Infected: Shift Page 16

  “That’s flattering.”

  “It shouldn’t be. Some guys are gonna see that as a challenge.”

  The microwave dinged, but Roan ignored it. “You think they’re gonna try and make their bones offa me? They’re welcome to try. Everybody gets one free shot.”

  She fixed him with a stern look. “You’re fucking impressive, I’ll give you that, but you’re still hurt by bullets. One of these days, some fucking gangbanger homophobe or kitty-hating psycho is gonna take a shot, and you won’t recover. Don’t you care?”

  He shrugged, aware he should be concerned, and also aware that he should be bothered that he wasn’t concerned. “Hazard of the job. You face it too.”

  “I’m a cop. You’re not anymore.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Fine, you don’t give a shit about yourself? What about Dylan? Have you ever considered—”

  “Don’t you dare play that card,” he interrupted angrily. It was a fucking low blow and she knew it.

  It didn’t stop her, though. “— he lives with you! If someone decides to target you, they may go after him instead. And how do you think he’d feel if you got yourself killed—”

  “How would Kim feel if you got yourself killed?” he roared back. Not literally, but it was a close thing. “This is fucking unfair!”

  “Maybe, but it’s an honest question. Have you even asked him how he feels about this?”

  Dylan didn’t even know, although he probably suspected, but to tell her that would give her a victory. “He doesn’t like it.”

  “I bet he doesn’t. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to get caught? Do you want to die?”

  The questions, asked in her low, level cop voice, just infuriated him. But he knew if he showed too much rage, she might start picking away at the lies. “I’m just doing the job I was hired to do.”

  “You were hired to lion out on a guy?”

  He gave her the paint-blistering stare this time. “I was hired to find out who murdered Jasmine Hawley, and I did. It was Sean Brand and Carey Switzer.”

  She put her hands on her hips, but otherwise didn’t seem surprised by that revelation. “Switzer’s probably gonna be nailed for it.”

  “Of course. He’s dead and it doesn’t matter anymore. But Sean killed her too. He told me.”

  “While you were turning into a vampire?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, you don’t need to tell me it’s inadmissible. I know. But he did it, Murph.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. He seems like the kind of asshole who would. But can you prove it beyond saying he did it?”

  He finally took his nuked sandwich out of the microwave, shaking his head all the while. “You know I can’t.

  “Then back off. Brand will be going down for the attack on Krause and for the ounce of coke they found in his apartment, and it ain’t a murder charge, but he might do more time.”

  “Very cynical.”

  “Tell me it isn’t true.” He couldn’t, so he didn’t say anything. Because of that, he heard the faint buzz of her cell phone vibrating in her pocket, and she pulled it out and looked at it before heading for the door. “Let it go, and stop trying to get caught, Superman.”

  “That’s Batman, missy,” he corrected sarcastically before she went out the door. He took his sandwich and ginger ale and retreated to the living room to eat.

  He found he’d left a book cracked open on the coffee table, a copy of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. It took him a moment to figure out why, but then he remembered. There was a piece of it he wanted as his next tattoo. A broken phrase, but it had all he wanted in it: “clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most unshatterable association….” If the text was small enough, he could probably fit it anywhere. He initially thought it’d be good on his back, but he’d never see it. Could he get away with it on his arm? It probably depended on the design. He was going to sketch out some ideas, some way to put it on him and have it not appear as if he'd written a memo on himself.

  Why had he gone from having nothing but a tiny tattoo of warning on his inner wrist to wanting to cover himself with the things? They hurt, they took time, and they were almost ubiquitous in the culture, past the point where he would have dismissed them as a poser’s affectation. So why? If he thought about it, the catalyst was Paris’s death. After that, he just wanted to cover his skin with ink, drown himself in it until nothing of his original flesh remained. He wanted pretty things to hide the ugly truth of himself. Maybe he could hide underneath the pictures. It was an awful revelation, and he was ashamed by the depth of the cowardice it revealed. Ironically, it made the Beckett quote doubly appropriate.

  The sandwich he was eating tasted a bit like hot cardboard, but he wasn’t sure if the sandwich was that bad or if he was in that kind of mood. The phone rang, and he almost didn’t pick it up, but eventually he did. It turned out to be Holden, who had apparently conned a nurse into letting him borrow his cell. (Figured.)

  Holden complained of boredom and wanted him to swing by his place and bring him his iPod and some books, as well as a Dick’s (burger) and maybe something with papaya juice in it. If he was well enough to complain of general ennui, then he was fine. He also requested his cell back, and Roan had forgotten he still had it. But he did.

  He was still on the phone with Holden when his own cell phone went off, and a quick look at it showed it was Grey calling him. He had to answer it, mainly because they hadn’t settled the Brand problem. As it turned out, it wasn’t anything that serious… yet. He was just going to the gym and wondered if Roan wanted to spar with him.

  A basic invitation, but Roan couldn’t help but wonder if this was where Grey wanted to discuss it. So he said okay and then told Holden he’d be by in a couple of hours, that he had to run an errand first.

  Roan finished getting dressed and shoved some shorts, a jock, and a tank in a duffel bag before getting out of there. He remembered to grab a bottled water so he had something to take his Vicodin with.

  The gym was a relatively decent place. It seemed more dedicated to actual working out than hooking up or meeting people (a lot of gyms were, quite frankly, dating spots for the vain), and there wasn’t an overabundance of mirrors, which was refreshing. Place still smelled of about a million different kinds of sweat, though. (Mainly to him, probably.)

  The sparring place tried to replicate the look of an old-time boxing gym, but it was as phony as a three-dollar bill. They had deliberately aged boxing posters slapped on the walls beside speed bags and heavy bags, a separate area for jumping rope and minor weight training, and then the squared circle of a boxing ring, although the padding was abnormally thick, and you didn’t step up into it—it was level with the floor. It had its own isolated changing area with metal lockers and a single bench running most of the length of the room, quitting before you reached the showers, but there was also a collection of gloves, helmets, and other safety equipment in a separate cubby, with a hamper for used equipment beneath. That wasn’t in any old-time boxing gym that he knew of. Neither were separate showers for privacy, or posted warnings about MRSA and using someone else’s towel.

  Grey was there, working a heavy bag, wearing a Falcons shirt and shorts with a similar evil bird head logo. There were about half a dozen people scattered around the boxing area, and Grey was the only one who actually looked like a boxer. (He wasn’t, but he was close enough. He was a boxer on skates.) Grey grinned at him and asked, “How good of a boxer are you?”

  He shrugged. “Decent. I have my own heavy bag at home.”

  “Whoa. Hardcore. Wanna open it up, go mixed martial, or stay traditional?” Something glittered in his eyes, mischievous and ever so slightly dangerous, and Roan couldn’t see saying no to a challenge, even if he knew that it was stupid.

  “If you’re up to it, let’s go mixed.” Ah, even gay men could fall into the macho man trap. Testosterone was poison.


  Grey scoffed. “Yeah, I’m up to it. But I warn ya, I took judo as a kid.”

  “I warn you, I turn into a lion when I get cornered.”

  Grey laughed, as if he was joking. He wasn’t, of course, but if Grey didn’t know that by now, he’d learn.

  Roan went off and changed into his shorts, jock, and tank top, finding gloves, headgear, and the special padded boots the kickboxers wore. He had his own mouth guard from when he used to spar in the gym, before he got his own heavy bag. He felt like a bit of a dick walking out to the ring, but he was no more or less a dick than anyone else in the place, and Grey was already waiting in the ring, dressed in a similar manner, and no one would ever call him a dick for fear of getting beaten to a fine paste.

  Once he ducked under the rope and got in the ring, Grey asked, “You a righty or a lefty?”

  “I’m right-handed, but I have a nasty left hook. What about you?”

  “I’m a righty too, but I can shoot from either side. Call me ambiguous.”

  Roan pondered that a moment. “Do you mean ambidextrous?”

  He considered that a moment. “Maybe. Probably. I’m not great with big words. I’m not paid to be.”

  Fair enough. They both popped in their mouth guards (Grey had a red one, and Roan was roughly sure that that was the one he wore on the ice), and they met in the center of the ring, where they bumped boxing gloves together. Since Grey was the client, Roan let him take the first punch, a huge roundhouse that smashed into the left side of his safety helmet and still made him stumble. It was probably a quarter of the power Grey put behind his hits, but damn, it was a concussion machine.

  Grey worked a corner of the mouth guard out with only his teeth and tongue (having to wear one all the time on the ice made him an expert at this), and he asked, “Too hard?”

  Roan smirked, recovering, and shook his head. If Grey wanted to play rough, he was more than happy to play along. He approached Grey warily, stepping in toward him on his right, and Grey threw a right, which he blocked with his arm, and nailed him in the stomach with a right of his own. Grey doubled over and backed away, and he said something muffled by his mouth guard, but Roan worked out what it was: “Sneaky.”

  They both exchanged a couple of blocks and hits, testing each other out, seeing how hard the other was willing to hit. Pretty hard, but they both had no problem taking it. Roan could feel his adrenaline flowing, and was having to tamp down the urge to growl.

  Grey was bigger and had more of a reach, as well as arms that could double for steel cables, but off the ice he was reasonably slow, and he had a tendency to telegraph his moves, possibly because finesse in hockey fighting was gilding the lily: all you needed to do was punch, hard, and if you had some wrestling skills, that could only help. There was not a lot of punch blocking in a hockey fight, usually because the guys were hanging on to each other’s jerseys so they didn’t get away or fall down.

  Finally Grey decided to throw a kick, see what happened, but Roan saw it coming when he shifted his stance, and blocked his kick with his arm. Grey backed off with a wolfish grin, and Roan spun into his own kick, aiming for his face. Grey saw this coming and grabbed his foot, so Roan—by reflex alone, really his only excuse for it—launched off his remaining foot and turned in midair, slamming the foot right in Grey’s face, making him drop him and reel back in surprise and impact. Roan hit the mat on all fours and quickly jumped back up to his feet, fists out, ready to go.

  Grey was slumped against the ropes, holding the side of his jaw and apparently laughing. Roan hadn’t realized it until then, but just about everyone else in the boxing area had come to watch them, gathered around a few feet away from the ropes. “Holy shit, how’d you do that?” A good-looking, shaven-headed black guy in gray sweatpants asked. “You a martial arts guy or something?”

  In retrospect, Roan realized he probably should have dislocated a leg or a hip with a move like that, and how the hell did he turn in midair in that short a space to land on his hands and knees? Well, cats always landed on their feet, right? Ha. He shook off a glove and pulled out his mouth guard. “Grey, you okay?”

  Grey was still laughing, but he worked his mouth guard out. “Yeah, I just didn’t expect that. So you did have some kickboxing training, huh?”

  No, no he hadn’t. He had no actual explanation for what had just happened. Watching too many Jet Li films? Should he be worried? “Little bit,” he lied, just deciding it was easier.

  Grey shook his head—shook it off—and stood up. “Wow, rattled my cage. That hasn’t been done since… fifth grade, I think. You’re stronger than you look.”

  “I get that a lot.” He decided to back off, just let things calm down. He was doing, unconsciously, what Murphy just accused him of doing: showing off.

  But after getting almost taken down, Grey had some pride on the line. He answered back with a flurry of punches, half of which Roan blocked, and half of which hit the target. He was mainly going for body shots, and still holding back, but the landed shots would probably leave bruises. But Roan landed some shots of his own that he knew would leave bruises as well, and would probably piss off Grey’s coach.

  There was an occasional comment from the crowd, but both he and Grey ignored it. This was a sparring match that had become oddly intense and serious. He winged Grey with an uppercut—he just caught the very edge of his chin, lifting it, letting him know that he could have punched his head off his shoulders if he was serious, and as Grey stumbled back, slightly off balance, the crowd “oohed.”

  “You tryin’ out for the UFC, dog?” someone asked. Roan wasn’t sure if he was talking to him or Grey.

  Grey faked a left that Roan committed to, and surprised him with a right to the jaw that made Roan stumble to keep his balance. The crowd “oohed” again, and Roan turned into a low kick that hit Grey on the side of the knee and got enough of the back to make Grey’s leg buckle, dropping Grey involuntarily to his knees. Roan then tapped him on the top of his padded headgear, letting him know he could have done something worse, and Grey started chuckling again. Roan had finally figured out that Grey was so startled when someone got the drop on him, he laughed rather than got mad. If it was a game, he’d get mad, but this was basically practice. So he laughed.

  Roan realized suddenly he was growling and stopped. Hopefully it was noisy enough that no one else noticed.

  Roan offered him a hand up, and Grey took it. “Man, you got moves. If there’s ever a bench-clearing brawl, you have my permission to jump on the ice and help.”

  “I’m an honorary Hanson brother?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  They were both sweaty and a bit short of breath—and achy—so they decided they’d sparred enough for the day. Hell, had it really been twenty minutes? It seemed like five. He could have kept going for the rest of the hour.

  The crowd gave them a smattering of applause for being entertaining, and Roan flashed them a middle finger after he got a glove off, but that just made them laugh. He had the approval of the gym’s boxing straight guys. Not that he needed it; he was confident he could kick all their asses without much trouble, and wasn’t that a nice thought?

  In the locker room, as they were changing out of their gear, Grey said, “I’ve never lost a fight, like, ever. I gotta spar with you until I can beat ya. It feels like a challenge.”

  “Yeah, that was fun. I usually just work the heavy bag at home.”

  “Ever punch it off its chain?”

  Roan paused taking off his tank top. His back was to Grey—he was facing his locker—and he was suddenly glad. “Once, maybe.” Actually, four times, but who was counting? “Why?”

  “Lucky guess. You punch like a wrecking ball. You really gotta teach me your stuff, man. It’s awesome.”

  What could he teach him? How to get infected and make your inner beast work for you? He didn’t even know how to do that, it was just something that happened to him. He was the superfreak, after all.

  He was still trying to fi
gure out how he’d get out of that when he heard a weird noise. It took a moment to figure out it was his cell, humming away in his jacket inside the locker, vibrating against the metal wall. It was Murphy, and he didn’t want to answer it, but he knew he’d better. “Yeah, Dropkick, calling to lecture me some more?”

  She sighed heavily. “Oh, you bastard, you wish. Michael Brand is dead.”

  Yeah, she was right: he did wish she had called to lecture him.

  15

  My Mistakes Were Made for You

  Roan listened as Dropkick mostly berated him, but kind of told him a bit about Michael Brand’s death. Apparently it looked like a suicide, but those were the operative words: looked like. She didn’t trust it, which was why the investigation was continuing.