Infected: Lesser Evils Read online

  “I have a lot of things. I just don’t talk about them much.”

  That’s exactly what he was afraid of. Roan wanted to ask what those other things could possibly be, but he had a sneaking suspicion he really didn’t want to know, and it was for the best that he didn’t.

  Driving home, he played music way too loud, trying to drown out his own thoughts, but it didn’t quite work. Why did he have to be the leader of the infecteds, if there could be such a thing? Wasn’t it arrogant to even think of himself that way? Besides, he wasn’t really one of them, was he? Most infecteds started out as Human and became a cat along the way. He’d never been completely Human, didn’t know what it was like to be a normal person who one day woke up to discover a foreign hunger in him, a virus that completely rewrote everything he was. He was as he had always been, with the small exception of his adaptation to his uneasy condition, the give and take between body and virus that had led him to here and now, where he could call it at will and find it damn near impossible to rein it back in sometimes. He was technically an infected, but he wasn’t a typical one by any means, and would never be.

  Roan enjoyed this rationale, aware that he’d never completely buy it. Humans would always toss him over into the infected camp, and the infecteds would accept him, because he was close enough. When you were a group of people who could generally count your lifespan in months, you didn’t kick up too much of a fuss. So shouldn’t the fucking cat who wouldn’t die kick up a fuss on their behalf?

  Still, wasn’t this what the Church was made for? Divine Transformation was all about cat advocacy, even if, like a typical church, they skewed things to fit their purposes. He should just let Bolt do the job he’d scratched and clawed for (no pun intended… well, a little intended), go out there and pimp for the cats. Roan could go back and sit in the freak corner, and everybody would forget about him.

  Once he pulled into Kevin’s driveway, he wondered why he’d come back. To take a nap? To shovel more pills down his gullet? The latter sounded more plausible. He had a couple hours before he had to pick up Dylan from work. He could go to Silver and bring property values down by loitering around the bar, but he didn’t want Dylan to fret about him any more than he already did.

  He needed to get help. He knew it, he didn’t need the men in his life pointing it out, he was sure he was a total fucking mess. Was there ever any doubt? But where did he get help? He could ask Scott if he could recommend a therapist, but he wasn’t sure he had a therapist anymore. (The implication was he’d had one in BC, but, despite its proximity, that was another country.) Besides, he needed one that dealt specifically with infecteds, so they wouldn’t freak out when he talked about his partial shifts. If he did. Maybe he didn’t need to bring that up.

  Roan had no idea how long he sat there, engine off, head resting against the steering wheel, the car growing progressively cold, cluing him in that it was an unseasonably chilly night. When did he become so pathetic? He needed his ass kicked.

  He was still trying to convince himself to get moving when his phone hummed in his pocket. He dug it out and slumped back lethargically in the seat, seeing it was Seb. He felt a cold dread settle into his stomach as he answered. “Yeah?”

  “Heard the news?” he wondered.

  Roan couldn’t even begin to guess. “I’m nowhere near any electronic device, and I haven’t been for hours.”

  “How? You in a cave in Twisp or something?”

  “I was talking art shit with Dylan and then talking trash with hockey players. I’ve had a full night.” Out of courtesy for his straight squeamishness and general privacy reasons, he didn’t tell him he and Dylan actually did much more than talk.

  “Obviously. Well, someone bombed the Church.”

  Roan waited a beat, not sure if Seb was joking or not. But the longer the silence stretched, the more he realized this wasn’t a sick joke. “What?”

  “Pipe bombs, Internet specials. There was an incendiary bomb, but it didn’t go off. Those are more complicated.”

  Seb didn’t sound overly concerned about it, but since he was a stoic, he didn’t react to much. You could chop his hand off, and you might get a vocal inflection, but you couldn’t bet on it. “How bad was it?”

  “Lots of damage, some people hurt, no one dead… yet. One of their rent-a-cops ain’t doing so well.” Seb sighed heavily, and asked, “Can we start talking about protective custody now?”

  Roan couldn’t think of anything he’d like to do less. But how long had he given the reins of leading the infecteds over to the Church, twenty minutes? That must have been a world record for screwing the pooch.

  Oh, who knows? Maybe he could do better.

  20

  Shot by Both Sides

  ROAN watched Kevin’s TV for a bit, just to see what the local news had to say about the bombing. Not a lot, or at least not much that was substantive. Two pipe bombs went off, one didn’t, and the number of injuries ascribed to the attack were fourteen, twenty-two, or twelve, depending on whether you were watching channel five, seven, or four. That one person was critical was the single constant.

  If there were one or two particular suspects, they weren’t named. Perhaps because there was a plethora of suspects to choose from. It would be easier to name those not involved, or at least take less time. Kevin told Roan not to go to the crime scene, that he’d ask around and see what he could find out. Was it that obvious he wanted to check out the Church? Yeah, probably. Roan promised he wouldn’t.

  He left early to pick up Dylan, ostensibly to stop by the store and pick up some Excedrin, which he used to take by the handful (taking so many painkillers basically killed his migraine cycle, which was a bonus of being a pill addict), but really because he had remembered he had to drop in on Cullen.

  Roan had to cut through a party that had spilled out onto the stairs, and he got a variety of looks from the junior thugs holding their big plastic cups full of cheap beer, mostly of the dirty variety. The pot smoke that wreathed them made him sneeze.

  There was no change of scents by Cullen’s apartment door, nor did he hear the hum of electricity when he pressed his ear against the door. Cullen hadn’t been home, had he? Had he done a runner? Had he heard of Hockney’s death, figured shit had gone south, and made a run for the border?

  Maybe Roan was looking at this wrong. Maybe Cullen had known of Hockney’s death before anyone else. Or maybe he was dead too.

  Headed down the stairs, a big guy with a white do-rag asked, “Who you lookin’ for?”

  “Joe. Don’t suppose you know him?”

  “The squirrelly white dealer?” he asked, and snorted derisively. The man had linebacker’s shoulders and a matching thick neck, making Roan think that’s exactly what he was, at least for some high school or college team. He caught a very vague scent of steroids on him. “What’cha need? We know a guy.”

  “Nothing from him. His supplier’s dead, I wanted to find out where he was at the time of his murder. I don’t suppose he’s come back today, has he?”

  Nervous glances were exchanged between the linebacker and his slightly smaller friends (smaller in the sense that a Road Ranger is smaller than a bull elephant). “You a cop?” One of his friends casually dropped something on the ground beside the stairs. (Dumping drugs, on his behalf.)

  “Just an investigator.” Roan reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a business card, which he handed to the linebacker. “If you see him, tell him to call me, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said in a halfhearted way that meant he’d do no such thing. He glanced at the card and was still reading it as Roan cut through the remaining crowd, which parted for him with the general semihostile uneasiness that occurred when people breaking a variety of laws thought you were a cop.

  Roan was walking out to the parking lot when the linebacker shouted, “What the hell kind of name you got?”

  “A weird one,” he admitted, not looking back.

  He stopped by a Safeway to pick
up a bottle of Excedrin and some of Dylan’s favorite green tea, and picked himself up a type of candy bar he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t know why, but he ate it in the car as he drove to Silver. Was he even hungry?

  Didn’t matter. As soon as Roan was done with it, he popped a couple of codeine, washing them down with the bottle of water in his glove box, and went in to pick up Dylan.

  He was a little early, and it was a slow time—the restaurant was about to close—so he sat at the end of the bar and Dylan served him a virgin pineapple margarita (he didn’t need to say it was virgin, Roan just knew) while he waited for him to finish closing down the bar. One of the waiters came by to gossip—he seemed very much the classic twink, with dyed blond hair in a sculpted quiff and a single diamond stud earring (surely fake)—and he mentioned the explosion down at the church, making it sound much more Michael Bay that it actually was. From the news footage, the bombs had collapsed the front porch and broken some windows, but not much beyond that. The twink kept giving him the stinkeye when Dylan wasn’t looking, which just made Roan smile at him. By now, contempt just amused him. Especially when the only reason was jealousy. The waiter wanted Dylan, and he knew that Roan was The Partner and could only cockblock him.

  Dylan seemed worried about him, but Roan assured him he was going to let the Church handle their own shit. For some reason, that still made Dylan nervous. He didn’t believe him? Or maybe he did, and it still bothered him.

  He wasn’t the only one bothered. Roan found himself wondering what was bothering him about all of this, and decided it was the timing. The drug dealer at the Church winds up dead, between an attempted drive-by and a more successful bombing. Sure, lots of people hated infecteds right now, had hated the Church since its inception, but damn, that was some timing. He really didn’t like coincidences, and this was a huge one. But what was the connection? That was the maddening thing. A drug war would make sense, except no drug mafia ever used pipe bombs, or at least used them so shoddily. Unless that too was deliberate.

  So many possibilities. He continued mulling them over as he drove Dylan back to Kevin’s house, and while making Dylan a late dinner of scrambled eggs (he could do eggs; it was pretty much the limit of his cooking abilities). In fact, watching him cook, Dylan asked, amused, “What have you done that makes you feel so guilty that you’re cooking for me?”

  “Nothing beyond the usual,” Roan replied. Which was true, but he wondered why Dylan put himself through the hell of being with him. He wasn’t infected; he didn’t need to do this. After all of this, if he was Dyl, he didn’t know if he’d stay. He supposed it said more about Dylan’s character than anything else.

  Roan was still trying to figure this out when they went to bed. Dylan slept peacefully while he lay awake, watching the gradations of light play across the ceiling as morning approached, and he tried to figure out why the timing of the Church attacks bothered him so much.

  Was that it? What if Hockney’s murder wasn’t drug related, but Church related? He wasn’t infected… but would it matter if some anticat extremist saw him coming and going from the Church all the time? They wouldn’t bother to investigate—they’d just assume he was an infected.

  The fact that it was a weapon similar to those used in the drug hits? Coincidence, or a case of someone actually trying to make it look like a frame job? It seemed like a long shot, but his mind refused to calm down about it.

  He got up and searched on his laptop for a while. Eventually he found a page where anticat extremists were posting photos of people seen entering and leaving the Church. There were lots, and it seemed he was on there too, his name and address posted, along with the comment, “This fag is the worst of the lot.” Oh hey, was there an award? Maybe a plaque? He should collect it. He could put it on his office wall, beneath his framed “World’s Best Buttfucker” certificate.

  By this time he could hear Kevin up and about, getting ready for work, so Roan took his laptop downstairs and met him in the kitchen. “Can you find out anything for me about the owners of a website?” he asked.

  Kevin, who’d been pouring himself a cup of coffee, said, “Yes. I am a geek.” He then turned, and almost did a double take. “Nice underwear.”

  Oh yes. He was in his underwear. Well, frankly, he was so involved in this he’d forgot to get dressed. No help for it now. He turned the laptop screen toward him, and said, “I have a theory.”

  “My god, those are famous last words from you,” he said. “You’re like a gay, mutant House.” He paused briefly. “Since when have you gotten all these tattoos? Jesus, I knew you had some ink, but man.”

  “Just count it as lucky I never got that face tattoo.”

  “Yeah, I think Mike Tyson took that off the market for everyone.” Kevin glanced at the screen, and almost choked on his coffee. “What the fuck…? An infected hate site?”

  “A hate site with photos. And look at number seventy-two.”

  Kevin dutifully took the laptop and scrolled down. He frowned at what he saw. “Who am I looking at?”

  “Pierce Hockney.”

  Roan saw the tumblers click behind his eyes. “The drug dealer who just got murdered?”

  “Who else has such a shitty name? Besides me.”

  “That was a drug-related homicide.”

  “Was it?”

  Kevin sighed explosively and put the laptop on his kitchen table. “Damn you, House, putting these thoughts in my head.”

  “Can you find who owns this website? Beyond the anonymous Save Humanity Now.”

  Kevin was still scrolling through the site, and he nodded absentmindedly. “Yeah, shouldn’t be a problem—holy fuck, this is you! They have your address and everything.”

  “My house got vandalized, somebody attempted a drive-by of the Church, Hockney was murdered, and now someone bombs the Church. The Church is having a bad time of it, aren’t they?”

  Kevin gave him a deeply concerned look. “Where does the burn fit into this?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it does at all. I think there’s a pattern forming here independent of that, but someone is smart enough to vary it, just enough that we don’t consider this one continuing crime but many separate ones. And they’re escalating in violence.”

  Another sigh, leading to Kevin saying, “Darinda and Seb are totally gonna kick your ass for givin’ ’em more work.”

  “I could be wrong.”

  He snorted in disgust. “Don’t insult us both, Ro. You’re the best natural investigator I’ve ever met. If you think there’s something here we’re missing, there’s somethin’ here.”

  That was a nice vote of confidence, one he honestly felt he needed, although he wasn’t sure why.

  Sure he had passed off his hunch to the right person, he went back upstairs and called Rosenberg, leaving a message on her machine, requesting a therapist reference without any additional commentary. There was a message waiting for him, from Scott. The viewing party was at five tonight at a downtown address; he told Roan he was free to bring Dylan and to skip bringing the beer if he wanted. Since Dylan would be working tonight, there was no way he could make it, and Roan could be fair to Jeff and bring some beer. Scott was right, diets sucked, even if it was in support of his career choice.

  Finally exhausted, Roan went to bed, cuddling up against Dylan’s warm body, and immediately fell into a deep, dark sleep. If he dreamed, he didn’t remember any of it.

  When he woke up, it was the afternoon. Dylan was gone, and had left him a note. He was at the temple right now, but said if Roan was up to it he’d meet him for lunch at the Taj Mahal restaurant at two. Since it was just past one, Roan figured he could make it if he hurried.

  After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Roan made it to the restaurant just in time. He checked his messages in the car, so he was able to tell Dylan that Rosenberg had given him the name of a therapist, and he intended to make an appointment. This pleased Dyl, like he thought it would. He also mentioned the viewing part
y, which got an ironic smile from Dylan. “You and Tank. I’m sorta glad he’s gone. You two could get into so much trouble together.” Which was a fair point. Hadn’t they already?

  After lunch, Roan checked his phone and found a message from Dropkick, chewing him out with a variety of cusswords that would have impressed the Falcons. But she also said the gun used in the Hockney murder was similar to the ones used in the DSM cases, but the ballistics were suggesting it wasn’t the same gun. She added that she fucking hated him, but she said it with love.

  He called the therapist, a woman named Doctor Lillian Sanger (what an old-fashioned name; he wondered if she was as old as Rosenberg), and made an appointment with her receptionist for next week. He still wasn’t sure he could do this—he’d had enough of therapy as a teenager—but he had to try, if only for Dylan’s sake.

  According to Kevin, the owner of the Save Humanity Now site was a guy named Dean McFadden, who had a record of hate crimes, and had been associated with the Aryan Brotherhood as a teen. Terrific. There was no extremist like a white supremacist. Was he smart enough to be behind any of these crimes? Maybe he was just an instigator. Bad enough.

  Roan stopped by and bought beer before arriving at the place downtown, which turned out to be the apartment of the Falcons’ goalie coach, Stephane Plamondon (the guys called him “Stevie”). A little more than half the team and supporting staff were there, filling out every available seat in the house, including floor pillows and an end table. Fiona was also there, to root on her boyfriend, and Roan found himself sitting between her and Grey on the sofa. The Falcons’ backup (currently starting) goaltender was a good Canadian boy (he didn’t appear old enough to vote) named Ethan Hill who made a point of introducing himself and shaking his hand, because “Tank told me you were good luck.” After Roan walked away and sat back on the loveseat, Grey muttered, “Goalies are so superstitious.” Roan was pretty sure all hockey players were superstitious, but he decided not to point it out.