Deception by Randy Alcorn

Something went sideways here, Detective. He—”
    “All I need to know. Be there in ten. Keep everybody out, okay?”
    I prefer not to hear crime scene descriptions over the phone. I like to rely on my own eyes. I want to see what I see, not what somebody else says I should see. I’d get patrol’s report after my own wheels were turning.
    As I drove, I noticed something in the passenger seat. A box. It said Wally’s Donuts. In it was a single glazed donut, with telltale signs that it’d recently had five companions.
    There were three reasons I didn’t eat it. One, I didn’t remember buying those donuts. Two, I didn’t remember going to Wally’s Donuts. Three, I didn’t remember ever hearing of Wally’s Donuts.
    The last six months, when I come home late from Rosie O’Grady’s, there’s a lot I don’t remember. But donuts from a place I’d never heard of? It wasn’t like me to have eaten five donuts. If I’d bought these, I would’ve eaten all six. Or given the last one to Mulch. Could I have been drunk enough to leave a donut in the car?
    What’s going on? The donut wasn’t my only issue. Why did they call me? Manny and I aren’t the up team. We’re on deck. Aren’t we? But then, if I couldn’t remember buying a box of donuts.
    My plan was to call Abernathy once I arrived at the scene. I’d still be in the car, so I could tell him I hadn’t entered yet. That would give me a head start. I’d be holding the cards when he got there.
    At the scene were a dozen people, two in bathrobes covered by coats. Crime scenes are magnets. Fortunately, at 3:30 a.m. not as many gawkers are available, and most journalists are sleeping in their crypts, or doing whatever vampires do when they’re not sucking blood.
    My biggest concern was the swarm of uniforms. It looked like the Policemen’s Ball. That always makes me nervous. The greater the numbers, the greater the potential for contaminated evidence. Cops, firemen, paramedics, all kinds of trained and helpful people can trample a scene and destroy or bury evidence.
    I saw two EMTs smoking cigarettes outside the ambulance across the street. That always means somebody’s dead.
    Two civilian cars in the driveway, patrol car at the curb. On the porch, two cops were having an animated exchange with somebody.
    I reached into my trench coat’s inner pocket for my Black Jack gum. Nothing. I patted it down. No Black Jack? Bad luck. I dialed Abernathy’s cell number. One ring.
    “Yeah?”
    “It’s Chandler. Sorry to get you up.”
    “I am up.”
    “Just got a call, Eeyore. There’s been a murder.”
    “No kidding.”
    I stepped out of the car. “The address is—”
    “2230 Southeast Oak.”
    On the porch, one officer was looking at me, the other was eyeing the big guy in suit and tie, who was pointing at the house numbers with his cell phone, glaring at me.
    “Oh, boy.”
    I approached, identified myself to the uniforms, then looked up at the shall-we-say tense face of Clarence Abernathy.
    “So you ‘just’ got a call?”
    “It was at 3:07. Only twenty minutes ago.”
    He looked at his watch. “Twenty-six minutes ago. Twenty-two minutes ago I got a call.”
    “The lieutenant?”
    “He said you’d call me, but just in case …”
    Light shone on our faces from the video camera of a bozo named Jordan who comes to murder scenes and sells footage to two of the TV stations.
    “Hey, Jordan, we’re having a private conversation here. Mind turning that off?”
    Jordan didn’t say anything. He kept filming.
    “Shaq here wanted us to let him in,” Dorsey said. “Can you believe that?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just like him.”
    It was a cold night. Abernathy had steam rising from his forehead, like it was the fourth quarter in a long, icy drive up Lambeau Field.
    “We had an agreement,” Clarence said.
    “I kept it. I didn’t enter the crime scene before calling you. I still haven’t entered the crime scene.”
    “That’s why people