by Andrea Speed
“As long as you’re not too full of yourself. Keep in mind he’s the best suspect in Thora’s and Eric’s murders.”
“I know, and if I think he’s that unstable, I’ll get out of there. I’m not a complete idiot, just a partial one.”
Roan gave him a warning look, and he didn’t like the idea of Par going off alone to interview a man who could be a cold-blooded, desperate killer, but he also knew if he made a big issue of it, Paris was likely to take offense and assume he only felt that way because Paris was sick. After all, he’d let Paris go off and use his charms on other persons of interest before, hadn’t he? And he had to admit that Par, as sick as he was, still had that deadly charm, the kind that could lure an otherwise law-abiding person into outrageous acts just to impress and get close to him. Paris was so utterly irresistible when he turned on the charm full blast that you could imagine the Pope beating the shit out of a bishop just to get next to him. If he’d been an actor, Paris easily could have been a movie star—he had charisma and sex appeal to burn. His illness hadn’t taken that away from him yet.
But it was risky—this guy could be a fucking lunatic. Par was a big, strong guy, but he wasn’t quite as strong as he used to be. “Why don’t you take Matt with you?”
Paris narrowed his eyes at him coldly. “Matt, as backup?”
“No, not as backup—come on, I’m not stupid either. He’ll know where Trey is, and he should be able to take you there. And on the way, you can ask him why the hell he stays in touch with a man he supposedly categorized as a self-loathing fairy, one he can’t be alone in a room with without a huge argument erupting.”
Paris’s look softened as he considered that. “Hey, yeah, that’s a good question.”
“You still have much to learn, young one.”
He poked him in the ribs. “Don’t get cocky. You bite it in the third reel.”
“Damn it. I thought I was better than that.”
“Should’ve given in to the dark side, like me. Believe me, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.” Paris then kissed him before putting the laptop on the coffee table and heading upstairs to change. Roan finished his toast and called Matt, telling him he needed to chauffeur Paris to wherever Trey was. Matt seemed a little surprised, but willing to do it, as Roan had expected. He also asked Matt about possible passwords, but none Matt speculated on panned out. He wondered aloud if she talked about putting out some memoirs, and Matt said it was all over her Facebook page that she was writing about her experiences in rehab. Apparently a few people were unhappy about that—and yes, Trey was included in that.
Tired of creepy ambience, Roan got up and hit the CD shuffle, since Paris had loaded up the player, and the sound switched over to Peeping Tom, which was still creepy, but in a totally different, noisier way. He decided to leave it, for fear that the next one up would be The Prodigy.
He got a glass of pineapple orange juice and perused Thora’s Facebook page, which he really should have done before. Her page was full of text, as she was a chatty sort. She only talked about her “memoirs” peripherally, saying it was very cathartic to get all of this “out of the closet”—what an unfortunate choice of words. Or was it deliberate? Was she going out of her way to taunt Trey and the others? He found some feedback left by people who had no accounts, or obviously fake ones, where they went off on her, saying no one would give a shit about her memoirs and she could be sued if she revealed something “slanderous,” as well as one message that said she should stop now or “she’d regret it,” and he found himself wondering which of her rehab mates those were. The usernames offered no real clues.
Paris came down the stairs looking incredible. He’d gone with the simple, classic look of the tight white T-shirt, the low-slung jeans that showed off a glimpse of his flat belly, and a black leather jacket. His hair was perfectly mussed, a calculated look that seemed natural and sexy. At the bottom of the staircase, he turned around slowly, holding his arms out to his sides. “Well, how do I look?”
Damn. “Like I want to rip your clothes off right this second. You’re gonna kill that kid. He’s going to explode, and they’re going to have to scrape his remains off the wall.”
“Yeesh, I was with you until you got descriptive.”
“Can’t help it. You make me poetic.”
“I thought I made you horny.”
“Same damn thing.” Roan went over to him and gave him a kiss, enjoying the warmth of his body, which felt wonderfully solid and strong with all the B-12 and caffeine in his veins. He still tasted of cinnamon.
Paris rubbed his forehead against his, running his hands through Roan’s hair, and said, “How about we come back here and exchange notes once we’re done with the interviews? Take a long lunch.”
“Only exchange notes?”
“No one said we can’t exchange notes in bed.”
That was true, and it sounded like something to look forward to. But, of course, it was just then that there was a knock on the door, totally killing the mood. Paris sighed and kissed him on the forehead before turning toward the door. “Wish me luck with Matt.”
“Good luck. Remember, if he starts running off at the mouth, you can always shove him out of the car.”
He snickered and opened the door. Matt stood there, dressed like a gay Johnny Cash—black T-shirt, black jeans—but when he saw Paris, he blinked for a moment. “Whoa. We’re not going to Panic, are we?”
“Only if that’s where Trey is.”
“Umm, no, he’s not. He wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like that.”
Interesting—yet another checkmark in the suspicious column for Trey. Paris must have thought that too, as he gave Roan a knowing look and then saluted sarcastically by way of goodbye. “See you later, chief.”
“Be careful,” he warned Paris, and flashed Matt a look that said the same thing, only he was quietly asking him to make sure Paris was careful. Matt must have gotten the message, as he looked a bit concerned, frowning slightly. Maybe he wasn’t confident that he could control Paris (which was a good bet, as no one really could, but he’d appreciate the attempt).
Before the door even shut, the phone rang, and after momentarily wondering if he should let it go to the machine, he picked it up. “Heya, Angus,” Murphy said.
“Hello yourself, Dropkick. What’s up?”
“Well, I got the coroner’s report on Thora Bishop.”
“Terrific. What was the cause of death?”
She sighed heavily, and he knew then it was bad news. “You’re really not going to like this.”
“Just hit me with it. A Scotsman can take anything.”
“I’m off the case.”
He hadn’t expected that. “What? Why?”
“Because she died of a speedball overdose. Her case has been reclassified a suicide.”
Son of a bitch.
11
Desire
PARIS vaguely recalled that Matt had neither a car nor a driver’s license last time they’d seen him, but like so much about him, that had changed too. His ride was an ’05 BMW 330i in decent shape, its color a shade that Paris knew the BMW wags had dubbed “mystic blue metallic,” because “blue” just wasn’t pretentious or gay enough.
The seats were butterscotch leatherette and actually fairly comfortable, although Matt grimaced sheepishly at having such a luxury car, since his last vehicle had been a ten-speed. He said it was his Aunt Steffy’s car that he’d simply bought off her fairly cheaply, since she had gotten a new car for her birthday. (She had apparently married extremely well.) Matt had also splurged on getting satellite radio for his car, so they had some good tunes to listen to on the ride into the city. Matt’s musical tastes were close to his own, so that was encouraging.
As soon as they got under way, Matt explained that Trey worked at the big Barnes & Noble on Madison Street, as he couldn’t quite hack working for Menham Lewis, the financial consultation firm that was currently run by Trey’s father, John Phan. Trey had an MBA in busine
ss administration, but he had confided to Matt that he found it all unbearably boring, and he hated it; he hated working for his father’s company. But rather than tell his father that, Trey told him he thought it was better if he got some experience “working with people,” which John thought was a good idea, and was the only reason why he allowed it. Trey was totally cowed by his father, a stern taskmaster who demanded both perfection and obedience, and Trey was too scared to go against him. His mother was no better, manipulative and bossy, and had arranged Trey’s engagement to the woman he barely knew.
Paris asked Matt why he still kept in touch with Trey, and Matt shrugged, embarrassed, and was careful not to look at him as he told him that although he couldn’t stand Trey much of the time, he kind of felt bad for him. Trey had almost no friends at all, although he apparently kept himself quite busy in X-rated gay chat rooms. “His handle is—get this—LongJadeDong,” Matt said, shaking his head. “And believe me, it’s not.”
Matt wasn’t lying, but it was clear he was conflicted. He probably still liked Trey a little bit and so held on, even though most of the affection had curdled and become anger and resentment instead. Paris asked if Trey had a temper, and Matt seemed reluctant to answer that. But finally he admitted that Trey did, that he tried so hard to repress every emotion he had that they often came out in sudden, explosive moments, where he broke furniture and shouted until he was hoarse, but Matt claimed he never got physically violent—not with him, at any rate. Paris believed that Trey had never gotten violent with him, but he sensed Matt was hiding something—Trey had gotten violent with someone, even if it was just a college bar fight. He was sure Roan was currently running a background check that might turn up Trey’s history of violence, if there was one. Paris was starting to think there was. Repression often led to ugly consequences; no good ever came out of it. How could it?
He asked Matt if he’d read Thora’s memoir, and he said he hadn’t, that he’d wanted to, but she’d said he’d have to wait to read it along with everyone else. Paris mentioned that he and Roan had seen the memoir, and Matt was not only surprised but very curious about it. Paris told him that the violent incident between him and Trey at the Laurel Springs Center had been recounted, which made Matt wince and stare resolutely at the Kia ahead of them. Paris also mentioned that she had described Matt as constantly mooning over a man he couldn’t have, which mortified Matt. Paris assured him it was okay, that Roan didn’t realize Thora meant Matt was mooning over Roan, and Matt was so horrified he almost swerved them into the oncoming lane.
Once he got hold of himself, Matt asked haltingly, “How... how did... did I...?”
“Don’t worry about it. Roan will never get it, because he honestly believes that he’s an inhuman freak pretty much unworthy of love. In fact, that’s pretty much all you need to know about Roan psychologically: he’s afraid he’s never quite good enough and that he’s not really human. He will never admit it, but it’s always kind of there. He might shrug off his bad childhood now, but no matter how jaded you are, that kind of shit leaves scars.”
Matt nodded in understanding, calming down. He wanted to know about Roan, know the stuff he couldn’t know otherwise, so he was happy to listen and forget about his own shame at being found out so easily. “There was always something about him that struck me as kinda sad, y’know? Like maybe under it all he was kinda depressed.”
“Well, he was diagnosed as a clinical depressive. But he seems to be bulling through it on his own, which probably isn’t recommended, but you know how stubborn he is.”
“He’s a depressive?” Matt seemed surprised by that. “I had no idea. He doesn’t seem like it. I mean... he doesn’t seem like any of that. He seems so confident, y’know. He seems more sure of himself than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“He’s confident in what he does and his ability to solve puzzles—he doesn’t seriously doubt himself there. And showing weakness is something he’s just not going to do. Not in public, at any rate. But he’s not as invincible as he seems.”
Matt accepted that, ruminating over it like it was some great truth of the universe. Finally, after a long moment, he asked, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m going to ask you a favor, and before you do it, I want you to know what you’re in for.”
His sidelong glance was really suspicious now. “What kinda favor?”
Paris took a deep breath before continuing. If Ro knew what he had just said to Matt, he’d probably get so mad he’d lion out, but he probably would never know. (Well, not until Paris was dead and didn’t have to worry about it.) “You know as well as anybody that I don’t have a lot of time left.” The baldness of the statement made Matt wince, but what could Paris do? He’d already accepted the fact of life that he was going to die—it wasn’t his fault if other people weren’t quite ready to deal with it. “When I’m gone, I want you to help make sure Roan doesn’t retreat from the world and stay in his damn house moping like a sullen bear in a cave. Annoy the shit out of him, tempt him with work, get him out there—I honestly don’t care what you do, just make sure it works.”
He’d baffled the poor boy; Matt looked stricken, like he wasn’t sure what to say. Paris felt like he should take a picture, because Roan would never believe he had made Matt speechless, no matter how briefly. Finally, Matt said, “I... I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Just annoy the shit out of him and don’t give up on him. I’m asking friends to do it, because I know he’s going to try and withdraw from the world. He’s been hurt a lot, and it’s just what he does when he’s hurt. He shuts down.”
“He wasn’t that way when he was shot.”
“That was physical pain. He’s almost immune to physical pain at this point. It’s emotional pain that kills him.” He remembered, before they got married, Roan finally breaking down and telling him about Connor. See, Paris always knew Ro must have had a really bad relationship in his background, but he could have never guessed that Roan’s boyfriend had gone off and killed himself. Talk about a drama queen. But hey, playwright, maybe that made a certain amount of sense.
That solved the mystery of the locked lower desk drawer in Ro’s office as well. Apparently there were mementos of his relationship with Con that Roan couldn’t quite get rid of, including the last script Con had completed before his death via train (which was very Anna Karenina, but again, he couldn’t say that without seeming both callous and incredibly bitchy), with a dedication that Con had written on the cover page, reading: “To the most beautiful man I’ve ever known. Love always.”
The play was titled God’s Country and was a semi-autobiographical tale about a fucked-up family that gets caught up in the Catholic Church’s sex scandals, which sounded really depressing and pretty much was. As soon as Paris read it, he instantly spotted a character who was clearly Roan. He was Ian, the wife’s laconic cop brother, a rare beacon of sense in a chaotic sea and probably the most sympathetic and adult character of the bunch. It was basically a huge downer (then again, a cheerful play about alcoholism, abuse, and pedophilia would have been jarring, to say the least), but it wasn’t a badly written story. As far as Paris could tell—and if he was honest, he was no arbiter of this—Con wasn’t a bad writer. According to Ro, the play was currently running off-off-Broadway and doing pretty well for itself, as death, especially a rather dramatic and tragic one, could be good for an artistic career. Ro knew this because all profits from Connor’s work were automatically split between him and Siobhan, Connor’s ex-wife, as stipulated in his will. Roan didn’t touch the money, he didn’t want it, but it hadn’t been very much... so far. But he’d heard from Siobhan that a gay filmmaker was interested in doing a film version of God’s Country, and if so, it could bring the pair of them a sizable chunk of change. Roan saw this as “blood money” and didn’t want it, which Paris thought certified him as crazy. Okay, maybe their breakup had precipitated Connor’s suicide, but Ro had to know he wasn’t responsible for it, t
hat it was the impulsive action of a man he himself had categorized as self-destructive. Come on—movie money! Shit, if it was him, he’d already be pricing hot tubs.
Okay, it wasn’t his ex-boyfriend, and it was really insensitive for him to think that way and he knew it. Paris was actually a little embarrassed at his own inherent bitchiness toward Connor, a man he’d never met and only knew from photographs. It was easy to see what Ro had seen in him, as he was attractive and had laser-blue eyes that looked both sharp and haunted. But Paris felt an unaccustomed sting of jealousy, as Ro had clearly loved him, even though Ro had left him because he couldn’t live with him. Paris was just used to causing jealousy, being the man whore that he was, not being on the other side of it. It was kind of weird, actually, especially since the man he briefly felt some ill will toward had been long dead, and before that Ro had left him anyway. But it was clear that just the thought of Connor still hurt Ro, and Paris hated that. It was no comfort to think his death would hurt Ro even more.
Paris told Matt to drop him off and get lost in the parking lot of the Target next door, because if Trey saw Matt, he imagined that the jig would be up. Matt was worried about him being alone with Trey, but Paris assured him that he didn’t think Trey would try anything in such a public place, and if there was any problem, he’d call Matt’s cell phone. Matt seemed uncertain about it, but everything Paris had told him about Roan had thrown him off, and he didn’t have the will to be difficult at this moment.
The Barnes & Noble wasn’t busy yet, although there were a few people wandering around the clean, well-stocked shelves, and most of them seemed to wander toward the Starbucks that shared a space with the shop and filled the air with a very specific coffee and pastry scent. Although this was the biggest bookshop he’d seen in some time, it did occur to him that Roan would hate this place—there was something very sterile about it, commercially clean and acceptable, homogenized and prepackaged for your convenience. Roan liked his bookstores slightly grotty and sloppy, clearly used, temples to books that barely limped through the publishing process and had almost no hope of ever getting on anyone’s best-seller list. Roan seemed to embrace his outsider aesthetic as ferociously as most people rushed to embrace their insider status. Still, Paris thought he might buy Ro a book here, a gift he would appreciate, and it really wouldn’t be too difficult to find him one, as he wasn’t too picky about his books outside of certain genres. (For instance, he knew Roan hated lawyer thriller genre books—oh dear lord, Grisham could set him off on an hour-long rant.) Paris browsed while watching Trey out of the corner of his eye. He was one of two clerks at the checkout counters, currently ringing up an Oprah’s Book Club selection for a woman who was quite rudely having a conversation on her cell.