The Pickens’ place sticks out on the block like a sore middle finger. A sagging porch. Half a truck rusting in the lawn. Christmas lights still dangling from the gutters in spring. Three trash cans, one of them overturned, with garbage spilling onto the dead grass.
“Lovely,” Everett says. “Truly, a showplace.”
I pull up to the curb and kill the engine. For a second, we sit there in silence, headlights off, the squad car ticking as it cools.
“You ready?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “But that’s never stopped me before.”
We climb out into the cold. Gravel crunches under our shoes, the sound too loud in the quiet street. There are lights on inside the house—bright, cheerful, like nothing happened. Silhouettes move behind the curtains. Voices drift out through the walls. Laughter.
My jaw clenches so hard I might crack a molar. I spent all morning scrubbing egg off my windows while these punks were inside laughing about it. Probably posting videos. Probably high-fiving each other over how clever they think they are.
They have no idea what’s coming.
Everett looks like he’s thinking something similar. His hands ball into fists at his sides, then flatten out again. “Let’s do this by the book,” he says. “At least at first.”
“At first,” I echo.
We head up the rickety steps. The porchgroans like it’s personally offended we’re here. There’s a broken lawn chair off to the side, a pile of muddy sneakers, and, for reasons I don’t want to contemplate, a dented kiddie pool full of cigarette butts.
I rap my knuckles on the door, and it rattles in the frame.
The door swings open.
Tammy Pickens stands there in blue scrubs, her blonde hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, dark circles under her eyes that suggest she hasn’t slept properly in years. She’s thin in that way that says she’s surviving on hospital cafeteria coffee and fumes, and when she sees us—sees my uniform, sees Everett in his judge-at-rest stance, the squad car behind us—her expression shifts from confusion to dread.
“Can I help you?” Her voice is cautious.
“Mrs. Pickens, I’m Detective Fox, and this is Judge Baxter. We need to speak with you and your husband about some incidents involving your property.”
Relief flickers across her face. “Oh, thank goodness. A voice of reason.”
She steps aside, and we walk in.
The house is a disaster. In other words, no change from the other night.
I’ve been in crack dens that looked more functional. Pizza boxes are stacked on the coffee table like a grease-stained Jenga tower. Empty beer cans litter every surface. The carpet looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed since the Bush administration—either one. Dishes are piled in the sink, visible from the entryway, and the whole place smells like teenage boy, stale food, and defeat.
Tammy notices us noticing, and her cheeks flush. “I work a lot,” she says quietly. “Daryl’s supposed to?—”
“What the hell is going on here?” Daryl barrels into the living room from the kitchen, still in his stained sweatpants, a beer in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other. He’s got the look of a man who’s been caught doing absolutely nothing and is furious about being interrupted.
A cluster of teenage boys appears in the hallway—five, six, maybe seven of them, all in hoodies and basketball shorts, all smirking as if they’ve just won something.
Tyler Pickens, the older son, stands front and center. Dark hair, cocky grin, the type of kid who peaked in eighth grade and doesn’t know it yet.
He stops when he sees us, gaze bouncing from me to Everett and back again.
“Well, if it isn’t the Fun Police,” he says. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”
Behind him, shapes move. A couple of older boys—one of them Ryan, lanky and tall, the rest his friends—hover in the hallway, peeking around the corner. There are more in the room off to the side, clustered around a glowing TV. All of them grin like they’ve just tuned in for a comedy special.
Everett and I share a quick look.
I take the lead. “We’re here to talk about your son. And about the vandalism that’s been happening on our street. A few houses have been egged.”
Daryl scoffs. “Vandalism. Big word for a couple of broken windows and some eggs.”
