by TA Moore
“And no reason it can’t continue to be fun sometimes,” he said. “As long as we’re on the same page.”
Cloister shrugged. “Maybe if I don’t have a better offer.”
He let Javi take the lead as they headed for the house and fell in behind him. Cloister buried his hand in the coarse hair of Bon Bon’s ruff. It was weird how good he was at lying about what hurt him. Maybe it was yet another leftover from his childhood. It always made Mom sad when she realized she was unkind.
Hell, it wasn’t as though he’d even had the wrong idea. He just—
Been an idiot, he cut himself off. He’d been an idiot, and that wasn’t exactly new. So get over it. There was a little boy out there who needed him to do something he was actually good at—find him.
Lara opened the door before Javi had a chance to knock. Whatever relief she’d felt about her oldest son not being a killer had been worn away overnight by the realization that her youngest son was in the hands of a serial predator. Her face was drawn, her skin stained with an undertone of gray all the way down to her lips, and her hair scraped back roughly. She glanced past Cloister and searched the street with bloodshot eyes.
“The press was here all night,” she said. “People are still saying that Billy did this. It’s all over the internet.”
“People are scared,” Cloister said. “They’d rather have a face to pin the blame on, rather than have to suspect it could be any face in the street.”
It wasn’t much comfort. He doubted anything would be right then. She sniffed and wiped her nose.
“I hate this,” she said. Her hands were raw. She was picking at her nails in the same nervous habit Billy had. “I don’t want this bitch… bastard… God, I don’t even know…. I don’t want them talking to my son.”
Javi stepped forward and put his hand on her arm. “We need to do this, Lara.” He gently urged her back into the house. “It will bring Drew home, and then we’ll lock this guy away. Somewhere he can never hurt anyone again.”
The rug under her feet—a tapestry of ochre and blue that looked expensively handmade—bunched under her bare feet as she shuffled back. She put her hand over Javi’s and squeezed her fingers around his knuckles.
“No,” she said. “You don’t get to touch me. We are not friends. You wasted time that you could have spent looking for this… this pervert trying to blame this on Billy. If it weren’t for you, nobody would have thought it was him. He wouldn’t have known we… they… thought he killed his brother. So we are not friends. You find my son, and then you will never come into my house again.”
She peeled-shoved his hand back at him and wiped her hand on her leg when she was done.
“That’s not fair, Lara,” Javi said. “I—”
She curled her lip. “My son being missing isn’t fair. So don’t expect me to feel sorry for you. Just do your job.” She flicked her gaze past Javi’s shoulder to Cloister. “Or let him do it for you. I don’t really care.”
She stalked away, and her feet slapped on the glossy wood floor. Javi stared after her, his jaw clenched on his own temper.
“Families always get angry,” Cloister said awkwardly. “Usually at us. The—”
“I don’t need my hand held, Deputy,” Javi said icily. “This isn’t my first investigation. Doctor Hartley’s dislike for me is why you’re here, remember?”
That didn’t mean that hearing her say it out loud didn’t sting. Cloister knew that firsthand. He also knew that sometimes sympathy made it worse. So he shrugged and changed the subject.
“Where did you put the equipment?” he asked.
“In the kitchen,” Javi said. The ice had gone from his voice, leaving it brisk and dry. “I didn’t want to risk Billy being able to communicate with her without being seen. “He still thinks that it’s some sort of misunderstanding. He still thinks that love is real.”
Cloister winced. Right then he wasn’t entirely sure whom he felt sorriest for.
A huge wooden table made of pale oak and well waxed dominated the Hartley’s kitchen. It was the sort of table that made a statement about the owner’s commitment to sit-down dinners and family time. That they meant well, but—based on the unmarked wood, free of dents or scuffs—they never really got around to it.
Occupying the table was a tangle of equipment, a frustrated computer tech from the sheriff’s department, and Billy hunched on a kitchen chair, trying to disappear inside his own T-shirt.
“I dunno,” he mumbled, presumably in response to something the tech had asked him. “Maybe. I don’t see why we have to do this. Bri didn’t do this. She’s not like what you’ve said.”
The staunch defense made Lara shudder. She pushed the heel of her hand against her forehead, pressed hard enough to blanch the skin, and then turned away. The job of making coffee gave her hands something to do, and she fumbled awkwardly with the coffeepot and faucets.
“Where’s Ken?” Javi asked.
She gave him a dirty look but didn’t have the energy to hold on to the emotion. Her shoulders slumped, and she went back to frowning at the coffee canister. “He went out,” she said. Her voice was small and very precise. “He won’t be long. Do you want a cup of coffee, Deputy Witte? Oh, would the dog like a drink?”
“She’d appreciate that,” Cloister said. “Me too. Thank you, Doctor Hartley.”
The only one she didn’t offer a drink to was Javi, but Cloister had learned his lesson. He ignored the snub. While Lara opened and closed cupboards looking for something to fill with water, Cloister went to the table. He put his hand on Billy’s shoulder.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
Billy shrugged. It was as much of an answer as Cloister could have expected—more of one than anyone would have gotten from Cloister at that age, probably. He’d done a lot of grunting and sullen staring.
“We need to get our suspect to log in to Skype,” the tech said. He pulled his glasses down onto the tip of his nose and scratched between his eyebrows with the end of a pencil. “Once they do that, I can sniff out the VoIP ID’s datagrams and use geolocation tools to find out their current location. I’ll also be able to get their ISP, and we can ask for a warrant to get their internet activity. But we need them to log in and contact us first.”
“I don’t like lying to her,” Billy said to his knees. “You don’t know her. You’re all wrong about her.”
“Billy—”
“Tell him,” Lara interrupted. She dropped a Pyrex bowl into the sink, and the crack of glass on metal made them all jump. “Tell him the truth about this person, this ‘Bri.’ I don’t want him going anywhere near them if he doesn’t know the truth. If he doesn’t believe it.”
“I do, Mom,” Billy protested. “I’ve seen her pictures and her family and….”
Cloister glanced at Javi and got a slow, uncertain shrug in answer. It was up to Cloister, apparently. He’d always thought the truth was better than a lie, however comforting. At least the truth was an end.
“The girl in the pictures you have? Her name is Birdie Utkin,” Cloister said. “Her father is a property developer, and she dated your uncle.”
Billy’s face creased with disgust. “He’s, like, thirty.”
“Twenty-five,” Lara corrected him. She flicked the tap on with a hard twist, and water splashed noisily into the bowl. “He’s twenty-five, and so is Birdie Utkin now. Not fourteen, not your girlfriend.”
“No. She’s…. I don’t believe you.”
Javi stepped forward and held out his phone. “This is Birdie Utkin,” he said, “with her father. It’s one of the pictures he gave the police when she went missing.”
Billy shook his head. “No,” he said. “They just look alike. Everyone has a double, right?”
He looked at Cloister for reassurance, and his eyes begged for them not to take this away as well. Unfortunately that was going to happen eventually.
“This isn’t the first time they’ve done this either,” Cloister said. “They’ve
used Birdie’s identity to approach other people, to get them to do what they want.”
The breath that rattled out of Billy was almost a sob. He sniffed hard and folded his lips in over his teeth. “Are they…. Did she kill them?”
Maybe it was always best to know the truth, but Cloister didn’t know if the details were what Billy needed right then. He was scared enough.
“That’s not what they want,” he said. “But the person they’re pretending to be, that isn’t real. They’re not Bri, they’re not Birdie, they’re not your friend.”
Billy sniffed again, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and looked at the picture again. His eyes hit on the pixels that made up Birdie’s face, and then he dodged away again.
“You could be making it up,” he said. His voice was tight and scratchy sounding in his throat. “I don’t know this is a real picture.”
Lara folded over in frustration, braced her elbows on the sink, and covered her mouth with her hand. She was scared for her son, but Cloister wasn’t. The defiance was gone out of Billy’s voice. Now he was trying to convince himself, not them, and it wasn’t working.
“It could be,” he said. “Unless we were sure she was guilty, though, why would we bother.”
“I don’t know,” Billy muttered.
“Me either,” Cloister said. He tapped Billy’s knee to get his attention back. “If we’re wrong, I’ll take you and Bri on a ride along one night. I don’t think I am, though.”
The sharp bump of Billy’s Adam’s apple jerked in his throat as he swallowed hard. He gave a small nod, and his chin dipped an inch as he turned to the tech who slid the keyboard toward him. Billy started to type, but his fingers stalled on the keys as though they still weren’t happy to betray their friend.
Chapter Twenty-Five
BEFORE SHE went outside to take a call from “Grandma”—Ken’s mother; her mother had died years ago—Lara set a bowl of water by the back door. The dog had her face buried in it, and the pink of her tongue was visible through the clouded glass as she drank.
On the tech’s screen, Billy’s Skype message hung in stark black and white.
Where were U the other nite? Lost my phone. Only got home to the computer. Call me. U won’t believe wot happened.
The loose approach to the English language made Javi wince, but it matched the construction of the other messages in the account. Most had been composed on the phone, so short and sweet was the route Billy had taken.
Although their suspect didn’t seem to find it all that sweet. “Bri” hadn’t taken the bait. Not yet.
“Sometimes she—they—don’t answer for a while,” Billy said. “Her—their—dad doesn’t like them being on social media. That’s what they said, anyhow.”
“Probably working,” Cloister said quietly. He had a mug of coffee cradled in his hands, and he leaned back against the kitchen counter with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. “We know he has a car, keeps it running, and most likely he’s a farmhand or laborer. So no breaks to check his email.”
Javi caught a gibe between his teeth. He still didn’t know what the hell he’d been thinking last night. Not wanting to disturb the sleeping dog cop was not a good reason to spend the night in his bed. He couldn’t have blamed Cloister if he thought it meant… something… and since it didn’t, that would have ruined their working relationship.
Luckily no matter the kick to his pride, no strings attached seemed to be what Cloister wanted too.
Probably, Javi admitted with a jab of bitter self-awareness, because he was an unpleasant bastard. Good in bed—he would give himself that—but out of it, he wasn’t much good at boyfriend stuff. It was fine. His job didn’t care about his emotional availability, and neither did Cloister. So he could do both with a clear conscience.
“Have they ever called you before?” he asked Billy.
“Couple of times,” Billy said. He wrinkled his nose. “It was always a bad connection, like crackly, and I could hardly hear them. She said it was the hotel they were staying in—old vents and no signal. Out in the boonies.”
Javi noted that. It wasn’t much of a clue, but liars often used the truth as much as they could. It was easier to remember, and for details that weren’t a preplanned part of their lie, it was right in front of them.
“I can’t believe I was so stupid,” Billy said, and anger jerked at his mouth. He scrubbed his arm impatiently over his face and dragged at the skin. “Maybe that’s why they picked on us—because I’m so stupid I’d fall for it. Only I fucked that up, and they took Drew instead.”
“He fooled other people,” Javi said. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“I still should have…. I shouldn’t have lied. I shouldn’t have talked to them,” Billy blurted in frustration. “This is all my fault. I wish I hadn’t lost my phone that night. I wish they’d taken me instead of Drew.”
“That wouldn’t have helped anything,” Javi said.
Billy gave him a scathing look. “It would have helped Drew.”
It was difficult to muster a coherent disagreement. The wrong brother being taken had helped the investigation. Without that mix-up, the police might never have realized there was a suspect other than teenage disaffection, but that wouldn’t be much comfort to Drew, wherever he was.
Cloister set his mug down and pushed himself off the counter. “This won’t either,” he said. “You weren’t taken. Drew was. What will help now is us finding who did the taking.”
Billy looked unconvinced.
The computer chimed suddenly and made the tech jolt up out of his slouch. Plastic rattled as he hammered at the keys with stiff fingers.
“He’s logged in,” he said as he wrinkled his nose to push his glasses up. “Let me….”
He stopped abruptly, his fingers frozen in awkward poses as the computer trilled. His glasses slid back down his nose, and he looked up at Javi with wide eyes.
“They’re trying to connect.”
Javi grabbed his shoulder, hauled him out of the chair, and gestured for Billy to move in front of the computer. Billy hesitated and then slowly slid across and moved as though he expected the chair to give him a shock as he sat down. He reached for the mouse and then hesitated and looked at Javi for permission.
“Get them to meet with you,” Javi said quickly as he hooked up the speaker-headset and passed it to Billy. He pulled on a pair himself and left one earpiece tucked behind his ear. “If they sense anything is wrong, blame it on your brother. We talked about this. You know what to say. If you get worried, just pay attention to me. Don’t go to video.”
While Cloister ducked outside to get Lara, Billy took a deep breath and accepted the call.
“B… Bri, is that you?” he choked out. “Did you see the news?”
Once you knew the voice belonged to a man, it was obvious. You could hear the strain on the vocal cords, the smoky hint of a lower register—although still tenor—trying to get through. If you didn’t know, it could pass as a shy teenage girl keeping her voice down to avoid attracting a parent’s attention.
“I saw,” he said. “I can’t believe it. Are you okay?”
“No,” Billy said. He didn’t need to be prompted. It was an obvious answer. “I’m not. We still haven’t found Drew.”
“I thought you were angry at me.”
“No,” Billy said. “Why would I be?”
“I didn’t turn up. My dad caught me sneaking out, so he grounded me.”
“That… that sucks. It’s not fair. I really wanna see you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I miss you.”
There was something aching in his voice. It sounded almost painfully true. Despite everything, he did miss the person he thought he’d known. Javi felt a pang of sympathy but squashed it. There was no response from the other end of the link.
“Bri?”
Javi glanced away from the conversation to check in on the tech, who had dragged the keyboard toward him and was clatter
ing away on it. He briefly freed up one hand long enough to give Javi the thumbs-up and then got back to work. The door to the backyard opened slowly, and Cloister quietly ushered Lara back inside. Her hand was clenched in his sleeve, and she twisted the black fabric into knots as she watched.
“Do you think I’m stupid?”
“W… what?” Billy stammered. He gave Javi a panicked look. Holding up his hand, Javi gestured for Billy to keep going. “Of course not. You’re the smartest person I know.”
The voice cracked down a register. “I’m not stupid. Just because I didn’t go to a fancy school, I’m not fucking stupid.”
Billy flinched back from the table, and the legs scraped over the floor. The headphone lead pulled taut, and the jack popped out of the splitter. The angry voice spilled out of the computer’s speakers, sounding harsh against the domesticity of kitchen cupboards and twee tin containers.
“…spoiled rotten brat. You think you can fool me? Use my own trick on me? I’m smart. I’m smarter than you.”
Lara let go of Cloister’s arm, threw herself forward, and grabbed the computer with her fingers. Her knucklebones pressed tight against her skin as she clutched it.
“Where is he?!” she yelled, her voice cracking. “Where’s my son? What have you done with my son, you bastard?”
Cloister caught her wrists, pulled her back into a restraining hug, and grimaced as she stamped a bare heel down on his boot. The commotion had disturbed the dog, and she barked once and moved back and forward along a short, anxious fulcrum.
“I’m sorry.” It was like someone had turned off the anger in the suspect’s voice. It had gone mild, almost meek. “You seem like a nice lady, but you don’t understand what they did.”
“My boys never did anything,” Lara yelled. She struggled as Cloister tried to calm her down. “Drew’s just a baby.”
“Your boys get to be babies,” the suspect said. “Spoilt, stupid, greedy babies. I show them.”