2

Jadon

At shift change, the station was a madhouse—even in the relative isolation of the detectives’ bureau. Phones rang. Officers shouted greetings or goodbyes as they passed each other in the hall, and as often, yelled updates in passing. “We had a pisser,” one of them called out, with what sounded like glee. Schroeder, Jadon thought. That sounded like Schroeder. Another man groaned, and Schroeder added, “Have fun.” A woman handcuffed to the desk in the corner was singing “Ave Maria,” but, as she had explained to Vaughn, “the way a dinosaur would sing it.” And she wasn’t wrong, Jadon thought; it did kind of sound like how a dinosaur would sing it.

All sorts of well-meaning people in Jadon’s life, he knew, would have pointed to this particular observation as further proof that he worked too much.

It was worse, of course, near Halloween. The crazies (to use a term that was strictly not department approved) came out en masse this week, and bad behavior tended to escalate in general. Even though the holiday itself wasn’t until Saturday, the weekend before, Jadon had seen two slutty Taylor Swifts being dragged toward the holding cells, and a Tiger King had gotten into a fight with a Joker in the lobby. That kind of thing made it hard to get into the spirit of the season, although somebody had strung paper jack-o”-lanterns around the doorframe, and spider webs made from black construction paper had been taped to the front of the detectives’ desks.

Jadon scrubbed backwards on the video he was watching. When he reached the beginning, he let it play again. The footage was from an emergency call box on the campus of Chouteau College. As a result, it wasn’t exactly the best quality—colors washed out by the low light, the resolution grainy. On screen, a young man in nothing but a silver jock and fairy wings followed one of the campus’s many brick footpaths. Another night, this would have been occasion for nothing more than a chat about public indecency and the fact that you couldn’t let your ass hang in the wind, even if you were going to a Halloween party.

The young man—Dalary Lang, a freshman who hadn’t declared a major but had been thinking about theater studies, who had sobbed uncontrollably when Jadon had taken his statement in a hospital cubicle, and who had texted Jadon the day before to tell him that he was withdrawing from college and going back to Perryville (population 8,500, if you added in the cows) to be with his parents—passed the call box without even looking at it. He’d almost reached the edge of the screen when another figure appeared. This one was a man, but the only reason Jadon knew that was because of the victim’s statement. On camera, he was dressed all in black, a hood up to conceal his face. The clothes were baggy, making it difficult to determine his build, but Jadon pegged him at around the same height as Lang, the victim. Then he corrected himself: the most recent victim. Because, if Jadon was right, this suspect was responsible for a string of assaults on campus.

On screen, Jadon watched as the man followed the path, staying a few dozen yards behind Lang. He looked for anything that might give the man away—a hint of jewelry, a glimpse of a tattoo. But, as with the previous ten times Jadon had watched the video, he saw nothing. The closest he came to something identifying was the man’s gait. Shoulders back, posture straight, even stride. The suspect wasn’t afraid; far from it. It told Jadon a couple of things. This wasn’t the suspect’s first time; there was none of the nervousness or uncertainty that might have suggested inexperience. It was also likely that the suspect was, in the real world, someone who was confident, successful, perhaps in a position of power. Likely was the key word, though—some men turned to assault to live out the power fantasies that went unfulfilled in their daily lives.

A hand appeared above Jadon’s screen and moved down, as though about to close the laptop.

With an annoyed noise, Jadon waved the hand away and, to be safe, pulled the laptop out of reach.

“Give it a rest.”

Cerise Cao was thin, with old acne scars and a too-tight ponytail. She was also a grade-A chef, kept a box of Trivial Pursuit questions from the ’80s in her desk drawer, and had a disgustingly wholesome relationship with her boyfriend, Dhanvin. Which meant Jadon was, as her partner, regularly supplied with “leftovers” that, he was told, he’d be doing her a favor if he’d eat them, and he was bombarded with questions like How many feet are there in a fathom? and How long is “Camptown Racetrack”? and What’s the only house in England that the Queen may not enter? The House of Commons, it turned out. It meant Jadon faced an unending series of kind, generous, sincere invitations (many of them proffered by Dhan), and he knew he was a dick for turning them down.

She had been his first real partner since then. He didn’t have a good word for then. It was then. Before. A flash of bad memories: Barr laughing, tobacco flakes caught in his teeth while winter sunlight lay on his neck like a hand; the hospital room, and the smell of his unwashed body and a powerful antiseptic; the night of cuts and burns and questions, the hours strung out like those paper jack-o”-lanterns, full of glowing eyes until finally the gunshot, darkness. But all of that was too much to put into words. He could say, My partner betrayed me. He could say, I was a fucking idiot. At night, in the last few minutes before exhaustion blanked everything out, he could admit, It was my fault. But he had learned to keep all of that in the box and call it then.

“I’m serious,” Cerise said. “How many times have you watched that thing?”

“A couple.”

“A couple dozen, maybe.”

Leaning back in his seat, Jadon shrugged. “It’s all we’ve got.”

And that was true. The assault had happened a hundred feet past the call box, in an alcove formed by two of the old limestone buildings. Minimal struggle because Lang was barely more than a kid, because he’d been surprised, but mostly because he’d been hurt and disoriented by a blow to the head. No DNA had been collected. No one had heard Lang’s screams, if he had screamed. That was one of the things that had made Lang sob—he didn’t remember if he had screamed, and if he had, he hadn’t been loud enough. Jadon had tried to tell him about the faculty party. About the music so loud it had resulted in a noise complaint. But Dalary Lang, like many victims, had blamed himself.

After, Lang dragged himself to the call box—the same one where they’d gotten the security camera footage, the same one he had passed not fifteen minutes before. But the suspect hadn’t appeared on camera again—not on any of the cameras, not anywhere on campus, not anywhere in the Central West End, which was tony enough that just about everywhere had cameras. And that told Jadon something about the suspect too, just not enough to find him.

“And there’s nothing there,” Cerise said. Jadon opened his mouth, but she spoke over him. “You need to call it a night. You’ve watched it. I’ve watched it. Vaughn and Duke and Rios have watched it. If there were something there, one of us would have seen it.”

Jadon nodded. “I know. You’re right.”

“Great. So, turn off your computer, and grab your jacket, and let’s go.” She looped a scarf around her neck—more seasonal affectation than necessity; it wasn’t that cold outside—and directed a flat look at him. She didn’t say now, but he heard it anyway.

“I’m going to finish up some paperwork.”

“Jadon.”

“Twenty minutes. Half an hour, tops.”

Struggle showed in her face. She must have lost whatever battle she was fighting, though, because the words came spilling out. “And then?”

“What?”

“What are you going to do when you finish?” Her tone turned scornful when she added, “In twenty or thirty minutes.”

Jadon rocked back in the chair. Inside the detectives’ bureau, the temperature simmered from too many bodies and an old boiler. They’d cracked a window (that was, per regulation, supposed to be sealed shut), and drafts of cold air limped into the building, an occasional whisper on the back of Jadon’s neck. We should get a fan, he thought. A fan would help.

“Are you going to hit the gym,” Cerise asked, “for the second time today? Or do you have a Brazilian jiujitsu class? Let me guess: you’re going to go home and stare at a blank wall for six hours and shower and get here before anybody else.”

He had a headache, he realized, and he wondered how long that had been going on. A while, he thought. It was one of those things, like the full-body aches, that became background noise eventually. His eyes felt gummy, and he rubbed one now. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look Cerise in the face.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No.”

“That was super shitty.”

“No, I get it.”

Cerise sighed. She looked him over, and then she said, “Jay, people are starting to talk.” And then she must have heard it and she said, like she was editing, “People are worried.”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you? Because it’s okay if you’re not.”

He cracked a smile. “I’m fine, Cao. Scout’s honor.”

“When was the last time you went out with friends? Or slowed down long enough for a real meal? Or—”

He made a warning noise.

As usual, Cerise ignored it. “—went on a date?”

“I appreciate this. I do. But I’m good. And you can tell all these other people who are worried about me that I’m good. Okay?”

The sound of traffic filtered in through the open window.

“Come to Halloween.”

“Oh God.”

“Dhan is begging you. Well, technically, he’s begging me.”

“That’s nice—”

“And you’re not the one who has to come up with excuses all the time. He’s starting to think you don’t like him.”

Jadon gave her a level look. “That’s a low blow.”

But, as usual, Cerise was unfazed. “You’re hurting his feelings.”

“Cheap. That’s real cheap.”

“So, I’ll see you there?”

Helpless, Jadon stared at her.

“Don’t come as a cop,” she told him. “It’s tacky.”

“I don’t have time to come up with a costume.”

“You’re spending three days at a glorified sensitivity training. You’re going to be bored out of your mind. Be a real person for once and sit there and pretend to listen while you shop online.”

He opened his mouth to object to the real person comment, and then the rest of the words hit him. He glanced at the calendar. He forgot what he’d been about to say.

Three days.

Three goddamn days at a symposium he’d been ordered to attend. For LGBTQ+ law enforcement officers. Even though he’d objected. And explained how much work he had to do. And, in the end, pleaded.

“You forgot?” Cerise said.

“I can’t spend three days at a training. Shit, Cerise, I’ve got—” He gestured at the stacks of folders. “How the hell am I supposed to take three days off from this?”

“Believe it or not, Jay, people find a way.”

“We’re ten days behind on the Lang kid, and we still don’t have anything. The trail is going to be ice after three more days; what am I going to turn up then?”

“What are you going to turn up if you don’t? We worked that case the way we were supposed to. We didn’t get any hits. It’s not magic, you know. Pounding our heads against a wall isn’t going to change anything.” She softened her voice. “I’m sorry for that boy. You know I am. But Jay, you’ve got to think about yourself for change.”

“He withdrew from school. He went back to fucking Perryville!”

The woman dinosaur-singing “Ave Maria” broke off to stare at them.

Jadon mumbled, “Sorry—”

But Cerise bent over her desk and spoke in a low voice. “Jadon, listen to me. You need to get your head on straight. And you need to do it fast. Two days ago, the captain hauled me into her office and asked me if you were having personal problems. I said no, and the captain started pressing. Was everything okay with Detective Reck? Had I noticed anything unusual? The whole thing like we were one big happy family, like she was so worried about you. When I kept saying you were fine, the questions got more specific. Were you sleeping at the station? Were you sleeping in your car? How was your mental health?”

For a moment, the words didn’t make any sense. “What are you—” The headache throbbed, and it was like a noise, swallowing up everything else. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now. Ever since Barr, you’ve been a black mark for the department. I’m sorry. That’s bullshit, and it’s not fair to you, and it’s not how it should be. But it’s the truth. I’m telling you, the questions the captain was asking—and the fact that she was the one asking them, and not trying too hard to hide what she was doing—that’s a bad sign. They’re done waiting for you to self-destruct, Jay. They want you out, and if that means making a case that you’re not fit for duty, that’s what they’re going to do.” She swallowed and stood straight again. “And that’s why you’re going to go to this stupid symposium, and you’re going to use the next few days to pull your life together, and you’re going to make sure these assholes don’t have a single thing they can use against you. Understand?”

Jadon nodded, but it felt like someone else was doing it. The draft was cold on his neck.

“Please, Jay,” Cerise said. And then, with an effort at good cheer, she added, “See you on Halloween.”