This was a motel near the freeway off ramp, one that was a collection of single units in two separate lines around a cracked and pitted parking lot that had seen better decades. In fact, the entire motel had seen better decades, even though it was built in the ‘80’s in a late ‘70’s style, and probably the very second construction was ceased, the place looked like it needed a new coat of paint. It still needed that coat of paint, some new shingles, and a full scale decontamination. Even the big sign that advertised its name and ability to rent by the hour had notable holes in it, making it look like the “ite Ow Mot l” from one side.

There were a few cars in the lot, most battered, and one water company truck. The office was at the very end of the lot, and quite tellingly, the motel desk was hidden behind bullet proof glass, like this was a bank and not a cheap fly by night motel.

As soon as Kevin came in, the man in the bullet proof booth said, “We want no trouble here. You go away now.” The man looked like a mad scientist from a Troma film, with a messy shock of silver hair that stood up as if he’d been recently electrocuted, a weathered, long face with a prominent chin and thick eyebrows that were still the deep brown color that his hair used to be, his eyes a filmy, corrupted blue beneath thick lenses. His accent was thick and Eastern European.

“I need to find Park - Colt. Is he here?” Kevin asked, undeterred by the man’s free floating hostility.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he barked, waving a hand at him. “Go away.” He glanced behind Kevin’s shoulder at him and Paris, and gave them a dirty look. This made Roan flash him an insincere, toothy grin. As expected, that visibly unnerved him.

Kevin took out his cell phone and held it up. “Tell me or I call in a raid. I heard gunshots here. Didn’t you guys hear gunshots?”

“Oh yeah,” Roan agreed.

“Seven or eight, I think,” Paris added.

The mad scientist scowled evilly, bringing out new lines in his face. Roan had judged him to be in his forties, but now he adjusted that to his fifties. “Fine,” he spat, with a surprising amount of venom. “You cops always harassing the small businessman. He is in … one of the rooms. I don’t remember which one. One of the Western units. I want no trouble here.”

“You won’t get any,” Kevin assured him. “Thank you.”

As they left the small hotbox of the office, Roan heard him cursing them under his breath in what sounded like Russian.

“Where the hell did they get that dude?” Paris wondered, almost laughing.

“Yegevny?” Kevin replied, walking towards what must have been the “Western” units - they were on the left side, the ones closest to the road. “He immigrated here from Estonia in ‘96.”

“Estonia?” Roan repeated, impressed. He’d never met anyone from Estonia before.

“Yeah, I know. There are rumors he was a low level Russian mobster who fucked something up so bad he had to run for his life and get lost in the States, leading to him running this shitbag motel.”

“Fun rumor,” Roan said. “Probably not true, though.”

“Probably not, but isn’t it neat?” Kevin agreed, flashing an unaccustomed smile.

“He’s not a pimp, is he?” Paris wondered.

Kevin shook his head. “Naw, not that we know of, but he does get kickbacks from the hookers who are regulars here. They pay him to keep his eye off the clock, mostly. There are also rumors there are web cams in some of the rooms, and Yegevny makes extra money on the side through online porn, which gets kickbacks to the hookers, but again, prove it.”

Close up, the motel units looked even worse, with their white paint nearly brown from road grime, and peeling off in big flaky strips, like the skin of a bad sunburn victim. There used to be trim around the small, postage stamp windows, but they had worn away to where you could see the naked wood beneath. Kevin pounded on the first door with a meaty fist, and bellowed, “Colt! We need to talk!”

An annoyed woman’s voice shouted, “He ain’t here, you dumb motherfucker! Try number three!”

So they walked down two doors, and Kevin did the pounding routine again. “Colt! Get out here! It’s urgent!”

Roan was pretty sure he heard a faint “What the fuck ..?” inside the room, and it looked like the industrial blue flower patterned curtains rustled, although he saw no one look out. After almost a minute, Colt came out, shirtless and sweaty and reeking of sex and drugs.

In person he looked more youthful than his mug shot would have lead you to believe. He had fine bone structure, which made him look even younger, although his pale blue eyes were wide and wild with drugs, the artificial euphoria making them look almost lively. His neck tattoo, a tribal mishmash of jagged triangles like shark fins and swirls like the wake they left behind them in the water, started on the left side of his throat and spilled down in a black cascade to just above his left pectoral, where a gold plated nipple ring occasionally caught a passing headlight and glinted at them. His chest was smooth and hairless, and he was so skinny his stomach was almost concave, the black boarder’s shorts he pulled on barely hanging on to the bony points of his narrow hips. “What the hell’s going on, Kevin?” His eyes then scudded towards him and Paris, and he studied them for quite a few moments, lingering on Paris especially. “Look, I’m busy right now, but if you wanna party, fine. I just need cash up front. Although wow, you got some cute ones here. Why d’ya need me?”

Because Kevin was a darker skinned black man, it was basically impossible to see him blush, but just from the set of his shoulders and the way he stared almost aggressively down at the asphalt told Roan he would have been blushing had he been able to see it. This exchange confirmed a suspicion he’d had since Kevin had recognized Parker right away, and he didn’t know what to do with the feeling. He was just glad the Vicodin was giving him distance, or he suspected he would have punched Kevin in the arm. “Colt, were you at Panic earlier this evening?” Kevin asked, finally looking up at the hustler.

The boy was flying. Roan could smell meth in his sweat, but he thought he picked up something else too, maybe ecstasy. His skater shorts weren’t quite baggy enough to hide a continuing chemically induced erection. “Why would I go to a fag club?”

That was the thing about male hustlers: not all of them were gay. Yeah, their clients were men - women hiring a man for sex was just wishful thinking on the man’s part - but they were generally junkies and street kids looking to survive any way they could. The younger a guy looked, the more he usually made in the hustling game. He just had to be able to fake desire for a man and fuck them or tolerate getting fucked, however it went. And again, the better you were, the more you made. Parker looked like a classic twink, a seventeen year old who should probably be at home working a Playstation or behind the counter at The Gap rather than servicing a desperate man, so Roan was mildly surprised he was working such a shit place; you’d have thought a guy with his looks could work somewhere better.

Kevin looked deeply disappointed, and his voice took on a rare harsh edge. “You were spotted there. Don’t lie; things will be a hell of a lot worse for you if you lie.”

Parker was clearly stoned out of his fucking mind; he was swaying standing on his feet, and his hands were twitching like he was sculpting something in the air. He rolled his eyes and his hands rose briefly, like birds struggling for flight. “I was paid not to talk, ‘kay? It was a special job, and the guy had some E, so I was cool, okay? What’s the BFD?”

“This guy - can you describe him?”

Parker stared at Kevin as if he was very far away, a dark blot in the distance, still wavering like he was on the deck of a storm tossed boat. “I dunno. He was just a guy. What the fuck’s this about?”

Kevin grabbed Parker by his shoulders, attempting to steady him. “Tell me what this man hired you for.”

Parker broke free of Kevin’s hold, but in the process stumbled and almost fell. “Whatever, man. The dude said his buddy hadn’t gotten laid in a long time and he wanted to give him a birthday present, but he didn’t want him to know I was bought. So I was to pick him up at the club and go back to his place, fuck him, and get out once he showed up.”

“The man who hired you showed up?”

Parker attempted to nod, but stopped, as he seemed to be making himself dizzy. “Yeah. I’d barely blown the guy by the time he did. He showed up sooner than I thought. But why did I give a fuck? Easiest hundred bucks I ever made. And free E. I saved most of it for myself.”

That statement finally made Roan speak up. “What do you mean you saved most of it for yourself? He wanted you to dose Eric with ecstasy?”

Parker stared at him belligerently, but seemed to get distracted. “Your hair’s a funny color, isn’t it? Do you dye it? I hate guys with red pubic hair.”

Here was the downside of drugs; Vicodin had lulled him into a false sense of security. “Parker, st -”

“My name’s Colt!” He suddenly shouted, with a surprising amount of vehemence. “When I’m working, I’m Colt! Don’t call me that.”

Roan mentally chided himself for such a stupid mistake. It was actually relatively common for hookers to have a “working” identity and a real one, and separate the two, as if they were two different people. It was almost like they could put all the degradation and humiliation of their lives on the “working” identity and remain otherwise untouched. As far as he knew, that had never actually worked. “I’m sorry, I forgot, Colt. No offense intended. Did he want you to dose Eric with ecstasy before you seduced him?”

His head twitched to the side, either a nervous tic or a drug induced spasm. Either way, it only happened once, and Parker acted like it hadn’t happened at all. “Eric ..? Oh, wait, the Asian guy? Yeah, the guy said he was uptight, that’s why he hadn’t gotten his rocks off lately.”

And it compromised Eric entirely, made him let his guard down, and left him vulnerable to the attack that took his life. The fact that he still attempted to fight back was a credit to him. It was possible that Colt was lying, making this vague story up, but right now he seemed too stoned to be capable of a decent deception; he was naked in his honesty, only because he didn’t have the sense to realize he should cover his ass.

Kevin seemed to understand that too. In his gentlest voice, he told Parker, “You need to get dressed and come with me. I need you to identify the man who hired you.”

He stared at him, barely seeing through the haze of his high. “Why? What the fuck’s this about, Kevin?”

He kept addressing Kevin in a familiar, casual manner, and it made Roan’s stomach twinge. It could have been just the casual relationship between a sympathetic cop and the hustler who saw him as a rare friendly face, but there was something in their tones of voice and their body language that said that wasn’t it. Roan just had too much on his plate to deal with this right now. “He’s trying to set you up, Colt,” Kevin told him, in that same casual manner. “We need to stop him before he’s successful.”

Parker just kept staring at him, like he was having trouble focusing on Kevin’s face. “Set me up for what?”

Kevin dodged the question. “I’ll tell you on the way. Okay?”

Parker looked uncertain, but was too tweaked to hold on to the thought for long. What it came down to was he trusted Kevin, cop or not. Finally he shrugged, and said, “I’m done with this guy anyways. His time’s up. Gimme a minute.” He staggered back to his room, and left the door slightly ajar.

Roan turned to Kevin, and fixed him with a caustic look. “We’re going to talk about this later, right?”

Kevin met his eyes briefly, but quickly looked down at the parking lot, trying hard to pretend he wasn’t ashamed and failing miserably. “It’s not what you think.”

“God, I hope not,” he said, and then turned and stalked off back to the GTO.

Paris remained quiet until they got back on the road. “He’s a very lonely guy,” he said, sounding both sympathetic and apologetic.

Roan looked at him askance. “He doesn’t have to be; he made the choice. He’s in a prison of his own design.”

“Maybe, but not all of us are as brave as you.”

He snorted derisively. “Like bravery has anything to do with it. Are straights vaunted for their bravery at being so aggressively hetero? It’s who I am, and it’s who he is. I don’t know who he’s pretending for.”

“He has his reasons. Just like I have my reasons for not telling my parents I’m infected.”

He frowned, really not liking the comparison - which he honestly felt was spurious anyways - but he let it go. If Paris wanted to feel some sympathetic kinship with Kevin, he could, but there was a huge difference in not telling your parents you were dying of bizarre, vicious disease and paying for sex from hustlers on the down low because you couldn’t be honest and admit you were gay.

But maybe one form as denial was just as good as another.

****

Back at home, Roan called Matt after ordering them a pizza (he still hadn’t gone shopping yet), and asked him who he’d told about Eric witnessing Thora being grabbed off the street. Matt sounded tired, as if totally exhausted and unable to muster being upset, or perhaps it was just the anti-depressives he was on, wringing all the strong feelings out of him.

Roan remembered his own brief flirtation with anti-depressives. After Con had killed himself, his depression was clearly visible to others, as someone reported him to the sergeant, and he got sent to the department therapist. He didn’t mention Con to her, mainly because he couldn’t; just contemplating saying his name aloud made it feel like someone was twisting a knife made of ice deep inside of him. He also wouldn’t talk about his troubled childhood, and talking about being infected didn’t thrill him either. So she decided he was probably a “burn out” depressive, and prescribed him Prozac. Out of curiosity, he tried some, and found it left him emotionally flat, like nothing was all that bad - or that good either. And it triggered a migraine later on, so he flushed all the pills down the toilet and never saw the therapist again. But he still remembered that curious feeling of having all his emotions drained of heft. Nowadays it was almost a tempting thought.

Matt said he told Hannah (of course), and a few of their mutual friends in group, but he was fairly sure he didn’t mention Eric’s name. Still, Roan got the names of those he talked to: Nikki Bartolonis, Trang “Trey” Phan, Drake Stein, and Danae Willis. Roan recognized all those last names from the financial pages save for Stein.

He had a slice of pizza before heading out, hoping Matt was right about Thora’s apartment having a faulty bathroom window. It turned out true, as he was easily able to force the window open and slip inside, careful to wear gloves so he didn’t leave prints, and carrying a flashlight with a red filter. It would be difficult to see from outside, and if it was, most people would think it was reflected brake lights or something, but beyond that, it preserved his night vision. He might not need it, but you never knew.

Matt’s idea of “trashed” and his were obviously quite different, as a thrown over coffee table really didn’t meet his definition. Okay, if she was as OCD as Matt had implied, it was a shocking sight, but to him it almost indicated the aftermath of a snit rather than evidence of a search.

What struck Roan was how devoid this place was of true personalization. Eric didn’t have much space or money, but he still managed to give some indication of his personality in his place; Thora’s apartment was a tasteful blank slate, like a model apartment for Martha Stewart magazine or something. Somebody extremely cleanly with a vague idea of current trends furnished the place, but it seemed like it was for show, not something to be lived in. The fact that she did disturbed him, although he couldn’t say why. Maybe it just seemed wrong for someone to live in such a sterile, pseudo-institutional setting when they had a choice to live differently. Was her mind so disordered she felt a genuine pressure to keep everything on the outside as orderly and controlled as possible? Then he remembered she was anorexic, and wondered if that was it. Anorexia at its core was all about control - you felt so out of control or lacking control in your life that you had to control yourself, to the point where you’d almost kill yourself declaring total dominion over your own body. Had she done that in her own home as well? He really needed to know more about Thora.

Her computer was in her functional, tasteful, and otherwise unappealing bedroom, but even though it looked just fine, he couldn’t boot it up, and it was easy to see why once he futzed with the case: the hard drive had been removed. This was discouraging, although he noticed there was a wireless internet connection, although this computer appeared to be DSL. A second computer? A laptop? If so, the searchers had probably snagged it.

Still, he dutifully searched the apartment for it, on the off chance they missed it. He searched under the bed (no dust bunnies under there - that was almost creepy), through the closet of overly expensive clothes and shoes, through drawers of even more flimsy and expensive lingerie (he was so relieved to find a drawer of schlep clothes, mainly inexpensive Joe Boxer sweats, in the bottom drawer; he’d been fearing for this girl’s sanity), through kitchen cupboards of little used china plates and sparkling glassware, and never used pots and pans so squeaky clean he could have eaten off them right now. There was little food in her cupboards, just some Crystal Light drink mix and a box of Celestial Seasoning’s Sleepytime tea, and her refrigerator was equally bare, with a pitcher of iced tea, a huge bottle of Evian, a bagged salad mix that was slowly starting to go limp and brown scattered about the otherwise empty shelves. He found ice cubes and a bottle of Absolut in her freezer, but the seal on the vodka bottle hadn’t been broken.

There were few places to search in the living room; she had few DVDs and CDs, and all looked quite genuine, not good hiding places. (She liked romantic comedies and contemporary pop music, with little deviation.) He searched the bathroom last, and found a whole host of prescription drug bottles in the mirrored cabinet over the sink. She had several varieties of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds, sleep aids, and a sizable stockpile of valium - she could have opened her own pharmacy. She also had a ton of vitamins and laxatives.

In the cupboard under the sink, he found toilet paper, a bottle of liquid soap, and a huge Costco size box of maxi pads. He attempted to move the box just to get a better look at the back of the cupboard when he realized it was way too heavy for a box of pads. Looking inside, he found her laptop.

It made him chuckle and grudgingly admire her. Most burglars were male, and would they look in a box of maxi pads? Hell no; most men didn’t want to know about female sanitary issues, even if they were heterosexual. Even he wasn’t going to look, he just wanted to do a thorough search. Maybe the man who’d been searching for the laptop had kicked the coffee table over after being unable to find it.

But this added another layer to things. Either she was paranoid, or she thought that someone might want her laptop, that there was something on it that someone else didn’t want anyone to see. She knew she might be in trouble, so she hid it … but didn’t have enough paranoia to be afraid of those that grabbed her? Something wasn’t adding up here, but at least he was on his way to figuring some of this out.

He slipped back out the bathroom window, the laptop wedged under his arm. He felt a little queasy about having to dig through this poor woman’s life, but that was just the deal when you were a private detective. If you couldn’t stand being a voyeur every now and again, this was the wrong job for you.

Back in the car, he found his cell phone going off, and answered it once he got settled and stashed the laptop underneath the passenger seat. No surprise, it was Gordo. “Where the hell have you been?” he carped. “I’ve been calling all fucking day.”

“I’ve been busy. I assume the farm cats have transformed?”

He grunted, still pissed off at him. “Yeah, and some have already transformed back into cats again.”

“But not all.”

“No. A woman named Carmen Serrano is out of her transformation cycle, apparently. But she’s pretty ill. I bet you knew that.”

“I guessed. No record?”

“None. And she wants to talk to you - only to you, in fact.”

Which probably just added to Gordo’s animosity level. “She at the station still?”

“For now. If you don’t hurry up, we’re just going to ship her to County General.”

“I’m on my way,” he assured him, and tossed the phone aside, peeling off his gloves and throwing them in the passenger seat before starting the car.

He really was getting neglectful of his job, but he didn’t know why. He’d gone almost twenty whole minutes without thinking of Paris - if this kept up, it would be a record.

Roan didn’t close the door, though; he didn’t want to touch it, mess up any potential fingerprints, so they simply waited at the end of the hall, just out of the way of the door, so they could see into Eric’s apartment but not see his body. You could only just see a bit of the blood from where Roan was standing.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, arms touching as they faced the door at the opposite end of the corridor, the one that the cops would have to come through to enter the building, and the contact was comforting after seeing Eric’s fresh corpse. It was horrible to think that the last time they saw him, they were secretly laughing at him. He wished he could apologize to him now, even though Eric probably never knew. “This is my fault,” he said, thinking aloud.

Paris didn’t turn his head, but the gaze out of the corner of his eyes was sharp. “No it’s not. You didn’t stab him.”

“If I had taken the case more seriously, if I had devoted more time to it, I could have figured out Eric may have been in danger. But I didn’t see it. God damn it, I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want this fucking case, so I did nothing but make a few phone calls. Pathetic. I haven’t even talked to Hannah Noyes yet.”

“Then the fault is mine, not yours. I know it’s because of me you haven’t been following up.”

He shook his head, and he felt oddly loose in his own mind, almost detached from his own emotions. The Vicodin still? Maybe. The drugs were actually helping him see what he had to tell Paris, what he had to say to put him at ease, if only for a little while. He needed chemical help to lower his own mental and emotional barriers - how fucking sad was that? He probably did need a therapist. “It’s because of me, Par, not you. I’m so afraid of … I have this nightmare where I come home to an empty house, but I know it’s not really empty, I know you’re upstairs. It’s just you aren’t …”

“I’m dead,” Paris said. It wasn’t even a question; it was like he already knew. But Dee was right - his body was failing him, but his mind was still intact. And Paris could always read him like he was see through.

He just nodded, his throat threatening to close up at the very thought of saying it. “I feel so fucking helpless. I can’t do anything to help you, and you’re the only person I actually want to help. I don’t know what to do. I just know I’ll never forgive myself if I let you die alone.” In spite of the protective layer of drugs, he felt tears sting at the corners of his eyes and shut them tight, trying hard to swallow back a lump in his throat that felt as big and hard as a matzoh ball, and Paris put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug, kissing the top of his head as he squeezed him tight. It was now a life or death struggle not to burst into tears at this point.

“That’s not going to happen,” Paris assured him. “I’d hang on for you, you know. That’s what policemen’s wives do. We wait better than anyone.”

“You’re a wife now, are you?”

“I must be. I have the best hair.”

The bastard was trying to make him laugh again. He couldn’t, though, as he knew he’d start crying, so he held back the impulse and clutched tightly at Par’s waist, waiting for the feelings to subside. They did, and he knew he had Vicodin to thank. (Now he was starting to understand drug addiction better. What a comfortable crutch to have.)

At least he got it together before Murphy, Dubois, and the forensics team showed up. They answered all the questions, and Murphy made sure to ask them, since Dubois kept casting glances at them like they’d pissed in his coffee. As soon as the preliminaries were out of the way, he asked Murphy if they had anybody back at the station who could work the identikit like a pro, preferably Pilar or Grey. Luckily it seemed Grey was still there, although she wanted to know why he wanted to know.

Toby, of course. The last person to see Eric alive was Toby, who had probably gotten a very good look at the guy who was cruising Eric, and was the obvious suspect at this point. The sooner he could give a description of him, the sooner they could find him, so once they got the all clear, he and Paris went back to Panic, and he was suddenly glad about the stupid bracelet.

As soon as they went back into the throbbing mass of the club, they made a beeline for Toby’s side of the bar, and when he came down to them, Roan showed him his card, and said that he needed him to come outside with them, as they really couldn’t talk here.

Toby went from mildly confused to alarmed in almost record time. “Has something happened to Eric?” he asked, guessing correctly that this was bad.

“We should talk outside,” Roan shouted over the machine gun drums that threatened to make his head hurt once more. Maybe the Vicodin was wearing off.

Toby seemed to understand, and disappeared into the back for a couple of minutes. While they waited for him, a moon faced guy with hair so black it was basically blue leaned over and shouted at Paris, “You married a detective? How does that happen?”

Roan wasn’t sure if he should be offended or not.

A new bartender came out, a whisper thin guy who had a flat stomach with no abdominal definition whatsoever, which made Roan like him, and then Toby emerged again in a weather appropriate heavy coat. They followed him out, and once out on the street, out of the hearing range of Mighty Mouse and some kids trying to convince him they were eighteen (in what - dog years?), Toby stopped them and asked, “What happened to Eric? I’m not going any farther until you tell me.” He’d zipped up his jacket against the cold, which also hid the fact he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

“He was killed,” Roan told him, deciding that there was no time to fuck around.

Toby stared at him in such a hollow eyed way that he was briefly worried he might faint. But Toby held it together, and leaned against their GTO as if to keep from collapsing. “How … was it that guy? The guy that was cruising him?”

Roan shook his head. “We don’t know, but it looks that way. That’s why I’d like you to come to the police station with me and describe the man you saw tonight to a police artist. They’re gathering evidence at the scene, but if we have a face to look out for this could be a lot quicker.”

Toby just sagged against the car, hiding his face in his hands for a moment. Roan thought he was going to lose it, break down sobbing, but he held it together, and after several seconds glanced at them with his jaw set angrily, eyes flashing with rage as much as sadness. “I knew it; I knew that guy was bad news. Yeah, he was cute, but I just got this … feeling from him, y’know? His eyes looked hard, and he had a tattoo on his neck. I’m sorry, but I don’t trust any guy with a tattoo on his neck. I told him maybe he shouldn’t encourage the guy, but Eric has been on a dry streak since he and Chris broke up, so he …” he shook his head at his own rambling, and a few tears slipped down his cheeks, but he quickly wiped them away with the back of his hand. “How did it happen?”

He really didn’t need to know the details; it’d be much better if he never did. But Roan knew he had to tell him something or he wouldn’t go. “He was stabbed.”

“Oh Christ,” he breathed, exhaling as if punched. Again, Roan thought they were going to lose him, but Toby was a lot stronger than he looked, because he managed to hold it together. “How did you know he was in trouble? I mean … do you even know him?”

“He witnessed a crime, but I don’t think he realized that’s what he witnessed at the time. We were hoping to get him to make an official statement for the police, but they found him first.”

“Oh shit.” He rubbed his eyes to wipe out any nascent tears, and then said, with a flat anger, “This world is so fucking dangerous. You think it gets better, but it never does, does it?”

Roan had no answer for him. It did seem like the world never changed, that nothing really ever did except the numbers in the body count, but somehow admitting that seemed like defeat, so he said nothing.

The car ride to the precinct was pretty quiet, although Toby did guess he used to be a cop just based on the way he talked. “I didn’t know there were any cops out of the closet in this city,” he said, somewhat bitterly. Roan was briefly tempted to ask him if he’d ever had a lonely vice cop named Kevin in the bar, but decided against it.

The station was fairly busy, as nighttime was always the boom time for crime, and while they got some fairly unfriendly looks, they managed to get to where Grey was without comment.

Grey was an average looking guy made striking by deep brown eyes and full lips, and he had oodles of charm, which he used to put witnesses and crime victims at ease. Roan had seen him get through to the most traumatized people; he had a real gift for it.

Toby didn’t need much coaxing to describe the guy as he was still angry, and it was pretty quick. The man he described was an oval faced kid with a nose stud and eyes that looked a bit smaller than would be advised, his tousled hair bleached to a snowy whiteness, even though he had a small base of black roots. The tattoo on his neck was on the left side, and Toby said he wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it looked tribal, black and full of sharp peaks and swirls; it started half way down his neck and disappeared beneath his collar. He’d been wearing a tight white t-shirt, worn, torn jeans, and a ragged denim jacket, and Toby guessed he was in his early twenties, even though he looked about seventeen.

“Hey there Roan,” a familiar voice said tentatively.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Kevin - speak of the devil - loitering nervously close by. He was in his civvies, so Roan figured he was off shift and heading home. “Hi Kevin,” he said neutrally, surprised that Kevin would speak to him in the precinct. But then again, everybody knew Grey was bisexual - even Grey’s teenaged son - so why would he rat?

Paris held out his hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Paris Lehane, Roan’s associate.”

Kevin looked briefly startled, but quickly covered it up, although a certain gratefulness flashed through his eyes. Paris was pretending that he’d never met Kevin, like they’d never had him over to dinner, like he didn’t know he was in the closet, like he was just another cop buddy of Roan’s. It was surprisingly kind of him. Kevin shook his hand, and replied, “Kevin Robinson.”

“Nice to meet you,” Par said, with absolutely no sarcasm or irony.

Kevin nodded, and glanced at what Grey was putting together, and froze. It was clear from his body posture that he recognized the suspect. “You know him?” Roan prompted.

Kevin almost shook his head, but leaned in for a closer look. Grey moved aside so he could get a better angle for study. “I think so. He looks familiar. Let me … just a second,” he said distractedly, and quickly turned and walked away.

Toby exchanged a curious look with all of them. “Is it that easy?”

“Only if we get lucky,” Grey told him.

Kevin came back a couple of minutes later with one of the big, thick folders that was full of mug shots. He opened the folder up to a page up front, and showed it to Toby. “Is this the man you saw?”

Roan saw the answer in his eyes before he spoke. They widened before he even took a breath. “Yes! That’s him, that’s the guy who was cruising Eric tonight.”

Roan reached out and tipped the folder closer to him so he could have a look. Grey had done a terrific job on the identikit, as the match was almost uncanny. What greeted him was the mug shot of a sullen man with a dark smear of a tattoo on the side of his neck and - Toby was right - hard, flat eyes, like those of a shark or some other beast whose soul had been killed off a long time ago. He might have been handsome if the look in his eye didn’t make him ugly. “Who is this guy, Kev?”

“His real name is Parker Davis, but he usually goes by Colt Turner.”

“Colt?” Roan snickered. “What the fuck is he, a wannabe porn star?”

“In a way: he’s been arrested several times for solicitation and prostitution, which is why I recognized him,” Kevin said, closing the folder. “He’s one of the hustlers who habitually works the area between the bus station and Anderson Street.”

Toby looked deeply shocked. “Why the hell was he at the club trying to pick someone up?”

It was a good question, but Roan had a suspicion. “Is he a meth user?” Meth, crack, and prostitution went hand in hand, like bullets and sucking chest wounds.

Kevin nodded, his always sad expression just a bit more grimmer. “He’s been arrested with a pipe in his possession, and one time he had a major freak out in a holding cell that seemed like someone major jonesing. “

“So he’s a frequent flyer.”

“Oh yeah. I think he was busted two weeks ago, but after the usual night in the stir and reminder to show up for court, he was booted.”

Roan nodded, putting a supposition together. “He was paid to pick up Eric and take him home. Since he’s not a hit man, I have to wonder if someone was waiting there to talk to Eric, and Parker took his cash and split.”

Kevin raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you lookin’ at him for?”

“Murder. He was last seen with a victim who was stabbed in his home.”

He was so shocked by this news he almost dropped the folder. “Damn. He’s gotten himself into the big leagues, hasn’t he?”

Toby sat forward, and he looked completely lost. “I don’t understand. You don’t think he killed him?”

“He could have, but … my guess is he was the middleman and an easy scapegoat.”

His dark brows scrunched together in a V over his Roman nose, and he shifted so far forward in his chair he almost wondered if Toby was going to get up and punch him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Grey shifted, leaning back in his own chair as Kevin went off with Parker’s mug shot, and smirked knowingly. “Our Roan here is the infected equivalent of Sherlock Holmes. Or is it Miss Marple? Anyways, he’s always doing things like this. It made people pelt him with day old doughnuts in the break room when he was a cop.”

“That happened once,” Roan corrected him, fixing him with a stern glare. “And that was you.”

Grey gave him a toothy grin that he probably thought was charming. “Face it, Roan, sometimes you’re just freaky.”

Toby sat back, his jaw going slack, and his eyes darted between him and Paris. “Infected?” he repeated, putting it together. Oh shit, now everybody at Panic was going to know Paris was infected and dying from it. Grey and his goddamn big mouth.

But that wasn’t really something worth worrying about at this point. Right now, they had to find Parker before he either got lost on his own, or ended up as another “loose end” floating in the bay. Still, the fact that he was a crankhead and a hustler meant they’d probably leave him be to kill himself. After all, he was on the lowest strata of human society, and who would believe a damn thing he said? His credibility would be less than zero, and he was a Central Casting perfect murderer. Every prosecutor in the world would be pleased to get him, because he was a professional junkie and fuck up who was destined for a violent end anyways. Conviction would be a cakewalk, everybody could break for an earlier lunch, and people could walk away feeling that justice was served.

Which was complete and utter bullshit. If there was one coincidence here, maybe he could buy it, but there were just too many stacking up. A guy turns up to hit on Eric right after Thora’s body was fished out, a guy who’s a hustler and doesn’t exactly do “freebies” or go to gay discos, and Eric turns up dead while he turns up gone. It was way too much, although he almost had to grudgingly admire how well executed all of this was. Whoever set this all in motion was good at their job.

An APB was put out on Parker, and although it was a long shot at best, Kevin thought it might be worth checking out the areas where Parker was known to work, and maybe the Nite Owl Motel, the seedy dive that he named as his place of residence the last time he was hauled in. It was a long shot at best, but worth a try.

Toby called his boyfriend to pick him up from the precinct, and Roan made sure that Paris was up to this before they headed out, following Kevin as he made the rounds. Technically Kevin was off duty, but as a vice cop he was extremely well acquainted with the area where they’d be looking for Parker, and most of the hookers and hustlers around there knew him. That would probably be considered bad - and it was for undercover stings - but it actually fostered a little bit of trust as well. They knew he was a cop, yeah, but not a bad one; not one who beat them up or bullied or demanded freebies to keep from running them in. Kevin was nothing if not a remarkably gentle soul. If he asked for their help to find someone, even if it was one of them, they just might help him out.

Roan had a chicken or egg question that no one was ever able to answer. Did bus stations just end up in bad areas, or did bad areas just spring up around bus stations? Either way, once you got to within two blocks of the Greyhound station, things took a turn for the worse - there were decaying businesses and boarded up apartment complexes that violated major health and safety codes, a tenfold increase in homeless people (mostly men) camped out in doorways and drug dealers loitering on the corners, freely advertising their wares with little fear of getting busted. The roads down here were even falling into disrepair, the potholes almost big enough to be sinkholes, and while Paris had made sure that the GTO had good enough shocks to take it well, Kevin’s battered little Celica looked like it nearly went airborne a couple of times.

Kevin eventually pulled over beside a curb beneath a broken streetlight, and an extremely statuesque black prostitute in a skintight dress and a magnificent rooster hair wig of tall brown hair that made her look a bit like Tina Turner after an eight day bender seemed to melt out of the shadows. Judging from the size of the Adam’s apple, Roan guessed this was actually a transvestite, but an extremely convincing one.

S/he talked to Kevin for a couple of minutes, and then Kevin drove off, and Roan continued to follow him, deeper into the black hole that was known around the station as the “vice triangle” (triangle because of drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling). His phone rang, and he wasn’t surprised to find it was Kevin. “Chalice knows Colt, and he said that as far as he knew, he’d gone to get a hit at a crack house over on Henderson.”

Chalice? What an interesting name - he sounded like a female porn star. “When did he last see him?”

“He wasn’t sure; a trick or two ago. Maybe a couple of hours.”

If that was true, that would have been before he went to Panic to pick up Eric. “Was he high?”

“Chalice? Oh yeah. His pupils were so dilated it looked like he had no irises at all.”

Okay - his sense of time could be majorly fucked up. Depending on the drugs, time could compress or spread out into infinity.

“You have a theory,” Paris asked from the passenger seat, but it wasn’t really a question.

Roan shrugged. “A minor one. Once this person - whoever they are - discovered that Eric witnessed Thora’s abduction and worked at a gay bar, he hired a hustler to pick Eric up and get him out of the club because the guy - and it’s probably a guy - is straight, and there was no way in hell he was setting foot in a gay bar. Maybe Parker can tell us who hired him, but whoever this guy is he must be pretty confident that Parker can’t or won’t identify him.”

“Not someone native to this area.”

“Absolutely not.”

“But how did they know Eric witnessed anything?”

Roan nodded, pleased that Paris was asking all the right questions. “I have to find out who Matt mentioned it to. I think the answer’s there.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Paris raise an eyebrow in surprise. “You think Matt blabbed?”

He gave him a slightly disbelieving glance before fixing his eyes on the road once more. “I know he’s better than he used to be, but he can’t help but talk. And if Thora was conscious when she was grabbed, she didn’t fight or make a scene, suggesting she knew who these men were and weren’t afraid of them, although she should have been. I think the guilty party is within the circle that Matt and Thora shared.”

He felt Paris’s stare on him in the dark. “Mutual friends?”

“Maybe. Or people even closer than - oh holy shit,” he exclaimed, cutting himself off as a veil of thick black smoke, chemical smelling and so sharply scented that it felt like he was inhaling broken glass, rolled across the road.

They turned onto Henderson and stopped abruptly, as the smoke was roiling out in thick black plumes from a dilapidated house that also had bright yellowish orange flames shooting from broken windows, the plywood boards that had once been nailed over them scattered all over the street in smoldering ruins. There was a weed filled lot that worked as a lawn, but the flames and heat were so great that people were standing gawking in the street rather than on the grass. Both he and Kevin pulled over on the opposite side of the road, as far from the flames as possible. The fire lit up the night like a false dawn, and Roan felt the heat hammer him as soon as he stepped out of the car, as did the sour, sickly smell of ammonia and other chemicals. Even as he and Paris joined Kevin at the fringe of the gawking crowd, he said, “This is our crack house, isn’t it?” It sounded like a question, but it really wasn’t. The smell had given it away. Somebody had been cooking up a batch, or maybe attempting to freebase, and it all spun out of control before anyone could react. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Kevin nodded. “I’m afraid so.” He then started going through the crowd, asking, “Has anyone called 911? Is anyone inside?”

There were no real answers, and from the scent of body odor, ammonia, and smoke wafting from their tattered clothes, Roan knew most of this crowd were people who had actually been in the crack house when it started going up, and wouldn‘t have called anyone. Kevin called 911 on his cell phone, probably figuring that out from the mass of blank stares that greeted his questions.

Half the house was already engulfed in flames, and as he and Paris sweated in the jittering shadows of consumption, Roan knew the firefighters would never get here in time. By the time they got here, the only thing left would be smoldering embers.

“This case just keeps getting more and more fun, doesn’t it?” Paris asked with cheerful sarcasm, reflected flames dancing in his eyes.

But alas, it was just Murphy asking him about the witness he had to Thora’s being grabbed off the street. “The Aunt confirmed the identity,” she told him, sounding slightly distracted. He heard noise in the background, and figured a belligerent perp had just been dragged in. “So I’m thinking I should probably have a talk with this guy. He got a problem with cops?”

Roan considered that. He just didn’t know enough about Eric Chiang to say, but why didn’t he go to the cops in the first place? It was possible Matt talked him out of it, but Chatty Cathy probably would’ve mentioned it if he had. “Possibly. He’s flaming.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like cops.”

That was true. The relationship between the gay community and the cops had improved; it was much better than when he and Murph were championed as “liaisons” between the communities. The relationship between cats and cops would never be good, though; that one was a lost cause. “He works at Panic as a bartender.”

There was a very long pause on her end of the line. “The gay disco?”

“Is there another Panic around these parts?”

She sighed heavily. “Holy shit. That’s going to be a tough one. Doesn’t that place have guys in cages and shit?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been.”

“Bullshit!”

“No, really. I hate house music. If real guitars and drums aren’t involved, I don’t want to hear it.”

She clicked her tongue in disapproval. “Are you seriously telling me that you’ve never once been to Panic? Even I’ve been to Lipstick, and I hate the scene!” Lipstick was a lesbian bar, essentially Panic’s gender opposite. He’d been there once as a cop, to break up a bar fight. (Yes, it was a stereotype that lesbians were more aggressive than “regular” women, but there were some women out there- regardless of who they chose to sleep with - who could brawl as eagerly and stupidly as a man. Especially if you got them liquored up, and they thought you were hitting on their girlfriend.) But otherwise Lipstick was classy and civilized, and a hell of a lot quieter than Panic.

“I’ve been to Lipstick too. I liked it. You and Kim should go more often. Especially if it’s tequila shooters night.”

The length of the silence that ensued told him Murphy was glaring evilly at the phone, and considering slamming the receiver on her desk just to hurt his ear. Ultimately, she decided not to. “You’re just a big old dyke in a man’s body, aren’t you?”

“Me and my dick resent that statement.”

“Leave it to a man to bring his dick into the conversation.”

He sighed, trying not to laugh. “Is there any way I can win this?”

“I’m a woman, so no.”

Well, that was fair enough, he supposed. He gave her Eric’s address, but told her he was probably already at Panic since he’d been getting ready for work while he and Paris were talking to him earlier. This got a groan of disgust out of her. “Do you know how hard it is to get the straight guys around here to go into a gay bar? They act like they’re going to get cooties if they step in the door.”

“A lot of those macho assholes are insecure about their own sexuality. Believe me, I know. Nobody wanted to ride in a patrol car with me, remember? Like I’d actually rape their flabby asses. They think highly of themselves, don’t they?”

“Well, you were a cat too.”

“Oh right - so maybe I’d give them fleas as well.”

She chuckled breathlessly. “Or turn into a lion and then teabag them.”

“A fate worse than death.” He’d turned down his road, and saw the “Blue Bug” - his nickname for Diego’s Volkswagen Beetle - sitting in the driveway. He didn’t realize he’d linger after dropping Paris off, but he supposed he should have expected it. (What if he had medically bad news for Paris? Oh shit, he didn’t want to know.)

“Can you sweat this guy, see if you can bring him in to make a statement voluntarily?”

“This is just your way of making me go to Panic, isn’t it?”

“Hey, track him down wherever you want. But if you can get him to come in of his own accord it’d be easier for all of us.”

“For all of us? I think not.”

“At least you don’t have all this paperwork to deal with.”

Which was true. The absolute worst part of the cop job - worse than the violently unstable crackheads or the heartbreaking murder scenes - was all the goddamn paperwork you had to sit down and fill out. It’s what you really felt like doing after nearly getting killed. Going from sheer terror to sheer boredom in under sixty seconds could wear on a body pretty fast.

He parked the GTO parallel to the front yard so the driveway would be clear for Diego to get out, and noticed how the winter had killed off most of the plants in the yard. The lawn looked pale with frost, and even the pine tree that towered over the house looked curled in on itself with cold. A season of death; a winter of discontent. God, he really needed a beer - he was getting maudlin. Or poetic; whichever one was worse. After a moment, he rubbed his eyes, and said, “Fine, I’ll talk to Eric again, see if I get him to make an official statement. But I’m adding this to the “owe me” column.”

“You can be such a whiny queen sometimes,” she teased.

“And that’s going to cost you too,” he warned, and hung up. He just sat there for a moment, listening to the engine tick softly, wondering if he was strong enough to go inside. Yes, of course he was - he wasn’t a weak person. If he had been, he’d never have survived this long. So why did he feel like he was growing weaker by the second?

He mentally cursed himself out for a few seconds, then climbed out of the car and headed towards the house, the frozen grass crunching under his feet. The door was unlocked, and he came in to find Diego waiting for him, sitting at the kitchen counter and having a Diet Pepsi. “Paris is upstairs taking a nap,” Dee told him. “He was pretty shagged out.”

He nodded, not surprised. “They’re not going to include him in the trials, are they?”

Dee shrugged, but he grimaced in sympathy. “I have no idea, but I think he may be too sick for them.”

“Yeah, I was afraid of that.” He went to the refrigerator to get himself something to drink, his throat was still rough from growling, but as soon as he opened the door he was shocked by how bare the shelves were. There were some cans of soda, a bottle of beer near the back, some take out containers from the Chinese place, a carton of half and half, the chocolate syrup, and a bright yellow bottle of mustard, but that was it. He was so accustomed to Paris doing the shopping (not that he ever gave him any choice; Par just kind of barged in and took it over, and Roan didn’t mind ceding it all to him) that he’d inadvertently neglected it. He told himself to stop tonight and stock up, and grabbed the beer. It wasn’t his favorite, but it would do. “You need to hire a personal assistant to do your shopping,” Dee said. He was being sarcastic, but said it so weakly it had no bite at all. He looked too depressed to be his normal smart assy self. God, how bad was Par?

He twisted the cap off the beer and took a gulp, aware that things were so much easier when he was alone. It was true that when you had nothing, you had nothing to lose. “You upping for the job?”

“Oh you wish, girlfriend.” He held up an injector in a sterile plastic wrap, and put it down on the kitchenette counter. “Vitamin B-12. Give it to Par when he gets up. It should give him a shot of energy for a little while. I’ll bring some more over tomorrow.”

“He’s that bad, huh?” Dee swore by B-12 shots to get him going on hard days, and he assumed that Dee pulled that from his own personal first aid kit that he kept under the front seat of his car. He had an odd first aid kit - along with the usual stuff, he also had the B-12 shot, caffeine tablets, Tylenol codeine, and a handful of condoms.

Dee stared at him, his hazel eyes both kind and harsh all at the same time. “You know he is, Ro. And you know what he’s worried about? You.”

He almost choked on his beer. “What do you mean?”

He scoffed, shaking his head. “He may be sick, but he’s still the same perceptive guy he’s always been. I don’t have any idea why, but you’re the one thing in this world he’s going to miss, and right now it’s killing him thinking he’s hurting you. I don’t care what you have to do, I don’t care how badly you have to lie, but as soon as he wakes up you need to go upstairs and convince him he’s not. He deserves some peace of mind if nothing else; it’s probably the only thing we can do for him at this point.”

“We?” He hated the way his voice thickened on that syllable. He hated Dee telling him this shit, but mostly he hated it because he knew he was right.

“Fine - you. But he’s afraid for you. He’s afraid you’re going to retreat into the cat, whatever the fuck that means.”

“He said that?”

Dee nodded, his lips thinning to a grim line. “And I think he’s right that you’re off your game. I don’t blame you at all - Paris is a better person than all of us, and you’ve been a better person since you’ve been with him. But I know this person, she’s a grief counselor, and I think you should probably see her before … well, this has gone on long enough. I know you’d prefer to muddle through this by yourself, Mr. Macho, but I’m not sure I can, and I’m not even married to him.”

He shook his head, letting out a small, humorless laugh. “I don’t need to see a fucking grief counselor. I had my share of counselors and psychologists and social workers growing up; I don’t want anymore.”

He raised his eyebrows in the facial equivalent of a shrug, and slid off the kitchen stool. “I’m sure you don’t want anymore, honey, but you need it. I’ll call her, see what her schedule is.”

“Not for me you won’t.”

Dee waved his hand in a dismissive manner as he grabbed his Pepsi and started towards the door. “Remember what I said. Lie to him and make it good.”

“You don’t think I can get through this.” The funny thing was, even as he said it, he knew what a silly thing it was to say. Roan knew he probably couldn’t, and that was what was scaring him. He could take beatings, shootings, stabbings, even being forced to eat at Tim Horton’s, but not losing Paris. This was a slow motion nightmare.

Dee gave him a compassionate look that was almost pitying, so it was a good thing he was way out of punching range. “I’m not sure anyone could.” With a final sad, knowing glance, Dee left, and it suddenly seemed amazingly quiet and empty in the house. It occurred to him that he should get used to this, to this absence, and grabbed the B-12 shot and went upstairs, leaving his beer behind.

Paris was asleep, and had apparently slept through their entire downstairs conversation, which was a good thing. Par had always been a fairly heavy sleeper, but nowadays it had become disturbingly closer to comatose. When Roan bothered to set the alarm nowadays, Paris almost never woke up.

Currently he had the suede comforter wrapped around him like a cocoon, the blanket partially covering his face, and almost out of habit Roan checked to make sure he was still breathing. He was, just not very loudly or forcefully.

Roan could smell the cats all over him, the musky scent of cougar along with a trace sickly sweet scent of illness, and stripped off his clothes, tossing them in the corner hamper before going into the bathroom and starting the shower. He left the B-12 injection on the nightstand, figuring Dee must have told Par what it was.

So Par was worried about him? Dee was right - he couldn’t let him continue doing that. But lying to Par was such a tricky thing. He could fool most people, but Paris was nearly impossible to bullshit. What could he tell him? What would he believe? What would make him stop worrying about him? Christ, he didn’t know. He was horrible at this kind of thing.

Clearly. He hadn’t fooled Paris for one second, had he?

He stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain shut before turning the faucet up full blast, hot enough to almost scald. He let it drench him, washing away the faint traces of foreign cats, and then started to sob. He hated it, but there wasn’t much he could do to stop it, and he didn’t even try. He was just glad Paris couldn’t hear him.

****

He almost wished Dee had left him a B-12 shot, because after he got out of the shower he felt terrible. His head full on ached now, a painful throb like an infected tooth, and he was forced to figure out how he could handle Panic with a head that felt like a swollen, overripe melon. The first loud techno beat would make his skull explode, splattering his brains all over like the world’s grossest piñata. So he got dressed and went downstairs, and ate a few forkfuls of cold Szechwan noodles before popping a Vicodin. He could probably handle one with few obvious effects, mainly because his drug tolerance was so incredibly high he could probably take elephant tranquilizers and hardly notice it at this point. He ended up finishing the Szechwan noodles, mainly because he was starving and hadn’t realized it until now.

He’d dressed down, in jeans and hiking boots and a loose red t-shirt with the “Duff Beer” logo across the chest, and was painfully aware that he’d probably stand out like a seven foot drag queen at a Mormon church. He didn’t look like the type of guy who’d go to a gay disco, which was the point - he didn’t want to look like a guy who’d go to a gay disco. He didn’t want to belong. He just wanted to find Eric and talk to him, and if anyone hit on him, he might have to claim he was straight. (That might fly … for a bit. Maybe. He would swear he could pass.)

But as he washed down the last of the spicy noodles with a diet Pepsi that still seemed overly sweet, he heard movement upstairs. Paris was awake.

Part of him wanted to just grab his coat and dart out the door, but that was so cowardly he was ashamed of himself. Okay, no, he still had no idea what he was going to say to him, but he had to say something. Roan headed upstairs, to let him know what he was doing and where he was going.

By the time he returned to the bedroom, Paris had already found the B-12 shot and used it, judging from the used needle tossed in the metal wastepaper basket beside his computer desk. He didn’t know if the shot really worked that fast, but Paris did seem a bit more alert than before; maybe the nap helped too. When he told him what he was doing, Par chuckled, and said, his face splitting into a grin, “You, going to Panic? Oh, this I gotta see.” That didn’t really fill him with confidence. But he was glad Paris felt well enough to venture out, so he wasn’t going to discourage him.

Paris got dressed more or less to match him, wearing jeans and a loose, long sleeved gray sweatshirt, and joked that the bouncers might not recognize him without the skin tight t-shirt and the silver hot pants. The hot pants were of course just him being funny. (Right?)

By the time they reached Panic, the sun was going down, and the club was approaching its busy hours. The Vicodin was working nicely; his headache had faded to annoying background pulse, and he felt slightly disconnected from it, like he could hold it in his hands and examine it objectively. That was the really good part about Vicodin - not that it killed the pain as much as it made you cease giving a shit about it. Paris seemed more bright eyed than usual, almost like his old self, and he hoped Dee brought a motherfucking case of those shots tomorrow.

The bouncer on the door was clearly a gym bunny. He was a huge black man about the height, girth, and possibly approximate weight of your average refrigerator, his head shaved bald and reflecting the blue neon glow of the Panic sign far above him, and even though the light was fading rapidly, he was still wearing cheap black sunglasses, and in spite of the cold, he was only wearing Nikes, jeans, and a navy blue t-shirt stretched so tightly across his barrel chest that Roan was pretty sure when the shirt snapped off him - and he was sure it would - it would take out an innocent bystander’s eye. He looked like a statue carved of granite, with arms about as big around as an average man’s leg, but as they approached his face split into a wide grin that showed many nicely capped teeth. “Oh my god, you! I was so afraid something happened to you.” The man’s voice was so high and fragile, Roan almost burst out laughing. It was like hearing a five year old girl’s voice come out of Atlas. But he didn’t, because it was rude, and because, little girl voice or not, he bet the guy could snap him in half like a piece of frozen beef jerky.

Paris introduced him to Jimmy (apparently the big guy’s name) as his husband, which shocked him needlessly. “Him?!” Mighty Mouse squeaked.

Oh, that was nice. What an ego boost.

Things didn’t really get any better once they were in the small, dark alcove where they paid the cover and got the neon green plastic bracelets that signified they’d paid and would let them back in the club tonight if they left. Roan protested that he was not coming back, but it was apparently protocol to put the damn thing on. The guy manning that station, with platinum blonde hair shot through with cotton candy streaks of blue and pink and a big gold nose ring that he apparently stole off a bull somewhere, also recognized Paris, and was happy to see him back. Roan could see both a positive and a negative here: Paris was popular enough that everybody would be more than happy to talk to him. That was both the positive and the negative. Funny when it worked that way.

They walked through an inner door that led to a sprawling nightclub, split almost evenly between a large and packed dance floor and a small side area full of small tables and leather booths. There was a large black painted bar off to the immediate left in a distended horseshoe shape, and there were two bartenders behind it, both men wearing leather vests over shirtless chests, but neither was Eric. One was a Hispanic man with a very pretty, feminine face, and the other guy was a Caucasian who didn’t have six pack abs more than a twenty four pack - you could have washed clothes by hand on his abs. He must have done eight thousand crunches a day.

The bar was lit by yellow spots, giving it a topaz glimmer, while gel lights of red, blue, green, and purple lit up the dance floor in confetti like hues. The music that pounded through the club was some dance remix of a Nine Inch Nails song with an almost tribal drum beat, and he was glad he’d popped the Vicodin, as he was sure it would have cleaved his head in half like a rotten coconut. But hey, Nine Inch Nails - that was pretty cool. The place smelled like many hot bodies in a small space, sweat and lust and a nearly toxic mélange of colognes, aftershaves, deodorants, and hair products.

They approached the empty end of the bar, and Mr. Abs came down almost instantly. “You! My god, where have you been?” He had neatly cut dark brown hair, brown eyes to match, and about a day’s worth of artful stubble. He was attractive, but in a rather calculated way, and couldn’t have been a day over twenty five.

“Around,” Paris answered cryptically, then put an arm around his waist, a possessive gesture meant to signal to the pretty bartender that he was off limits. “So Toby, where’s Chi-Chi? We heard he was working tonight.”

“Oh, he was, but he took a break. He was totally getting cruised by some jailbait, but Chi-Chi looks barely legal too, so that makes sense.”

“Did he leave with him?” Roan asked.

Toby glanced at him, and seemed to take a good long look at Par’s arm around his waist. He seemed to be thinking the same thing as Mighty Mouse - Him?! - but was too polite to say it aloud. “Technically no, but the kid left at the same time as Chi-Chi, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were together somewhere.”

“Not out in the alley having a smoke?”

He shook his head. “It’s not really private there. Or legal.”

He glanced at Paris, and he knew they were thinking the same thing - Eric’s place was just a couple of blocks away. If he wanted to sneak in a quick fuck, he probably brought the guy back to his place. So they probably hadn’t needed to come here at all. What delicious irony.

On their way out, about a dozen guys in ages ranging from twenty to forty, from respectable looking to club kid to flaming Goth, besieged them, asking Paris where he had been and if he was all right. (Matt hadn’t been kidding when he said the guys at Panic had missed him.) He showed his wedding ring and introduced him as his husband again, a way of deflecting attention away from the question while presumably answering it, and while there were many “Congratulations” and men telling Roan he was a very lucky man, there were some more “Him?!”-s, and some obvious jealousy. He wondered how jealous they’d be if they knew Par was dying. He tried not to think about it.

They detoured through the alley to make sure that Eric wasn’t there, but Toby had been right: they found a bouncer (not Mighty Mouse, but a white gym queen who could have been his half brother) and a guy who could have been a patron (or his boyfriend) sharing a smoke and discussing the latest episode of “Project Runway”, but no Eric, and when asked, both said they hadn’t seen him out here.

It was a quick jaunt back to Remains of the Day, and back up the outer staircase to the apartment access. But as soon as they entered the inner corridor, Roan smelled burned microwave popcorn, and a meaty metallic scent underneath it that was all too familiar and too depressing. “Oh shit,” he exclaimed, and raced to Eric’s apartment.

“What’s wrong?” Paris asked. He couldn’t smell it.

Eric’s door was just slightly ajar, so Roan pushed it all the way open with his knuckles while pulling out his Sig Sauer. Seeing the gun, Paris paused and his eyes widened. “Oh god no.”

Oh god yes. The open door revealed that Eric’s futon had been pulled out into bed mode, and Eric was splayed on it with one arm and leg hanging over the side, on his back, staring up at the ceiling. It was hard to tell if the sheets were red, or simply turned that color by the blood; some of it was still dripping off his hand, puddling on the carpet.

Roan neither smelled nor saw anyone else in the tiny apartment, so he holstered his gun and approached Eric, hoping the dripping blood was a sign that he was still alive. But as soon as he was standing over him, he could smell the hideous scent of death beneath all the blood. He was dead; not long dead, maybe two minutes or so, but they still arrived too late to do anything for him.

He’d been stabbed, mainly in the chest but also once in the shoulder and throat; Roan counted seven small but viciously deep wounds in all, as well as one through the palm of his hand - a defensive wound. He’d tried to fight back, but he was overpowered. He didn’t see the knife anywhere, and there was a pretty decent half footprint in the blood in the carpet. As Roan pulled out his phone and called Murphy, he noticed blood had splattered the far wall, and left red droplets all over the naked torso picture.

“Oh my god,” Paris gasped from the doorway. “The poor kid.”

Murphy picked up the phone, and he told her, “Get down to Eric Chiang’s apartment now. Your witness has been murdered.”

And he really didn’t care what the coroner’s report on Thora said now. This was pretty much proof that someone was belatedly covering their tracks.