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Jem scratched his beard, but Tean shook his head. “They killed my friend.”
“Our friend,” Jem said.
“They were trying to kill us, and they killed her instead. We’re not running away from that.”
“Even though we don’t exactly have unlimited vacation days. Well, I do. But that’s because I’m a reprobate.”
“We talked about this,” Tean said, his voice dropping as he turned toward Jem. “It’s my choice—”
“I know, I know, I know.” Jem held up his hands. “Look, this is my fault. I’m the one who screwed up. I’m the one who got these fuckers after us.”
“It’s not anyone’s fault,” Shaw said.
“It’s kind of his fault,” North said. He twisted away from Shaw’s elbow. “What? It is.”
“It’s not,” Auggie said. “We stirred the pot too.”
“He’s being kind,” Theo said. “I dragged him into this.”
Auggie shook his head, but he didn’t press the argument. After that, no one seemed to have anything to say. Silence gathered; it was thick in Shaw’s throat, and he wiped his eyes and laid his head on North’s shoulder. Emery’s voice was a low rumble in the background. And then that ended too.
His steps moved back toward the living room, and everyone turned toward the sound. Emery looked at them, face grim. “John asked me to come in.”
Theo glanced at Jem, who nodded, and said, “We’ll keep an eye on things here.”
“Good,” Emery said, his voice suddenly dry. “Because he wants North and Shaw to come as well.”
2
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.”
