Brent rocks back and forth uncomfortably. He's lower in rank than Nicolas and won't argue with him, but there's something building up inside him. His eyes keep flickering to the door, and his hands clench on the sides of his belt. Thin lips press together as he leans forward, wanting to say something but holding back the words.
“What is this about, Nicolas?” Jake asks.
“Just doing my job.”
“Seems like you're just trying to open up old wounds and drag up old shit for fun. Why did you really come out here and make such a fuss about talking to me?”
“We're following up on some new information,” Nicolas says.
Brent's eyes close briefly, but the gesture isn't lost on Jake. He looks at the younger officer, then back at Nicolas. His eyes widen.
“You found him, didn't you? You found my father's bones. Where?” Neither of the officers answer, and Jake takes a threatening step toward them. “Where did you find him?”
Before either officer can say anything, Jake's expression shifts, and realization crosses through his eyes. He storms out of the office, dragging me along with him by my hand.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “Where are you going?”
“Jake, you need to stay here,” Nicolas commands as he follows us.
The order is futile. Jake isn't going to do anything either of them tell him. They lost him very soon after the beginning of the conversation. He brings me to his car and opens the passenger door. Part of me expects him to stuff me inside like a piece of luggage, but he resists and just lets go of my hand so I can get in myself. As I'm hooking my seatbelt, he storms around the front of his car and gets in. I can hear Nicolas shouting after Jake as they come out of the bar. Brent is on his radio, and Nicolas has his hands planted on his hips, watching us. When they realize we aren't stopping, they run for their police car.
“Where are we going?” I ask again, trying to keep my voice as steady as possible in hopes of calming him down.
I don't know if that's possible. If I was in his situation, I don't think I could be calm, either. But I don't love the frantic look on his face and the way his knuckles look like they're going to snap under the tension of their grip on the steering wheel. He's not fully in control, and the winding, narrow streets of Feathered Nest aren't the place to test muscle memory.
“Look, Jake, I know you're upset. That's perfectly understandable considering what you're going through. But I think you need to take a second and think through this,” I say.
“I don't need to think through it.”
Holding tightly to the door handle beside me, I keep watching his face. I'm waiting for the expression to change, for the crazy to drain from his eyes and the laughter to come back. Then I'll know he's in there somewhere.
It doesn't happen. But I'm relieved when he pulls the car into a gravel driveway studded with grass and shrubbery growing up through the jagged rocks. I don't know where we are, but at least we've stopped. He didn't bother to put on his seatbelt, which puts me at a disadvantage getting out of the car. By the time I wrench myself out of mine and climb out, he's disappearing around the side of the squat blue house.
Overhead, the cloud cover has moved back in. A white sky streaked with smoky wisps of gray promises more snow, or at least the sharp, almost violent needles of freezing rain that cover everything with a glittering glaze. The atmosphere is too still. It amplifies the voices coming from the backyard of the house, and my boots crunching over the rocks.
They aren't casual voices. They're low and measured, controlled to a rhythm I know. Before I even see him, I know Chief LaRoche is back there. He's talking to the other officers, the ones who weren't sent to talk to Jake and instead are investigating the gruesome desecration.
I run to the side of the house and see Jake nose to nose with LaRoche.
“Back up, Jake,” the chief growls.
“Get out of my way.”
“I'm not letting you back there. This is nothing you should be seeing.”
“I don't need you to tell me what I should be seeing,” Jake says back through gritted teeth. “I'm a grown man. You have my father back there, and I have the right to know about it.”
LaRoche holds up his hands, playing the innocent again, and shakes his head.
“Now, Jake, we don't know what we have back there. And I'm not giving out details. What we might have found is part of an ongoing investigation, and I have to guard my information closely,” he says condescendingly.
Jake stabs a finger angrily over LaRoche's head toward the backyard.
“You know damn well what you have back there. That's my father. All that's left of him. And if the man who did this to him is here, he needs to have a word with me.”
“If you keep acting like this, I'm going to have to arrest you for interference.”
“I'll take my chances,” Jake fires back, his voice lowering.
He steps around LaRoche, and I rush after him. I stumble over a rotting piece of lumber positioned at the end of the driveway that made its way from the front of the house around to the side. I reach out and grab Jake's hand just as we get to the backyard. All I see are blue tarps hanging from trees with white nylon rope. It’s clunky and unwieldy, but it does the job. We can't see anything beyond a few steps away from the driveway and the cramped cinderblock patio built at the back of the house. Jake looks at each of the tarps like he hopes to see through them and find out what's going on beyond them.
From my angle, I can see piercing yellow tape set up in a perimeter a few feet away from a small shed. What looks like the sum of the rest of the police force mills around snapping pictures, taking notes, and setting down markers. One officer walks to the edge of a well and peers down into the gap created by the lid sitting off-kilter by several inches. A wheelbarrow sits a few yards from the shed, mounded with dirt, and supporting the handle of a large shovel. The darkness of the ground behind it tells me that dirt came from being dug out of the ground fairly recently.
“Get off me!”
I turn to the sound of the shout and see Jake with his hands wrapped around the shirt of a man standing on the patio. His hands are already handcuffed behind him, but Jake tries to yank him away from the officer leading him down the steps.
“What did you do?” he screams.
I rush up to him and pull him back by his waist. The man sagging from the handcuffs is white-haired, his face etched with deep lines. His shirt is well-worn and hanging over the waist of jeans broken in by years of wear, not the machines that are so trendy now. He looks old and broken. Jake doesn't care.
“What did you do?” Jake screams again.
He struggles against my arms, trying to get to the man, but I hold him back.
“You need to stop. You don't want to get yourself arrested,” I say.
“You were his best friend,” Jake shouts at the man, completely ignoring me. “He trusted you. And this is how you repaid him? Don't you think you already did enough?”
“Jake,” LaRoche says, coming up to us.
I hold up a hand to stop him. “I've got it. Come on. We're getting you away from here.”
Jake lets me pull him away from the man, but his eyes stay welded to him until the last second. I take Jake by the shoulder and walk him around the house until he’s finally forced to break eye contact. I guide him into the passenger seat of the car and get in beside him. He's silent for the first few moments of the ride, but his seething creates tension I'm just waiting to cause the windows to explode.
“I'm sorry,” I finally say, just to break the silence.