by Aiden Bates
The new omega blushed and smiled at Pat. He rested his hand on a barely-there baby bump and sat down. "Doing okay, Detective."
"Dude, I was under orders to shoot your husband. You don't have to call me 'Detective,' even at work." Pat shook his head. "Oliver, you already know Sgt. Tran. The gentleman on his right is Elias Salazar, from HomeSafe. He's consulting with us on this case. Mr. Salazar, this is Oliver Nenci, from the crime lab. He's the best we've got back there."
"Mr. Salazar." Elias pressed his lips together and looked down. Mr. Salazar had always been what Pat called Elias' dad, when he wasn't calling him something worse. "That's new."
"Can we not?" Pat looked over at him, face cold and impassive. "We've got a dead kid on our hands. It's not the time or the place." He turned his face away from Elias and over to Tran. "All right. What've we got?"
Tran bit his lip. "Okay." He put his hands on the table and let out a long, slow breath. "We've got some more details on the forensic analysis. Oliver, you confirmed DNA on the remains, correct?"
Oliver nodded. "I did. They let poor Sheedy out of isolation at around four in the afternoon yesterday, so we were able to get started on that. We can confirm that the remains do in fact belong to Scott Gilbert. The disease was indeed diphtheria. Fortunately, whatever my loving husband might tell you, I'm completely vaccinated against it, and I'm not worried about catching it."
Tran shrugged. "No need to go taking risks if you don't have to, right? Anyway, what else did you find?"
Oliver sighed. "Well, we got some trace evidence from the sheet he'd been wrapped up in and we got some data back from the teeth. As near as I can tell, he hasn't had any kind of dental care, as in ever. That's on par with the fact that he wasn't vaccinated. The sheet in which he was wrapped was clean, but it was well used and worn. The residue from the soap used makes it look like the soap might have been homemade."
Elias' jaw dropped. He'd seen a lot from forensic scientists, but this was beyond the pale. "You got all of that from a bed sheet?"
Pat smirked. "I told you, Oliver's the best." His cold mask returned. "What did we get from the sheets?"
Elias' stomach twisted. Pat's smirk had been a little too close to his old smile.
Oliver cleared his throat, eyes darting between Elias and Pat. "Well, we found some pollen. Mostly agricultural—there's wheat, corn, a few different types of vegetable. The remains had a few minor burns on the hands, which had some calluses on them. They're the kind of thing that you'd usually find on someone who was doing manual labor—not serious burns."
Elias nodded. "Farm work, maybe."
Oliver smiled at him. "Yeah. I've seen similar on younger Amish kids. If the kidnapper had been living off the grid in some way, they'd have to do a lot more with manual labor and farm work to survive."
Pat steepled his fingers and glanced over at Ryan. "There are some farms close to Boston," he said. "There are farms everywhere."
"It would be easier to farm off-grid in the western part of the state, though." Tran picked up his pen and gnawed on it for a moment. "Can you talk to Langer about coming up with a search area? He grew up around there, didn't he?"
"Yeah. Yeah, he did." Pat made a note on a little notepad. Elias couldn't help but stare at his hands, big strong hands that knew how to make him feel like he was floating on clouds.
That was the past. "Has the family been notified yet?" Elias asked, mostly to force his mind away from thoughts of Pat.
Tran grimaced and shook his head. "I wanted to have something to tell them. And I wanted to wait until we'd all sat down. Should we all be there to speak with them? I know it's something we all have experienced. Well, not Oliver."
Oliver held his hands up. "I'm a lab guy. I sit in my lab; I do my lab thing. I don't deal with living, whole human samples. They're squishy and don't stay still under the microscope." He reached into a briefcase. "What I can tell you, though, is that over the past twenty years we've had six other children turn up dead in the city of Boston, who had been abducted from a wide variety of locations several years before."
Oliver passed packets around. Elias flipped through his. He could see the issue right there, as clear as day. "That's a lot," he said, after skimming the research. "Why wasn't something done about this before?"
"Not all of these were reported missing right away." Tran pointed at the third victim on the list. "I remember this one. She was reported as missing two years after she was allegedly kidnapped by her mother. The mother was fleeing the father, who was allegedly abusive. We couldn't press charges because she wasn't around, and the local police didn't push too hard to find them because they knew the father was guilty as crap."
"Well, the kid drowned five years after she was reported missing. And, like Scott, her body was prepared for burial in this same way. Her body was left at Copley Plaza." Pat took a sip from his coffee and looked over at Tran. "Four out of these six were prepped for burial this way. None of them came to State Police attention."
"That's a problem." Oliver cleared his throat. "The fact that this one did means that we can stop it."
Elias managed a smile for the scientist. The guy was younger than the rest of them, and he was still optimistic. The kidnapper had gotten away with this stuff for twenty years. He was unlikely to stop any time soon. "How did you find it?"
"I got bored waiting for Sheedy to finish processing the samples that had been exposed to diphtheria." Oliver shrugged. "The thing is, some of these kids were in the kidnapper's custody while he had Scott."
"So, there are probably other kids out there right now." Pat leaned forward. "Kids without vaccines, most likely, who've been exposed to this disease that might kill them."
Elias forgot to hate Pat for a moment. "Oh, God." He put his hands over his mouth. "We've got to find them."
"We will." Tran turned to him. "We're going to find them. First, though, we have to retrace the kidnapper's steps."
Elias gripped the table. He knew that. He'd done this before. He'd just gotten too worked up. "Sorry. It's just kind of a nightmare." He took a deep breath. "How many more do you think are out there?"
"We'll have to do a search." Pat wouldn't look directly at him. "We'll do it."
Elias waved a hand. "We've got the database, and everything in Massachusetts is within a few minutes of a state line. HomeSafe can check nearby states too. I'll do that after we notify the families." He tried to catch Pat's eye and failed. He had to be satisfied with Tran's. "What about you guys?"
"I'll work on tracking the vehicle that dropped the body off." Tran wrote the tasks down. "Tessaro already said he'd work on narrowing down a search radius, using the parameters Oliver came up with."
"We'll talk to the family first." Pat stood up. "It'll be hard, but they might have seen something. You'd be surprised at what people remember years later, if you ask them the right questions."
Elias couldn't stop the bitter laugh that ripped through him. He switched his language to Portuguese, so that he and Pat could have their privacy. "And what's the right question to ask you?"
Pat refused to rise to the bait. He just narrowed those pretty gray eyes of his. "Were you raised in a barn?" He spoke in English, rejecting Elias' attempt at intimacy. "Tran doesn't speak Portuguese. Oliver doesn't speak Portuguese. If we're supposed to be a team, we speak a language we all understand."
"Are you that afraid of having a private conversation with me?" Elias crossed his arms over his chest. He didn't want to have a private conversation with Pat, but he wasn't thinking about that. He was just angry about the rebuff.
"I think that if you'd wanted to have a private conversation with me, Elias, you'd have done it ten years ago instead of kicking me out onto the street. But hey, maybe that's your idea of playing hard to get." He checked his watch. "I'm heading out to the Sheraton in ten minutes. Anyone who isn't in the lobby right the hell then gets left behind." He strode out of the room.
Elias hung his head. "Sorry about that."
Tran grimaced. "As reunions go, I've seen worse."
***
Pat splashed cold water over his face. He hadn't meant to get all alpha on the others. He tried to avoid that part of himself, as a general rule. If he could find some way of removing that gene, or that genetic expression, or whatever it was, he would do it in a heartbeat. Some guys loved being alphas. They thought it was a boost to their masculinity.
Pat didn't care. He was secure enough in himself and his own identity that he didn't need to go around dominating other guys to prove that he was a man. Normally, he was all for live and let live. Right now, though, all that he could think about was getting rid of everything that pulled him toward Elias.
Elias, who sat there in that room and played the victim. Right. Because he'd suffered so much when he'd cut Pat loose.
He closed his eyes and counted to ten. He hadn't gotten much out of his few sessions with Dr. Trujillo, but that was on him and not her. He just couldn't open up to her, couldn't rely on her the way he needed to in order to have a successful patient/therapist relationship. He had learned a few things, though, and one of them was how to calm himself down. Okay, so Elias was here causing trouble. Elias was also damn good in his field. Pat had followed his career; he knew how good Elias was. If they were going to crack this case, they needed Elias.
Pat knew that he wasn't the only one to blame for their split. Elias could blame him for the whole thing if he wanted; Pat knew the truth. It didn't matter anymore anyway. It wasn't like they were getting back together, even if Elias' scent still made him weak at the knees. Pat wasn't that same idealist. Elias probably wasn't either, come to think of it. No one was the same at thirty-one as they were at twenty-one, unless they'd been in stasis for ten years.
He got himself another coffee and sat down to wait for the omegas. They showed up exactly nine minutes and forty-five seconds after Pat left the conference room. Pat had been counting.
Ryan gave Pat a pointed look, one of his patented "you've got some explaining to do and I'm being very patient" looks. Pat ignored it. He'd done a lot for this team; he didn't owe any of them anything when it came to his personal life.
Pat led the way to his Honda in silence. They could have grabbed an unmarked car, but Pat just wasn't in the mood to deal with paperwork or any of that crap. He wanted to get out and go. His car was clean enough, and it was big enough to accommodate all of them. He didn't turn around to watch Elias sneer at his ride. It was better than the one Pat had to live in after they broke up.
"Ryan, you've got shotgun." Pat slid behind the wheel and started the car.
Elias got into the car and pressed himself against the door. He was sitting as far as he could from Pat, and he rolled down the window to boot. For a split second, rage welled up in Pat, and he put his finger on the switch to roll the window back up. Elias had thrown him out like garbage, and he thought that he could get away with acting like he was something he'd stepped in now? It wasn't like Pat had chosen to work with him!
He pulled his hand away from the control panel. That was unfair of him. The fact that they'd split up, badly, didn't mean that their physical chemistry wasn't still there. Elias was probably just trying to minimize his reaction to Pat's scent, and Pat sure couldn't fault him for that. He was doing the same thing, for crying out loud. He rolled down his own window instead.
The Gilberts were staying at the Sheraton just off of Exit 12. Of course, they were staying in separate rooms. They weren't the Gilberts anymore. The father was still Dan Gilbert, but the mother was now Josie De Palma. Dan had moved up to northern New Hampshire, and Josie to South Carolina. "Nice to know that true love still exists," Pat muttered as they went over their files, before they headed into the hotel.
"The loss of a child is usually pretty traumatic for the people involved." Elias licked his lips. "You shouldn't talk about things you don't understand."
"You honestly think that this is my first parental notification?" Pat snorted and put his files away. "Oh, that's right. I'm just a lowly, repulsive little State Trooper. I can't possibly understand something as complex as grief."
"I didn't say that." Elias unbuckled his safety belt.
"No, you're right. Your exact words were 'wasting your degree, and wasting your life.'" Pat got out of the car. "Let's all put on our 'team' faces for the grieving family now; we don't want the kids to see Mom and Dad fighting." He wiped a hand over his face and tried to focus on Dan and Josie.
He definitely didn't let himself grin when he heard Elias curse under his breath, in Portuguese, behind him. That would have been petty.
They walked into the lobby. Ryan spoke with the concierge, who nodded in sympathy and took him out of view for the moment. That left Pat alone with Elias. That was the last thing that he wanted. Maybe it was what he needed, though. Maybe, if he was going to have to work with the guy, he needed the constant reminder of the disappointment.
Elias rocked back on his heels. "How's your dad? Did you ever get back in touch with him?"
Pat scoffed. "You're kidding, right?"
"Where else would you have gone, after you left?" Elias' eyebrows drew together.
"I slept in my car until I started at the academy." Pat stared straight ahead.
"Oh." Elias drew back a little. "I—I didn't know that."
Pat didn't look at him. "Why would you?"
"Well, I figured that you'd have a plan for someplace to stay if you were going to just leave without a word!"
Now Pat did look at his former lover. "There was a word, Elias. Lots of them. The last thirteen were, 'This isn't working, and it isn't going to work. We can't stay together.' You can't think I forgot them."
Pat remembered every detail of that day. He remembered the drip of water in the sink. He remembered the hum of the refrigerator. He remembered the way that sleep hung on his eyelids, demanding that he not ignore it any longer.
Ryan came back over to them. "They've found us a small conference room we can use." He looked between them. "Do I need to keep the two of you separate?"
"It's probably for the best." Pat shouldered past Elias and followed Ryan down the hall.
Once they'd settled into the conference room, Ryan called the two parents in their room. They had to already know that something wasn't going to go the way that they wanted it to. Pat hadn't been in on the original call, but he knew that Ryan would have prepared him for something challenging. When both parents walked into the room dressed in black, it confirmed his suspicions.
Ryan introduced Pat and Elias, and he held Josie's hand as he explained that they'd made a positive ID based on DNA. The child whose body had been found in the abandoned hotel was indeed baby Scott.
Josie cried onto Ryan's shoulder. Dan cried too, and Pat hastened to offer a shoulder to the burly accountant. They'd been forewarned, but no one's ever truly prepared for news like that. Pat had seen it a thousand times, even more so in cold cases when the likelihood of survival was minimal.
Josie recovered first, although Pat thought that "recovered" was a bit of a misnomer. "How—what happened?"
Elias took Josie's other hand. "Ms. De Palma, the first thing that I want you to understand is that Scott was actually pretty well cared for. The forensic report shows that he was well fed. As near as we can tell, he grew up on some sort of farm. There are no signs of any kind of abuse, and he was clean and unhurt."
She sniffed. "So, how did he die? And how did he wind up in Boston?" She dabbed at her eyes.
Pat cleared his throat. He was still holding the father. "How he got into Boston is still a mystery. We're working that out. As for the cause of death, well, it seems as though the person or people who took him didn't give him any vaccines. He died of diphtheria."
Dan choked out a laugh. "Diphtheria. It sounds so Victorian. How does a baby die from diphtheria in the twenty-first century?"
"That's something we hope to find out." Ryan kept his voice calm and reassuring. "Ms. De Palma, is there anything that you can remembe
r from that supermarket trip? Anything at all, no matter how trivial?"
Josie glared at him. "I've already told about a million people, no. No, I can't. It happened so fast. I got down to get something off of a low shelf. Scottie was fussing; I think he had a tooth coming in. It took me a minute or so to find what I wanted on the shelf and when I popped my head up, he was gone."
Pat nodded. "I know it's frustrating to have to answer these questions again. I work in the cold case squad. Sometimes people remember things years after the fact that they didn't realize that they noticed at the time of the crime, because everything was too immediate and they were still too panicked."
"Hm." Elias didn't sound dismissive there. He sounded thoughtful, which shocked Pat. "Ms. De Palma, did you notice, maybe, someone who seemed to be in the same aisle as you were the whole time you were in the store?"