Darker Than Any Shadow

by Tina Whittle

  He looked puzzled. “Angie?”

  “Hey, Padre. You left this on the counter this morning. We hit a slow spot, so I ran it over.” She handed him a white paper bag. “I slipped you another bagel too. Don’t tell.”

  He accepted the bag, mumbled his thanks, then shut the door on the woman rather abruptly. He hustled the bag into the bedroom without explanation, shutting the door behind him, leaving me in the sitting area.

  Alone.

  My conscience prickled. I’d been trying to reform myself since hooking up with Trey—no sneaking, no peeking, no fudging. But the opportunity to snoop was irresistible.

  I stood quickly and went to Padre’s desk, dominated by stacks of notebooks. A wooden bowl contained random detritus—rubber bands, paper clips, pens. Receipts and coupons and flyers crammed his in-box, and crumpled paper overflowed the wastebasket.

  Then I saw the folder. It was shiny, clean, and thick with paperwork. I peeked inside and saw contacts and indemnity agreements, all of them lawyer-dense with small print, all of them riddled with zeroes. Lots of zeroes. Soon, Frankie wouldn’t be the only financially successful team member.

  Except that Padre wasn’t an official part of the team anymore.

  He came back from the bedroom as I closed the folder, but if he noticed me standing there hunched and furtive beside his desk, he didn’t say a word. When he sat again, he was much calmer.

  “Sorry. Old man brain again. I leave stuff lying around everywhere.” He hoisted the camera, then lowered it. “Come on, Tai, I know you’re not here to get your picture taken. What’s up?”

  “So maybe I have one question. Who usually provides the CDs for team events?”

  “Frankie.”

  “But Friday night, Adam said Frankie hadn’t brought enough. Who else would the team call?”

  He scratched his chin. “Maybe Frankie’s assistant?”

  “She has an assistant?”

  “Yeah. Debbie. Weird chick. Wannabe poet. Almost your age and still lives with her parents. She claims to be a textile artist.”

  “A what?”

  “You know, she runs one of those online shops full of hand-knit beanies and fingerless gloves. Wearable art. She and Lex were tight, but I think he was only shining her on.”

  “About what?”

  “About being a poet. She frankly sucked. Her work was juvenile, sloppy, derivative. I think he liked having a groupie, though, so he kept her on the hook.”

  “Do you have her contact info?”

  “Sure.”

  He went to his desk and rummaged in the in-box. Then he paged through a decrepit notebook, finally scribbling a phone number on a piece of scrap paper.

  “Here you go. That’s her cell.”

  I put it in my bag. “Was she there Friday night?”

  “I didn’t see her. I got there late, though. Traffic.”

  I remember Trey’s pronouncement, that Padre had been lying. And yet when I looked into his face, all I saw was honesty, clear and plain.

  He sipped his tea and watched me watching him. “How well did you know Lex?”

  “Not at all. You?”

  “Only a little. He had potential, but he spent too much energy on the clothes and hair, not enough on craft.”

  “Did you get along?”

  “Nah. He didn’t want to drink from my fountain of wisdom. His loss.” He winced. “Our loss, I mean. Lex was a baby. You’re supposed to think you’re hot shit when you’re a baby. Like I said, he had potential. Frankie and I may have our disagreements, but we both agreed on that.”

  We hung out in the silence for a second. Through the open windows, I heard the babble of tourists, the roar of Harleys. Padre picked up the camera again. He seemed more comfortable with it in his hands, something to keep between us.

  “You and Frankie don’t get along?” I said.

  “Oh, we do okay. She’s mad about the documentary, but she’s gonna have to stay mad. I made that happen, so I get the proceeds, I get the control, and she has to suck it up.”

  He said it pleasantly, too pleasantly. I suspected the conflict between him and Frankie ran a lot deeper than he was letting on. He hoisted the camera again. This time I didn’t look away as he fired off several shots in a row.

  “Was Lex a problem for your documentary?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because he was a problem in lots of other ways.”

  “Drama means ratings, ratings mean money. And Lex was good for drama.”

  “But you wouldn’t provoke drama for drama’s sake, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t. But then, this isn’t totally my show.” He shrugged. “That documentary is theatre, as scripted as a sitcom. We get our dialogue written, all of us, and then we strut and fret upon the stage.”

  “Famous words.”

  “Famous last words.” He stood up and stretched, returning the camera to its place beside the chair. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but I have to get ready for tonight. I assume you’ll be there?”

  “What’s tonight?”

  “Lex’s memorial. Haven’t you heard?”

  He handed me a flyer announcing a candlelight remembrance service for Lex Anderson, scheduled outside of Lupa. It was professional, tasteful and smacked of a PR agenda.

  “This Frankie’s idea?”

  “Of course. But as ideas go, it’s not a bad one. Whoever else he was or wasn’t, Lex was one of us.”

  There was nostalgia in his words. He kept saying “us,” and yet he was no longer the team leader, no longer on stage. There was no “us” that included Padre anymore.

  “Do you miss performing?”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his chin. “But spotlights cast a long dark shadow, and I don’t miss that. I’m content being behind the scenes now. Less angst, more money.” He indicated the flyer with a jab of his chin. “So are you coming?”

  I tucked the paper in my bag next to Debbie’s contact info. “I’m coming. I have a previous engagement I have to juggle, but I’ll be there.”

  Padre tilted his head and looked at me curiously. “Are you convinced I didn’t kill him?”

  “Is my Nancy Drew showing?”

  He held up two fingers. “Just a smidgen.”

  I laughed. “Reasonably convinced. But you might surprise me.”

  “Nice to know I still can.”

  He moved to the door and opened it. I shouldered my bag, paused at the threshold.

  “Thanks for talking to me. You and your old man brain were very helpful.”

  Padre didn’t react. Suddenly he did look old. Suddenly, in the stale light, he looked positively ancient.

  “You’re welcome,” he said and shut the door quietly.

  Chapter Sixteen

  My previous engagement met me at the front entrance of Turner Field with my ticket in hand. Garrity was impossible to miss, with fox-red hair and a sharp canny face to match. Even in blue jeans and a faded Metallica tee-shirt, he looked every inch a cop.

  He chewed a toothpick. “Another murder, huh? You’re turning into a walking, talking Bermuda Triangle.”

  I ignored the insult. “A club killing downtown is hardly your jurisdiction.”

  “You and Trey are my jurisdiction. Your names pop up, everybody finds me and tells me all about it. And sweet Jesus, Tai, why in the hell is your name popping up again?”

  “Freakish coincidence.”

  But it wasn’t. It was very much like last time—someone I love loses someone he knows, and perhaps has a problematic relationship with, to homicide. Last time it had been my brother. Now it was Rico. I didn’t want to explore this with Garrity, however. He had a way of looking at me that reminded me of bare light bulbs and two-way mirrors.

  He handed me my ticket. “Come on. I’m dying to hear more about this freakish coincidence.”

  ***

  Garrity had seats under the casino box, with a sideways view of the field. I’d barely gotten popcorn and beer before he started th
e interrogation, propping his feet on the empty seat in front of him and pulling his cap down low over his forehead.

  “Let me guess,” he said. “You want me to spill what I know.”

  I cooled my tongue with a sip of beer. Down below, Jason Heywood knocked a clean hit into the stands, and Garrity hoisted his beer in salute. He was Trey’s best friend and former partner, with almost ten years in the Atlanta Police Department major crimes division. He kept his ear to the ground, and as far as heart went, he’d gotten a helping and a half. But sometimes it was all I could do not to scream in shrill harpy tones at him.

  “What if I bought you some wings? Would that get you to shut up long enough to let me explain things?”

  He fanned his hand in a chivalrous manner. “Go ahead.”

  I gave him the condensed version, starting with the fire alarm and ending with the blood on the pavement. I left out the blood on Rico’s shoes entirely—I knew Garrity knew about it, but I also knew that if he knew the story behind it, he might have to do something about it. Murders weren’t his detail, but he was still a cop, and had rules as dense as Trey’s.

  “Hold up,” Garrity said. “Trey almost beat up who?”

  “Jackson. He owns the restaurant, he and his wife Cricket.”

  “Jackson Bentley? Used to play football at UGA?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Garrity closed his eyes and shook his head. “Damn, Tai, you know how to pick ’em.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He turned in his seat and faced me square. “Jackson Bentley was a linebacker for the Bulldogs a few years ago. He got kicked off the team his senior year.”

  “He wasn’t kicked off, he was injured.”

  “That’s the official story.”

  “You know an unofficial one?”

  “I have friends on the Athens PD.” Garrity leaned back in his seat and pulled his cap back down. “Jackson was using steroids. He denied it, of course, but the evidence was clear. Unfortunately, it was also circumstantial, so the charges didn’t stick. He ‘hurt’ himself and quit senior year. Worse than that, there were several domestic disturbance calls to his place during that time. The girlfriend refused to press charges, however.”

  I sat there stunned. Jackson? Steroids? Physical abuse? But then I remembered Lex’s taunt the night he was killed: Cricket understands how you get, right?

  “Lex knew.”

  “Probably. Does Jackson’s wife know, what’s her name, Cricket?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope she does, for her sake.” He eyed me seriously. “You watch yourself with that man, you hear?”

  “I hear.”

  Down below, a foul ball popped into the stands, and a crush of hopeful fans clotted at its landing spot. A young boy emerged triumphant, the ball held aloft. The big screen magnified his grin, missing front teeth and all.

  Garrity snagged a handful of my popcorn. “Tell me more about this Lex person.”

  So I explained what I’d discovered, including my theory that Lex Anderson was a perfectly coordinated phantom.

  Garrity kept his eyes on the field. “That would explain a few things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why there’s no next of kin in town to ID the body. Why his photograph is being sent to agencies all over the Southeast, especially the coastal area. Why his driver’s license turned up fake.”

  “He supposedly lived in Brunswick.”

  “Not that we can find. Can’t find his car either. Supposedly he drove a ragged-out navy blue Suburban, but it’s not showing up.”

  I got a familiar buzz in my head. I imagined it was the same sensation bloodhounds get when a cold trail suddenly blooms all warm and strong.

  “Something else is bugging me. Lex was stabbed, right? That’s a pretty bloody way to go, right?”

  “Can be, but bleeding out isn’t the only way to die. Get some internal bleeding going on, and your victim is headed for corpsehood right fast.”

  “Is it instant?”

  “Depends. You’re thinking he had lots of time to scream, call out, crawl into the open. Maybe, maybe not. He could have been incapacitated, maybe unconscious.”

  I remembered the bruising around Lex’s eye and the awkward positioning of the body. Could he have hit the sink on his way down, tumbled into his last darkness?

  “But wouldn’t there still be blood spraying about?”

  “Aha, now you’re thinking, wouldn’t the killer have blood on his hands? Maybe, but not arterial spatter. A quick wash in the sink, and your bad guy is good to go. Of course, that leaves contact, maybe fingerprints.”

  “I’m thinking the killer burned all that up.”

  “Oh yeah, I heard about the crime scene. Sopping wet piece of crap. I’m glad I’m not the poor sap has to work that.”

  I thought of the damage the water did, and then the extra damage Jackson inflicted with a fire extinguisher. And then I got another ripple of warm trail.

  “Do you know if they found Lex’s cell phone yet?”

  “Not yet. But mark my words, you find that phone, you find your killer.”

  “What about the murder weapon?”

  “Still out on that too. Waiting on blood evidence now.”

  I got a sinking sensation at the thought. “Trey says that’s five to seven days minimum.”

  “Looking more like ten, and that’s with a push. People’ve been bloodying each other up left and right this summer.”

  “But it could be that soon, right?”

  “Could be, but I doubt it.”

  I ate popcorn and drank more beer and thought about things. A cold beer was a miracle, good for clearing your head, especially during the dog days of Georgia summer, and I appreciated every amber drop of it.

  Still, I never got the appeal of baseball—ninety percent of it seemed to be standing around, sitting around, spitting. Garrity kept explaining it was like jazz, that the meaning lay in the pauses and the spaces. For me, baseball was nothing but an excellent excuse to drink early in the day.

  Garrity watched the field. “You told Eric yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “He’s your brother.”

  “So?”

  “So he’ll find out, even if he’s in…where is he again?”

  “Sydney. And I’ll tell him, okay? Eventually.” I snagged one of Garrity’s fries. “Because I’d like to be able to tell him—when he does find out—that the killer is behind bars, and we’re all going about our normal lives once again.”

  Garrity laughed. “Like that domestic drama you’re playing out in Buckhead is normal.”

  I elbowed him for that, hard. “Like you know anything about relationships.”

  “I know Trey. And I know you.” He squinted at the infield. “The boys are sucking today. I blame all that money. It makes them soft.”

  Down below, the teams traded position, with the Braves moving to the outfield and the other team—some kind of bird-themed organization—getting ready to bat. Every single player looked like he’d downed a steroid shake for breakfast.

  “This may sound weird, but did Lex’s murder look like a professional hit to you?”

  “Like an assassin?”

  “It fits. Lex was stabbed in exactly the right spot to kill him neatly and efficiently. That sounds professional to me.”

  “The ME report did say the first jab was deliberate, no hesitation. But it was falling on the blade that did him in.”

  “How can they tell?”

  “Angle and depth of penetration, bruise marks from the hilt.”

  “So it could have been an accident?”

  Garrity made a noise. “Yeah, right. The knife was in him when he went down. Somebody stuck it in his heart. Not an accident.” He sipped his beer, eyes on the field. “Look, hit men are as rare as Bigfoot in my line of work. Most people are killed by someone they know, for some stupid hot-headed reason. It’s that simple.”

  I munched my
popcorn, musing. “So does the APD have any suspects?”

  “Got a BOLO out for some poet, crazy name, starts with a V.”

  “Vigil?”

  “That’s him. Hasn’t been seen since he got bounced on that weapons charge. Suddenly Lex takes his place on the team, Lex turns up dead. Yeah, they’re looking.”

  “Are there any other suspects?”

  He tossed off a quick shrug.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means exactly what you think it means, that yes, you and Rico and everybody else there Friday night are under some intense scrutiny right now.”

  “But we were all around the stage at the time of the killing! With cameras rolling. That’s no soft alibi, Detective.”

  “You’re making a big assumption about time of death there.”

  “But the fire—”

  “The fire doesn’t prove anything. And that’s all I’m saying about that, you hear me?”

  He pulled his cap back down over his eyes. Conversation over. I threw a piece of popcorn at a pigeon. The pigeon ignored it, choosing instead to chomp down on a cigarette butt.

  “Fine. So there’s nothing you can tell me. If that changes, will you give me a call?”

  “I work in Criminal Investigations, not Homicide. It’s not like they memo me. Besides, I like my job. I’m not going to jeopardize it by telling you privileged information.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  Garrity sighed. “Yes. But you know the drill. You don’t pump me, and I tell you everything I can, when I can. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  Then he shot me one of those cop looks. “Really, how did you get involved in another murder?”

  Garrity was a coonhound of an interrogator. He’d circle closer and closer, until with one pounce, he’d take a hunk out of your ear. I decided to get it over with.

  “Rico asked Trey to watch out for things.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Trey came to the party fully locked and loaded.”

  “Why the hell would Rico do that?”

  So I explained. Garrity shook his head and returned his gaze to the game. There didn’t seem to be anything happening, only a bunch of men standing around in tight dirty uniforms, helmets shadowing their faces, biceps straining their shirt sleeves.