by Susan Fleet
More yelps from the dog. He swung left at the next street and put the spot on a two-story house with a basketball hoop on the garage. No lights in the FEMA trailer out front, but that didn’t mean it was vacant. After Katrina, he’d seen hard-eyed men with shotguns and attack dogs on the porches of Garden District mansions, protecting their property. The French Quarter had survived almost unscathed and Canal Street morphed into media alley. Secure and well fed, Geraldo, Ted Koppel and Anderson Cooper had beamed their reports around the world.
A flash of movement caught his eye. He hit the brakes and studied the dark hulk of a house, letting his eyes absorb the gloom.
There it was again, shadowy movement in the darkness. He trained the spot on the left side of the house. Saw a dark form jump out of the bushes and run toward the rear of the house, arms flailing.
The metallic taste of adrenaline flooded his mouth. He sprang from the cruiser and vaulted several trash bags on the sidewalk. Dug out his SIG-Sauer and ran alongside the two-story boarded-up house. Stopped at the back corner. Heard footsteps pound on gravel. Charged into the next yard.
Moonlight revealed a skinny kid in a hoodie, racing away from him toward the street, arms and legs pumping.
He ran faster, his lungs on fire, his thighs burning, his forty-plus legs accustomed to a daily run, not a sprint like this. He whipped around the corner of a house and spotted the kid. The kid saw him, whirled, tripped over some sheetrock and staggered.
A surge of adrenaline, a quick sprint and he grabbed the kid's arm, put him on the ground and straddled him. “Police! Put your hands on your head.”
Gasping for breath, the kid didn’t move.
“Put your hands on your head!”
The kid slowly laced dark skinny fingers around the back of the hood.
“I’m gonna frisk you. You got anything sharp that’s gonna hurt me? A knife? Any needles?” Silence. He swatted the kid’s head. “Answer me!”
“Ain’t got nuthin.”
He patted him down, found nothing hard and metallic, and searched his pockets. No weapon, no needles, no drugs, and no ID. He holstered the SIG and yanked the kid’s arm. “Get up, and don’t try anything or I’ll smack you.”
As the kid struggled to his feet his hood fell off, revealing close-cropped hair, a smooth coffee-milk complexion and a narrow face with a delicate nose. No telling about the eyes, the kid staring at the ground, lips clamped together. He cuffed the kid’s hands behind his back and marched him back to the cruiser. Halfway there, penned inside a wire-mesh fence, a German shepherd snarled at them. When they reached the cruiser, the kid tried to run.
Frank twisted his arm. “Don’t be stupid!”
“You’re breaking my arm!” A soprano voice rising to a shriek.
He studied the long eyelashes, thinly arched brows, large doe-eyes in a too-pretty face. Realization hit him like a head-on collision.
The kid was a girl.
_____
He took her to the Eighth District station, the girl not saying word-one on the way, and marched her down a hall to a funky-smelling interview room. A three-foot-square wooden table with two chairs sat in the center of the room. A fluorescent light in the ceiling made the pale-green walls look putrid. On purpose. Nothing like a nasty environment to get the thugs talking. Shit green walls, no air-conditioning, and the odor of stale urine from some moke who’d wet his pants.
He removed the handcuffs, sat the girl down and told her to stay put. His female juvy, no doubt about it. Not good. He was supposed to contact her parents and get permission to interview her, but that might take hours. Hell, he didn’t even know her name.
And the scumbag-robbers had taken a woman hostage.
He propped open the door, went around the corner to a one-way window and watched her. Rail-thin, she hunched her shoulders inside the hoodie and massaged her bony wrists. Set her elbows on the scarred tabletop, her lips moving, muttering to herself. He put a fresh tape in the camcorder, hit Record and returned to the room.
She looked up, her expression as bleak as if she were facing a firing squad, her dark eyes unfathomable. He sat down opposite her and flashed his you-can-trust-me smile. “I’m Detective Frank Renzi. What’s your name?”
Her eyes shifted away and her leg jiggled up and down, nervous knee belying her stone-face demeanor.
He let the silence build for a minute, his irritation mounting.
“Listen, Miss No-name, we know you and your friend robbed that convenience store. You’re in big trouble. Your buddy shot a cop.”
Her head jerked up. She gazed at him, eyes wide and fearful.
“What were you doing in Lakeview?”
Her face settled into a sullen mask.
“Maybe you didn’t rob the store. Maybe you were the lookout.”
She gazed at him, eyes baleful. “Don’t know nuthin ‘bout no robbery.”
“Why were you in Lakeview?”
“Ain’t no law against it, is there?”
“There’s laws against people that case abandoned houses at night looking to loot them.”
“I ain’t no looter.”
Making great strides with his hard-hitting questions, unidentified girl lobbing denials at him. He gave her an encouraging nod, not quite a smile, and said in a quiet voice, “Best thing for you to do right now is tell me your name. That’d be a start.”
“No start for me,” she mumbled, plucking at the folds of her hoodie with skinny fingers. “You just wanna pin something on me.”
“I’m your best shot at getting out of here tonight. I don’t want to put you in the lockup with the whores and the crackheads. What’s your name?”
She hunched her shoulders and gazed at him, chin cupped in her hands, a glimmer of hope in her eyes. “You can get me outta here?” Her voice rising in panic, knee jiggling faster.
“Gotta have a name to do that.”
“You gonna let me go if I tell you?”
He was on dangerous ground, threatening to charge her and not giving her the Miranda. He pushed back his chair and stood.
“Stay there while I get you a bottle of water. Maybe that will loosen your tongue. I don’t want to be here all night.”
The understatement of the year. He’d been working fifteen hours.
“You got any cigarettes?”
Smoking inside a police station these days was strictly forbidden for cops, never mind teen witnesses and suspects, but hey, whatever worked.
“Maybe,” he said. “Don’t even think about leaving that chair.”
He went to his office and took a stale pack of Marlboros out of his desk drawer. On the way back to the interview room, his radio handset crackled with chatter. But not about catching the robbers.
Maybe he had one. Maybe the wounded cop was mistaken and the second kid was this girl. Except she didn’t have dreads.
When he put the pack of cigarettes and the lighter on the table, her expression softened. She lit up, inhaled and blew a cloud of smoke.
Anxiety zinged his gut. He was breaking every rule in the book. Not that breaking rules bothered him, but if they wound up charging her, this interview would be useless in court without a Miranda warning. And if she was under eighteen, he shouldn’t even talk to her without her parents’ consent. Double trouble.
“Chantelle,” she said, puffing her Marlboro.
Keeping her end of the bargain, a pleasant surprise.
“What's your last name?”
“Wilson, okay? Can I go?” Gazing at him, hopeful.
“How old are you?”
“Why can't I go? I gave you my name! Just about broke my arm, shoving me into your damn car.” An angry flick of her wrist sent ashes to the floor. Chantelle emboldened by nicotine.
“You don’t look much over sixteen to me, that about right?”
She looked away. “Be sixteen next month.”
Acid chewed his gut. Not even sixteen.
“You got a sheet? Don’t lie. I can check on you.”
“Ain’t got no sheet for nothin! You lied. You said I could go if I gave you my name. You can’t keep me here. I didn’t do nuthin!”
“Where’s your folks, Chantelle? Where’s your Mom?”
“Gone.” She puffed her cigarette and stared off into the distance.
“Gone where?”
“Gone on crack. Gone to the Superdome after Katrina. Gone to wherever they took her.”
An all-too-familiar story. “Where’s your father?”
She flicked ash off her cigarette onto the floor. “I got no idea.”
Another familiar story. “Where you living, Chantelle?”
“Nowhere.” A forlorn smile parted her lips. “That’s a nice tune. You know it?”
He shook his head and smiled. “Can’t say I do.”
“I sing it sometimes . . .” She clamped her lips together, dropped the butt on the floor and mashed it under her dirty sneaker.
“You a singer?”
Her eyes teared up, bright and shiny. She sucked in air, a half-sob, turned her head away and mumbled, “Sing to myself sometimes.”
“You go to NOCCA?” The prestigious high school for the arts served the talented teen population of New Orleans.
“I wish. Went to McDonogh Senior High before Katrina.” She sucked in a shuddery breath, gazing at him with her large doe-eyes. “What happened to the policeman? He okay?”
He studied her, moved by the concern in her eyes. She might not have pulled the stickup, but his gut told him she knew something.
“Tell me where you’re living, Chantelle.”
Her eyes shifted away and she ducked her head. Big lie coming up.
“Already tol’ you. Nowhere.”
“You got no relatives here?”
A tear trickled down her cheek and ripped out his heart. She was only fifteen, scared out of her mind. He couldn’t put her in the lockup.
She arched her graceful neck and looked at him. “Got nobody.”
“So you have no permanent address.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess.”
“Best thing I can do is charge you with criminal trespass and—”
“No! You said I could go home . . .” She trailed off in a sob.
“You don’t have a home to go to. I’ll get you a place to stay until we straighten this out. Better than living on the street.” It would also allow him to run her name through the system and see if she had a sheet.
But if he expected gratitude for keeping her out of the lockup, forget it. Chantelle looked at him as if he were a cockroach crawling over her Big Mac.
______
She bit her lip to keep from crying. Here she was for the second time tonight in a cop car, not handcuffed this time but just as trapped, the cop driving her God knows where. Antoine might be in worse trouble.
If they caught him, the cop would have told her, wouldn’t he?
Knees to her chest, she squirmed into the corner of the back seat so he couldn’t watch her in the rearview with his bloodsucking eyes. The man was scary-looking. A hawk-nose and a stubborn jaw. A trickster, acting sympathetic, making bullshit promises, then charging her with trespassing.
Tonight had been a disaster from the get-go. Antoine didn’t want to rob no store, but AK said he had to, like it was some kind of test. Smiling his evil gold-toothed smile. AK was the one shot that cop, for sure. Antoine didn’t own a gun, would never have touched one.
Her heart beat fast and hard. Damn AK to hell!
The cop stopped at a red light on Esplanade Avenue at the edge of the French Quarter and turned to look at her.
“How you doing back there?”
“Fine.” Not gonna give you no satisfaction, Mr. Trickster. Not about to tell you my heart is breaking, my boyfriend’s in trouble and I got nobody to help me.
Her stomach rumbled with hunger. Last time she’d eaten was breakfast, rancid peanut butter on stale bread, the only food she kept in the apartment she’d once shared with her mother. She looked out the window as they passed a Circle-K convenience store, heading north toward Rampart Street.
Please God, don’t let him get on the I-10 and take me miles away.
Arms clenched around her knees, she dug her fingernails into her thighs. No way was she gonna stay in some foster home with a bunch of teen bitches. She’d bust outta there and get home so’s Antoine could find her.
Tears burned her eyes. Antoine loved her even if nobody else did, smiling when she sang to him, his eyes full of love, and later, in bed, holding her tight, telling her everything would be all right, they’d be together soon. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about crackheads and dope dealers and pimps busting into her apartment. Wouldn’t need AK to protect her.
As if AK would protect her. Try and jump her was more like it.
The cop turned right at Rampart Street and headed toward the I-10.
“Where we goin’?” Hearing the tremor in her voice and hating it.
“Mama LeBlanc’s. You’ll get along fine as long as you follow the rules.”
Where is it? She wanted to scream. Is it far from here?
But screaming at cops got you nowhere. Found that out five years ago when they arrested her moms, said they had her on a security video at some dress shop, her moms boosting clothes so she could sell them and buy crack.
“Don’t take my moms away,” she’d wailed. “I don’t wanna be alone.”
Didn’t wanna be bawling in front of no cops either, but she couldn’t help it. So they put her in foster care—some pissy-assed woman in it for the money. For a whole year she’d slept on a lumpy mattress, hardly any food to eat, stupid woman couldn’t cook for shit.
They turned onto a side street, going slower, seemed like the cop was hunting for a house. God be praised! If the foster home was near here she’d only be two miles from home.
The cop pulled to the curb, laid his arm along the seat back and looked at her. “I know you’re not happy right now, Chantelle, but this is the best deal I could get you.”
Best deal woulda been to let me go like you promised.
But she didn’t dare say this.
The cop gave her a hard-eyed stare. “Don’t cause trouble for Mama. Don’t try to run away. I’ll do what I can to get this trespassing charge dismissed.” Speaking softly in his musical voice, a deep baritone, the only thing she liked about him. She knew she should act grateful, thank the man for keeping her out of the lockup, but she couldn’t make herself do it.
He held out a card, gazing at her, not hard-eyed now, more like he cared about her. A little bit anyway.
“My daughter’s only eight years older than you and she cried on my shoulder a few times. If you need to talk, call my cell phone anytime, day or night. Detective Frank Renzi.”
She reached out and took the card, seeing the concern in his eyes, wishing she could trust him, wishing she had someone strong to lean on. Someone grown up and in charge. Antoine was strong but he wasn’t in charge of things any more than she was.
“Thank you,” she whispered, had to work to get the words out, her throat so choked-up she could barely speak.
He smiled. “You’re welcome, Chantelle.”
CHAPTER 3
Friday, 13 October
She stood at the music stand, studying Khachaturian’s Concerto for Flute. In 1940, flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal had been so taken with Khachaturian’s violin concerto he had asked the composer to rework it for flute. The result, thirty-six minutes of musical and technical challenges, was considered one of the most difficult in the flute repertoire.
But not too difficult for Belinda Scully.
She ripped off a three-octave chromatic scale, relishing the glorious acoustics in her first-floor studio. The room had sold her on the house, a stately two-story Victorian on a tree-lined side street near the New Orleans Museum of Art. She’d paid a ridiculous price, but the luxury of practicing in a room like this was worth every penny. No rugs or curtains to suck up the sound. Sunligh
t poured through tall windows onto the polished-oak floor, and twin fans on the fifteen-foot ceiling twirled cool air through the room. A Steinway baby-grand stood near the back wall, shielded from the sun. Along the side wall were shelves for her sheet music, beside them the cherry-wood ladder-back rocker—her mother’s—that she used during breaks.
She set the music aside. She used it for practice, never in performance. Humming the accompaniment that preceded the passage, she took a huge breath and leaped into it, fingers flying over the fiendish pyrotechnics Khachaturian had devised for the cadenza that ended the first movement.
Everything was perfect: rhythm, intonation, a big fat glorious sound . . .
A missed note. She stamped her foot. How could that happen? She’d played it flawlessly hundreds of times.
Then she remembered. Today was Friday the 13th. But next week it wouldn’t be. She never scheduled concerts on Friday the 13th.
She studied the passage with the note she’d missed. Two or three notes, actually. She closed her eyes and made her mind go blank as she did during concerts. Reviewers sometimes commented on this, conjecturing that she’d been swept away by the orchestral accompaniment. Nonsense.
She silently chanted her lucky mantra. Never give in to fear. Act successful and you will be successful. Believe in yourself and you cannot fail.
She began again, breathing easily, fingers flying over the keys of her platinum Haynes flute. She negotiated the offending passage and finished the cadenza. Perfect. All perfect.
Until the door opened and Jake stepped into the room.
“Jake, I’m practicing. You know I hate being disturbed—”
“I know,” he said, advancing toward her, “but we need to talk.”
His grim expression said it all. Forget practicing. Jake had a bug in his ear. But then he surprised her and smiled. “I just saw a juicy tidbit on the Internet. Nick Philopolous got the principal bassoon job with the Cleveland Orchestra. Wasn’t he at Juilliard when you were there?”
Nick. She crafted a bland expression, but her body betrayed her. Heat flooded her cheeks. She turned away, hearing Nick play the solo in Dukas’ Sorcerer’s Apprentice with the Juilliard orchestra, hearing him ace the impossible opening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Hearing his words when she told him she was pregnant: “You’ll make a fabulous mother!”