“What happened to her?”
“We don’t know. Her body was in Darwin Gardens. It looks like she took a bad beating or maybe was hit by a car. Maybe it happened there, or maybe someplace else. Did you see her anytime on Monday?”
Seth shook his head. “I was out on the interstate all day, doing my community service, picking up trash on the shoulder.”
“You’re on probation?”
“I’ve only got sixty?eight hours left, if I don’t throw myself in front of a big rig first from the sheer fucking boredom.”
“Hey,” Billy said, “it beats jail.”
“I wanted to do the time, to have that raw experience, but my dad wouldn’t let that happen. His fucking lawyers got me out. I only stayed for a few hours. It wasn’t even down in county, just the King City Central Lockup.”
Wade shared a look with Billy, then shifted his gaze back to Seth. “Let me get this straight. You wanted to go to jail.”
“Hell yes. You don’t know what it’s like up here. You’re cushioned from everything. Nothing is raw. How’s a man supposed to get tough if nothing ever cuts, you know what I’m saying?”
“Is that what Glory was?” Wade asked. “A raw experience?”
Seth gave Wade his best death stare. Wade had seen scarier expressions on a Smurf. Maybe Seth’s worries about getting too soft weren’t entirely unfounded.
Wade was half tempted to suggest he spend some time with Timo working on some scary expressions when his cell phone rang. He answered it.
It was the chief.
Wade parked the squad car at Riverfront Park in a spot that gave them a view of the river, the King’s Crossing Bridge, and if they turned their heads to the left, police headquarters at One King Plaza.
“What are we doing here?” Billy asked.
“I’ve got to talk to somebody. While I’m doing that, I’d like you to stroll over to headquarters, get me Seth Burdett’s rap sheet, and pull the files on all the dead women found in Darwin Gardens in the last couple of years.”
Billy frowned. “I want to switch to the night shift.”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“Because that’s when all the good stuff happens.”
“You found a body,” Wade said.
“That’s only exciting if she’s alive, looks like Megan Fox, and I find her in my bed.”
Billy got out of the car and trudged off toward headquarters. Once Wade was sure Billy was out of sight, he got out and strode toward the river.
Chief Reardon stood at a picnic table, smoking a cigarette, which he flicked into the river as Wade approached.
“You wanted to see me, sir?” Wade asked.
“You’ve gone insane,” Reardon said. “Totally bat?shit crazy.”
“Is there something in particular that makes you say that?”
“You dumped a corpse at my house, arrested two deputies, and harassed one of the biggest political donors in this city. I could take your badge right now, toss it into the river, and nobody, not even the AC fucking LU would question it.”
“Then, do it,” Wade took off his badge and set it on the picnic table.
“That’s the first sensible thing you’ve done in two years,” the chief said, reaching for the badge.
“Of course, now I will go tell my story to anybody who will listen. You’ll have to explain why you aren’t investigating the murders of those women in Darwin Gardens,” Wade said. “And why you’re letting deputies forcibly relocate people from one part of the county to another.”
Chief Reardon glared at him for a long moment, then set the badge back down on the table. “What do you want?”
“A thorough autopsy conducted today on Glory Littleton and the forensic evidence that I collected at the scene processed as quickly as possible. I’d like both of the reports sent directly to me.”
“That’s it?” Reardon asked. “That’s all you want? I thought the least you’d ask for is an immediate transfer out of Darwin Gardens.”
“I’m just trying to do my job,” Wade said. “I don’t care where I have to do it.”
The chief shook his head and walked past Wade toward police headquarters.
Wade picked up his badge, shined it on his sleeve, and pinned it back on his chest.
Wade walked into the station around noon and was surprised to see Charlotte at her desk, fast?forwarding through security?camera video from inside a bus that she was watching on her computer.
“You’re supposed to be off duty,” Wade said.
“So are you,” Charlotte said. “I’ve been watching those Blue Line tapes. Glory took the bus to Havenhurst on Monday morning, just like her mom said. But I can’t find any footage yet of her coming back.”
“When you’re done watching that, and if you’re still willing to stick around, you can help Billy go through the case files on the other women who were killed down here.”
“Oh joy,” Billy said as he came in lugging a box full of binders and dropped it on his desk.
“It’s called police work,” Charlotte said. “You should consider yourself lucky that we get to do it.”
“That’s the spirit,” Wade said.
“What are we looking for?” Charlotte asked.
“Whatever the murders have in common and anything that they don’t.”
“What are you going to be doing?” Billy asked.
“Sleeping,” Wade said and headed for the stairs.
With each step, he felt more and more tired.
He was on his fourth day in Darwin Gardens without an uninterrupted stretch of sleep. At some point, he knew the sleep deprivation would catch up with him. He just hoped it wouldn’t be during a confrontation with an armed felon.
As soon as he got into the apartment, he undressed and stood under the shower, letting the hot water pour over him.
It wasn’t only the physical exhaustion that was getting to him, but also the stress of dealing with all the political and personal forces aligned against him, not to mention the responsibility of guiding two rookie officers and getting accustomed to a new home.
He’d yet to unpack anything besides his bedding and toiletries.
It all made him feel unmoored in a way he hadn’t felt before. And whenever he felt insecure or uncertain in anything in his life, he reached for the one thing he knew he could depend on.
The badge.
And everything that it stood for.
Now, standing there naked in the shower in his rat?hole apartment above a former adult?video store in Darwin Gardens, he had a minor epiphany.
His father always had a single, pat answer for every decision that he made.
What’s important is what you stand for and how strong you stand for it.
It defined Glenn Wade, and now it defined his son too.
Wade finally understood why.
It was the one thing in his life that he could control. No matter what else was happening around him, that was the one thing that nothing and nobody could change, except him.
It made the world something that could be defined, managed, and understood. It had worked for his dad, out there on the lake, where life was a lot simpler and there were fewer shades of gray.
But not so well for his son in King City, where everything was political and interconnected, where corruption was in the city’s DNA, where principles were seen as something malleable instead of absolute.
Except by Tom Wade.
And therein lay the problem.
What’s important is what you stand for and how strong you stand for it.
Living by those words was how he held strong and never lost his way, even when the moral compass of everyone around him lost direction.
He stayed true to course and did the right thing.
And lost everything he had.
Now living by those words was all that he had left. Everything else in his life was different, but there was one thing he could be certain of and that would never change: the job he had to do and the way he had to do it.
For now, that meant enforcing the law on his beat and finding whoever was killing women in Darwin Gardens, no matter where the investigation led.