The ridiculousness of that thought eased the tightness in my chest.I almost tried for a laugh, but I didn’t.What was going on with me?What was I thinking?What did I think Darnell had done?
I settled back in the seat.I eased my aching hands off the wheel and flexed my fingers.Outside, crop fields slipped past me.The photo-flicker of green plants and dark lines of earth was rhythmic and soothing, not that I knew what any of it was.
Darnell had gone out.He’d fucked around.He’d booked a hotel and asked them to hold it for him even if he showed up late, because he hadn’t known how late his hookup was going to last, and he wasn’t sure if the hotel would give his room away.That happened sometimes if you didn’t call.
The relief was physical.Knots I hadn’t even been aware of loosened.My shoulders relaxed.My knuckles still throbbed from how tightly I’d been gripping the wheel, but even that was fading.
I mean, this was Darnell we were talking about.
Right?
When I spotted a wide stretch of shoulder, I slowed and pulled over.I took deep breaths and lay back, staring up at the torn headliner.That crushing sensation, like I couldn’t get any air, was gone, and now all of it seemed stupid—that zombie walk back from Harvey’s, checking Darnell’s computer, running out of the house.After therapy, I’d talk to him.I’d ask him what was going on.I didn’t care if he was out there sticking it to somebody.I just needed him to tell me where he was.
Or—
Or maybe I wouldn’t.
I mean, he didn’t ask me, did he?
It wasn’t any of my business.I could warn him that the detectives would look into his alibi.But maybe he’d told them more than he’d told me.He could have given them a name, an address, specific times.And he hadn’t told me because those were the rules.
I didn’t need to say anything to him.At all.
What I needed to do—instead of losing my shit and going on a seriously epic episode of spiraling—was figure out who the fuckwasbehind all of this.
So, what did I know?I shunted my realizations—and questions—about Darnell to the side and focused on the case.I knew a little more than when I’d started the day.Not much, but a little.I knew someone had killed Tip with a knife, and I had an idea about what that meant.I knew Rory and Jordan had shown up at my house for some reason.I wanted to know why.
When you had a dynamic duo like those two, one of them was always the weak link.In this case, it was obviously Jordan, so I tried him first.His phone rang until it went to voicemail.I left a short message, not that I expected a Gen Z TikTok gay to listen to it, and then I texted him the same information:We need to talk.Call me.
For shits and giggles, I tried Rory next.His phone didn’t ring; it went straight to voicemail.If a Gen Z TikTok gay wasn’t going to listen to my message, a Gen Z fuckboy was even less likely to, but I repeated the message and then texted him as well.
I could drive back to their place and see if they were home.But there was someone else I wanted to talk to.Someone, as far as I could tell, who wasn’t even on Brother Gary and Red Alvin’s radar: Sunny.
I went through my map history until I found the address for his lake house, and merged back onto the highway.
21
Sunny—last name unknown—was having a party.A quarter mile from his house, the line of cars began.They were parked on the shoulder of the road, in the shade of the old trees: Lexuses, Audis, Mercedes, BMWs.I slowed, inspecting the cars as I passed them.Some of them looked familiar, but I couldn’t put a name to any of the vehicles.It made sense, though.If Sunny was having a party, at least some of the guests would be local.
The question, though, was what kind of party it would be.It was early afternoon.Hard to imagine the kind of party Tip had expected—a full-blown orgy, with sex swings and stockades and Sunny leading somebody around on a dog collar—with the sun still shining.Hell, it was even hard to imagine the kind of party I’d been at, not that I remembered much of it.Did rich people do that kind of stuff in the middle of the day?Maybe it left their evenings free for charity work.
When I got to Sunny’s drive, I stopped and studied the house.It looked different by daylight.More expensive.Calling it a lake house didn’t really do it justice.It was huge, and every detail reinforced the point that somebody rich lived there: the “architecturally interesting” roof, the enormous windows, the rustic wood trim, even the big, fieldstone boner of a chimney.
The drive was a circle, and a car was parked in front of the house.As I watched, a woman got out, handed the keys to a teenager dressed in what looked like a lot of black polyester, and went inside.The teenager, who had to be cooking inside that uniform, jumped in the car and followed the circle drive away from the house.A moment later, I saw him pull out onto the road ahead of me.He turned away from me, following a line of even more cars parked on the shoulder, and parked.Then he jogged back to the house.I was guessing there was some serious chafage going on.
I rolled past the house and followed the line of parked cars.When I got to the end of it, I stopped.I sat there for a moment, trying to think of how to play this.I wasn’t exactly dressed for the occasion.Shorts.Tee.No underwear, not even a jock.I was going to get my homo license revoked.My mom would have been disappointed; she’d been big on clean underwear, mostly because she was big on the idea that we could all die at any time.The brake pedal was rough under my bare foot.I hadn’t driven without shoes since I was sixteen and my dad caught me and tore my hide off in front of Roman Wallace, who I was trying to impress.Roman hadn’t been impressed.And he hadn’t been gay either, which hadn’t stopped him from letting me suck him off every week the summer before senior year.
First things first: clothes.
I turned the car off and opened the trunk.The thing about being a detective—hell, being a police officer—is that you learn pretty quickly to carry a change of clothes.I grabbed the duffel bag I kept there, dropped trou, shucked my shirt, and stood there, as Pastor Ribbons would have called it, with my glory on display for God and man.Or, as my dad would have said, ass in the wind and trawling for queers.He liked that one a lot.He had a joke, I couldn’t remember how it went, about how a guy’s dick in the water waslike a worm on a hook.
A clean pair of chinos.A button-up.I even had a tie, although I left that in the bag.Socks.Shoes.The wingtips were a little scuffed, which was why they’d been benched in the first place.I cuffed the sleeves at the elbow, fixed my hair in the mirror, and decided no underwear had been a good choice.Unless I died in the next few hours.
I made my way back to the house.In the distance, music played, and the wingtips clip-clopped along the pavement.I studied the woods as I walked.Old growth.Probably oak.Not that I knew an oak from—what was another kind of tree?I mean, I knew it wasn’t a pine.Brush grew thick along the edges, but from what I could see, once you got under the trees, it thinned considerably.This was where Tip had said it had happened.He’d been out walking near the woods, in the dark, and a man had stepped out and hurt him.Could it have happened that way?A breeze rolled through the trees, carrying a hint of the lake and breaking the worst of the heat.Branches rippled in the wind, sending the shadows rippling.
When I got to the front door, the teenager was on his phone, hitting a vape.He looked like he was slowly melting inside the black polyester uniform.The sound of my steps made him glance up, and then he looked past me for a car.
Before he could speak, I said, “Gray Dulac, Wahredua PD.”
