“Don’t ask.” Roche proceeded to launch into a long complaint about exactly how the book was coming.
Elliot handed him a glass of wine. Roche talked on.
Listening with half an ear, Elliot sipped his wine and rinsed a pound of peeled shrimp and patted it dry. He was vaguely familiar with the cold case. The FBI had been actively trying to solve young Mattson’s murder fifty years after, but to no avail.
“God, it smells good in here. What’s for dinner?” Roche finally finished detailing his woes and sniffed the air like a hungry bloodhound.
“Stir fry. Greek shrimp and leeks.”
“How do you know the shrimp are
“Mills,” he said curtly. Seventeen months later he was still answering like he was on call. He needed to work on that. Like maybe try
She sounded nervous and he softened his tone. “Hi, Pauline. What’s up?” He understood how stressed she was, but surely she wasn’t expecting him to have found out anything within a few hours?
“I-I’m afraid I wasn’t totally honest with you earlier today, and I want to be because I know…it might hamper your investigation if I’m not.”
Unexpected. “Go on.” Elliot picked up his wine glass up and finished the dregs of wine. Roche rose, held the wine bottle up. Elliot shook his head. He still needed pain meds some nights, and pills and booze was a bad mix. Roche refilled his own glass.
Pauline said, “You asked about Terry’s friends. Whether he has a girlfriend.”
She stopped again. Elliot prodded, “And he does?”
“No. No, he doesn’t. Terry is gay.”
“Gay,” Elliot repeated as though he’d never heard of such a thing.
“Yes. He came out to us, to his father and me last summer. I’m afraid it was…” her voice failed, but she recovered, “…a shock. I’m afraid it was a shock to both of us. Tom especially had a hard time with it. It’s not what you want for your child, you know?”
He had no idea. He neither had, nor wanted, children, and his own parents had been completely accepting of his sexuality. Choosing a career in law enforcement was the thing that had driven his father to threaten disowning him.
Roland must have filled Pauline in on a few other things about Elliot because she added hastily, “Please don’t be offended. I’m only trying to make you see that there was tension there, but it wasn’t…That is…”
Tom Baker was not to be considered a potential suspect in his son’s disappearance, Elliot cynically filled in the blanks. “I understand. Was Terry seeing someone?”
“Yes. I don’t think it was serious, but he was seeing someone. A boy named Jim Feder. He’s also a student at the college.”
“Did you share this information with the police or the FBI?”
“No. Tom felt it wasn’t relevant. That it was personal family business.”
“You’ve done the right thing by telling me, Pauline. It opens another avenue of investigation for us.”
“I knew that. That’s why I wanted you to know…” She began to cry, and then to apologize.
“It’s okay,” Elliot reassured her automatically.
After a few seconds, she got control, apologized again, thanked him and hung up.
“What was that about?” Roche asked, green eyes watching Elliot over the rim of his wine glass.
Elliot had forgotten all about Roche. “Nothing. Friends of my dad are having some trouble with their kid.”
“When did you become a guidance counselor? And what does the FBI have to do with it?” That was the nosey writer looking for a scoop. Roche was always after Elliot to discuss his old cases. The more lurid, the better. And Elliot was always after Roche to mind his own business.
He ignored the question and turned on the oven to heat the skillet. “I guess you’re staying for dinner?”
Roche said cheerfully, “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Back when he’d been a hot shot special agent for the Bureau, Elliot had operated out of Seattle. He was familiar with the Tacoma RA, though, and even if he hadn’t worked with the team there a few times, there wasn’t that much of a difference from satellite office to satellite office. Not really.
He arrived in plenty of time for his meeting with Tucker. Unless Tucker had changed a lot, he’d be striding into the building about four minutes before the hour. Tucker was rarely late, but he cut it close plenty of times. Elliot preferred to arrive early and well-prepped—today in particular he felt he needed the advantage of surprise.
He was annoyed to recognize the signs of nervousness in himself: damp underarms, elevated heart rate, and his tie felt like it was choking him. He fought the desire to pace, forcing himself to sit at the battered table in the plain meeting room. Expelling a long, calming breath, he stared up at the millions of tiny black holes in the soundproofed ceiling.
The last time he’d seen Tucker—
But no. Not a good idea to rehash those memories. Certainly not at this moment, when he was about to beard the lion in his den.
Anyway, what was the big deal here? Maybe things hadn’t worked out for them, but had either of them ever really expected them to? It would have helped if they’d been friends before they fell in the sack, but…the fact was, they hadn’t. Their working styles were very different and they really hadn’t had a lot in common off the job either. Tucker liked sailing and poker nights with the guys. Elliot liked rock climbing and miniature war-gaming. Not much in the way of shared interests. Except sex.
The sex had been fantastic.
Elliot had a sudden vivid memory of Tucker’s unexpectedly soft lips tracing a moist path from the nape of Elliot’s neck down, all the way down, to his tailbone…Tucker’s big, freckled hand wrapping around Elliot’s cock.
The door to the meeting room swung open and Elliot snapped to his feet, ignoring the wrench of his wrecked knee.
Tucker strode in, bigger than life. That’s how Tucker always seemed: bigger than life. Just walking into a room he seemed to fill it, while at the same time emptying it of half the oxygen. Elliot had never known anyone who took up more metaphysical real estate than Special Agent Tucker Lance.
Uncomfortably aware of where his thoughts had been seconds prior, Elliot’s voice was stiff. “Hello, Tucker.”
Tucker froze mid-step. His knuckles whitened on the file he held. His eyes—a color known in painting miniatures as Prussian blue—went arctic.
“Is this a joke?” He sounded almost conversational.
“Good to see you too.”
Tucker glanced around and then behind him as though looking for
Hale and hearty?
Instead of shaking hands, Tucker thrust the file folder into Elliot’s fingers. “So you’re the consultant the Bakers brought in.” It wasn’t a question.
“That’s right.”
Tucker’s lip curled.
Elliot curbed his temper but it wasn’t easy. He refrained from asking the questions that would open the line of discussion that was sure to end in one of them decking the other. Instead, he slapped the folder on the table. “Great. Shall we get started?”
“Let’s.” Tucker yanked out the chair on his side of the table.
Elliot sat again and opened the file. That was for show. No way could he sit here calmly reading while Tucker did his best to raze him to ashes with those blue laser beams.
He made a pretense of turning pages, though, not least because he knew it was pissing Tucker off.
The ironic part was that Tucker seemed to believe he had cause for anger. As though
After about forty seconds of scraping pages, Tucker said in that same too-even tone, “So Montgomery set this up?”
“‘Set this up?’” Elliot repeated, some of his own hostility slipping through despite his efforts. “You’re the special agent in charge of the case and I’m the consultant the family has brought in. Is there some reason you’d decline to cooperate with me?”
Like he didn’t know.
“I don’t like working with outsiders.”
The brutality of that caught Elliot on the raw, but he managed to say pleasantly, “Still the same loveable asshole, I see.”
There might have been a faint tinge of red in Tucker’s face, though it was hard to tell beneath the freckles. He repositioned his chair and without further ado brought Elliot up to speed on the case. It was a brisk and concise accounting.
Elliot listened without interrupting.
The facts of the case boiled down to depressingly little. On the night of October 1, Terry Baker had been studying in Kingman Library on the PSU campus. He had checked out a book on Renaissance philosophy at eleven-thirty, left the library and hadn’t been seen since. Somewhere between the library and his dorm, Baker had vanished. His car had never left the student parking lot. There was no sign of foul play. No one, other than the librarian who had checked his book out, even remembered seeing him. According to his roommate, Baker had seemed “like always.”
“What was ‘like always’?” Elliot questioned, glancing up to find Tucker staring at him.
“Quiet. Serious. Polite. He was liked well enough, but I wasn’t able to identify anyone who considered him a close friend.”
“That seems to support what his mother said. Baker was gay. Were you aware of that?”
Tucker’s gaze sharpened. “I had my suspicions. We didn’t turn up anything conclusive.”
“He came out last summer. Tom Baker had major problems with it. He and Pauline chose to keep that piece of information to themselves.”
“That supports our theory that the kid walked.”
“Literally,” Elliot retorted. “I think if he’d left voluntarily, he’d at least take his car.”
“Maybe someone else drove.”
“I don’t think s—”
“
Elliot flicked him a cool glance. “I was thinking more along the lines that he might have capped himself.”
Tucker sat back in his chair. “Maybe. If I had to spend a semester reading Renaissance philosophy, I’d cap myself. But where’s the body?”
Elliot drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. He shook his head.
“Yeah, that’s the problem.” Tucker added grudgingly, “Baker Senior’s disapproval does change the dynamic, I’ll give you that.”
“There’s a boyfriend. That adds another suspect to the mix. And a potential motive in addition to the father’s disapproval.”
“A boyfriend?” Tucker expelled an impatient breath. “Fucking A. That’s two weeks’ worth of investigation—” He caught himself.
“Yeah,” Elliot said neutrally. He understood and he did sympathize. “What about the video surveillance cameras?”
“Nothing showed up.”
“Nothing?”
“The kid walked out of the library. No one followed him. The cameras are only positioned in strategic campus areas. What it gets down to is Baker walked out of the picture.”
“You checked the kid’s computer?”
“His laptop disappeared with him. Cell phone too.” Tucker took out a pen and notepad. “What’s the boyfriend’s name?”
“Jim Feder. He’s also a student at PSU.”
Tucker frowned, considering. “I don’t think he turned up in our initial investigation.”
“That’s squirrely right there. If they were hooking up, he’d probably start asking where Baker was. And if he was asking questions, someone should have noticed.”
“Maybe he knows where Baker is. Maybe he’s AWOL too.” Tucker’s gaze—so blue, so intense—met Elliot’s, and Elliot felt the old drag of awareness.
“It’s worth finding out.”
Tucker was still looking at him, his expression unreadable. Elliot heard the echo of his words. For some reason it suddenly felt like they were talking about something entirely different.
The strange moment passed. Tucker glanced at his watch and rose unhurriedly from the table. “Sometimes you already know the answer. Sometimes it’s just not worth the bother.”
“Try this.” Roland Mills held out a teaspoon with a dab of white on the tip.
Elliot sampled the teaspoon and closed his eyes. A delicate, buttery cheese melted across his tongue. He opened his eyes. “Wow. What is that?”
“Mascarpone cheese. For the mushroom cream sauce that goes over the rigatoni.” Satisfied, Roland returned to the stove.
They were sitting in the kitchen of Roland’s comfortable bungalow in the artsy and eclectic historic Ballard district, about a ten minute drive from Seattle. Elliot had grown up in this house with its glossy bamboo bedroom floors, natural rock fireplace and tranquil front and back gardens. For the first few years after his mother’s death in a hit-and-run accident, it had been hard for him to visit. He’d always tried to meet his father on campus or at a restaurant, but eventually he’d got past it. The house no longer echoed with the emptiness of that missing voice, that absent laugh, those vanished footsteps. Elliot could remember the good times without grief—although he still didn’t understand how his father could sleep in the same bedroom, same bed, he’d shared for twenty-four years with the bright spirit of Jesse Mills. But then there were a lot of things he didn’t understand about his father. And probably vice versa.
“What can you tell me about Tom Baker?” he asked, idly watching his father’s ponytail sway gently with the motion of powerful shoulders beneath blue denim as he swiftly, precisely sliced mushrooms. Roland had waxed scathingly on the gloomy financial forecast for several local arts groups—although if Elliot were honest, he had only half listened, his attention still mostly focused on the brief and unpleasant meeting he’d had with Tucker at the Tacoma RA.
He really,
An awful lot of memories for a relationship that hadn’t lasted a year. Hadn’t lasted three months, to be accurate. In fact, calling it a “relationship” was kind of an exaggeration. Realistically, they’d been fuck buddies, right? Which was why, when Elliot had managed to get himself nailed following a shootout at the federal courthouse, there had been nothing to hold them together. The only thing they ever had in common was the job.