Infected: Lesser Evils Page 40

  Roan had to circle the block before he found a parking spot, and after he had maneuvered in, he asked, “How’s the girl?”

  Holden really didn’t know what he meant, until he recalled the rescue of several nights ago. Considering he had been shot at, how could he forget? (Except it wasn’t the first time he’d been shot at, and it was amazing how your mind just adapted to circumstances, no matter how extreme.) “Jessie’s probably gonna keep her around, see if she can rehabilitate her here. Seems her stepfather sold her to the sex traffickers, so there’s no point in sending her home.”

  Roan let out a small sigh, more of disappointment than anything else. “I wish people would stop living down to my expectations.” The cynic’s lament. Holden knew the feeling and the problem.

  Franco’s apartment building was one of many rotten apartment buildings on this rotten street. If clinical depression had a neighborhood, it lived here, where gang tags decorated the walls and litter decorated the gutters, with a smell of piss mixing with dog shit that seemed to make Roan wince. Holden wasn’t fond of the scent either, but got used to it much faster.

  Franco lived on the third floor of his building, which he liked because he felt a ground floor apartment was simply an invitation to crack addicts looking for a television to hock. Holden sort of got the logic, but mainly he thought it reflected Franco’s natural paranoia.

  The trip up the dark, rickety stairwell that smelled rather strongly of malt liquor was uneventful, but once they were outside Franco’s door, Roan put his ear to it and kept Holden from knocking. His nose wrinkled from the stench, but after a moment, he said, “He’s home. I hear deep snoring in there.”

  “Can you tell if he has a playmate?”

  “Can’t smell one. I’m pretty sure he’s alone.”

  “You can smell someone through this stench?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Holden knew he would be. Roan tried the doorknob, which was clearly locked, and suddenly he growled, a noise low in his throat that made Holden’s hair stand on end. It was the noise a monster in your closet might make, and his sudden fear was simply an atavistic response to the sound. Roan then turned the doorknob again, and this time something snapped inside it, a metallic sound of a spring or a tumbler cracking under pressure, and then Roan put his shoulder to the door and pushed. He didn’t hit the door, it was a simple shove, and something broke inside as the door swung open. Once inside the apartment, which smelled like bong water and burnt cheese, Holden saw it was a deadbolt that had fallen from the door and hit the carpet.

  The apartment looked like a minor explosion had occurred within it, with dirty clothes, pizza boxes, and magazines scattered about haphazardly, with some irregular-shaped lumps suggesting there was furniture somewhere underneath it all. For a second, Holden thought he heard someone revving an SUV in the adjoining room, but it was just Franco snoring.

  They started looking around, for what Holden wasn’t sure, but he went immediately to Franco’s computer and started it up simply by moving the mouse, as it was in “sleep” mode. Holden went through the browser history, and saw Franco was a fan of “chicks with dicks” sites. Lovely. There was also something referencing a donkey show, but he didn’t bother to look too closely.

  Roan found Franco’s phone in his coat pocket, his jacket slung over one side of what Holden assumed was the couch, and after a moment of paging through the phone’s memory, Roan said, “Call up a reverse directory for me, would you?”

  Holden did, and Roan asked him to put in a number, see what came up. Once he was done, what came up was the name Lee McGuiness, with an address that put him near lower Capitol Hill. “Recognize the name?” Roan asked him.

  Holden shook his head. “Should I?”

  “No, but it’s the last number Franco dialed, besides Pizza Time.”

  “Think it might be our guy?”

  “It’s worth checking out.” Roan wrote the address on the palm of his hand, and then Holden shut down the browser and wiped out the history so even if Franco thought to check, he’d find nothing. On their way out the door, Roan wiped the broken doorknob, even though it was highly unlikely Franco would ever call the cops for any reason. (Certainly not with pot in the place.)

  So this was the detective work Roan wanted him to take over, huh? Holden wouldn’t have expected it, but it was oddly tempting.

  37

  Prince Squid

  LEE’S apartment building wasn’t as shitty as Franco’s, but it wasn’t the million-dollar condo you could find in some of the areas downtown. This was middle-of-the-road squalor, as opposed to full-on depressing squalor, and many of the apartment buildings looked alike, while a few small shops at street level added visual interest.

  Roan felt weird doing this in broad daylight, mainly because it felt like something that should be done in the dark of night—skulking in dark alleyways, hunting a fellow hunter. But he was no longer sure he had that kind of time.

  The way Holden had looked at him, Roan was sure he was worse off than he’d initially thought. Holden was the master of the poker face, he only let you see what he wanted most of the time, but Roan had rattled him enough that Holden had offered him a genuine glimpse of what he was feeling. Hell, he’d shaken him enough that Holden had given him a black beauty, a type of speed which Roan didn’t even know existed anymore, but hey, why not? The drugs may get passé, but if they were good, they still survived. Roan could feel it starting to work now; his heart was pounding, his hands shaking a little, but he was starting to feel more centered in himself, if that made any sense at all. It probably didn’t, but since little about him did make sense nowadays, so what?

  The apartment building was one of those you had to be buzzed into. Holden pressed a buzzer for one of the places marked with a name beside its apartment number, and there was, in response, a crackling, “Yeah?”

  “UPS,” Holden said, all business. “I have a package for a Mr. Sutter.” Perhaps Holden had thought of UPS because one of their trucks was actually idling down the street; they’d both seen the pudgy-legged man in his brown uniform enter one of the shops carrying a large cardboard box. It gave a wonderful verisimilitude to the story, and mentally Roan gave him points for using something in his environment to make his lie more plausible. Then again, Holden being so fast on his feet was one of the reasons he thought he’d make an excellent replacement. The man was a born liar, and while that sounded like an insult, in this business it was a compliment.

  Sutter didn’t respond, there was a simply a long buzz, and Holden swung open the door and went inside, Roan following right behind. Once inside the air-conditioned lobby, Roan said, “You’ve done this before.”

  Holden snickered. “I’ve had clients who wanted me to sneak into their business before or after hours, so their wives wouldn’t catch on to their extracurricular activities. I’m used to being where I shouldn’t be.”

  “That’s why you’d make a good detective.”

  “Why not put Dylan up for this?”

  “He’s an artist, not a detective.”

  They got in the ground-floor elevator, which was relatively clean and didn’t smell like piss, which was a nice change of pace from the lower-class apartment buildings. That alone was enough to make Roan angry, if this fucker really was the killer. If he wasn’t… well hell, he was still kind of pissed off. Why not?

  Lee’s apartment was on the fourth floor, where narrow windows just big enough to let in sunlight bracketed the ends of the corridor. His apartment was three doors down on the right, and before they came up to the door, Holden grabbed Roan’s arm and made him stop. “How we doin’ this?”

  “Depends. If he’s home, I need to get in, and if he’s the one, I’ll know.”

  “Which means what—you’ll growl or do the full-on lion?”

  “I’ll try not to lion out on you.”

  “What about if he’s not home?”

  Roan shrugged. “We might have to let ourselves in.”


  Holden nodded, as if that was simply the sensible thing to do. Breaking and entering never was, but this was where Holden’s loose morals came in handy. Roan wondered once again if he should ever bother to bring up that he knew Scott couldn’t be a client of his, because Scott had asked after him when they left The Dungeon—a client wouldn’t be so obvious, they’d play it cool, perhaps act like Holden didn’t exist at all. And bring him back to his place? Unheard of. No, there was something going on there, and while it made Roan nervous, maybe it was a good thing. Not for Scott, but for Holden, because Roan worried he didn’t have the capacity to feel much of anything. Holden could either be nothing but trouble for Scott, or maybe just what he needed. Scott was enough of an enigma that it was hard to say.

  Roan knocked on the door, and listened carefully. It was a quiet floor, even though he could scent someone making microwave popcorn; a couple were fucking, and someone down near the elevator had a baby that was making random shrieking noises that approximated speech. None of that was going on in Lee’s apartment, though; it was quiet inside. He thought he heard a television, but it was next door and simply bleeding through the wall.

  Since it was quiet, he told Holden, “Keep an eye out,” before dropping to one knee and busting out his lockpick kit, a small collection of tools that fit easily in his pants pocket. Roan got to work as Holden stepped in front of him on one side, facing the elevator, looking around on a regular basis.

  “Not going to force it?” he wondered.

  “Don’t want to give him any warning.”

  It didn’t take Roan long to trip the deadbolt, and within a couple of minutes they were inside, careful to use their sleeves to touch objects so as not to leave fingerprints. Not that it was likely Lee’d call cops in even if he thought there’d been a break-in; if he was the killer, he wouldn’t be overly fond of cops anywhere near his business. “So is it true what I’ve heard?” Holden asked, whispering.

  He trusted Roan to be right that no one was here, but he didn’t want the neighbors to hear.

  “What have you heard?”

  “That juries are letting the patently guilty go ’cause there isn’t forensic evidence supporting their guilt?”

  “I don’t see too many courtrooms anymore, unless I’m on trial for something, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Those goddamn CSI shows are too fucking absurd. Not everybody leaves usable DNA at a scene, and not everything can be told from a single strand of carpet fiber.” The apartment was relatively neat, dominated by Ikea furniture and neutral tones, and smelled of coffee, microwave pizza, and… cigarettes. The same cigarettes Roan had smelled at the tenement? Truth be told, it was kind of hard to tell; unless they were menthol or some other specialty brand, all cigarette smoke pretty much reeked in the same manner, with the little variations too common to be of much help. Roan knew if smokers actually knew of all the chemicals they were smoking, they’d probably quit tomorrow.

  Holden started wandering around the living room, looking around for who knows what. He stopped by a wall rack, and said, “Holy shit, I hope he’s the killer.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he’s got awful taste. Kenny Loggins? Fast and the Furious? God, he deserves a death sentence for these alone.”

  “If you find Toby Keith or Larry the Cable Guy, we’ll set a booby trap.” Roan wandered off toward the room that could only be the bedroom. Did he smell blood? It was so faint it was almost completely lost in all the other scents of a human living in a small space, but he still picked it up. He couldn’t have followed it on a city street, but here he was lucky the ventilation wasn’t great. Roan followed the scent toward the bathroom—Christ, when was the last time he’d cleaned it?—while Holden exclaimed, “I found Toby Keith. Can I take a dump on his bed?”

  “No.”

  “Damn it, man, I’ve found three Steven Seagal movies. We can’t leave this unpunished.”

  The bathroom, like most men’s bathrooms, reeked of piss. Roan winced and wondered how anyone could stand it, and then wondered if it was just his hyperactive sense of smell. If it really smelled that bad, you’d think he’d have done something about it by now.

  If you ignored the rings in the sink, toilet, and bathtub, it was relatively clean. Roan followed that tiny thread of blood scent to the sink, fearing it was just a shaving nick, but it wasn’t in the basin itself. No, it was under, below, and he crouched down to open the cabinet as Holden came to stand in the doorway. “Found something?”

  “I’m smelling infected blood.” Beneath the cabinet was a small plunger, a bottle of Drano, a couple rolls of toilet paper, Rogaine (ha), and a towel. A rather lumpy towel.

  Roan touched it, felt something hard and cylindrical beneath, and pulled back the topmost towel. Beneath it were three small, metal-tipped arrows, about the size of your average Slim Jim. “What is it?” Holden asked.

  Roan picked one up and sniffed it. It had been washed in a hot, soapy solution, but not well enough to escape his nose.

  “What the fuck… is that actually an arrow?”

  “He’s killing them with a bow,” Roan said, both disgusted and amazed. The possibility of him hunting without a gun had never crossed Roan’s mind. He got up and went back into the bedroom, Holden stepping aside.

  “Who the fuck does he think he is, Robin Hood?”

  “It’s quiet, so he doesn’t have to worry about drawing too much attention to himself, and it’s more of a challenge. If he wants a quick kill, he has to make it one damn good shot. And the damage to the pelt is controllable.”

  Holden started undoing his pants. “That’s it. I’m so taking a dump on his bed.”

  “No you’re not, especially when I’m still looking for the damn weapon.” Roan went to the closet, which was a bit of a mess, but he figured Lee’d take more care of his hunting weapon. The second search option was under the bed, where Roan turned up a small box full of porno mags (used—goddamn his sense of smell), and a bigger, covered Amazon box. Bingo.

  Roan slid the box out, while Holden perused the porno magazines, careful to use a tissue to handle the pages. “So, Juggs, Shaved Asians, Barely Legal… damn, I love this man. I want to slit him open stem to stern with a nail file and then set him on fire.”

  “Get in line.” Opening the box, Roan found another towel, and once he moved that aside, he found himself looking at a compound crossbow, affixed with a sight. It was the kind any bow hunter going after deer might use. It was a bit bulky, but he could see how it would be easy to hide with a heavy coat or simply inside a duffel bag or a backpack, and it wasn’t as heavy as he had expected it to be. The beauty part? This was an unregistered weapon, so even if the cops bothered to investigate and found a wound on a pelt equivalent to the arrowhead, it wouldn’t matter. There was no official database, nowhere to even begin tracking this.

  Roan pulled out his pocket knife, and nicked his thumb.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Marking this.” He pressed his cut thumb just above the trigger, where his hunter friend was unlikely to grab it, at least not until he opened fire. “If I smell my blood anywhere, I can track it. As soon as he takes this out anywhere upwind of me, I will find him.”

  “Well, that’s informative. And creepy.”

  “Give me a clean tissue, will you?”

  Holden balled up the tissue he’d been using to examine the magazines and tossed it under the bed, where it joined a couple more. He then got a clean one from the box on the bedside table and brought it over, and Roan wrapped it around the cut on his thumb before replacing the crossbow in the box, and reassembling it all before shoving it back beneath the bed. “He’s got to have knives to skin his prey. Precision knives, you couldn’t do this with a set from Kmart.”

  “And they’re not here, Mr. Bloodhound?”

  “Not in this room.” Roan went back out into the living room, but scowled as he realized he wouldn’t keep them out here. But they weren’t in the bedroom or bathroom, meaning the only r
oom left would be the kitchen. He wouldn’t really keep them in there, would he?

  Roan went to the kitchen, and wondered why he wasn’t smelling even the slightest trace of blood, when he decided that the smell of detergent was too strong. He opened the dishwasher to find nothing but large knives in the rack, although there were some small ones for finer work, some which looked almost like scalpels. The dishwasher did a better job cleaning off the blood than Lee had done with the arrows.

  Holden was behind him, looking over his shoulder. “If you had a search warrant, could you nail him for any of this?”

  “No.”

  “So what do we do? We could hang out until he comes home.”

  Roan closed the dishwasher, shaking his head. “We’re going.”

  “Are you kidding? He’s our guy.”

  “I know, but it’s not ending here. There’s a good chance he’ll be out tonight, hunting in the Heights. So will I.”

  Holden’s gaze was stony but infinitely understanding. “Good thing I’m free tonight, huh? Let’s get this bitch.”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “Don’t have to, want to. If you lion out, you’re gonna need someone to cover your tracks.”

  He was right, and it wasn’t like Holden hadn’t done it before. How odd—Holden was a man who didn’t trust easily, and yet he seemed to trust him. But then again, Roan knew he could say the same thing about himself. Ultimately, he and Holden had this in common: they were both jaded men who had been burned, so much so that it was sometimes impossible to tell their hard shells from their interior landscape. Except Roan had a glaring weakness, the people he loved, while Holden went out of his way to keep from showing any weakness. He cared about his “boys,” but in a sort of street-approved and expected way. Some of the feeling was probably genuine, but he tried to keep everyone guessing. Roan instantly thought of himself as the weaker of the two of them, because he had such an obvious vulnerability, but—and god, was this corny to even think—maybe he wasn’t. Maybe Holden was weaker because he was afraid to give up even that much of himself to anyone else.