He clears his throat and then says, “Good evening. I’m Michael Summer. Welcome to our poetry night, a night of literary delight. Now, to get started, I’ve placed a book of poems under your seat.” I hear nothing else. Poetry is the bible of words, not meant to lie on the ground, not meant to be dirtied and disrespected. Poetry is history to be protected, lessons to be learned, a path to change our society or prevent its demise.
And I am the chosen master—not the original, of course, but the chosen one nevertheless.
I sit back, sipping the luxurious whiskey that I now know to be a mismatch to a night where I watch one person after another step to the microphone to butcher the great works: Frost, Shakespeare, Poe. The list goes on, but I don’t blame the students. I blame the teacher, and the teacher must pay. He will not continue in his role, but he will serve a purpose.
I down my drink and slide my glass into my bag on the floor. The only part of me I ever leave behind is words, and my decision is made. Tonight is the night. Summer is the one. He’s the one who will let her know it’s time to fulfill her destiny. It’s time for her to train, to prove her worth, to be tested. He’s the one who will bring her to me, my perfect student, the future master.
Chapter 2
“Detective Samantha Jazz!”
At Captain Moore’s bellow, my gaze jerks across my desk to Detective Ethan Langford, my sometimes partner and desk mate. “What did you do, Lang?”
He laughs, a big hearty laugh appropriate for a man of six-foot-three who believes in “go big or go home,” and too often drags me along for the bumpy ride. The man doesn’t understand the principles of research and preparation. He holds up his hands. “I did nothing. Just say that. It’s perfect.”
I scowl because he enjoys batting back and forth with the captain. I do not, and with good reason. Every encounter for me with Moore includes a ghost in the room: the former captain, my father, whom we buried only three months ago today, and not with the honor I would have liked. “Seriously, Lang?”
“I didn’t do anything.” He wiggles an eyebrow. “Not that he knows about.”
I plop my hands on my hips and glare.
“Oh come on, brains,” he chides, “you were the youngest detective in the precinct, at twenty-five, with the highest scores on record. You had some crazy-high IQ test. You can handle the captain.”
“You’re enjoying this,” I accuse.
“I kind of am. Maybe he wants to know why you’re thirty-two and won’t take the sergeant’s test.”
“You’re forty and you haven’t taken the test,” I counter.
“Because I’m a fuckup.”
I love him, but he kind of is a fuckup, and it’s always been interesting to me that my father partnered us so often. “Well then,” I say. “I haven’t taken the test because I don’t want to manage people like you.”
“Jazz!” the captain shouts. “Now!”
I shove strands of my long, light brown hair behind my ears, and do so for no good reason. To a detective like myself, it might seem like a nervous gesture. So would the way I stand up and run my hands over my blazer, the likes of which I often pair with a silk blouse and dress pants. The jacket hides my weapon and badge, and the silk says: “I’m female, hear me roar.”
I’m not roaring now, though. My spine is stiff, and when I glance at the spot on my desk that once sported a photo of my father—tall and handsome, with green eyes that matched mine, and thick brown hair—I’m sick to my stomach. I’m also ready to get this over with.
Turning away from Lang, I tune out his, “Good luck!” that starts a symphony of the same from various detectives in the pit of desks. The captain isn’t going to press me to take the sergeant’s test. I’m the daughter of his dirty predecessor, only three months in the grave, for God’s sake. And apparently, my desire to join Internal Affairs to be the better Jazz made me a worse traitor than my father.
Captain Moore doesn’t trust me. The fact that my godfather is Chief of Police and my father’s ex-best friend doesn’t help matters.
I reach his doorway and without hesitation, I enter his office. That’s the thing about being a homicide detective and my father’s daughter. Even in the midst of uncomfortable situations, I haven’t been bred to timidity. I know how to dive right in to the bloody moment. And every moment with the captain, at least for me, is a bloody moment.
He’s behind his desk, a Black man in his forties who is big in all ways; his presence is large and confident. His energy commanding. His office is cold, like the man, free of family photos. He’s also a man who clearly enjoys the gym, and I know from my history with him that he does so far more than he ever enjoyed a day at the ice cream parlor. I, on the other hand, enjoy the gym and the ice cream parlor, but he’s just not that divided on anything. He doesn’t see the gray that I believe solves crimes. There is only black and white, which to me explains why, my father aside, I prickle every nerve Moore owns. We both know that I learned to see that gray from my father, who was inarguably a damn good detective in his day. He simply saw a little too much gray.
“Shut the door,” Moore orders without looking up from his file.
Wonderful. A shut door is not good.
I do as I’m told and once I’m sealed in the rather small office with this extremely large man, he lifts his intelligent, brown, always-cranky stare to mine, judgment in its depths. Always the judgment, but that’s not what comes out of his mouth. “I hear that you know something about poetry.” He taps his computer screen. “That’s what your employment record says. You ran a poetry club in college.”
I frown. Maybe this is about the sergeant’s test. “Why exactly are you looking up my college record?”
“I wasn’t looking at you, Detective Jazz. I was looking for someone who knows poetry, even if it meant searching outside the department, but it turns out I got a hit with you.” He slides a file across the desk and sets it in front of me. “This should explain.”
My defenses lower, and the detective in me, the one who thrives on impossible puzzles, sits down, eager to work. Work is good. Work keeps me sane. It took me sixty days after my father died to convince the department shrink just how true that is. A month later, she’s seen me solve cases and perform at my best. Now, she believes me. Now, I’m rid of her.
I open the file and I’m staring at a naked man tied to a chair by his ankles and waist, but interestingly enough, his hands dangle freely by his sides. His head is dropped forward, a mop of dark hair draping his face. Vomit forms an unevenly edged pool on the floor to his right. In my mind, I imagine the moment that sickness overcame him, imagine that he tried to escape that chair, and noting the burn marks by his ribcage, perhaps violently. When unable to untie himself, in desperation, it appears that he most likely leaned forward and heaved.