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After a brief attempt at pursuit, Nadia picked up the letter and held it out. The word Tatiana was scrawled on the front in cursive handwriting.
We shared a look and went back inside.
“The fuck was all that shouting?” Ryan asked. He’d pulled his jeans on, but was still bare-chested. “Another homeless junkie shouting at people?”
“We saw him,” I said excitedly. I practically skipped down the aisle to the stage so I could extend the card toward him. “We found the saboteur! He was trying to break into the theater. He dropped this.”
“Oh shit,” Ryan said, for once in awe. “He was breaking in to leave that letter for Tatiana?”
“I guess?”
Ryan looked at Andy. “How’d he get away? You didn’t stop him?”
“He was quite fast. Nadia chased for half a block but it was pointless.”
Ryan smirked. “What I’m hearing is that Nadia has more guts than you.”
Andy shook his head. “I don’t doubt it. That’s not even an insult—she took off without thinking.” Andy grabbed my arm. “He could have had a weapon!”
The reality of the situation sank in. I had chased after a potentially dangerous person who was trying to kill one of the cast members, and I’d done so with zero thought for my own personal safety. I shivered at the thought of the saboteur suddenly turning around with a knife…
“Wait here,” Andy said, rushing backstage.
Ryan frowned. “Where are you going?”
Andy returned a moment later with a notepad and pencil. “We need to take notes while it’s fresh in our heads. I listened to a podcast about how memory during traumatic events can be warped after a few minutes.” He paused and furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “It had something to do with the way the short-term memory parts of the brain interact with the long-term memory while under extreme stress. One scientist from Stanford claimed that adrenaline is the culprit…”
Ryan snatched the notepad out of his hands and looked at me. “How tall was he?”
“Um.” I blinked. I’d never gauged someone’s height before. “He was about my height, I think. It was tough to tell.”
Ryan scribbled on the notepad. “And you’re sure it was a man?”
I looked at Andy. “I think? He was wearing a hoodie with the hood up. It could have been a woman, I guess. He wasn’t as muscular as you, for example.”
“Bonus points for slipping a compliment into the description,” Ryan grinned while writing. “What else?”
I told him what little information I could. They’d worn black pants and shoes—they might have been dark jeans and might have been slacks. The street was too dark to tell.
“They were spry,” Andy chimed in. “They jumped from the second flight of the fire escape, at least 20 feet. Probably 25. We should measure it later.”
Ryan glanced at the ceiling. “We sort of knew that since they climbed into the rafters to set the sandbag trap, but it’s good to get confirmation. Anything else?”
Andy and I shook our heads. All in all, I felt like a failure for not getting a better description. A fast person wearing a hoodie. That narrows it down to, oh, about half of New York.
Ryan pointed at the card on the table. “What do we do with that? Call the detective?”
“So he can accuse us of planting it?” Ryan barked a laugh. “Fuck that. Let’s open it.”
“Shouldn’t we dust it for fingerprints first?” Andy asked.
Ryan stared placidly. “With what? Did you have a Junior Officer Detective Kit for your eighth birthday? Because mine is long gone by now.”
“Oh, I know!” I said.
I ran backstage to the dressing room, which had been stocked a few days before with makeup for the show. I returned with a canister of stage powder and a brush.
“Will that work?” Andy asked.
