Infected: Shift

by Andrea Speed

  “This is insane,” he blurted, too confused to worry about offending her.

  But she just nodded. “Isn’t it? I don’t get it at all. Medically, this is a first. But then again, Roan has been a medical oddity since I first started seeing him. He’s fairly atypical, unique. If I actually introduced these findings to the world at large, he’d be an instant celebrity in medical circles overnight. But I don’t want to see him as an animal in a freak show any more than he wants to see that happen.”

  He was sure there was something strange about that statement, but he couldn’t quite decide what. “You’ve never told anyone about him?”

  “Oh, I have. I’ve written papers about Patient X—as I call him—and shared it with a few colleagues, but most think it’s my attempt at fiction. They don’t believe he could exist, that a medical oddity this extreme is even possible. But that’s what they said about the virus when it first appeared, so what the hell?”

  Dylan just sat there in the chair, wondering if he was going to wake up at home on the sofa, where he must have fallen asleep trying to decide if he should cut his latest canvas in half or set it on fire. This couldn’t actually be happening, could it? “Is, um, there any chance the virus will mutate further?”

  She did something you never wanted to see a doctor do: she shrugged. “I wouldn’t think so, but I didn’t think it could mutate further to begin with, so who knows?”

  He scratched his head, wondering what the appropriate response was here. Surely throwing a chair through the window was out of bounds, but the fact that he felt like crying made about as much sense. “Why, um, why did you ask me here?”

  “Because I’m gonna get him out of his coma tonight, and I want you to lie with me that his cycle came to a sudden end. Then, once he’s had a day to prove that he won’t change, I’m gonna call him back in here and tell him the truth. You don’t have to participate in that. I’m sure it won’t be pretty, but I’ll tell him I set you up for it so he won’t be mad at you.”

  He nodded and found himself blinking tears away from his eyes. “Okay, sure.”

  “You’re upset.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why I would be upset.” He rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. Calmness; he had to think calm thoughts. He was water, he was stone.

  “’Cause it’s hard to be the loved one of an infected, especially when you’re normal.”

  “I’m normal?” he replied, almost laughing.

  “You’re not infected. And the fact that he’s been living under a death sentence must have added nothing but stress.”

  “He’s not going to die,” he said, and his voice cracked. He was water, and now it was coming out of his eyes.

  “Well, the possibility is still there. Aneurysms will always be a threat, and I’m sure he’ll die just like we all die. But we don’t have to worry about it on a month-by-month basis anymore. Here, have a tissue.”

  “I’m okay,” he lied, not sure why he felt like curling up in the corner and bawling like a little kid.

  Maybe because this should have been good news, extraordinary news, but he was afraid that Roan wouldn’t take it that way.

  If he really wanted to die, this actually made it easier to accomplish. He would have to decide between the living and the dead.

  And Dylan was pretty certain that was an argument lost before it was even made.

  Holden wondered if fighting was the only thing that kept people from realizing hockey was kind of gay.

  All the skating, all the body contact, guys hugging after a winning goal… kinda gay. But maybe that was his own prejudice talking. Maybe he was seeing everything through a gay glass. But no one could deny there were obvious homoerotic overtones, although not as much as in mixed martial arts fighting—now that was totally, completely fag-tastic. Guys in shorts, sweaty and grappling with each other in a cage as other men cheered them on… it was like soft-core porn at times. You could jerk off to it.

  Holden caught the end of a home game between the Falcons and the curiously named Wheat Kings (“All bow before the mighty Wheat King, or I will blight your crops with fungus!”), which the Falcons lost in overtime. Holden didn’t care, as he was just trying to spot the client, which he did when he came off the bench. It helped that he was very nearly the tallest dude on the ice, and that he drew attention to himself by pasting a guy so hard to the boards that he thought the glass—Plexiglas, plastic, whatever it was that surrounded the rink—was going to shatter. Grey’s number was twenty-two, but Holden thought 666 might be more appropriate, since he tried to make that guy a pancake. Did they teach you that in hockey school? Not plastering someone, but continuing to skate and play even though the right side of your rib cage has just collapsed and your lung is deflating? That Wheat Kings guy was amazing for not passing out, although he did go to the bench and seemed to sit there for a bit before he got out on the ice again. Holden noticed the client mostly seemed to be on the ice when that guy was, and when the Falcons were on a penalty kill, or the Wheat Kings (“Bring me your rice! Hear the lamentations of your oats!”) were really trying hard to score.

  He ended up loitering for almost two hours behind the arena before the Falcons started to emerge. The weird thing about hockey players was they looked so big and thick in their padded uniforms, their body armor protective gear, that out of it they seemed almost ludicrously skinny. Generally fit as hell and as hard as brick walls, but wispy all the same. You wouldn’t know there was a good chance they could break your jaw with one punch until they actually did it.

  Finally, he saw the client coming out, talking to two other guys, all three with gear bags slung over their shoulders. “Grey Williams?” he asked, coming up. The three men stopped, but Holden only noticed one guy tense, the thinnest of the group and also the shortest, who still had wet hair. Holden hadn’t seen everybody’s faces, not with those helmets and visors and his generally lousy seats, but he didn’t recognize the little brunet guy at all.

  “Who wants to know?” Grey asked casually, but there was a hint of menace in the tone.

  “I’m Holden Krause. I work with Roan McKichan. I’m doing some follow-up, and I was wondering if I could talk to you?”

  Williams’s tensing had been very subtle. Holden only realized it now as his shoulders slumped slightly and the murderous look in his eye gave way to a slightly goofy grin. “Oh, sure.” He looked at his companions, the wiry little brunet and the crew-cut blond with a knife blade of a face, and said, “See you guys tomorrow, okay?”

  There were okays and yes —the brunet had a French accent —and as they left, the Frenchy was still giving him a suspicious glare, like he didn’t trust him. Once they were out of sight, Holden asked, “Was that French guy gonna hit me?”

  Williams laughed. “Tank? Eh, he knows I’m up to something, so he’s become protective. I protect him on the ice, so he’s decided he’s gonna protect me off. Don’t know how, but I appreciate the thought.”

  “Tank? I assume that’s a nickname.”

  “Yeah. His name’s Thibault, but we just call him Tank ’cause he kinda is one.”

  “I didn’t see a Thibault on the ice tonight.”

  “’Cause that’s his first name. His last name’s Beauvais.”

  Holden recalled where he'd seen that name. “Holy fuck, that guy was the goalie? I thought he was bigger than that.”

  Williams genuinely chuckled. “They wear like eighty pounds of gear, man. If they were bigger than that, there’d be no net to shoot at.” After a moment’s pause, Williams asked, “So what d’ya need to know?”

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  “Sure. There’s a bar down the street.”

  And what a vaguely seedy bar it was. There was worse along the way—a strip joint and a sports bar (there were a lot of masculine addendums around the sports arena)—but this was a more traditional bar, a tiny dive with lots of dark wood and neon beer signs, and a jukebox playing a Tom Waits song, which seem
ed a little too on the nose. There was a tiny TV over the bar, but it was currently mute and seemed to be showing some kind of local weather report. The bartender, a busty woman with pink and bleached blonde raver kind of hair, greeted Williams as if she knew him, and a guy at the bar who looked like a professional drinker told him he played great Monday night. Williams thanked him politely before they disappeared to a small back table, where they were far from any of the boozy stragglers.

  The busty raver came over to take their drink orders, and Holden ordered a scotch and soda while Williams just ordered a grapefruit juice with extra ice. As soon as she was gone, taking her tremendous ta-tas with her, Holden asked, “You don’t drink?”

  “No, I do, but I’m on a training regimen right now, so I don’t.”

  “Ah.” So he had some discipline. Probably a mark in his favor.

  “So is Roan, uh—”

  “Indisposed. I’ve been looking into Jasmine Hawley while he’s out. I do the street beat, and he handles the cops and all those other official types.”

  “So you’re like a junior investigator or something?”

  “Assistant investigator. Although I guess if you want to get technical, I’m more like his Huggy Bear.”

  Williams gave him a blank look. “Teddy bear?”

  “Huggy Bear. Oh, come on, Starsky and Hutch?”

  Williams shook his head as the bartender came back, dropped off their drinks, and moved on. Holden sighed. “Thanks for making me feel old, Grey.”

  “You don’t look old,” Williams offered, with almost heartbreaking innocence. In his notes, Roan had written in the margin of the case form “Gormless?” Holden now had an inkling what he was getting at.

  “Thanks. What I needed to know was if Jasmine had a drug problem. I’ve heard conflicting testimony.”

  “Huh. No. I mean, I don’t think so. Jamie didn’t seem the type to go for that shit, y’know?”

  Holden nodded, but wasn’t ready to buy it. Although a lot of users were obvious—you could usually smell a serious meth head before you even saw them—not all were. And since Grey was in a different state, he had no way of knowing what Jasmine’s life was really like. “I know Jamie was living in an apartment at the time of her death. Where did her things go? Did her parents take them?”

  That made Williams scoff loudly, although it was almost more of a cough than anything else. “Yeah, no. Her parents wanted nothing to do with her after she decided she was a woman. He was a woman. Anyways, I think her roommate put ’em in storage.”

  “Roommate? You didn’t mention a roommate.”

  “I didn’t? Oh shit, I guess I forgot. Um, yeah, Jamie was living with this guy, Brandon something or other. I think he might still be there.”

  Holden nodded, grimacing, and wrote that down in his notebook. (He didn’t take notes like Roan took notes, but he agreed to at least take some when he had to.) He then had a sip of his scotch, which tasted a bit like off-brand mouthwash. He added the note “Don’t drink scotch in a dive bar” before asking, “This Brandon wasn’t a boyfriend, was he?”

  Williams had been taking a sip of his pink juice then, and it looked like he almost choked on it as he hastily put the glass down. “No! I mean, I don’t think so. Jamie never mentioned it. And she complained a lot that she was alone, so if he was, I think she’d have said. Maybe.” He scowled down at the table, which had the echoes of many drink rings and the scars of past cigarettes etched into its top. If you read Braille, there might have been a dirty limerick here. “So does Roan have, like, a boyfriend or something?”

  Weird question out of nowhere. “Yes. So you know he’s gay then?”

  “Well, you’d be surprised how often they called him gay before mentioning he worked for the cops.”

  “No, I probably wouldn’t. He always assumed he was an affirmative action pickup: gay, infected. A twofer.”

  Williams nodded like that made a lot of sense. “I noticed he had some scars on his face. How’d he get those?”

  “Honestly? No fucking idea. That’s not something he talks about. But I know he’s been shot a couple of times, and he once got a beer bottle broken across his face, so maybe he got a scar from that. That’s not even counting the amount of fights he’s been in.”

  “Tough guy?”

  “Like beef jerky left behind the radiator for weeks.”

  Williams smirked and glanced around the bar. Holden sat back and asked, “What about you?”

  Williams’s translucent blue eyes scudded back to him. “Me? Well, I got the one on my forehead from a hockey stick—”

  “I’m not talking scars. I’m asking if you’re gay.”

  That startled a short, sharp laugh from Grey. “Hell no. I got nothin’ against ’em, I mean, you a homo, be a homo, why should I give a shit? I was just curious.”

  Holden pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering how he even started to address this. “Homo?”

  “Is that a bad word?”

  “Unless you, yourself, are a big ’mo, yes.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know. Sorry.”

  “It could have been worse,” he admitted. He was picking up a strange vibe from Grey. Not a “john-is-a-psycho-who-will-kill-you” vibe, but one of… dishonesty, maybe? Not overt, just something he wasn’t saying, little pieces of information he was leaving out. Perhaps not even deliberately. Maybe this guy had taken one too many shots to the head, or perhaps he popped steroids or some equivalent. Drugs could fuck you up in funny ways. “Well, thanks, I think that’s all—”

  “I got an e-mail,” Williams suddenly said.

  Holden raised an eyebrow at that. “And?”

  “Somebody threatening me. They seemed to know I went to Roan. How I don’t know. It’s not like I told people. Even Tank isn’t sure what I’m doing. Here, I printed it out, and I’ve been keeping it in my wallet ’cause I was afraid I’d lose it otherwise.” He got a battered Velcro wallet, partially covered with hockey tape, out of his pocket and opened it to slide out a crumpled piece of paper folded poorly into a rectangle. He tossed it out on the table, and Holden grabbed it, opened it, and smoothed it out.

  It was a brief message, simple and to the point: “the fag can’t help you leave it or you’ll regret it.” The e-mail address it was from was just a bunch of letters and numbers jumbled together randomly, ending in home-dot-nu, suggesting a phony e-mail address, or at least one with a convoluted trace trail. The date indicated he got it yesterday. “You report this to the cops?”

  Williams scoffed again, but this time grapefruit juice didn’t threaten to come out his nose. “No. Why would I?”

  On a hunch, Holden asked, “You didn’t respond to this, did you?”

  “Course I did. I told him to bring it if he was so fucking tough.”

  Gormless. Gormless, gormless, gormless. “Are you fucking serious? A guy sends you what may be a death threat, and you tell him to bring it?”

  He shrugged. “If he shows his face, I’ll beat the shit out of him. I’m not afraid.”

  “Are you afraid of a gun? You can’t beat the shit out of him, tough guy, if he shoots you from a distance.” He made a noise of exasperation as he folded the note back up and shoved it in his pocket. Of all the nights to not be carrying the “clean” gun he bought from Burn. Not that he would ever grow accustomed to carrying a gun. He had his lucky knife, of course, but you knew what they said about guys who brought knives to gun fights.

  “If they’re gonna kill me, they’re gonna kill me. Can’t worry about it.”

  “Now I see why you hired Roan. You’re just perfect for him. You gotta car around here? I’ll walk you to it.”

  “I don’t need babysitting.”

  “Yes, you do, if you’re gonna do stupid things like this.”

  Williams shrugged again and finished his grapefruit juice. Holden had to suppress the urge to reach across the table and slug him or just kick him under the table.

  They paid and left and started walking back toward the
arena. Williams had to walk ahead. He was leading the way, but Holden tried to keep an eye on the street. There weren’t too many cars or people out right now, which bothered him. More people meant more witnesses and less of an opportunity to try something, so maybe it was a positive. Then again, more people meant better ways to hide yourself and avoid being spotted until it was too late. Oh God, Roan’s paranoia was rubbing off on him.

  “Since the cops killed Jamie, why would they take me on? I got a scout from the Predators checking me out. I die and it could go national if it’s a slow news day,” Williams argued. “National stories usually get solved.”

  Before Holden could add some doubts to his reasoning, there was a screech of tires, sudden acceleration on a slightly slick road, and gunshots rang out in a muted, pathetic fashion, like someone was throwing firecrackers at them. Holden grabbed Williams and threw him down to the sidewalk as the parked car they were now behind had its windows blown out. In the blink of an eye, they were covered in safety glass.