Dead Heat

Leslie assessed her. “The only person I trust besides me to get my butt where it needs to go in safety is currently teaching second graders how to multiply by twos. Do you mind if I drive?”

“See,” asked Anna, walking around to the passenger seat, “was that so hard?”

“Anna,” said Leslie, “I think I could learn to get along with you just fine. Go through those files and see what you want to start with.”

There was a stack of files tucked in between the seats. Fourteen new in various colors and one faded and battered. She opened the battered one and said, “1978?”

“Five-year-old boy—attempted kidnapping except that the boy had a big dog who heard him cry out. And—” She stopped. “You read that file and tell me what you think.”

Anna read. And thought. “This sounds right. The fae don’t like to move.” Bran had told her that once. There were a few that moved all the time, but most of them found a place and stayed if they could. “Most of them, anyway. They don’t age. And they don’t change their rituals, not unless they’re High Court fae.” And to think just a few years ago the only things she’d known about the fae had come from Disney movies. “They can’t.”

“That’s what Leeds said. He said we were making this perp too human. He’s the one who went digging in older files. Found four cases that fit, but that one was the only one where the kid escaped. This kid grew up and still lives in the Phoenix area. Teaches higher mathematics at Arizona State.” She gave Anna a challenging smile. “Why don’t you call him and see if we can make an appointment.”

As it turned out, Professor Alexander Vaughn had just finished his two morning classes and had the rest of the day free. Did they want to meet him at his house? He’d be delighted to entertain an FBI agent and her consultant—they should reach his house in Tempe about the same time.

Anna assured him that would be lovely.

“He didn’t ask what it was about,” Anna observed after hanging up.

“Could be a crime groupie,” said Leslie. “Lots of people are. Could be he is bored or lonely or anything. No speculation until after we talk to him.”

“FBI policy?”

“My policy. Assumptions drive an interview away from interesting places.”

“All right,” Anna said. “We’ll go talk to the professor.”

Leslie pulled up to a house that had been built in the fifties. Evidently they had beaten the professor there. Leslie did not obey speed limits as well as Anna. She arrived fifteen minutes earlier than the car’s navigation system’s estimate.

The house was large and most notable because it was not built in the Southwest adobe style Anna’s eyes were getting used to. Nor was the yard xeriscaped with the conscientious water conservation she saw everywhere. Green grass covered the very small front area and huge old trees surrounded the house. Likely the shade from the trees was how the grass survived summers here.

A Volvo, older but in pristine condition, purred into the driveway and disgorged an athletic man with a military-short cut that managed to tone down his bright red hair. He shut the door and took his time looking at them. Anna returned the favor. He looked a little younger than someone who had been five in 1978.

He walked toward them slowly and said, “Can I help you, ladies?”

“Professor Vaughn?” asked Leslie.

He shook his head. “No. Who are you? Why are you looking for Alex?”

The roar of an engine distracted them and a big truck pulled into the driveway beside the Volvo. The truck was painted black with bright pink flames and jacked up high enough it wallowed when it turned.

The door popped open and a mad scientist hopped out, looking very out of place in the redneck vehicle.

“It’s okay, love,” he called out. “If you answered your cell phone I’d have updated you.”

The red-haired man turned to the professor, tilted his head, and said, “I don’t talk while I’m driving. And you shouldn’t call while you are driving, Bluetooth or no. I don’t want to get that phone call.”

The mad scientist nodded, kissed the big man on the cheek, and patted his shoulder. “I’m Alex Vaughn and this bulldog is my partner, Darin Richards of the Phoenix Police Department. He worries, that’s his job. Dare, these are the FBI, they want to talk to me.”

Darin’s head jerked first to his partner and then to the two women. His eyes narrowed. “ID,” he said.

Leslie showed him her badge and he examined it. He frowned and said, “I don’t know you. I work with the local FBI office a lot.”

“They brought me out especially for this case,” Leslie said.

He looked at Anna, and she raised both hands. “Don’t look at me, I’m just a consultant.”

“And you are here to speak with Alex.”

“With Dr. Vaughn,” Leslie said. “Yes.”

“Dare,” said the mad scientist. “It’s okay.”

“Maybe,” he agreed, without agreeing at all. “Why are you here?”

“We have to do this on the lawn?” asked Leslie, not losing her smile.

“Dare,” said Alex gently. “What are they going to do? Shoot me? Let’s go in and have some coffee and talk.” He looked at Leslie. “I have a stalker, a former student. She quite often calls in complaints and we have police officers come to investigate strange noises, screaming, shots fired. You name it. The Tempe PD knows her, but occasionally she gets one through to a rookie. The fire department was here last week at two in the morning because she reported a fire. I guess she got tired of not getting a response.”

“We are definitely not here because someone called in a complaint,” Leslie said. “We’d like to interview you about an attempted kidnapping—yours—that happened in June of 1978.”

Both men’s faces went blank with surprise.

Darin recovered first. “You never told me you were kidnapped. Freaking damn it, Alex. You’d have been six in ’78. June. You’d have been five.”

“Attempted.” Dr. Vaughn sounded shell-shocked. “I don’t think the police even believed me. My dad installed a security system and my mom fed the dog steak every day for a week.”

“No one believed in fairies back then,” Anna said. “We’re all clapping our hands for Tinker Bell now, though. We have a missing child who lives four blocks from where you grew up. Would you mind talking to us about what happened?”

“Sure,” he said. “I guess. I was five, though. And it’s been a long time.”

“How about I go next door and see if your mom is home,” said Darin. “That woman has a mind like a steel trap. She’ll remember what you told her when it happened.”

“You think it was a fae?” asked Dr. Vaughn.

“He was green and hairy. His hands had six fingers with claws on them,” Anna said matter-of-factly. She’d memorized the words on the first reading—it hadn’t been hard. The boy’s terror and the police officer’s skepticism rang through in the dry words typewritten on paper older than Anna. She continued, “His voice was funny—like on TV sometimes. He had a long yellow tongue and he called you a barn. He said, ‘Come here, barn.’” She looked at the police officer. “If someone reported it now, Darin Richards, instead of years before the fae admitted their existence, what would you say it was?”

“Barn,” said Darin. “‘Bairn’ means child, right? If he was in Scotland instead of Scottsdale.”

“Yes,” said Leslie.

“You go in and have some coffee,” said Darin. In a gentler voice he said, “That sure explains some of your nightmares, Alex. You take them in and I’ll be right back.”

The mad scientist—well, mad mathematician—paced back and forth in the house even though he’d seated Leslie and Anna at the table and put coffee in front of them. He had that kind of kinky hair that never lies down right, and it was about two inches too long or ten inches too short to look good. Especially if it belonged to the kind of person who grabbed it and twisted or pulled when he was nervous.