Old Guns by Alan Lee

Author:Alan Lee [Lee, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sparkle Press
Published: 2024-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

24

Elijah was shook.

Again.

He was always shook. Encountering your first hardship in your twenties was too late.

He was forced to sit in the firm chair at the sheriff’s office, under the scrutiny of the deputy police chief, asking questions about the mystery man Diane ate lunch with. Down the hall, inmates were howling and Elijah stared that direction, worried zombies might burst through.

He worked with the sketch artist, mumbling I don’t know, until I kicked his shoe.

“What,” he protested. “I mostly saw the guy from behind. He looked like a lot of White guys look.”

The finished portrait was no help. He resembled everyone.

With fifty grand resting on Elijah’s head, I didn’t feel comfortable parading him around town in my car, so I drove him to a place no one knew about—Manny’s apartment. Manny kept a place not far from the US Marshal’s office, a luxury top floor unit he rarely used. He’d replaced the wooden door with steel, triple locked. The windows were bullet proof, and every access point was laced with two redundant alarm systems, plus video cameras he could monitor from his phone. Paranoid sissy. Valuable artwork leaned against walls and the leather furniture was expensive, the view of Mill Mountain and the star was the best in Roanoke.

“Yo,” said Elijah. “What baller lives here?”

“A baller who prefers sleeping on my floor,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone where you are. Not even your parents.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re human. They make mistakes. I’ll bring you clothes. You don’t open the door for anyone else,” I said.

He stood frozen in the middle of the wide apartment with vaulted ceilings, like the furniture was too rich for him to sit on. Which it probably was.

“Will the killers try to make you talk?” he asked. “About where I am?”

“Maybe. But they can’t.”

“Mackenzie. Dude.” He shook his head. “This is too much. I mean, low key, I can never pay you back for all this.”

“True.”

“Okay. Here it is.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You know the thing I haven’t been telling you?”

“I suspect you’re hiding something, yes.”

“I’ll tell you,” he said. “Cause, after what happened today, maybe it’s important.”

“It is. It’s probably worth fifty grand,” I said.

Head down, his dreads covered his eyes. He mumbled, “At that big house that night, I was following the guy, right? Avery Asher. I was recording everything on my phone, because my mom said I should. And I went up to the house to try and record him through the windows,” he said. “I know, I know, you told me. That’s not legal. You can’t record stuff in someone’s house. I know that now. But I didn’t then. So I walk up and I peek in a window.”

“While you were peeking in, a neighbor saw and called the police,” I said.

“Yeah, that’s what happened. But the police didn’t get there immediately, and by then I’d already gone inside.”

“Why’d you go inside?”

“You’re gonna be mad at this part,” he said.

“I’m already mad at everything, Elijah.”

“Because I saw them having sex.

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