by Andrea Speed
Currently he had the suede comforter wrapped around him like a cocoon, the blanket partially covering his face, and almost out of habit Roan checked to make sure he was still breathing. He was, just not very loudly or forcefully.
Roan could smell the cats all over himself, the musky scent of cougar along with a trace of the sickly sweet scent of illness, and stripped off his clothes, tossing them in the corner hamper before going into the bathroom and starting the shower. He left the B-12 injection on the nightstand, figuring Dee must have told Par what it was.
So Par was worried about him? Dee was right—he couldn’t let Par continue doing that. But lying to Par was such a tricky thing. He could fool most people, but Paris was nearly impossible to bullshit. What could Roan tell him? What would he believe? What would make Paris stop worrying about him? Christ, he didn’t know. He was horrible at this kind of thing.
Clearly. He hadn’t fooled Paris for one second, had he?
He stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain shut before turning the faucet up full blast, hot enough to almost scald. He let it drench him, washing away the faint traces of foreign cats, and then he started to sob. He hated it, but there wasn’t much he could do to stop it, and he didn’t even try. He was just glad Paris couldn’t hear him.
ROAN almost wished Dee had left him a B-12 shot, because after he woke up he felt terrible. His head full-on ached now, a painful throb like an infected tooth, and he was forced to figure out how he could handle Panic with a head that felt like a swollen, overripe melon. The first loud techno beat would make his skull explode, splattering his brains all over like the world’s grossest piñata. So he got dressed, went downstairs, and ate a few forkfuls of cold Szechwan noodles before popping a Vicodin. He could probably handle one with few obvious effects, mainly because his drug tolerance was so incredibly high he could take elephant tranquilizers and hardly notice it at this point. He ended up finishing the Szechwan noodles, mainly because he was starving and hadn’t realized it until now.
He’d dressed down, in jeans and hiking boots and a loose red T-shirt with the “Duff Beer” logo across the chest, and was painfully aware that he’d probably stand out like a seven-foot drag queen at a Mormon church. He didn’t look like the type of guy who’d go to a gay disco, which was the point—he didn’t want to look like a guy who’d go to a gay disco. He didn’t want to belong. He just wanted to find Eric and talk to him, and if anyone hit on him, he might have to claim he was straight. (That might fly… for a bit. Maybe. He would swear he could pass.)
But as he washed down the last of the spicy noodles with a Diet Pepsi that still seemed overly sweet, he heard movement upstairs. Paris was awake.
Part of him wanted to just grab his coat and dart out the door, but that was so cowardly he was ashamed of himself. Okay, no, he still had no idea what he was going to say to Par, but he had to say something. Roan headed upstairs to let him know what he was doing and where he was going.
By the time he returned to the bedroom, Paris had already found the B-12 shot and used it, judging from the used needle tossed in the metal wastepaper basket beside his computer desk. He didn’t know if the shot really worked that fast, but Paris did seem a bit more alert than before; maybe the nap had helped too. When Roan told him what he was doing, Par chuckled, and said, his face splitting into a grin, “You, going to Panic? Oh, this I gotta see.” That didn’t really fill him with confidence. But he was glad Paris felt well enough to venture out, so he wasn’t going to discourage him.
Paris got dressed more or less to match him, wearing jeans and a loose, long-sleeved gray sweatshirt, and joked that the bouncers might not recognize him without the skin tight T-shirt and the silver hot pants. The hot pants were, of course, just him being funny. (Right?)
By the time they reached Panic, the sun was going down, and the club was approaching its busy hours. The Vicodin was working nicely; his headache had faded to an annoying background pulse, and he felt slightly disconnected from it, like he could hold it in his hands and examine it objectively. That was the really good part about Vicodin—not that it killed the pain as much as it made you cease giving a shit about it. Paris seemed more bright-eyed than usual, almost like his old self, and Roan hoped Dee brought a motherfucking case of those shots tomorrow.
The bouncer on the door was clearly a gym bunny. He was a huge black man about the height, girth, and possibly approximate weight of your average refrigerator, his head shaved bald and reflecting the blue neon glow of the Panic sign far above him. Even though the light was fading rapidly, he was still wearing cheap black sunglasses, and in spite of the cold, he was only wearing Nikes, jeans, and a navy blue T-shirt stretched so tightly across his barrel chest that Roan was pretty sure when the shirt snapped off him—and he was sure it would—it would take out an innocent bystander’s eye. He looked like a statue carved of granite, with arms about as big around as an average man’s leg, but as they approached, his face split into a wide grin that showed many nicely capped teeth.
“Oh my God, you! I was so afraid something happened to you.” The man’s voice was so high and fragile, Roan almost burst out laughing. It was like hearing a five-year-old-girl’s voice come out of Atlas. But he didn’t, because it was rude, and because, little-girl voice or not, he bet the guy could snap him in half like a piece of frozen beef jerky.
Paris introduced him to Jimmy (apparently the big guy’s name) as his husband, which shocked him needlessly. “Him?” Mighty Mouse Jimmy squeaked.
Oh, that was nice. What an ego boost.
Things didn’t really get any better once they were in the small, dark alcove where they paid the cover and got the neon green plastic bracelets that signified they’d paid and would let them back in the club tonight if they left. Roan protested that he was not coming back, but it was apparently protocol to put the damn thing on. The guy manning that station, with platinum blond hair shot through with cotton-candy streaks of blue and pink and a big gold nose ring that he’d apparently stolen off a bull somewhere, also recognized Paris, and was happy to see him back. Roan could see both a positive and a negative here: Paris was popular enough that everybody would be more than happy to talk to him. That was both the positive and the negative. Funny when it worked that way.
They walked through an inner door that led to a sprawling nightclub, split almost evenly between a large and packed dance floor and a small side area full of small tables and leather booths. There was a large, black painted bar off to the immediate left in a distended horseshoe shape, and there were two bartenders behind it, both men wearing leather vests over shirtless chests, but neither was Eric. One was a Hispanic man with a very pretty, feminine face, and the other guy was a Caucasian who didn’t have six-pack abs as much as a twenty-four pack—you could have washed clothes by hand on his abs. He must have done eight thousand crunches a day.
The bar was lit by yellow spots, giving it a topaz glimmer, while gel lights of red, blue, green, and purple lit up the dance floor in confetti-like hues. The music that pounded through the club was some dance remix of a Nine Inch Nails song with an almost tribal drum beat, and he was glad he’d popped the Vicodin, as he was sure it would have cleaved his head in half like a rotten coconut. But hey, Nine Inch Nails—that was pretty cool. The place smelled like many hot bodies in a small space, sweat and lust and a nearly toxic mélange of colognes, aftershaves, deodorants, and hair products.
They approached the empty end of the bar, and Mr. Abs came down almost instantly. “You! My God, where have you been?” He had neatly cut dark brown hair, brown eyes to match, and about a day’s worth of artful stubble. He was attractive, but in a rather calculated way, and couldn’t have been a day over twenty three.
“Around,” Paris answered cryptically, then put an arm around Roan’s waist, a possessive gesture meant to signal to the pretty bartender that he was off limits. “So, Toby, where’s Chi-Chi? We heard he was working tonight.”
“Oh, he was, but he took a break. He w
as totally getting cruised by some jailbait, but Chi-Chi looks barely legal too, so that makes sense.”
“Did he leave with him?” Roan asked.
Toby glanced at him, and seemed to take a good, long look at Par’s arm around his waist. He seemed to be thinking the same thing as Mighty Mouse—Him?—but was too polite to say it aloud. “Technically, no, but the kid left at the same time as Chi-Chi, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were together somewhere.”
“Not out in the alley having a smoke?”
He shook his head. “It’s not really private there. Or legal.”
Roan glanced at Paris, and he knew they were thinking the same thing—Eric’s place was just a couple of blocks away. If he wanted to sneak in a quick fuck, he probably brought the guy back to his place. So they probably hadn’t needed to come here at all. What delicious irony.
On their way out, about a dozen guys in ages ranging from twenty to forty, from respectable looking to club kid to flaming Goth, besieged them, asking Paris where he had been and if he was all right. (Matt hadn’t been kidding when he said the guys at Panic had missed Paris.) He showed his wedding ring and introduced Roan as his husband again, a way of deflecting attention away from the question while presumably answering it, and while there were many “congratulations” and men telling Roan he was a very lucky man, there were some more “Him?”s and some obvious jealousy. He wondered how jealous they’d be if they knew Par was dying. He tried not to think about it.
They detoured through the alley to make sure that Eric wasn’t there, but Toby had been right: they found a bouncer (not Mighty Mouse, but a white gym queen who could have been his half brother) and a guy who could have been a patron (or his boyfriend) sharing a smoke and discussing the latest episode of “Project Runway,” but no Eric, and when asked, both said they hadn’t seen him out here.
It was a quick jaunt back to Remains of the Day, and back up the outer staircase to the apartment access. But as soon as they entered the inner corridor, Roan smelled burned microwave popcorn, and a meaty, metallic scent underneath it that was all too familiar and too depressing. “Oh shit,” he exclaimed, and raced to Eric’s apartment.
“What’s wrong?” Paris asked. He couldn’t smell it.
Eric’s door was just slightly ajar, so Roan pushed it all the way open with his knuckles while pulling out his Sig Sauer. Seeing the gun, Paris paused and his eyes widened. “Oh God no.”
Oh God yes. The open door revealed that Eric’s futon had been pulled out into bed mode, and Eric was splayed across it with one arm and leg hanging over the side, on his back, staring up at the ceiling. It was hard to tell if the sheets were red, or simply turned that color by the blood; some of it was still dripping off his hand, puddling on the carpet.
Roan neither smelled nor saw anyone else in the tiny apartment, so he holstered his gun and approached Eric, hoping the dripping blood was a sign that he was still alive. But as soon as he was standing over him, he could smell the hideous scent of death beneath all the blood. He was dead; not long dead, maybe two minutes or so, but they had still arrived too late to do anything for him.
He’d been stabbed, mainly in the chest but also once in the shoulder and throat; Roan counted seven small but viciously deep wounds in all, as well as one through the palm of his hand—a defensive wound. He’d tried to fight back, but he had been overpowered. Roan didn’t see the knife anywhere, and there was a pretty decent half footprint in the blood in the carpet. As Roan pulled out his phone and called Murphy, he noticed blood had splattered the far wall, and left red droplets all over the naked torso picture.
“Oh my God,” Paris gasped from the doorway. “The poor kid.”
Murphy picked up the phone, and he told her, “Get down to Eric Chiang’s apartment now. Your witness has been murdered.”
And he really didn’t care what the coroner’s report on Thora said now. This was pretty much proof that someone was belatedly covering their tracks.
The only question was, how did they know Eric had seen something he shouldn’t have?
7
Gravity Gets Things Done
THEY waited out in the hallway for Murphy and Dubois to arrive, as there was something awfully intimate about a murder scene. It was where a person had spent the last minutes of his life, in pain, in terror, and while Roan didn’t believe in ghosts or “negative energy” or any of that crap, there was a sense that you couldn’t shake, that something hideous had happened, even after the blood and the body were gone. And it would linger. The smell, an eerie feeling that something was off, a stain that would never quite come out. People would move in and never be aware of it, but people who had seen the scene would never be in the place again and not remember it, not sense it. Sometimes at the base of the stairs in his house he would see the pool of blood and Mitchell Henstridge lying splayed on the floor, his throat ripped out, but he didn’t feel bad about that. Maybe he should have, but it wasn’t a cold-blooded murder, like what had happened to Eric Chiang. Tigers couldn’t commit murder—what had happened to Mitchell was simply the law of the jungle. The bigger, meaner, faster, more lethal one wins.
Roan didn’t close the door, though; he didn’t want to touch it, mess up any potential fingerprints, so they simply waited at the end of the hall, just out of the way of the door, so they could see into Eric’s apartment but not see his body. You could only just see a bit of the blood from where Roan was standing.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, arms touching as they faced the door at the opposite end of the corridor, the one that the cops would have to come through to enter the building, and the contact was comforting after seeing Eric’s fresh corpse. It was horrible to think that the last time they had seen him, they were secretly laughing at him. He wished he could apologize to him now, even though Eric probably never knew. “This is my fault,” he said, thinking aloud.
Paris didn’t turn his head, but the gaze out of the corner of his eyes was sharp. “No it’s not. You didn’t stab him.”
“If I had taken the case more seriously, if I had devoted more time to it, I could have figured out Eric might have been in danger. But I didn’t see it. Goddamn it, I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want this fucking case, so I did nothing but make a few phone calls. Pathetic. I haven’t even talked to Hannah Noyes yet.”
“Then the fault is mine, not yours. I know it’s because of me you haven’t been following up.”
He shook his head, and he felt oddly loose in his own mind, almost detached from his own emotions. The Vicodin still? Maybe. The drugs were actually helping him see what he had to tell Paris, what he had to say to put him at ease, if only for a little while. He needed chemical help to lower his own mental and emotional barriers—how fucking sad was that? He probably did need a therapist.
“It’s because of me, Par, not you. I’m so afraid of… I have this nightmare where I come home to an empty house, but I know it’s not really empty, I know you’re upstairs. It’s just you aren’t….”
“I’m dead,” Paris said. It wasn’t even a question; it was like he already knew. But Dee was right—his body was failing him, but his mind was still intact. And Paris could always read him like he was see-through.
He just nodded, his throat threatening to close up at the very thought of saying it. “I feel so fucking helpless. I can’t do anything to help you, and you’re the only person I actually want to help. I don’t know what to do. I just know I’ll never forgive myself if I let you die alone.” In spite of the protective layer of drugs, he felt tears sting at the corners of his eyes and shut them tight, trying hard to swallow back a lump in his throat that felt as big and hard as a matzoh ball, and Paris put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into a hug, kissing the top of his head as he squeezed him tight. It was a life-or-death struggle not to burst into tears at this point.
“That’s not going to happen,” Paris assured him. “I’d hang on for you, you know. That’s what policemen’s wives do. We wait better than a
nyone.”
“You’re a wife now, are you?”
“I must be. I have the best hair.”
The bastard was trying to make him laugh again. He couldn’t, though, as he knew he’d start crying, so he held back the impulse and clutched tightly at Par’s waist, waiting for the feelings to subside. They did, and he knew he had Vicodin to thank. (Now he was starting to understand drug addiction better. What a comfortable crutch to have.)
At least he got it together before Murphy, Dubois, and the forensics team showed up. They answered all the questions, and Murphy made sure to ask them, since Dubois kept casting glances at them like they’d pissed in his coffee. As soon as the preliminaries were out of the way, he asked Murphy if they had anybody back at the station who could work the identikit like a pro, preferably Pilar or Gary. Luckily, it seemed Gary was still there, although she wanted to know why he wanted to know.
Toby, of course. The last person to see Eric alive was Toby, who had probably gotten a very good look at the guy who was cruising Eric, and who was the obvious suspect at this point. The sooner Toby could give a description of him, the sooner they could find him, so once they got the all clear, he and Paris went back to Panic, and he was suddenly glad about the stupid bracelet.
As soon as they went back into the throbbing mass of the club, they made a beeline for Toby’s side of the bar, and when he came down to them, Roan showed him his card and said that he needed Toby to come outside with them, as they really couldn’t talk here.
Toby went from mildly confused to alarmed in almost record time. “Has something happened to Eric?” he asked, guessing correctly that this was bad.
“We should talk outside,” Roan shouted over the machine-gun drums that threatened to make his head hurt once more. Maybe the Vicodin was wearing off.
Toby seemed to understand, and disappeared into the back for a couple of minutes. While they waited for him, a moon-faced guy with hair so black it was basically blue leaned over and shouted at Paris, “You married a detective? How does that happen?”
