The Boom Room

by Rick Blechta

  “Earlier today, I found another knife at The Boom Room. It was attached to the speaker magnet on one of the band’s amplifiers.”

  “So? What does that have to do with me?”

  “Quite a great deal. You see, while the knife had been wiped clean of fingerprints, there were a number of other prints and smudges on the speaker magnet.” Pratt raised his voice. “None of them were Mike Master’s, but they were all from the same person.”

  Carolyn’s eyes were big. “Jamie?”

  Pratt shook his head. “No. You. You put that knife there.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “Then how did your prints get there?”

  “I don’t know. I must have touched the magnet on Mike’s amp sometime at a rehearsal or something.”

  “I didn’t say it was Mike’s amp, so how could you know that?”

  “I just assumed—”

  Now Pratt’s voice was stern. “You put it there on purpose. You needed to get rid of that knife so it wouldn’t be found when we searched. You thought it would be undetectable there, and you were almost right. You nearly got away with it.”

  “Lies! All lies!”

  “You stabbed Joseph Lewis like you promised Mike you would. He wanted to take over the band, but to do that, he needed to get rid of Jamie. So you had to make it look as if Jamie had done it. That’s why you used the second knife to kill Lewis. If you’d used Jamie’s—which you’d taken earlier—you would have wiped off all his prints when you wiped off yours. You needed Jamie’s prints on that knife. After Lewis was dead, you carefully stuck Jamie’s knife into the wound to get blood on the blade. Then you chucked it under the photocopier. You had to hide the fact there was a second knife.”

  “You’re crazy! Why would I do that? I love Jamie!”

  “No, you don’t. You latched on to Jamie because you thought he’d become famous. Then you found he didn’t have the same fire in his belly that Mike Master had. You said you knew nothing about Mike Master’s past, but you knew all about it. Lying with you after sex, he told you his whole story, didn’t he?”

  “He told me he once killed someone, but I didn’t believe him.”

  “Then, after you’d done just as he’d asked, you found out Master had lied to you. I’ll bet it was something like, ‘What do you know about managing a band, Carolyn? That’s a laugh! I’ve spoken to Carl Thomson. He’s going to be managing Rotten Attitude. He actually knows something about managing a band.’ I’ll bet that really stung, didn’t it? Master had set you up and used you. He was very good at stuff like that.”

  Carolyn started to speak, then flopped back in her chair, glaring at Pratt.

  He continued speaking.

  “You had an ace up your sleeve though, didn’t you? All you had to do was plant a little bug in Jamie’s half brother’s ear. Jamie had told you he was a straight-arrow cop. He’d make sure Mike Master got his due. Master’s knife was still where you’d hidden it, but then we didn’t find it. You’d hidden it too cleverly. So today you took matters into your own hands. You set Master up. You were lying in wait for him at your apartment. You stabbed him with the hunting knife you took from his room last night. Then you made it look like he’d attacked you. All you had to do was wait for us to show up with the idea we were saving you from a psychopath.”

  Carolyn wouldn’t even raise her eyes as she began weeping.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hours later, in the police department’s favorite bar, Pratt sat with Ellis and McDonnell. He really could have used some sleep, but the bourbon was going down very nicely.

  “The thing I don’t get is, you told Gordon you came up with the solution by looking at Facebook,” McDonnell said. “Everyone knows you can’t stand computers, much less operate one.”

  Pratt clapped Ellis on the back. “It was all with young David’s help. And you know what? It wasn’t hard at all. I’ve been wary of computers for no good reason, as it turns out.”

  “But what did you see on Facebook?”

  “Yeah,” Ellis chimed in. “I looked at all those pages too. There wasn’t anything there that could have led you to Carolyn Tucci. Come on, Mervin,” he said, using Pratt’s given name for the first time ever. “Spill the beans.”

  “As I’ve told you before, David, you can’t just look, you have to see.”

  “Pratt!” said McDonnell. “As your superior officer, I order you to answer my question.”

  Pratt turned to him. “The Rotten Attitude fan page on Facebook is moderated—if that is the correct word—by our Carolyn. Perhaps it’s her ego, but her digital fingerprints are all over it.”

  “Listen to you.” Ellis laughed. “Digital fingerprints, indeed!”

  “So what was it you noticed?” McDonnell asked again.

  “Simply that Carolyn reported we’d found that first knife a good half hour before we told the media. The date and time of the posting is right there for all to see. Equally telling, there were all her reports about how the band would carry on without its founder and chief songwriter. Master would finally have control of the band—and she did it all for him. She was fawning all over him.”

  Ellis shook his head, then swallowed the last of his beer. “You told her you knew about Thomson getting the shot at managing the band. Did you actually know that?”

  “Sure. That’s about the one useful thing Gordon did on this job. Say what you will about him, Gordon knows how to wring a confession out of someone.”

  McDonnell motioned to the bartender for refills. They’d all regret this the next morning.

  “Okay, Pratt, since you’re so smart, who was the mastermind? The dead singer or Carolyn Tucci?”

  “Based on what Sheriff Warsh told me, I’m pretty sure it was Master pulling the strings. But there’s probably no way we’ll ever find out. Warsh thinks Master was borderline psychotic. The scary thing was that he was near-genius in intelligence. We all know well those are the worst kind.”

  Pratt took a sip of his new bourbon.

  “Still, he may have met his match in Carolyn Tucci. Whether it was an extreme need for fame or whether she’s psychotic too, we’ll have to wait to find out. Anyway, knowing all about Master’s past, it was a pretty good bet we’d believe he tried to kill her. It came close to working too. It nearly took me too long to realize there might be a second knife.”

  “And you got Jamie off,” Ellis said. “I can’t thank you enough. It’s interesting…”

  “What is?” both older men asked.

  “I listened to the CD of the band Carolyn gave me. I never really liked Jamie’s kind of music, but I have to admit his songs are, well, pretty good. I found myself liking them. I should play it for you.”

  McDonnell and Pratt looked at each other in horror.

  “No, thanks,” Pratt said. “Don’t make me regret what I’ve just done!”

  Acknowledgments

  The usual suspects (my wife Vicki and the indomitable Cheryl Freedman) again scanned my deathless prose, found it not deathless, but fortunately made suggestions that helped resuscitate every phrase to full health. Anything that’s still wrong is my fault, not theirs! I was also aided in all things police-oriented by Brent Pilkey who knows about this sort of stuff, nuff said!

  RICK BLECHTA has two passions in life: music and writing. A professional musician since age fourteen, he brings his extensive knowledge of that life to his crime fiction. He is the author of nine novels, one of which, Cemetery of the Nameless, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Best Novel Award (2005). The Boom Room is his second title in the Rapid Reads series, following Orchestrated Murder (2012). Rick lives, writes and performs in Toronto, Ontario. For more information, visit www.rickblechta.com.

 

 

 
-filter: grayscale(100%); -moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share