Night Songs

by Penny Mickelbury

  “I mean that they don’t see shades of gray. For them—for you—things are either right or they’re wrong. All the time. Not maybe right today and maybe not so right tomorrow.”

  “Is that a bad thing, Gianna?”

  “No. Just sometimes a very painful thing.”

  Mimi thought of Carolyn King and the granddaughter she was afraid would die, too. She thought of Shelley and Starry and the other women who were dead because, if Carolyn King was correct, some rich kids used them for target practice. She felt the part of her that didn’t want to believe such a thing was possible. She felt the part of her that wanted to talk to Gianna about it. Then she felt the part of her that wanted to make things right for Carolyn King and for her daughter and for her daughter’s daughter.

  Gianna felt her thinking and feeling and turned over to face her. She leaned on her elbows, looking into Mimi’s eyes, probing, searching, questioning. Mimi kissed her, lightly, gently. She didn’t want to talk because she didn’t know what to say, so she changed the subject.

  “I thought you were going to make me sweat.”

  And Gianna, with a seriousness and an intensity and a dedication to purpose that were breathtaking, made good on her promise.

  *****

  Adrienne Lightfoot would not even allow Mimi to enter the Washington Center for Spiritual Awareness. She was gracious and polite and even charming as she kept Mimi on the outside of the front door. And she was implacable in her refusal to talk to Mimi about Sandra, or to allow Mimi to talk to her about what Carolyn King said Sandra told her.

  “Miss Lightfoot, those women are in danger,” Mimi said to the space in the door where Adrienne Lightfoot stood.

  “They are most likely more aware than you of that fact, Miss Patterson,” Adrienne Lightfoot said quite calmly, and closed the door.

  Sylvia was considerably more receptive—she let Mimi in and gave her a cup of tea—though she was no more encouraging.

  “But what do you want me to do, Mimi? Being threatened is a part of those women’s daily lives. They won’t stop working because of threats. They can’t.”

  “Not threats, Sylvia, murder.” Mimi was trying to remain calm but was losing patience. “Don’t they believe that Sandra and the others are really dead?”

  “They believe it, Mimi,” Sylvia said with a trace of weariness. “They just don’t believe that it could happen to them.”

  Mimi drove downtown mumbling and muttering to herself. “It can’t happen to me.” The swan song of every victim every where. Bad things happen to other people. Muggings. Rape. AIDS. I can do whatever I want as long as I’m careful because bad things happen to other people.

  So engrossed was she in her mental tirade with herself that she had to swerve to miss hitting a taxi that abruptly crossed into her lane en route to pick up a passenger at the curb. Mimi cursed and honked her horn, then had to make herself slow down and calm down. She searched herself for the cause of her out-of-sorts feeling and was surprised when she discovered the reason: Ever since she had left Carolyn King’s house, her efforts and concerns had not been about her story, but about the people involved. She hadn’t stood there talking to Adrienne Lightfoot through a crack in a door for a story, she had done it for the women who sell their bodies on the street. That was the same reason she’d dropped in on Sylvia, and it was for a related reason that she was now on her way to Beverly’s new office, although she hadn’t known that was where she was going until that very moment.

  The Midtown Psychotherapy Associates occupied all three floors of a beautifully restored townhouse in a still shitty part of D.C. that was close enough to the gentrified part of LeDroit Park to hold out hope for better days to come. True, the campus of Howard University was a few blocks to the east, and the new city government building was several blocks to the north, but Bev’s building stood right smack in the middle of raging urban blight. The whole damn block needed psychotherapy.

  Mimi walked up the steps and tried to open the locked door. Frowning, she looked all around, then up and into the blinking eye of a security camera. Then she found the buzzer she needed to press to gain entry, and felt immediately better. At least the place was secure. At least Bev was safe here.

  “Your name and appointment time, please,” said a voice from a speaker Mimi didn’t see.

  “I don’t have an appointment but I’d like to see Beverly Connors if she’s available. My name is Montgomery Patterson.”

  “One moment, please,” said the invisible voice, and Mimi studied the massive oak door and the heavily barred windows while she waited, feeling better about the place.

  In just a few seconds a buzzer sounded and Mimi pushed open the heavy door which brought her into a foyer only to encounter another, metal, door through which she was buzzed, finally, into a bright, warm reception area that was packed with people—mostly young women and school-aged children—but there were two men, one of whom sat holding the hand of a terrified-looking boy; several sullen teenagers; and three women who looked at least sixty. Mimi was relieved to see them. It made her feel not so foolish for coming. And when, half an hour later, she was talking to Beverly in her office, she definitely felt much better than foolish.

  “The woman hasn’t had a breakdown only because she hasn’t had time,” Bev said sadly. Mimi had told her all about Carolyn King’s life and her comment that she was afraid she’d do something to hurt Sandra’s daughter. “I remember my mother and her friends saying that as a joke, as they wondered at the luxury of white women seeing shrinks and sending their children for therapy. My mother would laugh and shake her head and say, ‘Who in the world has time to have a nervous breakdown? I’ve got a husband and three children to take care of. Who’d cook dinner and do the laundry?’”

  “So, how do I get her to come see you?” Mimi asked.

  “I think you put it to her directly: If you want to talk to somebody, Mrs. King, these people specialize in Black families, especially women and children. She can only call or not call. Either way, Mimi, you’ve just done a wonderful thing. Don’t tell me you’re becoming a human being.”

  Mimi was still smarting about the human being crack when she walked into the newsroom. She dropped her purse and jacket at her desk and crossed the huge, noisy area to the wall of offices at the rear of the room where the editors lived. She passed Tyler’s desk, caught his eye and gave him a thumbs up, as she went in search of her boss-in-name-only, the special projects editor. Mimi didn’t like him, didn’t respect him, and didn’t want to work for him. But she’d have to be careful how she played her cards. Her last two major stories she’d worked for Tyler, politically dangerous ground for her boss, who was known as a turf fighter.

  She knocked on his door and went in. As usual, he was reading some boring government report. His idea of a good book was the federal budget. His idea of a good story was anything that involved a government report. Which was why he kept funneling immigration reports to her. She thought, as she did every time she saw him, how dumb he looked. For some reason, he dressed like a Connecticut Avenue lawyer, not like a journalist. He wore Brooks Brothers suits and wing tip shoes and starched shirts and his Phi Beta Kappa key and chain hung on his vest and the pungent odor of expensive Cuban cigars always hovered about him, though Mimi had never seen him smoke. Maybe he wore his father’s clothes.

  “Got a minute?”

  “Sure.” He waved her into a chair. “What’s up?”

  “Five hookers, not four, all killed by a six-inch hunting knife expertly thrown from a passing vehicle. The Daniel Boone murders, the cops are calling them.”

  She sat, watching and waiting, as he digested what she’d just told him. She knew he wondered how she found out, that he was attempting to calculate how long it would take for her to work the story, and that he was trying to figure whether his boss, the senior editor, would rather read about Salvadorans without green cards or some Daniel Boone murders.

  But out of his mouth came what was really on his mind. �
�That’s a city desk story, Patterson. The third one in a row. You forget who you work for?” He grinned, showing small, neat teeth, but the smile never reached his eyes. This guy would bag her the first chance he got.

  She shrugged nonchalantly. “Give the story to a city desk reporter if you want.”

  “Do your information sources come with the story?”

  “Not in this life.” She answered so coldly that he visibly winced.

  He picked up the phone and punched four digits. She knew without looking that he’d called Tyler.

  “Can you come in for a moment, please?” The half smile still raised the corners of his mouth. He didn’t speak to her during the few seconds before the knock came and Tyler sauntered in.

  “Tell him what you just told me. That is if you haven’t already told him.”

  “She’s already told me nothing.” Mimi loved it when Tyler bristled. “But I’m listening,” he said, turning his attention not only to Mimi but distinctly away from the scowling presence behind the desk.

  So Mimi told him in detail what she knew, including a veiled reference to an organized group of well-to-do young men who killed women as part of some kind of initiation rite.

  Tyler whistled. “That’s like that Billionaire Boys Club business out in, where was it, California? And wasn’t there something like that in New York?”

  “You mean that thing in Central Park?”

  “Yeah, and come to think of it, there was another group of boys in California, high school boys, passed young girls around for sex.”

  They both became aware at the same time that their editor not only didn’t know what they were talking about, he didn’t care. He’d already returned to his government report. Mimi wondered for a moment how the fool kept his job before she remembered his Ivy League credentials and the similar credentials of the decision makers at the paper, and she knew that he’d be around for a while.

  Gianna had spent the better part of the last hour on the phone with an investigator in the Fairfax County police department, who was confirming her worst suspicions about Errol Allyne and his friends. The file that she had compiled on them in the past few days was more than a little disturbing. Not only did it reflect a pattern of juvenile delinquency that had turned to adult criminality, but throughout there was evidence of parental tolerance at an unbelievable level. In addition to the juvenile records of the four boys, which Gianna had suspected was the reason she needed a top clearance to access the entire case file, there was also the report of an assault on a police officer by the father of one of the boys, the reason why Gianna was talking to the Fairfax County cop: Sergeant Marx was the one assaulted, and General Jefferson Davis Andrews, father of Clarke Andrews, had done the assaulting.

  “The man is a monster!” exclaimed Sergeant Marx, and he recalled for Gianna events that led to his altercation with General Andrews. He was one of three cars that responded to a call in an exclusive section of inherently exclusive McLean, Virginia. They found the remains of what had been a wild party at the home of a girl whose parents were out of town. Only the girl remained, and she had been gang raped and then punched and slapped and kicked in what appeared to be a ritualistic fashion.

  “What do you mean, ritualistic fashion?” Gianna asked.

  “Just that, Lieutenant. Three boys raped her then took turns beating her. Then each one, egged on by the others, beat her. The boys were sixteen at the time. The girl was fourteen.”

  Gianna felt sick to her stomach. She didn’t want to hear any more but Sergeant Marx continued to talk, and she understood that he needed to tell her because although the incident had occurred more than four years ago, the horror of it had not subsided for him, and neither had his anger. The girl identified the boys and told police where they lived: One of them, Clarke Andrews, right around the corner. Calling for back-up, Marx and his partner had rushed immediately to the Andrews home, wanting to prevent the boys from destroying any evidence of the attack. Though there obviously were people in the house, the bell went unanswered for several minutes. Finally the door was opened and the officers identified themselves and asked permission to enter. They were met by a stream of profanity from the man they later learned was General Andrews.

  “My partner at the time was a female officer,” related Marx, “and she cautioned Andrews that his words and manner could be construed to be threatening. He called her a castrating bitch and threw a punch at her. I couldn’t believe it! She reacted before I did and tried to get him in choke-hold but this guy is some kind of martial arts expert. It took both of us to subdue him, and I don’t mind telling you I gave him a hard knee to the nuts.” Gianna managed a small grin at the satisfaction she heard in his voice. He quickly wrapped up the rest of the story: When the back-up units arrived they found five boys barricaded in an upstairs bedroom. Three of them had cuts and lacerations about the face; the other two had been at the party but, it turned out, had been too drunk to participate in the rape. Downstairs in the basement, a load of clothes was in the washing machine—the evidence going cleanly down the drain. And in a small bedroom in the basement was a woman, the wife of the General and the mother of Clarke, so drunk and disoriented that she literally didn’t know who or where she was. The General and the boys were arrested and the washing machine confiscated. Three days later, the girl dropped all charges against the boys. The Commonwealth’s Attorney tried to bring a case but the girl’s parents refused to allow her to cooperate. The police department agreed to drop its assault charges against General Andrews in exchange for his apology, over the objections of both Marx and his partner.

  “Lieutenant, I, for one, would be eternally grateful if you could nail those little fuckers once and for all,” Marx said with vehemence. “People like them make a mockery of people like you and me.”

  Gianna agreed with him and was thanking him for his cooperation when he added a final comment—the impression that still remained most vividly in his mind about the incident. Gianna couldn’t imagine that there could be more, and was completely unprepared for what he said.

  “Those five red cars lined up in front of that house. Looked like a fucking car dealership.”

  “Sergeant...I’m sorry. I don’t understand. What five red cars?”

  “I didn’t tell you? All those boys in that club of theirs drove the same make and color of car. That year it was red Trans Ams. You know how much those things cost?”

  Gianna gratefully concluded the phone call with Sergeant Marx. Her brain was so overloaded that sometime toward the end of it she’d developed an odd detachment from the entire matter and she now wondered why.

  She began her habitual pacing about the Think Tank, relieved to have the space to herself for a while. Certainly the horrible images painted by Marx were disturbing, but what troubled her was more, deeper somehow...Cassie. It was Cassie, specifically, and the brutalization of women generally, that disturbed her inner core. That and the fact that such brutality seemed to have moved out of the relative privacy—and secrecy—of domesticity, into the realm of sport, of group activity for boys and young men. She felt the anger rise within her as she thought of the two who had brutalized Cassie. Then she had another thought, her own final image of the scene painted by Sergeant Marx, and it wasn’t of five red sports cars but of a sad, lonely, brutalized woman living in the basement of her own home, afraid, almost certainly, of the man she called husband, and probably of the child she’d risked her life to bring to earth. In that moment, Gianna wanted nothing more than to smash her fist into the collective faces of the perpetuators of such hatred.

  *****

  Cassie had awakened from her coma. Gianna arrived at the hospital first and rushed into the room filled with brightly colored, exotic flowers and green houseplants of every description, and balloons that said Get Well Soon and I Love You and a silly assortment of stuffed animals and boxes of Cassie’s favorite chocolates. But the real brightness of the room was the joy brought by Cassie’s awakening. Gianna gratefully recei
ved a warm embrace from each of the girl’s parents who then gracefully left the room.

  Gianna sat on the side of the bed and took one of Cassie’s hands into her own and held it, tightly. Tears fell from the girl’s one eye, the one not bandaged, the other one’s destruction hidden from view. Gianna wiped away the tears and took the girl gently into her arms. “Everything will be just fine, Cassie.” Gianna held her for a long time, until the tears and the body-wracking sobs ceased and it felt as if she’d fallen asleep. Then she carefully placed her back down in the bed, arranged the pillow and the blankets, and went into the bathroom to get a cloth to bathe her face.

  Eric arrived like an electrical charge. “She’s awake, right?” he asked with a worried look when he saw that Cassie was asleep.

  “Out of the coma, yes. But Eric, I don’t think she knows what happened to her.” And she didn’t need to say the rest: That without her positive identification it would be difficult if not impossible to bring her attackers to justice, especially since there was no eyewitness and not much forensic evidence.

  “Damn!” Eric said. “You think it will be permanent?”

  The doctor, who briskly entered the room at that moment, confirmed Gianna’s suspicion and answered Eric’s question. There was no way to tell how extensive Cassie’s memory loss ultimately would be, or how permanent. She explained that in cases of severe trauma to the brain the victim frequently remembered everything up to the few moments before the traumatic event, and selectively thereafter. For example, the doctor said, Cassie remembered nothing between parking her car in the garage near her home and waking up in the hospital looking at her parents. She really does not, the doctor explained, understand why she is in so much pain.

  “Does she know about her eye, Doctor?”

  “Not yet,” the doctor replied gently. “Do you want to be present when we tell her?”

  Gianna sighed deeply. “Do I want to? No. Will I? Yes. But what about her parents?”

  “The mother doesn’t think she’d be able to tell her and the father is wavering. So I thought that you, as her commanding officer—”