Prey (31 page)

“Now you’re just being a smart-ass.”

“I’m told that’s what I do best.”

“Don’t you even care that someone’s killing these kids?”

He let his hands fall flat on his desk, fixing Eli with a look that was just slightly frosty. “I care when anybody is killed. But I can’t interfere in an open police investigation, or I risk getting my license yanked. You may not like the cops around here, and God knows a lot of them are putzes, but they’re not criminally inept. Usually. So if this is what you want to hire me for, I suggest you take your man purse and go, because I don’t care how big a check that is.”

He scowled. “It’s not a man purse, it’s a messenger bag.”

“Whatever.”

Eli’s eyes narrowed to evil slits, making his brow furrow and showing a hint of his true age. He must not have had a Botox treatment recently. “Actually, what I want to hire you for is a matter a little closer to home.” He rummaged in the man purse once more, and this time he pulled out a number of things, mostly paper, but Roan noted a black and translucent CD-ROM case as well. “The church is being threatened.”

“Threatened?”

“Bomb threats, arson threats, vandalism.” He picked up a manila folder and shoved it over to him, and Roan glanced inside to see copies of crudely made letters, mostly sporting bad spelling and poor grammar, threatening harm to the
fucking pussies
and
godless hethens
. What was a
hethen
? Heathens, he knew, but that was just stupid. He wanted to find the person who wrote it and shout “Spellcheck, moron!”

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“It’s picked up very recently. Phone calls, mass e-mails, graffiti, eggs and dog shit thrown at the church, car windows smashed, tires slashed.

Now look what we found in the mailbox this morning.”

It was the local section of the paper he’d shown him just a minute ago, only over the small column about Ashley Cryer’s death was written, in red ink,
Your next.
It looked like Magic Marker-style ink; it had soaked into the newspaper like blood—surely the desired effect, even though the author had never heard of contractions. “You turn over the original to the cops?”

He nodded. “For all the good it’s going to do.”

“If it’s an open case.…”

“Oh come on, Roan, you know how the cops feel about us. They ain’t doing shit.”

He sighed, tapping his knuckles on the edge of his desk. Talking to Eli wasn’t like beating your head against the wall, it was more like having your head in a vise, and the sides were closing in a few centimeters every minute, just slowly enough that the pain seemed to sneak up on you.

“Again with the all-encompassing ‘us’. Are you coming out of the closet?

I mean, with that hair cut—”

“Give this whole jaded P.I. attitude a rest, would—what about my hair?” he suddenly exclaimed, touching it as if afraid it might have slipped off and hit the floor. Had he forgotten to fasten the chinstrap this morning?

Roan dry-washed his face to hide a laugh that was just itching to get out. When he was sure he had completely squashed the urge, he took a deep breath, and faced the poor little rich boy cult leader. “If this is an active police investigation, I can’t help you. Is that clear?”

Eli sat forward, almost leaning over his desk, a certain desperation flashing through his toilet-water blue eyes (colored contacts—Roan was honestly surprised that he hadn’t put in the ones with the cat-shaped pupils, because he just knew a guy like Eli would have them). “All they’re doing is amassing a file of threats and notes. They don’t take it seriously at all. They actually said they thought we’d get a lot of things like this.”

“Frankly, so did I.”

He frowned deeply, making more lines appear on his otherwise frat-boyish, vaguely Eurotrash face. “What I want you to do is find evidence, Infected: Prey

191

enough that the cops—who are sitting on their fat, cat-hating asses—can arrest the fuckers who are doing this.”

“Does this mean you have a suspect?”

“Of course I do.” He tossed another manila folder on Roan’s desk, and inside was a two-toned flyer, which had, in bold letters that took up most of the middle of the page, the words
Humanity First.

“Is this an Earth First offshoot?” Roan wondered aloud, scanning the rest of the flyer. It seemed to be about meeting other people interested in keeping humanity free of “mutagenic and cross-species diseases.” It was a very subtle way of saying “kitty-free.” “Ah, the vanguard of the anti-cat league. Don’t tell me—they want to pile us in sacks and drown us in the river.”

“He’s been trying to create his own Internet empire. He’s not doing too badly; the anti-cat sites have been spreading like wildfire over the Web.”

“He?”

“Reverend Harold Marber.” Eli rolled his eyes when he said

“Reverend,” as if the title itself was a joke. It probably was.

“Oh boy, he’s a religious freak? Does he hate gays too? I bet he does; they always do.” It was an awful thing, but he felt a slight, vicarious thrill; he did so love shutting down the religious hypocrites. But the problem was, there was one sitting right across from him.

“The rhetoric’s been getting more open, more hateful. He’s been recruiting downtown; I’ve heard he’s even had his people trying to get kids from the high schools.”

“And you haven’t?” he riposted with sarcastic cheerfulness.

Eli did not like that one bit. If looks could kill, Paris would have been scraping his brains off the wall of his office this afternoon. “He’s encouraging violence. We don’t hurt anyone; we never have and we never will.”

Roan gave him a challenging, disbelieving look before shuffling through the papers, finding more flyers, one with a contact phone number and Web page address, and a couple of computer printouts, including a page displaying a column titled
Twenty Five Ways To Kill A Cat.
Cute. Oh, and here was confirmation: an article stating that a “queer” fucking a cat 192

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led to the disease. Eli had probably made sure to include that little inflammatory tidbit just to get his blood boiling. “If being an obnoxious idiot was a crime, there’d be no room in prison,” he pointed out, closing the file.

Eli pulled out the check again, and slapped it on the desk. “Give me a week. Investigate Humanity First, see if they’re behind the violence like I’m sure they are; get proof and take it to your cop friends. That’s all I ask.”

“What if I don’t find any proof? What if I discover they’re just a bunch of mouth-breathing troglodytes?”

Eli shrugged, his head twitching to the side. It was a kind of reluctant shrug; he felt beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was right, comfortable in his complete smugness. How was the weather up his own ass? “So you don’t. I’m not asking you to fabricate anything or entrap anyone. I just don’t want any of my people hurt.”

His people? Did he mean people at the church, or was this an all-encompassing, royal “people,” all the infected? He didn’t ask, because he was afraid he’d be unable to keep his gorge from rising if Eli actually told him the answer. He tried not to do a double take when he glanced down at the check.

It was for ten thousand dollars. Roan was careful to count the zeros, roughly certain he was seeing one that wasn’t there. No, it was there all right. “This is a bit more than my standard fee.”

Again he shrugged, but it was far more nonchalant. “You get what you pay for. I want the job done right.”

Taking this prick for ten thousand sounded really good. But this was Eli and he couldn’t trust him, and frankly, ten thousand dollars for him was nothing; Eli probably spent that much on aftershave yearly. (The Ferragamo was thick enough to make his eyes water.) Still… wouldn’t it be fun to see if he could dig up some dirt on this Marber dickhead? And wouldn’t it be ironic if he dug up some dirt on Eli using his own money?

That was just too rich a prospect not to enjoy.

“If I do this, standard client protocols are in effect. Which means you don’t tell me what to do, you don’t interfere in my investigation. I’ll give you status reports, but that’s it. I work independently and autonomously, and I’m working for you personally, not the church. Is that clear?”

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Eli sat up, a child happy with long-denied attention, and fought hard not to smile. “Absolutely.”

Obviously Eli believed all of what he’d told Roan: he believed his people—but mainly himself—might be in danger. The problem was, Eli had a tendency to believe every piece of bullshit that plopped out of his mouth. What kind of religious leader would he be if he didn’t? There was something else going on here, something being held back or omitted, but with such skill it was almost unnoticeable. Almost.

As Roan pulled the standard forms out of the drawer, Eli added,

“Your people will thank you for this, Roan.”

His people? Infected gay men with lingering kitty traits? Now
there
was a party that everybody would want to attend.

As Eli signed the forms, Roan wondered how long it would take him to find the
real
reason Eli had hired him.

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3

Less Than Zero

AS SOON as Eli left, Paris came in, so curious he almost looked pained.

Roan had no choice but to tell him what Eli wanted to hire him for, and showed him the files.

“I assumed they got a lot of threats,” Paris said, making that assumption unanimous to everyone but Eli himself. When Roan told him he had taken the case, it looked like Paris was considering throwing his desk over. When Roan showed him the check, it calmed him down, but made him deeply confused. “What the hell is this? A payoff?”

“That’s what I’m wondering,” he admitted. He called up the Web page of Humanity First as Paris slowly sank into the chair Eli had just vacated, flipping through all the printouts. The Web page was just what the printout suggested. The front page seemed almost reasonable in its assertions that infecteds were getting too much of a “pass” for their crimes in kitty form; but the more you explored the site, the more hateful homophobic shit you found, including that “kill a cat” list and the open speculation that fags liked bestiality and had started all of this. There was a “calendar” of meetings in various areas, and a chat room. Roan signed up for the chat room using one of his anonymous e-mail addresses (he had a couple, ones he could use for cases and easily discard), and decided on the user name “Catkiller68” (why use subtlety when a sledgehammer would do?).

“You’re really going to investigate them?” For some reason, Paris sounded slightly queasy at the prospect.

“And Eli, as much as I possibly can. Can’t hurt.”

“But how can it help? I don’t care about Eli, but these Humanity First fuckheads could be dangerous.” He seemed genuinely concerned, and Roan was touched. He still wasn’t quite used to someone caring when he did something stupid.

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“If they are, I want to know so I can pass it on.”

Paris really wanted to argue with him, Roan could see it in his eyes, but as Paris grimaced at his own thoughts, it was equally clear that after a moment’s debate with himself that he had given up on the idea. There was no point in a debate and they both knew it; he wasn’t going to drop the case and return the check just yet.

“So how are you going to start?”

“There’s an informal meeting tonight down in the rec room of a church on State Street,” he noted, checking the online calendar. “I think I’ll wander by and be a dirtbag for a while.”

“Are you
insane
?” Paris exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “You can’t just walk in there!”

Roan looked up at him in genuine confusion. “Why the hell can’t I?

I’m not wearing a scarlet letter, I don’t have a big L tattooed on my forehead. I’ll cover the lion mark on my wrist and pretend to be rabidly hetero—I’ll fit in just fine.”

Paris continued staring at him in bug-eyed shock. “If they find out—”

“How are they going to find out? And even if they do, it’s not like they’re going to tear me apart like fresh bread; it’s not like I’m even human. They’re welcome to start some shit if they want, but there’s no way in hell they’re finishing it.”

Paris fixed him with a stern look, his clear blue eyes remarkably cold, and shook his head slowly. “You and your macho bullshit.”

“It’s not macho bullshit. Give them Uzis and I still wouldn’t be afraid of a bunch of redneck punk-ass bitches like that.” Okay, yeah, that did sound a little like macho bullshit. But he really wasn’t bothered by a bunch of impotent men who could only feel powerful when beating on other people; they were weak little bullies, limp dicks who didn’t want a real, hard fight. The ones you needed to worry about were the ones who relished a bloody, messy fight, but they were few and far between.

Paris sighed dramatically and rubbed his forehead like Roan was giving him a headache. After a moment, he said, “Fine, I’m going with you.”

Few things left Roan speechless, but this did. He needed a few seconds to find his voice. “What? No fucking way—”

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“You can’t stop me.”

“The hell I can’t.”

Paris put on his unyielding face, the one that usually prefaced a huge, pointless argument between them. He sometimes wondered if he’d infected Paris with his own assholic stubbornness. “I’m going.”

Son of a bitch. He wanted to tell him to stop being difficult, but he could just imagine the apocalyptic fight that would ensue, and there was no guarantee that getting Paris mad enough would keep him out of the meeting tonight. So he considered the pros and cons, and how much he cared about Paris and really didn’t want to fuck this up. Goddamn, the things you did for love. At least he knew, from the endless parade of cheating husbands and wives that came through his office, that straights had it no easier at all. “Okay, fine, if you want to come along, be my guest.

But remember, you’re utterly charmless, and if you can be uglier, it’d be a help.”

“I have great experience playing straight,” Paris pointed out. That was true enough. He looked at him with almost absurdly kind eyes now, as if he knew the pride Roan had to swallow to make this compromise. Roan was trying very hard not to let that get to him. A stupid fight was almost better than gratitude. (And what was wrong with him that he thought that?)