Irregulars

“Anything else on the agenda for this evening?” Gunther asked.
“On demand and a shower for me. Unless you feel up to interrogating vampires after nightfall. In which case you’re free to take the rental.” Keith wiggled the key fob at Gunther.
“Actually, I was hoping to borrow the car to pick up a box of legendary Bauer & Bullock feijoa jam alfajores. Apparently, they’re the most addictive cookie ever made. I need to bring back a farewell gift for another agent.”
“Someone retiring?” Keith had often wondered where old agents went to retire once their crime-fighting days were over.
“No, just moving. Promoted to directing the Vancouver field office. You might remember him from last year’s Cookie Jamboree? His name was Rake? Great big fellow?”
Keith had a sharp recollection of an enormous hulk of a man hanging around near the cookie decorations eating sprinkles and silver dragees when he thought no one was looking.
“The mountain with the sweet tooth.”
Gunther chuckled. “Right. He was my first partner when I was a rookie. He loves these cookies with a profane passion.”
“I’ve never heard of them, but I’m not really a big bakery guy.”
“They’re actually sold at a steakhouse. It’s supposed to have an excellent bar as well. If you’d like to come along, I’ll buy you a drink for keeping me company.”
Keith hesitated. Although he’d have never admitted it to anyone, Gunther scared him. And not just because he had turned out to be a goblin. Keith wanted Gunther and that desire had led him to break two cardinal rules he’d long held sacred—never date anybody twice and never stay friends with a guy who dumps you. Keith didn’t want to be a chump all over again.
Apparently sensing his reluctance, Gunther said, “Or I could drop you off at the hotel if you’d like.”
“Hotel sounds good. I’m beat.” Keith tossed him the keys and headed to the passenger side.
As he pulled up to the curb in front of the hotel Gunther said, “I’ll be having a drink there anyway. You could come by if you change your mind.”
Keith gave a noncommittal nod and left.
Once he’d made it back to his hotel room and gotten through a dicey, but necessary, cold shower, he had time to regret his decision. He decided that, on closer reflection, he did want a drink.
Maybe, he thought, he could still catch Gunther at the steakhouse if he took a cab there.
Finding Bauer & Bullock’s webpage was easy. It was splashy with a lot of photo carousels showing beef searing on different apparatuses. The one hundred and forty-three seat restaurant was apparently the choice for the Portland business diner looking to impress a client. Keith had always hated joints like these, even before he’d become a vegetarian. White guys in business suits eating slabs of meat and steak frites while talking about money always curtailed his appetite.
But Gunther had gone there, so now Keith wanted to be there too. He decided to check out the bar menu.
Pleasantly, though somewhat predictably, the website informed him that the bar stocked over five hundred different whiskies. He picked up his phone and was just about to dial Gunther when the image on the carousel changed from a sizzling grill to a photograph of the owner.
The face was familiar but her name even more so: Cindy Bullock, wife of Trent Bullock, whom Keith had arrested for cannibalism less than a year before.
He decided to pass on the whisky after all.
  Chapter Four  
Gunther arrived at Keith’s hotel room early the next day. The coffee maker had just started to gurgle and fill the hotel room with the scent of morning. Keith had neither dressed nor shaved and still wore the ragged old Misfits T-shirt and shorts he’d slept in.
“I just got an email from the lab.” Gunther set his laptop down on the small hotel desk. “The blood sample taken from the mop head at Lulu’s Flapjack Shack contained a mixture of human and bovine blood,” he said.
“So the killer is stretching one with the other?” Keith set about making coffee.
“Or there might have been two separate sources of blood,” Gunther said. “In addition to that, traces of methotrexate were present throughout the fibers, which would indicate that it has been combined with the blood mixture,” Gunther went on.
“Is that some sort of exotic new food additive?”
“It’s a prescription drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.”
“Weird.” Keith hunted through the cupboards for coffee cups. “I don’t know what to make of that at all.”
“Nor do I.”
“Did you get your cookies?”
“Last box of the night,” Gunther said.
“How did the restaurant seem?” Keith poured two cups of coffee and pulled the room’s remaining chair up alongside his partner.
“Busy. Crowded bar.” Gunther glanced up. “I sat down and had a superb whisky sour. When you failed to appear to keep me company I decided to while away the time google-stalking you on my phone.”
“Why?”
“Idle curiosity.” Gunther’s response came with such flirtatious ease that Keith initially mistook it for sarcasm.
“Did you stumble across anything good?”
“Your freshman yearbook photo. And a fine mullet you had then too. I particularly like the vaguely stoned look on your face and the ripped Whitesnake concert tee.” Gunther looked pointedly at Keith’s Misfits shirt. “Good to know you haven’t changed too much.”
Keith momentarily choked, embarrassed by the accuracy of the statement, but he recovered. “I was also wearing red parachute pants, but you can’t see those.”
“Nice.” Gunther smiled. “Do you still listen to metal?”
“Sometimes.” Keith took a sip of his coffee. Too harsh. He returned to the counter to swirl more sugar in.
“I always wanted to make some kind of rebellious adolescent statement on school photo day but never had the nerve,” Gunther said. “I was always afraid that if I was anything but absolutely harmless and normal I’d be found out, charged with breaking the Secrecy Act, and sent away.”
Keith was ashamed to realize that he’d never thought of what it must be like to grow up with that kind of isolation. Sure, he’d had the experience of hiding the fact that he was gay from people, but that was different. At any point he’d had the freedom to tell anyone which gender he preferred to sleep with. The Secrecy Act mandated silence on pain of deportation.
Lamely, Keith said, “That must have been rough.”
“It’s a unique way to experience childhood.” Gunther’s tone told him nothing.
“Don’t feel bad. My wearing a Whitesnake T-shirt was more an act of laziness than rebellion.”
“For you, maybe, but my mother dressed me in slacks and a tie every day of my freshman year,” Gunther said. “My classmates all thought I was a Mormon.”
“I imagine you learned to fight pretty early, dressed like that.”
“Some, but I also became adept at hiding other clothes in my backpack and changing in gas station bathrooms.” Gunther punched a couple of keys and entered the NIAD database. “I never really had to learn to fight so much as how not to kill people. Humans are fragile.”
Keith’s discomfort rose to an intolerable level. He wondered what offhanded remarks he had made about goblins. Had he called them butchers? Animals? Sick fucks? Any or all of those pejoratives was possible. He hadn’t been in a good way when he’d met Gunther before—angry and full of rancor.
He sat down on the bed and said, “I did look up the address of the bar you were at.”
“You did?” Gunther’s expression brightened briefly before dimming again. “But you didn’t come.”
“It’s not because of you,” Keith said quickly. “It’s because of the restaurant’s owner. Bring up Trent Bullock’s file in the NIAD base and you’ll see what I mean.”
Gunther complied and took a few minutes to read through the details of Keith’s recent bust.
“So although the meat that these people had been eating was goblin sourced, the diners were all human?” Gunther finally asked.