Chapter Ten
TEN
Finn used to tease Autumn about how often she relied on tarot to help her make sense of the world. Problem with a boyfriend? Pull a card. Unsure of what class to take? Pull a card. Can’t decide whether to eat ramen or order sushi? You guessed it, pull a card.
She could spend hours hunched over a spread, looking for shared traits, examining how one card might influence another.
Finn has no patience for that. He likes clear systems with right and wrong answers.
It’s one of the reasons he loves the library.
As a kid, he was fascinated by the letters and numbers on the little white labels that graced the spine of every book in his small town’s library.
Now, as an adult, he often wishes people came with such clear identifiers.
Little buttons that tell him who is an introvert, who is prone to political rants, and who he should never under any circumstances ask about their weekend.
Sometimes he imagines his own would say simply: FINN. HE/HIM. PLEASE DON’T ASK QUESTIONS.
Right now he could use one of those labels.
He can feel the eyes of the little girl with wild red curls boring into his back as he plucks a Percy Jackson book from the shelf to put on hold.
She’s been following him from a safe distance for the past twenty minutes as he pulls books.
The few times he’s turned to look at her with a friendly smile, she scoots.
But Finn’s radar tells him she wants help with a book.
Her nanny is of no help. The woman sits on a child-sized chair in the corner of the room, earbuds in, hunched over a phone, ignoring her charge.
Acknowledging the girl face-to-face hasn’t worked yet, so Finn tries a different tactic. “So, Percy Jackson fan?” he asks without looking directly at her. He lets the copy of The Chalice of the Gods drop into her sight line.
“Not really.” Hers is a squeaky little voice, the kind that could get lost if you weren’t listening for it. “I like magic. But I don’t like scary.”
“Hmm.” Finn runs his fingers along the spines of the books as he moves away from the Rs. “What about two friends who discover a pair of magic boots a witch left behind?”
“Maybe.”
He finds What the Witch Left and dangles it by his side, again without turning his head. In his opinion, it’s a classic. Even though it was published in the early 1970s, the story is a timeless one of friendship and both the freedom and the limits of magic. After a few seconds, the book is gone.
He feels like doing a little jig. There is no better feeling than putting the right book into a reader’s hand, especially a kid’s.
Moments like this dispel the faint hum of self-consciousness that follows him into public spaces.
Kids don’t care if your voice doesn’t match your jawline.
Mission accomplished, he moves on, pushing his cart of books that need to go on the reserved shelf toward the front of the library, when Howie Wong appears in his path, eyes wide behind his thick black glasses.
“Finn, there’s a gentleman at the front who says he’s here to see you.
” Howie has been at the library for twenty years, knows everything and everyone, and considers anything that happens in the small building to be his business.
If the library staff are like an eccentric little family, Howie is the nosy but respected elder.
“He looks a little, how shall I put this?” Howie leans forward and whispers, a burst of stale coffee breath hitting Finn full in the face, “Menacing.”
“Does he have one really thick eyebrow that runs across his forehead like a caterpillar?”
Howie jerks his head back, astonished. “Yes, how did you know?”
“Mind if I take ten minutes?”
“Not at all. Do you want me to come with you? For moral support, that is.”
“I think I can handle it. Thanks, Howie.”
“I’m right here if you need me.”
Finn parks the cart against the wall and heads to the front desk, where sure enough he sees the familiar hulking figure of Detective Aziz standing in front of the LIbrARIAN’S CHOICE display.
He’s holding the back cover of The Viscount Who Loved Me inches from his face, his glasses pushed up on his forehead.
Finn tries to keep his breathing steady.
Just because the detective is here doesn’t mean there’s any news about Autumn’s case.
In the past year, Aziz has called to update him and let him know that he is still looking into her murder, but he’s never come by.
“Big Bridgerton fan?”
Aziz turns, looking flustered. “Wife is. Not me.” He slips his glasses back into place and quickly reshelves the book. “You have a minute?” Without waiting for an answer, he walks out the front door.
Finn follows him outside, where they sit down as far apart from each other as possible on the wooden bench near the door.
Aziz sits with his legs spread wide, and instinctively Finn mimics his body language.
It’s a habit he’s had his whole life. One of his first memories is of standing next to his dad at the bathroom sink while he shaved.
Finn would wrap a towel around his waist just like his dad did, but instead of a razor like the one his dad used, he’d tape a Lego block to a pen and scrape away the foam on his face.
“How are you doing, Finn? We’re coming up on a year soon.” Aziz looks even more tired than usual, the heavy bags under his eyes more pronounced than the last time Finn saw him. But he might just be getting older.
“I know. I’m all right. Is there anything new?”
“I promised I would reach out to you if we got anything, right?”
Finn nods.
“Well, you know that we collected some blood from the crime scene. From that dresser.”
Finn holds his breath. This is it. The big break he’s been waiting for. He knows all about how whoever killed Autumn sliced their hand on a crack in the corner of a mirrored dresser. They must have been rushing to open all the drawers when they cut their hand, leaving a trace amount of blood.
“Were you able to get a DNA profile off it?” he asks, barely able to get the words out.
“Yup.”
Finn exhales loudly and leans back. This is something. The first new development that he is aware of.
“That’s good news,” Aziz says. “We weren’t sure there was enough blood to get a profile. It was only a few drops. But we did. And we ran it against the profile in our databases. Nothing yet.”
“But you must know something.”
Detective Aziz frowns. “You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Fair enough.”
“But we’ve uploaded the profile to open-access genealogy databases in the hopes of finding first- and second-degree relatives. You probably saw in Virginia a few months ago, they solved a cold case that way. There’s real potential there.”
“That’s great. I mean, it’s the first real new information we’ve had in a long time.”
“I wanted you to know. I promised to keep you updated and that’s why I came.”
“Would it help if you had the DNA of people in this neighborhood, to compare it to?”
Aziz fixes him with dark, hooded eyes. Finn recognizes this as his intimidating stare, and it would be if Finn didn’t know a little about Aziz.
That he had a tender heart he tried hard to hide.
That he was devoted to his three daughters and kept a picture of Autumn pinned to his corkboard at work to remind him her case was still active.
That he stayed in touch with Finn even though he didn’t have to.
“Don’t even think about it. I’m serious.
I appreciate that you want to get justice for your friend.
But do not go around committing felonies, which taking someone’s DNA and testing it without their consent is.
Let us do our job.” He juts his chin up.
“You’ve stopped that dog-walking stuff, right? You said you would stop.”
Finn made the mistake, months ago, of telling Aziz that he’d done some snooping while dog-walking.
“Of course I stopped.” He can’t meet the detective’s eyes when he tells this lie, so he stares at the ground. “And I wouldn’t collect people’s DNA without their knowledge. But people throw things away. Straws, bottles, tissues. All kinds of things have DNA on them.”
Aziz curses under his breath. “Don’t make me regret telling you about this. We’ll catch whoever did this. Criminals screw up, that’s what they do.”
Finn knows the detective thinks that Autumn was killed in a robbery gone wrong.
“It wasn’t a burglary. It’s one of the neighbors.” That gut instinct is a certainty honed by years of reading rooms for safety. It means he can spot what others miss.
Aziz makes an expression that’s halfway between a smile and a grimace. “Have you thought about moving out of the neighborhood, Finn? Moving on with your life? Is this what your friend would want for you?”
Finn shrugs and looks across the parking lot at the thick stand of trees that separates the lot from the local middle school.
From far away he can hear the shouts of kids playing, the occasional whistle.
The familiar sounds of weekend soccer matches.
The message from the universe is loud and clear.
Everyone is living their lives, moving forward.
He’s stuck, unable to get past Autumn’s death.
And the answer is a resounding no, she would not want this for him.
“Let’s say you’re right,” Aziz says, “just for shits and giggles, that it is one of the neighbors. Why do you want to live with these people? You’re young.
You have your whole life ahead of you. Move on, Finn.
” Aziz stands up and shoves his hand deep into his pocket, and in doing so, reveals his holstered gun.
Finn stares at the gun, which reminds him that Aziz is the detective, not him.
He has the badge, the gun, the temperament, and the training.
It’s just so hard to let go.
“Take it easy, Finn.” Aziz nods at him before getting into the unmarked sedan parked in front of the bench. “I’ll be in touch if anything else develops. But think about what I said. Think about leaving this neighborhood.”
Finn scrunches his face up as if he is already deep in thought.
As if he will take this under serious consideration.
But the detective’s news about the DNA has the opposite effect on him.
He’s already brainstorming ways he can use this new knowledge to help catch Autumn’s killer.
The detective may be a pro, but Finn has something going for him that Aziz doesn’t.
He’s an insider here. Just another unassuming Eastbrook neighbor.