Beau’s hand trembled; the pistol bobbed in the air, and North’s head bobbed along with it, his gaze hooked to the gunmetal. “He contacted me about the job here. I . . . I wanted to laugh and cry and break something. I’d spent so much of my life in the gutter, fucking guys behind dumpsters, living in shitty flops, shooting up and ruining my life. All of it because of him. Because of Zoar. And then, just when I had picked up the pieces, he was back. Like I’d never escape him. Like he was going to take it all away from me again.” Beau swallowed. “I came to St. Louis. I was going to tell him. I was even thinking about hurting him. Punching him in the nose. Kicking him when he was on the ground. Breaking ribs. The . . . the fantasies kept getting bigger. I was going to kick him in the side of the knee and cripple him. Bigger and bigger. And then I got here, and the first thing I saw, before I even got out of the car, was Shep on the porch, kissing another man. It was like TNT inside my skull. Blew my brains to fucking dust. I watched them from the car, watched how they talked, laughed, kissed, touched. I didn’t know they were married—if I’d known that, I might have tried to kill Shep right then. But I knew they were happy. I knew they cared about each other. And the only thing I could think, watching them together, was that Shep Collins had to die. It was like looking at the two of them and finally being able to see myself, like I had to connect the dots between the three of us before I knew, really knew, what Shep had done to me, what he had made me.”

  His breathing was harsh and uneven. North waited for more, but Beau only wiped the greasy sweat from his forehead and stared, blinking rapidly, into the middle distance.

  “You waited, though,” North said. “You waited until you knew you had the perfect plan. And then Donny showed up, and you were ready. You staged a fight at Big Sky Roadhouse—”

  “No,” Beau said. “No, the fight was real. I told you the truth about that. Shep wanted to play the field. He’d spent so long denying himself,” Beau spoke the words with acid, “and now he was ready to have fun. He wanted an open relationship. He wanted to go out and fuck anything that moved. So we fought.”

  “But the booze,” North said. “That’s the part I can’t figure out.”

  Beau grinned, and he looked younger—and, strangely, harder—with that grin stamped in place. “An old rentboy trick you pick up in case a john wants to get you drunk so he can really fuck you up. Mix some active dry yeast into yogurt, eat it, and then go drinking. It’s not 100%, but it goes a long way toward keeping your head up. After that, I just had to put on a good show for the wait staff.”

  “And then you met Shep at Donny’s camper and killed him.”

  “You make it sound easy. You make it sound like I’m some kind of monster. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done; I wasn’t even sure I could do it, not at the end. But then I thought of those weeks at Zoar, of the way I had worshipped Shep, and then seeing him kissing his husband, finally seeing myself and what Shep had made me.” A smile quirked one corner of Beau’s mouth; on his thin face, it looked like a wound. “You want to know when I knew I was doing the right thing? It wasn’t just the fact that I finally knew who I was, finally knew where Shep had caused me to end up. I called Shep after the Uber dropped me off at home. I told him I was sorry. I said I was willing to go along with whatever he wanted. I told him why I’d been feeling so jealous lately. Donny had confessed something to me. He had told me how badly he wanted Shep. He told me he jerked off to the thought of a three-way with us.” The smile curled into a smirk. “Total bull, of course, but Shep swallowed it. He was at a club trying to pick up another kid, and you wouldn’t believe how fast he got out of there, desperate to meet me and Donny. Two of his Zoar boys in one night. I don’t believe in God, but that felt like a sign.”

  “Donny wasn’t home. Donny was backpacking.”

  “I know. I gave him the idea.”

  North cocked his head, adjusting his sweaty grip on the desk. “You were the guy on the camping forum. You told him about that spot in Castlewood. And you knew he’d be backpacking because you were in contact with him.” North shook his head. “How did you know he’d leave the camper?”

  “I wasn’t sure. I thought I might have to drive up to Mark Twain and take some of the fibers. But I guessed he might leave the trailer; I kept telling him that little spot in Castlewood was hot, lots of people wanted to use it, and if he managed to get it, he shouldn’t give it up. He was backpacking, so he didn’t need the camper. I guess he took my advice.” Beau’s breathing was suddenly smoother, his hand steady, and he smiled a genuine smile. “It made my night a lot easier.”

  “You killed Shep down by the rocks. You waited for livor to set and rigor to ease. You collected fibers from the upholstery inside the camper. And then, when Shaw and I came poking around, you knew it was time to dump the body. Did you plan on framing Chuck? Or was she convenient because she cut herself and left her car? When did you decide to lure Donny to her apartment and add Pari’s murder—attempted murder—to the list?”

  “I never thought the cops would take Chuck seriously. I mean, Christ, the fibers were obvious. But I didn’t know how badly she and Shep had been fighting. I really didn’t expect those cops to fake a blood test so she was positive for coke. It worked out well, though; the cops still went after Donny, the way I knew they would. The fiber. The priors. The history of violence. His history with Shep. And their little operation they needed to keep quiet.”

  A noise came from the hallway, soft, barely loud enough for North to hear. He thought it might be a footstep. His heartbeat moved up behind his eyes, suddenly so loud he heard his own words from a mile away. “That’s a pretty pathetic reason to kill a guy. You feel bad for yourself. You had a rough childhood. That’s weak shit, you know?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” Beau said, his voice distant, his eyes fixed on something beyond North. “You’ve never had to see yourself, really understand yourself the way I did, like Shep and his fag husband were the coordinates I needed to figure it all out.”

  Through the white-hot pistoning of blood behind his eyes, North thought of himself standing in the darkened hallway of Shaw’s house, listening to Shaw moan and call Jadon daddy, of the violent whirl it had given to his perspective, the sudden clarity of vision as he realized how desperately he was in love with Shaw. And then the cold tile under his ass, and Shaw staring at him in outrage, and the ghost of Jadon behind his shoulder—North flung to one side, a third data point that didn’t matter anymore.

  Another scuff of a rubber sole came from the hallway. This time, Beau’s head cocked, and his hand holding the gun swung a quarter inch toward the noise.

  “I understand,” North said. “Put down the gun, Beau. We’ll finish talking this out, and then we’ll get the police, and we can—”

  “No.” Beau’s breathing grew ragged, panic shearing off the end of each inhalation, his eyes suddenly wide and white-rimmed. “I won’t go back. I won’t go back. I won’t go—”

  He pulled the trigger.

  North flung himself out of the chair at the same time that his brain registered the empty click of the gun. North landed hard, on his elbow, and pain zinged up his arm. He rolled into the fall, though, and came up against the far wall. Beau screamed, whipping his hand in an arc to follow North’s movement, squeezing the trigger like a madman.

  Shaw staggered into the doorway, his face a bloody mess, and his gaze went first to North and then to Beau. “He didn’t reload, did he? I emptied the magazine and the chamber, and I didn’t see any more cartridges, but I thought he might. I called the police, but I wasn’t sure—”

  “You fucking faggots,” Beau screamed, hurling the empty pistol at North.

  North twisted, absorbing the gun’s impact on his shoulder, and started toward Beau. He kicked a chair out of his way. Beau backed toward the corner, still screaming obscenities. North swung around the desk. Beau bumped up against the wall, cramming himself into the narrow space behind the furniture. North kicked another chair clear from his path. Beau’s hands moved blindly across the desk. And then he brought up a letter opener, the blade thin and short and catching the light in a dull smear.

  North stopped. He wished he still had a chair between him and Beau. Something. Anything to disrupt the man’s path when he lunged.

  But Beau just said, “It’s not fair. Nobody should have to see themselves that way.” And then he stabbed up with the letter opener, driving it into his neck.

  “Jesus Christ,” North swore, staggering forward as Beau fell, blood spilling out along his neck. “Get an ambulance, Shaw, get a fucking ambulance—”

  He caught Beau; the dull metal of the letter opener was buried almost a full inch in the thin man’s neck. Blood ran freely, spilling across his shoulder, soaking the Cure t-shirt. Beau was shaking, his heels drumming on the floor, one hand reaching for the knife.

  “For fuck’s sake,” North said, slapping Beau’s hand away and laying him on the floor as gently as he could. “You missed the fucking artery, asshole. Just hold still, and in a few months you’ll have all the fun of a trial.”

  Chapter 34

  FOR A LONG TIME after the police arrived, North sat on the curb, sweating in the thick, humid heat of the August day. The sun burned the back of his neck; he could feel the tenderness there, the too hot skin, and he decided he couldn’t tell Shaw because Shaw had been such a dick about his complexion. He would, however, have to try to find that aloe-and-weed lotion that Shaw claimed to have at home because North knew his neck would be killing him the next day.

  Taylor interviewed him first. And Barr was there, staring out at North from under those bushy eyebrows, drifting at the edge of the interview like the first shark to smell blood in the water. North answered their questions; he explained Beau’s confession, and when Taylor harrumphed and said it was all hearsay, North produced the phone that Shaw had taped underneath Beau’s desk, recording every word of their conversation.

  Waggener came next. She didn’t care about the phone. She was still small and blond and mousily pretty, but now every time she looked at North he saw the way her hand had moved on an invisible string toward the holster at her hip. He only met her eyes once, at the end of the interview, and she blinked once, fast, hard. North saw that blink like a coffin slamming shut.

  Barr looped and looped, first North, then Shaw, then North, then Shaw, listening, looking, watching.

  Waggener was the one who finally told North he could go; the city had sunk into twilight, and the back of his neck was stinging. He checked his pockets for the pack of American Spirits—no luck—and sauntered over to where Shaw stood, arms wrapped around himself as though it were January.

  “Let me take a look,” North said, brushing a loose hair away from Shaw’s face. The skin had split across Shaw’s cheekbone, and an ugly bruise was forming. A second cut, longer, ran at the hairline on Shaw’s temple. “I guess you’re going to live, right?”

  “I guess,” Shaw said, his eyes on the sidewalk.

  “So what happened?”

  “I followed the plan. I emptied the gun. I put my phone under the desk.”

  “And the desk gave you that shiner?”

  No smile. No grin. Just those hazel eyes locked on the sidewalk. “No, I didn’t think about the possibility that someone might be upstairs. Clarity. That boy who plays football. He thought I was stealing something, and then he wanted to march me downstairs to talk to Beau, and . . . things got a little rough.”

  “Is that what this is all about?” North chucked Shaw under the chin, forcing his head up so their gazes would meet. Hazel eyes met North’s for only a moment before they slid away toward the darkened street, where streetlamps popped on like soap bubbles. “You let a kid whip your ass, and now you’re upset?”

  Shaw just bit his lip and shook his head.

  “Are you still mad at me?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that.” The words weren’t even a whisper.

  “I want to talk about it.”

  “No, North.”

  “Since when don’t you want to talk about stuff? You want to talk about your diets. You want to talk about your eco-conscious fashion. You want to talk about Space Invaders and its Cold War allegory. You want to talk about Emily fucking Dickinson and goat’s milk and the neuro-sexual benefits of honey. But you won’t fucking talk about us.”

  Shaw tried to step away, but North caught his arm. “Let go.”

  “No.”

  “Get off me,” Shaw said, trying to squirm loose. When that didn’t work, he planted a hand on North’s chest and tried to shove him. “You’re making a scene. The cops are watching.”

  Some of them were, North realized. He shrugged. “You’re the one making a scene. And anyway, I enjoy being the center of attention. I live for the spotlight. I’ll do the macarena and recite prime numbers in my underwear if that’s what it takes for you to stand still for five fucking seconds and talk to me.”

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t ever want to talk about it.”

  “Too. Fucking. Bad.”

  Shaw twisted away, his hand coming up to pry at North’s fingers.

  Growling, North shook him a little. “Stop it. You’re being a little shit about this.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Yeah, fuck me. I fucking messed up, Shaw. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done what I did. You were upset. You were hurt. You were vulnerable, and I took advantage of you. I’m a real piece of shit; I know that. I wanted to say I’m sorry, that’s all. I’m not going to embarrass you. I’m not going to beg you to reconsider. I’m not going to pretend you feel the same way that I do, ok? You don’t have to worry about any of that. But I wanted to say I’m sorry because I am and because you deserve better than the way I treated you.”

  Then, releasing Shaw, North spun and marched down the block. He called back over his shoulder, “If you want a ride, you’ve got five fucking minutes to get your panties out of a wad.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” Shaw shouted after him. “And that was the worst apology in the history of the world.”

  As North sat in the Caravan, with the dark and the stench and the mothball streetlights strung out ahead of him, his phone buzzed. He grabbed it; Shaw would probably want to fight for a while, maybe bring out his claws, but the fact that he was calling was an answer. They’d figure out a way through this. Together.

  But when North put the phone to his ear and said, “I’m not picking you up. You can walk the block and get in the car yourself,” it wasn’t Shaw’s voice that answered.

  “Hey,” Tucker said, the words subdued. “I guess that’s not for me.”

  “Picked up on accident. Bye, Tuck.”

  “No, please wait. I packed up some of your clothes. I . . . I left the rest of your stuff where it is in case you change your mind, but I thought maybe you’d want some more clothes.”

  The offer was tempting; North was tired of living out of a single bag, and he didn’t feel ready for the fiasco of driving out to Webster Groves and packing up his entire life. But he said, “I’ll come get it another time.”

  “Were you talking to Shaw? When you picked up the phone, I mean.”

  “Goodbye.”

  “North, I need to talk to you about him. Not the jealous bullshit, ok? I’ve got something that you need to know. For your own protection.”

  North thought of the afternoon brilliance lighting up the house in Holly Hills, and Taylor’s voice as he asked Shaw about the Slasher, and the way Waggener looked up and down the block, her hand twitching toward her gun. Was it possible, in some bizarre twist of possibilities, that Tucker knew something about the Slasher? Or about the cabal of cops that seemed so worried about Shaw’s inquiries?

  “About what?” North asked.

  “I’ll send you a pin.”

  Tucker disconnected before North could protest, and his phone buzzed a moment later with an address in Soulard. North watched another ten minutes go by on the clock; still nothing from Shaw. Maybe this was it. Maybe things were over. They had solved the case, and their agency would flourish as a result, but whatever had been growing between them over the last eight years was dead. Or no, North thought. Not dead. It had never been alive. It had all been in his head.

  Then he started the car and drove to meet his husband.

  Chapter 35

  SHAW TOOK AN UBER back to Barnes-Jewish, where he collected the Mercedes from the parking garage and drove half a mile into the vast, green shadows of Forest Park. A curving road led him past the Jewel Box, glittering like a confection of ice in the wet heat of summer, and then he found a quiet stretch of road where the trees arched over the asphalt, plunging everything into darkness. He turned off the car, covered his eyes, and tried to meditate. Master Hermes would have told him that the psychic damage was too fresh. Dr. Farr would have told him that he was still processing. Shaw’s heart, though, told the truth: he was being a coward. In the darkness, he had nowhere to run, and then he swore and hammered on the steering wheel, the horn blatting in the darkness.

  When the anger at himself ran its course, Shaw slumped into the seat, the heel of his hand throbbing from the blows to the steering wheel, his face throbbing from the punches he had absorbed earlier that day.

  North’s word drifted into the silence: I’m not going to pretend you feel the same way that I do. Was that some kind of joke? After eight years of Shaw tying himself in knots over North, after that night senior year when they sat on the Sigma Sigma roof and Shaw had finally worked up the courage to tell North how he felt, after hearing North through the window telling Tucker, He’s sweet, but a little too soyboy for me—after all of that, North still didn’t have any idea how Shaw felt. How was that possible? How was that fair?