Sean snorted. “Time for you to go.”
“Wait.” Cloister raised his voice. “Look, this isn’t anything to do with corruption. We just want to know about the Utkin case.”
Sean looked sour. “I thought you said it wasn’t anything to do with corruption.” He stalked out of the kitchen, his bare feet slapping against the wooden floor.
It wasn’t the sort of thing someone said when they weren’t going to talk to you. Cloister glanced at Javi and raised his eyebrows. He got a mouthed “go” in answer, set his coffee down, and followed Sean. Javi stayed behind with a reproachful-looking Bourneville.
The house was all white plastered walls and pale wood floors. There wasn’t a lot of furniture. Sean slouched in the one chair and scowled out at the spaniel that was spinning around the garden, barking manically through the sliding glass doors, and then doing another lap.
“It’s not even my dog,” Sean said without looking at Cloister. “My ex’s. Took the furniture, left the dog.”
“After you lost your job?”
“After I lost my wedding ring in a hooker.” Sean pulled a rueful face and then shrugged it off. “You wanna know if Hartley had anything to do with the first disappearance?”
Cloister nodded. Sean stared at him and idly scratched at the scruff of silvering stubble on his jaw.
“Well, case has been a long time closed, but hypothetically? Couldn’t tell you,” Sean said. He shoved his hand through his hair, making it stick up in all new directions. “First day the case came over my desk, Captain told me to close it as soon as possible. Just another runaway, he said. No need to make waves.”
“Who was pressuring him?”
“Couldn’t swear to it,” Sean said, “but the Utkins were telling everyone that we weren’t doing enough to find their kid. I got letters from the mother right up until the time the FBI turned me out of my desk. Poor old girl is probably still sending them. Besides, by that point, the captain had some expensive tastes to keep up, and the Utkin coffers were dry.”
“They were broke?”
Sean waved a hand at the empty room, the scuffed marks on the floor and brackets on the wall mute testimony to what used to be there. “Not broke like this,” he said. “I got a reverse mortgage, and I’m still paying for the TV my ex is watching football on. The Utkins had a shitload of property they’d brought up but no ready cash. Unlike their good family friend, who also happened to be a very overprotective mother.”
“Kelly Hartley.”
Sean made a gun with his fingers and cocked it. “She was all sweetness and light around the Utkins, but the minute she had me alone, she was singing the same song the captain was—just another runaway. And it was probably true,” he said. “No one dragged her out that window. She went under her own steam. Things were bad at home between her parents, she’d had a huge fight with Hartley Junior, and her friends said she’d been back in touch with her ex. Whatever happened to her happened later. Thing was, no one cared enough to find out. Including me.”
His self-loathing settled like beer, and he seemed to wait expectantly for someone to absolve him of blame. It wasn’t going to come from Cloister. Angry words were hooked into the back of his tongue. He wanted to tell Sean that he didn’t get to sit in judgment of the captain’s corruption. He’d been just as bad, just cheaper.
It wouldn’t help.
“What was your theory?” he asked instead.
Sean huffed out a sigh and scratched his jaw again. “She’d been IMing one of her friends that her ex wanted her to hook up again. Said thatof courseshe wasn’t going to, that she had a boyfriend.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I think she was lying and that she went to see him that night. If she ever got there or not, I don’t know.”
Javi interrupted as he leaned against the doorframe with Bourneville skirting around him. She padded over to Cloister and leaned against his leg, pointedly not looking at him. “What did the ex-boyfriend say? Or did you even talk to him?”
Sean tried for a sneer. The expression didn’t get any traction. His grudge against the FBI slid off his guilt. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“I spoke to him a couple of times,” he said. “He was homeless. Cute enough to pass for a bad boy instead of a loser. Did pot instead of meth. Night that Birdie disappeared, though, he was in the hospital getting his scalp stitched back on. One of his friends had taken a bottle to his head. Besides, he seemed genuinely devastated. Altered but devastated.”
“What was his name?”
Sean pulled a face and rubbed his hand through his hair again as though he could massage the memory back to the surface. “It was ten years ago,” he said.
“You let Birdie Utkin down,” Cloister said. “You remember that.”
“I doubt it was even his real name,” Sean said after a second. “Umm, Hector something. Hector Andrew? Anders? He was sixteen, seventeen? A few years older than Birdie was. Just another kid. He lived in his car, an old ’69 Charger, but it was mostly primer and rust by then. It’d be dust on the wind by now. Look, what happened with Birdie was shit. She got brushed under the rug to keep the Hartley kid out of the news and to stop the bottom falling out of the real estate market. Didn’t want any of those nice San Diego professionals getting cold feet about the move, right? Still, I don’t see how my case is connected to the missing kid. There’s a lot of Hartleys in town. Bad things have to happen to them sometimes, right?”
Javi pushed himself off the door. “It’s not your case anymore,” he said. “It’s mine. Thanks for your help, Mr. Stokes. We’ll let ourselves out.”
He left. Cloister went to follow him and nudged Bourneville with his knee to get her to stop ignoring him. She grunted, stood up, and pointedly stretched her forelegs out.
“Wait,” Sean said. He shoved himself up out of his chair and patted his thighs with his hands until he seemed to remember he was just wearing boxers. “Shit. Hold on.”
