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“Thank you,” John-Henry said.
“Just one question: did it hurt when that guy turned you into his personal ass puppet?”
John-Henry breathed out slowly.
“Because that’s what I figure happened,” North said. “He shoved his hand right up your ass, and now your mouth is moving, but I’m hearing his bullshit.”
“North,” Shaw said. And then, “John-Henry, that isn’t—”
Emery rounded on North, but before he could say anything, John-Henry held up a hand. When he spoke, the words were clipped. “Stay here.”
Then he left.
“This is fucking bullshit,” North called after him. “It’s our break, and you guys have been sitting around, scratching each other’s hemorrhoids while our first good lead goes cold.”
John-Henry kept walking and didn’t look back. North thought about going after him, but the chinless uniform must have taken the Highway Patrol guy’s order literally, because he stood a few yards away, hand on his cuffs like he might have to spring into action at any moment. So, instead, North stood there, wrestling down the need to shout or swear or kick something.
“You know what?” Emery said. The security lights were distant, and shadows lay over Emery’s face. His eyes glinted with a hint of that frozen amber. “You are a real asshole.”
“Takes one to know one, I guess.” North shook off Shaw’s hand, the words boiling up. “And you want to know something? You’re a fucking hypocrite, because if it had been anybody else except John-Henry, you’d have lost your mind at this bullshit. You’ve got this big act about how you don’t eat shit, and then John-Henry smiles at you, and you sit down with a fucking spoon.”
“North,” Shaw said, his voice sharp.
Emery shook his head, the movement barely more than a sketch in the darkness. Then he started toward the road, checking North with his shoulder as he passed him. North stumbled, caught himself, and spun to go after him. Shaw was faster, though, catching North’s wrist in an iron grip.
“Sir—” the uniformed officer, Eaton, tried.
Emery kept walking.
North was trying to twist free of Shaw’s grip.
“Knock it off,” Shaw whispered fiercely. “You’re frustrated, and you’re angry, and I understand that. I’m frustrated too. But you’re treating people you care about poorly, and you need to cut it out right now.” North turned his arm, trying to break Shaw’s hold, and Shaw gave him a shake. “North!”
It was like a tide running out. All of a sudden, North felt tired, his head hollow and throbbing. He couldn’t meet Shaw’s eye as he nodded. Shaw held him for another moment. Then his hand relaxed, and he stroked North’s arm. Even at this hour, in the dark, the heat coiled around them, the air like school paste, making skin stick to skin as Shaw trailed his fingers up and down. The breeze turned, and the stink of old charcoal fires and smoke and rancid fat drifted in. The cemented-in park grills, a distant part of North thought. That’s what he was smelling. He tried to fix his gaze on a yellow caution sign that said CAREFUL—CHILDREN. It had been shot to hell with a BB gun. His stomach turned, and he was surprised at the flop sweat on his nape and chest.
Lights were coming on across the park. Voices mingled with the noise that spilled out of open RV doors: televisions and radios and an infant screaming. The whole park was coming alive, and North wanted to shake his head, but all he could do was stand there.
“This is how they do things,” Shaw said. “It’s their case. We’re just helping them.”
North wanted to say that it was more than a police case. That this was real, this was happening now, that someone was doing everything they could to cover up whatever was happening at the Cottonmouth Club, and that included trying to kill Jem and Tean and Theo and Auggie, and by this point, probably the rest of them as well. He wanted to say that the bad guys were winning, and that every time they turned around, another door slammed shut. But he didn’t say anything. One of the RV televisions must have been tuned to a game show, because everybody was cheering.
Maybe Shaw heard some of it anyway, though, because he let out an unhappy sound and pressed his face to North’s shoulder. He stood there, watching and running his hand over Shaw’s auburn hair. A Wahredua PD officer came back and said something to John-Henry, and then John-Henry followed him deeper into the park, disappearing into the clean-cut geometry of shadows created by competing lights. At one of the closer lots, a woman emerged, pushing past the man who was talking to the Highway Patrol trooper in the doorway. She was carrying a screaming baby over her shoulder, patting the infant’s back as she paced. A few pads down, the exterior lights of a Keystone came on, and the door flew open, and five children spilled out, shouting with excitement as they began doing what North took to be an impromptu karate performance—all with the occasional, excited pause to see if a police officer was watching.
Shaw laughed into North’s shoulder, and in spite of himself, North felt a grin stretch his cheeks. “This is a total shitshow.”
“Yep,” Shaw said.
“God damn it,” North said, but he couldn’t bring any heat to the words.
“Can you imagine if this was how you had to do the job all the time?”
“Sure,” North said. “I’d get a job as a mall cop instead. Then I’d shoot myself.”
Shaw laughed again. “If Welch didn’t know we were here before, I don’t know how he could miss it now.”
“Christ, I don’t know how he could—” North began. Then he stopped as he heard himself. He finished more slowly, “I don’t know how he could have hidden here in the first place.”
Shaw raised his head. “I know we were being optimistic. I mean, Maleah never told us he was definitely here, only that he used to bring her here. You’re right: there’s no reason he’d come back—”
