*
Before I was actually free to go anywhere, I had a number of practical concerns to deal with: I had no shoes, no coat, and no car. I walked stiffly to the lobby in my socks, freezing in place when I saw the crowd outside the police station, a gaggle of reporters with television cameras. Homza wasn’t kidding about the media circus. One surly uniform was losing a battle to keep them all away from the door. And just inside the lobby, Jake Lassiter was hurriedly removing picture frames from the wall.
The ones with Jack Derrow smiling behind his groups of students.
Lassiter spotted me and almost didn’t stop what he was doing, but then he did. We looked at each other for a long moment. He’d aged five years since I saw him two days earlier. Learning you’d harbored a killer for more than twenty years probably did that to a person. I wondered how much longer he’d even have a job. He looked down at the picture he was holding, and then pitched it into the trash.
“You might want to go out the back,” he said, clearing his throat.
“Yeah,” I said.
I waited for a second, in case he wanted to say anything else. He didn’t. So I kept walking. Then he cleared his throat again. “Ask Dee in the dispatch office to show you the lost and found,” he said. “I’m sure there’s a pair of shoes in there.”
I turned back to him, but he didn’t look at me again. Maybe offering me a pair of stranger’s shoes was his version of an apology. I decided to assume that it was. Besides, in that moment, I needed shoes more than I needed anybody’s I’m sorry. He threw two more photos away and I left him to it. I’d spent more than twenty-four hours in this terrible building in the last week. After I got a hoodie and a pair of canvas sneakers from the lost and found, I started looking for the back door of the police station.
Then I heard my name.
“Roxane?”
I turned around at the familiar voice and Tom was there, jogging down the hall toward me. He grabbed my arm, relief flooding his face. I thought maybe no one had ever been happier to see me in my life. “You’re okay,” he said.
“What are you doing here?” I said. I wanted to be mad at him for showing up like this, but I couldn’t. I placed my good hand over his and held on tight.
“I—” he began. He shook his head like he had no idea what to say to me. His tie was loose, his hair sticking up from running a hand through it one too many times. “I had to meet this badass detective who closed Frank’s case.”
My face felt weird, but I tried to give him a smile. “That’s right, I did,” I said. Somehow, in all of the excitement, I had forgotten that part. Mallory Evans. My father’s case.
“Your phone is off,” Tom said, “and we kept getting conflicting information on what had happened, and I needed to know. For me. I needed to know if you were okay.”
“We?” I said.
“I probably speak for much of the city with that we,” he said, “but I meant my squad. All of Crimes Against Persons, actually. I told you, cops are gossipy as fuck.”
“Really,” I said.
“Like a bunch of sorority sisters,” Tom said. He grinned at me, but there was something nervous about it. “So you’re a little banged up,” he said, glancing down at my bandaged hand.
I nodded. It didn’t hurt, or not yet, anyway. But it would, once the adrenaline wore off. “Indeed, and someday soon, we can get together for a drink and I’ll tell you all about it.”
He took a deep breath. “But today is not that day,” he said.
“Today is not that day.” I squeezed his hand and then let go. “I just, I don’t know, Tom, I can’t. I can’t talk about it any more right now.”
“Hey, of course, of course.”
We watched each other for a few beats. I could no longer even remember exactly why I thought I was so mad at him.
“So,” I said. “I could use a ride back to the car. Again.”
He laughed, and the sound put me a little more at ease. “Do you want to ride in the backseat?” he said. “And I can wear a little chauffeur hat?”
“As much as I would love that,” I said, “I’ll just settle for the ride today.”
“You got it,” he said. He set a hand lightly between my shoulder blades and steered me down the hall. “I figure you’d rather skip the press junket.”
“It’s like you know me or something.”
Once we got in the car, I told him where to go, and then we rode in silence for a while. But it was a better silence than the one we endured on Wednesday. I closed my eyes against the bright morning sun, even though I couldn’t sleep. I wondered if I would ever be able to sleep again.
“Listen,” Tom said as he turned onto Derrow’s street. It was still mostly blocked off by cop cars, but not as many as earlier. “About the other day.”
I shook my head. “Tom, it’s okay,” I said. “That was all me. Really. I’m sorry. Let’s just forget it.”
“No, I don’t want to,” he said, “I need to say this.”
He parked the car and turned to me. I thought about just getting out and walking away. But I didn’t. I assumed I had already made it through the hardest part of my day.
“I know you and Frank didn’t have the easiest relationship,” he said next, catching me off guard. “I know you think he didn’t respect you, that he was always trying to undermine you. I know that. But Roxane, I spent ten-plus hours a day with the guy for almost ten years, and I think I knew him better as a person than you did.”
My chest was starting to ache. “Please don’t,” I whispered.
But he did. “He was my best friend,” he said. “So I know what I’m talking about when I tell you that when he asked me to promise to look out for you, he didn’t mean because you couldn’t look out for yourself. He meant it because he loved you.” His warm brown eyes were bright, and he blinked hard. “And I promised, because I loved him. And I do take that promise seriously.”
I said, “It’s fine.” But I didn’t know what was fine or who I was telling.
“But the other day,” Tom said, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I didn’t handle it well, what I said. But I didn’t know how else to tell you.”
“How to tell me what. What else is there?” I said.
His jaw bunched and his eyes filled up and I felt my sinuses getting tight too. I pressed a hand over my mouth.
“How important you are, Roxane,” he said. “To me. That there’s a big space in my world for you no matter what. You’ve been very clear that it was just sex, and maybe that’s true. But that’s not all you are. You were there when no one knew how to be there.”