Fair Game Read Online Free

complaint about exactly how the book was coming.
    Elliot handed him a glass of wine. Roche talked on.
    Listening with half an ear, Elliot sipped his wine and rinsed a pound of peeled shrimp and patted it dry. He was vaguely familiar with the cold case. The FBI had been actively trying to solve young Mattson’s murder fifty years after, but to no avail.
    “God, it smells good in here. What’s for dinner?” Roche finally finished detailing his woes and sniffed the air like a hungry bloodhound.
    “Stir fry. Greek shrimp and leeks.”
    “How do you know the shrimp are really Greek?”
    “Funny.”
    The phone rang and Elliot put aside the mixing bowl with the couscous and herbs, and went to answer it.
    “Mills,” he said curtly. Seventeen months later he was still answering like he was on call. He needed to work on that. Like maybe try hello for starters.
    “Elliot? This is Pauline Baker. I hope it’s all right that I called you at home?”
    She sounded nervous and he softened his tone. “Hi, Pauline. What’s up?” He understood how stressed she was, but surely she wasn’t expecting him to have found out anything within a few hours?
    “I-I’m afraid I wasn’t totally honest with you earlier today, and I want to be because I know…it might hamper your investigation if I’m not.”
    Unexpected. “Go on.” Elliot picked up his wine glass up and finished the dregs of wine. Roche rose, held the wine bottle up. Elliot shook his head. He still needed pain meds some nights, and pills and booze was a bad mix. Roche refilled his own glass.
    Pauline said, “You asked about Terry’s friends. Whether he has a girlfriend.”
    She stopped again. Elliot prodded, “And he does?”
    “No. No, he doesn’t. Terry is gay.”
    “Gay,” Elliot repeated as though he’d never heard of such a thing.
    “Yes. He came out to us, to his father and me last summer. I’m afraid it was…” her voice failed, but she recovered, “…a shock. I’m afraid it was a shock to both of us. Tom especially had a hard time with it. It’s not what you want for your child, you know?”
    He had no idea. He neither had, nor wanted, children, and his own parents had been completely accepting of his sexuality. Choosing a career in law enforcement was the thing that had driven his father to threaten disowning him.
    Roland must have filled Pauline in on a few other things about Elliot because she added hastily, “Please don’t be offended. I’m only trying to make you see that there was tension there, but it wasn’t…That is…”
    Tom Baker was not to be considered a potential suspect in his son’s disappearance, Elliot cynically filled in the blanks. “I understand. Was Terry seeing someone?”
    “Yes. I don’t think it was serious, but he was seeing someone. A boy named Jim Feder. He’s also a student at the college.”
    “Did you share this information with the police or the FBI?”
    “No. Tom felt it wasn’t relevant. That it was personal family business.”
    Shit. An entire line of enquiry closed off because Tom Baker didn’t want anyone to know his son was queer. Unbelievable. Except it was only too common. Elliot had run into this kind of thing plenty of times. Of course, knowing Tucker, he’d probably seen through the smokescreen bullshit. Maybe that was why he believed Baker had offed himself. Nothing like parental expectation to drive a kid to suicide.
    “You’ve done the right thing by telling me, Pauline. It opens another avenue of investigation for us.”
    “I knew that. That’s why I wanted you to know…” She began to cry, and then to apologize.
    “It’s okay,” Elliot reassured her automatically.
    After a few seconds, she got control, apologized again, thanked him and hung up.
    “What was that about?” Roche asked, green eyes watching Elliot over the rim of his wine glass.
    Elliot had forgotten all about Roche. “Nothing. Friends of my dad are having some trouble with their kid.”
    “When did you become