Darker Than Any Shadow

by Tina Whittle

  So I let him go. And then I slugged my way through the crowd to the bar. Time to get more champagne, but even more importantly, time to get a woman’s perspective. And if that woman happened to be Jackson’s wife…all the better.

  Chapter Four

  As much as Jackson loved every brick of the restaurant, his prize renovation was the bar, a genuine teakwood reclamation from a bungalow teardown in Morningside. Presently the old antique was three-deep in thirsty patrons, all of them waving money, whistling, elbowing.

  I squeezed to the edge and caught Cricket’s eye. “Hey, have you seen Rico?”

  Cricket blew a strand of fawn-brown hair from her forehead. Whipped cream smeared her red glasses, and a rabid desperation lurked in her eyes. She wore totally inappropriate clothes for bartending—a white satin shirt and a black suede vest with fringes that kept dangling into the beer—but then, she hadn’t been expecting to be schlepping drinks. She was Rico’s teammate, competing for the third time this year, and she was supposed to be drinking champagne and practicing her lines, not mixing cocktails. That had been the plan anyway, before the bartender and two servers had called in sick.

  She shoved a black apron at me. “You know anything about bartending?”

  “I used to. But it’s been—”

  “I don’t care. Get back here!”

  Great, I thought, now I’d have to pretend I hadn’t seen her husband threatening Lex in the hallway. I also had to hope that Trey wouldn’t come back and start a recitation of whatever weirdness he’d discovered. There was a reason he didn’t do covert—he had no sense about what to say and when to say it.

  I moved into place and tied on the apron, kicking my heels under the bar. Before I knew it, money was being shoved at me left and right.

  Cricket moved deftly. “Don’t worry about the mixed drinks—throw me the orders, and I’ll handle those. Just move beers and take money.”

  I did as she said. The hubbub of the room had spread to the merchandise table, where Adam worked feverishly. Individual faces melded into an amorphous impressionistic blend. No Rico, however. Our table remained empty.

  I passed out beer and took money. “Cricket, what’s a Screaming Viking, I don’t see anything labeled Screaming Viking here.”

  She didn’t reply. Instead, she stared at her phone, annoyance twisting her mouth.

  I snapped my fingers. “Cricket?”

  She looked up. “I have to go.”

  “You what?”

  Somebody pounded the bar. I shooed him back, but two more bodies surged into his place.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “But—”

  She pulled off her apron and shoved it under the bar. Then she bounded around the corner and tacked her way through the crowd, headed for the swinging door that led to the back hallway.

  That was when I spotted Trey, in the corner nearest the kitchen’s service entrance. I spread my hands in a “well?” gesture. He shook his head emphatically, tapped his watch, then disappeared into the kitchen.

  Ah jeez. Sometimes that man…

  At that moment, Adam came up, a worried crease in his forehead. “Where’s Rico?”

  I blew hair out of my eyes. “That’s what I’d like to know. Did you see him leave?”

  “No, but he starts in twenty minutes. He’s real nervous, and I don’t know why. Do you?”

  Great. Another thing I was supposed to keep under my hat.

  Adam crossed his arms. “I asked, but you know how he gets. And now he’s vanished, not a word to anybody, not even me. Can you watch the merch table while I go find him?”

  “Adam! You can’t leave it unattended like that!” I sloshed a foamy wave of beer across the counter, and two guys jumped back. “And I’m up to my eyeballs right now.”

  “What about Trey?”

  I imagined Trey guarding the sherbet stack of tee-shirts, nine-millimeter at the ready.

  “Not a good idea.”

  “I need some help here. Rico’s gone, we’re out of CDs—”

  “Babysit it for five more minutes, and I’ll come over as soon as I can.”

  Adam sighed in exasperation and disappeared into the crowd, back to the table, I hoped. I understood his frustration—serving the public without berserking on some innocent customer was a challenge. But the last thing the team needed was a thousand bucks’ worth of merchandise disappearing into the night along with Jackson’s missing funds.

  I had my own worries—too many customers, too little beer, and absolutely no Rico. Some frantic moments later, Trey reappeared right at my elbow, materializing like an apparition.

  I tried not to sound impatient. “Well?”

  “Lex was in the back parking lot. Smoking.”

  “No gun?”

  “Cigarettes and matches, only no gun. And then I found Jackson in the kitchen, also unarmed. He says everything is fine.”

  “What about Rico?”

  “What about him?”

  I was in no mood to play Twenty Questions. “Look, Adam’s a mess, Cricket’s vanished, Rico’s on in five minutes, and now I’m stuck here. You have to find Rico!”

  “But he’s right there.”

  I looked at the stage. Sure enough, there he was, checking the microphone, cool and professional. He saw me looking and patted his heart, once, twice, a little thump thump of reassurance. Relief coursed through my veins.

  He took the microphone, cleared his throat, and the hushed refrain moved from table to table. “Respect the word,” people whispered. “Respect the word.” In less than thirty seconds, the conversations blurred into backnoise, a curtain of sound. Someone dimmed the overheads, and Rico stood alive and electric under the amber spotlight.

  He smiled his slow molasses smile. “You begin in the softest of ways, by opening your hand, the hardest part of all.”

  And the crowd sent up a roar of whistles and claps.

  He moved quickly into his first poem—a warm-up piece that always stoked the energy of the room. At the other end of the bar, I saw Cricket return and take her place. Her hands trembled as she tied her apron and wiped her palms on it, but she kept her eyes on the stage.

  Jackson appeared at the kitchen entrance. He stared at Cricket, his hands shoved in his pockets, but she didn’t look his way.

  Adam elbowed to the edge of the stage, riveted on Rico, as if each word were a private gift only for him. He’d packed away the merchandise table, every capitalistic impulse cut short by the desire to be fully focused on Rico. Behind him I saw Frankie, her expression calculating. I imagined she was torn to have such talent on her team this year. Rico, Cricket , even Lex—they made Atlanta the team to beat, these people who would eventually be her toughest competition in the individuals.

  I turned to Trey and dropped my voice to a whisper. “So what happened with Lex?”

  “I asked him if he was okay. He said yes. I came back inside. He remained in the parking lot.”

  “He’d better be getting in here. He’s on next.”

  A person in front turned and shushed us, so I pulled Trey into a huddle in the corner. All I could see was Rico in the spotlight, surrounded and solitary.

  “How did he seem to you?”

  “Nervous, agitated. No threat indicators, however.”

  I scanned the edge of the audience for Lex’s pale sharp face. Crowded places provided an invisibility of sorts, if you knew how to work it. I wasn’t sure Lex did—he seemed the kind to naturally draw attention, not hide from it—but I wasn’t dismissing the possibility that he was somewhere in that shifting warm darkness.

  Rico moved into his second piece, the shorter competition poem. Three minutes and nineteen seconds, one second under the time limit when performed perfectly. But despite the auspicious start, it was not one of his better performances. It lacked the dynamic push and pull he usually created, the dizzying spin of the lyrics, the rat-a-tat rhymes. Now, he was working by rote. He knew it by heart, but his heart wasn’t in it.

&
nbsp; He pulled the mike from the stand. “And now I’d like to—”

  A screaming alarm drowned him out, followed by the panicked murmur of the crowd. The sprinklers came on with a hiss and whoosh, and the murmuring ratcheted into gasps and shouts. Water soaked my hair and dribbled down the front of my dress.

  I shoved a sopping hank of hair from my eyes. “Great, now what?”

  Chapter Five

  Trey shielded his eyes and looked around. “It’s the fire alarm.”

  “I don’t see smoke. You think somebody pulled it for laughs?”

  “The sprinklers are triggered by heat, not a switch. We need to evacuate.”

  “We?”

  He was suddenly in motion, the security expert taking charge. “I’ll clear the main room and check the kitchen, you clear the back. No one stays in the building until this gets resolved.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t forget the restroom. Then meet me in the parking lot. And call 911.”

  Then he was gone, swallowed up in the throng of people. No one seemed frightened. Instead they were adrenalin-juiced and impossible to herd, like intoxicated goats. Through the din and surge, I saw Rico jump down from the stage and make his way to Adam.

  Most people streamed out the front door, but some took the side exit into the alley, some cursing, others clinging to each other and laughing. As they pulled open the fire exits, more alarms went off, carving another facet of noise into the din.

  I kicked off my heels and slung my purse more securely across my chest. Then I pushed my way toward the back, moving upstream against the crowd. The smell hit me from out of nowhere—smoke, bitter and noxious—and the first pang of fear struck.

  The hallway loomed dark, water already puddling on the floor. I moved left, toward the restrooms, one hand against the wall for balance. Water lapped my feet, and I tripped on a box of CDs someone had abandoned in the hall, sending the plastic cases skittering. The smoke thickened, and I quickly realized why. It was pouring from the small restroom, the door ajar.

  I kicked it open and saw the trash can next to the sink ablaze with a column of yellow fire. As the smoke cleared, I saw an even more disturbing sight—someone sprawled in front of the sink, legs crumpled, arms flung sideways.

  I yelled for help, but my voice was lost in the screeching alarms. So I dropped to all fours and crawled inside, coughing and sputtering and wheezing, reciting grade schools chants.

  “Get down and go. Stop, drop, and roll.”

  Wet tissue and paper towels clotted the floor in a sodden ashy mess. I gagged, choking on smoke and sour bathroom smell as I scrambled forward. Eventually my hand closed on a pair of black leather boots.

  Lex.

  I realized I’d have to stand up to get him out of there. Cursing some more, I took a deep breath, rose into a hunch, and then dragged him by his feet into the hallway. At that moment, Jackson materialized from the darkness, fire extinguisher in hand.

  “Get out of the way!” he yelled.

  “I’m trying!”

  I lugged Lex into the hall as Jackson shouldered his way inside the bathroom, spraying the extinguisher in wild desperate arcs. And then in the chaos of hissing foam and sheeting water and screaming noise, I dropped beside Lex.

  “Get out!” Jackson yelled.

  “I can’t leave him here!”

  Jackson stood there dripping, like he was seeing Lex for the first time. The fire was a smoking sputtering mess, but it was out. I knelt beside Lex and placed two fingers against his neck, the floor hard under my stockinged knees. His eyes were glassy and staring, his face bruised, his lip split. No pulse beat under my fingers.

  He was dead, very dead.

  But not from the fire. In the center of his chest, a red bloodstain soaked through the thin layer of his white tee-shirt.

  Jackson held the empty fire extinguisher. “Is he okay?”

  “No, he’s not.” I straightened, throat burning. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

  “But you said—”

  “That was before I knew he was dead.”

  Jackson stared. The fire alarm still split the air. The sprinklers continued full force, up and down the hall, the stale metallic-smelling water showering down in torrents.

  Jackson looked at me, bewildered. “So we just leave him like that?”

  “We have to. It’s a crime scene.”

  Or what’s left of it, I thought, as Jackson moved down the hall toward the parking lot exit.

  “You go,” he said. “I’ve gotta turn off these sprinklers.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I gotta shut the damn things off before everything’s ruined!”

  He went back inside, and I didn’t argue. The first person I saw in the parking lot was Rico, phone out. He waved frantically at me, and I jogged over and hugged him. He smelled like mud and sweat and liquor. Behind him, Adam sat on the hood of Rico’s Chevy Tahoe, skinny arms wrapped around his knees.

  “Are you guys okay?”

  Rico nodded and kept talking on his phone. Adam stared. I put a hand on his leg, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  Trey appeared from the doorway and headed my way, a dozen people in his wake, half of them on cell phones. In the distance I heard the wail of sirens.

  “All clear?” he said.

  I grabbed his elbow and dragged him to the edge of the parking lot. “We’ve got bigger problems. Lex is dead.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Dead. In the bathroom. Checked his pulse. Dead.”

  “How?”

  “Not from the fire. Fires don’t cause bloody chest wounds.”

  My words ran together in a machine-gun patter. I shook myself, and my vision blurred at the edges. Suddenly it was hard to catch a breath. Trey’s hands went to my shoulders, and I heard him calling my name as if from very far away.

  “Tai, look at me.”

  I met his eyes. “What?”

  “Take a deep breath, in and out. Slowly.”

  I did as he said. He kept his eyes locked on me, cool and professionally detached. When he decided that I wasn’t about to pass out, he said, “Call 911. Report a possible homicide.”

  “I know what a dead body is called.”

  He turned to go. I grabbed his arm.

  “You can’t go back in there!”

  “I need to secure the crime scene.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re not—”

  But he’d already disappeared into the crowd without a backwards glance, as if he were a cop again, as if that were the side of the line he stood on. Clear the scene, secure the scene. Trey knew how to do this—he had the flow chart in his head. But I had nothing.

  I heard the crowd babbling, growing, thronging. Wet people on cell phones everywhere, including Frankie, her hair wild about her face. Cricket sobbed in Jackson’s arms, and he rocked her against his chest, his eyes on the restaurant. Rico and Adam sat shoulder to shoulder on the hood of Rico’s car, shell-shocked.

  The wail of sirens drew closer, like a live thing closing in. And all I could think was, please not this again. Not with me in the middle. Not again.

  I wrapped my arms tight across my chest. Then I punched 911. When the operator answered, all I could think to say was, “Help. We really need help.”

  Chapter Six

  Detective Sandford Cummings examined my business card for Dexter’s Guns and More. “You’re Dexter’s niece, right? Weren’t you involved in that Beaumont thing back in the spring?”

  This was a question I got a lot, especially from new customers at the gun shop. A woman gets murdered in my brother’s driveway, then other people die too, and everybody thinks it must be a story I liked to revisit.

  It wasn’t. But the detective was looking at me all official-like, so I copped.

  “That was me.”

  “Yeah, I thought so. Seaver was involved in that too, wasn’t he?”

  Involved. Trey had been the freaking linchpin. I nodded and
didn’t elaborate.

  Cummings shook his head. “I knew him back in the day, before he went to SWAT. A lot of potential there. Then I heard about the accident.” He shook his head, which was what everybody did at the mention of The Accident. “What’s he doing now?”

  “He’s with Phoenix Corporate Security. Risk assessment and premises liability.”

  “Phoenix, huh? I heard they did some serious downsizing after the Beaumont thing.”

  “That’s putting it mildly. But Trey’s position is solid.”

  Cummings pulled out a notebook, waved his pen at me. “You want to tell me what happened here tonight?”

  “I’d love to, except that I don’t have a clue. I know there was a fire. I know Lex is dead, and that it wasn’t from the fire. That’s the sum total of what I know.”

  I said it lightly, but with exasperation at the edges. Cummings smiled in sympathy. Soft-bodied with bark-brown receding hair, he cinched his slacks under a generous Buddha belly. He was gentle, patient, chatty. Exactly the kind of disarming guy you’d open up to and then spill something that would send you up the river for a decade. Good cop all the way. His kind didn’t need a bad cop. You handed yourself over on a silver platter.

  So I knew the banter for what it was—a cop’s way of working his fingers into my brain, unraveling my story, looping it like rope into a noose he could hang me with.

  He looked apologetic. “I’m sorry, Ms. Randolph. You know how it goes. You find a dead body, you get to talk to cops.”

  “I wasn’t the only one who found the body.”

  He consulted his notes. “Yes, a Mr. Jackson Bentley was there too. How did he react to all this?”

  “Jackson? Pretty calmly considering his life savings were literally going up in smoke.”

  Cummings wrote that down, and I regretted letting it fall out of my mouth. I bit my tongue, resolving to stick with just-the-facts-ma’am.

  He kept his eyes on the notebook. “So tell me what happened tonight. Start at the part where you saw Lex for the first time.”

  I filled him in. We were in the parking lot, cordoned off from the rest of the scene. Uniformed officers guarded the doors while a crime scene unit worked the interior. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw other detectives interviewing other people, including Trey, keeping them separate as much as possible. I couldn’t see anyone else I knew, however—no Rico and Adam, no Cricket and Jackson, no Frankie.