Hidden Things (7 page)

Calliope's breath went cold inside her chest. She stepped back out of Tom's embrace; he let her go without a hint of reluctance. “That was something else entirely.”

He nodded, moving slowly. “Well, it was me.” He said the words the way someone might say
mostly cloudy
. “Not Joshua.”

Her eyes narrowed. “He might be dead. Definitely in trouble.”

“And you're running off to save him.” Tom's mouth twisted, as though he'd just realized a new kind of pain. “Right into the same thing that he ran into. Blind.”

“I don't—”

“No.” He shook his head. “You can't do this.”

She sighed. “Listen—”

“No.” He leveled a long, calloused finger at her. “For once, you listen.” Incredibly, even now, he wasn't raising his voice; Calliope wondered if he even knew how. “You—” His eyes came up to hers, and he stopped. For a few seconds, his finger continued pointing at her, then he lowered it. He took a breath as though he were about to say something, held it, shook his head, and let it out in a long exhalation. Calliope blinked when he turned to the door and opened it on the chilly morning.

“What . . .” She couldn't think of anything else to say, but it was enough to make him stop, at least for a second.

He turned just enough to look at her sidelong over his shoulder. “You've already decided you're going,” he murmured. “I don't know if you know it yet, but you have.” He turned back to the open door, straightened his shoulders from his subtle, perpetual stoop, and stretched. His next words were spoken to the open morning air. “And you're going for Joshua, pure and simple, and I don't know if you know that, either.”

Her throat grew tight. “That's not fair.”

“I love you,” he said, as though she hadn't spoken. “I'm going to be crazy worried about you until you come back.” He moved out onto the front step and turned back just enough to reach the door handle, without meeting her eyes. “So, please come back.”

“Tom—”

“I love you. Be careful.”

The door closed. The house might have been dead quiet, but Calliope couldn't tell over the pulse beating at her ears.

 

When the phone rang, Calliope—still standing in the entry-way, staring at the door—jumped as though she'd been electrocuted.

She fumbled the phone out of the pocket of her jacket where it hung on the back of a chair. The screen displayed a number she already recognized, and she thumbed the answer button. “Good morning, Detective.”

“Likewise, M—” He paused. “Calliope.”

“Well done,” she murmured, trying to inject some kind of amusement into her voice.

“Thank you,” he deadpanned. “I practiced. How was your Halloween?”

“Eventful, but nothing worth reporting to precinct.” Despite their conversation the previous evening, Calliope felt only the barest flicker of guilt at this evasion, remarkable only because it was there at all.

“Fair enough.”

“How did your partner's boy do with the records down at the office?”

“My—” Calliope could hear a moment's hesitation in Johnson's voice.

“Walker.”

“Ahh. Yes.” Johnson took a breath. “Technically, Special Agent Walker is not my partner—I am a liaison between his office and the department. I facilitate what I can, but he is directing an investigation in which I have no official role or jurisdiction.”

Calliope could hear an overcareful precision in his tone and wording. She was willing to bet he was, at some level, vein-poppingly livid about something, but too good a cop to let it show. She'd also put a smaller bet on the source of his stress. “Things a bit tense down there?”

Johnson didn't respond immediately. “The agent didn't have much luck last night—or this morning, come to that.”

Calliope winced. “Our filing system is a little arcane.” She let her eyes drift to the front window, but Tom's car was long gone. “I could come down and help sort it out for him for a while, if you'd like.”

“Special Agent Walker has assigned a second agent to the files,” Johnson not-replied.

“I could still speed things up for them, even if there's nothing to find.”

She heard Johnson exhale over the line and knew they'd gotten to the part she wouldn't like. “Special Agent Walker doesn't believe that your help will be necessary.”

Calliope turned that over in her head. She chose each word as she went, moving through her reply as if each syllable were rigged to explode. “Would Special Agent Walker like me to stay clear of his agents while they work through the files?”

Another small exhalation she didn't imagine Johnson realized she could hear. “He would.”

Calliope closed her eyes. “Has he filed any paperwork or given specific orders to that effect?”

“He has.”

“He's keeping me out of our office.”

“Yes.” The detective cleared his throat. “The file system was very confusing.”

“He thinks I'm obstructing.” Her lips felt cold; numb. “Or he thinks I'm a suspect.”

“No.” Johnson's tone was adamant, but he hesitated after the denial. “Not a suspect,” he finally added.

Not a murder suspect. That's a comfort.

“Do you think I'm obstructing, Detective Johnson?”

“I'm not heading up this investigation, Calliope,” he replied, laying a soft emphasis on her first name.

“That's a pretty cheap sidestep,
Darryl
.”

“I'm not even seconded onto it,” he protested. His voice was even, but contained more than a little disgust. “I'm not exactly welcome around Walker either, now.”

Realization came to Calliope, accompanied by widened eyes. “You went off on Walker?”

“If you need to reach me in the next few days,” Johnson replied, “use my office number—I'll be at my desk.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not at all.” He cleared his throat. “As an upside, I can get home early and see my kids before bed this week.”

“Congratulations,” Calliope said.

“Thank you.” Another pause. “I was hoping you might have thought of a more productive angle than the files in your office to work on, anyway.”

It was Calliope's turn to deadpan. “I did say I'd tell you if anything came up.”

“And I'd like to hold you to that,” Johnson said. Calliope heard his chair creak and imagined him leaning forward over his desk, shielding the phone from the rest of his office. “Though I have to warn you: given my new working arrangements, it may take
quite
some time before I'm able to share any new information with Walker.”

Calliope laughed; after her talk with Tom, it was a relief. “I'll take that under consideration, Detective.”

“I'm glad to hear that,” Johnson replied. There were a few moments of silence. Calliope could smell the coffee Tom had made, but couldn't bring herself to have any. Yet. She knew she would, eventually, and that it would make her feel guilty, and that
that
would make her angry; first at herself, then (mostly) at Tom, even—

Detective Johnson cleared his throat. “
Is
there any new information?”

“Sorry.” Calliope shook the thoughts away. “I was just . . . planning my day, I guess.”

“You don't make it sound like it's going to be a very good day.”

“Eh.” She dropped onto her couch. “That's how it goes sometimes. Let's talk about the other thing.”

Again, she heard a chair creak on his end of the line, and her mental image showed him leaning back. “I'm going to take a stab and guess it has something to do with the fat man that Joshua mentioned in his message.”

Calliope blinked. “You know you'd make a pretty good detective, Detective.”

“Sometimes,” Johnson replied. “Not so much in this case.”

“How so?”

“Two reasons.” Johnson shifted in his chair again, though not so much as he had. Calliope didn't get the impression that he was very used to sitting while he worked. “One, it was the only thing that even vaguely resembled a lead, unless you were withholding evidence, which I don't think you were.”

“Thank you,” Calliope said, and meant it.

“You're entirely welcome.”

She got up and wandered away from the couch. “You said there were two reasons.”

“I did.” Calliope could hear him lean forward over his desk again. “The second reason is—yeah?” The last word came to Calliope slightly muffled, in a different tone of voice; Johnson had been interrupted at his desk by another officer. Guessing from the tone of his voice, Calliope didn't think it was a superior, but neither did she think it was anyone he particularly liked. Johnson's end of the line became completely muffled; Calliope could only make out that there were two men talking. She rummaged around the kitchen while she waited; first a cupboard for a mug, then a drawer for a spoon—pulling items out by absentminded habit. She was just setting the sugar back where it belonged when she heard Johnson's hand come away from his mouthpiece. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” she replied. “That's the job.”

“That's the job today, yes.” Johnson sounded annoyed. “But I can deal with that later—the second reason is something you should know about.”

“Yeah?” Calliope sipped from the mug in her hands.

“Our . . . mutual acquaintance?”

Calliope's brow creased. “Walker?” she hazarded.

“Exactly. Our mutual friend has been very interested in the fat man reference as well.” Johnson's voice lowered. “That's mostly what he has his boys looking for in your agency's files: some kind of record of him. Pretty obsessive.”

“That,” Calliope observed, “is something I am absolutely sure he's not going to find.” She took another sip. “And not because I hid any files. It just doesn't exist.” She reconsidered telling Johnson about her whole weird evening, but decided against it. It felt too personal, like describing a vivid dream to a stranger. “I . . . know who it is now, but I can absolutely guarantee we never did any kind of work with the guy in the past.”

“But you've spoken with him.”

“Yeah.”

“And he told you . . .”

“Nothing.”

Silence on the other end of the line. “That doesn't sound like much of a lead.”

“He was—”

Forbidden from conducting business on Halloween.

“—busy. Told me to come back later today.”

“Doesn't sound very helpful,” Johnson said. “Or safe.”

“Helpful? No, he isn't. But safe? He's a downtown suit.”

Kinda.

“He's not a threat,” she said, trying to sound sure. She turned the mug in her hands. “And if he were, I could outrun him.”

“Ahh,” Johnson said. “The nickname's accurate, then?”

“You have no idea.”

“Unfortunately, I don't.” Johnson's voice shifted to Serious Cop. “This isn't my case, Calliope, and I told you to let me know if you found anything out, which you did. I have no reason to suspect you, and I don't . . .” He sighed. “With that said, this
isn't
my case, and you need to understand how your involvement would look to anyone else, and that none of it would break in your favor right now.”

“I do.” She considered what she'd told Tom. “I think it might mean I have to go out there.”

“There?” Johnson turned that over in silence. Calliope let him work it out. “Iowa.”

“Yeah.” She tried to keep the tone of her voice neutral, but to her ears, it didn't seem as though it worked. “Maybe.”

“You said your contact hadn't told you anything yet,” Johnson countered. “What makes you think you need to go out to where your partner—” He caught himself. “Out there,” he finished.

“I—” She paused, brought up short. Now that she thought about it, she'd had no reason to tell Tom that this morning. Somehow, her half-awake brain had munged all the stuff going on in the last few days into a half-sorted pile, and extracted—

“ . . . you can't take her with you.” The vagabond in the doorway stepped into the room. “You can't. She's not part of this. You can't—”

“It's just a hunch,” she said.

Detective Johnson didn't say anything for a few moments—long enough for Calliope to wonder if he was actually going to say anything, or simply wait for her to offer up something more compelling, less crazy. Finally: “Last year, I got put on a missing persons case.”

Calliope frowned. “Oh-kay.” She thought for a moment. “You're homicide.”

“I am,” he agreed. “It looked pretty bad.” He paused. “It was a kid. A little girl.”

“I'm sorry,” Calliope said, still frowning. “I'm not sure—”

“The parents were very scared,” Detective Johnson continued. “And a lot of us working on the case were parents. A lot of dads and moms trying to figure out what happened and how we could find the kid.” He took a deep breath. “We had a lot of
hunches
. Hundreds.”

Calliope bent her head. “But it turned out to be a homicide case all along.”

“It did.” Detective Johnson said. “I'm not saying anything about your partner—honestly, there's too much weird in this case to rule anything out—but make sure you know where your hunches are coming from. Make sure you know your reasons.” Another voice spoke in the background on Johnson's end of the line. He muffled the phone again, said a few words, and then came back to her. “I need to go.”

“Absolutely.”

“Please contact me if you get any more information.”

“I will,” she said, her voice soft. “Promise.”

“Good.”

He hung up. Calliope stood, facing the counter for a few more seconds. Then she shook herself, set the phone down, and picked up the mug.