4 - Cycle of Agony

Roan really didn’t want to do this. But he had no choice.

He walked out into the downpour and crossed the parking lot of the office park, coming to the all female CPA office where Randi worked. Admittedly, this seemed to be a strange office park: yes, they had the dentist and the chiropractor and the lawyer that all office parks of this ilk seemed to have, but the dentist was a German woman who had a tendency to curse in Yiddish and walked with a limp due to a prosthetic leg; the chiropractor was a gorp obsessed weirdo who looked like a real life version of Munson Honeydew; and the lawyer was a very brusque, professional woman who took the bar exam when she was a man about ten years ago (her employees generally didn’t know she used to be a man, but Roan did, because she told him once in an attempt at bonding). And then there was the infected gay detective and his dominatrix assistant, who probably took the entire weirdo cake. Roan would have worried he was a weirdo magnet, except Braunbeck was here when he started renting office space, so Braunbeck was the weirdo magnet. That figured.

He walked into the office, and the receptionist was a perky if slightly plain and slightly heavy woman named Patsy. “Hey Roan. You here to see Randi?”

“Yeah, but I can wait.” The layout here was different than most offices. The boss of the place tore out the physical cubical walls and replaced them with glass and translucent plastic ones, so it was more open and had more light; in other words, it seemed less dreary. It also allowed you to see who was busy and who wasn’t, and Randi was dealing with a client right now, so he hated to barge in on an appointment and say, “Randi, your brother’s either dead or a fugitive, and oh yeah, did you know he was infected?” That was something best shared in private.

Actually he relished sitting in the waiting room chairs and composing a script in his head, which he rewrote every thirty seconds. He could think of no good way to say this, no comforting way, no way to soften the blow. He watched rain drip from his hair and splash on his leg, disappearing quickly into the dark color of his pants. He usually wore dark colored pants, because they hid bloodstains so well, and it was a horrible revelation about himself. He was all ready for violence, even if the situation didn’t warrant it. But he was always locked and loaded, ready to go. What had he once said? Oh yes, that he was a battle queen; Boadicea. He was nearly forty - shouldn’t he have grown out of that by now? After all, if he was a “normal” infected, he’d have been long dead by now. Maybe when you knew you shouldn’t be alive, it made you more combative, ready to fight for the space you somehow had but shouldn’t have had. Every minute, you waited for the repo man.

He felt a shadow looming over him, and looked up to see Patsy standing there with a paper cup of coffee. “Randi can see you now. And here, I brought you this,” she said, handing him the coffee. “You looked cold.”

Cold. He thanked her, but wondered if that was code for something: miserable, depressed, like a drowned rat. He took the cup of coffee, but only for warmth, although to be fair it smelled strong and possibly gourmet. He wished he liked coffee.

As he approached her “office”, she looked up from her computer, and asked, “What can I do you for?”

He liked Randi, even though she had always had a not secret crush on Paris and only tolerated him as a Paris accessory. He couldn’t blame her for any of it, as Paris was always the better of the two of them; who didn’t love him? He didn’t want to hurt her like this. But it was either hear it from him, or from some cop who didn’t know her from any relative of a crime victim. “Does the address 212 Madison Court mean anything to you?” he asked, grasping at the final straw. Maybe it was another guy named Grant Kim; there was a growing Asian population in the region, and Kim was an incredibly popular last name, the Korean equivalent of Smith. This could be mistaken identity.

For a moment, Roan clung to that hope. The fact that Randi appeared momentarily puzzled fed his relief. But then she said, “I think that’s where my brother lives. Why?” Then horror overtook her expression, like a cloud moving across the face of the sun. She knew then that there was only one reason he’d come in here and ask such a question. “Oh shit. What happened to Grant?”

“I think we should probably discuss this in privacy,” he said, glancing around at the surrounding cubicles. He noticed a couple of employees pretending to work while they tried to eavesdrop on the conversation. It was natural curiosity, and that’s why an open office floor plan like this sometimes sucked.

She must have agreed, because she stood up, but she grabbed his arm and demanded, “Is he dead or in jail?”

“Neither,” he answered, and as far as he knew, it was most likely true.

She frowned, but then she signaled someone and said, “Ally, I’m taking my break now.” Randi grabbed her coat off the back of her chair and then headed out, still holding his arm and dragging him along. He let her, and at the surprised look of what he assumed to be the office supervisor, he said, “Family emergency. Sorry, it’s urgent.” He left the cup of coffee on the windowsill before Randi yanked him out the door.

Just beyond the doorway of the office, near the dripping eave of the roof, Randi faced him and said, “Neither isn’t an answer. What’s going on?”

He had no choice but to tell her he was called to a crime scene at the house this morning, a cat killing that turned out to be pretty bizarre. A dead man in the kitchen, so badly mutilated that identification was going to be difficult, and the scent of two cats but three people in the house: two infected males, including the dead man, and a woman, not infected but wearing perfume.

She started shaking her head halfway through, but waited until he was finished to start speaking. “Roan, it isn’t him. It must have been a couple of visitors or something; Grant wasn’t infected. He would have told me.” She started chewing her thumbnail, then stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing. She was saying the words, but he could tell Randi was speaking but not believing a word she said.

“Were you close?”

She shrugged. “We weren’t gossiping and doing each other’s hair every weekend, but we got along. There’s no way he’d not tell me something so major.”

“When’s the last time you talked to him?”

“A coupla days ago.”

“In person or on the phone?”

“What the fuck’s with the third degree, Roan?” she snapped. “Am I suspect or something?”

“Of course not. I’m just trying to establish a timeline here.” He was trying to get her to admit they weren’t that close, actually, but he knew if he said it she’d shut down.

Her look was deeply suspicious, but she admitted, “It was by email.”

He wasn’t surprised. “What did he say?”

“Nothing like “I’m infected, and I’m gonna eat my roommate”. Okay? It was just stupid stuff, relationship problems.”

“Did you save a copy?”

She gave him a look that could have blistered paint. “You’re not reading my emails.”

The fact that she was so super defensive told him all he needed to know. She wasn’t close with her brother; they barely kept in touch, despite living in the same city. She probably only saw him during family holiday gatherings. But now she was feeling guilty, and she wasn’t going to say it. “He was in a relationship? With whom?”

She shook her head and looked away. “I dunno. He only ever referred to her by initials: TC.”

“You’re sure it was TC and not TJ?”

“I know the difference between a C and a J, Roan.”

So probably not Tiffany Jones, unless her middle initial started with J. He had to check that. “What kind of relationship did he have with his roommates?”

She shrugged and bit a cuticle on her index finger before stopping herself. “I don‘t know. He and Curt went to college together, and I think his girlfriend moved in with them, but that’s about it.”

“Tiffany Jones was Curtis’s girlfriend?”

“I guess. Was that her name? I knew it sounded like something a stripper would use as a shitty stage alias.”

“You never met them.” It wasn’t a question.

She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye, but mostly kept staring out at the parking lot, like her savior was going to drive in any second and mow him down. He was late. “I’m sure I did once. But it was a while ago, and I forgot.”

He felt like making a sarcastic comment, along the lines of “That’s a hell of an impression they left on you”, but he didn’t, because he hadn’t even come to the worst part of this yet. “Did Grant have any tattoos or distinguishing marks? Scars, moles, piercings?”

“Now why would you ask that? It’s not like -” It set in. Blood drained from her face and she brought a hand up to her mouth in horror. “You think he’s the corpse?”

“No, I don’t.” He didn’t; he didn’t know who the corpse was.

“Just look at the eyes. He’s Korean! You’d know if …” her jaw dropped, and she had to take a moment to find her voice. “He had no eyes? The body had no eyes?!”

He held up his hands, hoping to calm her, knowing he couldn’t. “Please, just answer the question, and try not to think about the body.”

“Can I see it?”

“What?”

“The body. Can I see the body? I can tell you then -”

“I really wouldn’t. Just tell me, how tall was he? How much did he weigh? What was his body type? Was he broad shouldered or not?”

Roan had to repeat his request, because she zoned out for a moment. When she came back, she seemed to be staring at a spot just a couple inches above his shoulder. “He was like five seven, and maybe a hundred and twenty soaking wet. He was always a string bean. And no he wasn’t fucking broad shouldered. He was Korean. Do I have to repeat that? How many Korean quarterbacks have you seen?”

“I know a broad shouldered Asian cop. And I don’t think the corpse was your brother; this guy had a gut, and a mid-sized frame.” It wasn’t the easiest thing to work out, especially since he was so mangled, but considering the amount of blood and torn up flesh, they weren’t dealing with a string bean.

“Curt?”

“I guess, but it’s up to the ME’s office to get a confirmed identity.” And he still wished them luck. They were going to need it.

“Oh shit,” Randi suddenly exclaimed, and then reached into her pants pocket, pulling out a slim sliver of a cell phone. Quickly she called up a menu on the screen that lit up her face in blue light, and held the phone to her ear, muttering, “C’mon, c’mon, pick up …”

Calling Grant? Most likely. He was curious to see if he picked up, so he waited patiently. Randi’s curse told him all he needed to know before she said, “Grant, you get this, you call me back immediately. I mean it.” She then ended the call and shut the phone, slipping it in her pocket. “I got his call waiting.”

“I guessed.” A car turned in the parking lot, headlights scudding through the rain and lighting it up, making it look like silver needles falling to earth. The car just did a U-turn and eventually drove away, the pair of them watching the whole time. “If he calls back, contact me immediately. Tell him I’m willing to help him, but he has to meet me in person. Okay?”

She nodded, but there seemed to be a wariness in her posture. “He didn’t kill Curt, Roan. He’s not infected. I’m telling you, this is a mistake.”

“I really hope so,” he admitted.

But Grant and Randi hadn’t been close, and if he’d been infected recently, there was no reason why he’d tell her. He got a strong sense there was something Randi wasn’t telling him, but now was not the time to press her. He had to let the news sink in, had to let her wrestle down her own sense of guilt, and then maybe she’d tell him her big secret about Grant.

In the meantime, though, he was going to have to call Gordo back and let him know that Grant probably wasn’t the corpse in the kitchen, meaning if there wasn’t an APB out on him right now, there would be.

Roan could only hope he found Grant before the cops did.