Infected: Shift Read online

  Ouch. “If you didn’t know you were gay before….”

  “Yeah, that’s an eye-opener. I always felt I deserved credit for trying, but no one would give it to me. Certainly not my preacher dad. Apparently, if I prayed enough, I could’ve gotten wood.” He rolled his eyes in disgust.

  “Is that how it works? No wonder I’m gay—I’m an atheist.”

  “There you go. Damned from the start. What was my excuse? Oh yeah—according to my dad, my junkie mother. Gotta love hypocrites, don’t you?”

  “Love wasn’t the word I would have chosen.”

  “Please note the sarcasm.” There was a muted mechanical hum, and Holden reached into his jeans pocket, pulling out a very slim cell phone that Roan recognized as his “work” phone. Meaning the one only his clients used. Holden checked the number curiously before answering. “Ben, how is my guy today?” His voice had dropped to a sexy, slinky tone, and Roan had to suppress the urge to snicker.

  He got up and walked back to the kitchen, mainly because he didn’t want to eavesdrop on this conversation, but also because he was starving. The Frappuccino just seemed to be pointing out to his stomach that there was a meat and starch quota not being filled here.

  After a couple of minutes, during which it seemed Holden was negotiating both a meeting time and a price rate (What was Ben asking for? Oh God, he so didn’t want to know…), Roan had just pulled some croissants out of the microwave when Holden said to him, “Gotta roll. I’m meeting Ben at two. But I should be free by three thirty if you need me for anything.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Hey, you have a closeted cop friend, right?”

  Roan was careful never to mention Kevin by name to anyone in a way that might shed light on his hidden sexuality. But apparently it was known that one of his police contacts was a mutual friend of Dorothy. “Yes. Why?”

  “’Cause we should really conspire to hook him up with Ben. He’s a great guy, an IT nerd, a bit overweight and the beard does him no favors, but really sweet. Just lonely as all hell and a bit repressed. So your repressed guy and my repressed guy getting together could be dynamite.”

  “I’m actually imagining the most awkward Starbucks meeting of all time.”

  “Oh sure, Studly, you scoff, but not every guy is as hot or as confident as you. Some need a push. More like a shove.”

  Studly? “This sounds more like a handcuffing.”

  “Ben’s not into the kinky shit. Although he could probably be persuaded if you ply him with enough schnapps and weed.”

  Roan just hadn’t had enough caffeine yet to deal with him right now. “Bye, Holden.”

  That just made Holden grin, showing off his whitened teeth. Roan didn’t understand why anyone wanted to whiten their teeth until they looked like sun-bleached bones, but there was much about current trends he didn’t understand. It probably just meant he was old. “No need to throw me out. I got the message. Be seeing you.”

  “Adios.”

  Roan had bitten into a steaming hot croissant and was letting the pastry melt in his mouth when Holden paused and turned back. “Oh, one more thing. About the client? A bit obsessed with you.”

  Roan almost choked. “What?”

  “Not in a gay way, although I’m not a hundred percent certain about that. But he’s definitely fascinated by you. He asked about your scars, if you had a boyfriend, and when we were in the cop shop giving our statements, he asked if any of those cops knew you. He’s way into you.”

  He didn’t know what to think about that. “Are you sure you’re not projecting here?”

  “Nope. It’s your macho allure, I think. He’s in awe. And why not? You are Batman, after all.”

  Roan glowered at him—Holden knew damn well he hated being called that and seemed to enjoy him getting pissed off about it—but he finally came up with a comeback. “Does that make you the Boy Wonder?”

  Holden returned the glower. “I will be dead before you get me in elf shoes.”

  It was nice to know Holden drew a line somewhere.

  7

  Helpless

  Roan was kind of surprised Shithead wasn’t Switzer’s middle name, because it should have been.

  A little digging turned up a ton of maggots. Switzer was considered something of an asshole even within the Eastgate department, but according to Kevin (yes, he had called him, but he didn’t mention Holden’s idea about setting him up with his IT guy), Eastgate PD was known as a swaggering boys’ club, and the chief there, Charles Horne, was either a friend or relative of Switzer’s (it wasn’t clear which; he’d heard different stories). According to Kevin, the Eastgate PD was probably one of the more corrupt precincts in the entire state, but with a very high crime rate and a low budget, most people were content to look the other way. It was a perfect storm of ennui and bureaucratic clusterfucking. A lot of the cops that ended up at Eastgate had been bounced from other precincts, often as discipline problems.

  As for his personal life, Switzer was in the middle of a messy divorce with his wife April. She was claiming he was abusive and had been harassing her through the use of his cop friends; he was claiming she was a sex addict and a poor mother and wanted sole custody of their two kids, Zachary and Ashley (seven and five, respectively). What little he’d been able to turn up seemed ugly and awful. Roan was inclined to believe April, and Switzer wanting the kids? Pure power play and vindictiveness on his part. If he was a little despot, he’d want to control every fucking thing. Maybe he loved his kids, and Roan rather hoped he did, but possession of them would only be a tool to hurt his wife. He’d seen guys like Switzer too many times to think anything they did was ever as straightforward as it seemed.

  Kevin knew someone at the Eastgate PD, and it was through her that he got word that Switzer was technically on leave from the department, mainly while investigation of his supposed use of other cops to stalk his wife was going on, but this same friend said it was known that Switzer was still hanging around on Carson Street, which was part of his old beat. It was also three blocks away from where Jasmine lived and was killed, which was a hell of a coincidence. So he got everything he could on this guy and prepared to track him down.

  Roan felt like a good fight today.

  He showered and dressed, going for a casual wardrobe of jeans and a T-shirt, leather jacket and leather boots. He grabbed his Vancouver Canucks baseball cap so he could hide his hair (that was the problem with having such a distinctive shade of reddish-brown) and found a pair of absurdly black sunglasses in his top drawer. Undercover wear, only he didn’t think he’d have to be too inconspicuous. He thought about it for a long minute before grabbing his Sig Sauer and his belt holster. He doubted he’d have to use it, but best be prepared. He was glad Dylan was still asleep and didn’t see him put it on or grab his gear bag containing his camera with the telephoto lens and the directional mike.

  He decided to take the GTO and drove out toward the Eastgate precinct, wondering if the whole place could be rotten. If this was the ’60s or ’70s, maybe, but cop shops had gone a long way toward reform for a very good reason: nobody liked a bad image. And through allowing corruption, racism, sexism, and homophobia to run rampant, it diminished everyone and everything associated with law enforcement. They’d come a long way, but you had to be pretty naïve to think you still wouldn’t run into these types. Hell, wasn’t it one of those “bag a fag” stings that had caught Larry Craig? Taxpayer money spent on trying to catch consenting adults having sex while you had a less than fifty percent chance that the guy who broke into your house and stole your stuff would ever get caught. Fucking amazing, some people’s priorities.

  He knew from Switzer’s DMV file (okay, so technically he shouldn’t have been able to see that…) that he was driving an ’09 Ford Ranger, and he’d just turned the corner on Carson Street when he saw a black Ranger pull out into the intersection up ahead. He confirmed two of the letters on the plate matched Switzer’s and decided just to follow him and
see where he went.

  If he was honest with himself, he had no idea why he was following Switzer, except he wanted to start some shit. He was away from Carson Street, so he couldn’t catch him in the act of trying to extort sex from a prostitute… unless he was going to do this same shit on another corner. Surely his beat didn’t start and end at one. Okay, now he had a reason beyond simply starting shit with King Asshole.

  Except after ten minutes, he knew he was kidding himself. Switzer went out onto the freeway going south, so far out of his area he was crossing jurisdictions, but Roan decided to follow him anyways. After what Holden and Kevin had told him, and what he could find himself, he just wanted to sit this guy down, talk calmly and rationally, and then beat him so bad his grandkids would be born dizzy and bleeding from the eyeballs. Some people were such pieces of shit you had no idea why they existed—except to make misery for others. Did they get enjoyment out of that? They must have, because there was simply no other explanation for their hideous behavior toward their fellow human beings.

  When he saw Switzer was taking the Federal Way exit, he realized he must have been heading home. Or was it to his wife’s home? The divorce petition and subsequent stories about it did mention their Federal Way home, but it didn’t mention who was living in it. Roan assumed it was April and the kids, but maybe not. Maybe she had decided there were too many bad memories and left for her mother’s or something. It certainly happened.

  Confronting him at home just might be ideal. If he was as big a douchebag as Roan suspected, he probably had evidence lying about, assuming no one would find it and that he was untouchable. Bullies with badges always thought they were untouchable.

  He parked just up the street as Switzer pulled into the driveway of an unremarkable two-story house, white with grayish-blue trim, a large, spreading oak providing some shade over a well-tended lawn. He watched Switzer get out of his truck carrying a shopping bag with a bright blue ribbon trailing out of the top. A birthday present? Was it one of the kids’ birthday today? Well, shit—maybe he didn’t live here. So where did he live?

  A quick glance at his notes showed that he had no fucking clue. So maybe if he followed Switzer when he left, he might lead him to the place he was staying. What if he was crashing with one of his cop buddies? Didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to beat on the guy first anyways. He’d provoke Switzer into taking a swing at him, and then everything after was self defense, as long as he didn’t kill him.

  Yes, okay, that was very weaselly of him. But working the system every now and again wasn’t a bad thing, especially if you could use it against a dickwad like this guy.

  Roan was settling into a long stakeout, seeing what reading material he had in the car (he always stashed a couple of paperbacks in each car, on the off chance he’d have a lot of time to kill somewhere), when he heard a woman scream, “No!”

  There was an astonishing amount of emotion packed into that one-syllable word: fear, hatred, rage, desperation, sorrow. Every internal alarm Roan had was going off, and he was already lunging out of the car as he heard the gunshot.

  Just one, a small pop muffled by both distance and being inside a house, but that was followed by children screaming and a man yelling at them to “Shut up!” Roan had his Sig Sauer out, safety thumbed off, and in his other hand he had his cell phone. He’d already punched up 9-1-1, and as soon as the operator picked up, he said tersely, “Shots fired, 154 Sycamore Drive, Officer Carey Switzer’s house.” He then dropped the phone on the front lawn as he took the gun in a two-handed grip and ran toward the front door like a charging bull, intending to break it down whether it was locked or not. It would make him an instant target, but he didn’t care—in fact, that’s exactly what he wanted. Drawing Switzer’s fire would mean the kids were clear.

  And he knew this scenario, didn’t he? Before he caught the scent of blood, before he burst through the wood-framed door, he knew Switzer had just killed his wife, and now he was either going to kill the kids or kill himself, or all in sequence. He had either picked a bad day to follow Switzer—or a good one.

  Roan exploded through the door shoulder first, wood splintering from the frame as he allowed his sense of smell to immediately orient him toward the rank stench of blood and flop sweat, the keening wail of frightened children, and he brought his gun up at the same time Switzer leveled his police issue Beretta at him. “Drop the gun now!” Roan shouted, focusing on him and shoving everything else to the side. In his peripheral vision, he was aware there was a woman lying on the living room floor, only her legs visible to him from where he stood, and the kids were cowering in a corner behind Switzer, the little girl behind the little boy. The shopping bag Switzer had brought had been tossed casually on the sofa.

  Switzer was a solid but chunky man, probably hard fat, but there was some doubt as to whether he could pass a department physical now. His round face was ruddy and plump, his hair a thinning bird’s nest of strawberry blond, his eyes just pissholes in snow, curiously hot and hollow. There was some wetness on his cheeks, but they were angry tears. “They’re mine,” he shouted angrily, skin flushing. A tear was suspended in his close-cropped mustache like a bead of silicone. Somewhere a clock ticked loudly, the only noise beyond the whimpering kids.

  Roan nodded, as if declaring children property was the most natural thing in the world. “Drop the gun, Carey, and we can work this out.” How crazy was he, how far gone? If he could be reached through talk, Roan wouldn’t have to execute him in front of his own kids.

  Switzer was aware enough to realize he was talking to a strange man with a gun, but not sane enough to think it through. “Get out of my fucking house.”

  “Put down the gun and I will,” he lied.

  Switzer’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. He stank of sour fear, of alcohol, chemicals indicating something more prescription, and emotions too hard to categorize correctly. It was chemical imbalance, exacerbated by the introduction of other chemicals. “You’re him, aren’t you? The one she was fucking.”

  “No, Carey, I’m a private investigator—” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the little boy looking toward the gaping hole of the front door and tensing, like he was going to make a run for it.

  Sadly, Switzer noticed it too. “Get out of my house!” he roared, swinging the gun back toward the kids.

  Roan squeezed the trigger, and a hole exploded in Switzer’s chest, blood spraying out the back and splattering the sofa. The little girl screamed again, and Carey fell like a toppled redwood, hitting the floor on his side, the gun bouncing out of his hand on impact. Roan edged inside, gun aimed down at the floor, and went to check on April.

  As soon as he saw her splayed faceup on the floor, clots of brain tissue splattered out on the butterscotch carpet behind her, he didn’t bother checking for a pulse. Switzer had got her with an almost point-blank shot to the forehead; her head resembled a partially deflated basketball, lopsided in a way it never should have been, the neat little round hole like a third eye socket in her forehead, misleadingly dainty for all the damage the exit wound had done. She may have been pretty once, but you couldn’t tell anymore. There was the stench of death, but it was almost smothered by blood and gunpowder and fear.

  He didn’t check Switzer for a pulse, just kicked the gun farther out of his reach. Even though his ears were still ringing from the shot, he could hear faint sirens outside. He looked at the kids and holstered his own gun. “Zachary, Ashley, why don’t we go outside and wait for the ambulance, okay?” He needed to get them out of the house. They didn’t need to keep staring at their dead mother or watch their father bleed out on the carpet.

  The kids had the glassy hundred-yard stare of shock victims, which was understandable. From the sharp ammonia scent, one or both of them had pissed themselves, but that, too, was understandable. Finally, Zachary asked, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Roan McKichan, a private detective. I was investigating your dad. I’m sorry I didn’t begin sooner.”

&
nbsp; “Not a cop.” Almost a question.

  “Used to be. I’m not anymore. I didn’t play well with others.” It was an attempt at a joke, but there was no laughing now. “Come on, we need to get Ashley outside.”

  That was the tack to take—make the boy feel like he was taking care of his sister. He agreed with that and lead his sister toward the door. She was holding his hand so tightly that it looked like she’d cut off blood circulation. He followed them out at a respectful distance, sure not to get too close to them and spook them further, and retrieved his phone off the lawn, where he heard the tinny voice of the 9-1-1 operator repeatedly asking if he was there. “I’m here,” he told the man. “Switzer just killed his wife. I shot him before he could turn the gun on the kids. He’s still alive, but he has a GSW in the upper left quadrant of his torso. I’m Roan McKichan, a private detective. Tell the police I will be waiting out front with the children and will fully cooperate with being taken into custody.”

  He would be taken in, that was unavoidable, but once the circumstances were checked out, he’d be released. Or hopefully he would, at any rate.