Charlotte Oppenheimer, President of Puget Sound University, was saying, “It’s simply that I can’t help wondering if teaching is really your vocation, Elliot.”
It was late Tuesday morning and they were sitting in Oppenheimer’s comfortable and elegant living room with the bay windows overlooking the green and tidy lawns of the college.
Oppenheimer was in her late fifties. Intelligent, capable and diplomatic. Important qualities in a university president. She was always well-groomed and elegantly coiffed, yet she was surprisingly genuine and down-to-earth. At least for someone who quite literally lived in the ivory towers of academia.
Elliot said, “I realize how it must look.” And he did.
“One of our professors involved in an off-campus shooting.” Oppenheimer’s eyes were wide with horror.
Would an on-campus shooting have been preferable? Elliot did not say that, of course. Oppenheimer was right to be horrified. And it was going to get worse before it got better, judging by the newspaper headlines he’d glimpsed that morning.
“I know it doesn’t help, but I wasn’t seeking confrontation. I was on my way to have lunch.”
“Yes, but that’s the problem. Trouble—violence—seems to follow you. First there was the—the deplorable situation with Andrew.”
“That was hardly my fault,” Elliot said.
“No, of course not. The fact that Andrew turned out to be...to be...”
“A serial killer.”
Oppenheimer sighed. “Yes. Naturally no one blames you personally for everything that happened a year ago, but the fact that you insisted on involving yourself at all is worrying. And here we go again. You’re once again deeply involved in a criminal investigation. This is not the behavior the parents of our students like to see.”
“I understand. Are you firing me?”
“No! Good God, no.” She seemed genuinely distressed. “It’s understandable that you’re asking for time off, given the circumstances. You have the sympathy and support of everyone at PSU. All of us respect and value the contribution you made as an FBI agent—and, it goes without saying, as one of our instructors. You’re a fine teacher. And, of course, you’re Roland’s son. All I’m saying is...” She drew a quiet breath. “Some people, most educators, would probably find comfort and—and solace in their work at a time like this. Of course, you feel you can be of practical help to your law enforcement friends, which is... Your situation is different. I’m simply suggesting that while you’re on leave, you might want to consider whether you yourself feel that teaching is your calling. Are you here because you want to be here, or are you here because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time?”
Elliot said after a moment, “All right.”
“Honest self-reflection is my recommendation. That’s all. We just want you to be happy.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sure everything is going to turn out for the best.”
“Yes.”
She brightened now that the worst part of the interview was behind her. He knew she didn’t enjoy disciplining staff. If you could call such gentle remonstrance “disciplining.”
“Another cookie?” she asked.
Elliot ate a cookie and drank a cup of tea because he had eaten nothing in twenty-four hours and could not afford to collapse on Charlotte’s freshly vacuumed carpet. He thanked her again and promised to think over all she had said. Then he thanked her for her concern and good wishes.
At last he was free and he walked back to Hanby Hall, indifferent to the people around him, automatically answering greetings from students, unconscious of the autumn rain peppering his face and hair.
Charlotte was right. More right than she knew.
His “law enforcement friends” did not want his help now—any more than he would have welcomed civilian interference in their place. And he was the worst kind of civilian. Emotionally involved. It was the very thing he and Tucker had argued over a few months ago. If Tucker had been there, Tucker would be telling him to keep out of it. Tucker would advise him to focus on his work and let the cops do theirs.
Tucker would be right. And Elliot had tried. Tried to keep out of it. For about three hours. He had arrived on campus that morning with the best of intentions, but after verifying with Montgomery that Tucker had not shown up for work, that he was now being treated officially as a missing person, his determination had started to slip. Twenty minutes into his first seminar, he had listened to Markowitz, Linda mention Martin Luther King, Jr. freeing the slaves, and known he could not take another day of this.
Of doing nothing.
Not that teaching was doing nothing. On some former plane of existence teaching kids about the civil rights movement or the Civil War had been a worthwhile occupation, had even felt important, but in Elliot’s new reality all he could think about was that Tucker might at that very moment be in the hands of the Sculptor’s accomplice.
If he was not already dead.
He felt like he hadn’t been able to draw a full breath from the moment he’d found Tucker’s car. Like some great weight was crushing his chest, squeezing his heart and lungs just a little bit more with the passing of each remorseless minute.
It took all his strength not to give in to imagining what terrible thing might be happening to Tucker. He had seen those crime scene photos. Seen the cruelty and madness in Corian’s eyes.
If he let himself go there, he would be no use to anyone. Least of all Tucker.
Instead, he had made the decision to ask for a leave of absence in order to work on his own, in whatever capacity he could, to help find Tucker.
Because there was still a chance Tucker was alive.
Yes, they were past the crucial forty-eight-hour window, but sometimes...people did survive. And Tucker had the skill set for survival.
As he stepped inside Hanby Hall, he spotted Roland at the end of the main corridor talking to Anne Gold.
Anne taught art history. They had been friendly for a time, but less so after Elliot’s involvement in the Sculptor case. This had proved the case with most of his colleagues. It wasn’t that anyone blamed him—probably the opposite—but his activities had served to remind everyone that, retired or not, he still thought and sometimes acted like a law enforcement officer. That his loyalties might ultimately lie beyond his colleagues and the university.
“Elliot,” Anne said as he reached them. “I just wanted to say how glad I am you’re all right. That must have been terrifying yesterday.”
“Thank you.” Funny that the possibility of dying in a shootout did not terrify him nearly as much as the idea of losing Tucker.
“I didn’t know you and Will MacAuley were friends.”
Roland made a harrumphing sound, and Elliot said, “We were friendly-ish. Me being over there yesterday was just bad luck.”
Her smile was skeptical. “You do have a lot of that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, well.” If she only knew.
Anne kissed Roland’s cheek and bade him an affectionate farewell, patted Elliot’s arm and said, “You Mills boys stay out of trouble!”
No sooner had she stepped inside her classroom than Roland’s hand fastened on Elliot’s shoulder in a move straight out of Elliot’s boyhood, guiding him into his office.
“All right,” Roland said as the door to Elliot’s office swung shut behind them. “I appreciate the phone message letting me know you weren’t hurt yesterday, but what the hell is going on? How would you end up in a gunfight at Will MacAuley’s house, of all places? At first, the news reports sounded like you’d been arrested.”
Elliot’s sigh probably sounded more like a groan. “It’s under control, Dad. I’m okay. Everything is o—”
“No, it’s not,” Roland interrupted. “It is obviously not under control and you are obviously not okay. I could tell the minute you walked into the courthouse yesterday.” An expression of something like pain crossed his face. “Talk to me, Elliot.”
“You know how I know this, Professor Mills? Because it’s how I feel about you.”
It was the worried kindness, the sincere concern that got to him, made him feel about seven years old again, when there was pretty much nothing his father couldn’t set right for him, and for one awful moment Elliot feared he was going to break down.
But he managed to get out a steady “It’s a long story. The gist of it is Tucker’s...missing.”
Roland’s eyes narrowed as though he thought he hadn’t heard correctly, and then went wide. He hauled Elliot into a bear hug—had there ever been a crisis that Roland had not tackled head-on?—and Elliot really did nearly lose it that time.
“Tell me, son,” Roland commanded, his own voice terse and tight.
This was all for Elliot. Roland didn’t even like Tucker, really. Somehow that only served to choke Elliot up more.
He pulled back, wiping hastily at his eyes. “Not much to tell. He was supposed to fly out to Wyoming on Friday to see Tova and Ed, but he never arrived.”
“Are you sure he never arrived? Could they be lying?”
That was Roland’s instinctive distrust of the Christian right. He was probably imagining Tucker kidnapped and subjected to conversion “therapy.”
“I’m pretty sure,” Elliot said. “Tova sounded angry and hurt when I spoke to her on the phone. And I found his car right where it was Friday morning when I let him off. As of this morning, the police are treating it as a crime scene.”
He went through the entire story. By the end of it, his voice was level again and Roland looked about as bleak as Elliot had ever seen.
“The theory is Tucker was taken by this Barro character, who was a confederate of Corian’s, and who you shot to death yesterday. Is that correct?”
“That’s one theory. It’s also possible that one of Tucker’s other cases came back to bite him.”
“But you don’t think so?”
“There’s an awful lot of circumstantial evidence heading in one direction.”
Roland thought it over. He said grimly, “One cat trying to take down Tucker on his own would not go well.”
“No.”
The comforting thing about his dad was he had never been one for false reassurances. He did not make promises he could not keep or assurances he could not guarantee.
“You weren’t arrested—you’re not—?”
“No. At least—there’ll be some kind of official review and the DA might decide to press charges, but it’s unlikely. Everyone seemed to think it was unlikely.” He honestly didn’t care. Of all the things keeping him up at night, the fear of imprisonment was the least important to him.
And probably the most unlikely to happen.
Roland stared out the rain-speckled window at students beneath umbrellas and coats held high, hurrying to classes. Watching him, Elliot said, “Another theory is I knocked Tucker off for his life insurance.”
It was almost worth it to see Roland’s instant and complete outrage. “Who the hell said that?”
Anne probably heard that bellow all the way down the hall, and Elliot gave a tired laugh.
“Don’t worry, Dad. It’s not really a theory. Just a test balloon of an idea briefly floated by one of the detectives handling Tucker’s disappearance. There are other viable possibilities, that’s all. The Sculptor was only one of the cases Tucker was handling. It’s not even really an ongoing investigation at this point—or wasn’t. The focus was on making sure the prosecution had a watertight case before going to trial. Tying up all the loose ends. It was largely housekeeping.”
“Is it possible someone involved in one of Tucker’s other cases might have tried to get him out of the way?”
Elliot had been up at three o’clock that morning, going over every note in every file in Tucker’s home office in an effort to narrow the field of inquiry. Not that there was a lot to go over. Tucker had followed protocol regarding the handling of case paperwork. He rarely brought files home. One exception was the file on the 2001 murder of Assistant United States Attorney Robert Dice Thompson, and that was because he knew Elliot had a vested interest in the case.
It was hard to believe anyone who had gotten away with murder for over a decade had suddenly decided their only course was to remove the investigating agent.
But...
“Yes. This early in an investigation, anything is possible, really.” He took a deep breath. “If we—they—could have questioned Barro... But I took care of that.”
He hadn’t intended to sound so bitter.
Roland said after a moment, “I can tell you right now the choice Tucker would have wanted you to make.”
Elliot nodded. Yes. Tucker would want him to stay alive. And vice versa. In fact, it had gone through Elliot’s mind at the instant of firing to aim for Barro’s shoulder. He had failed. He was out of practice and was probably lucky to have hit his target at all.
Anyway, he could not talk about this part of it any longer. Not even to his dad.
He tried to sound brisk. “The Bureau—Yamiguchi—has promised to keep me updated on whatever progress is made. The cops have shut me out of the investigation.”
“Of course they have,” Roland said. “You can’t be impartial or objective where Tucker is concerned. Anyone would do the same. You’d do the same.”
Elliot’s cell phone rang and Elliot jumped as though his chair was electrified. He felt over his pockets and then leaped for his coat behind the door. It seemed to take forever before he located the damned thing. He pressed Accept, not even noticing who the caller was. “Mills. Yes?”
“It’s Pine. There’s been a development,” Detective Pine said.
His heart went into overdrive. God. God. God. Don’t let him be dead. Not that. He got out, “Go on.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with Lance.”
The relief left him feeling shaky, almost sick. “I’m listening.”
“We just got ballistics back on Barro’s weapon.”
Elliot’s heart fell back into its normal beat. “And?”
“The shot that killed MacAuley did not come from Barro’s gun.”
Into Elliot’s silence Pine added, “I’m relieved to say it didn’t come from your gun either.”
“My gun?” Elliot echoed automatically. But yes. Of course they had run ballistics on his weapon and checked the results against Barro and MacAuley both. They hadn’t taken possession of his Glock merely for form’s sake.
“You think we weren’t going to check?” Pine sounded grimly amused. “MacAuley was killed by a .22. One shot at nearly point-blank range. The bullet penetrated his heart and then bounced off his spine and ricocheted around his rib cage. It was recovered during the autopsy. Barro was using a Hi-Point semiautomatic.”
“A .45 caliber,” Elliot said.
“Correct. Just like you. Well, not just like you because you’re carrying a goddamned Glock and he was carrying a weapon that costs less than two hundred bucks and can be purchased at your local Walmart.”
An exaggeration, but the Hi-Points were affordable and readily available, for sure.
Elliot asked, “You’re sure Barro wasn’t carrying a backup piece?” Elliot sure as hell was.
“Gee, maybe we should have checked for that,” Pine said sarcastically. “Yes. We’re sure. There’s a slim possibility he threw the murder weapon away, but he was pretty busy trying to blow your head off at the time, so why bother?”
Why indeed?
Pine said, “So here’s my question for you. Was there anyone else in the house?”