Declination

by Gregory Ashe

  “She’s still got friends. They made sure things moved fast so she wouldn’t have to spend more than one night in jail.” Coker tilted her head. “Did she shoot that cop?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Not at all.”

  “This is all very cute,” Coker said after a moment. “The fishnet. The bootie shorts. And if you really were involved in those other cases, then you might have something legitimate to offer me. But we’re not going to get anywhere if you always want to be the cat and I have to be the mouse.”

  “I never liked cats.”

  “How about dogs?”

  “I’ve got a dog fucking up my life every way from Sunday. Don’t get me started on dogs.” North blew out a breath. “All right. Just one question, and then I’ll tell you. Are you for real?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Your reporting, going after corruption among the Metropolitan Police, the stories you print. Are you serious about that?”

  At the counter, the barista was muttering something about cockteases, and the molded plastic Cher hummed behind North. Coker reached up to check her ponytail of silver-blond hair. Then she pulled her phone out of her purse and tapped the screen, turning it toward North as she scrolled through a series of photos.

  The first showed a red Toyota crossover with the word CUNT scratched into the paint. “That was after I printed a story about a desk sergeant who was forcing girls to have sex with him when they got picked up and were in holding.” Three pictures followed in rapid succession, displaying broken windows. “That was after I printed a story about claims that vice detectives were skimming drugs and money from busts.” The next image took North a moment to process because it was a picture of a picture; someone had snapped a shot through a window, where the curtains didn’t quite meet, and the image was of a blond girl of eight or nine pulling on pajamas. “That happened after I printed the Nieman story. She’s my niece.”

  “That’s what you meant by dirty pictures?”

  “They’ve got some of me getting out of the shower. And some of me getting my mind blown by a Brazilian capoeira instructor I spent a weekend with.” She flicked fingers dismissively. “They’ve already posted them to a few of those hate porn and revenge porn sites.”

  “And the scary phone calls?”

  “Muffled voices. Threats. I’m a big girl.”

  “Is your niece ok?”

  Coker looked up and away, her gaze shifting to the illuminated Cher icon, and she swallowed once. “She’s fine.”

  “That’s why you printed the Nieman article separate from your work on the city cops. That’s why it’s just a stub, no follow-up.”

  More huffing and bustling and clinking came from the barista. North barely heard him; his attention rested on Coker, on the way she slowly closed her eyes and slowly opened them again and pushed the cappuccino away without looking away from Cher’s glowing face. The rattle of ceramic sent North’s pulse skyrocketing.

  “Here it is,” North said. And he told her. Not all of it, not Shaw’s name, not Shaw’s history with the Slasher. But enough. He told her about the video footage they had recovered from Regina, and about the license plates registered to a cop’s widow named Marjorie Parrish, about how Parrish had vanished when they went looking for her, and Shaw’s visit to the man convicted of the Slasher killings, and how he had died the night before Shaw drove down to Potosi Correctional Center. North told her about Waggener and Taylor and the drugs that Shep Collins had been moving through Iris. And he told her about Jadon showing up with a warning carved into his chest. But North didn’t tell her about the photograph of himself that had been pinned to Jadon’s shirt. He wasn’t sure why, but that felt like too much.

  “I can’t do this with a cappuccino that tastes like a club kid’s jockstrap,” was all Coker said, and she plucked the cigarette from North’s fingers.

  So they went outside and stood in September light that seemed harsh after the ruddy glow of an illuminated Cher. Even the shadows outside seemed harsh. Coker lit the American Spirit and took a long drag on it; she passed it without asking, and North puffed twice, liking how the smoke untwisted a knot inside him.

  “The thing with Dzeko is that it doesn’t make any sense,” Coker said as she took the cigarette back.

  “Why?”

  “Do you know her?”

  “We’ve met. We’ve done some work for her office.”

  “And?”

  “She’s tough. She’s good at her job, or that’s how it seems anyway.”

  “Most guys would say she’s a ballbuster.”

  “That’s because most guys can’t stand a woman who’s smarter than they are.”

  Coker blew out a thin stream of smoke and waved the cigarette’s bright tip through it. “You just described all three of my divorces and about eight years of therapy.”

  “My boyfriend’s into that stuff, therapy; some of it rubs off after a while.”

  With a laugh, Coker said, “Dzeko is tough. Really, she is. And it’s a bad world to be a tough woman in.”

  “But she’s flexible, too,” North said. “Smart and willing to work with people. She made a deal with one of our friends and dropped some charges in exchange for information he had about some break-ins.” North hesitated and then gambled. “Maybe the break-ins had something to do with dirty cops. How does that sound?”

  Coker drew deeply on the cigarette. She let out the smoke with a drawn-out, knowing noise.

  “That’s her reputation, right?” North said. “She’s a cop-hunter. She’s building her career on that, on going after corruption in the force. Jadon told us that. Then the next day, Jadon’s in the hospital, lucky to be alive. Lucky if he lives through the next few days, if we’re honest.”

  “That’s what you’ve got to decide.”

  North nodded slowly. “Either Dzeko’s being framed by the same cops who wanted to keep Jadon quiet, or she’s corrupt herself, and she was trying to silence Jadon.”

  An ancient Cadillac rolled past the alley where they stood; a heavy bassline thudded from behind darkened glass. The breeze shifted, carrying the crisp scent of autumn air and a light, floral perfume from Coker that mixed pleasantly with the raw tobacco of the American Spirit she still held.

  “The Nieman article,” Coker said like it was a full sentence.

  North nodded.

  Coker drew again on the cigarette. She exhaled. The cloud of smoke swallowed her for an instant, and then the breeze began to carry it away. She spoke through the dissipating screen. “The husband refused to believe it was a suicide.”

  “I read that.”

  “And you know who investigated it?”

  “Detectives Taylor and Waggener,” North said.

  “Detectives Taylor and Waggener. From the Metropolitan LGBT task force.”

  “Hilda—”

  She stabbed the cigarette as though punctuating something. “I can tell you two things.”

  “Ok.”

  “I’ve got more than just my niece.”

  “Ok.”

  “I’ve got my mother to think about. I’ve got a younger sister. I’ve got friends.”

  “Ok.”

  She shook her head. She was crying, and she scrubbed the tears away and took short, angry puffs of the cigarette. “It’s not ok. It’s not fucking ok.” Then she scrubbed at her face again, and now she didn’t look like she was still winning the battle against fifty. “Two things, and then I’m gone, and fuck your exclusive, fuck this whole conversation, do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Anna Dzeko came up in the Circuit Attorney’s office right when the Slasher killings were getting started. A special election, in fact, because the previous Circuit Attorney had to step down for health reasons. But that’s not the coincidence that’s interesting. Back then, I didn’t know Anna Dzeko from the girl running the Xerox machine. Back then, I
was working a story about corruption inside the Vice squad. I had a source who was sure that Internal Affairs was on to something serious, something big. There was a bust in a neighborhood called Nickel Heights. A lot of drugs went missing. A lot of money went missing. Somewhere in the millions, if you can believe that. Somewhere in the hundreds of millions, actually. I did some guesstimates. You want to know how much I think disappeared?”

  North nodded.

  “Five hundred million dollars. Cash and drugs. And do you know what happened after it disappeared?”

  North barely heard the question; he was thinking again about the drugs that Shep Collins had been moving, the bribes he must have been paying, the cops who had gotten angry when North and Shaw investigated too closely. He knew the answer to Coker’s question, though. “Gay men started dying.”

  “Gay men started getting cut up and left in pieces in the Central West End. And suddenly nobody cared about a corruption case, nobody cared about drugs going missing or cash disappearing or dealers who claimed their stash had been raided. Hate crimes sold more papers, drew more attention, got eyes all across the country on our city. The focus had to be damage control; even more than stopping the Slasher, the most important thing was keeping the Metropolitan Police from falling on their fat faces.”

  “So they made the LGBT task force,” North said.

  “And who got transferred over from Vice?”

  North already knew; Jadon had told him and Shaw a few months before. “Waggener and Taylor.”

  Coker nodded. Her tears had stopped; salt tracks marked the corners of her eyes. When she sucked on the cigarette again, her cheeks were hollow.

  “And the other thing?” North said, still trying to think it all through, still trying to think if what she was saying might mean what he thought it meant.

  “The other thing,” Coker said, passing the cigarette to North, her face lighting up like a sunset when he drew hard on the American Spirit and the tip flared, “is I can tell you where Jadon Reck was attacked, who found him, and all about the gun that Anna Dzeko supposedly used to try to kill him.”

  Chapter 20

  NORTH DROVE TOWARD the address Coker had given him, not even pausing to change out of the disguise, and he called Shaw on the way. Outside, St. Louis dissolved into the broken landscape of North City, miles and miles spangled with brown glass and flattened cans of Natty Light and bits of automobile chrome. After eight rings, the call went to voicemail.

  “I got a possible location for where Jadon was shot,” North said. “Call me back. I want to check it out.”

  At the next stoplight, North checked the messages that had come in while he’d been talking to Coker. A text about the electric bill at his duplex. A text from Shaw with a set of GPS coordinates—these opened in Google Maps to the same address North was headed to. Was Shaw already on his way there? Was that why he wasn’t answering his phone? And then a third message, from a number North didn’t recognize. The words, however, made the sender clear.

  You owe me Patrick Monaghan.

  Uncle Ronnie wasn’t going to give up just because North ignored him. North tossed the phone onto the GTO’s passenger seat, and the traffic light turned green. As he set his foot on the gas, the phone buzzed to life, with Pari’s name appearing on the screen.

  “What is it?”

  “Um, North. Hi.” In the background of the call, something rumbled. “You know how I made all those photocopies just like you asked and I never even complained even though it was a Friday and it was quitting time?”

  “It was 2:30pm,” North said. “And you’d clocked in at 1pm.”

  “And remember how I bought you that handkerchief that matches your eyes, and you never used it, even though gay guys love putting handkerchiefs in their pockets, and I never said anything even though I bought it for you special?”

  “I think you’ve been reading too many books about gay guys in the 80s.” A crash came across the line. “Pari, what’s going on?”

  “And remember how you promised I could have two weeks unpaid vacation after I got stabbed, but I never took any time off? I came in and did my job, North. I was here the day after they released me from the hospital.”

  “You came in for thirty minutes, Pari. You were looking for a cupcake you’d left in your desk, and we found a million ants, and then you cried until Shaw went and bought you a piece of gooey butter cake.”

  “And he took a bite out of it, North.” She said the words with righteous indignation. “Right out of the corner.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Wait.” The line practically crackled with Pari’s nerves. “I think you should come back here.” Something thudded on her side of the call. “Right now, North. I think you should come back right now. And I, um, I’m taking those two weeks off now. Until he’s normal again. Maybe it’s his hair, right? Maybe it just needs to grow back and then he’ll be normal again.”

  North swore; at the next intersection, he swung a u-turn and headed back the way he had come. “What’s wrong with Shaw?”

  “I don’t know. When he came in, he seemed pretty happy. He was talking a lot. About the office and how he wanted to redecorate. And about starting his own interior design business. And about making his own paint from mineral oil. But then he—I don’t know. He was in the office for a while. All by himself, you know, but I guess he was on the phone because he started yelling. And then he ran out of the office and started pulling things off my desk, telling me he’d . . . he’d figured out where I was hiding it. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be hiding. I mean, I have that box of Twinkies behind the back drawer, but I don’t think he knows about them. And before I could ask him what he was doing, he ran through the kitchen and upstairs.” Another thud came across the line. “And now he’s doing something up there. And he’s still talking, but it’s too much. I want to go home, North. I don’t like it.” Her voice shrank. “He’s scaring me.”

  “Did he have anything with him when he came back to the office?”

  “How did you know that?”

  At the end of the next block, North ignored the stop sign and stomped on the gas. The GTO launched forward. “Because this is junior year all over again. What did he have?”

  “A couple twelve-packs of Coca Cola.”

  “Aww, fuck. Don’t leave until I get there, ok?”

  “No, I’m just going to grab my purse and—”

  “Don’t, Pari. Please. He won’t hurt you, but he might do something stupid. Just make sure he doesn’t decide his hand would be better with a magnet inside it or that he could dry his clothes faster by running an electric current directly through them or whatever other bullshit ideas he has.”

  Glass shattered on Pari’s end of the call. “I’m not going up there.”

  “Just stand in the kitchen and listen. If you think he’s doing something stupid, call me back.”

  North pushed the GTO, breaking traffic laws and smashing speed limits. He rolled down the windows, and the cool air of the late September day washed through the car, carrying an autumn smell of fallen leaves. He turned on the radio, scanned all the way from the public radio station to the Top 40 at the high end of the band, and then punched it off again. At Shaw’s house, he pulled into the garage, killed the GTO, and barely slowed down long enough to slap the remote and start the garage door rolling shut before he rushed into the house.

  Pari was in the kitchen, holding a chef’s knife pointed toward the stairs. Today, the bindi was lilac, and her long, dark hair was gathered into a complicated braid.

  “You don’t need that,” North said, brushing past her.

  “I took it away from him,” Pari said. She dropped the knife in the sink, where it disappeared into a dirty scum of old water and Pine-Sol. When she pressed her hands to her face, North could see the tremors she was trying to hide. “He came down here and started talking about how he was going to give the dog a haircut.”


  “Did he give you any trouble?”

  “No. He just . . . he just ran back upstairs and said something about scissors.”

  “You’ve seen him amped up before.”

  Her answer was a whisper. “Not like this.”

  “Go home,” North said. “He’s fine. He’s just being an asshole.”

  “No, I’ll stay.”

  “Go home.”

  “I’m trying to work overtime this week.”

  “Pari, go home. Please.”

  “I’m not useless. Ever since I got hurt, you and Shaw treat me like I’m made of glass. But I’m not. I’m better. And I’m not useless. I stayed, didn’t I? I made sure he was ok, right?”

  North hesitated on the steps; he went back and touched her shoulders, and Pari shivered and turned away from him.

  “We know you’re not useless. We never thought anything like that. And you did a great job making sure Shaw didn’t do anything stupid. Well, stupider than normal.”

  Pari sniffed. “I want dental benefits. And I want my own office and a company car and—”

  “You can have the afternoon off,” North said. “And I’ll bring you a cruller tomorrow.”

  “Two crullers. And an iced coffee with coconut milk. And a bear claw.” Pari seemed to think. “And a pumpkin scone.”

  “I’ll bring you five fucking pumpkin scones. Just go home.”

  “No, I just want the one. If I have five, Shaw might try to—”

  North didn’t wait to hear the rest. He took the stairs, two and three at a time, hating the sound of his heavy tread. At the top of the steps, the door was closed. He tapped the wood.

  Something thunked inside the room, and Shaw said, “Ow.”

  “Shaw? Can I come in?”

  The old floor creaked as North shifted his weight. Outside, kids were shouting, and then a bat cracked against a ball. A cheer went up, and then an explosion of shouted instructions to run, dive, go back. North tapped the wood again. Silence. He opened the door.

  Shaw’s bedroom looked like junior year all over again. The mattress and box spring were standing on their sides, exposing dust bunnies, a box of condoms, and a bottle of red yeast pills. The bed frame was on the opposite side of the room, forming a rough lean-to with two dressers that Shaw had pulled away from the walls. Sheets printed with Kim Possible hung across the bed frame, creating a kid’s fort in the middle of the room. Everywhere else, debris marked Shaw’s passage: open books and half-ripped shirts and a bowl with uncooked ramen noodles. It was Shaw’s normal chaos multiplied by ten.