Chapter 23

By the time Shaw parked the Mercedes, purple dusklight soaked the Central West End. The street with Mark Sevcik’s walk-up was stripped of people for the moment, and Shaw’s footsteps ran ahead of him, magnifying the emptiness until it felt like this block went on for a mile.

But that sense of emptiness only registered on the edge of Shaw’s consciousness. His attention was turned inward, dialed in on an interplay of sensory details and memory that Shaw had only experienced once before. Shaw saw the horizon, where a band of purple swelled and dropped like the pulse on a heart monitor, and he thought of the innermost rim of Matty’s eyes, amethyst crags almost breaking the ring of the iris. Shaw felt the April air, cool and humid, feather the side of his neck, and he thought of the final impression of Matty’s fingers before he pulled his hand away. The door to the Kaldi’s coffee shop opened, and the smell of roasting coffee and cinnamon swirled out on the heels of a well-dressed blonde with a Yorkie under her arm, and Shaw thought about the way coffee had tasted on Matty’s breath that morning, about how much blonder Matty’s hair was than the woman’s, about whether or not Matty liked dogs. The whole world had become an index for Matty Fennmore, the way it had, eight years ago, been an index for North.

North was waiting inside the lobby, and although he’d ditched the UPS hat, he still wore the brown shirt and shorts. Very short shorts. Shorts that showed muscled thighs and calves with thick, blond hair. Sexy UPS guy had been, for Shaw, the object of too many fantasies. Especially when North did his Southie accent. Especially when North tugged open the top of the shirt to expose two inches of chest, a few scant blond hairs shining like sunlight. Except that this time, Shaw found himself wondering not what it might be like to work his fingers under the buttons, to feel the cotton unstick from North’s sweaty chest, but instead what Matty might look like in the uniform.

“What are you smiling about?” North asked as he held the door open for Shaw.

“Your fly’s down.”

North’s hand dipped reflexively.

“Made you look.”

“I didn’t look.”

“You checked.”

“But I didn’t look.”

Shaw took the stairs two at a time, and North thundered after him in those huge Red Wings. When they got to Mark’s apartment at the back of the building, police tape crossed the doorway in an X, and the door was locked.

“Guess your boyfriend didn’t want us poking around in there.” North rattled the handle and shoved. The door slipped from the broken jamb and swung open. “But if he really wanted to be sure, he should have set the deadbolt.”

Shaw slid between the crossed lines of tape. “Do you think you can get through here without breaking the barrier?”

North glared at him.

“It’s those big, macho boots, isn’t it? They’re too heavy, aren’t they?”