by Andrea Speed
“Hey, congratulations.”
“Don’t ever let anyone tell you it’s not fucking hard, ’cause it is.”
“I know what you mean, brother. After I discovered I was infected, I spent almost two entire years in a bottle. In fact, I’m still not sure how or when I got over the border. But detoxing wasn’t too bad for me, ’cause I was in a hospital at the time, and drugs made it better than it should have been.”
“I feel left out,” Roan admitted.
Paris rolled his eyes. “This one’s so squeaky clean, you’ll plotz. He has no fun at all.” He added a knowing wink to that.
Matt finally looked at Roan and smiled and tried to give him a quick, surreptitious once-over, only Roan caught it. Still hadn’t gotten over the puppy-dog crush, had he?
“You look good too. Hey, are you wearing a ring? I never figured you as a jewelry type.”
“Oh. Well, it’s a wedding ring, so apparently I’m obligated to wear it, or I’m sleeping in the garage.”
Matt’s eyes got wide as silver dollars as he looked between Roan and Paris, and he must have finally noticed the same type of ring on Paris’s hand. “Holy shit, you guys got married? Wow! Congrats! I didn’t even know that was legal in this state.”
“It’s not. We got married up in Canada. It’s more a symbolic gesture than anything.”
Paris cleared his throat, grinning somewhat evilly. “He has a thorn in his paw about it because he thinks I conned him into it.”
“You got me drunk.”
“Oh please! You were barely tipsy. The spite idea really appealed to you.”
“You took advantage of my weakness.”
Now Paris was grinning broadly at him, and he looked better than he had in days. “Crybaby.”
No matter what Paris claimed, he had plied Roan with a lot of pale ale that night—and he had to admit that the place Par took him to had some great microbrews—and convinced him that them getting married would piss a lot of people off. The rings they had weren’t traditional by any means; they were little silver metal snakes biting their own tails, forming a circle, that they bought in an open air market in Vancouver’s version of Chinatown. They were manly and, as Paris cheerfully pointed out, wonderfully phallic, so of course they had to get them. They were also only twenty bucks apiece, so how could they say no?
Paris’s parents were pretty surprised, but Roan thought they handled it well, considering. They did seem like very nice, decent people, and certainly Paris’s sisters were impressive: Annie wasn’t just a lawyer, but a human rights lawyer, and Dee was a medical examiner (!) in Toronto. It was easy to tell that, only son or not, Paris was the black sheep in this studious family, and he clearly enjoyed that. His infected status never came up the whole time they were there, though, and Roan didn’t push him. They were invited back any time, and Roan sensed that they mostly meant that.
And Roan had to occasionally complain about the whole married thing so Paris didn’t see the truth of the matter: that he’d married Paris because it seemed like that was what Paris wanted, and he’d do anything for Paris if he thought it would make him live an extra day, an extra week... anything. He really didn’t care what. If he actually thought it would help, he’d sacrifice a goat to Ba‘al—that’s how desperate he was.
Matt was looking between them, as if not completely certain whether they were kidding or not, and Roan decided to give the kid a break—he probably wasn’t used to the way they joked with each other. “We’re legally married in Canada. Here, we’re dirty, filthy outlaws and somehow a menace to all straight people everywhere.”
“Which keeps things hot,” Paris said, with such cheerfulness that Roan had to fake a cough to hide a laugh.
Matt smiled, apparently getting that joke. “Is that why you haven’t been to Panic lately? The guys were starting to get worried about you. They actually discussed reporting you as a missing person, if only they knew your name.”
“Hey, I’m married now. I have to become a fat, cold shrew. I don’t have time to go have fun anymore,” Paris answered, still clearly enjoying himself. Of course, the real reason he hadn’t been to Panic was because he’d been too sick, but he wasn’t going to tell Matt that. “But I’m touched the guys miss me.”
“I’ll let them know you’re snubbing them for being a bunch of loser nellies.”
“Ooh, do that! But only if I can watch what happens after that.” The phone rang again, and Paris exchanged a surprised look with Roan before he picked up the receiver. Business was positively booming today—unless it was a process server making sure they were on site before visiting. That had happened before.
Roan took the opportunity to ask Matt seriously, “Did you just drop by to say hi?”
A slightly guilty look flashed across his face, and Roan wondered how good a junkie Matt could have been if he had never mastered the poker face. His emotions were all right there, out front where everyone could see them, and Roan had no idea how he had managed to survive so long in this world. “Umm, no. It’s funny, ’cause I was always trying to think up a good excuse to see you guys, but a reason kinda fell in my lap while I was still thinking about it.”
“Oh?” He hoped Matt’s crackhead stalker wasn’t out of prison yet... although it would be fun to kick his ass again.
“Yeah, I, um, wanted to hire you.”
Roan raised his eyebrows and resisted making the obvious dirty joke. “Really? Well, I guess you’d better step into my office.” He led the way, wondering what Matt could possibly hire him for and how precisely Matt could afford to on a barista’s salary. He suspected he’d have to let him down gently.
Once inside the office, he gestured to the lonely chair in front of his desk and shut the door quietly, deciding to cut right to the chase. “I’m not cheap, Matt.”
“Oh, uh, I know, I saw your web page. Nice job on that, by the way.”
“That’s Paris’s baby, tell him that. I just know what I need to know about the Internet and no more.” By the time Roan had taken a seat behind his desk, Matt was sitting as well, as ramrod straight and anxious as a third grader called into the principal’s office for reasons unknown. “What’s the problem?”
Matt looked briefly confused, as if he wasn’t sure what the question was referring to, and then he seemed to understand Roan was asking why he wanted to hire him. Learning Roan had married Paris had really thrown him, hadn’t it? Poor kid. Roan almost felt bad for him.
“Um, a friend of mine from my rehab group has gone missing, and I was hoping you could find her. Or at least find out what happened to her.” He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a folded check. “This is your initial fee and expenses, I believe.”
He took the check and looked at it, noting both the number of zeroes and the still youthful scrawl of the handwriting across the check. “Yes, that’s a good start. But how on earth can you afford this, Matt?”
Roan could see the play of emotions across his face and knew then that Matt had to be the world’s worst liar. There was actually something refreshing about that; the world was so full of liars, himself among them.
“My family’s not exactly poor. I mean, emergency doctors don’t make much, but my dad’s a malpractice lawyer, and believe me, he’s rolling in it. Also, I gave up the barista gig and decided to try and grow up a bit. Although I don’t know if working at a spa is growing up exactly, but at least it pays better.”
“A spa?”
“Yeah, Avalon Spa, you know that place near the mall?”
“Oh, right. What do you do there?”
Again the nervous glance at the floor, and the small flush of color rising up his neck. “I’m a masseur. Which I know sounds as phony as hell, but I’m licensed and everything. Also, my clients are women—the only men at Avalon are the ones on staff. And while I’ve got nothing against women at all—I’d have had no friends in high school if it weren’t for women—I find them as sexually attractive as roadkill possum.”
> Roan had to swallow back a laugh. “Don’t tell them that.”
“Oh, God no! I’d never get any tips then.”
At least he wasn’t the male hustler kind of masseur; he had that going for him. Of course, Roan had no idea how much they made, but the fact that he had to be licensed probably put him a pay grade above barista. Still, he had a sense there was something Matt wasn’t telling him. “So this is all your money?”
A nervous glance, and when their eyes locked, something in Matt caved, and his shoulders slumped appropriately. “Well, actually... her aunt is chipping in on this too. But I’m not supposed to tell you that; she doesn’t want it getting back that she hired you.”
“Why?”
He shrugged, rolled his shoulders a bit, squirmed slightly in his chair. “She doesn’t get along too well with her sister, Callie’s mother, and she’s afraid this could make things worse, y’know.”
“Callie—the missing woman?”
He seemed to feel better with this topic change. “Yeah, Callie Stone. Well, not really, that’s just the name she’s been living under. Her real name’s Thora Bishop—gee, I wondered why she changed that, right?”
Bishop—that last name sounded familiar, although he couldn’t immediately say why. “Tell me about her.”
Matt was more than happy to oblige. He had met Callie/Thora in the Laurel Springs Therapeutic Recovery Center, which was an exclusive, private rehab clinic for the children of the wealthy (proving that Matt was right when he said his family had money). Part of Laurel Springs’ recovery program was that the group you were put in with met twice a month on an outpatient basis, a sort of exclusive AA program. Callie had been in for abusing prescription drugs and coke and was also an anorexic who weighed about eighty-nine pounds when she was brought in and often had to be fed through a stomach tube. Her parents were also concerned about her OCD problem, which had led to her washing her hands until they bled.
The girl was pretty fucked-up, which was why Matt gravitated to her. He said he always sympathized with the deeply screwed (which may have led to his crackhead stalker problem, but Roan wasn’t going to bring that up now), and Callie kept to herself a lot, even in group therapy, although eventually she began to confide in him. Not a lot but enough that he realized her family—the Bishops of the Thorp Chemical concern (that’s where he recognized the name: there was controversy all last year about Thorp buying a few thousand acres of formerly federal forest to build a new chemical manufacturing plant)—were fucked-up in quiet but elaborate ways. They exchanged e-mails once they were out of rehab, and plans were made to get together, but Callie developed a mild case of agoraphobia and never could manage it. They were never great friends, although Matt suspected he was the closest thing she had to a confidante, which made him feel bad for her. He played that role a lot, but he figured he was the “safe gay guy” for most of these conflicted women.
Yesterday he got a phone call from her, and she sounded near hysterical, and the first thing that struck him as weird was that it was obvious she was calling from outside—quite a feat for a person with agoraphobia. She was really scared; she was sure there were these guys following her, and she was afraid to go home. She wouldn’t call the cops—according to her, “It wouldn’t help”—but he was at work and it was too far away from where she was to be of much use to her, and sending her to his apartment when he wasn’t there and she had no way to get in wasn’t something she was up for. So he told her to go to Panic and he’d meet her there as soon as he could, banking on the fact that, most likely, her pursuers were straight men who wouldn’t enter a gay bar in a million years, and besides that, the bouncers were gym queens with an excellent sense of gaydar—no straight guys were getting past them even if they tried. (Roan’s opinion of Matt went up a notch; that was very clever of him.)
But when he got there, she was nowhere to be seen, and the bouncers hadn’t seen a woman matching her description. One of the bartenders thought he might have seen her, though. He told Matt he had been out in the alley having a smoke break, and he thought he saw, on the street, a woman matching her description being helped into a silver sedan type of vehicle. He remembered it because she was so skinny; he thought maybe she was a junkie of some kind, someone who spent more on drugs than food. He thought she looked passed out, but he wasn’t sure.
Matt knew she had a couple of brothers and hoped that maybe they’d picked her up, as far-fetched as that was. He had gone to her place and said it was “trashed” and she was nowhere to be found, which really scared him. He was now certain something terrible had happened to her.
“Have you reported this to the police?”
Matt shifted in his chair, sitting up a bit straighter, his eyes suddenly troubled. “No. The family asked me not to.”
Of all the possible responses to that question, that was the one Roan didn’t expect.
2
Hurt
“WHY would the family not want this reported?” Roan asked, having a bad feeling about this. Stuff with families got messy and complicated and often quite ugly; families were, as far as Roan had seen from the outside looking in, hell. He was glad he’d avoided them.
Matt gave him a look that suggested he agreed but had been verbally beaten down. “They think it will get out to the press and become a media circus. I talked to Callie’s aunt—her name’s Hannah Noyes—and at first she wanted to go to the cops, but then she reconsidered it. I even had to talk her into hiring you. She was afraid you’d leak it to the press. I had to vouch for you, tell her you weren’t the type to do that.”
Roan sat forward, scratching his head as he thought. Something wasn’t adding up here. “Who would care? I mean, sure, the Bishops are rich, and there was the whole Thorp Chemical thing, but they just aren’t that big of a deal. The Winters have kicked them off the scandal sheets, Eli being an infected cult leader and all.”
Matt shifted in his seat again, and it was clear he hated being in the middle of something. He may have led a rather dramatic life, what with the drugs and the stalkers, but Matt was one of those guys who didn’t like conflict. He disliked conflict so much it made Roan wonder what his childhood had been like. “I know, I said I didn’t think it was likely, but... she’s family, y’know? And the only one who’d talk to me, the only one who seemed to care. I had to play along. Callie always said that Hannah was the only sane one in her family, the only one who gave a damn about her.”
Roan opened a small notebook he always kept on his desk and wrote down the name Hannah Noyes on the left-hand side, and the name Thora Bishop on the right-hand side. He was going to make a list of the family members and connect them all in a daisy chain. It might lead somewhere, it might not, but it would help him keep track of all the players. “How old is Callie?”
“Seventeen.”
He looked at Matt sharply. He was expecting maybe nineteen at the outset but not seventeen. “She’s that young?”
Matt grimaced. “She’s pretty fucked-up. She told me she’s been anorexic since she was twelve and her dad called her a butterball. She started using at thirteen. It started with diet pills and snowballed from there.”
The name Adam Bishop popped into his head, and he wrote it down above Hannah’s name. He recalled it from the newspaper coverage of the Thorp Chemical controversy. That must be Callie’s/Thora’s father. “There’s no chance she’s run off?”
The look Matt gave him said “No, dumbass” better than words ever could. “She had her own place, which she wouldn’t leave most of the time ’cause of her agoraphobia. She has money—if she wanted to take off, she could and come back. Why call me in a panic? If she was simply leaving, she’d have told me. Hell, she’d probably invite me along, like she did to her cousin’s wedding.”
“You took her to her cousin’s wedding?”
“A couple months ago, yeah. Oh, and you know what was horrible? The groom hit on me.”
Roan stared at him. “No, he didn’t.”
“He t
otally did! He cornered me in one of the bathrooms—and my God, you should have seen this house, it was a fucking mansion! The bathrooms were bigger than my first apartment! Anyway, he said he knew I was gay, he could tell, supposedly, and he thought it might be fun to have a little... fling before he was tied down, y’know? God, I was horrified. He must have thought I was a total slut or something. Also, he wasn’t that good-looking. Rich, sure, but he should have spent some of his money on a nose job and liposuction.”
Now he could see why a guy would randomly hit on Matt; now he looked really good. Of course, if he still had his “club kid” look at that time, then the guy was not only a total skeeze but possibly a child molester, as Matt looked barely legal without the beard. “Who were these people? How are they related to Callie?”
“Oh! The cousin was named Crystal... God, something. I’m sorry, they weren’t very close, Callie just felt she had to be there, y’know, to keep up appearances and show she wasn’t dead yet. The guy was named Cody Ginter—–now, that I remember, ’cause Callie told me he was some big noise on the East Coast, but I’d never heard of him. Also, as I said, he hit on me, and I never forget a guy who grabs my dick, especially when I don’t want him to.”
Roan wrote Cody and Crystal Ginter at the very bottom of the page, not figuring them into the mess yet. “To show she wasn’t dead yet? You don’t mean that literally, do you?”
Matt ran a hand nervously through his hair, ruffling it only the slightest bit. (He must have used quite a bit of product on it.) “Well... kinda. She’d heard from Heather, Hannah’s daughter, that either her parents or her brothers had started a rumor that she was dead. She wanted to show she wasn’t.”
Roan sat back, wondering why he wasn’t surprised. He wished he wasn’t so cynical at times, but the world seemed to conspire to keep him that way. “Her family wanted her dead?”
“No! I mean... I don’t think so. I don’t really know. I mean, to hear Callie talk, she seemed pretty convinced that they’d have been happier if she OD’d fatally rather than survive to end up in rehab, but she was kinda... a drama queen, y’know? After a guy was late for their date, I spent an hour talking her out of killing herself.”
