Infected Freefall

by Andrea Speed

  If this was real, this didn’t belong to him. Whatever Santorelli said belonged to others.

  He left the bathroom and threw a five on the table as a tip, taking the napkin only because he knew if he left it she’d probably take it as personal rejection and not realize he was turning her down because she was the wrong gender. It was better for her self-esteem just to assume he was another bastard of a man who never called. But at least he’d also be remembered as a decent tipper.

  He called Murphy, and she was at the station, so he had to pay another visit to the cop shop. He still had his Vancouver Canucks hat from his earlier prison visit and pulled it on, tucking his hair up and lowering the brim, hoping no one recognized him as he made his way to homicide. It didn’t work, but really, did he expect it to? Some of the cops still insisted on greeting him as “Batman.” He gave them the finger, which only made them laugh.

  When he ducked into homicide, most of the detectives were too busy to notice him. He made his way along the cheap metal desks until he found Murphy’s, and then he slumped in the folding chair he found and dragged over from a currently empty desk. She acknowledged him with a look and a raised hand, but she was on the phone, so he had to wait until she was done talking before saying a word.

  He ended up waiting a little over a full minute before she returned the receiver to its cradle. “We found Holly Faraday’s car abandoned at the airport,” she informed him. “We’re still trying to figure out if she actually got on a plane or just wanted us to think that.”

  For some reason, he found that news vaguely depressing. Was he really hoping it would all turn out to be some curious misunderstanding? In what world did he dwell—Disneyland? “I’m not here about that. Do you know I’ve been hired to look into the Keith Turner disappearance?”

  She furrowed her brow and looked up at the ceiling, where some pencils hung like stalactites. This place had the acoustic tile drop ceiling that lent itself to perfect sharpened-pencil launching. Clutches of them bristled over every desk. “Umm, you’re gonna have to enlighten me….”

  “Ten years ago, grabbed out of Bishop Park?”

  “Oh! Shit, that one? That’s colder than a coal miner’s ass.”

  Rather than thank her for that newsflash, he told her about his pursuit of Roger Jorgenson’s former cellmates, and how Rocco, a temporary one, told him about Roland Chesney’s serial-killer bragging. Murphy listened, but with skepticism coloring her face. “Everybody makes shit up in prison. They want to look hard.”

  “I know, but this is really the only lead I have. Otherwise I have nothing.”

  “So why bring this to me?”

  “Because if he told the truth about only one of the bodies, this is your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”

  She glared at him, picking up a pen and tapping it on her desk in a manner that suggested she hoped it was actually an axe going into his head. “Bringing me more work, motherfucker? Do I look like I have nothing but free time?” But she sighed and turned toward her computer, muttering under her breath as she angrily typed on the keyboard.

  After a minute or so, she asked, “Do you think he could have been referring to the Sun Valley nuclear power station?”

  “Oh shit, I hadn’t even thought of that.” Sun Valley was a textbook case of what happened when nepotism and ineptness collided, sort of like the Bush administration on a much smaller scale. It was supposed to be a state-of-the-art nuclear facility, but the construction was beset by flaws from the start, and it was only about one-fifth built when the question of why it was so massively over budget and behind schedule was solved: the man in charge of the whole project—the brother-in-law of the local mayor—was embezzling money and really didn’t have the slightest idea what the fuck he was doing. The resulting scandal had the mayor ousted from office and the brother-in-law imprisoned and sued, although the court case had yet to be settled for either the mayor or his pseudo brother. Sun Valley remained unfinished and also tied up in a plethora of lawsuits.

  It was smack-dab in the middle of the desert. A couple of miles of it were technically government property, but beyond that it was free desert, and not a lot of people went out there due to the specter of a nuclear facility (never mind that it wasn’t finished and was never operational). It would be a good place to dump a body.

  Murphy looked at her computer screen and sighed once more. “I’ll make some phone calls, see if the cops out there have ever had a body turn up in the desert, but you know I can’t promise anything.”

  “I know, but I’d appreciate your help. Thanks.”

  She nodded, clicking a few more keys before glancing back at him. “You okay, Ro?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I dunno, you’ve seemed kinda… off lately. You’ve been gettin’ in fights left and right.”

  “I object to that. I haven’t been getting in fights, I’ve only been finishing them.”

  “Categorize it however you want, I’m worried about you.”

  He shrugged uncomfortably and stood up, hoping to put a quick end to this conversational cul-de-sac. “I’m okay, Murph, it’s just been a weird couple of days.”

  She gave him a sharp look, the kind that only a homicide detective could give you, one that told you in no uncertain terms that you were one hell of a shitty liar. “Maybe you should take it easy, huh? Back off for a bit? When’s the last time you had a vacation?”

  “Vacation? I don’t speak your crazy language, Earthling.”

  “Whatever, Gaylord.”

  He mock-beauty-queen-waved at her on his way out of homicide, and at the doorway, someone whose voice he didn’t recognize exclaimed, “Holy hand grenades, Batman!”

  “Eat me,” he snapped back, to a small chorus of strangely giddy chuckles. He knew they’d get over it eventually, but it couldn’t be soon enough for him.

  IN A way, it was a good thing it was a slow night, as it allowed Dylan to do a bit of surfing on his iPhone.

  He actually thought people who had iPhones needed help—what, there wasn’t a fireplace they could throw their hard-earned money into?—but Sheba got him one for his birthday, and only a truly ungrateful bastard would disparage or turn down a gift. As it turned out, he kind of liked his needless, pointless iPhone, and it made him feel bad.

  Still, he appreciated it during these slow nights at the club. He could do more than read books or have strangely tangential conversations with customers who still held out hope of getting in his pants. (Once, he’d had a conversation that started out about Will Ferrell films and ended up being about the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and for the life of him he had no idea when or where the topic started to diverge.)

  It also kept his mind off Roan, although it was Roan who was behind his iPhone surfing. What was he going to do with him? He knew Roan still loved Paris, and Dylan understood that completely. But it was hard to compete with a dead man. Also, it didn’t help that Roan was sinking deeper and deeper into depression and was really abusing the prescription drugs. He thought Dylan didn’t know, but of course he did. For a while after Jason died, he had had some problems with the pills himself, although not the heavy-duty painkillers that Roan seemed to favor. Dylan had no idea how he could function on so much Vicodin. (Oh sure, House made it look easy, but that was a television show. In real life, that stuff could knock the shit out of you.)

  The problem was he knew he couldn’t suggest therapy. Roan had had some negative therapy experiences and just didn’t want to hear about it anymore. But he was on the edge of something very catastrophic. Maybe he didn’t realize it, but it seemed like he was a couple of wrong turns away from a breakdown.

  Except Dylan worried that maybe he was being overdramatic. Roan was a grown man, and he’d survived well over thirty years of shit without him around. And it wasn’t like battling depression was new to him, as Roan admitted he’d been fighting it most of his life. He’d stood up and survived shit that would crush lesser people.

  But….

 
This was as frustrating as hell. He had to confront Roan and get this all out, even if it ended things between them. What did they have anyways? Dylan loved him, but he knew Roan probably wasn’t capable of loving him back right now. He was in some dark place that he couldn’t reach, where light didn’t touch. He wanted to help him, but he didn’t know how. Right now, he was considering sending some pages on depression and local therapists to Roan’s e-mail address, even though he knew that would just lead to a huge argument. Especially if he added, “I love you, you stupid son of a bitch, but I’m going to have you involuntarily committed if you don’t knock this shit off!”

  Things were so slow at Panic that Jessie gave him the go-ahead to leave early for the night, although it was just ten to two—not that early, in the big scheme of things. By the time he put on his shirt and his sweatshirt (worn in lieu of a coat) and put away his iPhone, it was two in the morning anyways.

  Dylan headed out, pulling out a cheap watch cap and putting it on. He hated what it did to his hair, but no customer from the club seemed to recognize him when he wore it. He cut through the back alley to the rear parking lot, and he found himself wondering if Roan would even be home. He’d been on a lot of stakeouts lately, but that wasn’t just it. He knew he’d gone out the other night after they technically went to bed. He knew Roan wasn’t cheating on him only because there was no way he had the emotional energy to do so. That meant he was getting obsessive about a case. It was the Keith Turner case, probably, and he couldn’t blame him, as it was hideous on several levels. How could that crime have never been solved? He was a little boy that got kidnapped; someone should have found something. Someone should have found that poor boy, no matter what condition he was in. But, as Roan would have reminded him, life and criminal investigations didn’t always work like that.

  He had pulled out his car keys and was just unlocking the door when a man asked, “Dylan Harlow?”

  Not his bar name, Toby, which made him instantly curious. “Yeah?” he asked, turning around. But in that split second he realized he’d made a huge mistake. He was so distracted he hadn’t been aware that two men had snuck up on him in a poorly lit parking lot, two men he didn’t know who still knew his name. He didn’t need Roan telling him that this was fucking bad.

  He saw silver flash in the dim lighting but only knew it was an aluminum baseball bat when it smashed into the side of his head. He felt a brief, dull burst of pain before everything faded to black.

  12

  Drinking From the Necks

  of the Ones You Love

  ON HIS way back home, Roan stopped by the all-vegetarian Indian restaurant that was a favorite of Dylan’s and got him take-out food of all his favorites. He only ate some naan bread and stopped by a fast-food place to get his red-meat fix. Dylan didn’t make him feel bad about it. He wasn’t an obnoxious vegetarian, but Roan wasn’t crazy about eating it in front of him.

  Once home, he put all of Dylan’s food in the fridge and checked his messages, none of which were important. With time to wait until Dylan was off shift, he started doing some research on the computer and watching some of the television that he had saved on his DVR but hadn’t seen yet. He didn’t know if it was the food or the drugs, but he started fighting to keep his eyes open. He thought he’d done a decent job, until the scream of the phone jolted him awake.

  He grabbed the handset, still half asleep, and muttered, “What?”

  “Roan?” It took him a moment to place the voice, but the Southern drawl should have been a dead giveaway. It was Shep. “Man, I’m sorry to call you about this.”

  He could hear the anguish in his voice, and it made Roan sit up. “What? Did something happen to Dee?”

  He sighed heavily into the phone, a rush of air like static. “No, not him. They just… man, Skiba and Lombardi just brought Dylan in.”

  Was he awake? He wasn’t dreaming, was he? No, Roan was pretty sure he was awake, even though he felt a bit muzzy. Images flashed by on the TV, but right now they seemed disconnected and made no sense at all. Coldness took root in his gut and started spreading outward. “Brought him in? For what?”

  “He was attacked in the parking lot of the club where he works, a coupla guys. The bouncer interrupted the attack, I guess, got one of the guys—”

  “Attack?” There were no good images in his head right now. Closing his eyes was an invitation to enter the nightmare factory. Something in his chest constricted, made it momentarily hard to breathe. “How badly is he hurt?”

  “Considering, not too bad for the moment. He’s stable. They took him for x-rays, but Lombardi told me he didn’t think he had a skull fracture—”

  Skull fracture. Christ. “Where are you?”

  “County General. Listen—”

  “I’ll be right there.” Shep was saying something else, but Roan had already hung up the phone and launched himself off the couch, the nightmares flickering in his head as he grabbed his shoes and headed out. Why would someone attack Dylan? It was senseless. He had no enemies!

  But Roan did. Roan knew he had a lot, and suddenly wondered if the connection had been made, if someone had gone after Dylan because they couldn’t get to him.

  Two possibilities asserted themselves: random gay bashing, which was known to occasionally happen in that area. Or someone trying to send a message to Roan by hurting his boyfriend.

  He drove to the hospital with nothing in his head but pure white noise, the sound of a rage so great that Roan knew he had little hope of containing it.

  THERE were times when Shep wondered why he had left Georgia.

  Oh sure, he knew exactly why he’d left—the humidity drove him fucking nuts and so did his parents and their William Faulkner-esque batshit family—but it was a safer question to ask than why he had ended up here. He’d had no real plans to. He was originally heading to California, but he heard from another paramedic that there were some good jobs farther up the coast, and he figured as long as it was a coast, well hell, why not? It was pretty here, the people generally laid back, the women hot, and the humidity was manageable. It was also nearly an entire continent away from his Aunt Claudine and Uncle Merle, so it was all good.

  Except, of course, no one mentioned the cat culture that had sprung up here. The church was the eye of the hurricane, of course, and once it was established, all the infected started drifting in. Fairly liberal social policies—at least when compared with most of the rest of the country—also contributed, and the rules began to shift a bit. He didn’t mind dealing with the infected—it was a disease, that’s all it was—but some of the nutty cultists were something else. According to them, it wasn’t a disease; it was a blessing, a divine birthright, some shit like that. And hey, his Great Uncle Walt was a fucking snake handler, so far be it from him to disparage or make fun of anyone’s religious choices. But worshipping a disease that put you in horrible pain before killing you very young seemed bizarre.

  Maybe it was a defense mechanism. Maybe, when you contracted something this inexplicable and this horrible, you had to come up with a reason for it beyond dumb luck. After all, this was the closest thing there had ever been to genuine lycanthropy, and God knew the Goths were in ecstasy over it. Until the reality of it set in.

  His Great Uncle Walt said the virus was God’s punishment on the wicked. Maybe the cat cult was a response to his and his kind. By asserting the divinity of it all, they were really just taking the piss out of the self-righteous, holier-than-thou assholes who claimed they had brought it on themselves. If that was the case, Shep couldn’t blame them; he might have done the same thing.

  He was thinking of all of this while looking over a brochure he’d found in the hospital’s waiting room. It looked slick, professional, but was recruiting material for the cat cult. It wasn’t sanctioned by the hospital, so obviously it had been planted there by true believers hoping to get their claws (no pun intended) in the newly diagnosed or simply the curious. He felt he should alert someone, let them know they shou
ld scour their waiting rooms to remove this kind of thing, but why? Was it any worse than the shit the Catholic League left behind, or the evangelicals and their pro-life or ex-gay conversion pamphlets? It was all aimed to take advantage of the confused and vulnerable; it all capitalized on weak moments and sudden doubts. Who was to say one was more harmful than another?

  The funny thing was, Shep knew when Roan had arrived before he even saw him. He wasn’t sure how exactly, except he got a feeling somewhere between his shoulder blades, and he turned to see that Roan had just come through the emergency entrance. Maybe that was just his weird magnetism at work.

  Now this was something his Grandmother Helly would have had a field day with. She was considered the family oddball (in his family? Ha!), and made her living telling fortunes. She wasn’t a con artist, or at least not a deliberate one; she honestly believed she had a gift. Whether she did or not was up for debate, but Shep always felt that she had helped expand his mind and learn to accept the eccentric and the different in life. According to Helly, some people had what she called “pull.” These were people with strong “auras,” people with possibly supernatural energy, and even if they didn’t know it themselves, she said that other people, especially “sensitives,” always knew who they were. She said you knew who they were the second they entered a room, and you couldn’t ignore them, no matter how hard you tried. They may seem ordinary in every respect, but around them you could feel something like power.

  She would have said that about Roan. Shep would have pointed out he was just one of those people with a strong personality and a forceful physical presence. No, he wasn’t built like a brick shithouse, like that bouncer who had stopped the attack and worked over one of the guys (that guy was a wall with legs), but he carried himself like a boxer, grace and lean muscle just waiting for the right moment to strike. You got the sense that if he wanted to hurt you, he could, and Shep knew that was true. Roan was a bit of a local legend by now, and some of the guys jokingly referred to him as “the pain fairy,” because when he got in a fight, it was usually the other guy you were scraping off the pavement. Dee told him they used to bet on how badly the other guy would be hurt. It wasn’t that he just whaled on them, he was all about surgical strikes, targeting weaknesses, and putting people down with a minimum of effort: kidney punches, throat strikes, broken noses, broken kneecaps. It seemed like a cop thing, but after having dealt with victims of police brutality and simply sloppy police dustups, Shep knew that wasn’t true. It was just a Roan thing. He was a guided missile of trouble, and woe betide the stupid dickhead who decided to take him on. He had learned most of his fighting techniques before he ever joined the force.