“People, just people.” He walked over to the door and opened it, signaling that this was the end of this conversation. “One month, and you’re off.”
My hands shook as I walked back to my desk. Every eye in the place was on me. Bearing into the back of my head. Off the case. The words still echoed around me. Who are these “people?” What shit was Clive really into that somebody’s puttin’ this much pressure on the captain to get the thing done with?
I had two choices. I could quit and maybe get some peace of mind by just being away from this place, or I could stick it out try and slug away for the next month and crack it. Right now, all I could think of was how alone I felt.
I sat down at my desk and opened the file. Feeling like somebody was knocking at the space between my eyebrows with a jagged rock. I closed my eyes, thinking it might ease the pain. But when I opened them, everything was light around me. I could see the room with the cops talking, bullshitting as usual, but it was all in slow motion with no sound. I was a casual observer in somebody else’s movie.
Then I saw Clive, clear as day, sitting on my desk, his long legs swinging over the side.
“You’ve gotta do this for me, Bob Greene,” he said.
I answered, except my lips weren’t moving. The sounds were coming from inside my head. “Why…tell me why the hell should I?”
He smiled sadly, an expression full of regret, saying wearily, “Because I need peace.” He began fading out. The noises in the background were starting to come back, but I could hear him coming through, words that shot into me…”Because you need peace.”
The sounds exploded back around me. The noise, the cursing, laughing, typewriters, and Clive was gone.
His words stuck to me, and I knew that he was right. Somehow we were linked, Clive and me, and if his soul could rest, then maybe mine could, too. So I couldn’t quit, not until we knew.
The question was how to find out what I needed with my key witness gone AWOL and a bunch of files that I couldn’t really decipher. The wife. I’ll talk to her again. She probably knows more than she was saying. They always did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Detective Bob
“I”ll tell her you’re here, Detective.” The maid, Dolly, showed me into the living room. I was prepared for all the richness, and it didn’t even bother me anymore, because I knew that behind the money and all the shit that he’d gotten, Clive January was a whole lot like me. A guy drowning in his own fuckin’ world.
As I was thinking this, a tall, graying black woman walked in the room holding the hand of a toddler. When I looked at the woman’s face, I saw Clive. I knew it must be his mother. And the child, his kid.
“You here to see my daughter-in-law?” Her words grated against me for some reason.
“Yeah.”
I figured I’d let her do the talking. She looked like the curious type.
“So do you know who killed my baby yet?”
I looked her in the eye, trying to figure her out. All I could see was somebody who had a wall so thick in front of her, that it wasn’t coming down any time soon, if at all. “No, not yet. Got any ideas?”
She glanced at me sideways, almost snorting. “Now how would an old woman like me know something like that?”
“You might have heard things, or seen things. Do you ever remember your son seeming upset at something or at somebody?”
“No more than usual. That was his way, you see, to always fly off at people. He done it to me more than once.”
“But I guess you still loved him, in spite of it?”
She held on to the child’s hand a little tighter, her eyes looking completely different when she looked at her granddaughter, softer, almost gentle. “Yeah, that’s right,” she said quietly.
“Mother, I’ll take her now.” Monique had come into the room without either one of us noticing. She looked pretty good for a grieving widow. Hair done up, expensive dress, no tear lines on her face.
She leaned down to scoop up her child, and for a moment her mother-in-law wouldn’t let go, holding the child closer to her saying in a cajoling, manipulating kind of voice. “Now you wanna stay with Nanna don’t you, baby?”
The kid looked up and smiled at her grandmother. “Uh huh…Nanna, I waana be with Nanna.”
Clive’s mother had this real funny look on her face, a mixture of love for the kid and pride, like somehow having this kid asking to be with her was all she really wanted. I actually felt kinda sorry for Monique. She’d lost her husband, and now, at least from what I could see, she was losing her child, too.
“Mother. She needs to take her nap. She’s tired, so why don’t you just let Dolly take her upstairs?” Monique sounded pissed and at the end of her rope. She pulled the kid away from her mother in-law. The kid, of course, starts yelling bloody murder.
“I don’t wanna go upstairs. I waaana stay with Nana!”
Clive’s mother brushed Ariel’s hair back, cooing, “C’mon now, baby. Yo mama wants you to take a nap, but if you goone upstairs, Nana’ll read you a story, how’s that?”
Ariel immediately calmed down. “Promise, Nana, promise to read me a story?”
“I promises.”
Monique turned away from Clive’s mother angrily, and then gently picked up Ariel, holding her tightly as if to reassert her dominance. “C’mon, honey, let’s go upstairs.” She marched out of the room, yelling back over her shoulder, “I’ll be right back, Detective.”
Clive’s mother had the strangest expression on her face. Like I said, she had a brick wall in front of her, so I didn’t have a clue what she was really thinking. Before I could figure out what might be really going on in her head, she turned her back on me and walked out of the room.
I was alone, so I took the time to look around the room, open some drawers, do a little police work. I was drawn to a funny little desk in the corner. I opened the drawer. Empty. I was about to close it when I noticed a folded piece of paper jammed in the corner. A date on the paper said: January 6, l986. A year ago. The paper was on the letterhead of BENDER, GRACE & CO. The place where Clive used to work years ago. Wonder why he’d have something from them now.
I folded the paper carefully and thrust it in my pocket.
“Found anything interesting, Detective?” Damn that woman could sneak up on you. I looked over at Monique leaning against the doorway. I didn’t turn around, wasn’t gonna give her the satisfaction of knowing she busted me.
“So how’s the kid? She sounded pretty upset.”
“She’s three, Detective. That’s how she sounds most of the time, or at least whenever she doesn’t get her way.”
“I wouldn’t know, no kids myself.”
She sat down on the couch, facing me with a no-nonsense look on her face. “So what did you want to ask me, Detective?”
I leaned back in the chair, patting the paper that I had in my pocket. “Not much really. I just wanted to see any files or work that your husband might’ve kept at home.”
“He usually didn’t bring work home. He wasn’t here that much, but whatever he has is upstairs in the den.” She took a cigarette out of a silver case on the table in front of her, offering me one. I wanted one, God did I want one, but I figured I’d held out this long.
“I’m trying to quit, but I keep fallin’ off the wagon, if you know what I mean. ”
“Well, keep trying.” She lit the cigarette quickly, almost nervously. “I wish I could say the same.”
“Does your husband’s mother live here?”
She frowned slightly, but then turned back coolly. “For the moment.” Getting up quickly, she motioned for me to follow her. “His den is upstairs, this way.”
She left me alone, pretty cooperative. I was about to start rummaging through the drawers when I noticed a calendar in the corner. I flipped through it. January 6, 1986. Circled. I glanced at the paper I’d taken from the living room desk. Same date.
I grabbed the calendar and put it in my bag. I loo
ked around the rest of the room, opening drawers, looking under cabinets. Not much here. She was right. He didn’t seem to do much work at home. Except for that calendar.
“Find what you were looking for, Detective?” She’d crept up on me again.
But this time maybe she could be some help. “A few things.”
“I told you that he didn’t work at home much. He rarely even came into this room.” She stopped as if in deep thought, then sighed.I took out the calendar, showing her the circled date. “Was January sixth some kind of important date for your husband, or for you…anniversary, birthday, you know that kind of thing?”
She shook her head. “Not as far as I know, but in my husband’s business it could’ve meant anything.”
“Mrs. January, did your husband ever talk about any new accounts that he was getting?”
“He never talked about his work with me.”
“Not even casually, like at dinner or something?”
“Detective, when we ate together, which wasn’t often, he usually didn’t have a lot to say.”
“Well, what about any phone calls you might’ve overheard, meetings at the house, anything that seemed out of the unusual?”
“No nothing.”
I brought out my TV Detective act again. “Look, Mrs. January, I’m trying my damndest to find out who killed your husband, and I can’t seem to get any help from any fuckin’ body, excuse my French. You don’t know nothin’, my main suspect slipped away, so all I’m coming up with is a big fat zero, and if I don’t crack this case in a month, my ass is off and they’ll stick some pansy on who probably cares even less than you do about finding out who killed your husband.”
I took a deep breath. That was a lot to say at one time and sound convincing. It was all true, and I’d made a silent promise to Clive that I would find out who did it. His salvation and mine were both hanging in the balance, and it wasn’t clear where the whole thing would end up.
For once, I think I cracked the surface on her. She actually looked like she might cry for the first time. She sat down on the small couch, turning away from me and saying softly, “I do care who killed my husband, Detective. I do care. “
She started crying, but not really crying, ’cause she was trying hard to hold it in. I could tell she was the kind who’d never cry around strangers, never let down her guard. But something I said hit a chord, and now it all just started coming out. My guess is that even an ice queen like her had to let go at some point.
She kinda choked out the words. “My husband and I hadn’t been…we had not really had much of a marriage for years, since before our daughter was born. I wasn’t in his life, and he wasn’t in mine. We were merely roommates, financial partners.” She stiffened, continuing quietly, so quietly that I could barely hear her. “But I did still love him.” She closed her eyes, talking more to herself it seemed than to me.
“Even though I told myself I didn’t, and that it didn’t hurt any more. It still did. Clive was like that. Once you loved him, you could never stop. He was like a drug, because when he loved you he was so completely yours and so completely involved in you that you couldn’t get enough, you lost yourself in him. So when he inevitably moved on, you couldn’t. You kept wanting that high again of knowing that someone completely loved you.”
Now I was quiet, seeing where she’d go next.
“I don’t know that I’ll get over his death.”
Suddenly, I felt sorry for this lady. I knew what it felt like for your love to come back unreturned. But I couldn’t think about that now. Hell this might have been all an act. ’cause even though one part of me believed her, my cop’s intuition told me never say never when you’re on a murder case. She still might be holding something back. “Mrs. January, were you and your husband thinking about a divorce?”
She clammed up on me again. The little bit of progress I’d made, shot to the wind. Pulling herself together real quick. Tears gone, eyes open, no more sad memories and choked up voice. She looked at me directly, without blinking. “Doesn’t every couple think about it at one time or another, Detective?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been married.”
“Well, Detective, I have been for seven years, and trust me, most couples do. It’s the nature of living in close quarters with someone for extended periods of time.”
Back to the ice queen. I could see that I wasn’t gonna get a whole lot more outta her today, so I figured time to wrap. “I’m gonna send a cop down here, if you don’t mind, to cart off the rest of these files…I don’t have time to go over them carefully now, but they might have something in them.”
Before she could say anything, Dolly came into the room. A real weird look on her face. “Mrs. January, your father’s downstairs…with Mr. and Mrs. Lanier.”
Monique looked surprised, but then I think she remembered that I was in the room. “Tell them I’ll meet them in the car.”
Dolly looked like she didn’t approve, or that something was up, I couldn’t tell. I made a mental note to question Dolly again. I’d talked to her right after the murder, but she hadn’t really been that much help.
As I walked outside, I noticed an older black man seated in the driver’s seat of a steel grey Mercedes, the kind I’d drool over in the magazines and that him a black man was drivin’. I recognized him as her father from Clive’s funeral. Next to him was a white man, Lanier, I guessed. Tall good lookin’ greyin’ with that I-got-money look. In the back seat was one of them rich bitch types. Loaded with jewelry and bad attitude. Figured it must be Lanier’s wife. They didn’t notice me. But something about them showin’ up like that had changed the deck, stacked the cards in another direction. And I was beginning to feel that my cop’s intuition was right. That Monique knew more than what she was saying, and Dolly had a clue of what it was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Laurel
“Stick of gum?” The lady truck driver offered me a pack of gum. Gratefully, I took a stick. This would be my lunch. I hadn’t eaten anything all day.
I’d been riding for almost three days now. The truck driver, her name was Jan, was a decent person. She let me sleep in the cab at night when she checked into a motel. I think she knew that I didn’t have any money.
During the day, she didn’t say much. We just rode past miles and miles of desolate landscape. The dreary South in winter, leafless trees, miles of emptiness. We rarely talked, but for some reason, today she seemed to want to open up. “You running from a man?”
I wondered where that came from, but I tried to sound calm. “No…not at all…”
She looked at me like she didn’t believe a word I was saying. “I was where you are, once, ’bout five years ago. My boyfriend, we were living together then, had started to get this bad habit of drinking and then coming home and knocking me around.” I thought that her boyfriend must’ve been huge because she was no small woman.
“Finally, I got sick of it. So I left.” She snapped her gum. “I thought that would be it, but then he came after me. Found me and came trying to beat down my door.” She leaned back in the seat, stretching her legs. “Now in those days I used to carry a gun, so I was ready to blow the shit outta him. If he got in the door, I didn’t care if I rotted under the damn jail, I wasn’t letting him touch me again.”
She took out another piece of gum and stuffed it in her mouth. “So anyways, he knocked the door down, and I had my gun pointed ready to pull the trigger, when all of a sudden, he grabbed his heart. He dropped down in front of me in pain. He couldn’t breathe or nothing.”
“Was he having a heart attack?”
“Yep, right there in front of me. And then I felt bad ’cause I didn’t really want him to die like that, so I leaned down and I tried to help him, but it was too late.”
Her words stung me. I knew her feelings, but I wasn’t ready for her next question.
“Ever seen someone die before, somebody you loved?”
My eyes clouded over. Trying to b
lock the memory…Clive lying there, the blood, the tears…”No.”
She slowed down abruptly, pulling the truck over and stopping it. “Sure you have.”
She pulled out a crumpled piece of paper from her jacket. It was my picture…a police drawing: LAUREL DAVENPORT MURDER SUPSECT.
Pain resonated in my chest, but this time it was followed by a sharp searing in my legs. “How…what…?”
“I got it at the motel last night. The minute I saw it I knew it was you.” She leaned over me and opened my door, looking at me with unfeeling eyes. “So, sister, this is the end of the road for you and me.”
What could I say? Nothing. So numbly, I got out of the truck. I was a fugitive. Without any idea of where I was, or where I was going. I was still holding the police photo of me. But why was I surprised? I’d known since I saw the police outside my window that they were looking for me. But to see it in print in black and white…I was about to close the cab door when Jan called out to me, “Hey…good luck.”
I nodded, because I really couldn’t think of anything else to say.
* * *
“Yo, Greene, we just got a call. Somebody saw your suspect in western Alabama, coupla hours outside of Mobile. She’d hitched a ride with a truck driver when they dumped her out there.”
I had already jumped up and strapped my gun on my holster. This time I wasn’t taking any chances. I was getting her myself.
“And one more thing. Her prints, the ones we got from her office, matched the second set of prints at January’s place. She was definitely at the murder scene that night.”
I rubbed my hands together, charging myself up. I was beginning to feel like a cop again. “Bingo! Now I got a case. Call the local cops down there. Get ’em to nab her. I’m leaving on the next plane.”
On the plane, looking out over the clouds, made me think about when I was a kid. I used to look up in the sky and pretend that I was seeing faces in the clouds. Sometimes it was like I had a whole ‘nother world up there. Pretty funny, then at least. So I was looking out seeing the faces. Only this time, they seemed more real than ever. Probably just tired and stressed from the past few days. But the faces weren’t going away, and I knew that Clive was pulling me into his world again.
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