Fair Game (13 page)

“Move a muscle and I’ll blow your head off,” Elliot announced.

The figure jumped as though already shot. “
Fuck.
Elliot, don’t sh-shoot!” Steven stuttered. “It’s me.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Elliot lowered the pistol and left the shelter of the wall.

Steven’s arms flopped to his side. “I wasn’t sure you were home.”

“So you sneaked around to the back and tried to break in?”

“I wasn’t trying to break in.”

“What were you doing?”

“Checking the door.”

“For
what?
”

“If it was open I was going to see if you had any popcorn.”

Elliot stopped dead. “Are you kidding me?” He could make out Steven shaking his head. “I could have shot you.”

“I know.” Steven sounded rattled. “I didn’t think. I was just…hungry.”

“Try buying some groceries. It works for me.”

“I freelance. The paychecks aren’t regular. And sometimes they aren’t much.”

“For Christ’s sake, Steven.” Elliot was still shaken. He wasn’t sure whether that was because he’d nearly shot his neighbor or because for a couple of minutes there he had believed himself in real and present danger. He went up the steps past Steven and pushed open the door. “Come in. Since you’re here.”

“Thanks.” Steven apologized again, “Sorry.”

Elliot shook his head. Steven looked sheepish and scared. “I think I have some of that microwave stuff somewhere,” Elliot said finally.

They tramped into the kitchen. Elliot opened the pantry cupboard, found a box of microwave popcorn and handed it to Steven, who was eyeing him with a funny expression.

“Something wrong?”

“No. You…you look…”

“Tired? Pissed off? I am.”

“You look dangerous,” Steven said bluntly. “Would you really have shot me?”

Elliot met Steven’s wide green eyes gravely. “Just…don’t do that again. For both our sakes.”

Steven nodded. “Got it.” He held the box up. “You want some? I could make it here instead of taking it home.”

That was the cop groupie turned on by the experience of nearly getting wasted. Elliot shook his head. “Thanks, but I’ve had a long day. Another time.”

Steven nodded.

“Did you get the job?” Elliot asked.

“What job?” Steven’s expression changed. “Oh. The online thing. No.”

“Sorry.”

Steven shrugged. “I don’t think I’m the collegiate type.”

Elliot saw Steven to the front door, watched him vanish into the windy darkness and slid the deadbolt behind him. He was unhappy with the whole incident. Steven’s quest for junk food didn’t quite match up with walking up from his place without using a flashlight. Nor did it explain why he was prowling around Elliot’s cabin instead of simply knocking on the door.

He couldn’t help suspecting that Steven had expected Elliot to be dining with his dad and had hoped to find a way to break into the cabin.

Why? Was he that hard up? And if he was, why wouldn’t he say so? He hadn’t seemed to have a problem mooching off Elliot in the past.

He turned off the porch light, turned off the living room light and went to return the Glock to the floor safe. As he spun the dial, his cell phone chirped, even that small sound loud in the silent house. He went to find his phone, eventually hunting it down in the kitchen. He thought—hoped—that it might be Roland.

As he picked the phone up he saw that he had an anonymous text message.

That was odd. Very few people had his cell phone number these days, and even fewer of those people used text messaging.

He clicked on the message.

Elliot, are you enjoying our game? I am.

“Lance.” Laconic. That was Tucker. From noon till night, he always answered the phone the same way: ready for trouble and not worried at the idea of it.

“It’s me.”

“To what do I owe this honor?”

“I want to run something past you.”

“I knew you didn’t call just to hear my seductive baritone.”

Elliot wished he was as sure, but he let that ride. As succinctly as possible he filled Tucker in on everything he’d learned in the days since the Bureau had withdrawn from the case. Tucker asked a couple of terse questions, but mostly listened in silence.

When Elliot had finished talking, Tucker said, “I’m confused.” There was an edge to his voice Elliot hadn’t heard for a while.

“About?”

“Aren’t you the guy who quit the Bureau because you couldn’t deal with the idea of a desk job? If you couldn’t be out in the field, you didn’t want any part of law enforcement, right? That was the story.”

This was dangerous ground. Elliot clipped out, “What about it?”

“Yet here you are acting like you’re running a one-man murder investigation.”

“I didn’t go looking for this.”

“No? Well, you’re sure as hell not letting it go.”

“One kid is dead and another kid is missing. You think I should let it go?”

“I think you’re a private citizen, Elliot. And that was your choice.”

Elliot refused to take the bait. “I think this message lends credence to the theory that there’s a connection between these two boys.” Granted, he preferred that theory to the idea of his father being involved even incidentally in Terry Baker’s death.

Tucker didn’t say anything for so long, Elliot thought they might have been cut off. He said at last, “I think somebody is yanking your chain.”

“No shit.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean that somebody is a killer or a kidnapper. You’re a little on the intense side, Mills, in case you never noticed. Maybe someone is getting a kick out of rattling your cage.”

“Come on, Lance. Only a handful of people know I was even peripherally involved in the Baker case.”

“And those people talked to how many other people? You don’t know. You have no idea.”

“I’m telling you, this is someone who I interviewed. This is a challenge. But more than that, it’s confirmation Gordie Lyle didn’t run away from home to make beautiful art. And Terry Baker didn’t pick up an anvil and walk out into a lake to shoot himself.”

Tucker barely waited for him to complete his sentence before he was rasping, “You want to know what I think? I’ll tell you what I think.” The barely contained anger caught Elliot off guard. “I think you’ve managed to pick up a stalker. I hope I’m wrong. I hope one of your pals in the ivory tower is having some fun with you, but that’s probably not it. You probably
have
attracted the attention of someone you’d have done better to avoid. So I’m going to give you a piece of advice. Stay the hell out of this case. I’ll give Tacoma PD a call tomorrow and share what you’ve told me, and that needs to be the end of it.”

Elliot gave a disbelieving laugh. “It’s too late for that and we both know it.”

“I don’t know that. Neither do you.”

“‘Elliot, are you enjoying our game?’ He’s challenging me.”

“So what? You don’t pick up the challenge. You don’t play the game. That’s how it ends right where it begins. You don’t respond.”

“I can’t do that.” Elliot couldn’t believe Tucker was even suggesting it. “This is a lead. The best lead we’ve had so far.”

“Tomorrow I’ll contact Anontxt.net and get the IPS of your stranger danger. We’ll have the sonofabitch.”

They were both talking over each other by now, neither listening, and both getting more frustrated and angry. “Never mind that. This might be the Lyle kid’s last chance—”

“And even if it was, this isn’t proof that the two cases are tied together—”

“He could still be alive. Where was Terry Baker for those three weeks before he went into the lake—”

“Hard, physical evidence—”

“Where did he get the gun?”

“And even if it
is
murder, it’s for the cops not the feds—”

“Where did he get the fucking anvil? We—”

“There is no goddamned
we.
”

And abruptly neither of them had anything more to say.

The silence was louder than the shouting.

“You need to let it go,” Tucker said at last. His voice sounded compressed with the effort to control it. “Leave it alone. Leave it alone before…”

Elliot waited for him to finish it, but he didn’t. Finally, Elliot said, “Got it. Thanks for your help.”

After he’d walked back to retrieve his drink, he began to seriously analyze that unfinished statement of Tucker’s. For all the anger and unresolved tension between them, Tucker really wasn’t a bad-tempered guy. Maybe he hadn’t been kidding when he said Elliot brought out the worst in him.

Leave it alone. Leave it alone before…

Never mind what Tucker was saying, what
wasn’t
he saying?

*  *  *

“TGIF,” Anne Gold muttered in passing when he met her in Starbucks where he’d stopped to get coffee on his way into work.

Elliot nodded grimly. He watched her splashing through the deep puddles in her high-heeled red boots as she tried not to spill her drink on the way to her Jeep Cherokee.

Godawful weather. It suited his mood perfectly.

“Mills,” called the girl behind the counter, and he retrieved his café mocha and went out to his own car.

A night’s rest had not done a lot for his spirits. Every time he remembered his father’s face, he felt guilty. Why had he done that? Why had he pushed? That was another part of his old life he hadn’t liked. Law enforcement hardened you. It made you cynical about people. Even people you loved. The people who deserved your unconditional trust.

Maybe Tucker had a point about his being too intense. Why the hell
didn’t
he just let this go? Why had he allowed himself to be guilted by Zahra Lyle into trying to find her nephew when the odds were good that the kid was off exploring his inner artist? Why not accept that Terry Baker had tragically shot himself? Why did he have to see some invisible hand working the puppets? Nobody else saw that. Nobody else would even think of looking for that.

Tucker sure didn’t see it.

And, when Elliot arrived at his office and called Tacoma PD, neither did they.

The folks at the Investigation Bureau were polite and they took his information, but they were not about to share their own findings. Why would they? He was no longer with the FBI, which made him merely another annoying busybody with a theory. They would call SAC Montgomery who would reassure them the Bureau had no further interest in their case. They would call President Oppenheimer who would assure them the university was happy with the way they had handled this sensitive matter.

Elliot was well on his way to establishing his reputation as a local crank. And deservedly so. What next? Would he start cutting out newspaper clippings of local crimes and start writing letters to the editor with his theories?

Maybe he should have taken that desk job. Was he honest-to-God that bored with teaching?

He stopped and considered this question carefully.

No. He wasn’t. He
did
enjoy teaching. He’d lost track of that over the past week. He’d allowed himself to get sucked back into the old obsessive mindset and—
admit it
—the thrill of the chase.

All that ended here and now. For better or for worse, that life was over. Tucker was right. It was time to accept that all he was doing now was hurting friends and family—and making himself crazy.

Relieved with his decision, Elliot spent the morning sloshing to and from the lecture hall to his office. He talked about revisionist Westerns and feminist spies in the Civil War. He glanced over essays and graded test papers. Kyle had not shown up, and Elliot spared him a few seconds’ concern. Kyle had not been his normal upbeat, energetic self for the last couple of weeks, and it was not like him to fail to show up without leaving word. But maybe it was just as well Kyle had missed today. It gave Elliot more to do and less time to think.

As he’d expected, Charlotte phoned. She rang around one-thirty as he was trying to decide whether to go out for lunch or work straight through.

“Elliot, my dear. I received a call from a very nice detective from the police department. I don’t understand why you’re still…” She let that trail as though she couldn’t quite put a name to whatever it was she feared he was doing.

He thought of and discarded several responses. “I’m sorry, Charlotte,” he said at last. “They shouldn’t have bothered you. There were one or two discrepancies in Terry’s death that I was hoping to have cleared up.”

“But Detective Lawrence said that you were suggesting there was a connection between Terry’s death and Gordie Lyle’s disappearance. Surely you’re not still thinking that’s the case?”

Hell.

He opened his mouth, but was forestalled by the buzzing of his cell phone. He frowned at the screen. Another text message from Anonymous Caller.

Eyes on the icon, he said slowly, distractedly, “Sorry? Er, no. I don’t know. Can I call you back, Charlotte?”

“Elliot, I want to make it perfectly clear that as far as the university is concerned, the matter is closed. We want to put this tragedy behind us. For the sake of the students. For all of our sakes.”

Elliot pressed the text icon. The words flashed up.

Your move.

So much for the sorry-wrong-number theory.

“I understand, Charlotte. It was a mistake contacting Tacoma PD.”

“It was, yes.” Charlotte sounded troubled and a bit exasperated. “I can’t understand why you did it. You don’t honestly believe there’s a serial killer on campus?”

A serial killer. The very words he had avoided thinking, let alone speaking.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got a call coming in that I’ve got to take.”

“
Really?
” And now Charlotte, in her polite New England way, was truly pissed. And no wonder. He had just informed the president of the university that he was expecting a more important call. It was beginning to look like tenure would not be in Elliot’s immediate future.

“It’s…I apologize. I really do have to take this.” He clattered the handset back into the cradle and stared at the screen of his cell phone.

Not a coincidence. Not a mistake. There was a connection between Gordie Lyle and Terry Baker all right. He’d stake his life that he or she was sitting on the other end of this call.

Elliot texted back.
Do I know you?

It took a few seconds, but the answer appeared.
Do you?

What do you want?
typed Elliot.

Another small delay, and then,
You like games. So do I.

“Oh, you think so, do you?” Elliot muttered. He texted back,
Let the games begin.