Текст книги "Fair Game "
Автор книги: Josh lanyon
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Chapter Fourteen
Good food, good wine, good company. They had always ranked high on Elliot’s list of life’s pleasures, but he found himself restless and unable to concentrate as he sat in Giacometti’s restaurant after the art exhibition listening to the usual professional gabble about funding and screening and online social networking.
The food was good: from the zuppa toscana soup to the swordfish a la siciliana. The wine, a Sicilian chard, was also excellent. The problem was him. Elliot knew that much. From the minute he’d agreed to look into Terry Baker’s disappearance, his restlessness and dissatisfaction with his new life had steadily escalated. The reentry of Tucker into his life hadn’t helped.
“I believe most of our faculty make the effort to preserve their private lives, but professors really have responsibilities twenty-four-seven.” Charlotte’s voice drifted to him across the table. “We all have to be conscious of that. The university is drafting a social media policy for those of our faculty who choose to engage in online interaction. We have to be conscious all the time of the boundaries between student and staff.”
Was Charlotte directing that comment toward him? Elliot wondered as he met her gaze over the candles and wine glasses and filled plates. Maybe she’d seen him talking to Jim Feder and misread the dynamic? Or maybe she was thinking about Zahra Lyle’s allegations. Not much went on around campus that Charlotte wasn’t aware of. Did she have her suspicions as to which professor Gordie had been involved with? It wouldn’t be too difficult to pin down. There were only about five female professors who were unattached and in the right age bracket.
Assuming Gordie limited himself to a particular age bracket.
Come to think of it, maybe he shouldn’t make any assumptions about that.
“It’s always been a consideration,” Roland responded, “but things were looser in my day. At the same time we didn’t have so many tiger traps. Blogs, Facebooks, Twitters.”
“No,” agreed another older lady professor whose name Elliot had missed. “We seduced our students the old-fashioned way.”
The others laughed, but Elliot could see Charlotte was not amused.
“Are you going to Andrew’s opening next Friday?” Anne asked from next to him, her voice startling Elliot out of his thoughts. He could understand why she was hoping for a change of subject.
“Andrew?”
“Corian.” Anne’s smile was deriding. “You remember Andrew? World famous artist? His office is in the same building as ours.”
“I remember Andrew.”
“You two don’t care much for each other, do you?”
“I never thought much about it.”
She chuckled. “Proof positive. That dismissing tone says it all. But next to your father he’s probably our most famous alumni. Well, not counting Charlotte.”
Charlotte had written two highly respected books on women poets of the Romantic period, but she was not a local celebrity in the way of Roland or Andrew Corian. Elliot said, “I didn’t realize Corian was having another exhibition.”
“I don’t know how you could miss it. The flyers are plastered everywhere.”
He bit back an uncharitable comment. “Are you going?”
“I suppose so. We have to support each other. It makes Charlotte happy.”
Elliot glanced across the table at Charlotte. She was sipping her wine and smiling serenely as her gaze rested on the faces of her staff. She reminded him of a queen benignly observing her obedient courtiers.
* * *
It was not until dinner was over and they were leaving Giacometti’s that Elliot had a chance to speak to his father alone.
“It’s good to see you making the effort to get out and be with people again,” Roland said as they walked to their cars. “I admit I was worried for a while there. You’re a lot like your mother. You both always took things too much to heart.”
“We did?”
But Roland wasn’t being facetious. “The world will break your heart if you let it, son.”
“Dad, I was in law enforcement for how many years? I don’t think I’m any starry-eyed idealist.”
“Of course you are. All cynics are disappointed idealists. The more stars in the eyes, the harder the fall.”
Elliot’s amusement faded. “What was Mom disappointed about?”
“Not in you. Never in you.”
“Was she disappointed in you?”
Roland looked flabbergasted. Slowly, the affection in his face hardened into something else. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Elliot had not meant to have this conversation here and now—he wasn’t sure he had ever meant to have it, would ever have had the nerve for it—but all at once it was on them, and he couldn’t see how to turn back.
He heard himself say, “What’s your relationship with Pauline Baker?”
“What?”
“Are you having an affair with her?”
For one instant Elliot thought his father was—for the first time in his life—going to strike him. He braced for it, mentally as well as physically, but in fact Roland’s unmoving silence was worse.
“An affair? With the wife of one of my best friends?” he said after what seemed like a very long time. “That’s what you think of me, is it?”
“I…No. I don’t know. I have to ask.”
“Why? Why would you have to ask me that? What possible reason could you have for asking me such a thing? Am I one of your suspects? A suspect in what?”
Elliot’s stomach roiled with a sick brew of guilt and shame and stubborn fear. “You’re not answering the question.”
“It’s none of your goddamned business, Elliot. That’s why I’m not answering the question. I don’t know if I’m more horrified that you would ask this question or that you honestly think there’s a need to ask this question.”
Elliot licked his lips. His mouth felt like it had been swabbed with cotton. “When you talk about Pauline, I sense that…you have feelings for her.”
“I’ve known her for twenty years. She’s the wife of my oldest—”
“More than that,” Elliot cut in, and this time Roland stopped trying to talk over him and fell silent.
Neither moved. Neither spoke.
“Go to hell,” Roland said at last, with finality. He walked away. Elliot stood motionless, watching him get in his car, reverse in a tight, neat arc, and speed out of the restaurant parking lot. The angry hornet buzz of the engine was swallowed by the night.
Of the trip back to Goose Island, Elliot remembered little. He could only remember one other argument with his father that had left him feeling this lousy—if “lousy” was the right word for sick at heart—and that was when he had told his parents he had joined the FBI. They could joke about it now, sort of, but at the time Roland had viewed Elliot’s decision as a defection. As a rejection of everything Roland believed in and had fought for. Roland had seen Elliot’s career choice as a betrayal, pure and simple. They had not spoken for six months. In fact, if Elliot’s mother had not died, they still might not be speaking. Despite what Roland thought, in some ways, Elliot was too much like him.
Too restless to wait in his car on the ferry crossing, Elliot got out and walked up and down the barge railings. Why had he pushed the issue? Why had he asked the question at all? He didn’t believe his father was accountable to him, nor did he believe that it was his place to judge if Roland had had an affair.
And he didn’t think—not seriously—that Roland had.
Except…there was nothing like working law enforcement for a few years to give you a jaded view of human nature. No matter how well you thought you knew someone, no one ever entirely knew anyone else. And if Roland had by some chance had an affair with Pauline Baker, how far back did that connection go? Why had Roland been so concerned over Terry Baker’s disappearance?
Elliot stood at the railing on the lower deck and listened to the slap of water, the rumble of the ship engines. Spray struck him in the face. It had a salty taste. His heart felt like lead. He was horrified that he could even consider these things. But what if they were true? What if Roland had an affair with Pauline? What if a child had resulted from that union? What if Tom Baker had discovered that fact?
Elliot shook his head. A little imagination was useful in solving crimes, but this bordered on delusional. And yet…
Somewhere in the black churning night a bell buoy tolled its sad song.
From the first he’d been skeptical of the idea that Terry had committed suicide. He needed to find out more about Tom Baker. Tucker had mentioned a police record. Granted, Elliot’s dad had a police record too, but Roland had advocated peaceful overthrow of the government. Passive resistance and canny handling of the media had been Roland’s idea of how to effect change. Baker, on the other hand, had a temper and Elliot had witnessed firsthand that he was prone to physical violence. Yes, Elliot definitely wanted to get a look at Tom Baker’s rap sheet, but with Tucker and the FBI’s withdrawal from the case, he was going to have to figure another way to obtain that criminal history record.
His uneasy preoccupation persisted as he drove off the ferry and headed home through the deep woods of Goose Island.
The two-story cabin was completely dark as he drove over the crest of the hill. He always left the porch light on, so the bulb must have blown. He parked in the garage and went through to the kitchen.
Maybe Steven was right. It would be nice to have a dog to greet him when he arrived home. The cabin felt cold and too quiet. A glance at the answering machine showed an unblinking red light, and he sighed. Fixing a drink, Elliot carried it into the sunroom where he spent a few minutes fiddling with the Pickett’s Charge diorama. Outside, the tall silhouettes of the pines swayed in the wind that shook the windows in their frames. He could see the long room reflected in the glinting, lamplit panes, see himself sitting hunched in his chair, nursing his drink and scowling at nothing.
Too bad Jim Feder was a student instead of another instructor. Too bad he was a suspect. Elliot would have liked company tonight, and he wasn’t feeling particularly particular. Even so, Charlotte needn’t have any fears on his account. Getting involved with a student wasn’t his style. True, Feder was an adult and he wasn’t Elliot’s student, but witnessing Anne Gold’s misery was a reminder of why mixing academics and sex was such a bad idea.
Not that mixing law enforcement and sex was much better because who was he kidding? There was only one person Elliot wanted tonight.
And by the evidence presented, the feeling was mutual. He let himself remember that astonishing kiss in Tucker’s car. The way Tucker’s face had looked afterward, flushed, his hard mouth pink and swollen from kisses. Elliot’s own face heated thinking about it.
So what was the problem, really? So long as everybody was on the same page? They were both adults. They both knew it was only sex. Everybody needed sex. No shame in admitting that.
He rolled the whisky over his tongue, considering. He even put his glass on the table in preparation of getting up and going to the phone.
The problem was that his newfound acceptance, this hard won calm, was too much like his reconstructed knee joint. It still worked, after a fashion, and it was mostly pain free, but it was not built to withstand prolonged, extreme stress—and nothing defined Tucker Lance like extreme.
Elliot picked up his glass again and finished his drink. He remembered that the front porch light was out, and he went to fetch a screwdriver, flashlight and a work stool from the mud room in the back. He propped the front door, climbed cautiously on the stool and removed the dusty crescent-shaped globe—an old-fashioned moon in a green night cap. He changed the bulb—it had blown, as he’d expected—and refastened the globe into place.
The moon smiled cheesily as yellow light spilled across the oak boards and down the steps to the gravel path. Moths batted against the illuminated globe face. Elliot steadied himself, hand against the rough wall and climbed carefully down. Not so long ago something as simple as scaling a step stool had been absolutely beyond him, so he took a second to rejoice that he not only still had his leg, he could use it.
What was the line from that old Bette Davis movie? Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars. Something like that. He gazed up at the grinning moon over the doorway. Good advice.
The sudden crash and clatter of the trash cans behind the cabin sent his pulse rocketing into overdrive.
“What the—”
He picked up the stool, put it inside the house, locked the door and went through to the unlit mud room, gazing out the windows at the metal trash cans in a straggling line. Once in a while a black bear swam over to the island and disrupted a game or two of golf or ransacked a few trash cans, but that was pretty rare. Elliot had yet to meet the bear that thoughtfully replaced a trash can lid.
He continued to stand on the darkened porch, watching. Nothing moved in the clearing and then, just as he’d nearly convinced himself the wind had rattled the cans, he heard the distinct roll and thump of logs falling from the wood pile around the corner of the cabin. His heart kicked into high alert, his brain working fast, and before he knew it he was opening the floor safe in his downstairs office and pulling out his back-up Glock 27.
The slap of the “baby” Glock’s grip against his palm felt comfortable, natural—like shaking the hand of a dear old friend. He slid the loaded magazine in, chambered a round and headed for the back porch once more.
Easing the door open, Elliot slipped outside and took a few seconds to get his bearings. He listened for his quarry.
The wind sounded like a river rushing through the tops of the pines. It whistled a jaunty tune beneath the lip of one of the trash barrels. A bird house mounted on a post creaked. His back pressed to the wall, Elliot traveled silently along the length of the cabin, stepping soundlessly. He reached the corner, ducked his head around—saw nothing—ducked back.
Behind him, he heard the scrape of a sole on stone. He whipped around, bringing the pistol up into firing stance. A shadowy figure stood on the cement stoop outside the back porch, trying the door handle.
“Move a muscle and I’ll blow your head off,” Elliot announced.
The figure jumped as though already shot. “Fuck. Elliot, don’t sh-shoot!” Steven stuttered. “It’s me.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Elliot lowered the pistol and left the shelter of the wall.
Steven’s arms flopped to his side. “I wasn’t sure you were home.”
“So you sneaked around to the back and tried to break in?”
“I wasn’t trying to break in.”
“What were you doing?”
“Checking the door.”
“For what?”
“If it was open I was going to see if you had any popcorn.”
Elliot stopped dead. “Are you kidding me?” He could make out Steven shaking his head. “I could have shot you.”
“I know.” Steven sounded rattled. “I didn’t think. I was just…hungry.”
“Try buying some groceries. It works for me.”
“I freelance. The paychecks aren’t regular. And sometimes they aren’t much.”
“For Christ’s sake, Steven.” Elliot was still shaken. He wasn’t sure whether that was because he’d nearly shot his neighbor or because for a couple of minutes there he had believed himself in real and present danger. He went up the steps past Steven and pushed open the door. “Come in. Since you’re here.”
“Thanks.” Steven apologized again, “Sorry.”
Elliot shook his head. Steven looked sheepish and scared. “I think I have some of that microwave stuff somewhere,” Elliot said finally.
They tramped into the kitchen. Elliot opened the pantry cupboard, found a box of microwave popcorn and handed it to Steven, who was eyeing him with a funny expression.
“Something wrong?”
“No. You…you look…”
“Tired? Pissed off? I am.”
“You look dangerous,” Steven said bluntly. “Would you really have shot me?”
Elliot met Steven’s wide green eyes gravely. “Just…don’t do that again. For both our sakes.”
Steven nodded. “Got it.” He held the box up. “You want some? I could make it here instead of taking it home.”
That was the cop groupie turned on by the experience of nearly getting wasted. Elliot shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ve had a long day. Another time.”
Steven nodded.
“Did you get the job?” Elliot asked.
“What job?” Steven’s expression changed. “Oh. The online thing. No.”
“Sorry.”
Steven shrugged. “I don’t think I’m the collegiate type.”
Elliot saw Steven to the front door, watched him vanish into the windy darkness and slid the deadbolt behind him. He was unhappy with the whole incident. Steven’s quest for junk food didn’t quite match up with walking up from his place without using a flashlight. Nor did it explain why he was prowling around Elliot’s cabin instead of simply knocking on the door.
He couldn’t help suspecting that Steven had expected Elliot to be dining with his dad and had hoped to find a way to break into the cabin.
Why? Was he that hard up? And if he was, why wouldn’t he say so? He hadn’t seemed to have a problem mooching off Elliot in the past.
He turned off the porch light, turned off the living room light and went to return the Glock to the floor safe. As he spun the dial, his cell phone chirped, even that small sound loud in the silent house. He went to find his phone, eventually hunting it down in the kitchen. He thought—hoped—that it might be Roland.
As he picked the phone up he saw that he had an anonymous text message.
That was odd. Very few people had his cell phone number these days, and even fewer of those people used text messaging.
He clicked on the message.
Elliot, are you enjoying our game? I am.
Chapter Fifteen
“Lance.” Laconic. That was Tucker. From noon till night, he always answered the phone the same way: ready for trouble and not worried at the idea of it.
“It’s me.”
“To what do I owe this honor?”
“I want to run something past you.”
“I knew you didn’t call just to hear my seductive baritone.”
Elliot wished he was as sure, but he let that ride. As succinctly as possible he filled Tucker in on everything he’d learned in the days since the Bureau had withdrawn from the case. Tucker asked a couple of terse questions, but mostly listened in silence.
When Elliot had finished talking, Tucker said, “I’m confused.” There was an edge to his voice Elliot hadn’t heard for a while.
“About?”
“Aren’t you the guy who quit the Bureau because you couldn’t deal with the idea of a desk job? If you couldn’t be out in the field, you didn’t want any part of law enforcement, right? That was the story.”
This was dangerous ground. Elliot clipped out, “What about it?”
“Yet here you are acting like you’re running a one-man murder investigation.”
“I didn’t go looking for this.”
“No? Well, you’re sure as hell not letting it go.”
“One kid is dead and another kid is missing. You think I should let it go?”
“I think you’re a private citizen, Elliot. And that was your choice.”
Elliot refused to take the bait. “I think this message lends credence to the theory that there’s a connection between these two boys.” Granted, he preferred that theory to the idea of his father being involved even incidentally in Terry Baker’s death.
Tucker didn’t say anything for so long, Elliot thought they might have been cut off. He said at last, “I think somebody is yanking your chain.”
“No shit.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody is a killer or a kidnapper. You’re a little on the intense side, Mills, in case you never noticed. Maybe someone is getting a kick out of rattling your cage.”
“Come on, Lance. Only a handful of people know I was even peripherally involved in the Baker case.”
“And those people talked to how many other people? You don’t know. You have no idea.”
“I’m telling you, this is someone who I interviewed. This is a challenge. But more than that, it’s confirmation Gordie Lyle didn’t run away from home to make beautiful art. And Terry Baker didn’t pick up an anvil and walk out into a lake to shoot himself.”
Tucker barely waited for him to complete his sentence before he was rasping, “You want to know what I think? I’ll tell you what I think.” The barely contained anger caught Elliot off guard. “I think you’ve managed to pick up a stalker. I hope I’m wrong. I hope one of your pals in the ivory tower is having some fun with you, but that’s probably not it. You probably have attracted the attention of someone you’d have done better to avoid. So I’m going to give you a piece of advice. Stay the hell out of this case. I’ll give Tacoma PD a call tomorrow and share what you’ve told me, and that needs to be the end of it.”
Elliot gave a disbelieving laugh. “It’s too late for that and we both know it.”
“I don’t know that. Neither do you.”
“‘Elliot, are you enjoying our game?’ He’s challenging me.”
“So what? You don’t pick up the challenge. You don’t play the game. That’s how it ends right where it begins. You don’t respond.”
“I can’t do that.” Elliot couldn’t believe Tucker was even suggesting it. “This is a lead. The best lead we’ve had so far.”
“Tomorrow I’ll contact Anontxt.net and get the IPS of your stranger danger. We’ll have the sonofabitch.”
They were both talking over each other by now, neither listening, and both getting more frustrated and angry. “Never mind that. This might be the Lyle kid’s last chance—”
“And even if it was, this isn’t proof that the two cases are tied together—”
“He could still be alive. Where was Terry Baker for those three weeks before he went into the lake—”
“Hard, physical evidence—”
“Where did he get the gun?”
“And even if it is murder, it’s for the cops not the feds—”
“Where did he get the fucking anvil? We—”
“There is no goddamned we.”
And abruptly neither of them had anything more to say.
The silence was louder than the shouting.
“You need to let it go,” Tucker said at last. His voice sounded compressed with the effort to control it. “Leave it alone. Leave it alone before…”
Elliot waited for him to finish it, but he didn’t. Finally, Elliot said, “Got it. Thanks for your help.”
After he’d walked back to retrieve his drink, he began to seriously analyze that unfinished statement of Tucker’s. For all the anger and unresolved tension between them, Tucker really wasn’t a bad-tempered guy. Maybe he hadn’t been kidding when he said Elliot brought out the worst in him.
Leave it alone. Leave it alone before…
Never mind what Tucker was saying, what wasn’t he saying?
* * *
“TGIF,” Anne Gold muttered in passing when he met her in Starbucks where he’d stopped to get coffee on his way into work.
Elliot nodded grimly. He watched her splashing through the deep puddles in her high-heeled red boots as she tried not to spill her drink on the way to her Jeep Cherokee.
Godawful weather. It suited his mood perfectly.
“Mills,” called the girl behind the counter, and he retrieved his café mocha and went out to his own car.
A night’s rest had not done a lot for his spirits. Every time he remembered his father’s face, he felt guilty. Why had he done that? Why had he pushed? That was another part of his old life he hadn’t liked. Law enforcement hardened you. It made you cynical about people. Even people you loved. The people who deserved your unconditional trust.
Maybe Tucker had a point about his being too intense. Why the hell didn’t he just let this go? Why had he allowed himself to be guilted by Zahra Lyle into trying to find her nephew when the odds were good that the kid was off exploring his inner artist? Why not accept that Terry Baker had tragically shot himself? Why did he have to see some invisible hand working the puppets? Nobody else saw that. Nobody else would even think of looking for that.
Tucker sure didn’t see it.
And, when Elliot arrived at his office and called Tacoma PD, neither did they.
The folks at the Investigation Bureau were polite and they took his information, but they were not about to share their own findings. Why would they? He was no longer with the FBI, which made him merely another annoying busybody with a theory. They would call SAC Montgomery who would reassure them the Bureau had no further interest in their case. They would call President Oppenheimer who would assure them the university was happy with the way they had handled this sensitive matter.
Elliot was well on his way to establishing his reputation as a local crank. And deservedly so. What next? Would he start cutting out newspaper clippings of local crimes and start writing letters to the editor with his theories?
Maybe he should have taken that desk job. Was he honest-to-God that bored with teaching?
He stopped and considered this question carefully.
No. He wasn’t. He did enjoy teaching. He’d lost track of that over the past week. He’d allowed himself to get sucked back into the old obsessive mindset and—admit it—the thrill of the chase.
All that ended here and now. For better or for worse, that life was over. Tucker was right. It was time to accept that all he was doing now was hurting friends and family—and making himself crazy.
Relieved with his decision, Elliot spent the morning sloshing to and from the lecture hall to his office. He talked about revisionist Westerns and feminist spies in the Civil War. He glanced over essays and graded test papers. Kyle had not shown up, and Elliot spared him a few seconds’ concern. Kyle had not been his normal upbeat, energetic self for the last couple of weeks, and it was not like him to fail to show up without leaving word. But maybe it was just as well Kyle had missed today. It gave Elliot more to do and less time to think.
As he’d expected, Charlotte phoned. She rang around one-thirty as he was trying to decide whether to go out for lunch or work straight through.
“Elliot, my dear. I received a call from a very nice detective from the police department. I don’t understand why you’re still…” She let that trail as though she couldn’t quite put a name to whatever it was she feared he was doing.
He thought of and discarded several responses. “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he said at last. “They shouldn’t have bothered you. There were one or two discrepancies in Terry’s death that I was hoping to have cleared up.”
“But Detective Lawrence said that you were suggesting there was a connection between Terry’s death and Gordie Lyle’s disappearance. Surely you’re not still thinking that’s the case?”
Hell.
He opened his mouth, but was forestalled by the buzzing of his cell phone. He frowned at the screen. Another text message from Anonymous Caller.
Eyes on the icon, he said slowly, distractedly, “Sorry? Er, no. I don’t know. Can I call you back, Charlotte?”
“Elliot, I want to make it perfectly clear that as far as the university is concerned, the matter is closed. We want to put this tragedy behind us. For the sake of the students. For all of our sakes.”
Elliot pressed the text icon. The words flashed up.
Your move.
So much for the sorry-wrong-number theory.
“I understand, Charlotte. It was a mistake contacting Tacoma PD.”
“It was, yes.” Charlotte sounded troubled and a bit exasperated. “I can’t understand why you did it. You don’t honestly believe there’s a serial killer on campus?”
A serial killer. The very words he had avoided thinking, let alone speaking.
“I’m sorry. I’ve got a call coming in that I’ve got to take.”
“Really?” And now Charlotte, in her polite New England way, was truly pissed. And no wonder. He had just informed the president of the university that he was expecting a more important call. It was beginning to look like tenure would not be in Elliot’s immediate future.
“It’s…I apologize. I really do have to take this.” He clattered the handset back into the cradle and stared at the screen of his cell phone.
Not a coincidence. Not a mistake. There was a connection between Gordie Lyle and Terry Baker all right. He’d stake his life that he or she was sitting on the other end of this call.
Elliot texted back. Do I know you?
It took a few seconds, but the answer appeared. Do you?
What do you want? typed Elliot.
Another small delay, and then, You like games. So do I.
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Elliot muttered. He texted back, Let the games begin.
