Page 94 of Skeletons in the Closet

“Why are you looking into Shore?” Doyle asked. “Why are you crawling all over campus and breaking into his office?” He nodded at Tallus but kept his attention on me. “The other day, your sidekick was inquiring about the Rowell woman’s death. Help me out here.”

“He’s not my sidekick.”

Tallus elbowed me in the ribs.

“He’s… my assistant.”

“I don’t give a fuck who he is to you. I want to know why you’ve got your nose in two of my cases.”

“Two?” Again, Tallus vocalized my thoughts. We needed to work on his inner monologue.

Doyle glared between us, clearly displeased and wanting answers.

Sensing Tallus was ready to spew a hundred questions and risk my client’s confidentiality, I slipped out of his hold and snagged his upper arm, using the same squeeze to warn him to shut up.

When he flashed me a disapproving glare, I loosened my grip.

“I can’t comment on my case,” I said to Doyle, “but I will tell you that if you haven’t connected Shore to the Rowell woman yet, you might want to do some digging. She met with him Friday night before she died. That’s all I’ll say.”

The information seemed to take Doyle off guard. So the department hadn’t connected Beth and David. Interesting. Yet David was being charged for something else entirely. What were the chances?

What were we missing?

Aslan pointed a finger in my face. “You be on call if I have more questions.”

“I’m not your bitch.”

He huffed. “No. You were never my type.” He left, slamming the door behind him.

***

After a short debate, Tallus and I ended up ordering food and sitting back on the love seat with the tablet while we waited for it to arrive.

Tallus had taken control of the device, sitting it on his lap as he typed endless searches into the bar, trying to discover who David Shore had apparently killed with his vehicle.

“It will be on my desk tomorrow morning for the website, but I don’t want to wait that long, and they may not reveal details to the public, depending on what they know. This whole case is giving me a serious boner. Is it always like this? Your job is exciting. Mine’s shit…”

I was barely listening, still trying to sort out how we’d gone from marital affairs, to sexual misconduct and drugs, to homicide. Two different homicides. Tallus’s chatter was background noise but not nearly as annoying as it had been in the past. It was nice to bounce around ideas with someone else.

“The students claimed Shore’s car was impounded weeks ago, so it wouldn’t be super recent.” Tallus scrolled, shaking his head, puckering his beautiful lips—ones that had been wrapped around my cock earlier—and clucking his tongue. “Man, a lot of people die from being hit by cars in this city. This is insane. How are we ever going to figure out who this is about?”

I sat closer than before so I could secretly inhale Tallus’s scent—bodywash and hair product that day since he hadn’t bothered with cologne. It was intoxicating, nonetheless.

“D? Thoughts?”

I tried to focus. “Are any of them from the university?”

“Oh. Good thought.” Tallus typedVehicular homicide + York Universityinto the search bar and hit Enter. A new list appeared, and the handful of results on the top all focused on one incident, but it was far from recent.

“Shit. Look.” Tallus placed a finger on the screen over the article’s date. “2010.”

“Click it.” Now we were getting somewhere.

When the article filled the screen, we read silently, shoulders connected. I was aware of every inchnotseparating us. I was sure Tallus noticed since it was me who took the initiative and leaned closer. My insides jittered, but I didn’t want to move away.

The write-up covered the death of eighteen-year-old Roan Guterson, a first-year chemistry student who had been killed while walking back to his dorm late one night after studying at a campus café. Roan had been involved in a hit-and-run. He was still clinging to life when an early morning jogger found him bloody, broken, and unconscious the following morning, several hours after he was hit, but the teen died later that day in the hospital from blood loss and head trauma. The police were involved in an extensive investigation, asking anyone with information to come forward.

Without the need to confer, we read a few follow-up articles from the weeks after Roan’s death, but the police had never caught the person responsible. The kid’s father protested and caused a lot of issues and disturbances at the university, demanding answers and claiming the police weren’t looking hard enough. Tallus did further searches, but the case didn’tseem to have ever been solved. Eventually, news about the investigation dried up.

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