“I ain’t a cop killer, Ryan. Come on. You know me.”
Hudson scrutinized his brother through a thick glass partition. Tobias looked as rough as he’d ever seen him, though in his line of work as a drug dealer, Hudson supposed he must have had days when he’d woken up in worse shape. At least here, in Sulfur County Jail, he was safe. Although—he threw a glance over each shoulder, noting the cops guarding each exit—if he really killed Garrison, he might not be.
He’d sat in his car for a full five minutes before drumming up the courage to go in. The possibility of someone recognizing him scared the hell out of him. While Hudson had never worked in the jail, it was attached to the law enforcement center, a concrete building that, with all its fissures, looked like a skull being forced out of the asphalt. Patrol officers transported prisoners here. Luckily, he still knew very few people on first shift. If he was with Garrison, it’d be a different story. Garrison had been a local celebrity. But without his larger-than-life partner, Hudson was essentially invisible. It worked in his favor, he thought as he finally got out and slammed the door. He paid the meter, cursing Tobias for making him his one phone call.
Now, he stared at Tobias behind a sheet of glass. His skin was sallow. Purplish half-moons cupped his eyes. Stubble covered his usually smooth face and neck. The center of his snowflake tattoo pulsed as he swallowed.
“You think I did it.” Tobias turned away, cut his chin on his shoulder. Sniffed. “Is that why you didn’t warn me?”
The phone caused his voice to echo. It sounded as though they were miles, rather than inches, apart. Hudson’s heart began to hammer, and he reminded himself that Tobias couldn’t hurt him. Not like all the other times, like when they’d been kids and Tobias pushed Hudson off the pier, or later, in high school, when he got his cronies to zip-tie Hudson to the urinal so he could beat the shit out of him.
Where were his cronies now, Hudson wondered. His friends.
Nowhere to be found, that was where. Hiding in their hovels and drug dens, probably more than content to know that Hades was locked up and off the streets. Out of sight, out of mind. He wasn’t a drug lord anymore. He’d been dethroned, pitched from his status in Black Harbor’s underworld. The man who sat on the other side of the glass partition from him was nothing more than a lowly drug dealer.
Hudson sighed into the plastic receiver. The phone smelled like cheap perfume. He wasn’t obligated to help Tobias, who had committed his life to terrorizing him. But, he didn’t have it in him to not help him.
When Muntz gave Kasper the address last night—corroborating one of the three places they’d been looking into—police had moved quickly. Kole wrote the warrant while Kasper called Wesson PD’s SWAT team to dress and assemble. And Hudson had been powerless to stop any of it. He stood in the bureau like a buoy in the climax of a storm, the waves tossing him this way and that, struggling to stay above water.
He knew they’d seize Tobias’s phone. A call or text from Hudson would have been damning for both of them. He wouldn’t have had time to drive over there if he’d wanted. And had he even wanted to? He wondered if he’d play it all differently now, after seeing his brother shrunken in his jail jumpsuit, the fabric faded to the color of the Ruins ticket.
No, he decided. He wouldn’t have done anything differently. Because if Tobias killed Garrison, he should rot in prison. And if he didn’t, then the truth would set him free.
And yet, the truth, like killing two birds with one stone, could destroy them both. Hudson knew that. He’d known it since eleven years ago, when he first submitted his application to the Black Harbor Police Department. Being exposed as the brother of the city’s most notorious drug dealer would end his career and put Tobias in a body cast, or worse. He’d be labeled a snitch, which was just about the worst thing a guy could be.
“You know, he saved my life once, your friend.” Tobias’s dark eyes held on Hudson’s like magnets. “Saw me at the edge of Forge Bridge, one foot already off the railroad tie.” He set his elbow on the counter, pinched the bridge of his nose, driving his knuckle into his brow.
Hudson had never seen Tobias like this, so vulnerable and defeated. He furrowed his brows, trying to make sense of the pitiful man on the other side of the glass. It had to be true. Tobias never lied. “Tobias, I never knew. You never said anything…”
“You never asked. But we’re not really that way, you and me, are we? We’re brothers, but we’ve never been brotherly.” He smiled, though it wasn’t a happy smile. “Not like you were with him, that Garrison character. I hated him for it, a little. The affection you showed him and not me. The way you looked up to him like he was some kind of god. But I understood. We were who we were. Or … are who we are,” he corrected. He mashed the heels of his hands in his eye sockets, smoothed out the lines of sleeplessness that creased his forehead.
“When?” In his mind, Hudson saw Tobias staring into the cruel black water below Forge Bridge, where countless bodies had bobbed to the surface, bloated and nibbled on by fish. He remembered, not too long ago, one corpse was recovered with a plastic bag in its throat. As if smacking the water and drowning hadn’t been bad enough, the poor bastard had had to choke on garbage, too.
In this frozen, coal-blackened city, everyone knew someone who jumped.
“Four years ago … ish,” replied Tobias. “Shayla had just taken Elijah. Filed for a restraining order. I couldn’t come within a hundred feet of my own kid.”
“Did you hurt her?”
“Used to.” He sighed. The crackling in the earpiece made Hudson flinch. “Just … either I wouldn’t be home when I said I’d be, or I’d be cussin’ her out, calling her every name imaginable. Cracked my hand across her cheek once. Split her lip.” His gaze was razor sharp, daring Hudson to judge. “I never said I was a good guy. That was my main reason for being up on that bridge. I thought it might not be such a terrible thing if a guy like me wasn’t walkin’ around no more.”
Hudson knew the feeling. He’d never thought of himself as a bad guy, like Tobias, but he’d contemplated the second part—the “not walkin’ around no more” part. Sometimes the will to quit was stronger than the will to live, especially when you came home in your funeral blacks to a cold, silent house. “You said Garrison stopped you?” he asked. “How?” He envisioned Garrison parked in the vacant lot in front of the bridge, typing up a report in his vehicle when he saw a shadowy figure on the wrong side of the railing. The image felt like more than something he was conjuring in his own mind, and he realized, as it took the shape of a memory, he’d heard Garrison tell the story. He just hadn’t known the man he’d yanked from death’s doorstep was his brother.
Neither had Garrison.
“I was gonna do it.” Tobias frowned. “Just step off the edge like you’re walkin’ onto an elevator except there’s no elevator there and you fall down the shaft. And I heard a voice. Son.” His own voice broke. He bit his bottom lip to stop it from quivering. Took a deep breath. “He called me son, and the first fucked-up thought that entered my mind was Dad. I wasn’t really in a right state of mind. I thought Dad had come from the other side or something, come to stop me from going the same way as him, but…” He trailed off and swiped away a tear that rolled down his jaw. “It was like I was already in mid-step, and when I tried to go backward, to undo what I’d just done, it was too late. I fell. And I don’t know how in the world he was so fast, he was like the Flash, but he caught me by the collar of my jacket. He was the only thing keeping me up, keeping me alive. I swung under the bridge some and smashed my face on the rails. Knocked out a few teeth. But he pulled me up and other than that I was fine.”
Jesus, Garrison. He was suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to hug him if he were here, were he still alive. But for what? For saving his brother who might have come around four years later and shot him?
As if Tobias could read Hudson’s thoughts, he said, “Now, how could I do it, bro? Kill a man who saved my life? Who called me ‘son’? Who let me spend at least four more birthdays with my little boy? Four more Christmases?” He shook his head. His face contorted into something anguished, compressed, like a can being crushed. “I know I’m not a good guy. But I’m not a monster.”
Hudson put both of his elbows on the counter and leaned forward until his forehead nearly touched the glass. He closed his eyes and pictured Tobias standing on the outskirts of Garrison’s funeral. What investigators had mistaken for a killer assessing his damage was really a man in mourning.
That is, if Tobias really was telling the truth. As if he had a second phone up to his other ear, he heard Sergeant Kole’s voice, reciting the golden rule of Investigations: Everybody lies.
He sighed. “The gun that killed Garrison was a fifty-caliber Desert Eagle. Why would it be in your apartment?”
“I swear to you, Ryan, I’ve never seen that gun in my life.”
He heard Kole again, chiding. That’s what they all say.
“Then how’d it get there? People said they saw you with it. Waving it around. Bragging about…” He cringed. “… popping a cop.”
Tobias rolled his eyes. “People are liars. You oughta know that by now.” He paused to lick his chapped lips. “Who’s people, anyway?”
Hudson pictured Muntz sitting in Interview Room #1. The feeling of a fist squeezing his intestines returned, the cramping he’d felt in that instant that Muntz had uttered the name Hades. “It’s confidential.”
“Are you fucking serious, bro? I’m about to fry for murder and you’re worried about protecting some code of ethics you got?”
“You’re not going to fry,” Hudson assured him. Wisconsin had abolished the death penalty in 1853, and the electric chair was a southern thing. It was this sort of know-it-all-ness that had always gotten Hudson punched when they were younger.
“You believe me, don’t you?” Tobias looked desperate, and for the first time in his life, powerless.
Hudson straightened up. He raked a hand through his hair and scratched at the back of his head. “Who else was in your place recently?”
“You mean who could’ve dumped the gun?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit, people in and outta that place all day. Alice—this new girl I got—she’s chummy with some seedy characters.”
Hudson raised a brow.
“You know what I mean. I’m shady but these people are…” He sucked his teeth. “They leave a bad taste in your mouth, you know what I mean?”
He did, actually. He and Garrison arrested a woman once, who was so grimy, so nasty, so sour with the smell of tobacco that his mouth tasted like he’d smoked a pack of cigarettes afterward. “What do they do?” he asked.
Now Tobias fixed Hudson with a raised brow, a look that said You’ve been walking a beat for over a decade and you don’t know what people do around here? “Lie. Cheat. Steal. You know the drill.”
“Steal? Like rob places?” While Morgan had dismissed the narrative that the suspect had come in to rob the gas station, Hudson hadn’t. Witnesses messed up their accounts all the time. It had all happened so fast; how would she have known whether he pointed the gun at the cashier or Garrison first?
Tobias shrugged. “Some, yeah. Shit, Kai’s last name is ‘steal.’”
The name hit Hudson like a kick to the stomach. “Kai Steele was in your place?”
“Like a rat in the goddamn walls. Motherfucker never left.”
“Doing what?”
Tobias shrugged. “Smokin’. Chillin’. Gel’in like a felon.”
“And if it was Kai’s gun—which you say you’ve never seen before—your DNA won’t be on it, right?”
“I don’t see how it could be.”
“You never held that gun?”
“Nah, bro, I’m telling you right now, I never even saw it.”
Hudson’s mind reeled. The gun had been swabbed for DNA, but the process of getting results back could take a few weeks. And there was no guarantee the findings would be conclusive. But if he could get the police to look into Kai Steele again, and find evidence to prove the gun belonged to him, Tobias could be cleared of murder charges. He would still do three or four years for the four ounces of cocaine the SWAT team found in his toilet tank—unless they could trace that back to Kai, too—but after that he’d be a free man … again.
“Who else?” asked Hudson. “You said there were seedy characters in and out of your place all day.”
“Shit.” Tobias blew air out of his mouth. “Guy named Ruiz. I think he’s an informant, though, so I quit sellin’ to him about a week ago. Destiny, she’s one of Alice’s friends. Lives above the Moonlight Market on Main. Ronald, he stays in the back of the old martinizing shop. He’s a real piece of shit.”
Hudson tried on his best poker face. He was willing to bet that the Ronald Tobias mentioned was Ronald Muntz. If Tobias found out he snitched, he could send someone after him and ruin any chance he had of getting out of here. “How so?” he asked.
Tobias’s face darkened. “Don’t you investigate crimes against children, bro?”
“Generally, yeah.” Hudson had to admit, he was surprised Tobias knew that. He’d never mentioned his assignments to his family, which meant his brother kept tabs on him.
“Tell me how you feel, then, about a grown man raping his niece. Who’s ten, by the way. Or hiring sixteen-year-olds for sex.”
Hudson clenched his jaw. He’d searched Muntz’s name in Onyx, and although he hadn’t come across charges for the crimes Tobias was talking about, it didn’t mean they didn’t happen. He just hadn’t been caught. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And yet, Tobias could be misinformed. Or reaching. His brother was drowning, and drowning people will always pull someone else under to save themselves.
“Detective, you almost done?” He felt the presence of one of the correctional officers.
“Yeah.” Hudson scraped his chair back across the floor and reached to hang up the phone.
Tobias’s voice was muffled on the other end. “Hold up. Do me a favor, would ya?”
Dread folded over Hudson like a weighted blanket. He brought the piece back to his ear. “What?”
“Feed Persephone while I’m gone? There’s some mice for her in the freezer.”
“Persephone is your … cat?”
“According to my rental agreement.”
Hudson hung up the phone. He stood and slung his messenger bag over his shoulder. As he turned to go, a knock on the glass made him turn back around. “You believe me, yeah?”
He nodded despite himself. He wasn’t sure what to believe. Possibilities ripped through his mind. The only solid, indomitable fact was that Garrison was dead, and if his brother had in fact killed him, then Hades himself would have hell to pay.
He would make sure of it.