This time, Jadon did sigh. “Babe, who says that the attack on Pari is connected to Shep Collins’s murder? Chuck’s jewelry is missing. Her TV and laptop are gone. Whoever was in there ripped up the place looking for anything she might have hidden. And Chuck lives in a rough part of town. It could have been a robbery gone wrong.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was Pari. In Chuck’s apartment. The probability of a coincidence like that—it’s infinitesimally small.”

  “Yeah, well, you can’t build your whole case on probability.”

  Shaw took another step back. “You think I’m being emotional again.”

  “I think you’re understandably upset. Someone you care about has been hurt, and—”

  “You think I’m wrong.”

  Jadon shut his mouth, rubbing his jaw, looking at North—who met his gaze with eyes like frost—and then at the floor.

  “Oh my God, you think I’ve been wrong this whole time.”

  “What are my options, Shaw? She got in a big fight with him. She was high as a kite. He disappeared. His body and the murder weapon were in her car. She’s got no alibi. If you tell me she didn’t do it, fine. I’ll go with you on this. But don’t act like I’m the one who’s being irrational.”

  A heartbeat passed. Then North let out a low breath and said, “Shaw—”

  “Irrational.”

  “Shaw, let it go.”

  “That’s what you think: I’m being irrational.”

  Jadon stood there, his jaw squared, his body angled and tensed like he was ready for a punch.

  “All right,” North said, moving between them. “Let’s take a time out.” Catching Shaw’s shoulder, North forced him back along the hallway. “Jadon, let us know if anything changes, all right?”

  “I’m not being irrational,” Shaw was shouting at the top of his lungs, leaning over North’s shoulder like he wanted to sprint down the hall and pick right back up where they’d left off. “I’m trying to do what the police should be doing, I’m trying to—”

  His back hit something—a door, Shaw realized—and North manhandled him through the doorway and onto a staircase landing.

  “—do your fucking job,” Shaw finished. The shout echoed up and down the bare cement steps.

  “You get thirty more seconds of this bullshit,” North said, “and then you’re done.”

  Shaw wheeled away from him, pacing the length of the landing. He stopped in front of the far wall, tilted his head back, and screamed. Then he punched the wall.

  Rather, he tried to punch it. North caught his arm.

  With one of those tiny North smiles, he said, “You don’t want to mess up your manicure.”

  “They don’t care. Pari could be dead, and they’d rather ignore it and pretend nothing happened so they can hang this around Chuck’s neck and be done with it.”

  “You’ve got about ten more seconds.”

  “I hate him. I hate him for being so fucking pretentious and for acting like I’m the one who’s crazy.”

  “That’s it. You’re done now.”

  Shaw shook his head. After a moment, barely trusting his voice, he said, “Why aren’t you upset?”

  “Oh, I’m fucking furious. But I’m not picking a fight with my boyfriend in the hospital. I’m going to do something about it. And you can too, if you’re not too busy being hysterical.”

  Shaw squeezed his eyes shut. Tears burned under the lids, seeped out, and scorched lines down his cheeks. “Fine. What are we going to do?”

  “Open your eyes.”

  “Just tell me, North.”

  “Open your eyes.”

  Shaw blinked; more tears spilled out, hot and fast. North caught his face with both hands. His thumbs wiped Shaw’s cheeks, catching the tears. He was so close. His eyes were like fresh snowfall, a blue that was almost white. His mouth was close enough, Shaw thought. He didn’t let himself think close enough for what, but his mouth was close enough.

  Then North’s thumbs rubbed roughly over Shaw’s cheeks again. Shaw’s breathing stuttered and then slowed. North wiped one more time; the pads of his thumbs had a velvet burn as they scraped across Shaw’s skin. Shaw blinked. His eyes still burned, but at least they were dry.

  “So, Mr. I’ve-got-a-PI-license,” North said with another of those tiny North smiles. “What are we going to do?”

  “Find the son of a bitch who did this.”

  “Or daughter of a bitch. It’s the 21st century.”

  In spite of himself, Shaw smiled. More tears spilled out of his eyes, and North wiped them away again. If anything, he was closer now. Shaw’s next breath was full of the smell of Irish Spring soap and summer sweat and leather.

  “And how are we going to do that?”

  “We’re going to figure out what happened at Chuck’s apartment.”

  For an instant, North’s smile flashed out in full. He swung Shaw around in front of him and swatted Shaw’s ass, propelling him toward the stairs. “Good thing you’re the one with the license.”

  Chapter 26

  POLICE TAPE MARKED the door to Chuck’s apartment, warning anyone from entering, but North didn’t think the police had much to worry about. The building was probably fifty years old, but it looked like it had been built to last about ten—cardboard and staples probably would have held up better than this shitheap. The floor had a distinct slope; mold dotted the baseboards; the walls were patched with mesh screens that had never been plastered over and painted. The air smelled like rotting cabbage, and it was enough to turn North’s stomach.

  Inside, North knew, would be worse. He caught Shaw’s elbow as they approached. “Check this floor for cameras. Then the ground floor. Entrances and exits. Anything on the street.”

  “I know how to do it, North.”

  North shrugged, pulling on nitrile gloves and paper booties. He checked the handle on the door, then noticed where the strike plate had been torn from the wood. When he gave a push, the door swung open with a long creak.

  “Well?” North said because Shaw was still standing there.

  “I’m not afraid of going in there.”

  North slid between strips of tape.

  “Maybe you should be the one checking for cameras.”

  North flicked on the lights; ancient fluorescents buzzed, and then he could see the apartment: black-and-white checkered linoleum, an efficiency-size refrigerator wheezing and clanking, a sofa with its cushions slashed, a stand where the TV must have stood, two narrow windows. One door on the right. One door on the left.

  “I’ll do it,” Shaw said, stepping toward the door. “I’ll take the apartment. You look for cameras.”

  “Not without booties. Not without gloves. Not without a hairnet.”

  “Ok. Hand them over.”

  “Oh, I only brought these for myself.”

  “Then I’ll get some from the car.”

  “Fine.”

  Shaw turned to go.

  “Oh, and Shaw? On your way down, you might as well check the cameras.”

  “That’s not—”

  “This floor. Then the ground floor. Then exterior. Then street.”

  For a moment, it looked like Shaw might argue, but then he spun and marched down the hall. Normally, North liked getting him worked up, but right then it felt like an emergency operation. North had learned a long time ago—seven years, to be precise—that keeping Shaw annoyed was a very effective tactic for keeping him from falling into dark places. Right then, North knew that one of the major things keeping Shaw from falling to pieces was that he was pissed at North and pissed at Jadon. North might have to explain that to Jadon, in fact—he wasn’t sure at all that Jadon understood why Shaw had reacted so strongly.

  North picked a path carefully to the middle of the room. Forensics had already processed the apartment, but it was still technically a closed crime scene, and North didn’t want to contaminate anything. He paused where the linoleum ended and cheap carpet marked the beginning of the living area. He studied the kitchen, near the front door, and the living space, near the windows.

  The attack had obviously happened in the kitchen. Blood covered the cabinets in long sprays; it puddled on the floor, reddish-brown stains. It seemed impossible that Pari had survived. In fact, it seemed impossible that Pari had managed to call 911 before collapsing into shock. The knife must have done massive damage.

  That was the main reason North couldn’t let Shaw into the apartment. Shaw was brave and tough and smart—probably braver and tougher and smarter than just about anyone North knew. But this attack, it had been with a knife. And blood painted the cabinets, the floor, the walls. And it had been Pari who had been attacked—someone Shaw loved. It was a fatal combination that might send Shaw spiraling back to that night seven years ago. A shrink would probably have said that North shouldn’t be taking choices away from Shaw. A shrink would probably have said that, at some point, Shaw needed to confront his past. But that shrink hadn’t seen Shaw at the end of junior year, when he couldn’t leave the apartment anymore, when he wouldn’t even open the bedroom door and North had to kick it in. That shrink would have to put a bullet in North’s head before he let Shaw be sucked into that whirlpool of nightmares again.

  Drawing a breath, North checked the first door: bathroom. Everything had been dumped out of the medicine cabinet. Over-the-counter bottles lay on the floor. A few tampons. A toothbrush had slid under the clawfoot bathtub. He crossed and checked the opposite door: a bedroom. The mattress cut open. Clothing ripped from the closet. Purses dumped out. A small jewelry box smashed, the splintered wood betraying the force that had been used to open it. A few framed prints had been torn from the walls; a Van Gogh reproduction had part of its matting peeled back, as though Chuck might have hidden something inside it.

  North turned back to the kitchen and living area, studying it again. What had they been looking for? He tried to play out the sequence of events: the killer had arrived long before Pari, of course, in order to have time to search so thoroughly. Then Pari had come in the front door.

  As though on cue, Shaw appeared in the doorway, his face framed by the police tape.

  “Stay out there,” North said, forcing his eyes not to go to the blood. “I’m in the middle of something.”

  Shaw fanned a stack of pages.

  “Are you looking for a lost dog?” North said.

  “I have been thinking about getting a dog. One of those teacup Yorkies—”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “I could teach it to use a litter box.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Oh. Security camera printouts showing Pari’s attacker.”

  “Oh? Like, no big deal, I just happen to have a major break in the case?”

  “Yeah, the guy at the convenience store across the street printed them out after he heard about the attack. He was just waiting for somebody to come by and ask about them.”

  “And you told him you were a police officer.”

  “No, I said I was cooperating with the police. Part of a special unit.”

  North groaned, but he picked out a safe path back to the door and studied the printouts as Shaw displayed them. The images were surprisingly good quality, although they had been printed on standard printer paper from a cheap inkjet. They showed a tri-colored truck—the front rusted brown; the doors obviously replacements with blue and white paint; the bed a poisonous shade of green. In several shots, the truck’s Arkansas license plate was visible: ZOAR. Then several shots of a man walking into the building. Then several of him leaving, head tucked down, shoulders hunched. The timestamps ran from 6:52am to 6:59am. And then a final, farewell shot of the van at the end of the block.

  “That’s Donny Yates,” North said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Pictures taken in early morning light. No shadows on him. He’s wearing shorts and a t-shirt and sneakers. His face is fully visible to the camera.”

  “Wow. I thought you needed glasses because of how you squint when you try to read the buttons on the remote, but you really did a great job of stating the obvious.”

  “I don’t need glasses, Shaw. I’m pointing this out because it’s not a trick, it’s not like someone dressing up for a bad camera in a dark parking lot. That’s Donny Yates.”

  “That’s right,” Shaw said again. “And that’s his truck.”

  “How did the convenience store guy know to pull these?”

  “Early morning. Nobody else was going in or out.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well, North, sometimes when the sun goes down, people like to go to sleep. Then, in the morning, they—”

  “I’m not talking about that. I’m saying somebody was here for a while. Somebody searched this place. Then Pari came home, caught him by surprise, and got attacked.”

  “Or Donny walked in,” Shaw said, “and Pari was already here. He stabbed Pari, tossed everything so it looked like it had been searched, and ran. Or he tossed the place quickly—burglars move fast, North—and Pari walked in like you said.”

  “Where’s Pari?”

  “In the hospital.”

  “No, dumbass. In the pictures? The convenience store guy said nobody else went in the building?”

  Shaw thumbed the stack of pictures. “She could have parked on another street. She could have come in another door. But so could somebody else.”

  “Either way, we need to talk to Donny Yates. He’s been floating around this thing since the beginning; I want to hear his story. Preferably while he’s in a pair of cuffs.”

  “He’s on the run, North.”

  “So find out where he is,” North said.

  “How?”

  “You’re resourceful.”

  “I brought some booties. I’m going to help you—”

  “No. I’m going over the apartment. You find Donny Yates. Call every campground in the state if you have to.”

  North went back to his search, and from the hallway came Shaw’s one-sided conversation with manager after manager as Shaw called campgrounds and searched for a tri-colored truck or a man who might be calling himself Donny Yates.

  The more North searched, though, the more disgruntled he became. Yes, the apartment had obviously been tossed. Yes, it made a quick, convenient excuse to dismiss the attack as nothing more than a botched robbery. But the more North poked around the apartment, shifting the torn cushions, studying the fallen prescription bottles, digging through the clothes that had been dumped from the dresser drawers, the more convinced he was of two things: first, that this hadn’t been a robbery; and second, that the cops investigating hadn’t cared.

  Shaw was tapping busily at his phone when North returned to the hallway.

  “Those are cute,” Shaw said. “But you’ll need to get your ears pierced.” Then his eyebrows shot up. “Unless you’re planning on—” His voice fell into a strangled whisper. “—for your nipples?”

  North struggled to control his voice. Balancing the two diamond studs in his palm, he said, “Yes, Shaw. I was looking around Chuck’s apartment, came across these diamond studs, and immediately knew they’d be perfect for my tits.”

  “I think that’s an offensive word now. And if you’re going to pierce your nipples, you should probably get something matching down, you know, on your, um.”

  “I’m not getting a piercing on my—Jesus Christ, Shaw, I’m not getting anything pierced. I’m trying to tell you this wasn’t a robbery. Nobody would have left diamond stud earrings. Nobody would have left them even if they were fake; they might get lucky pawning them.”

  “The real robbery,” Shaw said, “is that I’ll never get to see your diamond nipples.”

  “Have you done anything productive out here?”

  “Yeah. I found Donny Yates.”

  “What? And you’re just standing here, yammering about diamond tits or whatever you’re talking about? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “I’m not the one thinking about getting his—” Shaw coughed discreetly and pointed to his crotch. “—pierced and fitted with an enormous diamond. That’s really vain, actually. Maybe just something tasteful. Something small. Not that you’re small, I just mean, you want to be proportionate and—”

  “Stop talking,” North said through gritted teeth. “Where is Donny Yates?”

  “Oh, in a state park. Castlewood. But he’s not staying officially. He used an access road and found a spot the rangers never check. It used to be a ranger station, so they still have running water and a vault toilet, and he can stay up there indefinitely probably without anyone spotting him.”

  “And how do you know this?”

  “The internet.”

  “Shaw.”

  “I found him on a forum for camper and RV enthusiasts. He goes by ZoarBoy, and he was asking for a free place he could park his camper for a few nights. Somebody told him about the Castlewood spot, and that was ZoarBoy’s last post.”

  “Let’s check it out.”

  Chapter 27

  THEY TOOK I-44 WEST out of the city, leaving behind the urban-industrial sprawl of south St. Louis, through the green corridor of Webster Groves and Kirkwood, and then out into the desolation of the exurbs. They cut north up Highway 141, and then they followed Big Bend to Castlewood State Park.

  Late on a Wednesday afternoon, the park had a moderate population of hikers, kids splashing in the Meramec River, and casual visitors looking for a space to walk their dogs or throw a frisbee. Shaw kept the forum post visible on his screen, and he called out directions as they went deeper into the park.

  In the pair of hours since Shaw had heard about the attack on Pari, his emotions had run through a rough cycle. Some of what he had felt in the hospital—the overwhelming need to cry, the helplessness, the feeling of being trapped and unable to breathe—he could explain. He had been afraid for Pari, after all. And he had blamed himself for what had happened to her.