A Friend in the Dark - Gregory Ashe Page 0,10

in the closed-up, heated room. Something else Sam couldn’t put his finger on. Something that tickled his gut, and Sam wasn’t sure it was pleasant.

“Jake and I were in the Army together,” Sam said. “Now you.”

Rufus hadn’t broken eye contact. Maybe hadn’t even blinked since Sam had said “Jake.” “Prove it.”

“Do you have a phone?”

Rufus patted his pocket in response.

“Facebook?”

“Facebook is for old people,” Rufus said with a short bark of a laugh.

In spite of himself, Sam snorted. “I guess perspective is skewed when your balls haven’t dropped yet. You can find a picture of our platoon from basic—search for military yearbook sites. We were at Fort Leonard Wood, 2000, B-5-9, 2nd Platoon.”

Rufus tugged his cell free and started typing. He looked up every few seconds, keeping one eye trained on Sam’s weapon, before he seemed to have zeroed in on the photo in question. Rufus brought the phone closer, studied the screen, looked Sam over with a critical expression, then said, “You aged like shit.”

“Yeah, well, call me when you get pubes and we’ll see how you’re doing.” Before Rufus could respond, Sam added, “Now you tell me how you know Jake.”

Rufus gripped the phone tight. His skin had flushed, from the hollow of his neck to the lobes of his ears visible under the beanie. “I know him from work.”

“Oh yeah?” Sam’s grin was hard, hooking one corner of his mouth. “You a big, butch cop too?”

“Obviously,” Rufus said with heavy mockery. “I still know him from work, and I’m not going to tell you anything else.” He held up the phone and waved it back and forth. “You were in basic together. Big deal. Maybe Jake hated you. Maybe you’re a stalker. I don’t even know your name.”

“Sam.”

“Sam,” Rufus repeated. “Ok. It was nice meeting you, Sam. Now you want to move aside so I can go?”

“No,” Sam said. “I’m going to level with you, Rufus. I’m going to be really fucking honest with you. I’m tired. I’ve been on a bus for a day and a half. I hate this fucking city. And you are a real fucking treat yourself. I’ve been jerked around by Jake’s asshole partner; when I ask about forensics, I get answers that ought to make sense, and then it turns out everyone wants to pretend Jake killed himself. And that’s bullshit. I knew Jake. He wouldn’t have killed himself. Not when he was—” Sam stopped, the contents of that last e-mail burning his lips. He managed to say instead, “Then I get to his apartment and find Lucky fucking Charms eating his chips and willing to tell me fuck-all about why he’s in there. So, no, I’m not getting out of the way. We’re going to have a long talk. Really long. Until I know everything I want to know.”

The color that’d been in Rufus’s face—skin marred from maybe embarrassment, maybe annoyance—hell, maybe just the heat—had drained until he was the color of Elmer’s glue. Rufus shoved his cell into his pocket. “Jake was—” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat before trying again. “Jake was murdered.”

For a moment, the shock was electric, zinging through Sam. “You’d better tell me all of it.”

Rufus tugged the black beanie from his head, revealing a shock of red. He ran a shaky hand through the thick hair and said, while staring at the scuffed toes of his Chucks, “I don’t know anything.”

“You know he was murdered.”

“And that’s it.”

“How do you know that?”

It took another moment before Rufus met Sam’s expression. “I found his body,” he whispered.

Letting out a ragged breath, Sam knew they had reached a tipping point. Everything had to fall one way or another.

“I’m going to give you three things: Jake and I fucked around together, back in the day; we stayed in touch; he sent me something in an e-mail a few days before he died, something big.” Sam blew out another breath, pressing both hands against his thighs, hoping the weakness wouldn’t show. “But I need you to give me something too.”

Rufus’s green eyes stood out in stark contrast to his still pale complexion. His freckles—so many that it’d be impossible to count them all, connect them all—were like tiny craters on the face of the moon. He still looked a little sick. But he also appeared to be processing the imparted truth—trying to square up the Jake of the present that he knew with the Jake of the past that Sam had known. “I’m looking for his phone.