A Cut in the Curtain

The fly rail coughed once, and Victor Hale folded onto the boards beneath it. Red spike tape crossed the safety line above him, a cheap strip from the electrics cart, still clean at the edges where it should have stayed on the floor. Tessa Vale dropped to one knee. The stage carried dust and warm cable, with the sour bite of machine oil, and the metal taste of a fresh cut kept rising every time the house fan shifted air through the flies. Of course someone had cut it clean. Of course they had. Tessa put two fingers on the nylon, then pulled them back when the fray bit her skin. Straight blade. High enough for the hand to stay off the boards. Someone with the loft key. Someone who liked tidy edges. Her thumb came away black with rosin when she checked the knot on the lower safety drop, and that little stain told her more than the body did. Victor lay on his back with one shoe half off, his cuff button bright against the apron light, his mouth open toward the grid like he still had a line to cue. Inspector Bram Keene stood at the apron with one boot on the edge tape, writing in a pocket notebook. He had a neck for tight collars and a face made for bad news. 'Don't touch anything,' he said. 'You already have,' Tessa said, and kept her voice flat enough to pass for a tool laid on steel. Milo hovered by the masking flats, his cable bag hanging from two fingers. She nudged it with the side of her boot and shoved it behind a road case before Keene turned his head. Clean. Gone. Under Victor's shoe, a roll of yellow insulation tape had jammed against the apron seam, the sort Milo used for cable bundles, his initials pencilled on the core. Tessa hooked it under her boot and slid it behind the road case with the bag. 'Back up,' Keene said. 'The stage is mine until I say otherwise.' 'Then stop standing on it,' Tessa said. The old theatre gave a low hum under the work lights, the kind that came from transformers and bad patience. Victor's waistcoat had split at the seam. A brass tooth pressed through the cloth, stamped 7. Tessa slid it into her palm, closed her hand around it, and kept her arm loose at her side while Keene wrote. This place always had a smell for trouble, but tonight it came with varnish, hot dust, and a cut rope that should have screamed before it fell.

Keene asked for the maintenance log. Tessa pointed with the key still in her fist and said the house book was locked in the box office, which was true enough to keep him on the floor for another minute. He did not like being managed by anyone without a badge. That was plain in the way he wrote, short strokes and no flourishes. Celia Marr came in from the lobby with her black coat half buttoned and a stack of programs under one arm, as if opening night had put her on stage by mistake. She stopped at the taped boundary and looked once at Victor, once at the cut line, once at Keene. Her perfume carried a cold floral note cut through with dust from the foyer curtains. 'Tell me this is a collapse,' she said. 'Tell the police whatever you need to,' Keene said. 'I need the stage clear.' 'You need the story clean,' Tessa said. Celia's mouth tightened, but the rest of her stayed smooth. Not a tremor in the hands. No loose shoe. That kind of control cost more than people guessed. Victor had spent years making the whole building bend toward his tastes, and Celia had spent years paying the bills for that habit. Tessa bent over the lower block and checked the sheave. The wheel spun with a dry hiss. Fresh blade. Fresh cut. Someone had gone up the ladder, crossed the catwalk, and taken the line where the guide plate left a blind inch of steel. A person with a decent grip. A person who knew where the old paint had chipped. A person who could reach the loft without leaving the sort of marks a novice leaves all over a place. 'Milo was here,' Keene said. 'Milo works lights,' Tessa said. 'He works where I tell him.' 'That sounds like a family problem.' 'It sounds like a labour schedule.' Milo gave a short laugh that held no air in it. Tessa turned the laugh into a question about the smoke door, because questions with bolts in them were easier than questions with names. She had done that since she was seventeen, since a room with a damaged roof had taught her that a clean answer was safer than a true one. Celia asked who had gone near Victor before the fall, and Keene asked who had access to the fly loft, and Tessa answered with technical facts that made both of them poorer for having them. The cut angle and the line tension told one story; the dust ring on the gallery rail told another. The frayed nylon told her one thing, the floor told her another, and the key in Victor's pocket had already told her a third, but she kept that last bit shut in her hand. It would stay there until she had a reason to spend it.