Skin and Bone

by TA Moore

  “Did the sheriff’s department miss anything?” Javi asked.

  Cloister glanced up. “That’s not a question that will make you popular,” he said.

  “With you?”

  Cloister leaned over and kissed him, a lazy brush of soy-salted lips that didn’t seem planned to go anywhere. It wasn’t seduction or an invitation, just a kiss. Javi didn’t know why that caught in his chest the way it did. Maybe because the fact that he didn’t want to hurt Cloister wouldn’t make him feel any better when he did.

  “I’ve put up with worse from you,” Cloister said as he drew back. His attention was back on the files as he traded the report for photos of the scene. The family had been booked into an executive suite in a Disney resort for a long weekend. Jessica Macintosh was headed to LA with her son and stepson, and Andrew planned to follow the day after. He had a trial that afternoon—he won, actually, before he got the news—and preferred to ride his bike rather than be driven in a car. It was a habit that turned out to be very convenient for him.

  For some reason Jessica decided not to take the freeway to LA. She got onto the Pacific Coast Highway instead. Just a mile out of Plenty, her killer somehow waved her down, shot her and the two boys, and then set the car on fire. It had burned itself out by the time anyone found them. He’d probably never risk that again.

  The road was pocked and blackened, with bits of metal embedded in the surface, and the bodies were too. Galloway’s predecessor had examined them, and he had to use DNA samples from intact teeth. “I don’t know what you want me to find,” Cloister said.

  “Anything.” Javi cleared his dry throat and reached for his wine. He took a quick drink to wet his lips. It was sweeter than he cared for, with an almost syrupy aftertaste, and, although he’d only just realized it, the sort of wine he thought Cloister would probably prefer. Pathetic. “Just one thing that looks out of place. If there’s nothing, I’m wrong. Or I would be, if I’d told you my theory.”

  Cloister gave a sidelong look. “Last time I had an idea, you made me convince you. Now you have one, and I have to convince you?”

  “Just find something,” Javi said. “Or nothing. Either will be useful.”

  Cloister coasted as a deputy. His colleagues liked him, Frome valued his contribution to K-9, but none of them expected more from him.

  Javi was the only one who knew about the stack of cold-case folders Cloister used to pass the nights he couldn’t sleep. He had a knack for the gaps in an investigation, the blind spots and skipped protocols that could mean someone never came home. Maybe it was just obsession and training.

  It didn’t matter. He was still good at it.

  Javi finished his chicken and wine while Cloister pored over the files. He kept coming back to one photo—a close-up of the interior of the car—and the first couple of pages of the report.

  “It certainly made the investigating officer’s life easier when they settled on Macintosh as their suspect,” Cloister said. “If they had to look at people with a grudge against the man, well, that’s a long list.”

  That was true. There were pages of them—the victims Macintosh had denied justice in court, his ex-wife, lawyers whose reputations he blackened when he couldn’t beat them, and even his own clients, who feared Macintosh would sell them out one day. Somewhere in the stack was a collection of photocopied death threats, four to a page.

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t know,” Cloister said. “I don’t know if it’s what you wanted me to find. It’s definitely not much. You said anything, though.”

  “What is it?”

  Cloister reached for the plate of cold salt-and-pepper chicken he’d started nearly an hour before. He jabbed his fork into the cold strips and took a bite.

  “There was a big payment that came out of Macintosh’s account after his family was killed?” he said. “The prosecution argued that was the payment for the hit, except Macintosh worked for the sort of people who did that. He knew better than to make the payment from his own bank account. Then there’s the fire. You take someone out to an isolated place like that to kill them and then send up a flare? If it was a hired killer, that’s messy. If it was someone who wanted to get at Macintosh, wouldn’t they have wanted him to see their faces?”

  “Maybe he wanted to get rid of evidence?”

  “What evidence? He was never in the car. He shot through the windows.”

  Cloister was right. That wasn’t much. “Is there anything else?”

  “Neither boy tried to get out of the car.” Cloister wiped his fingers on a napkin and handed Javi the photo he’d studied. He pointed to the seat belts in the back seat. The fabric had melted, and the plastic was warped and twisted, but they were still clearly fastened. “Sean said that the older son was a jock, and that Macintosh had raised them both to act tough. Yet they sat there while someone shot their mother, or stepmother, and didn’t try to defend her or get out of the car or even hide? All three of them still had their seat belts on when the car was set on fire. Either there was more than one attacker—which seems unlikely since only one gun was used in all three murders—or the killer was someone they knew. Even then, once they shot Jessica, it should have panicked them. It’s… odd.”

  Odd wasn’t exactly the smoking gun Javi had hoped for. It would have to do, though. Javi grabbed the half of the file he hadn’t given to Cloister and searched through it for the picture of his family Andrew Macintosh gave to the police. It had been taken at a party somewhere, where Macintosh looked smarmy in an expensive suit and his family looked faintly uncomfortable around him.

  Javi tapped his finger against the youngest Macintosh’s face. The kid stood stiffly under his dad’s arm, his face tight and miserable over the starched collar of his shirt.

  “This is Tommy Macintosh,” Javi said, “whose dad was going to send him to a camp that would ‘toughen him up.’ When I spoke to Ruth Belford, she intimated that Janet’s family tried to send her to a camp that would ‘straighten her out.’ Could Janet and Tommy be the same person?”

  “I don’t know,” Cloister said as he reached for the photo. He touched his finger to the fat showy knot under Andrew Macintosh’s chin. “But I’ve seen him before. He was there that night. He was one of the homeless men under the bridge.”

  CLOISTER PACED in front of the long glass wall as he argued with the station on the phone. The streetlights had turned off outside, so it was just Cloister’s reflection caught in the black glass, barefoot and lean in his uniform. Javi had spent enough time the last few months with that image that it made his cock twitch in Pavlovian response.

  He dragged his attention away and focused on his call as he waited for the Kearny Mesa property and evidence officer to finish a list of excuses about why she might not find the evidence box Javi had requested. It was a cold case, someone had requested it three years ago, it could have been misfiled in transit from the old records facility.

  “Deputy Ergobah, just find the Macintosh evidence,” Javi told her in a clipped voice. “Save the excuses for if you can’t. Not that I’ll want to hear them then either.”

  Ergobah coughed to cut off the stream of excuses, cleared her throat, and tried again. “When do you need it?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Agent,” Ergobah protested. “These are old files. With the best will in the world, it will take me time to hunt it down. Then I have to arrange for transport up to Plenty, and….”

  “Fine,” Javi said. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  The frustrated noise Ergobah made was probably meant for her ears only. Javi pinched his lips in annoyance.

  “Deputy, this is a federal investigation. I need that evidence for a case that involved an attack on a sheriff’s deputy. Can you get me the evidence or not?”

  There was a pause and the sound of quick typing.

  “It’ll be with you tomorrow,” Ergobah said. “But this is an old case. I can’t guarantee what state it will be in.”

  “I di
dn’t ask you to. Just get it here.”

  Javi hung up. He put the phone down and tuned into the tail end of Cloister’s conversation.

  “I know you’ve been looking for anyone who was there that night.” Cloister leaned over the back of the couch to rub Bourneville’s ears. She huffed and rested her chin on her paws, her eyes on Cloister as he started to pace again. “It’s this man in particular I want you to keep an eye out for. I’ve scanned a picture and sent it through to you. He’s older now, grayer, and he’s grown a beard. When I saw him, he was wearing a gray jacket, sweatpants, and a dirty blue T-shirt. I know that fits lot of the homeless people around. Just let me know if anyone thinks they see him. Thanks.”

  He hung up and cursed under his breath as he scrubbed his hand over his face.

  “It’s not your fault,” Javi said.

  Cloister gave him a wry look. “That’s not your usual line.”

  For some reason that stung, perhaps because it wasn’t entirely unfair. It wasn’t as though Javi couldn’t hear himself when he jabbed at Cloister, but most of the time, he could justify the sharp words. Cloister wasn’t supposed to care about him.

  It was just that he hadn’t realized it worked. He swallowed the urge to apologize, to say something soft, and drew back instead. It was easier to close himself off, to commit to the offense instead of the regret.

  “Maybe it’s usually your fault, then,” Javi said. “Or you need to spend more time with people who’re nicer.”

  Cloister looked puzzled. “Like who?”

  Put on the spot, Javi couldn’t come up with anything. The obvious answer was someone who was kinder, someone who liked dogs, someone who would take him out on his birthday.

  Someone else.

  “Someone you’d trust,” Javi said. His voice sounded stiffer than he wanted, almost unfriendly as the words squeezed out between all the things they weren’t going to talk about. It wasn’t how he wanted to sound, but the words twisted as his temper crawled up from where he’d shoved it the other day. “Someone you could accept help from without thinking they were… what… trying to manipulate you?”

  Cloister scowled in frustration.

  “That’s not fair,” he said. “It’s not about you. I just…. I’ve always taken care of myself. Made my own food, patched up my own cuts—”

  “Arranged your own birthday party?”

  The halfhearted no-win trap Cloister had set for him—go on a date or be a dick—was one of the things Javi wasn’t going to mention. What was the point? Javi had worked his irritation out on Joel’s paperwork and in snide comments to the impervious Collins. Once he had, he could admit it was just bad timing.

  Except apparently not.

  “That wasn’t about you either,” Cloister said.

  “Flattering,” Javi said dryly. “But it would be more convincing if you didn’t care when I stood you up.”

  Cloister looked raw for a second. He swallowed hard and ran his tongue nervously over the soft curve of his lower lip, as though he’d finally been pushed hard enough to confide something. It made Javi’s stomach twist with the sudden panicked desire to take it back. He didn’t want honesty, didn’t want to actually have to deal with—

  “You still have some spare sheets?” Cloister asked stiffly. He wiped his hand along the back of the couch. “If it matters that much to you, I’ll crash here. Okay?”

  It made no sense to be frustrated that Cloister had done what Javi wanted him to do only a second earlier.

  Asshole.

  Javi wasn’t sure which one of them he meant with that. Maybe both. He stalked off to grab spare bedding from the drawer in the bedroom and tossed the neatly folded squares of crisp white linen onto the couch. It made Bourneville jump and look around.

  “If you sneak out in the night, toss the sheets in the wash,” he said. “Then it’ll be like you were never here.”

  He left Cloister to make up a bed in the living room and went to have a shower. The hot water rinsed off his sour temper and swirled it round his feet and down the drain. Once it was gone, he was left with was a bone-deep frustration with himself.

  What had he wanted Cloister to say? To appreciate that Javi had pushed the limits of what he was comfortable with when he made the offer to let Cloister stay? To explain why Cloister didn’t seem to believe he mattered at all to anyone?

  Or did Javi actually want it be about him after all? Despite everything he’d said.

  Javi stepped out of the shower and roughly toweled himself off as he padded back into the bedroom. His skin smelled like vanilla and pomegranate, but he’d rather smell like salt and sweat. He left his hair damp, the water chill as it trickled down his spine, and stared at the slick black wood of the closed door.

  Someone nicer would apologize to Cloister. If Javi went out, he’d just say the wrong thing again, even knowing it was the wrong thing. Cloister just… scared him sometimes. No one should care that little about themselves, especially not someone who deserved… well… at least someone nicer.

  Javi swallowed the “sorry” and went to bed instead.

  THE MATTRESS shifted under him. Javi woke abruptly and reached for the gun in his bedside table. It was too late, his brain informed him with laser clarity. The potential consequences flashed up vividly on the inside of his skull and then belatedly identified the broad-shouldered shape silhouetted by the moonlight as Cloister.

  “Shit,” he muttered as he lowered himself back into the bed. “I could have shot you.”

  “Maybe,” Cloister said, his voice low and sleep rough. It felt like a cat’s tongue against Javi’s skin, and the reaction was a tickle along his nerves that cut through his weariness. “Your couch is uncomfortable.”

  That was a lie, or at least an excuse. Cloister might never sleep for long, but he could do it anywhere. Javi had seen him nap slouched in a car seat or propped against a door. Even on the maligned couch, for all he’d been gone by morning.

  Javi actually had his mouth open to point that out, but his brain caught up with him and shut him up. He’d slept off enough of his temper to admit it was poor form to make an injured man sleep on your couch. Javi cleared his throat and shifted onto his back, his arm folded behind his head.

  “Stay,” he said. “If the mattress is up to your standards.”

  Cloister snorted and slid into the bed. The long sprawl of his body, naked except for a pair of white briefs, looked like honey against the dark sheets. His weight pinned down the sheets, and Javi could feel the heat of his body start to settle into the mattress.

  It made Javi wonder if the couch was that uncomfortable—even back when he’d dated, he liked cold sheets and his own space—but he stayed where he was. Though the closeness irritated him, at the same time, it felt like an olive branch. The silence dragged out between them, and Javi felt the weight of the night’s sleep pull at him.

  “My mom never gave up on my brother,” Cloister said suddenly. His voice was soft—so low that Javi nearly missed it—and cracked at the edges. Javi held his breath, as though that would help. It wasn’t often that Cloister talked about his brother, about anything from his life before Plenty in any real detail. Javi gathered the few bits of information he did share and filed them away as though he had to make a case against someone. “There were always appeals or leads, interviews with journalists and posters to put up. She felt bad about not making me a birthday or putting Band-Aids on my knees, but it was important.”

  “So were you.”

  Cloister paused for a second. “Mom used to get case files from the police. I guess the sheriff felt sorry for her. I used to read them when she was done—so many children that were taken and never found, and what had been done to the ones who were. That made Liam more important than me. It had to, and it was okay. I was always an independent kid. Mom didn’t need to worry about me.”

  When Javi was six, his mother took him to New York instead of to his best friend’s party, and he still felt cheated by that sometimes. Cloi
ster just sounded sad, and not even for himself.

  “Anyhow,” Cloister said as he roughly cleared his throat. “It’s years ago, but I guess… I’m used to telling people I don’t need them. It’s what they usually need to hear.”

  Javi reached over and wove his fingers into Cloister’s hair. It was gritty under his fingers, with sand down at the roots and unrinsed shampoo left matted into it.

  “This—us—has an expiration date,” he admitted. His throat was still dry from sleep, and the words were rough as he got them out. It had always been true, but now that Joel was going to be his supervisor, Javi was confident he’d be transferred out soon enough, probably to Alaska. “But if you need me, I want to know.”

  “I know,” Cloister said.

  It was a lie. For some reason Javi thought about Janet Morrow—not just her broken body, but the fact that she’d been so alone that the only person she had to call when she was in trouble was a tow truck driver.

  “I lost someone once,” Javi said before he could think better of it. It made him feel stripped, laid bare in a way that went beyond naked skin and the drape of sheets. It was the first time he’d talked about it since the disciplinary hearing in Phoenix. It hadn’t gotten any easier, but the words spilled out anyhow. “I didn’t love him—maybe it would have been different if I had—but he loved me. Then he died, and it was my fault.”

  Stained grout. Bloody clothes in a plastic bag. Kincaid’s voice as he asked, “What were you thinking, Merlo?”

  Javi swallowed the memories, and the words went with them. He was left with silence stuck in his throat like a stone and a point he hadn’t been able to finish. Cloister turned his head and brushed a kiss over the inside of Javi’s wrist.

  “You aren’t going to get me killed, Javi,” he said. His lips twisted into a wry smile against Javi’s skin. “Trust me. If anyone is going to get me killed, it’s going to be me.”