Fic Post: Unraveling [Shelter/Without a Trace crossover]

[dragontatt]

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Title: Unraveling, Chapter 4
Author: dragontatt
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Neither Shelter nor Without a Trace belong to me. No profit is being made from this work of fiction, and no disrespect is intended.
Word Count: 2710



- 17 hours missing -

Danny watched with some surprise as Martin gave Shaun a hug, holding him close and whispering softly in his ear. And when Shaun glanced up at him, he could tell by the empty look in his eyes that whatever had happened to Zach, Shaun was desperate to have him back. Still didn’t mean he didn’t have something to do with Zach’s disappearance, but in Danny’s mind there was no way he could fake that loneliness, that despair.

Shaun pulled away, eyes shining bright with unshed tears and gestured them into the apartment. “Cody’s asleep,” he said, one arm pointing vaguely down the hall, “but he can sleep through almost anything so we should be alright.”

Danny followed Martin in silence and glanced around, trying to get a feel for the place. The apartment was small, probably only two bedrooms, neat but well lived-in. There was a long, overstuffed tan couch along one wall- several pairs of sneakers and flip-flops were tucked neatly under the edge of the coffee table that sat in front of it. A large framed photograph hung over the couch, an abstract design of white and black curves, shot through with red accents. There was some building in the middle of it all but Danny couldn’t make out what it was in the dim light of the apartment. In the corner was a small wooden desk like the kind Danny had used back in high school, and as he looked closer he could see the top had been painted in black chalkboard paint. There was a clumsy alphabet scrawled across the top.

On the other side of the room was a big desk with a laptop opened in front of the black leather chair. Several large textbooks were haphazardly piled on one corner. A recliner was stuffed into what room was left beside the desk.

On the far side of the room between the two desks was a sliding glass door that led out onto a small balcony. Danny could see an easel standing outside next to a small table scattered with art supplies.

In the small front hallway, there was a skateboard leaning against the closet door, its deck covered with a strange collage of stickers and hand-drawn artwork: a bridge sketched out in silver marker, a series of rolling waves, and a clumsy doodle of a smiling flower superimposed on a sticker of a bright yellow sun. Next to the skateboard, a kid’s knapsack hung from the doorknob. It was army green and had an array of patches ironed on in neat rows. Danny didn’t recognize any of the names - Dragon’s Head mini-golf course, Santa Cruz Boardwalk, Scandia Screamer Coaster – but he smiled at the one on the bottom row – Gilroy Garlic Festival. Apparently they took this kid everywhere.

Shaun sat on the corner of the couch, turning on the side-table lamp. The light brightened up the apartment but threw into sharp relief the weary circles under Shaun’s eyes. He ran his palm over his lower face, fingertips rasping lightly over the stubble. He turned to Martin, sitting on the couch beside him and let out an uneven breath. “So tell me, what do we do now?”

Martin smiled gently at Shaun and Danny could see the sorrow in his eyes from where he was sitting on the edge of the recliner. Martin’s hand twitched and he reached for his notebook, pulling it from his coat pocket. “We start at the beginning. Shaun, this is Special Agent Danny Taylor. Danny, this is Shaun.”

Shaun turned to Danny almost in surprise, giving his head a little shake before holding out his hand. “Thank you for coming all this way,” he said simply as Danny nodded and shook his hand.

“Now Shaun, I’m going to need you to tell me everything about what happened. I’ll probably interrupt you with lots of questions. I know how much you hate that, but you’ll just have to deal with it for now, okay?”

Shaun gave a quick nod and settled back a bit onto the couch, fingers pressing deeply into his thighs like he was holding himself still.

“Tell me about Zach’s day yesterday – what did he have planned?”

Danny glanced at Martin. In all the years they’d worked together, he’d never heard Martin speak to any witness in quite that way before. His voice was soft and encouraging, with an undertone of something personal, something important that Danny would never be able to match. The closest he could recall was one time he’d stumbled upon Martin and Sam talking softly at work while they were still trying to keep their relationship under wraps. It had made him smile at the time but now that same warm voice gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He shifted his weight on the chair and clicked his ballpoint pen forcefully.

Shaun swallowed loudly and glanced at Danny a split second before turning back to Martin. His fingers wrapped themselves up in the loose denim threads that splayed from the hole in the right knee of his jeans. He ran his thumb back and forth across the threads wrapped around his index finger, not noticing he’d pulled them so tight the tip of his finger was turning white.

“Well, it was just a normal Monday for the most part. I walked Cody to school because Zach had worked a late shift at the diner the night before and was still pretty tired. But he was up and dressed by the time I got back because he had classes. We talked some and he worked on a few sketches for one of his classes for a while. It wasn’t until it was just about time for him to go that we realized that Cody’d left his lunchbox on the counter. I offered to take it but Zach said no, he had time to swing by and still make it to class.”

Martin nodded, scribbling a few notes down on his pad. “So what time did he leave here exactly?”

“Ten fifteen maybe? Couldn’t have been much later than that or else he wouldn’t have been able to make it to class on time. His first class is supposed to start at 11:45 and the next one at 1:30, he was just gonna hang around at the studio in between.”

“And that’s the last you saw or spoke to him?”

“Yes. I was here all day yesterday – well, I went out and grabbed a Big Mac about 1 something, the credit card receipt should have the time on it. But other than that I was here all day, I’m kind of under a deadline for some rewrites for the new book.

“Then a little after four I got a call from Cody’s principal, saying Zach hadn’t picked him up from school like we’d planned on. So I drove over and got Cody, and then we went to CalArts to see if we could find Zach. Before we got there I’d tried calling his cell and the diner where he works, just in case they called him in or something. But he never would have gone in to work and forgotten Cody. He might have forgotten to call me but he’d never forget Cody like that, so I knew something was wrong. And then when I got there and found that note, all I could think to do was get in touch with you.”

Martin smiled a bit sadly and said, “That’s okay, it was probably a good move. I am a professional, after all.”

Shaun snorted and shook his head. “It’s still hard to think of you as an FBI agent, you know.”

Martin’s lips pressed together into a thin white line and he nodded once, curtly. “Everything changes though. So,” he paused a moment to glance at the notes he’d written, “I know the local FBI have the note now but did you notice anything special about it?”

“Looked like it’d been torn out of a regular spiral notebook,” Shaun said with a shrug. “Could’ve been Zach’s for all I know. I don’t remember seeing anything on it beside those words. Give us back our money and our dope and we’ll give you back Uncle Zach. And I know what you’re thinking,” and he glanced at Danny before going on, “but Zach does not do drugs. Hell, whenever Gabe comes for a visit he won’t even smoke pot with him.”

“Gabe?” Danny finally spoke up.

“My kid brother – he’s Zach’s best friend. They went to school together from first grade on but Zach was always the calmer one, trying to rein in Gabe and his crazy schemes. Didn’t usually work though,” Shaun finished with a small smile, a faraway look in his eyes.

Martin tilted an eyebrow and said curiously, “You’re with your brother’s best friend? How on earth did that happen?”

Shaun laughed, and from his chair Danny was surprised to see him suddenly look ten years younger. His eyes were shining and he had deep dimples that looked a lot like Martin’s.

“Oh, believe me, it wasn’t easy. But actually Gabe was fine with it from the beginning – the trouble was Zach.” He smiled at Martin and shook his head.

“What do you mean?” asked Danny, and was vaguely pleased that Shaun jerked his head towards him like he’d forgotten Danny was there.

“Well, you see,” Shaun said, turning towards Danny slightly, “it took Zach a long time to come to terms with his sexuality. He lied to himself, and his girlfriend, for a long time. I think Tori knew Zach was gay before he did, actually.”

Martin cleared his throat, and Shaun turned back to him. “But none of that was a problem anymore, is that true?”

“Oh no, he’s fine now. Took a while for the three of us to get it all figured out, you know. How to be a family, I mean. Because pretty much right after we got together, Jeanne left Cody with us and took off. Not that it was that simple – she didn’t want to leave Cody with the two of us, she just wanted to leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“She left with her boyfriend, they moved to Portland and he didn’t want Cody to go with them, so she left him with Zach even though she didn’t approve of us.” There was a look of barely disguised disgust on Shaun’s face.

“Wait, she just left her son with you guys even though she didn’t approve of your relationship?” Danny was baffled – how could any mother do that, no matter how close the relation or how nice the couple?

“You’d have to know Jeanne to understand it all. She’s, well to be blunt, she’s fucked up. Likes to party, lots of men and when she got pregnant with Cody the guy didn’t stick around long to even see his son get brought into the world. He took off, made it as far as Chicago and got caught up in the middle of a drive-by shooting. When he died, the little part of Jeanne that always hoped for some sort of fairytale ending died too and with it any bit of motherly instinct she had left. She started leaving Cody with Zach all the time, and Cody’s just lucky Zach actually cared. It wasn’t easy for him, his mom had died not long before Jeanne got pregnant and taking care of Cody sort of screwed up his plans for college.” Shaun paused and closed his eyes a moment. “He’s worked so hard, taking care of Cody and getting back into to school.”

“But this probably isn’t the kind of stuff you need, is it?”

“No, this is good. Knowing who Zach is will help us find him,” Martin assured Shaun.

Shaun gave a pained smile and said simply, “He’s the man that I love.”

Martin flashed a quick, unreadable glance at Danny before looking back at Shaun. “I know,” he said softly. He stayed silent for a moment, staring at Shaun. A small, strange smile came over his face, and he glanced down. “So, um. You said Zach doesn’t do any kind of drugs. Does he have any close friends who do? What about Gabe? Would he be doing anything that Zach could have got caught up in by accident?”

“Hmmm,” Shaun shook his head. “I supposed technically it’s possible, but Gabe’s too much of a rich boy at heart to want to work selling drugs. And seriously, Larry gives him pretty much whatever he wants as long as he makes good grades. And he is my brother, I know he’s not involved with this.”

“Larry?” Danny asked from over in his corner of the room.

“Step-dad,” two voices said simultaneously and Shaun looked back at Martin with a grin. “You remembered.”

“Mostly I remember how much you hate it when anybody confuses him for your real dad. Or having much of anything to do with him, frankly. So why’d you ask him to get in touch with me then?”

“I was so freaked out, I mean I knew I should get in touch with you but I couldn’t think straight long enough to figure out how. One thing about Larry is he gets things done. And he’s always been willing to help out family, no matter how shitty I treat him sometimes. So I figured if anybody could figure out where to find you, it’d be him. And I was right.”

Martin nodded, apparently in appreciation of Larry’s skill at getting things done, and said, “Okay, so you say it’s got nothing to do with Gabe. We’ll need to check that out of course, but for now we’ll go with it. So is there anybody else? People at school? Any of Zach’s relatives?”

Shaun’s head popped up from where he’d been glancing absently at his frayed jeans. “Huh.” He stared off in the distance until Martin gently prompted him, “What are you thinking?”

“Well – nah, it’s nothing. I mean, they’re not even in the state anymore.”

“Who?”

“Jeanne and Alan.”

“Cody’s mom?”

“Yeah, and her boyfriend. He always seemed like trouble to me but I never heard about him doing drugs or anything.”

Danny jotted down Alan right under Gabe in his notebook. Neither of them jumped out as a viable lead at the moment, but no telling what a little digging would turn up. He drew a decisive double line under the names and wrote Background check. He paused a moment, thinking back to the note left at the scene – Uncle Zach it’d said. Someone who knows Zach as an uncle more than anything. That probably let out both Shaun and Gabe as suspects. He glanced at Shaun, flipped a mental coin and then wrote Talk to Cody tomorrow morning?.

“So somebody at school then,” Martin said, scribbling something down. “Anyone in particular he’s mentioned to you?”

“No, not really. I mean he’s mentioned names but no one seemed important enough at the time for me to remember, you know what I mean? He never hung out with anybody special after classes were over, never invited anyone over for dinner.” Shaun grimaced and closed his eyes. Danny could see how tired he was, how hard this must be for him.

“I haven’t been much help, have I? You have any ideas?” he asked Martin in a voice devoid of any hope.

“Of course, you’ve been a big help,” Martin assured him. “Tomorrow we’re going to CalArts, see if anyone there saw anything. We’ll check with campus police, see about getting the footage from their security cams. We need to talk to LAPD about getting some background checks on a few people, just to get that out of the way. And the report on the note and Zach’s car should be done tomorrow, hopefully whoever it was left lots of nice juicy fingerprints.” He glanced at Danny, raised an eyebrow and when Danny shook his head, he went on, “We’ve got lots of things to do, lots of leads to check out, and we’ll get started as soon as the city wakes up - not everyone’s awake at 4:45 in the morning, you know.”