The Wahredua police station looked like it had, at one point, been a school. North had plenty of friends who’d gone to Catholic school, and he recognized the look: the grim severity of the redbrick walls, the cramped windows, the uninspired attempts at religious ornamentation. At some point—probably whenever the city had taken it over—someone had tried to get rid of the iconography. No more angels and devils, no more saints and sinners. Not on the taxpayers’ dime. But, like most public works jobs, this one had been half-assed and, apparently, eventually given up. The decorative stonework above the main entrance, for example, still showed an angel with a bad hair day who was, apparently, pointing a pencil dick at the devil lying underneath him. No homo, North thought as he followed Emery into the building.
Emery led them past the front desk without slowing; the uniformed officer seated there opened her mouth in protest, but either she was familiar with Emery or didn’t care enough to raise a ruckus, because she let them continue into the building. Her nametag said Ehlers.
John-Henry was waiting for them in his office. It was the kind of space North would have guessed John-Henry would create for himself: a comfortable chair, a fairly organized desk, photos of Emery and Evie and Colt. An annoying number of awards. Somehow, John-Henry had found time to change into uniform—a spare, North guessed, kept at the station for emergencies like this. Blue trousers. Crisp white shirt. It would be nice one day when John-Henry got a beer belly and his arms went all soft and wobbly the way a lot of old guys did. North was really looking forward to that.
For now, he said, “You look like a wiener in that uniform.”
John-Henry’s answering smile was startled and, for a moment, white-hot and genuine, and he glanced at Shaw’s fuzzy shirt. “Better than a Muppet. Thanks for coming. Sit down.”
“Just so everyone knows,” Shaw said, “this is a cruelty-free pelt. This Muppet died in the wild of natural causes.”
North made him sit down.
John-Henry paused to check a message on his phone. Then he looked up at them; he already looked tired, and North knew this was only the beginning of a lot of long days and nights for the chief of police. When he spoke, though, his voice was strong.
“I’d like to hire you to help with this investigation. In particular, with running down our primary suspect.”
North shifted in his seat. “Ok.”
“Ok?” John-Henry asked.
Shaw nodded. “Ok.”
A tiny smile flickered. “I thought it might be a little more difficult than that.”
“The difficult part,” Emery said, “is going to happen the first time you try to tell them what to do.”
“Oh, yeah,” North said, “we’re fucking terrible at taking orders.”
“Very bad,” Shaw said, nodding enthusiastically. “The worst.”
“Uh huh,” John-Henry said. “That’s not exactly reassuring.”
“Look, we’re already tied up in this,” North said.
“Because you’re our friends,” Shaw said.
“Because it’s an interesting investigation.”
“And we care about you,” Shaw said. “We love you so much. Both of you, although mostly Emery. No offense, John-Henry.”
“Are you kidding me? If anything, we’re doing this because I feel sorry for John-Henry because he lives in this shithole, and in a place like this, beggars can’t be choosers.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shaw asked, bristling in his seat.
“Exactly what you think it means: if he could get any non-crazy, non-asshole dick in this bunghole of a town, he would have. Instead, he’s got chuckle-fucks.”
“That’s you,” Shaw said to Emery. “You’re chuckle-fucks.”
“I hadn’t realized,” Emery said.
“I’ll have you know Emery is a top prospect,” Shaw said. “In this town. In any town. He’s a Wahredua ten. And he’s a New York City ten and a half.”
“It’s a fucking ten scale, jackass. He can’t be a New York City ten and a half.”
“Really? Let’s do the math. Thighs: ten. Ass: ten and a half. Dick—”
“Ok,” John-Henry said. “As much as I would normally enjoy this, I’ve got to keep moving, guys. There’s a lot to do.”
“Of course,” Shaw said. “I’m sorry for my colleague’s unprofessional behavior.”
“His dick would be a three because it’s probably falling off from scurvy,” North said.
“If anything, his dick would be—”
Emery clapped his hands. “Jackasses, enough.”
North settled back into his seat.
“What have you got?” Emery asked.
“It’s a mess,” John-Henry said. “Where do I start? The cameras were deactivated, for one. For another, we’ve got a deputy missing, and an offender escaped.”
“Jesus Christ. Why were the fucking cameras turned off?”
“Great question,” John-Henry said.
Emery looked like he wanted to get his teeth into that, so North leaned forward. “Do you have a timeline?”
“Kind of. The cameras went off around seven. A deputy found the sheriff and Dalton a little after eight; they got a hold of me pretty quickly after that. We’ve got BOLOs out for the missing deputy and the offender, and Highway Patrol is putting up roadblocks and checkpoints.”
“An hour,” Emery said. “That’s a lot of time.”
John-Henry nodded. “They could be anywhere at this point, but if Highway Patrol moves fast, maybe they’ll catch something.”
“Do we know what happened?” Shaw asked. “Did Dalton attack the sheriff? Why was the sheriff even there?”
“We don’t know. They run a skeleton crew at night. The deputy who found the sheriff was one of two who were supposed to be on duty in the men’s unit.”
“And the other one?” Emery asked.
“I’ll get to him in a minute. The deputy who found them, his name is Glover.”
“Jesus.”
North cocked an eyebrow.
“He’s not that bad,” John-Henry said to the unasked question. “Well, he’s pretty bad—lazy, aggressive, all-around incompetent.”
“Oh,” North said, “a cop. Got it.”
“Incompetent doesn’t begin to describe it,” Emery said. “That’s like saying the Hindenburg was a whoopsie.”
John-Henry’s smile was a shadow and then gone. “The point is, Glover might not be a good deputy, but nobody seems to think he’s a corrupt one.” Emery opened his mouth, but John-Henry kept talking. “We don’t know that for sure, obviously; we’re going to have a major case squad here tomorrow, possibly a special prosecutor, the Highway Patrol. Glover’s going to have so many people crawling through his life, if he’s dirty, we’ll know pretty soon.” For a moment, John-Henry was silent as though gathering his thoughts. “According to Glover, last night, another deputy should have been on duty. His name is Adam Ezell. He showed up for his shift and then left; Glover doesn’t know why.”
“That’s not suspicious,” Emery said. “If he was involved, he couldn’t have picked a worse way to draw attention to himself.”
“A little before eight, the sheriff left to do rounds; Glover insists that the sheriff offered to do it, which I have to admit is in keeping with Engels’s personality. When Engels didn’t come back, Glover tried to get him on the radio.”
“Weren’t they concerned because the cameras weren’t working?” Shaw asked. “I think they’d try to call someone. Maybe go into lockdown.”
“They probably should have, yes,” John-Henry said. “But you’ve got to understand, this is a small jail in a small county.”
“With a small budget,” Emery said.
“That’s true too. It’s not a high-security prison, and it’s—well, it’s Wahredua. Glover said the sheriff was going to have someone come out first thing in the morning.”
“But it’s convenient,” North said, “the cameras going out like that.”
“It’s more than convenient,” Shaw said.
John-Henry nodded. “We don’t know what happened in that cell, but by the time Glover went to check, both the sheriff and Dalton Weber were dead.”
“When did they find Ambyr?” North asked.
“Not long after that. They did a head count, of course, and that’s when they learned she’d hanged herself.”
“Conveniently,” Emery said sourly.
John-Henry gave a weary shrug. “That’s also when they discovered that Philip Welch was missing. That’s who I want you to find. Hold on, I’ve got his photo here.”
He sorted through the papers in front of him and found a folder, which turned out to be Welch’s file. North studied the photo clipped to the inside. The photo was only a headshot, but Welch’s height and weight were given on the intake form—five-five, a hundred and eleven pounds. That might not qualify for a world record, but Welch was officially tiny, and in the photo, he looked even smaller because he was so young. The form listed his race as Black, but he was light-skinned and wore his hair buzzed. His lantern jaw gave his otherwise fine bone structure an oddly distended look.
Flipping through the rest of the file, North tried to paint a picture of the man in front of him. “He’s a frequent flyer, huh? Gangbang stuff in Jeff City. Dealing in Columbia. What’d they pick him up for here?”
“Possession with intent to distribute,” John-Henry said.
Emery grunted and held out a hand, and North, because he could, leaned back in the chair and fanned himself with the file. With a snort that could have been anything from amusement to murderous intent, Emery snatched the file from him and leaned against John-Henry’s desk as he began to read.
“How did the sheriff die?” Shaw asked.
The emptiness of his voice made North take a considering look. Shaw wouldn’t meet his gaze, but he hugged himself, angling his body toward John-Henry.
John-Henry said, “He was stabbed. I’m not even going to try to guess how many times, but a lot; the medical examiner has him now.”
“Shiv,” Emery said without looking up.
“That seems likely. Dalton died the same way.”
“The sheriff didn’t fight back?”
For a moment, frustration flared in John-Henry’s face. He spread his hands. “We don’t know. He didn’t have his service weapon with him.”
“What kind of rinky-dink operation is this?” North asked. “Aren’t there doors that only open on buzzers, that kind of thing?”
“It’s a county jail in rural Missouri,” Emery said, his attention still fixed on the file. “It might as well be a popsicle stand.”
“He had the sheriff’s keys,” John-Henry said. “It’s not clear—not yet, anyway—what other security measures had been compromised like the cameras. We’re going to have people going over this place with a fine-toothed comb. God, it’s going to be a nightmare.”
Emery looked up from the file to study his husband. Then he moved behind the desk to lay a hand on John-Henry’s shoulder. He squeezed once, and John-Henry nodded and rubbed his forehead.
“Do we know anything about what happened with Ambyr?” Shaw asked. “Had she said anything about harming herself? Does anyone know what kind of condition she was in today?”
This time, North didn’t have to look; he could hear it in Shaw’s voice, the mind-fuck, like oil slicking clean water. “Shaw, maybe you and Emery want to go over that file together? You can see if he missed anything.”
“I certainly didn’t miss—” Emery began, but maybe, against all odds, even Emery Hazard could occasionally catch a hint because he glanced at Shaw and shut his mouth. “Yes. There is, I suppose, always a possibility. If you’d like to help me—”
Shaw shook his head, still not looking at North.
“If she’d talked about self-harm,” John-Henry said, “she’d have been on suicide watch. They have female deputies on staff for the female offenders, but none of them heard or saw anything unusual.”
“Sure,” North said. “Why would they?”
“She must have been scared,” Shaw said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “And humiliated, and alone.”
“Shaw, I need you to hold it together for me.”
Shaw nodded, eyes hooded and looking off into his own private nightmares.
John-Henry glanced at North, but North shook his head. “Did Welch take the sheriff’s car?”
“Yeah,” John-Henry said. “Private vehicle because the sheriff’s department cruiser is in the shop.”
“Which means no lo-jacking,” Emery said. “Which is consistent with everything else in this case being fucking perfect.”
“We’re working on it; our guess is that Welch only took it to get clear of Wahredua. He’ll ditch it as soon as he can if he’s smart.” John-Henry shook himself as though remembering something and plucked a sheet of paper from his desk. “Ezell, so you know what he looks like.”
The picture showed a moon-faced white man with a perpetual flush. His blond hair was slicked back and thinning so that you could see the shape of his skull. He wore the khaki uniform of a sheriff’s deputy.
“Another of Wahredua’s finest,” North said. He held the photo out for Shaw, but Shaw didn’t seem to see it; after a few seconds, North passed it to Emery.
“He doesn’t have any official complaints filed against him,” John-Henry said, “and nobody seems to have any unofficial ones either. From what I could gather, nobody seemed to suspect he was dirty. Always showed up, did his job, went home.”
North nodded.
“Are you comfortable if we do the contract tomorrow?” John-Henry asked. “I can ask one of our administrative assistants to draw up a version of the one we use when we contract Emery; I’m already an hour behind where I should be tonight, and there’s a million more things to do.”
Waving away the question, North settled himself in the chair. “Why do you want to hire us?”
“Fantastic question,” Emery murmured.
“Because I need manpower,” John-Henry said. “And I need results. And most importantly, I need someone I can trust. You’re our friends, and I know I’m asking a lot, but I think you know we’re neck deep in this already. Someone arranged these murders. The same someone who went after Jem and Tean. The same person who attacked Theo and Auggie in their home. This isn’t over.”
“They’re barely getting started,” Emery said, voice so low he might have been speaking to himself.
North gave him a long look.
“John’s not wrong,” Emery said. “I’d also add that your methods are…unconventional, which in this situation may prove to be an asset.”
North nodded.
“Is there a problem?” John-Henry asked. “I understand if you don’t want to—” He didn’t quite look at Shaw, but he didn’t need to; North could feel the pull, the way Shaw was acting on all of them like a dark gravity. “If you need to think about it first.”
“No,” North said. “We’ll do it. I just wanted to hear both of you admit we’re hot shit first.”
“I never said—” Emery began.
Before he could finish, though, raised voices came from the bullpen: the words were indistinct, but the volume and tone suggested anger.
Emery, looking out the window, grimaced. “Brother Gary and Red Alvin.”
“Problem?” North asked.
“The sheriff’s department’s on-call clowns.”
“They’re detectives for the sheriff’s department,” John-Henry said. “And they’re not going to be happy when they find out I’m directing the investigation. You might want to clear out while you can.”
“Can you call over to the jail?” North asked as he stood. Shaw didn’t move, so he caught Shaw’s elbow and helped him to his feet. “We’ll start there.”
John-Henry nodded. His eyes moved to Shaw. “North—”
“We’ll be fine,” North said.
He led Shaw out of the office, and instead of heading for the entrance, they broke right toward a fire door across the bullpen. He had a glimpse of two men arguing with a pair of uniformed officers—one man wore a white suit like Matlock, and the other, in a track suit, looked like death warmed over. John-Henry had been right: they didn’t look happy, and North figured they were going to be even more upset by the time the night was over.
“Come on,” he said, joggling Shaw’s elbow. “We’ve got a murder to solve.”