by TA Moore
“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock,” he said as he swung his attention back to the road. A crow sat in the road ahead of them, pecking and pulling at sun-dried roadkill. Whatever it was had been there long enough and gone under enough tires that all he could say for sure was that it was once brownish in color. The crow waited until it was dangerously close to joining its dinner before it took off and half flapped and half hopped to the side of the road to wait for them to pass. Bourneville ruffed at it through the back window with her “I’m in the work car, so I gotta behave, but I see you” bark. Cloister reached back one-handed to give her a pat. “I can see how you got into the FBI.”
He didn’t need to look at Javi to know he was being glared at. He could feel it on the side of his face.
“I never said I was straight.”
“You never said you weren’t.”
“That’s because that would be weird,” Cloister said. He tugged the hem of his shirt. He’d changed into the spare gear he kept in the car, but it covered over a morning’s worth of dust and sweat. It itched. “What did you want me to do, pull you aside in the middle of a manhunt and say, ‘By the way, I like cock’? Besides, if you thought I was straight, what exactly did you think was going to happen last night?”
There was a pause, and then Javi snorted. “Ninety percent chance of an ugly scene, 10 percent chance of ‘I was bi all along,’” he said. “Either way, I’d get to stop wondering what you’d do if I stuck my cock in you.”
The mirror at the Rottsdown Road blind turn caught the sun, and the flash of reflected light made Cloister squint. He took the turn and slanted another look at Javi once the road straightened out again.
“I’m a redneck and a police officer,” he said. “What if I’d pulled a gun?”
Javi snorted.
Cloister wasn’t sure if he should take that as an insult or not. Maybe it was because he was “approachable.” He sneered at that idea from inside his head.
“For the record,” Javi said, “it won’t go beyond me. If you aren’t… out, I mean.”
“I’ve been out since I was fourteen and my stepdad caught me masturbating over a Colin Farrell photospread in a magazine.”
“Awkward,” Javi said. His voice sounded careful—the tone you took when you weren’t sure if you were poking a raw spot or not. “Did he… react badly?”
“Fucker laughed at me,” Cloister said. The old indignity still stung, but that wasn’t entirely fair, not to his dad. “No. I had my problems with him, but he never gave a crap about me being gay.”
“You’re lucky.”
Cloister laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Not often,” he said. “So I guess I was owed something.”
That seemed to dry up the conversation. For the next half mile, the only sound in the car was Bourneville panting in the back. The suburbs grew up around them as they drove. Dusty scrub and lizards gave way to artificially verdant patches of lawn and neighborhood watch signs.
“So, if you aren’t in the closet,” Javi said, sounding like he resented spitting the words out, “how come you made yourself scarce this morning?”
He sounded like he didn’t want to ask, and Cloister didn’t particularly want to answer. There were a load of reasons why a man crawled off a sofa after two hours’ sleep and let himself out, from a lifelong problem with affection to a need to take the dog out for a crap.
“Your couch is uncomfortable,” he said instead, picking the most innocuous truth. “Besides, admit it, you were relieved. If you had any more commitment issues, a flag saying ‘no strings’ would have popped out of your cock when you came.”
“I don’t have commitment issues,” Javi said.
Cloister swung his black Tacoma into the curved, cobblestone-paved driveway and parked behind a row of cars. The house was long, low, and white as a seashell—one of the sprawling plantation-style buildings that supplanted the modernist boxes that used to dominate the suburb. They had a dog. Cloister could hear it barking its shrill displeasure at their arrival.
“We had sex, and you told me to sleep on the couch,” Cloister said as he turned the engine off.
“I didn’t want to get fleas in my bed,” Javi said, his voice clipped with annoyance.
“Seriously?” Cloister asked, raising his eyebrows. “So instead of commitment issues, you’d rather people think you’re a snob with a taste for rough trade? Not what I’d pick, but up to you.”
He got out of the car, slammed the door on Javi’s spluttered protest, and got Bourneville. She hopped out, shook herself, and shed a cloud of dust and hair.
“I meant the dog,” Javi said over the roof of the car. He’d taken his sunglasses off, and he folded the legs to tuck them into his pocket as he spoke. His dark eyes squinted against the sun. “Where you go, it follows.”
“You don’t like dogs?” Cloister asked.
“I like them fine,” Javi said as he gave Bourneville an uncomfortable look. Cloister was pretty sure it was a lie. “They just don’t belong indoors. That’s why we invented kennels.”
Cloister cocked his head to the side. “You did not have a dog when you were a kid, did you?”
“We moved a lot,” Javi said. “Pets were an extra responsibility my parents didn’t want. Why?”
“Explains a lot,” Cloister said.
“No. It doesn’t.”
He didn’t sound amused, so Cloister dropped it. But if Javi made that face over Cloister’s trailer, he’d have to take him by his childhood home sometime. Working dogs stayed in the kennels, but old dogs made the move to being pets, and his mom had bred a small pack of bad-tempered Pomeranians that chased dust bunnies like they were a wolf pack. Cloister hadn’t seen a cushion that didn’t have a layer of dog hair on it until he was ten.
His good sense jerked the reins on that because Javi wasn’t going to be around long enough to get used to the trailer. Even if he were, one mind-blowing hour against a window was not a good reason to plan a trip home to meet the parents. Not after so many years.
No falling in love, Cloister reminded himself as they walked up the drive to the shiny blue front door. No getting overattached like a stray dog shown some affection. Javi Merlo was just a hot asshole who got under Cloister’s skin, not the next ex-boyfriend he was going to disappoint.
He fell easily. It didn’t mean he was any good at it.
BEHIND THE bright blue door, Sean Stokes made them coffee. It was black and thick enough to stand a spoon up in but not nearly as bitter as the man who made it.
“So what is this?” he asked as he poured a shot of whiskey into his coffee. It was, Cloister supposed, past noon. From the backyard, Sean’s dog—a perpetual-motion spaniel—barked itself into a confused frenzy of adoration and hatred over Bourneville, who ignored it gamely from where she sprawled. “The Feds couldn’t get anything on me back then, so now you’re back for a second bite of the apple?”
Javi smiled like a shark. “Why? Is there something for me to find?”
It was hard to tell if Javi was playing up the antagonism as “bad cop” or just acting according to his nature. Cloister leaned forward to pick up his cup. The ceramic was hot against the palm of his hand.
“You’ve seen the missing kid on the news?” he asked.
Sean sniffed and leaned back against the kitchen counter. It might be past noon, but he looked like he’d just gotten out of bed in boxers and a faded T-shirt. His hair hadn’t been brushed yet, and his eyes were still bloodshot from last night’s hangover.
It didn’t look as though early retirement suited him.
“News, Facebook, telegraph poles, pinned up at Whole Foods,” he said as he drank his spiked coffee. He squinted, seemingly balancing pain and curiosity. “Only place I haven’t seen him is on the back of a milk carton. I’m sure they’ll get there, though. What’s it got to do with me?”
“Birdie Utkin,” Cloister said. A muscle clenched in Sean’s jaw and bulged under the skin at the name. “You were the detective
on her case.”
The coffee was hot enough to scald, even with milk and whiskey in it. Sean drained his cup, grimaced around the burn, and set it down with a clatter in the sink.
“I was the detective on a lot of cases,” he said. He cut his gaze across to Javi. “Until the FBI got me canned.”
“The Plenty police force was corrupt,” Javi said.
“I wasn’t.”
“Yet you seem to have something to hide.”
Sean snorted. “Time for you to go.”
“Wait.” Cloister raised his voice. “Look, this isn’t anything to do with corruption. We just want to know about the Utkin case.”
Sean looked sour. “I thought you said it wasn’t anything to do with corruption.” He stalked out of the kitchen, his bare feet slapping against the wooden floor.
It wasn’t the sort of thing someone said when they weren’t going to talk to you. Cloister glanced at Javi and raised his eyebrows. He got a mouthed “go” in answer, set his coffee down, and followed Sean. Javi stayed behind with a reproachful-looking Bourneville.
The house was all white plastered walls and pale wood floors. There wasn’t a lot of furniture. Sean slouched in the one chair and scowled out at the spaniel that was spinning around the garden, barking manically through the sliding glass doors, and then doing another lap.
“It’s not even my dog,” Sean said without looking at Cloister. “My ex’s. Took the furniture, left the dog.”
“After you lost your job?”
“After I lost my wedding ring in a hooker.” Sean pulled a rueful face and then shrugged it off. “You wanna know if Hartley had anything to do with the first disappearance?”
Cloister nodded. Sean stared at him and idly scratched at the scruff of silvering stubble on his jaw.
“Well, case has been a long time closed, but hypothetically? Couldn’t tell you,” Sean said. He shoved his hand through his hair, making it stick up in all new directions. “First day the case came over my desk, Captain told me to close it as soon as possible. Just another runaway, he said. No need to make waves.”
“Who was pressuring him?”
“Couldn’t swear to it,” Sean said, “but the Utkins were telling everyone that we weren’t doing enough to find their kid. I got letters from the mother right up until the time the FBI turned me out of my desk. Poor old girl is probably still sending them. Besides, by that point, the captain had some expensive tastes to keep up, and the Utkin coffers were dry.”
“They were broke?”
Sean waved a hand at the empty room, the scuffed marks on the floor and brackets on the wall mute testimony to what used to be there. “Not broke like this,” he said. “I got a reverse mortgage, and I’m still paying for the TV my ex is watching football on. The Utkins had a shitload of property they’d brought up but no ready cash. Unlike their good family friend, who also happened to be a very overprotective mother.”
“Kelly Hartley.”
Sean made a gun with his fingers and cocked it. “She was all sweetness and light around the Utkins, but the minute she had me alone, she was singing the same song the captain was—just another runaway. And it was probably true,” he said. “No one dragged her out that window. She went under her own steam. Things were bad at home between her parents, she’d had a huge fight with Hartley Junior, and her friends said she’d been back in touch with her ex. Whatever happened to her happened later. Thing was, no one cared enough to find out. Including me.”
His self-loathing settled like beer, and he seemed to wait expectantly for someone to absolve him of blame. It wasn’t going to come from Cloister. Angry words were hooked into the back of his tongue. He wanted to tell Sean that he didn’t get to sit in judgment of the captain’s corruption. He’d been just as bad, just cheaper.
It wouldn’t help.
“What was your theory?” he asked instead.
Sean huffed out a sigh and scratched his jaw again. “She’d been IMing one of her friends that her ex wanted her to hook up again. Said that of course she wasn’t going to, that she had a boyfriend.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I think she was lying and that she went to see him that night. If she ever got there or not, I don’t know.”
Javi interrupted as he leaned against the doorframe with Bourneville skirting around him. She padded over to Cloister and leaned against his leg, pointedly not looking at him. “What did the ex-boyfriend say? Or did you even talk to him?”
Sean tried for a sneer. The expression didn’t get any traction. His grudge against the FBI slid off his guilt. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“I spoke to him a couple of times,” he said. “He was homeless. Cute enough to pass for a bad boy instead of a loser. Did pot instead of meth. Night that Birdie disappeared, though, he was in the hospital getting his scalp stitched back on. One of his friends had taken a bottle to his head. Besides, he seemed genuinely devastated. Altered but devastated.”
“What was his name?”
Sean pulled a face and rubbed his hand through his hair again as though he could massage the memory back to the surface. “It was ten years ago,” he said.
“You let Birdie Utkin down,” Cloister said. “You remember that.”
“I doubt it was even his real name,” Sean said after a second. “Umm, Hector something. Hector Andrew? Anders? He was sixteen, seventeen? A few years older than Birdie was. Just another kid. He lived in his car, an old ’69 Charger, but it was mostly primer and rust by then. It’d be dust on the wind by now. Look, what happened with Birdie was shit. She got brushed under the rug to keep the Hartley kid out of the news and to stop the bottom falling out of the real estate market. Didn’t want any of those nice San Diego professionals getting cold feet about the move, right? Still, I don’t see how my case is connected to the missing kid. There’s a lot of Hartleys in town. Bad things have to happen to them sometimes, right?”
Javi pushed himself off the door. “It’s not your case anymore,” he said. “It’s mine. Thanks for your help, Mr. Stokes. We’ll let ourselves out.”
He left. Cloister went to follow him and nudged Bourneville with his knee to get her to stop ignoring him. She grunted, stood up, and pointedly stretched her forelegs out.
“Wait,” Sean said. He shoved himself up out of his chair and patted his thighs with his hands until he seemed to remember he was just wearing boxers. “Shit. Hold on.”
He loped into the kitchen, came back out, and caught Cloister in the hallway.
“Here.” He shoved a dog-eared card into Cloister’s hand, the edges of it grubby from being shoved in a wallet. It said Stokes Investigations on the top in stark black lettering. “If you find anything out about Birdie, anything, let me know? I was a good detective. It never sat right with me, the way I let her down.”
Cloister’s chest was still tight with anger, but he knew what it was like to not get answers. He inclined his head in a tight nod, tucked the card into his back pocket, and followed Javi out the front door.
It was bright enough to make him squint, and the spaniel was still shouting at Bourneville from behind its fence. Javi stood next to the car. He was on the phone.
“…Tancredi,” he said as Cloister walked over, “where did Birdie and those kids used to hang out?”
Chapter Thirteen
IT MIGHT have been a Charger once. That would be down to the lab to confirm once they scraped off the char and rust and rebuilt the bits that had rotted away. It smelled like mildew and piss, layered over the particular rancid aroma of cooked vermin. The back seat was shredded, the stuffing gutted down to the springs, and the tires were naked, scuffed rims in pits of melted tarmac.
“You’d think someone would have towed it,” Cloister said as he wiped rust and sticky grease on his jeans.
“It’s on a private plot, not a public road. No one has to take responsibility, so no one will,” Javi said. He pushed his sunglasses up onto the top of his head. He narrowed his eyes, not quite squinting as he looked
around. “It seems to be the general approach people take to the area. From the looks of it, there hasn’t been any work done here since Birdie disappeared.”
A block of houses had been chopped out of the neighborhood, caged off behind wire, and left to rot. Faded signs declared, under bars of blue and yellow graffiti, that Mallard Park was an urban regeneration project, bringing luxury residential accommodations and green space to revitalize the area. Suburbs with an urban edge. Instead there were empty buildings, half of them gutted and sagging like damp houses of cards, the others half-built and angular like an interrupted game of Tetris. The only green space was a field of broken bottles in front of a listing wall.
“Some of the local developers got overambitious,” Cloister said. “They thought there’d be a market for professional urban living. Turned out, if you’re commuting two hours so you don’t have to live in a one-bedroom box in San Diego—”
“You don’t want to live in a one-bedroom box somewhere less exciting,” Javi finished for him. “Who owns it?”
“The bank now, most of them,” Cloister said. It was the sort of common knowledge that you never really thought about. It was only after he said it that he remembered. “Kelly Hartley’s bank, I guess.”
Javi lifted his eyebrows toward his hairline, notching a row of four V-shaped wrinkles into his forehead. “The coincidences are starting to stack up.”
“When does it become evidence?” Cloister asked.
“I’ll let you know,” Javi said. He turned in a slow circle and searched the buildings. “I hoped there might be someone here we could talk to. A resident or one of Hector’s homeless friends.”
“Ten years,” Cloister said.
“Humans need homes,” Javi said. “Even if it isn’t a house, people want to stay someplace familiar. Usually.”
“Every now and again, the bank and the developers send people down to run them off,” Cloister said. “The sheriff’s department too, whenever someone sets up a meth lab or a grow house. It can’t hurt to look around, though.”
