“Terrell!” I shout, wanting to put his fears at ease.
He looks up and sees me, and the relief spreads across his face. His legs give out beneath him, but another police officer keeps him on his feet. His aged body suddenly looks much older. I break free from David and hurry to Terrell. The police officers let me by, and I grab him in my arms.
“You’re okay!” he says, holding me tight. He sobs against me. “I thought…” He trails off. “Who’s that?”
David is behind me and asking the question I’m thinking. “Why did you think that was Darcy?”
I release Terrell and watch him wipe the tears from his eyes. “I was on rounds when Roger radioed from the front desk. Oh God. Roger?”
Roger Watkins. His must have been the body the police found behind the security desk. I didn’t know him well. Roger was a security guard who usually worked the night shift. What I did know about him led me to believe he was a good guy. He was a grandfather from New Orleans, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and two years away from retirement.
Terrell looks at me, his face pleading to know if Roger is okay. I look back, silently telling him all he needs to know. He struggles to pull himself together. I grab his hand and wait patiently for him to process the news. Fortunately, so do the officers around me.
Terrell finally continues, “Roger—Roger said someone was here to see Darcy. I-I told him you were working in the gallery.” Terrell turns to me. “I thought that was you here tonight.”
My stomach sinks as I turn back to the body beneath the sheet. That was supposed to be me. Someone came to the front desk, looking for me. That person killed the front desk security guard, Roger Watkins. Then Santa Muerte came up here and found a small brunette working where I should have been. She killed Lupe, thinking it was me.
My mind continues to race through the situation. Who asked Roger where I was? He wasn’t going to calmly radio for my location because the spirit of Santa Muerte drifted to his station. She and that owl were with someone else tonight. Who?
“Lupe?” Terrell asks. His question jerks me back to the present. “Is that Lupe?”
I turn to him and nod. Terrell covers his face with his hands, and I hold on to him as his legs begin to buckle again. Two people died, and it’s clearly too much for him to bear.
“Did you see who attacked you?” Snyder asks Terrell. Then he points at me with his stubby finger. “Was it her?”
Terrell looks at him in disbelief. “Is this a joke? Someone was trying to kill her!” he says, holding me tighter. His eyes burn into Snyder’s.
“Okay,” David says, stepping between them. He turns to Terrell and addresses him respectfully. “Sir, why don’t we take you outside? We’ll get you something to drink and have someone look at your head.” He gestures to a uniformed officer, who tries to grab Terrell, but he shakes him off.
“I’m okay,” Terrell says as he struggles to walk on his own. He looks at me and reaches out to squeeze my hand. “I’m glad you’re okay, Darcy.”
Snyder watches Terrell walk out then turns to face me. Neither of us says a word, but I know that in his mind, I’ve just been removed as a suspect, and that pisses him off. He turns and stomps away.
“Darcy?” David nods in the direction of the atrium.
Silently, I follow him to the hall and away from the eyes of the Los Angeles Police Department. The hallway floor is littered with yellow flags indicating every single drop of blood that spilled as Santa Muerte and I went sliding along the marble hall.
“I still need to make sense of what happened here tonight,” he says, looking at all the evidence markers as we pass. He’s talking not only to me but also to himself. “Why someone was murdered, why her heart was torn out, and what you were doing here.”
“I know,” I say.
“You working another case?”
“I’m working a lot of cases.” It’s a half-truth. In my defense, one case is a lot for me these days.
We stop at the railing that overlooks the atrium. The crack where I slammed into the tempered glass is marked with another flag of evidence. Another investigative team is checking the glass on the floor several stories below where Santa Muerte and the owl flew out the window.
David points. “Did you see that happen?”
I shake my head.
“We found blood in the shards inside and out on the street. It looks like someone did a Superman out of an eight-story window.”
He waits for me to respond. I say nothing.
“Jesus, Darcy, you have to give me something. Are you protecting someone? Hiding from someone? There’s no way you would have touched Lupe. You know how important a crime scene is.” I can see him working the evening’s events in his mind. I keep my expression blank. “You didn’t touch her—you grabbed someone else. That’s how you got blood on your hands. Maybe you struggled with this person. Maybe this person was the assailant. I don’t know yet.”
I still don’t say anything. My attention stays focused on the crew cleaning the glass on the bottom floor.
“How many secrets are you keeping?”
David, if you only knew…
I finally turn to him. I’m reminded of how much I lie to people every day—about who I am, what I am, and what I’m doing. Some days it comes naturally, and I hate how easily I can deceive people. As much as I would love to let it all out, I can’t reveal who I truly am.
David continues. “The best-case scenario is that we do figure out what happened here tonight—that I find out you’re lying and hiding something from me and impeding a police investigation and we charge you for
