I ducked my chin, burning shame making me want to squirm. His story had a familiar cadence. How many times had I used alcohol as a Band-Aid to get through tough situations?
“I’m four years and almost three months sober,” Doyle continued. “I had my last drink on December twenty-eighth at a Christmas party at my sister’s house. My brother-in-law called me out on my drinkingand pissed me off. We fought. I left and drove home completely hammered. Spun out on a patch of ice and hit a pole. Totaled my car. You’re probably asking yourself how I still have a job, and it’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it someday, but not today.
“The point is, I hit rock bottom. My family threatened to cut me out of their lives. My career was hanging by a thread. I knew I couldn’t go on like that. I made a choice, and I won’t lie to you, Krause. It wasn’t easy to crawl out of that bottle, but I did it.”
He paused as the waitress delivered our meals. When she headed off to help other customers, neither of us moved to eat. Heat rose to my cheeks, and if they glowed as much as they burned, Doyle would read my shame as easily as a blind man read braille. Maybe he expected me to talk and share, but I’d never been good at expressing myself with words.
After a beat, he continued, digging into his food while he talked about his recovery. Our stories weren’t the same, but separate currents had picked us up and dumped us in the same cesspool. At its core, we battled the same issues. We drank to escape uncomfortable emotions. We used it as a means of numbing the pain and dulling the stresses of life.
I listened to Doyle talk, struck by how much I could relate.
When he spoke about sobriety, about his husband and daughter, and all the positive things that had once seemed forever out of reach, I thought of Tallus and the life I might be able to offer him if I dedicated myself to getting better.
I didn’t eat much. My stomach was too knotted, but when Doyle asked if I was ready to tackle a meeting, I said yes without hesitation.
10
Tallus
The workday was nearly over when I got a text response from Diem. I’d waited all day to hear if he survived his lunch and AA meeting. My endless texts had gone unanswered. Knowing my boyfriend needed more time than most to process things, his silence didn’t surprise me.
At the chime of a text notification, I scrambled to unlock my device, abandoning the sixty-year-old homicide case I’d dug out of a moldy box that afternoon. My day had been absurdly busy, considering I was usually bored during shifts.
A detective in sex crimes had emailed an extensive list of files he required for a case. The date range covered forty years. Some of the retired cases were older than me. It meant tramping around the dirtiest, darkest part of the crypts to locate them among boxes I had yet to log into our system. It was during the excursion that I’d found the interesting homicide case. I had to battle cobwebs and insect carcasses to retrieve it, but so far it had been worthwhile.
I pulled up Diem’s text, anxious to hear about his day, but of course, Diem was King of Diversion when he didn’t want to talk about something, so I wasn’t surprised that he ignored the multitude of concerning texts about his meeting with Aslan and initiated a new conversation.
Can you see if Ruiz has a VHS to digital converter? RCA to USB. If not, can you stop at an electronics store when you’re done with work and buy one?
I stared at the message for a beat, trying to decipher what it meant. Diem was a minimalist when it came to texting and conversation in general. I often required a prybar or intuitive thinking to figure out the whys and what-the-fucks of his questions when he failed to elaborate.
So far as I understood, Diem had gone to Evergreen that morning to view surveillance. VHS? As in those blocky tapes like Heath kept in a box in the garage? Was he serious? That was still a thing?
I shot off a response.I’m not even going to pretend to understand what those letters mean, but I can see if Costa is still around.
It earned me a,Meet me at Evergreen.
No further texts came through. Typical Diem. I debated sending a sassy,You’re welcome, orYou owe me, but decided against it. He was likely stressed after his first AA meeting and hanging out with Aslan and would fail to read the teasing tone.
I tucked my phone away instead and returned to the ancient case.
When my shift ended at five thirty, I wandered to the gloomy basement of the headquarters building. If possible, the IT department was creepier than the crypt of a back room where I reigned, King of Mold, Ruler of Deceased Files of Times Gone By.
Transitioning the records department into the digital age of the 2020s had proven to be one of those instances where I bit off more than I could chew. Stupid fucking initiative. I’d been at it for two years,uploading files to the new computer program when I had free time, but I’d barely made a dent in the backlog.
My cousin, Lord of the Dragon’s Den, Decipherer of Code, was still hard at work when I knocked on his open door.
Costa glanced over his shoulder. “Hey, squirt.” Turning back to his work, he added, “What’s up?”
I glowered at the back of his head. “Squirt?That’s new. I don’t like it.”
“Note to self. Use it more.”
“Jerk.”
“Did you need something?”
“Yes. That is exactly what I need. Something.”