It made perfect sense, didn’t it? Why Eli had not gone public with the news. If he was tied to one of the victims in a close way, he could fall into suspect territory. But then he would have had to have been very close to Melissa Prescott to be so scared that his natural inclination towards shallow displays and p.r. blitzes would be curtailed. After the phone call he told Paris he’d talk to Eli about it tomorrow, but Par seemed to think he was included in this. He wasn’t, not yet, but he wasn’t going to argue with him about it. There was nothing to argue about. He trusted Paris with his life, his business, all of it, but he wasn’t really a detective. He was, to use his own term, his “guy Friday”. Roan had to go this one alone.

While Paris was brushing his teeth, Roan did a quick bit of checking. Melissa Prescott wasn’t what he would call gorgeous (okay, yeah, gay guy, but he knew attractive when he saw it no matter the gender), but she did look young - extremely young. She was twenty years old, but with her perfectly round face, full apple hued cheeks, pale blue doe eyes and shoulder length cascade of crimped honey blonde hair, she could have passed for fifteen or sixteen.

Eli had a thing about barely legal girls, didn’t he?

Melissa was his type all the way, with the added benefit that she was actually legal. Could she have been one of Eli’s many girlfriends? Part of his little “harem”? Now that the possibility had lodged in his brain, it seemed to fester, unwilling and unable to come out. Who was the other one of the four who went to the Church? If it was Patrick, okay. But if it was Ashley or Christa …

Those girls? He looked at their pictures too. They both looked younger than their ages; they both could’ve passed for sixteen. They both could have been Eli’s type.

He always fell back to sleep, although he was never quite sure how. Finally the alarm went off, set to radio instead of that annoying buzzer, and he woke to the very loud swells of some bombastic classical music, lots of strings and deep wind instruments building to a crescendo (which included a gong; you always needed a gong), and he slapped the alarm in irritation, rolling away from the warmth of Paris’s side. Paris made a half-conscious noise and snuggled deeper into his pillow, not bothering to open his eyes. That was the thing, the habit; Roan got up when the first alarm went off, and Paris usually didn’t bother getting up until the snooze alarm went off. So Roan sat on the edge of the bed and simply switched the alarm off. Yeah, Paris would probably be pissed off when he woke up and realized it, but he could always claim it was an accident; there was some benefit of the doubt there.

He took a quick shower, got dressed, and went downstairs to start the coffee. The smell would probably wake Paris up eventually, and he’d figured out he’d been ditched. He left a note on the fridge: Following something up. We’re closed today - enjoy your day off. He filled a travel mug with coffee and got out of there.

It was still raining, but some of the more dramatic weather had let up. It was pissing down steadily now, the wind almost nonexistent, the sky a gunmetal grey that made him feel like he was looking up at the hull of a battleship. He noticed the actual time, and stopped at a coffee shop about a half mile from the church, where they knew him fairly well.

It was a small place, one of those that sprung up to try and compete with Starbucks, and did it by promoting its “bohemian” atmosphere and dedication to local artists. As he sat at a small table by the window, eating some kind of pastry that didn’t have enough blackberries in it, he saw the fliers for a “poetry slam” night (people still did that?) and an open mike night. Every time he saw one of those, he always wondered what would happen if he signed up for one, got up on stage, and started ranting like this one vagrant he knew when he was a beat cop. Everyone at the station knew him, they called him “Saint Dude” (when asked for his name, he claimed it was Dude), and he had these wonderfully elaborate, incoherent rants about topics as varied as the conspiracy surrounding aluminum foil, the secret cabal of cattle kings who really ran the world, the saltpeter in pretzels, how the CIA was fitting house cats with 3-D imaging systems for spying on people, and the way the local television station was beaming microwaves directly at him to disrupt his brain. He was a schizophrenic who hadn’t had meds in years, but the sad thing was there wasn’t much they could do for him. They never got a positive i.d. for him, never found family, and the local loony bin was so overcrowded they were actually booking rooms in advance. Unless he was an obvious danger to himself or others, they had to leave him out on the street, and they did, because Saint Dude was never violent. He eventually was hit by a car and died, but his rants lingered on in the minds of those who were treated to them. If only he could have taken his meds, he might have been a hit blogger by now, or a commentator on Fox News. He was a genius before his time.

Figuring he wasted enough time, he went back out into the rain and drove to the Church, parking directly out front, and putting on his fedora before getting out. In his trench coat and hat, he felt like a hardboiled detective in some stylish ‘40’s film, and it was as silly and sad as all hell, but it usually made him feel better. Not today, though; today he just felt a bit foolish. But at least the hat kept the rain out of his eyes.

It was still too early for anyone to be manning the CCTV cameras, so he was forced to knock on the door. He almost pushed the doorbell, but then he remembered the last time he heard it, it played “Year of the Cat”. If he heard that, he might be forced to beat the shit out of Eli, and if he was going to go to jail on assault charges, he wanted it to be for something more meaningful than that.

Rainbow answered the door, trying to be cheerful but unable to hide a slight wariness. “Oh Roan, what a surprise.”

Was she ever going to say “What the fuck are you doing here?” She was just too nice, wasn’t she? “Don’t worry, I’m not here to cause trouble. I have to see Eli about the job. Can you tell him that?”

Her eyes squinched in curiosity, but she glanced off to one side as if looking for directions from the stage manager, and said distractedly, “Um, okay, just a moment.” She left him out on the porch, rain dripping off the brim of his grey blocked felt hat (luckily it was waterproof), but he didn’t wait too long before she opened the door again and looked at him with wide eyed surprise. “Come in. He says he’ll see you.” That really seemed to be a shocker, but he expected that reaction from her.

She led him down a hallway he’d never been down before, narrow and lined with small framed cat prints hardly bigger than photos, and behind a heavy oak door was an old fashioned looking study full of polished cherry wood and dark red and gold upholstery, where books by the foot lined the side walls and a picture depicting a fox hunting party in the woods set the general tone of a stuffy, old world British style library. A plush oxblood colored carpet ran from wall to wall, and there was a heavy oak desk that made up the centerpiece of the room, where Eli sat talking on the phone, motioning Roan in and throwing Rainbow a reassuring look, the tacit approval to leave them alone. Roan sat in one of the burgundy velvet upholstered wing chairs, and looked to see if any of the books had ever been moved or read. Nope, didn’t look like it. He hated designers who used books for aesthetic purposes only, and he hated even more pretentious boneheads who went along with it. There was a huge picture window behind Eli, but gauzy curtains the color of marigolds had been pulled against the gloom, so the only thing visible was the meager light bleeding through. The room spoke of old money and power, and he couldn’t have felt more out of place.

Roan took off his hat and waited for Eli to finish his call, which he finally did. “You couldn’t possibly have found out something so soon,” Eli said, as soon as he put the receiver down.

“What was your relationship with Melissa Prescott?”

Eli was a bit like Paris in that he was a natural actor. Shock flashed through his eyes, but his expression remained stony, and he cocked his head to the side curiously. “I beg your pardon?”

“Let’s not do this shit, okay? If you want me to work for you, I need full disclosure or I’ll walk. The police have asked me to find a connection between the four victims, and I’m starting to wonder if the connecting factor’s you. Talk to me or talk to Sergeant Murphy in homicide.“ He was overstating his case slightly - there was no way to make Patrick fit into the equation since Eli was straight (no matter what his hair cut and man purse would have you believe) - but scaring the shit out of Eli was the best way to get him to spill his guts.

The Ferragamo turned sour with fear as it oozed through his pores. He could hide the visible response, but not the physical one that coursed through his body. “You are fucking unbelievable. Do you really think I would hurt anyone? Not to mention why the fuck would I hire you if I killed all of them? Why would I be that stupid?”

He shrugged. “Guilty conscience?”

Eli glared at him, eyes like laser, and shook his head. “Un-fucking-believable. Melissa came here a few times, I talked to her once or twice, she seemed like a good kid. I was horrified to discover she’s been murdered.”

“So that was it? Melissa was a random church visitor that you just happened to remember?”

His eyes, as clear and brown as scotch today (he loved his contacts), narrowed in disgust. “I do make a note of remembering my people.”

Especially the young women whom he had a sexual interest in? He could buy that. But at this moment in time, he didn’t quite. “Who was the other church visitor of the victims?”

Eli opened his mouth, shut it, and then tried again, eyes briefly darting down to some papers on his desk. “I-It was Patrick Farley. He came here once or twice, but he never stayed long.”

Which screwed up his theory, but it wasn’t a fatal flaw. “So why did you have to consult a cheat sheet for Patrick but not for Melissa?”

Eli’s right eyelid twitched, and he watched the muscles in his jaw work as he ground his teeth, biting down hard on some ugly comment. “What is it you want from me, McKichan?”

“The truth. You were fucking around with Melissa, weren’t you?”

“No.”

“She was one of your girlfriends.”

“I said no.”

“And I don’t believe you. You’re shit scared; I can smell it.”

That startled a derisive laugh out of him. “You can smell it? Holy fuck, stop the presses! We gotta conviction on scent. Jesus Christ, the cops buy that shit, do they Scooby?”

Roan stood up and put his hat back on, making a point of flicking the raindrops on the carpet. “I’ll refund you your money less one day’s work. Expect a visit from Sergeant Murphy this afternoon.” He turned and walked for the door.

As he expected, he took two steps before Eli exclaimed, “Wait! I hired you! You can’t quit.”

He glanced coolly at him from over his shoulder. “I just did. See you in the funny papers.”

Roan had his hand on the brass doorknob when Eli snapped bitterly, “What the fuck d’ya want me to say? I did a consultation with her, all right? We didn’t date; it wasn’t a big deal. “

He turned to face him, but didn’t take his hand off the doorknob, which he made sure Eli saw. “You slept with her?”

Eli was on his feet, his face twisted in an ugly scowl. He didn’t look so Eurotrash handsome anymore. “How the fuck is that relevant?”

“It is if I say it is. Yes or no?”

He glowered at him, clearly loathing every single fiber of his being, and it was all Roan could do not to laugh. Ooh, Eli’s hatred just made him tingle all over. Was that wrong? “Yes,” he grated through gritted teeth, not so much sitting as collapsing back in his plush leather desk chair. He added snappishly, “Do you want photos? Diagrams? Videotape?”

“Do you have them?”

His hateful look continued, his eyes nearly glowing like embers. Man, some people just had no sense of humor.

Roan turned to face him, digging his hands in the pocket of his coat. “How serious was your relationship with her?”

“It wasn’t. Didn’t you hear me? It wasn’t a big deal.”

He almost said “trick“, but that was a gay term that didn‘t translate to the straight world; in the straight world, a trick was something either a magician or a prostitute did. “A one night stand?”

Eli fidgeted in his chair, squirming with discomfort. “Yeah. Happy now?”

“How close to the time of her death?”

“What?””

“A couple days before, a week, a month? You didn’t want this getting out, Eli, so I’m figuring the timing was bad.”

Eli rubbed his face, and Roan weighed the possibility he was hiding his expression as he concocted a lie. Moderate to extreme. “About a month ago.”

“So, since she was killed roughly two weeks ago, that meant you slept with her two weeks before her demise?” Eli nodded, face still hidden in his hands. Any personal relationship with the victim would get him added to the potential suspect list, but honestly it wouldn’t be a big deal, not in a case like this. The shootings seemed so random - save for the infected connection and the general ages of the victims - that all looks at boyfriends and girlfriends would be perfunctory and shallow, unless there was known violence in the relationship. Maybe it was an ego thing; maybe he lived in fear of having the cops come in and rummage through his life, especially after his near miss with the court on the assault charge.

Maybe, but he still had the feeling he wasn’t getting the whole truth here. And then there was the “informer”, the person who squealed on him. Roan had listened to the recording with Paris several times last night, and while neither of them could recognize the voice, they decided that the caller was either a woman or a man with a higher pitched voice. It had to have been someone from here, the church, someone who knew that Eli had hired him and was concerned about the killings. Most likely someone from within Eli’s inner circle - but why blow the whistle on a one night stand? Eli probably had dozens of them a month. Either it was more than Eli was saying, the informer had some issues with Eli that were just now boiling to the surface, or a combination of the both. It had occurred to him that the informer could be someone who had soured on Eli, turned against him, and Roan wondered how far that disappointment and anger extended. To murder? Was that why Eli was supposedly next? There could have been a couple of different things going on here, and that was a problem. “Did you infect her?”

That made Eli look up at him sharply, horror naked on his face. “No! Fuck no, she came here infected, I didn’t … I didn’t! She was a cougar strain, okay?”

That was easy enough to check, so it was unlikely he was lying about that. But judging from the smell, the size of his pupils, the tiny beads of sweat gathering at his hairline, the rapid beat of his pulse in his throat, he was still lying about something. His relationship with Melissa was more than he was saying, wasn‘t it? But even under duress he wasn’t willing to give it up. Why? Was there something damning about it, something that would make him more suspect than he already was? “Do you have a current serious girlfriend?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re still being evasive. I’m just trying to figure out why.”

He exhaled sharply, holding his hands open on his desk and attempting an innocent look that didn’t quite fit his face. “I swear to you I am not. I had a fling with Missy, yeah, but it was just the once, and it was no big deal. I don’t even think she liked me that much.”

“Bad in the sack, huh? You should ask Paris for tips - he’s a real dynamo.”

His eyes narrowed once more, and a more comfortable look of barely veiled disgust and hostility settled in his features. There was the Eli he knew and loathed. “Is this what I hired you for? To be a complete prick to me?”

“Hell no, I’ll do that for free.” He opened the door but never looked away from Eli’s face; he wanted him to know this wasn’t over. “But as soon as I figure out why you hired me, you may wish you had found someone else.” He left, closing the door behind him, and figured Eli was probably having the shits about that right now.

****

It was as easy as hell to find out the name of Eli’s current girlfriend. He simply went up to Rainbow and asked her if she knew where he could find Sandy, Eli’s girlfriend. She looked at him with great puzzlement, and said that Eli’s girlfriend was named Mia. He made a show of being embarrassed, and after blaming the early morning and a lack of sleep, asked what her last name was again. Not realizing this was complete entrapment, she volunteered that it was DeSoto, and when Roan asked if she was around, said she usually didn’t show up until around six or so. Poor Rainbow - she was so trusting, so friendly. He felt like a complete fuck taking advantage of that, but it did make his job easier.

In the car, he added the name Mia DeSoto to his extremely tiny list (so far) of people who were potential suspects. He definitely needed to talk to her as soon as possible; she was the favorite to be the “informant”. Hell hath no fury like a woman cheated on.

Since he was in the neighborhood, he stopped by Melissa’s apartment to talk to her neighbors, but most weren’t home and the ones that were had nothing of value to say. No one was home at the time of the shooting, and no one knew much about her, as she was one of those who “kept to herself”. He stopped by the Starbucks where Ashley Cryer worked, and he got a chatty barista named Matt who was a tall, wispy kid in a canary yellow t-shirt as tight as a second skin, with sterling silver rings all over his face (nose, eyebrow, earlobes) , a shock of electric blue in his spiky golden blond hair, and three loops of barbed wire tattooed on his left wrist. He was happy to talk to him - and give him extra foam on his mochachino - as he liked Ashley and was devastated by her death; he couldn’t figure out who would ever hurt her. Matt was also flamboyantly, obviously gay, as well as extremely impressed that he was a “real life” private detective. He agreed to meet him later after work at the Café D’Ante to talk about “Ash”, but before he left, Matt leaned over the counter and whispered. “I’ll bring her key.” Her apartment key? Jackpot. Thank god for the flamboyantly gay best friend.

He got back home to find the GTO out of the driveway (Paris had finally put the engine back together and reinstalled it last week; he just felt it had some body work left to do) and a note stuck to the front door: Went to the store, be back soon. P.S.: You’re a putz. Okay, yeah, he figured he ditched him. He wondered what he’d have to do to make it up to him. A scalp massage would probably make him forget all about it. (In attempting to treat his own migraines, he’d learned quite about scalp massages, and according to Paris he gave great ones. It was kind of a shame that the scalp massages didn’t work for his headaches, but at least it gave him an odd skill he could seduce men with.)

As soon as he checked the answering machine (there was nothing of note), he called Kevin, his trusty closeted inside source in the police department. He could have called Dropkick, but he doubted she’d give him this kind of information. Kevin could. “Detective Robinson.”

“Hey Kev, can you talk freely?”

There was a pause as he checked. He could hear typing in the background, people talking; it was a noisy day at the vice unit. “Kind of,” he finally said. “How are you?”

“Oh, copasetic. I know it’s not online, but I need you to check the autopsy report on Melissa Elaine Prescott. She’s one of the murder cases being worked by Murphy and Dubois.”

“What?” he exclaimed a bit too forcefully, and then lowered his voice to a hiss. “An active case? Are you mental? How do you expect me to do that?”

“Says the computer whiz. Oh come on, Kev, I have the utmost faith in you. Besides, I don’t need a detailed report, I just need to know if there were any signs she engaged in sexual activity shortly before her death.”

When he and Paris had Randi over for dinner a couple weeks’ back, he’d managed to cajole the nervous Kevin (“What if someone sees me at your house?”) to come too. Kevin had the most attractive skin color you could imagine, it was a kind of burnished chocolate (his eyes also matched), but otherwise … he looked like a nebbish, the poor guy. He was almost barrel shaped - not fat, just stocky, broad at the chest and shoulder but a little soft in the middle - and his round face seemed to be set in a permanently hangdog expression, like he was the saddest guy on planet earth. (Which may have been the truth; hard to say, he was just so reserved.) He remained fairly quiet through dinner, which wasn’t a big surprise, especially since both Randi and Paris were both so gregarious that they held the floor the entire night.

But Kev hadn’t reacted to Paris like he expected. He glanced at him like “Oh wow, look how attractive that guy is”, but that was it; he didn’t fall in rapt, instant lust like nearly every person whoever met Paris. He acknowledged he was too damn good looking and just seemed to move on. Maybe he didn’t like white guys, he didn’t know. In fact, he knew next to nothing about Kevin - save for privately outing himself to him, Kevin never talked about personal stuff. He talked computer shit, cop shop gossip, maybe small talk like the weather and sports, but almost nothing else. He was so far in the closet that not even his personality peeked out very much. Again, this made him feel very bad for him. What must it be like to be that tightly wound?

But it seemed to bring home the fact that while he knew Kevin, he didn’t actually know Kevin at all. He had no idea what his ultimate motivation was. He couldn’t quite believe that Kev helped him so much because he was gay and he was keeping his secret, but what other motive could he possibly have?

Kevin sighed heavily, and Roan knew he wanted to say no, but he wouldn’t. He never did. “If I’m caught and fired you have to make me a partner,” he hissed, then put him on hold.

While he waited, Paris came home, coming in the door juggling two paper bags (Paris always insisted on paper whenever possible, because he hated those “fucking plastic bags” - this was another strangely passionate hatred of his, like SUVs) and a twelve pack of diet cherry Pepsi. Upon seeing Roan on the couch with the receiver glued to his ear, Paris fixed him with a stern gaze, almost mocking but not quite. “How deep is the shit I’m in?” Roan wondered.

Paris thumped the bags down on the counter, let the twelve pack drop to the floor. He held his hand up level with his chin.

“Crap. I don’t suppose dinner and a movie is going to cover this, huh?”

He shook his head and started unpacking the groceries. “Nope, not even buying me something frilly.”

“Damn it, that was plan B.”

His look wasn’t quite forgiving, but he seemed to be thinking about it. “So what did you dig up without me?”

“Eli was fucking Melissa Prescott.”

He made a dismissive noise, shaking his head in disbelief. “And I call myself a man whore. Eli should give lessons.”

“No. Apparently he’s crap in the sack.”

Paris fixed him with a curious, slightly sardonic gaze. “And you know that how?”

“He said so.”

“He just admitted it? Were you holding him at gunpoint or something?”

“No, just slamming his testicles in a desk drawer.”

Paris chuckled faintly, and Roan knew it was okay. If he could make Par laugh, he couldn’t be that mad at him. “And you didn’t think to capture this on film? We could’ve had it on YouTube by now.”

“I know, I’m a complete idiot.”

“You said it, not me.”

Par finished putting the groceries away, and then walked over to the stereo, sipping from a can of Red Bull. Watching him move in his slightly baggy blue jeans that just barely hovered below waist level and his royal blue t-shirt that wasn’t tight but still showed off his arms and the long line of his back to great effect, he wondered how Kevin could not have fallen in lust Paris. Was he insane? Had he seen his ass?

He crouched down and flipped through some of their CDs; they had a whole bunch of them, and it was easy to tell whose were whose. Roan had the punk and the crunchy guitar stuff, while Paris had a lot of electronic, current “alternative” stuff, and the occasional questionable pop rock CD. Sometimes they found a common ground - Roan could tolerate Franz Ferdinand and Interpol; Paris could tolerate Pansy Division and Nine Black Alps - but many times they clashed. “Keane or Orbital?” Par asked.

“Door number three.”

“Pick one or I choose.”

“Oh fuck. Can’t you choose -”

“No,” he interrupted, punching the button on the CD player and opening the tray. “You’re running out of time.”

“This is a reflection of how mad you are at me, isn’t it?”

Paris didn’t answer, he just put in a shiny silver disc and hit the close button, putting the CD case back in the rack before he could see what it was. “I guess you’ll find out,” he finally replied, turning the sound down until it was barely audible, giving him some peace for his call. It was the opening strains of “Under The Iron Sea” that drifted down from the speakers set high up on the walls, and he figured that meant he had forgiven him. If Par was still really pissed off, it’d be Orbital thumping down at him.

Kev came back on the phone with a huff of breath, as if he’d just sat down. “You do shit for my blood pressure,” he accused.

“But you didn’t get caught, did you? What did it say?”

“Nada. No sign of any … uh, you know.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary at all? Nothing of note?”

“No, just death via gunshot wound to the head.” There was a pause, and Roan suddenly wondered if he had gotten a copy and was looking at it at his desk. He was in vice - that was fucking risky to look at a homicide file there. Wait a second - where the hell did he get it from anyways? “She had some damage to her back teeth that was consistent with bulimia; you know how all that stomach acid damages the enamel. Although morning sickness probably didn’t help.”

Roan sat forward, only doubting what he’d heard because Kevin was talking so softly. “What?”

“She was about three weeks’ pregnant at the time of her death.”