“We’re fine to keep going,” Will protested. “I just need to find a fresh angle.”
“It’s 8:00. You’ve both been here all day. You’re no use to me and to Rebecca if you’re too tired to think straight. Go home, sleep, and come at it again in the morning.”
“It just feels wrong to go home and sleep in my bed when we don’t know where she is,” he admitted. His eyes drifted to the missing person poster, where a picture of Rebecca Perez stared up at us, smiling and happy.
“I know. Unfortunately, sometimes that’s part of the job. I know you want to find her. We all do, but we’re also human, which means we need to rest if we’re going to function.” She lightly clapped him on the shoulder. “Night shift is already on duty. If anything changes, they’ll call you. Go home, William.”
Neither of us spoke as we packed up and left the station, the silence following us out onto the street.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he said finally, pausing on the sidewalk beside me.
“Believe me, I get it. Cornell is right, though. We have to eat and rest and give our minds a break if we’re going to find her.” I knew Will, though, and I doubted he’d take much of a break when he got home. That sparked an idea, though. “Why don’t you come over?”
“Come over? Where, to Alex’s place?” He still didn’t quite look at me, but I knew he was ready to refuse. Ever since the McAvell farm, he’d been awkward around Alex. I’d need to deal with that eventually and make sure Will really was okay with Alex and what he could do, but that was a problem for another time. I’d seen too many officers go down the road Will was on, obsessing over a case until it burned them out. I didn’t want that to happen to him.
“No, over to my house. We can order some pizza, maybe catch a replay of a game or something, and just chill out a little.” I did want to see Alex, but right now, Will needed me more. He lived alone and I just knew he’d go back to his apartment and spend the entire night awake, thinking about the case.
He still hesitated, but in the end, he nodded. “Yeah, sure. Just for a little while, I guess.”
I shot off a quick text to Alex as we walked, letting him know I might not make it tonight. He reminded me that I had a key and to come by any time if I wanted. Depending on what time Will headed home, I might just take him up on that.
My little rental house sat between two nearly identical houses about half a mile away from the station. An old fence had once surrounded the single-story property, but I’d removed it for the landlord in exchange for half-off my first month’s rent. Like most houses in Lowery’s Crossing, it was old and a little run-down, but it had solid bones and the roof didn’t leak, so it worked for me.
“You’ve lived here almost a year?” Will asked once we were inside and getting settled. He glanced at the cardboard boxes still in the corner of the living room, gathering dust. I’d mostly unpacked, but a few still lingered.
“You know I spend most of my time at Alex’s house. That’s mostly old, sentimental stuff that I haven’t found the right place for.”
A plush couch sat against one wall of the living room, facing the big TV I’d brought with me from Chicago. It perched on a short stand, with my old DVD collection on a shelf beneath it. A coffee table and a lamp made up the rest of the furniture in the room. A calendar hung on the wall by the kitchen, still showing December of last year.
“I’m surprised you haven’t just moved in already. You might as well, at this point, right?”
“We just haven’t talked about it,” I shrugged. I thought about it almost every day, but if Alex did, he hadn’t said anything. Something about the timing just didn’t feel quite right yet, which made no sense, and yet I couldn’t shake that feeling.
“My sister moved in with Raina after three dates or something like that. Trust me, compared to them, you guys are a glacier,” Will snorted, a hint of his old humor coming back.
“Hilarious. Here.” I tossed him the remote, snorting on a laugh when he fumbled it, but caught it before it hit the floor. “Find something to watch while I call Martinelli’s. What kind of pizza do you want?”
“From Martinelli’s? It has to be the traditional Sicilian.”
“No argument from me,” I agreed. There were two pizza places in town, but Martinelli’s was by far everyone’s favorite. “Pepperoni and spicy sausage?”
“Hell yes,” he agreed immediately.
I left him to channel-surfing while I called it in. Luckily, since it was Friday, they actually had a few delivery drivers working. On weeknights, it was pickup only, unless Paula Martinelli’s oldest son was willing to run deliveries. It was an eighty-twenty shot. Considering the entire town was only a few miles across, it wasn’t exactly a hardship for most. Weekends were busy enough for her to justify paying whatever local teenager wanted to make a few extra bucks to deliver pizzas.
“Twenty minutes or so,” I reported once I hung up. “Water or soda? That’s all I’ve got in the fridge right now.”
“Water’s fine. Seriously, though, you’re wasting so much money even keeping this place.”
He caught the water bottle I threw at his head a lot easier than he’d caught the remote.
“Anyway. Moving on.” I sat down on the other end of the couch, getting comfortable while we waited. “What’d you find?”
Will hit ‘play’ and pulled up a replay of last night’s NCAAW basketball game. That same tense silence from before blanketed us as we watched the game, waiting for the food to arrive. To make matters worse, when I opened the door to the delivery driver’s knock, Landon DeVor stood on the other side. He looked tired, worry and strain making him look older than he was.
“Hi, Detective Parker. I didn’t realize this was your house.” Like every other time I’d talked to him, he was soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, but in a quietly confident way that gave me hope for the kind of man he’d grow into.
“Hey, Landon. Thanks for bringing this,” I said, taking the box from his hands and putting it on the floor by the door.
