“Let me guess. Runaways?”
“I’m sure those exist, but no.”
“What is it, then?”
She held it out.
It was an investigation into Sheriff King for the sexual abuse of his daughter.
Reggie Dupree had discovered hope. It was in the hollow of his lover’s voice. It was in the brief sensation, like breaking throughrain, in the moments before orgasm. Once, when he was crying, he had felt it.
He held on to that memory as if it were a talisman.
He left the apartment, going down the stairs. He didn’t use the elevator. He hated the elevator. He hated all enclosed spaces. They made him feel like he was choking. He hated the smell of gymnasiums and the color gray. He hated bald heads on men. He hated crimson lipstick. The world was full of pain.
But he had hope.
The stairs opened up onto a fetid and dank alleyway. Here the apartment manager piled the garbage he hoped the homeless would take, so he wouldn’t have to pay for the removal. There were old couch cushions and a broken television stand. The dumpster nearby was crawling with rats.
Reggie no longer worked in a shop; now he had a job working festivals on the waterfront. He liked working outside. But he still remembered those first few years working with Jerry in his musty, incense-smelling antique shop as some of the best of his life.
He stopped as he was about to turn onto the street. There was a figure at the end of the alley.
All the hope inside him dried up then. He could feel the menace coming from the shape. He felt himself panicking. It could not be real. He was dreaming again. It was another nightmare from the past. He turned to run, but his legs felt as frozen as they had when he was a child, wrapped in the hard tube of a rug, the weight of Ike Tressler pressing down. Smiling at him and whispering in his ear,Later.
The shape was behind him, and then, somehow, the shape was inside him. There was a shock to his system, a feeling like an earthquake under his feet. He was falling. He felt the pendant of hope break against the dirty ground, and his face landed, hard, against the gritty pavement.He closed his eyes. He really didn’t want to see anymore. He was aware he was hurt inside, but he didn’t want to think about it, or the vast feeling of wetness inside him, leaving his body.
In his last moments, he saw the tall windows of Brightwood on the day the transport van had pulled up. He remembered jumping out of the van as if life were a new adventure and whatever was about to happen to him could not quell the magic inside him, the hope he had carried with him all the time back then, despite foster parents and fears and prayers. The air had tasted of salt. He had seen the ocean on the drive, and he had every confidence he would see the ocean again. He had every belief that someday the world would understand him, and he wouldn’t be forced to understand the world.
He felt his mind drift then. In his final thoughts, he was turning to Jerry. Jerry was behind him, calling his name.
“Reggie is dead,” Larry said.
They had just arrived back in Portland. Amanda was standing at the baggage carousel, where they were waiting for Larry’s suitcase.
It took Amanda a moment to process. She had been looking at her phone while Larry had answered his own.
“That was Jerry. He could barely get the words out. Portland Police is there.”
“But—how?”
“Murdered, in the alley behind their building. Reggie was found by a transient. Stabbed to death. They’re combing the scene, but there isn’t much to go on. No witnesses.”
“Can we go? Comfort Jerry, at least.”
“I’m sure he has his own friends to comfort him.”
“We should tell the police there.”
“About what, exactly?”
She held out her phone.
“You were right. It was this kind of knife.”
Sharon Gravelle was a large woman with a commanding build and a compelling gap-toothed smile. She and Larry went way back, to when they had both worked patrol. She had advanced into sex crimes—they always wanted to put women there, and keep them there—while he stayed on foot. Sometimes she teased him about it. Mostly she seemed puzzled.
“You made it to homicide,” he said.
