Old Bones

by Trudy Nan Boyce

  “Naw, you don’t even believe that yourself.” He laughed. “You just like to scare people with that black magic act.”

  “I’m telling you. For real,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth, barely covering her grin.

  Wonder scratched at the door and Mr. Gooden reached to let him in. “Come on now, dog,” he said as Wonder wiggled happily to Salt’s side.

  “See what I tell you?” Sister said. “She even got her black dog, her spirit guide.” Sister Connelly was full-bore intent on putting them on.

  Salt rubbed at the scar on her forehead. “You go on—have fun at my expense.” But she was laughing, too. “Really”—she dropped her hand to the dog’s head—“I came to ask you to keep an eye on the place. I’ve got a detail over several nights and I’ll be staying with Wills.”

  “How ’bout the mutt?” Mr. Gooden reached down and ruffled Wonder’s fur.

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to acclimate him to life in the city, to wean him off the sheep, but . . .”

  Mr. Gooden turned and walked to the other side of his kitchen to the sink, where he pulled off a paper towel from the roll and, with his back turned to them, dabbed at his face. Clearing his throat, he said, “Why don’t you let him have a few more days, a few more runs with his sheep? Let him stay with me. That way I can keep up with you. You’ll have to check in with me if I’m keeping him.”

  Sister went over to the wall-mounted coatrack and pulled down her coat. “Lettuces ain’t gone put they selves in the ground.”

  “Hold up. I’m comin’.” Mr. Gooden turned and crossed to her, holding her coat while she slipped her arms into the sleeves.

  With the three of them in close proximity, Salt was struck by a sudden awareness of their height. She was used to being the tall woman in a group, but Mr. Gooden and Sister were both right at six feet tall, taller than she. It was somehow comforting.

  “Come on.” Mr. Gooden grabbed for the door. “We got work to do.”

  • • •

  “Looks like he’s gonna be closing.” Salt sat back from the surveillance van’s periscope.

  Lieutenant Shepherd, in the captain’s chair bolted to the floor beside Salt’s, blew across a full cup of coffee. The van, on loan from the feds, had its own coffeemaker, as well as lots of other bells and whistles. “Figures, since he came in at seven p.m. Pepper said he always drives the black Mercedes parked over there by the entrance.”

  They’d gotten to the block above the club around one a.m. and had been waiting for Stokes. There’d been long stretches of silence; Shepherd being as much the quiet type as Salt, it had seemed a little awkward at first.

  “I ran into Peachtree Harrison the other day,” Salt said.

  “Aha.”

  “He knew my dad.” Salt leaned up and peered into the scope. The club parking lot was beginning to clear.

  “Peachtree still working that EJ at the Peacock?” Shepherd glanced at Salt over the top of her coffee.

  “Yeah, he gave me the tour—pretty amazing place.”

  “I’m sure it was in its day. Probably still jumping when he and your dad came on the PD.”

  “He’s the only person I’ve met in the department that said he knew my dad well.”

  “Funny the ways you get paid working this job,” Shepherd said.

  The lights of the club marquee went out, leaving only the streetlights and the funnel light above the entrance glowing with cold halos.

  “Paid?” Salt widened her eyes, refocusing in the darkness of the van in order to see Shepherd.

  “Cops like you, you don’t work the way you do, so close to the street, just for the paycheck.” Shepherd set the cup on the dash and leaned toward Salt. “You work it because it teaches you things you’d never be able to learn any other way—about the city, about yourself.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way. Pepper and I used to say to each other, ‘You know more than you think.’”

  “That’s some of it,” Shepherd said, “learning to pay attention.”

  “Sounds like the voice of experience, LT.”

  “See, some folks look at Peachtree Harrison and all they see is a worn-out old beat cop who never rose above patrol. It’s like people look at this city and see its surfaces—the glitter and lights or maybe all they see is the grit and grime.” She shrugged. “But if you work investigations, if you really police, you get to the interesting, good stuff about Atlanta.”

  There were only two cars left at the club, Stokes’ Benz and an older-model pimped-out sedan. “I don’t know if it did my dad any good.”

  “Interesting that your dad and Peachtree were close.”

  The door to the club opened and three people came out, one of whom was Stokes. “Here we go,” Salt said.

  Shepherd stepped over her and into the driver’s seat. The two others with Stokes were a man, large, looked like muscle, and a female, who walked between the men. It was hard to see the female’s face or to determine her age. The muscle man escorted the female to the passenger side of Stokes’ car and held the door as she got in, and then waited until Stokes was behind the wheel before going over and getting in the pimped sedan.

  The lieutenant drove parallel with Stokes for a while, then let the GPS tracker take over, allowing them to follow at a distance. After thirty minutes of northbound streets and no sign of the pimped sedan, they caught up with the Mercedes again and followed its taillights first into a newer cul-de-sac neighborhood, then past the driveway where Stokes’ car sat billowing exhaust in front of a two-car garage door that was slowly opening.

  • • •

  Over the next two nights Shepherd and Salt watched from the van as Stokes pulled into the same driveway at the same time each night, confirming his residence at that location. His house was similar to all the others in the ten-year-old subdivision: red brick, one or two stories with white trim, and short drives that led to either front- or side-entry garages. The neighborhood had a theme: all the streets were named for either a character or location in Gone with the Wind: Rhett Butler Way, Tara Trail, Ashley Avenue. Stokes lived on Belle View.

  The team, all seven of them, sat shoulder to shoulder in the close quarters of the van idling several blocks away on Prissy Path, ready to serve the warrant. Huff looked at Felton. “Wasn’t Belle the madam in Gone with the Wind?

  “What makes you think I’d know the answer to that?” Felton glared at the sergeant.

  “I don’t know. You, anybody. I wasn’t just asking you.”

  “You were looking at me.”

  Shepherd, using her most maternal voice, said, “Now children, we’re almost ready, almost there. Charlie, quit looking at Manfred.”

  They could take Stokes down in his car before he got out of the cul-de-sac on his way to work, but they wanted to get inside the house; they wanted to know who else lived there. They’d seen him go in with at least one female. Lieutenant Shepherd decided the seven of them would be sufficient to execute the warrant safely, but they also called several marked cars to stand by at the entrance to the subdivision. At noon exactly Pepper slowly drove them to the house—no flashing lights, no sirens, nothing about the van that even remotely resembled law enforcement.

  There was no running as they each quietly slipped from the van. They were dressed as they normally would be except that on top of their clothes they each wore their protective vest with the word “POLICE” in bold letters on each side. Salt and Pepper walked briskly around the right side of the house, Huff and Felton to the left, and Lieutenant Shepherd, Wills, and Sergeant Fellows, forming a triangle, positioned themselves at the front door.

  There was a brisk wind. The sun was bright. The neighborhood at lunch hour was quiet. At the back of the house Salt heard Wills’ aggressive, loud knock and announcement at the front door. “Police. Open up!” Thwack. Whap. He graduated to his retractable
baton, rapping on the door, and again, “Police. Open the door!” Unintelligible staccato voices came from inside the house, then noises like furniture being overturned and bumping and running sounds. Salt put her ear close to the back patio glass doors. Curtains obscured their view of the inside. Still unable to discern words, she heard a man’s voice and a responding high-pitched female voice.

  Fellows, having been on a field team and trained in warrant serves, had been assigned to handle the breaching tool; eight seconds was her record, she’d told them. Pepper had positioned himself at the back corner so he could see the side of the house as well as Salt and Huff at the back. Felton was in corresponding position on the other side of the back. Salt and Huff, guns at low ready, stood on either side of the sliding door.

  The screech of wood splintering was followed half a minute later by Wills’ shout, this time from the inside, “Police!”

  “Clear!” yelled Lieutenant Shepherd from the inside.

  “Clear,” called Fellows from somewhere closer to the back door.

  “Don’t move. Do not move,” commanded Wills from a more distant place in the house.

  Shepherd lifted the back-door curtain. It seemed to take an eternity for her to disengage the door lock.

  “Out! Out! Show me your hands,” yelled Fellows at yet another location in the house. As soon as Shepherd got the door open, Huff bounded toward the sound of Fellows’ voice.

  “On your knees,” Wills ordered from toward the front of the house. “Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Salt strode past Shepherd toward the sound of Wills’ voice.

  “LT, back here,” called Fellows.

  Salt rounded the corner hallway entrance to a cathedral-ceilinged great room where Wills, pistol drawn, was twelve feet from Stokes, who stood facing the wall behind a long red sectional sofa. “Climb the wall and spread your arms,” said Wills. Salt holstered, pulled out her handcuffs, moved forward to Stokes, and with a satisfying ratcheting of the cuffs’ teeth, clamped them on one wrist then the other.

  “This is not my house” were the first words Stokes spoke.

  “Dude.” Wills winced as he caught sight of Stokes’ animal-print briefs and quickly reached to belt Stokes’ hotel-logoed bathrobe.

  “Those probably aren’t your pants, either,” Wills said, referring to the ubiquitous denial of ownership of pants in which illegal substances or contraband were found.

  “Huh?” said Stokes. Some of his cornrows were less than tidy.

  “Salt,” Pepper called from another part of the house.

  Down a hall, past three small bedrooms, Salt walked into a larger bedroom at the end of the hall where Pepper, Fellows, and Shepherd were standing over three young girls sitting on a king-size bed. They appeared to be naked except for the bedspread they were jointly using to cover themselves. They looked up at the cops surrounding them, the whites of their eyes revealing fear. “You’re safe,” Sergeant Fellows said.

  • • •

  Glory, JoJo, and the three girls they found at Stokes’ were only the tip of the iceberg, according to the feds. They needed Stokes first, and then once they had used him to inform and get Flash on a wire, they’d turn Flash. The aim was to find and arrest sex traffickers at both the national and international level. This solved Salt and Wills’ dilemma about where she would be reassigned. She and Pepper were being transferred to the joint task force with the feds. And she and Wills could make their engagement public.

  Stokes did roll on Flash regarding Glory; he’d been at the quarry, he said, when Flash had shot her. But he said that Mary had gotten away from them. He believed she’d made it back to her old neighborhood, which confirmed what JoJo had told them, leaving Mary’s murder still a mystery.

  LAST SESSION

  Dr. Marshall stood with one foot on a rail of the sheep paddock. He’d called early and said he wanted to come down, asking for directions to her place.

  Salt opened the paddock gate to let Wonder in, steadying him behind the sheep as he pushed the flock out and into the orchard. “That’ll do,” she called to him. They watched the sheep disperse throughout the pecan trees. “How is your daughter?” she asked.

  “Right now we’re hopeful. We found another residential program.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for parents who don’t have the resources my wife and I do. Even with everything we know and have access to, having an adult child with a chronic mental illness . . . we often are at the end of our rope. You recognized pretty quickly how ill she is.”

  “Cops end up wrangling those neglected souls all the time. It’s frustrating.” She called Wonder to heel as they walked from the orchard to the back porch. “There’s also my personal experience, my father.”

  Marshall stood at the bottom of the steps. “When people think about cops, I don’t think they imagine anything like this.” He looked at the house and back out to the sheep.

  “Come on in.” She opened the screen door and led him to the kitchen. “I’ll fix us some special cop sandwiches. Vegetarian, okay?”

  Standing and watching while Salt put out a fresh loaf of the heavy, dark bread, a brick of Swiss cheese, avocado, and condiments, Marshall did most of the talking this time. “You must be wondering why I’m breaking protocol—coming down to your home.” Marshall started building his sandwich.

  Salt brought glasses and a pitcher of water to the kitchen table. “Have a seat.”

  “Sarah, the reason I wanted to come here today is to do what therapists are not supposed to do. I want to advise you. The fit-for-duty evaluation is done. But evaluations are not therapy.” He took a large bite of his sandwich, chewing and mumbling, “Mmm.” He swallowed. “I was hungry. The fresh air maybe.”

  They ate in silence. “Advice?” she prompted.

  Finishing his sandwich, he nodded at her hand. “I see you’re wearing your ring. That’s good.”

  Salt got up to start coffee. “Is that the advice?”

  “No, no.” He laughed. “That was a great sandwich!”

  “Another?”

  “No, that was perfect. How about we have coffee in a bit. I’d like to see the rest of this fascinating house.” He looked up at the overhead light set in a plaster medallion, then over to the deep porcelain sink.

  “Not much has been changed from when it was built, just a few upgrades. The wiring needs to be replaced next. Come on.” She went to the hall. There was something vaguely paternal in the ease with which Marshall carried himself—in the set of his shoulders? Salt tried to figure out what it was while she was showing him through the downstairs dining room and bedroom and into the library. When she pulled back the pocket doors, Marshall didn’t hesitate. He went directly to the shelf where her father’s books on mental illness were. He touched a few of the book spines, then went around the room looking at the rest of the books. “How different this is from TV images of cops.” He held his arms out, indicating the room.

  “Images,” Salt repeated, thinking to herself, He is the father of a mentally ill daughter and I am the daughter of a mentally ill father. “I’ll show you where he died,” she said, and led him through the living room and up the stairs.

  As they walked up the stairs, Salt asked, “My evaluation?”

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to keep you in suspense,” Marshall said.

  She gave him a cursory tour of the upstairs, waved him at last to the door of the dojo, and took off her shoes. He followed her lead, removing his shoes and entering the room with her. He went to the center of the room, where he stood quietly for a few seconds and then began turning to each wall. “It’s beautiful—the light, the weathered wood and bamboo, the white mat.”

  Salt knelt in front of the sensei altar.

  “Your father.” Marshall sat down cross-legged beside her and pointed to the photo.

  “This was their bedroom, wh
ere I found him.” She lit the candle.

  Marshall faced the photo while he talked. “Salt, as beautiful as the place is, as much as you’ve transformed this room, and even with all the positives you’ve brought to the property with the sheep and Wonder, the improvements”—he turned to her—“I still don’t see how it can be healthy for you to be reminded, day in and day out, of that day. And it’s not just that day. My suspicion is that this house holds a history that contributed to his depression.” He nodded at her father. “Sure, it’s likely he was predisposed, as is my daughter. And he might have felt the stigma, being a cop and all. But he failed to find help. Why do you think you would want to stay?”

  “I guess I was hoping to come to some understanding.”

  “Is that true? Or is it that you want to recover something lost and you’re hoping that it’s here?”

  The candle’s flickering light reflected on the photo, lighting her father’s eyes. His face was composed, serious, without either the sadness or the joy Salt remembered. His uniform, same as the one hanging in Salt’s downstairs closet, was sharp, spotless, the badge and name tag shining, the patent leather of his hat brim gleaming. Sitting seiza, Salt bowed, touching her forehead to the floor in front of the altar.

  Marshall put his hand on her shoulder. “I came here today to tell you in person—that, of course, I’ve found you fit for duty.”

  Salt sat upright and turned toward him.

  “With your engagement to Wills, you have some decisions to make—where you’ll be living and other changes you mentioned, work related. As I said, it’s not the job of a therapist to advise people, but this evaluation is time limited and not therapy. So I’m cutting straight through to advice: find your father in the memories, the better memories, when he was able to love you into becoming the person you are. You should leave this bloody house.” Marshall stood and walked to the door of the room. Salt leaned over and blew out the candle.