Prey (28 page)

“death by misadventure”—no one even considered pressing charges against Paris.

Maybe he didn’t feel bad about it because the bastard was coming to kill him and Roan. And because God knew what a fucked-up job he did on his own son.

Michael Henstridge was an infected, and a pretty odd one. A little digging found that Anita Henstridge had been infected by tainted blood given to her in a transfusion after a car accident in her first trimester of pregnancy, when the two of them were living in Chicago. The hospital had ended up infecting several patients in a similar manner; there had been a huge class action lawsuit that was settled out of court, and by the time the lawyers got their cut of the money, all the survivors blew through their meager leftovers quite quickly. By the time the Henstridges’ had relocated here, their money was gone.

Michael Henstridge had several problems, beyond just being infected and having polycythemia vera. He was something of a flip side to most infecteds, meaning he was more often cat than human, reverting to human form for only about a week out of every month. And when he was in human form, he still acted like a cat. He walked on all fours—it was difficult to get him to stand unless he was trying to reach for something—

and growled, yowled, and snarled; he didn’t speak. He did understand some commands, though, mainly stay, down, no, and sic. Clearly he had Infected: Prey

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some serious brain damage, but there was some question as to how much of it had been made worse by Henstridge “conditioning” his own son.

Michael was in a special hospital upstate, where they were trying to figure out what they could “fix” and what was permanent. He hadn’t been charged with his role in the murders, because he was a minor, because he was brain damaged, and because he was going to spend the rest of his days locked up in an institution anyway. How did you convict a boy who was mainly a cat?

Henstridge had a second identity established, Peter French, under which he’d been renting a ramshackle house not far from Tweaks on the East Side. There was a small pond on a neighboring property, and a search of it turned up a machete that was assumed to be the murder weapon used to kill the kids at Tweaks’s place. Roan had said there were some things left at the house that indicated that Mitchell honestly thought he was

“protecting” his son, that he was taking care of him in some way, but Paris couldn’t quite wrap his mind around that psychotic reasoning. He trained his
son
to a
leash
—how was that doing the best for him, exactly? How was training him to kill on command beneficial? Bizarrely, he thought Roan might have actually felt a bit sorry for Mitch, although he was still glad the fucker was dead.

And Roan. He wondered how and if he should try and get him to talk about what was happening to him. He heard from Diego what he’d done to Hatch, just as he saw for himself what he’d done to the deadbolt on the door. Paris worked on doors, he knew how hard deadbolts were to break, and Roan had
punched it out —
in one single piece. There was a break in the door where the lock had been engaged and forced out. The strength needed to do something like that was supernatural, and if you combined that with how he broke Hatch’s arm, it added up to an interesting picture.

Namely, the cat was bleeding into him more and more—but did he want to acknowledge that in any way? No, he was keeping it to himself, as if denial could somehow keep it from happening. Paris just went along with him, pretended he didn’t know, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep doing it. Yes, he was an excellent liar if he said so himself, but he was sure that not talking about it was slowly killing Roan. He’d found him up some nights, pacing or staring out at nothing, once even trying to see if he could read a book in the dark (did that work? He was kind of curious), but he had a variety of lame excuses, from too much caffeine to insomnia. Roan had to know he knew too, but he hadn’t banked up the courage to say it.

How funny was that? The bravest man he knew afraid of talking about 170

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what was happening to him.

Paris had already decided what he was going to do. He was going to make him a nice dinner one night, and then simply tell him he knew. Yeah, that was a hell of a way to ruin a nice dinner, but that was how they did it in the Lehane family, damn it; it’s what always made Christmas so interesting. Recriminations and presents.

Sikorski had come around shortly after the entire incident, once they had scrubbed all the blood out of the carpet and re-hung the basement door, and brought them a bottle of wine, saying he’d never brought Roan a housewarming present. Sikorski tried very hard to be nice to him, which made Paris instantly suspicious, and even Roan hadn’t known what to make of it, but Paris was relatively sure he eventually figured it out. He felt bad for doubting Roan or using him, and also it got through his thick, straight head that he and Roan genuinely loved each other. It was probably a weird thing for the terminally straight to get, but hey, his boyfriend punched out a deadbolt for him and almost became a lion on demand—

would Sikorski’s wife have done that for him? (Assuming she could.) Sikorski also brought up a point that awed him somewhat, and that was, if Hank had grabbed his Remington before going outside—instead of his sawed-off shotgun—Roan might have never taken an interest in the case, and Ro had to admit that was probably true. It just struck him as an odd weapon for a cop to have, and Paris couldn’t help but feel a little bit of pride. That was what Roan was great at: finding the one little flaw, the one little thing that didn’t quite fit, and blowing a case wide open.

He still didn’t trust Sikorski; he’d still used Roan. But maybe he judged him too harshly otherwise. At least he was trying.

The money remained a question mark, the answer to which had probably died with DeSilvo, Henstridge, and Tweaks. Randi had confirmed that Tweaks was in debt up to his eyeballs and wasn’t getting the Cayman Island gift baskets like Hank and Mitch, but since Metropol had disappeared as mysteriously as it had showed up, leads had dried up quickly. Roan had two theories, both of which were plausible enough: during the bust of the house in Edgewood, DeSilvo and Henstridge found a whole bunch of money (perhaps Tweaks, desperate to keep another more serious charge off his lengthy record, lead them to it, or was simply present when they found it) that was clearly ill-gotten gains, and took it for themselves. Unsure how to best launder it and wanting to keep suspicion off of themselves, the account was set up in the Cayman Islands and they Infected: Prey

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pulled out small amounts on a monthly basis, just enough not to garner attention. Or conversely, they had found something incredibly illegal at the Edgewood house, and knowing that Edgar Rodriguez had the cash or the capabilities of getting it, blackmailed him into paying them hush money.

Rodriguez denied any knowledge of the cops or a Cayman Island account, but the cops in Miami were still investigating him. Roan had told Paris, if it was Rodriguez, he’d covered his tracks extraordinarily well. They would probably never know what precisely happened at the Edgewood house.

That ate at Roan a lot—he hated mysteries even
he
couldn’t solve—but he was learning to let go.

The Nakamuras were so pleased by the job Roan had done for them that they gave him a five-thousand-dollar bonus. Roan had actually tried to refuse it (refuse!), but the Nakamuras insisted he keep it, so he did. It went very far in home repairs, so they were able to get the house secure again in no time. Danny was okay, although he’d seemingly suffered amnesia, possibly due to constant exposure to ketamine (or because he didn’t want to deal with it), meaning he didn’t remember exactly what had happened to him. But the hard drives had an awful lot of incriminating evidence; in fact, it seemed Hatch was trying to get into the online porn business, and he’d had a couple more underage victims on film that the police were having a hard time identifying (mainly because Hatch didn’t film too many faces). But between child pornography, kidnapping, rape, and ketamine possession charges, Hatch wasn’t going to see the light of day for a long time. And Roan hinted rather darkly at what other convicts did to pedophiles in prison, so it wasn’t a huge shock that Hatch’s lawyer was trying to get him sentenced to a special sex offender’s treatment center, although the state was resisting so far.

The Hatch case had gotten MK Investigations a lot of publicity, even though Roan had made it clear he didn’t talk to reporters and wouldn’t, and once when Paris did it just for the sheer lark of it, Ro got really pissed off. He didn’t want to be a “sideshow,” the infected detective, and Paris couldn’t help but wonder if the new thing he was going through—the changes, the cat traits lingering behind longer now—had made him want to retreat even further from the world. Was he afraid he’d end up like Michael Henstridge, more cat than Human? That wasn’t going to happen.

Okay, no, he had no basis for saying it, no proof he could give Roan, but Ro wasn’t brain damaged, and if he was going to change into a cat permanently, wouldn’t he have done so by now? He honestly thought Roan was simply growing into his abilities, which he’d never bothered to 172

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explore before. Paris bet Roan could do a lot of things if he wasn’t so afraid of himself and what he could do. Sometimes he just didn’t get Roan at all; if it had been him, and he’d found out he could have super strength and shit like that, by God, he’d be out there using it. He’d be ripping off bank vault doors and juggling Volkswagens and just really impressing the hell out of extremely attractive people as well as trying to swing a movie or TV deal. Just call him Super ManWhore.

At least business was really good now; everybody wanted to hire them. They had cases backed up into next month, although Roan was very careful about weeding out clients who simply wanted to hire them for the novelty factor. He’d once angrily tossed out a guy who turned out to be a reporter, just trying to be sneaky.

Paris weeded through the newspaper, finding the only section he bothered to read—the lifestyle section—before heading to the basement.

He was supposed to go out with Randi tonight, but he’d decided he wanted to spend the night at home. He and Randi usually went out to clubs, and Roan knew about it, but he didn’t mind, because he trusted Paris.

Okay, maybe he didn’t; he just knew that if Paris cheated on him he could smell the man or woman on him, no matter how well he showered.

That was the problem with being with someone with super-smelling, although at least it kept him honest. (Of course the fact that he would probably kill anyone else he slept with kept him monogamous as well; was any sex safe enough when the tiger strain was like playing Russian roulette with a fully armed semi-automatic?) Besides, he had a good thing going here; he wasn’t going to screw it up by fucking around. He had a feeling his fucking-around days were long past gone.

When Roan was in the high part of his cycle, he and Randi would hit the town, mainly going to gay clubs (which Roan hated) and the occasional straight clubs, generally just to dance and drink and have a good time. Also there was a continuing attempt to get Randi laid, but so far it hadn’t really paid off, to the point that she preferred going to the gay clubs with him. While she hated being a “cock blocker,” she’d made a whole bunch of new gay male friends, although she claimed that most were just friendly with her in hopes of eventually getting to nail him. Paris didn’t know if that was true or not, but they were generally nice guys, although not necessarily his type. (Which was funny, because pre-infection, almost everyone was his type if he was high or drunk enough.) Randi had sounded a little disappointed when he called to cancel, but Infected: Prey

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she said it was okay;
Lost
was on, and she could stay home and watch it.

Besides, she wasn’t sure she was in the mood to watch him get hit on by gorgeous guys she had no hope in hell of nailing unless she got a sex change. Maybe tomorrow night (For going out, not getting her a sex change. That seemed more like a weekend thing).

Paris left the new basement door open, so the CD he’d put on the stereo could be clearly heard. It was Death From Above 1979’s “You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine,” which was a recent album that Ro liked a lot in spite of its “flaming heterosexuality” (ah, he never did stop being a smartass). Paris went down the steps and sat in the center of them, a good distance away from the repaired cage, but still within the general eye line of the lion inside.

Roan in cat form always looked spectacularly regal. He was lying down in the pose of library stone lions everywhere, his deep green eyes a striking counterpart to his ocher fur and his large, luxurious mane, partially shot through with the dark, reddish-brown hair that Roan’s mother had named him after. (It had taken Paris a stupid amount of time to realize that Roan’s mother had named him after his hair color; roan just wasn’t used much as a descriptive term anymore, except in relation to the color of horses. It made him wonder about Roan’s mother, what she was like to know that name, to give it to her son.)

“Just so you know, I changed your ringtone again,” Paris told the lion conversationally. “It’s a Pete Yorn song that makes me think of you, so of course you’re going to absolutely hate it. And I’ll be the first to admit that that “sister” line is not only gender inappropriate, but even in correct context just totally creepy. I have no idea what possessed him to write that, unless he was just desperate for a rhyme. I mean, it’s icky.”

The lion just stared at him, oozing the lazy, arrogant disdain that only lions seemed capable of, its tail flicking with impatience. Sometimes he wondered if Roan was actually semi-aware in there; sometimes he liked to annoy him just in an attempt to prove it. If Roan, after changing back, went and deleted his ringtone, it’d be proof positive that he retained some kind of awareness.

Paris unfolded the
Lifestyle
section, and glanced at the day’s scintillating headline. “Gray Is The New Black.” “Seriously, who comes up with this shit? And who cares? Good lord, there are so many wrong things about this I don’t even know where to start. And if you were here, I know you’d say, “Why do you read that stuff if it pisses you off?” And I’d 174