Infected: Shift (66 page)

“Good,” Hatcher said, and hung up the phone.

The next day, the remainder of his fee and some extra money (expenses, presumably) was deposited into his account. This was a surprise, mainly because he had no idea Hatcher had his bank information.

A couple of days later, after the hard drive had made its way to the Feds (anonymously), he got an e-mail of a news report, a small thing that couldn’t have taken up more than two inches of column space. It was all about a man named Conrad Maddux dying in a car crash in Ecuador. Car crash his ass.

Now why had Hatcher sent this to him? A couple possibilities came to mind: proof that he kept his word, and that he had indeed gotten the last of the men connected to his son’s murder. Or it was a threat of some kind, to let him know that if he passed on that Hatcher had something to do with the now-defunct Tabu website (Holden had checked, although they both agreed that it had probably relaunched under another URL), he could end up as dead as Maddux. Roan was rather surprised he couldn’t even work up some anger about this. He just didn’t care. If Hatcher wanted to take his shot, he was welcome to try. Everyone had had one, why shouldn’t he?

Several truly weird things happened. The weirdest one was probably Tank and Fiona starting to date. Tank took Fiona out for a drink as a way of protecting her without her knowing he was, and as it turned out, they hit it off. Yes, he was off to the Bruins farm team soon, but Fi actually saw that as a plus, as she didn’t think she was up to a “proper relationship” right now. Weren’t goalies and dominatrices natural enemies in the wild? After all, he had a hundred pounds of protective gear, and she had a bullwhip. You’d think they were the opposite end of the spectrum. Still, they seemed to share a certain weirdness that made them almost perfect for each other.

Dylan sold three pictures in a row for good sums, but only one was bought by someone they knew (Scott). He was still unemployed, but his self-esteem was better.

The Falcons found out they were signing on to the domestic partnership registry and insisted on taking them out for a “bachelor party,” which was just an excuse to go barhopping and drink. Which was fine with him, so they went out with the same crew as before, and Roan got the impression that Jeff could drink Charles Bukowski under the table. Every now and again, Dylan would give him a look, a look that said “If I knew I was gonna get your crazyass friends too, I’d have dumped your ass a long time ago.” And he couldn’t really blame him, but weren’t these crazy jock assholes kind of fun? Or maybe he just liked not necessarily being the craziest guy in the room for a change.

Part of him expected to get arrested at any time, but he didn’t dwell on it, mainly because if he worried, Dylan would ask him what was up. The pills helped too.

The domestic partner registry thing was highly anticlimactic, although that was what he'd expected. It was just signing papers so if he keeled over, Dylan would get his stuff. (Oh, and he’d get Dylan’s stuff, but there was no way he was going to outlive Dylan, which he took as a perverse comfort.)

Hatcher himself left the country before it came out in the press that Jordan Hatcher’s body was one of those found in the fire, and thanks to a leaked video, the press began to connect Jordan to a porn scandal. It was huge news, even though they had random bits that didn’t quite fit together. It was probably a good thing Hatcher was in France, far away from the sensationalist and slightly wrong local coverage. Roan asked Holden if he'd leaked the video, and he swore he didn’t, but it was hard to believe. The porn/Jordan angle totally switched the line of investigation, and he had it on good authority that some people actually thought this was mob-related (yes, the mob was in porn. Not in Eastern Washington, but far be it from him to discourage such thinking). The more days went by, the more he knew it was unlikely they’d ever get nailed for it.

Roan got two new tattoos, mainly because he felt like it. If he could just cover every inch of his skin, would it hide the fur when he transformed? Would he be some weird tattooed lion? He liked to think so. Both were small—one was on his left arm and one was on his right. The first was simply a paintbrush with a ribbon reading “Dylan” on it, and the second was a biohazard symbol. Dylan was touched by the first but felt the second was far too derogatory. Why? He was a biohazard. His blood was toxic, full of a rotten virus that would break your bones and squeeze the life out of you more slowly than a boa constrictor. Much like his Leo astrological tattoo, he felt this was a way of warning the newbies how unclean he was.

Dylan didn’t find that funny.

At the end of the week, Dylan brought up the therapist again, but this time suggesting Roan might want to talk to someone because Dylan thought he was depressed. Really? Roan didn’t laugh in his face, but he wanted to. He’d been a depressive all his life, but he could handle it. He was just in a bad period right now. Maybe one of the people he ate at the snuff house disagreed with him. He thanked Dylan for his concern but told him he’d be okay, mainly because he couldn’t imagine what he would say to a therapist. “I really want my lion side to go away. Can you talk to it?”

Against his better judgment, as a sop to Dyl, he met with the reporter, Aidan Lambert, at a coffee shop downtown. He was one of those prematurely balding men, with curly black hair almost hiding the small crop circle at the back of his head, and retro geek-chic thick black frames that he could have ripped off of Elvis Costello in the ’70s. He had a pug nose, liquid brown eyes, and a scraggly, almost pubic goatee. He wasn’t handsome, so he went the opposite route, trying to play up the “quirky” angle that served some character actors so well in independent films but never quite played out the same way in real life. He looked like the love child of Abbie Hoffman and Steve Buscemi, and there was no way any good could come of that. To top it off, it was an unseasonably warm day, and here he was wearing layers and visibly sweating in them. (A button-down blue shirt with a gray hoodie and a worn brown leather jacket on top of it. He eventually shucked the jacket. He completed the outfit with khakis and red Converse sneakers that were probably part of the “quirky” aesthetic he was cultivating. This unleashed Roan’s inner flamer—he wanted to tell him “You’re trying way too hard, honey. You just look deranged,” but since he was wearing jeans, hiking boots, and a T-shirt with the words “Now Panic and Freak Out” on it—a gift from Paris, of course—he probably wasn’t qualified to give anyone fashion advice.) It was no guess at all to say Aidan was straight.

Right away, Roan told him that there were some questions he wouldn’t answer, and if he told him to move on, he’d better, or that was the end of the interview. To Aidan’s credit, he agreed, and he was almost a little gushy, as he was apparently aware he’d never done a proper interview. (He’d made an occasional statement to the media, but that was about it.) His oddly boyish enthusiasm didn’t make this any less weird.

Aidan stuck to the basics at first, and Roan decided to be diplomatic and pass on making any comment about the church, except when Aidan pointed out he’d had a long, contentious relationship with Eli Winters, he snapped, “It’s a fucking joke, but that doesn’t give any hater nutball the right to shoot the shit out of them.”

That made Aidan sit back and glance down at the micro-cassette recorder on the center of the table, as if afraid Roan’s language would cause it to spontaneously explode. Sadly, it didn’t.

Did this mean he couldn’t curse in this magazine? He mentally vowed to curse some more.

The interview went okay really. Aidan seemed to be aware there were boundaries he couldn’t get close to, but he eventually came to the topic Roan knew he would. “Are you aware of the videos of you on YouTube?”

Roan sipped his green tea lemonade as he played for time. Shit. “I’ve never posted any videos on YouTube.”

Aidan blinked at him, as if trying to figure out how to best continue. “The video of you punching out that lion went viral.”

“I’ve never punched out a lion.”

“It was you. It wasn’t the greatest quality video, but your hair color is pretty unmistakable, and a couple of cops came out and said it was you.”

He hadn’t heard that. Bastards. “I didn’t punch it out. It had been drugged. That was its final lunge before the drugs kicked in. It just happened I hit it and the drugs kicked in almost simultaneously.”

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

“I was there. I know what happened.”

Aidan consulted his notebook. It was an actual notebook, with chicken-scratch handwriting scrawled haphazardly across the pages in blue and black ink. It was charming in its way. “This was the same incident where you pulled the lion off a person who was being attacked, and kicked it hard enough to leave a very sizable dent in a parked car.”

“Is there a point to these questions?”

He hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with having to spit it out. “There are… rumors that you have abilities above normal Humans.”

“Bullshit.”

“But you do have a superior sense of smell, which has been well documented—”

“Smell. That’s different than what you’re implying. Hell, what are you implying?”

He shifted uneasily in his chair, and Roan was starting to smell his anxiety across the table. “Nothing really, I swear. It’s just that… while doing some research on you, I found some information that seems to indicate that you have some… gifts that aren’t average.”

His stomach sent out an extra pulse of acid. Luckily he was on Vicodin, and outer reactions were hard to muster. “Gifts? What, like the Archie McPhee inflatable toast that my secretary got me for my birthday?”

Aidan scowled at him. “No. You know what I mean.”

“So you’re a mind reader now? Awesome for you.”

“Why are you being hostile?”

“This isn’t hostile. Hostile would be throwing the table through the window. Which I’m considering if that emo bastard who bathed in Axe body spray walks by the table one more time. I swear, that stuff’s a chemical weapon. The UN should outlaw it already.”

Aidan looked like he was tempted by the topic shift, but firmly stayed on point. “There’s rumors of a security camera tape, circulated within the police department, that shows you doing something that would qualify as superhuman.”

Oh goddamn it, that convenience store tape? You’d think they’d have found something more interesting to watch by now. “There’s no such thing as superhuman, only well trained. Ask a stunt man or a karate teacher.”

Aidan looked just a little confused. “So you’re saying you’re just well trained?”

“There you go. As a virus child I have to keep myself in shape anyways, so I’m probably in better shape than most.”

Aidan nodded, but in a strangely reflexive way, like he was hardly paying attention to what Roan said. He tossed his notebook down on the table and shut off the recorder. “This is off the record, okay? Won’t go in the article. Why won’t you come out and admit that you’re different in more ways than the obvious ones?”

“Obvious ones?”

He let out a very slight scoff, almost a hiss through his teeth. “Your hair color, your eyes, your sense of smell, your age and your mental faculties in spite of the fact that you’re a virus child. The fact that you’re an ex-cop and private investigator that looks like you could’ve been in a punk band in the ’90s. None of this is normal.”

Punk band in the ’90s? “Is it the tattoos? And hey, what’s wrong with my eyes?”

“Nothing’s wrong with them! They’re gorgeous. Even I think so, and I don’t notice things like that, and I’m straight. I mean, they’re like cat’s eyes or something.” He then grimaced at his own words, and quickly added, “Not like that. I mean—”