Redirection

by Gregory Ashe

  “You talked to Ronnie?”

  “He came around last week.”

  North shook his head. Too much beer. Maybe he’d had too much beer. “Dad, Ronnie’s in jail.”

  “Christ’s sake, they gave him bail. It’s not like he murdered the Pope. He’s been out a few weeks now. He’s got to wear that thing on his ankle. Couldn’t have a beer, but he held one to be polite.”

  For a moment, the chatter aboard the MS Pacific Princess blended into white noise. “What are you—” North made himself stop and think through the haze of exhaustion, emotional and physical, and the ankle-deep beer. “He came here. He said—what did he say?”

  “Like I told you twice already: you’re about squared up. He said he’s just got one last thing to take care of.”

  Chapter 16

  THE TEXT WOKE SHAW at half past five, and by half past six, he was waiting on his parents’ porch, chafing his arms. Today’s tank had the word BASIC printed in rainbow letters. The pleather shorts made creaking noises every time Shaw moved, and the studs dug into his thighs if he wasn’t careful.

  The GTO pulled up five minutes later.

  “Oh,” Shaw said as he climbed in the car. North’s eyes were a maze of red, his color was bad, and his hair was flat on one side and spiky on the other. Apparently he had not been in possession of a toothbrush that morning. “Hi. When you texted me, ‘your ass outside one hour,’ I didn’t know if this was like that fantasy of a sunrise exhibitionist ravishing or—”

  “Not one more fucking word.”

  Shaw decided that was a suggestion. A good one.

  They drove to Ladue, to the tree-lined streets and the million-dollar homes. They passed the Slooves’ home and parked at the end of the cul-de-sac, with the GTO facing back up the street toward the house. All the Ladue big wigs had already gone into the office, and the trophy wives—and husbands—hadn’t yet started their routine of toning and firming and spackling retinoids across various sagging, lusterless expanses. The July day was already warm, and even with the windows down, the interior of the car was simmering. Shaw started to wish North had borrowed a toothbrush.

  For the next hour and a half, they watched the house. North produced coffees—black for him, a unicorn latte for Shaw—and his hand had a slight tremble as he raised the cup.

  A little after nine, a Porsche Cayenne emerged from the Slooves’ garage. There was no mistaking Will’s twist-out through the driver’s window. When the Porsche turned at the end of the street, North moved the GTO into the Slooves’ driveway. They went around back. This time, the French doors were locked, but the spare key was still hiding in its fake rock. Shaw grinned as he rattled the key inside the plastic. North gave him a death stare, and Shaw decided now was not the time to demonstrate the dividends his YouTube maraca lessons had paid.

  The smell of burnt coffee met them in the kitchen; little wisps of smoke were curling up from the heating element of the stainless-steel drip machine. Shaw reached to turn it off, but North made a disgusted noise and caught his arm. After pulling on a pair of disposable gloves, Shaw turned the machine off. North was already marching down the hall.

  In the office doorway, Shaw paused. The furniture had been overturned. Cushions had been slashed. The drawers in the desk hung open, and papers were scattered everywhere—across the top of the desk, all over the floor, even stacked in open spaces on the bookshelves.

  Righting a chair, Shaw ran his hand over the chipped gilt. “Poor Louis XVI is probably spinning in his grave.”

  North stared at the flood of papers. “What were you looking for, you son of a bitch?”

  “Well, he might have been looking for papers to establish his identity and to help process his mother’s medical insurance.” When North scowled, Shaw raised his hands. “I’m just saying, if he’s telling the truth, it makes sense that he would search the office thoroughly.”

  “I think he’s lying.”

  “Ok.”

  “I think the whole thing smells like a crock of shit.”

  “Ok.”

  “It’s too—” North grasped for the word. “Neat.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. But it might also seem neat because, well, it might be true.”

  North put his hands on his hips.

  “Are we ok?” Shaw asked. “Last night was awful. For me, anyway. I feel like I did everything wrong, and I was trying so hard to—I don’t know. I thought I was doing the right thing, and I only made things a hundred times worse.”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  Ah, Shaw thought. The old North McKinney one-two. “Can we talk about it?”

  North shook his head. He was still studying the scree of paperwork.

  “If you ever want to, I promise I won’t, um, try to help.” The air conditioner whirred on. “If you ever want to talk about it, I mean.” The papers in front of a vent rustled. “With me, I mean. If you ever want to talk about it with me, I promise I will listen and be supportive, because I understand now that what you were asking for last night was my support, and sometimes, because, I love you so much, I know I do what I think is best instead of listening, and I want you to know that I am sincerely listening and that I hear you, and whatever I can do, um, I want to do it. For you.” Shaw cleared his throat. “If you ever want to talk. To me. About…things.”

  “Oh my God,” North breathed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “So, uh, where did you go last night? After you left the house, you know, because things with Tucker and with me got so bad, and again, I’m trying to verbalize my part in that, and—”

  “You need to go do something else. Now. Right now.”

  “No, I’m sorry, I’ll—”

  “Shaw, leave me the fuck alone. I say I don’t want to talk about it, and you talk about it anyway. I say I don’t want to talk about it, and you keep asking questions. What was all that bullshit about hearing and listening from five seconds ago?”

  Shaw turned a page with the toe of his straw shoe. It looked like an electrical bill.

  “Well?” North said.

  “I’ll go do something else.”

  “Thank you, Jesus Christ.”

  Shaw made his way back to the kitchen. He started a routine search, opening cabinets, pulling out drawers, using a long-handled wooden spoon to dig through the flour and sugar canisters. A section of the kitchen counter seemed to have been repurposed into a kind of catch-all, where mail was dumped, the keys were tossed, and a calendar hung with days marked in a looping script that Shaw guessed was Jean’s. The dates on the calendar were all innocuous: tee times, dinner dates, Teddi’s Fourth of July party. It was blank before May, which told Shaw that Jean had begun recording information on this calendar only after their move to St. Louis.

  Something about the calendar tickled part of his brain, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. He opened the fridge. He took out a single-serve container of Icelandic yogurt. He found cream. In a ziplock bag, someone had stored most of a cherry danish. He got a plastic spoon from the pantry and a few on-the-go packs of raw sugar. He went back to the office, where North was on his knees, scanning one page at a time.

  “What?” North said.

  Shaw put the cherry danish, still in its bag, down next to North. He put the yogurt down next, the spoon balanced across the foil lid. He opened North’s coffee and added cream and packet after packet of raw sugar, until North made a worried noise. Then he pressed the lid down tightly. He set the coffee on the desk and left.

  He was looking at the calendar when North came into the kitchen ten minutes later. North stuffed the yogurt container, spoon, and disposable coffee cup into the empty ziplock—they’d have to get rid of it elsewhere to avoid evidence they’d been in the home.

  “I’m ready to act like a human being again.”

  “Then you need to brush your teeth,” Shaw said, flipping calendar pages again.

  That startled a laugh out of North.

 
; “You went to your dad’s.”

  It wasn’t a question, but North nodded and said, “Yeah.”

  “I hate when you go to your dad’s. I know you love him, but I hate how—” Shaw couldn’t finish. He couldn’t talk about North’s other voice, or the stranger who walked around in the Redwings for days at a time. He managed to finish lamely, “—how it upsets you.”

  “I’m sorry about how I acted.”

  “It’s ok.”

  “It wasn’t, not really. But I’m also not ready to talk about last night.”

  “Jean was keeping track of all Rik’s appointments on this calendar.”

  North came to stand next to Shaw.

  “That’s strange, right?” Shaw displayed the calendar. “I mean, his tee times?”

  “I’m not done talking about how I don’t want to talk about something.”

  “If I were getting divorced, or if my husband were cheating on me, I don’t think I’d keep updating his calendar.”

  “Hey, dummy, I’m trying to not talk to you.”

  Shaw bent over the calendar. Or rather, he tried to. North caught the strap of his tank and hauled him upright, and then he walked Shaw backward. The straw shoes scraped the tile as Shaw pedaled for purchase. Then his back hit the fridge.

  “Damn,” North said, considering the fabric he was clutching. “That’s some quality workmanship. It didn’t rip or anything. I bet I could carry you around all day like this.”

  Shaw swatted at his hand, but North didn’t release him. “Made in America.”

  “And who says manufacturing is dead?”

  “Will you let me go? I’m getting an armpit wedgie.”

  “That’s not a thing. You made that up.”

  “It’s a thing now. You made it a thing. It’s happening right before your eyes.”

  North lowered him; Shaw’s heels settled onto the tile. Eyes down, North straightened the straps of the tank. Then he tugged the hem down.

  “I’m going to be mad at you for five more minutes,” Shaw said. “Then you have to buy me a Coke.”

  “Ronnie’s out of jail. He made bail.”

  “Oh.” Shaw thought of the sound of North’s footsteps prowling the house, checking doors and windows and closets and the pantry. He thought of the restless fidgeting. The evenings after work when North walked him out to his car. The calls and texts, the rough veneer of agitation in his words. And now it was going to be so much worse. “Shit.”

  “Pretty much. He…he told my dad that he’s going to square things with us.”

  “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  “I think it means he’s going to kill us.” North shook his head. “Or try to. I didn’t say that right. God, I’m tired.”

  “You’re not sleeping.”

  “I thought you should know. In case something happens. I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe, but—”

  Shaw shushed him. He smoothed the spiky hair on the side of North’s head with gentle passes of his hand. After a moment, North closed his eyes and leaned into the touch.

  “Like a hedgehog,” Shaw whispered.

  A tiny smile flickered and went out.

  “We keep each other safe, Mr. McKinney.”

  North’s eyes opened, wide and wet. For one terrifying moment, Shaw thought he was going to cry, and then North stepped back. He tugged on his tee, adjusting it across the shoulders, and looked at the marble island for a long time.

  “And deodorant,” Shaw said.

  North set his jaw, eyes narrowing.

  “Not just your teeth. And your breath. But you’re sweating out a lot of dairy enzymes, and the lactose is curdling under your arms. They have prescription antiperspirants—”

  “Stop talking.”

  “It’s bad, North. Sometimes I think your boot socks are bad, but—”

  For some reason, North decided the only way to handle the situation was to pick up Shaw by the tank, both straps this time, and hurl him against the fridge over and over again until Shaw was giggling too hard to stand up on his own.

  They ended up sitting at the island, Shaw leaning against North, his fingers brushing up and down the inside of North’s arm.

  “So you think she didn’t know they were getting divorced?” North said, examining the calendar. “No, that doesn’t make sense because she tried to destroy the divorce papers.”

  “But maybe it was an amicable divorce. Or maybe he sprang it on her. Either way, what we’re seeing here, this level of attention and care about his schedule, doing things for him, that doesn’t suggest someone planning a murder for weeks.”

  “Unless she’s a cold-blooded psychopath.”

  “Unless that,” Shaw said with a sigh. “I guess we should hurry. We don’t know how long Will might be gone, and the office is a mess. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

  “No,” North said slowly. “We don’t. And that means we’re doing this wrong. Because the stupid way to search, the rookie way to search, is to think you know what you’re looking for and to think you know where it is.”

  “Like Will. He destroyed the office, but the rest of the house looks untouched.”

  “The right way to do a search, the professional way, is toss the whole house and see what shakes out. Which I would have thought of, if I hadn’t been wallowing in self-pity and a serious hangover.”

  “I thought of it,” Shaw said helpfully, “but I like to let you figure things out on your own.”

  North seemed to think throwing him against the fridge solved everything.

  After that, things were back to normal, and they worked well as a team—the way they always did. With fresh disposable gloves, they started their search again, doing it the right way this time. Shaw stuck to the front of the house, keeping watch through the windows in case Will came back. They made their way through the living room, the family room, the dining room, a bathroom, and the master bedroom with its en suite bath. They even tackled the office together, scanning financial paperwork that told them Rik and Jean Slooves had a lot of money, but it didn’t tell them much else.

  They hit pay dirt upstairs in a guest bedroom. The walls were white shiplap, and the distressed dresser and vintage steamer trunk and wrought-iron bed frame made it feel comfortable without inviting you to stay for the long haul. The ceiling lamp looked like someone had flipped a birthday cake upside down.

  North found cardboard boxes in the closet. The boxes were squashed and bulging on the sides—from being stacked for years, not from being overly full—and when North opened the flaps, the smell of musty paper floated up. Shaw opened the top drawer of the dresser. Something rattled. Several somethings rattled, sliding against each other.

  “Um, North.”

  The floor creaked under North’s steps. “Shit. That’s a lot of burner phones.”

  Six burner phones did seem like a lot, in Shaw’s opinion. “Do you want to—”

  “Be my guest,” North said as he returned to the cardboard boxes.

  Whoever had stashed the phones—presumably Rik—had been thoughtful enough to keep the chargers too, and Shaw plugged in the phones one at a time. As they powered on, each one displayed a lock screen.

  “They’re locked.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “I am a very good detective, but this time, it was kind of obvious.”

  “Yeah, that’s what the expression means. It was stupidly obvious.”

  “No, Sherlock was a really good detective.”

  “Oh my God,” North muttered to the pages in his lap.

  “And the lock screens are right there, North. Staring at me. I didn’t have to detect anything.”

  North held a folder up in front of his face. Apparently he couldn’t resist, though, because he said, “Try his birthday.”

  “Do you know his birthday?”

  “October 1, 1969.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Shaw beame
d at him. “That’s because you’re a good detective too.”

  “Maybe I’ll get a boat.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe I’ll get a sailboat and sail away.”

  “His birthday’s not going to work.” Shaw tried several combinations of the date as the code. “It didn’t work.”

  “Nobody could find me on a sailboat. I could have a whole new name. Maybe I’d be Derek. I like the name Derek.”

  “Derek is a douchey name. And Rik wouldn’t use his birthday because these are burner phones, and the psychology of a burner phone is all about depersonalization, distance, anonymity.”

  “I’m trying to read.”

  “Fine, Derek. I’ll figure it out myself. Just like Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Why do I say anything?” North said as he turned a page. “Why do I even open my mouth?”

  “Sometimes you open your mouth so you can hoover up my—ow! That pillow has beads on it!”

  “Quiet time starts now.”

  Three minutes later, Shaw said, “I got it.”

  “Quiet time means no talking.”

  “I figured out his passcode. Actually, passcodes. They’re different for each one. But they’re all some of the most commonly used codes: 1379, 0000, 1111, 1212, 1234, and 2580. They’re all keypad patterns that are easy to remember. That’s why so many people use them.”

  North lowered the folder. “What’s on there?”

  “Cocks.”

  North blinked.

  “Lots of them. Big. Small. Cut. Uncut. One of them kind of looks like a diviner’s rod. Oh, and holes. One of them reminds me of—”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “—that thing you ordered at that Mexican restaurant—”

  “Shaw, for the sake of my sanity and my ability to ever eat at Hacienda again, please don’t tell me.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll keep working.”

  “That would be fantastic.”

  “Like Sherlock Holmes.”

  “Mother of God.” But a few minutes later, North was the one who broke the silence. “This stuff is all about Will.”