Authors: Terri Blackstock
Double Minds
Double Minds
ePub format
Copyright © 2009 by Terri Blackstock
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ISBN-13: 978-0-310-31307-6
Scripture quotations are taken from the
New American Standard Bible
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Interior design by Christine Orejuela-Winkelman
This book is lovingly dedicated to the Nazarene
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
While I was writing
Double Minds
, a book about a struggling singer/songwriter, I had the privilege of meeting Erica Lane. Erica is an up-and-coming Chris tian singer who writes her own songs. She’s the subject of a reality television show that her challenges as she tries to get a record contract and build name recognition. Meeting her and watching her program (which airs on FamilyNet, JCTV, and other channels) inspired me, and I was able to get ideas for Parker’s character through watching her. Thanks, Erica, for being a genuine Chris tian in a tough world. I pray that your influence will reach far and wide.
I also want to thank my husband, Ken, for all the years of supporthe’s given me. I thank someone in every book, but he’s often left out because we take for granted those who are always there for us. It shouldn’t be that way. Ken provides a lot of fuel for my books, because he says such quippy and clever things, and no matter how tough things get in this crazy household of ours, he always finds ways to make me laugh. He’s generous and kind, and his Bible-basedwisdom gives me a strong sense of security. Ken is the greatestrepresentative on earth of the love Christ has for me. Thanks for being there for me, honey. I love you very much.
Emergency, Parker! Call me!
The text on Parker James’s iPhone almost broke her rhythm. She focused on the piano keys and tried to ignore it. Her brother could wait. Didn’t he realize she was in the middle of a concert?
She never should have set the phone on the music rack where she could see it. Now, in the middle of her best song, she was distracted by the vibration—as well as the message. She forced her mind back to the lyrics she’d written.
It was rare to have the undivided attention of fifty middle schoolers. Tonight, as she’d played piano and crooned her songs, they actually stopped whispering and shoving each other. Instead, they sang along, a beautiful chorus of a cappella praise.
The phone vibrated again as more voices joined the song. Jaded young faces held sweet, teary-eyed expressions, far removed from eighth-grade mini-dramas. Many of them closed their eyes … and they weren’t nodding off. They lifted their hands but weren’t wavingto friends. They were
in the zone
—that special place where all performers pray they’ll take their audience. No way was she going to stop to answer the phone.
Red bangs fell in front of her eyes and she shook them back. “Sing it with me,” she whispered into the microphone.
“Flying, dying,
This life is trying …
My fingers prying
Your hand away.
But You are bigger…
You grasp with vigor …
And get me through another day.”
Another text flashed onto the screen.
Parker, there’s been a murder. Call immediately
.
Now he had her attention.
The sound of soft voices rose and swelled, but the phone had snagged her thoughts. A murder? Her brother Gibson was a homicide detective, but he’d never reported a murder to her before. It had to be someone she knew. Someone close to her.
She stopped playing, letting the voices carry the song. Slipping off her stool as the teens kept singing, she stepped over to Daniel Walker, the youth minister, who strummed a guitar on the stage next to her. “Could you take over for a minute?” she whispered.
He nodded reverently, continuing to sing, and she slipped into the hallway and called Gibson. He answered after half a ring.
“Parker?”
“Yeah, what’s wrong?” she whispered.
“I’m at Colgate. There’s been a shooting.”
The chorus continued on the other side of the door:
“Flying, dying,
This life is trying…”
She plugged her ear. “A shooting? Who?” She heard Gibson talking to someone in the background. “
Gibson?
”
The phone cut off, and she punched the button to call him back. It went straight to voicemail.
She stared at the backlit screen of the phone in her hand. Had the phone company lost the call, or was Gibson in trouble?
And who’d been shot?
Her other brother, LesPaul, worked as a recording engineer at the complex, but she was pretty sure he wasn’t in a session tonight.
The singing stopped, and she touched her pounding chest, trying to decide what to do. She had to tell someone she was leaving. She wasn’t finished with her concert. What would they think?
She cracked the door open as Daniel took the microphone. “Wow,” he said in an intimate rumble, “that was great. And isn’t it just like Parker James to fore go the applause and adulation, and step out quietly in the middle of our worship, to let God have all the glory?”
She stepped back and closed the door as she heard the applause and adulation she really had come here for.
“Follow that example, guys,” he went on. “She’s a real woman of God, and I’m humbled by what she did here tonight.”
Now she couldn’t go back in, even if she wanted. What could she do? Tell Daniel that he had her all wrong? That she wanted to sing another half-hour and work them into a standing ovation?
No, she couldn’t. She had to get to Colgate Studios. She started walking away, then heard Daniel’s voice again. “The thing about Parker is that she doesn’t have a voice that draws big crowds.”
Her ego took the blow and splattered on the ground. It was worthy of a chalk outline.
“But man, can she tell a story with her songs and lead us right to the throne of God.”
She told herself it was a compliment, not a criticism, but the words still hurt. Crestfallen, she headed out to her V-dub. No time now for hurt feelings, not when someone she knew might be dead. What could have happened? Had some band members gotten into a fight? Even though Colgate Studios was a drug-and-alcohol-free zone, and mostly catered to Christian record labels, the musicians, engineers, and producers weren’t always drug-free—and they didn’t always behave differently from the secular musicians who’d given the industry its reputation for sleaze and self-indulgence. Occasionally there was an incident. But never anything requiring a homicide investigation.
Dread washed through her as she tried to remember who was recording there tonight. Clayton Marks, who’d been in Studio G all afternoon, had seemed depressed since his new album had tanked. Rumor was that he’d tried to take his own life once already. Maybe he’d succeeded tonight.
Would Homicide be called in for a suicide? Yes, of course. They probably had to investigate just in case it was a murder. But would Gibson call her out of a concert to tell her that? Besides, he’d specifically called it a murder.
By the time she hit 16
th
Avenue South, part of legendary Music Row, she had the heavy, sad certainty that she’d be attending the funeral of someone close to her. As she passed Sony Music, a million blue flashing lights illuminated the road in front of Colgate Studios. She drove straight for the roadblock and stopped behind a squad car.
A cop she didn’t know approached her as she got out. “Ma’am, you can’t park there.”
She strained to see the building a few doors down. “I work at Colgate Studios. What happened?”
“I need you to move your car.”
She turned to the crowd. “Somebody tell me … what happened?”
“Somebody got shot,” a teenager on a bicycle said.
The officer stepped between them. “Ma’am, if you don’t move this car—”
Parker turned back to him. “Please. Who was shot?”
“Get back in your car!”
She’d had enough. “I’m Detective Gibson James’s sister. I’m here because he asked me to come. Please call him and tell him I’m here.”
“I don’t know who he is.”
“He’s a homicide detective!” She dug her phone out of her bag. Pressing Gibson on speed dial, she waited for him to answer. It rang once, twice, three times.
“Parker, are you here?”
“Yeah, but they won’t let me through the barricade!” She read the officer’s nametag. “Could you tell Sgt. Foster to let me in?”
“Let me talk to him.”
She thrust the phone at the unyielding cop. “He wants to talk to you.”
The man took the phone, listened, then handed it back. He gave her a look that made her wrists hurt. No doubt he was one move away from slapping the cuffs on her. “He said he’d meet you at the tape,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Thank you.” She pushed between two squad cars and headed for the crime-scene tape, which crossed the street in a diagonal out from the building, creating a triangular perimeter. A crowd of press people were already there, snapping pictures as cops came and went out of the Colgate Studios building. The front glass was pierced with bullet holes, near where her reception desk sat. Every light in the building was on, and people moved around in the front room near her desk.
She stopped on the street, needing to keep some distance between herself and the evil inside.
A reporter from NewsChannel 5 was doing a live remote. “John, sources tell us that the murdered woman was a receptionist at Colgate Studios …”
A receptionist?
She
was the receptionist! Who had been watching the front desk tonight? Erin? Cat? Andy? Heat pounded in her face.
She couldn’t wait for Gibson. She ducked under the tape and bolted for the door. Another cop almost tackled her, but she twisted away. “Gibson!”
Her brother emerged then. “Let her go. She’s a witness.”
A witness? She hadn’t witnessed anything.
“Who is it?” she cried as she went toward him.
Gibson crossed the grass and took her arms. She stared up into his face. “Brenna Evans.”
Her mouth fell open, but her throat closed so tight she thought she might choke. Why had the intern even been here so late? The Belmont University student had only been working here for three months, mostly in the afternoons after her classes.
She was dead? So pretty and so young …
“Good Tidings was recording in Studio C,” Gibson said, “and Ron Jasper came out and found her dead on the floor.”
Brenna shot dead … while Good Tidings recorded their hymns in the booth down the hall? She tried to grasp it, but madness swirled in her head. From somewhere in the fog, she asked, “Did he see who did it? Did they catch them?”
“No, he didn’t see. She was dead when he found her. Since the booths are soundproof, no one heard the gunfire. She was apparently shot by someone outside, through the window. She was at your desk.”
Horror clutched her throat. “It could have been me … I’m usually here …”
“Parker, I know this is tough for you, but I need your help. I can’t take you into the building, but I need for you to look at some pictures and see if anything is missing from your desk. We haven’t ruled out robbery. Rayzo’s checking the security tape to see if anyone went in after the shooting.”
“Pictures? Yes, show me.”
He pulled the digital camera out of his coat pocket and turned it on. She watched as he clicked through the pictures he’d taken of the body. Parker’s lungs seemed to shut down. She couldn’t catch her breath. The young girl with the Bohemian style lay on her back where she’d fallen, between Parker’s computer case and her file cabinet. She wore a long, flowing skirt—lavender, the color of calm—and camel-colored Uggs. She lay on her back, her long, wavy blonde hair matted with blood.
Parker’s chair had fallen back with her, and Brenna’s legs seemed tangled in it.
She turned away, unable to look. “Look at this one, Parker,” he said finally. “Your desk. Everything in place? Anything missing?”
She shook the terror out of her thoughts and focused on the image. Brenna’s textbook lay open, next to a binder with notebook paper in it. A pen lay on top of a blank sheet. A can of Diet Coke sat next to her books. On the other side of the L-shaped desk sat Parker’s laptop—right where she’d left it. Next to that lay Brenna’s backpack, beside Parker’s mug of pens.
“Parker! Did they take anything?”
She ripped her mind from Brenna’s things and forced herself to scan her desk. “No … although these pictures are too small to tell for sure. Everything looks normal.”
He clicked through several more pictures of her desk taken from different angles, some zoomed in on the stacks of papers, the pens in their container, the contents of her top drawer.
Think
, she told herself.
This is important. There’s a person with a gun out there, and they could come back
. She said, “Did you check for the keys to the studios?”
“The ones in the second drawer?”
“Yeah.”
He clicked through more photos and found one of the contents of that drawer. The keys were still there.
“What are the musicians saying?”
“They all say either you or Cat were at your desk when they checked in. None of them saw Brenna.”
“Brenna wasn’t on the schedule tonight. Cat relieved me. She was here when I left.”
“I just talked to her. Cat says Brenna showed up and wanted to relieve
her
. Cat was glad to have the night off.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Brenna’s an unpaid intern. Why would she want to work extra hours?”
“Cat said Brenna thought it was a quiet place to study.”
“It’s not, though. People come and go, talking loud. The phone rings constantly. People hang out in the kitchen and lounge.” Of course, Gibson knew that as well as she did. He worked on the side as a studio musician. He’d done dozens of sessions at Colgate.
“George is here. I’m about to talk to him. We’ll see if he can shed any light.”
George Colgate had opened Colgate Sound Studios ten years ago and built a reputation for keeping the latest and most state-of the- art equipment in every booth. Major labels rented time for their artists to record here, and Colgate had a staff of house engineers who were the best in the business. Parker had come to work here as a way to network, pay her bills, and get coveted studio time to record her own songs for free.
She’d never counted on bullets flying toward her desk. She wiped her face and realized her hands were cold.
“Nothing’s been stolen or vandalized, according to George,” Gibson said. “But he’s pretty shaken up. The control boards and all the equipment are intact, as far as I can see.”
Cold wind whipped across the parking lot, slapping her hair into her face.
Her gaze drifted back to that bullet-pierced window, where camera lights flashed as the crime-scene investigators recorded the scene in all its cruel detail. She should have been here. If she had, that girl who had no stake in this company—wouldn’t have been killed. But then Parker herself would have been sitting there …
Parker glanced back at the crowd just outside the crime-scene tape. WSMV had a camera crew here, and their lead reporter was lit up like a hologram in the dark night.
There were people to be notified. Brenna’s parents, her roommate, her boyfriend … It was wrong to just leave her on the floor like that while the media vultures circled around the crime tape, the window lit up. “Why can’t you close the shades? Everyone’s looking.”
“They can’t see her on the floor,” Gibson said. “And we can’t close them, because there might be evidence on the windows or the shades, just like they are.”
Of course. She’d helped Gibson study for his homicide detective exams. She knew the procedure. Blood spatters were important. One stray drop of blood could tell them about the angle of the gun, the caliber, the distance from which it was fired. “Gibson, who’s going to tell her family?”