by Gregory Ashe
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah. Medical records—he had braces, all his vaccines, appendicitis. No birth certificate; if it was here, I bet ‘Will’ already took it. Grades from high school. Invoices from private investigators hired to look for him.”
“Jean kept all this stuff?”
“Maybe.” North tapped a page. “But Rik’s signature is on some of this stuff. However things ended between him and Will, at some point, he must have wanted to reconcile.” North let out a breath. “There are pictures.”
The photos were in mint condition, and they showed a young man with the same sandy-brown skin, although his hair was shorter and in finger coils, and his face was round with baby fat. He couldn’t have been older than twelve.
“That’s Will.”
“God damn it.”
“North, that’s Will.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” North began to scoop up all the papers. “So much for that particular theory. Fine. Will really is his son, I can handle that. That doesn’t mean he didn’t kill his dad, though. Are you done with your dick pics?”
“I guess. The messages are all either flirting or arrangements to meet up. He didn’t message any of them more than a dozen times; these were casual hookups, and they weren’t repeats.”
“Nothing to Tucker?”
“Nope.”
Shaw gathered the phones and started to put them away when another idea hit him. He unlocked each of them in turn and began checking the default mail app.
“North?”
North was still culling papers from the pile, setting some aside to take with them. “What?”
“There’s an email here from an anonymous mail service. It came in a couple of weeks ago. The subject line is ‘Blast from the past?’ And it’s got a video attached.”
When North was standing at his shoulder, Shaw pressed play. The video had been shot at an angle, high in a corner. Shaw recognized the room: the strawberry-print wallpaper, the chained-down CRT television, the avocado-colored bedding. This was the room he and North had visited at the Sunset Stayaway, the room where Rik had been killed. He tried to remember if he had noticed anything unusual about this spot high on the wall, but then movement called his attention back to the screen.
Two men stumbled into the room; one of them kicked the door shut behind him. Ripping each other’s clothes off, they made their way to the bed. They were kissing and groping like sailors fresh off the boat. One of them was Rik. The other was a young man, barely more than a kid, with carefully parted dark hair and dark skin. Shaw guessed that the boy was South Asian and not black, but it was only a guess.
Rik’s hands on the kid’s shoulders. The kid dropping to his knees. Slurping noises. Wet, gagging noises. Firm, relentless hands on the back of the kid’s head.
Then the door opened, and Tucker strode in. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“It’s not like we talked about this.” Rik flicked the kid’s forehead, and the kid sat back hard on his haunches. Rolling one shoulder, Rik said, “We’re just having fun.”
“Having fun?” Slower, more deliberately, and with the careful enunciation of an experienced drunk, he repeated, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Let me get my pants and we can talk outside.”
“I ought to beat your ass black and blue.”
“Tucker, come on. Be reasonable. This is new territory—”
“I should bash your fucking head in.”
The video cut off.
Chapter 17
THEY DROVE SOUTH AND then east, back toward Webster Groves. North kept turning on the radio and snapping it off again. Inside, the GTO was baking—or at least, that’s how it felt to North. He couldn’t stop sweating, and he blamed the AC. The sun played St. Elmo’s fire across hoods and windshields. Radio on. Radio off again. Were they playing “Landslide” on every fucking station in the city?
“It’s another weird coincidence,” Shaw said. “Like that phone call from Percy. People say things they don’t mean, and nobody thinks twice about them until—”
“Until a man ends up dead. With his head bashed in. Like Tucker said.”
“You told me twice last week that you were going to staple me to the shopping plaza sign and leave me there. When I threw away that expired Noosa, you told me you were going to chop my dick off and let me bleed to death for, quote, ‘high treason.’ But if something happened to me, nobody would think you had anything to do with it.”
In North’s mind, the flight of stairs was very clear: that huge, sweeping flight of stairs in the Aldrichs’ entry hall. And Ronnie, asking again and again about the stairs. Be careful on the stairs. North reached for the pack of American Spirits, remembered Shaw was in the car, remembered he’d smoked them all, and for a swimmy moment, as they passed the Mormon temple, felt like he was balanced on the spire right up there with the gold angel. “Tucker killed him.”
“No, that’s what I’m trying to say. If something happened to me, for example—”
“No more fucking examples.” North let out a juddering breath. “You heard him on the video. ‘Bash your head in.’ And that’s what happened to Rik.”
“But someone else recorded that video. And someone else sent it to Rik. And someone else was either threatening him or blackmailing him or both. ‘Bash your head in’ isn’t even that specific of a threat. It’s almost a general expression.”
North flipped the vents. His eyes felt too dry in the blast of cold air, but his pits and back and crotch were a swamp.
“Even the subject line, ‘Blast from the past?’” Shaw waited and then continued, “That means something. I think maybe we’ve been looking in the wrong place for who might have killed Rik and why.”
In his mind, North was seeing the stairs again. Words spilled out to fill the silence. “Ok, fine. Talk about that. What were we doing wrong?”
“Well, we suspected someone framed Tucker. The video reinforces that possibility—whoever had that video would have heard Tucker say ‘bash your head in,’ and that would have suggested the MO for the murder. But we started with the assumption that whoever killed Rik was motivated by either sex or money.”
“Whoever sent him that video could have been motivated by sex or money. We don’t know why they sent it to him.”
“But,” Shaw said, squirming to turn in the seat, “we know something about the timeline. We assumed that the killing had something to do with recent events—either the cryptocurrency scams or Rik’s sexual escapades. But the video suggests something from a previous time period. ‘Blast from the past’ doesn’t sound like last week or last month or even last year.”
“You’re thinking from when he was here before. When he taught at Chouteau.”
“I think the fact that he moved back to St. Louis and got murdered the night he went to a party with a bunch of people from his past is not a coincidence.”
North thought about this for a moment. “Shit.”
“I know.”
“Shit, Shaw. That puts all our friends in this.”
“They were in it already. I saw Rufus arguing with him at the party. We heard that voicemail from Rufus. Tucker told us about Peter and Paul losing all that money. But now—”
“But now we have to focus on them.” North’s fingers tightened around the wheel until the leather squeaked. “Shit, shit, shit.”
When they got to the Webster Groves house, tucked behind its Japanese maple, the blue Volvo was in the driveway. North parked at an angle behind it, blocking in the sedan, and they got out. The air was thick and humid, and the honeysuckles’ perfume was overpowering. The sun’s glare made it hard to see inside the house, and the rooms on the other side of the glass were dark. After a few moments of trying to peer inside, North hammered on the front door.
A sparrow chirped its song from a willow on the property line. A car rolled past, bass thumping hard enough to vibrate North’s teeth.
He rapped on the door again. “Open up, you miserable murderous cocksucking fuck.”
Shaw caught his wrist. “You’re going to break down the door.”
“If I have to.”
Rubbing North’s aching knuckles, Shaw smiled and said, “Then do your angry-mule routine. I like your hands the way they are.”
North yanked his hand away and stared at the door.
“Maybe he’s not home.”
“He’s here. The car’s here. He’s here.”
“Maybe he went for a walk.”
“He doesn’t go for walks unless he’s on the green.” North tried one last time to see into the interior of the house, but the windows were like mirrors unless he got right up next to them, and then the house lay in shadow. “Come on.”
“Why don’t you use your key?”
“I don’t have a key. I don’t live here.”
North took off around the side of the house. The backyard had a white picket fence, pavers, wild sage and mint growing everywhere so that each step sent up their perfume. He took the steps up to the back door, the one that never closed right.
“Sure you do. I know what the key looks like. It’s still on your keyring.”
North shot him a glare. “Maybe he changed the locks.”
“Maybe. But you didn’t even try.”
“I don’t want to try. I don’t want to use that goddamn key. You could fucking breathe on this back door and it would open. Why the fuck would I use that key like I still fucking live here?”
Shaw’s reddish-brown eyebrows drew together. “Got it.”
North tried not to release the half growl, half scream building in his throat. He grabbed the door handle, lifted and pushed sideways at the same time, and the latch popped free from the frame. “See?”
“A very good idea.” Shaw was nodding too much. “You have so many good ideas.”
“Be quiet.”
“Like last week. You had that great idea for all those parking tickets.”
“Paying your parking tickets isn’t a good idea. It’s the whole point of a ticket. It’s the law.”
“I think it might be more of a suggestion.”
“It’s not.” North stepped into the kitchen. The smell of cilantro, raw onion, and cold, greasy meat met him. He glanced around for the source. The kitchen had been wiped down, although fingerprint powder still stuck to a few surfaces. The house was quiet. The refrigerator made an aggressive buzzing noise—the ice maker, he realized after a moment—and then went silent again. He took a few more steps inside.
“Are you sure? Isn’t it like income taxes? Like you pay them if you want the good-citizen bonus points, but otherwise, you just put everything in that old oil barrel behind the office and burn it at the end of the year.”
North turned to face his business partner.
“Um.” Shaw bit his lip. “I was speaking in universals. Not particulars.”
“Did you go near my desk?”
Shaw shook his head.
“Did you touch any of my papers?”
Shaw shook his head more vigorously.
“And you’re still perfectly clear on what will happen if you attempt any new filing systems, or if you have a genius idea for how to change our accounting over to Babylonian cuneiform, or if you submit official paperwork without my prior approval, or if you go pawing through the petty cash box?”
“I bought one bum pop—”
“It’s a bomb pop, you moron.”
“—and I think letting the state know that we’re also doing business as the Private Dick Personal Services is the responsible thing to do.”
“We’re not doing that. We’re not doing any of that. And you put my cell phone number on there, and I was the one getting calls for weeks. Discreet masc for discreet masc my fucking ass.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what they were thinking too.”
North managed not to make any noises, but he did turn and walk away, and his steps were louder than he would have liked. The smell was stronger in the living room; a paper bag was flattened on the ottoman, and on top of it lay a cardboard takeout tray with what North guessed were the remains of Tucker’s dinner: street tacos and a congealed queso dip. The pork looked slightly green in the late-morning light. A plastic margarita cup held only traces of a pinkish slurry at the bottom.
“This is fucking ridiculous.”
“He needed to eat something, although he should have gone to that street taco place where the guy always tries to give you a squeezer under the table, because they have—”
“No, this.” North gestured. “Do you know how much he paid for this sofa? And for the fucking ottoman? Do you know how many times I got bitched out for drinking a beer while I watched the game, or for eating a pretzel dog out here? And this selfish dickhole spreads his whole meal out.”
“Is a pretzel dog what it sounds like?”
“No. It’s not a pretzel shaped like a dog. It’s not a dog shaped like a pretzel. It’s not a pretzel wrapped around a Pomeranian. Whatever the fuck you think, it’s not that.”
“Is it a pretzel wrapped around a hot dog?”
North had to struggle for five seconds. Finally he managed, “Yes.”
“Oh North. Those are really bad for you. We’ve talked about particle meats, and the nitrates—”
North took off for the front of the house. He checked the front door. He moved through the dining room and came back through the kitchen. When he finished his circuit in the living room, Shaw had a strange look on his face.
“Did you send this food to him?”
“What? No. Tucker can starve to death for all I care. Or, better, he can choke to death on those fucking seaweed chips—”
Shaw held out a piece of paper. The top of the page had the logo for a food delivery service, and then information about the order—from a place called Mission Taco—and then a message. Tuck, sorry about today, bet you’re starving. Don’t go out. It’s safer if you stay in. Tacos are on me, North.
“I didn’t write that. And I definitely didn’t order this stuff and have it sent to him.”
“Somebody did. And somebody wanted him to think it was from you.”
North spun and shot up the stairs. He threw open the door to the bedroom. It was still a disaster zone: the mattress bare, fingerprint powder everywhere, clothes covering the floor. The bathroom door was shut.
“Tucker?”
No answer.
Downstairs, the icemaker gave its abrupt buzz again.
North crossed the room in two steps. He tried the door. Locked. He rapped on the wood. “Tucker?”
Nothing.
One kick tore the latch from the frame. The door flew open, struck something, and rebounded. North caught it. Someone lay on the ground inside.
“Shaw?”
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
Somehow, North managed to squeeze through the door. He dropped onto his knees. Tucker lay in a pile of vomit, and North rolled him onto his side. His lips were blue, but when North bent closer, he could hear the whistle of his thin breaths.
“Not today, you stupid son of a bitch,” North muttered, opening Tucker’s mouth to check if his airway was partially blocked. “Not today.”
Chapter 18
HOURS IN THE EMERGENCY department of Barnes-Jewish. For much of the time, Shaw and North had to sit in the polypropylene chairs in the triage area near the entrance. A middle-aged white woman with a bad bob had one hand wrapped in a bloody kitten-print terrycloth towel. Two older Latino men talked quietly together, one of them shifting every once in a while, his face twisting in pain as he pressed a hand to his side. A harried mother kept running after toddler twins; she couldn’t seem to put all of her weight on one leg. Every breath carried the smell of alcohol, blood, and an antiseptic smell that reminded Shaw of childhood and his mom swabbing skinned knees and elbows with Betadine.
Jadon and
Cerise joined them. The four of them went outside, and North and Shaw gave statements in the parking garage, with tires squealing against the concrete and horns blaring approximately every fifteen seconds.
“Had Mr. Laguerre given any indication that he had thoughts of harming himself?” Cerise asked.
North snorted. “Tucker wouldn’t commit suicide. He’s too damn in love with himself.”
“When we get a chance, we’ll need to talk to the parents to see if they’ve—”
“Shit.” North dug his phone out of his pocket. “His parents.”
While North made his way down the parking garage, Shaw, Jadon, and Cerise headed back into the triage waiting room. A nurse with springy curls stood in a doorway, and when she spotted them, she waved them over.
“There you are. I was about to tell him you’d gone off and left him.”
“My partner—” Shaw tried.
“Right this way, please.”
Shaw turned a helpless look on Jadon, who shrugged.
“North’s a big boy,” Cerise said. “He’ll find us.”
The nurse led them to a treatment room and held the curtain for Shaw. He passed through, then Jadon and Cerise. The nurse said, “The doctor will be with you in a few minutes,” and then she let the curtain fall, and her rubber soles squeaked away on the linoleum.
Tucker had regained some of his color—his lips weren’t blue anymore, at least—but dark marks ringed his eyes, and his skin was gray. His hair was lank and flat. A day’s stubble was starting on his chin and cheeks. He had an IV running into his arm, held in place by blue tape. When he saw Shaw, he tried to smile, but it died as his eyes moved to Jadon and Cerise.
“Hi, Tucker,” Shaw said. He pulled a chair next to the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Great.” Another twitch of his lips. “Finally caught up on some sleep.”
“Mr. Laguerre,” Cerise said, “I understand you’ve been through a lot in the last day, but we need to ask you some questions.”
“Sure you do. Are you going to figure out a way to blame this on me too? What are you going to charge me with this time?”