The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney

by Susan Van Kirk

  TJ walked over to the bed. “Mr. Lattimore? Mr. Hugh Lattimore?”

  He stared for a moment, but did not recognize her. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Detective TJ Sweeney of the Endurance Police Department. I’d like to ask you a few questions. I won’t take a lot of your time, and I know you need your rest.”

  He almost snarled as he remarked, “Rest? I’ll have plenty of time for that soon enough. A cop? And a woman? Well, if that don’t beat all.” He silently looked her up and down. “I think I remember reading about you. You’re ‘mixed,’ aren’t you? I don’t know why you’re here. State your business and go.”

  TJ walked over and picked up the straight chair, setting it down far enough from Lattimore’s bed that he wouldn’t feel threatened, but close enough that he could hear her. She spoke a little louder than usual, worried about his hearing. He obviously didn’t like her, and she decided she’d let the ‘mixed’ comment ride. “Mr. Lattimore, sir, I need to ask you some questions about your brother, James, and his wife, Rose.”

  Lattimore’s face got a strange look, almost like the detective had confused him. “James, you say? He’s been gone for a long time now. Why would you want to know about him? Got a daughter, Louise, who lives here. Ask her.”

  “Yes, sir, I’m aware of Louise Rollins. I would like to ask you some questions about the night Mrs. Lattimore—Rose—disappeared, back in 1943. Can you remember anything about that night?”

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them TJ could see he had not lost any of his sharpness. His clouded blue eyes stared right at her. “Wasn’t there,” he rasped.

  She opened her notepad and consulted her notes. “But the detectives that night questioned you. They have notes about your interview, and indicate you were home on leave.”

  He thought for a moment. “Not me. That was our brother, Harry. Killed in the war later. Shot down over that Nazi hellhole, Germany.”

  TJ listened as his ragged breathing hesitated, and he spent several seconds trying to catch his breath. She thought to herself, Why am I doing this to an old man who doesn’t have much more time? He can barely breathe. I should take it easier, not make him upset.

  TJ checked her notes. “Could I ask, then, sir, where you were in early October, 1943?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. I was on an American bomber. Kicking the hell out of those Nazi bastards. We went on one bombing sortie after another over Berlin.” He stopped to catch his breath. “Didn’t hear about my brother’s wife until weeks after it happened. Said she disappeared.”

  “Can you tell me about her or the disappearance? I imagine you talked with your brother about it eventually.”

  He didn’t say a word. TJ decided he was sorting it all over in his mind, remembering back over sixty years ago. He asked, “What do you want to know?”

  She smiled her most endearing smile. “What can you remember?”

  He took several breaths, and TJ could hear their shallowness. His words came out in short phrases between breaths. “James and I were twins, you know, joined at the hip. We’d do anything for each other. Harry volunteered, and James and I were drafted. Figured we’d go together, like we’d always done. We could watch each other’s backs. Went to Chicago for our physicals. They turned him down.” He stopped and took some breaths again. “Eyesight. He’d always had to have glasses, thick ones. Guess that didn’t work for the army people. His hopes were dashed. I don’t think I ever saw him so down and dejected. You know, Harry and I got to go on this adventure. Jimmy was left out. I tried to keep his hopes up. Sent him letters. Told him he wasn’t missing a thing. ’Course I didn’t exactly tell him everything that was going on. The censors did the rest. He took that very hard—not getting into the war.”

  He slowly shook his head, and TJ could see the rims of his red eyes fill with tears. He gasped for breath several times, and then seemed to settle back down. TJ hoped she wasn’t hastening the end. He pointed to a glass of water on his food tray, and she held it while he sipped from a straw. Better cut it short, and leave him in peace. Out of the silence, he began to talk again as if he wanted to say what was in his head.

  “Only thing hit him harder was the disappearance of that wife. Pretty young thing, though I never cared much for her. Louise had grabbed on to her like a life buoy.” He turned his head and gazed at TJ with his rheumy eyes. “Louise’d never had a mother before, you see.” He pursed his lips, blinked several times, and took several breaths slowly. “I only met the woman once, when I was home on leave, and next thing, they got married.” He shook his head. “I think she must have been no good to leave him like that.” For a moment, he paused and couldn’t find words. Then his voice filled with vehemence, and he shook his head. “No good. Just no good.” He looked toward the windows as he slowly pondered the thought. “He never got over it, you know. Never got over it. And he died. My brother. Too young.”

  TJ could see tears in his eyes, and it was obvious he was fighting for more breath. The detective decided she’d done enough damage for today. Hugh Lattimore couldn’t really tell her anything, and it was obvious that his days were numbered. She said her goodbyes, and figured that Louise Rollins would have yet another death to deal with. She was no closer to finding Rose Lattimore’s killer than she was a week ago. TJ didn’t even know if the body at the park belonged to Louise’s mother. Sighing, she thanked him, and left his room.

  Back at her office that afternoon, TJ reviewed the evidence. Something happened that night in October, 1943. Rose Lattimore had not run off as the consensus had assumed—except for James and his young daughter, Louise. She had not run away, but she had run into someone or something. Who? She had a mysterious past, and no one from her own family had come to the wedding except her mother, who was probably long dead by now. Louise Rollins, the only viable person to interview, had been five and had not a clue who her stepmother was or where she had lived before Endurance. The business college Rose had attended long ago had closed its doors. Another dead end.

  According to Louise, her parents were crazy about each other. The locket with the inscription would seem to bear out the little girl’s memory. Without it, TJ would assume the five-year-old had romanticized the whole situation. But Louise believed her parents were in love, the brother, Hugh, said her disappearance nearly killed James, and no police records verified any domestic calls to that house. Dead ends everywhere.

  TJ did what she always did when she reached a dead end. She went back to the cold case file and examined the testimony at the time, written in the cramped notes of the detectives. Pouring over their facts and suppositions, she stood up several times and walked around her office. She rubbed the back of her neck and picked up a couple of hand weights so she could do bicep curls. Motive, opportunity, means. Was it possible Rose Lattimore ran into someone from her past who had tracked her down to Endurance? Could it have been a person who knew secrets about her, or perhaps she knew secrets about him? Maybe whoever this was knew that she was biracial and passing for white? Could she have been married before? Good theory, but hard to check out.

  Another theory was the always popular theoretical murderer who is totally unrelated to anyone in the case, who ran across a beautiful young woman with a dog on a leash, and somehow talked her into a car or killed her and moved the body. It was nighttime, dark, and very few people were around. No witnesses came forward. It would only have taken a few minutes to get her in a car. That’s all he needed. A definite possibility. But why? Again, how would she prove it?

  If only she could interview James Lattimore and know that he was pure, pure as he was made out to be by everyone in his family. Was it possible he truly did love his wife and pined for her for several decades before dying himself? Or was it guilt? Did he really mean what he had inscribed on that locket? Or was he her killer, finding out her guilty secret? She shook her head, set down the hand weights, and walked back over to her desk.

  Going over the 1943 notes of the detective interviews, she squ
inted at the cramped notes and suddenly stopped. Wait. What did that say? She went back and read the sentence again, and then looked up, silently thinking about the implications. Could it be possible? Before she could pick up her phone, it rang all by itself.

  “Sweeney. Myers here. Got the coroner guy, Atkins, on the line.”

  “Sure. Put him on.” As soon as she heard his voice, TJ could also hear his excitement.

  “Sweeney. DNA results came back for you from that envelope. No doubt about it. The results are conclusive. Rose Lattimore is your Jane Doe. This DNA stuff is so amazing. Hope that helps.”

  “It does, Doc. I was beginning to think we’d never even get an ID, let alone figure out what happened to her.”

  “And did you?”

  “What?”

  “Figure it out?”

  “Perhaps. I have to make a few phone calls to resurrect 1943.”

  “Let me know if I can be of any other help.”

  “Will do.”

  It took the rest of the day for TJ to make follow-up phone calls on her hunch, but when she went home that evening, the detective knew how Rose Lattimore had died. The only question was why. She had also called Louise Rollins and asked what she could remember about her stepmother’s funeral arrangements. What she discovered was mind-boggling. However, she thought, with a tired sigh, it could wait until Monday. Monday would be soon enough.

  Chapter Ten

  “Why are you up here, TJ? Please tell me you are not considering a four-floor nose dive.” Grace Kimball walked across the rooftop of the Gaffney Building, watching TJ, who was standing near the railing looking out.

  “How did you find me?” she asked, without turning around.

  “Myers.”

  “Oh, guess I did tell him I planned to stop here. Otherwise, I’d think he had planted a chip on me.” The detective turned and wandered over toward Grace in the middle of the roof. She sat down on a crate and invited Grace to do the same.

  Grace glanced around at the empty roof. “Why are you up here on this old roof?”

  “Marjorie Gibson. I thought, just for a few moments, I could remember the dazzling spot she’d described during the war where people could forget the ugliness: that their lovers were leaving the next day, yet again, for the front; or their mates were hiding a secret that meant they ate on the back steps outside of the restaurant instead of inside on the white linen tablecloths. You know, I wanted to see this place the way Marjorie Gibson described it: the dazzling lights, the Big Band music, the summer night with a light breeze, and the view of the entire town over the railings. The cynical me would have said, ‘Of course, that was only for the white folks.’ But now, somehow, I hope that the Lattimores’ last night was like that.”

  “TJ, you are such a softie. I’ve always known that, but I will keep your secret since you are the dreaded, terrifying detective of the Endurance Police Department. I’ve watched you shoot and kill a murderer with a focused eye and a steady trigger finger. No softie you. Back in high school, though, you had such a chip on your shoulder.”

  TJ smiled weakly at her. “Yeah, well, that’s been knocked off too many times to count, Grace. In my world, I’m confronted daily by situations where I don’t feel comfortable and have to consider how to react. It’s been better since college, but it’s still there. Even now, I’m on guard…except with you, Grace. Never with you.”

  Grace searched her face. “Your eyes are red, and they’re ringed in dark circles. Is it Rick? The case? Both?”

  TJ’s shoulders sagged, and she stared down at her hands on her lap.

  “I was just thinking about my father. It’s this case.” She shook her head slowly back and forth. “I think I’ve put the injustice and hatred out of my mind, and then my parents move into the picture, especially my father.”

  “Oh,” said Grace, sitting down across from her. “You’ve never talked very much about him.”

  “I haven’t.” Her eyes narrowed. “I try not to think about him at all.”

  “I assumed you didn’t remember him because you were so young when he left. Three? Four?”

  “Four. Tyrone was two. Our father was there one day, and then he wasn’t. Over the years I’ve talked with my mother about him. Not a lot, you understand. He was Caucasian, and his family let him know he wasn’t welcome in their home anymore after he told them he wanted to marry my mother.”

  “Not only do you not know him, I’d assume, but you also don’t know those grandparents.”

  “Moved away. I guess they couldn’t stand the shame. My parents got married in a quiet ceremony at the AME church with two of my mother’s friends as witnesses,” TJ said.

  Grace looked at TJ, her eyes blinking noticeably. “That’s too bad. I bet it was very upsetting to your father, as well as to Mama Sweeney.”

  “It was. We had quite a conversation back when I was a teenager. I asked her about that, and she said, ‘Of course I was sad, Baby. But after a while I realized their attitude said more about their characters and nothing about me. They didn’t even know me. It did, of course, upset your father terribly. He tried to ignore it, tried to protect us.’ Then, of course, the big question. I asked my mother why he left.”

  “That must have been a very difficult conversation for both of you.”

  “Terrible. After the discussion was over, I packed it away, and we never talked of it again.”

  After a pause, Grace said, “So why did he leave?”

  “It was an accumulation of days, months, and years of those little ‘incidents,’ like the drip, drip of water. He worked as a mechanic at Sandle’s Garage. Knew everything about cars. But, you know, the guys he worked with—they’d talk. It was less to his face and more the sleights, the innuendo, the whispers, and sometimes the edges of words that decent people don’t use. Those things eventually wear a person down, Grace.”

  “That’s awful, TJ. I can’t imagine how your parents dealt with that.”

  “Very sadly. I never understood how he could leave Tyrone and me. She said, ‘It wasn’t that he wanted to. He just wasn’t strong enough. People’s looks. Their faces. Sometimes their words. Words—they can be powerful, hateful weapons.’ ”

  Grace sat silent for a moment. Eventually, she asked, “What did he say when he left?”

  “Nothing. He was simply gone. My mama speculated that something happened at work the day before. She doesn’t know what it was, just that he was unusually quiet and upset that night. He didn’t come home the next day.”

  “Nothing? Not even to say goodbye?”

  “She didn’t think he could. It would have broken his heart to say goodbye.”

  Grace looked at TJ, her shoulders slumped, her eyes on the floor. “How did your mother ever live through that time with two little toddlers and no husband to provide for you?”

  “She put one foot in front of the other. One hour—one day—one month. She had two babies to feed and clothe. It wasn’t easy, but, as you know, my mother is a strong woman.”

  “Does she ever wonder where he is?”

  TJ cocked her head to one side, still not looking at Grace. “She says not. Mama says she believes it broke his heart, too, and not a day goes by that he doesn’t regret it. She is quite sure of that.”

  “And all those mean, hateful people?”

  “They’ve just gone on with their lives, Grace.”

  “Didn’t your mother hate them?”

  Now TJ looked up at Grace and smiled. “You know my mama. She says she has never hated them, because they have to live with their own unhappiness and somehow account for the hate in their hearts and minds. She believes hateful people are desperately unhappy with themselves and their lot in life. They need someone else to blame. Me, I just can’t be like my mother. I can’t forgive them. I guess my heart is not as big as hers.”

  “Do you ever want to see him, TJ?”

  “No.”

  Grace shook her head and sat quietly. Finally, she said, “You know, TJ, times and
people change. Huge waves of social revolution have taken place in this country since then. Once those advancements begin, they roll over the land with increasing momentum, state by state. Consider the civil rights movement, Viet Nam, same-sex marriage. We have made progress in those areas and laws.”

  TJ looked out over the roof beyond Grace. “I know you’re right, Grace, but it really upsets me to think that the times in which we’re living make such a huge difference.”

  “It’s less the time period, TJ, and more about what’s in people’s hearts, and how they begin to see things in a new way, a way more in line with respect for people and their characters rather than fear or hate for their differences.”

  “I suppose. I was just thinking the other day about the differences between the times of my recent murder victim—the 1940s—and ours. A different time period would have changed everything. When I’m sitting in a restaurant and an African American couple walks in, no one bats an eye now. They’re seated like anyone. The house behind me was recently bought by a young Mexican couple. That wouldn’t have happened in the forties. I go to Chicago and walk into a hotel bar, and the clientele is every skin color you might imagine. After all, skin color is only a political identity in the long run. In Rose Lattimore’s time—in my mother’s earlier time—none of that would have happened.”

  “You have to remember that, TJ. We still have a long way to go, but we’ve made some progress in human rights. Count the positives.”

  TJ reluctantly nodded her head. “On the other hand, watch any news coverage and you’ll see a dark current of hate and bigotry that even now runs deep through this country. It’s still there, believe me.”

  “I think we’re still working on perfecting how we see beyond what someone looks like, TJ. Every generation has to be reminded, has to be taught.”