Holding Out for a Fairy Tale (17 page)

The professor’s eyes grew wide, his mouth popped open, and he stumbled trying to take a step backward. It might have pulled them both off balance if Elliot hadn’t been expecting it. He shifted his weight away from the professor and pulled, a little bit harder than he needed to, just to keep the professor off balance but still on his feet.

“I’m sorry, I’m really very late.”

“You’re not late. Your class took the liberty of canceling itself. So you have more than enough time to help me sort through a few details from Friday.”

Dr. Holland looked flustered but went back to sorting through his keys. “A faculty meeting,” he tried. “I’m late for a faculty meeting. I really do have to go.”

“You arrange faculty meetings during the middle of your regular class sessions and then don’t inform your class?” Elliot asked. Beside him, he heard Ray snort, but he ignored it.

“Today, yes.” Dr. Holland nodded. “After you spread Sophie’s face all over the news, yes.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Holland, I presumed when you reported her missing that you wanted her found. Was I mistaken?”

“Of course I want her found, but it’s just rattled our department, that’s all.”

“Dr. Holland, my agency was reassured by the university president that the entire staff would provide any assistance we needed. I’m sure your fellow instructors will let you slide on this one. Why don’t we talk over a cup of coffee?”

“I really don’t have time. The entire campus is in an uproar, and—”

“I’m sorry if us taking
your
report of a missing student seriously has somehow inconvenienced you, Dr. Holland.” Elliot smiled and spun him around. “But then, Sophie Munoz wasn’t just your student, was she? I can only imagine the hell you must be catching, now that your colleagues have learned a student you were fucking has disappeared.”

“Would you shut up!” Dr. Holland pulled his hand away. “Anybody could hear you!”

“If you don’t want to sit down over coffee and be honest with me, I will take you into custody for questioning. Do you think there will be anyone left on campus who won’t know you seduced a student and were later arrested in connection with her disappearance once word of your arrest goes public? Do you think there will be any major university in the country that won’t hear about it, sooner or later?”

“You wouldn’t! That would ruin my career!” The professor’s tone was frantic.

“It would. And I will. But I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, either way. I’m nice like that.”

Ray clapped the professor on the shoulder and helped Elliot guide him toward the stairs. Elliot would have to thank the man later. He’d been nervous about allowing Ray to continue tagging along with him, but as the odd man out in the task force, he was working solo, and he wasn’t used to it. He didn’t want the headache of getting to know a new partner in the middle of a case. He definitely didn’t want to be stuck training a partner fresh from the FBI’s academy in Quantico.

Ray read him better than any partner he’d ever worked with. He responded intuitively to every nonverbal cue, knew the routine for every subject they’d spoken with so far. On the job, Ray Delgado was the consummate, detached, and attentive professional—which probably had a lot to do with why the SDPD put up with him. Surprising as it was, Elliot was grateful.

They took Dr. Holland to a coffee cart by the library where Elliot bought them all coffee. Elliot caught Ray’s eye and nodded toward the line of students patiently waiting for their drinks. Ray gave him a half nod.

“Come sit down with me.” Elliot turned Dr. Holland toward a bench where they would have a bit of privacy.

Elliot pulled out a small digital voice recorder and turned it on. “I don’t want to take notes, so I’m going to record this. My name is Elliot Belkamp, I am a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said into the recorder. “Is it all right if I record this conversation?”

He pointed the recorder at Dr. Holland, who looked flustered. “I…. Yes. It’s fine. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“Could you state your name and occupation, please?”

“Nathanial Holland. I teach in the computer science department for the University of California, San Diego.”

“Thank you.” Elliot set the recorder down between them. “So was Sophie Munoz the first student you seduced?”

Dr. Holland shook off the bumbling, nervous expression and narrowed his eyes in indignant outrage. “How dare you?”

“Blatantly, as a rule,” Elliot admitted. “I’ve found it works better to just ask what I need to know. My associate over there would take a more subtle, professional approach, I’m sure. If you want to trade euphemisms and innuendo for hours before you’re taken into custody, we can wait for him.”

“You have no proof. And even if you did,” Dr. Holland narrowed his eyes, “it’s not a crime.”

“Are you suggesting that there is nothing wrong with having sex with one of your students?”

“I never said that.”

“It’s time for you to start saying things. You concealed your relationship with Sophie Munoz and have been evading me ever since. So if you don’t offer up some kind of explanation, I will take you into custody. I can only hold you for forty-eight hours unless a search of your property is productive. Tell me, professor, what will we find when we search your home?”

“You can’t do this! I’m not being evasive! I just….” Dr. Holland ran his hands through his hair, his gaze darting around at random. “We started seeing each other over the Christmas holidays, the year before last. And it wasn’t the kind of relationship you’re imagining. I didn’t seduce her. From the start, it was obvious that she was in my classes because she needed the credits, not because she needed the education. She’s smarter than most of my colleagues, and she spent her break working as a monitor in the department computer lab. The computer science department has the newest equipment in our student labs, machines that can run the full range of graphics and design software our students need for user-interface design. She would spend a lot of her shift working on projects that were nothing short of amazing. If she had been a grad student, if she had ever showed them to anyone but me, the department would have been grooming her for a teaching position. All she wanted, though, was to go into law enforcement. She studied every form of modern encryption, network security protocols, everything she could get her hands on. I was helping her with a project when one thing led to another. We fell in love. But she didn’t understand how dangerous this was for me.”

“She didn’t understand?”

Dr. Holland nodded. “She didn’t like hiding. She didn’t understand why a relationship between two people who were both of age had to be viewed in such
archaic
terms. At the beginning of the fall term, she started flirting with Luca Garcia to make me jealous. It worked.” Dr. Holland shrugged. “When I got angry and accused her of acting immature, she got angry too. She said if I wanted to date someone more mature, I should stick to women my own age. She started dating Luca the next day. Seeing her with him made me crazy, but being with him made her miserable, too. Three weeks ago, we talked, we worked things out. The last time I saw her, she was on her way to break things off with Luca. She was going to move in with me….” Dr. Holland added. “But she never showed up. She wasn’t in her dorm room, she wasn’t answering her phone, and she didn’t even come to class. But that little bastard did.”

“Luca Garcia?”

“He had the audacity to sit there using her laptop in my class! As if I wouldn’t recognize it!”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were involved with Ms. Munoz when we spoke last Friday?”

“Because I was ashamed.” Dr. Holland’s voice dropped so low Elliot worried the recorder might not pick it up. “I’m still ashamed. But that doesn’t mean I’m not worried about her.”

“When was the last time you saw Mr. Garcia?” Elliot asked.

“My networking security class, last Friday.” After a moment, Dr. Holland looked thoughtful. “Look, I know I should have been honest from the start, but being involved with a student would destroy my career. I’d be blacklisted for the rest of my life. I never meant for it to happen, and I was hoping her family or her neighbors might report that something had happened to her so I wouldn’t have to. But weeks went by, and I was the only one who even seemed to notice. I know you think I had something to do with it, but why would I report it at all if I was responsible?”

Because of a misguided assumption that it might let him stay in control of the situation, Elliot knew. To give him a chance to waylay suspicion by accusing his rival. Of course, the rival Dr. Holland was accusing was a violent ass, so his accusations might be fair. “Tell me, Dr. Holland, do you know where Luca Garcia might be now?”

The man shook his head. He seemed to notice the voice recorder all over again. “No,” he said out loud. “Since I told you about him Friday, I assumed he was in jail.” The professor shrugged. “Maybe when Sophie’s disappearance came on the news, he ran. I didn’t know him that well, and Sophie didn’t talk about him when we patched things up. I can’t even tell you if he’s from the area. You can try the student directory to find his address, though.”

“We may do that. Just a few more questions, Dr. Holland, and we’ll be done. How long have you been with the university?”

“Six years now. Two years as an adjunct, then this full-time position.”

“And you’re not tenured?”

“No.” Dr. Holland laughed. “There are only a few tenure-track positions, so they’re competitive. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Just standard questions.” Elliot offered him a reassuring smile. He continued asking about Dr. Holland’s past, constructing a rough history in his own head and trying to glean a clear image of the man’s life.

Finally, he turned the conversation back to Sophie. “Last time we talked, you mentioned Ms. Munoz’s family. Can you tell me about them?”

Dr. Holland looked across the tiny courtyard at Ray, who was leaning on the coffee cart flirting with the blonde girl working the cash register. Elliot almost groaned.

“She never mentioned anything about her family. Not a word.”

“That’s not what you told me last time.”

“Nothing,” Dr. Holland insisted.

“She didn’t mention having a cousin who worked for the San Diego police department?” Elliot looked meaningfully at Ray. “It’s my understanding that they’re quite close.”

“She might have said something like that, I suppose. She was excited about going into federal law enforcement, like I said. She wanted to join the NSA, and she was heartbroken when something came up that cut her from the application process. She detested most of her family; she never talked about them if she could avoid it.”

“Do you think the rest of her family might have been her inspiration to apply with the NSA?”

Dr. Holland nodded. “I suspect her family was the reason. The reason she wanted to serve her country, and the reason she couldn’t.”

Elliot stared at Ray for a moment, wondering if he would have to throw something at the asshole to get him to look back in their direction. He didn’t have to, though. As if he could still see them, Ray turned away from the cart with two white cups of coffee in hand. Ray strolled over and presented them each with a cup of coffee. “Well, Dr. Holland, that’s everything for now, except for contact information.” Ray produced a notebook and pen like magic and copied down the same phone numbers and the man’s home address again.

“That’s it? I can go now?” Dr. Holland clung to the coffee with both hands.

Elliot took his coffee, switched off the voice recorder, and slipped it into his breast pocket. “Yes. If you have call forwarding on your cell phone or home line, you should turn it off. Both of those numbers routed me through to your office over the weekend.”

“I….” Dr. Holland looked like he might panic. “I thought I turned it off. I’ll be sure to double check.” The professor hurried off without another word.

Ray followed him with his eyes for a moment, then turned back to Elliot. “I don’t imagine it was the caramel macchiato that scared him off. How’d it go?”

“Weird. He admitted he was involved with her but basically said the same thing—that he thinks Luca Garcia killed her. He said she was planning on moving in with him the day she disappeared, so that kind of changes things as far as the packed luggage goes.”

Ray sat down beside him and chewed on his bottom lip, his entire body becoming tense. Elliot knew Ray had been forcing himself to assume Sophie was alive, and that assumption was based entirely on Sophie leaving her dorm room under her own power and packing for a trip.

“I think it’s time to get a warrant to search Luca Garcia’s place and bring him in.” Elliot let the warmth of the coffee cup seep into his fingers. “Something still feels off with Holland, though. I want to pull his financial records, get a better idea of who he is. You want my coffee?” Elliot offered Ray his cup. He’d ordered the same thing Dr. Holland had—a cheap bid to bridge some of the tension between them.

“You’re not going to drink it? They’re good.”

“Go ahead. I’ll order a decaf, and then I’ve got to make some phone calls.”

Ray nodded, pulled out his freshly charged cell phone, and settled in on the bench with a smile on his face.

Elliot rolled his eyes as he hurried to the coffee cart. He didn’t like not being able to include Ray in his interview with Dr. Holland, but Ray’s mere presence had already caused him enough headaches in this investigation. He was grateful to have someone else to work with, to bounce ideas off of, but he couldn’t risk his entire case just because they worked well together. He also didn’t want to think about the way Ray had smiled at the girl behind the counter. It was just one more reminder that when Ray got the whole bicurious thing out of his system, he’d still be straight.

He ordered a decaf coffee, ignored the girl’s flirtatious grin himself, and set to work loading it with flavored creamer at the counter. When he looked up to find a trash can, he was surprised to see Ray in front of him as well as behind. The bench, where Ray was sitting, was reflected in the glass door of the counter-top cooler next to the cash register. From the spot where he was standing, where Ray had been standing so he could flirt with the girl, Elliot could see the entire bench perfectly. There was a hungry smile on Ray’s face, his eyes locked on Elliot’s back. Ray’s phone was forgotten in his lap.