Darker Than Any Shadow

Chapter Ten

The next morning, I arrived at the gun shop to discover Bobby McGraw from the 11th Regiment of the Georgia Volunteers reenactment group pacing on my sidewalk. He was at my car door before I could even get it open.

“You’re late.”

“Long night.”

“I heard.” His eyes sparkled. “Saw your name on the news, said you were mixed up in some murder. That so?”

I fetched my revolver from its carry case under the seat. “That is so.”

“Damn, girl. Remind me not to invite you over. You’re like that old woman on TV, people always dropping dead around her.” He checked his watch. “No excuse for keeping your customers waiting, though.”

“Sorry, Bobby. Traffic was bad.”

Atlanta traffic was always bad, but people said this anyway. It was the traditional greeting.

I unlocked the front door, then gave it a good shove to get it open. Bobby was a progressive reenactor, which meant that while he liked the best and most historically-accurate clothing and accessories he could afford, he occasionally broke character enough to swallow some Mylanta while still in dress grays. Nonetheless, his disdain for the not-so-well prepared was obvious.

“Did I tell you we had two idiots wearing Nike sneakers out on the field last Sunday?”

I made a disgusted noise. “Some people.”

I switched the lights on, and Bobby followed me in. He was an accountant at a downtown law firm, with neat brown hair, a rounded physique, and hands like a geisha. Had he been in the actual war, he would have been the butter on some Yankee’s toast in about five minutes.

He shook his head. “I know, right? If you’re gonna be out there, make an effort to look the part. Whoa, is that mine?”

As I put my gun away, he spotted the wool cap on the counter, a Confederate kepi with silver infantry bugle insignia. I’d tried to talk him into a suede version, but he’d wanted what the original boys in gray had worn, so wool it was. I broke into prickly sweat thinking about it.

“All yours, Bobby. Came in yesterday.”

He popped it on his head. “I thought you said it wouldn’t get here in time.”

“I bribed the supplier. For history’s sake.”

He beamed at me from under the hat’s dove-colored bill. “Speaking of history,” he said, pulling out a transparent aqua flask.

It was scroll glass, used during the Civil War for both medicine and liquor, and from the crescent-shaped pontil mark on the bottom, I knew it was the real thing. The fluted pint-size flask had two inches of clear liquid in the bottom. I took a sniff. Also the real thing.

I shot him a warning look. “Bobby?”

He grinned. “Shhh. Authentic stuff.”

“It’ll give you lead poisoning.”

“Not that authentic. Clean and pure.”

“And illegal. You get stopped with that in your trunk, don’t call me.”

Bobby grinned, too happy with his hat to argue. This was the biggest part of my business, tracking down late-1860s weapons and ammunition and clothing, both authentic and reproduction, and making it available to Kennesaw’s population of fervent reenactors. I kept the basics of pretend war-making in stock—black powder, shells, soft lead round balls—but the kind of stuff Bobby wanted often required a little detective work.

He examined himself in the mirror while I filled in the invoice number on the ledger. As he preened, I reached under the counter and pulled out his new shotgun—a barely used Bernardelli Mississippi .58 reproduction with bayonet and scabbard.

I handed it to him. “Here. Just in time for the big event.”

Bobby almost hemorrhaged with glee. He immediately opened the stock and checked the particulars. “You sure you can shoot live ammo in this?”

“Absolutely sure. I checked with the gunsmith.”

Bobby grinned, and I got the warm sense of satisfaction that comes from making someone happy…and from knowing my bills would get paid that month.

He pulled out his checkbook. “Boonsboro here I come!”

Bobby’s big event was a big one indeed—the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Second Manasses, known to the North as the Second Battle of Bull Run. General Stonewall Jackson himself fought there, and he described the fighting as “fierce and sanguinary.” The skirmish ended in a Confederate victory, and it was happening once again in Boonsboro, Virginia, one hundred and fifty years after the fact. And every single one of its participants needed weapons and ammo and chronologically-appropriate uniforms.

My phone rang before I could take Bobby’s check, however. It was Adam. I felt a sudden punch of foreboding as I shoved the paperwork across the counter.

“Hang on a sec, Bobby, I gotta take this.”

But Bobby had already popped his weapon on his shoulder, its sights set on an ancient invisible enemy. He barely noticed when I took the phone into the office and answered it.

“Adam! Have you heard from Rico?”

His voice was shaky. “He’s home.”

“Is he okay? Did they arrest him?”

“He says it was just for questioning, but…” There was a long pause. “Is it okay if I meet you at the shop? I get off at three.”

Adam worked near Inman Park, in a boutique bed and breakfast run by some friends of his. I checked my watch.

“How about I meet you there instead? I’m headed back to the city in an hour or so.”

I poked my head out the door and peered at Bobby, who was trying on the hat and the gun together and examining the effect in the mirror. His round face, soft and pale from a life under fluorescents, seemed even more babyish in contrast, like a little kid playing dress-up. I flashed on Lex, exactly the opposite of Bobby—so young at a distance, so much older up close.

“Will Trey be coming with you?” Adam said.

“No.”

He exhaled in what sounded like relief. “That’s good. I mean…it’s not that I don’t trust him, but I don’t want to get the cops involved.”

“Trey’s not a cop anymore.”

“Still.” He sighed. “Look, there’s something Rico’s not telling you, something big. And you need to know about it ASAP. And I’d rather it be just the two of us, okay?”

***

The B&B was two doors down from a church made of Stone Mountain granite, one of the hundreds of such structures in the metro area. Adam took care of the greenery for both, inside and out. I recognized his handiwork in one of the vases on the check-in counter. When he’d tried to teach me the art of flower arranging, I’d ended up with a selection of stems that looked like an abandoned game of pick-up sticks.

“Colorful,” he’d said.

I wished I’d had Trey along, especially considering Adam’s reluctance to have him there. People with things to hide tended to avoid Trey, even if they didn’t know what it was about him that made them feel so unzipped. Adam’s relief at his absence pinged my suspicion into the red zone.

But there were upsides to working alone. Without Trey, I could maneuver around the edges a little more easily and not have to worry about running afoul of his Boy Scout meter.

I found Adam in the garden, tidying the late gardenias. His blond cowlicks were molded into sweaty peaks, and a smear of soil marred one cheek like an amateur attempt at tribal decoration. He carried an arsenal of spray bottles and tools, shiny silver with wooden handles, and he smelled of dirt and sweat and the chemical pong of insecticide.

I walked over and stood beside him. “You look like a page from a seed catalog.”

He stood up and pulled off one glove. He was as slender as a sapling, but his hands were strong and—at the moment—clean, even though I’d seen them grimy, black loamy soil ridging his fingernails. The name Adam came from the Hebrew Adama, he’d told me once. Of the dirt.

The sun rode high, and I moved into the shade under a purple cloud of crepe myrtle. There was no grin on Adam’s face now, no sign of his usual effervescence. He pulled off the other glove.

“Wait here. I’ll get us something to drink.”

***

He fetched lemonade and a plate of butter cookies from the kitchen, then joined me on the grass. He sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, one hand absently combing the rosemary. I waited, but he didn’t speak. I knew I had to be patient for this part. Too often I rushed it, like a dirty blond bulldozer, piling mounds of earth all over the information I was seeking, and sometimes over the person I was seeking it from. I nibbled a cookie, drank more lemonade.

Finally, he spoke. “You’re his best friend, right?”

“From junior high on. Our families were in the same social club too, if you can believe that.”

Adam finally smiled a little. “Rico calls it the Guilty Liberals with Money Club.”

I returned the smile. “As opposed to the Closet Racists with Property Club, which met on Thursdays.”

Clouds had tamped the knife-edge of the sun, but there was no rain in them. They were as bleached as bone, more like gathered dust than water. This happened every afternoon, sometimes displaying spits of fitful lightning on a dark horizon. But no rain. Never rain.

“Tai? Do you think he could kill somebody?”

This question again. I gave the standard answer.

“Any of us could kill. But do I think Rico killed Lex? No.” I put my lemonade down and wiped the cool condensation on the back of my neck. “There’s something he’s not telling me, though. And that worries me.”

“There’s something he’s not telling me either. But I do know one thing, a big thing.” He got up and started deadheading the plants, cutting down the withered buds with an assassin’s focus. “Rico came home without his shoes last night. The cops kept them.”

“Why?”

“Because he had blood on them.”

I put the cookie down quick. “Blood? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. I noticed it right before the performance, when he got back from wherever he’d been. I thought maybe it was mud or red wine. But he’d been drinking champagne, not wine. And there’s not a speck of mud in Fulton County right now.”

“Did he tell you what happened?”

“No. He called me about four in the morning, from the station. He told me to bring new shoes. I did. And then he rode home without saying a word. And when we got back to the apartment, he went right to the bedroom, shut the door, and wouldn’t talk to me. And then he left this morning and didn’t tell me where he was going or what he was doing.”

Damn. That didn’t sound good. “Have you called him?”

“He’s not picking up.” He tilted his head back and stared at the sky. “Something’s been wrong ever since Vigil got out of jail. You noticed too, right? That something was wrong?”

No, I hadn’t. I’d been busy tracking down Bernadelli rifles and black powder and getting fitted for my latest red dress. I stifled a pang of conscience.

As we sat there, the sun burned through the cloud cover, becoming once again bright and merciless. Even the shade was no respite against it. Even the shadows were dense and close and stuck to the skin.

Adam looked glum. “So what do we do now?”

He left the question on the table like a bill nobody wanted to pay. I knew what I’d be doing, for sure—after this revelation, I was going to find Rico and drag the story out of him come hell or high water. But I had no idea what Adam should do.

I reached over and put my hand on his. “We’ll figure something out. I promise.”

I squeezed his fingers. He didn’t speak, just sat there staring off into the middle distance.

“F*ck,” he finally said.

“F*cking right,” I agreed.