He sensed warmth beside him and looked over to see Paris sprawled on the other side of the bed, so deeply asleep it looked like he was barely breathing at all (those were the drugs for you). Sunlight was bleeding through the edges of the curtains, a plague of light, but the air conditioner was on and it was almost chilly.

As he got up, he noticed Paris had written something at the bottom of the legal p ad on the nightstand: Don’t worry about Eli. Really? Why not? He wanted to shake him awake and ask him what he’d done, but it wasn’t like Paris had gone out and killed him, so it wasn’t that urgent. But he was curious – what had he done?

He hopped in the shower and went downstairs to get some breakfast – okay, now it was technically lunch – before knuckling down to work.

Although Sikorski was one of the few higher ups who would talk to him on a regular basis, he had other friends in the police department, including one who let him peek at files he maybe shouldn’t have had access to. While he was searching DeSilvo’s personnel records, he also started searching the database for all the names Rainbow had given him, as well as for Eli’s name. John Hatch had nothing on his record but a DUI and a speeding ticket, both of which gave his address as that of a subdivision in Harrison Park; Andrew Freeman had a juvenile record that included vandalism, assault, misdemeanor pot possession, and resisting arrest; but Timothy Nelson was the real troublesome one. Although his record was clean here, there was a notation in his file: sex offender. Apparently he was convicted of molesting one of his friend’s sons – twelve at the time – with an Alford plea (which was a guilt free way of pleading guilty – it meant you were not guilty, but were pleading guilty because a jury or judge would most likely find you guilty) but for some reason he only did four and a half years before being released and moving from Maryland to here. There was no information pertaining to whether he finished counseling or had simply cut a deal with the prosecutors for the plea; just that “sex offender” notation. It either meant that he had been red flagged by the Feds or Maryland police as a high risk, or someone on the staff had a bug up their ass about all sex offenders. He lived alone about a mile away from the church, suggesting that his wife must not have believed his Alford plea, divorced him, and left with the kids.

Roan made a mental list in his head, the ones he would visit in order: Timothy Nelson (of course), John Hatch, and then Andrew Freeman if those two hit dead ends (all Freeman’s troubles were juvenile ones; his adult record was clean).

DeSilvo, meanwhile, was a bit of a troubled man himself. Allegations of thefts from busts dogged him over the years, and he was investigated by Internal Affairs a couple years back, although they found no evidence to substantiate the charges. It wasn’t above felons to make unsubstantiated allegations against cops, that pretty much came with the territory, but all this smoke? There must have been fire somewhere. Roan was now positive that sawed off shotgun he had was ill gotten booty, a meth head’s prize. Yet this didn’t actually explain anything. So he was mildly dirty – so what?

DeSilvo’s first partner, Curtis McAvoy, died eight years ago in an off duty car crash. His partner until early retirement was Mitchell Henstridge, a man ten years his junior, a man who – oddly enough – had taken a lot of medical leave in the last couple of years. There was no reason given, and he recently left the force. There was a reference in his file to the family medical leave act, so presumably all that medical leave he took wasn’t necessarily for him. He too was investigated by IA, and came up clean.

Speaking of clean, Eli was. But Roan knew the old police captain around here, McClarty, was a Winters’ family friend. If his trouble making son got busted, he’d have been happy to sweep it all under the carpet and keep it off the books. He had no way to prove it, though.

While he was writing down the last known address of Mitch Henstridge, a forwarded call from the office came in. Technically the doors were closed today, but he was still taking calls.

It was a woman on the phone who introduced herself as Susan Heffernan, and wanted to hire him to investigate her husband Ryan. He sighed and grabbed a notepad by the phone, so he could take her information. Infidelity cases were the bread and butter of detectives nowadays, and they were usually pretty simple to prove or disprove. A couple days work, and not hard work at all.

But as she kept talking, he realized this wasn’t typical. “Wait, let me get this straight,” he repeated, in a bit of disbelief. “You want me to find out if your husband is gay?”

“I know that sounds funny,” she admitted nervously. “But he spends so much time with Cooper, he talks about him all the time, he invited him to come with us on what was supposed to be our eighth anniversary trip. And when we were in Vegas they supposedly spent all their time in the casino and I never saw either of them. Ever since that movie, y’know, I’m wondering …”

“Movie?”

“Brokeback Mountain.”

“Ah.” He rubbed his eyes, and briefly wondered if someone was playing a practical joke on him. It was possible, but she sounded awkwardly sincere. “Look, Mrs. Heffernan, I think hiring me would be a huge waste of your money. Just talk to your husband. Just tell him you feel uncomfortable how close he is to his friend, and how you’d prefer if there was some space there.”

She let out a tiny little laugh. “You don’t think I’ve tried? It’s not an easy topic …”

“And you think spending hundreds of dollars to confirm his sexuality is easier?”

“ Well … hundreds?”

“Do you have any other reason to doubt his sexuality or his faithfulness, Mrs. Heffernan?” Sometimes he felt like a marriage counselor, and that was definitely not what he signed up for.

“Actually … um, yes. Lately he’s started dressing nicer.”

Roan almost dropped the phone, but instead he put her on hold and laughed. If he redecorated or tidied up, that would have been the end of him for sure. As soon as he got a hold of himself and calmed to his neutral, professional tone, he picked up the receiver once more. “If you really want to pursue this, I suggest you come by the office tomorrow. We’ll be open by ten.”

“Can’t we just set this up now? I’d rather just know as soon as possible.”

“I’m afraid there’s contracts to be signed, and we’re not open today. I’d suggest you talk to your husband if you want to get this over with sooner rather than later.”

It was a last ditch attempt, and he hoped he’d finally gotten through, but after a long moment she sighed, and said, “Fine. Ten o’clock tomorrow. I’ll be there.”

After he hung up, he wrote down her name and the time, with the added notation of Ryan Heffernan and Cooper Godwin. He’d never “outed” anyone before, and he really didn’t want to start, but his was not to cast moral judgments, just see his clients’ cases through to the end. Besides, if this guy was actually in denial or in the closet, it wasn’t fair to his wife.

Also he made a note to drop her a card of Melanie’s. Melanie was a divorce lawyer he worked for on a semi-regular basis, and even if Ryan and Cooper were as straight as Henry the Eighth – just a bit too close and male bonded – that marriage was done. If you couldn’t straight up ask your partner if they were fucking around and get an answer you felt you could accept, then why were you together? If communication had broken down to the point where you felt you had to hire a complete stranger to trail them with a digital camera, stick a fork in the damn thing and move on. It was over in all but name.

It made him think of Connor, which he didn’t like, so he grabbed up the addresses of Nelson, Hatch, Freeman, and Henstridge, and headed out the door.

But Connor lingered like a bad taste in his mouth. Roan had two whole relationships in his life, or at least ones he counted as genuine relationships: Connor Monaghan and Paris. So far the one with Paris had been running a lot smoother.

Connor had been married once to a woman. His parents were staunch Catholics and he tried to pretend to be straight to please them, but he called the marriage the biggest mistake of his life. His wife was “cool” about it when he told her the truth (the marriage was annulled), but his parents didn’t see why he didn’t just stay married to her and try to “be normal”.

He met Connor when he was a rookie cop, and he met him literally on the job. A drunken college football celebration turned into a small riot near a downtown bar, and Connor was one of the few who was willing to and could actually identify who beat a bystander half to death. (The man ended up in a coma and eventually died. A star college football player went down for his senseless beating, although that was very controversial.) He remembered Connor standing there with blood all over his white t-shirt – he’d tried to help the beating victim – clear eyed, sober, and perfectly indignant. He was handsome with a voice that he could have listened to for hours (he was an immigrant from Dublin; his Irish lilt was nothing like the grotesque stereotypical Irish accent), and eyes that seemed to vary between green and hazel. There was nothing stereotypical about Connor, and most thought he was joking when he said he was gay.

He knew where Connor lived due to his witness status, so he made sure he went out of his way to be at a café in Connor’s neighborhood when he was off duty, so when Connor ran into him, it was as a civilian. Luckily, Connor found him attractive too, so it wasn’t too awkward, and he didn’t accuse him of stalking him. (He wasn’t really; there was just something about Connor he found unforgettable and magnetic.)

The first warning flag should have been the fact that he was a writer. Mostly novels and short stories, although he wrote a short play that was an entrant into a local playwrights’ competition. He was extremely intelligent, extremely talented … and tortured really didn’t cover it. He was an alcoholic and knew it; alcohol was a “demon” he said he’d lived with all his life, and when he was drunk, he could get pretty ugly. Roan let him know immediately that he wouldn’t stand for it; he’d had enough drunks in his childhood and on the job that he didn’t want to put up with one at home. They lived together for three months, and for those three months he managed to stay sober, and won the competition, and everything seemed good. But Connor seemed to have a gift for self-sabotage; any time things went well for him, he seemed to go right out and shoot himself in the foot. Connor got incredibly, stinking drunk on his prize money , and Roan took him into the station on a drunk and disorderly. He spent the night in the drunk tank, while Roan moved out. By the time he was sober and out, he was gone.

He made it clear he loved him, he just wasn’t going to do this drama. He’d given him the choice: booze or him. As far as he was concerned, Connor made his choice.

Connor was all apologies and self-pity, and while he decided to give him another tentative shot, Con couldn’t even last a week without getting drunk. So he broke it off completely. He wished him well – and honestly it killed him – but he couldn’t do this.

Connor committed suicide two weeks later. Always dramatic, he walked out on some train tracks as drunk as hell, in front of the Amtrak headed to Coeur D’Alene. He left a suicide note that simply said he was tired, and Roan found that Con had left a message on his answering machine. It wasn’t much, but the words still haunted him: “I’m sorry. I loved you, you know.” Roan wasn’t perfectly certain, but he thought he heard a train whistle in the background.

He had pretty much written off relationships at that point. He was never good at them anyways, and Con’s death seemed to be a big universal flashing sign: You suck at this. So he fought getting into a relationship with Paris, at least with himself. These things were always fraught with peril, and he had enough drama in his life. But at least Paris wasn’t an alcoholic or suicidal; in fact, he couldn’t even imagine Paris deliberately sabotaging himself, not the Paris he knew anyways. He was like the polar opposite of Con. No worries there.

But he had never told him about him. He didn’t talk about Con at all. Even when the paper ran a little feature on suicides in the local creative community and he was gobsmacked to find Connor staring out at him from his morning newspaper, he never said a word. Why? He knew logically he wasn’t responsible for Con’s suicide; it wasn’t even his first attempt – he had faint scars on his arm from when he’d tried to kill himself as a teenager, razor blade marks that ran the length of his forearm. He varied from angry to hideously self-piteous when drunk, and declarations to “finish it” were part of his drunken script. You couldn’t blame another person for someone else’s suicide, (unless they crammed pills down their throat or forced the noose around their neck) as that was a personal choice. And yet he still felt so unbelievably guilty he couldn’t bear to speak his name. Could he have kept Con from doing it? Did he push him over the edge? Would Con be alive today if he hadn’t left him?

Some tough guy he was. Pathetic.

Nelson lived in a relatively clean but bland apartment building known as the Hampstead Arms, which proved the odd law that the “fancier” a name for a place the more low rent it was. No one answered the door, and Roan was pretty sure he didn’t hear anyone inside (hard to tell; someone the next floor up was really cranking up the Jay-Z). A Hispanic woman carrying a laundry basket walked past as he was at his door, and paused to ask if he was a “friend of Tim’s”. He played along and said yes, just to see what would happen.

As it turned out, nothing. She said he was gone most of the day and usually didn’t get home ‘til around six or so. He thanked her and left, adding that note to his small list of name. At least if Nelson had a job, it limited his time for hanging around the church.

Hatch lived in a pretty nice place, a pre-fab suburban house not unlike DeSilvo’s, but newer, and with more trees lining the streets and the yards. A woman answered the door of the house after he knocked, a slightly chubby brunette with a pale, round face, her make up barely covering a smattering of acne that decorated her forehead like a scatter of buckshot. (Did Dick Cheney live around here?) John wasn’t home either, although she didn’t offer up when he’d be home. Her expression was pinched, suggesting she didn’t like him a bit; she didn’t know him, but she didn’t like him. Maybe they didn’t like strangers around these parts.

He showed her his photo of Danny and asked if she’d seen him. She barely even glanced at it before saying no. He had a feeling he could have held up a photo of Hatch and she would have denied seeing him; she just gave off a hostile vibe. It could have been simply that she didn’t like his face, she didn’t like (vague) redheads, she didn’t like guys wearing olive drab t-shirts – it could have been any piddling thing. But this reaction was simply too suspicious for him to dismiss so easily. After leaving, he did a brief tour of the property, but the back yard was cut off by chain link fencing, and a dog that looked like a cross between a German Shepherd and a wombat snipped and growled at him as he looked over the fence at a large outbuilding that was probably a shed, but was large enough to have been someone’s workshop … or something else. The yard stank so badly of dog shit it made his eyes water. Again, he made a note to come back, and bring binoculars.

He got lucky with Andrew Freeman. He was home, as he was laid up with a broken leg and was on disability from the quarry where he usually worked. He was a guy with dirty blond hair and an honest to god mullet, as well as a mustache that was a quarter inch short of a Fu Manchu. To top off his general redneck/stoner look, he was wearing homemade cut offs and a sleeveless black t-shirt depicting an eagle fighting a snake. He smelled of sweat, cigarettes, and pot smoke.

His watery blue eyes had the glaze of someone who was high, but that also made him very friendly and slightly gregarious. He admitted that he liked going to the church because they had some “hot bitches” there and the guy he liked to buy his weed from usually hung out there, but he hadn’t been there since he got his leg broken a week and a half ago. He admitted that he didn’t go anywhere anymore since he could barely get around on his crutches in the house, but his brother, roommate Chuck, and “on and off” girlfriend Mindy brought him supplies, and he had satellite t.v., so he was good. He admitted he may have seen Danny around the church but wasn’t sure because he didn’t pay too much attention to the guys. He invited him in for a beer, but he politely turned him down and wished him luck. Only when he was back at the car did he realize he’d never identified himself to Freeman, and he had never asked who he was. He scratched Freeman off the suspect list.

On a whim, he drove past Henstridge’s place, but found the quaint little clapboard house had a “For Sale” sign in the yard, and a quick glance in the living room window proved that the house had been cleaned out; Henstridge had moved on. He called the real estate agency handling the sale of the house, and told them he was a private detective who needed quite badly to find Mitch Henstridge. The real estate agent was a rather hyper sounding woman named Sabina, and after looking for several minutes she finally gave him an address that he took without comment. He knew that address quite well; it had been a favorite of transients or people who didn’t want to reveal their actual place of residence when arrested – it was a vacant lot at the end of dead end street downtown. Fifteen years ago there was an apartment building there, but it was condemned and then burned down, and the city, which owned the land, had done absolutely nothing with it. But the address still technically existed on city maps, and would register as valid to anyone who checked in any way but personally.

So Henstridge had turned rabbit? According to Sabina, the house had only gone up for sale two days ago, and he was “highly motivated to sell”, although she couldn’t exactly say why. Well, this didn’t make sense at all. It was possible it was just coincidence – maybe the family member who was sick had died. Then why give a fake address?

He was running and hiding. But from who and why? Curiouser and curiouser.

He sat in his car and called Sikorski. As soon as he answered, he asked, “What do you know about a former cop named Mitchell Henstridge?”

Sikorski sighed heavily. “Don’t you believe in foreplay?”

“I’m Scottish. My idea of foreplay is “roll over Margaret”. So what do you know?”

He snickered. “Wouldn’t it be Angus in your case?”

“Don’t ruin a classic joke, Gordo.”

He heard him settle back in his chair, which creaked like doors in a haunted house. “The name sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it. When did he leave the force?”

“Three months ago. He was DeSilvo’s partner.”

“Oh. Why are you checking out DeSilvo?”

“I’m checking out Henstridge now. I’m finding some oddities in his current behavior that could use a bit of explaining.”

“Like what?” He challenged, almost belligerently.

“Like giving 1520 Oakview as his home address.”

“Oakview? The dead drop?” That’s what cops called that area: “dead drop lane”. Mainly because it would be a perfect place for a money exchange with kidnappers, but also because dead people had a tendency to show up there with great regularity. Many were just o.d.’s and transients who died in the cold, but sometimes they were people killed on the spot, or killed elsewhere and then dumped in the vacant lot. It was a really fun part of the city. “That is weird. Is he escaping creditors?”

“You tell me.”

“Huh.” He heard the click of his fingers on his keyboard as he went to work. “Here I thought you were calling to gloat.”

“Gloat? Over what?”

“Coupla things. Eli Winters showed up with that hard ass lawyer of his – what’s his name, Stovik?”

“Stovak. Why’d he show up?”

“Apparently he’s infected and doesn’t have any restraints; he was out last night apparently. He thought somebody told us already and was doing damage control. Who woulda known and not told us?”

“It’s a big church, Gordo.” What had Paris said to him? Oh, now he had to know how he could have scared Eli into a confession at the police department. Again, Paris had the makings of an excellent super villain, which really should have scared the shit out of everyone, but he was so disarmingly pretty you couldn’t help but think he was honestly harmless. And that just made him that much more dangerous. “What’s the other thing?”

“Oh, the coroner’s report came back on the kids at Tweaks place. You were right.”

His stomach burned, and he suddenly felt more awake than he had all day. “What? How?”

“The kids were killed by a bladed weapon, probably a machete, hours before Tweaks was killed. The cat gnawed on them, but there’s some indications they were killed at different times and repositioned afterwards. Why we don’t know. Tweaks was definitely killed by the cat, though.”