Tina Whittle_Tai Randall Mystery 01 (9 page)

Chapter 15

Garrity dumped a handful of grim photographs on the counter. Crime scene pictures, official ones. Lurid and vibrant, they hit me with the force of a punch in the stomach, and yet there was a detachment to them too. An unnerving composure.

“This is what murderers do,” he said. “This is what happens to people who get in their way.”

The photos were repulsively magnetic. One showed a woman’s hand, her palm sliced with a red line, a finger bent at an unnatural angle. The other showed a spreading pool of blood, black-red, clotting tendrils of blond hair.

I peered closer. Blond?

“That’s not Eliza,” I said. Then I noticed the date stamp on the photographs. “Garrity, these things are ten years old! What are you doing showing them to me?”

“Getting your attention.” He collected the images and shoved them in his pocket. “Getting killed is fast most of the time. You never see it coming. Life’s all chuckles and then suddenly someone’s brains are making modern art on the wall. Are you getting the point?”

I was getting the point. “Fine. I apologize for my behavior this afternoon at Beau Elan. I should have listened to Trey. Can I have my pizza now?”

***

Garrity ate like a starving teenager, in quick two-bite attacks. He looked kinetic, even sitting at the table, like his spring was wound too tight. I sat opposite. Trey took up a position near the window, his arms folded.

“I got somebody checking out that SUV following you all this morning,” Garrity said. “Guess what? It’s registered to Dylan Flint.”

My jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding.
The
Dylan Flint, the Dylan Flint who boffed what’s-her-name, that boy toy actress, and then sold the videotape on the Internet, Dylan Flint the sleaze?”

“Flint claimed it was stolen,” Trey said.

“Wouldn’t you, if you were a sleaze?”

Trey ignored me. “Did anyone ask him why he was following us?”

Garrity shook his head. “No. The officer dropped by his apartment, but there was nobody home. Same at his work, some photography studio over on Luckie Street. “

“So that’s it?” I said.

“For now. We can’t put out an APB for acting suspicious.”

“But Trey said he saw the same car at Phoenix Thursday morning. And then the parking garage cameras at Phoenix got smashed that afternoon.”

“Circumstantial.”

“What about Eliza?” Trey said. “Has there been any progress in the investigation?”

Garrity got another piece of pizza. “No weapon, no suspect. No purse either, so they’re thinking maybe a car jacking gone bad.”

“What about the guy who was following her,” I said, “the one Eric saw in the pick-up?”

“At this moment, he’s a phantom. Just like this Dylan Flint character.”

Trey kept his gaze on the horizon, his eyes focused on the ink and brilliance of the city sky. He seemed to be inhabiting his own world, and I guessed in many ways, he did.

“Do they have time of death?” he said.

“Sometime between three and six p.m.” Garrity wiped his mouth. “Eliza called in sick around nine o’clock Thursday morning, called your brother around three. It’s looking like Eric was the last person to see her alive, on record anyway.”

“So you heard his story?”

“I got the basics. Something else, though. She’d been roughed up a bit—bruises on the arms and wrists, chest, back of the neck. ME said probably forty-eight hours or so before she died.”

Forty-eight hours. Tuesday night. When Eric was still in town and they’d been at the Mardi Gras ball together.

I picked at what remained of the mushrooms. “So how bad is Eric looking?”

Garrity chewed vigorously. “Hard to say. I’m sure he knew he shouldn’t have been meeting some young, single girl under such strange circumstances.”

“I can’t believe that makes him ‘a person of suspicion.’”

“You are, too, you know.”

“That’s beginning to dawn on me.”

“Don’t take it personally. Everybody’s guilty of something, it’s a cop’s job to find out what. Your job is to be prepared.”

Trey spoke up. “Landon has approved counsel for Eric. I could talk to him about what might be available for Tai, but—”

“But,” I interjected, “since Landon has a bug up his ass about my hanging around, I don’t think I’m going to be getting any favors from him.”

Trey nodded. “Marisa is more amenable, however.”

He’d brewed another cup of hot tea for himself and was sipping it at his station at the window. His eyes didn’t have that blue flash to them, and every now and then, he tilted his head back against the wall and stared at the ceiling, taking long slow blinks.

I leaned closer to Garrity. “Is Trey okay? He looks kind of…”

Garrity waved off my concern. “He’s fine, just tired. A good night’s rest and he’ll be back to normal. Or whatever.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We finish this pizza. Then I’m taking you back to the Ritz.”

“But I left my car at Phoenix.”

“You can get it tomorrow.” He turned his cop eyes on me. “Looks like bodyguard duty falls to me this evening.”

Garrity had granite in his gaze. Could I see him killing somebody? Oh yes. Up close and efficient. But he’d have to have a good reason to do it.

“Personal protection,” I corrected.

***

Garrity went to bring his car around front, leaving Trey to make the arrangements. He talked to several people on the phone, then handed me a piece of paper with names and numbers on it.

“If you have trouble, any of these people can help you. I’d prefer if you called me first, however.”

I tucked the list into my bag. Up close, he looked exhausted, but he was still being polite, attentive even. He kept his arms crossed, though, and stayed farther away from me than personal space dictated.

“I appreciate everything you did today,” I said. “The ride, the pizza, letting me hang out here.”

He nodded.

“You’ve been very considerate,” I said.

He nodded again.

I wanted him to say something. But he just stood there, arms folded, his body slanted away from mine.

“This has been the damn strangest forty-eight hours of my life,” I said.

“There’s always tomorrow.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s what people say.”

I searched his eyes for the joke. There wasn’t one.

Chapter 16

Garrity proved to be a swift instinctive driver. The nighttime sky loomed gunmetal and dense, like the inside of a helmet, and the view through the windshield of his sedan was dotted with the streaky blur of oncoming headlights. Only a few blocks over, the raucous Buckhead party crowd was grinding into high gear, roaming like drunken gypsies from Pharr Road to East Paces Ferry.

But not me. No, I was cruising with the APD. And the APD was not in a good mood. In fact, the APD was shooting me serious cop looks, and I was starting to regret ever getting in the car with him.

“You’re mad,” I said.

“I’m not mad.”

“Then you’re not telling me something, I can tell. You’re all squinchy around the mouth. That’s either holding back or mad.”

Garrity kept his eyes on the road.

“What is it, something about Eliza? Something about my brother? Just tell me, I can take it.”

“This isn’t my case. I don’t know enough about it to hold anything back.”

The streetlights flared the car from bright to dark, intermittent slices of illumination followed by darkness. Atlanta had such a gorgeous skyline, even if it was always dotted with cranes and holes and veering half-finished angles. The Ritz-Carlton lay just around the final turn. I could see the brightness of the entrance, dazzling, rich with spotlights. Garrity pulled under the awning and flashed his badge at the valet, who backed away.

“Go to your room,” he said. “And stay there. I’ll call you in the morning.”

I wanted to ask Garrity so many questions—what had Trey been like before, was he going to get better?—but the doorman was holding the door. So I got out of the car.

I crossed my heart and held up three fingers. “On my honor, Detective.”

***

I was true to my word. Sort of. I didn’t exactly go to my room, so technically I didn’t leave it either. Instead, I took my tote bag full of research to the business center. The beige room was deserted, so I dumped my collection onto the counter. I hadn’t realized I’d gathered so much information—the Beaumonts, Phoenix, Senator Adams, and now the disreputable Dylan Flint made a messy mix. Rico always warned that this was the danger of research. He said that it was less about finding stuff and more about knowing what you’re looking at, what matters and what doesn’t.

I understood. Putting together tours was the same way—too much history would avalanche on you and bore your customers. I always approached the gig like telling a story. You find out the arc, the plot line that’s driving all the facts in front of you. The who and why and how come naturally after that.

I typed “Dylan Flint” into the search engine. Just as I expected, twelve thousand hits, most of them referencing the infamous videotape along with other, umm, interesting words. I added the word “Atlanta” and tried again. This time the first entry was for a business, a local one, on Luckie Street next to Centennial Park.

I clicked the link. It was a photography studio—Snoopshots. The images on the home page looked startlingly familiar, with their eccentric composition and off-kilter focus. It was the same nervous energy that I’d seen in the photos Mark Beaumont brought to Phoenix, the ones Charley had taken such an instant dislike to and confiscated.

“Oh yes,” I said. “Now we’re getting somewhere!”

Dylan had a blog linked to his site—also called Snoopshots—which featured a running commentary of Atlanta nightlife. Lots of seen-about-town photos sprinkled with random fashion don’ts. His most recent post was a photo of Charley Beaumont from the Mardi Gras Ball, her eyes wide, her mouth half open. It was entirely unflattering, and I suspected the entire Beaumont PR machine would roll out first thing in the morning to eliminate it from the blogosphere.

So the same guy who was following us in the Explorer was also the erratic photographer at the Mardi Gras party? But why was he taking pictures of me and Trey in the Ferrari? And even though he was seen on Phoenix property when the security cameras were destroyed, what possible reason could he have for doing such a thing? It made no sense.

I was scrolling though his blog when my cell phone rang—a local number, one I didn’t recognize. When I answered, I heard the muted echo of traffic in the background.

“Rico?”

“Look,” said a female voice, “I don’t know who you are, but I am telling you, do not trust those people, especially not that asshole manager. Or that bitch Janie, do not believe a word that comes out of that crazy redneck’s mouth.”

Who was Janie? And which cop guy, which manager? Garrity? Jake?

“Who is this? How did you get this number?”

“Listen, I’m not playin’ here. This is for real, you hear what I’m saying?”

“I can’t help you unless—”

“Shit, baby, I’m trying to help
you
, so you’d best listen—don’t trust nobody, don’t believe nobody. I’ll let you know what you need to know when you need to know it.”

A loud fading honk, like a semi passing close by, then the click of the connection being broken. I stared at the phone, utterly at a loss. This was the kind of crap that only happened to people who knew what to do about it. Nice innocent people like me didn’t get “trust no one” phone calls at midnight.

Besides, this midnight warning didn’t make sense; I only knew of one cop guy—Garrity. Hmm…What did I really know about him? Quickly, I typed “Dan Garrity” into the search box.

The first entries were the usual APD stuff. Some articles about his recent promotion, a press release or two about his work with computer fraud. Nothing personal, no blogs or weird fan fiction sites, just a slew of professional accomplishments.

And then a series of articles with a familiar name paired with it—Trey Seaver. I clicked on the first entry, an archived
Journal-Constitution
from almost two years before.

And that’s when I saw the word “fatal.”

It’s a hard word to move beyond. But there was Garrity’s name, highlighted in blue, and the text of an article that I assumed at first to be about Trey’s collision with the eighteen-wheeler.

But when I saw my brother’s name, I looked twice. And I saw that the word after “fatal” wasn’t “accident” or “crash.”

It was “shooting.” And I knew what it was that Garrity had been hiding from me.

Chapter 17

Come Sunday morning, I was feeling a twinge of guilt at not telling anyone about my mysterious phone caller. In fact, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t want to. Rico, however, had an idea.

“It’s something you have that they don’t,” he said. “You’re spiteful that way. Always gotta have something in pocket.”

He’d called me as I was getting dressed, his voice rough with exhaustion and a night of talking too loudly. And he was right—I did like to hoard my secrets. After all, I wasn’t telling him what I’d discovered about Trey the night before, and I told Rico everything.

I took the phone outside to a secluded area off the lobby where the valets hung out on their breaks. They were a wholesome-looking bunch, young and well-scrubbed. They all smoked. I tried to stay upwind, but the spiky bite of secondhand smoke found me anyway, curling into my nose. I shoved two pieces of gum into my mouth and took a seat on the edge of a planter.

“Hey, can you trace a call backwards, from a phone number?”

“Depends. Residential, cell phone, payphone?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Of course you don’t. But yeah, I can give it a shot.”

“I knew you could. You busy this morning?”

“Got nothin’ but time.”

“Cool.” I hopped down off the planter. “How about giving me a lift? My car is still at Phoenix, and there’s this field trip I’m dying to take.”

***

I waited for him in the lobby. When he arrived, the two women sitting opposite me checked him out like he was some rap singer they should have recognized. Or perhaps a criminal from a wanted poster.

He did look startling. Baggy black pants flowing over high-top Converses. A red Falcons jersey with a black 69. Gold hoops in each ear, a diamond stud in his nose, and a goatee, neatly-trimmed and black as his eyes, which were hidden behind dark sunglasses this morning.

I jumped up and grabbed him in a bear hug. Up close, his skin looked darker than usual, more café than au lait. I waited for the Hollywood smile, but it was low wattage.

I pulled off the shades. His eyes were red-rimmed and bleary.

“Jeez,” I said. “How much sleep did you get?”

He snatched the glasses back. “Three hours, and that’s roundin’ up.” He sat down, spread his legs. “So what’s the plan?”

I shouldered my tote bag and grinned at him.

He sighed loudly. “Oh crap.”

***

We took his car, a leased Chevy Tahoe that wolfed down a third of his take-home pay. He’d recently converted the sound system to MP3, so I no longer had to kick through a pile of CDs to make room for my feet. He had one of his mixes playing, the bass cranked up so high his car was practically bouncing off the line. The bank employees walking down Peachtree stared, like they knew exactly who we were.

“Go left,” I said.

We inched down Peachtree for a half mile or so, past the commuters, past the newspaper men hollering the
Journal-Constitution
headlines. I saw a panhandler talking on a cell phone while another slept under a blanket of wrapping paper.

Rico followed my directions without question, heading south until we hit the old part of the city, where the lofts of Cabbagetown rose over the MARTA railway line.

“Great,” he said, “we’re going to the zoo. You know I hate the zoo.”

“Not the zoo.”

“Unless the pandas are out. I’ll go see the baby panda.”

“Maybe later. Turn left.”

Rico squinted ahead. “Oh man, I hate it when you do this to me.”

“Do what?”

“Drag me into your ghost shit.”

We pulled in front of the arching brick gates of Oakland Cemetery, eighty-eight verdant acres dotted with some of Atlanta’s most elite dead people. The azaleas had yet to burst into full glory, but daffodils dotted the walking path in profusion. Two runners and their dogs stretched at the entrance as a docent gathered a group of tourists.

I shook my head. “I told you, ghosts don’t usually haunt cemeteries—not enough residual energy.”

He continued reluctantly through the gates, parking just past the visitor’s center near an enormous magnolia. We got out with some door slamming on Rico’s part, some kicking and muttering too.

He peered over his sunglasses. “White chicks and ghost shit. I do not get it.”

As we walked, I opened my Beaumont folder. It now contained an article about the reburial of Charley’s great-grandfather near the Confederate section. We followed my map to that area of the park, where I spotted the enormous stone lion I’d seen in the picture at Jake Whitaker’s office. The Southern Cross fluttered crisply above the marble creature, its paws clutching a cannonball, its face contorted in dying anguish.

Rico stopped walking and took off his sunglasses. “Oh no, we are not doing
Gone with the Wind
.”

“At least it’s not ghost shit.”

“Look at this skin, baby girl, what color is this skin?”

I patted a massive bicep and grinned. “Hot chocolate.”

“Shut up.” He put his sunglasses back on. “You better have a good reason for dragging me to the Great Cracker Burial Ground.”

“Stop being deliberately offensive, you know I hate that. I’m looking for somebody.”

“Clark Gable?”

“No. Somebody who was buried here last year. Or reburied here actually.”

“So this
is
ghost shit.”

I ignored him. The Oakland Preservation Society representative I’d spoken with that morning had been very helpful—when I mentioned the lion, she knew exactly which grave I was talking about. Even though the last plot had been sold in 1865, families occasionally put one up for sale, and the Oakland staff maintained a list of interested buyers, like Mark Beaumont. She’d demurred when I’d asked how much it had cost.

“Over there,” I said.

Shadrick Turner Floyd’s grave nestled under a dogwood. It wasn’t in the Confederate section proper, but in a private plot next to it. I got out my cell phone and took a picture.

“It’s a pretty spot,” I said. “You can see the lion, the obelisk—”

“The MARTA,” Rico replied.

To prove his point, a train rumbled by. Private Floyd didn’t have as prestigious a plot as the late Maynard Jackson, the city’s first African-American mayor—his grave was sited catty-cornered with a prime view of the Atlanta skyline—but it wasn’t bad.

“They imported him from Charley Beaumont’s hometown in…” I peered closer at the tombstone. “Tennessee, apparently, not far from South Carolina-Georgia border. Found the remains in a cotton field. The Daughters of the Confederacy contacted Charley about it and here we are.”

“I thought she was from Miami.”

“Apparently she has these redneck credentials that she only drags up if it’s politically useful.”

“Why is it politically useful to drag your dead great-great-grandfather all the way to Atlanta?”

I pointed at the photograph accompanying the article, a twin of the one in Jake Whitaker’s office, looking once again upon Senator Harrison Adam’s beaming robust face.

“This, you cannot spin wrong. Somebody’s gonna be pissed at you no matter what opinion you hold about the Confederate flag. But this…” I gestured toward the grave. It was well-manicured and tidy, with tasteful purple irises. “This is history.”

“It’s a stunt,” Rico replied. He plopped down on a bench and examined his fingernails. “The Beaumonts dug up this man and dragged him from West Bum-Fucked to be buried here, just to get some good press so their boy will get elected.”

“Looking like.”

“What could this possibly have to do with the real live dead girl, the one in your brother’s driveway?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m gonna find out.” I pulled at his elbow. “Come on. I gotta get my car back.”

***

Rico drove me back to Phoenix. He put me out at the main entrance, and I shoved three squares of gum in my mouth. He gave the building the skunk eye, then rejected my invitation to come inside.

“Just call me later. I’ll have that number looked up by then, unless it’s something tricky.” He examined me over his shades. “You quit smoking again?”

“Yeah, a week ago. Why?”

“Because you haven’t lit up once all morning. And you just ground out that gum wrapper with your shoe.”

I looked down. “Oops.”

***

The parking garage felt more deserted than usual. My footsteps echoed damply, and I didn’t see another person. I spotted Trey’s Ferrari right off—he’d parked it in a faraway corner and left it there, like a cowboy might tether his stallion before heading into the saloon. But no people.

My car was exactly where I’d left it, next to the elevator. Above it, I saw the empty spot where the security camera had been until someone had smashed it, that someone most probably being Dylan Flint. No security cameras meant no security. My paranoia quotient ratcheted up a few notches.

I quickened my pace, got out my keys. Suddenly, my little red Echo looked as sweet and welcoming and safe as a fortress.

I unlocked the door and climbed in. I was fastening my seatbelt when I saw the flyer on the windshield. My first thought was annoyance. My second thought was surprise. And my third thought? There wasn’t one. Fear will do that, short circuit your thoughts.

Because it wasn’t a flyer. It was a simple round target, black and white and clean as a whistle. Except that the center was a picture of me, with the middle shot clean through. Ragged edges, massive hole, probably something large caliber, something lethal.

A bull’s eye.