“We have to get this resolved,” Charlotte fretted.

“I’ll tackle the aunt again on Monday. If I push too hard right now, she’s going to view it as harassment. She’s already accused me of being the university mouthpiece.”

Charlotte fumed and fussed a few minutes longer. Elliot reassured her the best he could, but in all likelihood things were liable to get worse before they got better. Certainly from the standpoint of the university. At last she gave up, wishing him a good evening and a pleasant rest of his weekend.

Elliot replaced the phone thoughtfully.

Sunday played out very much like Saturday, minus the orcas in the harbor and breakfast with Steven. Elliot went for a couple of walks, chopped firewood, read the latest issue of CHARGE!, the quarterly newsletter for the Johnny Reb Gaming Society, and worked on filling in the open space in his diorama with more handmade terrain features.

No one visited. No one called. If Tucker had gotten Elliot’s message, he wasn’t responding. It was a quiet, peaceful day. Exactly the kind of day he’d told himself he needed. A fire burned cheerfully in the stone fireplace and the Cold Mountain soundtrack played on the downstairs audio system. He made chicken and dumpling soup (cheating with store bought dumplings) and watched football on TV.

In the late afternoon it began to sprinkle, and then rain thundered down on the roof and washed the windows in silver. Surrounded by glistening pine trees, enveloped by rain and fog, for the first time it occurred to Elliot that his extended period of solitude just might be turning into loneliness.

Chapter Ten

Leslie Mrachek was indeed a crier.

She listened in stricken silence to Elliot’s comments—he thought he’d found a reasonably tactful way to say now put it in your own words—and promptly burst into tears. Bewildered and uncomfortable, Elliot opened desk drawer after desk drawer searching for a box of tissues. At last he found one and handed it to Leslie. She sobbed into the tissue, blew her nose and proceeded to tell him all about her problems with her stepmother, her roommate and her boyfriend, John Sandusky. What any of it had to do with the films of John Ford, Elliot failed to see, but Leslie seemed to be drawing a soggy connection.

After she left, he checked his phone messages and discovered he’d missed a call from Zahra Lyle. Her terse voice informed him that if he didn’t return her call before 10 a.m. they would have to wait to speak until she got home from work at seven.

Elliot glanced at his watch and swore. Ten-thirty. From down the hall he could hear the familiar clatter of Ray’s maintenance cart and, more distantly, Andrew Corian bellowing the usual spiel about art and fascism. “We see the manipulation of emotion in the fascist art of our own government. Consider the books and films glorifying such repressive organizations as the police, the FBI, the CIA…”

The day went downhill from there. Elliot had just dismissed his History of the Civil War students when he felt that familiar warning prickle down his spine. He glanced over his shoulder.

Tucker stood inside the lecture hall doorway, arms folded. He wore one of his custom-tailored dark suits and tie, his smooth, copper hair in vivid contrast. Students filed past with curious looks. He could have been standing there in his skivvies and his aura would still have screamed cop.

“Would it be okay if I took off early today?” Kyle asked.

Elliot glanced his way. “Sure.”

“Thanks, Dr. Mills.” Kyle, normally upbeat and energetic, looked tired. There were dark circles under his eyes. Even his eyebrow rings seemed to droop.

“Everything okay?”

“Oh yeah.” Kyle shrugged. He too threw one of those doubtful looks Tucker’s way. No wonder. Tucker’s expression was noticeably stony, and reading it, Elliot knew how very bad the news was. He felt a pang as he thought of Pauline Baker. It didn’t get any easier, that was for sure.

Kyle was the last to leave. Tucker detached himself from the wall and walked over to Elliot who was automatically shoving papers in his briefcase.

“You’ve found Terry Baker’s body,” Elliot stated as Tucker reached him.

“Yes. We think so. We’re going to need a formal identification to be positive, but his belongings were found at the scene. Phone, ID, laptop.” Tucker added briefly, “I’m sorry.”

Elliot nodded. “Where?”

“In the lake behind the school.” At Elliot’s surprise, Tucker added, “It’s looking a lot like suicide.”

How the hell had Tacoma PD failed to check that lake? Elliot shook his head, but it was not really denial. There had only been so many possibilities. “How did he do it?”

“Used a rope to tie an anvil around his waist, walked out into the lake and shot himself.”

In the silence between them Elliot could hear students laughing and calling to each other in the hallway outside the room. “You’ve found the gun then?”

“Not yet. It’ll be there.” Tucker sounded very sure.

He was probably right, but Elliot said reluctantly, “I didn’t see it playing out like this.”

“I know. It was the most likely scenario, though.”

Was it? Yeah, probably.

He slid his laptop in his briefcase and clicked it shut. “Do you want me to break it to the Bakers?”

Tucker’s blue eyes met his. Of course Tucker wanted him to break it to the parents. Who wouldn’t want to get out of that job if it was humanly possible? But maybe Tucker read Elliot’s expression as clearly as Elliot read his, because after a hesitation, he said, “Why don’t we do it together?”

Elliot nodded. “Can I get a look at the crime scene?”

Tucker sucked in a harsh breath. “Why?”

“What do you mean why?”

Like that, the tentative truce between them evaporated. “The kid killed himself. Case closed. And if the ERT and local crime scene boys find evidence otherwise, then you’re still out of the picture.”

“Since when?”

“You were brought in as a civilian consultant, Elliot. You’re not FBI anymore, remember?”

“How could I forget?” It came out more bitterly than he’d intended. It was hard to believe that this flint-faced Tucker was the same guy who’d flirted with him on the phone Friday night. Maybe he’d had more to drink than Elliot realized. Maybe they both had.

“Hey, that was your choice.”

“My choice?” The fury that washed through Elliot caught him by surprise. Granted, where Tucker was concerned, the anger was never far away.

“You know what I mean. I’m not going to argue with you. As of right now, your involvement in this case is over. Is that clear?”

Elliot looked straight into Tucker’s eyes and laughed. “If you say so, Special Agent Lance.”

That was pretty much guaranteed to piss anyone off, and watching Tucker’s pale eyes narrow and his face turn the color of his freckles, Elliot knew he’d scored.

“I do say so.”

Elliot headed for the door, briefcase in hand.

Tucker followed him out into the hall, waiting while Elliot locked the lecture hall.

“You want to take my car over to the Bakers’?”

Elliot said, “Don’t you have a crime scene to attend to?”

“There are more than enough crime scene technicians crawling around there right now.”

Elliot’s nod was constrained. He didn’t particularly want to drive with Tucker, but it would be childish to refuse. Besides, he wanted more information. Not that either of them was in a chatty mood as they left the building.

Tucker had parked his silver G-ride, slang for government owned vehicle, in the chapel parking lot next to Elliot’s Nissan. Behind the fence and across the meadow, Elliot could hear ducks quacking frantically. He spotted crime scene vehicles and personnel moving back and forth beside the lake. A news chopper circled slowly in the sky overhead.