Double Minds by Terri Blackstock Read Free Book Online Page A

okay, Sis?”
    “Yeah, fine.”
    “Keep talking. When Brenna started working there, did any friends show up? Phone calls? Weird incidents?”
    She tried to think. “No. Her boyfriend, Chase, came by a time or two, just for a minute. She introduced me. He was nice. Mostly she was quiet and just worked hard. She picked things up really fast. We had her doing filing, vacuuming the studios, that kind of thing. After a couple of weeks I let her fill in for me during my lunch hour and stuff.”
    Gibson sat in the easy chair. “I want you to pick up each picture of your desk and study it one more time. Anything out of place? You know how you left it this afternoon, right?”
    “I … I don’t want to see …”
    “Her body’s not in the ones I’m showing you.”
    Parker blinked back the tears burning her eyes and forced herself to take the pages. She studied the pictures of her desk, her drawers, her tabletop.
    The pictures were bigger and easier to see than they’d been in the two-by-four inch display on Gibson’s camera. But she saw nothing out of place. She’d left her MacBook on, its screen saver flashing across the display in colorful strands of light. It was still doing that when Gibson took the pictures.
    “That your laptop, is it?” Rayzo asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Amazing nobody’s snatched it.”
    “I don’t usually leave it there, but tonight I had my hands full when I left. I decided to come back for it after the gig. Cat was there when I left, so I knew it was safe.”
    She stared at the photos of the contents of each of her drawers. Everything was as she’d left it. “I just can’t see anything wrong. Brenna’s stuff is there, but that’s the only thing different.”
    She reached for the pictures of the studios, saw the messes left by musicians in the throes of production—guitars left on their racks, baseball caps and tossed coats, drink cans and shoes kicked off. The sessions lasted hours, and the bands usually made it their home for the duration. The police must have made them clear out and leave everything just as it was.
    “Where were you at the time of the murder?” Rayzo asked.
    Parker looked up. “At a concert at Savior Church. I didn’t leave until Gibson called me to come to Colgate. I had to cut the concert short.”
    Rayzo made a note of it in his wilted notebook. “All the studios were full except one tonight,” he said. “Your calendar said some dude was booked there, but your log book didn’t show he’d checked in.”
    “Johnny Jackson,” she said. “He couldn’t get the musicians he needed, so he can celled at the last minute.”
    “Any way he could have shown up, after all?”
    “Not with a gun.” Johnny Jackson was a sixty-year-old Christian country singer who would give his own life to lead someone to Christ. No way he’d usher them into heaven with a bullet. Then again, she really didn’t know him that well. “He’s a really nice guy. Besides, when he called he said he was having dinner out with his family. I’m sure that can be verified.”
    She hoped Rayzo wasn’t taking her brother on a wild goose chase, hunting down good people and trying to make killers out of them.
    Gibson went back to the printer and pulled the next dozen out. He looked so young, so over his head. He was twenty-eight, two years older than she, yet she felt older, and somehow responsible for him. What was he doing in Homicide, this man who never listened? How would he ever solve a murder?
    She went through the rest of the pictures but had nothing to offer them. Finally, Rayzo got up.
    “Where are you going?” Gibson asked.
    “Home, to bed.”
    “But the case is still hot.”
    “That’s what I got a young partner for. Do what you can. I’ll call you in the morning.”
    Gibson followed him to the door. “What do you think I should do next?”
    “Search the dumpsters in the area for a gun.”
    “In the middle of the night?” Parker asked.
    “Like the man said, the case is still