The Spoil of Beasts, page 8
part #3 of Iron on Iron Series
“That’s a really good idea, North,” Shaw said. “That could be really useful. Sometimes I don’t know where you are. Like when it’s time to trim the puppy’s nails, but you need to run to the store for just one thing—”
“What do you want?” North asked.
“Well, I want you to help me trim the puppy’s nails because last time he used that submission bite on me—”
“Not you!” It was slightly above a whisper, but North managed to put on the brakes. Barely.
On the other end of the call, Jem was laughing.
“I’m hanging up,” North said.
The sound of laughter faded, and then Tean’s voice came across the call. It sounded like he was speaking away from the phone as he said, “Enough already,” and then his voice became clearer and he said, “We saw you drive past. We’re staking out Adam Ezell’s house.”
North had to process that for a moment. “The missing deputy, huh. And let me guess, Gid went inside his house.”
“Bingo bango bongo,” Jem said in the background.
“I should start saying that,” Shaw said.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” North told him. He tried to remember what he’d seen of the dead-end street and finally asked, “Where are you?”
“He tried to find us and couldn’t,” Jem said, apparently to Tean.
Tean shushed him. “Inside one of the houses. It was vacant—”
“How did you know it was vacant?” North interrupted.
“The grass in the backyard,” Jem said, “plus the lockbox on the door, plus the Realtor sign that said For Rent—”
“Ok.”
“—we looked in the windows—”
“I said ok!”
More laughter drifted across the call.
North decided to be mature and do mature things and react maturely. He tapped the screen, pulled up the keypad, and used his middle finger to hold down the asterisk. That was symbolic. The tone filled the call until it disconnected.
North refused to look at Shaw as he got out of the car. It was the mature thing to do.
They got their guns out of the lockboxes in the trunk of the GTO: North’s CZ, and Shaw’s Springfield. A quick glance at the backyards of the houses lining the dead-end street showed North the overgrown lawn and, therefore, the house where Tean and Jem were staked out. It was past one in the morning—closer to two, actually—and this part of the world had shut down for the night, so they started across the lawns. North did a wobbly vault to get over the chain-link fence, ignoring the fact that Shaw sprang over it like a fucking gazelle. At the next fence, the whole goddamn thing tipped and started to fall, and Shaw—already on the other side, of course—had to catch him.
“It’s not your fault,” Shaw whispered. “The psychic gravity of the masculine identity you’ve invested in those boots—”
“I. Will. Murder. You.”
Shaw shut his mouth.
They reached the overgrown yard without further incident—barely. Jem grinned out at them from one of the windows, and he opened the back door as they came up the steps.
“Rookie mistake,” North said as he stalked past Jem. “You’re leaving fingerprints everywhere.”
“Oh dang,” Jem said, scratching his beard. “I knew I forgot something. In case I ever come back and murder someone here, I’ll do some pre-cleaning first. Hey, Tean, did you know fences could go horizontal like that?”
The house was empty, and it had a musty, closed-up smell laced with a hint of animal urine. Empty houses were always a bit unsettling for North: the bare rooms, the undressed windows, the hint of past lives that hadn’t been completely scrubbed away. He liked this one even less, with its big picture window looking out onto the dead-end street.
Tean sat on the floor to the side of the picture window, where he could look out at the street with relatively little risk of being seen himself. When North looked at him, Tean pointed to the house directly across the street.
The house was dark, but North could make out the details in the wash of the streetlights. It was a story-and-a-half bungalow with slumping windows and a big dormer window that reminded North of a cranky eye. He blamed that particular lunacy on too much time with Shaw, too much secondhand weed, and it being way too long since he’d had a decent night’s sleep. The white board-and-batten needed freshening up, and the lava rock beds around the house were choked with weeds almost as tall as the overgrown lawn. Blinds hung in the windows, and from all North could tell, the house was dark.
“He’s in there, huh?” North asked.
Tean nodded. “He walked around back, but we’ve seen a flashlight a couple of times. We were about to call John-Henry when Jem spotted your car.”
“Spotted makes it sound like there was a chance of missing it,” Jem said. “You don’t spot a beached whale.”
North glared at him, but Jem only grinned bigger, exposing two slightly crooked front teeth.
“Don’t call John-Henry,” North said. “Not yet.”
“I don’t know,” Tean said. “We called him earlier, and he said we did the right thing—”
“If you call him, you’re going to send Gid running, and we won’t learn why he’s here. What happened earlier? Why’d you call John-Henry?”
“Who’s this guy anyway?” Jem asked. “I thought you were trying to track down that inmate.”
“His name’s Gid,” Shaw said. “He has a gun! He made us go in a laundry room, and then North said something about dirty shorts—I wasn’t really listening—and then Gid asked who we were, and I said—”
“He’s got some connection to a megachurch.” North caught a glimpse of the flashlight on the other side of Adam Ezell’s blinds. “Welch, the inmate, drove straight there. We lost Welch, but we picked up Gid, and now he’s poking around the house of a missing deputy. What the fuck do you think that’s about?”
No one answered, but after a moment, Tean said, “You didn’t put any of that in the group chat.”
“Sorry, I was busy not getting shot, and then I was busy interviewing suspects, and then I was busy getting that bone-climber Cassidy off my ass, and then I was busy following Gid back here so he could do some very sus shit. Next time I take a crap, I’ll try to update everyone. Is that ok with you?”
Out of the corner of his eye, North caught the change in Jem’s expression: how it flattened, hardened, and in a way that left North slightly off-balance, looked nothing like the goof who had once worn a pair of Muppet Babies sleep pants to Waffle House. “Watch it—” Jem began.
But Tean gave a tiny shake of his head and said, “We’re supposed to keep each other updated. You should have told us what was going on.”
Shaw made an unhappy noise. “He’s right, North. I’ll do it right now.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” North said. “What happened earlier?”
This time, Tean and Jem traded a long look.
“Another person went into Ezell’s house,” Tean said.
“It was in the group chat,” Jem said, “but you didn’t see that, of course.”
North kept his attention on Tean. “And?”
“We tried to follow him, but we lost him—he took off like there was an emergency.”
“What was he doing inside Ezell’s house?”
Tean shook his head.
“You should have taken photos, or at least a physical description—”
“Oh damn,” Jem said, “if only I hadn’t had my head up my ass—oh wait, I didn’t. Boom.”
“Did you seriously just say boom?”
But Jem was too busy producing his phone and swiping through photos. When he presented the phone to North, the screen displayed a photo. North recognized the backdrop—he was looking at it through the window: Adam Ezell’s house, and the stretch of sidewalk in front of it. The photo showed a man as he passed under a streetlight. North recognized him: it was the guy who’d been wearing his Sunday best when he’d pulled a gun on them, the one who’d been playing security guard at the Mosses’ house. He was dressed in baggy mesh shorts and a white tee, but there was no mistaking that tattoo.
“He was here a few hours ago?”
Tean nodded. “We got here around nine, and it wasn’t long after that.”
“And then he took off in a hurry?”
More nodding. “We tried to follow—”
North grunted and showed the photo to Shaw.
Recognition filled Shaw’s face. “The Mosses must have called him as soon as Welch showed up at their house. God, there were a lot of people driving between Wahredua and Auburn tonight.”
“We think the tattoo might be significant—” Jem began.
“Huh,” North said. A little too loud. A little too aggressively. But he was simultaneously tired and keyed up and, increasingly, on edge because none of this made sense.
In the dark, it was difficult to make out Jem’s flush, but not impossible.
“No, go on,” North said. “A tattoo might be identifying. Say more about that.”
“North,” Shaw said quietly.
Jem sent a strangely pleading look at Tean.
“Why don’t we all calm down?” Tean said.
He said it kindly, and quietly, and with a kind of assurance that made North take a deep breath. He gave Jem a wary nod that was as close as he could come to an apology in that moment and said, “He’s tied up with this church family. The cross in the tattoo, right? And that might be a letter E. Epiphany of Light is the name of the church.”
Jem made a noise that could have meant anything.
“Good job with the photos,” North said as he tossed the phone back to Jem. Then he crooked a grin. “For an amateur.”
“Asshole,” Jem muttered, but after a moment, he rolled his eyes and quirked a tiny smile back.
“Oh, that was so sweet,” Shaw said. “Wasn’t that sweet, Tean?”
Tean was suddenly very busy looking out the window, and his voice had a strangely tight quality, as though he were suppressing something as he said, “So sweet.”
Before North could respond, movement outside the window drew his attention. The figure was dressed in black, and he looked shorter than average. He was wearing a mask, and he walked with a kind of easy confidence that was too genuine to be called swagger. The gun holstered on his hip might have had something to do with it. The matte-black sickle in his hand probably did too. A slight hitch to his movement suggested stiffness, maybe an injury. He cut down the side of Ezell’s house and vanished into the shadows.
North’s brain was still putting together the pieces—he had heard about the attack on Theo’s house, about the man with the matte-black sickle and the matching knife—when Jem said, “Son of a bitch, it’s him!” Before anyone could do anything, Jem threw the front door open and sprinted out of the house.
Tean was getting to his feet, panic emptying out his face.
“Stay here,” North said. “Call John-Henry. Shaw—”
“I’ll go around back,” Shaw said.
They tore out of the house. There was no sign of either Jem or the man in black, and the only sound came from the buzz of the streetlights. North sprinted for the front of Ezell’s house. He tried to tell if he could still see the flashlight moving on the other side of the blind, but the streetlights threw a glare on the windows. Shaw darted down the side of the house, disappearing into the shadows.
The first shot rang out. It came from inside the house, and even muffled by the walls, it was loud. Whoever the man in black was, he didn’t care about noise. A man screamed, and North thought he recognized Gid’s voice. North took the steps up to the front door and reached for the handle. If it was locked—
But the door flew inward, and the handle moved out of North’s reach. His body followed it for a fraction of a second, an automatic reaction as he tried to catch hold. The movement sent him off balance. A moment later, Gid crashed into North. The impact knocked North off the stoop and into the bed of lava rocks along the foundation. Gid’s footsteps clipped the sidewalk and faded down the street.
Another shot rang out.
Shaw was shouting.
North picked himself up, distantly aware of the scrapes and bangs from the fall, and scrambled up onto the stoop again. He plunged into the house. It was dark, with thin slats of gray light filtering through the blinds. The stink of gunpowder filled the air. His hand shook—he was shaking all over—and he tightened his grip around the CZ.
Luck and reflexes saved his life. Something moved in the silver face of a mirror, and North reared back. He couldn’t see the blade; at first, all he felt was the flicker of something, the faint disturbance of air. Then his brain processed it, pulling up the image of that black sickle carving the darkness. He squeezed off a shot in what he hoped was the right direction. The muzzle flare burned off his night vision, and fear gripped him. He started to fire the next shot, but then he realized he didn’t know if Jem and Shaw were in the house, and he managed to stop. He kept backing up until he slammed into a wall.
For the second time that night, luck and reflexes saved him. A whispering hiss alerted him, and he dropped as the sickle sliced through the air above him. Plaster popped and cracked as the blade tore along the wall. Where was Shaw? Where was Jem? North fired a second shot, and the muzzle flare blinded him again. His ears rang from the gunfire, making it impossible to hear anything.
As his vision began to adjust again, North made out the silhouette of a man in the doorway, framed by the glow of the streetlights. He had a gun pointed at North.
Then someone crashed into the man, and both bodies went tumbling out of the house. North got to his feet and stumbled after them. Shaw emerged from somewhere deeper in the house and sprinted past him, face painted with the weak light from the street, the Springfield coming up in his hand. By the time North reached the door, Shaw was already lining up a shot.
For a moment, the scene was surreal. On Adam Ezell’s lawn, Jem and the man in black brawled like a couple of teenagers—grappling, rolling, flipping. Shaw hesitated; there was no clean shot, no way to fire without almost certainly hitting Jem too. After the thunder of the gunfire, the street’s silence shimmered in North’s ears. He clutched the doorjamb because he felt the floor sliding out from under him, and he wondered if he’d hit his head.
Then the man in black bucked Jem and sent him rolling toward the street. Shaw fired, and the man fired back. North grabbed Shaw and hauled him into the house. He waited for the next shot. For the screams.
But a heartbeat passed. And then another.
And then Jem called, “Motherfucking cowardly piece of shit!” In a weary voice, he added, “He’s gone.”
9
Apparently, North decided, shooting a gun in Wahredua was a bigger deal than in St. Louis, because they spent the rest of the night dealing with the fallout from the scene at Adam Ezell’s house. They had to tell the whole story to the responding officers. Then they had to tell it to a sour-faced detective named Palomo. And then, eventually, they had to tell it to John-Henry again. In his office. With Emery glaring at them over John-Henry’s shoulder.
When they’d finished, John-Henry rubbed his face, fighting a yawn. He was quiet for a moment. And then, in a controlled voice, he said, “I understand that our conversation earlier was rushed. I also understand that you’re used to…to working independently.”
“To doing our jobs,” North said. “The jobs you hired us to do.”
“To create a fucking shitstorm,” Emery said. “Is that what you were hired to do?”
“We were hired to track down Welch,” North shot back, “and we did.”
“Really? Where is he? Was he in that private home on that residential street you shot up like it’s the fucking Wild West?”
“We’re following this case where it leads us, and it led us to that fucking church and to some sort of connection with that missing deputy. What the fuck have you been doing? Picking lint out of your ass?”
Emery opened his mouth, but John-Henry slapped the desk and barked, “Enough.” In the wake of the shout, the buzz of the fluorescents was the only sound. “Ree, I’m handling this. North, knock it the fuck off.”
Maybe it was the late night. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Maybe it was the powerlessness of watching death and chaos ripple through the town you were sworn to protect. Whatever it was, it was riding John-Henry like a devil, and North could see it in his face now: a man pushed to the edge.
With a grunt, North sat back and looked at Shaw. Shaw shrugged helplessly.
“Sorry,” North muttered.
After a moment, John-Henry nodded. Emery leaned against the wall with an oddly satisfied look on his face.
“While you are working for the Wahredua PD,” John-Henry said, the words clean and neutral, “I expect you to obey the law and conduct yourself in a way that will make whatever case we bring to trial airtight. Do you understand?”
The wait was like sandpaper on raw skin. Finally, North bit out, “Yes.”
“And while you are working for the Wahredua PD, I expect regular updates about the progress of your investigation. You are not cowboys, to borrow Ree’s metaphor. You’re not on your own. You’re part of a team, and I’m not just talking about Wahredua PD.” Something in his voice yielded. “Either we’re in this together, or we’re not.”
“We’re in it together,” Shaw said quietly.
North nodded.
Emery snorted.
“But also,” North said, “fuck you, you big lump of fucks.”
For some reason, that made John-Henry grin, and he looked younger.
“Have the Highway Patrol been any help?” Shaw asked.
The smile evaporated from John-Henry’s face, but Emery was the one who spoke. “They’re still processing the cells, taking an eternity so they can tell us what we already know: Philip Welch killed two men in there.”
“They didn’t catch Welch with the roadblock,” John-Henry said, “but I think we’ve got an idea why—he was well past it by the time they put it into position.”
