Indirection, p.29
Indirection, page 29
part #1 of Borealis: Without a Compass Series
“You’re not supposed to want to be Bozo,” North said.
“Why not? He’s got the biggest feet, which means he’s definitely got the biggest—um, hi, kids. Where did you come from?”
“Field trip,” North said, pointing to the cluster of children in matching purple shirts.
“Again?” Shaw said.
“Looks like it.”
“On a Saturday?”
“Looks like it. Come on. Before you get put on another sex offender website.”
The teacher, a young black woman who was still struggling to remove her coat, stopped to stare.
“I didn’t get put on a sex offender list,” Shaw told her with a smile. “I accidentally added myself to a sex offender list.”
“Oh my God,” North whispered as he tried to put as much distance between himself and Shaw as possible.
They tried The Round Table next. No luck. Then the Camelot Public house. Nothing. They made their way through the convention rooms: Tintagel, Wormelow Tump, Castle Orgulous and Castle Blanc and Castle of Maidens. So many castles. Nothing.
“The storeroom?” North said.
Shaw nodded.
As they moved down the service corridor, North pointed to the open hasp and the missing padlock. “Someone is definitely in there.”
“Well, it has to be Yasmin. She’s the only one who has a key.”
North slowed. He glanced at Shaw.
“Right,” Shaw said, and the slender man spun and sprinted back the way they had come.
As North approached the door, he opened the laundry bag, found the pepper gel in his Carhartt, and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans. Then he counted to a hundred, dropped the bag, and opened the storeroom door.
Yasmin sat crisscross on the floor, and she glanced up at the intrusion. She looked awful: skin sagging, eyes bloodshot, an invisible fug of old smoke and body odor poisoning the cramped room. Between her crossed legs, she was using a screwdriver to pry the cap off a water bottle. On the ground next to her stood several more bottles, the caps obviously tampered with. A plastic baggie held a white powdery mixture with several large pieces—pills, North guessed, that had been only partially crushed.
“No,” Yasmin moaned. “No, no, no. Go away!”
“Stay—” North began.
But Yasmin slid onto her knees, waving the screwdriver in North’s direction. North reached back slowly. His fingers wrapped around the pepper gel canister, the aluminum smooth and cool, the edge of the ribbed cap resisting for a moment as he popped it off. Yasmin was getting to her feet, still making threatening slashes and thrusts with the flathead.
“Let’s calm down,” North said. “Whatever’s going on here, I’m sure you have a reasonable explanation.”
Yasmin made another of those despairing noises, shaking her head, and then she turned and ran. She shouldered through the storeroom’s rear door, bursting into the Tintagel banquet hall. Then a quilted snow boot appeared in North’s line of sight, catching Yasmin at the ankle. Yasmin tripped, fell, and faceplanted on the carpet. She lay there, stunned.
Shaw emerged from his hiding spot behind the storeroom’s back door. He stomped on Yasmin’s hand twice until she squealed and released the screwdriver, and then Shaw kicked it away.
“North, look, we got her!”
With a grunt, North shut the service hall door behind him. Then he crossed to the Tintagel door, where he could keep an eye on Yasmin and on the tampered water bottles at the same time.
“That’s got to feel good, right?” Shaw smiled beatifically. “You know, on account of your flagging self-confidence, your dwindling libido, the emasculation of letting that gimp get away from you earlier. You’ve got to feel so much better now that you redeemed yourself by catching Yasmin. With my help, of course.”
North stared at him.
After a moment, Shaw swallowed. “You know what? I’d probably better go find Jadon.”
“That’s why I keep you around,” North gritted out. “You’re so smart.”
Chapter 34
YASMIN DIDN’T CRY OR howl or fight when Cerise placed the cuffs on her. Whatever final burst of energy had driven her to run seemed to have burned off; she looked barely able to stand as Cerise and Jadon Mirandized her. The Tintagel banquet hall—half lit, quiet, with its engrained smells of Italian seasoning and roast beef and chafing-dish Sterno—might have had something to do with that.
“You two can get yourselves down to the station without an escort, I guess,” Jadon said. “We’ll need statements. And we’ll have questions.”
“Sure,” North said. “How’s next Friday? Or, even better, how’s March 35th?”
“Shaw?”
Shaw nodded. “We’ll head straight there.”
And they did, where they then spent the next eight hours. Part of that wasn’t Jadon’s fault; two women got into a brawl outside the LGBTQ squad room, and separating them seemed to require the efforts of every officer in the building. Screams of “My hair!” and “That’s right! That’s right! You’re a bald bitch now!” trailed away in opposite directions.
When Jadon and Cerise were finally ready to talk to Shaw, he found himself in an interview room with a one-way mirror, cameras, a particleboard table, and chairs. Someone must have puked recently, and Shaw’s stomach turned at the smell.
At first, the questions were straightforward: who did you talk to? what did they say? what did you do next? But once the ball got rolling, Jadon and Cerise jumped back and started asking questions that Shaw hadn’t expected. They wanted to know about when Yasmin had hired them. They wanted to know about the death threats. They wanted Shaw to describe the threats that Yasmin had shown him. They wanted to know about Leslie—what had Yasmin said exactly about her? Why do you think Yasmin wanted you to pay attention to her?
“Wait a minute,” Shaw said. “You think Yasmin poisoned Scotty?”
Jadon rubbed his face with both hands.
“You found her putting crushed-up pills in water bottles,” Cerise said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—I don’t know.” And then Shaw did know, and it horrified him. “She didn’t do this.”
After a stretched-out silence, Cerise made a disgusted noise.
“Don’t engage,” Jadon said, dropping his hands. “It’s better that way.”
Cerise’s gaze didn’t waver from Shaw. “What do you mean, ‘She didn’t do this’? You saw her doing it. Are you changing your testimony?”
“No, but—”
“Oh, so you’re telling me that there’s a problem with the evidence in that storeroom? You and North went for a smoke break, and while you were gone, somebody put those pills and those water bottles with the broken seals in the storeroom. And poor Yasmin was just so curious that she picked everything up and got her prints all over those baggies and bottles and the screwdriver. That’s what happened?”
“Do you really already have fingerprints back?” Shaw asked Jadon.
“No,” Jadon said. His eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere above Shaw’s shoulder. “I’m not doing this.”
“I’m just trying to understand what you think happened,” Cerise said. “Or we can go back to the way we were doing this before, when I was asking questions and you were being helpful.”
“Jadon, Yasmin did not kill Scotty.”
Jaw set, Jadon shook his head.
“Let’s go back to Leslie Hawkins,” Cerise said. “We’re going to make a list of all the times Yasmin tried to direct your attention to Ms. Hawkins, beginning with—”
“Jadon, she didn’t. I can feel it in my gut. This is all wrong.”
“Oh my God,” Jadon breathed. Then those sandy-dark eyes slid to Shaw, and he said, “Shaw, feeling queasy about this, it’s natural. You bond with people very quickly—”
“That’s not what this is.”
“—and you’re a very compassionate person—”
“Don’t do that!”
“—and those are very admirable qualities. But a bad feeling in your gut isn’t enough to create reasonable doubt. You’ve only known these people for a few days, and you and I both know that you can know someone for years and they can still have you fooled.”
Shaw bit the inside of his mouth to keep the next words from escaping. Jadon’s former partner and two other detectives on the LGBTQ task force had been involved in drugs and murder, including the attack that had almost taken Shaw’s life in college. Jadon knew better than anyone that just about anybody was capable of killing, no matter how they appeared on the surface.
“A bad feeling in your gut,” Cerise said, “also isn’t enough to get a conviction. You saw Yasmin Maldonado tampering with water bottles. With your own eyes. She was the only one with a key to that storeroom. She had a clear, powerful motive: Scotty was threatening her, threatening to ruin the convention and, by extension, to ruin her. The death threats were an easy way to make herself look like a victim; the first suspect would be whoever had been writing those notes. She even pointed out a possible person: Leslie Hawkins. Nobody can alibi her for the night when Leslie, Clarence, and Karen were pushed down the stairs. Nobody can alibi her for the half-hour surrounding the stabbing today.”
“But someone did write those threatening notes,” Shaw said. “Why aren’t you looking for whoever was sending them?”
Cerise shifted in her seat, body angled toward Jadon. He was quiet for a moment and said, “We found materials in her room that suggest she made those threatening notes herself.”
Shaw shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Of course it does.” In her cheap suit, Cerise slouched in the metal chair, one arm across the back. “She got exactly what she wanted: to throw the blame on someone else, and to stir up some excitement for the con. People have been buzzing about the notes for weeks.”
“No, she only told—”
“She told everyone. It came up in every interview we conducted: Yasmin told everybody who would listen about the notes, and then she made them swear to secrecy. She knew exactly what she was doing. That gossip spread like wildfire.”
“She didn’t do this. You’re wrong about the storeroom; the service door, the one that connected to Tintagel, it was open all night after Yasmin put Scotty’s special water in there. Anybody could have snuck down from their hotel room, poisoned the water and gone back up. And half the people at that convention had Adderall in their bags.”
“From what you and North told us, and from what the hotel staff has said, it’s a possibility that the door was unlocked all night, although every single staff member denies opening it. But that doesn’t matter. You and North caught her right in the middle of it. End of story.”
“But why use Adderall? Why use an amphetamine at all? It was just a fluke that Scotty died from it; the other people on the panel were fine. If Yasmin really wanted to kill Scotty, why not use something that would be sure to kill him?”
Jadon’s voice was gentle as he said, “We’re going to be waiting for a while to know exactly what was in the water, but yes, it was clearly an amphetamine of some kind, and yes, Adderall seems to be the most obvious choice, based on the demographic and the reactions that the other people on the panel described. Do you know what serotonin syndrome is?”
Shaw jerked his head in a no.
“It’s when there’s an excess release of serotonin in the brain. If it’s bad enough, it can cause death. That’s how Scotty died. Normally Adderall doesn’t produce a drastic change in serotonin. But if someone already has elevated levels of serotonin, the risk is dramatically increased.”
“And Scotty was taking double his Prozac,” Shaw said. “But—”
“Our best guess is that Yasmin tampered with all of the water bottles for that panel because she couldn’t be sure Scotty would get the right one. For the other panelists, the effects would be mildly uncomfortable; for Scotty they’d be fatal. And no, we don’t know how Yasmin learned that Scotty had upped his meds. Someone might have told her. Or she might have known that Scotty was on antidepressants and, not knowing he was taking more than he’d been prescribed, still hoped that the drug interaction would be fatal. Anything you can help us with, we’d really appreciate it.”
For a moment, Shaw sat there, his fingers gripping the seat of the folding chair, the oil on his skin making the metal slick. “Josue told us. About Scotty increasing his medication without consulting the doctor. I don’t think Josue wanted Scotty dead. He loved Scotty. Or he used to love him. I think Josue just wanted to live his own life.”
Jadon nodded.
“I guess that’s me being naïve again,” Shaw said. “Isn’t it?”
“We’ll look into it,” Jadon said.
“Even if Josue only wanted to get away,” Cerise said, “he might have said something to the boyfriend.”
“No, Brendon wouldn’t hurt—” Shaw stopped. He rubbed his eyes, which were burning suddenly. “I sound like a Care Bears episode. Can I—can I go? I don’t think I can tell you anything else that will help you.”
He was vaguely aware of Cerise shaking her head, but no words followed. Instead, metal squeaked on linoleum, and steps moved around the table. A warm hand caught his arm, helping him up, and Jadon walked him back to the squad room.
“What the fuck,” North said, rising from the bench where they’d left him, “did you do to him?”
“Nothing,” Shaw said. “They didn’t—”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” North shouted.
“Would you keep your voice down?” Jadon said mildly. “I know it’s been a long day, and I understand you’re upset, but shouting isn’t going to help.”
“You think I’m upset?” North said. “Pretty boy, you have no idea what I look like when I’m upset.”
“We’ll make this as fast as possible,” Jadon said, squeezing Shaw’s arm before releasing him. “Do you want tea? Or I have a seaweed chew that’s supposed to be calming?”
“Of course you do,” North said.
Shaw shook his head.
For a moment, Jadon stood there. Then he crossed to his desk, rattling drawers as he searched.
North’s hand came down, warm and rough, on Shaw’s nape. “Are you ok?” North asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Shaw said. “Yes.”
“God damn it,” North muttered.
Jadon came back and pressed something into Shaw’s hand: an oblong piece of something green.
“We’ll be as quick as we can,” Jadon said.
The two men were still bickering as they walked away. Shaw tried the seaweed chew, which had surprisingly little taste and, after five minutes, made his jaw ache. He spat it into a wastebasket. The fluorescents buzzed. Someone burned popcorn. An overweight man, fiftyish, with a buzz cut of graying hair, sat at the closest desk and hummed the same ten-second snatch of “Hotel California” again and again.
When North returned, he was alone, and he helped Shaw stand. They made their way to the GTO, where Shaw slumped against the seat. An ocean of orange-gray light hung above them, hiding the stars. In the closed confines of the car, Shaw sniffed the air.
“Why do you smell like smoke?”
“It’s probably from Yasmin.”
“No. That was hours ago.”
North shifted in his seat. “I went outside for a few minutes. While they were interviewing you. A bunch of uniformed guys were smoking.”
“And what? You just went up and talked to them?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I was going out of my mind from all the waiting.”
“Did they say anything interesting?”
“Yes. One of them is a major fairy and does nude ballet on the top of the Arch.”
“Wow, that is interesting.”
In the weak yellow glow of the dash, North reached over and stroked the back of Shaw’s head. The tires hummed. At the next red light, a Mercedes SLK rolled to a stop next to them. Two tinselly blond girls were hitting their vapes and screaming along with Ariana, “thank u, next.” When they light changed, the Mercedes peeled out, fishtailing once halfway through the intersection, Ariana trailing behind them like exhaust.
“Don’t you dare try to race them.”
A smile glimmered on North’s face as he said, “No challenge. Wouldn’t be any fun.”
“North, she didn’t do it.”
With a sigh, North nodded. His fingers slid down, scratching lightly at the sensitive skin on the back of Shaw’s neck. Then his grip tightened, and he squeezed once. “Jadon said you’d already gotten your teeth into this.”
“Do you think Yasmin poisoned Scotty?”
North was silent for the next two blocks. “I think Jadon and Cerise make some good points.”
“North, she didn’t. I’ve been thinking about it nonstop. Yasmin’s whole thing was that she wanted to save the con. I get it. Maybe she wrote those threatening messages. That’s possible; I’d buy that. She was trying to drum up some excitement, add an edge. And yeah, whatever she was doing today when we found her, that was messed up. But even that part doesn’t make sense. She’d already poisoned Scotty. Why risk it again?”
“She must have been trying to remove a potential witness. Leslie clearly knew something, and there must be someone else that knows something incriminating.”
“Fine. Maybe. But why hire us in the first place? We were even more of a threat than the police. Why bring us into it at all?”
“You have to admit,” North said, “that people got excited when we introduced ourselves. They liked it. And her whole angle was to make the con thrilling, to draw people in. Besides, it’s the perfect way to remove yourself as a suspect.”
“I can’t believe this,” Shaw said. North turned onto the Benton Park street where Shaw lived and pulled up in front of his house. The ground-floor windows were dark; Pari and Truck must have left the Borealis offices hours ago. “I honestly can’t believe that you’re—that you’re going along with such a stupid explanation for what happened.”
