Infected Freefall Read online

  He went into his office and read Fiona’s e-mail to him about Tucker, and she was right—there wasn’t much. There was little on his crime and little on his move to Boise, although Fiona had been able to find an address for him. Roan used that to access an online reverse directory and find his phone number. He punched it up but got a machine that listed the number back at him, no names, so he hung up and figured he’d try again later. He MapQuested the directions to the Sheridan Valley Penitentiary, as he’d never been down there. In spite of its pastoral name, it was a bleak maximum-security prison planted smack-dab in the middle of a barren stretch of land that used to be a gravel pit. The town itself was just a loose collection of strip malls and trailer parks and most likely a Walmart that was the pinnacle of regional culture.

  He was just printing it out when there was a rap on the door that didn’t sound like Fiona. He looked up in time to see Murphy peeking in the door. “What would it take to keep you home? Grenade injury? Dismemberment?”

  “Hey, don’t mock me just ’cause I’m the toughest homo in the world,” he replied, looking for the photos he took of Dallas Faraday’s last night on Earth.

  That startled a laugh out of her as she shut the door behind her. “Now wait just a goddamn minute here—I’m the toughest homo on Earth.”

  “You’re the toughest lezzy. I’m the toughest homo. There’s a difference.”

  “There’s always a double standard,” she sighed sarcastically, flinging herself down in the chair in front of his desk. “I guess you know why I’m here.”

  He found the photos in a manila envelope in his top desk drawer that he had marked “DF.” “Wedding shower?”

  “How did you guess?”

  He handed over the envelope, and she took it and slid the glossies out, looking at them. “By the way, the new receptionist is cute.”

  “Hey, she’s an assistant. Also straight, and a part-time dominatrix.”

  “Really? I didn’t realize being into B&D was a part-time choice.” She paused and turned a photo sideways. She was in her casual cop gear, namely black slacks and a khaki-colored shirt beneath a black blazer. They looked like men’s clothes and very likely were (Murph was into the cross-dressing), but they looked good on her. She’d recently got her black hair cut into a stylishly boyish short haircut, but the irony was it made her face look more feminine. Maybe that was the intent. “Wow, look at you getting clear shots of all the license plates.”

  “You never know when they can be handy to have.”

  “True enough. I’d kiss you, but I don’t want your gay on me. By the way, heard from the wife yet?”

  “My client? No.”

  Murphy nodded absently, still looking through the photos. “Whoa, is that coke or crack?”

  “Coke.”

  She whistled sharply. “That explains the toxicology report. Guy was flyin’ on coke, X, and Ritalin. He also had a point oh eight alcohol level.”

  “Ritalin? People take that recreationally even when they’re out of high school?”

  “Believe it or not, yeah. If Mrs. Faraday calls you or comes in, would you call me immediately?”

  That made him pause. “Is she a suspect?”

  Murphy shrugged, still examining the photographs. “She’s missing.”

  “What?” It suddenly occurred to him that, yeah, she hadn’t gotten in touch with him, even to get the photos he’d taken for her. That was strange, but so much had gone on in the meantime that he’d simply forgotten. “You check her place of business?”

  Murphy nodded, tucking the pictures back in the envelope. “Went there, went to the Faraday house, even visited her parents’ house. No one’s seen her since the fifth, when she left work for home. We’re running an APB on her car, hoping for a hit.”

  The fifth—the night he took most of these photos. (Some were taken after midnight, which would make the rest taken officially on the sixth.) “So what’s your theory? Think she’s a victim of foul play, or did she do a runner?”

  Again she shrugged, and grimaced because she hated doing it. “Either’s possible, although she’s looking better, suspect-wise. After all, things clearly weren’t great at home. She hired you to check up on her guy, didn’t she?”

  He had to concede that point. “But if she was just going to kill him, why bother to hire me?”

  “To throw suspicion off of her?”

  “That’s weak.”

  “You got any better theories? Besides, maybe she didn’t plan it. Women are more likely to commit crimes of passion than deliberately planned murders.”

  “Depends on the woman. Either way, she didn’t strike me as a killer.”

  “But anybody can be a killer, given the right circumstances.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he sighed, rubbing his eyes. Until Holly showed up to tell her side of the story, she was a suspect. In fact, her disappearance surely made her the number-one suspect. Goddamn it. “Fuck. She killed her husband, didn’t she?” Maybe she had discovered he’d given her herpes and snapped.

  “It doesn’t look good for her. What have you got on her?”

  “Just the usual shit, the form filled out for the job.”

  “Can I see it?”

  He paused briefly, not really thrilled about the prospect of sharing information about a client without a court order being involved, but Murphy was his friend, and besides, he might have been used by his client. He hated that, no matter how much of an asshole Dallas was. He went back into his top drawer and unlocked a box set into the drawer, where he kept current client information. Once he was done with the job, it got filed away in the locked cabinet on the far side of the room and scanned into the computer, where he transferred it to a jump drive he kept in a place in his home where he knew no one would ever look. It seemed excessive and paranoid, but you could never have enough backup. He found the form he was looking for and handed it over. She looked it over, nodding. There probably wasn’t anything there she hadn’t discovered already.

  “So how’s things in homicide?”

  “Busy. You know the economy’s in the toilet when the murder rate starts creeping up.”

  “How’s the guy who shot me?’

  That made her snort in dark humor as she tucked the form into the envelope with the photos. “Kwan broke him. He started this weird-ass ramble about you being a traitor to the species and whatnot, although it was never clear what species he was referring to. Also, you being an ass bandit seems to personally offend him. Kwan told him not to knock it until he tried it—which he would, whether he liked it or not, when he ended up in the county lockup.”

  “Oh, how lovely.”

  “Hey, it made me laugh.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she rolled her eyes. “Okay, yes, fine, prison rape is not funny. Even if it does happen to a hateful asshat who deserves it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Jeeze, Mr. PC, he shot you, and you worked him over like Mike Tyson in his less-pathetic days. I thought you of all people would want to see this fucker hurt.”

  “He’s a patsy, an easy scapegoat. He pulled the trigger, but someone else put the gun in his hand.”

  She gazed at him levelly. “You’re talking about DT.” Many cops simply referred to the church as DT, not only because it was shorter but because it sounded like an illness.

  “I’m talking about David Harvey. Taking me out would make him a hero amongst a large swath of his followers. He’d cement leadership in the Church if I was gone.”

  “I thought this was all about Eli’s computer.”

  “It is, but it finally occurred to me that that’s a convenient excuse. Getting the hard drive back could help him blackmail his way to the top, but it might just be easier to kill me. Well, that might have been his thinking.”

  “I bet he thinks different now.”

  Roan shook his head. “He just hates me more.” He didn’t tell her that he’d helped stoke that fire.

  They got to the personal bits of the discussion—he asked
how Kim was, she asked how his “strapping young stud” was (this indicated that she had forgotten Dylan’s name)—and then found an easy way to end the discussion. Truth be told, Murphy had only come here to check up on him and get the photos, maybe get some more information on Holly Faraday. It was more of a business visit than a personal one, but they pretended it wasn’t.

  Fiona turned out to have gotten a bit of the information wrong on the one o’clock client. Jack Murray was a somewhat neurotic middle-aged man who was afraid his younger boyfriend, one Bryan McKee, was cheating on him. Well, it had been bound to happen—a gay couple was going to come here to self-destruct. He had just assumed gay marriage would be legal by then. Although he felt weird about it—what, he only busted up straight couples?—he took the case. Hard to say no to money.

  After that, there wasn’t much point in sticking around, as he had things to do. He’d never make it to Sheridan Valley in time, but there was a third prisoner who had shared cell space with Jorgenson but wasn’t on the suspect list simply because he was in prison at the time of Keith’s disappearance, and there wasn’t a more rock-solid alibi than that. His name was Rocco Santorelli (his birth name was actually Rocco—it was astounding the names some people gave their kids), and he was up in County on a car-theft beef. Since Roan knew some of the people in County, he figured he’d have an easier time talking to Rocco. On his way out, he discussed taking Fiona out on a routine surveillance gig one of these days. She wanted to learn the ropes of the biz, and he figured, why not? Besides, surveillance gigs were boring, and a little company wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would help him get his mind away from the dark subjects it seemed to like to dwell on.

  Out in the car, he took a moment to think, take a codeine, and consider his next moves. Not only did he have to visit Rocco, but he had to visit Dee or he’d never hear the end of it. He calculated the drive time and figured he’d visit Rocco first. Dee wouldn’t like it, but he could wait.

  Roan decided to swing by the house and change clothes, as he looked like he might be a detective. Rocco might shut down instantly when faced with a PI, but if he looked like just some regular guy off the street, he was in with a better shot. Nothing fancy, just jeans and a T-shirt, maybe a baseball cap if he really wanted to go overboard.

  And then he hoped to pay a visit to Panic before Dylan started his shift, talk to Luis (nee Rhett). He wanted to know where Dylan might like to go for a weekend, but he didn’t want to ask him and spoil the surprise, so Luis was his next-best shot. He and Dylan had been friends for a long time, and presumably he’d know something about his tastes. Roan was a bit humbled because he wasn’t sure. He was a bad, bad boyfriend.

  He was humming the Pansy Division song of the same name when he pulled up into the driveway, and the codeine was really kicking in as he moved to his front door, his hands and feet feeling oddly warm. What a weird side effect. Maybe that’s what prevented him from realizing that something was wrong until he opened the door.

  The first thing he noticed was the way the air moved through the house. Fresh air whooshed, smelling slightly of the coming rain, and beneath it Roan could smell the scent of two men—one wearing some god-awful aftershave that smelled strongly of salt—who had been here recently. He pulled out his Sig Sauer and held it aimed down at the floor as he glanced in the living room. It showed some signs of being ransacked—the coffee table had been kicked over and some of Paris’s CD collection had been tossed out—but it was simply cover for what they were actually looking for. What thief left a television, a stereo, a DVD player behind? Those were easy to grab and easy to hock.

  No, the whole point of this robbery was Eli’s computer, which was missing from the side table. They had taken the monitor as well as the stack. Wouldn’t they be disappointed when they discovered the hard drive had been replaced?

  So this was David Harvey’s next move? How shockingly pedestrian.

  10

  La Stanza Bianca

  IT WAS always disappointing when a cop who knew you and didn’t like you showed up to take your statement.

  At least Butler—or, as he was known around the station, “Butthead”—came with a rookie named Salazar who didn’t know him and treated him just like any other guy who’d gotten his house burgled. Butler kept prowling around, like he was looking for something incriminating. Was he hoping to see some gay porn just lying around, or maybe a collection of dildos? If Roan had known he was coming over, he would have bought one and slapped his picture on it.

  There were some surprise visitors, though: Gordo and Seb. They wandered in, and Butler—who had been in charge of the scene before their arrival—got instantly tense. “Something I can help you with?” he asked, respectful but still slightly arch.

  Gordo gave him a bored look, which was worth a thousand hateful stares. He was now the senior man on the scene and he knew it, just as he knew Butler resented it. That was one of the things Roan really didn’t miss about being a cop: all the bullshit protocol. “This might be our jurisdiction, Ron.”

  Butler look confused, his beetle brows dipping low beneath his caveman forehead. “This isn’t a cat crime.”

  It was Seb who shrugged. Gordo was wearing a silver-gray suit coat, while Seb was rocking the khaki-trench-coat look. He was like a black Columbo, but without the lazy eye. “If it’s a hate crime, it is.”

  Butler scoffed and spread his arms wide, indicating the entire room. “There’s no sign of a hate crime here.”

  Gordo gestured to Roan, who was watching the tech gal, Imahara, dust for prints. “Roan said he thought DT was behind it.”

  Butler scoffed. “There’s no evidence of that. And last time I checked, feminine intuition doesn’t count as proof.”

  Gordo’s look hardened into ice. “You’re on report. Get out of here.”

  “What?” The question was one of genuine confusion, not defiance.

  “You heard me. Go home, Butler. You’re done here.”

  His mouth opened to protest, but Gordo and Seb were a brick wall, all stiff shoulders and withering looks, so he huffed a breath through his nose like an angry dragon and stomped out. Salazar looked painfully embarrassed but closed his notebook and followed Butler out, with a shrug that was probably an apology. Imahara continued working, pretending she wasn’t listening.

  “I could have just kicked his ass,” Roan pointed out.

  “I didn’t like that he felt so comfortable insulting someone in front of me. I ain’t putting up with that shit.” Gordo heaved a weary sigh, an indication of a topic shift. “Is Eli’s computer all they grabbed?”

  “As far as I can tell. They broke a window to get in and tossed some furniture around, but clearly they were after one thing.”

  “Someone called us about an altercation at the Church, but Mr. Harvey said only that you two had a ‘loud discussion’, and it was nothing of merit. Despite the fact that he looked very pained and isn’t a very good liar. His little assistant—who must have made the call—looked shell-shocked. You beat the shit out of Harvey?”

  “I think I’d better take the fifth here.”

  Seb snorted, a swallowed laugh. “Why? You’d get a medal down at the station if you did.”

  He knew they didn’t like the church at the cop shop or the state house, but that seemed like a more extreme reaction than usual. “Why? They been making more trouble than usual?”

  Imahara stood up, and her knees cracked like distant shotgun blasts. She was a vaguely attractive woman who seemed to like looking plain, wearing drab clothes and no makeup, her hair cut in an economic style. She looked like a person always on the verge of sinking into the background. It had to be a deliberate choice. “Well, got some good prints, but I suspect they’re yours, Roan. There’s a lot of smears indicating someone with gloves was here recently. You don’t wear gloves in the house, do you?”

  The first thing that sprang to mind was a fisting joke, but it was so awful he couldn’t make himself say it. “Not as a rule.”

>   She nodded. “That’s what I thought. Well, I’ll let you guys know, but I’m thinking we’re looking at a couple of pros here. They knew what they were doing. This was a smash and grab.”

  “They were also uninfected, probably because Harvey actually thought he could fool me into thinking it wasn’t him.” Imahara gave him a quizzical look on the way out the door, but it was Seb who asked, “How do you know they weren’t infected?”

  “He’d smell ’em if they were,” Gordo explained for him.

  As soon as Imahara was gone and had shut the door behind her, Roan asked, “So what’s been going on with the Church?”

  Gordo sighed and Seb’s shoulders sagged, all signs of defeat. “Since Eli’s death, recruitment has been on an upswing,” Gordo told him. “They’ve been having lots of parties where the infected and uninfected mingle, but they don’t hold them at the church. They’re been moving them around randomly, like house parties or raves, trying to avoid being busted. We’ve got some undercover agents posing as wannabe teens in the chat rooms, trying to get invited to these things, but they’re more paranoid than ever. It’s harder and harder to get a bite.”

  Roan nodded, sure he knew where this was going. “You want me to see if I can find one?”

  “It’d be a big help.”

  “Yeah, fine. I know sex workers, people in the scene. If there’s kinky shit going on somewhere, they’ll know.”

  Gordo smirked. “I’d ask how you know sex workers, but I’m sure I’d get in trouble.”

  “Just consider that all of us freaks stick together, because if we don’t, who would?”

  Seb nodded, and Gordo just gave him a strange look, but that seemed to be the end of it. “We can pay another visit to the church, mention the theft, see if we can shake him up,” Gordo offered.

  Roan shook his head. “Not necessary. All they got was a shell. I pulled the real hard drive out ages ago.”

  “So what do they have?”

  “An empty hard drive. A shitload of nothing.”

  Seb snickered. “Man, I can’t believe people still try you.”