Old Bones

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  “Either’s fine. I guess ‘Salt.’”

  “I’m curious how you got the name. But let’s come back to that. What was it made you say that about the past?”

  “It’s just the way I think about my job—that I work around a lot of desperate people.”

  “Cops?” Marshall laughed. “Kidding.”

  Salt smiled back. “I like that. That’s something we’d say when no citizens are around.”

  “So, desperate people?”

  “They do desperate things. An act of violence”—she leaned forward and started the balls again—“has consequences you might not expect. The balls stay in motion.”

  “Are you talking about your father, Salt? Is he the main reason you became a cop?”

  Salt raised a brow and drew back her chin. “Actually, I was thinking about a young girl, murdered—my new case.”

  “A young girl?” Marshall pushed back in his chair, hands tightening on the armrests. “You always carry this much tragedy around with you? You’re in the middle of a riot, trying to solve the murder of a girl, consoling families of a multiple-victim shooting, and didn’t you tell me you spent the other night standing watch over some kind of mass grave?”

  “In my free time I bend steel with my bare hands.” She laughed, a bubble of hysteria loosening.

  Marshall wasn’t returning the humor.

  “Really, Doc. It’s no more than most cops have on their plates.”

  “I don’t know most cops. I’ve been asked to evaluate you.” He leaned forward, one arm stretched along his desk.

  Salt turned her head toward the window and focused on something blurry in the light. “Pepper gave me the name.” She lowered her head and looked at her hands in her lap.

  “Pepper? Your friend?”

  “Yeah, although ‘friend’ hardly covers it.”

  “Why so?”

  “Oh, he’s saved my life. I’ve saved his. That kind of thing.”

  The room was quiet. The motion toy stilled. “Salt, this is our third session and I appreciate your honesty. You’re dealing with incident after incident, any one of which would, quite frankly, necessitate therapy for anyone. I’m not saying you’re crazy or unfit for the job, but this isn’t TV or the movies. You’re not Superman or Superwoman. You’re not Dirty Harry. You have a past. You are a person who can be wounded, might be wounded. Last time we’d almost gotten to your father’s suicide.”

  “My history not being past and all.” She lifted one of the pendulum balls again. “You want me to tell you about your daughter?”

  Dr. Marshall didn’t respond, blink, or flinch. All he said was “Go on,” concentrating on her.

  “I think she needs help.” Salt felt almost giddy. “She’s trouble waiting to happen. She shouldn’t be working here.”

  “Is that how you operate, Salt? All mild mannered and compliant, then wham! You blindside an opponent?”

  “Opponent? I thought you were on my side.”

  Marshall broke eye contact, looking over to his right at the shelves of books, a muscle at his jawline drawing taut.

  STAND DOWN

  The protest organizers had asked that instead of public marches, participants observe “Days of Silence” during the wake and funeral of their sister student. No planned demonstrations had been announced. Though still on twelve-hour shifts, officers and detectives had been told to report back to their regular assigned duties. But they were to keep wearing the uniform.

  The task force to find the perpetrators of the shooting of the Spelman women met in the Homicide Unit’s conference room, most of the meetings at two p.m., before Salt came on at four. She wouldn’t be asked to participate, though they had debriefed her again about the pursuit of the truck and being fired on by one of the suspects. The federal agents, two men and one woman almost always in identical blue padded jackets, seemed most disappointed that she’d “lost the perps,” as if they had now tired of not having someone to blame for the lack of progress. The motive for the shooting was unknown, a seemingly random assault. Daily, Chatterjee’s clothing hung looser, the circles under his eyes growing darker and darker. Wills, Gardner, and Huff represented evening watch on the task force. Day watch contributed the unit’s lieutenant and Detective Best. Even with all that personnel, other detectives were called on for assistance, including Salt, who was told to go out before the end of each shift, around midnight, to the park to search for witnesses, people who habituated the area during those hours. So far she, like the task force and everyone else, had come up with nothing.

  But unlike most of the others, Salt was not unhappy about the extended shifts or the uniform. People in The Homes were used to seeing her in uniform and she could use the extra hours trying to find anyone who might know something of Mary’s last days. It was just after noon, early for Man, but she knew the hour would likely find him at Sam’s in the back room, an adjoining cinder-block juke joint called the Blue Room. Man, aka James Simmons, had quit school in the seventh grade, when his entrepreneurial endeavors in the drug trade increasingly took more of his time and rewarded his efforts far more powerfully than the inner-city school curriculum ever could.

  She and Man had long had a symbiotic and relatively friendly relationship. He depended on her to keep a certain amount of chaos at bay and she relied on him for information and to uphold certain aspects of the social contract. Over more than ten years now they’d kept up a conversation about current events and their cultural implications. He claimed he was going straight and had moved from street dealing to doing business in and with strip clubs; his legal status with clubs like Toy Dolls was ambiguous.

  From his usual spot, a lone single table in the center of the floor, a can of high-caffeine power drink at his elbow, an ever-present book open in front of him, Man lifted his head as Salt entered. “Have a seat.” He smiled and nudged a molded-plastic chair from the table with his sneakered foot. In addition to the large academic-looking book he was reading, there was a stack of children’s books on the table.

  “Book group selection for the month of November, Man?” She looked over his shoulder and tapped the book he’d been reading.

  “Book group. You kill me.” He laughed and closed the book, enabling her to read the title, Understanding Schizophrenia. Not exactly surprised, she was curious. His smile widened over his perfect white teeth. He wore the simple white T-shirt she was used to seeing on him, every day always new, over long athletic shorts. In concession to the cold he’d added runners’ leggings under the shorts. A sports team hoodie, also new looking, hung on the back of his chair and a Braves cap hung on another chair. “How come you back to the uniform? You get busted out of Detectives?”

  “The situation downtown, demonstrations, there’s been some looting. We have to be ready in case something flares up again.”

  “Yeah, folks easy to upset when they already on they last nerve.”

  Already uncomfortable with her back to the door, Salt flinched when what sounded like a metal pot fell and rolled around the floor of the kitchen that separated the take-out chicken place from the Blue Room. She slid her chair to Man’s right in order to have a better view of who came in.

  “Chocolate city like this, there’s lots of folks uneasy. How come you wanna poleese here in the city anyway? You live in the country, don’t you? You could be one of them sheriffs or somethin’.”

  “Trying to get rid of me again, huh, Man?” She gave him a crooked grin. “I’ve always thought of it as home.” She saw that the stack of books were mostly for toddler-age kids. “You mind?” She shifted through them, Thomas the Tank Engine, Sesame Street, Clifford the Big Red Dog. “For your kids?” she asked him.

  “Naw, mine outgrew them. I brung ’em for Danny T.”

  “Book club, book exchange—what’s next, Oprah?”

  “Readin’s important. I been checkin’ out books at The Homes
library since I left school. I get a bigger picture and it makes me wanna move up that socio ladder.”

  “Broaden your worldview?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Man thumbed the book. “Stone back in The Homes. He paroled out.” He held a steady gaze on her.

  Salt shifted the chair again, slightly, so that she had almost as good a view of the door as did Man. More rattling came from the kitchen. The smell of chicken frying grew thick. “Lil D here?” She nodded toward the banging. Leaning over the table, she drew a finger under the title on the cover. “Schizophrenia. I get it now—the book.” Stone, she thought, always Stone. She became aware of the blood pumping through her veins.

  “They got him on medication. He go down to the mental health center every day so they can keep track of him, test his blood and all.”

  “How long has he been out?”

  “Couple of months. I thought they’d tell you. You poleese don’t talk to each other? He stay right next door at that store-church, God’s World. The preacher there let him use the back room.”

  “Right under your feet? No wonder you’re trying to figure out what’s up with him,” Salt said, tapping the schizophrenia book with her trigger finger.

  “Naw, I ain’t studyin’ him. He different now.”

  “How different?”

  “I don’t know.” Man frowned. “Maybe it’s the medicine. His head more mixed up in some ways. I read people first get schizophrenia when they young, like Stone’s age. But it’s like now he’s a zombie or something, not all there.”

  Salt sat up and took a breath. “Look, the reason I came by—”

  “Oh, here it comes. You all the time come ’round makin’ my life hard, complicatin’ shit.”

  “This should be easy for you, Man. Communicating, that’s all this is about. Lil D tell you about his sister?”

  BACK TO MARY

  Boxes were stacked in detectives’ cubicles throughout the office. They’d taken down and packed up personal touches. Gone were the mug shots, crime-scene photos, BOLOs, mementos, and commendations that had been displayed along with photos of their families, pets, or fishing trips. Wills’ framed picture of Pansy and Violet, his dogs, was gone from his desk. The pastel planting-season chart was down from Gardner’s cubicle wall. But as Salt walked through the aisles to her far-corner desk she began to notice identical memos newly pushpinned to the stained, ripped walls of each cubicle. And on her desk she found an envelope and inside the identical letter of “Accommodation” that Deputy Chief “Malaprop” had sent to all of them commending their sacrifice during the recent detail that had required extended shifts and cancellation of off days.

  “Where will you be taking your accommodation? I’m thinking the Keys, myself. I am so ready for some sunshine.” Felton dropped into the chair opposite her desk, where he could be found with increasing frequency when he wasn’t on the street or at his own desk.

  “You guys are so wrong. So what if the deputy chief mangles a few phrases or words. It’s the effort and spirit of his recognition.” She tacked her memo up, dug in a drawer, and came up with a “Get Away to the Islands” advertisement, which she promptly pinned beside the “Accommodation.”

  “Hey, mon. I need to be accommodated,” he said, leaning back in the chair, hands behind his head, legs extended, feet up on the desktop. “By the way, I’m single again.” He smirked matter-of-factly.

  “Oh, no! You had such hopes for this one.”

  “Dumped me for a fireman.”

  The phone on her desk began to crackle, its ring sounding more and more like an electrical short circuit with every call.

  “That sounds dangerous,” Felton said, nodding at the phone as she picked up the receiver.

  “Be right out, Rosie,” she said and hung up. “Mrs. McCloud is here. Rosie said she brought in a photo of Mary.”

  “How do you want to work it?”

  “Maybe you should get her back to the conference room and then I’ll see how she reacts to me.”

  “You got it.” Felton swung his feet to the floor.

  Salt opened Mary’s file and lifted the pages to the recent BOLO on her that Missing Persons had distributed. It was a school picture several years old with some kind of blue tint to it that in light of her death seemed morbid. Felton had asked her grandmother to bring in a more recent one partly as a reason to get her to the office.

  Felton came back escorting Mrs. McCloud. Every hair of her blond bun slicked into place, the heavyset woman stiffly surveyed the room. Giving Felton time to get settled, Salt waited until he came out to get two coffees, then followed him back into the conference room. Mrs. McCloud sat on the far side of the long table with her hands folded on top of a satchel-size black-patent handbag. She looked up from under lowered lids as Salt came in behind Felton. She didn’t blink.

  “Mrs. McCloud?” Salt said, offering her a coffee.

  Mary’s grandmother gave no acknowledgment of Salt.

  “You know Detective Alt?” Felton prompted.

  “I do,” she replied. “But what has she to do with Mary’s case? She is one of the reasons that Mary’s dead.”

  Salt came to the side of the conference table where Mrs. McCloud sat. She pushed one of the chairs to the wall, where it hit with a thud, and sat down, turning to square her body with the old woman’s. “I know you’re a true Bible Christian, Mrs. McCloud.” Salt knew the one subject the grandmother could not resist flaunting her knowledge of. “You must be here today partly to render to Caesar? Right? Did you give your DNA at the lab? Bring us a newer photo?”

  Mrs. McCloud bristled, straightening her shoulders and lifting her chin. “I want you to bring whoever was involved in killing Mary to judgment. I don’t need Caesar as a reason to cooperate.” She unsnapped the handbag, reached in, and came out with an eight-by-ten picture of her granddaughter that appeared to be printed off a computer on cheap photocopy paper. “Somebody in my church saw this picture of Mary on their computer and gave it to me.” She put the picture on the table.

  Salt slid the photo over. It was a blurry Mary standing between two larger girls, girls who were wearing jeans strategically ripped at the thighs and cut-off T-shirts with barely recognizable logos of the Toy Dolls strip club. She’d be seeing Man again for sure. He ran Toy Dolls now.

  “Who gave you the photo?” Felton asked.

  “They got nothing to do with it. They got it off their son’s phone. He got it from some other kid’s phone—neighborhood kids who know Mary. They all know how she is now.” She snapped the purse shut.

  “Why did it take you so long to file a missing person on her?” Felton asked, switching to bad cop. “She’d likely been dead at least a month when you made the report.”

  “I already told you that twice.” She turned her head, facing Felton. “Mary would still be alive if Miss Alt hadn’t interfered and if you police did your job—kept girls out of strip clubs and whoring instead of locking girls up with other whores.”

  “Did Mary talk to you about Hampton, who she hung out with there?” Salt asked.

  Eyes narrowed, Mrs. McCloud turned and stared at Salt. “I don’t talk about evil now and I didn’t want Mary telling me about evil.”

  “You were ashamed—the neighborhood knowing,” Salt said, picking up the photo, her focus drifting. Mary had had a habit of pulling, pulling at her fingers, one by one. She’d stood in the hall at the door to the bedroom pointing to where her mother crouched dead in the closet, blood congealing in her lap, flies laying their eggs.

  “Ashamed? Mary did this on her own!” Mrs. McCloud leaned from the waist like an old listing tree trunk, tapping the photo that Salt had laid back down on the table between them, thunk-thunk. “No, I didn’t report her. I didn’t want her to go back to Juvenile. You see what kind of trash she took up with?” She shoved the photo across the table.

  Felton pick
ed it up. “This the best photo you have? It would help if we had a good close-up of her face.”

  The grandmother raised her chin and looked down her nose. “Detective, you can get her mug shot from Juvenile.” She rose from the chair and stood over Salt, whose focus had remained with the image of Mary in that hall. “I gave my DNA.”

  “As the hart panteth after the water . . .” Salt quoted from the psalm. “You know when I was a kid”—she rose to face Mrs. McCloud—“I used to think the word was ‘heart,’ h-e-a-r-t, since I’d never heard of an animal called a hart. I was comforted that somebody felt their heart panted like mine did.” Salt reached out to move Mrs. McCloud, to turn her toward the door, remembering the feel of the old woman’s hard corset the day she took Mary into custody.

  Mrs. McCloud slowly looked down at Salt’s hand, snatched up her bag, turned, and strode to the door, Felton following her out. At the conference room doorway he looked back over his shoulder, eyes and mouth screwed up in a question mark. Salt watched them go out, but her mind’s eye lingered still in that hallway with Mary.

  • • •

  Salt found Felton seated in the reception area after he had seen Mrs. McCloud out. Except for Rosie, the area was for once quiet and otherwise empty.

  “What was that in there? You said you had a history with her, but that—what was that about?” Felton looked over at Rosie filing her nails like some gal in an old noir detective movie. He fidgeted and stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “What?” Salt said.

  He shrugged. “You know—some kind of witchy-woman thing—feminine energy? It was spooky. I don’t pay any attention when some of the guys say things, but I don’t know, Salt—you are sometimes, well, odd.”

  Rosie looked up from her nails.

  “What do they say?” Salt put her hands on her hips.

  Rosie put the file down and turned her chair to face Felton.

  Felton sighed. “They say you’ve got some kind of mojo, hoodoo, that you’re tuned to another channel. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not the one saying it. Still . . .”