While he was on Facebook, he sent friend requests to Beau and Mike, and then he checked the Zoar Zurvivors page. As he should have expected, the feed was full of comments. A few expressed sorrow for Shep’s passing and sympathy for his family; more expressed a mixture of grief and vindication. Beau’s was one of these, a lengthy post that Shaw read through carefully. Beau was a decent writer, and he worked carefully through his cocktail of emotions, expressing the changes he had felt as he had come to work for Shep, but still acknowledging the hurt and pain that Shep had brought into his life.

  Beau was someone Shaw intended to keep a close eye on until Chuck was released from jail. Something about the man made Shaw suspicious. It was hard to believe Beau could forgive Shep so completely. Shaw tried to pretend that his suspicion had nothing to do with how Beau had looked at North.

  Until now, Shaw had been reading only the posts. He dug down into the pictures, flagging a few that he wanted to show North. Then he started on the comments section, skimming the responses—most of the men had praised Beau and thanked him for putting their own complicated feelings into words—until, at the bottom, Shaw paused and saw something that sent a chill through him, even though he didn’t understand it.

  Donny. 100.

  That’s all: the name, and the emoji for the number 100. It had been posted by John Smith, and when Shaw clicked on the profile, it was locked. His gut told him that John Smith was a fake account, but it would be nice to know as much about the fake account as he could. Shaw sent another friend request.

  Then he worked backward through the posts he had already read. One of the earliest comments to each post—often the first, although not always—was that same message: Donny. 100.

  But nothing that might have been a post by Donny Yates. No Facebook account at all for Adonis Yates, and the Donny Yates that came up on Shaw’s search he excluded almost immediately.

  Heavy footsteps started up the stairs.

  “Don’t come in here,” Shaw said.

  The footsteps stopped.

  “I’m working,” Shaw said, “and I don’t want to deal with an asshole.”

  He went back to the Zoar Zurvivors and started checking each profile for connections to St. Louis.

  The footsteps started again.

  “Don’t come in here,” Shaw said.

  The footsteps stopped in the doorway this time; he could see North there out of the corner of his eye; he could smell the cigarette smoke and the unwashed, yesterday sweat.

  Shaw moved on to the next profile. He clicked again.

  North was still standing there.

  Shaw moved on to the next profile.

  North was still standing there.

  “How’s your head?” Shaw asked without looking up.

  “Can I come in?” It was his normal voice, now. Finally. Low and soft and warm like wood about to burn. “Please?”

  Shaw made a disgusted noise in his throat and kept clicking.

  North must have taken that for some kind of yes; he came into the room, his boots heavy on the floor, and he circled the bed and dropped onto the mattress next to Shaw. He lay still for a moment, just breathing, and then he squirmed closer, burrowing into the tangled bedding until his face rested against Shaw’s side. His eyes were closed, and when he spoke, his voice rumbled through Shaw’s chest.

  “I’m an asshole.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m sorry. I got in a fight with my dad this morning about Ronnie, and—I don’t know, we were fighting about pretty much everything by then. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I’m really sorry.”

  Shaw kept typing.

  “Shaw?”

  Shaw kept typing. He wasn’t really sure what he was typing. Maybe tickets to Fiji again, although now that didn’t seem like such a good idea.

  “Shaw?”

  “Ok.”

  They sat like that for a few minutes; North’s breath warmed Shaw, made him feel feverish. Then North dragged an arm over his face like a kid not wanting to get up, and he spoke again into Shaw’s side. “I left Tuck.”

  It was a good thing North was covering his face because Shaw couldn’t stop the smile. He struggled with it for a few moments, trying to control his voice before he spoke. North had buried himself so deep against Shaw, covering his face with his arm, that Shaw could only touch the back of North’s neck, and when he did, North shivered. Setting the MacBook aside, Shaw tried to turn to face North, but North wrapped an arm around Shaw’s waist, pinning him in place.

  Shaw went back to stroking North’s neck, and when he trusted his voice, he said, “You want to tell me about it?”

  “No.” Another shiver ran through North. “It was so fucked up. Everything has been fucked up for so long. Don’t stop, please.”

  Shaw ran his fingers along North’s neck again.

  After a moment, North continued speaking. “Did I call you last night?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” He snuggled closer. “I kind of thought maybe I . . .” He took a deep breath. “Anyway, thank God it’s over. Tuck and I stopped having sex like six months ago, and what kind of relationship can you have without fucking?”

  Shaw wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to hide from that question.

  North met his gaze, wet his lips, and said, “Shaw, how long did you know?”

  Shaw understood the question: How long did you know Tuck was hitting me? And he weighed his next words. The lie would be the easiest, and in the short term, the best. But Shaw didn’t want the short term.

  Taking hold of North’s wrist, he peeled the arm from around his waist, ignoring North’s grumbles. Then he slid onto his side and scooted down the mattress until their foreheads pressed together. North’s eyes were closed. His breathing was irregular.

  “Not long,” Shaw whispered, and he saw North flinch as much as he felt it. “Only at the end. I went to your house when I was working that case with Matty.”

  North’s eyes screwed up even tighter. His voice was blank with horror. “You saw?”

  Shaw leaned into the other man, increasing the pressure of his forehead against North’s, running his fingers through the messy thatch.

  “Ok,” North finally said, pressing his fingertips to his eyes and then, after a moment, butting against Shaw, returning the pressure and contact where their foreheads met. “I guess this is now officially the worst moment of my life.”

  “North Bojangles McKinney,” Shaw said, his voice cracking.

  “That is not my middle name,” North whispered.

  Pressing his own forehead harder against North’s, Shaw said, “Nothing you’ve ever done—nothing, North—could make you deserve what Tucker did to you. Do you understand that?”

  North twisted into the mattress, trying to get away from Shaw, but Shaw kept up the contact and the pressure.

  “North?”

  “Yeah, all right.”

  “And nothing in the entire world could make me love you less. Not even a little bit.”

  North nodded. He butted back now, pressing into Shaw with a kind of desperation that neither of them could put into words but that Shaw could feel in the touch. His fingertips were white where they crimped his eyelids. Then, he shook once like he was throwing off a shiver, and he cleared his throat and rolled away. He was still covering his eyes, looking up at the ceiling, when he said, “Yeah, thanks.” He cleared his throat again. “Can we talk about this case or about the Cardinals or about the weather or anything else, please?”

  For a moment longer, Shaw lay there, savoring the ache in his forehead where North had pressed against him, and then he said, “Sure. But you know we can always talk about—”

  “Please don’t,” North whispered. Then, louder, “What do you think about Matheny this year?”

  “Who’s that?”

  North groaned and buried his face in the pillow.

  “Is he that new actor you were talking about? The one in the movie, that action movie we were going to—”

  “He’s the manager for the Cardinals, Shaw.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ve talked about him before.”

  “Right.”

  “He’s decent. That’s the official position.”

  “That’s what I was about to say.”

  North rolled upright and went to the bathroom. The sound of splashing water came, and then North called, “Can I take a shower? I’ve got my clothes in the car.”

  “Yeah, I just bought this body honey that—”

  “No.”

  “Well, you should at least try the lavender bath salt that I—”

  “Not a chance.” Then North appeared in the doorway, the too-small shirt already stripped off, the hard planes of muscle making Shaw’s breath catch. “I just want a bar of soap.”

  “And shampoo. For your hair. You know, because of the cigarette smoke.”

  “It’s cigar smoke.”

  “No, there’s a big difference, and I can tell—” North was making a growling noise, and Shaw stammered, “I mean, I could be wrong, I guess.”

  “You are. Soap?”

  “There’s a goat’s milk body wash that’s got a very masculine—”

  “Just stop,” North said, holding up a hand as he trotted toward the stairs. “I think I’ve got an extra bar in my bag.”

  “If you need to borrow a shirt—”

  “I don’t need any lady’s clothes,” North shouted back up the stairs. “Thanks, though.”

  Chapter 12

  AN HOUR LATER, they were settled at their desks, and North had to make a few concessions. First, although he’d never admit it, the goat’s milk body wash had been fucking fantastic. Second, he was grateful for a chance to scrub the cigarette smoke out of his hair; he didn’t like Shaw guessing that he had smuggled another pack of American Spirits. Third, Shaw had done great work while North had been bitching and moaning.

  “You got all this from phone calls?” North said. “Even Donny’s and Grace’s last names?”

  Shaw shrugged as they looked over his timeline together. “The problem, though, is that we don’t really know when he died, so it’s hard to make the alibis stick.”

  Shaking his head, North said, “We don’t need to make them stick. We’re not trying to build a defense. We’re trying to figure out who killed Shep, and that means we just start working each suspect, shredding their stories as best we can until we find the son of a bitch who did it.”

  “Or daughter of a bitch,” Shaw said, his tone helpful. “It could have been Grace Augusta.”

  “Daughter of a bitch isn’t really an expression.”

  “It’s the 21st century. I think women deserve equal representation.”

  “Is that a Yorkie wearing a bow?”

  Shaw covered the page with his hand, and North peeled his fingers away.

  “It helps me think.”

  “It’s a very cute bow.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Shaw said.

  North nodded. “Of course not.”

  “Sometimes I hate you.”

  “I’d like to track down Donny Yates and get his story,” North said. “That fight with Shep sounded serious, and I’d put money that whoever killed Shep had a personal reason to do it.”

  “I think we should focus on Beau.” Shaw clicked on the computer, and an image came up on the screen. “See that—Beau talked about that. He mentioned Donny walking on the backstop. And here’s a picture with Beau and some of the other guys at Zoar after a baseball game. Look at the guy sitting on the fence.”

  North squinted; the picture had been scanned and uploaded, and flecks of dust and hair marred the image. It had also been taken with a point-and-shoot, and the quality probably hadn’t been great to begin with. Still, it was easy enough to make out Beau’s features, although softened in youth. North didn’t recognize the other boys, but one of them was, as Shaw had pointed out, perched on the chain-link fencing that served as the backstop. He looked like a big kid, even posed in that awkward squat, and he had a black eye and what North thought was a split lip. “Looks like the kind of kid who gets in a lot of fights.”

  “That’s what Beau told us—he was always picking fights. I think it’s too convenient. Beau was too ready to tell us that story.”

  “If Beau was telling the truth, it would make sense that he was thinking about Donny. He’d just overheard that big fight.”

  “Beau’s not telling us something,” Shaw said. “He was too . . . prepared when he talked about how he felt about Shep. He’s hiding how he really felt.”

  “You think this killing was definitely connected back to the Zoar stuff?”

  “Maybe,” Shaw said. “But the motive could have been money as well. I don’t want to believe Chuck could do this, but we have to admit that things look bad for her. We already know from Mike that Chuck and Shep had been fighting, and Shep thought Chuck was stealing from Iris.”

  “I guess we need to start shredding alibis,” North said. “I’ll start with Chuck.”

  Shaw frowned. “What if I went the other way?”

  “You pretty much always do.”

  “I mean, what if I tried to figure out where Shep went? That might help us eliminate some possibilities. It might even put us on the killer’s trail.”

  North nodded. “Your pretty boy might be able to help with that.”

  “He’s not my pretty boy.”

  “Of course not. You can’t own people.”

  “You can’t own—” Shaw stopped and glared at him.

  North gave him his best, most innocent smile.

  “I’m going to call Jadon,” Shaw said, picking up his phone. “But not because—”

  “He’s your pretty boy.”

  “—he’s my . . . Damn it. Stop doing that.”

  North just smiled some more.

  As Shaw dialed, North found Beau’s number and called. The man picked up after a few rings, his voice rough. “Hello?”

  “This is North McKinney; we met yesterday.”

  “What? Yeah. Ok. Hi.”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “I was up pretty late. The stuff about Shep, you know.”

  “I need to check the records on your security system. How do I do that?”

  “What? Why?”

  “I’m following up a few leads.”

  “I don’t—look, is this about Chuck?”

  “That’s an interesting question.”

  “Because I’m not giving you anything unless you’re trying to get her out of there.”

  “What do you think I’m trying to do?”

  “I don’t know, but I want to hear you say it.”

  “Fine,” North said. “We’re working on clearing Chuck. How about some help?”

  “You call this number,” and Beau read one off. “And you say you’re Shep, and you tell them the password is white lights forty-seven.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  “Shep never got around to adding the rest of us, so he just gave us his password. That way if there was a false alarm, we could cancel before they called the police.”

  “What else can you do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just a question. Anything else you want to tell me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anything about the Thursday Shep disappeared?”

  “I already talked to your partner about this. Didn’t he—”

  “Yeah, he did. What about Donny? Anything about him?”

  “Look, I know Donny and Shep got in that huge fight, but he wouldn’t have done something like this.”

  “How do you know?”

  A long silence buzzed along the connection, and then Beau said, “I guess I don’t.”

  “We’re going to need to talk. Keep thinking about Thursday night. And see if anybody knows where Donny is staying.”

  After North disconnected, he called the number Beau had given him and worked his way through the system. He gave his name as Shep Collins, provided the password, and received confirmation that the user ID assigned to Charlotte Abelano had activated the security system at 11:03pm on Thursday, July 26.

  “Well, shit,” North said and disconnected.

  “What’d you find?” Shaw said.

  “The security system checks out.”

  “That sucks.”

  North nodded. “If we figured that out, the cops have too, and that means they still think Chuck killed Shep, even with the security log.”

  “I wish Jadon would text back.”

  “You might have to trade some favors.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “Jadon looks pretty vanilla, but you never know.”

  “Ok, North. Drop it.”

  “He might have some kinks you can explore.”

  “All right.”

  “And then, when you’ve got him wrapped around your finger—or any other part of your body he might like—you ask him.”

  “Do you want to hear what Mike said? Or do you want to keep being an idiot?”

  “Can’t I do both?”

  “Mike said,” Shaw stressed the words, “that Grace Augusta was at the house first thing this morning. She was pounding on the door. Demanding that Mike get out of her house.”

  “Her house?”

  “I guess she has a will that she says is Shep’s, and he left everything to her.”

  “What did Mike say about that?”

  “Mike said he has a copy of a will that leaves everything to him.”

  “Some lawyers are going to get fat off this.”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

  “You think it’ll be easy to prove which will is a fake?”

  “I think Shep Collins didn’t have any money; it won’t be worth the lawyer fees to fight it out. Anyway Mike also said that Grace Augusta had a life insurance policy on Shep. She mentioned that too, and when he called their agent, the agent confirmed that Shep had taken out the policy and assigned Grace Augusta as the beneficiary.”