CHAZ TOSSED the knife in a random corner of the room after wiping off his prints. He waited at the foot of the stairs, arms up and surrendering. When Jack was the first person down, he thanked his lucky stars.
“Chip?” Jack exclaimed. The intense expression he wore as he charged down the stairs turned to mild confusion, then back to intense as he saw the blood.
“I can explain,” Chaz said. “I found the body. I foun—”
Jack cursed as he approached the other side of the pillar. He turned away from the gore once he saw Alan’s face, and shook his head. The rest of the police force came down the stairs, weapons drawn. They were all put away when they saw Chaz and Jack so close to the body.
“The room is clear,” Chaz said. “I’ve been here not five minutes.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jack asked. “You were supposed to be on bed rest. How am I going to explain this? Did you get an anonymous tip too?”
“You got a tip?”
Jack sighed. He ushered the rest of the officers up the stairs with calls to check the building for anyone else and to call Katja or Melinda to come in and take the body away. Chaz wondered why he was being left alone in a basement room with Jack. Not even Declan stayed.
Once they were alone, Jack explained the situation to Chaz in a low, methodical voice. People at the church had been complaining about a noise in the basement, but the door had been locked. Worried it was a werewolf, they’d called it in the night before. Alan Ramirez was the closest so he was sent to check on it.
“Should have been Alan and Jinny, but she’d needed to call in sick. Family emergency. We’re so understaffed… no one noticed that Alan was missing until this morning.” Jack sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Then we got an anonymous call to go to the church. It sounded scrambled, like someone using a voice decoder. Declan also thought he heard Czech in the background, so we booked it here thinking it was related to our vamp case. But fuck. Alan.”
Jack and Chaz both glanced at the body. He was starting to mummify, his uniform becoming billowy as his body grew smaller. His hands slipped out of the bound ropes and he fell on top of the words written into the floor that were quickly being consumed with blood.
“I can’t believe this. A vamp. Right here.”
“I know.”
“You did?” Jack said. “Is that why you’re here? Was that your tip?”
Chaz bit his lip, unsure how much to give away. What could he really say? I found Alan after fucking up and involving Reggie in on this case because I sent him to track the other vamp. Because I’m a vamp. And the sex worker that ran out of here is my partner now. God, what an idiot. Chaz ran a hand through his hair and realized the gash on his head that he’d received at the house had healed. Already. He shoved his hair back over where the cut should be and acted as if he was still injured. There were so many lies to keep track of now, he wasn’t sure if he could do it anymore.
And he didn’t want to either. Jack used to be his partner. They’d seen the worst in one another but still showed up to serve and protect. He’d understand the alternative methods Chaz had used. He’d even understand Chaz working when he was supposed to be home and healing.
So he told Jack. He gave him as much information as he could without outing himself, or Sully or Artie for that matter. He even tried to suppress Reggie’s name. As soon as he brought up the Citizen’s Brigade, Jack moaned.
“No, no, no. How could you?”
“What? I needed information on our vamps. We can’t go out into the field to get it, so I hired—”
“This story is going to break in a matter of seconds. Do you realize that? It was probably the damn tabloids calling us to get us over here. Shit.”
“You think the tabloids killed Alan? For a story?”
“No, but it doesn’t matter what I think right now because this case is done. Over with. Gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our vamp case from before is scrapped. We have the killer right here for us, delivered on a silver platter.”
“Alan? Really?” Chaz glanced at the body again, felt bile rise, and turned away. An hour ago he’d been convinced Alan was the killer leading sex workers to their deaths. But now, he seemed like a small pawn. “Jack, this man is dead. He’s been killed.”
“Suicide. With a note.” Jack read aloud the words written on the ground. “Sick fuck, but he’s gone now. The case is closed.”
“No. It can’t be. What about justice for Fatima? Patrick? Darcy?”
“I’m not even going to ask where you got the name Darcy from. This is fucking bad, Chip.”
“It’s… not Alan. Someone strung him up to look like Saint Sebastian. Like the last card at the crime scene. He’s not a killer. He’s a rookie who made some mistakes.”
“He’s a vamp. Nothing matters anymore. This is basically him martyring himself. Killing vamps because he hated himself, and then stringing himself up and bleeding to death because he felt bad. That’s the ending of this story. That’s all it can be.”
Chaz shook his head. The blood that leached out of Alan’s body from the wound would have taken hours and hours. There was also no way he tied his hands himself. He was murdered, plain and simple, by the same person who was pegging off sex workers who wanted to leave and be saved by Artie. They’d strung him up like Sebastian not to make him into a martyr but to send a message. Even ideas die. Even the good guys die. The world is unfair. The words on the ground stared back at Chaz each time he blinked. None of it mattered anymore.
“Jack, we need to canvass the area. We need to figure out who—”
“No,” Jack said simply. “It’s done. It’s over with. As far as I’m concerned, Alan Ramirez committed suicide so that he could be turned into a legend in the goddamn Citizen’s Brigade squad. They called it in and now we’re here doing their fucking bidding. He’d be the new… what? Saint Vampire? Bloodless Marvel? Cupid’s Arrow?” Jack laughed bitterly, so unlike the person who Chaz had shared a squad car with for years. “I don’t care what he calls himself now, because he’s done. Our job is done.”
“But—”
“Go home, MacDonald. You should have been there anyway instead of working like a clandestine PI. As far as I’m concerned, you’re off any and all cases for some time.”
“No. As far as I’m concerned, Jack, this isn’t you. You’re not like this. You want to investigate. You want—”
“And Chip, this isn’t like you. You don’t follow leads without your partner and you don’t get yourself stuck in a basement with a murder victim now covered in blood.” Jack’s eyes were hard and furious but also sullen. In a flash, Chaz saw just how much he’d aged since taking his job. Could Toronto and Jack’s superiors really crush his spirit this much—enough to let an innocent man take the fall for crimes and to be murdered for it? It didn’t seem right.
But really, nothing in the police force had been right. That had been the very reason why Chaz joined the force when he was declared normal. Better to be on the side of the law than on his own. Chaz felt the last decade of his life come back to him in a sudden flash of insight and understanding. The vans that were discontinued, the gang units that did nothing, and the constant ignoring of monster-on-monster crime: it wasn’t just that the police force didn’t know how to handle themselves in matters like these, like Chaz always thought, it was that they were deliberately obfuscating the cases they didn’t like or didn’t want to be solved. It was corrupt and hollow from the inside out. No amount of good people could solve it, because there was no mechanism for it to be solved. Anyone who tried was dead or fired for being an activist.
And now Jack was part of that inside corrupt center. He didn’t want to be corrupt—Chaz could see the desperation on Jack’s face in that moment—but he had been promoted. Jack wasn’t Jack his partner anymore, starry-eyed and wishing to solve things for the greater good. His friend, his soft-spoken, bad-joke-telling, and cat-loving friend was part of the problem now, but he was giving Chaz enough room to back away, to step down, and not become part of the section of workers that needed to be silenced.
Chaz took a deep breath. He looked at Alan’s body, then Jack once again. He had to make a choice. It was a stupid and terrible choice, one that reminded him of Nat in the deepest of ways, but he had to make it.
“Okay,” he said. “I understand what you mean.”
“Good.”
“Am I fired, sir?”
After a moment, Jack shook his head. “Under most normal circumstances, I would have to fire you. But I like to think that you’re my friend. And we need the warm bodies on the force. So go. Give your shoes to fucking forensics since you’re tracking blood, but then leave. Don’t make me fucking change my mind.”
Jack’s words struck Chaz like a blow. Worse than the explosion. The system that both Jack and Chaz believed in was falling apart before their eyes. If Ramirez could be a covert vampire, that meant anyone could be.
Including Chaz. Jack’s stare bore into him as if he knew the secrets Chaz had hidden beneath his skin. Chaz was the demon in the dark that Jack feared he could be. Maybe he hadn’t killed Ramirez, but Chaz was just like him. They were both vamps, and since that felt like more of a betrayal than Chaz could fathom, he already felt as if he’d destroyed Jack’s trust beyond measure. He deserved to be cast out. There was no being redeemed, ever, in his life.
“Okay, Jack. I’m sorry. I’ll see myself out.”
Chaz removed his bloody shoes and left them where he’d once stood. Jack stared at the body and only the body, shaking his head. By the time Chaz walked up the rickety stairs, the number of cops had lessened. Katja entered the front foyer with her forensic kit. She waved to Chip, then paused as she seemed to sense the tension in the room. Before even asking, she turned around and pretended to forget something in her car.
“Hey, Chip?” Jack called.
“Yeah?” Chaz moved to the top of the stairs, looked down to meet Jack’s gaze, and held his breath. But Jack’s sad eyes signaled the end once again.
“I’m sorry too.”