“Have a seat,” the mother said, pointing to the tan leather sofa.
“And your name, ma’am?” Steel said, empathy in his voice, his eyes narrowing as he squatted into the couch cushion.
“Jeanette Jones.”
Steel frowned. “Sorry we have to meet on these terms.”
Jeanette’s bottom lip quivered. Tears trickled down her sharp cheekbones, but she shook her head and stopped the flow of salty moisture, leaving both eyeballs red and watery.
Steel pointed. “Paul is going to do a quick sweep of the apartment…I think I had mentioned that he’s from forensics.”
She snapped her head back at him and her eyes drifted upward and away into the world of imagination. She smirked for a second, cried for another, as if remembering good times with her little girl.
Paul rolled gloves onto his hands, flipped out supplies from a bag, and went to work in the background.
Jeanette plopped down into a desk chair and slid over to the couch.
Steel motioned with his hands to switch seats, for her to take the sofa, but she waved him off.
She stared at the ceiling again and Steel figured probably talking to God in her mind. “I can’t believe my baby’s gone. My only child. Dear Lord,” she said, her voice loud, fearful and shaky as if she’d just escaped from a lion’s cage at the zoo. Her hands trembled.
Steel waited her out, let her finish talking. He adjusted his rear end in the cushion. “Ms. Jones, we’re going to ask you a few questions. You ready now, need a glass of water or something…before we begin?”
“No, no…go ahead.” She stopped crying as if on cue and flashed that same mean snarl she had displayed when she first stepped outside moments earlier. Steel had observed over the years that many family members of victims of violent crimes tended to rapidly alternate between sadness and anger in the early stages of an investigation.
He flipped his palms up and out. “So, let’s hear a little about your daughter, please.”
Marisa snatched a yellow legal pad and BIC pen from her bag.
Steel waited until she flipped to a fresh page and fastened the ball of the pen in between each thin blue line that ran sideways across the sheet.
“So, what did your daughter do for a living?”
“Attorney.” She pointed. “Worked just a few blocks over.”
“What type of law?”
“Social Security, disabilities, those types of things. She worked with clients for SSI, I believe.”
“Okay, okay,” Steel said, shifting his eyes across a framed painting of Philadelphia’s Love Park along the tan walls just over Jeanette’s head, noticed LOVE written in large bubble letters in its center.
“Was she married? Boyfriend? And who was the bastard you were talking about earlier?”
Jeanette curled her lips, shook her head numerous times and frowned as if someone were forcing her to eat a spider. “That bastard is her loser boyfriend, Kevin Johnson.”
“Okay, so boyfriend. You think he may have been involved?”
“Think, no, I know. Never liked that man since the day I met him. Cocky kid then and loser now. No respect for anyone, only cared about himself.”
“I’m assuming they’ve been together for a while?”
She raised her eyes in thought, flung an eyelash away from her eyeball with a finger and thumb. “About ten years. Yeah, ten years I guess. They met when Desiree first graduated from college, before the law classes. He was a bum then and a bum now. She could’ve done so much better. Wish my husband were still alive, I’da had him kick his ass long time ago.”
“Your husband’s deceased?”
She nodded. “About twelve years. Cancer.” She held out a finger, the skin of her nose wrinkling. “Let me tell you something about that boy, my daughter’s boyfriend. He was very manipulative and preyed on my daughter’s kindness. He didn’t work, maybe had a job here and there, but always convinced her for money, thought the world owed him something. I know they were fighting a lot lately, too.” She grinned as if proud. “I think Desiree was starting to see what he was about. And now she’s dead.” The proud nod turned to a face Steel could only describe as fury—tight eyelids, beady eyes, no blinking, clenched jaw. She locked her eyes with Steel’s, the stare more intimidating than Tony Soprano about to pound on an associate for screwing him on a deal. “You put two and two together. My daughter went to work, didn’t bother anyone, not an enemy in the world. And she gets murdered.”
“So there’s no one else you think could’ve done this?”
She yelled and her voice screeched and was hoarse, mixed of desperation and hopelessness: “He did, I’m telling you!”
Steel gazed off to the side, bit his lip, formulating more questions, but more to give her a moment to cool down. “Do you live here?”
“Actually, I just moved in with my daughter last month. I work over at Jefferson, a few blocks over, X-Ray tech. I’m in the process of moving to another apartment, so I was staying with my daughter for a while. It was just us, and her boyfriend popped in here and there. I had sold my home after my husband passed and rented since then. I was looking for a new apartment, and Desiree told me to stay here until I found one. She was my only child, my baby.”
Her eyes welled up, the white of each eyeball streaked with sharp red lines. Her sobbing turned Steel’s heart into slow, thick, painful liquid, as if her pain was flowing into his chest, boiled as it hit his gut. All he wanted to do was get this woman justice for her daughter. He inhaled, blew the air out through his nostrils. “Were you home last night, Ms. Jones?”
“No, I work the afternoon shift, four to twelve,” she said, gripping her scrubs, glaring at him. “Didn’t even change from last night. Got a call from the police and ran here to find my baby gone.” She broke out into uncontrollable sobs that resembled the whine of a hunger alley cat crying out for food and warmth on a cold winter’s night. “Why? Lord. Why?”
Marisa rose, tossed her notes on the sofa. She squatted beside Jeanette, slid a hand back and forth across her shoulders, genuinely.
Steel knew that’s why he loved her—she was real, a straight shooter who didn’t let anything get in the way of being a human being first.
Marisa frowned, still circling a palm across Jeanette’s back, glancing at Steel.
He studied Jeanette, eyed her dark hair that stopped just below her ears. He could tell the tears along her ebony skin was uncommon to her. He’d seen her type, a strong independent woman, a fervent optimist, could cheer up anyone with a few kind words—he’d seen a flash of it when Jeanette was thinking of Desiree. But he knew all that could turn in an instant, as this woman was experiencing something foreign to her, and understandably so. The side she avoided—her angry side, her sad side—was revealing itself from an uncontrollable event. Poor woman had lost her only daughter.
A sharp hole opened up in Steel’s stomach, a cold, dull void in his abdomen, just looking at the woman squirming in her seat and crying out for answers to the Universe’s decision to take her daughter.
He hated to see people in pain, grieving, and yet, ironically, that was what he did for a living. If his clinical depression taught him anything, it was empathy, to sense suffering and understand it, to assist others during their tough times. His mood was on the decline on this day, the world around him darkening, but he knew Jeanette’s world was a black hole and the light nowhere in sight. Could be worse, he thought. This poor woman.
Steel leaned forward and checked his watch. “Why are you here alone, Jeanette?”
She massaged her temples, her cheeks red and shiny from crying. She spoke but lowly, Steel barely heard her. “My sister’s coming over in a little. My sister and a cousin, I think.”
Steel said, “We’ll wait here with you.”
Jeanette dropped her head into the heels of her hands, rolled her forehead against the bone, and cried some more. The room was tense, the sobs being absorbed by the walls, the only noises derived from pain.
<
br /> Steel took a deep breath and ran a hand along his neck, twisted his lips. He glanced at Marisa, who was still consoling Jeanette Jones, running a hand along her shoulder blades, and he couldn’t ever imagine harming Marisa. But he knew through almost eleven years of police work that others didn’t always think and act mainstream. Some people’s thoughts and actions go beyond rational human comprehension. He’d have his hands full with this case. He nodded at Marisa and shifted his body so that he appeared in control, shoulders straight and eyes and mouth stoic, but his insides twisted and churned. Someone will pay, he thought, and soon.
7
S
teel had called the station after leaving Desiree Jones’s apartment, and an old friend of his, Mary McNeil, the clerk at the department in charge of the administrative side of things since she’d been shot in the field, had searched Kevin Johnson in the system. She had given Steel his address, phone number, prior work history, current work records, practically his life story, and all in her tough, no-nonsense, but friendly voice.
Steel drove through the streets and replayed through his mind what Mary had told him. The man lived in West Philly with his mother. Thirty-five years old. Unemployed truck driver.
He hooked a right and departed from University City—the name recently given to that section of the city due in large part because it enclosed the locations of the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University and the University of the Sciences. Many college students, along with young professionals and their families, lived in or around the area and co-existed with the locals.
Steel continued driving and thought how he loved West Philly, its history a dream for a buff like him. He often thought of a line from his favorite sitcom, Seinfeld, when referring to the term “history buff.” In the exact scene from the show, if Steel remembered correctly, Jerry and George ran into one-time Mets’ first baseman Keith Hernandez and debated whether or not to approach him and tell him they were fans. As they contemplated it, they said:
Jerry: Yeah, he’s [Keith Hernandez] a real smart guy, too. He’s a Civil War buff.
George: I’d love to be a Civil War buff. What do you have to do to be a buff?
Steel had chuckled numerous times over that and even louder at the moment. Thinking more about it, he pretty much laughed at almost every scene from the show.
He surveyed the homes and their Victorian architecture; they once were some of the most expensive real estate in the whole country, but some sections of West Philly had been on the declined for years due to increasing crime.
Times were changing, though, and construction was underway in and around University City. Steel noticed cranes, caution tape, dirt hills and wooden framed structures for condos being built. Some sections of West Philly were up-and-coming. Yuppies were moving in and attracting real estate investors’ and owners’ attention, attempting gentrification, and Steel observed over the last couple of years that police activity was also rising in the area, protecting the students and new citizens who had money. Steel remembered a time when few officers circled those blocks, when it was just the poor policing themselves. And he knew he was a realist, couldn’t ignore the facts, he’d seen it as a patrol officer when he worked a short stint near Drexel. You have money, people go out of their way to help you, but if you’re poor, they brush you off like you don’t exist, he’d tell people. Sad fact, he couldn’t dismiss it.
And there was so much history and interesting sites for him to see in that section of the city, and he’d explore it for hours at times. From The Woodlands Cemetery near the west bank of the Schuylkill River, which was originally the estate of Andrew Hamilton, who had purchased the property in 1735 and which also held the graves of many famous people who’d lived in Philadelphia, to the grounds of Satterlee Hospital which was one of the largest Union Army hospitals of the Civil War and was now the northern section of Clark Park, to the Please Touch children’s museum, Philadelphia Zoo, Fairmount Park, Mann Music Center, the historical 30th St. Train Station and much more. Steel had read that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries middle-class workers commuted east over the Schuylkill River to Philadelphia’s Central Business District by horse-cars and then later streetcars, and that West Philly was an early streetcar suburb. Steel remembered that a portion of that section of the city was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, known as the West Philadelphia Streetcar Suburb Historic District.
Marisa’s sharp, quick words broke Steel out of his gaze. “Haven’t been in West Philly since the department transferred me to the Center City district.”
Steel cut the steering wheel left. “Yeah, I worked here for a little while on patrol.”
“I like the houses. The Old World feel. Who’s from around here? Will Smith?”
“Yep,” Steel said and split his first two fingers and spun the heater dial. “And, if I’m not mistaken, Boyz II Men.”
“Yeah, that’s right. I heard that before.” She looked him in the eyes and winked. “You wanna sing me one of their songs tonight?”
She laughed until it fizzled out into a giggle. Even with all she’d been through over the past six months, she never lost her sense of humor or silly ways.
His stomach flipped from her soft eyes looking into his own, her stare as new as the day he had met her. “How about I just act out the lyrics on you, ya’ know, like the writers say, ‘show, don’t tell,’” he said and smirked and tipped his head. His face reddened. His shyness never fully went away, no matter how comfortable he was with another person.
She smirked back, ran a hand through her hair. “That’ll work.”
He laughed and was about to tell her he couldn’t wait until later but didn’t.
Steel grabbed at the wheel and squeezed hard, his adrenaline still pumping from her amorous gaze, and Marisa stared out at two-story red Victorian homes with blue and white bay windows and huge classically columned front porches, soft, warm air humming and pushing through the car vents. Each home had a front lawn. A large tree with a dark trunk the width of a basketball hoop stretched at least five additional stories over the front of every other home. These houses were like castles compared to the homes in South Philly where Marisa had grown up, much bigger, and also larger than many other sections of Philly for that matter. Steel could almost envision its early inhabitants sitting on their front porches after a hard day’s work of farming as the sun’s heat had reddened their backs, scribbling on a scroll with a felt tip pen at night, watching the sunset, sipping whiskey, sniffing the air that mixed of grass and trees and pollen as horses slept in the barn out back. He didn’t even know if those houses were built during the farming days, but the picture he’d painted in his mind felt right to him, he’d have to research it though.
On warm summer nights, Steel enjoyed driving or walking through Powelton Village, Spruce Hill, and Cedar Park, each section had been declared a National Historic District. It made him feel as though he’d gone back in time as he viewed similar scenes of wide, tree-lined streets and homes with huge porches that were built in the 19th century but still looked the same.
But as he cruised at 20 mph, casually stepping on the brake and gas, hooking a few right and left turns, and pulled up a block away from Kevin Johnson’s house, he knew he’d hit a rough spot. Some sections of West Philly ranked high in the country for drug-infested neighborhoods. Steel stared down a group of teenagers standing on the steps of a corner store that had gone out of business. The windows of the shop were boarded up with red and black spray-painted bubble graffiti letters. The storefront sign’s paint looked like a faded picture of a bread loaf, but Steel couldn’t tell for sure. The seven or eight young guys stood, no older than twenty, huddled together, blowing warm air into their cold hands, hoods over their heads. They looked up to no good, flashing sideways glances at his car, but that wasn’t Steel’s district, not his concern. He didn’t like to profile, didn’t like to assume.
Marisa read the address aloud, and Steel searched the road signs.
He cut up a narrow street, his car barely squeezing between parked cars to his right and the beige curb to his left, his tires rubbing the edge of the cement and shaking the wheels. He veered into a wide space that didn’t require parallel parking, in between two small sedans, and cut the ignition.
He and Marisa stepped out, shut the car doors, and eyed the red brick row home.
After reaching the house, Steel focused on a metal plate next to the front door that displayed the address digits.
He pointed. “Here it is.”
Marisa pulled out her badge.
Steel climbed the three steps and tapped four knuckles against the door, followed by a hard jab at the rubber bell. A minute passed. No answer.
He ran down the steps and leaped from the last one. His feet stung under the soles of his dress shoes from the cold ground.
“Whatda’ya think?” he said.
“Give it one more shot before we leave.”
Steel spun and climbed the stairs for a second time, but before he reached the top step, the door sprung open.
A man inched out, about thirty-five, African-American, 6’2, maybe 6’3, most likely Kevin Johnson, by the picture Mary had painted of him with her description. The man wore a white T-shirt, a pair of gray sweat pants and white socks. He nodded, his eyes wide and curious, and studied the two of them for a few seconds. “Can I help you?”
“Hello, sir, we’re looking for Kevin Johnson.”
The man cupped his left hand around his waist and patted his chest with the other. “That’s me. What’s up? Who’re you?”
“I’m Detective Benjamin Steel, and this is my partner, Detective Marisa Tulli.”
The man slid a hand over his cropped buzz cut so short it looked like a dark shadow over his scalp. “And this is in reference to?”
“Desiree Jones, sir.”
He scrunched his face, confused. His wide eyes dashed across the neighbors’ homes across the street. His chest bounced and he swallowed a whole breath. “My…my Desiree, what’s going on?”
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