CHAPTER EIGHT
Ava was slightly surprised that Carter Epps was only being held in a holding cell at the precinct. She’d heard of men being tossed into the city prison for far less without much of a trail, almost overnight. It sickened her and she hoped that this treatment of Carter Epps, with no real evidence against him, was a sign that things might be changing.
Imagine, she thought as she and Frank walked back to the holding cells in the back of the building. A female detective on the force and proper treatment of a black man with no evidence against him. Maybe there is some hope for the future.
Yet, at the same time, she had to remind herself that the case did seem like a sure thing. Carter had been heard arguing with Monty Lincoln, and there was at least one person who claimed to have actually seen the attack. And then there was even Carter’s entire band reporting that they had seen Carter kneeling by the freshly killed body. It was going to be a hard one to prove otherwise, and she wasn’t sure why she had such a hard time keeping that in mind. Perhaps it was because now, as a detective, she was getting a firsthand look at some of the racist behaviors within the precinct and the city that Clarence had often complained about.
The hallway containing the holding cells was in the back of the building, isolated far away from the central hub. It was quiet in this part of the building, the only sounds coming from one of the prisoners snoring and another whistling a sad tune. Given that Carter Epps was a musician, Ava was not at all surprised to find the whistling coming from his cell.
She recognized his face at once, having seen it a few times in the past. Though it had been barely over a year since she’d last seen him, he looked much older. When he saw them approach and he, too, recognized her, his eyes lit up a bit but the smile that touched his lips didn’t remain there for very long.
“Ava Gold,” he said, looking at her through the bars. “You know, word on the street was that you’d stopped singing and had become a boxer. But then that word switched and we started hearing you were working with the heat. I didn’t believe it, but…here you are.”
“Hi, Carter. Sorry to see you again under such terrible circumstances.”
He laughed nervously as he looked away from Ava, taking the time to study Frank for the first time. “Yeah, I’ll say.”
“Carter, we’re going to need to know what happened in that alleyway yesterday. The rest of your band said you wouldn’t talk about it with them.”
“Well, it wasn’t quite like that at all. I mean…I was in shock. I couldn’t really string a sentence together.”
“Okay,” Ava said. “So tell us what happened. You arrived at the Candle’s Wick to rehearse, right?”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“And what happened after that?”
“Well, we were setting up, talking about the set list. And…it’s embarrassing, but I felt the call of nature, you know? But there was some big fella in the back fixing the toilet. So I snuck out into the alleyway to relieve myself.” He looked embarrassed as he said this, as if this in and of itself were a terrible crime. “But before I could start, I saw this man…lying there on the ground. There was blood coming out of his ear and his head had been…well, he’d been hit really hard on his head.”
“So…wait. You’re saying the man was already dead when you stepped out into the alley?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see him before you found him dead?”
“Yeah, he was in the club for a bit, sort of here and there. I didn’t think anything of it. I figured he was one of Tony’s friends, you know? He did get awful angry at me for a second when I didn’t refer to him as ‘sir,’ though.”
“Okay,” Frank said. “Now, tell us what happened after you found his body in the alley.”
“Well, when I knew what I was seeing, I sort of hunkered down over him, trying to see if he was still alive. But before I had the chance to even check, there was this other man that came around the corner, off the street. He saw me and the dead man and started yelling at me. He said that I did it, called me a murderer. He got real loud.”
Already, the story didn’t line up with what they’d gotten from Tony and the rest of the band. It also veered from the story Albert Long had told them.
“When you found the dead man,” Ava said, “did you have anything in your hand? Anything that might have looked like a weapon to the witness?”
“No, there was nothing. I don’t…he said I had a weapon?”
“He did. He says you had something large in your hand, something that he supposed could have been a musical instrument.”
“But that’s…no. There was no weapon. Even the police checked me over. They went out and looked in the alley, too. I never had any kind of a weapon.”
“And what about the man who saw you there?” Frank asked. “Had you ever seen him before?”
“Not that I can recollect. But, you know…look, I’m not dumb. I can see why he’d think I might have done it. I mean, the man had only been dead for a little while, you know? But he was insisting that I did it.”
“Did he confront you?” Ava asked.
“A bit. He took a few steps into the alley like he planned to fight me, but backed off at the last minute. He just kept yelling at me. When I slowly got back to my feet, he backed away.”