Lesser Evils, Part 8

8 – The Blue Rose

Roan considered visiting Oliver at the hospital, but if he was unconscious, there was no point. He’d save it for later, when it was likely he was actually awake.

From what Luke had gathered from the EMTs who brought Oliver in, he was found collapsed in a bloody heap outside the parking garage of the Marriott on Pike Street. Which was curious, as he lived in the dorms. But maybe he wasn’t at the hotel, maybe he was just walking by, got jumped there, and collapsed. It was unlikely, but possible. Still, he wasn’t going to speculate on that until he could talk to Oliver about the incident.

What he decided to do was see if he missed anything. Oliver turned up nothing, he was clean as clean could be, so he decided to go deeper. He’d looked at Oliver, at Annette, at Adam – what about the rest of the family?

Everything that was happening had put him off his game, because it was the rest of the family that was interesting.

Adam’s father, Vernon Jephson, the one who worked for a place called Assurance International, the company where Adam worked after dropping out of college to take care of his rapidly growing family (and where Caroline, Oliver‘s sister, worked now). Adam started in the Delaware branch, but Vern stayed in Miami. Approximately one month before Adam disappeared, Vern’s wife, Emily, died in a very strange one car crash. Initial reports called it “suspicious”, but the police apparently determined she was on prescription drugs and that was assumed to be the cause of the crash. About ten days later, Vernon’s brother, George, was shot and killed in the Assurance International parking lot in what was called a “violent robbery”, but no suspect was ever named, and the case remained unsolved. And then a couple of weeks later, in Delaware, Adam disappears. What curious timing. Could one family be so beset by bad luck all within the same time frame? Well, why not? It beggared belief, but it was still possible. He didn’t trust it, though.

Vernon was the pivot, the key. He no longer worked for Assurance, he retired in 2008, but he was still alive, and still in the Miami area. He also had married himself a trophy wife (thirty three years his junior) six years ago. His phone number wasn’t easy to find, but Roan eventually did, and did the math. The East Coast was three hours ahead, so he could call him by five in the morning and be within the politeness zone.

Why hadn’t Oliver mentioned this? Because he didn’t deem it important, because he assumed it meant nothing … because he didn’t know. Was that possible? Could Adam have fallen out with his father enough to have next to no contact with them at the time of these incidents? Presumably Adam knew, but perhaps he kept it from the rest of the family, or at least kept the details out.

Roan was convinced this cavalcade of death meant something. What he didn’t know, but he knew he’d have to find out. The reason for Adam’s disappearance might be there.

He went and had a long soak in the bath, because a soak always made his muscles relax, and sometimes he did his best thinking in the bath. (Why he didn’t know, but he wasn’t going to question it.) He noticed he had some bruises on his legs he couldn’t remember getting, but tried not to think too much of it. But it bothered him, although he wasn’t sure why.

He was a little tired, but not much. He’d slept deep and hard at Holden’s, the combination of THC and Percocet putting him down for the count, and he felt like being up. He went downstairs and made scrambled eggs, throwing in salsa and some leftover vegetables from a stir fry, making a half assed omelet. He made enough for Dylan, but since he wouldn’t be up for a while, he just put it in a bowl, wrapped it in foil, and put it in the disconcertingly large stainless steel fridge. It was almost large enough to be a corpse locker. Wasn’t this a house owned by two guys? Why would they need a fridge this large? Even if they had an open relationship and had orgies every weekend, it wouldn’t explain a fridge this large. He realized he was being fussy, but he didn’t care, it bugged him.

After eating, he popped a codeine and added another name to his call list. Since it was five AM, he went ahead and called Abigail Jephson, Adam’s sister, and the one really financing Oliver’s search.

She answered crisply after two rings, suggesting that she was wide awake at 8AM Eastern time. He immediately explained who he was, and said he was seeking a little more background on Adam. She seemed okay with that, if wary, and he asked, “What caused the riff between Adam and your father?”

She let out a long, low sigh, like steam escaping from a muted kettle. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “He said he didn’t want me to get involved.”

This had been a guess on his part, or, if you wanted to look at it another way, a bluff. He was guessing that something had occurred to estrange Adam from his father, but that was only one possibility. He decided to gamble, and luckily it had paid off. “How bad was it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was this simply a chilly estrangement, polite noises and no more at family gatherings? Was it exile, no gatherings whatsoever, with no mention? Or was it full blooded warfare, with exile and lots of badmouthing?”

“You have ratings for this?”

“In my business, yes.”

She was quiet for a long time, long enough that he could hear the cheerful idiot babble of daytime TV in the background. “Nobody wanted to talk about it, but it was obvious Dad was pretty mad at him.”

“And you have no idea why?”

Another pause. “How is this important?”

Oh, he’d hit a live wire here. “Anything could be relevant, and I feel this factors into his disappearance.”

“Based on what?” Now she was sounding defensive, combative.

“A hunch. And before you scoff at that, keep in mind half of my job is playing hunches, especially when I don’t have much else to go on.”

“And that works, does it?”

The scorn in her voice actually made him smile. Again, he was so accustomed to hatred he often found it funny. “I’m still working. Does that answer your question?”

She made a noise that was hard to interpret, and then fell into silence for several seconds. “I think it was related to the business.”

“Assurance?”

“Yeah. I think Adam didn’t handle something the way Dad wanted him to, and they just kept thinking their opinion was the only right one. Men, you know?”

“I’m familiar with them.” If only she knew how familiar. “But that doesn’t help me. Was this a financial issue, a personal issue, something in between?”

It was hard to tell over the phone, but he was getting the sense that she was getting pissed off and giving him a death stare. “I told you I don’t know. What does this have to do with Adam leaving?”

“It could have everything to do with his leaving. The only thing I’m not sure about was if it was voluntary.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Now she sounded prickly, combative, and maybe just a little scared.

“You seem like an intelligent woman, Abigail, so why don’t you tell me why you dismissed out of hand the possibility that your mother’s death, your uncle’s death, and your brother’s disappearance were related?”

She scoffed loudly, and it seemed a little forced. “What? Are you for real? My mother’s death was an accident, and my Uncle lived in fucking Miami – people are killed there all the time.”

“The timing didn’t bother you?”

“What does that mean?” She sounded angry; she was shutting down. But her reactions seemed … off. He realized he was right to call her, as something wasn’t right about all of this.

“It all happened within the course of several weeks, one after another. It really never crossed your mind that this was a hell of a coincidence?”

“That’s what it was: a coincidence. And I really don’t like your sense of paranoia. Is that good in an investigator?”

“You’d be hard pressed to find one who isn’t.”

“Really? I guess you’d have to say that, wouldn’t you?” She made a negative noise, and he could easily imagine her shaking her head. “My brother is missing, Mr. McKichan, and rather than try to muck around in my family’s tragedy, I suggest you find him.” She then hung, which hadn’t surprised him all that much.

He put down the phone with his mind already racing at a thousand thoughts per second. Had he really picked up what he thought he did?

He would have to have her in the room to know for sure, but he thought she was lying. It was when she said search for her brother … she had no reason to search. She already knew where he was. Or at least she thought she did, strong enough to give off a tell.

But how did that make sense? Why would she give Oliver money to search for his father if she already knew where he was? Why not tell Oliver? Why not tell everybody? Assuming it was secret, wasn’t she worried he’d uncover the truth? Well, obviously not. If she knew where he was and didn’t want anyone else to know, she must have thought he couldn’t possibly find Adam, no matter how much money or time he poured into the search.

What the hell did this all mean?

He called Vernon, and got a call messaging system that did nothing but recite a number, giving no names at all. He identified himself, saying he was calling in reference to his son Adam, and hung up. He had no idea if he’d ever get a call back.

He sat there for a while, trying to figure out what Abby was hiding, and precisely who she was hiding it from. Oliver alone could not be the answer, because Oliver just didn’t matter that much. (No offense to him, but he was a college student. No one would go to the trouble for him alone.) So what was going on?

Damn it, he hated cases that dealt with families. There was always something ugly waiting if you dug deep enough.

He did paperwork until he got drowsy, and then went to take a nap beside Dylan, his skin warm with the smell of sleep, although Roan knew he was never going to get used to this weird round bed.

He did sleep, but he was woken up after a strange dream, one where he was in cat form in a cave, where a bunch of people had chased him, like angry villagers in a monster movie. Anxiety woke him up, because he knew he’d have to kill them all to get through them, and that thought hadn’t bothered him at all. Not one bit. That, ironically, bothered him. It also bothered him that he thought – in the dream – that it was completely doable, no matter the number of people waiting for him.

When he woke up, with the slightest bit of a headache, he discovered that Dylan had gotten up in the meantime, and found him downstairs talking on the phone to one of his art friends by the sound of it. He was standing by the huge bay window, framed by the sun, wearing nothing but his black yoga pants, the light making the light fuzz of hair on his stomach visible like a faint aura. Goddamn, he was a hot guy. By his eye rolling and brief jerking off gesture, he knew Dyl was talking to Troy, one of his higher maintenance friends in the art collective. Troy was ostensibly straight, but apparently such a diva he was called “Celine” behind his back. The fact that he apparently describe himself as a “truth teller” was enough to make Roan loathe him on principal.

As soon as he hung up, Dylan said, ”Thanks for the breakfast. When the hell did you get up?”

“Too damn early.” A glance at the digital clock built into the oven told him it was almost one. Holy shit, why had had he let him sleep in so late? Oh, because he figured he got up early, that’s why. Some detective he was.

“Well, two things. One, you have to make an appointment with Doctor Rosenberg now, or I’m going to make it for you. Two, we’re due at the arena at three thirty.”

He sort of expected the first one, but the second one threw him. “We are?”

“We’re Tank’s bodyguards this evening.”

Something was very wrong with that sentence. “You mean he’s our bodyguard?”

“No. Somehow he convinced someone somewhere that since he’s now a big deal, he needs a bodyguard tonight. And he volunteered us.”

That did sound like something he might do, but that was a broad category. If someone said he’d held up a bank, punched out a moose, or was really an East German shotput hurler named Helga who defected in the late ‘80’s, none of it would surprise him. Tank was in the rare category of people who could, and probably would, do anything at any time. Many of these people were in prison, but Tank had managed to channel his mischief in more productive ways. Roan wondered if he were one of those people, and then dropped it, as there was only so much self-awareness he could take in one day.

He called Rosenberg’s office and thankfully got one of her assistants, Nariko, who informed him she was in a meeting, so he never had to talk to her (yaay). He just made an appointment for next week, which made Dylan give him the stink eye, but it was a mild stink eye. He figured it was the longest he could push it out before Dylan got mad at him and demanded he reschedule.

On their way to the hospital to visit Oliver, he discussed Abigail’s unusual reaction, and the strong feeling he got that she was hiding something. Dylan instantly said, “She doesn’t want Oliver to know what actually happened to his father. She’s sure you won’t find him because he’s on the East Coast.”

“Or dead.”

“I’m trying to stay positive here, hon.”

“But she’s spending money to confuse the issue. Why?”

Dylan was silent for several seconds, his chocolate eyes staring at nothing, before finally admitting, “No clue. But then again, I’m not sure why she wouldn’t want to tell him in the first place.”

“How does it connect to the deaths?”

“Maybe it doesn’t.”

“Oh, come on.”

“It’s far fetched, granted, but possible. Maybe you need to think of it alone, by itself, and then consider possibilities of connections.”

That was good advice. Focus on one thing, do it in order. You’d think that would be a natural thing to remember, but no, not at the moment. He wanted to blame it on the phantom tumor, but truth be told he simply was getting distracted by other things. He was trying to do a thousand things at once, so he was doing all of them shittily.

Oliver was conscious, and looked like hell, his face as bloated as an overcooked sausage, and almost the same color around his eyes and jaw. His lips were swollen and split, and when he talked it sounded like he was holding several marbles in his mouth. He said he didn’t remember what happened, but Roan knew he was lying. But he was still hurt and slightly drugged, so he decided to just let it go for now. Still, what was with the Jephson family lying to him? He was going to start taking it personally if they kept this up.

He’d never been in the “backstage” area of an arena, and he didn’t know what he expected, but probably not something as prosaic and strangely rusted as what it was. There were narrow corridors and locker rooms that looked as if they’d been state of the art forty years ago, with a faint smell of mildew and man sweat everywhere. The lighting was florescent, and painted harsh lines on the concrete walls and floor, where a threadbare runner of red carpet led from the locker rooms to the ice. With all the guys on the ice for a warm up skate, it seemed spooky, empty, and would actually have been a great place to film a horror movie. Maybe someone had, but he hadn’t seen it.

The guys were mostly professional, the coach out on the ice and telling various players what he wanted out of them, what he needed them to do or not do, and amongst all his big, younger players he stood out like a sore thumb. But he was their boss and they listened, although he had no suggestions for Tank, who shifted playing goal with Ethan, and even took shots at Ethan with a puck, occasionally using his big goalie stick to bounce the puck in the air before batting it at him out of mid-air. Scott chided him for being a show off, and when Jeff jokingly swerved to check Tank like another player, Tank met him with his shoulder and sent him falling on his ass, much to the delight of a few other players watching the Tank show. In spite of the pre-game air, they all seemed pretty relaxed and loose, and since he found some pieces of wood in the empty corridor, he and Dylan drew up signs that they held up during set plays, making everyone laugh. (Dylan’s read “7.2”, while Roan’s read “6.5”.) Occasionally they’d switch signs, or hold them upside down. Grey, skating by, protested, “I did a lot fucking better than a six point five.” So Roan wrote on the back of the sign pi to four digits (“3.1415“), and held it up after he shot a few pucks at the net. Everyone else laughed, and Grey gave him the finger.

It was odd – it was always odd when he was with any of the Falcons – but it was fun. If anyone had ever asked him if he thought a bunch of macho jock hets would be so cool with them, he would have said no, but times were definitely changing. Of course, as Dylan would point out, he might be gay but he was still a fellow macho asshole, so at least they all had that in common.

They ended up behind the Falcons bench, watching the game at eye level, hearing all the trash talk and cringing as the guys threw themselves into other guys and the boards with careless abandon. Sometimes the crowd actually gasped, and the glass and the boards would shake as if in the middle of a minor earthquake. But every time both guys kept playing, reinforcing the idea that hockey players were all fucking nuts, and probably deserved their macho asshole reputation. (Although really, flinging yourself bodily at another man, no matter how hard you did it, seemed a little gay. He mostly kept it to himself, but he whispered it in Grey’s ear after he came off shift and sat on the bench, and Grey started laughing so hard he actually had tears in his eyes. He also had a hard time catching his breath, because most of the guys who came back to the bench were panting. Skating fast and flinging yourself at other guys was apparently quite a workout, and explained why, out of their padding and uniforms, most of these guys were as thin as reeds. And they sweated like fat guys in a superheated sauna.)

Dylan ended up spending most of the game sitting near Ethan, and they ended up hitting it off a great deal, talking about everything from vegetarian cooking (Ethan was a vegetarian – again, who knew?) to the songs of Elliott Smith. At one point, an annoyed player with the name Nilsson stitched on the back of his jersey turned and asked, “Do you guys ever shut up?”

“Nope,” Ethan answered happily, and went on talking.

There was no reason for Ethan to pay any attention. Tank’s final game was a total route, the Falcons won it five to nothing, and while Tank made some spectacular saves (and got himself an assist on Scott’s second goal of the evening), none looked particularly challenging. There were a couple of interesting things that happened, though. A guy named Johnson kept staring at him, and Roan stared back at him until he apologized for being rude, but he’d never met a gay guy before. This led Jeff to sock him in the shoulder, hard enough to make him shout, “Ow!” and almost fall off the bench. Jeff told him not to be a little shit, but he protested he wasn’t, he just hadn’t met a real live gay guy before, and Roan couldn’t help but laugh. Were all straight guys this awkward? Man.

The second interesting thing happened in the middle of the third period, when a puck ricocheted off a stick and came flying towards the Falcons’ bench. The guys ducked out of the way, but Roan caught it before it could hit the glass behind him. The odd thing was Roan had no intension of catching it; he made no decision to even try and get it, and yet the next thing he knew his left hand was stinging like it’d just been run over, and he had an ice cold puck in his palm. He moved it to his right hand and shook out his left, wondering if he broke some bones (not that it was a problem), and wondering when his reflexes got a mind of their own. “Holy shit,” Johnson exclaimed, staring at him wide eyed.

“He’s gonna get your job, Hillie,” Richie said, referring to Ethan.

The trainer offered him an ice pack for his hand, which he declined, and when the other team called a time out and Tank skated up to the bench, he lifted up his mask, grinning like a crazy person, and said, “We should add that catch to the highlight reel.” He wasn’t joking, so in a way he was glad Tank was going to Boston.

After the game, while the guys were showering and dressing, and he and Dyl were loitering in one of the drafty, creepy corridors, his phone rang. If it was Rosenberg, he was going to let it go to his voice mail (damn it, he was having a nice, distracted evening with the Falcons, and he wasn’t going to let it get away from him now), but the phone showed it was Holden, so he answered it. “Yeah?”

“I might have something on the cat killer for you,” he said, with no preamble. Wherever he was, it was loud, and he was pretty sure he recognized the Murder City Devils playing in the background. “But you need to get down to the Dungeon. It’s fetish night, so flash your tats, you’ll get in free.” Before Roan could ask further questions, such as why he was at the Dungeon on fetish night, he’d hung up. Not that he’d be able to hear him very well over “Press Gang”.

Dylan was looking at him with a curiosity tempered with knowing wariness. “Something up?”

“Holden has something for me on another case. But he expects me to go to the Dungeon.”

Dylan knew exactly what that was, and raised his eyebrows. “The S&M club?”

“Apparently it’s fetish night. If I show my tattoos I can get in for free.”

“Ooh, does that include me?” Grey asked, entering the hall. His hair was still wet but slicked back, and he’d changed into dark jeans and a black button down shirt that made him look almost like a normal person. Except the stuffed equipment bag slung over one shoulder, which was so full it looked ready to burst.

“You just won your game. Don’t you wanna go celebrate, have a beer or something? “

“Where we going?” Tank asked, joining him. Scott and Jeff soon followed, with Zack, Richie, and Ethan not far behind.

“You guys aren’t going,” Roan told them.

Grey ignored him, and told the guys, “A place called the Dungeon. Apparently it’s fetish night.”

“Fetish?” asked Jeff warily. “What kinda fetish?”

“Oh cool,” Tank exclaimed. “Fi’s told me all about the Dungeon.” Zack did a double take, but since he was standing behind and to the side of Tank, he didn’t notice.

“This is about a case I’m working,” he explained. “You’re not going with me.” But of course they were, and he knew it even as he insisted they weren’t.

Great. Now he was going to an S&M club with (mostly) straight hockey players to meet a hooker. It sounded like the set up to a porn film.

And come to think of it, it might be more enjoyable if it was.