The Late Show (Renée Ballard #1)(17)

“I’m in detectives. Filing paper. Heard you guys laughing it up a little while ago.”

“Oh, yeah, we’re having a ball up here. I need you to take a statement.”

“From who? I’m in the middle of this and still have the assault I haven’t even touched yet.”

“A guy just walked in, said he was in the Dancers when the shooting started. He says he has photos.”

“You sure? It’s a no-photo place.”

“He snuck a couple selfies.”

“Anything in them?”

“They’re dark but he’s got something. Looks like muzzle flash. Maybe they can enhance at the lab. That’s why I need you to take this guy and see what he has and what he knows. He’s sitting on a chair in the lobby. Grab him before he decides he doesn’t want to wait any longer.”

“On my way. But hey, L-T, I’m out of here in sixty. You signing any greenies tonight? I still haven’t touched the assault and now I have this witness.”

She was referring to the green voucher cards a shift supervisor had to sign to authorize overtime.

“I’ll give you an hour, that’s it,” Munroe said. “I can’t blow the bank in one night. That should give you enough time to talk to this guy and finish up the paper on the Dancers. The assault you can push till tomorrow—as long as the vic is still kickin’. I can’t stall a homicide.”

“Last I checked, she came through surgery.”

“Okay, then come take this guy off my hands.”

“Roger that.”

Ballard clicked off. She was pleased that she would not be turning the Ramona Ramone case over to the CAPs unit at the end of shift. That was more important to her than the overtime. On her way to the front lobby she cruised by Jenkins’s desk and saw that he was still typing with two fingers. She told him about the witness and added that they’d scored an hour of overtime, if he wanted it. He said no thanks, he had to get home.





7

The witness was a twenty-three-yearold clubber named Zander Speights. Ballard took him back to the detective bureau and put him in a small interview room. He was a slightly built man wearing a dark blue hoodie over gray sweatpants. He kept his hands in the pockets of the hoodie, even when he sat down.

“Zander—is that your real name?” Ballard began.

“Short for Alexander,” Speights said. “I like Zander better.”

“Okay. What do you do for a living, Zander?”

“Oh, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I’m sellin’ shoes at the moment.”

“Where?”

“On Melrose. A place called Slick Kicks.”

Ballard was not taking notes. When they entered the room, she had adjusted the thermostat, which actually turned on the room’s recording devices. It was wired for sight and sound.

“So you were in the Dancers earlier this morning when the shooting started?” she asked.

“That’s right,” Speights said. “I was there.”

“Were you alone?”

“No, I was with my boy Metro.”

“What’s Metro’s real name?”

“I don’t rightly know. He’s just Metro to me.”

“Where’d you meet him?”

“He works at Kicks. Met him there.”

“So when did you get to the Dancers?”

“Last night, ’round midnight.”

“And you saw the shooting?”

“No, it was like behind me. Two booths away, so I had my back to it. But just when it went down, I was taking selfies and I got the first shot. It’s crazy.”

“Show me.”

Speights took his iPhone out of his hoodie’s pocket and opened up the photo archive.

“I took three on Live Photos,” he said. “You can swipe through.”

He put the phone down on the table between them and slid it to Ballard. She looked at the photo on the screen. Front and center was Speights himself but over his right shoulder Ballard could see the dark outlines of the other crowded booths. No one was identifiable. It would be up to the video unit in the lab to try to enhance.

“Keep going,” Speights urged. “I got the shot.”

The second photo Ballard swiped to was similar to the first, but the third grabbed her interest. The camera had captured a flash of light in the second booth over Speights’s shoulder. He had indeed taken the photo just as the shooting started. He got the muzzle flash. Because the phone’s camera had the Live Photos feature, it captured a second of action leading to the actual freeze-frame. Ballard tapped it several times to replay and saw that within that single second she could see the killer’s arm raise the weapon and then the shot.

Ballard used her fingers to expand the photo and center the screen on the flash of light. It was very blurry but she could tell that the shooter’s back was to the camera. She could see the indistinct lines of the back of his head and his right shoulder. His right arm was up, holding the weapon and pointing it directly across the booth at the man who would moments later slump to his left and hang out of the booth. The victim’s face was blurred as he recoiled at the sight of the weapon.

“I bet they can enhance that,” Speights said. “Is there a reward or something?”