He also apologized to her for his awful appearance, explaining that it had been a horrible year. She accepted that without requiring an explanation. She also gave him a check for the job plus some initial expenses, and he stared at the check without too much comprehension. The drugs were not only in full swing, but he still felt disconnected from reality itself.

Roan sat down at his computer and booted it up, surprised that it still worked, and wondering when he last turned it on. He had no idea. Dee, Randi, or Matt could have had it on at some point, but he didn’t know, and if they had, they hadn’t left any obvious traces. (He could have looked deeper, but he didn’t.) He started doing some basic searches on Ron’s social security number and name, and he gathered up his courage and called Randi at her office. When she answered the phone, she said, “This is a joke, right? Jon, is this you?”

He sighed heavily. “It’s me, Randi, you know it’s me.”

“No, it can’t be Roan, he’s a sad piece of shit who mopes all day.”

“Look, I’m up now, I have a job, will you help me with something?”

“Did bedbugs hire you?” she asked brightly.

He banged his forehead on the edge of his desk, but it didn’t help much.

Eventually, after apologizing profusely and in every way he could, she decided to forgive him and grudgingly help him. He asked her to run Ron’s social security number and name through the financial databases, and she agreed to do it, although he sensed she was not through busting his balls. (Was she ever?)

Not that he could be all that mad at her. She was Paris’s best friend, and he knew she felt his loss quite acutely; when Roan was in the transformational stage of his infection, she and Paris used to go out all the time. She was also Roan’s first acquaintance at the office park when he opened up MK Investigations, as she came over to welcome the “new dick” (she really enjoyed her double entendres) with a cup of coffee. They were very casual neighbors until Paris started working at the office, and then suddenly she was over almost all the time. She had a crush on Paris, didn’t she? She knew Paris was devoted to him, but she probably hadn’t given up hope that he was still bisexual at his core - if he had fucked women once, he always could again. He couldn’t blame her for that either. Everybody was always falling in lust with Paris. As he liked to say overdramatically, “It’s my gift - and my curse.” (This was usually followed with a mock sob, him raising his arm like he was wearing a cape, and stalking dramatically out of the room. Roan’s contribution to the act was usually him shouting after him, “Drama queen!” If they ever did it in public, they would get very funny looks.)

God he missed him. He couldn’t think about him right now, though - he had work to do.

While following up on all the Ronald Dormers Google brought up, he did something that he dreaded doing, but felt he had to, if only for his conscience in the form of Paris’s memory. He called Matt. As soon as he answered, he apologized to him.

Matt was quiet for a very long moment, and then he sighed and told him, “Jesus, Roan, I wish you’d stop doing this to yourself, y’know?”

“I’m trying. I took the job Gordo sent over.”

“Really? Oh thank god! Is it anything I can help with? ‘Cause I’ve gotten pretty good at followin’ people and takin’ photos of them.”

Hearing this news shocked him to the core. It took him a moment to find his voice. “Matt, have you been playing detective?”

He clicked his tongue. “Well, playin’ sounds so bad. Look, I’ve never said I was you; I identified myself as your assistant, that’s all.”

Roan felt like banging his head on the desk again, but his forehead still ached from last time. “Matt, I’m licensed. If you run off and do this shit on your own under my name, you’re jeopardizing my license.”

“I’ve never taken anything big or complicated,” he claimed, sounding a bit guilty. “Just, y’know, cheating spouse stuff. And only a couple. There weren’t any problems, except I had to learn how to really use a camera, and, uh, I didn’t realize that being a detective could be so boring most of the time.”

“Matt,” he growled, aware that he only had himself to blame for this. He knew Matt thought he loved him, and saw something glamorous in what was honestly a tedious profession.

“Well, it wasn’t like you were gonna help these people,” he replied defensively. “And I figured since I was paying the -” He shut up quite abruptly, and Roan could have ruffled his hair for confirming Paris’s/his hypothesis, except he was talking to him on the phone.

“How long have you been footing the rent on the place?”

“I haven’t,” Matt lied, quite badly. “Umm, my twelve o’clock has arrived early, so I’ve got to go.”

“Come by tonight,” he told him, wondering if he would pluck up the courage to do so. He hung up the phone and continued sifting through Google results. That poor, deluded kid. He felt bad for him. All Matt wanted was to be loved and accepted, and so nakedly that Roan couldn’t help but pity him, and yet at the same time fear that need. Matt must have been pretty high maintenance.

There was more than one Ron Dormer in the world; there had to be several. But he noted a couple of interesting things, and wondered if they would add up. According to Dalisay, from what Ron had told her and what was listed on the copy of the resume she had provided him, Ron had graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Collins, New Jersey, and had gone to college at a state university in Kentucky. A man who was named Ron Dormer and seemed to have been about this Ron Dormer’s age had graduated from Franklin Pierce High School in Secaucus, New Jersey at the exact same time. Could two men with the same name, in the same state, have graduated high school in the same year? He supposed it was possible, but Ron Dormer just wasn’t that common a name. There was an explanation, though - they were family. An extended family throughout a state could indeed share a name, and New Jersey just wasn’t that big.

But here was a problem: there was no Thomas Jefferson High School in Collins, New Jersey. Had Ron lied about where he went to school? Why? Oh sure, Franklin Pierce sucked as a President, but that wasn’t enough of an excuse.

So he did a little more digging, and called Franklin Pierce in Secaucus, giving the woman who picked up the phone the usual bullshit about him being a dective and needing to confirm Ron Dormer’s identity for the matter of a will’s settlement. Again, when people thought other people were getting money, they were usually eager to help, and Francine was no exception. She even emailed him the class photo of Ron when he requested it.

This Ron Dormer, a pimply teenager, looked nothing like the Ron Dormer in the photo Dalisay provided him. In fact, unless he’d had extensive plastic surgery, there was no way this teenager could have become this man. The teenager had a moon face, round and soft, with plump cheeks and a receding chin, with small light eyes set a bit too close to a Roman nose, his hair a muddy brown. The adult male had a long, oval face with a strong, prominent chin and an aquiline nose with a bump on the bridge, his hazel eyes were a bit too widely set on either side of his nose, and his hair was a dirty dishwater blond. He could have gotten a nose job, dyed his hair, gotten contacts - but changed the shape of his jaw and face? No. The jaw was a possibility if he’d lost part of it due to some catastrophic accident or cancer, but the rest of the skull? Nope. These were two different people. They didn’t look remotely related either. They were both plain, ordinary men, but in totally different ways.

He had a hunch. Maybe it was the drugs, but he had a sudden feeling reality wasn’t just sliding sideways for him.

He had another frappachino in an attempt to sober up as he called the school in Kentucky. He was lucky that he got a secretary with absolutely nothing better to do, and she was able to turn up a group photo that had Ron Dormer in it. Again, it was emailed to him, and his initial hypothesis was confirmed: this was the kid from the high school photo. He was taller, a little thinner, his hair cut severely, but his skin hadn’t cleared up much, and his chin was still more of an idea than an actual thing, his face as round as a pancake.

Two possibilities. There were two men, distantly related, both named Ronald Lamont Dormer. Or there was one Ron L. Dormer, and the other, married to Dalisay, had stolen his identity. Employers weren’t likely to check a high school - why bother? - but a college? That was more likely, so the fake (?) Ron used the “real” Ron’s actual college, so the story would mesh if they checked.

His internet search turned up an odd thing. A note from a city council meeting in Rock Creek, Maryland, in August of 2006, where a Ron Dormer petitioned the council to allow him a permit to erect a “gazebo like structure” on his property. It was approved. This led him to find the online Maryland phone book, and a phone number for a Ron Dormer. He called him, and did his bullshit spiel about looking for a Ronald Dormer who once lived here, as he had come into a substantial inheritance. The Ron Dormer on the phone sounded interested, but also disappointed, as he admitted it wasn’t him. He said he’d spent most of his life in New Jersey, except for his brief college stint in Kentucky, and then he took a job in Maryland, where he’d lived ever since. If he was lying, he was good at it. Roan asked if there was another member of his family with the name Ron, and he said no, not to his knowledge.

But with an address and phone number, he could dig up a wealth of information on this Ron Dormer. He was able to confirm that he had purchased his Maryland home (well, started paying mortgage payments on it) in the spring of 2005 - before Ron Dormer’s “death” in the explosion here. Also, according to public records, he was married in the winter of 2004 to a woman named Sherri Costello - again, while he was still here, and still married to Dalisay.

Roan was dizzy, and his stomach was grumbling at him again. He was shocked to look at the clock on his computer and realize he’d been at this for hours. It was almost five o’clock. It had felt honestly good to throw himself into work, to think of something beyond himself and the absence of Paris. He probably should have done this before, but that would have required him to get up off his ass.

He levered himself up and went to the kitchen, only to find meager scraps in the cupboards and fridge, and mostly stuff he wasn’t crazy about. He decided he needed a break - and beer - and decided to try and venture out into the world for the first time in … shit, how long? He couldn’t remember. In fact, he wasn’t sure he could manage it. But he wasn’t going to be able to work this entire case on the computer; at some point, he’d actually have to do some legwork. Might as well practice now.

He took the motorcycle, because both the Mustang and GTO reminded him of Paris too much. They were his babies; he had loved them like they were pets. Roan hadn’t realized how slow on the uptake and generally logy he was though; he almost went off road twice and nearly lost control of the bike at one intersection. He wanted to blame the drugs, but knew he couldn’t - it was him, all him.

Luckily, the Safeway he visited wasn’t far from his home. But he wandered the aisles for a bit, not sure where anything was, and he was sure he used to know. Had he really just blanked, or had they remodeled since he was last here? As he was taking in the general strangeness of being in a store that was simultaneously familiar and yet not, he heard a man’s voice behind him ask, “Roan?”

Oh no. He turned warily, wondering who he knew who would be in the produce section at this time of day, He found himself looking at a young man he didn’t instantly recognize. He was about two inches taller than him, lean but in an athletic way, handsome enough that Roan was sure he should have recognized him. He wore jeans and a black Ramones t-shirt (which won him points) under a black leather jacket that was more chic than butch. He had dark brown hair in a sleek, neat cut, and had a tiny gold replica of an artist’s paint brush hanging from his right earlobe. He stared at this man blankly, wondering if this was one of Paris’s friends, but as the man’s deep brown eyes searched his face with sympathy, the penny finally dropped.

“I haven’t seen you in so long. How are you doing?” Toby the bartender from Panic asked him. He nearly didn’t recognize him with his shirt on.

Roan continued staring at him blankly. What? “Why do you care?” he wondered. He wasn’t being cruel - he was genuinely curious. He hardly knew the man.

Toby blinked at the aggressiveness of the question, but responded without being defensive. (That won him another point.) “The last time I saw you was at the wake, and you left looking pretty distraught. I was worried.”

“Why?” Again, genuine curiosity. Who the hell was this guy?

Toby dug his hands in the pocket of his jeans, and shifted on his feet uncomfortably. “I know what it’s like to lose the one person in your life who meant the most to you. I didn’t think I’d survive it.”

Oh holy shit, he so didn’t want to talk about this. “Yeah, well, death’s a bitch. Excuse me.” He spun on his heels and headed for another aisle. He had no idea what was in it, but he no longer cared; he needed to get away from the nosy bartender as quickly as possible.

“It’s not the end of the world,” he said sympathetically. “It just feels like it.”

He felt a coldness in his chest as those words sunk in, and once he was out of the aisle and out of sight, he waited a couple of seconds and peered around the corner to see if the weirdo bartender was coming after him. He wasn’t; Toby had turned back to the apples. Okay, so his lover or whatever had died on him - he was sorry. But right now it was all he could do to hold himself together; he didn’t need to hear someone else’s tale of woe, no matter how relevant.

Roan bought two packs of a microbrew that wasn’t his favorite but he thought he could live with, and a random assortment of foodstuffs, including a pre-made sandwich from the deli whose description he hadn’t read, so he had no idea what it was. He also had no idea if he had any money in his bank account, but his debit card worked, so he figured he must have.

Out in the parking lot, though, he suddenly realized he wasn’t sure how he was going to get his groceries home since he’d taken the motorcycle. Jesus Christ, he was a fucking idiot now, wasn’t he? Maybe he had always been.

His cell phone rang, but it took him a moment to realize that, as he had never changed the phone from the ringtone Paris had last downloaded on to it. For a moment, he just sat there wondering who was playing the Dandy Warhol’s “You Were The Last High”.

Yeah, he had become a complete idiot.

Finally he found his phone and answered it. “Wow, your bedbugs are on to something,” Randi told him.

Oh good, the case. He seemed to be doing better with that than anything else. “We’re looking at identity theft, aren’t we?”

“Well, I got two guys using the same social security number at almost the same time on separate coasts, so yeah, something not kosher’s going on.”

It turned out that while one Ron was getting a mortgage in Maryland, the other one was opening a Visa account here, and neither financial institution seemed aware of the other. (Because, in Randi’s opinion, “Most of these companies are fucking morons.”) The Visa account opened here was closed now - it had been since after Ron’s “death” - and the only usage of his social security number recently seemed to be on the east coast, where the “first” Ron was.

Randi sounded animated and chatty, and she seemed to have forgiven him for all his pain in the ass suicidal depression. She always loved playing detective when she got a chance, although it wasn’t too often that financial records that he couldn’t access came into play.

He hadn’t gone into detail about the case when he initially called her - he was too busy groveling - so he explained to her what was going on, and what he thought was going on. “She hired me to find her husband, Ron Dormer. But the problem is, they’re two different people.”

“So you think whoever she married was an identity thief?”

“Yeah. It looks like he was living as Ron Dormer, but that’s not really who he was. What I don’t get is why. Dalisay didn’t appear to have a ton of money, and the real Ron Dormer couldn’t be more of a middle class schlub. Why pretend to be him?”

Randi was quiet for a moment as they both digested this. “Because who he really was was even more disappointing?” Randi suggested.

Roan nodded, rubbing his tired eyes. The sky was turning a blood tinged red, but the evening was almost abnormally warm - or maybe it wasn’t. What season was this? “Or worse. How do I tell Dalisay the man she thought she was married to was someone else entirely?”

“Carefully?”

“I wasn’t looking for a joke, thank you.”

“Well, that’s all you’re gonna get. I crunch numbers; I don’t deal with people.”

“Lucky you.”

But his problem was even bigger than simply telling Dalisay she had married a fraud, a man who’d been living under another man’s identity. He had to look for a man whose name he didn’t know, who could be anyone else, who could have simply stole another man’s identity for himself.