Codirection by Gregory Ashe

Author:Gregory Ashe [Ashe, Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gregory Ashe
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

SHAW TRIED TO FOCUS on Jesse’s house, on the job, as they headed up the walk. It was late morning. It was a beautiful September day: the sky blue and puffy with cumulus clouds, verging on warm but with a breeze. He had on a flannel shirt, blue-gray with a grandad collar, and spandex bike shorts. After being dumped in the middle of nowhere, he’d decided that practical footwear was currently a prerequisite; hence the toe shoes. That morning, it had been easier to think about clothes, about being practical—like the inflatable wedge he now carried under one arm—than about everything else.

The call to the detectives investigating Malorie’s death had been bad enough. Shaw had contacted them first thing that morning; Monzyk had shouted Shaw down as soon as he understood who Shaw was, and Contalonis hadn’t been much better. They hadn’t wanted to hear about the Peach Grove or the Big Muddy. They’d wanted Shaw and North to come in for interviews—although that was partially conjecture on Shaw’s part, because most of the time the two detectives just swore themselves blue.

The fight with North, though, had been even worse. Awful. Mostly because it hadn’t ever made its way to the surface. Shaw had been panicked to wake and find North gone and not answering his phone. Then Pari had called, suspecting that Shaw hadn’t heard about North’s dad. Then North had arrived home sometime after sunrise and answered questions in monosyllables or broken fragments and finally terminated the conversation with “I don’t feel like talking right now.” Then he’d gotten in the shower, and Shaw had gone into the basement, taken an edible, shoved his head into the dryer, muffling himself with the clothes still in the drum, and screamed for a solid five minutes.

When screaming didn’t help anymore, Shaw called the rental car agency and reported the car stolen, which actually seemed to make the agent happy—probably because of the exorbitant fee. After the rental car agency, Shaw had gone outside to work on his potion cauldron, which was mostly an excuse to look busy while North got ready—and, more importantly, an excuse to avoid North in their small house.

When they reached Jesse’s stoop, North gestured with two fingers, and Shaw broke off. He headed around the back of the house. The sound of North’s knocking followed him.

The side of the bungalow had once featured flowerbeds, now overgrown with weeds. A concrete pad with rusting rebar suggested where an air conditioning unit had once sat—stolen, sold, who knew? The windows were old glass, thin, some of them cracked. At the back of the structure, the fascia was pulling away from the roof, and the gutter hung out over empty air. It suggested, to Shaw anyway, a waterslide—one with an abrupt, and perhaps fatal, ending.

The back of the house was even worse. Heaps of black, contractor-style garbage bags lined a chain-link fence. Ancient patio furniture bled rust. The stainless-steel grill looked like it had probably once cost a

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