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Okay, probably not the VFW.

But I knew damn well that the Richmond PD had a whole bunch of MFM assholes, and I had no reason to think that the Shawano PD, which was a lot less exposed to diversity of the demographic variety, was going to be any better.

Then I realized they were both staring at me.

“Shit. Sorry. Did I miss something?”

Taavi’s lips curved up slightly, although I’m not sure I could actually call the expression a smile. “No,” he answered.

“Then what?”

“You had the look,” Elliot told me.

“The look?” I repeated.

“The one you get when you start to put things together,” Taavi explained.

Oh. Apparently I get a look when I start thinking about things like an adult with half a functioning brain. That probably wasn’t something I should be proud of, but these days I was going to take whatever I could get.

“I was just thinking,” I muttered, feeling my ears heat up.

This time it was Taavi who brushed a kiss along my jaw, having to stand on his tiptoes to reach it. “We know,” he murmured into my skin.

12

Elliot putTaavi and me in charge of the basement—sorting through everything down there and making piles of ‘things Elliot might want,’ ‘things Elliot definitely won’t want,’ and ‘what the fuck.’ Elliot was going through the piles, sorting things into new piles—thrift store, the Green Bay branch of Hands and Paws, and specific people, like Henry, who might want particular things.

We were dusty, sweaty, and trying very hard not to snap at each other, although Elliot had muttered several unkind things about both his parents at various points throughout the past three days. I wasn’t going to do the same, even if I agreed. I didn’t argue with him, though.

Taavi took his keys and a load of stuff to be donated to Goodwill and Hands and Paws and promised to bring back ice cream—more specifically, Culver’s frozen custard.

Elliot and I kept going through things.

“Hey, El. Did you want your notebooks from grade school?”

“What the fuck, Mom?” he muttered, then came over and took one of the spiral-bound notebooks (red, with blocky kid print readingSocial Studieson the cover). He leafed through it briefly. “The fuck am I going to do with my social studies notebook from when I was like ten?”

I held up a blue one that readEnglish. “I have English and Math and—”

“I don’t want any of them.”

“You want to burn them or…?” There was a burn pit in one corner of the back yard, lined with heavy stones.

“Yeah. Burn box.” We had a big cardboard box for shit that would end up in the burn pit.

There was a lot more where the notebooks came from, and I kept having to ask Elliot whether or not he wanted things—final exams, certificates, awards, a Book-It pin.

After the tenth time, he sighed. “I’ll just do this box. If you—Would you—” He bit his lower lip.

“Whatever it is, sure.”

“Dad’s office?”

I didn’t want to go back in there. Elliot probably wanted to go in there even less. But then Taavi’s comment from the other night came back—You’re a brilliant detective. I wasn’t sure about the ‘brilliant’ part, but I was a detective. And in order to do my job, I had to go back to the crime scene. I’d done a once-over that first day, but I needed to do more than a once-over. I needed to go through everything in there to see if I could figure out why someone would target Gregory Crane.

I was also going to have to ask some tough questions of Elliot and Henry, and I was going to have to go after the Shawano PD. But I wanted more ammunition—and, preferably, evidence—before I started that fight.

“Yeah, I’ll go look through the office,” is what I said to Elliot. He didn’t need to know how closely I’d be going through it. I felt a little guilty about that, but… It’s what I would have done—gone through personal files, particularly found at the literal crime scene—in order to figure out motive by looking at the victim’s life.