“Watch the step!” the green-haired hostess called belatedly over her shoulder.
Haskell was drinking what looked like Scotch and apparently taking a friendly ribbing from his companions. “Not guilty! Not guilty,” he protested, laughing and shaking his head. His gaze happened to slide toward Adam, and while he didn’t exactly do a double take, for an instant—an instant that seemed to last a very long time—their eyes locked.
Adam was aware his heart was suddenly beating very fast, and his face felt warm.
No use pretending it hadn’t crossed his mind that maybe… He hadn’t really expected it. Things rarely worked out like that for him these days. And in a town as small as this one—too small to be called a town, in fact—he’d figured there might be a couple of obstacles. Like maybe a wife and kids.
And he could be wrong. In fact, he was probably wrong. He wasn’t great at picking up those kinds of signals. Much better at reading psychos than normal guys, according to Tucker.
The last guy he wanted to think about now was Tucker.
“How’s this?” the hostess asked, stopping before a small corner table positioned beneath a couple of Norman Rockwell fishing prints.
“Great.” Not great though because he couldn’t see Haskell, now blocked behind a wall of plaid and denim. It was the only empty table, so Adam sat down, picked up the battered menu, and stared blankly at the ketchup-stained pages.
“Can I get you something to drink?” inquired the hostess.
“Gin and tonic.”
“Well gin okay?”
Still on automatic pilot he said, “Sure,” and then, as the hostess disappeared, could have kicked himself. He hated cheap gin. Hated anything cheap, really.
Adam studied the menu some more. The chicken scratches came into focus, and he began to read his options. A lot of beef. Somewhere between the smoked tri-tip and the meatloaf was surely something he’d like to eat. Autopsies always took his appetite away. Even after all these years. Not that there was much to autopsy on a set of twenty-year-old remains. That really didn’t make it a whole hell of a lot better.
The chair across from him scraped pine on pine as it was dragged out. Haskell—lean, compact, and broad-shouldered—sat down. “Hi.”
Adam’s heart jumped. “Hi,” he said.
“Okay if I join you?”
It was a bit late to ask, but Adam wasn’t objecting. “Sure.”
Haskell offered his hand. “Rob.” He was out of uniform, wearing jeans and a red tartan shirt. His hair was dark and thick and, despite the conservative cut, fell boyishly across his forehead. Adam got another whiff of that very nice aftershave: a mix of sequoia and citrus. Understated and masculine. Like Haskell himself.
“Adam.” They shook, and he liked the firm, easy pressure of Rob’s grip. He really got tired of guys who thought crushing your fingers proved they weren’t intimidated by a G-man.
“I recommend the tri-tip.” Rob nodded at the menu.
“I think I’m going for the Chicken Alfredo.”
“Everything’s pretty good here.” Rob finished his drink. His brown eyes met Adam’s and he smiled. He was a handsome guy and he knew it. That was fine. Adam liked self-confidence and he liked self-assurance, being confident and assured himself. At least in most things.
Rob began, “How long have you been with the Bur—” The hostess, who was apparently pulling double-duty as waitress, showed up with Adam’s G&T.
“Hey, Robbie,” she said, dimpling.
“Hey, Azure.”
Rob and Azure chatted for a few moments before Azure remembered to take Adam’s order. “Good choice,” she approved of the Chicken Alfredo. She fluttered her false eyelashes at Rob and departed.
Adam sipped his drink.
“So you’re part of this Roadside Ripper taskforce?” Rob asked.
Azure must have thrown him off his stride, because that was a pretty lame opening. They both knew he already had the answer to that one. Maybe Adam’s speculations about Rob still being in the closet were right. Easy to believe in a backwoods place like Nearby. Anyway, this wasn’t a conversation Adam wanted to have. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which was…dinnertime. He answered with his own question. “How long have you been with the Sheriff’s Department?”
“Sheriff’s Office? Twelve years.”
Adam nodded. Rob looked to be in his mid-thirties. About his own age. A man at the peak of his abilities. Which were probably wasted here. “Did you grow up locally?”
“No. I’m from Portland originally. I moved here for the job. And the scenery.”
Adam smiled.
“Amateur photographer,” Rob explained.
“Ah.”
“And what do you do when you’re not chasing serial killers?”
“I jog.”
Rob laughed and Adam laughed too, though he wasn’t kidding. He didn’t have hobbies. He jogged and went to the gym. That was as close as he got to a hobby. When he’d been a kid he’d collected vintage model airplanes. For a while he’d been into sailing.
And, again, thinking about the past was not productive.
The conversation wilted. Rob held up his empty glass, and across the noisy room one of the waitresses spotted him and nodded. Rob pointed to Adam. The waitress nodded again. Rob turned back to Adam and smiled briefly.
Adam racked his brains for a neutral topic of conversation. He was really bad at this part. The other part, the part that came after—assuming you got through this part—he was good at. Not so good that it counted as a hobby, but he did definitely enjoy it.
Finally he came up with, “So you’ve got yourself a cold case.”
“Yeah. Well…” Rob shrugged.
That surprised Adam. “No?”
“Twenty years later and no ID?” Rob’s smile was wry.
“The Sheriff’s Office is not going to investigate?”
There was no hiding the note of disapproval in Adam’s voice because Rob’s smile thinned. “Investigate what? A twenty-year-old hit-and-run? Anyway, it’s up to Frankie. Sheriff McLellan, that is.”
What. The. Hell. However, Adam didn’t want his disgust with this lackadaisical approach to law enforcement to get in the way of getting laid. “Right.”
“Look,” Rob said. “We’ll do what we can, but we’re not the FBI. We’re not even Portland PD. We’re a small, rural sheriff’s office, and we spend most of our time dealing with kids setting fires and vandalizing property—or assholes who think shooting at ground squirrels in their front yard is all part of their right to bear arms. The fact that we even called you in ought to demonstrate how far out of our depth we are with this kind of thing.”
“‘This kind of thing’ being a twenty-year-old hit-and-run?”
Rob’s dark gaze was unsmiling. “Okay,” he conceded. “Maybe it wasn’t a hit-and-run. I’ve never known a hit-and-run driver to stop to bury his—or her—victim. But it wasn’t your guy either. Right?”
“No. Right,” Adam said. He had never known a hit-and-run victim to be struck hard enough to kill yet somehow not break any bones.
“People do crazy things in a panic.”
“That’s true.”
The grave depth and use of terrain to conceal the body did indicate panic and haste. The remote location, however, indicated premeditation.
“I’m still not sure why Frankie instantly assumed this was one of your whatdoyoucall’em? Unsubs.”
Adam grimaced inwardly. Rob wasn’t as overtly hostile as Deputy Lang, but nobody in LE liked the FBI circling their crime scenes. It didn’t matter that the FBI usually had to be invited in by someone in charge; they didn’t just barge into a homicide investigation for the hell of it. He said neutrally, “We’re getting a lot of that these days.”
“It’s a fact the freeways, the interstates, are popular dumping grounds for bodies.”
“Yes. Correct.”
“So why Frankie jumped to the conclusion that one lone DB in the middle of nowhere had to be part of your investigation…that I don’t get.”