12 - Drinking From The Necks Of The Ones You Love

On his way back home, Roan stopped by the all vegetarian Indian restaurant that was a favorite of Dylan’s, and got him take out food of all of his favorites. He only ate some naan bread, and stopped by a fast food place to get his red meat fix. Dylan didn’t make him feel bad about it, he wasn’t an obnoxious vegetarian, but Roan wasn’t crazy about eating it in front of him.

Once home, he put all of Dylan’s food in the fridge, and checked his messages, none of which were important. With time to wait until Dylan was off shift, he started doing some research on the computer, and watching some of the episodes of Lost on his DVR that he had saved but he hadn’t seen yet. He didn’t know if it was the food or the drugs, but he started fighting to keep his eyes open. He thought he’d done a decent job, until the scream of the phone jolted him awake.

He grabbed the handset, still half asleep, and muttered, “What?”

“Roan?” It took him a moment to place the voice, but the Southern drawl should have been a dead giveaway. It was Shep. “Man, I’m sorry to call you about this.”

He could hear the anguish in his voice, and it made Roan sit up. “What? Did something happen to Dee?”

He sighed heavily into the phone, a rush of air like static. “No, not him. They just … man, Skiba and Lombardi just brought Dylan in.”

Was he awake? He wasn’t dreaming, was he? No, Roan was pretty sure he was awake, even though he felt a bit muzzy. Images flashed by on the TV, but right now they seemed disconnected and made no sense at all. Coldness took root in his gut and started spreading outward. “Brought him in? For what?”

“He was attacked in the parking lot of the club where he works, a coupla guys. The bouncer interrupted the attack, I guess, got one of the guys -”

“Attack?” There were no good images in his head right now. Closing his eyes was an invitation to enter the nightmare factory. Something in his chest constricted, made it momentarily hard to breathe. “How badly is he hurt?”

“Considering, not too bad for the moment. He’s stable. They took him for x-rays, but Lombardi told me he didn’t think he had a skull fracture -”

Skull fracture. Christ. “Where are you?”

“County General. Listen -”

“I’ll be right there.” Shep was saying something else, but Roan had already hung up the phone and launched himself off the couch, the nightmares flickering in his head as he grabbed his shoes and headed out. Why would someone attack Dylan? It was senseless. He had no enemies!

But Roan did. Roan knew he had a lot, and suddenly wondered if the connection had been made, if someone had gone after Dylan because they couldn’t get to him.

Two possibilities asserted themselves: random gay bashing, which was known to occasionally happen in that area. Or someone trying to send a message to Roan by hurting his boyfriend.

He drove to the hospital with nothing in his head but pure white noise, the sound of a rage so great that Roan knew he had little hope of containing it.

****

There were times when Shep wondered why he left Georgia.

Oh sure, he knew exactly why he left - the humidity drove him fucking nuts, and so did his parents and their William Faulkner-esque batshit family - but it was a safer question to ask than why he ended up here. He had no real plans to. He was originally heading to California, but he heard from another paramedic that there were some good jobs farther up the coast, and he figured as long as it was a coast, well hell, why not? It was pretty here, the people generally laid back, the women hot, and the humidity was manageable. It was also nearly an entire continent away from his Aunt Claudine and Uncle Merle, so it was all good.

Except, of course, no one mentioned the cat culture that had sprung up here. The church was the eye of the hurricane, of course, and once it was established all the infected started drifting in. Fairly liberal social policies - at least when compared with most of the rest of the country - also contributed, and the rules began to shift a bit. He didn’t mind dealing with the infected - it was a disease; that’s all it was - but some of the nutty cultists were something else. According to them, it wasn’t a disease; it was a blessing, a divine birthright, some shit like that. And hey, his Great Uncle Walt was a fucking snake handler, so far be it from him to disparage or make fun of anyone’s religious choices. But worshipping a disease that put you in horrible pain before killing you very young seemed bizarre.

Maybe it was a defense mechanism. Maybe, when you contracted something this inexplicable and this horrible, you had to come up with a reason for it beyond dumb luck. After all, this was the closest thing there had ever been to genuine lycanthropy, and God knew the Goths were in ecstasy over it. Until the reality of it set in.

His Great Uncle Walt said the virus was god’s punishment on the wicked. Maybe the cat cult was a response to his and his kind. By asserting the divinity of it all, they were really just taking the piss out of the self-righteous, holier-than-thou assholes who claimed they brought it on themselves. If that was the case, Shep couldn’t blame them; he might have done the same thing.

He was thinking of all of this while looking over a brochure he found in the hospital’s waiting room. It looked slick, professional, but was recruiting material for the cat cult. It wasn’t sanctioned by the hospital, so obviously it had been planted there by true believers hoping to get their claws (no pun intended) in the newly diagnosed or simply the curious. He felt he should alert someone, let them know they should scour their waiting rooms to remove this kind of thing, but why? Was it any worse than the shit the Catholic League left behind, or the evangelicals and their pro-life or ex-gay conversion pamphlets? It was all aimed to take advantage of the confused and vulnerable; it all capitalized on weak moments and sudden doubts. Who was to say one was more harmful than another?

The funny thing was he knew when Roan had arrived before he even saw him. He wasn’t sure how exactly, except he got a feeling somewhere between his shoulder blades, and he turned to see that he had just come through the emergency entrance. Maybe that was just his weird magnetism at work.

Now this was something his Grandmother Helly would have had a field day with. She was considered the family oddball (in his family? Ha!), and made her living telling fortunes. She wasn’t a con artist, or at least not a deliberate one; she honestly believed she had a gift. Whether she did or not was up for debate, but Shep always felt that she had helped expand his mind and learn to accept the eccentric and the different in life. According to Helly, some people had what she called “pull”. These were people with strong “auras”, people with possibly supernatural energy, and even if they didn’t know it themselves, she said that other people, especially “sensitives”, always knew who they were. She said you knew who they were the second they entered a room, and you couldn’t ignore them, no matter how hard you tried. They may seem ordinary in every respect, but around them you could feel something like power.

She would have said that about Roan. Shep would have pointed out he was just one of those people with a strong personality and a forceful physical presence. No, he wasn’t built like a brick shithouse, like that bouncer who had stopped the attack and worked over one of the guys (that guy was a wall with legs), but he carried himself like a boxer, grace and lean muscle just waiting for the right moment to strike. You got the sense that if he wanted to hurt you, he could, and Shep knew that was true. He was a bit of a local legend by now, and some of the guys jokingly referred to him as “the pain fairy”, because when he got in a fight, it was usually the other guy you were scraping off the pavement. Maria told him they used to bet on how badly the other guy would be hurt. It wasn’t that he just whaled on them, he was all about surgical strikes, targeting weaknesses and putting people down with a minimum of effort: kidney punches, throat strikes, broken noses, broken kneecaps. It seemed like a cop thing, but after having dealt with victims of police brutality and simply sloppy police dust ups, Shep knew that wasn’t true; it was just a Roan thing. He was a guided missile of trouble, and woe betide the stupid dickhead who decided to take him on. He had learned most of his fighting techniques before he ever joined the force.

He was as straight as a gate, but Shep could see why guys (or girls, or cats or dogs, whatever) could be attracted to him. He had a strangely intense energy about him, and yet a sort of regal gravitas, casual but still ever-present. Dee once joked that being with Roan was really like being in the presence of a genuine lion … and you know, it kind of was. Compacted power, and an awareness that one wrong move could wake the slumbering beast.

Stalking across the waiting room entrance towards him, it looked like he had indeed woken the beast - or just Roan - up. His deep reddish brown hair (it was almost the color of old blood, which was strange since it didn‘t come from a bottle) was mussed, and he was wearing worn jeans that probably needed a belt to fit properly, and a rumpled black t-shirt that inexplicably had the words “These Arms Are Snakes” printed on it. What was that supposed to mean? Well, this was probably just an example of what Dee had described as Roan’s large collection of strange t-shirts. Dee had claimed it was Roan’s penchant for t-shirts that made most people think he was straight. Roan’s usual magnetism had a dark air about it now, which was reflected in the shiny metal glimmer of his eyes. It was partially the emptiness of a shock victim, and partially the squirming black shadows of someone restraining a volcanic rage. “Where is he?” Roan asked, his voice pitched low. His jaw was taut with the effort of speaking through clenched teeth.

“I’m not sure you can see h -”

“Where the fuck is he?” Roan repeated, storming past him. Shep grabbed his arm, and Roan yanked out of his grasp with excessive violence, making Shep stumble. He could almost swear he felt muscles twitching like snakes beneath the skin of Roan’s arm, something sentient and impatient under tender flesh. Did he have muscle spasms? It was possible; infecteds had lots of secondary conditions.

“I’m not the enemy,” Shep snapped, and his tone of voice made Roan stop and look at him. Roan’s look was flinty and yet slightly distant; he was somewhere in his own head, his mind gnawing the hell out of something. There were a few people in the waiting room, a few nurses coming and going, but it was funny how everyone deliberately avoid them. Roan’s “fuck you” vibe was filling the corridor and scaring everyone back.

A crack appeared in Roan’s armor. It was brief, but it was there, something Human flashing through eyes like green glass. “I know. I just need to see him.”

The anger was hiding pain; Shep had seen it enough to know it. Lots of people cried or broke down, but some retreated to anger because it was easier, safer. It wasn’t a surprise a scrapper like Roan would lash out first and foremost. Shep glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to them, then jerked his head, a tacit invitation for Roan to follow him. He did, without comment.

Dylan was currently alone in a treatment room off the main ER, because shortly before Roan arrived there was a flurry of activity that pulled just about all the doctors and nurses away. First was a car crash victim who’d had the bad luck of having a steering column almost completely collapse their sternum, and the second was a teenage gangbanger with a GSW to the abdomen. They were fighting hard to keep the accident victim breathing, and to keep the boy from bleeding out or having his guts slosh out the gaping hole. (Shep had actually seen that happen; he hoped he never had to see that again.)

Dylan was alone on a gurney in the small, cool room, although he wouldn’t be alone for very much longer. Still, he was in much better shape than the two patients currently enjoying the lion’s share - no pun intended - of the attention. Although it wasn’t good for the victim of a potential head injury to be unconscious, his vitals as reflected on the monitor were good, stable and steady, and that was always a positive sign. Still, if he did have a head injury, they could be slow to build, and yet very sudden in their effects. It was why they were such bitches to deal with, and why Dylan was going to be here for a while.

He wanted to give him the upbeat diagnosis, focus on the positive, but he seemed to understand that he needed to be quiet for a moment. He stood by the doorway as Roan ventured in, moving slowly towards the gurney as if sleepwalking. Dylan didn’t look great; the right side of his face was swollen and bruised, with butterfly bandages temporarily holding a gash on the side of his scalp closed (later, it would be properly mended), while there was a tiny bloody line where the corner of his mouth was torn. A blanket had been thrown over him, covering the bruises on his arms and chest, but it didn’t matter too much; it didn’t look like there were any broken bones, save for one finger (and possibly a cheekbone, and maybe a hairline skull fracture). Soft tissue injuries never killed anyone, they just looked and felt bad.

Roan lowered his voice to a whisper, and all the tension seemed to sag from his frame as he stroked his boyfriend’s hair. “Dylan, can you hear me?” His voice didn’t crack, but Shep picked up the sorrow beneath regardless. “I’m so sorry.” He kissed him softly on the forehead, which was touching and sad. No, he didn’t get the whole gay thing, but love was love, and he had no problem with that. There wasn’t enough of it in the world.

Suddenly Roan’s muscles seemed to tense again, and Shep could feel himself respond, tense in kind. What was it? Roan looked at the far wall, or at least glanced in its direction; he didn’t seem to be focused on anything. “He was attacked by an infected.”

That caught him completely off guard. Roan had a terrible way of doing that. “Umm, what? I -”

Roan spun and faced him, anger surging through his frame, putting him back in that defensive posture once more. “I can smell his blood. Where is he?”

Okay, rewind. Shep considered his words a moment, and how deeply strange they were. He smelled the blood of the infected guy on Dylan? The bouncer had worked one of the attackers over a bit, but the blood splatter on Dylan must have been minimal, because most of the blood on him appeared to be his own. And, hey, wait a fucking second - since when did one kind of blood smell different from another kind of blood? Blood was pretty much blood. “What the hell do you mean you can smell his blood?”

Roan approached him, shoulders up and head low, a look in his eye just a few degrees shy of murder. “Where is he, Shep? Is he still here?” His voice was low, silky, reasonable, coldly dispassionate - a warning sign if there ever was one. This was a man who was comfortable with what he was going to do next, even though he was fully aware it was bad. His brother Jonny sounded the same way before he off and broke Bobby Tanhauser’s arm.

“His injuries were bloody but superficial. He was treated at the scene and taken to the police station. He was never brought here.” It was the truth, but he expected Roan to accuse him of lying.

It didn’t happen. He cocked his head, nostrils flaring, and then he nodded faintly, looking straight through him. “Doesn’t matter. I want the ringleader.” He stalked towards him, and Shep stepped aside, wondering if he was going to shove him or hit him. But no, Roan would have just ran over him; he stormed out as though Shep had never been in his way at all.

Couple of things: he muttered a word that sounded like “Hurry” (Harvey?) under his breath, but it was hard to tell, as he was growling. It was the kind of growling that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It reminded him a bit of the Benson’s dog, a big ass Rhodesian ridgeback that was perhaps the nastiest beast he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. It wasn’t a Human noise, and he couldn’t help but shudder a bit as he followed Roan out. “What are you gonna do? Man, don’t do anything rash …” he reached out and touched his arm, but he didn’t grab him, as he knew that wouldn’t end well.

Roan spun around so fast that Shep jumped back, afraid there might be a fist coming his way. There wasn’t, but he kind of wished there had been. “Stay out of this,” he snarled, his growl never ceasing even as he spoke. The words were syllables lost in the rumble. And -

- holy shit.

Shep just stood there gaping as Roan stalked out of the hospital, everyone scrambling to get out of his way. Had he actually seen that?

He must have. Roan’s eyes changed. From one moment he’d gone from having Human eyes to having cat’s eyes. It even looked like his canine teeth were longer, thicker; fangs. But that couldn’t be true.

Infecteds changed differently, depending on the viral type, but some things remained pretty constant. For instance, the eyes usually were the first thing to change, but it wasn’t instantaneous. Like most of the transformation, it occurred in stages, and while it was quicker than the bones breaking and restructuring themselves, it still took about ten minutes for the pupils to change shape, for the irises to bloat and the cornea to alter. Usually one eye changed before the other, although pieces of both could alter more or less in synch. And like everything about transformation, it hurt like fuck.

But just like that, Roan’s eyes had altered. One moment he was talking to a Human being, and then next he was looking into the eyes of an overgrown predator who still retained a Human ability to hate. Pupils had gone from circles to ovals, and his irises seemed too big, his eyes too glazed and yet too sharp. The Human was falling away, being shed like an old skin.

Virus children were different; he knew that. He remembered during one of his classes on the “special needs of infected individuals” his professor admitted that virus children were pretty much terra incognita, as most were born so damaged and died so young it was impossible to say both how and why they were so different than post-utero infectees. His opinion was that if the fetus was able to survive the total integration of the viral strands into their DNA, then they were in essence a different species: neither Human nor Human infected, but something other. It was a controversial stance to be sure, and some suggested crazy as well as racist (specist), but in his favor, it couldn’t be proven or disproven; it was a hypothesis in a vacuum, because there weren’t enough surviving viral children to say. Roan was actually one of three Shep had encountered in total in life, and the only one not in an incubator or developmentally disabled; he was the only one he’d ever actually had a conversation with, and the only one not visibly deformed.

He felt like calling Professor Bell and telling him he had found his example. He found a virus child that just might fit in the “other” category. Was that a good thing really?

An orderly he vaguely knew, a big Samoan guy everyone called “Bean” (he had no idea why, and never asked, mainly because he didn’t want to look like an idiot), came up to him, and asked, “What the fuck was that guy’s problem?”

“Someone attacked his boyfriend,” he reported numbly, amazed at how those words didn’t even begin to cover what had happened here.

He had to do something. Whether Roan transformed fully and was caught out unrestrained or Roan found who he was looking for first, Shep was convinced that somebody was going to die tonight.

11 - Marching Bands of Manhattan

Once he left Dee’s, he swung by Panic. It was still early yet, so it wasn’t as busy or as flashy as it usually was. Still, he was almost deafened by Cut Copy as he walked in, the sound swirling around him at volumes that made his teeth rattle. As it was, he still had to do most of his talking in sign language, pointing at Luis (Rhett) and himself before pointing at the door behind the bar.

Rhett got it; he gave him the thumbs up and motioned him around to the side, where he opened the bar up for him and let him in. Before they ducked into the back, he saw the new bartender. He was a tall, lean man with very dark brown skin, his torso an enticing V shape, and his black hair held down to his scalp in tiny, tight braids. Roan must have looked a bit too long, as the guy caught him looking, but he gave him a lazy smile and a wink before turning back to the mini-fridge under the bar. Damn, he had a nice ass too. For a couple of seconds, he thought about the good parts of being single.

As soon as they were in the back break area, and the music died down at dull roar, Rhett cocked his pierced eyebrow at him and said, “I see you noticed Byron.”

“What kind of bar name is Byron?”

“A terrible pun; he’s bisexual,” he said, with a roll of his eyes.

“Got something against bisexuals?”

“No, but once you’re out of college, you should really pick a side. It seems so wishy washy otherwise.” He then flashed him one of his “I’m now moving on“ smiles, of which he had at least three. He didn’t know Rhett all that well, but he’d attended a party at his apartment with Dylan, and learned some things about him. Along with his extensive catalogue of transitional smiles, Rhett was a photographer who kept a gallery of them in his place. Many were faceless, artistic portraits of former boyfriends, and according to Dylan, Rhett went through boyfriends like McDonald’s went through Big Macs, so he had lots to choose from. His current boyfriend was a slightly nervous jock type who was the captain of the local gay rugby team. This was the first time Roan had even heard of a local gay rugby team.

Rhett was a lean, handsome Latino who had a twink air even though he wasn’t a twink. He usually wore coordinated eyebrow and nipple rings, and today was no exception - today he wore tiny gold hoops with gold four leaf clover charms on them, one through his right eyebrow and the other through his left nipple. He looked barely nineteen, but was verging on twenty nine. He smelled like nicotine, mint mouthwash, and hair gel, with a subtle undertone of something pharmaceutical.

He asked Rhett about where Dylan might like to go on vacation, saying he wanted to surprise him with it. The funny thing was, Rhett seemed to consider the question a stumper. “Aw hell. Y‘know, he’s fully embraced the whole Buddhist not wanting stuff principal, so I don‘t really know. He just doesn‘t talk about stuff like that.” He scratched his head, mussing up his well coiffed yet bedhead looking hair, and Roan saw is fingers twitch slightly before he brought his arm back down to his side. His low slung jeans revealed a patch on his hip.

According to Dylan, Rhett had been trying to quit smoking since he’d known him. The longest he’d gone without a smoke was two and a half weeks. He kept trying, though, which was either a sign of an indomitable will or complete insanity. “I guess, you know, as long as you’re with him, he‘ll be okay with anywhere. Somewhere peaceful I guess; somewhere kinda Zen.”

Wow, that was so helpful he wondered why he bothered asking.

But before he could thank him and leave, Rhett added, “Y‘know, it’s great you wanna do something like this for him. I mean, he’s crazy about you, but you … you’re kinda hard to read, y‘know? I mean, I’m sure it‘s your job and everything, all poker face stuff, but usually you can tell if someone is into someone else. I just can’t tell with you.”

Roan didn‘t know what to say to that. He didn’t feel anything anymore? He was dead inside? He was a total bastard? They were all applicable, and yet he didn’t feel like admitting this to Rhett. “Dylan’s a great guy,” he finally said, aware he had to say something.

Rhett nodded almost spastically, rubbing the back of his neck to hide the twitching fingers. He wanted a cigarette so badly he was almost crawling out of his skin with need. His rings picked up the light and glinted like SOS signals. “Yeah, I know. I tried so hard to get into his pants when we first met, y’know, but I guess I’m not his type.” Suddenly aware of what he said and to whom, he quickly added, “But I’ve stopped trying. I mean, I wouldn’t … once you get rejected a dozen times, your ego can’t take it anymore. You know?”

He gave his arm a friendly pat, just to let him know there were no hard feelings. Except he wanted to punch him for using “You know” about a dozen times more than was necessary, but that was a separate issue. “Yeah. Well, thanks. And this is just between us, right?”

“Absolutely, I won’t say a thing.” He gave him one of his other transitional grins, one that almost seemed predatory but wasn’t quite. He ultimately didn’t know what to think about Rhett - he seemed all right, and he’d been a friend of Dylan’s for a long time, but there was something about him that seemed scattered and flighty. Sometimes Roan wondered if cigarettes and men were his only addictions.

Of course, as he returned to his car to have a pill, he realized he had no room to talk.

There was a cyber-café a couple of blocks over, and he went there to search for “Sun” places on the Eastern side of the state. There was a “Sun Lake” in Kiernan Park, but internet pictures proved it was a genuine park, with trees and everything. There was no desert there, and it didn’t look like a good place to bury bodies unless you wanted an audience.

Once he included desert places - buildings, businesses - with Sun in the name, the number of locations available exploded. How could he narrow this down? And why? He could be chasing nothing, a ghost of a lie. He was punching sand. And why? Because he’d been used by a client who had simply ended up killing her husband? Because he felt bad for Chris Spencer? Because he wanted to love Dylan but really wasn’t sure how? This was constructive; this was action. He was doing something concrete here. He felt useful, and not like some hollowed out, pill popping failure.

When he was on his second green tea lemonade, he suddenly realized the waitress, a nineteen year old with a dragon tattoo on her forearm and short, dark hair highlighted with magenta bangs, was flirting with him. He almost did a spit take when he realized she’d written her cell phone number on a napkin and slipped it to him. Oh god, the poor thing. He felt sorry for her. In a café half full of guys, she had to pick the one that was 1) gay and 2) infected. He’d both heard of and encountered bad taste in men in several forms, but this really took the overpriced pastry.

He ducked into the men’s room and splashed cool water on his face, which actually felt nice since the codeine was kicking in and making his face feel hot. He looked in the mirror and tried to see what other people saw when they looked at him. He couldn’t imagine it. He saw a man with funny colored hair and eyes a little too green to be trusted, someone with ghostly pale scars on his lip and bisecting his eyebrow, both suggesting he was more trouble than he originally seemed. He saw someone he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Roan decided he was being an idiot. He was tired, and he could feel his unshakable enemy, depression, blooming in him like a pernicious flower that could never quite be ripped out. All the pills in the world didn’t make it go away.

If this was real, this didn’t belong to him; whatever Santorelli said belonged to others.

He left the bathroom and threw a five on the table as a tip, taking the napkin only because he knew if he left it she’d probably take it as personal rejection and not realize he was turning her down because she was the wrong gender. It was better for her self-esteem just to assume he was another bastard of a man who never called. But at least he’d also be remembered as a decent tipper.

He called Murphy, and she was at the station, so he had to pay another visit to the cop shop. He still had his Vancouver Canucks hat from his earlier prison visit and pulled it on, tucking his hair up and lowering the brim, hoping that no one recognized him as he made his way to homicide. It didn’t work, but really, did he expect it to? Some of the cops still insisted on greeting him as “Batman”. He gave them the finger, which only made them laugh.

When he ducked into homicide, most of the detectives were too busy to notice him. He made his way along the cheap metal desks until he found Murphy’s, and then he slumped in the folding chair he found and dragged over from a currently empty desk. She acknowledged him with a look and a raised hand, but she was on the phone, so he had to wait until she was done talking before saying a word.

He ended up waiting a little over a full minute before she returned the receiver to its cradle. “We found Holly Faraday’s car abandoned at the airport,” she informed him. “We’re still trying to figure out if she actually got on a plane or just wanted us to think that.”

For some reason, he found that news vaguely depressing. Was he really hoping it would all turn out to be some curious misunderstanding? In what world did he dwell in - Disneyland? “I’m not here about that. Do you know I’ve been hired to look into the Keith Turner disappearance?”

She furrowed her brow and looked up at the ceiling, where some pencils hung like stalactites. This place had the acoustical tile drop ceiling that lended itself to perfect sharpened pencil launching. Clutches of them bristled over every desk. “Umm, you’re gonna have to enlighten me …”

“Ten years ago, grabbed out of Bishop Park?”

“Oh! Shit, that one? That’s colder than a coal miner’s ass.”

Rather than thank her for that newsflash, he told her about his pursuit of Roger Jorgenson’s former cellmates, and how Rocco, a temporary one, told him about Roland Chesney’s serial killer bragging. Murphy listened, but with skepticism coloring her face. “Everybody makes shit up in prison. They want to look hard.”

“I know, but this is really the only lead I have. Otherwise I have nothing.”

“So why bring this to me?”

“Because if he told the truth about only one of the bodies, this is your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

She glared at him, picking up a pen and tapping it on her desk in a manner that suggested she hoped it was actually an axe going into his head. “Bringing me more work, motherfucker? Do I look like I have nothing but free time?” But she sighed and turned towards her computer, muttering under her breath as she angrily typed on the keyboard.

After a minute or so, she asked, “Do you think he could have been referring to the Sun Valley nuclear power station?”

“Oh shit, I hadn’t even thought of that.” Sun Valley was a textbook case of what happened when nepotism and ineptness collided, sort of like the Bush administration on a much smaller scale. It was supposed to be a state of the art nuclear facility, but the construction was beset by flaws from the start, and it was only about one-fifth built when the question of why it was so massively over budget and behind schedule was solved: the man in charge of the whole project - the brother-in-law of the local mayor - was embezzling money, and really didn’t have the slightest idea what the fuck he was doing. The resulting scandal had the mayor ousted from office and the brother-in-law imprisoned and sued, although the court case had yet to be settled for either the mayor or his pseudo brother. Sun Valley remained unfinished and also tied up in a plethora of lawsuits.

It was smack dab in the middle of the desert. A couple of miles of it was technically government property, but beyond that it was free desert, and not a lot of people went out there due to the specter of a nuclear facility (never mind that it wasn’t finished and was never operational). It would be a good place to dump a body.

Murphy looked at her computer screen and sighed once more. “I’ll make some phone calls, see if the cops out there have ever had a body turn up in the desert, but you know I can’t promise anything.”

“I know, but I’d appreciate your help. Thanks.”

She nodded, clicking a few more keys before glancing back at him. “You okay, Ro?”

“What do you mean?”

“I dunno, you’ve seemed kinda … off lately. You’ve been gettin’ in fights left and right.”

“I object to that. I haven’t been getting in fights, I’ve only been finishing them.”

“Categorize it however you want, I’m worried about you.”

He shrugged uncomfortably and stood up, hoping to put a quick end to this conversational cul-de-sac. “I’m okay, Murph, it’s just been a weird couple of days.”

She looked up at him with a sharp look, the kind that only a homicide detective could give you, one that told you in no uncertain terms that you were one hell of a shitty liar. “Maybe you should take it easy, huh? Back off for a bit? When’s the last time you had a vacation?”

“Vacation? I don’t speak your crazy language, Earthling.”

“Whatever, Gaylord.”

He mock beauty queen waved at her on his way out of homicide, and at the doorway someone whose voice he didn’t recognize exclaimed, “Holy hand grenades, Batman!”

“Eat me,” he snapped back, to a small chorus of strangely giddy chuckles. He knew they’d get over it eventually, but it couldn’t be soon enough for him.

****

In a way, it was a good thing it was a slow night, as it allowed Dylan to do a bit of surfing on his iPhone.

He actually thought people who had iPhones needed help - what, there wasn’t a fireplace they could throw their hard earned money into? - but Sheba got him one for his birthday, and only a truly ungrateful bastard would disparage or turn down a gift. As it turned out, he kind of liked his needless, pointless iPhone, and it made him feel bad.

Still, he appreciated it during these slow nights at the club. He could do more than read books or have strangely tangential conversations with customers who still held out hope of getting in his pants. (Once he had a conversation that started out about Will Ferrell films and ended up being about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and for the life of him he had no idea when or where the topic started to diverge.)

It also kept his mind off of Roan, although it was him behind his iPhone surfing. What was he going to do with him? He knew he still loved Paris, and Dylan understood that completely. But it was hard to compete with a dead man. Also, it didn’t help that Roan was sinking deeper and deeper into depression, and was really abusing the prescription drugs. He thought he didn’t know, but of course he did. For a while after Jason died, he had some problems with the pills himself, although not the heavy duty painkillers that Roan seemed to favor. Dylan had no idea how he could function on so much Vicodin. (Oh sure, House made it look easy, but that was a television show. In real life, that could knock the shit out of you.)

The problem was he knew he couldn’t suggest therapy. Roan had had some negative therapy experiences and just didn’t want to hear about it anymore. But he was on the edge of something very catastrophic. Maybe he didn’t realize it, but it seemed like he was a couple of wrong turns away from a breakdown.

Except Dylan worried that maybe he was being over dramatic. Roan was a grown man, and he’d survived well over thirty years of shit without him around. And it wasn’t like battling depression was new to him, as Roan admitted he’d been fighting it most of his life. He’d stood up and survived shit that would crush lesser people.

But …

This was as frustrating as hell. He had to confront him and get this all out, even if it ended things between them. What did they have anyways? Dylan loved him, but he knew Roan probably wasn’t capable of loving him back right now. He was in some dark place that he couldn’t reach, where light didn’t touch. He wanted to help him, but he didn’t know how. Right now, he was considering emailing some pages on depression and local therapists to Roan’s email address, even though he knew that would just lead to a huge argument. Especially if he added, “I love you, you stupid son of a bitch, but I’m going to have you involuntarily committed if you don’t knock this shit off!”

Things were so slow at Panic that Jessie gave him the go ahead to leave early for the night, although it was just ten to two - not that early, in the big scheme of things. By the time he put on his shirt and his sweatshirt (worn in lieu of a coat) and put away his iPhone, it was two in the morning anyways.

He headed out, pulling out a cheap watch cap and putting it on. He hated what it did to his hair, but no customer from the club seemed to recognize him when he wore it. He cut through the back alley to the rear parking lot, and he found himself wondering if Roan would even be home. He’d been on a lot of stake outs lately, but that wasn’t just it; he knew he’d gone out the other night after they technically went to bed. He knew Roan wasn’t cheating on him only because there was no way he had the emotional energy to do so. That meant he was getting obsessive about a case. It was the Keith Turner case probably, and he couldn’t blame him, as it was hideous on several levels. How could that crime have never been solved? He was a little boy that got kidnapped; someone should have found something. Someone should have found that poor boy, no matter what condition he was in. But, as Roan would have reminded him, life and criminal investigations didn’t always work like that.

He had pulled out his car keys and was just unlocking the door when a man asked, “Dylan Harlow?”

Not his bar name Toby, which made him instantly curious. “Yeah?” he asked, turning around. But in that split second he realized he’d made a huge mistake. He was so distracted he hadn’t been aware that two men had snuck up on him in a poorly lit parking lot, two men he didn’t know who still knew his name. He didn’t need Roan telling him that this was fucking bad.

He saw silver flash in the dim lighting, but only knew it was an aluminum baseball bat when it smashed into the side of his head. He felt a brief, dull burst of pain before everything faded to black.

10 - La Stanza Bianca

It was always disappointing when a cop who knew you and didn’t like you showed up to take your statement.

At least Butler - or as he was known around the station, “Butthead” - came with a rookie named Salazar who didn’t know him and treated him just like any other guy who’d gotten his house burgled. Butler kept prowling around, like he was looking for something incriminating. Was he hoping to see some gay porn just laying around, or maybe a collection of dildos? If he’d known he was coming over, he would have bought one and slapped his picture on it.

There were some surprise visitors, though: Gordo and Seb. They wandered in, and Butler - who had been in charge of the scene before their arrival - got instantly tense. “Something I can help you with?” he asked, respectful but still slightly arch.

Gordo gave him a bored look, which was worth a thousand hateful stares. He was now the senior man on the scene and he knew it, just as he knew Butler resented it. That was one of the things that Roan really didn’t miss about being a cop: all the bullshit protocol. “This might be our jurisdiction, Ron.”

Butler look confused, his beetle brows dipping low beneath his caveman forehead. “This isn’t a cat crime.”

It was Seb who shrugged. Gordo was wearing a silver grey suit coat, while Seb was rocking the khaki trench coat look. He was like a black Columbo, but without the lazy eye. “If it’s a hate crime, it is.”

Butler scoffed and spread his arms wide, indicating the entire room. “There’s no sign of a hate crime here.”

Gordo gestured to Roan, who was watching the tech gal, Imahara, dust for prints. “Roan said he thought DT was behind it.”

Butler scoffed. “There’s no evidence of that. And last time I checked, feminine intuition doesn’t count as proof.”

Gordo’s look hardened into ice. “You’re on report. Get out of here.”

“What?” The question was one of genuine confusion, not defiance.

“You heard me. Go home, Butler. You’re done here.”

His mouth opened to protest, but Gordo and Seb were a brick wall, all stiff shoulders and withering looks, so he huffed a breath through his nose like an angry dragon and stomped out. Salazar looked painfully embarrassed, but closed his notebook and followed Butler out, with a shrug that was probably an apology. Imahara continued working, pretending she wasn’t listening.

“I could have just kicked his ass,” Roan pointed out.

“I didn’t like that he felt so comfortable insulting someone in front of me. I ain’t putting up with that shit.” Gordo heaved a weary sigh, an indication of a topic shift. “Is Eli’s computer all they grabbed?”

“As far as I can tell. They broke a window to get in and tossed some furniture around, but clearly they were after one thing.”

“Someone called us about an altercation at the Church, but Mr. Harvey said only that you two had a “loud discussion”, and it was nothing of merit. Despite the fact that he looked very pained, and isn’t a very good liar. His little assistant - who must have made the call - looked shell shocked. You beat the shit out of Harvey?”

“I think I’d better take the fifth here.”

Seb snorted, a swallowed laugh. “Why? You’d get a medal down at the station if you did.”

He knew they didn’t like the church at the cop shop or the state house, but that seemed like a more extreme reaction than usual. “Why? They been making more trouble than usual?”

Imahara stood up, and her knees cracked like distant shotgun blasts. She was a vaguely attractive woman who seemed to like looking plain, wearing drab clothes and no make up, her hair cut in an economic style. She looked like a person always on the verge of sinking into the background. It had to be a deliberate choice. “Well, got some good prints, but I suspect they’re yours, Roan. There’s a lot of smears indicating someone with gloves was here recently. You don’t wear gloves in the house, do you?”

The first thing that sprung to mind was a fisting joke, but it was so awful he couldn’t make himself say it. “Not as a rule.”

She nodded. “That’s what I thought. Well, I’ll let you guys know, but I’m thinking we’re looking at a couple of pros here. They knew what they were doing. This was a smash and grab.”

“They were also uninfected, probably because Harvey actually thought he could fool me into thinking it wasn’t him.” Imahara gave him a quizzical look on the way out the door, but it was Seb who asked, “How do you know they weren’t infected?”

“He’d smell ‘em if they were,” Gordo explained for him.

As soon as Imahara was gone and shut the door behind her, he asked, “So what’s been going on with the Church?”

Gordo sighed and Seb’s shoulders sagged, all signs of defeat. “Since Eli’s death, recruitment has been on an upswing,” Gordo told him. “They’ve been having lots of parties where the infected and uninfected mingle, but they don’t hold them at the church. They’re been moving them around randomly, like house parties or raves, trying to avoid being busted. We’ve got some undercover agents posing as wannabe teens in the chat rooms, trying to get invited to these things, but they’re more paranoid than ever. It’s harder and harder to get a bite.”

Roan nodded, sure knew where this was going. “You want me to see if I can find one?”

“It’d be a big help.”

“Yeah, fine. I know sex workers, people in the scene. If there’s kinky shit going on somewhere, they’ll know.”

Gordo smirked. “I’d ask how you know sex workers, but I’m sure I’d get in trouble.”

“Just consider that all of us freaks stick together, because if we don’t, who will?”

Seb nodded and Gordo just gave him a strange look, but that seemed to be the end of it. “We can pay another visit to the church, mention the theft, see if we can shake him up,” Gordo offered.

Roan shook his head. “Not necessary. All they got was a shell. I pulled the real hard drive out ages ago.”

“So what do they have?”

“An empty hard drive. A shitload of nothing.”

Seb snickered. “Man, I can’t believe people still try you.”

“Of course they do. I’m just a dumb ex-cop who has to make his living taking pictures of other people’s cheating spouses. I can’t be that hard to fool.” Roan moved to the couch and sat on the arm, figuring things were done.

Gordo looked strangely concerned, at least for him. “You really think this guy’s gonna roll over and take it? I just talked to him for a few minutes, but there seemed to be somethin’ kinda … off about him.”

Roan could only shrug. “I imagine he’s gonna come back at me. But I don’t care. If I can’t take a sleazebag like that, I deserve to get cut down.”

“I know it’s your macho talk, but shit like that worries me,” Gordo replied, surprising him. “Sometimes idiots get lucky. Keep trying them, and someone will.”

He was right, of course, and Roan dipped his head in acknowledgement. “You take your chances every day. That’s just how it is.”

Gordo’s stare was piercing and skeptical. “And you don’t care if you get on the wrong side of it?”

“Of course I care. I’m not some suicidal asshole.” But even as he said it, he wondered if maybe Dylan was right about his death wish.

After they left, he put on Drive Like Jehu as he picked up the furniture and CDs, and taped up the broken window. It might be an invitation for thieves who somehow made it into his backyard, but he had a simple solution for that. He propped up a piece of plywood in the taped up hole that had “Infected” written on it in bright red letters. It was remarkably good at keeping people away.

When he was done, he went off to County to speak with Rocco Santorelli about his previous cellmate. He actually didn’t expect anything useful from this man, he only wanted to cover his bases. Roan hated prisons and the way they smelled, like industrial cleansers, body odor, hate, and fear ; desperation flop sweat mixed with a toxic stew of testosterone and nowhere to go. Long ago he’d figured out being a caged animal in the long term would be no good for him - he’d tear everyone to pieces. He now wondered if his lion side would be out all the time in such a situation. (Unless Dylan was right about that too, and it was just the darker side of his personality. But either way, he figured it’d be out and causing a scene.)

Sitting behind shatterproof glass in the sterile, depressing visitors booth, he found himself finally facing Santorelli. He was six feet of muscle crammed into a five foot five body; he was squat and squared off, a miniature refrigerator of a man, with no neck and a perfectly spherical shaven head resting on shoulders as straight as a level, his eyes small and widely spaced around a large nose that had clearly been broken several times in his life. His mouth was an uneven slash, his lower lip distorted with a faint scar near the left corner. This was a man who’d been in lots of battle, the type that Roan himself would be reluctant to mix it up with simply because he probably knew how to hurt someone badly and quickly, and had no qualms about doing it. The funny thing was, the way his dark eyes seemed to settle on the scars on his face, he had a feeling Rocco was thinking the same thing abut him. “Who the fuck ’ re you?” he asked into the receiver set into the wall.

“I’m trying to find something out about Roger Jorgenson, a former -”

Rocco sniggered derisively, lips curving into a sneer. “The fucking child molester. What, he diddle your kid or somethin’?”

“No, but I think he may have something to do with my friend’s kid going missing.”

Rocco shook his head. “That fat bastard? He was a coward. A fucking pussy whipped momma’s boy. He saw blood he freaked the hell out. Naw, he’d never kill one of ‘em. He didn’t have the decency.”

What an odd way to put it, but he sort of knew what he meant. “You remember him well.”

He shrugged one of his blocky shoulders. “Everybody was trying to shank him. I would’ve done it myself, but I got moved out to another cell by the time I got a shiv, and besides, he had that guy protecting his fat ass. Don’t know why; maybe he was poundin’ him or something.”

Charming. But Rocco was turning out to be more of a help than he ever could have imagined. “What guy? Chesney? Tucker?”

Rocco’s eyes narrowed until they almost disappeared into the folds of his face. “You a cop?”

“Do I look like a cop?”

He scrutinized his face with an intensity that made him feel like he was under a magnifying glass. But after a long moment, he said, “Naw, yer too pretty.” Now that was funny. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Paris Lehane,” he said, the lie coming easy. Being a detective was about eighty percent lying persuasively. At least that was twenty percent less than being a politician. “I’ve been researching Jorgenson, but I’ve hit a brick wall.”

“Prob’ly his head,” Rocco replied darkly. “The fucker was stupid and repulsive. He had nothing goin’ for him at all.”

“Who was protecting him?”

“Eh, what’s his face, the guy with the bug tattoo. Rollo.”

“Roland?”

Rocco shrugged. “Guess so. That fucker was nuts. I think he aligned with the Aryans.”

Did Roland Chesney have a bug tattoo? It was mentioned he had tattoos, but what kind were never specified. “Why was he nuts?”

“You mean besides picking out the blob for his bitch? He had these razor marks on his arms that he put there himself, he said that was how he kept track of the people he did.”

It was funny how the word “did” could have so many meanings. “You mean killed?” Rocco looked at him like he was the biggest idiot in the world, so Roan took that as a yes. “But this was before he killed his ex-girlfriend. You’re saying she wasn’t his first?”

He scoffed. “If you believed his bullshit, she was like number twelve or twenty or something. He claimed to be smarter than the pigs, that he had a lot of bodies buried out in the desert and no one was ever gonna find ‘em. But everyone says shit like that here, like bein’ a serial killer makes you such a bad fucker no one wants your ass.”

Roan felt his stomach clench and his blood turn cold. Yes, people made up shit in prison all the time. But if any of this shit was true, he may have found his man. “Did he say where he buried ‘em?”

Rocco shrugged and shook his head. “I dunno. Can’t remember. It was somethin’ like Sundown or some shit like that. But you ain’t gonna tell the cops, are you? I ain’t a rat.”

“Why would I tell the cops anything? They haven’t helped me at all.” Sundown? Was that a reference to something? There was no place called “the Sundown desert”. Then again, if he was just making it up to make himself look like a hard ass, there wouldn’t be.

The bizarre thing was Rocco was so forthcoming because he was lonely. He wanted to talk, and just as a tacit thank you for the information, he listened to him ramble for about five more minutes about how he ended up here on a trumped up charge that wasn’t his fault anyways. If you listened to inmates, there were no guilty people in prisons, but the odds were there had to be some.

Rocco actually suggested he come back sometime. Wow, that was lonely. Roan only said he’d see what he could do. If Rocco’s information panned, out he would.

Roan thought about this while waiting for Godfather’s to make his pizza, and even examined the map he had in the glove compartment. There were no deserts on this side of the state - wrong climate - but the eastern side had a couple. Hell, you could make the argument that the whole eastern half was a desert that had been partially paved over. Nothing named Sundown or Sun-anything, though. He needed to do a computer search.

But he tried not to think about this as he paid a visit to Dee, as Dee would catch his preoccupation and probably be offended by it. He was mostly recovered from his flu, but was still puttering around his place in a dark green fuzzy bathrobe. He waited until Dee finished lecturing him about not going to the hospital after being shot in the hand, and helped himself to some pizza as Dee finally told him his news. He had a serious boyfriend finally - definitely a cause to celebrate - name Luke Cho. Not a doctor this time but a nurse, he was also mixed race (half Korean, half Philippino), so that was two things he and Dee had in common right off the bat. Dee thought they might be moving in together, which was a huge step for Dee - he could see why he was a bit anxious about it all.

But Dee wasn’t content to stick to his own life. He had to butt into his. He told him if he really didn’t love Dylan, he had to cut him loose. “He’s a sweet kid,” Dee said around a mouthful of pizza. “If you can’t love him, you should cut him loose and let him find someone who can.”

Roan nodded, as he not only knew it, he agreed. He should do it; it was the right thing to do. Would he do it, though? He didn’t know.

He had to tell Dee about the other night too, when he beat up the gay bashers. Never mind that he wasn’t treated by the paramedics, their gossip network still got back to him. Dee seemed to be concerned that he was “hanging around” with a hustler, especially one with Fox’s reputation. “I don’t fuck hustlers,” Roan reminded him. “I don’t pay for sex on principal. I got nothing against them, though.”

“Neither do I, and hey, some of those guys you can find on that escort site … hot damn, I may pay for that,” Dee admitted shamelessly, picking up his glass of what he called his “Nyquil smoothie” (actually it didn’t have Nyquil in it, just a dash of cold medicine amongst honey, tea, and brandy). “But this Fox guy … you know his reputation, right?”

“I ran him in once. He recently helped me on a gig. He’s not some prostitute gangster, he‘s just a guy who made a couple of fucked up decisions and is trying to make the best of where he is.”

Dee fixed him with his scolding, strangely paternal glare that let him know he thought he was being a complete idiot. “He’s a gay guy that most straight street thugs don’t want to mess with. Doesn’t that set off warning bells for you?”

Roan sighed. How did he get in the position of defending Holden? “Look, the street is just a game. He plays it better than most, that’s all.”

“Which means he’s a schemer, and if he’s set his sights on you, it’s time to worry.”

“I can take of myself, Dee.”

“Normally. But you’re collapsing in on yourself and starting to shut down. And don’t deny it, ‘cause I know the symptoms. You’re only half here as it is; your eyes are distant.”

This is why Dee was such a pain as a boyfriend. He said shit like this all the time. “I’m working a case, Dee. I just got what might be a break. I didn’t expect it”

Dee just sat back on his sofa, eyes shiny with fever, and Roan felt like he was lying even though he knew he wasn’t. No one should be able to make you feel like that.

Goddamn it. Exes were never anything but trouble.