Page 5

The detectives—if you were willing to call them that—were waiting in the hall.

Say what you would about the Dore County Sheriff’s Department, they sure knew how to pick them. Gary Holliman was tall, heavyset, and had thick, graying hair pulled into a ponytail. The cowboy hat he usually wore was tucked under one arm. He was dressed in a white suit, and on one finger he had a silver ring with a cross on it. He went by Brother Gary, and I was ninety-nine percent sure he jerked off to old Matlock episodes.

Alvin Reinbold wasn’t much better. Red Alvin, or Red, as he was usually called, had probably, at some point, been a redhead. (If my boy John-Henry had been around, I would have made a joke about the carpet matching the drapes.) He was skinny, his face and hands covered in sunspots, and today he wore the Walmart special: a Miller High Life tee and jeans that looked like they’d been ironed. He chewed a toothpick on one side of his mouth. I didn’t think he jerked off to Matlock . He probably didn’t jerk off at all. Why jerk off when you could nut just from how badass you were?

“Detective Dulac,” Brother Gary boomed in his church voice. “If we could have a minute of your time.”

I glanced past the two boners to where Tip’s parents were still locked in a furious—and self-absorbed—argument. They didn’t seem to notice that I’d left Tip’s room. They certainly didn’t seem to have any intention of going in there themselves.

“Come on,” Red Alvin said.

We ended up in one of the bland, interchangeable waiting rooms—this one, for the moment, currently empty of other people. Then we stood there. The detectives looked at me. I looked at them. They knew all about the waiting game. And so did I.

Finally, Red Alvin said, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Talking to Tip Wheeler.”

“About what?”

“About what happened to him last night. I’m the one who found him.”

“We know,” Brother Gary said. “And we want to talk to you about that.”

“I gave my statement.”

“We read it,” Red said.

Brother Gary nodded. “And we do have some questions.”

“Here we are,” I said. “What do you want to talk about?”

“For one thing, why you were at that party?”

I laughed. “Why do you think?”

“Answer the question, please.”

“Have you ever been to a party? It’s kind of like this: picture your last church social, only instead of all the guys giving themselves pocket jobs while they think about diddling the altar boys, you have a beer and find an adult to hook up with.”

Brother Gary’s face darkened.

“Is that why you were there?” Red Alvin asked. “To ‘hook up’?” He traced the air quotes with his fingers.

“Sure.”

“What does Darnell think about that?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “You don’t like me stepping on your case? Fine. Say that. But I found that kid last night. I wanted to know how he was doing. This isn’t fucking couples therapy, and it’s none of your fucking business what I do in my private life.”

“It is our business,” Brother Gary said, and his voice was a little less booming and a little scratchier with suppressed rage. It had probably been the pocket-pool comment. “Especially when that boy shows up with his face cut to ribbons and glass in his eye, just like—”

I swung at him without even realizing I was going to do it.

Red Alvin was faster, though. Or he’d been expecting it. He shoved me back, and the punch went wide. I took a step forward, and Red was right there, shoving me back again.

“Get out of here,” he said over his shoulder to Brother Gary.

“I will not—”

“Get the fuck out of here!”

“Yeah,” I shouted over Red Alvin’s shoulder, “get the fuck out of here!”

Brother Gary’s face was still mottled with that dark red, but he stalked out of the room. Red Alvin put himself between me and the door.

“This is the kind of detective work you do?” I asked.

Red Alvin spread his hands.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked.

“He shouldn’t have said that,” Red said. And then, “Did he tell you anything useful?”

It took a moment to connect the he back to Tip.

I shook my head. “Did he tell you the story about the guy coming up to him? The one who was all but carrying a sign that said ‘I’m an Ozark Volunteer’?”

“He told us.”

“What the fuck was that?” I shook my head. “I mean, the fucking neck tattoo?”

Red Alvin’s voice was surprisingly cautious as he said, “There are a lot of guys who might match that description. And it wouldn’t surprise me if some of those men decided to mess with a gay boy wandering around, alone, in the wrong part of the county.”

“He was outside some asshole’s two-million-dollar lake house,” I said, “with a hundred other people, most of them college kids, and plenty of them willing to swing on a knob. It’s not like he showed up at Maniacs or wandered onto some fucking Ozark Volunteers compound.”

“You know how these guys are. They know about those kinds of parties. They know what kind of people go there. They get drunk enough and stupid enough, and they decided to swing by, raise some hell. An opportunity presents itself.”

“Fuck that,” I said. “That story was bullshit. You know it was bullshit. There’s no fucking way he saw a neck tattoo, not out there in the dark. It’s like a well-digger’s ass out there. Fuck, he wouldn’t have been able to see the fucking bottle the guy was carrying.”

Red Alvin shrugged. “That’s his story.”

“Yeah, that’s his fucking story.”

So, the question was: why was he lying?

“Listen,” Red said, “if you think of anything else…”

“Sure.” But I couldn’t help asking, “What do you think happened?”

Red shrugged again. “Come on, Gray. You’ve seen this shit before. Kids get fucked up. Kids fuck each other up. Everyone’s too drunk to remember.” He turned to head after Brother Gary and tossed back over his shoulder, “This kind of thing never gets closed.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. A lot of cases went just the way he described, and they never got closed. Hell, they barely even got investigated. Because what were a couple of detectives supposed to do after they’d talked to everyone they could track down from the party, and no one remembered anything?

I stepped out into the hall, the sound of Red Alvin’s steps fading, and sudden movement to my left made me glance over. I only caught a glimpse of the person who had darted out of sight, but it was enough for me to recognize the slouchy little outfit he’d put together for the hospital. Had Jordan followed me on purpose? Or had he stumbled upon our conversation by accident? And either way, why had he been eavesdropping?

I thought about going after him, but what would I say? Why were you walking through the hallway of a public hospital? For all I knew, Tip had gotten tired of his fussing and thrown him out again, and then Jordan had been embarrassed to be seen by me.

What I should do, I thought, is go home. Get some more sleep. Do whatever I was supposed to do for Darnell. But I already knew that wasn’t what I was going to do.I headed for the exit. Next stop: Tip’s apartment.