Infected Freefall

by Andrea Speed

  Roan shrugged. “I guess we won’t know ’til we find them, will we?” But if he had to go by his instincts, whatever had happened in this house was even uglier than the scene downstairs.

  2

  After Hours

  ROAN smelled like bloody death all the way home.

  Dylan had fallen asleep and seemed so peaceful that he hated to even risk waking him up, so he used the downstairs shower. He was under the spray until the water turned ice cold, and he wasn’t sure the smell was completely out of his skin. He hoped it was psychosomatic.

  He was tired, too tired to trudge upstairs, so he flopped on the couch, naked and wet, and dragged the throw over him, settling his head against the armrest. He’d seen the message machine’s blinking light, but he studiously ignored it.

  Roan slept heavily but dreamed too much. In one, he was fighting an endless swarm of biting black insects that he could only see out of the corner of his eye but made his skin unbearably itchy. The next dream, he was inexplicably in a cage, but in his Human form, and he couldn’t get out. Occasionally people would walk by and he’d call out to them, but they’d ignore him. He could feel the lion wanting to come out and yet unable to. He didn’t get it.

  Frustration alone woke him up, his head pounding sickly in his temples, a drumbeat that only he could hear. He peeled himself off the sofa, not surprised but disappointed that only three hours had passed. It was still pouring outside, the light gray, and he felt like he was in a submarine that was slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

  He went downstairs to steal some boxers from the dryer, and he stared at his cage for a while, seeing it as the small prison it was, like a prop from a horror film. His head continued to pound, like he had an angry old man banging his fist against the inside of his skull, so he went back upstairs and rooted around in a first aid kit until he found some codeine. Yes, he had promised Dylan he was off the stuff except when he was post-change, but goddamn it, he felt like his fucking headaches were included in the compromise. He washed the pills down with a pale ale snagged from the fridge. Yeah, it was way too early to drink, but when he was woken up by a headache, all bets were off.

  He decided to actually listen to his messages while waiting for the pills to kick in. The first was from last night. Dee had called to report that he and Luke had gone to see “his movie” last night (Con’s play turned movie). They had enjoyed it (kind of), but Dee found it (quote) “equally hilarious and appalling” that “his” character (the character that Con had loosely based on Roan) was made straight for the film.

  Con’s ex-wife, Siobhan, had invited Roan along to the local premiere a month ago and thought he ought to come, but Roan declined, saying that he just couldn’t face it. And he couldn’t, not really—although one night curiosity got the better of him and he snuck out to a late-night showing alone (he told Dylan he was on a stakeout). The movie was okay, and he wasn’t really surprised by the changes made to Con’s original play: the title was now Requiem (which made no fucking sense in a story context, but what the hell), and the Church’s protection and knowledge of the abusive priest was watered down heavily, as was the family’s initial response to the abuse (they took the priest’s side and accused Con of making it up and being “wicked”; in the film, this response was limited to simple disbelief, not accusations that he was a liar). Yes, the cop character based on him was inexplicably made straight, removing any romantic subtext from scenes with Con’s character (whose sexuality was never mentioned—great straight-washing), and was also reduced to what was an extended cameo. In the play he was a major supporting character. In the film, he had maybe ten minutes’ screen time. The screenwriter had also created a pretty, shy neighbor girl, presumably a romantic interest for Connor. (Siobhan’s character in the play had been his best friend, also wearied by the constant oppression of her strict family, and while she was still in the film, her role was reduced as well.) If you hadn’t seen the play it was okay. If you’d seen the play, you knew it was crap.

  Still, the whole time, Roan kept imagining how chuffed Con would have been to see his play on the big screen, even in a highly bastardized form. Oh, he’d have gotten royally pissed at the filmmakers and probably would have slung beer bottles at their heads, but for about the length of the film he’d be thrilled to see his baby up there. Then he’d start kicking heads in. Roan would have helped.

  Siobhan had told him the studio didn’t want a “gay” film because they never made much money, and beyond that she felt it got “focus-grouped to death.” Roan didn’t know why they didn’t just write a rip-off script and film that instead; it probably would have been cheaper. But he didn’t get the entertainment industry and would never claim to.

  The next message was from Holden, sounding unusually upset. “Roan, as soon as you get this, I need you to come over. I don’t care what time it is. I have a problem and only you can handle it.”

  Roan was a little surprised he didn’t add, “Help me, Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope,” but that was probably too geeky for him. He called Holden but only got his machine, so he hung up without leaving a message. If he wasn’t in jail—and he hadn’t asked for bail money—something strange was going on. Since sleep was out of the question, he decided to go ahead and check it out.

  He’d been hoping there was more news from the crime scene, but obviously not. When Roan left, they’d tentatively identified the homeowner as Curtis Bowles, but that didn’t mean he was the victim or one of the missing roommates. He could have been subletting. And considering the condition of the corpse, it could be days or even weeks before a proper identification could be made. Poor bastard.

  He dressed hurriedly and ventured back out into the underwater world. He wished he’d stop having nightmares, especially about stupid shit. He probably needed to break down and see Doctor Rosenberg again. He could trust her not to turn him over to the first traveling freak show that came along.

  He called Fiona from the car, as he had ample time to do it, sitting at stoplights. He told her he’d be coming into the office today, but a bit later than usual. He left the message on her voice mail, as he was routed straight there. It wasn’t personal. Fiona hated answering her own phone. According to her, “It’s not like it’s ever anything good.” He couldn’t argue with that logic.

  The codeine and beer combo had really kicked in now, beating his headache back to a dull and ignorable roar, but he now felt a little hollow-eyed and light-headed, his hands and feet oddly warm. There was no way to win. He checked his eyes in the mirror and wondered if Holden would notice he was on pills again. Oh, fuck it. Holden had called him—he was just going to have to live with getting Roan in whatever shape he was when he answered.

  He had to knock twice. Well, the first time was a knock. After waiting a minute and getting no answer, he changed to pounding on the door. That got a response. “Hold your horses,” Holden snapped, his voice muffled by the door. He still sounded tired and cranky.

  When he finally opened the door, Roan told him, “You called. Don’t get pissy at me.”

  Holden stared at him with sleep-blurry eyes, his mussed sable hair sticking up in all directions. “Yeah, I did, but give me a minute. I was up ’til five thirty.” He turned away, dry-washing his face, leaving the door open, a tacit invitation inside. Roan took it, although not without some reservations.

  He felt awkward, and not only because he always felt awkward around Holden since he’d seen him almost completely transform. This time he also felt awkward because Holden was dressed only in red boxer briefs, riding so low on his hips you could see a fringe of dark pubic hair in the front and a good dose of ass crack in the back. Holden had no sense of modesty, so he wouldn’t actually care—you didn’t become a whore if you were actually shy about your body—but Roan found it too early in the day to face anyone half naked. Maybe he was getting prudish in his old age. What a horrible thought. Luckily, Holden padded into his small kitchen, and his counters hid him. “Want some coffee?”
>
  “No thanks. What’s going on?”

  Holden ran a hand through his hair, making it only slightly less messy, and nodded his head in the direction of his coffee table. “It’s right there.”

  Roan looked as Holden continued to futz with the espresso machine, and he finally deduced that he must have been referring to the folded-up newspaper. He sat down on the sofa and had a look.

  On the front page was a large PR photo of a smiling man in his fifties, with a full head of hair almost as white as his supernaturally blinding Chiclet teeth, highlighted by a tan just a few degrees shy of George Hamilton orange. Roan recognized him as Joel Newberry, of the Newberry clan, a locally famous family. They owned Channel Four and a classical station, sponsored a boat race every year, and had a controlling interest in the advertising firm Armstrong Anderson (if there was a conflict of interest in this, no one mentioned it). Scanning the article, it said that Joel, fifty-four, had died suddenly of a heart attack last night.

  Roan scanned the rest of the front page, in case he was missing something else, but the only other articles were on rising gas prices, local soldiers killed in Afghanistan, and a dustup at the city council over an offensive e-mail. He couldn’t imagine Holden being interested in any of this. “Is this about the dead rich guy?” he finally asked, giving up.

  Holden snorted. “Not just a dead rich guy. There’s no fucking way he died of a heart attack. I want to hire you to find out how he really died.”

  Roan scratched his head. Had the drugs kicked in extra hard, or had he actually heard that? “Umm, you knew Joel Newberry?”

  “He was Trevor,” he said, pouring himself a cup of espresso. “One of my regulars.”

  Okay, it was official: Roan was glad he was on drugs. “This guy? Trophy wife Newberry?”

  “He wasn’t gay. I’d say he was bi, although he himself never used the term. He would tell me he thought the Greeks had the right idea, that a man could have another man to fool around with and not be considered gay. After all, our sex drives are more compatible than it is between a male and a female.”

  “Sounds like justification from a weasel.”

  Holden shot him a harsh look as he came out into his living room and collapsed on his loveseat, somehow not spilling a drop of coffee. “Be that as it may, he told me himself the last time we met up that he thought someone was trying to kill him.”

  “And this wasn’t role-playing?”

  Holden gave him a surprisingly nasty look. “Are you going to let me tell my story, or would you rather be a wise-ass?”

  “I get a choice?” Before Holden could throw his coffee on him, he said, “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “Right. He told me last time we met—Thursday—that he thought someone was trying to kill him, and he thought it was someone in his family. There was some kind of business deal and he was holding out, mainly ’cause he didn’t like it. He was getting nervous, though. He said the family was freezing him out, and then something happened, although he didn’t specify what. He just said it was something that made him think he might be in real danger. He told me who he was, Roan, he gave me his real name—not that I hadn’t already figured it out, but hey, part of the hooker gig is playing dumb—and the number to his private line. He told me if I hadn’t heard from him in a week, to call the number. Three days later, he’s dead. Coincidence?”

  Oh, he could talk now? “Possibly. Guys, especially in their fifties, drop dead of heart attacks all the time. If he was paranoid, tension could have predisposed him to a cardiac incident.”

  “Don’t give me the party line. He was as healthy as an ox; he said he got his insurance-mandated physical a month ago and he was as healthy as I am. They said he had the heart of a twenty-five-year-old.”

  “Occasionally they get heart attacks too.”

  Holden glared at him.

  Roan threw up his hands. “Okay, fine, I’m just saying that he could have actually died of a heart attack, and it might be unconnected to what he told you. Isn’t it possible that he was indeed paranoid?”

  “No. I’ve known him for almost two years, Roan, and I knew what he was like. He wasn’t paranoid. Irresponsible, egotistical? Sure. Not paranoid and jumping at shadows. C’mon, Roan, how desperate does a guy have to be to trust his rent boy? Even you have to admit that’s an extreme level of desperation.”

  It was, but he wasn’t ready to acknowledge the point. “Two years? And his wife never caught on?”

  “Which one?”

  “Oh, right.” Joel seemed to swap trophy wives like they were last year’s Jaguars. “What number was he on?”

  “Of wives? Five. He only married Cherry four and a half months ago.”

  “Cherry,” Roan repeated, rolling his eyes. Now, it wasn’t anyone’s fault what their parents named them—look at him, he was Roan, a reddish-brown hue mainly associated with horses—but people who named their kids after fruit were just asking for a punch in the mouth. Add to that her name was now Cherry Newberry, and she sounded like she was a character in a children’s cartoon—or a porno. Funny how that worked. “How old is she?”

  “According to the paper, twenty four.”

  “Jesus.” Joel was old enough to have been her dad. That was just fucking creepy. He didn’t care if it was a straight relationship or a gay one: if you dated someone young enough to have been your child, you gave him a serious case of the heebie-jeebies. “You don’t think balancing a hot young wife and a studly male prostitute wasn’t too much for his ticker?”

  “Are you going to stop being an asshole?”

  “I don’t see that there’s much of a case here, Holden. I’d be lucky to get any access anywhere, and it seems rather pointless. A heart attack seems reasonable to his age and lifestyle. Doctors miss things. They’re human. Just because he was paranoid only meant he sensed there was something wrong. He just wasn’t looking in the right place.”

  Holden took a sip of his espresso and sighed heavily. “Would you please look into it for me?”

  “Is this gonna be a guilt thing?”

  “You bet your sweet ass it’s gonna be.”

  “Fuck. Fine. But if I get nowhere in five working days, you’ll have to find another chump.”

  “Oh come on. If I can get your lion sense tingling, you won’t let this go.”

  “If I hear one more superhero reference, I’m going to go on a shooting spree.”

  Holden levered himself up from the sofa, and this time he hitched up his shorts as he walked back to the kitchen. “The cops are still calling you Batman?”

  “All the fucking time. If someone else asks me how Robin is, I’m going to break their jaw.”

  Holden went to his fridge and rooted around in it for a minute. “Oh, come now. You can have fun with it. Besides, at least they’re not calling you Batgirl.”

  “I’ve gotten that too, thank you very much. But not to my face.”

  “Of course not to your face. You’re Batman.” When he turned around, Holden gave him his patented shit-eating grin. Roan gave him the finger in response.

  He returned to the loveseat, but before plopping down, he tossed Roan a small stack of money held together by a rubber band. It was rather cold. “You keep cash in your fridge?” He looked at the stack, rifled the edge, did a bit of math. A thousand dollars? Goddamn, he really should become a whore.

  “In a South Beach Diet sandwich box,” he acknowledged. “Have you ever had one of those damn things? They’re clearly made of recycled cardboard. Nobody is idiotic enough to want one, so I figured it was as theft-proof as a safe.”

  “You’re on the South Beach Diet? Isn’t that very three years ago?”

  “I don’t diet. I unfortunately had one at a friend’s place. But if you were a thief, would you grab it?”

  “God, no. Your secret’s safe with me.” He held up the stack of money and asked, “Are you sure you want to waste your money this way?”

  “It’s not a waste. Something’s rotten in Denmark, Yori
ck. I need you to find out what.”

  “I don’t want to be Yorick. He died.”

  Holden rolled his eyes. “It was Hamlet. Everybody died.”

  He had a point. Roan wondered who else was going to die before the intermission break.

  3

  Gravity Rides Everything

  EVEN through the codeine, Roan’s head was starting to throb again, and he was starting to see small dark flashes, pinpricks of negative light floating somewhere behind his eyeballs. Full-blown migraine. Even codeine and alcohol were sometimes helpless in the tide of pain.

  Roan went straight from Holden’s apartment to the emergency health care clinic he went to when he absolutely had to go somewhere. He knew a good deal of the staff from his cop days, and as a general rule of experience, he liked the emergency clinic doctors much better than other doctors. They never seemed to get freaked out by anything, and they were models of kind efficiency: they got you in, assessed you, got you out. The check-in nurse, a stout, middle-aged woman with sensibly cut silver hair and a brightly flowered scrub top, looked over her desk and said, “Hello, Roan. Migraine?”

  “I’m too predictable,” he admitted. “How are you doing, Kelly?”

  “Can’t complain. Take a seat, I’ll get you in as soon as I can.”

  It wasn’t crowded, maybe because it was still fairly early yet and the weather was so shitty. He slumped in one of the lobby chairs, head back and eyes closed, until a perky, young Japanese nurse he’d never seen before summoned him back. At the weigh-in station, she asked if he’d had any “symptoms”—she was referring to his infection status, not his migraines. He was able to tell her no, because the ability to transform out of viral sequence wasn’t a symptom of a health decline in any medical journal.

  He wasn’t surprised his blood pressure was low and told her he’d taken some painkillers in a fruitless attempt to circumvent the migraine. When she asked what, he fudged, telling her Tylenol codeine. Close enough.