Childhood in Avery’s railyard hometown had been a crash course in Boys’ Club politics. For years, it had only been her, Sam, and their dad in the house. Jimmy Costello liked to lean on his horn in traffic, point at a woman on the corner, and say to his kids in the backseat, “Don’t worry, she’s your mother.” He said the same thing when he found a [i]Playboy[/i] Sam had wedged between the toilet tank and the wall. “Come on, Sammy, why do you have to jack it to your own ma?” Everyone was their mother. The news anchor, Avery’s third grade teacher, Jimmy’s favorite bartender. Once, Jimmy was arrested on the front lawn, and the two kids rolled their eyes while he “let” the female cop cuff him. “I’m only doing it,” he slurred, drunk, “because she helped me make the both of you.” He stayed a few extra days in a holding cell for that one.

In high school, she was “Sam’s little sister,” but that was a double-edged sword. Her brother’s friends were a pack of wild dogs that roved the streets with baseball bats, spray paint, and liquor bottles stolen from a rotating selection of family cabinets. They taught her how to drink, skip class, and sell Xanax prescriptions to rich people in Bunker Hill. [i]You clean up okay, so they’ll trust you because you’re white.[/i] When she wanted to try out for the school soccer team, Jack Bilson laughed. “Have fun with the dykes.” Bilson probably gave her the most shit, but he also had her back the hardest. As teenagers do, some started a rumor that Sam’s friends only tolerated Avery because she gave them all blowjobs -- Bilson found that guy that started it and slashed his car tires. “I told him that if he started shit again, that I’d stuff his body inside the next tire, set it on fire, and leave it on his mother’s porch. Fucking bitch.”

She found it difficult to completely divorce herself from her hometown attitude. After college, she dated a nice guy who went to therapy and had a gay, polyamorous sister -- he acted like it gave him street cred for being a paragon of thoughtfulness. Avery was attracted to him at first because he was the opposite of what she was used to. Reluctantly, she accepted that she found his sensitivity grating. He asked her one night what she wanted in bed. “I want you to shut up,” she muttered, “and fuck me.” The relationship was doomed after that. She got drunk and called him a bitch, and he called her a hopeless charity case that only got into Northeastern because of Title IX. [i]Yeah,[/i] she told Sam later that night on the phone, [i]the nice ones are so much worse.[/i]

So when Thomas Duke, resident charmer of the ABI, said some sly comment about women and football, she saw a chessboard unfold. She bit back, sacrificing a pawn, but it was expected. His harmless Midwestern douchery was an empty shell compared to the minefield of bro-dude bullshit she’d waded through growing up. Avery was from that minefield, and as far as she was concerned, you don’t forget where you came from.

So far, Duke was harmless. It didn’t hurt that he was conventionally attractive, but “conventional” wasn’t really her bag. While maybe she thought he was a little too Wonderbread for her, a stranger would probably put her on the same shelf. Her wardrobe was half J. Crew and half free t-shirts from college. Average height, brown hair, good posture. Sam liked to give her shit for her blue eyes and say they were “from Mom,” but neither of them knew who that was. A running scholarship got her out, and she tried to keep up with it. Her body was the result of midnight circuits around her neighborhood -- something to get her mind to rest at night. Otherwise, she stood like a cop. It was impossible not to, and it was a dead giveaway.

She stuck a hand in one pocket while she flipped through photos, suppressing the urge to look away. Her other hand went to her necklace, something Bilson had given to her before he went overseas and gotten himself killed like a fucking idiot. McCann’s claim that he was sending them to the Fox Islands because of their quibbling rendered false to her -- maybe this was their chance. Sink or swim. Fuck it up, and their future was probably desk work. Sixteen unsolved murders was a big deal. If they couldn’t handle it, the Feds were the next step. Giving up her first big case because she couldn’t cut it wasn’t on her agenda.

The amount of disappearances was what stuck with Avery. It was eerie. Just...odd. Her eyes moved from the photos when she felt both McCann and Duke looking at her. “No questions,” she said. She nodded at Duke. “Guess we’re crashing here tonight, huh? Grab your sleeping bag.” They had two days to come up with a game plan before they showed up on someone else’s turf, asking their big city questions. The sleeping part was only half a joke. They likely wouldn’t have time for any rest of any sort before they left.

McCann gave them the room, and the balance in the air shifted somewhat. 

“I’m sorry. About yesterday.” Avery rolled up the sleeves of her white collared shirt and looked Duke in the eye, to make up for how flat her apology sounded. She blinked, embarrassed by what she had to say next, and turned her back to him. She put her hands on her hips and looked down at the table, knowing that it would be worse to fake it than to pony up. “Any advice on how to start? This is my first big case.”

[i]Great. Cool. Here we go.[/I]