The water was warm. North was warmer. And Shaw felt like with all this wet, slippery contact, he couldn’t exactly be blamed for his reaction.

  North chuckled against his neck and clutched him tighter.

  “I like you,” Shaw protested. “It’s not my fault you came in here and got all slick and nakedy, and this shower definitely wasn’t designed for two people, and sometimes I think you forget that you’re kind of this giant, clodhopping oaf, and—oh sweet Jesus.”

  North, wordless, had slid down to his knees and taken Shaw in his mouth. He moved Shaw’s hands to his hair. The straw-colored mess was dark with water, and when he looked up at Shaw, lips distended obscenely, his pupils were wide, shading his ice-blue eyes to the color of a storm.

  In part, it was the reaction to near-death. In part, it was the unfamiliar setting. In part, it was simply because this arrangement was new for them. Shaw was slow at first, and then faster, and then rougher, until North gagged and coughed. When Shaw eased back, North pulled off, returned Shaw’s hands to his hair, and said in a rough voice, “Did I tell you to stop?”

  “Oh fuck,” Shaw groaned.

  He didn’t last much longer. When the orgasm ripped through him, North cupped his ass and helped him stay upright. Then Shaw slid free, and North rocked forward, his head pressed against Shaw’s belly. Shaw stroked his hair, the side of his face, tracing his ear and the bristle of golden stubble. North’s face was an ember against the sensitive skin there. After what felt like a long time, he turned and kissed Shaw just below the navel and got to his feet.

  “Can I—”

  North gave a brusque shake of his head, elbowed Shaw aside, and said, “Give me the soap. And quit hogging the hot water.”

  They showered and dressed in the clothes that North had purchased from the Dollar General. The jeans were very, very blue. And the t-shirts were very, very white.

  “I feel like I’m in a 1950s gang of ne’er-do-wells.”

  “Great. That’s a step up from your usual look of ‘I raided my hippie grandmother’s lingerie drawer.’”

  “My grandmother was a hippie,” Shaw said.

  North shook his head as he stepped into a pair of plasticky slides. “Why do people wear this shit? What’s going to happen if something falls on my foot?”

  “And I did raid her lingerie drawer. After she died, I mean.”

  “Stop talking before I have to break up with you.”

  They got breakfast and drove back into the city; at the station, people gave them plenty of looks, and more than a few amused grins, but it didn’t take long before they were in separate interview rooms. They spent most of the rest of the day there. Shaw told his story to a fish-eyed detective who was mostly interested in the arson angle, and who seemed to think Shaw was hard up for money. Then Shaw told his story again. And again. And again. He told it once to Diamond and her partner, who shared a look but refused to answer any of his questions. And then Shaw had to tell it again.

  At sunset, he found North sitting on the steps outside the station. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Ronnie,” he said when he saw Shaw. “But no dice. I wanted to give that murderous little troll warning before I tracked him down and killed him.”

  “Remember when we were at Rufus’s party and I was telling everyone how you and I had looked at sex swings together, and you got really red and later you said sometimes certain conversations are better in some places than others?”

  “It wasn’t a party. It was his mother’s wake.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be talking about murdering Ronnie outside the police station.”

  North grunted. “I want that little fucker to know how much shit he’s in for going after you. It’s weird that he’s been quiet this long; I thought we’d have heard from him by now, if only so the ghoul could double down on his threats.”

  “Forget about Ronnie,” Shaw said, giving North a hand up. “We should probably call Pari. And Truck. And Zion. They’re going to want to know they can’t show up for work for the next little while.”

  “They already know.” North looked wrecked; dark circles marred the fair skin under his eyes, and his gaze had a hollowed-out quality. He smelled like cigarettes. “Diamond sent a couple of uniformed officers to check out my place; we can go back there.” His hesitation was so awkward that it was almost physically uncomfortable. “Unless you’d rather stay at your parents’ place.”

  “What? No. I want to be with you.”

  A tired smile raised the corners of his mouth.

  “So you can sit up all night with your gun.”

  “Jesus.”

  “And be all butch and protect me.”

  North turned and headed down the block.

  “It was very inspiring.”

  “Stop talking.”

  “I composed eighteen erotic haikus about it.”

  “Please stop talking.”

  Instead, Shaw recited the first four erotic haikus on the drive home; he’d forgotten the others.

  While Shaw tossed a rubber bone for the puppy and listened to voicemails from the insurance adjuster, North changed clothes. He was stepping into a pair of sweat shorts, the muscles in his back flexing, when his phone buzzed. He gave it a dirty look.

  “If you ignore it, I’ll let you order pizza.”

  “I’ll order pizza if I want to order pizza, Shaw.”

  “I’ll let you get the one with all the murdered animals.”

  “You know what it’s called. You know perfectly fucking well. Meat-lover’s. And you ate five slices last time.”

  “I’ll let you—”

  “It’s Celia,” North said, eyeing the flashing screen. He picked it up; his side of the conversation consisted of fewer than six words. When he lowered the phone, he looked even more tired than before. “We’ve been summoned again.”

  Chapter 20

  AT NIGHT, THE Chittenden farmhouse reminded Shaw of turn-of-the-century phantasmagoria: the white clapboard was ghostly, pearlescent in the moonlight, shifting behind the windbreak of black haw. Moisture in the air refused to settle into either mist or dew, and it gave everything a warped, kaleidoscopic look. They parked, and when Shaw opened his door, the smell of spring onions and raw Midwestern humidity rolled over him. An owl hooted in the distance, and then cut off abruptly before branches crackled against each other in an explosion of movement.

  “Fuck this,” North said. “If I want the fucking haunted house experience, I’ll go to Disney World.”

  “We could go right now,” Shaw said. “I’ve got six different Disney World maximizer apps on my phone already, and my Donald Duck romper was at the cleaner, so it didn’t get destroyed in the fire, which is kind of a miracle, North, right?”

  “Why do I say anything?” North asked as they approached the door. “Why do I open my mouth at all?”

  “Well, earlier, you opened your mouth because—my tit!” Shaw stumbled sideways, trying to rub out the sting of the titty-twister.

  “Don’t say tit.”

  “You can’t—but you—”

  “It’s sexist.”

  “What’s going on? What’s happening? Who are you, and where is the real North?”

  “I don’t know,” North said. “I haven’t had any cheese today; maybe my body is shutting down.”

  Then he knocked, and Shaw decided the rest of this conversation might be one of those things North kept saying was better to save for private time.

  Gavin the assistant opened the door. Behind him, darkness flooded the entry hall. The only light came from somewhere on the second floor, an oblong panel that illuminated one end of the landing with harsh, electric clarity. Where North and Shaw stood at the front door, the sanded pine boards had darkened to the color of honey, and the walls that last time had seemed the white of a tungsten filament were dingy now. Pigeon colored. The rest of the house dissolved into a void. Gavin’s eyes drooped, and his coffee breath mixed with an overpowering blast of vanilla air freshener.

  From beyond the second-floor kliegs came screaming: two voices, a man’s and woman’s.

  “Mrs. Chittenden will be with you in a moment,” Gavin said as he ushered them into the office.

  “Tell her no rush,” North said. “Make sure she rips his balls clean off; don’t hurry on our account.”

  Gavin’s face rippled with anger, and he rushed out of the room.

  The office lay in shadow too. A single lamp on the desk provided light, and the objects that on their last visit had seemed middle-class banal—the milk pails, the shine jugs, the blue-enamel percolator—had been rendered down to blobs of shadow. Inside its red-felt display case, the revolver looked dull and leaden. Even the shiplap wall with its photographs had changed. The lamp threw a glare, turning the glass into mirrors that winked when Shaw moved. North took a seat; overhead, the screaming continued. The woman’s voice, almost exclusively now. North stood again, hands in his jacket, and paced to the window.

  Shaw tried counting his breaths. He hummed the first four bars of “Screaming Infidelities.” He applied a transposition cipher to fragments of “I heard a Fly buzz—when I died” that he remembered. When the front door opened, he started, and he was weirdly relieved to see that he wasn’t the only one who was jumpy: North’s hand had gone to the CZ holstered under his arm.

  Gavin’s voice was a murmur, and then footsteps moved toward the office.

  “—and I’m telling you, we can’t just—” Detective Diamond Kelso cut off as she passed through the office’s double doors and saw them.

  “Yes, we absolutely can,” her partner was saying. Raskowski was tucking her blond hair under a Cardinals cap and hadn’t noticed them yet. “Pick them up, hold them for twenty-four hours, and let them go before we have to arraign them.”

  “Gee willikers, North,” Shaw said. “That sounds like false imprisonment.”

  Raskowski stopped moving. Then, shoving the last of her hair under the cap, she raised her gaze to look at them.

  Diamond let out a sigh. “Should have known you’d be here.”

  “Long time no see, Detective,” North said. “I thought you and your partner had just about worn yourselves out trying to prove that Shaw burned down his own house. I figured you were due for some shut-eye.”

  “You need to take it down a level.” Like her partner, she was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, which made her larger build more obvious than in her tailored suits. She took a seat on the tan leather sofa, and after a moment, Raskowski joined her. “You know we have to ask those questions. You might be the first person who’s lucky to have a killer trying to silence him, just because it gives you some sort of alibi. The arson squad got hard-ons just smelling all the accelerants around your place.”

  “Right,” North drawled. “Shaw boarded up his own doors, crawled up the fire escape, fired a rifle at his window, and set the place on fire. Oh, and escaped out the back.” Then he frowned. “You think whoever killed that girl came after Shaw?”

  “Now they’re going to try to twist everything around,” Raskowski said.

  “It seems pretty straightforward.” Diamond’s luminous golden eyes narrowed as she studied North. “You found that girl, and the same night, your partner almost gets murdered. Someone wants you to stop looking into this case. Did you think it was just a coincidence?”

  North’s face was painfully blank, and Shaw could practically hear him thinking about Ronnie, but all he said was “I didn’t think it through, I guess.”

  In the silence that followed, something crashed upstairs. Raskowski flinched.

  “Don’t you want to check that they’re ok?” Shaw asked.

  Settling back onto the sofa, Diamond ran her hand along the cushion.

  “She’s a state senator,” Raskowski said. “I’d like to get to my twenty.”

  The screaming picked up again, rising in intensity before another crash punctuated the harangue.

  “What do you have on Hiwet?” North asked.

  Raskowski shook her head, but Diamond glanced up at the escalating voices and said, “She was killed with a nine-millimeter. Two shots from close range. It looks like she was killed there; the blood spatter seems consistent, although that’ll have to be checked.”

  “Any idea why she was in that apartment?”

  “Or how she got there?” Shaw added.

  “We can talk about this—” Raskowski began.

  “It’s either talk about it now or sit here and go crazy listening to that.” Diamond flinched as a thud sounded above them, and the whole house seemed to shiver. “She had travel papers. Train tickets to Chicago, and then connecting on a bus to Bemidji.”

  “Minnesota?” North glanced at Shaw. “Why was she going to Minnesota?”

  “No, they were for Philip Chambers, which matches the fake ID you found in that wallet.”

  “Shit. How the hell did she get her hands on those?”

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Raskowski snapped. “She showed up. The kid was still there. She threatened to tell everyone he was running away. Grabbed his papers or something, said she wouldn’t let him leave. He shot her and took off.”

  North didn’t exactly roll his eyes, but it was close.

  “Do you have any idea how she found out about that apartment?” Shaw asked again. “Or when she went there?”

  “Her head of residence says Hiwet was in bed by curfew the night before; our best guess is that she snuck out and went to the apartment. She didn’t show up for classes on Friday, and the school notified her parents, but apparently this was a semi-regular occurrence. From what we can tell, the girl’s been on the move her whole life—her dad was some sort of bigwig in Eritrea twenty years ago, but he’s been on the run since that girl was a baby. God only knows why.” Diamond blew out a breath. “That’s a long way of telling you that no one was particularly worried when she didn’t show. We’re not sure how she learned about the apartment. It doesn’t seem to be common knowledge; you might think we just sat around waiting to talk to you about your house burning down, but we spent most of today talking to students and staff. If anybody knew about that place besides Hiwet, they’re a grade-A liar—everyone we talked to swears they didn’t know Philip had a fake ID, let alone an apartment, and I’m inclined to believe them.”

  “What about Lauren?” North dropped into one of the farmhouse chairs. “Have you hauled her in and pressed her? How did she get that wallet? She had to know about the apartment, right?”

  Diamond pressed her lips together and looked away.

  “Lauren,” Raskowski said in a mocking tone, “is back with her parents in Vermont. Behind an army of lawyers.”

  “Jesus,” North muttered.

  “The most we could get out of her was a story about Flip dropping his wallet; she claims she picked it up and meant to return it to him, but then he disappeared.”

  “Convenient. But as soon as someone shows up to ask her about Flip, she runs and buries it in a dumpster.”

  Diamond gave an aggressive nod. “She swears she didn’t know about the apartment; she assumed the address was a fake just like the name.”

  “She says,” Raskowski said with that same mocking sneer, “you guys scared her, and that’s why she threw it away. She says if the police had asked her about it, she would have turned it over immediately, but she thought she was in danger from you two.”

  “Bullshit.” North slapped the arm of the chair. “That is fucking bullshit. She knew something was wrong, and she’s tied up in it somehow.”

  “You think she had something to do with Hiwet?” Diamond asked.

  “I think every time she opened her mouth, she was lying. Why would this bullshit be any different? She knows something about Hiwet; I’d bet on it. And I bet she knows a hell of a lot more about Flip than she’s telling us.”

  “You can fly out to Vermont, then. Good luck.”

  “Fuck,” North growled, pounding his fist on the chair again. “What about that fake ID? Did you get anything?”

  “We’re waiting on warrants to see if he has accounts in those names. As far as we can tell, he hasn’t booked any flights, but—”

  “That kid is dead,” Raskowski said.

  Diamond turned to look at her. North did too. Shaw couldn’t turn away.

  Raskowski shifted, playing with her ball cap and looking away. “He is. And you all know he is.”

  A door opened and slammed shut, a gunshot sound that made all four of them bolt upright. Heavy steps moved along the upper hallway, and then stairs creaked.

  Celia’s screams suddenly became audible. “—at least I’d have a husband with a functioning dick.” The words grew clearer as she came closer to the entry hall. “I should have listened to my father when he told me not to marry the cockless wonder.”

  From where he stood, Shaw could see through the double doors into the entry hall’s gloom. Francis raced across the floor, threw open the door, and plunged out into the night. The door hung open behind him; tendrils of damp chill and spring-onion smell worked their way into the house.

  The next scream, when it came, sounded like Celia was standing just outside the office. The noise was guttural, animal, and it rose in pitch into a kind of insane rage. A moment later, something crashed—shattering ceramic and splintering wood. Then the only sound was ragged breathing.

  “Jesus Christ,” North whispered.

  Footsteps. Celia, in another navy suit and sensible heels, clicked her way to the front door and shut it. Then she turned, staring into the office, her eyes skating over Shaw before fixing on an empty space in the middle distance. The only sign of her distress were two ruddy spots in her cheeks, barely noticeable in the shadows. She walked into the office, her stride smooth and unhurried, and Shaw fought the urge to step back, to grab North’s hand, to dive out the window.