Fair Game (14 page)

“No, you didn’t,” Tucker said. “No. You did not. Because one thing you’re not is stupid, and you would
have
to be stupid to bait a psycho.”

“All right,” Elliot returned irritably—mostly because he knew Tucker was right. “I admit to a moment of macho posturing bullshit, okay? Let it go. Anyway, ignoring the calls isn’t going to stop them. In fact, the caller may escalate if he or she thinks she can’t get a response.”

Tucker was driving while talking on his cell phone. Elliot could hear the background music of crackling white noise. It didn’t muffle Tucker’s anger; that came through loud and clear.

“Escalate how? According to you, he or she has already committed two murders. Besides which, I already told you
I
would handle this. I’ve contacted Anontxt.net and, believe me, we’re going to get this freak’s ID within a couple of days.”

“Who asked you to? I could have handled that myself. I’m not helpless, whatever you think.”

“You’re welcome!” Tucker snapped back. “And for your information, I don’t think you’re helpless. I think as an employee of the federal government I can get results a lot faster than you can.”

Maybe so, but it was still galling that Tucker believed a blown knee meant Elliot could no longer take care of himself.

“Anyway, the damage is done—” Elliot became aware that two men in raincoats were standing in his office doorway listening to his conversation.

Cops. Plainclothes detectives.

“I’ll say it sure as shit is,” Tucker retorted. “You’ve apparently got a death wish.”

Elliot clicked off, ignoring the brief flash of satisfaction in having the last word, even if it was merely dial tone. “Can I help you?”

“Professor Mills?” The senior partner was middle-aged: fair, square and red faced. Too many fast food meals and not enough exercise. “I’m Detective Anderson. This is Detective Pine. We’re with Tacoma Homicide. We’d like to ask you a couple of questions.”

“Come in.” Elliot didn’t need to tell them to shut the door behind them. They took the chairs in front of his desk. Detective Anderson smiled. It was a polite, noncommittal smile. His partner—young, short, dark and Anderson’s opposite in every way—gazed disparagingly about Elliot’s office. It didn’t bother Elliot. He had worked with a lot of cops in his time. It took all kinds to keep the world safe.

“Are you one of these Civil War reenactment dudes?” Pine asked, picking up the cannon paperweight on Elliot’s desk. He glanced meaningfully at the map of Civil War battles on the wall.

Elliot considered telling Pine no, certainly not. He preferred to play with toy soldiers.

“You placed a call to the Persons Crime Section this morning,” Anderson was saying with a cautioning look at his subordinate.

“That’s right.” Elliot leaned forward, picking up a pen. “I know it’s not a popular theory, but I think there could be a link between the recent death of a PSU student and another student’s disappearance.”

“You’re referring to the suicide of Terence Baker, the son of Attorney Thomas Baker?”

“Correct.”

“And the other student is one Francis Gordon Lyle?”

“Also correct.”

“I see. What’s your interest in this investigation, Professor Mills?”

“I became involved when the Bakers asked me to look into Terry’s disappearance.”

Pine put the paperweight back on Elliot’s desk with a bang. “You used to be feeb?” Elliot nodded. Pine questioned, “What happened?”

Elliot gave a bare bones accounting of exactly what had happened. Pine’s body language and expression communicated clearly that if Elliot had been half the cop Pine was, it
wouldn’t
have happened.

Anderson, however, looked unwillingly sympathetic. “I remember reading about that courthouse shooting and then the pursuit through the Square. You got the bastard. That’s something.”

“Yeah, I got him. Not before he got me, though.” For an instant, Elliot was back there lying on the ice cold bricks in the stinging rain, staring dizzily up at the silently roaring copper dragon atop the thirty-three-foot column of the Weather Machine.

Forecast: gloomy.

He shook off his preoccupation. “So why are you here?” A bleak thought occurred to him. “Did you find the Lyle kid?”

“No. Are we going to?” Pine asked.

Anderson threw his partner another of those much-tried looks. “No. We’re here, Professor Mills, because it looks like you might be right.”

“About?”

“About the fact that these boys are being abducted.”

They were watching him very closely, watching his every reaction. And good luck with that because, like them, Elliot had been trained to hide his emotions. Occasionally even from himself.

He said slowly, “There’s been another abduction?”

“Didn’t your anonymous friend text you?” Pine asked.

Elliot absorbed that. The good news was that the Persons Crime Section desk had taken down all his information that morning, including the part about receiving anonymous text messages from someone who might or might not be the Unsub—or “perp” as the cops called unknown bad guys.

The bad news was that Elliot was apparently also in the running for homicidal maniac of the year.

He stared at their set, suspicious faces. In their position, he’d have been suspicious too. It wasn’t fair, but retired and ex-cops made as good cranks and crazies as the next citizen.

“Who?” he asked without emotion. “Who did he snatch?” He had a bad feeling and unconsciously held his breath, waiting for their answer.

“Your teaching assistant. A kid by the name of Kyle Kanza.”

Maybe he wasn’t as good at hiding his emotions as he’d once been because Anderson unbent enough to say, “It’s not that bad. The kid managed to get away. He’s banged up, but he’s okay. He’s at St. Anne’s Hospital.”

*  *  *

Minus the multiple piercings and elaborate hair, Kyle looked very young and very fragile in his hospital bed. His right arm was in a cast. He had a black eye and the left side of his face looked like someone had run a cheese grater over it, but he smiled a wan greeting to Elliot.

“Sorry I didn’t make it in today, Professor. How’d the test go?”

“It went fine. Are you okay?”

Kyle nodded very seriously and kept nodding. Clearly he was feeling the effects of a nice chemical cocktail. Elliot relaxed a fraction. He’d already heard the medical report via Detectives Anderson and Pine—Kyle had been very lucky. But Elliot had still needed to see for himself. He couldn’t help feeling that if he’d minded his own business this might not have happened. No way had his TA been randomly targeted.

“How long are they going to keep you for?”

“They’re supposed to let me out this afternoon.”

Elliot took the hard plastic chair next to the bed and gave Kyle’s hand a light squeeze. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Kyle blinked up at the ceiling. “I think…” He tilted his head and squinted at the light panels from another angle.

“You were jogging this morning before class?” Elliot prodded.

Kyle seemed to remember Elliot was there. He nodded. “Five-thirty every morning I do my laps around the track. It was just after. I was done with my run and I was walking back to my dorm when he came out of nowhere and grabbed me. I thought…”

“Go on.”

“I thought he tried to stab me, but the knife got hooked in the folds of my hoodie and he dropped it. I remember I looked down and I saw it was a hypodermic needle.” He gave Elliot a wondering look. “Then he punched me.” Kyle touched delicate fingers to his cheekbone.

“That’s one beaut of a shiner. What did you do? Do you remember?”

Kyle seemed to brighten. “Yeah. When I was a kid I used to take martial arts and some of it came back to me.
Eeeeeyah!
” He waved vaguely with his good arm. “I managed to get in a couple of serious kicks.”

“Is that how you got away?”

“Mmm.” Kyle seemed to consider this dreamily. “No. Truth? I think he was going to beat the shit out of me…Yeah, some girls were jogging our way, and I think they scared him off. Anyways, next thing I knew I was lying on the ground and this girl was tucking her sweatshirt around me and another girl was calling 911.”

“Can you describe your assailant?”

Elliot had already heard everything Anderson and Pine could—or would—tell him on this score, but he wanted to hear it from Kyle.

“Male. Big. He wore a black ski mask like on TV.”

“What about his hands? Did he wear gloves?”

“I think so. Yeah.”

That explained how he’d dropped the hypo so easily. He’d also managed to retrieve it. According to the cops the hypo was not at the crime scene. “Did he speak? Did he say anything to you?”

“No. Not a word. It happened
so
fast.”

It always did. “Was he taller than me?”

Kyle’s good eye considered Elliot dispassionately. “Maybe.”

“Broader?”

“Yeah.” He added seriously, “I like that jacket. I like tweed. Brown looks good on you.”

“Thanks. How did he move?”

Kyle seemed to wake up. “Like he knew what he was doing.”

Yeah, well he’d had some practice. “Did he move like a young man? Do you think he was a student? Maybe someone you know?”

Kyle chewed his lip. “Maybe,” he said uncertainly.

“Did anything about him strike you as odd?”

“You mean besides trying to grab me?”

Elliot grinned. The kid still had his sense of humor, and that was a good sign. “Aside from that, yes. Did he…I don’t know, smell a particular way? Like cigarettes maybe? Aftershave?”

Kyle turned a startled eye his way. “He smelled like chemicals.”

“What kind of chemicals?”

“Harsh.” Kyle closed his eyes.

“Harsh?” Elliot thought that over. “Kyle, I want to ask you something.”

Kyle’s heavy lids rose.

“You haven’t seemed like yourself the past week or so. Is it possible that something going on in your life could be connected to this?”

Kyle scrunched his face. “No.” He smiled tiredly. “That’s…boyfriend trouble.”

“Boyfriend?” Now here was something in common with Terry. Except…Kyle had been targeted because of his relationship to Elliot, right?

Anything else was too big a coincidence. Or was it?

Elliot tried to think of a more subtle approach, but failed. He simply asked, “Who’s your boyfriend?”

“Oh.” There was a hint of color in Kyle’s drawn face. “You don’t know him. He’s pre-law. His name is Jimmy. Jimmy Feder.”

A hard knocking on the office doorframe jolted Elliot out of his absorption. He was on the phone filling Tucker in on the latest development regarding Jim Feder. He looked up, frowning.

Ray stood in the doorway frowning right back at him. “You forgot to put your trash out again.”

Sorry,
Elliot mouthed to him.

Ray’s frown deepened.

“Jim Feder comes up clean,” Tucker’s faraway voice said. “He’s Joe Average. Well, make that Joe B-plus Average. No wants, warrants or arrests. If he was any cleaner he’d be bathing in Clorox. About the most I can say against the guy is he appears to have a fear of commitment.” From the blurred reception, Tucker was on the road again, and Elliot couldn’t help wondering what the case was.

“Can you hang on a second?” Elliot felt under his desk for the wastepaper basket. He rose, easing around the desk, handing the trashcan off to Ray who took it without a change of his surly expression.

Not for the first time, Elliot wondered what his story was. At a guess it didn’t include a stint in charm school. Ray reappeared with the empty trash basket and returned it to Elliot, who contemplated him curiously.

Ray wasn’t handsome by anyone’s standards. His was big and bulky with small, pale eyes and blunt, peculiarly unmemorable features. Elliot saw him nearly every day and would have had trouble describing him in detail.

Tucker’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Look, we need to talk. Where are you now?”

“Back at my office.”

“Let’s meet for dinner.”

Elliot’s pulse jumped. Did he want to do that? Yes.
Should
he do that? Doubtful. He glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. What he should do was phone his dad and apologize, maybe bring over some Indian takeout as a peace offering.

“You still there?”

“Yeah. All right,” Elliot answered.

“When and where?”

“I’m going to drive over to the lake behind the school. I want to take a look at the crime scene.”

“Elliot, for God’s sake.”

“Look, I know what you’re going to say. I even agree. But it’s not going to hurt to have an extra pair of trained eyes take a look, right?”

“Why?” Tucker’s exasperation seemed to be mounting with his mileage.

“Because I want to. Is that all right with you? I’ve got permission from Tacoma PD.”

“Yeah, I bet. They have my sympathy.”

Elliot enlightened Tucker as to what he could do with his sympathy, and annoyingly there was a grin in Tucker’s voice when he replied, “Okay, okay. I’ll see you at five at the Black Bull pub. Try not to get yourself arrested in the meantime.”

“They were
not
planning to arrest me, Lance.”

“That’s their story now.”

“I’ll see you at five.”

“Wear something sexy.”

“Asshole.”

“That will certainly work.”

Against his will, Elliot was laughing when he disconnected.

He sobered quickly when he realized how much he was looking forward to seeing Tucker.
It’s not a date,
he told himself.
I’m just trying to persuade him to reinvolve the Bureau in this investigation.

They had always laughed a lot. He had nearly forgotten that, forgotten that they shared the same peculiar sense of humor.

The problem was his own increasing difficulty in remembering why he must not get involved with Tucker again. In his heart he knew it was a really bad idea. Intellectually, he was starting to question why. That was probably more about Elliot’s current need to get laid than having turned any philosophical corner. He hadn’t forgiven Tucker for not being there for him, for turning on him when he needed Tucker the most. But the pain felt old now, distant. Like the hurt had happened to someone else.

And he missed Tucker. He’d been missing him for seventeen months. Even though he’d told himself that there had been nothing between them but sex—and the profession they both loved—he still missed him, still felt like a huge chunk of his life had been ripped out by the same bullet that put him out of a job.

A shared sense of humor wasn’t enough. He knew that. They had not known each other really. Not even known each other well enough to know whether it was worth trying to know each other better. Elliot gathered his raincoat and briefcase and reminded himself not to expect too much—or anything—and all the while his heart skipped along as though school were out for summer.

Well, in fairness, there hadn’t been a lot to look forward to lately.

Five minutes later the door to Hanby Hall was swinging shut, locking firmly behind him.

Friday afternoon, the campus was already quiet and empty-feeling. Hard to believe that earlier in the day it had been overrun with cops and reporters and anxious parents. At one point Elliot had even thought he’d glimpsed Steven walking across the quad. The true crime writer looking for a scoop? Word of Kyle’s close call had spread fast and now people were openly speculating about what had happened to Gordie Lyle. A few were even questioning Terry Baker’s supposed suicide.

That was vindication for Zahra Lyle, for what it was worth. Elliot had tried to reach her that morning and again that afternoon, but Zahra was not returning his phone calls. Why hadn’t she shown up at the art exhibit the day before?

Had she given up hope?

Was there reason for hope? What if there was a timeline to these abductions? The week Terry had died was approximately the same week Gordie had disappeared. Did that mean that the attempted snatch of Kyle indicated the clock had wound down on Gordie?

Kidnapping aside, very rarely were adult males, even young adult males, held prisoner for any purpose beyond rape, torture and murder. Females stood a slightly better chance of being subjected to sexual slavery or indoctrination.

The fading afternoon sun flashed waywardly against the windows of the brick buildings.

Elliot remembered something that had skipped his mind with all the other things that had happened since the art show. He veered from his path and headed for the ceramics building.

He used his access card to gain admittance, walking down the empty corridors. Most of the classroom doors were locked, but finally one opened onto a very large room with high windows and long tables and metal sinks. One end of the room was lined with cubbyhole shelving. On the other side was a row of low tables and potter wheels. The only occupant was a middle-aged woman in glasses and a flowered smock. She was humming along with the radio as she stacked tall white plastic buckets on a rolling metal shelf.

Elliot tapped on the doorframe and she glanced around, startled. “Hello, there,” she greeted Elliot. “I didn’t know anyone was left in the building.”

“I was having a quick look around.”

“Oh? Is there anything I can help you with?”

“I was looking for the anvil.”

“The…anvil?”

“You sometimes use an anvil in making pottery, don’t you?”

“Er…” She looked confused. Her expression changed. “You’re Professor Mills, aren’t you? The second Professor Mills.” She smiled.

“That’s right.”

“Andrea Collins.” She held her mucky hands up. A wedding ring gleamed on her left hand. “I can’t shake hands, but it’s nice to meet you officially at last. I have to tell you, I had
such
a crush on your father when I started teaching.”

Elliot couldn’t help a wry grin. “I get that a lot.”

“I bet you do.” She sighed sentimentally. “It feels like a million years ago. Anyway, about your anvil.” Mrs. Collins picked up a grimy blue rag and wiped her hands. “I have a feeling you’re thinking of something totally different. In pottery making paddle-and-anvil is a way of finishing ceramics. You use the paddle, which is a flat or curved stick—” she pointed to a curved stick in the center of one of the long, narrow tables, “—to beat the exterior or interior of the vessel while using a convex or clay stone—the anvil—on the opposite side. See, it’s a little stone.” She handed what looked like a rounded river stone about five inches across to Elliot. “We have a bunch of them lying around here. There’s one made of bisqued clay—and that spherical piece of wood is another one.”

“You don’t use any version of the kind of anvil used in forging metal?”

“Oh no.”

Elliot weighed the stone, considering. Either Corian had misunderstood or Elliot had. Or Corian had been having a laugh at Elliot’s expense. Probably the latter.

He handed the anvil back to Mrs. Collins. “Thanks.”

“Come back anytime,” she invited him cordially. “I’ll give you the grand tour. And give my regards to your father.”

Elliot was thoughtful as he left the ceramics building, making sure the door swung tight and locked behind him. He walked down the cement path, then headed off through the arboretum on his way to the chapel parking lot.

He wished he could more exactly remember the details of his conversation with Corian. Corian had said that the anvil used in ceramics was different, so maybe Elliot hadn’t phrased his question properly. Anyway, it didn’t matter, did it? Obviously the anvil used to weight Terry Baker’s body hadn’t come from the ceramics building.

He hadn’t really thought it had. Had he? While the obvious connection between these boys was the university, it didn’t automatically follow that the Unsub was an employee or even a student. Someone familiar with the campus, definitely, but that easily encompassed retired staff, parents, school trustees and even friends of students. In fact, anyone with time and inclination could quickly familiarize himself with campus traffic patterns and security soft spots.

Reaching his car, Elliot tossed his briefcase and raincoat in the back.

It was about a ten-minute drive to the lake behind the university. In fact, once it would have taken him less time to walk it. For the average person it was certainly within walking distance of the campus.

Elliot parked and got out, hiking down to the water’s edge. Crime scene tape had been tied around one yellow plastic signpost. The other end had worked free and flapped in the breeze, trailing in the mud where it jerked like a dying fish. The choppy water was the color of dull pewter. A couple of ducks took flight at his approach. The others quacked loudly, swimming to the edge of the water in hope of food.

Elliot stepped carefully. The earth was soft and slick from the recent rain. At the brim of the lake he stopped. The ground slanted sharply and abruptly beneath the water. That meant Baker would have been in water up to his chin within a few feet from shore.

Elliot pictured it, pictured his position in relation to where Terry would have stood, trying to get a feel for how it would have gone down.

Terry would have needed both hands to carry the anvil, which would have made it impossible for him to run or to jump his captor. Besides, where would he have run to? Elliot scanned the empty meadow, school buildings in the hazy distance. The main highway was hidden behind distant stands of trees.

No, running would be out. Nor were they in shouting distance of the campus or the power station across the highway. The highway itself was too far away.

Even so, it would have taken place at night. Probably late at night.

It would be the easiest thing in the world to stand here and fire point blank at someone standing in the water.

Even so, it was a stupid plan.

A bee hummed past close enough to sting his ear. Elliot jerked his head, put his hand to his ear and brought it away wet. In disbelief he stared at the bright blood on his fingertips.

“What the hell?”

Another projectile whizzed past and splashed down into the smoky water to the right of him. He heard a loud crack. Beads of water sparkled in the air. Ducks began to flap and quack-quack in panic. Wings beat the air around him. Another crack split the silence of the autumn afternoon.

A duck fell out of the air and flopped brokenly on the muddy slope at his feet.

Behind him he heard a weird thwack and the sound of the 350Z’s window shattering.

He was being shot at.