Stone’s panting slowed. He barely flinched, lifting only one finger as Salt clamped the metal cuff over one wrist slick with blood. She crawled into the car to reach for his other wrist. Her body, heavy with gear, pressed against him, securing him in the close confines of the car’s front compartment. He’d tried to kill her, he’d killed her sheep, hurt her dog, and stolen her peace. She collapsed against him, the lingering echoes of his rage ringing in her ears. She glanced out at Lil D’s face, his eyes wide, his mouth tight with incomprehension.
* * *
• • •
The headlights and alley lights of beat cars lit up the street. Most of the shift seemed to be arriving on Marcy just to see Stone in handcuffs. No citizens had ventured out to witness an arrest of one of the gang. Lil D and Man were leaning against Man’s car. Stone was sitting on the curb, cuffed behind his back, his feet in the gutter. Flanked by Blessing, Sarge, and Fuzz, Salt lifted Stone, like deadweight, by his elbow. She stood him on his feet for the walk to the wagon. He kept his glare on Lil D, who said to Man, clearly so that Stone could hear, “My foot slipped.” He turned to Stone and grinned.
Trying to break away from her, Stone lurched at Lil D. “You whole family fucked. Ask that prissy sister of yours what she doing at yo mama’s the day before—before she claim to found her.” Lil D and Man kept their practiced masks of nothingness. She jerked Stone toward the wagon, pushed him in, and closed the inner doors. Through the grate she asked, “You wanna make a statement to me about what you just said to Lil D? Or you just blowing smoke?” She was beginning to feel the ebb of energy, to notice how the street dirt was sticking to the dried sweat on her skin and she thought she could detect the clinging odor of something decomposing.
“Since it seem to matter to you, Mrs. Poleese, I ain’t got shit to say.” He spit on the cage door.
“You haven’t read him his rights.” Sister Connelly stood on the sidewalk beside the wagon. A thin, loosely buttoned housecoat covered her nightgown and those old scars. She had left the shotgun in her house and was now armed with a Bible.
Salt slammed the outer paddy wagon door, then turned toward Sister. The wagon took off for the downtown jail. “Sword of the Lord,” Sister said, and raised the Bible.
“Did you hear what Stone said to Lil D?” Salt asked.
Sister looked past Salt. “My hearin’ not what it used to be.”
“He said Mary was at Shannell’s the day before Mother’s Day.” Salt moved closer and tried to make eye contact. But Sister Connelly kept searching the darkness, her eyes squinting, swiveling her neck.
“Well, if she was here he must have been here to have seen her,” Sister said.
“What did you see? What do you know? Don’t you want justice for Shannell?”
“Ain’t no justice for Shannell.” She turned.
“What about for Mary?” Salt asked.
Sister walked away, up her steps, and, without looking back, closed the door behind her.
Salt glanced across the street and there was Dirty Red, looking like a ghost of herself, sitting on the top step of the stairs to Shannell’s. Salt started toward her.
She passed Lil D and Man, who were standing in the light of the single street pole like they were stranded on their own street. “D—” she began.
“Can I go now?” He cut her off.
She wanted to ask him if his foot did slip, wanted to ask why he had grabbed the gun. He pulled the towel from around his neck and walked away.
“Man.” She nodded to the gang leader, and turned to the stairs. In those few seconds Dirty Red had disappeared again.
Salt, Pepper, and two other officers searched the area for Red. At Shannell’s they lifted every loose board and checked behind every cabinet and door. They canvassed the neighborhood and searched the wooded areas around Marcy Street. Red stayed missing.
37.
SUNDAY MORNING
The sky above the AME church was bright blue and cloudless. The voices of the choir and congregation, accompanied by a fuzzy, too-loud organ, carried on the slight breeze through the windows, open to the cool fall day. Salt leaned against her car in the parking lot and lifted her face to the sun. The shining rays warmed her cheeks, her hair, the scar. A soloist began.
“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.
Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of his spirit, washed in his blood . . .”
Then the preacher’s voice rose, reassuring the flock that they were in Jesus’s hands and that they would be led to the Promised Land. The congregation prayed in unison: “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.”
The people began filing out of the church. A large percent of the congregants were older women dressed in all white with elaborate hats, some with feathers and sequins. One woman had an artificial dove perched atop her wide-brimmed crown.
Sister Connelly stopped to shake the preacher’s extended hand. Her dress was bright white, as if it had been bleached by the sun. She was wearing a matching hat with a simple veil covering the top part of her face. No one would ever mistake her for anyone else, her dark skin, her height, a shadow surrounded by a cloud. She didn’t say anything to the minister, just changed the Bible she was carrying to her left hand and shook his hand while she looked out at the parking lot. She made her way through the churchgoers, who nodded as she passed, acknowledging her, showing respect to a woman who knew and kept their history.
Sister stopped a foot or so farther than conversational distance. “Why didn’t you go to church today, Officer Salt?”
“I came here for help.” Salt straightened off the car. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, had left her gun in the athletic bag on the passenger seat.
“The Lord helps those who help themselves.” Sister lifted her already dignified carriage. “You got your man. That Stone never stood a chance,” she said, shaking her head. The hat and veil, tied and pinned, stayed firmly in place.
“He was charged with assault and violation of gun laws.”
“I thought you arrested him for killing Shannell.” The old woman’s eyes were hidden by the now slightly shaking veil. Her lips folded inward, holding back.
Salt reached out her right hand without touching Sister. “Sister Connelly, you remember that you told me Shannell picked flowers from your yard to give to Mary when she would visit?” she spoke to Sister’s lips beneath the veil.
“Did I tell you that? Well, it’s true then.” Sister crossed her arms, holding her pocketbook and Bible in front of her waist.
“I went back and looked at the crime scene photos. There were wilted wisteria blooms scattered on the floor. I remembered the smell. Did you see her pick the flowers? Did she say Mary was coming that day?”
Sister Connelly’s hand with the Bible rose and she pressed it close to her chest. “Ain’t you seen enough evil? Why you got to go lookin’ for more? I’m truly tired of it. You’d think God would come on and send us the Savior.”
“Did God send a savior for Shannell? Was there a chance for her and she just didn’t take it? I’m just trying to do my job. Did you see Mary at Shannell’s the day before, like Stone said?”
“You think Mary might have seen who killed her mother? Then why wouldn’t she tell it?” The old woman dropped her arms to her sides. All kinds of little dried flowers fell from the Bible. Sister snapped it shut. “Just leave ’em.” Sister turned and took a few heavy steps back toward the church, not toward her house down the street.
“I don’t know the answers,” said Salt. Sister’s back was to her. “Maybe she was afraid. Did Shannell say Mary was coming? Did you see Mary that day?”
The old woman, armed with the Bible and scars, turned and took one step back. “Why I got to be the one to bear witness? What do you want?”
“I want it to stop. I’m
going to talk to Mary again and I need more than Stone’s say-so that she was there the day her mother was killed. I need to be sure. She’s a child who may have witnessed her mother’s murder. I have to be sure. I can’t take a chance that I’d hurt her more than she’s already been hurt.”
Some church members turned toward them with brows wrinkled and narrowed eyes. Some knew Salt. “Sister, I swore an oath when I took this job. Old-fashioned as it might sound, I feel a sacredness about it, like I’ve been given a trust, a legacy, you might say. Mary isn’t just a piece of a problem to me. I swore to protect and defend her, you, Lil D, even Man and Stone.” She paused, pressed her palm to the scar in her hair. “But I can’t do it alone.”
“Can I be of assistance, Sister?” The minister close at hand now. “Officer Salt?”
Sister Connelly turned her veiled head, looking at the other members of the congregation. She looked past them and the minister to the stone church and the window of James the Martyr. “No,” she answered him, then turned to face Salt. “There’s no problem. This police officer has the answers. She just doesn’t know which ones.” She lifted the veil. The dark, dark skin of her face reflected the sun and the years. The deep paths under her eyes were running like old creeks. She wiped a finger under each eye. Her chest rose and fell. “Salt,” she said, “the truth may set us free but it also binds us. I’ve tangled with truth before.” She patted her chest where the white dress covered her. “You have to be mighty careful how you unravel a mystery. You go pulling one thing and we all feel a tug. We’re all bound together.
“Do you want me to tell you the answer you already know? I did see Shannell the day before she was found, on the top stairs to her place, where that screen door hangs. And her daughter had wisteria in her arms.”
38.
ANOTHER VICTIM
The children tumbled out of the school bus doors into the sunlight, stumbling into one another, doubling up in the doors, jumping and tripping over themselves in their excitement to be free. Salt watched from the porch of the McCloud house. Mary Marie was again the last off the bus. Mary eyed a group of girls stopped on the sidewalk in front of her, slapping their look-alike sneakers on the pavement, trying to make squeaking noises. She stayed back, didn’t pass, but reached down to pull up white ankle socks that had been eaten by her brown loafers.
At her vigil on the porch, Salt’s legs gave way and she sat down with a thud. Mary was so marked. She took a deep breath and entertained a brief fantasy of having Wonder herd all the children to include the girl.
The sidewalk girls giggled and cast coy eyes outside their circle to see if anyone worth noticing was noticing them. They covered their mouths and elbowed one another, laughing at laughing. Mary hunched her shoulders to get past, on the edge of the sidewalk. They didn’t seem to notice the black sheep, like Salt—a child who was kept separate—like The Homes, cut apart from the city. As Mary passed, another girl with long coltish legs in a short pleated skirt parted from the group and started down the sidewalk almost beside Mary.
“What you know anyway?” the girl, grinning, called back to the others.
Following behind, Mary matched her step for step, her socks slipping down again. Her focus was so intent on the girl that she almost passed by her own house but pulled up when she noticed the police car. She glanced in the car, then looked up on her porch and saw Salt. She canted her head then watched as the receding girl turned the corner, out of sight.
Images of Wonder watching the new lambs, holding them gently with only his eyes, came to Salt again. He was tender while they were learning their legs. It didn’t take much to make them skittish, to send them into an uncertain run, dangerously bolting. Salt wished she had a way for Mary to learn what to hurry toward and when to stay back.
“My grandmother told you not to come here again,” Mary said, her face flat, her eyes hooded. She came up the steps. Her braided hair looked painfully tight, her clothes too clean for a twelve-year-old who had just come home from being at school all day. The slipping socks were the only things out of place.
“Should we wait for her?”
Mary swung the backpack from her shoulders and sat it down. “Know what?” She unzipped it and took out a large black three-ring binder. “I keep all my tests from the beginning of school till the end.” She balanced the open notebook in her left hand while flipping the dividers with her right. “We worked on fractions today in Math. I got all ten problems right the first time. I always make one hundreds on my tests. I show my notebook to my grandmother every school day. You see? I make As in English, Social Studies, and History.” She looked up from the notebook, looked down once more at her schoolwork, and closed the binder.
Salt stood beside her, her boots heavy on the wood planks. Mary handed Salt the notebook and left her pack where she’d dropped it. “It doesn’t matter, does it,” she said as she unlocked the front door. The cheap socks were halfway gone into her shoes. Salt picked up the pack, tucked the binder under her arm, and went in behind Mary.
Inside the door the girl slipped off her shoes, straightened her socks, and watched Salt put the backpack and notebook down beside her loafers.
“You did it wrong. That doesn’t go there. You better not knock my shoes against the wall.” She turned down the hall. “Are your shoes off?” Mary said over her shoulder.
“Not this time,” Salt said, mostly to herself. “I can’t.”
The girl turned into a room to the left. The house was close and airlessly warm. When Salt came to the doorway she found Mary standing in front of a dresser mirror, holding her arms wrapped around herself, shivering. The room was all white: walls, bedspread, throw rugs, and a picture of a white Jesus hanging above the bed. Salt unloaded the books. As she placed the books on a white desk, Mary came over, patting them as you would a dog, and began to arrange them, weighing each book in her hands, then stacking them according to size. “What you know anyway?” Her voice sounded high up in her throat, a parody of the girls she’d left at the bus stop. With Salt following, she marched out down the hall and into the sterile kitchen that was filled with so much light it was hard to see through.
“I know you were there that day, Mary. The flowers. I know your mother gave you the flowers like she always did.”
The girl went to the kitchen sink and grabbed the rim hard with both hands, holding on, the shivers turning into a tremble.
“The wisteria was on the floor.” Salt pushed on, matching Mary’s stiffening muscles with her own body loosening to the point that she felt her bones disappearing.
Mary bent over the sink and began to heave. But it was words she brought up. “I asked her, it was Mother’s Day, the next day.” She turned and there was a strand of spittle coming from one corner of her mouth. “I asked her to let me come live with her, to be my mother.” She wiped her hand across her mouth and started to choke. Then her eyes widened suddenly and focused past Salt’s shoulder.
Salt turned.
Mrs. McCloud was in the doorway. “I told you. Go past my door; you’re not to be in my house.” She headed straight toward Mary. “What you tellin’ this cop?” Her voice echoed. “What have you been telling?”
The light from the window was brilliant, hitting the floor in a wavy shimmer. Mrs. McCloud came through the light at Salt, who put a hand up, against the grandmother’s chest, to hold her back. In the halt, her fingers struck and hit something hard beneath the old woman’s dress, an old-fashioned corset. Mrs. McCloud startled at Salt’s hand, drawing quick breaths into her hard chest. No one spoke. Her chest heaved against Salt’s palm. Slapping at Salt’s arm: “Get out,” she said.
Salt didn’t move, the feel of the old woman’s corset still impressed on her fingertips. The house was very quiet. Salt still stood between the old woman and the girl. She directed her words to both, but facing Mrs. McCloud she said, “Tell me the rest, Mary. You tried the first time I was here.�
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Mary’s words floated up. “She’d picked those ugly purple flowers.” The afternoon sun struck through the kitchen windows, yellow bars pinning the three of them in place. Mary turned toward the window with her back to them. “Wisteria’s not real flowers, they’re vines. They fall apart before I even get home. She give them to me because she don’t even know what are real flowers. I feel ashamed of her and mad at me ’cause I was ashamed. I’m mad at me and her.” Mary sounded like a little girl. “Her hair was all sticking up. I could see her head in places where she didn’t have hair.”
The grandmother pounded her fist against her hard chest. “Don’t she have the right to remain silent?”
Salt, fingers shaking, fumbled the Miranda card out of her pocket and recited mostly from memory, her voice like it belonged to someone else, “You have the right . . .” When she asked, “Do you wish to speak to me at this time?” the final question on the back of the card, Mary turned and looked straight at her grandmother, standing her distance, her voice loud, so distinct, like someone in the last seconds of a spelling bee, and said, “I will for me and my mother.”
“She wasn’t no mother, she was a whore,” Mrs. McCloud growled.
“Mrs. McCloud, you have the right to remain silent.”
Mary turned to the sink and lifted her head to the window above it. “That’s why she wouldn’t let me come live with her. You made her believe what you said, that she was no good. She believed you, Nana. Why she said no. She said, ‘You know your nana says this is no place for a child to be.’ Her arms were all snappy and she was knocking things over, trying to find a jar for the flowers. All her head bopping, I wanted her to be still, to quit banging around.” Mary put her right hand over her eyes, blocking her view.
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