Least Wanted (Sam McRae Mystery 2)

“As I said, I was trying to locate my client, Tina Jackson. I thought Fisher might know where she was.” I nodded at Detective Tamara Harris, a short, solid woman with freckled skin and a mini-Afro. Harris, the investigator on Shanae Jackson’s murder, sat beside Brown Suit, tossing questions from time to time but mostly listening. On behalf of the State’s Attorney’s Office, my “good friend” Ray Mardovich was there. He wore the remnants of the bruise I’d inflicted. To my surprise, he also had a tape across his nose. I took guilty pleasure in having broken it. Ray sat next to Detective Harris, but I ignored him.

“Little did I know,” I went on, “that Tina was with her uncle. What’s going to happen to her, now that her father and Bill Jackson are

in the hospital?”

“Don’t worry,” Harris said. “We’re taking care of that.”

Jackson had fled the scene, like a stock car racer on speed, only to wreck his car a few blocks away. He’d veered to avoid a pedestrian, bounced off another car and smashed into a telephone pole.

Harris spoke in rapid, no-nonsense bursts. “Fisher was a potential suspect from the start, but he had an alibi.” Ray started to say something. Harris silenced him with a look. I began snickering and pretended to sneeze, to cover it.

“Given the way Shanae Jackson was killed,” Harris continued, “we started looking at the gang angle. Girls usually don’t use guns. They tend to go with bats or razor blades. Anyway, the forensics seemed to back our theories. When the neighbor placed a young girl who looked like Tina at the house around the time of the murder, we figured we probably had our killer. If it wasn’t Tina, we thought it might be one of the gang. We hoped Tina would squeal on her.”

“But Tina and her gang were busy that night,” I said. “Detective Willard should have the DVD that shows what they were doing.” I looked at the two-way mirror on the wall. Willard was no doubt watching.

“Yeah, I saw it. Even if Tina left before her friends did, I think the recording probably gives her an alibi. She was at Beaufort’s place about twenty minutes before the witness thought she saw her at the house. That doesn’t give her much time to go home and kill mom. So, we’re left with the ten-million-dollar question: ‘If she didn’t do it, who did?’”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out,” I said. “I think it may have been someone Shanae was blackmailing. Possibly the janitor, Greg Beaufort, though he would have had to sneak away from the party first. Fisher seems to be the more likely suspect. Both were short, light-skinned black men, but Fisher looks a lot like Tina. If he’d dressed in the right clothes, he could have passed for her.”

“But Fisher had an alibi,” Harris repeated.

“Right,” I said. “Before he was shot, though, Fisher said someone had set up the arrangement between the boys at Kozmik Games and Greg Beaufort. I’d been wondering all along how these people got together. I think Fisher knew who it was. I know it wasn’t a white man, but that’s about all. Whoever it was would have been threatened by Shanae’s knowledge of the setup.”

While I was talking, Detective Willard walked in and leaned against the wall. A dark-haired white man in a navy blue suit stood by his side. “Ms. McRae, this is Detective Norris from Philadelphia,” Willard said. “We’ve been touching base on Darrell Cooper’s homicide and how it may relate to the Jones murder.”

“Nice to meet you, Detective,” I said. I was starting to feel like I’d walked into a cop convention. “So it was a homicide?”

“We have reason to believe so,” Norris said. Apparently, he didn’t want to talk about those reasons.

“The evidence you sent gave us grounds to bring in the two Kozmik game developers and their boss, Mr. Fullbright, and get a warrant to seize their computer equipment—at home and at work,” Willard said. “They’ve lawyered up, but if we find child porn on their computers, there won’t be much for them to say.”

“How about the embezzlement?” I asked.

“They aren’t talking, about the embezzlement or anything else,” Willard said.

“I have copies of a check written on Kozmik’s account to ITN, and financial records mentioning ITN that someone broke into Fisher’s office to get.”

“Since the police weren’t involved, there’s no Fourth Amendment problem with that. We’ll need the person to testify how he got the records.”

I tried, but failed to imagine Little D being a witness for the prosecution.

“I didn’t get them,” I said. “But I can tell you what I know.”

“The question remains.” Ray spoke at last, his voice nasal. “Who killed Shanae Jackson? More to the point, who can we prove killed her?” Harris nodded. I didn’t have a ready response.

* * * * *

Later, I sat in Frank Powell’s office, still trying to make sense of everything I’d learned over the last few days. I asked Powell, rocking in his squealing chair, whether Beaufort had ever told him about the Pussy Posse’s ventures into child porn.

Powell shook his head. “No, he never mentioned that. He did tell me the kids were having sex, but nothing specific.”

“Would you have any idea how Beaufort might have hooked up with a couple of white guys at a computer gaming company?”

He spread his arms. “I haven’t the slightest notion. I didn’t know Beaufort well. He was a source of information. That’s all.”

“Hmm. Do you know if he knew a man named Darrell Cooper?”

He shrugged. “As I said, he was merely someone who kept me abreast of the school grapevine.”