A Visible Darkness mf-2

by Jonathon King

  "Somebody will have to take you in," he said.

  Down the street the road was blocked again by two squad cars parked nose to nose. People who had been evacuated from their houses were milling around, talking to the cops and probably getting little answer for their questions. Another officer jogged up and told me to follow him to the command post. Richards, Diaz and two SWAT officers were working from the side patio of a small stucco house. Richards introduced me around and then filled me in.

  "His place is the beige one across and to the left." I peeked around the corner. The house had a dilapidated look that followed the neighborhood trend. All the shades were down. The driveway was empty. The roof had a deep sway in the middle as if part of the air had been let out of the place.

  "The phone has been disconnected for years," she continued. "Neighbors say that Eddie used to live there with his mother, but they hadn't seen either of them for quite a while."

  "How old's the mother?" I asked.

  "From what we know she's got to be mid to late sixties. Property records say she's owned the place for thirty years."

  "What's the sheet on our guy?"

  "Thirty-seven years old. Picked up a couple of times for loitering but only the one time for theft, when they say he stole some plants off a woman's carport. Low IQ. Signs of mental illness. They kept him in the forensics unit for more than thirty days to evaluate him. Nothing in the file to show they had any trouble with him there. Dr. Marshack did a preliminary workup on the guy, but when he'd served out his time they cut him loose to the streets with an appointment for follow-up at the local mental health clinic."

  "And he never showed up," I said, knowing the answer. In some things, the world worked the same no matter what city you were in.

  "He have any weapons charges?"

  "Nothing that showed."

  "So how come SWAT?"

  The two guys in black never flinched.

  "We got a quasi-county employee with half a bottle stuck in his neck. We got some psycho with his prints all over the inside of the victim's car. Hammonds wants this one tight and by the book," Diaz said.

  All right, I thought. Show of force. Couldn't argue with that.

  "They used the bullhorn on the place already. No answer. Now they got guys coming in through the alley and it's sealed from the front by a sniper," he said, pointing up to the roof over our heads.

  I looked around the corner again and watched a three-legged dog limping down the middle of the empty street, snuffling the ground and then tilting its muzzle to the air trying to figure out the smell of clean leather and fresh gun oil.

  "All right, detectives, we're set in the back with the door ram. Let's get this done before it gets any darker," said the SWAT lieutenant. Richards nodded her head.

  The lieutenant whispered an order into his radio, and he and his partner stepped around us and out toward the street. We heard the muffled splintering of wood and then a series of shouts from the target house. Everyone seemed to hold their breath, waiting for a crack of gunfire we would all recognize and dread. A few seconds later we heard another whump from inside and then nothing.

  The lieutenant spoke into his radio, and when he raised his hand and motioned us, we moved up behind him.

  "All clear inside," he said. "Nobody alive."

  Diaz led the way in. The SWAT team had opened the front door and we could smell the stench spilling out on the porch. An officer coming out shouldered his MP5 machine rifle and offered Richards a tin of jellied Vapo-Rub.

  "Bad in there, ma'am."

  She dipped a finger and dabbed it up at her nostrils. I took him up on the offer. Diaz declined.

  What furniture there was inside had been shoved up against the walls. It was hot and stale and others on the team were snapping up the window shades and trying to force open the windows. The light that washed in gave the place a gray cast. The lieutenant directed us to a bedroom door just off the kitchen that had been splintered open, but as we approached, another black-suited team member opened the nearby refrigerator door and jumped back.

  "Jesus Christ," he yelped.

  On a bottom shelf stood a huge glass pickle jar that at first glance seemed to be full of a caramel soda that had been shaken and was fizzing over. On second look, a boil of brown cockroaches was streaming out of the jar in an effort to flee the officer's flashlight beam.

  "Shut the damn door, Bennett," the L.T. snapped, and the kid slammed the door and danced into the next room.

  Richards still had her eyes closed when we went into the bedroom.

  "Signal seven in the closet," said the lieutenant.

  I stepped forward and looked. Folded up in a small linen closet were the remains of a woman. Her gray hair was matted on skin that wasn't far from the same color. She was curled up in a fetal position and looked too small to be an adult. There was a swatch of silver duct tape wrapped around what was left of her mouth.

  "Been here a while from the looks of that decomp," said Diaz.

  I turned away and noticed that all the windows had been sealed with the same duct tape. The bed was still made up. But the dresser top had been cleared of anything remotely valuable.

  "Lets get the M.E. out here," Richards said. "And let's call Hammonds."

  27

  Another twilight was spun through with red-and-blue light bars from a line of squad cars. Another visit by the M.E.'s black Suburban. Another body bag.

  I leaned up against the driver's door of Diaz's SUV while Richards talked on a cell phone inside, filling her boss in on the details. I was thinking about crisp new hundred-dollar bills, doubting that they were going to find any in this house. The detectives were playing their theme: A former psych patient goes wacko for some reason, tracks down the shrink that treated him in jail and robs and kills him.

  "Uh, yeah. We've got a mug shot from the jail and a physical description, sir," Richards was saying into the phone.

  Diaz had turned on the overhead light in his truck and was looking through the jail and arrest reports on Eddie Baines. He handed a sheet to her.

  "We've got a black male, thirty-seven years of age, approximately five-foot-ten and 250 pounds. Brown hair, uh…no eye color here. Some scars on his forearms, possibly knife wounds it says here, sir. No marks or tattoos.

  "Yes, sir. I believe we've already got the BOLO out, sir," she said, passing the sheet back to Diaz.

  I was staring down the darkened street, seeing something big and thick and menacing in the back of my head.

  "Uh, no, sir, I don't believe so." She turned to Diaz. "Anything in there about a vehicle?"

  "Uh, nada," he said, reading through the arrest report. "Looks like he was stopped by patrol on foot while he was pushing some kind of shopping cart. Like a junk man or something."

  I reached in through Diaz's window and plucked the sheet out of his hand.

  "Yo, Freeman," he snapped.

  "What?" Richards said.

  I read the line about the shopping cart, the description.

  "He's our guy," I said, as much to myself as to them. "That's him."

  The detectives were watching me.

  "Um, yes, sir. Yes, Freeman, sir," Richards was saying into the phone.

  An hour later we were in Hammonds's office, on the sixth floor of the sheriff's administration building. Richards had taken up a spot leaning against a bookshelf. Diaz took the most comfortable chair off to one side, leaving me with the chair directly in front of Hammonds's desk.

  "All right, Freeman. Let's get past the fact that you didn't reveal information that you had. That investigative flaw is not surprising, but bolsters my assessment of your lack of professionalism. So convince me of this theory of yours."

  He was up tight against his side of the desk, his palms flat together, his tie cinched up and the sleeves of his dress shirt showing an ironed crease.

  I told him of the paper trail on Marshack, the confirmation that the doctor had collected the finder's fees on the South Florida viatical
policies. I told him about McCane and his tailing of Marshack to the northwest side liquor store and the detail about the new hundred-dollar bills, the same kind found in Marshack's glove box.

  Hammonds peaked his fingers, touching the tips on his chin. Without him asking a question, I elected to go on.

  "I made some contacts in the zone and they picked up the word from one of your local drug dealers that a man fitting the description of Eddie Baines had been paying for heroin with new hundred-dollar bills."

  "So we've got a psychotic with a heroin addiction walking around in Three Zone. He may or may not have been getting money for his habit from his jail psychiatrist. He may or may not have killed that psychiatrist. He also may or may not have killed his mother and left her in her closet to rot," Hammonds said, turning to Richards. "You have any reason to believe this guy has any connection with the rapes and killings you're supposed to be working, detective?"

  "Location. Opportunity. Knowledge of the streets. And now, the possible propensity to violence," she said.

  Hammonds let that sit for a moment.

  "I ask you the same question, Mr. Freeman."

  "If Marshack was paying this guy with hundred-dollar bills to get high, what was he getting in return for his money?" I said. "And if he was collecting a finder's fee on viaticals, was he lining up Baines as his hit man?"

  Hammonds shook his head.

  "Those aren't reasons, Freeman, they're questions," he said. "But since you have built these so-called contacts in the zone, it's my suggestion that you ride with Detective Richards and see if we might be able to find this junk man.

  "And Detective Diaz. I want you to get with a computer tech and go through all the files Marshack may have had over in his office at the jail. Going on the supposition that Marshack's killer was also looking for something, let's see if what our burglar was looking for might have been stashed in a place even he couldn't get into."

  We stood up and Hammonds reached for the phone and then realized that Richards hadn't moved.

  "Problem, Detective?"

  "Suggestion, sir. Since I'm a lot better on the computer side and Vince has patrolled that zone before, sir, I think we'd be better served by switching the assignments, sir."

  Hammonds swept us all with his gaze, as if trying to figure something out.

  "Whatever it takes to get it done," he said, and dismissed us.

  28

  Richards avoided my eyes when we split up, her to the jail, Vince and I to the parking lot. I watched her disappear down a long hallway.

  "Hey," Diaz said. "Don't let it get to you, man. She's like that all the time with all these cops trying to hit on her. More than two years her husband is dead and she's still cold, man. It's nothing personal. Women hold onto their pain."

  I turned back to him.

  "That's real philosophical, Vince."

  "Hey," he shrugged. "I'm Cuban. I know women."

  We took Diaz's SUV, the new equivalent to the old unmarked four-door Crown Victoria that used to scream "cop" to any criminal with a brain. The advantage in South Florida was that there were so many SUVs on the road they could blend in most of the time. But we still got second looks from the people hanging on the streets in the northwest zone.

  "I wasn't so sure about Richards myself when Hammonds made us partner up," he started in again. "Then one night we're doing a job on this place the kids called a satanic worship site in this old shut-down trash incinerator. I tell her to wait outside while I check out this big empty furnace room. Inside it gets this weird red glow when you put the flashlight on and I'm checking this pile of melted candles and BOOM! Some fucking psycho drops out of the ceiling on me. Big, strong guy got a fucking tire iron, man. I'm going oh shit and the next thing I hear is Richards screaming, 'Freeze it up, asshole!' "

  I was trying not to grin at the scene in my head. Richards saving Diaz's ass. So I stared straight ahead and let him finish.

  "She's got the barrel of her 9mm screwed into this guy's ear and I believed her, man. I think she would have done the guy."

  "You ease up on her after that?"

  "Sure, you see how nice I am now," he said, smiling. "I'm just warning you, man."

  Diaz slowed and crawled, almost royally, down the street that was considered the Brown Man's territory. Two middle-aged men walking with a bag of groceries watched us pass, not stopping but turning their heads to follow our taillights, looking to see if anything was going to happen.

  "So we think this cat is a junkie, right?" Diaz said. "Shouldn't be too hard to pick out if he's as big as that report says."

  "Maybe," I said.

  "Maybe? Hell, guy like that everybody notices, man."

  He pulled even to the Brown Man's stool, but the dealer refused to look up. Catching me off guard, Diaz hit the power button and rolled down my passenger-side window.

  "Yo, Carlyle. Was up?" Diaz yelled, leaning forward to look out my window.

  Again, the Brown Man didn't move his head, but his eyes did and when he saw me, he gathered the moisture in his cheek and spat in the gutter.

  Diaz laughed and moved on.

  "Look, Detective. I know this is your turf, but maybe it'd be a good idea if we tried to be a little less conspicuous," I said. "My sense of this Baines guy is that he moves a lot on the side streets, out of the main flow."

  "Yeah, sure," Diaz said. "How 'bout we stop and get some coffee and then cruise over by his place. Maybe he's hanging around the perimeter of his momma's."

  Diaz pulled into a market he called the "Stop and Rob" and I got two sixteen-ounce cups for myself and held one between my feet while sipping from the other. We drove in silence. I kept my window down, watching the sides of the streets, the activity between houses and businesses and the shadows cast by the high-density security lights in parking lots.

  My old partner in Philadelphia had a habit of trying to educate me with his eclectic reading. Whenever we cruised west Philly and the hard streets were quiet, he would quote from historian Will Durant: "Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks."

  My partner said that was why historians were pessimists. Historians and cops, I thought. I was starting to believe that Eddie Baines's life went on even further back from the banks, hidden back behind the tree line. And he only came into the stream to feed at its edges.

  Diaz took the alleys, his headlights off, the yellow glow of his running lights spraying dull out on the garbage cans and hedges and slat fences. When we got to the block before Baines's mother's house, he stopped and pulled the SUV along the swale. From here we could see both down the alley behind the house and a piece of the street in front. I finished my first cup.

  "How could somebody do that to their own mother?" Diaz said. "You know, in the Cuban culture, respect for the one who brought you into this world is an unspoken rule. You learn it as a child. And you don't forget. That's what holds us together, man, you know?"

  Diaz was that kind of surveillance cop. A talker. It was the only way he could fill the long hours. I didn't mind. I'd had other partners who were the same. It was like background noise. He talked and watched. I sipped and watched.

  "My own mother came to Miami on one of the first freedom flights in 1965. Only a girl. She had to leave my grandmother behind to the jackal Fidel," he said, snickering. "That's what she always called him, my mother.

  "She got married over here, to another Cuban refugee, but my father was never the strong one. She was the one who learned English, got us to school, made sure we were fed, practically pushed my sister through the doors of the University of Miami."

  While he talked, I thought of my own mother sitting with her rosary, the Catholic habit she couldn't give up, and how she never again slep
t in the bedroom she shared with my father before his death. She took my old room.

  At the policeman's funeral she was silent and dressed in black. And when they presented her with a flag, still not a tear fell from her cheek. She sat at our kitchen table during the traditional family gathering afterward, as relatives moved in and out of her house, eating pastas and meatballs and cheesecakes from Antonio's Bakery.

  The men, most of them cops, gathered in the backyard, quietly guffawing, beers in their hands despite the March chill. My uncle Keith would come in and rub his palms together and ask her if he could get her anything, and she would look only him in the eye and turn the rosary over in her hands and shake her head.

  After they all left she rarely saw them again. When I would come on Sunday morning to drive her to First Methodist, she would still be at the table, dressed warmly, watching the dust float in the stream of early light flowing through the back window.

  The only times I remember any part of a smile coming to her face was when she and Billy's mother would greet each other in the basement of the church. They would hug one another like sisters, holding hands, the contrast of my mother's now pale and blue- veined hands wrapped in the wrinkled brown of her friend's.

  Within two years she was diagnosed with cancer. I took her to the doctor's and then to a clinic four times before she gave up. She simply said no more and refused to be taken from her house. Neighborhood women would bring her dishes to eat, try to sit by her side, but she would not confide in them.

  When my mother became too weak, Mrs. Manchester would come on the Broad Street subway from her home in North Philly, walking the last several blocks to the house. She would clean and cook and sit with my mother for hours, reading from the Bible. The relatives and neighbors accepted the black woman's role in a house where they themselves were not invited by considering her a kind of nurse and housekeeper.

  For two more years my mother hung on. Near the end I would come each evening before my night shift started and make sure she had at least eaten something. A real nurse was visiting now, someone from hospice care. They had set up a morphine drip that my mother had refused at first, but then acquiesced to out of pure weakness. I would sit by the side of her bed, the same bed I had slept in through my childhood and teenage years, and massage her legs, the only place she would admit to having pain.