Page 5

The Hastings Rock sheriff’s office was located inside a concrete building with a flat roof and a bad attempt at a folksy stone veneer. Inside, it wasn’t much better—clean, yes, and well maintained, but it still felt like a public building. It had vinyl tiles and neutral paint, and the lobby was decorated with posters warning you about strangers and suspicious packages and crossing the street. What seemed to be a Muzak rendition of “Thriller” played overhead; it was probably meant to make everyone feel as calm and cozy as if they were stuffed in an elevator. From farther back came voices and then a microwave dinged. Next to me, Indira wrinkled her nose, and Fox stuck out their tongue. Millie and Louis didn’t react—they were too busy holding hands (both hands, as a matter of fact). Then I caught a whiff of something like warmed-up tuna casserole. Nobody asked me, but in my book, microwaving fish in a shared office was a bold move.

After I’d spotted the bloodstained clothes, Salk had arrived, and he’d escorted me back to the Pilot. (Which was a polite way of saying that Deputy Salkanovich, who was Hastings Rock’s former star quarterback, a total sweetheart, and who had once told me if Bobby broke my heart, he’d wrestle him—very confusing, as you might imagine—had dragged my sorry keister away from the evidence.) I hadn’t wasted any time before calling Bobby. But it didn’t matter; I was too late. Bobby told me they’d already found Keme and taken him to the station. So, I called Indira.

And now, here we were. The Last Picks.

Only, not all of us. Because Keme wasn’t here. And neither was Bobby.

Waiting looked different for each of us. Indira sat perfectly still, with a kind of preternatural calm that was actually more frightening than if she’d been screaming. Fox kept busy for a while punching holes in bottle caps and then stringing them on a shoelace, but they quickly settled into a doze. Millie cried. Like, a lot. Loudly. And Louis looked like he wanted her to let go of one of his hands so he could play on his phone.

How did I spend my time waiting? I’m so glad you asked. I did what I’m best at: I worried. I’m a great worrier. I worried about everything. I worried until my head ached, until my stomach was completely acidified, and until my neck throbbed like someone had closed a clamp around it. (If you ask me, I did a great job.)

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Encyclopedia Brown.”

I recognized Tripple’s voice before I saw him. He stood at the reception desk, flipping through a stack of papers. He glanced up at me with a smirk. “Did you save your buddy yet?”

Next to me, Indira radiated anger. Fox snorted in their sleep. Millie burst into a fresh wail of tears. Louis had successfully freed one hand and was reading something on his phone.

“Ignore him,” I muttered.

“Let me guess,” Tripple said. “You and Bobby are going to play boyfriend detectives as soon as he’s off duty.”

“No,” I said. Not because I didn’t like the idea of playing boyfriend detectives with Bobby, but because Bobby had this whole thing about honor and duty and responsibility.

Tripple just laughed, though. “Sure, you are. You were already poking around at the RV park. Let’s hear what you learned, Deputy Dash.” His tone had that patronizing good humor I associated with distant (and usually unpleasant) elderly relatives. “Did you crack the case?”

“I wanted to talk to Keme’s mom. He didn’t do this, and if you—” I almost said were halfway decent at your job , but since my conflict-averse meter was quickly buzzing up into the red, I just sank down in my seat and mumbled, “—knew Keme, you’d know that too.”

“Oh yeah? Did you find some evidence? Got any proof?”

I refused to look at him, but a flush prickled its way up my neck and into my face.

“Don’t you have anything that requires your attention, Deputy Tripple?” Indira asked in a clipped tone.

Tripple only laughed again. He tapped the papers on the desk to line up their edges and headed for the door that led deeper into the station.

As soon as Tripple cleared the door, Sheriff Acosta stepped into the lobby.

I shot out of my chair.

Sheriff Acosta was a sturdily built woman with warm brown skin and dark hair pulled into a ponytail. She was a good sheriff. She was fair. She didn’t throw children in the slammer (never mind that Keme was, legally, an adult). In fact, as far as I knew, she didn’t even call it the slammer. She was a smart, reasonable, competent professional.

Which is why I said, “This is wrongful arrest. This is false imprisonment. You can’t—”

Bobby followed the sheriff into the lobby, and she turned to look at him. He didn’t do anything, but something in his pose suggested a nonverbal I warned you .

“Hello, Dash,” the sheriff said. “Indira, Fox, Millie.” There was a slight pause. “Louis.”

“Hiya, Sheriff,” Louis said. “We’re all so worried. What can we do to help?”

He didn’t sound particularly worried, but it still made Millie erupt in a louder-than-usual sob.

“Is Keme okay?” Indira asked as she got to her feet. Her voice was steady, and her face was smooth, but her hands were tightly clasped, and there was an electric charge of worry in the air around her. “May I see him?”

“He’s all right,” the sheriff said. “You’ll be able to see him in a little while, I think.”

“HE DIDN’T DO IT!” Millie’s shout rang out in the lobby as she got up stiffly from her chair. (For that matter, Millie’s shout probably rang out in the next town over. I thought Louis’s eyes might have rolled up inside his head.) “KEME DIDN’T DO IT! HE WAS WITH ME ALL NIGHT .” (The italics are to help you understand she got even. louder .) “AND I HAVE PROOF!” She fumbled her phone out of her pocket to display a picture of a group of people. Keme might have been in the mix, but before I could spot him, Millie swiped. “WE WERE AT A PARTY, SO HE COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT!”

The sheriff must have been made of sterner stuff than the rest of us mortals because she looked unfazed. She listened to Millie (if listened is the correct word when you feel like someone has a megaphone pressed to your ear) without her expression changing. “That’s good to know, Millie. Thank you for telling me. I’ll need you to make a statement to Deputy Mai, and I’ll need those photos as well.”

Millie looked like she hadn’t expected that response; her own face seemed caught between the lingering desire to carry on the fight, and numb relief.

That was until Louis cleared his throat and said, “Well, Sheriff, he wasn’t with us the whole night.”

“YES, HE—” Millie began.

Louis shushed her and caught her hand to pat it. “Be quiet now, babe. I’ve got this.”

You could have heard a pin drop in that room. (If you still had functioning eardrums.)

I swear to God: Indira growled.

Fox crossed themselves.

“Keme was at the party,” Louis said—oblivious to the fact that he was one gingerbread house away from Indira roasting him in an oven. “But he was only there for an hour or so. He was gone by nine.”

The hurt on Millie’s face was too much to look at; I averted my gaze.

“But he WAS there—” Millie began.

“A couple of my friends and I,” Louis said over her (no mean feat), “we saw him leave. I can give you some names if that would help.”

I waited for the sheriff’s cross-examination of Millie, but all she said was “Thank you, Louis. I’d like you to make a statement too, and I’ll need you to provide Deputy Mai with those names.”

When I was brave enough to risk another look, the pain on Millie’s face looked even deeper. Louis was still patting her hand.

It felt like that awful, frozen moment would go on forever, but then Fox said, “Leaving aside Millie’s terrible attempt at an alibi, you can’t tell me you think Keme had something to do with that man’s death. Keme wouldn’t hurt a soul.” Fox seemed to consider this, head cocked to the side, and then added, “Except Dash.”

“I understand that this is a difficult, stressful time,” the sheriff said, “and emotions are running high. Right now, the best thing you can do for Keme is be ready to show him your love and support when you’re able to see him. I understand if you feel like you need to wait here, but I encourage you to go home and get some rest. I’ll contact you when Keme can have visitors.”

Another of those frozen gulfs opened up.

“But you can’t be serious,” Fox said. “This is ridiculous. We’re talking about Keme.”

“Bobby, go ahead and take those statements,” the sheriff said. “Dash, if you’d come with me.”

She didn’t seem to be asking, so I followed her out of the lobby.

As the sheriff led me down a hallway, she said, “I understand you’re already conducting your own investigation.”

“I don’t know about an investigation,” I said, “but I did talk to Keme’s mom and—I don’t know, her boyfriend.” I filled her in on the conversation, including their vagueness about why Keme had gotten upset and the reason for his argument with JT, and then I told her about the other man, the one from Orange County, who had argued with JT.

“California?” the sheriff asked.

“I have no idea. Foster didn’t seem like the chewiest, um, cookie in the drawer.”

(I was sixty percent certain that was an expression.)

“Why would someone drive all the way up here from California to argue with JT?” the sheriff said, but it wasn’t really a question, so I just offered a shrug.

We passed the squad room, where Salk and Dahlberg were having a conversation in low—and what appeared to be unhappy—voices. Neither of them looked up when I passed. We continued down the hall. There were more of those public safety posters. (One of them was about Sasquatch, but I was pretty sure it was a joke.) And someone had hung the kind of “public spaces” art that you could get at TJ Maxx. (Skyscrapers in black and white! A triptych with a distressed wooden frame!) I’d been back here before, of course—even as a suspect myself. But the last year, and my relationship with Bobby, had wiped away a lot of those bad associations. Now it felt like I was seeing everything anew, and it all felt wrong. Like the building had been turned upside down. Or this was one of those dreams where you were lost in a maze.

“You understand,” the sheriff said, “that your personal connection to the case means that I can’t contract you to help with the investigation.”

“I know,” I said. And maybe it was the disorienting unreality of the moment that made me brave enough to add, “But I’m still going to try to help Keme.”

“I know,” the sheriff said.

She opened a door, and we stepped into a dark room. The only bright spot was a smoky piece of glass that looked in on the next room, where Keme sat at a table. Even though I knew he couldn’t see us, it felt like he was staring right at me, his jaw set with familiar belligerence. A bruise was darkening at the corner of his mouth, and the skin had split above his temple. He also had one heck of a shiner.

“I’ll have to send someone to take statements from them again,” the sheriff said. “From his mom, I mean, and her partner. When Salk tried to talk to them, the boyfriend wouldn’t give him the time of day. He told Salk he didn’t know where the mom was. Didn’t know how to reach her.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “He told September she was asleep when the deputies came around to ask about Keme.” I hesitated. “She took a pill while I was there. I don’t know what it was, but it felt…weird.”

Weird actually didn’t begin to describe it, but I wasn’t ready to get into the details.

The sheriff only nodded. Then she said, “We canvassed the park, as I’m sure you guessed, and the statements we took back up what you told us. No one was seen entering the house after Deputy Tripple and Channelle left.”

“So, that’s the last time anyone saw him alive,” I said. “Do you have a time of death?”

“The district medical examiner puts it somewhere between eight and ten last night. We’re thinking it had to be around ten, since JT made a couple of phone calls around nine-thirty.”

“Who’d he call?” I asked.

“Deputy Tripple for one,” the sheriff said drily. “Apparently he had complaints about how Tripple handled things earlier, but he framed it as wanting to ‘add something to the incident report.’ Jaklin put him through to Tripple’s phone, and he read Tripple the riot act. After that, JT called over to the Bay Bridge Suites. Apparently he knew, or he guessed, that’s where Channelle would be staying. He kept asking the front desk to connect him to different rooms, hoping he’d get lucky. After a while, May—the woman working the desk—told him to stop bothering people and hung up on him.”

Then something I hadn’t really thought about occurred to me. “He lived in the park office?”

“Yeah, it’s got living quarters attached to the back.”

“Where was he found?”

“In the garage.”

“And he was killed with a blunt object.”

The sheriff nodded. “The garage is half storage unit and half tool shed, so there were plenty of things lying around. It’s possible the killer planned this and came prepared, but it feels spontaneous to me—an argument escalated, and someone grabbed whatever was at hand and hit him with it.”

On the other side of the smoky glass, Keme’s face was stone.

“He didn’t do this,” I said quietly.

“Dash, I’ve got a shirt, shorts, and slides covered in blood. We already typed it, and it matches JT. The DNA results will come back as a match too, I’m sure. And I know you want to be a loyal friend, so I’m not going to ask you to confirm this, but I know those clothes belong to Keme.”

“Did Bobby—” I regretted the question as soon as I began to ask, and I mumbled, “Never mind.”

The silence drew out between us until the sheriff said, “No, Dash. It wasn’t Bobby.”

After a deep breath, I said as firmly as I could, “Keme didn’t do this.”

Sheriff Acosta nodded, but she said, “You understand I can’t take your word for it, though.”

“I know. But I want you to know he didn’t do it. What about the wife? What about the other man who got into a fight with JT yesterday? Nobody actually saw the killer go into the house, right?” The sheriff didn’t answer, so I continued, “They had to have entered from the back. They walked through the trees and got inside the office that way. I mean, the front of the office is practically a fishbowl—someone would have seen the killer.” She still hadn’t said anything, so I said, “You knew that. That’s why you had Dahlberg searching the tree line.”

“And that’s where she found the only physical evidence in this investigation,” the sheriff said. “Do you see my problem?”

I wanted to say again, Keme didn’t do this . But I didn’t.

“Right now,” Acosta said, “I need you to convince Keme to help himself.” At my glance, she continued, “He won’t talk, Dash. To anyone. He just stares us down.”

“He’ll talk to Bobby.”

“He won’t, actually. Bobby was in there for almost an hour, and Keme didn’t so much as look at him. I thought maybe his mom…”

The trailed-off sentence seemed like an invitation, so I shook my head. “I don’t know how much help she’d be. I can’t figure out their relationship.”

“Turns out, it’s a moot point; when I finally got her on the phone, she said she wouldn’t be coming down to the station because, quote, ‘Keme’s an adult now, and we raised him to be independent.’” The sheriff snorted. “‘We raised him to be independent’ is pretty big talk for a woman who lives off a trust her dad left her, with a sponge of a boyfriend who spends half his time catting around.”

I’d never heard the sheriff editorialize like that.

Clearing her throat, she gave an embarrassed shake of her head that was almost lost in the dim light. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Uh, no, that was amazing.”

For some reason, she put her hands on her hips—like I was the problem. “I’d like you to see if you could get Keme to tell us where he was last night. Even if he thinks it won’t help because he was on his own, there’s a chance we could verify the alibi. If we can verify it, Keme’s in the clear, bloody clothes or no bloody clothes.”

“If he won’t talk to Bobby, he won’t talk to me, but I guess I can try.” I took a step toward the door, and then I stopped. “Sheriff, do you think Keme’s bad? I mean, do you honestly believe he’s capable of something like this?”

She was nothing more than a silhouette, hands on her hips, like a darker spot in all the darkness. Finally, she cleared her throat again. “He’s had a rough life, Dash. He has a temper, and a history of fights, and—and I don’t know how to put this. I know you and your friends care about him. But you’ve got to understand, to a lot of the town, Keme is…strange. He doesn’t talk to most people. He’s closed-off. And frankly, he’s downright rude sometimes. He doesn’t act like a normal kid, so people don’t know what to make of him. And people are afraid of things they don’t understand.”

I waited for more. And then I said, “I didn’t think you did.”

She didn’t say anything, but as I swung open the door, she said in a low, hard voice, “It doesn’t matter what I think.”