Infected: Lesser Evils (50 page)

“I would have wanted to believe.”

Holden didn’t have to listen for too long before cutting the connection. “My call went to his machine. I don’t know if he’s home and ducking me, or just out.”

“Wanna go find out?”

“Sure.” Holden paused, wondering if he should say what he was thinking. It might not help, it might make things worse. But then again, what could make things worse at this point? “Look, if you need something to wake you up… I’ve got some pills.”

Roan fixed him with a skeptical look. “I seem that bad, huh?”

“Just tired. Really tired.”

Roan ran a hand through his hair, messing it up even more. Ever since he had become able to force a change at will, his hair looked shaggy all the time. Holden hesitated to call it a mane, as that seemed like a stereotype or a slur, but honestly, it looked more mane-like all the time. He wouldn’t say Roan was looking more leonine… but yeah, he kind of was. There was a look in his eyes most of the time that suggested there was something biding its time, waiting on its moment to emerge, and whatever it was, it wasn’t Human. It wasn’t the cold, dead-eyed stare of a Human predator, but the sharp, inhuman look of a true predator, the kind that reminded the Human kind they were just mammals, and had no idea what a real predator was. To a real predator, no matter what kind of badass you thought you were, at best you were food.

“What kind of pills are we talking about, speed?”

“Prescription speed, but yeah. It’s a little harder than caffeine, but not by much.”

“Sure, yeah. But since when do you supply me with pills?”

Holden almost said, “Since you look like death warmed over.” But considering Roan’s tumor diagnosis, he thought it might not be politic to say such a thing. “You just look exhausted. You sleep at all last night?”

“I slept fine. I’m probably just getting old.”

“Aren’t we all?” Holden looked through the cupboard over the stove, where he kept a random assortment of spices, and behind the crushed red pepper was an old-timey film canister, in which he kept prescription pills. He had some in the bathroom, but ones he wouldn’t mind a thief stealing—Viagra, amyl nitrate, work-related medication—while he kept the stuff he didn’t want stolen here in the kitchen, mainly painkillers. This speed functioned well as a painkiller, and didn’t make you sleepy.

Holden dug out a pill and filled a cup full of water before taking them both over to Roan. Was he enabling him? Yeah, but Roan looked so rough he felt anything short of injecting him with heroin would be doing him a favor.

Roan examined the pill before popping it and swallowing it down with a gulp of water. Maybe he wasn’t sick; maybe he just needed a vacation. Holden kind of hoped that was the case.

They left, and after a minor bit of negotiation, they took Roan’s car. Holden wasn’t sure how he felt about having a driver on an unknown number of pills, but Roan pointed out he had better than Human reflexes even when he wasn’t paying attention, and Holden had no argument for that. “Besides,” Roan added, with a hint of sarcasm. “I’m a functioning pill addict.”

He was, actually. But far be it from Holden to tell him.

On their rather uneventful way there, Roan suddenly said, with no preamble, “If something happens to me, you should take over MK Investigations.”

“Pardon?”

“I mean it. Get your investigators license so you’ll be ready for… whenever.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You read people well, you have more contacts than I do… you’re perfect for the job.”

“I’m a whore.”

“You don’t have to be. You’re wasting your talent.”

“Are you kidding me? I fuck like a demon.”

“Be that as it may, you’d make a better detective. Just do it aboveboard, okay?”

He really didn’t like the way Roan was talking. It was like he was making plans for when he died, which was in fact what he was doing. What a weird thought—him, a detective. Since when was Holden mainstream? When did he fulfill a society-approved role? How vanilla… although, to be fair, Roan didn’t make it seem so bourgeoisie. “I’m not a superhero, though.”

He snorted derisively. “What kind of superhero am I? Just call me Freak Show.”

“And I’m The Fox. We’re like a bad ’70s crime show.”

Roan smiled, liking this idea, like Holden thought he would. “And we get all the chicks. But since we’re gay, we never close the deal.”

“And we make all the straight boys jealous, wishing they were as cool as we were. Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“We should sell that to Logo.”

Holden chuckled this time. “Only if we package it as a reality show.”

“The cameras will have to follow you around, then. I’m boring when I’m not utterly terrifying.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re more terrifying than anything else.”

“Why does everyone say that?” But Roan was smiling as he said that, so he couldn’t have been that serious. Although Holden was willing to believe it.

Franco lived in a really shitty part of town, near the Heights, but where else could he live? As long as Holden had known him, he had no idea what Franco did for money, except it probably wasn’t legal. The shitty places were where you hid when you wanted to be ignored by cops, at least if you were a small fish. If you were a big fish, you just drew more attention to yourself, and that’s why you got lost in better neighborhoods or the suburbs. The only problem with living in the ’burbs was you had to put up with Kardashian fans and child molesters, and the other kinds of refuse that washed up on those whiter than white shores. Holden had no idea how anyone stood it, but then again, he was the type of sexual deviant socialist pinko commie who was destroying America, so what did he know?

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.

Prince Squid

L
EE
’
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.