The Body Box

by Lynn Abercrombie

  My face felt hot.

  Tracy Dial took a long, slow breath. Then, as she blew the air out of her lungs, she seemed to crumple, like nothing had been holding her together but pure will. “Oh, God,” she said, putting her face in her hands. “I went out last night, started hanging pictures of her on light poles. Drove around till the sun came up. I don’t know if it does a damn bit of good. I feel so helpless.”

  “Darling,” I said softly. “Darling . . .” Trying to think what else to say. Part of me felt like just apologizing and walking out the door. And the other part? The other part felt like doing something crazy. I felt myself hanging there, like a gust of wind could have blown me one way or the other. And then I took the crazy leap. “I need to explain something to you. The God’s-honest truth is, I’m not even assigned to your daughter’s case. My supervisor doesn’t even know I’m here.”

  She looked up at me, a wrinkle forming in the middle of her brow. “You serious?”

  I nodded.

  “Then why are you here?”

  I looked up at the ceiling. For a second, tears started brimming up in my eyes. I guess I knew why I was there. But what was I going to say? If I told her what was really in my mind, she’d laugh in my face. And for good reason. It was too complicated to explain.

  “Shoot, it doesn’t matter why,” she said finally. “If you’re really gonna help, then just tell me what you want.”

  I wiped my eyes. I didn’t want her to see the tears. “Start from the beginning,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”

  She took another deep breath. “I work the night shift at the Waffle House on weekends,” she said. “So usually I get home at eight in the morning, play with Jenny a while, then go to bed. That day Larry was out fishing.”

  “Where was he fishing?”

  “Lake Sinclair.” I knew the name of the lake. It was somewhere out in the boonies, but I wasn’t sure how far from Atlanta it was. I’d have to check.

  “And was he with anybody? Somebody that could verify what he was doing, where he was?”

  She looked at me with her dark brown eyes, finally said, “Nope.”

  “So anyway—” I said.

  “So anyway, how it happened, I get home from the Waffle House around eight o’clock. My replacement on the day shift was late, so Larry’s all mad ’cause I was spose to get off early so he could get out to the lake by sunup. Anyway, he takes off in his truck, pulling the boat. Jenny’s playing in the yard. As he’s driving out of the yard, this van comes creeping down the road, and Larry, he’s in such a rush, he just backs out without looking. Even though this van’s coming real slow, he has to slam on his brakes, nearly tips the boat trailer over. Gets mad, shoots a bird at the man in this white van.” She wiped one eye. “That’s the last thing Jenny seen of her daddy, him yelling and shooting a bird. Mm. Sometimes I just . . .” She sighed, regained her composure.

  “So anyway, I had brang some pancakes back from the Waffle House, and me and Jenny ate them, then we went out to play in the yard. Jenny’s a little tomboy, likes playing ball, you know, so we played with one of them playground balls. Like a kickball? And she was kicking the fool out that ball. Here, I’ll show you.”

  She stood, opened the door, led us out into the front yard. It was a very small yard, but neatly kept, with the grass cut, impatiens and pansies planted around the mailbox, and all the bushes trimmed like jello molds. We walked by the open carport, kitty litter scattered over an oil stain, and around the back of the house. The backyard was just grass, with a rusting chain-link fence, and an alley running along one side. At the far back of the property, behind the fence, the land fell away into a deep crevasse full of kudzu that sloped down toward the back of an aging brick industrial building.

  “Jenny kept kicking it over the fence,” Tracy said. “I was by the fence and she was by the house, so I kept having to go down into all that dadgum kudzu and get the ball. Finally I said, ‘Next time you kick it in the kudzu, you’re getting it.’ Well, I roll her the kickball, and boom, she busts it right over the fence, down the hill. Slap out of sight. So I tell her, ‘Go, head on!’ Well, she goes scurrying right over that fence, just like a boy. Didn’t even use the gate. Goes running down the hill. I yelled to her, ‘I’m going to get me some more coffee. ’ ”

  Tracy Dial closed her eyes, stood stock still in the middle of her yard for an uncomfortably long time. Finally she said, “I went inside, and when I come back out, she hadn’t got back.”

  “You see anything at that point?” I said. “Anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Well, I figured she was just playing down behind the plant.” She pointed down toward the industrial building at the bottom of the kudzu-covered hill. “That’s a old factory, used to make conversion vans, they got all kind of junk cars and parts and boxes and stuff down there. Everybody in the neighborhood tells their kids not to play down there, and every kid in the neighborhood plays down there anyway.” She smiled briefly. “I hollered for her. She didn’t come. So I went down the hill, poked around some. No Jenny. I come back up the hill, looked in the front yard. That’s when I seen that van again. The one I told you about? The one that Larry almost backed into? It comes out of the alley over yonder. Just oonching along. Then, it’s like as soon as he sees me—the driver I’m talking about—he floors it, goes hauling ass up the road.” Tracy’s eyes went cold. “I know she was in that van. I know it.”

  She sighed. “I guess you’ll find out anyway. I hooked up with my husband Larry right about the time Jenny was born. Six months later, Larry dropped her off the changing table. Broke two of her ribs. Dee-Fax come in, made a report on it, so on.” Dee-Fax was how people in Georgia pronounced the acronym for the state’s Department of Family and Children Services, DFACS. “They was talking about how it was maybe child abuse.”

  “Was it?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Hell, no! Larry’s all bark, no bite. That’s a fact. And especially with Jenny. She’s got him wrapped around her little finger. He wouldn’t hurt a hair on her head.”

  “You’re sure.”

  She looked me square in the eye. “I’d stake my life on it. I’m not one of these dumb girls that believes any old shit her husband says just because he’s her man. Larry’s got his flaws, believe me, but he wouldn’t do a thing like this. Besides, like I say, he’d done went fishing already.”

  “Okay, so this van,” I said. “Did you see the face of the driver?”

  “It was a man.”

  “White guy?”

  She spread her hands helplessly. “I guess, yeah.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “I keep trying and trying and trying to remember.” She slammed her fist on her leg four or five times in a row, like she was trying to punish herself, and a tear ran down her nose. “I just wasn’t thinking at the time. I just wasn’t thinking!”

  “You looked at mug shots for Sergeant Fairoaks?”

  “Wasn’t no point,” she said dully. “I didn’t see him clear.”

  I asked a few more questions, but there was just nothing there. Finally I stood to go.

  “Here,” she said, handing me a stack of photocopied sheets. “I printed up five thousand of these. Hang them on some light poles, drop off a few at your favorite restaurant, I don’t know, maybe something will come of it.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  But I knew nothing.

  I got back in my car, set the posters on the seat next to me, stared at the little girl. I could feel something yanking at my insides. And there was nothing I could do about it.

  I shouldn’t have even come here.

  NINE

  As I got back in the car, my cell phone rang. “Detective, this is Captain Goodwin. The Chief wants you in his office. Immediately.”

  “I’m out picking up a perp, sir. I probably ought to stop off and—”

  “Is there something ambiguous about the word immediately, Detective?”

  “No sir,” I said to
the dead line.

  As I mentioned before, the chief of police, Eustace V. Diggs, Jr., is an extremely ordinary looking, extremely light-skinned black man. He makes up for his ordinariness by wearing a suit with more gold braid than your average admiral. He always seems to be smiling. He’s been a lifer with the department, coming up mostly through the staff side—personnel, public relations, training, admin, that sort of thing. He had never been a detective, and hadn’t walked a beat since the early eighties. He was seen by most people in the department as a politician, not a cop, and was despised as a result. But that didn’t matter to him. He’d gotten where he was by crushing everybody in his way. Notwithstanding the smile.

  When he had taken over the department four or five years back, he’d had a large number of walls knocked out to make himself an office of vast proportions. I’d heard it was almost three times larger than the mayor’s. The mahogany-paneled walls were hung with folk-art paintings in bright colors—old ladies in do-rags chopping cotton, crazy-looking pictures of Jesus, that sort of thing.

  The Chief had three or four aides, all of them young, light-complected men who wore spotless, crisp dress uniforms and were as beautiful as male models or movie stars. Captain Goodwin—the one who had muffed the search of Delwood Anderson’s house—ushered me across about twenty yards of deep pile carpet to Chief Diggs’s huge desk. The Chief rose, beaming, came around the desk, and gave me a big hug like we were old friends. “How’s your daddy, girl?” he said. My father is tapped into the same circle as the Chief, the movers and shakers in the city of Atlanta. My father and the Chief were also both Omega Psi Phi men, which is a big deal. “I haven’t talked to him in a coon’s age!”

  “Neither have I,” I said. I’ve always been the black sheep of our family, and we don’t get along much. The trouble I got in last year has only made things worse between the two of us.

  He clapped his hands together, smiled brightly. “Yesss, yessss. Cold Case squad. My, oh my, that must be strictly fascinating. Strictly fascinating!” The Chief loved ornate words, archaic words, phrases your grandmother might say.

  “Yessir, so far it’s been very, ah, very . . . Well, I think interesting is the word.”

  The Chief gave me another squeeze, not quite grabbing a hold of my booty, but not quite not if you know what I mean. Then he hustled around the desk, sat down. The desk, a mirror-polished immensity of granite perched on a couple of polished steel legs the size of oil drums, was stone empty. Except for a file folder that sat dead center in front of his chair. It was my personnel file.

  Chief Diggs opened the file, made a great show of putting on a pair of reading glasses, pretended to read the file with some care, then looked up at me, his surprisingly fat hands pressed together as though in prayer, and said, “I’m not one to remind people of favors I’ve done for them. When the opportunity arises to assist a deserving individual, I just harken to the call. Bread on the waters, am I right? Mm-hm. Yes. Bread on the waters, indeed.” He closed the file. “However, I feel compelled to mention, in your case, that a certain amount of trouble has been gone to. By myself. By the troops here in the office. Certain individuals in the power structure downtown. Yes. Yes. I think you understand that a certain amount of cap-in-hand type behavior was involved. Which, for a proud black man such as myself, gives a certain . . .” He made a stabbing motion in the vicinity of his heart. “A certain pain. You with me?”

  “If you’re saying that y’all went up to Cobb County, out to the suburbs, kissed a bunch of white ass to get me out of the trouble I was in, well, look, I understand how you feel, sir, and I just want to say how much I—”

  The gleaming smile grew broader. “Nah, girl, see you don’t understand. I’m here to explain, and you’re here to listen quietly and then say, ‘Thank you very much indeed, Chief Diggs, for saving my fine black ass when Mr. Charlie was very much eager to put the same fine black ass in the penitentiary. ’ We on the same page, young lady?”

  “Yes sir. Absolutely.”

  I knew that when I got busted while trying to buy crank up in Smyrna last year, my father had pulled some strings. But I didn’t really know exactly how it had played out, or how high up the string-pulling went. I guess I’d chosen to remain ignorant. Well, now I knew.

  Chief Diggs leaned back in his chair. Behind him were dozens of framed pictures, him shaking hands with all kinds of big wheels—senators, civil rights leaders, mayors, Bill Cosby, Mariah Carey, a very freaky-looking Michael Jackson.

  “You know anything about the history of the Cold Case Unit?”

  I figured it was time to rein in my mouth. “No sir.” “Well, let me give you a little background. You familiar with one Mr. Barton Millwood?”

  “Isn’t he on the Fulton County Commission?”

  “Actually, Mr. Barton Millwood is the chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. Now, as you’re aware, the city of Atlanta is located in Fulton County. As you’re also aware—relative to the metropolitan area, in toto—the city of Atlanta proper is rather small. We—African-Americans, I’m talking about—now dominate the governmental structure of the city of Atlanta. But certain important aspects of governance in our region continue to be under the purview of Fulton County, and therefore of our dear white friends on the north side. Yes. You know all this, of course. But here’s where it plays out. Certain funding decisions, certain plans involving major personages in the city of Atlanta, certain aspects of progress and economic development, remain in the stranglehold of Fulton County, which has that nice fat northside tax base to draw on. Yes. While the city of Atlanta languishes, taxwise. I won’t bore you with specifics, with cases, but let’s suffice it to say that this is how the world works. Give and ye shall receive, that type of thing.”

  “Yes, sir.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Now perhaps you were not aware of this, but Mr. Barton Millwood, the head of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, suffered a tragedy some years ago. His brother-in-law was murdered. Inside the city limits of Atlanta. And the case was never solved. I gather that this fact has chafed him like a burr under the saddle, as it were. And he never misses an opportunity to throw this fact in our faces. Incompetence of city administration, blah blah blah, the usual sort of sub rasa racist statements and implications. Yes. Yes. Now, apparently some time last year he was watching the television—I watch television very rarely myself, it’s a wasteland of vulgarity and triviality in my view—but at any rate, apparently Mr. Barton Millwood very much enjoys a little television in his spare hours. And he was watching a program, 60 Minutes, 20/20, one of those shows, and they had a segment about a Cold Case unit in some other city. Baltimore, I believe.

  “Well, Mr. Barton Millwood, who knows nothing about law enforcement or the administration thereof, is seized, you see, absolutely seized with the brilliance of this idea. Sure, he thinks. Wouldn’t it be wonderful and peachy to take several productive detectives off of the City of Atlanta Police Department’s already overworked and scandalously—this is strictly between you and me, of course—scandalously underfunded homicide squad, and assign them to poking around in a bunch of moldy old unsolved cases. With the end in view, of course, of serving a personal end—specifically the solving of the murder of his half-witted brother-in-law, who apparently didn’t have the sense that God gave a dog, because his murder occurred while he, a white man, was wandering around on foot in a high-crime African-American area downtown with a blood alcohol level of point one three, doing who knows what, but one can only suspect probably trying to pay some crack whore to suck his johnson, quite frankly, at four o’clock in the morning. You see?”

  “Um—”

  “Bottom line, detective, is this. That white sumbitch Millwood threatened to hold up funding for a very important and sizable civic project—which, I might add, was going to generate a great deal of revenue for a number of important minority-owned firms in the city—if we did not agree to create a Cold Case Unit.”

  �
�I see.”

  The broad smile came back. “Now, I must be frank. We did not choose you or Lieutenant Gooch because of your magnificent records in law enforcement. We chose you because we had to staff this unit with somebody. Persons with actual bodies.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s been nine months, young lady. It’s been nine months, and that ignorant cracker down there in the basement, so far as I can discern, has made zero headway on the one case that matters to me, to the mayor, to our good friend Mr. Barton Millwood, and, not least, to the health and well-being of both your unit and you personally. That case is the murder of Mr. Barton Millwood’s moron brother-in-law, may he rest in eternal and undying peace.”

  “I see.”

  “What I’m telling you, I need to know what in hell that redneck son of a bitch is doing down there.”

  He laced his fingers together and stared hard at me. Still smiling, but not in a way that reassured me.

  I could see where he was coming from. And I certainly felt no particular loyalty to Lt. Gooch. But at the same time it rubbed me a little bit the wrong way, being asked to rat on my boss. “I have to be honest with you, Chief Diggs,” I said finally. “I haven’t been there but a few days. I’m just getting my feet wet.”

  “Blah blah blah. I’m asking you a simple question. What in the name of creation is that man doing down there?”