All Things Hidden

by Judy Candis

  “Or something.” Jael would have to check the files, but the only way she could have missed this was if the murder had been in another jurisdiction. “Did you know Zap Man?”

  “Not personally, but you don’t live on this side of the track without hearing the names of the more notorious ones.” Rhonda moved to the refrigerator. “Want something to drink?”

  “Depends on what you’re offering.”

  Rhonda laughed. “You know I’m real proud of you, Jael. Once you made up your mind to leave the fast life behind, you stuck to it. Maybe someday I will follow your lead. But right now it would be like giving up sex. Even though I feel like sh . . . well, even though I don’t feel so hot this morning, it was worth it. Girl, we put one on last night! It was the bomb! There was so many folks in this house you couldn’t move. Even you would have enjoyed yourself.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But my success is based on avoiding certain situations, and lots and lots of prayer. I’ve told you time and time again, I couldn’t have done it alone. I—”

  “Okay, okay,” Rhonda interrupted. “No preaching this morning, all right? My head can’t take it. Your invitation to convert my lifestyle is branded on my brain. When I decide to give up the good life and start going to church with you, you’ll be the first to know.”

  Jael couldn’t help but laugh as she shook her head. “You’ll be surprised about what is really the ‘good life.’ Anyway, whenever you’re ready, the doors are open.”

  Rhonda shut the refrigerator and passed Jael a can of 7UP. “Well, at least we always have lots of chaser around.”

  “Is anyone talking about the killing?” Jael popped the tab and took a long swallow.

  “They will be after the news gets around. Two dealers in three weeks means somebody’s mad at somebody.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that.” Jael had to wonder how this tied in with the dealer they found last night. She’d check the files on her computer when she returned home, then give Sills a call and have him see what he could find out.

  Rhonda was now stacking another plate with potato salad and chicken wings. If she heard Jael groan, she ignored her as she covered both plates with foil and turned the conversation in another direction. “Toad invited this guy over, even though I told him you weren’t coming. But you know Toad, always bragging about you. You know, being a police detective and all and looking so fine to boot. But after this man he brought had a few drinks in him, girl, I wouldn’t have wanted him myself if I were single. Although he didn’t look too bad at first. But dang, can liquor make some people stupid. Brotha lost all his fine looks with each slurred word that came out his mouth. He was fuc . . . I mean drunk as a skunk. They had to carry the fool out of here.”

  Jael smiled, appreciating Rhonda’s attempts to curb her cursing around her. A few years back she’d had a long talk with Rhonda about cursing in front of LaTesha. Since then, Rhonda always watched her mouth when anyone four feet or under was present, though look out if she was drinking or in a foul mood. Still, Jael admired her efforts. “When will your husband stop trying to hook me up with men?”

  “Whenever you stop working so hard and realize Ramon needs a real father figure, not a police mom. And believe me, Jael, it’s not the same, sweetheart. And I don’t mean to get all up in your business but shh . . . shoot, girl, ain’t the physical needs there no more or what?”

  “Hey, I ain’t dead yet. But with my kind of job, you’re too busy to think about men.”

  “So I guess those things walking around in pants at the station don’t count as men? Ain’t no job out there could make me forget about a little hum-hum. Damn, Jael, all you work around is men. Do you ever stop and notice the difference?”

  Well, so much for curbing the foul language. In her need to express her thoughts on Jael’s incomprehensible celibacy, Rhonda hadn’t noticed the slip. “God’s got his time, Rhonda.”

  “Well, if for no other reason than to get you hooked up, I guess I’ll start doing some praying of my own.”

  Jael roared with laughter. “Whatever it takes. I guess God’s going to pull some unique strings to get you on your knees in prayer.”

  “Yeah, ain’t that the truth.”

  “Well, I’d better be going,” Jael said, rising from her seat and heading to the front of the house. “Don’t see many of these free weekends, you know.”

  Rhonda pushed the two plates at her cousin. “You’d better slow down and take it easy. You’re the only high-ranking black police officer we’ve got, you know, and female besides.”

  “You don’t stay on top taking it easy.” Jael had not mentioned the possible promotion to anyone outside the station; she’d wait until she had a definite reason to celebrate. Opening the door, Jael looked back at her cousin. “And if you hear anything about those murdered dealers, call me, will ya?”

  “Hey, you know I’m your eyes and ears on the street. But if there’s something I need to know for my own safety, make sure you tell me!”

  Chapter

  6

  During the drive home, Jael couldn’t get what Rhonda said about the other dealer out of her head. Was it possible the two murders were related? What were the dealers saying? After all, they would certainly have a better spin on this than outside spectators.

  With that thought, Jael made a sharp turn and headed in the opposite direction toward Main Street, a notorious hangout for drug dealers. Thankfully, she was in her Bronco instead of her unmarked car, though she knew that a few of the dealers recognized it anyway. Still, she hoped to talk to someone who could get this nagging itch out of her head—that there wasn’t a drug war going on in Dadesville.

  She didn’t need to be an officer of the law to know that this poison was a multibillion-dollar industry, seeping into every crevice of society. It spread like a virus. Not even small towns were immune—to that she could attest. Prior to her promotion to detective, she had thrown herself into being a street cop to prove she could handle the job, and the temptations. She had done almost two years of undercover narcotics work and learned to be a credible witness, known as an officer devoted to doing her job. Only solid evidence could convict, and Jael avoided the entrapment law by handling all her assignments strictly by the books.

  In less than five minutes, Jael was cruising down the South-side district of Dadesville, black folks’ downtown. Black-owned businesses were on either side of the street and people were already out in numbers. It was Saturday—a little breezy now, since the earlier humidity had given way to crisp gusts of chilled air, but Saturday, nonetheless. In another six hours, this street would be crawling with the partying crowd.

  Jael looked for a familiar face and just as she suspected, one was at the corner leaning against a trash barrel, overflowing with last night’s remnants. Jael pulled up slowly beside the curb.

  “Hey, Deke,” she said, leaning out the window.

  “Whoa, now, Detective Reynolds. I ain’t doing nothing but taking in the sun.” Deke did a little two-step as he backed away, his hands slightly raised in defense.

  Deke was just a small-time dealer, a corner boy who had yet to reach the status of “the man.” Though he wore at least two heavy platinum chains around his neck over an Orlando Magic jersey with shiny gray FUBU pants, he probably didn’t own much. Jael knew he lived with his girlfriend, who already had two kids and paid the majority of their bills.

  “No problem, just need to ask you a few questions.” Jael gave him what she intended as a reassuring smile. She still hoped to add Deke to her list of CIs—confidential informants. So far he wasn’t showing any interest.

  “Now you know that ain’t kosher. Can’t be seen talking to no vice.” Though his eyes shone with a hint of amusement, his skinny frame was instantly tense. He was a walking paradox. He wore his hair in short cornrows and his facial features had a baby-fresh look of innocence that threw most people off guard. In court, minus the earring and wearing the right suit and innocuous expression, he’d look like a coll
ege student awed by his arrest.

  “Would it make it easier if it looked like I was taking you down?”

  “For what?” A dumbfounded look crossed his handsome face. “Y’all always messing with folks.”

  “Just one question, around the side, and then I’m outta here.” Jael tilted her head sideways with a “you can’t deny me this” smile.

  Deke pursed his lips and glanced up and down the street as if looking for oncoming traffic. Jael suspected he was debating whether to make a dash for it. She decided to help him make up his mind.

  “I know where you live.”

  Rolling his eyes, Deke shrugged his shoulders and defeatedly moved toward the backside of the old laundry building. Jael did a hasty U-turn and parked on the other side of the road. She locked her Bronco and casually moved across the street as if she were a part of the afternoon scene. She certainly looked the part in snug stonewashed jeans, K-Swiss sneakers and a red and white Old Navy pullover.

  Deke was waiting near the Dumpster with his back turned in case anyone saw them.

  To his back, Jael said, “I just need to know if you heard about the dealer killed over on 10th Street a couple of weeks ago.”

  This was safe ground. Deke turned toward her, his hands playing with the cell he had pulled out of his pocket to camouflage their meeting. His fingers ran nonchalantly across the face of the portable phone, never pressing the SEND button.

  “Hey, who hasn’t?” His smart-aleck inflection quickly changed to a look of astonishment when Jael continued to silently stare at him. “You don’t think I did it?!”

  “Did you?”

  “Hell, Zap Man was my dog. We often pooled our funds for . . . for certain business deals.”

  “Any idea who might have?”

  Flabbergasted, Deke twisted the side of his mouth. “And you think I’d tell you if I did?”

  “If your butt was on the line.”

  “Hey, don’t know nothing, ain’t heard nothing. So stopping me was a waste of time.” Deke pocketed the cell phone to indicate their little session was over.

  “He wasn’t the only one, you know.”

  When he looked at her again, his expression said he did know and that he’d been thinking just that. He quickly regrouped with a nonchalant air. “Hey, what can I say, it’s the kind of life they lead.”

  “But what if he’s not the last?”

  This also got his attention. It seemed Deke had been doing some serious thinking on this matter and probably had a lot of questions of his own. Of course, Jael had no illusions Deke was about to make her his new confidant.

  “All I need to know is if there’s some kind of vendetta going on with the drug boys.”

  “Hell, Detective, you’re Homicide. It’s dangerous just looking at you.” To reinforce his statement, Deke took a nervous glance around them. Though it was even cooler in the shade of the building, Jael noticed a sheen of sweat across his brow.

  “If it’s not a vendetta, then we may have a serial killer on our hands.” This thought hadn’t occurred to her before, but if there was no gang war going down, then what else? A vigilante killer?

  Obviously this was one line of thought that hadn’t crossed Deke’s mind, either. It put a whole new twist on things.

  “Well, it ain’t no vendetta. Both brothas worked for Big Jake, and so I hear he was pissed like a motha.” With that, he decided he had said enough and took off swiftly down the opposite end of the alley, without even a good-bye. The interview was over.

  Jael’s thoughts were racing. Two dealers popped, no rival drug war supposedly going down; plus, she hadn’t missed the fact that Deke was suddenly scared to death, and not of the police.

  Chapter

  7

  Less than an hour and a half later, Jael was on her stomach searching under Ramon’s bed, hoping to find at least two pairs of matching socks. That boy could lose more socks, so getting him brand names like Spiderman and Nike wasn’t working out. She’d have to resort to her old standby, all white.

  After leaving Deke, it had crossed her mind to ride around and look up Big Jake, though it could take hours just to locate his latest hideout; to avoid police scrutiny, the dealer moved around a lot. Then again, she’d decided, it probably made more sense to have more info under her belt about the other dead guy before approaching Big Jake. The man could fiddle with your mind if you weren’t up to par, and it would be a wasted trip if she didn’t have the right information to fire back at him. So instead of driving around in circles, she’d come home, choosing to throw a load in the washer before going on the Web to see what she could learn about the other killing.

  “There,” she said in triumph as she found another match. Two dirty Nikes and a pair of Adidas. For just a second, as she eased herself from beneath the bed, she thought of pulling one of her mother’s old tricks and make Ramon gather everything from under his bed in one big pile and then let him sort through all the junk. But of course, if she didn’t stand over him every minute of the process, socks would end up in the trash, never to be seen again.

  Rising to her feet, Jael looked around her son’s room. His bed was still made, in that haphazard way of his. Lumps poked everywhere under his NFL All-Star comforter. The pillow still had indentations where his head had lain. Jael reached over and fluffed the pillow and pulled the spread a bit tighter.

  The action caused her to remember the time he had pulled the pillow to the floor to pad his knees while saying his nightly prayers. He’d bruised them pretty badly at karate practice that day and was still nursing tender and scraped skin. Like a champ, though, he was never whiny.

  “Momma, you think they do things like play ball and eat pizza in heaven?”

  “Well, if God is a loving Father, what do you think?”

  Ramon had been silent for a moment, his head turned slightly as he looked up at her from his position on the floor, his fingers folded together on the bedspread.

  “Well, maybe He won’t let us eat a lot of pizza because it’s not healthy for you all the time, but ball—man, I hope they play sports up there.”

  “Well, think about this just before you go to sleep,” Jael said, sitting on the bed. “If Jesus came to earth to give us life and to give it more abundantly, wouldn’t heaven be even more than what we have here on earth?”

  “I certainly hope so. I mean sometimes I think heaven might be kind of boring.”

  Jael had laughed. “I seriously doubt that.”

  It had been a topic that came up often. Though Ramon was a good student and had never had trouble in school, Jael had eventually transferred him to a Christian school not far from their home, making it easier for him to socialize with other kids who would help reinforce his new attitude toward life.

  Looking around his bedroom now, she knew that, though financially it may have been a little tight, it had been a good decision. Certainly Virgil liked and supported the idea of “private school.” It was another thing to boast about to his friends.

  Just overhead was a built-in bookcase Virgil had put up years ago, cluttered now with robots and spacecraft, a children’s Bible, several Early Reader Books, and things Jael couldn’t even put a name to. Around the walls were posters of The Rock and other WWF wrestlers, his favorite basketball stars, Phase II, Mary Mary and the empty space where she’d made Ramon take down the picture of a well-known rapper. Though she didn’t consider herself fanatically strict, she made sure her son understood some things would not be tolerated in their home. One of those things was a foulmouthed rapper, no matter what his claim to fame.

  Ramon’s dresser was just as loaded with schoolbooks and sheets of lined paper, showcasing his fourth-grade scrawl and a recent photo of his dad Virgil had framed and delivered himself, looking for all the world like the smug bug he was. Jael sneered at the photo before leaving the room.

  Taking the socks and pants she’d gathered earlier, she headed for the washer and dryer in the little room behind the kitchen. She tossed in the cloth
ing, dumped in some Purex and twisted the knob to WASH. The rhythmic sound of the washer was pleasingly hypnotic. This would be a great time, she thought, to turn on the CD player, kick back and listen to some contemporary gospel as she whiled away the hours indulging in selfish fantasies. She resisted the temptation. Maybe later.

  Moving to the refrigerator, she reached in and pulled out a Caffeine Free Pepsi, her latest addiction. Popping the lid, she strolled into the den, where the computer sat on a Wal-Mart self-assemble wooden desk, a postdivorce accomplishment.

  Jael took a sip of the caramel fluid, then sat before the computer. Turning on the PC, she clicked the mouse to bring up the DPD file. Entering her password, ROMY, Jael began a search of all recent homicides in neighboring districts.

  After about fifteen minutes, she found what she was looking for: the homicide report on Bartholomew Walker, alias Zap Man, a twenty-seven-year-old Dadesville native.

  The entry date of the report was less than two and a half weeks earlier, processed by a Sergeant Donald Nichols. Jael jotted the name on a piece of paper. She would contact the officer later and get a personal accounting. Different districts often worked together, sharing information on various cases, and she’d worked with this particular one on several occasions.

  Scrolling down the report, she read how the body had been discovered in an alley off 10th Street behind the Walgreens a block away from 32nd Avenue. The victim had been shot three times in the chest, just like her boy. According to the report, Dr. Larry Steinberg recovered three slugs during the postmortem, which were now secured in District Five’s property room.

  And just as with her boy, listed under confiscated evidence retrieved at the scene was a large amount of cash—$2,150, to be exact—and two kilos of powdered cocaine, plus a spent .38-caliber slug, a pair of metal-framed sunglasses and a dirty white pillowcase. This information brought a frown to Jael’s brow. Yeah, maybe during the last incident the assailant feared getting caught, she thought, but what was his excuse in this case? Was the murderer opposed to drugs and drug money? How ironic would that be? None of it added up. There was a pattern here, but what did it mean?