Page 38 of The Evening Wolves

“North, Jem take some of these,” Auggie said, pushing two piles of receipts across the table. “Jem, start a shared map and drop pins. North, make a spreadsheet and log them chronologically.”

“Easy there, Captain Crunch.”

“Fine. Emery—”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it,” North said as he swept up the receipts.

“What do you want me to do?” Theo asked.

“Supervise North.”

“Hardy-har, chuckle-fuck,” North said. “Theo, get your ass over here and help me.”

Emery was examining Vermilya’s phone when he glanced up and caught an unfamiliar expression on John’s face.

When he noticed Emery’s attention, John’s face smoothed out, and he gave a short laugh. “This is so frustrating. Normally—I mean, you know what it’s like, Ree. If I want to know who somebody is, I get his fingerprints, I get aliases, I run search after search until NCIC is about to explode, I get a warrant for his phone.” He raked fingers through his hair. “And now I don’t have any of that, and I’m useless.”

“You’re certainly not useless.” Emery cocked his head. “What else would you do?”

John gave him a crooked smile. “That’s very sweet.”

“I’m serious. Fingerprints are out unless we can get somebody inside the department to help us.”

“I don’t want to do that. That’s asking them to compromise their professional ethics, and even if they’re doing it to help me, what am I supposed to do when this is over? I don’t want anyone who would do that working in my department.”

“For those of us not on the soapbox,” North asked, “what’s it like up there?”

“Does the altitude keep you from getting a boner?” Jem asked. “It seems like it would.”

They shared a smirk, which vanished when Emery directed a glower at them.

Turning his attention back to John, Emery nodded, which was—in his opinion—less of an outright lie. After all, a nod could simply mean acknowledgment. And there was no point in mentioning his run-in with Dulac, not yet. “What else?”

“Traffic cameras—”

“Not the things you can’t do. What else?”

John reached for his mug of coffee, but he didn’t drink; he just held it, hands wrapped around the ceramic, the hint of mint rising on the air. In a different voice, he said, “If I had a photo, I’d show it around locations that were significant—the crime scene for starters.”

“We’ve got pictures,” Auggie said. “He’s on the internet.”

“I’d check his social media.”

“Go ahead,” Tean said. “I can finish.”

“On it,” Auggie said, whipping out his phone.

“What else?” Emery asked.

“If he had any identifying physical characteristics, those get entered into—”

“John.”

A smile, a real one, bloomed.

“What?” Emery asked flatly.

“Good God,” John said to himself. Then, smile growing, he said, “Thank you.”

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