He went to a high school in Blackwell, Idaho - not Franklin Pierce but Elmer K. Thomas High (presumably some local figure of renown) - but then pretty much disappeared from the few records that Roan had access to. What he needed was the man’s real social security number, but he didn’t have it, and wouldn’t have a chance to access it unless Randi could use her magic. He called her and told her about the development in the case as he emailed Ron again, this time asking for every scrap of information he had on Vance. Randi agreed to dig around for Vance Ladowski tomorrow at work, but she was going out for the night, so he was going to have to wait for more digging. This really bugged him, and he didn’t know why.

Wrong, he did know. The B-12 had kicked in completely now, and he’d been sleeping for days. He didn’t want to sleep, he didn’t want to think about himself or Paris; he just wanted to find Vance Ladowski and get his ass prosecuted for being a fraud and an all around bastard (which wasn’t a crime, but damn it, it should have been). But he was stuck in this empty house, all by himself, and this house had seemed too damn big since Paris had died. Before Paris, he knew it was probably a bit roomier than he needed, but he thought it suited him just fine. He was one of those guys destined to be a cranky old loner, a hermit that everyone avoided, alone with his books. Or so he thought; Connor had gotten under his skin first, and then Paris had totally ruined his confidence that he was a born loner. He wasn’t sure he even knew how to do it anymore.

It finally occurred to him that Matt hadn’t shown up tonight. He was hiding from him now, wasn’t he? Roan called him but only got his answering machine, and he hung up before leaving a message. Matt would show up sooner or later, and he could ask him then how long he’d been keeping his office solvent - as well as playing detective.

Roan tried to watch t.v., but he didn’t want to sit down, and bizarrely enough, too many shows reminded him of Paris. He wasn’t sure he could ever watch South Park again. He did some more random and desperate searches for Vance Ladowski, but he kept coming up blank. It was like trying to find out who Chief was. He called Kevin’s house, and once again was greeted by an answering machine. He left a message asking if he could run a Vance Ladowski through the system and see if he turned up anywhere. As soon as he hung up, he realized he’d never confronted him about Parker Davis. Did he still want to? He really didn’t know.

Roan felt like he was going crazy being here, doing nothing, and he really regretted taking that B-12 shot now. He couldn’t stay here, but he couldn’t imagine where he could go. He could probably go to Dee’s, Dee would probably let him in - if he was awake - but he’d imposed on Dee enough, and frankly, he was kind of sick of him at the moment. Seriously, nobody needed to spend so much time with one of their exes. “Am I going crazy? He asked himself.

“You’re talking to yourself,” Paris pointed out. “Also, you think I’m still here. Neither of those are good signs.”

Finally he did something he thought he was crazy to do whilst doing it: he called Panic. It was really hard to hear on the bar floor, but the guy who answered did hand him off to Toby, and he asked when he got off work. “About an hour from now,” Toby said, almost shouting into the phone over the raging house music. It was one in the morning, which put him off at two. “Why?” A brief pause. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m crazy.” He was about to hang up, as it suddenly struck him how embarrassing this was. He didn’t know this guy at all; he didn’t even know why he was talking to him, except he showed him a single moment of compassion. That was his big mistake, wasn’t it? You’d think a bartender, used to dealing with drunks, would know how dangerous that was, showing weakness around the unstable.

Before he could slam down the receiver in sheer embarrassment, Toby said, “Do you know Gracie’s?”

There was a name he hadn’t heard since he left the force. “The all night diner on Lawford? Yeah.”

“Meet me there in an hour, okay? Can you get there?”

“Uh yeah, sure.”

“Good. I’ll see you then. Right?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” He almost thanked him, but hung up instead. This was a huge mistake. Why did he just do that?

“Because it’s easier to unload crap on strangers,” Paris said. “It’s why people see therapist. Also he’s a Buddhist - he’s got to listen to you and forgive you.”

“I can’t believe there aren’t bitter Buddhists.”

“Oh, I’m sure there is. Just hope he’s not one of them.”

Roan figured he wouldn’t go, he’d just call and apologize, but somehow that seemed unfathomable. His head was starting to ache, he felt a little dizzy, and his face felt really hot, like he could keep a mug of coffee warm on it. The fever. Should he be driving? Fuck it. If he was going to die in a stupid car accident, that might be better than some of the alternatives.

He actually liked driving late at night, when it was late enough for the traffic to have thinned out and the city lit up like a landing strip. It had a different energy, something tangible, which may or may not have been connected to the parallel rise in the danger level. People started indulging in their vices, getting sloppy, getting needy, and so many people’s raw emotions mixing together could only add up to trouble. It was the best time to track cheating spouses, but the worst time to have some kind of breakdown. He drove the motorcycle a bit better this time, maybe because he was finally relearning how to do it, or maybe because the B-12 had improved his reflexes. Either way, he never came close to losing control.

Lawford Street was a couple of blocks away from the “gay” part of the city, and the change was quite startling. Gone were the clean streets and gentrification, and in its place were crumbling streets and sagging buildings with security grates over the windows. The gay part of the city used to be part of the poor section of town, only gays became flush with disposable income and brought the neighborhood up. In a downfall for the bullshit “a rising tide lifts all boats” economic theory, this didn’t happen in the surrounding areas. If anything, they seemed to get worse. Nighttime plunged the neighborhood into almost absolute darkness, with the well lighted Gracie’s a beacon amidst the gloom. There was no way he could park the bike around here, it’d get ripped off in no time, so he drove a couple of blocks out, towards the better edge of town, and parked the bike in the underground parking garage for an insurance company. No, he had no business at the insurance company, but the rent-a-cop who kept an eye on the place didn’t give a shit. Roan ended up walking to Gracie’s.

That was actually a dangerous prospect, especially around two in the morning, but he honestly didn’t care. Why would he worry about desperate crack addicts or bored teenagers? He’d bet hard cash he was the craziest, most dangerous thing out here. Again, he knew he took the mad, dangerous bastard sweepstakes no matter the participants. He saw some questionable men who couldn’t have been up to any good, possible gang bangers or gay bashers (they were often the same thing), but no one bothered him. He must have been giving off the proper “don’t fuck with me” vibe.

Gracie’s was a popular spot for drunks, drug users from the various nightclubs shutting down at this hour who had nowhere else left to go, and cops on the night shift. It was a potentially volatile mix, but it was understood that this was a neutral space, and if you didn’t start none, there wouldn’t be none. Sometimes there was an incident - a loud, angry drunk, a freaking out methhead - but not as often as you might think.

It was a homely place, full of white tiling and tables that could never quite be cleaned well enough to get rid of a persistent greasy sheen that covered everything from the ceiling to the stainless steel appliances visible behind the counter. Decades of fried foods had given the place a helpful coating of lard. It was an honest to god greasy spoon.

He’d been here a couple of times as a cop, but not often enough to be recognized, which he was actually relieved about. It was easy to pick out Toby, as he was the prettiest guy in the place by far - prettier even than the best looking waitress, who was Melanie. She must have been working here twenty years, and every bit of it showed in the worn lines around her eyes and mouth, although she’d kept a good figure, and most of the straight guys rarely looked beyond her breasts, which were large and barely contained by her blouses. Tonight her shirt was a sea green one with odd ruffles, her shoe polish black hair puffed up in an odd combination of a pompadour and a bun.

Toby looked tired but better, still in that leather jacket he saw him in at the store, but now he wore a yellow t-shirt with a cartoon horse on it. Roan slid into the blue vinyl booth across the table from him, and said, “I’m sorry about this. I don’t know why I called you.”

Toby shrugged casually. He had a cup of soda in front of him, but the level wasn’t down much, so presumably he hadn’t been waiting long. “It’s okay. You haven’t been using, have you?”

“What?”

“You sounded agitated on the phone, and you’re looking kind of flushed now.”

“Oh. No, I’m just feverish.”

That didn’t really appease him. “Should you be out?”

“I couldn’t stay in anymore. I think I’m going crazy.”

Toby shook his head. “You’re not.”

“How do you know?”

He smirked in a rueful way. “Trust me, I know crazy. You have a long way to go.”

Melanie came to the table and asked if they were ready to order. Toby handed him the laminated menu as he ordered a big plate of French fries and nothing else, and while Roan figured he was fine, the smell of all this heavy, greasy food and diesel strength coffee made him hungry. Gracie’s was a diner, and as such, was only good at diner food, no matter how fancy its menu got. He ordered a cheeseburger as he handed her the menu, and also asked for an ice tea, even though he knew it’d be disappointing. As she walked away, Toby asked him, “Should I just talk?”

Roan sat back and stared at him for a moment. He had been through this, hadn’t he? “I’d appreciate that.”

So Toby did just that. He told Roan all about his college boyfriend, Jason Westerfeld. They were both “art hags”, artists, specifically painters, although Toby had a more “realistic” style and Jason was rather abstract. They first met when they had an argument over whether impressionism was at all a viable style now that it had been completely co-opted by commercial forces. (Toby still liked Monet, even though his work was now appearing on tote bags; Jason thought it was now the equivalent of motel art.) In spite of that, they hit it off really well and started dating. He admitted it was cloying and naïve and stupid to think that he’d found his “soul mate”, but he felt he kind of did, as Jason “got him” more than anybody ever had.

They stayed together throughout college and beyond. Shortly after graduation, they went to see a friend act in a local play (they had lots of friends in the artistic community, where they were so known as a couple they were often called by one name, “Dylson” - and it was at this point that Toby said his real name was Dylan, that Toby was simply a bar nickname), and driving back that night, they were broadsided at an intersection by a drunk driver with a suspended license. It was a violent crash - the drunk driver must have been going about fifty or sixty when he ran the red - and Toby said he didn’t really remember it, just flashes, bits and pieces that didn’t add up to much. When he came to in the hospital, he was actually rather okay, considering the car was totaled. But when he asked about Jason, people dodged the question, enough to make him feel truly queasy. Then his sister confirmed that Jason was dead, that he died at the scene of the crash. He was on the side of the car that was hit, and apparently the impact was great enough that it snapped his neck. Toby said he tried to take some comfort in the fact that he probably died very quickly, but it wasn’t really a comforting thought.

There was a brief interruption as Melanie brought their food, and Roan wasn’t sure he was hungry anymore. Toby said it took him a long time to get over Jason’s death, especially since he’d been driving the car. “Survivor’s guilt”, according to his therapist.

He didn’t see a therapist right away, though. He spent the first six months “or so” barely leaving his apartment, and he wasn’t a drinker, but he abused some prescription drugs. And basically just withdrew from life, until a “half-hearted” suicide attempt forced him into therapy, which he wasn’t thrilled with, but he found it helped. It also helped that a friend of his had recently become a Buddhist and dragged him to a temple, which he found incredibly peaceful. He found their theories on life and death rather comforting too, so he eventually joined them. He said he wasn’t a great Buddhist, but he tried his best. “The real test will be when Steadman gets out of prison, though,” he admitted, with a sheepish grimace.

“Steadman? The driver?”

He nodded. “Charles Earl Steadman Jr. Not that I’m planning revenge or something.”

“What’d he get, vehicular manslaughter?”

“And driving without a license and parole violations, as it seems he was out for other drunken driving crimes. He was a repeat offender, although this was the first time he’d killed anyone.”

“When does he get out?”

“Next year. He’s completed an alcohol treatment program - for the second time - and he’s been on his best behavior.” He picked up a French fry, looked at it, and put it down again. “I guess this will teach me whether I can forgive or not. I tried with Eric’s killer. I guess it wasn’t the hustler, huh?”

“No. But trust me, the guilty party had been punished.”

Toby finally ate a fry, and looked at him with curiosity. “Why does that sound ominous?”

“Just think of it as karmic justice.” He had lost track of what Adam was doing to the Lorimer/Braben family, but he had no doubt it had been quite good. Well, not from their perspective.

Toby continued giving him that questioning look. “That doesn’t make it sound any better. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“I can’t, sorry, client confidentiality. Also, I suspect I have to take the Fifth.”

He studied him for a moment, scrutinizing him, then shook his head. “I’m sure at this point I don’t want to know.”

“It’s probably for the best.”

He took a drink of his soda as Roan sampled his iced tea. Yeah, it was disappointing. Toby then said, “See, I managed to talk about Jason without bursting into tears. I’m not telling you how you should or shouldn’t proceed, because everybody grieves differently, and you need to work out what’s best for you. But you do need to keep talking; you can’t isolate yourself, because that’s the worst thing you can do. There’s no healing if there’s no movement, and isolation is the same as standing still. Do you have someone you can talk to?”

Roan shrugged, tearing off a piece of his burger and eating it. It was as greasy as hell, which meant it was actually surprisingly good, as a cheeseburger was supposed to be greasy. “Lots of people.”

“Which is why you called me at one in the morning.” He gave him a slight smile, cutting down the harshness of that statement.

“Okay, so they’re not night owls.”

“I know a great therapist.”

“I don’t like therapists much. They always want to talk about my depression and anger issues and parental abandonment issues and other bullshit like that.”

“Well, I’m a bartender, I think that makes me an amateur therapist. I promise I won’t bring up any of those things, unless you want me to.”

“You’re offering to be my therapist?”

“Listener,” he corrected. “I can’t practice without a license.”

“I won’t tattle.”

Toby smiled, and settled back against his seat. “I appreciate that.”

They finished their midnight snacks talking about almost nothing, but Roan actually did feel a little less crazy. Paris was right; it did feel good to unload crap on a stranger, even though he didn’t unload much. Toby did much of the unloading, and yet it still made him feel better. As they split up for the night, they shook hands, and Toby told him his real name, which was Dylan Harlow. Everybody at Panic worked under nicknames as a security measure, as sometimes really lonely guys could fixate on them and turn stalker. He explained that he got the nickname Toby because one day he came to work with blue paint on his hands, because he was using a new tint and didn’t realize that his usual paint remover wouldn’t quite take it off. Someone jokingly accused him of wanting to join the Blue Man Group like Tobias on the show “Arrested Development”, and that was shortened to Toby. Roan was pretty certain he’d never have guessed that.

Once back home, it was about four in the morning, and the B-12 was finally wearing off. He went to bed and slept, but not for long, as the ringing phone woke him up. He felt like he’d been asleep for an hour or two, but the sunlight streaming into his bedroom was bright enough to make him squint as he groped for the telephone. “What?” he muttered, although he was so tired it was barely a syllable.

“Hello to you too, Mr. Sunshine,” Randi replied, sounding far too chirpy for so early in the morning. “I’ve got a hit for you.”

Roan opened one eye and squinted at the alarm clock. Was it really ten thirty in the morning? It didn’t feel like it. “Not a slap, I hope.”

“If only I could do it over the phone. No, I found our lying bastard Vance Ladowski. Two days ago, he used a credit card in his name at the Calico Cat Motel in Las Vegas. You know what this means?”

He rolled over on his back and scratched his chin. His beard felt almost unbearably itchy today; he was probably going to have to break down and shave the bastard off. “You’ve been illegally accessing financial records?”

“No shit, Sherlock. It means this guy could still be in Vegas. We gotta go, pick up his trail, nail the bastard.”

“We? Randi, you’re a CPA.”

“Exactly, and I never get any action. So, I can get us two tickets on a puddle jumper that’ll get us to Vegas by three. We can catch the red eye out, so we’ll have enough time to arrest the bastard and catch the nude ice skating show before we leave.”

Roan hit his arm with the phone receiver, just to make sure he was actually awake. Apparently he was. “Are you high? What is this, Andy Barker PI? We are not a team. And why the fuck would I ever want to see nude ice skating?”

“’Cause you’re gay,” she teased.

“I’m not that gay. I’m not even sure Siegfried and Roy are gay enough for that.”

“Did Paris teach you nothing? We go for the commemorative t-shirts. That way we can say we saw the nude ice skating show without actually having to put up with big floppy tits and shrunken junk. It’s a foolproof plan.”

“With emphasis on fool.”

“Don’t make jokes - I’m the funny sidekick.” He heard her typing on a keyboard. “There, we’re booked. Get your sad ass out of bed and pack a change of clothes in case we have to rough this guy up. You need to get to the airport in an hour. I’ll meet you by gate ten.”

“Hold on a second. You’re not coming with me.”

“Yes I am. I’ve booked the flight, and I’ve never been to Vegas.”

“It’s a shithole.”

“So says the not gay enough gay man. You probably just can’t appreciate it.”

He rubbed his eyes, and wondered how much of this was Paris’s doing, and how much of Randi was already a pushy broad before he came along. “Look, what do you think we’re gonna do down there, even if we find Vance? What do you think is gonna happen?”

“We arrest his ass,” she replied with great confidence.

“Neither of us are cops.”

“So? It’s a citizen’s arrest.”

“We’re crossing state lines to make a citizen’s arrest? Do you know how stupid that is? Where the hell did you learn law - CSI?”

“God, you’re so grumpy after sleeping for a year. Meet me at the airport, Rip van Winkle, or I’m going alone. Hasta la vista, baby.”

“Rand -” But he was already talking to a dial tone. He sighed and hung up the receiver, wondering if he should call her back, and figuring it wasn’t worth the bother. Weren’t accountants supposed to be mousy, wimpy people? Why hadn’t Randi gotten the memo?

Besides, he didn’t want to admit it, but it was possible she was right. If he put a big charge on his credit card, it could have been him renting a room for a week, and it wouldn’t even have to be that big of a charge, as the Calico Cat was probably one of those run down, cheap ass motels - no Caesar’s Palace those - for hookers and for gamblers that had pretty much bankrupted themselves. It was the last stop before you were run out of town on a rail or in the trunk of a car.

Come to think of it, Las Vegas would be perfect for an identity thief. There was so much credit flashing in Vegas, people probably weren’t being as careful with their credit card numbers as they should have been. If he knew what he was doing, Vance could probably pick up a couple of new identities for him to use in other states.