Page 79 of The Evening Wolves

The day was so bright everything seemed incandescent, and when he moved his head, afterimages glowed in his vision.

“Your job, gone. Your pension, gone. Your career, up in smoke.”

“You’re talking about a worst-case scenario—”

“Be silent.” His father’s breathing was suddenly ragged. “Don’t speak. A worst-case scenario, John-Henry? Where have you been the last few days? As far as this town is concerned, you’re already guilty. And let’s say, by some miracle, you’re found innocent. No one in this town will look you in the eye again. You will be removed from the force sooner or later—Lieutenant Peterson can’t turn a blind eye anymore, not when Naomi has laid everything out like this, and even if you somehow escape criminal charges, she’ll get rid of you when she inevitably wins the next election.”

“There it is,” John-Henry said, and the thickness of his voice surprised him. “That’s what this is about.”

“This is about our family, you idiot child. And about our future. And I have done what I could to—to insulate you while you lived out this fantasy with that man and turned your mother and me into a laughingstock in this town.”

His throat was dry. He looked around for water and didn’t see it, but that might have been because of the afterimages still drifting across his vision. “I think you should go.”

“You didn’t read that article, so I’ll tell you what it says: quote after quote from Naomi, as she describes your efforts to, in her words, ‘impede the course of justice.’ Witness tampering. Obstruction. Abuse of power. Criminal interference from members of the police department still loyal to you. A history of working outside the law. You think it’s an insult to your honor that I ask you to apologize?” His final words erupted in a shout. “I’m trying to save your fucking neck!”

When the shout died, John-Henry said, “Get out.”

Instead, his father took several deep breaths. He perched on the edge of his seat, adjusted the jacket of his suit, touched his hair in an absent-minded gesture that was so familiar it snapped something deep inside John-Henry. “I imagine,” he said, his voice compressed into a shade of normalcy again, “that you think those allegations are irrelevant. But consider, for a moment, their significance for Emery. They only have to make one of them stick, John-Henry, for him to lose his investigator’s license.”

“Get out.”

“The two of you playing at this like it’s a game, harassing people in town. Perhaps you’re right, John-Henry. Perhaps I should have let you pay the price for your actions. You’re certainly going to pay for them now.”

Outside, the sky was a blue thinning to white, and the river looked like something drawn in gold. John-Henry’s head was starting to ache. The woman in the hall was laughing again—laughing and laughing, a cackling kind of laugh. I’ll have what she’s having, John-Henry thought, and he wanted to burst out laughing. But he said, “I’d like you to leave.”

His father stood. “I will remove you from the department if I have to, John-Henry. For your own sake.”

The laugh tore its way free. He put a hand to his chest, and the pain of bruised muscles was strangely grounding. The sun was so bright outside, and he wanted to close his eyes. It was like those stadium lights all those years ago. He thought of the boy who’d been determined to be free. But that had been somebody else, somewhere else, and it had been a boy’s dream. Naïve, that was the word. A boy’s naïve dream. John-Henry laughed again, blinking against the brilliance of all that light. “You’ve never done anything for my sake, Father. I wouldn’t expect you to start now.”

18

The flash of cameras continued as the garage door rolled down behind them.

“Fucking bottom feeders,” Emery said.

John didn’t respond. He stared straight ahead, his face slack, like someone had cut the wires from his brain, clutching the newspaper to his chest. He’d been like that since Emery had gotten to the hospital to bring him home, answering in monosyllables, his body communicating only a kind of empty awareness stripped of emotion or affect.

Part of it, Emery knew, was because of the interview. Emery hadn’t been present while Palomo talked to John, but he had a good idea what they’d discussed—among other things, the shooting of Jace Vermilya and the murder of Eric Brey. Palomo was a good detective, and she was just doing her job, and the Wahredua PD had reason to consider John a person of interest. None of that, however, softened the reality of John being interviewed by one of his own detectives. So, yes, part of it was the interview. But not all of it.

Representatives of what passed for the media had been waiting outside the hospital, but Emery had taken John out a side exit and managed to avoid them. They hadn’t been so lucky with the vans and cameras at home. Faces and microphones pressing against the windows of the van. Shouted questions. Flash, flash, flash. All Emery could do was inch forward, trying not to crush some intrepid reporter’s foot, until they managed to reach the safety of the garage.

And now, in the weak, indirect light, the familiar lines of John’s face were blurred, as though someone had smudged them. John must have felt the weight of Emery’s gaze because he glanced over, his expression still registering nothing, and stared at him. Say something, Emery thought. Say anything.

“Let’s get you something to eat.”

John stared at him for a moment longer, and then he opened the door and got out.

Emery sat in the van as his husband limped inside. He clutched the steering wheel, shoulders slumped, and his head was full of a pulsing nothingness. Then, after a while, he got out and went into the house.

Tean and Jem were at the stove, frozen in place, apparently in the middle of Jem trying to wrestle a can of pinto beans out of Tean’s hand. Their gazes slid to him. Tean’s face creased with sympathy. Jem grimaced and tucked the can of beans behind his back.

“We were going to make you something to eat,” Tean said.

Jem glanced toward the stairs. “How’s he doing?”

“Great, Jem,” Emery said as he crossed the kitchen. “He’s doing great.”

It was unfair. It was small and mean and, maybe worse, unnecessary. But helplessness and frustration and hurt had been building in Emery for days now, and lashing out, even in such a petty way, provided a temporary release. It was a bad night, he told himself. We all had a bad night.

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