This is a Test

Ch. 12

For once, Cashe was as stunned as the rest of them. Dante was saying something, but he missed it, so he was forced to ask, "I'm sorry. Could you repeat that?"

"I asked, 'Where were you this evening?' "

"I see. And I assume you asked everyone else this already." The silence was Cashe's answer. "Or is there some reason that you profiled me?"

"Don't pull that crap with me," Dante spit out. "This isn't about race. This is about a guy being beaten to death. That's more of a guy thing than a girl thing."

Cashe acknowledged to himself that a man would have been his first suspect, but he wasn't letting Dante off the hook. "Oh, so you saw him, then?"

"No. Karina saw his body, ran in here and told me."

"I see. And how did you know he was beaten to death?"

This was the part in old movies where the music would give an orchestral bum-bum-buuuum as the killer revealed something only he could have known. The moment spurted out when he said, "Karina said so."

"Is that true?" Cashe inquired of the woman being supported by Miranda.

She stopped her sniveling to wipe her eyes with her shirt cuffs. "What?" After a repeat of the question, she said, "Yes, I could see his head had been bashed in..." Despair flickered to immediate fury. "By one of you!" she screamed at the men, pointing her finger between the two of them.

"Karina, dear," Miranda said "please, let's not be hasty and accuse people without proof."

"Yes," Cashe offered, attempting to show himself as an enlightened person. "Women are just as capable of murder as men are."

"Thank you, Randall," Miranda said with an appreciative smile.

"Of course. I do have one question of Karina, though." This caused the plant lady to make eye contact. "I have never seen you around the Garage before. What spurred an interest now?"

Bum-bum-buuuum...

She pushed herself away from Miranda and aimed her accusatory finger down the hall. "Because I have never seen the doors between the Garage and Lounge closed before!" The words shot out of her mouth with flecks of spittle. "I figured that fat fuck was trying to pull some shit. I didn't know that they were closed to hide a murder.'

The theme music in his head died in a cacophony of instruments giving up the ghost. Cashe stared above their heads as he tried to process this before saying, "Makes sense. I probably would have found that suspicious as well. But how do you know he is dead?"

"The way he was laying there."

"Okay, but that doesn't seem like a diagnosis from a trained professional. There is a chance he is still alive, and I think it's our responsibility to find out."

His eye contact with Miranda wore her down in seconds as her hippocratic oath must have convinced her that a duty to a patient overrode her sense of fear and horror. Cashe walked towards the Lounge with Miranda in tow when he heard Karina yelp, "You are going off alone with him?"

"Perhaps everyone could come along, to ensure the safety of all," Cashe volunteered. His comment about women being killers was valid, and since it had to be one of them that took Roger's life, perhaps he wouldn't feel as assured having a single person behind him as they separated from the group.

"I'm not going back in there," Karina hissed.

"I wouldn't ask you to. Maybe you all wait outside and one of you comes in to make sure that nothing nefarious happens to either Miranda or myself. No one else needs to see anything." There was no consensus or motivation to follow him, so Cashe said, "We have a moral responsibility to see if he is hurt."