Page 21 of The Librarians
“We went to high school together.” Jonathan chooses his words carefully. “But before today I hadn’t seen her in ages.”
Maryam was not at the reunion.
“Still, you must be friends, right?”
Maryam was in fact Jonathan’s girlfriend for two years—two Christmases, two Valentine’s Days, two proms. His mom still has their senior prom picture up on her mantel.
He hesitates. “I guess.”
“Can you find out from her what happened? All they’d tell me was that he died, but not when or how or—why.” Astrid clutches at Jonathan’s arm. Her grip is tight, but her fingers shake. Her eyes brim with desperation. “Jonathan, do you think the police came here as part of a murder investigation? Am I being investigated for a murder?”
Jonathan sits at the bar of a midtown restaurant, nursing a martini.
The restaurant is a local favorite. To be a favorite in a town trying to hang on to its bohemian roots while swimming in a tsunami of tech money, it doesn’t hurt to be a bit kitschy. The kitsch here is of the romantic variety: There are twinkling fairy lights everywhere, cascading in garlands andcurtains. And overhead, crisscrossing the beams, hang pendant lights that are orange and red glass bubbles, because Halloween is over and everything has become Thanksgiving-themed.
Two months ago, close to a hundred of Jonathan’s former classmates thronged the banquet room of this very establishment. Eleven o’clock that night, outside the restaurant, he finally managed to talk to Ryan Kaneshiro for a few minutes. It was the tail end of a brutally hot day. Heat still radiated from the asphalt lot, and Ryan’s shirt was open a few buttons at the collar.
Shadow pooled in the hollow of his throat. He placed a hand on his roommate’s shoulder and the motion pulled on his shirt, enough to show the indentation of a collarbone.
And Jonathan hasn’t stopped thinking of him since.
Which is part of the reason that instead of contacting Maryam, he fixed up a time with Ryan. But it’s also possible that Ryan, who works for the Travis County Medical Examiner’s Office, might be able to tell him just as much.
“Is this seat taken?”
Ryan.
Without waiting for an answer, Ryan settles himself next to Jonathan. He is wearing glasses—and looks so hot it’s a moment before Jonathan can say, “Hey.”
The bartender comes over. Ryan orders a local beer. And Jonathan wants to roll his eyes at himself. The dry martini in front of him resulted from half an hour of last-minute online education, in the hope of appearing grown-up and sophisticated. If he knew Ryan had a beer in mind, he’d have ordered a beer too. At least he knows what he likes in a beer.
The bartender slides a pilsner glass of pale lager to Ryan, who takes a sip and turns toward Jonathan. He’s waiting for Jonathan to begin, a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes.
Jonathan swallows. “Thanks for meeting with me.”
“Sure. I’m sorry for what happened to your colleague,” answers Ryan. “It’s never fun getting mixed up in police business.”
And Jonathan suffers his next bout of regret. He shouldn’t have gone for such a no-nonsense opening, because now he must go straight to theproblem, when he’d have preferred to ask Ryan what he’s been up to lately—and in the past twenty years.
Does he still play basketball? When did he start wearing glasses? Has life been kind to him? Has he been kind to himself? Does he ever kick himself for giving the time of day to the dumbass high school quarterback?
“She has a list of questions, my colleague,” Jonathan says, so that he can look down at his phone and stop staring stupidly at Ryan. “She would like to know the victim’s full name and when and how he died, at least. I know I’m asking a big favor, so please don’t hesitate to say no if anything goes against rules and regulations.”
“That’s okay. I can tell you a thing or two without getting into trouble.” Ryan, like Jonathan, consults his phone. “Full name of the deceased: Heneage Pericles Bathurst.”
“What?”
Ryan shows him a slightly fuzzy screencap. Jonathan squints to take in the full-throttled nonsense—at least Pericles was an important Athenian; what’s Heneage? No wonder the guy went by Perry.
“Midmorning on Halloween, the police received a call from the management of an apartment complex in Northwest Austin. Mr. Bathurst was judged to have been dead at least ten hours by the time he was found in his rental car.
“As for how he died, I don’t want to say too much, but I can tell you that it was not from natural causes. And I can also tell you that, for the moment at least, it isn’t considered homicide.”
“Nota homicide—and two detectives interview everyone at the library?”
“From what I understand, his parents don’t believe their kid died of his own fault.”
Not from natural causes.Isn’t considered homicide. The parents refuse to accept their son’s culpability in his death, but the police differ in their assessment.
