Darker Than Any Shadow

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.

A large chunk of the crowd still hung at the edges, fresh faces interspersed. I was betting every single one was a squeaky-clean innocent bystander. Anyone with a whiff of misbehavior on their record had hightailed it before the black-uniformed wave swept the vicinity.

Cummings jabbed his chin toward the restaurant. “Did you see any kind of weapon?”

“No.” I remembered the body on the floor, the neat circle of blood on Lex’s chest. “Was he stabbed? Shot?”

“We won’t know for sure until the autopsy.”

“There wasn’t much blood.”

“A fatal wound doesn’t always involve a lot of blood.”

“So you’re saying—”

“I’m asking you to keep an open mind—it may not be a gun or knife we’re looking for. Did you see anything, however unusual, that could have killed him?”

I thought hard. “No. I’m sorry.”

“Anybody acting out of the ordinary?”

“There were so many people here tonight, most of them people I didn’t know.” Then I remembered. “Have you talked to a guy named Vigil?”

Cummings shook his head, interest piqued. So I explained that story, soft-pedaling the part where Trey showed up because of said Vigil, who had a bone to pick with Rico.

“Did you see this Vigil person here tonight?”

“No. But I’m not sure I’d recognize him in a crowd. I’ve only seen him on stage.”

Cummings kept writing. “So this was the first time you’d met Lex?”

“I’d seen him perform, but this was my first time meeting him, yes. Rico pointed him out.”

“You mean the poet who was performing when the alarm went off?” He checked his notes. “Richard Worthington?”

It took me a second to make the connection. I hadn’t heard his full name since high school. “He goes by Rico now.”

“You two were here together?”

“Together like a couple? No, we’re just friends.”

I immediately wanted to take that back. Why did people use the word “just” to describe a friendship, as if friendship wasn’t deep and real and intense? As if only romance could be that serious. Or that complicated.

“Best friends,” I corrected. “But I came here with Trey.”

“You and Seaver? Really?”

He glanced at Trey, then reconsidered me anew. I was familiar with the look. People always assumed a man who looked like James Bond would have no interest in a rednecky woman with falling-down hair.

I shot him a look back. “Yes, me and Seaver. You wanna drag him over here to verify?”

“I’ll take your word on it. But let’s get back to Lex—you said you had a conversation with him in the hallway?”

“He threw some bravado my way, hit on me, then took a call from somebody he referred to as his ‘lady friend.’ That’s the sum total of our interaction.”

“Was this before or after his altercation with Jackson Bentley?”

“After. But you’ll need to ask Jackson about that.”

“I already have.”

I got a surge of annoyance. I hated trick questions. Cummings’ meter ticked one degree toward bad cop.

He tapped his pen on the page several times, then leaned closer in a just-between-us way. “Look, I heard you got railroaded during that last mess. Some guys like the power play routine, but I don’t work that way. You’re not a suspect, and I don’t plan on treating you like one.”

I nodded, but I knew better. Because good cop or bad, he was lying. I was absolutely a suspect. I found the body, after all, and cops always look extra hard at those of us unfortunate enough to stumble onto a corpse.

“I swear, Detective, I don’t know a damn thing about Lex. He left for the parking lot after our conversation, and he left alive and well.” I jutted my chin in Trey’s direction. “You can ask Trey. He saw him smoking a cigarette out there.”

My fingertips itched at the mention of the word “cigarette.” Nothing like a Q&A with the cops to kick a nicotine craving up a decibel or two.

“This ‘lady friend’ who called him, she have a name?”

“I’m sure she does, but I don’t know it. Somebody on the team might, though.” I hesitated. “Somebody needs to tell her, whoever she is. If it were my boyfriend…”

The memory of the scene flared again. Lex, sprawled on the floor, the red stain on the white tee-shirt, right over his heart. I imagined Trey in his place and shuddered.

Cummings noticed. “I know this is hard. But I need to hear about when you found Lex.”

I described it in as much detail as I could—the water, the bathroom smell, the smoke. The way Lex’s head tilted askew, as if he’d hit something on his way down. The bruising around his eye, the bloody split lip. The memory trembled in my retelling, as gray and shifting and insubstantial as smoke.

I tried to shake the scene into focus. “I keep thinking there’s something I’m missing.”

“Take your time. No rush.”

I concentrated, but in my mind’s eye, Lex was two-dimensional. All I could see was the red splotch. Everything else faded into the background.

“Nothing. Sorry.”

“Did you happen to see his cell phone in the bathroom?”

“The black one, with the rhinestones? No. It wasn’t in his pocket?”

“It wasn’t on the body. But you reported seeing it the last time you saw him alive, right?”

“Right.”

Lex’s phone was certainly a bank vault of data. Photos, e-mails, numbers, secrets. Little wonder someone had snatched it. I watched Cummings scribble in the margins of his notebook. I craned to get a look, but couldn’t make out anything.

He closed his book with a snap. “Thank you for your time, Ms. Randolph. We’ll be in touch.”

I stood to leave. Cummings shoved his pen in his pocket.

“Oh, and one more thing.”

I sighed. “I know, I know. Let me tell Trey.”

“Tell him what?”

I hesitated. “You’re about to take me downtown, aren’t you?”

He looked surprised. “No. I just wanted to say congratulations. Seaver’s a great guy. I’m glad he’s doing good.”

He clapped me on the shoulder. I stood there dumbfounded and watched him go.