After Bennett’s weird blowup, Matt’s mood had been dicey to say the least. Instead of giving the apology everyone expected, Bennett went behind closed doors on a daily basis, and Matt refused to make the first move. The whole thing snowballed into Matt turning the office remodel over to Eddie and Alex entirely, choosing to work at his house or Jim’s most of the time.
No one could get more information than that. Helena hadn’t even known there’d been a fight when Evan talked to her, but that was also because of some serious stress in her career.
To the surprise of no one, Helena was tendering her resignation to the NYPD. She missed working with Evan, didn’t like his replacement, and found the new captain rigid and uncompromising—not to mention harboring an ancient attitude about women and the police force. She was miserable and done. Now it was just a matter of choosing something else.
She and Evan talked for almost three hours. He tried to counsel his dearest friend, but he didn’t have answers for her. Particularly when she confessed Shane was having some career pains himself and he’d suggested they move to the West Coast for a while.
That played in Evan’s head as they cleared the table after the twins were done and had disappeared upstairs for the night.
“Helena said she and Shane were considering a move to California,” Evan said suddenly as they walked into the kitchen. In front of him, Matt paused, then turned, a frown on his face.
“What?”
“When we talked. She’s going to resign, Shane’s talking about California. I don’t know—it just seemed to come out of nowhere.”
They loaded the dishwasher in silence. Evan was lost in thought, but Matt looked concerned.
“What?”
“I don’t know. What if something is going on with Bennett? Like money problems or something? He spends like he’s fucking Midas.”
“I think he spends like that because he can. And even if he was in trouble, I have to imagine there’s some sort of backup plan.” Evan assumed. Evan hoped. Because Bennett wasn’t just Matt’s client, he was their friend. And the aftershocks of Bennett’s business tanking would spread through their social circle in a serious way.
Matt wiped his hands on a dish towel, leaned against the counter. “It’s not because he’s our biggest client,” Matt said. “We’ve got plenty of business and we’re fine—we’d be fine.”
Evan nodded. Things would change, but everyone was still going to get through college, even if they had to take out loans.
“Just—I keep thinking about last summer and all of us at the house. Everyone so damn happy.”
The note of defeat in Matt’s voice moved Evan around the open dishwasher and into Matt’s embrace. They hugged until the oven timer went off. Evan dropped a kiss on his boyfriend’s cheek before he walked away.
They’d been through bad times—times they wouldn’t wish on anyone else. The specter of darkness wasn’t welcome in the lives of the people they loved.
“SO SHANE and I just have to finish a few things; then we’ll move to the next stage of development,” Griffin said, taking a break between courses to give an update on what he was doing. The two couples sat around the dining room table, enjoying a meal Matt had made himself—though Evan took credit for the salad.
And pouring the wine.
Evan and Matt shared a look that Griffin couldn’t help but notice.
“How’s Shane been lately?” Matt asked, leaning on the table on his elbows. He’d been about half as jovial as usual, which Griffin found concerning. The question about Shane ratcheted it up another few notches.
“Uh, fine. We’ve been mostly working via Google Docs and stuff like that. This bathroom renovation is basically never going to end, and with Jim going out of town so much for work, someone’s gotta make sure no one is tracking molecules of dirt through the house.” He patted Jim’s hand affectionately. “His HEPA filter only does so much.”
When no one laughed, Griffin scrunched up his face in concern. “What?”
Another shared look. Then Evan updated them on his conversation with Helena—by the end of which Griffin was moving into low-level panic.
“Shane wants to leave? That’s crazy,” Griffin said. “And Bennett hasn’t apologized.” The panic inflated a tick more. “Daisy said….” He paused, torn between his worry and the fact that she had said things in confidence.
“Daisy said what?” Matt asked.
It was the concern in Matt’s voice that loosened Griffin’s tongue—because he knew Matt felt protective about his friend, and maybe what he knew was bigger than bitching about your husband. “She said that Bennett’s been working all the time. Like getting in late, taking a lot of meetings during the day. He’s always out doing something, apparently.”
Again, Matt’s expression did something to Griffin. Something upsetting.
“What? Is that not true?”
“He’s in his office all the time,” Matt said, reaching for his wineglass. “Never goes out. That’s what Alex told me. They can’t even get him to inspect the second floor so we can officially sign off the job.”
Jim took Griffin’s hand and squeezed, and all the while Griffin felt the blood draining from his face. “Someone has to tell her,” he started to say, but Evan was shaking his head.
“You can’t put yourself in the middle of this, Griffin. Tempting as it is. It’s their marriage.”
“She’s been through this shit once before,” Griffin snapped. “And now there’s a kid involved.”
Evan smiled sadly. “She knows something’s wrong already—if you’re going to say anything to her, it should be that she needs to talk to her husband.”
The conversation killed the mood for a while until Jim let out a loud sigh and started refilling wineglasses. “Time for a change in conversation. Someone ask Griffin about how many tiny squares of material are sitting on our dining room table.”
Pulled out of his funk enough to be annoyed, Griffin kicked Jim under the table. “We have to pick curtains for the bathroom and linens for the wedding.”
“I told you. Black.”
Griffin looked at their hosts but realized he was getting nothing from Matt and Evan. Their house was nice, but everything was a shade of brown or rust.
Worst gays ever.
“Black is bad luck at a wedding.”
“What about tuxes? They’re black,” Matt put in, and Evan started laughing. “Everyone has black tuxes. So black is not bad luck, unless you consider getting married to be unlucky—”
“Black linens are for goth raves and over-the-hill birthday parties,” Griffin cut him off in midsentence. “If I let Jim plan the wedding, it would be a barbecue with beer balls and a sheet cake, and the wedding favor would be Wet-Naps.”
“I love everything about that sentence,” Matt said.
Jim gestured toward his friend. “See!”
GRIFFIN HELPED Evan with the dishes as Jim and Matt caught the end of the baseball game on television.
“I feel like gender roles are being—” Griffin started, but Evan put up a hand. There was cheering from the living room.
“What?” he yelled.
“Grand slam!” Matt yelled back.
Evan looked pleased as he went back to putting silverware in the basket. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
Griffin started to laugh, shaking his head as he pointed to the living room. “Go. I can finish this.”
DESPITE THE serious conversation at dinner, the rest of the evening was nice. Evan liked spending time with Jim and Griffin, liked their banter and obvious affection for each other. Where once he’d been so awkward with that sort of exchange—and if he was honest, that predated Matt—now it made him feel warm inside.
“You didn’t tell me Jim asked you to be his best man,” Evan said, stripping back the blankets on the bed. The air conditioner hummed as the water from the bathroom indicated Matt hadn’t heard him. Evan waited a second, then tried again, louder.
“Heard you th
e first time,” Matt said, poking his head out of the bathroom door. “Yeah, it was the same day as the Bennett thing, so I guess I forgot.” He shot Evan a big smile. “But yeah—tux and speech and all that other shit.”
He looked pleased, and Evan returned his smile. “That was nice of him.”
“Well, he’s probably the best guy friend I have,” Matt said with a shrug, disappearing back into the bathroom. “Besides you.”
“I’m your friend?”
“You started that way,” Matt said, coming back out of the bathroom again. “So yeah.”
“Oh.” Evan got into bed and leaned against the headboard.
Matt snapped off the bathroom light, then walked around the bed to his side. “‘Oh’ is a weird response.” Matt slid under the covers.
“Not really. I’m just sort of ranking friends in my head.” Evan laughed at his own words. “When I was—with me and Sherri, she had her friends, I had work people. Vic and Helena. Then I had you. Now I guess I’m trying to figure out who my friends are.”
“Well, there’s Casper of course,” Matt said, the sharpness of his tone pulling Evan out of his musing.
“I guess. Casper’s more a work friend.”
“Does he know that?”
Evan looked down at Matt’s form, facing away from him. “Of course he does.”
“Uh-huh.” Matt punched his pillows and maneuvered himself around until he was comfortable—behavior Evan knew usually meant leave me alone.
He slid down under the covers, then reached over to shut off the light.
Chapter 10
WHEN TRACEY didn’t call back, Jim took it as a sign.
He hid the Ingersoll file further in the computer, away from his line of sight. He worked on the security business; he oversaw the final bathroom remodel as Griffin spent a week of long days in the city with Shane, working on their play.
Every day, another piece of the wedding planning seemed to show up in the dining room. Jim grumbled and blustered about the clutter, but then Griffin would smile as he walked into the room and Jim couldn’t get pissy about it. Not really.
Not when it made the person he loved so happy.
When his cell rang with an unknown number as they walked the aisles of a local furniture store, Jim didn’t think about it, he just hit Accept.
“Detective Shea? It’s me, Tracey.”
JIM LEFT Griffin to look at mirrors, whispering about a work call. He hurried away from the other shoppers and his fiancé, who looked annoyed at the intrusion on their Sunday afternoon.
He all but ran out to the parking lot so he could pace on the grass median.
“Yes, Tracey. Sorry, I’m here,” he whispered, out of breath.
“Can you come up to Toronto? On Wednesday. This coming Wednesday. I’ll be there and I’ll talk to you.”
Jim’s heart nearly beat out of his chest. “Yes, absolutely. Where can I meet you?”
They agreed on nine in the evening, at the Trump International Hotel. She’d text him her room number that day. No one could come with him; no one could know about their meeting.
“I understand,” Jim said, watching the entrance to the furniture store, waiting for Griffin to come out, for him to demand Jim tell him what was going on. He felt like a felon sneaking around to hide his secret life. “I’ll be there.”
Tracey disconnected the call and Jim sat down on his haunches, shaking in the warm spring afternoon air.
GRIFFIN LET the annoyance fall by the wayside. He had to be patient with Jim’s work, just like Jim was patient with him. So maybe he was considering using Jim’s obvious guilt to get his way for the color scheme of the wedding. And the purchase of a new mirror for the upstairs hallway.
None of this was bad stuff.
And maybe, just maybe, he lingered in the aisle with the baby furniture, pretending he was looking for a present for Sadie when really he was filling the second guest room like the nursery he dreamed it could be.
Jim found him there but said nothing as they walked to find a salesman.
At lunch Jim was his attentive self, holding Griffin’s hand and patiently listening to updates about the project. Shane, Griffin gossiped, refused to say anything about Bennett, insisting it was personal and not work related. He didn’t want to talk about leaving New York at all.
It was weird.
Jim nodded and commented in the right spots; he even asked about Daisy and Sadie and the latest adventures of their weekly excursion.
Griffin did twenty minutes on the lemurs at the zoo and Jim didn’t yawn once.
If it was strange and out of character, Griffin just tried not to look a gift horse in the mouth.
THE TRIP to Toronto made him worry. A little bit.
JIM SWORE he would just listen to Tracey, see what she had to say, but he couldn’t sleep in the days leading up to his trip. He found himself spending more and more time with the files, with his research, searching for a pattern or a clue. Something he’d missed. Because if he had this time with Tracey, he needed to ask the right questions or it would all be for nothing.
Putting pressure on his relationship for nothing at all.
The day before he left to meet Tracey, Jim found himself on a forum for retired detectives. There was a shit ton of bitching about pensions and waxing poetic about “the good ol’ days,” so Jim was in full skim mode.
Until he found the section on unsolved cases.
This was what he needed for validation: more ex-cops like him still tangling with a piece of human garbage they wished they’d put away. Maybe he wanted reassurance he wasn’t crazy.
It was a detective from a small town on the California-Oregon border called Ashland that caught his eye. Ashland, home of Southern Oregon University.
Jim blinked. Why did that sound so familiar?
Because Tracey Baldwin went there, he realized a second later, and then the rabbit hole opened up and swallowed him.
The first murder was a coed found in a bar parking lot a few miles away from campus. The detective on the case noted another girl under similar circumstances in a university town about fifty miles away.
He knew it in his bones, in the marrow that made him a good detective—he knew he’d found it, and all hell broke loose.
Jim started pulling up names and pictures and newspaper accounts. Six hours later, as dawn peeked in through the blinds, Jim had five murders in five cities, an almost straight line from Northern California to Seattle. A spree that started in Tracey Baldwin Ingersoll’s college town and ended in Jim’s backyard.
His hands shook slightly as he dove into Tripp Ingersoll’s college years. He had everything publicly available, from newspaper clippings to four yearbooks, hidden in the back of a filing cabinet.
Nothing matched up.
Jim pushed away the frustration and stared at the five dead girls on his desktop.
He thought about Tracey.
Then he found her yearbook.
TRACEY BALDWIN, women’s lacrosse, four years.
Their team’s schedule the year of the murders.
He sat back in his chair and breathed through the heart attack he was sure he was having. How did he miss this the first time around?
Right. Jim and Terry were hell-bent on getting Tripp for Carmen Kelly’s murder. They had tunnel vision.
Now?
Now Jim had a pattern of murders, strangulations like Carmen’s, matching the travel of Tracey Baldwin’s lacrosse career during college. If he could prove that Tripp was with her…
If he could get these cold cases reopened…
If.
MATT DROVE him to the airport. The atmosphere was so tense, the air so thick, that Jim kept the window rolled down just so he could breathe.
“I’m going to take everything you have and lay it out,” Matt said as he pulled into the departures lane for LaGuardia Airport. “Time line, case files.”
“We need his schedule,” Jim murmured, rubbing damp hands on his pants. “His class
schedule, attendance if we can get it.”
“I’ll get it.” Matt eased to the curb and put the SUV in park. He glanced over at Jim, who nodded.
“Thank you.”
“Remember what Liz said about talking to Tracey.”
A phone consultation with Matt’s dear friend Liz the shrink had produced an outline of information for talking to an abused woman. Whether or not Tripp ever used his fists, he’d most definitely used fear to keep Tracey in line—for who knew how long. Jim’s handling of Tracey’s trauma might be the difference between getting what he needed and leaving empty handed.
Start slow and easy.
Ask open-ended questions.
Let her tell the story in her own way.
Explore her options for getting her life back.
Most of all? Jim had to stay calm.
“You go, you talk to her, we give everything to the police in the first town where that girl died.” Matt’s jaw was tense as he laid out their agreement. Again. “Then this is done.”
Jim put his hand on the door handle. “We have to give them as much evidence as we can,” he argued quietly. “This has to stick.”
“You have no jurisdiction and this guy is fucking suing you. If this gets out, that lawsuit might not go away any time soon.”
Jim opened the door, grabbed his bag in his other hand. “It’s not going to get out.” He stepped out, then closed the door behind him. Jim leaned against the window, fully owning up to the anger on Matt’s face. “It’s not. Don’t worry.”
Matt didn’t look convinced, and as Jim walked into the terminal, he felt his friend’s eyes boring into the back of his head.
Chapter 11
“ARE YOU sure about this?”
Griffin stood in the foyer of his house, clutching Sadie against his chest. The toddler was currently trying to strip off his glasses, so he was dodging her like a prizefighter. She found this game hilarious.
Truth & Tenderness Page 8
