Fair Game (9 page)

Elliot shook his head.

“The hell.”

“Think.” Elliot nodded at Pauline who was still swaying, even as she clutched the doorframe.

“I…don’t understand,” she murmured like someone talking in her sleep.

“He assaulted a federal officer.”

If they wanted to get technical about it, no, Baker had not. He’d assaulted a civilian dumb enough to get in between him and his federal officer target, but no way was Elliot going to debate it in front of the Bakers. He was not going to question Tucker’s authority with an audience. He shook his head trying to communicate silently what a really bad idea he thought it was to arrest Tom. For a lot of reasons, not least of which was it would leave Pauline to have to make the formal ID of Terry’s body.

He could see Tucker’s reluctance, see him struggling with it. That was a revelation. When had he lost his compassion? Maybe he’d never had any. Elliot had told himself that more than once, but he’d never really believed it.

Tucker’s mouth tightened. He seemed to consult some inward counsel, and then he said shortly, “Your call.” He removed the handcuffs and got to his feet.

They watched as Baker made it stiffly to his hands and knees and then dragged himself up, using a barstool and then the island. Baker was the same age as Elliot’s father, late sixties, and the fact that he was in good shape didn’t change the fact that he was an old man.

Tucker said, “You’ve got a violent temper, Tom.”

Baker combed his no-longer-coiffed hair out of his eyes. His voice shook but he spoke with an unexpected dignity. “My son—my only child—is dead. Have you any idea—” His voice cracked.

Pauline went to him and they clung together.

Tucker expelled a long breath. He turned to Elliot who jerked his head toward the door.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Tucker said to the Bakers. They made no sign they heard him. “We’ll be in touch.”

*  *  *

On the sidewalk outside the house, Tucker preempted Elliot with a harsh, “I don’t want to hear it. Personally, if someone did pop the kid, I like Daddy-o for it.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong.”

“The guy is a bona fide homophobe—with a violent streak to boot. Have you had a look at his record? Assault charges were filed against him
three times
back when he and your pop were buying their tie-dyed tickets to Woodstock.”

Tie-dyed tickets?
Despite the fact that there was little to find funny in any of this, Elliot’s mouth twitched. “What happened to the assault charges?”

“Maybe the same thing that happened today. Someone convinced someone else against his better judgment to drop them.”

Elliot met Tucker’s flinty gaze. He shook his head. “The guy’s a lawyer, Lance. A very successful lawyer. And he’s a grieving father. Where do you think a court’s sympathy is going to lie? With a model citizen like him or a hard-ass like you?”

Tucker’s gaze grew adamantine. He opened his mouth, but Elliot said, “It’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer if you don’t. Can you give me a lift back to the college?”

After a moment, Tucker nodded curtly.

The drive back to campus was accomplished in record time and dead silence. As the tires bit into the chapel parking lot, Tucker glanced Elliot’s way and growled, “You okay?”

Elliot gave him a narrowed look. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“What happened back there?” Tucker glanced at Elliot’s knee, which Elliot had been unconsciously rubbing.

“Nothing.” That was obviously not true. Elliot qualified, “I rammed my knee into the counter.”

Tucker opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of it. He shrugged.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.” He was not fine, of course. He felt drained, depressed, and his knee was pulsing to a steady, painful beat, flares of anguish surfacing through damaged nerves and muscles and tendons when and where he least expected. He was sorry he’d ever agreed to look into Terry Baker’s disappearance. What the hell use had it been?

“Good,” Tucker clamped out, pulling up beside Elliot’s Nissan. “Great.”

“I’ll talk to you later.” Was there some reason he would be talking to Tucker later? Elliot wasn’t sure, but he knew that he couldn’t say a final goodbye to Tucker here and now. He didn’t dare examine that conviction, but it persisted all the same. This was not the time or the place to face never seeing Tucker again.

He reached for the door handle, and Tucker said suddenly, urgently, “Elliot?”

He turned his head and Tucker’s big hand landed ungracefully on his shoulder, drawing him back as his warm mouth landed on Elliot’s.

For an astonished moment Elliot was aware of nothing but the feel of Tucker’s hard, insistent lips on his, the almost desperate pressure, the taste, the scent, the disturbing reality of Tucker’s desire.

“Elliot,” Tucker whispered, breaking contact for a moment. The heat of his breath was against Elliot’s face, hypnotizing, bewildering. His mouth touched Elliot’s again, and Elliot could feel his name—and a question—formed against his skin. Just that. Just
Elliot?

There was a terrible familiarity to it. A reminder that he had not forgotten nearly enough, nearly what he had reassured himself was far, far behind him. It was all there, buried deep but still flickering, like a short in his wiring, like an imprint on cell memory. Genetic code and the secret message was
Tucker.
The sudden unbearable sweetness of it made his breath catch and his eyes sting. Turned his guts to liquid with furious longing for that touch—that touch and no other.

The unfairness of it, the outrage of it, gave him the necessary strength to pull away. Tucker stared back at him, pupils dilated, breath uneven.

“What the fuck?”

Tucker’s chest rose and fell.

“Where did
that
come from?”

Still nothing from Tucker, and Elliot’s anger soared.

“Are you out of your fucking mind? You think after two years you’re just going to—to pick up where we left off? What the hell’s the matter with you?” Elliot pushed Tucker. Shoved him back into his corner behind the steering wheel. Tucker made no move to defend himself.

“
You’re
what’s the matter with me,” he cried. “Why did you have to come back?”

“I’m
not
back.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I’m working for the Bakers.”

“
Bullshit.
Bullshit, Elliot.”

“You think I got involved because
you’re
on this case?”

“No. I know better than that. Maybe you’ve developed selective amnesia, but I haven’t. I remember the way it went down. I’m not the only one who made mistakes.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re so goddamned stubborn. And you always have been.”

At some point it would be funny, the fact that the two of them were sitting there glaring at each other, panting and nearly inarticulate with anger and lust and complete, utter confusion. But it was not funny now. Now it was merely one more painful, pointless instant in a day of painful, pointless incidents.

“Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that, Tucker,” Elliot threw back. He yanked open the car door, jumped out. “Eventually you’ll convince yourself
I
walked away.” He slammed the door shut with all the energy and anger he could summon.

He stood there rubbing his knee impatiently, absently, as Tucker’s car sped from the parking lot.

“I heard on the news about that white boy,” Zahra Lyle said. “Maybe now someone will listen to me.”

Elliot had phoned Ms. Lyle after Tucker left him off at the chapel parking lot. After he watched Tucker drive over to the crime scene across the meadow, Elliot had returned to his office at Hanby Hall where he’d found a note from the head of maintenance reminding him to put his trash out in the hall each night. He popped a couple of painkillers, cancelled his massage appointment and instead phoned his physical therapist. After setting an appointment with Augie for five o’clock, he’d given Gordie Lyle’s aunt another try. To his surprise, she had been willing to meet with him.

“Did your nephew know Terry Baker?”

Zahra shook her head. “No. He wasn’t Gordie’s whoadie. No way.”

The Lyle home was located in the Hilltop neighborhood of Tacoma, an entirely different zip code from the Baker residence—both geographically and culturally. Once the central part of Tacoma had been the province of drug lords and gang bangers, but its citizens had successfully teamed up with the police and other community organizations. Slowly but surely, they were reclaiming their neighborhood. Or so the feel good real estate brochures read.

The Lyles lived in a small refurbished home with a handkerchief-sized front yard and a badly dented Volkswagen on blocks in the driveway. Inside and out, the house was scrupulously neat.

“Gordie is an art student, is that right? He transferred in from Cornish after some problems there?”

Her face hardened. “That wasn’t Gordie’s fault. Those boys were jealous of him and that teacher was a cracker racist.”

Elliot let that go. He’d investigated a couple of color of law cases in his time at the Bureau and he was well aware that bias was a two-way street. “Why were the boys jealous of him?”

“Gordie was popular with a lot of girls. A lot of white girls. It wasn’t anything serious, he’s…” Zahra seemed to struggle for a moment with all that Gordie was. It was obvious to Elliot that she adored her nephew, to the extent that whatever problems he might have were inevitably someone else’s fault.

“I see. So Gordie was kind of a ladies’ man?”

Gordie’s aunt seemed torn between pride and defensiveness. “Maybe. A bit.” A reminiscent smile touched her mouth. “Even when he was a little boy, he had the mojo.”

“You raised him on your own?” Zahra didn’t look much older than himself. She didn’t wear a wedding ring, and the few photographs on the wall gave no indication of a husband or domestic partner.

“Since he was ten years old.” Her chin jutted pugnaciously, and Elliot abandoned that line of questioning. She was an attractive woman. Dark hair tightly and elegantly braided and a trim z-shaped body: big breasts, tiny waist, plump bottom. But he was forming the opinion that, with the exception of her nephew, Zahra had a slightly antagonistic attitude toward men. She was talking to him, but she clearly resented every minute of it.

“What about the hassle with one of his instructors? What was the problem there?”

“I told you. That man was a racist. He’s the one who should have been kicked out of that school, not Gordie.”

“What happened?”

She went into a long, convoluted explanation of what had happened. The gist, as far as Elliot could make out, was that Gordie had not liked the grade his project had been given.

“So Gordie accused this professor of being a racist and the professor threatened to have him expelled?”

Zahra nodded fiercely.

“And Gordie responded by saying he was going to have his homies whack the guy?”

She burst out, “He’s only a boy. It was only talk. Gordie doesn’t know any people like that. He never hung around that street scum. He was angry and flapping his mouth.”

“Sure,” Elliot said. “I understand. How’s he getting along at PSU?”

She settled reluctantly, her dark eyes still blazing with the desire to do battle in Gordie’s defense. “Good. They like him at PSU. His teachers like him.”

Elliot smiled. “I guess so. You hinted on TV that Gordie was romantically involved with one of his professors?”

Zahra blinked. Her expression grew wary. “So?”

“Do you have any proof of that?”

“Gordie said so.”

“Did he give the name of this professor?”

“No.” She tugged absently on her earring. “She called here a couple of times trying to find him, and when I asked him, he started laughing about this lady professor. He never said who she was.”

“And she didn’t leave a name?”

“She wouldn’t, would she?”

Probably not, if she had any brains. But if she had any brains, she wouldn’t be involved with a student.

“Did Gordie give you—or were you able to pick up any hint—about her? Do you know for sure that she was one of Gordie’s professors?”

“Do you think that honky bitch had something to do with this?”

Honky?
Seriously? “So she was white? How old did she sound?”

Zahra shrugged. “She sounded all prim and proper. I don’t know. Those women over there all sound alike.”

“How often did they meet? Where did they meet?”

Zahra was shaking her head, looking more and more harassed.

“Okay, let me ask you this—has this woman called since Gordie disappeared?”

“Yes. Twice.” She added quickly, “She could be doing that to throw suspicion off her.”

“But you don’t know who she is, so why would she need to throw suspicion off?” Elliot studied her curiously. “Did Gordie ever indicate this woman might be dangerous?”

“No.” Zahra made a contemptuous sound. “Gordie can take care of himself.”

“But yet you seem sure that something has happened to him.”

“He wouldn’t stay away from home. He knows I worry. And he wouldn’t take a chance on getting kicked out of school again. Something happened to him.”

Elliot continued to question Zahra about Gordie’s friends and associates. He asked about Gordie’s classes, how he spent his free time and everything else he could think of.

In the end, he had to tell her, “I appreciate how concerned you are, but I don’t think there’s a real connection between these two cases.”

“I knew it! You don’t care about Gordie. You don’t care about anyone who isn’t lilywhite inside and out.”

“I’m not saying I don’t think you have cause for concern,” Elliot said, giving way to exasperation. “I’m saying that, at least on the surface, I can’t see what connection there is between these two boys. They don’t seem to have had anything in common. That’s good news for you, Ms. Lyle, because Terry’s dead. It looks like he killed himself, but if he didn’t, then the last thing you would want is his death to be connected to Gordie’s disappearance.”

She stared at him unblinking for several seconds. “Does that mean you don’t care about what happened to Gordie?”

“No, it doesn’t mean that.”

“You’re going to try and find out what happened to him?” she challenged.

“I can try…” Even as the words left his mouth, Elliot could feel the ground giving way beneath him. What was he doing? He wasn’t a PI, for God’s sake and he sure as hell wasn’t an FBI agent. He was a history professor.

Whether he liked it or not.

Maybe that was the point. Anne had been right. As much as he enjoyed teaching, he had loved law enforcement. He had loved believing that he was making a difference in the world, setting right a few wrongs. He had genuinely wanted to help the Bakers and Terry and it was painful to have failed. Maybe he could redeem himself with Gordie Lyle. Looking at it that way, maybe this was an unforeseen break. Terry’s death made his own continued involvement in any investigation problematic. He could agree to help Zahra Lyle and still stay within the letter of what Charlotte had asked of him, thereby justifying his inquiry.

“I’ll do what I can,” he conceded.

Some of the angry defensiveness left Zahra’s face. “Gordie’s special. Really special. You ask any of his teachers.”

“I know,” Elliot said. He asked to see Gordie’s room and Zahra led him to the back of the house. Whereas Terry Baker’s bedroom had been transformed into an anonymous guestroom about five minutes after he’d packed for college, Gordie was still inhabiting what looked like a shrine to his boyhood. There were Michael Jackson posters on the wall and children’s books on the shelves. It seemed clear to Elliot that Gordie did not spend a lot of time in this room—and probably not this house.

“Does he have a laptop?”

“It’s in the desk. He doesn’t use it a lot.”

Elliot found the Apple MacBook in a desk drawer. “Is it all right if I borrow this?”

Zahra hesitated. Nodded.

*  *  *

After leaving Zahra Lyle’s, Elliot headed over to the orthopedic clinic over on South Union Avenue.

“No harm done,” Augie assured him after a brief but thorough examination of Elliot’s knee. He gently manipulated the joint. “How’s it feel now?”

“Better. Fine.”

Augie smiled faintly. “I’m sure it hurts plenty, but it should be okay by tomorrow. Take a couple of painkillers tonight if you can’t sleep.”

“That’s a habit I’m trying to break.”

“No shame in admitting you hurt sometimes,” Augie said easily.

Elliot nodded, unconvinced. He studied his knee. It had healed well, but you’d never know it to look at the patchwork of pink and white scars. He wasn’t particularly vain, but he’d always taken his good looks and fitness for granted. Finding himself disabled and out of the job he loved had been the hardest part, but once in a while he caught an unexpected look at his leg and it was always perturbing. Maybe some of the damage would fade in time, but he wasn’t going to be wearing shorts anytime soon, that was for sure. And the idea of getting naked with someone? It would have to be someone he trusted a lot. It was hard to remember the last time he’d trusted anyone that much.

*  *  *

I remember the way it went down. I’m not the only one who made mistakes.

The long, mournful harmonica wail of a train whistle drifted in the night, interrupting Elliot’s bleak thoughts.

He was sitting in his car at the Steilacoom landing listening, preoccupied, to the passing trains and watching the slow twinkling approach of the ferry lights. The bulky ship’s prow cut the waves in shining halves. He was thinking about Tucker, about that confusing, shattering kiss in the PSU parking lot.

At least it was a relief to know it wasn’t just him. That Tucker also still felt that bewildering, frustrating mélange of emotions. That’s how it had been from the first. From the first time Elliot had looked across the crowded briefing room, not long after Tucker had transferred in from the Los Angeles field office, the attraction had been instant and mutual. As had been their awareness of that attraction.

Elliot could remember that first meeting as though it were last week instead of nearly two years before. Nothing romantic about it, really. They were both trained to pick up physical cues of body language and eye contact. And yet, recalling the way Tucker’s gaze had held his—the slightly dilated pupils, the faint flush on his hard cheekbones, the absent way he’d rubbed the edge of his thumb against his stern lower lip…even now Elliot felt the power of that tingling memory. No surprise that by the end of Tucker’s first week in Seattle, they’d landed in bed together.

Eleven weeks. And the whole time Elliot had wondered what the hell he was doing. He’d never felt anything like it. Never craved anyone like he craved Tucker. He’d known it couldn’t last. They were both ambitious. Both focused on their careers. They were too different. He should have expected—

Elliot’s phone rang. He looked at the number flashing up on the screen. Roland.

He refused to acknowledge the glimmer of disappointment as he accepted the call. “Hi, Dad.”

“You all right, son?” Roland’s voice sounded funny, gruff.

“Me? Sure.” Elliot thought rapidly. “You’ve heard about Terry.”

“Pauline called.”

“Really,” Elliot said flatly. What the hell was Pauline Baker doing calling Roland on the night she discovered her son was dead?

Or was he being unfair? After all, Pauline had gone to Roland for help in the beginning. Maybe it made sense that he was one of the first people she shared the dreadful news with.

Roland said in that same awkward manner, “I’m sorry, Elliot. If I’d realized Tom would be such an asshole, I’d never have gotten you involved. You’re sure you’re all right?”

He was talking about the wrestling match in the Baker kitchen, worrying that his good old homophobic buddy had roughed his son up. Elliot had practically forgotten about it, once Augie had reassured him he hadn’t done any serious injury to his knee. The kiss in Tucker’s car had effectively overshadowed previous events.

“It’s okay, Dad. I’m fine. Baker was going for Tucker. I happened to get in the way.”

“Even so, I should have realized—” His father’s voice changed, sharpened. “
Tucker?
You mean that bastard who was supposed to be your friend in the FBI? Is
he
the one in charge of Terry’s case?”

Precisely how doped up had Elliot been those first months after getting shot? Apparently he’d spilled his guts to anyone who would listen.

He said uncomfortably, “Yeah, it’s a small world, isn’t it? Anyway, it’s all water under the bridge. Speaking of which, the ferry is docking. I’m going to have to go, Dad. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

He hung up as Roland hit his stride, ranting about how it wasn’t a surprise there had been no progress in the case with that bully boy brownshirt tramping his big fascist feet over both the evidence and people’s fee—