It’s not enough that you’re at every fucking spot that’s important to this case,” Barr was shouting inside the cramped manager’s office. The bushy dark hair, the bushy dark brows, the bushy little sliver of goatee were all quivering as though Barr were standing in a draft. He kept moving forward, trying to get a position where he could intimidate North, but the office was too small and the desk was in the way. North banged his knees against the hidden filing cabinets under the desk and decided he should be grateful.
“It’s not enough that I can’t bend over without the two of you close enough to wipe my fucking ass,” Barr was still shouting. “It’s not enough that you’ve got that fucking lunatic for a client.”
North straightened in the chair. The fog of thoughts about Regina and Mark blew clear, and his attention was fully fixed on Barr. “What? What about Fennmore?”
Barr’s lip drew back in disgust. “Walk me through this. Every fucking step of it. I want to know how you’ve managed to shit on every possible piece of evidence in this whole case. Did you buy a fucking tourist map?”
“What do you know about Fennmore? Why’s he a lunatic?”
“I ought to have both of you inside the station for the next twelve hours. I ought to see if you’ve got something interesting to say then.”
“Matthew Fennmore—”
“Shut. Up.” Barr seemed to bring himself under control with a great deal of effort. “Did he have it?”
“What?”
“Did Sevcik have the flash drive? If you took it, McKinney, I’ll know. If you so much as breathed on it, I’ll know. If you ventilated your partner’s asshole shoving it up his chute because you thought you could keep it safe, I’ll fucking know. I’ll fucking cut off your fingers and send them to forensics just to see if you’ve got fucking pocket lint under your nails if I have to.”
“What—”
“Did he have it?” The words were half-roar, half scream.
“I didn’t touch him. Shouldn’t you be out there right now? Shouldn’t you be looking at the body, trying to figure out what happened, instead of having a one-man pissing contest in here?”
Barr took a half-step, reached the wall of the tiny space, spun, and dragged both hands through the bush of dark hair. He looked like a man coming apart, a man who’d been under strain so long that he didn’t even notice that the seams were giving, the stitches popping, the whole assemblage about to tear.
“Walk me through it,” Barr finally said. “All of it.”
North did. He left out what he could, like entering Mark’s apartment, but he kept the general outline accurate. Barr asked a few questions, but for the most part, he listened. The ragged intensity in the other man didn’t seem to ease; if anything, it got worse.
When North finished, Barr only took a few more of those aborted attempts at pacing. Then he froze, wound up, and punched the wall. His fist went clean through the drywall, and Barr screamed, “Fuck,” and then he dragged his hand free—scrapes and blood showing through the white drift of dust—and said, “Stay the fuck here.”
He was gone maybe fifteen minutes before Detective Reck stepped into the office. As usual, Reck looked like he’d just finished filming some sort of beach-bum-turned-office-drone shoot: the high-end suit, the darkly sandy hair, the easy grace of an athlete moving under the mass of muscle. He came around the desk and sat on the edge. Up close, North noticed a pallor under Reck’s tan, the shadows under Reck’s eyes, a tic in one eyelid. He didn’t feel an ounce of sympathy.
“You left Shaw with that maniac?”
“He’ll be ok.”
“He won’t be ok. He’s in shock, and in case you hadn’t noticed, your partner is unstable. No. He’s beyond unstable. He put his fist through the fucking wall, and he looks like he’s having a breakdown.” North stood. “I cannot believe you left Shaw with him. I’m going to—”
“Sit down, please.”
“No fucking way.”
“Sit down.”
North studied the pretty boy. He could take Reck if he had to. Reck was bigger, but not by much, and Reck looked too groomed to really know how to land a punch, even if he was a cop.
Then Reck sighed. “I asked a patrol officer—discreetly—to keep an eye on things and let me know if Barr got rough with Mr. Aldrich. So will you sit down?”
After another moment, just to make his point, North dropped into the chair.
“This is a high-profile case, and my partner is under a lot of—”
“What do you know about Matty Fennmore?”
Reck blinked. His dark eyes were liquid, and they seemed to be absorbing North in a decidedly new way that North didn’t like. All Reck said was, “This is an ongoing investigation. Now, I’d like you talk me through what happened tonight.”
“Is he dangerous?”
“I told you: Detective Barr is under a lot of strain. He’s a good cop. He’s a great cop. You know he started this task force single-handedly? The LGBT task force. That’s his creation. He made it possible for our people to have a voice in the department, to have recourse.”
“Our people? So that’s why you’re always looking at Shaw like you want to spit-roast him?”
A hint of red crept into Reck’s tan cheeks, but all he said was, “Did you know that my partner is the one who caught the West End Slasher? He damn near died doing it, too. The knife nicked the femoral artery; he was lucky Barnes Jewish was two blocks away. My partner caught the guy that carved up your partner. Yeah. I know who Shaw Aldrich is. And so I’m going to say this one time, and one time only: you don’t have to like Detective Barr, but don’t ever suggest he’s not a good cop. Not while I’m around. Not if you have any fucking respect for what he did for Shaw.” Reck’s voice took on a mocking softness when he said the name.
“Shaw doesn’t think he caught the real Slasher.”
“Shaw got hurt by that man. Badly. I wouldn’t blame him if he saw the Slasher in every shadow for the rest of his life.”
“You’re dodging my question about Matty Fennmore. Is he dangerous?”
Reck’s voice was cool. “Talk me through tonight.”
So North did it all again, and he hoped that Shaw, no matter how upset he was, had managed to keep his head through the interview. The last thing they needed were obstruction charges or trespassing charges or Christ knew what else Barr might bring down on them.
North wrapped up his account, and Reck made a few notes and tucked the pad away, and then North said, “The waitress told me Mark Sevcik was in here last night for dinner. He was a regular; she remembered him eating alone last night. And there’s security footage,” he nodded at the monitor, “of someone waiting for him outside last night.”
“Jesus. Did you tell Barr?”
“I’m telling you because I want to know if Mark Sevcik was killed last night.”
“You found him, didn’t you?”
“I’m asking about last night.”
Reck rubbed his chin. “That’s for the ME to decide.”
“I’m asking you about last night, Reck. I’m asking you. You saw the body up close, didn’t you? I only had a quick look.”
For another moment, Reck said nothing. Then he let out a slow breath. “Rigor was fully set. And livor is consistent with his position.”
North’s brain raced. In the most general terms, rigor reached its peak twenty-four hours after death. Livor—the settling of blood, and the subsequent discoloration of flesh at the lowest part of the body—became fixed somewhere between eight and twelve hours after death. That meant Mark Sevcik had been lying in that position for at least eight hours after death, and he’d been dead anywhere between twelve hours and a full day. All of it was consistent with the waitress’s story about Mark eating at the restaurant last night and with the video timestamp of Regina Rex waiting with the gun and shepherding Mark into the night.
It took North a moment to realize that Reck was still there. The detective rocked once, as though about to stand, and then he just sat there, big hands folded between his knees. A struggle worked its way through Reck’s rugged features, and when he spoke, his voice was low and uncertain.
“You know what your partner did when we came back from seeing the body? After forensics got here, I mean.”
“Something typically Shaw, I assume. He probably offered to smudge the whole fucking place to clear out bad vibes.”
“He asked me if I was ok. And he said he wasn’t ok, and it was ok if I wasn’t either. He asked if he could get me something. He asked if I had someone to talk to.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t ask if you needed help processing everything.”
Reck’s face was eerily still, his gaze fixed on North. “Is that really who he is?”
“What do you care? Do you want to date him? Because you can fucking get in line behind Matty fucking Fennmore.”
Reck’s big hands twisted once. “Is that who he is, really? Or is his whole thing, is it some kind of bullshit routine you guys play?”
“What are you asking? Jesus. You really are into him, aren’t you?”
“Answer my question.” Reck’s hands turned again. “And I’ll answer yours.”
“That’s Shaw. A hundred percent. It’s like a fucking free-love commune had a baby with the American Psychological Association.”
Reck chuffed a small breath, and then a strange little smile tightened his lips. He pushed off the desk and moved toward the door. “You can go. We’ll have some follow-up, so keep yourself available.”
“Is that what you tell all the boys?”
Reck just kept moving.
“You told me you’d answer my question.”
At the door, Reck paused, his hand on the knob. He didn’t look back. But he said, “I don’t know anything about Matty Fennmore. Never heard of him.”
“That’s all I get? Fuck you, asshole.”
“But I have done some reading on a guy named Matthew Fennley.”
In the vast quiet that had fallen over Hog Hollow Hocks, Reck’s shoes made muffled clicks in the sawdust. Then silence. And then Reck was out the door, pulling it shut behind him.
North pulled out his phone. He pulled up Missouri’s Case.net. He plugged in Matthew Fennley.
Matthew Fennley, Kansas City, December 2012. Sexual misconduct in the second degree. Six days’ jail. Matthew Fennley, Liberty, May 2013. Sexual misconduct in the second degree. Four weeks’ jail. Three hundred dollar fine. Matthew Fennley, Independence, November 2013, Sexual misconduct in the second degree. Six weeks’ jail. Matthew Fennley, St. Louis City, March 2014. Prostitution. Eight months’ imprisonment.
North’s hands were shaking as he went back to Google. He typed in Matthew Fennley again. Nothing.
He typed in Matthew Fennmore. He pulled up the RiverChurch page. He found Matty’s picture and searched the image on Google. And there it was, on a 2011 playbill for the Kansas City Greater Community Theater’s production of Oliver!: Matthew Fennley in the role of the Artful Dodger.
His hands were shaking so badly now that he could barely type, but he managed to get RiverChurch into the search box. The page Matty had directed them to came up immediately. But North scrolled down, viewing other results. A church in South Dakota, in Ohio, in Texas. A slight variation for a congregation in Saint Charles, Missouri. But nothing else about the RiverChurch supposedly pastored by Matty Fennmore’s father. And how hard was it really, North thought, to make a webpage? You pay a hundred bucks, click a few buttons, type a few paragraphs, and voila, there’s an official RiverChurch website with your picture and a whole bunch of horseshit about how you’re a youth pastor.
And then, all of a sudden, North’s hands were still. Everything inside him had stilled. It was a kind of molecular cold that had frozen everything down to atomic vibrations. It made it difficult to think, like the gears wouldn’t turn or shift. But one thing glittered, icy and clear, in that stillness.
North was fairly sure he was about to kill Matty Fennley.