Darker Than Any Shadow - By Tina Whittle Page 0,24
an assault rifle and headed for the front door. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but I knew his process—start at the beginning. My process was different. I started by finding something with a lid on it. Then I pulled the lid off.
I pointed toward the back. “Can I see the crime scene?”
She shrugged. Together, we headed for the back hallway, brooms in tow. Inside, the area was T-shaped, and standing in the crux of it, facing the double doors leading to the main room, I could see almost all of the restaurant. To my left were the office and the bathroom, that entire hall blocked by yellow crime scene tape. To my right were the storage closet and the swinging double doors marking the entrance to the kitchen.
Cricket stopped at the boundary of the police tape. I noted the particulars—here was where I’d last seen Lex alive, here the CDs I’d tripped over, here the spot where I’d dragged Lex’s body.
Then it had been all flames and smoke and screeching alarms. Now it was the hum of the fans, the brushing of the broom, the drip drip drip of water.
Cricket fingered the tape. “My own restaurant, off limits by decree of the APD.”
“It’s only tape. We could step right over that.”
She looked shocked. “You’re not serious.”
“It’ll take one second. Nobody will know.”
We both looked Trey’s way. He was out front, moving the broom in a slow trajectory at the baseboards. With a finger to my lips, I took one quick step over the tape and pulled out my cell phone. I snapped a shot of the floor, another of the wall. The bathroom door hung ajar, so I tip-toed over and peeked inside.
Point of origin, no doubt. The infamous V stained the wall beside the toilet. Everything lay sodden and ashy and smelling of decay, punctuated with incessant dripping. I could still see Lex there, sprawled in front of the sink—the bloody wound, the bruising.
“The kitchen was spared entirely,” Cricket said. “It runs on a separate sprinkler system that didn’t trigger. That’s the only good news.”
She stood outside the tape, her expression solid loss right to the middle. I took one final photo and joined her back in good citizen land.
I tucked the phone in my bag. “Don’t tell Trey.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She stepped closer. “So I hear you’re good at this?”
“Good at what?”
“Figuring stuff out. You know, unofficially, like you did last time.”
I hesitated. “Is there something you need me to figure out?”
“How about the whole freaking mess?”
I was dying to ask her about Lex, about her mysterious text, about why she had to abandon me at the bar. But I needed Trey with me when I did it, to sniff out the lies from the truth.
“Any part of the mess in particular?”
“How about that cop, what’s his name?”
“Cummings.”
“Yeah him. He seemed all right, but I got the feeling he was throwing stuff at me to see what would stick. Like he was waiting for me to say the wrong thing and then…” She drew a slash mark over her throat. “He thinks one of us killed Lex, I know he does.”
“Do you think he might be right?”
She stared at her broom. I was betting she had a secret, and I was betting it concerned Lex. But was it the secret I thought it was? Was it the secret Rico was protecting?
I suddenly realized he wasn’t there. “Rico said he and Adam were coming?”
“They had to cancel. Rico didn’t say why.”
I started to quiz her further, but stopped when I saw the red in her eyes, either from crying or lack of sleep or both. My conscience twinged yet again.
I held out my hand for the broom. “Here, let me do that for a while. You rest.”
***
I spent the next half-hour sweeping while Cricket ate lunch. Trey swept too, but eventually he propped the broom in the corner and started casing the place. Being a premises liability expert meant that he had a keen eye for physical space. Occasionally he would bend and pick up a piece of trash or run his finger along a seam in the wall. At certain points he disappeared entirely—into the parking lot, out front, poking into closets.
The storage closet in particular held his interest. Tiny and stacked with shelves, it was located next to the kitchen. I came up behind him as he examined it. Cricket put down her sandwich and came over too.