Just as the baby coughed and came completely clear of her mother, the door opened and the paramedics rushed in carrying their bags. They began unloading their med gear and snapping on gloves.
“Looks like a girl,” one of the medics announced, tearing into a sterile blanket.
Salt looked up with the baby in her bare hands. “Accurate diagnosis,” she said, feeling smiley. Her fingers formed a careful cradle around the newborn.
“A girl?” groaned Shuffie.
“A girl,” Salt said with a second short prayer that this mother wouldn’t go missing, go to jail, or die. A prayer that this mother might protect this child.
* * *
• • •
Salt had washed off with bottled antiseptic from the trunk. The baby was healthy and the whole distaff family had trundled off in the ambulance. First thing when she sat back in the car the chaplain shuffled his papers and without looking up said, “I should have at least baptized the baby.” He lifted his head and watched the disappearing ambulance.
Back in service with the chaplain still trying to check off his questions, she drove the beat, her hands still tingly.
“Nightmares?” he read from the sheet.
“Nope.”
“Flashbacks?”
“Only to my childhood,” she tried to joke.
“What about your childhood?” He thought she was being serious. “And why do you mind if I asked about your birthday celebration? Did you get drunk?”
“I was joking.” She turned the car down a narrow alley where abandoned stolen cars were often discovered.
“Officer Alt, can we stop here for a minute?”
“Sure.” She put the car in park but left the motor running. The cruiser’s headlights illuminated what appeared to be a new SUV about a block down the alley. The vehicle was jacked up, wheels missing.
“You have a job to do. So do I.” He tapped the forms to align them.
She pointed down the alley at the SUV.
“I know it’s a stolen car. Can’t you just leave it for a minute?” he asked.
“Maybe it was used in a murder or robbery and maybe there’s evidence in it that will solve a crime.”
“Or maybe you don’t want to be talking to me about your shooting.” He made another check on the form.
The hair along her new scar felt like straw. Salt resisted the urge to rub her scalp. “There’s nothing to talk about. He shot me. I shot and killed him.” She reached for a paper towel in the side door compartment and began wiping the window in front of her, worried she had said the wrong thing.
“You’re cleaning a clean window,” he said, giving her a glance.
She stuffed the towel back in the door. “Your follow-up could get me transferred. Someone will look at that form you’re filling out and make a judgment about my fitness for duty.”
“That’s not what this is about. Look, I might not be or ever have been a great cop but I know one when I see one. You’re the real thing. I’m embarrassed that you delivered that baby with me outside.”
“Chaplain.”
“No, let me continue. I’m not even a good chaplain. I follow departmental procedures but they don’t seem to be of help to wounded and troubled cops. So let me just say that the best I can do is to tell you that I hope you’re not having any problems because of getting shot, or anything else.” He folded the check-off sheet, put it in his pocket, faced forward, and swallowed hard. After a second or two she put the car in drive and pulled up to process the abandoned auto.
* * *
• • •
They hadn’t said anything more on the way back to the precinct. In the parking lot Salt asked, “Which is your car?”
“Green minivan.” He pointed to a battered older-model van.
A rear bumper sticker proclaimed JEWS FOR JESUS and featured a cross superimposed over a Star of David.
“Got a couple of major religions covered there.” She tried for a lighter note, pointing to the sticker.
Still quiet, he answered, “I guess.”
“Okay, Chaplain, you earn your stars today.” Salt paused and drew a long breath. “I don’t celebrate my birthday at all. Birthdays were hard for my father. I do have flashbacks about him. Maybe you heard talk. He was with the department. He committed suicide on my tenth birthday.” She shrugged. “Really, the only birthdays I feel like celebrating are like—like the one today. I’ll lift a glass of wine tonight to Shuffie’s new baby. Do I fail the follow-up?”
They were both blue-and-white reflections on the windshield.
“No, you don’t fail.”
“Thank God.” Salt let out a long noisy breath.
“That’s my line.” He laughed, a strange braying behind his hand.
His odd laugh shocked her to laughter.
“You want to come to my office, drop by anytime.” He got out of the car, stuck his head back in. “Anytime, anytime.”
Salt put the car in drive and waved at him, without looking back, now recalling her dream of chairs, a more recent version of the dream—words appearing as a colliding vision on the boards, appearing on the rough boards for building the chairs in which she now longed to rest. The unknown person still walked forward from the misty dream woods, carrying a sign that she couldn’t read.
28.
COURT, LIL D, SHELL CASINGS, AND MARY MARIE
All rise,” the bailiff called as the judge entered the dais at the front of the courtroom. Salt stood, along with citizens, cops, and lawyers, cops behind the lawyers in the never-turn-your-back-to-them tradition.
She wasn’t exactly surprised when Stone entered the courtroom, loping without grace, his shoulders folded inward. When he saw her across the room he stopped, turned, and just stood, no expression, flipping his cap between his hands. Court didn’t allow hats. Stone’s hat hair was mushroom shaped.
A cop behind her tapped her on the shoulder. “What’s that asshole’s problem?” He thumbed in Stone’s direction.
“He’s having a bad hair day.”
Her colleague laughed and relaxed, telling her a bit of the latest gossip around his precinct, until the bailiff called the first case.
Waiting to be called for Lil D’s first appearance on the “Possession with Intent to Distribute” charge, Salt felt nervous for the first time since her rookie courtroom days. The headaches were becoming more intrusive. Her vision was increasingly populated by phantom lights and floaters.
As they sat, the court continued to fill with families of suspects, victims, and victims’ families. There was rarely a difference between the accused and the accusers. Very young women with babies on their hips and grandmothers with babies on their hips were in abundance. Shannell’s generation was missing but the courtroom was packed.
Too much of the culture of The Homes was being shaped by Budweiser commercials, the celebrity of the moment, what they were driving and wearing. Bling over substance. Modesty had gone the way of mules. Quite a few of the women and girls who came to court were sent out by the judges for improper attire while others barely made the cutoff.
Case after case, young men, slouching in defiance, were led from holding cells. When Lil D’s name was called he was led out blinking, looking thinner and hungrier than ever. Stone stood up and went to lean against a wall in Lil D’s sight line. He covered his mouth with his cap. His face muscles moved like he was talking behind it though he made no sound. Lil D looked at Stone, then turned back to stare at the floor.
The judge recited, rather than asked Lil D, the questions regarding his ability to afford a lawyer. Asked if he had held a job in the past six months, Lil D was barely audible when he answered, “No.” His voice sounded weak and unused when he answered, “Yes,” to needing a public defender.
The judge postponed the hearing for another week. Before the bailiff corrected hi
m Lil D tried to turn so that the stain on his neck was away from the courtroom audience.
Out in the parking lot, as Salt opened her car door, Stone popped up between cars and strutted toward her. There were too many cops leaving court for him to cause her any real trouble. He strolled by inches away, his bony shoulders moving back and forth, like a large bird of prey, dancing.
By the time she told radio she was back from court, the late afternoon bloodbath in The Homes had begun without her. Domestic quarrels were the theme for the night. On Thirkeld a woman held her jaw as she related between sobs her story of abuse, her baby’s daddy having fled before Salt arrived. She took the report while a tall thin man watched, leaning on the corner of the building. It was not Stone. On Shaw, Salt arrived as the paramedics were holding a pressure bandage on a young teenage boy’s face. The boy had gotten between his mother’s knife and an uncle. Salt arrested the mother. As she was sitting behind the wheel working on the report and waiting for the wagon with the caged mother in the back, she flinched when someone slapped the patrol car, her puff of relief audible as an old man stumbled by and she saw it wasn’t Stone.
By nine the assaults had turned deadly and Salt was stringing yellow tape to preserve, protect, and defend another dead body. The crowd chorus again complaining about the slow ambulance arrival time and “Poleese don’t care ’bout nothin’,” the crowd working into a frenzy, potential witnesses scattering.
Around ten the “shots fired” calls weren’t even being dispatched, but the sounds of gunfire ricocheted throughout The Homes. Salt sat under a streetlight finishing paperwork, documenting the facts, leaving out details like the color of blood under halogen lights. She kept glancing in the car’s mirrors and out the windows, but her night vision couldn’t adjust from the reports. Fully automatic gunfire erupted from behind the closest building. It was too much and too close for her to ignore.
“Radio, hold me out on shots fired at 1412 Middleton Street.”
“Radio copies. Can any unit start for her location?” The familiar dispatcher knew Salt wouldn’t have bothered to call it in if there hadn’t been some significance to the gunfire.
“3307,” Pepper responded. “I’ll hold my paperwork. Show me en route.”
Instead of getting out on foot, Salt put the Crown Vic in low gear and punched over the curb. The patrol car’s undercarriage scraped the ditch as she rounded the corner of the building. Her headlights dipped as the car wheels bumped in ruts and over a drainage pipe. A sports field down the hill was wide, spread out, the center of The Homes. Just outside the illumination of the patrol car’s lights, dark figures darted in and out below the direct beams, scattering from the center of the ball field. The car door made for good cover as Salt opened it, the beams of her flashlight adding more specific light to the scene. Her boots skidded on shell casings, the ground littered with shiny brass.
What little ambient light there was reflected off Pepper’s silver buttons as he walked around the corner of the building. “Smart girl. It’s too late to be chasing gunmen on foot,” he said, noting the position of her car. He added his light to the glitter on the ground. “Goddamn war zone here,” he said, bending down to pick up one of the brass casings. He examined the casing, rolling it between his thumb and finger.
“We’ve gotta collect all of them.”
“Why? We never collect casings on just ‘shots fired.’”
“We do these, Salt. They’re armor-piercing. Remember the flyer the Gun Unit passed out at roll call last week? These have the markings, same as the ones in the flyer.” He stood next to her, his flashlight shining on the brass in his palm.
Salt’s stomach turned over. Stone didn’t need words. From an open apartment window the theme song from a popular police drama started up. Dropping shell casings in an evidence bag on the downbeat, she and Pepper kept time to the music.
* * *
• • •
The rest of the week continued with the usual hard and sad life in The Homes. Stone was conspicuous by his absence.
Her nightmares got so that she’d wake up and find Wonder staring. She trembled in her bed, in her house, where she now felt more on edge than in The Homes.
* * *
• • •
Another summer downburst was flooding the streets just as the bus lumbered to a stop. Salt watched from under the tattered awning of a nearby pawnshop. STEREO EQUIPMENT, JEWELRY, GUNS, AND MORE! advertised fading painted block letters on the concrete wall at her back.
The school bus delivered Mary at 4:22 almost every day and it was all Salt could do to get out of roll call, load her gear, and get to somewhere near the bus stop so she could watch the girl, always the last one off the bus and never with another child. Today was the same.
Mary never seemed to see her. Salt didn’t hide but did take pains to always park away from the stop, in different places, and walk to some vantage point.
On the opposite side of the bus from Salt’s view, the children clamored out and dashed down the sidewalks. The bus pulled away, splashing water from the gutter. Mary stood alone, rain sloshing her up and down, running from her braids. A crack of lightning threw the scene into a negative. Mary didn’t startle or even move.
Salt looked down at her own feet. Bits of wet weeds clung to her black boots, but she could feel the wet socks in Mary’s shoes, the ribbing printing itself on her ankles. Memories of her own childhood washed over Salt as she stood watching Mary get soaked. She put herself back against the warm storefront wall as Mary took the first of her plodding steps toward the house where Shannell had once been a child.
Mary didn’t flinch at the second blast of lightning, either. She stood still, rain streaming down her cheeks, and lifted her face as another strike flickered close. The girl seemed more reluctant to go home than to stay in striking distance.
29.
TESTIFYING
The city had lit its courtrooms like live theater. Recessed lighting was dim in the audience and bright up front. The judge’s dais was large and raised above a waist-high wooden island on either side of which the prosecution and defense held forth and negotiated.
Salt sat three rows back in the far-right section. The thunk of leather-covered metal against the wood benches sounded as other cops arrived. Her gear belt with cuff cases and baton holder at her back filled the normal curve of the bench so that she had to find purchase with her boots to keep from slouching, to be able to see above the front rows of lawyers. She scuffed the floor, letting off nervous energy.
In the other two sections of the dim area, a flux of family members, of both the victims and the accused, and a few witnesses, moved either to the front as their cases were coming up or to the back and out once a disposition was rendered. These were preliminary-hearing courts. No trials. No Bibles were sworn over. No gavel was struck. Impatient cops waited their turns. Mothers tried to quiet crying babies and restless children.
“Officer Alt,” called the solicitor, her cue to go forward and play her part, testifying against Darrell Rafael Mobley. She had practiced her lines often enough in similar cases, knew the rules of search and seizure. She stood and walked toward the front of the room.
Lil D was led, shuffling, into the courtroom, leg restraints inhibiting the exaggerated side-to-side tough walk. He was wearing the orange jail jumpsuit, pant legs too long and bunching at his ankles. The bailiff positioned him opposite Salt, across the island. The brighter light revealed lint in his hair, which unaccountably provoked Salt’s fury. She dug her fingernails into her palms in frustration that there had never seemed to be a way out for Lil D. Lil D, head bent, squinting and looking from the corners of his eyes, upper lip raised like he smelled something bad, looked like she felt.
The solicitor and Salt stood on one side of the polished wood peninsula. Lil D and his court-appointed lawyer stood on the other side. When she turned her head toward Lil D she involuntar
ily blinked from the glare.
Above them all sat the judge, a bored, cynical veteran of the city courts. The back of a laptop computer was visible on the judge’s desk to his right. His hand moved quickly over the track pad, the light from the screen playing across his face, rapidly changing from green to blue. “Next case,” he called, his eyes not leaving the computer. Salt thought he was playing a video game.
The solicitor, who knew Salt well, didn’t bother to ask about the arrest. He assumed that this case would be like others she brought to court, it would be solid. His words ran together. “Your Honor, Darrell R. Mobley is charged with ‘Possession with Intent to Distribute.’”
The judge, a blue glow on his chin, frowned at his computer, then plopped back in his high-backed chair, waving his hand for the solicitor to begin.
“Officer Alt, tell us about how you came in contact with the defendant on August 28th of this year.”
Salt looked at Lil D. He’d tried to hide his birthmark by turning up the collar of the prison suit.
“Officer Alt,” the solicitor prompted, shuffling through the stack of charges on the shelf beside him without looking at her.
“Myself and four other officers were manning a roadblock at Meldon Avenue and Middleton Street when the defendant, driving a 1974 Oldsmobile, came through the location.” Salt felt something caught in her throat. She covered her cough with a fist and continued. “There was a passenger, Curtis Stone, with the defendant.”
The solicitor, who’d been at ease because of their familiarity, now cut his eyes. Stone? he mouthed silently at her. They both knew it was the job of the defense attorney to bring out the fact that Stone had been in the car, suggesting his relevancy. She was volunteering information unnecessarily. The defense attorney didn’t miss “Stone” either. A public defender, he also knew Salt from previous cases. He cocked his head to look at her, now also more attentive to the case.
The Policeman's Daughter Page 21