Redirection

by Gregory Ashe

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Slooves, my name is North McKinney. This is my partner, Shaw Aldrich. I’m sure this is a difficult time for you, and I’m sorry for your loss, but we need to talk to you about your husband’s death.”

  “You are police?”

  “No, we’re private investigators, but we have been talking to the police—”

  “No,” Jean said and shut the door.

  The deadbolt thudded home a moment later.

  “Well,” North said, “fuck.”

  “Maybe she went to get us some nice, cold lemonade.” Shaw rapped on the door. “I’ll let her know that she accidentally closed the door.”

  “And accidentally threw the bolt.”

  After a few more moments of knocking, Shaw frowned and said, “Maybe she forgot.”

  The sun was scorching the back of North’s neck. “Maybe.”

  “You know, North, I don’t think she’s coming back.”

  North sighed and headed back to the GTO. “The worst part is I can’t even tell anymore when you’re being serious.”

  North might have imagined the gleam-and-vanish of Shaw’s grin.

  They climbed into the car, and this time, North took the wheel. As he followed the drive back to the street, he said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to be a surveyor—”

  “No fair! I want to be the sexy surveyor.”

  “For the last fucking time, not every disguise is sexy.”

  “Yes. They are.” Shaw ticked them off on his fingers. “Sexy bean sorter, sexy Porta Potty delivery guy, sexy Victorian chimney sweep, sexy Subway sandwich artist—”

  “They were just disguises. Except the chimney sweep. That was only because you lied and said everyone dressed up when they went to listen to the carolers in Old Town St. Charles. None of them was sexy anything.”

  “Please.” The word was filled with scorn. “Sexy bean sorter licked his fingertip every time he sorted a bean, and sexy Porta Potty guy—”

  “Fine. You can be the surveyor. The hardhat and hi-vis vest are on the floor behind my seat. There should be a clipboard too.”

  Instead of turning to get them, though, Shaw peeled himself out of his shirt. Then he squirmed halfway into the back of the car, digging through the junk that had accumulated there.

  North slowed for a stop sign and took advantage of the opportunity to pants Shaw.

  “Oh my God!” Shaw dropped back into the front seat, yanking his pants back up. “You can’t do that!”

  “Give me a break. You spend ninety percent of your life naked. One time I had to make you put on boxers before you went to class.”

  “It was art studio!”

  “Yeah, well, it was about to become a pornographer’s den. Anyway, you’ve got a cute butt, and it’s been a minute since I saw it.”

  “You told me there are laws! When I was doing air-bath gardening, you dragged me inside and said Mrs. Rodriguez was going to get me hauled off to jail.”

  “She would have if I hadn’t paid her fifty bucks and told her you’d take her trash down to the street every week.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I know. I did it for you.”

  With a wary eye on North, Shaw leaned between the seats and snatched up the vest, hat, and clipboard. As he pulled them on, North signaled and turned. He stopped at the end of the next block.

  Adjusting the vest over his bare chest, Shaw looked at the clipboard and the hat. “What do I do now?”

  “One of those things goes on your head.”

  Shaw balanced the clipboard on his head.

  For some reason North couldn’t explain, that made him smile. He tried to wipe it off his face as he snatched the clipboard away and jammed the hat down on Shaw’s head. Then he kissed Shaw. He meant it to be fun and light, goofy the way Shaw was being goofy, but it turned into something else, with a kind of need North hadn’t even known he was feeling. He slid a hand under the vest, thumbing Shaw’s nipple.

  “Get in the back seat,” North said in a thick voice. “We’ll be fast.”

  Shaw licked his lips. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think—I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  A Lexus rolled past them. The woman driving was working on her lipstick; she didn’t even see them. A little boy in the backseat was whacking an iPad against the headrest as hard as he could.

  “We’re working,” Shaw said softly. “And I don’t think that you’re emotionally—”

  “Ok, then get out of the car.”

  Shaw stared at him.

  “You’re right,” North said. “We’re working, so let’s work.”

  “Whatever happened today with Tucker—”

  “Get your ass out of the car.” North swallowed and tried to make his voice light. “Is there something you don’t understand?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, there’s a whole lot I don’t understand. And I don’t like it. And I don’t like you right now.”

  “I like you. You’re hot as fuck in that vest and hat, and I’m going to make you wear them some night when we’ve got lots of time to play.”

  Shaw’s expression didn’t change. He elbowed open the door, but he didn’t get out. He wasn’t meeting North’s gaze. “Do I stand around with the clipboard and watch her house or something?”

  The hurt in his expression, the way he tried to stifle it in his voice, threw North’s balance. He tried to recover. “I don’t know, Shaw. You’re the one who took fourteen correspondence courses on celestial geography and then dragged me to fucking Kingdom City for a capstone weekend retreat. You figure it out.”

  “You had fun.” Shaw fiddled with the storage clipboard’s lid. “You ate all that fudge and tried on new boots and bleached your chest hair.”

  “I didn’t bleach my chest hair. You switched the body wash for Nair. I barely washed it out in time.”

  “Sometimes smooth is beautiful, and one time I found a Skittle in your chest hair, and even if you just thinned it once in a while—”

  “Get out of the car!”

  The whole exchange should have been the kind of thing that made North love Shaw more than anyone else in the world. Shit like that was what made them good together. Perfect together. As friends. Instead, it felt like they were both reading somebody else’s lines.

  Shaw slid out of the car, the hi-vis vest flashing in the July sun, and headed toward the street they had left. North drove around the block. The Slooves’ home backed up to another line of houses, with a scrim of trees between them providing the illusion of privacy. North studied the houses on this street as he parked. Dead-eyed windows, dark and still. Daddy’s at work. Mommy’s getting a nip and a tuck. Bobby and Sally are at their forty-two-thousand-dollars-a-year private school.

  After retrieving the binoculars from the trunk, he cut between the houses and stationed himself in the tree line. Across a stretch of thick zoysia and a fenced swimming pool, he had a perfect view of the back of the Slooves’ home, and like the front, all the windows had their curtains drawn back. He brought up the glasses.

  He found the bedroom on the main floor, and the signs didn’t point toward a woman who was terribly distressed: a glass of wine; a box of chocolates; a paperback lying open, pages down. The television mounted on the wall was showing a rerun of Vanderpump Rules. Maybe that was how she grieved, but after their encounter at the front door, it looked more to North like a woman who wanted to enjoy some creature comforts.

  There was no sign of Jean in the bedroom, so North scanned the windows again. He found her in what had to be the office. She stood at a massive desk, a sheaf of papers in her hand. Then, as North watched, she began to pace. Her movements were erratic; her steps stumbled, and she kept putting a hand out to steady herself on the desk, a chair, the wall. The terrycloth robe flapped against her calves. All of a sudden she turned, heading for the fireplace, where flames burned in spite of the simmering July heat. She fumbled for a m
oment with something—North couldn’t tell what—and then she turned and staggered out of the room.

  North followed her through the windows. He glimpsed her in a hallway. Then crossing the dining room. And then she came to a stop in the kitchen, looking down at the papers in her hand. She set them down. She did something—looked through drawers, North guessed, although that was mostly because of the way she held her head. Then she picked up the papers again and ran a burning match along one side of the sheaf.

  The paper caught.

  North called Shaw.

  “You know what?” Shaw said. “I think this vest might be made from a synthetic fabric because I already have a rash on my tummy, and I kind of forgot about sunblock and my shoulders are pink, and I caught my finger in the clipboard and a lady had to get me some ice—”

  “She’s burning something.”

  “What? Like incense or—”

  “I think it’s the will.” North’s fingers tightened on the phone. “I’m going in there.”

  “No, North, that’s trespassing at a minimum, and if she’s pissed, she might try to get them to ratchet it up to breaking-and-entering and—”

  North pocketed the phone and took off at a run. The sun hammered down, making him squint, and in the heat shimmer the world seemed to swim. He juked hard around the swimming pool, going full speed until he was five paces out, then hitting the brakes. At the French doors leading into the kitchen, he jiggled the handle, relieved to find them open, and burst inside.

  Jean stood over the sink, where the papers burned against the fireclay. She looked up at North, but otherwise, she didn’t react. Her eyes were glassy.

  North yanked on the faucet’s handle, sending water spraying into the sink. The flames hissed and went out. Flecks of charred paper spun toward the drain. Shaking water from the burned pages, North drew them from the sink.

  Jean was still staring at him. Even standing still, she seemed to be having trouble keeping her balance. One hand clutched the counter so tightly that her knuckles blanched. North stepped back, shaking more water from the pages, spattering the tile with wet, black flakes.

  “You can’t be here,” Jean said, and her accent was thicker now. “Who are you? You can’t—you can’t be here.”

  North glanced at the half-burned pages. The fire had done plenty of damage in the time it had taken him to call Shaw and reach the house, but the top of the paperwork had survived untouched—albeit damp. The top sheet of the paperwork was legal boilerplate. But it wasn’t a will. After naming a circuit court in St. Louis County, Missouri, the document listed Rik as the petitioner and Jean as the respondent in a petition for dissolution of marriage.

  Jean’s hand dipped into a pocket.

  “Whoa,” North said. “Slow down. Calm down.”

  She seemed to hear him from a distance, cocking her head as though trying to parse the words. She drew out a prescription vial from her pocket.

  “For my heart,” she mumbled.

  “Oh. Ok. I’m sorry about the scare, but I saw fire, and I thought you were in trouble.”

  It was a weak excuse, but it didn’t matter; if the words reached Jean, she gave no sign. She shook the bottle. The rattling sound suggested it was nearly empty, and when she tilted it over her hand, only two pills tumbled out.

  “Do you need some water or—”

  She tossed them back and dry-swallowed.

  “North?”

  Shaw stood in the French doors, holding the clipboard in both hands like he meant to brain someone with it. His shoulders really were pink; North decided he’d remind Shaw of that the next time Shaw decided to tell him how fair he was.

  “It’s ok. Mrs. Slooves had to take something for her heart.” North tried to smile. “I scared her, coming in like that, but I saw the fire and thought she was in trouble.”

  Jean still didn’t bite. Her hand slipped along the counter, and she barely caught herself. Her knuckles bumped the prescription vial and sent it tumbling. Something about her breathing was off, although North couldn’t put his finger on what.

  “Mrs. Slooves,” Shaw said hesitantly as he stepped into the house. “Have you had something to drink?”

  She stared into the middle distance. Somewhere nearby, a dog had begun to bark wildly.

  “Mrs. Slooves,” North said, “we wanted to talk to you about your husband. About Rik.”

  “You are in an awful place.” The words were low, half-formed, and North had to strain to catch them. “You love and you love, and then one day you are here, and you do not know this place, and it is a bad place, very bad. You do not know how to get out. You were the one who locked the doors. You are the one with all the keys. It is a very bad place. You do not know this place, but you built it with your own hands.”

  “Did something bad happen?” North asked, fighting the cold knot in his chest, the way her words seemed to get inside his head and echo. “Is that why you and Rik were getting divorced?”

  “You cannot make things better. No. No, you cannot.”

  “No,” North said. He felt like he was talking through a mouthful of sand. “No, sometimes you can’t make things better. What happened with Rik? Why is this a bad place?”

  “It is a very bad place,” she said, as though she were agreeing. Then she collapsed.

  North caught her. She was heavier than he expected, and he had to ease her down to the floor.

  “It’s flunitrazepam,” Shaw said, glancing at the bottle. “The label’s in Spanish, but I can read the drug name. I think she OD’d.”

  “Call an ambulance.”

  While Shaw placed the call, North tried to move Jean into a more comfortable position. He glanced at the sheaf of papers, then picked them up and began separating the sodden sheets.

  “What are you doing?” Shaw whispered. Then, more strongly, “Yes, I need an ambulance.”

  North spread the wet paper across the tile and snapped pictures of each document fragment. “Trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.”

  Chapter 11

  JADON AND HIS PARTNER, Cerise Cao, met them at the hospital. They took brief statements—Jadon raised his eyebrows when he saw Shaw’s outfit, but he left it at that—and then left to speak to a nurse and then to a doctor; Shaw watched them through the waiting room’s floor-to-ceiling windows. The room had a tiny TCL television mounted in one corner. Dr. Chris: Pet Vet was doing something that looked to Shaw like second-date material to a guinea pig, and the guinea pig’s squeals filled the small room. A lavender air freshener was tag-teaming with the squeals to give Shaw a migraine. He tried to close his eyes, and he kept seeing the chemical implosion in Jean’s face before she collapsed, and the part of his brain that he couldn’t turn off, that part was running wild: what Jean must have felt in those last minutes; what she must have felt in those last hours; all the loneliness and fear that his brain could conjure and that he didn’t know how to turn off.

  One of North’s big hands found the back of Shaw’s neck and began to massage lightly.

  Shaw let out a hiccupping breath.

  “How’s the rash?” North asked.

  After a moment of internal struggle, Shaw took the lifeline. “Really bad. I’m going to need another of those CBD-infused creams from Master Hermes.”

  “And for your shoulders.”

  “And for my shoulders. I think I have third-degree burns.”

  “And for your finger.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure I chipped the bone when I closed the lid on it.”

  North kissed his shoulder, the rush of pleasure chased by the sunburn’s sting. “We’ll get you home and take care of you.”

  But it wouldn’t be like that, Shaw knew. Not for long, anyway. Tucker would call. Or Shaw would slip up and try to talk about feelings. And North’s eyes would get shuttered, and he’d be someone different for a while.

  “Stop thinking about her,” North said quietly, his thumb stroking the sid
e of Shaw’s neck. “I know it’s hard for you, but you’ve got to stop. This kind of thing kills you.”

  Shaw was surprised to find that he’d forgotten about Jean, but all he said was “I know.”

  The door opened, and Cerise stepped into the room, followed by Jadon. The detectives didn’t look like partners; they looked like action figures that had lost their original pair. Cerise was petite, too thin to be athletic, and she had a tendency of buying cheap suits that were much too large for her. When she smiled, you might forget the acne scars and the too-tight ponytail, but she didn’t smile often. Jadon, in contrast, looked like he’d stepped off the cover of a bodybuilding-slash-surfer magazine. He was a big guy, big across the shoulders, big in the arms and legs, but most people’s first impression of him was probably that he was pretty. His body, sure, which was toned rather than bulky, but his darkly sandy complexion, and definitely his face. North had made lots of long, pointed comments to Shaw about rearranging that pretty face. But for all that they didn’t look like they fit, the detectives seemed to work well together—from what Shaw could tell, anyway.

  “Let’s talk on the way out,” Cerise said.

  The hospital halls were noisy with casters and beeping machines and a patient care tech who was beatboxing for the entertainment of a little old white lady in a wheelchair. No one said anything until the elevator doors slid closed.

  “She’s in a coma,” Jadon said.

  “Is she going to be ok?” Shaw asked.

  “No one’s sure.” Cerise shrugged. “It sounds like all they can do is try to keep her body going while the drugs work their way out of her system. They’re not even sure they can do that.”

  “She did it to herself,” North said. “I watched her finish off those pills. She was popping them like they were candy. Right after she tried to destroy evidence that she and Rik were getting divorced. Tell me what that sounds like to you.”

  “I don’t like jumping to conclusions,” Jadon said.

  “Bullshit.”