CERTAINTY
Salt drove through the streets of her old beat, The Homes, and the shabby little houses and businesses surrounding it. The sounds of the bulldozers, excavators, and jackhammers seemed to come from all directions. She’d come back to where she often had, to Sister’s old stone church, which sat almost dead center of the beat.
This morning she’d woken early; a loud bird perched on a limb right outside the window where she and Wills lay. When the sun was up in the country, that had never bothered her. But here in the city the singular call of that one bird had brought her out of a dream. Wills snorted softly, rolled over on his side, and began sleep breathing again. She got up, dressed without riling the still sleepy dogs, and left a note on the coffeepot.
There had been only a couple of cars in the neighborhood pharmacy parking lot when she’d pulled up. It hadn’t taken five minutes for her to find the testing kit, pay for it, and ask for the restroom. She should have gone home, home now being Wills’ house, their place, to tell her soon-to-be husband. But instead she was here at the old stone church staring at the pink double lines on the little test “stick,” as it was called. She thought of it as more of a wand. She had a positive wand, something to keep to herself at least until she figured out how she felt about it. She knew what Wills’ reaction would be; he’d been hinting about having a child.
Up the street from where Salt sat in the church parking lot, a mid-level sedan was parked outside a small house. A man dressed in slacks and a windbreaker and carrying a briefcase came out, got in the car, and drove a block to another little house. The insurance man. Salt realized she’d seen him around for years, always in the background, and had never really noticed. She’d heard people talk about their paid-up or not-paid-up funeral insurance. Gill? Gill? Gilligan, she remembered his name as she drove the Taurus the short distance, parked behind his car, and waited for him to come out of the next house.
When he came out, she was standing at his car. He raised his hand and smiled at her in recognition. “Officer Salt, good to see you again. How are you? Haven’t see you around lately.”
“Mr. Gilligan, right?”
“Yep.” He nodded. He was what they called “paper-bag brown,” affable as one would want in an insurance salesman. She guessed he sold some measure of peace.
“Tell me, sir, how does confidentiality apply to your line of work?” Salt propped one foot on the front of the Taurus.
Gilligan smiled again. His fifty-something face was permanently creased with that oft-used expression of, if not happiness, at least satisfaction. “Well now, it depends,” he said. “Nothing really in the law about it, but I wouldn’t be in business long if I went around gossiping about whose funeral was paid for and whose wasn’t—who had insurance and who didn’t. But I’m not bound by anything.” He laid his briefcase on the hood of his sedan, seemingly in no hurry, either.
“Thank you, sir. Do you by any chance know Mrs. McCloud? Lives a couple blocks south of here on Jonesboro.”
“Sure,” he said. “Funny you should ask. I just had a reconciliation with her. It did seem odd, not that it hasn’t happened before, but she took out a policy, a little life policy, on her granddaughter just a month or so before the girl was shot to death. These policies are small. Life is short in this neighborhood. Maybe she had a premonition or something.” He shook his head. “But it’s not my money so I don’t mind a bit.”
“Do you have a record of the date she took out the policy?”
“’Course.” He opened his case. It was full, but he confidently thumbed through the files and papers. “I’m kind of a one-man operation. Keep all my office business right here. No computers for me—too old. Here it is.” He handed a two-page policy to Salt. It was signed on August 15, five days before Mrs. McCloud had reported Mary missing, approximately three weeks after the medical examiner had estimated Mary’s time of death and three months before her body was found. It was too close, but she knew. Salt put a hand to her belly.
“I never much cared for that old woman. Been dealing with her for years. First her husband—I guess he was her husband. Then you know her daughter was killed, too. There’s something not right there, you know?” Mr. Gilligan shut his case.
Salt put out her hand. “I do know. Thank you.”
• • •
Driving from Sister’s church to God’s World, Salt reflected on the Flannery O’Connor quote “While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.” It seemed she was forever in front of, beside, in back of, going to, or coming from one of Atlanta’s churches, there being one almost every other block or so. Didn’t seem to do much for the crime rate, though.
Given God’s World’s seven-day-a-week schedule and it being close to spring, the glass-front door was open for business. Sitting in the parking lot, Salt considered whether or not her child should have a religious education and if so what flavor. The childhood prayer returned.
Jesus, tender shepherd, lead me
Through the darkness be thou near me
Guide thy little lamb tonight
Wake me with the morning bright.
Her phone vibrated—Wills. “Hey,” she answered.
“I got your note,” he said. “Where are you now?”
“God’s World.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “But where exactly?”
“Really, I’m at the church.” Before he could protest, she added, “You still at home? I’ll come by in a few. I’ve got some news.” She tucked the test wand in her jacket inside pocket.
“Sure,” he said. “I was just going over the floor plans again. We could still squeeze in a small workout area. I hate that you’re having to give up that great dojo.”
Man came to the open door of the church, saw her, and leaned against the doorjamb.
“Uh, you might want to wait for me and we’ll look at the plans together.”
“Deal,” he said. “I’ll make us lunch and we can negotiate while we eat.” His voice was eager, his speech rapid, as if wanting to get going. He paused. “By the way, what are you doing down there? I thought we agreed you’d wait for your partner to go out—after all, you’ve only got a week before the new assignment.”
Stone appeared in the doorway beside Man.
“Loose ends,” she said. “Just clearing up a few for my own satisfaction. I’m okay, Wills, really. I’ve got lots of reasons to be careful.” She touched the St. Michael’s pendant between her breasts. “I’ll see you in about an hour. Okay?”
“Bye, babe.”
Salt pocketed the phone, got out of the car, and said hello to her old nemeses.
“I guess we done owe you,” Man said. “Stone coulda gone back to state custody if you hadn’t got him to the hospital instead of jail.” He tapped Stone’s arm with a finger. “Say something, Curtis.”
Curtis? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard anyone call Stone by his first name.
Stone did his best impression of a smile, drawing his lips back and chomping his too-white dentures together. “They give me some new pills and a shot. My head quiet.” He rubbed his palm over his round scalp.
“That’s good,” she said. “Really, no one’s happier than me that the docs are doing you some good.”
“Man, happy.” Stone’s eyes narrowed. He stood to his full height, challenging, fists tightening.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that . . .”
“Naw, man, chill,” Man said to Stone. “She mean she real happy, too.”
“I came by hoping to see you, Stone. I’m being reassigned, so I might not get a chance to get down here any time soon and I wanted to clear up something.”
Stone was waggling his hands, loosening his fingers from their tight-fist position, rolling his shoulders.
“Can you remember the last time you saw Lil D’s sister? If she said where she
was going?”
Stone’s eyes began to lose focus. “Yeah, I remember ’cause she had that look.”
Salt knew, and she suspected Man also knew, the hazards in Stone’s losing awareness of the present.
“Like she on empty and give up,” said Stone. “She say she goin’ back to her grandmaw. That the last I seen of her.”
• • •
“I sure hope an even disposition is a dominant gene,” Salt said, entering the kitchen, dogs swirling around her legs.
“What?” Wills asked, distracted, taking the lid off a pot on the stovetop. The kitchen smelled warm, something to do with garlic, onions, and maybe faux-bacon grease?
“Disposition,” she repeated, stepping through the dogs. She held out the little test wand to Wills.
He looked at it. “Is that . . . ?” He looked up with wide eyes.
Salt lifted her brows, an expression of what-can-I-say. “We seem to have a convergence.”
He took the wand and stared at the double bars.
“It’s positive. We’re pregnant,” she said.
ABOUT MARY
Although she’d known the answer, Salt had asked the DA anyway. Despite the insurance Mrs. McCloud had taken out after Mary had gone missing, and Stone’s assertion that the last time he saw her she was returning to her grandmother, they didn’t have enough to bring charges.
So with little hope Salt had taken her last afternoon in Homicide and returned to the house on Jonesboro where both Mary and her murdered mother were raised. It was the last thing Salt wanted to do, to go back to that house. She could still see Mary getting off the bus at the corner, pulling at the heels of her socks while the cool kids, the carefree kids, skipped past.
Mary’s image accompanied her up the steep steps. In her mind’s eye she could see Mary trudging up the steps with her heavy book bag. Salt knocked and waited. When Mrs. McCloud opened the door and saw Salt she tried to close the door but Salt stuck her foot out. “God knows I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here,” she said. “But aren’t you just a little bit curious, or concerned, about what I have to say? Maybe there’s new evidence. Most people would want to know how a case of their murdered loved one is progressing.”
Mrs. McCloud stepped out and looked to the right and to the left. “I don’t want you standin’ on my porch.”
“That’s right. What will people think? What will they say? Of course, they recognize the Taurus. How about I come in?” Salt pushed past the now unresisting woman.
The floors gleamed with polish. Mrs. McCloud looked down at Salt’s shoes.
“My shoes stay on,” Salt said.
Mrs. McCloud walked away and down the hall, her slippers making a swishing noise. Salt followed her to the kitchen at the back of the house, the memory of Mary still with her. Salt remembered the girl’s rigid posture and her anguished cry—how she’d wished for some way to have been able to shelter her.
Although Mrs. McCloud always remained stout, as before there were no signs that food had ever been either consumed or prepared in the kitchen, every surface spotless. Like a dated advertisement, sunlight reflected off the old appliances. It was disconcertingly incongruous. The sun shone from the back window, also highlighting the perfect blond chignon at the back of Mrs. McCloud’s head. Mrs. McCloud grabbed and held on to the back of the kitchen chair on the opposite side of the table from Salt.
“Oh, that’s right. You want to get to the new evidence.”
“Get to it. I’m not about playing games with you.” The old woman tightened her hold on the chair back.
“I see.” Salt tucked her chin to her chest. Looking back up, she said, “I expect we come from the same place, you and I. You cannot escape shame. It’s partly what made you shoot and kill your granddaughter. And here I was carrying around the motive all along—the photo of Mary and the other two girls, the dancers. When someone sent you the photo—after that, that shame, you killed her.”
Mrs. McCloud opened her mouth wide and laughed. Still grinning, she said, “You got nothing. If you did, you wouldn’t be all talk. You’d be here with a warrant and some more cops to put me in handcuffs. But here you are—all talk.”
“It began to make sense when I thought about it, asked myself who had the most to lose by Mary being alive? It wasn’t the men who had used and abused her. They weren’t threatened by Mary’s escape. They were threatened by her death and the investigation, but not her escape. They knew she wouldn’t, couldn’t, do anything to them. So who had something to lose by Mary being alive?” Salt took off her hat and dropped it on the table. “You are partly right. I don’t have enough evidence to convict you in a court of law. This is one murder for which there’ll be no conventional resolution.”
“Get out of my house.” Mrs. McCloud’s voice was loud, but she didn’t move.
Salt went around the table and stood too close to Mary’s murderer. “She was desperate for shelter. You killed her mostly because you were ashamed, and then there was the premeditated aspect—the insurance. She was a living testimony to your failure. I just wanted to let you know that at least I, one person, am witness to that. You took her to that field—it would have been the very end of blackberry season—and shot her right through the heart.” Salt reached out and put the tips of her fingers in the middle of Mrs. McCloud’s chest.
Mrs. McCloud backed away, went around Salt and back down the hall to the front door.
Salt blinked and opened her eyes in the too-bright light. That will have to do, Salt, she said to herself. That’ll do.
THE PAST IS NOW
There was only one box; Salt hadn’t been in Homicide long enough to accumulate a lot of personal artifacts and memorabilia. Not only was she leaving, on loan to the FBI task force, at least until the baby arrived, but this was also the last week of the unit inhabiting the old building. Mary’s file, all the other cases she’d worked, all the colored-by-year books had been transferred to storage. Mary’s file, because it was still open, would go with the unit. The rest, the solved cases, would go to a climate-controlled remote facility. Salt leaned into the aisle down which she could see into Huff’s office, where he stood rubbing his head amidst the stacks and piles of case folders.
Her landline gave off its staticky death-rattle ring. “Honey, you have a visitor,” Rosie said. “A Mr. Jim Britton.”
“Oh?”
“He said he doesn’t have an appointment but was hoping to catch you.”
“I’ll come out.” Salt dropped the handset into its cracked cradle.
When Salt came out to the waiting room, Britton was standing facing the command staff photographs on the wall. He strode to her, extending his hand. “Thank you for seeing me. I should have called, but this was somewhat of an impulse.”
“Sure, no problem. Come on back.” Salt held the door for him. Britton not being a member of their usual visitor demographic, Rosie registered her curiosity by arching her eyebrows.
“Pardon our mess,” Salt said as they walked through the unit, passing boxes on boxes and cubicles dreary and bereft of their curiosities, mementos, and departmental reminders. “I’m going to a new assignment and the unit is also moving.”
“Ah, yes, I heard about the new headquarters,” he said.
Salt grabbed a chair from the empty cubicle across from her. They sat. Britton looked around. Salt waited, then finally said, “What can I do for you today, Mr. Britton?”
“Sorry to keep bothering you.” On his windbreaker was the logo of the environmental group he worked with, the same jacket he had worn before. “This might seem trivial to you, what with all this.” He pointed at the files on her desk, a stack of eight-by-ten crime-scene photos, the boxes and files on nearby work spaces. “But I’d like to know whether or not the information I gave you about seeing Flash Daddy Jones at the quarry was helpful to the investigation.” His voice traile
d off as he looked down at his lap.
“It was. It certainly was. One thing I’ve learned in this job is you never know when some small detail will be the piece that solves the mystery or gives enough information to complete the picture.” She was still struggling to find hope and peace about Mary’s case.
“I didn’t see anything in the media about an arrest,” he said.
“Without saying too much, let’s just say there’s an even bigger picture that’s being considered in regard to Mr. Jones.”
Britton sighed and leaned back. “Like the butterfly effect.”
“Are you talking about the weather—that thing, something about the wind from a butterfly’s wings causing a tornado somewhere far away?”
“It may not be that dramatic or extreme, but yes, random occurrences have been observed to significantly affect outcomes,” he said.
“As humans, though, don’t we consciously, knowingly control more of the factors?” Salt asked. “We’re not blown about by the wind. We can steady ourselves if we choose.”
“Of course, but what I’m talking about, Detective, is the randomness of the conditions to which we are born.” Britton stood. “I am, as I’m sure you’ve suspected, tortured by the legacy of my ancestors’ barbarous treatment of the conscripted laborers a century ago, those bodies found at the South River. They were born poor, mostly black, and on whose backs my great-grandfather, grandfather, and even my father built their wealth, my wealth.” Awkwardly, he stood.
Salt folded her hands atop her desk, then looked up. “I recently found some records and photographs in my attic. I think there’s lots of that stuff rotting away in old houses like mine. My neighbor who’s old enough to be my grandfather told me there used to be more, but people were ashamed and got rid of it, burned it, buried it. It’s hard to come face-to-face with the past, sins of our fathers and all.”
“So what are we to do?” he said, his voice thin.
“Isn’t the work you do, trying to reclaim the polluted places, enough? Don’t you feel like you’re giving back through your work?” she asked, even as she felt a hollowness within her own chest, thinking about what she should do with those old records from her attic.
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