It wasn’t hard to find him - his number was listed in the white pages. He wanted to apologize to him, to say he was sorry for boneheaded comments that could have been taken the wrong way, for general insensitivity, but then he realized that maybe Dylan didn’t expect him to know his real past. Maybe what he thought were hints were simply cryptic comments that he invested with too much import only because they were so odd. They just set off his own puzzle solving aspect, that’s all, and right now that seemed to be the most hyperactive part of him.

He forced himself to let it go, and concentrated on Vance/Ron/Ryan/Ben. As far as he could tell, while he took a couple of waiter jobs as Ryan, he never got married in that identity. There were lots of Ben Hicks, so yes, he needed to narrow it down.

What he needed to do was start from the beginning, so he did - he spent all afternoon unearthing the life of one Vance Robert Ladowski. His online records were spotty, so he had to make a lot of phone calls and fax a couple of people, but he started building a timeline of his life, such as it was. He was born on May 13th, 1970, in Nashville, Kentucky, the second son of John and Helen Ladowski - Vance had a three year old brother named Mark when he was born. John and Helen split up when Vance was six, and Helen got custody of the kids and moved to Florida. She married two times and moved six times, finally settling in Blackwell, Idaho. John Ladowski was a real rolling stone, though, getting married four more times, fathering three other kids (one outside of marriage), and eventually ending up in Sweetwater, Texas, where he died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2001. Helen was still alive, but she was in a nursing home that was known for its care of Alzheimer’s patients, so she’d most likely be no help at all. But his brother Mark was alive; he was married to a woman named Catherine, they had two daughters, Sarah and Rebecca, and had lived in Bayonne, New Jersey until they moved to Blackwell, Idaho (to look after mom, presumably) two and a half years ago. He found Mark’s number in the online white pages, and wrote it down, trying to figure out the best way to approach this. If the Las Vegas PD had contacted him about his dead brother, this would seem as insensitive as hell. But the longer he waited, the more likely it was that the LVPD would call him first. He just hoped their cases were as backlogged as other police departments, making notifying a family about a probable suicide a lower priority.

He called, and it was Mark Ladowski who answered. Roan identified himself as a private detective looking for some background information on Vance, and Mark sighed heavily. “Jesus Christ, what has he done now?”

This told him a couple of things. Namely, Mark didn’t know his brother was dead, and two, he knew he was a fuck up on a grand scale. Maybe he wouldn’t feel protective of him, therefore he might tell him the whole truth.

Of course, he knew his brother was dead, and he knew he should tell him, but that was the LVPD’s job, and besides, did he know for a fact it was Vance? He thought it was; certainly circumstantial evidence pointed that way, but he never did stop to get his fingerprints. What if he was wrong? (Okay, yeah, he knew he was a chickenshit, looking for an excuse not to do it. He hated telling people their loved ones were dead.)

Mark was willing to talk. Vance had a long history of petty crimes, nothing major, but Mark had kicked him out of his house when Vance was in college because apparently Vance got a credit card in Mark’s name without telling him; Mark just found out about it when he started getting the bills for a Discover card he didn’t have. Mark eventually found out that Vance had done the same thing to a college roommate, and that’s when Vance dropped out and disappeared. Mark said he’d hear from his brother now and again, but usually just so he could wire him some bail money. Their relationship had never recovered from the credit card fraud, although Mark admitted that they had never been that close to begin with. Vance was the “black sheep”, always a little “strange”, always on the fringe of the family. Roan suddenly felt a bit of sympathy for Vance, even though he was apparently a dick.

Mark turned out to be very helpful, as he remembered an alias that the Oklahoma cops who arrested him said he’d been using: Brad Wilson. Roan added it to the list. He also said that he thought Vance had “settled down” and lived in Fresno for a while, but that was several years ago.

As soon as he was off the phone with Mark, he did some searching, made another few phone calls - and again, missed Paris with an ache that was palpable - but was able to connect “Ben Hicks” to Fresno, about a year before he moved up here and met Dalisay. He was emailing Randi to let her know what he’d discovered about the Ben Hicks ID, in the hopes that that would help narrow it down, when Dee came over with some take out food. Dee stared at him in disbelief. “You’re awake. When did hell freeze over and why was I not informed?”

“Very funny. I have a case, remember?”

“It must be a good one if it gets you out of bed. Or did you have help?” He put the white plastic bags on the breakfast bar, and the smell of Thai food drifted towards him, making his stomach growl. Roan realized he’d forgotten lunch - was it dinner time already? Roan also didn’t remember turning on the stereo, but Porcupine Tree was playing faintly in the background, and it was doubtful Dee had put that on.

“Help? Meaning what?”

He snorted derisively as he unloaded the cartons. “Like I didn’t notice the boy toy was wearing your shirt.”

Roan sighed, wanting to bang his head on the table, but unwilling to give Dee the satisfaction. He knew this would happen. “It was pouring last night, remember? I gave him my shirt while his was in the dryer.”

Dee arched an eyebrow at him and put a hand on his hip, giving him a look that could have blistered paint. “Oh sure, like I haven’t heard that one before. What the hell is it with you and superhot guys? What do they see in your pale Scottish ass?”

Luckily, he knew an easy way to distract Dee. “You tell me. I mean, you qualify as one of those superhot guys, right?”

He looked briefly confused, a look of annoyance flashing across his face as he figured he was flattering him to distract him, but he still bought into it. “I think it was temporary insanity. I hadn’t eaten for hours and my body chemistry was off. Also, I have a weakness for cops who don’t freak out and lose their lunch at gruesome accident scenes.”

Which is where he first met Dee. He’d still been a cop then, although it was in the waning days of his “career”. He was one of three squad cars that responded to a five car pile up on the interstate, and one of the victims, in an insanely accordioned Hyundai, had taken a stomach laceration so deep that his insides started spilling out when another cop tried to unwittingly pull him out of his vehicle for safety. That cop had to go away to vomit, while Roan reached into the car and tried to close the gap in his skin to hold his insides in, putting pressure on the wound until the first EMTs- including Dee - arrived. Somehow this guy lived for a while, although he would die two days later at the hospital, but that was still longer than you’d think a guy who had his guts spilling out would live. He got some credit for keeping the guy alive until the EMTs arrived, but he didn’t think he deserved it, especially since he didn’t ultimately live. “I’m not squeamish,” Roan pointed out. “I’m infected. I’d better not be.”

“You’re just Mr. Tough Guy,” Dee replied, somewhat dismissively, as he moved around his kitchen like he owned the place. “Hey, I think we just figured out what your appeal is. So, Clint Eastwood, who was the eye candy?”

“His name’s Dylan, and he’s just a friend.”

“Sure he is,” he said, in a way that suggested he didn’t buy that for a moment. “He looked kind of familiar. Where have I seen him before?”

“You’re asking me?” He knew that wouldn’t put him off, so he sighed and admitted, “Panic. He’s one of the bartenders.”

Dee whistled as he dumped various amounts of food on a couple of plates. “That’s why I couldn’t place him - I didn’t recognize him with his shirt on.”

“I think that’s a common problem.”

“I suppose it’s crass to ask that when you’re done with him if I can get a shot? I mean, those young guys are pretty much sluts, and bless their hearts for that.”

“Stereotype much? He’s not like that. He hasn’t hit on me once.”

Dee’s look was dubious. “Damn, Clint, you must be losing your touch.”

This was exactly why it was nuts to be friends with an ex. The amount of shit they slung at you was really annoying.

But he was able to change the subject easy enough. Although this meal was Roan’s dinner, it was technically Dee’s “breakfast”, as he was working the night shift tonight, which was also known as “drunken prime time”, as most incidents with people in various states of intoxication happened the later it got, for obvious reasons. When the bars closed, it was a positive boom time. So Dee was getting himself psyched up, pounding energy drinks and giving him crap, all in preparation for a very long night. At least the food was good.

Once Dee was gone, he went back to his computer, to discover that Randi had managed to get a hit on his Ben Hicks identity down in Fresno - he’d once used a credit card to pay his rent at an apartment building named Casa Vista. But before he googled the address for the apartment building, he rubbed his eyes, which ached a bit, and asked, “What the hell am I doing?”

“Dalisay asked you to find out why he lived a lie with her for several years,” Paris said. “That’s what you’re doing. It’s psychological profiling. You used to do that, yes?”

“But there’s nothing psychological here. Right now I’m just constructing a physical timeline, just creating a file of fake identities.”

“Why?”

“Because I think it’s going to lead me somewhere. But what if doesn’t? What if this is pointless? Clearly he started his fraudulent ways young; the only thing he was ever running from was himself.” He folded his arms and rested his head on them, wondering if the picture would ever start to form. The most annoying thing was he was actually relatively certain there was a pattern here; he could nearly make out its edges. Yet here he was talking with Paris again - he couldn’t rely on his mind right now.

Suddenly he had that antsy urge crawling up his spine once more - he needed to get out of here. He needed a drink. Several drinks.

There was a pathetic little bar not too far away. It was a cramped place that was always dark, no matter the time of day, and seemed like some kind of natural black hole of despair that made misery an almost physical thing. He went there, perched on a leather stool, and had a truly awful beer that tasted liked piss. He took drinks of it while holding his breath, but he wasn’t doing very well.

His cell phone went off, and he almost didn’t answer it because it was Matt. But he did, and as it was, Matt was asking for help. Quite reluctantly, Matt admitted that he took on another “spouse job” just a few days ago, before Roan was “up and about”, but since he was now out of bed and relatively functioning, he thought maybe he’d like to do it. Or, in other words, he found stake outs so damn boring and the incident with Murchison last night so freaky that Matt didn’t want to do another photo session with a cheating spouse. Roan agreed to it before he knew what he was doing, and swung home to grab his camera and stake out kit before meeting Matt at the office.

Shit, the office. He got a lump in his throat just pulling into the almost empty parking lot, and he didn’t really know why until he realized that the last time he saw the home base of MK Investigations, Paris was with him. Oh god, he used to be so good at being alone; even when he was with Paris, there were times he wished he was alone again, or at least had his own space. Now that he had nothing but his own space he felt so empty he thought he was hollow, something fragile that would crumble at the first bruising blow. He hated it, and it shamed him in so many different ways he couldn’t quantify it.

Matt was leaning on his BMW, looking beaten and slightly miserable, and Roan remembered how much black eyes hurt. It’d been a while since he’d had one - for a while there as a kid, he was lucky to get through three consecutive months without three consecutive black eyes - but you never really forgot the toothache dull pain that seemed to sink into your eye socket and made your skin ache even if it was just the wind brushing your face. Maybe he’d decided to just sit out this stakeout because he felt so punk.

Matt gave him the standard record form and told him what he knew about the client. He was hired by Sheena Hancock to follow her husband Peter, who worked at that big monstrosity of a building downtown (the Brooks Insurance tower). Her husband had taken to spending a lot of “late nights” at the office, but she already knew from someone who worked with her husband that he always left at the same time. When confronted, Peter claimed he was working “off the books”, but she didn’t buy it - she was sure he was having an affair. And she was probably right, as most cheaters weren’t as subtle as they thought they were; if anything, most of them seemed to want to get caught. It was like they wanted out of their relationships but didn’t have the balls to face the person and say, “I want out”, so they chose a passive-aggressive way to go about it. He was bound to leave work at nine, which didn’t give Roan a lot of time to get there, and he drove a silver ‘06 Saab 9-5 , and Sheena had helpfully provided a license plate number so he could actually find the damn car (silver Saabs were a dime a dozen downtown). Since he didn’t have a lot of time if he wanted to catch Peter, Matt didn’t have a chance to mention Dylan, but clearly he was thinking about it.

At stop lights, he dug his infrared illuminator out of his stake out kit. You could hardly use a flash on a person you were taking surreptitious pictures of, but he’d gotten a miniature high powered LED illuminator (powered by plugging it into the car’s cigarette lighter) that lit up a scene with a light frequency that was beyond a Human visible wavelength, but still worked with his camera. The pictures came out as if they’d been lit with harsh fluorescents. Ah, technology was a wonderful thing for the rotten bastard.

He loaded up his audio book while he searched for the Saab 9-5, afraid he missed Peter, but as it turned out he was just going to his car. He was a very average looking man in his mid-thirties, with the savagely combed back hair of the severely repressed or potential neo-con, whichever came first. He let Peter get two car length’s ahead before he followed, letting another car cut in to put more distance between them. It was unlikely he’d notice he was being followed, but the GTO was a pretty memorable car, so he made sure to keep a good distance.

Peter headed like a man possessed to the red light district, and while Roan idled at another light, he took several snaps of Peter talking to hookers. One eventually got in, an Asian woman in a turquoise mini-dress, and he couldn’t be certain without a close up look, but he thought it was Mika. Mika was a gorgeous, lithe woman with an impressive rack, who was actually transgender - meaning she was female from the waist up and male from the waist down. Apparently she got the breast implants as a “gift” from an older lover, but ended up getting dumped by him, rejected by his family, hooked on meth, etc., and ended up hooking. She was gorgeous, and she’d done enough hormones that you’d never guess he was a guy … as long as you didn’t reach under the skirt. Then you were in for a bit of a shock, no matter how well he tucked. Did Peter know he was picking up a shemale? Probably not. Mika didn’t really advertise that, except online.

Peter drove around behind one of those cheap teriyaki joints that looked like it promised a side dish of food poisoning in every meal, and the hooker who could have been Mika gave him a blowjob in his car. Admittedly there were no good angles on this unless Roan got closer to the car, but he got a couple with Mika(?) quite obviously putting her head in his lap. What else could she be doing, looking for her contact lens?

He got enough photos that he knew this stake out was over. Peter wasn’t having an affair per se, just having some fun with the local hookers. Still, he hung around to see where Peter would head next - no pun intended. After dropping Mika (?) off, he headed towards the airport, eventually stopping at one of those massage parlors that Roan always felt like he should give a kickback to. Jesus, what was this guy, a sex addict? (Although honestly, he hated that term - what man wasn’t a sex addict? What guy said, “Oh yuck, I’m never doing that again”? And if they ever did, clearly they had done it wrong.) Roan got photos of him going in, then drove off, figuring this was enough to not only confirm Sheena’s suspicions, but sink his marriage. What a life this was - snapping photos of guys getting blow jobs. He was going to take a scalding hot shower when he got home, but he knew it wouldn’t wash the feeling of dirt away.

Roan was shocked to feel something dripping off his face, only to discover he was crying. Why the hell was he crying? Yeah, he was disgusted by his job right now, but not enough to get weepy eyed about it. Then he realized he thought he could smell Paris in this car, a faint, lingering scent of him, and it had triggered his tear ducts. A hollow pocket behind his rib cage ached, and he had to wipe his eyes to see the road clearly. “Goddamn it, you pathetic son of a bitch, stop thinking about yourself,” he snapped, yelling at himself in the confines of his car. Yes, he was nuts. He thought that was supposed to be a freer state of mind. By the time he got home, he was seething with fury at himself.

While he showered, he had the photo printer spitting out the pics he took tonight, the nails in the Hancock marriage coffin. Just like he suspected, the shower didn’t make him feel any better, but he’d cleaned off the tears and felt a mite less pathetic. To distract himself, he turned on the television and went back to the computer to dig up more of Vance Ladowski’s past. He finally searched for the Casa Vista Apartments down in Fresno, and to his surprise, he turned up quite a bit.

Approximately four years ago, there was a sensational murder there. A woman named Desiree Jones was killed during an apparent robbery, which was just the latest crime in one of several plaguing the building. About a week after this, “Ben Hicks” ran off, and shortly afterwards “Ron Dormer” surfaced in this state, working as a delivery man. Surely it was a coincidence. The high profile crime had probably scared “Ben” off, just like the devastating accident in the fireworks factory scared “Ron” off. These weren’t identities that could hold up to a great deal of scrutiny, especially legal scrutiny.

Still, the timing was interesting, wasn’t it?

The phone rang and he ignored it, letting the machine pick it up. Could Vance have been involved in the killing? There was no evidence that he’d ever been violent, but it only took one time. As he was pondering how he was going to get the Fresno police department to cough up details on the Jones case, he heard, from the phone machine, “Hey, this is Tyler Hansen from the Las Vegas Police Department. If you can call me back as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it.” He then left his cell phone number, and Roan just stared at the machine like the handsome cop might poke his head out of it.

As Roan pulled him away from the door, Dylan came over to help, and he let him take the burden of Matt as he wavered on his feet, his eyes hollow with continued disorientation. “Are they still outside?” Roan asked him.

Matt’s roving eyes finally focused on him, and he said, “What?”

Roan sighed and glanced at Dylan, who nodded as he took the remaining weight of Matt and let Roan go back to the doorway. That earned Dylan some brownie points - he helped out without asking idiotic questions.

He peered out into the dark, the rain still pouring down like a punishment, a brief flash of lightning throwing a quick strobe light on the lawn and driveway. He saw only their cars: his, Dylan’s, Matt’s. Since Matt drove here, it was unlikely his assailant was here (yet at any rate), but Roan flared his nostrils and breathed in the ozone heavy air as thunder rumbled like a angry dragon. If there was someone else here, he couldn’t smell them.

And he was disappointed, because he was still angry. Rage was like a small stone in his chest, not quite an ember but hot enough to make itself known. He wanted to take it out on someone; he wanted to let the lion take over and absolve him from feeling anything human. The thought of it was so intoxicating it scarred him just a little. It’d be so easy just to let go; hanging on was almost painful.

He ducked back in and closed the door, smoothing his wet hair back from his face as he turned towards the living room, where Dylan had helped Matt to the sofa. Matt was looking at Dylan woozily, as if he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. “Toby? What are you doing here?”

“He’s a friend,” Roan said dismissively, retrieving a mini Maglite from a kitchen drawer. “What the fuck happened, Matt?”

“Umm, remember how I said I did some cases while you were, um …”

“Yeah, I remember. Tell me you weren’t working on one now.” Roan stood in front of Matt and looked down, and he noticed a concerned look briefly flash across Dylan’s face. What, did he think he was going to smack him?

“No! I was just out … I went to the Starbucks, y’know, to visit my friends there. I didn’t realize it, but one of the guys I took pictures of cheatin’ on his wife was there. I don’t know how he recognized me, but he did, and when I went out to my car he blindsided me. I didn’t even recognize the guy! Maybe I just didn’t recognize him with his pants on.”

Roan sighed heavily, and held the flashlight out from one of Matt’s eyes before turning it on. He squinted and raised his hand, but Roan caught it and shoved it down. “I’m trying to determine if you have a concussion, so stop it.”

“We should call an ambulance,” Dylan said.

“No ambulance,” Matt insisted. “This is embarrassing enough as it is. Since when are you guys friends?”

Roan saw that Matt’s pupil reactions were normal, and asked Matt to follow his finger with his eyes as he moved it slowly back and forth across his field of vision. Matt seemed to follow it okay, so he was betting he didn’t have a concussion, he just got his ass kicked. Matt may have filled out with more muscle, but he was still a twink at heart and just didn’t know how to fight. All the muscle in the world wasn’t any good if you didn’t know how to use it.

Paris had been a big guy, and he hated to fight, but he knew how to fight. He played junior league hockey, for Christ’s sake. And even in his current wasted state, Roan knew he knew how to fight; he learned the hard way as a kid, and kept learning until he joined the force, when he had to unlearn some things so he didn’t do a full beat down on a combative perp’s ass. He never did unlearn it, apparently. The lion just made things worse, and potentially more lethal.

“Since when are you a paramedic?” Matt asked, somewhat surly. The ‘tude was probably the result of embarrassment, especially embarrassment in front of a hot guy (Dylan), which just made things worse.

“You put up with Dee’s shit long enough, you learn a few things,” he told him, twisting off the flashlight. “You did lose consciousness there for a second, so you probably should go to the ER just in case. I don’t think you have a concussion, but we’ve already established I’m an amateur.”

Matt shook his head, then winced and put a hand to his head. Roan noticed his knuckles were red, as if he’d hit back. “I’m okay, really, I just got my brain rattled for a second.”

“Do you have an ice pack?” Dylan asked. Roan pointed towards the kitchen, and he nodded and got up to go get it.

Matt’s eyesight was good enough to follow him for a bit, and then he looked back at Roan accusingly. “Since when do you know him?”

“It’s complicated,” he said, wondering what was up his butt - well, besides getting it kicked up between his shoulder blades. Was he jealous? “Do you know who this guy was who beat you?”

Dylan came back with a frozen pack of blue ice, which he held up to Matt’s blackened eye. As Matt reached up to take it, he cautioned, “Be careful, don’t put too much pressure on it.” He’d done this before, hadn’t he? No wonder he hadn’t been too alarmed by a beaten guy on the doorstep.

As soon as Matt had the ice pack secured against his face, he answered the question. “Yeah. He accused me of making Crystal leave him and take half his shit, and since I only had one client by the name of Crystal, it’s an easy guess.” Roan stared at him with a raised eyebrow, and finally he remembered to share the names. “Oh, uh Crystal Murchison, so it musta been her husband, Chuck.”

“Chuck Murchison, great. Did you keep a file?”

“A file?”

“Names, address, contact information ..?”

“Oh, yeah. I followed Paris’s, um … files.”

“Great. Then we can tell the cops exactly where to go to catch this guy.” He picked up the receiver to call it in, and Matt grabbed his arm.

“Wait, no. I mean, shit, isn’t this humiliating enough?”

“Hey, no one beats up one of my investigators, even if he did volunteer himself to work for me without asking or otherwise telling me.” He gave him a small, sarcastic smile for that, and Matt removed his hand from his arm, aware he was still in the doghouse with him. “Since I wasn’t there to kick his ass, I’ll let the cops do it for me.” He didn’t add “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll go kick his ass”, but he felt that was implicit.

As it was, he got a dispatcher he knew, Jamie, and she agreed to get a couple of guys out there as soon as she could. He then called Dee, who chewed him out for a bit, and asked him to come by. At first Dee pointed out he was on shift and couldn’t, but then Roan told him why he wanted him to come over. That got him to shut up.

The pizza arrived, and they all had a slice before Dee and Steve arrived, just ahead of the cops. The cops were made up of a rookie he didn’t know, a rather petite blonde woman named Corinne Nilsson, and one cop he did know, a ten year veteran named Allen Cho, who was known around the cop shop as “Chewie” (the origin of the nickname was disputed; some said it was because he chewed a lot of gum - which he did; ever since he quit smoking, he became a three packs of gum a day man, and constantly smelled of spearmint - others said it was because Cho was so phonetically close to “chew”, even though it wasn’t, suggesting some kind of awful racial joke that Roan didn’t even want to know about).

Dee agreed with his diagnosis that Matt didn’t appear to have a concussion, and nothing seemed broken, but he wanted to take him into the ER just in case, because he had lost consciousness at some point. Matt protested, but Dee never took no for an answer - well, rarely; Roan could make him do it, but only because he could annoy the shit out of him - and as soon as the laconic Chewie and his partner had what they needed for the report, they let Dee and Steve take him.

On their way out, Chewie told him, “Corry ran him through the system, and it looks like this guy has a couple of priors, mainly for domestics and bar fights. You should warn your guys to run a criminal check before they do a job.”

“He’s new,” Roan said, rolling his eyes. He would have told him he hadn’t actually hired Matt at any point, but Chewie didn’t need to know that, and besides, he was sick of dealing with cops. He’d been dealing with cops all day.

Chewie grunted in acknowledgment, his look sympathetic - he was dealing with a rookie himself, although Nilsson seemed reasonably competent. “Guess the guy’s just lucky he didn’t jump you, huh?” He clapped him on the arm in a friendly manner, and turned to go, adding, “Take care of yourself.”

He closed the door on them, aware of a slight dull pounding in his head that he knew would just get worse, and Dylan said, “You must be a tough guy. Even Matt told Diego he came here because he figured you could protect him.”

He sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Matt thinks I’m his savior or a superhero or something because I kicked the ass of his ‘roid monster stalker. I guess he forgot about the part where -” He stopped himself before he could admit he lioned out at least partially and freaked everyone the hell out. But he had to say something. “ - I was a cop, and we’re taught to handle crazies.”

“Some handle them better than others,” Dylan offered. It wasn’t that he was trying to be kind, although Roan was sure he was. It sounded more like he was speaking from rueful experience. What was Dylan hinting at?

Roan could have asked, but honestly, he didn’t care all that much. He nuked a couple of slices of now cold pizza in the hopes that more food would send his monstrous headache back to his cave, and Dylan enjoyed a slice as well. They talked about pretty much nothing really, but that was okay, as Dylan was very easy to talk to. He was a good listener, and certainly easy on the eyes, but Roan idly wondered what these pieces he gathered about him meant. He mentioned over their first chat at the diner that he knew what crazy looked like; he showed that he was accustomed to tending to beating victims; he now hinted at knowledge of how cops treated the loonier perps. What did this all mean? He suddenly wondered what a background search on Dylan would turn up.

As soon as Dylan left, he went and took a long shower and then went to bed, just laying there for a while and listening to the thunder as it faded away in the distance. Paris used to like storms, although he never knew why. The bed seemed much too big.

He had no memory of falling asleep, and yet he woke up to a ringing phone. It was just Matt checking in, letting him know he’d files a police report, and they’d already taken Chuck Murchison into custody. He wasn’t hard to find, mainly because he went home. (The criminal genius of some people was absolutely staggering. It wouldn‘t have surprised him to learn that Chuck was one of those shirtless fat guys dragged out ranting from beneath a parked car on Cops.) He was physically okay, just embarrassed, and Roan wanted to chew him a new one over becoming a detective without fully realizing what that meant, but he was wasn’t awake enough. He needed coffee first.

He’d invited Dalisay over here, as she’d hired him here and it just seemed like the place to end it. He started up their old coffee machine, as he couldn’t quite manage to start up Pierre, the espresso machine Paris’s parents gave them as a wedding gift, and he put the kettle on in case she preferred tea. Look at him, playing hostess. But how did you break the news that 1) she married a man who wasn’t who she thought he was and 2) was now dead, so no “closure” was even possible? It was always hard to break bad news to the clients, but some news was just worse than others.

Waiting for Dalisay to show up, he did some searches. Dylan was clean, criminal record wise, but Roan decided he could do some other searches - Lexus-Nexus, Google - just to see if anything else came up, because he had a sense that there was something he wasn’t saying that he expected him to know. Checking his email, Roan saw that Randi had forwarded him some information on Ryan Solgot, one of the names on the credit cards he found hidden in Vance’s jacket. The card he found was almost totally maxed out, although it hadn’t been used in almost three months, which was about when it was flagged by MasterCard as a fraudulent card. (How did he know to abandon the card? And why was he still carrying it around if he knew it was bad?) But here was an interesting thing - Ryan’s last job? Waiter at a restaurant called El Gaucho in Minneapolis. In spite of that name, it was a very fancy place, the kind that had the gall to charge you a hundred bucks for a steak. That would be an excellent place and an excellent job to get access to other people’s credit card information. There was another Ryan Solgot too, still living in a Minnesota suburb and still working as a banker (how ironic), still fighting the credit card companies over fraudulent charges made in his name. She said there were several Ben Hicks, and she was trying to narrow things down.

Going through all his telephone messages, he found out that Kevin had called him last night, sounding very nasal, like he had a cold. Vance had a record, it seemed - he’d been arrested for mail fraud, passing bad checks, and drug possession in New Jersey, Michigan, and Oklahoma, respectively. He never did a lot of time for any of them, though.

He was doing some other searches when Dalisay showed up. She looked neat and prim in a tailored brown pantsuit, wearing so little make up that it was almost hard to tell she was wearing any at all. She was still wearing a bit too much perfume for his taste, something floral and cloying, but when he sneezed he once again blamed it on allergies.

He offered her coffee or tea - as it turned out, she picked coffee - and when he brought her a cup and sat down across from her on the sofa, she said meekly, “It’s bad news, isn’t it? People are always nice before they drop bad news.”

Roan would have denied it, but she was correct. So he laid it all out plainly, telling her that her husband was actually Vance Ladowski, an identity thief, who killed himself recently down in Las Vegas. He had the box of tissue standing by this time, and he was glad, as she needed it. But after a couple of minutes of shocked crying, the tears trailed off, and she asked, “Why would he do such a thing?”

He was forced to shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Can you find out?”

“Umm … I’m not sure. I could try, I suppose. But why would you want to pay me to do that?”

Her tears dried up, and her lips thinned grimly until they almost disappeared. “Because I need to know why he lied to me for the three years I knew him and the two years we were married. Does he have another wife somewhere, another family?”

“Not that I’ve found.“ He didn’t add “yet”, or mention that he hadn’t really looked, but he supposed that that too was implicit. “Look, are you sure you want to know this?”

She sat up straight, hands folded in her lap, chin raised ever so slightly. It was a posture of poise and dignity, one which most people couldn’t muster. “I am. I have to know who he was. I don’t care how bad it is, I want to know.”

That was fair enough, and far be it from him to talk a client out of continuing to pay his salary. He told her what little he had gathered about Vance, about his stealing the identity of Ryan Solgot and his brief criminal record. Her expression set like cement, a look that was far beyond stony and resolved. She took it all in, but didn’t otherwise react.

She wrote him a check for further fees, and he asked her, just because he had a hunch, if she was from a wealthy family. That stopped her short - did she guess he was asking because that would be a good reason for Vance to have married her? - and after a moment she said no, not exactly rich, but fairly comfortable, as her family was the Tuazons. They were a regional manufacturer of frozen foods, mainly Asian in nature, and while they’d hardly give Swansons a run for their money, they did quite well in sales all along the West Coast and into some rare spots in the interior (Idaho and Colorado). They weren’t poor.

As soon as she was gone, ruminating over the possibility that she’d married a male gold digger, Roan went back to his computer to run some more searches on Vance’s alternate identities, to see if he could find some marriage license or announcements. He’d had a window open from a previous search on Dylan, and he discovered he had some hits. First of all, a Nexus-Lexus search turned up that he’d once appeared in a local newspaper article about the 2000 Summer Olympics (!), as he was trying out for the American archery team (archery?!) while at college. He didn’t qualify, but just barely. Then there was a bland announcement about a court action - he’d changed his name. So his name wasn’t actually Dylan Harlow either? Wow, this guy was hard to pin down.

Roan had ways to get into records, and while it took a phone call or two, he finally found what he wanted: Dylan had his name legally changed at eighteen from Dylan Shepherd to Dylan Harlow, Harlow being his mother’s maiden name. No reason was given, and it wasn’t really necessary in this state to have one on the record.

So he did a search on Dylan Shepherd, and turned up a couple others in various states. But for the Nexus-Lexus articles locally, he turned up hits from many years ago, when Dylan must have been, what, five, six?

The articles revealed that Dylan’s parents were involved in a homicide-suicide: his father, a disgraced cop (!) killed his mother after years of physical abuse. It was a well known, sensational case that led to reforms in the police department and how they handled domestic violence cases amongst officers. Roan vaguely remembered the case since it was a big local scandal for many years, but it was long before he entered the force. Holy shit.

Roan stared at the last article for a while, which ended with the woman’s sister taking custody of the couple’s three kids (Dylan was the middle one; his sister, Sheba, was a year and a half older, and his brother Thomas was two years younger) after a brief custody battle with the father’s parents, where the deceased woman was slandered so much by her former in-laws that even the judge was appalled. Jesus Christ, this poor guy. It even mentioned the kids were in the house at the times of the shooting, and sure they were - it all happened a week before Christmas, during a really bad winter. How much of it had he seen? How much of it did he remember?

No wonder he changed his name, and when he gave his bio to the newspaper about the archery trials, he didn’t mention his past history at all. Who would? Who wanted to be known as one of “those” kids? Oh shit, last night, when he blurted out where had they been when he was getting the shit beaten out of him - Dylan could have said he was getting the shit beaten out of himself too. Or that his mother was getting killed by his dad before he topped himself. He could have shut him the hell up, or at least won the “Queen For A Day” sob story contest.

But he didn’t. And why would he? Dylan Shepherd was someone else. He was the sad survivor of a hideous tragedy. As soon as he was old enough, he changed his name and embarked on a new life. He became Dylan Harlow, someone with a past so mundane it was hardly worth mentioning, and somehow a champion archer. (Okay, that bit needed some heavy explaining - how did someone become an archer in this day and age? And why oh why was it a fucking Olympic sport?!) He had separated from his past by cutting clean from it; maybe it was the only way he could stay sane. Maybe he had to become someone else because he couldn’t possibly remain who he was.

Tyler was young, a new cop, and it showed in how delicately he handled him. He was the good, sensitive cop, the modern cop, which is why his older, gruffer partner was the one who gave him shit. He was a stocky Hispanic bulldog of a man named Ramirez (he never learned his first name), who had hair like a scrub brush, stubbly short and wire grey, even though he couldn’t have been older than forty. His shoulders were almost as broad as Tyler’s, even though Tyler had about a foot of height on him.

The cop shop was industrial and crowded and its air conditioner was inconsistent, with some spots eerily cold and others swelteringly hot; the scent of bad coffee and body odor was almost nauseating. He expected to be put in a “box” - an interrogation room - and was, even though the questioning never got bad. He told them what happened and why he was here several times, and he gave them his references. As it turned out, Chief Matthews had vouched for him big time, saying he was a “consultant” for the PD up there, which was embellishment if not exactly outright bullshit. Calling him when they had bad cats wasn’t exactly “consulting”. But he appreciated it.

He knew when they got his old personnel file by the way they treated him. Ramirez still gave him the gimlet eye, but he stood farther away, and Tyler seemed solicitous, asking if he wanted coffee or something to eat. The coffee smelled awful, and he couldn’t imagine anyone drinking anything hot in Nevada, so he requested a soda, which Tyler went to retrieve. So they knew he was infected now. When would they ask the awkward questions? He then wondered if he could ask to see his personnel file - he wondered if Odenkirk had written “big flaming faggot fairy princess” in it, like he’d once threatened to. Maybe that was the real reason Ramirez was standing far away from him.

A check with the airport confirmed what time he’d arrived in Vegas, pretty much meaning the timelines didn’t match, and even if they didn’t think it was suicide (but they did), he couldn’t have done it. The funny thing was, though, Tyler was still curious about the case. Roan had told him about Ladowski’s identity theft ways, and Tyler got this look on his face that he recognized from his on the force days. It was a look of crusade, of a person who just discovered something that didn’t fit. Roan wished him luck, because he wasn’t sure there was anything to find here. He was a troubled man, one who probably had many demons. They were probably lucky he just committed suicide and not a homicide-suicide.

Roan left the cop shop to call Randi from the outside, but he felt so dizzy in the heat he had to sit down on the curb for a moment. He closed his eyes, but it felt like the world was spinning even in total darkness.

(Why would a man who was going to kill himself worry about getting a discount on a room rate?)

He heard a very official cop voice ask, “Are you all right, sir?” He opened his eyes to see a rather mannish looking female cop looking down at him, her eyes hidden behind dark cop sunglasses.

He nodded, climbing to his feet. Sweat had doused him, making his shirt cling to his body like Saran Wrap, and his stomach grumbled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten today. That was probably the source of his problem.

He called Randi to pick him up, giving her directions to the cop shop and asking her to bring food - he didn’t care what, just something to keep him from passing out.

(Why did Ladowski use his own credit card when he had two others under different names he could have used?)

It took an hour for Randi to show up, and he discovered why once he piled into the car and she tossed a still warm Jack-In-The-Box bag in his lap. She started talking hyperactively about gambling. She knew it was a sucker’s bet, but she won twenty five dollars on a slot machine and could understand why people could get sucked into it. He ate something stuck between a bun, he had no idea what - chicken sandwich? Fish sandwich? - but it was food (or at least a food like product), so he ate it. He was working on the fries by the time she got around to asking about Ladowski, and he told her it looked like a suicide. Then he pulled the cards out of his shoe and tossed them on the dashboard, telling her he wanted her to run these through her system at the first chance she got.

At a stoplight, she gathered them up for a quick glance, and asked, with some disbelief, “You took these from the scene?”

“They were hidden in the lining of his coat.”

“Isn’t that illegal? Shouldn’t you have left them for the cops?”

“Yeah.” He left it there, shoving fries in his mouth.

She shook her head and tossed the cards back on the dashboard. “You’re getting more criminal as you get older.”

“Society’s to blame.”

“Eh, that only worked the first two dozen times.” She paused briefly. “You don’t think it’s a suicide, do you?”

“No, I’m pretty sure it is.” (No it wasn’t.)

She looked at him askance, studying him in a way that suggested she knew he was lying. “Then why do you want me to check the records on these cards?”

“I want to know how many lives he’s ruined.” A partial truth. He did want to know, but mostly wanted to know why he did this, why he gave up his life to assume someone else’s. And then, at the end, took his life back. What was up with that?

Roan kept telling himself he didn’t care, but his mind kept latching on to the puzzle, to the things that didn’t make sense, the things that didn’t fit. He didn’t want to care, he didn’t feel up to it, but his traitorous mind wouldn’t let it go.

Randi asked him if he was okay, and he told her honestly that he just wanted to go home. Randi must have thought he looked like total shit, as she drove them back to the airport and was able to trade their tickets in for an earlier flight. He slept on the flight back, as he was inexplicably tired.

He shouldn’t have slept, because he dreamed. He was sitting on Vance’s homely bed in his depressing motel room, watching a man who was no more than a silhouette push through his open door and grab his wallet off the nightstand, ignoring the scattered change beside it, and then grab his single bag of luggage and his clothes piled up outside the bathroom door.

No - at this point Roan stopped it. That didn’t make sense. If the clothes were piled that close to the bathroom door, because the thief would be able to smell the body. He may have still taken everything, but more likely than not it would have freaked him out. So Roan started the visualization again, this time with the clothes piled on the end of the bed, but that made no sense.

Paris was suddenly sitting beside him on the bed as Roan was trying to figure out where Vance might have left his clothes. “I can’t make this work,” he admitted to him.

Paris shrugged. “Then your assumption must be faulty. You always told me if something doesn’t make sense, attack it from another angle. A closed mind is a dangerous thing for an investigator.”

He sighed, hating to hear his own words parroted back at him. They sounded kind of pompous. “Was I that bad?”

Par smiled and put an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. “I thought it was kinda cute. Besides, you’re great at puzzles. I figured you knew something I didn’t.”

“I’m not that great. I can’t make this work.”

“You’re trying to shove a square peg into a triangular hole. What does your gut tell you?”

“No good investigator goes by his gut.”

“Bullshit. What does your gut say?”

He wondered that himself, beyond insisting that it needed more food. Finally the scene started again, this time with the silhouetted man holding Vance at gunpoint, ordering him to strip, then ordering him into the bathroom. Afterwards, he came out, gathered the wallet, clothes, and bag, and left, not closing the door all the way behind him. In his haste to leave, he forgot about the coat on the chair.

“I don’t think that’s quite right,” Roan admitted, scratching his head.

“But it feels closer to the truth than any other scenario.”

“Yes.” He leaned against Paris, feeling the warmth of his skin, and rested his hand on his thigh. “I miss you.”

Paris kissed his forehead softly, and leaned his head against his. “Why? I’m always here.”

The plane had a rough landing, which woke him up. They’d come from the heat haze of the desert to the stormy weather of the Pacific coast at night, just beating by minutes a thunderstorm that made landing so treacherous. Once they were through the departure gate, Randi, who looked a little greenish, excused herself to the bathroom, and he found a plastic seat to slump in, waiting as she barfed up her own lunch.

She didn’t look much better when she finally emerged, but oddly enough she asked him if he was okay. He assumed he continued to look shitty. He really needed to gain some weight.

She asked him several times if he was okay to drive, and he assured her he was, but once he was behind the wheel, he wasn’t sure. Rain was sheeting down now, reducing visibility to near zero, distant flashes of lightning barely getting through. For a while there he felt like he was under water, driving his own private submarine.

Once he got home, he was surprised to find Dylan getting into his pokey little car. As Roan pulled in, Dylan approached. He looked like a drowned cat, as the Land’s End jacket he was wearing had no hood. “God, I was so worried about you,” Dylan exclaimed as he got out of the car.

Roan looked at him funny as he reached in and grabbed his duffle bag. “Why?”

“You weren’t answering your phone, and after last night … I was afraid something happened to you.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, the rain pelting down on him and sluicing down his face. After sweating so much in Vegas, this actually felt good. “You think I’m suicidal?”

Dylan just blinked at him, raindrops suspended in his dark lashes. “Are you?”

Roan shook his head and headed for his door, unlocking it and kicking it open. “If I was suicidal I’d be dead already.” Even as he said that, he could imagine feeding himself one of his guns upstairs, just putting it in his mouth, angling the barrel upwards so it stuck in his palette and would be guaranteed to blow out the back of his skull, and he could almost feel the cold metal of the trigger as he squeezed it gently, the sound of a gun’s internal combustion the last sound he ever heard.

He froze in his tracks as he realized the thought of it made him want to smile.

“Are you all right?” Dylan asked.

“I’m sick and tired of people asking me that fucking question!” He snapped, suddenly furious at … he didn’t know. He was just angry, and Dylan was here. “I’m a grown man! I can look after myself! God, where were you people when I was a kid getting the fucking shit beaten out of me or gettin’ locked in closets ‘cause I was a fucking leper, huh?! I’m fine, goddamn it, now leave me the hell alone!” He tossed the bag on the couch, and realized a couple of things concurrently: He hadn’t turned on the lights. The anger had made the blood rush to his head, and he now really felt like he was going to pass out. He had just realized he admitted some embarrassing personal shit. Crap. He was so fucking tired; he had no right to be this tired.

Roan didn’t look back; he knew Dylan was frozen in the doorway, letting the sounds and smells of the rain in, caught off guard by this. He knew he’d feel compelled to fill the silence, so Roan decided to fill it instead, hoping to steamroll past all of it. “I was closing my case; I went off to Vegas with Randi. Sorry I forgot to leave a message on my machine.” Speaking of which, Roan could see the blinking light of his phone, and knew there’d be several messages for him, not just from Dylan. He’d forgotten to tell anyone where he was going - he just went. Dee was probably busting a nut.

“Vegas?” Dylan repeated. He was still trying to get past the other stuff, but at least he was trying.

He turned on one of the living room lamps, and barely glanced at Dylan before saying, “Yeah, the man my client wanted me to find was there, and would you close that damn door before the water fills the foyer?”

He took that as an invitation to come inside and indeed closed the door, dripping in the foyer like he was a personal rain cloud. How long had he been outside? “Sorry. When I headed out tonight, I swear it didn’t look like rain.”

“It never does. It just sneaks up on you.” He sighed and looked at Dylan, who was shivering inside his damp coat. His sable hair was plastered down to his scalp and face like a clingy veil, and by now it looked like he was standing in a puddle. “Why don’t I get you a towel?”

“I’d appreciate that.”

He walked past him to the downstairs bathroom, and told him, “You can throw your coat in the dryer if you want.” But the thunder took that moment to come in overhead, making the house rumble, and he was pretty sure Dylan never heard him. So he came out with the towel, holding it towards him, and repeated the message.

Dylan gave him a faint smile and a nod of thanks as he took the towel and wiped off his face before attempting to dry his hair. “If there’s a wet t-shirt contest tonight at Panic, you’re a shoe in for the win.”

Dylan’s smile grew wider. “Actually it’s my night off, but thank you. Where is your dryer?”

He showed him the basement alcove where the washer and dryer was, hidden beneath the stairs, but of course going down the stairs you got a constant eyeful of the steel cage where he usually spent his transformative time; in fact, the basement was still thick with the scent of lion. But Dylan couldn’t smell that, and while he looked at it, he kept his eyes moving, deliberately not staring at it. But it was cold down here, and even once he shucked off his wet coat, Dylan was shivering. It didn’t help that both his jeans and his shirt were partially soaked as well. “Why don’t you throw your shirt in as well,” he told him, heading back up the stairs. “I’m sure I’ve got one I can loan you.”

“Thanks,” Dylan called after him.

Roan figured Dylan was about his size, although arranged far better (nearly everyone was, save for Vance), so he went upstairs and randomly grabbed a t-shirt out of his drawer before heading back downstairs. He decided he was going to call for a pizza and then do a round robin, assuring all the nervous nellies who left messages for him, then schedule an appointment to see Dalisay tomorrow. He couldn’t tell her over the phone that she was married to a fraud who was also now dead via suicide. He hated to break the news to her, but it was closure of a sort. Perhaps that was all he could have ever offered her.

“How horrible is my life that I’m impressed with your dryer?” Dylan said, with a slight self-effacing chuckle. “It’s so much better than the one at my apartment complex. It doesn’t even smell like burning rubber.”

“I’m -” Roan began, than instantly forgot what he was going to say, and paused on the staircase. Dylan was standing at the base of the stairs, shirtless, looking absolutely fucking amazing. He still had the chiseled chest and rock hard abs that made him such a favorite at Panic, and he wasn’t shaving his chest anymore, so he had a slight fuzz of dark hair across it. His torso was a perfect V of lean, sculpted muscle. In his mind, he heard Paris say, “Hol - lee shit. If you don’t nail this guy, I’ll have no respect for you anymore.”

Roan noticed the goosebumps breaking across his skin as he hugged himself, obviously cold, and that snapped him out of his trance. Okay, maybe he wasn’t completely dead from the waist down, but for some reason, that made him feel instantly guilty. “I’m glad it doesn’t. Why does your dryer smell like burned rubber?”

Dylan shrugged, inadvertently showing off his impressive shoulders. “I have no idea, but the super constantly denies it. Mrs. Fujikawa claims he must have lost his sense of smell in the war.”

That made Roan smile faintly as he handed Dylan the shirt. (“You should have told him you didn’t have one that fit him,” Paris scolded.) “She sounds like my kind of lady.”

“Oh, she’s a blast,” Dylan confirmed, pulling the shirt on. Roan told himself he wasn’t going to watch, but he did until Dylan pulled the shirt over his head, then he turned quickly and walked away. “She’s basically Rodney Dangerfield, if he had been a middle aged woman who threw pottery and had a drag queen for a son.”

Roan had to ruminate on that one for a moment. “Is there a Japanese drag queen in this city?”

“Oh yeah, his drag name is Sashimi, he occasionally does a show down at The Vault. I haven’t seen it personally, but she’s shown me pictures. Mrs. Fujikawa, not Sashimi.”

“The Vault?” Roan couldn’t help but scoff. Glancing at Dylan, he saw the Monty Python and The Holy Grail t-shirt he’d given him was tight enough to fit him like a second skin, emphasizing some of the muscular ripples in his torso. Damn it, he liked that shirt - why did Dylan have to look so much better in it? “Isn’t that a leather bar?”

He swept his damp bangs off his forehead and looked at him with shining, sarcastically stunned eyes. “Yeah. But you should see Sashimi’s act. Let’s just say I have no idea how many riding crops she goes through, but the IRS must find it an interesting business expense.”

Roan shook his head and sat on the arm of the sofa, picking up the telephone receiver. “And right there, I no longer want to know. I’m ordering a pizza - what do you want on it?”

“Uh, whatever you’re ordering is fine, although I’m a vegetarian.”

“Not a vegan?”

He grimaced sheepishly, glancing down at the floor. “I probably should be, but I can’t quite give up ice cream or cheese.”

“Actually I’m glad to hear that.” He was, as he would have been forced to mock him if he was a full “I only eat grass” vegan. No offense to them, but he wondered if they ever had any joy in their lives.

Once he’d hung up, Dylan asked, “So how did the case go?”

He was trying to talk about anything but his angry outburst, which was fine with him, but it was obvious he was still thinking about it. He supposed that client confidentiality wasn’t violated as long as he kept it all vague. “Well, the person I was hired to find is dead. It isn’t ideal, but at least the case is closed.”

“What? Oh my god, that’s horrible.” After a moment, he asked, “What happened?”

“It looked like suicide.”

Dylan’s eyes lit up as he gave him a scrutinizing look. Roan noticed that his eyes were almost the exact same color brown as his hair. How odd. Was he wearing colored contacts? “Looked like?”

It was then that there was a loud pounding on the door, making Dylan jump. It couldn’t have been the pizza guy, it was way too soon, but Roan couldn’t imagine who else it could be. Unless it was Dee, ready to punch him in the gut.