Music: Out of the Box 26 (The Girl in the Box Book 36)

by Robert J. Crane

  “It’s all...so appealing,” I said, unable to meet her gaze. “But I can’t leave the FBI in the lurch right now. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course.” She nodded. “The offer is open.” She smiled, clearly disappointed but not bitterly. “If you change your mind.”

  I nodded. “Thank you.” I rose, drinking down the last of my coffee. It really was good. A lot better than the store-bought swill I’d been drinking lately. “No one has wanted me to be...well, anywhere, for a while. So thank you.”

  “You are welcome here,” Mayor Brandt said, circling around her desk and shaking my hand warmly, with both hands, again. She didn’t act like she was rushing, but I was guessing if I hadn’t been a succubus, she would have held on a lot longer. “Let me know if you need anything during your stay, all right? Anything. The governor also wanted me to let you know that he is at your disposal if you need to contact him.” She looked me right in the eye. “While here, you will have the full cooperation of Nashville and the State of Tennessee.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try to keep the destruction to a minimum.”

  “I know you always do,” she said, and it was fully sincere, again in a way I wasn’t used to. “Take care.”

  With that, I turned to leave, almost regretting that I had to. I’d known Mayor Clea Brandt for all of ten minutes, and already I wanted to work with her way more than Heather Chalke or Willis Shaw.

  But that wasn’t the path I was on.

  Chandler was waiting for me, sitting on Brandt’s assistant’s desk, both of them chuckling at something as I walked out. He hopped up instantly, said, “Nice to meet you,” to the assistant, and fell in beside me. “How’d it go?”

  “Your mayor makes a hell of an offer,” I said.

  “You would make a hell of an asset to state law enforcement,” Chandler said with his slight accent, keeping right up.

  I gave him a sidelong look. “Are you going to be my tour guide, then? Selling me on why I should take the job?”

  Chandler just grinned. “I don’t think I’ll have to do much selling. I’m just chauffeuring. Where to now? The scene?”

  I nodded. “Take me to the scene.” I ignored that faint, distant voice in my head that loved the sense of warm approval I’d gotten in the mayor’s office. I’d almost forgotten how nice it was to be...wanted. Made me just a little sad to be walking away from it, but I had things to do. “Let’s get this thing solved.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Jules Sharpe

  The loud sound of guitars wailing out of strained old speakers was not the soundtrack Jules Sharpe would have preferred for reading his morning paper. The Tennesseean was laid out neatly on the scarred tabletop in front of him, neon purple lights pulsating as focused beams swept the stage to his right. He sat in an aging booth, studying an article about the rise of tourism numbers in Williamson County, a substandard cup of coffee that had long ago lost its steam sitting next to his right hand, a stale grocery-store croissant hard as a rock to the left of his paper.

  This wasn’t how he envisioned his morning routine would go. Jules Sharpe imagined a more pleasant setting—the back garden of a Victorian estate in Brentwood, just outside Nashville proper. The rolling green hills would provide a lovely backdrop as he ate fresh croissants and pastries made by an in-house chef and drank freshly ground coffee of the highest caliber, poured from a hot French press by a personal butler as he started his day in a leisurely manner, the birds chirping in the suburban quiet.

  Not like this. Here he read his paper by the glow of the purple lights refracting off the stage as a naked dancer gyrated on a pole while idiot customers threw dollar bills at her. He wanted a country estate; all he had was this slumhole titty bar on the edge of Nashville, and barely that. He still owed a bunch of money on it, so he couldn’t even properly call it his.

  Yet.

  Bones was the name of the place. Inside joke. Also not his. It referred to the side business that had typically been done in the back rooms of the establishment, before the Metro Nashville PD had gotten quite serious about eliminating prostitution and very wise to the fact that “private” dances at Bones involved actual privates touching each other quite a lot. That had been the downfall of the previous owner.

  Jules Sharpe was a man who liked to live on the edge, but preferred to keep his criminal activities back from it a bit. There was no enjoying an estate in the rolling hills of Brentwood if you were sentenced to twenty up in Brushy Mountain, after all.

  Gil Wallis was a mook, classic tough guy, and unfortunately the best that Jules had on his small but slowly growing team. The fact that one of his eyes was slightly larger than the other drove Jules just about nuts, which was how Gil looked. Gil slid into the booth next to him, broad chin so wide he might have had trouble getting a bicycle helmet with a strap big enough to fit. This was another part of the morning routine that Jules wasn’t a fan of. Another reason he wanted his estate, his peace, his quiet.

  “What’s up, boss?” Gil asked, in a distinctly non-Southern accent. He sounded like he was from Jersey. Because he was.

  Jules did not answer at first. He liked to make Gil wait in the mornings. When he had to, Sharpe could be forceful. He’d busted a head or two in his time. Done a little worse once or twice. He preferred not to; what was the purpose of having flunkies like Gil if you had to do your own incriminating dirty work, after all?

  Still, he made Gil wait a full thirty count before answering. Gil was wise to this by now, didn’t seem to care. He chewed a fingernail while killing the time, finger looking tiny against the backdrop of his oversized chin.

  “Something interesting,” Jules said, sliding the paper over to Gil, shutting it so he could see the front page article.

  Gil skimmed it. He was not a big reader in Sharpe’s estimation. “So?” He looked up, blank-eyed, chin just sitting there waiting to be broken in five so it could be normal-sized. There had to be a surgery for that.

  “Did you read it?” Jules asked calmly. Of course he had. Or parts of it, at least.

  “Yeah, the thing on Broadway yesterday.” Gil shrugged. “Saw it on the news. What about it?”

  “The Tennesseean suggests it’s a metahuman,” Jules said, sliding the paper back and pretending not to give Wallis any attention while doing so. Looking him in the eye only encouraged him to talk more. Being pensive kept him off guard.

  “And?”

  Sharpe was tired of these conversations. Why was Gil the best right-hand man he could find? There had to be better, smarter criminals in this town. Still, he worked with what he had, so he spelled it out. “If one had a metahuman like this—” he tapped the black and white picture of the destruction in the honky-tonk with his fingertip “—on one’s team, why...what do you suppose we could do with him?”

  Gil shrugged. “I don’t know. Break a lot of glass?”

  Sharpe contained his annoyance. He was quite used to it. “The answer is, ‘We could run this town,’” he said quietly. “This would be a game changer.”

  Gil just blinked. “Whaddya mean? How is this—whatever—better than a gun?”

  Sharpe held in a sigh. “Think about a protection racket. About how you have to go and collect.”

  The slow light dawned in Gil’s eyes. He was slow, but getting it. “Ohhh. You’re saying a guy like this could wreck a non-paying customer—”

  “In seconds.” Sharpe folded the newspaper closed. “Without a gun. Without a bat. Without arousing suspicion by carrying those things around. Without leaving any evidence behind. And that’s but one application of so many.” He inclined his head.

  “That’s a good idea, boss,” Gil said, nodding in respect. “What do you want us to do about this?”

  “I should like it very much if you put some feelers out for this guy,” Sharpe said crisply, tapping the photo of the wrecked bar again. “If we could find him before the police do.” He eyed the headline: Sienna Nealon is coming to Nashville! “Before she does..
.well...” Sharpe smiled, and once more, he was envisioning himself on the estate he didn’t own quite yet, living a life he hadn’t gotten his hands on yet. “I think it could it be the start of something very profitable for all of us.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sienna

  We parked about a block away from the crime scene, according to Chandler, leaving the government SUV in a tight lot next to a brick building. When I asked him why we couldn’t just park on the street out front, he only smiled and said, “You’ll see,” before leading me off down a pretty average-looking city street.

  My first impression of Nashville was that it was cute. It had a few skyscrapers that looked a little older, a lot that looked new, and quite a few construction cranes over the skyline that indicated more were coming. The tallest, most obvious building in town caught my attention for its strange architecture, and I pointed it out to Chandler.

  “That’s the AT&T building,” he said, leading me down the somewhat aged brick street. “Everyone here calls it the Batman building, though.”

  I stared up; it did fit. There were two points at the top, separated by a gully between them, making it look like Batman’s cowl. Another, geekier parallel came to mind and I voiced it before I could stop myself: “It looks like a skyscraper version of the Eye of Sauron.”

  “You’re not the first to point that out,” Chandler said with a chuckle. “We’re almost there.” He pointed ahead.

  I followed him to the next intersection, which was just a hell of a thing. The cross street in front of us was four lanes, but the intersection was just monstrous somehow. There were the standard crosswalks that squared it in, but also diagonal ones that cut through the middle of the square. Music was wafting through the air even though it was before eleven in the morning on a weekday.

  “What in the magical shores of Asgard...?” I muttered as we approached. There was already a crowd on either sidewalk, moving up and down the street.

  “Welcome to Broadway,” Chandler said with a little hint of pride.

  Each of the four corners of the intersection was taken up by a big, neon-lit bar, the signs glowing faintly even in the bright sunlight. Maybe they were just catching the sun, but they seemed to be shining, as though intended to draw people in. I saw signs that blared Luke’s 32, Ole Red, another proclaiming BOOTS. The biggest eye-catcher was Kid Rock’s Big Ass Honky-Tonk Rock & Roll Steakhouse. All the windows and doors on that one were open to the street for four floors, and music was pouring out into the street, along with the pleasant aroma of beer and something fried.

  The pavement was old and worn, and we hooked a right on Broadway, me following Chandler a little dazed as I tried to take in the sights. “This is like a cross between the Strip in Vegas and Bourbon Street in New Orleans,” I said, finally finding a way to put into words what I was thinking.

  “One of the city’s nicknames is Nashvegas,” Chandler said, now just full-on blooming with pride. “We are the nation’s number one destination for bachelorette parties.”

  “I guess that makes you like a target-rich haven for single dudes looking to get laid,” I said. The street went on for quite a ways in front of us. Looking back, I saw it ended in a couple blocks, a river shining brightly with sparkles of sunlight somewhere just beyond its terminus. A stadium sat just across it, a big one, with NISSAN written on its side.

  Chandler laughed at my observation. “I think there are actually more women than men in Nashville, so maybe?”

  “No wonder they call it Music City,” I said. “I’ve never seen this much country music...uh, stuff—”

  “Honky-tonks?”

  “Yeah, that,” I said. “And apparel, and...everything.” I shook my head. Guitar music flooded my senses from a dozen sources. There was a lot playing on this street.

  “Not a fan?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “My mom liked some older stuff. Johnny Cash and whatnot. Then she went through a Garth phase when I was a kid and I got dragged along, but other than that, not particularly.”

  “Well, here we are,” Chandler said, nodding at a bar to our left. It took up half the block, and the sign—busted out, but the glass already swept up off the street—said Screamin’ Demons.

  I chuckled under my breath at the ironic name. Next door, someone was playing an electric guitar and the opening riff of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” washed out through an open window. I paused, listening for just a second as the drum beats kicked in, and found myself tapping my steel-toed boots as Chandler held up the crime scene tape and I ducked into the ruin of the bar.

  “Not a lot to see here,” Chandler said. “The house cameras were destroyed in the incident. We’ve got some witness accounts you can read over. They’re mostly concurrent, a little variance here and there. No one lying in my estimation—”

  “Just the normal dissonance you find when trying to get large numbers of people to agree on anything,” I observed, looking behind the bar. Every single bottle had shattered, and the place stunk to high heaven of blended alcohols. I tried to hold my breath, feeling like I might be in danger of breaking sobriety if I even breathed too deeply. “Anything stand out?”

  “We have a sketch artist rendition from three people, including the bartender,” Chandler said, stepping over a table that had been knocked asunder at some point. “He had the most contact with the suspect.”

  I paused, looking up and examining a speaker that hung from the ceiling. It had completely blown out, the guts of it suspended by wire a few inches from the mount. “The guy did all this with his voice?”

  “So they say.” Chandler nudged a shattered beer bottle with the toe of his dress shoe. “He got up and was singing—it was karaoke night—and all of the sudden his voice just...changed.”

  “What kind of human collateral?” I asked. There was a small pool of what could only be dried blood at the table nearest the stage.

  “A couple people had their eardrums popped,” Chandler said. “Some migraines. Blurry vision.”

  I frowned. “Because of the fluid in the eyes being disrupted?”

  “That’s what the doctors suggested. Same with inner ears. Nausea. Vomiting—after the fact.”

  “I could do with some stomach acid to cover up the booze. It smells like a frat carpet the morning after a kegger in here,” I said, taking another sniff of the rich smell of gin, whiskey, vodka—everything.

  Chandler paused next to the bar, eyeing a cell phone that looked like the screen had exploded. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  “Not that I recall,” I said, taking the step up to the stage. The mic stand was melted, like someone had taken a blowtorch to it from the top to about halfway down. Whatever had happened to the mass at the top, I had no idea. Similarly, the remains of a microphone rested nearby next to one of those numbered evidence placards with a 1 on it.

  I made a slow turn to look out over the wreckage of Screamin’ Demons. The sheer volume of destruction this guy had caused was pretty epic. It looked like a full-on bar fight had broken out, though obviously no such fight was in evidence. “How is there no video?” I asked, standing on the stage like I was the queen of this ruined kingdom.

  Chandler shook his head. “Cameras were destroyed during the performance. And get this—somehow whatever he did traveled along the wires to the recording unit hard drive. Shattered it.”

  I let out a low whistle. “Got anything from street cameras, maybe?”

  “Yeah, we have some footage. He’s got his head down, though. Really shuffling. And of course it’s mostly low-res, grainy. It’s back at headquarters; we can take a peek when we get you armed up.”

  “I like that arming me is a priority for you,” I said with a smile. I stood there on that stage, my steel-toed boot crunching in broken glass from the shattered lights.

  He laughed. “Welcome to the South.”

  “Thanks. You keep pushing guns and swell job offers at me, I might end up liking it here. Nice contrast to...” My
voice trailed off as I listened. Something in the background had caught my attention.

  There was a guitar riff starting, slowly building next door. It had a twanging, morose quality, and I stepped off the stage to follow it without really thinking about it.

  “What?” Chandler asked as I drifted past him.

  It was really picking up steam now. I recognized it. A classic.

  It was “House of the Rising Sun,” by the Animals. But someone had slowed the tempo just a touch. I threaded my way around the fallen tables and broken beer glasses toward the busted panel windows that looked out onto the street. I didn’t even bother with the door, I just hopped right out into the open air, the cool breeze rustling my hair as the notes became louder now that I was outside and there were no walls to muffle it.

  The lead singer broke into the opening verse, and I blinked. It was a cover version, live, being done next door where they’d been playing “Enter Sandman” when I’d come in. I cocked my head; the bar had open windows, casement type, cranked open so that people passing by could enjoy the music.

  I stood there on the sidewalk, the music washing over me. The lead singer’s voice was powerful, bold, and yet somehow soothing. I found myself closing my eyes as they launched into the chorus. The band was on a corner stage, facing into the bar, but the music washed out the open window just fine and I swayed for a moment, the smell of the spring air filling my nose, the crowd on Broadway churning under the sound of this song.

  “You like this one?” Chandler’s raised voice came from beside me. I opened my eyes and found him swaying next to me.