Page 94 of The Devil’s Feather

I showered and got dressed. My knee was a lovely mosaic of black and purple, but since I could bend the joint and put weight on it, Dee wasn’t worried. Even if I had to hop on one leg, I’d be at the doors the second the police station opened.

Cold damp seeped into my bones; fog greyed the morning light. I grabbed one of Rafael’s sweaters to combat the frigid humidity. The sleeves were comically long on me, and it hung almost to my knees; like a black cashmere dress. It also smelled faintly of his hair oil. I decided he was never getting it back.

As Mark Twain supposedly said, “No winter colder than a summer in San Francisco.”

It was only spring, but Rafael’s absence made it a permafrost wasteland.

I led Dee down to Telve. “Don’t you have work today?”

She wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I shuffled my schedule around. They aren’t expecting me back until Sunday. Don’t you start crying again, Laney.”

I scrubbed at my treacherous eyes. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Girl, shut the fuck up. Remember in college when that one bitch kicked me out of her car in Oakland? On fucking International Boulevard at 2am? All you asked was, ‘Where are you?’ and you drove two fucking hours from Santa Cruz in the middle of the night before finals to come get me. That’s when I knew you were a real one.”

We grabbed coffees to go. I decided not to tell the baristas what was happening until I knew something concrete. I drove, and Deandra followed in her burgundy Corolla.

She hugged my arm as we waited in the morning gloom. “Never thought I’d see the day you’d be behind the wheel of a damn Caddy.”

“Me neither.”

A few figures milled around the police station in the chilly fogbank. Any moment now, the Silent Hill sirens would start up. I latched onto the image of Rafael as Pyramid Head to distract myself. Hot as fuck, and he might be the only person tall enough to actually pull that cosplay off.

The station didn’t open until 9am, but we’d gotten there at 8 just to be safe. To my shock, Benson Ives was there. And they were approaching me.

Still sleeveless, still effortlessly cool, Benson looked me over. I braced myself.

“Hey. Shit’s fucked.” Their voice was low and silken—a voice meditation apps would pay big money for, assuming AI didn’t take those jobs too—and they scrubbed a hand through their bright green hair. “I’m Benson. Rafael and I do not get along by any stretch of the imagination, but nobody deserves this. I want to help.”

At their conciliatory tone, I nodded and started breathing again. Dee subtly shook my arm.

“Thank you. I’m Elaine Parham.”

Benson smiled like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Deandra made a strangled noise behind me.

“I know. Kathy told me to watch out for you. Said you’re one of the good ones.” They snorted. “She says that about Rafael too, but nobody’s right all the time.” Benson’s grey eyes dropped, and they chewed on a lip piercing. “When we find him, will you tell him I’m sorry? I did some fucked up shit and I regret it. He might not want to hear it from me directly.” Realization broke across their face. “I’m not trying to get back with him or anything, I promise.”

“Oh, no, it’s ok. I’m sure he’d be glad to hear that.” Or not, but it was a nice gesture. Dee poked me in the ribs, and I jumped. “Uh, this is my friend Deandra Lee. Deandra, this is Benson Ives.”

Dee slid out from behind me with a smile bright enough to melt the fog and struck up a conversation with Benson about protests they’d been to. Love on a picket line. How very San Francisco.

I only had eyes for the door. “Y’all don’t need to come in with me. I’m just getting info. I’ll be right back.”

9 o’clock rolled around with no movement.

9:05.

9:10.

‘To be a musician is to be a timekeeper,’ Rafael had said.

At 9:12am, someone finally unlocked the glass doors. I ripped them open and charged inside.

“I have a case number for a missing person: Rafael Nazim. Have y’all got any updates?” I did my best to keep my voice from quavering. “Detective Amber Corey was on the case?”

The clerk just blinked and waved me through the metal detectors. Detective Corey was a remarkably fit woman, probably in her fifties. She had copious grey in her mousy brown hair and a tanned, hard cop face.

“Seems Mr. Nazim had an AirTag on him. It was found in the woods west of the Lively property.” Corey showed me on the map, and I took a picture. “We’re prioritizing the search in that area.”