Infected: Freefall (29 page)

The main picture showed a lanky Asian male, shirtless and drinking from a beer bong. The fact that Grant had chosen that as a picture to represent himself told him a lot about the guy. His last post was late Friday, and it read, in its entirety:
“Goin to a party 2-nite! It’s gonna kick AZZ! Mikey scored some sunshine and we’re gonna par-TAY bitchez! Hit me up if yer in the area, it’s gonna be AWEsome!”

“Sunshine?” Dylan asked, thinking about it for a moment. “That’s a type of E, isn’t it?”

“You’re the bartender at the gay club. You should know better than me.”

“You know, call me naïve, but I didn’t think anyone over the age of twelve actually wrote like that.”

“It’s a new age, especially when you’re trying desperately to seem hip and with it.” Roan scrolled down to the part of the page that had personal info and found Grant had listed his age as twenty-three. Roan knew better than to trust that. His birth certificate and driver’s license he’d believe. And who was “Mikey”?

“Roan,” Dylan said and pointed at a line on the screen. In the “Relationship” box, he’d chosen “It’s complicated.”

“Huh.” Maybe he was keeping his options open or didn’t want to share the fact that he had a girlfriend. Or maybe they’d broken up, and he’d never told Randi. Could have been a ton of reasons. But they were stoking some basic suspicions Roan had about Grant.

Grant seemed to be a bad candidate for cultist, which was a good thing. But on the other hand, he seemed to be a prime candidate for an accidental infected.

And one of those stupid assholes who unknowingly infected a lot of other people. Son of a bitch.

6

Cattle and the Creeping Things

A
LL
the pictures Grant had on his Facebook page seemed to involve him drinking or getting high, in various states of undress. Roan wasn’t sure if he was trying to say
“I’m a sexy good-time guy”
or
“I’m a complete fucking moron.”
He even had a tramp stamp, a tattoo on the small of his back (it was some sort of black pseudo-tribal design, which had probably been hip for five minutes when Grant was in high school). Randi hadn’t mentioned it, leading him to think she didn’t know about it. Did she never visit his Facebook page?

“Is this any help at all?” Dylan wondered.

Roan was forced to shrug. “Grant went to a party Friday night with some guy named Mikey, and probably dropped some E. How that leads to this morning’s bloodbath I have no idea. I mean, I can search for all parties on Friday night, but that will give me, what? Three or four dozen leads? Not a help.”

Dylan frowned in thought, staring through the picture of Grant pretending to drink the water out of a blue glass bong. “You know, I can ask at the bar, see if anyone knows of a guy named Mike who may peddle Ecstasy. I know a couple of circuit boys, and if anyone’s going to know the dealers, it’s going to be them.”

“This really isn’t your investigation.”

“I know, but if I can help, let me.”

Roan wasn’t going to argue with him. Gordo wouldn’t like it, but he didn’t need to know about it. He told him to go ahead, but not to worry about it if it went nowhere. Not that he needed to tell Dylan that. Mr. Daily Meditation, he went out of his way trying not to worry. How successful he was at it was up to Dylan to say, not him.

Eventually Dylan showed him what he had called him here for: the perfected version of his tiger sketch. It was beautiful, slinky and somewhat Asian in style, with simple, curving lines suggesting a muscular tiger stalking its prey. It was just a quick sketch Dylan had done while bored, something he did quite often (if he had to wait anywhere, from Starbucks to the DMV, he killed time drawing), but when Roan saw it, he knew he had to get it as a tattoo. He had his Paris one on his right arm, so why not get one on his left? Balance himself out. The funny thing was, he’d never been much for tattoos, and yet he felt compelled to add this, to burn it on his skin. The fact that it was a tiger didn’t escape his notice, and he wondered if it was yet another tribute to Paris. He’d probably cover his body with tributes to Paris if he could. No one should forget him, least of all him.

Dylan was surprised he wanted it as a tattoo, but was good with it. He asked for a chance to perfect it, make it more tattoo-like in size, and Roan had no problem with that. He knew that Jade, one of the artists over at Damaged Ink, where he’d got his Paris tattoo, would copy it, so the idea was Dylan was going to draw the finished version on Roan’s arm, leaving Jade to basically trace it. But she got paid whether she did it freehand or traced someone else’s work, so she didn’t mind. Did Dylan mind? If he did, he never said or indicated it in any other way.

The decision was made for Dylan to do the drawing tonight, before he went to work, if there was time. Right now Dylan was off to bikram yoga (Roan teased him about this, but the end result was Dylan had a body you could break concrete slabs on, and he didn’t have to partially morph into a cat to get it, either), and Roan supposed he should pretend to do some work, although he wasn’t sure where to go next. He didn’t have leads per se, just a collection of observations that suggested Randi was probably embarrassed by her brother.

He went to the snack shop, run by a couple of nice middle-aged ladies, and picked up both some fresh popcorn and some hand-dipped chocolates, as the migraine medication had left him ravenous (or so he thought; otherwise he had no idea why he just wanted to sit in his car and shove food in his piehole). But it occurred to him that he’d missed something. It nagged at him like a word just on the tip of his tongue that he just couldn’t remember. What had he missed?

Roan went back to the office and looked at Grant Kim’s Facebook page again. What the fuck had he missed? Only scanning the pictures did he see it: it was in Grant’s ignominious photo gallery. It was a picture posted last Wednesday, and it showed him tapping a pony keg. He was in front of a neon pink flamingo in a blue circle next to a big fake Tiki head and a framed Don Ho album on the wall. The only place he knew with tacky décor like that was the Oasis, a little split-room bar and nightclub near the campus of the university. He found Curtis’s page, but it was set to private, so all he could see was the bland picture on the front of his page. He printed it out, along with the least-embarrassing photo of Grant he could find. He was unable to find Tiffany’s page.

The Oasis was so empty it may as well have been closed, but from the way the wait staff was fussing with decorations on the wall, Roan figured things were dead until the students were out of class. The bartender was a gym bunny, a true steroid monstrosity, with arms as big as most people’s thighs and a neck as thick as a tree trunk. He was wearing a maroon T-shirt so tight it looked like any movement on his part would cause Hulk-like ripping. Since the guy wasn’t doing anything, Roan showed him the printed-out pics of Grant and Curtis and told him that these men were currently missing, and he had reason to believe they came here quite a bit.

The guy only vaguely recognized Grant, calling him
“that skinny Asian kid who seemed almost always drunk.”
According to the bartender, he seemed to always be with a bunch of people and always drinking on their dime. He couldn’t remember him ever paying for his own drink. As for Curtis, he had no idea. He just shook his head and summed up Curtis wonderfully well:
“He’s got one of those faces you always forget.”
He did. Roan wondered if he was going to be one of those guys who was unremarkable in life but remembered in death, if only because his passing was so brutal.

The kid (the bartender constantly called Grant “the kid”) was in a lot, maybe every other weekend, although he said he hadn’t been in that Friday or Saturday, not that he could recall. He did confirm he had been in Wednesday, but only because he remembered he was with a “hot blonde” he wasn’t sure was legal. (Tiffany? His mysterious girlfriend? Someone else entirely?) She apparently had a “sweet rack,” and this told Roan that the bartender thought he was a fellow straight guy and would appreciate his ogling of a woman’s breasts. Roan just stared at him and moved on to the next question.

There hadn’t been a party here Friday night, but he was sure there were a “million” in the area, since they were near a college campus. And as far as knowing any drug dealers named Mike, he told him, chuckling slightly, that about every other guy around here was named Mike. You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Mike.

Roan left him one of his business cards and asked him to call if Grant or the blonde turned up, or if he just remembered something that might be helpful. He studied his card for a very long time, then looked up at him with a furrowed brow. “You’re really looking for this guy? Shit, I thought maybe he owed you money or something.”

“No. I’m working with the police department on this investigation.” Not technically a lie.

“He’s really missing?”

Roan nodded, wondering if he was sitting on some information. “I wasn’t lying. I imagine it’ll be on the local news tonight.”

“Shit.” He looked down at his business card again, like it might tell him something new. “I’ve never known anyone who’s gone missing before.”

“First time for everything,” Roan replied lamely, mainly because he didn’t know what to say. What did you say to that? Congratulations? Aren’t you glad it wasn’t you? Nothing fit.

When he was leaving, the bartender said, “Hey… um, I don’t know if it helps, but… for a while he was going out with this girl, um, Marjean, she’s a student at the university. I think she is still.”

“Any last name?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know it.”

It was still a break—how many people were named Marjean?

The campus looked depressing, and Roan imagined that it still would even if it wasn’t downpouring. There was a beautiful, large oak tree in front of the campus quad, and he saw a gray squirrel on one of its lower branches, seemingly upset by the constant torrent. The funny thing was, Roan smelled it long before he saw it. Wet fur of any animal was very pungent, and it made his stomach do an uncertain twist. Did normal people smell that, or was it just him? When the squirrel sniffed him, it took off running up the tree. Typical. He wondered what he smelled like to animals, if the lion or the human scared them more.

He decided to bring out the whole bullshit offensive in the front office. Roan told the woman working there that he was with the police and that they were looking into the disappearance of Grant Kim. The woman, a matronly sort who looked like a housemother, struggled to recognize the name but didn’t quite get it until he showed her the picture. Then she didn’t seem all that surprised.

Here came some information. Grant had dropped out of college ahead of getting his ass booted, as he had missed so many classes during his first year none of the faculty teachers were sure what he looked like. He had a reputation on campus as a hard partier, a good-time guy, and as such was generally popular with the students. Although there had been one incident, recorded by the campus police, where he was cited for taking part in a large brawl in the parking lot. As it turned out, he may have been a victim and not an instigator, as the woman told Roan she could remember how covered in bruises he was. She also said she didn’t think he was much of a fighter.

As soon as he mentioned Marjean, she supplied the rest of the information: Marjean Hardaway, who didn’t live on campus but across the street in an apartment complex called Sunrise Plaza. She even gave him her apartment number: 316. Did he look that much like a cop? Well, he had put on his “cop voice,” the one that seemed to most effectively convey authority and a “don’t fuck with me” vibe. He thanked her and went to look for Marjean.

Roan didn’t know what he was expecting to find, but it probably wasn’t what he got. Sunrise Plaza was a small four-story apartment complex with a shabby air that probably didn’t matter to hard-up college students, and on the ground floor he passed a corkboard filled with kegger notices and homemade flyers for bands. Occasionally there was a notice about a roommate wanted, a lost pet, or something for sale, but not a lot.

He heard rap music coming from Marjean’s place before he got there. He didn’t recognize who it was: somebody in the top twenty. It occurred to him that the only rappers he could name by sound were Public Enemy (great), Sage Francis (great), Outkast (did they even count?), and Eminem (idiot). God, he was so fucking old.

He had to pound on the door, as knocking got no response. The door opened and the thudding, repetitive beats washed out all over him, as a young bleached-blonde woman leaned against the door drunkenly. “Yer not the pizza guy,” she slurred.

She was probably pretty, but right now it was hard to tell. Her face was swollen and reddish with what Dee had once referred to as the “Irish hangover glaze,” her eyes half-lidded and so bloodshot it was honestly difficult to say what color her eyes were (pale blue or gray, either/or). She had some smears of makeup on her face, but none in the spots they were supposed to be in, and she was wearing a man’s extra-large Stanford University sweatshirt and nothing else. It ended at mid-thigh, revealing pale legs with a slight inward curve to them and bruised knees, with a cat scratch (?) on her left calf and a faint dark bristle of unshaved legs. Her hair was a tangled rat’s nest, perched atop her head like an askew wig, and he thought he saw dried vomit in a small, clumped-together strand. She smelled like vomit, malt liquor, body odor, unwashed laundry, cigarettes, and crank, and Roan had to blink fast to keep his eyes from watering. She was twenty going on forty at a thousand miles an hour.

He identified himself as a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Grant Kim, and she stiffened. “You a cop?”

“No. Private investigator.” Being a cop held cachet with the school. Clearly it wouldn’t here.

Her posture eased a bit, which was dangerous, as he wasn’t sure she could stand up. She was leaning on the door so heavily he was surprised it hadn’t fallen all the way open. It took a moment, but the penny dropped. “Grant’s missing? Why?”