Somehow, they climbed back over the fence. Somehow, they got back to Hog Hollow Hocks, where nothing had changed: the thrum of neon lights, the pulse of the music, the explosions of laughter and voices when the door swung open. North got Shaw settled on the curb, head between his knees as he took deep breaths, and North let his hand run down Shaw’s neck, down his spine, bumping over each vertebrae, and then he stepped inside and found the manager.

She was a quiet woman with a ponytail a little too high on her head, giving her whole frame an off-balance, toppling momentum that North found unsettling.

“I need to look at your security footage from last night. The parking lot cameras.”

“I can’t—”

“It’s about a murder.”

“I’m sorry. Are you with the police?”

“No. Five hundred dollars.”

Her head wobbled. That ponytail was throwing everything off kilter.

“A thousand dollars.”

“Do I have to call the police?”

“No. I’ll call them as soon as I look at this.”

And that was how North found himself in the cramped back office, his knees clanging against the filing cabinets that had been wedged under the desk, while the manager slid a DVD into the player and fumbled with the remote.

“I’ll do it,” North said.

The screen was split into four feeds, and only one of them showed Hog Hollow Hocks’ parking lot: a wide-angle view from above the front door, a cone of asphalt and then the dividing strip of grass before it reached a streetlight and the road. North started at six o’clock and fast-forwarded.

And then he stopped the video. Paused it. Studied the frame tagged 11:37pm.

The streetlight backlit the figure, making it hard to see the face. In fact, she stood far enough back that the camera only provided an outline. But the important details were there: the long blond wig, the sequined dress visible under a trench coat, the heels. The shape of the body was the same. Even the nails, curved so that they were visible against the light, were the same two-inch monstrosities. It seemed impossibly stupid that she would show up like that, so easily identifiable, until North saw the genius behind it. Drag was an illusion, and all Regina Rex had to say was that it could have been anyone wearing that wig. It was the perfect disguise because it wasn’t a disguise at all.

North dialed 911 and reported the body, and as the operator yammered in his ear, he played the video forward and watched as Regina Rex intercepted Mark in the parking lot, as she drew something from her purse—the silhouette of a gun winged briefly in front of the light—and then marched Mark off camera. Toward the gravel road. Toward his death.

Chapter 25

It’s not enough that you’re at every fucking spot that’s important to this case,” Barr was shouting inside the cramped manager’s office. The bushy dark hair, the bushy dark brows, the bushy little sliver of goatee were all quivering as though Barr were standing in a draft. He kept moving forward, trying to get a position where he could intimidate North, but the office was too small and the desk was in the way. North banged his knees against the hidden filing cabinets under the desk and decided he should be grateful.