Shift: Infected, #5, page 5
Finally, he saw the client coming out, talking to two other guys, all three with gear bags slung over their shoulders. “Grey Williams?” he asked, coming up. The three men stopped, but Holden only noticed one guy tense, the thinnest of the group and also the shortest, who still had wet hair. Holden hadn’t seen everybody’s faces, not with those helmets and visors and his generally lousy seats, but he didn’t recognize the little brunet guy at all.
“Who wants to know?” Grey asked casually, but there was a hint of menace in the tone.
“I’m Holden Krause. I work with Roan McKichan. I’m doing some follow-up, and I was wondering if I could talk to you?”
Williams’s tensing had been very subtle. Holden only realized it now as his shoulders slumped slightly and the murderous look in his eye gave way to a slightly goofy grin. “Oh, sure.” He looked at his companions, the wiry little brunet and the crew-cut blond with a knife blade of a face, and said, “See you guys tomorrow, okay?”
There were “okays” and “yes”—the brunet had a French accent—and as they left, the Frenchy was still giving him a suspicious glare, like he didn’t trust him. Once they were out of sight, Holden asked, “Was that French guy gonna hit me?”
Williams laughed. “Tank? Eh, he knows I’m up to something, so he’s become protective. I protect him on the ice, so he’s decided he’s gonna protect me off. Don’t know how, but I appreciate the thought.”
“Tank? I assume that’s a nickname.”
“Yeah. His name’s Thibault, but we just call him Tank ’cause he kinda is one.”
“I didn’t see a Thibault on the ice tonight.”
“’Cause that’s his first name. His last name’s Beauvais.”
Holden recalled where he’d seen that name. “Holy fuck, that guy was the goalie? I thought he was bigger than that.”
Williams genuinely chuckled. “They wear like eighty pounds of gear, man. If they were bigger than that, there’d be no net to shoot at.” After a moment’s pause, Williams asked, “So what d’ya need to know?”
“Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“Sure. There’s a bar down the street.”
And what a vaguely seedy bar it was. There was worse along the way—a strip joint and a sports bar (there were a lot of masculine addendums around the sports arena)—but this was a more traditional bar, a tiny dive with lots of dark wood and neon beer signs, and a jukebox playing a Tom Waits song, which seemed a little too on the nose. There was a tiny TV over the bar, but it was currently muted and seemed to be showing some kind of local weather report. The bartender, a busty woman with pink and bleached blonde raver kind of hair, greeted Williams as if she knew him, and a guy at the bar who looked like a professional drinker told him he played great Monday night. Williams thanked him politely before they disappeared to a small back table, where they were far from any of the boozy stragglers.
The busty raver came over to take their drink orders, and Holden ordered a scotch and soda while Williams just ordered a grapefruit juice with extra ice. As soon as she was gone, taking her tremendous ta-tas with her, Holden asked, “You don’t drink?”
“No, I do, but I’m on a training regimen right now, so I don’t.”
“Ah.” So he had some discipline. Probably a mark in his favor.
“So is Roan, uh—”
“Indisposed. I’ve been looking into Jasmine Hawley while he’s out. I do the street beat, and he handles the cops and all those other official types.”
“So you’re like a junior investigator or something?”
“Assistant investigator. Although I guess if you want to get technical, I’m more like his Huggy Bear.”
Williams gave him a blank look. “Teddy bear?”
“Huggy Bear. Oh, come on, Starsky and Hutch?”
Williams shook his head as the bartender came back, dropped off their drinks, and moved on. Holden sighed. “Thanks for making me feel old, Grey.”
“You don’t look old,” Williams offered, with almost heartbreaking innocence. In his notes, Roan had written in the margin of the case form “Gormless?” Holden now had an inkling what he was getting at.
“Thanks. What I needed to know was if Jasmine had a drug problem. I’ve heard conflicting testimony.”
“Huh. No. I mean, I don’t think so. Jamie didn’t seem the type to go for that shit, y’know?”
Holden nodded, but wasn’t ready to buy it. Although a lot of users were obvious—you could usually smell a serious meth head before you even saw them—not all were. And since Grey was in a different state, he had no way of knowing what Jasmine’s life was really like. “I know Jamie was living in an apartment at the time of her death. Where did her things go? Did her parents take them?”
That made Williams scoff loudly, although it was almost more of a cough than anything else. “Yeah, no. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her after she decided she was a woman. He was a woman. Anyways, I think her roommate put ’em in storage.”
“Roommate? You didn’t mention a roommate.”
“I didn’t? Oh shit, I guess I forgot. Um, yeah, Jamie was living with this guy, Brandon something or other. I think he might still be there.”
Holden nodded, grimacing, and wrote that down in his notebook. (He didn’t take notes like Roan took notes, but he agreed to at least take some when he had to.) He then had a sip of his scotch, which tasted a bit like off-brand mouthwash. He added the note “Don’t drink scotch in a dive bar” before asking, “This Brandon wasn’t a boyfriend, was he?”
Williams had been taking a sip of his pink juice then, and it looked like he almost choked on it as he hastily put the glass down. “No! I mean, I don’t think so. Jamie never mentioned it. And she complained a lot that she was alone, so if he was, I think she’d have said. Maybe.” He scowled down at the table, which had the echoes of many drink rings and the scars of past cigarettes etched into its top. If you read Braille, there might have been a dirty limerick here. “So does Roan have, like, a boyfriend or something?”
Weird question out of nowhere. “Yes. So you know he’s gay then?”
“Well, you’d be surprised how often they called him gay before mentioning he worked for the cops.”
“No, I probably wouldn’t. He always assumed he was an affirmative action pickup: gay, infected. A twofer.”
Williams nodded like that made a lot of sense. “I noticed he had some scars on his face. How’d he get those?”
“Honestly? No fucking idea. That’s not something he talks about. But I know he’s been shot a couple of times, and he once got a beer bottle broken across his face, so maybe he got a scar from that. That’s not even counting the amount of fights he’s been in.”
“Tough guy?”
“Like beef jerky left behind the radiator for weeks.”
Williams smirked and glanced around the bar. Holden sat back and asked, “What about you?”
Williams’s translucent blue eyes scudded back to him. “Me? Well, I got the one on my forehead from a hockey stick—”
“I’m not talking scars. I’m asking if you’re gay.”
That startled a short, sharp laugh from Grey. “Hell no. I got nothin’ against ’em, I mean, you a homo, be a homo, why should I give a shit? I was just curious.”
Holden pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering how he even started to address this. “Homo?”
“Is that a bad word?”
“Unless you, yourself, are a big ’mo, yes.”
“Oh. I didn’t know. Sorry.”
“It could have been worse,” he admitted. He was picking up a strange vibe from Grey. Not a “john-is-a-psycho-who-will-kill-you” vibe, but one of... dishonesty, maybe? Not overt, just something he wasn’t saying, little pieces of information he was leaving out. Perhaps not even deliberately. Maybe this guy had taken one too many shots to the head, or perhaps he popped steroids or some equivalent. Drugs could fuck you up in funny ways. “Well, thanks, I think that’s all—”
“I got an e-mail,” Williams suddenly said.
Holden raised an eyebrow at that. “And?”
“Somebody threatening me. They seemed to know I went to Roan. How, I don’t know. It’s not like I told people. Even Tank isn’t sure what I’m doing. Here, I printed it out, and I’ve been keeping it in my wallet ’cause I was afraid I’d lose it otherwise.” He got a battered Velcro wallet, partially covered with hockey tape, out of his pocket and opened it to slide out a crumpled piece of paper folded poorly into a rectangle. He tossed it out on the table, and Holden grabbed it, opened it, and smoothed it out.
It was a brief message, simple and to the point: “the fag can’t help you leave it or you’ll regret it.” The e-mail address it was from was just a bunch of letters and numbers jumbled together randomly, ending in home-dot-nu, suggesting a phony e-mail address, or at least one with a convoluted trace trail. The date indicated he got it yesterday. “You report this to the cops?”
Williams scoffed again, but this time grapefruit juice didn’t threaten to come out his nose. “No. Why would I?”
On a hunch, Holden asked, “You didn’t respond to this, did you?”
“Course I did. I told him to bring it if he was so fucking tough.”
Gormless. Gormless, gormless, gormless. “Are you fucking serious? A guy sends you what may be a death threat, and you tell him to bring it?”
He shrugged. “If he shows his face, I’ll beat the shit out of him. I’m not afraid.”
“Are you afraid of a gun? You can’t beat the shit out of him, tough guy, if he shoots you from a distance.” He made a noise of exasperation as he folded the note back up and shoved it in his pocket. Of all the nights to not be carrying the “clean” gun he bought from Burn. Not that he would ever grow accustomed to carrying a gun. He had his lucky knife, of course, but you knew what they said about guys who brought knives to gun fights.
“If they’re gonna kill me, they’re gonna kill me. Can’t worry about it.”
“Now I see why you hired Roan. You’re just perfect for him. You gotta car around here? I’ll walk you to it.”
“I don’t need babysitting.”
“Yes, you do, if you’re gonna do stupid things like this.”
Williams shrugged again and finished his grapefruit juice. Holden had to suppress the urge to reach across the table and slug him or just kick him under the table.
They paid and left and started walking back toward the arena. Williams had to walk ahead. He was leading the way, but Holden tried to keep an eye on the street. There weren’t too many cars or people out right now, which bothered him. More people meant more witnesses and less of an opportunity to try something, so maybe it was a positive. Then again, more people meant better ways to hide yourself and avoid being spotted until it was too late. Oh God, Roan’s paranoia was rubbing off on him.
“Since the cops killed Jamie, why would they take me on? I got a scout from the Predators checking me out. I die and it could go national if it’s a slow news day,” Williams argued. “National stories usually get solved.”
Before Holden could add some doubts to his reasoning, there was a screech of tires, sudden acceleration on a slightly slick road, and gunshots rang out in a muted, pathetic fashion, like someone was throwing firecrackers at them. Holden grabbed Williams and threw him down to the sidewalk as the parked car they were now behind had its windows blown out. In the blink of an eye, they were covered in safety glass.
“You were saying?” Holden shouted, as he heard the tires scream and the throaty rumble of a car engine as it sped away from the scene.
Gormless indeed.
6
Available
IT WAS really disturbing to know your doctor was lying to you, and yet not be able to prove it.
Doctors, much like lawyers and politicians and detectives, got very good at lying after a while. The tells other people had often disappeared after a certain amount of time spent perfecting it, doing it for a reason you believed was just (or at least explainable or profitable). So while he was relatively sure Rosenberg was lying to him about his viral cycle being over early, Roan couldn’t prove it. She also said the words he always dreaded—they were looking at some test results—but once he was awake, he was cleared to go home with Dylan. She just wanted to see him again soon, which is another thing you never wanted a doctor to say to you.
Considering he had just been through a cycle, Roan felt great. Of course it was probably all the drugs and not being conscious after the snapping of so many bones, tendons, and joints. Always helpful, that.
But, true to form, he was ravenous, so he asked Dylan if they could stop on the way home to get a bite to eat. He had no problem with that, and they stopped at Gracie’s, the all-night diner, which he suddenly remembered was the first place that he and Dylan actually had a conversation with each other. Did this make Gracie’s “their” place? He hoped not, because it was a classic greasy spoon, and as a vegetarian, there wasn’t a lot for Dylan here.
Roan was not a vegetarian and rather glad about it at the moment. He wolfed down two cheeseburgers and split a plate of fries with Dylan, who barely had any. He seemed troubled about something, but he wouldn’t say what. He just said he was tired, as he hadn’t been sleeping well since Roan went into the hospital. It made Roan feel horrible. Had he been worrying about him this whole time? Goddamn it. It would be so much easier if he were single; then he wouldn’t have to worry about someone worrying about him. But that would be dead boring too, so he wasn’t sure how to swing that.
Dylan told him that Holden had been looking into the case for him, and that he may have accidentally offended him. Roan asked him how, and Dylan, oddly, shrugged diffidently and said he wasn’t actually sure how, but he thought Holden thought he was being arrogant.
“Why?” Roan pressed again, dunking a greasy fry in runny ketchup. Yes, it was all very disgusting—and tasted so good it was hard to believe.
Dylan sighed wearily. He really didn’t want to tell him. “I suggested that perhaps he had feelings... for a certain client.”
“Doug?”
“Who’s Doug?”
“The pilot he ties up and smacks around.”
Dylan raised an eyebrow at that. “Do you think he has feelings for him? He did just go to Vegas with him.”
“Did he? I didn’t know that. But, no. I mean, I don’t know, but it seems unlikely. Holden enjoys his cynicism. Emotions would ruin his cool.”
“Oh, is that the problem?”
“What?”
“He’d rather want something he can’t have because if he actually had it, he’d have to do something about it.”
Roan looked over his shoulder, and then looked back at Dylan. “I think this conversation fell through a hole in the space-time continuum. What the hell are we talking about?”
Dylan smiled quietly, and Roan was glad to see it, even though he had no idea what they were discussing. Yes, it was about Holden, but he was sure there was a subtext he was missing. “I think I’m trying to figure out Holden,” Dylan said. “I’m not doing well.”
“What’s to figure out? He’s a control freak who’s afraid of losing control, so he uses a mix of charm and aloofness to always control the situation. And I should know, as I have control freak tendencies myself.”
“Tendencies?” Dylan repeated, giving him a sly grin. “Oh sweetheart, we are so beyond tendencies.”
“Quiet, you,” Roan mock threatened. Dylan just smiled at him, taunting him with his eyes. He knew Roan wasn’t going to do anything. Cheeky bastard.
As they headed home, Roan wondered why Dylan would feel the need to try and figure out Holden. It seemed needlessly frustrating. Roan would never understand Holden, and he didn’t even want to try.
It was late, and when they got home, he wondered if it was too late to call Holden or if he was off on a client call. Or maybe just sleeping for once, although he seemed to be a true night owl. It was probably a street kid habit that he never shook, but it would serve him well as a detective.
He was going to tell Dylan he needed to make a phone call, but as soon as they were in the door, Dylan grabbed him and gave him a long, deep kiss that he could feel all the way down to his toes. Wow. He pulled back in a kind of a daze and asked him, “What was that for?”
Dylan cupped the back of his neck, giving him a wistful, lazy smile as he rested his forehead against Roan’s. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve only been gone three days.”
“I still missed you,” Dylan said, and leaned in to kiss his neck. He then bit him, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to make Roan involuntarily growl.
He had no idea why a bite would do that to him, turn him on beyond all reason. It was probably very kinky and unsavory, but it seemed as unconscious as his growling. Roan grabbed Dylan and kissed him back just as hard as he’d been kissed when they came through the door.
You know what? Screw the phone call. The job could wait until later.
ONLY when the sound of the doorbell woke him up did he remember he had one.
Did anyone ever use the doorbell? Roan tried to remember the last time anyone had used it as he stumbled into the bathroom for a piss. The UPS guy? Yeah, that must have been it. Not many people bothered.
He glanced out the bathroom window to see if it was the UPS guy again, but all he saw was a silver Chevy Cavalier parked out front. It took a moment for him to remember that was Holden’s new (well, new-ish, it was several years old) car. He'd sold his old one, why, Roan didn’t know, but surely Holden had a reason. It was a sunny day. The rain had retreated for now, but there was a slightly opalescent cast to the air that suggested both cold and the impending return of showers. Figured.
Roan pulled on his boxers and glanced at the clock, surprised that it was almost noon. Dylan was still sleeping hard, suggesting he really needed the rest. Seeing him sprawled on the bed on his stomach, the blankets pooled around the small of his back, Roan remembered what a lucky guy he was. Not just because he had a hot young guy, but because he had a hot young guy who actually cared about him. He was damn lucky he had anyone who cared about him at all because—to be brutally honest—he could be insufferable at times. (At times? Was he being generous?)
