“If you try to talk about last night,” Shaw said, “I’m hanging up.”

  From the other side of the line came the sound of North clearing his throat, and then a single, rough word. “Ok.”

  “I know I’m usually the one who wants to talk. I know I’m usually the one who has to put it all into words. But I don’t want to talk about it. I feel like shit, and I’m sorry. And that’s all I want to say.”

  Another long silence followed; from the faint ambient noise that filtered across the line, Shaw guessed that North was driving. Then, his voice regaining some of its normal smolder, North said, “I thought we weren’t talking about it.”

  “We’re not.”

  “Well, if we’re not talking about it, then I can’t say I’m sorry too.”

  “Fine. Good. Let’s not talk about it.”

  “Are you ok? You sound like you’ve been drinking.”

  “I’m fine. I just—I’m still waking up.”

  “At one in the afternoon?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this case a lot, North. About Shep and Chuck and Donny. About Grace Augusta forging that life insurance policy and threatening Mike, and Mike stealing from Shep and from the Iris foundation, and Beau having an affair with Shep. Shep and drugs. Donny and drugs. Chuck and drugs. All of it. And you know what?”

  “People suck.”

  “People fucking suck.”

  A trace of humor crept into the familiar roughness of North’s voice. “You figured that out all on your own, huh?”

  “I don’t think Donny did it, North. And now he’s dead.”

  A long silence came from the other side of the call, longer than the two that had come before. Then, carefully, North said, “Chuck’s out of jail, though. Charges dropped.”

  “But Donny didn’t do it.”

  “We don’t think he did it, Shaw. But we hit a dead end. The cops are satisfied it was Donny; Mike is probably back in the Philippines by now, and Grace Augusta could be anywhere. The case is closed. For that matter, both our cases are closed. All that’s left now is to bill them.”

  “I don’t know. Billing Chuck doesn’t seem right. And what’s our other case?”

  “Teddi’s little brunch fiasco. It didn’t take long to unravel; somebody made up a lie about him, and they were clever enough to seed it a few different ways so that everyone thought they had heard it from someone else. It’s not exactly a new move, but the old ones still work pretty well.”

  “I don’t feel bad about billing Teddi.”

  “No, Teddi is definitely going to get an invoice, but—” North bit off the word, interrupting himself. “Jesus fucking Christ, I am such a fucking idiot.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I left Jack at the brunch. Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with me?”

  “Jack?”

  North’s voice came back distracted. “I’ve got to call you back.”

  “Jack? Who’s Jack?”

  “That really cute guy from Allure. Nice arms. Long legs. I tried to set you up with him. I’ve got to call him, Shaw. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “He wasn’t that cute,” Shaw said, but the line went dead, and then Shaw was alone again, staring at a pile of cable-knit sweaters that, after reading an article about the skin benefits of wool, Shaw had dug out of his winter storage and then, at some point, forgotten about.

  Nice arms. Long legs.

  Shaw tried to push the thought aside. He crawled back to the bed, still feeling like he was flying through clouds, and dragged himself onto the mattress. He lay there, staring up at the plaster ceiling, tracing the cracks.

  That really cute guy from Allure.

  Maybe it was better this way, Shaw thought. Maybe he was always going to be slightly off center from North, just to one side. Maybe there would always be three points floating in space: North and his partner, whoever it might be, and Shaw drifting off to nowhere.

  Maybe, Shaw thought, he could borrow an old trick. Maybe he could tell Pari a rumor about Jack. Only he’d tell it in a way so that it sounded like he’d heard it from someone else, and then Pari would tell North, and North would think Pari heard it from—Christ, who? Teddi? North would believe that, right? And then North would hear this rumor about Jack and decide to end things with him.

  Groaning, Shaw buried his face in the mattress again, wishing the Ambien would drag him back into the blackness for a little longer. He was turning into a full-on psycho, thinking things like that.

  It was time to be a grown-up. He found the knit shorts from the day before and dragged them on; something rustled in the pocket. When Shaw pulled out the piece of paper, he found that it was a backpacking permit. He dimly remembered grabbing it from inside Donny’s truck right before everything went to hell. The dates were for July 26 through July 28. Thursday through Saturday. The exact window of time in which Shep Collins had been killed. A convenient alibi that Donny had never had a chance to use? Or something else?

  Shaw dropped onto the bed and shoved the backpacking permit into his pocket again. It didn’t matter because the cops had killed Donny, and as far as they were concerned, the case was closed. But the permit jiggled something loose inside Shaw’s head, and suddenly he was restless, itching with the need to move.

  He rolled over, grabbing a cocktail napkin from under the bed and a charcoal stick that he found next to the two joints in his nightstand. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he lit up and took a long toke. With the cocktail napkin at his side, he let the charcoal scrape back and forth. The clouds in his head made it difficult to think, and Shaw regretted the Ambien.

  Something about what North had said. An old trick. But old tricks work sometimes. A thought swam in the dark waters of Shaw’s unconscious.

  Shaw set himself to thinking. Mike Llagas might have fled the country, as North suggested. But maybe not. And Grace Augusta might have gone back to Arkansas. But maybe not. Someone had stayed in the city. Someone had attacked Pari when she went to Chuck’s apartment. Shaw didn’t have any proof, but he knew it hadn’t been Donny Yates. The security camera footage of Donny was too perfect; whoever had arranged this had put Donny in the frame clear as day. And that meant the real killer had been the one who attacked Pari, and he—or she—was still here.

  Frowning to himself, Shaw sketched a house. A pony. A donkey. North in profile, just the jawline and the start of a cheekbone, but enough for Shaw to recognize what he was drawing.

  He ripped up the napkin, stubbed out the joint, and went downstairs. Sitting at his desk, his head spinning in the chemical fog that the weed had only made worse, he tried again with the sketchpad.

  North with one of those tiny North smiles on his face.

  He tore the page into scraps.

  North with his shirt unbuttoned, exposing the dense muscle across his chest, the thick blond fuzz between his pecs.

  He shredded the page in two directions.

  North, hair mussed, pupils blown open, the way he had looked after the kiss in the instant before Shaw had pushed him away—literally and figuratively.

  Shaw reached for the page to tear it again, but his fingers trembled when he caught the paper’s edge, and his eyes filled with tears. He dashed them away; he was only crying because of the meds and the weed, of course, but they were really fucking him up. He wished, again, that he’d made a different choice. He could have kissed North back. He could have trusted North—he could have lived out the fantasy that had been in his head all these years, the dream-world where North was safe and perfect and could help Shaw through the fears and fumbles. For that matter, Shaw thought, they could have just had a huge fight. Blown up at each other. But at least that would have been better than shoving North—

  A fight.

  And then, Shaw thought about Shep bailing out Donny Yates. He thought about the third man in the basement when Beau had overheard the fight between Donny and Shep. He thought about the way Jadon had described Taylor and Waggener’s handling of the case: as if they already knew where they were going. He thought about what the two detectives could have wanted so badly that they took such stupid risks, and he thought about all that money in Shep’s bank account. Then Shaw thought back to what Chuck had told them, about a boy from Iris getting picked up for possession and Shep talking the cops down to a misdemeanor. The thoughts broke the surface of Shaw’s unconscious, and he knew what he’d missed. Jadon and North had both been right: Shaw had been blind. And very, very stupid.

  He made one phone call, and then he knew he was right.

  Chapter 32

  SHAW MET NORTH in the Barnes-Jewish parking lot, and they went up the elevator together, not speaking. The fluorescent glare leached the color out of both of them; to Shaw’s eyes, it made them look like they ought to be lying down in a morgue. They followed the quiet halls. North smelled like cigarette smoke again, and his eyes kept settling on Shaw with a weight that was hard to throw off. But every time Shaw readied himself to ask what was going on, North’s gaze would drift away, casually, naturally, as though Shaw had ceased existing for him.

  The hospital room was dark even on the summer afternoon: the shades drawn, the lights turned off, not even a lamp to read by. North went first, his hand brushing the gun at the small of his back, hidden under a loose fold of his t-shirt. Then Shaw stepped inside, shutting the door behind him, and took in the layout carefully. He was walking into a minefield.

  Chuck sat in a chair next to Pari’s bed. In the shadows, Chuck’s face lost most of its details. Shaw had only an impression of her pallor, the shock of bleached hair, the darkness puddling under her eyes. Next to her, in a tank and shorts that covered about fourteen inches total of his long, lean frame, Nels sprawled in another chair, his head on Chuck’s shoulder, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell easily.

  Pari took up a good minute of Shaw’s attention. He hadn’t seen her since the attack, and the sight of her now disturbed him in a way he hadn’t expected. Shaw had been fortunate that to this point in his life, he had never had to see someone he loved gravely injured. North had gotten knocked around, and when he had been hurt in their last case, that had scared Shaw. Terrified him. But it was nothing like this: Pari’s already thin frame wasted from the trauma, the bones pressing against stretched skin, an unhealthy cast to her face that even the shadows couldn’t hide.

  Chuck blinked once at Shaw and North but said nothing. Her hands tightened around the plastic armrests, though.

  Shaw cocked his head at the hallway. “Outside?” he asked in a whisper.

  She must have considered it, because a pause preceded her response. Then she shook her head once. That was when Shaw knew that she knew why he was there.

  So Shaw sat in the remaining chair, and North stood by the door. His hand didn’t touch the small of his back again, but Shaw could almost feel him fighting the urge to check the gun again. Nels’s chest rose and fell; the exchange student’s Scandinavian good looks were hollowed out too with grief and worry. These three young people had been through two tragedies in the space of a week. The stress must have tested their relationship in a way none of them could have predicted. And now Shaw was here. He wondered if they would blame him for what happened next; he would understand if they did.

  “It’s my fault,” Chuck whispered, and then she started to cry. She didn’t sob or shake or even tremble, but her hands tightened on the chair hard enough that the plastic creaked.

  Shaw waited.

  “I thought I could just keep quiet. I thought it would be better if I didn’t say anything.”

  “But somebody did say something,” Shaw said. “And you lied.”

  Chuck sniffled into her sleeve.

  Shaw waited.

  “It didn’t matter, though,” Chuck said. “They got him. Right?”

  “They killed an innocent man. You were part of that, whether you like it or not.” Shaw shifted in his seat, checking his line to the door, checking the position of the bed, guessing how quickly Chuck could get to him if she decided to do something stupid. “You’ve been lying from the very beginning, Chuck. You lied about the fight you had with Shep. You lied about Donny Yates. You lied about Pari. Was she supposed to die? That night she went to your apartment, did you think that would shut her up completely?”

  Chuck stared at him; even her bleached hair looked like it had more color than her face.

  “Mike Llagas told us about the fight,” Shaw ticked it off on one finger. “He told us you thought Shep was stealing. He told us it was a bad fight, really bad. But the fight wasn’t about money from Iris. The fight was about the money from the drugs you and Shep were dealing to those kids.”

  “What?”

  “Was he skimming cash? Were you not getting your cut?” Shaw shook his head. “Either way, Shep was screwing with the money, and you knew you couldn’t trust him because he’d flaked out before; he had a habit of disappearing. You knew he was going to do it again. He was going to disappear with all that money. Money that should have been yours, right?”

  Chuck shook her head once. She looked speechless.

  “What was the last straw?” Shaw said. “When did you know you couldn’t just let him walk away? Can you remember the precise moment you knew it would be better for Shep to die than for him to wriggle away with all that money and start over again?”

  “I never thought that,” Chuck said. “What money? What are you—”

  “I think you made those decisions the night you killed him.”

  Chuck stiffened in her seat, her whole frame rigid. Nels snorted in his sleep, his head almost sliding off her shoulder before she caught him and helped him shift position.

  “I think,” Shaw continued, “it was the night Shep took Beau out for dinner and drinks, and they fought because Beau wanted more than Shep was going to give him. Beau wanted a life with Shep, as sad as that might be. But Shep just wanted another kid he could screw—and this was the ultimate forbidden fruit, because this was one of his kids from Zoar. They fought; Beau got wasted. And I think Beau called you that night. He told you everything. He told you about all that money Shep had socked away. More money than you ever realized you were pulling in from dealing to the kids at Iris.”

  “No,” Chuck whispered.

  “And you knew that if Shep had that kind of money, he could vanish any day. Just walk away, and you’d never see him again. You’d be the one left holding the bag. What was the arrangement?”

  “No.”

  “Ok, I’ll tell you my version, and you can let me know if I got it wrong. Shep’s running Iris, but he’s sick of being poor. Then Donny shows up; he’s going back and forth, muling between here and Arkansas. One day, Donny gets arrested. Shep bails him out. And Donny has a proposal. So Shep starts dealing to the kids at Iris; LGBT kids have a real propensity for substance abuse, so they’re his target market. You get looped in; you need money too, after all. One of the kids gets picked up for possession, though, and now you’ve got trouble. Lucky for you, the detectives on the LGBT task force aren’t above taking a little of that extra cash. Shep gets them to drop the charges down to a misdemeanor. But they want more money. And Donny wants more money. And Shep wants more money. And you want more money. So one night, you all have a meeting. It turns into a fight. That’s the fight Beau overheard, by the way. The one when you were supposedly upstairs, not hearing anything. But you heard the whole thing, didn’t you? You knew Donny might kill Shep. Or Taylor and Waggener might decide to get rid of him. You knew the pressure was rising, and Shep was going to run. He was going to disappear with your money. You weren’t going to let that happen.”

  “No.” Chuck was sweating now, fat drops rolling down from her hairline. “I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t hurt Shep.”

  Shaw’s eyes flicked to North just long enough to check that he was ready in case Chuck tried something stupid. Then Shaw said, “You didn’t waste any time. You knew about Donny Yates’s trailer. You knew he was in the area. You knew he had threatened Shep, and that made him the perfect scapegoat. All you had to do was get Shep to Donny’s trailer. How did you find him?”

  Wiping sweat from her face, Chuck said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about this.”

  “Well, we’ll figure it out. Somehow you found Donny Yates’s trailer, and you lured Shep to it. You told him you had to see him that night. You told him—what? That it was about the cops. They were going to be a problem, and the three of you needed to figure out how to handle them. Is that how it went down?” Shaw offered a hard line of a smile. “And then you killed him in the woods. Donny wasn’t home; you knew that too.” He produced the wrinkled camping permit that he had taken from Donny’s truck. “Three-day backpacking permit for Mark Twain National Forest. Donny didn’t realize it, but he was helping you stab him in the back. He was out backpacking, his trailer was sitting alone in the middle of the woods. You killed Shep. You collected fibers from Donny’s camper. And then you put Shep into position so that lividity would make it obvious he had been moved; you didn’t want anyone to miss the fact that his body had been moved to your trunk long after he was killed. That was a very cold, very calculating idea. Did you sit there, alone, with a dead body for twelve hours, waiting? Or did you go back to your apartment and sleep?”

  “No,” Chuck said, too loud this time. Nels snorted again, sliding off her shoulder, and sat up with a start. “No,” Chuck said again, “I didn’t do any of that. I never hurt him. I never—I wouldn’t do that.”

  “Blondie,” Nels said in his faint Swedish accent. “What’s going on? Fuck, my neck.”

  “I didn’t do anything. Not any of it. I didn’t.” Chuck scrambled to her feet, only then seeming to realize that North was blocking the door. “This is insane. Why would I—why would I do that?”