Prey (49 page)

Paris told him a couple of interesting things during breakfast.

Namely that a deliveryman had brought a coffee basket from Starbucks this morning, which had a small note on it that simply said
Thanks.
Paris thought it was very sweet that he was getting gift baskets from the puppy, but he wondered if it wasn’t time to start dusting off the restraining order.

Paris was just kidding, of course, but he really hoped Matt didn’t do that again.

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The other interesting thing was the plate run on Barlow. Keisha had done it when she got in that morning, and it turned up the fact that Barlow had gotten himself a parking ticket over a week ago back on Pine Street.

What was interesting about that? It was issued the day before Melissa Prescott was murdered—and she lived on Park Street, which was just over from Pine. Son of a bitch; they’d just placed him in the area prior to the shooting. He was sure that Barlow wasn’t doing any of the dirty work…

but it didn’t mean he couldn’t scout. Still, it was circumstantial at best, and he could always claim he wasn’t driving the car; his wife or one of his kids could have been, or at least he could say that.

Which made him suddenly wonder how old Barlow’s kids were.

Paris didn’t know, so Roan interrupted his breakfast to go get his laptop and have a look. Tim had a ten-year-old daughter, Sierra, and a seventeen-year-old son, Troy. What did Troy think of his Dad’s anti-cat feelings? Was he sucked up in it too? Would Tim groom his own son as a

“soldier” for the cause? It’d be interesting to find out.

Roan had gotten a bit complacent, though, and while he was helping Paris load up the dishwasher, Par gasped and grabbed him, turning his back toward him. “Oh my God! Where did you get those?”

He tried to look over his own shoulder, but was kind of limited. “Get what? Don’t tell me I have a tattoo.”

“I wish. These are some very ugly bruises.” He brushed his fingertips lightly low on his back, and Roan felt a tiny ache at even that gentle pressure. Oh shit, he should have worn a shirt—he forgot all about the kidney punches Sam had given him. (And why? Did he not piss some blood this morning? Jesus, sometimes he was a moron.) “Do they hurt?

Who did this to you?”

“Well… I kinda helped apprehend my shooter last night,” he said, settling on a partial truth. “He didn’t go quietly.”

Paris let him go, if only to scowl at him. “And you were going to tell me this when?”

“Possibly never, if I could at all avoid it.”

The evil look he got from Paris presaged a lecture (he knew it by heart), but before he could start, the phone rang, and Roan lunged for it like a lifeline. He didn’t get saved by the bell often, but when it happened, he was glad about it.

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It took him a moment to recognize the caller, who was on a cell phone with a semi-crappy connection. It was Juan Marquez, the exterminator who was Patrick Farley’s neighbor. He prefaced his statement with lots of hesitation, saying he’d thought of something but it was kind of stupid and probably not important, but Roan coaxed him into telling him what he had just thought of. “So yesterday there was a UPS

guy at the apartment,” he said, with an almost constant crackle in the background. “And he parked his truck right out front, in what’s s’posed to be the fire lane. All the UPS and FedEx guys park there; they just run in and run out, so no one thinks too much about it, know what I mean? But the day before Patrick got capped, I came home from work and saw a UPS

guy in the lobby, where all our mailboxes are. But I didn’t see a truck out front; I didn’t see a truck anywhere. They’re pretty distinctive, ya know, hard to miss, but there was just the guy. I thought it was weird at the time, but I really didn’t think about it until I saw the UPS guy yesterday. You said to call you if I thought of anything strange around the time Pat was killed, so I thought I should.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” And he really did: a fake UPS guy.

Motherfucker, that was perfect. Who else could get slightly paranoid, stranger-wary infecteds to open a door? And who, when asked if they saw someone strange, would ever report seeing a UPS guy? They weren’t strange, even if seen leaving a recent crime scene.

This was why you canvassed people in person, in the hopes you could gain the trust of a good witness, one who would make your job infinitely easier. He asked Paris to put the scolding on hold while he called Murphy, and she was a little grumpy, as New Horizons was going to make them take them to court to get the list of clients. She asked him to go talk to them, thinking they’d be more amenable to someone like them. He decided to overlook the “someone like them” comment, the slight edge to it, as they were both a “them” in other people’s contexts, both being homosexual. Also cops (admittedly, him formerly).

He was tempted to start chanting, “One of us, one of us,” but she sounded like she might have him arrested if he did.

After getting off the line with her, not committing one way or the other about talking to the New Horizons people, he started searching through their entire list of suspects—and honestly there were quite a few, including all the names of the Humanity First people they’d managed to uncover—and to speed up the process he divided the list in half, with Paris 308

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volunteering to do the other half. What he was looking for was someone who worked in any kind of mail delivery capacity: UPS, post office, FedEx, courier even. He didn’t think the killer just pulled the whole UPS

angle out of his ass. Yes, it was brilliant, but he had a feeling he knew that from personal experience, from the way people reacted in such a blasé manner to his arrival. If that didn’t pan out, he was willing to go to delivery professions of less “official” capacity—pizza guys and newspaper deliverers, if necessary—but he thought the connection would grow tenuous to the breaking point by then.

It would have been nice if he’d got a hit right away, but things like that rarely happened outside of cop shows. It took them hours of sitting in front of their respective computers, until their butts went numb, but they got two solid hits and a partial third. Reese Campbell, the copy shop manager who had hosted the Humanity First recruiting meeting for

“Kevin,” had worked at the post office for six years before quitting and going off on the career path that led him to Kinko’s; Jordan DeSoto, Mia DeSoto’s brother (Eli’s quasi-girlfriend), worked at FedEx as a delivery driver before being fired for being drunk on the job (classy); Noah Hammond, Karen Hammond’s oldest son, worked as a bicycle messenger downtown.

So much for the lazy day half-dressed in front of the computer.

These guys had all vaulted into the best-bets category, and if any of them were expert computer hackers, that would pretty much cement them as the only suspect. The only one who had been on their radar at all was Reese; he’d discarded the DeSotos for now since he wasn’t terribly interested in getting between Eli and his bitter current girlfriend, and only Paris had followed up on the Hammonds in any respect.

They needed to get on these guys and start narrowing them down now. Roan called the Kinko’s and asked to speak to the manager; he put it on speaker, and as soon as a man responded, hung up. Paris confirmed that was Reese’s voice. So they knew where he was, and where Reese would most likely be for the next few hours. This left Jordan and Noah up for grabs.

Jordan was currently unemployed, although he apparently functioned as something of a handyman around the church (a sop thrown by Eli to his girlfriend, surely), and Roan called the service Noah worked for, and confirmed he was working today. What was left now was checking these men out, staking them out, and trailing them if necessary. Nothing too Infected: Prey

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intensive, just enough to see if there was even a smidgen of possibility they were cold-blooded murderers.

There was no choice in the matter. Roan was too well-known at the church, and his hanging around would cause obvious consternation; Paris was generally liked there, and no one made a big deal about him working for a detective agency, whereas Eli and Stovak liked to point out Roan was a “failed cop.” Paris was the only one who could observe Jordan without too much suspicion. That left Roan chasing around the city after a bicycle messenger, and that was going to be a shitload of fun.

They worked out possible covers and stories, how often they were going to keep in touch, and Paris left first, giving him a quick kiss before grabbing his leather jacket and heading out to the GTO, with the warning that they were going to talk about last night later. (Roan was taking the bike, damn it, as it only made sense if he was going to be chasing after a guy on another type of bike.) Roan changed into nondescript clothes, shoving as much of his hair up in his Toronto Maple Leafs cap as possible, and dug out a pair of deep black Ray-Bans to hide his eyes. He couldn’t take the recon kit with him on the bike, so he was just going to have to do his best not to get noticed.

But he found himself wondering about something. Downtown area.

It was a long shot, but sometimes they were all you had.

He called Matt’s apartment, and his roommate told him he was staying at a friend’s place because he was so freaked-out about last night.

But the roommate gave him the number of where Matt was staying (at the apartment of a woman named Candy), and he called it. It was Matt who picked up, and when he heard it was Roan, he went from sounding slightly irritated to frighteningly cheerful.

Before he could get started on some digressive ramble that would probably sidetrack into profuse thank yous, Roan asked him if they got a lot of bike messengers at Starbucks. Matt scoffed. “Are you kidding? Shit yeah, those guys are comin’ in all the time. Not that I’m complaining,

’cause some of them look pretty good in those shorts, y’know.”

“I bet. You know any by name?”

“Some of ’em, yeah. They’re mostly straight, though, so it’s casual.”

“You don’t know one named Noah, do you?”

“No.” He paused suddenly. “But I think he’s that creepy guy that I 310

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sometimes see with Elvez.”

“Elvez?”

“Oh, that’s what we call him; I think his real name’s Adam or something, but we all call him Elvez ’cause he looks kinda like a Spanish Elvis, y’know?”

Cute. “Is Noah a regular?”

“No, he never comes in. We see him standing outside the window with his bike, but it’s always Elvez who comes in. I don’t know why. I just figured that maybe he had some kind of dislike of Starbucks commercially, but would still drink the coffee if someone bought it for him.”

“But Elvez is a regular.”

“Fuck yeah, every single weekday, although Noah’s only with him about half the time. Venti skinny double-shot espresso.”

“What time does Elvez show up? Does he have a regular time?”

Matt snorted humorously. “Of course he does. He usually stops in, like, at a quarter to one on the dot, unless traffic’s really shitty or he had a job way the hell on the other side of the city.”

He glanced at his watch, and realized he could actually beat Elvez there if he made tracks now. “Thanks, Matt. Oh, and thanks for the gift, but stop sending me stuff. I just did my job, okay? I appreciate the gesture, but it feels weird.”

“Your job? You’re not a cop. Since when is helping me part of your job?” Okay, that was a point for him. “Few people have ever stuck their neck out for me. I really appreciate it, y’know.” He paused briefly, then asked, “This stuff about that Noah guy—is this related to Ashley’s case at all?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Y’know that sounds like a yes to me.”

“Can’t do anything about that. Stay out of trouble.” He then hung up and dry-washed his face before grabbing a brown canvas jacket and heading out to the garage.

Either Ashley’s murder was pure coincidence, or the killer had had more casual contact with at least one of the victims than they had been aware of until now. For some reason, that wasn’t a comforting thought.

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13

Digging the Grave

FOR a stakeout on a suspected killer, it was surprisingly civilized.

Rainbow—just the woman he wanted to see—intercepted him

almost immediately, and the two of them ended up sitting on the wicker chairs at the far end of the front porch, drinking chamomile mango tea and discussing how long Jordan DeSoto had worked for them. Rainbow was aware Roan was working for Eli in some capacity related to the threats he had received, but she didn’t know much beyond that, and Paris didn’t go out of his way to illuminate things for her. It wasn’t personal—how could you not like Rainbow?—but if Eli had actually wanted her to know he’d have told her. Also, it was an open case and all that. He actually wasn’t sure how Roan applied these rules, but he could fake it if he had to.

According to Rainbow, Jordan was a good groundskeeper, but he seemed to have a troubled relationship with his sister and the church alike.

He didn’t seem to like infecteds much, and he didn’t like that Eli was dating his sister, but he needed the job and he wasn’t rude or mean to anyone. He just kept to himself a lot and didn’t really socialize. As if on cue, Paris heard a mechanical roar somewhere in the back, slowly growing louder (closer), and he judged it to be a lawnmower. Good old Jordan was taking advantage of a rare sunny day to mow the grounds—lucky him.

Paris asked if they kept records of the days he worked and the days he didn’t, and she said Eli had all the time sheets.

Chamomile mango tea actually tasted quite nice, but it went through him like a bullet train, and he had to duck inside to use the bathroom. Had he been aware before now that the church had Italian tile in its bathrooms?

He was sure he’d have remembered a detail like that. He was washing his hands at the sink, and after noticing that they had those blue LED things attached to the tap so the water came out looking neon blue (now he knew who bought shit like that), he noticed he looked a little flushed. He stared at himself in the mirror a moment, wondering if the lighting just had a 312