Old Bones

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  The address was a small bungalow on a side street lined with magnolias, their dark, waxy leaves shining and reflecting the distant noon sun. The mostly brick Craftsman homes along the short street had been converted to boutique businesses: accountants, attorneys, a chiropractor, a couple of high-end clothing shops, and The Wellness Center, the name of Dr. Ian Marshall’s practice. She followed arrows pointing to parking in back and took a path of awkwardly paced paving stones to the arched front door.

  As she entered, a bell chimed and a scowling, lank-haired young woman came from a doorway in back of the chest-high receptionist counter. “I have an appointment—” Before Salt finished introducing herself, the girl handed her a clipboard with multiple forms. “You need to complete these.” She pointed to the waiting area.

  Salt chose a corner in the otherwise empty room. A gurgling fountain powered by an electric motor plugged in below the table beside the chair kept drawing her attention, distracting her. She wondered if that was the intended effect.

  “Sarah Alt?” At her elbow a barrel-chested man of about fifty and close to Salt’s height stood with his hand extended.

  Salt wiped her sweaty palm on her slacks, got up, and shook his offered hand.

  “I’m Ian Marshall. Come on back.” He led her down a short hall to a room that had most likely once been the dining room off a small kitchen farther down the hall. An overstuffed sofa sat along one wall. Dr. Marshall’s desk faced the opposite wall of shelves so that his chair swiveled to a conversation area of two matching easy chairs and a coffee table, on which lay a box of tissues, a carafe of water and glasses, and a crystal bowl of hard candies.

  “Water? Coffee, tea?” He nodded to a counter on the shelves where there was a coffeemaker.

  “I’m good,” Salt said, standing beside one of the chairs and taking off her jacket in the overly warm room.

  “Sorry,” Marshall said, coming to his desk. “They must have forgotten to tell you. You can’t have your gun here.” He nodded at the weapon in the leather shoulder holster under her left arm.

  “They didn’t tell me.” She halted halfway to sitting, feeling this was a bad start.

  “Can you take it to your car?” he asked.

  “Not really. I’m not that kind of cop.” She sank into the chair.

  “No?”

  “Careless, I mean. It could get stolen if my car was broken into.”

  Marshall sat down facing her. “Could you leave it with our receptionist?”

  “You’re kidding, right? Is this part of the evaluation? She looks, um, depressed.”

  “My daughter. But I see your point. I guess for this first session we can let it go, but next time I’d appreciate it if you’d leave the gun somewhere?” He raised his hands and eyebrows, gentling the request.

  Salt rubbed her palms on her thighs again. “Next time? How many times will I have to come here?”

  Marshall’s eyes took on a gleam. The corners of his mouth turned up as if trying to suppress a smile. He leaned back in his chair, thumbing through the forms she’d filled out. His mustache seemed to be fading from some color of red to an orange-and-white bristle. A tweed jacket hung on the back of his chair, but he was tieless. He ran his hand through iron-gray hair as he flipped through the forms. “You understand I’m to make a determination of your psychological fitness?”

  She nodded.

  “The procedure states that when an officer is involved in more than one lethal use-of-force incident within five years, they are required to undergo a fitness-for-duty evaluation.

  “You should also know that otherwise what you tell me is confidential. I only report fit or not fit.”

  “Okay,” she responded. “Have you evaluated many cops? Do you treat cops?”

  “Yes and no. But we should get started talking about you.” He put the clipboard down and sat upright. “You’re here because of regulations that require evaluations for officers who have experienced specific events or conditions that might stress them to the point that they may have difficulties doing their jobs. Do you think that applies to you in any way?”

  “Doc, those incidents, the two shootings were a year ago and two years ago.”

  “Okay, so let’s talk about now.” He brought the clipboard back to his lap. “I see you’ve checked ‘yes’ to sometimes having vivid dreams.”

  “I was being honest. Doesn’t everyone have vivid dreams? People wouldn’t remember them if they weren’t, would they?” she asked, on guard now. She definitely wasn’t going to get into the dreams she’d had after the shootings. She wondered if he knew about her father.

  Dr. Marshall waited.

  She tried to breathe quietly.

  Nothing about the fifty minutes made Salt less stressed. She wasn’t able to figure out if Dr. Marshall was judging her one way or the other.

  • • •

  News trucks lined Ponce de Leon Avenue in front of the massive nine-floor former Sears, Roebuck building—brick, art deco brass, and rust-meets-seventies’ cheap renovations and peeling paint, spread over an entire city block. It had been temporary office space for some city government departments, police headquarters, and detective units, including the Homicide squad. Now mostly vacant, it had once been the largest retail distribution center in the Southeast, its two million square feet a grand time capsule from the early 1900s. The vast uninhabited areas were littered with old black-and-white wall clocks and flimsy furniture, side by side with solid-wood sorting cabinets. Tempting wood-handled circuit breakers, disconnected control panels, vacuum tube conveyers, tangles of wire, mangled metal and exposed ductwork, all sorts of fantastic accoutrements contributed to Salt’s romance with the building and the ghosts of its former workers. She imagined their shoes, the cigarette smoke, clingy dresses, and pleated pants.

  Once again, the “new” elevators installed in the ’80s weren’t in service. She took the stairwell that echoed with the curses and disgruntled voices of other employees.

  In the Homicide Unit’s waiting area it was standing room only, filled with people wanting—needing—a word with some official who had information about the assault on the Spelman students. Rosie and the day-watch receptionist were tag-teaming, barely controlling the chaos.

  “Miss, can I talk to you?” One man beckoned as she passed through to the inner door.

  “Sorry,” Salt said through the closing door.

  Inside, the office teemed: detectives from all three watches, supervisors and commanders, people wanting, demanding, ordering, and directing action. Salt shouldered through. “I’m here,” she said, standing at the open door to Huff’s office.

  Huff, on the phone, held up a finger for her to wait. He covered the mouthpiece. “I need you to go to Grady. Hamm is already there. She’ll fill you in.”

  “Sarge, I caught a body yesterday. I need to get on that.”

  “Fuck it. Those bones are so cold nobody’s gonna give a shit. Now we got neo-Nazi nut jobs coming out of the woodwork, one dead Spelman girl rapidly becoming the social media’s newest Joan of Arc, and eleven of her sister saints in three city hospitals. I need you to go hold their families’ hands.” Huff waved her off and returned to his call.

  Wills tugged at her elbow, beckoning her to follow him to the break room, where there was only slightly less chaos. “How did it go with the shrink?”

  She shrugged. The break room counters had begun to fill with food containers, empty take-out boxes, and disposable cups. Paper plates, Styrofoam, all manner of litter covered the surfaces. “So much for the city’s recycling program.” She scanned the waste.

  “Salt.” Wills squared his body with hers.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to worry about it.”

  “But you are, aren’t you?” There was no touching in the office, as their relationship had to be kept strictly professional while they were on duty
. And they had to be careful who knew. Romantic relationships were officially discouraged between employees on the same shift. They could both be transferred out of Homicide if word got out.

  “I’m on my way to the hospital. I gotta go.”

  “This is not good. You just caught a case yesterday.”

  “Wills.” She stood with him eye to eye. “All of us, you included, have our shoulders to the wheel.”

  “Just so you share the load. Okay? None of that Lone Ranger stuff.”

  She chuckled. “Nobody knows who the Lone Ranger is anymore, Wills.” She turned to the door. “See you when we get there, Kemosabe.”

  Days like this leading to longer nights kept them apart. They had murders to investigate. Wills was renovating his house. Salt had sheep to herd. And they both had their dogs, the commonality that had brought them together initially; over dead bodies they’d met, talking about their dogs, the dogs that now required their separate attentions. Wills was right; maintaining separate homes was wasting their energies.

  • • •

  Salt pulled into the cop lot beside the massive city hospital called the Gradys by some older Atlantans, a reference to the era of segregation when black and white patients were cared for in separate buildings. Although familiar to Salt from bedside interviews with victims and witnesses, as well as having personally benefited from its emergency care, she still got lost in the labyrinthine halls. Directional signs illustrated with Christian crosses, somewhat disquietingly ubiquitous, guided her to the chapel. She wondered where the Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Buddhists went to be comforted.

  Church-like double doors paid homage to the room’s intended religious use and opening them was like unsealing a vacuum, the sounds in the rest of the hospital sharp and harsh while in the chapel everything was muffled. Dim light from wall sconces focused soft glows up the beige walls of the small sanctuary. Wiping their eyes, family members of the injured students quietly slid along the polished oak pews as they came and went. And Charissa Hamm, day-watch detective and the only other woman in Homicide, attended them; going from group to group or person to person, she settled her considerable bulk in the row in front of each and turned around to speak quietly to them. Hamm raised her eyes briefly, touched the hands of a man and woman with bowed heads who were tightly grasping the pew in front of them, then stood and walked to Salt at the doors of the chapel. “This is not good. I’m glad you’re here. Maybe some of them will be reassured by a white face.”

  “Why do you say that? You’re the veteran. Looks to me like you know what you’re doing.”

  “Yeah, but for some of these old-school folks, white people still have the power to make things happen.”

  “What am I supposed to do? We don’t have anything to tell them yet. Can’t give them what they want right now, which is an arrest.”

  “Give them the Homicide all-hands-on-deck, pulling-out-all-the-stops routine. Explain the task force, the FBI. Give them your card. The hospital has been on top of keeping them updated on their daughters. Two have regained consciousness and we’ll need to interview them when they’re stable.”

  Salt reached for the phone vibrating in her jacket pocket. “You know I just caught a body yesterday?”

  Hamm shrugged, pulling on a what-can-I-say face.

  “Probably the ME with the autopsy findings.” Salt held up the phone.

  “Take the call. I’ll wait.” Hamm turned back to the families.

  The corridor outside the chapel was lined with gurneys, some empty, some with patients triaged to the hallway because their illnesses or injuries were less serious. “Hold on,” she said to the ME’s office. “I’m in Grady.” She moved along the hallway trying to get a clear connection—reception in the bowels of the hospital being notoriously poor—as well as a spot where she wouldn’t be overheard. She stopped across from a sign that read TURN OFF ALL PHONES. Her back to a nearby occupied gurney, she faced the green tile wall. “Hi, Marc. Sorry. It is crazy.” She leaned her forehead against the wall. There was an inviting empty gurney to her left. “Yeah, I thought that was probably the case. Body left to decompose outside like that. What caliber?” She sat down on the clean sheet, reconsidered, and instead leaned against the wall. “How long had she . . . The body was female? Marc?” Salt had to turn again to regain the signal. “I’ll start the search right away. A girl that age will likely be a flyer by now.” There was more dead air and static. “Thanks. I appreciate the quick work, Marc.”

  Turning the phone off, Salt lowered her chin and closed her eyes. Strong, slightly sour disinfectant fumes triggered something between déjà vu and a flashback that muted the echoing voices in the corridor. Two blurred silhouettes, backlit and with a haze, spoke indistinctly to each other. By their tones she recognized her father and mother. Her first memories of this hospital were from when she was a child and had been brought there by her mother to see her father.

  She felt a sudden blow along at her waist, not so much painful as startling.

  “I said wake up,” said a vaguely familiar voice. The man on the gurney to her right propped up on his elbows was wielding an aluminum cuff crutch. He growled, “You that girly detective hangs around with the HOPE Team.”

  “Did you just hit me?”

  “So what?” Thin as he was, he would have been easily unnoticeable lying under the sheet.

  “You’re Mr. Makepeace. We talked to you last year when we were looking for Pearl.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Why you lookin’ all hangdog?”

  “It’s already been a long day, Mr. Makepeace, and it’s about to get longer.” Salt pushed off the wall.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t feel sorry for you one bit. I don’t feel sorry for nobody got two good legs under ’em.” He slapped the crutch against the tile wall.

  “What are you here for?”

  “Goddamn infection.” He pointed with the crutch to his right foot under the sheet.

  “You know, you might think about getting off the street.”

  “You should shut your goddamn mouth. You don’t know shit ’bout me or being on the street.” He fell back on the skimpy, thin pillow.

  “Oh, brother.” With the heel of her hand Salt pushed on the scar at her hairline and turned toward the chapel doors. “You did help us find Pearl. Thanks,” she said to the now-silent Makepeace.

  “Gimme your card.” Eyes closed, he held out his dark, cracked, and weathered hand, turning up the softer pink palm on which Salt placed without further comment her card, one of the ones that had her mobile number, not just the office line. He enclosed the card with his fingers and tucked his hand beneath the hospital sheet.

  BREAK ROOM

  The burnt-coffee smell of the break room was stronger than usual. Salt sat with Huff at one of the patio tables, one with a hole for an umbrella in the center. There were no orange stickers to move anything in the break room. The appliances, every piece of furniture—all were to be junked.

  “It’s being ruled a homicide,” Salt said. “The shirt held a bullet and a bone fragment. There was corresponding damage to her spinal column; front to back, indicating she’d been shot through the chest, probably got her heart. Holes in the shirt confirmed the trajectory. She was between twelve and fourteen years old, black female. And, Sarge, her body’d been lying there for about three months. Nobody called it in.”

  Huff, scooping hummus with a celery stick from a compartmentalized lunch container, squinted at the old bulky TV on a stand against the wall. The news was on, sound muted. “Nothing human beings do to each other shocks me anymore.” With a loud crunch he broke off a piece of celery between his teeth. The TV brightened with orange flickerings. “Oh, shit, here we go. Turn it up.” Fire flamed behind dark images moving around the scene.

  Barney and Daniels rounded the corner into the room. “Sarge, are you watching?”

  The volume crescend
oed as Salt pressed the button. “Students have joined from other campuses, other colleges and universities throughout the city, in what had been a peaceful march. But, Steve, as you can see behind me the situation has escalated,” a blond reporter said to the camera. “Someone torched one of the businesses, a copy center and paper supply shop here at the corner of Peachtree and Decatur Street.” Demonstrators, most of whom were college-age women, passed behind her. Some held signs: NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE. Some shouted at the camera, “No justice, no peace.”

  Huff looked down at his phone vibrating on the tabletop, took a breath, and picked it up, answering, “LT. Got it. Tomorrow.” He put the phone in his shirt pocket. “Get everybody in here. Rosie, too,” he told the Things.

  “I got the girl’s description to Missing Persons,” said Salt, trying to get Huff’s attention. “And Sergeant Fellows has her people checking reports for runaway girls her age. I need to call the counties.” On the TV black smoke began to obliterate the orange as the fire department’s hoses flushed water through a now glassless storefront. Although she rarely smoked, Salt felt a sudden craving for a cigarette.

  “Whatever you need to do, do it now. You are reporting to the academy at eight a.m. tomorrow for a refresher on ‘crowd management.’” He wiggled his fingers with the air quotes familiar to his detectives. “That’s what they’re calling it nowadays.”

  The reporter was jostled by some young male teens who came running gleefully alongside the placard-carrying marchers. The boys mugged for the camera, fingers in gang signs, acting out, taking advantage of what had been a peaceful event.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Huff.

  “Sarge, what about my case?”

  “On hold.” He looked at his ringing phone again but didn’t answer. Wills, Gardner, and the others came in the room.

  “We’re now receiving reports that police have arrested some of the student marchers,” said the reporter, who was becoming obscured by people passing between her and the camera. “Back to you, Steve. We’re relocating to . . .” The picture on the screen wobbled.