Prey (38 page)

He glanced behind himself to make sure he was talking to him.

“Huh? Me?”

“Yes silly, you. Oh my God, you’re not telling me you don’t know how attractive you are, are you?” Roan wasn’t sure how to answer that, and was going to steer the conversation back to Ashley, but Matt gasped dramatically and continued. “Oh holy shit, you don’t, do you? Will you marry me? I mean, right this second? I know a chick who’s like a Unitarian minister or some shit like that.”

“Um, Matt, why don’t we—”

But Mr. Caffeine kept on going. “How can you
not
know? You must look in the mirror to shave, unless you got electrolysis. I know this drag queen who had it done to his face, and he says it hurts a little bit but it’s totally worth it ’cause you don’t need to shave for a long time. Even when you came in to the Starbucks today, I noticed you right away; I even whispered to Shanaia to let me have you, since we tag team the front counter. You have the most gorgeous eyes I’ve ever seen. Are they really that green? I was thinking contacts, but usually you can see contacts, y’know, if you stare hard enough you can make out the edge of the plastic.

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But I don’t see any edges. And your eyes kinda go down a little at the corners, not Asian, more really European, like the French, ’cause a lot of French people have eyes like that. They’re like cat’s eyes, y’know, really striking. And they must be, ’cause noticing a guy’s eyes is like eighteenth on my list, but on you I just saw them and that scar and that jaw of yours and I was like ‘Please God, let him be gay and into me.’ You just look so… I guess rugged’s the word I want, but not exactly, y’know?

Something like that. You just look strong and manly without being too butch or a muscle queen, you exude testosterone, but not in a caveman way, you’re like regal, and I just want to bury my hands in your hair. You don’t dye it, do you?”

Finally he paused, and Roan took a breath for him. Just listening to Matt made him feel like he was hyperventilating. “Umm, no, I don’t. And technically I am gay, but I have a boyfriend, so thanks for the interest. But no thanks. Can we get back to—”

Matt’s eyes widened so dramatically he wondered if the passing waiter had kicked him under the table. “You
are
gay? You’re fucking with me, aren’t you? You’re totally teasing.”

“No, I am. But I’m in a relationship, and this really isn’t relevant to the case. If I show you a picture of someone, can you tell me if they’ve been in the shop or not?”

“Oh sure. You’re honestly gay? Y’know, I have the best gaydar—I can’t believe I missed you. So tell me about this boyfriend of yours—is he cute? Please don’t tell me you’re one of those hotties who ends up with a guy who looks like a troll. ’Cause I’ve seen that so often, and I don’t get it at all. I mean, who needs a sugar daddy that badly, y’know?”

If he said “like” or “y’know” once more, Roan was fairly certain he was going to punch him. No, no he couldn’t, he hadn’t given him Ashley’s key yet. With a sigh, he dug the picture of Eli out of his pocket, and said,

“My boyfriend is the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen. Now, can you tell me if this man is a regular at the Starbucks?”

Matt took the picture eagerly, but reared back slightly as soon as he saw it. “Don’t tell me this guy is your boyfriend.”

Roan rubbed his forehead. Motor-mouth Matt was starting to give him a headache. “No, that’s the man I was wondering if you’ve seen in the Starbucks.”

“Oh. Yeah, he’s in now and again. He’s no rabid regular, but he 236

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comes by at least weekly, usually Tuesday or Sunday.”

He stared at Matt somewhat skeptically. Could his memory be that good? “You know him that well?”

Matt nodded, handing the picture back. “Venti espresso con panna half-caff with a shot of mocha syrup.”

Okay, now he wasn’t sure if he should be impressed or scared. “Do you know all your customers that well?”

“No, just the ones I like or hate. Isn’t that weird?”

“Which one is he?”

He clicked his tongue in disgust. “Hate, darling. He seems like a kinda skeevy bastard, y’know? And he never tips. I hear he’s famous, like some kinda local celebrity, but I dunno. He used to make eyes at Ash, but she never noticed and claimed I was making it up. But I wasn’t! I mean, I know what a guy looks like when he wants a piece of that, I’ve gotten it enough in my lifetime, and it doesn’t matter if they’re gay or straight, the look’s the same. Nobody knows a man like another man, y’know?”

Wasn’t that interesting? Eli had an attraction to Ashley that wasn’t reciprocal—and she died anyway. It could be coincidence; it could mean a hell of a lot. Unless Matt was mistaken, like Ashley had seemed to think…

but Roan actually thought, dramatic overstatement aside, Matt probably could nail lust in a man at fifty paces. He struck him as a “party guy,” the type who’d happily give you a blow job in the back of your car ten minutes after you met him. Not to be disparaging, but… okay, yeah, there was probably no way that couldn’t be disparaging. But if he’d just shut up for five minutes, he might be an okay guy. “Was he in Starbucks the Tuesday before she died?”

He shook his head, making his five consecutive earrings jingle. “No, he was in Sunday. Along with his regular espresso he bought a double chocolate muffin. I know, ’cause I served him; Ash was busy fighting with a jammed napkin dispenser.” Despite his appearance and his magpie chattering, Matt would have made one of hell of a witness on the stand.

Gossipy as all hell, he saw everything.

Sunday? Ashley was killed on Monday. Holy shit, there was no way in hell that was coincidence. But which way was this going?

Was Eli actually the killer, or was someone hunting people around him?

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7

Pattern Against User

MATT gabbed for a solid ten minutes, but Roan was too busy thinking to pay attention.

Okay, so he had a connection between Eli and Ashley, but it was a casual (circumstantial) one at best. Something wasn’t right, but he didn’t know what. He couldn’t see all the pieces of the puzzle, and it was annoying him more than Matt’s ceaseless prattling.

Finally—and as politely as he could—he asked for Ashley’s key.

Matt gulped down his third glass of Coke (no wonder he was so jazzed) and stood up, digging in his pants pocket. “Sure, let’s go.”

Roan glared at him, but he seemed oblivious to it. “I’m going alone.

By trespassing on a closed crime scene, we’re committing a crime.”

Matt found the key and pulled it out. It was alone on a key chain that doubled as a bottle opener. “Not if you’re with me. I have her key, and I’ll just say I’m like checking on her plants or something. You’re simply with me.”

He almost admired his gall. “No way in hell they’ll buy that.”

Matt made a “tsk” noise and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, they will. If we get caught, let me do the talking. I’ll so annoy the shit out of them they’ll agree to anything to make me shut up and go away.”

Now Roan did briefly admire his gall. “You know?”

“What, that I talk too much? I have ears, sweetie, how could I not know? Sometimes even
I
have no fucking idea what I’m talking about; it just comes gushing out, y’know? I call it diarrhea of the mouth.” He jingled the key, and pulled his black motocross-style leather jacket off the back of his chair. “We goin’?”

Roan paid the bill even though he’d hardly had anything, simply 238

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because he figured baristas just couldn’t make that much. Matt had walked here—he lived with a roommate in an apartment four blocks away—so they took the Mustang by default.

It was unlikely they’d get caught; that was just an excuse to try and escape Chatty Cathy in the passenger seat (and yes, he kept rattling on, although Roan tuned him out). But just venturing into the Wildwood seemed like a risky proposition, and he wondered how Ashley had managed it on a daily basis. She was either very brave or very desperate.

The Wildwood looked exactly the same as it had the last time he’d been here, two years ago, on a domestic violence call. It was a square, six-story apartment block with brick facing that had faded to a sickly brownish gray and was crumbling like rotted teeth. Gang tags were the only true spots of color, warped letters and numerals as bloated as waterlogged corpses, their meaning cryptically elusive to most people. All the first-floor windows either had bars or were simply boarded over.

If defeat looked like anything, it looked like the Wildwood.

“Wow, this looks like a crack house I once went to,” Matt commented, following Roan into the piss-soaked “lobby” of the building.

He didn’t ask, because he really didn’t want to know.

Inside the Wildwood it was murky dark, like they were submerged beneath a polluted lake, and the smell of urine, cooked food, spilled beer, and the sickly sweet and sharply chemical smell of crack rendered the hallways into a pungent, unpleasant stew. Roan had cinnamon gum in his coat pocket and popped a stick in his mouth, using its overwhelming smell and taste to block out everything else. It was mostly successful.

Ashley had lived on the third floor, third apartment on the left.

Yellow crime scene tape still crisscrossed the whitewashed door, although someone had scrawled on it, in thick black ink,
Kitty fucker
. That warning was probably the only reason the tape hadn’t been broken—who was going to touch anything a kitty fucker had touched and possibly contaminated with their infected blood?

Matt—who had been blessedly silent since they’d entered the building—carefully unlocked the door and they both went in, ducking under the tape and being careful not to break it. Inside, Ashley’s apartment was even darker than the hallway, and the smell of blood and death was so overpowering that Roan rocked back on his heels. Son of a bitch, no one had cleaned it up yet, had they?

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Matt must have smelled a bit of it, as he cupped his hand over his nose and mouth, but his eyes widened as he saw the metal shutters that blocked out every scrap of light. “Whoa.”

“She was infected,” Roan explained. “If you’re going into your transformational phase, you have to block the windows, otherwise you’re liable to jump through them or die trying.”

“Oh. I didn’t think she was kinky. She never struck me that way, y’know? She actually seemed kinda lonely.”

Roan’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, although he pulled out the small Maglite he always carried with him. (Essential P.I. tools: cell phone, digital camera, flashlight, notebook, a laptop if you could carry it and had a Wi-Fi connection, and maybe a gun, but only if you were really paranoid.) He could have turned on a light—no one was going to see it from the street as long as they kept the shutters down—but he didn’t want to lose what he had of his “night vision” right now. Also, if he could keep Matt from seeing the huge rusty-brown stain on the cheap, yellowish industrial carpet, he felt things would go better. “No friends, no boyfriend and/or girlfriend? Sounds lonely.”

“Yeah.” Matt fumbled something out of his coat pocket, and Roan didn’t really see what until he snapped it and a bright but icy-blue glow emanated from it. It actually lit up the area around Matt quite well.

“Do you always carry a glow stick?” he wondered, kind of amused.

Somehow it figured a party guy like Matt would just happen to have a glow stick handy.

“Naw, I just remembered the last time I wore this coat, I was at Panic. Hey, if you’re gay, how come I’ve never seen you there?”

Panic was
the
hot gay nightclub in town, and he was sure the little bit of black script at the base of the glow stick identified it as coming from there. “I’m not into the nightclub scene. It’s too… techno for me.”

“Oh man, you’re missing out. You need to come down, if only to see this guy who shows up like every other coupla weeks. Don’t know his name, but we call him the Hottie down there, ’cause he is. I mean he’s fucking gorgeous; you’d cut off your left nut to be with this guy. He has guys lining up three deep to dance with him, and ten deep to buy him drinks. He always comes with this fag hag, she looks like a young Margaret Cho, and he’s just the world’s biggest cocktease, y’know? He’s 240

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got great moves, he’s cute, he looks like he’s got a rippin’ bod, but he always says he only comes to dance and ain’t interested in hooking up, y’know? It’s as frustrating as hell, but God, it’s worth the sexual frustration just to watch him for a couple of hours.”

Hearing this description, Roan suddenly wondered how small a gay subculture it was. “Is he about six-foot-three, two-ten, with black hair and blue eyes?”

Matt nodded eagerly, eyes showing his happy surprise. “Hey, you’ve seen him? Isn’t he just to die for? You wouldn’t think such a solid slab of man meat could be as graceful as he is, but wow, he’s just all kinds of lust-bait. And that ass! God, I just want to grab him and—”

“That’s my boyfriend.”

Matt stared at him levelly, the blue light casting bruised shadows on his face. “You’re shitting me.”

“No. I sort of doubt there’s two gay guys in town that match that description.” And he couldn’t imagine Randi being thrilled with that

“Margaret Cho” comment. In fact, he could imagine her “Oh, I bet you think all Asians look alike”
rant, as he’d heard her give it to a clearly embarrassed man in the parking lot at work once. A shrinking violet she wasn’t.

Matt held his gaze for a long moment, attempting to judge his veracity. “Holy shit. I always wondered who could land him, and now I know: another hottie. Makes sense, y’know. Uh, does that mean I have to stop talking about him?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Damn, he was distracting me from the smell.” He moved the glow stick around, lighting up spots of the small, austere apartment as well as leaving brief blue trails in the air, and asked, “So what are we looking for exactly?”

“
We
?”

“I’m not totally useless. I got a great head for, uh… remembering things. In fact, I can remember this one time when—” He froze, looking down at something that had been caught in the narrow scope of his light.