Darker Than Any Shadow

Chapter Thirty-nine

Friday vanished swiftly, passing in a montage of black powder and field loads as my boys prepared for the Second Manasses redux. I’d never seen so many men happy to trek off to imaginary battle, and as my cash register filled up, I got happy too.

Unfortunately, all that activity meant I was late getting to the Fox, and I had to park five blocks away in a cheapie lot. When I finally arrived backstage and found the team, I saw Cricket and Jackson in a private huddle, Frankie talking to herself in the corner, and Vigil smiling his lupine smile while he signed some sweet young thing’s clavicle. He saw me across the crowd and grinned. I ignored him.

Trey had corralled every team into separate circles of security personnel and APD officers. The tight quarters had Rico’s nerves on edge. I’d smuggled in a bottle of vodka and cranberry juice by disguising it as a sports drink, but even that couldn’t quell the jitters.

I patted his back. “Stop worrying. You’re gonna be awesome.”

“You always say that.”

“And you always are.”

I knew the drill—twenty teams, four poets per team, one poem per poet. Poems over three minutes and twenty seconds would receive heavy penalties. Each poem would be judged by three judges, with each assigning a score from zero to ten. When every team had performed, the scores would be tabulated and the winning teams announced, with the top individuals going head-to-head the next night.

So simple. So nerve-wracking.

I stayed next to Trey. He said not one word to me, and I knew better than to say anything to him. He was cool and inaccessible, riveted on the job. It was somewhat disconcerting, but every time I thought of Rico on the stage, sixty feet from the edge of the balcony, I was grateful for Trey’s remote singled-mindedness.

The Atlanta team had the next-to-last slot, finally taking the stage just before ten. Rico opened with a sloe gin fizz of a poem, lazy-sexy at the beginning, downright erotic in the coda. Cricket caught the vibration and let it wash over her poem, which was innocent enough by itself, a schoolgirl of a poem, but on the heels of Rico’s performance, every word sizzled. Vigil held the momentum with a summertime ode to an old flame, and then Frankie closed with a poem that sounded like thunderclouds tumbling atop each other, purple and bruised.

The applause was thick and enthusiastic. I joined in, but Trey didn’t. He was on his cell phone, his expression no longer placid. I knew the look. It was not good.

“He said what?” Trey closed his eyes and counted to three. “Yes, he’s telling the truth. Of course I’m serious.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. He held up one finger and shook his head.

“Yes, yes, I heard you. I’ll be there in two minutes. Handcuff him if you have to.”

He snapped his phone shut and headed for the emergency exit behind the stage. I followed at his heels.

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Jackson. The perimeter guard spotted him making a drug deal across from the MARTA station. He’s demanding to see me.” He cocked an eye in my direction. “And you.”

***

Jackson sat on the sidewalk, his back to the building, face in hands. The navy-uniformed security guard stood nearby, Jackson’s duffel bag gripped tightly. When Jackson saw Trey, he started to get up, but the guard shoved him back down.

Jackson’s voice was desperate. “I didn’t do it! I wasn’t buying drugs!”

The security guard’s voice was firm. “I saw you—”

“You saw me talking to somebody, that’s what you saw!”

“I saw you throw this is the bushes!”

The guard produced a bundled piece of daffodil-yellow cloth for Trey’s inspection. It was a napkin from the restaurant, gathered to conceal something within.

Trey opened his hand. “Give me that.”

The guard handed the bundle over, explaining as he did. He’d noticed Jackson leave the building and head for the alley, where he met a suspicious male wearing an army fatigue jacket and combat boots. Jackson and the stranger exchanged a package. When the guard accosted them, they both ran. The stranger got away, but the guard pulled his gun on Jackson, who surrendered and started yelling for Trey.

Jackson’s skin looked damp and feverish in the streetlight. “I told him it wasn’t drugs! Tell him I’m telling the truth!” He sent a beseeching look my way. “Explain like you did at the restaurant, about Trey! Tell them!”

The guard glanced inquisitively at Trey. “Sir?”

Trey put his hands on his hips and raked his gaze over Jackson’s face. Fifteen seconds passed, thirty seconds. Trey was a daunting interrogator even when he said nothing—the piercing stare, the cocked head. Jackson quivered but didn’t drop his eyes.

Trey held up the cheerful yellow bundle. “What is this?”

Jackson swallowed. “If you’ll look, it’ll make sense.”

“I don’t think—”

“It’s not drugs. But you’ll understand if you see.”

Trey considered. I watched the calibration, the tick-tick of his cranial lie detector. Finally he pulled a pen from inside his jacket and delicately pulled back the layers of yellow napkin. Jackson looked sick to his stomach, but he didn’t protest as Trey unfolded the bundle, revealing its contents.

Lex’s skull and roses necklace.

It was exactly as I remembered—dark silver, deeply etched, with a grinning skull atop an Egyptian ankh tangled with rose vines. Trey gave Jackson the look, the one that could carve out canyons.

I leaned forward and caught the scent of garlic and rosemary. “It smells like soup.”

“That’s because I boiled it.”

Trey blinked. “You did what?”

“Dropped it in the stockpot Friday night. To erase the evidence.”

“What evidence?”

Jackson swallowed hard. “I thought somebody was framing Cricket for Lex’s murder.”

Trey shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“Pull it apart, and you will.”

Trey examined the ankh, his expression quizzical. He doubled his hands under the napkin, made a quick tugging motion, and the necklace separated into two parts—the skull still dangled from the chain, but the vine-twined staff lay separate.

It was a blade. Three inches of steel ending in a sharp point.

Jackson’s voice was desperate. “When I found Lex, he was on his stomach. I didn’t know he was dead until I flipped him over and saw the athame sticking out of his chest.”

“The what?”

“Athame. It’s a Wiccan ritual knife. It’s not supposed to be used for cutting.”

“How do you know what it is?”

Jackson dropped his head. He explained. Every word sounded like broken glass in his mouth.

Trey kept his attention on the knife. “It’s very sharp for something that’s not supposed to cut.”

“It symbolizes the blade of truth, so it’s supposed to be sharp. That one’s designed to look like jewelry. Even Cricket didn’t recognize what it was.”

He was right. To the casual observer, it looked like a rather ostentatious pendant. I would never have pegged it as a knife. Which was the point, I supposed.

I squinted at it. “It’s very small.”

Trey folded the napkin up again. “It’s enough. The pericardial sac lies inches from the surface. There would need to be force behind the blow, and the entry would have to be precise. But it’s possible.”

Jackson had been watching this exchange like a hawk. “I didn’t kill him.”

Trey nodded. “I know.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Leave it to the innocent to muck things up. After all, Trey and I wouldn’t have been staring at a probable murder weapon if Jackson hadn’t be trying to protect his wife. It would have been really sweet…except for the wreaking ball he’d taken to the evidence chain.

I sat next to Jackson. “Who was the guy in the park?”

“A friend from college.”

“A drug dealer friend?”

He shook his head violently. “No! I told you, I don’t do that anymore!”

“Then why—”

“He was a fence, okay?”

I started figuring it out. “You were trying to sell the necklace?”

Jackson stared at his hands. “Don’t blame Cricket. She didn’t know. I thought maybe the diamonds were real, see? My friend said they weren’t. But he said he could probably get money for it anyway. He said it was a collector’s item.”

I felt sick to my stomach. “There are people who collect murder weapons?”

Trey’s mouth was set in a firm line. “There are. But this particular weapon won’t be going to a collector.”

A familiar voice interrupted us. “Indeed it won’t.”

I turned around and saw Detective Cummings standing in the doorway, the golden interior of the Fox behind him. He was in full arresting officer mode, with a suit and tie and badge shining in the slanted streetlight. He came into the alley flanked by two patrol officers and headed straight for us.

“I need this area cleared now!” He whipped a finger at Trey and me. “That means you two are out of here. And if I hear one word of this in the paper tomorrow, I’ll have you both behind bars for obstruction of justice. Do you understand?”

I looked at Trey. He looked at me. We both understood completely.