Page 34 of 44.1644° North
“Jason?” he repeated blankly.
“You were on the phone to him last night.”
Rory still looked blank. Maybe, probably, because this was absolutely none of my business? But I was almost positive Rory was gay, and I needed to know so that I didn’t misinterpret any of the signs I believed I was picking up.
I prompted, “When I was checking the rear entrance to the Swiftwater.”
He thought back, and his face lightened. “Oh,Jason.” He laughed. “God no. He’s my boss’s boyfriend.”
“Oh.”
“My boyfriend and I broke up about six months ago.” He looked into my eyes and smiled, and my heart fluttered around in my chest like a butterfly on the first day of spring.
“Your boss too? There must be something in the watercooler. I just assumed the FBI would be pretty homophobic.”
“I can’t argue some ground’s been lost over the last couple of years, but for the last decade the Bureau’s made a conscious effort toward inclusiveness. In fact, I’m not the only gay agent in our unit.”
I nodded, turned my attention back to the monitor. I took a closer look. “Here we go,” I said. “Rusty Bailey’s obit.”
“Rusty wasn’t living locally when he died. He was in Canada.”
“Correct, but he’d lived here most of his life. He still had strong connections to the community. You heard Simon on our hike to the crash site.”
“Yep. Pretty defensive.”
“Maybe with good reason. I’m sure you’ve seen the online speculation regarding Rusty.”
Rory nodded. “The fact that he moved away three years after Deirdre went missing didn’t help his cause. Nor did committing suicide two years later.”
No. And it also didn’t help that Rusty had been a bit of an oddball. With his wispy long hair, missing teeth, andwhat-the-hell-accent-is-that, he looked like every TV-movie-of-the-week backwoods serial killer. The internet had not been kind.
I bit my lip, reading theWeekly’s surprisingly lengthy—and glowing—obituary. “I read a fictionalized account of the case, and the asshole author not only openly blames Bailey, he promoted the book by continuing to accuse him and berate anyone who disagreed.”
Rory said neutrally, “Not nice, I agree. But the book was written long after Bailey was dead.”
I stared at his profile. “You weren’t kidding about doing your homework.”
“Due diligence is the name of the game.”
I sat back in my chair. “We’ve got a several people dying of cancer, a couple of drug overdoses, an eleven-year-old accidentally shooting himself, onemaybeaccidental death—”
“Overhiser’s brother? The one who struggled with depression?”
“Right. There’s no obituary for anyone besides Rusty who’s remotely connected with Deirdre’s case. Should we assume HPD considers Rusty their prime suspect?”
Rory removed his glasses, wiped them on his forest-green plaid flannel shirt, slid them back into place. “It’s never safe to assume.”
“Yeah, but ninety-nine percent of these obituaries are people dying of old age.”
“You’ve got a large population of retirees up here. It’s not impossible that one of them hit the kid by accident when she was walking down the road. Maybe that person panicked and disposed of her body.”
“So the alternate theory is Mr. Magoo mows Deirdre down, dumps her body somewhere, and goes on to live a long and otherwise blameless life?”
“The hit-and-run isn’t a new theory.”
No. It wasn’t. I’d never liked that theory, though. Partly for the reason that hit-and-runs are noisy and messy, and surely someone in one of those nearby houses would have heard it. Partly because my impression of small rural communities was that these people tended to trust the local law, which meant they were more likely to report that kind of accident with the expectation of not being blamed unfairly.
“Did Rusty leave a secret suicide note?”
