Holding Out for a Fairy Tale (18 page)

The blonde held up a small trash can and got his attention with a swish of her ponytail. Elliot realized he’d been staring at the reflection. He dropped his eyes to his coffee, scooped up the empty creamer cups, and tossed them in the trash. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” The blonde smirked at him. “You two are cute together.”

Elliot knew he was blushing, but he didn’t want to look up and see the fact confirmed in his own reflection. “We’re not together. We work together. Work.”

“Uh-huh. I’ve got regular cream, if you’d like that instead of those little packets.”

“No thanks. Fake hazelnut flavoring is the best stuff ever.”

Elliot tried to force the smile from his face before he turned back to the bench, but he blew it. Ray pulled his phone halfway up, pretending to be engrossed in what Elliot realized was probably a black screen. All so Ray wouldn’t be caught staring at
him.
Elliot couldn’t stop grinning.

The sight hit something deeper inside Elliot, something that felt like pity. Ray was so used to hiding the fact that he was attracted to men, so careful about it, that he camouflaged his interest without even thinking about it. He had done the same thing himself, years ago before public attitudes began to shift toward acceptance. He’d even kept an old copy of
Playboy
hidden inside his history book, so none of the guys he spent his high school years staring at would suspect the occasional hard-on he got in class was because he’d been staring at them.

How had he so easily forgotten what it had been like, living with the constant fear someone would find out? It had only taken witnessing a few fights in middle school to warn Elliot, no matter how many friends he had or how well he could take care of himself, he was fucked if anyone learned he was gay. He had spent his four years of high school terrified that he’d slip up, say something wrong, and that everyone in his school would discover the truth. He had nightmares about being lumped together with the effeminate kids who were always the target of their ridicule and scorn. Sometimes he worried they would resent him for not being obviously gay and beat the shit out of him for deceiving them. Worst of all, he’d been terrified they would tell his family. He’d spent weeks imagining all the different ways his family could react to finding out he was gay, and every imagined scenario was horrible and heartbreaking. The reality of his family’s reaction—the acceptance, support, and even frank curiosity he’d received—had been such a relief, it had all but erased the shame he’d felt during those years.

He didn’t know why he hadn’t realized Ray must be dealing with those same fears and feelings, but he hadn’t. He felt like an ass for not considering the probability the day he walked out on Ray in Montana. Ray was reaching, exploring, trying to come to terms with all those feelings Elliot had put behind him at eighteen, and Elliot hadn’t recognized it. Not that anything he could have said or done would have taken the shame and fear away—that was something Ray would have to manage to overcome on his own—but he could have listened and thought about what the man was trying to say, rather than assuming that everything coming out of his mouth was an insult.

Elliot took another sip of his coffee and watched Ray’s reflection in the glass once more. He wondered if all of Ray’s insults and jokes were just a deflection, like hiding behind his phone.

Elliot reluctantly turned his attention away from the open and honest reflection. Sure enough, by the time he’d turned around completely, Ray was poking at his phone again. Elliot sat down on the bench beside him, thought of a thousand reassuring things he could say, and realized that anything he said would just be met with scorn or a joke.

“I’ve got to call St. Claire.” He fell back to the safety of talking about work. “I’ve got to get started on a search warrant application for Garcia’s place. Do you want me to drive you out to the impound lot to get your car?”

“Assuming yours hasn’t been towed yet?”

“I left the flashing light on top,” said Elliot. “Mine will still be there.”

“Yeah. Am I returning to house arrest at your place?”

“Yes. Unless you’d rather stay in a cheap hotel. There isn’t enough money in the task force budget for the Four Seasons.”

“Chez Belkamp it is. Give me your key?”

Elliot handed him the spare key he’d dug out that morning.

“Good. I’m going to stop on the way home and get more groceries. It’ll stop me from feeling so damn useless.”

“Just so long as you don’t take anything else apart, we’re good.”

“No promises,” Ray shook his head seriously. “Your alarm system has two points of entry where there’s a fault in the circuit. I checked the magnets on everything I could find, so the fault is somewhere in the wiring.”

“Oh God, why did I say anything?” Elliot felt like smacking himself in the head. He thought about how Ray had so carefully positioned himself to keep an eye on him and Dr. Holland without being intrusive. A week ago, if Ray Delgado had asked to take apart one of his computers and play with a soldering iron, he’d have had the same reaction. Every time he would have expected Ray to screw something up, Ray had managed perfectly. “You know what? It’s fine.”

“Hmm?”

“I trust you,” said Elliot. “From everything the other detectives on your team said, I’m a fucking idiot to trust you, but I do. I already trust you not to fuck up this investigation, to back me up like you did with Holland, and to back me up with a gun if one of your relatives stops by to visit. If I can trust you with my life and my career, why not my sheet rock?”

Ray’s grin flickered for a moment. His expression was thoughtful, concerned.

“What?” Elliot glanced around him, wondering what Ray looked so worried about.

“You shouldn’t ignore the warnings of seasoned homicide detectives, you know. They know me.”

Elliot shook his head with certainty. “No they don’t. They know the practical jokes and easy smiles you want them to see. I don’t think anyone on your team, outside of Superman and maybe your captain, knows you. But I think I’m starting to, and behind the practical jokes and laughs, you’re the most detail-oriented, focused, analytical man I’ve ever met. I trust you aren’t going to tackle a project you can’t handle.”

Ray’s smirk returned quickly. “Well, now I’ve got to do my very best to make it look like a team of contractors tore your house apart, you know.”

Elliot shrugged. “If that’s what you need to keep yourself busy.”

The smirk died again.

“Come on, let’s go get your car.”

Elliot stopped in front of the impound lot and waited until Ray, in a sleek black Nissan sports car, drove out through the twelve-foot chain-link fence and waved.

Elliot watched him drive away, wishing he had an excuse to keep Ray with him. He wasn’t sure how he’d gone from resentfully attracted to Ray to having a full-blown crush on him, but Elliot had. The more he stuck to his resolution to keep an eye on Ray, the worse it was going to get.

When he got back to the office, he began the warrant application and went to brief his boss. She promised to rush the paperwork through so they could search Garcia’s apartment that afternoon, but she called him back into her office ten minutes later, looking grim. “The warrant application’s pointless.”

“What’s happened?” Elliot’s stomach sank as he imagined Sophie’s body being found by one of the search teams combing the canyons.

“Your suspect is dead. According to SDPD Homicide, a body with Luca Garcia’s ID in his pocket was found downtown early this morning. Officers responding to a report of shots being fired found him dead on the scene. The serial number of a gun found on the body matches a handgun registered to your friend Detective Delgado.”

“Delgado’s gun?” Elliot tried to recall the details of Ray’s police report from Saturday night. “Saturday night his place was ransacked. He said a gun was stolen, along with some computer equipment.”

When St. Claire pointed to one of the chairs in front of her desk, he sat down obediently.

“Belkamp, building security says you brought Detective Delgado with you when you brought in the laptop surrendered by Luca Garcia Saturday afternoon. You brought him to class Saturday night. How do you know his place was broken into?”

“I gave him a ride home. I was just going to give him a ride back to his car, but it had been impounded Friday morning.”

The twisted smile on her face was not a look of amusement. “Spill it. Every detail.”

Elliot took a deep breath to buy himself a moment to think about just which details he could safely omit. “Sophie Munoz is his cousin, he was worried about her, and he was looking for information regarding her whereabouts on the UCSD campus Friday morning. We’ve run into each other before. We’re friends. When I found out that he was also the informant Hathaway was worried about, I thought I’d keep an eye on him and try to reassure him that we’re doing our best to find his cousin. Since the information he provided was the basis of this entire investigation, and he is a police officer, I didn’t think there’d be much risk in letting him tag along while I filed a report. He didn’t come past the lobby.”

“So you ran into him Friday morning?”

“Yes.”

“And you brought him into the building Saturday afternoon and to class Saturday night. And you brought him back to his place Saturday night.”

The accusation in that statement was obvious, but Elliot very carefully pretended not to notice. “Technically, I brought him back to my place Friday night. His car was impounded from the UCSD parking lot. Like I said, we’re friends. We spent the evening catching up.”

“You filed a preliminary report saying you interviewed Luca Garcia Saturday morning.”

Elliot nodded. “I did.”

“He was there when Luca Garcia surrendered Miss Munoz’s laptop?”

“Yes.”

“You brought one of the victim’s relatives along to interview your suspect?”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it,” said Elliot.

“And now the suspect is dead.”

“Delgado couldn’t have done it.” The words came out too fast, with too much emotion. “Someone broke into his place Saturday night. He still didn’t have his car, and his phone was dead, so I reported the break-in and gave him a ride to the police department to file a report. Since his apartment is still a closed crime scene, he spent the entire weekend on my couch. I took him to get his car this morning.”

“Belkamp….” St. Claire shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut hard.

“He would have gone to talk to Garcia on his own anyway. He’s a criminal investigator, he knew she had a boyfriend, and he would have tracked him down. I was with him the entire time, I made him leave his sidearm in the car, and I can personally account for his movements from that point until about two hours ago.”

“Do you realize anything we find on that laptop is going to be thrown out of court? Elliot, I would expect this kind of fuck-up from a rookie, but you’re a better agent than this!”

“I know I screwed up, but you were all for assigning an agent to watch him before. I thought the break-in just proved that Hathaway was right, that he really is in danger, so I didn’t want to let him out of my sight.”

“In a hotel! Not on an active investigation! Oh God, Elliot….” St. Claire groaned, a bit of the woman he counted among his best friends seeping through the sheer iron wall that was his boss. “Tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it means?”

“What do you think it means?” He kept his face blank, oblivious.

“Tell me you’re not involved with him!”

“I am not involved with him. That first night, he didn’t have his car to get home.” Elliot didn’t want to tell her about the migraine. St. Claire knew that he’d suffered from migraines since he left the Army, but she had no idea how debilitating they could be. So long as he could push through them with medication, he could usually keep them from interfering with his job. If she knew how close they came to knocking him out of commission, she would have to take him off investigating work altogether. “The impound lot was closed until Monday, but I tried to drop him at his place after class Saturday night. When I realized Hathaway wasn’t just being a moron, I was worried about leaving him alone. I am not presently involved with him.”

“
Presently
?”

“Come on, St. Claire, I’ve only been on your team four weeks, and even I’ve heard what kind of reputation he’s got,” Elliot said. “He’s a ‘new girl every week’ kind of guy. He’s
obnoxiously
straight. I’ll be the first to admit he’s hot, and if he swung my way, I’d jump at the chance.” Elliot shrugged and smiled. “But I’m not masochistic enough to go after straight guys, especially my friends. Straight guys don’t magically turn gay. Not even if they want to.”

St. Claire fell back into her seat, sighing with relief. “Thank God. Although, I’m not so sure his reputation is valid.” There was a hint of amusement in her voice. “There was nothing about the way he was staring at you that said
just friends
to me.”

He felt the heat flush his cheeks before he could hide it. “I wish. I think he stares at everybody like that,” said Elliot.

“Not that I saw.” She grabbed a legal pad and a pen. “Give me a time line from your weekend, starting Friday morning. I want every single hour accounted for.”

Elliot squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes, ma’am.” Elliot edited out everything that involved physical contact, but otherwise told her exactly what had happened over the course of his weekend. She began taking more detailed notes when he began to describe the break-in at Delgado’s apartment.

“What else was taken?”

“He said two laptop computers and a nine millimeter. A lot of easily pawned stuff was left behind or smashed. Also, he had a hell of an alarm system and lives in a secured building, so I doubt it was just a casual break-in. I believe whoever broke in was looking for the laptop I got from Garcia’s place.”

“The laptop Luca Garcia surrendered to Delgado?” St. Claire asked.

“Yeah, that’s my guess. Delgado didn’t introduce himself except to say he was related to Sophie Munoz. Without knowing his name or address, I’ve got no clue how Garcia could even have found out where he lived.”