“Okay,” Javi said. He wanted to know the details, to control the threads of the investigation, but pushing Cloister in that sort of mood just ended with fuck-offs and disciplinary action.
Or fucking, Javi supposed. Sometimes it ended in fucking.
He took a deep breath, tasted dust and exhaust fumes, and tried to judge where his professional responsibility to manage the investigation ended and his personal need to control his environment began.
“I’m going to go to the Hartleys’, get the tracking software installed on their computer, and make sure they understand the limitations of what they can communicate,” he said. “Once I’m done, you get to fill me in on where this hunch is going. Understood?”
“I’m not an agent,” Cloister growled. “I don’t answer to you.”
“Really?” Javi said. “Last night you did exactly what you were told.”
Heat licked the edges of the voice, sweet and fizzing against Javi’s lips. It didn’t matter. It was still flirting, however the words came out. The silence on the other end of the phone managed to sound somehow strangled. Javi assumed Cloister was trying to decide if he was furious or just embarrassed.
Before he could decide, Javi continued. “I’ll see you in about two hours, Cloister. I expect words by then.”
He tapped the earpiece, and the connection went dead. Ahead of him the sports car had finally managed to squeeze between lanes and was trying to change again. Javi leaned back in the soft leather seat and wondered idly what Cloister looked like when he blushed. It passed the time until he reached the cutoff and peeled off the main road onto the narrow, cracked tarmac.
Chapter Nineteen
“WHEN WASthe last time you slept?” Tancredi leaned on Cloister’s desk. Her sleeves were rolled up, and the skin on her forearms was freckled and pocked with old scars. He’d never asked about them, and she never talked about them. But they were old, so whatever it was, she’d dealt with it.
Cloister snorted and sat back in his chair. It creaked under his weight and wobbled as the loose castor clacked and slid against the linoleum.
“I got a couple of hours sleep last night.” It wasn’t exactly true—not quite a lie either, more of an exaggeration—but he didn’t think anyone had ever given an honest answer to that sort of question.
Tancredi wrinkled her nose at him. “You need to learn how to lie better.”
“What I need is to find Drew Hartley.”
The mention of the boy made her wince, and the teasing slid off her face to leave her looking somber and regretful. She pushed herself off the desk and folded her arms tightly over her chest.
“Don’t remind me,” she said, and she pursed her lips unhappily. “A serial killer in Plenty. That’s all we needed to round out the hand of drug dealers and wife beaters. Did Merlo tell you?”
His blank look was enough answer.
“You know I knew Birdie.” Tancredi hesitated and folded her mouth down at one corner in a self-mocking grimace. “That sounds like we were best friends. I saw her in town. I remember her face in the paper and on posters. I thought she’d run away. I never thought she was dead. God. And how many other people has this guy killed?Children.”
Cloister glanced at his computer screen. A dozen missing-person reports were lined up in overlapping windows—a dozen different names and a dozen outcomes that announced whomever it was had been found. All of them stamped asNo Further Action Required.
The crime lab had techs analyzing the packets of clothing they’d found and hunting through cold-case files for missing-person reports that matched. Thing was, once a person was found, they weren’t a cold case anymore.
“Maybe he didn’t kill them all,” he said slowly.
“He killed Birdie.”
“I know. She was the only body we found, though.”
Tancredi looked skeptical but tried to play along. “So what is he doing, then?”
“I don’t know,” Cloister admitted.
“You know I’m joining the FBI,” Tancredi said. “Well, that I want to. I’ve read a lot of textbooks about aberrant psychology, and that isn’t how they work. They don’t retreat after the first kill. They embrace it.”
She was right. Not that Cloister had read the books, but he knew how violence worked. Even for normal people—if you could find one—it goteasier.Just like anything else. The kid who puked his ring up after his first fight might not fight again, but if he did, he wouldn’t puke. Eventually even the weird pop-yield of a broken nose under knuckles wouldn’t bother him much.
Except… he still had ahunch.Nothing he could put a finger on, nothing he could pin down and point out. It was like trying to pass someone a handful of frogspawn. The data was there in squishy little pods, but the slime of connective instinct made it hard for someone else to get to.
It was just easier to get on with whatever he needed to do and let people fill in the gaps for themselves. That way everyone was happy—more or less.
