I reached out to hug Nareece, but she turned her back to me. “I hate you!” she screamed. Her head turned three-sixty. “I wish you were dead. I wish I was dead.” Red spit flew from her mouth to my cheek.
Mini-waterfalls flowed from Mom’s eyes. She reached out to me. “Your sister needs you,” she said.
I awoke in a start, sweaty, unsure of my surroundings.
“Dream workin’ you, girl,” Dulcey said.
I sat up, rolled down the window, and stuck my head out a bit to suck in the cool air. A half hour later, Dulcey pulled up in front of the house. She threw the car in Park, reached back and grabbed her purse from the back floor, and said, “C’mon, girl, let’s go see bout that . . .”
I was out of the car and closing my door on her last words.
The letter was in a hidden pocket at the back of my nightstand. I tore the envelope as Dulcey sat on the bed next to me. Inside a folded piece of paper were photos of Nareece, John, and the twins. On the piece of paper was a typed note from Nareece.
M, I know there is so much I never told you, so much I’m sorry for. Mom and Dad. I don’t know what I would have done all these years without you. I’m so grateful for all you did. For Travis. That he is even here. All grown up. I wish we could all just go away together.
Disappear and never look back. I know you’ d just tell me I’ m crazy, always living in a fantasy world. And I guess you’re right. Except now reality is setting in. I guess I always knew this day would come, sooner or later. So much time has passed, until I was beginning to believe that everything was going to be all right. That everything is the way it is and the past is the past, long gone, done. But it’s not done, Muriel. And I know that I’m the only one who can fix it now. I love you.
Reecey
Dulcey gave me her nonsense look—eyebrows lifted, causing ripples in her forehead, lips pursed.
“Don’t even ask, girl. I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about. What she did. Only two things I know that will make a body hunt your behind down no matter how much time passes are money and more money.”
After Dulcey left, I took my jacket off and checked the messages on the house phone.
“Hi, Auntie, please call us. We’re worried about Mommy and Daddy and we want to go home or come to your house. We’ll be good, we promise.” They spoke in unison like they were rehearsing a script. Two other messages consisted of a hang-up and a message from the hospital.
I called the hospital and learned Calvin was in stable condition, but sleeping. I held off calling the twins back. They needed answers I did not have. The prospect of them staying with me required more thought than I was capable of at present.
First, Calvin. I showered, blow-dried and curled my hair, put my face on, then slipped into black slacks, a light green sweater, and black heels.
When I entered the hospital, the smell of disinfectant mixed with butt and sick made me gag. I held my breath until I entered the elevator, then again until I entered his room. Flowers filled the room, the fragrance weighing down the breathable air. I sat in the chair next to his bed and watched him sleep. He looked peaceful, despite the white lines that peppered his face, healed scratches, and the pink scar that went from the top of his head, cut his forehead in half, and ended above the bridge of his nose. Otherwise, his brittle brown skin was smooth and wrinkle-free, despite his fifty-eight years. He looked handsome in a rugged kind of way, with a few weeks of beard growth. I squeezed my legs together to maximize the tingle and shifted back in the chair. “Hmph, hmph, hmph.” I planned to be there when he woke.
My phone vibrated. It was Cap. I moved out into the hallway.
“Mabley, I hope you’re better and back on your feet good. I need you here. We need to talk. Now.”
I told Cap I would be at the lab within an hour.
Calvin was still sleeping when I peeked back in the room. I stopped at the nurses’ station to leave a message for him on the way out, in case he woke before I returned. One of the nurses said it would be at least another hour or two before the medication they’d given him wore off.
While I waited for the elevator, I said a short prayer thanking God, whom I seldom visited with words, for Calvin’s life. An amen and the elevator doors opened. A stately looking black woman stepped off and brushed past me. My brain grabbed hold of a mental uneasiness that stopped my steps. I looked sideways and watched her walk down the hallway, then shook off my foolishness and got in the elevator.
I reached the lobby and called Laughton’s cell. The squawk pierced my eardrums: “The number you have reached is no longer in service . . .”
I clicked off. Another call came in, unknown number. I don’t usually answer unknown numbers, but with all the unknowns that were registering around me, this time I did.
“Auntie M, please come get us, please!” Rose, or maybe it was Helen, screamed.
“Honey, don’t cry. What’s wrong?”
“Grandma’s yelling and being mean. She won’t let us do nothin’. We can’t go outside, we can’t play in the house. All she lets us do is sit around and do nothin’. Everything we do is wrong.”
“Mrl,” John’s mother, Ama, said. She had taken the phone from the twin. She had her own way of saying my name, but I couldn’t understand anything else she said. She ranted for what seemed forever in Vietnamese without taking a breath.
“Ama, I can’t understand you.”
“They are upset. No Nareece. No John. Come to get them. They should not be here. I cannot . . .” And she took off again in unintelligible garble.
“Ama, stop!” I yelled. It took her a few more sentences to quiet so I could talk. “I’ll get the girls as soon as I can. I’ll call you back to let you know when. You have to handle it for a little while longer. Maybe a few days.” She stayed silent. “Ama?”
“Yes, okay. I wait.”
“Let me speak to one of the girls, please.”
“Hi, Auntie, it’s Rose again.”
“Listen, you girls need to calm down and behave. I’ll come in a few days, on the weekend. You’re not hurt, are you?”
Rose sniffled. “No, Auntie. We’ll be good until you come.”
I heard Helen crying in the background. “I-i-i-iss she coming?” she said with a bubbling sound.
Rose said, “Where’s Mommy and Daddy? We’re scared because they haven’t called and they’re not answering their phones.”
“Don’t worry, baby. Everything’s going to be all right. Put Helen on.”
Helen was snorting like she had been crying long and hard. “Auntie . . . please . . . come . . .” she begged.
“I’m going to come and get you. But you’re going to have to be good for a few more days until I can get there, okay?”
“We . . . love . . . you.” She snorted after each word.
I could hear Rose in the background trying to reassure and comfort her sister. “Don’t worry, Hel,” she said. “Auntie’ll fix everything.”
Then the line went dead.
“I love you, too,” I mumbled to dead space.
My head spun. I fell into a seat in the lobby of the hospital. My stomach flip-flopped and I gagged. A passing nurse stopped and asked if I needed help. I couldn’t answer. She left for a few minutes, then returned with an ice pack, slapped it against her hand, and set it on the back of my neck.
I managed a smile. “Flashing,” I huffed.
Seemed I spent my days on edge, waiting for the next one to happen, hoping and praying it wouldn’t be in the captain’s office or while out on assignment, or in a crowded elevator or a store or a movie theater . . . The only two places that worked were in my car or at home alone, where I could scream, shout, dump cold water on myself or ice down my shirt, or jump out of my clothes. I smiled and shook my head at the thought of my aunt Moo, yes, Aunt Moo was her name, jumping around and shouting, talking about the Lord having put the heat in her and how He would lead her to the cool waters of salvation, her version of the true meaning and purpose
of “the Change.”
“Hot flashes? I got them, too,” the nurse said and laughed with me. “You might want to see your doctor and get some medication to help get you through.”
“I’m okay now. Thanks again.” When I got up, I stumbled forward a bit like a drunk, then pulled it together and sauntered out. I heard my nana’s squeaking voice saying, “Getting old is not for sissies.” Hell, I was only forty-nine. What was old? More like being a woman was not for sissies. We are the grand, awesome, wonderful, beautiful gender, but our calling was definitely not for sissies. No, it was definitely the “old” part that was freaking me out, making me feel like I was past my prime, done, with no brilliance left to attract, never mind keep, a man. Oh, but wait, I had never been able to do that up till now anyway—keep a man. I shook off the negative thoughts and went for the exit.
Outside, the cool breeze revived me.
The lab was empty and dark except for a few desk lamps left on and the lights in Cap’s office at the far end of the room. There were no windows in the lab since we were in the basement. The only light was artificial. I allowed the desk lamps to light my way, not wanting to bear the harshness of the overhead fluorescents. I set my bag on my desk and started toward Cap’s office, then I noticed that Laughton’s desk was cleaned off—none of the usual mounds of bullets, gun parts, and guns decorating it. Never before in seventeen years.
The top half of Cap’s office door was glass, so I could see him hunched over his desk in intense concentration as I approached. When I knocked and went in, he quickly closed the file he was examining and shoved it into his side drawer.
“Sit down.”
I obeyed.
“You know, your partner quit this morning.”
I popped back up. “What do you mean, quit?”
“He handed in his badge and gun.”
I squeaked out, “Laughton?” I paced and circled the room.
“You have another partner? Yes, Laughton!”
“Okay, so you’re telling me that Laughton just walked in and gave you his gun and badge without any explanation.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. Sit down, damn it, you’re making me dizzy. He said he had some other business and it was time to call it quits here.”
“Yeah, right. I just talked to him, and he didn’t happen to mention that he had quit. He was . . .” I hesitated. I didn’t want to tell Cap that Laughton was drunk when I last talked to him.
“I’ll hold off from putting in his papers for a few days, until you have a chance to talk to him. And you’re going to have to check in with Parker to get back on schedule. We got too many cases pending. The commissioner has his fist rammed up my ass.”
“Okay, okay, I got it. But listen, Cap, Reecey is in some kind of trouble. She’s disappeared, her and John.” I pulled the note she wrote me from my pocket and handed it to him. “She sent this to me, but it doesn’t make a helluva lot of sense.”
I told him about the trip to Boston—the run-in with an unknown assailant, John’s dismissive attitude, and the black SUV that had tailed us. I ended with the phone call I’d received from the twins. When I finished talking, Cap looked like he was having a hot flash himself, sweat dripping down the sides of his flushed face.
“If you weren’t like my own daughter . . . You got a week, Mabley. Find Nareece and take care of your nieces. I’ll get Parker to partner up with Johnson and Huy. Now get outta here.”
“Thanks, Cap.” Before I closed the door, Cap squawked, “And keep me posted.”
My desk was covered from edge to edge with casework, except for a carved-out space where my computer sat. I got into my computer and entered Marcy and Wade Taylor’s names. They both had records for drugs and weapons charges, though neither had served any time. They both had been free from the law for the last twelve years. Married in 2007. No children. They had legal custody of Wade’s daughter’s daughter. No previous marriages for Wade. One previous marriage for Marcy to Kelvin Boone. Kelvin Boone, son of Richard “The Pistol” Boone. Brother, Jesse Boone. My fingers tingled as I pressed the computer keys.
No Laughton McNair listed anywhere.
I sat in front of Laughton’s apartment without any memory of driving there—always a scary thought to have been on the road driving for miles and not realize the journey had happened until after the fact. The bell went unanswered, so I tried the doorknob. The door pushed open, the lock broken. I pulled my gun and went inside. The place was empty except for trash strewn across the floor. A rancid odor of funk mixed with a hint of ammonia permeated the air and made me gag. I moved through, room by room, the same smell in each room. The closets and cabinets were cleared out.
Laughton’s next-door neighbor said Laughton had moved out a week ago. Said three men came the night before and kicked the door in, which explained the broken lock. She called the police, but the men left before they arrived. She had no information about a forwarding address, but she pointed me to the landlord’s unit around the corner. The landlord did not answer the door.
I sat in the car, numbed by all I thought I knew, or rather all I did not know, about Laughton. We had a permanent link, at least I thought we did, no matter what, when, where. It went that deep. “I just talked to him and he doesn’t happen to mention he quit, never mind he moved,” I said out loud. I scanned my memory trying to recall something that would have led down this path to move Laughton off the reservation.
Then there was Marcy Taylor, whom he said he was once married to, but there was no record of that in the files. Ever since she committed suicide or got murdered, whichever, Laughton had been acting weird. I tried his cell again—no answer. I needed to find Laughton, but with no known next of kin or friends outside of the department and me that I knew of, I supposed I would have to wait for him to contact me. I returned to the hospital, so I would be there when Calvin woke up.
When I walked into Calvin’s hospital room, he was engaged in a fit of laughter that had him coughing and choking and brought a nurse running to his bedside. His coconspirator was a beautiful young woman who shared his fine features and dusty brown curly hair. Her haircut, short to her head, intensified her gray-blue eyes.
“You must be Muriel,” she said, regaining control, but not quite. The expression on my face must have told her I did not appreciate being the butt of their laughter. “Oh no, please.” She came toward me with an outstretched hand. “I’m Shea, Calvin’s little sister.” She gestured for me to take her place at Calvin’s bedside. “Believe me, the good news is that you didn’t arrive a few minutes earlier. You were definitely saved from the disgusting outputs that escaped my not-so-classy big brother. Reminds me of when we were kids—”
Calvin interrupted. “TMI. Put all my business out in the street, why don’t you?” he scolded, but not really.
“I’m happy you’re back,” I said. I leaned down to kiss him. He captured my arm and held me in place for a much longer kiss than I intended, especially with Little Sis at my back.
She cleared her throat and said, “Well, time for me to exit right.”
I gently pulled away.
“Don’t stop on my account,” she said. “I’m leaving anyway. Unfortunately I didn’t get away in time, before being assaulted, that is.” She laughed. “I have to get back to work. It is a pleasure to meet you.” She blew Calvin a kiss and left.
“I thought I’d lost you—” I said. He pulled me down and kissed me again, cutting off my words.
He let go and said, “I thought so, too. I decided to hang around because I had you to discover.” He kissed my hand.
“I am so sorry about this.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry about. It certainly wasn’t your fault. I was driving. When I first woke up, I thought you were dead. I fell all out of the bed trying to get to someone to find out what happened to you. Almost killed myself for real,” he said, laughing lightly.
“So, when can you get outta here?”
“They don’t keep you
in the hospital for long anymore. Your eyes are open, you’re out. I’m going home on Tuesday.”
We sat in silence for a good while, holding hands, letting the television fill in the spaces. For the first time in weeks, my shoulders released.
A nurse came in and gave Calvin more pills. Not long after, he went to sleep, but not before confirming I would return Tuesday to take him home.
Travis arrived home the same time I did. “Hey, Moms.”
When we walked in the entryway, I could smell the greenery. I looked closer—glassy eyes, simple smile. Visions of my perfect child disintegrated. And so they should have long ago. Silly mother. He started upstairs.
“Travis, are you high? No, let me rephrase. You’re high.”
Still walking upstairs, he said, “I smoked a little weed, what’s the big deal?”
“Boy, you must be losing your mind.”
He stopped halfway up the stairs and spun around to face me, looking down.
“What are you getting all bent out of shape about? It’s not like I’m a drug addict or something.” He rolled his eyes and said, “God forbid.”
My whole body shook. “I’m a cop, for chrissakes. You’re a cop’s son.” The words made sense before they came out of my mouth. Then they sounded dumb, self-righteously dumb.
“Mom, please, give it a rest. I know all about being your son, and how I’m supposed to act. Cut me some slack, will ya?”
I knew if I started up those steps, I would lose total control and probably regret whatever actions resulted. Instead, I sucked in all the air I could hold into my lungs, let go, and said, “We need to talk. Now is not the best time, but before the night is done, once you sober up.”
He made an about-face and continued up the stairs.
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