9 – Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things To Do Today

David Harvey was nothing special. He was a couple of inches shorter than Roan, with thinning reddish blond hair that smelled of Rogaine and was spread across his scalp like a haphazard nest. His eyes were pale blue, like they’d been watered down somehow, and his mouth seemed a bit too wide for his narrow face. In fact, there was something almost fish like about him, like he was staring at the first Human partially cloned from a trout. He gave off a faintest hint of lion pheromones somewhere beneath his Calvin Klein cologne. “I’d be careful about making slanderous or libelous comments on camera, Mr. McKichan,” he said, his voice and smile so disgustingly smug that Roan had to restrain the urge to punch him back into last year.

“Your boy squealed, Harvey. Nolan wasn’t ambitious enough to do this by himself, but with his record, people could believe he was stupid enough. I don’t.” To his knowledge, Nolan hadn’t actually given up a name, but if Kwan was on him, it was only a matter of time.

Harvey’s smile remained smug and plastered onto his face like a bad make up job. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Roan wanted to cross his arms over his chest, but didn’t, as that might seem defensive. He kept his posture open and blatantly hostile. “I can press the issue if you make me, Harvey. I’d advise you don’t.”

Harvey arched a single eyebrow at him. It was more blond than red, although tinted a slight orange that couldn’t have possibly been a real hair color and yet was. “Elijah was afraid of you, but I’m not. You are one of us, even if you don’t act like it, even if you are a pillow biter. As such, you’d think you’d have more loyalty against the mundane, but -”

“Did you just call me a fucking pillow biter?” he exclaimed in utter disbelief.

Harvey gave him a hard smile, his eyes gleaming with a triumphant sort of anger. “We all know what you are, and I understand the need to compensate for that, but really, you could change if you wanted to.”

Roan just glared at him for a moment, and then turned his back towards the camera so there’d be no film of him giving Harvey a short, sharp sucker punch to the solar plexus. He made a pained noise lost in the rush of breath from his lungs, and dropped to his knees, involuntarily heaving. Roan crouched down, out of barfing distance, and whispered, “You want to make me angry? Congratulations, fucker. But you’ve forgotten something, haven’t you? You may have a deranged cult following, but I have a hard drive full of shit on all of you. The reason it hasn’t hit the front page of cultwatch dot com is because I really don’t give a fuck about you and your insane shit, but you’re starting to make me care. I don’t think you want to make me do that, David.”

He managed to get his gag reflex under control, although a string of saliva drooped from his bottom lip until he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He looked at him with pained, enraged eyes. “The computer belongs to us. It’s our rightful property.”

“No, it belonged to Eli, and I assume he wanted me to keep power mad fuckers like you in check. I have no illusions that your fancy ass lawyer will get you off the hook for any charges that might be flung at you; everybody will be happy with Nolan taking the dive alone. But I’m watching you, and you try anything like this again, I’m not gonna stop at flinging your shit around on the web. I will fuck you up; I will fuck up your life beyond the telling of it, Dave.” Harvey scoffed and sat back on his haunches, arm still around his gut. He was a soft man; he’d never been in a genuine fight in his life. “You think it’s hyperbole? Try me.” Roan stood up, and spit on him. Dave hadn’t expected that, so when the spit hit his head he jerked back as if he’d kicked him, and stared up at him with uncomprehending confusion. “Next time you try and have me assassinated, make sure they don’t miss.”

He stalked away, kind of hoping the cowardly shit would attack him while his back was turned, tackle him maybe, take a shot at a kidney punch, but he didn’t. And why would he? Pillow biter or not, he was the alpha lion even when they were in their Human skins and he knew it. And Roan was absolutely dying to have a good reason to lay into him, work him like a heavy bag, make him choke on his own blood and spit teeth.

Back in the car, Roan glanced back at the porch of the house turned Church of the Divine Transformation, and saw David continuing to glare at him from under the shelter of the eaves, the hate naked and raw on his face. This wasn’t the last he was going to hear from David Harvey.

Good.

****

He returned to the office in a strangely sanguine mood. Not good, not exactly, just … peaceful. It was the calm resolution of someone who knew they were going to die, knew they couldn’t change it, and just decided to die with dignity. Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best metaphor, but it would do for now.

Fiona was behind the front desk, her red hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, and once he was in the door she began her litany. “Okay – you can see Chesney any time you want, as long as you stick to regular visiting hours, as Chesney doesn’t seem to have any visitors. Gee, a rapist murderer has no friends? Who’d have thunk it? And what I’ve scrounged up on Peter Tucker through vaguely legal sources I have emailed to you. If you have illegal sources you may want to use ‘em, as I didn’t find much. So what are you doing back at work after you got shot in the hand?”

He held up his hand for her inspection. “The damage was overstated. Do we have anyone coming in today?”

She nodded and checked her online schedule. “At one we have a guy coming in named Jack Murray, who seems to think his wife is cheating on him.”

“Oh, the usual then, male version.”

“Yep, Adam and Eve on a raft, wreck ‘em.” Using the old diner lingo made her flash him a big smile, and while he didn’t smile back, he smirked at her eager cheekiness. He was glad someone was so enthused about the tedious reality of people’s relationships going through slow motion catastrophes.

He went into his office and read Fiona’s email to him about Tucker, and she was right – there wasn’t much. There was little on his crime, and little on his move to Boise, although Fiona was able to find an address for him. Roan used that to access an online reverse directory and find his phone number. He punched it up but got a machine that listed the number back at him, no names, so he hung up and figured he’d try again later. He MapQuested the directions to the Sheridan Valley Penitentiary, as he’d never been down there. In spite of its pastoral name, it was a bleak maximum security prison planted smack dab in the middle of a barren stretch of land that used to be a gravel pit. The town itself was just a loose collection of strip malls and trailer parks, and most likely a Wal-Mart that was the pinnacle of regional culture.

He was just printing it out when there was a rap on the door that didn’t sound like Fiona. He looked up in time to see Murphy peeking in the door. “What would it take to keep you home? Grenade injury? Dismemberment?”

“Hey, don’t mock me just ‘cause I’m the toughest homo in the world,” he replied, looking for the photos he took of Dallas Faraday’s last night on Earth.

That startled a laugh out of her as she shut the door behind her. “Now wait just a goddamn minute here – I’m the toughest homo on Earth.”

“You’re the toughest lezzy; I’m the toughest homo. There’s a difference.”

“There’s always a double standard,” she sighed sarcastically, flinging herself down in the chair in front of his desk. “I guess you know why I’m here.”

He found the photos in a manila envelope in his top desk drawer that he had marked “DF“. “Wedding shower?”

“How did you guess?”

He handed over the envelope, and she took it and slid the glossies out, looking at them. “By the way, the new receptionist is cute.”

“Hey, she’s an assistant. Also straight, and a part-time dominatrix.”

“Really? I didn’t realize being into B&D was a part-time choice.” She paused and turned a photo sideways. She was in her casual cop gear, namely black slacks and a khaki colored shirt beneath a black blazer. They looked like men’s clothes and very likely were (Murph was into the cross-dressing), but they looked good on her. She’d recently got her black hair cut into a stylishly boyish short haircut, but the irony was it made her face look more feminine. Maybe that was the intent. “Wow, look at you getting clear shots of all the license plates.”

“You never know when they can be handy to have.”

“True enough. I’d kiss you, but I don’t want your gay on me. By the way, heard from the wife yet?”

“My client? No.”

Murphy nodded absently, still looking through the photos. “Whoa, is that coke or crack?”

“Coke.”

She whistled sharply. “That explains the toxicology report. Guy was flyin’ on coke, X, and Ritalin. He also had a point oh eight alcohol level.”

“Ritalin? People take that recreationally even when they’re out of high school?”

“Believe it or not, yeah. If Mrs. Faraday calls you or comes in, would you call me immediately?”

That made him pause. “Is she a suspect?”

Murphy shrugged, still examining the photographs. “She’s missing.”

“What?” It suddenly occurred to him that yeah, she hadn’t gotten in touch with him, even to get the photos he’d taken for her. That was strange, but so much had gone on in the meantime that he’d simply forgotten. ”You check her place of business?”

Murphy nodded, tucking the pictures back in the envelope. “Went there, went to the Faraday house, even visited her parent’s house. No one’s seen her since the fifth, when she left work for home. We’re running an APB on her car, hoping for a hit.”

The fifth – the night he took most of these photos. (Some were taken after midnight, which would make the rest taken officially on the sixth.) “So what’s your theory? Think she’s a victim of foul play, or did she do a runner?”

Again she shrugged, and grimaced because she hated doing it “Either’s possible, although she’s looking better suspect wise. After all, things clearly weren’t great at home. She hired you to check up on her guy, didn’t she?”

He had to concede that point. “But if she was just going to kill him, why bother to hire me?”

“To throw suspicion off of her?”

“That’s weak.”

“You got any better theories? Besides, maybe she didn’t plan it. Women are more likely to commit crimes of passion than deliberately planned murders.”

“Depends on the woman. Either way, she didn’t strike me as a killer.”

“But anybody can be a killer, given the right circumstances.”

“Yeah, I know,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes. Until Holly showed up to tell her side of the story, she was a suspect. In fact, her disappearance surely made her the number one suspect. Goddamn it. “Fuck. She killed her husband, didn’t she?” Maybe she discovered he’d given her herpes and snapped.

“It doesn’t look good for her. What have you got on her?”

“Just the usual shit, the form filled out for the job.”

“Can I see it?”

He paused briefly, not really thrilled about the prospect of sharing information with a client without a court order being involved, but Murphy was his friend, and besides, he might have been used by his client. He hated that, no matter how much of an asshole Dallas was. He went back into his top drawer, and unlocked a box set into the drawer, where he kept current client information. Once he was done with the job, they got filed away in the locked cabinet on the far side of the room, and scanned into the computer, where he transferred it to a jump drive he kept in a place in his home where he knew no one would ever look. It seemed excessive and paranoid, but you could never have enough back up. He found the form he was looking for, and handed it over. She looked it over, nodding. There probably wasn’t anything there she hadn’t discovered already. “So how’s things in homicide?”

“Busy. You know the economy’s in the toilet when the murder rate starts creeping up.”

“How’s the guy who shot me?’

That made her snort in dark humor as she tucked the form into the envelope with the photos. “Kwan broke him. He started this weird ass ramble about you being a traitor to the species and whatnot, although it was never clear what species he was referring to. Also, you being an ass bandit seems to personally offend him. Kwan told him not to knock it until he tried it – which he would, whether he liked it or not, when he ended up in the county lock up.”

“Oh, how lovely.”

“Hey, it made me laugh.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, yes, fine, prison rape is not funny. Even if it does happen to a hateful asshat who deserves it.”

“Thank you.”

“Jeeze, Mr. PC, he shot you, and you worked him over like Mike Tyson in his less pathetic days. I thought you of all people would want to see this fucker hurt.”

“He’s a patsy, an easy scapegoat. He pulled the trigger, but someone else put the gun in his hand.”

She gazed at him levelly. “You’re talking about DT.” Many cops simply referred to the church as DT, not only because it was shorter but because it sounded like an illness.

“I’m talking about David Harvey. Taking me out would make him a hero amongst a large swath of his followers; he’d cement leadership in the Church if I was gone.”

“I thought this was all about Eli’s computer.”

“It is, but it finally occurred to me that that’s a convenient excuse. Getting the hard drive back could help him blackmail his way to the top, but it might just be easier to kill me. Well, that might have been his thinking.”

“I bet he thinks different now.”

Roan shook his head “He just hates me more.” He didn’t tell her that he helped stoked that fire.

They got to the personal bits of the discussion – he asked how Kim was, she asked how his ”strapping young stud” was (this indicated that she had forgotten Dylan’s name) – and then found an easy way to end the discussion. Truth be told, Murphy had only come here to check upon him and get the photos, maybe get some more information on Holly Faraday. It was more of a business visit than a personal one, but they pretended it wasn’t.

Fiona turned out to have gotten a bit of the information wrong on the one o‘clock client. Jack Murray was a somewhat neurotic middle aged man who was afraid his younger boyfriend, one Bryan McKee, was cheating on him. Well, it was bound to happen – a gay couple was going to come here to self-destruct. He just assumed gay marriage would be legal by then. Although he felt weird about it – what, he only busted up straight couples? – he took the case. Hard to say no to money.

After that, there wasn’t much point in sticking around, as he had things to do. He’d never make it to Sheridan Valley in time, but there was a third prisoner who had shared cell space with Jorgenson but wasn’t on the suspect list simply because he was in prison at the time of Keith’s disappearance, and there wasn’t a more rock solid alibi than that. His name was Rocco Santorelli (his birth name was actually Rocco – it was astounding the names some people gave their kids), and he was up in County on a car theft beef. Since Roan knew some of the people in County, he figured he’d have an easier time talking to Rocco. On his way out, he discussed taking Fiona out on a routine surveillance gig one of these days. She wanted to learn the ropes of the biz, and he figured why not? Besides, surveillance gigs were boring, and a little company wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would help him get his mind away from the dark subjects it seemed to like to dwell on.

Out in the car, he took a moment to think, take a codeine, and consider his next moves. Not only did he have to visit Rocco, but he had to visit Dee or he’d never hear the end of it. He calculated the drive time, and figured he’d visit Rocco first. Dee wouldn’t like it, but he could wait.

Roan decided to swing by the house and change clothes, as he looked like he might be a detective. Rocco might shut down instantly when faced with a PI, but if he looked like just some regular guy off the street, he was in with a better shot. Nothing fancy, just jeans and a t-shirt, maybe a baseball cap if he really wanted to go overboard.

And then he’d hope to pay a visit to Panic before Dylan started his shift, talk to Luis (nee Rhett). He wanted to know where Dylan might like to go for a weekend, but he didn’t want to ask him and spoil the surprise, so Luis was his next best shot. He and Dylan had been friends for a long time, and presumably he’d know something about his tastes. Roan was a bit humbled because he wasn’t sure. He was a bad, bad boyfriend.

He was humming the Pansy Division song of the same name when he pulled up into the driveway, and the codeine was really kicking in as he moved to his front door, his hands and feet feeling oddly warm. What a weird side effect. Maybe that’s what prevented him from realizing that something was wrong until he opened the door.

The first thing he noticed was the way the air moved through the house. Fresh air wooshed, smelling slightly of the coming rain, and beneath it Roan could smell the scent of two men – one wearing some god awful aftershave that smelled strongly of salt – who had been here recently. He pulled out his Sig Sauer and held it aimed down at the floor as he glanced in the living room. It showed some signs of being ransacked, the coffee table had been kicked over and some of Paris’s CD collection had been tossed out, but it was simply cover for what they were actually looking for. What thief left a television, a stereo, a DVD player behind? Those were easy to grab and easy to hock.

No, the whole point of this robbery was Eli’s computer, which was missing from the side table; they took the monitor as well as the stack. Wouldn’t they be disappointed when they discovered the hard drive had been replaced?

So this was David Harvey’s next move? How shockingly pedestrian.

8 – Bliss

Luckily he wasn’t treated as a prisoner for long. Back at the station, not only was Marcus on duty but so was a desk sergeant named Jefferson, who really didn’t seem to give a shit about him one way or another but at least recognized him. They got Gilberto to take the cuffs off of him. Even though they were across the room, he heard Jefferson whisper to McKay, “Are you fuckin’ crazy man? Matthews likes him; he’s her pet. She’ll chew you a new one if she finds out you did this.”

Pet? Pet?! He’d have gotten furious if it wasn’t for the fact that he shouldn’t have been able to hear a whispered aside across the room. But the self-loathing and general loathing was back, settling in his chest like a stone.

He eventually convinced Gilberto to take the cuffs off Holden, taking personal responsibility for him. As he got the cuffs off, Holden told Gilberto, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “I prefer the fur lined cuffs. Keep that in mind for next time.”

Gilberto gave him a flinty look, and walked away muttering “Maricon,” under his breath, Spanish for fag. From the face Holden made, he knew what it meant. But that was the fun thing about being a gay man in a straight world – you quickly learned the slurs, no matter what language they were delivered in.

Holden then turned to him with a sigh. “If I get charged, will you bail me out? I can pay you back; I have the money back at my apartment. I just don’t carry it with me.”

“It won’t go that far. You were trying to protect Ponyboy. If anyone will be charged it’ll be me, for excessive use of force.”

“It was self-defense.”

“Yeah well, it’s our word against the other guys’. I have a feeling they’ll tell a different story.”

“Yeah, but you’re a former cop, and you’re sober. Your word will go farther.”

Roan wanted to tell him that wasn’t true on both counts. Many of the cops didn’t like him, and he was currently on Vicodin. But nobody was going to drug test him. He could pass a Breathalyzer if it came down to that.

“What’s his name anyways? I hate to keep referring to him as Ponyboy.”

“Cooper Reese.”

“Seriously?”

Holden nodded. “Kids have funny names today.” He paused briefly. “Roan.”

He scowled at him, which Holden met with a dazzling smile. “I gonna get my baton back, you know.”

“Hey now, what did I say? Absolutely nothing.” He gave him a wink, still grinning as he watched a couple other cops wrestle in a combative drunk man and a combative drunk woman, both bearing fresh contusions and scratches, who continued screaming and cursing at each other even while the cops attempted to book them. Ah, marriage. What a wonderful institution. No wonder the straights wanted to keep it all for themselves.

They were separated to give their accounts of the incident, and Roan suspected from some of the questions he was asked that Holden had exaggerated the amount of trouble he was in when he walked in on the fight. That was kind of him, and he knew the cops would believe it, because McKay, the one taking his statement, asked, “He can really fight?”

“Holden?” McKay nodded. “Yeah, he can.”

The man, a corn fed looking guy with a thick neck and a soft face like cookie dough, shook his head in disbelief. “But the way he talks … you’d think he couldn’t.”

The way he talks? Oh yes, his slight lisp. That pretty much meant you were a pansy ass, right? Forget that the guy was over six feet, and had the broad shoulders and chest of the athlete he used to be, and the hard temper of the street kid he used to be; an extra S or two indicated you were a sissy slap fight queen. Roan quietly despaired at such dumb ass shit coming from a guy who should really know better, but maybe he didn’t know better. Maybe he hadn’t been on the beat long enough to realize that being gay or being female didn’t mean you couldn’t be as vicious and as tough as shit. He’d learn, possibly the hard way.

As predicted, Holden wasn’t charged with anything. He was issued a warning for disorderly conduct, but that was it. Roan wasn’t charged with anything either. They warned him not to leave the state, but admitted that the case had all the earmarks of a gay bashing. Interviewed at the hospital, the two guys who could speak told two different stories, neither of which was compatible with the few facts that were known, and the fact that they were surprised when the cops originally found Roan’s gun and then later claimed that he had pulled it on them proved they were liars. And bad liars at that.

Before leaving, they gave him back his baton and his gun. Holden said he’d call a friend to pick them up and reunite Roan with his bike (hopefully A.J. hadn’t hocked it for a trailer full of meth yet), and while he went off to do that Roan took the time to talk to Marcos.

In spite of detective-client privilege, he told Marcos who had hired him and why. What Chris Spencer didn’t know – or maybe he did – was that nearly all cops hated these unsolved kid cases. Even the most jaded and cynical amongst them would pause. Missing people you never found, especially young women who were more than likely victims of foul play, you hated too, but there was something special about the kids that disappeared. Everyone felt like they failed them. That, as the most vulnerable of citizens, you fucked up the most basic tenet of your job. Roan knew this would allow him information he really shouldn’t have.

Sleepy eyed Marcos, who probably hadn’t shown a flicker of emotion in his weathered face in years, briefly looked flinty and cold as he stared at his computer screen. In a little bit, his fingers clicking over the keys like a master pianist, he had the information for him. Jorgenson had had two cell mates in his time in the joint: a guy named Peter Tucker and another guy named Roland Chesney. Chesney was back in the stir, having been convicted of murder less than a year after he got out (he killed his ex-girlfriend), but records indicated that Tucker’s last known location was Boise, Idaho. Marcos gave him all the information he had on both on a computer print-out.

Records indicated both men had done time for sex crimes – Chesney went up on a rape charge initially, and Tucker was convicted of fondling a niece he’d been babysitting and intimidating a witness – but they also had other things in their records less violent: check fraud, loitering, obstruction, drunk driving. Chesney, being an obviously violent person, was in the lead as suspects went. He’d never gone for kids, but he showed a propensity for going after people weaker than himself. He probably got off on it. Yeah, he really needed to speak to Chesney.

He went back to where Holden was waiting, and before he got there he saw him sitting back in one of the waiting room chairs, eyes closed, head back, looking for all the world like he was in serious pain. People walking past made him lift his head and open his eyes, and then he saw Roan and flashed a small, weak smile. When he came near, he sat up and said, “Ahmed should be here in a couple minutes.”

“You got some painkillers at home?”

Holden gave him a hooded sidelong glance, pondering whether to be indignant or not, but he realized he’d been caught, and decided – for once in his life – not to put up a front. How could he? His lip was scabbed over, and his eye was blackening, a deepening bruise violet splotch that was also making his eyelid swell. Soon, he might not be able to see out of his left eye. “I’m a whore, Roan. Of course I have painkillers at home.” He smirked at his own joke. “I also have Viagra, if you ever feel the need to fuck someone you’re not attracted to.”

“Trick of the trade? No pun intended.”

“Indeed. Sometimes you can’t get it up on cue. You have to have a plan B.”

“You know, I’d think that’d make sex depressing, always having to fuck people you didn’t like.”

He shrugged. “It does get tiring. It’s part of the reason why I’m getting out of the business.”

“How’s that going?”

“Really good, actually. I cut my schedule down to just four regular clients. I told the agency that I’m not taking any new gigs, I’m just doing my regulars and that’s it. Randy knows I’m intending to leave, and he’s cool with that. Mainly because he’s a partner in the web thing I have going with Rocky, and also, I ain’t getting any younger.” He flashed him a smile of bright, whitened teeth that had nothing but venom in it. “This is, after all, a young man’s game.”

“Yeah, oldie, don’t want to fuck a guy and break a hip.”

That made him snort a laugh, and he bent forward and put a hand on his face. “Ow, fucker, that hurt. Don’t make me laugh.”

“Sorry.”

He took a minute to regain his composure – yeah, he really was in pain – and then sat back in his chair, slumping slightly. “So while they were booking the tranny hooker, I heard a couple of cops discussing how you could possibly be in a fight after having gotten shot in the hand earlier today. Then there was a reference to some videotape, and you possibly being the gay Superman. Who shot you?”

Roan quickly moved his hand into his coat pocket, but too late, as Holden had already looked at it and saw the somewhat circular patch of raw skin on the top of his hand. He knew it wasn’t just rumor; he knew it was somehow true. “I can’t be the gay Superman,” he replied, trying to be casual. “I wear my underwear inside my pants, and I’m not gay enough to wear a spit curl.”

Holden sat forward and then leaned over the arm of the chair, looking him in the eye as best he could. “I’ve seen you change, you crazy fuck. It still freaks me out to think about it, but I’m honored I’m one of the few who know. Don’t worry, I’ll keep your secret. I’m good at keeping secrets.” He mimed zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key before sitting back in his chair. One of the cops passing by, Johnson, gave him a dirty look, and Holden blew him a kiss, which made him turn away in disgust. Holden sighed almost wistfully, and added, “I had fun.”

Although Holden’s previous statement had made him feel numb to his toes, he appreciated that he had plowed on to another topic, pretending that this hadn’t been something strangely significant and just a little frightening. “Tonight?”

“No, when we were working together. I had a blast. If you ever need my help in another case or something, or just need physical back up, I’d be happy to help.”

Roan was glad he was letting this slip by. Yes, Holden did know he could partially transform, and he almost forgot that he did know that. It was just Dylan, Gordo, Seb, Dropkick, Doctor Rosenberg, and Holden. In retrospect, a shitload of people. “No offense, but I don’t foresee a lot of cases needing a hustler.”

Holden looked at him with a moue of disappointment. “Sweetheart, you know me better than that. I’m not just a hustler; I can be whoever you need me to be. I’m the best actor who’s never walked a stage.”

Actually, he had him there. He was; his entire life was being some man’s fantasy, and the fantasies always changed. Holden could adapt and sell it – whatever it was – with the bone deep conviction of someone whose life depended on you buying it. Because it did. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he told him, and meant it. Holden might actually be useful someday. His street contacts could be invaluable. “So, you talk to your parents yet?”

He scoffed and waved a hand that revealed reddened knuckles. “No. My mother finally stopped calling. Oh, that reminds me, I’ve changed my number.” He searched the pockets of his own leather jacket – worn and brown, yet somehow stylish – and found a pen and a piece of paper that clearly contained a phone number he must have picked up at the bar before he got in the fight. The scribble over the number looked like “Troy”, or possibly “Trey”. “Tony”? Holden scrawled his new number on the back and handed it to him. “It’s my main line, so even if I’m not home, it’ll get forwarded to my cell. Call any time. If I’m on the job, I’ll call you as soon as I’m done.”

Roan took the scrap of paper, and wondered how jaded you had to be to refer to fucking a paying stranger as “on the job”. “Talked to Zoë?”

“Oh yeah. I’m gonna go down to California and visit her and her daughter in the summer. She can’t come up here ‘cause of money issues, and then there’s the fact that I’d rather she didn’t.”

It wasn’t hard to guess why. “What does she think you do?”

“She thinks I’m a local entertainer.” Roan laughed, and Holden feigned indignance. “Well, I am; it’s not much of a lie. I’ve entertained dozens and dozens of men in my life.”

“Only dozens?”

“I said dozens of dozens. Don’t nitpick.”

He smiled almost in spite of himself, and Holden smiled back, a strangely genuine expression on his wounded face. “I know I look like hell, but you could come home with me.”

The funny thing was, it was almost tempting. Roan wasn’t sure why, except maybe he was just looking to run away. Sex could be oblivion as much as drugs and violence. “I have a boyfriend, Holden.”

“So?” At Roan’s look, Holden rolled his eyes. “Fine, be that way, stick to the parochial hetroparadigm. I expected better of a radical like you.”

“Parochial heteroparadigm?” he repeated in amused disbelief. “Have you joined ACT UP?”

Holden raised an eyebrow at him, that smart ass grin on his face. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

They got out in time to meet Ahmed in the parking lot. Roan wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but he wasn’t expecting a black six foot five leather queen who drove a vintage Mustang Charger painted candy apple red and listened to Danzig at communication negating volume. Did you ever expect that? He was pretty sure the answer was no, just like no one ever expected the Spanish Inquisition. But he seemed like a decent – albeit strange – guy. Paris would have loved his car.

A. J. had watched his bike, and while he hadn’t exactly washed and waxed it, he hadn’t sold it for smack either, and he had to give him some credit for that. Ahmed was giving Holden a lift back to his place, so they said their farewells there, but Holden surprised him once more by giving him a kiss on the cheek and whispering, “Go home and cuddle your boyfriend, Roan. And lay off the pills, huh? You’ve got too much to live for.”

He stared at him, words of denial springing to his lips, but Holden backed away and waved at him, giving him a sad smile. How had he known? No one else had known. Was it his pupils? How big were they? He looked in the bike’s mirror, but it was too dark to tell.

Maybe it was even simpler than that. Maybe it simply took a liar to know one.

****

He got what he wanted from Marcos, so he went home and slept it off for the rest of the night, which wasn’t long since it was almost morning. He only beat it by a couple of hours. He was at the cop shop longer than he anticipated.

By the time he got up, Dylan was out for his morning jog – oh, how he used to hate those guys, and yet now he was dating one – and there were a few phone calls waiting for him, including Kwan asking almost angrily how he could possibly be in a fight after getting shot in the hand, but what he really didn’t understand was him kicking all their asses. “Stop making the rest of us look bad, asshole!” he added, before slamming the phone down. You could never accuse him of being anything but entertaining in his own curmudgeonly way.

Fiona checked in, reminding him she’d see him at the office today. He called her back and got her cell phone, but he left her a message, asking if she could check in with the Sheridan Valley Penitentiary and see if she could set up an interview with Roland Chesney for as soon as possible. Also, he needed her to see if she could find some information on a former prisoner named Peter Oswald Tucker, who relocated to Boise. That was what an assistant was for – the plodding work.

He made breakfast by the time Dylan came back, as long as you were generous enough to classify making toast and cutting up some blood oranges as breakfast. But Dylan liked to eat light after exercising, and that suited Roan fine, as he had lots of things on his mind and didn’t feel like anything heavy. Dylan sensed something was wrong and asked him about it, so Roan bluffed by telling him about the former cell mates of Jorgenson he was attempting to track down, and how he already sensed that this was a dead end, but he had to try it anyways. It was clear that this case still got to Dylan too; everybody involved with the missing Keith Turner felt bad about it, even if they were only tangentially related to it. Except, possibly, the man who killed him; no conscience meant no guilt.

On his way out the door, Dylan suddenly asked him, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

This was where Roan wanted to be comforting, but he decided Dylan deserved the truth. He stuck by him for god knew what reason; it was the least he deserved. “It’s the only sure thing about this case.”

Dylan nodded, looking heartbroken, but not really all that surprised. After a kid was missing a decade, it was unlikely he’d just turn up on the doorstep one day, looking for all his unpaid allowance. But he bet Chris Spencer would give anything to have that happen.

He set out for the office, but soon diverged, taking Pacific Avenue down to a very familiar area he hadn’t wanted to see ever again. But he knew his luck didn’t work like that and never had.

He felt eyes on him as he walked up to the porch, and he gave the middle finger to the CCTV camera he knew was watching him as he knocked on the door, ignoring the bell and its aggravating chime. Eventually the door opened, and a well scrubbed guy who had the perfect look of the annoying gay personal assistant – a cross between that guy on Ugly Betty and that one David Spade used to play on unfunny SNL sketches – glared out at him with the most perfect blue eyes money and modern optical technology could buy. “Yes?” he spit, narrowing those cosmetically enhanced eyes at him. He smelled faintly of hair gel and the pheromones of leopard.

Roan met his look, unimpressed. He had to know who he was, even if they’d never met before. “Go tell your boss Roan McKichan is here, and wants to know why the fuck he wants to kill me. Tell him he can either talk to me, or talk to the cops.” Roan pulled out his cell phone and held out the screen towards him, so he could see the numbers 9-1-1 were on it, although he hadn’t pressed the send button yet.

The kid looked at it, the slightest bit of alarm cutting through his perfect mask of annoyance. “You’re crazy.”

“Okay, if that’s how you want to play it,” he said, lowering the phone and slowly moving a finger towards the send button.

“Michael, I’ll take this,” a new voice said, as a hand appeared on the boy’s shoulder, and he was moved back from the door.

Finally, Roan found himself face to face with David Harvey.