She looked from him to me and back again, her eyes wide. I hated that she'd been drawn into this. These dark shadows, they weren't hers. Someone made them hers anyway.
I wanted to push them down the stairs. Knife in the chest optional.
"You don't have to look if you don't want to," I said, putting my arm around her.
"Yes she does," Woody said. "We need to know if whoever wanted you to come here had something to do with her. This is about you."
I was about to refute that suggestion, but he was right. Why else would anyone fake Savannah's voice? Was that knife and fall down the stairs meant for me? Was that man in the wrong place at the wrong time?
My stomach twisted. Someone innocent could have gotten caught up in whatever this was. Someoneelseinnocent.
"I'll look," Savannah said with a nod. "Then we should call the cops."
"Agreed," Forrest said.
Once more, we piled out the door and into the stairwell.
Savannah peered down at the corpse, wincing at what she saw. "I can't unsee that."
I sensed one of the guys was about to tell her she'd get used to it, but they knew better than to say that. Just as well, I didn'twanther to get used to it. I wanted to keep her out of this from here on out. This was our problem, not hers.
"Do you know him?" Forrest asked.
Savannah squinted. "He looks familiar. I think I've seen him around at rehearsals. He's not in the orchestra though." She shook her head. "I don't know who he is."
"If it wasn't for the knife. I'd wonder if he got himself caught in his own trap," Leif said.
Forrest grunted his agreement. "I was thinking the same thing. The knife in the chest would suggest otherwise."
"I don't know." Woody leaned against the railing, peering down at all the flights of stairs we'd labored up. "Accidents happen. Remember that guy who accidentally stabbed himself in the ass?"
Leif snort-laughed. "Yeah, that was fucking funny."
"Then there's all the people that shoot themselves in the foot, literally," Woody continued. "He might have held the knife wrong and it stabbed him right through the heart when he fell."
"That sounds like something out of a cartoon," I said. I pictured an animated character dramatically teetering at the edge of a step, twirling a couple of time before tumbling, knife embedding at an impossible angle.
"In my experience," Leif said slowly, "if we can imagine it, then it's possible. With some exceptions, like Brussels sprouts not tasting like shit."
I made a face. I knew a lot of people liked them, but I wasn't one of them.
"Brussels sprouts are good when you cook them right," Woody said. Of course he'd like them.
"You can cook them for us sometime." Leif moved carefully down the stairs, avoiding stepping in any blood, and crouchedbeside the corpse. He started searching through the man's pockets.
"Either he's going to have ID, or his lack of ID is going to suggest he's someone suspicious, doing something he shouldn't be doing," he explained.
That made sense. Someone coming after me might not have wanted to be identified if something like this happened. Not that I believed, that this just…happened. Their theory about him accidentally stabbing himself in the heart was colorful, but it didn't make sense to me. Not really. If you were about to fall down the stairs, wouldn't you make sure to hold the knife as far away from yourself as possible? Wouldn't you drop it or throw it?
No. Whoever did this, they did it on purpose.
"They might still be here," I whispered. I looked up as far up as the stairs went. If anyone was there, they were hiding in a stairwell, potentially listening to every word we said. Possibly laughing their asses off at the suggestion this was an accident.
No, if they were laughing their asses off, we'd be able to hear them. Wouldn't we? Oh good, now I was picturing an animated ass rolling past us, all the way to the ground.
"Anything?" Forrest asked, addressing the question to Leif, while also keeping one eye on the stairs above us.
"Just a phone," Leif said, holding it up. "It's locked." He held it in front of the corpse's face, but the phone didn't unlock. "Inconvenient."