Shift: Infected, #5, page 24
While Dylan was getting ready for bed, Roan checked his e-mail, and saw that Hatcher had sent him one, saying “Rutherford.” Opening the e-mail, he saw there was nothing but a link. He clicked it, and after a very strange moment where something briefly flashed on his screen and died (had the bastard sent him a virus?), he suddenly found himself at what looked like a root directory.
Hatcher had sent him a hack. He was inside the Academy’s computer database.
It was as illegal as all hell, and while he was sure software “genius” Hatcher had a way of protecting him from a back trace, he still knew he had to get out of there as quickly as possible. He had broken into an occupied house, and he was just lucky they were heavy sleepers.
He sifted through the Brittneys, and when he found photos, he started comparing the most likely suspects to the girls he'd found in photos with Jordan on his Facebook page. Eventually he found her: Brittney Selfridge, a seventeen-year-old from Bellevue, a bottle blonde who wore way too much makeup with way too much glitter, and her face was so slender and narrow it seemed like her cheekbones were razorblades that could cut you on casual contact. She was trying very hard to look like a divorcee in her early thirties for some reason, and Roan couldn’t imagine that was popular among kids now.
He decided he’d try and bother the Selfridges tomorrow. He called Kevin and Murphy, but he got their answering machines. Could they both be out on a call? Still, he asked them both about Coyote (aka Roman Smith) and Lacey (aka Karen). He assumed they’d be intrigued enough by his vague message to call back as soon as possible.
He searched for information about Coyote’s murder, but there was almost nothing to find. He got one of those one-and-a-half-inch brief columns inside the local section of the newspaper, and all it described was a “transient” killed by “homicidal violence,” which could have been anything from a stabbing to a beating. The fact that Holden knew he had been strangled meant that he'd either heard about it from some of the boulevard boys (most likely) or he’d read or heard an account that he just couldn’t dig up online. Most likely it was the boys. Street people had their own network, a way of talking between themselves that usually wasn’t open to outsiders. This was why Holden was such a good point man for this info. He wasn’t a part of them anymore, but he used to be and was thought of fondly, and that was enough.
Once they were in bed, Dylan asked him why anyone would be into snuff, whether fake or real. That was a good question that Roan couldn’t answer, except some people just liked the idea of fucking a corpse and/or having the ultimate power of taking someone else’s life got their rocks off. Having actually killed people, Roan couldn’t imagine taking such pleasure in it. It wasn’t fun; it was an awful feeling. (Although—and he’d never admit it to anyone—there were times when it was a relief. Killing Switzer had felt like something that should have been done a long time ago, if not by him then by someone else. He had been the human equivalent of a mad dog.) But then again, Roan wasn’t a psychopath. Oh, he flirted with sociopath at times, but at least he wasn’t so far gone that he couldn’t see it.
He slept well, except for the time he woke up and found his heart racing around his chest like it was being chased by a bunch of skinheads. It actually left him panting and sweating, and he lay there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, wondering if this was a precursor to a heart attack. Was it a heart attack? He didn’t think so, because he wasn’t in pain. He was just a little short of breath, and waking up due to a racing heart was always a bit disconcerting. He was just glad he hadn’t woken up Dylan, because he might freak about it.
He got up, went into the bathroom, and after taking a piss, dug out the hidden stash of downers he had inside an old anticlotting agent bottle, and took a Valium to bring his heart rate down. Was this confirmation of what he’d already guessed? The rules of infecteds had stopped applying to him, and that meant he probably wasn’t going to die like one. Oh, maybe he might die midtransition, but he wasn’t going to slowly waste away like Paris. No, he might just die suddenly in his sleep, which should have been a relief but wasn’t. Because how fair was that to Dylan? To wake up one morning next to a corpse. He should have left him and stayed gone, for his sake. Roan just knew he was never going to be anything but a temporary bit of respite before the huge disappointment.
When he felt the drugs settle in and envelop him like a warm cloak, he went back to bed and snuggled next to Dylan, who smelled good (he almost always smelled good, and Roan had no idea how he did that), and wondered if there was any way he could make this, if not right, better. How did you prepare someone for your own eventual death? Paris had managed to do it pretty well, but it was long established that he wasn’t Paris. Paris had probably decided Dylan was perfect for him and set it all in motion, matchmaking after death. Again, terribly creepy, but also kind because Paris knew how lousy he was when he had no one to force him to go out in the world and interact with people. Dylan didn’t need help with that—he wasn’t that fucked up.
Roan must have fallen asleep, because before he had anything approaching a course of action, he found himself waking up to a ringing phone. He felt a great impulse to pick up the phone, say “I didn’t do it,” and hang up, but he should probably find out who it was before he did that. The call might be for Dylan.
As it turned out, it was Dropkick. With no preamble, she asked, “How did I know you’d get involved in the dead hookers case?”
“I’m very predictable.” He rubbed his eyes, and suddenly realized what she’d said. “Hookers? Plural? So Lacey is dead.”
“You mean Karen Ramirez? I thought you knew she was dead.”
“I knew she was missing, and I suspected she was dead, but I didn’t know for sure. How long?”
“How long what?” Now she sounded pissed off. Maybe because she had just accidentally leaked information.
“Has she been dead.”
There was a long silence, in which Roan felt psychic, because he knew she was considering hanging up on him. Finally she sighed, and said, “Do you want the coroner's report? I ain’t givin’ it to you.”
“I don’t want a report, just when she was found.” He knew when she was in this mood, he shouldn’t push his luck.
“Three days ago.”
So fairly recent. That wasn’t good. “Strangled like Smith?”
More pointed silence. “How did you know that?”
“I was talking with Holden, he—”
She groaned in disappointment. “Fox. I shoulda guessed.”
“It’s all over the street. They know about Roman.”
“And how the fuck do they know? That information wasn’t shared.”
“How the fuck do they know anything? Nine out of ten times they know when a drug bust is going down, and I assume vice isn’t advertising that. It’s just one of those weird things.”
“Why a hustler, Roan? This isn’t something I should be worried about, is it?”
“What? Holden’s an assistant investigator now. I thought you knew that.”
“And that bothers the hell out of me. They aren’t the most well-adjusted people in the world, you know.”
“Neither am I, so that works. Will you at least tell me if you have a suspect in either killing?”
“No suspects. How can there be? We can’t even get a decent timeline tracing their last known whereabouts.”
“What about Kevin? He got anything for you?”
“He tried, but all we have is that Smith may have been seen hustling near Antique Row about a day before his probable death, or he was seen hitchhiking out of the city near a freeway overpass. Both are impossible to confirm.”
This was where Holden could come in handy. Either no one knew for sure and the cops had heard two different stories, or someone knew and was deliberately not telling the cops. Holden wasn’t a cop, so he’d be in at a chance for the truth. And it would make sense that Smith might be at Antique Row as, in spite of its name, a lot of young male hustlers did business down there. “If I find anything out, I’ll let you know.”
“You better.” That almost sounded like a warning and probably was.
Downstairs, he found Dylan brewing tea and looking unusually snazzy in a pale-blue button-down shirt and neat black jeans that could have passed for classy. That’s when Roan remembered. “Oh yeah, you’re going to interview for Silver today.” Silver was an upscale restaurant/bar that had recently opened but also had a vacancy in its bartending staff.
Dylan looked almost embarrassed as he took a bite of his toast. “Yeah. Is it wrong that I might go work for hets just because they’re offering dental?”
“You know, I’m sure there’s a dirty joke somewhere, but I’m too tired to find it.”
Dylan grimaced and gave him a dirty look, but there wasn’t much anger behind it. “Thanks for the support, hon.”
“Hey, I’ll support you ’til you can’t stand anymore.”
That got a small, reluctant snicker out of Dylan. “You’re horrible, you know that?”
“Says it on my business card.”
He helped himself to toast and tea and flipped through the paper, scanning it, wondering how Karen’s death fell through the cracks. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe her body was found on a busy news day, and report of it just got bumped. It could happen.
After a moment, Dylan said hesitantly, “Did you read the thing on the new domestic partnership registry?”
“You mean the ‘no marriage for you, fags’ act? Yes, I did. Why?”
“Well, um, it says it covers hospital visitation, you know, meaning a doctor would have to let your partner see you like they were actually family or something. I was thinking maybe that would be something we should look into. I mean, we’ve been lucky so far, what with Dee’s friends and the fact that most of the hospitals know you already, but what happens if we run into some stickler for regulations who just doesn’t care who you are or who you know?”
“Like Nurse Ratched.”
“Exactly.” He paused briefly. “Do I add that to your movie reference list or your book reference list?”
“Could go either way. You pick.” He considered what Dylan was saying, and what he actually meant. What he meant was “what if they won’t let me see you if you’re hospitalized again?” and that was a concern. If he was going to be unfair to Dylan by possibly dying on him in his sleep, he owed him at least that much. “Does it say what dreary government office we trek to, to do this?”
“Umm, I don’t know. You want to do this?”
“I do. Find out where we go, and we’ll go.”
“How do you know it will be a dreary office building?”
“Because it’s an unwritten law that all government bureaus should be bleak hellscapes straight from Kafka’s or Orwell’s worst nightmares. And yes, that’s two for the literary reference pile.”
Dylan gave him a disarming, sweet grin, and Roan instantly felt bad for him. He should have had better taste in men than Roan. Talk about taking up with a lost cause.
Dylan left cheerful, which Roan figured was the least he could do for him, and only then did he put in a call to the Selfridges. He was prepared for a machine, but the mother picked up. (He knew from looking at Brittney’s school records her name was Elizabeth, but he wasn’t going to tip his hand so early on.) “Hello, Mrs. Selfridge? I’m Roan McKichan, a private detective, looking into the disappearance of Jordan Hatcher, and—”
She interrupted him with a disdainful snort. “Oh, she ran off with him, did she? I’m not surprised.”
“So Brittney’s gone?” He actually knew from the school records that she had missed two days in a row, unexcused. He’d guessed she was gone, but again, it was safer to pretend he was an idiot. People generally opened up more to idiots than to know-it-alls.
“Of course she’s gone. And good riddance. Mouthy little brat.”
Wow. Bad relationship there, huh? “How long has Brittney been gone?”
There was a noise like a drag off a cigarette before she said, “Three days, Mr. McKichan. After we got her out of her last shoplifting charge. And before you ask, no, we have no idea where she ran off to, and I can’t say I much care. I’m sure you think I’m a horrible mother, but ever since she turned sixteen, she’s been out of control. Drinking, drugs, shoplifting, and going out with boys she knows damn well her father and I won’t approve of. She’s trying to make us angry, and why? We give that ungrateful bitch everything, and she only gives us headaches.”
“Teens rebel. They’re good at that.”
“Perhaps, but she doesn’t have to be so obnoxious about it. The only thing she’s actually dedicated herself to over the past year is pissing us off. If only she’d work so hard at her studies.”
“Has she run off before?”
“Once, but that was just to her aunt’s in Santa Clara. She was packed up and sent home within a day. Kate can’t stand her anymore.”
“So she’s unlikely to have gone there again.” Not a question, but she seemed to take it as such.
“No, I’d have had an angry phone call by now if that was the case.”
“Can I have her name anyways?”
She sighed heavily, as if just talking to him was a burden. “Katherine Norris. But she’s not there, and there’s no way in hell she’d take that dirtbag boyfriend of hers down there.”
“You don’t like Jordan.”
“He’s an idiot. I know his father is supposedly some kind of genius, but it must not run in the family. That boy’s as dumb as a post and as close to white trash as you can get for a pampered rich boy.”
That just confirmed a suspicion on his part, and he wanted to say the father had an air of white trashiness about him too, but didn’t because it didn’t matter. “So you really don’t have any idea where they might have gone?”
“No, I do not, and you know what? I don’t care. I hope for your sake you find Jordan, but if you find Brittney, don’t bother letting us know.” And with that, she hung up on him.
Well then—two poor little rich kids who hated their families (and vice versa?). If that wasn’t a recipe for runaways, he didn’t know what was.
6
D Is for Dangerous
HOLDEN sat in one of the saddest motel rooms he had ever seen, and considering he was a hooker, that was saying something.
A tiny television that probably dated back to the ’80s provided the only light in the room, a flickering, inconstant illumination that scudded by in eerie silence. It looked like a game show. The whole room smelled like bong water, body odor, dust, and failure.
Holden sat in the small room’s only chair, as Javier sat on the bed in his underwear, black shorts that he preferred because they hid the stains and could go a couple days without being washed.
He was a bit on the short side, but slender and wiry, and he looked fragile and much younger than he was. He said he was seventeen, but he was actually twenty-four and starting to show it around the eyes. He usually shot drugs between his toes or in other visually inaccessible places. He had a few track marks on his legs that he usually hid with Band-Aids, but they had all fallen off onto the messy bedspread like pieces of sunburnt skin. He scratched his slightly sunken chest before picking up the bong he’d made out of an empty Coke can, and his red plastic lighter. He often shaved his chest, but even when he didn’t, the few hairs that grew in were wispy and almost pubic, gathering just beneath the hollow of his throat like a clutch of crabgrass.
Javier—real name Brody Walker—held the flame briefly to the tiny hole in the center of the can where the dried lump of pot sat and took a deep breath of smoke through the mouth of the can. He held it until his coughing became convulsive, and then it all came out in a single spasmic cough. He then held out the can, his brown eyes glazing over, and asked in a harsh voice, “Want some? This is good shit.”
Holden shook his head. “Nah, I don’t like to mix booze and pot. Gets me too fucked up.” He hadn’t been drinking, but he wasn’t interested in getting high right now. He was on a mission.
He was also on painkillers. Being stabbed in the stomach at least got you that, even though these were so mild he bet Roan could down the whole bottle and think they were Flintstone’s Vitamins.
Brody nodded, and Holden pretended not to notice the glass meth pipe sitting on the nightstand, right next to the potato chip bag and crumpled pack of Camels. No one became a hustler if they were overly concerned about their health, or had any other way of getting the money they needed. A good thing in Brody’s case, as right now he looked like a corpse waiting to happen, propped up on a messy motel bed. “Cool. More for me.”
“So Cowboy told me you’d been working gigs with Coyote.”
“Some, not a lot. I wasn’t with him on the last one.”
“I assume not. Do you know what it was?”
Brody took a swallow of his energy drink (wouldn’t that be a counter to the pot?), and had a potato chip before telling him, “Couldn’t do it. I’m not into group sex.”
“So it was a gang bang gig?” That tracked with what he'd seen on the snuff site.
“Yeah. Not my thing, even though it mighta been a way into movies.”
“So it was a porn gig?”
“Nah.” He paused, frowned. “Maybe. It was hard to say.” Holden didn’t know if the pot had made Brody’s natural inclination toward vagueness any worse than it already was. Even though he had been born and raised somewhere in Kansas (he refused to name the city, saying no one had heard of it anyway), he always spoke like English was a foreign language to him, like he wasn’t sure what half the words actually meant.
“Who was the gig for?”
“Dunno. Some guy he met on Craigslist.”
“Coyote had a Craigslist ad?”
He was taking another hit, so he simply nodded and didn’t speak until he let the smoke out. “Yeah. He said he was tired of doin’ it curbside, that there was more money doin’ it online.”
