Just seeing Adam was enough of a motivation to keep her own emotions locked down. She didn’t want to be forced into taking a mental-health leave. Couldn’t stand the thought of her family knowing she’d cracked from the strain. ‘You’re here early,’ she offered.
Adam gave her an annoyed look. ‘Yeah. I got called to a crime scene this morning and was halfway there when Dispatch said, “Never mind.” Another detective had taken over.’
Scarlett winced. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘You should be. I put on a tie and everything.’ He studied her face. ‘You okay, kid?’
They’d known each other for years and she genuinely liked him. That he was Deacon’s first cousin meant she and Deacon had been able to stay in touch with him while he’d been on leave. Adam had seemed relaxed, but there were still shadows in his eyes.
‘Yeah. I’m okay,’ she said. ‘You?’
‘Just peachy. Came in and did some paperwork since I was all dressed up anyway.’
Scarlett made herself smile. ‘You can’t let a tie like that go to waste.’
‘Exactly. Now I’m gonna take my mother to breakfast.’ Rising, he hesitated, then squeezed her shoulder. ‘This morning was a rough one, huh?’
‘Yeah.’ She’d let him think that because she didn’t want to admit to anyone that she’d lost it, sobbing in her own foyer as she thought about Michelle. Besides, any case involving the discovery of a body in an alley was a rough one. ‘But I’ll be fine, thanks. Say hi to your mom.’
Waiting until he was gone, she logged into her email account and felt her shoulders relax. The top email in her inbox was from Marcus O’Bannion. The newsman had come through.
There was no attachment, but there was a link followed by a short note.
Detective Bishop,
At this link you can download the video files we discussed earlier. Please do not hesitate to call if you have any further questions.
M. O’Bannion
Publisher and CEO, The Ledger, Inc.
There was no mention of the list of those who’d threatened him either in the email or the link he’d provided. There were, however, eleven video files, each labeled with a date. The first file was dated two weeks before, the last with today’s date. That would be the murder in the alley.
Still raw from her conversation with Bryan, Scarlett decided to put the murder video off for a little while. Just until the memories of Michelle’s crime scene receded a bit more. She didn’t want to taint her first impressions of Tala’s murder with memories of Michelle’s. That was simply good investigative procedure. At least that was what she told herself.
She downloaded the first video and hit PLAY. It was in color, but the quality was grainy, the angle odd. It was Marcus’s visual perspective, she realized, the camera planted on the edge of the bill of his cap.
‘Easy, old girl.’ Marcus’s voice came out of her speakers, rich and lovely, sending a shiver down Scarlett’s spine and licking across her skin. He looked down, bringing into view his feet, the sidewalk, and a slightly limping Sheltie on a leash. ‘Come, BB. Let’s sit here.’
His dog, she thought. He’d said the dog was elderly and couldn’t run fast, that he’d gathered her in his arms when he’d run after Tala the first time, but that incident had not been recorded. On the screen, the dog curled up at his feet and blew out an exhausted sigh before resting her muzzle on her front paws.
‘I know,’ he murmured. ‘I miss him too.’ Then he switched to a companionable tone. ‘So, BB, do you think the girl will show up tonight? The one with the prissy dog? I sat here and waited last night and the night before, but she didn’t come.’ The camera slowly panned in a circle as Marcus checked the woods all around him. ‘I’m going to try one more time, and if she doesn’t come back, I’m going to have to drop it. I can’t help her if she won’t come close enough for me to find out what’s wrong.’
Nearly two minutes passed with no activity except for the few times Marcus leaned down to scratch BB behind the ears. ‘Maybe it was the singing,’ he murmured to the dog. ‘I suppose it can’t hurt to try.’
Scarlett had expected the Vince Gill ballad, had braced herself for the memory, but what came out of the speakers hit her far harder. ‘Ave Maria’. Her heart stuttered, her breath backing up in her lungs. The last time she’d heard it had been at her nephew’s christening, which was the last time she’d set foot in a church. She could only hope that none of her single brothers would get married and that the married brothers would have no more children who had to be christened, because weddings, christenings and funerals were the only times she forced herself to enter a church. To kneel. To grit her teeth while everyone around her prayed.
Marcus’s ‘Ave Maria’ was the most beautiful rendition she’d ever heard – clear and pure and strong. Still, she was relieved when he suddenly broke off, the camera on his cap swinging in a wide arc as he twisted to look behind him.
There Tala stood, barely visible behind the line of trees where she waited, poised to flee. She wore a white polo shirt and jeans, just as she’d worn today. At her side was a tall white standard poodle, cut the fancy way, with rosettes on its hindquarters, puffy pompons around its ankles and a topknot on its head. It was groomed like the dogs she’d seen on that famous dog show that came on TV on Thanksgiving Day, right after the Macy’s Parade.
Putting ‘Ave Maria’ from her mind, she focused on the dog. A dog that fancy would have to be groomed frequently, she thought – and had an aha moment. Groomers would probably be more inclined to answer questions than vets would. Asking a vet about an animal’s owner was an interrogation. Asking a groomer for the names of owners of poodles he or she had groomed – that was getting a reference. She’d written ‘groomer’ on the notepad on her desk when Marcus began to sing again, and all thought fled.
This time he did choose Vince Gill’s ‘Go Rest High On That Mountain’, catching her unprepared. Her stuttering heart rose to fill her throat and tears flooded her eyes as the memory of funeral after funeral flashed through her mind. Michelle’s. Then the one for the best friend of her oldest brother, killed in Iraq. A colleague, shot in the line of duty. A firefighter she’d grown up with, killed in a blaze. So many others that it hurt to recall. And, of course, the funeral of Marcus’s brother. Whoever had planned Mikhail’s funeral had hired the star tenor with the Cincinnati Opera to sing the song, and he’d done a commendable job. But Marcus’s version . . .
It broke her heart, but it also soothed it.
Tala, too, had been drawn to Marcus’s song. On the video, she moved slowly but carefully through the trees until she came to a path that met the small clearing where Marcus remained seated on the bench, turning only his head to follow her progress. Tears ran down the young woman’s face unchecked, one hand pressed to her mouth, muffling the sobs that shook her slim shoulders. Her other hand stayed fisted around the dog’s leash.
She stood like that until he’d sung the last note. Marcus’s microphone picked up his very audible swallow, then his cleared throat.
‘Why are you crying?’ he asked so gently that Scarlett found herself pressing the heel of her hand to her heart to alleviate the ache there.
The camera jostled as he started to rise, but an instant later Tala took off through the trees, the white of her polo shirt and the white of the dog visible until she turned a corner, taking a path out of the park.
At least we know which way she ran. It would give Scarlett a place to direct the uniforms who were gathering at this very moment to canvass the neighborhoods around the park, showing Tala’s photo to the residents. And the dog’s too. That dog was so distinctive that it must be well known in the neighborhood where it lived.
She backed up the video to the point where Tala and the dog appeared, then went frame by frame until she found the clearest image from which to pull the still photo. Zooming in, she checked out the shiny stones on the poodle’s pink collar – she counted at least six that were so large they had to be rhinestones. But if Marcus was right and they really were diamonds? The very notion made Scarlett’s blood boil. How dare they? The couple who owned Tala and her family threw away hundreds, even thousands of dollars on a damn collar for a dog.