Page 31 of Stay in Your Lane!

“Exactly.” I knew better than to mention the shoe print, but I could still use the contusion angle. “And Ricky had some bruises that no one seemed to care about, but it seemed like he’d been in a fight recently.”

Leon peered at me for a moment. “You work for the morgue or something? How do you know all this?”

“I moved the body,” I told him. “That’s what I do. I mean, more than that too, all sorts of mortuary services, but I specialize in—” Kyle nudged me. “Ah. Sorry. I don’t work for the morgue, exactly, but I contract with them. And the people on the scene just didn’t seem to give a shit that things weren’t right.”

“Ah.”

A waitress arrived a second later, and Leon ordered another beer. I was tempted, since I wasn’t driving, but Kyle didn’t order anything for himself so I decided not to either.

“Well,” Leon said after the woman walked away, “I can explain the bruises, at least. Ever since Ricky and his baby mama went their separate ways, he’s been getting harassed and beat on by someone on the force at least once a week.” Leon smirked, but there was no pleasure there. “Usually after he had the audacity to call Rosie up and see how his kid’s doing. Two months ago, some cop beat him badly enough he had to go to the ER to get patched up—his eye was swollen as big as an orange. I had to drive him home that night.”

“That’s fucked up,” I said feelingly.

Leon shrugged. “Cops can get away with a lot. Ask your friend here how many times his daddy’s ever been given a speeding ticket.”

I turned to Kyle. He was staring down at his hands and digging his thumbnail into what I thought was an old scar. His glasses reflected the neon lights at the bar when he finally turned to me and said, “He’s not wrong. They give each other a lot of leeway. Families too. It wasn’t until I went into business for myself that I got my first ticket for a parking violation.” He looked down again. “Parking too close to an intersection, it said, but the intersection was twenty feet away.”

“Dude.”

“I know.”

Leon accepted his new bottle from the waitress and hoisted it up in our direction. “Here’s to the boys in blue. Always there, just never when you need them. Anyway, if I were you, I’d look into the guys who’ve been fucking with Ricky for months now. Probably one of them finally decided he’d had enough of Ricky not getting the message and backing away from his kid.”

That was useful information, except… “Her father is the Chief of Police, and that guy is like twenty years overdue for retirement. He couldn’t have roughed up Rick himself, so who?—”

“He didn’t get to be chief without stacking a bunch of pigs in his pocket.” Leon took a long drink. “Look, man. Whoever fucked up Ricky—he’s probably got himself a badge. Why do you think it’s so easy to get the rest of ‘em to fall in line and cover things up? Blue covers blue. It’s always been that way.”

Kyle and I glanced at each other.

“Any idea which cop?” Kyle asked.

Leon shrugged and didn’t answer. It wasn’t a no, but it wasn’t anything useful, either. But what were we going to do? Interrogate the guy? As we’d pointed out, we weren’t cops. We couldn’t compel Leon to do anything for us or tell us anything, and I wouldn’t be comfortable with that anyway. I barely felt comfortable reminding my dad that hedidhave to pay me and give me vacation time and sick leave and all that stuff, because I wasn’t a teenager working“for the experience”any more.

“Thank you,” I said.

Leon looked at me for a moment, but when he spoke it was to Kyle. “Listen, you’re blood to the cops but not in the ‘family,’ so you know how bad this sort of thing can be.” He gestured at me. “You better leash your puppy, man. Otherwise he’s going to get hurt. You’re lucky I’m a nice guy, or this could have gone real bad.”

Um, no? Because I called Kyle and asked him to come with me; that was thedefinitionof getting backup.

But Kyle nodded. Nodded! “I know. We’ll be more careful.” He got to his feet, nodded again, and turned to leave. I followed him, feeling kind of like a puppy that had just been spanked.

“That seemed unnecessarily cryptic,” I said once we were back outside.

“There was nothing cryptic about it,” Kyle replied. “Look, I believe that there are legitimate reasons to have a police force and that a lot—probably most—cops just want to do their jobs. They may get a few perks, may look the other way a time or two,but I do believe most of them are genuinely good people. That being said…” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, ruffling it into spikes. I wanted to pet it back down, but killed the impulse. “There are some people who abuse the system, but because they’re part of the tribe they don’t get called on it the way they should. I’ve met cops like that. I—shit.”

“What shit? Shit what?”

He stared up at the night sky for a second, clasped hands locked behind his neck. “I’m going to have to talk to my family.”

CHAPTER 10

KYLE

About the only thing keeping my mood afloat the next morning was watching Everett scooping food debris out of my fishtank.

I hadn’t slept for shit. I still needed to go back and finish cleaning up the scene I’d abandoned last night. And… my brother was on his way over. None of those things put me in a great mood on their own. Altogether? Fuck me.

Fortunately, though…

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