Fair Game (10 page)

Elliot was reviewing a fellow history professor’s paper on the Battle of Shiloh when Steven stopped by late Tuesday morning.

“Hey, man. Are you free for lunch?”

Elliot smiled in greeting, setting aside the papers. “What are you doing here?”

“Job interview.”

“What job?”

“Adjunct professor. If I get the position I’ll be teaching true crime writing online.”

“What about the book?”

“It’s only a part-time position. I’ll still have plenty of time to work on the book. So…lunch?”

“Sure. Just let me finish up here. It’ll take about five minutes.”

Steven sat in front of Elliot’s desk, lifted a book off his desk and flipped through it while Elliot continued to work.

“What’s that dude’s problem?”

“Hmm?” Elliot glanced up out of his preoccupation with Brigadier General Lew Wallace’s lost division.

“That maintenance guy.”

“What about him?”

“Have you been leaving stink bombs in your trash can? You should have seen the look he just gave you when he walked by.”

“Oh. I keep forgetting to leave my trash out. I guess it offends his sense of order.” Realizing he wasn’t going to get any more work done until Steven had gone, Elliot put the research paper aside. “Let’s get out of here. Grab something to eat.”

They lunched at a small café not far from the college. Elliot patiently dodged Steven’s questions about Terry Baker while they ate their sandwiches and drank their coffee. Then Steven said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure, provided it has nothing to do with Terry Baker and Gordie Lyle.”

Steven seemed to consider his words. “Did you ever regret killing the dude who shot you?”

“That’s an odd question,” Elliot said finally.

Steven looked apologetic, but he was still waiting for an answer.

“The truth? No.”

“Not a flicker? I mean, yes, you were injured and you lost your job, but he’s dead. Did you even consider merely wounding him?”

Elliot set his sandwich on his plate and pushed the plate aside. “Ira Kane shot and killed two people in that courthouse. No, it didn’t occur to me to wound him. For one thing, he nearly blew my leg off. For another, we’re not trained to wound.”

“Hey.” Steven put his hands up as though in surrender. “Just asking.”

*  *  *

Gordie Lyle might have been a number of things, but there was no question he was gifted. Reading through the kid’s cumulative record folder on Tuesday, Elliot quickly formed a picture of a young man with a lot of talent and a very bad temper.

Long before he’d managed to get himself kicked out of Cornish, Lyle had established a high school record of fights with peers and run-ins with teachers. His overall academic scores were respectable, but it was in the area of art that he came into his own. He’d won several grants, as well as a scholarship based on his artistic ability.

His medium was sculpture. His faculty advisor was Andrew Corian. Elliot grimaced. That was an interview he wasn’t looking forward to.

Lyle was a handsome kid. Not that it was germane, but Elliot couldn’t help noticing that even in his student ID photo, Lyle was a beautiful boy.

He cross-referenced Lyle’s record with Terry Baker’s, but nothing came up. No hits. Baker lived on campus, Lyle lived with his aunt. They did not share the same major, they did not have the same faculty advisor, in fact, they didn’t have so much as a single class in common. Elliot could find nothing to link the two boys together. Gordie was black, Terry was white. Gordie was heterosexual, Terry was gay. Gordie was poor, Terry was rich.

The only connection Elliot spotted was that both boys had been ill the previous year. Terry had been hospitalized with appendicitis and Gordie had come down with mononucleosis. As connections went, it was pretty tenuous. They hadn’t been treated by the same physician or at the same hospital. Still, he’d point out that tie-in to Tucker. Tucker had the resources to cross check nurses, orderlies, health insurance clerks. You just never knew what might turn up.

Terry might have committed suicide—Elliot felt unconvinced on that score—but no way in hell had Gordie Lyle killed himself. That was one possibility Elliot had no problem ruling out. There was nothing in Lyle’s psychological profile to indicate anything but supreme confidence.

He’d spent a couple of illuminating hours the night before going through Gordie’s MacBook Pro, and in addition to an ungodly amount of porn—even for a healthy, college-aged male—there had been a mind-boggling amount of email from infatuated females. All of which Gordie, judging by his sent replies, had taken as his due.

There were a couple of emails from Gordie’s aunt and a couple of emails from professors including Andrew Corian regarding the upcoming student art show, but by far the bulk of email was from girls Gordie appeared to be juggling with the ease of long practice. What Elliot had not found was email from any lady college professor. Not that he recognized. Granted, this PSU instructor could be hiding her identity, but unless she was also deliberately changing her “voice” to sound like a nineteen-year-old girl, it was hard to believe any of those letters belonged to a mature woman. That could mean that Gordie had deleted all her emails—and all his replies to her email—but the impression Elliot had formed was that Gordie was neither discreet nor likely to be concerned with protecting the good name and reputation of anyone reckless enough to get involved with him. Either this mysterious lady professor had, thanks to some faint remaining instinct for self-preservation, stuck to using the phone or there was no mysterious lady professor.

Lyle hadn’t been one for keeping calendars, but nothing in all that email indicated he had been planning on taking a trip. In fact, the presence of his MacBook seemed to confirm the opposite.

It seemed to Elliot that all this dallying with the hearts of romantic females was a pretty good way to get yourself killed. Even so, even though Elliot had told Zahra Lyle the two cases were probably—most likely—not connected, the coincidence of two boys from the same campus going missing at roughly the same time still bothered him. As much as he wanted to dismiss the idea of a tie-in, he couldn’t quite.

He called Tucker. Tucker did not pick up. Elliot left a message asking about the ME’s report.

It was a strange day. The campus was largely in a state of shock following word of Terry Baker’s death. Students were offered the services of grief counselors and the security staff worked actively to keep the media off school grounds. The quad slowly filled with flowers and other tributes, but Elliot suspected that was less about Terry as an individual and more about a youthful response to tragedy.

Jim Feder stopped by Elliot’s office late afternoon. His eyes were red and swollen.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” he said, throwing himself into the chair in front of Elliot’s desk after Elliot invited him to sit. “You knew it from the beginning, didn’t you? That Terry was dead?”

Elliot shook his head. “No. I knew it was a possibility.” But Jim wasn’t so far off the mark. From the minute Elliot had heard the circumstances of Terry’s disappearance, his instinct had led him to fear the worst case scenario.

“I can’t believe he’d do that. Kill himself.”

“Terry never talked about suicide—even jokingly?”

“No.” Jim had no hesitation. “Never.”

If Terry hadn’t killed himself, the only other possibility was murder. Nobody accidentally tied a heavy weight around his waist, walked into a lake and shot himself. Elliot asked slowly, “Since the last time we talked, have you remembered anything that might shed light on Terry’s death?”

Feder shook his head. “No.”

Yet Feder had sought Elliot out. Why?

“You mentioned before that you thought Tom Baker might have harmed Terry. To your knowledge, did Tom ever threaten or physically attack Terry?”

“No.” Feder stared at the Gettysburg cannon paperweight on Elliot’s desk as though it were the most interesting object he’d ever seen.

“Did Terry ever mention a student by the name of Gordie Lyle?”

“Who? No.”

Someone tapped on Elliot’s open office door. He glanced up. Tucker stood in the doorway. Instantly Elliot’s heart was pounding. His chest felt tight with the enormity of his excitement. It was alarming to feel this much, to know he felt too much to safely contain it. What had happened to seventeen months of dogged burying of the past?

Tucker was doing his full on FBI agent impersonation. Not a twitch of emotion on his impassive face. He wasn’t wearing his Oakleys, but the impression was the same.

“Professor Mills?” he asked politely, formally.

“Will you excuse us?” Elliot asked Feder.

Feder didn’t bother to hide the fact that he was irked. He cast Tucker a displeased look as he scooted past him. He could have saved himself the effort. Tucker paid as much attention as he would to a toddler chasing his ball.

Shutting the door behind Feder, he approached Elliot’s desk. Elliot resisted the impulse to rise, to brace for attack. Tucker didn’t look like he was going to attack. He looked cool and professional as he took Feder’s chair. There was no sign that he even remembered their last contact, that crazy, almost desperate kiss in the chapel parking lot and the argument that had followed. Elliot, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to get it out of his mind.

“I’ve got the ME’s initial report. You want to hear it?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll summarize. Baker died following what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot to the forehead.”

“Temple or middle of the forehead?”

“Forehead. I didn’t note the precise location of the wound.”

“How can the ME be so sure it’s self-inflicted? The kid was in the water for a week. Some of the forensic evidence is bound to be contaminated in the context of the crime scene.”

“I said ‘appears.’ You know how it works. Obviously powder burns and other physical evidence isn’t available. The evidence that is available indicates .45 caliber and before you ask, no, we still haven’t located the weapon. Toxicology tests are still pending. DNA degraded in the water.”

Elliot thought this over. “Was he clothed?”

Tucker tore his gaze from the poster of John Wayne with the slogan
Life is tough; it’s tougher if you’re stupid.
“Yes. And his jacket, cell phone, laptop and wallet with ID were left neatly on the bank.”

“Defensive wounds?”

“None apparent.”

“How long was he in the lake?”

“No more than a week.” Tucker’s eyes met Elliot’s. “We’re handing it off to Tacoma PD. This isn’t a federal case.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

“Regardless of what the Lyle kid’s aunt believes, I don’t see a connection between Baker’s death and her nephew’s disappearance. Can you give me any reason to think otherwise?”

Tucker was right. There wasn’t enough to justify involvement by the feds, yet Elliot heard himself say stubbornly, “I think this kid would have left a note.”

“I don’t. He went to lengths to make sure his body wasn’t discovered. Most people don’t leave notes, you know that.” Tucker seemed to be studying the titles on the bookshelf behind Elliot.

True. Men were more likely to leave notes than women, but less than a quarter of suicides left notes at all.

“Point. But that’s another thing. The whole chaining himself to an anvil business. Who does that? It’s stagy. It’s…fake.”

Tucker hadn’t stopped looking around since he sat down. What clues did he imagine he was going to find in this ordinary academic cubbyhole? Or was he just doing his best to avoid Elliot’s gaze?

“Look, we’ve both seen enough weird shit to know that disturbed people do bizarre things.”

“Yeah, but this is…This doesn’t make sense. There are simpler ways to get the same results. And where was the kid for three weeks? That strikes me as taking a long time to make up your mind to kill yourself. Do we have any intel on that? Where did he go when he left campus that night? Where did he find an anvil? For that matter, where did he get a gun?”

Tucker eyed him dispassionately.

“We both know Daddy-o is correct. It’s not that hard to get hold of a gun if you know where to look. The rest of it…that’s for the Tacoma PD to determine.”

“I think you’re wrong, Tucker.”

“So what’s new there?”

Elliot blinked, sat back in his chair. “So that’s it? Case closed?”

Tucker’s face could have been carved from rock. “That’s it.”

“Then I guess I’ll…see you around.”

Tucker gave a tight smile. “Yeah?” His big hands closed on the arm of the chair and he rose in a quick, lithe move. “See you around then.”

*  *  *

It should have made his day. No more Tucker Lance to piss him off with autocratic orders to butt out of his investigation. Instead, annoyingly, Elliot felt almost…disappointed. Of course part of that was the simple fact that without Tucker, Elliot no longer had instant access to law enforcement files and resources. He was a college professor, not a PI. What was his justification for asking to see police files? General nosiness? A genetically programmed streak of do-gooder? He wasn’t use to having to go through the same channels as civilians.

But there was another part of him that felt let down. Kind of like declaring war and nobody showing up. He’d been all psyched up to do battle with Tucker and now Tucker had retreated from the field. It took the fun out of victory.

Charlotte Oppenheimer phoned to indicate her thanks for his help and her relief that the investigation could be laid to rest.

“Gordie Lyle is still missing,” Elliot pointed out.

“There can’t be any connection. Gordie will show up when he’s ready.” Charlotte sounded like her old self, confident and relaxed. “Will we see you Thursday at the opening of the annual Art Students Show?”

“Not this Thursday.” Thursdays were his night to dine with his dad. These little rituals provided the glue that held his new life together.

“Not to worry. It runs through the end of the semester.” As Charlotte continued in that light, social vein, Elliot began to understand why Zahra Lyle felt that her concerns were being blown off. Not that Charlotte wasn’t in the right, merely that she was determined not to consider any other possibility.