CHAPTER 7
Clara
Thin black marker. Red strip. One end folded for easy removal.
Considerate, if your hobbies include attempted murder and craft supplies.
I crouch beside the fallen sandbag and keep my hands to myself because Detective Alvarez is already giving me the look men give women when they expect us to ruin evidence with emotion. He underestimates me by half. I am excellent at ruining things with emotion only after documenting them properly.
The sandbag lies on the concrete where my ribs would have been.
That detail keeps trying to become a thought. I refuse to let it. Thoughts have doors. Doors are not doing well tonight.
Molly stands in the doorway with pepper spray still in her fist, pointed down now but ready to blind the next inanimate object that earns her suspicion.
Diana is near the wall, face pale and furious in the flashlight beam.
Malcolm stands close enough that I can smell the cold night on his jacket and far enough that his hands stay visible.
He is learning.
I resent the timing.
Alvarez photographs the red tape. Then the cut line. Then the card taped to the panel.
ASK HER WHY SHE LEFT FIRST.
The words are less effective now that I have a near-fatal bag of sand beside me. Manipulation hates competition.
“You know what this means?” Alvarez asks.
I stand too fast. My knees object in a cold, private way. I ignore them. “It means whoever set this up expected me to step in close and read the card.”
“That part, yes.”
“It means they know how I move through a scene.”
Malcolm’s gaze shifts to me.
Not at me. To me. Like I said something important and he hates that he didn’t say it first.
Good.
Alvarez lowers his camera. “Explain.”
“They didn’t rig it over the doorway because any of you could have triggered it. They wanted me under it. So they used text.” I point to the card, not touching it. “A question about Laurel. A question about my guilt. They knew I’d go close enough to examine it.”
“Because you’re emotionally connected.”
“No. Because I investigate with my eyes before my hands.”
Molly says, “Also because you have a medically concerning relationship with printed words.”
“Not now.”
“I said it supportively.”
Diana rubs her forehead. “The bag was rigged for a mark. Like a practical effect.”
Malcolm looks up at the cut line. His jaw is tight, but his voice stays even. “A bad one. Fast, dirty, hidden in existing clutter.”
“Could it have killed me?” I ask.
Nobody answers fast.
There is the answer.
Molly’s pepper spray rises two inches.
“Molly,” I say.
“I’m pointing it at the concept of death.”
“Lower the concept.”
She lowers it, muttering, “I don’t care for this room.”
Neither do I.
The shoebox is smaller than I remembered, which offends me because memory had no right to make it larger.
The old insert stage is a narrow rectangular storage room with a low ceiling, scarred concrete floor, racks of forgotten wardrobe, flats stacked like tombstones, and one red-painted panel that has outlived better people.
Dust sits on everything except the path someone used to bring us here.
The air tastes like fabric rot and fake blood.
My shoulder blade starts to ache where Malcolm yanked me back. Not injury. Contact memory. His arm around my waist. My back against his chest. One hot second where my body understood alive before my pride understood furious.
I press my thumb into the side of my index finger until the nail bed hurts.
Useful. Small. Mine.
Alvarez gestures us back. “Out. All of you. This room gets sealed.”
Diana objects first. “I know the build.”
“And now you know the exit.”
“Detective—”
“No. One attempted assault scene per hour is my personal limit.”
Molly points at him with the pepper spray. “That is a healthy boundary.”
“Thank you. Don’t point that at me.”
“Sorry.”
She turns it toward the floor.
Alvarez looks at me. “Ms. Vane, I need your statement on the sandbag.”
“You have my statement from the trailer.”
“I need this one too.”
“Do I get a punch card? Sixth statement free?”
His mouth shifts. Not a smile. Close enough. “You get coffee if you stop touching crime scenes.”
“I didn’t touch it.”
“You touched the air around it with intent.”
“I’m being profiled as literate.”
“Accurately.”
Malcolm makes a low sound behind me.
I turn.
His face returns to neutral half a second too late.
“You laughing?” I ask.
“No.”
“That was terrible.”
“I agree.”
“You’re not supposed to enjoy police oppression.”
“Noted.”
Alvarez looks between us and decides, with admirable self-preservation, to move on. “Out.”
We file into the corridor like the world’s worst field trip. Molly stays close enough to brush my sleeve. She does not ask whether I’m okay. This is why I keep her. She knows I am not. She also knows I would rather eat broken glass than discuss it with my knees still negotiating with gravity.
Outside, the service lane feels too open and not open enough. The broken light still clicks overhead. Cold air slides under my coat and touches the damp skin at the back of my neck.
Malcolm steps out after me and rolls his left shoulder once.
Small. Controlled.
Pain flashes across his face and disappears under discipline.
I hate him a little less for failing to hide it perfectly.
“You hurt your shoulder,” I say.
“No.”
“Mmm.”
He looks at me. “That was almost a sound banned by your general personality.”
“It was punctuation.”
“Dangerous punctuation.”
Molly, beside me, whispers, “I ship none of this but I am taking notes.”
I turn my head slowly.
She lifts both hands, pepper spray dangling from one finger. “Emotionally. Not legally.”
Diana steps past us, phone to her ear, already issuing orders in the tone of a woman who has made assistants cry and saved productions from men who confuse confidence with competence.
“Nobody moves anything from wardrobe. Nobody posts. Nobody breathes near Stage 14 unless Alvarez clears it. If Victor complains, tell him I’ve entered my litigious era. ”
Molly watches her go. “I want to be her when I grow up.”
“You’re thirty-one,” I say.
“I’ve had delays.”
Alvarez sends two uniforms to tape off the hidden corridor.
Another detective arrives with an evidence kit.
The lot has begun to pull itself around the official narrative like a body trying to clot.
People stand in groups near trailers. Phones appear, vanish when security looks. Whispering spreads faster than light.
Avery Lorne is still missing.
That should be the only sentence in my head.
It isn’t.
ASK HER WHY SHE LEFT FIRST.
SHE SCREAMED BEFORE THE TAKE THAT KILLED HER.
ASK MALCOLM WHY HE MOVED HER.
The messages stack like bad dialogue from an unseen writer who thinks pain is clever if you use capital letters.
Malcolm moves beside me. “You need to sit down.”
I look at him. “I need many things. A new personality. A flamethrower. Better shoes.”
“You’re shaking.”
I look at my hands.
He is right.
Damn him.
My fingers are trembling in short, ugly bursts at my sides. Adrenaline leaving. Body filing a complaint. I close them into fists.
“Now I’m not.”
“That isn’t how physiology works.”
“Physiology can email me.”
Molly steps in front of me. “Okay. I love the banter, but as a certified adult with a purse full of receipts and one yogurt I forgot about, I’m calling a break.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Clara, a bag of sand tried to reorganize your skeleton.”
“Vivid. Unhelpful.”
“We are leaving this set for twenty minutes before you start making decisions with your trauma steering.”
“I do not have trauma steering.”
Malcolm says, “You do.”
I point at him. “You’re on probation.”
“For what?”
“Existing near accurate statements.”
Molly nods. “Valid charge.”
Alvarez approaches with his notebook. “Ms. Vane, you can give the sandbag statement at the security office after you’ve had water.”
“I don’t need water.”
“You all say that before you faint.”
“I’ve never fainted.”
Malcolm’s face changes.
Small.
Too small for anyone else.
Not for me.
I turn on him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Try again.”
His eyes move to Alvarez, then Molly, then the taped-off room.
Not here.
The phrase arrives without him saying it.
My temper lifts its head.
“No,” I say.
Malcolm’s mouth tightens. “I didn’t—”
“You thought it loudly.”
Molly mutters, “That is their most divorced sentence so far.”
“We were never married,” I say.
“Emotionally, you own property.”
Alvarez closes his notebook. “There’s a coffee shop two blocks off-lot. Twenty-four hours. I need everyone available but not in my evidence path. Reed, you’re staying reachable. Vane, statement after.”
Malcolm looks at him. “I should stay on-lot.”
“You should stop contaminating my scene with unresolved history for twenty minutes.”
Diana, returning from her call, hears that and says, “Detective, I’m beginning to respect you against my will.”
Alvarez points his pen at all of us. “Coffee. Then statements. Nobody disappears, nobody chases anonymous texts, nobody enters old rooms with rigging over their heads because a haunted arts-and-crafts project invites them.”
Molly raises a hand. “Can I quote that?”
“No.”
She lowers it. “Rude but fair.”
I should refuse. I want to refuse. Refusal is clean. It makes the body feel like it still has jurisdiction.
Then my knee gives a tiny delayed tremor.
Malcolm sees.
I look at him, daring him to speak.
He does not.
Fine.
That, more than anything, gets me moving.