by Gregory Ashe
“Actually,” Shaw said in what he obviously considered a helpful tone, “I think the three of us would be very compatible sexually, together, I mean, and—”
“Um, no,” Jadon said.
“I would rather be fucked to death with barbed wire,” North said.
“Jesus Christ,” Jadon muttered. In a stronger voice, he asked, “Did you call me for a reason? Or is this just another opportunity for North to run psych-ops on me?”
“Buddy, I haven’t even gotten started.”
“We called for a reason,” Shaw said, slapping North’s ribs. He told Jadon about Will and the voicemail from Percy.
When he’d finished, Jadon said, “God damn it.”
“This is why he gets paid the big bucks,” North said. “This is all that first-class academy training. That’s what you’re seeing right now.”
“I know it’s going to be hard, North, but could you try not being a dick for the next five minutes?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll drive into this sound wall because that would be better than talking to you.”
Shaw sighed.
“I think I saw something about the son running away,” Jadon said. “I don’t know. I wasn’t looking for anything like that. I’ll have to do some checking and get back to you.”
“I’ll send you the pictures I took. What about that money in Tucker’s account?”
“Jeez, it’s a mess. They’ve got a security camera over the night depository, not that the video footage gave us anything. The guy who dropped the cash could have been anybody. He might not have even been a guy. Bulky clothes. Average height. A Guy Fawkes mask. No latents we could pick up easily, but I guess they’ve got some other tricks they’ll try on the envelope and the cash and deposit slip—whenever it’s finally our turn in line.”
“What about the handwriting on the deposit slip?”
“It doesn’t look like a match to me, but we’ve got to wait for an expert on that, too. And, as Fiegler explained to me, ‘would you be stupid enough not to disguise your own handwriting?’ So that’s the working theory.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? She still wants to hang this around Tucker’s neck? Even when everything is so weird?”
“She’s got a wild hair,” Jadon said flatly. “Look, I’m not saying she’s right, and I’m not saying Tucker did this, but the story she wants to tell, this story about Tucker being an obsessed queer who got jilted and killed a happily married straight man? The building blocks are there, and it’s an easy story to understand.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“Thanks, Jadon,” Shaw said.
“I’ll keep you updated.” He cleared his throat. “Did you put something on those shoulders?”
Shaw blinked. “Oh. No. Not yet.”
“I’ve still got that mare’s-milk-infused aloe you gave me. It’s pretty good for sunburns. I’m at the station, but I could meet you at my place—”
“Beg for dick on your own time,” North growled and reached to disconnect the call.
“Wow,” Shaw said quietly.
North leveled a glare at Shaw, but for a change, Shaw met him and didn’t back down. North looked away first, signaling to creep into the next lane as traffic inched forward.
“We’re just friends,” Shaw said.
“Don’t start with me.”
“You’ve gone out of your way to make that perfectly clear every chance you get.”
An opening appeared on the right, and North hit the turn signal and cranked the wheel.
“And I’m giving us time because I love you and that’s what we agreed: we were going to try some time off. But—”
“I’m telling you, you do not want to fucking do this with me right now.”
“But if you’ve decided things are never going to change, and this is what you want, just being friends and fucking around, we’re going to have a different kind of conversation.”
North’s vision had narrowed to a tunnel. Only the blare of a horn made him jerk the wheel, bringing them back into their lane.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you. Are you done?”
Shaw fell back heavily in the seat. After a moment, he said, “For now.”
“Then call Peter and Paul. Maybe they know how Percy is mixed up with Rik.”
“I’m serious, North. I love you, but I’m not going to—”
“I said I heard you. Quit fucking talking about it and do what I told you.”
Shaw’s breathing changed. It took on a rhythm that North recognized as Shaw trying to calm himself. When an opening appeared to the right, he hit the gas, and the GTO lurched into the lane. They moved steadily to the next exit, which was Lindbergh, while the rest of I-64 was a parking lot.
When Shaw placed the call to Peter and Paul, he put it on speaker. After eight rings, it went to voicemail.
“Try Rufus,” North said as he followed Lindbergh south. Strip malls. Old, tree-lined streets with old, expensive houses. A car dealership with a high school cheer squad wrapping up their car-wash fundraiser, two teen girls in matching sports bras dancing on the verge. You could tell which guys needed a pair of tin snips taken to their balls by the cars that honked.
The call to Rufus went to voicemail too.
“Either our friends have decided to have fun without us—”
“Huh. I wonder which one of us rubbed them the wrong way.”
“—or they’re all avoiding us.”
“I wonder which one of us they’re trying to avoid.”
“I told you not to get started with me. I told you I wasn’t in the mood. You’re the one that had to keep pressing it.”
“Yeah? You’re never in the mood. You never want to talk about anything that matters, and I’m sick of—”
Shaw cut off as the phone rang.
“Sick of what?” North slid his hands along the leather-wrapped wheel. It felt greasy under his sweaty palms. “Sick of me?”
Eyes cool, Shaw looked at him and answered the call.
“Hey Shaw, I had a voicemail from your number but it was North, and—”
“Where the fuck are you?” North said. “And why are you avoiding me?”
A tick of silence. “Hi, North.”
“Answer the questions. We’re almost to the Herbert and Galleli offices. Is Pops entertaining any VIP clients tonight? I’d hate to give them a shock.”
“Jesus, North, don’t go there. Please. Don’t bother him. I’m not avoiding you. I couldn’t pick up when you called, so now I’m calling you back, and here we are. What’s up?”
“Where are you?”
“Look, this is getting too intense for me. Shaw, when he cools down, give me a call and—”
“We heard a voicemail of you threatening to kill Rik Slooves. So tell me where the fuck you are.”
“Shit,” Percy whispered. “Hold on.” From the other end of the call came the sound of movement, the crinkle of something papery, and then the thunk of a door shutting. “I was blowing off steam, North. You know me. I wouldn’t do something like that. Shaw, tell him. You guys have known me for almost nine years. I wouldn’t—”
“Percy, you still haven’t told me where you are, and it’s pissing me the fuck off.”
“The urgent care!” It wasn’t a shout, but his voice did rise with a shrill helplessness. “That’s why I couldn’t pick up. I was with the nurse practitioner.”
“Why are you at the urgent care?”
“I had too much to drink at lunch. I kind of—I had a tumble.”
“You fell?”
“Down the service stairs. Exposed concrete.” His voice took on a note of dry amusement. “It’s not pretty. Anyway, these places take forever. I’ve been here for a couple of hours, and they were finally seeing me when you called.”
North grunted. “Which urgent care?”
“I don’t know. It’s on—I want to say Clayton, but I wasn’t
driving.”
“Why don’t you tell us about the voicemail?” Shaw suggested.
The GTO came to a stop at a red light. On the corner, an Exxon station had a big, black smoker parked in one corner of the lot. Even with the GTO’s windows up, the smell of barbeque rolled through the car, and North’s stomach grumbled. Then the light changed, and they drove forward again.
Percy broke his silence with a sigh. “I know how stupid that was. I mean, I knew it was stupid after I left that message, but I was—I’d had some drinks—”
“Another working lunch,” North put in.
“—and I was pissed. I hired Rik as a favor. I mean, he wanted to come back to St. Louis, and we didn’t necessarily have an opening, but we made it work. He’s good at what he does, and he brought some new clients. Great. But he’d been here one week, and I found out he’d been making trades with some of my clients’ money.”
“That’s not usual?” North asked. “You’re all the same firm, right?”
Shaw was already shaking his head, but Percy answered, “It’s totally unacceptable. Those are my clients. I met with them. I know what they want. He was selling off stable stocks, good long-term investments, and dumping money in cryptocurrency.”
“You must have been angry,” Shaw said.
“Angry doesn’t begin to describe it. I felt like I could have killed him. I’m only saying that to you two because you’re my friends, and obviously I didn’t kill him. But I was furious. So I had some drinks. I left a dumb message. That was it.” He took a breath. “It all worked out, though. It was fine.”
“What does that mean?”
“He sold off the crypto, and my clients actually made some money. We put it back where it was supposed to be, along with what they made, and I made it totally clear that if Rik ever did something like that again, he’d be fired. I didn’t care that he’d been my professor in college or that he was kind of a big deal—if he tried anything like that, he was out on his ass.”
“But he was more than your professor in college.” Shaw waited a moment. “Wasn’t he?”
“Look, Shaw, I don’t expect you to understand because you were doing your own thing back then—”
“Don’t talk to him like that,” North barked. “What the fuck do you know about what he was doing back then?”
“I just meant—Jesus, North, I just meant he was with all those hippy boys that never used soap. I didn’t mean anything by it. He wasn’t taking business classes. He didn’t understand how Rik—I mean, Rik was magnetic. He had charisma. And when he and Jean split, yeah, I wanted a piece of that. Every guy did. Except North and Shaw, of course. North was too busy fucking the Chouteau boys lined up outside his door, and Shaw was in that goat cult.”
“Oh my God.” Shaw’s eyes brightened. “I forgot about the Caprine Collective. North, you would have liked it, we had to make cheese for eight hours a day, and—”
“And you were basically slave labor,” North said. “I remember. I also remember that you had no objections to wearing those homemade robes and eating straw, but you cried so hard you made yourself sick when they separated that kid from its mother, and I had to hold your hair. Do you know what the combination of puke and an old, rank goat robe smells like?”
“We didn’t eat straw, we ate grass, and I only cried because the astral essence of Baphomet got in my eye—”
“Did Rik and Jean’s son run away?”
Percy’s hesitation had a confused quality to it. “Yeah, actually. How’d you hear about that?”
“What do you know about him?”
“His name’s Will. I actually don’t know much about him besides that. It’s kind of a sad story. Like you said, he ran away from home when he was sixteen, and Rik never was able to track him down. I guess he could still be alive, but, I mean, that’s young to be on your own.”
Shaw frowned. “You’re sure?”
“That’s what Rik told me. I think. I mean, we only talked about it once. Rik never brought it up, but one time we’d been drinking, and he unloaded. I think he felt guilty about it, but, I mean, it wasn’t his fault from what I could tell.”
“Do you know why he felt guilty?”
“Well, his only kid ran away and disappeared. I think that’s a pretty good reason. But I think it had to do with their last few interactions. What’s going on? This is a weird line of questions.”
North glanced at Shaw. Shaw answered, “We met someone today who claims to be Will Slooves.”
“God damn.” Percy was silent a moment. “Maybe Rik has pictures.”
“We’re going to take a look at the house, but my guess is that we won’t find anything. Either Rik didn’t keep pictures, or this kid is an impostor and already got rid of them. At this point, it’s hard to say.”
“I can check the office.”
North made a face. “That’s actually a good idea.”
“What happened in their last few interactions?” Shaw asked. “Will—the guy we met calling himself Will, anyway—told us he’d been kicked out of the house. That doesn’t sound like what Rik told you.”
“I mean, I don’t know the specifics. It was only that one conversation. But I think that might actually line up. Rik said Will had been behaving erratically. Out of control.” Percy hesitated and said, “Violent. A therapist diagnosed him with adolescent borderline personality disorder. They were going to put Will in a treatment center. Will ran away. So, Rik might have felt guilty, but he saw that as Will’s decision to run. Will, on the other hand, might have felt like he was being forced out of the house.”
“Fuck me,” North muttered. “Violent? How violent? What was this kid doing that they were going to lock him up?”
“Do you mean, could he have come back and killed his dad?”
“Yes, Percy. Obviously that’s what I fucking mean.”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus. Ok. Check on those photos in Rik’s office and let me know what you find.”
“Yeah, sure.” Percy gave a weird laugh. “Um, guys? I might have done something.”
For a moment, silence filled the GTO.
“What did you do, Percy?” Shaw asked.
“I might have, uh, looked at Rik’s will.”
“What? How?”
“He kept a copy in the office safe. It’s not that strange, actually. Lots of the partners like to keep copies of important paperwork here—usually it’s a third copy, after the lawyer and their home.”
“Ok,” North said.
“Anyway, after he was killed, I got curious. So I took a look.”
“And?”
“He left everything to Jean.”
“She’s his wife,” Shaw said. “That makes sense.”
“What would have happened if they’d gotten divorced?” North asked.
“That’s the thing,” Percy said with a trace of excitement. “Rik was talking about it. Divorce, I mean. Talking pretty seriously. And in Missouri, divorce takes precedence over a pre-existing will. So the state would have revoked the clauses leaving property to Jean because that will had been written while Jean was his wife.
“But if they were still married,” North said slowly, “she would have gotten everything.”
“That’s right. I mean, stuff like this, it’s always about money, right? And Jean is the one with the most money to lose if Rik was trying to divorce her.”
“Shit.”
“I’ve got to go,” Percy said. “The nurse is here.”
“Take some pictures of the will if you can. And check for photos in Rik’s office. And Percy? Don’t talk about this with anyone.”
Chapter 14
THEY CUT EAST ALONG the surface streets until they had looped back to I-64. The accident—or whatever had stopped traffic—was behind them now, and the drive into the city was quick and quiet. Ahead of them, the sky was wine-dark, and the summer humidity gave the night body and texture. Streetlights popped
on, cutting out a geometry of ashy light against the concrete. The silence got under Shaw’s skin, and he played with the radio until he found Stevie, and she was asking the mirror in the sky a very important question. But there was no mirror in the sky. There was the haze of light pollution, an un-darkness that was its own kind of darkness. After a few minutes, Shaw turned the radio off.
When they pulled up in front of Shaw’s parents’ place, North turned off the car.
“Do we have to do this every time?” Shaw asked.
“I’m sorry about earlier.”
“It’s fine. North, you’re exhausted. I know you haven’t been sleeping. I know you haven’t been eating. And Tucker has this way of…upsetting you that is taking its own kind of toll. You don’t need to do this. Go home, get some good sleep, and we’ll pick up tomorrow.”
“Sure,” North said, unbuckling himself.
Sighing, Shaw followed him into the house.
It had been like this every night since Ronnie’s arrest. North’s Uncle Ronnie—although, as far as Shaw could tell, there was no biological relation—had tried manipulating them into helping him steal proprietary biochemical property from an Aldrich Acquisitions subsidiary. North and Shaw had managed to turn the tables on him and get him arrested, but the success had sparked a kind of paranoia in North that existed below the level of words. North couldn’t even talk about it; it only manifested in things like this, every night that he had the opportunity—and when he didn’t, the agonizingly long phone calls where he rattled off checklists.
The house was dark and empty; Shaw’s parents were at another fundraiser or party or speaking engagement. In the entry hall, Shaw flipped on the lights. The parquet floors gleamed. The tarnished mirror gave back two hollow-eyed men. A whiff of lavender hung in the air, which meant Nella had come to clean. The grandfather clock ticked, its pendulum a lolling brass tongue where a second set of reflections warped and twisted.
“Stay here,” North said.
“North, this really isn’t necessary.”
But North was already moving through the house, flipping on lights. Doors opened and closed. Curtain rings rattled on their rods. North’s steps rang out against the polished boards, muffled intermittently by rugs. He looped through the entry hall and headed for the stairs.