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“I don’t know. It depends.”
He smiled. He knew this game well. “Okay. Can I take you on a date?”
“I don’t really date.”
“What does that mean?”
“I like to get to know people. If you’re asking if you can spend more time with me, the answer is yes.”
He frowned. “Wouldn’t that be a date?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Okay, I’m confused.”
“We can spend more time together, Bakari. I just don’t like labels. Labels lead to expectations.”
“Yeah. I feel you.” He really didn’t, but whatever.
“Cool,” she said.
Since their date wasn’t an actual date, Bakari drove her back to her house after they left the restaurant instead of doing his usual routine of prolonging the evening in the hopes of getting some ass. Not that he didn’t want it. He just didn’t mind waiting this time.
He walked Danielle to her door and told her how much he enjoyed the evening. She told him she was looking forward to spending time with him again in the future. It was all very perfunctory, especially the polite hug they shared. He couldn’t write her off like he’d done girls in the past who played hard to get. Danielle actuallywashard to get.
As he walked back to his car, his happiness began to give way to another feeling. A feeling that nagged at him. It was nothing earth-shattering, just mild confusion.
It was just…he had been friends with Nyleah, but Danielle had been herbestfriend. And yet she hadn’t seemed very emotional when they were talking. She barely seemed effected. She said she was having trouble, but…
He brushed it off. It was a ridiculous thought. People grieve differently, and for all he knew, because he didn’t know her well, she may have been holding back a river of tears. She deserved the benefit of the doubt, especially since he had been perfectly willing to use the memory of a dead girl to get a date with a live one.
He sat in his car and waited for the porch light to go off. It did, but he stayed where he was. Thinking.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Therewassomethingpeculiarabout this case. Webb could feel it in his bones.
And not the normal kind of peculiar, if there even is such a thing, because murder itself is peculiar, after all. Unnatural. But this particular murder wasn’t ticking any of the usual boxes for him, and that was strange for reasons not immediately clear to him. Some cases are like that. Like a ball of yarn. You can pull on the main string all you like, but within that thick, cottony thread are hundreds of smaller, closely-packed threads that are interwoven with each other. Pull too hard, and you might end up with a tangled mess.
He and Ackerman exited the car and headed toward the clubhouse. Ground zero. The scene of the crime.
They entered the through the front doors and found it empty. It seemed odd that no one was manning the place given the nice furniture, stocked bar, and flat-screen television right there in his line of sight as he entered. If anyone was so inclined, they could rob this place blind.
“Where do you wanna start?” Ackerman asked, but Webb was busy scanning the area. That’s how he always handled scenes. He imagined himself as a robot like the ones in the movies that give you a point-of-view shot with the machine's observations on the screen. He stood perfectly still and scanned left to right in order to get a first impression.
Ackerman waited a few seconds before walking off on his own, and that suited Webb just fine. Once he took in the big picture, he started walking around, taking in the details.
The great room, where he was, took up much of the first floor. The bar was to the left, and the kitchen was behind the bar. In order to get to it, you had to walk toward the front doors and bang a right, walk down a hallway, then turn to the right again. It was a pretty poor setup for entertaining.
He walked back into the great room and looked through the glass. The entire back wall of the great room was a window. In the middle was a sliding glass door leading out onto the balcony.
He stepped out into the fall air and was annoyed by the heat. Summer in the south is a petty, spiteful creature that loves to overstay its welcome.
The balcony was only about three feet from the ground, but there was another balcony about ten feet above him. It had a sliding glass door in the same place, but the second-floor balcony wall was made of wood, not glass. Webb walked all the way to the left and then all the way to the right. It was there that he discovered stairs going from the ground level up to the second balcony. He made a mental note and went back inside.
“Hey, up here,” Ackerman called to him.
Webb slid the glass door shut and locked it behind him before making his way up the staircase by the front door. The wood creaked beneath him like it was tired. The banister was rough and aggressive against his hands. Ackerman stood at the top of the stairs, sweat already staining his underarms and chest.
