Someone not named Carter or Lincoln cleared their throat.
Lincoln froze, and Carter opened his eyes to Jeremiah, arms folded, foot propping open the elevator door. “There better be FP biscuits in this for me.”
“Newlyweds.” Carter shifted Lincoln so as not to be totally rude but also keeping him in a position to hide the erection pressing against his thigh and the one behind his own zipper.
“Sexually frustrated gay bachelor,” Jeremiah replied. “Have some fucking courtesy.”
Lincoln moved to Carter’s side and swung the messenger bag around to their front in another surprisingly smooth move that afforded them coverage as they stepped out of the elevator. “Biscuits not worth it today,” he said. “Barry and Trudy are out of town.”
Jeremiah’s face fell.
“But Ginger’s cranberry orange muffins were divine.” Carter dug the bag out of his coat pocket and tossed it to Jeremiah.
“My favorite!” Jeremiah grabbed one out of the bag and bit into it, moaning. Carter swore he heard Lincoln pout. “You met Molly and Poppy?” he asked around his bite.
“Yes, and sounds like we might meet Brandon this afternoon.”
“Might.” He finished the muffin and wiped his hands off on his jeans. “Okay, I’m off to class, then leading two small sections this afternoon, then a study group. I probably won’t be back until tomorrow morning.” He stepped into the elevator and punched the up button. “Don’t fuck in the stacks, please. The shelves aren’t as stable as they look.”
“You sound like you speak from experience,” Lincoln said.
Jeremiah flashed them jazz hands, both hands up, fingers spread wide. “Top ten most embarrassing life moments. Last time Little Kline got any action. Wouldn’t recommend it.” The doors slid shut on his smirking face.
Lincoln was still staring at the elevator doors as they closed. Carter propped his chin on Lincoln’s shoulder. Same as Lincoln had done at the lab yesterday. “You want to make out in the stacks with me, Professor Polk?”
Lincoln’s eye roll as he slid away was exactly the laugh Carter needed, and it carried him through the next few hours of digging through archive boxes and microfilm. For nothing. They narrowed down the box graphs considerably and focused their archives search on the window of time Baxter was a student at Apex U. They used his transcript to search for class pictures and cross-checked his name with all athletic teams and extracurricular activities. Unfortunately, there were no pictures of the Future Astronauts of America Club, and the 2009 Apex U graduating class was too big to list students by name and the 2009 Apex U physics department too small to hold a graduation ceremony where they’d take a class picture.
So they refocused around the gray-hair theory. Using the narrowed time windows, they found two dozen pictures with multiple gray-haired persons in them, nine of which they ruled out as irrelevant. The individuals in those pictures were identified by name, and a quick records search showed two deceased and the others in locations that would make it impossible for them to be Dr. Fear.
“That leaves us with these fifteen pictures,” Lincoln said. “We need to start analyzing them for further details. See if we can use anything else in the shot to identify the individuals.”
“Before we get there, I have to ask, do you think any of these guys”—Carter spread his hands over the fifteen photos—“look like that guy?” He pointed at the laptop screen where they had open the mug shot of Jeff Baxter.
Lincoln nudged a picture in the top corner. “Maybe this one.”
“Maybe.” Carter fell into a chair. “Not really. Admit it.”
Lincoln dropped into the chair beside him, tossed his glasses on the table, and scrubbed his hands over his face. “We were making such good progress and then . . .” He lowered his hands and raised his two middle fingers, flipping off the table.
Chuckling, Carter reached out and covered his hands. “The table won’t appreciate that nearly as much as I did.”
“Do we go back into the founding families search now? Or cross-check Baxter with long-term Apex U employees?”
“We do both,” Carter said. “But I’m not sure I’m ready to leave this avenue either. We wanted the gray hair to be the variant, and I think it might still be for Dr. Fear, but maybe it’s not for Jeff Baxter. Yet.”
Lincoln straightened in his chair. “Hair dye.”
“Maybe.” Carter rolled his chair over to the laptop and accessed the FBI’s case log on Baxter. There were several files added since this morning, including a list of items from a search of Baxter’s place. Carter scanned down the list, stopping a third of the way down. “Yep, there it is.” He highlighted the six-month supply of gray hair dye that had been tagged to Baxter’s bathroom.
“Fuck,” Lincoln cursed. “What’s his natural color, then? Do we have a DNA panel yet?”
Carter clicked through the list of recently uploaded files. “No, but we have his NASA application.” He opened that file and a younger, dark-haired Jeff Baxter filled the page. “This is who we’re looking for.”
Lincoln groaned. “But that’s an even bigger, more generic haystack. Brown hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing features. I operate best when I can narrow things down.”
Carter turned toward him, knees on either side of Lincoln’s to contain the inevitable flailing. He needed the professor to focus, not get frustrated. Or more frustrated than he already was. “How can we best do that?”
“Maybe if we knew who some of the other people Baxter hung around with were, we can find them in pictures. If we’re lucky, another gray-haired person will be in the frame.”
