17

Piper went to the office but found she couldn’t work because they were doing construction today on the unfinished portion of the basement. Hammers and drills and the occasional sound of something breaking. She took it for as long as she could but eventually left and went to a café down the street. The type of place only open for breakfast and lunch that always smelled like grease.

She sat at the counter and watched the cook, the owner who ran the place with his wife, frying up potatoes and eggs on a massive grill. Piper ordered coffee and pancakes and set her laptop down in front of her. She glanced behind her to make sure no one would be able to see over her shoulder. She was on a flight once and left some photos out that she had been looking at—a young boy that had been severely physically abused by his stepfather—and the teenage girl in the seat behind her had seen them, and the mother asked Piper to put the pictures away.

She pulled up the police drawing of the man’s calf that the German tourists had described. None of them spoke English, and there wasn’t an interpreter immediately available, so Lazarus had used Google Translate and noted that some of the minor details might be skewed because of the language issue.

It looked like a round face with teeth and blood and a chef’s hat.

Piper ran it through both Google and an AI images program, trying to discover if it could possibly mean something else. She found a few references to some earlier cartoons, but that was about it. She then turned to reading articles about cannibalism fetishes.

One article by a psychiatrist that dealt with the fetish said that many of his patients pointed to a single memory of when the fetish began showing itself: Porky Pig. Apparently there was a scene in an old Looney Tunes cartoon where Porky got roasted over a spit with an apple in his mouth. The psychiatrist stated that many of his patients with vorephilia cited that episode as an awakening for them.

A male voice said, “Never really liked Porky Pig.”

Piper looked over her shoulder and saw a man with messy blond hair. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt, the only decoration a silver watch on his wrist.

“I always thought he was kinda dense,” he said.

“Who did you like?”

“Pepé Le Pew was interesting.”

“He was basically a rapist.”

He chuckled. “Interesting doesn’t mean good.”

Piper watched him leave, mulling over the brief, unsolicited interaction. She found it mildly intrusive, but his offhanded comment lent an unexpected lightness to a topic she didn’t want to be reading about.

She turned back to the screen and the image of Porky Pig and decided she didn’t want to read about that anymore. She checked the time; her grandmother would be getting hungry, and though she hated Piper fussing over her, Piper knew she had a hard time cooking anymore with her arthritis and she had a sensitive stomach that required certain foods. Piper left some cash on the counter and went home.

Lake was sitting outside in a lawn chair, letting the sunlight warm her bare legs, as Piper came inside to the kitchen.

“What are you doing, sweetie?” she called from outside.

“I thought we’d eat together. Be out in a minute.”

She made two servings of rice and plain chicken breast and took them out to the patio. Her grandmother sat up in her seat as Piper set the plates and silverware down.

“This looks delicious,” she said.

“Just rice and chicken, but it’ll hit the spot.”

They talked about trivial things, what they’d done during the day, things they’d seen, rumors they’d heard.

“You dating anyone?” Lake said as subtly as possible.

“No.”

“No one at work? What about Tom?”

“My boss?”

“What’s wrong with that? You spend all day at the office. Where else are you supposed to meet somebody?”

“No, I’m not dating at work.”

Her grandmother lightly squeezed her hand. “I don’t want you to be lonely, Piper. That’s why I’m always so curious.”

“I’m not lonely, Grandma. I have you.”

Her grandmother was from a generation where compliments embarrassed them, and she stopped asking about it and unfolded her napkin across her lap.

“What are you working on at the office?”

She cleared her throat. “Same old stuff.”

“Oh, that’s good. To have something familiar.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely something,” she said with a forced smile.

They finished and Piper cleaned up so her grandmother could take a shower.

Piper decided the fatigue was straining her ability to think, and she took a nap on the couch in the living room. It felt like only a couple hours, but the sun had gone down when she awoke, and she had that slight panic from waking up at a time of day she didn’t expect.

She went down the hall and saw her grandmother lying on the bed. It was a moment of unguardedness, and she looked frail. Old and tired. Piper wondered how much of what she saw during the day was a mask her grandmother wore for her benefit.

“Grandma, I’m going to work at the office for a bit,” she said from the hallway.

Lake sat up, hiding the old woman that had been lying on the bed in pain, and Piper heard a small groan. She sat rigid and said, “When will you be home?”

“I don’t know. Not long.”

“Okay, dear. I’ll see you when you get home.”

Piper watched from the hallway awhile longer as her grandmother pushed off the bed and went into the bathroom.

It was dark when she went outside to her car. The air was warm, and she could hear traffic from the nearby freeway that cut across the landscape like a blanket of veins and arteries.

She got into her car and drove the streets. It was sparse, but there were cars. Enough that she could zone out, let her mind drift, and she would see nothing but an ocean of red taillights in front of her.

The station was quiet, with just a few people moving around or chatting softly in the hallways. She took the elevator to the Dungeon. The doors opened on the small lobby.

The office lights were switched off, and she reached to turn them on when Lazarus said, “Leave them off, please.”

Light from the lobby spilled into the room, casting some illumination, but the area where Lazarus’s desk sat remained veiled in shadow. In front of him, a tumbler and an open bottle of whiskey rested. “I thought only two beers?” Piper said as she set her satchel down on her desk.

“Whiskey’s more like candy. Don’t count.” He poured a little more into the glass, then said, “Have a drink.”

“I’m not a big drinker.”

“Everybody’s a big drinker.”

Piper sat across from him as Lazarus handed her a tumbler with a few fingers of whiskey. She took a small sip: it tasted like fiery oak wood. She slid the glass back and cleared her throat.

“You ever heard of Sawney Bean?” he said, his voice slightly slurred.

“I don’t think so.”

“Him and his kin lived in a cave in Scotland. For decades, families takin’ the roads would disappear, and they could never figure it out. Then they found their cave one day ’cause someone got away. Inside were strips of dried flesh hanging from the ceiling and dishes made of bones. But that ain’t the interesting part. What’s interesting is the young kids in the cave. They killed for forty years before they got caught, so an entire generation had grown up not knowing cannibalism was considered wrong. It was nothing to them. They didn’t understand why people would have a problem with it.”

Piper didn’t interrupt him or respond. It didn’t much seem like he was really talking to her anyway.

New photos were up on the board, some of them of Sophie. Photos of her arms and legs on the night of the attack.

Her flesh bore the brutal aftermath of her escape: streaked with blood, laced with cuts ranging from shallow scratches to deep gashes.

“Any luck finding Emily’s dealer?” she asked.

He took a sip of his whiskey. “She had a valid prescription for chronic back pain. No dealer. You get anywhere with the teachers?”

“Not really. They’ll have support for her throughout the year because if they don’t, I’ll drag them to court, but after I’m no longer assigned, that’ll stop, and she’ll be on her own way before she should be.”

“You sound like you know what that’s like.”

“I would figure we all do.”

He took a long drink of whiskey.

“Why you really here, Danes?”

“You first.”

“What’d you say I was doing before? Deflecting?”

Piper leaned back in the chair, slinging one elbow over the back as she crossed her legs. It was the most comfortable she had felt down here, and she wondered if it was because the lights were off.

“When my mother lost custody of me, my guardian was a woman named Ms. White. The first day, I couldn’t stop crying. She stayed with me. When I woke up, not sure where I was, she was there telling me it was going to be okay. It’s because of her my grandmother even found out I existed. My mother had never told her she had a child. I wouldn’t have anyone if it wasn’t for Ms. White. Next to my grandmother, she was the most important person in my life.”

“That’s a great reason for being a guardian, not a great reason why you’re in this basement with me.”

Piper paused briefly, then extended her hand for the tumbler and took a small sip before placing it back. “People say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but I never understood that until I started working with abused children. Kids who’ve endured real trauma get this distant stare because their minds shut down to cope. Sophie has it, but she’s fighting so hard to not let it consume her. I can relate to that, I guess.”

Lazarus stayed silent as he refilled the tumbler and took another drink.

“Now you,” she said. “Why did you leave Homicide?”

He looked down and remained silent for what felt like a while, but his expression showed he had something to say. Piper waited without speaking.

He retrieved his vape pen from a drawer and brought it to his lips, taking a deep drag. The smoke looked gray in the dim light. “When I caught Ava Mitchell, I thought it’s a simple B and E, breaking and entering, that went bad. Then I see the tent ... I’d never seen anything like it. Not even a sexual sadist tearing up prostitutes in a dingy motel room came close. Takes a helluva lot to rattle me.”

He drew deeply from his vape pen, the vapor briefly clouding his expression.

“She fought. Her hands were covered in defensive wounds. She tried to rip open the tent with her fingers and teeth ... she wanted so badly to live.”

He paused.

“I couldn’t get it outta my head. Couldn’t stop thinking or talking about it ... I stopped sleeping. When you can’t sleep, you know it’s bad.”

He took the vape pen out of his mouth, as though disgusted, and put it away.

“I trudged along another six months in Homicide and then took some time off. When I came back, I asked for a transfer. First opening was Juvenile Crimes.”

“Did your lieutenant know how bad you suck with kids?”

Lazarus grinned. “No. He didn’t ask too much. They hated my guts in Homicide anyway. They got the reputation as the elite of the elite, so when someone tells ’em they ain’t so elite, bruises the ego.”

“You talking about them or you?”

“I don’t know. I’m drunk.”

Piper grinned and took another sip of whiskey. “So that’s a great story of why you’re in Juvenile Crimes. Not why you’re down in this basement with me.”

Lazarus leaned back, and she could see his profile in shadow.

“I’m puttering along in JC and I get a call from Judge Dawson. She tells me about this grant, that they’re trying something experimental in juvenile justice and she thinks I would be perfect for it. I said no.”

“How’d she convince you?”

“She sent me those crime scene photos from the Graces’. She knew they were similar to what happened at the Mitchell cabin and that I couldn’t say no to that.”

The elevators dinged. Henry got off and poked his head through the open door and said, “Sorry to interrupt. Just grabbing some toilet bowl cleaner. We got a mess up there.”

Lazarus said, “Have a drink with us, Henry.”

“Nah. You cops are too doom and gloom for me.”