Death's Echoes

by Penny Mickelbury

  “About this Sunset View mess you dropped in our laps,” Gianna began.

  “It may be a bigger mess than we first thought,” Mimi said, interrupting her.

  “What could possibly be a bigger mess than cops taking over a woman’s home and raping her?”

  “The two sons of another woman who haven’t been seen in days, not since another of the cops moved in with her.”

  Gianna looked at her like she’d grown an ear in the middle of her face where her nose should be. “Say what?”

  And Mimi explained how Alfreda Tompkins had initiated the contact with the police because she was having problems with her sons, whose behavior was changing from boys-will-be-boys antics to quasi-criminality. “Two officers came initially, Virgie said, and they just kept coming, every day, one hanging out at Alfreda’s to help with her sons—”

  “Wait a minute,” Gianna interrupted. “Who said he was helping with her sons? What did he do to help them? Did anyone see him helping them?”

  “Virgie said Alfreda told her that Dexter—that’s the cop’s name, Dexter Davis—could have arrested the boys for vandalism but didn’t because he wanted to help them.”

  Gianna’s face morphed into what Mimi called “Lieutenant Mode.” “All right. Then what?”

  “Then he became a fixture at Alfreda’s, and Virgie said nobody has seen the boys. At the same time, Phil moved in on Sonia. Those were her words, how she described it: that he moved in on her, he chose her because she was Latina and he was Latino—”

  “Didn’t they complain?” Gianna asked. “Didn’t they call the station house and complain?”

  Mimi nodded. “That’s when the sergeant came and he moved in on a couple of the women. He didn’t stay with anyone the way Dexter and Phil did. Seems he liked to rotate.”

  Gianna picked up the tape dispenser and threw it across the room. It bounced off the wall, leaving a deep gash. The roll of tape flew off, hit the file cabinet, and rolled under the chair. She got up to pace but there wasn’t enough room so she sat back down. Mimi watched her closely. There was more on Gianna’s mind than whatever was happening at Sunset View, but Mimi could only wait to find out what that was. And thankfully Gianna didn’t make her wait too long. When she heard what it was, Mimi almost wished Gianna hadn’t been so forthcoming so soon. This job already was taking its toll. She could see, could feel, Gianna being pulled in at least two different directions—toward her natural inclination to help women and children at risk, and toward her desire to want all cops to be righteous, and to despise those who weren’t and who abused their authority. Then there was a third pull, the one that made the lieutenant in her feel responsible for all the outcomes. Mimi wasn’t liking this at all.

  “Will you be all right, love?”

  “I have no choice in the matter, though I may need a new definition of ‘all right.’ Work on that for me, will you please?”

  “Anything for you, as you know. But . . . I need a couple of favors, too?”

  “Of course you do,” Gianna said with a grin, and spread her hands.

  “Will you see if Alfreda Tompkins’ boys are in the system, either as adults or juveniles?”

  Gianna nodded. “And Mimi, will you set up a meeting with Virgie and Sonia?”

  “Ah, sure,” Mimi said. “When?”

  “Within the next couple of hours,” Gianna said, “so they can meet their new relatives and/or best friends, Alice Long and Linda Lopez, who’ll be moving in with them.”

  Mimi was startled. “Moving in when?”

  “This evening,” Gianna said, giving her a quick kiss and rushing off to put the finishing touches on her plans for the rest of the day.

  They were meeting in the Hate Crimes Unit office until they were told they couldn’t, which Gianna expected would be sooner rather than later. Office space was at a premium and she and her new team were expected to use their new, larger space. But for the time being, she, Eric and the new sergeant, Thomasina Bell, had to review the personnel files of the new team members. There were twelve of them, thirteen including Sergeant Bell, who, Eric had told her, was first rate. “You’ll like her, Boss. And she’s called Tommi.”

  “Do you know any of these people, Tommi?” Gianna asked as she paged through the files.

  Tommi shook her head. “I don’t, Lieutenant. I think whoever picked these people wanted to be certain there were no connections, no ties.”

  Gianna frowned, thinking of Jim Dudley and Tony Watkins, both of whom she knew and had worked with. And she had her original team, which she saw as the core of the new unit. And, she thought, perhaps that was the Chief’s point; after all, she was certain that he had hand-picked the new unit, as certain as she was that he wanted her to expand her reach. This was his way of making sure she did. She studied Tommi Bell. Like Eric, she was a few years older than the rest. She might even have a couple of years on Eric. And like him, she exuded efficiency and confidence. Eric had told her that Tommi was a personnel and HR specialist, which Gianna was grateful for since the number of people who answered to her had tripled, literally overnight. “Tell me, Tommi, please, what I need to know about these new people,” Gianna said with a smile.

  “Shall I begin with myself, Loo?” she asked.

  Gianna shook her head. “Eric already told me he’s keeping you, so the others.”

  Tommi smiled and blushed, something Gianna wouldn’t have thought possible for a dark-skinned Black woman—and she’d have been mistaken. Sgt. Tommi was back to businesslike in a nanosecond: The other twelve team members were six women and six men, with a detective each. Four of them were gay. “Do you want me to tell you which ones?”

  Gianna shook her head. “I don’t need to know. At least not right now. But tell Eric and he’ll tell me when I need to know.”

  “OK. We’ve got three Black, three white, three Spanish-speaking—”

  Gianna interrupted. “What’s that mean? They’re Latino, right?”

  Tommi was shaking her head. “They may share a language but they’re as culturally different as . . . well, as people from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Mexico are different. But D.C. natives, all of them.”

  Now Gianna was frowning. “I thought the largest Spanish-speaking population in D.C. was Salvadoran,” she said. Tommi was nodding in agreement. “So why isn’t one of these new people Salvadoran?”

  The new sergeant gave her a steady look. “I take it you know who put this group together? That would be a question for him.”

  One I sure as hell will be asking, Gianna thought as she signaled for Tommi to continue with the details of the new Unit: Three were ex-military, and the group as a whole had experience in white-collar crime, vice, gangs and drugs. There was even one from harbor patrol. “And, last but not least, there’s our resident techie,” she finished with a smile.

  “Officer Jennings. Yes, I met him yesterday,” Gianna said. “Good, is he?”

  “Among the best,” Tommi said.

  “Then he and Kenny should get along splendidly,” Gianna said. “Or not.”

  “I saw them early this morning,” Eric said, “and they looked quite happy.”

  “And several of them are social media experts, fluent in all the platforms including YouTube and Instagram and . . . and whatever else there is.”

  “Oh, lord, yes!” Gianna exclaimed with an almost comical expression. “I don’t ever want a repeat of the mistakes I made around the Snatch and the Pink Panther! Eric, make sure—”

  “I’m on it, Boss, and I’ll fill Tommi in.”

  Gianna stood up. “Thank you, Tommi, and welcome aboard. I’m looking forward to working with you.” She was headed for the door when she stopped, frowned. “You stopped at nine. Who are the other three?”

  Tommi laughed out loud. “You’re even better than they say, Loo. Middle-Eastern heritage, one of them a Muslim. Pakistan, India, and Israel.”

  “Then let’s go meet ’em.”

  “Hello, everybody, and welcome to whatever it is
we are. A friend suggested we call ourselves the Swoop Unit, since that’s kind of what we’ll be doing—swooping in to correct or repair or whatever else is necessary to make right a wrong. Sounds simple, I know, but it will be anything but. You know what we’re already working on so you know there’s nothing simple about any of it. It may also not be to everyone’s liking because we may sometimes be standing with our toes on the line, or even over the line, outside the letter of the law. When we take down the doors of that sex-trafficking warehouse, our focus—my focus—will be on putting a stop to the sale and systematic rape of twelve- and-thirteen-year-old girls.”

  “What happens when people—the public—complain that maybe we violated the rights of the people who own the warehouse when we take down their doors?” one of her new team members asked.

  The public can screw themselves, Cassie said before she could respond, and Gianna offered a grim grin to recover her equilibrium. “We make certain the public knows the average age of the girls being sold for sex in the warehouse. We make certain the public knows how many times a day the girls are raped. We make certain the public knows the girls are systematically drugged and, if this place operates like others in the rest of the world, they’re rarely fed and barely clothed. We make certain the public knows that most of the girls are smuggled into this country illegally, and that the men who buy and sell them more often than not are here illegally as well.”

  “So you’re saying the ends justify the means?” the young officer asked.

  Damn straight! Cassie said. Gianna said, “There was a time when I’d have said absolutely not!”

  “So what changed?” He followed up his question like a reporter at a press conference.

  “The world, and me with it,” Gianna replied as she looked down at the piece of paper Tommi Bell had slid before her. Ofc. Randall Connally. He came from Harbor Patrol. “I knew that what’s happening inside that Broad Street warehouse happened in the rest of the world, but it didn’t happen here. Not on my watch. Now it does, and that’s not all right with me. Just like what’s happening at the Sunset View apartments is not all right with me.” She waited for them to shift gears and to grasp what they were being told: The next takedown by the Swoop Unit would be dirty cops.

  “How certain are we about the facts at Sunset View?” Sergeant Bell asked, and Gianna knew what she really was asking: Are those cops really dirty? Gianna also knew why her new sergeant asked the question: because her new team members weren’t yet comfortable enough to ask their Boss the tough questions, but they really wanted to know.

  “Ninety-five percent certain, but we’ll be 100 percent certain before we move.” She stopped and looked around the room, meeting as many pairs of eyes as would meet hers. “Let me say this right now: I realize that a unit like this isn’t for everyone, and anyone who’s not comfortable can go, no questions asked, no recriminations. You walk away clean, as if you were never assigned here. But if you remain, you’ll do the job that’s asked of you, and you’ll give it everything you’ve got, every time. Am I clear?” There was no sound in the room. “Am I clear?” Gianna said again, and there was no mistaking the fact that she expected an answer.

  A chorus of, yes, ma’ams and yes, Bosses rang out through the room. “Anybody who’s leaving, see one of your sergeants in private. You know who they are: Sgt. Eric Ashby and Sgt. Thomasina Bell, and they’re always available to you—to any and all of you for any reason.”

  “Can I ask one more question, Loo?” This from the one who asked about the rights of the warehouse owners.

  “Of course you may, Officer Connally,” and she had to work hard to keep a straight face at his reaction to her knowledge of his name. It took him a moment to get himself together, and when he did, he asked, “How is what we’re doing at Sunset View different from what IAD does?”

  The question truly surprised her but she tried not to show it. “The job of Internal Affairs is to investigate police misconduct. That is not our job. We’re not investigating the cops there.”

  “Then why are we going in there?”

  “So that the people who live there, and the people who know them, work with them, and are related to them, aren’t left with the impression that calling the cops is a mistake. Yes, we’ll remove the dirty cops, but we’ll also make sure people see that it’s cops who’re making it right. I’d really like to see people take cops off the list of people they hate.” Gianna stopped for a moment and looked around the room, making it a point to meet the eyes of her erstwhile team. “I may no longer be running the Hate Crimes Unit—there no longer is a Hate Crimes Unit—but I did not stop caring about or worrying about what hatred does to us when my job title changed.”

  “Boss?”

  “Yes, Tim?”

  “Are you saying we’ll still be able to deal with the assholes who hurt the people they hate?”

  “As long as I have breath and a badge, Tim.”

  Way to go, Boss! Cassie said in Gianna’s brain as Tim stood up and broke his six-foot-four-inch weightlifter’s body into the queenly stance he used to confuse and confound the unsuspecting—in this case, practically everyone in the room. “That’s a real relief, your High Bossness,” he crooned. Jim Dudley broke the shocked spell with a loud guffaw, followed by a dash across the room to envelop Tim in a bear hug.

  “I’ve heard about this performance, but it’s my first in-person sighting! Believe me, seeing it is so much better than just hearing about it!” he enthused.

  “Well thank you, Detective Dudley, sir. Now, if it’s all the same to you, let’s go get those baby-raping assholes in that warehouse!” Tim growled, looking every bit like the hulking weightlifter and nothing like the mincing queen. Gianna still marveled at the transformation, and she’d been watching it for years. And hearing about the price paid by the macho types foolish enough to disparage Tim’s sexuality.

  “You lead, McCreedy, and I’ll proudly and happily follow!” Jim Dudley said, and Gianna knew he meant it.

  “Well, before you two go charging off, I need to meet with you, Jim, and Eric and Tommi, to formulate and plan and assign staffing. My office, fifteen minutes.” She surveyed the room again. “A number of you will be assigned to Metro GALCO—Tommi and Eric will make those assignments—and Tim will debrief. He thinks there’s a possible threat and I trust his instincts.”

  Eric, Tommi and Jim Dudley followed her to her office—how much longer will this be my office? she wondered—and closed the door, each of them taking a seat and giving her their complete attention. “Let’s get this thing operational, Jim. I don’t want another girl to die on our watch.”

  “On your ‘go,’ Boss.”

  “Get necessary medical personnel and any law enforcement support you think you’ll need, and use the Phillips warehouse as your staging location. How do you plan to take the door?”

  “Gonna blow it, Boss,” Dudley said, and hastened to explain at the look on her face. “It’s a steel door, and they’ve got better and tighter security than any bank. We can’t knock and announce. We gotta take ’em by surprise.”

  “Will any of the girls be collateral damage?”

  “Negative,” Dudley said, shaking his head. “They’re too far away from the front door to be harmed.”

  Gianna stood up. “Give me a written report of your needs and your plan before you leave tonight.”

  “How late will you be here?” Dudley asked, and he blinked when Gianna laughed—all the answer he needed. He got up and left, and she turned her attention to Tommi and Eric.

  “Do we have enough people to do what we need to do?”

  “Depends on how many bodies Dudley needs,” Tommi said.

  “He’s talking about blowing doors and staging a major assault,” Gianna said. “I’ll get the appropriate bodies from the Chief. And Eric, I don’t want Tim hurt even though he and Jim think he’s some version of the Incredible Hulk.”

  Eric nodded, then shared a look with Tommi. “We can cover the other stuff as
long as no major shit hits the fan.”

  “From your lips to God’s ears,” Gianna said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Virgie Barrett had told Mimi more than once that Alfreda Tompkins probably wouldn’t talk to her but now that Mimi knew for certain, thanks to Gianna, that the Tompkins boys were not guests of the juvenile justice system, the burning question was: Where were they? She absolutely had to ask Alfreda and hear her answer. Virgie was certain that Alfreda didn’t know, and she was deeply suspicious that the cop they knew as DD almost certainly did know where the boys were, and for Mimi the “where” was less crucial than the “why.” Was a dirty D.C. cop named DD doing to little boys what some Eastern European shitheads were doing to little girls in a Broad Street warehouse? And did the boys’ mother have the answers? Mimi had to confront Alfreda Tompkins, but not at home. At work, where perhaps she’d be a little less fearful and a bit more forthcoming.

  “I have to think she’ll talk to you,” Joe said, “even if she’s afraid. She has to want to know what’s happening to her boys! She has to be more fearful for them than she is for herself, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think, Joe, and that’s part of the problem I’m having. If we follow the ‘mothers will do any- and everything for their children’ script, then yes,” Mimi said.

  “Everything we’ve seen and heard from and about these women follows that script, Mimi. You do agree, right? Or don’t you?”

  “I would if any of this made any sense, but it doesn’t. These women did the right thing when faced with trouble: They called the cops. Where do you turn when it’s a cop who scares you?”