Free Infected: Shift by Andrea Speed Page B

custody of their two kids, Zachary and Ashley (seven and five, respectively). What little he’d been able to turn up seemed ugly and awful. Roan was inclined to believe April, and Switzer wanting the kids? Pure power play and vindictiveness on his part. If he was a little despot, he’d want to control every fucking thing. Maybe he loved his kids, and Roan rather hoped he did, but possession of them would only be a tool to hurt his wife. He’d seen guys like Switzer too many times to think anything they did was ever as straightforward as it seemed.
     
    Kevin knew someone at the Eastgate PD, and it was through her that he got word that Switzer was technically on leave from the department, mainly while investigation of his supposed use of other cops to stalk his wife was going on, but this same friend said it was known that Switzer was still hanging around on Carson Street, which was part of his old beat. It was also three blocks away from where Jasmine lived and was killed, which was a hell of a coincidence. So he got everything he could on this guy and prepared to track him down.
     
    Roan felt like a good fight today.
     
    He showered and dressed, going for a casual wardrobe of jeans and a T-shirt, leather jacket and leather boots. He grabbed his Vancouver Canucks baseball cap so he could hide his hair (that was the problem with having such a distinctive shade of reddish-brown) and found a pair of absurdly black sunglasses in his top drawer. Undercover wear, only he didn’t think he’d have to be too inconspicuous. He thought about it for a long minute before grabbing his Sig Sauer and his belt holster. He doubted he’d have to use it, but best be prepared. He was glad Dylan was still asleep and didn’t see him put it on or grab his gear bag containing his camera with the telephoto lens and the directional mike.
     
    He decided to take the GTO and drove out toward the Eastgate precinct, wondering if the whole place could be rotten. If this was the ’60s or ’70s, maybe, but cop shops had gone a long way toward reform for a very good reason: nobody liked a bad image. And through allowing corruption, racism, sexism, and homophobia to run rampant, it diminished everyone and everything associated with law enforcement. They’d come a long way, but you had to be pretty naïve to think you still wouldn’t run into these types. Hell, wasn’t it one of those “bag a fag” stings that had caught Larry Craig? Taxpayer money spent on trying to catch consenting adults having sex while you had a less than fifty percent chance that the guy who broke into your house and stole your stuff would ever get caught. Fucking amazing, some people’s priorities.
     
    He knew from Switzer’s DMV file (okay, so technically he shouldn’t have been able to see that…) that he was driving an ’09 Ford Ranger, and he’d just turned the corner on Carson Street when he saw a black Ranger pull out into the intersection up ahead. He confirmed two of the letters on the plate matched Switzer’s and decided just to follow him and see where he went.
     
    If he was honest with himself, he had no idea why he was following Switzer, except he wanted to start some shit. He was away from Carson Street, so he couldn’t catch him in the act of trying to extort sex from a prostitute… unless he was going to do this same shit on another corner. Surely his beat didn’t start and end at one. Okay, now he had a reason beyond simply starting shit with King Asshole.
     
    Except after ten minutes, he knew he was kidding himself. Switzer went out onto the freeway going south, so far out of his area he was crossing jurisdictions, but Roan decided to follow him anyways. After what Holden and Kevin had told him, and what he could find himself, he just wanted to sit this guy down, talk calmly and rationally, and then beat him so bad his grandkids would be born dizzy and bleeding from the eyeballs. Some people were such pieces of shit you had no idea why they