Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
S ometimes Tristan felt like a lone wolf. Much of his job was performed on his own, tracking leads, following people, performing interviews. But sometimes, like today, he enjoyed going to the office so he could remember that he was not, in fact, alone.
It wasn’t just that his once-barren office had been decorated by Josie and was now a cozy riot of color. It wasn’t that Gaines was there, ready and willing to offer an ear or advice. It wasn’t that Elyse was a phone call away, available for technical support. It was all those things, plus something more, something indefinable, but if he had to give it a name he’d call it roots. Somehow Washington DC had come to feel more like home than Missouri, the place where he’d spent most of his life, ever had. He’d left his home in shame, disgraced, unfairly targeted and fired, cut off by his family and so-called friends, secure in the knowledge that he was a pariah and content to remain that way. Instead he’d found a job he loved even more than he loved being a cop, a boss who became a friend, and a client who became the love of his life. All in all, Tristan had a lot of reasons to smile these days. He didn’t, but he had reason to.
He thought these things as he sat at his desk and touched a gentle finger to the grumpy gnome Josie had knitted for him. After that little gesture that had become his daily office ritual, he aligned everything on his desk, took a breath, and turned his mind toward the job.
There was no need to consult his case notebook, but he did so anyway, setting it on his desk at a perfect ninety-degree angle. Asher and the baseball game. There was something there, Tristan felt sure. How and why did he end up at the game, in the elite box, and why had his demeanor been so odd?
The seats had been easy enough to track down because there were only so many seats in the private box. Most of them belonged to team owners or the uber wealthy who owned seats but rarely went to a game. The two in question were given to players, for them to use on a rotational basis for special guests. Tristan guessed a lot of women filled those seats, current or potential girlfriends a player hoped to impress. On the night in question they had been filled by Asher and Dex. Unfortunately for Tristan there was no record of who provided the tickets that night, only that it was a player.
He pulled up the team roster and scrolled, half-hoping a name would jump out at him. Of course it was never that easy, but a guy could dream.
Elyse probably had a program that could cross reference Asher with every guy on the team in seconds, but she also had her own stuff going on, multiple cases she was working for Gaines, as well as two others for him. She was only one woman, and it would be lazy to put this on her without doing his part, so he pulled up Asher’s social media and began to scroll. Elyse had hacked all of Asher’s passwords, but Tristan preferred not to remember that part of things. It had become so standard to use her hacking skills, he barely remembered what to do without them.
He didn’t discover a link until the fourth page of scrolling. There was a picture of Asher, his arm around the neck of another guy who, even though Tristan didn’t recognize, looked familiar somehow. It was the type, the I’m an athlete, adore me type. Some men were used to being fawned over, used to having their paths cleared. Tristan got a taste of it when his football team went to state in high school and their algebra teacher gave everyone on the team an A, even though many of them were failing. Men who received that sort of special treatment on a professional level had developed a special brand of entitlement. He matched the name to the roster of the baseball team and got a hit. Rogan Staats. Not surprisingly, Rogan had access to the seats Asher used the night of the game. Tristan did a little more digging and found that Rogan was still on the roster. He checked his watch and decided to make a visit to the practice field.
Traffic was its usual nightmare, but in an odd way he’d grown to enjoy it. Being forced to sit still for long stretches gave his mind a safe space to think and put together the pieces of the puzzles that made up his daily life. More than one of his cases had been solved or nearly solved, thanks to an extended traffic jam.
He parked in a city lot and hoofed the remaining blocks to the stadium. At the door, he flashed his badge and was granted entry. The badge was a trick he’d used as a cop, after noting people’s almost universal response to it. Something about it triggered their fight-or-flight mechanism. When he needed to gain entrée or information from someone, all he had to do was present it and they froze, relented, or started to babble. In this case they opened the door and buzzed him through without question, not bothering to read what was actually on the badge. If they had, they would have seen the truth: Tristan Evans, private investigator, along with a shiny silver badge that said some nonsense phrase in Latin. No one ever paused to read, though, and Tristan counted on their lazy compliance.
By the time Tristan reached the locker room, practice was over and he was diverted to the training room, where he found Rogan Staats in an ice bath, his arm wrapped in an additional ice pack that seemed gratuitous. How much ice did one man need? He sank to a bench uninvited and waited for Rogan to finish bantering with the man in the other ice bath before turning his attention on Tristan with raised brows.
“Something I can help you with, guy?”
“My name is Tristan Evans,” he began, flipping open the badge again for Rogan’s inspection. “I have a couple of questions for you, if that’s okay.” His tone made it clear that it didn’t matter if it was okay, but Tristan was big on the technicalities. Technically he needed permission to ask questions, so technically he’d ask for it, even if he planned to use his size, presence, tone, and badge as inducements.
“About what?” Rogan returned, brows still in the upright position.
Tristan looked at him, letting the question reverberate between them, checking for any hints of guilt. Amateurs and stupid people couldn’t keep guilt off their faces or tongues. Silence made them blurt things or turn their heads away to give their eyes a reprieve. Rogan Staats was either innocent or intelligent because he held Tristan’s unwavering gaze and remained silent, waiting for him to speak.
“Are you familiar with a man named Asher Cline?”
Rogan gave his own pause, and Tristan found that interesting. Why pause before answering, unless he knew Asher was mysteriously dead? “Yeah, he’s an acquaintance.”
“Did you give your acquaintance some free tickets to a game, a few months back?”
“Yeah,” Rogan said, shrugging his unwrapped shoulder. “So what?”
“Did you know Asher was murdered?”
Rogan jolted and cursed. “What? No. What happened?”
Tristan tilted his head at him, as if to say, You tell me.
Rogan held up his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you insinuating here? I barely knew the guy. How does me giving him a couple of tickets equate to me knowing anything about his murder?”
“It doesn’t,” Tristan assured him. “I don’t know a lot about the man, someone who liked his secrets, and I’m looking into any connections that might give me a better picture. Your name came up. This is me, reaching out.”
“Came up how?” Rogan demanded.
Tristan didn’t answer. He never felt the need to answer anyone’s questions, a trait that served him well in his career, but drove his girlfriend insane. Thoughts of Josie tried to intrude, but he batted them away, lest they make him smile.
“Look, I barely knew the guy. We had friends in common and hung out a few times.”
“What friends?” Tristan enquired.
“I don’t feel comfortable sharing that information, feels too much like gossip,” Rogan said, tone properly self-righteous.
“Why? Were they in the mafia or something?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“Then what’s the deal? They were friends, who cares if I know their names?”
Rogan sighed, annoyed. “I don’t know. Friends. You know how it is, you know someone who knows someone. We hung out a few times, he asked for a couple of game tickets, I obliged. It’s a thing I do, try to make use of them, whenever I can.” This time his shrug was more of an aw, shucks, I’m such a good guy variety. Briefly Tristan wondered if he’d injured his shoulder by shrugging so much.
“How did he seem to you?” Tristan asked.
“You mean did he seem like someone who was about to be murdered? No, he didn’t.”
“Did he have a temper? Was he friendly?”
“I didn’t know him well enough to know if he had a temper. I guess he was friendly. Schmoozy, is probably a good word. He was a name dropper, and I could tell from the beginning that he wanted to be able to drop my name. Probably another reason I gave him the tickets, tossed him a bone. Then when he bragged to his friends that he knew a pro baller, he could have proof.” He smirked. Tristan didn’t, and his smirk soon faded. “What do you want me to say here, man? Do you track all your acquaintances, know their signs, and clock their personality quirks? He was some guy, I gave him tickets, the end.”
“In your brief acquaintance, were there any red flags?”
“What kind of red flags?”
“Anything weird that stood out to you. Did anyone try to warn you away from him? Did he make inappropriate contact, harass you, stalk you?”
Rogan shook his head, and then tipped it. “I guess I did hear something about him.”
“What?” Tristan was forced to ask, when he failed to elaborate.
“Someone told me that if you wanted something, Asher was the one to hook you up.”
“What kind of something?”
“Don’t know, I never found out,” Rogan said.
“Who told you that?”
Rogan squinted, thinking again, and then he smiled. “Come to think of it, I guess it was Asher himself.”