Free Malevolent by David Searls

without even a moment’s pause.
    Griffin fiddled some more with his cap, plucked it from the top of his head to run his fingers through his hair and reveal the pink spot at the crown that explained the constant headgear. “I s’pose the lady cop visited you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t exactly come out and say you were with me when it happened, but that seems to be the way she took it.” He released a sour chuckle. “Course, I was given an opportunity to clarify my initial statement.”
    “So I’ve heard.” Tim wandered down one aisle and came up another. “Yeah, she thought I was your alibi, and seemed kind of surprised when I told her I wasn’t. She seemed to figure one of us was lying.”
    He hadn’t realized how bothered he was by the way he’d been dragged into the situation until the words left his mouth. Now he came up to the counter and watched Griffin’s eyes flick to the TV screen, to a stack of returned DVDs, and to the throbbing pink light thrown across the hood of Tim’s van and onto the black pavement from the neon sign hanging high and unseen over the door.
    Griffin adjusted his cap yet again, and Tim saw the sweat line at his temple. Before he could explain himself—if that’s what he was about to do—the door buzzed and two loud, chattering couples spilled in.
    “Hey!” Griffin called out, like he welcomed the distraction, and one of the four returned a mumbled greeting.
    With barely suppressed giggles, the two girls pushed their boyfriends down an aisle ahead of them. The boys picked up DVD cases, commented in raucous whispers, and tossed them back onto the white shelves.
    “The back room,” Griffin muttered.
    The four now stood before the black curtain under the You Must be 18 to Enter sign. They milled around it as if it posed an unexpected detour. One of the young men took his girlfriend by a slim wrist and pulled her toward it. She gamely held back, before yielding with a new fit of giggles. The other couple shuffled in afterward.
    “Came here all along for a dirty movie, but have to pretend they didn’t,” Griffin chuckled.
    The velvety black drape, hanging from a rod like a dressing room curtain in old clothing stores, had struck Tim as an anachronistic touch from the eighties. He’d thought such touches had pretty much disappeared. First the big chains put the mom-and-pop operations out of business and didn’t carry X-rated movies. Then the Internet killed the need for exposing your smutty needs to the world. Probably only those without a computer or high-speed online access needed the content behind the curtain. Or teenagers on a lark.
    “Bet that’s all anyone’s looking for this time of night,” he said.
    “Not true,” Griffin said, sounding mildly annoyed. “AfterHours isn’t an adult video store. I’m a small business owner who’s found a late-night niche, that’s all.”
    The whispers grew louder, a voice squealed, the curtain flapped.
    “A girl goes into that room,” Griffin says, “she’s gotta act like it was an accident, you know? She’s gotta roll her eyes a bunch of times like she can’t understand how her man can waste his time on such trash. She’s gotta giggle a lot to show this is a goof, not anything she’s gonna enjoy. Even then he’s gotta practically drag her in. Wouldn’t be a lady otherwise. Guys are the same, but different. They gotta make sure I understand it’s for a bachelor party. Like they got a life, they won’t be home alone in ten minutes with their pants around their ankles. Like I give a rat’s ass.”
    Tim was preoccupied. Remembering Melinda Dillon telling him that Griffin had met the victim on two previous occasions. Hadn’t Griffin only mentioned having been balled out by her when he’d visited her church? What was the other occasion?
    “Did she—the victim—ever stop by here?” he asked on a whim.
    Griffin sighed heavily. “That got me in a lot of trouble with the lady cop. Like I was trying to hide