by Isaac Thorne
“That’s fine,” Afia said. She sounded exhausted again. Staff wondered if he should talk with Patsy privately sometime before morning, let her know about Afia’s past here. She didn’t seem to recognize the reporter’s name as having any local significance, unofficial historian or not. Telling her a bit about Afia’s own history in Lost Hollow might help avoid some more awkwardness if the older woman knew what subjects and areas of town were best avoided.
“It sounds like you’ve got quite a few scary tales around here that we’ll be able to tell,” he said. He pushed himself back from the table, preparing to return to his room for the evening, at least until he was sure that Afia was secure in her own room. “We’ll come away with something great. So what’s the name of this constable we’re going to meet tomorrow morning?”
Patsy smiled. “Mr. Gordon. His name is Graham Gordon. He seems a little shy at first, but I’m sure he’ll open right up when we start talking about his little haunted place on the edge of town.”
Staff paused in mid-repel from the dinner table. He glanced up at Patsy first, perhaps hoping she had misspoken and would correct herself. When she didn’t, he turned to look at Afia. The reporter’s hands were in her lap, the napkin beneath them clenched tightly in her palms, making the veins on the backs of her hands stand out. Her face had become stone except for a single throbbing spot on her right temple. Her eyes, narrow, were trained squarely on the squat older woman who sat across from her at the dining table.
Patsy looked at both her guests, one to the other, her smile fading. Her larger than life gray eyes were innocent behind her glasses.
“Did I say something wrong?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“You didn’t actually say anything wrong,” Staff said to Patsy. “It’s just that Afia had quite a bit of her own childhood trauma from back when she lived around here. I didn’t know anything about it myself until it came up on our way into town. Her father was murdered. They found his body propped up by that obelisk in the middle of town one morning. After that, Afia got shuffled into the foster system.”
He had padded downstairs a half hour after dinner to find Patsy standing in her kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes and a blank expression as if she wasn’t sure where to begin the cleanup. Now he stood stooped over her kitchen sink, his arms clad in yellow rubber gloves that were in turn coated with a fine layer of bubbles courtesy of the liberal amount of apple blossom-scented Dawn Patsy had squeezed into the warm standing water. He was carefully scrubbing each of the serving plates from dinner with a sponge, rinsing them, and gingerly placing them in the nearby dish drying rack. Patsy, on the other hand, sat at the small circa-1970s kitchen table in the center of the room, her face cradled in the palms of her hands. Now and then the old chair beneath her squeaked and groaned as she fidgeted. Staff figured she was fighting an urge to leap up and take back the dishwashing task he had kindly offered to perform in exchange for a few words with her about Afia. Most likely, he thought, he wasn’t washing them “right.”
“Oh, my Lord,” Patsy groaned. “I had no idea that the poor girl had ever lived here, much less that she lost her dad in such a brutal way. How horrible.”
Staff deposited another dish in the drying rack. “Yes. The memory of it seems to have really done a number on her mood since we drove into town. She was fine on the drive until we started talking about it. She’s been kind of sullen since then, like she hadn’t realized how much she didn’t want to relive any of that. She didn’t say as much, but I kind of got the feeling that she hasn’t been back here since those days.
“The worst part of it is that there’s never been any justice. The case was just left unsolved. Afia thinks it’s just because none of the local authorities were interested in pursuing the murder of a black man.”
“Oh dear,” Patsy said, shaking her head. “That might explain why I’ve never heard anything about it until now. This world. This awful, awful world.”
“Then you mentioned that the constable’s name is Gordon. That’s kind of a double-whammy for Afia, I’m betting. She told me that there was this man with the last name of Gordon that her father had been into it with for years. There was bad blood between them, I guess, or maybe the other guy was just a straight-up racist. I don’t know. Either way, Afia always thought that this Gordon guy had something to do with her dad’s murder.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been our constable.” Staff thought he heard some defensiveness creep into her voice. “I very much doubt he’s any older than Ms. Afton. How old did you say she was when all that happened?”
From somewhere behind the both of them, a yawning voice replied, “Twelve. I was twelve.”
Staff whipped his head around from dish duty at the same time that Patsy scooted her chair backward and craned her neck to examine the newcomer. Afia stood in the doorway wearing what looked to Staff like an old-fashioned set of men’s blue cotton pajamas covered by a white terrycloth bathrobe. She shuffled into the kitchen on slippered feet and drew up the chair to Patsy’s right, making a short “uhff” sound when she slumped into it.
“That was the most horrible day of my life.”
***
Twelve-year-old Afia Afton was startled awake by the rapid, repetitive thuds of someone pounding on her front door. She had fallen asleep while watching an episode of Miami Vice. Her dad didn’t like her watching that show, but it was easy to sneak it in on nights that he worked extremely late. Most of the other girls in her class went all weak-kneed over Don Johnson with his linen jacket, dangling cigarette, and five o’clock shadow. Afia had a crush on Philip Michael Thomas, especially when he wore the black button-down shirt with the double-breasted jacket over it. Let the white girls swoon over Crockett if they wanted. Tubbs was the one who made her tingle.
The repetitive thuds came again, harder this time, rattling the doorknob on her side. Afia glanced at the clock on the wall opposite the television. It was seven o’clock in the morning. She had fallen asleep in front of the tube after the credits had rolled on Miami Vice and the real-life Barbie doll who reported the news on Channel 6 began reading her teleprompter. Why were the TV reporters always bubbly little bleach blondes with doe eyes, voluptuous lips, and large breasts? The way they constantly stumbled over their words and corrected themselves as they delivered the news made them sound illiterate. Well, maybe not illiterate, but they never sound as if they actually comprehend what they’re reading. It was annoying.
“Dad?” she shouted. “Someone’s at the door.”
He must’ve found her asleep on the couch when he rolled in from work last night and not wanted to wake her. Usually he at least draped a throw over her if she’d allowed herself to drift to sleep out here. The fleece throw was still smartly folded in half over the back of the couch. She yawned and shivered, then grabbed the throw and draped it around her shoulders. Her father’s bedroom was just outside the living room. She stood up and turned toward it. The door of her dad’s room was wide open, which was also unusual after he’d worked the late shift.
“Dad? You in there?”
No answer.
There was a third round of pounding at the door, hard enough to rattle the decorative China set that still hung on the wall in the kitchen four years after her mother had disappeared. Afia heard them shaking against their hangers from the vibrations whoever was outside was creating. Why wouldn’t he just take that stuff down? This round of aggressive knocking was followed by the booming, angry voice of a man who was not her father.
“Hollow County Sheriff’s Department. Open up!”
Afia felt her skin crawl against the throw she’d draped over herself. She peeked into her father’s bedroom as she passed by it on her way to the front door. The bed was still made. There was no sign of her father. No sign of the pair of boots he usually left sitting at the foot of the bed when he came home from work. He wasn’t home, then. Was it possible that he hadn’t made it home from work at all? Panic began to claw at her heart and creep
its way into her throat. She was left at home alone often these days. It was just her and her father, after all. Sometimes she had to be home alone. But she could never remember a morning when she had awakened and not found her father either cooking bacon in a frying pan in the kitchen or sawing logs in bed that sounded like a growling grizzly bear.
“Dad?” she screamed. “Dad? Where are you?”
Another thud and the sound of splintering wood sent her running to her own bedroom. She slammed her door and searched frantically for something heavy that she could shove against it. The front door of the house she’d shared with her father since birth slammed against the interior wall. That was immediately followed by the clomp clomp clomp of an army of boots marching through her place. With nowhere to run, she peeked through her bedroom window. There were two sheriff’s department cars in the driveway, their strobes alternating red and blue. Behind them was parked an unmarked car. Inside that one sat a jowly white man in a tie and sport jacket. No sheriff’s deputies were in sight around him. That must mean they were all in her house. If she opened the window and bolted, she doubted that the jowly man would be able to run fast enough to catch her. But where could she go?
“Afia Afton?” a baritone male voice called from the other side of her bedroom door. “My name is Abe Wickham. I’m a Hollow County sheriff’s deputy. Are you in there, Afia? There’s nothing to be afraid of. We just need to make sure you’re all right.”
The jowly man in the car caught sight of her then. She saw him snag a CB radio mic and start speaking into it before she ducked below the window casement. Her heart felt like it was going to burst right out of her chest. Her breath was ragged, shaky. Her hands trembled. Distantly from the other side of her bedroom door she heard another man’s voice. He said something about a window. Then came the Wickham man’s voice again: “10-4.”
“Where’s my dad?” Afia screamed. “What have you done to my dad?”
There was a long pause from the other side of the door followed by an exasperated sigh.
“Afia, we need to talk to you about your dad, but we need to do it face-to-face. I’m going to need you to open your door for me so we can talk. If you don’t, I’m going to have to open it myself.”
Another voice, male but not as baritone as Wickham’s added, “Christ’s sake. We don’t have time for this.” Someone else—Wickham maybe—shushed him.
“Nobody’s going to hurt you, Afia,” Wickham said. His voice was somehow closer now, as if he’d pressed his lips directly against the gap between the closed door and its frame. “We want to help you, but we need you to help us do that.”
Afia glanced through her bedroom window again. The jowly man still sat in his car. He was staring off in the opposite direction now. Bored, maybe.
“Jesus, Abe, just open the door,” said another man’s voice.
Afia spoke up then. “Ok. I’m opening up. But if you try to hurt me I’m going to kick you all in the balls.”
Laughter from behind the door.
“Ok, Afia,” Wickham replied. “I’m stepping away from the door. Come on out when you’re ready.”
She opened the door to find four white men in uniforms with shiny gold badges pinned on their chests, shiny black boots on their feet, and shiny, intimidating handguns strapped to their hips. The tallest of them, a man with narrow eyes and what the other girls in her class referred to as a porn stache over his lip, wore a nametag with the same shininess of his badge just above it. On it was printed one word in all caps: WICKHAM. He went down on one knee as she approached him and removed his hat. Their eyes locked for a second. Afia thought he looked like an angry man who was trying to fake gentleness and sympathy. He wasn’t good at it.
“Afia, I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Wickham said. “We found your daddy this morning in the town square. He’s passed away.”
Afia’s knees buckled. She collapsed to the floor in front of him. No one tried to catch her.
Minutes later, the newly orphaned Afia Afton found herself seated on her own front porch, tears streaming down her face while the deputies who had broken into her home with Wickham searched through all her dad’s stuff and her own. They would not tell her what they were looking for. The jowly man that had remained in his car ambled his way toward her, a sympathetic twist on his lips, his tie blowing off his chest and over his shoulder as a sudden gust of wind embraced them.
“Miss Afton,” the man said. “May I have a seat there beside you?”
Afia shrugged and indicated the spot on her left with a nod of her head.
“Thank you, ma’am. My name is Johnson. Inspector Johnson with the Hollow County sheriff. I investigate homicides.”
She looked at him. “My dad was murdered?”
He nodded, focusing his own gaze on his car in the driveway. “Yeah, it looks that way. We’re going to find who did this, but I need to ask you a few questions so we can figure out who it was. Do you feel like you can answer a few questions for me right now?”
Fresh hot tears streamed from the corners of her eyes. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“We’ll work all that out.” He patted her left knee, still without looking at her. “Do you know if your daddy had any friends who came to visit him here? Anybody that you thought didn’t look like a normal person?”
She glared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean did he ever have any buddies over who were drinking funny stuff? Or smoking anything that smelled weird to you? Ever see anyone with any funny white powder?”
Afia shook her head.
“What about strange women, then?” the Johnson man asked her. “Your daddy bring home any girlfriends since your mother went away? What did they look like? Did they dress funny? Wear clothes that you thought were a little too, uh, revealing?”
Afia’s level of uncomfortable with this strange white man suddenly went to Red Alert. “My daddy was a good man,” she said to him. “Only person he didn’t like was that old drunk who lives through the woods there.” She indicated the direction of the Lee Gordon house with an outstretched hand. She tried to meet his eyes, but he would not look at her. Instead, he patted her left knee again and stood up. He placed his hands on his lower back and stretched, yawning. Afia heard something pop. She thought it was probably a bone in his spine.
“Yep. Thank you for your time, Miss Afton,” he said. He stepped off the porch and began the walk back toward his car, not looking back at her. “We’ll catch the folks who did this, you betcha.”
Deputy Wickham strolled out of her house just then, his entourage of three other deputies falling in behind him. He jogged to catch up with Johnson, who stopped his stroll and allowed Wickham to bend his ear. Their baritones made it easy for Afia to overhear what they were saying. Or maybe they just weren’t bothering to hide it from her.
“No drugs or evidence of sex trafficking inside,” Wickham said. “We did find a bunch of issues of Ebony. A lot of them look like they have stories about gangs in them. Think Afton might’ve been caught up in that stuff?”
Johnson nodded knowingly, his jowls jiggling as he did. “Oh, gangs are gonna be a problem for us,” he said. “It’s been all over the news. They’re spreading out from the inner cities of the big towns, coming into small places like ours, trying to rob and kill the good people here. Reckon we’ll just have to look out for their colors and symbols. We’ve got to get them before they have a chance to get us.” He nudged Wickham in the ribs. “Maybe we just stock up on some white robes, huh? That’ll keep them out.” He brayed laughter. Wickham glanced uncomfortably at Afia behind them.
“What do we do with her?”
Johnson glanced back too, looking as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Oh, we’ve already called the state about her. DCS ought to be down here before too long. Just keep her fed and dry until they get here.” He strolled back to his car then and, without another look back, drove away. Deputy Wickham took Johnson’s former seat beside Afia.
�
��My dad wasn’t in no gang,” she said to him.
Wickham nodded. “Well, there’s a lot of things grown-ups do that kids never know about.” He produced a Winston from the right pocket of his uniform shirt and clamped it between his lips. “Them street gangs are some tough shit, but we’re tougher. They don’t know what they’re in for if they think they’re going to come down here and mess with a bunch of wild-eyed Southern boys.”
Afia scoffed. He glared at her.
“You don’t believe me? Well, that’s all right, I guess. You don’t have to. I just hope you don’t grow up and turn out like your daddy did. You know, for your sake?”
She sneered at him. Her tears had dried on her cheeks. “And if my daddy really was killed by a gang, I hope you’re going to spend every single night from now on in your car searching this town high and low for them until you find them.
“You know, for my sake?”
***
“Ugh,” Afia said, cradling her forehead in her hand. “I don’t think I ever saw those men again. Never heard another word about an investigation or gangs in Lost Hollow. I was just whisked away by the state and put into the foster program. Never even saw my dad’s body. Don’t even know if they had a funeral.”
Staff felt a pang of remorse. It probably sounded to Afia like he and Patsy had been gossiping about her behind her back. He supposed it was an accurate appraisal, even if it wasn’t intended to be mean-spirited. “Afia, I hope you’re not offended. I was just trying to—”
She waved away the rest of his thought.
“No worries. I should’ve told Joanie to find someone else for this one, that’s all. There must have been a part of me that thought it might help me to see the place again, how much it’s changed. I guess I figured it might help me put the past in the past, you know? Especially if the place had grown up at all over the years. Then all those memories came flooding back while we were driving down here. Then we almost hit that...that...whatever it was.”