by P J Parrish
He took a step back to appraise his work. A few moments later, Emily and Tooki wandered over, followed by Cam. The four of them stood looking at the framed photograph.
“So you’re starting a victim wall?” Tooki asked.
“Yeah, sort of,” Louis said. “Though that’s kind of a morbid name for it.”
“Call it the 10-24 wall,” Emily said. “Radio code for assignment completed.”
Louis nodded. “The 10-24 wall it is.”
Tooki shook his head. “But no one will know what this is, why the picture is here.”
Tooki was right. The wall needed something else to help define it and Louis knew where to get it. He hurried up the steps to Steele’s loft and grabbed the wood plaque laying on the credenza.
When he returned, Cam gave a low whistle when he saw what Louis had. “I think the captain wanted that for his office,” he said.
“It belongs here,” Louis said, picking up another nail.
Louis positioned the plaque about six inches above the boys’ photo and nailed it in.
“’The Truth Takes Time,’” Emily said, reading the engraved words aloud.
“Are you going to put Jonas and Tuyen up there too?” Cam asked.
Louis hesitated. “We’re a cold case unit,” he said. “That’s our focus. I think we should dedicate this wall to those victims.”
Cam pursed his lips and stared at the picture of the boys.
“Are you good with that?” Louis pressed.
It took a moment, but he finally gave a tight nod and started back to his desk. Louis watched him, trying to think of something to say to make things better without calling attention to Cam’s pettiness. He couldn’t change what happened or how it happened. And he wasn’t going to apologize for doing his job.
Emily touched his arm. “The captain played Buddy’s confession tape for us. Are we charging him with anything?”
“No,” Louis said. “He was twelve at the time. Can’t take a forty-two-year-old guy into juvenile court.”
“I suppose not. Did you find the boys’ father?”
“Sheriff Nurmi turned up a death certificate for him dated late 1962. Thomas Revel died of emphysema, so it’s likely he knew he was sick when he gave his sons to Jonas. The mother died years before that.”
Emily looked back at the photograph. “Poor little guys had no one. Where are they going to be buried?”
“Sheriff Nurmi is taking care of them,” Louis said. “They’ll be having a service up in Eagle River when the lab releases the remains. I’ll be flying back for that.”
The bang of the front door opening made them look up. Steele had come in. The last time Louis had seen him he’d been mud-splattered and exhausted, getting on a prop plane headed back to Lansing to calm the bosses at headquarters. Today, he wore a navy blue three-piece suit, white shirt and royal blue tie. He carried a bundle of newspapers and his black briefcase.
“Sorry I’m late,” Steele said. “I’ve been at headquarters all day. Good to see you back, Louis. Everything wrapped up in Keweenaw?”
“Yes, sir.”
Cam turned around in his chair. “So how are we looking down at headquarters?”
Steele tossed the newspapers on the conference table. “I can’t say they were impressed with our methods,” he said. “But they were with the results. And they like good press coverage. The team is on solid ground. At least for now.”
Louis walked over and sifted through the newspapers. They ran the gamut from the Detroit Free Press to the Mackinac Town Crier, with a pile of mid-sized papers in between. The case wasn’t the big headline in every edition, but Anthony Prince’s picture was on every front page. And often, so was Steele’s.
“What’s this?” Steele asked.
Louis looked up. Steele had moved to the confessional wall and was staring at the photo of Toby and Eli. Then he turned, waiting for an answer from someone.
“We call it the 10-24 wall,” Tooki said.
It took Steele a moment then he nodded slowly. “You’re all in favor of this?” he asked.
“Yeah, we are,” Cam said.
Louis suspected that Steele might be mildly pissed about his officers—his minions—taking things into their own hands, and he was probably struggling with how to express his approval.
“Well, let’s get back to work on filling this wall up,” Steele said.
He went to the conference table, picked up a copy of the Lansing State Journal and started up the stairs to his loft. Halfway up the steps, he stopped and looked back over the nave.
“It’s Friday,” he said. “I want all of you to take the next four days off. I’ll see you all Wednesday morning.”
Steele disappeared up the stairs and a few seconds later, the lights went on and the piano music started.
For a long moment, the four of them just stared up at the loft then looked around at each other.
“Four days,” Cam said. “Long enough to get laid and wasted but not long enough to get into real trouble.”
He grabbed his leather jacket off a chair. Emily picked up her purse and yellow rain slicker. Tooki was just standing there, looking bewildered and Louis had the feeling he had nowhere to go and no one to see.
Emily must have sensed it, too, because she went to Tooki and touched his shoulder. “I’m starved. You want to come to Dagwood’s with me?”
“Dagwood’s?” Cam piped up. “Is that that dive over by the freeway?”
“It’s not a dive. It has good burgers and chili,” Emily said. She picked up Tooki’s windbreaker and held it out. “Come on, you’re coming with me.”
Cam hadn’t made a move to leave. He was standing there, staring at Emily, and when she didn’t say anything he said, “I could use a burger and a brew.”
Emily smiled. “Let’s go.”
Cam and Tooki started to the door and Emily turned to Louis. “You coming?”
Louis shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m still coming down from all this. Not sure I’d be good company.”
She hesitated then said, “Okay, I won’t push. But we’ll save you a chair.”
They left, the heavy door banging shut behind them, and the nave was quiet again. Even the piano music from the loft had stopped. Louis went to his desk and began to straighten up some papers, but his mind was already halfway up the highway on the way to Echo Bay, and he was imagining the look on Joe’s face when he showed up at her cabin door.
“Louis.”
He turned and looked up. Steele was standing at the loft railing.
“Can you come up before you leave?” Steele said. “I need to talk to you.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Steele was standing behind his desk. His posture was stiff, his expression unreadable, except for a solemnity in his eyes, as if he would rather not do whatever it was he was about to do.
There was a chair in front of the desk, but Louis didn’t take it. The air of formality told Louis that whatever this was, it should probably be taken standing up.
“Let me start with this,” Steele said. “I knew when I put this team together that we’d be working long hours in close quarters. For that reason, I wanted to know everything about my candidates I could possibly know.”
Louis tightened. Had something popped up in his past he needed to explain?
“When the time came for me to start whittling my list of candidates down to my final five,” Steele said, “I’ll be honest, I almost set you aside, despite your glowing recommendation from Norm Rafsky.”
“Why?”
“Because I couldn’t figure you out,” Steele said. “I read your law school admissions essay. I rehashed every move you made in Loon Lake. I studied every case you worked as a PI. But I still couldn’t figure out what it was that compelled you to chuck law school and put on a uniform.”
Steele picked up a thick, tattered manila folder and a large yellow envelope bound together with a fat rubber band.
“So, I went for wh
at we call deep background,” Steele said. “I pulled your child services file.”
A prickle moved up Louis’s arms. He felt violated, just as he had that day he realized that Steele was screwing with their heads by offering up cold cases with personal undercurrents.
Louis struggled to keep his tone civil when he spoke. “Did you get your answer?”
“I did,” Steele said.
Steele held the file out and Louis accepted it. Maybe now was the time to confront Steele on his game, but suddenly it seemed pointless. He was none the worse for having worked the boys in the box case. Except for the nightmares. And now he had in his hand the one thing that could answer the rest of his questions.
“I know you requested your file from Detroit,” Steele said. “I apologize for not giving it to you when they notified me, but we were deep into the Prince case and I didn’t want you distracted.”
Louis understood that, but said nothing, not quite willing to give Steele any indication he was okay with any of this personal shit.
Steele started putting papers in his open briefcase. “I have another meeting,” he said. “If you’d like to sit up here and take a look through that, you’re welcome to. No one will bother you and it’s a good place to reflect. Or as Tooki would say, balance your Chakras.”
Louis fingered the ragged edges of the folder. Truth was, he did want to read it and he wanted to read it now. But he hesitated to do it here, in Steele’s office.
“Louis.”
Louis met his eyes.
“You were a brave boy,” Steele said. “And you’re a brave police officer. I am pleased to have you as a member of my team.”
The compliment was so unexpected, Louis had to play it over in his head a second time and then find the simplest reply.
“Thank you, sir.”
Steele picked up his briefcase and left the loft. Louis looked after him for a minute, then moved to the sofa and sat down. He pulled the rubber band off the folder, set the manila envelope aside and opened the file.
On the left, he saw health and school records, full of checkmarks and notes from teachers. He flipped through those first, figuring they would be pretty benign, things he could handle before he worked up to the harder stuff. Occasionally, he paused to read the handwritten notes made by teachers.
Child is bright but refuses to do the work.
Child excels at solitary projects but resists participating in groups.
Louis turned his attention to the other side of the folder, to the reports that detailed each foster home placement. The document on top marked his exit from the system, when he aged out at 18, in November of 1977.
He had been living for ten years with Phillip and Frances Lawrence by then in Plymouth. He wanted to read these eventually, but right now, they were not the years he was interested in.
He wanted to read about what came before Plymouth, starting with the removal from his home in Mississippi at age seven, all the way through to that night the police arrived at the house on Strathmoor. The last night he saw Sammy.
He found what he needed in the back of the file, his first placement after he left Mississippi. It was on the east side of Detroit, with a distant aunt of his mother’s. That explained why he had been sent out of state, here to Michigan. Maybe she was the only relative who wanted him.
The caseworker’s notes . . .
Child is a compulsive runaway.
Child is almost non-verbal and lacks social skills.
Foster mother feels overwhelmed. Wishes to return child to state custody.
There was a photo of him stapled to one of the reports—a skinny, brown-skinned kid with a halo of dark, unruly hair and empty gray eyes. It reminded him of the photos UNICEF put up on late night TV to get donations for African children.
He turned the pages until he found his next home. In April, he had been placed with people who lived in the heart of Detroit, near Tiger Stadium. He had a vague memory of hanging out near the ballfield, hoping for out-of-the-park home runs, but nothing else.
The caseworker notes . . .
Child has run away six times in one month.
Child is losing weight. Has many unexplained accidents.
Request for placement with approved fosters Phillip and Frances Lawrence of Plymouth denied at this time due to the department’s policy on not placing Negro children in white households.
Louis re-read the last sentence several times, struck by the use of a word he had never had to write on forms as he grew older. It bothered him that Phillip had never told him he had made a request to take Louis in months before he was actually sent there. If the state had approved the Lawrences’ request in April, he never would have ended up at Moe’s house on Strathmoor that summer.
His next home was with a family on Detroit’s west side.
Child has run away nine times in 30 days.
Child frequently caught trespassing after dark at nearby Henry Ford high school track.
Louis had no memory of the home, but he did remember the mindless, leg-burning runs through the darkness along the high school track. The same kind of runs he had made in high school as a cross country athlete. And the same kind he had made that night on the shores of Lake Superior after his first nightmare.
Another photo. Same boy, same empty gray eyes. He set this picture aside, too, and turned another page.
Suddenly he was looking at Moe.
His heart kicked as he stared at the ugly, brown, pock-marked face, bracing himself for an onslaught of memories—images, sounds, smells. But none came. Instead, there was just a pain, a breathtaking, deep physical pain that felt like the plunge of a knife in his chest.
Breathe, he told himself, breathe.
How could this man still trigger this kind of emotion?
Breathe.
He started to read the report. The foster placement was made in July, 1967, a few weeks before the Detroit riots and four months before Louis’s eighth birthday. There was one home visit made in late summer with only a few notes.
Child appears well adjusted. Runaway attempts have stopped. That was because Moe tied them to their beds at night.
Child appears healthy and has put on weight. That was because all Moe kept in the house was junk food for his cravings that came when he got high. Dinners of donuts, Twinkies, potato chips, and one night two bowls of raw, yellow cake batter that Sammy made. Louis turned the page.
Detroit Police Incident Report November 16, 1967
Officers were called to home of Massimo Schrader at 2:06 a.m. in response to a report of child battery. Upon arriving at the scene, officers were confronted at the door by one black male and denied entry. The black male, later identified as Massimo Schrader, resisted arrest and assaulted an officer. He was taken into custody at the scene. Upon searching the premises, officers found multiple containers of marijuana, two “bongs,” misc. drug paraphilia and seven handguns, three of which were determined to be stolen. Two black male juveniles, age seven and ten, were removed from the scene. (See supplemental DPD report #2455) Both juveniles were transported to the hospital.
Louis turned the page, looking for that supplemental report that would give him details on Sammy and tell him if Sammy was dead or alive. But there were no more police reports, only a series of CPS interviews with Louis.
He read each one, but they were simply his account of the horrors of life with Moe and throughout them, he mentioned Sammy only by his first name. They were followed by three pages of Xerox photos that documented the burns and bruises on his body. He set them aside, face down.
The next page detailed his final placement, at the tri-level home in Plymouth, with Phillip and Frances.
While it remains against our long-standing policy of interracial placements, it has been determined this case presents dire circumstances and that it is in the best interest of this child at this time to be placed with the Lawrences.
Louis was disappointed that there was no further information, but now that he had
the case file and that Detroit PD report number, maybe he could find out more. He also made a mental note to call Phillip. He’d never been very good at staying in touch, but today he felt an urgency to hear Phillip’s voice. There was a lot to say to him and Frances. A lot.
Louis started to close the folder, then remembered the manila envelope. He picked it up and opened it. Inside was a six-page trial transcript, with two lines typed on the first page.
Wayne County 24th District Criminal Court
State of Michigan v. Massimo J. Schrader
On the second page, Louis found transcribed testimony, the participants listed only as Witness and Adams. He assumed Adams was a lawyer and had to look to the top of the page to see whose testimony he was reading.
It was his own.
Moe went on trial and Louis had testified.
How could he not remember this?
He had a few memories of being in courtrooms, but they were just like blurry film clips in his head. He had always figured he was there for a routine hearing, or to meet new foster parents. Never a trial.
But he realized that this would tell him exactly what happened the night the cops came to Strathmoor. This would tell him what happened to Sammy.
The first section of his testimony was a recount of what went on in the house over that summer and into the winter. He scanned it quickly, eager to get to the night the police took Moe away.
Finally, he found it.
Adams: Louis, do you remember the night when the police officers came to your house?
Witness: Yes, sir.
Adams: Can you tell me what happened before the police officers got there?
Witness: Me and Sammy watched Gunsmoke.
Adams: What happened after Gunsmoke was over?
Witness: We was cleaning up the kitchen but me and Sammy was messing around and I dropped a plate and it got broke.
Adams: What happened after that?
Witness: Mr. Moe come and he started yelling. Sammy told him he dropped the plate cause he always took the blame for stuff and Mr. Moe grabbed him and started hitting. We busted loose and ran up to the bedroom.