The Policeman's Daughter

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  “Nope, that’s a complete who-done-it and we’ve caught four more, not including these three, since then. Gardner did find out from somebody that the victim’s boyfriend—what’s his name?” He jotted the numbers down on his pad.

  “Darrell Mobley, Senior.”

  “Yeah, some neighbor said he was living in one of the shelters downtown. They didn’t know which one and we haven’t found him.” He followed the retracting tape, walking toward Salt.

  She looked up quickly. “How long ago was that?”

  “Huh? About a week ago. Why?” Wills reached for the tape measure.

  “Do you think he killed her?” She shrugged to cover her eagerness.

  “We just don’t know. Right now all we want is to talk to him. What kind of dog?” He stopped in front of her.

  “What?” She was thinking about which shelter she could check to find Big D.

  “What breed is your dog?”

  “Since he’s a rescue I’m not sure.” She smiled as the image of her dog changed her focus. “He’s all black with longish fur. He’s got the body of a Border collie, although the Borders are seldom all black. I called him Wonder ’cause you wonder.” Her eyes were almost level with Wills’s.

  He’d paused from taking notes. He was medium height, about five ten, but with a heavy, hard-boned look, maybe forty-something but he could be younger. Homicide detectives were notorious for not aging well. He wore the requisite fedora of the Homicide squad but otherwise didn’t appear to care about his clothes. Each time she’d seen him he’d been wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeve shirt of indeterminate blend. He glanced back at the bodies, then back to Salt. She thought she saw something familiar there in his look.

  She broke eye contact and asked, “You think maybe you can let me know if you get anywhere with Shannell’s—the McCloud—murder?”

  Dropping his head, he shrugged. “We won’t get anywhere with that homicide. No witnesses coming forward, forensic evidence in a crack apartment—forget it.”

  “What about the autopsy?”

  “Two gunshot wounds, 38-caliber, one in her shoulder, one to the heart. From the angle of entry it appeared she was crouched in the closet when she was shot.”

  “So she wasn’t put there to hide her body and she didn’t run there after she was shot?”

  The contract hearses arrived to cart the bodies away.

  “Looks like she was trying to protect herself, covering her heart with her arm.” He held his arm over his chest.

  She looked away from his gesture. “Did anybody hear the gunshots?”

  “If they did they’re not saying. We did the door-to-door but on Marcy Street . . .” He shook his head.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Why are you so interested in the case? Did you know her or you just got a thing about your beat?”

  “Both. A .38 is not the gangster’s choice these days,” she said.

  “You’re right. We usually see more 9s and .380s used by the gangs and dealers.”

  “You got any likely suspects?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer right away. “Not really.”

  Wills nodded to the body snatchers who began to load the bodies onto gurneys. He helped Salt tear down the yellow tape and bundle it into a dented Dumpster. “My dogs are Pansy and Violet,” he offered.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” She laughed.

  “No, what’s so funny? Who wants to hug on something named Spike or Killer?”

  “Well, Homicide detectives are not normally known as huggers.”

  “I can hug.” He feigned hurt feelings.

  “Okay, okay.” She laughed again but couldn’t quite let go of this chance for information on Shannell. “Don’t forget, if you get anything more on Marcy Street let me know.”

  They stood side by side at the rotten-meat-smelling Dumpster, looking out at the crime scene. After a few awkward minutes, Wills broke off and headed toward his car. “Be careful,” he called to Salt.

  “Okay.” She lifted her hand and watched as Gardner came out of the building, looked at Wills, who was still watching her, and grabbed Wills’s arm, laughing and pulling him toward the detective car. Gardner shoved Wills in the unmarked and drove off, Wills waving back toward her cruiser.

  Pepper came up, smiling. “What’s with Wills?”

  “Just talkin’ about dogs.”

  “I’m glad you’re finally having conversations with somebody about something other than Shannell,” he said, dropping into his cruiser.

  “Yeah, looks like he and I have something in common,” Salt said, lifting a strand of crime scene tape into the trash.

  12.

  SISTER CONNELLY AND BOOTIE GREEN

  On Saturday afternoon it was raining hard when Salt stopped the cruiser in front of Sister Connelly’s. One small, blimp-size cloud seemed to be dumping its heavy load here on Marcy Street only, on the old woman’s all-garden yard, like God personally watering Sister’s forsythia, azalea, jasmine, wisteria, honeysuckle, and Cherokee rose. New-growth plants were scattered around in make-do planters—coffee cans and old buckets—inching green sprouts above their rims. The cloudburst had not had the breadth, duration, or strength to wash the grime off the projects. Salt lowered the car window to catch the fragrance of rain on green.

  Sister’s yard shamed the worn dirt in front of the apartments on the other side of the street. A plyboard cover had been nailed across the entrance to Shannell’s building. Someone had finally, in a way, fixed the door. Slanted graffiti blurred into the fake wood of the barrier, words scrawled in various colors, hard to decipher, capital letters and lowercase letters, random, some backward, like an ancient language, the handwriting of some ghetto god: mENe, MenE, tekel, PARSIN? Shannell’s building, like Babylon, ready to fall into ruin, walls cracked, windows broken, forsaken by anyone who cared.

  In contrast, Sister Connelly’s small, hundred-year-old folk-Victorian cottage seemed bursting with energy, with its one-gable front, on what was probably once a shotgun house, and a twenty-foot wing added to the right of the original structure. Rivulets poured from the narrow porch. Hanging baskets crowded one another, vying for the rain and sunlight and shading a two-seater swing. Precisely cut, neat patches of tin and old advertising signs had been added here and there to cover spots where the wood siding had fallen off. One rusted piece read SKOAL with a faded picture of a snuff can.

  Salt sat for a while in the car, waiting for the rain to let up; the storm beating and beating with hard fast drops for a few short minutes. Then it was gone; the hot sun appeared and began turning the puddles into steam.

  Sister Connelly was on the porch by the time Salt had started up the steps, the wood worn so that water puddled in the middle of each plank. “I know you ready for some ice tea,” the tall woman pronounced. Like the house, she seemed steady and durable.

  “Yes, ma’am, if you’ve got some made.”

  “Always keep tea in the Fridgidaire. Come on in.”

  Salt had to adjust her eyes once she passed into the house. All the shades and drapes were pulled shut, keeping the little house cool. The front parlor was crowded, upholstered furniture, pillows, doilies, afghans, throw rugs over the woven carpet, a maze of objects and shadows. Framed photographs of individuals and groups, decades represented in aging hues, hung on walls and propped on tables and shelves. Sister was a woman who knew most everybody, their families and their history.

  “Sit, sit,” said Sister.

  The old woman went down a dark hall, disappearing into the dim, like Alice’s rabbit. Salt’s sense of her own over-average height and proportion began to grow in the close room. “Radio, hold me out on an information-only call,” she spoke quietly into the mic on her shoulder.

  Sister returned with two jars. “You here ’bout Shannell,” she said, offering the tea, then bending her body
into a worn armchair.

  “Just asking around. Have you thought of anything more? Remembered anything else? Did you hear the gunshots or see anybody over there around the time Shannell was killed?” She took a sip of the iced tea. It was sweet, sweet, sweet, almost like cold syrup.

  “You know now, I’ve known Shannell’s family for a long time. Fact is, her mother, Mrs. McCloud, is a cousin of mine, second or third, on my mother’s side. They was always a righteous family.” While Sister Connelly always seemed open and forthright in their previous encounters and conversations, Salt often had the feeling that Sister’s native language wasn’t modern English but something else, though she had no particular accent. It was as if she was translating in her head before she spoke. She was doing it now, looking upward and to the left before talking, a pause, a look up, her clear, bright brown eyes lifting above wire-frame glasses, Daniel interpreting for Belshazzar.

  “Are you there, 3306?” radio called.

  “It wadden till Shannell fell in with Darrell Mobley, Lil D’s dad, that she started on the downslide.”

  “Yes, 3306 here,” answered Salt.

  Sister Connelly smoothed her loose flowered shift over her knees, then took a snuff tin off the side table. She offered the opened tin. Salt smiled, shaking her head no. The old woman put a pinch between her teeth and lower lip. “Them Mobley kids always been bad but I had hoped Big D would turn around. I had hoped he would not be loose like his mother.”

  “Ah, 3306, meet Narcotics,” radio said.

  Sister’s voice was lower when she continued. “He had no daddy to speak of. Shannell was good for him but life kinda pulled them both down. You might say history caught up with them.” She leaned and spit into a pink ceramic vase on the table beside her, then took a sip from the tea jar. From somewhere in the shadows a clock ticked in the muffled silence. Sister turned toward the sound of the ticking clock. “Shannell got away from Big D and for a while was doing all right till she got pregnant with that little girl. She and Big D already had Lil D, so she gave the girl to her mama to raise and Lil D went to Mrs. Mobley, too, when Shannell took to the street.”

  “3306 copy. Meet Narcotics,” Salt responded, eager for the call she’d been listening for, ready to go and taking a long drink of the tea to finish it in a hurry.

  “They callin’ you?”

  “Yes, sorry,” she said, standing. “Thank you for the tea.”

  “You stop by again. Us old folks don’t get many visitors and most people ’round here I don’t want on my porch, much less in my house. They act like dogs.”

  “No, ma’am. My dog is polite. The people act like nobody trained them right or cared about what they did.”

  “You right, you right. But Shannell loved her girl. She wanted Mary to have something. Didn’t want her ever in the street like Lil D. Hoped her mama would be a better mama.” Sister stopped mid-sentence, looked away as if at a sudden memory.

  Salt hurried to the porch, radio asking for her ETA to the corner. She bounded the steps to her car, waving to the old woman as she drove off. Halfway down the block with the odor of green leaves, new flowers, and damp yard still following her, she realized Sister had never answered her questions about whether she saw or heard anything. She backed up, inhaling the exhaust from her own vehicle. Sister Connelly was still standing on the porch. From the car window Salt asked again, “Do you know anything that would help us find out who killed Shannell?” Her mouth felt dry and sticky. The sweet tea had made her thirstier than before.

  “You come back to see me again, Miss Salt.”

  Pepper was answering radio, starting for the corner, the sergeant calling her radio number, asking for her location. She pulled off again from Sister Connelly’s and, with a screech of the siren, busted past the stop sign at the corner.

  * * *

  • • •

  The only people in the parking lot at Sam’s were a couple of uniform cops, some plainclothes detectives in takedown masks, and Bootie Green, handcuffed, shackled, and lying facedown on the pavement. A wiggle of elation and apprehension bounced around in Salt’s chest. Bootie would be the first gang member to fall in her campaign. She’d missed the takedown but wanted to be there to deliver a message for Man-Man.

  She got out of the car and went over to Sol Chambers, her Narcotics friend. “Thanks for the help, Sol.” Hugging him, in part, for the benefit of the shadows across the street.

  “No problem. We have to put in eight anyway. It was easy, just like you said. He”—Sol pointed at Green—“sold to Junior and we watched him get the hit from a stash in back. But better, he was carrying a stolen .380 pistol. He’ll be in the federal system because of the gun and won’t be getting out on bond.”

  Salt had known Chambers since her academy days and they had kept up with occasional phone calls, usually work related, and running into each other in the street and in court. When she had called asking for his help with the gang’s corner, he was eager to make a dent there and to be able to report results from that location. He had been even happier that the surveillance, which took so much time, had already been done.

  She walked over to Green and the Narcotics detective standing over him. “I’ll take him to the wagon,” she offered. He nodded and walked away to join some of the other cops. She knelt down. Green turned his face toward her, sweat pouring down his forehead, causing bits of dirt and small pieces of pavement to stick to the side of his cheek. He was overweight by about fifty pounds and breathing hard.

  “You can blame Man-Man for this, Bootie. So when you call him from jail tell him that.”

  Green glared at her. “You dead.”

  She stared back. “Bootie, the only way you can help yourself on a federal charge is to give me what you know about who killed Shannell.”

  “Man, I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Yeah, maybe, maybe not, but if anybody comes forward for you with the information you can get your sentence reduced. That’s the way the feds work.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “Think about it. Here’s my card and phone number.” She rolled him on his side, tucked the card in his shirt pocket, and hoisted him to his feet.

  “Get your hands off me, bitch.” He jerked his tethered arm from her grasp.

  “Who’s the bitch, Bootie? You’re going to jail ’cause Man tells you to jump and you say, ‘How high?’ Call me if you want some years of freedom back.”

  Salt left him to the wagon driver, then walked to the edge of the parking lot, knowing that they were watching from across the street. She lifted a hand, a challenge, to the watchers in the dark.

  Pepper came up. “What are you doing? You gone crazy?”

  “I was just helping Sol.” A sharp pain in her head made her eyes start to water.

  “Your hormones actin’ up? First you’re late on an in-progress call and now I catch you waving at UFOs.”

  Laughing with relief that he hadn’t figured out what she was up to, she turned to him. “No, just practicing my salute for when you make chief,” she said, resisting the urge to wipe her eyes.

  “When pigs fly. So, are we on for this weekend? Ann’s already cookin’.”

  “As long as you promise no unexpected guy will show up.”

  “Oh, good grief. Danny wasn’t that bad.”

  “He wanted me to handcuff him, for God’s sake.”

  “So, what’s wrong with that?”

  She flipped him the finger and went to thank Chambers and the other detectives again.

  As the wagon pulled off with Bootie, the scene began to clear and she went to get in her own car. Pepper came over again. “You gonna tell me now what you’re doing?” He was standing close in the wedge of her open car door. Seemed like he wasn’t in the dark after all.

  “Community Policing, the new trend in the war on crime.” She smiled, quoting a recent
department directive, trying to make light of her action.

  “I’m serious. What message are you trying to send? What did you say to Bootie?”

  She looked up, and feeling crowded by his tall body, said, “You’re in my door.”

  He lifted his hands and backed away. “Don’t get jammed up with them,” he said, sounding like he’d let it go for the moment.

  “Pepper.”

  “I mean it. You work too close sometimes.”

  “That’s what works here. You know it. You have to get close, close enough to—”

  “Get hurt,” Pepper stopped her. “Don’t try to do this by yourself.” He turned to go to his car, then turned back. “Why do you take stuff on all by yourself? You don’t have to prove anything.” He got in his car and slammed the door, windows closed.

  She rolled the car windows down to better hear the night, drove out of the parking lot, following Pepper while radio was giving out a call to another unit. There was a loud blast and Pepper, a couple of car lengths in front of her, swerved and came to a stop. She hit her blue lights, braked beside his car, got out, and ran up to him, then realized that his car was leaning to the right. “Damn, I thought it was a gunshot. I didn’t think tires still blew out that way,” he said, looking up at her from the window. He puffed his cheeks, blew out a long breath, and got out. They both went to the passenger side of the car. The front tire was ripped open. “Radio, start me a wrecker for a flat,” Pepper advised dispatch.

  Salt walked back to her car trying to calm her breathing. On the hill above, something in motion reflected light from the street.

  She yelled back to Pepper, “I need to go finish a report. Do you need me here?”

  “I’ve got blue lights. Go.”

  The car hung in first gear on the short drive around to the Homes’ entrance. She drove until she got to near where she thought the flash had come from. A sharp right turn led to the buildings that faced the chicken place dope hole and overlooked the street where Pepper waited for the wrecker. She drove slowly, straining to see in the shadows. Parallel with where Pepper was stopped, she parked and got out. There was no one in sight. Her flashlight covered sequential sections of the area as she walked toward the hill lined with water oaks and low, leafless shrubs. The beam caught movement at the far edge of the tree line, an arm, light brown shirt, slipping back around toward the apartments. Picking up the pace, she followed her flashlight’s beam skipping over the ground. Around the corner of the end building whoever had been on the hill had disappeared.