Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

“No, no. I’ll just use it as a basis of reporting. I’ll go around the neighborhood here, take Reese’s picture, like I did with these three girls here, and ask if anybody recognizes him. Like I just did with you, right? I showed you the pictures, asked you if you recognized them. I didn’t say anything about anybody else.”

“Okay.”

“Alright. So.” He took a breath. “Did, did Reese keep coming in the store after Noel went missing?”

“I wasn’t taking notes on it. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen him.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll ask Pittman’s family about it, and tell them someone says she was involved with a guy named David and see what they say.”

“The judge. Will you tell him?”

“If some other people say they saw him, or I find another way that shows he and Pittman were having an affair, then I’d have to go see him and see what he says before I could print it.”

“But you’re not going to use my name?”

Sully extended his hand over the counter. “I don’t burn people, Doyle.”

The man nodded and shook his hand. He leaned back on his stool. He cleaned his glasses with a cloth by the register, apparently a nervous tic. “I just feel better now that I told somebody,” he said. He managed a dry cough, his eyes lighting up, relieved. “I felt terrible, holding on to a secret like that.”

Sully came out of the store, his mind aflame, and before he could think of anything else, there was the bright red light of the Big Apple Dance Studio directly across the street, like a slowing magnet.

Crossing during a lull in traffic, the cold and the dark settling in, he tugged the glass door open, the thumping music from the studio upstairs assaulting his ears. The receptionist desk was along the wall.

He asked for Regina Blocker, the owner, and the lady told him she had gone for the day. He was about to ask for Victoria, then remembered that was her middle name. He was tongue-tied until he turned and she was coming down the steps from upstairs, as if on cue.

She had on tights and running shoes and a white sweatshirt, the top collar scissored open for a deep V-neck. She had a white hair band keeping her braids back and a gym tote bag slung over one shoulder. Sully thought she looked athletic, attractive, like a small forward on a college basketball team.

“Look at you,” he called out, “right on time.” He jerked his head toward the door and started walking, as if they had plans.

She gave him a wary look but went outside with him. “I’m just running across the street to get something to eat,” she said, gesturing toward the Hunger Stopper.

He nodded. “Then let’s make it my treat.”

Halfway across the street, she said, “Something going on? I don’t mind helping you out, but I don’t wan-”

“Nobody made you as ‘Victoria,’ did they?”

“No,” she said, flashing him a smile. She was comfortable, opening the door to the restaurant, stepping up to the carryout window, looking up at the menu items listed overhead, on her turf. “We’re good.”

“I still don’t know your name, you know.”

“A tragedy.”

Sully, itchy from the news Doyle had given him, stood beside her, waited while she ordered a roast beef on rye and coffee to go. “You eating that right before class?” he asked. “After,” she said. “They close before class lets out. Get it now or go hungry.” He reached into the backpack for the three pictures. He spread them out, as much as he could, on the takeout counter, glad no one was in line behind them. “So I got to ask you one more question,” he said.

“That’s Noel,” she said.

“And I didn’t even have to ask.”

“She used to come in the studio. Hip-hop.” She looked at the other pictures. “That’s that Spanish girl you were asking about last year. Don’t know the other one.”

“Noel took classes?”

“Yeah. She had this gig out at Halo. She didn’t want to be embarrassing herself out there.”

“Was she a regular student?”

“More off and on. She just came to a group class, so far as I know.”

“You saw her in there?”

“I taught the class.”

“Oh.” He paused. “So you can dance like that, like they do out at Halo?”

“You like that sort of thing, Mr. Newspaper Man?”

He laughed, caught. “No, no. I didn’t say that exactly, I just-”

“Guys do. Don’t be so shy about it. So why you showing me these pictures while I’m trying to get something to eat? I got to get on back.”

“I-I was working in the neighborhood and happened to stop in. You know David Reese?”

“Sarah’s dad, sure.”

“He around the studio?”

“Drop off, pick up. Mainly Saturdays. Like I told you before.”

“He hang out at the studio while Sarah danced?”

“Nah. Sometimes he’d be ten, fifteen minutes late picking her up.”

“You remember what time those classes were?”

“Sarah’s? She was in Intermediate Modern. Starts at six on weekdays, ten on Saturdays.”

“Okay, so when were the lessons that Noel came in for?”

“Saturday mornings. First thing. Well-and, well, there was a second hip-hop class. It started at eleven. I taught that, too.”

“I’m guessing the first one started at like nine.”

“Aren’t we the smart little cookie.”

“Which means that early class of Noel’s would have been breaking up right when Sarah’s was starting.”

“And the second one started when Sarah’s finished. It bookended.”

The man behind the counter brought a paper cup of coffee with a plastic lid on it and a folded brown paper bag. Before Victoria could put any money down, Sully handed him a ten-dollar bill and told him not to worry about change.

“You remember which one Noel came in for most often?”

“Why, look at you,” Victoria said. “Thanks. And no. It’s a ten-week group class. You sign up and pay, you can come as much or as little as you like.”

She was walking then, back outside, sipping the coffee, waiting for traffic to clear so she could cross back to the studio.

“So how long did Noel take classes?” he said.

“Can’t remember. You can ask Regina, but she’s not going to say anything. It was maybe a year. Probably less.”

“Was she coming to class right up until she disappeared?”

She shrugged, a hunch of the shoulders. “I don’t know when she went missing. She just didn’t come anymore. There were six or eight girls in the class. It’s not like I was keeping attendance.”

The traffic cleared then, and she started across the street. Sully stayed on the sidewalk. “You can tell me your name if you want to,” he called after her.

She turned in the street, walking backward, smiling. “You asking for my number?”

This was unexpected. It wasn’t unwelcome, it just threw him, the idea, maybe something other than Dusty… “Should I?”

She turned away, laughing, raising the coffee cup as a parting. “Keep me out of this shit.”

“What about your number?”

“You got to do better than this,” swinging the paper bag with the sandwich.

Sully stood on the sidewalk for a moment. Victoria was, if he stopped to think about it, kind of damned hot, and she was playing with him, which he kind of liked, but there was Dusty and… He blinked and blew out a breath. Focus. Too much shit at once.

He pulled out the cell and punched in Sly’s number.

Five minutes later, Sly Hastings opened the door, unlocked the gate with the steel bars. Sully followed his angular frame into the hallway and then down the steps into the basement.

There was music on-Sully recognized it as Miles Davis, that middle register-and Sly went to a bar stool and sat down. Donnell was asleep on the kitchen floor. The dog opened an eye and watched as Sully stepped over him and went to the refrigerator.