Darkness Descending

by Penny Mickelbury

  “All right, you guys,” Gianna said, and the room got quiet and down to business. “Did Natasha Hilliard become ‘Tosh’ only on the Friday or Saturday nights that she went to The Snatch? Is The Snatch the only hang out for Doms and Ags? How long had she lived that dual life? Who else knew about it? I think somebody had to know. Nobody can keep a secret like for very long. Somewhere, there’s somebody who knew both Tosh and Tasha, and we’ve got to find that somebody. I’m thinking the Phillips sisters might be inclined to help steer us toward the Dom/Ag community, and we need check out Baltimore, too. If D.C. was too risky for Tosh, maybe Baltimore was safer, or New York, even. Cassie? You and Tim.”

  Tim assumed his queenly posture so quickly that he actually surprised his colleagues, though they were by now used to the performance. And a performance it was: McCreedy compressed and contorted his six-foot-four-inch weightlifter’s body into a prancing, mincing, limp-wristed caricature, which included a locked-thigh walk that was as gravity-defying as it was hilarious. “You can’t send me back there, Lieutenant! You just can’t! They don’t like me. They won’t talk to me. And I simply can’t imagine why! I mean, I’m a white male! Why wouldn’t they want me around?”

  They all went silly and giddy again and this time it took longer to reign them in. Gianna got the message: Unless there was a compelling reason not to, she needed to send them home. They’d been ten straight days on the clock. Their silliness was merely a reflection of their fatigue. “On to Joyce Brown. We may have a sketch tomorrow, and Bobby’s going to pester the lab for DNA test results. Alice was at the Pink Panther last night, and there should have been some back-up provided by Inspector Davis from Mid-Town. Alice?”

  “There were all kinds of people in the Pink Panther last night, including quite a few women. I think they were trying to make some kind of statement, like, we’re not afraid to come here, we won’t be intimidated. But I gotta tell you, Lieutenant, if that’s supposed to be a gay bar, then most of the men in there were lost.”

  Then Bobby and Linda related their conversation with Ray Washington, earning Linda a whole chorus of atta girls for her handling of the situation and a new designation of DL as Low Down. “It is low down,” Linda said. “All those so-called straight men going home to their wives and girlfriends after a night in Pink Panther bathroom, and they wonder why so many straight women have AIDS.”

  “I appreciate the explanation,” Alice drawled, “‘cause I was having trouble trying to figure out why all these so-called gay guys were giving me sideways looks.”

  “Miss Long, honey, I give you sideways looks and I haven’t been straight a day in my life!” Tim said, giving full, buffed butch, and Gianna sent them all home.

  Alice Long was, without question, one of the most stunning women Gianna had ever seen, and she knew that Mimi thought so, too. She also knew that something had happened between Mimi and Alice, though she wasn’t sure what, and she wasn’t especially worried about it as long as it didn’t get in the way of Alice’s work, and there was nothing to indicate that it would. Still, she wondered. Then she pushed the thought away and pulled the stack of reports toward her. She opened the top folder, Stephanie Blackwell’s. She looked at photograph, a standard studio portrait, then at the info sheet. Older than Natasha Hilliard by almost fifteen years, a tenured professor, a former chair of the department, twice a visiting professor at other universities. And married. Gianna paged quickly through the file, looking for the husband’s information: Allen Cureton, a professor of art history, currently on Sabbatical. Gianna felt a flash of something familiar. She pulled Natasha Hilliard’s telephone records. All of her phone calls to Blackwell were to her office or to her cell phone, none to her home.

  She stood up and began to pace, then sat back down and began to check the dates. Then she checked the dates of Hilliard’s involvement with Lili Spenser and Selena Smith, then with the other intimate relationships the Unit had discovered, and there were quite a few of them. As Lili Spenser had said, Tosh/Tasha loved women. Gianna returned her attention to the record of phone calls to Stephanie Blackwell. Then she got up and paced some more. Natasha Hilliard had had an affair with Stephanie Blackwell. She’d check their travel records but she knew what she’d find. And then she knew what she’d felt, knew what the flash of familiarity was: The peculiar logistics of an affair with a married woman. Gianna able to call Dorothea only at work and never at home, able to see her or to be with her only when the husband was working late or out of town. Dorothea had dumped her, opting to remain with the husband who earned more money and offered a more comfortable lifestyle than a cop ever could. Especially a woman cop. Had Natasha dumped Stephanie? How had that been received? Had Stephanie’s husband been aware of the affair? She made a note to expedite locating Blackwell and Cureton, clipped it to the outside of the file, closed it, and reached for another file. And as she did so, she realized that she’d thought about Dorothea without pain or sorrow for the first time since their break-up three years ago.

  Elwood Burgess had one of those huge, monster churches across the D.C. line in Prince Georges County, Maryland, in an area that now was so chic and trendy that probably nobody but Burgess remembered its redneck origins. But Burgess certainly remembered; that’s where he was from, and so was a notorious cadre of D.C. cops and an even more notorious cadre of PG County cops who had been so violent that Black residents equated them to the cops of Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia.

  The members of Elwood Burgess’s church probably didn’t know that the man they called Reverend Doctor ever had been called Officer. Or Pig. Mimi knew, the same way she knew most of the history and lore of D.C. and its origins—from a couple of retired reporters and cops who were has-beens when she was a cub reporter but who, for whatever their reasons, took a liking to her and whom she still respected and from whom she often sought advice and counsel. The Burgess story was one told by both cops and reporters and as old as the story was—more than thirty years old now—it still was worth telling, how Burgess had kicked and stomped a sixty year-old man to death following a routine traffic stop: One of the tail lights on the man’s car was out. Months of protests by outraged citizens finally resulted in a review board, which cleared Burgess of any wrong doing, based on the testimony of his partner. Like a Boston priest, he was transferred to another Division, and two years later, while responding to a burglary-in-progress call, he shot a fifteen-year-old boy in the back. Again, a review board found no fault with his actions, based on the testimony of his partner, and again he was transferred. The third time was the final strike. Burgess put a forty-year old housewife in a wheelchair for life when his shot at a fleeing suspect, whom nobody else but his partner had seen, severed her spine. Another person shot in the back. Another Black person a Burgess victim. Another police review board finding in his favor, based solely on supporting testimony by his partner. Then a citizen stalker with a high powered rifle began to follow Burgess and take pot shots at him, scoring a series of dramatically—and intentionally—narrow misses. Even followed him home one night and put a bullet in the wall so close to Burgess’s sleeping son that he put in his retirement papers the following day. He found Jesus shortly thereafter, got a couple of mail order divinity degrees, bought a couple of acres of still cheap PG County farmland, built a little clapboard church, and went into the soul saving business. His current church, a brand new eight-million-dollar edifice, boasted a membership of more than five thousand. Burgess had his own TV ministry, a stretch limousine, a mansion, and he was a chaplain to the D.C. police department.

  Mimi’s eyes burned from three hours of reading old newspaper clips on microfiche and her head ached at the thought of the rampant and unchecked racism and injustice, and at the knowledge that this man still was welcome inside the D.C. police department. Did people ever change? Could they change? Maybe, maybe not. That was a question for philosophers and theologians and ethicists to ponder. Mimi’s concern was Burgess’s former partners: Frank O’Connell, Darren McGillicud
dy, and Ernie Binion. O’Connell and McGillicuddy were deacons in Burgess’s church. Binion still was the Catholic he’d been raised to be: Went to confession on Friday night, Mass on Sunday morning, and spent the time between Sunday afternoon and Friday afternoon trying to dodge hell. For a cop, no easy task; hell was everywhere. For people who either thought they were God, or thought they had a direct line to Him, people like Elwood Burgess and Frank O’Connell and Charles Bailey, sitting in judgment was what they did when they weren’t interpreting Divine pronouncements for the masses.

  Mimi had returned to Bailey’s little church for Sunday morning service and Carolyn Warshawski had sent another reporter to Burgess’s big church. The message, though delivered in different cadences, was the same: Homosexuality was a sin against God and nature. Homosexuals deserved to be punished. Homosexuals would be punished, either by God or by nature. It was not the job of the police to protect homosexuals and sinners. The D.C. Police Department had erred grievously in its sanction of Inspector Frank O’Connell, who had refused to provide comfort and protection to homosexuals. The true sin was that a God-fearing Christian soldier like Frank O’Connell was expected to entertain homosexuals in his office! And prostitutes and drug dealers and others like them. Mimi didn’t know how many other congregants throughout Metropolitan Washington heard the same message from other preachers. The message was shocking: Frank O’Connell, the preachers said, had “refused to provide protection” to homosexuals on his watch. Both Bailey and Burgess had said it. Both Mimi and the other reporter had it on tape.

  “What next?” Carolyn pulled up the chair from the adjacent desk close to Mimi so they could talk without being overheard.

  “Find a cop from Mid-Town who’ll say that O’Connell issued a specific directive: Don’t patrol at the gay bars, don’t protect citizens at the gay bars, don’t investigate crimes against homosexuals.”

  “You think he was stupid enough to put anything like that to paper?” Carolyn’s face was as hopeful as kid’s on Christmas.

  “If he was, Eddie Davis’ll find it, but he won’t give it to me.” As far as Mimi knew, Davis had never leaked anything to a reporter in his entire career. Of course, there was a first time for everything...

  “You want to know about O’Connell, and you want me to ask Davis to answer your questions, but you don’t want to know about the Hilliard or Brown investigations. Am I getting this correctly?” They were finishing a Sunday dinner at Gianna’s, soup, salad and lasagna, and talk had been about everything but work until mention of their friend, Marianne, owner of a Louisiana-themed lesbian nightclub led to mention of The Snatch and recent events.

  Mimi nodded. “Right.”

  “So, you wouldn’t be interested in an artist’s sketch of one of the rapists.”

  Mimi shook her head. “Nope. Unless it looks like Frank O’Connell.”

  “And the fact that we may never know who killed Natasha Hilliard, that doesn’t make your pulse race and sweat pop out on your brow?”

  Mimi started to laugh. “You make my pulse race, Lieutenant.”

  “By the way, Alice Long’s working with us again.”

  Mimi stopped laughing. “Where’d that come from?”

  Now it was Gianna’s turn. She worked to control a sly grin. “Must’ve been talk of racing pulses. Alice seems to have that effect on people, including half the low down men in the Pink Panther, as well as our very own Tim McCreedy.”

  “How about on a certain lieutenant?”

  Gianna shook her head. “I have only protective and proprietary feelings where my team is concerned.”

  “And what about when Detective Long isn’t on your Team?”

  “That may be a moot point. The chief may let me keep her.”

  “Wow,” Mimi said, duly impressed. “What brought that on?”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Gianna mused. “Six months ago the City Council was about to remove us from the budget with an eraser the size of Alaska, now we’re getting an extra body. Unfortunately, the hate business is booming.”

  “Which reminds me,” Mimi said, “O’Connell. We were talking about what you know about Frank O’Connell.”

  Gianna got up and began clearing the table. “You were talking about him, I wasn’t. Do you want dessert?”

  “After the way I just stuffed myself? Are you kidding? I need to go to the gym and work off that second helping of lasagna. Unless you’ve got a better idea for an intense caloric burn.”

  “I just might have a thought or two on the matter...oh, hell.” She scurried into the kitchen to answer the phone. The instant change in her facial expression brought Mimi to her feet. Gianna said, “Yes, sir,” twice, then, “I think I should be there, if you don’t object.”

  “What?” Mimi demanded as Gianna ended the call.

  “The Snatch clientele are having a memorial service for Natasha Hilliard, followed by demonstration outside the Ark of the Covenant. Retaliation, I suppose, for the church group’s rally the other night, only theirs is larger. About three hundred people, which is about three times the number in attendance at the Sunday evening church service.”

  “I wonder if that’s because they had somebody at this morning’s service and heard what the good reverend had to say.”

  That stopped Gianna in her tracks. “I’m assuming you know what the good reverend had to say at this morning’s service?”

  “He said, among other asinine, ignorant and stupid things, that Inspector O’Connell was right not to offer protection to homosexuals, no matter what police department regulations say.”

  “He said O’Connell intentionally ignored the assaults on the patrons of those nightclubs? How would he know that?”

  Before Mimi could answer, her cell phone rang. She grabbed it from her pocket and it was Gianna’s turn to watch Mimi’s face, which converted from frown to grin. “Thank you, Miss Jefferson. I appreciate the call, and I’ll see you there.” She shut the phone. “That was Baby Doll, I mean, Marlene, calling to tell me about the demonstration. She didn’t call earlier because she ‘didn’t want to bullshit me, in case nobody showed up.’ She also called your office and left a message for you.”

  Gianna headed for the bedroom and a change of change of clothes. Davis was right, she didn’t need to be there, his call was purely courtesy. But she didn’t want to risk any cracks in the shaky foundation of her relationship with the Phillips sisters and their patrons, especially in light of what Mimi just told her. Eddie Davis hadn’t been at Mid-Town long enough to impact and affect behavior, and if the cops in O’Connell’s command thought it was acceptable to withhold protection from lesbians, things could get out of hand and very ugly in no time.

  Mimi came up behind her to kiss the back of her neck. “Not exactly how I’d planned to spend Sunday night,” she said.

  Gianna turned to face her, claiming the kiss. “Maybe there’s still hope.”

  “Yet another of the many reasons I love you: Your cockeyed optimism.” Mimi was out the door.

  Optimistic, perhaps, Gianna thought, but cockeyed? Was it really so outrageous to think that they still could salvage some of their Sunday evening? And as she strapped on and fastened her shoulder holster, she knew the answer. Even if the demonstration was short-lived and peaceful, Mimi would have to go to the paper to write up the story, and she herself would go back to Mid-Town command with Inspector Davis to talk over with him what Mimi had told her about Frank O’Connell and to try and learn what he already knew about the man he’d replaced.

  She used the quiet time on the drive to The Snatch to mull over the facts of the two cases. With an artist’s sketch and DNA evidence, they had a better than even chance of getting their hands on Joyce Brown’s rapists, but in the Natasha Hilliard case there still were no witnesses, no forensic evidence, and no apparent motive—no way to catch a killer. Unless young Miss Hilliard’s apparent predilection for loving them and leaving them led to a motive for murder, and certainly jealousy constituted as good a motive a
s any. There still were backgrounds to be checked and the second round of interviews with those closest to the victim. Let the shock wear off and often other emotions surfaced— anger, resentment, revenge, jealousy. Combine those four emotions and there surely was a motive for murder. But for mutilating a body?

  Then there was greed. Natasha hadn’t left a will, but she did have insurance policies that paid off the mortgage on her house and the loan on her car. Throw in the art work, the Persian carpets, the first edition books, and there was an estate worth close to a million dollars that her parents would inherit, but Gianna didn’t really believe that Robert and/or Christine Hilliard had murdered their second-born daughter for her assets; they had plenty of their own. Tosh Hilliard wasn’t killed for her earthly possessions. She was dead because she was a dyke and somebody didn’t like that fact. Somebody had been angry enough that Natasha Hilliard was a lesbian to kill her. But who? Gianna didn’t have time to ponder the question further. The Snatch demonstration, she saw when she turned the corner, was in full swing. Television equipment and personnel were as plentiful as mushrooms in the forest after a rain, which made Gianna nervous. TV cameras seemed to impact people and events in bizarre ways, especially in a situation already rife with unusual twists and turns.

  Gianna drove her unmarked sedan up on the sidewalk across the street from Charles Bailey’s Ark of the Covenant Tabernacle Church and to the rear of the crowd and studied the gathering as she worked her way to the front. It was a multi-ethnic, mixed gender conglomeration amazing for the spontaneity of its organization as for the sense of purpose it conveyed. The camaraderie was palpable. Cross-dressers in full bloom sang and danced beside Doms and Ags, butches and femmes joined arms with gay men and lesbians—all of them their own rainbow of Black, white, Latino, Asian. Many of them looked young enough for Gianna to wonder if their parents knew where they were, and several were old enough to be grandparents. Impressive as the gathering was, however, it still was illegal, and Gianna wondered how long Eddie Davis would allow it to continue, wondered how long its sanguine nature would continue in the presence of television cameras, especially once the church contingent put in an appearance