Page 60 of Stay in Your Lane!

“Dude,” he said in a harsh whisper, “shit just got worse.”

I sat straighter, fully aware that my brother was watching me and had no doubt read the panic in my body language. “What happened?”

“The body I was called to collect? They’re trying to call it a suicide. But it’s not. It’s definitely not.”

“Shit,” I breathed.

“Shit is right. Because it’s Leon Taylor.”

CHAPTER 17

EVERETT

I’d never had to pick up the body of a person I knew before. Not that IknewLeon—we’d only met face-to-face the one time—but still…that made it worse.

I was good at compartmentalizing. Maybe it was because my brain was always going off on a tangent, but just like I had a hundred tabs open in my phone, it felt like I had a hundred different paths in my mind that I could run down any time. When one thing bothered me or got boring, I diverted into another. It made following through on stuff like paperwork, whichneverhad my attention,reallyhard sometimes, but it also made it easy for me to dissociate from the reality of a body. Blood, viscera, brain matter, blank expressions on broken faces—these were all things I could mentally shy away from even while I was bagging the body up and getting it to the morgue.

Not this time. This time I couldn’t take my eyes away from Leon’s face, and not just because I didn’t want to look at the mess that was his chest. I’d spoken to that face, heard words come out of that slack mouth. I’d stared into those cloudy eyes and seen an intelligent person staring back at me, and now—it was almost like seeing a stranger, but he wasn’t. Even though Ineeded to think he was, because no one could know that we’d met.

The M.E. had already left, but there was some kerfuffle with the officer in charge of the scene, so I wasn’t allowed to take the body quite yet. I’d been standing here on the edge of the railroad tracks, a stone’s throw from the club where Kyle and I had met Leon, for the past hour. You’d think that would be enough time for me to calm down, but it wasn’t. Instead, the panic in my chest was getting worse.

It had taken a lot of convincing to get Kyle to stay home. I already knew they weren’t using his company for the cleanup job, and for once I was grateful I wouldn’t see him at a scene. He needed to keep his distance right now, and his brother backed me up on that. I’d promised him I’d come by as soon as I could, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that might be the worst possible thing I could do.

I’d called Leon. My number was on his phone. Had the police confiscated it? Would they even bother to do an investigation, given that the death had been ruled a suicide?

Howhad they ruled it a suicide? How could it possibly be a suicide? Leon hadn’t seemed anything like suicidal when we’d spoken before. Nervous, sure, duly cautious, but not suicidal. And he’d supposedly shot himself in the chest, which—in a study of over six-hundred and fifty one suicides over a ten year period that I’d read a few years ago, out of a hundred and twenty-one deaths by firearm, eighty-five percent of men who’d used one to kill themselves had shot themselves through the head. The stat was lower for women, but that high percentage for men was consistent across meta studies as well. Men who used a gun to kill themselves were anywhere from seventy-five to ninety-percent likely to shoot themselves through the head.

That didn’t mean he had to make that choice, of course. Given the bottles strewn about the gravelly pit where his bodyhad been found, it was possible that alcohol had impaired his judgement, not to mention his coordination. But…

Suicide.Leon had been ruled a suicide before the medical examiner even got him to the morgue. He’d been ruled a suicide before the most cursory investigation had been finished. Fine, Leon was a drug dealer, very possibly a murderer, and not a nice person overall, but he deserved an actual investigation instead of a quick decision on the part of the detective who’d come to the scene.

It wasn’t Reardon. I was glad, because I wasn’t sure I could look at that guy right now without breaking out in a cold sweat. Instead, it was Detective Jackass—I still didn’t know his actual name—the same guy who’d handled Ricky’s scene.

That couldn’t be a coincidence. The deaths were on opposite sides of the city. Why would Detective Jackass come to both of them, unless someone was pulling strings to make sure the “right” cops showed up to the scene?

“Everett!”

I jumped a little as I realized Dwayne, the crime scene tech, was calling my name. He’d been at Ricky’s death scene, too. Was he part of this conspiracy, or was I starting to see boogeymen where they didn’t exist?

“Jesus, you’re out of it today,” Dwayne said, taking off his gloves and depositing them into the bag at the edge of the taped-off area before wiping his forehead. “I called you three times.”

“Sorry,” I said, then cleared my throat and tried again, because that was barely audible. “I mean, sorry. Got a lot on my mind lately. Is it clear for me to…”

“Yeah.”

“Thanks.” I grabbed my body bag and the rolling stretcher I’d use to bring Leon back to the hearse, but Dwayne’s hand on my forearm stopped me cold.

“Something I can help with, man?”

I looked at Dwayne blankly. “What?”

“Whatever’s on your mind. Is it something you need help with?” Dwayne’s broad, affable face was set in an expression of concern. I’d have been touched, if this wasn’t the first time in thirteen body pickups that he’d ever bothered with getting personal. Dwayne wasn’t rude the way a lot of people were, but he didn’t give a crap about me.

He was fishing.He’s in on it.Maybe I was being paranoid, but at this point I felt justified.

“Family stuff,” I said after a moment. “Nothing important, don’t worry.”

“Yeah? You sure I can’t do anything?” He smiled, and italmostlooked natural. “I’m a decent listener.”

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