“My best friend when I was in high school died when he was seventeen,” Teague Donovan said pensively, rolling his bottle of beer between his hands. “No, not died. He was killed. Murdered.” He raised his head, his deep blue eyes—above a thin nose and well-defined lips—meeting those of the man he considered his second in command.
“Damn, Teague. Did they catch the bastard?” Jake asked.
“Nope. Hell, for the longest time everyone thought he—his name was Chris. They thought he’d run away again. He just…disappeared. I was probably the last one in town to see him. It was the day after I graduated.” Teague took a drink before continuing. “Anyway, like I said, he was seventeen and didn’t have anyone other than his three brothers—and me. His mom died in a car accident a couple of years before. Oh, there were relatives, and the boys were farmed out to them, all around the country. Chris ran from his uncle’s home as soon as he could, coming back to our town where his oldest brother lived with an aunt. She rather reluctantly let Chris stay. Well, until she found out he wasn’t the type of kid she was willing to have around.”
Jake tilted his head in question.
“Chris was gay,” Teague told him. “Not what a devoted church-going lady wanted in her house, so she kicked him out. It was almost the end of the school year and my folks told him he could stay with us until then. The morning after I graduated, I drove him to the bus station while trying to convince him to stick around.” Teague shrugged. “He didn’t. They found his body five months later, but no one knew it was him. He was listed by the cops as an unidentified male, 15 to 18 years old. It wasn’t until two years ago that the cops finally put a name to his body.”
“How come so long?”
“All they had was his fingerprints but back when he was murdered fingerprint databases weren’t very extensive. And DNA? Using it was still in its infancy in ‘87. So his identity remained a mystery until a police detective opened the cold case on a serial killer who had murdered two other boys the same way Chris was killed. He was the third—the unidentified victim. The cop decided to run Chris’s prints again. This time they came back with a name because Chris had once been arrested for a minor felony.”
“They never found the killer?”
“I told you they didn’t,” Teague said sourly.
“So why are you telling me this?”
“Because the guy, the killer, appears to have surfaced again.”
Jake shook his head. “Three guesses. You want us to try to catch him.”
“Yeah.” Teague finished his beer and set the bottle down—hard—on the coffee table in his den. “If it wasn’t for me, Chris’s aunt wouldn’t have found out he was gay and he wouldn’t have left town. So I owe him. Finding his killer is the only way I can repay that debt.”
Jake looked at Teague in shock. “You told her?”
Teague shook his head. “She caught us out back in the barn. We weren’t doing anything but kissing and a bit of playing around but—” he spread his hands, “—she got the message loud and clear.”
“Shit, Teague.”
Teague smiled dryly. “Yep. It hit the fan. My folks knew about me, which is why they were willing to let Chris stay with us, as long as he and I behaved. We did, which didn’t sit well with him. He told me he was getting out of town the day after school ended for the year, and nothing I could say would change his mind.”
“Okay, so if this killer’s starting up again, why aren’t the cops on top of it? And how do you figure we stand a better chance of stopping him than they do?”
“I’m not certain we stand a betterchange, but for me at least it’s personal. For them it’s just another case. Sure, they want to catch the bastard, but they’ve got dozens of other things on their agenda as well.”
“We’re not exactly sitting around twiddling our thumbs, as much as my wife might disagree at times,” Jake pointed out.
“True, but you can handle what we have going at the moment.”
“Uh-huh. Now I see where this is heading. I do all the day-to-day work, while you spend every waking moment trying to track down a shadow. An old one since it’s been well over twenty years since he killed those boys.”
“Twenty-seven years at this point.” Teague barely smiled, adding, “Stop grousing. You have the rest of the team to help you.”
“Yeah, but you’re the brains. The organizer. It’s your agency. I’m just one of the investigators.”
“The best one, Jake. If you weren’t I wouldn’t be telling you all this and leaving the agency in your very capable hands until I find the bastard.”
“It’s not going to be easy, Teague. First off, how do you know this recent killing is the work of the same person who murdered those boys twenty-seven years ago? It could be a copycat, or a coincidence. The original killer would have to be what, at least in his early fifties by now?”
Teague chuckled ruefully as he got up to get another beer from the fridge in the corner of the den. “From my vantage point, at forty-five, fifty isn’t that old.” He looked questioningly at Jake and handed him a fresh beer when he nodded.