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“Judy is more of a party scene personality. She liked to stay out all night instead of having a stay-in movie marathon. She came back to the apartment only once or twice to fix her makeup before heading back out,” he explained.
“The girlfriend doesn’t have too much information to go on. I feel sorry for the guy. She didn’t even know when his birthday was and was off on his age by three years.” Knight has an edge of disgust to his voice that made Anastacia wonder if he’s had a similar disinterested romance in his past.
“How was she when she found out?” Anastacia closely examined the woman's photo on the board. Judy looked just as fake in the photo as she did on the sidewalk the morning after the murder.
“She seemed upset, but there were no actual tears. She has a solid alibi and, much like you, she has no reason for him to die.”
“And Jay— er Jason? Have you looked at him? He’s a business partner, they may have been together that night.”
“On the victim’s phone, he was texting who he believed to be Jason the night of the murder, but when asked about the texts, Jason didn’t know who he was texting. One of his business phones was stolen and the number Mr. Coster had been texting belonged to said phone. He made a police report about the phone over a week prior.”
“Why would Mel text a stolen business number for one of his closest friends? Why not just text his personal number?” Anastacia puzzled. “Where was Jason that night?”
Knight reached over his desk to his notebook and flipped to the right page for the notes.
“Come on, Stacia. Jay wouldn’t hurt me. He needed me to get the bar off the ground. He wouldn’t have done anything to put brakes on it opening its doors,” Mel said as he stared at the photo of Jason held to the board with a magnet.
“What about the missing phone?” she mumbled to Mel, but enough that Knight could hear her sound like she was talking her thoughts out loud. “You said one of his business phones was stolen, Knight. What about the other ones? Numbers can be routed from one phone to another. It just seems that if he was missing a phone for a week, he would have told Mel to use a different number.”
“He was texting me back from that number all week!” If Mel were alive, his yell would have raised hackles all over the office. “Check the other phones. I’m sure my texts will be on there.”
“Okay, one thing at a time.” Knight scratched at his head and held up the notes he had. “He was on camera with the lawyer for their business the night of the shooting.”
“It’s too easy.” Anastacia now stood next to Mel as she scanned Jason’s photo. Something didn’t sit well with the guy. Something crawled under her skin at his smile. The type of feeling she would get when a much older man tried to hit on her or held her hand too long.
“Maybe it was something outside of the business. Maybe a drug deal gone bad?” Knight pointed at the alleyway. “I know the area is a known drop-off place for dealers.”
“He was adamant against drugs when I knew him.” She looked at Mel, who had wandered over to look over the shoulder of Detective Baker. He had to bend himself backward when she almost rolled right through him. Anastacia shook her head. “No, definitely not.”
“You didn’t know him that well, you said yourself. What if he was good at hiding it?”
“His arms were always clean, his eyes clear, and despite his personality being… different, his mind was very sharp. Some high school friends had fallen into drugs after we graduated. You name it, they tried it. I saw the aftereffects firsthand before I cut ties. Mel wasn’t a user.”
“Maybe he walked in on one thinking he was heading into a meeting with his partner?”
“You mean, the meeting that led him to the empty building he was shot in? Things aren’t adding up for the wrong place, wrong time. He was led there and I’m wondering why and by who, if not by his business partner.”
Thedaydraggedbywith more theories and more discrepancies, and Mel’s frustration grew. He understood why Anastacia couldn’t just throw out things he knew to be dead ends, but it didn’t ease the feeling that they were getting nowhere.
The need to move, to do something, was maddening. After Mel made sure no spirits were bothering Anastacia, he walked.
Whoever had designed the station wasn’t even courteous enough to make it interesting, like the rest of the city. It was boring hallways leading to equally boring rooms. Even the drunk tourists in holding cells were dead asleep and unamusing.
Dead asleep.
It had a different meaning now.
Turning the corner to a hallway was cut short when laughter accompanied flickering lights in a small room at the end of the hall he was in. Curiosity drove his feet toward it.
“Just giving them a little trouble.” An older gentleman stood beneath a light centered in the ceiling above him, staring up with a wide grin on his face. “Everyone needs some trouble to enjoy the things going right.”
“Sure, sounds like a legitimate philosophy to me.” Mel nodded slowly, approaching the older spirit. Looking closer, no darkness leaked from the mark on his neck or anywhere else on his person. His bloodshot eyes were a tell-tale sign of when the suffocation had set in during his death. He was a ghost for sure, but it seemed like he had a purpose, no matter how small it may be. “What kind of trouble are you making for them?”
“Nothing too serious. Light problems mostly. They’re still scratching their heads along with the poor electricians they send in here. And it’s the easiest thing for old Frank to do.” He jabbed a thumb into his chest. “Doesn’t take too much energy or effort.”
The man looked back up at the fixture above their heads, the light faded, brightened, then faded again until it worked into a flicker. The man snickered as a set of footfalls approached from down the hallway. A young officer came into the room and looked at the light with a groan.
He yelled down the hallway before he went to look for his superior, “It’s the mail room again!”
