The Poet (Samantha Jazz)
“Did you really just say that to me?”
“Just preparing you for the verbal ass-whipping the captain’s going to give you. Don’t move. Do not make me hunt you down.” He resumes his linebacker position and charges toward the van.
I’m about to join him when sirens shrill through the air, and I turn to find a fire truck and an ambulance filing into the faculty parking lot. I don’t even consider staying put and doing nothing. This is my job. It’s instinct. This job is the only thing I know. With quick steps, I plant myself in the path of the emergency vehicles and wave them to halt. I don’t need a crew ready to save his life, but I didn’t know he was gone already when I made that call. The problem is that Lang is right. Everyone might not believe that when they find out I was here when he died.
Perhaps everyone knows one of my secrets after all.
Chapter 84
I stand in the path of those emergency vehicles; my mind is processing what has happened.
The Poet is dead and that’s my win today—it’s my only win, considering I never proved he was The Poet, and the family is now likely to sue the police department. If Newman killed himself, I’ll be blamed for pushing him over the edge. If Newman was murdered by a family member, I might well be blamed for pushing them over the edge. There is no win for me, so I have to go do what I do, what I’ve always done. When all else fails, work the crime scene. It’s what my father and my godfather taught me, and it’s where I land now.
The fire truck stops inches from where I stand, the grandstand of sirens silenced and replaced with my shout of, “Stop! Stay back!” I race toward the EMS team now coming up on the side of the fire truck. “Detective Samantha Jazz,” I announce, turning my hands into a stop sign. “Stay back and call in CSI.” It takes me about three minutes too long to rein them all in and save the evidence they might destroy. By the time they finally get a grip on what is happening, the hollow echoes of approaching sirens transform into screeching howls a moment before a good half dozen patrol cars explode past the entrance into the faculty parking lot.
That’s my sign to get lost before I end up shut out of the scene. I need to examine the body and the vehicle, to read the story to be read there, but that’s a good way to get noticed and shorten what little time I have left free to explore. I need to see that camera footage, and with that goal in mind, I head away from the approaching patrol cars and double step a fast walk toward the faculty entrance into the campus building. Lang is nowhere in sight, and I like it that way. Well, as long as he’s not dead or injured, but that’s highly unlikely. Whoever did this isn’t looking to shoot up the school or the police force.
I approach the door with a clear path, the absence of students or faculty anywhere in view, telling me that campus police, for all their early pushback, are now doing their jobs. Pushing past double steel doors, I end up in a hallway just inside the building, and Officer Jackson is standing in front of me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Securing the building.”
“You have a way of being everywhere I am.”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing? I’m on your team.”
He’s right. The Poet is dead. I don’t know why I’m pushing back with him. “Yes. You are. Are we clear?”
“We are.”
“There’s plenty more space to cover.”
“Right. Going now.” He exits the building and I shake off the encounter, focused on finding the security booth. My destination doesn’t require a hunt. It’s just off the entrance to my right. Entering the small office lined with cameras, I find no one here. Jesus. Someone should be here, watching the feed, looking for a shooter.
I sit down at the desk, a row of screens line the wall now directly in front of me, a setup that I’ve seen before. With nothing even locked down, I quickly and too easily key in camera views. What I find is not good. The camera feed for the parking lot where Newman was shot is nothing but fuzz. I try to bring it back up, but the camera’s offline. Whoever killed him either killed the camera from the outside first or had access to the security booth I’m sitting in right now and knows technology better than me, which isn’t saying much. Aside from that, there’s little to see besides law enforcement scurrying about like rats on the campus, looking for blood, finding none. I tab through screens, looking for clues, one after another, and I find nothing.