Prey (22 page)

Roan was a born investigator, he was almost supernaturally good at it, and Sikorski knew it; Sikorski knew the force had lost a major asset when Ro was bounced. Worst of all, Ro had to know Sikorski was using him, but he so loved to do this, he so loved what he did, that he let him. Mundane private detective work was never going to completely satisfy him; he needed meatier puzzles, he needed challenges to make him feel useful.

And that’s all this came down to. Roan, cynical and tough as he was, just wanted to help people. He did, and it was so obvious Paris didn’t understand why Ro pretended that wasn’t it. He felt totally abandoned by people, by society, and yet he wanted to help them, because maybe that would allow him to be a part of them in some way. If he couldn’t be

“normal,” if he couldn’t be un-infected, then maybe he could be valued for what he could do. And if society was at all smart, they would have. It was Infected: Prey

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a terrible cliché, but even Roan just wanted to be loved, even though he’d never admit such a thing, even under the threat of death.

Thinking of mundane detective work reminded him that Ro was supposed to be at the office today to meet a potential client. He’d mentioned it last night before Paris had to go in the cage, something about a woman worrying her husband was on the down low with his best friend.

Roan was a little queasy about possibly “outing” some closet case, but Paris pointed out it was a cheating spouse case, just like any other, with the possibility that he’s fucking a guy as opposed to his secretary. After all, they had had one case that accidentally turned into an outing: the Patterson case. That was just last year. A guy showed up and wanted his wife followed, as he was pretty certain she was having an affair with a guy named Grassow, a neighbor, but as Roan soon discovered, Mrs. Patterson was actually having an affair with
Mrs.
Grassow. The husband was utterly flabbergasted, and apparently wasn’t sure what he was going to do with this information. In the end, it probably didn’t matter; the two women ran off together, and last Roan heard, they were living in Rhode Island.

Paris found the notebook Roan had left by the phone, and found all the information he needed to know. Ro was rather eccentric in that he liked to keep handwritten notes, usually meaning half of Paris’s “job” at MK Investigations was scanning or transcribing his copious handwritten case notes and entering them into the computer files for the various cases.

Paris always left out Ro’s occasional conversations with himself on the paper (“Coincidence? Follow up. This guy is so disgusting I’d cheat on him too”) although he hated to do it, because they were often the most entertaining things.

Paris hated to put on a long-sleeved shirt on a day that was already promising to be as miserable as yesterday, but Ro tried to look “casually professional” on the job, meaning he’d only wear a “cubicle noose” (a tie) if he was absolutely forced to, but otherwise he tried to look professional and presentable. So Paris followed his lead, since he’d be filling in for him, playing detective.

He didn’t do it often, but he did like to do it. He felt like putting on a fedora and one of Ro’s long coats (bless him, he had trench coats and dusters, giving in to the stereotype stylishly), maybe stick a cigarette between his lips (he hadn’t smoked since he was infected, but it seemed to go with the image), and not so much walk as swagger. Again, he knew none of this was true—he knew most detective work was rather dull and 130

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somewhat voyeuristic—but it was such a
good
stereotype, how could you not want to be a part of it?

Still, it was hot enough that he eschewed the trench coat, and rolled up the sleeves of his button-down shirt as he went out to the Mustang and drove to the office, stopping along the way to grab some fast food to calm his roaring stomach.

It was stuffy and slightly stale in the office from being closed yesterday, so he opened the blinds and turned on the rattling air conditioner, and although he thought caffeine had absolutely no chance against the painkillers in his system, he put the coffee on to get a pleasant aroma in the office. He almost sat down behind his desk out front, then remembered he really should be in Ro’s office. He felt odd walking in and not seeing him there behind his cheerfully weather-beaten wooden desk, which was relatively neat, with a cup of gel and ballpoint pens (Ro preferred gel pens; he felt they were smoother and easier to write with) and an appointment book on one side, and his computer on the other. Paris booted it up, feeling a little like he was prying where he shouldn’t, and wondered again what was in that locked bottom drawer.

It was on the bottom right, and it was the only drawer that was actually locked (the left bottom one could lock, but it never was). Roan said the lock was stuck on that drawer and there was nothing in it, but Paris suspected he was lying. Why, he had no idea, and he supposed if he pushed, Roan would tell him eventually, but in a strange way he almost didn’t want to know. He feared he’d find artifacts of old lovers or something, things Roan didn’t actually want to share and things that Paris would feel better off not knowing.

Roan didn’t talk much about his romantic past at all. He said he’d had “one or two” relationships that never worked out, but he mostly stuck to casual relationships because he wasn’t good at serious ones. Paris suspected he had gotten his heart not so much broken as minced, sautéed, and served to him in a light Béarnaise sauce, but if that was too painful for him to talk about that was okay. Everybody had a hard-luck relationship story… well, okay, not him, not unless you counted the one-night stand with Darlene that got him infected with the tiger strain. All in all, that could probably top a lot of people’s stories.

He sat in Ro’s chair, an old leather seat that looked battered but was incredibly comfortable (no wonder he never got a new chair), and tried to pretend he was him for a minute. He was pretty sure he could mimic the Infected: Prey

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attitude—be a smart-ass? Check!—but he couldn’t actually think like Roan. He wished he could. In fact, he’d decided a while ago that while he was initially attracted to Roan’s gorgeous, intense eyes, the slinky way he moved, and his great ass, what he fell in love with was his kindness and his fascinating, almost inscrutable mind. Paris knew he wasn’t the most intellectual guy around—hell, he’d spent most of his life as a dedicated hedonist, only focused on getting laid as much as humanly possible—but he knew there was something different about the way Ro thought, the way he could find those little flaws, take obscure leaps of logic that miraculously panned out, find the threads that everyone else missed. Paris wished he could think that way; he wished he could feel out leads like they were tangible objects, something he could hold in his hands and examine at his leisure. But he felt more comfortable in his male “femme fatale”

role. He didn’t know things, but he knew people; he knew what they wanted, he knew their desires, and he knew how to make almost anyone beg. That was good enough.

He heard the office door open, and he jumped to his feet and went out to greet the client. Susan Heffernan was a Clairol sun-kissed blonde with muddy roots, average height and average weight, with relatively large breasts and a small bulge of a gut, dressed in a pink top that was a bit too tight for her form and a pair of denim capris that didn’t quite work with her clunky sandals. As she adjusted her suede hobo bag, she stared at him in what must have been shock. “You’re Roan McKichan?” She said it like someone might say “
You’re my daughter?
”

“No,” he replied with a small, professional smile, and wondered if she knew how lucky she was. She’d just pronounced his last name

“McKitchen.” “I’m afraid Mr. McKichan”—he pronounced it correctly, with some emphasis—“is ill today. I’m his partner, Paris Lehane.”

“Oh.” She shook his hand, but held on a bit too long, and he knew she was taking a mental snapshot of him for later. Oh well… it happened too much for him to be bothered by it now. “Named after the city?”

Most people guessed that; Roan had impressed him by asking, “City or myth?” His mother was a teacher of classical mythology; he was named after the guy who supposedly started the Trojan War by kidnapping (or eloping with, depending on interpretation) Helen. Of all the kids, he’d probably got the best end of the name game; his sisters were named Antigone and Deianira.

It was a pretty much straightforward transaction: he gave her the 132

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standard forms, told her their rates, he got the basic information about her husband (where he worked, what his shift was, where he liked to go after work), and she also provided a photo of Ryan and his “best friend”

Cooper. They were both blandly good-looking and not screaming queens, so it was impossible to say if she had a reason to be worried or not. What an easy case to solve; just give him five minutes alone in a room with Ryan, and he’d know if he was gay or bi or not.

It didn’t seem perfectly ethical somehow, but they were one payment closer to getting the sliding glass door replaced, so that eased his conscience a bit. He was happy to put the down payment receipt in his wallet (so she paid by credit card; it was better than a check) and decided to close up before Braunbeck came over with a sack of gorp and an offer for a free rolfing. He couldn’t help but worry about Roan, although he knew the last person in the world he ever needed to worry about was Roan. But whatever had happened to him last night must have been…

heavy.

While he was locking up, Randi came over, buzzing on coffee, and handed him a manila envelope as she talked in a Starbucks-fueled mania (it wasn’t her lunch hour, so she must have been taking a break). She’d e-mailed Ro all the stuff, but she thought he might want to have some hard copies to look at. Apparently DeSilvo and Henstridge both had been receiving money from something called Metropol Limited, which was, as far as she could tell, a dummy corporation and a very lame tax shelter based in the Cayman Islands. It no longer existed—it shut down after a huge donation was made to Henstridge’s account two days ago—and she was sure it was probably just a person trying to hide some cash. Her guess was they were trying to hide money from the IRS, but the amounts were dribs and drabs, so she wasn’t sure. But she thought Ro would be really interested in it, and so did he. It was suspicious, but he had no idea what it could possibly mean; Roan would undoubtedly know what it meant, and would stare at the two of them like the complete morons they apparently were.

On the drive back home he kept running over scenarios where Roan would freak-out over being infected, but he kept drawing a blank. Ro wasn’t like him; he wouldn’t wake up one day and find himself covered in someone else’s blood, aching like he’d just been shoved off the roof of a twenty-story building and run over by the ambulance that was supposed to pick him up, and take a minute to figure out that the weird… things on him, the things that looked like random pieces of shredded plastic, were Infected: Prey

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actually flesh cut so thin it was almost translucent. Paris shuddered at the memory, his gut churning, but he felt a certain healthy distance from it now, which was probably good. That would make anyone lose their mind for a while, right? Well, maybe Ro could deal with it; maybe anyone would deal with it better than he did.

Pulling up to the house, he saw a silver Subaru Outback parked across the street, and a man standing at the base of their driveway. Paris recognized neither the SUV nor the man, and he suddenly had a really bad feeling about this. It didn’t help that the man turned around suddenly, as if surprised. The gun was under the seat, right?

He got out of the car and the man came up to him with a friendly enough “Hi,” and an additional, “Do you live here?”

Ro was a bit paranoid, but there was always some logic to it. For instance, he always advised Paris to be careful in giving away information, no matter how seemingly harmless, if you didn’t trust someone. Paris didn’t trust this guy enough to confirm even that. “Can I help you with something?” he replied, meeting a question with a question.

The guy was six foot even, probably mid-thirties, reasonably broad across the shoulders but slender, face square-jawed and ruggedly all American, his eyes hidden behind slender, pitch-black sunglasses, his ash-brown hair short and slightly spiky in the front, like he combed mousse through his bangs with his fingers. He wore a loose, vintage T-shirt, dun brown with the “Twister!” logo on it, and oversized Levis that were baggy enough to hide his legs (and surely his ass as well… and maybe a gun).

Paris figured he could take the guy if he tried anything, unless he was a martial arts expert or a character from a Tarantino film or something.

The guy claimed to have been driving by when he saw the GTO. He also claimed to be a classic car collector (in a Subaru Outback?!), and it had happened to Paris before, when he was painting the GTO, so he could almost buy it. The guy did seem to know something about muscle cars, but Paris couldn’t shake his suspicion that that wasn’t why he was here, that if he hadn’t drove up, this guy would have… what? Was he casing the joint?

Was he looking for Roan?

For some reason, that made him feel slightly queasy.
Looking for
Roan.

The guy said his name was Mark, and he made Paris an offer for the GTO, a thousand in cash and another thousand in check form to buy the 134

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car as is—with the engine out—but Paris turned it down. Restoring cars like the Mustang and the GTO was a hobby, one that allowed him to turn off his mind and pretend for a while he was normal, like he was back in high school working in his Uncle Mick’s garage—not infected, not doomed to a grisly fate. Also, he didn’t believe “Mark.” He had no real reason to disbelieve him, but something about this was all wrong. Paris couldn’t completely shake the feeling that he had interrupted “Mark,” but in the course of what he had no idea.

He watched the Outback drive off, but not overtly. It was a new car, apparently; it had no license plate, and the temporary one in the back was so obscured by the tinted windows he couldn’t read it. You’d think the cops would hate that.