Land of Shadows

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  He considered the cloth, then winced. “What’s this stain?” he asked, waggling the hankie. “I’ll give you three guesses, even though you’ll only need one.”

  I grinned. “Cleanup on aisle 4.”

  He nodded. “But who’s the lucky guy? Von or Derek? Or is it some even older dude she was banging on the DL and was keeping evidence of, just in case?”

  “Just in case of what, though? That shit got real and she needed ammo?”

  Colin whispered, “Cyrus?”

  “Possibly. Or like you said: some other old guy who has a cheerleader fetish.”

  “I’ll bet you a Code Four that this stain ain’t snot.” He stuffed the hankie back into the box and placed the top back on. “I say we take it. Test it. Just in case.”

  Like any cop, I liked free lunches, but I wouldn’t take Colin’s bet.

  Because I knew that he was right.

  I would tell Cyrus and Angie that we were taking the netbook and the diary. But I would “forget” to mention the soiled handkerchief. I didn’t know what that stain was about but I did know that it had OH SHIT splashed all over it.

  16

  It was a little after nine o’clock when I pulled into a parking space in the station’s garage. As I ducked into the building, I squinted up to the sky: the sun was out and doing its job. The squad room was crackling with quiet energy. Luke Gomez sat at his desk with a cell phone to his ear, three-hole punching reams of reports and sweet-talking a woman who may or may not have been his wife, Lupita. Joey Jackson was flossing his teeth while flipping through a stack of fingerprints. As he slid string between his back molars, he said something like, “Search wahai for gwah trailer’s on your gwehk.”

  The room stank of Luke’s seven-dollar cologne and sludge only cops called coffee. An open box of Krispy Kreme donuts sat near that pot of so-called java, and from the looks of Luke’s belly and sugared mustache, he had eaten at least five of the dozen.

  Peter “Pepe” Kim, the tallest Korean-Mexican American in South Los Angeles, was filling in the board—squares of old and new murders and the names of dicks who worked them as well as a few new cases awaiting the assignment stork. All those victims’ names—red ink for unsolved, black for solved—and ways they had died, you’d think the Apocalypse was in full swing. Nope. Just another year in the city.

  It had almost been fifteen hours since I had caught the Monique Darson case and time was chipping away. My nerves always started to ping around eighteen hours in, so I needed to make some progress before I stroked out. The more time passed, the more witnesses forgot and the more people grew reluctant to talk. How far you got in the first forty-eight hours helped determine whether you would be taking victory laps or playing a sad trombone. But Monique Darson had lucked out today—the A-Team would be searching for her murderer. Each of us turned cases upside down, inside out, and then magnified them to 200 percent. Not to brag, but I had solved 90 percent of the investigations I had led. Pretty good for a girl.

  Colin, seated at the desk next to mine, was nibbling on a glazed donut. He licked at the flecks of sugar on his lips and said, “Better get one before Gomez takes it.”

  The search warrant for the construction site trailer sat near my keyboard … which sat near a vase of purple roses. The flowers didn’t fit in the squad room with its old computers, raggedy space heater, and the men. But then, neither did I. “So, Cyrus Darson,” I said. “What do you think he’s hiding?”

  Colin snorted. “What do you mean? You don’t believe the late-dinner-beer-and-pool alibi?”

  “There were a lot of ‘umms’ in that timeline.”

  “Think he’s getting a little on the side?”

  “He’s a man, ain’t he?” I plucked the small white card from the bouquet.

  I miss you. Sorry I’ve been AWOL. I’ll do better. GAN

  Oh, crap. There it was.

  Greg had sent creamy brown roses when he had been cheating on me with Amarie. And when I had busted him texting her while he was supposed to be watching Letterman, he upgraded my Ford to the almighty Porsche. Purple roses … Who was the lucky whore now? And what would he buy me next? A space shuttle?

  I had last talked to Greg yesterday afternoon around three. He had reminded me to send in the car insurance payment. Then, he had yawned loud and long, and begged off talking because he needed sleep. I had said, ‘I love you,’ and he had said, ‘I’ll call you later,’ and now I wanted to tear up this new card, drive home, collapse on the couch, and have an ugly cry while eating Doritos and watching Ghost.

  Right now, though, I only had access to the last two donuts in the Krispy Kreme box. And so, I sat at my desk killing myself with delicious pastries, listening to the frantic pleas of the cuckolded wife within demanding that I Do Something! I wanted to tell her to get bent—hell, I was doing something. I was eating.

  Lieutenant Rodriguez must have sensed my repressed distress because he charged into the room as I picked up donut number two. He plucked it from my fingers and bit the glazed in half. Then, he shouted, “All right, fellas. Let’s have a seat.”

  Chairs scraped, notepads opened, and all eyes fell on me, the lead detective for Who Killed Baby Girl?

  I leaned against my desk and cleared my throat. “So … A woman is in the delivery room giving birth—”

  Laughter filled the room.

  Lieutenant Rodriguez rolled his eyes. “Ha-ha, Lou. Let’s get serious.”

  “At least let her tell us the punch line,” Luke whined.

  I settled on top of the desk, then said, “So the woman says, ‘I’m just glad it didn’t bark!’”

  The room exploded with laughter again. Gallows humor.

  I waited for the room to quiet before saying, “My Jane Doe is actually Monique Darson, seventeen years old, just graduated from St. Bernard’s last week.” Then, I gave a brief rundown about who we had talked to and all we had discovered—strangled with a belt, nails cut, abandoned Lexus, strange suicide note, family notified … “Anybody know about any similar cases?”

  “Down in San Diego,” Pepe said, “they found a college kid in a hotel room.”

  “Strangled?”

  He nodded. “Kinky shit, though.”

  “Black girl?”

  “Not through and through.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “A bunch of nothin’.”

  “Was a cheer uniform a part of that nothin’?” I asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Nice hotel?”

  “The Omni.”

  “Well, that’s swankier than a condo on the edge of the ghetto,” I said.

  “I don’t think it’s related,” Colin said, tapping the side of his shoe with a pen.

  Pepe and I gave each other the eye.

  Lieutenant Rodriguez said, “Keep your finger on it, Kim.” To me, he said, “Do you have an idea of who done it?”

  I shook my head. “I’d say someone close to the victim, though. She had two boyfriends—both at extreme ends of the spectrum. And the church boy is just as good for this as the gangbanger.”

  “And she was wearing her high school cheerleader’s getup when we found her,” Colin added. “And we wanna know why.”

  “Well, we probably already know why,” I clarified. “I’m thinking typical role-playing. Submissive character dominated by a partner who likes ’em young and virginal.”

  “And maybe she realized at the last minute that she was out of her league,” Luke said.

  I nodded eagerly. “And she freaked out. Did something that made him go cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and that was that. Whoever did her? Dude has a temper a mile long and an extraordinary mean streak. And he knows that what he did was wrong—”

  “Which is why he made it look like a suicide,” Colin added. “And whoever he is didn’t mind leaving behind that $300 belt.”

  “So he’s got some ends,” Pepe observed.

  Colin and I nodded.

  I told them that we would talk to everyone
, even the seemingly innocent ones like Von Neeley the Church Boy. “We don’t want the jury a year from now having reasonable doubt because we didn’t talk to the butler who, two years before, had killed Miss Marple in the library with a candlestick holder.”

  “You mean, like the case Joey screwed up?” Luke said with a smile. “Y’all remember: the guy who kept taking dumps outside the home ec window over at Manual Arts, then ended up killing the home ec teacher.”

  “What?” Colin said, with a reluctant grin. “You’re kiddin’, right?”

  A flush colored Joey’s neck. “The kids in the class said it was a fat Mexican guy with glasses. Was I supposed to question every fat Mexican with glasses?”

  “Is you is or is you ain’t a detective?” Luke asked.

  “Never mind that,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said. “Just don’t fuck up—that’s the lesson here.”

  And then, it was time to hand out assignments.

  Joey would retrieve school and medical records.

  Luke would pull Monique’s phone records, including texts, e-mails, call lists, and bills.

  Pepe would set up a tip line and look for any similar crimes in the Crenshaw area. He’d also design the reward flyer, the one with a nice picture of Monique Darson and the offer of $1,000 for information that led to the bad guy’s arrest.

  Colin would manage the murder book and serve as the liaison between us and forensics.

  Besides keeping my hand in everyone’s cookie jars, I would get a warrant to examine the Darsons’ finances. Monique may have shared a bank account with her parents, and weird financial shenanigans could have precipitated her murder—maybe she had withdrawn a large amount of money from the ATM on the night she was killed.

  The group disbursed and Colin grabbed the book from my desk to log in the diary, the netbook, and the soiled hankie found in Monique’s closet.

  I pulled from the expandable file the plastic bag that held Monique’s journal—I’d read it in a quieter moment.

  Before leaving the room, Lieutenant Rodriguez stopped by my desk and whispered, “You okay on this?”

  I scrunched my eyebrows as I shuffled papers around. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Don’t play me, Lou,” he said, straightening the yellowing picture on my cubicle wall: Tori and me at the Redondo Beach Pier. “First sign that there’s a conflict of interest—”

  “I’ll bail. Got it. No need to worry. I will treat Napoleon Crase just like I’d treat anyone else who may have possibly last seen my sister before she mysteriously disappeared and now may be involved in the death of someone else’s sister.” And then I smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.

  He eyed me for a moment, frowned, then plinked a rose. “Aw, shit. Again?” He shook his head and wandered over to the empty donut box.

  I grabbed the telephone and held my breath as I punched in a number.

  She answered on the first ring. “Well, hello, stranger.”

  “Mom, I talked to you three days ago.” I began to fill out a warrant request for the Darsons’ bank records.

  “Since I’ll be leaving the country next week,” Mom said, “I wanted to talk to you. But can I call you back? Martin and I are heading out for our walk.”

  “Yep.”

  “Breakfast tomorrow at the marina?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  After “I love you” and “I love you, too,” I hung up and finished the warrant request. Then I scribbled Derek Hester BPS on a sticky note. Pulled another note: f-up on Q-tips, rape kit. And another note: talk w/tech re computer. Each sticky went on the frame of my computer monitor.

  Then, I typed Derek Hester into the crime database’s search bar. In his latest mug shot, Derek wore cornrows as neat as a ten-year-old girl’s. He didn’t smile—but they never smiled. He had the shoulders of a linebacker and sleepy-looking eyes, which had earned him the nickname Sleepy D. He had seven pages worth of priors: from possession of drugs and guns to trespassing, battery, and robbery. He had done a little time at State in Lancaster for dealing, for corrupting a minor, and for a robbery-carjack combo plate.

  My body groaned in advance. This visit would require a police radio, a Kevlar vest, a gun in my side holster, and a gun in my ankle holster. Fortunately, the thermometer would just hit a high of sixty-nine degrees today so only a creek of sweat would pour down my back and into a vest that wasn’t washable, so it stunk. While I could deal with the reek of a three-day-old corpse, body odor from living people (me included) set me off like a fire alarm.

  In his latest dance with the law, Derek had been stopped for running a red light and possession of marijuana. These probation violations had landed him in Men’s Central. He had also been dating Monique Darson, a girl under the age of eighteen. And now a dead girl under the age of eighteen. But I wouldn’t pull the statutory rape card until I needed to hold him for something bigger and deadlier. He had been released from jail a week before Easter and now lived in an apartment on Coco Avenue in the heart of the Jungle. No chances of recidivism there.

  “Were there gangs in Colorado Springs?” I asked Colin, who was now three-hole punching a report for the murder book.

  He nodded. “Crips, Bloods, a large Mexican gang, and a motorcycle club. Most of them were on the east and south sides.”

  “You worked west side, right?”

  He held up his hands. “Hey, I went where I was assigned.” He pointed at the roses. “Those from your husband?”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Pretty.”

  “Yes. Very pretty.”

  He let himself smile for a second, then said, “Zucca Super-Glued the phone and got some prints. Nothing good on the belt, though.” When heated, Super Glue fumes adhered to the amino acids found in fingerprints. But this technique was a one-shot trick—if it failed, there were no do-overs. “So now what?”

  “AFIS,” I said. Automated Fingerprint Identification System. “But that doesn’t get me hot. A suspect can explain away his prints—houses are filled with random fingerprints from repairmen, from second cousins, the Pope … Semen, though. That handkerchief? That gets me randy.” I scribbled Derek’s address onto a sticky and stuck it inside my binder.

  Colin leaned over and tapped Derek’s image on my monitor. “So we’re having high tea with this guy today?”

  “The highest. First, though, I need you to take the laptop and the handkerchief down to forensics. Come back here and we’ll drive over together to the Jungle. Make sure you wear your vest—seems Mr. Hester has a quick temper and is known to carry a gun or three.”

  “Are we gonna call first or just show up?”

  “Show up,” I said. “Just like the folks from Publishers Clearing House. We’ll skip the balloons and big-ass check, though.”

  Colin leaned back in his chair. “How the hell does a Catholic-school girl on the honor roll get mixed up with a banger?”

  “She wanted to walk on the wild side,” I said, staring at the purple roses sent by a man who had seemed so … safe.

  Hate to say it, but my sister had more bangers inside of her than the county jail. When she was only sixteen, Tori had dated a Gramercy Crip nicknamed Baby Buddha (he was a quarter Korean). When Baby Buddha was killed on the corner of La Brea and Jefferson, she hung with Big Ant, another Gramercy Crip who had been a preacher’s kid in his former life. Mom never had a clue—or maybe she did and had just ignored it, considered it a “phase.”

  Some girls made it out of this “phase” and went on to marry CPAs, history teachers, and IT guys. But some girls, girls like Tori, girls like Monique, died before seeing the light.

  17

  On the afternoon of July 17, 1988, Tori collapsed next to me on the living room couch. “I’m bored. This is stupid.” She sucked her teeth and threw a cushion to the carpet. “Mom is a straight bitch for making me stay home with you.”

  Mom had agreed to teach summer school because we needed the money to buy new tires for the car and to pay off a ridiculously high phone bill, courtesy o
f my big sister. Unfortunately, in the last three days, two guys and a girl had been shot within a three-block radius of our apartment, and Mrs. Kelley from apartment 3 had been raped in our laundry room. Mom, rightfully concerned, had prohibited Tori and me from leaving the house, and she called every two hours to make sure that we hadn’t snuck out.

  “What do you wanna do?” I had asked brightly. “We can play Monopoly. Or we can watch TV.” I didn’t mind being trapped at home—I was hanging out with my big sister. She rarely played board games now, and she didn’t watch much television with me because she hated every show I liked.

  She narrowed her eyes, and said, “You know what tomorrow is, right?”

  I nodded, then chewed on my bottom lip. “But…” I slowly inhaled, then little by little, let that breath leave my lungs. “Mom will get mad if she finds out,” I whispered. “She’ll ground us like she did last year.”

  Tori slung her arm over her head, then raised her other arm, the one that held the gold wristwatch Dad had given her for her thirteenth birthday. “This is what I think of Mom finding out.” Her middle finger jabbed the air. “We have the right to celebrate his birthday. So what, he left us? He’s still our father. We’re still his kids.”

  “We don’t have enough eggs,” I said in a small voice. “So we can’t make a cake.”

  She let her arm drop, and then she sat up. “We can still sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ though.”

  And so we sang, loud and clear, to the man who had helped make us but hadn’t stuck around to see us work.

  With that over, Tori and I settled back into the Land of Yawn.

  “I have another idea,” Tori said, smiling at me with sharp little teeth. “Let’s go to the store for some Twinkies. Daddy likes Twinkies.”

  My heart hammered. My hand found my right earlobe. “Go to the store down the hill?”

  “No, Lulu. The store in the bathroom.” She rolled her eyes, then snapped, “Yes, Elouise, the store down the hill.” She saw that I had started tugging on my ear, so she added, “Don’t worry. We’ll be home before she calls again. We’re just going down the hill. That’s, what, fifteen minutes?”