Infected: Shift (35 page)

But they would be visiting him later, as Dylan insisted it was the polite thing to do. So when he got home, he walked in to the delicious aroma of spicy cooking. “Goddamn, I hope that’s for me.”

“Sorry, but it’s for Holden. It’s a ‘Welcome home, sorry you got stabbed’ tamale pie,” Dylan replied, his voice wafting from the kitchen.

“Wow. Now that’s a specialized cookbook.”

“Very funny. Wanna drink, Krusty?”

“Beer me, bartender, and pour yourself one while we’re at it.”

“You bastard.” Dylan didn’t like being reminded he was a bartender at home. If Dyl could ever talk him into having a house party, he wouldn’t serve drinks.

Roan flopped down on the couch and closed his eyes, feeling both tired and irritated. He had to call the douche bag and get those student records. What was bothering him was the WAV file of Jordan’s last phone call to his dad—it sounded very real. Very confused, distressed, the voice of a teenager who had the sudden, terrible awareness that his best friend has been the psycho killer all along, and yet he knows if he lets on, he’s dead next. There was also that teenage boy need to be macho and cool even though he was shitting himself. You couldn’t fake that, no matter how good an actor you were.

It was very easy to believe Jordan had run away willingly, to escape his butt crack of a dad, but maybe something went wrong along the way. He hated Hatcher, but Jordan, chip off the old douche that he was, couldn’t help who he was born to.

“Tell me about it,” Dylan said, joining him on the sofa. He pressed a pale ale into Roan's hands and lay down on the couch so his head was on Roan’s thigh. Roan took a swig of the cold beer and then looked down at Dyl, who was looking up at him curiously.

“Tell you about what?”

“What’s bothering you. That little vein is standing out on your temple.”

“Is it?” He reached up and touched it, but he didn’t know why—he couldn’t actually feel it. “Ah fuck.”

He had no choice but to tell Dylan about the case, recounting how much he honestly hated Hatcher and how much Jordan was hardly different, but since he was a kid he felt bad for him. He stroked Dylan’s hair this entire time, unconsciously, although he was aware how soft it was. Dylan listened politely, as he always did; Roan sometimes wondered if he went away on a private meditation in his head while he was yammering away about something, but Roan didn’t know a way to ask that wouldn’t sound rude.

Finally, when Dylan spoke, he was still looking up at him curiously. “You dislike this guy enough to screw up your own investigation?”

Roan stared down at him, beer bottle halfway to his lips. “Huh?”

“Someone goes missing. What’s the first thing you do? The first thing you’ve done since I’ve known you.”

He had the sudden, sick feeling he’d stumbled into a trick question. “Um….”

“Search their house, or in this case, room. You look for physical clues to where they’ve gone. You haven’t done that yet.”

He could only nod. Dylan was perfectly correct. How many pills had he had today? “I’m afraid I’ll just start beating him as soon as I see his obscene Medina home.”

Dylan shook his head and frowned in disappointment. “Keep your eye on the prize, hon. Missing boy.”

“It’s hard to keep your eyes on the prize when you realize his garage is the size of your house, and he’s one of the least deserving people on the planet.”

Dylan sighed and patted him on the leg in a sympathetic manner. “Would it help if I came along and distracted him while you searched Jordan’s room?”

“He’s not gay. He may be homophobic.”

“So? I’m a bartender—I’m used to dealing with jerks, idiots, and morons. They’re not always drunk.”

He had a point. He had a couple, actually. Roan hated to think he could be as much of an idiot as his clients.

So they headed out, after Dylan took the tamale pies out of the oven (he’d cooked one for them; he figured Roan would want one too) and Roan took an emergency pill in hopes that it would keep him from losing his temper and smashing in Hatcher’s smug face. Was there a pill in the world capable of that? He supposed they’d find out.

The drive out to Hatcher’s place was actually enjoyable, which was extra surprising considering how long a drive it was. But Dylan distracted him with talk and fed him pieces of an apple, which they split (of course, Dylan almost always had an apple with him—Roan had decided he wasn’t going to ask). Dylan actually had some stuff still at D’Andra’s place, and hadn’t gone back to get it yet. Had he thought he'd made a mistake by leaving? Roan didn’t ask, and Dylan didn’t say, but there seemed to be some sort of implication in the fact that he had yet to leave the house (save to go to the store and get ingredients for tamale pies).

Roan lost all his breath as he saw Hatcher’s home for the first time, like he’d taken a two by four to the gut. A long, winding private road led up to what could have been a modified castle on Lake Washington, with its own private dock and stretch of beach. But it was all green, relentlessly green, from the sprawling golf course lawn between the house and the dock to the landscaping and well-tended “woods” behind the home, acting as a natural fence. It was a temple of wood and glass; the windows were huge, and while mostly coated to keep prying eyes out, it still sparkled like ice between wooden slats. The house was three stories, and Roan had no name for the architectural style—postmodern, perhaps modern, who the hell knew? The house lolled in the greenness like a colossal alien church, abrupt angles and steepled roofs giving way to glass window walls as empty as a bureaucrat’s soul. He had been wrong—his house wouldn’t make up Hatcher’s garage, it would make up Hatcher’s closet. Kitchen closet, not even bedroom. Just walking the grounds would be a workout for the dedicated athlete.

“Holy fucking Christ,” Dylan said upon seeing the glass castle. “Does the Pope live here?” That about said it all.

The private road ended before a broad drive that was cut off by a metal gate as decorative and high as a medieval portcullis. Roan found himself looking around for the enfilade shields, and when he told Dylan that, Dylan just stared at him until Roan was forced to ask, “What?”

“I’ve never heard anyone use that word in a sentence before. I think I’m stunned.”

“I did try out for
Jeopardy
, you know.”

He shook his head. “How can you possibly be an action hero and the world’s biggest geek at the same time? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m a complicated man.” He just about managed to say that with a straight face.

There was a speaker in the gate, and a voice demanded to know who they were. Roan identified himself—the voice was brusque, not Hatcher’s; it invoked a mental image of a ’roided-out shaved ape, perhaps newly sprung from some kind of zoological prison where he'd spent twenty years for killing a tank full of sharks with his bare hands—and said he had been hired by Hatcher and had to speak with him. There was a very long silence, a silence long enough for he and Dylan to battle each other by throwing out medieval terms they knew (Dylan opened with “hornwork,” Roan countered with “ballista”), and finally the guard ape grunted something that couldn’t be discerned, and the gate started automatically opening.

“Oh boy! We get to see the wizard,” Dylan said, with a ton of false cheer.

“Nuh-uh. I don’t care that we’re gay—no Wizard of Oz references or I’m pulling this car over.”

“Spoilsport. You just don’t want me to make any cowardly lion jokes.”

“Oh my god, I didn’t even think of that.” He hadn’t. He was just in full idiot mode today.

The lake glittered off to the right like a dream forever out of reach, the private dock an elongated L-shaped shadow in the water’s glare. Eventually, a deliberately planted scrim of tall, willowy trees reduced the view to shards of silver between the branches. The house loomed bigger and bigger, until the horizon was just its icy gleam.

Roan deliberately tried to mentally blank out, go away on a little vacation, so he didn’t notice too many details, so he didn’t get overwhelmed by fury. This was a different world, one that kind of baffled him. When people insisted there was no class system in America, they obviously hadn’t seen the rarefied air of these places, so out of reach for the average person that they never even crossed their radar unless they happened to catch a particularly egregious episode of
Cribs
. There were the very rich, and everyone else. Although the very rich were a small percentage, they had a disproportionate amount of power—they must have, otherwise why weren’t the proletariat storming those oh-so-pretty gates?

That was his own radical tendencies; he was aware of that. He may have once been a cop, but he still felt the urge to throw a garbage can through a Starbucks window at times. He struggled with the duality of keeping the peace and wanting to completely sabotage the system at the same time. No wonder he'd turned to pills.

They heard the harmonic splash of running water when they got out of the car, and they traced it to a copper sculpture that looked like an ancient cave wall, only with rainbows hidden in its burnished earth tone and water cascading down its flank. Dylan leaned in and whispered, very softly, “You can fight the man at another time. He’s your client, remember that.”

What gave him away? The tensing along his shoulder blades? His hands clenching into fists? His jaw tightening until he heard his own teeth creak under the strain?

The door opened before they reached it, and they were met by a man who seemed to ooze officiousness from every steam-treated pore. He was in his late twenties, five five and maybe a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, in a crisp gray suit so pale it was almost silver, a color like ash and regret. His shirt was as white as a new envelope and its folds just as sharp, his tie skinny and conservative navy, a Bluetooth asshole tag affixed to his right ear, his hair the hue of smoker’s teeth and cut super-short but in an acceptably mainstream fashion. His eyes were super-caffeinated and bright as lasers, blue diluted by clouds, his lips thin and almost bloodless, appropriate for a man who probably avoided smiling in case it cracked his entire facade.

“Mr. Hatcher will see you, but next time you should schedule an appointment,” the man said, his voice sharp and brittle and hiding the vaguest hint of a lisp. “He’s a very busy man.”

Roan opened his mouth to respond, but the man had already spun on his heel and retreated into the house, not requiring a response. He exchanged a look with Dylan, and whispered, “He has his own Smithers.”

“Don’t all megalomaniacs?”

“He’s gay. He should have better taste.”

Was it a stereotype that the high-powered, super-efficient aide de camp was a frustrated and vicious queen? Absolutely. But it came about for a good reason, and even Dylan didn’t doubt that this man was one of their tribe as they followed his bubble butt down the hall. That made Roan want to take him aside and smack the shit out of him for betraying his own people, but how he was betraying them wasn’t clear. He just wanted him to sabotage Hatcher in some way, or at the very least be a bit more out. He probably wasn’t; he probably pretended to be totally asexual for his asshole of a boss.

The house was all pale wood and light spilling in from multiple and sometimes improbable angles, sun painting everything like they were in a forest glade. Expensive furniture and knickknacks surrounded them but kept to a rather severe aesthetic, so the rooms looked half empty. Again, Roan tried not to focus on any of it.