Orientation (Borealis Investigations Book 1)

by Gregory Ashe

  “Right,” North said, and he stepped on the gas. The Caravan lurched over the white line and died.

  Chapter 10

  By the time they reached the Borealis offices, Shaw had pretty much convinced himself that he had gotten away with it. It had been close. There had been that moment at the beginning when a change had rippled through North’s face. But that, it turned out, had been Shaw’s imagination. The proof was in the fact that North hadn’t followed up on the possibility—hadn’t teased Shaw about still having his V-card, or some bro bullshit like that. North might avoid serious conversations like the plague, but he never missed an opportunity to yank Shaw’s chain.

  In the front office, Pari sat behind her desk with textbooks and notebooks mounded in front of her. Identical islands had been cleared on each side of the desk: in one, she had set up her shiny new MacBook; in the other, she had a loaf of pound cake, two bottles of Coke, and what was, as far as Shaw could tell, a Tupperware of brown sugar. With a spoon. Like she’d been eating it straight.

  When she saw them, she furrowed her eyes so fiercely that the bindi disappeared, and she curled an arm protectively around the pound cake.

  “No way, Shaw.”

  “I didn’t even ask.”

  “Buy your own goddamn pound cake.”

  “Is it from La Petite Boulangerie?”

  Grabbing the bread knife—his bread knife, Shaw realized with chagrin—Pari stabbed straight down through the loaf and met his eyes from under dark, thick lashes. “You know what happened to the last person who said ‘Let them eat cake?’”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “She got her head chopped off.” Pari drew the blade out of the loaf with gruesome slowness and then mimed it across her own throat.

  Shaw kept moving into the inner office, doing his best to project an air of wounded innocence. When North closed the door behind them and dropped into his chair in the corner, he said, “Let them eat cake?”

  “I think she’s got her World Civ 2 final next week.”

  “How much is it going to cost—”

  “Please don’t start this.”

  “—to get an exterminator in here,” North continued, “to get rid of the rats that are having a banquet off the crumbs and dirty plates and whatever else she’s got decomposing inside that desk?”

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Why haven’t we fired her?”

  Shaw gave him a pointed look.

  North, shrugging, said, “She’s not going to change her mind about the cake. No matter how nice you are to her.”

  “I know.”

  “If you want some pound cake, just run out right now and buy some.”

  “I don’t want pound cake.”

  “Jesus Lord, if you try to nick some while she’s in the bathroom or something, I’m not getting into it this time. You’re going to be on your own.”

  Shaw concentrated on amplifying that aura of wounded innocence as he dug through the bottom drawer for his MacBook. “Oh. A Ding Dong.” He tossed the snack cake on the desk and fixed North with his best puppy-dog eyes. “Too bad there’s only one.”

  “You’re a fucking Ding Dong,” North muttered as he pulled out his phone and started typing.

  “I heard that.”

  “Did you have it mixed in with the rat poison?”

  “My desk is very organized. You just don’t understand the system.”

  “That’s the same system where you keep the silly string for your birthday party—remember, you were turning twenty-six, not six—in the same drawer as your pepper spray. Is that right?”

  “I told you: you just don’t understand the system. But there is most definitely a system.”

  North flipped a lazy bird, already lost in whatever he was searching for on his phone.

  It was easy to focus on Matty’s case because they didn’t have any other paying clients, so Shaw opened up Chrome and surfed his way over to Facebook. He polished off the Ding Dong and smoothed the wrapper flat and pinned it to the desk with his elbow—he didn’t want to forget about it. Then he searched for Mark Sevcik.

  A surprising number of men shared that name, although only one of them had a shared friend: Teddi Larsen. Mark’s picture showed the same man as the security footage from Allure. Even wearing a Cardinals jersey and a backward hat, Mark looked like he’d come straight off the standard businessman rack with only minor alterations. He probably could have plunked down in any sales office or car dealership or HR department without anybody blinking. Shaw sent a friend request. He wasn’t exactly anticipating a quick confirmation, but it never hurt to try.

  While he waited for Mark Sevcik to contemplate the risk vs. reward of adding a total stranger as a friend (judging by Mark’s eight-hundred-plus friends, Mark must have added people freely), Shaw scrolled through the photos and updates that Mark had made available to friends of friends—and thank God, Shaw thought to himself, for Teddi Larsen’s web of associations.

  Whatever security options Mark had enabled must have been lax because his page held a surprisingly large amount of information. The majority of it was as photographs, but they told a complicated story—one that Shaw wasn’t entirely sure he understood.

  “I’m going to stretch my legs,” North said, and he stepped out of the office, and a moment later, the front door opened and shut.

  Shaw retrieved a Sharpie from the desk and a safety pin and then he scribbled a few words on the Ding Dong wrapper and then planted his elbow on it again. Just to make sure it didn’t go anywhere.

  Turning his attention back to the computer, Shaw tried to assemble the information into something cohesive. There were times when Shaw’s brain worked like anyone else’s, and then there were times when it seemed like the drain was clogged and nothing got through. This was one of those dirty drain, soap-scum, old bathwater times.

  Mark Sevcik wore a Cardinals jersey. Four years ago, according to his timeline, he had played on a softball team that won a regional championship. Eighteen months ago he had listed his hobbies as Dungeons and Dragons (third edition only), Xbox (Forza Motorsports and Skyrim), and e-sports (League of Legends). Twelve months ago, he had, according to a series of poorly designed banners, proudly started his own business doing interior design (just a side hustle, he added in the comments, something to keep him from going crazy in the finance world), and six months ago—

  Well, six months ago was the strangest part. There was nothing. A blank space that was invisible unless you paid attention to the dates. Everything picked up again two months ago, late February, when Mark announced that he had met the love of his life and was doing much, much better. He was now pursuing his passion of sound design, anyone interested in having him DJ an event, and on and on like that.

  Better than what? What had happened six months ago? And why, after meeting the love of his life, was Mark in a bar cruising for anonymous sex?

  It wasn’t just those questions that bothered Shaw. In the span of a few years, Mark had gone from a gone-to-seed bro playing on a softball league to a hardcore nerd to a pseudo-stereotype gay. And while Shaw loved the idea of a Renaissance man, Mark’s variety of interests were consecutive, not coexisting. He jumped from one to the other, an abrupt and total shift. And the more Shaw stared at the timeline, the photos, the check-ins, the more he guessed that for Mark, these hadn’t just been shifts in how he spent his freetime. Shaw was willing to bet that Mark had reinvented himself completely every time. That kind of behavior was pathological, probably stemming from a degree of personal dissatisfaction and an underlying psychic instability. Shaw would have to discuss it with Dr. Farr the next time he saw her. Maybe he could squeeze in an extra appointment next week. But however pathological the pattern might be, it wasn’t criminal, and it didn’t necessarily point to the kind of cruelty and manipulative behavior Mark had exhibited with Matty Fennmore.

  North re-entered at that point, carrying a gust of chemical pine scent
with him, and he flopped down at his desk in the corner. Shaw didn’t like the desk over there. He didn’t like that North had moved it there without asking, without even a word about it.

  “Did Pari spill the Pine-Sol again?”

  “What? I don’t know.”

  “Well, why does it smell like cheap air freshener in here?”

  “That’s my new cologne.”

  “No, seriously. Did you spray something?”

  “What did you find on Mark?”

  “If you really did get a new cologne, I didn’t mean it smelled cheap. I just was having a hard time placing it.”

  “Mark Sevcik. What did you find on him?”

  So Shaw told him. And when he’d finished, North rolled the chair toward Shaw’s desk, the casters thumping over the uneven boards, and displayed his phone. “City assessor’s website. Property records. All nice and available for a quick search.”

  “By owner?”

  North shook his head. “Privacy concerns. But you can look them up by address. And what do you think about that?”

  Taking the phone, Shaw scanned the screen. It listed all the properties for Mark’s building. Most of the condos were owned by individuals, but for unit 3D, Mark Sevcik’s unit, the owner was DDD Collaborative, LLC.

  Shaw shrugged. “I thought it was an apartment, not a condo, but who’s DDD Collaborative?”

  “Great question.” North’s hands brushed Shaw’s as he took back the phone, opened a second tab, and returned it.

  This time, the page showed a State of Missouri Business Filings search. The entry for DDD Collaborative listed the type—Limited Liability Corporation—the charter number, the status—Active—and, most importantly an agent. With a physical address.

  “Maybe we should visit Lee Brueckmann and ask him why he’s letting Mark use his condo. Did Brueckmann have to say what the LLC does?”

  Another electric rasp of North’s hands against his own, and then the screen showed a scanned Articles of Organization that listed the purpose of the LLC: Any or all lawful business for which a limited liability company may be organized under the laws of the State of Missouri.

  “Not very helpful,” North said, taking back his phone.

  “I’m going to need more than that, North.”

  “What you need is to work outside in the sun in the middle of August laying irrigation pipe.”

  “Like you.”

  “I turned out all right.”

  “I should probably buy a Carhartt jacket. And a trucker hat. And a pair of those Red Wings. Steel toe, of course.”

  “Say another word about my Red Wings. Say one more word.”

  Shaw grinned and mimed zipping his lips.

  “The address is a P.O. box. Barring a favor from your new buddy Jadon, we’d have to wait like thirty days—business days—just to get a Freedom of Information request processed and come back with the boxholder’s physical address. I think I’m going to have to ask for a favor.”

  Shaw’s cheeks were still hot from the snipe about Jadon—a part of Shaw wondered, briefly, if he had missed something, if Jadon might have been a little friendlier than a detective needed to be—but he understood the significance of North’s statement.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “No,” North said, sighing and shoving the phone away. “It’s fine.”

  “I’ll call Jadon. Really, I will.”

  “They’re not going to help us nose into their case. Barr practically told us to shut this down.”

  “I’ll offer him sexual favors.”

  North had one of those frostfire North smiles. “We want him to help us, Shaw. Not send him running off the grid.”

  “I really don’t want you to do this. You always come back—”

  North arched a fuzzy blond brow.

  “Upset.” That was a pathetically small word for it. North always came back from these visits flattened. He always came back drunk. For a week or two after, the black eyes and bloody noses and split knuckles would be worse, a lot worse, and Shaw could only guess at how hard North had to push himself in boxing to drive the demons back into their corner.

  Scooping the Ding Dong wrapper and safety pin into his hand, Shaw came around the desk and wrapped North in a hug. He worked the pin shut as he patted North’s back. “North Donald McKinney, don’t do something stupid.”

  “That is definitely not my middle name,” North said, with a laugh as he pulled free of the embrace. “And I’ll be fine. I’m just going to ask my dad for another favor.”

  Chapter 11

  North followed Gravois to Arsenal, and Arsenal out to the dry cement wash that people stupidly called River Des Peres. He followed the river—well, its shell—south. Lindenwood Park was one of the outermost neighborhoods in the city, and it was one of the quiet neighborhoods that had survived the urban blight intact. In fact, it was thriving, one of the few working-class enclaves with low crime and clean parks and neighbors who still helped each other.

  A knot was drawing tighter between North’s shoulders as he turned, and turned, and turned, until he parked on Winona and walked to the blondie-brick house where he had grown up. He didn’t bother with the front door; nobody ever used the front door, as far as North knew, except the parish priest when he’d come once. Instead, he followed the cement pavers past the chain fence, and the rusted Beware of Dog sign clapped and rattled the links when he shut the gate behind him.

  Two steps up to the back door, and North jiggled the handle—no door had been locked on this house since Mary McKinney had died when North was thirteen years old—and stepped inside. He smacked face-first into a wall of cigar smoke, navigated Jasper and Jones, who yowled and darted past him, their tails flicking as they disappeared into the overgrown yard, and kicked over an ancient desk fan that wheezed and chugged and tried to push the smoke through one of the sun-porch’s windows.

  “Who’s back there?”

  There was always a moment of shock now when North saw his father. David McKinney, in North’s mind, was still a silver-haired fireplug of a man with a rough voice and a rough temper. Forty years on job sites, exposed to the elements, forty years of cigars, forty years of weeknight drinks at Murphy’s had all taken bites out of him. He was so much thinner now, his back and shoulders curved, his hand knobby where he clutched the oxygen tank. The cannula hung over jaundiced cheeks. He had lost most of his hair during the chemo a few years ago, and much of it hadn’t come back.

  “Oh,” North’s father said. “It’s you.”

  Righting the fan, North said, “You’re smoking.”

  David McKinney grunted.

  “If you want this fan to do anything, it can’t be sitting on the ground. It’s too small and too low.”

  “That fan is older than your freckled ass, and it’s always worked just fine. Did you let the cats out?”

  “Haven’t seen them.”

  “It’s your ass if they got out.” Dragging the tank with him, he tottered to the window, parted the bent and battered blinds, and wheezed. Then the blinds clinked shut, and he stumped back into the house proper, leaving North on the sun porch.

  North propped the door open, found the cat treats under a sofa cushion, and sprinkled a few on the floor. Then he followed his father, passing the kitchen—piles of bills on the counter, a microwave roughly the size of a pony, dishes piling in the sink. The dishwasher had been pulled out from under the counter, hoses spilling like ruptured viscera. Here, the ever-present cigar smoke had to fight with a burnt-grease stink that reminded North of a childhood of blackened grilled cheese sandwiches.

  In the living room, at the front of the house, he found his father in the same patched recliner, in front of the same console TV (circa 1992), with the blinds shut and the lights off so that the wisps of sun that managed to reach the room were immediately gobbled up by the smoke. Four folding chairs surrounded a card table—one leg had been broken by North in childhood, during a
particularly vicious round of cops and robbers, and was now supported by two milk crates and a stack of 1989 Penthouse magazines. North dragged one of the folding chairs so that it paired with the recliner. Between him and his father, a cigar smoldered in an ashtray.

  “I’ll buy you another fan.”

  His dad coughed—an awful, tearing sound that went on for minutes—and waved a hand.

  “How are you doing?”

  David McKinney’s eyes were like the water in the River des Peres: a glisten over cold cement. He punched a remote, and the music from The Price is Right swelled.

  “Have you been going to see the doctors?”

  “I’ve been going.”

  “You want some fresh air in here? Some sunlight?” North twisted in his seat. For what was probably the thousandth time in his life, he gave up smoking right then and there. The disorientation of this place—his home, his childhood, and yet not at the same time—never got any better. “You want me to crack the door?”

  “You want to make yourself useful?” North’s father gave another of those awful, wet coughs again and fiddled with the dial on his tank. “Get me a beer.”

  North bit the inside of his cheek. After a minute, he stood and stepped past his father.

  “What the fuck is this?” David McKinney rasped, catching North’s jacket and dragging him to a stop. Something ripped at the back, and when North turned around, his father was holding a wrapper with Ask me about my printed in black Sharpie above the words Ding Dong.

  Shaw. North felt back, found the safety pin, and worked it loose. Part of him wanted to smile. Part of him was measuring a rope for Shaw’s neck.

  “It’s trash. Give it here, I’ll throw it away.”

  The disgust on his father’s face was so visible that North could have seen it from the International Space Station. David McKinney crumpled the wrapper and pitched it at the kitchen floor, ignoring North’s outstretched hand.

  North found two Budweisers in the fridge; there was also a half head of iceberg that was dissolving into a black puddle and a chunk of Limburger cheese vanishing into a fuzz of green. He took one Bud. Then he took the second and went back.