by Andrea Speed
Oliver—or whoever he was—shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think she had one of those guys watching me.”
“Who were they?”
He shook his head. “Relatives of hers. Nephews, cousins, something like that. You’d think she could have sent one of those overgrown assholes to pretend to be Oliver if they were already here.”
“But they don’t look like him, not like you do.”
“I had to dye my hair, get it cut… I used to have a goatee.”
“Where is Oliver Jephson?”
“Cancun.”
Holden nodded. He’d already asked around on campus at the U-W, and discovered that Jephson was indeed supposedly in Cancun with a couple other people. But he wanted to see how honest this guy was going to be with him. “And who are you precisely?”
With a disgruntled sigh, he said. “Tyler Edwards.”
“Okay, Tyler, why did Abby hire you to pretend to be her nephew? Why does she want to find Adam so badly?”
What Tyler told Holden was what he’d pretty much expected: Abby had found the photo online, not Oliver, and wanted to discover if this was indeed Adam, but she wasn’t about to upset Oliver, especially if it wasn’t actually Adam. So she’d hired him to pretend to be Oliver for the purposes of hiring a Seattle-area detective to find out for sure, and Tyler felt a kind of personal connection to this, because his own father had left when he was five, and even though he could have had a relationship with Tyler, he chose not to. He’d remarried, had another family, and forgotten all about him.
While Holden was tempted to play the world’s tiniest violin for him, he figured it was best to stay on topic. “And this didn’t strike you as at all fishy?”
He looked at him like he was crazy. “She wants to find her brother, and doesn’t want to hurt her nephew. How is that weird?”
“Oh, I don’t know… maybe the fact that she had some family members beat the shit out of you when you tried to back out?”
Tyler squirmed in his hard plastic chair, looking around uncomfortably. There was a surprisingly long line at the check-in counter, and the windows looking out at the scruffy train tracks let in a good amount of light. Too bad there was nothing to see but dingy tile floors, and a TV set high on the wall playing CNN, for no obvious reason. Holden gave himself a moment to wonder why anyone gave a shit about news channels, and figured it was one of those straight white people things he’d never understand, like Survivor and leaf blowers.
“Okay, that I didn’t get,” Tyler muttered.
“And that’s why you’re leaving? You don’t want to be treated to another beat down?”
“No. It’s just….” He rubbed his mouth, sat back up so he didn’t fall out of his chair and slide onto the floor, and shook his head. Tyler was a cavalcade of tics, all raw nerves and fear. “What d’ya want me to say? Okay, yeah, I know somethin’ ain’t right here, okay? I’m goin’ home.”
“Where she knows where to find you.”
That made him pause, chewing his lower lip as he thought about it. “Oh. Shit. But she’s not gonna do anything to me. I mean… that’s just silly.”
“As silly as getting guys to beat you up?” That made Tyler do a slight double take. That hadn’t occurred to him? “Why don’t you crash at a friends’ place for a couple of days? This should blow over by then.”
“What should?”
Holden was forced to shrug. “Whatever the hell this is.” Roan, in his notes, had named Adam’s father as suspicious, and said he didn’t like the hostile vibe he was getting from Abby. Now it made sense: she was looking for Adam, probably on behest of her (their) father. They couldn’t be looking for him for anything good. How would Roan handle this? Better yet, how would he handle this?
Holden supposed he was about to find out.
DYLAN had taken to sketching in the hospital room, mainly because he didn’t feel like watching TV, and reading was something he did for Roan, not himself. Oddly enough, he felt he had stumbled upon something.
Dylan was simply doing pencil sketches, but picking odd subjects: the IV bag and stand, with an off-center window (covered with a retractable metal grate—this was a room for an infected, after all). A stack of books on the floor. The end of the hospital bed. He suddenly realized there was a stark beauty here, a sort of visual loneliness that still had a kind of appeal. Maybe it was just him, but the fact that they were perhaps the most depressing still lifes he’d ever seen made them likable to Dylan. Perhaps this was why he was never going to make a living as an artist. Still, he liked them, they made him feel better, and Dylan got so absorbed in doing it that time passed quickly. He figured Dee would come check in on him again, see his sketchpad, and have him removed by force, but maybe that was for the best.
He was so absorbed in shading the curtains just so that at first, when Dylan heard the noise, he thought it was a car in the parking lot. Except you couldn’t really hear the cars this high up, not well at any rate, and the sound was very close. It was then his mind finally made the connection: not a rumbling car engine, but a low-level growl.
He looked up, startled, to see Roan looking at him. Except it wasn’t Roan.
He hadn’t changed, he was still Human… save for his eyes, which seemed wrong. There was something flat and animalistic about them, devoid of emotion and intelligence. He was growling low, a warning more than anything, but it still made Dylan’s skin crawl. “Roan?” he asked.
There was no response, but there wouldn’t be. Dylan got up slowly, and walked just as slowly to the door, despite his urge to run. Roan had once told him that big cats wanted you to run, so the best strategy was to leave slowly, never turning your back. It seemed logical, but in the heat of the moment, it was hard to ignore the screaming in your own head.
Roan didn’t move a muscle, but his eyes tracked him as he moved, an unseemly hunger in them. At the door, Dylan asked one more time, “Roan?” But there was nothing, no familiarity, no response, just the constant growling.
Dylan shut the door, which closed with the same pneumatic thunk that all reinforced doors seemed to make. He leaned his forehead against it and sighed, not too concerned about what anyone in the hallway was saying to him.
So the lion had woken up, but Roan hadn’t yet. What did that mean? Somehow Dylan thought it couldn’t be anything good.
42
Cavity Carousel
DYLAN waited until Doctor Rosenberg showed up before telling anyone what had happened, mainly because he didn’t want anyone busting in with guns blazing. Not that that was likely to happen, but even a small possibility was too much of a possibility.
Once she arrived, Dylan told her, in confidence. For a moment, Rosenberg stared at him over her glasses perched on the end of her nose. “The lion woke up in his body?”
“Yes.”
“How is that possible?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
She huffed a sigh through her nose before rubbing her eyes like she was in pain. “Goddamn that little pisher, he’s always thinking up new ways to complicate my life.” Once she stopped pinching the bridge of her nose, she reset her glasses and walked over to the nearest nurses’ station. Dylan followed, but kept an eye on the door of Roan’s room. Not that he could get out, but Dylan didn’t want anyone accidentally going in.
She picked up the phone, hit a button, and said, “Gonna need you to bust out the cannon and get up to room 25-IU. Make it a high dosage, as this guy has a tolerance.”
As soon as she hung up, he repeated, “Cannon?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “What we call the drug gun. We gotta liven up the place.”
“You don’t need to send a sniper in. Just give me a needle, I could probably get close enough to him to jab him.”
“Seriously? Even though he was growling at you?”
“It was only growling. If it’s the lion, it may not know how to get around in a bipedal body.”
For a moment, her stare was relentless. “And you
just came up with that, huh?”
Dylan glared back at her. “I think it would have attacked me otherwise.”
“Based on what?”
“Based on the fact that it’s a lion, and I don’t think it’s interested in playing backgammon with me.”
Rosenberg didn’t seem amused, but this wasn’t a laughing moment. Except Roan would probably say it was; he would say that about everything, therefore he wasn’t a good source of opinion.
Finally she settled for shaking her head. “Kid, you’re not a nurse, you’re not vetted by the hospital, the lawsuit potential is just too huge, setting aside other stuff like reason and common sense. So thanks but no thanks, I’m leavin’ it to my sniper.”
Dylan would have argued with her, but he had no grounds if she was going to take a legal angle. So he let it go, at least for now, although he felt a slight sinking in his stomach when the orderly arrived with the tranquilizer gun propped on his shoulder. He would never get used to people shooting Roan, but maybe that was a good thing.
As the nurse sniper went about putting Roan down, Dylan had to ask Rosenberg, one more time, “What does it mean? Will Roan ever wake up?”
“Kiddo, I really don’t know. But I’m gonna kick his ass if he doesn’t.”
“Get in line,” he sighed. Again, Dylan found himself in the position of wishing he had nothing to do with Roan, and being afraid Roan would have nothing to do with him. Was there any way to win with this man? Would he ever know for sure?
Oh Buddha, why couldn’t he have fallen in love with a less-complicated man?
THERE was no point in putting it off any longer. Using Roan’s records, Holden called up Aunt Abby, and braced himself for the torrent of bitterness. Luckily, he had his camp bitchy attitude locked and loaded. Did she think she could outbitch a gay man? He wanted to hear that.
As soon as she answered—her voice clipped, short, hard edged—he launched into his spiel. “I’m Holden Krause, calling for Roan McKichan, and I’m letting you know we’re terminating our services.”
There was a moment of tense silence before she replied, “What?”
“We’re cashing the check for work done, but our contract is null and void because you lied to us. We’re really not pleased with that.”
Again, another pause, but Holden could sense her growing fury. He was good at spotting fury, he had a lot of experience with it. “Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you implying?”
“I’m an associate investigator, because you are not worth Mr. McKichan’s time anymore. We know Tyler Edwards was impersonating your nephew, and you know where you fucked up? Having him beaten. Too many witnesses. Next time, hire smarter thugs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Can the bullshit, sister. We know you can’t afford the money you’ve been spending without skimming… or help from your very rich daddy. How much do you want me to divulge here? Because I could get into specifics.” That was partly true. Holden had talked to Randi Kim—Roan’s friend, accountant, and fellow office park denizen—after visiting Roan’s office and finding it cordoned off by crime tape, with a good part of its front charred black. (It was mostly surface damage, though, nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a cosmetic Band-Aid.)
Randi admitted to him, over a quickie nosh at a taco truck down the street, that she had been avoiding Roan since her brother Grant had been arrested. She knew the fact that Grant was still alive and hadn’t been shanked in prison yet was all courtesy of Roan, but she hadn’t quite worked up to seeing him. Roan occasionally left her phone messages, by now never expecting her to call back. Randi felt weird around him now, and couldn’t say why, except she felt guilty, angry at him, and grateful at the same time, and wasn’t sure their friendship could ever go back to where it had been before all of this. When she heard Roan was in the hospital, though, Randi supposed she should make amends. Holden told her that might be a good idea, and in return, she looked up a couple of financial records for him.
Abby’s voice, already cold, took on an even frostier edge. “You’re lying. Financial records are sealed.”
“Yes, unless you know somebody who doesn’t mind breaking the law, and you’d be surprised how few lawful people I know. By the way, if you’re near your computer now, go ahead and look up the Seattle area craigslist, personals section.”
“Are—are you fucking insane?”
“Fine, be that way. Let me read you the ad: Adam Jephson—your father is looking for you in the Seattle area now. Leave as quickly as possible. Just posted that an hour ago. It’ll run for a week, in every section I could post it in. It’ll also be in the Stranger and the Times too. If he saw it right away, he could already be halfway to Vancouver by now. Got any family in Canada?”
“You stupid… I paid you to find him, not send him deeper into hiding!”
“Under false pretenses. That’s not how we do business.”
“You fucking asshole. I’ll sue you!”
“Will you now? Please do. I’d love to see your family drama dragged into open court, ’cause maybe then the truth will come out. But I really wouldn’t go the revenge route on us or Tyler Edwards. Money can buy you a lot, honey, but it can’t buy you protection from the likes of us.” Yeah, the Human lion and the vigilante hooker—she didn’t have a prayer.
Holden then hung up on her, even as he heard her blustering. He’d called her on his trick phone, his Fox phone, one used by his clients only. It was impossible to trace; star 69 would get you nowhere, it didn’t show up on caller ID. He didn’t want anyone having his number who didn’t intend to use it for its specific purpose. No suspicious wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, or coworkers would ever track him down. He prided himself on being impossible.
Holden did wonder what was going on in the Jephson family. Was Vernon Jephson actually looking for his son to harm him? Is that why he’d split? Roan had seemed to imply as much in his notes. It wouldn’t surprise Holden either, as families could fuck with people worse than any maniac stranger ever could. He knew that personally.
Holden changed into slightly more respectable clothes, deciding to pay a visit to Dylan at the hospital, see how Roan was doing, and let him know that whenever Roan woke up, Dylan could tell him the Jephson case was closed. Well, for now. There was no telling if something would come back to haunt them, or if Roan would be inclined to peek under more rocks.
He’d seen in the paper that Lee’s body had finally been found. Holden recalled going back that night, cleaning up the blood. He didn’t need to get rid of the knife or the crossbow (or Lee’s wallet), because they were gone by the time he got back. Funny how that worked. Nobody called the police, no one reported the body, and he wasn’t at all surprised. The paper seemed to assume the body was that of a transient, and Holden wondered if they’d ever discover the truth. They might not bother to look.
Not that Holden read the papers anymore, besides the Stranger. It was just that he had visited a client this morning, and he got the paper in his hotel room. Holden read it while Henry was in the shower. It was really weird, because for a moment, he felt a genuine disconnect between who he was at that moment and who he had been when they went after Lee. Holden could feel the schism inside him, the two different people who shared his skin. It wasn’t a proper split personality, just the roles he decided to play: hooker and vigilante. Which was the real one? Was either of them real? Holden honestly didn’t know. Roan had a reason to be split in two, but he didn’t. He really didn’t like to think about who he actually was, because the very nature of the question was solipsistic and boring, way too close to that narcissistic touchy-feely stuff they peddled on all varieties of daytime talk shows. He was just a person. A weird person, but a person, and to think more about it was to invite trouble.
Holden was shrugging on his jacket when there was a knock at the door. By now, it was becoming a familiar knock.
With a weary sigh, he opened the door on Scott, who immediately held up a
green-colored flyer. “Guillermo Del Toro film festival at the Grand,” he said, with no preamble. “Wanna go with me?”
Holden scowled at him, and took the flyer. It listed three films: Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pan’s Labyrinth. He recognized one of those names. “Spanish horror films? Really?”
“What? I’d go with Grey if he was here, but he’s not. So you wanna go?”
“I’m the backup plan?”
“C’mon, don’t be that way. I hate goin’ to movies alone. Come with me, it’ll be fun. You could probably use your cultural horizons expanded anyways.” Scott gave him a teasing little smile, but Holden wasn’t letting him off that easy.
“Oh, so the suburban jock is telling me I need my horizons expanded.”
“You’re sexy when you’re pissed off.”
Holden glared at him, and tried very hard not to laugh. Scott was just grinning at him like an idiot. “This is six hours plus of movies.”
“I know, it goes all night. There’s nachos and Red Bull on me.”
The joke there was too good to let go. “On you? Where on you exactly?”
That made Scott laugh. It was an open laugh, unself-conscious, and it reminded Holden of why he liked him, beyond him being as sexy as all hell. “We’ll hafta figure that out on the way.” Scott’s clear blue eyes scanned him, looked him up and down, and noticed the clean corduroys, dark red shirt, and classy leather jacket. “You got a date?” He asked without jealousy, just curiosity, which was another thing to like about Scott. Holden didn’t need possessive, didn’t need any hetero-normative bullshit impinging on his job, and Scott, who still kept his options open when it came to women, didn’t want him to infringe on his ability to date either. So they were even.
“I was just going to the hospital to see if Roan has woken up yet. Wanna come with me?”
All humor fled Scott’s expression. “He’s still not awake?”
Holden just shook his head. “Physically he seems to be okay, but… brain surgery, you know? Anything can happen.”
