“Dude, Sherlock, Mister-One-Hundred-Percent-Clear-Up, you told me when I first came that each detective here brings their own way of working cases, point of view, story, to this murder work.”
“Maybe it’s a woman thing. It just looks different. You pay attention to things others don’t.” Felton straightened his vest and tugged at his cuffs. “I realize I’m not the one to talk about what’s different.”
Rosie propped her elbows on her crossed legs and focused on them with chin in her hands.
“She uses religion to bully people, that’s all. She used it on her daughter and then her granddaughter,” Salt said. “I don’t like it that people get away with that kind of hurt.” She had a flashback to the hospital and her father in a bed, in restraints.
Huff blew in carrying the cold in his clothes and glanced at the three of them. “All three of my favorite dicks, right when I come in the door. Jesus Christ,” he said, stomping his feet, blowing on his hands, and rubbing them together.
Rosie quickly slipped the manicure kit in a drawer. “Would you like some fresh java, Charlie?”
He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. “I guess there are perks to putting up with you freaks. Perks. Perks. Get it?”
They stared at him.
“Rosie is going to make me coffee. Perks?”
Salt and Felton rolled their eyes.
“Perks. That’s funny, Charlie.” Rosie stood. “Let me get you out of that coat,” she said, reaching toward the sergeant’s shoulders as he sidestepped, punched the keypad, and darted through the inner door. Rosie, undeterred, followed on his heels.
• • •
She needed to get to the Youth Detention Center, but before she could get out the door, the FBI agents came to her with a book of photos of rifles and asked Salt to try to identify the weapon that had been pointed at her from the truck. Impossible. She’d been ducking glass and bullets. The task force seemed desperate.
• • •
Salt began to pay attention to her breath as soon as she drove in sight of the Hampton YDC. It was to steel herself. The facility represented the system’s massive failure to intervene and care for kids before they were housed there. Behind fences topped with razor wire, behind metal doors and concrete walls were the most vulnerable, those most in need of a soft place to land. She was able to find a front-row parking space, the lot being large and only partly utilized. At the entrance her admittance was accompanied by a loud, obnoxious electronic-door buzzer operated by staff behind hard Plexiglas. Showing her badge and ID, she handed her 9mm through the retractable tray and leaned close to the round metal speaker. “I have an appointment with Ms. Shannon.”
“Keep your arms by your side and go through the metal detector,” said the uniformed corrections officer behind the glass. “I’ll call her.”
Down the hall from a cross corridor walked a line of juveniles, holding their arms crossed at the wrists as if handcuffed. They wore, both girls and boys, dark blue cotton elastic-waist pants and shirts stenciled with the letters “HYDC.” There was one hollow-cheeked white-faced boy in a line of fifteen dark faces. She stared, remembering the day she’d seen Mary getting off the school bus with the other kids, her socks slipping down into her shoes as she walked, and Salt’s fantasy at that moment for Wonder to herd Mary to a safe place.
“Detective?” A striking woman of six feet or more came from around the corner. “I’m Natalie Shannon,” she said, holding her hand out to Salt. “Let’s go back to my office,” she said and turned, leading down the hall.
Skylights and wire-mesh windows at the end of the hall added to the glare from a plethora of industrial fixtures that threw a harsh light against the highly polished white-and-blue-tile floors and white walls. Salt felt an urgent need to get home to her dog, to touch his downy undercoat, remembered the soft feel of the heated cloth her mother would put against her chest when she had a cold.
Ms. Shannon swiped a card attached to the lanyard around her neck across a sensor next to the office door. “Have a seat.” She waved Salt toward a faux-leather couch between two chairs in a conversation arrangement. A tower of stacking chairs took up one corner of the room. “You look ready to bolt,” she said to Salt, still standing hat in hand at the door.
“Mary Marie McCloud.” Salt walked to the couch and sat down. The armrests were worn from the original dark blue to a lighter hue.
Shannon went to her desk across the small room and picked up a file. “She was released May fifteenth. She was in the trauma group that I run and I also treated her in individual therapy.” Shannon came over and sat down in a chair across from Salt. She ran her hand over her hair, which was pulled back in a flawless chignon. “This place was inappropriate for her. She was too soft. Also, she was owning up to what she’d done and why. I was shocked when her case worker called me and said she’d gone missing.”
Salt tried to shake the image of Mary’s hair entwined in the brambles. “Who made the decision she could go back to her grandmother?”
“Mary was here only because of the seriousness of her crime. The record shows that the detectives that arrested her even advocated for her. Because she had no previous record, because she was making progress in therapy, she qualified for community treatment.”
“Did you meet the grandmother?”
Shannon stood and walked to her desk. “Mary told me she wanted to go back to her. I warned her—told her that Mrs. McCloud would be the same. Yes, I met her.”
“I was the one who arrested her.”
Both Salt and Shannon sat in silence until finally Salt stood and came over to the desk where Shannon now sat. “Help me. Was there someone here she was close to—made friends with?”
Shannon opened the file and flipped through, tracing down the pages with her finger. “No.” More flipping. “Maybe.” Almost to the back of the folder she stopped and read silently. “This is an incident report from when she was first admitted. She was discovered in bed with another girl.”
“Name?”
Shannon looked down. “Josephina Jones, aka . . .”
“JoJo.”
“This says,” Shannon continued to read from the file, “both girls were fully clothed.” She looked up. “I remember now. JoJo was also in my trauma group.” She tapped the keyboard in front of the monitor on her desk, typed, and reading from the screen, said, “Released almost exactly a month from the day Mary arrived.”
“What was JoJo in for?”
“Habitual,” she read, “theft, shoplifting, early and often.” Shannon copied to a notepad, tore off the paper, and handed it to Salt. “JoJo’s guardian, her auntie’s address.”
SALT AND FELTON TAKE A RIDE
“You got time to take a ride with me?” Salt asked Felton, who was at his desk, a half-full packing box on the floor beside him. He blinked up at her from a framed photo of him and another man on a beach, the sun setting behind them, their arms entwined. He threw it, frame and all, into his wastebasket. “Sure,” he said, standing and grabbing his fedora and coat.
In the elevator on their way down Salt said, “It’s just that I have a history with the people in The Homes, most of it positive, but I made some enemies, too. I worked that beat for ten years. I need to stop by there on the way to Toy Dolls.”
“I hear they’re tearing The Homes down. Lot of those folks won’t be there for long.”
“I’m sure the first ones to go were the ones easiest to place, those who had clean records, the fewest complaints, ones without troubled relatives.” The elevator opened to the parking deck level. “There is this one guy—Stone, Curtis Stone.”
“I thought he was in prison. Isn’t he the one that tried to kill you? Wasn’t he also convicted on gun charges?” Felton asked as they wandered around the poorly lit detective parking lot looking for Salt’s Taurus among all the other Tauruses.
“Yeah, and h
e’s out now, on medication for some pretty serious mental health issues.” They found the car and Salt got behind the wheel. “I used to believe he was just violent, an enforcer for the gang but unpredictable. He had a childhood of more abuse and neglect than usual, one that would turn a healthy mind sick. But as his illness has gotten worse, I actually think I understand him better. But . . . Wills.” She shrugged.
“Oh, I get it. Sure. What I wouldn’t do for somebody who cared about me like that.” He turned his head to look out the passenger window.
“I don’t want to be an albatross.”
“Come on.” He shrugged. “It’ll be good. Pepper must have liked having you back him up all the time. You and he are still close. Everybody loves Pepper.”
“He’s a good guy, my brother from another mother.”
“And who knows, maybe your lucky-in-love karma will rub off on me.” He let out a long breath.
They passed The Homes and Sam’s Chicken Shack and the Blue Room, Sam’s and the Blue Room sharing a parking lot with the adjacent run-down former retail strip where God’s World Ministries occupied one storefront, from which light now shone. Salt took the next left and circled back into the lot in front of the church, the door opening and closing as people came and went. “Man said Stone was staying in a back room of the ministry.” She pointed to God’s World.
“You think it’s a good idea to stir him up? Maybe Wills has good reason to be worried. Why take a chance that you’ll be the cause of Stone going off the deep end?”
“Maybe,” she said. A stirring drumbeat could be heard each time the church door opened. “I don’t know.”
Felton unbuckled his seat belt. “What does he look like?”
“What are you doing?”
“I’ll just talk to the preacher—see what he says about Stone.”
“They’re having a service.”
“Then I’ll give one of the deacons my card and ask him to have the preacher call me. Be right back.”
It was becoming clear to Salt why Felton had been so successful clearing his cases—he worked the opportunities. A tambourine rattle accompanied the drums when he opened the storefront door. As the door closed behind him, suddenly, from above her head came a loud metal-bending sound. The car roof caved inward over her head. She ducked, slid to the passenger side, got the door open, and crawled out. Stone was perched cross-legged on top of the Taurus, his long, talon-like fingers grasping a Bible. “Behold the angel of the Lord.” His eyes rolled upward, light from a nearby pole shining directly on his face. Then he looked down at her and smiled, the whiteness of his new teeth gleaming in the streetlight and in contrast with the red-brown skin of his too small, round face and head.
“I heard you got parole,” she said, making sure both his hands were on the Bible and evening her breath.
“Born again. I been saved. Washed in blood.” Stone cocked his head, narrowing a one-eyed gaze on her, a glimmering in his focus.
Salt was facing Stone and had her back to the door of the church, where the sound of the drums from inside briefly intensified. She turned sideways to see Felton coming out.
The roof unbuckled with a heavy pop as Stone slid down the windshield onto the hood and off the Taurus, landing with a jump.
Felton came up beside her. “Detective Felton, this is Curtis Stone,” she said.
Stone had begun thumbing through the Bible, his motions jerky and frenetic, ignoring Felton and Salt’s introduction. “What’s the sign? What’s the sign?” he repeated over and over as he flipped the pages. He pounded a finger to a page, pointing and reading, “There, ‘Suffer the children . . .’ In red, in red.” He hit the Bible with his fist and it fell from his hands to the dusty gravel parking lot. His eyelids dropped like hoods covering the mad light from his eyes. His shoulders folded inward, curving to their familiar vulture-like shape.
Felton touched her arm. “We should go. Keys?”
Salt handed him the keys. “Curtis?” she said.
He’d become inert, head bowed, slumped, arms hanging at his side.
“Curtis? Can I pick it up for you?” She waited but he didn’t respond. Keeping her eyes on him, she walked closer, bent down, picked up the Bible, and held it out. Muffled shouts from the minister exhorted responses from the congregation inside God’s World. Stone slowly opened his eyes to the Bible in Salt’s extended hand. He took it and walked toward the corner of the building and out of sight.
• • •
“No wonder Wills is worried. That guy is very scary. He is unpredictable, ready to explode. He’s big and wiry at the same time,” Felton said as they drove down Pryor toward Toy Dolls.
“Yeah, but I’ve known him since he was about twelve,” Salt said. “The way he was raised, left to fend for himself, would have been enough to make anyone crazy, especially someone so young and already predisposed to mental illness. He’s always been a ticking bomb.”
“That is not just a product of poor parenting. He’s got misfiring circuits for sure.” Felton tapped his temple.
“And nobody to care or take care of him,” she said.
“A monster. Hold on. I’m as compassionate as the next guy, but when you look at him, you know there’s nothing that can save that guy.”
“He’s already lived his life in hell—born into hell. He’s never had a chance. There but for the grace of God or the Universe and all that.”
Felton turned off the car and looked up at the derrick-like steel tower that rose above the Toy Dolls Club, on which a silhouette of a reclining curvy woman in pink neon lit up the night. “I’ve got my own cross to carry,” he said.
The last time Salt had been to Toy Dolls she’d been part of a team serving a warrant. It hadn’t ended well.
They got out and went through the double doors. An interior wall blocked the view from the entrance to the main room and created an alcove in which a doorman sat behind a chest-high counter. The walls of the club were painted flat black, off of which disco lights reflected, winking and swirling to the deafening beat of the music. Leaning over the counter in order to be heard over the pounding bass, she showed her badge. “Man. We’re here to see Man.” He held up a finger and picked up an old-fashioned cord phone from under the counter. “Tell him Salt is here,” she shouted. “Office,” he mouthed, replacing the receiver, pointing his finger toward the ceiling. As they passed through the room, a young woman onstage wearing angel wings, back to the audience, bent from her waist and bared her genitals, exposing them to the men at the tables in front of the stage. Felton held up a hand shielding his eyes. Salt led the way up the stairs to an office with a long, wide window overlooking the stage and tables. Man was standing at the window when they opened the door.
“This is Detective Felton. Detective, meet Man-Man, aka James Simmons.”
He pointed his chin in Felton’s direction. “You got backup now?” he said, then smiled, teeth glowing blue-white in the low fluorescent light of the office. He was wearing what for him was unusually flashy athletic gear, shiny red shirt and long shorts that obscured the slight bow of his legs.
She took the photo of Mary and the two females from an inside pocket of her coat and handed it to him.
“I see what you’re gettin’ at—girls wearing my club shirts, looking all girl-friendly with Lil D’s sister,” he said, brow furrowing as he looked at the picture.
“How did she know them? Both of those girls, by the way, look too young to strip.”
“Yeah, they do look fresh.” Man smiled. “But they legal. That one, with the ponytail”—he tapped the image with a manicured nail—“she call herself JoJo. She from The Homes, used to live not far from where Mary’s daddy used to stay. Mary come in here one night with her and I made JoJo take her home, use my car. I’m not gonna let Lil D’s sister start here.”
“You got their permits?”
“Ri
ght here, all legal.” He went over, opened one of the file cabinets against the back wall, thumbed through, and retrieved paperwork on Josephina Jones, aka JoJo, and Gloria Glover, aka Glory. The permits showed both to be just past their twenty-first birthdays.
A couple of times Man glanced at Felton, who had stayed silent but kept his eyes on Man. “You top or bottom, Detective?”
Felton, about the same height, came close to Man, up in his face. “I realize you want me to think of that as rhetorical, Mr. Man. But I don’t take it as such. I’m out-and-out top. How ’bout you?” Almost nose to nose he eyed him feet to head.
“Are either of them working tonight?” she asked, interrupting the showdown.
The phone rang and Man snatched it. “How soon?” he asked into the receiver, then hung up. “You got to go. Now. You got the addresses. I’ll ask around. You got to leave right now.” He opened the office door, followed them down the stairs and through the room, pounding music accompanying them out the doors.
Outside Salt said, “You’ve got my number, Man.”
Already inside the door he gave a backward wave.
Back in the Taurus, Salt looked at Felton. “That was kinda weird,” she said.
He turned on the ignition. “Where should we wait?” he asked.
“The whole lot is wide open. We should just stay right here, lights off. What was that between you and Man? I’ve seen guys beat their chests at each other but that was a different vibe, speaking of different!”
He turned the car and lights off. “You mean sexual?”
“I guess.”
“He was trying to sell me wolf tickets and I challenged him.”
“See, that’s why—”
“No different. Straight or gay we beat our chests, guys do. You think it impedes communication?”
Not wanting to appear ungrateful for his help, she said, “I don’t know.”
Felton looked out over the cars in the lot. “He’s beautiful, your Mr. Man-Man. He swings both ways in case you didn’t know. Trust me, I can smell it. If I’m going to hang with you and if I see him again, he has to know I’m not gonna pull punches, either. I’ll be straight with him, so to speak.” Felton grinned.
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