Foxe Hunt (30 page)

There wasn’t much inside but what looked like a brand new leather La-Z-Boy recliner, a lamp, a flat screen TV, a card table and folding chairs, and lots of U-Haul boxes still taped up tight.

Skyler looked around. “Uh…”

“I know. I still have a lot of unpacking to do.”

“You’ve got nothing
but
unpacking to do.”

“It hasn’t been a priority. Look, I’m going to go in there and change, maybe take a really quick shower. That okay?”

“Sure.”

“Make yourself at home. There’s beer and some white wine in the fridge.”

Alcohol!

Keith disappeared in the dim of a back bedroom and Skyler went into the small kitchen divided only from the living room carpet by a counter and the difference in flooring. He opened the fridge and snorted at the emptiness of it. The man seemed to live out of every fast food joint in town. Skyler opened a pizza box and saw two dried, curled pieces of pepperoni pizza. Closing the lid he grabbed some of the Chinese food cartons, opened one, sniffed it, and grimaced before putting it back. A six pack of beer was also in there along with a half drunk bottle of Chardonnay.

He grabbed the Chard and closed the door. He picked a cabinet, opened it, but found only two coffee mugs. He picked another but it was empty.

“Jeez.” He opted for a mug and poured the wine in. He drank and wiped his mouth. It was stale but better than nothing.

The shower came on in the other room and he wandered back
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to the living room and settled into the recliner. It was all kinds of comfortable. “Man, if this wasn’t so tacky…” He wiggled his ass in the seat and leaned back. “Oh.” He moaned. This was
really
comfortable. Maybe Keith would get two, one for each of— Whoa. He sat up and clutched his mug.
I thought we were giving
the boyfriend thing a break.
His brain thought it was a good idea but his ass didn’t. At least when sitting on the recliner. Not for other things. Definitely not thinking about other things. Except the sounds of Keith in the shower in the next room were giving him ideas. Naked Keith ideas.

He swigged the wine and moved toward the boxes. They were stacked three high and were marked with a Sharpie with things like “kitchen,” “bedroom,” “living room.” There were a couple of boxes scattered near the TV with their tape torn back and their lids sitting open. Skyler glanced over his shoulder toward the bedroom and with the sounds of the shower, was satisfied Keith was still busy.

He sidled over to the nearest one and leaned over, just casually glancing in. Books. On philosophy, biology, a few well-worn classics, like Henry James and Oscar Wilde. Skyler smiled.

Well all right, then.

He wandered toward the other box marked “football” and saw a few trophies. He set the mug down on the floor and reached inside to bring one out. It was a high school trophy for Most Valuable Player, 1990. When he lifted it up it dislodged a picture in a silver frame. Skyler smiled upon beholding it and set the trophy down to pick it up. Young Keith Fletcher, maybe in his sophomore year of high school, in the typical football pose, wearing a jersey with oversized shoulder pads, arm cocked back with a football, ready to throw. His hair was a lot longer and even messier. His jaw was just as squared and no matter how you looked at it, he was a big guy, even at fifteen. “You were cute even then,” he murmured.

He put it down and moved to the next box. Small tins full of loose items. One had fallen open and was spilling out a stack of cards. Skyler picked up the bundle with the idea in mind to put Foxe hunt
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them back in the metal tin. But as he held them he kept staring at them, all thoughts of putting them away disappearing.

Driver’s licenses. A lot of them. All for different states. But that wasn’t unusual. Keith said he moved a lot.

But did he change his name each time?

On the one from Idaho he was Karl Miller. On the frayed one from North Dakota he was Thomas Sinclair. Another from Arizona where he was Sam Wallace. Three in California: Jeremy Stevens, Ross Falchon, and Steve Gaunt.

Skyler’s pulse pounded, clamoring in his ears. A lump burned hot in his throat. He pushed aside a bar towel lying on top of the rest of the stuff in the box. It revealed a gun in a holster.

Skyler jumped back, knocking over the one lamp in the room. The light splashed against the wall, casting long, distorted shadows across the carpet.

Keith walked in, clean, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, with a towel slung over his shoulders. He was barefoot.

“Hey, what’s going on in here? Skyler?”

Skyler stared at him, at the man he didn’t know at all. He opened his hands and showed him the driver’s licenses.

Keith’s eyes widened. “Shit! What are you doing messing around in there?” He lunged toward Skyler and snatched the licenses out of his hand. He saw the exposed gun in the box and tried to hide it but Skyler snorted, amazed he was capable of speech.

“Don’t bother. I’ve seen it. You keep a loaded gun in a box?”

“It’s not loaded.” He closed up the box and stood, facing Skyler. His face was blank and drawn.

Skyler’s throat was still tight and he realized to his dismay that tears were streaming down his face. “So who are you? Is your name even Keith? Or Fletcher?”

“Yes. Both.”

“Are you sure?” The incredible hurt he felt pierced his heart,
252 Haley Walsh

throbbing it with an ache he’d never felt before. “Because it looks like you have a lot of names to choose from.”

“Skyler, you have to believe me when I say—”

“
Believe
you? Believe
you
?” He wiped angrily at the tears on his face. “You are such a liar! You’ve lied to me at every step of the way. I really don’t want to hear anything you have to say to me.”

Skyler turned and grabbed the doorknob but Keith closed his hand over his wrist. Skyler yanked it away and without looking back, screamed, “
Don’t
touch me! I’m leaving.”

“But—”

“I’m leaving and you’re not stopping me.”

“Skyler, wait!”

There was nothing more to say, nothing more to listen to. He yanked open the door and ran across the gallery to the nearest stairs. He took them two at a time and was running down the street back to the school. It didn’t matter how far it was. He didn’t really feel the pavement beneath his shoes. He just kept running, the cold slapping against his face, drying the tears.

He got home and took a hot, hot shower, as hot as he could stand. He wanted to be clean of everything, of all his choices and all the choices taken from him. When he finally shut off the water, he toweled quickly, rubbing hard until he was red all over.

He stuffed himself into his fluffy robe and sat on the toilet seat staring at his bare feet.

What had he gotten into? Keith was some sort of criminal, running from the law. No wonder Sidney said there were holes in his record. It wasn’t
his
record she was looking into. He dropped his head into his hands and rolled it back and forth. What was he going to do? Tell her? Don’t tell her?

But wait. Couldn’t there be other explanations for this? For having lots of names on different licenses? Ex-cop? That might also explain the gun. Witness protection maybe?

But wouldn’t that mean keeping a low profile? Pulling a stunt like he did tonight did not constitute a low profile by any stretch.

But the thing that bothered him the most was that Skyler was becoming attached to him. He’d never given anyone else a chance before. Not Philip, not Jamie, not Rodolfo. No one. Just Keith Fletcher. If that was really his name.

“What have I gotten into?” he moaned. He didn’t want to leave the bathroom let alone the apartment. But he had to go to the station and make a statement.

Reluctantly, he dragged himself to the bedroom, walking around the clothes he had dropped on the floor on his flight to the shower. He glanced at the phone on his bed where he tossed it. Messages. He opened it. Fifteen messages from Keith.

He deleted them all without listening to them and turned off his phone.

He dressed slowly. Jeans, T-shirt, Boulder slip-ons, leather jacket.

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Out the door and down the stairs he got into his car and took his time heading for the station.

Midnight. He meant to head straight there but he couldn’t seem to face it just yet. Instead, he meandered his car down dark cramped streets crowded with post war bungalows divided from one another by dark oleanders. Eventually, he turned onto wide avenues shouldered by huge date palms, lording over the streets with their umbrella-like heads. No one was out on the sidewalks.

Just pools of light under vintage light posts.

He slowed for a small white dog crossing the street, trotting swiftly over the cool asphalt as if he had somewhere important to be.

Without even thinking about it he switched on his player, and the slow strains of the Four Tops singing “Just Ask the Lonely”

thrummed through his speakers and filled the lonesome places in his car.

He hadn’t realized how lonely he
had
been. Yes, he had his friends. Sidney would come over at the drop of a hat. But now even
she
had someone. And it had been nice for him to have someone, too. But he needed to be able to trust that someone, to know who and what he was. And he had the awful feeling that it might be something bad.

When he glanced at the clock again he saw it was twelve-thirty. It was time to stop stalling and head over to the police station. He couldn’t wait for this night to be over.

§ § §

He pulled into the station parking lot, passing a few black and whites in their parking spaces. He locked the car and walked across the pavement to the well lit front entrance. The rest of Redlands was asleep in their beds, but the police station was humming with activity, of people coming and going out of its lobby, where uncomfortable plastic chairs awaited.

When he walked up to the front counter, he asked for Detective Sidney Feldman and the female officer at the desk told him to take a seat while she called.

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It took a few minutes but Sidney showed up. She ushered him past the security door and into the offices. She had a cubicle with walls no more than hip height and she gestured toward one of the chairs on the opposite side of her desk.

When she got comfortable in front of her laptop she stared at him. “Are you all right? You look awful.”

“I’m okay. Let’s just get this over with.”

“Mike had to take him to the hospital. Your boyfriend did a number on him. Which I secretly cheer, by the way. No charges will be filed.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.” And didn’t that refrain finally sink home.

“He sure looked like that to me.”

“Things change.”

She seemed to sense his mood and became businesslike.

“Okay, then. Tell me everything from your first encounter with James Fischer to what happened tonight.”

Skyler raked his hand through his still damp hair and began to talk. He talked and talked, compartmentalizing it all in orderly fashion and explaining what he saw, what he did, and why, all in as cohesive a narrative as he could.

When he was finished and Sidney stopped tapping on the keyboard, she looked up. “Is that it?”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“Pretty damned near. Mike called me from the hospital just before you arrived. Fallows confessed. Told a very interesting story about him and his pal Evan.”

“So Fischer helped with the murder?”

“No, but he encouraged Fallows to get Evan to help with the pot growing. He thought he would be desperate enough to do it. But he wasn’t interested in breaking the law. In fact, he got pretty vocal about it and threatened to turn them in. Fallows got scared and came back one evening to threaten or bribe him.

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He said he came upon Evan just as he finished cleaning his gun.

He wrestled it out of his hand and loaded the clip. He said he decided to make it look like a suicide and shoved it in his mouth, but Evan fought.” She must have noticed the look on his face because she stopped and took a breath. “I’m sorry, hon. I keep forgetting. Anyway, Evan couldn’t fight back because his other leg wasn’t working very well and, well, you know the rest. When we got to the crime scene we found a perfect footprint of a boot sole. He must have been waiting for Jeff to leave. As soon as we got a lead on Fallows—thank you for that—we were able to get a warrant for his place and matched the boots. We were just about to go to the school anyway and arrest him when we got a call that something was up there.”

“I wonder who that was.”

“I don’t know. It was a man and he said that there was a ruckus at the school. I imagine they meant your dancing with Keith.”

“Oh.”

“So do you want to tell me now why you look as if someone drowned your puppy?”

Skyler sat back in the chair and stared up at the drop ceiling, eyes following the pattern of holes in the tiles. “Tell me about these records you looked at, about Keith.”

“Why? Skyler. Look at me. Why?”

He dropped his chin and leveled his gaze at her. “Because I don’t think he can be trusted.”

“Is this about the computer hacking? Because Fallows confessed that Wes Sherman Jr. was hired to do it. They changed the grades of all the football players so they could continue to play. That’s going to mean that the whole season gets wiped.

There are going to be a lot of angry parents when this news gets out.”

“So it’s not Keith?”

“No. Doesn’t appear to be. Fallows doesn’t know anything about Keith. At least he’s not saying.”

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That almost made him feel better. But then those names and licenses kept creeping into his mind. “Sidney, would there be a reason for someone to…um.”

“A reason for someone to…?”

“For someone to have more than one driver’s license? With more than one name on it?”

“They legally changed their name either on their own or when they got married, or they’re in the witness protection program, or they’re an illegal alien, or undercover cop, or a criminal. Why?”