9 - Mistaken For Strangers

Roan got as much information as he could from Holden, even the phone number Joel had left him to contact him, and then left, as it seemed like Holden really wanted to be alone. Or maybe he just wanted to sleep. Same difference, really.

He chewed over his plan of attack in his mind. He doubted the Newberry family would want to talk to him, but he could try and get in the front, leave himself an open target, and let some sneakier people infiltrate the family in a less obtrusive way. Fiona was great with people, and men let down their guard more with women then men; she’d be a great asset. He might even be able to use Holden, who could ingratiate himself with almost anyone, and could play any role he had to play. The funny thing was, he looked like the most useless piece in his own investigation.

He did some research on his computer at home, found out more about the attempt to buy out the Newberry’s media holdings. A nationwide behemoth known as One World was attempting to gobble them up, and while John Newberry was for it, Joel was against it, leading to at least one very public squabble, but then they pulled it back and any squabbling went on behind the scenes. One World was offering double digit millions, an insane amount of money to turn down, making him wonder why Joel did. It was hard to imagine he really cared that much about keeping a network affiliate in local hands. Maybe he just had enough money that even that amount wasn’t tempting to him, although that was hard to imagine. There were two things he’d discovered about the very rich, that may or may not have surprised people: in spite of their personal extravagance, they were generally very miserly, and very, very greedy. They never had quite enough money, even if they had more than the gross national product of a mid-sized nation. Money was all; money was a drug; money was god. They were capitalists ne plus ultra.

It was getting late, and his thinking wasn’t the best. He kept wondering if Grant Kim was stalking around in his leopard form, killing other unlucky son of a bitches that stumbled into his path. He turned on the TV, hoping for a Torchwood repeat, and considering how close it was to Dylan’s getting off shift, he decided to make dinner for him. Of course he was a lousy cook and he hadn’t done it for a long time, but sometimes if he was keeping busy doing something else, he’d have semi-brilliant insights into things. Sometimes not; but at least the effort alone would get him boyfriend brownie points.

He decided to make pasta, as it was easy and vegan as long as you didn’t add meat to it, and as he was chopping up some bell peppers, he arranged a suspect list in his head. Although Bill was the most obvious suspect, just about everyone in his family that could profit from the sale had to be considered a suspect, and that was everyone. He’d probably be looking for that special mix of avarice and hatred; the killer would be found in the in-between space. That would take more digging.

Then something strange happened. He was trying to figure out the best way to infiltrate the family’s business circle when he suddenly found himself on the floor. It felt as dramatic as that: he was chopping peppers one second, and the next he was laying on the floor, getting a good look at the tile. Only when he shoved himself up to a sitting position and grabbed his fallen paring knife, head aching slightly from the impact, did he realize that there was a moment of blackness, like a prolonged blink. Had he passed out for a second? Why the hell would he do that?

He sat there for a moment, rubbing his head, trying to mentally shake the fuzzy feeling away from his brain. Was this some stupid ass side effect to the migraine meds he got today? What a fucking pain in the ass. The meds were nice, but they came with a grab bag of weird side effects. One migraine medication he used to take left him with pulled muscles in his arms, and he could never figure that out.

Roan pulled himself up, wondering how long he’d been out, and went back to making the pasta sauce, not about to let the medication stop him from what he was doing. He was just about done anyways.

As it was, no further side effects plagued him. A good thing, as Dylan showed up after two in a kind of sour mood - it had been a bad night at Panic. There was a gay bashing incident right outside the club that almost led to a small riot, and Dylan sat with the guy who took a bottle in the face and had a bleeding gash in his head because of it until the cops and paramedics showed up. And while the cops were all professional and very PC, he heard one of them, supposedly safely ensconced in his car, joke to someone over his radio that he need to be decontaminated after dealing with all these fags.

The truly awful thing about that was Roan could guess by name which officer had made that joke. Prick.

But he was cheered up by dinner, though, and even Roan had to admit he’d done a pretty good job with it. (Especially considering he’d passed out during the proceedings, but he didn’t tell Dylan that.)

About three thirty or so in the morning, Dylan got to drawing the tiger sketch on his arm in permanent ink. He actually used a calligraphy pen, as he liked the tapered tip better for making thinner lines, which Roan knew nothing about. To make it easier for Dylan, he laid shirtless on the bed, left arm held out straight across the comforter, and Dylan was kneeling beside the bed and occasionally partly on it, drawing the thing. Soon, Roan became rapt watching Dylan - not the sketch, although he knew that was coming on beautifully. No, he was fascinated watching Dylan create something; his full concentration was on it, as if Roan really was a canvas. He might as well have been, Dylan was so caught up in what he was doing he never even looked at him once he got started. And Roan found that almost unbearably arousing.

The one thing that really made their relationship work so far was that, at the end of the day, they were both rather private people. Dylan liked to paint in solitude (if he was doing a portrait, he’d sketch it, and paint it later in privacy), just like Roan liked to have time to himself, to research, put notes together, or just relax, without the strange pressure of other people. This was absolutely fine with Dylan, who equally cherished his private time. Roan sometimes wondered if shitty childhoods predisposed you to act in this way, although Paris was probably the exception to that rule.

So he didn’t see Dylan paint a lot. He saw him sketch quite a bit, but he was always half-distracted when he did that; it was almost unconscious, a reflex action that didn’t need his full attention. Roan had never seen him in full concentration before, in full creation mode, his eyes as focused as lasers and yet strangely distant at the same time, turned inward towards his mental canvas. And it was incredibly fucking sexy.

Once he was done, Dylan blew softly on the ink, attempting to speed drying, and used a paper towel to gently blot his arm. The look finally went out of his eyes - he was back in the real world - and sat on the edge of the bed. “I had to stop myself from going further detail crazy. Tell Jade she lucked out. Maybe I should look into becoming a tattoo artist.”

“Yeah, you probably should,” Roan agreed, and grabbed him and pulled him into a long, hard kiss. Dylan seemed momentarily surprised, but offered no resistance at all.

They had some of the most incredibly intense sex that they had ever had. Roan knew he was kind of horny yesterday, but it was nothing like right now. And why? Who the hell knew, and who the fuck cared? Not him.

Ironically, he didn’t even see the finished sketch on his arm until he got up later that morning, around ten. (And he was still tired because they’d been up until about five, but his bladder insisted he get up.) It was beautiful, a slinky black tiger made of deep black lines that rarely connected; there were many suggestions of connections, but few actual ones. It was almost an optical illusion. “That is fucking beautiful,” he said aloud to his own reflection. It was. He almost didn’t want Jade to impose on this. If it was in permanent ink, maybe he could wait a day or two before going to see her.

He considered going back to bed, but weirdly enough, as tired as he was, he seemed to get a second wind out of nowhere; he felt almost jazzed for no reason whatsoever. He called Holden, and told him that although he knew he was the client, he was wondering if he’d be willing to assist in the investigation. Much like he expected, Holden jumped at the chance. After that, he called Fiona, and arranged for the three of them to meet at an indie coffee shop in the gay part of town, mainly because he knew there was little chance anyone working for the Newberrys would spot them there. He also told her the case they were working on, and asked if she had any untraditional information sources on the Newberrys. Fiona had a lot of unconventional information sources that, while rarely confirmable in any sense, still passed on accurate info. One of the perks of being a dominatrix with friends in both the temp agencies and the sex worker network.

He took a leisurely shower and decided not to shave, as he thought his stubble look stereotypically detective like, and while he was getting dressed, he accidentally woke Dylan up. He just turned over in bed and asked muzzily, “Are you going?”

“Afraid so.”

Dylan’s response to that was simply to steal his pillow and slip it under his head. As he pulled the covers over him, Roan asked him impulsively, “What would you think about moving in with me?”

He just laid there, and for a moment he thought he’d already drifted off again, but then Dylan said, “I’d think it was a good idea.”

“Great.” Well, Dylan spent most of his nights here anyways; they were kind of already living together.

Since he needed to look like a stereotypical private detective, he wore a more professional looking outfit, with dark slacks, a neutral button down shirt (a kind of bronze colored brown, minus anything remotely metallic), and his London Fog trench coat. But he drew two lines: he wouldn’t wear a tie (he fucking hated ties;  the only time he wore them was when he was forced to, such as to testify in court), and he had no loafers or slip on shoes to wear. So he went with his black leather boots that could kind of pass for leather shoes if you didn’t look too hard or weren’t fashion oriented (meaning basically straight men and gay women, but that was a horrible stereotype - he was gay, and he knew nothing about fashion at all. Which his wardrobe proved, day in and day out.) He was going to pay a visit to the Newberrys later, and he wanted them to think he was just your run of the mill private investigator/office drone, no one special, no one different. He also wanted them to think he was investigating something other than Joel. He hadn’t yet settled on his cover story.

It wasn’t downpouring today, or at least not yet. It was a heavily overcast day, though, a kind of lambent slate gray, with an occasional errant water droplet to let you know it was thinking about dousing you like a drunken co-ed in a Girls Gone Wild video. But it had yet to go wild, so all it would do was occasionally spit.

He wanted to take the bike, but took the GTO instead, as how many drone detectives drove Buells? Then again, how many drove lovingly restored ’60’s muscle cars? It still seemed like the lesser of two evils, and besides, without Paris to work on it, the GTO was starting to look a little rougher, which worked with the image he was trying to convey.

The coffee shop was a little cafe that was trying to eek out a living in spite of Starbucks and Seattle’s Best Coffee and all those other competitors. He wished them luck. Right now it was getting by on two things: being openly gay in the gay section of town (rainbow flag in the window, along with a “Silence = Death” sticker and a flyer for the local pride day parade), and having a pastry chef who actually could make stuff that was so fucking good you couldn’t believe any other coffee shop would try and foist their stupid hockey puck pastries on you. It was run by a couple of guys, Tony, who was originally from Kansas, and Brett, the pastry chef, who originally came from Louisiana. Roan didn’t know much about them, except they had been a couple for a while, and Tony called everybody “Sugar”.

Even though he was a little early, Fiona and Holden had already grabbed a table in the corner and were waiting for him. As he sat down, Fiona said, “Whoa, going to court today, Roan?”

“I didn’t even know he had a shirt that wasn’t a t-shirt,” Holden teased, pushing the plate of croissants over towards him. Oh goddamn it, he knew his weakness was croissants. How did he know that?

“I am trying to look professional, thank you,” he sniffed with mock haughtiness, picking up a croissant and resisting the urge to shove the whole damn thing in his mouth. The croissants here were so good, they’d make you punch a nun.

“I didn’t know that was a prerequisite,” Holden replied.

“First I’ve heard of it,” Fiona agreed.

It was always dangerous getting these two together. They’d known each other before he knew Fiona, and they had a pre-existing relationship. They got along fabulously, which could be a major problem, as they were both smart asses and had a tendency to riff off one another, to the point where you wanted to run screaming from the room. But since he was a smart ass too, he was determined to find a way to handle them.

One of the baristas who doubled as a waiter occasionally drifted over to see if he could get them anything. He was a skinny, heavily pierced and tattooed kid named Jake, who seemed to love doing funky things with his hair (today it was a faux hawk). Normally he treated Roan with a sort of disaffected air, as if barely aware he even existed, but today he was oddly solicitous, and when Roan asked for a tea, he seemed weirdly … flirty? Really?

Roan shared a look with Holden, who was grinning at him. “What the hell was that about?”

“It’s the suit,” he claimed. “It makes you look rugged, but financially stable.”

“And that shirt’s a really nice color on you,” Fiona said, reaching over and fingering the material on his sleeve. “You know, metallic type shades usually don’t look great on redheads, but you can pull it off.”

“Thanks, I think. Um, business, guys? Can we get to it?”

“I’d rather flirt with the waiter, see if I can get us free profiteroles,” Holden replied.

“Ooh, do that!” Fiona encouraged. “See if you can get him to throw in an éclair too.”

This was his crack team of investigators? Oh good lord, they were doomed.

****

At some point, they settled down and got to business.

Fiona hadn’t been able to discover a lot from her contacts, except for one interesting thing: Kyle Newberry, Joel’s second marriage son, was a party animal. No shock there, he was a professional gadabout, but in a society where that was an actual job description as long as you came from a wealthy family (Paris Hilton, any Kardashian, the entire cast of The Hills), that was no longer considered a shameful thing to be. Here was the thing: in spite of his recent engagement to wealthy socialite Embeth Asher, she kept running into scuttlebutt that he was at many a party that devolved into an orgy - gay parties. What she heard was he was a major league flamer, but stayed firmly in the closet. Holden wasn’t surprised, although Joel had never talked about Kyle to him. Holden just figured that Joel being bisexual, some kind of alternative sexuality had to be genetically within the family.

Holden wanted to see if he could work an angle on John Newberry. Roan wasn’t so sure about that, he didn’t want revenge to interfere with anything, but Holden swore to him that he was going to pretend he didn’t know him at all and stick to the script. Roan had no choice but to trust him.

Fiona wanted to work the wife, Cherry, as she felt being a fellow woman, she’d be non-threatening to her. Well, non-threatening as long as Fi kept her riding crop and ball gag in her purse, anyways.

This left Roan with the kids, which he thought it was best he handled anyways. They were much lower on the suspect list than anyone else, but he figured as soon as he could eliminate them he could move on to the ex-wives, who seemed like more likely possibilities. No one could hold you in more contempt than an ex-lover, save for a brother or sister.

Having their assignments and the reporting back protocol, they broke up and went their separate ways. Holden actually helped him come up with a plausible cover story for his identity, which wasn’t that surprising considering how close he was to Joel.

He went to pay a visit to Bill Newberry, eldest of the kids, family scion, and all around anal retentive asshole, who worked for Armstrong Anderson. He ended up talking with a secretary who seemed to hold him in withering contempt, glaring at him like he’d just run over her dog. He told her how he was working on background checks for One World, who liked to thoroughly vet everyone before doing business with them. As soon as he said “One World” her antipathy seemed to ratchet down several notches, and she finally told him that Bill was out meeting a client, but if he wanted to come back tomorrow she would make sure that he would see him first thing. Disappointing, but not really unexpected.

“You could vet me,” a voice purred behind him, a voice that came with a strong smell of expensive cologne.

Roan turned to find Kyle Newberry there, grinning at him in a sly, calculated way.

Kyle was twenty two, and a pretty boy of the highest order, pretty in a way that professional gadabouts with nothing but time on their hands could be. He looked airbrushed even in person, his pores so small they were almost microscopic, with a square jaw line and bright eyes highlighted by just the faintest hint of professionally applied guyliner. His hair was glossy black and artfully unkempt, three hundred dollar bedhead, and his eyes were an unreal emerald, obviously aided by tinted contacts. He wore a needlessly expensive Prada cashmere V-neck and calfskin boots, but his black silk blend blazer and khakis were probably some other designer label, something so insanely expensive that if Roan had known the price of them, he’d have started beating him right here in the lobby. But they were all so precisely fitted that you could tell he had a lean but hard gym toned body. He looked like Paris’s slightly more girlish half-brother.

“I didn’t realize you worked here,” Roan said, keeping his tone neutral so he didn’t hear the unspoken “I didn’t know you worked anywhere”.

Kyle grinned at him, flashing blindingly white and eerily perfect teeth. Movie star teeth. That probably cost more than his wardrobe combined. “Just like you, I came to see my brother. And just like you, I’m disappointed to find him gone.” During that last sentence, he looked over Roan’s shoulder and gave the receptionist behind him a look that wasn’t so much annoyed as it was homicidal; something very ugly flashed through his eyes, a spoiled brat about to throw the mother of all tantrums. “I’d think he’d want me to know where he is.”

The receptionist’s voice became cowed and ingratiating. “I’m sorry, sir, but he left explicit instructions that he was not to bothered by anyone, even Mrs. Newberry.”

Kyle hissed a sigh through his teeth, and as he looked away it almost became a whispered word. “Cunt”? Roan was pretty sure; there were few other words it could have been. But when he looked back at Roan, a slimy, ingenuous grin was pasted on his face. “Well then, I guess we could kill some time together, huh?”

The way he stared into his eyes, his lips curving up ever so slightly, Roan realized he was very subtlety flirting with him. Gay? So gay he probably made Graham Norton look straight.

And recalling that ugly look he just gave his brother’s receptionist, Roan wondered how bad his temper was, how mean.

Kyle Newberry had just moved into the top five suspect list.

8 - Ghouls

Clusterfuck was probably the only word for it.

At least Gordo got taken to the hospital pretty quickly, and if he lost consciousness, it wasn’t for long. Seb went with him and called Connie, Gordo’s wife, but Roan went with him anyways. Why he wasn’t sure.

It wasn’t like he and Gordo were great friends. For a long time they had a very weird, slightly tense work relationship, because Gordo - like most of the het cops - didn’t know how to handle him being gay, and then him being an infected while Gordo worked infected crimes was just an added layer of macho bullshit. To Gordo’s credit, he got over it, and for the last few years most of that baggage had been put aside. They were kinda friends, but not really friends - acquaintances? Hard to say. It was a weird category, something in between.

But Roan knew it was guilt that brought him along to the hospital. He had a weird moment where a line of a We Are Scientists song floated through his mind with perfect audibility: “We all recognize that I’m the problem here.” That was his life, captured in a song lyric. How sad.

He helped Seb comfort Connie, who to be fair didn’t need much. Although clearly upset about the whole thing, she had a good patrician background that served her well in times of crisis. Luckily Gordo had a “minor” heart attack. Roan wanted to ask if that was akin to a minor bullet wound or a minor shark attack, but with Connie here, he bit back his sarcasm.

He had to call Dylan and tell him they’d have to do the tattoo thing either after work or tomorrow, as there was no way he’d be home in time. Once he told Dylan why, he wanted to come to the hospital - for him, not Gordon; he only knew that Gordo was one of his police contacts, but that was about it - but Roan told him he was leaving now anyways. He could only stay in a hospital for so long before a mild panic attack would set in. He had no choice when he was unconscious and drugged, but when he wasn’t, he could walk out.

It was funny. He stood outside the hospital, longing for a smoke, and he had never smoked a cigarette in his life. He hated the smell. But he wanted something to do, something to take his mind off all this shit.

The universe, in its odd wisdom, answered his plea. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he thought it was Dylan, so he answered without really looking at who was calling. That’s why he was surprised when he answered, and an unexpected voice said, “Okay, things just got wicked.”

It was Jay Bhaskar, medical examiner and Quincy wannabe. “Pardon?”

“Joel Newberry. Just got some preliminary bloodwork and autopsy results, and he died of hyperkalemia.”

“Which is?”

“Potassium overdose. It caused his heart attack. His heart, by the way, could have belonged to a man twenty years younger; it was in great shape. Well, before the potassium deluge.”

Roan stood flush against the hospital wall, where smokers usually congregated. No, he wasn’t smoking, but he was mostly out of the rain here, and could watch the going ons in the parking lot. There was a sad story in every person trudging to the front entrance. “How common is it of people to die of potassium overdose?”

“More common than you might think, but it’s not a silent epidemic by any means. But conditions that would predispose him to it - Addison’s disease, lupus nephritis, rhabdomyolysis, a whole host of kidney related disorders - are not present. Nor was he taking any medications that could cause accidental potassium overdose.”

“So what caused it?”

“Fuck if I know, man. It’s possible he was taking drugs he wasn’t prescribed, but judging from what I’ve seen, there was nothing in his blood but potassium.”

“You sound excited, Jay. This worries me.”

“It’s suspicious, don’t you think? A guy in fucking great shape for his age suddenly keels over dead from a potassium overdose? You know what the cure for it is, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Salt. If you take too much potassium, you balance it out with salt, or you take a diuretic to piss it out. Baking soda if it’s due to acidosis.”

Roan leaned up against the wall, and looked up at the sky, wondering if there were stars visible somewhere above the cloud layer. The sky didn’t look like night; it had the odd glow of dusk lingering in the clouds. “No fucking way you know all of this off the top of your head. You researched this before calling me.”

“Well, I’m not a computer. I can’t be expected to have an easily accessible medical encyclopedia just waiting in my frontal lobes,  you know. Every time you learn something new, it displaces something.”

“I learned that on a Simpsons episode.”

“The scary thing is, all known wisdom has been in a Simpsons episode, but because it’s a cartoon, nobody’s paid it any attention.” After a pause, he said, “Potassium overdose is an almost perfect crime. It’s not hard to get a hold of, it’s not hard to get the medications that can cause a toxic build up, and it can kill pretty fast if you hit ‘em with a massive dose. Killing them slowly is fairly impossible, ‘cause most people have too much salt in their diet, and it’ll pass out of the system pretty quickly anyways, but if you hit someone with a huge dose, wham! They may feel sick, but here’s the weird thing - many people with hyperkalemia don’t feel any symptoms at all. Until their heart stops and they drop dead. So you can poison someone and send them off, and they’ll walk off happily, giving you a chance to be far away from them by the time they bite the dirt.”

“Okay, it’s official: you’ve been reading way too many Sue Grafton novels. Or have you been watching CSI again? I thought you hated that show.”

“I do, although I am hypnotized by David Caruso’s ability to act with his sunglasses. I mean, who allows themselves to get out acted by an accessory?”

“A guy who just wants to cash the checks and go home.”

“Ah. Well then, the man’s a genius. I take back everything horrible I’ve said about his mother.”

“That’s good of you. Thanks for the info.”

“Oh no you don’t! You’re not getting away that easily.”

Roan sighed and leaned against the wall. It was cold and probably damp, but thanks to his raincoat, he didn’t feel the damp. “Jay, stop it.”

“I’m telling you, someone killed him. It’s just hard to prove that in a legal sense.”

“How did they get the potassium in him?”

“Either injection or ingestion. Haven’t found an injection spot yet, but if you know what you’re doing, you can conceal it really well.”

“Ingestion? In what form?”

“Umm, probably liquid. Otherwise somebody gave him a metric ton of pureed kiwi.”

“But this could have happened some other way. It needn’t necessarily been murder.”

“Needn’t? Did you just say needn’t? Good lord, you’re becoming a British fop.”

“Don’t taunt me for having a good vocabulary. If this is murder, there will be a police investigation. I can’t get involved.”

Jay snorted derisively. “Murder investigation my big brown ass. It’s a suspicious death, weird, but we have no proof it’s murder. Any investigation will be perfunctory, and probably not a proper murder one, just a basic “How’d he do this?” sort of one. And if Newberry’s family keeps acting like they are, we’ll be lucky to get even that.”

Roan sighed and rubbed his eyes. He knew exactly when he was being railroaded into something. “Jay, stop playing Quincy. This isn’t a ‘70’s television show.”

“I know. If it was I’d be knee deep in pussy.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. Not only was it funny to think of dumpy, balding Jay as a lady’s man, but there was a terribly weird but bizarrely hilariously mental image that came with that. He must have been laughing too much, as Jay finally said, hurt, “It’s not that funny.”

“Yeah, it kinda is,” Roan told him, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Keep looking into things, let me now how it’s going.”

“Are you gonna do the same thing for me?”

“We’ll see.” Okay, he’d give him that the death was terribly suspicious, but that didn’t make it murder. It made it strange, and with Joel’s supposed paranoia added in, it made it coincidental. But nothing said murder except Jay jumping to conclusions. But …

He walked through the now dribbling rain to his bike, reluctantly calling Holden. He picked up on the third ring. “Hey Roan.”

He thought he heard the sound of running water behind him. “Can you talk right now? I mean in person.”

“Oh. Sure, yeah, meet me at my place in twenty minutes. Okay?”

“Fine by me. See you then.”

Holden hung up pretty fast. Twenty minutes, huh? He was with a client, wasn’t he? It suddenly gave him a creepy feeling that he may have interrupted something he didn’t want to think about.

Driving over was a little less dramatic than driving earlier was, and he was glad; he felt he’d had enough drama for one evening. And in spite of the traffic and his leisurely pace, he beat Holden home. So he waited for a few minutes, leaning next to his door like he was a hustler trolling for a very specific customer. He couldn’t help but smirk at the thought as Holden finally arrived, smelling of some expensive mint soap, the kind you only found at expensive hotels. “Hope you haven’t been waiting too long,” he said, unlocking his door. Holden had a keychain that looked like a piece of sushi; a tuna roll, if he wasn’t mistaken.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt something,” Roan asked, following him in. Holden had left his neon martini lamp lit, so there was some light in the room, but not a lot. He turned on a lamp to throw more light on the scene.

“Nope, I was on my way out when you called. It was good timing, really. So is this about Joel, or is this a personal call?” He collapsed on his sofa, clearly exhausted, and Roan decided he wasn’t going to think about what he had probably been doing just thirty minutes ago. If Holden had any shame, he’d lost it a long time ago; the only one uncomfortable here was him.

“It’s about Joel. He didn’t take vitamin supplements, did he? How much of a health freak was he?”

Holden let out a long, slow sigh, and unzipped his leather jacket, revealing a white t-shirt so skin tight it looked painted on. He must have been trying on his “sexy young punk” persona, as it was only “rough trade” when he wore the leather pants too and his nipple ring as well. And it was sad that he knew that. “He took a multivitamin, but he wasn’t a vegan or anything, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Did he ever take any kind of potassium supplements?”

He gave him a curious look. “No. What are you getting at?”

“Just heard from a friend of mine that Joel’s blood work has come back, and it’s kind of unusual.”

There was a grumbling noise, and much to Roan’s horror, he belatedly realized it had come from his stomach. Holden raised an eyebrow at that. “Are you hungry, or is the lion hiding in your stomach?”

“All day I’ve been starving. I have no idea why.”

“Well, it’s either a tapeworm, or that wacky cat metabolism you have.” Holden waved a hand towards his kitchenette, and said, “Why don’t you go make me a sandwich too?”

“Oh, I’m your servant now?” he complained, but went ahead and entered his kitchen, looking through cupboards for the bread. He was actually glad he’d given him permission to do something and have a bite to eat, but he’d never admit it.

“That is a fantasy of mine, you know. I imagine you give great foot massages.”

“Keep your kinky fantasies to yourself.”

“That’s the vanilla one. You wanna hear the kinky one?”

“I’ll just pretend I didn’t here that.”

“Suit yourself. But it is actually kind of funny. It’d give you a laugh.”

“I’m sure.” Holden’s cupboards still seemed oddly bare, especially when compared to his, which was a jumble of cereal bought yesterday to bottles of spices bought years ago. But Holden only had things that seemed recent, and not a lot of those. But he found sourdough bread, and in the refrigerator he found mustard (thank god, Buddha, whatever) and lunchmeat, as well as some bagged salad greens and grilled red peppers in oil. It’d be a simple sandwich, but a good one. As he slapped them together, he realized something looked odd about Holden as he sat there splayed on the couch, looking tired and distracted. He was about done making the sandwiches when he realized the reason Holden looked odd was because he was actually off duty; his charm shield was down. He wasn’t trying to seduce him or schmooze him, he had totally dropped his guard. This was just Holden. It was actually a bit startling to realize, as street kids - even in adult form - rarely dropped their guards, but he supposed that showed how much Holden trusted him, enough to be vulnerable and human in front of him. Weird. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Holden had exactly four plates in his cupboard. “Do you have all your flatware in the dishwasher or something?”

He just shrugged as Roan handed him a plate with a sandwich on it. “I don’t have a lot of plates. Don’t need ‘em. I don’t really entertain. Could you grab me a pomegranate juice?”

“Sure.” There was a bit more food in his fridge, but not really a lot. He didn’t entertain; he never told clients his real name or where he lived; he had many acquaintances, but did he have any friends? He already said he didn’t fuck if he wasn’t paid, so he had no boyfriend either. It was a cliché, the lonely hooker, but for a guy with the most active sex life he had ever encountered, he did seem a bit lonely. But then again, maybe he preferred it that way. Roan wouldn’t have blamed him.

He grabbed Holden a small bottle of pomegranate juice, and a bottle of green tea for himself, before joining him on the sofa. Roan tore into his sandwich hungrily, while Holden just took a bite of his and set it down. “Not bad.”

“That’s why you’re eating it.”

He smirked weakly. “I had room service. I thought you’d feel funny making a sandwich only for yourself.”

“Bastard.”

That made Holden smile. He grabbed the remote control off his coffee table, but didn’t turn on the television. He just slumped back and sipped his juice before asking, “Was he poisoned?”

He knew he meant Newberry, and the sandwich gave him a moment to gather his thoughts and consider what it was he should tell him. “Not precisely, but it’s something along those lines. It could have been an accident or a fluke; it’s not clear cut.”

“You’re a professional skeptic, aren’t you?”

“It comes with the job. You told me he was having some problems with his family. Did he name any in particular? How did he get along with his wife?”

Holden sat forward and took off his leather boots, buying himself some time. “Mind if I change? I feel stupid sitting here in costume.”

He wanted to say he’d flashed him a bit of his ass this morning and hadn’t apologized, but he seemed so weary he didn’t think Holden would be in a joking mood. “Your apartment; do what you want.”

“Thanks.” He stood and shucked off his jacket, tossing it on his chair before peeling off his shirt - and he did peel it off. It looked for a moment like he might not actually be able to remove it from his torso without a crowbar. He took the shirt with him as he went to his bedroom. After a moment, amongst the opening and closing of drawers, Holden said, “He was having a problem with his kids, and with his brother and sister in law. He bitched about them a lot. Once I overheard him having an argument on his cell with his brother.”

“About what?” Roan pulled out the tiny notebook he was carrying with him, where he’d made random case notes in an attempt to seem semi-professional. Joel had three kids, two with his first (and longest lasting) wife Karen, a son named Bill (the scion of the family) and a daughter named Lorainna, and a son named Kyle that he had with his second wife, Jessica. Joel’s brother was named John, and he was something of the “black sheep” of the family; he’d done stints in out of state hospitals for his alcohol and gambling problems, although now he’d gone out of his way to re-ingratiate himself with his family and reclaim a roll in it. Word had it he was a complete dick.

“It seems John lost some money. How much I don’t know, but I gather it was a lot, and Joel seemed to think he hadn’t misplaced it so much as started gambling again.”

“Did you find out if that was true?”

“No. I don’t ask questions of a non-sexual nature with my clients, unless that’s what they want. Joel didn’t even know I was eavesdropping, although by the way he was bellowing at the end, how could I not hear it?”

This was all bad news. Families made for toxic brews, which was why you were more likely to be murdered by a family member or friend than anyone else. Add money to that, and you were damn lucky if things didn’t devolve into the end of The Wild Bunch. “Is that all you heard?”

Holden came back out into the living room, wearing a baggy brown t-shirt and black boxer shorts. Roan didn’t even know he owned a pair of boxer shorts. He collapsed on the couch, strangely boneless. “Yeah, that’s it. He didn’t want to talk about it.”

“What about the problems he was having with his kids?”

This got a shrug. “He said they were fighting between themselves a lot, but that was it. No details.”

“How about things with his wife?”

“He didn’t talk about Cherry with me. I think it was just basic etiquette. You don’t mention the wife to the lover, and you don’t mention the lover to the wife.”

“Is everything all right? You seem oddly subdued tonight.”

Holden gave him an anemic, lopsided smile. “I’m okay, just tired. But thanks for asking.”

He was lying, wasn’t he? He wasn’t okay. But he didn’t want to talk about it, so Roan let it go. If anyone understood not wanting to talk about something, it was him.

7- All Is Ash Or The Light Shining Through It

Roan drove through the downpour, in search of the party house, getting almost hypnotized by the windshield wipers’ rhythmic slap. Usually after migraine meds, he needed a nap, and he knew he’d fought the urge too long. But he’d just check out this one thing, and go home.

The address Marjean had given him led to an empty, old style A-frame house, set apart from its neighbor on about an acre of weeds. There was a “For Sale” sign, but the paint was peeling from sun and rain damage, and the lock box the real estate agency had put on the house was broken. He nudged the door open with his foot and was swamped by Human smells: shit, piss, vomit, sex. There was also a terrible lingering stain of alcohol and smoke, mostly pot and cigarette smoke, but some of it was crank and crack, meth and something so completely chemical Roan imagined that something had briefly, unintentionally caught fire.

There was little furniture in the living room, an old couch that was so stained and damp it gave off a strong aroma of mildew was pretty much it, and there was some bird and mouse shit along with the crumpled beer cans and broken crack pipes clotting the corners. An abandoned house used as a party house. Not new, not surprising, and there’d be no clues here.

Well, no, technically there’d be a thousand clues, but none that would point directly to Grant. There was no one to talk to about the party, except for Marjean, who had probably told him all she could clearly remember. He supposed he could grill her, ask her about other people at the party, but what was the point? The cops were most certainly combing through Grant’s stuff by now, put an APB out on his car. He was probably in custody already. He was a dollar short and a day late.

He called Gordo, but got routed straight to his call messaging. He didn’t leave a message. When he could call and tell him they had Grant, he would.

By the time he reached home, he had that odd hollow head feeling that wasn’t quite a headache and wasn’t quite a dizzy spell, but was some sickening offspring of the two. As soon as he was in the door, he kicked off his boots and dropped his sodden coat in the foyer, figuring he’d pick them up later. He took off his wet shirt on the stairs, but kept it with him so he could throw it on the floor of his bedroom. He stripped off his pants, also damp from rain, and just threw them aside, figuring he’d be up before Dylan showed up. He was asleep almost the moment his head hit the pillow; he barely got the covers pulled over him.

He slept hard, but he did have vague memories of a strange dream where he was playing poker with Paris and Grant Kim. Grant had no shirt on and a pony keg on his lap. The whole thing was very weird, and the only thing he remembered Grant saying was, “Only infecteds can play.” Well, duh.

The phone woke him up. Oh, how he was learning to hate the fucking phone. He reached out and snagged it, keeping his face buried in his pillow. “What?”

“What the hell, are you gagged?” Gordo asked, annoyed. “I can barely hear you.”

He ignored that comment. “You got Grant yet?”

“No, and I need you here, in the woods next to Martin Ellis High School.”

For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming. “Did you say you want me at the high school?”

“Near the school. Just follow the cop cars and local TV news van. I’ll probably be telling some blow dried asshole to fuck off.”

“So, a normal night for you.”

“Very funny.”

“Why am I goin’ to the high school, Gord?”

“We have a body here I need you to check out. I think I know who did it, but I need a confirmation, and you’re faster than waiting for a bite print to come back.”

Roan felt his stomach sink like a stone. “Oh no. Grant?”

“Approximate time of death seems to say the vic died early this morning, around the time the first crime scene was discovered. And we’re about a mile away from it.”

“Fuck me.”

“Yeah, that was my opinion too. It looks real bad; the vic’s a kid too, or at least from what I can tell. Right now I’m goin’ by his high tops and the remains of his Seether t-shirt.”

“Christ.” He shoved himself up to a sitting position, looking out the window at the rain, which had backed off to a pissing kind of drizzle. But it was still raining; rivers would be flooding soon, if they weren’t already. Just one more thing to worry about.

Deaths by cat were always bad, and always caused a minor firestorm in the press. But the death of a kid? That sometimes made national news, and brought out all the “we should lock ‘em in camps” right wing assholes in their wake. Not that he was advocating tearing up teenagers should be given a pass, but it wasn’t Grant’s fault. It was the cat who did this, not the person. But some people didn’t give a rat’s ass about the distinction or didn’t even bother to make it in the first place.

He told Gordo he’d be there as soon as possible, and hastily got dressed, ignoring the fact that he had perhaps the worst case of bedhead he’d ever glimpsed in a bathroom mirror. It’d be wetted down by the rain soon enough.

Since he was going to get drenched regardless, he decided to take the bike. He could use the extra speed right now anyways; it’d help wake him up.

In the end it didn’t, but other people driving like idiots kind of did. It was Washington State - it rained. It rained quite a bit, although not as much as the jokes would lead you to believe. So why did so many people panic and drive like the world was ending when it rained? He would never understand that.

And Gordo was right, it was easy to find the site. The channel eight news van was visible several blocks away thanks to the garish logo painted on the side. But they must have only knew it was a killing near the high school and not a kid victim, as it wasn’t their big “action news man” on the scene but one of the minor ones, the cute but ethnically diverse female reporter (Asian), Hannah something or other. Roan couldn’t remember, as he didn’t watch channel eight news. He got all his local news from the newspaper, and all other news from the internet or BBC News. Did that make him a snob? Ah, fuck it, who cared? If he could be a snob in a black vinyl rain coat and a Dalek t-shirt, with a sparkly black motorcycle helmet wedged underneath his arm, so be it.

Channel eight’s team was being held back at a hasty cordon of sawhorses, where Hannah was arguing with a poor beleaguered beat cop roped in to stand guard and protect the crime scene. The channel eight team seemed to be Hannah in her ridiculously expensive raincoat, a sound engineer huddled beneath an umbrella being held by the segment producer (?), and the cameraman, who was standing aside and smoking a cigarette like he’d been starving for nicotine.

They were an interesting contrast, and they all glanced at each other as one of the other cops working the line recognized him and waved him through the blockade. The sound engineer looked like he was barely out of high school himself, a lanky black guy who had that type of youthful face that would guarantee he’d be carded until he was in his forties. The segment producer was almost a foot shorter than him and his opposite in almost every way: stocky where he was lanky, doughy where he was lean, dark where he was pale. His face also showed every bit of stress and worry he’d ever had in his life, which was sizable. The cameraman looked like a stereotypical biker, with thinning but shoulder length steel gray hair, and a salt and pepper beard that was neatly trimmed but may as well have been bushy and shaggy. He just gave off a disreputable air, whether that was fair or not.

As Roan started up the slight, muddy incline, he heard Hannah ask, “Who the hell is that?”

One of the men - not the cop, but part of Hannah’s entourage - muttered, “I think that’s their outside cat expert, the kitty fag. His name’s like McKitchen or something.”

Roan sighed and stopped where he was, looking back at them. “You really shouldn’t casually slur the guy who can track you down by scent alone, you know? Just an FYI. And it’s pronounced Mick - kee - an. At least get that much right.”

He saw the surprise register on their faces - all but Hannah’s, as she simply didn’t react to anything (on air talent rule 101) - but no one said anything, so he turned and continued on. He then heard, very faintly, “How the fuck did he hear me?”

There was a throaty chuckle, and the cigarette rasp of the voice led him to think it was the cameraman talking. “The shit I heard about him, he’s damn right - you don’t fuck with him. He can’t turn the cat off, or some shit like that. He’s like superhuman or something.”

Can’t turn the cat off? What a weird way to put it.

The woods were just a thick stand of pine and firs that had yet to be cleared away, a couple hundred yards away from the chain link boundary of the school’s football field. Some attempt had been made to clear away the undergrowth, but you couldn’t kill blackberry vines with a tactical nuclear strike. Around the clinging, barbed vines where discarded forty ounce bottles of various kinds, cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, even a used condom and a pill bottle with its label stripped off waited, the side of a dark red spattered white shoe was visible. Rain and wind diluted the smell of blood, as did the smell of piss, stale beer, and fresh pot smoke. Well, relatively fresh; a few hours old.

“Kid was smoking pot?” he asked as he approached Gordo.

Gordo was wearing a brown felt hat that wasn’t a fedora, but wanted to be. Rain dripped from its brim, and as he turned it flung some droplets. “Probably. I ain’t even gonna ask how you knew that.” Many forensic people buzzed around, nearly all of who Roan recognized. Since they knew who he was and why he was here, he wasn’t acknowledged in any way. “Apparently a lot of kids come here before or after school to smoke up or have a drink, stuff like that.”

“Fuck around?”

“That too. There’s kind of a path over there, near the dogwoods, so it’s pretty well traveled.”

“And yet the kid’s been here since around the time school started?”

Gordo nodded, making rain shower from his hat. “And the body was only reported less than an hour ago.”

“So who knows how many saw it before anyone bothered to report it? The scene’s contaminated.”

“I know. It’s all massively fucked. What’s wrong with kids today? How can you see the body of a kid that’s been mutilated and then not call it in?”

Roan shrugged. “It’s not a new thing. Every generation has its segment of people who never want to get involved.”

“I suppose. But they’re gettin’ younger by the year.” He paused. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you haven’t said what it was.”

“It was a leopard.”

Gordo let out a sigh that sounded like he was deflating, and the way his shoulders sagged, he might as well have been. “God, what a clusterfuck this is turning into.”

“And you haven’t found Grant yet?”

“No. Kid could be hiding out anywhere. We have a list of friends and acquaintances, but it’s fucking huge, and many of them are pretty shady and not inclined to cooperate. I’ve talked to the parents, but they said they haven’t talked to him for a month or so, and I’m inclined to believe them.”

“What are the parents like? Traditional, strict, hippy?”

He gave him a curious sideling glance. “You’ve never met them? I thought Miranda Kim was a friend of yours.”

“She is, but she never took me home to meet the parents.”

Gordo shrugged, and reached into the pocket of his trench coat, pulling out a crumpled tissue that he blotted his face with. Belatedly, Roan realized he wasn’t drying off rain but sweat; he was sweating, in spite of the chill breeze, and in spite of the growing darkness, Roan noticed he was looking a bit off, a bit pale. “They just seemed like people. Father teaches English at Collins High, the mother’s a librarian for the county. They seemed fine. Upset, as you might imagine; they had no idea he was infected. Why? You got a theory?”

“No, I’ve just been piecing some things together. I know they had a room set up in their house, but is it possible that this was Grant’s first transformation? That he didn’t know he was infected either?”

He raised an eyebrow at that, but didn‘t scoff. “So why the room?”

“It was put together for Bowles. They all knew he was infected, but Grant got his stupid ass infected and didn’t know. Not until he started transforming. It caught him, Bowles, and Jones short; none of them were prepared for Grant to change. Hence the resulting bloodbath, as they were suddenly faced with a loose leopard, angry and in pain. And a hurting animal can be one vicious fuck, especially if it thinks the people before it are the cause of the pain.” Roan squinted at him, catching a faint whiff of … something. He couldn’t identify the smell. “You need to sit down. You smell wrong.”

Gordo glared at him. “Smell wrong? Jeeze, thanks, my deodorant fails and you’re calling me out on it. Can you put the nose away for a second?”

“It’s not body odor.”

“Then what is it?”

Roan was forced to shrug. “I dunno. It’s just wrong.”

“Terrific,” he grumbled sarcastically. Gordon continued to ignore his advice and retrieved what looked like a small Ziplock bag, only inside it was a bloody scrap of plastic. “Even though we don’t have all of this vic, at least he had his ID on him.”

It was blood smeared and had been mauled by teeth and claws, but Roan could see enough to determine the kid’s name was Trevor German, and he was seventeen years old. Son of a bitch.

He recalled his strange dream of him and Grant and Paris playing poker, and realized the symbolism, his brain trying to tell him something. “He panicked.”

“The kid?”

“Grant Kim. Assuming this was his first transformation and he wasn’t expecting it, he probably freaked out as soon as he transformed back to Human. That’s why we can’t find him - even he has no idea where he’s going. Paris didn’t know he was infected until he woke up in a dog house in a neighborhood close to the campus, with dog guts strewn all about him. He freaked out when he realized it wasn’t a sick joke and figured out what had happened to him. He left school and ran; hell, he inadvertently ran into the States. He started in Canada.”

“You think Kim’s gonna run up to Canada?”

“No. I think he doesn’t know what to do and he’s freaked out. That could actually make things more dangerous.” He unconsciously glanced up at the sky, which was already dark with clouds, but was growing darker by the second as the sun, somewhere behind the cloud layer, started setting. If they assumed that last night/this morning was Grant’s first transformation, then he was due for round two tonight. Transformation lasted, at bedrock, five days; at most, they could last an entire week.

Gordon got where he was going. “He’ll be loose again tonight. Why won’t he turn himself in? He’d be safe in a jail cell.”

“He won’t remember killing anyone, but he will wake up bloody. If he wasn’t freaked out before, he will be now. Do you really think the moment you wake up in tremendous pain and covered in someone else’s blood, with no memories of what happened the night before, that your first impulse would be to call the police?”

“Well, you put it that way,” Gordo grumbled. “Guess not. But we gotta find him before more people die. Or somebody kills his furry ass.”

“I know. The problem is the panicky don’t exactly have a rhyme or reason. We’re looking at this logically, and there’s no way in hell we’re gonna find him that way.”

“Yeah, but how else do we do it? Throwing darts at a map seems like a big waste of …” Gordo suddenly leaned against a tree, head down towards the ground.

“Gord?”

“Just a little dizzy,” he said, and made to push off the tree, but his legs gave way and he collapsed, hitting the muddy ground with a thud. Roan dropped his helmet and dropped to his knees beside Gordon as he struggled weakly to get up. “I’m okay -”

“Fuck you, you are not,” Roan said, putting a hand on his neck. His skin was clammy, his heart rate incredibly erratic.

One of the female forensic technicians was the first over, and asked, “What’s going on?”

“He’s having a heart attack,” Roan snapped. “Call in the EMTs already.”

It was wonderful how shitty situations could always turn shittier, in ways you never expected.