by Kylie Logan
Were her hands shaking when she made up her mind about what she had to do?
She liked to think not, but she wasn’t very good about lying to herself.
Like it or not, she needed to track down Billy DeSantos.
* * *
The Exorcist was playing at the Capitol Theater that night, the opening volley in the barrage of scary movies that was the Cleveland Horror Film Festival.
By the time Jazz finished up at school and went home to get her car, she was lucky to find a parking place where she could squeeze her SUV between a shiny black Porsche and a red Cooper Mini in the parking lot behind a bank that was closed for the day. She crossed the street and joined the surprisingly large number of people headed toward the theater, doing her best to quiet the voice in her head that sounded remarkably like Nick.
He’s got a record. Stay away from that guy.
It might have been easier if she could erase the memory of Billy hanging around outside St. Catherine’s. If she could calm the tattoo of fear that started up in her insides when she remembered how she’d found him outside her house.
Nick had never said what Billy DeSantos had done that had earned him a reputation with the CPD. He didn’t have to. Jazz was not the type who judged people by what they wore or how many tats they did or didn’t have, but she was enough of a realist to know that the way Billy dressed sent a message, loud and clear. Sure, some of the folks in the crowd headed to the movie who were dressed in black or had spiked hair or (like the guy next to her) creepy red contact lenses … sure, they were all about the mystique of horror.
But something, something deep down and undeniable that left her with a rock in the pit of her stomach, told her Billy was the real deal.
A cascade of shivers crawled over her arms.
“Hope you brought a sweater, it’s always cold in this theater.”
Jazz didn’t realize she’d run her hands over her arms until the middle-aged woman walking alongside her offered the advice. She assured the woman she’d be fine, and when they turned the corner and met the roadblock of people waiting to get into the theater, she bumped her way from the center of the crowd to its edges, stepped into the street, and did her best to scan the sea of faces.
Black capes. Black jackets. Black dresses and eye shadow. Still, it wasn’t all that hard to spot the guy with the shaved head dressed in black leather with an octopus crawling up his neck.
Her heart knocked against her ribs, and when Nick’s voice inside her head tried to reinforce his warning about Billy, she told it to shut up. She skirted the edges of the crowd, pushed through the line of people coming up the street from the parking lot at the back of the theater, and stepped up to Billy’s side.
He was handing out flyers that listed the times and places of the other movies the film festival would feature—Parker Paul’s new brochure bitch—and he passed one to her without even bothering to give her a look.
“We need to talk,” she told him.
Billy’s head snapped up, his lips pressed so tight that the metal ring stuck through the bottom one looked like a twin to the sliver of moon that rode overhead. “Why? You never wanted to talk before.”
“What do you mean—”
He’d been leaning against a tall stool while he worked, and he pushed off and moved from the pool of light thrown by the spots and into the shadows in front of the storefront next door. “You thought I killed Florie.”
She’d followed him, and, in the gloom, she nearly bumped into him. She pulled herself up short just before she did and planted her feet, her fists on her hips. The stance might not make her feel any braver, but she hoped it made her look capable of standing up to him.
“I never said you did.”
“You wanted it to be me. It made more sense, a guy with piercings instead of the teacher with the ritzy wife.”
“It’s a terrible thing no matter who did it.”
“Like I told you all along.…” He lit a cigarette and took a drag. “It wasn’t me.”
There was no use beating around the bush or trying to convince him that she’d never been a threat. Not much of one. Not really. “We’re planning a memorial service on Monday. At the high school Florie attended.”
“And you want me to lead the prayers?”
“You have pictures of Florie on your phone. Lots of pictures of Florie.”
He’d just taken another puff of his cigarette, and his grunt of protest escaped along with a long trail of smoke that collected in the darkness between them and made him look blurred around the edges, like a figure out of a fever dream.
“You just don’t let up, do you, lady? Don’t you watch the news? Or are you some kind of idiot? They got … they got the guy that killed Florie.” His voice broke, and Jazz wished the light was better. She would have loved to see the expression on his face.
Billy took another puff of his cigarette. A second. A third. He tossed the butt on the sidewalk and ground it with his boot heel.
“They got the guy,” he said again, his voice level now except for the suffocating sadness that edged his words. “The pictures don’t mean a thing. You can leave me alone now. You can let…” He coughed. “You can let Florie rest in peace.”
The anguish in his voice caught Jazz by surprise and made her breath catch over a realization so astounding, she could barely get the words out.
“You loved her. You … you followed me because you—”
“Because you’re a nosy bitch. Yeah, that’s why.” Billy’s smile was tight. “When you came around asking questions, I thought…” He turned away long enough to compose himself. “I had to know what happened. Do you get that? I couldn’t just let Florie go away, let her disappear. Not just like that, not like she was nothing and she never existed. And you were asking questions so I thought … I thought maybe you could tell me something. Maybe you could help me make sense of the whole thing.”
At the same time Jazz’s heart clutched, she put a hand on Billy’s leather-clad arm. “I thought—”
This time his smile was wider. “Yeah, I know. Big and scary. I have that effect on a lot of people.”
“I shouldn’t have assumed—”
“I just wanted to know more and I was thinking—”
“That I could help. I’m sorry. I should have. I didn’t realize how much Florie meant to you. I’m sorry about Florie.”
“There is no Florie. Not anymore.” His voice was as thick as the cloud of smoke that floated between them and so filled with pain, Jazz could only say what she’d already said. “I’m sorry.”
He turned away. “Why are you sorry?”
It was the same question she’d been asking herself since the night she found Florie, but suddenly, Jazz knew the answer. “Because Florie was a talented woman and she would have made a difference in the world.”
He faced her again. “That’s not what they’re saying on the news.”
“All the media cares about is ratings. You cared about Florie.”
“I wasn’t stalking her.” His words rang against the stone storefront. “I never would have hurt her, not the way I loved her.”
She didn’t ask if Florie loved him back. She wasn’t sure Florie was capable. She wasn’t sure it mattered.
Jazz cleared away the tightness in her throat with a cough. “We need some pictures for her memorial service. You think you could pick out one for me?”
He pulled out his phone. “Let’s go…” He tilted his chin back toward the theater entrance. “The light is better there.”
It was, and in the glow of the spots, Jazz watched Billy scroll through pictures. Hundreds of pictures. He slowed down when he got to the pictures she’d seen before, the ones of Florie handing out brochures on Public Square the day she died.
“I’d rather have one where she isn’t in her film festival makeup,” Jazz dared to tell him. “Not that I think there’s anything wrong with it,” she added quickly, “but I’m trying to show another side of Florie, not what th
ey’re showing on the news. The girl we knew at St. Catherine’s and—”
Her gaze on the screen of Billy’s phone, her words dissolved in a burble of disbelief.
“Is that…” When she pointed, Jazz’s finger shook. “Is that Florie going into the building on Tremont the night she was killed?”
Billy eyes were sad. He nodded.
“Billy…” The better to draw him out of whatever he was thinking when he looked at Florie—at the confident tilt of her chin, at the way her backpack was slung over her shoulder, that lanyard that would be the murder weapon swinging from it—Jazz put a hand on his shoulder. “You never told me you were there.”
Billy grunted. “Yeah, that’s all the cops needed to find out.”
“But you have pictures. Evidence. How did you—”
“Know she was going over to Tremont? That’s easy. Florie told me. She was all proud of being asked to shoot pictures for that son of a bitch Brody, all excited about it. When we were over at Public Square, she told me he was picking her up and where they were going.”
“And you followed them.”
“You make it sound creepy.”
There was no use arguing the point. Jazz looked at the next picture. “Florie went around to the back of the building. That’s how she got in. The cops figured she used the back door. You went around that way, too.”
“Yeah, and look who’s letting her in that door.” He pointed to a picture that was dark and grainy. Billy had taken it from an odd angle in the shadows because he didn’t dare get any closer. Still, there was no mistaking the cap of unruly, sexy hair or the stubble of beard on the man who poked his head out of the doorway to greet Florie.
“How long until he came out again?” she asked Billy, because she didn’t have a shred of doubt that he’d waited.
“Here.” He scrolled to the next picture. The angle was different—Billy must have found a more advantageous place to watch and wait. In the picture, Tate Brody was standing in the doorway looking outside, his lips pressed together, his hands bunched into fists at his sides. Florie was behind him, her mouth opened wide.
Jazz took one look at the desperation in Florie’s eyes, the tears streaming down her cheeks. “He wasn’t lying about breaking up with her,” she said. “He was lying when he said she didn’t care.”
The next picture showed Tate Brody walking out of the back door of the building with Florie still in the doorway, bent at the waist as if the very act of breathing was excruciating.
“Wait!” Jazz put her hand on Billy’s to stop him from scrolling further. “Are you telling me you actually have proof that Florie was still alive when Brody left?”
Billy’s face twisted with disgust. “I got a call from Parker Paul, the fat shit. He needed me over at the festival office. Son of a bitch is too lazy to do any of the real work, and some big-ass posters, a rush job, came over late from the printer. He needed me to unload them. So, yeah, I had to leave. But it’s pretty obvious, don’t you think? Brody left. Right here.” He tapped the picture on the phone screen. “But he must have come back. Don’t you think? Otherwise the cops wouldn’t have been able to prove he killed Florie.”
It made sense in light of the evidence Nick had unearthed.
“So that’s it. The last of your pictures?” Jazz asked Billy.
“I got one more before I had to go.” He scrolled to it. The picture showed Florie still framed in the darkened doorway, one hand clutched to her backpack as if holding on to it would help keep her world from spinning out of control. Some sound from behind her had startled her, and her head was turned, her free hand braced against the doorway as if she was all set to push off, ready to run.
Jazz stared at the photo, her words caught up against the block of ice that strangled her breathing.
“Someone else was there.”
CHAPTER 21
For once, the weather forecasters were right.
Monday was a glorious spring day—sunshine, blue skies, warm temperatures.
Aside from the fact that they had an hour-long break from classes, Jazz couldn’t blame the young women of St. Catherine’s for being a little too frisky. But she still couldn’t allow it.
“Emma!” Jazz whispered the warning as soon as she saw Emma Marsh smack her red balloon against Gia Cartossi’s yellow one. Just because they were in the last row of juniors gathered around the gazebo in Lincoln Park didn’t mean they could get away with messing around. “Quit it!”
Gia and Emma snapped to attention, though Jazz was enough of a realist to know it had less to do with her than it did with the laser look of death the girls got from Shauna Best, their homeroom teacher and a woman known to take no prisoners. That mini crisis averted, Jazz stepped back and scanned the area, checking—again—to be sure every detail was taken care of, everything was going smoothly, and Doogie, the guy with the Rasta braids who sold weed in the park every afternoon, was far, far away from the ceremony.
Satisfied everything was under control, she moved away from the juniors and walked behind where the youngest girls were gathered, seventh and eighth graders whose teachers had used Florie’s passing to teach a hard lesson about life and loss. She deliberately avoided even glancing toward the reporters and TV cameras at the furthest edges of the crowd. As much as she and Eileen had discussed the consequences of their presence all through the weekend, as much as they would have liked to ban the media altogether, they were both pragmatic enough to know it would never happen, not in a public place and not when the memorial service was designed to honor the victim of a sensational murder. The extra uniformed police officers the local commander had sent down to the park to control the crowd helped keep the reporters in their place.
“Police.”
Far enough away from anyone to be overheard, she grumbled the word and slipped her phone from her pocket.
Still no callback from Nick.
“Nothing?” Sarah must have been watching her, because when she looked up, Jazz saw her mouth the word from the far side of a group of sophomores. Jazz had told Sarah about her theory that someone else besides Florie and Brody was in the building where she’d found Florie’s body, and naturally, Sarah was as anxious to hear what Nick would have to say about it as Jazz was.
Jazz shook her head, stashed her phone, and did her best to control emotions that bounced between disappointment and annoyance.
She’d called Nick any number of times since she saw Billy’s pictures over at the Capitol Theater.
She’d told him in her first voicemail that she had information pertaining to Florie’s case and she knew he’d want to hear it.
She’d told him in subsequent voicemails—at least a dozen of them—that she really needed to talk to him.
And Nick?
Jazz wasn’t sure if the irony of the situation was funny or just plain pathetic.
Even the details of Florie’s murder, Florie’s relationship with Brody, and the video instructor’s fall from grace (and society) had taken a backseat to the weekend’s news, a hotter-than-Hades story about a city council member, a love nest complete with mirrors, a hot tub, and a heart-shaped bed, and a dead hooker.
Nick had his hands full.
Swallowing down her disappointment, Jazz listened to the orchestra perform flawlessly. The choir sang, their sweet young-girl voices flying up to the heavens like birdsong. Father Donovan said the opening prayer. Now—right on time with the schedule Jazz had drawn up—Eileen began her carefully crafted speech. After she was finished, the choir and orchestra would do one more piece together, then each girl would release the balloon she held and the sky would be alive, dancing with yellow and red, a last tribute to Florie.
Jazz had typed up every word of Eileen’s speech and she didn’t need to listen, so instead, she let her gaze drift from the two empty chairs behind Eileen—reserved for Larry and Renee, who Eileen had personally invited—to the photo of Florie on an easel at the base of the gazebo steps, one of the few photos on Billy’s phone
that showed Florie out of her film festival costume and makeup. She looked sweet in a baby-blue sweater, her hair down around her shoulders. Billy had caught her off guard and she looked wistful and so young. Not for the first time, Jazz wondered what Florie had been thinking when Billy snapped the pic. Whatever it was, Florie’s eyes were bright. Her smile was wide. Her face was tipped toward the sun.
The expression hardly fit with the dark secrets Jazz had discovered about Florie’s life, but it was appropriate to the occasion, and important for the girls to see the real Florie instead of the goth vamp whose picture (well, before the city-council-member-and-the-hooker story broke, anyway) stared back at them at the beginning of every local newscast. The girls of St. Catherine’s had heard enough about Florie’s shortcomings, and as Eileen was about to remind them, there was more to her—more to each and every person there in the park—than just a reputation, good or bad. There is also, always, a spark of the divine.
While she waited for Eileen to wrap up, Jazz quietly made her way over to where the freshmen girls were assembled. One of them, a girl named LaTasha Mills, had always struck Jazz as a little too sensitive, and she saw she was right; LaTasha’s cheeks were streaked with tears. Jazz signaled to LaTasha’s homeroom teacher for a little extra attention, and joined the girls as they sang the closing hymn. The last note faded, and on Eileen’s signal, the girls released their balloons, oohing and ahhing as they sailed into the air. Some of the balloons tangled in the branches of the nearby trees, like oversized yellow and red apples. Many more flew up and over the neighborhood and disappeared into the clear sky.
The ceremony done, the girls and their teachers headed back across the street to school. Jazz stayed behind to handle the wrap-up.
It was good thing she did, or she wouldn’t have seen Billy, who stared at the picture of Florie for a minute, then disappeared into the crowd of neighbors and onlookers who’d gathered at a respectful distance. She wouldn’t have seen another familiar face, either, and when she did, Jazz immediately took off in the direction of the tall chain-link fence that surrounded the neighborhood swimming pool.