Bone White

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Here the seasonal gloom has felt oppressive and depressing.

  Emerson watches the undertakers finish the job and load their equipment into a van. After they drive off, she makes her way between neat rows of tombstones to inspect the raked dirt rectangle.

  When something is over, you move on, her father told her when she left home nearly two decades ago. She attended Cal State Fullerton with scholarships and maximum financial aid, got her master’s at Berkeley, and landed a teaching job in the Bay Area.

  But she didn’t necessarily move on.

  Every holiday, many weekends, and for two whole months every summer, she makes the six-hour drive down to stay with her father. She cooks and cleans for him, and at night they sit together and watch Wheel of Fortune reruns.

  It used to be because she craved a connection to the only family she had in the world. Lately, though, it was as much because Jerry Mundy needed her.

  He pretended that he didn’t, that he was taking care of himself and the house, too proud to admit he was failing. He was a shadow of his former self when he died at seventy-six, leaving Emerson alone in the world.

  Throughout her motherless childhood, Emerson was obsessed with novels about orphans. Treasure Island shared coveted space on her bookshelf with Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, The Witch of Blackbird Pond . . .

  She always wondered what would happen to her if her father died. Would she wind up in an orphanage? Would a kindly stranger take her in? Would she live on the streets?

  Now that it’s happened, he’s down there, in the dirt . . . moving on?

  She’ll never again hear his voice. She’ll never see the face so like her own that she can’t imagine she inherited any physical characteristic from her mother, Didi—though she can’t be certain.

  Years ago, she asked her father for a picture—preferably one that showed her mother holding her as a baby, or of her parents together. Maybe she wanted evidence that she and her father had been loved; that the woman who’d abandoned them had once been normal—a proud new mother, a happy bride.

  Or was it the opposite? Was she hoping to glimpse a hint that Didi Mundy was never normal? Did she expect to confirm that people—normal people—don’t just wake up one morning and choose to walk out on a husband and child? That there was always something off about her mother: a telltale gleam in the eye, or a faraway expression—some warning sign her father had overlooked. A sign Emerson herself would be able to recognize, should she ever be tempted to marry.

  But there were no images of Didi that she could slip into a frame, or deface with angry black ink, or simply commit to memory.

  Exhibit A: Untrustworthy.

  Sure, there had been plenty of photos, her father admitted unapologetically. He’d gotten rid of everything.

  There were plenty of pictures of her and Dad, though.

  Exhibit B: Trustworthy.

  Dad holding her hand on her first day of kindergarten, Dad leading her in an awkward waltz at a father-daughter middle school dance, Dad posing with her at high school graduation.

  “Two peas in a pod,” he liked to say. “If I weren’t me, I’d think you were.”

  She has his thick, wavy hair, the same dimple on her right cheek, same angular nose and bristly slashes of brow. Even her wide-set, prominent, upturned eyes are the same as his, with one notable exception.

  Jerry Mundy’s eyes were a piercing blue.

  Only one of Emerson’s is that shade; the other, a chalky gray.

  Beyond the plate-glass window, midtown Manhattan is moist, dark, and dirty, wriggling with fat-bellied tourists looking up at skyscraper spires, and pissed-off New Yorkers looking down as they scuttle for subway steps.

  Rush hour, and the pub is busier than usual. The regulars, mostly Long Island or Jersey-bound Penn Station commuters, are jammed alongside Billy Joel fans heading over to a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden a few blocks away.

  NYPD Missing Persons Detective Sullivan Leary and her longtime partner, Detective Stockton Barnes, arrived well ahead of the crowd and grabbed a pair of stools beneath the specials chalkboard. Two-for-one drafts till seven, along with free mini buffet—Swedish meatballs, lentil samosas, and crab rangoon in tinfoil chafing dishes.

  After days like this, happy hour is anything but for Sully and Barnes. Yes, they solve the vast majority of their missing persons cases. Some reports are false alarms, filed due to misunderstandings or missed connections. Some people disappear deliberately, despite their families’ insistence that there must be foul play. Spouses have affairs, kids run away, deadbeat parents abandon children.

  Those things happen every day. The missing either eventually find their way home, or resurface in far-flung locations.

  There are abductions and accidents, of course, and a few cases do end tragically. Usually, you can see it coming; steel yourself for the inevitable.

  That’s how it was today, on the case they just closed with the usual heap of paperwork before adjourning to the bar. It began forty-eight hours ago with a missing, possibly suicidal teenager and was resolved early this morning when someone discovered his body, wrists slit by his own hand, decomposing alongside goat carcasses behind a Chinatown restaurant. Sully anticipated it would end that way, but the kid’s parents did not. The note in his pocket was addressed to them—grief-stricken immigrants whom he blamed for a variety of slights, most, according to his siblings, imagined by a troubled young man.

  “This isn’t like you. Stop dwelling,” Barnes tells her when she wonders, not for the first time since they sat down, how the bereaved parents are going to sleep tonight—and for the rest of their lives.

  “I’m not dwelling. I’m just speculating.”

  “Bad idea. Move on, same as always.”

  Move on. Funny you should say that, Barnes . . .

  He’s provided her with the perfect opening to say what’s on her mind, but even now, she can’t quite bring herself to do it.

  “Excuse me, is this seat taken?” A statuesque brunette gestures at the vacant stool next to Barnes.

  “If it were taken, someone would have been sitting there,” Sully mutters to Barnes after he tells the woman that it’s open. “Anyway, I’m sitting here.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Never mind.”

  She watches the woman swivel her stool toward Barnes, ready to start a conversation.

  There was a time when Sully was irked by the assumption that she and Barnes are a couple. These days, it’s the opposite.

  Is it so hard to believe that a drop-dead gorgeous African-American man who can have his pick of nubile beauties might be romantically attached to the scrawny, middle-aged likes of Sully, with her Chee-tos and cream complexion?

  Apparently, it is. The brunette asks Barnes, “So, do you come here a lot?”

  Lame.

  Sully sips her barely touched Jameson, glad she swore off dating fellow cops after she divorced one.

  And it’s not as if she and Barnes have anything in common beyond the job. He’s worldly, gregarious, and charming. She prefers familiar places and faces and is . . . well, not so charming.

  “Hey, Sully, you want another drink?”

  “I just got this one,” she snarls at Barnes.

  Unruffled, he orders another for himself, and a chardonnay for the brunette.

  To his credit, he curtails the small talk with her and turns back to Sully. “Extra prickly tonight, aren’t we?”

  “Hell, no. I’m a freakin’ marshmallow.”

  “You? A marshmallow?” He throws back his head and laughs.

  Yeah, Sullivan Leary is no marshmallow—not tonight, not ever. Not after more than a decade as an NYPD detective, and not before, either.

  Raised in a no-frills, rowdy New York family, she’s quick-witted and quick-tempered, with a fierce sense of justice. She likes everything strong: her tea, her Irish whiskey, her men . . .

  Ah, but the strongest men in her life have shared
her blood and her law enforcement vocation. Others, particularly her ex-husband, proved weak.

  Barnes is not weak, and he isn’t family, which makes him . . .

  “I’m serious,” he says. “Something’s getting to you. Is it the case?”

  “This case? Today? No.” She scowls.

  “Then what?”

  Her cell phone rings before she can say what she’d been about to say when the brunette barged in.

  Looking down at her phone, she recognizes the 518 area code and Mundy’s Landing exchange, though not the last four digits. Earlier this month, she and Barnes devoted the better part of their Hudson Valley vacation to a missing persons investigation linked to a century-old unsolved murder case.

  Sully excuses herself and strides toward the door with her phone. Beyond the air-conditioned pub, cigarette-smoking bar patrons pollute a steamy, neon-lit canyon shadowed by concrete and steel towers. She sidesteps Helga, a neighborhood homeless woman who’s sleeping soundly on the sidewalk beside the closed metal gate of a notions and trimmings store. Her blanket is a torn garbage bag, her pillow a cardboard sign crookedly lettered with just two words: Help Me.

  Sully tries, often bringing her a sandwich or handing over what little money she herself can spare. It isn’t much—loose change, occasionally a dollar or two.

  “Good evening, Detective Leary,” a familiar voice says in Sully’s ear. “This is Miss Ora Abrams, curator of the Mundy’s Landing Historical Society.”

  She smiles, picturing the dainty elderly woman who wears her snow white hair in a Disney princess bun. “Nice to hear from you. How are you?”

  “Quite well, my dear. I’m calling with some news. You may recall that the society has offered fifty thousand dollars to the person who solves the Sleeping Beauty murders?”

  “You mean the Mundypalooza reward? I mean, for your event?” she amends, aware that Ora isn’t a fan of the colloquial term.

  Every summer for twenty-five years, the historical society extends an open invitation to amateur detectives to try their hand at solving the village’s century-old Sleeping Beauty murders.

  “Yes, I’ve just come from a meeting with the board of directors,” Ora goes on, “and we’ve decided that you deserve the reward.”

  Sully gasps a lungful of tobacco smoke and rotting Dumpster garbage. “But, Miss Abrams . . . I mean, I didn’t solve it.”

  “You were much closer than anyone else over the years, other than that dreadful person.”

  The dreadful person, of course, is Holmes, the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s twenty-first-century counterpart, who’d unlocked the historic case and then set out to duplicate the crimes.

  “If you’d had one more day,” Ora goes on, “you’d have figured it out.”

  One more day, and more innocent lives would have been lost. Two local families found a happy ending, but several others weren’t as fortunate.

  Fifty thousand dollars would buy a whole lot of . . .

  Freedom.

  But Sully forces herself to say the right thing. “The reward should go to Annabelle Bingham, Miss Abrams. She and her husband can use the money,” Sully points out—as if she can’t.

  But Annabelle and her family live at 46 Bridge Street, one of three Murder Houses targeted by both Holmes and the 1916 Sleeping Beauty Killer. She, too, had pieced together the original crimes and narrowly escaped becoming a copycat victim.

  “The Binghams suggested that the reward go to you. We all agree. It’s our way of thanking you for all you’ve done for Mundy’s Landing.”

  “But I didn’t do this alone. My partner was—”

  “Detective Barnes? A delightful man. Splendid suggestion.”

  “Suggestion?”

  “We’ll honor you both with the reward—two names on the check.”

  “I really think the Binghams deserve it, Miss Abrams. I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking all that money, and I know Detective Barnes won’t, either.”

  “In that case, we’ll divide it. Half the money will go to the Binghams, and the other half to you two.”

  “But—”

  “That’s the end of it. We’ll award the money at a ceremony next month. I hope you and Mr. Barnes will be able to join us.”

  “I’ll be there,” Sully promises.

  And not just for the ceremony.

  Hanging up, she puts her phone back into her pocket and takes out a couple of twenty-dollar bills. Bending over Helga’s sleeping form, she tucks the money alongside the woman’s withered hands that are clasped as if in prayer.

  Back in the bar, Barnes is, predictably, chatting with the brunette on the next stool. Seeing Sully, he breaks off to ask if everything’s okay.

  “Everything’s fine.” She reclaims her seat, picks up her drink, and swirls the amber liquid in her glass as the truth sinks in. “Everything’s great, actually.”

  “Excuse me, Stockton?” His new friend touches his arm. “Would you mind watching my wine while I go to the ladies’ room? You never know when someone might slip something into it.”

  “Is it just me, or was that wishful thinking?” Sully mutters as the woman walks away.

  “It’s just you. Who was on the phone?”

  “What would you say if I told you we just won a nice little jackpot?”

  “I’d ask if you were talking to the lottery.”

  “The lottery doesn’t call people.”

  “How would I know?”

  “You don’t play the lottery?”

  He shakes his head. “My money comes the old-fashioned way. I earn it.”

  “So you’re turning down your half of the twenty-five grand?”

  “What now?”

  She explains the situation quickly, concluding, “I told Ora they should just give the Binghams the entire thing.”

  “No, come on, Gingersnap, you need that money. You keep telling me you’ve been in credit card hell. Here’s your chance to buy your way out.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m spending my half on a real vacation to make up for the one I missed. You can come with me.”

  She smiles faintly “Where are we going?”

  “Cuba. It’s not off-limits anymore. I heard commercial airlines are going to start flying there this fall, and I have Cuban blood—my abuela, remember?”

  “She was born in the Bronx.” You ride around with someone all day, every day for years, you know little details like that.

  “Her parents were from Havana. Come on, we’ll go before tourism ruins everything. We can lie on an unspoiled beach, smoke cigars, drink rum . . . Think about how nice it would be to get out of here.”

  Another perfect opening. This time, she won’t let it go by.

  “I have thought about it, Barnes. And you’re right. I do need to get out of here. But not just for a week, and not to Cuba.”

  His eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. And you knew it was coming. I’ve had enough. I’ve got to go. For good.”

  He sips his drink, staring at the tiered rows of bottles behind the bar.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “You said you’d never leave the city.”

  “No, you said that, Barnes.”

  “About you.”

  “Well, you were wrong. I’ve been thinking about it ever since we got back from Mundy’s Landing. My lease is up next month. My rent is going to skyrocket.”

  “So it’s because of Sir Douchebag?” His nickname for her pompous landlord. “Or is it Manik Bhandari?”

  And there it is.

  They say there’s one case in every law enforcement career that gets you in the gut, no matter how hardened you are. After almost two decades on the job, Sully confronted hers last year.

  She and Stockton were on a routine investigation in a rough neighborhood when a couple of joy-riding junkies spontaneously declared open season on the NYPD and started firing. The bullet that just missed Sully hit the seventeen-year-old h
onor student. Manik sobbed for his father like a frightened baby and died in her arms before she even realized she’d been struck by the second bullet.

  Though her forehead wound is long healed, the scar still sometimes burns, a cruel stigmata of flesh and soul. She plays the scene over and over in her head, imagining a different outcome—one in which she saves Manik. Sometimes she, too, survives. Sometimes she doesn’t. But at least she dies a hero.

  “It pushed me over the edge,” she admits.

  Barnes opens his mouth, undoubtedly to remind her she’ll get over it.

  She curtails him. “Nick Colonomos called yesterday and offered me a job—detective on the Mundy’s Landing force.”

  “You’re actually considering it? Listen, you can’t—”

  “I already said yes.”

  “You’ll be bored out of your mind up there.”

  “Maybe. But boring sounds like a decent alternative to . . .” She taps the scar on her forehead.

  “You can’t make a snap decision based on one incident. You need to give this some time. At least wait until the end of the year, or even next summer. By then, if you still—”

  “There’s a job now. It won’t be there in a few months.”

  “Something else will come up.”

  “Not there.”

  “Why do you have to be there?”

  “Why are you trying to talk me out of this? Are you going to miss me that much?”

  She waits for his usual retort, but it doesn’t come. He pushes their drinks away and clasps his large black hand over her bony, freckled one.

  Looking her in the eye, he says without a hint of irony, “Yeah, Gingersnap. I’ll miss you.”

  Jerry Mundy’s obituary was published this morning.

  Not in the Los Angeles Times, of course. No such prominence for a man who’d lived a solitary, humble life. His obit appeared only in the relatively obscure neighborhood online paper, the one that generates headlines from Girl Scout cookie sales and lost puppies, largely ignoring all crimes more serious than jaywalking or littering, with a front page devoid of politics, wars, global terrorism.