The way Skippy burped corpse-breath straight into Alejandro’s face, the sound almost comical if it hadn’t been so wrong. So rancid it made his eyes water.
They maneuver Hartley onto the stretcher and wheel him away. The tarp goes with him, folded over what’s left of his dignity.
Two staff members remain behind on the stage.
They just stand there, staring at the mess he left. Blood. Bile. Something darker. The air still holds it, a sickly-sweetstench hanging low and stubborn, coating the back of my throat.
And then I remember something else Alejandro said. A different night. A different body.
Sweet. Sickeningly so.
He told me that smell never leaves you. That it brands itself into your soul whether you want it to or not. That years later, it still crawls out of nowhere and reminds you exactly how close death really was.
Standing here now, breathing it in, I understand exactly what he meant.
“Okay,” Grim says in my ear. “I’ve got it.”
His voice shifts and he starts narrating what he sees, describing camera angles, timestamps, crowd movement. Then Hartley convulses on the feed, and Grim yelps.
“Oh—oh, Jesus, he’s—he’s vomiting. That’s bad. That’s really bad.”
“Focus, Grim,” I murmur. “Move past that.”
“Okay. Okay,” he says, a little breathless. Another crunch follows, loud in my ear, and I briefly consider committing a secondary murder just to make it stop.
Then, “Okay,” he says again. “I’ve got it.”
There’s a pause.
Then a single, startled laugh.
“What a loser,” Grim says. “He missed.”
I shake my head slowly, scanning the floor around the stage. “No,” I say. “He didn’t. Alejandro never misses.”
I move methodically, eyes tracing lines, angles, places a bullet could have gone without announcing itself. The shot had to land somewhere.
“Can you see where it hit?” I ask.
“Hold on,” Grim replies.
I hear the faint sound of him squinting, the rustle of movement. In the background, someone speaks Spanish sharply, like an argument over a video game as he and his cousin must be watching the video together.
Then, “Yeah,” Grim says. “I can see it. Let me pull the live feed.”
Keys clack rapidly.
“Okay,” he says. “I see you. Walk to center stage. Then stage right.”
I do.
“Keep going.”
I follow his voice.
“Almost,” he says. “Almost… right there. Look down.”
I stop.
