Infected: Freefall (35 page)

“He was hitting on you? Should I be jealous?” There was a hint of teasing in Dylan’s voice.

“Since when am I attracted to conceited dickheads? Oily closet-queen conceited dickheads?”

“Well, if you put it that way, I sound like an idiot.”

“No, you don’t. Actually, it’s cute that you’re jealous.”

“Cute?”

“Sexy cute.”

“Damn right.”

Roan’s mind had already started wandering as he considered how to approach Cooper, Weiss, and Cooper. If they knew he was an ex-cop, they’d shut him out instantly, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing he could do about it.

But didn’t he know someone who could help him get a foot in the door?

11

Beware

D
ENNIS
C
ALDERA
was perhaps the most dapper lawyer Roan had ever encountered. He always wore tailored suits, never too expensive, but cut so exquisitely it didn’t matter that they were far from Prada. He had prematurely silver hair that was cut and styled just so, adding to the air of dignity he seemed to naturally exude. If Roan thought about it, he couldn’t recall Dennis ever cursing, either in his office or at the courthouse. He was always aware of the image he was presenting. He was a class act, no ambulance chaser him; if you were represented by Dennis, you were being represented by the best. Judges generally liked him, and juries liked him even more, seeing a knowledgeable charmer with good taste and genteel manners.

So it always baffled Roan why Dennis decided to use him as his primary PI. He could have found someone more professional, someone who didn’t look like he’d just rolled out of bed half the time, someone who actually liked wearing a suit and tie, someone who could testify in court without the opposing attorney pointing out he was infected and snickering at his “special powers.” But this was where being the only openly gay private detective in the city helped him for once. Dennis liked to keep business within the “community” whenever possible, so Dennis either had to hire him or be a hypocrite. He could have been a hypocrite—most people were—but he decided to live by his code, and Roan’s bank account could thank him for that. He had to worry when another gay detective hung out his shingle.

Because he was such a class act, most other lawyers liked Dennis, at least in a professional capacity. He seemed to know people everywhere, which was why Roan called him. As soon as he said Cooper, Weiss, and Cooper, Dennis made a “hmm” noise, the kind of hmm noise he made when he really didn’t like something and didn’t know how to politely tell you you were a fucking idiot for even thinking about it. He then had to assure Dennis that he wasn’t in debt to the mob or something. He just needed some inside information on a client. That made Dennis “hmm” some more and then put him on hold. Roan was on hold long enough for him to take another pain pill. The pain wasn’t fading fast enough.

Roan was starting to feel slightly disconnected from his body when Dennis got back on. He said he knew a paralegal who worked for CWC, Taylor Sanchez, who was rather dissatisfied with his job. He’d probably be very happy to spill on any of CWC’s clients, although Dennis specifically asked him to not ask Taylor for anything illegal, as he was young, naïve, and bitter. Roan appreciated the warning. Too bad he intended to use it.

Roan called Taylor, got him, and told him that Dennis Caldera had recommended he talk to him. He put him on hold—Roan took that moment to scream in frustration and slam his phone down on the steering wheel—but when he came back, Taylor just told him he got off work at five and to meet him at the Wendy’s on Larson Street. Taylor had rung off before he could ask why.

Killing time, he got in contact with Fiona, only to discover her attempts to get in contact with Cherry had met a dead end. Cherry made regular visits to a very upscale spa and salon, but it turned out she hadn’t made an appointment for this week and hadn’t been in for a while. She was lying low since the death of Joel, presumably.

Holden had better luck. He said he was in at John’s office as a temp. This was a surprise to Roan, because he was pretty sure Holden didn’t know how to do any office chore and didn’t want to know, but Holden told him he had an “in” that would allow him to fake it, as long as he actually didn’t have to sit down at a desk and do actual work. The “in” was apparently an employee he knew “very well.” (Holy fuck, how many closet gays were there?) He said he was hoping to get something “incriminating” by the end of the day. Roan didn’t think it was possible to grab something so fast, but okay.

By the time he found the Wendy’s on Larson, he felt like he was floating. It was weird, but nice. He ordered a shake and waited at a front table for someone who looked like a paralegal to come in.

Taylor was one of those type-A guys who were so full of energy they seemed to vibrate even while standing still. You imagined if you gave him cocaine, he’d explode. He was a bland-looking guy in a bland suit-and-tie type of outfit, with a plain white button-down shirt and a dark tie that was a type of navy blue Roan, for some reason, always associated with airline pilots. His haircut was short and neat, probably a Supercuts special, and he was trying very hard to corral the type of pimples that could often plague a person well into their late twenties. His eyes were such a pale hazel they were almost a suggestion of a color rather than an actual color, and his wire-framed glasses made them look smaller, exacerbating the problem. He was all nerves as he came over to the table, but Roan couldn’t help but note that didn’t stop him from ordering a “Baconator.” And in spite of everything, Roan had to assure him he wasn’t a cop, and lifted up his shirt to prove he wasn’t wearing a wire. (Although with the perfection of directional mikes, you hardly needed to wear a body mike nowadays, but he wasn’t going to tell him that.) The funny thing was, no one seemed to notice or care. Considering the neighborhood, one man showing another man his nipples was probably one of the least strange things that had ever been done here.

Taylor went off for a bit on how he hated working for Cooper, Weiss, and Cooper, as he knew some of the clients were “shady” (only some?), and he was terrified the Feds were going to bust the office at any time. He wanted to get work at Dennis’s firm, but they had all the paralegals they needed, and it was a plum assignment anyways. Dennis had e-mailed him, though, asking him to hear Roan out, and he seemed to think that maybe helping him would give him an in with Dennis.

Roan told him he needed anything he could get on any legal or under-the-table transactions done by Kyle, John, or Joel Newberry in the past year (that was a guess). The name Newberry made Taylor sit ramrod straight in his plastic seat, as if he’d just received a cattle prod up the ass. Apparently everyone reacted that way when you brought the Newberrys into it. Roan watched sweat ooze out of Taylor’s pores, gathering on his forehead like the visible remnants of evil thoughts, and then Taylor put his cholesterol bomb down and excused himself from the table, ducking into the men’s room. Was that too much for him to attempt? Poor kid. He just wanted to get ahead, and some stranger was asking him to put his neck on the chopping block.

Someone at a nearby table had abandoned their newspaper, so Roan picked it up and glanced at it. He instantly wished he hadn’t.

A big cat had mauled someone in Bishop Park last night and killed another person, as well as a couple of pets (or at least it was blamed on the cat—investigation could render it an erroneous assumption). They’d already made connections between the Bowles killing and the German killing. He wondered briefly why Gordon hadn’t called him in on it, and then remembered he was in the hospital due to his heart attack. Son of a bitch, how had he forgotten that? What was fucking wrong with him lately?

He rubbed his eyes and realized they felt funny. Dry, and almost kind of hard, like they’d been replaced by stones, but when he pressed on them he could feel pressure, pain. It was hard to focus on the article, it was a little blurry (goddamn soy ink; sure, it was environmentally friendly, but it ran easily, and it smelled funny to his nose), but he could see at least one city councilman was calling on the chief of police to get the “goddamn cat menace” under control. As if that had never occurred to anyone; as if they were letting Grant run wild on purpose. (If it
was
Grant. It could have been another big cat. There were no details in the paper that actually swung it one way or another, and he knew the department wouldn’t release those kinds of details.)

Suddenly Taylor was back at the table, looking at him funny. “You okay, man?”

Roan wanted to ask him how he had managed to teleport from the bathroom to his chair, but then he realized the paper had fallen from his hands and was on the floor, and had probably fallen there a minute or so ago. For some reason, he only realized it in retrospect.

Those pills he’d taken were just Tylenol codeine he’d scored up in Canada, right? He thought they were. Maybe they were. Holy shit, what did he take? He could be such a fucking idiot sometimes.

He lied and said he was, and Taylor was too freaked by the idea of digging up dirt on the Newberrys to call him on it. He said he’d try, as long as Roan put in a good word for him to Dennis, and he agreed. The kid hinted around money, and Roan told him he’d be compensated, which was just the type of lawyer-speak he wanted to hear.

Roan had stuff to pursue, other leads. He needed to check in with Seb on both the Grant Kim case and Gordo, but suddenly right then he wanted to go home, so he went home. He blacked out for about half the drive, so how he got there in one piece he had no idea. At the last minute, he checked the bottle in the glove compartment: Tylenol codeine. Then what the fuck was going on?

Roan stumbled in the door, and had just collapsed on the couch when he heard Dylan coming down the stairs. “I didn’t expect you home so early,” he said. “But I’m glad you are, ’cause I was thinking I could make dinner tonight. But I have no idea what to—” He stopped suddenly and stared at him like he was a complete stranger. “Roan, what’s wrong?”

Roan looked up at him and didn’t know what to say. His head didn’t ache anymore, but it felt like it was filled with a heavy velvet fog. “I dunno. I had a headache, a migraine….” He forgot the word, so he just went on without it. “I took some Tylenol codeine for it. But there’s something wrong with it.” Was it his ears, or did his voice sound kind of thick? Slow. Wrong.

Dylan initially frowned—Roan had promised him he’d given up the pills, after all—but he quickly got past it. “What do you mean there’s something wrong? With the pills?”

“Yeah. They’re not what was supposed to be in the bottle. I think. I dunno. I don’t feel well.” He realized it was getting harder to breathe. There was a tightness in his chest, something he hadn’t felt since he was a kid and had walking pneumonia. His limbs felt heavy, and he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he could move them. If he could get mad, maybe he could bring the lion out, fight it back a bit, but he couldn’t imagine what would make him angry at this point. He was exhausted, and getting angry would require more energy than he had.

Dylan picked up the phone, and Roan heard him say, “Yes, I need an ambulance. I think my boyfriend’s been poisoned.”

Poisoned? That seemed overly dramatic. But Roan had to admit to himself that that might be the only word for it.

12

Can’t Exist

D
YLAN
wondered how often he had been in emergency rooms since he had been dating Roan. More than he had before he started seeing Roan? Yeah, he was pretty sure this pushed it over the amount he’d been in a hospital his entire life before Roan. Maybe this was the price you paid for hooking up with the hot, mysterious, dangerous guy. Was this agony worth it?

He answered questions for the cops while they worked on Roan somewhere behind the emergency room doors. Luckily the cops seemed to know Roan and didn’t consider Dylan a suspect (well, at least not yet). Before he passed out, Dylan got some information from Roan: he’d taken three pills (he held up three fingers), and the pill bottle was in the glove compartment (he nodded an affirmative to that). He then passed out while Dylan was on the phone with the 9-1-1 operator. He tried to wake Roan up—the only thing he was sure about was he had to keep him conscious—but save for getting his eyelids to briefly flicker, he couldn’t wake him up. His heart rate had dropped absurdly low by the time the paramedics showed up (he’d been hoping Dee would be one of the paramedics, but he wasn’t). The cops arrived to take the pill bottle into custody and check out the car, but the couple now questioning him—Walker, the somewhat good-looking, lanky black man, and Shale, the more compact, slightly masculine brunette woman—had given him a lift to the hospital. Dylan knew they at least knew of Roan, because as soon as Walker asked him if he knew of anyone who might want to hurt Roan, he rolled his eyes and admitted it might be easier to start listing the people who didn’t want to kill him. Shale snorted humorously at that. As far as Dylan could tell, it wasn’t meant in a mean way, just an ironic one.

He had no answers for them, but they didn’t seem to hold it against him. All he could say was what little Roan had told him when he got home. As far as he knew, no one had access to his car (although clearly someone did), and he was off on a case, so he had no idea where in town Roan might have been. He couldn’t even tell them about the case. He said Roan hadn’t told him, which was a lie. He knew he was working the Newberry case. But until that was relevant, he was going to play the dumb, clueless boyfriend. Being a bartender at Panic helped. As soon as he told them where he worked, they exchanged this look that Dylan recognized as “himbo.” They’d already written him off as a vacuous boy toy. Again, fine. He didn’t give a shit—they could think of him as Paris Hilton for all he fucking cared. He just wanted to know if Roan was going to pull through or not.

He thought he’d held himself together well. He’d wanted to cry, but he didn’t. He’d been swallowing back the tears since he saw Roan slumped on the couch, his eyes glassy and his lips perfectly bloodless. There was a time and a place for emotional displays, and he preferred to lose his shit when no one was around to see it.