Page 99 of Savage Lover

“You know . . . I just thought you wanted the straight life.”

Sebastian frowns. “Yeah, well, that was a fantasy, obviously. I’m not Michael Jordan. It was stupid to think that.”

“Seb, you were really good. With some more therapy—”

“FUCK therapy!” he barks. “It doesn’t fix it. Before the accident, I was playing nine hours a day, training constantly. I had to get better and better every game, always pushing. Now I can barely get back to where I used to be. And all the guys I was playing with have had months to keep moving forward. They passed me by. It’s over.”

I’ve never heard him admit that before. We all thought he’d keep trying, at least through graduation.

Before, I wouldn’t have known what to say to him.

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my time with Camille, it’s that you can’t say anything to fix a situation like this. And you don’t have to try. You just have to be there for the other person.

So I say, “I’m really sorry, Seb. It’s a shit situation, and you didn’t deserve that happening to you.”

Seb is quiet for a minute. Then he says, “Thanks, brother.”

“If you want to do this job with me . . . I’d be glad to have you.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely,” I say.

But first, our little late-night visit . . .

We pull into Braidwood about ten o’clock at night. It’s a tiny town, maybe six thousand people. Most of them work at the nuclear plant. So does the man we’ve come to see. Eric Edwards is a security guard, preventing acts of industrial espionage for the princely sum of $12 an hour.

It’s a step down from the days when he was patrolling the city streets for the Chicago PD. He was discharged with no pension after he broke some kid’s arm during a routine shoplifting arrest. Turns out that kid was the fourteen-year-old son of the Fire Commissioner, so that little act of aggression didn’t get swept under the rug like the twenty-two complaints Edwards had received before.

But I’m not here about any kid.

I’m here because Edwards was one of the two officers who found Matthew Schultz outside Rosenblum Park on April 18th, 2005.

Now he lives in a tiny salt-box house on the outskirts of town, between the Dollar General and Hicks Gas and Propane.

I’ve seen photos from his policing days, when he had a thick black mustache and relatively trim physique. I hardly recognize the fat fuck sitting by his fire pit, dressed in a pair of striped pajama pants and a Ghostbusters t-shirt that doesn’t even come close to cover his hairy belly. He’s roasting a hot dog on a stick, the first of many if the amount of buns he’s got laid out on his plate is any indication.

He looks up as our car pulls into his drive. He doesn’t move from the beat-up lawn chair that barely looks capable of supporting his bulk.

Seb and I get out of the car. We approach him from two sides, as Papa always taught us. Flanking like wolves.

“Whadda ya want?” Edwards demands, squinting up at us.

“Just a moment of your time,” I say, quietly. “I’ve got three questions for you. If you answer honestly, we can be on our way.”

Edwards’ piggy little eyes narrow even further as he looks between Seb and me.

“Who are you?” he says. “You work for Flores?”

I don’t know who Flores is, and I don’t care.

“That’s not how the game works,” I remind him. “I ask the questions. You answer.”

“I don’t have to play your fucking game, kid,”

Edwards nods toward his old service pistol, slung over the arm of his chair in its holster. I raise an eyebrow, pretending to be impressed.

“You see that Seb? He’s got a gun.”

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