Double Minds (5 page)

She hoped Rayzo wasn’t taking her brother on a wild goose chase, hunting down good people and trying to make killers out of them.

Gibson went back to the printer and pulled the next dozen out. He looked so young, so over his head. He was twenty-eight, two years older than she, yet she
felt
older, and somehow responsible for him. What was he doing in Homicide, this man who never listened? How would he ever solve a murder?

She went through the rest of the pictures but had nothing to offer them. Finally, Rayzo got up.

“Where are you going?” Gibson asked.

“Home, to bed.”

“But the case is still hot.”

“That’s what I got a young partner for. Do what you can. I’ll call you in the morning.”

Gibson followed him to the door. “What do you think I should do next?”

“Search the dumpsters in the area for a gun.”

“In the middle of the night?” Parker asked.

“Like the man said, the case is still hot. I ain’t crawlin’ in no dumpsters. I’ve paid
my
dues.” Rayzo ambled out toward his car.

Gibson looked a little pale. “Well, guess I’d better get on it.” He took the stack of pictures and looked around for his keys. Eventually, he realized they were in his pocket. “I gotta go.”

She suddenly felt the chill of vulnerability. She didn’t want to be here alone. “Do you think you’ll be back tonight?”

“Doubtful. I have a lot to do. You’re not scared, are you?”

She didn’t want him to know she was. She’d spent a lot of time proving to her family how independent she was. “Should I be?”

“Maybe. You need to load that gun I bought you.”

She hated guns, and when he’d given it to her for her last birthday, she’d kept it in the box, refusing to put ammunition in it. In fact, he had forgotten to give her bullets—or rounds, or whatever they called them—so the gun was useless, just as she wanted it.

“Yeah, I still have it.”

“Well, don’t be afraid to use it if anything happens,” he said. “You should get a dog.”

“I don’t usually need one. I have a cop who sleeps on my couch.”

She watched as he left, then turned the light back off and went to her room, changed into some sweatpants and a T-shirt, and slipped under her covers. She would leave the lamp on in the living room.

She tried to sleep, but she dreamed of dead bodies, a brain-movie scored by a melody she’d never heard. When she woke, she was in a cold sweat. She went into the living room to see if Gibson had come in. The couch was empty.

As she often did when she woke in the night, she went into her music room and fired up her computer. Opening her recording software, she picked out the melody she’d heard in her dream. Slowly, she began to flesh it out with lyrics—a song about the fragility of life, the sudden ending of innocence, the shock of a life ripped away.

Though she attributed her gift of ideas and talent to God, she saw many of her songs through the eyes of a character named Lola, whom she’d created years before. No one knew about this alter-ego who lived out Parker’s emotions. She never mentioned Lola in the songs, but her quiet friend came to her at night in fits of brilliance and urged her to write songs that Serene could record. Lola had experienced divorce and brutal breakups, the death of a child, the grief of a mother. She had been so happy that she wanted to dance, had praised God so intensely that she could almost fly. She’d been suicidal, brokenhearted, grief-stricken, and abandoned. She had commitment issues, control issues, anger issues, and she battled loneliness and passion. She’d been in love more times than Parker could count.

Lola was insecure yet confident, strong yet fainthearted, courageous yet unruly, and she always seemed to land on her feet. Lola provided Parker a way of holding her problems at bay so she could observe them from every angle.

Tonight Lola had been treading through Parker’s dreams, and now the after-effect, the composing of a song that might be one of her best yet, gave Parker a little satisfaction. This one she would keep for herself, for her own CD. This one might actually put her on the map.

By the time Gibson came in, scruffy, starving, and dying for sleep, Parker found that she was exhausted as well. She tossed Gibsona pillow, saying, “I didn’t sleep much at all. I can’t believe I have to go to work in three hours.”

“Not today,” he said. “The building’s sealed. Nobody’s going there today.”

Relieved, she went back to bed. She slept deeply for the next three hours.

And then she woke with a grief she hadn’t expected and decided she needed to do something about it.

CHAPTER

SIX

Belmont University sat at the end of one of the major streets that made up Music Row. Belmont Mansion loomed in all its antebellum glory as the frontal piece of the campus on Wedge wood Avenue, along with a matching administration building with a circular drive. Parker passed those buildings where she’d studied Music Business. The school would have been out of her price range had her mother not been a professor in the English Department. That gave Parker free tuition and a great education. She turned onto the street that would take her to the dorms. The campus commons couldn’t be seen from the street because the buildings were all turned inward, providing a perimeter for the campus.

Brenna, being a freshman, had most likely lived in one of two dorms—Wright or Maddox. Parker imagined that word of the murder had spread like wildfire among the girls, so she took her chances and went into Maddox Hall. She crossed the lobby to the front desk. A girl sat at a computer with her chin propped on her hands, her Facebook screen up. She looked up when Parker approached her.

“Can I help you?”

Parker leaned in and softened her voice. “Yes, I work at Colgate Studios.”

The girl perked up. “Where Brenna was murdered.”

“Yes,” Parker said. “Did you know her?”

The girl swept her bangs behind her ears, but they fell back into her face. “I saw her sometimes, but I never really talked to her. I didn’t have any classes with her. Do they know who did it yet?”

“Not yet. I’d really like to talk to some of her friends. Her roommate, maybe. Tell her how sorry I am.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll call her.”

“Thanks.” Parker knew the roommate would have to come down to get her. Security prevented visitors from going up without a resident to escort them. She went to one of the couches in the lobby. A TV was blaring
America’s Next Top Model
. A girl on a loveseat nearby was watching. Parker tried to focus on the search for the next poor girl to starve herself invisible, but her mind kept wandering back to Brenna’s roommate. What would Parker say to the girl? Her stomach tumbled, and that sick feeling returned.

She heard the elevator open down the hall and looked in that direction. A girl with black spiked hair and a nose ring emerged. Mascara was smeared beneath her eyes, and her nose was red, as though she’d cried all night. She wore a bulky sweater with too-long sleeves that she bunched in her fists.

“Hi, are you the one from Colgate?” the girl asked as she approached Parker.

Parker introduced herself. “I worked with Brenna.”

The girl glanced toward the desk. “Yeah, she told me on the phone. I’m Marta. Brenna told me about you. She really liked you. You’re the songwriter, right?”

Parker was surprised that Brenna would have shared that about her. “Yeah, and also the receptionist. She was at my desk when …when it happened.”

Marta’s face crumpled. “What was she doing there? She worked afternoons, not nights.”

“I had the same question. Were you two good friends or just roommates?”

“We didn’t even know each other when we came here last fall,” Marta said, hugging herself. “But we became good friends. We were going to room together again next fall, in Hillsboro.”

Hillsboro was one of the nicer campus apartments. Upperclassmen got first pick, but younger students participated in a lottery to determine who could live there. At least, that was how they’d done it when Parker went there. And since she couldn’t afford Hillsboro, she’d worked as an RA and lived in the dorms.

“You want to come up? You might as well. Everybody else has.”

“Yeah, if it’s okay.” They started to the elevator. “What do you mean, everybody else has?”

“I mean the cops. They were here, looking around. I thought they were gonna make me move out. It was like a crime scene. I sat out in the hall with the other girls on my floor, waiting for them to finish. They took a lot of her stuff. Her computer, her notebooks, her journal.”

They reached a door with a dry erase board on the outside, with the names Brenna and Marta drawn in curvy block letters and colored in with hot pink. It was filled with messages left from other students.

Brenna, we’ll miss you so much
.

Brenna, we had so much fun hanging out with you. I don’t know what to do now
.

Brenna, my heart is breaking. I’m waiting for you to walk in and say it isn’t true
.

Brenna, you’re a bright angel in heaven right now
.

Marta looked past the messages and unlocked the door. Parker followed her in and looked around. “Wow, this is a blast from the past.”

Marta closed the door and wiped her nose on a Kleenex wadded in her fist. “You went here?”

“Yeah. Graduated four years ago. Lived here the whole time.” There were pictures of Brenna everywhere. Her bed, lofted to five feet off the ground, was unmade, and beneath it sat two desks, side by side.

“My brother’s a homicide detective, probably one of the ones you spoke to last night. He’ll do his best to find the person responsible.”

“I hope so,” Marta said. “We hung with some of the same people. I’m scared now. It could have been anybody.”

Parker bent to study the picture on Brenna’s nightstand of her with her famous parents. “Is Brenna an only child?”

“No, she has a brother. That’s him, there.”

Marta pointed toward a framed photo. Brenna’s brother sat on some steps, elbows on his knees. He had shoulder-length brown hair and brooding eyes.

“Were they close?”

“Not particularly. They’re half-brother and sister. Didn’t grow up together.”

Parker noticed another framed print—Brenna’s boyfriend. “Chase, right? What’s his last name?”

“McElraney You should have seen him last night when he found out. It was awful. He was freaking out. He heard it on the news and put his fist through his wall. I went over there as soon as I heard. I thought he was about to kill himself.”

“Where does he live?”

“Over in Bruin Hills.”

Parker nodded. Those were the mid-level campus apartments. “Seen him this morning?”

“No. I hope he got some sleep.”

“Do you know if they had been getting along?”

“Pretty much. They had their ups and downs. But he’s a really nice guy, and he loves her a lot.” Marta sat down on Brenna’s desk chair. “I feel really guilty about this. She wouldn’t have gone to Colgate to study if I hadn’t been rehearsing my songs in here.”

Parker remembered the sounds that had reverberated through the dorm when she was here. A drummer next door who’d practiced night and day. A roommate who was a vocal performance major, who’d sung every waking moment. A saxophone player across the hall. At ten o’clock, they were all supposed to quit rehearsing so people could sleep. But most students didn’t have the luxury of waiting until ten o’clock to begin studying.

“I had to perform in vocal seminar today. So I’ve been rehearsing and rehearsing. I should have found another place to practice.” “Where was Chase?”

“He had a class last night. She said his roommate and his girlfriend were there, so Brenna had to find somewhere else.”

“What was she studying for?”

“Music Theory.”

“Tough class.” Parker remembered it well. It was the class that so many freshmen flunked. As musically oriented as she was, Parker had barely squeaked by. “I’d like to go see Chase. Could you tell me his apartment number?”

“I’ll take you there. I need to get out, and I was planning to go check on him.” She checked the clock. “My parents are on their way here from Indiana. They’re all freaked out, thinking somebody’s killing students. But they won’t be here for a while. Just let me brush my teeth.”

While she waited, Parker scanned the other side of the room, looking for anything Gibson might have missed. Beneath Marta’s loft bed was a futon. Parker looked beneath it and found some fallen popcorn and wadded paper that no one had retrieved. Glancing back at the bathroom, she picked up and unwadded the paper. It was nothing. Just some download instructions from a computer help screen. She tossed it into the empty waste basket, realizing that the cops had probably emptied it.

Brenna’s bed had an apple-green comforter, with pink and purple pillows scattered across it. She didn’t seem to have any Greek accessories. She must not have rushed, which wasn’t uncommon among the music students at Belmont. Sororities and fraternities held little appeal for them. They’d rather be in bands.

She stepped onto the ladder to Brenna’s bed to get a closer look. Brenna had an alarm clock that apparently shared the bed with her, along with a phone charger, her contact case, and a few other items. A small lamp was clipped to her headboard.

Parker remembered lofting her own bed like this her first semester. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but she wound up hating it. There was no way to have a table that high to put your stuff on. No one could sit on the bed without climbing up. You couldn’t even slide out of bed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night; you had to climb down the ladder, then back up. Second-semester freshmen rarely repeated the set-up.

She stepped back down and went to Brenna’s desk, opened the top drawer. A bunch of pens, some paper clips, Post-it notes … Gibson had probably taken anything of interest.

Parker closed the drawer quietly as she heard the water cut off. Marta came out of the bathroom, her face washed and hair spiked a little more intentionally. She grabbed her cell phone and a purse made of frayed denim. “Okay, I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s go see Chase.”