Infected: Shift (23 page)

Dylan fixed him with a skeptical look, lips thinning to a hard line, but he decided to accept that for now, or at least postpone the argument. “Just be careful, okay?”

“Okay.”

Dylan leaned in and kissed him on the forehead before getting up and leaving the room. Through the open bedroom door, he heard Murphy shout from the living room, “Don’t try and hide, motherfucker!”

“You want me to come down naked?” he shouted back, finally bothering to get out of bed. He was still tired, but he knew Murph wasn’t going to leave it alone.

“You do and I’ll shoot you!”

“Now you’re just giving lesbians a bad name,” he accused, grabbing a pair of boxers from his dresser and putting them on. He had to piss like a racehorse, so he went and did that before stepping into a pair of jeans. He didn’t bother putting on a shirt, because if she was going to arrest him, he was going to go shirtless, barefoot, and bellowing, like any random redneck on
Cops
. Or Ronnie Dobbs, patron saint of bellowing shirtless rednecks.

As he came down, Murphy came over to meet him at the base of the stairs, dressed in a demure navy suit with a cream-colored blouse and sensible shoes, her arms crossed over her chest and her toe tapping impatiently. Her expression was sour enough that if he didn’t know her, he might have started shitting his pants. Her badge was just visible on her belt, but her gun was still hidden. “I hope Dylan didn’t leave on my account. Did he leave on yours?”

“No, it’s Wednesday. He always does charity work with the temple, bringing meals to the ill and the elderly. He’s the only bartender I know bucking for sainthood.”

Her brow furrowed in consternation, deep enough that she almost forgot to be pissed at him. “The temple? Beth El?”

“No, the Buddhist temple. The one on Park Street?”

“Oh. Yeah, I didn’t think he was Jewish.” She shook her head and got back to being angry as he walked to the kitchen to get a drink.

He was too tired to brew anything, so he just got an organic ginger ale from the fridge. Organic ginger ale—the kind he picked up in health food sections of stores—wasn’t anything like that Canada Dry shit. This had real pieces of ginger in it, and it was spicy. It also gave him his appetite back when migraines or too many downers took it away. Luckily Dylan liked it too and didn’t question why he bought so much of it.

“Sean Brand has been raving about how you are a vampire. He’s probably going to end up at Rosewood for a psych eval.”

“If he thinks I’m a vampire, he should.”

The look she gave him could have burned paint from the walls, so he turned to paw through the cupboards for breakfast. Or was it lunch? He checked the time on the stove’s clock. Yeah, lunch. What did they have in the freezer? “He says your eyes changed and your teeth grew, and you were inhumanly strong and fast. Everybody thinks he’s trying to get declared incompetent, but I know what happened. If Sikorski wasn’t off on leave, he’d know too. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

He looked at the box in his hand and said, “Nuking a sandwich.”

The death glare she gave him indicated she didn’t think his honesty was funny. “Look, asshole, I get that you’re a superhero—”

He scoffed. “No, I’m not. I’m a freak.”

“Fine, you’re a superfreak. But if you don’t want everybody to know about it, stop showing off. So far you’ve been fucking lucky. Most people think those YouTube videos are fake, and most are willing to believe you took out the skinheads by simply being super-athletic. But you are pushing it. Do you want to be exposed?”

“You know I don’t.” Superfreak? Yeah, he was super-freaky, yow.

“Then get a cape and a mask, Batman, because you can’t keep doing this. The legal system can hardly handle people who turn into big cats five days a month—we can’t handle you.”

“A superfreak.”

“A guy who can change at will, who can turn it on and off like a faucet.” She threw up her hands and sighed, her body language betraying total frustration. “You’re special, and that’s cool, but if you keep acting like you are, everyone will know. If Peter’s informant is to be believed, word is already getting around about you on the streets.”

“What are they saying about me? Beyond kitty fag.”

“They’re saying you should be avoided at all costs, that there’s something not right about you, and that there isn’t an ass you can’t kick.”

“That’s flattering.”

“It shouldn’t be. Some guys are gonna see that as a challenge.”

The microwave dinged, but Roan ignored it. “You think they’re gonna try and make their bones offa me? They’re welcome to try. Everybody gets one free shot.”

She fixed him with a stern look. “You’re fucking impressive, I’ll give you that, but you’re still hurt by bullets. One of these days, some fucking gangbanger homophobe or kitty-hating psycho is gonna take a shot, and you won’t recover. Don’t you care?”

He shrugged, aware he should be concerned, and also aware that he should be bothered that he wasn’t concerned. “Hazard of the job. You face it too.”

“I’m a cop. You’re not anymore.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Fine, you don’t give a shit about yourself? What about Dylan? Have you ever considered—”

“Don’t you dare play that card,” he interrupted angrily. It was a fucking low blow and she knew it.

It didn’t stop her, though. “— he lives with you! If someone decides to target you, they may go after him instead. And how do you think he’d feel if you got yourself killed—”

“How would Kim feel if you got yourself killed?” he roared back. Not literally, but it was a close thing. “This is fucking unfair!”

“Maybe, but it’s an honest question. Have you even asked him how he feels about this?”

Dylan didn’t even know, although he probably suspected, but to tell her that would give her a victory. “He doesn’t like it.”

“I bet he doesn’t. What are you trying to accomplish? Do you want to get caught? Do you want to die?”

The questions, asked in her low, level cop voice, just infuriated him. But he knew if he showed too much rage, she might start picking away at the lies. “I’m just doing the job I was hired to do.”

“You were hired to lion out on a guy?”

He gave her the paint-blistering stare this time. “I was hired to find out who murdered Jasmine Hawley, and I did. It was Sean Brand and Carey Switzer.”

She put her hands on her hips, but otherwise didn’t seem surprised by that revelation. “Switzer’s probably gonna be nailed for it.”

“Of course. He’s dead and it doesn’t matter anymore. But Sean killed her too. He told me.”

“While you were turning into a vampire?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay, you don’t need to tell me it’s inadmissible. I know. But he did it, Murph.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. He seems like the kind of asshole who would. But can you prove it beyond saying he did it?”

He finally took his nuked sandwich out of the microwave, shaking his head all the while. “You know I can’t.

“Then back off. Brand will be going down for the attack on Krause and for the ounce of coke they found in his apartment, and it ain’t a murder charge, but he might do more time.”

“Very cynical.”

“Tell me it isn’t true.” He couldn’t, so he didn’t say anything. Because of that, he heard the faint buzz of her cell phone vibrating in her pocket, and she pulled it out and looked at it before heading for the door. “Let it go, and stop trying to get caught, Superman.”

“That’s Batman, missy,” he corrected sarcastically before she went out the door. He took his sandwich and ginger ale and retreated to the living room to eat.

He found he’d left a book cracked open on the coffee table, a copy of Samuel Beckett’s
Krapp’s Last Tape
. It took him a moment to figure out why, but then he remembered. There was a piece of it he wanted as his next tattoo. A broken phrase, but it had all he wanted in it: “clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most unshatterable association….”
If the text was small enough, he could probably fit it anywhere. He initially thought it’d be good on his back, but he’d never see it. Could he get away with it on his arm? It probably depended on the design. He was going to sketch out some ideas, some way to put it on him and have it not appear as if he'd written a memo on himself.

Why had he gone from having nothing but a tiny tattoo of warning on his inner wrist to wanting to cover himself with the things? They hurt, they took time, and they were almost ubiquitous in the culture, past the point where he would have dismissed them as a poser’s affectation. So why? If he thought about it, the catalyst was Paris’s death. After that, he just wanted to cover his skin with ink, drown himself in it until nothing of his original flesh remained. He wanted pretty things to hide the ugly truth of himself. Maybe he could hide underneath the pictures. It was an awful revelation, and he was ashamed by the depth of the cowardice it revealed. Ironically, it made the Beckett quote doubly appropriate.

The sandwich he was eating tasted a bit like hot cardboard, but he wasn’t sure if the sandwich was that bad or if he was in that kind of mood. The phone rang, and he almost didn’t pick it up, but eventually he did. It turned out to be Holden, who had apparently conned a nurse into letting him borrow his cell. (Figured.)

Holden complained of boredom and wanted him to swing by his place and bring him his iPod and some books, as well as a Dick’s (burger) and maybe something with papaya juice in it. If he was well enough to complain of general ennui, then he was fine. He also requested his cell back, and Roan had forgotten he still had it. But he did.

He was still on the phone with Holden when his own cell phone went off, and a quick look at it showed it was Grey calling him. He had to answer it, mainly because they hadn’t settled the Brand problem. As it turned out, it wasn’t anything that serious… yet. He was just going to the gym and wondered if Roan wanted to spar with him.

A basic invitation, but Roan couldn’t help but wonder if this was where Grey wanted to discuss it. So he said okay and then told Holden he’d be by in a couple of hours, that he had to run an errand first.

Roan finished getting dressed and shoved some shorts, a jock, and a tank in a duffel bag before getting out of there. He remembered to grab a bottled water so he had something to take his Vicodin with.

The gym was a relatively decent place. It seemed more dedicated to actual working out than hooking up or meeting people (a lot of gyms were, quite frankly, dating spots for the vain), and there wasn’t an overabundance of mirrors, which was refreshing. Place still smelled of about a million different kinds of sweat, though. (Mainly to him, probably.)

The sparring place tried to replicate the look of an old-time boxing gym, but it was as phony as a three-dollar bill. They had deliberately aged boxing posters slapped on the walls beside speed bags and heavy bags, a separate area for jumping rope and minor weight training, and then the squared circle of a boxing ring, although the padding was abnormally thick, and you didn’t step up into it—it was level with the floor. It had its own isolated changing area with metal lockers and a single bench running most of the length of the room, quitting before you reached the showers, but there was also a collection of gloves, helmets, and other safety equipment in a separate cubby, with a hamper for used equipment beneath. That wasn’t in any old-time boxing gym that he knew of. Neither were separate showers for privacy, or posted warnings about MRSA and using someone else’s towel.