WHEN THE MUSIC DIES (MUSIC CITY MURDERS Book 1) (12 page)

Brad thought for a moment. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe he could pick up some new gunsmith customers and even pocket some prize money.

“Where is this place?”

Arnie explained how to find the lodge. “You can come anytime you want after 10:30. It would be great to have you with us.”

“Maybe I’ll come by for a short visit.”

“Great. Sheila will be excited. Man, it’s really good to see you again. I thought maybe you’d moved away.”

“I considered it after I lost Julie, but I enjoy my place. I like the solitude.”

“Sounds great. Well, I can’t wait for you to see our lodge.”

“You never said what the name of the lodge is.”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t. It’s the White-Tail Lodge.”

“A bunch of deer hunters, huh?”

“Yeah well, we say
that
isn’t the reason for the name.”

“Oh?” Brad asked.

“Yeah, it really means you got to have a white tail to get in.” Arnie laughed and slapped Brad on the back. “We’ll see you in a few hours, buddy. Don’t forget your guns.”

Mustafa’s Restaurant

Nashville, Tennessee

Tuesday Morning

“Excuse me, Mr. Mustafa. There is a Mr. Daran Hamid here to see you in the lobby,” the young waitress said.

“Thank you. Tell him I will be right there.”

The round restaurateur shuffled from his office in the rear of his Middle Eastern eatery and up the main aisle to greet his visitor.

“Mr. Daran—welcome to Mustafa’s. I hear you are about to celebrate a glorious event.” Mustafa grabbed Daran’s hand in both of his.

“Yes,” Daran stood a little straighter. “Today, after eight long years, I become an American citizen.”

“Congratulations. I too, realized that honor almost twelve years ago. This is a happy day. How can I help you to enjoy it?”

“My supervisor and your friend, Mr. Zaid Zebari recommended that I ask you to prepare the food for my celebration.”

“Yes, he told me. I would be honored. What can I prepare for you and your guests? Is the celebration this evening?”

“Yes, if it is possible, I would like to pick up the food at seven.”

“That should be no problem.” Mustafa pulled a pad and pen from the pocket of his white shirt. “Now, what would you like to serve?”

“Do you have a specialty?”

“Oh, yes. We have many, but our Mixed Grill is our most popular selection for groups.

“That sounds good,” Daran said. “I am expecting twenty people, maybe a few more.”

“Very good.” Mustafa made notes. “If you can wait here, I will return with the ticket for your food. You can pay tonight when you pick it up.”

“Thank you.” Daran glanced at his wristwatch.

After a moment, Mustafa returned with a white bag. “Here you are. This is my gift to you, to honor you on this important day in your life. This is more than enough Baklava for your guests tonight. You can take it with you now. You will have enough to carry this evening with food for twenty-five.”

“I do not know what to say.”

“Say nothing, but promise me you will enjoy Mustafa’s creations and then tell everyone you meet.” Mustafa laughed.

“I promise. Thank you very much for your gift.” Daran dropped the ticket into the bag.

“You are most welcome. I will see you this evening.”

“Yes,” Daran said. “I will be here.”

Daran smiled as he jogged to his car in the light rain, thinking of how memorable this special day was going to be.

As he backed from his parking space, he paused to allow a large green delivery truck to pass by. Checking his watch, he still had plenty of time to get to the ceremony.

Once out of the parking space, he accelerated around the building to see the truck stop abruptly in front of him. He stomped on his brakes. That’s when he felt the jolt from behind.

I-65 South

Nashville, Tennessee

Tuesday Morning

The rain was steady and had been since before daybreak.

“I got the worst damn luck,” Detective Jack Hogue mumbled as he stared through beaded raindrops on the passenger side window.

“Now what’s your problem?” Cris Vega asked.

“We ain’t gonna find zip for evidence in this shit.”

“Hey, it rains this time of year,” Cris said. “You ought to be used to it. There’s not a lot you’re going to be able to do about it, you know.”

“It still pisses me off.”

“Everything pisses you off, Hogue. Maybe you should have been on your knees this morning asking God to postpone this mess.”

“I get tired of these high maintenance calls. You’d think we could draw a simple, indoor domestic shooting with the wife sitting with blood on her hands and a smoking .38 in her lap. But no, we got flood duty.”

“We all get tired of it,” Vega said. “I’m tired of people blowing each other’s brains out and expecting us to create some sense from what happened and then make it all better, but so far it hasn’t stopped too many of them. Until it does, we got a job to do partner, rain or shine.”

Detective Cris Vega was small compared to most of the men in the department, but even at five-foot five, she exhibited a presence respected throughout the department. Short black hair in a shag cut with a mocha complexion that required no makeup; she was both physically and emotionally strong. Her confidence was fortified by her years as a Mexican-American growing up on the streets of Houston, Texas, where even the boys hesitated before crossing her. She was a cop’s kid; straight by the book, no bullshit and intolerant of incompetence and stupidity. Both of the latter were specialties of her new recycled partner.

Jack Hogue was a crude and opinionated thirty-two year veteran of the Nashville Police Department who spent much of his tenure riding the coattails of his friend, and partner of twelve years, Detective Gilbert Murdock. Now that Murdock had taken his retirement, Hogue’s bigotry and his questionable performance were primed for exposure.

“Why are you parking up here?”

“Hogue, look down at the Interstate. Do you want to try and climb that embankment in the pouring rain? Or, would you rather slip over this railing, jump down three or four feet and be thirty seconds from the crime scene?”

Hogue grunted, knowing his agility level at such tasks.

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,
partner.
I didn’t start this line of work yesterday, you know.”

“Really, Vega? I took you for a rookie.” Hogue couldn’t resist being a smart ass.

“I got your rookie right here, asshole.” Cris saluted Hogue with her middle finger.

“Let’s go.” Cris turned up the collar of her trench coat, grabbed her umbrella and charged into the downpour. With the umbrella over her head in one hand, she resembled a circus act as she stepped up onto the railing and then down on the other side. Using one hand to steady herself, she paused a moment squatting on top of the short wall. She jumped and landed next to the base of the wall.

Hogue watched her athletic display from the comfortably dry sedan and rolled his eyes. It took a bit longer for him to leave the car and longer still to negotiate the railing. When he finally scooted off the top of the wall, his umbrella was in the grass, and he was soaked to his shorts.

“What do you have so far?” Cris asked as she held up her shield to Officer Richard Rollins who identified himself as the first officer on the scene.

“I arrived at 0615. I got a call from dispatch saying someone spotted a body here on the west side of Interstate 65. Honestly, I figured it was a homeless guy passed out under the bridge. I’ve seen them near here before. When I got here, there were two cars parked down there. One was a citizen, trying to help. I thanked him and asked him to leave the scene. The other was Jason, over there.” Rollins pointed. “He’s an off-duty EMT on his way home. The Isuzu is his. He checked the victim with me and agreed he was deceased and had been for a few hours. The victim is a white male, about five feet nine or ten and one-seventy to one-eighty. He looks to have a small caliber entry wound at the base of his skull.”

“How long ago did the criminalists arrive?” Hogue asked, trying to become part of the investigation.

“Maybe ten minutes before you guys; they’ve not been here long.”

“Do we have an ID?” Cris asked.

“This wallet was in his left rear pocket,” Rollins said holding up the bagged wallet. Tennessee operator license states his name is Shawn Parsons. He’s nineteen and lives at The Berry Hill Townhouses near Melrose.

“Just to confirm,” Cris said. The body has not been moved at all?”

“Correct. All we did was check for a pulse, grab his ID from his hip pocket, and then I got Jason to help me throw the plastic sheet over him to try and preserve what little evidence might still be here after the downpour.”

“Thanks.” Cris looked around in all directions for possible points of origin for the shooter. “Has the Medical Examiner been called?”

“Yeah. They were notified about twenty minutes ago.”

Cris stepped over a can of red paint and squatted down close to the body. She pulled up the plastic and examined the back of the victim’s head where there was a hole that looked to be a bit smaller than the diameter of a pencil. The victim’s Pittsburgh Steelers cap was in the grass between his head and his right hand. His right index finger was stained with a rainbow of colors.

“How long before you’re finished with your photos?” Cris asked the crime scene photographer as she replaced the plastic.

“About five minutes,” the tech said. “Do you need some special shots?”

“Did you get shots of the body already?”

“Yes, I did those as soon as we arrived because of the rain, but I shot them with the plastic sheet in place.”

“When you’re done, I need to turn the body so you can shoot frontals.”

“Sure. I was waiting on the medical examiner’s team for that.”

“Normally, I would wait too,” Cris said. “But, at the rate we’re losing evidence in this rain, I don’t think we can afford the delay.”

“Give me a few minutes,” the photographer said, “and I’ll be with you.”

“Thanks,” Cris said.

Cris bumped umbrellas with Hogue who was standing close behind her. She turned to face him. “Well, what do you think, Jack?”

“I think we got one more dead dumb ass gangster that’s consuming valuable time we could be spending on an important investigation of somebody who’s worthy of it.”

“Well, I guess that explains the redneck perspective. What makes you think he’s a gang member?”

“Normal people here don’t deface public property by spraying their gang tags all over the city.”

“I hate to be the bearer of enlightenment for such a committed and narrow-minded viewpoint Hogue, but this victim was not tagging his gang’s ID.”

“Then what do
you
call it?” Hogue asked.

“The unfinished artwork on the wall is no gang tag. It’s just that: artwork. This young man was simply practicing his misdirected craft. This untouched public canvas was for him a place to display his talent. Now, taking that into consideration, who the hell pops a graffiti artist in the back of the head from what? At least a hundred—hundred and fifty yards away?” Cris said as she pointed across the freeway.

“Is that the only scenario you’ve got?” Hogue asked, anxious to offer up his two cents worth of possibilities.

Cris hesitated, then stopped herself from saying what she wanted to. She motioned for Hogue to follow her to a spot away from the others.

“Jack, if you have one that works, please—be my guest.”

“It could have been a ricochet. It could have been a shot from a half-mile away that found an unfortunate home. It could have been someone he pissed off who was following him, then came up behind him with a Saturday night special. It could have been a homey who was with him, planning to paint the wall, and they got into a fight. It could have been a rival gang member who was driving by and thought the same thing I do; this idiot is taggin’ the wall with his gang’s ID and that homeboy decided to punch his ticket.”

“What the hell have you been smoking?” Cris asked. “There is one thing for sure. Murdock must have been the expert in your partnership. That’s the craziest bunch of hypothetical bunk I’ve ever heard. Do you really believe any of that crap?”

“It’s all possible,” Hogue said.

“Yeah, and it’s also possible all this is a dream, and I’m going to wake up at any minute. Please, Burris—wake me up.” Cris shook her head as she walked toward the photographer.

“Detective?” One of the criminalists shouted from near the victim’s artwork.

“Yeah,” Cris said.

“You got a minute?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Look.” He pointed to the bottom of the retaining wall.

In the grass, at the base of the wall, was what looked like a piece of raw turkey meat with a small army of ants beginning their own investigation. Cris dropped to her knees in the wet grass for a better look.

“You got a paper evidence bag on you? And tweezers?”

“Sure,” the young man said, reaching inside his kit.

Cris took both from the tech, rested her opened umbrella on her shoulders and picked up the specimen. She shook it to encourage some of the ants to abandon their discovery, then bagged it.

“What do you think it is?” He asked.

“I’m not sure, but I’ve got an idea.” She closed the bag and the clasp. “Here take this and be sure you document where you found it.”

“Are you ready to shoot the frontal?” Cris asked the photographer.

“Sure.”

“Jack, give me a hand over here,” Cris shouted.

Hogue joined Cris and while Officer Rollins and the young EMT held the plastic above them, the two detectives rolled the body.

The photographer emitted a gasp like someone had doused her with a bucket of ice water.

As the body was rolled face up, it was evident
all
the face wasn’t up. A good portion of the man’s nose and upper lip dangled onto his left cheek. The rest was in a paper evidence bag.

Hubbard County, Tennessee