by Gerry Boyle
“She’s not in trouble,” Brandon said. “We just need to know who was there, give us a clue. The mother was asleep.”
“They not asleep, they on the dope,” the woman said.
She pulled the stroller back, started to turn it. Brandon reached out, stopped the stroller.
“This is about a missing child, ma’am,” he said. The woman looked away, pulled at the stroller. Brandon held on.
“How many people living in your apartment?” he said. The woman looked at him, suddenly aware of every word.
“What’s your limit with Portland Housing? Four? I hear they kick people out if they’re over the limit. Go back on the Section Eight list, right at the bottom.”
Kat looked at him, the lady, too.
“We make a trade,” Brandon said. “You give me her name—which building—and I keep our little secret.”
“The building number four,” the woman whispered. “Sasha.”
“Thanks,” Brandon said. He let go of the stroller. The woman wrenched it away, turned and wheeled down the sidewalk. Kat looked at him.
“Playing it a little close to the edge, aren’t you, Blake?”
“It’s a missing kid,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean you can strong-arm witnesses.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t,” Brandon said.
Number four was just like numbers three and five. Two stories, brick on the first floor, siding above, nobody answering the door when the cops came knocking.
Brandon and Kat walked back to the cruiser, parked in the street out front. Brandon pulled into the driveway, blocking in a beat-up Civic, a Penthouse Pet air freshener dangling from the mirror. They got out, and Brandon leaned against the cruiser while Kat looked the car over. She checked the inspection sticker, saw that it had expired.
“Want to run these plates?” she said, and Brandon went around, got in, typed the registration into the laptop. The number came back to a Chevy pickup, 1991. He got out.
“Swapped off a truck,” Brandon said. Kat bent down, yanked the plate off the back bumper. She was on her way to the front when the door of number four rattled open and a kid came storming out.
“Hey, what you think you’re doing?”
They both stared at him for a moment, then another. He was a good-looking Asian guy: Cambodian, hair gelled up, same outfit as the Sudanese guys: big shorts, high-tops, an NBA jersey. Carmelo.
“This your car?” Kat said.
“Yeah. You can’t just start pulling things off, come in here like—”
“Like I’m about to write you for illegal attachment, expired inspection, no registration. You got a license?”
“Yeah, I got a license.”
Kat held her hand out.
“Produce it.”
“It’s in the house.”
She looked at him.
“Sasha in there, too?”
“Don’t know nobody with that name.”
“You go in there, come back out with either Sasha or the license. You bring Sasha, we leave the car. You don’t, we get the hook.”
The kid looked at her, then at Brandon, then back at Kat.
“What is this?” he said.
“A hell of a deal,” Brandon said. “I’d take it.”
The kid shook his head, saved face by spitting on the ground. Then he turned, walked back inside.
“We’re even,” Kat said.
“You’re learning,” Brandon said.
A minute later, the door opened and a young woman appeared. She closed the door behind her, walked up and stopped.
“I’m Sasha,” she said.
“I’m Kat. This is Brandon.”
“We old friends already?” Sasha said. “First-name basis?”
They looked at her. Pretty, big hoop earrings, black hair tied back. Bike shorts and a peasant blouse. Bare feet with red nails. A dragonfly tattoo on the right side of her neck.
“You were at Chantelle’s?”
“I don’t know who that is,” Sasha said.
“I thought we were friends,” Brandon said. “Thought you were gonna help us out, save us the time, driving you downtown to see the detectives. Pain in the butt, have to wait around all day, waiting for them to spring you loose.”
Her eyes narrowed. They could see the telltale redness around the nose, hint of wrinkles, cracks feathering out from her eyes.
“Maybe I know her,” Sasha said.
“The one who’s missing the baby,” Kat said.
“Oh, yeah.”
“You there Friday morning? End of the party?”
Sasha thought for a minute, deciding whether to lie.
“Yeah. Me and this friend of mine. But we didn’t take the baby, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Not thinking anything,” Brandon said. “Just trying to figure out who saw the baby and when. When did you leave?”
“I don’t know. One? It was dead.”
For a moment Brandon thought she meant the baby.
“The party?” Kat said.
“Yeah, like boring. People sitting around this big honking television. All blurry. I think it was really old.”
“Was the baby there?”
“Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t in the room. She had it out for a while, giving it a bottle on the couch, you know? People, like, took turns holding it.”
“It’s a him,” Brandon said.
“Right. Holding him. He’s drinking the milk or whatever.”
“And then what?”
“Then the bottle runs out and he starts screaming and whoever it was holding him, they give him back to Chantelle. She’s, like, trying to make him happy, but she’s—”
“Pretty messed up,” Brandon said.
Sasha shrugged.
“Then people were wanting to roll, you know. The baby crying and everything.”
“So then what?” Kat said.
Sasha thought about it, how much she wanted to say.
“She put the baby back in the bed.”
“Did he stop crying?” Brandon said.
Sasha thought.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“And then?” Kat said.
“We hung out for a while and then people left. And then I left, me and this other girl.”
“Who was there when you left?” Brandon said.
“Nobody. Just Chantelle and the baby. And they were both asleep.”
“So that was it?” Kat said.
“Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t any big deal. Just a few people, this guy, he—”
“We know,” Brandon said. “He just got out of jail. It was a party for him.”
“So you leave, they’re both zonked,” Kat said. “Nothing else?”
Brandon smiled. “There has to be one more thing. Just one.”
“Nope.”
“Come on. You can think of one.”
“What?” Kat said.
“Or we haul your boyfriend’s ride,” Brandon said.
She looked back at the house, then down the street.
“We’re sitting there. The movie’s on, some cop thing. And somebody knocks at the door. So I get up to answer it.”
“Yeah?” Brandon said.
“And nobody’s there. So I go back, watch the movie. It’s boring, you know. And it happens again.”
“The knock,” Kat said.
“Right.”
“So you get up.”
“And there’s nobody there. It was creeping me out.”
“Neak ta?” Brandon said.
Sasha stared at him, this white guy speaking Khmer.
“No,” she said. “Not a ghost. More like there was an ax murderer out there.”
“But there was nobody there?” Kat said. “And when you left, still nobody?”
“No. I went back, I shook Chantelle. I’m like, ‘Honey, there’s Freddy Krueger out there or something.’”
“What did she say?”
“Not much. She was—”
<
br /> “High,” Brandon said.
Sasha didn’t answer.
“It doesn’t matter. What did she say?”
“She said that one time she felt like there was somebody in the apartment. When she was sleeping, I mean.”
“She didn’t say who?” Kat said.
“No, just that she woke up, felt like somebody had been there, you know? The smell of them. Then she figured it was a dream.”
“Can you dream a smell?” Brandon said.
“We’re leaving, she’s already nodding out. I tell her—” Sasha hesitated.
“It’s okay,” Kat said. “We’re here about the baby.”
“I tell her, you lay off the shit. Don’t want to be wasted, somebody’s creeping around.”
“So after that?” Brandon said.
“Hell if I know,” Sasha said. “Me and my girlfriend, we bounced.”
They looked at each other. Brandon glanced at the house, saw the curtains move. Sasha started to turn away but Brandon called to her. “You talked to her since then?” he said.
“Yeah. She called. I didn’t call her. I mean, what am I gonna say—‘Sorry your freakin’ baby’s gone’?”
“What did she say when she called?”
“She was pretty messed up. She said she could hear the baby. At night, her sister came and stayed with her, but even then, she said she’d wake up, thinking she could hear him crying.”
She looked at Brandon.
“There’s your fucking ghost,” she said.
Sasha went back to the house, padded inside, closed the door behind her. They walked to the cruiser and got in, sat for a moment.
“Somebody knocking, still somewhere around there after Sasha and her friend leave the apartment,” Brandon said.
“Who knows what Chantelle remembers?” Kat said.
“Worth somebody talking to her.”
He started the motor, tapped the laptop. He started back through the project, feeling that there were people watching them from every window. What did Sasha tell the cops? Who did Sasha rat out?
They were passing the basketball court when Kat’s cell rang. She yanked it out.
“Yeah.”
Kat didn’t say anything else. Still didn’t. Brandon looked over at her, saw something bad. She put the phone down.
“Head for the bridge,” Kat said. “A floater. They want us to come down, see about an ID.”
“Why us?”
“Because we just saw her. At the apartment. Chantelle.”
The water was blue-black, flecked with floating trash. Plastic bottles, chunks of broken brown foam, clumps of knotted yellow rope. A blue-and-yellow spray can. WD-40. Brandon thought of a story he’d read about an expanse of ocean north of Hawaii that the circling currents had filled with garbage. He looked away, then back.
This was at the municipal wharf, cruisers and an ambulance parked above, the Coast Guard inflatable tied up below. On the float by the boat they gathered in a tight circle over the body, a bare foot and ankle sticking out from under the tarp. The foot was blue-white. The nails were pink. There was a tattoo around the ankle, a Celtic-looking design. Blue on blue.
“That’s Chantelle,” Brandon said, and the senior cops looked at him. “I remember the tattoo, the nails.”
“Nail polish matches. I guess we can go home now.”
Brandon looked up. Jimmy Dever, a second-year patrolman, grinned at him and snorted.
“Uncover the face,” growled one of the day detectives, a weathered guy named Pelletier. Kat did, and there she was. Lips barely darker than her cheeks, eyes open wide, like there had been a moment of shock: My, that water is cold.
“That her?” Pelletier said.
“Yeah,” Kat said. “Chantelle Anthony.”
“So that’s what happens when you lose your own kid, huh?” Dever said. “You take a swan dive.”
“We don’t know that she lost him,” Brandon said. “We just know he’s gone.”
“What’s the difference?” Dever said. “She was a fuckup . . . just another fuckup.”
Brandon looked at him, felt the anger rising up. Handsome, tanned, Oakleys on his head even though it was raining. Kind of cop who liked to chat up the uniform chasers, the college girls coming out of the bars on Exchange Street. And Dever was last one in at a bar fight, nobody you could count on to save your ass.
“Lost implies it was her fault,” Brandon said, thinking back to the hard time he gave Chantelle, now just a carcass on an oil-stained float.
“So what do you think happened, Sherlock Holmes?” Dever said, smirking.
Brandon expected Pelletier to cut it off, but he didn’t, just looked at Brandon, like he wanted them to duke it out.
“I think somebody grabbed the kid, somebody she knew,” Brandon said.
“Why?”
“To trade him for something. Maybe one of her dealers, leverage to shut her up.”
“Well, it worked,” Dever said. The same smirk. One of those cops who showed off their bravado, everything a joke.
“You think this is funny,” Brandon said, “this frigging mess?” Kat reached over, touched Brandon’s arm.
“Enough, children,” Pelletier said. “Feel like I’m at home.”
They turned away, Dever still smirking, Kat’s grip tight on Brandon’s arm.
“Easy there,” she said. “He isn’t worth blowing your career over.”
“He’s a chickenshit,” Brandon said.
“And you take a swing at him, you’re an ex-cop.”
They parted, got into the cruiser. Brandon took a deep breath.
“You know who I’m really pissed at?” he said.
“Yourself,” Kat said. “For getting up in her face at the apartment.”
“It’s just that, you know, the parenting thing—”
“But you know you treated her a little like Dever did. Like she was beneath you.”
Brandon put the cruiser in gear. Kat told Dispatch they were back in the car.
“Saw a little bit of yourself in him and you didn’t like it,” she said.
Brandon turned onto Commercial, hit the gas, headed away from downtown. “Sometimes I think you know me better than I know myself,” he said.
“None of us really know ourselves,” Kat said. “Always a step behind.”
They were headed west, Brandon figuring they’d drive up to Cumberland Street, ask around among the junkies for the Lewiston guy with the frozen eye.
Brandon looked left as they turned off Commercial, saw the blue lights on the bridge, the Portland side. He slowed. Blue lights and orange ones. A wrecker.
“Her car?” Kat said.
Brandon put the lights on, took a left. They swung out onto the bridge and he shut the lights off. As they rolled up, the wrecker driver was on his back on the pavement, hooking a chain onto an old beater Buick, white with a light blue driver’s door.
They stopped, got out. A couple of day-shift cops were standing by their cruisers watching, older guys, lots of seniority. One was halfheartedly directing traffic.
“The jumper?” Kat said.
“Parked it and went over the rail,” the cop said.
He looked at Brandon. “Seen you around,” he said.
“Blake,” Brandon said.
“Six weeks in,” Kat said.
“Zachary,” the cop said. “Sixteen years.”
“Long time,” Brandon said.
“Just a job,” Zachary said. “You probably think you’re gonna save the world.”
Brandon didn’t answer.
“Well, you ain’t gonna save this one. Eighty feet to the water.”
“We saw her,” Kat said.
“Left it running?” Brandon said.
“What, the car?”
“Yeah.”
“Running when we got here,” the cop said.
“Wonder how long a car can idle on a tank of gas,” Brandon said.
“Detectives talked to the bridge operator. Nobody
saw her go over. Got light, they noticed the car, called it in.”
The car scraped the pavement as it was drawn onto the ramp truck. Brandon looked beyond it, the tanker docks, the Fore River snaking its way into the tidal flats. At one time, the British had loaded masts up there, cut from Maine forests, shipped back to England.
“You know who she is, right?” Zachary said. “The one with the missing kid?”
“Yeah.”
“Gonna be a cluster, with the press,” Zachary said.
“Speak of the devil,” Kat said.
“So you were the officers who responded to the scene, when the baby went missing,” the reporter said. It was the skinny guy who’d talked to the woman on Quebec Street, after Brandon had pulled his weapon. He beamed like this made them old friends, reunited after twenty years.
“Matt Estusa,” he said. “I know Kat there, but I don’t think we’ve met.”
He nodded toward Kat, helping move traffic, slowed by gawkers. He looked at Brandon’s name tag.
“Officer Blake,” Estusa said. He held out his hand, gave Brandon the smile again. Brandon shook the guy’s hand, felt like the guy held on a little too long. They disengaged.
“First jumper?” Estusa said.
“Yeah.”
“Must be hard when you know the victim,” he said.
“Not hard. Just sad,” Brandon said.
“Yeah, from what I hear, this Chantelle had kind of a hard life. Drug problems, father of the child away in the war. Then this with the baby.”
Estusa had his arms folded, a notebook stuffed in the back pocket of his jeans. Topsiders, an expensive-looking runner’s jacket, a runner’s watch. Brandon wondered if Mia knew him. Or Lily and Winston.
“I was just talking to the detectives,” Estusa said. “They said she was pretty freaked out.”
“Who wouldn’t be?” Brandon said. “Her baby.”
“Yeah, but the drugs. Not like she was the perfect mother.”
“Doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be upset.”
“So she kills herself. Kinda too bad. I mean, now the kid’s got nobody. The dad, I guess he’s a combat vet, got PTSD, she had to go to court to get custody. Now the guy’s at sea, didn’t even come back when his baby went missing. You’d think that a father would—”