Black and White

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  Daniel nodded. “That’s fine.”

  “I doubt I have anything to add to what he told you. You think someone Claire Quindlen knew killed her. I don’t know who that would have been.”

  Jennifer glanced around her. The lawn was manicured, and multicolored impatiens filled the flower beds on either side of the porch.

  “We just thought maybe you’d remember something Murray didn’t,” Daniel said. “Or remember wondering about somebody without actually having any concrete reason to wonder.”

  “No.” Hamilton looked at Jennifer. “That was a bad time. For all of us. You, especially, I realize. But I doubt there’s any profit in digging at all up now. Kenneth and I did our best, I can assure you of that.”

  “It’s not really our intention to dig anything up,” Jennifer said, though she wasn’t sure that was exactly true. “I’m just trying to put it behind me, too, and I wanted to see the case files. I saw the door lock, and…” She shook her head.

  “We talked to people who knew your mother, your family. We talked to them, too,” he said. “Even your father. But none of them became suspects in any way.”

  “Not even as a gut feeling?” Daniel asked.

  He looked down at Daniel. “I act on evidence, not gut feelings, Daniel. You know that. Gut feelings are more Kenneth’s area, and I don’t remember him having any.”

  “He’s a warm guy,” Jennifer said a few minutes later. It startled Daniel, who had been mulling over locked doors and retired cops and cold trails.

  He pulled back onto Main Street, which would eventually turn into Citrus Trail. “He was never one of the fun guys. He was a decent cop, though. He drinks. So does Murray, but Murray hangs out at Monty’s and drinks with his pals. From what I understand, Hamilton’s wife left him back…I don’t know, around 1960, something like that. He never remarried, and he drinks alone.”

  “You know, I’m starting to think that any cop who stays with it a long time becomes a drinker,” Jennifer said. “A lot of the guys in New Orleans did. The few women cops I knew didn’t; they had husbands and sometimes kids to get home to.”

  “It does seem to be an occupational danger,” Daniel said quietly.

  Aside from a few beers here and there, Daniel didn’t drink. He’d seen too many guys in Vietnam who found their only peace in a glass, and it had scared him.

  He looked over at Jennifer. For the hundredth time, it struck him how much she looked the same, and how much she didn’t. She’d filled out a little more, and she had a few tiny little lines starting up around her eyes, but it was more the set of her jaw, and the strength and stubbornness in her eyes. Not for the first time, he realized that she was prettier than she had been before. He tried not to let that distract him.

  “What was it like out there?” he asked her. “In New Orleans?”

  She looked over at him. “Very different. People there take pride in being outside the mainstream, in being different. Things between blacks and whites weren’t as black and white as they were here, no pun intended. It’s a beautiful city. You would like it, I think.”

  Daniel nodded, and stared out at a red light. It finally turned green, and they moved through the intersection where Main Street turned into Citrus Trail.

  “I almost went out there, you know,” he said quietly.

  He saw her head jerk around, but he didn’t look at her.

  “When?”

  He swallowed. “I went to see Grandma the day I enlisted. She told me where you were. I think she wanted me to go out there.”

  He glanced over at Jennifer, but she was staring out her window.

  “I wish you had,” she said, almost too quiet for him to catch it. Then she did look at him. “But I don’t blame you for not coming. It had been, what, five years?”

  “Four.”

  He looked back out at the road. Just ahead, two black teenaged girls were sitting in aluminum chairs beside the Orange Blossom fruit stand. He remembered the time the four of them had snuck into the grove. It was their junior year. He and Jen had just declared themselves engaged, though he hadn’t given her the ring yet, and everything was new and exciting and good.

  It had been late on a January Saturday night. They’d been coming back from the movies, and Inez and Jonah made him pull over. They parked behind the fruit stand and ran into the groves, trying not to laugh so loudly the night watchman would catch them. Then they’d climbed a couple of orange trees, Jonah and Inez in one, Daniel and Jen in another one across the way.

  They’d sat up in the branches, picking oranges and eating them right there, shivering in the cold. Jen had sat between his legs, leaning back into his chest as he wrapped the sides of his windbreaker around her and she fed him sections one at a time. The oranges had been incredibly sweet and juicy that year, and his life had been simple and good and full of every possibility. All of them had included her, had centered around all four of them always being together. He had had no reason to think it would be otherwise.

  He realized the cab of the truck had been quiet just long enough to be uncomfortable. Jen was looking out her window again, nibbling at a thumbnail. He had forgotten that she did that when she was worried or nervous. He wondered which one she was now.

  “I was worried that it would go badly,” he said. “And then I would go to Vietnam. That it would be bad for me to go there after a bad goodbye. Or that it would go well and then I’d have to leave.”

  He saw her turn to look at him.

  “I wish you had come.”

  They were quiet again for a few moments, and he supposed they were both thinking about what might have happened. But that was then.

  “I almost came home a couple of times,” Jennifer said. “Twice I even packed my stuff. Once about a month after I left, and then again right after I graduated high school.”

  “I was in Fort Lauderdale, looking for you,” he said, with a bit more tightness than he’d intended. That trip had been a horrible failure in many ways. He hadn’t found his fiancé. He’d spent a lot of time getting drunk at some place called The Elbo Room on the beach, where a lot of people his age hung out. He’d lost his virginity to some girl he couldn’t even picture in his head the next day. He badly wanted to ask her when she’d lost hers and with whom, but he damn well wasn’t going to.

  “So why did you come home?” he asked her.

  It took her a minute to answer him, her face still turned to the window.

  “I was so tired of being the only person who knew me,” she said quietly.

  When Jennifer walked into the station the following morning, Messer was already there.

  “Hey, Anthony.” She put her purse down on her desk.

  “Hey,” he answered, looking a little nervous. “Ray wants to see you five minutes ago.”

  “Ray wants us,” Daniel said quietly, appearing next to her without warning. “He’s somewhat pissed.”

  Jennifer’s chest tightened. “That was fast.”

  “What’d you guys do?” Anthony asked under his breath.

  “Daniel, I’m sorry.”

  “Why? It was my idea.”

  “You wouldn’t have if I hadn’t—” she glanced around the room.

  “But you did, and so I would have eventually,” Daniel replied in what was almost a stage whisper, almost a hiss. “So, eventually we would have ended up exactly where we are.”

  “Where the hell are you guys?” Anthony asked. “What did you do?”

  Daniel looked at him. “Nothing really wrong.”

  “We disobeyed Ray’s orders.”

  “And did what, exactly?”

  “Maybe you could explain it to him in the car later, when we’re not standing in the middle of your ten biggest fans,” Daniel said.

  Jennifer quickly looked around the room. Half the guys were looking without trying to hide it. The other h
alf were trying.

  “Let’s get it over with,” Jennifer said.

  Daniel stepped back and let her pass. She felt all eyes on them as they crossed the room to Ray’s open door. He looked up as she was about to knock on the jamb.

  “Get in here,” he said quietly. “And shut that door.”

  They stepped in, and Daniel closed the door behind them. Ray watched them walk to the desk. Jennifer sat, Daniel didn’t.

  Ray put his pen down and sat forward. “Both Frank Hamilton and Kenneth Murray called me last night. At home, on a Sunday.”

  Jennifer swallowed. “They complained?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, although neither one of them was especially tickled,” Ray answered. “Murray was at least kind of curious about your door lock. Hamilton is a sad, sorry man who just wants to be left alone with his garden and his whisky.”

  “I’m the one who called Murray and asked to come out,” Daniel said.

  “I don’t actually care,” Ray said. He looked from him to Jennifer. “I expressly told you that this is not an open case, that we did not have permission to look into it at this time, and that you were not to go poking around.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Ray,” she said without flinching. “I just really needed to know if one of them unlocked that door.”

  “And they didn’t. So how did that help you, precisely?”

  “If they had, she could stop worrying so much about who did,” Daniel said.

  Ray looked back at him. “But they didn’t, so she can’t. And I’ve got two police officers who don’t appreciate being reminded, by the very young, inexperienced cop who just happens to be the daughter and sister of two of the victims, that they weren’t able to solve the biggest, most divisive case of their careers!”

  He rubbed at his face, his mustache stretching with his skin. “And I assure you that half those guys out there know that, and the other half will hear about it the next time they go to Monty’s, which isn’t gonna help you fit in any better than you already do.”

  “I wasn’t trying to make anything harder than it already is, Ray.”

  “Don’t call me Ray this morning,” he said, his voice clipped. “This morning you call me Chief.”

  “Okay.”

  “Chief—,” Daniel started.

  “Be quiet, Daniel. I’m surprised you had anything to do with this.”

  “With all due respect—,”

  “Little late for that, son.”

  “Jen has a valid point,” Daniel said, raising his voice slightly. “The lock matters. And I don’t know why you’re so surprised. Jonah was my best friend. Jen—these guys didn’t just kill her family—”

  Ray stood up. “You gonna remind me what was lost? I carried my best friend’s casket, son. Carried Jonah’s, too. Right alongside you, as I recall. Jonah was like a nephew to me.”

  Ray sat back down and took a breath. “I know what you lost, Daniel,” he said, glancing at Jennifer. “But the fact remains that you are both officers with Dismal PD, and you cannot run around opening old wounds and raising new questions without official sanction, and even if we were opening the case again, the two of you certainly wouldn’t be handling it.”

  “We know that,” Jennifer said. “And when I first asked you for that file, it wasn’t about reopening the case or anything like that. I just wanted to know. I wanted to see the facts, as an adult.”

  “And now you’ve seen them,” Ray said. “And maybe—maybe—you noticed something that slipped by everybody back then. It’s not enough to look into it officially, and if you look into it even unofficially, you’re gonna cause us and a lot of other people a lot of heartache and trouble. Those murders tore this town apart for months. Months. If you’re gonna pick at scabs, you have to have a better reason than an unlocked door, and I told you that the other day.”

  “Yes, you did,” Jennifer said. She was going to be respectful; Ray deserved that. But she wasn’t a scared little teenager anymore, and she wasn’t going to cringe or whimper.

  “Y’all go get ready for muster,” Ray said quietly. “And understand something. I love you, Jennifer. And you know how I feel about you, Daniel. But make no mistake. You directly disobey me like that again and I will fire both y’all’s asses without hesitation. I cannot keep my people effective or safe if they know they can be blatantly insubordinate without consequence.”

  He looked at Daniel, then at Jennifer. “Y’all understand that well enough this time?”

  “I don’t know, Jennifer,” Anthony was saying. “You got some cajones. If it was my brother, my mother, God rest her, I don’t know if I could look at those pictures.”

  “I already saw it all, Anthony,” Jennifer replied.

  “Still.”

  He was actually letting her drive, since he was starving and couldn’t eat his tuna sandwich and drive at the same time. Jen had already eaten hers. Touchingly, after they’d met, Michelle had started packing lunch for both of them.

  “I’ll just say this,” Anthony said, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “I think you’ve got a right to understand what happened. And if, God forbid it, somebody close to your mom or your family actually did this thing, then you need to know it. Not because they might hurt you, ’cause I think whatever hair got across their butts back then, they’re probably over it by now, and it’s not like they can get back at her now, right?”

  He unwrapped a homemade brownie and took a bite. “But you can’t be spending the rest of your life wondering if the guy you sit next to at church, or your family doctor—or whoever— if they killed your family. Right?”

  “Right,” Jennifer agreed distractedly, and stopped for a red light.

  Across the street just past the intersection, there was a cluster of people on the sidewalk out in front of Patterson’s. Patterson’s was a neighborhood bar that was popular with blue collar workers on the west side of town. The group looked agitated.

  “What’s going on over here now, while I’m trying to enjoy my brownie?” Anthony asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  The light turned green, and Jennifer drove slowly past. Yes, there was something going on. Two men, one young and one in his forties or so, were yelling at each other. There were a few older men standing behind the older man, who wore an electric company uniform, and a matching group of younger men behind the other guy.

  “Aw, come on, man,” Anthony said. “It’s been a nice quiet day so far.”

  He picked up the radio and called in, as Jennifer made a U-turn and pulled slowly up to the curb. There were no weapons that Jennifer could see, and it didn’t look like any punches had been thrown yet, but things were definitely heated. The older guy was facing them, but he barely glanced in their direction before going back to jabbing his finger in the air between himself and the younger guy, who was wearing blue coveralls.

  “Alrighty, let’s see what’s bugging these guys,” Anthony said, and they both got out of the car.

  Once outside, they could hear a bit better.

  “I don’t care what you and your fag liberal buddies say!” the older man was saying. “And if you don’t like my opinions, then you can go find another place to get your beer.”

  “Maybe you should keep opinions like that to yourself, or tell them to yourself when you’re home alone, instead of out here around decent human beings,” the younger man yelled. As she got closer, Jennifer thought maybe she knew him.

  “What’s going on?” Anthony asked mildly as he stepped up behind the group. The younger guys moved back a bit.

  The younger man, slightly built, with almost yellow blond hair, jerked his head around. He seemed surprised, but not scared, to see the police. “This guy’s ruining my damn lunch running his mouth!”

  Jennifer stepped up onto the sidewalk near the older man, who turned to look at her. He did a dramatic d
ouble-take and smirked. “Oh, look who it is! Dismal’s very own Gloria Steinem.” He looked back at his buddies. “That’s ironic, huh?”

  “Why’s that?” Jennifer asked.

  “Because he was just talking about your mother,” the young man said.

  “My mother?” Jennifer looked back at the older guy. “What about her?”

  “He’s saying she brought it on herself, brought it on the whole town, running around with n—hanging around with black people.” He shrugged. “Your mother was a good person.”

  Jennifer looked at the older guy, who wasn’t embarrassed. She looked back at the younger guy, who looked to be about her age. “Do I know you?”

  He shrugged. “Probably not. I’m Jason Broderick. I was a couple years behind you in school. But my older sister Patty used to run the cash register for your mom, at her shop.”

  Jennifer didn’t remember, but she nodded like she did.

  “Your sister like colored guys, too, there, Jason?” the older guy asked, sneering.

  “She’s married to a white guy, but so what if she did, you redneck piece of—”

  The older guy moved like he was going to get in the Jason kid’s face. Jennifer stepped forward and put an arm in front of him, and he slapped it away.

  “Hey!” Anthony yelled angrily. He moved toward the older guy, but Jennifer held her right hand up to stop him. Then she pointed at the older guy with her left.

  “You put your hands on an officer of the law, and it’s felony assault,” she said quietly. “You put your hands on me, and I’ll beat the crap out of you in front of all your friends.”

  “Is that right?” the older guy asked.

  “That’s right. And since you made the first move, I’ll be watching Mannix at home tonight, while you’re whining for some Bufferin in jail.”

  “I’d love to watch that, but I’m gonna be late clocking back in as it is,” Jason said. “Can I go?”

  “You can go,” Anthony answered. Jason and the other younger men headed for the parking lot behind them. Anthony looked at the older guy, whose friends were already heading for Patterson’s door. “You going with them or with us?”