The Policeman's Daughter

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  “Wait.” She followed him and reached out to grab his arm but circled in front of him instead.

  “This shit depressin’, man.” He clicked his mouth, grimaced, and shot quick glances at the shabby men slumped along the hallway floor.

  “You’re right.”

  Just then there was a sudden downburst of rain. Lil D turned back. “Okay, just get it over with, Miss Poleese.”

  The Reverend looked up at her, one eyebrow lifted and one eye squinting from his cigarette smoke. “You here for visiting hours, Officer? What’s this about?”

  “This is the son of the man I came to see last time.”

  Reverend Gray reached his hand across the desk. “His father. Okay.”

  At first Lil D didn’t seem to know about men shaking hands but then he reached out and took the Reverend’s hand.

  Reverend Gray stood. “I’ll take you.”

  “Is he in the same place? I remember the way.”

  “Yeah, we moved a cot back there for him. He’s not in good shape. I have his real name written in one of these books but everyone here calls him ‘Father’ and some of the Catholics even try to get him to hear their confessions. ’Course they’re crazy, too.” He dusted ashes off his belly. “My house is your house.”

  They started toward the sleeping area, with Lil D following her, glancing around and checking behind them.

  Salt said, “Keep up. I know the way back.”

  The cavernous room was the same as it was before, except that the light was different. Instead of the early morning sun coming in the huge windows, rain-diffused streetlight shone from above. Most of the tin funnel lights hanging from the metal rafters were turned off. Only a few lights along the brick walls had been left on; they helped staff avoid trampling on the worn men on the mats. Lil D stepped carefully, following Salt’s footsteps to where Big D had sat before in his metal chair, looking out at the city.

  The cot grew visible but looked unoccupied. Closer she could see that Big D had become so impossibly thin that he barely made an outline under the blanket. As they approached he said without opening his eyes, “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and give you peace now and forever. Amen.”

  Lil D looked at Salt, then toward the way back out.

  “Big D,” she called softly.

  He opened his eyes and saw his son. “You,” he said. Lil D took a step forward, stopped, and waited. Big D pushed to raise himself up on his elbows but one arm slipped on the thin edge of the cot. Lil D went down on one knee to catch his father’s fall.

  Salt stepped back.

  * * *

  • • •

  It had begun a hard rain while Salt sat in the patrol car waiting for Lil D. Gutters rushed trash, dirt, and heavier debris toward sewer grates. The streetlights in front of the shelter were reflected in raindrops falling into black street water, creating tiny craters that sank dark, then lifted with glimmering edges.

  Lil D appeared in the entrance and pulled his ball cap low on his forehead. He dashed across the street, dropped himself into the passenger seat, and slammed the door shut. He faced straight, staring out at the rain. “Don’t say nothin’.” His face had been kept dry by the cap but his jersey was spotted with wet splotches.

  Salt drove slowly back toward The Homes, She stopped at every yellow light. Lil D took off the cap and kept staring straight ahead, and clenching his jaw muscles. City lights shone through the windshield onto his face. His skin glowed with light streaming rain. His birthmark appeared as a continent cut by a river.

  When they were getting close to The Homes, Lil D dug a fist into the seat. “Ain’t you gonna say nothin’?”

  “Big D can’t help dying.” Her voice held an even tone that she didn’t feel. They were silent, stopped at a light. “Where do you want me to let you out?”

  “I wanna go to Latonya’s.”

  “You’re not worried about being seen?”

  “Just take me back. Latonya be tired now, she need a break. Dantavious need his daddy.”

  He looked out as they passed Sam’s, the laundromat, and the alley hanging with shoes, until they got to Latonya’s apartment. When Salt stopped the car Lil D sat there.

  “Do you still believe he killed your mother?”

  “He told me. No, he didn’t.” He brought his arms up to the dash and locked them stiff. In silhouette, his eyelashes were backlit, clinging together, damp.

  The radio on Salt’s shoulder began the traffic that always accompanied the rain. “3307, 3309, 3310 respond to accidents at . . . respond to an accident with injuries . . .”

  “I’ve got to go,” Salt said quietly. The calls couldn’t wait. “He told you what?” she asked, trying to keep her voice solid. “Did he know who might have?”

  Lil D grabbed the car door handle and leaped out. He didn’t go to Latonya’s door but ran up along the building, then broke toward the empty field in back and disappeared into a sheet of black-and-white rain.

  36.

  STONE MAN

  The early October days held hints of cool and the shift went to long sleeves, rolled up in the afternoon and down when the sun ducked behind the city. Salt sniffed the breeze as she and Pepper stood outside their patrol cars at Big Red’s. Sometimes she thought she was so close to Stone she could smell him.

  Pepper was saying, “Every cop in the metro area has heard about what happened at your house. His mug shot is all over the place.”

  Big wasn’t outside. The grill was closed. There was an old wooden Adirondack chair turned over on its side. The late-day sun was warm. A slight wind ruffled the orange leaves that still clung to the branches of the tree above the blue tarp on Big’s house.

  “He’s here, in The Homes.” She tilted her head upward toward the tree.

  “Yeah, but gone to ground.” Pepper’s eyes followed an old bowlegged woman walking by with a toddler’s gait.

  “Guys like Stone have never been anyplace, wouldn’t know how to buy a bus ticket, much less a plane ticket.”

  An old man pushing a baby stroller followed behind the bowlegged woman. The stroller was full of cans to be sold to the recyclers.

  “Stone’s probably never even been to the north side of the city, much less to some other city.”

  Easy-to-steal American sedans were parked facing the wrong way on the narrow one-way street.

  “Even if he had money. And you know nobody’s gonna front him. Man’s not exactly a charitable guy.”

  “He’s here all right, and you’ll probably be the one to find him. But you won’t be alone. Not this time.” Pepper tapped her forehead right where the scar tipped out of her hairline. She couldn’t breathe into her radio these days without backup appearing. Pepper was trailing her on every call.

  “I wish I could find Red. I’m worried about her. She’s just disappeared.”

  “The shift has her photo, too. Share the load, girl.” Pepper waggled her shoulder.

  Salt tugged at her vest and pulled her shirt collar to let some of the breeze under the uniform while her eyes wandered to Big Red’s curtain-covered windows. On the days that Red’s sister had been in the yard she’d just shaken her large head and they had rolled on past. If they knocked on the door she would come to the front window and shake her head in the same giving-up way. It had been weeks since Salt acquired her Pepper trail, two weeks checking every day at Big Red’s.

  They were about to leave when Big Red came out into the yard. She was wearing a tool belt, overalls with nothing underneath so that the sides of her breasts swung loose beneath the front bib, and a rope around her waist. She walked over to the chair without acknowledging them and began pounding one of the backboards with a hammer. The sounds of the day, car engines running, the click of the air-conditioning, Pepper’s voice, traffic on the adjacent streets, all became
muffled. Salt heard the hammer strikes as if in a tunnel, the echoes, the sound of the hard steel on old wood. The cool, edgy October air, a woman in overalls, nailing boards on a chair. Salt stood entranced, then looked off to the near north. The swinging boards of a broken door. Her blood rushed, adrenaline finding receptacles ready for the run.

  She turned to Pepper. “I know where he is.”

  Pepper reached for his radio mic. “I’m calling SWAT.”

  “Hold on.”

  “Don’t start. You’re not doing this by yourself.”

  “No, it’s not that I don’t want help. I think he has Red and I want to try to get her away. SWAT, really anybody, won’t care who’s in there with Stone.”

  “What place?”

  “I should have known. They’re at Shannell’s.”

  * * *

  • • •

  They didn’t have to wait long for the night. Even with the last of the autumn sun there would have been plenty of cover for Salt to make her way unseen from the street that paralleled Marcy. She took the back way on foot to Sister Connelly’s, weaving between trees, vines, and kudzu, her boots catching on low, dark vegetation, dodging tree limbs. The fighting voices of drunks on the corner came from several streets over, nothing out of the ordinary.

  A quarter-man moon had risen, glowing large with spiked tips, shining on the trail that addicts had worn, a cut-through to Marcy Street. Salt stepped into the familiar path, the flashlight on her hip banging gently against her leg as she made her way in the moonlight. Sister Connelly’s house was dark, backlit by the waxing moon. Closer to the house, a small soft glow from inside was barely visible. She tapped softly on the panes of the old woman’s back door, then, not hearing any movement, put her face to the glass, trying to peer past the dark kitchen to the yellow light coming down the hall. A figure appeared with an odd silhouette, its arm too long. The door suddenly swooped inward.

  “Good thing I don’t shoot first and kill you later.” Sister Connelly pulled the cord for the overhead light. The shotgun, pointing directly at Salt’s belly, gleamed in the glare of the bare bulb. Salt stepped quickly into the kitchen and pulled the cord back to off. She felt Sister Connelly lower the gun.

  “Ask questions,” corrected Salt, saving her breath.

  “You here to ask questions?”

  “No, I meant that the saying is ‘Shoot first and ask questions later.’”

  “Now you ain’t here creeping up in the dark to correct my speech.” Sister Connelly had her hair unbraided, flowing over her shoulders and down her back, and was wearing a nightgown that left her chest, shimmering with scars, exposed.

  Salt tapped her own protected chest, then touched the scar at her hairline and, trying not to look at Sister’s old crisscrossings, said, “I just need to use your house for a few minutes. I need to watch what’s going on at Shannell’s.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on there ’cept that Red whore using it to flop in.”

  Salt started moving down the hall toward the small parlor, feeling the rush intensify, and was relieved to see the shades over the windows pulled.

  Sister followed her with the shotgun by her side, pointed toward the floor. “Now I don’t think I invited you into my living room,” she complained, dignified, indignant.

  “I know,” Salt said, turning out the one lamp by the reading chair, “but I don’t have a lot of time to use manners. So please, ma’am, may I use your house for a few minutes? Just for a few minutes. I need cover.” She carefully pulled back the shades, trying to find the window that gave the better view.

  Sister Connelly was behind her. “I heard what Stone did to you. It’s a wonder you weren’t killed.”

  A streetlight on a pole near the end of the building illuminated a cone of night. Shannell’s apartment door was now missing the plywood cover. The broken screen, hanging by the one hinge, swung in the fall wind, a sharp scratching sound. No lights were visible in the ruined apartment. The light over the door had never worked. A slight movement, the dark door gained a darker, wider trim. Someone was coming out.

  “3306 to 3307, stand by,” she radioed Pepper, two streets away.

  “How is it you weren’t killed?” Sister Connelly continued at her back.

  “Stone’s a bad marksman at distances,” Salt responded, distracted, trying not to blink her eyes for fear of missing any crucial movement across the street. A dark shape stepped from the apartment door, followed by another. Man, followed by Lil D.

  “3306 to 3307, there’s movement. Hold.” To herself she whispered, “Lil D,” aware that her breath was taken by a sudden, sad hollow in her chest.

  “I told you ’bout seeing too much evil. Those who see turn to a pillar of salt.”

  “Or stone,” Salt said as she watched the third man, with wing-shaped shoulders, descend the stairs. She heard the ignition. Lil D was in the driver’s seat again.

  “3306 to 3307. Move. Three to the car.” Unholstering her weapon in the two strides it took to get to Sister Connelly’s front door, she grabbed for the knob.

  “I’ll be watching,” Sister Connelly said as Salt went out, down the steps, into the street, taking cover on the side of the building while Stone slipped into the back of Man’s car.

  Pepper’s engine sounded like warm thunder, his headlights lighting up the street, tires throwing dirt, spinning and fishtailing toward the gang, driving straight for the front of their car. Lil D in the driver’s seat, Man the front passenger. Salt ran, bent at the waist, toward the metallic-blue sedan.

  The alley lights of Pepper’s patrol car snapped on. He trained his searchlight straight at the car. White light washed them. Lil D and Man threw their arms and hands up to shield their eyes. The car interior filled with arms bent and heads turning from the glare. Pepper’s cruiser jerked to a stop five feet from the front grille of the beater. He bolted out and took position at the passenger side, opposite Salt on the driver’s-side rear. All the car windows were down. Some part of Salt’s brain registered the interior smell of the car, fast food grease, and sweat.

  Pepper ordered, “Reach for the ceiling and keep your hands up,” his pointed gun reinforcing the command.

  Salt used the flashlight in her left hand to illuminate the backseat. The trickle of adrenaline became a river roaring in her ears. Stone was facedown, stretched across the floorboard with his arms beneath him.

  “I’m watching every twitch you make, Stone. Don’t make a wrong one. I want to see your right hand first. Do not move anything but your right hand. Do it.” Her voice loud, like she had to be heard over the rushing of her blood.

  Stone’s right shoulder folded out slowly, upper arm, elbow, then he showed his right hand, thin bony fingers spread wide.

  “Now the left,” she told him, her voice steady in the current.

  The seat constricted his left shoulder but he showed his left hand by crawling it up the back of the front seat, one finger, two, then five fingers moving upward. She sensed him tense, not thinking about life or death but judging her and the weapon in her hand. She focused her muscles, her mind refused any distraction.

  Stone continued to unfold, still lying on the floor of the car with his right arm spread. Pepper had his gun drawn, trying to cover Lil D and Man in the front seat, his attention torn from them to Salt and Stone. The car was still running. From a hole in the muffler, heavy gray exhaust swirled around the car and came close to choking her.

  The headlights of the two cars beamed against each other, smashing light rather than making it clear. In her side sight there was a slight movement of Lil D’s head, turning toward Man or maybe Stone, who at that moment began to use his left arm as leverage, rolling to his side as he reached his left hand toward the floor beneath him and a flash in the shape of a gun. She began the trigger squeeze, felt the first of the metal coil yield and then the sound of an old clock tick as the ca
r lurched forward and the metal windowframe shoved her gun arm up with a blast. Space entered where none had been and Stone disappeared from view. Her flashlight rolled onto the pavement. The car rammed into Pepper’s parked vehicle. Lil D and Man jerked forward. Stone began rising. The car seemed in slow motion as it recoiled from the collision. She was back up at the rear door in one stride, her eyes even with Stone’s, his hands not yet visible. She raised her weapon level with his face. Stone turned his head, screeched at Lil D, “Motherfucker, give it up,” and lunged for the gun that was now in Lil D’s right hand. Stone’s wide shoulders blocked the space between the back and front seats. Salt snatched at the driver’s door, Pepper opened the door next to Man. In one sure movement Salt caught Lil D’s arm, scooped his thin elbow with her left arm, like a mother removing a child in the street from the path of an oncoming car. The gun dropped in the gutter. Stone grabbed on air.

  She shoved at the backs of Lil D’s legs to force him to the sidewalk. Her gun still trained on the inside of the car, she stepped over Lil D and picked up the gun from the street.

  Man threw his hands up as if surrendering the game, as if distancing himself from what he ultimately had set in motion. Pepper had a cuff around one of his wrists and Man was offering him the other.

  Inside the car Stone raged in a frenzy of slapping, banging, and flapping, his whole body beating itself against the insides of the car, his furor so intense that Salt half-expected feathers to fly. Stone bloodied his face against the windshield, the skin of his leg cut in contortions with the steering wheel, his fingers tearing at the car ceiling. But worse than his acts of fury were the sounds he made, like a scream mixed with the whimper of a child when its pain is immediate and pure. Ordering him out of the car would have been futile. In his rage he was beyond comprehension.

  Then it stopped. The moment seemed to hang. Salt and Pepper moved only when Stone lay with his arms and shoulders up and draped over the backseat, and his only movement the rise and fall of his ribs. Salt blinked away tears, moved forward, holstering her gun, tucking the other gun in her waistband and drawing her second handcuffs from the case on her belt. Pepper covered.