Orientation (Borealis Investigations Book 1)

by Gregory Ashe

  “Whatever. Do you have a box I can use?”

  “Try again.”

  “Shaw.”

  “You know what I want to hear.”

  “This is so fucking juvenile. Just give me a box so I can get some work done.”

  “Indulge me.”

  “This is a waste of time.”

  “We would have been done already except you’re being totally lame about this.”

  North grimaced. The he undid the top two buttons on his shirt. Shaw made a rolling gesture with his finger, and North undid two more. He peeled back the placket to expose the hard planes of his chest, ran a finger through his messy thatch of blond hair, and dropped his voice to say, “Excuse me, sir. I believe you have a package for me.”

  “That was the worst Southie accent I’ve ever heard.”

  “Give me a fucking box, Shaw,” North snapped, a blush glowing in his fair cheeks and he did up the buttons again.

  “Oh, I don’t have any. Ask Pari.”

  “You’re going to hell.”

  After a screeching bout with Pari, North left, and Shaw could see him through the front window with a box under his arm. The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. Shaw kept trying to dig something up, but he found nothing. And by the time North called, Shaw had reached a decision.

  Over the phone came the rumble of traffic, and Shaw asked, “Where are you?”

  “Sitting on I-44. It’s a parking lot.”

  “With the windows down?”

  “It’s a beautiful day.”

  “Did sexy UPS guy get any packages?”

  “You’re such an asshole sometimes.”

  “It’s just, you know, some guys’ packages need to be handled with care.”

  “Ok, Shaw.”

  “Sexy UPS guy should probably wear . . . protection if he’s going to handle strange guys’ packages.”

  “I was trying to get information. I wasn’t filming a fucking porno.” A horn blared in the background, and then North’s voice faded, and Shaw could tell he was speaking to someone else. “Sorry. I’m sorry about that.”

  “Who was that?”

  “That,” North said in a furious whisper, “was a fucking busload of nuns, and they’ve got all their windows down because it’s a fucking beautiful day. So thank you very much for that, Shaw.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sexy UPS guy didn’t—”

  “If you say one more thing about accepting packages or delivering packages or special deliveries or—”

  “Contents under pressure?”

  North made a tiny, strangled noise on the other end of the phone.

  “Nobody’s going to trust you with their package if you sound like that.”

  For a few moments, the only noise was the sound of North’s aggravated breathing. Then it smoothed out. North’s voice was still tight, though, when he said, “Mark Sevcik doesn’t work there anymore. He was fired four months ago. The receptionist didn’t really know anything else; it’s a financial investment company that takes up like three floors of the building, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised she didn’t know him personally.”

  “Four months ago? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “That’s right when he was in the middle of that weird dom/sub game with Brueckmann, right? It makes sense to me. He probably wasn’t doing well at his job. Sleeping in a doggie kennel would do that.”

  “No, it’s not that.” Shaw propped his head in his hand, staring out the window as the street turned purple in the fading light. Somewhere on Gravois a truck backfired, and the loud clap sent a jolt of adrenaline through Shaw. His hand jumped, and he dropped the pencil, and sheets of paper covered with free-association writings and sketches flew into the air. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. North, something doesn’t feel right. About any of this, to be honest.”

  North’s relieved breath whooshed across the mic. “Thank God. I thought you were going to have your head up your ass forever. This whole thing with Matty—”

  “What? What about Matty?”

  Through the window, Shaw watched a cat jump onto the brick sill. It stretched once, shook its gray head, and then jumped down again, obviously dissatisfied with the perch.

  “You go first,” North finally said.

  “Mark Sevcik. I don’t get the vibe that he was blackmailing anybody.”

  “What? Why?”

  “He’s pathetic.”

  “That’s not really a reason. Pathetic people can be blackmailers too. It’s America. You can be whatever you want.”

  “Yeah, but.” Shaw couldn’t put it into words, not yet. The reason was there, in the dark cloud of his mind, but he couldn’t reach it, couldn’t hold it, couldn’t put it into words. “He’s just not a blackmailer. I mean, even the timelines are weird. Regina’s been blackmailed for years, but Brueckmann’s blackmailer just contacted him a few weeks ago.”

  “That makes perfect sense to me. Think about it: Mark somehow gets a hold of the blackmail material on Regina. He’s getting five hundred dollars a month, which is a lot for an aging drag queen, and it’s a nice little supplement to what Mark’s making. Everything’s going smoothly until Mark tries his experiment with Brueckmann. When that goes wrong, Mark is really out of luck. He’s got no house, no car, and no job because he got fired while he was playing puppy. But—Jesus Christ!” Then North’s voice grew distant again. “Ok, ok, ok, I’m sorry.” To Shaw, he said, “Remember not to take the Lord’s name in vain when a busload of nuns cuts you off.”

  “Noted.”

  “While Mark’s messing around with Brueckmann, he comes across that video, the one Brueckmann said is being used against him. Now Mark has the great idea to do his whole blackmail scheme, but to do it big. He’s got something serious on Brueckmann, and he’s got nothing to lose, so he’s goes full force.”

  “Except Brueckmann wouldn’t have kept that video lying around; he didn’t even know about the video. Hell, he can’t even remember the guy he was with. And couldn’t it have worked the other way? Couldn’t Brueckmann have learned about the blackmail when he took over Mark’s life? And then Brueckmann put Mark up to it again—he wanted another sub, maybe, so he forces Mark to find somebody like Matty, somebody he can manipulate and control with blackmail?”

  “How does that fit with what Reck told you? If somebody has been blackmailing important people in the area long enough for the cops to get wind of it, it’s not like it all started up recently. Brueckmann didn’t just steal Mark’s idea.”

  “And Mark didn’t just blackmail one drag queen until he lost his job.”

  “Damn.” The rush of air moving over the mic told Shaw that North was moving again. “Somebody’s lying to us. They’re probably all lying to us. This case has been messed up since the beginning.”

  “What were you going to say about Matty?”

  “What?”

  “Earlier. What were you going to say?”

  “Just that the case has been weird. That’s all.”

  Somewhere outside, a trash can clattered, and then the same cat Shaw had seen earlier sprinted across the road and vanished into an overgrown row of hydrangeas.

  “You know what we need to do?” North said.

  “See Mark Sevcik’s apartment.”

  “And let’s hope your boyfriend the detective doesn’t decide to check in on the place. Meet me there as soon as you can.”

  Before Shaw could respond, North cut the call.

  Chapter 23

  By the time Shaw parked the Mercedes, purple dusklight soaked the Central West End. The street with Mark Sevcik’s walk-up was stripped of people for the moment, and Shaw’s footsteps ran ahead of him, magnifying the emptiness until it felt like this block went on for a mile.

  But that sense of emptiness only registered on the edge of Shaw’s consciousness. His attention
was turned inward, dialed in on an interplay of sensory details and memory that Shaw had only experienced once before. Shaw saw the horizon, where a band of purple swelled and dropped like the pulse on a heart monitor, and he thought of the innermost rim of Matty’s eyes, amethyst crags almost breaking the ring of the iris. Shaw felt the April air, cool and humid, feather the side of his neck, and he thought of the final impression of Matty’s fingers before he pulled his hand away. The door to the Kaldi’s coffee shop opened, and the smell of roasting coffee and cinnamon swirled out on the heels of a well-dressed blonde with a Yorkie under her arm, and Shaw thought about the way coffee had tasted on Matty’s breath that morning, about how much blonder Matty’s hair was than the woman’s, about whether or not Matty liked dogs. The whole world had become an index for Matty Fennmore, the way it had, eight years ago, been an index for North.

  North was waiting inside the lobby, and although he’d ditched the UPS hat, he still wore the brown shirt and shorts. Very short shorts. Shorts that showed muscled thighs and calves with thick, blond hair. Sexy UPS guy had been, for Shaw, the object of too many fantasies. Especially when North did his Southie accent. Especially when North tugged open the top of the shirt to expose two inches of chest, a few scant blond hairs shining like sunlight. Except that this time, Shaw found himself wondering not what it might be like to work his fingers under the buttons, to feel the cotton unstick from North’s sweaty chest, but instead what Matty might look like in the uniform.

  “What are you smiling about?” North asked as he held the door open for Shaw.

  “Your fly’s down.”

  North’s hand dipped reflexively.

  “Made you look.”

  “I didn’t look.”

  “You checked.”

  “But I didn’t look.”

  Shaw took the stairs two at a time, and North thundered after him in those huge Red Wings. When they got to Mark’s apartment at the back of the building, police tape crossed the doorway in an X, and the door was locked.

  “Guess your boyfriend didn’t want us poking around in there.” North rattled the handle and shoved. The door slipped from the broken jamb and swung open. “But if he really wanted to be sure, he should have set the deadbolt.”

  Shaw slid between the crossed lines of tape. “Do you think you can get through here without breaking the barrier?”

  North glared at him.

  “It’s those big, macho boots, isn’t it? They’re too heavy, aren’t they?”

  “You’re basically wearing carpet samples, Shaw. You don’t have room to talk.”

  “Mine are comfortable.”

  North raised one foot—exposing a long patch of pale thigh where the shorts slid up—and then wobbled and put his foot back down. “See how comfortable they are when you step on a fucking nail.”

  “They’re eco-friendly.”

  “That’s going to be a real comfort when you get tetanus.” North tried again, this time sliding the massive Red Wing between the strands of tape before dropping his foot. The whole building seemed to shake with the crash.

  “They’re quiet,” Shaw said with a wince.

  “Give me a hand.” North was bent double, trying to swing his other leg through without snagging the tape.

  “And they’re fair trade.”

  “Just give me a hand, please.”

  Shaw helped him through, and the building trembled again as North dropped his second foot to the ground.

  “Next time I’ll fucking crawl.”

  “I’ll get you a pair like mine next time I’m in Barcelona.”

  North groaned something, and Shaw thought it sounded like a very long, very muffled fuck me.

  They moved through the apartment systematically. Shaw read the room in layers, as though excavating strata of an ancient civilization. The uppermost layer, the most visible and the easiest to read, was the search that the police had conducted. Kitchen drawers had been emptied, their contents strewn across the tile. Cabinet doors hung open. A sack of flour had been poured into the trash, outlining the trash can in white drifts like snowfall. In the living room, the sofa had been overturned, the dust cover slashed, the cushions opened and the foam ripped out in chunks. The bedroom had suffered a similar fate: the mattress and box springs cut, the closet doors ajar, clothes tossed around the room. The signs of Mark’s various interests manifested like the bones of past lives. Two Cardinals jerseys. Cleats. T-shirts branded with games like Destiny and Dragon Age and Call of Duty. In a separate pile, all by itself, was an incandescent white velour robe. Then, in the closet, Shaw found a matching hat and staff and wand. One of the asshole cops—he assumed it was Barr because Reck, even though he was an asshole, didn’t seem like this particular brand of asshole—had snapped the wand in half.

  Shaw’s mind turned over a single question: had Reck and Barr had a warrant to search this place? For some reason, he doubted it. And if not, what had prompted them to conduct a warrantless search? Were they banking on an open door and signs of a fight to hold up in court as exigent circumstances? Or did they simply not care? That last possibility opened a door onto a darker world.

  The second archaeological layer that Shaw read in the apartment was a fight. In the front room, a sunflower print had been knocked from the wall, and a large hole showed in the canvas. More holes opened the drywall, and gypsum dust sprinkled the baseboards and the carpet. The dining room table had been overturned. A glass had shattered against the wall. The fight had carried past the front room. Someone had kicked straight through the television in Sevcik’s bedroom. Someone had gone into the bathroom, his blood forming a long, blurred track on the wall, as though he had stumbled—been kicked? punched?—and tried to catch himself.

  The third and final layer was the life that Mark had lived before the fight. In the bathroom, Shaw found two different types of hair product: a paste for short, messy hair, and a styling mousse that looked like what Mark Sevcik—from the pictures Shaw had seen—might have used. He found two crusty spots in the toothbrush holder. He found bar soap and a body wash—although someone, presumably Barr, had squeezed out all the body wash to check that nothing was hidden inside. In the bedroom, Shaw found a pair of neon-red bikini briefs under the overturned hamper, although the rest of the underwear in the room was boxers. He found a Marx Brothers DVD in the front room; the cable box was set to ESPN2.

  Shaw found North in the bedroom. He was sorting clothes.

  “You can do my room next.”

  North threw him the finger without looking up.

  “What do you think about this?” Shaw asked, tossing the Marx Brothers DVD.

  “He had a boyfriend.” North tossed aside the DVD.

  “What—how did you—”

  “Come on. The toothpaste crust?”

  “I know, but—”

  “Help me out.”

  “Want to tell me what you’re doing?”

  “Figuring out who Mark Sevcik was. Take that pile over there.”

  They sorted the clothes by style and, as best they could guess, by age. North was surprisingly informed about the rise and fall of clothing trends; Shaw deferred to him on all of it because Shaw barely remembered what he had in his own closet from day to day. The general sorting, however, showed a definite pattern: a large pile of clothes that North kept calling business casual, and he said it like he had a mouthful of dog turds; then a second, smaller pile of t-shirts branded with video games and energy drinks and anime shows—again, North seemed oddly well-informed—as well as hoodies, joggers, mesh shorts and a yellow and black cloth belt with the words Fuck Off woven into the pattern. Then there was the wizard robe, hat, staff, and broken wand. Then there were the two Cardinals jerseys and a pair of battered cleats. And then a flapper-style dress with a beaded fringe. And then there was a final pile: a t-shirt that said Hungry? Hog Hollow Hocks, Loins, and Ribs, with a big stain that might have been blood; four more Hog Hollow t-shirts—these only had the lo
go; a John Deere cap; a pair of loose fitting, boot-cut jeans; and a pair of snakeskin boots.

  “So what the fuck does this tell us?” North muttered, hands on his hips, the smell of his sweat and Irish Spring soap so strong that Shaw felt claustrophobic.

  “You know way more about clothes than you pretend to.”

  “I had to learn to keep up with all you fucking Chouteau boys.”

  “And you know way, way, way more about anime than I would have ever guessed.”

  “There was a twink sophomore year. That’s all he would talk about.”

  “Right.”

  “Wouldn’t fucking shut up about it.”

  “Sophomore year?”

  “You wouldn’t remember him. I never brought him around.”

  “Oh, ok.”

  North grunted.

  “It’s just.”

  A low rumble had started in North’s chest.

  “Was he a time traveler?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Can we drop this anime shit? I already told you about the twink. Sophomore year.”

  “Right, right. It’s just, I did a quick google. And this—” Shaw toed one of the shirts. “This one didn’t even come out until last year.”

  North’s head came up slowly. He fixed Shaw with a look that was pure, frozen murder. And he bit off his words. “It was a lucky guess.”

  After another look at North’s face, Shaw nodded frantically. Outside, a horn blared, and then came a peal of drunken laughter, with somebody yelling, “Get out of the fucking road.” Tires squealed, and an engine roared. More drunken laughter filtered through the noise as the car raced away.

  Only then did North seem to think he had made his point, and he lowered his gaze to the clothing and asked, as though nothing had happened: “So. What does this tell us?”

  “Sometimes people hide their nerdy obsessions because, well, they’re afraid that their best friends might think they’re nerdy. Only, their best friends would never think that because they already know they’re nerdy. Like their best friends remember the time they assigned everybody on the dorm floor the name of a Star Trek character, and that was—” Shaw swallowed at the look on North’s face. “—a purely hypothetical example.”