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“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.”
“What are you going to do about that?” North asked. “The Moss family, the church.”
“Cassidy,” Emery said, that single word a dead sound.
Something flickered in John-Henry’s expression, but when he spoke, he sounded tired. “It’s going to be a jurisdictional nightmare. It already is, I suppose.”
“And, as a result, we’re going to spend as much time jerking each other off as we do actual police work, which is a vibrant reminder of why I purposefully left this bullshit behind.”
“Also,” North said, “they would have fired you anyway.”
Emery turned a flat look on him.
“What about Gid?” Shaw asked.
“We’re looking for him too,” John-Henry said. “That shouldn’t be as hard; I can’t imagine the son of a preacher has the kind of skills and resources to lie low for an extended period of time. He’ll swipe a credit card or pop up on a traffic camera.”
“Of course, it would have been nice if you’d held on to him,” Emery said.
North tried not to make a face about that, mostly because he agreed with Emery. Jem’s all-clear had sent them venturing out onto Ezell’s lawn, and by the time Shaw had remembered Gid, there was no sign of the man.
“We were a little busy,” North said. “Fucking Jem. Rushing in there like a fucking amateur.”
Emery raised his eyebrows.
Shaw made an unhappy noise.
“You know,” John-Henry said, “there’s a good chance Gid’s still alive because Jem acted the way he did. This man in black, whoever he is, is a killer. And I don’t like that he’s carrying a gun now.”
“No,” Emery said, “it was so much better when he was a cross between Freddy Krueger and a ninja.”
“Oh, he’s not Freddy Krueger,” Shaw said, “because Freddy Krueger had those hedge-trimming gloves.”
“That was only in an episode ofThe Simpsons—” North tried.
“He’s more like a cross between a ninja and…oh! A medieval peasant harvesting a cereal crop.”
“John,” Emery said.
“Or mowing hay.”
John-Henry rubbed his eyes again. “Any idea what the youngest son of a preacher was looking for in our missing deputy’s house?”
North shook his head. “That’s got to be enough for a warrant, though, right? We’ve got a clear trail that has Welch walking up to their front door, and a couple of hours later, Gid drives across the state to break into some random deputy’s house? That’s a connection.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” John-Henry said through a yawn. “Right now, I’m hitting a wall.”
North opened his mouth to say something—the phraseweak saucewas probably in there—when a yawn caught him too.
“We’re sorry again, John-Henry,” Shaw said. “Emery. We’re really sorry. We’ll do better.”
