He shoved the door open and let Bourneville jump down first. Then he sat down on the steps as he pulled on a battered, sandy pair of sneakers. The wind was still up, bowling discarded soda cans and torn paper bags across the trailer park. It was dark but not quiet. A child was squalling somewhere—that dull whine that was in for the long haul—and the dull thump of bass from the stoners’ trailer was like a heartbeat.
Some of the other deputies gave him shit for living there, and he’d seen the sneer on Javi’s mouth earlier, but it suited him. When you were a lifelong insomniac, the last thing you wanted at night was peace and quiet. Silence just felt like the world taunting you with how well it was sleeping.
Besides, the only roots he ever had turned out to be poisoned. So he paid rent on a battered old Airstream, and his old kitbag did double duty as a wardrobe.
He stood up and whistled for Bourneville. She came wriggling out from under the trailer, spiderwebs decorating her ears and a scabby old tennis ball in her mouth.
“I buy you shit, Bon,” he told her. “Good shit, but you’d rather run around with some thrift-store reject ball? People talk.”
She grinned at him, her tongue hanging out behind the ball until he laughed. A wave of his hand sent her loping down to the shore. He rolled his shoulders back hard to loosen the muscles and raced her there.
The dog won.
CLOISTER HADspent his life running—into trouble, after dogs, away from whatever was in his nightmares. The mistake people like Bozo the Meth-head made was to think you could outrun your problems. That never worked. The problems always beat you to the finish line. All you could do was run until the biggest problem was whether you were going to puke or come.
It was puke this time.
Cloister limped into the tide, his muscles aching from running on the shifting footing of the coarse sand. He scooped up a handful of seawater and swilled it around his mouth. Salt and grit cut the taste of grease and acid, and he spat.
Behind him Bon rolled enthusiastically, adding elflocks of sand to the salt that matted her fluffy coat. She was going to need a bath.
Cloister ran for that one minute of exhausted clarity when his brain was empty. Bon ran because she was a dog. But why had Drew Hartley run? Ten-year-old boys didn’t run away from their big brothers, not unless something had already established itself as very wrong in that household.
The tremble of Lara’s voice replayed in his ear. “He’s been soangry.” But was that how she’d have phrased it before Drew went missing? Once you started to think your child could have done something horrible, everything else they did was warped by association. No one said that Drew was scared of Billy. Annoyed with him, pestering him, but not scared.
Ten-year-olds drank what their brothers gave them, even if it tasted weird. Ten-year-olds ran after they knew someone wanted to hurt them—not because they thought someone might. The fear of looking stupid had kicked in by then.
The dread that usually confined itself to his nightmares stretched in the back of Cloister’s brain, making the skin at the nape of his neck prickle clammily. He could guesswhy, but he didn’t see how a fractured memory made years ago and miles away could help.
Cloister stood for a second more and stared over the stretch of choppy black water as the tide washed waves in around his knees. He still didn’t think Billy was guilty, but he couldn’t pin that feeling down to a reason.
The case against Billy had evidence, witness testimony, and a mother’s doubt. He had nightmares and a blurry scene in his head that could be a theory or could be wishful thinking. If it wasn’thisgut, even he’d admit the merits of the case damned Billy.
“What do you think?” he asked Bourneville as he waded out of the sea. His sneakers were wet. The rough seams rubbed his ankles while the sodden laces trailed in the dirt. “Am I just being soft on the kid, or what?”
Bourneville scrambled to her feet and shook violently, shedding half a beach of sand and shell. The other half stayed tangled in her fluffy black coat. Her tongue dangled out of her mouth behind what was left of the ball.
“You’re right.” He walked up the beach to her. There was seaweed in her muttonchops. He picked it out and gave her a scratch under the chin. “We should stick to what we’re good at—finding people and staying up late. Leave the detective work to the guys who have to wear suits.”
She wagged her tail in agreement and stirred up the sand.
“C’mon, then,” he said as he hooked his hand in her collar. “Let’s get home and get you rinsed off. Maybe I can grab another hour’s shut eye before I gotta get up.”
Instead of going back along the beach, following the long jut of headland, Cloister took the narrow path up to the scenic overlook at the road. The narrow dirt path crawled up the steep hill, and dry dirt and shells slid under foot. By the time he reached the potholed oval of tarmac, his sodden sneakers were dry and salt-stiff against his toes as they bent.
They walked back along the road, and Bourneville stuck obediently to Cloister’s side on the shoulder. Two cars passed them, music blaring and men wearing sunglasses driving. Back at the trailer park, Khaled Hirmiz—a construction worker and neighbor—was swearing quietly at his truck.
“Problems?” Cloister paused on his way across the plot.
Khaled looked up, his mouth open to rant, but caught himself as he registered who was talking to him. He shut his mouth and pursed his lips under a week-old moustache. He’d always been uneasy around Cloister since he learned he was a cop, not that Cloister had ever seen him or his small, well-behaved family even litter.
“No,” Khaled said. He shuffled away from Bourneville as she sniffed around the tires. “Just the kids. They untied all the ropes again. I can do it.”
Usually that would have been the end of their interaction. Cloister only played mascot when the lieutenant sent him and Bourneville out to schools to be the approachable, fuzzy face of the department. Tonight he lingered and stared at the new plastic sign zip-tied to the pickup.
Andres and Son Construction
His brain felt like a car stuck in neutral, revving until it smoked but stuck in one place. The “off” that he needed to pinpoint, to pin down, was right there. He just couldn’t bring it into focus. It hadn’t been Andres, it had been….
