Those Bones Are Not My Child (14 page)

Swinging off Peachtree, where the old Indian burial mounds used to be, by the pitch tree that gave the area its name, where later Dad’s mother, in keeping with the curfew codes for the colored, walked along sporting the lisle stockings, black dress with lace apron and cap, the passport costume needed after six p.m., her dad would quiz her, holding out a pack of Bit-O-Honey as reward. Then they’d bounce and rattle down the hill to Buttermilk Bottom, where they’d sit outside the house, their mouths stuffed with candy, while he guided her hand drawing maps of the terrain and she dutifully recited, prying her jaws apart with her sticky fingers, the history learned on that day’s trip.

That early training had stood her in good stead during her time with Delia of the speak-up-make-contacts-get-with-it-girl program. Zala hadn’t done any better, though, at the job her sister-in-law got her with Tour Atlanta, than with the telephone jobs soliciting for carpeting companies. But she’d at least been able to contribute to the Black tour company’s information bank and wasn’t a total bust when Delia and Bryant opened a sideline in real estate. She knew what was where. But for all the jobs Zala’d had over the years making use of Dad’s training,
her favorite had been driving an ice-cream truck in summers, mostly because it required so little talking at all.

Now, leaning hard across the steering wheel on the lookout for blinking detour signs, she realized that the downtown area she’d mastered at five, then remastered at ten under the tutelage of the Twins (who, like other activist youth in the sixties, demonstrated, picketed, and sat in with such adamancy that white business interests had built shopping malls along the Perimeter so Blacks could never flex that kind of muscle again) was a confusion of sawhorse barriers, open ditches, plank sidewalks, and sandy pathways for yellow Caterpillars carrying boulders in their maws.

She pulled up short when a cement mixer trundling along went suddenly in reverse, then scooted through a newly excavated lane; and ducked instinctively when a line slung across the narrow street slackened and a clamshell bucket dropped a dollop of cement on her roof. She peered past the windshield lest she miss the new entry onto 75/85 north that would take her to 285 and out to Perimeter Mall.

She spotted the limo right away, the chrome lady on the hood slowing her down. It was parked outside of J. C. Penney’s double doors. She pulled into the lot and parked in view of the plate-glass window. A motorcycle cop pulled up behind the limo and strode back and forth, examining its length, width, and sheen, tapping on the windows, cupping his eyes to inspect the interior. As she walked up, he was checking the tags, the plates, the inspection sticker, one hand on the violation book flapping against his hip. She leaned against the mailbox and waited for him to remount, rev up, and move on, reluctant to ticket so impressive a car, so likely a VIP’s. She had to smile.

Her smile broke into a chuckle when Spence pushed through the double doors in a Chinese-blue outfit and boots. Spence as Bruce Lee as Cato in the old
Green Hornet
series. She couldn’t wait to huddle with Sonny so they could crack up together. Spence propped the door open and was immediately hidden by a portly man in a green brocade burnoose and turban, leading a procession out; two women cowled in shimmering cloth filed out toward the limo, their coverall garments flapping crisply between their ankles like laundry on a line. Six children, she counted them, filed past her in elaborately embroidered gowns, the girls with lots of jewelry, the boys in turbans. She wondered how the limo would hold them all. A sharp-nosed man, nervous and
wiry—she decided he was the tutor—lugged small valises. The tutor hunched his shoulder against the door and Zala stepped around the mailbox in anticipation. But it wasn’t Sonny yet; it was a parade of salesclerks carrying bundles and bags to the limo. She was holding her breath as the door wheezed to. Was holding it still when the tutor moved away and Spence stepped toward her, calling.

Zala didn’t like the surprise in his voice, the working of his face. Didn’t like the way the people were closing the limo doors, the sales clerks backing away, practically bowing, bills in their hands, dismissed.

“Where’s Sonny?” It came out garbled.

The horn was beeped. Spence actually turned away from her to respond to strangers while her knees were buckling.

“Sonny, Sonny.”

He was genuinely perplexed. “Sonny?”

“Don’t play with me.” She lunged. “Where’s my baby? Baby, please.”

He caught her under the arms before she knew she was falling. She thought she’d simply stumbled over something on the pavement in her effort to see into the limo. She felt weightless and giddy, a hot spraining sensation like an electric current traveling from her neck to her armpit and down one side. He was saying something into her hair, nearly breaking her arm as he slung it around his shoulder and lugged her toward her car. He was telling her to be calm, to stop shouting, to take a deep breath. He was giving her a hell of a lot of instructions, but not saying the one thing she was desperate to hear.

Sergeant B. J. Greaves pushed the door with her hip and ushered Zala into a room, a storage closet actually, dusty and cluttered. She motioned toward a step stool and an old kitchen chair.

“We can talk here, Mrs. Spencer. It’ll be a while before we get any feedback from the hospitals and shelters. Have a seat. I’ll have a team from the evening shift scout out the woods where you designated. Be right back.”

Zala sat in the chair, old paint on the armrest lodging under her nails. It could have been a jail cell—tight, smelly, airless, a mop-wringer pail and a disconnected toilet banked against old telephone directories and stencils. Smears of grime funneled down the dark hole. She
was feeling swarmy and regretted having taken Spence’s advice that she call Delia to come get her from the mall.

What was it the sergeant had asked her? Did she know of houses in the neighborhood that hosted pot parties, drinking, and dirty movies? Could she identify adults that her son might know who were involved in drugs and wild parties? There were more than a dozen cases in all, the sergeant had said: children who’d vanished in broad daylight, children murdered, others dead from undetermined causes—mysterious cases that didn’t fit the normal pattern, the normal pattern of murdered children. And something about a child who’d fallen fatally from a railroad trestle at Moreland and Constitution. Zala dug into the soggy paint with her nails. There was no train trestle in that area.

“Okay,” Officer Greaves said, returning from the squad room. She sat on the step stool and Zala sensed she was being closely studied, the woman gauging how big a dosage of information could be safely administered. She had a manila folder clutched under her arm. Zala was afraid of it.

“The children,” Zala said. “You were saying that several children have been killed at wild parties?”

“That’s the theory at the moment. Though the lab tests don’t confirm it, I understand. And as far as I know, there are no corroborating witnesses. May I call you Marzala?” She extended her hand. “I’m B. J., and I’m here to help you. I swear.”

It should have assured her. But a current of ice sped through Zala’s veins. She was afraid to put her hand in her lap. She clutched the armrests.

“Some of the deaths were originally labeled accidental, Marzala.” She flipped through the folder. There were typed sheets, handwritten sheets, and interoffice memos stapled together. “Others have been on the books as ‘undetermined’ for months. And in a few cases, the patrolmen on the beat reported ‘suspected foul play.’ Many of the children were apparently murdered, just as a number of parents have said all along. You’ve read about the parents? Heard about the sit-in they staged?”

“No … I …”

“At any rate, a few days ago a special investigative Task Force was set up. They’re reviewing, I believe, fifteen cases referred by MPYD and Homicide.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and flicked ash onto a
pile of forms. “You’ll want to see the director of the Emergency Task Force. No doubt, you’ll want to meet with the Committee to Stop Children’s Murders. Am I going too fast? I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m listening and I …” She almost apologized for keeping Greaves beyond her sign-out time. A student dropped in for term-paper research. Normal, murder. It was clear from what Greaves had just said that she didn’t expect Sonny to be found in a hospital or in a shelter, didn’t think there was much hope that the police would stumble upon him wandering around, dazed, in the woods, either. Rings of smoke curled against Zala’s knee and broke up, like ghosts, while Greaves puffed and continued talking about what was typical in cases of slain children.

“Maybe two or three per month we can solve, so in a given year, perhaps four cases still pending. But since last year Detective O’Neal and Sergeant Sturgis have been writing memos to call the division’s attention to the fact that the numbers of deaths are way out of proportion. For a year too, the parents have been escalating their protests. Some of them, at any rate.” She paused to lodge the tip of her tongue in her upper gums, signaling that she found it odd that only some of the parents were vocal. She ran her fingers across the form Zala had filled out, noting the address. “Surely you’ve heard about it? Several of the youths are from your neighborhood.”

Zala looked toward the half-closed doors for a shadow, a swatch of navy blue, some sign of rescue, some news. How could Sonny be in any way involved in a string of murders? How could anything like this be happening in the Black community and Mayor Jackson not be on the TV nightly mobilizing the city?

“That’s exactly what Mrs. Mathis has been saying.” Greaves paused when Zala looked up startled, unaware that she’d been thinking aloud. “ ‘It’s a hurting thing,’ indeed, when you consider that not only is the mayor Black, and the commissioner, and the police chief, and half the city council and its president …” She massaged her gums again and took a long drag on her cigarette. “Which is not to say that …” She wrestled with whatever she’d been prepared to say, then shrugged. “Do you know Mrs. Willa Mae Mathis? Her boy Jefferey’s been missing since—” Greaves consulted a sheet from the folder. “He left the house in the afternoon of March 11, 1980, to run up the block to get her some cigarettes. Up on East Ontario and Gordon. Isn’t that near where you
work? Do you know the family? The boy’s your son’s age. Maybe they went to camp together, or know each other from the park, a basketball team, something? Think now.” She leaned forward, and the edge of the manila folder cut into Zala’s knees. “So far we’ve got no links between the children. And no suspects, either. Or murder weapons. Or any witnesses. Or even a known scene of the crime. No hunch regarding motive. No leads. No clues. Which makes it all so unlike the routine cases.” She held out papers stapled together. “Do you know any of these children?”

Zala allowed the woman to drop the papers into her lap, but she made no effort to read them. She was stalling, waiting for a tap on the door, verification that Sonny was no part of this “epidemic,” this trouble, that these pages needn’t concern her. Somehow Greaves had pulled her off the track she’d come in on and plunged her into a murky world of disconnected information. Parties, victims, memos, sit-ins, foul play, Task Force.

“Please,” the sergeant
almost
whispered, the cigarette clenched in her front teeth. “I’m trying to help you find your son. Are any of the names there familiar to you?”

She planted a finger against her lips while Zala rustled the papers. Greaves flicked a shred of tobacco away and continued talking, keeping her voice low and leaning closer. “For my money, the families aren’t saying all that they could about their children, their habits, their associates and hangouts. But then I’m not altogether sure my colleagues are probing as they should. And those Task Force donkeys can’t seem to get off their duffs and hit the streets to …” Smoke streamed from her nostrils. She’d smoked the cigarette down to the lipstick. She stubbed it out on the side of the step stool and looked sideways at Zala. “Please talk freely, Marzala. This is a serious situation, and we’ll be of little use to you if you sit on the facts.” She waited, then lit up another cigarette and set the lighter under her thigh.

“Well, at least take a look.” She was clearly annoyed. “Do you know any of the victims?”

Zala scanned the pages, still waiting for approaching footsteps to save her. The names ran together, boys and girls of seven, nine, eleven, fourteen, sixteen. Addresses blurred. Bludgeonings, stab wounds, possible revenge, a fall from a trestle. Last seen on a bike, at a park, a pool, a movie house. Statements from mothers, fathers, foster parents, grandparents,
neighbors. Suspicious cars seen in the neighborhood. Visits by groups of parents demanding attention, refuting “runaway” and “accident.”

“Quite frankly,” Greaves said, “when I noticed how several of the girls’ ages clustered around fourteen, that age when they start striking out on their own, I thought of prostitution—you know, some pimp getting rough. And then the boys—at that age when they start standing up to Stepfather or tussling with Mama’s boyfriend. Are you okay, Marzala?” She stepped away from the stool to catch the papers falling from Zala’s lap.

Zala was thinking of Dave and Sonny. Of Spence and the blackouts he used to have before the VA hit on a pill that didn’t have him sleepwalking, or flaring up in fits of rage.

“Oh, God!” Zala wailed. Stand by me, she prayed silently, stand by me, Lord.

“What is it?”

“My husband,” Zala blurted.

“Your husband?” Greaves tapped ashes into her palm, then sprinkled them behind her. “Your husband?”

Zala was afraid now of what was seeping through her brain, leaking into her mouth. Dave. Spence. She could not even prevent the notion from forming that she herself might have dragged Sonny to the back-porch pantry Saturday morning and done him bodily harm.
Boy, I will knock you down. Boy, I will knock the breath clean out of you
.

“Your husband, Mrs. Spencer. Might he have taken the boy? Hurt him perhaps?… Is he a violent man? Was your husband in ’Nam? What kind of discharge did he receive?”