“You just told me you were coming off your shift.”
“At this job. I’m late for my other job. If you could just—” Hand shaking, I held up my phone as I tried to text my student. He’d be thrilled at not having to study with me. His parents? I’d have to deal with them later.
“So you clocked out and . . . ?”
“Just a second.” I sent the text. Slid my phone into my back pocket. “Sorry?”
“You said you came out the door at 1:51. I noted that was very precise—”
“I’d just clocked out. That’s how I remember what time it was. I left by the back door.” I gestured behind me.
Beyond us, out in the alley, someone was taking pictures. Someone else was investigating a patch of stringy weeds that had grown up beside the dumpsters.
“So you came out that door and then what did—”
A text pinged my phone. It was my student.
Could you just tell my parents we had a session?
At a hundred dollars an hour?
No.
I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Even though, in this area, my fee was a bargain.
“Ma’am?”
“I’m sorry. Um—” I tried to remember what he’d asked. Tried not to remember the man who was lying there in the alley with blood pooling around his head.
Behind us, the door cracked open. Corrine poked her head out.
The detective raised a finger. “Hold on.” He leaned around me. “Hey!” He raised his voice to be heard over the wind. “Don’t open that door. Please go back inside!”
Corrine ignored him. “You okay, Whit? Just wanted to check on you.”
“Please shut the door. Now.”
“I’m fine, Corrine.” Maybe not right that second, but I would be. I had to be. I didn’t have time not to be.
The detective shook his head as he resumed his questioning. “You came out the door and then what?”
“I don’t know.” I went out the door and then what? “I saw that man. The victim. He was lying there on the pavement. I think he was already dead.”
“Did you hear a gunshot?”
“No.” I was trying hard to keep the detective’s shoulder between me and the dead man so I wouldn’t have to see him. “Is this going to take long?” I needed to get to the library.
The detective shifted.
I could see the body again. The photographer was taking pictures of it from every possible angle.
“Did you hear anything as you opened the door?”
“No.” I heard nothing. I saw everything.
“Right. Okay. So you were—where were you standing?”
I walked back to the door and then took a few steps away from it toward the alley. “I was right here.” As I stood there speaking, the door opened again.
The detective stepped past me and pulled it all the way open.
My manager came out.
“When I said I didn’t want anyone opening this door, I meant it. Could you please just—”
“I’m the manager of this store. I wanted to know if—”
“After I’m done with Ms. Garrison, I’d like to talk to you. But I’ll come around through the front.” He gestured her back through the door. “There’s been a murder. The shooter might have been one of your customers. The victim might have been one of your customers. Either one of them might have come into the alley through this door. That means there could be evidence somewhere in that hall. There might even be some on the door. And every time someone opens it, that evidence gets compromised. So please. Go back inside and tell the others to just stay away.”
The manager hesitated for a long moment and then retreated, letting the door swing shut behind her.
The detective sighed. “Okay.” We retreated back to the shelter of the wall. “So you come out the door, you stop right there”—he pointed—“and you’re facing which way?”
“My back was to the door.”
He made some notes. “Okay. Then what happens?”
“Nothing. Nothing was happening. The man was just lying there.” With a hole in his head, staring up at the sky.
A car tried to drive into the alley. The policeman controlling access waved him off. Told him to turn around.
Out by the dumpster, one of the investigators squatted. Examined something on the ground.
“And what did you do?”
“I wanted to get back inside. But the door had shut. And then I heard something on the roof. I looked up and there was a man there. I think he was holding a gun. He pointed it at me.”
“And then what happened?”
“That’s when the garbage truck came around the corner.” I pointed left, out toward the end of the alley.
The detective wrote some more. “What happened after that?”
“The man on the roof disappeared.”
“Did you notice anything about him?”
“Besides that he was a man?”
“Anything.”
I shook my head. He was a man. He was holding a gun. I was almost certain it was a gun.
“What was he wearing?”
I closed my eyes. Tried to recall. “A jacket? Dark. I couldn’t see him below the waist.”
“What did he do with the gun?”
“He put it into his jacket.”
“Jacket?” He underlined something in his notebook. “Into the pocket?” He patted the outside pocket of his own jacket.
“Inside pocket.”
“Inside jacket pocket. What kind of jacket?”
“Suit jacket.”
The investigators were moving closer. One of them was inspecting the gutter beside us.
“Color?” the detective asked.
“Um. Sorry. What? Color of what?”
“The suit.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. It was a dark color.”
“And that was it?”
“That was it. He disappeared.”
He made a few more notes. “Any idea who he was? Had you seen him before?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
We exchanged contact information. He asked me to wait inside the coffee shop until he could work up a statement for me to sign.
As I turned to go, I nearly ran into one of the investigators. She was holding a Blue Dog coffee cup. Our tagline . . . and other fantastical beasts, written in cursive, ringed the bottom edge of the cup.
As I held on to her arm for balance, I saw the label.
It was one I’d put on that cup about half an hour before.
Joe
Soy mocha
One pump
No whip
I walked back to the detective. Caught his attention.
He turned away from the wind as he bent to talk to me. “Think of something else?”
“I know who the victim is.”
“But you said before that you didn’t recognize him.”
“I didn’t. I don’t. But that cup?” I pointed to the investigator who was bagging it. “I gave that cup to that man just before I got off work.”
He reached past me and gestured to the woman. Took the bag from her.
I pointed to the label.
The detective read it. “Joe?”