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The idea that Darnell had lied was too big for me to take in all at once.

I grabbed my keys and wallet and went out to the car. The heat was even worse inside the oven of glass and steel. Sweat dripped into my eyes and stung. Shoes, I thought from a far-off place inside my head. I forgot shoes again.

Then I put the key in the ignition and started the car. I backed out of the driveway and drove out of the neighborhood. Harvey was probably watching, a distant part of me thought. He’d tell everybody I forgot to use a fucking turn signal.

For a while, I didn’t know where I was going. My body moved like I was on autopilot. The city melted and flowed around me, a river of meaningless information until something popped out at me: the spinning orange of a Popeye’s sign, the weed-choked lot of an empty arcade, some dumb kid in a Statue of Liberty costume dancing on the corner with a sign for a nearby barbecue place. The kid was probably Tip’s age, red faced, sweating buckets. The Fourth of July was just around the corner, and restaurants were drumming up business. How much was the barbecue joint paying this kid to get heat stroke?

Then I was out of the city, past the belt of light-industrial and ag buildings—post-frame warehouses and old barns and even a brick shithouse, which I’d always thought was just a saying. The air conditioning started to work. The cold air was almost too much; my skin stung, as though I really had gotten sunburned. In the mirror, for a second, I didn’t recognize myself. And then, distantly, I remembered and thought, Oh, right.

Why lie?

Because he had something to hide.

I flexed my hands around the steering wheel. I caught myself shaking my head. What would Darnell have to hide? A hookup? Okay, maybe. Yes, we had an open relationship. But Darnell had made it painfully clear that he wasn’t taking advantage of the benefits of that arrangement. I got the impression he thought it gave him the moral high ground; I could have told him, if I wanted to, that he already had the moral high ground. I mean, look at me—I was an oxy-sniffing deadbeat. But I was also fully aware that I would cut a bitch if Darnell started catting around, so he wasn’t entirely wrong.

Maybe a hookup. Maybe he’d finally decided to give it a try, see what was out there. Maybe that was a good thing, right? He’d get his nut. He’d loosen up. He’d fall in love with some dewy-eyed twink who weighed a hundred and twenty pounds and had those spaghetti arms and needed help getting his favorite dildo out of the toy box.

I caught the tail end of that line of thinking and wondered if maybe I did need to snort a little oxy. At least pop a zannie. Just to cool the jets.

As tempting as it was to think Darnell was simply out there finding a convenient hole, it didn’t track. Sure, maybe he’d leave town to do it—I could see him wanting some privacy, not wanting anyone to know. But the closest thing to that Hampton Inn had been a company that repaired grain silos. I mean, sure, maybe he’d had something prearranged. Maybe some horny little fucker who worked on grain silos had needed his cork popped. Or his silo, uh, plundered. Or whatever.

But what were the odds?

That was the problem. What were the odds that Darnell’s first hookup would be the same night someone left Tip’s body in our house? And why pretend he was at a hotel when he wasn’t? If you took law enforcement out of the equation, maybe. Maybe he’d have kept up the lie if he thought, somehow, it was for my sake. But shit was serious. Brother Gary and Red Alvin were not fucking around. They were looking at me and Darnell for this. So, why lie about an alibi that wouldn’t hold up to even the most cursory check?

I didn’t know. Maybe we’d figure it out in fucking therapy. Yeah, doc, I do have one question. Darnell lied to the police. What do you think that’s about?

Were you supposed to call them doc? Probably not.

The ridiculousness of that thought eased the tightness in my chest. I almost tried for a laugh, but I didn’t. What was going on with me? What was I thinking? What did I think Darnell had done?

I settled back in the seat. I eased my aching hands off the wheel and flexed my fingers. Outside, crop fields slipped past me. The photo-flicker of green plants and dark lines of earth was rhythmic and soothing, not that I knew what any of it was.

Darnell had gone out. He’d fucked around. He’d booked a hotel and asked them to hold it for him even if he showed up late, because he hadn’t known how late his hookup was going to last, and he wasn’t sure if the hotel would give his room away. That happened sometimes if you didn’t call.

The relief was physical. Knots I hadn’t even been aware of loosened. My shoulders relaxed. My knuckles still throbbed from how tightly I’d been gripping the wheel, but even that was fading.

I mean, this was Darnell we were talking about.

Right?

When I spotted a wide stretch of shoulder, I slowed and pulled over. I took deep breaths and lay back, staring up at the torn headliner. That crushing sensation, like I couldn’t get any air, was gone, and now all of it seemed stupid—that zombie walk back from Harvey’s, checking Darnell’s computer, running out of the house. After therapy, I’d talk to him. I’d ask him what was going on. I didn’t care if he was out there sticking it to somebody. I just needed him to tell me where he was.

Or—

Or maybe I wouldn’t.

I mean, he didn’t ask me, did he?

It wasn’t any of my business. I could warn him that the detectives would look into his alibi. But maybe he’d told them more than he’d told me. He could have given them a name, an address, specific times. And he hadn’t told me because those were the rules.

I didn’t need to say anything to him. At all.

What I needed to do—instead of losing my shit and going on a seriously epic episode of spiraling—was figure out who the fuck was behind all of this.

So, what did I know? I shunted my realizations—and questions—about Darnell to the side and focused on the case. I knew a little more than when I’d started the day. Not much, but a little. I knew someone had killed Tip with a knife, and I had an idea about what that meant. I knew Rory and Jordan had shown up at my house for some reason. I wanted to know why.

When you had a dynamic duo like those two, one of them was always the weak link. In this case, it was obviously Jordan, so I tried him first. His phone rang until it went to voicemail. I left a short message, not that I expected a Gen Z TikTok gay to listen to it, and then I texted him the same information: We need to talk. Call me.

For shits and giggles, I tried Rory next. His phone didn’t ring; it went straight to voicemail. If a Gen Z TikTok gay wasn’t going to listen to my message, a Gen Z fuckboy was even less likely to, but I repeated the message and then texted him as well.

I could drive back to their place and see if they were home. But there was someone else I wanted to talk to. Someone, as far as I could tell, who wasn’t even on Brother Gary and Red Alvin’s radar: Sunny.

I went through my map history until I found the address for his lake house, and merged back onto the highway.