The radio crackles with activity. Number-coded dramas are playing out all over town. There are a couple of 10–52s—domestic disputes—though only one is coded F to indicate a firearm involved.
Countless 10–10s—narcotics sales.
One 10–33—explosive device—in Tompkins Square Park. Update: unfounded.
So far, there’s been only one 10–65—missing persons, accompanied by a BOLO for light-skinned black female, aged nineteen, five-foot-nine, 120 pounds. Last seen Friday at home on Lexington Avenue in Harlem, reported by the father. If Wayland’s case were officially wrapped up, Barnes and Stef might have been assigned to this one, but it’s not going to happen today. Not any time soon.
Stef stops the car in front of the hospital. “Just the way it is, Barnes. The way it has to be. You know that, right?”
Barnes is silent.
Beyond the windshield, the rain has turned to a wet snow.
Wash, in his head: “Nothing like that first snowfall. Scrubs away the grime, makes everything fresh and pretty . . . It’s all about the timing . . . whether it’s welcome depends on when it shows up and whether you’re ready.”
Barnes pats his pocket to make sure the envelope is there, and his key chain holding the little gold ring.
C . . . for Charles.
And for Charisse.
He already has Dad’s initials tattooed on his arm. He’ll give his daughter the ring. One day, maybe it can remind her of him.
If, going forward, he could be half the man his father was—half the man Wash is . . .
But I don’t know. I just don’t know.
“Thanks, Stef,” he says, opening the door. “For . . . the ride.”
“You’re welcome for the ride. For everything.”
Barnes gets out of the car and walks toward the hospital, toward his baby girl, leaving Stef alone in the car with the radio crackling about Amelia Crenshaw, the missing girl in Harlem.
Manhattan
At last, Gregory Devlin spots the Port Authority looming beyond the bus windshield wipers.
His day started before dawn on Saturday, driving the first morning shift that takes him from the city up through the Hudson Valley and then northwest into the Catskills. The bus always starts off full, but starts to empty out when they reach the college towns—Poughkeepsie, Binghamton, Ithaca . . .
It fills up again in Rochester with folks riding to the last stop, Buffalo. Before embarking on the return trip, Gregory gets to take a decent break. It’s too short for a nap, but long enough to order some chicken wings at the Anchor Bar. He’s a regular there now.
“You get the same thing every week,” the pretty young waitress commented today, setting down his double order of medium wings. “Don’t you ever want to change it up?”
“I would if I could get wings down in Queens, where I live, but no one’s ever heard of them there.”
“I’ll come visit you and bring you some,” she said with a flirty smile.
He changed the subject to the Bills-Miami game, thinking of his pregnant wife at home. She’ll be sound asleep by the time he gets there, and he won’t stir three hours later when she rolls her roly-poly self out of bed to go to her job as a Key Food cashier. Sometimes, he worries about what’s going to happen when the baby comes and she can’t work for a few weeks.
“We’ll get by,” she told him just yesterday and patted his hand, as if that were a plan and not an empty reassurance.
Yawning, Gregory guides the bus along the network of tunnels and ramps leading into the terminal, the headlights catching more than a few scuttling rats of the furry and human variety. This place is a dump at any hour, but especially overnight, when the most degenerate population segment takes over and the cops seem to turn a blind eye. Sometimes, he worries that certain passengers won’t make it out of here in one piece.
Tonight, he’s concerned about a pockmarked, bespectacled high school kid who boarded in Rochester with a viola case.
At least there are no little old ladies this trip. Not frail ones, anyway. Just the same no-nonsense broad who boarded last minute Saturday morning and sat solo in the front row seat reserved for disabled passengers. He could see her in the rearview mirror, quietly facing forward, basket perched on her lap. She disembarked up in Ithaca. When he stopped there for the evening run back to New York, there she was again. The bus was crowded, and she had to sit somewhere in back.
She reminds Gregory of his Auntie Ruth, who before she lost her marbles was also a sassy black woman. She looked a lot like this one—attractive for her advanced age, with a thick coil of salt-and-pepper braids.
“Port Authority,” he calls, flicking on the overhead light and pulling into the gate. “Last stop, Port Authority.”
The passengers stir to action, some waking from a sound sleep. He steps out and opens the luggage compartment, handing over their bags as they file past him. The old lady is taking her sweet time moving down the aisle to the door.
Gregory wills her along, looking for tokens in his pocket and thinking about food, home, and bed. Maybe he’ll jump off the subway three stops before his own and pick up a couple of slices from his favorite pizza joint on Queens Boulevard.
He finds two brass tokens mixed with the loose change and drops one as he sorts it from the quarters. It rolls under the bus. Gregory drops to his knees on the filthy pavement and strains to reach it with his hand, not wanting to go belly down in his white shirt. Almost . . . almost . . .
Got it.
“Child, what you doin’ down there?”
Recognizing the accent, he turns, expecting to find himself face to feet with orthopedic shoes and saggy stockings. Instead, he sees a pair of lace-up booties in the same red leather as the satchel she’s waiting to claim.
She’s shed her coat, now wearing a gaudy fringed shawl, and her coiled braids are hidden beneath a bright watermelon-colored headdress. She slings the handle of her cloth-covered woven basket over her arm and holds out a brown hand for her satchel.
“It’s been a long day. Let me carry it for you, ma’am.”
She shakes her head and says something.
It takes him a moment to translate: “Where I’m going, you’re not.” Probably true, unless she’s in the mood for pizza.
“Are you taking a cab? The subway?”
“Neither.”
“Well, is someone waiting for you? Because the weather is getting—”
“I not be gwine till dayclean. T’night, I stay here.”
He looks at her in dismay. “You can’t do that. You have no idea what this place is like at night.”
“I do. I stayed last night in the terminal after the bus was canceled, and—”
“They didn’t cancel any Ithaca buses last night.”
“Not to Ithaca.”
“So you spent the night in this hellhole and then you got on the wrong bus?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I changed my plan, for a friend.”
“A friend in Ithaca?”
She nods. “But she’s okay now, so I can go home on the bus in dayclean.”
“Sure I can’t help you with that bag?”
“No, t’engky.”
“Get home safely, ma’am, wherever it is,” he calls as she shuffles through the door.
She gives a muffled reply as it closes behind her.
Gregory catches only one word.
Island.
Ithaca
In a small, windowless office, Amelia sits across from two police detectives asking her countless questions. There are some she can’t answer, and a few she’d prefer not to. Like about why she came to Ithaca to find Silas. And whether her father knows she’s here.
For a split second, she considers lying, as she had when she told Silas she’d called Calvin. But you don’t lie to the police. She admits she’d left home without telling him where she was going, though at her age, that’s not such a big deal, is it?
Turns out, it is.
A police o
fficer knocks on the door to request a private word with the detectives. They step out, closing the door.
Grateful for the break, Amelia rests her forehead on the table. She feels lousy—mouth dry, stomach queasy, head pounding. A hangover, Jessie had said earlier, when they were sitting on the hard bench. She has one, too. She’s in the next room, waiting for her turn with the detectives.
Lucky Jessie. If that woman had somehow turned out to be her birth mother . . .
Lucky Jessie. Her adoptive mother is on the way, rushing home through a storm to comfort her.
Amelia has never felt more alone in her life.
“You had a mother who raised you, too,” Jessie had pointed out, right before they went to bed. The conversation is fuzzy now, but Amelia’s been trying to replay it, because there was something else Jessie had said . . . something that troubled her, before she fell asleep.
The door opens again. Only one detective is back. He returns to the table, but he doesn’t reclaim his seat. Instead, he takes the telephone from an adjacent desk, stretches it as far as the cord will reach, and plunks it down in front of her.
“Miss Crenshaw. When your name went through the system in association with this crime, it came back in association to a missing persons case in New York City.”
“It . . . What?”
Her birth mother—birth parents?—have been looking for her all along? All these years, and she never knew . . .
“So I really was kidnapped?”
“Pardon?”
“They said I’d been abandoned, like I told you—that’s why I’m here, so that Professor Moss can help me find my birth parents, remember?”
He stares at her like he has no idea what she’s talking about.
“I thought . . . you said . . . if they filed a missing persons case on me, I must have been kidnapped, right? Or . . . lost, somehow?”
“I’m sorry. You misunderstood. Your father, Calvin Crenshaw, filed the report yesterday. He’s been frantic.”
“He . . . what . . .” She shoves words past crushing disappointment. “How do you know?”
He points to the phone. The hold light is red.
“He’s on line two. I’ll let you have some privacy.” He leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
Amelia stares at the phone.
Calvin.
Not her birth mother.
Not kidnapped.
Not even put up for adoption. Just . . .
Abandoned.
Maybe her birth mother’d had a hard life, like Enid Skaggs. Maybe she’s a despicable woman, too. Maybe not. But she chose to—
That’s it! That’s what Jessie had said last night, when they argued before bed.
“She didn’t choose to leave you . . .”
She wasn’t talking about Amelia’s birth mother.
“She got sick.”
Bettina.
Amelia’s been so angry with her for months, dragging all that fury around, refusing to forgive her . . .
For the lie?
Or for leaving?
“You’ve suffered terrible losses,” Silas had said yesterday, and the dam had fractured. She held back the tears then.
Now they stream down her cheeks.
She’s lost two mothers. But only one took care of her. Only one tried to force-feed her homemade Southern food, and warned her about strangers, and sewed her that godawful pink dress with the uneven sleeves.
Her birth mother might have loved her, but . . .
Bettina did love her.
And now she’s gone, and I’m angry, so angry . . .
But not alone.
Amelia reaches for the phone, lifts the receiver, presses the button for line two.
“Daddy?” she manages, before her voice is choked by sobs. But he’s crying, too. Telling her he thought something terrible had happened to her. That he’d lost her.
She’d thought the same thing.
Something terrible had happened. And they’d lost each other. Now they’ll have to find their way . . .
Not back. You can never go back.
We’ll find our way forward.
She hangs up with a promise to call him again in the morning, opens the door, and sees that it’s already here.
No, not morning.
Beyond a wall of glass, the world is bathed in soft gray light, shimmering in soft white snow.
Dayclean.
Sing Sing
Spontaneous lies tend to spill from Oran Matthews’s lips like well-rehearsed lines from a script, even when he’s under pressure. Somehow, for him, the truth has always been much harder to come by. And sometimes when he tells it, he wonders why he bothers.
He glares at the two NYPD homicide detectives seated across from him. He isn’t on the witness stand this time, testifying under oath, fighting for his life. He owes them nothing, yet he’s giving them the truth—with a few omissions, yes.
Still, they don’t seem to believe a word he’s saying.
“No, I don’t! How many times do I have to—”
“Sorry, Oran, but we want to be absolutely clear that you—”
“I don’t! Don’t know her. Don’t know who she is. Never seen her before in my life. Never heard of her.”
He maintains eye contact with the two men, keeping his voice steady and his cuffed hands firmly clasped on the table between them.
He doesn’t know this Enid Skaggs woman they’re asking about. He has no idea what might have motivated her bloody rampage. And he sure as hell won’t allow them to see that he’s shaken by the news that he’s lost a child.
Emily. Such a beautiful name.
Such a terrible shame.
What about the others? He can only hope that Gypsy has found them by now, assembled them to wait, as he instructed.
“What about your daughter?” asks the younger of the two detectives, as if he’s read Oran’s mind. He tongs his double chins with a fat thumb and forefinger, waiting for the answer.
“Never met her, either.”
A pause. “That’s strange, because we’re told she was here to visit you not long ago, and that she comes every Father’s Day and every Christmas. So—”
“What? You mean Gypsy?”
“Gypsy Colt Matthews. She is your daughter, correct?”
“Yeah, she’s my daughter. I thought you were talking about the dead kid up in Boston.”
“Also your biological daughter.”
“Guess so. How come you’re asking me about Gypsy?” Saliva pools on his tongue. If he swallows, it will be a gulp.
“When was the last time you saw her?” the other detective asks. He, too, is jowly, his necktie too short above a fleshy gut, revealing the straining bottom button on his white shirt.
“And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite . . .”
Proverbs, chapter 23, verse 2.
“Oran? When did you last see Gypsy?”
“Guess it was Father’s Day. That’s what you said, right? I don’t keep track.”
“Talked to her lately?”
“I don’t talk to her. You think I have a damned phone I can pick up and call whenever I feel like it? I have to write to her. And no, I haven’t. Not in a while.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“How would I know? I’m in here.” The words are slicked with defiance and spittle. He will not allow himself to falter.
The older detective leans forward. “Looks like Enid Skaggs and your daughter Gypsy spent some time in the same foster home, so we thought maybe—Hey, you okay, there?”
No, Oran isn’t okay. And not just because the saliva has finally slid down his throat, making him choke.
Through the roar in his brain, he hears someone ask a guard to bring him water. By the time it arrives, he’s retched the contents of his stomach, men recoiling all around him.
Body quaking, bile dripping down his chin, he closes his eyes. Ah, there she is—his fearless, clever little girl, with that stri
king violet gaze and raven mane.
“I like it just the two of us,” she’d said, long after he’d removed her mother, before her sisters and brothers were born.
She’s the only person in this world Oran has ever trusted. Now she’s betrayed him, just as Delilah betrayed the mighty Samson. Gypsy, too, is a beguiling beauty who conquered the seemingly invincible man of faith, robbing him of his strength, condemning him to imprisonment, blindness, and death.
He hears a spray bottle spritzing, smells disinfectant mingling in the air with his half-digested breakfast. Someone mops his face and holds a cup to his lips. He swallows tepid water, remembering Jesus and the sour wine.
It is finished.
He opens his eyes. A custodian wipes vomit from the table. The guards stand by. The detectives are still watching him intently.
“Need another minute?” the older one asks.
Oran shakes his head.
They resume their questioning about a connection between the dead murderess and his daughter. He assures them he knows nothing about it, nor Gypsy’s whereabouts, and nothing about the murders.
The truth, all of it.
They thank him and leave, and he’s led back to his cell, alone once more. He sits on his cot and stares at the pen and notebook he uses to write his sermons and letters to his daughter.
They’ll look for her in northern Maine, he supposes, but he knows they won’t find her there. They’ll never find her. Nor will he see her again in this world, or the next.
Closing his eyes, he allows himself one last glimpse of her lovely face, searching for a hint of betrayal.
Seek, and ye shall find.
Her violet eyes have paled, glinting like the silver for which Delilah traded Samson’s love; like a honed blade before it plunges into flesh and emerges wet with blood.
Oran opens his eyes and picks up the pen. It trembles in his hand.
He clenches his fist, steadies his grip, and thrusts upward, gouging first one eyeball, and then the other.
Acknowledgments
With gratitude to my editor, Lucia Macro, for going above and beyond with this one,
Little Girl Lost Page 33