“Yeah. I’m at home, just watchin’ Law and Order.”

“Oh god, not you.”

He chuckled. “Well, it’s escapism to me. So what cha got?”

“I know who killed Ladowski.”

He was silent for a moment. “Goddamn, you work fast. Okay, so hit me with it.”

Roan prefaced everything with the fact that there was much speculation on his part, and then went ahead and told him his theory. “What tipped it was Desiree’s job. Did you notice? She worked at the Social Security Administration.”

“A lot of people do.”

“Yeah, but just think what an identity thief could do with access to even a small portion of legitimate SSNs.”

“You think she was working with Ladowski?”

“I think she was intending to, or there was some attempt at blackmail. And I believe Mackey and Nelson were in on this as well. At some point, Jones had a change of heart - she didn’t want to do this, wouldn’t cooperate, whichever, and they were afraid to let her go because she might talk. One of them killed her and the group then split up, all running to different identities, which is why they all fell off the radar. I think murder freaked out Ladowski - and why not? He stole money and identity, not actual Human life - and he tried to start a more settled existence up here. But then his past caught up with him in the form of Randall Mackey. By the way, you can stop looking for Mackey.”

“Why?”

“He’s dead.”

There was a long pause. “Not according to the database.”

“That’s because his fingerprints were all burnt off, and Mackey never had a DNA sample taken. He died under the identity of Jeremy Halva, in a fireworks factory explosion almost three years ago.” After seeing Mackey’s mug shot, he thought he looked familiar, and going through the press clippings he’d saved on his computer about the explosion, he discovered that with a shave and a haircut and the addition of twenty pounds, he looked exactly like the AP photo of Halva. A closer look into the Halva identity eventually turned up discrepancies that showed the name to be false. It was unlikely his wife ever knew.

Hansen was silent again for a while, clearly mulling this over. “You sure that explosion was an accident?”

“No idea, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. Maybe he was trying to blackmail Ladowski, maybe they were attempting to run an insurance scam together, maybe it was just freakishly bad timing, but I’m certain Ladowski was planning to run before the explosion, probably due to Mackey. The factory explosion gave him a great excuse, but someone else knew what Mackey was up to, and that he had failed.”

“Nelson?”

“You got it. I’m fairly certain that Ladowski knew his days were numbered, that his old roommate/buddy, and possibly more, was on his trail, so he sent up the equivalent of a signal flare: he used a credit card in his real name. He probably figured he was flagged on a computer and the cops would be dispatched to find him as soon as possible. The problem is, that didn’t happen before Nelson found him.” That was probably also why he was carrying those cancelled credit cards in his coat - if the card in his own name failed to get attention, those other cards would, but he died before he could use them.

“More? Are you implying that Ladowski was gay?”

“I don’t know; I have no information on his sexuality at all. It could be that Nelson is just a psychopath. But I know that relationships gone wrong can cause some people to act spectacularly evil, way out of normal character for themselves.”

Hansen grunted an acknowledgement. “Yeah, I hear that. So Nelson killed him?”

“He must have.”

“If Ladowski was so freaked out, why didn’t he just turn himself in to police?”

“More speculation here. He couldn’t quite bring himself to do that - he didn’t have a good history with police - or he didn’t think Nelson’s threat was as great as the threat of Mackey. I think Nelson told Ladowski that Mackey killed Jones, when in fact it’s more probable that Nelson killed Jones.”

“And they made up the movie alibi to cover.”

“Which is another thing that led me to believe that their relationship might have been more than it was. Nelson had to have told Ladowski he needed an alibi. Wouldn’t that have struck him as funny?”

“Except he’s an ex con. He probably wouldn’t care.”

“Yes. And maybe he and Nelson had something they wanted to cover up anyways, beyond identity theft.”

“Oh.” Hansen paused again, thinking. “Damn. That kinda fits, doesn’t it?”

“That’s what I thought.”

“Why’d he take all his stuff from the motel room?”

“Physical evidence? Or maybe because he’s a vindictive queen?”

Hansen chuckled, but it quickly died. This really wasn’t a laughing matter. “So we have to look for Nelson.”

“Which may be difficult, as he’s surely living under a different identity now. But I leave that up to the brilliant investigative skills of the LVPD.”

“You’re bowing out now?”

“I’ve discovered what I needed to know for my client.” Well, yes and no. But if a little wild speculation helped his client sleep at night, he wouldn’t knock it. “And I don’t work for you guys, even as a consultant.”

“Chickenshit.”

That made Roan laugh. “I wish you luck trying to explain this to your sergeant.”

He groaned. “Crap. I forgot about that.”

“Say a man matching Nelson’s description was seen at the motel the day of Ladowski’s death. That should help.”

He was silent for a long moment. “You want me to lie?”

“It won’t hold up in court, but all you need to do is get Nelson in the box. I bet if you lean heavily on the suspected relationship between him and Ladowski - or suggest one between Ladowski and Mackey - he’ll say something incriminating. Spurned lover or irrational psychopath, if you unbalance them a little, they have a tendency to completely collapse.”

He tsk-ed in sarcastic disapproval. “You give cops a bad name.”

“It’s why I’m not a cop anymore.”

“Fair enough.” He paused again, but this time it seemed more meaningful. “You really walking away from this one?”

“Have to. But if you want to keep me updated, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Leave me more work to do.”

“Exactly.”

He let Hansen go, and decided to veg out by watching television, trying not to chew over the story too much. While the Daily Show distracted him for a while, he kept coming back to it. He hoped he was wrong; he hoped Nelson was honestly just a psychopath. It’d be terrible for him to turn out gay. While hets had a far and away lead in the realm of killers, their sexuality was never brought up - if they were gay, it was, like it proved gay guys were fundamentally evil.

While he got ready for bed, he worked out the story he would tell Dalisay tomorrow, and left a message on her machine that he was going to drop by tomorrow to discuss a resolution to the case. He had it all worked out. The fact that most of it was speculation and well intentioned lies didn’t bother him nearly as much as it should have.

He slept fairly well, thanks to the beer and vicodin combination, and went out to eat breakfast, this time picking a spot other than Gracie’s, a coffee shop close to his office. He should have rethought that, as instead of being intercepted by Dylan, he was joined by Randi, who wanted to know what was going on with the Ladowski case.

He could have lied, but Roan didn’t honestly see the point. He told her of his conclusions on the case, and how there was probably a whole ugly sub-plot that they’d never know involving Ladowski, Mackey, Jones, and Nelson. Randi kept stealing bits of his croissant while he told the story, but then she applauded at the end. “Who needs to watch Mystery on PBS when they have you for a friend?” She asked.

He raised an eyebrow at that. “PBS still shows Mystery? Have you ever seen it?”

“Now I’m offended. Are you implying I’m an idiot?”

“No, but even I only watch PBS to see Red Dwarf.”

“Red Dwarf? Oh my god, Paris was right about you - you’re a big geek.” She made an L out of her forefinger and thumb and put it on her forehead, grinning almost maniacally.

He gave her a sarcastic scowl. “You know what it is, lady CPA. You’re a geek too.”

“Prove it.”

“You just made a PBS Mystery reference.”

“Aw fuck.” She went ahead and stole the rest of his croissant off his napkin. “By the way, geek boy, I hear there’s going to be some big hedonistic gay party on Saturday night, in some warehouse downtown.”

“I know, I’ve been hired as part of the security crew. How’d you hear about it?”

Her almond eyes fixed him with a caustic glare. There was just something about Randi that told you in school she was the “mathlete” who wasn’t picked on by the bullies because they were actually scared of her. She had the soul of a nerd and the personality of a Teamster. “You’re not my only gay friend, you know. So come on, invite me.”

“You don’t want to go.”

“The fuck I don’t.”

“Parties like that are fucking scary. Male sexuality unfettered can be frightening, and I’m saying that as a gay guy. You get a whole bunch of tweaking, horny guys in the same room, and fucking hell, it’s suddenly Thunderdome.”

“Since when do gay guys riot?” She teased.

“Stonewall.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Since then.”

“It’s an ugly scene. I wouldn’t be going if I wasn’t getting paid.”

“Chicken. It’s not like they’d be grabbing my ass.”

“True, but still, I’d rather you not be there. And actually there are gonna be guys there who really don‘t care what they fuck as long as it has legs: men, women, coffee tables. You want to avoid them.”

She smiled slyly, eyes brightening behind her red framed cat’s eye shaped glasses. “You’re gonna be cruisin’, huh?”

It was his turn to give her the evil look. “I will fucking not. I’m working, Randi.”

“It doesn’t take long …”

“I’m working. I don’t mix the two, and I wouldn’t there.”

She sat back with a resigned sigh, eating the last of his croissant. “Does this have something to do with that hot guy you’ve been seen with?”

He felt a twinge in his gut. “What are you talking about?”

She gestured at the window, as if that was supposed to mean something. “Some guys have mentioned that they’ve seen you with this smokin’ hot piece of ass. A built guy with brown hair, kinda young. Ring any bells?”

“He’s not … I’m not seeing him, all right? He’s just a friend.”

“Why? Go for him! You know Paris would be rootin’ for you.”

He did, but that didn’t make him feel any better. If anything, he suddenly felt very sick.

****

It went better at Dalisay’s than he could have hoped.

Roan told her that it was his belief that Vance ran because he wanted to protect her from his past, namely his past in the form of a violent ex-con named Randall Mackey. Roan told her that he believed that Vance was trying to start a new life and honestly loved her, which he’d written in the note. She cried while he told her all of this, but seemed satisfied by it, and he was glad, as Roan wasn’t sure exactly how full of shit he was. It was possible that Vance did love her, but frankly none of them would ever know the truth. He left no journal, no blog, no scraps of how he thought or what he felt - if he felt anything at all. Vance lived so many other people’s lives, he probably never had much of his own. And he’d probably been good with that.

He went home afterwards, aware he should get started on the Tolliver case, but he still felt exhausted and slightly sickened by having to lie to a client, and the possibility that he was lying to himself. It probably wouldn’t be the first time.

He tried to call Matt, as they hadn’t yet had the conversation he knew they needed to have, but he just got his machine. He left a message, and wondered if he’d ever bother to call him back.

Roan spent the day doing chores around the house, trying to catch up on all the things he’d let fall by the wayside while he stayed in his pit of misery. He also checked his bike, which had held up well for being in storage for about a year … if it had been. He suspected someone had taken it out at least once. Maybe Matt, possibly even Diego, just to piss him off.

He started talking to Paris again, although he wasn’t sure when he started. He was straightening out his shelves in his “library” when he realized Paris wasn’t responding. So even his mind had decided to stop doing that? He hated it when his subconscious knew what was better for him than he did.

Roan ordered a pizza for dinner and started reading all the papers in the envelope on the Tolliver case. Kai/Jacob was a fairly good looking kid: six feet tall and one hundred and sixty pounds of pure, lean sculpted muscle and a nearly concave stomach, he had stylishly cut black hair and clear hazel eyes that almost had a yellowish tint to them, and the picture looked like a modeling shot. It had him from the waist up, his worn blue jeans worn very low on his hips and just barely visible, his shirt off to show off his pecs (he shaved his chest) and the small black circle of a tattoo around his belly button, and he had his head thrown back slightly, giving a haughty look to the camera, the pout highlighting his full lips. This was clearly from the escort agency. According to the profile for Kai that Kevin had downloaded, he was a “straight type” who was a “basic dominator” (that meant he’d be willing to do minor BDSM, but only if he’s dishing it out) but disliked most other fetishes. Although Kevin said he was twenty three, Kai’s age was listed as nineteen, but that was okay, as he could pass for that. He worked for the Diamond Escort Agency, but Kevin had made a note that the agency was known to change its name often, sometimes up to three or four times a year.

Kevin had friends at the DMV, which showed, as he had all of Jacob’s info from his driver’s license. Yes, he was twenty three, and he lived on Larchmont Avenue, apartment 3-B. Larchmont didn’t have a lot of apartment blocks, so he probably lived in that one that had that big ass mural painted on the side. What was it called? Royal Oaks or something like that? Jacob shared his apartment with a guy named Bret Finch, who worked at the escort agency as well, as a guy named “Phoenix”. He passed himself off as a “surfer” type, basically submissive, but not into BDSM. It was Bret who first mentioned that Jacob never came home. According to the notes Kevin left, Bret and Jacob weren’t involved, just friends. At least according to Chris, who worked under the name “Miguel”, but Kev hadn’t included any more information on him. Kev had to leave him some work to do, he supposed.

Roan found himself on the web, doing something he’d never done before - surfing porn sites. Seriously, he hadn’t. He didn’t actually like the idea of masturbating anywhere near his computer. He’d spilled water on a keyboard once, and frankly that was bad enough.

He found Diamond Escort’s page, but it was full of little more than teasing still photos and superficial profiles on its “models” - for more, you had to give a credit card number, and he didn’t need to commit to that yet. There was also a chat room where you could talk to the models. But he wasn’t ready to go there either. After all, it would just be sex talk, and all he wanted to know was where the hell Jacob Tolliver was. Besides, he would hate to run into Kev there, if Kev was there. There was just no words for how icky that would be. How awful would it be to find out the guy you were having IM sex with was one of your cop buddies? Eww!

He was about to call it a night when his phone rang, and he picked it up, hoping it was Matt. He heard loud house music in the background, and then Dylan’s voice, much closer to the phone, and yet almost not audible. “Roan? Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a situation down here.”

Okay, that was never an auspicious start. “What? Why call me?”

He heard glass breaking, close to the phone, and an angry shout of “Whore!” along with something unintelligible. “Umm, it’s Matt. He’s totally wasted and just started busting shit up -” Dylan suddenly covered the phone and shouted, “Don’t hurt him!”

“Wasted? He’s clean. He went through - oh shit. What do you think he’s on?” Matt had to pick now to fall off the wagon? And he’d been doing so well! He’d been clean what, three years now?

“He’s drunk, and I think he’s on some kind of speed.”

“Not meth?”

“No … I don’t think he’s tweaking. But I don’t know for sure.”

“Shit. Why is he breaking stuff up?”

“He’s angry at me, because apparently he thinks you and I are … involved, and he doesn’t like that.”

Oh god. This was unbelievable. What the hell was that stupid twink thinking? “I assume you told him we were just friends.”

“Yeah. But he thought I was lying, and called me all sorts of names, and started throwing tables and chairs around. I’m almost flattered. I haven’t been called a slut since … well, ever, now that I think about it. Luis wants to call the cops and have him hauled off, but I’m more inclined to call an ambulance, ‘cause I swear Matt started foaming at the mouth. But I thought since he works with you I’d better call you instead.”

He wanted to deny Matt worked with him, but fuck it. He had carried the slack for a long time, and whether he had actually hired him seemed like a moot point now. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll come and get him.”

“I didn’t think you two were, uh - “

“We’re not. He just … has a crush on me. I’ve discouraged him in every way I can think of, I’ve even been a total dick to him, and it hasn’t seemed to dissuade him.”

“Perhaps it’s time to consider a restraining order.”

There were too many “ifs”, which was unbelievably frustrating. He punched one of the containers, almost completely collapsing its side, but it didn’t make him feel any better. The rest of his search turned up nothing valuable, leaving him with nothing but the note. How funny - Paris left him a note, and Vance left Dalisay a note. All these dead guys just couldn’t shut up.

He went back into the house, and showed Dalisay the note, asking if this was “Ron”’s handwriting. She sat down heavily, staring at the note, and confirmed that it was, but she didn’t stop staring at the note for a very long time. When she looked up at him, she had tears in her eyes. “If he loved me, why did he do this?”

That was another very good question that he couldn’t yet answer.

When he got in his car and searched his glove box for Excedrin, he realized he really wanted to go out and get drunk. He just wanted to get completely fucking blottoed and forget all about this case, about dead people and regrets and the open mysteries they sometimes left behind. As much as he hated to admit it, some mysteries could never be solved. It was a cliché, and he wanted to punch himself for even thinking it, but people were honestly the biggest mystery of all. Sometimes only they knew why they did things, and they weren’t about to share or leave any clues behind.

Roan drove home, and he decided to try and get rid of some of his aggression by working on his punching bag. He had a heavy bag in his office, the one that was being redone and would, at this rate, never be finished, as this was Paris’s project, and he didn’t live long enough to finish it. Turning on the light, the staleness of the air in the room hit him. His old desk sat back against the far wall, between two large oaken bookcases, which still had most of his “official” books (legal ones, boring as fuck), but most of the shelves were bare, as he moved his really important books - the ones he really liked - upstairs. But he saw a couple of books he didn’t instantly recognize, their spines were too glossy to be legal tomes, and he went over to investigate them.

They were photo books of naked men, one with a vaguely legal theme, one that aspired to be some kind of “high art”, but was really just about getting young ripped guys naked. Clearly this was Paris having a bit of fun, and since these books were on the shelf closest to where he had the paint sample patches, he figured that Paris had probably meant to take pages out of the book and put them up as wallpaper. So even dead he was being a smart ass.

The rest of the furniture had been moved out so the old carpet could be ripped up, and Paris had gotten in the new one, a deep pile one in a rich, dark blue. Paris had picked it out; he felt it looked “distinguished, but not anal retentive”. Roan wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was a nice color.

The heavy bag sat in the corner near the door, all by its lonesome, freestanding so he could put it anywhere in theory, but in practice, filled with sand, it was too heavy to bother with. The thinly padded gloves he used with the bag were the only things sitting on the desk. He slipped them on and started with a couple of light jabs before letting go and just whaling on the thing, using no plan or even acquired skill - he was just letting out rage.

He hit it as hard as he could, fists thudding against the leather surface of the bag, and at some point he started growling, but it was like a white noise in his head and he didn’t care. Hitting it didn’t seem to be enough; his anger was bubbling under his skin and he thought his head might explode with it. He added some kicks along with punch combinations, throwing in a head butt, resisting the urge to sink his teeth into the flesh and tear it. When he heard the chain holding the bag to the frame start to creak in an ominous way, he forced himself to come back to his senses and stop beating on the thing before he broke it. How would he explain that?

It was then he caught himself growling, his teeth aching from being gritted against the desire to let out the rest of his lion side, and he notice the muscles twitching in his arms. Had he partially transformed again? Well fuck - if he almost beat a heavy bag off its chain, that was hardly Human strength, was it? “I hate being human!” he yelled to everyone, to no one in particular. Humanity was awful; humanity made you hurt. Humanity was a weakness that would kill everyone, one way or another.

He took a shower to wash away the sweat, the tears he didn’t remember shedding, and of course he heard the phone ringing. He let it go to the machine, and then wrapped a towel around himself before padding downstairs to the kitchen, leaving a trail of water behind him since he hadn’t really bothered to dry off, and not really caring either. He raided his fridge, found some cold pizza, and gulped down a slice. He couldn’t take a vicodin without having something in his stomach first, or he’d barf it right back up. He was hungry enough to wolf down a second slice, and was working on a third when the phone rang again. He let the machine get it, but then he heard Kevin’s voice, strangely weakened, coming from it. “Um … Guess it’s true, you being up and about again. Good, I’m glad. Listen, um … I really need the help, so if you could call me back as soon as possible -”

Kevin called him occasionally, but never for help. That alarmed him enough to pick up the phone. “Kev, everything okay?”

“Oh, Roan, you’re home. Umm, I’m okay, it’s just … I don’t want to talk about this over the phone.”

“You’re not at work, are you?”

“No, I called in sick today. I got this bitch of a cold.”

“I can hear it.”

“Yeah. I took some cold medicine, but this punk stuff they put on the shelf after getting rid of all the pseudoephedrine is just shit. Fuck those meth-heads, I want my cold medicine back.”

He made a good humored noise, but couldn’t quite laugh. “Can’t you still buy it from pharmacists?”

“Probably, but who wants to fuck around with that when it feels like your sinuses are going to explode?” He paused long enough to sniff. “Um, are you doin’ anything right now?”

Was he? Kevin’s being so evasive brought back his halting, fumbling attempts back in the day when they were on the force together, when Kevin admitted he was gay and then quickly added he never intended to come out of the closet, but admired him for being so “brave”. Brave for just being himself? What kind of fucked up world was it when admitting the truth about who you were was considered daring? “No, not really. Why? What’s up?”

“Come over and I’ll tell you. You have dinner yet? I was making myself a curry to see if I can still taste anything.”

“You have beer?”

“Of course.”

“Should I bring my gun?”

“Only if you wanna shoot me.”

Well then, it couldn’t have been that serious. “Okay, I’ll be over soon.” He hung up, left the remaining pizza where it was, and grabbed a can of soda to take his vicodin with. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to do this anymore, but there just some circumstances where it was preferable he be numb. Since he’d eaten and gotten his adrenaline up before he took the pills, he felt better about taking the bike out this time. He threw on some clothes and got moving.

Kevin still lived in the same house, on the same spot of land in a quaint rural neighborhood. Although clean and always tidy, there was something vaguely sad about it but impossible to pin down, which was both confirmed and explained in the interior. There was no hint of genuine personality - anyone could have lived here, or the place could have been suddenly abandoned months ago. You couldn’t quite tell by looking at it.

Kevin looked much the same as he always had, an average looking black man that was maybe thirty pounds overweight, although his frame had a tendency towards broadness, so he wore it better than most. But he was the living embodiment of the expression “hangdog” - he always looked just a bit sad, like he was in mourning, for what you were never sure, his heavy eyelids almost always at half mast, a sleepy look that was usually deceptive. His brown eyes had a slightly rheumy look to them today though, probably the cold, and he was dressed in loose navy blue sweatpants and a grey fleece sweatshirt bearing the logo of the station’s charity softball team over the left breast. There were a couple of small stains of what was probably garam masala and saffron. The house smelled of curry and cats and dogs.

Kevin’s life could be broken down into work, computers, and pets - that was it. The living room was sparsely furnished but neat, and again the lack of personality was shocking. It was like he was planning on moving very soon, but he’d lived in this house for about a decade. It was like he was afraid of giving himself away. “You corralled the beasts,” he said, as Kevin let him inside and gestured towards the kitchen.

Kevin nodded, sniffing all the way. “I know how the cats and dogs react to you. The dogs are in the backyard, and the cats are shut in upstairs.”

“Thank you.”

While Kev’s living room was nice but sterile, his kitchen made up for it a bit. The walls were painted a honeyed gold, the surfaces either stainless steel or sand colored tile, the appliances all white as snow. There was a small kitchen table off to one side by the sliding back door leading to the back yard, although Kevin had closed the opaque ecru curtains across the door so they couldn’t see the dogs giving them sad looks. (Or evil looks, in his case.) The table was small, big enough for four people , and looked as homely as the four mismatched kitchen chairs around it - thrift store buys one and all. And yet it gave this room more personality and charm than the rest of the house. Someone lived here and spent time here, and it showed.

Even though he’d already eaten, he accepted a paper plate with a multicolored scoop of curry on it, redolent of ginger and lemongrass, the yellow of saffron mixed with the orange of carrots and green of peas. An odd combination of authentic and North American, but it worked somehow.

They sat at the table, eating curry and drinking good dark pilsners, and they got the small talk out of the way, asking how each other was, yada yada yada, all waiting to get to the real point of why they were here, filling in each other’s loneliness. Only in the silences did Roan realize that Kev had the radio on faintly, tuned to the classical station.

Finally, Kevin decided to broach the topic of why he asked him here. “I wanna hire you as a detective, but I want you to listen to me fully without freaking out or judging me.”

“Since when do I judge you?”

Kevin fixed him with a stern glare. “I know you think I’m pathetic because I won’t come out.”

“I wouldn’t say pathetic,” he argued, aware that vicodin might have hampered his ability to lie.

But Kev looked down at the remains of his curry and pushed the yellow grains of rice around his plate, which was also paper. Kevin had said that using actual dishes seemed like a waste of dishwashing liquid when it was usually just him eating alone. He had dishes in his cupboard, but they remained in the box they had been purchased in. K-Mart stuff, but they looked fairly nice … on the box. Kevin had never taken them out; he said he had no reason to. That always struck Roan as monumentally sad.

He agreed to be on his best behavior - knowing the vicodin would keep him that way - as Kevin told him about this online gay chat site that he spent some time in, and how members of this locally based “escort” service would often take part in the chats, usually trolling for customers. One of these guys was “named” Kai, and he suddenly disappeared - but not only online. Kevin had talked to one of his fellow “escorts”, Jordan, via email, and he admitted that they were scared for him but didn’t know what to do. Kai - real name Jacob Tolliver - seemed jittery and nervous about something, but never said what before he left for home on Thursday night, and never made it there. Everyone assumed it was more shit with his father, but now they weren’t so sure. Kevin admitted he might be able to help, as he knew this private eye, and that brought them to here. “I’ve looked into things as much as I can,” Kevin admitted. “But nobody’s filed a missing persons report on him - like they’re going to show up at the station and say “Hi, I’m a man whore, and I’d like to report the disappearance of another man whore,” - and I can’t really dig as much as I’d like to without … you know.”

“Raising questions.” Kev would hardly be the first vice cop to dip his toe into prostitution in an non-professional capacity. And even though he really wanted to bitch him out, point out that if he was out and out there on the dating scene he wouldn’t have to secretly pay for sex or risk anonymous fucks with equally desperate internet prowlers, but Kevin surely knew that. And besides, he didn’t ask him here and give him dinner to get a routine speech in return.

“You got it.”

“The family doesn’t care?”

“They disowned him, so I’m gonna say no.”

“Why does Tolliver sound familiar?”

“Pastor Mike Tolliver?”

Roan gasped in recognition. “Oh shit, that guy with the hair that looks like a stunned wombat’s been strapped to his head?”

Kevin’s face contorted as he tried not to laugh. “Uh, I never thought of it that way, but yeah, I guess so.”

“I’ve been tempted to watch his show just to see if that thing ever wakes up and breaks its chin strap. When it does, there’ll be hell to pay. Hey - hell toupee.”

Kevin looked away to laugh and then sneeze repeatedly. Pastor Mike was sort of the local god guy, with a big multi-million dollar church, and a show on a local channel early Sunday morning. He had two frighteningly cheerful Stepford children, but there was never any mention of a son named Jacob, no appearance of him in promotional materials. “They disowned him for being gay, or being a whore?”

“Gay. According to Jordan, his parents caught him making out with a guy in Bible college and told him he was out of the family until he begged God for forgiveness and got help for his perversions.”

“I’m hoping he told them to go fuck themselves.”

“He did, which is why his family no longer acknowledges his existence. He was the missing Tolliver kid long before he actually went missing. They’ve excised him from all the biographical materials.”

“How very Christian of them.”

“It’s selective Christianity,” Kevin said wryly, reminding Roan that he was a half-hearted Christian. Half-hearted because Kevin had some problems reconciling himself with some of the church teachings. Roan didn’t believe in any higher power and had no idea why anyone did, but he tried to be tolerant of people who did, as long as they didn’t shove their beliefs down his throat. Then he was forced to pretend he was a Scientologist or a Satanist or something, although he inevitably made up so much of what he claimed to believe in that he figured one day he’d be sued for slander by Tom Cruise.

“How long has he been missing?”

“A little over two weeks now.”

“And he doesn’t have a history of running off? How old is the kid?”

“Twenty three. And no, he didn’t. If I didn’t think there was something serious behind this, I wouldn’t bring this to you.”

And since Kevin probably wouldn’t want to admit to him that he spent a lot of time in gay sex chat rooms and knew some gay escorts well enough to know their real names, he probably should have guessed that. “I’m still working on a case, but I’ll get to it as soon as I can.”

“The identity thief one? How’s that goin’?”

Normally client confidentiality kept him from talking about these cases, but he had asked Kevin to look for police records on Ladowski and some of his aliases, and besides, he felt like he needed someone to talk to about this case. Usually he had Paris, but not anymore, and his absence was sadly noticeable and vast. He was more than his husband and his assistant - he’d been a sounding board, someone he could work out theories with, someone who could occasionally give him insight into the Human condition. Maybe Kevin would have to sub for one of those things right now.

As he told him about it, Kevin cleared the table, throwing away their paper plates, and pulled a white casserole dish of warm, caramel smelling flan out of the oven. Kevin doled out portions of it into what looked like white ramekins, and never asked if he wanted dessert, just assumed. Roan figured it was only polite anyways, he was a guest in his house. Besides, it smelled good, and he never knew anyone who made their own flan.

He put the small container of warm flan in front of him before sitting down with his own. “Roan, you were a cop long enough to know that sometimes people do things and they don’t know why they do them. You know that sometimes when we haul a guy in, covered in blood after chopping up his entire family with a hatchet, that you can sit him down and ask him why the fuck he did that, and he will tell you with great sincerity that he doesn’t know why … and that’s the truth. It’s the hardest lesson to learn, isn’t it? There’s just some shit we will never understand. And as cops - investigators - it’s our job to uncover this stuff, find the reason, which is why we all get ulcers and tear our hair out when we come to realize that sometimes there’s no reason to be had.”

“You’re telling me I may never know why Ladowski ran.”

“You’re a logical man, Roan, and I respect that, but this world isn’t logical. Okay, let me qualify that before you jump all over my ass - it’s a logical world. But the people in it aren’t. And relationships are the most illogical, irrational things. I mean, look at me. I only fall for guys I can’t possibly have, sparing me the possibility of both love and heartbreak. It’s pretty fucked up, I know it, but some people are just better off alone.”

Roan nodded, figuring he was talking about him. “Yeah, I know.” The flan actually tasted good, rich and creamy with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. Who knew Kev was such a chef?

“Not you,” he said, sharply enough that Roan looked back at him. “You need someone, Ro. You’re … wild. Without someone to help ground you, you spin off compass. Look what happened after you left Connor. And now that Paris has died.”

For a long moment he just stared at him, glad he was on the vicodin to prevent him from getting really angry. “Was that an insult?”

“Absolutely not. I wish I was like you, Ro. I wish I could be that … uninhibited, that raw, fearless. Most people are prisoners of themselves, of all their own shit, but not you.” He smiled sadly, only half his mouth quirking up. “You’re the one who flew over the cuckoo’s nest. Must be nice.”

“It’s always fun throwing drinking fountains through windows,” he cracked, still wondering if Kevin’s assessment was accurate, or if he was just being kind - or mean. He really didn’t know, and the combination of beer and vicodin was doing him no favors.

Before things could get weirder, they finished dinner and Kevin gave him a manila envelope full of documents relating to the Kai/Jacob Tolliver case. He also wrote him a check, which Roan felt weird about taking, but Kevin insisted he treat him just like any other client. And it wasn’t like Kevin didn’t have the money; he had quite a bit socked away in savings. Kevin was one of the most well off cops he’d ever known - it wasn’t a job that paid generously - he just didn’t live like it.

The ride home was almost hypnotic, and he felt like just driving the bike up into the mountains, just driving until he ran out of road or gas or both, but the food, pills, and beer made him too tired. So he went home and forced himself to crack down on the Ladowski case, even though it was dark now, the stars starting to pop out across the sky, and he was tempted to climb up on the roof and just stargaze. Paris would have loved this.

He ducked inside, and wondered if Kevin knew how he wrestled with his own inner beast. Maybe he just seemed so “raw” because the lion was always on the verge of surfacing. Maybe it wasn’t him who “flew over the cuckoo’s nest” - maybe it was the lion. How could he tell the difference?

Roan sat down at his laptop and looked through his emails, finally finding the files that Tyler Hansen had sent him. There was the interviews the night of the Jones murder, the records of Mackey, the coroners report on both Jones and Ladowski, what they had put together of Desiree Jones’s last day, facts upon facts that seemed to be a jumble of hints and clues that added up to nothing.

But he studied a couple of things more closely, and then suddenly, like a lightning bolt from the blue, he realized who had killed Desiree Jones and Vance Ladowski.

Yes, relationships were irrational all right. And sometimes so were the people in them.

It seemed like years since he opened up the door of MK Investigations, and while the air was slightly stale, it wasn’t that bad, nor was it dusty. But then again, Matt had been in here quite recently, airing the place out and keeping the dust from accumulating. It was only he who was a stranger here.

He sat behind Paris’s desk, and noted that while Matt had undoubtedly looked at many of these files, he’d tried to return everything to its proper place. He must have known that disrupting anything that belonged to Paris was an unforgivable sin. Roan opened the desk drawers and saw little mementoes that were signs of Paris, pieces of himself left behind. In the top drawer, he found a small framed photo of the two of them together, smiling at the camera, their heads leaning against one another. Even though he didn’t look drunk - a relief - it took Roan a moment to realize that this was taken at that pub in Vancouver after they got married. It was the closest thing to a wedding picture they’d ever had. Paris looked happy and handsome, heartbreakingly so, and not at all drunk, just happily tipsy.

Holding the picture, he realized he felt something on the back of the frame. Turning it around, he saw a folded up piece of paper tucked into the side. He took it out, unfolded it, and he felt a twinge in his stomach as he recognized the loose scrawl of Paris’s handwriting. You’re wallowing, aren’t you? The note read. Stop wallowing. Love and kisses, Paris

Oh that bastard. He chuckled and said aloud, “Nag nag nag,” and then felt the tears coming. He was glad he’d locked the office door, so no one walked in on him in this embarrassing state. He cried for a while, and although his head ached and his nose filled with snot, he ultimately felt better. It was like purging, he supposed. No one liked vomiting, but sometimes it was better to have the poison out of your system.

He put the picture of him and Paris on his desk in his private office, and tried not to be pissed off that Matt had clearly been in here, no matter how he tried to hide it. He took the note Paris had written and stuffed it in his pocket, figuring he probably needed to take it home and frame it. He cleaned himself up in the bathroom and tried to make himself a bit more presentable before the client showed up. How seriously could you take a private investigator that had clearly been actively sobbing? He had Sheena Hancock coming in, so he could tell her yes, her husband was cheating on her, and he had the photos to prove it. It was another part of the job that made you feel so good about yourself.

Randi came by, mainly to rag him about finally being back at the office - he expected that - but she was actually mild for her. He discovered why when she asked if he had any news about the dead body they found down in Vegas. He told her honestly that the cops had pegged it as suspicious and were looking into it, but it could take a while, as he had no idea how backed up the medical examiners were in Las Vegas. But then he said quite untruthfully that as soon as he knew something, he’d let her know.

He didn’t have long before Sheena showed up, although he had just long enough to field a phone call from an insurance investigator he knew, Collin. He was going off on vacation and was hoping he could take a case over for him - insurance fraud, of course, and the company had no problem paying him for doing that, as Collin’s father owned the company. Sometimes nepotism was a good thing.

Sheena was a very ordinary looking upper middle class woman, in a well tailored suit that couldn’t quite hide her twenty extra pounds, her hair bleached to a beige-y blonde, her makeup applied with an airbrush on the “stucco” setting. She wasn’t attractive - in spite of her efforts - but she wasn’t homely; she was very ordinary, which was probably worse somehow. She had rather large breasts, though, and knowing straight men (and after having photographed so many of them in compromising positions, he felt like he kind of did), that was what Peter found so attractive about her in the first place.

Her face went from stoic to strained to quietly, horrifically furious as he handed over the photographs and told her of his “fun” night following her husband Peter. Her lips thinned until they threatened to disappear, bringing out fine lines on her face. After sitting in tense silence through all of his spiel, she arranged the photos in a neat little pile in her lap. “I’m going to kill him,” she said in a flat, toneless way. It was the exact way you said it when you were serious.

“A divorce would be more productive,” he advised her. “You’d also get half his stuff, which should piss him off. That’s always consolation.”

She had a big gold leather handbag - probably designer, but he wasn’t gay enough to keep track of that sort of thing - and she tucked the photos inside it, zipping it up sharply. “I’ll consider it,” she said, exactly like she wouldn’t.

He knew he was supposed to advise marital counseling or something, but after years of doing this, he was too cynical to do such a thing anymore. He really wasn’t sure how people ever managed to make a relationship work. Okay, yeah, he managed it briefly for a couple of times, but those were under specialized circumstances: Connor was hard to live with, what with his alcoholism and personal demons, so not too many people were interested in a relationship with him; Paris was not only a tiger strain infected, but a suicidal homeless guy when he met him. Not a lot of people could see past that to the hotness.

Or maybe that was the trick. It was the perfectly normal people who always seemed to be running around on each other, and the perfectly dysfunctional who seemed to be beating on each other. Maybe only damaged people, flawed in similar ways, could have a decent relationship.

Wow - what a fucking depressing thought.

He checked his email and printed out the info Collin had sent him on the insurance fraud case, and fielded the phone call from Chris, the guy Dylan had mentioned, about doing a bit of security for the circuit party Saturday. They didn’t need him to do all the security, just act as an inside bouncer, which he could easily do. In all honesty, it sounded like an easy gig.

He called Dalisay and asked if she still had things “Ron” left behind, and if he could look through them. She said yes, she had all of the things he left when she thought he’d died - she’d kept them in a back shed, as she wasn’t sure she could part with any of it. She was glad he’d called, because she was considering burning it all. He didn’t blame her.

He closed up the office once more and drove out to her place. She lived in a nice little suburban home, a two story A-frame painted sky blue, with a dark green trim. Although in a suburb, there was a goodly amount of space between neighbors, and she had a neat yard with a controlled explosion of flowers in two well tended beds, with climbing roses up against the house itself. The smell of flowers was enough to make him sneeze for a bit, announcing his arrival before he could even knock. Inviting him inside, she told him all about this new allergy medication that was doing wonders for her best friend’s son.

She offered him coffee, but since it was starting to get late, he turned it down and told her he should probably get to work. She led him through her neat house - where her cats avoided him deftly - to the fenced backyard, where a little brown alpine styled shed with a padlock on it awaited him. She had already unlocked it so he could have easy access.

She asked him what he was looking for, and he told her honestly that he wasn’t sure, he was just hoping that Vance had left behind something that would give some clue about who he was. She wished him luck, because she wasn’t sure she had any clue anymore.

She had boxed his things neatly, and he spent the next couple of hours going through everything, hoping for some lightning bolt revelation, but willing to settle for a light breeze of awareness. (Fuck, was he high? Maybe the scent of cedar chips was getting to him.)

He was sifting through yet another box of “Ron”’s clothes when his cell phone rang. “McKichan,” he said, checking out the pockets of a pair of jeans. They were empty of everything except lint.

“Murder,” a silky, sonorous man’s voice said, without preamble. It didn’t sound threatening, just ominous, and the smallest hint of a Southern twang pegged this as Tyler Hansen of the LVPD.

Roan sat back on his haunches, back against a stack of large Rubbermaid containers. “The coroner’s report is in, huh?”

“Yeah; your nose was right.”

“What was the tell?”

“That it was murder? He had a near lethal dose of dantrolene in his bloodstream. The M.E. doubts he could have stood up, and isn’t sure he was even conscious at the time of his hanging, but if you smelled fear, he must have been conscious at some point.”

“Dantrolene? What’s that?”

“A major league muscle relaxant.” Roan heard him shuffling papers, clearly finding the one with the definition of dantrolene on it. “Uh, apparently it’s the only drug effective in the treatment of “malignant hyperthermia”, whatever that is.”

“I think that’s a potentially fatal reaction to anesthesia, essentially fatally excessive body heat,” he told him, sure he’d heard that term before.

There was a brief but telling silence. “And you know that how?”

“I used to date an EMT who could have been a doctor, but decided he didn’t want to waste that much time in school. So is the M.E. saying that Ladowski had so much dantrolene in him he couldn’t have stood up on his own?”

“That’s exactly what she’s saying. She’s saying if he had a supernaturally powerful constitution, he could have leaned on things maybe, but walk, reach up, do the knots around his neck? Never. Fine motor skills would be gone.”

“Shit.” Someone did murder Vance Ladowski. He never really bought the suicide set up, but this was still shocking somehow. Somebody slipped him enough drugs to leave him defenseless as they dragged his body to the bathroom and set up the belt on the shower rod, fashioning a noose. He could almost see Vance propped on the bathroom floor, watching, unable to fight or even get away. Whoever killed him either really hated him, or was monstrously cruel. They could have just suffocated him with a pillow. “Who could buy dantrolene?”

Hansen sighed heavily, and Roan figured he’d asked that question himself. “That’s just it. Apparently it’s used as an antidote to ecstasy intoxication.”

Son of a bitch. “So it’s in every emergency room.”

“Right, and could be ripped off by someone who knew what they were looking for.”

“Damn it.” The suspect field was now wide open. If anyone could have gotten the drug, anyone could have slipped it to him. “Do you guys have any leads? Any suspects?”

“Besides you?” Roan expected that - he reported the body, after all, he was at the crime scene. They had to put him on the suspect list, even though the airplane passenger roster and Vance’s time of death exonerated him. “Technically no, although we pulled a couple of partial prints from the motel room that aren’t yours or Ladowski’s. Of course, we haven’t been able to get the prints of all the maids there; some of them are probably illegals, and I don’t expect the manager to be really cooperative.”

“But you’re running them?”

“We’re trying. Most of them are too partial to be much good. And frankly, we found some belonging to about a dozen different people.”

“So the Calico Cat isn’t wild about hygiene. I wish I was shocked.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Roan heard the flat noise of papers being thrown down on a desk before he asked, “What about Fresno? The Desiree Jones case?”

“Oh, that.” He shifted in his seat and shuffled some more paper around before answering. “It’s unsolved, still open, but pretty damn cold. The best suspect they had for that was one Randall James Mackey, a neighbor in the complex, a bad customer who’d done time for both robbery and assault, and had been seen having an argument with Jones two days before her death.”

“Sounds good to me too. Why wasn’t he made for it?”

“Airtight alibi. Four different people backed up his story that he was playing pool in a bar at the time of the murder. The cop on him at the time suspected he’d pressured some of these people into backing him up, but none of them cracked.”

“So he was cut loose.”

“Yeah. No choice in the matter.”

“Where is he now?”

“No fucking clue. He moved to Bakersfield about a month after the killing, and then completely dropped off the radar. He may have gone to Mexico.”

“Shit. Ladowski was interviewed, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he and his roommate.”

“Roommate?”

“Yeah. Ladowski - Ben - was sharing an apartment with a guy named Todd Wayne Nelson. Since they were neighbors of Jones they were both interviewed, and said they were at a midnight showing of Reservoir Dogs and didn’t come back until around two thirty AM, around an hour and a half after the killing. Record checks on them both came back clean; they were never suspects, not with Mackey two doors down.”

Roan rubbed his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. It was breathing in the fumes of heated plastic in a small room probably, although he’d left the shed door open. “He left when Ladowski did?”

“Apparently, but I have no idea where he went.”

“How was Jones’ killed?”

“It looks like there may have been a brief struggle. She was punched or hit with a blunt object a couple of times before ultimately being strangled by an electrical cord stripped off a blender.”

“Strangled?” Roan’s mind reeled briefly as he realized that Jones’s and Ladowski’s death could very well be connected, despite the span of years and distance between them. “Ain’t that a hell of a coincidence.”

“That’s all it could be, you know.”

“I know. Do you believe it?”

There was a very long pause, giving Roan time to finish up the search in this box and move on to the next container. Finally Hansen said, with a heavy sigh, “Talking to you is so bad for me. You put thoughts in my head.”

“I make you think? That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in a while.”

“It could be a coincidence. Seriously man, knock this shit off.” Hansen said that without much enthusiasm.

“It’s not just strangulation, but opportunistic strangulation. Whoever killed Jones didn’t bring a rope or a garrote with them - they had to strip a cord to do it. Whoever killed Ladowski didn’t bring a rope or a garrote - they had to use his belt. Maybe they had hoped to kill him with a drug overdose, but didn’t bring enough, so they decided at the last minute to try and make it look like a suicide. And since they were familiar with strangulation, they were comfortable with it.”

Hansen sighed like he’d just been punched in the gut, and groaned accordingly. “You could be a cult leader, you know? You’re dangerous.”

“Tell me that scenario doesn’t work.”

“You know damn well I can’t, motherfucker.” Again, he said this with no real rancor. He clicked his tongue in frustration, and said, “I’ll start looking harder for Mackey.”

“Also, can you email everything you have on Nelson and Mackey, and the statements made by Hicks and Nelson that night?”

“More illegal shit.”

“Not illegal exactly, just not kosher.”

He sighed heavily once more, but Roan knew he had worn him down. He’d told him this much, had he not? Once you crossed the line, you had nothing holding you back. “Damn you, McKichan. I knew it was a mistake calling you. You just give me more work.”

“I’ll do some of it and let you know what I find.”

“I know, and that’s what’s bothering me. Gotta go. I’ll get back to ya.” And with that, he was gone.

Roan didn’t have a web enabled phone, but he was confident that when he got home, he’d find what he wanted in his email inbox. Hansen’s interest was piqued, but he just might be flying solo on it, and you needed all the help you could get in most investigations.

Roan was going through another container of clothes (how many did Ladowski have?), when moving a dark blue windbreaker something fluttered to the floor. He set the jacket aside, and found that it was a piece of white paper, folded into quarters. Had it fallen out of the pocket? It must have - when he pulled it out of the container, he was holding the jacket upside down.

He unfolded the note, and saw written on it in a hurried print that looked nothing like Dalisay’s handwriting, I loved you. I’m sorry.

There was no name signed to it, but Roan found it easy to assume that this was Vance’s handwriting, and that he’d left the note in a pocket for Dalisay to find, which she never did. His stomach burned, and it took him a moment to figure out why. As brief as it was, it almost read like a classic suicide note. Was Ladowski planning to leave even before the explosion at the fireworks plant?