Undertow, Part 2

2 – Tiny Violin

Here was a problem that had dodged investigators since the beginning of time: where did you look for clues when you had absolutely none?

As soon as Jessica had gone, he hopped on his computer and confirmed that the local library had a checked in copy of “A Fearsome Rage: The Hunt For The North Hill Rapist”, a true crime biography by a local writer who’d made a career out of writing true crime books. At least they weren’t nearly as salacious or lurid as they could have been. There might even be some facts he didn’t know in it. He hoped so, or why waste an afternoon reading a true crime book?

Then he got on the phone and called Gordo. Connie answered the phone, though, and as soon as she realized it was him, she let out a sigh of relief, and said, “Thank god it’s you. Maybe you can cheer him up.”

“He’s that bad? What’s he doing now?”

“Watching a football game.”

“That’s worse than I thought. No one enjoys the Seahawks. Put that sad sack on.”

As soon as Gordo came on the line, he said bitterly, “Yeah, what do you want?”

“I want you to get off your ass and do me a favor,”

There was a brief silence, enough that it told Roan Gordo had perked up a bit. Or at least he was paying attention. “What kinda favor?”

“Know anyone that works for the Yakima PD?”

He considered that longer than necessary. “Maybe. Why?”

There was nothing to lose here, so he told him who his latest client was, and what she was looking for. He made a noise like Roan had punched him in the stomach. “What the fuck, Roan? You’re just taking her money. If there was anything to find, the cops would have found it already.”

“I told her that, but she was pretty insistent.”

“Still, a dick move on your part.”

Roan sighed. “A dick move I was guilted into. So can you help me or not?”

“What do you want?”

“Any and all existing case files on Melinda Hall would be the dream.”

“Good thing you don’t ask much,” Gordo replied sarcastically. He took a drink of whatever he was having. Roan was willing to bet it wasn’t beer, mainly because Connie wouldn’t let him have it. “If I help you out, does this mean I’m an assistant investigator?”

“Don’t push your luck, but I’ll see what I can do.” It wasn’t much, but it was pretty much all he could offer right now.

Although that made Gordo issue an annoyed grunt, he seemed to accept it, probably because he had nothing much else going on. That was the sad thing about forced retirement, as well as not knowing what to do with yourself.

Roan headed off to the library, where he had visited often enough that most of the librarians knew him by name. Rather than check out the book, he took it from the paperback rack and sat in one of the library chairs to skim it, as he didn’t need to know everything about the North Hill rapist, just about the Melinda Hall side of things, if it was even covered in the book.

It turned out it was. He flipped to the index, found her name, and went straight to the appropriate pages. The author fleshed out some of the details of the day Melinda went missing, but it was pretty much what Jessica already told him. Coming home from school to an empty house, an unusual scene in the kitchen, the whole thing. The author readily admitted that she was simply a probable victim, but a good bet, simply because of location and her appearance.

There was one interesting thing. Apparently Melinda’s husband – Jessica’s father – Harvey Hall, caused a scene in the courtroom, getting tossed out after he interrupted court proceedings, yelling at Shaw that he wanted to know what he’d done with his wife. According to the author, Harvey was devastated by his wife’s disappearance, and never quite recovered. Was that still true? Jessica had given him her father’s phone number, but had asked that he not call him unless it was absolutely necessary. Still fragile, even after all this time? Perhaps. People had all sorts of reaction to tragedy, especially the seemingly capricious, out of the blue kind. Not that it was all that easy to take even when you knew it was coming.

Roan skimmed the book, but found nothing else particularly relevant or useful to the case. Shaw was a twisted sicko who seemed to get off on inflicting pain and really hated women, which couldn’t have been a shock to anyone. He searched the shelves and the library computer for any more references to the North Hill sleaze bucket, but they weren’t here if there was anything else to find. He kind of hoped not, if only because he didn’t want to have to read any more of these kinds of books. To be fair it wasn’t as lurid or exploitation as it could have been, but most true crime books set his teeth on edge.

His watch bleeped, informing him he had ten minutes to meet Dylan. Dyl had to work until closing last night, and it was one of the rare times that Roan went to bed before Dylan came home. They had a standing appointment to meet at a thrift shop they had both agreed was one of the best in the city, because Dylan insisted Roan needed more clothes, and Roan hated shopping.

Yeah, he knew that seemed to mean he was a bad gay, but Dyl wasn’t that enamored of shopping either. They agreed this was the best compromise, because Roan really wouldn’t bother shopping for as long as he could put it off, which just might push him into next year.

There was a coffee shop next door to the thrift shop – it was Seattle; there was a coffee shop roughly every twenty feet – so Roan got them both a tea while waiting for Dylan. He showed up roughly on time, still a little sweaty from his yoga class. Roan teased him about it, never bothering to say that he always found that kind of sexy, but he did. A slightly mussed, panting Dylan was just a crazy bucketful of sexy.

While finishing their tea, since you couldn’t drink in the thrift store, they talked about the tattoo Roan wanted. He had no idea in mind, he only knew that he wanted Dylan to draw it. Dyl was afraid he was addicted to tattoos, if such a thing was even possible, but he didn’t object to drawing on him again. “You know, this could very well be a pathology,” Dylan warned him, not unkindly.

Roan shrugged, tossing his empty paper cup in a trash can. A homeless man staggered by, dragging along a miasma of malt liquor and piss with him. Sad. He didn’t recognize him, which reminded him he hadn’t been a beat cop for many years.

At the thrift store, Dylan finally told him what he’d been worried about. Roan knew Dylan was nervous about something and trying very hard to hide it. When you were with people long enough, you knew when they were trying to hide something from you, no matter how good an actor they were.

It seemed Dylan’s friend from Culture Shock magazine had told him they wanted to have Roan in their “Year In Review” recap. (Never mind that the year’s end was a long way off – they had a slow turn around time in the magazine business.) They’d send down a staff writer for a blurb and this photographer apparently named Fabian that Dylan just gushed about. Apparently he was a “fantastic visual artist”.

Roan just sighed, well aware of exactly why they wanted him. It turned out that his issue of Culture Shock was the magazine’s highest seller to date, that it got the most emails and letters (people still wrote letters?) of anything they’d ever featured, and it also got the most complaints. People argued over whether he was actually Human or not, if infecteds were a genuine minority or just sad sick bastards, why the magazine was “glorifying” infected status in general or him in particular, which even some dumb shit Congressman brought up on the Congressional floor, because it wasn’t like the country had any real problems to deal with. Some infecteds objected to having him (mostly subtle allusions to him being gay) represent them, while some gays objected to him because he inadvertently helped perpetuate the stereotype that all gays were infected. Others even called him an “Uncle Tom” for working with the police. Roan really didn’t pay any attention to it, because he didn’t give a flying fuck what random strangers thought of him, but Dylan followed it all online for a bit, until he got so pissed off he stopped. No surprise – the general anonymity of the internet seemed to encourage people to be dicks.

Roan didn’t want to appear in any magazine ever again, even if it was just for a photo and a single paragraph blurb, but Dylan clearly wanted to meet this photographer. “I’ll do it only if I can flip off the camera.”

“You could. In fact, they’d probably love you if you did.”

“Really?”

Dylan stopped looking through the shirt rack long enough to gift him with a rueful smile. “Controversy sells, sweetheart.”

That it did. But in spite of his general hatred at the thought of making them happy, the idea of being able to flip off all the readers of said magazine and have it documented for posterity was very tempting.

After the semi-painful shopping was out of the way and they were in the car heading home, Roan told him about his new case. Dyl grimaced through most of it, disliking the violent nature of the topic. “Does this mean a road trip to Yakima is in order?”

“I’ll probably take a puddle jumper over. It’s faster.”

“And more nerve wracking.”

“True, but I still like it when turbulence gives you that brief feeling of zero gravity.”

“That’s because you’re insane.”

Roan smiled at him. “You’ve just figured that out now?”

Dylan offered to go with him, supposedly because he’d never seen Yakima, but it was such an awful city – in Roan’s limited experience anyways – he knew the real reason was Dyl was worried about him taking Holden over there and indulging some of his darker, more violent impulses.

Dylan knew. He didn’t have the details of his dark, hidden life – his superhero life? – but he knew Roan had been trying to protect him from something. (His secret identity? Did the Crimson Cat get trotted out here again?) Dyl could have confronted him about it, but then Roan probably would have told him the truth, and obviously Dylan had decided it was better that he didn’t know. He knew there was something, he just didn’t want to know what.

Was that healthy? Could their relationship survive his double life? They didn’t have a superhero/vigilante instruction manual he could consult for advice. Maybe it was just a variation of the compromises all couples made. It was just his double life had nothing at all to do with a piece of ass on the side, and everything to do with letting the lion come out to play. Roan idly wondered what would happen if he never did that.

Roan had no reason to go all lion on someone’s ass, at least not at the moment, so he told Dylan he could come with if he wanted to. Dylan pulled out his iPhone and started looking for cheap plane tickets, as they decided they’d leave tomorrow. It was the start of Dyl’s weekend (not for anyone else, unless they also worked weird bar hours), and Roan wanted to get this over with anyways. He needed to find out if there was even a sliver of a case here, and the sooner he let Jessica know, the better.

****

Because they left from a small airport, not Sea-Tac, they weren’t subject to the new, invasive TSA procedures. Which was good, because Roan didn’t feel like being molested this morning by a random stranger. He also didn’t feel like announcing his infected status to everyone, which was one of the controversial measures currently undergoing a court challenge. He hoped the ACLU nailed their dicks to the table. What, were they going to stuff all known infecteds into the cargo hold?

Although it was a tiny plane that was barely half full and the turbulence wasn’t that bad, Dylan gripped his arm so tightly all the way there he left finger indents in his arm. He really didn’t like flying, which was a surprise – Roan had no idea he was afraid of flying. You’d think, after all this time, there’d be no surprises in their relationship, but there it was.

In the dinky airport, while Dylan was off buying a tea to calm himself, Roan put in a call to Jessica. He was deliberately forcing her hand by calling from Yakima, which was kind of underhanded, but he knew this might be the only way to go about it. He asked her if he could pay a visit to her father. She balked, like he suspected she would, but she asked for him to give her some time to talk to him first, and he agreed. But he requested a call back within the hour.

His next call was to Gordo, who gave him the name of his contact in thee North Yakima PD, Detective Jeremy Gambol. Roan decided to pay him a visit first, as he had no idea when Jessica would call him back. Because this was “cop stuff”, Dylan dropped him off before taking the rental car and driving off to a nearby strip mall.

Yakima was exactly as dreary as he remembered it. Too hot, the sky an unhealthy piss yellow from industrial effluvium and desert dust, and the air tasted like dirt and exhaust. There was something oppressive and depressing that he couldn’t shake, and he was so glad he didn’t live here. Maybe it was claustrophobia; he’d grown so accustomed to being close to water that being far from it seemed weird.

The North Yakima PD was housed in a squat cinderblock building that looked as friendly as a random punch to the face. Inside was no better, as the windows didn’t seem to let in enough light, and the fluorescents buzzing overhead gave everything a yellowish cast that mimicked the polluted sky outside.

The clerk he first encountered, a fireplug of a man whose hair was so short it was more of a suggestion than a reality, glared at him sullenly, even after he asked for Detective Gambol. Considering his friendly reception, he almost didn’t expect Gambol to show up. He kind of expected the clerk to tase him out of boredom and kick him out into the parking lot.

But Gambol did show up, and he asked, surprised, “You’re Roan McKichan? Wow, I thought you’d be bigger.”

“I should have worn heels,” he replied, shaking his hand. Gambol’s handshake was perfunctory and a little damp.

Gambol was reasonably tall, maybe six two, and about twenty five pounds overweight, most of which had settled in his gut, making him look like he was  pregnant with a bowling ball. His hair was a ring of gray around a dome shaped scalp, and his face seemed to be receding into a sea of weather-beaten wrinkles and folds. His brown eyes were afterthoughts sinking under crow’s feet, his thin lips disappearing into creases around his mouth. He was at least Gordo’s age but looked ten years older, in an ill fitting dark suit and a coffee stained overcoat that was inappropriate both for the outside and for this meagerly air conditioned station house. He looked a bit like Doctor Phil’s even more disreputable brother.

Gambol escorted him back to his office, which wasn’t so much a private office as just a separate inner office. There were eight desks in this unit, but only three were currently occupied, and only one detective bothered to look up from his computer as Roan had a seat at Gambol’s desk.

“Gordo said you were looking into the Melinda Hall case? That’s a tough way to make a living,” Gambol noted, taking a seat behind his desk.

“Tell me about it. You didn’t work the North Hill rapist case, did you?”

“I came in near the end. It was actually Campoli’s and Sawyer’s case, but there were so many victims and so much shit to wade through it became all hands on deck. You know how it is.”

“Paperwork city.” If they ever had a cop show that dealt realistically with paperwork, there’d be no time to cover the actual crime. CSI: File Cabinet.

Gambol nodded as he slid open a desk drawer and took out a manila folder, which he slapped in front of Roan. “All we have on Melinda Hall.”

“All?” he replied in disbelief. He picked it up, and confirmed it was even thinner than he thought. Inside were five double spaced pages, which he quickly thumbed through, looking for sign off dates. The latest he found was dated 1991. “Why does this stop dead in ‘91?”

“Case was closed. No need to hang on to it.”

Roan stared at him in bewilderment. “Closed? You never found the body.”

“No, but we never found anything else either. Shaw managed to dump her somewhere out of sight, actually remembering to clean up after himself. He was an idiot, but they get lucky sometimes.”

Roan glanced back down at the cold, typewritten pages that were chock full of nothing, and realized this was all that was left of the life and death of Melinda, boiled down to a foot note that had been stashed in the back of a file cabinet for decades.

Shaw may have been kind of dumb, but so were the cops. The only way he was caught was because his last victim bit him hard on the neck, hard enough to leave tooth marks on his neck, and the cops decided to leak that info to the press, hoping someone would recognize the guy with the bite on his throat. In the end, Shaw was turned in by his Sunday school teacher fiancée (really), because he couldn’t explain to her how he, a real estate agent, ended up with a teeth marks in his neck. That and he had a box full of mace canisters in his garage. She claimed, even after turning him in, that he was a “wonderful guy” and a “true gentleman”, and he was incapable of such violence. The teeth marks matched the teeth of the victim. If the victim hadn’t bit him, and if his suspicious fiancée hadn’t turned him in, would he have been caught? Roan suddenly realized that was a valid question.

He shook his head, refusing to grasp this. “She should be a cold case. Just because she was a probable victim doesn’t mean she was a definite victim. There’s no evidence tying her to Shaw.”

Gambol threw up his hands in a “what are you gonna do” gesture. “The Chief felt there was enough circumstantial evidence to close the case. It’s not like we have an abundance of personnel and money to devote to cold cases anyways. This case is history, McKichan. If there was ever any evidence, it’s long gone by now.”He leaned across the desk, trying on a chummy, “we’re all friends here” expression that made Roan’s skin crawl. “Look, you know as well as I do that, at best, she’s a bunch of scattered bones in the desert. Maybe you oughta give the daughter some peace of mind, tell her her mother’s body is buried out somewhere near Moses Lake. That way you ain’t takin’ her money for nothing, and she can move on with her life.”

It was difficult for him to swallow down a growl. “Her mother is missing. Someone killed her, and it may not have been Shaw. Did it cross anyone’s mind that you might have had a copycat?”

Now Gambol smirked in a deeply irritating way, sitting back in his chair and making it creak like a coffin lid. “We’re not dumb hicks, no matter what you Seattle cops think. There was no evidence to suggest a copycat.”

“There was no evidence, period. Didn’t that strike anyone as weird?”

Gambol’s thick brows suddenly furrowed. “You makin’ that noise?”

Shit, he was growling. Sometimes it was hard not to, especially when facing off with dumbasses.