Infected: Lesser Evils Page 7

  Dominik decided to be fashionably late to his own show, so they wandered around the small gallery, looking at his photos. Most were blown up to poster sizes, although a few were smaller, and they were following a theme: half-naked, scrawny guy with bleached hair and black roots (Dylan confirmed it was Dominik) in a Southwestern desert landscape, usually on or near a road. Every now and then there was a plaque or a sign, declaring “Isolation is a place” or some pretentious shit like that, but then they came to the photos where he was lying on black strips of asphalt with his pants pulled down to expose his ass. “Is he gay?” Roan wondered, trying to make sense of the photo in front of him.

  “No. He’s very vain, though.”

  “So I’m gathering. The composition’s nice, but why’s he humping a road?”

  “He’s not humping a road.” Dylan paused, and leaned in to study the photo more closely. “Is he? Oh dear god, tell me he’s not humping a pothole.”

  “I can’t tell from this angle. Is this a stage of madness? Is he so crazy from isolation he’s now fucking a freeway system?”

  “I—” Dylan shook his head helplessly. “I am now scared. Is it wrong of me to hope he’s on drugs?”

  “If he’s not on drugs, he should be put on them immediately.”

  When Dominik showed up around seven, he was wearing black sunglasses and an apricot orange ascot, and Dylan had to hold Roan back from going over and strangling him with his own scarf. Not because he hated him—he didn’t know him well enough to hate him—but because he looked like such a pretentious prick Roan almost couldn’t stand it. He was having a full-body allergic reaction to this guy, but rather than seize, his hands were making involuntary fists, and he had to resist the urge to shout, “Roadhumper, nice of you to show up.”

  Dylan had decided they’d had enough, and he went to greet Dominik before they left. Dominik treated him with an almost fey curtness, and he seemed to have a slight hint of an obviously fake Eurotrash accent. Rather than introduce himself, Roan gave him a toothy smile, and asked, “So, you bleached your butthole, huh? Just for the photos, or is it a hobby?”

  Dylan quickly grabbed him and hustled him out the door as Roan shouted, “Ta ta, toots. Great ass!”

  Once outside, he exclaimed, “I can’t believe you’d say that to a friend of mine! Do you want to—” It was here that Dylan had to stop talking because he was laughing so hard. He leaned against the stucco outer wall of the gallery, and Roan joined him, mainly chuckling at Dylan’s response.

  After a moment, when he caught his breath and wiped away tears from his eyes, he asked, “Did he really bleach? I didn’t notice.”

  “I think he shaved too.”

  “Oh god,” Dylan replied, laughing again. Once he’d gotten a hold of himself, he said, “I love you, hon, but I can’t take you anywhere.”

  “No, you can’t,” Roan agreed. “I’m too much of a smartass.”

  They shared a smile at what was now a private reference. After all, hadn’t Dylan told him he was too much of a smartass to become a lion permanently? Maybe he had a point after all.

  They went home, mainly so Dylan could change and get to work. Roan found out Rosenberg had called him back, but her message was unexpected. “I’m testing a theory, but I need fresh infected blood, so get over to Saint Joe’s.” What theory? And why the hell was she at Saint Joe’s? He tried calling her back, but he went straight to machine again. Damn it.

  So while Dylan left for Silver, he took the bike to Saint Joseph’s Hospital, figuring if he got in a wreck on the way, she could have all the blood she wanted.

  It took him a bit to track her down, but he found her in the hematology lab. As soon as she saw him, she ordered him to take off his coat and roll up his sleeve, but he told her she wasn’t getting one drop until she told him what this was about. It seemed to put her out, but she told him she suspected that there were chemicals in the toxin isolated from Ava’s bloodstream that reacted a certain way to the virus, but she wanted to test it in real time, hence his blood. That seemed reasonable, so while she took some, he told her about “burn,” and his theory that maybe it would cause a reaction in infecteds it wouldn’t in normals. She agreed that was an avenue to explore, but now that meant she had to get some normal blood, and he was a total bastard for giving her all this extra nonpaid work to do, but at least she said that last part affectionately.

  As he was leaving the hospital, he suddenly wondered where he could get some “burn.” Hell, a gay club like Panic would be rife with the stuff, wouldn’t it? He wondered if he had enough pull as Dylan’s boyfriend to get some cheap.

  An ambulance was bringing in someone on a stretcher as he was leaving, all chaos, and one of the EMTs was shouting the brief version of the story and the injuries to the ER staff. Roan almost walked out without looking until the smell of the blood froze him in his tracks.

  The blood smelled familiar.

  Suddenly he tuned in to what the female paramedic was saying, and followed the stretcher. “—dumped in an alley off Pine and 43rd,” she was saying. “In and out of consciousness, a concussion and maybe a hematoma, numerous broken bones and blunt trauma injuries. He got jumped and beaten by at least two people with weapons of some kind, but the guy still had his wallet, so it wasn’t a mugging.”

  The ER physician was a Korean man with short, spiky, black hair and a kind face, although he looked all of twenty-two (he was probably really about ten years older). As they transferred the man from the stretcher to a hospital gurney, the doctor shined a penlight in his one good eye (the other was swollen shut) and asked, “Can you hear me?” Without glancing up at the paramedics, he asked, “What’s his name?”

  Roan had slipped in without any of the team noticing him, probably because he had been sticking to the back, out of everyone’s way. “Holden Krause,” he said, shouldering his way to the side of the gurney. He leaned over and asked, “Holden, it’s Roan. Can you hear me?”

  Holden was almost impossible to recognize. He was covered in blood; his shirt had been cut off by the paramedics, but his torso was still caked in the stuff, the flesh bruise purple where it wasn’t bloody red (Roan was pretty sure one of the bruises on his rib cage was shaped like a partial boot print). His face was bruised, bloody, and swollen, to the point where if Roan hadn’t recognized the scent of his blood, he wouldn’t have been able to visually identify him. Roan was tempted to grab his hand, but he saw the one on his side was curled up, the fingers bloated like sausages—someone had stamped on his hand, broken fingers, and maybe he’d broken some attempting to defend himself. It had to have been at least two guys, maybe more, and they’d had to have taken Holden by surprise. There was no way, under normal circumstances, Holden could have been beaten this bad.

  Holden’s one good eye opened, and there was haziness there, broken vessels like little pinpricks of blood in the white of his eye, the blue iris clouded like a rainy day. But Roan knew he recognized him, and didn’t even seem all that surprised to see him. He fixed him with a surprisingly steely gaze, and croaked in a dry, harsh voice, “Judge Garver.”

  A huge male nurse with the shoulders of a fullback grabbed Roan and said, politely but firmly, “Please sir, clear the area, family isn’t allowed here.” As he was pulled away, he nodded at Holden, letting him know he understood what he was trying to say.

  Judge Garver, the circuit court judge who’d got drunk and angry the other day. He probably didn’t appreciate Holden beating him down and threatening him, so he’d got some thugs of his own to beat Holden’s ass. Bullies didn’t like being bullied.

  Roan should have been angry, but it was worse. He felt ice cold down to his marrow as he left the hospital, as focused as a heat-seeking missile.

  It was time for Garver to get a little justice meted out to him. And there was no way in hell he was going to like it.

  But Roan would. He already knew he was going to enjoy this immensely.

  7

  The Buzz Kill

 
; SINCE he had an “emergency key” to Holden’s apartment, he went there and used it, finding the place to be in general order. (Should it bother him that Holden was a better housekeeper than he was? He wasn’t sure….)

  Figuring Holden was beyond caring at this point, he used his computer and found Judge Garver’s address in minutes. (Lloyd Garver, to be precise.) He thought so-called “activist judges” needed to protect their addresses, but then he remembered that applied only to judges who made any decision that could be considered left wing. The right-leaning activist judges never had to worry about harassment, even if they made a ruling that made Sharia law seem far too lenient. Thanks to Google Street View, he was even able to case most of Garver’s house. He lived in a McMansion with a high-gated fence and wall. You probably needed a special code to get in the gate, but since Roan was figuring on jumping the wall, he didn’t need it.

  He searched Holden’s bedroom, looking for the photos, but found other interesting things in his dresser drawer and closet. He found enough condoms and lube to keep an orgy going for ten years, and some very questionable leather gear he assumed was for clients. He also found a ski mask, which made no sense, but he took it anyways. He also kept meticulous records of his STD testing (the latest was a clean bill of health that came back two weeks ago), but Roan assumed that was necessary for his employment at the agency, as a whore giving a client a disease would look bad for business.

  He suddenly remembered Holden’s favorite hiding place, the one place it was guaranteed no one would look: in a South Beach diet sandwich box in the fridge. Because the South Beach diet stuff was shit, and even a desperate junkie wouldn’t eat it.

  The box looked pristine, unopened, but as soon as he examined it more closely, he saw one of the ends of the box had been carefully resealed. He opened it with care, pulled out the plastic packing material, and a couple of Ziploc plastic bags fell out. One held several hundred-dollar bills (Holden’s emergency fund, presumably), and the other held a rather thick sheaf of photos. Presumably the negatives were hidden elsewhere, since a fridge probably wasn’t the best place for them, but knowing Holden, he had them in a safe deposit box or something. Roan also noticed a Washington State driver’s license under the name Holden Fox, but pretended he didn’t. (It wasn’t like he didn’t have a half dozen fake IDs himself.)

  The photos were pretty explicit—there was no way in hell any of the men could say the pictures were “misconstrued.” Having looked up a picture of Lloyd Garver online, he knew what he looked like (well, his face—there was no telling what was under the robe), and eventually found him. The pictures were wonderfully awful for Garver—it showed Holden handcuffed to a bed while Garver sucked his dick. Holy shit, how did he talk his way out of that? “I handcuffed this hot nude ruffian to the only solid object around, and while phoning the police I tripped and fell mouth first onto his cock.” Roan didn’t put it past a hypocrite like him to actually try the story to see if it would fly.

  He decided on an approach with a cold clarity that was pure psychosis. Hot anger was awful, and could be deadly, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the cold rage that made you see the world as only a true predator could. He knew exactly what he was going to do, and how he was going to do it. Had Holden felt this way after he saw Coyote killed?

  Muffled music started playing, and when Roan realized what it was, he burst out laughing. It must have been Holden’s “regular” (not client) cell phone, and yet the ringtone was the Flight of The Conchords’ “Sugalumps.” Of course he’d have an ode to balls as his ringtone, no matter that it constantly referred to women. A song about balls was something that Holden couldn’t pass up.

  The laugh should have broken his homicidal mood, but it didn’t. He fell back into it as he grabbed the ski mask and photos and headed out. Holden didn’t look like he was going to die, but head injuries were funny things—you could bump your head on the door, say you were fine, and drop dead two hours later from bleeding in the brain. Any blow to the head had the potential to be fatal, as Mike Oliver could have told anyone.

  Garver lived in Bellevue, which kind of figured, and Roan found a place to hide his bike on the previous block, while he rolled the ski mask up like a stocking cap to hide the odd color of his hair. Not that he should have bothered—there was no one walking these exceptionally well-tended streets at this time of night. The wealthy had extremely nice neighborhoods, and never used them.

  Climbing the wall and jumping over the top of the fence were nothing; scaring off the two German shepherd guard/family dogs was nothing (just a snarl and a growl and they were off), and disabling the lame alarm system they had was also nothing. There were lights on upstairs, probably the kids, and as he crept around the house, avoiding windows lit up or uncovered, he was able to hear a television. He found a darkened window, the curtains slightly parted, and thanks to his rapidly cycling night vision, he was able to see a book-lined study. Had to be Lloyd’s, as it just screamed man who wanted to make an impression. Forcing the window open was just like opening an average one, and climbing into a room that smelled of cigar smoke and scotch, filled with thousand-dollar furniture, was like getting out of bed. In a bizarre way, he was disappointed. He wanted a challenge, a fight, some sort of difficulty that would make him pause. But it was all too easy, and his rage quietly bubbled and blackened, becoming a weapon of incredible ugliness. His hands felt sweaty in their leather gloves.

  He went to the man’s phone, right there on the two-thousand-dollar desk, and wrote the phone number down on his arm. If he didn’t show up in ten minutes—unlikely—Roan was going to call the phone. He found more to anger him in the fact that, save for a couple of thick law books, none of the other books had been shifted in some time; someone wasn’t dusting properly. He hated people who had books only for show. They weren’t supposed to be decorations only.

  He could hear all the noises in the house. The wife was watching Big Brother, one of the kids was listening to music upstairs (Green Day), there was an occasional creak of the walls shifting and settling. They’d had beef with a burgundy-based sauce tonight, mashed potatoes with garlic and sour cream, steamed asparagus. At some point, someone had made Japanese rice pudding. Upscale sure, but oddly normal. The fact that this man was having his fake life, full of lies and contented domesticity, while Holden might be fighting for his life in a hospital, made Roan see the dark in shades of translucent red. The lion was right under the skin, for once listening to him, waiting for him to give the signal to tear Garver to pieces. It was a weird sort of insight, to realize they could work together when violence was a given.

  Roan didn’t have to call. Garver came in, flicking on a light, unaware of the man in the ski mask standing to the right of the door as he picked up a tiny remote no bigger than a mini MP3 player and turned on his Bose stereo system, which played something classical. He tossed the remote back down when he finally noticed the photo Roan had placed near his computer keyboard, the one of Lloyd sucking off Holden. He did a slight double take, shoulders stiffening, tension and anxiety starting to come off him in a smell like acetate when Roan moved, grabbing him by the back of his neck at the same time he slammed a foot down on the side of the man’s knee.

  The crack of his leg shattering was quite loud, but not enough to triumph over the orchestra coming from the speakers. Lloyd tried to scream, but just like Roan expected, all that came out was a high-pitched squeak like a balloon slowly deflating as he sagged toward the floor. But Roan had a death grip on the back of his neck and held him up, a feat he knew would startle Lloyd. After all, he was holding up a two-hundred-pound man with one hand on the back of his neck—if that wasn’t a feat of strength, what was?

  “You shut up and listen to me if you don’t want me to rip your balls off and shove them down your throat,” Roan growled in his ear. “You tell me the names of the men you sent to beat up Fox, and I won’t pulverize every single bone in your body.”

  It took him a moment to find his voice, a harsh w
hisper. “You’re making a mistake, assho—”

  Roan let him drop on his broken leg, which would have elicited a scream from him if Roan hadn’t grabbed his chin and forced his mouth to slam shut, causing an audible click of his teeth as well as another noise, a muffled grunt that brought tears to the man’s eyes. Good. Roan was hoping he’d get him to bite his own tongue. With any luck, he’d bitten it off.

  In reflex, Lloyd reached up to grab Roan’s wrist—weakly; even if he were a normal man, Roan could have kicked the shit out of this pudgy, bloated benchwarmer—and Roan idly, with almost no exertion on his part, pulled his hand away. In the process, he twisted Garver’s wrist until his bones crackled like ice underfoot, and the muffled, moaning screams coming from him were truly terrible. He let Lloyd go to fall forward and retch on his thousand-dollar carpet. “You think it’s hyperbole, Judge? A negotiation? Every minute you don’t tell me what I want to know, I break something. Get it through your thick head: your power means nothing to me. I’m not afraid of you, your authority, the police, no one. Because you are all Human, and I’m not, and there’s nothing you own that I can’t destroy.”

  After he finished spitting up bile, Garver rasped, “You’re insane.”

  “Yeah, that too. Just more ammo in my armory.” He stepped on the nape of Lloyd’s neck, driving him face first into the puddle of his own vomit. “And don’t think it stops at me breaking you physically. The photo? Tip of the iceberg. Those are stills from a video, you know. Just think of the meal KING or KOMO would make of that footage.”

  Lloyd had been struggling, but stopped as soon as Roan said that. He got his face free enough to mutter, “Video?”

  He didn’t know if Holden actually had video of himself and his high-powered clients, but all those action photos Roan saw seemed to indicate they were juicy stills from longer and more involved pieces. Only the most explicit shots would do. “Despite what you may think about whores, Fox isn’t dumb. He knew you guys might try and throw him to the wolves someday, so he had a plan B. Namely, he takes you with him, and let’s face it, he has nothing to lose. You? You have everything. Career, power, prestige, money, family, presumed moral authority… the lie that you’re hetero. Wanna pick one, Lloyd? Which one will you miss the most?”