“He gonna be alright?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
Everybody always tellin’ me not to worry. “I seen ’em fightin’. That dude was catchin’ a beatin’…”
“They’re checkin’ him for a concussion. He banged his head pretty bad.”
“Shoot, that wasn’t his biggest problem. The dude was chokin’ him to death.”
He nodded like, yeah, tell me another one. In his favor I’m sure a lotta people come up to cops with crazy ideas. “You see it?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, I did. This wasn’t no bar fight, I can tell the difference. He was chokin’ the dude to death. If that old man hadn’t come along he woulda killed him.”
“What old man?”
“This old man with a cane. Poked him in the ribs real hard and told him people was takin’ his picture and he better get off that boy so the dude up and run away.”
His eyes got all squinty like he knew I was lyin’. “You must have been pretty close if you heard him say all that.”
“I don’t know, I just heard him. Why don’t you ask the people if they got a picture?”
He looked down the alley. “Too dark.” Then he looked back at me, checkin’ my uniform.
“What do you do at the college?”
“Landscapin’,” I said. Sounds better than janitorial.
“Why didn’t you try to help this boy if you thought somebody was tryin’ to kill him?”
So now he’s got it that I’m a coward if I’m not a liar.
“By the time I realized what was happenin’ the old man come up…”
“You see the guy who was doin’ the chokin’?”
“Couldn’t see his face. The old man saw him.”
“Where’s this old man now?”
“He just ran off.”
“Old man with a cane ran off?”
“You move fast when you’re scared.”
He nodded like, yeah, that could be true. But then his eyes got all narrow again like he was tryin’ to see through me.
“Have a coupla beers?”
“A few, yeah…”
“Coupla tequila shooters to go with ’em? Coupla tokes…?”
“Just beers…”
“Go home and get some sleep. You don’t wanna drag in to work tomorrow with them road maps in your eyeballs.”
Okay, fine, he thought I was drunk and stoned and makin’ it up. But I didn’t feel right just lettin’ it go.
“I’m tellin’ you this wasn’t part of the fight. The dude was waitin’ in the alley to kill somebody.”
He just turned his back on me. “Well, in case you didn’t notice, nobody got killed…”
“They will next time. That dude’s gonna kill again.”
“Go home, son.”
I was gonna say ask that old man, but he was already walkin’ away, boots bangin’ like he wanted everybody to get out of his way.
Couldn’t sleep. Kept seein’ that dude, mouth open like when the doctor pokes that stick down your throat and tells you to say ahhh…
I got on the PD web site. Twenty-six homicides in the last thirty days. Most of ’em in the Fifth Ward. “Gang-related” or “drug related”. Drive-bys with old folks on their porches gettin’ hit in the crossfire. Stray bullet travelin’ two blocks, goin’ through a window and hittin’ some little baby in its crib.
I found two deaths by strangulation. High school art teacher found in the bushes in Galena Park. Woman choked to death in the vacant lot back of the bus station on Main.
It was him. I knew it.
No point in callin’ the cops, I went over to campus security the next day. I’m workin’ at the college nine years, they all know me. First-namin’ me when I walked in. Hey, what’s shakin’? Brought me right into the commander’s office.
This time I kept the killer outta my story. The old man, too. Just told ’em I had information on that brawl at O’Meara’s where the girl got slashed. Described the big cop I was talkin’ to. That’s McVickers, they said. He’s down at headquarters.
I knew this cop wouldn’t talk to me on the phone. Lunchtime, I drove downtown to Headquarters on Travis Street. Passed through the metal detector with cops, their badges danglin’ outta their pockets, lawyers in fancy suits lookin’ into their iPhones goin’ where they want, gotta jump outta their way or they bump you like it’s your fault. Girls all dressed up for work, heels goin’ clackety-clack.
I had to sign in at the front desk.
“McVickers?” I asked.
“Ninth floor,” they said.
The office door said Major Case Squad. A lady cop at a desk looked at me like I wanted to rob the place. Walked me down the hall to a cubicle where McVickers was sittin’ with his feet up. Brown Tony Lamas this time, bluebonnets stitched on the sides.
“This is my detective buddy,” he said to the lady cop.
“Hey detective buddy,” she said, walkin’ away.
There was a chair next to his desk, but he didn’t invite me to sit. “You find that killer you were talkin’ about?” he asked.
I told him about the two other murders. “Manual strangulation,” I said.
He swung off his chair, towerin’ over me. Took me down the hall into the stairway and up to the roof like he didn’t want nobody to hear, but when we got up there he lit up so it was just all about havin’ a smoke.
Then he gave me a cigarette, even lit it for me like he felt sorry…
“That art teacher had a fight with his boyfriend that night,” he said. “Screamin’ and swingin’ at each other outside a bar on Fairview. Then he made the wrong friend in the park. We’ll find people who saw him with the killer. Somebody who knows somethin’ will come forward. Sooner or later the knucklehead will try to charge somethin’ on his credit card. We’ll be waitin’.”
From the roof you could see the city spreadin’ past the bayous out to the Gulf.
“This woman wanted to leave town, but her boyfriend wouldn’t let her,” McVickers said. “People at the bus station saw them fightin’. He was tryin’ to pull her off the bus. Transit security had to break it up. Got her DNA all over him, too. Scratches on his face and she’s got his skin under her fingernails. Of course he’s cryin’ that he went home and don’t know what happened next.”
“He could be tellin’ the truth.”
McVickers shook his head like no chance. “Boyfriend’s got a record and a record never lies. Wait’ll his Public Defender tells him he’s facin’ life if he goes to trial, but manslaughter if he cops a plea. He’ll change his tune. He’ll find Jesus right quick and be beggin’ forgiveness from her family in the courtroom…”
McVickers’s eyes was all scrunched up from the cigarette. “I know, son, you think you see a pattern. Killer haunts the city, goin’ to crowded bars and ghetto bus stations where he knows fights’ll break out. Stalks his victims in the confusion. Crushes their windpipes. A coupla minutes and he’s gone. Made to order fall guy in the person who was fightin’ with the victim. Nice and neat like a movie, right?”
“I know what I saw and it wasn’t no movie,” I said. “That dude was out to kill.”
“But he didn’t. Even if you’re right it don’t matter. Best detective in the world can’t solve a murder that didn’t happen.”
He grabbed my cigarette just before I flicked it away. “If the bosses see dead butts on the roof, they’ll lock the door and we won’t have no place to smoke.”
Patted my shoulder with a big red hand. “You get this old man of yours to come tell me his story. Then, maybe we’ll have somethin’ to talk about.”
How long can your heart keep jumpin’, or your stomach be so jittery you can’t hold nothin’ down before you die yourself? I was makin’ myself sick about it. Dude’s prowlin’ the city every night. How many would he kill while the cops was wastin’ time with boyfriends and brawlers? They needed to put a task force out on the street. They needed to talk to everybody, check surveillance videos.
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I was on that damn police web site checkin’ for homicides every fifteen minutes. Out every night after work lookin’ for somebody I never seen. Big city. How you gonna find a dude who’s lookin’ to choke somebody he don’t know and don’t have nothin’ against? All you can do is watch the news to see if a body turned up.
Couldn’t do nothin’, but I still felt like it would be my fault if somebody got killed. Stayed in my room. Maybe if I just sat in the dark, no TV, no Internet, I would calm down. Didn’t work, it got worse. Thursday came and I had the feelin’. Like a train horn blastin’ in my brain.
I hit the bars in the Village. O’Meara’s was party time like nothin’ had happened. The bartenders were like, hey bro, where you been? Mirror all taped up. That girl who got slashed? The big dude who was almost choked to death? Oh yeah, that made the highlight reel. C’mon man, have a cocktail…
All night, goin’ from one place to the next. Big fat raindrops splattin’ on the sidewalk just made it hotter. Four in the morning I was over to Vega’s, an all-night Mexican joint in a strip mall on Westheimer. Fluorescent lights. Formica tables. Tejano music blastin’. Seriously drunk people. Students, Crips, and cholos, just a real bad mix.
This chola girl comin’ back from the bathroom, could hardly walk in tight jeans. Slippin’ and slidin’ in a puddle of salsa, grabbed a table and knocked some dude’s beer into his lap. Everybody was up and yellin’. Gettin’ close to a riot.
The chola girl sat down so hard her chair went over. Big table of college girls, sneakin’ whiskey into their horchatas. One of ’em tried to help her. Her cholo boyfriend yelled to leave her alone. Don’t touch her. Looked like he was gonna pull down on them girls.
He went out with his boys, shovin’ people. The chola girl tried to follow. She was bangin’ into the walls like a pinball, crashin’ through the door. People were like, somebody go see if she’s okay.
Outside them cholo Tundras on the high risers was roarin’ around. She was stumblin’, cryin’, callin’ for them to wait. They almost sideswiped her speedin’ out. Get her a cab, someone said. College girls tried to help her, but she pushed ’em away. Drunk people don’t like to be held.
She was ziggin’ and zaggin’, didn’t know where she was goin’, but had to keep movin’. Must have tripped in a rut because she was on her hands and knees crawlin’.
This humpbacked shadow come up over her. Couldn’t see nothin’. Sound like somethin’ was draggin’ on the gravel. Screamin’ get your hands off…
That chokin’ sound again. Garglin’, then nothin’.
Oh God. I was cryin’. Froze up again.
This small chokin’ voice was please, please, let me go…
Streetlight motion detector must have come on ’cause I saw the little girl. On the ground, big hands pressin’ down on her throat. Eyes bulgin’, breath rattlin’.
My feet were stuck. Tryin’ to scream for help, but nothin’ came out.
Thumbs pressin’…Oh God, somebody do somethin’.
Somethin’ cracked and went black like they had put a bag over my head. A big hand was pushin’ my face into the ground. Coughin’ and cryin’. People talkin’. You okay, Miss? Sit up…Put your head between your legs…
I twisted my neck all the way around and seen that cane with the rubber tip. The old man.
“Hey Pop…”
“I had to call ’em, son,” he said. “Couldn’t let you…”
Feet running. Sirens…Click, click…Cuffs was cold on my wrists. Heart was still hoppin’ and skippin’, but at least I didn’t have that scary feelin’ in my gut no more. They flipped me over like a damn pancake. That little girl was sittin’ on the ground, people all around her.
McVickers stood over me. Another dude in a suit. Look like one of them lawyers who walks with his head down in his iPhone and makes you jump out of his way.
“How long have you had him?”
“Coupla weeks. Father came forward after the bus station, but we were slow on the uptake. Lucky he followed his son to the bar or that boy would be dead…”
“All you really have is the father’s suspicions and this one attack,” lawyer said.
“Picked up his DNA off the cigarette,” McVickers said. “We’ll get a match from the other victims. It’s him…”
“He’s a good boy…” Old man sounded like he was far away.
McVickers crouched down and wiped the mud off my face.
“I told you one killer was doin’ all this, didn’t I?” I said.
“Yes, you did.”
“Told you he’d kill again.”
“Yes, you did. Appreciate it, son. Couldn’t have solved the case without you.”
LULLABIES AND LIGHTNING STORMS
by Dana Chamblee Carpenter
An old man crawled down the Ozarks from Elsinore to Gideon. He was dying and wanted to find his son. Six-year-old Sybil sat braiding the hair of a doll while the old man yelled his sad story through her window. Spit shot through the gaps of his missing teeth and splattered against the glass.
But in rural Missouri, that was no excuse for a lack of hospitality. Around noon, Sybil’s mom, Cassie, brought the old man some iced tea in a tumbler—the last of her grandmother’s Georgian Lovebirds Depression glasses. The old man never even looked at her as he took it and drank without pause, without breath, his eyes closed, but he cradled the glass’s bottom as he handed it back, his wart-covered fingers wrapping over Cassie’s, careful not to let the tumbler slip and shatter on the front step. Cassie almost smiled, almost spoke, but she didn’t see folks much anymore and was out of practice—she spent her days caring for little Sybil. By the time Cassie had sucked in breath and courage, the old man was already turning back toward Sybil’s window. For a moment, his skin stretched taut across his jaw. Cassie could imagine how he must have looked in his youth.
“Girl! God done told me to come here to you. He done said you’d tell me where my boy gone to,” the old man hollered at Sybil. “Tell me where Levon at, girl!”
When he finally grew quiet and lay on the lawn in the late afternoon sun, little Sybil wrote her answer on a piece of purified paper, folded the note into a triangle, and slid it through the flap in the plastic at her door.
Everything in Sybil’s life came and went through twelve inches.
The edges of the paper danced in the stream of sterilized air as Cassie reached through the opening on her side of the thick plastic covering the doorway. Her gloved fingers squeaked as they curled around her daughter’s note. She folded it again carefully before slipping it into the old man’s hand, which was wet with the slaver of desperation and faith.
He hadn’t been the first to come see Sybil. He hadn’t been the first to ask a question or to get an answer.
The women’s Bible-study group had been to the house months ago, their curiosity finally overcoming their righteousness. They’d come to study the story of Jezebel with Cassie, but they all made sure to take a trip to the bathroom down the hall past Sybil’s room. The newspaper stories hadn’t had any good pictures of the girl, and the church ladies had been dying to see for themselves anyway. There wasn’t much else to do in Gideon.
As they paused at her doorway, shaking their heads and thanking God for their good fortune, Sybil had whispered something to each of them. One by one, they’d come back into the kitchen, faces pale and lips pressed tightly, to snatch their purses and Bibles from the midst of tea and red velvet cake Cassie had set on the table. She knew they’d meant to tear at her like the stray dogs had done to Jezebel, punishing her for her sin, but at least they were company. After seeing Sybil, they left, their eyes full of fear and their pinched lips mouthing a whispered, “My God.” And they didn’t come back.
By now, Cassie was used to the shunning, a natural consequence of having a baby out of wedlock in a place like Gideon where they still used the word bastard in an official sense. So when Bess Sanderson had come visiting the Monday after the church-ladies, Cassie was shocked. Bess,
who’d been Homecoming Queen three years in a row and who wore white when she wed the mayor, even though it washed out her fair skin and made her look like runny confectioner’s icing in the hot August sun. Bess, who hadn’t spoken a word to Cassie in seven years, had stood at the front door asking to see Sybil.
Cassie couldn’t think of a good reason to say no, but this time she’d hovered at the corner of the hallway and listened to Bess Sanderson ask Sybil if her husband was cheating on her.
“Blossom,” Sybil had sung in her high, sweet, six-year-old voice, “Frozen dreams, melted cares. Away.”
“What’s that? I don’t understand.” Her voice tight with needing to know, Bess had stepped closer to the plastic barrier. “They said you knew things. They said you’d tell me the truth.” Her manicured nails curled against the sheathing. “What’s that mean—‘frozen dreams’?” Bess turned back toward Cassie looking for answers. “Do you mean…? Oh God. Is that girl saying…?”
But Cassie wasn’t listening to Bess Sanderson. Cassie had slid slowly down the hall wall, her mind full of the sound of her daughter’s voice. It was the first time she’d heard Sybil speak.
“Say it again, honey. Say something, Sybil,” she had pleaded.
The little girl stood at the far side of the room with her arms flung out, spinning around and around like maple seeds twirling down to the ground. Silent.
Cassie had wept with longing.
• • •
Resignation settled slowly on a woman like Cassie. The first of it, when she missed her period at sixteen, had come quick like a shot. She had recovered once the worst of it—telling her parents—had come and gone. Through all those months of angry stares when she did the shopping at the Piggly Wiggly and of being sent home from school and then whispered to by the Reverend’s wife that maybe Cassie should worship at home until after the baby came, Cassie had held to her dream of a life far away from Gideon, a life extraordinary. Cassie had always known she was destined to have a life like that.
Flashes of red and orange had flared in the hills that September morning in ’78 when her daddy drove her down into the alluvial plain to the hospital at Hayti. He had griped about having to use one of his leaves at the Box Factory, but Cassie’s mama was sick and couldn’t take her. And that wasn’t what her daddy was really mad about anyway. Cassie was six months along when the boy had gone off with some motorcycle gang out to the reservation in Utah or Arizona; a spirit quest, he had called it, to find his Navajo ancestors.
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