Steel ran a crumpled grease-stained napkin over his lips and tossed it on the desktop. He slapped his stomach. “You? I ate five pieces.”
She smiled and stood in one swift motion, kept gliding her hand across her stomach. She tossed each of their plates into a tiny black trashcan under the desktop and flipped the cardboard box shut. “I’ll go put the extra few pieces in the kitchen, somebody’ll eat it.”
“Yeah, I’ll pull up Desiree’s file.”
“Be right back,” she said.
Steel slid his chair back a couple of feet to his desk by slowly moving one foot in front of the other. He opened a manila folder with computer printouts inside that he’d put together with everything he had to go so far. That was his personal copy—he took it home at night—did it with every major case.
Within seconds, Marisa’s footsteps rattled Steel’s cubicle as she made her way back. She tugged at her blouse, smoothed out her pants with a hand, and plopped back down in her seat. Steel reached over and flicked on a table lamp by his computer monitor and the bulb shot a blanket of white light over the manila folder.
“All right,” he said slowly, and his words skipped a beat as though they had gotten trapped somewhere in between the five slices of pizza he’d just eaten, “nothing much from forensics…autopsy confirmed what we suspected already, a homicide, definitely sudden because there weren’t any signs of a struggle.” He licked his thumb, leafed through the contents of the folder, and turned toward her and folded his arms across his chest. “What’s your take on the boyfriend, Kevin Johnson?”
Marisa bit her lip. “Wish we had evidence, something to go on. But he looked genuinely shocked, even a bit horrified. And you know how this goes. It wasn’t a crime of passion…it was a single gunshot. If he’d been that angry he would’ve caused more damage to her out of hatred. Probably woulda beat or shot her multiple times, right?”
Steel nodded. “I agree, but what if he’s calculated, trying to throw us off, knows about the crime of passion and all that shit, watches too much Law & Order.”
“Then we’ll get him.”
“And this schizophrenic man?” Steel said.
“Maybe…I took some psychology classes in college, at Temple. If he has the one type, I believe paranoid schizophrenia, he’s liable to do anything, couldn’t tell reality from fantasy. He might’ve felt she was out to get him. That’s a classic symptom—persecution from others.”
“Absolutely…something we gotta look into, for sure.”
“Marisa,” a voice called out. Steel knew it was Lieutenant Williams from the low baritone echoes.
The Lieutenant said, “Can you come in my office for a moment, please?”
“You got it, sir.”
Steel yawned, and she shot him a closed-lip smile and rose from her seat.
He watched her walk away before a sudden panic broke a warm sweat on the back of his neck, the heat trickling down his shoulder blades. His ears warmed. A lump bulged from under his Adam’s apple. He coughed. The hyperventilating began, his heart punching his ribcage, his breathing squeezing his throat. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, but the knot behind his tongue grew and cut off his airway. A blurry image from six months prior, the blood staining the ground, the shocked and scared faces, the rage and adrenaline that had coursed through his body, the trembling from fear he had felt that day was consuming him, forcing him to relive it. The scene on that highway replayed in slow motion, the yelling, the horns honking, the high speeds, all meshing together and colors fading in and out and sharp flashes of whole images dancing in between the recollections. Steel could feel his extremities on fire, his thighs tightening, twitching as if the scene were currently happening. He gasped for air.
He shook his head violently and opened his eyes, reached for the water bottle on his desk and gulped down two shot of the cold liquid that soothed his tingly throat. He ran the back of his wrist over his forehead and wiped the sweat, downed the rest of the water. The flashback ended, but his body still trembled and shook from the memoires, his stomach acidic and jittery. And he instantly thought of his shrink’s words: A panic attack can’t hurt you even though you feel like you’re going to die…it will pass, don’t fight it, just breath and let it pass. Steel hoped these were just panic attacks he’d been experiencing since that day and not a touch of Post-Traumatic Stress disorder. His psychiatrist told him that he doubted it was PTS, but Steel was a little skeptical, maybe his OCD was trying to convince him that he had it.
And with Marisa back with him on this case, he hoped those memories would be all he’d have to battle. God, he thought, I don’t need any new ones.
17
S
teel reached for the black office phone directly next to his computer monitor. He glanced down at the manila folder in front of him, found Desiree’s mother’s cell number on the top sheet, and jabbed a finger into each digit.
The phone rang twice.
“Hello,” Jeanette answered, her voice tired and low and slightly forced.
“Jeanette Jones. Detective Steel.”
“Hi,” she said and her voice trailed away from the receiver on Steel’s end.
“How you holding up?”
“My pastor told me that God never puts more on our plates than we can handle.” She whimpered. “What else can I say?”
Neither spoke for a full minute. The cold phone against Steel’s ear didn’t feel good, was eerie, like a ghostly message from Desiree to comfort her mother.
“I’m just following up with you. Has anyone called your daughter’s apartment, stopped by, anything out of the ordinary?” he said.
“No,” she said and her voice kicked up a notch as if someone were turning a volume knob, “do you have any leads, anything, Detective? Huh? Huh! You have to check everywhere, and did you even start with that boyfriend? What are you guys doing over there, huh? Tell me! What? What? Whatttt?”
“We’re working on that now, Jeanette. I assure you,” Steel said calmly.
“My baby’s not gonna die in vain.” She sobbed. “Please don’t let my baby die and leave me wondering. God,” she called out, “a person can only take so muc—”
“I promise you we’ll find the person responsible for this…I promise.”
A swift, sharp pain radiated from Steel’s belly button and shot up his ribcage, hit the bone. He grabbed at his side. His shoulders stiffened. He knew he shouldn’t be making promises he couldn’t keep, but his intuition told him that most people just need hope, that hope keeps people going, that hope that things will improve gives the soul that extra shred of will to move forward in life, that it reminds us that things will work out in the future, and without it, we’re dead, no reason to live, nothing to strive for, we give up.
“Detective, hello, Detective? You there?”
“I’m here…yeah. Can you hear me?”
“Did you talk to my daughter’s work yet?”
“Yes, I talked to her boss, John Fratt.”
“Right, what he say?” she said.
“We’re working on it.”
“And how about her co-worker, Jimmy?”
Steel dug a finger under his hair and scratched his skull, recalled the man who’d interrupted their meeting with Fratt. “Ah, yeah, I briefly met him but didn’t get a chance to speak with him.”
“He was close with my daughter—she always talked about him and said he was her best friend in the office.” Jeanette cried out, breathed shallow gasps. “Wish my daughter would have dated him, anyone, instead of that…”
“I’ll check in with him, see if he can help.”
Steel scribbled the name Jimmy on a square yellow Post-It note in blue ink. “His last name?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Not a problem…I’ll call over there now. Oh, and Jeanette, I’ll check back in with you in a few days, hang in there, okay. Stay strong for Desiree. I’ll solve this for you. Stay strong.”
“Yeah,” she said and sniffled back tears
. “Thank you, Detective. Please…just please.”
“I promise you.”
Steel heard her sigh, and he did the same, knowing he’d just made a promise to a grieving mother he knew his odds were fifty-fifty of keeping.
18
S
teel squeezed the phone in his left hand and held his right index finger against the end button until he finished the call with Jeanette. He read another number off the computer and lifted the finger, listening to a dial tone before tapping seven more digits. He yawned, cleared his throat.
Marisa crept up from behind him and slid a hand across his shoulders, her hard fingernails dragging. He pulled away until realizing it was her, puckered his lips and snapped a short kiss her way, but discreetly, didn’t want others in the office to see. Afterwards, he tucked his head into his shoulder, the phone in between, listened to its loud ring pierce his eardrum without an answer.
A few officers on the force had complained about the oddity of a couple working together as detectives, was even prohibited if they were married. They’d only been together for six months and not many knew about it, but he knew their work-partnership would end soon.
Marisa lounged in her seat, yawning, stretching, her arms reaching for the ceiling. Her blouse flipped up a bit and her smooth flesh lay just between the tip of her pants and belly button. Steel glanced at her, saw the skin, and almost got swept up in lust right there in the office, felt like a freshman in high school, thought for a second of taking a half day, the two of them, break from this case, get that sexual healing he’d gotten just a few nights prior, go home, celebrate their engagement, mess up the sheets, roll around and on top of one another until their voices went hoarse and until their limbs lay entangled in each other’s, their eyes and bodies exhausted and enriched simultaneously. But he turned and tucked his head back down, cursed under his breath. He wanted her right then. But he was on the job. Can’t escape, can’t run from life and responsibilities, he told himself.
Marisa dropped her arms and slapped both hands against her thighs, crossed her legs and dangled a foot, and laid her hands across her stomach, watching Steel’s phone call, her eyes watery and pinkish from the yawn.
“Yell-lo,” a man answered.
“Hello…may I please speak with John Fratt,” Steel said and straightened his head and body, fiddled with a stapler with the hand not holding the phone.
“Speaking.”
“John…Detective Steel.”
“Detective, how are you?”
“Could be better. Listen, real fast. I need you to have one of your associates contact me at his earliest convenience.”
John Fratt coughed twice, cleared his throat. “Um. Um.” He coughed again. “Excuse me, think I’m catching something, damn weather. Anyway, who?”
“Jimmy…the man who came in when my partner and I were in your office.”
“You got it. He’s back out in the field now, but I will surely give him the message.”
“You have my number, correct?”
“Indeed. Have your card right here on my desk.”
“Thanks, sir,” Steel said.
“Call me John. I’m a regular guy,” Fratt said and laughed, his laugh arrogant and condescending, the chuckle of a man who thought the world was a computer program and he controlled the mouse.
Steel’s stomach tensed and he bit his bottom lip. He wanted to call this guy Mr. Douchebag but would settle for John. He had called him sir out of habit. “John, we’ll be in touch,” Steel said through gritted teeth, anger in his words.
“Sure thing. Keep me updated, Detective Steel. You golf?”
“No.”
“If you ever want to go out, give me a call. We’ll go to my club.”
Steel hung up and thought, Yeah, I’ll give you a call…I’d like to smack you in the teeth with a club.
Steel spun his seat toward Marisa and frowned. “Don’t like that guy.”
“Why? What’d he say?”
“Just sounds like a pretentious asshole. Like a typical frat boy turned lawyer. Never had a hard day in his spoiled, trust fund life. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him.”
“So, what’s that mean to us? How do I interpret that?”
“Means he’s number two on my list behind the boyfriend.”
“Oh, yeah,” Marisa said, squinting and nodding.
As Steel swirled in his seat he mentioned to Marisa that he didn’t care who you were, or what job title you held, or how high up the economic ladder a person climbed, that a pretentious person was always an asshole, that it didn’t matter how much a person had in this world, poor or rich, the good guys were always the good guys and the bad guys were always the bad guys, regardless of their financial worth or job title, regardless if they had pennies or millions. And he felt Fratt lived the stereotype and was the king of pretentious assholes.
19
T
he wind skittered by her window, and its intensity gnawed at the glass and rattled the frame and shook the curtains. Darkness had fallen on Philadelphia the previous night when the sun went down, and the lingering blackened atmosphere on this early morning was quiet, still, lifeless and reminded Jeanette Jones of the darkness that had taken over her when she found out that someone had ripped her baby-girl from her life. Her body shook from terror, grief and fear the entire night. She ran out of tissues and Advil.
Jeanette sat on her daughter’s sofa, on the same cushions that her daughter had once rested, burying her face into balled up fists. Tears soaked her knuckles and slid down her wrists until they disappeared into her shirt sleeves and dampened the material.
“Why, my Lord?” she cried out and jerked her head. “Why my baby, so young? Where’s the meaning? This didn’t happen for a reason. What purpose did you have to take my baby?”
She squeezed her eyes so tight that her eyeballs could have exploded from pressure and then yelled and cried in a sharp outburst. “I don’t understand…Why? Why? Whhhhy?”
Jeanette flicked open the fist and slapped her palms together in prayer-hands. “Doesn’t make sense. Take me, bring her back. Pleassseee, pleassseee, pleeeeeeaseee,” she cried but more like a plea from a child to a parent, her voice echoing and shaking and continuous, “pleeeeeassseee, Lord, pleaseeee…” She sobbed, wanted to die.
Pools of salty tears flooded the red divots and creases in the sore skin around her eyes. She moaned and caught her breath, snorted back snot dripping from her nostrils, her lips quivering and twitching.
Her sister had called her ten minutes prior, told her she’d be over in forty-five minutes to sit with her. Jeanette knew that would be a long and lonely wait.
She wiped each eye with a wrist and wheezed for a good minute until the tears slowed and eventually stopped, her face worn and drained and devoid of hope. She snatched a picture album next to her on the sofa and laid it across her lap. With a quick tug, she flipped open the 8x10 brown leather book and scooped a page between her finger and thumb. The cold plastic that held each picture a harsh reality, a reminder of how cold the world could be, that she’d never feel the warmth of her daughter’s skin, only cold plastic that held the images of her. Tears slid down her cheekbones and sank into her mouth. She licked them away and smirked a bit at a picture of her daughter. Desiree couldn’t have been older than ten in the photo. There she was in the home she’d grown up in, sitting on their green sofa that was dug into brown carpeting, smiling a mouthful of teeth as white as fresh snow, light glinting off her eyes. She was wearing a blue dress and white stockings she’d worn to church that morning, her hair in a braided ponytail and off to the side, dangling by a shoulder and tied with a blue scrunchie that matched her dress. Her father sat to her right, his arm around her, smiling just as wide, wearing a black suit, white shirt, black tie, his precious daughter’s tiny, delicate head tucked into his chest. Chills erupted throughout Jeanette’s body and she could almost hear her daughter and husband’s laughter on that day by just looking at the photo.
She tried to imagine the scene but only pieced together scattered images. Genuine love burst through the photo and could’ve been adapted into a painting with a caption DADDY’S GIRL. And that she had been.
Jeanette remembered snapping that photo on her old Sony Instant Polaroid camera, the picture popping out and developing in minutes. She knew Desiree was her father’s daughter, had the same smile and laugh, go-getter personality, and sharp, quick mind. Will Jones was a painter as a profession, had a small business, and had built up a clientele before his passing at the age of just forty-five. Everybody in their neighborhood and church loved him. And Jeanette thought back of when she and her husband were married, how they’d tried for two years to conceive without success, stuck together through two miscarriages, until their precious little girl was born. Jeanette’s stomach plummeted at that thought as if someone were kicking her near the belly button.
Desiree was devastated when her father lost his battle to colon cancer when she was in her early twenties. She was never the same after that, maybe on the exterior, but not in her own company. She missed him, always talked about how she wanted to see him once more, to hear his voice, to hug him and feel the warmth of his skin, to see him smile and melt when he’d see his little girl’s eyes. Jeanette missed him, too, and had shared many nights with Desiree crying and reminiscing. But now she was alone, mourning her daughter and husband. Maybe the two were together in heaven, smiling down on her.
She slid a finger over the photo and gently traced an outline of her husband and then Desiree, a painful smirk on her face, but her throat swelled by the second as if she’d swallowed an M&M whole. Her eyelids burned and itched from hours of salty raindrops that had poured from them throughout the night.
The doorbell rang, and she flinched, raised her buttocks off the seat. “Hmm…she must be early,” she mumbled to herself. She glided a hand under each flap of the cold leather book and clapped it shut, pressed both heels of her hands into the sofa cushions, and slowly rose and walked to the door. “Sandra, that you?”
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