8 - Ghouls

Clusterfuck was probably the only word for it.

At least Gordo got taken to the hospital pretty quickly, and if he lost consciousness, it wasn’t for long. Seb went with him and called Connie, Gordo’s wife, but Roan went with him anyways. Why he wasn’t sure.

It wasn’t like he and Gordo were great friends. For a long time they had a very weird, slightly tense work relationship, because Gordo - like most of the het cops - didn’t know how to handle him being gay, and then him being an infected while Gordo worked infected crimes was just an added layer of macho bullshit. To Gordo’s credit, he got over it, and for the last few years most of that baggage had been put aside. They were kinda friends, but not really friends - acquaintances? Hard to say. It was a weird category, something in between.

But Roan knew it was guilt that brought him along to the hospital. He had a weird moment where a line of a We Are Scientists song floated through his mind with perfect audibility: “We all recognize that I’m the problem here.” That was his life, captured in a song lyric. How sad.

He helped Seb comfort Connie, who to be fair didn’t need much. Although clearly upset about the whole thing, she had a good patrician background that served her well in times of crisis. Luckily Gordo had a “minor” heart attack. Roan wanted to ask if that was akin to a minor bullet wound or a minor shark attack, but with Connie here, he bit back his sarcasm.

He had to call Dylan and tell him they’d have to do the tattoo thing either after work or tomorrow, as there was no way he’d be home in time. Once he told Dylan why, he wanted to come to the hospital - for him, not Gordon; he only knew that Gordo was one of his police contacts, but that was about it - but Roan told him he was leaving now anyways. He could only stay in a hospital for so long before a mild panic attack would set in. He had no choice when he was unconscious and drugged, but when he wasn’t, he could walk out.

It was funny. He stood outside the hospital, longing for a smoke, and he had never smoked a cigarette in his life. He hated the smell. But he wanted something to do, something to take his mind off all this shit.

The universe, in its odd wisdom, answered his plea. His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he thought it was Dylan, so he answered without really looking at who was calling. That’s why he was surprised when he answered, and an unexpected voice said, “Okay, things just got wicked.”

It was Jay Bhaskar, medical examiner and Quincy wannabe. “Pardon?”

“Joel Newberry. Just got some preliminary bloodwork and autopsy results, and he died of hyperkalemia.”

“Which is?”

“Potassium overdose. It caused his heart attack. His heart, by the way, could have belonged to a man twenty years younger; it was in great shape. Well, before the potassium deluge.”

Roan stood flush against the hospital wall, where smokers usually congregated. No, he wasn’t smoking, but he was mostly out of the rain here, and could watch the going ons in the parking lot. There was a sad story in every person trudging to the front entrance. “How common is it of people to die of potassium overdose?”

“More common than you might think, but it’s not a silent epidemic by any means. But conditions that would predispose him to it - Addison’s disease, lupus nephritis, rhabdomyolysis, a whole host of kidney related disorders - are not present. Nor was he taking any medications that could cause accidental potassium overdose.”

“So what caused it?”

“Fuck if I know, man. It’s possible he was taking drugs he wasn’t prescribed, but judging from what I’ve seen, there was nothing in his blood but potassium.”

“You sound excited, Jay. This worries me.”

“It’s suspicious, don’t you think? A guy in fucking great shape for his age suddenly keels over dead from a potassium overdose? You know what the cure for it is, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Salt. If you take too much potassium, you balance it out with salt, or you take a diuretic to piss it out. Baking soda if it’s due to acidosis.”

Roan leaned up against the wall, and looked up at the sky, wondering if there were stars visible somewhere above the cloud layer. The sky didn’t look like night; it had the odd glow of dusk lingering in the clouds. “No fucking way you know all of this off the top of your head. You researched this before calling me.”

“Well, I’m not a computer. I can’t be expected to have an easily accessible medical encyclopedia just waiting in my frontal lobes,  you know. Every time you learn something new, it displaces something.”

“I learned that on a Simpsons episode.”

“The scary thing is, all known wisdom has been in a Simpsons episode, but because it’s a cartoon, nobody’s paid it any attention.” After a pause, he said, “Potassium overdose is an almost perfect crime. It’s not hard to get a hold of, it’s not hard to get the medications that can cause a toxic build up, and it can kill pretty fast if you hit ‘em with a massive dose. Killing them slowly is fairly impossible, ‘cause most people have too much salt in their diet, and it’ll pass out of the system pretty quickly anyways, but if you hit someone with a huge dose, wham! They may feel sick, but here’s the weird thing - many people with hyperkalemia don’t feel any symptoms at all. Until their heart stops and they drop dead. So you can poison someone and send them off, and they’ll walk off happily, giving you a chance to be far away from them by the time they bite the dirt.”

“Okay, it’s official: you’ve been reading way too many Sue Grafton novels. Or have you been watching CSI again? I thought you hated that show.”

“I do, although I am hypnotized by David Caruso’s ability to act with his sunglasses. I mean, who allows themselves to get out acted by an accessory?”

“A guy who just wants to cash the checks and go home.”

“Ah. Well then, the man’s a genius. I take back everything horrible I’ve said about his mother.”

“That’s good of you. Thanks for the info.”

“Oh no you don’t! You’re not getting away that easily.”

Roan sighed and leaned against the wall. It was cold and probably damp, but thanks to his raincoat, he didn’t feel the damp. “Jay, stop it.”

“I’m telling you, someone killed him. It’s just hard to prove that in a legal sense.”

“How did they get the potassium in him?”

“Either injection or ingestion. Haven’t found an injection spot yet, but if you know what you’re doing, you can conceal it really well.”

“Ingestion? In what form?”

“Umm, probably liquid. Otherwise somebody gave him a metric ton of pureed kiwi.”

“But this could have happened some other way. It needn’t necessarily been murder.”

“Needn’t? Did you just say needn’t? Good lord, you’re becoming a British fop.”

“Don’t taunt me for having a good vocabulary. If this is murder, there will be a police investigation. I can’t get involved.”

Jay snorted derisively. “Murder investigation my big brown ass. It’s a suspicious death, weird, but we have no proof it’s murder. Any investigation will be perfunctory, and probably not a proper murder one, just a basic “How’d he do this?” sort of one. And if Newberry’s family keeps acting like they are, we’ll be lucky to get even that.”

Roan sighed and rubbed his eyes. He knew exactly when he was being railroaded into something. “Jay, stop playing Quincy. This isn’t a ‘70’s television show.”

“I know. If it was I’d be knee deep in pussy.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. Not only was it funny to think of dumpy, balding Jay as a lady’s man, but there was a terribly weird but bizarrely hilariously mental image that came with that. He must have been laughing too much, as Jay finally said, hurt, “It’s not that funny.”

“Yeah, it kinda is,” Roan told him, wiping the tears from his eyes. “Keep looking into things, let me now how it’s going.”

“Are you gonna do the same thing for me?”

“We’ll see.” Okay, he’d give him that the death was terribly suspicious, but that didn’t make it murder. It made it strange, and with Joel’s supposed paranoia added in, it made it coincidental. But nothing said murder except Jay jumping to conclusions. But …

He walked through the now dribbling rain to his bike, reluctantly calling Holden. He picked up on the third ring. “Hey Roan.”

He thought he heard the sound of running water behind him. “Can you talk right now? I mean in person.”

“Oh. Sure, yeah, meet me at my place in twenty minutes. Okay?”

“Fine by me. See you then.”

Holden hung up pretty fast. Twenty minutes, huh? He was with a client, wasn’t he? It suddenly gave him a creepy feeling that he may have interrupted something he didn’t want to think about.

Driving over was a little less dramatic than driving earlier was, and he was glad; he felt he’d had enough drama for one evening. And in spite of the traffic and his leisurely pace, he beat Holden home. So he waited for a few minutes, leaning next to his door like he was a hustler trolling for a very specific customer. He couldn’t help but smirk at the thought as Holden finally arrived, smelling of some expensive mint soap, the kind you only found at expensive hotels. “Hope you haven’t been waiting too long,” he said, unlocking his door. Holden had a keychain that looked like a piece of sushi; a tuna roll, if he wasn’t mistaken.

“Hope I didn’t interrupt something,” Roan asked, following him in. Holden had left his neon martini lamp lit, so there was some light in the room, but not a lot. He turned on a lamp to throw more light on the scene.

“Nope, I was on my way out when you called. It was good timing, really. So is this about Joel, or is this a personal call?” He collapsed on his sofa, clearly exhausted, and Roan decided he wasn’t going to think about what he had probably been doing just thirty minutes ago. If Holden had any shame, he’d lost it a long time ago; the only one uncomfortable here was him.

“It’s about Joel. He didn’t take vitamin supplements, did he? How much of a health freak was he?”

Holden let out a long, slow sigh, and unzipped his leather jacket, revealing a white t-shirt so skin tight it looked painted on. He must have been trying on his “sexy young punk” persona, as it was only “rough trade” when he wore the leather pants too and his nipple ring as well. And it was sad that he knew that. “He took a multivitamin, but he wasn’t a vegan or anything, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Did he ever take any kind of potassium supplements?”

He gave him a curious look. “No. What are you getting at?”

“Just heard from a friend of mine that Joel’s blood work has come back, and it’s kind of unusual.”

There was a grumbling noise, and much to Roan’s horror, he belatedly realized it had come from his stomach. Holden raised an eyebrow at that. “Are you hungry, or is the lion hiding in your stomach?”

“All day I’ve been starving. I have no idea why.”

“Well, it’s either a tapeworm, or that wacky cat metabolism you have.” Holden waved a hand towards his kitchenette, and said, “Why don’t you go make me a sandwich too?”

“Oh, I’m your servant now?” he complained, but went ahead and entered his kitchen, looking through cupboards for the bread. He was actually glad he’d given him permission to do something and have a bite to eat, but he’d never admit it.

“That is a fantasy of mine, you know. I imagine you give great foot massages.”

“Keep your kinky fantasies to yourself.”

“That’s the vanilla one. You wanna hear the kinky one?”

“I’ll just pretend I didn’t here that.”

“Suit yourself. But it is actually kind of funny. It’d give you a laugh.”

“I’m sure.” Holden’s cupboards still seemed oddly bare, especially when compared to his, which was a jumble of cereal bought yesterday to bottles of spices bought years ago. But Holden only had things that seemed recent, and not a lot of those. But he found sourdough bread, and in the refrigerator he found mustard (thank god, Buddha, whatever) and lunchmeat, as well as some bagged salad greens and grilled red peppers in oil. It’d be a simple sandwich, but a good one. As he slapped them together, he realized something looked odd about Holden as he sat there splayed on the couch, looking tired and distracted. He was about done making the sandwiches when he realized the reason Holden looked odd was because he was actually off duty; his charm shield was down. He wasn’t trying to seduce him or schmooze him, he had totally dropped his guard. This was just Holden. It was actually a bit startling to realize, as street kids - even in adult form - rarely dropped their guards, but he supposed that showed how much Holden trusted him, enough to be vulnerable and human in front of him. Weird. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

Holden had exactly four plates in his cupboard. “Do you have all your flatware in the dishwasher or something?”

He just shrugged as Roan handed him a plate with a sandwich on it. “I don’t have a lot of plates. Don’t need ‘em. I don’t really entertain. Could you grab me a pomegranate juice?”

“Sure.” There was a bit more food in his fridge, but not really a lot. He didn’t entertain; he never told clients his real name or where he lived; he had many acquaintances, but did he have any friends? He already said he didn’t fuck if he wasn’t paid, so he had no boyfriend either. It was a cliché, the lonely hooker, but for a guy with the most active sex life he had ever encountered, he did seem a bit lonely. But then again, maybe he preferred it that way. Roan wouldn’t have blamed him.

He grabbed Holden a small bottle of pomegranate juice, and a bottle of green tea for himself, before joining him on the sofa. Roan tore into his sandwich hungrily, while Holden just took a bite of his and set it down. “Not bad.”

“That’s why you’re eating it.”

He smirked weakly. “I had room service. I thought you’d feel funny making a sandwich only for yourself.”

“Bastard.”

That made Holden smile. He grabbed the remote control off his coffee table, but didn’t turn on the television. He just slumped back and sipped his juice before asking, “Was he poisoned?”

He knew he meant Newberry, and the sandwich gave him a moment to gather his thoughts and consider what it was he should tell him. “Not precisely, but it’s something along those lines. It could have been an accident or a fluke; it’s not clear cut.”

“You’re a professional skeptic, aren’t you?”

“It comes with the job. You told me he was having some problems with his family. Did he name any in particular? How did he get along with his wife?”

Holden sat forward and took off his leather boots, buying himself some time. “Mind if I change? I feel stupid sitting here in costume.”

He wanted to say he’d flashed him a bit of his ass this morning and hadn’t apologized, but he seemed so weary he didn’t think Holden would be in a joking mood. “Your apartment; do what you want.”

“Thanks.” He stood and shucked off his jacket, tossing it on his chair before peeling off his shirt - and he did peel it off. It looked for a moment like he might not actually be able to remove it from his torso without a crowbar. He took the shirt with him as he went to his bedroom. After a moment, amongst the opening and closing of drawers, Holden said, “He was having a problem with his kids, and with his brother and sister in law. He bitched about them a lot. Once I overheard him having an argument on his cell with his brother.”

“About what?” Roan pulled out the tiny notebook he was carrying with him, where he’d made random case notes in an attempt to seem semi-professional. Joel had three kids, two with his first (and longest lasting) wife Karen, a son named Bill (the scion of the family) and a daughter named Lorainna, and a son named Kyle that he had with his second wife, Jessica. Joel’s brother was named John, and he was something of the “black sheep” of the family; he’d done stints in out of state hospitals for his alcohol and gambling problems, although now he’d gone out of his way to re-ingratiate himself with his family and reclaim a roll in it. Word had it he was a complete dick.

“It seems John lost some money. How much I don’t know, but I gather it was a lot, and Joel seemed to think he hadn’t misplaced it so much as started gambling again.”

“Did you find out if that was true?”

“No. I don’t ask questions of a non-sexual nature with my clients, unless that’s what they want. Joel didn’t even know I was eavesdropping, although by the way he was bellowing at the end, how could I not hear it?”

This was all bad news. Families made for toxic brews, which was why you were more likely to be murdered by a family member or friend than anyone else. Add money to that, and you were damn lucky if things didn’t devolve into the end of The Wild Bunch. “Is that all you heard?”

Holden came back out into the living room, wearing a baggy brown t-shirt and black boxer shorts. Roan didn’t even know he owned a pair of boxer shorts. He collapsed on the couch, strangely boneless. “Yeah, that’s it. He didn’t want to talk about it.”

“What about the problems he was having with his kids?”

This got a shrug. “He said they were fighting between themselves a lot, but that was it. No details.”

“How about things with his wife?”

“He didn’t talk about Cherry with me. I think it was just basic etiquette. You don’t mention the wife to the lover, and you don’t mention the lover to the wife.”

“Is everything all right? You seem oddly subdued tonight.”

Holden gave him an anemic, lopsided smile. “I’m okay, just tired. But thanks for asking.”

He was lying, wasn’t he? He wasn’t okay. But he didn’t want to talk about it, so Roan let it go. If anyone understood not wanting to talk about something, it was him.

7- All Is Ash Or The Light Shining Through It

Roan drove through the downpour, in search of the party house, getting almost hypnotized by the windshield wipers’ rhythmic slap. Usually after migraine meds, he needed a nap, and he knew he’d fought the urge too long. But he’d just check out this one thing, and go home.

The address Marjean had given him led to an empty, old style A-frame house, set apart from its neighbor on about an acre of weeds. There was a “For Sale” sign, but the paint was peeling from sun and rain damage, and the lock box the real estate agency had put on the house was broken. He nudged the door open with his foot and was swamped by Human smells: shit, piss, vomit, sex. There was also a terrible lingering stain of alcohol and smoke, mostly pot and cigarette smoke, but some of it was crank and crack, meth and something so completely chemical Roan imagined that something had briefly, unintentionally caught fire.

There was little furniture in the living room, an old couch that was so stained and damp it gave off a strong aroma of mildew was pretty much it, and there was some bird and mouse shit along with the crumpled beer cans and broken crack pipes clotting the corners. An abandoned house used as a party house. Not new, not surprising, and there’d be no clues here.

Well, no, technically there’d be a thousand clues, but none that would point directly to Grant. There was no one to talk to about the party, except for Marjean, who had probably told him all she could clearly remember. He supposed he could grill her, ask her about other people at the party, but what was the point? The cops were most certainly combing through Grant’s stuff by now, put an APB out on his car. He was probably in custody already. He was a dollar short and a day late.

He called Gordo, but got routed straight to his call messaging. He didn’t leave a message. When he could call and tell him they had Grant, he would.

By the time he reached home, he had that odd hollow head feeling that wasn’t quite a headache and wasn’t quite a dizzy spell, but was some sickening offspring of the two. As soon as he was in the door, he kicked off his boots and dropped his sodden coat in the foyer, figuring he’d pick them up later. He took off his wet shirt on the stairs, but kept it with him so he could throw it on the floor of his bedroom. He stripped off his pants, also damp from rain, and just threw them aside, figuring he’d be up before Dylan showed up. He was asleep almost the moment his head hit the pillow; he barely got the covers pulled over him.

He slept hard, but he did have vague memories of a strange dream where he was playing poker with Paris and Grant Kim. Grant had no shirt on and a pony keg on his lap. The whole thing was very weird, and the only thing he remembered Grant saying was, “Only infecteds can play.” Well, duh.

The phone woke him up. Oh, how he was learning to hate the fucking phone. He reached out and snagged it, keeping his face buried in his pillow. “What?”

“What the hell, are you gagged?” Gordo asked, annoyed. “I can barely hear you.”

He ignored that comment. “You got Grant yet?”

“No, and I need you here, in the woods next to Martin Ellis High School.”

For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming. “Did you say you want me at the high school?”

“Near the school. Just follow the cop cars and local TV news van. I’ll probably be telling some blow dried asshole to fuck off.”

“So, a normal night for you.”

“Very funny.”

“Why am I goin’ to the high school, Gord?”

“We have a body here I need you to check out. I think I know who did it, but I need a confirmation, and you’re faster than waiting for a bite print to come back.”

Roan felt his stomach sink like a stone. “Oh no. Grant?”

“Approximate time of death seems to say the vic died early this morning, around the time the first crime scene was discovered. And we’re about a mile away from it.”

“Fuck me.”

“Yeah, that was my opinion too. It looks real bad; the vic’s a kid too, or at least from what I can tell. Right now I’m goin’ by his high tops and the remains of his Seether t-shirt.”

“Christ.” He shoved himself up to a sitting position, looking out the window at the rain, which had backed off to a pissing kind of drizzle. But it was still raining; rivers would be flooding soon, if they weren’t already. Just one more thing to worry about.

Deaths by cat were always bad, and always caused a minor firestorm in the press. But the death of a kid? That sometimes made national news, and brought out all the “we should lock ‘em in camps” right wing assholes in their wake. Not that he was advocating tearing up teenagers should be given a pass, but it wasn’t Grant’s fault. It was the cat who did this, not the person. But some people didn’t give a rat’s ass about the distinction or didn’t even bother to make it in the first place.

He told Gordo he’d be there as soon as possible, and hastily got dressed, ignoring the fact that he had perhaps the worst case of bedhead he’d ever glimpsed in a bathroom mirror. It’d be wetted down by the rain soon enough.

Since he was going to get drenched regardless, he decided to take the bike. He could use the extra speed right now anyways; it’d help wake him up.

In the end it didn’t, but other people driving like idiots kind of did. It was Washington State - it rained. It rained quite a bit, although not as much as the jokes would lead you to believe. So why did so many people panic and drive like the world was ending when it rained? He would never understand that.

And Gordo was right, it was easy to find the site. The channel eight news van was visible several blocks away thanks to the garish logo painted on the side. But they must have only knew it was a killing near the high school and not a kid victim, as it wasn’t their big “action news man” on the scene but one of the minor ones, the cute but ethnically diverse female reporter (Asian), Hannah something or other. Roan couldn’t remember, as he didn’t watch channel eight news. He got all his local news from the newspaper, and all other news from the internet or BBC News. Did that make him a snob? Ah, fuck it, who cared? If he could be a snob in a black vinyl rain coat and a Dalek t-shirt, with a sparkly black motorcycle helmet wedged underneath his arm, so be it.

Channel eight’s team was being held back at a hasty cordon of sawhorses, where Hannah was arguing with a poor beleaguered beat cop roped in to stand guard and protect the crime scene. The channel eight team seemed to be Hannah in her ridiculously expensive raincoat, a sound engineer huddled beneath an umbrella being held by the segment producer (?), and the cameraman, who was standing aside and smoking a cigarette like he’d been starving for nicotine.

They were an interesting contrast, and they all glanced at each other as one of the other cops working the line recognized him and waved him through the blockade. The sound engineer looked like he was barely out of high school himself, a lanky black guy who had that type of youthful face that would guarantee he’d be carded until he was in his forties. The segment producer was almost a foot shorter than him and his opposite in almost every way: stocky where he was lanky, doughy where he was lean, dark where he was pale. His face also showed every bit of stress and worry he’d ever had in his life, which was sizable. The cameraman looked like a stereotypical biker, with thinning but shoulder length steel gray hair, and a salt and pepper beard that was neatly trimmed but may as well have been bushy and shaggy. He just gave off a disreputable air, whether that was fair or not.

As Roan started up the slight, muddy incline, he heard Hannah ask, “Who the hell is that?”

One of the men - not the cop, but part of Hannah’s entourage - muttered, “I think that’s their outside cat expert, the kitty fag. His name’s like McKitchen or something.”

Roan sighed and stopped where he was, looking back at them. “You really shouldn’t casually slur the guy who can track you down by scent alone, you know? Just an FYI. And it’s pronounced Mick - kee - an. At least get that much right.”

He saw the surprise register on their faces - all but Hannah’s, as she simply didn’t react to anything (on air talent rule 101) - but no one said anything, so he turned and continued on. He then heard, very faintly, “How the fuck did he hear me?”

There was a throaty chuckle, and the cigarette rasp of the voice led him to think it was the cameraman talking. “The shit I heard about him, he’s damn right - you don’t fuck with him. He can’t turn the cat off, or some shit like that. He’s like superhuman or something.”

Can’t turn the cat off? What a weird way to put it.

The woods were just a thick stand of pine and firs that had yet to be cleared away, a couple hundred yards away from the chain link boundary of the school’s football field. Some attempt had been made to clear away the undergrowth, but you couldn’t kill blackberry vines with a tactical nuclear strike. Around the clinging, barbed vines where discarded forty ounce bottles of various kinds, cigarette butts, fast food wrappers, even a used condom and a pill bottle with its label stripped off waited, the side of a dark red spattered white shoe was visible. Rain and wind diluted the smell of blood, as did the smell of piss, stale beer, and fresh pot smoke. Well, relatively fresh; a few hours old.

“Kid was smoking pot?” he asked as he approached Gordo.

Gordo was wearing a brown felt hat that wasn’t a fedora, but wanted to be. Rain dripped from its brim, and as he turned it flung some droplets. “Probably. I ain’t even gonna ask how you knew that.” Many forensic people buzzed around, nearly all of who Roan recognized. Since they knew who he was and why he was here, he wasn’t acknowledged in any way. “Apparently a lot of kids come here before or after school to smoke up or have a drink, stuff like that.”

“Fuck around?”

“That too. There’s kind of a path over there, near the dogwoods, so it’s pretty well traveled.”

“And yet the kid’s been here since around the time school started?”

Gordo nodded, making rain shower from his hat. “And the body was only reported less than an hour ago.”

“So who knows how many saw it before anyone bothered to report it? The scene’s contaminated.”

“I know. It’s all massively fucked. What’s wrong with kids today? How can you see the body of a kid that’s been mutilated and then not call it in?”

Roan shrugged. “It’s not a new thing. Every generation has its segment of people who never want to get involved.”

“I suppose. But they’re gettin’ younger by the year.” He paused. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you haven’t said what it was.”

“It was a leopard.”

Gordo let out a sigh that sounded like he was deflating, and the way his shoulders sagged, he might as well have been. “God, what a clusterfuck this is turning into.”

“And you haven’t found Grant yet?”

“No. Kid could be hiding out anywhere. We have a list of friends and acquaintances, but it’s fucking huge, and many of them are pretty shady and not inclined to cooperate. I’ve talked to the parents, but they said they haven’t talked to him for a month or so, and I’m inclined to believe them.”

“What are the parents like? Traditional, strict, hippy?”

He gave him a curious sideling glance. “You’ve never met them? I thought Miranda Kim was a friend of yours.”

“She is, but she never took me home to meet the parents.”

Gordo shrugged, and reached into the pocket of his trench coat, pulling out a crumpled tissue that he blotted his face with. Belatedly, Roan realized he wasn’t drying off rain but sweat; he was sweating, in spite of the chill breeze, and in spite of the growing darkness, Roan noticed he was looking a bit off, a bit pale. “They just seemed like people. Father teaches English at Collins High, the mother’s a librarian for the county. They seemed fine. Upset, as you might imagine; they had no idea he was infected. Why? You got a theory?”

“No, I’ve just been piecing some things together. I know they had a room set up in their house, but is it possible that this was Grant’s first transformation? That he didn’t know he was infected either?”

He raised an eyebrow at that, but didn‘t scoff. “So why the room?”

“It was put together for Bowles. They all knew he was infected, but Grant got his stupid ass infected and didn’t know. Not until he started transforming. It caught him, Bowles, and Jones short; none of them were prepared for Grant to change. Hence the resulting bloodbath, as they were suddenly faced with a loose leopard, angry and in pain. And a hurting animal can be one vicious fuck, especially if it thinks the people before it are the cause of the pain.” Roan squinted at him, catching a faint whiff of … something. He couldn’t identify the smell. “You need to sit down. You smell wrong.”

Gordo glared at him. “Smell wrong? Jeeze, thanks, my deodorant fails and you’re calling me out on it. Can you put the nose away for a second?”

“It’s not body odor.”

“Then what is it?”

Roan was forced to shrug. “I dunno. It’s just wrong.”

“Terrific,” he grumbled sarcastically. Gordon continued to ignore his advice and retrieved what looked like a small Ziplock bag, only inside it was a bloody scrap of plastic. “Even though we don’t have all of this vic, at least he had his ID on him.”

It was blood smeared and had been mauled by teeth and claws, but Roan could see enough to determine the kid’s name was Trevor German, and he was seventeen years old. Son of a bitch.

He recalled his strange dream of him and Grant and Paris playing poker, and realized the symbolism, his brain trying to tell him something. “He panicked.”

“The kid?”

“Grant Kim. Assuming this was his first transformation and he wasn’t expecting it, he probably freaked out as soon as he transformed back to Human. That’s why we can’t find him - even he has no idea where he’s going. Paris didn’t know he was infected until he woke up in a dog house in a neighborhood close to the campus, with dog guts strewn all about him. He freaked out when he realized it wasn’t a sick joke and figured out what had happened to him. He left school and ran; hell, he inadvertently ran into the States. He started in Canada.”

“You think Kim’s gonna run up to Canada?”

“No. I think he doesn’t know what to do and he’s freaked out. That could actually make things more dangerous.” He unconsciously glanced up at the sky, which was already dark with clouds, but was growing darker by the second as the sun, somewhere behind the cloud layer, started setting. If they assumed that last night/this morning was Grant’s first transformation, then he was due for round two tonight. Transformation lasted, at bedrock, five days; at most, they could last an entire week.

Gordon got where he was going. “He’ll be loose again tonight. Why won’t he turn himself in? He’d be safe in a jail cell.”

“He won’t remember killing anyone, but he will wake up bloody. If he wasn’t freaked out before, he will be now. Do you really think the moment you wake up in tremendous pain and covered in someone else’s blood, with no memories of what happened the night before, that your first impulse would be to call the police?”

“Well, you put it that way,” Gordo grumbled. “Guess not. But we gotta find him before more people die. Or somebody kills his furry ass.”

“I know. The problem is the panicky don’t exactly have a rhyme or reason. We’re looking at this logically, and there’s no way in hell we’re gonna find him that way.”

“Yeah, but how else do we do it? Throwing darts at a map seems like a big waste of …” Gordo suddenly leaned against a tree, head down towards the ground.

“Gord?”

“Just a little dizzy,” he said, and made to push off the tree, but his legs gave way and he collapsed, hitting the muddy ground with a thud. Roan dropped his helmet and dropped to his knees beside Gordon as he struggled weakly to get up. “I’m okay -”

“Fuck you, you are not,” Roan said, putting a hand on his neck. His skin was clammy, his heart rate incredibly erratic.

One of the female forensic technicians was the first over, and asked, “What’s going on?”

“He’s having a heart attack,” Roan snapped. “Call in the EMTs already.”

It was wonderful how shitty situations could always turn shittier, in ways you never expected.

6 - Cattle and the Creeping Things

All the pictures Grant had on his MySpace page seemed to involve him drinking or getting high, in various states of undress. Roan wasn’t sure if he was trying to say “I’m a sexy good time guy” or “I’m a complete fucking moron”. He even had a tramp stamp, a tattoo on the small of his back (it was some sort of black pseudo-tribal design, which had probably been hip for five minutes when Grant was in high school). Randi hadn’t mentioned it, leading him to think she didn’t know about it. Did she never visit his MySpace page?

“Is this any help at all?” Dylan wondered.

Roan was forced to shrug. “Grant went to a party Friday night with some guy named Mikey, and probably dropped some E. How that leads to this morning’s bloodbath I have no idea. I mean I can search for all parties on Friday night, but that will give me, what? Three or four dozen leads? Not a help.”

He frowned in thought, staring through the picture of Grant pretending to drink the water out of a blue glass bong. “You know, I can ask at the bar, see if anyone knows of a guy named Mike who may peddle ecstasy. I know a couple of circuit boys, and if anyone’s going to know the dealers, it’s going to be them.”

“This really isn’t your investigation.”

“I know, but if I can help, let me.”

He wasn’t going to argue with him. Gordo wouldn’t like it, but he didn’t need to know about it. He told him to go ahead, but not to worry about it if it went nowhere. Not that he needed to tell him that, Mr. Daily Meditation, he went out of his way trying not to worry. How successful he was at it was up to Dylan to say, not him.

Eventually Dylan showed him what he called him here for: the perfected version of his tiger sketch. It was beautiful, slinky and somewhat Asian in style, with simple curving lines suggesting a muscular tiger stalking its prey. It was just a quick sketch Dylan did while bored, something he did quite often (if he had to wait anywhere, from Starbucks to the DMV, he killed time drawing), but when Roan saw it he knew he had to get it as a tattoo. He had his Paris one on his right arm, so why not get one on his left? Balance himself out. The funny thing was, he’d never been much for tattoos, and yet he felt compelled to add this, to burn it on his skin. The fact that it was a tiger didn’t escape his notice, and he wondered if it was yet another tribute to Paris. He’d probably cover his body with tributes to Paris if he could. No one should forget him, least of all him.

Dylan was surprised he wanted it as a tattoo, but was good with it. He asked for a chance to perfect it, make it more tattoo like in size, and Roan had no problem with that. He knew that Jade, one of the artists over at Damaged Ink, where he got his Paris tattoo, would copy it, so the idea was Dylan was going to draw the finished version on Roan’s arm, leaving Jade to basically trace it. But she got paid whether she did it freehand or traced someone else’s work, so she didn’t mind. Did Dylan mind? If he did, he never said or indicated it in any other way. The decision was made for Dylan to do the drawing tonight, before he went to work if there was time. Right now Dylan was off to bikram yoga (Roan teased him about this, but the end result was Dylan had a body you could break concrete slabs on, and he didn’t have to partially morph into a cat to get it either), and Roan supposed he should pretend to do some work, although he wasn’t sure where to go next. He didn’t have leads per se, just a collection of observations that suggested Randi was probably embarrassed by her brother.

He went to the snack shop, run by a couple of nice middle aged ladies, and picked up both some fresh popcorn and some hand dipped chocolates, as the migraine medication had left him ravenous (or so he thought; otherwise he had no idea why he just wanted to sit in his car and shove food in his pie hole). But it occurred to him that he’d missed something. It nagged at him like a word just on the tip of his tongue that he just couldn’t remember. What had he missed?

He went back to the office and looked at Grant Kim’s MySpace page again. What the fuck had he missed? Only scanning the pictures did he see it: it was in Grant’s ignominious photo galley. It was a picture posted last Wednesday, and it showed him tapping a pony keg. He was in front of a neon pink flamingo in a blue circle next to a big fake Tiki head and a framed Don Ho album on the wall. The only place he knew with tacky décor like that was the Oasis, a little split room bar and nightclub near the campus of the university. He found Curtis’s page, but it was set to private, so all he could see was the bland picture on the front of his page. He printed it out along with the least embarrassing one of Grant’s he could find. He was unable to find Tiffany’s page.

The Oasis was so empty it may as well have been closed, but from the way the wait staff were fussing with decorations on the wall, Roan figured things were dead until the students were out of class. The bartender was a gym bunny, a true steroid monstrosity, with arms as big as most people’s thighs, and a neck as thick as a tree trunk. He was wearing a maroon t-shirt so tight it looked like any movement on his part would cause Hulk like ripping. Since the guy wasn’t doing anything, Roan showed him the printed out pics of Grant and Curtis, and told him that these men were currently missing and he had reason to believe they came here quite a bit.

The guy only vaguely recognized Grant, calling him “that skinny Asian kid who seemed almost always drunk”. According to the bartender, he seemed to always be with a bunch of people and always drinking on their dime; he couldn’t remember him ever paying for his own drink. As for Curtis, he had no idea; he just shook his head and summed up Curtis wonderfully well: “He’s got one of those faces you always forget.” He did. Roan wondered if he was going to be one of those guys who was unremarkable in life, but remembered in death if only because his passing was so brutal.

The kid (the bartender constantly called Grant “the kid”) was in a lot, maybe every other weekend, although he said he hadn’t been in that Friday or Saturday, not that he could recall. He did confirm he was in Wednesday, but only because he remembered he was with a “hot blonde” that he wasn’t sure was legal. (Tiffany? His mysterious girlfriend? Someone else entirely?) She apparently had a “sweet rack”, and this told Roan that the bartender thought he was a fellow straight guy, and would appreciate his ogling of a woman’s breasts. Roan just stared at him and moved on to the next question.

There hadn’t been a party here Friday night, but he was sure there were a “million” in the area, since they were near a college campus. And as far as knowing any drug dealers named Mike, he told him, chuckling slightly, that about every other guy around here was named Mike; you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Mike.

Roan left him one of his business cards, and asked him to call if Grant or the blonde turned up, or if he just remembered something that might be helpful. He studied his card for a very long time, then looked up at him with a furrowed brow. “You’re really looking for this guy? Shit, I thought maybe he owed you money or something.”

“No. I’m working with the police department on this investigation.” Not technically a lie.

“He’s really missing?”

He nodded, wondering if he was sitting on some information. “I wasn’t lying. I imagine it’ll be on the local news tonight.”

“Shit.” He looked down at his business card again, like it might tell him something new. “I’ve never known anyone who’s gone missing before.”

“First time for everything,” Roan replied lamely, mainly because he didn’t know what to say. What did you say to that? Congratulations? Aren’t you glad it wasn’t you? Nothing fit.

When he was leaving, the bartender said, “Hey … um, I don’t know if it helps, but … for a while he was going out with this girl, um, Marjean, she’s a student at the university. I think she is still.”

“Any last name?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know it.”

It was still a break - how many people were named Marjean?

The campus looked depressing, and Roan imagined that it still would even if it wasn’t down pouring. There was a beautiful large oak tree in front of the campus quad, and he saw a gray squirrel on one of its lower branches, seemingly upset by the constant torrent. The funny thing was, Roan smelled it long before he saw it; wet fur of any animal was very pungent, and it made his stomach do an uncertain twist. Did normal people smell that, or was it just him? When the squirrel sniffed him, it took off running up the tree. Typical. He wondered what he smelled like to animals, if the lion or the human scared them more.

He decided to bring out the whole bullshit offensive in the front office. He told the woman working there that he was with the police and that they were looking into the disappearance of Grant Kim. The woman, a matronly sort who looked like a house mother, struggled to recognize the name but didn’t quite get it until he showed her the picture. Then she didn’t seem all that surprised.

Here came some information. Grant dropped out of college ahead of getting his ass booted, as he had missed so many classes during his first year none of the faculty teachers were sure what he looked like. He had a reputation on campus as a hard partier, a good time guy, and as such was generally popular with the students. Although there was one incident, recorded by the campus police, where he was cited for taking part in a large brawl in the parking lot. As it turned out, he may have been a victim and not an instigator, as the woman told him she could remember how covered in bruises he was. She also said she didn’t think he was much of a fighter.

As soon as he mentioned Marjean, she supplied the rest of the information: Marjean Hardaway, who didn’t live on campus but across the street in an apartment complex called Sunrise Plaza. She even gave her her apartment number: 316. Did he look that much like a cop? Well, he had put on his “cop voice”, the one that seemed to most effectively convey authority and a “don’t fuck with me” vibe. He thanked her and went to look for Marjean.

He didn’t know what he was expecting to find, but it probably wasn’t what he got. Sunrise Plaza was a small four story apartment complex with a shabby air that probably didn’t matter to hard up college students, and on the ground floor he passed a corkboard filled up with kegger notices and homemade flyers for bands. Occasionally there was a notice about a roommate wanted, a lost pet, or something for sale, but not a lot.

He heard rap music coming from Marjean’s place before he got there. He didn’t recognize who it was; somebody in the top twenty. It occurred to him that the only rappers he could name by sound were Public Enemy (great), Sage Francis (great), Outkast (did they even count?), and Eminem (idiot). God, he was so fucking old.

He had to pound on the door, as knocking got no response. The door opened and the thudding repetitive beats washed out all over him, as a young bleach blonde woman leaned against the door drunkenly. “Yer not the pizza guy,” she slurred.

She was probably pretty, but right now it was hard to tell. Her face was swollen and reddish with what Dee had once referred to as the “Irish hangover glaze”, her eyes half-lidded and so bloodshot it was honestly difficult to say what color her eyes were (pale blue or gray; either/or). She had some smears of make up on her face, but none in the spots they were supposed to be in, and she was wearing a man’s extra large Stanford University sweatshirt and nothing else; it ended at mid-thigh, revealing pale legs with a slight inward curve to them and bruised knees, with a cat scratch (?) on her left calf and a pale dark bristle of unshaved legs. Her hair was a tangled rat’s nest, perched atop her head like an askew wig, and he thought he saw dried vomit in a small clumped together strand. She smelled like vomit, malt liquor, body odor, unwashed laundry, cigarettes, and crank, and he had to blink fast to keep his eyes from watering. She was twenty going on forty at a thousand miles an hour.

He identified himself as a private investigator looking into the disappearance of Grant Kim, and she stiffened. “You a cop?”

“No. Private investigator.” Being a cop held cache with the school; clearly it wouldn’t here.

Her posture eased a bit, which was dangerous, as he wasn’t sure she could stand up. She was leaning on the door so heavily he was surprised it hadn’t fallen all the way open. It took a moment, but the penny dropped. “Grant’s missing? Why?”

What an odd question. “That’s what I’m trying to find out. Could you tell me something about him?”

She tried to run a hand through her hair, but it was too tangled; her hand hit a clump and stopped dead. “Sure. C’mon in.” She stumbled away from the door, her sweatshirt riding up and showing that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Wow, people all over the place were flashing him their asses today. He wouldn’t tell her, but Holden had the nicer one. Then again, his livelihood depended on it.

The reason the door didn’t fall open all the way was simply because it couldn’t; the place was a pig sty. Now people threw that description around loosely, but he didn’t as his own housekeeping was on the questionable side (his boyfriends, bless them, usually were neater than him). But this place struck even him as sloppy beyond the pale, and if that wasn’t a cry for help, what was? There were dirty clothes heaped on the floor, along with a litter of take out food detritus (pizza boxes, plastic bottles, paper wrappers, napkins, even packets of ketchup and hot sauce) and a scattered assortment of textbooks that looked like dead birds fallen from the sky, covers spread open like wings. The living room consisted of a fold out couch almost as old as he was, covered in fabric that was a hideous cross between fuchsia and Pepto-Bismol and now blotched with stains, a Dell computer on a couple of overturned crates that functioned as a desk, and a stereo system and television that were probably more expensive than his motorcycle. At least he could judge her priorities.

She turned down the stereo, but tellingly didn’t turn it off. She didn’t so much sit down on the couch as collapse on it, folding a leg under her and lighting a cigarette. Where the cigarette had come from he had no idea and didn’t want to know. He decided to just jump in and try to get some answers from her before she passed out again. “His sister told me the last she heard from Grant, he was going to a party Friday night. You don’t know where it was, do you?”

She took a serious drag off her cigarette, and exhaled the smoke slowly; it seemed to waft up from her open mouth like dry ice fog. “Sister? Oh wow, I forgot he even had a sister.” She paused, long enough that he thought he was going to have to prompt her, but she started picking at a scab on her leg as she said, “He was always going to parties. Grant always knew where the best parties were.”

He waited for more, but it wasn’t forthcoming. She stroked her leg idly, like she was trying to soothe a scared pet, and he figured she’d just discovered she hadn’t shaved her legs. “So what party did he go to Friday night?”

She snorted, the cigarette shoved tightly into the corner of her mouth; she was working it like some people worked a toothpick. “I don’t know where I was Friday night. They had two dollar tequila shooters over at the Bull’s Eye and after a coupla those, I don’t really remember anything until I woke up Saturday night in the doorway of that church down the street. Wait a sec, maybe I have somethin’ …” She grabbed up a battered black purse from beside the couch and turned it upside down, spilling out the contents beside her. He saw tissues, condoms, a pack of birth control pills, lip balm, a couple of unknown loose pills (vitamins? Prescription? Other?), keys, pens, a red cell phone, a tampon, green Tic Tacs, a stick of gum, a small glass pipe that she probably used for crank. She sifted through it, heedlessly knocking some of it onto the dirty brown carpet.

She was a Hold Steady song in the flesh. He wanted to tell her that, but resisted the urge.

She picked up a receipt and glanced at it with squinted eyes before holding it out. “Okay, I was there. I’m pretty sure I ran into Grant there too.”

“Was he with someone?“ He studied the receipt, which wasn’t one actually. It was only a receipt on one side, from the Fred Meyer on the corner down the street: beer and toilet paper, also known as the breakfast of champions. The other side, the side she meant, had a hastily scrawled address on it in black ballpoint ink. He could barely make out the address, which was 175 Vickery Avenue.

“I dunno; it was an awesome blow out,” she said, and struggled to get up from the couch. “Or so I’m told. I was kinda out of it. Wanna beer?”

Definitely a Hold Steady song. “No thanks. You know of anyone who was there that night that might have memories of the party?”

That got a genuine chuckle out of her. “Not that I know, man. It was a wicked party.”

So maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t much of a partier. He thanked her, restraining the urge to say “Thank you, Ms. Winehouse”, and left her his business card, wondering what would kill her first: the drugs or just her lifestyle.

And then he wondered how many people thought the same thing about him.