Without his beard, Roan thought his face looked thinner, almost gaunt, hungry in some frightening way. He didn’t always used to be this raw boned, did he? He thought he looked kind of like a homeless guy before, but now he looked like a junkie hitting bottom. Maybe that was appropriate. His eyes seemed too big and too empty over hollow cheeks, and he suddenly wondered how much he weighed. He could have weighed himself, but he didn’t want to know.

He decided to dress as an average joe, a person who wasn’t special and meant nothing to anyone, which meant sneakers, jeans (by necessity baggy - he had none that fit him anymore), and a grey t-shirt, this one an Australian tourist one he picked up in a thrift shop. It displayed Aboriginal style art across the torso apparently titled “Crocodile Dreaming”, and Roan couldn’t remember why now, but at the time he found it he’d really liked it. Paris had too, which could have been the deciding factor.

He found a black nylon duffle bag on the upper shelf of the closet and rather than pack of change of clothes, which he felt he didn’t need (why would he have to rough him up exactly?), he just packed in his laptop, a baseball cap and cheap sunglasses (the basic anonymity kit), and after putting on his black leather jacket, he went into his “library” and scanned the shelves, grabbing a hardback and two paperbacks. Considering he wouldn’t be gone even overnight that might seem excessive, but he knew that even with puddle jumpers, a lot of traveling was just hurrying up to wait. He could catch up on his reading.

Roan took the GTO, and he thought he could still smell Paris in the car, traces of him like an olfactory ghost, and his stomach knotted like a fist. It felt wrong to even be in here since the cars were Paris’s babies, his pride and joy for whatever reason. No, that wasn’t completely fair. At first, he hadn’t understood Par’s love of muscle cars, but once he’d restored these and Roan had driven them, he got it. They were cars as missiles, metal bodied torpedoes with substantial power under the hood and good “Road Warrior” cars (defined as ones that could survive a crash to crash again), and while Paris liked to make several jokes about the potential phallic imagery of it all, it had nothing to do with that. It was all about escape - open the throttle, and you could just go, straight on until morning. It was a tempting thought right now, except he couldn’t bear to leave behind these traces of Paris. It was all he had left of him. As he drove to the airport, he found himself fingering the ring hanging from his necklace, and wondered if he was just scenting Paris from the traces left on his ring.

He found a good overnight lot to park in, and braved the general madness of the airport, which more and more felt like a rather pathetic mall. It even smelled like coffee, wafting over from the Starbucks outlet, and cinnamon buns and egg rolls, from two competing places (presumably), only the soundtrack wasn’t depressing pop music but announcements that were almost impossible to interpret.

It really wasn’t that difficult to find Randi, as she decided to dress somewhat loudly in an effort to stand out. (Or at least he hoped that was what she was doing.) She was petite, five foot three, about one hundred and forty pounds, neither fat nor thin but somewhere in the comfortable middle. Her bone structure was delicate, so she actually did have an attractive, open face, her eyes both almond in shape and color, her glossy black hair cut in a chin length style that strove to be punky but usually settled for just slightly messy. She had an unexplained love for lipstick in purplish shades, today it was a kind of frosted plum color, and her earrings were dangling, tiny wedges of plastic cheese. (Again, never explained.) She wore a red t-shirt with a Homer Simpson “Mr. Sparkle” head on it, jeans with random rhinestones in vague patterns up the legs, red tennis shoes with platform heels, a silver silk jacket, and a metallic gold scarf, with a crocheted purse and a World Wildlife Foundation logo backpack dangling from one hand. “Over here!” she shouted, waving wildly, even though he’d already seen her and started walking her way. He briefly felt like turning and walking in the opposite direction, but fought back the urge.

Randi may have had an unusual dress sense - he suspected she had it long before Paris came along and encouraged it - and a cute, delicate look about her, but she was unbelievably shrewd and according to Par, packed a hell of a punch. She was a shark in Hello Kitty clothing who could smile at you whilst making sure you were about to get audited by the IRS until you were bleeding out the eyeballs. She was actually a lot of fun, as long as you didn’t get on her bad side.

She made some jokes about him having been in a coma for a while and then moved on to his hair (okay, so he hadn’t cut it as straight as he usually did), and by the time they made their way through the security line up, Randi had decided to pretend to be a Japanese tourist who spoke little English and giggled a lot (never mind that her ethnicity was actually Korean and she was born in Portland, Oregon - she was counting on none of these people picking up on that). Most of the guys on the security detail found this charming, although the woman found it the exact opposite. If Randi noticed her death stare, she didn’t let on.

Once they were through the intrusive security scan (for a puddle jumper to Vegas? What kind of low rent, low aiming terrorist would end up here?), he asked, “Why the hell did you decide to be Pink Lady all of the sudden?”

She grinned at him, and he caught a glimpse of the green apple gum she was chewing. “Oh come on - that was fucking hilarious.”

Paris had warped this poor woman. He’d probably have been very proud of that fact.

The seats on the plane were tiny and close, just as everything on the plane was tiny and close. He and Randi sat together, him in the window seat since Randi said she couldn’t stand seeing take offs or landings, and he noticed that the plane was essentially full, but most of the people on it seemed to be elderly. A gambling junket? Probably, or the AARP was sponsoring some sort of gathering in Vegas. “I hope they stocked enough prune juice to go around,” Randi whispered, and he shook his head, pulling out a paperback.

Randi didn’t let him read very much, because once they took off she wanted him to talk to her and keep her distracted. Of course this begged the question if she hated flying, why did she insist on coming with? But it was too late to toss her out on the runway now.

He was afraid she wanted to talk about Paris, but she kept the conversation weird and utterly pointless. They had similar tastes in cult television shows, so they discussed what characters they’d nail. While they disagreed on which alien and which vampire was the most doable, they did agree that Captain Jack was the only Doctor Who character they’d both be willing to nail (it wasn’t like there was a plethora of hot guys or cheerful bisexuals on Doctor Who), and they both thought Sayid was actually the hottest guy on the island. God, this was sad - they were such geeks. Lonely, desperately needing to be laid geeks on top of that.

But this was silly and oddly distracting, and they both laughed enough that they got evil looks from a guy who could have been Wilfred Brimley’s stunt double. Roan couldn’t remember the last time he laughed, so that was nice.

They hit a bit of turbulence, which was always more violent on a smaller plane. But there was a moment when it felt like zero gravity, when the plane seemed to be simultaneously going up and down at the same time. He liked that feeling of being unencumbered by gravity, of competing forces canceling each other out, but from the tense silence in the cabin and the way Randi’s fingers dug into his arm, he was the only one. After it had settled, she gave him a slightly dirty look, apparently figuring out he was the only one who didn’t care. “Didn’t that bother you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He wanted to say “Because I don’t care if I live or die,” but didn’t, because that was fucking disturbing. True, but disturbing. He settled on a shrug.

They eventually got back to their discussion of fuckable fictional characters, but Randi took it into a really weird area: cartoons. He couldn’t even conceive of thinking of an animated character as attractive, not to mention fuckable, but Randi had some ready to go. She accused him of being “uptight” (him?!), but by this time they were finally landing in Vegas.

To say it was hot was like saying the Pacific Ocean was a tad damp - it didn’t begin to describe it. The heat was dry and oppressive, the sunlight bright enough to make him squint, so he pulled out his sunglasses and put them on. It was in the upper 80’s to low 90’s, so he shucked off his jacket and shoved it in his duffle bag. Randi eventually took off her jacket and managed to squeeze it into her backpack.

She’d gotten them a rental car, a homely little white Infiniti that had two things that she considered absolute necessities: air conditioning and satellite radio. He was actually glad about the air conditioning, but he could foresee arguments over the radio.

She had print-outs of directions from Mapquest, which she double checked because she didn’t completely trust Mapquest, which put the Calico Cat on the outskirts of Vegas. They drove there, avoiding most of Vegas proper, ensuring views of the dreary desert where the city actually was. They passed pre-fab housing projects and collections of trailers roasting under the unforgiving sun, the dirt baked to a sandy brownish grey, and every now and then they passed a sad gas station or run down quick mart that looked as if they could be set pieces in some modern, bleak horror movie.

Eventually they came to the Calico Cat, an L-shaped complex with a large parking lot of cracked, baking asphalt, and a roof that had probably once been red but had been bleached by the sun to a disturbing fleshy pink. It had a sign depicting a winking orange and white striped cat (by definition not calico), but part of the sign had been broken, making it look like its front feet were missing. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, all dusty from exposure to the relentless Nevada hellscape, and none more recent than a ‘05 Civic.

According to the information that Randi had illegally dug up, Vance had room number eleven, but just to cover all the bases he went to talk to the desk clerk, asking Randi to stay outside and out of view. She was happy to do so, since she figured that such an exercise was a waste of time. In the brief walk across the parking lot to the glassed in office, sweat coated his back and made his shirt cling to him uncomfortably.

The desk clerk was a compact Cambodian man who had his air conditioner cranked up to sub-arctic - Roan shivered convulsively after walking in from outside, and half expected to see his breath - and was watching Oprah on a portable television. He identified himself as a private detective, which earned him his partial attention, and told him he was hired to find Vance Ladowski, whom he knew had been here, and wanted to know if he was still here.

The man asked if Vance was a criminal, and when Roan told him yes (technically he was - he wasn’t wanted, which was probably what the man meant, but he wasn’t going to split hairs), he suddenly stole away all of Oprah’s attention. The man insisted he didn’t keep track of his clients and simply couldn’t, this being a rather “transient” place (no kidding), but he consulted his ledger and confirmed that Vance had rented a room two days ago, paying for three days in advance to take advantage of a discount. He’d asked for the maid service not to bother him, but that was it - otherwise he hadn’t made contact with anyone, and no one had complained about him. He hadn’t seen him today at all.

The clerk asked him what he had done, and Roan told him he couldn’t say due to client confidentiality. The clerk guessed murder and then bank robbery before Roan told him he wasn’t a violent criminal, just a sneaky one. He made a couple more guesses before Roan left the office, and he must have grown accustomed to the chill, because the heat of outside slammed down on him like an anvil. The sweat that had dried on him in the cold office was now joined by a new wave of sweat springing out all over his body, plastering his hair down to his scalp. He was going to need a shower, or good spray down with a fire hose.

He found Randi standing under one of the covered walkways besides the complimentary ice machine, fanning herself with her hand. She complained about the heat, but all he could do was shrug. He should have packed a tank top like a good gay man.

Room eleven was at the end of the L, whereas the front office was at the head of the L, and not in direct line of sight. Roan was sure that had been done on purpose. They found the grimy door of room eleven, and it was remarkable for being the only obviously occupied room that you couldn’t hear something through: a television, shouting voices, noises of sex.

He knocked on the door, and realized it felt a little loose, the door rattling in its frame. His hackles rose as he realized the door was open. “Stay here,” he told Randi, pushing the door with his foot, making it swing open effortlessly.

The room’s dusty blinds were shut, making it a gloomy cracker box of a room that smelled of unwashed socks. The bed was mussed, the ugly bedspread of pink and brown flowers thrown back to reveal off white sheets that were approaching beige faster than was appetizing. The walls were painted a pale yellow, the carpet a threadbare, mottled brown color that would have successfully hidden both mud and blood stains, and there wasn’t much in the way of furniture: a nightstand, a small television bolted down to a small table across from the bed, and a tiny armchair with a black jacket tossed casually over it. There was no luggage or any other signs of habitation beyond a loose scattering of pennies beside the phone on the nightstand, and the bathroom door was slightly ajar.

Maybe it was the little air conditioner rattling like a jalopy and circulating chemically cooled air combined with the rank cigarette and exhaust smell outside, but Roan didn’t smell it properly until he stepped well inside the room. When he caught it, though, he scowled down at the floor, waiting for the nausea to pass. Son of a bitch, he’d expected this, hadn’t he? You didn’t leave a door open unless you never intended to return again or your room had been robbed. This room didn’t appear to have been robbed.

Randi came in after him anyways, and he held out an arm to hold her back. “Hey, I didn’t get us these tickets just to be left outside,” she protested, ducking under his arm and looking around the drab room. When she made to move further into the room, he grabbed her shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be here; this is a crime scene. I can explain my presence to the cops but not yours. Get out of here before you leave evidence they can find.”

She looked at him stunned, and she narrowed her eyes, as if trying to figure out whether he was joking or not. “What do you mean this is a crime scene? This is just a shitty motel room - oh, wait, are you smelling something?”

He nodded, backing up and pulling her towards the door. “Death. The body’s in bathroom. Go now, I’m gonna call the cops.”

The look she gave him was one of torn disbelief, but she didn’t resist as he backed her out the door. “What does death smell like?” she asked, lowering her voice to whisper even though there was no one out here but them.

Should he tell her the truth? “It varies depending on how long they’ve been dead, but shit is pretty much a constant. The bowels -”

“Yeah, I’ve actually seen CSI, you know.” She then grimaced in embarrassment. Anyone who knew him knew he hated that show. Forensic guys interviewing suspects? Not to mention the lab work getting done in record time, as well as a billion other things that really couldn’t happen in this universe. Yes, it was fiction - The Wire, which generally got it right, was still fiction - but too many people accepted it at face value, which was what really annoyed the shit out of him. “You’re going to tell me what happened, right?”

“As soon as the cops let me loose, which could take a couple of hours depending on how much they dislike me.” Cops generally didn’t like private detectives; in fact, many of them loathed the average PI, seeing them as just a sleazier version of a rent a cop. They often liked to sweat them as much as they could for sport, and he couldn’t count on his status as an ex-cop getting him off the hook. If they were really bored, they might keep him for half the night. “Find a place to hang out. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

“You’re not bullshitting me, are you?”

He sighed wearily, but couldn’t blame her for her skepticism - he hadn’t wanted her along in the first place. “I wish I was. I’m tired of constantly stumbling over dead bodies.” He gave her the rental keys and she took them, walking back to their bland little Infiniti.

Roan ducked back inside the room and walked towards the bathroom, shoving it open with the toe of his shoe so he didn’t leave any prints. A man was hanging from the shower curtain rod, which was bowed under his weight, enough that the man’s legs were touching the floor. He wore nothing but tighty whiteys, now stained brown and yellow from his released bowels and bladder, and he had an unremarkable body, with a smattering of hair and zits on his back and a saggy gut in the front, his chest undeveloped and his arms stringy. His face was swollen and blue, eyes and tongue bulging, but Roan still recognized the nose, jaw, and forehead of Vance Ladowski. He had a plain brown belt knotted around his neck and attached to the shower rod, and judging from its original height and his, he could have hung himself from it, although it would have been a close thing.

There were two things wrong with this scenario, as far as he could tell. The main one was he’d hung himself so he died of strangulation, not of a broken neck, and that was one of the most hideous ways you could die. Strangulation, suffocation, drowning - anything that deprived the body of oxygen was not only painful, but triggered something in the animal brain. The body fought; no matter the wishes of the person involved, the body wanted air. Drowning was the hardest scenario to fight back from, simply because there often wasn’t a choice involved in that, or an ability to get to air; in this scenario, not strangling would have been easy to achieve. He could have stepped on the floor if the shower rod was sagging this much, or, if not, on the edge of the tub; it would have relieved the pressure off his windpipe. This didn’t automatically mean he didn’t hang himself, though, as he’d actually seen at least one auto-erotic asphyxiation accidental death in his short life as a cop (in that case it was especially difficult for the family, as it was a fifteen year old boy). Sometimes strangulation/suffocation happened, even if you didn’t want it to. But …

It was the smell, wasn’t it? Beneath the heavy scent of shit and piss, there was another scent. Hard to make out in the miasma, but it was a vinegary undertone, sharp and sour, a scent he associated with fear. It could have been anything - Vance could have eaten asparagus before he hung himself - but he found himself wondering why a man who had chosen to hang himself would be so frightened of it.

No, he wasn’t going to do this. It looked like a suicide, and probably was; he had no doubt this was a troubled man. His case ended here. Dalisay had wanted him to find her husband, and he had. So what if it was dead in a sad, messy bathroom in a Las Vegas motel? It was an answer and an ending. That was probably all she wanted.

He scanned the ivory walls, for what he wasn’t sure, and as he dialed nine one one on his cell phone, he caught himself in the pitted bathroom mirror. He looked like a ghoul, a ghost, his cheekbones sharp and his eyes too green and too bright, sunken in a pale face. He didn’t look like a murderer; he looked like a victim. He turned away and walked out of the room as he reported the dead body - a possible suicide - at room eleven of the Calico Cat motel. As he gave the operator all the information she required, he looked around the room as unobtrusively as possible.

No luggage - hell, no clothes. He’d heard of losing your shirt gambling, but this was ridiculous. Just the coat on the chair, which he frisked for a wallet. He didn’t find one, just a half roll of Life Savers (peppermint), an unopened condom (Trojan), some Dentyne gum (cinnamon), and a receipt for his motel room bill. But Roan felt something that he couldn’t find in the pockets - inside the coat? As soon as he was off the phone, he inspected the lining of the jacket, and because it was black it was hard to see, but he eventually found the cut, a small slit that he reached inside. He felt plastic and pulled it out, and found he’d discovered Vance’s secret stash of cards: two driver’s licenses and two credit cards, one each for a Ryan Solgot and a Ben Hicks.

He knew he should give these to the cops, but he hid them in his shoe instead, on the assumption they would frisk him and take his wallet to check his info. Roan knew that Vance would have clothes and at least one bag, as well as a wallet; someone had been here. Maybe after he committed suicide, someone noticed the open door and helped themselves to his things, unaware there was a body in the bathroom. That was certainly possible and plausible. It didn’t mean he was killed; it didn’t mean he’d finally screwed over the wrong person, who caught up with him and made him pay a pound of flesh for his fraud and embezzlement. This was a problem for the Vegas PD, not him.

He went outside and sat on the concrete edge of the parking lot, under the shelter of the walkway, and listened for the distant scream of sirens as he baked in the heat rising off the asphalt in shimmering waves.