Infected: Shift (14 page)

It was a fair cop, he supposed. But it wasn’t like he enjoyed being difficult….

Oh, who the hell was he kidding? Of course he enjoyed being difficult. He just wasn’t about to admit it.

Roan
woke up when Dylan slammed down the phone, cursing in Spanish. That was how you knew you’d really pissed him off—he cursed in Spanish. He didn’t do that often.

Roan turned over onto his stomach, snuggling into his pillow, and asked, keeping his eyes closed, “What’s wrong?”

“Those fucking press monkeys tracked Sheba down at work,” he exclaimed angrily, while putting a gentle hand on Roan's back. It was warm and comforting. “She told them she didn’t know you well enough to comment on you.”

“Nice of her,” he muttered into the pillow. It had been two days since he'd sent Holden after Brand, and he remained sequestered in his house, hoping to bore the press to death. Obviously he’d just sent them in another direction.

Dylan rubbed his back idly, then asked, “You okay? Sure you’re not mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you? I’m fine, Dyl. I should be ecstatic. No more cage.” Doctor Rosenberg had called him into her office yesterday. He had snuck out and met her at her office, and she told him the unbelievable: he no longer had a viral cycle. Being ready to transform all the time had seemingly kicked him out of it, and now he no longer had to worry about transforming without warning. So no more cage, no more worrying that the viral sequence would kick in sooner than he expected. He should have been thrilled. So why wasn’t he?

Maybe because his identity as King Freak was permanently cemented now. He was now a permanent outcast in a segment of society that should have accepted him to some degree. He’d always felt like an outsider, and now he knew why: he wasn’t them. Not really. No more than they were him. Maybe the gays would accept him; they were his last hope for any sense of unity. And he didn’t hold out much hope there, since he never got the homosexual agenda newsletter that every member of the religious right seemed to get.

Dylan rested his head on his back, between his shoulder blades, and said, “I know you should be happy, maybe, but you’re not.”

“I’m okay with it, really. I’m just still processing it.” Did he believe him? Probably not. Dylan was too perceptive. So before he could call him on it, he asked, “What time is it?”

“A bit after eleven.”

“What?” He finally lifted his head and opened his eyes, looking at the alarm clock as Dylan sat up, taking his weight off of him. Oh yes, he wasn’t lying—it was slightly less than an hour to noon. “Oh shit, I have to get going.”

“Looking for Brandon?”

“I’m outta leads. I’ve got to talk to Grey.”

“He’s back?”

“Told me yesterday they would be doing an afternoon skate at the Grind ice rink.”

Roan was on his feet, heading toward the bathroom in a half-dazed stumble, when he heard Dylan ask, “That’s an ice rink? I thought that was a skateboard place. Or a strip club.”

“I know. I didn’t believe it either, but apparently they do ice too.”

Roommate Brandon had turned into a huge pain in the ass. He had lived in the apartment he'd shared with Jasmine several months after the crime but, according to the landlord, moved out a few months ago, she wasn’t sure where. She also couldn’t describe him, beyond a “fragile, girly-looking Mexican boy” (Roan assumed she meant Hispanic). He gave his name as Brandon John Fallows, and the SSN matched… a teenage boy killed a little over thirty years ago in a car accident and buried in a cemetery in Burien. Now Fallows, who only seemed to pop into existence—after the thirty-year absence—a couple months before he'd moved in, seemed to cease to exist two weeks after moving out. An experienced identity thief, but beyond that was the troubling fact that Brandon—or whatever his name actually was—was obviously concealing his real identity, and no one did that without good reason. He’d now worked his way onto the bottom of the suspect list. What was he running from? Could it have gotten his roommate killed?

He had to get everything Grey knew about Brandon and try and find a lead from it. He wanted to do it in person, mainly because he wanted to make sure Grey didn’t lie to him, either intentionally or unintentionally.

This case had gotten more complicated than he’d expected. And to be honest, he was glad for the distraction right now.

Roan ended up parking in the back lot of Grind, which was almost as large a quadrant as the parking lot at the Seahawks stadium. Why? Was skating that popular in the Seattle area? Or had each player, crew member, and hanger-on driven here in their own car, but not before inviting a hundred random people to come watch them? There was a bus stop nearby, and he wondered if that was the reason.

As he walked the lot, he saw a bald guy (a white guy who shaved his head) in a denim jacket giving him the stink eye, like he recognized him as the guy who ran over his dog several times with a combine harvester. Roan gave him a sarcastic little wave, and the guy muttered something into a cell phone. Roan mimed a kiss, and the guy turned away. Yep, blowing a kiss at them usually did it.

There was a guy in a nylon jacket standing at the rear entrance of the rink, arms folded in the traditional security guard posture. But he was more lumpy than muscular, like the Falcons sweatshirt and the slacks he was wearing were full of mashed potatoes instead of prime beef. Not only was Roan sure he could take him, but that anyone over the age of thirteen had a fair shot at taking him. He was bald, but unlike the guy giving him the stink eye, it wasn’t by choice. “Help you?” he muttered, making it one word: hepyu.

“I’m Roan McKichan. I’m here to see Grey Williams.” Roan tried not to stare, but the guard’s head was almost perfectly egg shaped. He wanted to ask him if he’d ever had a hen sit on him by mistake.

“Uh huh.”

“Ask him. He knows who I am.”

With great reluctance, the man lifted a walkie-talkie to his mouth and said, “Ryan, there’s a guy named McKeen out here, says Grey knows him.”

“McKichan,” Roan corrected, but figured Grey would know who was meant. If he was lucky.

There was a burst of static over the walkie-talkie, Ryan saying something, but it was impossible to make out what he said. Even the Eggman scowled at his unit, like if he frowned hard enough he could have made sense of it.

After almost a minute, the door behind the Eggman cracked open, and he stepped aside as Grey stuck his head out. “Oh, hey, man. Thought that might be you.” He came out dressed in dark sweatpants and a sweatshirt, none of which had a Falcons logo. His hair was damp, and his skin was slightly flushed.

“I didn’t pull you off the ice, did I?”

“Oh, hell no. There was some kinda scheduling snafu, so we had to do our skate early. We’re packin’ up. In fact, I thought I was gonna hafta call you and reschedule.”

“They got something else going in here? It explains why the parking lot is so full.”

Grey looked around, as if noticing it for the first time, and shook his head. “Yeah, it’s some ice skating thing. There’s a buncha MILFs in the lobby.”

Ah, straight people. As he was wondering what he should say to that, the door opened again, and a tall, slender guy came out. “Hey, Grey, this the detective?”

“Oh, yeah. Roan, this is Scott Murray, our team captain. Scottie, Roan.”

Scott held out his hand, and his handshake was dry and firm but not over-the-top bone breaking. “Hi. Really wanted to meet you. You were really impressive taking on those Nazi fucks.”

“Thanks.” How many people had Grey shown the video to? Well, it probably wasn’t his fault—it was shown ad nauseum on television for about twenty-four hours, until a more interesting story hit the news cycle. And considering this was a nice distraction from the fact that Scott was fucking cute.

He had a round face that ended in a squared-off jaw that wasn’t heavy, with sleepy blue eyes that softened his rugged looks and short black hair that was actually reasonably stylish, not harsh. He could have been his ex-lover Connor’s half  brother, that’s how handsome he was, and Roan wanted to slap himself but didn’t dare. This wasn’t at all fair. The stereotype was hockey players had the best bodies—lean, hard—but the homeliest faces. Hadn’t Scott been given the memo? He was even better looking than Argent.

“Vancouver, right?” he asked.

Scott nodded. “Burnaby originally, but close enough. Accent gives it away, huh?”

“I’m very familiar with it.” How old was he? He looked barely twenty, but he had a bit of stubble suggesting that at least he was shaving age.

Now it seemed to be a “meet the team” party, as several other players dribbled out. In order: a tall, blond Russian called Sandy (who could have been a body double for Dolph Lundgren in that Rocky film), “Tank” Beauvais (who seemed oddly placid and yet gave off the vibe that he was a grenade waiting for his pin to be pulled), a guy named Richie whose nose had been broken so often it was now permanently crooked, and a guy with an astonishingly stereotypical New York accent named Jeff. (He’d learned from the Falcons own web page that there were only three American-born players on the team: Grey, Jeff, and somebody named Rozanski. Nearly all the rest of the team was from Canada, save for Sandy and a Finn named Henrik.) Roan felt like a trained monkey—were they expecting him to dance?

Another guy came out, but he was talking to the Eggman, and he was too old to be a player, deep in his mid-thirties. Also, he wasn’t wearing anything approximating workout gear, and Roan caught a glimpse of a silver watch that was reasonably expensive.

Not sure there was a subtle way to do this that Grey would catch, he told him bluntly, “I’m here to talk to you about the case. Should we go somewhere private?”

He shrugged. “No need. The guys know.”

“Okay.” Did they know he was looking into the murder of Grey’s best friend’s transsexual sister/brother? Maybe they honestly didn’t care. Most of the younger generation wasn’t as hung up on sexual roles as the older generation. “I need to know if you ever met Jamie’s roommate, Brandon Fallows.”

“No.”

“Know anything about him at all?”

He considered that, grimacing slightly. “Not really. Jamie hardly mentioned him in his letters.”

Roan stared at him blankly. “Letters? Jamie wrote you letters?”

“Yeah. For a while there I didn’t have an Internet connection, so that was easier.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that before? Can I see the letters?” He was trying very hard not to get mad at Grey, not in front of so many big teammates (only Tank was about his size—short, his ass!) but it was difficult. Did he really want to sabotage his own case? It was hard to believe anyone could be this dumb.

“I didn’t save ’em.” He scratched his head, then added, “There might be one or two, though. I packed up a whole buncha stuff. I’m not sure about everything I packed.”

“If you could check, I’d really appreciate it.”

Roan had no idea why, but his personal alarm bells started going off as soon as he heard the rumble of a truck engine. Or maybe it was just he was being stared at, and usually he knew when eyes were on him. He looked over his shoulder to see a flatbed white Ford pulling to a stop in a parking lane almost twenty feet away (well, there weren’t a lot of places left to park), and the engine was left running as eight men of various sizes and ages—mostly older teens, most burly—hopped out onto the pavement, some carrying pipes or bats. Roan instantly recognized the skinhead who’d been giving him the stink eye earlier.