Condemned: A Thriller

by McBride, Michael

  Not long ago she had been well on her way to becoming a dermatologist; now the digested remains of her face were somewhere inside the walls of that horrible place.

  Again, this was a white girl and one who would be more than missed. Her absence had already opened a chasm of sorrow on campus, which I’m sure was the whole point. She may have been worshipped for her outward beauty, but inside she was so much more. Or at least she had been. Now she was an empty husk, left to rot where even God couldn’t see her.

  I understood the message, but that made it no less tragic.

  The world would feel the loss of these two girls. One wanted to work with underprivileged youth, while the other was already well on her way to becoming the kind of doctor who might not have waded through blood in an emergency room, but—thanks to an episode of Seinfeld—we all knew would save lives through the treatment of melanoma, basal and squamous cell carcinoma, and other types of cancer of the…skin…

  I leaned back and stared at the line of light sweeping across the ceiling as a car sped past outside.

  There was something there. I had that tip-of-the-tongue feeling, as though that line of thought were leading me to the brink of a revelation.

  I retraced my thoughts. Two dead girls. The world feeling the loss. A social worker and a dermatologist. A skin doctor.

  Skin.

  We had two dead white girls in a city that was six-sevenths black. My first thought when we found Lindsay DeWitt was that her skin color had been meant to draw attention, whereas a dead black girl from a neighborhood like the one surrounding the Eastown would never make the front page of the paper or the nightly news. But was there more to it than that? Both of the victims had blond hair and blue eyes. White skin. Skin doctor. Alex Snow. Snow White.

  I stared at my computer screen. At the picture of a woman who in life had looked nothing like I had seen her in death. Why had the killer driven all the way down to Toledo when he could easily have taken another white girl, even another white medical student, from Dearborn or the University of Detroit-Mercy?

  The answer hit me with such force I could barely breathe.

  I typed into the search engine so fast that I misspelled every word and had to start over. I willed my hands to stop shaking as I typed again, slower this time.

  The surname DeWitt was Dutch in origin and found its way to England following the Norman Conquest of 1066. There were many spellings—de Wit, De Witt, De Witte, Dewett, and Dewitt—but only one meaning. The name originated from the German and Anglo-Saxon word hwita and the popular medieval practice of naming someone based on physical characteristics, presumably in this case someone with fair hair or a pale complexion.

  DeWitt was the Norse version of the twentieth most popular surname in the United States.

  White.

  SIXTEEN

  Dray was already waiting for me at American Coney Island by the time I got there. I parked behind his car against the curb and watched him stare blankly out the window. The way he slouched reminded me of his old man, sitting in his easy chair with a Schlitz in one hand and the clicker in the other, looking in the general direction of the TV as he flipped from one channel to the next, the flickering glow of the tube on his blank features in the dark room.

  And suddenly I was overwhelmed by memories I hadn’t relived in years. You had to be quiet when his dad was in that kind of mood. His mother would sit on a stool in the kitchen, wringing a dish towel back and forth between her callused hands. We’d stuffed the blankets from Dray’s bed against the bottom of his bedroom door and talked in whispers, and even then he’d shushed me every thirty seconds and continually watched the doorknob for the slightest hint of movement.

  He caught me looking and I hurriedly climbed out like I’d been in the process of doing so all along.

  The American was a fixture of downtown Detroit and one of its most closely guarded secrets for nearly a century. In my lifetime, it’d seen the expansion of its physical premises and its menu, but very little had actually changed. Since its inception, it had remained in the hands of the Keros family and day or night you could count on finding one of the brothers or cousins somewhere behind the counter, every bit as recognizable as the place itself. The black and white checkerboard tiles, red vinyl chairs, and plain white tables had played hosts to local celebrities—from Edsel Ford to Eminem and Diana Ross to Kid Rock—who were willing to risk slumming with the commoners for one of the most exquisite culinary experiences any man could afford.

  We’d spent a lot of time in the American through the years, most of it in the middle of the night and the early hours of the morning, largely because we had nowhere else to go or weren’t quite sober enough to drive there when we did. A hot dog smothered in onions and chili was probably the last thing in the world a guy with a belly full of cheap beer wanted to ingest, but that was just a part of growing up in the Motown. I imagined that was the main reason it still thrived, even in this economy. People would always need somewhere to go when no one wanted them anywhere else.

  I bought two Americans and two bottles of Bud with the last of my walking money and joined Dray at the table in the window. He’d picked the location farthest from the group of kids wearing flat-billed baseball caps at all sorts of odd angles, team jackets, and boxers displayed as a fashion statement above jeans belted around their thighs. I recalled reading that the style was made popular by Louisiana convicts being released from Angola without their belts and shoelaces and wondered about the future of our society if those were the role models with whom our youth most identified.

  Dray nodded his thanks and tipped back the bottle. His posture softened almost immediately. I didn’t know where he was when I called, but he obviously hadn’t been sleeping. The whites of his eyes were almost completely red and the skin beneath his eyes was puffy and purple. The wrinkles starting to form on his face were identical to those of his father. I hoped he didn’t see my father when he looked at me.

  “You remember when we were like them?” He inclined his chin toward the kids who’d made him as a cop and yet didn’t seem to care. “Sometimes I feel like that wasn’t real. Just memories my mind made up to fill in the blanks.”

  “That was a long time ago. And things were different then.”

  “Maybe.”

  “We sat here talking about girls and music and the places we were going to go.”

  “That’s the difference. They know they ain’t going nowhere while we still had ourselves convinced that we could.”

  “You’re a real ray of sunshine tonight.”

  He offered me a wan smile and took another swig of his beer.

  “Back when this place opened, people forced to live in poverty and under conditions like these kids would have risen in revolt against the powers that be. Today they kill each other in the streets fighting over the scraps. How many of those boys you think’ll see twenty, let alone thirty?”

  As if on cue, one of them broke away from the group, a fry hanging from the corner of his mouth like a soggy cigarette. He pulled it out, tossed it back, and chewed with his mouth open as he approached our table. I hadn’t noticed from a distance, but his entire face was covered with tattoos I couldn’t decipher against his ebony skin.

  Dray cocked his head and looked the kid squarely in the eyes.

  “Whatever you thinkin’ a doin’, you best think real hard ‘bout how tough you goin’ look crawlin’ back o’er there with a footlong shoved up yo narrow black ass.”

  “Shit, yo. This just community outreach, know what I’m sayin’? Jus’ welcoming you to the neighborhood’s all. You and Mister Rogers here.” He looked at me and spoke in the same tired “white guy” voice all comedians used. “And it is a beautiful day in the neighborhood, is it not?”

  His buddies laughed and tossed a flurry of fries in our direction.

  “You’ve got us confused,” I said. “I’m King Friday. He’s Mister Rogers. Detective Rogers, actually.”

  Dray smirked and adjusted his ja
cket so the kid could see the butt of his pistol in his shoulder holster.

  The silly smile on the kid’s face vanished.

  “Yo, man. I was jus’ messin’s all. You hear?”

  He backed away, but not without trying to save face in front of his crew by dipping his finger into the chili on my hotdog and slurping it off.

  “S’right,” Dray said. “Keep on steppin’.”

  “You’ve got that whole ebonics thing down,” I said.

  “Makes you sound racist when you say shit like that.”

  “I can’t be racist if I’m a minority, can I?”

  “Let’s just say it makes it easier to work the streets if you learn the language.”

  “They frown on you just shooting them, I take it.”

  “We’ve got the union looking into it for us, hoping to make some progress on that.” He leaned closer. “But while we’re on the subject…”

  I felt something tap my knee under the table. Dray’s eyes caught mine and he nodded for me to take it. It was cold and heavy and I knew exactly what it was before I scooted back to take a look at it.

  “All that’s going on? I thought it might not be a bad idea to let you borrow that for a while.”

  I turned it over and over in my hands. Gripped it and slid my finger under the trigger guard. Felt its awesome weight, and the transfer of power that came with it. And yet I couldn’t help feeling that everything about it was wrong.

  “No serial numbers. No registration. You get the chance, you do what you’ve got to do to finish this.”

  I passed it back to Dray under the table.

  “I’d probably just end up shooting myself in the foot. Besides, I still have that Colt my old man gave me in the back of my closet somewhere, if I really need it.”

  The second pistol disappeared back into his jacket. It looked almost futuristic. He just nodded to himself and turned to watch the kids gather their stuff and head out the side door. The one who befouled my American glanced up at the security camera facing our table as though debating doing something stupid, then pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head. Once the door closed behind them, Dray returned his attention to his hotdog, but merely picked at it.

  I stared at him as he killed his beer, his eyes on something only he could see.

  “You going to tell me why you aren’t wearing your ring?”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “You’ve never been a very good liar.”

  “And here I was thinking I was doing so well.”

  “Did she leave you?”

  “You could say that.”

  He loosened his tie and pulled out a necklace from beneath his shirt. A plain gold band hung from it. He held it in his palm for several seconds before tucking it away once more. When his eyes again met mine, they were filled with so much pain that I had to look away.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “What, so now you care? Where the hell you been these last six months?”

  “You could have called me, you know.”

  “Lines run both ways.”

  I conceded his point with a nod. The expression on his face was one I couldn’t read.

  “She’s gone. I got over it.” I looked back at him and could tell he’d become a much better liar. “So you going to tell me why you called? And don’t tell me you were just craving a dog. You’ve never picked up a tab in all the time I’ve known you, not unless there was something you wanted in return.”

  When he smirked, I saw my oldest friend in the world again and couldn’t resist laughing. The release felt wonderful, regardless of how short lived. Some of the boys looked back at me with their heads cocked and their chins raised in challenge, as though I were somehow laughing at them. Dray pulled back his jacket to reveal the butt of his pistol and they went back to talking among themselves.

  “You looked at the race angle yet?” I asked.

  “Two dead black girls and we got ourselves a paragraph on page five. Two dead white girls and we suddenly got ourselves a page-one hate crime? We’re only talking race because we’re in Detroit.”

  “You know me better than that.”

  “So you going to tell me how you got this one black friend so that don’t make you racist?”

  “If you don’t shut up, that black friend won’t be around much longer.”

  “You threatening an officer of the law?”

  “Would you just stop talking for thirty freaking seconds and hear me out?”

  He took a bite of his dog, wiped a sludge of mustard and chili from his chin, and gestured for me to proceed with a wave of his hand. I explained my theory about the names of the victims and the reason for their selection. I told him about how the victims had been chosen not just for their blond hair and blue eyes, but for the contributions to society they intended to make. These weren’t just two dead white girls; they were two women who could have made a genuine difference in our community. When I was done describing the connection of the room with all of the animal bones to Paradise Lost and Milton’s personal feelings about idolatry to the concept of physical beauty in our society, he just stared at me without saying a word. His hot dog remained half eaten in front of him and the occasional wince told me his stomach was rebelling against the onions, like mine was. He chewed on the inside of his lower lip before finally speaking, slowly and in a low voice.

  “Say you’re right. What’s the endgame?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pulling headlines isn’t enough motivation. They don’t last. This isn’t the fifties. No one remembers them from one day to the next, even if they are about dead white girls.”

  “If these murders are proven to be racially motivated, we could see the kind of riots that put the OJ thing in LA to shame and turn this town to ashes.”

  “Who do you think benefits from that? Given enough time, this city’ll go down that road on its own. There’s no percentage in accelerating the inevitable.”

  “He wants society as a whole to see what’s become of this city. What society has done to this city. He wants people to open their eyes and see what money is doing to our civilization.”

  “It’ll take a lot more than headlines to do that.”

  “You know as well as I do there’ll be more victims.”

  “Seems to me you know a lot more than I do. Anything you want to tell me, now’s the time.”

  “You accusing me of something?”

  “You’re up to your neck in this and getting deeper by the minute. You tell me how this looks from where I’m sitting.”

  “Screw you. I didn’t want anything to do with this—”

  “And yet here you are.” I stood and looked at him across the table as I’d done so many times in my life. I no longer recognized the man in front of me. “Tell me it’s not headlines that pay your bills. I’ve been inside that place of yours. Some people’d say living on the streets would be a step up.”

  “I’ll see you around, Dray.”

  He spoke to my back as I walked away.

  “I’m sure you will.”

  SEVENTEEN

  I wanted to drive around until I was able to vent some of this steam, but I was already down to half a tank of gas and I’d nearly blown everything I had left for the week on the blasted hot dogs and beer. Instead, I parked by the Detroit Opera House and walked around Grand Circus Park. Despite the city crumbling around it, the park retained some of the magic I believed once resided here. The grass was recently mowed and the gardens were well tended. The ornate lamps still illuminated the paths and water still flowed through the sprinklers and fountains, despite the fact that elsewhere such services were being cut off in record numbers. The panhandlers who flooded the streets surrounding Comerica Park had yet to emerge from wherever they slept and, with the exception of a few early-morning joggers and some questionable characters who were every bit as happy to avoid me as I was them, I found myself totally alone with my thoughts.

  Dray had crossed a
line with me. My best friend for roughly my entire life had looked at me with open suspicion and questioned my integrity. I would have expected that kind of thing from his partner, but not from him. I tried to tell myself that the stress of the job and his wife leaving him were responsible, and yet I refused to give him an excuse for the way he’d treated me.

  I understood why he was mad at me. I hadn’t been there for him when he needed me, but—dammit—how was I supposed to know? He was right. I should have called. I could be self-absorbed and insensitive. I could get so caught up in my work that I lost touch with everything else in my life. That didn’t give him the right, though. Especially not now, when I was only trying to help and he treated me like I was a criminal. I hoped that American was eating right through the lining of his stomach.

  My phone chirped to alert me to an incoming message. Not only did I ignore it, I switched the blasted thing off. Dray owed me an apology and we both knew it, but I was in no mood to hear it now. I wanted him to swing in the wind for a while, let him think long and hard about how he’d treated me and understand just how pissed off at him I was.

  I walked around the Russell Alger Memorial Fountain and stared up at the statue of the Roman woman ensconced in flowing linens, holding high a shield and pointing toward a future only she could see. Her bare left breast reminded me of the two naked bodies I’d seen so recently; I couldn’t help envisioning Lindsay and Alex up there, pointing accusingly toward the city where they had lost their lives.

  What little I’d consumed of the American returned with a vengeance and I threw it up into the wood chips lining the hedges, for lack of anyplace better.