Declination

by Gregory Ashe

  “Then the Circuit Attorney retires,” Shaw said, “and there’s a special election. Dzeko sees her chance: she makes a deal with Parrish and his friend to commit a series of murders. It looks like a serial killer is at work. Dzeko rides the panic to victory, and one of the first things she does is use her clout to push IA away from Parrish and the others. Roman Stroud, a transient with no good alibi, is picked up and framed for the Slasher killings. The end.”

  “But it’s got to be more complicated than that. Parrish, Waggener, and Taylor, they were strictly small time before this. Nickel Heights was a huge change for them. And then, escalating to the killings as a distraction, helping Dzeko get to power. That’s a new level of play.”

  “The friend,” Shaw said. “The Slasher.”

  “Yes,” North said. “And no. Yes, I think Parrish’s friend, probably the one he met at the McCausland Public House the night Marjorie followed him, I think he was the brains behind this. I think he’s the one who helped Parrish take this operation from kiddie stuff to the big boys. But I don’t think he was the Slasher.”

  “North, I know you think I’m harping on this, but I’m telling you: it wasn’t Taylor, Waggener, or Parrish in that alley with me. It wasn’t.”

  “I don’t know about that. I’m not disagreeing; I’m just saying I don’t know. But I think we have evidence that Parrish’s friend isn’t the Slasher.” North paused. “The tape recording.”

  “What about it?”

  “They were talking about hiring the Slasher, right? Only someone said something about how he was holding out for more money. That doesn’t make any sense; they were trying to hire someone to do these killings. But the friend, it was his plan from the beginning.”

  “So the mysterious friend comes up with a plan for Nickel Heights. Parrish recruits Waggener and Taylor. Then, when they need a distraction to get the heat off, they bring Dzeko in and hire someone to be the Slasher.” Shaw frowned. “That’s it?”

  “Not entirely. Parrish didn’t trust Dzeko; that’s why he recorded the conversation. He hid the recording in his wife’s car, told her to keep the car, and must have told Waggener and the others where it would be if they ever needed it.”

  “Why didn’t they use it? When things fell apart with Dzeko, why not use the recording to keep her quiet?”

  “Because Jadon had already hidden the car. They couldn’t get to the recording, so they had to improvise and frame her for the attack on Jadon.”

  Shaw paused with a spoonful of yogurt. “Here’s another question: why did Parrish use his wife’s car on the nights of the attacks? Why not steal a car? Or steal plates?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Weird, right?”

  North nodded. “He really liked the car. Maybe that’s all it was. Or maybe he thought there was some kind of security because he had the excuse that the car was ‘in for repairs.’ Maybe he thought he could push it off on the repair shop if anyone ever spotted the car. Say somebody else must have been driving.”

  Shaw frowned, the spoon gripped by his teeth, and shrugged. He pulled the spoon out and said, “Then everything’s good for a long time. They’ve got the Nickel Heights money. Roman Stroud took all the heat, and Dzeko quieted the IA stuff. They’re safe.”

  “Until you find the tape with footage of Marjorie Parrish’s car at the scene of a Slasher attack. You start investigating more seriously. You go to Potosi Correctional to see Roman Stroud. They know they’re in trouble, so they try to warn you off by sending Jadon with a message, threatening me.” North spread hummus on a cracker and passed it to Shaw. “Only they didn’t realize they were making a huge mistake. Jadon was hurt. Jadon was scared. But he also wasn’t going to back off. So he started digging. And he found something.”

  “He must have realized Dzeko’s connection the same way I did,” Shaw said. “Ricky wrote a whole chapter in his dissertation about it. And it wouldn’t have been hard to figure out the connection between Parrish, Taylor, and Waggener once he found Marjorie and got her talking. He even realized the car was important somehow and managed to stash it away. Then he came back to the city, did some more digging. Somehow he found this stash of cash.”

  North nodded slowly. “Ok.”

  “I think Jadon made a mistake,” Shaw said. “I think he thought he could scare Dzeko and the others into confessing. But they didn’t fall for it. Dzeko sent Truck to find the money, and Taylor and Waggener must have kidnapped Jadon and tortured him to get the location of the money.”

  “Jadon escaped,” North said. “Somehow. That’s the only reason he’s still alive—he didn’t give up the money. But they must have shot him while he was getting away. By then, they all must have realized they were in trouble. They started turning on each other. The cops framed Dzeko for the assault on Jadon. That’s why someone conveniently found a gun with her prints. Dzeko probably had her own blackmail ready to use against Waggener and Taylor, but by then, Waggener had turned on the others. She killed Taylor. She killed Dzeko. She might have thought she could pin the deaths on us, but we escaped before she could kill us. Kelso and Barr survived as witnesses, and she stuck around looking for the money until the cops picked her up.”

  Shaw bolted upright. “What?”

  “You didn’t hear? They collared Waggener. She was squatting somewhere in North City. She’s in jail waiting for arraignment.”

  For a moment, Shaw seemed to consider this. Then he said, “Cracker.”

  North spread more hummus on a cracker and passed it over. He looked at the duffel bags. “The money. Almost all of this has been about the money. If Jadon hadn’t stolen it, they would have just killed him. It might have ended there. Waggener might not have escalated to killing her partners.” Then North drew in a sharp breath. “Fucking Ronnie.”

  “What about Ronnie?”

  “Ronnie was looking for Truck.”

  “He said he wanted to talk—”

  “Oh, I’m sure he knew Truck had the two million. And I’m sure he would have been happy to take it. But that’s not why he was looking for it. Ronnie wanted Truck because Truck was a loose end.”

  “You think Ronnie was involved in this?” Shaw said. “From the beginning?”

  North couldn’t answer; he was still trying to process the chain of thoughts.

  “You think Ronnie is—” Shaw’s voice wavered. “You think he’s Parrish’s mysterious friend?”

  “I don’t know. Shit, I don’t know. I need to think about this. He might just be a fixer. He might just be . . . helping shut this whole mess down before the real ‘friend’ gets exposed.”

  “So we call Ronnie,” Shaw said. “We give him the money, we explain the game’s over. Everybody except Waggener is dead; there’s nobody left who can talk. Truck walks away.”

  “Shaw, it’s almost two million dollars. And it’s blood money. They stole it—”

  “And Truck got dragged into the middle of it.”

  “Whether Ronnie was involved himself or whether he’s just working as a fixer, he doesn’t deserve to get his hands on blood money.”

  Shaw had a small smile. “You’re starting to sound like me. Fortunately, I had a dramatic change of heart overnight. I’m not saying we drop it, North. I’m just saying we call a truce until we can figure out what’s really going on.”

  North grimaced; he wanted to point out that their best option, currently, would be to track down Ronnie and put a bullet between his eyes. That wasn’t realistic. For a lot of reasons, including some he never wanted to explain to Shaw. So instead, he polished off the box of crackers and argued with Shaw about the shape of a mole on his shoulder and eventually went downstairs.

  Truck was sitting on a banker’s box next to Pari’s chair, hir brow furrowed as ze painted Pari’s nails.

  “Truck needs a job,” Pari said. “And you need more help around this place. Ze’ll start for fifty thousand dollars a year, four weeks of paid vacation, and you and S
haw have really got to reconsider the health plan you offer because—”

  “No,” North said.

  “Ze’s smart, ze’s good at hir job, ze can find things even you and Shaw can’t find.”

  “No.”

  “Well, say something,” Pari said, whacking Truck’s knee. Truck just stuck the tip of hir tongue between hir teeth and looked like ze was trying hard not to let the paint smear on Pari’s nail. “I shouldn’t have to defend you.”

  “I’d be super loyal,” Truck said. “I’d never, ever, ever think about selling you guys out. Well, maybe, if it were like a billion dollars and I was ready to retire, but—”

  “Truck, how do you feel about being broke again?”

  “Ah, man. I was going to use that money to buy Pari a new car.”

  “Here’s the plus side,” North said. “You get to keep living.”

  Truck sniffed. “Does he always walk around without a shirt on?”

  “Unfortunately,” Pari said. “Shaw makes him feel incredibly sexy, and then the rest of us have to see all . . . that.” She gestured with her free hand. “Like he’s never heard of a razor.”

  North crossed his arms. “I’m making that phone call, Truck. Say goodbye to the money and hello to a few more weeks of living, if Pari doesn’t kill you first.”

  “See if somebody can get you in for a waxing,” Pari called after him. “Shaw’s going to get lost on his next blond bush safari.”

  “You’re fired,” North said as he slammed the door to the inner office.

  At some point, his chair had fallen over, so North put it to rights and then played with the cord on the landline phone. This was the end of it. Everybody who mattered to the investigation was dead or locked up: Parrish, Waggener, Taylor, even Marjorie. The last thing to take care of was the money. He picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Hi, Dad,” North said. “I’ve got what Ronnie wants. Will you have him call me?”

  Chapter 35

  THE NEXT WEEK went by in a blur. Shaw didn’t want the time to slip away, but the first few days were swallowed up in sleeping and eating, recovering from the demands of the case, and in hiding from the press as stories about the Slasher and police corruption went local, then national, gaining the kind of momentum that a slow news cycle only exacerbates. Shaw spent those golden hours with North: touching him, cuddling with him, getting wrecked by him—and doing a fair bit of wrecking himself, Shaw was proud to say. And then, after those first few days, they had to ease themselves back into real life. North set himself the goal of housebreaking the puppy. Shaw set himself the goal of naming the puppy, but North shot down everything he suggested. And then, slowly, the media frenzy died, and North and Shaw went back to work. They sent out invoices. They learned one of the costs of focusing on the Slasher.

  “I’m sorry,” Shaw said for what felt like the hundredth time.

  North just shook his head. “I think they were on the fence about the whole thing anyway. We’ll find someone else.”

  “Washington Strategic—” Shaw began.

  “—isn’t the only company that needs private investigators. We’ll keep working. We’ve got more work than we can handle as it is.” He lifted a stack of phone messages. “At least ten of these are about ‘hot tips,’” he drew the air quotes around the words, “on other serial killers. The rest of them run the gamut: infidelity, stolen property, missing persons, wrongful death. We’re not going to run out of clients for a long time.”

  “But we were going to go national,” Shaw said. “We were going to sit back and get rich.”

  “You’re already rich,” North said with a shrug. “And I think I’d be shit at it. I guess I’ll just have to keep working.”

  “We’ll just have to keep working.”

  North gave one of those tiny, unreadable smiles and went back to typing.

  At the end of that week, Shaw made a decision. He showered. He dressed. When he went into the living room, North was cross-legged on the couch, flipping through a book on blood spatter while the puppy slept contentedly in his lap. He glanced up, raised an eyebrow, and whistled.

  “A tie-dye shirt and velour track pants and—are those gladiator sandals? Where are you going? The Four Seasons?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I think the Pope is coming into town soon. Don’t you want to save this outfit for a personal audience?”

  “The pants are really comfortable, and I wanted the shirt to have something bright and happy.”

  “Right. Bright and happy. Comfortable. Not, like, oh, what a clown might look like if it went through a blender.”

  “I think it looks good.”

  “You look great.”

  “Then don’t make stupid jokes.”

  “I just get worried.”

  Shaw frowned. He was trying not to take the bait, but after a moment he said, “Worried?”

  “Well, I don’t know how you’ll feel when they run the ‘Who Wore It Best?’ with you and Queen Elizabeth in this exact same outfit.”

  “I don’t know why that puppy likes you so much. I don’t know why I like you so much.”

  North gave a wicked grin. “Give me five minutes inside those velour track pants and I’ll remind you.”

  “I think I’m going to see Jadon in the hospital.”

  “He’s conscious?”

  Shaw shook his head.

  For a moment, North said nothing. Then he gently ran his hands under the puppy, lifting him out of his lap and settling him on the couch. He unfolded his legs and rose, and then he came over and wrapped his arms around Shaw.

  “Are you mad?” Shaw asked.

  North just tightened his hug.

  “It’s not because I’m in love with him.”

  North buried his face in the crook of Shaw’s neck.

  “I just want to see him. I feel like . . . I feel like this is my fault.”

  North bit him. Hard.

  “Ow. Jesus, North, what the—” Shaw tried to wriggle free, but North just held him tighter.

  Then, turning his mouth up to Shaw’s ear, North whispered, “You can go see him.”

  “I don’t need your permission.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m a grown man.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “Controlling relationships are a form of abuse.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I know it’s not my fault,” Shaw said, his voice breaking. “I know it’s not. But it is, too, because I asked him for help, because I got him into this, because if they hadn’t used Jadon to send that threat he never would have gotten involved.”

  North ran his thumb under Shaw’s eye, collecting a tear. “Do you want me to bite you again?”

  “What? No.”

  “Then quit saying stupid things.”

  “I just feel—ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, Jesus Christ!

  North pulled back, wiping his mouth, his eyes wide and innocent.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  He smiled. “Let me get my boots.”

  They drove to Barnes-Jewish; Shaw thought he remembered the way, but when they got to the room, they found it empty. Then they had to go back and navigate a web of desks and nurses and stations and charts until, finally, they were standing on the other side of the hospital, on a different floor, outside another room. The door was closed, and for a long while, they just stood there, North’s arm across Shaw’s shoulders.

  “Maybe he’s sleeping,” Shaw said.

  “He’s unconscious. He’s always sleeping.”

  “Maybe we should come back another time.” Shaw checked the hall, but there were no windows. “It’s getting dark. I bet it’s already totally dark. Maybe we should come back when it’s daytime.”

  “Not sure that makes a big difference to a guy in a coma.”

  “Well, maybe I should get those bites checked out first. You know the human mouth has a lot of b
acteria, and I don’t want them to get infected just because you have a dirty mouth.”

  Shaw turned, intent on finding a nurse who could look at the bites, but North grabbed the tie-dyed shirt. “Uh uh.”

  “It’s a real risk, North.”

  “You never minded my dirty mouth before.”

  “Yes, well, um. That’s not exactly the same.”

  “I’m going to go buy us some snacks.”

  “A Coke?”

  North fixed him with a flat stare. “I’m going to go buy us some snacks,” he repeated. “You probably want something stupid like an Almond Joy or a little packet of yogurt-covered raisins or something like that, right?”

  “Almond Joys are delicious.”

  “You go on in, Shaw. That’s the whole reason we came. And when you’re done, come out here, and I’ll have a treat for you.”

  “You sound like you’re talking to a little kid.”

  North shrugged.

  “I’m not a kid. I’m a grown—”

  “I know, you’re a grown man, we talked about this.” North spun him around, swatted his butt, and shoved him toward Jadon’s room. “It was very cute the first time.”

  North stood there like he could outwait God, so after another moment, Shaw opened the door and stepped into the hospital room. He shut the door behind him, standing in darkness, and then he heard North’s boots thump away in search of snacks.

  The only light in the room came through the blinds, filtering an urban wasteland’s light into the room: rods of gray that made the room look like a prison cell more than anything else. As Shaw’s eyes adjusted, he picked out the hospital bed, the nightstand, the molded plastic chairs, a door that led to a bathroom, a TV mounted in one corner. Shaw picked his way between the bed and the chairs, flicked on the lamp, and angled the bulb up and away. It gave a gauzy yellow glow to the room that, Shaw hoped, wouldn’t bother Jadon. Then he sat.