The Bridge: A Novel

by Solomon Jones

  “I understand you saw Kenya on Friday night. Do you remember where you saw her and what time it was?”

  “I guess it was a little after ten, ’cause the news had just came on Channel 29. I was goin’ to the store to get some cereal for my baby, and I saw Kenya in front o’ me. I called her and asked her where she was goin’.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She never answered. She just said she was comin’ with me. I told her she couldn’t, and she asked if she could spend the night with us. Told me somethin’ about some cousins comin’ up from down South and Judy apartment bein’ crowded.

  “I knew she was lyin’. Kenya would lie sometime to keep from sayin’ what was really goin’ on down there. But somethin’ about the way she said it made me take her serious.”

  “And what was that?”

  “She started cryin’. I ain’t know if she was fakin’ or what, but I took her serious. I told her to go ’head up and ask my mom if she could spend the night.”

  “Why didn’t you go with her?”

  “I was talkin’ to somebody.”

  “Who were you talking to?”

  Tyreeka hesitated. Lynch sensed that she didn’t want to give details.

  “Look,” he said, feigning exasperation, “we can do this down at Central Detectives if you prefer.”

  Tyreeka sighed and held her baby tighter, rocking her nervously as she answered the question. “This boy named Scott that hustle down Crispus Attucks.”

  “Scott what?”

  “I don’t know his last name. They call him Scott Playa. We was talkin’ and then we went for a ride. One thing led to another and, you know, we ended up at his aunt house on Thompson Street.”

  “Do you remember the exact address?”

  Tyreeka stopped to think. “It was 1185,” she said. “I remember ’cause I was lookin’ at it and thinkin’ I ain’t know the numbers went that high.”

  “Did you see Kenya go in the building before you left?”

  “I saw her walk toward the buildin’, but I ain’t see her go in.”

  “Did you see her talking to anyone else after she left you?” Lynch asked as he jotted notes.

  “No.”

  “Is there anything you remember about her state of mind when you talked to her?”

  Tyreeka thought about it for a few minutes, then looked up at Lynch with a troubled expression.

  “She seemed like she was nervous,” she said. “She kept lookin’ over her shoulder and actin’ like she ain’t wanna leave me.

  “Tell you the truth, I think she was scared,” Tyreeka said finally. “I think she was scared to go home.”

  Darnell sat with the shades drawn in the darkened living room, waiting for the hurt to subside. He’d been sitting there for hours, ever since Lily had dismissed him.

  He was out of crack, and for the first time in months, he had no desire to scrounge for more. It was crack, after all, that had put him there, writhing in the pain that came with Lily’s latest rejection.

  It was the kind of hurt that twists in one’s gut. The kind that comes after hope is built up, then crashes to the ground and shatters. It was an ache that Darnell had forgotten.

  He had long ago stopped feeling. The crack had taken away his ability to do so. But in quiet moments like this, when the crack was gone and sleep refused to come, his emotions awakened and stabbed at him like needles.

  Normally, he would turn to the drugs to make it stop. But all he wanted now was Lily. Nothing else would do.

  He considered going out to join the search for his niece. But at that moment, he didn’t care about the search, and he didn’t want to act as if he did. The demand of doing so was too great. And Darnell was in no mood to meet demands.

  He looked up as the doorknob turned, squinting at the dim hallway light that rushed into the darkness. He recognized the silhouette that filled the doorway. But not even the sight of his sister could pull him from his funk.

  “Who that?” Daneen said, spotting him in the corner.

  “It’s Darnell,” he said.

  There was a moment of awkward silence.

  “What you doin’ here?”

  “What you mean, ‘What you doin’ here?’ I live here.”

  “Well, shouldn’t you be somewhere lookin’ for Kenya?” Daneen said, with a hand on her hip.

  “Shouldn’t you?”

  “I just came in from lookin’ for her,” she said, walking to the window. “But it’s only so many times you can keep goin’ over the same streets.”

  She lifted the shade. Then she went about the task she’d come there to carry out. She went from room to room, rummaging though the drawers and closets, looking in vain for something that would give her a clue about Kenya.

  She went into the kitchen, looked into a drawer, and saw the gun that Sonny kept behind the silverware tray. She quickly slipped it into her jeans, covered it with her shirt, and pushed the drawer shut.

  “The cops already been through here lookin’,” Darnell said, walking into the kitchen behind her.

  Daneen jumped, but quickly regained her composure. She didn’t want to have to explain taking the gun. She didn’t even know why she’d done it. But somewhere deep down, she felt that she might need it.

  “The cops couldn’ta searched the way they shoulda,” she said haltingly. “Or else they woulda found my baby by now.”

  She looked at him nervously. When she realized he hadn’t seen her take the gun, she leaned back against the counter and sighed. “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “I don’t think nobody do,” Darnell said, going back to his spot on the floor.

  Daneen walked over to the living-room couch and sat down across from Darnell. She took in the dark circles around his eyes, his pallid skin, his beaten expression.

  “You look like you done lived a couple o’ lives in the past few days,” she said, almost sympathetically.

  “So do you. But I expected that.”

  They sat quietly for a moment, lost in their own thoughts.

  “You see Kevin?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I saw him. He ain’t wanna see me, though. Matter fact, he told me to stay away from him. Said he ain’t need me to help him find Kenya.”

  Darnell laughed.

  “What’s funny?” she said.

  “Seem like it’s a whole lotta that goin’ around. I went down Lily’s like she was gon’ fall for me if I washed my ass.”

  “So what happened?”

  “You see where I’m at, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know why you expected no different,” Daneen mumbled.

  “I don’t know why you expected somethin’ different from Kevin,” he said in a tone that was almost angry.

  Daneen was about to say something hurtful. But her brother was already in pain. His eyes held a sadness that had set in years before—the same sadness that had set into her own.

  “I guess we always expectin’ somethin’ different, Darnell. I guess we think if we look past all the dirt we done did, everybody else gon’ look past it, too. But it don’t work that way.

  “You live with the stuff you do,” she said pointedly. “You live with it, and you can’t kill it. ’Cause every time you think you done buried it, it get up out the grave. You can run from it, you can pretend it ain’t there. But it’s always standin’ right next to you, remindin’ you who you really are.”

  Darnell couldn’t think of a response. There was no flip answer to the truth. There was no way to turn it around and point it at Daneen. It was what it was, and he knew it.

  “Kenya more than a niece to me,” he said, gazing at the floor as he changed the subject. “I wanna help you find her. It’s just hard for me to keep lookin’.”

  Daneen stared at him. He looked tortured and pathetic.

  “Help yourself, Darnell,” she said as she got up to leave. “That’s the best way you can help me.”

  “Oh, so you get a little two months clean and think you can
tell me ’bout helpin’ myself, huh?”

  “Who said I was talkin’ ’bout that? You got a whole lot more than that you need help with.”

  “First thing I need is somethin’ to eat,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “You know the only thing Judy got in here is some damn grease on the stove. I can’t eat that. Trust me, I tried.”

  Daneen dug into the pocket of her jeans, took out a crumpled bunch of bills, and handed him two dollars.

  He looked at it. “What I’m supposed to do with this?”

  “That’ll get you three chicken wings and a rice and gravy from the Chinese store.”

  “Damn, sis, that’s the best you can do?”

  She looked at him, stretched out on the floor with his hand extended toward her like a beggar.

  “That’s what I should be askin’ you, Darnell. I should be askin’ if that’s the best you can do.”

  With that, she turned and walked out the door.

  The news van pulled onto the sidewalk in front of the projects and Channel IO’s Jim Wright jumped out, holding a copy of the Sunday Inquirer, with Kevin Lynch’s photo on the front page next to Judge Baylor’s.

  Within an hour of that morning’s hearing, his department sources had told him that Kevin Lynch had been suspended for his role in the car chase that killed Judge Baylor. Wright had spent the rest of the day gathering other useful bits of information that no one else had thought to seek.

  Now he was scrambling for footage so he could package the story in time for the five o’clock broadcast. Shots of the projects, perhaps even the apartment where Kenya had been staying, would do nicely for starters.

  As he walked toward the building with his cameraman following close behind, he saw a group of boys sitting on the pole around the outside of the main building. They watched his cameraman to make sure he wasn’t filming the project commerce they were posted there to protect.

  He went inside, past the vacant guard booth. As he stood by the elevator, pushing the button and hoping that it would come quickly, residents shuttled in and out, looking at him with a curiosity that Wright misconstrued as aggressiveness.

  When people started to gather and ask if they were going to be on television, Wright was anxious to move—to do something that would keep him from having to wait there for an elevator that obviously wasn’t about to come.

  “Let’s get some shots on the first floor,” he said, when he spotted the entrance to the stairway. “We can do a standup in the hallway and maybe just take the steps to the seventh floor.”

  They walked up the three steps that led to a door and the first floor, opened it, and walked into the dank hallway that ran between the apartments.

  As the cameraman turned on the light and Wright began to speak, an apartment door opened and Kevin Lynch walked out. He was saying something to the woman who lived there when Wright spotted him and ran down the hallway, followed by the cameraman.

  “Detective Lynch, Jim Wright, Channel 10! I saw you yesterday down at Broad and South when they were searching for Sonny Williams. I’d just like to ask you a couple questions.”

  Lynch was taken aback, but recovered quickly. “I’m busy right now. I don’t have time to answer any questions.”

  Wright ignored that. “Regarding your suspension in connection with Judge Baylor’s death, do you feel you’ve been unfairly made into a scapegoat?”

  Lynch looked at the camera, then at the reporter, and wondered how they’d found out about his suspension so quickly.

  “I don’t have any comment on that,” he said, pushing past them.

  “Are you here working on the case in spite of your suspension?”

  Lynch walked quickly down the hallway, with Wright and the cameraman close behind.

  “Are you any closer to finding Kenya Brown? Is she even still alive?”

  He stopped. “Look, man. This might just be a story to you, but these people have to live with it. It’s not just some drama for you to put on television so people in the suburbs can shake their heads and talk about the poor little Negroes in the projects. It’s people’s lives.”

  “So does that mean you’re still working on the case? And if so, under what authority, since you’ve been suspended from the force?”

  “I’m just visiting,” Lynch said. “I grew up here, and I’m just back visiting. Excuse me.”

  Lynch squeezed between Wright and the cameraman and was almost at the end of the hallway when Daneen came through the door.

  “Kevin,” she said, and stopped when she saw the reporter.

  “Ms. Brown,” Wright said when he spotted her. “You are Daneen Brown, right? Can I ask you a few questions?”

  Daneen looked from the reporter to Lynch as the cameraman approached and shone the bright light in her face.

  Lynch was angry. He wanted to take the camera and smash it against the cinder-block walls. But he knew that the only way to keep the focus on Kenya, rather than Judge Baylor, was for Daneen to make some sort of public plea. Because no matter what they told themselves, there was still one cruel reality. The longer the search for Kenya went on, the more likely her disappearance would become a homicide. And Lynch knew that he could never live with that.

  “Go ahead and talk to them,” he said to Daneen. “It might help Kenya.”

  Daneen looked at Wright suspiciously. “Okay,” she said. “Ask your questions.”

  “How does it feel knowing that the people who were supposed to be caring for your daughter allowed this to happen?”

  Daneen hesitated, then looked into the camera. “I don’t know what I feel about them yet. It’s still sinkin’ in that my daughter gone. I’m still tryin’ to deal with that.”

  “What would you say to Judy Brown and Sonny Williams if you could talk to them?”

  “I guess I would tell ’em we could deal with whatever they did later. Right now, I just want my baby back. So if they can help us find her, I would ask ’em, no, I would beg ’em to tell me where she at, so I could have her back with me where she belong.”

  “But isn’t it true that the Department of Human Services took her from you and placed her here, with Judy Brown?”

  Daneen hadn’t expected that type of question. But Wright had done his homework, and what he’d learned was intriguing.

  “I had some problems in the past,” she said evenly. “But you tell me what’s better for a child: a mother tryin’ to get herself together or a house full o’ drugs and God knows what else? I ain’t gon’ blame DHS for what’s goin’ on now. But I will tell you this. Kenya woulda been better off with me. Least then she wouldn’t be missin’.”

  “Yes, but the fact is, your daughter was placed in this home and you could’ve—”

  “Next question,” Lynch said, his eyes flashing a warning.

  Wright looked up at Lynch and decided not to press the issue.

  “One last question, Ms. Brown. If Kenya was listening right now, what would you say to her?”

  “I would tell her I love her. I would tell her to stay strong, ’cause Mommy doin’ the best she can to find her. I would tell her that if she mad about somethin’, she can talk to me about it. We can start over, baby. I wanna be your mother. I really do. But I need you to come home and gimme a chance to do that.

  “Please, Kenya,” she said, as the tears welled up in her eyes. “Come home.”

  She leaned against Lynch, who hesitantly put an arm around her. And then she allowed the tears to flow freely as the camera captured her pain in all its heartbreaking detail.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Three divisions of the police department, in various parts of the city, were swept up in the investigation. Officers in South Division, where Sonny had last been spotted, were still scouring the area for him. Detectives from East Division searched the area around Germantown Avenue, looking for Judy. Central Division detectives, along with Housing Authority officers, questioned neighbors in and around the Bridge and Crispus Attucks.

  But in spite o
f the vast resources being committed to the investigation, it was painfully obvious that Kenya was not their concern. Though more than thirty officers were involved in the case, the police had questioned only a few neighbors, and none of them were the people who knew Kenya best. They hadn’t extensively questioned the neighborhood children. They hadn’t targeted any suspects other than Sonny and Judy.

  In truth, most of the officers were only out to find Sonny, but not for what he might have done to Kenya. They wanted to even the score for the officers he’d injured, and to calm the public outrage surrounding Judge Baylor’s death.

  Roxanne Wilson knew that. And as she rose from the few restless hours of sleep she’d managed since going home on Saturday, she grabbed the Department of Human Services file that a friend in DHS had managed to smuggle home after working some weekend overtime at the office.

  As Wilson thumbed through it, she thought about the disappearances and murders she’d seen during her years in the police department’s Juvenile Aid Division.

  There was the case of the teen basketball star whose mother had murdered her in a fit of rage, then made a tearful plea for her daughter’s safe return. There was the case of the foster mom who’d drowned her infant foster daughter, then had sex with her boyfriend as if nothing had happened. There was the case of the old woman who admitted that she’d smothered five of her infant children while claiming that they’d died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

  In all of the most heinous cases she’d seen while dealing with children, it was often the mother or caregiver who was to blame. It was that experience that told her the first finger should be pointed at Judy. But in her zeal to do what was right, she’d forgotten to look closely at Kenya’s biological mother. And from what she saw in the file, she should have.

  Wilson put the folder on her nightstand, got out of bed, and walked down the hall to her younger son’s bedroom. Looking at its contents, which were arranged much the same as they’d been when her son was alive, she remembered why she was hesitant to blame Daneen. Because in some ways, Daneen’s suffering had the same roots as hers.

  Ten years before, Roxanne Wilson, just recently divorced, moved to her West Philadelphia home. She knew the neighborhood was bad. It had been that way for some time, because the cycles of change always seemed to make things worse.