by Andrea Speed
Damn it. He should have known he wasn’t going to get out of it that easy.
ROAN got Paris to go upstairs and lie down, and even gave him the ice pack because, fuck it, Paris needed it more. As soon as he was gone, Roan shotgunned a beer, aware that using alcohol to numb your emotions wasn’t recommended by anyone, but right now he needed the numbness. He contemplated taking another Vicodin, yet decided to just stick with alcohol for the moment. But his head was starting to ache from unshed tears, so maybe he was going to hit the pills anyway.
A background search on Gavin Lorimer showed he was clean, record-wise, and came from an interesting family. His father was apparently some big-time agent down in L.A., although he had split with Gavin’s mother when Gavin was four years old. When he was fifteen, his mother had married a lawyer with political ambitions, Clifford Braben, who was currently on the city council and gathering capital for a run at the governor’s office. Braben was pretty conservative, a real right-wing prick, so maybe it wasn’t a shock that he and Gavin didn’t get along. Wouldn’t the news that his stepson had been arrested for drunken driving with cocaine in his car paint him as a hypocrite, since he was major zero tolerance on drugs? It wasn’t in his file, though—charges had never been leveled against Gavin. Presumably Braben’s connections made sure it all went away in exchange for shipping Gavin off to Laurel Springs; Thora had said as much in her memoir. If Gavin had wanted to embarrass his stepfather, he must have been disappointed.
A LexisNexis search turned up some awful sound bites of Braben’s that Roan tried hard not to read. Oh good—he hated gays, and on top of that he thought all infecteds should not only be registered with the local health department, but that they should all live in special “complexes” that would spare the uninfected from being subjected to exposure or cat attack. Would he call them zoos? Perhaps cat houses—now that would be funny. He closed the browser window, because Braben wasn’t the focus of the search.
Or was he? Gavin’s family might prove relevant to his state of mind and personality. It might also explain why he didn’t live at home. Maybe he couldn’t stand Braben, maybe Cliff didn’t want to share space with a fuck-up who could only be a detriment to his political aspirations, or perhaps the truth was somewhere in between. He needed to talk to Gavin, if only to establish why he’d broken up with Thora, and how ugly the breakup was.
He called Paradiso to see if Gavin was in the bar, but so far not yet, or the bartender was lying for him. He then searched online for fevers, and discovered it was a symptom of autoimmune disorders, along with dizziness, fatigue, and malaise—all symptoms Paris had had for some time. Roan listened carefully, making sure Paris wasn’t moving about upstairs, but then ducked into the downstairs bathroom anyway and called Dee on his cell phone.
“Better be important, Ro,” he answered, his voice fractured due to the crackling of static on the line. “I’m reading someone’s blood pressure here.”
So Dee was on shift now. Because of that, he decided to cut to the chase. “Does Paris have an autoimmune disorder?”
There was a long quiet moment, broken up only by bursts of static, and he was beginning to think that the connection had dropped off when Dee sighed. “Probably, yeah. Eventually the body rebels against the virus, but it overreacts, and it’s too late anyway. It starts destroying itself in an effort to save itself: the ultimate in self-destruction.” He heard Dee say faintly, off the phone, “One fifty over ninety.”
“Is there anything that could be done for him?”
“Paris? Well, you could get some immune suppressors, but I really wouldn’t recommend it. He’s just too weak for them.” There was another long pause. “I’m gonna hate myself for saying this, but Ro, you gotta start letting go. He’s… this is it for him. Paris knows this. He’s accepted this with a lot more dignity and grace than I could ever manage.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He didn’t know if he was angry or disgusted or simply scared. “Since when do you give up so easily?”
“I’m not giving up, I’m being realistic. You know I’d do anything for Paris if I thought there was anything I could do. But there isn’t anything I can do, and there’s nothing you can do either. You can’t save him, Ro. You need to stop trying before it starts killing you too.” There was a noise in the background, but the connection was so cut through with static he couldn’t tell what it was. “I’ve gotta go, this guy is going into v-tach. I’ll call you later.” He hung up abruptly, but Roan didn’t blame him—he was working, and the only time you should call a paramedic was when he was off the job or on a break. People could die if they got distracted.
Roan folded up his phone and tossed it on the counter next to the sink. If Dee said nothing could be done for him, then there was nothing that could be done. He needed to accept that; he needed to come to grips with it. Paris had accepted it, so why couldn’t he? Because he didn’t want Paris to die? Because he hated feeling so helpless? Because he couldn’t stand the pain of such a slow, inevitable loss? Because everyone he loved died horribly?
He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to focus on it because it hurt all the more.
He opened the bathroom cabinet and pulled out the Vicodin bottle, popping a tablet before he could think too much about it.
HE WAS feeling good and numb by the time he returned to Paradiso. Luckily, a different maître d’ was on duty, and let him peek into the lush bar, which was full of highly polished wood, burgundy draperies that had the soft distortion of silk, pale golden light, and gleaming reflective surfaces. It looked like a great place to get loaded, as long as you didn’t mind getting overcharged for your drinks. Gavin was nowhere to be found.
Roan drove back to Hillfield, suddenly wondering if Thora and Eric had been the only victims. What if they were the only found victims? The bay only occasionally gave up bodies—there was a lot of debris on the bottom, refuse of sunken ships and detritus heaved into the water, that could snag a corpse and hold it. It was possible that Gavin had been taken out the same night as Thora, only no one had reported him missing, and the body hadn’t turned up yet. The new, friendlier maître d’ had told him Gavin hadn’t showed up at the bar the last couple of days, and that was unusual to say the least.
He buzzed Gavin’s apartment, but there was no reply. As he was doing that, a middle-aged brunette woman in a thick, blue quilted jacket came up, and she was a resident, as she used her key to get in the door. He stood aside as she went in, giving her a friendly smile, and then, just before the door closed all the way, he grabbed it. He waited a minute for her to vacate the lobby, then went inside.
The lobby was dingy, and looked like a thousand other sad little apartment lobbies he had seen in his life. He expected it to smell like pee, but it smelled like cigarette smoke, enchiladas, and burnt tuna casserole. Rather than take the small and frankly dangerous-looking elevator, he was so tired from his booze and drugs combination that he decided to take the stairs up to Gavin’s floor. He noticed the stairwell was remarkably cold, almost colder than it was outside. Roan thought he smelled snow out there, in the sharp, dry air, and even though it was a bit early for it, he bet they were in for some. Maybe Paris would get to see it. He might have been Canadian, but he still liked snow mainly because it gave him the chance to say, “You call this snow? Pussies.” (Of course Paris was from suburban Vancouver, not the Yukon, but if this production made him happy, who was Roan to piss on his parade?)
Gavin’s apartment was at the end of a long hallway that smelled like spaghetti with an undertone of pot smoke. It was poorly lit and narrow, with a worn, burnt-orange carpet that could have been a reject from a swinging ’70s halfway house. He knocked loudly on Gavin’s apartment door, and announced, “Pizza delivery!”
It took a moment, but he thought he heard something thud to the carpet inside the apartment. Now he knew Gavin—or someone—was home, and they knew they had given themselves away. A muffled voice finally slurred, “Wha’? I din’ order no pizz
.” It was a male voice, and either stunned with a head injury or drunk off his ass.
“According to the order slip, I’ve got a pizza for Gavin, extra large pepperoni and sausage thin crust.” Oddly enough, this seemed fun. It was probably the Vicodin.
There were more stumbling noises, and then the voice, closer to the door, said, “I didn’ order a pizza! I don’ even like sausage….” Roan heard the sound of locks being thrown, and the door creaked open like a coffin lid. “Bu’ as long as yer—”
He came face to face with Gavin Lorimer. His face was flushed with alcohol, and puffy as well, his gray eyes watery and glazed in his handsome actor’s visage. He had a strong jaw and a dimpled chin, currently covered with a light fuzz of stubble, and it was easy to see what women saw in him… well, when he was cleaned up. But it was clear he hadn’t bathed in at least a day, and his dishwater-blond hair hung down in greasy strands, slightly curly from being uncombed and unwashed. He wore a dark blue tank top and khaki walking shorts, both of which hung on him like someone else’s clothes.
The scent hit Roan so hard he took a step back. It was body odor, sure, but that wasn’t the startling thing—the startling thing was the reek of cat all over him, feline musk oozing through his pores. He smelled like a lion, and Roan felt the lion in him wanting to roar, to establish dominance over this interloper. Gavin scanned Roan in confusion, and when he brought his eyes back to his face, Roan could see his pupils were so large that his irises were slender rings. “Where’s th’ pizza?”
“You’re infected,” Roan said, even though it was the most obvious thing to say. “You’ve transformed recently, haven’t you? That’s why people haven’t seen you lately.”
Gavin stared at him, panic flashing quickly across his mannequin face. He was just too drunk and too drugged to get worked up about it. “Who the fuck are you? I ain’t infected! I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. I can smell you. You’re a lion. You just came back to consciousness a couple hours ago, is that it? You haven’t showered yet. The smell of the cat is all over you.”
“Yer full of shit,” he slurred, then reached out, grabbed a fistful of Roan’s shirt, and yanked him into his apartment. Roan let him, because that’s where he wanted to be. Gavin shut the door heavily, mainly because he was leaning against it. He could barely stand. “Who the fuck are you?” he whispered harshly. “How d’ya know?”
“My name is Roan McKichan, I’m a private investigator looking into Thora Bishop’s death, and holy fuck, you infected her, didn’t you?”
Gavin’s apartment was a sad affair, a bachelor pad all the way: the furniture was all thrift store and sparse, with his stereo shelves just planks of wood held up and apart by concrete blocks, and his wooden coffee table hidden beneath about a dozen empty beer and Jack Daniel’s bottles. He had a calendar with topless models on it, which really must have impressed the females, but Roan had a feeling that he didn’t do a lot of entertaining here. What he assumed was the bedroom door was hollow core metal, meaning it was probably where he barricaded himself when the change came on.
Gavin glared at him, trying to muster some rage through the heavy blanket of painkilling drugs. “She prob’ly gave it to me, the bitch.”
“What about Danae?” he wondered, feeling like pieces of the puzzle were starting to click together. “Is that why she went to France—supposedly—and hasn’t been seen since? Did you infect her too? How many women have you infected, Gavin?”
“I haven’t—” he began, shouting, but then he paused, as he realized his voice might carry through the walls. He visibly steeled himself, then tried again, this time achieving a softer voice. “It isn’t like that. I don’ know who had it first, or who gave it to who. Okay? Don’t blame me.”
“But female to male transmission is rare.” Yes, Paris had been infected that way, but that woman had figured out how best to do it and had done it deliberately. She was pretty psychotic from being infected, and Roan wanted to blame her, as it was a horrible thing to do to someone, but somewhere in his heart of hearts, he could understand it. He didn’t approve of it, but he knew where that impulse came from. You couldn’t take out your rage on the virus, so you took it out on others.
Gavin snorted in a kind of laugh and staggered over to the worn, swaybacked brown corduroy sofa. He tripped before he got there and ended up collapsing on it, but that seemed to suit him just fine. Not only was he completely wasted, he was still trying to find his coordination through the remaining pain. His change back to human must have been very recent indeed. “Yeah, well, I got it somehow, didn’t I?”
“Have you ever used intravenous drugs?”
He snorted again, and snagged a beer bottle off the table. Apparently they weren’t all empties. “Do I look like some smackhead?”
Roan glanced at Gavin’s bare arms. He didn’t see any track marks, but then again, Gavin could have shot up in more unobtrusive places. The smart junkies did. “I wasn’t aware there was a look.”
“Yeah, there is. Haven’t you ever heard of heroin chic?”
Roan leaned against the nearest wall, tired but not desperate enough to attempt to sit in one of the few rickety chairs Gavin had scattered haphazardly around his messy apartment. “Have you had unprotected gay sex?”
This time he got a snort and a laugh. “I ain’t no butt pirate.”
Roan felt the urge to say, “Arr matey, prepare to be boarded,” but somehow managed to repress it. It was still hard not to giggle, though. He wasn’t getting anywhere with this line of questioning, and frankly Gavin was so reeking from cat and sweat and alcohol that it was impossible to say if he was lying or not. “Did you know you were infected when you slept with Thora?”
“No. I ain’t like that.” He swigged down the rest of his beer and tossed the empty bottle aside. It landed on the opposite end of the couch and bounced once before falling to the floor. Gavin didn’t seem to notice or care.
“But you didn’t use a condom?”
Gavin fixed him with a disdainful glare. “What the fuck are you, my sex ed teacher?”
“It might have prevented you from being infected, and from infecting others.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. I think I do wanna pizza now. You wanna get the fuck outta here?”
Roan studied him as the boy limply reached for his telephone, his limbs like rubber, and he realized it all did click, didn’t it? At the end of the day, was there anything more scandalous than a family member riddled with a disease of known perverts and drug addicts? “I will, as soon as you answer a question for me.”
Gavin huffed a sigh impatiently through his nose, his eyes slowly gliding over toward him. “What?”
“Who had her killed, you or your stepfather?”
17
It’s Not the Fall That Hurts
GAVIN snorted again, but it was in a forced, unconvincing way. “What the fuck are you on about, man? She committed suicide. She was one fucked-up bitch.”
Roan started the recorder in his coat pocket and folded his arms over his chest. He was tired of this. He was tired of this venal, stoned little man and his dirty-sock-smelling apartment, and he was tired of this whole sordid mess. Paris was dying; he was going to die. He wanted to be home with him, although he didn’t know what he would do if he was home. Lie next to him and listen to him breathe, just reassuring himself he was still alive? Sob uncontrollably, and hide in the shower until the hot water ran out and his skin was totally pruney? Take more pills until he could find the magic number that would make him stop feeling like the world was ending? “Was she upset over the end of the relationship?” he asked, deciding to reel this fish in and then club him over the head.
“We didn’t exactly have a relationship; we just hooked up a coupla times. But yeah, I guess she was upset about it.”
“And about being infected.”
He nodded like his neck was a loose spring, eager to play along with this scenario. “She said she was gonna kill herself, but I d
idn’t believe her. I mean, she was always a drama queen. But what woman isn’t, right?”
Roan shrugged, playing along with the sexism. “It’s the hormones.” He could imagine Murphy pulling out her Taser and jabbing him in the neck with it, so he was glad she wasn’t going to hear this.
Gavin snorted in agreement. This penchant for snorting was starting to drive Roan up the fucking wall. What kind of annoying frat boy reject was he? “Yeah, must be. And Thora acted like she was always on the rag, y’know? Bitchy and always complaining.”
“What did she complain about?”
“What didn’t she complain about? Bitch, bitch, bitch.” Roan waited, and Gavin, feeling drunk and expansive, filled in the silence. “I mean, she knew goin’ in that no bitch is gonna tie me down, right? I’m a good-lookin’ guy, okay? And I’m rich. Women throw themselves at me all the time. What am I, a monk?”
There was the motive. “And she was going to out you in her memoir, wasn’t she? As a Lothario who was casually infecting women?”
He shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “Like anyone would have published that piece of shit. And people never believe anything in a blog.”
“Except the media.”
He rolled a single shoulder, and fidgeted anxiously. “Nobody would believe her. She was full of shit.”
“She was blackmailing you.” That was a guess, but one based on some experience.
Gavin stopped staring at the blank TV screen and looked at Roan sharply, sudden anger making him look almost sober. “She knew that I’d be disowned if my stepdad found out I was infected. The vindictive bitch knew it. She was gonna tell them about it, and the drugs, and she knew I’d be cut off. Not only would I lose the money, but if Cliff did manage to get his ass elected—unlikely, but people are sheep—I’d lose out on that gravy train. The governorship ain’t shit, but Cliff’s an ambitious little prick, and all he needs to do is get his toe in the door and then he’s shooting for the top. And he’s just the kinda oily hypocrite who always gets elected.”
