Poisonfeather (Gibson Vaughn #2)(9)

How could he fight an enemy he couldn’t even name?

He took up his fork, started to take a bite, and then pushed his plate to the edge of the table instead. He sat brooding out the window until he saw Toby Kalpar’s reflection. Toby owned the Nighthawk Diner with his wife, Sana. After separating from Nicole, Gibson had rented his apartment as much for its proximity to the diner as anything else. He’d adopted it as a second home in the months before the divorce became final, when he just hadn’t wanted to be around people. A meal at the diner forced him to leave his crummy apartment.

Toby and Sana had adopted him in return.

Gibson pointed at the seat opposite. Toby sat and their eyes met. Toby nodded to his friend; Gibson nodded back. After that, they sat in silence as men do when talk seems a wearying proposition. Gibson was grateful for the company and grateful that Toby knew not to ask about the polygraph. Toby’s given name was Taufeeq, but he had gone by Toby ever since emigrating from Pakistan.

“Are you still seeing that woman?” Toby asked, steering wide of the abortive polygraph.

Gibson had been on two dates with a woman from his gym. On the second, he’d made the tactical error of bringing her to the Nighthawk and now was all but engaged in Toby’s eyes.

“Didn’t work out.”

“Why? She was a nice woman.”

Because she has a roommate, and I’m embarrassed of where I live. Well, he could forget moving out and finding a better place now. No dog. No bedroom for Ellie, so no weekend visits. Gibson stopped himself there. If he kept working his way down this checklist, he was going to flip out again, and he’d only just calmed down. Not thinking about it seemed the safest option for the time being.

“It just didn’t work out.”

Toby smiled and nodded patiently—the way only men who have found their place in the world can to men who have lost theirs. Sana called for her husband to help her. He stood to go but hesitated.

“Gibson,” Toby began, finally getting to the point of his visit. “I know you have much on your mind, but . . . there was a man here today.”

“Who?”

“He was asking questions. Taking pictures. He knew a lot about you.”

“What kind of questions?”

“About Atlanta . . . he wanted to know if you were in Atlanta last summer.”

A chill raised the hairs on Gibson’s neck. He’d told no one about Atlanta. Not even Nicole, although he’d desperately wished that he could. It wasn’t safe for her to know, and he’d made a promise to Grace Lombard to keep silent and to stay away. Far away. A promise that he intended to keep. Anyone asking questions about Atlanta was not a friend.

“What did you tell him?”

“What could I tell him?”

Toby took out his phone and showed him a photograph. “He did not like it,” he said with a shrug, “but if you take pictures of me, I take pictures of you.”

It was true; the man in the photo did not look happy. He also didn’t look anything like Gibson expected. Instead of being a clean-cut, po-faced suit, the man looked like a refugee from a Hacky Sack convention, with a garrulous, good-natured face framed by a receding hairline and a scruffy ponytail. The sweater vest he wore over a Henry Rollins T-shirt hung down below his hips, stretched long by swollen, overstuffed pockets. He was no one to Gibson, but Gibson was not no one to him. He asked Toby to text him the photo. He could see his friend biting back the impulse to ask what was going on and appreciated not having to lie to him.

“I should see what Sana needs,” Toby said, excusing himself.

Gibson’s phone vibrated, and he studied his new ponytailed admirer. The cherry on top of his day. If he’d been feeling needlessly paranoid after Nick Finelli’s warning, now he didn’t feel paranoid enough. It was a lot of chickens coming home to roost all at once. The Spectrum disaster. Judge Birk’s letter yesterday at the ballpark. Was that a coincidence too? Gibson took the blue envelope out of his messenger bag and read it again. Maybe it was connected, maybe it wasn’t, but it was a starting point: an answer to the question of what to do now. It would at least keep him moving, not necessarily forward, but moving. That was enough. Because he knew if he let inertia overcome him now that he might never move again.

Gibson checked the time—it was only seven p.m. on the West Coast. He dialed the number and let it ring.

“Hear from her?” Dan Hendricks had never been one for small talk.

Her. They never spoke or wrote Jenn Charles’s name. Whether because of superstition or paranoia at who might be listening, Gibson couldn’t say.

“Was just going to ask you the same thing. No, nothing.”

“Then what do you want?”

That marked the end of the pleasantries. Neither one of them wanted to be the first to give voice to what both feared. That the months were ticking past, and the chances of Jenn Charles or George Abe being alive were dwindling. Gibson heard the strike of Hendricks’s lighter.

“How are things out west? You noticed anything unusual?”

“Should I have? Why? What’s up?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. I didn’t get a job.”

“And what’s unusual about that?”

Ouch. Gibson wanted to say something biting back, but he’d left all his fight back at the polygraph suite.