Triangulation, p.2
Triangulation, page 2
part #2 of Borealis Investigations Series
“Most of them?”
“Some of them were just plain angry.”
“Do you blame them?”
Chuck seemed to consider the question seriously. “No. I don’t. But I did feel bad for them. Even after I knew all of it—and trust me, Shep told me all of it—I knew Shep had changed. He isn’t the same person. Most of the boys who came to see him understood that. The ones who didn’t, well, ultimately they were the ones who were trapped by the past. Not Shep.”
“Trapped by him,” North said. “He did that to them, he—”
“Ok,” Shaw said.
“It’s not fucking ok.”
“So you knew,” Shaw said. “You still wanted to work with him.”
“I still do want to work with him. And it’s not just me. We’ve got one of his boys working with us. I say boy, but you know what I mean. Beau. He was an Arkansas boy, and he grew up ok. Pretty great, actually. He’s our youth activities coordinator. Full time at Iris; we’re the only three who are.”
“That was never uncomfortable?”
“Never.”
“But now Shep’s gone?”
“Yeah, he disappeared.”
“Tell us what you mean by that.”
“Nobody knows where he is: not his husband, not any of us at Iris, not any friends or neighbors.”
“His husband?” North said. He felt proud, again, of how steady his voice was. “Somebody was willing to date this motherfucker? To marry him?”
“Somebody was willing to marry you,” Shaw muttered.
North shoved Shaw’s chair hard enough to send him rolling, and Shaw scrabbled at the desk to catch himself. “He’s got a husband?” North asked again.
“Yeah, Mike’s awesome. But he’s freaking out, of course. We all are.”
“When was the last time somebody saw him?” Shaw asked, still trying to drag himself back to the desk.
“Thursday. Five o’clock.”
“That’s very specific.”
“He was leaving Iris. I had the evening shift. Shep was going to run some errands. The next day, Mike called Iris; he was looking for Shep. Sometimes, if there’s a kid in crisis, Shep will stay overnight. He’ll stay as long as it takes, to be honest.”
“So Mike wasn’t worried when he called.”
“No. This was all old hat. He was just calling to check in.”
“But Shep wasn’t there.”
“No. I locked up around eleven that night; that’s when we send the kids home.”
“On a school night?”
“For most of these kids, there’s a strong correlation between time spent out of the house and a decreased risk of self-harm.” Chuck waved a hand vaguely. “There’ve been all sorts of studies about it.”
“And Shep didn’t come back to Iris while you were still working?”
“No. And he didn’t come back after I left either. There’s a security system on the house, and it logs every time someone codes in and out. Personalized codes, by the way. I left, I set the alarm, and I was the first one in the next morning. I didn’t check the records right away—Mike and I thought there was some sort of silly explanation, maybe something we’d forgotten, a trip he’d forgotten to tell us about, a flat tire, something. I guess now I know we were stretching. I didn’t know there was a problem, I didn’t really know, I mean, until Mike showed up at Iris in person on Saturday afternoon. He was pretty upset by then, worried sick, so I freaked out. I finally thought to check the security system.”
“It took almost two days before Shep’s husband was worried?”
Chuck shook her head. “Mike told me they were supposed to meet for dinner at seven on Thursday, but Shep never showed up. Like I said, that first night, Mike probably didn’t even think twice about it. Or maybe he did. I think—” She cut off, her eyes darting to Pari.
“You might as well tell them,” Pari said. “They’re not stupid.”
“A ringing endorsement,” North said.
Nels, for some reason, found this hilarious.
“I think Mike and Shep were having some problems. Shep never said anything, but I heard them arguing on the phone sometimes. They’d been saving money when they could because they wanted to adopt, and I know that was a lot of financial pressure. Mike’s a sous chef at Boeuf et Vin, and he makes ok money, but Shep doesn’t take home hardly anything from Iris.” A tired smile softened her face. “None of us does.”
“Do you think Shep was having an affair?”
Color flooded Chuck’s face, shockingly red against her peroxide hair. “I don’t think so. But I can’t say for sure. I guess I thought that maybe some nights Shep stayed at a friend’s place. I never really thought . . . I mean he didn’t seem like the kind. But I got the feeling that lately, between a few crises at Iris and fights with Mike, Shep might not have spent more than a night or two at home in any given week.”
“Maybe this is the same,” North said. “Maybe he finally called it splits and just hasn’t bothered to let his husband know.”
“But he wouldn’t leave Iris. That’s the thing. I could see him and Mike separating; I hate it, but I could. Abandoning Iris, though? No way. Absolutely no way. Never.”
Shaw cocked his head. He had managed to wiggle his chair back to his desk, and now he had a pad of paper in front of him, sketching rainbows: big, small. And then he switched to triangles. And then he switched to what North thought was supposed to be the pride flag. Judging by his face, North thought he was far off in shawland.
But when Shaw spoke, his voice was clear and precise. “But I bet if you had asked someone in Arkansas, they would have said the same thing. Nobody would have guessed that Pastor Shep would abandon the conversion center. Do you think he could have gone back to something like that? A church? Some sort of religious community?”
“No,” Chuck said, sounding dazed. “No. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do that.”
“What about the police?” North said.
“Mike went to the station. He filed a missing person report. I guess they’re looking for him, but I don’t think they’re looking very hard. I mean, I don’t even know where they could look. They came by Iris for a grand total of fifteen minutes, and I could tell they were itching to get out of there.”
“Did you talk to the LGBTQ task force?” Shaw asked.
“Here we go,” North said.
On his paper, Shaw had switched to drawing a superhero: cape, muscles, tousled dark hair, the letters STLPD on his freakishly developed chest. North was pretty sure that was how Shaw saw Detective Jadon Reck: a superhero. It made North want a smoke.
“It’s a valid question,” was all Shaw said. He was still sketching in Jadon’s abs.
“They were just regular police, I think. Please. It’s been five days. We’re all freaked out. We’re all worried. And we just want him to be ok.”
“What do you think happened?” Shaw asked in the same clear tone, his eyes still fixed on Jadon Reck—Jesus, was that a twelve-pack?
“He’s hurt. He got hit by a car. Or he fell. Or he’s sick and can’t make it to a phone.” Chuck’s combat boots pressed so hard against the floor that a board squeaked. “Or one of those Arkansas boys came after him.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. I just—I don’t know. We’re going there, right? We’re going to Iris? You can talk to Beau and the kids and see if anyone knows anything.”
“Will you give us a minute?” North said.
“I know that look,” Pari said as she rose, tugging on Chuck’s hand. “Don’t you dare say no to her.”
“Just give us a minute,” North said.
When the girls and Nels had left and the door was shut, North said, “No way.”
“What?” Shaw scrunched his nose, bending closer. He’d given Super Jadon hamstrings the size of bowling balls. “Why?”
North ticked off items on his fingers. “He’s fighting with his husband. There’s money trouble. He has a history of dropping everything and disappearing. Do I need to go on? Oh, yeah. And he’s a fucking abomination. If he’s hurt, great. If he’s been hit by a car, let’s send that driver a turkey dinner. He’s gone; let him stay gone.”
“He’s doing good stuff now.”
“Good stuff now doesn’t make up for ruining thousands of lives.”
Nose still scrunched, Shaw said, “What does?”
“What?”
“What would make up for ruining a thousand lives?”
“Christ, Shaw, I don’t know. This isn’t a fucking ethics class. I’m just saying we’re not taking this case.”
“Ok.”
“No.”
“What?”
“No, Shaw.”
Shaw finally glanced up from his hero-worship drawing. “What?”
“You are not taking this case by yourself.”
“I didn’t say—”
“I said we’re not taking the case. You said ok. That means you think you can take it by yourself.”
“I didn’t—”
“Absolutely not.”
“Even if I wanted to—”
“Fine.” North could feel himself struggling for breath, and he pushed up out of his chair so hard that it spun across the room. “Fine. We’ll take the fucking case. But we’re working it together, Shaw. Are you happy?”
“I literally haven’t finished a sentence.”
“You didn’t have to. I can read you like a fucking book. Of course you’re happy. You got exactly what you wanted.” North took a step toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I need some air.” North took another step, and then he spun back, jabbing a finger down on Shaw’s drawings. “And that? Your fucking pride flag? It looks like a shitty pan of lasagne.”
“Good. Because it is a pan of lasagne.”
Shaw’s hazel eyes were so fucking innocent that North wanted to scream. Instead, he marched outside, passing Chuck and Pari without a word, and circled around the side of the house. He wiggled the loose brick free from behind the downspout, and he retrieved the pack of American Spirits. He smoked through half of one viciously, butted it out on the brick, and stowed it back in the pack. Then, after another minute, he went back inside to tell Pari’s girlfriend—and boyfriend—they were going to try to find her favorite asshole.
Chapter 4
IRIS SAT A FEW BLOCKS south of Grand, occupying one of those massive homes that marked the area as a once-prosperous neighborhood that had weathered a difficult 20th century. Shaw had made plenty of trips to the area growing up—friends and friends of friends lived here, especially in Tower Grove South—and he was familiar with how the area had changed. Like many of the homes around it, the Iris building showed efforts at conservation and restoration, with fresh woodwork and paint and roofing. The front door had a simple sign, lettered in rainbow colors, that said: IRIS KIDS STL - ALL ARE WELCOME.
“You can’t really judge it by how it looks right now,” Chuck said, leading them into the building and toward a room at the back. North’s prediction had been uncanny, as was so often the case: the main floor rooms were filled with second-hand sofas and bookshelves and board games. They were also full of trash: empty two-liter bottles of soda; a massive plastic jug of cheese balls that had spilled on its side; a single, battered Vans tied to the doorframe so that Shaw and North and Nels and Chuck had to duck or bat it away to get past—Pari just walked right under it.
“The kids are supposed to help with the cleaning, but usually we have to get on them about that.” They passed into a kitchen where two girls sat at an island countertop, absorbed in their phones. “Hi, Tanisha. Hi, Rory.”
“Hi, Chuck,” Tanisha said.
Rory looked like she’d fallen through the screen of her phone.
“Anybody else here?”
“Clarity said he’s coming over after football,” Tanisha said.
“What about Beau?”
“Oh my God,” Tanisha said, angling her phone toward Rory and giggling uncontrollably. “Oh my God.”
“Let’s look for Beau,” Chuck said, shaking her head and taking them up the back steps. “Bye, girls.”
“Bye,” Tanisha gasped between laughs.
Rory still hadn’t looked up.
“Who’s Clarity?” North asked as they moved to the second floor.
“Another of our kids.”
“And he plays football?”
Chuck shrugged. “You’re a private detective. Not every boy who comes here wants the girls to braid his hair and talk about nail polish. Of course, most of the girls don’t want to do that either, so maybe it’s a good thing.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I’d like to talk about nail polish,” Pari said. “Shaw threw out my bottle of Rose de Seville.”
“Wait a second,” Shaw said.
“I was just asking if he played football,” North said. “That’s all. It’s a valid question; I mean, the stereotypes are there for a reason.”
“Sure,” Chuck said. “But they’re also a self-fulfilling prophecy. Half the boys in here show up sweet and interested in—God, I don’t know, a million things. But a lot of them let themselves get sucked into this one, specific version of a gay identity where they act bitchy and high maintenance because that’s all they ever see on TV, that’s all they see in the clubs, that’s all they see on Instagram. Eventually, everybody wants to fit in somewhere.”
“That bottle was empty. I just want everybody to know that.” Shaw looked around as they reached the landing. “Totally empty.”
“It was my nail polish,” Pari said. “I wasn’t done with it.”
“You weren’t done with an empty bottle?”
Ignoring him, Pari said, “Anyway, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being high maintenance.”
“Don’t say it,” North said.
“Of course you don’t think there’s anything wrong with it,” Shaw began, “you—”
“Excuse me?” Pari said.
“There isn’t anything wrong with it, babe,” Chuck said, kissing Pari’s cheek. “I love that you’re high maintenance. But there’s something wrong with not having more representation, wider representation. There’s something wrong with feeling like you have to act a certain way just because that’s all you ever see—oh, hey Beau.”
They stopped in an office crammed with filing cabinets, a ripped leather sofa, a desk snowed under with paperwork, and a wall of books. The man behind the desk had reading glasses perched on his nose, although he didn’t look much older than Shaw or North, and he was cute in a painfully thin, scholarly sort of way. He was the kind of guy Shaw had often stumbled into at the back of the stacks in Chouteau’s library.
North elbowed Shaw, and when Shaw looked at him, North darted his gaze back to Beau.
Shaw shook his head.
North elbowed him again. Harder. And this time he added arched eyebrows to the meaningful look.
“Stop it,” Shaw hissed. “I’ve got a boyfriend.”
“Yeah, I mean, you’re kind of dating Jadon, but I wouldn’t say he’s your boyfriend.”
“Oh.” Beau suddenly seemed to notice them. “Chuck. Hey, Pari. Umm . . .” His words had a soft accent to them—not quite Southern, but definitely country. He snagged the reading glasses from his nose, folded them with one hand, and studied Shaw and North. “You guys are the detectives, right? You were all over the news. The gay detective agency.”
“A detective agency specializing in LGBTQ work,” North said.
Beau smiled, a little self-conscious, a little amused, and that smile was one-hundred-percent meant for North.
Shaw said, “Technically an agency can’t be gay. Because, you know, it’s an abstract thing.” Everyone was staring at him. “Like a corporation.”
The only sound was Tanisha’s giggling downstairs.
“Right,” Beau said, and Shaw felt his cheeks heat. “Are you guys—what are you guys doing? Did Pari—”
“I hired them,” Chuck said. “To look for Shep.”
“Oh. Wow. Wow. That’s great. Ok, yeah. What can I do to help?” He gave North another of those self-deprecating grins. “Normally Chuck and Shep do all the accounting, but we’re all trying to pitch in. Somebody’s got to keep this place running. You wouldn’t believe how much these kids eat.”
This time, North actually smiled back. “It’s pretty amazing work, what you do here.”
There was something about the way North smiled back that made Shaw start talking. “You know those cheese balls are really bad for kids. They’re basically just air and chemicals, you know, artificial dyes, flavoring.”
This time, Shaw didn’t even have the comfort of Tanisha’s laughter. Everyone was silent until Chuck shifted and a board creaked, and Pari must have taken that as some kind of signal because she said, “Be careful or Shaw will throw out anything he doesn’t like, just like he did with my—”
“Ok,” North said. He was rubbing his temples, and Shaw had the sense that he wanted to bury his face in his hands. “Ok. Chuck, you probably have a million things you need to do. Could you take Pari with you?”
“Oh, no,” Chuck said, “don’t worry, I can stay for this.”
“That was North’s way of saying we should leave,” Pari said. “Usually he’s more direct. He wouldn’t ever use the rest of your Rose de Seville to paint his toenails and then bury the bottle at the bottom of the trash hoping that you’d think you had thrown it away and just forgotten about it.”
“I was doing an experiment,” Shaw said, his cheeks burning now, “about the chance of nail polish being left at the scene of a crime, and I—”
“If you need anything,” Chuck said, glancing doubtfully at Shaw and then at North and last at Beau, “I’ll be picking up downstairs. You can leave the accounts, Beau. I’ll make sure we pay FunTimes before they take us to the collection agency.”
