I slipped the phone into my pocket and dislodged six more bricks, laying them on the floor at my toes. I knelt to press my chest against the wall, plunging arm and shoulder through the hole. The moldy stench of decay crept past my sleeve. My fingers touched more debris. I felt crumbled brick, gritty cloth, plasterboard slabs, powder. The sharp edge of a tool, maybe a spade or trowel. No bracelet. I withdrew my arm and looked again. The glint of silver teased from the left quadrant of the black space. I knew where to fish. I bent the metal prong from my ballpoint pen into a hook and thrust my arm again. Four blind casts until the hook caught. Metal clinked against metal. I had the bracelet.
I tugged; the hook slid, then jammed. Another pull, the bracelet budged. A third yank broke the resistance. My feet skidded. I fell back; my arm jerked through the hole in the wall. Another arm – all bones – flew toward me. A skeletal wrist cuffed with a silver band. White bones dangled from my fist. I lay flat on my back. Puffs of dust swirled above my mouth. The bones swung over my face. I saw little fingers with delicate knuckles; tendons of plaster linked these slender pickets to the fragile wrist. Above that joint, white bones ended in a jagged break. The hand hovered on my chest, a birdcage balanced on white claws. I flinched; the cage collapsed. Chalk dashed against my black t-shirt. The bracelet skittered to rest over my heart. It was a simple silver bangle, smooth under its film of powder. Not the complicated chain of Carolyn Wiley’s distorted memory.
I knelt at the wall again. I pressed my face to the opening to scan the dark tomb beyond the bricks.
Police arrived six minutes after I dialed 911. Reporting discovery of a human skeleton sets a fire under the cops. Eight minutes later four squad cars were angled next to Brina’s Honda, their blue lights flashing across the shadowed trees lining the street. An ambulance straddled the sidewalk, its open rear door rammed against the iron picket fence in front of the basement apartment.
I couldn’t fade from the drama or play fake curious neighbor. I told the first officer on the scene what I’d found. “Yes. The skeleton was behind the brick wall… Curled like a sleeping child in the crawl space… I pulled out just enough bricks that I could see it—I didn’t want to disturb it further. No, it wasn’t a body... A skeleton…just bones with clothing. That’s how I knew it was human. From the clothes.” My lips hitched over my teeth, the basement funk still sour in my nostrils.
Eyebrows raised, he looked a question. No words could tamp the dense stink of that closet. Or block the mildewed fumes invading my eyes. I shook my head, tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Sweat plastered the cop’s forelock on his face. Below green eyes, more sweat smeared on his upper lip. “You only got a look, but any ideas on who that skeleton might be? Anything you could tell from the clothing? Any jewelry or wallet or ID?”
“I couldn’t see a wallet. The only jewelry was a silver bracelet on the wrist. The skeleton was wearing a yellow sweater and blue jeans. There was a braided leather belt too. The yellow sweater had a pattern on it. Maybe ducks or clouds.”
His eyes popped. “You figure it might be a woman or a girl? Don’t know any real man would wear a fruity sweater like that.”
“Maybe.”
Carolyn Wiley was incidental to the story, an old lady I tried to help recover lost jewelry. I kept her name out of my account. My case, not his business. He didn’t ask the basic question of why I was snooping in the vacant apartment. If he was too spooked by my discovery to ask the fundamentals, I wasn’t going to volunteer information. When he’d finished jotting in his notebook, I gave the officer my card. I took a spot on the curb opposite the house. Concerned, cooperative, but under the radar was my role.
Whispering neighbors stood in clutches of three and four along the curb. A man sidled toward me. He wore a soiled undershirt, baggy track pants, and blue bandanna knotted over his scalp. “Hey, bro, what’s going on? You got any idea?”
“Not much. They found a body in the basement. The crawl space.” I skipped my role in the story.
“You mean, like a junkie or something? Too many of them bums and bangers infesting our neighborhood.”
“Don’t know. It was a skeleton, not a fresh body.”
The man shook his head to erase the grim images of death and decay scampering across his mind. “Bad news. I figure no way a person could be in that crawl space for legit reasons. Had to be some business on the wrong side of the law, any way you cut it. The owners are still up in Martha’s Vineyard or wherever, on vacation. I guess the cops’ll get around to calling ‘em.”
As the man finished his speculation, metallic scraping and rough shouts drew our attention to the death house. A gaggle of police technicians in dark blue wrangled a gurney through the basement door. They hauled it up the two steps to the street. A lump on the stretcher was zipped into a black body bag.
The swollen bump was small and misshapen, like a chimp or a broken doll. Nothing human left. These forlorn remains, the gurney, the police swarm, everything reminded me of Annie. Five days gone now. Even as they’d shuttled her corpse from the hotel, she’d retained the warmth, contours, and substance of the living woman. Annie smelled like Annie, even in death. But this skeleton was a jumble of bones, less a person than scattered fragments of an idea. Where was the humanity in this pile’s diminished and undignified form? A shudder rippled across my neck.
My nosy sidekick turned, worry etched on his face. “You okay, bro? This city supposed to be tough and hard. But seeing a dead body’s always gonna shock, right?”
“Yes, always.” Murder wasn’t my beat. Never would be. No explanation, just fact.
The man glanced at me, then passed his hand over his nose, like I exhaled plague. To cover, he pointed at the uniformed parade across the street. Each officer carried a clear plastic sack of clothing. One evidence bag caught the eye of my new pal. “Lookit that! Them’s a nice pair of black high-top sneakers. You know, old-school cool kicks, Nikes maybe. How much you wanna bet those shoes never make it to the precinct. End up on the feet of some cop’s kid. Trust and believe. They gonna be stole.”
I tipped my chin, but didn’t take the cynical bet. There was nothing more I could gather at this somber scene. And nothing more I could give. The police would question the home owners and neighbors. They’d check dental records and descriptions from missing persons reports. They’d dig up cold case murder files, open investigations, and inquiries from other jurisdictions.
The coroner’s report would give an indication of time and cause of death. Forensic reconstruction would yield the gender, age, and physical description of the dead person. The cops might float background scraps to reporters. A news story could generate clues from a curious public to help identify the skeleton. Harvesting current gossip for intel on past crimes was a trick the cops played to perfection. I’d leave them to their scavenger hunt.
I had two hunches I wanted to pursue beyond police scrutiny. Carolyn Wiley knew the house, maybe she knew something relevant to this strange death. Through the haze of damaged memory, she accepted me as her trusted son. Our fragile connection might let me push further than obtuse cops could. I’d inform them about Carolyn if necessary. Otherwise, I wanted to keep her out of the investigation.
First, I had to probe the awful meaning of the skeleton’s yellow sweater. Norment Ross’s old photo of his family held the clue. I knew he could identify the lost woman in the wall. I dreaded burrowing into Norment’s past again. He’d shared his painful stories to help me. More prying now seemed grisly. But I needed those answers before launching a dangerous expedition to dig up Carolyn Wiley’s buried memories.
Chapter
Fourteen
My hunch played as I’d feared.
The morning after the police unearthed the mystery skeleton, I shared my insights with Norment Ross in his office. I described the house and reminded him of my connection to it through the wandering Mrs. Wiley. Not wa
nting to lead Norment to false conclusions, I didn’t volunteer a description of the skeleton. I dropped an open-ended question, hoping the facts wouldn’t match my gruesome discovery: “What do you remember about the clothes Dreamie wore the last time you saw her?”
He leaned forward, elbows planted on his desk. “Well, that’d be more than twenty-five years ago. But here’s what I recall. Dreamie liked to wear blue jeans. I’d always tease her and call them ‘dungarees,’ like we do in Charleston. She claimed they were in style, but they looked kinda low-class to me.” Fond smiles flickered across his face. “Anyway, that’s what she was wearing the last time I saw her, blue jeans and her braided leather belt. And I know she had a sweater, ‘cause of the cool weather. Probably yellow, ‘cause she favored that color. She had so many tops and blouses in yellow. I told her that shade of bright yellow made her face glow like the sun.” More smiles and a pause. I figured he was trying to delay asking why I was so interested in the clothing. “I guess that’s why she wore so much of it. I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think she was wearing a sweater like the one in that photo I showed you. That’s all I got, Rook. Blue jeans and a yellow sweater. Does that mean something to you?”
“Yes, it does.” No sugar-coating the truth. He deserved to learn what I knew. “Norment, did Dreamie wear a silver bracelet?”
“Always. I gave it to her the day after Sabrina was born. Nothing fancy. Plain silver was all I could afford. But Dreamie wore that bangle every day. Why?”
“I think the woman they found is Dreamie.”
He sighed, two gut-deep torrents of sorrow, but he didn’t weep. His eyes narrowed, the dark lids clamping over pulsing strings of red around the pupils. I held my breath, wanting my guess to be wrong.
When he spoke, Norment sounded more surprised than pained. “So that’s where she’s been all these years. Holed up in a house ten blocks from me. All these years of searching and fretting. Wishing and hoping. Come to find out she’s been just ten blocks away the whole time.”
Tears came later. Norment asked me to accompany him to the coroner’s office downtown to identify the remains and view the clothing. He didn’t call her Dreamie. Or his wife. Just “that poor woman.” Maybe he hoped if he didn’t say the name out loud, the truth would stay buried. He didn’t want Brina to go with him. Digging up the past was a man’s job, not a daughter’s, he said. These first moments with his lost wife belonged to him alone. He’d break the news to Brina at a better time and place.
We sat side-by-side at a metal table in a small conference room with beige walls and scuffed linoleum tiles. A clear plastic bag lay flattened in front of us. A young white cop, R. Salton according to his name tag, sat opposite, his square fingers drumming the table. The cop shoved the bag toward Norment. Salton glanced past our shoulders toward the two-way mirror behind us. This interrogation room was designed to extract the truth and we were subjects of the latest experiments. They were using the soft approach on us. Salton’s doughy face folded in a half-smile. His pity thickened into soup around us.
The ziplocked sack contained jeans and a yellow sweater, white tube socks, flowered panties, and a white bra. Black blotches stained the braided belt. Tiny bites frayed its leather. As predicted, the black Nike sneakers hadn’t made it to the evidence lock-up. No silver bracelet either. The cop removed the items one by one. Brown, green, and gray mildew stains marred each piece. Rodents had gnawed everywhere. The moldy clothing reeked of neglect or absence. Each item had been folded with care. The package wasn’t bulky once the bag was punched down and the rank cellar air expelled.
In answer to Salton’s questions, Norment identified the clothing as belonging to his wife, Jayla Dream Ross. The cop led him through a point-by-point recital of that painful history. Norment outlined the last day he’d seen his wife: the breakfast they’d eaten, his drive to the office, his return home in the evening. He described what Dreamie looked like, how tall she was, what she’d worn that last morning. He explained how he’d searched for her and how he’d given up hope. As Norment talked, the cop grunted over a narrow spiral pad, scribbling notes with a leaky ballpoint. Ink blotches soiled the words. Finished with questions, Salton planted his fist on a yellow legal pad and shoved it across the table. He pushed the pen with his fingernail. Salton said Norment had to write his story, then sign to make everything official. Torture prolonged. I objected, but Norment seized the legal pad and produced his own ballpoint. He took up the task without complaint. Clean words on a clean page mattered.
When he was done writing, Norment asked if he could take home his wife’s clothing. The officer shook his head; it was evidence in an on-going investigation into a suspicious death and had to remain in police custody. Salton’s voice was flat and slow, as if this routine bored him. As if he’d spent every day of his brief career telling dim-witted husbands their lost wives were dead. Norment could have demanded professional courtesy, cop to PI, crime-fighter to detective, neighbor to neighbor. Something to smooth over this saw-toothed indifference. But he held his tongue and grimaced sideways to shut me up.
Norment’s last question was the simplest: had Dreamie been murdered? Sticking to the rules, Salton declined to characterize the death beyond calling it suspicious. The cop clomped from the room, leaving us alone with the evidence bag. Maybe he went behind the two-way mirror, spying to make sure our grief was real.
I refolded each item into neat squares and slipped them into the plastic bag. Panties, bra, sunny yellow sweater, shredded jeans. Pathetic little souvenirs from a lost life. As I moved my fingers over the clothing, a spray of confetti fell from the dank creases. The minute flakes were dark blue and rigid, like flecks of paint. Two of the shavings stuck to the moisture on the tip of my index finger. The lacquer was shiny and thick. Maybe these flakes were residue from wall paint. Maybe from another source. Had the walls of the basement room where Dreamie was buried been painted blue? I angled my body so the movements of my right hand were hidden from the spying cops behind the two-way mirror. I scooped a sample of the blue confetti under my nail and transferred that hand to my pocket where I flicked the shavings into the collection of lint and stray dimes. I collected three samples of the blue flakes. They glittered like iridescent scales from a tiny tropical fish. I wanted to know what these chips meant.
When I’d finished returning the folded things to the evidence bag, I pushed it toward Norment. He pressed both hands on the bag covering his wife’s clothes. Then he laid his head on the plastic and kissed its cold surface. The plastic crackled under his touch, air hissing from a hidden hole. As I rubbed his shoulders, Norment wept for his Dreamie, gone twenty-five years. Annie had been dead six days.
Our return train ride to Harlem was the longest forty minutes I’d ever endured.
Chapter
Fifteen
I was bad at receiving comfort and not much better at giving it.
I tried to console Brina in the hours after Norment broke the news to her of the discovery of her mother’s body. My afternoon phone call caught her in the car. “You going to be at home tonight? I can drop by. If you want.”
“That’s okay. Thanks.” I heard the sniffle as she gunned the engine. “I’m heading to Daddy’s place now. Probably spend the night on his couch.”
“You’ll be together then. That’s good.” I hesitated as she coughed. Plunging on was the best I could do. “If you want anything. Call me. Anything.” I didn’t know how to fit into her life. Or if she even needed me to. And she wasn’t offering clues.
“Sure. I’ll call.” Traffic noises surged over her words. I heard car horns, screeching brakes, and angry curses shouted in the silence between us. She muttered, not loud enough for me to catch what she said.
“Brina, is everything okay? What’s going on?”
“Some fool in roller skates and gold spandex tried to break the law of gravity in the middle of the intersection.”
“Yo
u okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. Two Band-aids will patch him up.”
“No. You. Are you okay?”
“Sure. I’m doing fine.” Briskness returned to her voice, erasing any falter or opening for me to share a consoling word. “Catch you later,” she said. She clicked off before I could ask more.
The next morning, rather than dissolving in misery, Brina burrowed into work. Perhaps too much time had elapsed for sorrow to catch hold of her. That motherless past was half her childhood, all her teen and adult years. Or maybe Brina’s memories of Dreamie were so faded it was difficult to summon any overt mourning. When I’d met her two years ago, Brina recited the agency’s informal motto: “Lots of people go missing in Harlem. We find the ones who want to be found. The rest, well, they stay lost.” Maybe that forlorn observation applied to memories as much as people. Perhaps for Brina her mother, and the past they’d shared, was meant to stay lost.
Brina worked with subtle determination to keep her father occupied and distracted. She ate more meals with him, invited him to join our trips around the neighborhood more frequently. She directed more cases toward Norment, even the strenuous tasks she ordinarily would have assigned to me. I couldn’t know what father and daughter said to each other in private. Maybe there were more tears behind closed doors. I knew one thing for sure: without a satisfactory resolution to the mystery of how Dreamie ended up buried in that house, the case and the sorrow might be past, but it would never be over. I wanted to deliver that resolution.
The second day on the job after the discovery of Dreamie’s body began like the one before: bleak and silent.
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