Women on the Case

by Sara Paretsky

  Truth is, the Metropolitan Police Department doesn’t care much more about white people in shelter than it does about us. “Homeless” becomes the operative word. It has an homogenizing effect on people’s sensibilities. Still, they all laughed at her little funny, even the lone white woman in the group. She probably didn’t want to; I couldn’t.

  The little stout woman moved away from the others and stuck her hand into the pocket of the terry cloth robe she wore over her sweater and jeans. She looked into my eyes, into her pocket, and then back at me again, in a slow, deliberate movement, so I leaned over to peek in. A cellular phone. My God, a cellular phone.

  She whispered, “My son gave it to me for protection, you know. This is only the second time I used it here. First time was ’bout a young girl too. Poor thing. A cute little thing with real light eyes.”

  Real light eyes!

  “What do you do around here, just swallow them up whole?” I said, all up in Ms. Bennett’s face, as Amani would have said.

  Ms. Bennett dropped her hands from her hips and backed up out of her own space to get away from me.

  By the time I’d questioned the woman with the phone sufficiently to know that the girl with the light eyes could not have been Amani, Ms. Bennett had appeared waddling down the hall in a thin nightgown, open silk robe, and Barney slippers.

  “Miss … ? What is your name? I have no idea what you are talking about, but we have rules in this shelter and unless you have somewhere else to stay on a regular basis, I would strongly suggest that you just go back to your room, and I’ll forget this little disturbance,” she said with perfect diction and learned authoritative pitch. “I’ll look into this tomorrow … later today.” She looked at her watch, disgusted.

  “Since you asked but clearly do not care, my name is Gloria Bell. And the problem is, a little girl, a teenager, is missing. She came in beaten up—”

  “Beaten up?” She looked away.

  “Yes, beaten and scared and now she’s gone. I just don’t think she left on her own. She had no place to go. So, Ms. Ben—. What’s your name, your first name?” I paused to get her name and when she didn’t give it, well, let’s just say I knew it was about to get ugly up in that hall.

  “Okay, B—I can call you that can’t I?—like I said, a girl is missing. She gave a phony name, Rachel Jackson. What are you going to do?”

  “First,” the B said, “any ladies who don’t need to be here, that is, everybody but you should go back to her room. You only have a couple of hours left before you will be on your own for the day. I would suggest—”

  “So, what are you going to do except suggest that the group disperse? What about the girl?” I said as my supporters walked away even more quietly than they had assembled.

  “Who is this girl to you?”

  “She is a human being, a scared little person who needs somebody to look after her. She wouldn’t have left on her own, she knew I was going to help her,” I said. The B appeared to want to laugh. “Now, what are your procedures for searching this facility?” Now I could work with “facility” as well as the B could work with “ladies.”

  “I am not going to entertain this discussion with you. At a decent hour, say, eight o’clock, I will have in-take records checked and—”

  “That’s almost three hours from now. This can’t wait. Where are the records? I’ll check them.… But, how’s that going to help? All the in-take person asked for was her name, which she lied about.” I waited for a response.

  “I will look into this in a few hours—”

  “No, somebody’s going to look into it right now. Too much for you? Then just get the hell out of my way, B.”

  “You’re out of here, now,” the B said. “I’ll call the police if I have to.”

  “The police were called thirty minutes ago, so you don’t have to leave. We can talk a little longer,” I said and smiled, a real smile, both dimples deepening.

  The little color in her face had completely drained away. The effect was not pleasant. “Who called the police?”

  “I did,” I said. “Maybe if you call too, they’ll come quicker.”

  The police didn’t arrive until six-fifteen, more than an hour after the first, and perhaps only, call to them. The B hadn’t seemed too pleased at the real prospect of police coming into A Woman’s Place to search for another missing child. When they arrived, I was in Room 7 looking around Rachel’s cot with my flashlight. I’d looked earlier, when I first noticed that she was gone. When I saw that her leather bag was missing, too, I knew she hadn’t just gone to the bathroom or for water. Or left on her own. Where would she go if she’d had to come here?

  I should have watched her. I know how dangerous this place can be. First Amani, and now Rachel.

  I pushed her cot a few inches to the left, and it bumped the next cot. The elderly woman on it lifted her head and said, in a gentle, sleepy voice, “What’re you doing, honey? What time is it anyway?”

  I apologized for waking her and told her that it was after six and that the child who had been in the cot next to hers was missing. She looked around, at the other cots, and put her head back down.

  “Did you hear or see anything?” I said.

  She turned her back to me and pulled the cover over her head. “No, I don’t know nothing about nothing, honey. I just come here ’cause I don’t have anyplace else to go.”

  I walked over to her cot, leaned down, and whispered as gently and calmly as I could, “If you remember anything, please let me know.”

  I went back to the space between my cot and Rachel’s and knelt to look under hers. When my left knee, the bad one, touched the floor, a sharp pain went up my thigh. I raised my knee to find a bright yellow stone. Light from the hallway flooded the room.

  “Miss, come with me, please,” a young policewoman said, standing small but Rambo-like in the doorway. A male officer—another baby with a gun and a little training—stood to her left, and in the background between the two I could see the B smiling—not for long—and talking to someone out of my view.

  “Of course, officer,” I said. Rachel might still be in this place. Amani surely wasn’t, but Rachel, maybe.

  I dropped the yellow stone in the pocket of my sweats and walked toward the door, hesitating near the cot where the little lady with the gentle voice pretended to be asleep. “Officer, my name is Gloria Bell, and I want to re—”

  “Glo?” I knew that voice. A tall, dark officer pushed past the two younger ones and filled the door. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

  “Lew, thank God,” I said. He took two six-feet-three strides in my direction. He smiled down at me, but he wasn’t amused.

  “I’m waiting for an answer, Glo. This better be good or I’m going to arrest you.”

  And he would.

  It took exactly five minutes to recount what I had repeated at least five times already, the only important facts being, a young girl, beaten up and frightened, had disappeared from this place and no one seemed to care. He stood in front of me. I sat on the windowsill in the in-take room.

  “And she didn’t tell you her real name?”

  “No, but her initials might be C.P.N. They were on her bag.”

  “The bag could have been stolen .or it might belong to a friend.”

  “If she has a friend who would lend her an expensive leather bag, she probably has one she could have gone to instead of coming here,” I said unpleasantly.

  He ignored the comment but moved closer to me. He knelt in front of me and took my hands.

  “Glo, I’ll look into this, but we both know what this is really about.”

  “Yes, it’s really about a young girl missing and nobody caring.” I looked out the window. Now I wanted him to disappear.

  He stood up, without releasing my hands. “Obviously somebody cares, baby,” Lew said.

  “Not enough.” If I’d cared enough, she might be here now. No, she’d be where I knew she’d have been safe. My hou
se. I could have taken her there.

  “Ms. Bennett will look into this and so will I. But you, private citizen, will stay out of it. Got that? I ain’t playing with you, baby, I’ll throw you in jail if I have to.”

  “For what? Trying to save a child?” I said, trying to retrieve my hands.

  “No. For obstructing justice, public nuisance, vagrancy. I’ll think of something,” he said, smiling. “Maybe, I’ll get you on indecent exposure ’cause you sure ain’t too decent now.”

  “Okay, Lew, you’re funny, but can you find this one?”

  I hadn’t meant to say that. And he was right. This wasn’t just about Rachel.

  He leaned out of my face, stretched his six-three skyward, and lost the smile. My hands were definitely mine again. “Okay, the child is no longer here and Ms. Bennett wants you to be removed from the premises for causing a disturbance. I will personally escort you out. Now, you can either go home or move on to another shelter, but you’re getting out of here.”

  “Thank you, officer. And by the way, why is such a high-ranking officer looking into this little inconsequential home-less-child-missing, homeless-lady-causing-disturbance kind of call?”

  “That’s it.” He opened the door, stuck his head out. “Officer Morrison, please escort Mrs. Bell back up to her room to get her belongings. Bring her back down. She’ll be leaving here immediately afterward. See that she does not disturb other residents.” He looked back at me. “You have exactly ten minutes.”

  Officer Morrison, a pretty little thing who appeared too small to make weight and height requirements for the department, stepped into the room. “Yes sir. Let’s go, ma’am.”

  We went up the stairwell in silence. On the second floor, when we got to the second door on the right, I stepped in and she followed. It was still dark. I walked over to the cot against the wall, but someone was already in it and the next one.

  “Mrs. Bell, these beds are already occupied. Are you sure we’re in the right room, ma’am?” Officer Morrison whispered.

  “Oh, it must be the next room,” I said, with no pretense at whispering. When I turned to leave the room, I stumbled forward a few steps and fell. My bad knee hit the floor, hard. “Oh God. Ooooh …”

  My misstep and pain were acknowledged by a chorus of “What the hell?”, “Goddamn, can’t even sleep in this MFing hole in the MFing wall,” and other warm indications of concern.

  “You okay, ma’am?” Officer Morrison said, racing forward. I held my knee with both hands and moaned, real moans.

  She tried to help me up. Finally, a couple of women came to her assistance. One was Janice. I thought that she’d gone into Room 6, and I hadn’t misjudged her character at all.

  “I must have tripped over something,” I said, all out of breath and weakly.

  “Maybe I better get Lt. Davis and my partner. It’ll be easier for the men to help you up. Don’t want these ladies to injure themselves, too,” she said with genuine concern. Somebody had taught her respect for people, just because.

  She left the room at a clip. I turned to Janice and grabbed her hand. When she realized I wasn’t holding on for support, she pulled away, surprised. I wasn’t coming on to her, was not looking for a date.

  Officer Morrison was fast and Lew, a natural sprinter, would be worried.

  In two minutes flat, Lew was in the room. He shoved the little crowd aside and knelt by me on the floor. He immediately began to massage my shoulder and to rub my thigh, neither of which was hurting. But that was okay. “What happened?”

  “I tripped over something and twisted my ankle.” He scanned the immediate area without moving his head and only briefly looking away from me. He could really be annoying. “When I fell, I hit my knee,” I said.

  “The bad one?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t hit it that hard. I think—”

  Before “I can stand” could get out, standing wasn’t an issue. He’d lifted me from the floor and was on his way out of the room, down the steps, and out of the front of A Woman’s Place. He didn’t look as if he felt like a hassle, so I didn’t protest. Anyway, my knee really did hurt.

  He dumped me in the passenger seat of his black Sable, slammed the door, and got in on the other side. “Okay, Glo, wave at the building. Say good-bye. You’re not coming back. I hope you accomplished whatever you planned to in the wrong room.”

  It would be nice to be home, especially after this absence. It felt good to have a home to come back to, even an empty one. Eighteen months half empty, six months completely empty.

  Lew said fewer than ten words after pulling away from A Woman’s Place. “Are you crazy, Glo? Do you want to disappear?”

  “No, but I want my child back,” I said and stared out the window. I hated to cry, perhaps because tears came so easily. Every emotion and everything related to emotion came easily. “I … I-want-Amani-back! And I needed to protect Rachel. Now they are both gone, gone …” I’d yelled at him, accusingly, even though he had tried harder than anyone except me to find Amani, to find out what happened to her.

  When we reached my house, a large rambler on 16th Street, Lew pulled into the driveway, came around to open my door, and lifted me out of the car.

  “I think I can stand,” I said, all cried out now and apologetic.

  “I should drop you, right here in the driveway, maybe tripping over air like you did back there,” he said and almost smiled.

  Inside the house, he put me on the overstuffed sofa in the living room and went into the kitchen. I could hear him talking on the phone, but made out only two words: “another kid.” He was a more accomplished whisperer than I.

  The teakettle whistled, and Lew returned to the room carrying the rattan tray that he’d given Robert and me just weeks before Robert’s stroke. The tea smelled wonderful. The man who made the tea was wonderful. And Robert was almost an impossible act to follow.

  “You don’t need to stay with me. Thanks for fixing the tea. I’ll be fine now,” I said. “Besides, I need to get decent.”

  “Can you get around?” he said with real concern. “Try to stand.”

  I motioned him away and pushed up from the soft arm of the sofa. My knee didn’t feel too bad, but I knew it would get worse. I limped to the opposite wall. Satisfied, he agreed to leave but not before mentioning his need for a home-cooked meal and even supplying a menu—stuffed pork chops and any kind of greens. I started to tell him that I hadn’t eaten pork or much of anything fried since Robert’s stroke but didn’t think he wanted to hear about my dead husband while he was trying to get a date, his first one with me since college.

  “Hinting for a free meal, uh? I’d love to oblige but it might be hard while I’m incapacitated,” I said, glad to have the playful banter completely back in both our voices. After Robert died, Lew had helped me hold things together without ever overstepping. He was always there to give me what I wanted, what I needed, and nothing more. Only recently, over the last couple of months, had our relationship begun to change, slowly.

  “I’ll bring the food, spaghetti from that place you like downtown or some real food from Levi’s. Sometime between seven-thirty and eight,” he said, then walked over to the wall where I leaned, scooped me up—one hundred and forty pounds is never easy for anybody to scoop—and put me back on the sofa. A light kiss that he had aimed for my cheek landed on my lips—my doing—and sealed the dale.

  On his way out, he stopped at the compact disc player. By the time he reached the front door, “If This World Were Mine,” the Luther Vandross-Cheryl Lynn duet, was playing. Without looking back, he left.

  He’s really a wonderful man. But I was glad to see him leave.

  I picked up the phone on the end table, put it on my lap, and waited.

  Answer that phone! That must be the tenth ring.

  I jerked forward, almost dropping the phone from my lap. My knee was throbbing, and the phone ringing was mine. I must have dozed off—taken a long nap. The last time I’d checked it was only twe
lve-thirty, and now it was just beginning to get dark. Please don’t hang up before I can answer, please don’t. I snatched the receiver from the hook.

  “Hello. Hello?” I said. No answer. “Janice?”

  “Yeah,” she said. I could barely hear her.

  “So you got the number?”

  “From you, this morning,” she said. Right answer, wrong voice.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d even see what I scribbled on the corner of that old Barry flyer,” I said, trying to fix on the voice. “You sound a little funny. Are you all right?”

  “Catching a cold or something. You wanted me to call you.”

  “Can you talk now? Where are you?”

  “In the phone booth around the corner from the shelter. But I can’t talk long. There’s a line for the phone. And you know how these people get.”

  At the moment, those people were being unusually quiet outside a doorless phone booth on a busy noise-free street corner, during rush hour.

  “Are you going to help me?” I said, getting right to the point.

  “I called you, didn’t I?”

  “Thanks. I’ll treat you to dinner at Southern Grill while we talk. It’s only a couple of blocks from you.”

  She didn’t answer quickly. Homeless people rarely hesitated to accept invitations to dinner. I looked at my watch. It was five-thirty.

  “No. You hurt your leg. I suggest you … let me come to you,” she said.

  Now, I hesitated. “I’m at 6193 Sixteenth Street, N.W. It’s a gray house, third from the corner.” I had to talk to her. Whatever she knew, I needed to know now. It had already been more than twelve hours since I’d noticed Rachel was gone. “How soon can you get here?”

  “Twenty minutes,” she said, and hung up.

  Well, she certainly wasn’t traveling by Metrobus or the subway. Moving up in the world, aren’t you, Janice?