by Libby Kirsch
Coming from the sunlit office, the bar felt darker than it had before. From her new vantage point, she saw that a table by the door was tilted at an odd angle. Two chairs
lay on the floor, clearly knocked off the tables in a path directly to the gap in the countertop that employees used to get behind the bar.
“Did you do this?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Frank answered. “I swear, I came straight through to the office.”
A tiny flare of sunlight from the open office door glinted off the cash register. “You didn’t stop to check behind the counter for this precious note? Wait right there. I’m not sure I believe you.” Still gripping the bat, she headed straight for the bar, keeping Frank in her sights. She skirted around the counter to the opening. With a relieved sigh, she saw that the cash drawer was in place, locked just as she’d left it. “Do you have any other keys, Frank?” He shook his head and she pivoted slowly again. That’s when she saw it.
The circular shelves to the Beerador leaned heavily against the other drink coolers. Her brow furrowed and she crept closer to the appliance, noting as she passed the trash can that it was full—full of whole and broken bottles that used to sit on the shelves inside the sturdy old unit.
“What did you do, Frank?”
He wasn’t paying attention, though; he was too busy folding the jacket back into a neat square to hear what Janet had said.
From the side of the Beerador, she gripped the handle and pulled, but the door didn’t budge. She blew out a frustrated sigh. All the doors in the bar that were supposed to be locked that day had swung easily open, and the one door that was supposed to be open was now, inexplicably, locked.
She stepped closer to get a more direct handle on the door latch and turned her focus from Frank to the Beerador, then sucked in a loud breath. “Jesus H. Christ,” she breathed, stepping away from the unit.
Detective Finch stared out from the Beerador, unblinking, unseeing. His face was smashed against the glass; a lone streak of blood marred the blue-white skin of his face.
“F-f-Frank!” she stuttered, calling to her former employee. She stumbled back and almost fell when she bumped into the cooler drawers behind her.
A clash of noise at the front of the bar made her jump.
“Janet?”
She turned, but with bright sunlight streaming in behind him, she could only make out the outline of a man standing in the open doorway.
Suddenly feeling vulnerable, she held the bat aloft.
“Who’s there?”
“Janet, it’s me, Patrick.” She squinted, finally recognizing O’Dell’s voice. “I got a text to meet Finch here. Have you seen him?”
She lowered the bat and pointed to the Beerador. “Yeah. Yeah, I think he’s been here for a while.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
For the second time in as many weeks, crime scene tape surrounded the Spot. However, this time, with a dead active-duty cop in the mix, there were more police brass inside and outside than at the station downtown. Beyond the sea of blue, on the other side of the tape, the press circled the crime scene like hungry dogs.
Janet kept a wary watch across the bar as Frank and a homicide detective huddled in a booth. She didn’t trust anything about her old bouncer, and while she couldn’t imagine him killing Finch, she also couldn’t imagine that he would be completely forthcoming with the police when he was in the middle of a homicide investigation.
“Where’s Jason?”
O’Dell towered over her, his fingertips white where they pressed into her table.
She didn’t answer, she only had the strength to rest her forehead against her hands. Through her splayed fingers, she saw medics gather on either side of the gurney holding Finch’s body. They raised him up to hip height and pushed him out of the bar.
She looked up and found O’Dell staring at her. He rubbed a hand over his face and sat down across from her. “I talked to Haverfield.”
She nodded, barely remembering the cop who’d interviewed her an hour ago. Instead, burned in her mind, was O’Dell rushing into the bar and trying to pull the Beerador open. He’d yelled Finch’s name over and over, and had nearly wrenched his arm off pulling at the handle. Janet had finally pushed him away from the cooler and yelled at Frank, frozen by the office door, to call 911. It had eventually taken four firefighters and two steel crowbars to pry the door free, they learned later that the door had been jammed by a metal button on Finch’s sleeve. After another conference session, emergency responders finally figured out how to get Finch’s cold, stiff body out of the cramped space.
Janet felt sick to her stomach, but she looked across the table at O’Dell and said, “Finch was here this morning. I was rude, maybe even slammed the door in his face.”
“And he came here to tell you that the investigation had stalled?” O’Dell looked up from the notebook but couldn’t hide his skepticism.
“I know, it sounds like something I just made up, but that’s what he said. He asked me if I had any more surprises, and I told him I didn’t. And then he accused me of not caring about Ike’s death, and said that the case was going to fade away like so many others.” She looked down at her hands. “I don’t know why he would have come back to the bar. I watched him drive away, and then I left. I’d just come back when I found the bar door unlocked, and Frank in the office.”
“Where did you go?”
“Hmm?” she asked, stalling for time. She’d told the first cop that she ran some errands, and he hadn’t pressed, but she knew O’Dell would, and she still hadn’t decided what her story was going to be. Elizabeth’s concerns for her safety now seemed well founded, indeed, and while O’Dell’s shock at finding Finch’s body earlier had seemed genuine, she truly didn’t know who to trust.
“I said, where did you go? What errands did you run today?”
She took a slow, steady breath and made a choice. “I guess they weren’t really errands. I . . . I went to the cemetery and then to church.”
“Really?” O’Dell said, his surprise evident. “You went to church?”
“Is that so surprising? Doesn’t everyone in Knoxville go to church?”
“Yeah, but . . .” He squinted at her and then asked, “Which church?”
“Holy Ghost.”
His skepticism turned to disbelief. “I’ve never seen you there.”
“You’re Catholic?” she asked, remembering too late that O’Dell wasn’t from Knoxville. She should have known the New York transplant wouldn’t be Southern Baptist.
“Mmm-hmm. And I go every week.”
“Well,” Janet said, her poker face back, “I don’t. My mom died a few years ago and I’ve been spinning my wheels for a while. But today I felt . . . called to visit.”
“A confession?”
“No,” she said, disgruntled at his insinuation. “Just to sit.”
O’Dell chewed on that silently for a while, then said, “I had a squad car stop by your house.”
“You did?” Her brow furrowed, and she wondered what O’Dell was going to throw at her next. Elizabeth was waiting at the church for their planned showdown. Janet was going to have to get in touch with her somehow—as the plan would have to be delayed, if not outright canceled, because of this murderous turn of events.
“No one answered, and Jason’s car isn’t there.” O’Dell leaned closer. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“When did you see him last?”
She gulped, not liking how her answer was going to sound. “Uh . . .”
“Janet. We have a dead cop. Don’t play games, just answer the question.”
“I’m not playing games, I just don’t see how—”
“When did you last see Jason? It’s a simple question. What are you hiding?”
“I’m not hiding anything! I saw him last night. Here, at the Spot.”
He sat back, looking triumphant. “He didn’t come home last night? Or this morning? Where ha
s he been?”
“No—I mean, I don’t know for sure, because I didn’t go home last night.”
That information pulled O’Dell up short. “Where did you go?”
“I . . . I slept here, in the office. We had a fight. Just a dumb fight, but I didn’t feel like going home, so I didn’t.”
“What did you fight about?”
“Me being a bitch.”
“Sorry?”
“You asked what we fought about, and that’s the answer. We fought about me being mean and rude.”
O’Dell nodded but his face was tight. “Excuse me.” He walked across away with his cell phone pressed into his ear.
Janet sat there for another ten minutes before she felt too antsy to be still. She stood up and started walking toward the office, thinking she could try Jason’s cell phone again, but a hand reached out and landed on her shoulder.
“Miss Black? You’ll need to have a seat right there, please.”
Janet turned to find a woman in a white uniform shirt with several bars and stars pins surrounding a name tag. “Captain Wiggins, is it? I don’t feel like sitting.”
“I don’t care,” the woman answered. Janet stood mutinously for a moment, and the captain said, “You can sit in cuffs or on your own. The choice is yours for the next fifteen seconds. Then the choice is mine.”
She lowered herself to the chair with as much dignity as possible and turned her face away from the captain. Several words came to mind, but she bit her tongue, realizing that pissing off the highest-ranking cop on the scene wouldn’t do her any good. Plus, this woman’s colleague had just been brutally murdered. She likely had more on her mind that Janet’s feelings.
She smothered a bitter laugh: she was feeling compassionate toward the captain. Not that it mattered, but Jason would have been proud.
“We’re going in,” O’Dell said, nodding at the captain as he took a seat. She walked away and he leaned toward Janet. “We’re going into your house. Judge just signed a probable cause warrant to see if Jason’s hiding in the basement.”
“What?” Janet said, and a tiny tick of annoyance in the back of her head said, See, this is where compassion gets you, but she tried to focus on O’Dell. “Jason’s not there! I was home this morning, and no one was there!”
“But that doesn’t mean he’s not there now,” O’Dell said with a superior smile. “And we’re not taking any chances. My guys are going in with a battering ram. I just gave them the okay.”
“Will you let it rest? Jason had nothing to do with this murder!”
O’Dell frowned. “Then why did we find his pen inside the Beerador with Finch’s body?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Janet sat in mutinous silence across from O’Dell, forcing herself to stay calm. She was surrounded by the enemy, and they all had guns.
“What pen?” she finally managed to ask.
O’Dell shook out a zip-top evidence bag. Sure enough, Jason’s customized, obnoxious, neon blue and yellow pen was inside. But she snorted when she saw it.
“Are you kidding me? That’s not evidence in a murder. That just shows that your department took all of Jason’s stuff yesterday, and Finch apparently wanted to use the pen!” Her temper finally got the better of her. “You call this off right now, O’Dell, I’m serious!”
“Janet, this is happening. Jason was angry, a cop is dead, and we have evidence that he was here at the time of the murder. Or at least right after. That’s enough for me.”
His words only enraged her more. “That’s your probable cause? That Jason was angry and had a pen? That’s not even true, you asshole, he was disappointed in me, okay? Which is worse for me but has nothing to do with you, Finch, or the fact that someone killed him!” O’Dell was maddeningly calm as he sat opposite her, unfazed by her emotion. “O’Dell—call off your people! Just—” She stopped talking and jumped up when an idea struck. “My tenant has a key! You don’t have to break down the door! They don’t know it’s there, but it’s hanging on a hook in the cabinet over the oven. Just use the key to get in, okay! A new door is going to cost me five hundred bucks!”
“You don’t care if we go in?”
“No. Knock yourselves out—just don’t knock the damn door out!”
“You’re upset about the cost of the door?”
“Yes—I’m not made of money, and I won’t be able to open the bar again tonight. Give me a break!”
“You’re not worried we’ll find Jason inside your house?”
“No. He told me he needed a break. From me. And since you took all his computer equipment, there’s no reason for him to go home.”
O’Dell studied her for a moment before speaking again. “I can’t get a read on you, Janet, and it’s starting to piss me off.”
“Yeah, well, it’s part of my charm.” She leaned over the table. “Will you call your guys? Tell them to knock on the other half of my house—and carefully! They’ve got a baby over there and don’t need you people waking it up if it’s finally sleeping.”
“It?” He cocked one eyebrow at her.
“The baby.” She wrinkled her nose. “It’s a her, okay?”
O’Dell signaled to another officer and they conferenced for a moment before O’Dell said, “It’s done. They’ll get the key and search the house. They gonna find anything else I should know about now?”
“No,” Janet answered mulishly, though her heartbeat accelerated, thinking about the computer that had sat on the kitchen “island” only hours ago.
“Janet?” he pressed.
“What? I’m worried about Jason is all. It’s not like him to disappear like this.”
“I’m worried about Jason, too. I think he’s involved in this, Janet, and if I were you, I’d start thinking about how to protect myself.”
“I may not know where Jason is, but I know he’d never hurt me. Not in a million years.”
“He already has!” O’Dell gestured around them. “He’s involved in this murder and in Ike’s death, too!”
“That’s ridiculous, and if it were true, you’d have already arrested him. Finch was right about one thing: you guys are floundering on the investigation into Ike’s murder, and now you’ve got nowhere to go on this one, either. Don’t try casting out random lines just to see what you can catch.”
“You have no idea what we’ve got on Jason, no idea.”
She sat back in her chair, frustrated into silence. She crossed her arms and looked over toward the bar when she heard a deafening crash.
Two burly men with hand carts flanked the Beerador. Their white jumpsuits were already marred with dirt and dust, and their hands and feet were covered in plastic gloves and boot covers.
“Again,” one of the men said. His partner tried to tilt the Beerador to the right so the other could shimmy his hand cart underneath, but he lost his grip, and the heavy refrigerator slammed to the ground with another crash.
“Ugh!” Janet cringed at the noise.
“I got it,” the second guy called triumphantly. He’d managed to slide the lip of the cart under the Beerador, and his partner rushed to his side, ready to help stabilize the huge appliance. With an almighty heave, the cart operator tried to tilt the hand cart back. Nothing happened. His partner reached over and pressed down on the cart. For a moment, the bar fell silent as everyone watching held their collective breath. Instead of succumbing to the attempt to move it out of the bar, however, the Beerador seemed to bear down. The metal hand cart snapped in half, sending the two men tumbling to the ground.
In the shocked silence that followed, Janet looked over to O’Dell to find him staring, not at the scene in front of them, but at her.
“Are you seriously worried about the Beerador when another man is dead—dead—at your business?” Any vestige of friendliness was gone, and O’Dell looked at Janet like she was the enemy. The sight filled her with anger.
“There’s so much you don’t know about this case it could fill that damn Beerador,�
� she said. O’Dell winced, and Janet flushed, realizing what she’d just said. “That’s not what I—” She sighed. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly, “but you’re all wrong about this case, O’Dell. All wrong.”
O’Dell grabbed her arm roughly and led her to a booth in the corner, away from the pack of officers watching the Beerador removal process. “What do you know? Start talking, Black. Now.”
She pulled out of his grip. “I’m not telling you anything. Not yet. You’re so focused on my boyfriend that you’re not in a place to see anything else now anyway. I won’t waste my breath.”
“Why are you so certain Jason is innocent? Ike Freeman was a nuisance who, according to many of your customers, loved to talk trash to you, specifically, when he was drunk! Maybe your boyfriend decided he’d messed with you one too many times. Mark Finch was screwing with Jason’s business, making accusations, and now he’s out of the picture. Pretty convenient for your boyfriend.”
“You’re so wrong it’s painful, O’Dell. Painful.”
“Listen, Black, you wanna open for business? Then start talking. Otherwise, it might take us weeks to get all the evidence we need out of here. Weeks. It’s up to you.”
“Unbelievable!” Janet rubbed the spot on her arm where he’d grabbed her. “You do what you have to do, O’Dell. But leave me out of it.”
“I wish I could, Janet,” he said, looking at her with surprising concern. “I wish I could leave you out of all of this. But you keep turning up right in the damn middle of things.”
She sank down into the booth and looked around the room. “What is Frank saying?”
O’Dell lowered himself into the seat across from Janet. “Exactly what you said he told you. That he came in for some things he’d left here and didn’t touch anything else.
“Do you believe him?”
“I do,” he said.
“Of course you do,” Janet scoffed. “You guys always stick together—that’s the problem, isn’t it?”
“What do you know, Janet? I can’t help if you don’t let me.”