Darker Than Any Shadow

by Tina Whittle

  A large chunk of the crowd still hung at the edges, fresh faces interspersed. I was betting every single one was a squeaky-clean innocent bystander. Anyone with a whiff of misbehavior on their record had hightailed it before the black-uniformed wave swept the vicinity.

  Cummings jabbed his chin toward the restaurant. “Did you see any kind of weapon?”

  “No.” I remembered the body on the floor, the neat circle of blood on Lex’s chest. “Was he stabbed? Shot?”

  “We won’t know for sure until the autopsy.”

  “There wasn’t much blood.”

  “A fatal wound doesn’t always involve a lot of blood.”

  “So you’re saying—”

  “I’m asking you to keep an open mind—it may not be a gun or knife we’re looking for. Did you see anything, however unusual, that could have killed him?”

  I thought hard. “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Anybody acting out of the ordinary?”

  “There were so many people here tonight, most of them people I didn’t know.” Then I remembered. “Have you talked to a guy named Vigil?”

  Cummings shook his head, interest piqued. So I explained that story, soft-pedaling the part where Trey showed up because of said Vigil, who had a bone to pick with Rico.

  “Did you see this Vigil person here tonight?”

  “No. But I’m not sure I’d recognize him in a crowd. I’ve only seen him on stage.”

  Cummings kept writing. “So this was the first time you’d met Lex?”

  “I’d seen him perform, but this was my first time meeting him, yes. Rico pointed him out.”

  “You mean the poet who was performing when the alarm went off?” He checked his notes. “Richard Worthington?”

  It took me a second to make the connection. I hadn’t heard his full name since high school. “He goes by Rico now.”

  “You two were here together?”

  “Together like a couple? No, we’re just friends.”

  I immediately wanted to take that back. Why did people use the word “just” to describe a friendship, as if friendship wasn’t deep and real and intense? As if only romance could be that serious. Or that complicated.

  “Best friends,” I corrected. “But I came here with Trey.”

  “You and Seaver? Really?”

  He glanced at Trey, then reconsidered me anew. I was familiar with the look. People always assumed a man who looked like James Bond would have no interest in a rednecky woman with falling-down hair.

  I shot him a look back. “Yes, me and Seaver. You wanna drag him over here to verify?”

  “I’ll take your word on it. But let’s get back to Lex—you said you had a conversation with him in the hallway?”

  “He threw some bravado my way, hit on me, then took a call from somebody he referred to as his ‘lady friend.’ That’s the sum total of our interaction.”

  “Was this before or after his altercation with Jackson Bentley?”

  “After. But you’ll need to ask Jackson about that.”

  “I already have.”

  I got a surge of annoyance. I hated trick questions. Cummings’ meter ticked one degree toward bad cop.

  He tapped his pen on the page several times, then leaned closer in a just-between-us way. “Look, I heard you got railroaded during that last mess. Some guys like the power play routine, but I don’t work that way. You’re not a suspect, and I don’t plan on treating you like one.”

  I nodded, but I knew better. Because good cop or bad, he was lying. I was absolutely a suspect. I found the body, after all, and cops always look extra hard at those of us unfortunate enough to stumble onto a corpse.

  “I swear, Detective, I don’t know a damn thing about Lex. He left for the parking lot after our conversation, and he left alive and well.” I jutted my chin in Trey’s direction. “You can ask Trey. He saw him smoking a cigarette out there.”

  My fingertips itched at the mention of the word “cigarette.” Nothing like a Q&A with the cops to kick a nicotine craving up a decibel or two.

  “This ‘lady friend’ who called him, she have a name?”

  “I’m sure she does, but I don’t know it. Somebody on the team might, though.” I hesitated. “Somebody needs to tell her, whoever she is. If it were my boyfriend…”

  The memory of the scene flared again. Lex, sprawled on the floor, the red stain on the white tee-shirt, right over his heart. I imagined Trey in his place and shuddered.

  Cummings noticed. “I know this is hard. But I need to hear about when you found Lex.”

  I described it in as much detail as I could—the water, the bathroom smell, the smoke. The way Lex’s head tilted askew, as if he’d hit something on his way down. The bruising around his eye, the bloody split lip. The memory trembled in my retelling, as gray and shifting and insubstantial as smoke.

  I tried to shake the scene into focus. “I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing.”

  “Take your time. No rush.”

  I concentrated, but in my mind’s eye, Lex was two-dimensional. All I could see was the red splotch. Everything else faded into the background.

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “Did you happen to see his cell phone in the bathroom?”

  “The black one, with the rhinestones? No. It wasn’t in his pocket?”

  “It wasn’t on the body. But you reported seeing it the last time you saw him alive, right?”

  “Right.”

  Lex’s phone was certainly a bank vault of data. Photos, e-mails, numbers, secrets. Little wonder someone had snatched it. I watched Cummings scribble in the margins of his notebook. I craned to get a look, but couldn’t make out anything.

  He closed his book with a snap. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Randolph. We’ll be in touch.”

  I stood to leave. Cummings shoved his pen in his pocket.

  “Oh, and one more thing.”

  I sighed. “I know, I know. Let me tell Trey.”

  “Tell him what?”

  I hesitated. “You’re about to take me downtown, aren’t you?”

  He looked surprised. “No. I just wanted to say congratulations. Seaver’s a great guy. I’m glad he’s doing good.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder. I stood there dumbfounded and watched him go.

  Chapter Seven

  I tried to find Rico, but he’d vanished, so I found Trey instead. He hadn’t moved two feet from his post beside the back door, only now an Atlanta PD officer guarded the entrance instead of him. He told me about his interview, which had gone very much like my interview.

  Yes, Cummings was working without a partner. No, he didn’t know why, sometimes detectives just did. Yes, he remembered Cummings from his time at the APD. No, he hadn’t any idea if he was a good cop or a bad cop.

  He took off his jacket and draped it over my bare shoulders. I hadn’t realized I was shivering until it settled around me, warm and smelling of him, welcome even in its dampness.

  I pulled it tighter. “I can’t believe I’m cold.”

  “It’s shock. You’ll feel better when you can get dry.”

  I moved closer to him and dropped my voice. “Have you been able to read anyone?”

  “No, not clearly anyway.”

  “Damn. I was hoping your secret weapon would help me sort this out.”

  It was an ability both simple and astonishing—ever since The Accident, Trey could spot a lie with uncanny accuracy. The damage to his right frontal lobe had left him with an enhanced sensitivity to micro-emotive expressions, which meant that deliberate untruths lit up people’s faces like Christmas trees.

  I knew for myself how good he was—I was the uncrowned queen of the necessary fib, the not-quite-on-the-money explanation, the straight-faced whopper. Dating a man with such an ability was a precarious endeavor for someone like me, someone used to a little creative editing, but it proved useful at times.

  Like when I found dead bodies.

  Unfortunately, when people
are confronted with a violent crime, especially murder, they immediately start lying, even the innocent ones. They blank out parts of the story and twist their involvement, aggrandizing heroic moments and minimizing problematic ones. Human are lying animals, after all. It’s our birthright, along with opposable thumbs and a taste for simple sugars.

  “So what about Lex? When you found him in the parking lot?”

  “Hard to determine. When I asked about Jackson, his hands were shaking, and he kept his eyes averted. That could have been nervousness, however.”

  “He didn’t seem nervous when I talked to him. He was downright smug, despite the fact that Jackson had just tossed his ass into a wall.”

  Rico appeared from a knot of uniformed officers, looking tired and frustrated and utterly beaten up. I reached out to him, but he shook his head. That was when I noticed the second cop right behind him.

  “Rico?”

  “I gotta go give a statement.”

  “Why?” I pushed my way over, but the cops kept moving him on.

  “It’s the machine, baby girl, and I’m stuck in it for a while. I’ll call you when I get out, all right?”

  He was almost out of the parking lot when Frankie bustled right up in his face. The cops pulled up tight, like their reins had gotten a yank. She was an imposing barrier, one hand on her hip, the other pointed at Rico.

  “I have to talk to him.”

  The cop shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”

  She ignored him and turned to Rico. “What happened? Why are they taking you in?”

  He shook his head. “Get Tai to fill you in on the details.”

  “Who?”

  He pointed, and she turned my way. Sudden recognition flared in her face, then a brusque appraisal as she sized me up.

  She turned back to Rico. “Call me when you get finished. We need to decide how the team is going to deal with this.”

  This, she said. As if a murder were some annoying complication.

  As they led Rico away, I spotted a familiar figure—short, olive-skinned, his salt-and-pepper hair pulled into a ponytail, his ever-present camera around his neck. Padre, the former team leader, Rico’s role model and poet hero. We’d met several times after Rico’s performances for drinks and general adoration. I remembered him as laughing, effusive, good-natured and jovial. Tonight his expression was pinched, his eyes dark.

  Frankie skewered him with a look. “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”

  “I got hung up.”

  “How?”

  “In an interview with the paper, what does it matter?”

  “It matters a lot.”

  He ignored her and looked at me. “What happened?”

  I explained. His face crumpled as I told the story, his features twisting first with shock, then sadness, then sympathy. He abruptly lunged at me and engulfed me in a hug.

  “Hang in there, babe. It’ll be all right.”

  I let him squeeze me for a while; he smelled like cigarettes and patchouli, an oddly comforting combination. When he finally released me, he took a step toward Trey like he was gonna hug him too. But then he bounced off the invisible force field that Trey kept up and settled for standing there, hands on hips.

  He shook his head. “Tough night, man.”

  Trey nodded. “Indeed.”

  Frankie still had a bone to pick with Padre, however. “This is all your fault.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “You were supposed to be emceeing! If you’d been here, I could have kept Lex in line instead of having to stop and run the show.” She turned her attention to me. “They say you found him?”

  “Jackson and I both did.”

  She made a noise of exasperation. “Team finals start on Friday. That’s one week. How am I supposed to get us back on track by then, much less prepare for the individual rounds?” She started ticking off on her fingers. “I have to fill out an exigency request, reschedule the practices, start thinking about who to substitute—”

  “What about Vigil?”

  “That’s trading one problem for another. But I may have to use him. I didn’t work this hard to see our team pulled at the last minute.”

  Padre stepped forward. “Take your fingers off the wheel, Frankie, at least for a little while.”

  She glared at him. And then she stalked off, no doubt to drag some important Performance Poetry International officials from their beds and harangue them.

  Padre watched her go, hands in pockets. “That woman will never learn. She’s all stick and no carrot.”

  I had to agree. As we watched, she intruded on Jackson’s interview, then made a direct heading toward Cricket, who was trembling in a folding chair, a glass of water in hand. I felt an immediate surge of sympathy for Cricket, a small island with a big hurricane headed its way.

  Padre shook his head in that direction. “I knew it was a bad idea letting him stay at their place.”

  “Him who?”

  “Lex.”

  It took me a second to catch up. “Lex stayed with Cricket and Jackson?”

  “It’s the hospitality rule of poets everywhere. If you don’t have a bed, somebody will find you a sofa. And you’ve got a sofa, you make it available to whoever needs it.”

  “He didn’t live here?”

  “No, he lived down the coast, near Brunswick. He only came up here for practice and slams. Jackson kicked him out yesterday, though.” He shrugged philosophically. “The boy had a way of stirring things up, for good or ill.”

  This mess was getting more and more complicated. I could barely keep track of who was who and where they were sleeping. But I remembered Jackson’s anger.

  “Was this about the missing money?”

  Padre eyed me sharply. “How’d you hear about that?”

  “I heard Lex and Jackson arguing. Violently.”

  He shook his head. “I told Jackson it wasn’t Lex. I watched Lex put that money in the safe and close the door, then leave empty-handed and innocent. Of that particular crime anyway.”

  He looked over my shoulder, and I turned to see the body being wheeled out into a waiting fire and rescue vehicle. Photographic flashes flared in the night, looking like some strange aurora borealis in the halogen street lights. Padre followed my eyes as I watched the car containing Rico pull away.

  He patted my back. “One thing at a time, babe. I’ll talk to Cricket and Jackson. You make sure Rico’s okay. Okay?” He frowned. “Why are they taking him in anyway?”

  “I don’t know. But it can’t be good.”

  “Maybe they have a line-up. Or maybe they wanna do a police sketch.”

  I shook my head. “No, something’s up. Rico never goes quietly. I don’t like it.”

  “It’ll be okay, I’m sure. Tell him I’ll see him Sunday morning, okay?”

  “For what?”

  “Photo shoot. The team’s getting new head shots. You can come, if you like. I’ll snap one of you too.”

  “Sure. If Rico’s up to it after all this.”

  He patted my shoulder. “He will be. He’s a pro. And Frankie’s got one thing right—the show must go on.”

  He ambled off Cricket and Jackson’s way, hands tucked in the pockets of his photographer’s vest. Trey watched him go. Now that the actual cops were on scene, he’d lost an active role in keeping things straight. Stuck with nothing to do, he’d retreated into stoic passivity.

  His eyes narrowed. “Who was that?”

  “I don’t remember his real name. Everybody calls him Padre,” I explained. “He got his start back in the seventies at the Nuyorican when it was only a bunch of poets in somebody’s East Village living room. Rico idolizes him.”

  “What does he do now?”

  “A little of everything—writing, teaching, photography. Rico says he’s the reason the documentary got greenlit so fast. Rumor has it he’s fetching a pretty penny for his part in it. A piece of spoken word history, that man.” I looked at Trey. “Why the curiosity,
Mr. Seaver?”

  Trey was still watching Padre, who by now had reached Cummings and was introducing himself. He looked like an anachronism, a photo from the sixties come to life next to the clean-cut APD cops in black serge.

  “He was lying,” Trey said.

  “About what?”

  “About why he was late.”

  “What about the money story, about Lex not taking it? Was that the truth?”

  Trey nodded. “Everything else was true, as far as I could tell anyway.”

  I leaned against the wall and shoved my hair out of my face. Jeez, was everybody here a suspect? Rico and Adam? Cricket and Jackson? Frankie? Padre? Me? Trey? And as the cop car pulled away with Rico inside—no lights, no sirens, only purpose—I knew the answer was yes.

  Suspects all.

  Chapter Eight

  Back at Trey’s place, I ate cookie dough ice cream in bed while he got ready to join me. He wore his favorite pajama bottoms, the Ermenegildo Zegnas in dark charcoal. I’d taken the top for myself.

  I banged the spoon into the empty bowl. “Why hasn’t he called yet?”

  “Questioning takes about two hours minimum. But he could be there much longer than that.”

  “He could still call.”

  “No, he can’t. You know this.”

  Yes, I knew this, but something was wrong regardless. I hoped it had nothing to do with Lex’s death, but I was pretty sure it had something to do with Lex. Unfortunately, getting personal information out of Rico was like digging for diamonds. There was sweat involved, blind luck and pickaxes.

  “Do you realize the odds of this happening? One person finding two murder victims in one lifetime? I’m cursed!”

  Trey didn’t reply. He brushed his teeth with focused precision.

  “I know you don’t believe in curses, but I knew this voodoo woman in Savannah who could slap a gris-gris bag on you like that.”

  I snapped my fingers. He kept brushing. He’d been on the straight and narrow path to bed since we’d walked in the door. It was four hours past his bedtime, and yet I knew he’d be up bright and early anyway, ready to hit the pavement for his Saturday morning run.