by R.J. Ellory
I know my father, the carpenter. Big Joe. I know why he did what he did, and how much it cost us all.
I remember him standing in the hallway. Had on a hat. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’re going out.’
‘Where?’ I asked. Plaintive child, no more than six or eight or ten.
‘Surprise,’ he said.
‘Give me a clue,’ I said.
‘Out to the highway and then some.’ Smiled cryptically. ‘There and back, just to see how far it is—’
‘Aw, Dad . . .’
Big Joe would’ve understood what happened. Why it happened. The reasons for it all.
Big Joe would have understood that, and he would have looked down at me - the plaintive child of six or eight or ten - and he would’ve said something.
‘No matter what they dream up . . . I guarantee you I’ve endured far worse for far longer.’
Something like that. Something that would prove he understood.
SEVEN
Miller arrived at the Second a little after eight on Monday morning, Roth fifteen minutes later. The disarray of files greeted them, the heap of discarded coffee cups and Coke cans, along with the smell of stale cigarette smoke. Miller cleared a space on one of the desks and dragged a telephone toward him. He took the yellow slip he’d taped to the wall and dialled the number again. He hoped against hope, but he knew even before he tried. There had been no fault in the exchange the day before. It wasn’t a phone number. Miller dialled it three times, got the same uninterrupted tone of an invalid number.
He called the operator, had them check the number through the phone companies’ system. It came back negative - not only was it not a current or disconnected number, it had never been a number in the first place.
Miller sat at his desk staring at the small yellow slip. 315 3477.
‘Hey,’ he called to Roth. ‘Phone number here. Not recognized. What else has seven numbers?’
The telephone rang and he picked it up. ‘Miller,’ he said. He nodded, took a pencil from the desk tidy, cleared a space for a sheet of paper. ‘Sure . . . put her through.’
Miller listened for a while, and then leaned forward in his chair, intent expression on his face. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Of course we’ll check it out.’
Paused for a moment, listening once more.
‘No, of course not. All such things are treated with confidence, but we will check into it. Did you leave your phone number with the desk? . . . Okay, good . . . and spell your name for me.’
The line went dead.
‘Fuck,’ he said and hung up. He lifted the receiver again, asked the desk if the last caller had actually left a number. She had not.
‘’S up?’ Roth asked.
‘Some woman . . . something about a kid at her Sunday School who says she recognized the Sheridan woman. Hung up when I asked her name. No number either.’
‘A kid? What kid?’
‘Gave her name, Chloe Joyce. Lives out in the projects. Says she saw a newspaper photograph of the Sheridan woman yesterday and made some comment about it.’
Roth turned his mouth down at the corners.
‘Jesus Christ, Al, you know how this is. We get something, we make a report, and then if we don’t follow it up . . .’
Roth raised his hand and Miller fell silent. He smiled resignedly as he reached forward and switched on the computer. ‘How many of these phone calls we gonna get, you figure?’ Roth asked.
Miller smiled. ‘I should think a hundred thousand and then some.’
‘Standard spelling . . . J-O-Y-C-E?’
Miller nodded. ‘Think so.’
‘Any idea of which projects?’
‘Not a clue . . . try them all.’
Roth typed on the keyboard. Miller waited patiently, found his thoughts turning once again to the hours between ten-thirty and four-thirty on the 11th, the six hours of Catherine Sheridan’s life they couldn’t account for. The library, the deli, and then returning home to be seen by the old neighbor who liked to watch pretty girls on the tube. Who had she spent those last hours of her life with?
Remembered the last conversation with Captain Lassiter after Killarney had left the day before. Lassiter’s eyes like a car crash, carrying everything - the death of his wife, his sister’s suicide three years before, the frustration and negation, the all-too-familiar sense of certainty that everything was fucked, and if not now then soon. Eyes like that? They’ve seen everything, absorbed it, carried it like a professional.
While Roth searched the system Miller called the coroner’s office. He spoke with Tom Alexander, Hemmings’ assistant.
‘Give us a couple more hours,’ he told Miller. ‘Give us until after lunch can you?’
Miller told him he could, and then asked if Marilyn Hemmings was there.
‘She’s here,’ Tom said. ‘Up to her elbows in guts, but she’s here.’
Miller thanked him, hung up the phone.
‘Got something here,’ Roth said. ‘Out between Landover Hills and Glenarden, have a woman named Natasha Joyce with a daughter named Chloe.’
‘That’ll do,’ Miller said. ‘Let’s go pay her a visit.’
Roth drove. Miller asked him to. He wanted to think about what he was going to say to this Natasha Joyce woman. An anonymous call, a little girl’s name, that was all there was. But in the absence of anything else it was something.
The roads were clear; they made good time, and before Miller had really figured out what he was going to do they had arrived.
Roth parked up at the edge of the slip road that ran down into the projects complex. He knew well enough that to leave it within the perimeter was to ask for its swift disappearance.
They walked down there together, and near their destination Miller paused. For a little while he stood with his hands buried in his overcoat pockets. He could see his breath. He could see the smashed-to-fuck aspects of life represented by this place. He could see the graffiti, the garbage, the overturned dumpsters, the empty glass bottles, their brown paper skins holding out against the elements; he could see the stairwell that led up to frustration and desperation and a sense of shame and humiliation for so many of these people, and he wondered why.
‘Up there,’ Roth said, and pointed.
Miller followed him, out between the hunkering cinder block sheds that served as home for people that deserved so much better.
This is the shit we don’t want to consider part of our national capital, he thought.
‘Eighteen,’ Roth said. ‘Apartment eighteen, second floor.’
They walked up there amidst too many shadows. It was early morning, but there was something about this place that felt like dusk all the time. And there was the smell of ammonia, of piss and shit and blood and garbage and damp newspaper, of old mattresses and burned-out homemade braziers, of make-believe and wishes that it was something different. But it wasn’t.
This is so fucked.
Roth knocked on the door, stepped to the side. Miller on the right, Roth on the left. Roth had his hand on his gun. Still holstered, but the press-stud was open so he could pull the thing in a heartbeat.
Too fucked by half.
Sound of someone inside.
Chains, bolts, deadlocks - a wish to keep the desirable in, everything else out.
‘Who is it?’ the voice from within asked.
‘Police, ma’am.’
Silence.
Roth looked at Miller.
Miller said ‘Open the door, ma’am . . . it’s the police.’
‘Heard you the first damned time,’ Natasha Joyce said, and then she turned the key.
Door opened. Miller went first, Roth behind him, already securing the press-stud on his holster. Hallway was bright, freshly painted, the carpet on the floor worn in places but clean. House smelled okay, nothing like the stairwell outside. Small oasis of something there, small oasis fighting against the desert beyond the walls.
Miller held out his badge.
‘I kn
ow who you are,’ Natasha Joyce said.
‘You are Miss Natasha Joyce?’ Miller asked. ‘You have a daughter named Chloe?’
Natasha smiled weakly. ‘The teacher, right? She called you?’
Miller frowned.
‘That’s what you’re here about isn’t it? The woman in the paper. The one that got herself killed on Saturday.’
‘Yes,’ Miller said. He glanced over his shoulder at Roth. ‘You were expecting us?’
Natasha shook her head resignedly. ‘Hell, people like us are always expecting people like you, isn’t that right?’
And then - standing in the clean, freshly-painted hallway of Natasha Joyce’s home, waiting for her to direct them through to the kitchen - Miller seemed caught in some hiatus of near-silence, and all he could hear was the faint sound of cartoons playing somewhere.
‘My daughter’s in her room watching TV,’ Natasha Joyce said. ‘Wanted her home with me today, you know? One day out of school ain’t gonna hurt her. We can talk in here.’
It was then that Natasha walked Roth and Miller through to the narrow kitchen, showed them chairs on either side of a narrower table, and she herself stood with her back to the sink, her hands gripping the chrome edge, knuckles tight like she was expecting something bad. She looked away and cleared her throat, and then she turned back to Miller because he’d been the first one through the front door, been the first to speak. And even though he was younger than Roth there was something in his face that said he’d lived an awful lot more life. Natasha Joyce had elected Robert Miller the leader of this gang, had decided if she was going to speak, then she was going to speak to him. ‘So watchu wanna know?’ she asked.
‘We got a call,’ Miller said. He watched Natasha Joyce closely. Something about her said that life, regardless of what happened, would always leave behind a sense of disappointment. She was a pretty girl, her hair corn-rowed on one side, the other side worn long and pinned back with a barette. But there was something in her eyes. Miller was reminded of another girl, a girl he’d tried to help.
Natasha seemed distracted, ill-at-ease. Through her tee-shirt she had sweated a great deal. On the counter were rubber gloves, the smell of disinfectant in the air. She’d been housework-busy.
‘From Chloe’s Sunday school teacher, right? Miss Antrobus?’
Miller shook his head. ‘She didn’t give her name.’
‘It was her alright. She spoke to me yesterday when I went to collect my daughter. I figured she’d call you.’ Natasha Joyce sort of half-smiled and then laughed. ‘I was gonna call you myself. Fuck it man, I should have called you myself. Now this is gonna look some way that it ain’t.’
‘What is, Miss Joyce?’ Miller asked.
Natasha seemed not to hear the question. She shook her head and went on talking. ‘She is one scared bitch man, one scared little bitch. Me? I think it comes from the fact she’s a mixblood, half and half, you know? She ain’t black, she ain’t white . . . hell, no-one wants her. That must be one helluva thing.’
‘She didn’t give her name,’ Miller repeated, ‘and there was no complaint about you or your daughter or anything else, Miss Joyce. I think the caller was merely concerned that you might know something about Catherine Sheridan, the woman who was murdered on Saturday—’
‘Wasn’t her name,’ Natasha cut in defensively, like here was where she could get a one-up on these white asshole cops. ‘Wasn’t her name, and I don’t think it was the same woman . . . but she came down here and a couple of weeks later Darryl was dead.’
Miller frowned. ‘I’m sorry, I’m a little lost here. You said it wasn’t her name?’
‘Sheridan. Catherine Sheridan. That wasn’t her name when she and that other freak came down to speak with Darryl.’
‘Darryl?’
‘Chloe’s father. Darryl King. He was my boyfriend . . . my man, you know? He was Chloe’s father.’
‘And he’s dead now?’
‘Yeah, he died back in 2001.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Miller said understandingly, and then he was straight back to business. ‘And this woman, the one who was murdered . . . she came to see Darryl with someone else?’
‘God, I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell to think. There was a woman who came down here to speak with Darryl. She looked like that woman in the paper. She came with another man, a few times as far as I could tell. They spoke to me only once even though I saw them a couple or three times. Said they were looking for him, did I know where he was? Hell, by that time he was heading south . . . real south, know what I mean? He was doing I don’t know how much of the stuff.’
‘Stuff?’
‘Heroin. Darryl was a junkie, mister, a real honest-to-God, professional status junkie . . . so you might be down here asking me about this woman, and I might’ve seen her a couple of times like five years ago, and that’s if it was even the same woman . . . but why she would have anything to do with Darryl King, and why Darryl King would have anything to do with the likes of her, fuck only knows. I don’t know that I can help you. Only reason I’m talking to you - and I would have called you even if that interferin’ bitch hadn’t done so first - is because I started to think that maybe these people had something to do with what happened to Darryl, you know?’
Miller glanced at Roth. His disappointment was evident in his expression. This was old information, all of five years old, and it seemed like something had become nothing in a second.
‘The man that was with her,’ Miller asked. ‘What was he like?’
Natasha pointed at Roth. ‘Like him.’
‘Like me?’ Roth said, and for a second felt awkward.
‘Yeah, like you, you know? Shirt, tie, suit, overcoat, dark hair, a little grey at the sides . . . nervous though. He seemed nervous. Hell, I don’t know, maybe not nervous, more like he was vigilant, like watching out for something, right?’
‘And how did he look, his face, you know? Was there anything particular about how he looked?’
Natasha shrugged. ‘God knows. Not that I can remember. It was a long time ago. I wasn’t paying particular attention. The woman did the talking. He didn’t say nothing. Maybe I’d recognize him if I saw him again, I don’t know.’ She paused.
‘Something else?’
‘Nothing really,’ Natasha replied. ‘He gave me twenty bucks . . . told me to buy something nice for Chloe. Bought her a doll. She loves that doll, still has it. Only reason she would’ve remembered those people.’
‘And they just said they wanted to speak to Darryl, that was all?’
Natasha nodded.
‘And is there anything else you can tell us about this man? Distinguishing marks? Anything unusual about the way he appeared? Tattoos, scars, birthmarks maybe?’
Natasha shook her head. ‘No, there wasn’t nothing else.’
‘Sure, sure, of course,’ Miller said. ‘Anything else you can think of, Miss Joyce?’
‘I don’t know what Darryl was involved in. Hell, I don’t know . . . could be that lady came down here to get some candy for herself and that freak she was with. I saw her maybe twice or three times.’
‘You remember exactly when it was?’
‘About two weeks before Darryl died.’
‘Which was?’
‘October 7th, 2001.’
Roth was making notes in his pocketbook.
‘And you can’t think of anything else that might link Darryl King with this woman?’
‘If I could I’d tell you.’
Miller was silent for a moment. ‘What do you think, Miss Joyce?’ he asked, and there was something compassionate and understanding in his tone.
‘About what? What do I think about what?’
‘About this woman? You think it was the same woman?’
Natasha shook her head. ‘I don’t know . . . I can’t be sure. They look similar, hell they could’ve been sisters, right?’ She laughed suddenly, nervously. ‘I don’t know . . . I really don’t know.’
‘Don’t you bring her into this. Jesus Christ, whaddya want from us? Some woman came to see my dead boyfriend five years ago. I can’t tell you how they knew him or what they wanted. She might have been the same—’
‘Was she the same woman, Miss Joyce?’ Miller said, and from his inside jacket pocket he took the digitally enhanced passport photograph of Catherine Sheridan, and the picture was color, and it was a damned sight clearer than the one in the paper, and when he held it up he noticed the sudden change in Natasha’s expression, the way her eyes widened, the way she seemed silently to inhale, as if in surprise, as if in shock, perhaps in fear.
‘I think maybe . . . maybe yes . . . I can’t be sure . . .’
Miller held the picture steady.
Tears welled in Natasha’s eyes.
‘Miss Joyce?’ Miller prompted.
‘Ye-yes,’ she stammered. ‘I think it’s her . . . she’s the one who came . . .’
Miller put the picture back in his jacket pocket. He looked at Roth.
‘I don’t want to get involved,’ Natasha said. ‘This woman has nothing to do with me.’
‘I understand that, Miss Joyce, but she came down here to see Darryl, and—’
‘Jesus man, that was five years ago, you know? Darryl’s dead. Now this woman’s dead as well. For God’s sake, I have a kid.’ She stopped suddenly, looked at Miller closely. ‘You have children?’
Miller shook his head.
Natasha turned to Roth. ‘You have kids . . . you look like you have kids.’
‘Three,’ Roth said.
Natasha turned back to Miller. ‘He understands. Ask him. He knows what it’s like when you have kids. I don’t know what the fuck this woman got herself into, and I sure as hell don’t know why she came down here looking for Darryl, but this is not the kind of shit I want round my daughter. I spent God knows how long keeping her safe from all the bullshit that Darryl brought home with him.’ She breathed deeply, tried to gather herself together. ‘We survived it, you know? We fucking survived all of it. God, sometimes I thought we wouldn’t, but we did. Now it’s over, you understand? I told you what I know . . . I don’t have nothing else to tell you. You go ahead and find whoever did this thing but leave us the hell out of it, okay?’
