“Over what?”
“Over women in comics. The details are more complicated, but essentially, that’s what it boiled down to. The trolls made their voices heard by the hundreds.”
The bell jingled over the door. I glanced around as the teenaged boy left.
“And Noah supported diversity in comics?”
Dana gave a vigorous nod. “Only a couple of months ago I would have placed him squarely in the traditionalist category. After all, he was part of the original demographic—a young, white, socially inept male who spends his time hiding out in his parents’ basement and looking at internet porn. But like I said, Noah was branching out.”
“Becoming an SJW.”
“That, and I think he saw the light when it comes to opening up the comics world. He’s a smart kid. Probably saw there was more money to be made by diversifying.”
“People get mad enough about this stuff to kill over it?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You think that’s what happened?”
“I’m just asking.”
She huffed out a breath, lifting her bangs. “Some of those guys get pretty riled up. But I think most of them are web warriors. They’ll troll you online and promise to eat your babies. But I’ve never heard of it moving into the real world.”
Our anger is righteous.
“Was Noah an angry kind of guy?”
“He was pissed he couldn’t get a date in a city of beautiful women. But he was over that.”
“Noah’s students. The ones in the back. Which category do they fall in? Social justice warriors or pissed-off trolls?”
“Those two? I don’t know. They’re all right. Rivero’s angry, and Markey’s a geek. But I wouldn’t pigeonhole them.” She looked at Noah’s drawings again, picked up the one of the yellow-eyed man next to the train.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“Just that there are a lot of yellow-eyed supervillains in the comics world. This feels a little cliché for Noah.”
“What villains?”
“Nightcrawler. Trigon. Gamora.” She shrugged and set down the drawing. “One of the most famous is a character named Apocalypse. He was originally created as a supervillain intended to operate behind the scenes leading something called the Alliance of Evil.”
“Sounds sinister.”
“That’s the world of comics.” She leaned forward on the counter. “There is one thing you should maybe know.”
I also leaned in. “What’s that?”
“I might be making a bit of a stretch, here. Noah was a friend, but it’s not like he confided in me.”
I waited.
She pushed up her readers. “Something was bothering him lately.”
“He didn’t say what?”
“Like I said, he didn’t confide in me.” She flattened her palms on the counter and studied the backs of her hands, as if the answer lay there. “But one day, maybe a month ago, he came in dragging a serious funk. When I asked him about it, he said something about the payback.”
“The payback?”
“That’s right.” She lifted her head. “He said that the work he was doing was going to bring some payback. At the time, I thought he was talking about getting paid. Just saying it in a strange way.”
“But you don’t think so now?”
“No. Because when I look back on that day, Noah wasn’t just agitated. He was . . .”
“He was what, Ms. Gills?”
“Scared. I think Noah was scared.”
CHAPTER 12
My counselor tells me that at my core, I am a good person. That we all come into the world as unblemished as God made us, and then the world starts to act on us. We can get back to that good core, he tells me. Back to our true selves.
But I’ve seen too much. You can scrub all you want. But a darkened heart will always be dark.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
Thoughts of a frightened Noah, pickup artists, and payback swirled through my mind as Dana Gills opened a door behind the register and ushered Clyde and me down a hall toward the back of the building.
“Noah’s been teaching here for about three years,” Dana said as we walked. “At one time he had almost twenty students. But then the software gig went full time, and he cut back to just these two.”
“They been his students for long?”
“Rivero Martinez’s been with Noah from the beginning. Markey Byron, a couple of years, I think. A long time, anyway.”
She opened another door on to a concrete room starkly lit by overhead fluorescents. The back of the room overflowed with stacked cardboard boxes, along with a stained porcelain sink and a closet-size space closed off by a door marked “Toilet.” The front half of the room held two plastic folding tables shoved together and covered with jars of pens and brushes, bottles of ink, and stacks of paper.
The two men sitting at the table looked up.
“Hey, boys,” Dana said. “You’ve got company. This is Detective Parnell.” To me she said, “The glowering hulk sitting on the left is Rivero Martinez. Markey Byron’s the cherub on the right.”
I nodded my thanks as Dana left, and Clyde and I entered the room.
The concrete walls and floor in the chilly space carried an earthy smell. The toilet emitted a faint stink, and at least one of the men gave off the aroma of unwashed flesh. I caught whiffs of paint and ink and something that might have been soot—charcoal pencils, maybe.
Rivero and Markey glared at me in silence. They both wore long-sleeve tees, down vests, dark jeans, and attitudes. Their lack of welcome radiated like gas fumes from a poorly sealed tank. Seemed I’d crossed a threshold from the colorful world of comics into a space allocated for and guarded by the men behind the art.
Women need not apply.
Then again, maybe they just hated cops.
Rivero was a strongly built twenty-something Latino with shoulder-length hair and a thick beard. His eyes glittered with subterranean emotion. He kept his eyes on me as he tipped back in his chair and folded his arms across his wide chest.
A partially finished drawing in front of him showed two men squaring off. Even in black and white, the sketch carried the motion of violence, and—in the faces of the men—anguish.
Across the table, Markey
