Fair Play (All's Fair Book 2) (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Elliot did not dawdle. In fact, he broke speed records getting across the valley. And in the end, he did arrive first, turning off his headlights and pulling slowly into the empty parking lot.

He got out of the car, easing the door shut. Sounds carried at night out here. The warm air felt heavy and damp, which was probably due to the irrigation systems running through all the plots and plantings. He could hear the efficient hiss and hum. The lights of the distant farmhouse shone through the trees. It was quiet. Beyond the trickle of water, the only sounds were crickets and the cries of an owl hunting away to the north.

Elliot walked up and down the long dirt lot, waiting for Tucker. The sweet smells of peonies and pollinating corn hung in the warm, still night.

The short white tents looked like weird mushrooms in the silver light of the moon. Not a lot of light, and that was good.

Come on
,
Tucker.
But Elliot was ashamed for even thinking it. God only knew how Tucker had explained walking off the job. Whatever the job was at the moment.

From down the highway he spotted headlights. As he watched, they blinked out, and he felt relief. Tucker’s G-ride slowed, and the gray shadow pulled carefully into the lot, tires crunching dirt.

Tucker parked and got out, coming to meet him. His shadow looked ten feet tall in the moonlight. It always surprised Elliot how such a big man could move so quietly.

Tucker reached him and said in a low voice, “How did you want to handle this? Meet and greet? You take the front door and I’ll take the back?”

“I want to take a look around before we knock on the door.”

Tucker grunted. “That’s a good way for somebody to get his head blown off.”

“These are not young men. Nobb must be nearly seventy.”

“It doesn’t take a lot of strength to pull a trigger.”

Elliot acknowledged it.

Tucker said, “And—I know you know this, but I’m saying it anyway—you’re not an officer of the law anymore, and this is out of my jurisdiction.”

“I know. If you want to—”

“I don’t. I just want us to be clear. We’re hanging out a mile here. If things go badly, they will go very badly. For both of us.”

“Which is why you’ve got to let me take point on this, Tucker. I’ve got leeway that you don’t.”

“It’s your party,” Tucker agreed. Which was lip service, but even lip service from Tucker was some kind of concession.

Elliot pulled his Glock out and chambered a round. “There’s a patio behind the house. They used to sit out there drinking and smoking pot on nights like this. If they’re out there, this will be over in a couple of minutes. If they’re in the house, it’s more complicated. The only thing I clearly remember about that place is it was stuffed to the roof with old furniture and tons of junk.”

“Weapons?”

“Well, we know he’s got a crossbow. I don’t remember Nobb owning any firearms, but that farmhouse has been in his family for a couple of generations, and he was in the army, so I’d say there’s a good chance there’s at least a shotgun on the premises.”

“Other occupants? There’s nobody else on the property? No other family members?”

“Unknown. But I don’t think so.”

“Let’s do it,” Tucker said grimly. He did not say,
Watch yourself
, and Elliot knew that was because Tucker considered that his responsibility.

They split up, moving soundlessly through the rows of vegetables and then making their way through the untilled fields toward the house. Lights blazed cheerfully on both stories of the old building.

As they drew closer, Elliot could hear the whisper of music. Dylan. Posing the eternal question.
How does it feel?

Frankly? It felt shitty. He was scared for his father and hoping like hell he wasn’t dragging Tucker into some career-busting scenario. He felt bad about Nobby. And he was hoping like hell he didn’t get shot again. ‘Coz you never forgot your first time.

Elliot paused in his advance, eyes scanning the moonlit terrain for Tucker. He didn’t see him, didn’t see more than an unnatural ripple in the waist-high wild flowers, but he didn’t need to see him to know Tucker was out there, moving into position.

The moon was high in the sky, throwing baleful bleached light over the landscape.

The house was only a few yards away now. The drapes were open on the lower level, and Elliot could see right into rooms that looked like sets for the show
Hoarders
. How the hell could Nobby run such an efficient farm and live in that chaos?

Pistol at low ready, Elliot continued to make his way forward to the structure. When he reached the house, he went around to the side, leaning against the white clapboards, catching his breath and listening.

He picked up the murmur of voices.

Two voices. Male. The tension inside him eased. He hadn’t realized how worried he was until he heard the low, familiar cadence of Roland’s speech. He couldn’t make out the words...

From behind the house, not inside, so that was a break. He focused his hearing, ignoring the distraction of night sounds, the music from inside the house. The men sounded easy, calm. They were not in crisis. There was no immediate danger.

Elliot moved silently along the side of the building, stepping quietly, cautiously, over broken flower pots and rain gutters, skirting shrubberies.

“I’ll get another bottle,” Nobby said clearly.

Yes.
Christ
,
yes.
Go inside the house.
Elliot edged forward, and when he heard the bang of the back door screen, he stepped out from cover and walked quietly up to the rustic picnic table where Roland sat beneath the vine-covered arbor.

Roland was staring out into the darkness. He drained the last mouthful from a paper cup and set it aside. His face was untypically melancholy. At the scrape of Elliot’s boot on brick, he glanced over and the expression on his features changed to one of horror.

He rose, nearly knocking over the long wooden bench. “What the hell are you doing here?” Despite his alarm, he kept his voice low, and that was all the confirmation Elliot needed.

Roland knew. Of course he knew.

“Dad.” Elliot kept his own voice low. His attention was divided between Roland and the back door. “Go with Tucker.”

Tucker approached noiselessly from the other side. “Mr. Mills, come with me,” he said softly.

Roland looked from Elliot to Tucker, back to Elliot. “The hell I will. What do you two think you’re doing? I
told
you I would handle this.”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Elliot said. “I’m just going to talk to him.”

Tucker said, “You being here complicates the situation, sir.”

“
My
being here?” Roland sputtered. “What the hell are you two smoking? I don’t need rescuing. There was no threat until you showed up.”

“The hell there isn’t.”

Roland threw a worried look at the house. “You’ve got to go, Elliot.
Now
.”

“Mr. Mills—”

“For Christ’s sake, Dad. He’s not going to let you leave here,” Elliot said. “He was willing to murder you to protect his secret. You think you’re going to talk him into giving himself up? It’s not going to happen.”

“We have to move now, Mr. Mills,” Tucker pressed, and Roland threw him a look of fierce dislike.

The music inside the house suddenly blared a few decibels louder. The Stones. “Sympathy for the Devil.”

Mixtapes. Now there was a blast from the past.

Realization dawned.

Elliot swore. “Nobb made us,” he told Tucker. “He’s going out the front.”

“Will he rabbit?”

Elliot thought rapidly. Nobb was the one who had told him no one could stay off the grid for long, that the underground was a thing of the past. “No. He doesn’t have anywhere to run.”

“Why the hell couldn’t you leave it alone?” Roland groaned.

“This guy is an ex-vet? We’ve got to get to cover,” Tucker answered Elliot’s unspoken thought.

Elliot considered that long stretch of moonlit field and farm they would have to travel before they could get to the safety of the cars. He shook his head. “The house might be our best bet now.”

“You’ve forced him into a corner,” Roland said.

Elliot looked at Tucker. Tucker nodded. They both knew this pattern only too well. If Nobb couldn’t run and wouldn’t surrender, then there was a good chance he would try to take them all out before ultimately concluding he had no choice but to cap himself.

Elliot nodded toward the house, and they moved toward the screened back door. Roland was swearing savagely. Tucker was on his phone. The music was at a deafening pitch and Elliot could not hear Tucker’s words, but he knew he was calling Seattle PD, requesting backup. This was not how Elliot had wanted it to go, but it was out of his hands now.

Maybe it always had been.

He scanned the skeletal formation of the old apple orchard that advanced nearly to the edge of the brick patio. A forest of dead trees. Whatever else they grew at Nobb’s Organic Farm, they did not grow apples.

He thought he saw a shadow move behind the glimmering tree trunks.

“Get inside,” Elliot said.

They fell back. The screen door creaked behind him, promising sanctuary of sorts. Or at least the illusion of cover.

Elliot recognized with crystal clarity the vulnerability of his own position. Tucker had made it into the house, Roland would be inside a moment later, even if Tucker had to bodily throw him through the door, but Elliot was in the spotlight of the porch lantern. And if there was an arrow trained on him now, he could not move fast enough to avoid being hit. He could not fire at shadows, and he knew without question that if he raised his weapon he would be dead. He might be dead any second anyway.

So he lowered his pistol and said as calmly as he could, “Nobby?”

He was aware that there was some kind of struggle behind him, but his attention remained focused on the gnarled and broken line of trees. A shadow detached itself from the others.

Nobby stepped forward, modern crossbow in hand, the small, deadly blunt head of the stainless alloy arrow pointed at Elliot’s heart.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Nobb’s face was that of a stranger. He looked a million years old, and yet his dead black eyes seemed ageless.

Elliot was aware of another upheaval behind him. “No,” Roland said. He sounded as close to panic as Elliot had ever heard. “Oh my God, no.” There was a desperate commotion behind him, and somehow Roland managed to shove in front of Elliot.

From inside the house, the music suddenly went silent. As though someone had pulled a plug. As though all sound were draining from the world.

That would be Tucker. You couldn’t negotiate if you couldn’t make yourself heard, and he was trying to buy them every possible second.

Roland’s voice was husky. “Oscar. Listen to me. Of everyone,
you
have to know this—what the hell was it all for, if we end up killing our own children?”

Nobb’s face did change then. “I didn’t start this,” he said. His voice was laced with suffering. “I didn’t want this. You brought him into it. You started it with that goddamn book.
Why
couldn’t you listen when I told you—we
all
told you—not to write it?”

“I would have, if I’d known.”

“Why couldn’t you let it go? Nobody remembered. Nobody cared.”

Elliot said, “Suzy’s family cared. They never stopped looking for her. Her sister is still looking for her.”

Nobb shook his head, not so much as in denial, as though to clear it. Out of the corner of his eye, Elliot saw motion. That would be Tucker trying to get into position behind Nobb—and that explained why Roland had been free to push into harm’s way.

Sweat soaked Elliot’s underarms, trickled down his back. He was taller than Roland but Roland was squarely, solidly in his way, and Roland’s center was where Nobb was currently aiming. Elliot could knock Roland down right now, try to shield him with his own body, but that would almost certainly precipitate the very thing he wanted to avoid: Nobb firing that lethal-looking weapon. That was going to end one way and one way only.

Elliot kept his voice even, calm. If there was one thing everyone needed, it was the chance to explain themselves. “How did it happen, Nobby?”

Nobb’s face twisted. Or maybe that was the erratic light. Elliot could hear moths batting against the glass shade of the porch lantern behind his head. “It just...did. I don’t know why. To this day I don’t know why. That last thing I wanted after ‘Nam was...”

“You were living with Suzy here on the farm,” Elliot prompted.

“That’s right. I asked her if she wanted to move in.” Nobb’s seamed face lightened in remembrance. “She said yes. She was tired of living at the house in Bellevue. Not having any room or any privacy. Everything always being about the war and the revolution. She said she wanted to walk in open fields and swim in the pond.”

“That’s right. I remember,” Roland said. “Suzy moved out to the farm. I didn’t think she stayed.”

“No, why would she stay with me?” Nobb asked bitterly. “None of them had any time for me.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant. It’s true. But I thought maybe it would be different with her. Maybe
she
would be different.”

Tucker began to move closer, and Elliot’s heart seemed to hold off beating for fear of making a betraying sound. One scrape of foot, one crack of leaf or branch, and Nobb would swing around and let fly. Tucker would fire, but even a headshot couldn’t guarantee that Nobb’s eye and hands wouldn’t automatically follow through to deadly culmination. Elliot’s mouth was so dry it was hard to get enough moisture to say, “It would have been an accident. We all know that.”

Nobb shuffled forward, something sad and earnest in his expression. But the bow didn’t waver. And the fact that he was still talking did not mean this would not end in bloodshed.

“I thought at first... She kept saying we should get to know each other, that she wanted to be friends. I wanted to be friends too, but why did she come here if that’s all she wanted? I tried to give her time, I tried to be her friend, but she didn’t want me. She just wanted to live here. She was sick of living in town, sick of living with the rest of you. She didn’t care about me. She ran around in her little shorts with her ass hanging out and her little tops with her tits hanging out. What did she think I was? Who did she think I was? Her father? Her brother?”

“Oh, Oscar,” Roland said. He sounded tired.

“Why didn’t you tell her to go?” Elliot said. Not his place to judge, and he knew not to be distracted by emotion, but somehow he had come to feel allegiance to Suzy D., the gone girl. The smiling ghost in the photos. So easily dismissed, so quickly forgotten.

“I liked her,” Nobb said. “She said she liked me. I wanted to give her time. She was always talking about free love and the sexual revolution. I kept giving her chances.” He stopped, frowning.

Elliot said, “And then what happened?”

“One night it just...got out of hand. We were both a little high, a little spacey. We were having fun. We started making out, but then she changed her mind again, and I was tired of it. Tired of her yanking me around, teasing me. I tried to show her why she couldn’t do that to me. She freaked out and started screaming. Screaming and screaming. There was no one to hear. We were in the middle of nowhere. I stopped. I backed off. But she kept screeching.” Nobb winced as though he could still hear Suzy’s screams.

“Her voice was so high. So shrill. It hurt my head. Why was she acting like that? I tried to shut her up, but she wouldn’t stop. And finally I hit her.” There were tears in his eyes, but he bared his yellowed teeth, his expression defiant. “She kept screaming and I hit her again. And then I just kept hitting her.”

His eyes flicked down, as though checking for the signs of damage on his hand. But he didn’t lower the bow and the next second he was glaring again at Elliot and then at Roland. He said, “No, you don’t know. Because it was never like that for you, Rollie. You were never alone in your life. You don’t know how loneliness feels. How it eats at you.”

“You don’t think so?” Roland’s voice sounded thick, strained.

“There was always enough love going around for you to get your share. You got everything you wanted. And more.”

Elliot didn’t like that change of tone. He interjected, still keeping his voice neutral, “So Suzy was dead. Then what?”

“I blacked out, I think. I woke up the next morning and I thought maybe I dreamed it. I couldn’t find...her. I thought maybe she ran away. I was glad. Relieved. Then I walked out behind the house and I saw the mound of fresh-turned earth. And I knew it was true.”

“I remember. You called me and said you were going to Canada,” Roland said. “We’d just found out about J.Z. It seemed like going underground was a good idea.”

“I didn’t know a thing about J.Z. until you told me. I was in a panic. I knew I had to get away. I packed her things and I started driving. I dumped her clothes at a Salvation Army store in Bellingham. I don’t remember what else she had, but I scattered the odds and ends along the way. I just kept driving and driving.” Nobb frowned. “Sometimes I thought I’d see her standing alongside the road or hitching rides.” He shook his head. “I just kept moving, drifting. Then the war was over and everyone was going home. I came back.” His expression was one of wonder. “I kept waiting for someone to ask me about her, but no one ever did. Not one person ever asked about her. I built the pergola in the back and laid bricks over her grave.”

“And you forgot about her,” Elliot said.

This seemed to hit Nobb on the quick. He said fiercely, “No. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her. I grow peonies because she said once they were her favorite flowers. I didn’t forget her.”

One eye on the soundless, hovering shadow that was Tucker, Elliot said, “Maybe not, but you didn’t—”

Tucker dived, and Elliot knocked Roland to the ground. He wrapped his arms around Roland’s heaving body and did his best to subdue, all the time watching Tucker. Tucker tackled Nobb, grabbing with one powerful arm for the crossbow and yanking it from Nobb’s grasp. But not before Nobb loosed an arrow that flew wild, landing with a thunk in the legs of the picnic table less than two feet from where Elliot was shielding Roland.

Sirens wailed in the summer night.

“Let me up,” Roland’s muffled voice demanded, and Elliot rolled off him.

Roland picked himself up, stumbling over to Nobb who was facedown, sobbing on the patio. He gathered his old friend in his arms, glaring at Elliot over the top of Nobby’s bent head.

“Happy? Proud of yourself?”

Elliot’s knee throbbed where he had banged it falling. He got painfully to his feet. “I’m happy nobody got killed or injured, yes.”

Tucker was coming toward him, crossbow in hand, and Elliot limped to meet him. “You okay?”

Tucker nodded, his expression still grim, still dangerous. “You?”

Elliot assented.

Nobb’s baseball cap had fallen from his head, and the sparse white strands of his remaining hair looked pathetic somehow. It was terrible to see him broken, terrible to hear those racking sobs.

Roland was still speaking in that harsh, unfamiliar voice. “Why the hell couldn’t you leave it alone? I
asked
you to leave it alone. I told you I would handle it.”

“How could I do that? Dad, I know he was a friend. But he would have killed you. He wasn’t going to let you leave here. You’re forgetting how far he was willing to go.” Tucker put a hand on Elliot’s shoulder. Elliot ignored him. He said, “He
killed
Suzy. There has to be some retribution.”

Where had he seen that look on Roland’s face before? Right. The cover photo of
Power to the People
. Roland’s expression was an older version of the contorted features of the angry young man screaming into the face of that long-ago cop.

There had been another time that Roland had looked at him like Elliot was the enemy. It didn’t feel any better tonight.

“Does there? Does there really? According to who? I knew Suzy, and I can tell you that she didn’t believe in prisons any more than I do.”

“Dad—”

“And to put an old man like Oscar behind bars? He’ll die there. You know it as well as I do. And what the hell good will it serve? He’s not a criminal. He wasn’t doing anyone any harm.”

The last thing Elliot wanted was to fight with Roland, especially now, but he couldn’t help a flash of anger at the unfairness of that. “The helpless old man defense would have worked better before Nobb burned your house down. Or hired a plane to chase you down with his trusty bow and arrow.”

Roland turned his head away, turned his back on Elliot—the last word not a word at all.