Prey (32 page)

“But we have to watch it. We’re just friends, that’s it. If anyone gets an affection vibe off us, we could be in deep shit.” While that was perfectly obvious, it was actually more insidious than you’d think. There was an unconscious body language that people who’d been together for a while or people simply into each other projected, as subtle as being turned toward another or as obvious as a casual, lingering touch. Roan knew he himself would have to watch out for such things if Paris came with him; they had to be together but always completely parallel, physically, emotionally, and in all other ways and behaviors. They were two straight guys who liked each other but otherwise had no interest in each other.

Something like that was usually easier said than done, but at least Paris had the experience of pretending to be straight and passing for a great deal of his life; he knew how to play the game successfully.

Paris flashed him a brilliant, cocky smile as the phone started ringing in the front office and he turned toward the door. “I’ll try not to give you a blow job in front of everyone.”

“Well, if the mood strikes you, far be it from me to stop you.”

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Paris blew him a kiss as he ducked out to the front, closing the door behind him. How were they going to ugly Paris up? Without prosthetics, that was going to be difficult.

He picked up the phone and punched in a number he hadn’t used in a while. He wondered if he’d be as welcome as a heart attack. After two rings, the phone was answered and a woman’s clipped, professional voice said, “Sergeant Murphy, homicide.”

“Dropkick Murphy, how’s it hanging?”

She chuckled faintly. “Angus Podgorny. Why am I not surprised somehow?” Sergeant Darinda Murphy was also known as the “lesbian cop in homicide,” the most accepted openly gay member on the police force.

She never got the shit he got, and he knew why: straight men just accepted lesbians easier. Maybe because they often seemed like “one of the guys,”

or perhaps—and most likely—they weren’t afraid the lesbians were going to rape them in the shower. (That would probably be filed under “fantasy”

for some guys.)

He called her Dropkick after the band, the Dropkick Murphys, which she had never heard of, but she liked the nickname because it was different from the usual nicknames she was given, which were generally Rindy or the Dyke. In response, she called him Angus or Angus Podgorny, a Monty Python reference—supposedly the first and only Scotsman to win Wimbledon. People generally looked at them funny, but at least it was deserved. “Hey, does that mean you were thinking of me? How’s Kim?”

“She’s good. We just renovated our kitchen, and now I don’t have any idea where anything is.” Kim was a nurse over at County General, and had been Dropkick’s partner for the last seven years. Roan had met her a couple of times, mostly on the job, and she seemed nice enough. Neither she nor Dropkick were butch or overly feminine; no bull dykes or lipstick lesbians here. They were both just normal, average, as if deliberately going out of their way to subvert stereotypes. “How’s Paris?”

“A willful little snot.”

That made her chuckle once more. “All you men are like that. So why the call? Somehow I have a feeling that you’re not just wanting to shoot the shit.”

“You caught me. I was wondering, since you’re the hotshot on the squad, if you and Dubois had the kitty-killer case. You know, the idiot going around shooting infecteds.”

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He heard her chair creak, and since she had a much nicer chair than Sikorski, he knew that meant she’d sat forward. He could picture her leaning her elbows on her neat desk, her stylishly bobbed chocolate-brown hair falling forward and obscuring at least one of her equally brown eyes.

She dropped her voice to an angry whisper as she hissed, “Where the fuck did you hear that? Who the hell is your leak, Roan?”

“I heard it from a guy who has a leak in the coroner’s office. And has apparently spread it to the Church of the Divine Transformation.”

She let out a breath between her teeth, a slow whistle like a deflating beach ball. “Fuck. Tell me you’re joking.”

“No. As far as I know, they haven’t acted on the info yet, but who knows what they might do with it.” If nothing else, it was fair warning.

“So, are you on the case? What’s the deal? What’s the connection between the kids?”

Again the creak, and he could imagine her pinching the bridge of her nose, which she did when she was trying not to get angry or impatient.

“I’m not discussing an active case with you. I can’t believe you’re even asking.”

She didn’t deny being on the case, which meant she was on it. He was glad, because he knew she was a good cop. Dubois wasn’t too bad, but he just didn’t know enough about him; Jon Dubois seemed to avoid him whenever possible, which meant he was either one of those guys who had no problem with lesbians but couldn’t tolerate a gay male, or was a closet case who didn’t like to be reminded of what he could have become if he didn’t fight his sexuality all the way. “I’m not asking for anything damaging, and I’m not going to discuss this with anyone. You know me.”

“Yeah, I do. That’s the problem. I don’t need you butting in.”

“I’m not going to.” He wasn’t sure if he was lying or not. “Is it one killer or one group of killers? Is the church the common denominator?”

She sighed heavily, and he waited for her to decide whether she wanted to tell him anything or just hang up on him. After what seemed an eternity, she finally said, quietly, “It looks like the same weapon was used in all the killings, and everyone was taken by surprise. This is all off the record, capice?”

“I’ve got you, Murph. This is just between us.”

“Two of the victims had been to the church, but the other two, as far as we can tell, never went. We have no common denominator for the Infected: Prey

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victims at the moment, beyond their illness.”

Holy shit. The cops had nothing. In a homicide, the first twenty-four hours were crucial: if you didn’t identify a suspect in that time, the odds got increasingly worse that you ever would with every hour that passed.

Usually the first person identified within that twenty-four-hour span was also the actual killer; it was cozy how that worked. “Is it a professional?”

he wondered.

He heard her tapping a pen on her desk. That was another nervous habit of hers. “There are no indications of that.”

With cops, it was often
how
they said something, not what they said.

“It hasn’t been ruled out.” She tapped her pen at a more rapid pace, and he felt his heart sink. No. “You haven’t ruled anything out, have you?”

“I can’t talk about this,” she replied, the strain obvious in her voice.

There was nothing more frustrating than a case that seemed like a zero-sum game right from the beginning. This was fucked-up.

“If I can help at all.…” he offered, wondering why there were no witnesses willing to come forward about the shootings. Were they really supposed to believe no one saw anything? Okay, no one ever did at Wildwood, but what about the other places? And come to think of it, why was Eli sitting on the information that all the killed were infected? Did he just learn it this morning before coming into his office, or… was there some other reason he wasn’t holding a press conference and accusing the police of indifference? This was starting to seem a lot less straightforward and far more messy.

She snorted derisively. “If we need a bloodhound, I’ll call you.”

After a moment, she realized how harsh and bitter that sounded, and added, “Shit, I’m sorry Roan, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Actually he was fairly certain she did, but he let it go. “That’s not all I’m good for.”

“I realize that, but you’re a civie. Stick with your cases and leave us to ours.”

“I’ll look into the kids, see if I can find a connection.”

“Roan, I just said—”

“I know the cat community,” he interrupted. “People will talk to me more readily than they will to a cop.” This was doubly true if he sent in Paris to do the job.

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She sighed, but he heard the concession in it before she ever said a word. “Fine, ask around. But that’s it, okay? Let’s not have a repeat of the Henstridge thing, okay?”

“What, you think I want the suspect to come to my house and try and kill me?”

“Not that.” He heard her shift once more, and she lowered her voice.

“You didn’t make any more friends around here by breaking that case.”

“’Cause he was a cop.”

“And because you made the investigative unit look bad. He wasn’t even on the radar until you mentioned his name. Do yourself a favor and try not to get arrested between now and next year.”

He scoffed, although he knew she wasn’t joking. “Thanks for the heads up. I’ll see what I can find and call you back.” As soon as he hung up, though, he wondered where he was supposed to start. Well, where did any decent detective start? With the victims’ backgrounds.

By the time he had to give it up and do some other work, he had the home addresses and workplaces of all the victims, although he’d already found a tenuous connection between them: all lived away from their families, save for Christa, who lived with her great-aunt. But her parents and siblings lived in Mission Viejo, California; Patrick’s family lived in Cleveland; Melissa’s family lived in Richmond, Virginia; and Ashley’s family lived in Corpus Christi. Was that significant? The church and very liberal social policies had brought an influx of infecteds to the city, as it was seen as more “kitty friendly” than most, and he knew that scared a lot of people, although kitty crimes hadn’t gone up. A lot of the influx was kids, runaways who couldn’t hack it at home or simply weren’t wanted. It was kind of sad when you thought about it. But it also meant there was a social network for the kids themselves, and he wondered how he was going to insinuate himself into it.

He put together an action list, places to hit and people to interview, and he wondered if he could get permission from Murphy to visit one of the crime scenes, but he figured he’d wait until tomorrow. Right now, he didn’t see her being amenable to it.

The meeting was at five-thirty, so he wrapped things up and told Paris they were closing up early. He was hoping that Paris would change his mind about going, but oh no, he was determined to see this through.

Why was he attracted to the stubborn? Life would be so much easier if he Infected: Prey

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could somehow tolerate the naturally submissive.

Back at the house, he went through the closet and found the stash of

“undercover clothes” at the back. Following people, especially in crowds, you couldn’t draw attention to yourself; you had to be as inconspicuous as possible, as average and unnoticeable as the scenery. He kept a wardrobe of things he normally wouldn’t wear just for the various situations where he might have to tail people, and sometimes he did find himself at a loss.

Luckily nowadays, most of the time, you could fit in to any situation with a T-shirt and jeans.

And that’s what he settled for: a plain blue Gap T-shirt that looked well-worn (because it was—he bought most of his undercover clothes at the Goodwill) and faded Levis that were just a little bit too big for him, along with dirty Nikes that looked like he’d spent the day tracking through the mud. He topped it all off with a gimme cap that covered his hair and had the symbol for the Toronto Maple Leafs on it. He enjoyed this, because it allowed him to get a suspicious look on his face and say,

“Didn’t you take me to a Leafs game?” This was a very obscure reference to a Kids In The Hall sketch, and while it amused him endlessly, Paris had only the vaguest idea who the Kids In The Hall were and had never seen the sketch he was referring to. It made him feel so very old and so very geeky. He had to get the DVDs one of these days, if only to torment Par with them.

Paris went with a more quasi-frat-boy look, wearing a basketball jersey (What was the significance of the number 32? He had no idea, but he wasn’t about to admit it.) and the jeans he sometimes wore while working on his cars, which meant they were a bit torn and grease-stained and looked authentically like jeans worn by someone who didn’t give a flying fuck about fashion or good taste or laundry. Paris also gathered his hair into a tight ponytail, making him look like a guy who hadn’t gotten the message that the nineties were over—the only way he could have looked less fashionable was if he wore moon boots and a skinny tie. He still seemed a bit too handsome, but they were just going to have to live with that.

Par glanced at his cap, and grimaced. “Oh no, not the Leafs game joke again.”

“Tonight I’m straight; I’m not making that joke.”

He glanced at his watch. “I give it five minutes.”

“Very funny.” He had to dig in his top dresser drawer to find his 202

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leather cuff watch, the one with the wide band that hid his Leo sign tattoo quite handily, and snapped it on. He added a worn brown leather jacket before they left, and then belatedly worried that he was too color coordinated, but fuck it.

On their way to the church, they decided on fake names and backstories. It was unlikely that anyone would ask, but it was always good to have them ready just in case. Roan had decided on Chris McDonald, a recently unemployed corporate drone who’d once been mauled by a cat (hence his hatred of them). Paris was Kevin Stiles (apparently the name of this prick he hated in high school), a house painter who had an uncle killed by a cat. It wouldn’t actually be hard for them to dredge up some anger toward cats, because it wasn’t like they loved being infected. If they were perfectly honest with themselves, would they have actually wanted this?

Would they want to have to deal with this fucking disease and all the baggage that came with it? Of course not, which was why the people who deliberately chased it, the ones who wanted to get infected, always puzzled them. It wasn’t quite like the Gothic horror romances said, and he thought the trans-porn, even as cleaned up as it was, would send that message loud and clear. Becoming something else was not fun, it was not painless, it was not Buffy The Vampire Slayer. It sucked, it hurt, it lowered your life span dramatically, or in the case of surviving tiger strain infectees, chopped it down to almost nothing.