“The Old Town Taco Shop,” Kincaid identified the restaurant.He started to pull the photos back.“And yet you two…you don’t know each other?”
JJ cleared his throat.“I eat there too,” he said.“For the record, they do aChiles en Nogadalike my third step-grandma used to make.Delicious.They blew up on TikTok last year.Half of San Diego ate there.”
Cloister put his hand flat on the photos and pulled them back.He glanced from one to the other as he noted the details.
“And these were taken at different times,” he said.“In fact, they were on different days.The specials board in the window has changed.”
JJ checked that for himself and gave Kincaid a disappointed look.“Come on now,” he said.“You couldn’t even ChatGPT up an image of them at the same table sharing a taco likeLady and the Tramp?”
“That would be deceptive,” Kincaid said pleasantly.“I didn’t say they were there together, just that it was an interesting coincidence they both enjoyed the same establishment.Especially considering their other commonalities.”
This time, the image was sharp enough to hurt.Cloister hadn’t seen his stepdad since he signed on the recruiter’s dotted line.It didn’t matter.He looked the same, like a Witte of his age.Big, blond, and badly tatted.Take away the tats, or add a few bad decisions, and Cloister would look the same in thirty years.In the photo, Jacob had been caught propped up on a bar, a whiskey in one hand and a pool cue in the other.The man next to him was scruffier and dirtier, but it was the same police-sketch-artist gift of a profile caught in the camera lens.
Kincaid steepled his hands under his chin.
“Did you know I did a stint in white-collar crime?”he said.“What we call this sort of thing there is insider trading.It’s frowned upon.”
Cloister ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth.It was dry, but he’d already finished the bottle of water Kincaid had brought.He didn’t want to ask for another.That would feel like a favor, and Kincaid wasn’t a man to owe a favor to.
“My stepdad’s a criminal,” he said.“Most of his drinking buddies are, too.That’s a part of his life I never had anything to do with.”
Kincaid raised an eyebrow.
“Maybe,” he said.“That’s still to be decided, because you certainlypaidfor his way of life, didn’t you?”
Cloister went still.He couldfeelit.It felt like the moment you were up on blocks: everything tensed, but you couldn’tmoveuntil the starter’s pistol went.
“You were, what, fourteen?”Kincaid asked.He knew the answer.They both knew he did; it was theater.Cloister didn’t dignify it by playing along.He just clenched his jaw as Kincaid dealt another photo onto the table, the mangled wreck of a dirt bike on the side of the road.“That’s where you got those scars on your ribs.When one of your dad’s deals went wrong, and you got driven off the road.”
He didn’t bother to wait for an answer.Cloister should have known what the next photo would be, but for some reason, it still caught him up short.It was an old photo, but a fresh print of it.The colors were starkly bright.A toy truck lay on its side in the mud.
Kincaid said something, but Cloister didn’t hear it.
It had been red.
Cloister remembered that.The color and the weight of it in his hand.Except in the photo, it was yellow.Yellow and splattered with blood.
He could feel the memory squirm in his head like a fish as it edited itself.
Kincaid snapped his fingers under Cloister’s nose.The noise made Cloister flinch back, his hands tightening, and glare at the other man.He clenched his jaw and took in a thin breath of air sour from use.
“Really don’t remember anything?”Kincaid prodded.“Or was that just what you were told to say?You were gone for thirty-eight hours—”
No.It had been a couple of hours, hadn’t it?Overnight.Cloister strained for the shape of the memory, and it shrugged him off.He couldn’t have been gone that long.He had chewed over that night a hundred times; there had been psychics and psychologists and priests to talk him through it.
Except they had all wanted to know what he didn’t remember, not what he thought he did.
“Maybe he even tried to protect you,” Kincaid remarked as he took the picture back and tucked it into the file.
“Don’t,” Cloister said.He didn’t know if Kincaid heard him or not.If he did, he ignored it.
“He was older than you, wasn’t he?”Kincaid said.“Wyatt?”
Cloister smacked both hands flat on the table.The noise jolted him, and he realized he was half standing, the chair sent skidding into the wall, and maybe a heartbeat away from punching an FBI agent.Kincaid knew it too.He looked so satisfied it verged creepily on sexual.
“That’s enough,” JJ said firmly.He glanced at his watch as he stood up and dropped one “donotdo it” hand on Cloister’s shoulder.“Deputy Witte has been more than helpful, and this has gone beyond fishing and into daydreaming if you are trying to link a childhood tragedy to whatever case youthinkyou have.”
Kincaid leaned back and held up both hands.“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said.“I guess people disappearing is just on my mind.Deputy Witte’s brother.My agent.Funny that, actually.Another crime in Plenty that somehow benefits the good deputy.”
