by Noir, Roxie
“I wish,” Dane said, then paused, looking at his mate. “Thanks for bringing me dinner,” he said. “I know I’ve been gone a lot, and it’s not gonna get better until this is either solved or cold.”
Isaac leaned over and kissed Dane on the lips, a little harder than he probably should have.
“This is important,” he said. “I’ll be around when it’s over.”
Tell him about Grey, and then just tell him about the fight, Isaac thought. A pang of guilt stabbed into his chest. Just tell him. He’ll be mad but only for a little while.
Dane stabbed at a container with his chopsticks, lifting a pile of noodles to his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, and pointed a hand-drawn map that he’d made on the desk. There was a coffee ring on it already.
“We’ve got Nicky heading west on First around five p.m. from an ATM camera,” he said. “So far, that’s it.”
“What time was the body found?”
“The call came in at eight thirty,” Dane said. “He hadn’t been dead all that long.”
“That corner’s kind of busy at night,” Isaac said. “Someone’s got balls to murder someone then and there.”
Dane shrugged. “Ballsy or dumb,” he said. “I’m not sure murderers are always the smartest bunch.”
He hit play on his computer screen, and the fluorescent lights of the liquor store sprang to life. Isaac’s eyebrows went up.
It has surveillance tapes? he thought.
Immediately, he felt like an idiot.
Of course it does, he told himself. It’s a liquor store, they get held up all the time. I guess.
The camera in the store pointed at the counter and only the counter. The clerk was in the shot the entire time, mostly playing with his phone. Other people were only in frame when they bought something, though shadows played across the counter whenever people passed by it.
Dane pointed at the screen with chopsticks again.
“That’s people going down to the basement,” Dane said. “There must have been a game going on that night.”
“I think there’s a game most nights,” Isaac said.
Dane knew about the gambling room. Most of the police officers did, but to be honest, it just wasn’t very high on their priority list. The money was always handled separately from the actual poker playing, and someone on the police force seemed to always tip them off anyway. The few times that they’d tried to make a bust on the poker game, nothing had come of it beyond a few citations for drinking in an establishment with no in-restaurant liquor license.
Besides, even a stickler for the rules like Dane knew that there were real problems in Rustvale beyond a few people having a good time in a liquor store basement.
“You think Nicky is one of these shadows?” Isaac asked. “Maybe he pissed someone off at the game, left through the door to the alley, and they followed him and killed him.”
“Could be,” Dane said. He made a note in a notebook. “I should see if I can find the people who were there that night, if they’ll even talk to me about it.”
“They know you,” Isaac said. “Nobody exactly liked Nicky, but nobody wanted him stabbed in an alleyway.”
“Someone did,” said Dane.
He had a point.
I wonder if Grey was there last night, he thought. She might have been with the killer.
A shudder went down his spine.
On the screen, the liquor store clerk was still playing a game on his phone.
Isaac took a deep breath, then turned to Dane.
Dane was already looking at him, and he paused the video.
For a moment, the two mates just stared at each other.
Fuck, thought Isaac, his heart starting to beat faster. Something’s wrong. Why’s he looking at me that way?
“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” Dane said. “I met a girl.”
Isaac just stared at him for a heartbeat, thinking, So did I.
Just as he opened his mouth, Dane’s phone rang, and Dane sighed and rolled his eyes, taking his feet off the desk.
“Sorenson,” he said, clearly irritated.
Then he listened for a moment, slowly getting to his feet.
“Who said this?” he demanded.
Silence.
“He’s a thug whose head is so far up his own—“
More silence as someone cut him off.
“Yes, I understand.” He glared over at Isaac, and Isaac just lifted his eyebrows. “Got it.”
Dane slammed the phone down onto the receiver and paced around the desk. Isaac just watched. When Dane got like this, it was useless to try to get information out of him until he’d processed it all himself, and then he’d spit it out.
So Isaac waited, and sure enough, in a few more moments, Dane stopped pacing and turned toward the desk.
“You know the girl who found the body yesterday?” he said, his voice gruff.
“I know there was a girl who found the body,” Isaac said.
Dane leaned on his hands on the desk, looming over Isaac.
“Crazy hot,” he whispered, even though there was no one else in the room with them. “I was questioning her last night, and just — I could barely string a couple of words together, she had me too scrambled. I guess she’s new in town, because I’ve definitely never met her before.”
Isaac’s eyes widened, then narrowed.
“But there’s a problem,” he said. Best to let Dane finish before he told him about the other girl.
“Yeah,” Dane grumbled. “Apparently one of the officers just made a traffic stop, and he claimed to have seen Grey stabbing the guy in the alleyway last night.”
Isaac blinked, then laughed, then frowned, almost all at once. He jumped up from his chair.
“I met Grey today,” he said. “Someone saw her stabbing Nicky?”
That he just didn’t believe.
“Someone says they saw Grey stabbing the guy,” Dane said.
He picked up the container of lo mein, looked at it, poked at it with his chopsticks, before slamming it back onto his desk, a few little pieces of noodle landing on the table.
“Who?” said Isaac.
“Didn’t recognize the name,” said Dane. “But Ramirez just picked up Grey and he’s bringing her here for more questioning.”
Isaac leaned against the desk and rubbed at his eyes. This was too much, all at once, but a small part of him was secretly excited to see Grey again.
“So, Grey,” he said, looking up at Dane. “Yeah?”
Dane looked back, and Isaac could see something in his mate’s eyes, the way his face softened, just a little.
“Yeah,” Dane said. He rapped his knuckles against the desk. “Yeah, for sure.”
A quick moment of silence passed between them
“You think she did it?” Isaac asked softly, changing the subject
“There’s no way,” said Dane. “Someone much bigger and stronger than her stabbed Nicky. You know how hard it is to get a knife through someone’s ribcage?”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Isaac. “The body’s pretty tough.”
Dane’s certainty made him feel better, because he thought he knew why Grey had been in that alley. It was where the back exit from the poker room let out.
“I guess you’d know,” Dane said.
Tell him about the fight, Isaac thought. And about where you think Grey was last night. And about where you actually met Grey.
Just tell him everything. He’s your mate, for the love of God.
Somewhere in the building, both of them heard a door open and then shut.
“That’ll be her,” Dane said grimly. “I’ll go talk to Ramirez.”
Chapter Four
Grey
“Okay, miss,” said the officer. “Please state your name for the record.”
“Grace Patience Joy Mac—“
Grey hiccuped.
“Macauley,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper.
“Thank you,” the officer said.
He was middle-aged, slightly pudgy, and Grey could tell that he was being especially nice to her. It probably helped that she’d been sobbing since the moment that he’d come into her apartment and told her why he was there.
I wish I’d just walked past that body, she thought viciously. I wish I’d left him there to rot. Someone else could have found him, and now they could be arresting them instead of me.
The door to the room opened, and Grey looked up.
It was the officer from the night before. Sorenson.
For a split second, their eyes locked, and Grey felt that feeling again. Instantly, she felt calmer, like everything was going to be okay.
“Want me to take over?” the officer said to the guy who was currently in the room. “It’s late, and I’m here anyway.”
“I can do this, if you want to question the guy who saw her,” said the officer who’d arrested her.
Sorenson jerked his head just slightly, indicating that the other guy should come outside. He went without question, and as he shut the door, Sorenson looked at her, one more time.
Grey put her head down on the desk.
She hadn’t done anything. Well, besides go to an illegal poker game and find a dead guy in an alleyway, but she definitely hadn’t murdered anyone.
Come clean about the poker game to Officer Sexy, she thought, her forehead still on the cool wooden table. Hell, he probably already knew you were lying, like on the crime TV shows.
Cops always know.
She hoped that he was the one to question her, anyway. Not only was he considerably more attractive than the older guy, she also felt a pull toward him that she couldn’t quite explain. They’d established a rapport the night before.
He’ll believe me, she thought.
The door opened again, and Sorenson came through. Grey whipped her head up, off the desk, and just watched him as he sat down opposite her.
Before he said anything, he reached into his pocket and came out with a plastic travel pack of tissues, sliding it across the table to her.
“Don’t tell Patty,” he said. “I stole those from her desk because I was out.”
Grey tried to smile, and managed to lift the corners of her lips, only to feel them falter as she started to cry again.
“Thanks,” she whispered, then pressed a tissue to her eyes. She blew her nose, crumpling the tissue carefully and pushing it to the edge of the table.
“So, you’re here because someone claimed that they saw you commit the murder of Nicholas Grant last night,” he said.
Grey just shook her head.
“I only found him, Detective Sorenson,” she whispered, looking up into his eyes.
“Call me Dane,” he said.
She nodded.
“Could you go back over where you were last night?” he asked. “If you were with a friend and they can vouch for you, it should be fairly easy to establish an alibi.”
Grey bit her lip. She tried not to remember Shovel earlier that night, getting in her face with his bad breath, demanding that she lift up her shirt.
I can’t go back there anyway, she thought. Not that I need to. I shouldn’t have been going there to begin with.
“I wasn’t really with a friend,” she said, taking a deep breath. “There’s a poker game in the basement of that liquor store on First and I was there.”
She let her gaze flick up, but Dane didn’t look surprised at all.
“Can you name anyone else there?” he asked, simply writing some things down on the legal pad in front of him.
“The only person whose name I know is Tobias, and he’s the bouncer,” Grey admitted. “Last night there were three other people and the dealer and that was all, and I never know their names.”
“How about you describe them?” Dane said, gently.
Grey did her best to talk about the poker game, the entire time thinking about Shovel’s red, furious face just inches from her own. It had been her, another woman who was older and didn’t say a single word, a big, middle-aged guy who looked like he’d been in the military, and an older guy who’d drunk a lot of whiskey and lost most of his money.
“We don’t really exchange information, exactly,” she said. “We kind of just... play.”
“Don’t worry, you’re doing great,” Dane said. “Was there anyone else there?”
Grey opened her mouth, then shut it, then opened it again.
“An older guy who sat in the back,” she said, looking down at the table. “People kept coming in and out to talk to him, but I couldn’t... I didn’t get a good look at him you know?”
Dane just nodded, his face a little grim.
“Okay,” he said. “Now, I know you’ve been through a lot, but you need to tell me everything that happened last night, and I need you to be completely honest, because I promise a murder rap is way worse than anything for illegal gambling.”
Grey nodded, took a deep breath, and grabbed another tissue. Then she started going over her night in vivid detail: getting home from school, going through her kids’ papers. Making herself tea, then pasta for dinner as she’d watched Jeopardy.
Dane smirked at that.
“What?” she asked.
“My grandma watches Jeopardy with dinner too,” he said.
Grey just stared at him, blinking.
“She’s not the murderous type,” he said. “Sorry. Keep going.”
After that, she’d tried to read for a while, but around seven, she’d gotten antsy and gone to play poker.
“How often do you play?” Dane asked.
She hesitated, twisting the tissue in her hands. She wished that she could tell him once a week, maybe twice, but since she’d learned about the game, it had been every night. It was all she thought about while she was at school with the kids, all she thought about while she drove anywhere or made dinner or watched TV.
“A couple times a week,” she said.
He nodded, and she went on. She’d walked to the poker game, going through the liquor store. The clerk had seen her, maybe, but had been pretty absorbed in his phone so she couldn’t really say. Tobias had been there, and then she’d played for an hour, maybe ninety minutes before the other players took a break and she left through the alleyway.
“Then you saw him,” Dan said.
Grey nodded.
“I thought it was just trash at first,” she said. “There’s that restaurant there, and so sometimes there’s puddles by that dumpster, but then there were some headlights — from that driveway across First Street, you know? — And I realized that it was a person, and then I realized that it was blood, but I wasn’t totally sure. I mean, what are the chances, right? So I got closer and used my phone’s flashlight, and it was definitely—”
She took a deep breath, closing her eyes against the image of Nicky’s dead face, staring up at her sightlessly.
“Definitely a body,” she finished, exhaling.
“And what time was that?” Dane asked.
“Around eight or eight thirty?” she asked. “I honestly don’t remember, but I called 911 right away.”
“So did the neighbors,” said Dane. “They heard the screaming.”
“Sorry about that,” said Grey.
She thought she saw him almost smile.
“Don’t apologize,” he said. “What happened after the call?”
Grey pressed her hands to her temples and tried to remember. She felt like she couldn’t shake the image of Nicky, lying there in the alley, halfway in the trash.
“I think I ran out to Main Street and tried not to pass out,” she said. “To be honest, I don’t remember that well, and then the cops got there, and I just... stood around for a long time, watching everyone work. I didn’t want to go home alone.”
Dane nodded, then looked at the clock on the wall. It had been almost an hour.
“Let me go see where we are with everything,” he said, and left the room.
Grey was starting to feel better, just a little. She hadn’t don
e it, and they would just let her go, right? They’d search her apartment, find nothing, and leave her alone.
Please, she thought. Please let that happen.
Then she thought of every documentary she’d ever watched about someone getting nailed for a crime they didn’t commit, every case where someone had been in jail for forty years despite being innocent.
She put her head back on the table and tried not to panic.
It didn’t really work.
Minutes later, Dane came back, shutting the door softly behind him. He looked tense, his jaw tight, and there was a hardness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“They want to keep you a little longer,” he said. “Apparently they need to test some of the evidence before they can let you go.”
Grey felt the blood rush away from her face.
“What evidence?” she whispered, her eyes widening.
Dane shook his head.
“I can’t say just yet,” he told her, glaring at the top of the table. “But hopefully it shouldn’t be too much longer.”
“I didn’t do it!” she shouted. She felt her tenuous grip on herself begin to loosen. Up until then, she’d kept her emotions pretty well in check, she thought, but she couldn’t help herself for much longer. Grey wanted to scream, she wanted to cry and swear and claw at Dane until he was convinced that she was innocent.
He reached toward her, their hands nearly touching on the table top, then drew back.
He looked at her, and Grey’s heart skipped a beat.
“I believe you,” he whispered.
He led her gently to the Rustvale Police’s only holding cell, a miserable barred-in room with benches around three sides and a toilet. She sat as far as she could from the toilet, on the bench, and put her head in her hands.
After he locked the gate behind her, Dane crouched down, the bars in his hands.
“Grey,” he said.
She didn’t bother looking up at him.
“Grey,” he said again, his tone borderline pleading.
She looked up but didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to go see what’s happening with the witness,” he said. “But I’ll be back soon, okay?”
She just nodded.