FOUR
“Who are you?” The man's pale blue eyes were looking through me.
I had just walked in the door of the dimly lit basement room and was looking at him across a scarred metal desk. A handwritten sign taped to the door said
COLD CASE UNIT
in black magic marker.
“Me?” I said to the man behind the metal desk. “I'm Mechelle Deakes. You're Lt. Gooch, right? They had me posted up in Admin, temporary thing. Acting GLBT Liaison? After my leave of absence, medical leave, administrative diversion, whatever you want to call it? Before that I was doing Narcotics, over in Zone Three. The new detective? Mechelle Deakes? The new . . .” I blinked. He continued to look through me as I babbled at him. I tend to babble when I'm nervous. “They didn't
tell
you? The didn't
tell
you they were assigning you a new detective?”
The man behind the desk shrugged. It was such tiny motion of the shoulders that you almost couldn't see it. And it was completely unreadable, inscrutable, impossible to parse. It could have meant he'd forgotten; it could have meant they hadn't told him about me in the first place; it could have meant he didn't give a hoot in hell about anything at all. I tried to see myself through his eyes: small, wiry, young, female; skin the color of caramel candy; straightened hair hanging to my shoulders. I probably represented everything he despisedâeverything he thought had gone wrong with the world in general, and with the department in particular. I knew what the white guys in the department said about black women copsâthat we were mouthy shirkers looking for a fat government paycheck, people who couldn't be trusted to back you up when the chips were down. I knew because they'd tell me to my face. They called black female officers “hairstyles.” As in: “Two officers and a hairstyle responded to the scene.”
Hey, but you're different, Mechelle,
they'd always say.
You're not like Them. You're mad! You're crazy!
Mad and crazy being cop slang for somebody who was good on the street, somebody who could be trusted, somebody who could throw down, who could flip out and go ninja when circumstances demanded.
Lt. Goochâpresumably that was who he wasâheld out his hand, palm up. “File,” he said.
“File?”
“File.”
“You mean like my personnel file?”
He didn't answer, just kept holding out his palm.
“Here.” I handed him the envelope that the Chief had given me.
Lt. Gooch took the envelope, then pulled a knife out of his pocketâone of those big black-handled lockblades that every hayseed goober in Georgia seems to carryâand slit the envelope with it, pulled out my file, then made a show of going through the folder, licking his thumb and peering at every page.
I studied his face while he inched through the file. I'll be honest, I've always been nervous around men with blue eyes. A certain kind of pale blue eyes, I'm talking about. Those eyes, they go with a certain kind of Southern white man who is basically your worst nightmareâthe eyes of a lynch mob boiled down to its barest, palest essence.
Other than the eyes, Lt. Gooch was undistinctive. His voice was quiet, like sandpaper on a piece of glass. But it carried. He was a little past forty years old, if I were to guess, with weathered skin, like he'd spent a lot of time outside; a blunt, square jaw; and brown hair that was starting to go gray, buzz cut like a kamikaze pilot's, so short it was barely more than stubble. There was a lump of something in his bottom lipâsnuff, I suspected.
Lt. Gooch kept paging through the file, slow as itch. It made me antsy.
“Look, sir,” I said finally. “I know they probably told you all kind of stuff about me, what I did, various things that maybe aren't even in the file, andâ”
I'm a talker, I know this. I open my big mouth all the time when I shouldn't and sometimes I keep it open even when I can tell people want it closed. But when Lt. Gooch looked up from the file with those pale eyes, I just flat shut up.
Finally, after what was probably close to half an hour of reading my personnel file, Lt. Gooch looked up at me for a minute. “Desk,” he said. He pointed at a cheap metal desk pushed up against the wall, covered with a pile of papers. “Chair.” He pointed at the chair.
I looked at the chair and the desk, the anger rising in me. “Are you saying I have the job, sir?” I said sharply. “Or not?”
Gooch just looked at me, impassive as the sky.
Finally I said. “So, like, what do I do?”
This seemed to insult Lt. Gooch in some vague way. “You tell me.”
“Do you have a case for me to work on?”
Lt. Gooch's pale eyes just kept looking at me.
“I mean, am I being un
reason
able? Asking you a couple things? How I'm supposed to do my job, what I'mâ”
Lt. Gooch shifted the dab of snuff in his lower lip, prodded it pensively with a brown-stained tongue. Then he reached in his pocket, took out a very large set of keys, leaned over, unlocked the bottom drawer, opened it, took out a wretched, vile, dirty Dixie cup that was about half full of a disgusting brown liquid, dribbled some brown spit into it, put the cup back into the drawer, closed it, locked it, put the keys away.
Finally he spoke. “You got a week. Go to Records, pull some files, find you a case.”
FIVE
I went to Records, signed out a bunch of case files, brought them back and set up in the room with them. I tried occasionally to make some chitchat with Lt. Gooch, to bring up something I'd found in a case file, to ask him a question, whatever, but it was a waste of time. He never once spoke to me, just looked at me with the those lynch-mob eyes, then looked back down at whatever he was reading.
By about noon I was ready to scream. I am not a sit-around-and-read person. I'm a get-out-there-and-mix-it-up person. But I was damned if Gooch was going to get under my skin. So I just sat there and read, dawn till dark, coming in earlier each successive day and leaving later each successive nightâthough I never seemed to get there as early as Gooch, or leave as late. He remained planted in that chair, motionless as a rock. It was torture.
And the whole time I kept thinking about that little girl out there. Jenny Dial. I didn't want to be working these moldy old cases. I wanted to be doing something that had some relevance, that would help somebody in the here-and-now. But what could I do? So I just sat there every day, reading and reading, taking notes, reading, going back to the Records office occasionally to check out more old case files.
I am not the crying type. But on Thursday I cried all the way home. I cried when I looked around my bare, miserable little apartment. I cried when I looked in the refrigerator and there was nothing inside but some bologna and some two-week-old milk. And when it had built up to the point where the only thing I could think of that would put things on an even keel was a trip down the street to the liquor store, I went into my room and turned on my computer to do some e-mail.
When I was done going through my messages, I reached out to turn off the computer. But my hand just hung there for a while.
I had promised myself that I wouldn't do the thing that I wanted to do next. I kept saying to myself that it was only going to make me feel worse. But finally I gave in and did it anyway. Because the only other thing I could think of involved driving over to the seedy liquor store around the corner. So finally I typed in a Web address that I'd memorized, and after a couple seconds a bunch of pictures came up on the screen.
At the top of the screen, it said, “Here's our beautiful new son, Kevin!!!”
Then the pictures: a little brown-skinned boy with soft curly black hair and full lips that looked a lot like mine. The boy on the screen lay on his stomach, looking up at the camera. Oh, and, yes, sweet Jesus, he
was
a beautiful boy, with huge brown eyes, almost pretty enough to be a girl.
Another picture of him sitting on a carpet, an expensive Oriental rug, a litter of toys and dolls lying around him. He was smiling at the camera, toothless still at six months, looking proud as hell of himself for being able to sit up.
A third picture of the brown-skinned boy, a close-up of his face. He was nestled in a woman's armsâthough you couldn't see her face, only her hand.
Which was pale as straw.
Â
Â
For supper I ate slightly gamey bologna without bread, and warm ice tea. I went to bed as soon as the sun went down, 8:30, so I could get up and go to work early, beat that man in to the office, show him who he was up against. Mechelle Deakes was not some shirker looking for a government paycheck. Whatever my flaws, you bet your ass that wasn't one of them.
SIX
I got in to work at 5:05 AM. Gooch was already there. I couldn't believe it. He didn't look up as I entered. “Well?” he said.
“You ever hear of Evie Marie Prowter?” I said. “Female white, juvenile, body recovered in the woods 4/6/92â”
“Huh-uh. Don't talk.” Lt. Hank Gooch shook his head. “Give me the file.”
I walked across the room, set the case file on his desk. He opened it and began reading, licking his brown-stained thumb every time he flipped over a piece of paper. He read carefully, slowly, so slow it was like he was trying memorize every page. Fifty pages, you'd have thought he could have gotten through them in about five minutes. But no, an hour went by, then another. I just sat there watching him, trying to make sense of this man.
It was becoming clear to me that he had some kind of a plan, and I believed I had figured it out. What it was, he was in slowdown mode. His plan, I had determined, was that he was trying to do everything so slow that eventually the city would try to fire him. And when they did, he'd sic the union on them, file suit for reverse discrimination or some other BS along those lines, wait around until the lawyers convinced the city that the cheapest way to get rid of him was to offer him a settlement. Then he'd walk away with his crummy little check, go deer hunting or fishing or whittling or whatever it was that shiftless rednecks did when they had nothing honest to keep them occupied.
Finally, at around 7:00 he closed the folder, looked up at me.
I didn't say anything, just waited.
Finally he spoke. “Nope.” Just that one word.
I spread my hands. “And? What? What's wrong with that case?”
The lynch-mob eyes stared through me. “You tell me.”
I was at a loss. I'm rarely speechless, but he'd just flat taken the wind out of me.
“DNA,” he said finally.
“You're saying we need a case with DNA.”
“Take another week,” he said. “Find another case.”
I decided I was going to have to get a little ethnic on him. “Oh, no you don't!” I said. “I've read two hundred, three hundred cases now. I don't need a week, a month, a year. I don't need one more minute of sitting around. You want DNA, I got DNA!”
Lt. Gooch crossed his arms.
I walked across the room, pulled out another file.
“DNA, sir? All right then! Here's your DNA. Marquavious Roberts, male black, juvenile, seven years old, disappeared 10/12/89â”
“The file,” he said.
I laid the file gently in the middle of his desk. Then I stalked out of the room.
When I came back an hour and a half later, I walked up and stood in front of the desk. The file was closed, sitting right there on the edge of the scarred Formica.
“Sir?” I said finally.
Lt. Gooch didn't look up. He was making tiny little notes in a notebook. “Why you keep looking for my approval? Go find him, get his DNA.”
“Whose?” I said.
No answer.
“Vernell Moncrief's?” Moncrief was the dead boy's mother's boyfriend, the prime suspect in the Marquavious Roberts case.
“Vernell's?” Lt. Gooch finally looked up, made a face of pretend surprise. He shifted the dab of snuff in his lower lip, prodded it pensively with a brown-stained tongue. “Of course, Vernell's! Unless you got a better idea.”
“So, we're working the case?” I said.
“We?”
Inexplicably, I felt my heart soar.
SEVEN
Find Vernell Moncrief, get his DNA. Thank you, Jesus! I was finally working an actual case. I felt like I'd gotten paroled out of hell.
But then as I walked down the dim, echoing hallway I started thinking about it. Let's say I found the suspectâwhich was no sure bet. And let's say the guy consented to let me take his DNAâwhich he didn't have to do. Even so, it would take forever for the case to move. I'd heard that the GBI crime lab's serology department was so backed up that there was some kind of ridiculous turnaround time on DNA. Months, maybe.
And so, by the time I reached the elevator, my initial burst of enthusiasm had faded, replaced by gloom. Now that I had a moment to consider the thing, it confirmed my diagnosis of Lt. Gooch. This case was all part of his game to play slowdown until his pension showed up. Once I got some DNA from this guy Moncrief, the case would be tied up for months while we sat around staring at more case files in the dark, silent room. I got the shakes just thinking about it.
And so, on impulse, instead of heading to the parking lot and off on a fruitless drive to Vernell Moncrief's last known address, I decided to ride the elevator up to the third floor.
Sgt. Sheila Fairoaks's office was down at the end of the hallway. The sign outside her door said,
MISSING AND ABUSED CHILDREN COORDINATOR.
She was the lead investigator on the Jenny Dial case. I'd known her for a while. She was a nice lady, one of the early women detectives on the force. But honestly? Not the sharpest tool in the drawer.
I knocked on the door frame, walked in the open door. The walls of her office were lined with pictures of grinning kids. Behind every grin, I knew, there was a sad story.
“Hey, Mechelle,” she said. “Congratulations on the commendation! That was some heads-up police work.” She was a tall, horse-faced white woman with naturally blond hair pulled back in a bun.
“Thanks,” I said. We made a little chitchat and then I said, “So, did you get a look at that photograph in the kiddie-porn stash at Delwood Anderson's house? It looked an awful lot like Jenny Dial.”
She frowned vaguely, then said, “Yeah, um . . .” She scrabbled around on her desk, came out with the picture I'd found on Delwood Anderson's bed. She squinted at it. “You really think that's her?”
“I don't know. Have you showed it to the parents?”
“Uhhh . . .” She kept frowning at the picture. “I guess I should, huh?”
I raised my eyebrows like an idea had just struck me. “Hey, look, I'd be happy to run up there and talk to the parents. If you want. Save you a trip.”
Sheila Fairoaks put her face in her hands and looked at me for a minute. “I thought you were assigned to that Cold Case outfit down in the basement.”
“I'm just settling in. I could make a little time.”
“Yeah,” she said vaguely. “Yeah, sure. It's just, seeing that you've just got the new job and everything? I better not use you if you haven't been officially assigned to me. If it got back toâ” She pointed her finger at the ceiling, obviously indicating the Chief's office on the fourth floor. “âyou know, you and me both could end up getting taken out to the woodshed.”
“Hey, I'll just run it out there,” I said. “See if they think it's her. If so, you can handle the follow-up, nobody's the wiser.”
“Yeah, no, I'm kinda thinking . . .” She trailed off, then shook her head.
“You sure?” I edged toward the desk where the photo was lying.
She nodded and hastily closed the folder. “Yeah. You better not.”
“Okay,” I said. I stood there looking at the folder. “You're
gonna
follow up, though, right?”
Her eyes widened a little. “Hey, Detective, whatâare you implying I'm not doing my job?” Suddenly I had gone from being “Mechelle” to “Detective.”
“Oh, hey, no!” I said. “You know how it is. You find some little piece of evidence and you get all motherly on it.” I grinned.
She kept looking at me, but she didn't grin back. “There's a lot of stuff to sift through here,” she said. “Jenny's stepfather's a little sketchy. But at this point I'm still looking at the mother's ex-husband, Jenny's biological father. He's up in Ohio, and at this juncture I've been unable to locate him.” Her voice took on a pedantic singsong. “As you know, most child abductions involve a relative.”
“And the photograph?”
“I have to prioritize.”
“So . . .” I said.
She sat there, her face stiff as wood.
“ . . . You're saying the possibility that some asshole may be putting pictures of Jenny Dial on the Internetâthat this isn't a priority to you?”
She got a slightly hurt look on her face. “Shame on you, Detective. You're getting real close to calling my integrity into question.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, hey, look, forget I asked. I was just trying to help out.”
“And I appreciate that,” she said. Not meaning it.
“All right then,” I said. “You take care now.”