“I know,” he interrupted hastily. “I know, I’m a total pain in the ass. But I got somethin’ for you.”

Save him from the amateur detectives. “What?”

“Noah’s real address. I called around, I know some guys who -”

“I have his address,” he interrupted, not bothering to hide his annoyance. “He lives at the trailer park with his mother.”

“No, he doesn’t. I mean, he gets his check there, he gives that as his official address, but it’s not true. It’s only his mail drop off point, ‘cause he doesn’t want anybody knowin’ where he actually stays, y‘know. But he’s had Elvez over, and he told Trip about it.”

He was positive Matt wasn’t using again or just high on caffeine, wasn’t he? “Trip?”

“Another bike messenger. It’s short for Tripod, which is -”

“I can guess where that came from,” Roan told him, digging his notebook out of his coat pocket. “Where is it that Noah supposedly lives?”

“Over on Jefferson, at a place called Sun Hill. Apartment 32.”

Even as Roan wrote it down, he found himself looking at it in disbelief. “Sun Hill on Jefferson Avenue?”

“That’d be it. You know it?”

“I’m surprised you don’t.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Almost as bad as Wildwood.” It was another tenement, and in fact it was just a mere two blocks down from the Wildwood. It was smaller, and was on a block more known for its bars and convenience stores than its apartments, but if you wanted to live somewhere where no one noticed you engaging in illegal activities - ranging from drugs to prostitution to outright murder - that was the place you went. No one ever saw anything, even if it happened right in front of them. There was a high concentration of high risk parolees there, as the landlord of Sun Hill ironically used to be one himself. (Admittedly it was back in the ‘70’s, but he still seemed a bit too creepy. His fondness for polyester shirts was unnatural.) “I know bike messengers don’t make much, but he’d be better off living in the trailer park than in that shit hole. I don’t suppose Trip knows why Noah would be there.”

“Well, Elvez supposedly asked him about that, and Noah said he didn’t like living with his Mom ‘cause she was a total drunk and a slut and all sorts of shit like that. He said he got his mail there ‘cause he still checks on his brother and sister, and he didn’t want them knowin’ where to find him.”

He wasn’t sure he followed that. “He doesn’t want his family to know where he lives?”

Matt clicked his tongue, like he was being stupid on purpose. “No - them. Y’know, the government and that sorta shit.”

“He’s a conspiracy nut?”

“I dunno, nobody’s quite sure. They think he might be born again, y’know, ‘cause he has this, like, fundamentalist view on things. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he thinks all drug dealers and users should be executed, that sort of thing.”

Now Roan was very glad he stayed. It didn’t matter the religion - all extremism was bad, and most extremists could be convinced to commit violence with the right prompting. It wasn’t a huge leap from being intolerant to being deadly. Of course he was a cynic who believed everyone could become a killer, given the right circumstances, but that just meant he took too much of his work home with him.

Matt continued talking, which was par for the course. “He’s never been seen out on a date either, or ever talks about a girlfriend, y’know. Some think he may be gay but in the closet, but I think he’s just asexual, y’know? ‘Cause he doesn’t set off my gaydar; he just sets off my “creepy straight guy” - dar … which doesn’t exactly sound right, but you know what I mean.”

“Because he seems to have no sex life or social life?”

“Right.”

“Which just supports the religious extremist supposition.” And did you have a lot of time to date when you were planning to murder a large group of people? Getting away with murder usually required some planning.

Matt seemed to pause for an abnormal amount of time. “I have no idea what that word was, but you sound very manly saying it.”

He chuckled, but he shouldn’t have. He didn’t want to encourage him. “Thanks, I try. Is it likely any of these friends of yours will tell Noah you were asking after him?”

He snorted, a partial laugh mixed with a scoff. “No. Even the guys that kinda like him find him creepy.”

“Does that include Elvez?”

“Oh yeah. He’s nice to everybody, y’know, but you can tell he isn’t sure what to make of him. Still, it isn’t like Noah has any other friends.”

At least that his work friends and other peripheral acquaintances knew of. He probably kept his lives separate like a good boy.

He’d been watching Elvez and Noah throughout this conversation, but now he saw Noah grab for his cell phone like it was ringing, but he didn’t talk into it, he just looked at the screen, and his face went astonishingly blank. A text message? Roan guessed that whatever the message was, it didn’t make him happy, and he was struggling not to show it. If he was right, he expected Noah to make an excuse and leave, and it looked like that was exactly what he was doing. “Matt, I have to go. Thanks for your help, but stop it now. I don’t want to have to save your ass again.”

“Yes mom,” he said sarcastically, but he could hear the smile in his voice. “If this bastard killed Ash, nail him to the wall.”

“I intend to.” He flipped his phone shut and dropped it back in his pocket as Noah got up, leaving his coffee cup behind, and retrieved his bike. Roan’s binoculars were also the kind that folded up, so he was able to put those away and leave the bank just as Noah started pedaling North down the main drag. Roan figured he could follow on foot, he knew he had the stamina to run after him no matter how far he went, but then he’d be at the mercy of the traffic, and he’d be pretty conspicuous.

His bike was pretty conspicuous in the sense that it was a motorcycle, and a very nice motorcycle at that, but it gave him the ability to be more mobile than a car in this traffic, especially while on the trail of a bike messenger. The trick was keeping far enough back that Noah - whom he had to assume was a paranoid sort - wouldn’t suspect he was being followed.

He tried to guess where Noah was heading based on his general direction, but he was shocked by where he actually went: the Kinko’s where Reese Campbell was the manager. Wasn’t that a coincidence?

He parked the bike in an alley beside the dollar teriyaki place, hiding it behind the rather smelly dumpster, and strolled into the Kinko’s (it wasn’t like either Reese or Noah knew who he was). The copy place was surprisingly busy, but he recognized Reese right away - Amy Campbell had a chatty MySpace page full of pictures of herself, her husband, and some of her friends (surprisingly, she didn’t mention her politics either) - a bald man whose scalp had a sunburned reddish tinge, and whose gut strained at his button down white shirt. He was talking to Noah on the far side of the shop, a counter between them, their voices so hushed he couldn’t hear them over the noise of copying, faxing, and customers, but he could tell from their body postures that Noah was upset about something, and while Reese wasn’t happy either he was trying to calm the boy down. He watched them from the corner of his eye as he pretended to be fascinated by the amount of papers available, and it suddenly occurred to him what might have upset Noah: Jordan had just been arrested. Could all three men be connected?

He could connect Reese to Barlow, and Noah to Barlow only through his mother, but Jordan was a non-starter as far as they knew. Maybe a little more digging into his background was necessary. But Roan was uncomfortable with the conspiracy he was starting to smell here. The reason why most killers worked solo - beyond the obvious fact that serial murderers usually killed as some grotesque parody of intimacy - was the same reason vast conspiracies rarely existed: the more people involved, the more likely someone was to talk or to fuck up. Yet if there was a group behind the killings, plotting, planning, perhaps sharing gunman duties, it might explain why the cops had absolutely zero to go on. They were looking for a single killer, but in fact there was group that had managed to plan its hits pretty well. But the thing about groups was there was often a fragile dynamic, and it was more than possible that yanking one of the people out could cause the whole thing to collapse.

The best case scenario was they were able to hold Jordan for a while, he wouldn’t lawyer up immediately, and he broke and sang like a drunken American Idol contestant, but Roan knew better than to count on best case scenarios. If he could make a solid connection here between Jordan and Barlow, he could call up Murphy, apologize profusely for running his own investigation on an active case, and turn it all over to her. He honestly didn’t care that he’d get no credit at all, and might in fact get a lot of shit - he just wanted these fuckers stopped.

He was trying to work out how such a cabal might function as Noah finally left, and Reese turned and headed back into his office, looking sweaty and vaguely dyspeptic. It would make the most sense, efficiency wise, if the duties were split: one to hack the New Horizons system and pick out the likely targets, another to scout and confirm target (they had to have some knowledge of when these people were home, when they were alone, when their streets or apartment buildings weren‘t so busy), another to drive, and the last to do the shooting. So a minimum of four people? Noah, Reese, Jordan, and … Barlow? The math tracked, but he wasn’t sure the people did. Who amongst them was a hacker? And who was the most likely triggerman?

He couldn’t follow Noah out instantly, so that pretty much meant he’d lost the tail, but not really. Matt - super annoying puppy that he was - had given him Noah’s real, “secret” address. He had time to go home, trade the bike for the rental car, grab his laptop, and stake out Sun Hill until Noah got home. And where he went after work might be a hell of a lot more illuminating than following him on his rounds through the city.

He felt his cell vibrate in his pocket on the drive home, but there was no way to use a bike and talk on a cell at the same time (well, maybe with one of those hands free models, but he wasn‘t sure how that would fit on his head along with the helmet), so he just let it go, figuring they’d call back if it was important. When it started buzzing a second time less than a minute later, he pulled off into a gas station and answered the phone.

It was Paris. “I just got the weirdest call from Barlow,” he said. Did he sound slightly breathless? He thought he had before. He was okay, wasn’t he?

“Weird how?”

“He wanted to meet me as soon as possible. He said it was really important but he couldn’t talk about it over the phone. I agreed to meet him at the Road House at five thirty. Isn’t that interesting timing?”

It definitely was. Was that who Reese had called? Had he gone back to his office after talking to Noah and called Tim? “Tres suspicious. Was Jordan taken in?”

“Oh yeah. I told Eli what I’d found, and when the cops arrived, Eli gave them permission to search the shed, since it’s his property. They found the gun, Jordan claimed he’d never seen it before and had no idea how it got there, but a routine run on his name turned up a bench warrant. Seems he got a DUI in Fairview last year and never showed up in court.” He paused briefly. “Did you just say tres suspicious ? Could you be more gay? Is that possible?”

He smirked, trying hard not to laugh. “Girlfriend, please.”

“You’re doing the snaps, aren’t you? You can’t say that without the snaps.” Paris let that hang for a moment, just long enough to signal the topic shift. “What do you think’s going on, Ro?”

“I think Reese, Noah, Barlow, and Jordan are all in on this. There’s enough concern about Jordan being taken in that I suspect he was vital to the next hit. Maybe that is the gun that’s been used in his tool kit, or they’re afraid a search of his home or car will turn up something incriminating.”

“Or he’ll talk.”

“All potential disasters.”

“How do you think they’re all connected?”

So Roan explained what he’d just seen, and what Matt had told him about Noah. Paris’s reaction to this was a succinct, “Well, shit.”

“I think we may have kicked over a hornet’s nest here.”

“So why do you think Tim needs to see Kevin so badly?”

That was a good question, and there were a couple of troubling possibilities. “It seems early to slot you into Jordan’s place.”

“Too bad. If they asked me if I wanted to kill someone, we could get them arrested on the spot.”

He rubbed his eyes, trying to work out the timing of staking out Noah and listening in on Paris and Barlow, and he knew almost immediately that he couldn’t do it. He had never been able to bilocate, and it was unlikely he’d learn to do it in the next couple of hours. “Yeah, but I doubt they’ll make it that easy for us. Listen, since I’m going to be tailing Noah, I’m gonna call Phil and see if he has an operative free that can shadow you tonight, okay?” Phil was the fellow private detective who ran a huge operation over in Springfield, and they occasionally helped each other out. Phil owed him, because the last gig they did together it was Par and him working as floaters at that conference Phil was providing security for. That’s where he got all the name tags for their appliances.

Par scoffed. “I don’t need a shadow. I can handle myself.”

“I know you can, but you’re meeting with a guy who may be in a super group of serial killers. Even I wouldn’t go into a situation like that alone.”

“Bullshit.”

“Par, please, don’t do this now.”

“You’re tailing Noah alone, aren’t you? He’s in the same super group if you’re right.”

“Yes, but he’s never going to know I’m tailing him.”

“Ideally.”

“Yes, and if I dumb enough to let him see me, I deserve what I get.” He sighed, aware that this discussion could go nowhere positive. “I don’t want to fight. You don’t send someone into the field alone, and that’s that. I’m not going into the field, I’m loitering on the sidelines. You’re going in, and you’re having back up.”

Par let out an exasperated sigh, and Roan glanced at the traffic gliding by on the road. People honked as risky lane changes almost caused accidents, and that was always the first sign that rush hour was almost here. People’s driving got worse and worse as more cars got on the road, and he wasn’t sure how that worked, but it did. Maybe it was the auto corollary of people being stupider in larger groups than they were on their own. “Is that why you went after your shooter all by yourself?”

Oh, he should have known he was going to trot that out. “I didn’t. I called Gordo and Seb as back up. Ask them if you don‘t believe me.”

“And not me?”

“You’re not police - you couldn’t have arrested this crackhead fucker.” As soon as that escaped his mouth, he regretted it, and rolled his eyes at his own stupidity.

“He was a crackhead?” Paris repeated in angry disbelief. “Jesus Christ, Roan! No wonder you weren’t going to tell me about it.”

“It wasn’t that big a deal, really. It sounds worse than it was …”

“How badly did you get hurt?”

“You saw it for yourself, just some kidney punches.”

“Fuck you. That’s after you partially transformed and healed yourself. What happened before?”

“Nothing. The guy was high and inept, and he didn’t have his gun. Ask Gordo if you don’t believe me.” Okay, that was a partial lie, but not by much. Sam didn’t crush any bones in his neck when he attempted to strangle him, and repeatedly head butting him hadn’t done any harm to his hard head. He glanced at his watch, the cuff one that was covering his Leo tattoo. It just seemed like the best idea on a stake out, just in case. “Look, meet me at home, we can argue there.”

“I don’t want to argue.”

“Neither do I! So what the hell’s this about?”

Again with the exasperated sigh, but at least it didn’t sound as angry this time. “Don’t shut me out, Ro. I’m getting the sense that you are, and I’m not sure what I’ve done to make you do that.”

Oh great, just what he needed: industrial strength guilt. “God, Paris, it’s not you. I just … I don’t know how to handle this. Just be patient with me, okay?”

“I have been, hon, but I can only wait so long before I start to feel like a complete idiot.”

“You’re not; you’ve never been that.”

“My sisters will disagree with you,” he replied, a humorous tinge to his voice. But it faded away long before he added, “I’ll see you at home.”

He hung up after Paris did, wondering if he was fucking this up. He just wasn’t good with relationships; he was used to being on his own, doing things on his own, relying on no one but himself. It made things infinitely easier. Lonely, sure, but easier. He trusted Paris, he knew that he did and could, and yet it was still so hard for him to do so in a meaningful way. He was so accustomed to betrayal and disappointment, and he didn’t even think it was anyone’s fault; the human animal seemed built for betrayal, for the casual meting out of pain, and he almost expected it on some level, even though he never abided it when it happened. There was a difference between expectation and acceptance, and he was proud he hadn’t crossed that line.

He wished he was one of those guys who was good at anonymous, quickie sex, but even that required a level of trust he wasn’t comfortable handing out to just anyone. He probably should have been straight, as he figured he was an awful gay man, but that just wasn’t how he turned out.

Life was full of perversity like that.

****

Once he got home, he changed into another set of anonymous clothes - he did go into the Kinko’s, after all - and did another search on Noah Hammond, but it was much the same as before: he was so squeaky clean he could have been an honorary Mormon. A search on the address Matt provided him showed that that apartment had supposedly been rented out to a “John Smith”. Incredible. Was no one good at thinking up pseudonyms anymore?

Paris came home with some take out Vietnamese food, and for a little while they just pretended that everything was okay, but there was an obvious awkwardness. While he was eating his curry, he decided to tell Paris, with no preamble, about the scar on his chest.

He hadn’t been in a lot of abusive foster homes; most foster parents were do-gooders who meant well. The problems were the people who actually thought this was an easy way to get money from the state (it wasn’t), or one person who wanted to be a foster parent in a couple and the other who didn’t, but went along with it anyways. They were usually quite bitter and resentful, and usually took it out on the kids.

So was the case with the Swansons. Phyllis was a church happy do-gooder who saw helping these kids as “god’s work” - Roan found her overbearing, but he appreciated that she never tried to convert him. Henry was different; Henry was an extremely angry, controlling man who, in a clinch, got intimidated by Phyllis. Roan suspected that he had an Oedipal complex that he never got over, and he saw Phyllis as much as his mother as his wife (Henry’s mother was a scary, creepy old Bible thumper, so the through line between her and Phyllis was pretty obvious). Henry had a tendency to smack him around when Phyllis was at one of her many church functions, which was often.

Sometimes he wondered if being exposed to so many dysfunctional heterosexual relationships was why he so happily embraced being gay, but honestly he had no idea. It was fun to think about, though.

His memories of childhood were very fuzzy things; he only remembered scraps, most of them bad. He could remember being in the Swansons garage, for example, but he could no longer remember why he was there. Henry was mad at him for something again - and again he couldn’t remember why, but that wasn’t his bad memory; that was because he rarely knew why Henry was mad at him beyond the fact that he simply existed - and Henry made to smack him, but Roan saw it coming and was big enough at this stage to catch his arm and shove it back; he was ten, after all. This infuriated Henry more, so he grabbed something blindly off his work bench (which was actually little used, as Henry had no patience for anything), and hit Roan with it. He jumped back, avoiding most of it, but what Henry had picked up and hit him with was a saw, and the tip of the saw caught him, the teeth sharp enough to rip open his shirt and the skin beneath. Blood was everywhere before Roan even realized he’d been cut, and it even seemed to take Henry a moment to grasp it. He could still remember the naked terror on his face, making him look a thousand years old as he held the bloody saw, and then his eyes drifted towards it, and when he saw the blood running down the blade he threw it across the garage like the metal was so hot it was burning his skin. He started shouting for Roan to get away from him, so horrified his skin had turned the color of old oatmeal, and fled the garage like he had the devil on his ass. It took him a moment to work out why, it wasn’t like he’d hit him with the saw, but then he figured it out as blood continued pouring down his chest, turning his shirt red, dribbling down his jeans and pooling on the oil stained cement floor.

It took him a moment to understand why Henry was so freaked out, but then he tried to staunch the blood with his hand, and that was when he got it: his blood. His diseased, pestilent blood. He was suddenly full of rage, just furious, and he began splattering his blood all over the garage, collecting it in his hands and flinging it all over the room, smearing it on the walls, the workbench and tools, even Henry’s car. He wanted to bleed to death, he hoped he did, as his disease would taint this fucking place and everything in it. He wanted them to live with it, to live with this. He was so angry he knew he was acting like a fucking crazy person, but he couldn’t stop; his rage was bigger than he was. He thought he was screaming, but he didn’t know for sure; he remembered nothing but red hot rage.

An ambulance team arrived - Henry had said that Roan had “accidentally” cut himself - and he still remembered the laconic, sleepy eyed EMT who knew immediately that Henry’s story made no sense with the wound involved, and that he’d lost an awful lot of blood for someone who’d “just” done it. He could remember that the patch on his jacket said O’Neil, and he had hair the color of driftwood, and his touch on the cut was very gentle; he suspected O’Neil was his very first crush. Although his partner, a wiry guy who seemed more comfortable around Henry than around the kid with the diseased blood, seemed nervous, O’Neil was too much of a pro to care. He looked him square in the eyes (he could barely remember the color of O’Neil’s eyes, but he was pretty sure they were as brown as his hair) and said, “You didn’t do this to yourself, did you?” Roan shook his head, and glared over O’Neil’s broad shoulder at the cringing, terrified figure of Henry in the garage doorway. He didn’t need to say it - out of the four of them in the garage, three of them knew what had happened. The EMTs took him to the hospital, and he never went back to the Swansons again. He ended up back at a state foster care group home, and they said he’d probably be left with a nasty scar, but it had faded pretty well over time. Oh sure it was still there, a ghost scar that seemed to trace the contour of his collarbone where the tip of the saw had gotten caught in his skin, but it had healed a lot more cleanly than anyone had ever expected.

While he told the story he’d kept looking down at his curry, moving the vegetables and chicken pieces around the Styrofoam container, rearranging rice that was the color of saffron. He didn’t want to see what was on Par’s face, because he was afraid he wouldn’t like it. But after he told his story, Par reached across the breakfast bar and put his hand over his, and gasped, “Oh god, sweetheart, that’s horrible. I hope they threw his ass in jail.”

He shook his head, sparing a quick glance at Paris. His eyes were shining with empathetic tears, but none of them had fallen, and he was glad about that. “No, nothing really happened to him; the laws were a bit looser then, you understand, a little abuse here and there was tolerated more. I just hope it took him eighty years to decontaminate his fucking garage.”

Paris squeezed his hand, and he looked indignant as well as sad. “If I ever find the guy, I don’t care if he’s a multiple amputee in an old people’s home, I’m kicking his fucking ass. Hitting a kid with a saw?! Jesus.”

He leaned over the bar and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

That seemed to startle Paris, or at least deeply confuse him. “What for?”

“For caring, for putting up with me. I can barely stand myself at the best of times.”

Paris reached across, burying his hand in his hair, and pulled his head over the bar, meeting him half way and kissing him full on the mouth. He tasted like sweet green tea and bo kho. After the kiss, he leaned his forehead against his for a moment, and Roan felt a surprising surge of relief. He hadn’t fucked this up too much; this wasn’t beyond fixing. “You are a wonderful, amazing man,” Paris told him. “And if you don’t give yourself a break, I’m gonna kick your ass too.”

That made him smile. He probably meant it too, but it was still oddly touching.

He called Phil after their combo lunch-dinner (well he was on a stake out tonight, and Paris was meeting Barlow in a seedy bar - this was probably their last chance to eat for a while), and luckily he was able to dispatch Jamal, who didn’t have any open cases at the moment. He knew Jamal; he was ex-military intelligence, like Phil himself, but he had a better sense of humor in general. He was on the short side, but built like a fireplug, and he had no doubt at all that if things went really horrible that Jamal could kick the ass of the entire population of the bar and not even break a sweat, which was exactly the type of person he wanted shadowing Par tonight. Paris and Jamal decided to meet in the parking lot of a Wendy’s just over from the Road House and work out the cues in case something went wrong. (Unlikely, but it was always vital to have them.)

Roan left in the rental first, feeling a bit better about things in general. Admittedly the records search on Jordan turned up nothing that connected him in any way to Barlow or Reese or Noah, it just reinforced Eli’s view that he was a “fuck up”. Clearly he had problems with alcohol, as he had a few DUIs on his record, and a couple of arrests for public drunkenness and urinating in public (classy again), although none since last year. He seemed like the type you didn’t want in on an intricate assassination plan, so Roan couldn’t imagine they used him for anything really important. He was close to Eli, though - did he tell them how best to frame him?

He parked down the street from Sun Hill, in front of an abandoned building whose broken windows were covered with wooden planks and gang tags, and was once again glad he insisted on tinted windows on the Taurus. Since he assumed he was in for a long stake out, he brought a thermos full of hot, sweet black tea (full of caffeine and sugar - a one two punch that should keep him hyper alert), a sizable empty plastic bottle to pee in (disgusting, but necessary when you couldn’t leave your post to piss), and an audio book that he slipped into the CD player. It was a Stephen King one, so it’d last all night, and possibly into next morning. At least audio books made these long, dull stake outs a bit more tolerable.

He tried to focus on the front of Sun Hill and ignore all the drug deals going on around him, as well as the johns picking up the occasional prostitute (mostly female, but a couple male; in fact, he recognized two of the women, DeeDee and Cherry, and one of the boys, Justin, from his time on the police beat). He’d been there for a bit over an hour, sunset making the sky cycle through the spectacular crimson shades that you could only see in polluted areas, a red explosion like neon blood painted across the bottom of the clouds, when a car far too nice for the area pulled up to the curb outside Sun Hill. It was a silver ‘04 Audi A8 with some minor denting in the back, but still a lot newer and classier than any car that ever parked around here (some of the johns’ cars were extremely expensive, making you wonder why they were trolling for cheap tail down here). As he took a photo of the plate, he saw a woman get out, and she instantly struck him as familiar.

She was petite with a very slender, willowy frame, her black hair styled in a short pixie cut that just reinforced the youthfulness of her elfin face; she looked barely legal, but she carried herself like a much older woman, making her true age a crapshoot. She looked around nervously, giving him a good look and shot of her profile as she drew her leather jacket around her anxiously and walked into the plain brick building that was the Sun Hill Apartments.

Holy shit. It was Mia DeSoto.