by Andrea Speed
Roan glanced at the file but didn’t open it. “If it’s an open case, I can’t get involved.”
Grey didn’t react. He remained stone-faced, which was actually pretty intimidating considering the number of facial wounds he had. “Can you if the police did it?”
Okay, this just went in a direction he hadn’t anticipated.
3
Killer in the World
“You think the police killed her?” Roan repeated, wondering how many shots to the head Grey had had in his life.
He must have heard the doubt in Roan’s voice, because he sat forward with a grim look on his beaten face. “I know it. She’d just filed a million-dollar lawsuit against them.”
That sounded vaguely familiar. Who’d had a million-dollar lawsuit filed against them in the last couple of years? “Are we talking about the Eastgate PD?” Grey nodded, lips thinned so much that Roan could see a secret scar, a tiny cut to his lower lip that only appeared when bloodless. “Is this the Jasmine Hawley case?”
Now that had been a hard-to-miss case a couple years back. Jasmine Hawley—nee James Hudson—was a pre-op transsexual in her late teens who was arrested by the Eastgate PD, supposedly for solicitation, but Hawley claimed not only to not be a prostitute but that two police officers beat her while in custody. The police department claimed she’d resisted arrest and got most of her bruises from fighting with other prisoners, which didn’t quite ring true with Roan. Put a pre-op in with your regular perps, they’d get the shit raped out of them. Pre-ops were usually thrown in a special “whore pen” (the holding cell where all the prostitutes were stashed) with the women, because otherwise there was no end to the abuse they’d suffer. Would female prostitutes beat someone that badly? Maybe, but it was unlikely the cops wouldn’t break it up. Still, there were some cops who had a special revulsion saved for transsexuals. Oh sure, they hated fags, but they hated men who wanted to be women (or women who wanted to be men) more than anything on Earth.
Rumor had it there was a piece of videotape that caught part of the beating on film. A gay rights group helped Jasmine file a million-dollar lawsuit against the police department and two officers in particular who she said beat her down. Less than two weeks after this, Jasmine was killed. The lawsuit continued.
Roan opened the overstuffed folder and looked. Yep, news clippings, an arrest report, statements Jasmine made for the lawsuit, photos of Jasmine’s beaten face and body.
“I was born in Bellingham,” Grey said. “The Hudsons lived across the street. I went to school with Ben Hudson, Jamie’s older brother. We moved when I was ten, packed up to Saint Paul, but we always kept in touch. This was before the Internet too, so it was kinda weird, I guess. What I remembered about Jamie was he was kinda a goofy kid, a class clown without a class. I was in college at the University of Minnesota—I was a Gopher—when Ben was killed in a car accident. Ben had always asked me to keep an eye out for Jamie ’cause I was always a kinda big freak, and I guess I still felt kinda responsible for him. But this whole mess happened before I ended up with the Falcons and I came back to Washington, so I was no fucking good at all. I guess I’m tryin’ to make up for it now.”
Roan found what he was looking for: the names of the accused officers. Michael Brand and Carey Switzer. Neither rang any particular bells, but he was pretty sure he didn’t know anyone at the Eastgate PD. “You have no problem with Jamie’s switch of gender?”
Grey shrugged. “Whatever gets you through the night, y’know? Besides, when I thought about it… it kinda made sense. You know? I could see him wanting to be a girl. First time we went trick-or-treating as kids, he was Sleeping Beauty.”
It was probably Roan’s own prejudice, but he would have thought a big macho jock like this would be the first to beat up or disparage a transsexual. But maybe not when it was your best friend’s brother (sister—he was using the right pronoun too). “I’d be the first to admit this case sounds as suspicious as hell. The timing of the murder is also incredibly suspect.”
“No shit. To me, they’re being pretty blatant about it. I’ve talked to some other cops in the department, to see how the investigation’s going, and one told me, off the record, that the case is ice cold and has been given to a homicide detective with too many cases, with the instruction that it was low priority. He hasn’t looked into it once since he got the case. They ain’t doing shit.”
“Who’s the investigating officer?”
Grey sat back and slumped in the chair, legs spread wide and shoulders thrown back. It was a man’s man pose, but also the body language of someone with nothing to hide. Roan wondered if that was true, although he had no reason to think he was lying. “Don’t remember the name.”
“Who told you this?”
“I said I wouldn’t rat ’em out.”
“If I’m even going to attempt to look into this, I need a place to start inside the department. I’d say they’re my best shot. Otherwise I shouldn’t bother.”
Grey scowled, glancing down at his own calloused hands, then said, “Fine. The name’s Sid Fisher.”
Roan scribbled that down on a sticky note and attached it to the top of the arrest report. “Okay, here are the ground rules, and they are nonnegotiable. I will look into this, but the legal admissibility of most of it will make much of it useless. I can’t directly muscle into the case without jeopardizing my license, but I will rattle a few cages and see if anything falls out. I can make a few phone calls now, but I might have to put off any direct investigation until next week.”
That made Grey’s heavy brows dip into a sort of V. “Why?”
“If you saw that footage of me and the neo-Nazis, you probably know I’m infected. I’m about to enter my cycle.”
“Y’mean turn into a cat? Cool,” Grey said, with something approaching enthusiasm. “So what are ya?”
Roan gave him an evil look, but Grey didn’t seem to realize he was being rude. “Lion.”
“Oh, awesome! One of the big ones. I kinda feel bad for the people who turn into cougars. I mean, I know they’re deadly and all, but they don’t seem that impressive, do they? Not when compared to other cats. If I was a cat, I’d wanna be one of the big ones.” It seemed to be intended as a genuine compliment, but once again, Roan wondered how many shots to the head Grey had taken in his lifetime. It also made him wonder how old he was. So he asked.
“Twenty-two,” Grey said without blinking. He reached for his wallet, and as he pulled it out, he added, “I stopped at the cash machine before I got here. You don’t mind bein’ paid in cash, do ya?”
“Don’t want to leave a paper trail?”
He paused, that confused look scudding over his face again. “Huh?”
Roan shook his head. “Nothing.” Was he a bit naïve, or just, as the British said, gormless? Safe to say he got into college on a sports scholarship, or perhaps his parents footed the bill. At least, daft or not, he seemed an amiable and unbiased sort.
Still, he managed to fill out the paperwork without printing anything and only glancing at his Social Security card to confirm the number (he said he had a bad head for numbers, and Roan could sympathize). He’d gotten up to leave, but at the door he turned back and asked, “You wanna spar sometime?”
“Huh?”
“You know, box? I think’d be awesome to face a guy as strong as you, as long as you promise not to break somethin’. I’m usually at 24 Hour Fitness in the afternoon, if I don’t have a road game or an afternoon skate.” He then gave him another goofy smile, and Roan got a strange feeling. It was almost like he—in a very odd way—was flirting with him.
Nah. Just some straight guy, macho bullshit bonding. It was an easy mistake to make, though.
As soon as the man left, Roan started to look up information on Grey Williams.
Lexis-Nexis had a surprising amount on him. He might have been a self-professed low scorer, but he’d made it into the World Junior Hockey Championship three years ago on the U.S. side. There’d also
been a feature on his parents in a Minnesota paper around that time. Apparently his dad was Merritt Williams, who briefly held some kind of college football record, although injuries kept him out of the NFL. He was the uber-jock dad who had five sons and pushed at least four of them into sports: oldest son Jensen had followed his dad into a football career but blew out his knee while in college and now owned and ran a sports bar in Syracuse; second son Lorne played college basketball but was apparently not that great at it and now coached junior high school basketball in Florida; third son Alden played minor league baseball with a team called the Reading Phillies; Grey was the fourth son. Interestingly enough, the fifth son was almost never mentioned, although one article gave his name, Rayne. He didn’t follow the family dictate of going into sports? Bad show. Didn’t he know that would make him a pariah?
A separate search on Rayne Williams did eventually turn up something: he was the lead in his high school’s musical production of Little Shop of Horrors. Oh dear. Could you say “big flamer”? Okay, maybe that was a stereotype, and an unjust one—Roan, for example, was no fan of musicals, possibly because the only science fiction musical he knew of was The Simpsons’ wonderful “Stop The Planet of The Apes, I Want To Get Off!”—but it might explain why Grey was accepting of Jamie’s/Jasmine’s proclivities if he had a gay younger brother.
Fiona briefly knocked on the door before coming in. “So, was he a Mafia hit man?”
“Close. Hockey player.”
“Really? Huh. Guess that explains the haircut.”
That made him chuckle. “So mean.”
“What? Come on, you were thinking the same thing.”
“Actually, I’m glad you’re here ’cause I need you to hit up your sex worker pals.”
“For money?”
“For information. I need to know if Jasmine Hawley really was working the streets and how unfriendly the Eastgate PD is to anyone they decide they don’t like.”
“Jasmine Hawley?” she repeated the name like it meant something, and then recalled it. “Holy shit, he was asking about Hawley?”
“The younger sister of his friend. There’s no rush on this. I’m off to the hospital tomorrow.”
She looked briefly concerned. “Are you—”
“Rosenberg wants to put me in a coma. She thinks that’ll keep me alive another month.”
She considered that, shrugging. “Might work. Worth a shot. Dylan know?”
“Not yet. I suppose I should go tell him, huh?”
She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You’ve had how many relationships?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, Ms. Dominatrix, give me relationship advice.”
“That’s Mistress, Slave, and don’t you forget it,” she said crisply, before giving him a big, cheesy grin.
Weird friends and weird cases. At least his life had a recognizable pattern.
Roan stopped on the way home and got a pizza, as he felt like a pizza. He made sure it was vegetarian, even though he was dying for pepperoni, and he then had to figure out how to take it home on the bike. (Okay, that was a detail he should have worked out in advance.)
Dylan was up when he got home, but he was still in his underwear, drinking his morning (afternoon) tea. But since he hadn’t eaten yet, he was willing to have pizza with Roan while they discussed what Rosenberg had in mind for him.
Dylan was thrilled, or as thrilled with the idea of someone putting Roan in a coma as one could get. He honestly thought Rosenberg was trying to save him, and Roan was sure she was trying, but he also knew there was a lot of guesswork involved. It was desperation, pure and simple, and there were no guarantees whatsoever. But he let Dylan have his enthusiasm, because he owed him that much.
Dylan volunteered to go to the hospital with him tomorrow afternoon, and Roan agreed, although he didn’t know why Dylan would even want to come. They were just going to drug him until he was unconscious (which now, in retrospect, sounded like fun), and what was Dyl going to do, hold his hand? Of course, if it didn’t work, it might be the last time Dylan saw him alive, so okay, he supposed he understood.
Dylan called Ty, one of the other bartenders at Panic, and got him to cover his shift so he could take the night off. Again, he was acting like this was Roan’s last night on earth… but you know, fuck it. Roan decided he didn’t care. It was or it wasn’t; Dylan had a fifty-fifty chance of being right or wrong. Let him do what he wanted. Roan had already found his peace with all of this.
They had dinner, watched TV, and went to bed—nothing really remarkable, except the possibility he might actually be dead this time tomorrow night. Apparently someone else called, suggesting his life story might make fascinating viewing (ha!), and that led to him and Dylan discussing who they’d like to play them in a film. Dylan seemed horrified by Roan’s initial choice to play himself: Robert Carlyle, whom Dylan insisted looked nothing like him. Roan knew that. He’d just always liked him as an actor since Trainspotting, and of course, he was a Scot, which Roan kind of was (look at his mysteriously hard-to-pronounce surname).
Dylan picked John Barrowman to play Roan (Captain Jack? Flattering, but no, he couldn’t see it….), and Gael Garcia Bernal to play him. Now, Roan agreed Gael was kind of cute, but nowhere near cute enough to play Dylan, in his opinion, and also way too short. Roan figured if they could somehow lump Gael together with a younger Javier Bardem, they’d have the perfect Dylan.
They both agreed Taye Diggs would have to play Diego. Not that Dee actually looked like Taye, it was just that Dee would die if anyone else played him. They figured Fi would want Meryl Streep. Again, no physical resemblance, but Fi would insist on quality over resemblance. Holden could go either way on that—he’d either want a porn star or a British stage thespian playing him (one who wasn’t afraid of nudity in either case, and he’d probably insist the guy would have to at least be bi; straights would be kicked off by Holden personally). Roan was sad Jerry Orbach was dead, because he’d have made a perfect Gordo. Judi Dench with an American accent, a wig, and a foul mouth could probably carry off Doctor Rosenberg.
It was fun. They were amusing themselves immensely, until he idly wondered who would play Paris and all the fun went out of it. Just like that. Dylan initially chided him for being “no fun anymore,” then he must have guessed why Roan went all quiet, and he began talking about the strange people who wanted to buy any art relating to Roan that he had. Dylan had lied to them all and said he had none because none of them were pieces he wanted to sell, especially not to bizarro fetishists. Fame was a weird thing, especially when it was “freak of the week” fame. Roan just sort of hoped the new freak would hurry up and appear already, because he was getting tired of all the bullshit.
But then again, if he didn’t survive the procedure tomorrow, he’d have nothing to worry about, would he?
4
Halo
Holden was a little surprised when Dylan answered the door in his boxer shorts, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Having stopped by Panic last night, he knew that Dylan hadn’t been up late working. “Is something wrong?” he wondered, looking beyond him to try and see the living room.
Dylan shook his head, yawning, “Roan’s in the hospital. I stayed there as long as I could, but eventually I got kicked out.”
Holden stared at him. “He’s in the hospital? Did he have another aneurysm?”
“No. Oh, you don’t know.” Dylan then made a sort of scoffing noise as he said, “Right, yeah, he barely told me. Come in, I’ll explain.”
Well, it couldn’t have been a huge emergency if Dylan wasn’t freaking out about it. Holden followed him inside, noting from a purely clinical perspective that he had a nice ass and a nice back. (It was long and lean, a little dimple near the small of the back, no overt hair.) If he wanted to do the high-class prostitute thing, he could probably make a mint. “Have a seat,” Dylan said, gesturing to the sofas as he disappeared into another room.
Holden sat, trying to decide what things were Roan’s and
what things belonged to Dylan. The only things that seemed like Dylan were the painting now hanging up over the stereo—one of those bizarre ones, of a wall with a huge hole in it that appeared to be bleeding, like a crime scene detail with only the body missing—and the Bloc Party CD currently playing softly. Roan just never struck him as a Bloc Party kind of guy.
Dylan came back wearing sweatpants and pulling on a T-shirt of a Roy Lichtenstein-type woman crying and firing a machine gun while saying “It’s not you, it’s me….” He had a feeling Roan had bought that for him, or it was one of Roan’s T-shirts; he was the wacky T-shirt master around here.
“Want something to drink?” Dylan asked, crossing to the kitchen. “I’m just getting myself some green tea.”
Green tea—oh boy! What a hedonist. But he was the Buddhist vegetarian around here. You’d think an artist/shirtless bartender at a gay nightclub would have a much wilder life, but he seemed to work hard to cultivate a lifestyle more suited to an ascetic. “No thanks, maybe later. So what’s up with Roan?”
