Beneath The Surface (19 page)

“Where do I find her?” Nick asked.

“I don’t know where she lives,” Watson said, and Rain reached back to hit him again, “but her mama lives in Gun Hill projects. She goes by there every day.”

“Rain,” Nick said and she stood up. They both aimed their weapons at Watson and emptied their clips.

Nick and Rain put away their guns and left the apartment. “You know you gotta give me some of that dick,” Rain said on the way out of the building.

“What; seeing his little dick make you horny?” Nick asked as they got in the Bonneville.

“Hell no. Seeing that little baby dick he had made me think about that dick you carrying; and that shit keeps me wet all the time.”

Carmen arrived at the station that afternoon, after spending the morning at a shelter for battered women. She had been talking to women for her next piece. Carmen promised each of the women that they wouldn’t have to appear on camera, but one of the women said that she didn’t care if Carmen showed her face. “If the mutha fucka find me, then the mutha fucka just find me.” But the center’s director was definite on the subject. “No faces on camera.”

The first person she ran into at the station was her cameraman, Max. He informed her that the police had finally returned the footage they had shot at the art gallery on the night of the murder.

“I’m going to meet Dan and screen it now. You
coming?”

“I’m right behind you, Max,” Carmen said, and followed Max to the studio where her producer, Dan was waiting.

“Carmen,” Dan said as Carmen came in with Max, “I’m glad you’re here. Max
tell
you what we’ve got?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Carmen said and took a seat, while Max queued up the footage.

“Max tells me you’ve been playing detective, Carmen.”

Carmen turned and looked at Max, who quickly dropped his head. “Snitch.”

“
It’s
okay, Carmen, I appreciate you taking the initiative. It’s what a good investigative reporter does with a story.”

“Are you saying? . . .”

“I’m not saying anything other than what I said: That I appreciate you taking the initiative.”

Carmen looked at Max and he winked at her.

“What have you found out so far?” Dan asked.

“Not much other than more background on the victim. Tangela House was a call girl that used to be a dancer at a club called Lace.”

“I know the place,” Max injected.

“She also did some adult videos for a guy named Finch.”

“I remember you telling me about him. Did you talk to him?” Dan asked.

“I did. But I don’t think he had anything to do with her murder. But when I asked him some questions about two other dancers from Lace that have gone missing, his whole attitude changed. If he’s not involved in their disappearance, he knows something about it.”

“What makes you say that?” Dan asked.

“Because when I left there, somebody tried to kill me,” Carmen said.

“What!” Dan and Max both said.

“When we left there . . .”

“Wait a minute. Who
is
we
?”

“I told you I wasn’t going alone. Anyway,” Carmen continued without mentioning Black’s name, “when we left there, two guys started shooting at us.”

“What happened?” Max asked.

“My friend took care of them.”

“That scary looking guy you left the conference with?”

“Yes, Dan.”

“How?” Dan demanded to know.

“How what?”

“How did he take care of them?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Dan looked at Carmen and thought for a moment. “My better judgment tells me that I should make you back off this story. . . .”

“Come on, Dan.”

“Let me finish, Carmen. But the television producer in me says for you to stay on it and see where it leads.”

“Thank you, Dan.”

“But Carmen, please,
be
careful.”

“I will be, Dan. Trust me.”

“Now, what you got for us, Max,” Dan said.

Max started the footage he’d shot and took a seat. They had been watching for a while, when they saw Tangela House. “There she is,” Carmen said excitedly.

“Let’s hope Max stays with her,” Dan said, in much the same manner. She was standing looking at a portrait, but when she walked off, Max moved on to another shot. A while later, they saw her again, walking through the gallery among the other guests by herself, and that was the last shot of her.

Everybody was a bit disappointed that they didn’t see her mingling with anybody. “What now?” Dan asked.

“I was gonna go and talk to Detective Mitchell, and see if they have anything new,” Carmen said.

“Maybe you should go by the gallery,” Max suggested. “They had security cameras throughout the place. They probably got more footage from that night and better angles.”

“The police probably took theirs too,” Dan said.

“They gave ours back. It’s worth a shot,” Max said.

“Okay. Carmen, you go talk to your cop; see if they got anything. And then go by the gallery. But take Max with you,” Dan said, expecting Carmen to object.

But Carmen’s simple answer was, “Okay.”

“Me? Why me? Suppose somebody starts shooting at her?”

“Duck,” Dan said and walked out. “And remember, you still need to shoot a promo for tomorrow’s piece.”

“Three takes, Max, and
I’m
done,” Carmen said.

Their first stop was the police station to talk with Detective Mitchell. Carmen went to the desk sergeant, told him who she was, and asked to speak with the detective. He told her to have a seat.

An hour later, Carmen’s cell phone rang. “Carmen Taylor.”

“Hello Carmen. It’s Detective Mitchell, how are you?”

“I’m fine, detective,” Carmen replied.

“Is this a good time to talk?”

“It’s a good time for me. What about you? I mean, I’ve been sitting in your lobby for the last hour.”

“You are? I’ll be right down,” Mitchell said and hung up.

When the detective arrived in the lobby, Carmen and Max got up to greet her. “Sorry you’ve been waiting so long; but nobody told me that you were down here.” Then she looked at Max’s camera. “And I know why.”

“Why?”

“Your friend with the camera. They’d let some guy with a camera get by them, and the asshole ambushed me. I was so mad that I came down here and cursed everybody out. They just thought you’d go away. Anyway, I wanted to ask if you had a chance to review the footage that we returned this morning. And if you did, did you see anything that might be helpful?”

“Funny, I came to ask you the came question,” Carmen said.

“We saw her, a couple of times, wandering around by herself. But we didn’t see her talking to anybody,” Mitchell said.

“Same here.” Carmen thanked the detective for her time, and each promised that if they found out anything, they would let the other know.

When they left the station, Max wanted to know why she didn’t tell the detective about the other two missing women, Finch, or the fact that he may have tried to kill her. “All in due time, Max. I want to have more to go on with that before I bring it to her. For all I know, they might have just moved on.”

“So where to now?” Max asked. “You still wanna go to the gallery?”

“I sure do.”

When Carmen and Max arrived at the 18
^th
Street gallery, they were met by the chief of security, who reluctantly agreed to let them see their footage; but only if he was present. Naturally, Carmen agreed.

They had been fast-forwarding their way through video for over an hour before they caught their first look at Tangela House, wandering around the gallery. Then they caught a break. “Stop,” Max said when he saw her. “Back it up a little.” The chief rewound the video to a shot of her walking toward a door, away from the show area.

“Where does that lead to?” Carmen asked.

“That goes to the stairs to the offices,” the chief told them.

“Is that where the murder was committed?” Max asked.

“Yes. I’ll let it run for a while; see if anybody else goes back there,” the chief said. Sure enough, after awhile somebody else, a woman and a
man,
went toward the door.

“There!” Max shouted. “Can you enhance that image so we can get a better look at her?”

“I’m not that good with this equipment,” the chief said.

“Mind if I try?” Max offered.

“Help
yourself
,” the chief said, and they changed places.

Max spent a minute or two looking over the system, trying to familiarize himself with it before he did anything. “I think I can do this,” he said and took a shot at it. Before long, they were looking at a close-up of the woman.

“Wait a minute,” the chief said, “I’ve seen her before. She’s here all the time. Real patron-of-the-arts type; if you know what I mean.”

“Do you know her name?” Carmen asked.

The chief got up and returned with a copy of the guest list from that night, and looked over the names. “That’s her: Jeannette Winters.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have an address on her?”

“No. But the director, Miss Perry would have it. But she’s not here right now.”

“The two of them pretty close?” Carmen asked, remembering the night that she went over the guest list; and her reaction when she got to a certain name. Carmen believed that Miss Perry called her; and that she was the woman who called and said she was at the gallery with Tangela House.

“Believe me, Miss Perry is close to anybody that supports the gallery with money,” the chief said.

“Hold up a minute,” Max interjected. “The cops have to have seen the same thing we did, right?”

“Right,” Carmen said.

“Would they have wanted to know the same thing?”

“Two detectives were by here yesterday and talked to Miss Perry.”

“Do you know what she told them? Carmen asked.

“No.”

“Did they talk to you?” she asked.

“No.”

Carmen stood up and thanked the chief for his time, and she and Max left the studio. On the way back to the station, Max asked Carmen if she thought that Mitchell was holding out on her.

“Maybe. I wouldn’t be surprised. But I don’t think Ms. Aneisha Perry told the detectives anything about Jeannette Winters,” she said, and told Max about the call she’d gotten. “I wanna talk to her. All we have to do now is find out where she lives.”