Chapter Eight
The vending machine in the Youth Center lobby took credit.
It also piddled out a crooked stream of beige liquid that accumulated in the thin plastic cup it dispensed.
Javi pulled it out as it finished, the last drips of the stream hot on his knuckles, and took it with him to where Clyde sat in the small cafeteria on a thin plastic chair.
A by-the-books analysis of his body language would say he looked calm.
His face was composed, his hands loose and relaxed on the cheap Formica table in front of him.
Despite that, Javi could feel the frustration and anger that radiated off the man.
It flushed the back of his neck red and showed in the tendons in his wrist that wanted to clench his hands into fists.
Javi pretended not to notice.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have coffee?” He put the cup down in front of Clyde and then pulled out the chair opposite him. “I don’t know if it would be any better, but it couldn’t be worse.”
Clyde’s lip twitched. “You’d be surprised.” He picked up the cup and took a drink. Despite the general appearance and smell of the tea, he still grimaced at the taste as if it wasn’t what he’d expected. “And I think I’ve had enough coffee today.”
Fair enough. Despite the decision, Clyde didn’t take another drink of the tea. He set it back down on the table and clenched his jaw.
“OK, let’s get this over with,” he said. “I want to get my kid, go home…go somewhere. So why don’t we speed-run this? You think I killed Tracy?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you do?”
Javi put his phone down on the table. He raised an eyebrow at Clyde as he hovered his thumb over the Rec button on the app.
“Do you mind?” he asked. Clyde shrugged and waved a hand dismissively.
Javi started the audio file and leaned back in the chair.
He laced his fingers together and rested them on his knee.
“Right now? No, you’re not in the frame.
But, statistically, it would be short-sighted of us not to check that line of inquiry. Just in case.”
“I have three ex-wives,” Clyde pointed out. “And I married them back when I had shit for them to get in the divorce. If I was going to kill anyone, I’d have started with them.”
Javi pursed his lips. “I’d have led with you being on a flight to Vancouver when she last made contact,” he said. “But point taken.”
Clyde sniffed and rubbed his thumb under his nose. “I could have hired someone,” he pointed out. “Come on, SA Merlo, don’t make me do your job for you. Tracy didn’t like you much, but she never mentioned you were incompetent.”
Javi smiled thinly. “Not anyone good,” he said. “Like you said, three ex-wives.”
Clyde acknowledged that with a tight twitch of a smile. He glanced at his watch and then back to Javi, raising an eyebrow.
“That covers the big ones,” he said. “What else is there…my kid has mental health problems, I’ve got legal problems with my ex, and I’m in peak shape for a midlife crisis? I miss anything?”
“Any of those why you were in couples therapy?” Javi asked.
“No,” Clyde said shortly. He took a deep breath, nostrils flared, and considered his answer for a moment before he grudged the words out. “Put it this way. I didn’t want to move, and she didn’t much care what I wanted. So…we’re working that out.”
Javi didn’t see how that tied to the mystery number, but it didn’t sound like Joel.
She’d always been the sort to try and find consensus.
Or at least the appearance of it. An ultimatum that disregarded her partner’s wishes suggested more than surface-level marital tension over how high to turn the toaster.
Clyde looked as if he had been about as forthcoming as he was willing to be, though, so Javi put a pin in that for now.
He flicked his gaze down to the phone as a missed-call notification flashed on screen. It was Kincaid. He reached out and dismissed it with a casual swipe as he changed the direction of his questions.
“What about Tracy herself?” he asked. “Did anything happen recently that made her act out of character or put her out of sorts? Any arguments or confrontations that you know about?”
A very nasty smile twisted Clyde’s mouth. He leaned forward to be closer to the phone.
“Only my mother,” he said. “They don’t get on.”
“Anyone else?” Javi asked. “Do you know if she met with anyone, or did she take any calls she didn’t want to talk about?”
Clyde gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “She’s an FBI agent,” he said. “She couldn’t talk to me about half the shit she does. What sort of question is that? What are you getting at?”
“There were no signs of physical force to explain Joel’s absence at your house,” Javi said. “SSA Joel either left on her own for some reason, or the coercion took another form.”
It took a second.
When the penny dropped, Clyde looked confused for a moment, then pivoted to anger. Dull red flushed up from the collar of his shirt as he jabbed a blunt, callused finger at Javi’s face.
“Fuck you,” he said. The legs of the chair scraped against the tiles as he pushed it back from the table and stood up. “Fuck your questions. If there’s anyone in that office that’s corrupt, it’s you. Tracy knew that. Maybe she found a way to prove it? Is that what happened?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Javi saw one of the agents pull his phone out to take a call. Right on cue.
“I understand you’re upset, Mr. Limehouse,” Javi said. “But—”
Clyde picked up the plastic cup of tea and tossed it in Javi’s face.
The liquid had cooled while they talked, but it was still hot enough to make Javi flinch.
He scrambled up out of the seat to brush himself off, the tea leaving watery brown stains on his shirt.
The instinctive response saved him from getting hit by the table that Limehouse flipped over.
It clattered against the floor. Javi’s phone went skidding over the tiles.
The other agents—one still clumsily trying to juggle the emergent situation and a call with his boss—hurried in their direction. At the other end of the lobby, the Center’s security guard clued in that something was happening and did the same.
“This isn’t going to help anyone,” Javi pointed out.
“You implying my wife is corrupt isn’t going to help anyone, least of all her,” Clyde snapped. “Tracy’s a good woman and a good fucking agent. I don’t deserve her as a wife, and you definitely didn’t deserve the second chance she gave you.”
“She didn’t give me a first chance,” Javi snapped back, his temper finally slipping out of his grip. “Never mind a second one. And maybe that was because she had a guilty conscience of her own she was trying to distract from. What did Tracy have to hide, Clyde?”
Clyde threw a punch. It was telegraphed enough that Javi had already started to move back, but the man moved faster than he’d expected.
Callused bruiser’s knuckles connected with the middle of his face.
His nose made a distinct crackle-pop, like snapped Styrofoam and glass, and the sharp liver and pennies taste of blood filled the back of his throat.
Shit.
Javi blinked through the pain. He finished the step back and grabbed Clyde’s wrist in one hand.
A sharp twist and the heel of his hand jabbed into Clyde’s elbow made the man fold from the joint down.
Javi used the leverage to put him on the ground, the meaty thud of it brutally loud, and twisted the arm up and back to the pain point.
He could feel Clyde’s tendons tighten and flex under his grip as he tried to struggle.
Javi planted his foot between the man’s shoulders and bore down to keep him on the ground.
Spots of blood stained Clyde’s white T-shirt. For a second, Javi blanked on why, then remembered.
“Shit,” he muttered out loud as he blotted his nose against the sleeve of his jacket.
The two other agents, one still narrating events to Kincaid, and the security guard had broken into a run. Javi wiped under his nose again, the pain flaring red up into his sinuses, and held up a hand to ward them off.
“It’s fine,” he said shortly. “Mr. Limehouse is just concerned about his wife.”
Clyde snarled something unflattering and tried to get up off the ground. A little extra pressure on his wrist made him go slack, sweat visible on the back of his neck as he grudged a “Sorry” into the tiles.
He didn’t mean it. He didn’t have to.
Javi waited a moment longer for everyone’s blood to cool. Then he let go of Clyde’s arm and stepped back sharply. Just in case.
The older agent stepped in to give Clyde a hand up.
The offer was snarled at, and Clyde clumsily lurched back up under his own steam.
He stood there, sweating and rubbing his shoulder roughly with his other hand, and glared at Javi.
His nostrils flared, and he spat on the ground—motivating a weak “Oh, no call for that,” from the Center’s puffed security guard.
“You want to know what my wife did when she wasn’t at work? Think about you,” he said. “What you did, what you deserved, what was going to happen to you. I honestly thought she was overcompensating to hide her real feelings, and the two of you were fucking.”
The outburst was so far from what Javi had expected that all he could think to say was, “I’m gay.”
Clyde laughed with no real humor in the noise.
“Yeah, that’s what the PI said.” He spat again and scuffed it into the tiles with his foot before the security guard could protest again.
“But if Tracy was corrupt, I don’t know when she’d have found the time.
Are we done here? I want to get my kid and get out of here. None of this is on her.”
For a second, Javi weighed the advantage of pushing Clyde a bit harder. This time, though, he wasn’t sure where to apply the leverage, so he just nodded.
“Go on,” he said.
Clyde turned and stalked towards the elevator. The security guard, after a worried glance around, loudly announced he’d escort him and scuttled after him. That left the other agents.