15
By nine thirty, Keith and “Beth” had enjoyed a second round of drinks (Gin switched to soda after her first, while Keith ordered a light beer) and a heap of chicken wings in addition to the burrata. Gin had embellished the basic ruse she and Tuck had come up with, adding details that she had no possible chance of remembering. And though they’d talked at length about Keith’s family and love of the outdoors, he’d made no mention of the body being found on his land. It seemed unlikely that he had no knowledge of the gruesome discovery, but she had to admit it didn’t make for great first-date conversation.
Tuck’s plan to gain insight from Keith might be a bust—but Gin had sufficiently charmed him that he’d asked her out on a second date.
She felt terrible telling him that as much as she’d enjoyed the evening, she didn’t feel that there was enough of a connection between them to see him again. Keith looked crestfallen, but he thanked her politely and gamely offered to walk her to her car. He shook her hand and wished her the best, adding that if she ever changed her mind, she knew where to find him.
Gin had driven only half a mile or so when a car behind her flashed its brights. She slowed, and Tuck’s SUV passed her. He tapped the horn and motioned for her to follow him.
They could have discussed the evening over the phone, especially since nothing had come of the conversation that would be helpful on the case. But Gin had to admit that she welcomed a chance to talk in person, to share her thoughts on what had happened.
She parked behind Tuck’s truck in his driveway. He got out of the truck and came back to her car, opening her door for her.
“Hello, Beth Conway,” he said, grinning. “You were very convincing. I saw more than one guy in that place checking you out.”
“Well, for your information, Keith asked me out for a second date.”
“I’m sure he did. Maybe the two of you have a real future together.”
As they entered the house, Gin saw a gray-haired woman sitting on the couch, working on a Sudoku puzzle.
“Hello, Mr. Baxter,” she said, giving Gin a cool, assessing stare.
“Hi, Mrs. H. This is Gin Sullivan, a friend of mine. Gin, this is Mrs. Hill, who stays with Cherie from time to time.”
“I see. Isn’t it a bit late for visiting?” Mrs. H took off her glasses and let them hang from their silver chain, the better to glare at Gin.
She thinks I’m here to hook up, Gin thought, embarrassed. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
Tuck pulled some bills from his wallet and handed them to the elderly woman, who tucked them into her pocketbook. She picked up her puzzle book and said, “Cherie ate all of her supper and said her prayers. She was no trouble at all.” Glaring pointedly at Gin, she added, “I’ll see myself out.”
Once she was gone, Tuck and Gin burst into laughter.
“I didn’t know they made them like that anymore until I met Mrs. H.,” Tuck said. “I always feel like she’s about to rap me on the knuckles with a ruler. But Cherie loves her, so I can’t complain. How about a beer?”
“No thanks. After all those appetizers, I’m going to have to stick to salads and water for a week.”
They sat in the living room and Gin shared everything that she had learned about Keith—and his sister and her kids, especially her son’s connection to the gaming group. “Sounds like he’s close in age to Jonah. It’s a stretch, but maybe it’s worth looking into.”
“Too bad you weren’t able to get the kid’s last name,” Tuck said. “But maybe we can figure it out.”
He grabbed his laptop and patted the sofa next to him. “I promise I don’t bite. Let’s do a little surfing.”
Gin moved over to the sofa, deliberately leaving space between her and Tuck. The late hour, the cocktails, the strain of trying to stay in character—and now sitting so close to Tuck that she could smell his aftershave—all of it combined to make her feel extremely self-conscious. Especially after the painful conversation with Jake, her feelings were more convoluted than ever.
“Look,” she blurted. “This would be a lot easier if I knew what was going on with you and the department.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Tuck said calmly. “I know it’s frustrating. I’m sorry.”
“That’s—you’re putting me in a difficult position,” Gin protested. She wished she could tell him about the disturbing incident with Katie, but she’d promised Paula to keep it to herself. “Since I met you, you’ve come under not one but two official inquiries. And there are things … people I’ve talked to, who—I mean, this affects other people. You have to know that.”
Tuck nodded. “Yes—it looks bad. Especially since I can’t in good conscience say a thing to defend myself. So here’s what you need to ask yourself, Gin—given that you’ve known me for a while now, that we’ve shared some fairly intimate moments—do you believe I’m capable of doing something bad enough to lose my job? Or of hurting anyone, for that matter?”
Gin held his unblinking gaze as long as she could and then finally shrugged. “No. I don’t believe you’re capable of something like that.”
“Good. Now can we please move on?”
He was already opening his laptop again. He brought up a browser window and logged into Facebook. “I checked out Jonah’s page already … there, see, he’s cleaned it up quite a bit. I’m guessing his dad’s lawyer made him do it. There used to be links to a number of things that wouldn’t make the best impression on the jury, should Jonah ever be charged on the evidence we have.”
“What kind of things?”
“Nothing too racy—a few metal bands, a few gaming sites—but it looks to me like they’re trying to sanitize Jonah’s social media, make him look like a Sunday school student. See, look at the pages he recently liked—his high school STEM club, the National Parks Foundation, the Carnegie Museum of National History. A few jazz music sites. He’s a regular boy scout.”
Tuck clicked over to Jonah’s friends list and scrolled down slowly. Jonah had almost two hundred friends; not a lot, in Gin’s experience, at least compared to Brandon’s daughter Olive, who had over six hundred.
“Bingo,” Tuck said. “Logan Ewing. Does that ring a bell?”
“I don’t think Keith ever mentioned his sister’s married name.”
Tuck clicked on the link and Logan’s page came up. His profile picture was of a scowling young man with pale skin, sharp features, and dyed black hair. Most disconcertingly, he’d altered the photograph so that his eyes were stark white orbs with no pupils.
Gin shuddered. “That’s creepy.”
“Not as creepy as this,” Tuck said, scrolling down his likes. “Hard core gaming sites, slasher movies, anarchy organizations—and Jesus, look at this.”
“Who are they?” Gin asked, staring at the page for a group called the First Amendment Strikegroup. It featured a group of about thirty white men of all ages arranged around what looked like a decommissioned Humvee. Many of the men wore black; a few held United States and confederate flags. A man standing on the hood of the Humvee wore a bandana tied over his face under mirrored sunglasses and brandished a sword.
“Short answer is they’re a hate group. We’ve been keeping an eye on groups like this for a while—especially lately, given the rise in clashes between white supremacist and liberal activists. You may not be aware that Pennsylvania’s in the top five states for hate groups, because they generally operate under the radar.”
“I’ve seen the news,” Gin said. “I just didn’t realize it was going on so close to home.”
“These guys have been relatively well behaved,” Tuck said. “They mostly show up at protests by other, more prominent groups, though they don’t really have a coherent mandate—basically they hate liberals, immigrants, anyone of color, feminists. Probably public television and the NEA. They’re not very well organized.”
“That’s awful, but I’m not sure it’s relevant.”
Tuck had gone back to the friends lis
t. “Look, here’s your boyfriend, Keith Walker. Logan’s Uncle Keith? And here’s Cindy Ewing—his mom?”
“Keith’s sister is named Cindy,” Gin confirmed. “He told me she’s been having trouble with Logan—she’s a single parent. So now we know that Jonah and Logan know each other. At least, on Facebook they do.”
“They go to different high schools, but they could have met in some extracurricular activity,” Tuck said. “Or even online in a game forum.”
“So are you going to talk to him?”
“Well, now, that’s going to be a little tough given my current status in the department,” Tuck sighed. “I hate to say it, but it’s probably time for us to share this with Bruce and let him take a crack at it.”
“And when you say ‘us’ … you really mean me, right?”
“Unless you’re spoiling to have my leave made permanent,” Tuck said. “Which would give me more time to campaign for ‘World’s Sexiest Stay-at-Home Dad,’ of course, but probably wouldn’t help get this case solved. So yeah, we’re going to have to figure out a plausible way for you to tell Bruce about this that doesn’t involve me.”
“You don’t have faith in him…”
“Nope. And neither do you, or you wouldn’t have agreed to help me out with this in the first place.”
Gin yawned, the long day catching up with her. “I’ll think about it. I guess one more lie isn’t going to make things any worse than they already are.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Tuck said, his voice softening. “Make sure the boogeyman doesn’t get you on the way to your car.”
“That’s … I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“What? All I’m going to do is walk out onto my own driveway.”
Gin took a breath, but she couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I think we both know it’s not as simple as that, Tuck.”
He raked his hand through his hair in frustration. “Gin, when are you going to accept the fact that Jake can’t give you the attention you deserve? Hell, at the first sign of trouble, what does he do—doesn’t stick around to make sure you’re okay. No, he heads out of town.” He shook his head with disgust. “To my way of thinking, a man’s job isn’t done until he knows his woman is taken care of.”
Perhaps he hadn’t meant the double entendre … but given the way he was gazing at her, Gin wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t about to confess that she’d just made their breakup more permanent. “You can’t understand what he’s been through.”
“Not much to understand, the way I see it. Look, I know Jake’s been through a lot. So has everyone. I won’t bore you with my own sob story, but no one handed me anything in life—I earned it. And I didn’t become the man I was until the doc looked me in the face and told me my baby only had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. So I know a thing or two about grit.” He touched Gin’s face with a tenderness that belied his harsh tone. “Grit’s something I’ve got in spades, Gin. I take care of what’s important to me. I’d take care of you. Just give me a chance.”
For a moment Gin teetered on the edge of his invitation. It would be so easy to give in, to lean into his touch, to let go of all the pain from her breakup with Jake. Maybe it was time to try to take her life in a new direction, starting with the kind, strong, undeniably sexy man in front of her.
But the questions that nagged at her were real. She could live with not knowing why he’d been pushed out of the county police, what his role was in the Internal Affairs investigation. But she couldn’t deny the impropriety of what they had undertaken together. A cop on administrative leave with a cloud of suspicion over his head … a consultant with no legal right to involvement with any police business she hadn’t been explicitly hired to address … they were on dangerous enough territory trying to get information about the case, much less actively investigate it. Add to that the lies Gin had told to Keith, the subterfuge in setting up the date in the first place, the fact that she and Tuck were secretly pursuing not one but two separate cases—getting involved romantically would be the cherry on top of a series of bad decisions.
“As … flattered as I am by your attention,” she said quietly, “I think I’d like to keep things as professional as possible between us.”
Tuck’s only reaction was a slight tightening of his expression, a dimming of the light in his eyes. “Understood,” he said gruffly. “For now. Although I sometimes wonder what Crosby would have to do to finally convince you that he isn’t man enough.”
The words stung, and Gin pushed back against the emotions they provoked. “Let’s just get back to what we were doing, okay? I’ll figure out a way to tell Bruce about the connection.”
“So … you won’t date me, but you’re still okay with flouting authority and disregarding the law and courting all kinds of trouble with me?”
“Well, when you put it that way,” Gin said, forcing a small smile, “how can I resist?”
* * *
Gin glanced at the dashboard clock when she got into her car. Almost eight thirty—still early enough to fit in a quick visit with Rosa. She made the short drive and found a handwritten note on her door that said “Come on in.”
Even a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable to leave a front door unlocked in this neighborhood, but the town’s renaissance was in full swing halfway through her mother’s first term as mayor. Where there had once been cracked pavement, boarded up houses, and empty lots, there were clean streets in good repair, working street lights and even a pocket park with a pint-sized play structure. Neighbors were out enjoying the nice evening, and Gin could smell barbecue and hear laughter and music.
Gin walked into the house and was greeted by the smell of popcorn. She passed through the living room and the bright, scrubbed kitchen, and heard Rosa’s voice through the screen door in the back of the house. She went out on the patio and found Rosa and her mother eating popcorn and talking.
“Gin!” Rosa said, jumping up and giving her a delighted hug. “I’m so glad you stopped by.”
Gin bent down next to Rosa’s mother, who suffered from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. “It’s nice to see you, Mrs. Escamilla,” she said, and gave the elderly woman a kiss on her soft, papery cheek.
“You’re a very pretty girl,” Mrs. Escamilla said, beaming and giving Gin’s hand a squeeze.
“You just missed Antonio,” Rosa said. “He tired himself out trying to catch fireflies back here. Practically fell asleep while I was carrying him upstairs.”
“Antonio is very good boy,” Mrs. Escamilla said. “My grandson!”
“Yes, you’re a lucky grandmother,” Gin agreed.
“I have agua fresca,” Rosa offered. “Pineapple and watermelon. We made some earlier to take to the park. Doyle and the kids joined us for a picnic.”
“Very handsome boy,” Mrs. Escamilla observed. “And from good family.”
“Mom sometimes gets Doyle confused with a boy she apparently used to date back in Mexico,” Rosa said cheerfully. “I’ve been trying to get her to tell me if she broke his heart.”
“No, no heartbreak,” Mrs. Escamilla said, yawning. “Is no good to be sad all the time. Much better to settle down and have nice family.”
“Mom, how about we take you up to bed?” Rosa asked. “You look pretty sleepy.”
She helped her mother up from the lawn chair, promising to be right back. Gin poured a glass of the cold watermelon drink from the pitcher on the patio table, and sat down to enjoy the view of a fat yellow moon rising over the neighborhood. The scent of jasmine floated over the hedge, and a woman somewhere nearby called out into the night, “Thomas! Marlon! Time to come inside!”
Rosa came back with a stack of blankets over her arm. “It’s getting cool out,” she said, handing a blanket to Gin. “Now tell me all about this date you had.”
Gin stuck to the truth as closely as she dared, describing Keith and the conversation they’d had, but omitting the fact that she’d pretended to be someone else.
“Did he ask you out again?”
“Yes,” Gin admitted. “But I don’t think I’m going to go.”
“You’re not ready yet,” Rosa said. “You’re still in love with Jake.”
Gin shrugged; there was no point arguing.
“Well, we’ll talk about something else, then. Has there been any progress on your latest cases?”
Another minefield. Maybe coming to see her friend just now had been a mistake. “Unfortunately not. I did sit in on an interesting autopsy recently, though.”
“Oh, tell me all about it!” Rosa didn’t blink at the subject change; she was fascinated with Gin’s job and never tired of the stories she brought back from her work.
“Well, it’s an open investigation, so I can’t say anything about the details of how the body came to us, only that it was moved from its initial burial location. But what was interesting—to me, at any rate—was the challenge of establishing an approximate time of death given that the body had been embalmed.”
She gave Rosa a quick explanation of the various factors that went into establishing time of death, warming to the subject as Rosa asked thoughtful questions. “Couldn’t you identify him by his teeth?”
“Dental records weren’t relevant in this case, because the John Doe has implants,” she said.
“Wait—I thought you said the guy was in his forties or fifties? Isn’t that kind of young to get dentures?”
“Yes, we discussed that. There are a number of conditions that can cause early tooth loss, however, even in affluent communities. In fact, one in five people over forty wear dentures. It’s out of the ordinary but certainly not as rare as you might expect.”
“Like what, for instance?”
“Well, periodontal disease and tooth decay from poor dental hygiene, for starters. But also severe tooth erosion from gastrointestinal reflux. Factors like smoking and having rheumatoid arthritis or type two diabetes can contribute to tooth loss. And—”
“But you wouldn’t lose all your teeth with those conditions, would you?”
In the Darkest Hour Page 15