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.