Chapter 2: Shades Of Gray

Sara arrived at the crime scene an hour later, just as she said she would. A young police officer stood in front of the entrance to the maze of support beans below the stage. She showed him her credentials and was quietly pointed in the direction of the body. It didn’t take her long to make it through the narrow openings to the site of the murder.

Sara almost immediately noticed the head that lay a few inches from the body. She gasped, her heart beginning to race, as she remembered her dream. The flashback seemed so vivid, so real, that she didn’t notice her partner walk up beside her and tap her shoulder. Sara jumped, her eyes showing a hint of fear as she blankly stared at him.

“Sara?” Danny asked, looking at her strangely with his dark, almond shaped eyes, attributed to his half-Asian heritage.

“Sorry,” she replied. “I was just in deep thought. I didn’t see you coming… So, what happened here?”

“Stabbed and decapitated. He was a roadie for the artist playing here tonight. I think the guy’s name is Darren Hayes,” he answered, moving a little closer to the body.

Squatting down closer to the body, Sara felt like an interloper into this man’s final minutes. The horrified expression on his face was frozen in time, immortalized as evidence by the camera that flashed overhead. Sara was very familiar with the metallic smell of drying blood and other bodily fluids that now invaded her senses. In a lifetime, she could not forget it.

The medical examiner was about finished with his observations. “It probably happened somewhere between three and four in the morning. I’ll have more information for you after the autopsy,” he said.

Sara nodded, half listening to his comments. She was too engrossed in the fact that this guy almost exactly depicted what had happened in her strange dream the night before. Looking down at her wrist, she realized the Witchblade still had that menacing red glow. There was definitely a connection, but what it was she had yet to find out.

“Who found him?” Sara asked as she stood up once more.

“Anastasia Rossini, Hayes’ personal assistant,” Danny said. “She’s up top right now waiting for someone to question her.”

“I’ll go,” she replied, starting back the way she came. It didn’t take Sara long to find the girl. She was sitting on a large speaker, drying her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “Anastasia?” Sara asked cautiously.

“Yeah,” the girl replied, turning around, her long blond hair swishing behind her.

“I’m Sara Pezzini with the homicide unit. Could I ask you a few questions?” Sara softly replied.

“Go ahead,” Anastasia sniffled.

Sara sat down beside her and began her interrogation. “When did you find Ryan?”

“Just about two hours ago. I wanted to ask him if he was finished installing the supports for the stage so we could do a sound check this morning. I knew he’d be down here, so I went to look for him,” Anastasia continued to dry her eyes with the tattered tissue.

“Did he have any friends on the crew?”  

“Not really. He was the loner. He never talked much; he just stood around until he was told to do something. Everyone thought he was kinda weird.”

“Do you know if anyone had any bad feelings towards him?”

“No. Everybody on the crew has gotten along pretty well these last few months.”

Sara tried to think of something else to say, but Anastasia’s cell phone began to ring. “Excuse me,” she said, standing up and pulling the phone out of her pocket to answer it. “Hello? Yeah, Leo… Yeah… He’s dead… You have to come here. Bring Darren. He needs to know as much as everyone else… No, I don’t know about the show. Like I said before, talk to Darren. If he still wants to do it, let him… Okay, bye.” Anastasia turned to Sara and said, “That was Darren’s manager, Leonie. She’ll be here in a little while.”

“Does she know anything about the murder?” Sara asked.

“No, she, Darren, and the rest of the band were stuck in Boston last night because of bad weather. They were supposed to be here half an hour ago, but I guess their flight was delayed again. They should be here within the hour,” Anastasia answered. “Can I go now?”

“Yeah, go ahead. If you have anymore information, please give me a call,” Sara replied as she pulled out her card. “That’s my number. If you can’t get a hold of me for any reason, just leave a message on my voicemail.”

“I will,” Anastasia said as she took the card, looked at it, and put it in her pocket. Her dark brown eyes wandered down Sara’s arm to the Witchblade. “That’s a really pretty bracelet, detective.”

“Thank you,” Sara cautiously replied as she tried to hide it with the sleeve of her leather jacket. Anastasia walked off the stage and disappeared into the corridor that led to the dressing rooms. There was something about that girl that made Sara wonder if she was telling the truth. She had started off very distressed, but almost too quickly got over it. She shook her head and stood up to go back down to the crime scene.

*~*~*

He sat there; his faded sapphire eyes cast down at the floor below, his mind in a completely different place. He knew about the roadie’s death, and it had been weighing upon his conscious that entire day, but in the music industry, the show must go on. He had already cancelled enough concerts that year throughout Asia and Australia. One more and he could lose his entire fan base in the US.

Darren Hayes sighed loudly, prompting Leonie Messer, his manager and confidant, to turn slightly and look at him. “What’s wrong, Daz?” she asked in her thick Australian accent.

“Nothing,” he mumbled, his eyes remaining on the floor.

“Is this about the show tonight?” she inquired, the question hitting him right where it hurt.

Darren sighed again as he looked up at her, the sadness apparent in his eyes. She knew he was torn up inside about tonight’s concert, and didn’t blame him. Just months earlier, he had gone through losing his voice and canceling nearly half of the Australian leg of the tour. Now with the death of the roadie, things had become even more complicated. She reached over and gently placed her hand on his shoulder for comfort.

“Don’t worry,” Leonie replied.

“Don’t worry?” Darren asked in almost a whine. “That is the biggest load of crap I’ve heard all day! Don’t worry. Of course I’m worried! This tour has already been plagued with enough problems. First I have laryngitis, then I have those strange dreams, and now the death of the roadie. Can things get any worse? I’m so worried; I think I’m going to have a nervous breakdown or something. I’m turning into Mariah Carey, for Christ’s sake!” He shook his head and looked out the window again. “I knew this was coming. I knew the moment I had that weird dream last week, this was coming. I foresaw the roadie’s death in that dream, even though it was supposed to be a woman that got her head chopped off, but dreams can distort things. Right?” He looked at her with confusion, fear, and anger in his eyes.

“Darren, take a long, deep breath,” Leonie advised. “Repeat after me. Dreams do no tell the future.”

“Leonie,” Darren retorted.

“What?”

“Shut up.”

Leonie stuck her tongue out like a little girl as Darren crossed his arms over his chest. He finally cracked a smile. There was still something else on her mind, though, something that had to be addressed before they got out to the arena that afternoon. “Daz?” Leonie quietly asked as she looked down at her fingernails.

“What, Leo?” he hesitantly replied, knowing that it wasn’t good by her mannerisms.

“About the concert… Are you still going to do it tonight or should we reschedule?” she finally spit out in an almost incoherent jumble of words.

Darren sighed deeply. He knew this question would come sooner or later. He shook his head and answered, “It’s the last day of the tour, it’s New York City, I have to do it. I know I’ll get hell tomorrow, but I don’t wanna piss off the fans tonight. I’ve done that enough times on this tour, canceling all those concerts in Australia. The least I can do is make tonight’s concert the best one.”

Leonie smiled, but inside, she felt horrible for handing this decision over to him. It pained her to see Darren in such a horrible state. How he managed to get through it, she didn’t know. She was just glad that this was the last decision he would have to make for a while.

Leonie and Darren sat quietly across from each other for the rest of the trip to their hotel. He managed to stay in a positive frame of mind, remembering that sound checks were just an hour away. Singing was the only time his mind ever got to rest. It was the only thing that made him feel better during times like these.

With his eyes still staring blankly out the window, New York City passed him by without even a hello. It was the kind of eerie silence that made him began to wonder what all this meant. The dream he had only nights before depicted what seemed to be the Roman Coliseum. He remembered himself running through the crowd towards the arena. Into the pit he stumbled where one woman lay headless while another looked down at her, terrified. He remembered seeing her back away and she actually hit him as she tried to run, but he stopped her. Just before the dream ended, she turned to face him. But he never saw what she looked like; he only remembered her emerald green eyes.

The car rolled to a stop in front of the hotel, snapping Darren out of his thoughts. He looked up, finding that Leonie was already making her way through the door. He gently stretched his legs and exited the other side while the chauffeur held the door open for him.

Darren and Leonie walked into the Plaza Hotel to find the bellhops already waiting to take them to their rooms. It appeared that Anastasia had done her job that morning and was probably already waiting to talk to them at the arena where the concert was supposed to be held.

‘The concert,’ Darren thought with disgust. He knew he had to do it. The press was calling it his biggest concert yet. It didn’t seem that way from what had happened. It seemed as if it were cursed. He knew nothing good was going to come out of it, but no matter what angle he took, someone was bound to get pissed. He took the fans’ side, knowing that they were the majority, but decided that he’d make a special dedication that night for the roadie.

“Daz,” he heard Leonie say as she took his hand and dragged him into her room.

“Huh?” Darren responded as he looked up at her.

“Come on, the police are waiting for us at the Garden. Anastasia said that she’d explain everything when we got there.”

Chapter 3: Surprise Invitation

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