Infected: Freefall (15 page)

Once he included desert places—buildings, businesses—with Sun in the name, the number of locations available exploded. How could he narrow this down? And why? He could be chasing nothing, a ghost of a lie. He was punching sand. And why? Because he’d been used by a client who had simply ended up killing her husband? Because he felt bad for Chris Spencer? Because he wanted to love Dylan but really wasn’t sure how? This was constructive; this was action. He was doing something concrete here. He felt useful, and not like some hollowed-out, pill-popping failure.

When he was on his second green-tea lemonade, he suddenly realized the waitress, a nineteen-year-old with a dragon tattoo on her forearm and short dark hair highlighted with magenta bangs, was flirting with him. He almost did a spit take when he realized she’d written her cell phone number on a napkin and slipped it to him. Oh god, the poor thing. He felt sorry for her. In a café half full of guys, she had to pick the one that was 1) gay and 2) infected. He’d both heard of and encountered bad taste in men in several forms, but this really took the overpriced pastry.

He ducked into the men’s room and splashed cool water on his face, which actually felt nice since the codeine was kicking in and making his face feel hot. He looked in the mirror and tried to see what other people saw when they looked at him. He couldn’t imagine it. He saw a man with funny-colored hair and eyes a little too green to be trusted, someone with ghostly pale scars on his lip and bisecting his eyebrow, both suggesting he was more trouble than he originally seemed. He saw someone he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Roan decided he was being an idiot. He was tired, and he could feel his unshakable enemy, depression, blooming in him like a pernicious flower that could never quite be ripped out. All the pills in the world didn’t make it go away.

If this was real, this didn’t belong to him. Whatever Santorelli said belonged to others.

He left the bathroom and threw a five on the table as a tip, taking the napkin only because he knew if he left it she’d probably take it as personal rejection and not realize he was turning her down because she was the wrong gender. It was better for her self-esteem just to assume he was another bastard of a man who never called. But at least he’d also be remembered as a decent tipper.

He called Murphy, and she was at the station, so he had to pay another visit to the cop shop. He still had his Vancouver Canucks hat from his earlier prison visit and pulled it on, tucking his hair up and lowering the brim, hoping no one recognized him as he made his way to homicide. It didn’t work, but really, did he expect it to? Some of the cops still insisted on greeting him as “Batman.” He gave them the finger, which only made them laugh.

When he ducked into homicide, most of the detectives were too busy to notice him. He made his way along the cheap metal desks until he found Murphy’s, and then he slumped in the folding chair he found and dragged over from a currently empty desk. She acknowledged him with a look and a raised hand, but she was on the phone, so he had to wait until she was done talking before saying a word.

He ended up waiting a little over a full minute before she returned the receiver to its cradle. “We found Holly Faraday’s car abandoned at the airport,” she informed him. “We’re still trying to figure out if she actually got on a plane or just wanted us to think that.”

For some reason, he found that news vaguely depressing. Was he really hoping it would all turn out to be some curious misunderstanding? In what world did he dwell—Disneyland? “I’m not here about that. Do you know I’ve been hired to look into the Keith Turner disappearance?”

She furrowed her brow and looked up at the ceiling, where some pencils hung like stalactites. This place had the acoustic tile drop ceiling that lent itself to perfect sharpened-pencil launching. Clutches of them bristled over every desk. “Umm, you’re gonna have to enlighten me….”

“Ten years ago, grabbed out of Bishop Park?”

“Oh! Shit, that one? That’s colder than a coal miner’s ass.”

Rather than thank her for that newsflash, he told her about his pursuit of Roger Jorgenson’s former cellmates, and how Rocco, a temporary one, told him about Roland Chesney’s serial-killer bragging. Murphy listened, but with skepticism coloring her face. “Everybody makes shit up in prison. They want to look hard.”

“I know, but this is really the only lead I have. Otherwise I have nothing.”

“So why bring this to me?”

“Because if he told the truth about only one of the bodies, this is your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

She glared at him, picking up a pen and tapping it on her desk in a manner that suggested she hoped it was actually an axe going into his head. “Bringing me more work, motherfucker? Do I look like I have nothing but free time?” But she sighed and turned toward her computer, muttering under her breath as she angrily typed on the keyboard.

After a minute or so, she asked, “Do you think he could have been referring to the Sun Valley nuclear power station?”

“Oh shit, I hadn’t even thought of that.” Sun Valley was a textbook case of what happened when nepotism and ineptness collided, sort of like the Bush administration on a much smaller scale. It was supposed to be a state-of-the-art nuclear facility, but the construction was beset by flaws from the start, and it was only about one-fifth built when the question of why it was so massively over budget and behind schedule was solved: the man in charge of the whole project—the brother-in-law of the local mayor—was embezzling money and really didn’t have the slightest idea what the fuck he was doing. The resulting scandal had the mayor ousted from office and the brother-in-law imprisoned and sued, although the court case had yet to be settled for either the mayor or his pseudo brother. Sun Valley remained unfinished and also tied up in a plethora of lawsuits.

It was smack-dab in the middle of the desert. A couple of miles of it were technically government property, but beyond that it was free desert, and not a lot of people went out there due to the specter of a nuclear facility (never mind that it wasn’t finished and was never operational). It would be a good place to dump a body.

Murphy looked at her computer screen and sighed once more. “I’ll make some phone calls, see if the cops out there have ever had a body turn up in the desert, but you know I can’t promise anything.”

“I know, but I’d appreciate your help. Thanks.”

She nodded, clicking a few more keys before glancing back at him. “You okay, Ro?”

“What do you mean?”

“I dunno, you’ve seemed kinda… off lately. You’ve been gettin’ in fights left and right.”

“I object to that. I haven’t been getting in fights, I’ve only been finishing them.”

“Categorize it however you want, I’m worried about you.”

He shrugged uncomfortably and stood up, hoping to put a quick end to this conversational cul-de-sac. “I’m okay, Murph, it’s just been a weird couple of days.”

She gave him a sharp look, the kind that only a homicide detective could give you, one that told you in no uncertain terms that you were one hell of a shitty liar. “Maybe you should take it easy, huh? Back off for a bit? When’s the last time you had a vacation?”

“Vacation? I don’t speak your crazy language, Earthling.”

“Whatever, Gaylord.”

He mock-beauty-queen-waved at her on his way out of homicide, and at the doorway, someone whose voice he didn’t recognize exclaimed, “Holy hand grenades, Batman!”

“Eat me,” he snapped back, to a small chorus of strangely giddy chuckles. He knew they’d get over it eventually, but it couldn’t be soon enough for him.

I
N
A
way, it was a good thing it was a slow night, as it allowed Dylan to do a bit of surfing on his iPhone.

He actually thought people who had iPhones needed help—what, there wasn’t a fireplace they could throw their hard-earned money into?—but Sheba got him one for his birthday, and only a truly ungrateful bastard would disparage or turn down a gift. As it turned out, he kind of liked his needless, pointless iPhone, and it made him feel bad.

Still, he appreciated it during these slow nights at the club. He could do more than read books or have strangely tangential conversations with customers who still held out hope of getting in his pants. (Once, he’d had a conversation that started out about Will Ferrell films and ended up being about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and for the life of him he had no idea when or where the topic started to diverge.)

It also kept his mind off Roan, although it was Roan who was behind his iPhone surfing. What was he going to do with him? He knew Roan still loved Paris, and Dylan understood that completely. But it was hard to compete with a dead man. Also, it didn’t help that Roan was sinking deeper and deeper into depression and was really abusing the prescription drugs. He thought Dylan didn’t know, but of course he did. For a while after Jason died, he had had some problems with the pills himself, although not the heavy-duty painkillers that Roan seemed to favor. Dylan had no idea how he could function on so much Vicodin. (Oh sure, House made it look easy, but that was a television show. In real life, that stuff could knock the shit out of you.)

The problem was he knew he couldn’t suggest therapy. Roan had had some negative therapy experiences and just didn’t want to hear about it anymore. But he was on the edge of something very catastrophic. Maybe he didn’t realize it, but it seemed like he was a couple of wrong turns away from a breakdown.

Except Dylan worried that maybe he was being overdramatic. Roan was a grown man, and he’d survived well over thirty years of shit without him around. And it wasn’t like battling depression was new to him, as Roan admitted he’d been fighting it most of his life. He’d stood up and survived shit that would crush lesser people.

But….

This was as frustrating as hell. He had to confront Roan and get this all out, even if it ended things between them. What did they have anyways? Dylan loved him, but he knew Roan probably wasn’t capable of loving him back right now. He was in some dark place that he couldn’t reach, where light didn’t touch. He wanted to help him, but he didn’t know how. Right now, he was considering sending some pages on depression and local therapists to Roan’s e-mail address, even though he knew that would just lead to a huge argument. Especially if he added,
“I love you, you stupid son of a bitch, but I’m going to have you involuntarily committed if you don’t knock this shit off!”

Things were so slow at Panic that Jessie gave him the go-ahead to leave early for the night, although it was just ten to two—not that early, in the big scheme of things. By the time he put on his shirt and his sweatshirt (worn in lieu of a coat) and put away his iPhone, it was two in the morning anyways.

Dylan headed out, pulling out a cheap watch cap and putting it on. He hated what it did to his hair, but no customer from the club seemed to recognize him when he wore it. He cut through the back alley to the rear parking lot, and he found himself wondering if Roan would even be home. He’d been on a lot of stakeouts lately, but that wasn’t just it. He knew he’d gone out the other night after they technically went to bed. He knew Roan wasn’t cheating on him only because there was no way he had the emotional energy to do so. That meant he was getting obsessive about a case. It was the Keith Turner case, probably, and he couldn’t blame him, as it was hideous on several levels. How could that crime have never been solved? He was a little boy that got kidnapped; someone should have found something. Someone should have found that poor boy, no matter what condition he was in. But, as Roan would have reminded him, life and criminal investigations didn’t always work like that.

He had pulled out his car keys and was just unlocking the door when a man asked, “Dylan Harlow?”

Not his bar name, Toby, which made him instantly curious. “Yeah?” he asked, turning around. But in that split second he realized he’d made a huge mistake. He was so distracted he hadn’t been aware that two men had snuck up on him in a poorly lit parking lot, two men he didn’t know who still knew his name. He didn’t need Roan telling him that this was fucking bad.

He saw silver flash in the dim lighting but only knew it was an aluminum baseball bat when it smashed into the side of his head. He felt a brief, dull burst of pain before everything faded to black.

12

Drinking From the Necks
of the Ones You Love

O
N
HIS
way back home, Roan stopped by the all-vegetarian Indian restaurant that was a favorite of Dylan’s and got him take-out food of all his favorites. He only ate some naan bread and stopped by a fast-food place to get his red-meat fix. Dylan didn’t make him feel bad about it. He wasn’t an obnoxious vegetarian, but Roan wasn’t crazy about eating it in front of him.

Once home, he put all of Dylan’s food in the fridge and checked his messages, none of which were important. With time to wait until Dylan was off shift, he started doing some research on the computer and watching some of the television that he had saved on his DVR but hadn’t seen yet. He didn’t know if it was the food or the drugs, but he started fighting to keep his eyes open. He thought he’d done a decent job, until the scream of the phone jolted him awake.

He grabbed the handset, still half asleep, and muttered, “What?”

“Roan?” It took him a moment to place the voice, but the Southern drawl should have been a dead giveaway. It was Shep. “Man, I’m sorry to call you about this.”

He could hear the anguish in his voice, and it made Roan sit up. “What? Did something happen to Dee?”

He sighed heavily into the phone, a rush of air like static. “No, not him. They just… man, Skiba and Lombardi just brought Dylan in.”

Was he awake? He wasn’t dreaming, was he? No, Roan was pretty sure he was awake, even though he felt a bit muzzy. Images flashed by on the TV, but right now they seemed disconnected and made no sense at all. Coldness took root in his gut and started spreading outward. “Brought him in? For what?”