Fair Game

“That’s right.”
Tucker’s lip curled.
Elliot curbed his temper but it wasn’t easy. He refrained from asking the questions that would open the line of discussion that was sure to end in one of them decking the other. Instead, he slapped the folder on the table. “Great. Shall we get started?”
“Let’s.” Tucker yanked out the chair on his side of the table.
Elliot sat again and opened the file. That was for show. No way could he sit here calmly reading while Tucker did his best to raze him to ashes with those blue laser beams.
He made a pretense of turning pages, though, not least because he knew it was pissing Tucker off.
The ironic part was that Tucker seemed to believe he had cause for anger. As though he were somehow the wronged party.
After about forty seconds of scraping pages, Tucker said in that same too-even tone, “So Montgomery set this up?”
“‘Set this up?’” Elliot repeated, some of his own hostility slipping through despite his efforts. “You’re the special agent in charge of the case and I’m the consultant the family has brought in. Is there some reason you’d decline to cooperate with me?”
Like he didn’t know.
“I don’t like working with outsiders.”
The brutality of that caught Elliot on the raw, but he managed to say pleasantly, “Still the same loveable asshole, I see.”
There might have been a faint tinge of red in Tucker’s face, though it was hard to tell beneath the freckles. He repositioned his chair and without further ado brought Elliot up to speed on the case. It was a brisk and concise accounting.
Elliot listened without interrupting.
The facts of the case boiled down to depressingly little. On the night of October 1, Terry Baker had been studying in Kingman Library on the PSU campus. He had checked out a book on Renaissance philosophy at eleven-thirty, left the library and hadn’t been seen since. Somewhere between the library and his dorm, Baker had vanished. His car had never left the student parking lot. There was no sign of foul play. No one, other than the librarian who had checked his book out, even remembered seeing him. According to his roommate, Baker had seemed “like always.”
“What was ‘like always’?” Elliot questioned, glancing up to find Tucker staring at him.
“Quiet. Serious. Polite. He was liked well enough, but I wasn’t able to identify anyone who considered him a close friend.”
“That seems to support what his mother said. Baker was gay. Were you aware of that?”
Tucker’s gaze sharpened. “I had my suspicions. We didn’t turn up anything conclusive.”
“He came out last summer. Tom Baker had major problems with it. He and Pauline chose to keep that piece of information to themselves.”
“That supports our theory that the kid walked.”
“Literally,” Elliot retorted. “I think if he’d left voluntarily, he’d at least take his car.”
“Maybe someone else drove.”
“I don’t think s—”
“You don’t think so?” Tucker’s tone was edged with barely restrained hostility. “You’ve been on the case for five fucking minutes. What do you think happened? He was kidnapped? I know it’s been a while, but even you should remember how rarely adult males are kidnapped from college campuses.”
Elliot flicked him a cool glance. “I was thinking more along the lines that he might have capped himself.”
Tucker sat back in his chair. “Maybe. If I had to spend a semester reading Renaissance philosophy, I’d cap myself. But where’s the body?”
Elliot drummed his fingers on the table, thinking. He shook his head.
“Yeah, that’s the problem.” Tucker added grudgingly, “Baker Senior’s disapproval does change the dynamic, I’ll give you that.”
“There’s a boyfriend. That adds another suspect to the mix. And a potential motive in addition to the father’s disapproval.”
“A boyfriend?” Tucker expelled an impatient breath. “Fucking A. That’s two weeks’ worth of investigation—” He caught himself.
“Yeah,” Elliot said neutrally. He understood and he did sympathize. “What about the video surveillance cameras?”
“Nothing showed up.”
“Nothing?”
“The kid walked out of the library. No one followed him. The cameras are only positioned in strategic campus areas. What it gets down to is Baker walked out of the picture.”
“You checked the kid’s computer?”
“His laptop disappeared with him. Cell phone too.” Tucker took out a pen and notepad. “What’s the boyfriend’s name?”
“Jim Feder. He’s also a student at PSU.”
Tucker frowned, considering. “I don’t think he turned up in our initial investigation.”
“That’s squirrely right there. If they were hooking up, he’d probably start asking where Baker was. And if he was asking questions, someone should have noticed.”
“Maybe he knows where Baker is. Maybe he’s AWOL too.” Tucker’s gaze—so blue, so intense—met Elliot’s, and Elliot felt the old drag of awareness.
“It’s worth finding out.”
Tucker was still looking at him, his expression unreadable. Elliot heard the echo of his words. For some reason it suddenly felt like they were talking about something entirely different.
The strange moment passed. Tucker glanced at his watch and rose unhurriedly from the table. “Sometimes you already know the answer. Sometimes it’s just not worth the bother.”
 Chapter Four 
“Try this.” Roland Mills held out a teaspoon with a dab of white on the tip.
Elliot sampled the teaspoon and closed his eyes. A delicate, buttery cheese melted across his tongue. He opened his eyes. “Wow. What is that?”
“Mascarpone cheese. For the mushroom cream sauce that goes over the rigatoni.” Satisfied, Roland returned to the stove.
They were sitting in the kitchen of Roland’s comfortable bungalow in the artsy and eclectic historic Ballard district, about a ten minute drive from Seattle. Elliot had grown up in this house with its glossy bamboo bedroom floors, natural rock fireplace and tranquil front and back gardens. For the first few years after his mother’s death in a hit-and-run accident, it had been hard for him to visit. He’d always tried to meet his father on campus or at a restaurant, but eventually he’d got past it. The house no longer echoed with the emptiness of that missing voice, that absent laugh, those vanished footsteps. Elliot could remember the good times without grief—although he still didn’t understand how his father could sleep in the same bedroom, same bed, he’d shared for twenty-four years with the bright spirit of Jesse Mills. But then there were a lot of things he didn’t understand about his father. And probably vice versa.
“What can you tell me about Tom Baker?” he asked, idly watching his father’s ponytail sway gently with the motion of powerful shoulders beneath blue denim as he swiftly, precisely sliced mushrooms. Roland had waxed scathingly on the gloomy financial forecast for several local arts groups—although if Elliot were honest, he had only half listened, his attention still mostly focused on the brief and unpleasant meeting he’d had with Tucker at the Tacoma RA.
He really, really didn’t want to think about Tucker or start the inevitable sifting through the ashes of their brief—however intense—relationship. Though listening to his father bitch about Republicans, the recession and cancelled art grants wasn’t a whole hell of a lot of an improvement. It bothered Elliot how a few minutes’ conversation with Tucker could stir up…so much.
An awful lot of memories for a relationship that hadn’t lasted a year. Hadn’t lasted three months, to be accurate. In fact, calling it a “relationship” was kind of an exaggeration. Realistically, they’d been fuck buddies, right? Which was why, when Elliot had managed to get himself nailed following a shootout at the federal courthouse, there had been nothing to hold them together. The only thing they ever had in common was the job.