it at a security shop, but any place that sells martial arts equipment will probably have them too.” “Huh. I gotta get me one of those.” The cop car partially blocked the mouth of the alley, and when the cops joined them, Roan saw that he didn’t know either of them—
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McKay and Gilberto, respectively—and since they didn’t know him, they instantly considered him a suspect. This got worse when he was thrown up against the wall and frisked along with Holden, who wanted to stay with Ponyboy, but it was Roan they found with the baton and the gun. He was instantly cuffed, even as he told them—for the thousandth time—that he was a private investigator and was a consultant for the department. When he told them he used to work at the Ninth Precinct and that they should call Chief Matthews to verify his identity, McKay snorted and said, “Yeah pal, we’re gonna wake her up for you.” He told them he had his PI license in his wallet along with his concealed carry permit, and at least they looked at those as the ambulance arrived to block the rest of the alleyway. He didn’t know these paramedics either, which was a bitch since he was cuffed and sitting, resigned to a very frustrating night, next to an equally cuffed Holden, who was manacled the moment he gave them lip. This close to him, Roan could see Holden had a swollen, reddish eye that would be black in a few hours and a split lower lip that was seeping blood down his chin. Holden was deceptively tough, but taking on three guys seemed a bit much, even for him. “You take me to the nicest places,” Holden joked. He simply glared at him out of the corner of his eye. “Hilarious. What were you thinking?” “Probably the same thing you were. Putting an end to it.” “We did a bang-up job, didn’t we?” “You did. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.” “I am the toughest homo in the world.” Holden smirked at the echoed line and replied, “Be proud of it, man. I used to think I was. I feel humbled.” Ponyboy was in really bad shape, suggesting that it wasn’t the first time the metal pipe had come out during the fight, and the paramedics had to call in another unit to take everyone to the hospital. One came over to treat Holden, but he didn’t have to do much. Roan needed no help at all—or at least not the physical kind. A twitchy Asian kid wearing a stocking cap pulled low over his head, making his hair stick out from beneath it like loose wires, hung
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around after the ambulances left, and Holden’s gesture with his head brought him slinking up the alley, trying to avoid the eyes of the cops. “A.J., take care of Roan’s bike,” he told him. “I’ll hold you personally responsible if something happens to it. So keep it safe, okay?” The kid—A.J.—nodded almost spastically and said in a quiet voice, “I’ll take care of it.” The kid stalked away, pausing only to grab the bike and wheel it away. “He won’t sell it for crack, will he?” Roan asked. Holden shook his head. “I told him I’ll hold him personally responsible for it. He’ll probably wash and wax it for you.” “In that case, thanks.” He wasn’t certain about this, but it was better than leaving the bike out here, where it would probably be stolen within five minutes. Holden still had enough pull on the streets that the kids would want to listen to him and fall into his favor. Finally the cops decided to run them in, and Roan found himself trying not to laugh, possibly because this was so fucked up. Well, he’d wanted to go to the cop shop. At least this way he was getting chauffeured.
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8 Bliss LUCKILY, he wasn’t treated as a prisoner for long. Back at the station, not only was Marcos on duty but so was a desk sergeant named Jefferson, who really didn’t seem to give a shit about him one way or another but at least recognized him. They got Gilberto to take the cuffs off him. Even though they were across the room, he heard Jefferson whisper to McKay, “Are you fuckin’ crazy, man? Matthews likes him; he’s her pet. She’ll chew you a new one if she finds out you did this.” Pet? Pet? He’d have gotten furious if it wasn’t for the fact that he shouldn’t have been able to hear a whispered aside across the room. But the self-loathing and general loathing was back, settling in his chest like a stone. He eventually convinced Gilberto to take the cuffs off Holden, taking personal responsibility for him. As he got the cuffs off, Holden told Gilberto, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “I prefer the furlined cuffs. Keep that in mind for next time.” Gilberto gave him a flinty look and walked away muttering, “Maricón,” under his breath, Spanish for fag. From the face Holden made, he knew what it meant. But that was the fun thing about being a gay man in a straight world—you quickly learned the slurs, no matter what language they were delivered in. Holden then turned to him with a sigh. “If I get charged, will you bail me out? I can pay you back. I have the money back at my apartment, I just don’t carry it with me.” “It won’t go that far. You were trying to protect Ponyboy. If anyone will be charged, it’ll be me, for excessive use of force.” “It was self-defense.” “Yeah, well, it’s our word against the other guys’. I have a feeling
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they’ll tell a different story.” “Yeah, but you’re a former cop, and you’re sober. Your word will go farther.” Roan wanted to tell him that wasn’t true on both counts. Many of the cops didn’t like him, and he was currently on Vicodin. But nobody was going to drug test him. He could pass a Breathalyzer if it came down to that. “What’s his name, anyways? I hate to keep referring to him as Ponyboy.” “Cooper Reese.” “Seriously?” Holden nodded. “Kids have funny names today.” He paused briefly. “Roan.” He scowled at him, which Holden met with a dazzling smile. “I’m gonna get my baton back, you know.” “Hey now, what did I say? Absolutely nothing.” He gave him a wink, still grinning as he watched a couple other cops wrestle in a combative drunk man and a combative drunk woman, both bearing fresh contusions and scratches, who continued screaming and cursing at each other even while the cops attempted to book them. Ah, marriage. What a wonderful institution. No wonder the straights wanted to keep it all for themselves. They were separated to give their accounts of the incident, and Roan suspected from some of the questions he was asked that Holden had exaggerated the amount of trouble he was in when he’d walked in on the fight. That was kind of him, and he knew the cops would believe it, because McKay, the one taking his statement, asked, “He can really fight?” “Holden?” McKay nodded. “Yeah, he can.” The cop, a corn-fed-looking guy with a thick neck and a soft face like cookie dough, shook his head in disbelief. “But the way he talks… you’d think he couldn’t.” The way he talks? Oh yes, his slight lisp. That pretty much meant
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you were a pansy ass, right? Forget that the guy was over six feet and had the broad shoulders and chest of the athlete he used to be and the hard temper of the street kid he used to be. An extra S or two indicated you were a sissy-slap fight queen. Roan quietly despaired at such dumb-ass shit coming from a guy who should really know better, but maybe he didn’t know better. Maybe he hadn’t been on the beat long enough to realize that being gay or being female didn’t mean you couldn’t be as vicious and as tough as shit. He’d learn, possibly the hard way. As predicted, Holden wasn’t charged with anything. He was issued a warning for disorderly conduct, but that was it. Roan wasn’t charged with anything either. They warned him not to leave the state but admitted that the case had all the earmarks of a gay bashing. Interviewed at the hospital, the two guys who could speak told two different stories, neither of which was compatible with the few facts that were known, and the fact that they were surprised when the cops originally found Roan’s gun and then later claimed that he had pulled it on them proved they were liars. And bad liars, at that. Before leaving, they gave him back his baton and his gun. Holden said he’d call a friend to pick them up and reunite Roan with his bike (hopefully A.J. hadn’t hocked it for a trailer full of meth yet), and while he went off to do that, Roan took the time to talk to Marcos. In spite of detective-client privilege, he told Marcos who had hired him and why. What Chris Spencer didn’t know—or maybe he did—was that nearly all cops hated these unsolved kid cases. Even the most jaded and cynical among them would pause. Missing people you never found, especially young women who were more than likely victims of foul play, you hated too, but there was something special about the kids that disappeared. Everyone felt like they’d failed them. That, as the most vulnerable of citizens, you’d fucked up the most basic tenet of your job. Roan knew this would allow him information he really shouldn’t have. Sleepy-eyed Marcos, who probably hadn’t shown a flicker of emotion in his weathered face in years, briefly looked flinty and cold as he stared at his computer screen. In a little bit, his fingers clicking over the keys like a master pianist, he had the information for him. Jorgenson had had two cellmates in his time in the joint: a guy named
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Peter Tucker and another guy named Roland Chesney. Chesney was back in the stir, having been convicted of murder less than a year after he got out (he killed his ex-girlfriend), but records indicated that Tucker’s last known location was Boise, Idaho. Marcos gave him all the information he had on both on a computer printout. Records indicated both men had done time for sex crimes— Chesney went up on a rape charge initially, and Tucker was convicted of fondling a niece he’d been babysitting and intimidating a witness— but they also had other things in their records less violent: check fraud, loitering, obstruction, drunk driving. Chesney, being an obviously violent person, was in the lead as suspects went. He’d never gone for kids, but he showed a propensity for going after people weaker than himself. He probably got off on it. Yeah, he really needed to speak to Chesney. He went back to where Holden was waiting, and before he got there, Roan saw him sitting back in one of the waiting room chairs, eyes closed, head back, looking for all the world like he was in serious pain. People walking past made him lift his head and open his eyes, and then he saw Roan and flashed a small, weak smile. When he came near, Holden sat up and said, “Ahmed should be here in a couple minutes.” “You got some painkillers at home?” Holden gave him a hooded, sidelong glance, pondering whether to be indignant or not, but he realized he’d been caught and decided— for once in his life—not to put up a front. How could he? His lip was scabbed over and his eye was blackening, a deepening bruise violet splotch that was also making his eyelid swell. Soon, he might not be able to see out of his left eye. “I’m a whore, Roan. Of course I have painkillers at home.” He smirked at his own joke. “I also have Viagra, if you ever feel the need to fuck someone you’re not attracted to.” “Trick of the trade? No pun intended.” “Indeed. Sometimes you can’t get it up on cue. You have to have a plan B.” “You know, I’d think that’d make sex depressing, always having to fuck people you didn’t like.” He shrugged. “It does get tiring. It’s part of the reason why I’m getting out of the business.”
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“How’s that going?” “Really good, actually. I cut my schedule down to just four regular clients. I told the agency that I’m not taking any new gigs, I’m just doing my regulars and that’s it. Randy knows I’m intending to leave, and he’s cool with that. Mainly because he’s a partner in the web thing I have going with Rocky, and also, I ain’t getting any younger.” He flashed Roan a smile of bright, whitened teeth that had nothing but venom in it. “This is, after all, a young man’s game.” “Yeah, oldie, don’t want to fuck a guy and break a hip.” That made Holden snort a laugh, and he bent forward and put a hand on his face. “Ow, fucker, that hurt. Don’t make me laugh.” “Sorry.” Holden took a minute to regain his composure—yeah, he really was in pain—and then sat back in his chair, slumping slightly. “So while they were booking the tranny hooker, I heard a couple of cops discussing how you could possibly be in a fight after having gotten shot in the hand earlier today. Then there was a reference to some videotape, and you possibly being the gay Superman. Who shot you?” Roan quickly moved his hand into his coat pocket, but too late, as Holden had already looked at it and saw the somewhat circular patch of raw skin on the top of his hand. He knew it wasn’t just rumor; he knew it was somehow true. “I can’t be the gay Superman,” he replied, trying to be casual. “I wear my underwear inside my pants, and I’m not gay enough to wear a spit curl.” Holden sat forward and then leaned over the arm of the chair, looking him in the eye as best he could. “I’ve seen you change, you crazy fuck. It still freaks me out to think about it, but I’m honored I’m one of the few who know. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret. I’m good at keeping secrets.” He mimed zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key before sitting back in his chair. One of the cops passing by, Johnson, gave him a dirty look, and Holden blew him a kiss, which made him turn away in disgust. Holden sighed almost wistfully and added, “I had fun.” Although Holden’s previous statement had made him feel numb to his toes, Roan appreciated that he had plowed on to another topic, pretending that this hadn’t been something strangely significant and
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just a little frightening. “Tonight?” “No, when we were working together. I had a blast. If you ever need my help in another case or something, or just need physical backup, I’d be happy to help.” Roan was glad he was letting this slip by. Yes, Holden did know he could partially transform, and he’d almost forgotten that he did know that. It was just Dylan, Gordo, Seb, Dropkick, Doctor Rosenberg, and Holden. In retrospect, a shitload of people. “No offense, but I don’t foresee a lot of cases needing a hustler.” Holden looked at him with a moue of disappointment. “Sweetheart, you know me better than that. I’m not just a hustler; I can be whoever you need me to be. I’m the best actor who’s never walked a stage.” Actually, Holden had him there. He was. His entire life was being some man’s fantasy, and the fantasies always changed. Holden could adapt and sell it—whatever it was—with the bone-deep conviction of someone whose life depended on you buying it. Because it did. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he told him, and meant it. Holden might actually be useful someday. His street contacts could be invaluable. “So, you talk to your parents yet?” He scoffed and waved a hand that revealed reddened knuckles. “No. My mother finally stopped calling. Oh, that reminds me, I’ve changed my number.” He searched the pockets of his own leather jacket—worn and brown, yet somehow stylish—and found a pen and a piece of paper that clearly contained a phone number he must have picked up at the bar before he got in the fight. The scribble over the number looked like “Troy,” or possibly “Trey.” “Tony?” Holden scrawled his new number on the back and handed it to him. “It’s my main line, so even if I’m not home, it’ll get forwarded to my cell. Call any time. If I’m on the job, I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.” Roan took the scrap of paper and wondered how jaded you had to be to refer to fucking a paying stranger as “on the job.” “Talked to Zoë?” “Oh yeah. I’m gonna go down to California and visit her and her daughter in the summer. She can’t come up here ’cause of money issues, and then there’s the fact that I’d rather she didn’t.”
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It wasn’t hard to guess why. “What does she think you do?” “She thinks I’m a local entertainer.” Roan laughed, and Holden feigned indignance. “Well, I am. It’s not much of a lie. I’ve entertained dozens and dozens of men in my life.” “Only dozens?” “I said dozens of dozens. Don’t nitpick.” He smiled almost in spite of himself, and Holden smiled back, a strangely genuine expression on his wounded face. “I know I look like hell, but you could come home with me.” The funny thing was, it was almost tempting. Roan wasn’t sure why, except maybe he was just looking to run away. Sex could be oblivion as much as drugs and violence. “I have a boyfriend, Holden.” “So?” At Roan’s look, Holden rolled his eyes. “Fine, be that way, stick to the parochial heteroparadigm. I expected better of a radical like you.” “Parochial heteroparadigm?” he repeated in amused disbelief. “Have you joined ACT UP?” Holden raised an eyebrow at him, that smart-ass grin on his face. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” They got out in time to meet Ahmed in the parking lot. Roan wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t a black six-footfive leather queen who drove a vintage Dodge Charger painted candyapple red and listened to Danzig at communication-negating volume. Did you ever expect that? He was pretty sure the answer was no, just like no one ever expected the Spanish Inquisition. But he seemed like a decent—albeit strange—guy. Paris would have loved his car. A.J. had watched his bike, and while he hadn’t exactly washed and waxed it, he hadn’t sold it for smack, either, and he had to give him some credit for that. Ahmed was giving Holden a lift back to his place, so they said their farewells there, but Holden surprised him once more by giving him a kiss on the cheek and whispering, “Go home and cuddle your boyfriend, Roan. And lay off the pills, huh? You’ve got too much to live for.” He stared at him, words of denial springing to his lips, but Holden backed away and waved at him, giving him a sad smile. How had he
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known? No one else had known. Was it his pupils? How big were they? He looked in the bike’s mirror, but it was too dark to tell. Maybe it was even simpler than that. Maybe it simply took a liar to know one. He’d got what he wanted from Marcos, so he went home and slept it off for the rest of the night, which wasn’t long, since it was almost morning. He only beat it by a couple of hours. He had been at the cop shop longer than he anticipated. By the time he got up, Dylan was out for his morning jog—oh, how he used to hate those guys, and yet now he was dating one—and there were a few phone calls waiting for him, including Kwan asking almost angrily how he could possibly be in a fight after getting shot in the hand, but what he really didn’t understand was him kicking all their asses. “Stop making the rest of us look bad, asshole!” he added, before slamming the phone down. You could never accuse him of being anything but entertaining in his own curmudgeonly way. Fiona checked in, reminding him she’d see him at the office today. He called her back and got her cell phone, but he left her a message, asking if she could check in with the Sheridan Valley Penitentiary and see if she could set up an interview with Roland Chesney for as soon as possible. Also, he needed her to see if she could find some information on a former prisoner named Peter Oswald Tucker, who had relocated to Boise. That was what an assistant was for—the plodding work. He’d made breakfast by the time Dylan came back, as long as you were generous enough to classify making toast and cutting up some blood oranges as breakfast. But Dylan liked to eat light after exercising, and that suited Roan fine, as he had lots of things on his mind and didn’t feel like anything heavy. Dylan sensed something was wrong and asked him about it, so Roan bluffed by telling him about the former cell mates of Jorgenson he was attempting to track down, and how he already sensed that this was a dead end, but he had to try it anyways. It was clear that this case still got to Dylan too. Everybody involved with the missing Keith Turner felt bad about it, even if they were only tangentially related to it. Except, possibly, the man who had killed him: no conscience meant no guilt.
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On his way out the door, Dylan suddenly asked him, “He’s dead, isn’t he?” This was where Roan wanted to be comforting, but he decided Dylan deserved the truth. He stuck by him for god knew what reason; it was the least he deserved. “It’s the only sure thing about this case.” Dylan nodded, looking heartbroken but not really all that surprised. After a kid was missing a decade, it was unlikely he’d just turn up on the doorstep one day, looking for all his unpaid allowance. But he bet Chris Spencer would give anything to have that happen. He set out for the office but soon diverged, taking Pacific Avenue down to a very familiar area he hadn’t wanted to see ever again. But Roan knew his luck didn’t work like that and never had. He felt eyes on him as he walked up to the porch, and he gave the middle finger to the CCTV camera he knew was watching him as he knocked on the door, ignoring the bell and its aggravating chime. Eventually the door opened, and a well-scrubbed guy who had the perfect look of the annoying gay personal assistant—a cross between that guy on Ugly Betty and that one David Spade used to play on unfunny SNL sketches—glared out at him with the most perfect blue eyes money and modern optical technology could buy. “Yes?” he spit, narrowing those cosmetically enhanced eyes at him. He smelled faintly of hair gel and the pheromones of leopard. Roan met his look, unimpressed. He had to know who he was, even if they’d never met before. “Go tell your boss Roan McKichan is here and wants to know why the fuck he wants to kill me. Tell him he can either talk to me, or talk to the cops.” Roan pulled out his cell phone and held out the screen toward him so he could see the numbers 9-1-1 were on it, although he hadn’t pressed the send button yet. The kid looked at it, the slightest bit of alarm cutting through his perfect mask of annoyance. “You’re crazy.” “Okay, if that’s how you want to play it,” he said, lowering the phone and slowly moving a finger toward the send button. “Michael, I’ll take this,” a new voice said, as a hand appeared on the boy’s shoulder and he was moved back from the door. Finally, Roan found himself face to face with David Harvey.
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9 Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today DAVID HARVEY was nothing special. He was a couple of inches shorter than Roan, with thinning reddish-blond hair that smelled of Rogaine and was spread across his scalp like a haphazard nest. His eyes were pale blue, like they’d been watered down somehow, and his mouth seemed a bit too wide for his narrow face. In fact, there was something almost fishlike about him, like Roan was staring at the first Human partially cloned from a trout. He gave off the faintest hint of lion pheromones somewhere beneath his Calvin Klein cologne. “I’d be careful about making slanderous or libelous comments on camera, Mr. McKichan,” he said, his voice and smile so disgustingly smug that Roan had to restrain the urge to punch him back into last year. “Your boy squealed, Harvey. Nolan wasn’t ambitious enough to do this by himself, but with his record, people could believe he was stupid enough. I don’t.” To his knowledge, Nolan hadn’t actually given up a name, but if Kwan was on him, it was only a matter of time. Harvey’s smile remained smug and plastered onto his face like a bad makeup job. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Roan wanted to cross his arms over his chest but didn’t, as that might seem defensive. He kept his posture open and blatantly hostile. “I can press the issue if you make me, Harvey. I’d advise you don’t.” Harvey arched a single eyebrow at him. It was more blond than red, although tinted a slight orange that couldn’t have possibly been a real hair color and yet was. “Elijah was afraid of you, but I’m not. You are one of us, even if you don’t act like it, even if you are a pillow biter.
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As such, you’d think you’d have more loyalty against the normals, but—” “Did you just call me a fucking pillow biter?” Roan exclaimed in utter disbelief. Harvey gave him a hard smile, his eyes gleaming with a triumphant sort of anger. “We all know what you are, and I understand the need to compensate for that, but really, you could change if you wanted to.” Roan just glared at him for a moment, and then turned his back toward the camera so there’d be no film of him giving Harvey a short, sharp sucker punch to the solar plexus. Harvey made a pained noise lost in the rush of breath from his lungs and dropped to his knees, involuntarily heaving. Roan crouched down, out of barfing distance, and whispered, “You want to make me angry? Congratulations, fucker. But you’ve forgotten something, haven’t you? You may have a deranged cult following, but I have a hard drive full of shit on all of you. The reason it hasn’t hit the front page of cultwatch dot com is because I really don’t give a fuck about you and your insane shit, but you’re starting to make me care. I don’t think you want to make me do that, David.” Harvey managed to get his gag reflex under control, although a string of saliva drooped from his bottom lip until he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He looked at Roan with pained, enraged eyes. “The computer belongs to us. It’s our rightful property.” “No, it belonged to Eli, and I assume he wanted me to keep power-mad fuckers like you in check. I have no illusions that your fancy-ass lawyer will get you off the hook for any charges that might be flung at you. Everybody will be happy with Nolan taking the dive alone. But I’m watching you, and you try anything like this again, I’m not gonna stop at flinging your shit around on the web. I will fuck you up. I will fuck up your life beyond the telling of it, Dave.” Harvey scoffed and sat back on his haunches, arm still around his gut. He was a soft man. He’d never been in a genuine fight in his life. “You think it’s hyperbole? Try me.” Roan stood up and spit on him. Dave hadn’t expected that, so when the spit hit his head he jerked back as if Roan had kicked him and stared up at him with
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uncomprehending confusion. “Next time you try and have me assassinated, make sure they don’t miss.” He stalked away, kind of hoping the cowardly shit would attack him while his back was turned, tackle him maybe, take a shot at a kidney punch, but he didn’t. And why would he? Pillow biter or not, he was the alpha lion even when they were in their Human skins, and he knew it. And Roan was absolutely dying to have a good reason to lay into him, work him like a heavy bag, make him choke on his own blood and spit teeth. Back in the car, Roan glanced back at the porch of the house turned Church of the Divine Transformation and saw David continuing to glare at him from under the shelter of the eaves, the hate naked and raw on his face. This wasn’t the last he was going to hear from David Harvey. Good. He returned to the office in a strangely sanguine mood. Not good, not exactly, just… peaceful. It was the calm resolution of someone who knew they were going to die, knew they couldn’t change it, and just decided to die with dignity. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best metaphor, but it would do for now. Fiona was behind the front desk, her red hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, and once he was in the door she began her litany. “Okay—you can see Chesney any time you want, as long as you stick to regular visiting hours, as Chesney doesn’t seem to have any visitors. Gee, a rapist murderer has no friends? Who’d have thunk it? And what I’ve scrounged up on Peter Tucker through vaguely legal sources I have e-mailed to you. If you have illegal sources you may want to use ’em, as I didn’t find much. So what are you doing back at work after you got shot in the hand?” He held up his hand for her inspection. “The damage was overstated. Do we have anyone coming in today?” She nodded and checked her online schedule. “At one we have a guy coming in named Jack Murray, who seems to think his wife is cheating on him.” “Oh, the usual then, male version.” “Yep, Adam and Eve on a raft, wreck ’em.” Using the old diner
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lingo made her flash him a big smile, and while he didn’t smile back, he smirked at her eager cheekiness. He was glad someone was so enthused about the tedious reality of people’s relationships going through slow-motion catastrophes. He went into his office and read Fiona’s e-mail to him about Tucker, and she was right—there wasn’t much. There was little on his crime and little on his move to Boise, although Fiona had been able to find an address for him. Roan used that to access an online reverse directory and find his phone number. He punched it up but got a machine that listed the number back at him, no names, so he hung up and figured he’d try again later. He MapQuested the directions to the Sheridan Valley Penitentiary, as he’d never been down there. In spite of its pastoral name, it was a bleak maximum-security prison planted smack-dab in the middle of a barren stretch of land that used to be a gravel pit. The town itself was just a loose collection of strip malls and trailer parks and most likely a Walmart that was the pinnacle of regional culture. He was just printing it out when there was a rap on the door that didn’t sound like Fiona. He looked up in time to see Murphy peeking in the door. “What would it take to keep you home? Grenade injury? Dismemberment?” “Hey, don’t mock me just ’cause I’m the toughest homo in the world,” he replied, looking for the photos he took of Dallas Faraday’s last night on Earth. That startled a laugh out of her as she shut the door behind her. “Now wait just a goddamn minute here—I’m the toughest homo on Earth.” “You’re the toughest lezzy. I’m the toughest homo. There’s a difference.” “There’s always a double standard,” she sighed sarcastically, flinging herself down in the chair in front of his desk. “I guess you know why I’m here.” He found the photos in a manila envelope in his top desk drawer that he had marked “DF.” “Wedding shower?” “How did you guess?” He handed over the envelope, and she took it and slid the glossies
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out, looking at them. “By the way, the new receptionist is cute.” “Hey, she’s an assistant. Also straight, and a part-time dominatrix.” “Really? I didn’t realize being into B&D was a part-time choice.” She paused and turned a photo sideways. She was in her casual cop gear, namely black slacks and a khaki-colored shirt beneath a black blazer. They looked like men’s clothes and very likely were (Murph was into the cross-dressing), but they looked good on her. She’d recently got her black hair cut into a stylishly boyish short haircut, but the irony was it made her face look more feminine. Maybe that was the intent. “Wow, look at you getting clear shots of all the license plates.” “You never know when they can be handy to have.” “True enough. I’d kiss you, but I don’t want your gay on me. By the way, heard from the wife yet?” “My client? No.” Murphy nodded absently, still looking through the photos. “Whoa, is that coke or crack?” “Coke.” She whistled sharply. “That explains the toxicology report. Guy was flyin’ on coke, X, and Ritalin. He also had a point oh eight alcohol level.” “Ritalin? People take that recreationally even when they’re out of high school?” “Believe it or not, yeah. If Mrs. Faraday calls you or comes in, would you call me immediately?” That made him pause. “Is she a suspect?” Murphy shrugged, still examining the photographs. “She’s missing.” “What?” It suddenly occurred to him that, yeah, she hadn’t gotten in touch with him, even to get the photos he’d taken for her. That was strange, but so much had gone on in the meantime that he’d simply forgotten. “You check her place of business?” Murphy nodded, tucking the pictures back in the envelope. “Went there, went to the Faraday house, even visited her parents’ house. No one’s seen her since the fifth, when she left work for home. We’re
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running an APB on her car, hoping for a hit.” The fifth—the night he took most of these photos. (Some were taken after midnight, which would make the rest taken officially on the sixth.) “So what’s your theory? Think she’s a victim of foul play, or did she do a runner?” Again she shrugged, and grimaced because she hated doing it. “Either’s possible, although she’s looking better, suspect-wise. After all, things clearly weren’t great at home. She hired you to check up on her guy, didn’t she?” He had to concede that point. “But if she was just going to kill him, why bother to hire me?” “To throw suspicion off of her?” “That’s weak.” “You got any better theories? Besides, maybe she didn’t plan it. Women are more likely to commit crimes of passion than deliberately planned murders.” “Depends on the woman. Either way, she didn’t strike me as a killer.” “But anybody can be a killer, given the right circumstances.” “Yeah, I know,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes. Until Holly showed up to tell her side of the story, she was a suspect. In fact, her disappearance surely made her the number-one suspect. Goddamn it. “Fuck. She killed her husband, didn’t she?” Maybe she had discovered he’d given her herpes and snapped. “It doesn’t look good for her. What have you got on her?” “Just the usual shit, the form filled out for the job.” “Can I see it?” He paused briefly, not really thrilled about the prospect of sharing information about a client without a court order being involved, but Murphy was his friend, and besides, he might have been used by his client. He hated that, no matter how much of an asshole Dallas was. He went back into his top drawer and unlocked a box set into the drawer, where he kept current client information. Once he was done with the job, it got filed away in the locked cabinet on the far side of the room and scanned into the computer, where he transferred it to a jump drive
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he kept in a place in his home where he knew no one would ever look. It seemed excessive and paranoid, but you could never have enough backup. He found the form he was looking for and handed it over. She looked it over, nodding. There probably wasn’t anything there she hadn’t discovered already. “So how’s things in homicide?” “Busy. You know the economy’s in the toilet when the murder rate starts creeping up.” “How’s the guy who shot me?’ That made her snort in dark humor as she tucked the form into the envelope with the photos. “Kwan broke him. He started this weird-ass ramble about you being a traitor to the species and whatnot, although it was never clear what species he was referring to. Also, you being an ass bandit seems to personally offend him. Kwan told him not to knock it until he tried it—which he would, whether he liked it or not, when he ended up in the county lockup.” “Oh, how lovely.” “Hey, it made me laugh.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, yes, fine, prison rape is not funny. Even if it does happen to a hateful asshat who deserves it.” “Thank you.” “Jeeze, Mr. PC, he shot you, and you worked him over like Mike Tyson in his less-pathetic days. I thought you of all people would want to see this fucker hurt.” “He’s a patsy, an easy scapegoat. He pulled the trigger, but someone else put the gun in his hand.” She gazed at him levelly. “You’re talking about DT.” Many cops simply referred to the church as DT, not only because it was shorter but because it sounded like an illness. “I’m talking about David Harvey. Taking me out would make him a hero amongst a large swath of his followers. He’d cement leadership in the Church if I was gone.” “I thought this was all about Eli’s computer.” “It is, but it finally occurred to me that that’s a convenient excuse. Getting the hard drive back could help him blackmail his way to the
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top, but it might just be easier to kill me. Well, that might have been his thinking.” “I bet he thinks different now.” Roan shook his head. “He just hates me more.” He didn’t tell her that he’d helped stoke that fire. They got to the personal bits of the discussion—he asked how Kim was, she asked how his “strapping young stud” was (this indicated that she had forgotten Dylan’s name)—and then found an easy way to end the discussion. Truth be told, Murphy had only come here to check up on him and get the photos, maybe get some more information on Holly Faraday. It was more of a business visit than a personal one, but they pretended it wasn’t. Fiona turned out to have gotten a bit of the information wrong on the one o’clock client. Jack Murray was a somewhat neurotic middleaged man who was afraid his younger boyfriend, one Bryan McKee, was cheating on him. Well, it had been bound to happen—a gay couple was going to come here to self-destruct. He had just assumed gay marriage would be legal by then. Although he felt weird about it— what, he only busted up straight couples?—he took the case. Hard to say no to money. After that, there wasn’t much point in sticking around, as he had things to do. He’d never make it to Sheridan Valley in time, but there was a third prisoner who had shared cell space with Jorgenson but wasn’t on the suspect list simply because he was in prison at the time of Keith’s disappearance, and there wasn’t a more rock-solid alibi than that. His name was Rocco Santorelli (his birth name was actually Rocco—it was astounding the names some people gave their kids), and he was up in County on a car-theft beef. Since Roan knew some of the people in County, he figured he’d have an easier time talking to Rocco. On his way out, he discussed taking Fiona out on a routine surveillance gig one of these days. She wanted to learn the ropes of the biz, and he figured, why not? Besides, surveillance gigs were boring, and a little company wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would help him get his mind away from the dark subjects it seemed to like to dwell on. Out in the car, he took a moment to think, take a codeine, and consider his next moves. Not only did he have to visit Rocco, but he
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had to visit Dee or he’d never hear the end of it. He calculated the drive time and figured he’d visit Rocco first. Dee wouldn’t like it, but he could wait. Roan decided to swing by the house and change clothes, as he looked like he might be a detective. Rocco might shut down instantly when faced with a PI, but if he looked like just some regular guy off the street, he was in with a better shot. Nothing fancy, just jeans and a Tshirt, maybe a baseball cap if he really wanted to go overboard. And then he hoped to pay a visit to Panic before Dylan started his shift, talk to Luis (nee Rhett). He wanted to know where Dylan might like to go for a weekend, but he didn’t want to ask him and spoil the surprise, so Luis was his next-best shot. He and Dylan had been friends for a long time, and presumably he’d know something about his tastes. Roan was a bit humbled because he wasn’t sure. He was a bad, bad boyfriend. He was humming the Pansy Division song of the same name when he pulled up into the driveway, and the codeine was really kicking in as he moved to his front door, his hands and feet feeling oddly warm. What a weird side effect. Maybe that’s what prevented him from realizing that something was wrong until he opened the door. The first thing he noticed was the way the air moved through the house. Fresh air whooshed, smelling slightly of the coming rain, and beneath it Roan could smell the scent of two men—one wearing some god-awful aftershave that smelled strongly of salt—who had been here recently. He pulled out his Sig Sauer and held it aimed down at the floor as he glanced in the living room. It showed some signs of being ransacked—the coffee table had been kicked over and some of Paris’s CD collection had been tossed out—but it was simply cover for what they were actually looking for. What thief left a television, a stereo, a DVD player behind? Those were easy to grab and easy to hock. No, the whole point of this robbery was Eli’s computer, which was missing from the side table. They had taken the monitor as well as the stack. Wouldn’t they be disappointed when they discovered the hard drive had been replaced? So this was David Harvey’s next move? How shockingly pedestrian.
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10 La Stanza Bianca IT WAS always disappointing when a cop who knew you and didn’t like you showed up to take your statement. At least Butler—or, as he was known around the station, “Butthead”—came with a rookie named Salazar who didn’t know him and treated him just like any other guy who’d gotten his house burgled. Butler kept prowling around, like he was looking for something incriminating. Was he hoping to see some gay porn just lying around, or maybe a collection of dildos? If Roan had known he was coming over, he would have bought one and slapped his picture on it. There were some surprise visitors, though: Gordo and Seb. They wandered in, and Butler—who had been in charge of the scene before their arrival—got instantly tense. “Something I can help you with?” he asked, respectful but still slightly arch. Gordo gave him a bored look, which was worth a thousand hateful stares. He was now the senior man on the scene and he knew it, just as he knew Butler resented it. That was one of the things Roan really didn’t miss about being a cop: all the bullshit protocol. “This might be our jurisdiction, Ron.” Butler look confused, his beetle brows dipping low beneath his caveman forehead. “This isn’t a cat crime.” It was Seb who shrugged. Gordo was wearing a silver-gray suit coat, while Seb was rocking the khaki-trench-coat look. He was like a black Columbo, but without the lazy eye. “If it’s a hate crime, it is.” Butler scoffed and spread his arms wide, indicating the entire room. “There’s no sign of a hate crime here.” Gordo gestured to Roan, who was watching the tech gal, Imahara, dust for prints. “Roan said he thought DT was behind it.”
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Butler scoffed. “There’s no evidence of that. And last time I checked, feminine intuition doesn’t count as proof.” Gordo’s look hardened into ice. “You’re on report. Get out of here.” “What?” The question was one of genuine confusion, not defiance. “You heard me. Go home, Butler. You’re done here.” His mouth opened to protest, but Gordo and Seb were a brick wall, all stiff shoulders and withering looks, so he huffed a breath through his nose like an angry dragon and stomped out. Salazar looked painfully embarrassed but closed his notebook and followed Butler out, with a shrug that was probably an apology. Imahara continued working, pretending she wasn’t listening. “I could have just kicked his ass,” Roan pointed out. “I didn’t like that he felt so comfortable insulting someone in front of me. I ain’t putting up with that shit.” Gordo heaved a weary sigh, an indication of a topic shift. “Is Eli’s computer all they grabbed?” “As far as I can tell. They broke a window to get in and tossed some furniture around, but clearly they were after one thing.” “Someone called us about an altercation at the Church, but Mr. Harvey said only that you two had a ‘loud discussion’, and it was nothing of merit. Despite the fact that he looked very pained and isn’t a very good liar. His little assistant—who must have made the call— looked shell-shocked. You beat the shit out of Harvey?” “I think I’d better take the fifth here.” Seb snorted, a swallowed laugh. “Why? You’d get a medal down at the station if you did.” He knew they didn’t like the church at the cop shop or the state house, but that seemed like a more extreme reaction than usual. “Why? They been making more trouble than usual?” Imahara stood up, and her knees cracked like distant shotgun blasts. She was a vaguely attractive woman who seemed to like looking plain, wearing drab clothes and no makeup, her hair cut in an economic style. She looked like a person always on the verge of sinking into the background. It had to be a deliberate choice. “Well, got some good
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prints, but I suspect they’re yours, Roan. There’s a lot of smears indicating someone with gloves was here recently. You don’t wear gloves in the house, do you?” The first thing that sprang to mind was a fisting joke, but it was so awful he couldn’t make himself say it. “Not as a rule.” She nodded. “That’s what I thought. Well, I’ll let you guys know, but I’m thinking we’re looking at a couple of pros here. They knew what they were doing. This was a smash and grab.” “They were also uninfected, probably because Harvey actually thought he could fool me into thinking it wasn’t him.” Imahara gave him a quizzical look on the way out the door, but it was Seb who asked, “How do you know they weren’t infected?” “He’d smell ’em if they were,” Gordo explained for him. As soon as Imahara was gone and had shut the door behind her, Roan asked, “So what’s been going on with the Church?” Gordo sighed and Seb’s shoulders sagged, all signs of defeat. “Since Eli’s death, recruitment has been on an upswing,” Gordo told him. “They’ve been having lots of parties where the infected and uninfected mingle, but they don’t hold them at the church. They’re been moving them around randomly, like house parties or raves, trying to avoid being busted. We’ve got some undercover agents posing as wannabe teens in the chat rooms, trying to get invited to these things, but they’re more paranoid than ever. It’s harder and harder to get a bite.” Roan nodded, sure he knew where this was going. “You want me to see if I can find one?” “It’d be a big help.” “Yeah, fine. I know sex workers, people in the scene. If there’s kinky shit going on somewhere, they’ll know.” Gordo smirked. “I’d ask how you know sex workers, but I’m sure I’d get in trouble.” “Just consider that all of us freaks stick together, because if we don’t, who would?” Seb nodded, and Gordo just gave him a strange look, but that seemed to be the end of it. “We can pay another visit to the church,
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mention the theft, see if we can shake him up,” Gordo offered. Roan shook his head. “Not necessary. All they got was a shell. I pulled the real hard drive out ages ago.” “So what do they have?” “An empty hard drive. A shitload of nothing.” Seb snickered. “Man, I can’t believe people still try you.” “Of course they do. I’m just a dumb ex-cop who has to make his living taking pictures of other people’s cheating spouses. I can’t be that hard to fool.” Roan moved to the couch and sat on the arm, figuring things were done. Gordo looked strangely concerned, at least for him. “You really think this guy’s gonna roll over and take it? I just talked to him for a few minutes, but there seemed to be somethin’ kinda… off about him.” Roan could only shrug. “I imagine he’s gonna come back at me. But I don’t care. If I can’t take a sleazebag like that, I deserve to get cut down.” “I know it’s your macho talk, but shit like that worries me,” Gordo replied, surprising him. “Sometimes idiots get lucky. Keep trying them, and someone will.” He was right, of course, and Roan dipped his head in acknowledgement. “You take your chances every day. That’s just how it is.” Gordo’s stare was piercing and skeptical. “And you don’t care if you get on the wrong side of it?” “Of course I care. I’m not some suicidal asshole.” But even as he said it, he wondered if maybe Dylan was right about his death wish. After they left, he put on Drive Like Jehu as he picked up the furniture and CDs and taped up the broken window. It might be an invitation for thieves who somehow made it into his backyard, but he had a simple solution for that. He propped up a piece of plywood in the taped-up hole that had “Infected” written on it in bright red letters. It was remarkably good at keeping people away. When he was done, he went off to County to speak with Rocco Santorelli about his previous cellmate. He actually didn’t expect anything useful from this man. He only wanted to cover his bases.
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Roan hated prisons and the way they smelled, like industrial cleansers, body odor, hate, and fear. Desperation flop sweat mixed with a toxic stew of testosterone and nowhere to go. Long ago he’d figured out being a caged animal in the long term would be no good for him—he’d tear everyone to pieces. He now wondered if his lion side would be out all the time in such a situation. (Unless Dylan was right about that too, and it was just the darker side of his personality. But either way, he figured it’d be out and causing a scene.) Sitting behind shatterproof glass in the sterile, depressing visitor’s booth, he found himself finally facing Santorelli. He was six feet of muscle crammed into a five-foot-five body. He was squat and squared off, a miniature refrigerator of a man, with no neck and a perfectly spherical shaven head resting on shoulders as straight as a level. His eyes were small and widely spaced around a large nose that had clearly been broken several times in his life. His mouth was an uneven slash, his lower lip distorted with a faint scar near the left corner. This was a man who’d been in lots of battles, the type that Roan himself would be reluctant to mix it up with simply because he probably knew how to hurt someone badly and quickly and had no qualms about doing it. The funny thing was, the way his dark eyes seemed to settle on the scars on Roan’s face, he had a feeling Rocco was thinking the same thing about him. “Who the fuck’re you?” he asked into the receiver set into the wall. “I’m trying to find something out about Roger Jorgenson, a former—” Rocco sniggered derisively, lips curving into a sneer. “The fucking child perv. What, he diddle your kid or somethin’?” “No, but I think he may have something to do with my friend’s kid going missing.” Rocco shook his head. “That fat bastard? He was a coward. A fucking pussy-whipped momma’s boy. He saw blood, he freaked the hell out. Naw, he’d never kill one of ’em. He didn’t have the decency.” What an odd way to put it, but he sort of knew what he meant. “You remember him well.” He shrugged one of his blocky shoulders. “Everybody was trying
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to shank him. I would’ve done it myself, but I got moved out to another cell by the time I got a shiv, and besides, he had that guy protecting his fat ass. Don’t know why. Maybe he was poundin’ him or something.” Charming. But Rocco was turning out to be more of a help than he ever could have imagined. “What guy? Chesney? Tucker?” Rocco’s eyes narrowed until they almost disappeared into the folds of his face. “You a cop?” “Do I look like a cop?” He scrutinized his face with an intensity that made him feel like he was under a magnifying glass. But after a long moment, he said, “Naw, yer too pretty.” Now that was funny. “Who the fuck are you?” “Paris Lehane,” he said, the lie coming easy. Being a detective was about eighty percent lying persuasively. At least that was twenty percent less than being a politician. “I’ve been researching Jorgenson, but I’ve hit a brick wall.” “Prob’ly his head,” Rocco replied darkly. “The fucker was stupid and repulsive. He had nothing goin’ for him at all.” “Who was protecting him?” “Eh, what’s his face, the guy with the bug tattoo. Rollo.” “Roland?” Rocco shrugged. “Guess so. That fucker was nuts. I think he aligned with the Aryans.” Did Roland Chesney have a bug tattoo? It was mentioned he had tattoos, but what kind were never specified. “Why was he nuts?” “You mean besides picking out the blob for his bitch? He had these razor marks on his arms that he put there himself, he said that was how he kept track of the people he did.” It was funny how the word “did” could have so many meanings. “You mean killed?” Rocco looked at him like he was the biggest idiot in the world, so Roan took that as a yes. “But this was before he killed his ex-girlfriend. You’re saying she wasn’t his first?” He scoffed. “If you believed his bullshit, she was like number twelve or twenty or something. He claimed to be smarter than the pigs, that he had a lot of bodies buried out in the desert and no one was ever gonna find ’em. But everyone says shit like that here, like bein’ a serial
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killer makes you such a bad fucker no one wants your ass.” Roan felt his stomach clench and his blood turn cold. Yes, people made up shit in prison all the time. But if any of this shit was true, he may have found his man. “Did he say where he buried ’em?” Rocco shrugged and shook his head. “I dunno. Can’t remember. It was somethin’ like Sundown or some shit like that. But you ain’t gonna tell the cops, are you? I ain’t a rat.” “Why would I tell the cops anything? They haven’t helped me at all.” Sundown? Was that a reference to something? There was no place called “the Sundown desert.” Then again, if he was just making it up to make himself look like a hard-ass, there wouldn’t be. The bizarre thing was, Rocco was so forthcoming because he was lonely. He wanted to talk, and just as a tacit thank you for the information, Roan listened to him ramble for about five more minutes about how he ended up here on a trumped-up charge that wasn’t his fault anyways. If you listened to inmates, there were no guilty people in prisons, but the odds were there had to be some. Rocco actually suggested he come back sometime. Wow, that was lonely. Roan only said he’d see what he could do. If Rocco’s information panned out, he would. Roan thought about this afterwards, while picking up a pizza for Dee, and even examined the map he had in the glove compartment. There were no deserts on this side of the state—wrong climate—but the eastern side had a couple. Hell, you could make the argument that the whole eastern half was a desert that had been partially paved over. Nothing named Sundown or Sun-anything, though. He needed to do a computer search. But he tried not to think about this as he paid a visit to Dee, as Dee would catch his preoccupation and probably be offended by it. He was mostly recovered from his flu but was still puttering around his place in a dark-green fuzzy bathrobe. He waited until Dee finished lecturing him about not going to the hospital after being shot in the hand and helped himself to some pizza as Dee finally told him his news. He had a serious boyfriend finally—definitely a cause to celebrate—named Luke Cho. Not a doctor this time but a nurse, he was also mixed race (half Korean, half Filipino), so that was two things he
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and Dee had in common right off the bat. Dee thought they might be moving in together, which was a huge step for Dee—Roan could see why he was a bit anxious about it all. But Dee wasn’t content to stick to his own life. He had to butt into his. He told Roan if he really didn’t love Dylan, he had to cut him loose. “He’s a sweet kid,” Dee said around a mouthful of pizza. “If you can’t love him, you should cut him loose and let him find someone who can.” Roan nodded, as he not only knew it, he agreed. He should do it. It was the right thing to do. Would he do it, though? He didn’t know. He had to tell Dee about the other night too, when he beat up the gay bashers. Never mind that he wasn’t treated by the paramedics. Their gossip network still got back to him. Dee seemed to be concerned that he was “hanging around” with a hustler, especially one with Fox’s reputation. “I don’t fuck hustlers,” Roan reminded him. “I don’t pay for sex on principal. I got nothing against them, though.” “Neither do I, and hey, some of those guys you can find on that escort site… hot damn, I may pay for that,” Dee admitted shamelessly, picking up his glass of what he called his “Nyquil smoothie” (actually it didn’t have Nyquil in it, just a dash of cold medicine amongst honey, tea, and brandy.) “But this Fox guy… you know his reputation, right?” “I ran him in once. He recently helped me on a gig. He’s not some prostitute gangster, he’s just a guy who made a couple of fucked-up decisions and is trying to make the best of where he is.” Dee fixed him with his scolding, strangely paternal glare that let him know he thought he was being a complete idiot. “He’s a gay guy that most straight street thugs don’t want to mess with. Doesn’t that set off warning bells for you?” Roan sighed. How did he get in the position of defending Holden? “Look, the street is just a game. He plays it better than most, that’s all.” “Which means he’s a schemer, and if he’s set his sights on you, it’s time to worry.” “I can take care of myself, Dee.” “Normally. But you’re collapsing in on yourself and starting to shut down. And don’t deny it, ’cause I know the symptoms. You’re
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only half here as it is. Your eyes are distant.” This is why Dee was such a pain as a boyfriend. He said shit like this all the time. “I’m working a case, Dee. I just got what might be a break. I didn’t expect it.” Dee just sat back on his sofa, eyes shiny with fever, and Roan felt like he was lying even though he knew he wasn’t. No one should be able to make you feel like that. Goddamn it. Exes were never anything but trouble.
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11 Marching Bands of Manhattan ONCE he left Dee’s, he swung by Panic. It was still early yet, so it wasn’t as busy or as flashy as it usually was. Still, he was almost deafened by Cut Copy as he walked in, the sound swirling around him at volumes that made his teeth rattle. As it was, he still had to do most of his talking in sign language, pointing at Luis (Rhett) and himself before pointing at the door behind the bar. Rhett got it; he gave him the thumbs-up and motioned him around to the side, where he opened the bar up for him and let him in. Before they ducked into the back, he saw the new bartender. He was a tall, lean man with very dark brown skin, his torso an enticing V shape and his black hair held down to his scalp in tiny tight braids. Roan must have looked a bit too long, as the guy caught him looking, but he gave him a lazy smile and a wink before turning back to the mini-fridge under the bar. Damn, he had a nice ass, too. For a couple of seconds, he thought about the good parts of being single. As soon as they were in the back break area, and the music died down to a dull roar, Rhett cocked his pierced eyebrow at him and said, “I see you noticed Byron.” “What kind of bar name is Byron?” “A terrible pun. He’s bisexual,” he said, with a roll of his eyes. “Got something against bisexuals?” “No, but once you’re out of college, you should really pick a side. It seems so wishy-washy otherwise.” He then flashed him one of his “I’m now moving on” smiles, of which he had at least three. He didn’t know Rhett all that well, but he’d attended a party at his apartment with Dylan and learned some things about him. Along with his extensive catalogue of transitional smiles, Rhett was a photographer who kept a
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gallery of them in his place. Many were faceless, artistic portraits of former boyfriends, and according to Dylan, Rhett went through boyfriends like McDonald’s went through Big Macs, so he had lots to choose from. His current boyfriend was a slightly nervous jock type who was the captain of the local gay rugby team. This was the first time Roan had even heard of a local gay rugby team. Rhett was a lean, handsome Latino who had a twink air even though he wasn’t a twink. He usually wore coordinated eyebrow and nipple rings, and today was no exception—today he wore tiny gold hoops with gold four-leaf-clover charms on them, one through his right eyebrow and the other through his left nipple. He looked barely nineteen but was verging on twenty-nine. He smelled like nicotine, mint mouthwash, and hair gel, with a subtle undertone of something pharmaceutical. He asked Rhett about where Dylan might like to go on vacation, saying he wanted to surprise him with it. The funny thing was, Rhett seemed to consider the question a stumper. “Aw, hell. Y’know, he’s fully embraced the whole Buddhist not wanting stuff principle, so I don’t really know. He just doesn’t talk about stuff like that.” He scratched his head, mussing up his well-coiffed yet bed-head-looking hair, and Roan saw his fingers twitch slightly before he brought his arm back down to his side. His low-slung jeans revealed a patch on his hip. According to Dylan, Rhett had been trying to quit smoking since he’d known him. The longest he’d gone without a smoke was two and a half weeks. He kept trying, though, which was either a sign of an indomitable will or complete insanity. “I guess, you know, as long as you’re with him, he’ll be okay with anywhere. Somewhere peaceful I guess; somewhere kinda Zen.” Wow, that was so helpful Roan wondered why he’d bothered asking. But before he could thank him and leave, Rhett added, “Y’know, it’s great you wanna do something like this for him. I mean, he’s crazy about you, but you… you’re kinda hard to read, y’know? I mean, I’m sure it’s your job and everything, all poker-face stuff, but usually you can tell if someone is into someone else. I just can’t tell with you.” Roan didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t feel anything
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anymore? He was dead inside? He was a total bastard? They were all applicable, and yet he didn’t feel like admitting this to Rhett. “Dylan’s a great guy,” he finally said, aware he had to say something. Rhett nodded almost spastically, rubbing the back of his neck to hide the twitching fingers. He wanted a cigarette so badly he was almost crawling out of his skin with need. His rings picked up the light and glinted like SOS signals. “Yeah, I know. I tried so hard to get into his pants when we first met, y’know, but I guess I’m not his type.” Suddenly aware of what he’d said and to whom, he quickly added, “But I’ve stopped trying. I mean, I wouldn’t… once you get rejected a dozen times, your ego can’t take it anymore. You know?” Roan gave his arm a friendly pat, just to let him know there were no hard feelings. Except he wanted to punch him for using “You know” about a dozen times more than was necessary, but that was a separate issue. “Yeah. Well, thanks. And this is just between us, right?” “Absolutely, I won’t say a thing.” He gave him one of his other transitional grins, one that almost seemed predatory but wasn’t quite. He ultimately didn’t know what to think about Rhett—he seemed all right, and he’d been a friend of Dylan’s for a long time, but there was something about him that seemed scattered and flighty. Sometimes Roan wondered if cigarettes and men were his only addictions. Of course, as he returned to his car to have a pill, he realized he had no room to talk. There was a cybercafé a couple of blocks over, and he went there to search for “Sun” places on the Eastern side of the state. There was a “Sun Lake” in Kiernan Park, but Internet pictures proved it was a genuine park, with trees and everything. There was no desert there, and it didn’t look like a good place to bury bodies unless you wanted an audience. Once he included desert places—buildings, businesses—with Sun in the name, the number of locations available exploded. How could he narrow this down? And why? He could be chasing nothing, a ghost of a lie. He was punching sand. And why? Because he’d been used by a client who had simply ended up killing her husband? Because he felt bad for Chris Spencer? Because he wanted to love Dylan but really wasn’t sure how? This was constructive; this was action. He was doing
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something concrete here. He felt useful, and not like some hollowedout, pill-popping failure. When he was on his second green-tea lemonade, he suddenly realized the waitress, a nineteen-year-old with a dragon tattoo on her forearm and short dark hair highlighted with magenta bangs, was flirting with him. He almost did a spit take when he realized she’d written her cell phone number on a napkin and slipped it to him. Oh god, the poor thing. He felt sorry for her. In a café half full of guys, she had to pick the one that was 1) gay and 2) infected. He’d both heard of and encountered bad taste in men in several forms, but this really took the overpriced pastry. He ducked into the men’s room and splashed cool water on his face, which actually felt nice since the codeine was kicking in and making his face feel hot. He looked in the mirror and tried to see what other people saw when they looked at him. He couldn’t imagine it. He saw a man with funny-colored hair and eyes a little too green to be trusted, someone with ghostly pale scars on his lip and bisecting his eyebrow, both suggesting he was more trouble than he originally seemed. He saw someone he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Roan decided he was being an idiot. He was tired, and he could feel his unshakable enemy, depression, blooming in him like a pernicious flower that could never quite be ripped out. All the pills in the world didn’t make it go away. If this was real, this didn’t belong to him. Whatever Santorelli said belonged to others. He left the bathroom and threw a five on the table as a tip, taking the napkin only because he knew if he left it she’d probably take it as personal rejection and not realize he was turning her down because she was the wrong gender. It was better for her self-esteem just to assume he was another bastard of a man who never called. But at least he’d also be remembered as a decent tipper. He called Murphy, and she was at the station, so he had to pay another visit to the cop shop. He still had his Vancouver Canucks hat from his earlier prison visit and pulled it on, tucking his hair up and lowering the brim, hoping no one recognized him as he made his way to homicide. It didn’t work, but really, did he expect it to? Some of the
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cops still insisted on greeting him as “Batman.” He gave them the finger, which only made them laugh. When he ducked into homicide, most of the detectives were too busy to notice him. He made his way along the cheap metal desks until he found Murphy’s, and then he slumped in the folding chair he found and dragged over from a currently empty desk. She acknowledged him with a look and a raised hand, but she was on the phone, so he had to wait until she was done talking before saying a word. He ended up waiting a little over a full minute before she returned the receiver to its cradle. “We found Holly Faraday’s car abandoned at the airport,” she informed him. “We’re still trying to figure out if she actually got on a plane or just wanted us to think that.” For some reason, he found that news vaguely depressing. Was he really hoping it would all turn out to be some curious misunderstanding? In what world did he dwell—Disneyland? “I’m not here about that. Do you know I’ve been hired to look into the Keith Turner disappearance?” She furrowed her brow and looked up at the ceiling, where some pencils hung like stalactites. This place had the acoustic tile drop ceiling that lent itself to perfect sharpened-pencil launching. Clutches of them bristled over every desk. “Umm, you’re gonna have to enlighten me….” “Ten years ago, grabbed out of Bishop Park?” “Oh! Shit, that one? That’s colder than a coal miner’s ass.” Rather than thank her for that newsflash, he told her about his pursuit of Roger Jorgenson’s former cellmates, and how Rocco, a temporary one, told him about Roland Chesney’s serial-killer bragging. Murphy listened, but with skepticism coloring her face. “Everybody makes shit up in prison. They want to look hard.” “I know, but this is really the only lead I have. Otherwise I have nothing.” “So why bring this to me?” “Because if he told the truth about only one of the bodies, this is your jurisdiction, isn’t it?” She glared at him, picking up a pen and tapping it on her desk in a
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manner that suggested she hoped it was actually an axe going into his head. “Bringing me more work, motherfucker? Do I look like I have nothing but free time?” But she sighed and turned toward her computer, muttering under her breath as she angrily typed on the keyboard. After a minute or so, she asked, “Do you think he could have been referring to the Sun Valley nuclear power station?” “Oh shit, I hadn’t even thought of that.” Sun Valley was a textbook case of what happened when nepotism and ineptness collided, sort of like the Bush administration on a much smaller scale. It was supposed to be a state-of-the-art nuclear facility, but the construction was beset by flaws from the start, and it was only about one-fifth built when the question of why it was so massively over budget and behind schedule was solved: the man in charge of the whole project—the brother-in-law of the local mayor—was embezzling money and really didn’t have the slightest idea what the fuck he was doing. The resulting scandal had the mayor ousted from office and the brother-in-law imprisoned and sued, although the court case had yet to be settled for either the mayor or his pseudo brother. Sun Valley remained unfinished and also tied up in a plethora of lawsuits. It was smack-dab in the middle of the desert. A couple of miles of it were technically government property, but beyond that it was free desert, and not a lot of people went out there due to the specter of a nuclear facility (never mind that it wasn’t finished and was never operational). It would be a good place to dump a body. Murphy looked at her computer screen and sighed once more. “I’ll make some phone calls, see if the cops out there have ever had a body turn up in the desert, but you know I can’t promise anything.” “I know, but I’d appreciate your help. Thanks.” She nodded, clicking a few more keys before glancing back at him. “You okay, Ro?” “What do you mean?” “I dunno, you’ve seemed kinda… off lately. You’ve been gettin’ in fights left and right.” “I object to that. I haven’t been getting in fights, I’ve only been finishing them.” “Categorize it however you want, I’m worried about you.”
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He shrugged uncomfortably and stood up, hoping to put a quick end to this conversational cul-de-sac. “I’m okay, Murph, it’s just been a weird couple of days.” She gave him a sharp look, the kind that only a homicide detective could give you, one that told you in no uncertain terms that you were one hell of a shitty liar. “Maybe you should take it easy, huh? Back off for a bit? When’s the last time you had a vacation?” “Vacation? I don’t speak your crazy language, Earthling.” “Whatever, Gaylord.” He mock-beauty-queen-waved at her on his way out of homicide, and at the doorway, someone whose voice he didn’t recognize exclaimed, “Holy hand grenades, Batman!” “Eat me,” he snapped back, to a small chorus of strangely giddy chuckles. He knew they’d get over it eventually, but it couldn’t be soon enough for him.
IN A way, it was a good thing it was a slow night, as it allowed Dylan to do a bit of surfing on his iPhone. He actually thought people who had iPhones needed help—what, there wasn’t a fireplace they could throw their hard-earned money into?—but Sheba got him one for his birthday, and only a truly ungrateful bastard would disparage or turn down a gift. As it turned out, he kind of liked his needless, pointless iPhone, and it made him feel bad. Still, he appreciated it during these slow nights at the club. He could do more than read books or have strangely tangential conversations with customers who still held out hope of getting in his pants. (Once, he’d had a conversation that started out about Will Ferrell films and ended up being about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and for the life of him he had no idea when or where the topic started to diverge.) It also kept his mind off Roan, although it was Roan who was behind his iPhone surfing. What was he going to do with him? He knew Roan still loved Paris, and Dylan understood that completely. But
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it was hard to compete with a dead man. Also, it didn’t help that Roan was sinking deeper and deeper into depression and was really abusing the prescription drugs. He thought Dylan didn’t know, but of course he did. For a while after Jason died, he had had some problems with the pills himself, although not the heavy-duty painkillers that Roan seemed to favor. Dylan had no idea how he could function on so much Vicodin. (Oh sure, House made it look easy, but that was a television show. In real life, that stuff could knock the shit out of you.) The problem was he knew he couldn’t suggest therapy. Roan had had some negative therapy experiences and just didn’t want to hear about it anymore. But he was on the edge of something very catastrophic. Maybe he didn’t realize it, but it seemed like he was a couple of wrong turns away from a breakdown. Except Dylan worried that maybe he was being overdramatic. Roan was a grown man, and he’d survived well over thirty years of shit without him around. And it wasn’t like battling depression was new to him, as Roan admitted he’d been fighting it most of his life. He’d stood up and survived shit that would crush lesser people. But…. This was as frustrating as hell. He had to confront Roan and get this all out, even if it ended things between them. What did they have anyways? Dylan loved him, but he knew Roan probably wasn’t capable of loving him back right now. He was in some dark place that he couldn’t reach, where light didn’t touch. He wanted to help him, but he didn’t know how. Right now, he was considering sending some pages on depression and local therapists to Roan’s e-mail address, even though he knew that would just lead to a huge argument. Especially if he added, “I love you, you stupid son of a bitch, but I’m going to have you involuntarily committed if you don’t knock this shit off!” Things were so slow at Panic that Jessie gave him the go-ahead to leave early for the night, although it was just ten to two—not that early, in the big scheme of things. By the time he put on his shirt and his sweatshirt (worn in lieu of a coat) and put away his iPhone, it was two in the morning anyways. Dylan headed out, pulling out a cheap watch cap and putting it on. He hated what it did to his hair, but no customer from the club seemed
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to recognize him when he wore it. He cut through the back alley to the rear parking lot, and he found himself wondering if Roan would even be home. He’d been on a lot of stakeouts lately, but that wasn’t just it. He knew he’d gone out the other night after they technically went to bed. He knew Roan wasn’t cheating on him only because there was no way he had the emotional energy to do so. That meant he was getting obsessive about a case. It was the Keith Turner case, probably, and he couldn’t blame him, as it was hideous on several levels. How could that crime have never been solved? He was a little boy that got kidnapped; someone should have found something. Someone should have found that poor boy, no matter what condition he was in. But, as Roan would have reminded him, life and criminal investigations didn’t always work like that. He had pulled out his car keys and was just unlocking the door when a man asked, “Dylan Harlow?” Not his bar name, Toby, which made him instantly curious. “Yeah?” he asked, turning around. But in that split second he realized he’d made a huge mistake. He was so distracted he hadn’t been aware that two men had snuck up on him in a poorly lit parking lot, two men he didn’t know who still knew his name. He didn’t need Roan telling him that this was fucking bad. He saw silver flash in the dim lighting but only knew it was an aluminum baseball bat when it smashed into the side of his head. He felt a brief, dull burst of pain before everything faded to black.
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12 Drinking From the Necks of the Ones You Love ON
HIS way back home, Roan stopped by the all-vegetarian Indian restaurant that was a favorite of Dylan’s and got him take-out food of all his favorites. He only ate some naan bread and stopped by a fastfood place to get his red-meat fix. Dylan didn’t make him feel bad about it. He wasn’t an obnoxious vegetarian, but Roan wasn’t crazy about eating it in front of him. Once home, he put all of Dylan’s food in the fridge and checked his messages, none of which were important. With time to wait until Dylan was off shift, he started doing some research on the computer and watching some of the television that he had saved on his DVR but hadn’t seen yet. He didn’t know if it was the food or the drugs, but he started fighting to keep his eyes open. He thought he’d done a decent job, until the scream of the phone jolted him awake. He grabbed the handset, still half asleep, and muttered, “What?” “Roan?” It took him a moment to place the voice, but the Southern drawl should have been a dead giveaway. It was Shep. “Man, I’m sorry to call you about this.” He could hear the anguish in his voice, and it made Roan sit up. “What? Did something happen to Dee?” He sighed heavily into the phone, a rush of air like static. “No, not him. They just… man, Skiba and Lombardi just brought Dylan in.” Was he awake? He wasn’t dreaming, was he? No, Roan was pretty sure he was awake, even though he felt a bit muzzy. Images flashed by on the TV, but right now they seemed disconnected and made no sense at all. Coldness took root in his gut and started
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spreading outward. “Brought him in? For what?” “He was attacked in the parking lot of the club where he works, a coupla guys. The bouncer interrupted the attack, I guess, got one of the guys—” “Attack?” There were no good images in his head right now. Closing his eyes was an invitation to enter the nightmare factory. Something in his chest constricted, made it momentarily hard to breathe. “How badly is he hurt?” “Considering, not too bad for the moment. He’s stable. They took him for x-rays, but Lombardi told me he didn’t think he had a skull fracture—” Skull fracture. Christ. “Where are you?” “County General. Listen—” “I’ll be right there.” Shep was saying something else, but Roan had already hung up the phone and launched himself off the couch, the nightmares flickering in his head as he grabbed his shoes and headed out. Why would someone attack Dylan? It was senseless. He had no enemies! But Roan did. Roan knew he had a lot, and suddenly wondered if the connection had been made, if someone had gone after Dylan because they couldn’t get to him. Two possibilities asserted themselves: random gay bashing, which was known to occasionally happen in that area. Or someone trying to send a message to Roan by hurting his boyfriend. He drove to the hospital with nothing in his head but pure white noise, the sound of a rage so great that Roan knew he had little hope of containing it.
THERE were times when Shep wondered why he had left Georgia. Oh sure, he knew exactly why he’d left—the humidity drove him fucking nuts and so did his parents and their William Faulkner-esque batshit family—but it was a safer question to ask than why he had ended up here. He’d had no real plans to. He was originally heading to California, but he heard from another paramedic that there were some
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good jobs farther up the coast, and he figured as long as it was a coast, well hell, why not? It was pretty here, the people generally laid back, the women hot, and the humidity was manageable. It was also nearly an entire continent away from his Aunt Claudine and Uncle Merle, so it was all good. Except, of course, no one mentioned the cat culture that had sprung up here. The church was the eye of the hurricane, of course, and once it was established, all the infected started drifting in. Fairly liberal social policies—at least when compared with most of the rest of the country—also contributed, and the rules began to shift a bit. He didn’t mind dealing with the infected—it was a disease, that’s all it was—but some of the nutty cultists were something else. According to them, it wasn’t a disease; it was a blessing, a divine birthright, some shit like that. And hey, his Great Uncle Walt was a fucking snake handler, so far be it from him to disparage or make fun of anyone’s religious choices. But worshipping a disease that put you in horrible pain before killing you very young seemed bizarre. Maybe it was a defense mechanism. Maybe, when you contracted something this inexplicable and this horrible, you had to come up with a reason for it beyond dumb luck. After all, this was the closest thing there had ever been to genuine lycanthropy, and God knew the Goths were in ecstasy over it. Until the reality of it set in. His Great Uncle Walt said the virus was God’s punishment on the wicked. Maybe the cat cult was a response to his and his kind. By asserting the divinity of it all, they were really just taking the piss out of the self-righteous, holier-than-thou assholes who claimed they had brought it on themselves. If that was the case, Shep couldn’t blame them; he might have done the same thing. He was thinking of all of this while looking over a brochure he’d found in the hospital’s waiting room. It looked slick, professional, but was recruiting material for the cat cult. It wasn’t sanctioned by the hospital, so obviously it had been planted there by true believers hoping to get their claws (no pun intended) in the newly diagnosed or simply the curious. He felt he should alert someone, let them know they should scour their waiting rooms to remove this kind of thing, but why? Was it any worse than the shit the Catholic League left behind, or the evangelicals and their pro-life or ex-gay conversion pamphlets? It was
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all aimed to take advantage of the confused and vulnerable; it all capitalized on weak moments and sudden doubts. Who was to say one was more harmful than another? The funny thing was, Shep knew when Roan had arrived before he even saw him. He wasn’t sure how exactly, except he got a feeling somewhere between his shoulder blades, and he turned to see that Roan had just come through the emergency entrance. Maybe that was just his weird magnetism at work. Now this was something his Grandmother Helly would have had a field day with. She was considered the family oddball (in his family? Ha!), and made her living telling fortunes. She wasn’t a con artist, or at least not a deliberate one; she honestly believed she had a gift. Whether she did or not was up for debate, but Shep always felt that she had helped expand his mind and learn to accept the eccentric and the different in life. According to Helly, some people had what she called “pull.” These were people with strong “auras,” people with possibly supernatural energy, and even if they didn’t know it themselves, she said that other people, especially “sensitives,” always knew who they were. She said you knew who they were the second they entered a room, and you couldn’t ignore them, no matter how hard you tried. They may seem ordinary in every respect, but around them you could feel something like power. She would have said that about Roan. Shep would have pointed out he was just one of those people with a strong personality and a forceful physical presence. No, he wasn’t built like a brick shithouse, like that bouncer who had stopped the attack and worked over one of the guys (that guy was a wall with legs), but he carried himself like a boxer, grace and lean muscle just waiting for the right moment to strike. You got the sense that if he wanted to hurt you, he could, and Shep knew that was true. Roan was a bit of a local legend by now, and some of the guys jokingly referred to him as “the pain fairy,” because when he got in a fight, it was usually the other guy you were scraping off the pavement. Dee told him they used to bet on how badly the other guy would be hurt. It wasn’t that he just whaled on them, he was all about surgical strikes, targeting weaknesses, and putting people down with a minimum of effort: kidney punches, throat strikes, broken noses, broken kneecaps. It seemed like a cop thing, but after having dealt with
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victims of police brutality and simply sloppy police dustups, Shep knew that wasn’t true. It was just a Roan thing. He was a guided missile of trouble, and woe betide the stupid dickhead who decided to take him on. He had learned most of his fighting techniques before he ever joined the force. Shep was as straight as a gate, but he could see why guys (or girls, or cats or dogs, whatever) could be attracted to Roan. He had a strangely intense energy about him, and yet a sort of regal gravitas, casual but still ever-present. Dee had once joked that being with Roan was really like being in the presence of a genuine lion… and you know, it kind of was. Compacted power, and an awareness that one wrong move could wake the slumbering beast. Stalking across the waiting room toward him, it looked like he had indeed woken the beast—or just Roan—up. His deep reddishbrown hair (it was almost the color of old blood, which was strange since it didn’t come from a bottle) was mussed, and he was wearing worn jeans that probably needed a belt to fit properly and a rumpled black T-shirt that inexplicably had the words “These Arms Are Snakes” printed on it. What was that supposed to mean? Well, this was probably just an example of what Dee had described as Roan’s large collection of strange T-shirts. Dee had claimed it was Roan’s penchant for T-shirts that made most people think he was straight. Roan’s usual magnetism had a dark air about it now, which was reflected in the shiny metal glimmer of his eyes. It was partially the emptiness of a shock victim and partially the squirming black shadows of someone restraining a volcanic rage. “Where is he?” Roan asked, his voice pitched low. His jaw was taut with the effort of speaking through clenched teeth. “I’m not sure you can see h—” “Where the fuck is he?” Roan repeated, storming past him. Shep grabbed his arm, and Roan yanked out of his grasp with excessive violence, making Shep stumble. He could almost swear he felt muscles twitching like snakes beneath the skin of Roan’s arm, something sentient and impatient under tender flesh. Did he have muscle spasms? It was possible; infecteds had lots of secondary conditions. “I’m not the enemy,” Shep snapped, and his tone of voice made
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Roan stop and look at him. Roan’s look was flinty and yet slightly distant. He was somewhere in his own head, his mind gnawing the hell out of something. There were a few people in the waiting room, a few nurses coming and going, but it was funny how everyone deliberately avoided them. Roan’s “fuck you” vibe was filling the corridor and scaring everyone back. A crack appeared in Roan’s armor. It was brief, but it was there, something human flashing through eyes like green glass. “I know. I just need to see him.” The anger was hiding pain; Shep had seen it enough to know it. Lots of people cried or broke down, but some retreated to anger because it was easier, safer. It wasn’t a surprise a scrapper like Roan would lash out first and foremost. Shep glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to them, then jerked his head, a tacit invitation for Roan to follow him. He did, without comment. Dylan was currently alone in a treatment room off the main ER, because shortly before Roan had arrived there’d been a flurry of activity that pulled just about all the doctors and nurses away. First was a car-crash victim who’d had the bad luck of having a steering column almost completely collapse their sternum, and the second was a teenage gangbanger with a GSW to the abdomen. They were fighting hard to keep the accident victim breathing and to keep the boy from bleeding out or having his guts slosh out the gaping hole. (Shep had actually seen that happen; he hoped he never had to see that again.) Dylan was alone on a gurney in the small, cool room, although he wouldn’t be alone for very much longer. Still, he was in much better shape than the two patients currently enjoying the lion’s share—no pun intended—of the attention. Although it wasn’t good for the victim of a potential head injury to be unconscious, his vitals as reflected on the monitor were good, stable and steady, and that was always a positive sign. Still, if he did have a head injury, they could be slow to build, and yet very sudden in their effects. It was why they were such bitches to deal with, and why Dylan was going to be here for a while. Shep wanted to give him the upbeat diagnosis, focus on the positive, but he seemed to understand that he needed to be quiet for a moment. He stood by the doorway as Roan ventured in, moving slowly
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toward the gurney as if sleepwalking. Dylan didn’t look great; the right side of his face was swollen and bruised, with butterfly bandages temporarily holding a gash on the side of his scalp closed (later, it would be properly mended), while there was a tiny, bloody line where the corner of his mouth was torn. A blanket had been thrown over him, covering the bruises on his arms and chest, but it didn’t matter too much; it didn’t look like there were any broken bones, save for one finger (and possibly a cheekbone, and maybe a hairline skull fracture). Soft-tissue injuries never killed anyone—they just looked and felt bad. Roan lowered his voice to a whisper, and all the tension seemed to sag from his frame as he stroked his boyfriend’s hair. “Dylan, can you hear me?” His voice didn’t crack, but Shep picked up the sorrow beneath regardless. “I’m so sorry.” He kissed him softly on the forehead, which was touching and sad. No, he didn’t get the whole gay thing, but love was love, and he had no problem with that. There wasn’t enough of it in the world. Suddenly Roan’s muscles seemed to tense again, and Shep could feel himself respond, tense in kind. What was it? Roan looked at the far wall, or at least glanced in its direction; he didn’t seem to be focused on anything. “He was attacked by an infected.” That caught him completely off guard. Roan had a terrible way of doing that. “Umm, what? I—” Roan spun and faced him, anger surging through his frame, putting him back in that defensive posture once more. “I can smell his blood. Where is he?” Okay, rewind. Shep considered his words a moment, and how deeply strange they were. He smelled the blood of the infected guy on Dylan? The bouncer had worked one of the attackers over a bit, but the blood splatter on Dylan must have been minimal, because most of the blood on him appeared to be his own. And, hey, wait a fucking second—since when did one kind of blood smell different from another kind of blood? Blood was pretty much blood. “What the hell do you mean you can smell his blood?” Roan approached him, shoulders up and head low, a look in his eye just a few degrees shy of murder. “Where is he, Shep? Is he still here?” His voice was low, silky, reasonable, coldly dispassionate—a
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warning sign if there ever was one. This was a man who was comfortable with what he was going to do next, even though he was fully aware it was bad. His brother Jonny sounded the same way before he went off and broke Bobby Tanhauser’s arm. “His injuries were bloody but superficial. He was treated at the scene and taken to the police station. He was never brought here.” It was the truth, but he expected Roan to accuse him of lying. It didn’t happen. He cocked his head, nostrils flaring, and then he nodded faintly, looking straight through him. “Doesn’t matter. I want the ringleader.” He stalked toward him, and Shep stepped aside, wondering if he was going to shove him or hit him. But no, Roan would have just run over him. He stormed out as though Shep had never been in his way at all. Couple of things: he muttered a word that sounded like “Hurry” (Harvey?) under his breath, but it was hard to tell, as he was growling. It was the kind of growling that made the hair on the back of Shep’s neck stand up. It reminded him a bit of the Benson’s dog, a big-ass Rhodesian ridgeback that was perhaps the nastiest beast he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. It wasn’t a human noise, and he couldn’t help but shudder a bit as he followed Roan out. “What are you gonna do? Man, don’t do anything rash….” Shep reached out and touched Roan’s arm, but he didn’t grab him, as he knew that wouldn’t end well. Roan spun around so fast that Shep jumped back, afraid there might be a fist coming his way. There wasn’t, but he kind of wished there had been. “Stay out of this,” he snarled, his growl never ceasing even as he spoke. The words were syllables lost in the rumble. And— —holy shit. Shep just stood there, gaping, as Roan stalked out of the hospital, everyone scrambling to get out of his way. Had he actually seen that? He must have. Roan’s eyes had changed. In one moment he’d gone from having Human eyes to having cat’s eyes. It had even looked like his canine teeth were longer, thicker: fangs. But that couldn’t be true. Infecteds changed differently, depending on the viral type, but
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some things remained pretty constant. For instance, the eyes usually were the first thing to change, but it wasn’t instantaneous. Like most of the transformation, it occurred in stages, and while it was quicker than the bones breaking and restructuring themselves, it still took about ten minutes for the pupils to change shape, for the irises to bloat and the cornea to alter. Usually one eye changed before the other, although pieces of both could alter more or less in synch. And like everything about transformation, it hurt like fuck. But just like that, Roan’s eyes had altered. One moment he was talking to a Human being, and then next he was looking into the eyes of an overgrown predator who still retained a Human ability to hate. Pupils had gone from circles to ovals, and his irises seemed too big, his eyes too glazed and yet too sharp. The Human was falling away, being shed like an old skin. Virus children were different; Shep knew that. He remembered, during one of his classes on the “special needs of infected individuals,” his professor admitted that virus children were pretty much terra incognita, as most were born so damaged and died so young it was impossible to say both how and why they were so different than postutero infectees. His opinion was that if the fetus was able to survive the total integration of the viral strands into their DNA, then they were in essence a different species: neither Human nor Human infected, but something other. It was a controversial stance to be sure, and some suggested crazy as well as racist (specist), but in his favor, it couldn’t be proven or disproven. It was a hypothesis in a vacuum, because there weren’t enough surviving viral children to say. Roan was actually one of three Shep had encountered, in total, in his life, and the only one not in an incubator or developmentally disabled. He was the only one he’d ever actually had a conversation with and the only one not visibly deformed. He felt like calling Professor Bell and telling him he had found his example. He had found a virus child that just might fit in the “other” category. Was that a good thing, really? An orderly he vaguely knew, a big Samoan guy everyone called “Bean” (he had no idea why and never asked, mainly because he didn’t want to look like an idiot), came up to him and asked, “What the fuck was that guy’s problem?”
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“Someone attacked his boyfriend,” he reported numbly, amazed at how those words didn’t even begin to cover what had happened here. He had to do something. Whether Roan transformed fully and was caught out unrestrained or Roan found who he was looking for first, Shep was convinced that somebody was going to die tonight.
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13 Corporeal IT WAS scary how easy it was to sneak into hospitals. Really, in spite of all the security it ostensibly had, if you knew the right people or simply said the right things, you could go wherever you wanted. Holden considered telling someone, but right now this was helping his cause, so fuck that noise. It was way too late for visiting hours, but ever since finishing up with “Doug,” his pilot client, he’d been sitting beside Ponyboy’s bed, reading aloud to him from the bookreview section of Entertainment Weekly. Doug had been oddly subdued this evening. He’d only called him six hours ago and asked Holden to meet him at his hotel, as Doug had ended up filling in for a sick pilot at the last minute, and he had a ninehour layover here. Doug hadn’t been in much of a mood to be beaten tonight. He seemed content to simply be trussed up and thrown facedown on an ugly hotel bed. It gave Holden a lot of time to flip through the TV channels, order from room service, and think. He knew he shouldn’t feel guilty about Ponyboy’s beating. He was no longer on the street, he was no longer the “den mother” looking out for anyone but himself. And wasn’t that a relief? Wasn’t that the greatest of weights off his shoulders? More so than eating regularly, more so than actually having a regular, warm place all his own to sleep—he didn’t have to look out for anyone else anymore. He was free! So why did he still feel so fucking bad about it all? Because he got out and so many of “his” boys didn’t? Didn’t Chris always tell him that? He would be getting out, it was only a matter of time, and it was generally accepted that most of them would fade away or die like Cheshire, in a crack house with a dirty needle in their arm. Street kid didn’t lead to much of a future, especially if you threw “hustler” into the mix.
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He didn’t know Ponyboy that well at all. He knew him a bit through Cowboy and Newt, both of whom felt protective toward the kid, and he wasn’t sure Ponyboy knew him beyond his legend. But he’d taken Cowboy away from him—he was still in that rehab center upstate, the one that catered to gays—and Holden had no fucking clue where Newt was. Newt went on benders and got lost for days at a time. Once he had called him from a drunk tank in Tijuana after having been missing for eight days, and Newt couldn’t actually remember what he’d been doing for the past seven days. He had a tattoo of a donkey on his ass, though. He thought that was a clue, although an extraordinarily unhelpful one. Some people still called Newt “Donkeyboy.” It was probably a good thing Newt wasn’t here, as Holden was pretty sure he’d punch his stupid ass. Christ, he had HIV (infected most likely during one of his infamous benders) and had to take care of himself. He had a whole buttload of meds the community outreach workers tried to keep him on, but if you were losing days in drunken and otherwise intoxicated hazes, you weren’t taking care of yourself. The last time Holden had seen him, he’d looked like shit. He’d lost about fifty pounds and looked like Christian Bale in The Machinist, and he had a mark on the side of his neck that he said was a bruise, but Holden thought it looked more like a carcinoma. It did occur to him that Newt could be dead; he could be a “John Doe” in the morgue in the basement. He had been considering checking it out, but how did you just go to the morgue and say, “Show me all your John Does, I may know one?” Guilt kept him at Ponyboy’s bedside, even though it was nearing three in the morning, even though Ponyboy had yet to wake up. He’d been comatose since his beating, and yes, Holden felt a bit responsible for that. He should have done a better job kicking their asses, he should have gotten to the scene faster… oh fuck, he just should have called Roan immediately. He had just stepped in and taken the rednecks out of the fight in under a minute. Some jobs you just had to leave to professionals. And Holden was losing his touch. He was getting slower, softer, indulging in something so close to a “normal” life that some of the transvestite hookers he knew now looked at him with the same scorn they usually reserved for their johns. Like they knew Holden
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deliberately kept his refrigerator half empty so he wouldn’t sit down at the end of the day and eat everything. Like food on a regular basis had become such a novelty that now that he could afford to have it, he wanted it all the time. Food had taken the place of sex for him, which was really just a job. Food was his sensual obsession, if he thought about it, and he was trying to keep from indulging even the most minor bit of it, for fear that if he did he’d become as fat as Marlon Brando at the end of his life. And maybe he could pretend he wasn’t some sad bastard who felt a little empty and needed to fill himself up with something to make it go away. He wasn’t some pathetic cliché. Yeah, okay, his head probably wasn’t in its right space, but he wasn’t sure it ever could be. He was the son of a preacher man, and you just didn’t recover from a crippling trauma like that. He’d brought the magazine from home, mainly because the hospital’s most recent magazines seemed to date from 1992, and was reading the book reviews because he thought it might piss Ponyboy off enough to wake him up. Ponyboy, like most of his generation that Holden had ever met, was not big on reading. He was cheerfully laying out the plot of a book about multiple generations of an Indian family and the rebellious daughter whose spiritual journey makes her reflect on her ancestors before deciding to just settle for the arranged marriage anyways when the door to Ponyboy’s room flew open. He was expecting the nurse who had attempted to chase him out an hour ago (he’d pretended to acquiesce and leave, hid in a bathroom for ten minutes, and then snuck back to Ponyboy’s room. Oh sure, an orderly saw him, but it was one he had flirted with, so it was cool with him), but it wasn’t Nurse Ratched. It was a not-too-bad-looking natural blond in a paramedic’s jacket, looking slightly wild-eyed, giving off the faintest scent of flop sweat. “You’re Fox, right?” the guy asked, with a hint of a Southern drawl. “One of Roan’s friends?” That made Holden cock his head at him curiously. He knew Roan had an ex who was a paramedic, and as some bizarre extension of that, he seemed to know a lot of paramedics. Or at least they seemed to know him, which was a crucial distinction. “I’m not sure he’d classify me that way, but I like to think I am. Why?” The paramedic took a deep breath and swiped limp strands of
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dirty-blond hair off his forehead. He wouldn’t kick him out of bed, but whoa, wasn’t he a touch panicky? Holden didn’t care for the highly strung; they were always high maintenance. “Do ya think if he got really upset, you could… talk him down?” It was the faintest tremble in his voice, the wild-eyed look in his eye, the smell of his sweat. Holden shut the magazine and put it on top of Ponyboy’s monitor as he stood, suddenly sure what had freaked the med tech out. “Did he lion out?” He scoffed, a startled bark of laughter that quickly died in his throat. “Is that what you call it? He’s done it before?” “When he’s very upset, yes. What happened?” Holden had a sudden mental picture of Roan rampaging through the hospital halls like Michael Myers in a Halloween film. But if that was true, there’d have been more screaming. “Someone attacked Dylan outside of Panic—” “What?” Dylan—the real name of his bartender boyfriend? Sounded like it. “—and Roan said the attacker was infected ’cause he smelled his blood on Dylan, and then he just stormed outta here growling like a fucking pit bull, and his eyes just went….” “Do you know where he’s headed?” This was worse than bad— whatever dickwad idiot had attacked Roan’s lover was asking to get their head ripped off and their throat pissed down while everyone looked on in horror. And that was the best-case scenario. Even he knew you could fuck with Roan all you wanted, but you didn’t move on to his loved ones. Roan had a thing about that. The paramedic shook his head and shrugged at the same time, a picture of desperation. He was probably as cool as an iced cucumber when it came to sucking chest wounds and emergency tracheotomies, but a guy starting to transform into a lion in front of him, without the requisite pain and misery, made him as nervous as a virgin in a room full of chicken hawks. It was kind of cute. “I dunno. My guess is the church.” “Divine Transformation?” Holden rolled his eyes and shook his head. When were people going to understand that religion—whether it was widely accepted or considered a “fringe”—was just an excuse to
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cause misery for other people? “Oh fuck. He’ll tear them to pieces.” “Can you stop him?” “I can try.” In all honesty, he was a bit more eager to help him tear through them like a hurricane of razor blades, but Roan didn’t deserve going to prison for it. You’d think there was some way to get him a medal for it instead.
ROAN’S ability to perceive time seemed to go in and out, or maybe it was just his mind. Either way, trying to hold back the lion—or his rage, whatever you wanted to call it—was such a full-time job that he lost track of everything else. One moment he was fighting to drive, keep on the road (it was harder than he’d anticipated), and the next he was prowling the grounds of the church. His sense of smell had sharpened as his mental awareness retreated, and the night was full of colors that cut through his sinus passages like broken glass. People here, more earlier but not as many now… eleven distinct heartbeats in the main house, scent trails still present in the wind adding up to hundreds, although not all necessarily from around here, not all Human. Trying to think coherently was beyond his abilities right now, and reality continued to fragment, spider-web cracks becoming fissures at the edges of his vision, breaking the night into puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit together. He hurt, his head throbbed like an open wound, but it made his anger clearer, sharper. He found Harvey’s scent trail and followed it onto the back grounds, where shapes rose up in the dark. Through these eyes, the night sky looked like an odd color of blue, the color of the sea instead of the night. Maybe he was underwater; maybe that explained everything. Harvey’s scent was a neon stripe that led to one of the small houses looming on the back lot, making him briefly wonder if he had been exiled here or chose to be away from the main house. But the thought squirmed from his grasp like an eel, and then his attention was caught by nearing heartbeats, stronger scents. Guards? Definitely men, one of whom had a sparking Taser, but Roan had no problem grabbing his arm and making it snap, the bone bursting
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through the flesh as he twisted the arm in and had the man Taser himself, the scent of blood and singed flesh like charcoal on his tongue. The other guard ran, and Roan considered pursuit. He’d be so easy to catch; he was slow, weak, and like all Humans, easy to break. But he was not Roan’s target. His target was hiding behind walls and shadows, hiding ahead of him, unaware of what was going on outside. He was inside, watching television, the blather of voices blending with an electronic hum. The door was locked, so Roan walked back to the midpoint of the yard and then ran for the door, jumping and turning so his shoulder and hip hit the door first, and just like he suspected, the doorjamb splintered and cracked under the sudden force and the door slammed open with a bang as loud as a rifle crack. Harvey let out a shocked yelp and jumped off his sofa, sending a beer falling to the carpet, where the glass bottle bounced without shattering, spilling a yeasty reek throughout the room. “You,” Roan snarled, his growl swallowing the word as Harvey stared at him in wide-eyed horror, falling back against the wall, beside the sofa, as the urine scent of fear started sneaking in beneath the alcohol. Harvey started sliding along the wall behind the sofa, color draining from his face, his mouth opening and closing like a fish drowning in open air. Finally he spit out syllables, but they were anemic things, nearly stillborn. “What—what’s happened to you… what’s wrong with your face….” Roan heard the faint crackle in his jaw of bones resetting, the taste of blood so constant he didn’t even notice it anymore, even though it ran down his throat both inside and outside, dribbling on the beige carpet and getting lost in the wet stain of beer. “You don’t go after Dylan. You leave my people alone.” It was hard to talk. Not only was his growl too loud, but his vocal cords were changing shape, he could feel them spasming in his throat like he was being very gently strangled by constant, growing pressure. Harvey’s wide eyes glanced toward the open door, but Roan shifted a single step in that direction. He wasn’t fast enough to make a run for it, and no help was coming from the main house. The way he started to slowly sink behind the sofa, as if hoping to use that as a shield, seemed to indicate that he knew he was screwed. “I don’t know wh—” Harvey began, an obvious lie, and Roan screamed in rage, a noise that came out as a roar loud enough to shift the glass of the small
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living room window in its frame. Harvey clapped his hands over his ears and winced, trying very hard not to look like he was terrified. He was failing. Roan could smell that he had pissed himself. “All right!” Harvey shouted, just as the roar died. “All right! But he wasn’t… they were just gonna grab him. It was gonna be an exchange, him for the hard drive. I don’t know what went wrong—” “You’re dead.” “Call the police, I’ll fucking confess! Is that what you want?” Harvey’s eyes met his briefly, then looked quickly away. He couldn’t look at him. “Are you changing? How can you be changing? It doesn’t work like that—” “It does for me. You stupid shit, don’t you get it yet?” Roan’s throat was shredded, his vocal cords warping out of true, so now he sounded like he’d just gargled with Drano and sandpaper, with the blood and the growling adding a strangely liquid undertone. “I am your fucking god.” For a brief moment, anger flashed in Harvey’s eyes, probably due to Roan’s blasphemy, but then his shoulders seemed to crumple. He was beaten. The cowardly shit wasn’t even going to fight for his life. Oh well. He’d had his chance.
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14 Mescaline Eyes IT
OCCURRED to Holden that this wasn’t what he’d signed on for
when he found the big guy kneeling on the grass, weeping like a baby, cradling an arm that hadn’t been broken so much as it had been nearly ripped in half. The bone was just poking out of his arm like a branch someone had stabbed through his elbow, blood running out in a stream. Holden wasn’t going to stop, but the guy was clearly in shock. There was a discarded coat on the grass—his?—so he grabbed it and quickly wrapped it around the guy’s arm, and that’s when they heard the roar that made them both start slightly. It sounded like someone had pissed off a dragon… which was, in retrospect, a fairly accurate assessment of what was going on here. “He’s not Human,” the guy breathed, betraying a hint of an Israeli accent and a big dollop of his shock. “He is, he’s just… confused,” Holden told him, running toward the noise. Was that smart? Oh hell no, it wasn’t, but he figured he’d gone this far. He did commit to his role. No one could accuse him of not doing that. He came to an open doorway in what could have been a bungalow but seemed too grand a name for an outbuilding turned into a guest cabin. “Stop!” he shouted, before he even got a look at what was going on inside. He thought he was prepared. Yes, it had been freaky the night Roan had started to transform while wrestling down that gay-bashing cop, but it still wasn’t this. What he had seen that night was mild, the warm-up for this. If Holden hadn’t known it was Roan, he might not have recognized him. His jaw was starting to distend, blood running down
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his chin in a constant flow now that almost all his teeth had come in and ripped open his gums—fangs and teeth made for tearing muscle and crunching bone. His eyes seemed large in his distorted face, cat’s eyes, and his skin gleamed slightly golden, although it took Holden’s mind a moment to comprehend that it was because some fine fur was starting to come in. His fingers seemed to be twitching in odd ways, like he had jumping beans beneath the skin, and the crackling sound was coming from them as the bones continued to break and shift into something else. He was breathing through his mouth in a pant, his shoulders hunching and popping as his back spasmed and roiled, preparing to drop him down into a four-legged stance. He didn’t know Roan could actually get this far into his change on anger alone. Or at all. It was shocking and fucking batshit, and he wanted to run away screaming, especially when Roan’s lion eyes focused on him with no recognition, just pure contempt. But this was where Holden’s training came in handy. All things he had figured out for himself, of course—how he’d learned to survive as a street kid and a hustler. Important things like swallowing whatever feeling you had and playing whatever suited the situation best—what would allow you to survive, and if at all possible control the situation. Emotionally, he shut himself off from his body, like he was outside looking in on this bizarre tableau, and as such nothing could hurt him here; nothing could touch him. He was safe here, far away, where no one could ever get him. He was in a body encased in ice. It felt nothing. It was dead meat. “I suppose telling you that Paris wouldn’t want you to do this wouldn’t work this time,” he said, in his Fox voice. Fox was almost another personality from his own, a default personality he could assume whenever he needed to, a role he had tailor-made for himself. And who wouldn’t want to be Fox? He was slick and charming, with the unwavering confidence of someone who knew everything and was shocked by nothing. He wanted to be Fox; that’s how cool he was. Roan simply looked at him, growling low, no recognition, nothing Human peeking through. The man who was trying to sink behind the ratty blue sofa kept looking at him in mute appeal, big, obvious “HELP ME”s, but Holden felt nothing for him. He must have been the man behind Dylan’s attack, ergo, he deserved this. “It’s gone too far, Roan.
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We might not be able to smooth this over. C’mon, let’s go.” The lion thing never stopped growling at him, but its eyes focused on the man instead, and his lip curled up, exposing sharp, bloody teeth. The inside of his lip was turning black. “Look at me when I’m talking to you,” Holden insisted, but the lion thing didn’t oblige him. The control of the situation—which he’d never really had—was almost totally gone now, not leaving him much choice. Glancing around, he saw a small ceramic statue of a black panther on a wall shelf near the door. He grabbed it and threw it as hard as he could near the feet of the lion thing, and it exploded into half a dozen good-sized pieces. That got the lion’s attention. Its head snapped around toward him with an angry snarl. “Good, are you listening? Knock—” It happened so fast that Holden couldn’t actually process it until it was all over. He never saw Roan move, and yet the next thing he knew, he had been slammed bodily against the wall, so hard that the shelf next to him collapsed, spilling tchotchkes on the floor as he struggled to regain the breath that had been knocked out of him. His ribs ached, and he wondered how many had been broken as the lion thing growled in his face. His breath was hot and smelled like blood, and his eyes were like black holes under glass. There was nothing in them, just perfect emptiness reflecting his own right back at him. Holden, deep inside himself, was shit-scared. But it didn’t even come close to reaching the surface. Much like dogs, Human predators knew they had won the moment they smelled fear, so Holden had learned early in his hustling career to smother it in the crib before it could ever get out. Give them no fear, give them nothing to work with, and they lost their footing. Fox was out now, and he knew how to handle this. Well, kind of. He’d never dealt with a lion man before. “I’m not your enemy, Roan, but you shouldn’t be here,” he said, as soon as he had enough breath back. “He’s not worth the murder charge and you know it.” Nothing. Nothing upon nothing. No response, a mirror showing empty mirrors. Gambit number two. “You should be with Dylan.” Response. A brief flicker deep inside the endless dark wells of his
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eyes. Something Human was still in there, just fading fast. He had to get it back. “Yeah, Dylan, remember him? Back at the hospital? Why aren’t you with him, Roan? Why aren’t you protecting him?” More response. Oh thank god or thank Buddha or thank fucking Noam Chomsky, but Fox had stumbled on the right thing to say. Again, why couldn’t he really be like Fox? He bet life was easy as Fox. Roan’s clawlike grip on his shirt started to ease, even though the spasmodic seizures of what was left of his fingers continued. It might have been easy to summon the change, but not as easy to switch off. Like most things, doing one thing was infinitely easier than doing the other. More humanity was coming back to his eyes, a light in the dark, and Holden knew he had to keep hammering this home. He had to give Roan a hand and pull him out. “He needs you. Not here, there. You should be with him. Anybody can beat this fucker’s ass, hell, I know guys who’ll make him disappear permanently for eighty dollars’ worth of crank. But right now Dylan has no one else but you. You should be there, taking care of him, not indulging some mindless need for revenge that’s not gonna help him in the slightest.” “No one fucks with my people!” Roan roared, still growling and gravelly, but there was Human emotion in it, something a cat wasn’t capable of, and now something like guilt shaded in his eyes. Holden was so happy to have him back he would have kissed him… except he was still actively bleeding out the mouth, and he still had that half-lion jaw thing going on, and it was not attractive. “Your people? He’s not your people. You love him. Wow, you can’t even admit it to yourself, can you?” Roan let him go and turned away, and Holden heaved a very quiet sigh of relief. He had been so sure he was dead. Roan showed his back to both him and his prey, whoever he was. (Who was supposedly giving him grief at the church? Harvey something? He was reasonably sure the guy’s name was Harvey something.) The boiling and popping along the shoulders seemed to slow, then stop. Proof that Roan could go pretty far into his transformation but still pull the brakes if given the right stimulus. He was staring down at the floor, the blood piddling down like a soft rain.
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Harvey was now sitting on the floor behind the couch, and from the sound of it, either hyperventilating or having an asthma attack. He’d just seen a very ugly death coming right for him, and he was having a hard time dealing with it. Well, boo-fucking-hoo. It was stupid, as the noise made Roan turn back toward him, but the transformation of his face had stopped. His hair seemed to have grown, though, and taken on a mane-like fluffiness. Holy shit, how dangerous was Roan? Seriously. He thought he’d been dangerous enough as your average Human. The growling returned in the base of his throat. “I’ll take care of him,” Holden said. “Go to Dylan. He needs you.” Roan glanced at him, and Holden saw that one of his eyes—just one—was almost Human again. It was nearly more creepy than seeing him halfway to lion mode. Here was a man who would never truly be at peace with himself, because he wasn’t just a man, but he wasn’t a lion either. He was and forever would be the unholy combination of both. “He—” “I owe you, for saving Ponyboy,” Holden said, and that was true. Roan had to know that. “I’ll take care of him. Now go. The cops’ll be here soon, and that doesn’t give me much time.” Roan looked back at the cowering Harvey and growled for several more seconds, then turned sharply on his heel and stormed out the open door, not looking at him or glancing back, probably because he couldn’t. He was riding a line of control, and he could only do what he had to. “Oh my god,” the guy who was probably Harvey said, still gasping for breath as he used the back of the couch to pull himself up to his feet. “Thank you, thank you. I thought… my god, what kinda freak is he….” Holden had reached into his front pocket, and felt the now bodywarmed metal handle of his butterfly knife, the lucky charm (and more) he’d had with him all his life on the street. As he crossed the small room toward Harvey, he expertly flicked his wrist, opening the knife and exposing the blade, which Harvey didn’t seem to see until Holden had shoved him back against the wall and put the long, cool blade right
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up against his jugular vein. Fear flooded his eyes again, now tempered with confusion. “I wasn’t saving you, fuckbrains. I was saving him.” And Holden couldn’t help but smile coldly as the reality of it all settled in Harvey’s eyes, seemingly deadening them. “Welcome to street justice, motherfucker.”
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15 Stranger By the Minute BY
THE time he staggered to his car, Roan was already half unconscious from the pain. He couldn’t say how many bones had broken and reset themselves or how many muscles had torn. All he knew was it was too damn many, and by the time he fought the lion back, he was shaking and involuntarily crying from the pain. And only the pain, damn it. But the humiliation was bad enough. With trembling hands he got the glove compartment open and managed to wrestle the top off the first bottle of pills he grabbed—what they were was irrelevant; he only had codeine and Vicodin in the car— and swallowed whatever was left in the bottle. Six or seven maybe, it didn’t matter in the big scheme of things, as nothing short of elephant tranquilizers was going to kill the pain. He felt like he was full of broken glass, his nerves on fire and melting into barbed wire, his skull shattered like an egg and hastily glued back together again. He spit blood from his aching mouth and tried to wash out the taste of it with the water he had stashed under the seat, but it wasn’t up to the task. He simply tasted more blood, coppery and salty, and he forced himself to drive and get the fuck out of there even though he hadn’t been able to stem the flow of tears from his eyes. At least they were no longer pink with blood. His mind didn’t know where to focus. It reeled like a drunken Tilt-A-Whirl. Where the hell had Holden come from? Why was he there? How did he know about Dylan? He had wanted to kill Harvey so badly. His terror was a sweet appetizer for what was to come. Was Holden really going to “take care” of Harvey? Roan thought
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he had the answer to this: yes. He hadn’t been lying. There was no way he could have lied to him in that condition. Was he really going to let Holden do his dirty work for him? Yes, obviously. He could barely drive his fucking car right now. Homicide was way out of the question. Roan swung by his office—it was on the way back to the hospital—and let himself in so he could use the bathroom. Turning on the light, he saw a horror show in the mirror: a blood-splattered man who could have been Victim #1 in a slasher film. But it was him, of course, a bloody ruin that had no right to be still standing. He tried to ignore the fact that his hair had grown an inch in the course of an hour, and that he now had a layer of reddish-gold stubble hidden beneath the blood caked on his chin and cheeks. He washed in the hottest water he could stand, filling the sink and sloshing a bit of blood-tinted water over the sides as he cleaned his face and hands and peeled off his shirt to clean off the blood on his torso. Hopefully he could salvage the shirt, because he really liked it. He found some more pain pills hidden in an Excedrin bottle and swigged them down with cold water straight from the faucet, and only then did his tears start to dry up. He sat down for a moment to let the pills work their magic and wondered if there was a mental hospital that could contain an infected. You’d think there were some. Not all people took being infected well. Many had psychotic breaks or, in the case of Paris, just had nervous breakdowns. It was hard to deal with becoming another species every once in a while, not to mention the pain of the transition and possible hazards (such as eating your pets, neighbors, or family). Once he thought he could manage it, Roan got up and searched his office for spare clothes. He always kept some here just in case, so he had a clean T-shirt and pair of jeans to pull on. He put his bloodsoaked clothes in a plastic bag and stashed them in his garbage can. When he was in better shape, he’d come back for them. He found a towel and wiped off the blood smears near the light switches, on the door, on his desk. If Fiona came here tomorrow and saw blood everywhere, she just might quit, and he rather liked her. As soon as he was done, he tossed the towel in the garbage can and went
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back out to his car. His body just throbbed with residual pain, but his head, while still aching, had a strange pill-caused lightness to it as well. Was he safe to drive? Oh, fuck it—it was past the time when the bars were closed. The streets were as close to a graveyard as they ever came. Roan made it to the hospital in one piece, but his head felt pumped full of helium, although the residual pain kept him anchored to this world. He stumbled past busy and exhausted night-shift workers who were honestly too wrapped up in their own dramas to notice him. Dylan was no longer in the room he had been in, but he had been moved recently enough that Roan was able to pick up his scent (in spite of the hospital smell of illness, blood, and cleaners that could peel the skin off a person) and follow it to the ICU. Or a place near the ICU. Right now he couldn’t tell, and he didn’t much care. Dylan was still out cold, although someone had stitched up the cut on his head and shaved off a tiny strip of hair to do it, throwing his haircut out of all whack. Roan touched Dylan’s head, running his fingers carefully through his hair. “I don’t know how I do it. I always hurt the people I want to protect the most.” He found a chair in the tiny room and pulled it over, collapsing in it and grabbing Dylan’s hand, laying his forehead on the edge of the bed. “I wish you could wake up and curse me the fuck out. Call me every name in the book, tell me how I ruined your life, kick me out of here. Just do it. I won’t fight back. Just wake up.” He waited for Dylan to respond, to do something, but he slept while the machines kept a steady, uninteresting rhythm. Roan stared at the floor in the dark and wondered how he could have fucked things up so badly.
“Y-YOU can’t—” the guy who was probably named Harvey said. “Shut the fuck up,” Holden snapped, pressing down on the knife blade. Harvey shut his mouth so fast there was an audible click as his teeth slammed together. “I’m not interested in a single thing you have to say. You hurt Dylan. You’re fucking trash.” With his other hand, Holden reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, which he
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flipped open, and punched in a number with his thumb. It was on his speed dial, but it wasn’t a number he called often at all. It was just there as an emergency, something he could use if he absolutely had to. After half a dozen rings, it sounded like the receiver was dropped before actually being answered. “Yeah?” the man on the other end slurred. In the background, very faintly, Holden heard the type of dramatic grunting and groaning he associated with porn. “Spider, it’s Fox.” He kept his eyes on Harvey, never looked away. Harvey looked like he was contemplating shouting for help, but he weighed it against the knife at his throat and thought better of it. “Oh, Fox. What can I do for ya, man?” “I have something I need to get rid of, but I don’t want to pay the dump fees. Want to help me haul it out?” It was code. Clumsy code, and yet best when dealing with Spider. Spider was a member of a biker gang. Not a leather-daddy one or a gay one, an overly macho het felonious one, the kind you occasionally saw getting busted by the feds on the evening news. Spider was one of the scariest-looking dudes he had ever met, with the most tattoos of anyone he’d ever encountered, and he was painfully confused about his sexuality. Oh sure, he’d fuck bitches (and he always referred to women as bitches, unless he was calling them cunts), but he really enjoyed fucking guys, and he had a problem dealing with this. It didn’t fit the macho image he’d grown up with and worked so hard to cultivate. So while he hired the occasional male prostitute on the side—only ones he could pay to keep their mouths shut about him—he also worked out his internal conflicts with pool cues, spiked chains, and a pair of .45s. Spider hadn’t been convicted of a felony in this state yet, to his knowledge—but it was a given he would. He often bragged about how he beat a murder rap in Nevada because the chief of police was on the payroll of the drug gang they often ran coke for, but he really did kill the guy. The most disturbing thing about that was that talking about the killing gave Spider a hard-on. Spider was a full-on closet case who became a full-on psycho because he couldn’t deal with his own personal dichotomy. He was also a methhead of a serious variety, usually high or drunk, as he had long ago given up dealing with the world sober. In spite of that, Spider had
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an inkling they might be falling under the feds’ radar, so he was very careful what he talked about and to whom. And he liked Holden enough that he promised if he ever needed something—like, say, a guy killed— all he had to do was give the word. It sounded like Spider took a drink of something before he said, “Sure. Where’re you stayin’ now?” “A place off Riverside and 42nd. Got me a lot of cats.” Harvey was staring at him in mute horror, as the code really wasn’t that hard to figure out: he was giving Spider directions to the church. “Oh… that place? Okay. We talkin’ somethin’ big here?” “Nope. Small potatoes. I call them Harvey.” Spider snorted, and the groaning in the background had stopped, indicating he’d turned off the set. Was the snort a sign he’d done a bump? Maybe. He never saw him sober. “’Kay, I’ll be there soon.” “Appreciate it.” There were no good-byes; he simply folded the phone shut and slid it back into his pocket. “The man’s a professional. You’ll disappear, and it’ll be like you never existed at all.” Harvey made a small noise like a whimper in the back of his throat. “P-please, no. I’m sorry—” “Don’t beg,” Fox spat at him. “Don’t you have any spine at all? Jesus, you fuckheads who won’t even do your own dirty work make me sick.” He pressed the knife in hard, hard enough that it broke the skin, and a thin rivulet of blood started trickling down his neck. Harvey was struggling very hard not to cry. “Now be quiet and listen, because I’m only making this offer once. If you’re very fast, you might be able to get out of state before Spider finds you. Maybe. But once you’re gone, you’d better stay gone—you feel me? Abandon the church, don’t tell them what happened to you, never ever talk about Roan or even think of Dylan again. Because Spider’s gang runs all up and down the West Coast, from Vancouver to Baja, and one phone call from me is all it takes for a bunch of angry bikers to show up at your door. You bother Roan or anyone near him again, and you’ll be nothing but a dismembered, unidentifiable corpse strewn across the I-5 corridor. Understand?” He wanted to nod, but the knife was still cutting into his throat. “I
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get it,” he whispered harshly, tears squeezing out the corners of his eyes. “I won’t—I’ll leave him alone, I won’t bother him again—” “No, you won’t,” Holden agreed, staring him straight in the eye. Working a hunch, he said, “I think I’ll fuck you before you die.” There was a flinch, a blossom of fear in Harvey’s eyes—yep, homophobe. They were really fun to mentally fuck with, because they arrogantly assumed every gay man was after their flabby, pale asses. Even if he paid him cash, Holden probably wouldn’t fuck this guy, but how was he to know that? He probably thought sex was all gays thought about, and that they fucked all the time. (Some wished they did, sure, but name a man who didn’t.) Holden withdrew the knife from his neck but still held it up so Harvey could see the smear of blood on the blade. “Run. Now.” He didn’t need to be told twice. Never taking his eyes off him, Harvey grabbed his coat and ran out the door, pretty fast for an out-ofshape guy. There—that was his Good Samaritan deed for the month. Roan probably would have felt bad about his death in the morning. Maybe. Well, odds were fifty-fifty. Holden strolled through the tiny bungalow and found the bathroom off the small bedroom. He wiped the blood off the blade with toilet paper and flushed the evidence before cleaning off the blade in the sink with antibacterial liquid soap and folding it back up. He could ditch the knife, but not here, not now. When Spider showed up, he could give it to him if he wanted, and he’d be happy to get rid of it or “recycle” it (use it himself). It probably wouldn’t be necessary—a cat cultist, go to the cops? Yeah, right. The cops would probably be here by then, and Spider would hang back, unwilling to show his face around the uniforms, but he would loiter long enough to see if Holden was in custody or not. If the gang had no cops on their payroll, they would have people on the inside, inmates, who would help him out if he was stupid enough to get arrested. Spider was a psycho dirtbag in a whole pack of psycho dirtbags, but even they had their place. Coming back through the bedroom, he saw a wallet on top of the
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dresser, along with a scattering of loose change. Holden checked the wallet, saw about forty-five bucks in cash, a debit card, and a couple of credit cards. He pocketed the wallet—no way a guy took off without taking his wallet with him; that’d look suspicious—and figured his Boulevard boys would be eating and drinking good for a couple nights or so. At least Harvey’s money would be going to a good cause.
ROAN was in a half stupor and he knew it. He could see in the dark, through the dim light of the machines, and it looked like the floor was breathing. It was rising up and flattening out in rhythm with Dylan’s breath, and he wondered how many pills he’d had. Lifting his head caused the walls to shift around him, like they were on casters, and he wondered briefly if he had fallen into a Terry Gilliam film. He didn’t think so, but if Hunter S. Thompson had ever actually done that many drugs at once, Roan finally knew what he’d felt like. “I need to balance this out,” he told the still-unconscious Dylan. “I need caffeine. I’ll be back.” He kissed him softly on his unbruised cheek and felt a surge of anger buried beneath the muffling effects of the drugs. What was Holden doing to Harvey? He hoped it was good. It took him a moment to lever himself up to his feet with the help of the bed, and then another moment to get his sea legs. Even then, he felt like he was staggering, and his brain was swimming laps inside his skull. The funny thing was, he could still feel the pain—it still felt like his eyes had been plucked from their sockets and shoved back in with dirty fingers, like he had been pulverized by a sledgehammer and then plumped up with saline until he looked vaguely Human. He got out to the corridor, where the lights suddenly seemed too bright, and he had to close his eyes for a moment before opening them slowly, readjusting to the light. While he was doing this, a young male intern in blue scrubs walked into the corridor, and giving him a look out of the corner of his eye while still reading a clipboard, said, “Sir, you shouldn’t be here.” He then stopped suddenly and looked back at Roan
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with wide-eyed horror. He looked maybe twenty, super young, but he was one of those Asian guys that looked twenty even when they were forty. “Are you all right?” Roan wondered how much of his over-intoxication was showing on his face. It must have been a lot, because this guy was staring at him like he was a ghost. “I’m fine, I just need some coffee,” he said, as the hallway seemed to pitch and yaw like a storm-tossed ship. Did he feel a little nauseous? Maybe. But it soon became irrelevant, as he couldn’t fight the dark narcotic tide any longer and sank into the soft, warm blackness.
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16 Subtle Body ROAN found himself sloshing through ankle-deep water, not a hundred percent sure where he was. Looking up, he saw he was somewhere off the coast… or at least on a beach of some sort. Although it seemed like there was some hulking shape off in the water, obscured by thick fog, and the coastline was an unfamiliar blend of cement-colored sand and broken rocks as big as satellite dishes. As he waded toward shore, he saw someone sitting on one of the rocks. “This is a dream, isn’t it?” Roan asked the figure, as snakes the color of water fled before his advancing footsteps. Drug dream? Oh yeah, big time. “Of course it is. What d’ya expect?” He froze hearing the voice. He had honestly expected Paris, his usual dream companion, but this voice had an Irish accent. He felt a coldness in his stomach as his gut twisted, and oily sweat prickled on his back. Oh shit. “Connor?” “Not what you were expectin’, right?” Roan could see him now, sitting on top of a boulder with his knees drawn up to his chest, arms around his legs. He looked just like he always did, his shockingly deepblack hair mussed up and making his skin look gothically pale. His eyes were a vivid blue, Caribbean Sea blue, contrasting against the black lines of his eyebrows and the bruise-colored smudges beneath his eyes, speaking quietly of too many late nights and too many binges. He had a pleasant oval face, almost impish, which highlighted his big, startling eyes, and it made Roan’s heart hurt to recall how oddly striking he was. Connor never knew it, though. His hair had always had the nowfashionable “bed-head” look because he very rarely combed it; he seemed to think running his hands through his hair was enough. He’d
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never owned any hair products or cologne, and did all his clothes shopping at thrift stores (in fact, he’d taught Roan which ones were the best ones, and how to look for a good deal); he put to rest the stereotype of the vain gay man. Although maybe he had been the living stereotype of the boho one, the artist who was deliberately shabby when he didn’t need to be. But he hadn’t been pretentious or snobby. He was just a guy who didn’t know the rules and didn’t really care about them, preferring to make them up as he went along. He was always quite fiercely himself, which was why it had been such a rush and such a pain to be with him. Heaven and hell in one pretty package. “You just don’t like thinkin’ about me, do ya?” “You fucking hurt me, you selfish bastard,” Roan snapped, guilt making his stomach ache. “You didn’t have to kill yourself.” Connor shrugged, sliding off the rock and down to the beach. “Sometimes it hurts so much you just don’t know how to deal with it anymore. You gotta know what that’s like.” Roan stared at him, aware this was his subconscious lecturing him about something, using Connor as a warning and a reminder. He really resented it. “I am not you.” “’Course you’re not. You wouldn’t even know how to write a play.” Connor gave him a broken half grin, the kind he always used to give him after making a smart-ass remark. He knew it made him look endearing. “We had some good times, yeah?” Roan rubbed his forehead. What had happened to him? Something had happened; he was pretty sure of that. “Yeah, we did. And some pretty miserable ones.” “I was a miserable bastard at times,” he admitted. “But so were you. You were so fuckin’ unhappy bein’ a cop.” “It wasn’t easy. I got a lotta shit.” Roan thought about it for the first time in a long time. He didn’t let himself think of those days too often, because his memories of Connor were inextricably tied in with it. But thinking about that, he also recalled what a relief it had been to shuck off the uniform at the end of the day (or night, depending on the shift), and how he felt free when he was with Con. He’d felt like he was truly himself, while at work he’d felt constrained. He didn’t feel that way anymore, but he did feel lost more often than not, and the only
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reason he could see for that was the absence of Paris. He was his polar north, and now that he was gone, Roan’s own internal compass just didn’t work anymore. Connor hugged him, and for a moment Roan panicked. He didn’t know what to do. The smell of Connor brought back so many memories, half bad and half good: the small tattoo on the back of his neck (a heart—Con said his mother always told him he wore his heart on his sleeve, so he decided to put it somewhere else) that Roan used to kiss to wake him up on Sunday mornings; the ugly drunken fights; the incredibly hot make-up sex; the low points of finding Con passed out at his computer or on the couch, a mostly empty bottle of Glenfiddich dribbling on the floor next to him; going to the opening of one of his plays and seeing the pure, giddy joy on Con’s face; coming back from the gym to find Con burning one of his manuscripts in a garbage can, setting off the fire alarm. So many ups and downs, so many good times and bad. There were few middle times. With Con, it had always been great or horrid, almost never something in between. Connor may have had an abbreviated life, but while he lived it, he lived it full throttle; Roan had to give him that. Roan hugged him back, inhaling the memories along with his scent, and told him, “You were such a son of a bitch. I miss you.” “You know I loved it when ya talked dirty to me,” he replied, and Roan laughed. Con pulled back and gave him that heartbreaking crooked grin, the one that always looked slightly lopsided, like he was imperfectly mimicking someone else’s smile. Shortly after his death, Roan had been contacted by a journalist who wanted to interview him about Con and the “secret pain that killed him.” Roan declined to talk to anyone about Con, ever, under any circumstances. Everyone assumed it was his childhood sexual abuse— often acknowledged in some form or another in his plays—that was the biggest trauma in his life, but during a drunken ramble one night, Con had told him that hurt, but it wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him. No, the worst thing, as far as he was concerned, was that his parents chose to believe his abuser over him, for years and years. Only when others started coming forward, accusing the priest of similar abuse, and a reporter discovered that the church had moved him around Ireland in advance of other sex scandals at the various parishes he had
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worked for, did they decide to believe him. But by then it was too late; he was gone, emotionally, mentally, physically. As far as he was concerned, they had chosen the Church over him. His anger toward them was unabated by time. In Connor’s will, he had a special message for his parents: “Not one cent. You don’t get my body, my ashes, a single scrap of paper. You abandoned me, and now I abandon you.” He left it all to his ex-wife and Roan: everything he owned, rights to his work, money, his ashes. Maybe the Monaghans knew—they didn’t show up for his memorial service, but they did show up for his will reading. Roan knew if Con had left everything to him, they’d have taken it to court—no queer boy was getting anything else from their son—but since his exwife was made the executrix of his estate, they didn’t. No matter that it was a sexless sham marriage, a last-ditch attempt to earn acceptance from his parents. They still felt she was his wife, divorce or no divorce. It probably helped that, at the time of his death, he was barely scraping by. Only after his death was he suddenly considered a “genius,” and the money started coming in. Roan had thought that was a cliché, but apparently it was still true in some cases. It occurred to him that Con’s ex-wife had left a message on his machine a week or two ago. He’d never returned it, but only because he’d got busy and forgot. Was this his subconscious’s way of reminding him? No, probably not. There was probably more to it than that. As if to send that point home, Con told him, “If numbing yourself is all you can think about, something’s wrong.” He sighed wearily. “You are so not the person to tell me that.” Connor grimaced slightly before cupping Roan’s face in his hand. “No, love, there’s no one better to tell you that.” And then he suddenly remembered what had happened. Roan woke up with a head full of cotton wool and a mouth full of sourness, his throat and stomach aching, a tube under his nose pumping air that was scented vaguely like plastic. It felt like his stomach and throat lining had been scrubbed away with a wire brush. Stomach pumped? Probably. He gave himself a moment to acclimate, then took the tube off and let it fall on the floor. He knew there was another patient in the room, separated by a curtain, but judging from the sounds
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of a monitor that wasn’t his, that guy wasn’t going to be bothered by anything he did. How stupid—he had taken too many pills. The worst part was he had several more aches on top of the old one. What a fucking pain in the ass. (Actually the only part of him that didn’t hurt at the moment.) As he sat up, he saw movement in the dark near the doorway, and a familiar voice asked, “I just can’t leave you alone for one second tonight, can I?” Holden. Oh Jesus. “How long have I been here?” Mostly by the shadow of his posture alone, Roan could tell Holden was at once amused and appalled by the whole situation. He couldn’t blame him. “At the hospital? No idea. But it’s been almost two hours since they pumped your stomach.” “Fuck.” It was bad enough to feel totally humiliated—it was worse to be so in front of Holden for the second (or possibly third) time tonight. He sat on the side of the hard hospital bed, the cool air on his legs letting him know he was in a paper hospital gown. Great, another humiliation. “I have your clothes,” Holden said and stepped forward to put them on the end of the bed. It was dark enough that Roan couldn’t see his face, for which he was glad. “This has been a remarkably shitty night for you, hasn’t it?” “I think that’s an understatement.” Roan grabbed the clothes and slipped on his jeans under his gown. He felt unsteady on his feet, hollow in the gut, but he didn’t know what was physical and what was emotional. Yeah, you knew when you were self-destructive, but you thought you had it under control… until you didn’t. Connor must have gone through something similar, thinking his alcoholism and depression and self-loathing was nothing he couldn’t handle, until it killed him. He never wanted to become Con, but at some point he had. After he ripped off the gown and pulled his shirt on, Roan asked, “How’s the Harvey situation?” Holden leaned back beside the doorway, so Roan could see him as a solid shape in the dark, with a casually cocked hip and his arms folded over his chest, like he was trying to hold in everything he actually wanted to say. “You’ll never see him again.” “Do I get details with that?”
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“Be happy without them.” He paused briefly, signaling a topic shift. “There was some speculation over whether it was a suicide attempt, but I was able to convince them it was accidental, that this is your transformation week, and you were so desperate to check up on Dylan that you came here straight from home. Apparently a lot of infecteds accidentally OD on pain meds around transformation time, because you guys are in so much pain, and things are so wacky what with being a cat and being a person and whatnot.” “And you knew that how?” “PBS had a report about it.” In spite of the darkness, he must have known that Roan was staring at him, because he added defensively, “Hey, I sometimes have some time to kill in client’s hotel rooms, and there’s shit on, okay?” Dressed and standing as straight as he could at the moment, he had to ask, “How’s Dylan?” “Asleep, as far as I know. But there’s no way you’re getting back in his room. Not only is Nurse Ratched on guard, but the intern you passed out in front of is still pushing for a psych consult.” Shit. Roan considered his options and wasn’t too surprised that he had few. He absolutely didn’t want to stay here if he didn’t have the option to leave. He needed to stay with Dylan… but he really didn’t like the sound of a psych consult. That was a one way ticket to Crazyville for good. “Can you get me out of here?” Holden’s silhouette cocked his head like that was the stupidest question he’d heard all night (quite possibly). “Did you forget who you were talking to? Honey, I can get you out of almost anything.” There was a joke there, but he decided not to make it. He was going to owe Holden a lot for this, so he supposed he should simply be grateful for his generosity and his easy gift of gab. Holden snuck him out of the hospital through a way he didn’t know existed, but was apparently for the janitorial staff. Roan almost asked him how he knew about it but decided that this was just the type of thing Holden would go out of his way to know. Roan never entered a place without being aware of the immediate exits, and Holden never went anywhere without taking note of the more obscure ways out. He had the spirit of a sneak thief in him.
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Holden led him toward his car, and Roan was going to object but then realized he probably was in no shape to drive right now. He was lucky to have gotten away with it earlier. The drugs may have been theoretically out of his system, but his head was still swimming, and he felt unconscionably hollow, like he was just the husk of a human being. “Where am I taking you?” Holden asked. That was a good question. If he went home, the cops could find him easily, as could Dee, whom he was more concerned about. Dee was just going to kill him once Shep told him what had happened. He wanted to put this off as long as possible. Also, there were a whole bunch of nice, comforting pills waiting for him at home, and he didn’t know if he was strong enough to fight the need for them right now. “Not home. I can’t deal with that right now. How about a motel or something?” Holden shrugged and got in the car, and Roan got in the passenger side, figuring that was okay. “You know, you caught a break,” Holden told him, once Roan had collapsed into the passenger seat. “The guy whose arm you snapped like a swizzle stick? He couldn’t give a description to the police, and seemed to think you were wearing a prosthesis on your face. “ Roan didn’t even remember anything coherent after arriving at the church. His memory was like a broken mirror, something so completely shattered and disconnected it was hard to imagine that it had ever been one whole piece. “The cops will know who it was.” And they would, too. What they would do about it was another story. “They’d have to prove it. And I caught up with you before you reached the church, so we have no idea who the fuck that could have been.” Just like that; an easy lie, casually delivered, so reflexive it almost sounded like a natural truth. Roan looked at him curiously, but Holden was watching the road. His face flashed in and out as it was illuminated briefly by passing lights and plunged back into darkness again. Roan hadn’t even noticed when he started the car. “Why are you helping me?” “It’s called friendship. Look it up.” Holden glanced at him, then shot him a brief, almost feral smile, all teeth and confidence. “C’mon,
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Roan, you were always good to me and my boys. Consider this good karma coming back at you.” And the more cynical side of him knew that Holden liked to collect favors and people who might turn out to be good to know at some point in time, and he may have just fallen into that category. Was he going to protest it right now, though? No. He leaned his head against the cool glass of the passenger window, which felt inordinately good right now. He watched the road slip by like a fast-running river and wondered how long he would feel this empty. “Am I going crazy?” “No, you’re just self-destructing. I’ve seen it happen to a lot of people. Most people do it one drink at a time, but you just had to go and prove to everyone you were gay by being flamboyant about it.” He scoffed in mock disgust. “Okay, we get it, you’re dying inside. Do you have to make a big deal out of it, cocksucker?” Roan wasn’t sure if trying to make a joke out of it was helpful. Well, it was laugh or cry, wasn’t it? “Are you saying you’ve never selfdestructed?” “Oh, fuck no. I love myself too much to do that. That’s the key— be a conceited fuck, and you’ll never want to implode.” He winked at him as they passed beneath the halo of a streetlight. It almost made Roan laugh. Not quite, but the fact that he nearly wanted to seemed remarkable. He thought about Connor for a moment and realized it didn’t hurt quite like it used to. Would he get there with Paris one of these days? Maybe. Not just now, though. “Are you still bucking for an assistant job?” “After tonight, I better damn well have it.” “I’m on the verge of making you partner,” he admitted, and to his surprise, Holden chuckled at that. Maybe he wasn’t too far gone if he made someone else laugh. It gave Roan hope.
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17 Ghosts HOLDEN actually ended up taking him to Holden’s apartment, arguing that no one would think to look for him there. Roan had to admit that was true, and besides, he was too tired to actually protest. As it was, Roan didn’t think he’d have to worry about Holden hitting on him, because once you saw a guy come within a few shattered bones of turning into a lion, could you actually be attracted to him? Well, perhaps if you were the kinky sort, into transformation porn, or if you had a cat fetish of some kind. There were quite a few people like that, especially on the Internet, but Holden had never been one. He’d have been pretty up front if that was his fetish. They’d barely been there five minutes, and Roan had said he was sleeping on the sofa, when Holden’s cell phone went off. It was his special phone, the one only his clients knew about. He answered it with an amused expression on his face, and Roan tried not to listen as he helped himself to a drink from Holden’s fridge. He could only hear Holden’s side of the conversation, but from what he could tell, Holden was surprised to hear from this client, whom he didn’t think was in town, and the client was both a little drunk and a little horny. Holden agreed to visit him at his hotel for double rate, since it was “off hours” and he was on a night off. The client apparently agreed to the double rate and requested something, because Holden said he’d bring “it” (he had no idea what “it” was, and he absolutely didn’t want to know under any circumstances). As soon as Holden closed his phone, he grimaced in embarrassment and said, “You’d never guess who that was.” He wasn’t actually offering to tell him. Holden kept his client confidentiality better than most private investigators and lawyers Roan knew. Oh sure, he’d talk about them, but with obviously phony names,
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and he never gave any identifying details. Sure, he’d tell you this one guy likes to get the shit beat out of him, but he never gave you details that could help identify him on the street. They were all vague, sad people, the ones you’d be scared of if you didn’t pity them. “A televangelist or a Republican senator,” Roan guessed. Holden chuckled. “Oh, you think they’re all closet queens, do you?” “Self-loathing closet queens. If I were you, I’d secretly tape them and post it all over the Internet. Which, I’ve been led to believe, is a series of tubes.” Holden shook his head and smirked. “You’re such a cynic.” “Says the guy who sells his body for a living.” “Hey, I’m tapering off of that.” “And going into porn.” “It’s a better deal.” “I’m sure it is. That’s the scary part.” Holden smiled like he was suppressing a laugh and said, “Help yourself to anything, my casa is your casa and whatnot, although I’d appreciate you not going through my porn stash. I should be back in a couple of hours, tops.” Roan nodded, holding onto his can of soda like it was a lifeline. He wasn’t sure why. It stung like a son of a bitch going down. Carbonation and recent stomach pumping didn’t seem to mix. “Thanks.” Such a weak word, and yet he meant it sincerely, for everything. Holden seemed to understand the weight and breadth of it all, because his expression sobered. “It’s okay. You’re better than this, Roan. You don’t have to go this way.” Roan almost said that Holden didn’t either, but held it in. Holden probably knew that, and there was no point in stating the obvious. While he disappeared into his bedroom to get ready, Roan collapsed on Holden’s couch and was glad it was comfortable enough to sleep on. He felt like he was drifting off right now, going away to a happy place where he hadn’t come within two or three minutes of a full transformation, and where he didn’t accidentally overdose on
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painkillers in a hospital. And it was accidental, right? The scary thing was, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure himself. He was pretty sure if he was going to kill himself he’d just tuck his gun barrel underneath his chin at a slight angle, certain to blow the back of his skull out, and then pull the trigger, which would guarantee both success and the fact that he’d be dead before he even heard the shot. Only then did it occur to him that he should probably be worried that he had a planned suicide route. When Holden appeared again, it was with a folded blanket and a pillow he put on the arm of the couch. “Get some sleep, you look like hell.” “Let’s see you look perky after getting your stomach pumped.” He then noticed what Holden was wearing and added, “Well, maybe you could.” “Hey, he’s into bad boys,” Holden said, not so much defensively as in simple explanation. He was wearing a white T-shirt so tight that Roan could clearly see he was wearing a nipple ring on the right side. His jeans were almost as skintight and ripped in strategic places, while he put on a black leather jacket with lots of extraneous chains, zippers, and chrome accents than was ever necessary. He jingled when he walked. “Slightly stereotypical, Hollywood-style clean bad boys.” “Again, couldn’t you do something better for money?” He shrugged. “Prob’ly. But I’m getting twenty-five hundred for one hour’s work. Where else am I gonna make that kinda money?” Roan stared at him in disbelief. “He’s paying you two thousand dollars?” “And I’m getting room service on top of that.” He grinned with a strange sort of savage pride. “He’s probably so drunk he’ll pass out before I have to fuck him, so it’ll be the easiest money I’ve made since Doug.” “I’m not even gonna ask.” Holden went to the door, but before he opened it, he said, “He’s a congressman, whose wife has the scariest hair helmet this side of the 700 Club.” “I knew it. You should really expose these hypocrites.”
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“Well, no one likes a tattletale. Besides, if it wasn’t for these selfloathing freaks, I’d have to get an honest job, and who wants to see that? Not me, sweetheart.” He waved at him from the door. “Ciao, baby.” Could he have picked a stranger sidekick if he tried? No, probably not. Roan figured he’d have to work pretty damn hard and would definitely have to visit every sideshow he came across. He was so exhausted he slept hard and, thankfully, dreamlessly. He never even heard when Holden came back, but when Roan cut through his bedroom to use the bathroom, he saw Holden was asleep on his bed, almost completely lost in a pile of comforters. In his bathroom, Roan looked into the medicine chest out of habit and found two amber prescription bottles. Both were for other people, but they were fake labels: the bottle for Peter Wang was supposedly for Xanax, but he looked inside and saw little blue pills—aka Viagra. The bottle for Amanda Dear was supposedly for tetracycline, but contained pills of unclear intent. Either way, it didn’t smell at all like something from the antibiotic family. (And he knew that smell quite well, because all antibiotics stung his nose.) He was tempted to ask Holden about this, but that would have meant admitting he’d opened the bottles and looked inside, which was just too creepy and needy, basic junkie behavior. He was going to head out to his car and then remembered Holden had driven him here. Fuck. He called a cab, and while waiting for it checked his messages. He had several from Dee, almost all starting, “You motherfucker,” which didn’t encourage him to listen longer. He fast-forwarded through most of them. Chris had also called, just to see if he had anything new to report. Rainbow had called early in the morning, to say that there had been a “fracas” on church grounds last night, and David Harvey was now missing. No one knew what had happened to him. Rumors had it he (Roan) was to blame for all the violence last night, but for some reason no one wanted to pursue it with the police. “I don’t like that, Roan,” she said, sounding nervous. “If you did it, I don’t like it either, but them not pressing charges? Something’s going on there. It can’t be good for you.”
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Her concern was touching. Did he have anything to worry about? Perhaps. It was hard to tell what a loony church would do next. But he hoped they had got the message that if they went after anything near and dear to him, they would pay, swiftly and bloodily. Wow—that didn’t sound at all insane. The last message was from one of the nicer nurses at the hospital, named Akembi. She let him know that Dylan was now conscious and asking for him. According to the time code on the message, she had called a little over an hour ago. As soon as the cab arrived, he had it take him to the hospital. Never mind that he hadn’t showered or changed his clothes or eaten or even shaved off this beard he now had—he owed it to Dylan to see him. Also, selfishly, he had to make sure he was okay. It was busy at the hospital when he arrived, but in a way that was good, as he was able to cut through the crowd and not gain the notice of anyone by the admissions desk. When Roan ducked into Dylan’s room, he was sitting propped up in bed, talking to an intern in blue scrubs (thankfully not the intern Roan had collapsed in front of). Dylan looked tired and bruised, his face still swollen and one eye blackened to the point that his eyelid was barely open on the right side. Still, there was a brightness in his eyes upon seeing Roan. The intern, a petite Indian woman with a rather severe bob, told Dylan she’d come back later and gave Roan a polite nod as she left the room. Roan hugged Dylan—carefully—and kissed him on the unbruised side of his face. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whispered. Dylan wrapped an arm around his waist and gave him a weak but affectionate squeeze. “It’s not your fault.” “It is. They attacked you because of me.” “You didn’t kill them, did you?” He wasn’t kidding. Dylan’s tone of voice was deadly serious. He was glad he didn’t have to lie to him. “No, I didn’t. The cops got them first.” Dylan let out a deep sigh of relief. “Thank god. The first thing I thought was you were gonna kill them.”
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“You know me too well.” Dylan kissed his cheek affectionately. “I know. It scares me too.” He ran his hand over his beard and scowled. “I can’t have been out that long.” “It’s a long story.” Roan rested his head on Dylan’s chest, not only so he could hear his heartbeat, but also so he didn’t have to look Dylan in the eye. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were mad at me.” “Why the hell would I be mad at you? You didn’t make them hurt me. You have to expect the occasional psycho when you’re dating Batman.” He groaned into his chest. “Please, don’t you start.” “What, they can call you that down at the station, but I can’t?” Roan could hear the smile in his voice. “You do, and there might be some Robin jokes headed your way.” “Oh, please don’t. I don’t like tights. Also, that’s a bit creepy.” “What, the Dark Knight and his little Boy Wonder?” Dylan mock shuddered. “Eww. How did they ever get away with that?” “I have no idea.” Dylan stroked his hair, and Roan just enjoyed it for a moment. Suddenly the lingering aches of last night didn’t seem so bad. “How are you feeling?” “Like I have the worst hangover of my life. But I’m not sure if I got it before or after the truck hit me.” Roan kissed him softly, on the throat and up his neck, his skin tasting like salt, stopping at a gentle kiss on the lips. As much as it pained him to look down into Dylan’s bruised face, he did, carefully stroking his hair back from his forehead, avoiding the stitches. “If I say I’m sorry again, will you hit me?” “That’s not very Buddhist.” Dylan paused briefly. “Yes.” He gave him a pained smile, his fingertips stroking the back of Roan’s neck, a ghostly feeling that raised goose bumps along his spine. His fingers were cold, whatever that meant. “Just get me out of here, and consider yourself forgiven.” There was too much concern in Dylan’s one good eye. Roan knew, with a sinking feeling, what that was about. So now it was his
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turn to suck it up and be brave. As soon as he was sure he could do it, he looked down at Dylan and said, “I’m going to lay off the pills, okay? I can’t promise that I’ll stop cold, ’cause I’m still going to need them come transition time, but I promise that I’ll stop taking them for no reason other than to get numb.” Dylan stroked his hair, his look somewhat doubting, but he nodded faintly. “I guess that’s all I can ask right now. Will you let me help you? Will you open up to me?” He nodded, not sure if that was a promise he could actually keep. But he would try, so maybe that was worth something. “I’ll try. You know I’m no good at this shit.” “Hey, you’re Batman. You’re great at everything.” He scowled at him while Dylan grinned, revealing old blood on his teeth. Before he could say anything, a doctor came in and chased Roan out, which was fair enough. He talked to another doctor about releasing Dylan, but they wanted to keep him overnight. They were waiting for some test results to come back, and besides, they were always cautious about head injuries, and he had been unconscious for a long time. Roan was wondering how to break the news to Dylan that he had to suffer through another night here when his phone hummed in his pocket. He thought it might be Dee calling to cuss him out, but a check of the number display revealed it to be Murphy. He supposed it was her turn to have a go at him, so he answered. “Hey, Dropkick.” “Hey Angus,” she replied just as casually. “You get up to some shit last night at the church?” “I’m taking the Fifth.” “That’s what I thought.” She sighed wearily. “Well, beyond that, I thought you’d want to know about Roland Chesney.” “What about him?” But even as he asked, he thought he knew. If he was a bust, she’d have told him without preamble. “I think we found something.”
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18 Imitation of Life ROAN sank down into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs that it seemed you could only find in hospitals or DMVs and asked, “Found what exactly?” “I did some digging, just for the hell of it, and it turned out Roland Chesney’s uncle, Michael Chesney, owned a big piece of land out around the Sun Valley build. Roland lived there for a few years, supposedly taking care of the place while his uncle died of cancer. The place went to Mike’s daughter after his death and Roland found himself kicked out, but the place has been abandoned ever since.” “That’s coincidental. It’s just a confirmation of Rocco’s story.” “Here’s the interesting bit. A year ago, a dog in the area apparently unearthed a Human arm bone. They never discovered where the dog dug it up, but the sheriff of the town really didn’t like it. He was sure there was a body out there that they were somehow missing. I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a connection. Hell of a coincidence, don’t you think?” “Does my opinion matter here? You talk to the sheriff?” “Yeah, I did. He talked to Mike Chesney’s daughter about looking around the place, and she told him he could burn it down if he wanted. She doesn’t give a fuck what they do with it. She can’t sell it because it’s downwind from Sun Valley.” He lolled back in the chair, his throat still raw from last night’s stomach pumping, the weariness settling on him like a heavy, wet blanket. “That’s not exactly finding something. I thought you were talking about a dead body or something.” “We’re workin’ on it. Jesus, Mr. Impatient.” After huffing an irritated sigh, she added, “I’m getting a feeling about this, Roan. I think
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you’ve stumbled upon something.” His stomach growled, reminding him he still felt empty. He wasn’t going to scoff at her intuition, because it was something that good detectives developed along the way, and Murphy was a good detective. “I usually only stumble on things lately.” “Hey, no self-pitying bullshit right now. I’m in no mood for it. I’m feelin’ too good.” He was glad for her, so he thought he ought to go as soon as possible before he got her down. “Keep me updated, okay?” “Sure. How’s Dylan?” “Conscious and talking. I think he’s gonna be okay.” “I’m glad. You keep him safe now, yeah? There’s been a resurgence in gay bashing for no apparent reason. Get him a Taser and teach him how to use it.” “He’s a Buddhist. He’s opposed to violence.” “Tell him the bad guys aren’t. Gotta go. Don’t kill anyone unless you hafta.” “I won’t, Mother,” he replied, stressing the last word sarcastically. He heard her laughing as she hung up. He slumped down in the uncomfortable chair and closed his eyes for a moment, as they were hot and itchy for no obvious reason. He must have fallen asleep, though, as he woke up to find Dee leaning over him, looking down at him with an equal mix of curiosity and sternness. “You haven’t returned a single one of my phone calls,” he pointed out. Luckily, Dee was on duty and was now inclined to be kind to him. He took Roan to the café across the street from the hospital—he was on a break—and bought him lunch. He didn’t lecture him, just told him if he ever did anything as stupid as overdose again, he’d get some muscle queens he knew to wrap him in a straightjacket and throw him in an aggressively Christian rehab center, where he would undoubtedly kill and eat at least half the staff and end up in prison. That was a devious plan, and Roan respected him for it. Having a steady boyfriend was doing Dee a world of good. Even though Dee warned him his digestive system might revolt so soon after having his stomach pumped, Roan was ravenous and
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ended up eating two bacon cheeseburgers (fuck the calories and cholesterol. Transition burned lots of calories, and he’d probably lost two pounds since yesterday—his pants actually felt looser) and a plate of chili-cheese fries, which led Dee to proclaim him a “closet straight,” since no self-respecting gay man would actually eat chili-cheese fries. Roan accused him of trafficking in stereotypes because Roan would eat chili fries, and in fact had actually eaten poutine up in Canada. (Roan wasn’t sure he would eat it again, but at least he had tried it.) To be fair, the chili fries were gross, but he was so hungry he didn’t care. As soon as Dee left to go back to work, Roan returned some phone calls. Fiona had called to check in on him and Dylan, and he let her know they’d both survived. She offered to find the culprits and give them the bullwhipping of a lifetime—again, she reminded him she could take the skin off a grape with her whips. And she had a selection of them—god, he was starting to feel like the John Waters of the detective set, surrounding himself with this cadre of the strangest people you could ever meet. But was that so bad? He actually liked John.… But he had been truthful when he said the cops had gotten Dylan’s assailants. After getting one at the scene, he caved pretty quickly and named his partner, showing that Dave Harvey hadn’t found volunteers known for their smarts or loyalty. What a shock. He left a message for Holden, thanking him for last night. He wanted to ask again what he had done to Dave, but he knew he’d never get a straight answer, and besides, he was probably better off not knowing. If he knew, he was an accessory after the fact. Roan had done enough bad things that he didn’t need to add one more thing to them. Because he had asked him to, Roan dropped by Dylan’s apartment to water his plants. He had two bonsai trees, a juniper and a cypress, both in glazed ceramic pots with gravel and sand bases like little Zen gardens, and a passion fruit vine that he had started from a seed packet but was now about ten feet tall and sprawled all over an impromptu trellis. It was in the living room beside the window, where he had replaced the blinds with curtains because the passion fruit kept sending out tendrils and tangling itself in the blind slats. While there, De’Andra, the bald lesbian from downstairs who still looked at Roan like he might explode at any second, came upstairs to ask how Dylan
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was doing. He invited her in, but she just stood in the doorway, giving him a look that suggested she knew damn well that Dylan was way too good for his pasty ass. Roan saw that the picture Dylan had painted of him with his halfHuman, half-lion face was still in the living room on an easel, covered with a drop cloth. Roan asked De’Andra if she knew the people running the gallery show Dylan was doing—it was a hunch—and she said yes, which was no shock at all. He said that Dylan had wanted to add a painting, but since he was now in the hospital, he couldn’t. Could she make sure it got in? Of course she could, so Roan handed her the lion painting, still concealed by the drop cloth, and thanked her for doing this for him. Roan wondered if she would be retroactively mad at him for making her an accessory, assuming Dylan ever told her that he’d never put the painting in his show. After watering his plants, Roan sat down on the couch and just absorbed the silence and the scent of Dylan—and paint, paint thinner, charcoal—that permeated the place. Roan vowed to treat him better and learn to allow himself to feel like a real person again. It just terrified him. Physical pain he could take—he’d better be able to by now. But emotional pain… there was no building up a tolerance to that. God, he was such a pussy. And not the cat kind either. He called Chris to let him know he had made some progress, although he was careful not to mention the police investigation into Roland Chesney. There was no sense in getting his hopes up when it could turn out to be nothing. He’d had enough heartbreak in his life. Because Roan found he didn’t notice the urge for pills if he was doing something, he decided to go home and catch up on everything he was neglecting: laundry, paperwork, facing all his pain pills and not taking them. After everything he had been through in his life, Roan was sure he was strong enough to face that. Considering how things had been going, he wasn’t too surprised to find an unmarked police car parked out in front of his house. He also wasn’t surprised to see Gordo get out of it as Roan parked in the driveway. Seb was in the car and waved at him but didn’t get out. He just put in his earbuds and started bobbing his head to music only he could hear.
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As soon as Roan was out of the car, he only needed to point to Seb to get an answer from Gordo. Gordo rolled his eyes and said, “His daughter got him an iPod for his birthday, and he’s determined to prove he’s not an old fogy. The problem is, all he listens to is R.E.M.” “R.E.M.?” Roan chuckled, looking back at Seb. Yes, he was completely ignoring them. “Really? I’d never have picked him as an R.E.M. type of guy.” Gordo both nodded and shrugged, not getting it and agreeing with him at the same time. It was obvious he wanted to talk to him alone, so Roan simply went to unlock his door, and Gordo followed. “Yeah, well, you like that punk rock shit, right?” Gordo said, once they were inside. “Takes all kinds.” “Not only punk. I try to keep my mind open, although I never appreciated electronica quite like Paris did.” “Electronica? Is that that “thump thump thump” dance music?” “Yep. It sounds best when you’re really high.” He tucked his keys in his pocket and hung up his coat on the coat rack before going to the kitchen and grabbing a Diet Pepsi out of the fridge. He tacitly offered Gordo one by holding up the can, but he shook his head. “Is that true of rap?” Gordo wondered. Roan shrugged. “Depends on the rap. So what can I help you with, Gordo?” He took a seat at the breakfast bar, a pensive look on his weathered face, and Roan just knew he was in for something. “How are you doing, Ro?” A cop asking you “how are you doing” was always a bad sign. “Well I got ninety-nine problems, but a bitch ain’t one.” Roan grinned at his own joke, but Gordo just glowered. “Now even I know that’s a rap reference. Are you going to take me seriously?” “I’m not sure. I haven’t had enough caffeine today.” “Try. I know it was you who caused havoc at the church last night.” “Couldn’t have been me. I was at the hospital with Dylan last
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night.” He then took a swig of his pop so he didn’t accidentally smile. The caustic glare Gordo was giving him let him know he wasn’t buying that. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” Roan met his look with a stare of his own. “Do you think I am?” Gordo huffed a sigh through his nose and shook his head like a disapproving father. “Fine, don’t admit anything and incriminate yourself, but I’m not here to arrest you. If I was, I’d have brought a SWAT team.” “’Cause I’m Batman?” “Will you cut the bullshit? You did some real damage. Are you even aware you almost ripped a guy’s arm off? I mean off, Roan, and not even from a joint. From what I understand, the strength needed to do something like that is inhuman.” “And so am I, is that it?” Gordo’s caterpillar eyebrows furrowed, dropping low over the bloodshot hollows of his pale blue eyes. “You know goddamn well I’d never say that. But I don’t know many people capable of that kind of strength. Hell, I actually don’t believe you’re that strong, but then again, I never would have guessed you were a long jumper, either. I worked with you for years, but now I have to admit I don’t know you at all. You know how shitty that makes me feel as a detective?” That got to him and made him feel inexplicably bad. Gordo was always decent to him. Oh sure, he had been uncomfortable with him being gay and being infected for a long time, but he didn’t go out of his way to give him shit about it. Gordo was probably one of the more accepting of the old-timers. He’d gone out of his way to make sure Roan didn’t get into trouble when he stepped over the line helping him with cat cases. He was a decent guy. They’d never be best friends, but they weren’t enemies either, and he shouldn’t push it. He considered several possible replies and finally decided on the truth. “Under normal circumstances, I’m not capable of that kind of strength.” “Under normal circumstances? What qualifies as normal?” “Not furious.” That made Gordo sit back on the stool, as if the response surprised him. “You’re the Hulk now? We wouldn’t like you when
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you’re angry?” He suddenly looked toward the front door and said, “Hey, yeah. You punched out a deadbolt when you thought Henstridge had killed Paris. I’ve never seen anyone punch out a deadbolt without tools. Wow, how’d I forget that?” Roan had forgotten that too, and turned away so he could wince out of Gordo’s view. He went to the fridge and pretended to be looking for something to eat, just so he had a reason to turn away. “It was a long time ago.” How had he forgotten that? That had been a partial transformation, a use of his warping muscles that was, in retrospect, extreme. He couldn’t even remember his hand hurting after that. Gordo scoffed. “Doesn’t matter. I haven’t forgotten the rest of it. You don’t forget seeing a man whose throat has been ripped out in one solid piece by a tiger. That was.…” He petered out for a moment and grunted softly. “No offense to Paris, but I’m glad there aren’t many tiger strains. I think the Human race would be doomed.” “We’ll kill ourselves off before any animal has the privilege.” Roan saw the containers of Indian food he had gotten and saved for Dylan, and his stomach twinged. Well, he could have them when he got back from the hospital. He saw a pear and grabbed it, figuring this was a good enough foodstuff to pass. Gordo shrugged a single shoulder as Roan turned back to face him. “Probably. We Humans are good at that.” He slid off the stool and pointed at Roan, like he was picking him out of a lineup. “Keep doing this kinda shit, and everyone will know. Not only will we be unable to hide it, but people will put the clues together. I don’t even wanna imagine that media circus. Just… tone it down. And no matter what you do, stay the fuck away from those cultists. You getting in trouble or getting infamous will be just what they want.” He then gave him a small salute on his way out the door. Roan collapsed on his couch and wondered what he was going to do about himself. Gordo was right—if he kept displaying these abilities in public, it wouldn’t be good for him. He could imagine doctors lining up for the privilege of gawking at and poking the freak, keeping him in medical quarantine “for his own good,” but really just so they could dissect him and figure out how the virus had mutated in him, become something as helpful as it was harmful. If he was religious, he could
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call himself blessed or damned, and both would be equally applicable. Shit. As soon as Dylan was well enough, they were definitely going on vacation and getting the fuck away from here for a while. He really needed to get his shit together. When Roan had conquered his lethargy, he turned on the stereo and cranked These Arms Are Snakes as he forced himself to do what he had to do to keep his mind off the pills. He did laundry, he did paperwork until he thought the boredom was going to kill him, and then, even though he felt unusually tired, he went into his study and worked the heavy bag, not letting himself get too carried away. He focused on the rhythm of his fists hitting the bag, trying not to put too much behind the punches (because if his muscles took this as an invitation to warp, he might break the goddamn chain), and threw in a few side and snap kicks for variety, so he didn’t fall too completely into a somnambulant pattern. He finally stopped when he was forced to pant for breath, the sweat dripping off his forehead as he bent down and put his hands on his knees. He caught his breath in increments and watched sweat beads fall and plop onto the dark carpet, where they were quickly absorbed. His muscles felt stretched, had the post-workout burn, but he hadn’t taken anything too far, hadn’t partially changed, so that was good. Sometimes small victories were all you had. Roan had no idea how long his phone had been ringing when he finally heard it. He just barely picked up the receiver before the machine kicked in and had to tell the person on the other end to wait a moment as he muted the stereo. “Yeah, sorry.” “This has been one bizarre day,” Murphy said, sounding grim. “They find something at the Chesney house?” “I have no idea. The Sherriff hasn’t called me yet. No, this is about your client, Holly Faraday.” It actually took him a moment. So much had happened it seemed like ages ago now. But how could he forget that she had set him up for some inexplicable reason? Had him trail her cheating husband, only to murder him and flee. “You caught her?” “No, but we’ve found her.” She paused, and Roan stood up
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straight, suddenly wary. What the hell had happened now? “We found her body in an old gravel pit about two miles from where Dallas Faraday’s body was found. Somebody put a bullet in her brain too.” Roan felt honestly terrible that his first reaction was relief that she hadn’t used him. But who would want to kill Holly? Strike that: who would want to kill the Faradays? He had picked a bad week to stop taking pills.
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19 The Bones of You “I DON’T suppose it was suicide?” Roan asked, collapsing on his sofa. “It’s a little strange to shoot yourself in the back of the head, so I’m gonna say no,” Murphy said. Roan made a noise of strangled disappointment, pressing his hand hard into his forehead. It didn’t change a thing. “Fuck.” “If it makes you feel better, we have a suspect.” “Who?” “A minor player of a thug named Marco Lewis. He’s a small-time drug dealer, but it seems Mr. Faraday owed him money. And Mrs. Faraday’s murder has some of the hallmarks of a robbery gone bad, so what we think happened here was genius—aka Marco—tried to extort money the hubby owed him from the missus, and something went wrong. Mr. Faraday was probably then killed, for more than one reason.” “So she was right to be concerned about his debts. She just wasn’t concerned enough in time.” “That’s about the size of it.” “Shit,” he sighed wearily. He felt terrible for Holly. If he’d been faster, better, would she still be alive? No, he couldn’t think about that, mainly because it wouldn’t change anything. His client was dead, and while if he’d gotten the case a few days earlier he might have been able to do something to prevent it, it was all a moot point now. Murphy promised to call him as soon as she heard anything about the Chesney house, and he went upstairs and took a quick shower that failed to make him feel any better. After getting dressed, he got together some books for Dylan, as well as his MP3 player, and went back to the
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hospital to drop them off. There he encountered Dylan’s sister Sheba and her husband. That was always awkward. Roan got the feeling that Sheba was humoring him most of the time and was not-so-secretly freaked out by his infected status (although he couldn’t blame her there—she was probably afraid he might accidentally infect her brother), and it didn’t help that her well-meaning husband usually gave off that odd straight guy vibe that said, “I want to be cool around gay guys, but damn, they creep me out.” Everything was civil and fine, but Roan still got the impression that Sheba would have been happier if he had absolutely nothing more to do with her brother. Dylan was happy to see him, though, and gave him a kiss even before he gave him the books and his MP3 player. He was as bored as hell and wanted to go, but he’d just gotten some “damn scan or something” and they weren’t letting him go just yet. Only later did Roan find out that Dylan had gotten a head CT and figure Dylan had dismissed it so he didn’t freak out about it. Dee would later tell him that it was fine, they were just checking something. What, he didn’t say. Dylan scooted over and patted the mattress beside him, so Roan ended up sitting on his bed with him as they talked, Dylan leaning his head against his shoulder as Roan idly caressed his thigh and they talked about very mundane things. But it was strangely nice. Roan felt oddly settled and didn’t notice his drug cravings in this moment of chaste intimacy. Dylan just had a calming influence on him. He made him feel Human, although not in a bad way. He enjoyed his warmth and his comforting scent, although it was diluted with the awful medical scent of the hospital. He admitted that he hadn’t taken a pill all day, and save for tiredness and minor cravings, he really didn’t miss them. What he didn’t tell him was he feared he had acquired his own internal numbness, which was better than any narcotic. And he was going to have to learn to use it, because if he didn’t get his lion episodes under control, he was going to be in real trouble. A nurse came in and chased him off, which seemed par for the course, but she gave him and Dylan especially dirty looks, and even though they were just sitting, talking, she warned them stridently that
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there wasn’t “any of that kind of thing” allowed in the hospital. That kind of thing? What? Butt fucking? Did she think they were on the verge of having wild and perverted gay sex before she heroically burst through the door? He and Dylan exchanged a look—they seemed to be thinking the same thing—and before he left, they shared a long, overly passionate kiss that they played up a bit, just to disgust and annoy her. Which it did. But she deserved it—they weren’t shy, acquiescent gays, and if she was going to indulge in jackassery, so were they. Although, to be totally honest, that was one hot kiss. Goddamn, they needed to kiss like that more often. Just before he left Dylan’s floor, he remembered Ponyboy and went up a couple of floors. He hadn’t checked in on the kid forever, and no, he didn’t know him, but it was a decent thing just to check up on him. When Roan stepped out of the elevator, he saw Holden slumped in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs that lined segments of the hallway, his tall frame almost folded in half. The posture looked more sad than painful. “Holden, everything okay?” he asked, belatedly realizing that he’d forgot to call him Fox. Oh well, hopefully no one had noticed, and those that did didn’t care. Holden sat back and looked up at him, a strange blankness in his eyes. “You here to see Ponyboy? You’re too late.” “Oh shit.” Roan sat on the chair beside him. “What happened?” “They think it was blood clot in his brain.” Holden shrugged and looked away, tears making his eyes look glassy. “Christ, what am I supposed to do now? Track down the parents he ran away from in the first place and say, ‘Hey, your little faggot is dead. Do you want his body or should I just throw him in the trash like you did?’” He sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Fuck.” “I’ll do it.” “What?” “I’m a detective; I’ll track the parents down. And when I was a cop, I used to hafta do the dead calls, contact relatives and next of kin to come down and identify a body.” He sighed at the memory. “People’s responses always surprised you. You expected the ones that reacted in horror or burst into sobs, but the ones who had no reaction, or the ones who said ‘I don’t care’ or had some profane or pedestrian
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response to it were always the most startling. There were people who said they were watching something and they’d be over as soon as it was done; others who said simply, ‘Let ’em rot’ and hung up. You don’t know how people really feel about you until you die… and then you’re dead, so why would you give a fuck?” Holden looked at him askance. “That was a philosophical abortion.” “Hey, at least I tried.” They just sat in silence for a moment, staring at the white wall before them, the noises of the hospital floor sounding like the background of a television show, minus the ubiquitous syrupy power ballad. “I don’t even know why I’m crying,” Holden finally admitted. “I didn’t know him at all. He was just a friend of a friend.” “He was a kid, whose crime was essentially being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been any of us.” He nodded and sniffed, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “Well, it couldn’t have been you. You’d have ripped them to pieces and beaten them to death with their own limbs.” Roan opened his mouth to object to that classification, but of course Holden had just been kind to him. He had seen Roan in a more transformed state than anyone had since Paris. He could have said “eaten them” and left it at that. It would be true. So he decided to simply say, “I think you’d have fucked them up pretty well too.” Holden scoffed. “They wouldn’t have fucked with me either. I may sound like a twink, but I’m built like a jock. Those fucking scumbags only pick on easy targets.” “True.” They sat together for a moment, staring at the wall. Sometimes there was just nothing that could be said or done. Sometimes all you could do was sit in the silence and wait to see if the world ever noticed. Even though Roan knew from experience that it never did. Poor Ponyboy. He wondered if his parents would care and then feared the answer. By the time Roan got home, there was a message waiting for him on his answering machine, one he had both longed for and feared. A
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body had been unearthed at the Chesney place. As had a piece of another one. The next couple of days, it would be splattered all over the local news. In total, three bodies were found, all women, only one identified (by dental records—a woman named Jamie Lynn Anderton, Chesney’s youngest victim at age nineteen), although a concerted effort was under way to identify the other two. The disappointing thing was that clearly none of these victims were Keith Turner, but it did prove that Roland Chesney was a more disturbed and violent man than many had believed. Murphy told him it sounded like the DA was going to try and cut a deal with him, get him to confess to other victims and point out other dumping places in exchange for slightly lesser charges. (A joke, as he was going to be in jail for the rest of his life, no matter how this played out.) He must have known that, because Chesney was denying that he had murdered the women. Although the dry desert conditions had basically jerked the bodies, some evidence was found that proved Chesney was lying his ass off. He’d probably have no choice but to deal. Roan had Chris Spencer meet him at his office before the full week was up and admitted to him that Chesney had been his best lead, and while Keith’s body hadn’t turned up, it was his opinion that Chesney was most likely to have grabbed Keith from the park that day. If it wasn’t Chesney, he honestly didn’t know who could have done the crime. It was a pathetic answer, one hardly worth voicing, but Chris cried a bit, both in relief and disappointment, and thanked him. He accepted that as all the answers he was probably going to get about Keith and thanked him for it, even though Roan felt that Chris should probably be cursing him out. He’d found the killer of others, not necessarily his son, although Roan understood that even a pathetic scrap of a potential answer probably looked good to someone who had gone without even a hint all these many years. He just wished he could have given him a more concrete and satisfying answer. Dylan was still bruised up by the time his gallery show came around, although Roan managed to convince him it looked butch and dangerous. Since Dylan was hoping to “integrate” more into his life, Holden and Fiona were invited to the show and came together, as Fiona wasn’t dating anyone, and Holden—as far as Roan could tell—never
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dated anyone who didn’t pay for his time. They seemed to like pretending they were a couple, as Fiona liked having “arm candy,” and Holden loved role-playing. Holden turned on the charm and schmoozed everyone, including the art snobs whom Roan heard talking to Dylan and referring to him as Dylan’s “blue collar boyfriend,” (what?) which was supposedly “very trendy.” Roan felt the urge to go and punch them, but Dylan told him they were assholes and he should ignore them, while Holden went over and got them caught up in his charm, identifying himself as an “entertainment facilitator,” so they could all have a quiet laugh over these people in their Prada and Versace fawning over and kissing up to a gay prostitute. But Holden was far more honest than they were: he was a whore and gladly admitted it. These people were whores too, but pretended they weren’t. So Holden won that contest. Dylan was pretty surprised to see his lion painting on the wall. Some people did a double take upon seeing Roan, and when they recognized him they moved away quickly. He considered growling just to see if he could make them piss themselves but decided that was taking things a step too far. Ultimately, the show was a good thing. Dylan sold a couple of paintings, and some of the art snobs seemed impressed with him. It got his name out there, and positive exposure was always a good thing. Roan was doing okay without the pills for the most part, but he knew he had to work on his temper to keep the lion from coming out. How he was going to do that he had no idea, although he was considering a variety of methods. And while the Church of the Divine Transformation was quiet, before he and Dylan left on vacation, he found an anonymous note in his mailbox that said, “We haven’t forgotten.” He knew it was from them, but since it didn’t constitute harassment, he didn’t report it. But he hadn’t forgotten either. They were away on a brief weekend vacation in Vancouver (which had started to feel like home away from home) when Roan had another dream about Paris. He figured it was because he was in Canada, which he always associated with Paris. He and Paris were on a pier in the Bay, looking out at water as blue and still as glass. It was dusk, so the sky was very
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nearly the same color, leaving lights on the water and in the city skyline to define the horizon, where the water began and where the city ended. Roan was lying on the dock, his back on the sun-warmed boards, his head on Paris’s thigh. Paris was sitting on the edge, legs dangling over the side of the pier, stroking Roan’s hair as he looked out on a Vancouver Island ferry in the distance. Roan was pretty sure this was only a slightly dream-altered memory. “How am I doing?” he asked. Paris looked down at him, playing with his bangs as he smirked. “That’s a question for you, not me.” God, he was too handsome. It still hurt his heart to look at him. “Do you think I can hold it together?” Paris clicked his tongue and shook his head. “What is that? Do you think so little of yourself? Everyone’s a little crazy. You’re not so bad. I’ve met guys who argued with their shoes. And I’m talking knock-down-drag-outs, back and forth cussing. Well, forth. The shoes never did talk on their own.” Roan reached up and tweaked his chin, making Paris look down at him and smile. “Will you be serious? I’d like you to tell me something. And don’t say ‘something’, got it?” He sighed. “Fine. On a scale of one ten, you’re fourteen.” Roan pondered that. “Wait—is that a sanity scale in ascending order or descending order?” “Yes.” It was Roan’s turn to roll his eyes and look off toward the peaceful bay. “How can you be a smart-ass in my own head?” “Hey, you’re the person having a conversation with a dead man. Judge your sanity accordingly.” But that was why Roan had asked him, because he didn’t want to think about it too much. How was he going to deal with the lion in him when he knew very well that he was basically an angry type of guy? Could he even get mad without the lion coming out? And did he just assume that Dylan knew he was still in love with Paris and would always have to split his affections with him? His sleeping brain had brought him here for a reason, and Roan suspected he knew what it was. He stopped worrying about it and just
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relaxed, letting the wind and Paris’s ghostly fingers stroke his hair as the sky slowly darkened, and night fell softly enough to be comforting. He refused to worry about the real world until he was back in it again.
Book Two
Bloodlet ing
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1 Signify EVERYONE had at least some dirty little secrets they hid from their boyfriend or girlfriend. That was to be expected. But some were just honestly unbelievable. “You really think I’m letting you off the hook for this?” Roan asked, slipping under the sheets. Dylan turned over on his back to face him, scowling sourly. “You are such a dick sometimes.” That made him laugh, settling back on the mattress, turning toward Dylan. It was way too early in the morning, not even seven, but Roan felt surprisingly awake. He’d accidentally woken Dylan up when he came upstairs, but he didn’t seem to be holding that against him. Yet. “I’m not the one who’s a Trekker.” “I am not a Trekker,” Dylan protested. His blackish-brown eyes had a haze of sleep, but they also had a sparkle of annoyance and mirth that Roan loved to see. “I just think Avery Brooks has a sexy voice. Are you denying that he has a sexy voice?” He had him there. And from the way Dylan’s leg slowly rubbed against his, he knew it. “Okay, yeah, he has a sexy voice. But I’m supposed to believe that’s the only reason you were watching?” “Was another reason necessary?” Again, he had him. Arguing with Dylan could be a very difficult thing, and not only because he had patience that would perturb a television golf commentator. Roan reached over and brushed some of Dylan’s black hair off his forehead. It could get wavy and unruly when there was high humidity, and right now the rain was sluicing down outside like it was being blasted from a fire hose. There was no real reason to, except it was nice to feel the silky strands of it, to feel the
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heat of his body infused into his hair. “You’re so shallow,” Roan jokingly accused. Dylan laughed, placing a warm hand on his chest. “Didn’t you get the memo? All gay guys are shallow.” “We are? Damn it, that’s what I get for not being subscribed to the newsletter.” Dylan slid his hand up to his throat and leaned against him, his body warm and hard against his. For no reason at all, Roan had been vaguely horny when he came home from the stakeout, and now he was really horny. Dylan could do that to him. “You’re a bad gay. I’m starting to think you’re an undercover straight guy.” “Those are fighting words,” Roan replied in mock rage, before giving him a passionate kiss. Dylan was a good kisser, for which he was glad. Some guys didn’t like to kiss, and he didn’t get that at all. Anybody could fuck, but being a good kisser was a talent. They were just getting into it when the phone rang. Roan sighed and complained, “Cockblocked by the phone. Wanna bet it’s Focus On The Family, or some Satanic organization like?” “You think they get on the phone as soon as they sense gay men are making out?” “It wouldn’t surprise me.” Roan rolled over and grabbed the receiver. “Yeah?” “You haven’t eaten yet, have you?” Gordo asked, his voice gruff with the vestiges of sleep. There was a dirty joke there, and he almost made it, but Gordo sounded too grim for humor at the moment. “No. Why?” “We gotta ugly scene down at 212 Madison Court. Get here as soon as you can, and skip breakfast.” Roan rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Cat killing?” “Yeah. It’s on the loose too, we didn’t find one here.” “Shit. Give me a few minutes, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” As he dropped the receiver back in the cradle, Dylan looked at him with great sympathy. “Gordon?”
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“Yeah, sorry. Homicide stops for no man.” He kissed him on the forehead before sliding out of bed, and only then did his weariness actually hit him between the shoulder blades. He had been up all night on a stakeout, feeling exhausted there the last couple of hours, yawning and occasionally punching himself in the leg to stay awake. He bet he had a couple of nice bruises to look forward to later. Dylan rolled over on his side and pulled the blankets up, snuggling under the covers in a way that made Roan jealous and annoyed. Goddamn it, why couldn’t he sleep now? “Good luck. Wear something waterproof.” “They perfected those full-body condoms yet?” he asked, pulling jeans and a T-shirt out of the dresser. No need to get fancy for a crime scene. “Not that I know of.” As soon as Roan pulled on the shirt, he recognized the smell as Dylan. In the dark he’d grabbed one of his shirts, but fuck it, it was clean, and none of the guys at the scene would know it wasn’t his. It was just a plain royal-blue T-shirt. It didn’t say “Property of Boyfriend” anywhere on it. He knew the jeans were his, though, as they felt worn in a way that none of Dylan’s jeans were. Probably because he didn’t hang onto clothes until they dissolved in the washer. Why, Roan didn’t know—he was a starving artist, right? He should be the one hanging onto clothes until they were rags. He’d left his boots downstairs, so he went back down to put them on and grab a dry coat from the coat tree, as the one he’d worn earlier tonight was still sopping wet. In lieu of a hood, he slapped his deliberately cliché fedora on and headed out to the garage. He wanted to take his bike, mainly because he only used Paris’s cars (and they were Paris’s cars, and he’d always think of them that way) for stakeouts and tails, but it was still pouring, and along with getting soaked, his visibility would be shit. Better to wrap himself in steel, in case he hit someone or someone hit him. He took the GTO, just because it was the first car he came to in the garage. Madison Court was a street where one of the new housing subdivisions had sprung up like weeds in the formerly vacant lot, about five miles away from his quiet, isolated house. The rural countryside
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was slowly being gobbled up by developers who slammed in these prefabs and overpriced them, hoping to convince people they were “luxury” because they had a back deck, despite the fact that they were a single arm’s length removed from their neighbor. The houses that lined Madison Court like a picket fence were row-house-style homes painted in a strangely drab array of earth tones, from a wan taupe to an anemic sea-foam green, conformity at its bleakest. Thankfully there were so many police vehicles out in front of 212 that he found it easily amongst the lines of houses that looked numbingly the same. The police had formed a barricade with their cars, blocking off easy access to the front lawn as spools of yellow crime scene tape were unfurled and secured. Despite the early morning hour and the small monsoon, there were gawkers—most had the good sense to peek from windows or at least stand just inside their doorways, but a couple of brazen ones stood out on the sidewalk across the street, hunkered under umbrellas. The cops setting up the crime tape recognized him and waved him on toward the front door, which was slightly ajar. The lawn was supersaturated, becoming the suburban equivalent of quicksand, water spilling from the grass and onto the asphalt. There were two vehicles in the driveway: a dark blue Acura, and in front of it a meat wagon, with a plump Asian man he recognized as working for the ME’s office sitting in the driver’s seat, writing on a clipboard. Roan knew this scene must have been horrible, because he had barely stepped onto the sodden lawn, the grass and mud squelching beneath his boots, when the smell hit him. Roan had to turn away momentarily, the smell of so much carnage making him feel dizzy, nauseated, hungry, and repelled. It was blood and torn flesh, the stink of death and the early hint of decay. He had to breathe through his mouth for a moment, tasting the air a bit but also tasting the rain, which was still unseasonably warm. For a moment, it tasted like blood. He finally got accustomed to the smell—or at least as accustomed to it as he was ever going to get—and headed toward the door. Gordo appeared in the open doorway before he reached the poured-concrete steps. “And we thought the smell was bad. I bet it’s real hell for you.”
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“You can’t imagine.” He probably couldn’t, any more than Roan could imagine what it was like to have “normal” smelling. As far as he was concerned, his way of smelling was completely normal. It was everybody else who was fucked. Gordo stood aside as he entered the home, which was nothing special: white walls, sand-colored carpet, furniture that basically matched, and a flat-screen TV that was probably the most expensive piece in the living room. Blood striated the carpet and walls in dark lines, all leading to the open archway of the kitchen, where dark arterial blood pooled like spilled ink on the white and blue tile. The forensic team was still buzzing around like bees, although Seb was off in one corner, discussing something with the head of the team, Slab (Lise Slavin). “The neighbor next door realized the back door was ajar,” Gordo said, pointing at the door just visible at the edge of the kitchen. “There’d been break-ins around the area, so when no one replied, they called the cops and reported it. A prowler checked it out, and found the vic in the kitchen, swimming in a pool of what must have been over half his blood volume. Considering the blood out here, we figure the initial attack was in the living room, but it all ended in the kitchen, whether he was finally brought down there or dragged there by the cat.” “Any ID yet?” “Nope. The guy was torn to shit. The cat shredded his face and chest like cheese. His left hand was also gnawed off. We found a part of his thumb, but that’s it so far.” “Probably all you’ll find. The cat probably ate the rest.” Gordo looked away, suppressing a shudder. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” He composed himself a second, but Roan thought he looked terrible. Sure, he’d probably been woken up for this call, but he looked weary and haggard, the lines of his face deeper than usual, his jaw taut enough to break concrete. “Can you tell us what kinda cat we’re looking for? We weren’t able to pull a decent paw print out of the blood or the back lawn.” Roan closed his eyes and tried very hard to sift through all the scents, get past the blood and death and fear that soured the air like spilled ammonia. With so many people here, bringing with them the
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smells of cigarettes and coffee, forensic chemicals and deodorant, aftershave and mouthwash, it made it difficult. (Someone had smoked pot recently. Someone on the forensic team, or one of the cops? He couldn’t say right now. They’d covered it up fairly well, but not enough for his nose.) “Leopard,” he told Gordo. “The vic’s a cougar strain.” Roan opened his eyes to find Gordo staring at him in surprise. “The vic? Are you saying he’s infected.” “You didn’t know?” “No! We didn’t even find a cage here!” Now that was weird. Roan concentrated on the leopard smell as best he could and followed it, a thin thread of neon among a spiderweb of dark threads of scent. He went up a narrow staircase to the second floor, Gordo following him, and went to a room at the end of the hall. He thought it might be a bedroom, but swinging open a surprisingly heavy door revealed a room with no furniture, save for a flattened old beanbag sitting deflated in a corner under high shelves. There was a window covered with burglar bars. “This was a funky place,” Gordo admitted, as Roan looked at the door. It had been reinforced on the inside with thin plates of metal. “We figured it was some kinda safe room.” “It’s an ad hoc cage,” Roan said. “The bars are on the inside of the window. It’s to keep something in, not keep people out.” Gordon scanned the room, looking for any sign of cat occupation. The threadbare carpet was a ’70s burnt orange, one corner of it torn up to the nap. If Roan had been the cat in this room, he’d have torn it to shreds instantly just for being as ugly as fuck. “Are you sure? It doesn’t look like it.” “I’ve seen people do it before. Some people are really offended by the notion of a cage, and just try and cat-proof a room.” He saw a shadow on the wall and went to have a look at it. Somebody had tried to spackle and paint over claw marks, but they had done so poorly. Gordo checked out the door, opening it and looking at both sides before scratching his head. “This door wasn’t broken down. It was open.” “Like the back door?”
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“Yeah.” He exchanged a suspicious look with Roan. “What the fuck happened here? We thought the back door was open and the cat came in that way. But it was here all along?” Roan nodded. The leopard had marked its territory here. He could smell it more strongly in this room than anywhere else in the house so far. “It’s hard to tell, but I swear I scented a woman’s perfume in the hall. I think there were three people in this house; one who transformed into a leopard and killed the man downstairs. Leaving the third one suspiciously AWOL.” “A setup? Or did they just run for their fucking lives?” Roan shrugged. “I guess we won’t know ’til we find them, will we?” But if he had to go by his instincts, whatever had happened in this house was even uglier than the scene downstairs.
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2 After Hours ROAN smelled like bloody death all the way home. Dylan had fallen asleep and seemed so peaceful that he hated to even risk waking him up, so he used the downstairs shower. He was under the spray until the water turned ice cold, and he wasn’t sure the smell was completely out of his skin. He hoped it was psychosomatic. He was tired, too tired to trudge upstairs, so he flopped on the couch, naked and wet, and dragged the throw over him, settling his head against the armrest. He’d seen the message machine’s blinking light, but he studiously ignored it. Roan slept heavily but dreamed too much. In one, he was fighting an endless swarm of biting black insects that he could only see out of the corner of his eye but made his skin unbearably itchy. The next dream, he was inexplicably in a cage, but in his Human form, and he couldn’t get out. Occasionally people would walk by and he’d call out to them, but they’d ignore him. He could feel the lion wanting to come out and yet unable to. He didn’t get it. Frustration alone woke him up, his head pounding sickly in his temples, a drumbeat that only he could hear. He peeled himself off the sofa, not surprised but disappointed that only three hours had passed. It was still pouring outside, the light gray, and he felt like he was in a submarine that was slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean. He went downstairs to steal some boxers from the dryer, and he stared at his cage for a while, seeing it as the small prison it was, like a prop from a horror film. His head continued to pound, like he had an angry old man banging his fist against the inside of his skull, so he went back upstairs and rooted around in a first aid kit until he found some codeine. Yes, he had promised Dylan he was off the stuff except
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when he was post-change, but goddamn it, he felt like his fucking headaches were included in the compromise. He washed the pills down with a pale ale snagged from the fridge. Yeah, it was way too early to drink, but when he was woken up by a headache, all bets were off. He decided to actually listen to his messages while waiting for the pills to kick in. The first was from last night. Dee had called to report that he and Luke had gone to see “his movie” last night (Con’s play turned movie). They had enjoyed it (kind of), but Dee found it (quote) “equally hilarious and appalling” that “his” character (the character that Con had loosely based on Roan) was made straight for the film. Con’s ex-wife, Siobhan, had invited Roan along to the local premiere a month ago and thought he ought to come, but Roan declined, saying that he just couldn’t face it. And he couldn’t, not really—although one night curiosity got the better of him and he snuck out to a late-night showing alone (he told Dylan he was on a stakeout). The movie was okay, and he wasn’t really surprised by the changes made to Con’s original play: the title was now Requiem (which made no fucking sense in a story context, but what the hell), and the Church’s protection and knowledge of the abusive priest was watered down heavily, as was the family’s initial response to the abuse (they took the priest’s side and accused Con of making it up and being “wicked”; in the film, this response was limited to simple disbelief, not accusations that he was a liar). Yes, the cop character based on him was inexplicably made straight, removing any romantic subtext from scenes with Con’s character (whose sexuality was never mentioned—great straight-washing), and was also reduced to what was an extended cameo. In the play he was a major supporting character. In the film, he had maybe ten minutes’ screen time. The screenwriter had also created a pretty, shy neighbor girl, presumably a romantic interest for Connor. (Siobhan’s character in the play had been his best friend, also wearied by the constant oppression of her strict family, and while she was still in the film, her role was reduced as well.) If you hadn’t seen the play it was okay. If you’d seen the play, you knew it was crap. Still, the whole time, Roan kept imagining how chuffed Con would have been to see his play on the big screen, even in a highly bastardized form. Oh, he’d have gotten royally pissed at the filmmakers and probably would have slung beer bottles at their heads, but for about
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the length of the film he’d be thrilled to see his baby up there. Then he’d start kicking heads in. Roan would have helped. Siobhan had told him the studio didn’t want a “gay” film because they never made much money, and beyond that she felt it got “focusgrouped to death.” Roan didn’t know why they didn’t just write a ripoff script and film that instead; it probably would have been cheaper. But he didn’t get the entertainment industry and would never claim to. The next message was from Holden, sounding unusually upset. “Roan, as soon as you get this, I need you to come over. I don’t care what time it is. I have a problem and only you can handle it.” Roan was a little surprised he didn’t add, “Help me, Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope,” but that was probably too geeky for him. He called Holden but only got his machine, so he hung up without leaving a message. If he wasn’t in jail—and he hadn’t asked for bail money— something strange was going on. Since sleep was out of the question, he decided to go ahead and check it out. He’d been hoping there was more news from the crime scene, but obviously not. When Roan left, they’d tentatively identified the homeowner as Curtis Bowles, but that didn’t mean he was the victim or one of the missing roommates. He could have been subletting. And considering the condition of the corpse, it could be days or even weeks before a proper identification could be made. Poor bastard. He dressed hurriedly and ventured back out into the underwater world. He wished he’d stop having nightmares, especially about stupid shit. He probably needed to break down and see Doctor Rosenberg again. He could trust her not to turn him over to the first traveling freak show that came along. He called Fiona from the car, as he had ample time to do it, sitting at stoplights. He told her he’d be coming into the office today, but a bit later than usual. He left the message on her voice mail, as he was routed straight there. It wasn’t personal. Fiona hated answering her own phone. According to her, “It’s not like it’s ever anything good.” He couldn’t argue with that logic. The codeine and beer combo had really kicked in now, beating his headache back to a dull and ignorable roar, but he now felt a little hollow-eyed and light-headed, his hands and feet oddly warm. There
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was no way to win. He checked his eyes in the mirror and wondered if Holden would notice he was on pills again. Oh, fuck it. Holden had called him—he was just going to have to live with getting Roan in whatever shape he was when he answered. He had to knock twice. Well, the first time was a knock. After waiting a minute and getting no answer, he changed to pounding on the door. That got a response. “Hold your horses,” Holden snapped, his voice muffled by the door. He still sounded tired and cranky. When he finally opened the door, Roan told him, “You called. Don’t get pissy at me.” Holden stared at him with sleep-blurry eyes, his mussed sable hair sticking up in all directions. “Yeah, I did, but give me a minute. I was up ’til five thirty.” He turned away, dry-washing his face, leaving the door open, a tacit invitation inside. Roan took it, although not without some reservations. He felt awkward, and not only because he always felt awkward around Holden since he’d seen him almost completely transform. This time he also felt awkward because Holden was dressed only in red boxer briefs, riding so low on his hips you could see a fringe of dark pubic hair in the front and a good dose of ass crack in the back. Holden had no sense of modesty, so he wouldn’t actually care—you didn’t become a whore if you were actually shy about your body—but Roan found it too early in the day to face anyone half naked. Maybe he was getting prudish in his old age. What a horrible thought. Luckily, Holden padded into his small kitchen, and his counters hid him. “Want some coffee?” “No thanks. What’s going on?” Holden ran a hand through his hair, making it only slightly less messy, and nodded his head in the direction of his coffee table. “It’s right there.” Roan looked as Holden continued to futz with the espresso machine, and he finally deduced that he must have been referring to the folded-up newspaper. He sat down on the sofa and had a look. On the front page was a large PR photo of a smiling man in his fifties, with a full head of hair almost as white as his supernaturally blinding Chiclet teeth, highlighted by a tan just a few degrees shy of
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George Hamilton orange. Roan recognized him as Joel Newberry, of the Newberry clan, a locally famous family. They owned Channel Four and a classical station, sponsored a boat race every year, and had a controlling interest in the advertising firm Armstrong Anderson (if there was a conflict of interest in this, no one mentioned it). Scanning the article, it said that Joel, fifty-four, had died suddenly of a heart attack last night. Roan scanned the rest of the front page, in case he was missing something else, but the only other articles were on rising gas prices, local soldiers killed in Afghanistan, and a dustup at the city council over an offensive e-mail. He couldn’t imagine Holden being interested in any of this. “Is this about the dead rich guy?” he finally asked, giving up. Holden snorted. “Not just a dead rich guy. There’s no fucking way he died of a heart attack. I want to hire you to find out how he really died.” Roan scratched his head. Had the drugs kicked in extra hard, or had he actually heard that? “Umm, you knew Joel Newberry?” “He was Trevor,” he said, pouring himself a cup of espresso. “One of my regulars.” Okay, it was official: Roan was glad he was on drugs. “This guy? Trophy wife Newberry?” “He wasn’t gay. I’d say he was bi, although he himself never used the term. He would tell me he thought the Greeks had the right idea, that a man could have another man to fool around with and not be considered gay. After all, our sex drives are more compatible than it is between a male and a female.” “Sounds like justification from a weasel.” Holden shot him a harsh look as he came out into his living room and collapsed on his loveseat, somehow not spilling a drop of coffee. “Be that as it may, he told me himself the last time we met up that he thought someone was trying to kill him.” “And this wasn’t role-playing?” Holden gave him a surprisingly nasty look. “Are you going to let me tell my story, or would you rather be a wise-ass?”
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“I get a choice?” Before Holden could throw his coffee on him, he said, “Okay, I’m listening.” “Right. He told me last time we met—Thursday—that he thought someone was trying to kill him, and he thought it was someone in his family. There was some kind of business deal and he was holding out, mainly ’cause he didn’t like it. He was getting nervous, though. He said the family was freezing him out, and then something happened, although he didn’t specify what. He just said it was something that made him think he might be in real danger. He told me who he was, Roan, he gave me his real name—not that I hadn’t already figured it out, but hey, part of the hooker gig is playing dumb—and the number to his private line. He told me if I hadn’t heard from him in a week, to call the number. Three days later, he’s dead. Coincidence?” Oh, he could talk now? “Possibly. Guys, especially in their fifties, drop dead of heart attacks all the time. If he was paranoid, tension could have predisposed him to a cardiac incident.” “Don’t give me the party line. He was as healthy as an ox; he said he got his insurance-mandated physical a month ago and he was as healthy as I am. They said he had the heart of a twenty-five-year-old.” “Occasionally they get heart attacks too.” Holden glared at him. Roan threw up his hands. “Okay, fine, I’m just saying that he could have actually died of a heart attack, and it might be unconnected to what he told you. Isn’t it possible that he was indeed paranoid?” “No. I’ve known him for almost two years, Roan, and I knew what he was like. He wasn’t paranoid. Irresponsible, egotistical? Sure. Not paranoid and jumping at shadows. C’mon, Roan, how desperate does a guy have to be to trust his rent boy? Even you have to admit that’s an extreme level of desperation.” It was, but he wasn’t ready to acknowledge the point. “Two years? And his wife never caught on?” “Which one?” “Oh, right.” Joel seemed to swap trophy wives like they were last year’s Jaguars. “What number was he on?” “Of wives? Five. He only married Cherry four and a half months
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ago.” “Cherry,” Roan repeated, rolling his eyes. Now, it wasn’t anyone’s fault what their parents named them—look at him, he was Roan, a reddish-brown hue mainly associated with horses—but people who named their kids after fruit were just asking for a punch in the mouth. Add to that her name was now Cherry Newberry, and she sounded like she was a character in a children’s cartoon—or a porno. Funny how that worked. “How old is she?” “According to the paper, twenty four.” “Jesus.” Joel was old enough to have been her dad. That was just fucking creepy. He didn’t care if it was a straight relationship or a gay one: if you dated someone young enough to have been your child, you gave him a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. “You don’t think balancing a hot young wife and a studly male prostitute wasn’t too much for his ticker?” “Are you going to stop being an asshole?” “I don’t see that there’s much of a case here, Holden. I’d be lucky to get any access anywhere, and it seems rather pointless. A heart attack seems reasonable to his age and lifestyle. Doctors miss things. They’re human. Just because he was paranoid only meant he sensed there was something wrong. He just wasn’t looking in the right place.” Holden took a sip of his espresso and sighed heavily. “Would you please look into it for me?” “Is this gonna be a guilt thing?” “You bet your sweet ass it’s gonna be.” “Fuck. Fine. But if I get nowhere in five working days, you’ll have to find another chump.” “Oh come on. If I can get your lion sense tingling, you won’t let this go.” “If I hear one more superhero reference, I’m going to go on a shooting spree.” Holden levered himself up from the sofa, and this time he hitched up his shorts as he walked back to the kitchen. “The cops are still calling you Batman?” “All the fucking time. If someone else asks me how Robin is, I’m
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going to break their jaw.” Holden went to his fridge and rooted around in it for a minute. “Oh, come now. You can have fun with it. Besides, at least they’re not calling you Batgirl.” “I’ve gotten that too, thank you very much. But not to my face.” “Of course not to your face. You’re Batman.” When he turned around, Holden gave him his patented shit-eating grin. Roan gave him the finger in response. He returned to the loveseat, but before plopping down, he tossed Roan a small stack of money held together by a rubber band. It was rather cold. “You keep cash in your fridge?” He looked at the stack, rifled the edge, did a bit of math. A thousand dollars? Goddamn, he really should become a whore. “In a South Beach Diet sandwich box,” he acknowledged. “Have you ever had one of those damn things? They’re clearly made of recycled cardboard. Nobody is idiotic enough to want one, so I figured it was as theft-proof as a safe.” “You’re on the South Beach Diet? Isn’t that very three years ago?” “I don’t diet. I unfortunately had one at a friend’s place. But if you were a thief, would you grab it?” “God, no. Your secret’s safe with me.” He held up the stack of money and asked, “Are you sure you want to waste your money this way?” “It’s not a waste. Something’s rotten in Denmark, Yorick. I need you to find out what.” “I don’t want to be Yorick. He died.” Holden rolled his eyes. “It was Hamlet. Everybody died.” He had a point. Roan wondered who else was going to die before the intermission break.
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3 Gravity Rides Everything EVEN through the codeine, Roan’s head was starting to throb again, and he was starting to see small dark flashes, pinpricks of negative light floating somewhere behind his eyeballs. Full-blown migraine. Even codeine and alcohol were sometimes helpless in the tide of pain. Roan went straight from Holden’s apartment to the emergency health care clinic he went to when he absolutely had to go somewhere. He knew a good deal of the staff from his cop days, and as a general rule of experience, he liked the emergency clinic doctors much better than other doctors. They never seemed to get freaked out by anything, and they were models of kind efficiency: they got you in, assessed you, got you out. The check-in nurse, a stout, middle-aged woman with sensibly cut silver hair and a brightly flowered scrub top, looked over her desk and said, “Hello, Roan. Migraine?” “I’m too predictable,” he admitted. “How are you doing, Kelly?” “Can’t complain. Take a seat, I’ll get you in as soon as I can.” It wasn’t crowded, maybe because it was still fairly early yet and the weather was so shitty. He slumped in one of the lobby chairs, head back and eyes closed, until a perky, young Japanese nurse he’d never seen before summoned him back. At the weigh-in station, she asked if he’d had any “symptoms”—she was referring to his infection status, not his migraines. He was able to tell her no, because the ability to transform out of viral sequence wasn’t a symptom of a health decline in any medical journal. He wasn’t surprised his blood pressure was low and told her he’d taken some painkillers in a fruitless attempt to circumvent the migraine. When she asked what, he fudged, telling her Tylenol codeine. Close enough.
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While waiting for the doctor to show, he dozed lightly in one of the chairs, the sick throbbing of his head not allowing him anything but the lightest stage of pre-sleep. Sometimes, with the bad attacks, there were few medications he could take to shut the pain off, even if he took a handful of heavy-duty shit. It was like his brain was an infected wound, swollen and near bursting with pus. Which was a disgusting idea, but it felt even worse. The doctor turned out to be one of the newer ones, a petite woman younger than him, who also had shorter hair than him. She was exceedingly kind, noting that his chart was full of references to migraines and cluster headaches and filled with medications used and discarded. Like most, she asked when he had his last head CT. They kept looking for brain tumors, and they had yet to find one, although it was once noted aneurysm could also be a possibility. Fun. There were new meds out, which didn’t surprise him considering the sheer amount of pharmaceutical ads, and she gave him a shot of the meds in his hip. Then he had to loiter in the room for a good fifteen minutes, just to make sure he didn’t have any side-effect reactions (he’d had a bad reaction to one of the first migraine meds he was ever given, and this was a chemical cousin). His head hurt so much he didn’t even feel the needle. He had considered trying to overwhelm the pain in his head, distract his pain receptors by, say, slamming his hand in a car door, but that didn’t work. He’d tried, though; he tried almost everything you could name, short of a brain transplant. He was okay. The pain was starting to ebb, and while he felt slightly dizzy and hollow, that was how migraine meds usually left him feeling. It was preferable to the alternative. The doctor gave him some samples of the medication in pill form, mainly because his health insurance didn’t cover this particular medication (Ha! Road trip to Canada was in order, it seemed….) and she advised him to see his GP as soon as possible. She didn’t like that his migraine attacks seemed to be increasing in frequency, and he hadn’t had a brain scan in over a year. The fact that he was an infected seemed to make this more dire in her opinion, and he knew why: as infecteds went, he was elderly. He’d lived too long with the disease without physically breaking down. She probably thought this was a sign, the first sign of his rapid decline that would end with his death within six months. Sometimes he wished that
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was true. He knew the meds were really working when he became ravenously hungry while driving to the office. Because he had an insane craving—the meds, or just him?—Roan pulled into the lot of the first Baskin Robbins he came to and got a Jamoca Almond Fudge ice cream cone. The kid working behind the counter gave him a funny look, but Roan didn’t care. It was the breakfast of champions, damn it. He felt light-headed and giddy, not really high on meds so much as high on the lack of pain. You forgot how nice it was to live without it sometimes. He arrived at the office just as Fiona was hanging up the phone. “Where you been, bitch?” she asked. It was a running joke between them now, the pointless addition of the word “bitch” at the end of sentences and questions. They didn’t do it around clients, as someone might take them seriously, but they thought it was hilarious. “Stopped at the doctor’s, bitch.” She sighed heavily and fixed him with a stern look. Today Fiona was wearing her crimson dominatrix hair extensions, but she combined them with her honey-colored contact lenses that made her eyes look almost yellow, like a wolf’s. It was startling, especially when combined with a black pleather vest worn as a shirt, such as now. She looked like she got lost on her way to the biker bar. But Roan imposed no dress code, except she at least look semi-professional and never wore her dominatrix gear during work hours (which was cool with her, because she didn’t like to wear it except when she was on a “gig”). “Is it your migraines again? Man, you need to see a specialist.” “There are migraine specialists?” “I assume. Isn’t there a specialist for everything? They got butt doctors. Why not head doctors?” “I don’t need a brain surgeon. Yet. Give me a minute.” “Don’t smart-ass me, mister.” He decided not to remind her who was the boss around here, and simply asked, “Any messages?” She gave him a look that suggested he was going to pay for this and let out a martyr’s sigh before consulting a piece of paper on her desk. “Detective Sikorksi called and said he wanted you to call him
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back. Dylan called and said he’d be at the Serrano Gallery this afternoon and would love it if you stopped by, and James Bellamy called with another excuse about why he’s been late on payment.” “Bellamy,” Roan sighed, waving his hand in a dismissing manner. He was a weasel who wanted him to get “dirt” on his soon-to-be-exwife but was unwilling to pay for it. So until he coughed up the dough, Roan wasn’t giving him shit. Then he asked, “Serrano Gallery? Like the peppers?” Fiona nodded, her crimson hair moving up and down. “Yeah, it’s a place that specifically focuses on Latino artists, but I always thought it sounded more like a restaurant. And I keep forgetting Dylan’s Latino. I don’t know why. He has that total hot Latino guy look going on.” “Back off, sister—he doesn’t bat for your team.” “Don’t I know it, bitch. You hot guys all seem to be gay. Where’s my hot straight guy, damn it?” “Did you include me in the hot guys statement?” She glared at him. “Well, duh. You are a hot guy. Don’t fish for compliments.” “I wasn’t!” He wasn’t. He wasn’t sure how he looked. When he looked in the mirror, he either saw his scars or he saw too much of the cat in his face and had to look away quickly. He tried not to glance in mirrors too often. Only when he absolutely had to. “Oh sure,” she replied teasingly, but before she could dig the hole deeper, he was saved by the phone. Once she answered it, he ducked into his office and closed the door. There was a bowl of fresh gorp on his desk, indicating Doctor Braunbeck had stopped by at some point. He was glad he had missed him. Once he’d settled and shoved the gorp into his garbage can— sorry, but he really didn’t like the stuff, and Roan had no idea why Braunbeck could never accept that some people didn’t like it—he called Gordo back but got routed straight to his call messaging system, which told him he had his cell phone switched off: he was either at a scene or at a meeting. So Roan left a terse message to call him back. Damn it, if he had more on the crime scene, he wanted to hear it. So, with time on his hands, he called a person he hadn’t talked to in a while, Jay Bhaskar. He was a medical examiner—read coroner—
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for the county office, and while very straight (he had three kids and two pissed-off ex-wives to prove it), he was the most gossipy, nosy person Roan had ever met outside of a hair salon. He’d been known to flash Polaroids of particularly grisly or inexplicable finds in corpses at Christmas parties, which Roan knew could get him fired if anyone higher up ever found out about it. But Jay had on his side a very selfdeprecating sense of humor (he described himself as the “dumpy Gandhi—you know, the one who found nirvana in a double cheeseburger”) and a very generous nature. If you needed ten bucks, help moving, or a kidney, he was the guy you called. Roan didn’t need anything so dramatic. When Jay answered, Roan heard the hollow echo of a speaker phone. “Bhaskar.” “Hey, Jay, it’s Roan McKichan.” “Roan! You old gay bastard! How ya doin’, Batman?” He sighed wearily and slumped back in his chair. “Don’t you start.” “Oh come on! I saw those security tapes, man. Ain’t no way a normal human without years of training could pull off those stunts.” “How do you know I haven’t been training?” Jay snorted a laugh that trailed off into a snicker. “Training as which, a gymnast or a long jumper? Hey, I know—ninja training. You’re a ninja now, aren’t you?” It was nice to have friends, but it also could be a tremendous pain in the ass. He decided to get right to the point. “Jay, I need you to look into something for me.” “I assume it’s a corpse.” Roan heard a faint metallic clink, like something being tossed onto a metal tray. “Are you doing an autopsy right now?” “Yeah, but a very basic one. I’m just confirming a death by natural causes, and boy, was it ever. Your body’s probably a temple, ninja Batman, but this guy used his as a garbage dump. His arteries are so clogged I couldn’t get a needle through them.” Roan winced at both the mental image and the possibility that ninja would now be added to his name-calling list. “Do you know if
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Joel Newberry is on the docket?” “Newberry? Holy shit, now there’s one guy I’d love to slice and dice. The stories I’ve heard about him….” “Such as?” “Oh, the usual decadent rich guy stuff: sex parties, orgies, allnight coke binges and losing half a million dollars at the blackjack table in Vegas. You know, the routine.” “Stuff that someone could have pulled from a Jackie Collins novel.” “Right. But I bet at least some of it is true.” “Can you find out? I mean, at least through his autopsy report—” “Are you fucking kidding me, man? That stuff’s locked down tighter than a nun’s snatch. The Newberrys are trying to keep this stuff as hush-hush as possible.” Roan wished he was surprised, but he wasn’t. “Why?” “Because… well, he’s rich, they’re rich, they’re local celebrities. That’s all the reason they need.” “Is that good enough for you?” There was a long pause and another clink of a metal instrument hitting a metal tray. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? You’re trying to manipulate me into breaking the law and giving you details that maybe three people in the world could possibly be interested in. Why the interest in Newberry, Ro?” “I’ve been hired to look into his death by a close friend of his, who doesn’t believe his death was accidental.” Another pause, but shorter than the first. “Really?” Jay now sounded interested. That was all he needed to do, pique his curiosity. Once, when he was very drunk at one of those Christmas parties, Jay had admitted to him that he’d always had this secret fantasy about being Quincy, a mystery-solving coroner. He ate this mystery stuff up on a plate. “I’ll sniff around, but… I can’t promise anything. And if I find anything, it stays between us and my name never comes up, got it?” “You can count on me, Jay.” “I’d hope so, you being Batman and all.”
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If Jay wasn’t doing a favor for him, Roan would have slammed the receiver down repeatedly on the desk. But when someone was doing you a favor, you couldn’t pull shit like that, not without being seen as the world’s biggest asshole. But the next time someone called him Batman, he was going to scream. After ending the phone call with Jay, it struck him that he felt too light-headed—dizzy almost. The world seemed to have a slight tilt to its axis, and he thought he might start floating if he didn’t hang on to the edge of the desk. Okay, the absence of pain was nice, but sometimes these side effects could be a real bitch. He pushed his chair away and lay down on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Which needed cleaning, something he hadn’t realized before. There was a big-ass cobweb in the near corner, which he had never seen before. Some detective he was. Also, his carpet was pretty flat. He probably needed to get it replaced before it became threadbare. Well, assuming he got the money to do such a thing; the economic downturn was hitting him as well as other people. Only Holden seemed immune, but then again, when you sold sex, you were probably bulletproof. He was wondering if he was falling asleep when his phone rang, and rather than get up to answer it, he grabbed the phone cord and yanked it down to the floor. The receiver tumbled off the cradle when landing, so Roan scooped it up and answered, “MK Investigations.” “Hey, you know someone named Miranda Kim, don’t you?” Gordo said, with no preamble. He had his gruff “just the facts ma’am” voice on, which set off alarm bells in his head. “Randi? Yeah, she’s a friend. Why?” “We got the IDs of the three people last known to be living at the house on Madison Court,” he reported. “Curtis Bowles, Tiffany Jones, and Grant Kim.” Roan felt his gut twist, although the meds he was on were so good it registered as little more than a twinge. Grant Kim? Wasn’t that the name of Randi’s brother? Oh fuck no. He hoped it was another Grant Kim, but somehow he doubted it.
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4 Cycle of Agony ROAN really didn’t want to do this. But he had no choice. He walked out into the downpour and crossed the parking lot of the office park, coming to the all-female CPA office where Randi worked. Admittedly, this seemed to be a strange office park. Yes, they had the dentist and the chiropractor and the lawyer that all office parks of this ilk seemed to have, but the dentist was a German woman who had a tendency to curse in Yiddish and walked with a limp due to a prosthetic leg; the chiropractor was a gorp-obsessed weirdo who looked like a real-life version of Bunsen Honeydew; and the lawyer was a very brusque professional woman who took the bar exam when she was a man about ten years ago (her employees generally didn’t know she used to be a man, but Roan did, because she’d told him once in an attempt at bonding). And then there was the infected gay detective and his dominatrix assistant, who probably took the entire weirdo cake. Roan would have worried he was a weirdo magnet, except Braunbeck had been here when he’d started renting office space, so Braunbeck was the weirdo magnet. That figured. Roan walked into the office, and the receptionist was a perky if slightly plain and slightly heavy woman named Patsy. “Hey, Roan. You here to see Randi?” “Yeah, but I can wait.” The layout here was different than most offices. The boss of the place had torn out the physical cubical walls and replaced them with glass and translucent plastic ones, so it was more open and had more light. In other words, it seemed less dreary. It also allowed you to see who was busy and who wasn’t, and Randi was dealing with a client right now, so he hated to barge in on an appointment and say, “Randi, your brother’s either dead or a fugitive, and oh yeah, did you know he was infected?” That was something best
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shared in private. Actually, he relished sitting in the waiting room chairs and composing a script in his head, which he rewrote every thirty seconds. He could think of no good way to say this, no comforting way, no way to soften the blow. He watched rain drip from his hair and splash on his leg, disappearing quickly into the dark color of his pants. He usually wore dark-colored pants, because they hid bloodstains so well, and it was a horrible revelation about himself. He was all ready for violence, even if the situation didn’t warrant it. But he was always locked and loaded, ready to go. What had he once said? Oh yes, that he was a battle queen: Boadicea. He was nearly forty—shouldn’t he have grown out of that by now? After all, if he was a “normal” infected, he’d have been long dead by now. Maybe when you knew you shouldn’t be alive, it made you more combative, ready to fight for the space you somehow had but shouldn’t have had. Every minute, you waited for the repo man. He felt a shadow looming over him and looked up to see Patsy standing there with a paper cup of coffee. “Randi can see you now. And here, I brought you this,” she said, handing him the coffee. “You looked cold.” Cold. Roan thanked her, but wondered if that was code for something: miserable, depressed, like a drowned rat. He took the cup of coffee, but only for warmth, although to be fair it smelled strong and possibly gourmet. He wished he liked coffee. As he approached her “office,” she looked up from her computer and asked, “What can I do you for?” He liked Randi, even though she had always had a not-so-secret crush on Paris and only tolerated him as a Paris accessory. He couldn’t blame her for any of it, as Paris was always the better of the two of them. Who didn’t love him? He didn’t want to hurt her like this. But it was either hear it from him or from some cop who didn’t know her from any relative of a crime victim. “Does the address 212 Madison Court mean anything to you?” Roan asked, grasping at the final straw. Maybe it was another guy named Grant Kim. There was a growing Asian population in the region, and Kim was an incredibly popular last name, the Korean equivalent of Smith. This could be mistaken identity.
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For a moment, Roan clung to that hope. The fact that Randi appeared momentarily puzzled fed his relief. But then she said, “I think that’s where my brother lives. Why?” Then horror overtook her expression, like a cloud moving across the face of the sun. She knew then that there was only one reason he’d come in here and ask such a question. “Oh shit. What happened to Grant?” “I think we should probably discuss this in privacy,” he said, glancing around at the surrounding cubicles. He noticed a couple of employees pretending to work while they tried to eavesdrop on the conversation. It was natural curiosity, and that’s why an open office floor plan like this sometimes sucked. She must have agreed, because she stood up, but she then grabbed his arm and demanded, “Is he dead or in jail?” “Neither,” he answered, and as far as he knew, it was most likely true. She frowned, but then she signaled someone and said, “Ally, I’m taking my break now.” Randi grabbed her coat off the back of her chair and then headed out, still holding his arm and dragging him along. He let her, and at the surprised look of what he assumed to be the office supervisor, he said, “Family emergency. Sorry, it’s urgent.” He left the cup of coffee on the windowsill before Randi yanked him out the door. Just beyond the doorway of the office, near the dripping eave of the roof, Randi faced him and said, “Neither isn’t an answer. What’s going on?” He had no choice but to tell her he had been called to a crime scene at the house this morning, a cat killing that had turned out to be pretty bizarre. A dead man in the kitchen, so badly mutilated that identification was going to be difficult, and the scent of two cats but three people in the house: two infected males, including the dead man, and a woman, not infected but wearing perfume. She started shaking her head halfway through but waited until Roan was finished to start speaking. “Roan, it isn’t him. It must have been a couple of visitors or something; Grant wasn’t infected. He would have told me.” She started chewing her thumbnail, then stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing. She was saying the words, but he could tell Randi was speaking but not believing a word she said.
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“Were you close?” She shrugged. “We weren’t gossiping and doing each other’s hair every weekend, but we got along. There’s no way he’d not tell me something so major.” “When’s the last time you talked to him?” “A coupla days ago.” “In person or on the phone?” “What the fuck’s with the third degree, Roan?” she snapped. “Am I a suspect or something?” “Of course not. I’m just trying to establish a timeline here.” He was trying to get her to admit they weren’t that close, actually, but he knew if he said it she’d shut down. Her look was deeply suspicious, but she admitted, “It was by email.” He wasn’t surprised. “What did he say?” “Nothing like “I’m infected, and I’m gonna eat my roommate.” Okay? It was just stupid stuff, relationship problems.” “Did you save a copy?” She gave him a look that could have blistered paint. “You’re not reading my e-mails.” The fact that she was so super-defensive told him all he needed to know. She wasn’t close with her brother; they barely kept in touch, despite living in the same city. She probably only saw him during family holiday gatherings. But now she was feeling guilty, and she wasn’t going to say it. “He was in a relationship? With whom?” She shook her head and looked away. “I dunno. He only ever referred to her by initials: TC.” “You’re sure it was TC and not TJ?” “I know the difference between a C and a J, Roan.” So probably not Tiffany Jones, unless her middle initial started with C. He had to check that. “What kind of relationship did he have with his roommates?” She shrugged and bit a cuticle on her index finger before stopping herself. “I don’t know. He and Curt went to college together, and I
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think his girlfriend moved in with them, but that’s about it.” “Tiffany Jones was Curtis’s girlfriend?” “I guess. Was that her name? I knew it sounded like something a stripper would use as a shitty stage alias.” “You never met them.” It wasn’t a question. Randi glanced back at Roan out of the corner of her eye but mostly kept staring out at the parking lot, like her savior was going to drive in any second and mow him down. He was late. “I’m sure I did once. But it was a while ago, and I forgot.” He felt like making a sarcastic comment, along the lines of “That’s a hell of an impression they left on you,” but he didn’t, because he hadn’t even come to the worst part of this yet. “Did Grant have any tattoos or distinguishing marks? Scars, moles, piercings?” “Now why would you ask that? It’s not like—” It set in. Blood drained from her face, and she brought a hand up to her mouth in horror. “You think he’s the corpse?” “No, I don’t.” He didn’t; he didn’t know who the corpse was. “Just look at the eyes. He’s Korean! You’d know if….” Her jaw dropped, and she had to take a moment to find her voice. “He had no eyes? The body had no eyes?” He held up his hands, hoping to calm her, knowing he couldn’t. “Please, just answer the question, and try not to think about the body.” “Can I see it?” “What?” “The body. Can I see the body? I can tell you then—” “I really wouldn’t. Just tell me, how tall was he? How much did he weigh? What was his body type? Was he broad shouldered or not?” Roan had to repeat his request, because she zoned out for a moment. When she came back, she seemed to be staring at a spot just a couple inches above his shoulder. “He was like five seven, and maybe a hundred and twenty soaking wet. He was always a string bean. And no, he wasn’t fucking broad shouldered. He was Korean. Do I have to repeat that? How many Korean quarterbacks have you seen?” “I know a broad-shouldered Asian cop. And I don’t think the corpse was your brother. This guy had a gut, and a mid-sized frame.” It
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wasn’t the easiest thing to work out, especially since he was so mangled, but considering the amount of blood and torn-up flesh, they weren’t dealing with a string bean. “Curt?” “I guess, but it’s up to the ME’s office to get a confirmed identity.” And he still wished them luck. They were going to need it. “Oh shit,” Randi suddenly exclaimed, and then reached into her pants pocket, pulling out a slim sliver of a cell phone. Quickly, she called up a menu on the screen that lit up her face in blue light and held the phone to her ear, muttering, “C’mon, c’mon, pick up….” Calling Grant? Most likely. Roan was curious to see if he picked up, so he waited patiently. Randi’s curse told him all he needed to know before she said, “Grant, you get this, you call me back immediately. I mean it.” She then ended the call and shut the phone, slipping it in her pocket. “I got his voice mail.” “I guessed.” A car turned into the parking lot, headlights scudding through the rain and lighting it up, making it look like silver needles falling to earth. The car just did a U-turn and eventually drove away, the pair of them watching the whole time. “If he calls back, contact me immediately. Tell him I’m willing to help him, but he has to meet me in person. Okay?” She nodded, but there seemed to be a wariness in her posture. “He didn’t kill Curt, Roan. He’s not infected. I’m telling you, this is a mistake.” “I really hope so,” he admitted. But Grant and Randi hadn’t been close, and if he’d been infected recently, there was no reason why he’d tell her. He got a strong sense there was something Randi wasn’t telling him, but now was not the time to press her. He had to let the news sink in, had to let her wrestle down her own sense of guilt, and then maybe she’d tell him her big secret about Grant. In the meantime, though, he was going to have to call Gordo back and let him know Grant probably wasn’t the corpse in the kitchen, meaning if there wasn’t an APB out on him right now, there would be. Roan could only hope he found Grant before the cops did.
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5 Quote Unquote ROAN wasn’t in the best of moods and he knew it, but he thought he might cheer up if he saw Dylan. Or maybe he’d just bring him down. But hey, what were boyfriends for? Finding the Serrano Gallery turned out to be a major pain in the ass. It wasn’t well marked and was situated in a small shop hidden between a music store and a candy shop in the older part of downtown, in one of those narrow places that had once been referred to as a “boutique” when the place was new. Now it was “quaint,” a virtual kiss of death in these trendier, sexier times. The smell of fresh popcorn wafted from the candy shop—it also sold gourmet popcorn and ice cream, snack multi-tasking—and Roan was tempted to stop in before visiting the gallery. But he decided to visit afterward, because the gallery owners might object to him shoving pepper popcorn in his face while he dripped rain water on their floors. As it turned out, he might as well have. Roan might also have come in pantsless wearing flip-flops for the evil look the woman at the front of the gallery gave him. She was probably a Latina, but didn’t really look it. She had gathered her hair up into a sort of ponytail on the top of her head, so her hair looked like an exploding fountain, and she had so many piercings in her face Roan wished he’d brought a large magnet just to annoy her. His favorite piercing was the one in her cheek. It looked like she’d been shot but had stopped the butt end of the bullet with her cheekbone. Her glare seemed to be a challenge to him to talk, so he did. “I’m here for Dylan.” Her look hardly changed an iota. “Who the hell are you?” “Who the hell are you?” he replied. Luckily, Dylan came walking out of the back just then. “Roan!
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Oh good god, didn’t you even take your hat this morning?” He was apparently appalled to find Roan dripping on the dusty floor. “I did, but I left it at the office. Say, who’s this ray of sunshine over here?” “Fuck you, old man,” the girl sneered. “Serena, stop that,” Dylan snapped at her, in that very Buddhist way of his. It meant he sounded annoyed, but not actually pissed off. “This is my boyfriend, Roan.” “Oh.” She said it like it was the most irrelevant aside she had ever been subjected to. “You must date a ton,” Roan said with sarcastic cheerfulness, which led to Dylan grabbing his arm and quickly dragging him down a corridor so narrow he almost didn’t fit. “Your personality is so sparkling!” Roan tossed over his shoulder. She probably cussed him out again. In the doorway of a room that smelled strongly of oil-based paints, Dylan turned and faced him with a mild scowl. “Please, don’t pick a fight.” “Who’s fighting? I’m complimenting her on her wonderful people skills.” Dylan shook his head. “She’s pissy, I know—” “Pissy? I think you’re giving her too much credit. She’s worse than me.” “Yes, well… she’s always that way with white guys who don’t look like rich art snobs.” “You’re mixed race. Has she been informed?” “Half is better than none,” he said and rolled his eyes, indicating he was repeating something she said. “Wow, this is new. I’ve been discriminated against for being gay, and for being infected, but never for being too fucking pale. I think I’m getting a tingle.” “Would you stop?” Dylan said that in a gently exasperated, mostly humorous way. “I am, it’s a tingle. No, wait, I think it’s a cold.” He turned aside
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and sneezed. Dylan put a warm hand on his arm, which he could feel through his sodden coat. “I don’t have any towels that aren’t smeared with paint, but would you like a smock? I think there’s a smock.” “Smocks are for pussies, Dyl.” He giggled but went to look inside the small paint-reeking room. “I don’t mean to offend you, macho man.” “I’ll beat every SOB in this place, even the Iron Maiden in the vestibule. Bring it!” Now Dylan was chuckling, and brought over a clean painter’s smock. He threw it on Roan’s head and then began drying his hair with it. Roan would have protested, but it was so casually intimate it sort of surprised him. Dylan wasn’t even drying his hair hard, whereas if Roan were him, he’d have been tempted to wrench his head off. “Hate to break it to you, tough guy, but I don’t think real bruisers use the word ‘vestibule’.” “Too fruity?” “Tres fruity. But not as fruity as dropping random French words in your conversation.” He slid the smock off his head and asked, “Feel better?” “Yeah. I think I still squish when I walk, but I guess that’s typical of us poofters, right?” Dylan smirked and rolled up the now-damp smock before lobbing it back in the room. “Not a pun, Ro. That’s low.” “And that rhymed. You know how much fun it is to be gay and have a nickname that rhymes with blow?” Dylan hid his face in his hands so Roan didn’t see him struggling not to laugh. After a moment, he asked, “Have you been in the laughing gas?” “No. I think it’s all the paint fumes. I’m getting giddy on the stuff.” Dylan put his arms around his neck, a casual touch as opposed to the full-on throttling that Roan imagined he’d do if he were Dylan. “So, are you gonna tell me what pulled you out of bed this morning?” “Oh, that.” There were privacy issues, but fuck it, Randi was
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probably going to be over a lot, and he would hear it from either her or him. So he told him, leaving out details of how gruesome the crime scene was and glossing over how upset Randi really was when he told her about her brother. But Dylan guessed it, as his brown-black eyes went wide in horror, his natural empathy making him adopt the pain as personal. “Oh my god! Poor Randi, and poor Grant! So he was infected and never told his family?” “Apparently.” “And his college pal and current roommate is also infected?” Dylan paused, giving him a skeptical look. He’d made the same instant mental connection Roan had. “So were they both druggies, or were they secretly gay?” “You forgot the shocking third option.” Dylan had to think about it for a moment. “Cultists?” “Yeah—they sought infection. I saw no evidence at the scene to support it, but Gordo hardly let me paw through their computers.” “If they were, does that mean this Tiffany was one of them and just unlucky? Or was she the normal one stuck in the middle of all of this?” “That’s what I’m wondering. She may be the only person left who can tell us what the fuck actually happened in that house. If she’s still alive.” Dylan grimaced. “Gods, that terrible. Poor Randi. We should do something for her. What do you do when someone’s brother is infected and ate his best friend?” “A very good question. Add to that Randi knows more than she’s saying. She was definitely holding out on me.” Dylan clicked his tongue and gave him a mildly scolding look. “How long were we together before I told you about Tom? There’s just some things you don’t want to tell people about your own family.” There was perhaps a bitter irony in what happened to Tom, Sheba and Dylan’s younger brother, the one they’d spared from seeing the bodies of their parents after their father killed their mother and himself, as he was the one who never seemed to get over it. They’d shielded him
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as best they could and continued to do so, but Tom really struggled growing up, acting out in ways that Sheba and Dylan never did, including cutting, until he made a suicide attempt at fourteen. Shortly afterwards, he’d had something akin to a psychotic episode at school and attacked two kids and a teacher with an X-Acto knife, and that began Tom’s many episodes with both the justice system and the mental health system. He had been diagnosed as schizophrenic and then as having borderline personality disorder, but he hated taking his meds, and once he was of legal age, he would disappear for weeks at a time. He “selfmedicated,” as Dylan called it; he wouldn’t take the drugs prescribed to him, but he’d indulge in alcohol and illegal drugs, leading him to more time in the justice system. It was a vicious, unrelenting cycle, and Tom refused to let either Dylan or Sheba help him. The last time Dylan had heard from Tom, he was homeless and wandering in Idaho. He was still angry at his siblings for having him hospitalized against his will, so his communication with them was sporadic at best. It suddenly occurred to Roan that he had overlooked something. “You got your iPhone with you?” Dylan raised an eyebrow at him. Roan teased him about his iPhone, which even Dylan admitted was an overpriced and, for him, a rather needless gadget (but Sheba bought it for him, so he wasn’t going to get rid of it). “Yes. Why?” “Does this place get Wi-Fi?” “Yeah, the university’s coffee shop is on the corner, and we’re in their range. Again, why?” “Could you do a search for me on Grant Kim? Specifically for a MySpace or a Facebook page.” Dylan let him go and pulled the iPhone out of his pocket. As he went to the web browser, he said, “Is that a big part of detective work now?” “Searching for people’s Facebook pages? You’d be surprised. Nowadays, a lot of people just let it all hang out on the Internet and are shocked when someone uses it against them.” “The Internet feels safe. I mean, you’re alone, in your own home, posting shit. You know other people can read it, but it never seems to
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sink in that everybody can read it if they know where to look.” Dylan gave him a funny look and asked, “You don’t have a page like that, do you?” He scoffed. “Oh yeah, Dylan, you know me, big Internet slut.” It was precisely because he knew how such things could be used against you that he never joined a damn social network of any kind on the web. It wasn’t that he was antisocial, it was just that… okay, yeah, being antisocial was a part of it. But a very small part. Smallish. Dylan squinted at the small rectangular screen before standing shoulder to shoulder with him and sharing the view. “There’s a couple of Grant Kims on Facebook, including one who lists themselves as an 83-year-old woman.” “Ignore age and gender. Smart-asses have fun with those. Let’s narrow it down by location.” He stared at the screen, which actually had great resolution for its size, and saw what he was looking for. “Right there.” He touched the link, and they were taken to the page. The main picture showed a lanky Asian male, shirtless and drinking from a beer bong. The fact that Grant had chosen that as a picture to represent himself told him a lot about the guy. His last post was late Friday, and it read, in its entirety: “Goin to a party 2-nite! It’s gonna kick AZZ! Mikey scored some sunshine and we’re gonna parTAY bitchez! Hit me up if yer in the area, it’s gonna be AWEsome!” “Sunshine?” Dylan asked, thinking about it for a moment. “That’s a type of E, isn’t it?” “You’re the bartender at the gay club. You should know better than me.” “You know, call me naïve, but I didn’t think anyone over the age of twelve actually wrote like that.” “It’s a new age, especially when you’re trying desperately to seem hip and with it.” Roan scrolled down to the part of the page that had personal info and found Grant had listed his age as twenty-three. Roan knew better than to trust that. His birth certificate and driver’s license he’d believe. And who was “Mikey”? “Roan,” Dylan said and pointed at a line on the screen. In the “Relationship” box, he’d chosen “It’s complicated.” “Huh.” Maybe he was keeping his options open or didn’t want to
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share the fact that he had a girlfriend. Or maybe they’d broken up, and he’d never told Randi. Could have been a ton of reasons. But they were stoking some basic suspicions Roan had about Grant. Grant seemed to be a bad candidate for cultist, which was a good thing. But on the other hand, he seemed to be a prime candidate for an accidental infected. And one of those stupid assholes who unknowingly infected a lot of other people. Son of a bitch.
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6 Cattle and the Creeping Things ALL the pictures Grant had on his Facebook page seemed to involve him drinking or getting high, in various states of undress. Roan wasn’t sure if he was trying to say “I’m a sexy good-time guy” or “I’m a complete fucking moron.” He even had a tramp stamp, a tattoo on the small of his back (it was some sort of black pseudo-tribal design, which had probably been hip for five minutes when Grant was in high school). Randi hadn’t mentioned it, leading him to think she didn’t know about it. Did she never visit his Facebook page? “Is this any help at all?” Dylan wondered. Roan was forced to shrug. “Grant went to a party Friday night with some guy named Mikey, and probably dropped some E. How that leads to this morning’s bloodbath I have no idea. I mean, I can search for all parties on Friday night, but that will give me, what? Three or four dozen leads? Not a help.” Dylan frowned in thought, staring through the picture of Grant pretending to drink the water out of a blue glass bong. “You know, I can ask at the bar, see if anyone knows of a guy named Mike who may peddle Ecstasy. I know a couple of circuit boys, and if anyone’s going to know the dealers, it’s going to be them.” “This really isn’t your investigation.” “I know, but if I can help, let me.” Roan wasn’t going to argue with him. Gordo wouldn’t like it, but he didn’t need to know about it. He told him to go ahead, but not to worry about it if it went nowhere. Not that he needed to tell Dylan that. Mr. Daily Meditation, he went out of his way trying not to worry. How successful he was at it was up to Dylan to say, not him. Eventually Dylan showed him what he had called him here for:
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the perfected version of his tiger sketch. It was beautiful, slinky and somewhat Asian in style, with simple, curving lines suggesting a muscular tiger stalking its prey. It was just a quick sketch Dylan had done while bored, something he did quite often (if he had to wait anywhere, from Starbucks to the DMV, he killed time drawing), but when Roan saw it, he knew he had to get it as a tattoo. He had his Paris one on his right arm, so why not get one on his left? Balance himself out. The funny thing was, he’d never been much for tattoos, and yet he felt compelled to add this, to burn it on his skin. The fact that it was a tiger didn’t escape his notice, and he wondered if it was yet another tribute to Paris. He’d probably cover his body with tributes to Paris if he could. No one should forget him, least of all him. Dylan was surprised he wanted it as a tattoo, but was good with it. He asked for a chance to perfect it, make it more tattoo-like in size, and Roan had no problem with that. He knew that Jade, one of the artists over at Damaged Ink, where he’d got his Paris tattoo, would copy it, so the idea was Dylan was going to draw the finished version on Roan’s arm, leaving Jade to basically trace it. But she got paid whether she did it freehand or traced someone else’s work, so she didn’t mind. Did Dylan mind? If he did, he never said or indicated it in any other way. The decision was made for Dylan to do the drawing tonight, before he went to work, if there was time. Right now Dylan was off to bikram yoga (Roan teased him about this, but the end result was Dylan had a body you could break concrete slabs on, and he didn’t have to partially morph into a cat to get it, either), and Roan supposed he should pretend to do some work, although he wasn’t sure where to go next. He didn’t have leads per se, just a collection of observations that suggested Randi was probably embarrassed by her brother. He went to the snack shop, run by a couple of nice middle-aged ladies, and picked up both some fresh popcorn and some hand-dipped chocolates, as the migraine medication had left him ravenous (or so he thought; otherwise he had no idea why he just wanted to sit in his car and shove food in his piehole). But it occurred to him that he’d missed something. It nagged at him like a word just on the tip of his tongue that he just couldn’t remember. What had he missed? Roan went back to the office and looked at Grant Kim’s Facebook page again. What the fuck had he missed? Only scanning the pictures
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did he see it: it was in Grant’s ignominious photo gallery. It was a picture posted last Wednesday, and it showed him tapping a pony keg. He was in front of a neon pink flamingo in a blue circle next to a big fake Tiki head and a framed Don Ho album on the wall. The only place he knew with tacky décor like that was the Oasis, a little split-room bar and nightclub near the campus of the university. He found Curtis’s page, but it was set to private, so all he could see was the bland picture on the front of his page. He printed it out, along with the leastembarrassing photo of Grant he could find. He was unable to find Tiffany’s page. The Oasis was so empty it may as well have been closed, but from the way the wait staff was fussing with decorations on the wall, Roan figured things were dead until the students were out of class. The bartender was a gym bunny, a true steroid monstrosity, with arms as big as most people’s thighs and a neck as thick as a tree trunk. He was wearing a maroon T-shirt so tight it looked like any movement on his part would cause Hulk-like ripping. Since the guy wasn’t doing anything, Roan showed him the printed-out pics of Grant and Curtis and told him that these men were currently missing, and he had reason to believe they came here quite a bit. The guy only vaguely recognized Grant, calling him “that skinny Asian kid who seemed almost always drunk.” According to the bartender, he seemed to always be with a bunch of people and always drinking on their dime. He couldn’t remember him ever paying for his own drink. As for Curtis, he had no idea. He just shook his head and summed up Curtis wonderfully well: “He’s got one of those faces you always forget.” He did. Roan wondered if he was going to be one of those guys who was unremarkable in life but remembered in death, if only because his passing was so brutal. The kid (the bartender constantly called Grant “the kid”) was in a lot, maybe every other weekend, although he said he hadn’t been in that Friday or Saturday, not that he could recall. He did confirm he had been in Wednesday, but only because he remembered he was with a “hot blonde” he wasn’t sure was legal. (Tiffany? His mysterious girlfriend? Someone else entirely?) She apparently had a “sweet rack,” and this told Roan that the bartender thought he was a fellow straight guy and would appreciate his ogling of a woman’s breasts. Roan just stared at
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him and moved on to the next question. There hadn’t been a party here Friday night, but he was sure there were a “million” in the area, since they were near a college campus. And as far as knowing any drug dealers named Mike, he told him, chuckling slightly, that about every other guy around here was named Mike. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Mike. Roan left him one of his business cards and asked him to call if Grant or the blonde turned up, or if he just remembered something that might be helpful. He studied his card for a very long time, then looked up at him with a furrowed brow. “You’re really looking for this guy? Shit, I thought maybe he owed you money or something.” “No. I’m working with the police department on this investigation.” Not technically a lie. “He’s really missing?” Roan nodded, wondering if he was sitting on some information. “I wasn’t lying. I imagine it’ll be on the local news tonight.” “Shit.” He looked down at his business card again, like it might tell him something new. “I’ve never known anyone who’s gone missing before.” “First time for everything,” Roan replied lamely, mainly because he didn’t know what to say. What did you say to that? Congratulations? Aren’t you glad it wasn’t you? Nothing fit. When he was leaving, the bartender said, “Hey… um, I don’t know if it helps, but… for a while he was going out with this girl, um, Marjean, she’s a student at the university. I think she is still.” “Any last name?” He shrugged. “I don’t know it.” It was still a break—how many people were named Marjean? The campus looked depressing, and Roan imagined that it still would even if it wasn’t downpouring. There was a beautiful, large oak tree in front of the campus quad, and he saw a gray squirrel on one of its lower branches, seemingly upset by the constant torrent. The funny thing was, Roan smelled it long before he saw it. Wet fur of any animal was very pungent, and it made his stomach do an uncertain twist. Did normal people smell that, or was it just him? When the squirrel sniffed
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him, it took off running up the tree. Typical. He wondered what he smelled like to animals, if the lion or the human scared them more. He decided to bring out the whole bullshit offensive in the front office. Roan told the woman working there that he was with the police and that they were looking into the disappearance of Grant Kim. The woman, a matronly sort who looked like a housemother, struggled to recognize the name but didn’t quite get it until he showed her the picture. Then she didn’t seem all that surprised. Here came some information. Grant had dropped out of college ahead of getting his ass booted, as he had missed so many classes during his first year none of the faculty teachers were sure what he looked like. He had a reputation on campus as a hard partier, a goodtime guy, and as such was generally popular with the students. Although there had been one incident, recorded by the campus police, where he was cited for taking part in a large brawl in the parking lot. As it turned out, he may have been a victim and not an instigator, as the woman told Roan she could remember how covered in bruises he was. She also said she didn’t think he was much of a fighter. As soon as he mentioned Marjean, she supplied the rest of the information: Marjean Hardaway, who didn’t live on campus but across the street in an apartment complex called Sunrise Plaza. She even gave him her apartment number: 316. Did he look that much like a cop? Well, he had put on his “cop voice,” the one that seemed to most effectively convey authority and a “don’t fuck with me” vibe. He thanked her and went to look for Marjean. Roan didn’t know what he was expecting to find, but it probably wasn’t what he got. Sunrise Plaza was a small four-story apartment complex with a shabby air that probably didn’t matter to hard-up college students, and on the ground floor he passed a corkboard filled with kegger notices and homemade flyers for bands. Occasionally there was a notice about a roommate wanted, a lost pet, or something for sale, but not a lot. He heard rap music coming from Marjean’s place before he got there. He didn’t recognize who it was: somebody in the top twenty. It occurred to him that the only rappers he could name by sound were Public Enemy (great), Sage Francis (great), Outkast (did they even count?), and Eminem (idiot). God, he was so fucking old.
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He had to pound on the door, as knocking got no response. The door opened and the thudding, repetitive beats washed out all over him, as a young bleached-blonde woman leaned against the door drunkenly. “Yer not the pizza guy,” she slurred. She was probably pretty, but right now it was hard to tell. Her face was swollen and reddish with what Dee had once referred to as the “Irish hangover glaze,” her eyes half-lidded and so bloodshot it was honestly difficult to say what color her eyes were (pale blue or gray, either/or). She had some smears of makeup on her face, but none in the spots they were supposed to be in, and she was wearing a man’s extralarge Stanford University sweatshirt and nothing else. It ended at midthigh, revealing pale legs with a slight inward curve to them and bruised knees, with a cat scratch (?) on her left calf and a faint dark bristle of unshaved legs. Her hair was a tangled rat’s nest, perched atop her head like an askew wig, and he thought he saw dried vomit in a small, clumped-together strand. She smelled like vomit, malt liquor, body odor, unwashed laundry, cigarettes, and crank, and Roan had to blink fast to keep his eyes from watering. She was twenty going on forty at a thousand miles an hour. He identified himself as a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Grant Kim, and she stiffened. “You a cop?” “No. Private investigator.” Being a cop held cachet with the school. Clearly it wouldn’t here. Her posture eased a bit, which was dangerous, as he wasn’t sure she could stand up. She was leaning on the door so heavily he was surprised it hadn’t fallen all the way open. It took a moment, but the penny dropped. “Grant’s missing? Why?” What an odd question. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Could you tell me something about him?” She tried to run a hand through her hair, but it was too tangled; her hand hit a clump and stopped dead. “Sure. C’mon in.” She stumbled away from the door, her sweatshirt riding up and showing that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Wow, people all over the place were flashing him their asses today. He wouldn’t tell her, but Holden had the nicer one. Then again, his livelihood depended on it. The reason the door didn’t fall open all the way was simply
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because it couldn’t; the place was a pigsty. Now, people threw that description around loosely, but Roan didn’t, as his own housekeeping was on the questionable side (his boyfriends, bless them, usually were neater than him). But this place struck even him as sloppy beyond the pale, and if that wasn’t a cry for help, what was? There were dirty clothes heaped on the floor, along with a litter of takeout food detritus (pizza boxes, plastic bottles, paper wrappers, napkins, even packets of ketchup and hot sauce), and a scattered assortment of textbooks that looked like dead birds fallen from the sky, covers spread open like wings. The living room consisted of a foldout couch almost as old as he was, covered in fabric that was a hideous cross between fuchsia and Pepto-Bismol and now blotched with stains, a Dell computer on a couple of overturned crates that functioned as a desk, and a stereo system and television that were probably more expensive than his motorcycle. At least he could judge her priorities. She turned down the stereo, but tellingly didn’t turn it off. She didn’t so much sit down on the couch as collapse on it, folding a leg under her and lighting a cigarette. Where the cigarette had come from he had no idea and didn’t want to know. He decided to just jump in and try to get some answers from her before she passed out again. “His sister told me the last she heard from Grant, he was going to a party Friday night. You don’t know where it was, do you?” She took a serious drag off her cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly. It seemed to waft up from her open mouth like dry-ice fog. “Sister? Oh wow, I forgot he even had a sister.” She paused, long enough that he thought he was going to have to prompt her, but she started picking at a scab on her leg as she said, “He was always going to parties. Grant always knew where the best parties were.” Roan waited for more, but it wasn’t forthcoming. She stroked her leg idly, like she was trying to soothe a scared pet, and he figured she’d just discovered she hadn’t shaved her legs. “So what party did he go to Friday night?” She snorted, the cigarette shoved tightly into the corner of her mouth. She was working it like some people worked a toothpick. “I don’t know where I was Friday night. They had two-dollar tequila shooters over at the Bull’s Eye, and after a coupla those, I don’t really remember anything until I woke up Saturday night in the doorway of
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that church down the street. Wait a sec, maybe I have somethin’….” She grabbed up a battered black purse from beside the couch and turned it upside down, spilling out the contents beside her. He saw tissues, condoms, a pack of birth control pills, lip balm, a couple of unknown loose pills (Vitamins? Prescription? Other?), keys, pens, a red cell phone, a tampon, a small glass pipe that she probably used for crank. She sifted through it, heedlessly knocking some of it onto the dirty brown carpet. She was a Hold Steady song in the flesh. He wanted to tell her that, but resisted the urge. She picked up a receipt and glanced at it with squinted eyes before holding it out. “Okay, I was there. I’m pretty sure I ran into Grant there too.” “Was he with someone?” Roan studied the receipt, which wasn’t one actually. It was only a receipt on one side, from the Fred Meyer on the corner down the street: beer and toilet paper, also known as the breakfast of champions. The other side, the side she meant, had a hastily scrawled address on it in black ballpoint ink. He could barely make out the address, which was 175 Vickery Avenue. “I dunno. It was an awesome blowout,” she said and struggled to get up from the couch. “Or so I’m told. I was kinda out of it. Wanna beer?” Definitely a Hold Steady song. “No thanks. You know of anyone who was there that night that might have memories of the party?” That got a genuine chuckle out of her. “Not that I know, man. It was a wicked party.” So maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t much of a partier. Roan thanked her, restraining the urge to say, “Thank you, Ms. Winehouse,” and left her his business card, wondering what would kill her first: the drugs or just her lifestyle. And then he wondered how many people thought the same thing about him.
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7 All Is Ash or The Light Shining Through It ROAN drove through the downpour in search of the party house, getting almost hypnotized by the windshield wipers’ rhythmic slap. Usually after migraine meds he needed a nap, and he knew he’d fought the urge too long. But he’d just check out this one thing and go home. The address Marjean had given him led to an empty old-style Aframe house, set apart from its neighbor on about an acre of weeds. There was a “For Sale” sign, but the paint was peeling from sun and rain damage, and the lock box the real estate agency had put on the house was broken. He nudged the door open with his foot and was swamped by Human smells: shit, piss, vomit, sex. There was also a terrible lingering stain of alcohol and smoke, mostly pot and cigarette smoke, but some of it was crank and crack, meth and something so completely chemical Roan imagined that something had briefly, unintentionally caught fire. There was little furniture in the living room—an old couch that was so stained and damp it gave off a strong aroma of mildew was pretty much it—and there was some bird and mouse shit along with the crumpled beer cans and broken crack pipes clotting the corners. An abandoned house used as a party house. Not new, not surprising, and there’d be no clues here. Well, no, technically there’d be a thousand clues, but none that would point directly to Grant. There was no one to talk to about the party, except for Marjean, who had probably told him all she could clearly remember. He supposed he could grill her, ask her about other people at the party, but what was the point? The cops were most certainly combing through Grant’s stuff by now, putting an APB out on his car. He was probably in custody already. Roan was a dollar short and a day late.
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He called Gordo but got routed straight to his call messaging. He didn’t leave a message. When he could call and tell him they had Grant, he would. By the time Roan reached home, he had that odd hollow-head feeling that wasn’t quite a headache and wasn’t quite a dizzy spell but was some sickening offspring of the two. As soon as he was in the door, he kicked off his boots and dropped his sodden coat in the foyer, figuring he’d pick them up later. He took off his wet shirt on the stairs but kept it with him so he could throw it on the floor of his bedroom. He stripped off his pants, also damp from rain, and just threw them aside, figuring he’d be up before Dylan showed up. He was asleep almost the moment his head hit the pillow; he barely got the covers pulled over him. He slept hard, but he did have vague memories of a strange dream where he was playing poker with Paris and Grant Kim. Grant had no shirt on and a pony keg on his lap. The whole thing was very weird, and the only thing he remembered Grant saying was, “Only infecteds can play.” Well, duh. The phone woke him up. Oh, how he was learning to hate the fucking phone. He reached out and snagged it, keeping his face buried in his pillow. “What?” “What the hell, are you gagged?” Gordo asked, annoyed. “I can barely hear you.” He ignored that comment. “You got Grant yet?” “No, and I need you here, in the woods next to Martin Ellis High School.” For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming. “Did you say you want me at the high school?” “Near the school. Just follow the cop cars and local TV news van. I’ll probably be telling some blow-dried asshole to fuck off.” “So, a normal night for you.” “Very funny.” “Why am I goin’ to the high school, Gord?” “We have a body here I need you to check out. I think I know who did it, but I need a confirmation, and you’re faster than waiting for
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a bite print to come back.” Roan felt his stomach sink like a stone. “Oh no. Grant?” “Approximate time of death seems to say the vic died early this morning, around the time the first crime scene was discovered. And we’re about a mile away from it.” “Fuck me.” “Yeah, that was my opinion too. It looks real bad. The vic’s a kid, too, or at least from what I can tell. Right now I’m goin’ by his hightops and the remains of his Seether T-shirt.” “Christ.” Roan shoved himself up to a sitting position, looking out the window at the rain, which had backed off to a pissing kind of drizzle. But it was still raining. Rivers would be flooding soon, if they weren’t already. Just one more thing to worry about. Deaths by cat were always bad, and always caused a minor firestorm in the press. But the death of a kid? That sometimes made national news, and brought out all the “we should lock ’em in camps” right-wing assholes in their wake. Not that he was advocating tearing up teenagers should be given a pass, but it wasn’t Grant’s fault. It was the cat who did this, not the person. But some people didn’t give a rat’s ass about the distinction or didn’t even bother to make it in the first place. He told Gordo he’d be there as soon as possible and hastily got dressed, ignoring the fact that he had perhaps the worst case of bed head he’d ever glimpsed in a bathroom mirror. It’d be wetted down by the rain soon enough. Since he was going to get drenched regardless, he decided to take the bike. He could use the extra speed right now anyways. It’d help wake him up. In the end it didn’t, but other people driving like idiots kind of did. It was Washington State—it rained. It rained quite a bit, although not as much as the jokes would lead you to believe. So why did so many people panic and drive like the world was ending when it rained? He would never understand that. And Gordo was right, it was easy to find the site. The Channel Eight news van was visible several blocks away, thanks to the garish logo painted on the side. But they must have only known it was a
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killing near the high school and not a kid victim, as it wasn’t their big “action news man” on the scene but one of the minor ones, the cute but ethnically diverse female reporter (Asian), Hannah something or other. Roan couldn’t remember, as he didn’t watch Channel Eight news. He got all his local news from the newspaper, and all other news from the Internet or BBC News. Did that make him a snob? Ah, fuck it, who cared? If he could be a snob in a black vinyl raincoat and a Dalek Tshirt with a sparkly black motorcycle helmet wedged underneath his arm, so be it. Channel Eight’s team was being held back at a hasty cordon of sawhorses, where Hannah was arguing with a poor beleaguered beat cop roped in to stand guard and protect the crime scene. The team seemed to be Hannah in her ridiculously expensive raincoat, a sound engineer huddled beneath an umbrella being held by the segment producer (?), and the cameraman, who was standing aside and smoking a cigarette like he’d been starving for nicotine. They were an interesting contrast, and they all glanced at each other as one of the other cops working the line recognized Roan and waved him through the blockade. The sound engineer looked like he was barely out of high school himself, a lanky black guy who had that type of youthful face that would guarantee he’d be carded until he was in his forties. The segment producer was almost a foot shorter than the sound guy and his opposite in almost every way: stocky where he was lanky, doughy where he was lean, pale where he was dark. The cameraman looked like a stereotypical biker, with thinning but shoulder-length steel-gray hair and a salt-and-pepper beard that was neatly trimmed but may as well have been bushy and shaggy. He just gave off a disreputable air, whether that was fair or not. As Roan started up the slight, muddy incline, he heard Hannah ask, “Who the hell is that?” One of the men—not the cop, but part of Hannah’s entourage— muttered, “I think that’s their outside cat expert, the kitty fag. His name’s like McKitchen or something.” Roan sighed and stopped where he was, looking back at them. “You really shouldn’t casually slur the guy who can track you down by scent alone, you know? Just an FYI. And it’s pronounced Mick—kee— an. At least get that much right.”
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He saw the surprise register on their faces—all but Hannah’s, as she simply didn’t react to anything (on-air talent rule 101)—but no one said anything, so Roan turned and continued on. He then heard, very faintly, “How the fuck did he hear me?” There was a throaty chuckle, and the cigarette rasp of the voice led him to think it was the cameraman talking. “The shit I heard about him, he’s damn right—you don’t fuck with him. He can’t turn the cat off, or some shit like that. He’s like superhuman or something.” Can’t turn the cat off? What a weird way to put it. The woods were just a thick stand of pine and firs that had yet to be cleared away, a couple hundred yards away from the chain-link boundary of the school’s football field. Some attempt had been made to clear away the undergrowth, but you couldn’t kill blackberry vines with a tactical nuclear strike. Around the clinging, barbed vines were discarded forty-ounce bottles of various kinds, cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, even a used condom and a pill bottle with its label stripped off, and the side of a dark-red-spattered white shoe was visible. Rain and wind diluted the smell of blood, as did the smell of piss, stale beer, and fresh pot smoke. Well, relatively fresh, a few hours old. “Kid was smoking pot?” Roan asked as he approached Gordo. Gordo was wearing a brown felt hat that wasn’t a fedora but wanted to be. Rain dripped from its brim, and as he turned, it flung some droplets. “Probably. I ain’t even gonna ask how you knew that.” Many forensic people buzzed around, nearly all of whom Roan recognized. Since they knew who he was and why he was here, he wasn’t acknowledged in any way. “Apparently a lot of kids come here before or after school to smoke up or have a drink, stuff like that.” “Fuck around?” “That too. There’s kind of a path over there, near the dogwoods, so it’s pretty well traveled.” “And yet the kid’s been here since around the time school started?” Gordo nodded, making rain shower from his hat. “And the body was only reported less than an hour ago.” “So who knows how many saw it before anyone bothered to report it? The scene’s contaminated.”
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“I know. It’s all massively fucked. What’s wrong with kids today? How can you see the body of a kid that’s been mutilated and then not call it in?” Roan shrugged. “It’s not a new thing. Every generation has its segment of people who never want to get involved.” “I suppose. But they’re gettin’ younger by the year.” He paused. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you haven’t said what it was.” “It was a leopard.” Gordo let out a sigh that sounded like he was deflating, and the way his shoulders sagged, he might as well have been. “God, what a clusterfuck this is turning into.” “And you haven’t found Grant yet?” “No. Kid could be hiding out anywhere. We have a list of friends and acquaintances, but it’s fucking huge, and many of them are pretty shady and not inclined to cooperate. I’ve talked to the parents, but they said they haven’t talked to him for a month or so, and I’m inclined to believe them.” “What are the parents like? Traditional, strict, hippy?” He gave him a curious sidelong glance. “You’ve never met them? I thought Miranda Kim was a friend of yours.” “She is, but she never took me home to meet the parents.” Gordo shrugged and reached into the pocket of his trench coat, pulling out a crumpled tissue that he blotted his face with. Belatedly, Roan realized he wasn’t drying off rain but sweat. He was sweating, in spite of the chill breeze. And in spite of the growing darkness, Roan noticed he was looking a bit off, a bit pale. “They just seemed like people. Father teaches English at Collins High, the mother’s a librarian for the county. They seemed fine. Upset, as you might imagine. They had no idea he was infected. Why? You got a theory?” “No, I’ve just been piecing some things together. I know they had a room set up in their house, but is it possible that this was Grant’s first transformation? That he didn’t know he was infected either?” Gordo raised an eyebrow at that but didn’t scoff. “So why the room?” “It was put together for Bowles. They all knew he was infected,
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but Grant got his stupid ass infected and didn’t know. Not until he started transforming. It caught him, Bowles, and Jones short. None of them were prepared for Grant to change. Hence the resulting bloodbath, as they were suddenly faced with a loose leopard, angry and in pain. And a hurting animal can be one vicious fuck, especially if it thinks the people before it are the cause of the pain.” Roan squinted at him, catching a faint whiff of… something. He couldn’t identify the smell. “You need to sit down. You smell wrong.” Gordo glared at him. “Smell wrong? Jeeze, thanks, my deodorant fails and you’re calling me out on it. Can you put the nose away for a second?” “It’s not body odor.” “Then what is it?” Roan was forced to shrug. “I dunno. It’s just wrong.” “Terrific,” he grumbled sarcastically. Gordon continued to ignore his advice and retrieved what looked like a small Ziploc bag, only inside it was a bloody scrap of plastic. “Even though we don’t have all of this vic, at least he had his ID on him.” It was blood-smeared and had been mauled by teeth and claws, but Roan could see enough to determine the kid’s name was Trevor German, and he was seventeen years old. Son of a bitch. He recalled his strange dream of him and Grant and Paris playing poker, and realized the symbolism, his brain trying to tell him something. “He panicked.” “The kid?” “Grant Kim. Assuming this was his first transformation and he wasn’t expecting it, he probably freaked out as soon as he transformed back to Human. That’s why we can’t find him—even he has no idea where he’s going. Paris didn’t know he was infected until he woke up in a dog house in a neighborhood close to the campus, with dog guts strewn all about him. He freaked out when he realized it wasn’t a sick joke and figured out what had happened to him. He left school and ran—hell, he inadvertently ran into the States. He started in Canada.” “You think Kim’s gonna run up to Canada?” “No. I think he doesn’t know what to do and he’s freaked out.
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That could actually make things more dangerous.” Roan unconsciously glanced up at the sky, which was already dark with clouds but was growing darker by the second as the sun, somewhere behind the cloud layer, started setting. If they assumed that last night/this morning was Grant’s first transformation, then he was due for round two tonight. Transformations lasted, at bedrock, five days; at most, they could last an entire week. Gordon got where he was going. “He’ll be loose again tonight. Why won’t he turn himself in? He’d be safe in a jail cell.” “He won’t remember killing anyone, but he will wake up bloody. If he wasn’t freaked out before, he will be now. Do you really think the moment you wake up in tremendous pain and covered in someone else’s blood, with no memories of what happened the night before, that your first impulse would be to call the police?” “Well, you put it that way,” Gordo grumbled. “Guess not. But we gotta find him before more people die. Or somebody kills his furry ass.” “I know. The problem is, the panicky don’t exactly have a rhyme or reason. We’re looking at this logically, and there’s no way in hell we’re gonna find him that way.” “Yeah, but how else do we do it? Throwing darts at a map seems like a big waste of—” Gordo suddenly leaned against a tree, head down toward the ground. “Gord?” “Just a little dizzy,” he said and made to push off the tree, but his legs gave way and he collapsed, hitting the muddy ground with a thud. Roan dropped his helmet and fell to his knees beside Gordon as he struggled weakly to get up. “I’m okay—” “Fuck you, you are not,” Roan said, putting a hand on his neck. His skin was clammy, his heart rate incredibly erratic. One of the female forensic technicians was the first over and asked, “What’s going on?” “He’s having a heart attack,” Roan snapped. “Call in the EMTs already.” It was wonderful how shitty situations could always turn shittier, in ways you never expected.
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8 Ghouls CLUSTERFUCK was probably the only word for it. At least Gordo got taken to the hospital pretty quickly, and if he lost consciousness, it wasn’t for long. Seb went with him and called Connie, Gordo’s wife, but Roan went with him as well. Why, he wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like he and Gordo were great friends. For a long time they’d had a very weird, slightly tense work relationship, because Gordo—like most of the het cops—didn’t know how to handle him being gay, and then him being an infected while Gordo worked infected crimes was just an added layer of macho bullshit. To Gordo’s credit, he got over it, and for the last few years most of that baggage had been put aside. They were kinda friends, but not really friends—acquaintances? Hard to say. It was a weird category, something in between. But Roan knew it was guilt that brought him along to the hospital. He helped Seb comfort Connie, who, to be fair, didn’t need much. Although clearly upset about the whole thing, she had a good patrician background that served her well in times of crisis. Luckily Gordo had had a “minor” heart attack. Roan wanted to ask if that was akin to a minor bullet wound or a minor shark attack, but with Connie here, he bit back his sarcasm. Roan had to call Dylan and tell him they’d have to do the tattoo thing either after work or tomorrow, as there was no way he’d be home in time. Once he told Dylan why, he wanted to come to the hospital— for him, not Gordon. Dylan only knew that Gordo was one of his police contacts, but that was about it—but Roan told him he was leaving now anyways. He could only stay in a hospital for so long before a mild panic attack would set in. He had no choice when he was unconscious and drugged, but when he wasn’t, he could walk out.
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It was funny. Roan stood outside the hospital, longing for a smoke, and he had never smoked a cigarette in his life. He hated the smell. But he wanted something to do, something to take his mind off all this shit. The universe, in its odd wisdom, answered his plea. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he thought it was Dylan, so he answered without really looking at who was calling. That’s why he was surprised when he answered and an unexpected voice said, “Okay, things just got wicked.” It was Jay Bhaskar, medical examiner and Quincy wannabe. “Pardon?” “Joel Newberry. Just got some preliminary blood work and autopsy results, and he died of hyperkalemia.” “Which is?” “Potassium overdose. It caused his heart attack. His heart, by the way, could have belonged to a man twenty years younger. It was in great shape. Well, before the potassium deluge.” Roan stood flush against the hospital wall, where smokers usually congregated. No, he wasn’t smoking, but he was mostly out of the rain here and could watch the goings-on in the parking lot. There was a sad story in every person trudging to the front entrance. “How common is it for people to die of potassium overdose?” “More common than you might think, but it’s not a silent epidemic by any means. But conditions that would predispose him to it—Addison’s disease, lupus nephritis, rhabdomyolysis, a whole host of kidney-related disorders—are not present. Nor was he taking any medications that could cause accidental potassium overdose.” “So what caused it?” “Fuck if I know, man. It’s possible he was taking drugs he wasn’t prescribed, but judging from what I’ve seen, there was nothing in his blood but potassium.” “You sound excited, Jay. This worries me.” “It’s suspicious, don’t you think? A guy in fucking great shape for his age suddenly keels over dead from a potassium overdose? You know what the cure for it is, don’t you?”
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“No.” “Salt. If you take too much potassium, you balance it out with salt, or you take a diuretic to piss it out. Baking soda if it’s due to acidosis.” Roan leaned against the wall and looked up at the sky, wondering if there were stars visible somewhere above the cloud layer. The sky didn’t look like night; it had the odd glow of dusk lingering in the clouds. “No fucking way you know all of this off the top of your head. You researched this before calling me.” “Well, I’m not a computer. I can’t be expected to have an easily accessible medical encyclopedia just waiting in my frontal lobes, you know. Every time you learn something new, it displaces something.” “I learned that on a Simpsons episode.” “The scary thing is, all known wisdom has been in a Simpsons episode, but because it’s a cartoon, nobody’s paid it any attention.” After a pause, Jay said, “Potassium overdose is an almost perfect crime. It’s not hard to get a hold of, it’s not hard to get the medications that can cause a toxic buildup, and it can kill pretty fast if you hit ’em with a massive dose. Killing them slowly is fairly impossible, ’cause most people have too much salt in their diet, and it’ll pass out of the system pretty quickly anyways, but if you hit someone with a huge dose, wham! They may feel sick, but here’s the weird thing—many people with hyperkalemia don’t feel any symptoms at all. Until their heart stops and they drop dead. So you can poison someone and send them off, and they’ll walk off happily, giving you a chance to be far away from them by the time they bite the dirt.” “Okay, it’s official: you’ve been reading way too many Sue Grafton novels. Or have you been watching CSI again? I thought you hated that show.” “I do, although I am hypnotized by David Caruso’s ability to act with his sunglasses. I mean, who allows themselves to get out-acted by an accessory?” “A guy who just wants to cash the checks and go home.” “Ah. Well then, the man’s a genius. I take back everything horrible I’ve said about his mother.” “That’s good of you. Thanks for the info.”
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“Oh no you don’t! You’re not getting away that easily.” Roan sighed and slumped against the wall. It was cold and probably damp, but thanks to his raincoat, he didn’t feel the damp. “Jay, stop it.” “I’m telling you, someone killed him. It’s just hard to prove that in a legal sense.” “How did they get the potassium in him?” “Either injection or ingestion. Haven’t found an injection spot yet, but if you know what you’re doing, you can conceal it really well.” “Ingestion? In what form?” “Umm, probably liquid. Otherwise somebody gave him a metric ton of pureed kiwi.” “But this could have happened some other way. It needn’t necessarily have been murder.” “Needn’t? Did you just say needn’t? Good lord, you’re becoming a British fop.” “Don’t taunt me for having a good vocabulary. If this is murder, there will be a police investigation. I can’t get involved.” Jay snorted derisively. “Murder investigation my big brown ass. It’s a suspicious death, weird, but we have no proof it’s murder. Any investigation will be perfunctory, and probably not a proper murder one, just a basic “How’d he do this?” sort of one. And if Newberry’s family keeps acting like they are, we’ll be lucky to get even that.” Roan sighed and rubbed his eyes. He knew exactly when he was being railroaded into something. “Jay, stop playing Quincy. This isn’t a ’70s television show.” “I know. If it was, I’d be knee-deep in pussy.” Roan couldn’t help but laugh. Not only was it funny to think of dumpy, balding Jay as a lady’s man, but there was a terribly weird but bizarrely hilarious mental image that came with that. He must have been laughing too much, as Jay finally said, hurt, “It’s not that funny.” “Yeah, it kinda is,” Roan told him, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Keep looking into things, let me know how it’s going.” “Are you gonna do the same thing for me?”
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“We’ll see.” Okay, he’d give him that the death was terribly suspicious, but that didn’t make it murder. It made it strange, and with Joel’s supposed paranoia added in, it made it coincidental. But nothing said murder except Jay jumping to conclusions. But…. He walked through the now-dribbling rain to his bike, reluctantly calling Holden. He picked up on the third ring. “Hey, Roan.” Roan thought he heard the sound of running water behind him. “Can you talk right now? I mean in person.” “Oh. Sure, yeah, meet me at my place in twenty minutes. Okay?” “Fine by me. See you then.” Holden hung up pretty fast. Twenty minutes, huh? He was with a client, wasn’t he? It suddenly gave him a creepy feeling that he might have interrupted something he didn’t want to think about. Driving over was a little less dramatic than driving earlier was, and he was glad. He felt he’d had enough drama for one evening. And in spite of the traffic and his leisurely pace, he beat Holden home. So he waited for a few minutes, leaning next to his door like he was a hustler trolling for a very specific customer. Roan couldn’t help but smirk at the thought as Holden finally arrived, smelling of some pricey mint soap, the kind you only found at expensive hotels. “Hope you haven’t been waiting too long,” he said, unlocking his door. Holden had a keychain that looked like a piece of sushi; a tuna roll, if he wasn’t mistaken. “Hope I didn’t interrupt something,” Roan asked, following him in. Holden had left his neon martini lamp lit, so there was some light in the room, but not a lot. He turned on a proper lamp to throw more light on the scene. “Nope, I was on my way out when you called. It was good timing, really. So is this about Joel, or is this a personal call?” Holden collapsed on his sofa, clearly exhausted, and Roan decided he wasn’t going to think about what he had probably been doing just thirty minutes ago. If Holden had any shame, he’d lost it a long time ago. The only one uncomfortable here was him. “It’s about Joel. He didn’t take vitamin supplements, did he? How much of a health freak was he?” Holden let out a long, slow sigh, and unzipped his leather jacket,
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revealing a white T-shirt so skintight it looked painted on. He must have been trying on his “sexy young punk” persona, as it was only “rough trade” when he wore the leather pants too and his nipple ring as well. And it was sad that he knew that. “He took a multivitamin, but he wasn’t a vegan or anything, if that’s what you’re getting at.” “Did he ever take any kind of potassium supplements?” He gave him a curious look. “No. What are you getting at?” “Just heard from a friend of mine that Joel’s blood work has come back, and it’s kind of unusual.” There was a grumbling noise, and much to Roan’s horror, he belatedly realized it had come from his stomach. Holden raised an eyebrow at that. “Are you hungry, or is the lion hiding in your stomach?” “All day I’ve been starving. I have no idea why.” “Well, it’s either a tapeworm, or that wacky cat metabolism you have.” Holden waved a hand toward his kitchenette and said, “Why don’t you go make me a sandwich too?” “Oh, I’m your servant now?” Roan complained but went ahead and entered Holden’s kitchen, looking through cupboards for the bread. He was actually glad he’d given him permission to do something and have a bite to eat, but he’d never admit it. “That is a fantasy of mine, you know. I imagine you give great foot massages.” “Keep your kinky fantasies to yourself.” “That’s the vanilla one. You wanna hear the kinky one?” “I’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that.” “Suit yourself. But it is actually kind of funny. It’d give you a laugh.” “I’m sure.” Holden’s cupboards still seemed oddly bare, especially when compared to his own, which were a jumble of cereal bought yesterday to bottles of spices bought years ago. But Holden only had things that seemed recent, and not a lot of those. But he found sourdough bread, and in the refrigerator he found mustard (thank god, Buddha, whatever) and lunch meat, as well as some bagged salad greens and grilled red peppers in oil. It’d be a simple sandwich, but a
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good one. As Roan slapped them together, he realized something looked odd about Holden as he sat there, splayed on the couch, looking tired and distracted. He was about done making the sandwiches when he realized the reason Holden looked odd was because he was actually off duty. His charm shield was down. He wasn’t trying to seduce him or schmooze him. He had totally dropped his guard. This was just Holden. It was actually a bit startling to realize, as street kids—even in adult form—rarely dropped their guards, but he supposed that showed how much Holden trusted him, enough to be vulnerable and human in front of him. Weird. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Holden had exactly four plates in his cupboard. “Do you have all your dinnerware in the dishwasher or something?” He just shrugged as Roan handed him a plate with a sandwich on it. “I don’t have a lot of plates. Don’t need ’em. I don’t really entertain. Could you grab me a pomegranate juice?” “Sure.” There was a bit more food in his fridge, but not really a lot. Holden didn’t entertain. He never told clients his real name or where he lived. He had many acquaintances, but did he have any friends? He’d already said he didn’t fuck if he wasn’t paid, so he had no boyfriend, either. It was a cliché, the lonely hooker, but for a guy with the most active sex life Roan had ever encountered, he did seem a bit lonely. But then again, maybe he preferred it that way. Roan wouldn’t have blamed him. He grabbed Holden a small bottle of pomegranate juice and a bottle of green tea for himself before joining him on the sofa. Roan tore into his sandwich hungrily, while Holden just took a bite of his and set it down. “Not bad.” “That’s why you’re eating it.” He smirked weakly. “I had room service. I thought you’d feel funny making a sandwich only for yourself.” “Bastard.” That made Holden smile. He grabbed the remote control off his coffee table but didn’t turn on the television. He just slumped back and sipped his juice before asking, “Was he poisoned?” He knew he meant Newberry, and the sandwich gave Roan a moment to gather his thoughts and consider what it was he should tell
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Holden. “Not precisely, but it’s something along those lines. It could have been an accident or a fluke. It’s not clear-cut.” “You’re a professional skeptic, aren’t you?” “It comes with the job. You told me he was having some problems with his family. Did he name any in particular? How did he get along with his wife?” Holden sat forward and took off his leather boots, buying some time. “Mind if I change? I feel stupid sitting here in costume.” Roan wanted to say he’d flashed him a bit of his ass this morning and hadn’t apologized, but Holden seemed so weary, he didn’t think he would be in a joking mood. “Your apartment. Do what you want.” “Thanks.” He stood and shucked off his jacket, tossing it on his chair before peeling off his shirt—and he did peel it off. It looked for a moment like he might not actually be able to remove it from his torso without a crowbar. He took the shirt with him as he went to his bedroom. After a moment, amongst the opening and closing of drawers, Holden said, “He was having a problem with his kids, and with his brother and sister-in-law. He bitched about them a lot. Once I overheard him having an argument on his cell with his brother.” “About what?” Roan pulled out the tiny notebook he was carrying with him, where he’d made random case notes in an attempt to seem semiprofessional. Joel had three kids, two with his first (and longestlasting) wife, Karen, a son named Bill (the scion of the family) and a daughter named Lorainna, and a son named Kyle that he had with his second wife, Jessica. Joel’s brother was named John, and he was something of the “black sheep” of the family. He’d done stints in outof-state hospitals for his alcohol and gambling problems, although now he’d gone out of his way to re-ingratiate himself again with his family and reclaim a role in it. Word had it he was a complete dick. “It seems John lost some money. How much I don’t know, but I gather it was a lot, and Joel seemed to think he hadn’t misplaced it so much as started gambling again.” “Did you find out if that was true?” “No. I don’t ask questions of a nonsexual nature with my clients, unless that’s what they want. Joel didn’t even know I was eavesdropping, although by the way he was bellowing at the end, how
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could I not hear it?” This was all bad news. Families made for toxic brews, which was why you were more likely to be murdered by a family member or friend than anyone else. Add money to that, and you were damn lucky if things didn’t devolve into the end of The Wild Bunch. “Is that all you heard?” Holden came back out into the living room, wearing a baggy brown T-shirt and black boxer shorts. Roan didn’t even know he owned a pair of boxer shorts. He collapsed on the couch, strangely boneless. “Yeah, that’s it. He didn’t want to talk about it.” “What about the problems he was having with his kids?” This got a shrug. “He said they were fighting between themselves a lot, but that was it. No details.” “How about things with his wife?” “He didn’t talk about Cherry with me. I think it was just basic etiquette. You don’t mention the wife to the lover, and you don’t mention the lover to the wife.” “Is everything all right? You seem oddly subdued tonight.” Holden gave him an anemic, lopsided smile. “I’m okay, just tired. But thanks for asking.” He was lying, wasn’t he? Holden wasn’t okay. But he didn’t want to talk about it, so Roan let it go. If anyone understood not wanting to talk about something, it was him.
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9 Mistaken for Strangers ROAN got as much information as he could from Holden, even the phone number Joel had left him to contact him, and then left, as it seemed like Holden really wanted to be alone. Or maybe he just wanted to sleep. Same difference, really. He chewed over his plan of attack in his mind. Roan doubted the Newberry family would want to talk to him, but he could try and get in the front, leave himself an open target, and let some sneakier people infiltrate the family in a less obtrusive way. Fiona was great with people, and men let down their guard more with women than men. She’d be a great asset. He might even be able to use Holden, who could ingratiate himself with almost anyone and could play any role he had to play. The funny thing was, Roan looked like the most useless piece in his own investigation. He did some research on his computer at home, found out more about the attempt to buy out the Newberry’s media holdings. A nationwide behemoth known as One World was attempting to gobble them up, and while John Newberry was for it, Joel was against it, leading to at least one very public squabble, but then they pulled it back, and any squabbling went on behind the scenes. One World was offering double-digit millions, an insane amount of money to turn down, making him wonder why Joel did. It was hard to imagine he really cared that much about keeping a network affiliate in local hands. Maybe he just had enough money that even that amount wasn’t tempting to him, although that was hard to imagine. There were two things Roan had discovered about the very rich that may or may not have surprised people: in spite of their personal extravagance, they were generally very miserly and very, very greedy. They never had quite enough money, even if they had more than the gross national
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product of a mid-sized nation. Money was all; money was a drug; money was god. They were capitalists ne plus ultra. It was getting late, and his thinking wasn’t the best. He kept wondering if Grant Kim was stalking around in his leopard form, killing other unlucky sons of bitches that stumbled into his path. He turned on the TV, hoping for a True Blood repeat, and considering how close it was to Dylan’s getting off shift, he decided to make dinner for him. Of course, Roan was a lousy cook and he hadn’t done it for a long time, but sometimes if he was keeping busy doing something else, he’d have semi-brilliant insights into things. Sometimes not, but at least the effort alone would get him boyfriend brownie points. He decided to make pasta, as it was easy and vegan as long as you didn’t add meat to it, and as he was chopping up some bell peppers, he arranged a suspect list in his head. Although John was the most obvious suspect, just about everyone in Joel’s family that could profit from the sale had to be considered a suspect, and that was everyone. He’d probably be looking for that special mix of avarice and hatred; the killer would be found in the in-between space. That would take more digging. Then something strange happened. Roan was trying to figure out the best way to infiltrate the family’s business circle when he suddenly found himself on the floor. It felt as dramatic as that: he was chopping peppers one second, and the next he was lying on the floor, getting a good look at the tile. Only when he shoved himself up to a sitting position and grabbed his fallen paring knife, head aching slightly from the impact, did he realize that there had been a moment of blackness, like a prolonged blink. Had he passed out for a second? Why the hell would he do that? He sat there for a moment, rubbing his head, trying to mentally shake the fuzzy feeling away from his brain. Was this some stupid-ass side effect to the migraine meds he’d got today? What a fucking pain in the ass. The meds were nice, but they came with a grab bag of weird side effects. One migraine medication he used to take left him with pulled muscles in his arms, and he could never figure that out. Roan pulled himself up, wondering how long he’d been out, and went back to making the pasta sauce, not about to let the medication stop him from what he was doing. He was just about done anyways.
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As it was, no further side effects plagued him. A good thing, as Dylan showed up after two in a kind of sour mood—it had been a bad night at Panic. There had been a gay-bashing incident right outside the club that almost led to a small riot, and Dylan sat with the guy who took a bottle in the face and had a bleeding gash in his head until the cops and paramedics showed up. And while the cops were all professional and very PC, he heard one of them, supposedly safely ensconced in his car, joke to someone over his radio that he needed to be decontaminated after dealing with all these fags. The truly awful thing about that was Roan could guess by name which officer had made that joke. Prick. But Dylan was cheered up by dinner, and even Roan had to admit he’d done a pretty good job with it. (Especially considering he’d passed out during the proceedings, but he didn’t tell Dylan that.) About three-thirty or so in the morning, Dylan got to drawing the tiger sketch on his arm in permanent ink. He actually used a calligraphy pen, as he liked the tapered tip better for making thinner lines, which Roan knew nothing about. To make it easier for Dylan, he lay shirtless on the bed, left arm held out straight across the comforter, and Dylan was kneeling beside the bed and occasionally partly on it, drawing the thing. Soon, Roan became rapt watching Dylan—not the sketch, although he knew that was coming on beautifully. No, he was fascinated watching Dylan create something. His full concentration was on it, as if Roan really was a canvas. He might as well have been. Dylan was so caught up in what he was doing, he never even looked at him once he got started. And Roan found that almost unbearably arousing. The one thing that really made their relationship work so far was that, at the end of the day, they were both rather private people. Dylan liked to paint in solitude (if he was doing a portrait, he’d sketch it, and paint it later in privacy), just like Roan liked to have time to himself, to research, put notes together, or just relax, without the strange pressure of other people. This was absolutely fine with Dylan, who equally cherished his private time. Roan sometimes wondered if shitty childhoods predisposed you to act in this way, although Paris was probably the exception to that rule. So he didn’t see Dylan paint a lot. He saw him sketch quite a bit,
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but he was always half-distracted when he did that. It was almost unconscious, a reflex action that didn’t need his full attention. Roan had never seen him in full concentration before, in full creation mode, his eyes as focused as lasers and yet strangely distant at the same time, turned inward toward his mental canvas. And it was incredibly fucking sexy. Once he was done, Dylan blew softly on the ink, attempting to speed drying, and used a paper towel to gently blot his arm. The look finally went out of his eyes—he was back in the real world—and he sat on the edge of the bed. “I had to stop myself from going further detailcrazy. Tell Jade she lucked out. Maybe I should look into becoming a tattoo artist.” “Yeah, you probably should,” Roan agreed and grabbed him and pulled him into a long, hard kiss. Dylan seemed momentarily surprised but offered no resistance at all. They had some of the most incredibly intense sex they had ever had. Roan knew he’d been kind of horny yesterday, but it was nothing like right now. And why? Who the hell knew, and who the fuck cared? Not him. Ironically, he didn’t even see the finished sketch on his arm until he got up later that morning, around ten. (And he was still tired, because they’d been up until about five, but his bladder insisted he get up.) It was beautiful, a slinky, black tiger made of deep, black lines that rarely connected. There were many suggestions of connections, but few actual ones. It was almost an optical illusion. “That is fucking beautiful,” he said aloud to his reflection. It was. He almost didn’t want Jade to impose on this. If it was in permanent ink, maybe he could wait a day or two before going to see her. Roan considered going back to bed, but weirdly enough, as tired as he was, he seemed to get a second wind out of nowhere. He felt almost jazzed for no reason whatsoever. He called Holden and told him that, although Roan knew he was the client, he was wondering if he’d be willing to assist in the investigation. Much like he’d expected, Holden jumped at the chance. After that, he called Fiona and arranged for the three of them to meet at an indie coffee shop in the gay part of town, mainly because he knew there was little chance anyone working for the Newberrys would spot them there. He also told her the case they
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were working on and asked if she had any untraditional information sources on the Newberrys. Fiona had a lot of unconventional information sources that, while rarely confirmable in any sense, still passed on accurate info. One of the perks of being a dominatrix with friends in both the temp agencies and the sex-worker network. Roan took a leisurely shower and decided not to shave, as he thought his stubble looked stereotypically detective-like, and while he was getting dressed, he accidentally woke Dylan up. He just turned over in bed and asked muzzily, “Are you going?” “Afraid so.” Dylan’s response to that was simply to steal his pillow and slip it under his head. As he pulled the covers over him, Roan asked him impulsively, “What would you think about moving in with me?” Dylan just lay there, and for a moment Roan thought he’d already drifted off again, but then Dylan said, “I’d think it was a good idea.” “Great.” Well, Dylan spent most of his nights here anyways. They were kind of already living together. Since Roan needed to look like a stereotypical private detective, he wore a more professional-looking outfit, with dark slacks, a neutral button-down shirt (a kind of bronze-colored brown, minus anything remotely metallic), and his London Fog trench coat. But he drew two lines: he wouldn’t wear a tie (he fucking hated ties; the only time he wore them was when he was forced to, such as to testify in court), and he had no loafers or slip-on shoes to wear. So he went with his black leather boots that could kind of pass for leather shoes if you didn’t look too hard or weren’t fashion oriented. (Meaning basically straight men and gay women, but that was a horrible stereotype—he was gay, and he knew nothing about fashion at all. Which his wardrobe proved, day in and day out.) He was going to pay a visit to the Newberrys later, and he wanted them to think he was just your run-of-the-mill private investigator/office drone, no one special, no one different. He also wanted them to think he was investigating something other than Joel. He hadn’t yet settled on his cover story. It wasn’t downpouring today, or at least not yet. It was a heavily overcast day, though, a kind of lambent slate-gray, with an occasional errant water droplet to let you know it was thinking about dousing you
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like a drunken co-ed in a Girls Gone Wild video. But it had yet to go wild, so all it would do was occasionally spit. He wanted to take the bike, but took the GTO instead, as how many drone detectives drove Buells? Then again, how many drove lovingly restored ’60s muscle cars? It still seemed like the lesser of two evils, and besides, without Paris to work on it, the GTO was starting to look a little rougher, which worked with the image he was trying to convey. The coffee shop was a little café that was trying to eke out a living in spite of Starbucks and Seattle’s Best Coffee and all those other competitors. He wished them luck. Right now it was getting by on two things: being openly gay in the gay section of town (rainbow flag in the window, along with a “Silence = Death” sticker and a flyer for the local pride day parade), and having a pastry chef who actually could make stuff that was so fucking good you couldn’t believe any other coffee shop would try and foist their stupid hockey-puck pastries on you. It was run by a couple of guys: Tony, who was originally from Kansas, and Brett, the pastry chef, who originally came from Louisiana. Roan didn’t know much about them, except they had been a couple for a while, and Tony called everybody “Sugar.” Even though he was a little early, Fiona and Holden had already grabbed a table in the corner and were waiting for him. As he sat down, Fiona said, “Whoa, going to court today, Roan?” “I didn’t even know he had a shirt that wasn’t a T-shirt,” Holden teased, pushing the plate of croissants over toward him. Oh goddamn it, Holden knew his weakness was croissants. How did he know that? “I am trying to look professional, thank you.” He sniffed with mock haughtiness, picking up a croissant and resisting the urge to shove the whole damn thing in his mouth. The croissants here were so good, they’d make you punch a nun. “I didn’t know that was a prerequisite,” Holden replied. “First I’ve heard of it,” Fiona agreed. It was always dangerous getting these two together. They’d known each other before he knew Fiona, and they had a preexisting relationship. They got along fabulously, which could be a major problem, as they were both smart-asses and had a tendency to riff off
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one another, to the point where you wanted to run screaming from the room. But since Roan was a smart-ass too, he was determined to find a way to handle them. One of the baristas who doubled as a waiter occasionally drifted over to see if he could get them anything. He was a skinny, heavily pierced and tattooed kid named Jake, who seemed to love doing funky things with his hair (today it was a faux hawk). Normally he treated Roan with a sort of disaffected air, as if barely aware he even existed, but today he was oddly solicitous, and when Roan asked for a tea, he seemed weirdly… flirty? Really? Roan shared a look with Holden, who was grinning at him. “What the hell was that about?” “It’s the suit,” Holden claimed. “It makes you look rugged, but financially stable.” “And that shirt’s a really nice color on you,” Fiona said, reaching over and fingering the material of his sleeve. “You know, metallic-type shades usually don’t look great on redheads, but you can pull it off.” “Thanks, I think. Um, business, guys? Can we get to it?” “I’d rather flirt with the waiter, see if I can get us free profiteroles,” Holden replied. “Ooh, do that!” Fiona encouraged. “See if you can get him to throw in an éclair too.” This was his crack team of investigators? Oh good lord, they were doomed. At some point, they settled down and got to business. Fiona hadn’t been able to discover a lot from her contacts, except for one interesting thing: Kyle Newberry, Joel’s second-marriage son, was a party animal. No shock there, he was a professional gadabout, but in a society where that was an actual job description as long as you came from a wealthy family (Paris Hilton, any Kardashian, the entire cast of The Hills), that was no longer considered a shameful thing to be. Here was the thing: in spite of Kyle’s recent engagement to wealthy socialite Embeth Asher, Fi kept running into scuttlebutt that he was at many a party that devolved into an orgy. Gay parties. What she heard was he was a major-league flamer but stayed firmly in the closet. Holden wasn’t surprised, although Joel had never talked about Kyle to
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him. Holden just figured that, Joel being bisexual, some kind of alternative sexuality had to be genetically within the family. Holden wanted to see if he could work an angle on John Newberry. Roan wasn’t so sure about that. He didn’t want revenge to interfere with anything, but Holden swore to him that he was going to pretend he didn’t know him at all and stick to the script. Roan had no choice but to trust him. Fiona wanted to work the wife, Cherry, as she felt, being a fellow woman, she’d be nonthreatening to her. Well, nonthreatening as long as Fi kept her riding crop and ball gag in her purse, anyways. This left Roan with the kids, which he thought it was best he handled anyways. They were much lower on the suspect list than anyone else, but he figured as soon as he could eliminate them he could move on to the ex-wives, who seemed like more likely possibilities. No one could hold you in more contempt than an ex-lover, save for a brother or sister. Having their assignments and the reporting-back protocol, they broke up and went their separate ways. Holden actually helped him come up with a plausible cover story for his identity, which wasn’t that surprising, considering how close he was to Joel. Roan went to pay a visit to Bill Newberry, eldest of the kids, family scion, and all-around anal-retentive asshole, who worked for Armstrong Anderson. He ended up talking with a secretary who seemed to hold him in withering contempt, glaring at him like he’d just run over her dog. He told her how he was working on background checks for One World, who liked to thoroughly vet everyone before doing business with them. As soon as he said “One World,” her antipathy seemed to ratchet down several notches, and she finally told him that Bill was out meeting a client, but if he wanted to come back tomorrow she would make sure he would see him first thing. Disappointing, but not really unexpected. “You could vet me,” a voice purred behind him, a voice that came with a strong smell of expensive cologne. Roan turned to find Kyle Newberry there, grinning at him in a sly, calculated way. Kyle was twenty-two and a pretty boy of the highest order, pretty in a way that professional gadabouts with nothing but time on their
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hands could be. He looked airbrushed even in person, his pores so small they were almost microscopic, with a square jawline and bright eyes highlighted by just the faintest hint of professionally applied guyliner. His hair was glossy black and artfully unkempt, threehundred-dollar bed head, and his eyes were an unreal emerald, obviously aided by tinted contacts. He wore a needlessly expensive Prada cashmere V-neck and calfskin boots, but his black, silk-blend blazer and khakis were probably some other designer label, something so insanely expensive that if Roan had known the price of them, he’d have started beating him right here in the lobby. But they were all so precisely fitted that you could tell he had a lean but hard gym-toned body. He looked like Paris’s slightly more girlish half brother. “I didn’t realize you worked here,” Roan said, keeping his tone neutral so Kyle didn’t hear the unspoken, “I didn’t know you worked anywhere.” Kyle grinned at him, flashing blindingly white and eerily perfect teeth. Movie-star teeth. That probably cost more than his wardrobe combined. “Just like you, I came to see my brother. And just like you, I’m disappointed to find him gone.” During that last sentence, he looked over Roan’s shoulder and gave the receptionist behind him a look that wasn’t so much annoyed as it was homicidal. Something very ugly flashed through his eyes, a spoiled brat about to throw the mother of all tantrums. “I’d think he’d want me to know where he is.” The receptionist’s voice became cowed and ingratiating. “I’m sorry, sir, but he left explicit instructions that he was not to bothered by anyone, even Mrs. Newberry.” Kyle hissed a sigh through his teeth, and as he looked away it almost became a whispered word. “Cunt”? Roan was pretty sure; there were few other words it could have been. But when he looked back at Roan, a slimy, ingenuous grin was pasted on his face. “Well then, I guess we could kill some time together, huh?” The way he stared into his eyes, his lips curving up ever so slightly, Roan realized Kyle was very subtly flirting with him. Gay? So gay he probably made Graham Norton look straight. And recalling that ugly look he’d just given his brother’s receptionist, Roan wondered how bad his temper was, how mean. Kyle Newberry had just moved into the top-five-suspect list.
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10 The Shit Sisters THEY went down the street to what could be called an upper-class fern bar, where they served wine around the clock with overly expensive meals. Kyle ordered the wine without the food. Roan contented himself with water, although Kyle kept trying to rope him into joining him. When Roan mentioned he didn’t like wine, all he did was snort. This place tried for an airy café look even inside, with high, small round tables and window walls looking out on grim sidewalks that no amount of potted plants could disguise. Kyle got them a corner table (of course), and the table was so goddamn small it was a joke. Their knees were almost touching just sitting across from each other. Roan laid the groundwork for his cover story, asking Kyle about what he did for the company and basic background shit (Kyle said he worked in “publicity” for the station, and it was all Roan could do not to laugh), and Kyle gulped down two glasses of wine like he was dying of thirst. By the third, color started seeping into his complexion, and he was deliberately rubbing his knee against Roan’s. Every time Roan moved his leg, Kyle’s leg still managed to find his again. He was considering kicking him, but he felt the need to ingratiate himself with this drunken playboy loser until he was further along in his investigation. Kyle got tipsy enough to get bored with his questions, and as Roan was writing one of his answers down in his notebook (actually, he was writing “Hard-core alcoholic—needs to be drunk to relax around people”) Kyle touched his hand. Roan reflexively yanked it away. “Whoa, hey, man, just lookin’ at your ring,” he said, partially smiling, a lopsided look that only made him appear drunker. “That an engagement ring? I didn’t think women liked that kind of shit.” “It’s a wedding ring.”
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“Seriously? How long have you been married?” “I’m not married anymore. I’m a widower.” It was such a weird thing to say: widower. He was, but when he put it that way, he seemed to realize that Paris was gone and had been gone for so long that it was unbelievable. Part of him still expected to wake up in the morning and find him hogging all the blankets. Kyle frowned at him, his falsely tinted eyes betraying confusion. “Yer young for that, ain’t cha? So what’d she die of?” “He was infected. Now, can we get back to you? You attended college, right?” Kyle sat back and stared at him for a moment, then laughed. “Oh man, I knew you were too good-looking to be straight. So did you run off to Boston or something?” Roan gritted his teeth, trying to keep from reaching across and smashing Kyle’s stupid head into the table. He was so sorely tempted it was hard to resist. “He was Canadian. So where did you go? Yale, Harvard?” Roan knew where he’d tried—and failed—to go to college, he just wanted to change the subject. It seemed to work. Kyle snorted again and poured the dregs of the wine bottle into his glass. “Oh yeah, right, ’cause I’m so fucking brilliant and my dad wanted me to have the best, right? I went to UCLA for almost two years. Got some bullshit diploma my dad was able to buy, so my getting kicked out wasn’t so bad.” “What were you kicked out for?” “Well, they had this stupid rule where you actually had to show up for classes. Sometimes even sober.” “Imagine that.” “I know. I don’t remember that being in any contract I signed.” He swigged back the whole glass of wine in a single gulp, then slammed the glass back down with finality. He motioned the waitress over and ordered another bottle of red. She looked nervously at both of them but scuttled off without a word, aware that Kyle Newberry was the drunken customer asking, putting him in the special category of guys who could be served no matter how drunkenly obnoxious they got.
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“I’m sorry about your father,” Roan said, holding back his observation that Kyle didn’t seem all that broken up about his death. Kyle shrugged, rubbing his leg against his again under the table. Motherfucker. He was asking to get punched. “That’s what happens to old guys. They die.” “You sound so broken up.” “We weren’t close. I mean, he bought me my diploma, yeah, but that was only to save face. He didn’t need to spell out what a disappointment I was to him. I got it.” The waitress brought over the new bottle of wine, and Kyle obviously checked out her ass as she walked away, although he was still playing footsie with him under the table. “It sucks that he died, but hey, I ain’t gonna miss him. I hardly ever saw him anyways.” “So your relationship was distant?” Kyle opened the new bottle and splashed a good amount into his empty glass. “More like nonexistent. We had an occasional photo op, but that was it. Why do I give a shit? Guy was kind of a douche bag anyways.” Kyle leaned forward, propping his head on his hands, and gazed at him with a lascivious, drunken smile. “I have to admit I’m kinda curious about you gay guys. Why don’t we get out of here and see how curious we can get?” Was he always this crass, or was it the booze talking? Truth be told, Roan didn’t give a shit which—he was physically repulsed by this asshole. “Stop the shit, Kyle. I know you’re one of those closet queens who won’t come out. Does your fiancée know she’s a beard, or is she going to find out when she comes home early and finds you getting fucked by the gardener?” This made Kyle burst into a hearty laugh, almost spitting out his wine. He smacked the table with his open palm, making it shake. “Damn, you’re hilarious. You’re a top, aren’t ya? Gotta be a top. I bet you’re a monster in bed.” “I’m a monster in general. What about you?” He gulped down his wine and sat forward with a folksy sort of grin on his face. But his eyes were flat and empty. “Listen, little man. I can buy and sell your piece-of-shit detective agency with one phone call. I could own your tight little ass, and the ass of everyone associated
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with you. You don’t want to fuck with me. Don’t even think of blackmailing me.” That was interesting. Why did his mind go straight there? The easy answer to that was because it had happened before. “Someone’s blackmailed you, Kyle? Because you’re gay?” “I am not gay,” he spat, lowering his voice to a harsh whisper. “And if you say that again, I’ll do you for slander.” “Slander? I thought you just wanted to do me.” He slumped back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “Play your cards right, be a good boy, and maybe you’ll get lucky.” “If I get any luckier, I’ll have to shoot myself in the head.” Roan slid out of his high-backed stool, and said, “I’ll call you if I have any further questions.” “Yeah, you do that,” he said coolly, like he’d already started forgetting who he was. Monstrously fickle. Or did he have no genuine feelings, so he faked them at the drop of a hat so people didn’t catch on? Kyle was hard to read in that sense, but Roan had already decided, if this guy was any colder, you’d get freezer burn from mere proximity to him. “One thing. Did your dad know you were getting blackmailed?” Kyle stared at him, gimlet-eyed, his falsely green contacts insufficient shields for hiding his general contempt. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The party line. Roan simply turned and walked out, not even sparing him a parting glance, although he could see Kyle’s reflection in the window, gulping down more wine. He had such a tolerance that Roan was sure he wasn’t even close to drunk. He had just acted that way so he’d have an excuse for his flirty behavior. Roan also knew he was lying—he did have an idea of what he was talking about. The problem with his extra-sensory truth-telling sense was that he didn’t know if Joel knew Kyle was being blackmailed. All he knew was someone had blackmailed (or tried to blackmail) Kyle, and someone else in the family probably knew. But who was an open question. Roan had pulled out his phone to call Fi, see how she was doing
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with Cherry, when a sudden pain in his head almost dropped him to his knees. He did drop his phone as he grabbed his head. It felt like a hot drill bit had just burrowed into the soft meat behind his skull. For a moment he heard nothing but blood roaring in his ears, a wave of nausea waxing and waning, and when the pain and the noise started to subside, he was suddenly aware of people standing beside him. “Are you okay?” the man asked. It was a couple, an Asian man and a Caucasian woman, both in their mid- to late forties, with figures so comfortably middle-aged and similar, he guessed that if they weren’t married, they’d been together for years. The woman had picked up his phone, which miraculously hadn’t exploded into pieces on the pavement. “Uh, yeah, thank you,” he said, straightening up and taking the proffered phone. Did he have tears in his eyes, or had things gone a bit blurry at the edges? Roan rubbed his eyes, and it seemed to get a little better. Maybe. He reassured the kind strangers that he was all right and went to sit in his car for a moment. He worked in such a dark corner of life that he sometimes forgot there were decent people out there. They were few and far between, perhaps, but they were out there. Sometimes he’d get sudden sharp head pains as a migraine precursor, but never any that sharp, never any that threatened to drop him to the pavement. What the fuck was that? Did someone have a voodoo doll of him, and had they just shoved a knitting needle through the cranium? It felt like it. The pain echoed but was fading rapidly. Still, he reached under the seat and found his emergency bottle of water. He had his emergency pills in the glove compartment, and Roan took a couple, washing them down with the lukewarm, plastic-tasting water. Holy shit. If his migraines kept coming on this bad, he’d have to go to his doctor. No, he supposed he’d have to go to the doctor very soon. First he’d collapsed, now he’d almost got dropped by a head pain. Something was going on with him, and there was no fucking way it was good. His phone hummed in his pocket, and he let it go for a couple of rings before pulling it out. It was Dylan, so he answered it. He let Dylan talk, because he still felt winded. “Hey, Ro, I forgot to tell you last night I may have discovered your drug dealer named Mikey.”
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“Really?” That was about Grant’s case, right? “Yeah. Josh, one of the circuit boys, says the big source of Ecstasy and other club drugs was known solely as MDMA, or Mike for short.” MDMA was the acronym for the chemical name of Ecstasy. “You want Sunshine or any variant, he’s the main man you go to. Supposedly he does nightclub-hopping on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, hitting all the party places, straight, gay, and mixed. That’s where he does most of his selling.” “He hit Panic?” “Well, of course. I already asked Josh to point him out to me if he comes in.” “Good. Call me the second he shows, and keep him there until I show up. I need to talk to this guy.” “Sure.” Dylan paused briefly. “Um, did you ask me to move in with you this morning?” “I did.” Roan dug out his notebook and started flipping through it. He really wanted to check out the Kyle blackmail angle while he could still function. But where did he start there? “Does it freak you out now that you’re fully awake?” “I don’t know. It kinda feels like we’re living together already.” “My feeling exactly.” “It’s just… are you sure? Living with a moody, self-absorbed artist is a total pain in the ass.” “Living with me is a total pain in the ass. No difference.” “Well, I wasn’t going to say that….” “I know. You’re Buddhist, and so much nicer than me. See, that’s why I need you. You can patch up all the gaping holes I punch in people’s emotional walls.” He paused briefly. “Was that a mixed metaphor?” “Fuck if I know. I think after the interview I just had, I’m just gonna start saying “I am a fish” for the next hour or so.” “It was that bad?” “The closet queen son of Joel looks like my best bet for killer at the moment, and fuck if I don’t hate nailing my own kind.”
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“Well, gay people are just as capable of committing crimes as straight people. More so, if you believe James Dobson.” “As a rule, I don’t believe a goddamn thing Dobson shits out of his mouth.” “See? We agree on that.” “We’re a perfect couple,” Roan concurred, finding a note he’d almost overlooked. Kyle, John, and Joel shared a law firm: Cooper, Weiss, and Cooper. Interestingly enough, he knew they were very expensive, and a whiff of rottenness lingered over everything they touched. Most cops knew these fuckers were helping launder money for drug dealers and anyone wealthy enough to afford their services, but they were slick enough to never get caught. They’d probably have no problem arranging a blackmail payoff—or whatever else might be deemed necessary to get rid of the problem. That was a good place to start. “So why do you think the closet queen did it?” “I have nothing tangible. He’s simply a sociopath with all the emotional empathy of a desk drawer, and I think he may have been blackmailed, but I’m not sure where or if that fits into this.” “I’m gonna go out on a limb here: he pissed you off.” “Oh fuck yeah. Smarmy little prick. He pretended to get drunk at lunch and kept hitting on me with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the crotch. He also threatened me, but fuck that. He has money and power, but I can turn into a lion at any time—I win.” All the money and power in the world couldn’t keep a hungry, angry lion from eating you. It was a strange comfort, but a comfort all the same. “He was hitting on you? Should I be jealous?” There was a hint of teasing in Dylan’s voice. “Since when am I attracted to conceited dickheads? Oily closetqueen conceited dickheads?” “Well, if you put it that way, I sound like an idiot.” “No, you don’t. Actually, it’s cute that you’re jealous.” “Cute?” “Sexy cute.” “Damn right.”
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Roan’s mind had already started wandering as he considered how to approach Cooper, Weiss, and Cooper. If they knew he was an ex-cop, they’d shut him out instantly, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do about it. But didn’t he know someone who could help him get a foot in the door?
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11 Beware DENNIS CALDERA was perhaps the most dapper lawyer Roan had ever encountered. He always wore tailored suits, never too expensive, but cut so exquisitely it didn’t matter that they were far from Prada. He had prematurely silver hair that was cut and styled just so, adding to the air of dignity he seemed to naturally exude. If Roan thought about it, he couldn’t recall Dennis ever cursing, either in his office or at the courthouse. He was always aware of the image he was presenting. He was a class act, no ambulance chaser him; if you were represented by Dennis, you were being represented by the best. Judges generally liked him, and juries liked him even more, seeing a knowledgeable charmer with good taste and genteel manners. So it always baffled Roan why Dennis decided to use him as his primary PI. He could have found someone more professional, someone who didn’t look like he’d just rolled out of bed half the time, someone who actually liked wearing a suit and tie, someone who could testify in court without the opposing attorney pointing out he was infected and snickering at his “special powers.” But this was where being the only openly gay private detective in the city helped him for once. Dennis liked to keep business within the “community” whenever possible, so Dennis either had to hire him or be a hypocrite. He could have been a hypocrite—most people were—but he decided to live by his code, and Roan’s bank account could thank him for that. He had to worry when another gay detective hung out his shingle. Because he was such a class act, most other lawyers liked Dennis, at least in a professional capacity. He seemed to know people everywhere, which was why Roan called him. As soon as he said Cooper, Weiss, and Cooper, Dennis made a “hmm” noise, the kind of hmm noise he made when he really didn’t like something and didn’t
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know how to politely tell you you were a fucking idiot for even thinking about it. He then had to assure Dennis that he wasn’t in debt to the mob or something. He just needed some inside information on a client. That made Dennis “hmm” some more and then put him on hold. Roan was on hold long enough for him to take another pain pill. The pain wasn’t fading fast enough. Roan was starting to feel slightly disconnected from his body when Dennis got back on. He said he knew a paralegal who worked for CWC, Taylor Sanchez, who was rather dissatisfied with his job. He’d probably be very happy to spill on any of CWC’s clients, although Dennis specifically asked him to not ask Taylor for anything illegal, as he was young, naïve, and bitter. Roan appreciated the warning. Too bad he intended to use it. Roan called Taylor, got him, and told him that Dennis Caldera had recommended he talk to him. He put him on hold—Roan took that moment to scream in frustration and slam his phone down on the steering wheel—but when he came back, Taylor just told him he got off work at five and to meet him at the Wendy’s on Larson Street. Taylor had rung off before he could ask why. Killing time, he got in contact with Fiona, only to discover her attempts to get in contact with Cherry had met a dead end. Cherry made regular visits to a very upscale spa and salon, but it turned out she hadn’t made an appointment for this week and hadn’t been in for a while. She was lying low since the death of Joel, presumably. Holden had better luck. He said he was in at John’s office as a temp. This was a surprise to Roan, because he was pretty sure Holden didn’t know how to do any office chore and didn’t want to know, but Holden told him he had an “in” that would allow him to fake it, as long as he actually didn’t have to sit down at a desk and do actual work. The “in” was apparently an employee he knew “very well.” (Holy fuck, how many closet gays were there?) He said he was hoping to get something “incriminating” by the end of the day. Roan didn’t think it was possible to grab something so fast, but okay. By the time he found the Wendy’s on Larson, he felt like he was floating. It was weird, but nice. He ordered a shake and waited at a front table for someone who looked like a paralegal to come in.
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Taylor was one of those type-A guys who were so full of energy they seemed to vibrate even while standing still. You imagined if you gave him cocaine, he’d explode. He was a bland-looking guy in a bland suit-and-tie type of outfit, with a plain white button-down shirt and a dark tie that was a type of navy blue Roan, for some reason, always associated with airline pilots. His haircut was short and neat, probably a Supercuts special, and he was trying very hard to corral the type of pimples that could often plague a person well into their late twenties. His eyes were such a pale hazel they were almost a suggestion of a color rather than an actual color, and his wire-framed glasses made them look smaller, exacerbating the problem. He was all nerves as he came over to the table, but Roan couldn’t help but note that didn’t stop him from ordering a “Baconator.” And in spite of everything, Roan had to assure him he wasn’t a cop, and lifted up his shirt to prove he wasn’t wearing a wire. (Although with the perfection of directional mikes, you hardly needed to wear a body mike nowadays, but he wasn’t going to tell him that.) The funny thing was, no one seemed to notice or care. Considering the neighborhood, one man showing another man his nipples was probably one of the least strange things that had ever been done here. Taylor went off for a bit on how he hated working for Cooper, Weiss, and Cooper, as he knew some of the clients were “shady” (only some?), and he was terrified the Feds were going to bust the office at any time. He wanted to get work at Dennis’s firm, but they had all the paralegals they needed, and it was a plum assignment anyways. Dennis had e-mailed him, though, asking him to hear Roan out, and he seemed to think that maybe helping him would give him an in with Dennis. Roan told him he needed anything he could get on any legal or under-the-table transactions done by Kyle, John, or Joel Newberry in the past year (that was a guess). The name Newberry made Taylor sit ramrod straight in his plastic seat, as if he’d just received a cattle prod up the ass. Apparently everyone reacted that way when you brought the Newberrys into it. Roan watched sweat ooze out of Taylor’s pores, gathering on his forehead like the visible remnants of evil thoughts, and then Taylor put his cholesterol bomb down and excused himself from the table, ducking into the men’s room. Was that too much for him to attempt? Poor kid. He just wanted to get ahead, and some stranger was
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asking him to put his neck on the chopping block. Someone at a nearby table had abandoned their newspaper, so Roan picked it up and glanced at it. He instantly wished he hadn’t. A big cat had mauled someone in Bishop Park last night and killed another person, as well as a couple of pets (or at least it was blamed on the cat—investigation could render it an erroneous assumption). They’d already made connections between the Bowles killing and the German killing. He wondered briefly why Gordon hadn’t called him in on it, and then remembered he was in the hospital due to his heart attack. Son of a bitch, how had he forgotten that? What was fucking wrong with him lately? He rubbed his eyes and realized they felt funny. Dry, and almost kind of hard, like they’d been replaced by stones, but when he pressed on them he could feel pressure, pain. It was hard to focus on the article, it was a little blurry (goddamn soy ink; sure, it was environmentally friendly, but it ran easily, and it smelled funny to his nose), but he could see at least one city councilman was calling on the chief of police to get the “goddamn cat menace” under control. As if that had never occurred to anyone; as if they were letting Grant run wild on purpose. (If it was Grant. It could have been another big cat. There were no details in the paper that actually swung it one way or another, and he knew the department wouldn’t release those kinds of details.) Suddenly Taylor was back at the table, looking at him funny. “You okay, man?” Roan wanted to ask him how he had managed to teleport from the bathroom to his chair, but then he realized the paper had fallen from his hands and was on the floor, and had probably fallen there a minute or so ago. For some reason, he only realized it in retrospect. Those pills he’d taken were just Tylenol codeine he’d scored up in Canada, right? He thought they were. Maybe they were. Holy shit, what did he take? He could be such a fucking idiot sometimes. He lied and said he was, and Taylor was too freaked by the idea of digging up dirt on the Newberrys to call him on it. He said he’d try, as long as Roan put in a good word for him to Dennis, and he agreed. The kid hinted around money, and Roan told him he’d be compensated, which was just the type of lawyer-speak he wanted to hear.
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Roan had stuff to pursue, other leads. He needed to check in with Seb on both the Grant Kim case and Gordo, but suddenly right then he wanted to go home, so he went home. He blacked out for about half the drive, so how he got there in one piece he had no idea. At the last minute, he checked the bottle in the glove compartment: Tylenol codeine. Then what the fuck was going on? Roan stumbled in the door, and had just collapsed on the couch when he heard Dylan coming down the stairs. “I didn’t expect you home so early,” he said. “But I’m glad you are, ’cause I was thinking I could make dinner tonight. But I have no idea what to—” He stopped suddenly and stared at him like he was a complete stranger. “Roan, what’s wrong?” Roan looked up at him and didn’t know what to say. His head didn’t ache anymore, but it felt like it was filled with a heavy velvet fog. “I dunno. I had a headache, a migraine….” He forgot the word, so he just went on without it. “I took some Tylenol codeine for it. But there’s something wrong with it.” Was it his ears, or did his voice sound kind of thick? Slow. Wrong. Dylan initially frowned—Roan had promised him he’d given up the pills, after all—but he quickly got past it. “What do you mean there’s something wrong? With the pills?” “Yeah. They’re not what was supposed to be in the bottle. I think. I dunno. I don’t feel well.” He realized it was getting harder to breathe. There was a tightness in his chest, something he hadn’t felt since he was a kid and had walking pneumonia. His limbs felt heavy, and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he could move them. If he could get mad, maybe he could bring the lion out, fight it back a bit, but he couldn’t imagine what would make him angry at this point. He was exhausted, and getting angry would require more energy than he had. Dylan picked up the phone, and Roan heard him say, “Yes, I need an ambulance. I think my boyfriend’s been poisoned.” Poisoned? That seemed overly dramatic. But Roan had to admit to himself that that might be the only word for it.
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12 Can’t Exist DYLAN wondered how often he had been in emergency rooms since he had been dating Roan. More than he had before he started seeing Roan? Yeah, he was pretty sure this pushed it over the amount he’d been in a hospital his entire life before Roan. Maybe this was the price you paid for hooking up with the hot, mysterious, dangerous guy. Was this agony worth it? He answered questions for the cops while they worked on Roan somewhere behind the emergency room doors. Luckily the cops seemed to know Roan and didn’t consider Dylan a suspect (well, at least not yet). Before he passed out, Dylan got some information from Roan: he’d taken three pills (he held up three fingers), and the pill bottle was in the glove compartment (he nodded an affirmative to that). He then passed out while Dylan was on the phone with the 9-1-1 operator. He tried to wake Roan up—the only thing he was sure about was he had to keep him conscious—but save for getting his eyelids to briefly flicker, he couldn’t wake him up. His heart rate had dropped absurdly low by the time the paramedics showed up (he’d been hoping Dee would be one of the paramedics, but he wasn’t). The cops arrived to take the pill bottle into custody and check out the car, but the couple now questioning him—Walker, the somewhat good-looking, lanky black man, and Shale, the more compact, slightly masculine brunette woman—had given him a lift to the hospital. Dylan knew they at least knew of Roan, because as soon as Walker asked him if he knew of anyone who might want to hurt Roan, he rolled his eyes and admitted it might be easier to start listing the people who didn’t want to kill him. Shale snorted humorously at that. As far as Dylan could tell, it wasn’t meant in a mean way, just an ironic one. He had no answers for them, but they didn’t seem to hold it
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against him. All he could say was what little Roan had told him when he got home. As far as he knew, no one had access to his car (although clearly someone did), and he was off on a case, so he had no idea where in town Roan might have been. He couldn’t even tell them about the case. He said Roan hadn’t told him, which was a lie. He knew he was working the Newberry case. But until that was relevant, he was going to play the dumb, clueless boyfriend. Being a bartender at Panic helped. As soon as he told them where he worked, they exchanged this look that Dylan recognized as “himbo.” They’d already written him off as a vacuous boy toy. Again, fine. He didn’t give a shit—they could think of him as Paris Hilton for all he fucking cared. He just wanted to know if Roan was going to pull through or not. He thought he’d held himself together well. He’d wanted to cry, but he didn’t. He’d been swallowing back the tears since he saw Roan slumped on the couch, his eyes glassy and his lips perfectly bloodless. There was a time and a place for emotional displays, and he preferred to lose his shit when no one was around to see it. Dylan tried to empty his mind, use a Zen meditation technique to take himself out of himself and let the time go by faster, but that was hard to do when all you could think was your lover was dying in the next room. Didn’t he know this could happen? The problem with Roan was he thought he was indestructible. He wasn’t, although he arguably had a decent case for it, what with being able to turn into a lion and all. But that wasn’t indestructibility; it just made him riskier to hurt. Roan didn’t seem to care about that difference at all. Incredible bravery or a suicidal tendency? It was a fine line, and kind of hard to say. Dylan didn’t know, and he was sure Roan didn’t either. The suicidal aspect could just be his pill habit, but maybe not. Maybe that was just for the numbing effect. For all his tough-guy exterior, he knew Roan felt things a little too deeply for his own good. The pills were just backup for his armor, an inner framework that he leaned on more and more. Dylan wondered what it said about him that he’d decided to accept Roan as a drug addict, just like he’d accepted that he was always going to love Paris more. It was sad. He’d always had more self-esteem than that, and yet he had decided if he wanted to be in Roan’s life, he’d have to compromise. Sometimes loving someone
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just sucked. Dylan sensed a person near him, and a vaguely familiar voice said, “I took a guess and figured you were a tea drinker.” He looked up to see Fox, aka Holden Krause, Roan’s maleprostitute friend. Or acquaintance, Roan was never able to explain what he was, exactly. He’d actually seen him in Panic once or twice, back when he bleached his hair, but he hadn’t seen him lately. Tall, broad shouldered, he was more masculine than you would expect (save for his voice, which did give the game up a bit), and he wasn’t a pretty boy. He was one of those guys who, if they didn’t have a transcendent sort of charm, would be forgettable. Not ugly, not anonymous, just not special enough to warrant noticing. It also helped that a sort of furtive intelligence burned in his sea-blue eyes. It came and went, depending on how much of himself he decided to show to you, but it made Dylan distrust him the first time he saw him. If he wasn’t a hustler, he was a guy on the make, someone calculating and predatory, and the fact that he actually was a hustler made Dylan think of him in a tiny bit better light. He had a reason to be calculating then, a reason to be hunting. Holden wasn’t in costume. He was wearing very ordinary jeans and a promotional T-shirt for 30 Days of Night that was a size too large for him, the fabric slouching on him like it was damp and fresh out of the washer. His brown hair was messy in a way that suggested he’d gotten dressed in a hurry and come right over. He was holding out a paper cup of steaming liquid—some awful tea or another—and Dylan remembered to take it with a small nod of thanks. How long had he been sitting here staring at the cup? “I am, yeah. Thanks.” Holden sighed as he sat in the empty plastic chair beside him. “How is he doing?” “I have no idea. They haven’t told me anything.” “Is this a gay thing? You’re not family so you don’t count?” “I think it’s more they’re trying to figure out what he took and how they can counteract it.” “What was happening to him, if you don’t mind me asking?” Odd question. He gave Holden a sidelong glance, but he sensed he was trying to figure something out; he had a strange focused look in his eyes. “He was slipping into a coma. His heartbeat and breathing
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were dropping lower and lower. I kept trying to wake him up, but nothing happened. He was slipping away from me and I got to see it—” Dylan had to stop, as his voice caught and he could feel those treacherous tears surging back. He closed his eyes and focused on stomping them down. He was not losing it, especially not in front of a man he didn’t fully trust. And he didn’t mean it in a sexual sense. There was nothing going on between Holden and Roan. It wasn’t even a question he had to ask. There was something so calculating about Holden he knew he’d never appeal to Roan. Ro had trust issues, and something about Holden made you wary about trusting him. Dylan almost jumped when he felt Holden’s hand on his back, giving him a reassuring pat. “I’m so sorry, Dylan. Roan’s a tough motherfucker. The lion would never let him go without a fight.” That was probably true, but for some reason he resented Holden for saying it. Dylan mentally wiped it away and opened his eyes, no longer afraid he’d start crying. “Why are you here?” He hoped that didn’t sound accusatory, but fuck it if it did. He didn’t feel like being polite right now. “Dee called me,” he said, surprising him again. “He’s stuck at the scene of a huge pileup on I-5 near the Silverdale exit and couldn’t get here. He called me and asked me to come check on you and Roan for him.” “Oh.” Diego called him? That meant Dee must have trusted him on some level. Dylan wasn’t sure if that was comforting or not. “I was wondering why he wasn’t here. The paramedic news network is formidable.” “So I’m learning.” Finally, a short Indian woman in a white doctor coat approached them. Dylan stood, and so did Holden. “How is he?” “Alive,” she said. She had the brusque but not unkind manner of every hurried ER doctor everywhere. “As far as we can tell, he took an animal tranquilizer.” “What?” Dylan replied. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to say, but it wasn’t that. “Like ketamine?” Holden asked. The doctor shook her head. “Heavier. This is stuff used to sedate
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elephants in a zoo. Two should have killed him, three pills should have been a nail banged into the coffin. But he’s not a normal human, by far. He has the constitution of an angry musk ox, and we got to him in time.” She sighed wearily and rubbed her forehead, as if she was even more tired than she looked and trying hard to keep focus. “He’s lucky he’s a hybrid, although I doubt anyone can convince him of that.” “Hybrid?” Dylan asked. He’d heard Roan say something about that before, something about his rarity in catching colds. She grimaced, as if she realized she’d said something wrong. “I simply meant his virus child status was a help in this case.” “Can I see him?” “Not now. He’s in the ICU on a respirator. Come back tomorrow at—” “He’s on a respirator?” Dylan interrupted impatiently. She hadn’t mentioned that. “It’s mostly a precaution. Respiratory depression is common in these kinds of things, and he may need some help breathing until it’s mostly out of his system. We don’t foresee any lasting problems. In fact, if you’d let me finish my sentence, I was going to say you should come by tomorrow, when we’ll probably be removing him from the respirator.” She patted him on the arm, a clumsy attempt at comfort. But Dylan vaguely recognized her, so she must have worked on Roan before. It certainly explained some of the implied familiarity. “He’ll be okay. It’s just the other guy I’m worried about.” “What other guy?” “Whoever slipped him the mickey,” she said, as her pager went off. She picked it up and glanced at it, frowning, as she turned away. “Roan isn’t a forgive-and-forget type.” “No,” Dylan agreed, the syllable lost in a sigh. He dry-washed his face and wondered what he was supposed to do with himself tonight. Somebody had tried to kill Roan, and now a machine was doing his breathing for him. How did you sleep? How did you spend all those agonizing hours waiting for the sun to come up and a new day to start? He’d done such things in his life, but he never wanted to do them again. “This is all my fault,” Holden said suddenly.
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Dylan glanced at him, a little surprised by the certainty in his voice. “What do you mean? You didn’t give him the drugs, did you?” Anger flashed through Holden’s eyes, and he scowled. “You think that little of me? No, I didn’t slip him the elephant tranqs. It’s just my fault it happened.” “How?” He huffed a sigh through his nose and crossed his arms over his chest. “I hired him to look into Joel Newberry’s murder. Someone slipped him a lethal amount of potassium, and now they tried to get Roan with tranqs. This shitty bastard likes deaths that can be written off as accidents, no matter how weird they are.” “But he just started the investigation. This person would have had to have known Roan was investigating this right from the start. That’s not possible, is it?” Holden looked away as he considered it, muscles going taut in his jaw. “I don’t know. At this rate, we can’t discount anything.” Great. He sounded like Roan there for a moment. Dylan started walking away, wondering what he was going to do with himself, when Holden grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Look, stay with me tonight, or let me stay over.” “What?” “This guy, whoever he is, attacks with stealth. He doesn’t like confrontation, he doesn’t want a fight, and he won’t risk taking on two guys at once. There’s safety in numbers.” Was this some bizarre come-on, or was he serious? Dylan’s head was still spinning from the fact that someone had tried to kill Roan. He didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with this right now. “You think he’s going to come after me?” Holden shrugged. “It depends on how concerned he is about loose ends. But if anything happens to you, Roan will kill me. I’ve already seen what he does when someone hurts you. I don’t want to be on the other side of that.” Dylan considered that but still felt as if he didn’t have a grip on things. “Are you making fun of him?” “Absolutely not. He just loves you enough that he will kill for
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you. Literally—he will kill. He will let the lion out and rip people to pieces. I don’t want to end my life as a bit of food in his colon.” He paused a moment. “I bet there’s a dirty joke in that, but I’m too angry to make it right now.” This sort of went in one ear and out the other. Dylan couldn’t take much more tonight. He used to have a rather sedate life. Oh sure, he had his weird art friends and the interesting employees at the gay club, but he had a very normal routine: work, painting, watching TV, meditating. That was pretty much it. Pretty normal, much like everyone else’s with a couple of variations. But then he met an unusually attractive man named Paris, who was the only tiger-strain infected he had ever met, who seemed to talk all the time about his boyfriend, Roan. And somehow, his life took a weird sideways turn from then on. Suddenly his life was full of death, iron cages, books, guns, dominatrices, paramedics, and male prostitutes. While he was baffled much of the time, you’d think he’d been more miserable than he actually was. Oh sure, he was miserable right now, but for the most part he was perversely happy with Roan. In spite of the hard exterior, he was one of sweetest men he’d ever known. He seemed genuinely interested in helping people. Merging that with the man who could turn into a lion and eat people was a brain-twisting dichotomy. “He… what? Are you saying you saw him do this?” Holden got this look on his face that suggested he’d suddenly realized he had made a mistake. “And he didn’t tell you about it at all. Right. I should have guessed that really. Forget it. You know he has a temper. That’s all it is.” “He tried to kill someone because of me?” “No. If he wanted someone dead, they’d be dead. He just scared the living shit out of them.” “But you said—” “I’m full of shit, Dylan. Now, are we headed to your place or are you coming back to mine?” How weird: he was lying and telling the truth at the same time. Dylan hadn’t known that was physically possible. But, again, he couldn’t deal with that now. It was disappointing to think that maybe he wasn’t strong enough
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to be in Roan’s world, but he was starting to wonder.
HOLDEN knew he was many things, but a decent detective wasn’t one of them. Under normal circumstances. But circumstances were far from normal; circumstances were pretty well fucked. It was bad enough the doctor had obviously lied to them: no one on a respirator was “okay.” That was like saying the guy on the iron lung only had a “mild cough.” But he figured Roan would recover eventually, because he generally did. He was a bad penny, and he kept turning up. Poor Dylan. Not only did he look shell-shocked by all of this, but he asked him in the car, “You think Roan really loves me?” Oh, it was so weird. Holden told him that obviously he did, and obviously he didn’t admit it because the idea of it freaked him out. Lingering Paris guilt? Maybe. Holden really had no idea. The one time he’d thought he was in love, his heart had been so thoroughly crushed he was no longer sure he ever was in love. He thought love was a sham used to sell greeting cards and heterosexual conformity, even though he generally recognized the delusion when it popped up in others. Roan had it bad for Dylan, although he supposed he could understand. Dylan was a good-looking guy, but not vain, and he was as mellow as a heavily stoned person without being actually stoned or completely fucking stupid. He’d be an easy target for anybody who wanted to kill him. Holden knew he wasn’t an easy target. He looked like he was, but he wasn’t. He’d learned long ago you did what you had to do to survive, and sometimes your survival meant hurting someone else. It happened. You just tried not to hurt anyone without necessity or good reason if you had any shred of a conscience. Holden had a shred, but only just. He figured it would serve him well. Today, while “working” at John Newberry’s office, he had found a very queeny assistant to befriend. It wasn’t difficult. A bit of flirting, a bit of flattery, and this poor guy was following him around like a puppy. The scary thing? This guy couldn’t have been more than twentytwo, making Holden feel vaguely like a dirty old man. Okay, he was only thirty, but in hustler years that was ancient. The guy Callum—
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might have been shiny young, but he wasn’t very attractive and had a bit of a belly. Not much of one, but in the perfectionist world of the gay dating scene, that made him little more than a drunken desperation fuck at best. Attention from Holden meant a lot to him. He felt really bad for stringing him along. He got access to some of John’s e-mails and line-item budget items for the past couple months. What he discovered was that, only yesterday, John had sent a rather large payment to a Duane Malloy. A bit of Googling and use of less widely known search engines turned up that he was a private investigator for a firm working out of Lakeview. John Newberry had hired a private investigator and just paid him off in a way that suggested their business was done. He wanted to ask Roan what that could possibly mean, if it was sinister as he felt it might have been, but Roan wasn’t conscious enough to ask. Holden had to drop Dylan off at Roan’s place anyways, and luckily Dee was there to meet them. Holden whispered to him to not leave Dylan alone, which earned him a quizzical look, but then he told Dee and Dylan he’d be back as soon as he got some things from his place. Holden then headed off to find Burn. Burn was one of those guys you met when you lived on the streets or very close to the gutter. He was a wheeler-dealer, a vulture living off the corpses of other people’s misery and actively encouraging the misery for money. He was a heroin addict who derided methheads until he got addicted to meth himself. When Holden tracked Burn down, he was shocked at how rapid his decline had been. His skin looked gray, like he was already dead, and his cheeks had sunken in, giving him a look akin to the embodiment of Famine. When he talked, Holden saw his gums were an odd color, his teeth the color of candy corn and occasionally similarly shaped, and his breath smelled like someone had just taken a shit in a vat of nail polish remover. They sat in the dark corner of a dive bar where you could buy a hit of meth or a girl in the piss-reeking bathroom, and Holden passed over a wad of cash for one of Burn’s “specials.” They were guns with their serial numbers filed off and their barrels often altered. They were usually stolen from out of state or bought at gun shows, untraceable and anonymous, a gun without a country. They were made to be used for one gig and then tossed, guns altered specifically for evil things.
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Holden got a semiautomatic with six bullets in it. It was in good shape. Holden’s only objection was that it had flashy silver plating, which was important to those who wanted to show the gun off but had no use otherwise. Still, it would do. The bullets were hollow points. Holden wondered if the hit of meth he’d just paid for would be the death of Burn and if that would really be a bad thing, considering the shape he was in. Holden could shoot. He was raised in a good Christian American household; he could use a gun before he knew how to use long division. Pastor Krause had his priorities in order. But Holden had never shot a Human. Yet. There was a first time for everything. He’d already Google-mapped the location of Duane Malloy’s private detective agency. It wasn’t his own. He worked for an agency called Security Solutions, which sounded like a burglar alarm company. It did have an alarm, but a cheap one. It was easy to disable. The locks were also easy to pick. He’d learned that skill from a fellow street kid, Trips, that he’d had a huge crush on for a while. Shame he was straight. Holden wondered what had happened to him. One night he decided to hitchhike to Vegas, and Holden never saw him again. He hoped he had found himself a life. Holden went through Malloy’s files, looking for something on Newberry. Sadly, Duane wasn’t as meticulous a record keeper as Roan was. The computers were locked down with passwords they hadn’t written down on Post-it notes, which Holden had been surprised to find they did in Newberry’s office. (You were just asking for people to fuck around with your shit. Holden was glad it was that easy.) Holden picked the locked drawers of Duane’s desk and a nearby file cabinet and looked through the folders and papers he found there. That’s where he found the pictures of Joel. Big glossies of Joel entering an expensive hotel, and in a short sequence of shots, Holden saw himself entering the same hotel, eyes hidden behind sunglasses but still vaguely recognizable. There were other photographs of Joel and him entering other expensive hotels. Never together, there were no pictures of them engaging in any sort of act, but there was something circumstantial about it all. There was a copy of a hotel bill, Joel’s, which showed that Joel, alone on a business trip, had ordered two different dinners and an expensive bottle of gin.
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(Holden remembered that. The gin was okay, but weirdly enough, he knew a cheaper brand that tasted so much better.) Then Holden found a copy of an old arrest report, when he was a juvenile and had been brought in for solicitation of prostitution, as well as a printout of his recent profile on the escort company’s website. There was no fucking way they should have had that arrest report, but then again, how did they get a copy of the hotel bill? So he had been made. Malloy had discovered that Joel was most likely associating with a known male prostitute. And this information was given to his brother John. Blackmail? But who was doing the blackmailing? Did Malloy blackmail John, or did John simply pay him to dig up dirt on his own brother? At least Joel was right to feel paranoid. Holden suddenly realized something. The last photo taken was on the last day he saw Joel. Duane and John knew he had seen him. Was he still being shadowed? If so, they’d have seen Roan come to his apartment, and Duane would most likely recognize a PI as unique as Roan. It wouldn’t be hard to figure out why Holden might want to see him, hire him. And that’s how they swapped out Roan’s pills. He didn’t know it, but he had been under surveillance since he’d left Holden’s apartment. That’s how the killer knew that Roan was looking for him by day one. This was his fault. Holy shit, was someone going to pay for this. Holden closed the drawers, locking them again, and shoved one combined folder full of pictures and case notes down the front of his shirt, keeping his hands free. He locked the office up again but didn’t bother to reconnect the alarm system, because fuck it—let them wonder who the hell hit them. Let them wonder why. Once he was in his car, he tucked them under the front seat, wedged inside a copy of Scientific American. He then made sure the safety was off the gun and it was ready to go. Time to pay someone a visit. Time to see if he was angry enough to shoot someone in the face.
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13 Cosmopolitan ALTHOUGH the rich and powerful always had it much easier, in this day and age, it was hard to hide. This was doubly true of local celebrities, a phenomenon that continued to strike Holden as incredibly weird. Was that something to be proud of? You were famous in a two-thousand-mile radius, and then, after that, progressively less so, until you were just another schlub again at the state line. It made you an egotistical asshole and an emotionally needy asshole at the same time. Holden knew something about John that most people didn’t. He visited the Pacific Queen Casino (oh, the jokes he could have made…) almost every night. He had many luxury cars, but when he came to the casino, he always drove an old Mercedes, black with a dented fender. He didn’t want everyone to know he was a high roller up front. He tried to keep his true wealth a secret. Considering how much he blew in the casino, Holden had no idea how he thought he kept that all a secret. But at some point, someone was humoring him. A security guard, an overweight guy with a polyester uniform and a posture that suggested he’d been broken long ago, desultorily prowled the lot in a marked sedan, but the parking lot was fucking huge, so Holden only had to wait for him to go on by, continuing his rounds further on, before working on the lock of John’s passenger door. It was incredibly easy. All he had to do was wait. He came late enough that he didn’t have to wait long, although Holden was regretting not having his iPod with him. Finally John came walking through the parking lot, talking on a cell phone, completely oblivious to everything around him. Why did Holden even hide? He didn’t need to. He could have been following John and he’d have never noticed.
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John was busy lying. He was telling someone—his wife, presumably—that the meeting finally got over and he was on his way home. He talked about someone named Dan going on and on about boring shit, an attempt to give the lie some realistic detail. Holden had heard this done a million times, by men he had just fucked, men calling their wives and family—and, in one notable case, congress—and assuring them they were having a boring, awful trip and couldn’t wait to get home. Sometimes they’d glance at Holden and roll their eyes. Sometimes they’d pretend he was already gone. So was the way of men—men, by nature, lied. Did women? Maybe. Maybe it was just a Human condition, a compulsion that couldn’t be resisted. But from what Holden knew and experienced, men were generally pieces of shit. That’s why he didn’t feel bad about what he had to do. He waited until John had gotten in his car and finished his call before he came up and opened the passenger-side door, sliding into the seat before John had realized he had an unwanted hitchhiker. “Hey,” John said, and Holden pulled out the gun and pressed it against his forehead, shoving him back until his head was pushed up against the window. “You know who I am,” Holden told him. “Just like I know who you are. But if I blow your fucking brains out right now, it’ll never be connected to me. You’ll be a mystery, much like the death of your brother. The curse of the Newberrys. Although considering your gambling debts, they’ll probably think that finally caught up with you.” “Wh-what… who are—” Holden shoved the barrel even harder into John’s head, and the back of his head thunked against the glass. “Not this shit. I want to kill you enough as it is. Don’t make me lose my temper.” “I—I have money.” “I know you do. That’s your problem. Now tell me why you’ve had me followed and who tried to kill Roan McKichan before I just start breaking things.”‘ John swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in an unstable manner, as his eyes nervously studied Holden’s face. Maybe he was serious about not knowing him at first, because Holden could see recognition click into place now. His wariness was tempered by fear,
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and a modicum of sneering contempt. Holden could read his mind in this second—he was thinking, “Filthy whore.” Maybe because he was gay, there was an extra fear of cooties, or worse yet, contagious gayness. Maybe if they shared air too long, he’d get the gay too. “I had nothing—” Holden hit him with the gun barrel. Just drew his wrist back sharply and turned the gun just slightly, so when he made contact with John’s skin, the sight hit him first. Skin ripped along his forehead, making John yelp, and a small seam of blood opened, trickling down his face. “I’ve already decided to kill you,” Holden told him. “You know, I’m as liberal as anyone else in the sex trade, although we love you conservative, repressed guys. If not for you, we’d be out of a job. But I’ve been studying people long enough to know that there are some who are a waste of flesh. They do nothing but steal oxygen and cause misery for everyone else. They have no reason to exist, and really shouldn’t, for the greater good of us all. You’re one of those people, John. You’re a cold-blooded fuck who extorted his own brother for money. Did you kill him too? Not personally—you’re a ball-less wonder if I’ve ever seen one. But did you pay someone to do it for you? Or is making sure your brother gets an overdose of potassium an easy thing? I wouldn’t know. I’m an only child. Well, I wasn’t really, but I was raised one, so I missed out on all the sibling bonding. Tell me why Joel had to die, John.” John grimaced in pain, bringing a hand up to his forehead. When he saw the blood that came away on his hand, he looked ashen, slightly ill. Did the sight of blood make him sick? No wonder he took to poisoning people instead: no blood, no icky bodily fluids, just a corpse. “I didn’t kill him,” he said, more a plea than anything else, his voice cracking with fear and confusion. “I wouldn’t do that. Why would I do that?” “Because you’re up to your ass in debt, John, and you need the buyout to take place so you can have a fresh hard-cash infusion. That’s a hell of a murder motive. According to a detective friend of mine, money is usually the number one reason for death.” Or maybe it was number two—he couldn’t remember. But it didn’t matter anyways. John was cracking, easily and quickly. He believed Holden was
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serious about killing him, or guilt was eating away at him, or he noticed the safety was off. Maybe all of the above. “I didn’t do it. Okay, yeah, I need the money, but Joel’s estate is all going to his bitch of a current wife and his spoiled brat kids. How do I benefit from his death?” “The buyout.” He let out a scoff of a laugh, breathless and mirthless. “I have to split it with the rest of the family. It wouldn’t be much. I’d get more if Joel was alive to negotiate the deal. He could get blood from a stone.” That felt like truth. Joel had an appealing charm when he turned it on. “Why did he oppose the buyout?” “I dunno. He said some shit about our legacy and local media and a whole bunch of grade-A bullshit that never made any sense to me. I think he was just being a fuckhead, opposing it because the rest of us were all for it. It was his way of reminding all of us he was in control.” That, too, had a ring of truth. The men who hired him did so because they were trying to control the scenario. An anonymous trick might discover who you are; a boyfriend might become bitter. But a prostitute was engaged in a simple business transaction and had much to lose if they decided to expose you. It was mutually assured destruction if the secret leaked out. Or so the johns thought, and that was fine with Holden if they honestly believed that to be true. It wasn’t, though. A whore might have been just a whore, but a man who paid another man for sex never seemed to live it down in this country. Paying a woman was almost understandable and seemed to earn sympathy in some corners, but a man? Never. You were the eternal butt of a joke. But desire often outweighed logic, thankfully for his bank account. “What exactly did you pay Duane Malloy for? And consider your answer carefully.” “How—” John paused, deciding that the question was irrelevant, because Holden wouldn’t answer it. The guy with the gun didn’t have to answer a single fucking thing. “We needed a new security—” Holden punched John right in the balls. He convulsively knifed forward, slamming into the steering wheel, a high-pitched, keening noise escaping him. “I said I was gonna start breaking things, John. Do you think I’m fucking around? Do you want me to prove how much I want to hurt you?”
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“No,” he wheezed, still in pain. When he sat back, his eyes were red-rimmed from tears, and a string of saliva dangled from his wet lower lip. Had he almost barfed? Probably. “Did Joel mean that much to you?” “He didn’t mean anything to me,” Holden snapped, mildly surprised to discover that was true. There was familiarity and routine, but nothing else. Perhaps that was what marriage was like. “I was curious what happened to him, especially after what he told me. No, the reason you’re gonna die is because a good man is dying in a fucking hospital because of your family and your shit.” There it was: he was furious that they had hurt Roan. Part of him thought it should have been him that was the target. The killer should have come after him but didn’t for an obvious reason—who cared? He was a fucking whore, a hooker, and his word would mean nothing. The cops would roll their eyes, a judge would dismiss him, a jury of wonderful straight people would regard him as a leper and every word out of his mouth as contagious garbage. He could witness a murder, and any attorney worth their ambulance-chasing shoes could rip him apart. He could find the poisoner standing over Joel’s body with a container marked “potassium,” and no one would believe him or care. No lawbreaker ever had to worry about him, because he was an Untouchable, and no one would listen to him. But Roan… oh, poor Roan. He would be believed. Infected, gay, but an ex-cop and a police adviser on kitty cases, he had a patina of legitimacy that no amount of boyfriends, cat jokes, and suspicions of pill popping could erase. Then there was a vague sense of unease around him, since he seemed to have superhuman abilities, one of which—his supernatural sense of smell—was considered admissible in a court of law. On the one hand, people mocked him. On the other hand, they were terrified of him. He should have been a flaming queen, he should have been a sickly virus child, he should have been gone by now. Roan almost seemed to be karmic retribution, but whose was in question. The only thing everybody could agree on about him was he was dangerous, much more dangerous than you would initially think, much more than he should have been. When Malloy told the killer who was visiting Holden’s place, he must have panicked. To be fair, Holden didn’t think he’d want Roan after him either, even if he got the
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guarantee that he wouldn’t turn into a lion at some point. How did he feel about Roan? Holden wasn’t really sure. He’d come to believe he was a genuinely good person when he first encountered him as a cop. Holden didn’t like cops as a matter of course—tiny little tyrants, many with homosexual impulses they fought by becoming extremely homophobic—but Roan always seemed a little off. He seemed to treat everyone like a Human being, whether they were a hooker or a junkie. Holden figured then there was no fucking way he was going to last in the job, and he was right. He was strangely attractive, not a pretty boy but weirdly alluring all the same, with intense, haunted eyes. And god, was he trouble: not just infected, but an obvious depressive, too smart for his own good, a romantic turned cynic, battered by the world and not sure how to handle it. He raged at dying light, or whatever was handy, and had taken to numbing himself with chemicals. He was stubborn and moody, a total pain in the ass. Holden didn’t envy Dylan, putting up with him. But that was the weird thing: he didn’t envy him, but wasn’t he still a bit jealous anyways? Yeah, he was trouble, but Holden suspected he was rarely ever boring. The true outcasts rarely were. Nothing could ever work between him and Roan, but Holden bet it would have been a fun disaster. “I had nothing to do with that,” John insisted, his voice still raspy with pain. Holden hoped he’d burst a testicle. “I wanted nothing to do with that guy. Malloy warned me off. He told me we had to shut this down before McKichan got wind of it. He didn’t wanna follow him.” That, too, was believable. He couldn’t imagine that one private detective wanted to follow another. If you knew the tricks of the trade, you could spot a tail pretty easy. “What did you hire Malloy for in the first place?” He sniffed, wiped snot from his face with the back of one hand and rubbed his crotch with the other. “Fuck, I think you did some real damage.” “I warned you not to lie to me. Stop trying to change the subject.” “I’m not. I hired him to… fuck. I hired him to dig up dirt on Joel. I needed leverage.” “Leverage for what?” “For what else? Convincing him to take the fucking deal. We all
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wanted to sell. He was the lone holdout, and for no good reason. He just wanted to remind us who was in control. So I thought I’d show him he wasn’t as hot shit as he thought he was. Of course, I didn’t know he was a fag.” “He wasn’t. He was bi.” John glared at him. “What’s the fucking difference?” “The difference is gay guys really don’t want to fuck women. Joel would fuck anything.” John winced at this and looked out the windshield. “That’s more than I ever wanted to know about him.” “Then why hire a private detective?” He shrugged a single shoulder. “I figured he was fucking around. No guy with money and power is actually gonna stick with just one woman. They know that, right? You’re gonna fuck around. You can have anyone you want, so why stay in and have reheated leftovers when you can go get something fresh, you know? I figured he had a mistress, probably more than one. I didn’t expect him to have… you. But he probably coulda had a guy for free—you fags’ll fuck anybody, right? You hook up in bathrooms and shit. Why didn’t he just do that?” Holden restrained the urge to start pistol-whipping him. Mainly because the gun could accidentally discharge in any direction, and he didn’t want to accidentally shoot himself. “Use the word fag again, and I’ll break your other ball. Get me?” John looked like he wanted to say something, maybe belittle him for being so PC, but then he remembered he was holding the gun and had already done some testicular damage to him, and he managed to swallow it down. But Holden saw it in his eyes, the continued, endless contempt. He didn’t know him, but Holden disgusted him. “Yeah.” “Let me get this straight: you still employed Malloy to follow me after Joel’s death. What the fuck for? Wanted my number, John?” Holden got the reaction he wanted, the sudden, reflex revulsion. “No! I ain’t a f—that way. I thought maybe you had something to do with it.” This was unbelievable. “With his death?” “Yeah. I mean you’re… you’re a criminal, right? You do shit like
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that.” As infuriating as that statement was, it didn’t quite fit. Why? Because of one very important thing. “I’d be perfect to frame for the crime if something went wrong. It sort of begs the question how you knew Joel had been murdered when everyone assumed he’d died of a heart attack.” His mouth open and closed soundlessly, as he almost said something and then thought better of it. He tried again, more successfully this time. “That’s not—Joel was in too good of shape to just drop dead like that. I didn’t know he was killed, but it didn’t feel right.” “Umm, no. You’ve told enough truth that a lie could slip through, but I lie for a living, asshole. Did you really think you could bullshit me?” He pressed the barrel of the gun against John’s temple with renewed ferocity. “Drive.” There was a smell coming from John now. Not piss, not exactly, just fear sweat, a rank smell of failed deodorant and desperation. Holden wondered if people smelled like this to Roan most of the time, and if so, how did he stand them. “Drive where?” “We’re gonna pay Duane Malloy a visit,” Holden told him. “And then we’re gonna find out if any of us are gonna live through the night.” Oddly enough, Holden wasn’t bothered by this prospect. Maybe he’d finally found a new occupation.
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14 Time Won’t Tell “YOU know, you’re not a detective,” Diego said. Dylan sighed, sitting back on the couch, balancing his cup of tea on the arm of the sofa. He’d been going through both Roan’s laptop and the notes he’d found, hoping to find something that jumped out at him, something that said, “Yes, I’m the bastard that tried to kill Roan.” So far, that elusive clue wasn’t jumping forward and revealing itself. “Obviously, Dee, or this would make more sense to me than it does.” “Hardly. Ro may keep a lot of notes, but they’re not always linear,” he replied, between swallows of his beer. “They’re stream of consciousness half the time. I’m not sure if he does that to keep people from reading them and making sense of them, or if he really thinks like that. You know, he might think that way. I dated him, but I still can’t say I’ve ever totally understood him. How are you doing on that front?” Was Dee trying to distract him? Could he blame him if he was? “I’d never claim to understand completely how he thinks, but I think I know where he’s coming from most of the time. And his notes aren’t that bad. They’re kind of like he’s having a conversation with himself, trying to figure out where one piece slots into the bigger picture, if it does. He generally assumes everyone’s lying about something and tries to figure out what they’d be most likely to lie about. It’s a chess game where you can only guess what and where the pieces are.” Dee gave him a funny look. “I think you just gave me a headache.” “I never said it was easy.” “Obviously.” Dee paused briefly, pondering his next statement with care. “How do you think we should approach his continuing pill problem? I’d suggest an intervention, but knowing Roan, he’d pull a
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gun and open fire on us.” Dylan shook his head, looking at the notes on screen so he didn’t have to meet his gaze. “I think that’s not even on the table right now. He needs to recover, and then we’ll deal with it.” There was a very telling pause. “Wow. You’re writing it off? Really? You think you can live with that, Dylan?” “I think it doesn’t matter right now. If he dies, none of this bullshit is going to matter.” He could feel his anger rising, and along with that, tears. Dylan squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a bad case of eyestrain. Now was not the time. In fact, despite Holden’s warning that he shouldn’t be alone, he really wanted to be alone. If the killer wanted to get him, fine, he could come and have a go. It would allow Dylan to see if he still had the will to kill inside of him. Luckily, there was a knock on the door. Dee sighed and levered himself out of his chair. “Finally. I was wondering if Holden had stopped for a trick or something.” He had been gone for a long time. But Dylan wasn’t that surprised, mainly because he had a sneaking suspicion Holden had somewhere else to go. It was just the way he’d left in a hurry. He looked like a man on a mission. But when Dee opened the door, it wasn’t Holden that came in. It was Fiona, greeting Dee with surprise before breezing past him and making a beeline for the sofa. Dylan was barely on his feet before Fi engulfed him in a hug. “How are you, sweetie?” she asked. She was wearing a vanillascented perfume that was very soothing. Or maybe it was just vanilla. It was hard to pick up anything perfumey about it. “Okay, considering,” he said, as Fi finally let him go. She had her long red hair back in a ponytail but otherwise looked very much the same as before, in a T-shirt, jeans, and a red leather jacket. Her eyes were a bit tired, like she’d been up too long. (Hadn’t they all been?) “How are you?” She shrugged and grimaced. “I’m getting used to people trying to kill my boss. Isn’t that sad? Anyways, how is he?” “No change from before,” Dee said, returning to his chair. “In the
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case of an animal tranquilizer overdose, we can take that as good news.” Dylan sat back down on the sofa, and he moved the laptop so Fi could sit down beside him. “That’s good, I guess.” She glanced at what was on the laptop screen. “Case notes?” Dylan nodded. “I’ve been trying to figure out if the answer was here, if Roan was so close to the guy he decided to kill him.” “Well, I have something that isn’t in the case notes,” she said, almost excitedly. “Something that may alter the case a bit.” Now that was intriguing. “What?” She shifted on the couch, turning to face him more, getting comfortable. “Okay, you know I have friends in the sex industry, right?” “I’ve seen your dominatrix ad in the back of The Stranger,” Dylan replied. He had, but only after Roan found it and pointed it out. Still, no need to tell her that. That made her grin in a slightly sheepish way. “It’s only parttime. I don’t have time for many clients anymore. Anyways, I was talking to Gunther, down at the sex dungeon—” “There’s a sex dungeon?” Dylan exclaimed. He wasn’t sure if being frightened or appalled was the proper response. “Oh yeah,” Dee said, surprising him further. “Me and Shep got called there once. A guy forgot the safe word and got choked to unconsciousness.” “I heard about that,” Fi said. “Weirdest thing? He was that guy who runs all those used-car lots on the west side. Shep recognized him from his TV commercials.” Fi shook her head as if the guy should have known better than to forget the safe word and shifted her gaze back to Dylan, moving on. “Anyways, Gunther told me about something involving Kyle Newberry.” “He’s a closet ’mo,” Dylan interrupted. “Yeah, Ro included that in his case notes.”
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“No, not that. There’s a sex tape.” Dylan and Dee shared a surprised look, and both sat forward. “A sex tape?” Dylan repeated. “Kyle having sex with a man?” Fi grinned in a savage way. “Two guys. They were having a Newberry sandwich. And one of them was a regional porn star. Gunther recognized his dick and the tattoo on his stomach.” Dylan didn’t even know where to start with this one. So he tried to pretend he was Roan and ask questions Roan would ask. “Who’s the guy, and where’s the tape?” “The porn star goes by the name of Colt Brixton.” She rolled her eyes. “Shitty name, I know, but hey, most of the good names were probably taken.” “That’s almost familiar,” Dee said, frowning in thought. Watched a lot of porn, did he? “What’d he do?” “Besides everyone?” She grinned at her own joke. “He works mostly for Champion Studios out of Portland.” Dylan opened a search engine browser and entered the name Champion Studios. What he came up with was a page of links to its website and to various adult films it had for sale. Their home page, which you had to give a credit card number to venture further into, had its heading as Champion STUDios. Cute. Fi looked over his shoulder and said, “Here.” She turned the keyboard toward herself, entered a username and password, and got him into the site. He looked at her in surprise. She gave him a lopsided grin, coloring slightly. “What can I say? If I’m gonna watch a porn, it’s gonna be a gay porn. Straight porn just makes me ill.” He so didn’t need to know that about her. Dylan turned to the web page, amazed at the sheer amount of dicks and balls everywhere, and searched for Colt Brixton. Dee came over and sat on the other side of him so he could peruse the website as well. “You’re not an Internet porn guy, are you?” Dee guessed. Dylan shook his head. “Not a porn guy period. Seriously, how does anyone get turned on by that acting?” “See, you’re not supposed to be paying attention to the acting.” “Yeah, hon, although sometimes it’s hilarious,” Fi admitted.
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He shook his head. “No, I’m too distracted by it. It’s too painful. I used to date a theater major, and I have a low tolerance for hideous acting.” Dee gave him a disbelieving look. “But hot naked guys, Dyl.” He snorted derisively. “I work in a gay nightclub. I’ve seen lots of hot naked guys. After a while, it’s just wallpaper. Besides, I’m not a big fan of the gym-bunny look, and look at these guys. You could grate cheese on their stomachs.” “There is such a thing as overboard,” Fi agreed. “But you know, you can probably say this because you’re hot, and your boyfriend’s hot. It might be different if you weren’t.” “I don’t know about that,” Dylan said, although he supposed she had a point. It was an easy thing to say when you had a boyfriend who was really incredibly sexy. But she thought he was sexy? He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Yeah, he had to look relatively good for the day job, but beyond that he didn’t think a lot about it. Maybe that made him luckier than most. He found Colt Brixton, and kind of wished he hadn’t. The guy had a lean, hard body, all muscles defined and heightened, and he had a hard hawk-featured face, not at all appealing, although he cultivated a type of tough-boy sneer that was popular amongst insecure adolescents. He had a type of tribal-sun black tattoo ringing his navel, seemingly highlighting it, although why you’d want to accentuate your belly button Dylan had no idea. Maybe it was a porn-actor thing. “Eww,” Dylan said. Absolutely not his type. He was trying to look like streettough jailbait, one of those gay-bashing teens whom every gay suspected was just fighting his own sexuality, and it was almost a stereotype. Fetishizing the enemy is what Roan called it. Dylan imaged he was trying to look eighteen, but he looked twenty-six at the youngest. “Yeah, I don’t usually go for that kind either,” Dee agreed. “He’s one of those guys who looks like he’s constantly smelling something bad,” Fi said. “Put a bag over his head, and he might be okay.” All the titles this guy was in were hilariously bad—The Postman Cums Twice, really?—but nothing screamed Newberry sex tape. “What
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about this tape, Fi?” “Oh. Gunther and this other guy, Declan, had seen it, but they said it had barely been leaked when it disappeared. The word through the underground is someone with deep pockets bought up every copy, even digital ones. Gunther’s interested in purchasing a copy, though. If we can get it, he’s willing to pay for it. He thinks it’ll be huge.” Dylan sighed. So why did he have to look up this guy? Again, think like Roan. “When was it bought up?” She shrugged, her eyes still glued to the laptop screen. “Gunther thinks it was about a month ago, more or less. He said it disappeared too fast for anyone to upload it.” Dylan considered that, wishing he was Roan. He had a feeling he’d know exactly what this meant. “Okay, so how does this help us?” “Umm,” Fiona said, considering it. “Well, my thought was we could talk to Colt. Maybe he knows who paid to scoop up the tape.” “Or maybe he still has a copy,” Dee suggested. “Porn guys can be pretty narcissistic.” “So how do we contact him?” “I was figuring Holden would know,” she admitted. “He knows the hustlers.” “But he’s a porn star, not a hustler.” Dee clicked his tongue and shook his head. “He’s a very minor porn star, regional as opposed to national. A lot of these guys hustle on the side. There might even be a web page for him, if we knew where to look. Can I see that?” Dylan gave him the laptop. “Help yourself.” Dee’s fingers got busy on the keyboard, searching for the link where you could rent Colt for a while. Dylan felt like Dee and Fi were so much better at this than he was. He felt lost. Dylan grabbed the phone and punched in Holden’s cell number. They were right—you needed a hustler to deal with another hustler. It was their milieu, a secret world with its own rules and protocols. Or maybe he was being too dramatic. After all, anyone could be a hustler. You just had to sell yourself for money. It got complicated when you decided to make a living out of it, whether by necessity or impulse.
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His phone rang five times before he picked up. “What is it, Dylan?” Holden asked curtly. Considering how friendly he had been earlier, that threw him a bit. Moody, was he? “There’s been an interesting development in the case. It seems there’s a Kyle Newberry sex tape that appeared for five minutes and disappeared after lots of money got thrown around.” “What kind of sex tape?” “Kyle and two men, one of whom has been identified as Colt Brixton, a regional porn star.” Holden’s pause seemed portentous. “Why does that name sound familiar?” “No idea. Dee seems to think he’s probably a hustler and may have a copy.” “Where’s he work out of?” “Umm, Portland, and a place called Champion Studios.” A pause, but this time, Holden held the phone aside and said to someone else, “Pull over.” Another pause, and Holden said to his mysterious friend, “Did I stutter? Pull the fuck over. Now.” “What’s going on?” he asked. Dylan had a sudden bad feeling about this. What was Holden up to? “I’m investigating a lead. I think they may connect.” “How?” “I’ll let you know as soon as I do. Gotta go. I’ll call back in a few minutes.” And with that, Holden hung up before Dylan could even take a breath. “Well, fuck you too,” Dylan muttered, hanging up the receiver. “Holden recognize him?” Dee wondered. Dylan could only shrug. “He seemed to think it was familiar. Guys, he’s doing something. I don’t think it’s good.” Fi made a noise of disbelief. “He’s not tricking, is he?” “No. I think it’s… I dunno.” The anger in his voice when he told his mystery guest to “pull the fuck over” was palpable over the phone. It left a bitter taste in Dylan’s mouth. Investigating a lead? He had a sudden, fearful feeling he had a member of the Newberry family in his
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company, and it wasn’t willing company. “He doesn’t own a gun, does he?” They both gave him surprised looks. “Did you hear a gunshot?” Dee wondered. “No.” Dylan wasn’t actually sure if he could explain it to them. All he knew was that after Jason’s death, he had been so angry he’d wanted to murder the man who’d driven the car that hit them. And after stewing on it for a while, he’d got that gun and resolved to shoot that motherfucker before he could be released on an unsuspecting populace. Dylan knew the sound of someone deciding to do something irrevocable, the cold anger that wasn’t so much rage as surrender. You were giving up to your darkest impulses and no longer cared what happened to you. In a strange way, you were begging to be killed, obliterated, only if you got to take the object of your hatred with you. But maybe he was being a drama queen. Maybe Holden was just pissed off. Could he be blamed? This was all so deeply fucked up. Still, he thought Holden was currently doing something very stupid, something that could get him killed. Maybe this had been enough to call him off, to make him refocus his energy. Maybe. Dylan would never claim to know how Holden thought. But he hoped it worked. They’d need to put all their heads together to figure this one out if Roan wasn’t here to guide them.
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15 The Use of a Tourniquet Is Not Advised HOLDEN tried his best to puzzle this out in his mind, but there was more than one thing going on. There simply had to be. “You blackmailed your own nephew,” he said aloud. John stared at him like he was insane. “What?” “Over Kyle’s sex tape. You blackmailed him and decided to go after your brother—” “That’s not what fucking happened!” he roared, his anger genuine. “Joel bought the fucking thing!” Holden wondered if this was true. Then he wondered why he doubted it. This was so fucked up it was incredible. “He bought up his son’s sex tape?” “Yes. Someone approached him, said they’d release it on the web if he didn’t pay them. I thought you couldn’t trust the bastard, but Joel wanted the tapes destroyed and the whole thing put behind them, so he paid up.” “Who was the guy?” “How the fuck should I know? Supposedly a… participant, but I don’t know. I stayed out of it.” “’Cause it was icky?” John grimaced and looked away. “I didn’t need to know this shit, okay? Not my business.” “Was the participant’s name Colt?” “What kinda name is Colt?” “A porn name.” John shook his head like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing and kind of hoped he’d never have to hear it again. “I don’t know shit about the tape, except Joel said he took care of it.”
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“How soon before his death?” The question seemed to catch him off guard. “What?” “What I said.” He had to think about it. “A week, maybe? Two?” “Kyle knew about it?” He shrugged helplessly. “How the fuck do I know?” “So Joel paid blackmail money on Kyle’s sex tape, and then you decided to blackmail him too, since he was such an easy mark?” “What kind of scumbag do you think I am?” “A huge one.” “Fuck you.” “How fucked up is your family?” Holden shot back. “Why would Joel, of anyone, want to help keep his own son in the closet?” “Because the Ashers have money coming out the ass, and he’s good friends with Evangeline Asher and didn’t want to humiliate her.” “Good friends.” Holden figured that meant he was fucking her, used to fuck her, or wanted to fuck her. Joel was a predictable horndog. There was also the possibility that if Kyle’s secret came out, some of Joel’s might as well. “This is fucked up.” “Tell me about it.” Holden decided that the answer lay—no pun intended—with Colt Brixton. Duane Malloy was probably a skeezy bastard, but he could wait. He needed to talk to Colt now. “You want to live, John?” He scowled at him. “Is that a trick question? Fuck yeah.” “Fine. Then this never happened. You report me to the cops, I’ll be sure to tell them all about Joel, and all about you.” “What d’ya mean all about me?” “Brothers sharing a hustler. It’ll make the top of the news cycle for weeks. You can’t buy that kind of salaciousness.” His eyes almost bugged out of his head, and a vein throbbed visibly in his neck. “What the fuck…? I’m not gay! I’ve never hired you!” “I know. But who cares about truth when a lie is so good? It’s what you call… truthiness. You could get the Pope to swear it never happened, but it won’t matter. You’ll forever be known as that guy who
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hired his brother’s hustler. You will never live it down.” Holden opened the passenger door, and half in and half out of the car, he looked at the sweating, bleeding John and gave him a deeply insincere smile. “Makes holding a gun on you seem like nothing, huh?” “You motherfucker,” John snarled, but he looked away, his shoulders slumping. Holden knew he wasn’t going to do a damn thing. The thought that Holden would lie and paint him as a closet fag was just too much for him to bear. Pussy. At least they weren’t too far from the casino. Its huge, garish neon sign lit up its corner of the sky like a spotlight. It was an ugly place, as gaudy and cheap as a ten-dollar hooker, and Holden couldn’t fathom who would spend all their time in there, wasting all their money. But he felt the same way about cocaine, and that certainly had a fan club. Walking along the road, he pulled out his cell phone and punched up a familiar number. “Julian, it’s Fox. I need you to work some pimp magic and find a hustler for me. He works porn out of Champion in Portland, goes by the name of Colt Brixton. Ideally I need a place to find him, or a personal phone number. I need this ASAP.” He hung up without saying good-bye, as he’d gotten his machine. But you always got Julian’s machine. Did he ever answer his fucking phone? Holden decided to call Ahmed and see if he was in the mood for a road trip. Julian would call back eventually, and he wanted to be ready. Julian didn’t disappoint. It just took him a while. He called back around four-thirty in the morning, clearly wasted, and said several things that were completely unintelligible. But eventually he spit out what sounded like an address and a grudge. (The words Holden was able to make out were “fucker,” “stash,” “me,” “light,” “butt,” and “fluffer.” He couldn’t put them into a coherent sentence, though.) By the time the call came through, he was crashing on Ahmed’s couch, which was—of course—black leather. A leather queen was going to have a leather sofa. Holden told Ahmed what was going on, but Ahmed had been smoking his evening joint at the time and didn’t really follow it. (He liked to say some people had a beer to relax after work, but Ahmed— musician, guerrilla journalist, and social worker—preferred to have a joint. Fair enough. Holden begrudged no one their vices, especially since his income depended on at least one.) Holden tried again, but
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Ahmed just waved his hand dismissively and said, “I’m thinking it’s probably best I don’t know all the details. Now, who wants a grilled cheese sandwich?” To be fair, Ahmed made great grilled cheese sandwiches. While Holden took the time to catch some sleep, Ahmed remained up, in spite of the joint, and after Julian called, they piled into his vintage DodgeCharger and started driving to Portland. Ahmed had been working the late shift lately and was keyed up, as he said his body clock now told him he couldn’t sleep until the sun was up. He was becoming a vampire—or, as he preferred, a Blacula. Being both a leather queen and a few inches shy of seven feet tall, Ahmed was naturally intimidating, but he was amazingly laid-back and had a goofy sense of humor that Holden imagined Roan would love. They would probably get along great, come to think of it, but they’d only met once, and not under the best of circumstances. Ahmed would probably love Roan’s vintage muscle cars. Ahmed had made lots of road trips down South, so he knew several shortcuts and ways around the heavier traffic areas, but still Holden ended up dozing for about half the trip. It was well into morning when they reached Portland, but it was hard to tell because it was gray and raining, the sun hiding behind a cloud layer as thick as sheep’s wool. Holden thought about calling Dylan or Dee when they stopped at a gas station to have a piss and get directions, but he ultimately decided against it. What if they told him Roan was dead? It was unlikely, but still possible. Could he handle that? He didn’t think he could, so he decided to operate in ignorance for now. Besides, if he found out Roan was dead before he met Colt, he might just beat the shit out of him, and how did you get information out of a guy with a broken jaw? They got a bit turned around, but after about forty minutes they found Colt’s apartment building. It was a shitty little brick building in what looked to be a seedier part of town, and for some reason, it called itself Lincoln Towers, even though there was just the one building (why the plural, “Towers”? Did there used to be another one?) and it was only, at most, about six floors high. Hardly a tower. Colt was in a ground-floor apartment, 5-A, and Ahmed offered to go in with him, but Holden managed to convince him to wait in the car.
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Being a social worker who was part of a mental health “crisis team,” he was accustomed to defusing tense situations and being so fucking bloody reasonable that it was almost impossible to bully and intimidate someone with him there. Oh sure, he could intimidate with his size alone, but once he started talking, he revealed his soft, marshmallowy center and pretty much blew the deal. Holden wanted to get in this guy’s face, and he didn’t need Ahmed hanging around being reasonable. The interior of the apartment building was exactly what Holden expected: poorly lit, reeking of piss, vomit, and stale malt liquor. Dimly through doors he heard crying babies, loud televisions, louder music, some shouting in a language he didn’t recognize. Holden lived in a much better apartment, and his porn enterprise wasn’t really off the ground yet. But then again, Holden was his own boss there, it was all Internet, and he didn’t have a drug problem. Lots of the guys who got into porn and/or hustling got drug habits, but it was very chicken and egg—did they get into drugs to stand hustling, or did they hustle to get money for drugs? After doing a little research on Colt, he guessed he probably did have a drug habit. What other reason could there have been for Champion to not give him more high-profile work? He was probably a minor player because he had problems that couldn’t be solved with a fluffer. He found 5-A and knocked on the door, but as soon as his knuckles made contact with the door, it opened a couple of millimeters. Not just unlocked, but open. Oh wow, this wasn’t good. Holden made sure he was still carrying his gun before nudging the door open and walking inside. “Hello?” A messy apartment, it smelled like mold and boiled-over soup, with an undertone of sweat. He saw some drug paraphernalia on the coffee table—glass pipes, blackened foil—and a bunch of wadded-up blankets on the floor beside it. As he inched closer, Holden realized they weren’t blankets at all. Well, there was a blanket, but it was mostly covering a body. Terrific. This was the gift that kept on killing.
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16 We Regret to Inform You HOLDEN knew he should leave and call 9-1-1, but he’d just gotten here. He checked and made sure Colt was dead, then put on the leather gloves he’d brought just in case he couldn’t pick the lock on the door. He was here. He might as well have a look around. What he found out right away was the guy was a slob. Besides that, he discovered that his real name was David Smith, so no wonder he’d decided Colt Brixton was better. It wasn’t, but who was he to judge? His real name was Holden Krause. He always thought he sounded like a foreign car. The guy had a fridge full of Red Bull and vodka and a silverware drawer full of glass pipes and roach clips. The guy must have medicated himself morning, noon, and night. Further searching turned up an empty laptop case in his bedroom. Had he simply forgotten it somewhere, or had someone taken it? Considering he was dead, the answer seemed to be the latter. The guy was really disgusting. When was the last time he’d washed his sheets? Also, he had a pile of dirty clothes in the corner that smelled like an overcrowded bus at 5 p.m. on a Friday. Now, Holden wasn’t the neatest guy in the world, but he never let that happen. He never had a reeking pile of clothes in his apartment, nor did he allow his sheets to get crunchy. That was just beyond the pale. In the back of his closet he found a box of porn DVDs, many of which were movies Colt had been in, and Holden had a hunch. If he was going to hide something, this would be a great place to do it. He started opening up the DVD cases, looking for a DVD that didn’t fit. He was through the first dozen without finding anything, and he wondered if he was a far-too-hopeful idiot. There was some straight
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porn in the box too, making him wonder if David/Colt was straight. It was more than possible. Lots of straight guys went into gay porn to make more money. And with his sizable drug habit, he probably needed all the money he could get. Down near the bottom of the box, in a case for a truly scarylooking Ron Jeremy film, was a DVD that wasn’t a DVD—it was a CD-ROM. “I hope this is what I think it is, and not some interactive porn game,” he said to no one. Or maybe he was talking to the dead guy in the living room. It was bad enough that he was pawing through the man’s stuff—did he have to be completely rude too? He did a quick check of other potential hiding places, found only a half a gram of white powder taped under the toilet tank, which he flushed away. He also found, in the false bottom of the cabinet under his bathroom sink, a little black book. Literally, a small, black-covered address book. Probably just a collection of his tricks, but still Holden shoved it in his pocket along with the CD-ROM. Leaving the apartment, Holden pulled out his cell phone and reported that he was just walking through his building, and he’d noticed a neighbor’s door ajar, and while he couldn’t be sure, it looked like there was a person huddled on the floor beneath a blanket, a person who didn’t move or respond when he talked to him. Okay, an anonymous 9-1-1 call was chickenshit. But there were too many questions he didn’t want to answer and, to be completely fair, just couldn’t.
DYLAN knew he was in ahead of visiting hours, but he didn’t care. He’d barely got any sleep, and he felt he had to be here. It wasn’t anxiety keeping him up, but nightmares. Well, one in particular. He was at Roan’s funeral. Or was it a wake? Must have been a wake; Roan had already told him, when he died he wanted to be cremated and thrown in the face of his enemies. He assumed that last bit was just his dark sense of humor… but maybe it wasn’t. Actually, there was a fifty-fifty chance it was actually what he wanted and not a joke. Dylan was getting a soda from a lobby vending machine—so
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much better than the industrial-strength coffee they had—when a woman asked, “You’re Mr. McKichan’s partner, yes?” He turned to see the short Indian doctor from last night. According to what he could see of her security badge, her name was Doctor Singh. “Well, uh, I guess.” He hated that term, “partner.” Like they were business associates. He really would have preferred “butt buddy,” frankly. Partner was so cold and clinical, so American Family Association. Like there was no emotional attachment whatsoever. It was all financial or bureaucratic and seemed to indicate it was something other than a relationship that could end in bitter acrimony and clothes getting tossed out on the lawn at three in the morning. That was so unfair. “During a routine test this morning, Roan had an unusual pupil response, so we did some scans—” “He’s off the respirator?” he interrupted, as this seemed vital. She looked distracted, and then a brief look of annoyance flashed across her face before she resumed her medical poker face. “Yes, he seems to be breathing on his own now.” Dylan let out a sigh of relief, unaware he’d even held his breath. “Good, I’m glad.” “Anyways, we… found something. Do you know if he has a regular doctor? As an infected, I imagine he does, but it’s not in the files.” This threw him for a moment. Dylan’s hand tightened around the cold can of pop, and he was glad for its indisputable reality. “You found something? What do you mean, you found something? Can you be more specific?” She shook her head, sweeping her bangs off her forehead with the back of her hand. “Not at this moment, no, and that’s why I need to talk to his doctor. Do you know who that is?” Dylan scowled at her, wanting more answers, scouring his brain for the name of Roan’s doctor. Did he even have one? He hated doctors. But he recalled there was one he seemed to talk to on the phone, one who occasionally left messages on the machine. What was her name again? “Umm… Rosenberg. Petra Rosenberg, I think. I remember it’s an unusual name.”
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The woman’s eyes widened slightly. “Rosenberg from the Institute? I didn’t even know she treated patients anymore.” He didn’t know what the Institute was exactly, but he supposed it was infected-related. “I don’t know that she does. She treated Roan as a kid, I guess, and they’ve kept in contact. He seems to trust her. He doesn’t trust too many people.” Doctor Singh nodded. “She’s good. Her work on infecteds will probably get her a Nobel Prize one of these days.” Dylan didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. “Thank you,” she said, turning away. “Wait,” he said quickly. “This thing you found… can you tell me anything about it?” “I’m afraid there’s nothing to tell at this moment. It could be an anomaly related to his condition, which is why I need to talk to his doctor.” It felt like a dodge to him, but he wasn’t sure how to call her on it. And honestly, did he want to? His heart and stomach were both fluttering nervously. No one wanted to hear a doctor found “something” in a routine test or scan. The “something” was never a thousand-dollar bill or a deed to an island in Hawaii. It was always a horrible something. “Oh, and you can see him now. We’re hoping he’ll regain consciousness soon.” Dylan was hoping that too. Now more than ever. As it turned out, Roan never woke up. Dylan talked to him, mainly about the many twists and turns of the Newberry case, and how none of them could figure out what it meant. And how disconcerting Holden’s continued radio silence was. None of this roused him from a deep sleep that was just this side of a coma. After a while, Dylan just laid his head on his chest to make sure he was still alive. Yes, he was. There was a slow, almost thick thud inside his chest, nearly normal but far too slow. Something had been wrong with Roan previous to this, and he knew it, didn’t he? Dylan supposed he did, but he didn’t know how to say it, or even if he should. After all, Roan knew better than he did that his migraines were getting worse. Was he supposed to tell him
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something he already knew? This was what he hated about relationships. Just fucking hated. The emotional investment and the slow, subtle death of it in one way or another. Roan’s eventual death was a fact of life he’d had to grapple with the second he thought he might really like the guy. He was infected and had lived years beyond any virus child of record. The clock was ticking. Dylan knew this, and he wasn’t sure he could deal with it, but he also knew emotions had a tendency to carry him away, no matter how he tried to be Zen about it. The moment Roan took off his shirt, showing him the scars he had so Dylan didn’t feel self-conscious about the self-inflicted scars on his arms, was the moment he fell in love with him. You just had to love someone who was so utterly fearless and yet so kind. They were rare. Too rare to live. Just like Jason. A nurse eventually kicked him out, which was fine by Dylan, as he knew he was getting maudlin and that Roan, if he happened to come to then, would probably just slug him. He wasn’t a fan of the soppy. On the way out, Dylan barely recognized the cute Asian guy who was Dee’s current boyfriend. He said he’d call him if Roan regained consciousness, and Dylan thanked him for that. He left feeling numb and strange, slightly disconnected from the world around him, as if he was sleepwalking and yet aware of it. He felt that way all the way home, only realizing as soon as he parked in the driveway that he should have gone to the store. Fuck it, he wasn’t hungry. If he got hungry later, he could order a pizza. Dylan was still in a personal fog, unlocking the front door, when someone grabbed him around the neck from behind. “Roan McKichan? Are you Roan?” Dylan grabbed the man’s arm. He knew enough self-defense that he could have thrown the guy if he had the room, but he didn’t, so he could do nothing at the moment save keep him from strangling him. “No, I’m not. Why do you want him?” “Where is he?” The guy sounded desperate. He also smelled, of body odor and, strangely enough, a scent like wet cat. “In the hospital. Somebody tried to kill him. Was it you?” Dylan
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didn’t think so, he didn’t know Roan on sight, but he wanted to put him on the defensive. “No! No, I didn’t do that. At least, I don’t think I did—” His voice cracked, and he made a slight keening noise as he tried to keep from crying. Results were mixed. And that’s when it all suddenly clicked into place in his mind. “Grant Kim?” Dylan asked.
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17 The Sound of Light Breaking Down IN THE manner of dreams everywhere, Roan was aware he was in what was supposed to be his house, but wasn’t his house. It was a big, nearly empty room of plain white walls, save for a huge floor-to-ceiling picture window. He’d never seen a room like this, and it surely didn’t exist in his house. But in his dream mind, this was home. And he was looking out the window on an expansive green lawn where a tiger lolled, its tail flicking lazily as it surveyed its surroundings with what seemed to be boredom. Once again knowing without knowing, he knew he was looking at Paris’s tiger. Not Paris in tiger form—Paris’s tiger, the one that hid inside of him. “So, you finally got out,” Roan said, even though there was no way the tiger could hear him through the glass. It still looked at him anyways, as if it could. Did that mean Paris was around here, free of his infection? He looked around, but the room was empty, save for him. There was a strange noise, though, a kind of scritching, and he turned back to see the cat was now scratching on the glass, as if wanting to come in. But it was no longer a tiger but a lion, a lion with a mane shot through with deep reddish-brown fur the color of half-dried blood. His lion. The tiger was nowhere to be seen. “You can’t come in ’til I let you in,” Roan told it. Wow, his dreams weren’t subtle at all, were they? Very in your face with its supposedly veiled messages. He almost didn’t trust how desperately it wanted to come in. Roan was aware enough to wake up, hearing small random noises before he decided to open his eyes. There was a black male nurse in a sea-green uniform checking his IV bag, and almost offhandedly he noticed him. “Hey there, back to the world of the living, huh?” he asked, picking up a clipboard and looking at it. He had a Puerto Rican accent.
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“Guess so.” Roan rubbed the sleep from his eyes and wondered why he still felt so incredibly groggy. “Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?” Roan looked up at him in disbelief. “Did someone drop me on the floor? Did I get a concussion?” “Not that I know of, but it’s always a good thing to be sure. How many?” This was annoying. He glanced at his hand and said, “Four. Did I pass the vision portion of the test?” The nurse marked something down on the clipboard and said, “Yes, you did. What do you want to do for the talent portion?” Oh good, a funny nurse. Was Robin Williams not available? “Punch people in the head.” That made him snicker. “Nice to know you still have your sense of humor.” “Who’s joking?” “Can you tell me if you’ve had headaches recently? Before now, I mean. Problems with your vision?” “I have migraines. That should be in my records.” “It is, but have they gotten worse?” Okay, maybe he was still groggy and out of it, but he knew leading questions when he heard them. This was leading to something. “Why are you asking me these questions? What’s going on?” “We just want to make sure you had no adverse reactions to the treatment. You were given some pretty heavy downers, man; your system was well overloaded. Most people wouldn’t have survived it.” “Most people aren’t freaks. And it doesn’t make any sense that you’re asking me how I was before the treatment to determine how I took the treatment. You’re asking me for another reason.” “Damn, you are awake, aren’t you?” He shook his head, and the tiny braids of his hair shook slightly. They were small and close to his scalp, so there was little room to move. “The notes just say I’m suppose to ask you these questions, it doesn’t say why.” “Bullshit.”
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“Ooh, now we’re getting personal.” “You know why, or at least you can guess.” He appeared to consult the clipboard once again, but Roan didn’t believe it. He was stalling for time. “I assume it’s related to your migraines.” “You assume, and so do I, but I doubt it.” “I also notice you’re dodging the questions.” Roan sighed. “My migraines are always bad. It likes to get my attention. Could you excuse me? I really gotta piss.” The nurse shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me none. Now, would you answer—” “I’m asking you to move so I can get out of bed,” Roan asked pointedly, sitting up and gesturing toward the bathroom. “You mind?” The nurse seemed slightly nonplussed by that. “Um, you’re hooked up to a catheter.” “What?” Roan lifted the sheet and looked under, and either his penis had become much longer, thinner, and translucent, or…. “Fucking Christ on a pogo stick,” he snapped, dropping the sheet so he didn’t get nauseous. No one really wanted something up their dick, did they? Well, maybe those with piercings didn’t mind. And of course now that he knew it was there, he was fairly sure he could feel it. “Can I get this removed? Can I also be drugged for its removal?” The nurse grinned, his teeth movie-star straight and blindingly white. “Yeah, we can remove it, but drugging isn’t really an option, not after what you’ve been through.” God, this was humiliating. “What was I through? What’d I get dosed with?” “Elephant tranquilizers. You were on a respirator for a while, so your throat will probably be sore for a bit.” It did hurt a little, but he was so concerned with the feeling of a tube jammed up his dick he really didn’t notice it. “Now that I’m conscious, can I get outta here? After you remove the tubes and things.” He shook his head, briefly pasting on a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, dude, but we have to run some tests. You’re not off the hook yet.” Somehow he figured that. But why was he asking him all these
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questions? It had to do with his worsening migraines, that weird pain in his head. They’d found something, and the fact that the nurse wasn’t telling him meant either they weren’t sure what it was, or it was so horrible the doctor had to break it to him. Roan took a calming breath and decided to level with the nurse (whose security badge read Ethan Velez). “Look, I’ve spent a good portion of my life in hospitals. I’m an infected, so either they were poking and prodding me to see what was wrong with me, or, oftentimes, what wasn’t wrong with me, as they were often thrown by the fact that I didn’t have something wrong with me that I should have had wrong with me. You get me?” He nodded. “You’re pretty remarkable. You could probably dislocate all your limbs and have ’em popped back in without noticing.” Was that a good thing or a bad thing? He decided not to ask. “These questions you’re asking me… I know you found something you didn’t like. Would you just level with me and tell me what it is? I assure you I can handle it. When I was ten, I was told I’d probably be dead in three years. I didn’t freak out then, and I’m not going to freak out now, no matter what you say.” “Whoa, that’s harsh. They told you you were gonna die when you were ten?” “Yes. And when I was twelve, fourteen, and every year between sixteen and twenty-six. Eventually they realized how foolish they looked and stopped. So are you going to level with me or what?” He shook his head, grimacing doubtfully. “Sorry. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” Roan sighed. Fine, he wanted to be difficult? Why the hell not? Everyone else in his life was. “Is it a brain tumor?” That’s what they were always testing him for, since his migraines were so bad. Ethan shook his head and shrugged simultaneously. “Honestly, I don’t know. All it says is I’m supposed to ask you these questions and record your responses. But, at a guess, I’d say they were worried about any after-effects of the drug overdose. Humans aren’t supposed to have those drugs, and certainly not in that quantity. How it didn’t permanently fuck you up, I don’t know.” “I’m not completely Human.”
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“Don’t say that. Just ’cause you’re infected—” “I’m a bit more than simply infected,” he countered. “Look at that chart. Tell me what on it is normal.” “That’s no way to think of yourself. Your readings are great: you have the heart rate and blood pressure of a nineteen-year-old.” “And I’m almost forty, I have a minor pill habit, most of my diet is take-out food, and I spend a lot of time sitting on my ass in a car. My body is a garbage dump and it should reflect that, but it doesn’t. You know as well as I do how freakish that is.” Nurse Velez scowled at him. “Why do you keep calling yourself a freak, man? You’re not a freak. You’re a fucking miracle. Be proud of it. I know I would be.” He wanted to say, “You’re not me, and I’m not a fucking miracle,” but that sounded both bitchy and self-pitying, and he really wanted no part of either. Instead he looked away, aware of how privileged he was to have a private room, no matter how small. But infecteds were generally segregated from the other patients, especially if no one was sure of their time of the month. No one wanted the legal drama of one patient eating another. That reminded him of Grant Kim. “How long have I been out?” “’Bout a day. Your boyfriend was in here from early this morning ’til they kicked him out. Want I should give him a call?” Dee wasn’t just friends with every goddamn EMT on the planet; he managed to have lots of friends amongst the nurses too. Since nurses didn’t usually extend such a courtesy, he figured Dee must have spread the word that he was a friend and to be treated accordingly. Roan had had no idea when he started dating Dee that he would turn out to be the most important man he would ever know in his entire life, but there it was. “Yeah, sure.” Velez was on his way out of the room when Roan asked, “Does he know?” Velez had to consider that a moment, but the confusion collapsed after he figured out he wasn’t asking if he knew about the overdose, since he’d brought him in. He was asking if Dylan knew why they were asking these extra questions, if he knew there was possibly something else wrong with him. Velez finally just shrugged. “I dunno. I wouldn’t think so. Medical privacy and all that. You guys aren’t married, are
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you? I mean, maybe then, but maybe not. Kinda depends on the doctor.” “Not all gay-friendly around here, huh?” He snorted in such a derisive way, Roan figured if he wasn’t gay, he was queer in some respect. Bi maybe, or just had too many gay friends to automatically side with the straight. “Man, I don’t know how Hardwicke got through medical school with such a tiny, narrow brain, but I didn’t tell you that.” “If I get him, I’ll make sure to hit on him relentlessly.” Velez laughed, a big, hearty, caught-off-guard sort of laugh, and slapped the clipboard on his leg. “Hot damn. If you do that, I gotta come watch.” Yeah, that was probably more entertainment than you got watching soaps in the staff lounge. Roan took some comfort in that fact that his knee-jerk asshole response was still functioning—how bad off could he be if the idea of tormenting an asshat was still his first impulse? But he remembered his dream of the lion wanting in, and he wondered if letting it in would save his life, or end it faster.
THERE was no other word for it: Grant was hysterical. Dylan supposed he couldn’t really blame him. If he’d killed and eaten a few people, he might be a bit freaked out himself. Grant was sitting on the couch, and Dylan kept trying to get him to talk to him, but he kept sobbing, and when he did try and talk, it was broken up by sobs. Dylan could hardly make out a word. So he went into the downstairs bathroom, found Roan’s secret Percodan stash, and cut a pill in half before pulverizing it into powder. He hoped Grant wasn’t allergic to it, but he really needed him to calm down, and Roan didn’t have any antidepressants. (Oh, he had a bottle marked Prozac, but it was just full of codeine.) Dylan mixed the pulverized pill in a cup of chamomile tea, which he all but forced Grant to drink. He told him it would calm him, and that Roan swore by it. (Roan only swore by it if the box fell out of the cupboard and hit his
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foot. He didn’t like chamomile tea. But again, this wasn’t anything Grant needed to know.) The drug seemed to start working on him fast, either that or he was taking Dylan’s instructions to heart. He’d been telling Grant to breathe, to blank his mind and focus on his breathing, meditation techniques. Grant seemed to be sobbing through them, though, so he didn’t think they’d work. When he calmed down a bit—or at least stopped sobbing so much—Dylan was able to coax some of his story out of him. He didn’t know how or when he’d got infected. Grant had been thinking about it, but was only able to think of his “lost weekend.” A couple of weeks ago, he went to a party with a couple of friends he only referred to as Luce and Weed, and they were doing some GHB, passing a water bottle dosed with the stuff back and forth. They went club-hopping, and Grant lost most of the night after the first club. He woke up in a cheap motel with a sore ass and a mouth as dry as a biscotti (his words) the next afternoon. But he wasn’t worried about it because he found a couple of used condoms. (A couple?) Curtis thought maybe he should get checked out, he thought he had been raped, but Grant didn’t think so, mainly because he went out specifically to get laid. The only problem was, he got so wasted he couldn’t remember it. He assumed he’d had fun. Luce vaguely recalled him leaving with a couple of guys, maybe three, and maybe a girl was there too—her memory was equally checkered. Dylan wished he hadn’t seen this type of shit before, but he had. More than once he’d overstepped the bounds of his job description and stopped a guy from leaving Panic with a guy so fucking wasted he could hardly stand on his own. Sometimes the wasted guy protested more vehemently than the more sober guy, but Dylan didn’t like the scenario at all. Maybe he took the drugs on his own, maybe he was dosed. Dylan didn’t know and he really didn’t care, he just didn’t want to end up as someone who stood by and did nothing when someone was in trouble. People had complained to the manager about him, but all he got was a slap on the wrist. If the customers didn’t come back, good riddance. Nobody wanted Panic to be known as date-rape central. Grant was really worried about Curt and Tiffany. He’d seen the papers, he knew Curt was dead, but he wondered if Tiffany had been
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found yet, if she was okay. Dylan honestly told him he didn’t know. Roan read newspapers, watched BBC World News, but Dylan avoided it all. His one concession was to watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report with Roan, but that was it. He just got to a point where he couldn’t take it anymore. Television news was shallow and shockdriven (okay, BBC World News probably not so much, but that just showed you how needlessly clever Ro was), newspapers were depressing, and he’d decided he’d had an overload of negativity in his life as it was, so he eschewed all of it. He knew enough to get by in conversation, to know what was generally happening in the world, but that was it. If anyone needed a deep conversation about some news item, he pointed them to Ro and went elsewhere. He wasn’t stupid, just burnt out on everything he wanted to change but couldn’t. “Wow, that chamomile tea really works. Can I have some more?” Grant asked, sagging back into the sofa. He was no longer crying, but his face was still streaked with tears. He was filthy. He was wearing clothes that clearly weren’t his—they were ill-fitting, the pants too baggy, the shirt too tight—and he smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in days. The cat scent was particularly rank on him. That made him reflect on how Roan smelled after a transformation. After dosing himself with enough painkillers to kill an ox, he went and cleaned up, but Dylan thought it was remarkable he didn’t smell that bad. Maybe to himself; he wasn’t even going to try and imagine how nuanced Roan’s sense of smell was, except the fact that he could pick up an infected in a crowd was kind of scary. But Roan’s lion scent was not “cat enclosure at the zoo,” nor was it Grant’s smell now. It was lion, yes, or at least something feline, but it was tempered by a Human smell, something not unpleasant. Although Humans stunk, yeah, often worse than any cat, but still… he couldn’t explain it. Was it because he liked him? Dylan considered that, but no, that had never stopped him from disliking the smell of another man’s sweat before, so he didn’t know what was going on here. The pheromone overload? Ro said he shed a lot of them during transformation time, as was common with all infected. Or maybe it was just that Roan had such a unique smell it was hard to dislike. He didn’t know, but he knew enough not to tell him. Roan would probably see it as another way he wasn’t quite Human.
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“Why don’t you clean up?” Dylan suggested. “There’s a shower in the bathroom, and I know we have some spare clothes you could wear.” Actually, he didn’t know that. Grant was kind of short, five five, and extremely scrawny right now, maybe a hundred pounds or at least in that neighborhood, and everything they had would probably be too big and baggy for him. But Roan had to have some skinnier clothes around. During his transformation period, his weight could drop precipitously, to a scary degree. Dylan, vegetarian that he was, would encourage him to eat meat at those times, if only for its protein and fat properties. Grant looked at him with slightly owlish eyes, tempered by the drugs and the easing of his hysteria. “Then you’re gonna call the cops?” “I have no idea what I’m gonna do,” he admitted. He didn’t. Yes, Grant had killed people, but Dylan also knew it wasn’t his fault. He should have got his stupid ass tested, but that was a moot point now. Grant seemed to accept that—what choice did he have?—but as he struggled to his feet, he said, “I loved them, you know. Curt and Tiff. People wouldn’t understand, but we were a team, y’know?” Why wouldn’t people understand you liked your roommates? That didn’t make any sense. Unless…. “Were you involved with both of them?” Grant looked down at him as if he had just revealed a developmental disability. “Duh. We were a threesome.” A threesome. They were all in a relationship together? Why not? He’d heard of stranger setups. But why was Grant out partying then? Was he the third wheel—the guy brought in for fun, but just an adjunct of the Curt-and-Tiffany relationship? It was possible. “Was Tiffany infected? No one seemed to know.” “I don’t think so… but maybe now. If I was infected, she could be, I guess. I hope she’s okay. I never meant to hurt anyone, y’know.” “I know. You can’t help the change.” But he could have helped before, he could have not—no, that was being morally superior and didn’t help anything. Grant shouldn’t have gotten so wasted, but if he was raped, it wasn’t his fault. No one deserved to get raped just because they were an idiot. That was doubly true about getting infected. Grant wandered off to the bathroom, and Dylan was wondering if
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he should go get some Febreeze to get the scent out of the couch, when it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he should call Randi. What would that accomplish? Yes, she’d know her brother was alive and momentarily safe, but then what? He couldn’t claim to know her as well as Ro did. What would Ro do? He was asking himself that very question when the phone rang. Dylan picked it up almost offhandedly and didn’t even say hello before Holden said, “I know who the killer is.”
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18 Lucifer MRI machines sucked. They really, honestly sucked. You lay motionless inside a cramped metal tube that made you feel like a torpedo waiting for launch, and weird noises went off around you as you fought off claustrophobia you’d never had before for an hour that seemed to last approximately one thousand years. Roan asked to bring a book into the tube, but oh no, they wouldn’t allow that. He couldn’t bring in his MP3 player either. (Not that he had it, but it was the principle of the thing.) And the worst indignity of all, he had to continue to wear the stupid paper hospital gown. If they wanted to have a look at his ass, they just could have asked. So Roan spent his time in the tube composing complaint letters in his head. He wrote one to the inventor of the MRI machine, to the technicians staffing it, to the head administrator of the hospital, to the local paper for not telling readers the real truth about the Illuminati conspiracy to cause brain damage using supersonic frequencies during American Idol (okay, this was when he started losing his mind). Worse yet, he swore the sounds were giving him a headache. At least he didn’t have the catheter stuck up his dick anymore. Finally Roan was released from the captivity of the MRI machine, and the doctor in charge was right there, saying, “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He was a needlessly enthusiastic Japanese man who looked exactly like that guy on Heroes if you aged him ten years and gave him a receding hairline. His name seemed to be Stuart Senzaki, which sounded like a Witness Protection name if he’d ever heard one. Roan glared at him. “Yes, it was. And now you’ve given me a headache, so thanks a lot.” “Really? When did it start? Where does it hurt?”
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“Like I have any concept of time in a tube. And it hurts all over.” Senzaki pulled out a penlight and shined it in his eyes, making him wince. “Jesus, are you trying to kill me?” “Sorry, I’m just trying to—” And this was when things got weird. It was like time jumped, like a poor editor had suddenly been assigned to the film that was his life. Because next thing Roan knew, he was on his back, looking up at Senzaki, Velez, and a woman he didn’t recognize. His head pain wasn’t so bad anymore, but it felt like he had a cloud of something vaguely toxic still fogging up his neurons. “What the hell am I doing down here?” All three exchanged a troubled glance as Velez looked down at him and said, “I think you had a bit of a seizure, dude.” “No I didn’t,” Roan snapped, and tried sitting up. But Velez put a hand in the center of his chest and pushed him back down, and the woman, who had brown-blonde hair so short it could only be called a buzz cut, produced a rather long-looking needle and said, “Please hold still.” “You drugging me?” Velez shook his head. “Trying to make you feel better. Your head still hurt?” “Not really.” “That’s not a no,” Velez replied, as the woman shot Roan in the hip. He didn’t really feel the needle, and he didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. “What the fuck’s wrong with me?” “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Doctor Enthusiasm told him, with—guess what?—a little too much enthusiasm. Roan wondered if he was ever getting out of this bloody fucking hospital.
DYLAN rubbed his eyes and felt inexplicably tired. Oh, right, he hadn’t slept well last night. Still, that was no excuse; he was a night-shift
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worker, he was supposed to be used to odd hours. “How do you know, Holden?” “’Cause I’ve been watching the DVD I got from Colt’s apartment on Ahmed’s laptop, and you won’t believe who the third part of the Newberry sandwich is.” Dylan sighed and tried to sort all of it out in his mind. There was the dull “beep” of the call-messaging system telling him someone else was calling, but he decided to just let it go to message. Probably wasn’t important anyways. “Colt just gave you the DVD?” “Um, no, he was… indisposed.” “So you stole it?” “Um, basically, yeah, but he’s not going to miss it.” Oh crap. Did Holden want to get arrested? “Do you know what Roan’s gonna say?” He clicked his tongue dismissively. “He’s used to me by now. Anyways, third person—wanna hear it or not?” “Do I have a choice?” “No. The guy looked kinda familiar but I couldn’t place him, so I started going through some recent pictures, and I found him: Jessie Newberry.” Dylan thought perhaps he’d misheard something. “Who, exactly?” “Jessie Newberry, John Newberry’s oldest son. It’s a digital file of Colt fucking not just Kyle but Jessie. Fucking cousins—how scandalous would that be? Not only gay, but incestuous. No wonder John wanted to kill every person who might know about it.” That was pretty icky. But Dylan wasn’t sure he made the connection. “Why would John kill his own brother over that, though?” “’Cause he probably blamed him. He had the detective follow him and figured out he was gay, right? Well, bi, but John sees no distinction because he’s a fucking philistine. I knew when I had John he was a fucking liar, but goddamn it, I had no idea of the scope. I had that fucking murderer and I let him get away! Not again.” “I don’t know, Holden. I mean, I can see why someone might kill to keep that quiet, but I don’t see why he’d kill his own brother over it.”
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“This is one fucked-up family.” “I’m sure, but….” Dylan just shook his head. “I don’t know where I’m going with this. Just don’t do anything rash, okay? Wait.” “Well, I’m still in Oregon, so it’s gonna hafta wait a bit, but I’m right about this bastard, Dyl. I’ll show you.” “Okay,” he sighed and hung up. He wasn’t a detective, he wouldn’t claim to get this, but he wasn’t sure Holden’s supposition was the correct one. It felt off somehow. He really wanted to talk it over with Roan—he’d know what the flaw was, he’d figure it out. There was something on call messaging, so he called in to their machine to hear it and just about hit himself when he heard the first syllable escape from the stranger’s voice. It was the hospital—Roan was awake. His first impulse was to slam down the phone and race over there, but he could hear the hiss of the water in the shower, and he remembered he still had Grant to deal with. He could hardly leave him on his own here, could he? Roan would probably tell him to stay here, to keep an eye on him, but there was no way in hell he was going to do that. Did he have a choice? He hung up the phone and then quickly punched up a familiar number. “Randi? Tell me you’re not busy. Because there’s someone here you’re gonna want to see.”
DYLAN barely waited for Randi to come over before he took off. Randi still seemed stunned, but he just pointed back toward the house and got in the car. The urge to see Roan now was almost overwhelming. It probably didn’t help that the mysterious “something” was forefront in his mind. But Roan was stronger than him, right? Stronger than anyone. He would survive it, no matter what it was. He had to believe that, because up to this point, it had been true. It was a crowded mess in the hospital lobby, so he was able to avoid everyone and duck up the fire stairs, taking them to Roan’s floor. He was aware this was a form of cheating, but he honestly didn’t give a
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shit. Once he came out on the floor, Dylan only took a few steps before he heard, “Hey, the boyfriend.” Dylan turned and saw a nurse coming toward him, black with nice braids and a Puerto Rican accent. “I do have a name.” “I know. Sorry, man, forgot it. It’s not Bob, is it?” “No, it’s Dylan.” “Ah, so that’s why I was thinking of Bob Dylan.” He grinned, showing off impressive teeth. “It’s kinda against the rules, but I’m gonna go let you see Roan now. Just don’t be alarmed that he’s a little groggy.” “Why’s he groggy?” “We had to medicate him after an incident with the MRI. But my god, what a stubborn smart-ass, he’s fighting the meds.” “He will fight anything, up to and including an angry, torchwielding mob. What incident? He didn’t punch someone, did he?” “No, but I’m sure he would have if given the chance.” The nurse paused briefly. “He had a small seizure.” “What?” That was like saying a “small brain hemorrhage,” wasn’t it? The nurse, whose security badge read Velez, made a “calm down” gesture with his hands, like a mime shoving an invisible creature into an invisible box. “It really isn’t that big of a deal. Getting an MRI can be very stressful, and he was in a weakened condition to begin with. We’ve had lots of seizures, panic attacks, even a tearful breakdown or two. It probably shouldn’t have been done this soon, but the doctor felt it was imperative.” That in itself was bad news, and Dylan was torn between being angry and just being upset. He settled on splitting the difference. “What did you find? What’s wrong with him?” The nurse shook his head. “Results aren’t in yet.” As Dylan let out a sigh of disgust, he added, “I need you to do me a favor. Convince him to stay put until the results come through, okay?” “Is he free to leave?” “No, he hasn’t been discharged, but I can’t help but note that’s
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never stopped him before. He’s a Houdini of a patient. Or should that be David Blaine now?” “Roan doesn’t do stupid-ass stunts for publicity.” “Houdini it is. If you could talk him into staying for now, it might prevent another incident. Please.” “I’ll try,” Dylan said, aware he was probably only being allowed to see Roan for this very reason. But fuck it, he’d take it. Velez led him to Roan’s room but only opened the door for him. He didn’t follow him in; he didn’t say anything else. He just gave him a somewhat apologetic look. Was he one of Dee’s friends? Dylan wondered, mainly because he was one of the more helpful nurses he’d encountered. Roan was propped up in bed, reading a Scientific American, presumably stolen from somewhere in the hospital. (Maybe Velez brought it to him to keep him from wandering.) There was a TV in the high, far corner, but it was off, which was not a surprise to Dylan. If they didn’t get BBC America, Roan might never turn the set on. Roan glanced over the magazine, and as soon as he saw it was him, he set it aside. “Dylan.” “Roan,” he replied, his voice almost cracking. Roan did look a bit groggy. His eyes were glazed, and he seemed pale, his reddish-brown hair extra vivid against the whiteness of his skin. Dylan hugged him fiercely and kissed him on the forehead, the bridge of the nose, his dry, cracked lips. He was so happy to see him awake he could have cried. “If you get weepy on me, I swear I’m gonna punch you in the kidneys,” Roan said, his voice muffled since his face was now buried in his chest. Dylan laughed and hid a sob that threatened to give the game away. He held it back, got ahold of his rampaging emotions. “So, you’re an invalid now. Should I smother you with a pillow?” “I’m not ready for you to go all One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on me. Yet. But keep the pillow handy, Chief.” Dylan looked down at him and tried on a wan smile that felt tissue-paper thin. He touched Roan’s forehead and realized, “You’re cold.”
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“I think it’s the meds they gave me. I don’t know what they were, but it feels like the beginning of a carbonite freeze.” “Oh, stop with all these geeky references. People might think we’re straight.” “Horrors.” “Scootch over,” Dylan said and climbed into bed with him. It was a small, uncomfortable bed, but as long as Dylan stayed on his side, he fit. Roan turned on his side to face him, and they put their arms around each other, mostly for warmth, but a bit for comfort. “So, am I a dead man?” Roan asked him. He gave him his evilest scowl. “I won’t hear talk like that. You are not a quitter.” “No, I’m not, but I’m not sure about the lion.” “Knock it off, or I swear, I’m kicking you out onto the floor.” “It might be more comfortable,” he replied, then snuggled in against his chest. Dylan held him tight, glad Roan couldn’t see his face right now. He didn’t know if he could do this. He could do the Zen thing, but doing the stoic thing was so much harder. He breathed in the scent of his hair and felt a little bit better. “So what’s been going on since I’ve been in the elephant’s graveyard?” Roan asked. Terrific, an out. So he told him about the attempt he, Fiona, and Holden (with some assistance from Dee) had made to become detectives in his stead, and how Holden felt he had figured out who the killer was, since he’d found the sex tape and determined who the third member of the ménage à trois was. Roan listened, and despite the drugs, his mind was still as sharp as ever. “No, he’s wrong,” Roan said, not a bit of doubt in his voice. “John has a gambling problem, and I believe some drinking issues. He’s an impulsive person, and while I can see him being angry enough to both blame and kill his own brother over this, he’d have done so in an impulsive manner: bludgeoning with a golf club, stabbing with a decorative sword. Potassium poisoning is not only odd but deliberate; someone planned that. They had to, since potassium overdosing is difficult. John couldn’t have thought that out.” Dylan sighed, feeling so much better. He couldn’t put his reservations into words, but Roan had. “You have any thoughts on
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suspects?” Roan leaned his head back into the thin pillow and looked up at the ceiling as he thought. His eyes were still too brilliantly bottle-green to be Human, but Dylan would never tell him that. “I’m not sure, but someone should really keep an eye on Kyle Newberry. He’s the fulcrum of this crime.” “Meaning?” Who the fuck used “fulcrum” in an everyday sentence? Seriously. But Roan had a ridiculous vocabulary, and Dylan had learned to just let it go. Apparently the other cops used to make fun of his pedantic tendencies. What a shock. “Meaning he’s either our killer or the next potential victim. Someone should look into Jessie Newberry too. I never did work up a background on him. But he wasn’t even on my radar.” He said someone, but Dylan was fairly certain he meant him, or at least would by default. “What would we look for?” He shrugged. “The basics. If he has a criminal record—unlikely, he’s the son of a rich man and they get away with lots of shit—where he works, if he works at all, if he’s in a relationship, what his status within the family is, if he gets along with his dad or uncle, where he was the morning his uncle was killed, if he has any hobbies or vices… well, beyond fucking his own cousin and third-rate porn stars.” “You have to admit, that would probably take up a lot of time.” “Probably. Still, he must have some downtime, or periods where he has to stop and replenish his fluids, so there’s gotta be something there.” “How awfully cynical are we that we’re joking about this?” Roan gave him a crooked half grin that was always magnificently endearing. He could get away with so much with a smile like that. It was probably a good thing he didn’t know. “You either laugh or cry, or get so disgusted with the Human race you decide to kill them all. This is really the lesser of the evils.” “And you know all about that, I’m sure,” Dylan teased. He then got serious. “I think you’ve created a monster in Holden.” “Why? Because he’s jumping into this detective thing?” “Yes. Clearly he likes it, although he probably wouldn’t admit
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that he likes it as much as he does.” “Well, unlike Matt, I really think he could do the job well. He’s a terrific liar.” That made Dylan raise an eyebrow at him. “And that’s all it takes to be a good detective?” “A good undercover detective, yeah. Well, knowledge-gathering capabilities help. Being a street kid and a sex worker, he’s had to hone his instincts. They were probably all that stood between him and a guy with an urge to kill, and since he’s still alive, I’d say he’s probably got a knack for it. But I don’t see him ever taking over my job.” “Why not?” “’Cause’s he’s in the rarefied position of a high-class prostitute. He probably makes more in a day than I do in a week. This job is a lot of effort for little money, and he could make more where he is. I can see him becoming a detective when he loses his looks, though.” “It is the job of choice for the ugly.” “Why you—” Roan said in mock anger, and gave him a brief love bite on the bridge of his nose. He barely felt it, although it did occur to Dylan that, if he’d really wanted to, he could have bitten his nose clean off. Roan leaned back and said, “Whatever you have to do, get Holden off John’s case. Get him on Kyle, get him on Jessie, get him on someone else, I don’t really care who. We can’t have him screwing the investigation because he’s focused on the wrong guy.” Considering this was Holden they were talking about, Dylan knew it was much easier said than done.
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19 Between the Bars AS DYLAN suspected, what to do with Grant was a more troublesome issue. Roan hated to turn a fellow infected over to the police, but he didn’t have much choice. Grant needed help, and probably needed to be locked away for his own good right now. Roan instructed him to call Seb and arrange for him to come and quietly take Grant in. Seb knew this had to be handled delicately, and whatever they did, the press couldn’t be tipped off. Otherwise it would be a madhouse. And Seb wouldn’t mistreat an infected, unlike some other cops. It was the safest course. Roan still hated doing it, but he didn’t see another way. Neither did Dylan. But at least Grant would get help, and you couldn’t be convicted of first-degree murder in your cat form, as with one or two exceptions (one of them right next to him), no one had ever been seen to have any sort of Human consciousness in cat form. You were just a big, angry cat. But people did have a hard time accepting that, and it wasn’t difficult to empathize with them. When your boyfriend/girlfriend /family member was eaten or mauled to death by a cat, it was hard to swallow the reason that boiled down to “shit happens” or “wrong place, wrong time.” You wanted it to be more, to have some greater meaning or intent. The problem with life—with a lot of things—was randomness was responsible for so many things. Karma may or may not have come into it, depending on your belief system, but it was hard to believe someone could have done something so bad that it would end in them being eaten by a leopard. It was easy to understand why so many people were so angry. Dylan couldn’t help but think how angry he had been after Jason died, and that basically boiled down to “wrong place, wrong time, wrong intersection, wrong side of the car.”
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After a long moment of silence, Roan said, “If you don’t wanna move in with me, I totally understand. In fact, I’d support you not doing it.” “What? What the hell are you talking about?” Roan looked really tired. He had deep-set eyes anyways, so when he got tired, it seemed like his eyes started to submerge into his face, dark crescents beneath the sockets only intensifying the effect. The meds he was on gave his eyes a glassy sheen. “I think I’ve fucked up your life enough, Dylan. I’m really sorry about that.” Dylan leaned back slightly, if only to glare at him. Yes, he was serious. “Are you insane? Do you have any fucking idea how boring my life was before you? Okay, there are times I miss the peace, but I think I was going quietly nuts. De’Andra warned me about you right off the bat. She said you were a macho drama queen and I would be very sorry if I hooked up with you on a serious basis, but—” “Macho drama queen?” Roan interrupted, puzzled. “Is that a contradiction, or a new category?” “Oh, hell if I know. And she’s wrong, because you don’t really fit the queen mode. Macho and drama are other stories.” “Cute.” “Look, I’m gonna get all soppy and weepy on you if you keep pressing. So shut up and consider yourself lucky to have me, or I’m gonna cry all over you.” “You bastard. You wouldn’t dare.” “Try me.” Roan sighed heavily. “I’d make a Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? reference, but that’s too gay even for me.” “Oh, so we’ve found a level?” “You’re cruising for a bruising, smart-ass,” he growled in an affectionate manner. If anything could ever be said to be growled in affectionate manner, but this was all teasing. Listeners who didn’t know them would be horrified, but Dylan knew Roan would never hurt him, just like he knew he’d never hurt Roan. Although Dylan sort of hoped he’d never hurt anybody at any time, ever. It kind of went with being a Buddhist.
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Roan was finally succumbing to the drugs. He was dozing off, and Dylan was kind of tired too. His arm was half asleep, but oh hell, he hated to move it and wake him. But there was a brief rap on the door, and Velez stuck his head in. “Gotta clear out. They’ll be doing rounds in a couple of minutes.” Dylan nodded, and only then noticed as the door shut that the inside of it was covered with metal. This was indeed the cat room. Dylan slipped his half-numb arm out from beneath Roan and slid off the bed, almost falling because he was very clumsy at avoiding machines. Roan was asleep, though, so he couldn’t make a smart-ass comment about it. Dylan pulled the thin blanket over him and kissed Roan on the forehead. His skin still seemed cooler than normal, although not quite as cool as before. It was still troublesome. Dylan was so lost in his thoughts, he didn’t realize he was being followed until he made it to the elevator and became aware there was an elderly woman right beside him who had been beside him almost since he’d left the room. “You’re Dylan, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice slightly husky from years of smoking. He had to look down at her, as she was perhaps five feet, and he guessed her age to be somewhere in the mid-sixties. She wasn’t bad looking for her age. Her hair was dark and curly, neatly styled, and she had a round face that was probably too round when she was younger but now seemed just right. Her hazel eyes were just bright enough to suggest she was probably something of a looker back in the day. “Umm, yes?” “I’m Petra Rosenberg,” she said in her smoky voice, and held out a dainty hand. He shook it, careful not to crush it. “Nice to meet you. How’d you know who I was?” “Doctor Singh told me. Too hot to be straight, chocolate eyes to die for. Of course I could’ve guessed the first part on my own. All of Roan’s boyfriends have been absurdly gorgeous. He has great taste, in spite of what his wardrobe might lead you to believe. Goddamn, where were you boys forty years ago? I’d have gladly married one of you and been a beard as long as you agreed to sit around the house shirtless.”
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Dylan wasn’t sure what to say about that, so he didn’t say anything. He did smirk, though, as it was now quite obvious why Roan liked her. She was probably one of the few women in the world who would find the descriptive “tough old bird” flattering. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, and they had to step aside as a nurse came out, pushing a patient in a wheelchair. Dylan had no idea what had happened to the guy in the chair, but he had a leg in a cast, an arm in a sling, a black eye, and from the way his paper gown seemed absurdly thick around the upper part, his ribs wrapped. He was tempted to ask, “Skydiving accident?” but some people didn’t take jokes about serious injuries very well. In fact, most people. Roan could probably have a spear sticking out of his chest, and he’d say something like, “The dismount is always the hardest part.” His smart-ass ways were rubbing off on Dylan. As soon as they were gone, Doctor Rosenberg stepped into the elevator and gestured for him to join her. Dylan reflected that only older women and female politicians who didn’t want to appear sexy ever wore pantsuits anymore. Rosenberg’s was a dark forest green, offset slightly by a navy blue blouse. “I need a smoke. Why don’t you come with me?” The look she was giving him was deadly serious, and he knew this had nothing to do with grabbing a smoke. His stomach twisted at the thought that she was going to give him bad news about Roan, but he obeyed, mainly because it was reflex. After the death of his parents, Dylan was raised by his aunt, but also most of his mother’s family—those who were in the States— chipped in as well. (He never really saw his father’s family, and after several years, he’d forgotten their names or where they lived. He probably looked more white than Hispanic, but the racially mixed side of his family were the ones who chipped in and held together—what that meant he had no idea—but even in spite of his new, Caucasiansounding last name, he was continually startled when anyone just assumed he was white.) What this led to was a lot of time spent with his (maternal) grandmother and even for a little bit his greatgrandmother, both incredibly feisty women who didn’t let a variety of physical frailties keep them from being bossy and a feared ruler with an iron fist. As a result, he now found himself unconsciously deferring to
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older women in general, especially if they had a strong personality. He already knew Rosenberg was a strong woman, and he was going to have to fight his natural tendencies here. “I don’t smoke,” he told her as the doors slid shut, even though he knew it had nothing to do with cigarettes. She shrugged. “Didn’t think you did. And good for you. It’s a horrible habit.” “So why don’t you quit?” “I have, five times.” Again, another shrug. “Nicotine is a bitch goddess.” Dylan grimaced, holding back a laugh. “Look, I’m sure you’re a smart guy, so I’ll just cut to the chase: do you love Roan?” Wow, this came out of nowhere. He felt like he might have gotten whiplash from this conversational shift. “Uh, um, yes, I do. Why?” “’Cause there’s probably gonna be some tough times ahead, so if you don’t, now’s the time to bail.” He swallowed hard. Oh shit, it was bad. “I’m not leaving.” “Good, ’cause Roan’s gonna want you to. He doesn’t like looking weak in front of anyone. He hates being vulnerable. It’s why he’s such a prickly bastard. He prefers hatred and fear over pity. Who wouldn’t?” “You know what’s wrong with him.” It wasn’t a question, and tears threatened, making his eyes feel dry and hot. “No, I’m not a diagnostician. I can only guess, and I wouldn’t put much stock in me there.” The elevator doors opened on the ground floor, and they needed to get out before everyone else came in, including at least one person on crutches. Dylan followed her, but he didn’t know why, as he was now kind of afraid of discovering the truth. Still, he did. The conversation continued once they were outside in the parking lot. Rosenberg walked around the corner of the building, which he assumed was the smoking area, and started rummaging in her small black purse. The wind came up, cold and ragged, and blew cigarette butts and assorted other detritus across the asphalt with a scraping sound like skeletal fingers. “So you’re an expert on infecteds?” Dylan
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asked, wanting to say something. She shrugged again. “Who’s an expert on this virus? It’s a fucking nightmare of impossibilities. No one should be able to transform into another species, not even a facsimile of another species, but there that fucker is, doing it. We can’t even agree on how it came to be. The fucking thing is still a big mystery.” She found her pack of cigarettes and pulled them out, a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds that seemed to only have a couple of cigarettes left in it. She must have seen him looking at it, because she said, “I only allow myself two cigarettes a day, three if it’s a fucking crappy day. This is gonna be a six-cigarette day, I just know it.” He had no idea she was so profane. But, again, it made sense that Roan would consider her a friend. “So what’s your speculation on Roan’s problem?” She shook her head as she stuck a cigarette in the corner of her mouth. “I can’t tell you even if I wanted to. A patient should hear it first, family second. But I will tell you this, although if you repeat it I’ll have to deny it, ’cause I’ll be drummed out of the medical profession. But I don’t think you need to worry about Roan. I don’t think the virus is going to let him die just yet.” Dylan momentarily thought that was a sick joke, but as she lit her cigarette and took what was obviously a satisfying drag, he realized she was perfectly serious. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
HOLDEN was glad to hear that Roan was okay. But he knew Dylan was lying to him about something. It was because Holden heard a sort of thickening in his voice, like he’d been crying (or possibly just eaten a whole buttload of cheese, but somehow he didn’t think that was a possibility). Dylan insisted that Roan was fine, though, conscious and awake, and that he thought Holden had the wrong end of the stick. Roan thought the answers to all of this lay with Kyle or Jessie. For the record, Ahmed agreed with Roan. “Killin’ someone with
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potassium is just weird,” he said, as they crossed the Oregon border. “You need a weird person to do something like that. John doesn’t sound weird enough. He sounds kinda pathetic.” That did have a ring of truth to it, which irritated Holden no end. Being an asshole wasn’t enough? What was the world coming to when being a major grade-A asshole wasn’t enough to get you accused of murder? They made a pit stop at a Starbucks, and they had Wi-Fi, so Holden did some surfing. Jessie Newberry was a bit hard to find, but eventually he tracked him down to his Facebook page, where his handle was Jessie369. Holden recognized him even with his clothes on. Kyle was better looking in the face, although Jessie had a harder, gym-toned body. A little too gym-toned, actually, he’d crossed that subtle line between hot and gross. Veins stood out on muscles that had lumpy shapes, and Holden could imagine the track marks even if he didn’t see them. Was he more of a steroid guy or an HGH guy? Maybe both. While paging through his personal photo gallery, Holden came away with the idea that this was a man so in love with himself that calling him a narcissist would actually be an understatement. There he was pumping iron; there he was striking a pose in a Speedo (and having seen the sex tape, Holden knew he was padding it, ’cause his dick just wasn’t that big); there he was supposedly impressing a bleached blonde with huge, fake tits with the bulbous muscles in his arms; there he was in his gym tank top in front of the juice bar— Wait a fucking second. Holden scoured his page carefully. Jessie worked in a gym? He did. He claimed he was a personal trainer, which included not just exercise but a nutritional regime of his own design. (Jessie had his whole sales pitch in the “bio” section.) Oh shit. This was it. As Ahmed came back to the table with his second green tea Frappuccino, Holden asked, “Do you know where the Seattle Fitness Center is?” He took a sip of his drink, then said, “Seattle?” Holden scowled at his poor joke. “We need to get back on the
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road and get there now. I think I just found a huge clue.” Ahmed sighed and shoved himself out of his chair. “Yippee skippee. You know, I’m kind of wondering what you get out of being Hawk to his Spenser.” Holden stared up at him blankly and asked, “What?” Ahmed shook his head and walked away. Actually, he knew the reference he was making. Holden just felt like being a jackass.
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20 Warbrain HOLDEN hated lying to Ahmed. He hoped he never found out about it. All the way to Seattle, Ahmed tried to talk him out of “seeking revenge” or “going off half-cocked” (oh, the fun you could have with that phrase), and after a bit Holden let him get his way, telling him to just drop him off at his apartment. He said he had a client to meet at the Sheridan in a couple of hours, anyways. That sent Ahmed off on his usual lecture about how exploitative prostitution was, even if he didn’t feel exploited, blah blah blah. He’d heard it several times before. It wasn’t that Ahmed didn’t have a point, because of course he did, and all day (and night, sometimes both) he worked with broken people who often had such things in their past or present. Of course he was right. But Holden knew he wasn’t broken. He’d decided long ago he was going to sell himself, sure, but he was going to exploit his clients, not the other way around. And if Ahmed thought they were broken, he hadn’t met their clients. Most of them were the sorriest sons of bitches he’d ever met. Sad, sad people. But maybe it took one to know one. Holden called Seattle Fitness from his home, and was able to wheedle Jessie’s number from someone with a bullshit story about having to cancel an appointment he’d made with him but he’d lost his business card. (He’d just guessed Jessie had a business card. It was a correct guess.) He then called Jessie and got his machine, and he left a very succinct message: “Hey, Jessie, I’m a friend of Colt Brixton’s, and he gave me this digital video file on a jump drive that I bet you’ll want to have. If you’re not interested, I’ll give Kyle a call.” He then recited his phone number and hung up. Holden poured himself a gin and juice for courage and turned on his stereo, giving himself some background music to distract him from
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his darker thoughts. Ironically—or maybe not—he still had his iPod plugged into the stereo, and it started playing that The National song, the one about people throwing money at each other and crying. Presumably the song was about a bad relationship, but he thought it had the hooker/client relationship down pretty well. Same thing, perhaps. He then made a call to someone he didn’t call very often, a guy named Phat. Holden had time to change his shirt, to put on a skintight black tank top that showed off his broad chest, and had stripped down to his underwear by the time the phone rang. It had taken Jessie twenty-five minutes to call back. “What the fuck do you want?” he snarled. Holden could almost hear the foam frothing at the corners of his mouth. “Don’t be that way,” he replied, turning on the teasing, oozing charm he usually adopted when he was trying to calm his more nervous clients. Usually newbies or virgins. “I’m not so crass as to want to blackmail you. I have a much more… profitable proposition for the both of us.” “Who is this?” Jessie demanded, sounding suspicious. “A businessman. Call me Marco. Can we meet? I’m on my way to Seattle right now.” Although in general a lie was easier to swallow when sprinkled with some truth, sometimes Holden discovered there was a strange emotional symmetry when you did nothing but lie. People felt better, found it easier to swallow when the bullshit was so smooth and pretty and even. “You’re lying,” he accused. He sounded unsure. “You don’t have a copy of the tape. This is bullshit.” “That thing on your left butt cheek—was that a mole or a pimple? I couldn’t tell since the lighting was so poor.” It was a pimple—Jessie had a case of bacne, suggesting steroid abuse, but to tell him he knew of it would give the game away. Jessie was quiet for a long time. All Holden could hear was his ragged breathing. Finally, he told him to meet him at an address in two hours. Holden agreed, hung up, and immediately Googled the address. A private home in the well-off part of the Madrona district. Jessie’s place? A good guess, and he was glad that his hunch that Jessie would want to meet in private was the correct one. He probably
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wouldn’t tell anyone of the meeting either, sealing his fate. Holden pulled on vaguely out of fashion baggy jeans, baggy enough to hide what he was carrying, and was finished dressing when there was a knock at the door. Phan—known on the streets as Phat— was there, a rangy, short guy in a baggy canvas jacket and camo pants, emo-boy shaggy hair squashed awkwardly under a dark knit cap and sticking out beneath it like warning spikes. He was an average-looking Vietnamese guy who looked seventeen but was in actuality twenty-five, a father twice over by two different women, and supposedly had a cousin who was some sort of Asian gangster, but if that was true, why was he simply a street-corner dealer? Maybe he was trying to work his way up. Gangsters all had to start somewhere. “Y’know I usually don’t make house calls.” He sniffed as he made like he was going to shake Holden’s hand but slipped him the plastic-wrapped package from his palm. Holden took it, shoving it in his pocket, where he also pulled out the folded money and hid it in his hand as he grabbed the front pocket of Phat’s camo pants and pulled him forward, as if threatening to give him a kiss. He snuck the money in his pocket. “Hey, no fag stuff,” Phat warned. “Take it like a man, Phat,” he teased, leaving in a hard edge. “You never know who could be watching.” That seemed to remind him how dangerous this was, and Phat, twitchy at the best of times, seemed to visibly fidget. “Yeah, yeah. But why d’ya want the bad stuff—” “The less you know, the better off you are.” Phat hardly needed to think about that. He just nodded, sniffing again. Either he had a constant cold that wouldn’t go away, major sinus problems, or he was a big fan of coke. “Got a new shipment of Viagra over the border.” “I’m good, but I’ll let you know when I need some,” Holden said and closed the door on him. Not that Phat cared, as he was already turning away. Phat may have been a street dealer, but he rarely dealt in your standard drugs. He dealt mostly in prescription and “club” drugs and made better money than you’d think by both his wardrobe and his pedestrian tastes. Less violence that way too. Holden prepared it and got it ready, putting the final result in a small velvet bag that he had no idea how he’d acquired. Just one of
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those things that occasionally seemed to breed and materialize in the chaotic darkness of junk drawers. He checked himself out one more time in the mirror, making sure there were no suspicious bulges, and put on his white, motocross-style leather jacket, which always made him feel like a whore. He wasn’t actually sure why, but he felt that something about the jacket screamed, “I’m a cheap hooker.” And that was fine by him. The more harmless Jessie thought he was, the better. The last thing he grabbed was the jump drive, which did have something pornographic on it, but it wasn’t Jessie’s sex tape. He drove up to Seattle, listening to the indie station Roan loved so much, and wondered about the fear and weariness he’d heard in Dylan’s voice earlier. Was something wrong with Roan, no matter what he actually said? That must have been it. Gruff old Roan liked men who wore their hearts on their sleeves, men who were the opposite of stoic, butch him. He felt bad for Dylan. Roan was a bit like a rickety carnival ride: you thought you were prepared for the trip you were about to go on, but no one ever really was. He wasn’t for the fainthearted. Holden had lost all sense of time. He couldn’t remember when he’d started this day, and now it was night, the sky a black blanket, headlights blinding and taillights molten. When did he last sleep or eat? He was overdue for both, but he was wired right now. He had something to do first, miles to go before he could sleep. He parked his car a block over from Jessie’s home and walked the rest of the way on foot. It gave him time to do a little reconnaissance, stake out the place. The neighborhoods were supremely quiet, and he seemed to be the only person walking on either street. He pulled on his gloves before he was in view of the house. Jessie had a modest—for the Newberrys—two-story house with a peaked roof and a well-landscaped front yard. He had a high fence around the backyard, blocking it from view, and Holden was willing to bet his left nut he had a pool back there, perhaps a hot tub, and even a pony wasn’t out of the question. If you assumed a Newberry had more money than sense, you were generally on firm ground. Jessie was just as he looked in his Facebook photos: grotesque. Less handsome in person, which seemed impossible, Holden wasn’t sure if the steroid abuse was ravaging him or if he’d had his photos touched up first. His pores looked too big on his gaunt, angular face,
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which still had the counterintuitive puffiness that suggested HGH use. It didn’t help that the look on his face was so sour and aggressive, making him look even more hideous. Jessie looked around before holding the door open, making sure Holden was alone, but he didn’t say anything until Holden was inside and he’d shut the door. “Where’s the fucking drive?” he snapped. “We talk business first,” Holden countered, still oozing friendly charm, giving him a toothy smile. “Then I’ll give you the drive if you’re not interested in what I have to say.” Sometimes his own ability to lie shocked the hell out of him. It was so easy, so natural to him that the truth was actually hard. Lying was second nature, and considering his preacher dad, he wondered if it ran in the family: a bullshit gene. Carried by all successful evangelists, politicians, and con men everywhere. “I’m not interested,” Jessie snarled, pale blue eyes narrowed to slits. Even as he growled, he jerked his head toward the living room. Jessie’s growl struck Holden as comical. It was a Human noise, pathetic, meant to be tough and scary but actually the exact opposite. After having heard Roan growl—really growl, not a Human noise, but a shit your pants lion wants to kill you and eat your entrails growl—any attempt by anyone else made him want to laugh. They had no idea what a real growl was and how scary it could be, especially when accompanied by the sounds of breaking bones and snapping joints. “Why the fuck you wearing gloves?” “I’m a bit OCD, I’m afraid. Do you know you mostly get colds from shaking hands or touching doorknobs? It’s disgusting the amount of germs that are everywhere.” He’d deliberately talked in a higher octave, playing up a natural inclination to lisp. He wanted to sound the stereotypical interior-decorator fairy you could find on any sitcom, the harmless queen who screamed bloody murder if he saw a spider. Let Jessie believe he was harmless. Let him believe he could never be any threat to a brawny he-man like him. Jessie’s room looked like a Best Buy display. All the latest electronic toys that a boy could want were sparkling new and ready to go, from the big screen HD TV to the home theater system, the stereo with enough bass to rattle your fillings loose, a Wii and a PlayStation of some sort (Holden just didn’t know video game systems) sitting side by
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side, a skeletal-framed metal desk with a computer with its own wide flat-screen monitor, perhaps in case he got bored of watching porn on the big screen. “Your name isn’t Marco,” Jessie said, his aggression naked in his voice. So he knew who he was. That confirmed that either John had told him about the detective he’d hired to look into Joel, or he’d found out in another way. Holden turned and fixed him with one of his seductive half smiles. “I said for you to call me that. It’s one of my names—I have three. Which one do you know me by?” Jessie was wired. Sweat beaded on his broad forehead, even though he was only wearing a sleeveless red muscle shirt and navy jogging shorts, and the muscles in his arms and jaw seemed to tense and flex according to their own rhythms, a visible symphony of anxiety and barely suppressed rage. He wanted to rip Holden’s head off. Good thing he came prepared to take on an angry gorilla. “Holden somethin’. You’re the fag whore that used to get with Uncle Joel.” He didn’t even try and hide his sneer of contempt. “You know Colt? Was this a setup or somethin’?” “Hardly. All us fag whores know each other.” He said that with a certain amount of sarcasm, but he was sure it sailed far over Jessie’s head. “After having seen you in action, I must admit, I thought you’d be perfect for this new venture I’m launching with a friend of mine. We’re getting into porno, web content only, and with your body, you’d be perfect for our muscle category. I’ve put out some feelers toward Kyle, he’d be more of a frat-boy-style guy, but he seems to insist on anonymity. If you have no objections about wearing a slave mask while fucking, I think we can swing anonymity for both of you. Now, it’s going to be a subscription-only deal, so not everyone will be able to access it—” “Are you fucking insane?” Jessie roared, stomping toward him in a menacing way. Holden didn’t react—to back up was to show fear, and to show fear was to invite death, so he held his ground and met his gaze straight on. “I’m no faggot! And I certainly ain’t no fucking—get out of my house! Get out!” “And take the drive with me? Sure.” He glared at him, a muscle jumping in his jaw, his thin, cracked upper lip curled up as if caught by an invisible fishhook. God, what an
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ugly man. “I listened to your disgusting fucking pitch. Now give me the drive.” “Have you actually seen the footage, Jessie? It’s interesting.” Jessie’s eyes were so narrowed they were almost gone. His hair was slicked back, as if he’d just gotten out of a shower, but he still smelled like rank sweat, and combing his dull brown hair back so sharply only revealed his receding hairline, making his forehead look like it was creeping up his skull. “I wouldn’t watch that disgusting—I was drugged! Kyle did that, he… he’s sick! I ain’t no sissy fag!” “Of course not,” Holden agreed, all too aware he was lying. He was dying to ask if they gave him roofies laced with Viagra (the special kind that didn’t make your face flush) since he was so visibly hard and obviously came, but he wasn’t here to provoke a fight. He was here simply to dispense a little justice. “In fact, what I caught on the recording might be actionable.” Big word, too big for a muscle head like Jessie. He scowled, making a vein throb in his forehead. “What?” “There’s a part where Kyle and Colt say something to each other, and you’re not visible. They’re whispering, but it does seem like Kyle is setting you up, from what I can hear.” Holden was counting on ’roid rage’s bastard cousin, paranoia, to step in here, and it did. The expression on his face was as naked as any child’s. He was buying it. “Setting me up for what? What did he say?” “Advance to time code 18:23 and see for yourself,” Holden replied, pulling the jump drive out of his pocket. Jessie glanced at it briefly before ripping it out of his hand and stalking over to his computer, plugging it into the USB port and waiting for his computer to acknowledge it. He was muttering to himself angrily, “Fucking Kyle, I fucking knew he was up to something. He’s always fucking me over, egotistical bastard—” While he ranted, Holden pulled the hypodermic syringe out of the velvet bag, and since it seemed Jessie was left-handed, he adjusted his target to his right arm. Jessie had pulled up the file and was advancing to the time code. “I see what you mean about poor lighting.” A brief pause. The living room had hardwood floors, but the center of the room was taken up by
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a large, fluffy white carpet that Holden couldn’t imagine owning because it would have been hell to clean. But since Jessie probably cleaned up none of his own messes, he could probably afford it. It muffled footsteps very nicely. “Hey, this isn’t us.” The good thing about a muscle head? Veins were visible at all times. Holden jammed the needle in one in his right upper arm and depressed the plunger. Jessie reacted, a yelp and a smack that sent Holden flying across the room until he hit the brown leather sofa, but it was too late. “What the fuck?” he roared, getting out of his chair so fast it tilted and hit the floor. “What’d you do to me, you fucking faggot?” He was coming for him, but Holden was barely dazed. He used to be a street kid. He’d been beaten by bigger guys than him, and in greater numbers too. He reached behind him and pulled out his gun, leveling it at him. “One more step and we go for violent suicide, Jessie.” Jessie stopped, clearly trying to figure out if he had a chance of taking him before he could fire, and he realized the needle was still in his arm. He pulled it out, helpfully getting his prints on the syringe, and the drugs must have been starting to take effect, as Jessie got this funny look on his face. “What—what is this? Did Kyle—” “You know when the penny dropped for me? Today I was looking into both Kyle and you, and I came across an article that mentioned Kyle was living at the family estate—you know, dad’s house. Joel’s house. The buyout had nothing to do with any of this, did it? It was personal. You meant to kill Kyle, but somehow Joel ended up taking the hit. I assume you drugged some juice, water, booze? Something you thought only Kyle would drink, but Joel ended up drinking it instead.” He was starting to breathe harder now, and he was shaking his head as sweat left slime trails down his face. “I don’t—no, no—” “I have friends in the drug trade, Jessie. I also have friends amongst the gym rats, and they always have the best drugs, as well as the best questionable nutritional supplements. You know, the kind never approved by the FDA, the kind that might be toxic in certain doses. Such as ones really high in potassium. And I’m sure you know some people who can get ahold of some really bitchin’ elephant tranquilizers.” “I don’t—you’re making this up. I don’t—” Jessie dropped to his
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knees and grabbed his head. “What the fuck did you give to me?” “You wanna live? You’d better start confessing now. You’re running out of time.” “Kyle’s a motherfucking asshole!” he suddenly shouted, falling back onto his butt. He looked really dazed now. Holden probably could have put the gun away, but he decided not to. Let Jessie still think he had a chance. “He—it was his idea. I was just a kid… I didn’t know what we were doing….” “He molested you?” “Yes! And he… I didn’t… he just tossed me aside like I was nothing. He’s my brother, y’know? The closest thing I have to a brother, and he treats me like that. He’s a fucking pig. He deserves to die.” Oh god—did this crime spree boil down to a jilted lover? “Do you love him?” “Yeah. But not like that! Not in some sick, perverted—” Jessie fell on his back, making little choking noises, his arms spasming slightly like he was trying to get up but couldn’t control his limbs. “Gay way? No, I’m sure it’s more of a family way, since you are family, and that’s what makes it truly icky. You thought the gay thing was what was wrong with it? Please.” Holden tucked the gun back into his jeans and stood up. “Just so you know, this wasn’t about Joel. He was a client, a client who tipped really well, but he didn’t mean anything to me. It was business, nothing more. This is about Roan. See, if he was here, he’d tell you that people only get one shot to kill him, but he’s not here, not because you killed him, but because there’s something wrong with him. Which is fine, because it gave me the chance to even the score. You had your shot, you failed. And ultimately, you tried to kill the wrong man. Roan would have turned you over to the authorities. He would have let your cadre of lawyers fight it out with the state’s lawyers. But I don’t trust the justice system. I don’t trust cops. I just knew I wasn’t going to give you the chance to hurt him again.” Holden retrieved the jump drive from the computer and shut it down, pulling the chair back upright. He went over to Jessie’s stereo system and turned it on. “If you killed yourself, you’d be listening to music, right? I would be, I think. Did you know steroid abusers are statistically more likely to commit suicide? Too
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much of that shit alters your brain chemistry. Drugs are bad, Jessie. But then again, that’s your preferred method of murder, so you know that.” He picked up the needle and moved closer to Jessie. His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, but it wasn’t clear if he was dead yet. “But drugs have their good points. For instance, I’m going straight home, and I’m dosing myself with roofies, so when I wake up tomorrow I’ll have no memory of killing you. I will pass every lie detector test in the world, because I will genuinely not know what the hell I did. You won’t even be on my conscience, Jessie. But don’t worry about Kyle. I’m sure his fall from grace will be spectacular when the sex tape hits YouTube in, oh, about five minutes ago. The world we live in, huh? Well, I live in. I think you’re gone.” Holden closed Jessie’s eyelids and then put the needle in his left hand, curling his sausagelike fingers around it like it was the last thing he held on this Earth. Which it was. Holden gave the room a visual once-over, just making sure there were no signs of a struggle or anyone else being here. There wasn’t. His lower lip was mashed from Jessie’s hit, but the only bleeding seemed to be inside the lip where it hit his teeth. He licked the blood away, the copper taste of it lingering in his mouth as he left the house. He was glad he hadn’t eaten for a while, because he was pretty sure he’d have puked if he had. He had a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. The night air was cool and refreshing, and Holden took in lungfuls of it, ridding himself of the horrible shit smell of death. So he’d added murderer to his list of sins now. He honestly wished it bothered him more than it actually did. Not that he had long to worry about it—he hadn’t been lying about the roofies. He had a client who was a war vet, an amputee with a leg missing below the knee and extensive scarring on his intact leg, and he liked to do roofies and Ecstasy because otherwise he couldn’t get it up. He felt so ugly sober, so mutilated, he couldn’t even take off his clothes. Nothing Holden told him helped. Only the drugs helped. And now they were going to help him forget how violent he actually was. He wondered what he’d think happened to him tomorrow afternoon, and realized he didn’t actually care. The case was closed.
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21 Midnight in a Perfect World WHAT was he expecting? Roan didn’t know. It didn’t help that he was still woozy from meds, and from some weird nightmare where he felt like he was suffocating and was sure he wasn’t ever getting out of this fucking hospital. Doctor Singh noticed the tray shoved aside and asked, “You didn’t eat your breakfast? Are you nauseous?” Roan poured himself another glass of water—he’d sweated a lot during his nightmare; he needed the water—and said, “No. I didn’t eat it because it’s hospital food. If it smells bad to you, imagine how it smells to me.” Dylan had already snuck in this morning, and after a discussion, had nipped out to go buy Roan some decent food. He kind of hoped Singh was gone by that time, but he had a feeling Singh liked Dylan, or at least liked looking at him. (Who could blame her?) “It smells fine to me.” “It’s not, trust me.” He took a gulp of water, then said, “Whatever it is, break it to me. I’d like to be out of here within the hour.” Singh frowned, her brow furrowing, but it was the worried look in her eyes that bothered him. She seemed like a cool and rather aloof doctor, a veteran with a steady poker face, but it was now breaking. That was never a good sign. “I’m not sure that’s advisable.” “Why not? Am I dying? If so, no offense, I’d rather do it elsewhere.” “Your headaches got worse, didn’t they?” she asked, deciding to get to the point in a roundabout way. “You had an incident you didn’t report to us.” “Incident?”
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“Severe head pain? Blurry vision? Unconsciousness? Vomiting? Any of those ring a bell, Roan?” Now she was scowling at him like an upset mother. He sighed and figured there was no point in denying it, as obviously she had some evidence of it. “I may have passed out for like a minute. It wasn’t a big deal. And the next day I got a pain in my head bad enough to make me stagger, which is why I took what turned out to be elephant tranqs.” She shook her head. “Good lord. Now I really have no idea why you aren’t dead. You had an aneurysm, Roan.” “No,” he replied reflexively. He had no idea why he was denying it. “Yes, you did. The scans we did confirmed it.” “Don’t people who have brain aneurysms usually drop dead?” “Often, not always. But from what I’ve seen, you probably should have.” She looked at her clipboard aggressively, holding it like she was considering hitting him with it. “The problem is treatment. You’re an excellent candidate for another one—in fact, when your change cycle comes in, I advise you get yourself hospitalized in advance. Your boyfriend said it was due in about two weeks. Is that true?” “Round about. You know how erratic the cycles are.” He didn’t mention he could basically shift at will, as, if she believed him, she might order him institutionalized now. “But are you gonna have a vet handy? ’Cause I really don’t see how you can treat me in lion form if something does go wrong.” “Doctor Rosenberg’s volunteered to be on call for you.” “She’s not a vet.” Singh fixed him with a look that could have blown the back of his head off. “Knock it off now. This is very serious.” “Infecteds are prone to this kind of shit. Kills a lot of us. I’m not dead yet, so can I go now?” He thought she was going to lose her temper at him, but she reined it back at the last minute. “Surgery is an option.” “Brain surgery? Look, I’m not still actively bleeding in the brain, am I?”
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“You’d be dead if you were.” She scowled again, but her dark eyes seemed turned inward. “The bleeding stopped on its own.” “That’s good, isn’t it?” But even as Roan said it, he knew that didn’t sound quite right. She held the clipboard up like she was brandishing a sword. “This doesn’t make sense, you know. An aneurysm ruptured in your brain and may have been bleeding for some time. This should have killed you, Roan. This should have at least laid you flat. There’s a theory that you actually overdosed on elephant tranquilizers at just the right time, as it lowered your blood pressure to an absurd degree, limiting damage and slowing bleeding until it stopped.” It was the way she said it that gave it away. “But you don’t think that’s it.” “It could be. For all I know, it was as good as inducing hypothermia. But it doesn’t make sense. In all my years on the job, I’ve never seen anything like this, and I don’t know what to make of it.” This seemed to really trouble her, as if it was a failing on her part. “No one knows what to make of me,” he told her, trying to comfort her. He wasn’t sure why. “I’m a puzzle that can’t be solved. Kind of like the virus.” She shook her head and slapped her clipboard against her other arm. “Everything can be solved. It might take decades, but there’s a solution to everything.” “Spoken like a true scientist. Or maybe House. I don’t have decades, do I?” She threw up her hands (and clipboard) helplessly. “I don’t know. You could die tomorrow, Roan. You could live another twenty years. But once you have one aneurysm—and this one was out of the blue— your blood pressure wasn’t high, which is the most common aneurysm trigger—you are likely to have another one. This is the gift that keeps on giving.” “Like the virus. Look, I get it, and you’re absolved. Release me. I want to go, and there’s nothing you can do for me here. If I die, I die. Maybe I’ll get lucky and my whole head will explode, à la Scanners. I always wanted to die in a way that would leave people cleaning up after me for days, so I’m good with that.”
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“Can you be serious for one second? We’re talking about your mortality here.” “And I’ve lived with death all my life, and I’m kind of bored with it now. If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die. About twenty years overdue, according to most estimates, so at least I beat the warranty. Not many people can say that.” It sounded comforting, it sounded true, but he didn’t honestly know what he was feeling at this point. Maybe it was the drugs, maybe it was the fact that he’d been pronounced to be on death’s door a million times, or maybe it was the fact that the virus had somehow ended the bleeding. That was it, wasn’t it? No, it didn’t make sense. Viruses didn’t work like that, and they certainly didn’t have intelligence or direction, but viruses did have the innate drive to survive. If he was half virus or whatever the fuck, maybe that was enough. It struck Roan then that that was what they meant when they called him a hybrid. Not a hybrid of man and lion, but man and virus, DNA strands locked mercilessly in a struggle that neither would ultimately win. In the meantime, that left him… what? A walking disease? Probably. Was he surprised? He needed to wear that bell around his neck and randomly intone, “Unclean,” to warn people. “I still think you’re taking this too lightly. We’d like to keep you for observation—” “Trust me, there’s nothing to see. I’m amazingly boring.” “Would you stop being an asshole for one fucking second?” she snapped. “We think we spotted another potential aneurysm in your CT scan. Do you even care?” “I care, but what can you do about it? Is brain surgery actually the answer here?” She grimaced, scowled, glared at him as if he’d caught her in a lie. In a way, he had. “It’s not in a part of the brain I’d advise operating on. There’s few who’d attempt it.” “Okay, that answers that question. I’m gonna get dressed now.” Dylan had brought him some clothes, like he asked, even though he wasn’t sure he should leave the hospital if the doctors didn’t advise it. Roan appreciated his concern. It was always touching, but he was sure
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Dylan didn’t yet understand his abiding hatred of being cooped up in hospitals. He’d have preferred prison, and they felt roughly the same. “God, you are really going to be this much of a dick, huh?” “This is your bedside manner?” he asked, slipping the boxer shorts on under his paper gown. Only then did he happily take the damn thing off and put a proper T-shirt on. “I’ve given up with you,” Singh replied. He could only shrug. “Fair enough.” He wiggled into his jeans— made infinitely harder since he was lying down—but he didn’t want to stand just yet, because he was afraid the drugs would make him woozy, and his almost falling over would be all she needed to get him readmitted. He just wasn’t staying here, no matter how bad he was. “There’s a new drug that might help. Will you at least try that?” “Won’t make me a zombie, will it?” “I doubt it.” “Fine, I’ll give it a go. You know I’m not averse to pills.” She sighed, and her shoulders slumped, like she was beyond tired. Or perhaps he simply drove her to the brink. She wouldn’t be the first. “This is your life, Roan. You shouldn’t be so cavalier about it.” “Trust me, I’m not being that way. It’s just hard to work up energy about it when I’ve been told I’m about to die so often that I always felt they should just make a card of it and flash it at me every time I see a doctor.” “Will you arrange to come here by your next cycle?” “Maybe. Let’s see if I live that long, huh?” Maybe was actually a no, but since he was preparing for an argument with Dylan later, he didn’t feel like fighting with her any longer. She must have felt the same way, because she shook her head in disgust and turned away, saying, “I’ll go get you the meds.” As soon as she was gone, Roan collapsed on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Shouldn’t he have been upset? Why wasn’t he upset? Did he really not care if he lived or died? He had no religion, believed in no gods and no afterlife, and yet maybe, somewhere in the back of his mind, he still held out some vain hope he’d see Paris again. Maybe. He could be an idiot as much as anyone else.
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He was putting on his sneakers when Dylan came back, holding a fast-food bag and a paper cup. “You are so lucky I’m such a nice guy.” He didn’t have to ask why. The smell hit his nose, and his stomach rumbled in anticipation. “Oh, you beautiful man. You got me a steak breakfast burrito.” “I can’t believe you even eat breakfast burritos. They’re disgusting.” “Many are disgusting, yes. But every now and then, you find one that’s pure ecstasy in a tortilla. And this one is, thanks to the chipotle sauce.” Roan got up, and found it easy with such impetus behind the movement. He went over to Dylan and kissed him before taking the bag and the cold cup from him. Dylan shook his head, his lips thinning, but it was an affectionate sort of exasperation. “I’m glad I can’t have my vegetarian status revoked, because this would do it.” “You’re doing it for love. People would understand. Well, maybe not PETA.” Even though he was eager to leave, he was ravenous, so Roan sat on the edge of the bed and opened the bag, pulling out the hot, paper-wrapped burrito, which he peeled open eagerly. It was probably still too hot to eat, but as soon as he sank his teeth into it, he didn’t care. Before the spicy sauce kicked in, he could taste all the hot fat and salty calories, the meat and the eggs and the crispy bit of hash-browned potatoes they threw in as well. Bliss. He might have had an orgasm if Dylan had gotten him a pumpkin-pie shake too, but he’d gotten him a Pepsi, which he had admittedly requested. (He needed the sugar and caffeine.) He ate greedily, gulping half of it down in little over a minute, and Dylan sat down in the room’s only chair. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or do I have to pry it out of you?” He finished chewing, washed it down with a gulp of soda so sweet and ice cold it made his teeth hurt, and said, “You’re gonna want me to stay here. But I want you to know I’m not going to. I’m doing this my own way, and I hope you’ll support me even if you think I’m the biggest idiot in the world.” Dylan stared at him in a way that suggested he wasn’t sure what to do: punch him or laugh.
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“You should get that printed on a card and hand it out to potential boyfriends. By the time most of us figure that part out, we’re in too deep.” “I probably deserved that.” “Look, I know you, okay? Something was wrong and you hid it from me, because you didn’t want to admit weakness. And you’re terrified of hospitals, so you want to get out of here as fast as possible, even if it hastens your death. How am I doing?” Roan let a pause linger. “I wouldn’t say terrified.” He rolled his eyes. “You also use humor to try and defuse situations and change the subject, or alternately you use it as a weapon. You do it a lot. You’re a closet comedian.” “I make you laugh.” “All the time. But that isn’t the point. The point is I just found you, you selfish bastard, and you can’t die on me now.” Dylan tried to blink away nascent tears, then gave up and just ran the back of his hand across his eyes. A weight seemed to settle in Roan’s stomach, unrelated to the food, and it seemed to want to clog his throat. Roan didn’t let it. “I promise you, Dylan, I’m not gonna die. Not without a fight. You know how I love to fight. That hasn’t changed.” “It better not.” Roan sat there, wondering how far ahead Paris had planned. He’d discovered only after he met Dylan that Paris had actively singled Dylan out and all but groomed him to take his place. He had selected Roan’s next boyfriend for him, which was exactly like Par, so much so that he didn’t know why it shocked him that he had. Like he’d let him find someone that Par didn’t judge worthy? As if. But was this part of the reason why? Paris knew Roan would be eager to join him in the nothingness of death, sweet oblivion, so he made sure there was something that would pull him back, make him want to stay alive even if only by sheer guilt. Was that the entire intent? How weird was it that most of the important men in Roan’s life were dead, and yet he could still feel them in his life? Wow. His existence was so much weirder than he’d thought.
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WAS like stepping out into a new world. Well, no, the same old fucked-up one, with a few minor changes. The “Sex Tape Scandal!” headlines seemed to suggest that the Newberry sex video had been found and released to the world, and Roan knew instantly that Holden was responsible. He had found it, and he’d leaked it. Why? Because that was him. Hide something from him, and he would share it just to be an ass. Not that he would do anything different, but Holden was a bit more flamboyantly nasty. The surprising thing was Jessie Newberry had apparently committed suicide. Reports had it happening shortly after the video was leaked on the web, and while he left no note, it was assumed the video was enough to send him over the edge. He was a troubled person, it seemed. Speaking of which, Kyle Newberry had supposedly checked into rehab ahead of the PR shitstorm. Was there an incest rehab? Well, why not? There seemed to be a rehab for everything else. Grant was in legal custody, and many people were rather angry about the whole thing. It was understandable, but he didn’t kill anyone on purpose. No matter, many people still wanted his head. Roan wondered if Randi hated him now. On a similar note, remains had been discovered in a wooded area, and they were assumed to be Tiffany Jones, although identification was still pending. Roan hoped it wasn’t, for Grant’s sake. Gordo was out of the hospital, but he was still on leave from the cop shop and rather unhappy about it. He was a man who defined himself by his job, so without it, he felt lost. Roan could understand. He was the same way, sort of, but usually he had so much shit going on that he could only muster a half definition at best. There was also the fact that macho cops like them hated being labeled as fragile. At least Dylan waited until they got home before they started arguing. Dylan thought the diagnosis was very serious, and Roan wasn’t treating it as such. That seemed unfair, as he agreed it was serious. It just wasn’t something he could get worked up about. Why, he didn’t know. It didn’t really help his side in the fight. Roan left Dylan to stew and fume at him in private and went
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down to the basement, where he sat on the stairs and looked at the cage—his cage. The door was still ajar from the last time he’d used it, and Dylan didn’t touch the thing. It wasn’t so much that he was scared of it… okay, yeah, that was part of it. Most of it. Why didn’t the prospect of dying in it bother him? Roan knew it should, but it didn’t. It bothered Paris. That’s why he’d committed suicide ahead of his final transformation. He wanted to die a Human, not a half-tiger monstrosity. He understood that totally. But the idea of it didn’t really bother Roan. Maybe because the lion had as much claim to him as his Human form. He didn’t know what it was like to be just Human. He had always been something else, something caught between what he seemed to be and what he actually was. Human, lion, virus. A freak amongst freaks. He deserved to die as he lived, neither here nor there, torn between Human and other. Dim sunlight was bleeding through the tiny rectangular window at the very top of the basement, casting a shaft of light inside the cage itself, a vivid line on the poured-concrete floor. Roan could still catch a whiff of tiger deep down beneath the more dominant scent of lion, or at least he thought he could. It could have been psychosomatic, something he wanted to believe. Just like he wanted to believe his death would be as simple as transforming and causing a blood vessel to burst in his brain. In a bizarre way, Roan thought it might be nice, a peaceful, quick death. But he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy. Nothing ever was.
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About the Author
ANDREA SPEED writes way too much. She is the Editor in Chief of CxPulp.com, where she reviews comics as well as movies and occasionally interviews comic creators. She also has a serial fiction blog where she writes even more, and she occasionally reviews books for Joe Bob Briggs’s site. She might be willing to review you, if you ask nicely enough, but really she should knock it off while she’s ahead. Visit her web site at http://www.andreaspeed.com and find her on Facebook. She tweets at http://twitter.com/aspeed.
