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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Society’s to blame.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No good investigator goes by his gut.”

“Bullshit. What does your gut say?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you all right?” Dylan asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d appreciate that.”

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

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

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

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

“Thanks,” Dylan called after him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not a vegan?”

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

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

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

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

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

“It looked like suicide.”

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

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