20. Tallus

“But how did they know about his connection to Beth?” I asked as we hustled down a different stairwell and exited the building.

“We’re missing something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

We got in the Jeep and hit the road. I didn’t ask where we were going, figuring I’d find out when we arrived. We ended up at Diem’s, which was good since I’d left my car there the other day and had not been looking forward to the Uber expense to retrieve it.

Inside, Diem rummaged around his desk—it was no tidier than Shore’s—and found an iPad. He unearthed a pack of Nicorette and helped himself to two pieces before heading to the room next door.

I followed.

“Still get cravings, huh?”

He grunted.

Diem aimed for the fridge. “Drink?”

“No thanks. Bad idea. I don’t want to irritate my head. It’s in a fragile state right now.”

He paused as though only then remembering I’d been bedridden with a migraine for two days. He didn’t quite look me in the eye, but he tried. “How is it? Your head? Are you… okay? Shit. I should have… I can take you home.”

“I’m fine. It’s much better, but alcohol can aggravate it, and I’m less than a day recovered, so…”

Again, Diem hesitated. In the end, he moved away from the fridge without getting a drink. He didn’t land on the loveseat. Seemingly unsure where to put himself, he waffled in the middle of the room, hugging the tablet to his chest, working the gum with vigor. His fingers drummed the iPad’s plastic case.

“What’s up?”

“I researched David Shore while you were sick.”

“You said. And?”

“Didn’t find much.”

“The guy’s a lowlife asshole, fucking his much younger students, dealing drugs, and murdering women. Probably doesn’t want that on the internet.”

“I don’t know how he connects with Beth, Olivia, or Noah. At all. We’re missing something. I know all three of them went to York back in the day, but that was ten or more years ago.”

“Well, maybe Beth and Olivia were among his first student bed companions. Makes sense. He could have been up to his disgusting games back then too.”

Diem made a noise in his throat, almost like he was agreeing.

“Maybe Noah got in on the action. Maybe he was fucking around with Beth and Olivia and never stopped after he got married. If he and Shore got into it back then, there could have been bad blood between them.”

Diem furrowed his brows and seemed to take it in.

“We’re all over the place, D. In truth, we have no clue what’s going on. This went from an affair to murder. We need to talk to Doyle and Fox. Maybe we could—”

“No.” Diem shook his head for added emphasis. “Out of the question.”

“Why not? They somehow connected Shore to Beth, and we know he met with her Friday night. That’s huge evidence. We can’t suppress it. If we play our cards right, maybe—”

“No.”

Frustrated, I turned to pace the room but came face-to-face with Diem’s aquarium and pet snake. Baby was out of her hollowed-out log, prowling the tank. Could snakes prowl? I said yes.

She gave me the heebie-jeebies, and I backed up a step, wrinkling my nose. The heat lamp hanging low in her cage cast a yellow glow over her scales, highlighting her odd patterning. To me, they were a combination of browns and yellows, but I didn’t know what other people saw.

“She’s hungry,” Diem said from behind.

I laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. Not humorous. More of a mixture of fear and incredulity. “Great. That’s lovely. Not only do you have a fucking python for a pet, but you starve it. Now she’s pissed.”

“She’s not a python. She’s a red-tailed boa. And I’m not starving her. She gets fed tomorrow. I have her on a schedule.”

I stared at the reptile, her body pressed against the front glass of the aquarium as she moved slowly around a decorative rock in the corner, doubling back and slithering over other obstacles, tongue flicking the air like it tasted good.

“She’s more active when she’s hungry. It’s normal. She won’t hurt you.”

“So you’ve said. She’s disgusting. I don’t know how you can stand having a snake for a pet. I can’t even look at her without getting goose bumps.”

Diem said nothing. When I glanced over my shoulder, the big guy still clung to the iPad as he watched Baby move around her enclosure. He no longer chomped the gum or drummed his fingers. A distant look hung in his stormy gray eyes, and his forehead creased. It wasn’t often Diem looked anything but pissed off or confused, but the expression on display at that moment was one of sadness. Hurt.

He caught me staring and jerked his attention from the snake, scanning his apartment. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he mumbled.

“Please explain it. I’d love to know why you share space with something so hideous.” I didn’t know why I asked or why I was so harsh—his choice of pet unsettled me—but something about my comment seemed to upset Diem.

“We… We understand each other.” Diem shook his head. “Never mind. Like I said, you wouldn’t get it.” He moved to the loveseat and sat with his back to me.

I glanced at the creature in the tank. How did a person bond with a snake? It was ugly. You didn’t want to cuddle it. Hell, I didn’t want to touch it. They were nasty, mean, and dangerous. The way its tongue flicked, and its thickly coiled body tensed and stretched as it moved made it look like it was constantly on alert. Ready to attack. It wasn’t often the snake left its log—at least from what I’d seen. Ordinarily, I thought it seemed perfectly happy to stay hidden from the world.

The world probably preferred it too.

Frowning, I looked at Diem where he sat on the couch, bent over the iPad he’d placed on the coffee table. Coiled muscles, oversized body, and shorn hair over skin displaying a road map of scars from past abuse. Tension filled him like he was always on alert. Always ready to fight back.

And how did the world see him?

Nasty, mean, and dangerous.

Ugly.

Diem, too, preferred to fly under the radar and stay hidden.

“Fuck me,” I muttered under my breath. I saw it now. I understood.

I joined him on the loveseat, leaving several inches of space between us, knowing by this point that Diem needed extra room. I wanted to apologize, tell him I didn’t think he was hideous, tell him I wasn’t afraid to touch him, but I stayed quiet.

The damage was done.

Diem had a search engine pulled up. He’d written David Shore’s name in the bar at the top.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing if I can figure out why they arrested him.”

“Probably because of Beth.”

“But why would he kill her?”

“She told? She exposed him? She could have been the anonymous tip-off. I don’t know.”

The search was too broad, the name too common. Diem added York University to the search terms and got better results, but still not what he was looking for.

David Shore assisted with a ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2016. David Shore was promoted to head of the mathematics department in 2006 and earned tenure in 2008. David Shore welcomed new exchange students to his program in 2011.

“Let me talk to Doyle and Fox. I can at least find out what he was charged with.”

“No. They won’t talk.”

“I can be persuasive.”

“No.”

“Why are you so against collaborating? I know you hate people in general, but it’s healthy to communicate with your friendly neighborhood homicide detectives. They could help. In your line of work, I would think—”

“They won’t help. This isn’t a made-for-TV special.”

“I never said it was.”

“It’s how you think. Detectives have low opinions of private investigators. We are the scum of the earth. Me especially.”

I huffed. “Seriously?”

Diem grunted.

I sighed. “Then what do we do? We were supposed to be investigating a dead guy’s infidelity. We’re getting way off base with this.”

Diem scowled at the tablet. He knew I was right. We’d followed the breadcrumb trail, but we’d taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

Diem typed into the search bar again, adding Noah’s name to the mix. Adding Beth’s, then Olivia’s, and any other combination he could think of. He used various dates, focusing on the time period when Noah, Beth, and Olivia would have been students at York, but we found nothing.

It was nearing six, and I was hungry. The soup I’d eaten at noon wasn’t holding me. Considering we’d hit a brick wall, it seemed like a good time to make my escape. “I should go.”

Diem nodded but seemed lost in thought.

“D?”

“You could talk to his wife.”

“Faye?”

“No. Shore’s wife. Natalia is her name. If she’s pissed enough at her husband… If she was…” He trailed off and typed into the search bar again. Natalia Shore + David Shore.

A few hits were bogus and didn’t match. But one was a wedding announcement with an attached picture. A Facebook post several years old. The couple had married in 2014.

I did quick math in my head. “That would have been after the other three were done school.”

Diem nodded and flopped back on the couch. It meant Natalia likely wouldn’t know any more about how David connected to the other three than we did.

“Still want me to try talking to her?”

“No. Doyle and Fox probably have her gagged anyhow, and we don’t want to—”

A knock sounded at the office door.

Diem stiffened, his body instantly coiling and on alert.

I glanced into the other room and back. “Are you expecting someone?”

“No.”

“New client?”

“I don’t know.”

“Want me to answer it?”

He hesitated. “No.”

The person knocked again.

I got up, and when Diem didn’t stop me, I crossed to the other room to see who it was.

When I opened the door, Detective Aslan Doyle from homicide grinned from the other side of the threshold. It was not a pleased-to-see-you grin but more of a self-satisfied-smirk type.

“Thought I might find you here.”