The first officers on the scene were beat cops in uniform. None of them gave me more than a glance as they secured the area. In accordance with protocol, their sweep required them to barge into every room in the house with no regard for the innocent children they might startle. Virginia squawked at the pair who burst into Tommy’s room, but Tommy didn’t have the indignation reflex down yet. He defaulted to loud, blubbery crying that rose and fell like an ambulance siren.

When they had thrown around enough chairs and overturned enough tables to be sure there were no more thugs lurking in the corners or behind the spice rack, their backup had yet to arrive. One brave officer started in on me. He wasn’t much interested in my version of events, but he was adamant I needed to turn my gun over for evidence.

I told him that wouldn’t be necessary. At no point was I anything but forthright about it being the gun that put the thug down. The police department already had all the information they needed for it, from the serial number to ballistic characteristics, from when I worked for them.

They tried to bully me, but gave up after the third refusal, grumbling that I could be someone else’s problem. I thought I might finally get somewhere when a new flashing blue light trundled down the street, but the detectives who stepped out of the car disabused me of that notion. I recognized the way Detective Henry opened his door and adjusted his belt before I even saw his smashed-in face.

Henry sneered at me as he came through the door, but after a quick debrief with the ornery lynx who had tried pushing me around, he went upstairs to talk to Virginia. That left Boggs to deal with me.

“All right. Let’s get this over with.” He gestured into the living room so we could stand out of the main thoroughfare. We had a front-row seat of the forensics unit crawling over the body, smearing the blood puddle as their effete paper booties slipped on the gruesomely lubricated tiles.

Boggs shared Henry’s disdain for me, but it wasn’t personal. A general distaste for “that damned O’Howell” had proliferated as generational knowledge through the police department. Sometime in the course of every recruit’s training, they found their mentor saying something like, “You remember Detective O’Howell, Delinquency Dog? Yeah, from TV. He used to work here, might’ve had that same locker. What was he like? Oh, he was a real piece of shit, let me tell you.”

The sentiment wasn’t novel; they’d all taken to giving me the stink eye even before my messy divorce from the department. It was better that than to be the kind of person they worshiped, but it made interactions like this one tense.

Boggs flipped open his notebook, took a pen out, and held it above the paper. I knew the drill; I could talk, and he’d do the bare minimum by writing down the highlights. He assumed the police already knew everything I did. His eyes glassed over when I started the story with how I came to know Virginia, but he perked up when I mentioned Douglas Calhoun’s involvement in Ethan’s agricultural side business.

He wrote with more urgency as I unfurled the whole tale, from the black Cadillac to the fire at Club Callout. As much as I wanted to be the one to solve the case, my ego wasn’t so puffed-up that I’d risk the kid not getting found just to stoke it. If what I’d uncovered already helped bring Ethan home in the end, that was enough for me. The only key detail I left out was that the black Cadillac I’d seen cruising around was, at that moment, parked one block over. They’d find it eventually, but I wanted to check it out before they messed everything up.

I also downplayed my suspicions about Virginia’s involvement. I knew she was still hiding something, but she had done well to convince me she wasn’t behind Ethan’s disappearance. When things settled down, I’d get to the bottom of that rabbit hole. As with Guy’s car, I didn’t want the police to go scrounging around inside Virginia’s head before I had my chance.

Boggs put his pen away when I started explaining the cold, hard facts about what had happened in the house. It didn’t take a mastermind to figure out how things had gone down. I kicked in the door, found the man threatening Virginia, and put him down.

“This Guy character… You know why he was here? What’d he want from Virginia?”

“No clue. Virginia was about to tell me before you busted in and ruined the whole thing. Maybe when you find out, you could let me know.”

“Wouldn’t count on it, Mr. O’Howell. Don’t usually give details of active investigations out to civilians. Especially not ones as chummy with the press as you seem to be with this Miss…” He flipped back in his notepad and tapped the page. “Miss Furone.”

“Come on, Boggs. You know I’m not going to blab. All I want is for Ethan to get home safe. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

Boggs grunted and thrust out his jaw so his tusks stood out. “Ha. I thought you were supposed to be all about sticking to the books. Looks like that was for show, huh?”

“If you can’t see the difference between looking the other way when officers are caught stealing from victims and bending the rules to save lives, you’re a goddamn psychopath.”

Boggs put his hands up as if he were under arrest. “Woah, there. Looks like I touched a nerve.”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I didn’t mind being mocked—I even expected it—but Bogg’s attitude got under my skin. “We’ve got a dead body and a missing kid on our hands, you son of a bitch. Now isn’t the time to be joking around.”

I raised my voice louder than I had planned and my shirt got tight in the back where my hair stood up. The officers in the kitchen stopped prodding the body, opening cabinets, and scribbling in notepads to look at me. Boggs’s smile broadened when he saw my hands balled into fists. He was younger and bigger and in better shape than me, but if I wasn’t sure I’d end up in jail for it, I would have tried to wipe the grin off his face. Someone had to do something to keep pieces of shit like him in line, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Henry.

“Are we done here?”

“Sure,” Bogg’s said. “I’d appreciate it if you got the hell out.”

I pushed through a clot of officers to get outside. My blood ran too hot for me to feel the chill as I stomped across the yard.

Faces peeped over windowsills and through pushed-back curtains on all sides. The neighbor’s eyes didn’t concern me as much as the ones boring into my back from inside Virginia’s house. I wanted some privacy when I checked out Guy’s car, so I didn’t head straight for it. I took a right instead and circled the block.

The walk calmed me down, but when I got to the street I had parked on, I saw a pair of fireflies floating toward the Cadillac. The police had found Guy’s ride and sent some rookies out to start the search while the forensics team took care of the time-sensitive matters inside the house.

“I’m just shocked she wasn’t calling wolf this time,” one of the officers said as he approached the Cadillac. They hadn’t spotted me yet, so I took cover behind a fence to eavesdrop. “That bitch is over the top. A real drama queen.”

The other officer returned a forced chuckle. I didn’t see any sign of amusement in the hippo’s eyes.

“Now that I met her, it isn’t hard to see why someone might want to smack her around a bit. Maybe it’s a good thing she didn’t squeal last time. We would have had to drag an innocent man in for a totally justified attitude adjustment.”

Officer Spangler got to the car first and shined his light through the window. He shifted from side to side, careful not to engage with the cackling jackal he’d been paired with.

“It’s a real drag the way things are heading in this country. Used to be a man didn’t even need a reason. He could just haul off and—”

“Did someone give you the key?” Officer Spangler asked.

The jackal paused with his mouth open and his flat hand raised by his ear, winding up to mime a backhanded slap. “The key?”

Spangler tried the handle, demonstrating its locked nature.

“Oh. I thought you—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll go back and get it. No, that’s all right, you stay here and have a look around.”

Spangler had joined the force with good intentions, and he had made the crucial error of expecting his fellow officers to share his morality. He reminded me of myself at his age, but it seemed he had learned not to stand out a lot quicker than I had. It was only a matter of time before he either burned out, got ousted, or became just like them.

The jackal hummed to himself and kicked the tires. I snuck toward him while he lit a cigarette and swept the pavement under the car with the beam of his flashlight.

“This time?” I growled from a foot behind him.

The jackal’s cigarette fell out of his mouth when he startled and turned around. He hesitated a second before remembering his gun, giving me plenty of time before he reached for it. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and clamped my right around his throat. My untrimmed nails bit into the soft flesh of his neck and his esophagus pushed out against my palm as he tried to shout.

I stared him down until his eyes stopped rattling inside his head. My hand relaxed enough for him to swallow and squeeze a word out. “Howl.”

I eased off but kept my hand on his shoulder.

“What the fuck is this all about? You can’t just—”

“This time?” I repeated. He stopped panting, but rubbed his throat as he raised an eyebrow at me. “You said she didn’t cry wolf this time. What happened last time?”

The jackal didn’t want to talk, so I twitched toward him to loosen his tongue. “Shit, someone called us out a month ago when they heard shouting. Found Virginia home alone with a black eye.”

“You think it was Guy?” The name didn’t register in the jackal’s mind. “That wildebeest taking a nap on the linoleum in Virginia’s kitchen.”

“I don’t know. She said it wasn’t Peter, but we didn’t believe her. They’d just split, and we figured he got mad and tried to get back at her. When we got the call, we thought it was him again. Pissed off about what she let happen to Ethan.”

“It couldn’t be Peter. He’s out of town.”

The jackal smiled and shook his head. “He’s back. Came to the station to give his statement, but wouldn’t you know it? He doesn’t know anything. His alibi’s rock solid.”

“He seem broken up about it at least? Seem like he cares his son’s missing?”

“You ever seen the guy?” The jackal blanked his face, opened his eyes wide and fluttered his eyelids, mimicking the slow loris’s mournful expression. “Man would look depressed swimming in a sea of champagne with a raft made of tits to keep him dry.”

I wanted to be mad—to tell him to take this seriously—but I knew he was right. The police’s heavy-handed interrogation and emotionally stunted interviewers couldn’t see past the most obvious front he wore. If Peter was hiding something, they wouldn’t be able to pick up on it.

“What else can you tell me about Peter?”

The jackal snickered again, and I pushed him back into the Cadillac. “I’m not saying shit. Official police business and all.”

“Damn it, I work for Mrs. Calhoun. Just tell me what I need to know to help her.”

“Ha. Don’t think you’re going to be prowling around much longer. How do you think the judge will feel when they hear you assaulted a police officer?”

“I assaulted a—?” I saw the tendons standing out on the back of my hand as it crushed the jackal’s shoulder.

A flashlight bounced our way, and I let my hand drop.

The jackal turned his beam on Officer Spangler, who stood stock still, confused by all the attention, then doubly confused when he saw me.

“Detective O’Howell?” the hippo asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Just checking to see if you boys needed any help. Your friend here doesn’t seem to think so.”

The jackal rubbed his shoulder and side-eyed me, then slid his gaze over to Officer Spangler. I could have stuck around and tried to get information out of him, but it wasn’t worth the risk. I was a good enough detective to find Peter on my own.

I got in my car and watched the two officers talk in hushed tones, with Spangler looking over at me between each sentence.

The jackal would be too embarrassed to admit an aging PSA mascot got the jump on him. Even if he did, it would take a while for the lethargic police department to send someone out to round me up. By then, I hoped to have the case handled.