It was hard to imagine doing a worse job at this. I felt slow and stupid. I had so much to learn––even more than I realized.
“Thought that soft, big fro nigger with the glasses did it. What was his name? Wayne Williams––same as the little boy who he killed then fucked.”
The fact that LaMarcus had been raped had never been released to the public, and only a handful of tightlipped cops and the killer knew the rape came after the murder.
Something inside me began to buzz.
“You ’bout got that?” he said, nodding toward the paper. “I gotta get back to work.”
I handed him the paper.
“John Jordan,” he read. “Forty-three-thirty-six Pleasant Point Drive. Decatur.”
I nodded.
And then I witnessed a transformation from something that had appeared to be a man into something that more closely resembled a monster.
“Now we know where you live,” he said. “Ray and I will come pay you a little visit. We usually don’t like ’em as old as you but we can make an exception. Bet your little pink pucker is still nice and tight. Is, ain’t it?”
How could I be so stupid?
Everything about him had changed. He didn’t even look like the same person any longer. He was even giving off a different odor, the smell of something feted and feral.
I didn’t say anything, just stood there staring at him, my fists clinched at my sides.
Bobby Battle had been right about these men and about me. They were animals, cold, cruel, inhumane. I was ill-equipped, in over my head, and had just made a costly rookie mistake that could get me hurt or killed––just like Battle had said.
“Come in here talkin’ ’bout somebody told you I might know Ray. Either you think my setting is stuck on stupid or yours is.”
“It’s clearly the latter,” I said.
“Admitting it is the first step. So what’s your story, stupid?”
“I’m an amateur––”
“That’s obvious.”
“Just tryin’ to figure out what happened to LaMarcus Williams.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Need to know.”
“We all have needs,” he said. “Some far more dangerous than others. Some’ll cause you not to fit in, not to be able to live by society’s bullshit rules. Others’ll get you killed.”
I had nothing for that so I kept my mouth shut.
“You too young to be a cop. Already said you’s a amateur. You a friend of the family or just some random motherfucker with a death wish?”
“Tell you what,” I said, trying to sound far more calm and unafraid than I felt, “I’m shy when it comes to talking about myself. Why don’t we wait until you and Ray visit and I’ll let my friends from the force tell you all about me. And if there’s anything they don’t know, Frank Morgan with GBI will. Here’s his card in case you want to reach out to him directly. I’ll make sure he’s expecting to hear from you either way.”
“I screwed up,” I said.
There was a pause.
I wanted to call Frank, but knew it had to be Bobby Battle.
Swallow my medicine. Straight, no sugar.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You tried to make a citizen’s arrest and got your ass kicked.”
“Worse.”
He sighed heavily, his frustration and disapproval palpable even through the phone.
“Let me have it.”
I did.
“Told you, didn’t I?”
“You did. I’m sorry. I should’ve listened. I underestimated him and was unprepared and made a mess of it.”
“Yes you did.”
“But––”
“Make an excuse right now and I’ll walk away, hang you out to dry. Let you deal with Pelton and Storr.”
“He let it slip that he knew LaMarcus was raped.”
“Doesn’t take much to make that leap.”
“After he was murdered.”
“Oh.”
He was quiet a moment.
“What’d you say to get him to say that?”
“Nothin’.”
“You had to say somethin’.”
“I said somethin’ about how the killer had never been caught and he said he thought Wayne Williams did it and went on to say his last name was the same as the little boy who he killed then fucked.”
“And you’re sure it was just like that? He wasn’t repeatin’ or respondin’ to somethin’ you said, not inferring what happened from somethin’ you let slip?”
“Positive.”
“Well, then,” he said. “You still fucked up, but maybe I won’t let you get killed over it.”
Chapter Thirty
“You remember LaMarcus, don’t you, Carlton?” Jordan was saying.
She was holding up the last picture ever taken of her brother, one that was still on the roll of film inside Ida’s camera when he was killed.
In it, he is skating at a friend’s birthday party in Conyers, a large gold chain around his neck, a broad, sweet smile on his face.
Carlton nodded.
We were in the back corner of Safe Haven––me, Martin, Jordan, and Carlton––having waited until everyone else, including Ida, had gone home.
Jordan had told Carlton’s mom it would be a little later than usual when she dropped him off tonight. Carlton’s mom seemed grateful for the extra time.
Martin was with me because he wanted to be, had nowhere else to go, and I thought he might make Carlton feel safer. He sat at a table not too far from us, coloring with conviction.
“LaMarcus was a good boy,” Carlton said. “LaMarcus was my friend.”
Carlton had a big frame and a soft, fat belly emphasized by his too-tight, tucked in T-shirt, which was shoved deep into cheap, old, ill-fitting polyester pants cinched at the waste by a wide, brown, faux leather belt.
“He was,” Jordan said. “He was a very good boy and he was a very good friend.”
“LaMarcus died,” he said. “LaMarcus is dead. He’s in heaven with the angels.”
I was letting Jordan ask the questions not only because of her rapport with Carlton and her quiet, kind, gentle ways, but because of how I had handled things with Vincent Storr.
“That’s right,” Jordan said. “LaMarcus, your good friend, is in heaven now.”
“With the angels.”
“With the angels, yes.”
I had to keep reminding myself that Carlton was older than I was by a few years. Everything about him but his size was small, stunted, childlike.
“Do you remember what happened to him?” Jordan asked.
“LaMarcus wouldn’t wake up. He went to sleep and wouldn’t wake up.”
“Did you try to wake him up?”
“I did. I did try to wake him up. Wake up, LaMarcus. Wake up. Let’s play some more. But he wouldn’t wake up.”
More. He had said let’s play some more.
“Had you been playing with LaMarcus before he went to sleep?”
Carlton nodded.
“Where? When?”
“LaMarcus played with Carlton. Hide. Count. Look. Ball. Carlton loves ball. Carlton and LaMarcus love basketball.”
“’Ee ’oo,” Martin said softly without looking up or missing a stroke with his crayon.
I smiled and thought about how much I enjoyed playing basketball with Martin.
“What did you and LaMarcus play the day he died, the day he wouldn’t wake up?”
Carlton looked confused, as if the concept of time was too much for him, as if what his mind stored wasn’t locked down and ordered, but rather tossed in and jumbled.
“LaMarcus played with Carlton. Nobody else. Get outta here you fat retard. Go on. Get. Just LaMarcus. Sweet, good boy LaMarcus.”
Jordan swallowed hard and I caught the glint of gathering moisture in her eyes.
“LaMarcus told Carlton a secret,” he said.
Jordan sat up, her head turning slightly, her expression rising.
/> “What did he tell you?” she asked.
“It’s a secret.”
“You can tell me,” she said. “I’m Jordan, LaMarcus’s sister. Remember?”
He shook his head. “Can’t tell anyone. No one. Promise me. I promise, LaMarcus.”
“The thing is . . . after someone goes to sleep, after they die, you can tell their secret to their sister.”
“You can?”
She nodded. “Yes. You can.”
He looked over at me and then at Martin.
“We’ll step outside a minute,” I said. “Let you two talk.”
“You color really well,” I said to Martin when we got outside.
“’Ank ’oo Yon.”
With nowhere to go, we just wandered around a bit beneath the covered walkway.
It was a dark night, touched at the edges by a rim of pale moonlight. A cool breeze blew leaves about, their stiff edges scraping against the concrete of the walkway and the asphalt of the parking lot.
“Is Carl’on ’onna be o’a?” (
I nodded. “He’ll be fine, buddy. He’s just helpin’ us with something very––”
“The fuck you doin’?”
I turned to see Ralph Alderman rushing toward us.
He was out of his security uniform and looked odd, out of place in street clothes. He was wearing a navy-blue-and-white Nike jogging suit with only a wife beater and a gold chain beneath. Elephantine exercise clothes on such an enormously soft, fat man looked absurd and comical, as if he were a retired gangster.
“Waiting on Jordan,” I said. “What about you? Out for a jog?”
“Where is she? What are y’all doin’ here this late? Where’s Miss Ida? Who is this?”
“Jordan’s finishing up in the classroom. We’re about to leave. Ida’s at home. This is Martin Fisher, my best friend in Atlanta.”
“Come on,” he said. “I wanna hear it from Miss Jordan or I call the police. I’m sure they’d be happy to dispatch her husband.”
We followed him to the classroom, my hand on Martin’s shoulder.
“Everything’s okay,” I told Martin. “Nothin’ to worry about.”
He shrugged, seemingly not worried about anything.
When Ralph reached the door, he opened it and looked inside––and drew back as if he had seen something shocking.
I rushed around him to look inside, my heart pounding, my mind preparing for something horrible.
But everything was just as we had left it, Jordan and Carlton in the corner talking.
“Just be sure to lock up when you leave,” Ralph said, quickly heading back down the walkway.
“What’s wrong?” Jordan asked. “What was that about?”
She had walked over and was nearly to us.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure. He was all gung-ho to talk to you until he opened the door, and then he couldn’t get out of here quickly enough.”
“’Ome’in’ ’ong wi’ ’Arl’on,” Martin said.
We looked back over to the corner where Carlton was.
He was rocking back and forth, his clenched fists up near his head shaking. “Carlton go home now. Time for Carlton to go home now. Take Carlton home.”
We rushed over to him.
His pants, the chair, and the floor around him were wet where he had urinated on himself.
“It’s okay,” Jordan said. “It’s no problem at all. I’ll get you cleaned up in no time.”
“No clean up. Go home. Carlton go home right now.”
Chapter Thirty-one
“Carlton was seriously terrified of Ralph,” Jordan said.
I nodded.
Martin and I had followed her to take Carlton home, waiting in the car down the way a bit while she had walked him in and gotten him situated. Then we had come to the Dairy Queen on Wesley Chapel for ice cream and were at the tables outside––Jordan and I sitting on top of one, our feet on the bench, licking our soft serve chocolate cones, Martin atop another finishing up his art project, his pencils and crayons spread out around him. Each time he traded one pencil, pen, or crayon for another, he took a bite of his banana split.
“I wonder why?” she said.
“Maybe he saw him kill LaMarcus.”
“Ralph?” she asked, her voice rising in shock.
“Yeah.”
We were talking quietly so Martin couldn’t hear us, aided by his concentration and the traffic on both Wesley Chapel and I-20.
“No,” she said. “There’s no way. It can’t be. It’s got to be something else.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe he reminds him of someone or maybe . . . Do he and Ralph have a history? Has anything happened at Safe Haven or––”
“No. Nothing. I don’t think Carlton’s ever been to Safe Haven before tonight. I just don’t get it. I’ve never seen him like that.”
“So you’re saying he hasn’t been around Ralph since LaMarcus was killed?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t guess so. Not at Safe Haven anyway. But he would’ve had to have been back around the time it happened, at the funeral, visitation, in the neighborhood Carlton's family moved to. I . . . I’m just not sure. But it can’t be Ralph. He’s . . . he’s around children every day.”
“Exactly.”
“But . . . to protect kids. He’s there to . . . He takes his job of protecting the kids, of protecting all of us, so seriously. It can’t be Ralph. He can’t be . . . He wouldn’t . . . He couldn’t. Not Ralph.”
“The more you say it, the more untrue it sounds.”
“That’s because the more I say it, the more I doubt it.”
“Think about how hostile he’s been toward us looking into what happened to LaMarcus, how threatened and defensive he’s been. Maybe it isn’t that he doesn’t like me or has a thing for you. I’ve got to find out why he was fired from the force and we need to take a closer look at him.”
“If he . . . if he killed LaMarcus and has been working for us all these years, pretending to care, pretending to protect . . .”
“I know.”
This time when Martin put down his pencil, he took several bites of the banana and mixed the strawberry and chocolate ice cream together, his open mouth lingering over the plastic boat as he studied his work.
“Did he tell you LaMarcus’s secret?” I asked.
She nodded as she finished the bite of cone she was working on, then said, “He did. Said LaMarcus told him he was going to live with his dad, that his dad was going to make a man out of him.”
I thought about that, wondering when he had been told, why it stuck in his memory, and how it could fit with what had happened to LaMarcus.
Up near the street a white kid carrying an enormous boombox on his shoulder strolled by on the sidewalk in tight, black jeans tucked into black combat boots and a blue blazer customized with pins and buttons and patches. Rising out of shaved black hair, his spikey mohawk was white-blond. His ghetto-blaster was blasting a radio-recorded version of Run D.M.C.’s Walk this Way so distorted it was nearly unrecognizable.
“Could it be Anthony?” she asked.
I nodded.
“So not Ralph after all.”
“It could be Ralph.”
“But wouldn’t his dad be more likely?”
“Could be both.”
“Both?”
“Dad tries to drug him and take him away––to make a man out of him––but he gets the dose wrong and instead of calming him or putting him to sleep temporarily, kills him. He hides him in the bushes where he was just hiding before, then he flees. Ralph comes along, takes the body to the drainage pipe. Carlton sees him do it or sees him leaving after he did it and . . .”
“But why move LaMarcus to the drain pipe?” she asked.
She must not know about her brother being raped and I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. Not now. Not like this.
I shrugged. “It’s just a theory.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Talk to Frank and Bobby.”
She nodded.
We had both finished our cones and as our conversation came to a close, now found ourselves watching Martin as he alternated between his split and his drawing.
We sat there like that a long moment, our thighs touching, the sweet smell of her shampoo wafting over occasionally.
“I . . .” she began.
“Huh?”
“Nothin’. It was silly.”
“Tell me. You can tell me. You can tell me anything. You could never be silly.”
She looked at me with her sweet, kind eyes and her fresh, unadorned face, and smiled a beautiful but shy smile.
“I keep havin’ this fantasy,” she said.
“Oh yeah? Wonder if we’re havin’ the same one?”
“I know I shouldn’t. Know it’s silly and farfetched . . . but it’s so . . . persistent. I guess it’s more a picture in my head or a dream . . . I don’t know.”
“What is it?”
“It’s us. Like this. Together. Married. Having adopted Martin. A family.”
I nodded. “Sounds like a small sliver of heaven.”
“So . . . you don’t think . . . I’m . . . I don’t know . . . you don’t think it’s wrong to even wish for?”
“It’s lovely,” I said. “And very similar to mine.”
“Really?”
“Mine’s the same as yours except in it Martin’s in his room, in his bed sound asleep, and we’re naked in ours in the way only lovers can be.”
Chapter Thirty-two
When we got back to my apartment, they were waiting for us.
Thankfully, Martin had fallen asleep in my backseat on the short drive over, and didn’t wake up when I parked the car.
They came at us as soon as we got out, so I left Martin inside, hoping they wouldn’t see him.
We had parked beside each other, across the lot from the apartments near the basketball court. They had appeared out of the darkness, one on each end of the cars, trapping us between them.
I recognized Vincent Storr so assumed the guy he was with was Raymond Pelton.
“This him?” Ray asked.
In contrast to Vince, Ray was round and short with big, muscular arms, thick, stubby-fingered hands, no neck, and not much hair.
INNOCENT BLOOD: a John Jordan Mystery Book 7 (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 13
