The Body Box

by Lynn Abercrombie

  “During that time, did they give you anything to drink?”

  “Oh, yes, ma’am! High sheriff give me a co-cola. Bought it for me his own self, out the machine.”

  “One Coca-cola. They only gave you that one drink? In twenty-four whole hours?”

  Maurice grinned. “You best believe it hit the spot, too.”

  “And your confession—”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Explain exactly how that happened.”

  “Well, they done had the proof, ain’t they? They done had that DMA blood off the shirt. So the high sheriff, he splaint to me what I done. I kept saying how, naw, I couldn’t of did that ’cause I was in the churchhouse, praise God. But he a patient man. I give him that. Never done raised his voice or nothing. Just done a-kept on splaining and splaining it to me.” Maurice looked sadly at the floor. “I always been slow. Slow to pick up, you know. So he had to take me through it. ’Cause I was staunch. And slow also. Staunch and slow. Which it done took Sheriff Higganbotham a good little while to get it all clear to me. He done told me about them pervert desires, a’ight? He done splaint to me how I could of took the boy while I had susposably run out to the baffroom or either if I got up to stretch my legs, and then done entice him up in the car, carry him over to the plantation, tie him up, be back in church so quick wouldn’t hardly nobody notice. I keep studying on it, boy, it start fin to make sense.”

  “Plus you was getting hungry,” Hank said.

  Maurice nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, sir, boss! High sheriff done told me soon as I tell them everything how he splaint it, he give me barbecue, whitebread, bake beans, ever what I want.”

  Lt. Gooch blew out his breath slowly.

  “Taking a wild, flying guess here,” I said. “You didn’t have a lawyer in there, did you?” I said.

  “Oh, no, ma’am. Sheriff splaint that, too, how I didn’t need me one.”

  “I just bet he did,” Lt. Gooch said.

  We stood quietly for a moment. In the background was the din of prison—blaring radios, yells, grunts, the clang of a door.

  “Son,” Gooch said after a while, “you ever had anybody stick a needle in your arm, take your blood out?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, yessir, I donates blood once a month here at the penitentiary. They gives me two dollars for my account.”

  “Okay, but back before you were arrested. What about then?”

  “Yessir. Well, of course the high sheriff carried me over to the clinic, had a lady take the blood out of me so they could match my DMA to the shirt.”

  “What about before that? Anybody ever get your blood before that?”

  Maurice thought about it for a while. “Matter fact, you know something? It was a man come to my home. Axe me, would I give him a sample.”

  “He just came up, knocked on the door, said he wanted to stick a needle in your arm?”

  “Yessir.”

  “And you let him?”

  Maurice shrugged. “I figured it be a’ight.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t know. Seem like a nice fellow. Cracking off all them jokes, whatnot. Say he from up at the State in Atlanta, doing him a test or something. Driving him a nice new white Ford Crown Victoria, some kind of badge-looking sign on the side. Plus which, he give me thirty-five dollars, cash money.”

  Lt. Gooch looked up in the air for a moment. “This man. What’d he look like?”

  “About medium looking.”

  “Medium looking. We talking about a white man? Black man? Tall, short? What?”

  “Black gentleman. But high complected. And he talk kind of funny, too.”

  “Funny how?”

  “Oh, you know. Kind of white talking.”

  “So a very light-skinned black fellow who talked like he was white. How you know he wasn’t Italian or something?”

  Maurice looked amused. “What kind of question that is? Everybody know white from black.”

  Lt. Gooch looked at me. “What else we need to know?” he said.

  I said, “What about the boy, Maurice? How long did you keep him out in that plantation house?”

  “Round abouts two, three months, how the high sheriff said it.”

  “What did you make the boy do all that time?”

  “I reckon he tied up. Can’t hardly do nothing. Just set around, or whatever.”

  “But the sheriff, he told you about your perverted desires.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Explain that. Explain about your perverted desires and how they relate to this young boy.”

  Maurice looked at me blankly.

  “I want to know exactly what perverted desires you were trying to satisfy. Do you understand what I’m asking you?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I’m asking, did you rape this boy? Did you have sex with him? Did you make him give you a blow job? Did he masturbate you? What?”

  Maurice looked at me like I was crazy in the head. “I don’t like you,” he said angrily. “You pretty, but you got a dadgum dirty mind.”

  “Yeah, but Maurice, see it’s important that we be very specific about—”

  “No!” He stood up, towering over me suddenly, a look of disgust on his face. “I ain’t talking to you no more. I had my pervert desires on him, but I ain’t rape him or nothing! My goodness! Young boy like that! Something wrong with you.”

  Lt. Gooch nodded for me to move away from the bars. I took a couple of steps backward. Gooch stepped forward then, and in a quiet voice said, “Just a couple more things. Okay? Then you can get back to sleeping.”

  Maurice glowered for a moment, then sat down on his cot again. “A’ight.”

  “Suppose it wasn’t you that had done this.”

  Maurice looked puzzled.

  “Just suppose. Imagine it wasn’t you. Was there anybody that had been hanging around Etta Jean’s place before that crime got done, somebody that might have been looking funny at Ronnie? You ever hear anything like that?”

  “Like who you mean?”

  “Anybody.”

  Maurice shrugged.

  “Okay, son,” Lt. Gooch said. “One more question. During all that time, them two or three months you had him out in the plantation house, did you feed that boy regular?”

  Maurice squinted out through the bars at the lieutenant. “Well, I spose I must have.”

  “How come you suppose that?”

  “Well, shucks, I like that little boy. Be a crime, let a little-bitty boy go hungry, now wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Lt. Gooch said. “Yeah, son, I think it would.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  “You still think I shouldn’t have embarrassed that sheriff ?” Lt. Gooch said as we drove back to Atlanta from the Reidsville penitentiary.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I can’t believe it,” Lt. Gooch said. “First time I’ve ever seen you speechless.”

  “You think he coerced that confession.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. Twenty-four hours without food and water, that poor moron would of said he shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, personally caused World War I. I don’t doubt for a minute Sheriff Higganbotham thought he was doing his duty as a Christian and a sworn officer of the peace. Seemed like a good man to me. Problem is, he just didn’t know how to do his job.”

  “They had the DNA,” I said defensively.

  “Yep. They had the DNA.” Then after a pause. “That bloodstain could have gotten on there a lot earlier. Maurice and the kid are horsing around before church, Maurice busts a knuckle on a tree, whatever. There’s your proof.”

  “And the stain would stay in the shirt for two months while the boy’s being held hostage?”

  “I don’t imagine whoever had that boy all that time was worrying a great deal about the poor kid’s personal hygiene. Probably never washed his shirt that whole time.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe.”

&nbs
p; When we got back to Atlanta, we rolled up in front of a tiny white house off of Buford Highway. “This is Jenny Dial’s house,” I said.

  “Mm-hm.”

  “I already talked to her. The Chief knew about it half an hour later. He’s gonna drop the hammer on us if we go in there.”

  “All of a sudden Jenny Dial ain’t so important, huh?”

  I sat in silence.

  “There’s some questions we still need to ask this lady. Stuff you didn’t know to ask a four days ago.”

  I took a deep breath. “Screw it,” I said.

  Tracy Dial answered the door wearing a nightdress. “Sorry,” she said. “I worked late shift, have to sleep during the day.”

  I introduced Lt. Gooch and we came inside.

  “So, anything new?” she said.

  “Just a couple more questions. This van. Is there anything else you can tell me about it?”

  She shrugged. “Just a white van. Nothing suspicious about it.”

  “Ladders on top?” I said. “Logo for a plumber or a landscaper on the side? Anything?”

  “You know, funny you mention that . . .” She frowned. “The reason I didn’t think anything suspicious about that van at the time? It was kind of official looking.”

  “Official how?”

  She thought about it for a while. “Like a police vehicle.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “I can’t say exactly.” She thought about it a minute; then suddenly her eyes widened. “I remember now! There was a thing on the door, like a badge or a seal or something. A circle with some official-looking stuff in the middle.”

  “Did it say ‘police’ on it anywhere?”

  Tracy shook her head. “Nah, nothing like that. Just that badge on the door.”

  Lt. Gooch interrupted with his pet issue. “Okay, but let’s go back before the day she disappeared. Was there anybody suspicious who’d come around before? Like a stranger who talked to her, played around with her?”

  She thought about it for a while, brow furrowed. “You know, there was this cop come around one time. He come by and ast if I’d seen anybody riding some kind of green bicycle. Said this boy down the street had got a bicycle stole from him. A green BMX.” She shrugged. “I didn’t think nothing of it. Seemed like a nice fellow. He gave Jenny a Tootsie Pop. Later on I ast the gal down the street—she’s the one whose boy got him a green BMX bike—I ast her if her boy’d got his bike back, and she said, nobody’d done stole his bike.”

  “You mention this to Sergeant Fairoaks?” Lt. Gooch said.

  “Nah. I mean, it only just come to me. Sergeant Fairoaks, she spent all her time asting me about Larry and my ex-husband anyhow. Plus that fellow was a cop, so I didn’t think—” Her face suddenly went white. “Wait . . . you think that van . . . That it was a cop in there? That . . . Oh, my God.”

  Lt. Gooch said, “I seriously doubt that.”

  “You recall what was on this badge or sign or whatever?” I said. “The one on the van?”

  She shook her head, squinted at the floor. “It was more like a seal than a badge. Like them state vehicles you see sometimes, got the state seal on the side? Department of Transportation, like that.”

  I nodded. “What about a license plate number? Did you get a look at the face of the driver?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “This cop,” I said. “What did he look like?”

  She shrugged. “Just . . . normal.”

  “Normal.”

  “Looked like he’d just got back from the beach, that was about it.”

  “He had a tan?”

  She nodded.

  “Hair color? Eye color?”

  “Brown maybe? I just talked to him for like five minutes.”

  I looked over at Lt. Gooch. “Anything else?”

  He shook his head. We headed back around to the front of the house, Tracy Dial following after us.

  As we were starting to get into the car, she said, “Am I ever gonna see her again?”

  Lt. Gooch said. “We gonna try our best.”

  I slammed my door, rolled down my window.

  “Oh. Also,” Tracy said, as Lt. Gooch started up the car. “There was a bum. Two, three days before Jenny disappeared.”

  “A bum?” I said. “You mean like a homeless person?”

  “Yeah. Hunting through the trash. Larry had to get out there and wave a stick at the sumbitch, make him go away.”

  “What’d he look like?”

  “Big old beard, army coat, dirty, brogans with holes in them. He was, uh . . .” She eyed me briefly, as though I might take offense. “He was black, too.”

  “Y’all got a lot of bums around here?” the lieutenant said, looking thoughtful.

  Tracy shook her head. “Nope. Never seen a one of them before.” She held up her finger for a moment. “Hold on.” She walked back into her house. After a couple of minutes she came back out and handed me a photograph. I looked at the pretty blond child in the picture with a gap in her teeth, and my heart about broke.

  “Is there even a chance?” she said. “Is she dead already?”

  I felt like my heart was about to break for this woman. “We think she’s not the first one,” I said.

  Her eyes widened.

  “If it’s who we think it is?” I said. “He keeps the victims for a while. There’s still hope.”

  “What? But . . .” She looked like she was about to faint. I mean literally.

  Lt. Gooch gunned the engine, and we took off.

  “Me and my big mouth.” I sighed.

  “You said it,” Gooch said. “Not me.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “So that’s it?” I said as we drove away from the little frame house. “Is that why you’re being so quiet about this thing?”

  “Is what it?”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “It’s getting beyond coincidence now. Our guy—if he exists—he’s law enforcement.”

  Lt. Gooch didn’t say anything.

  “All the way back in the Gerald Bokus case, back in Columbus. That detective Nert Clemminger, he said that guy had law-enforcement experience. Remember, that painter or whatever he was? And Evie Marie Prowter’s uncle had the supposed parole officer. And the guy in the white van with the seal or badge on it, down in Bascoe County, who took Maurice’s blood? And over in Walton County, the state trooper who turned out not to exist? Not to mention we’ve got Brunson, the chief of police in La Grange, right there on tape doing the nasty with Lacy Freemont’s mama. Maybe we need to be looking at Chief Brunson.”

  “The guy in the van was black, you may recall. Brunson is white.”

  “You think we got a black perp here? Or white? Or is this a team? We got a whole pederast club, maybe? Or is the whole mysterious-stranger scenario some kind of blind alley?”

  “I think white,” Hank said after a brief pause. “I think he might have a state job. I think he probably travels. But law enforcement, no. Maybe a county extension agent. Maybe somebody with DFACS, or DOT.”

  “Or Corrections? Pardons and Paroles?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t see why you’re ruling out law enforcement.”

  There was a long pause. “I just don’t think he is, that’s all. He doesn’t feel like a cop to me.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No, ‘yeah buts.’ We ain’t pursuing that angle, not till we rule out the other options.”

  We drove back to City Hall East and did paperwork all afternoon. Most people don’t realize it, but half of police work is filling out reports. Every time you do something, you have to document it—otherwise there’s no record for you to use in court. And without records you can use in court, everything you do as a police officer is wasted.

  Around five-thirty Lt. Gooch suddenly stood up. “I’m heading on,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  Gooch had been gone no more than five minutes when the telephone rang. “This is Captain Goodwin,” a man’s voice
said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Captain Goodwin. In the Chief’s office.”

  “Ah. Yes, sir.”

  “The Chief needs to see you.”

  “When, sir?”

  Captain Goodwin sounded annoyed. “Now, obviously.” Then he hung up.

  My heart started beating a little faster. The Chief. I was supposed to have been keeping him apprised of what we were doing. And what had I reported to him? Nothing. And worse, we had gone to see Jenny Dial’s mother again, against his explicit instructions. We were supposed to be working the case of some politician’s brother-in-law. I tried to think of some clever way of finessing the whole thing, but I came up dry. Whatever you wanted to say about the Chief, he was no idiot. He wasn’t going to be put off by the old buck-and-wing.

  I took a deep breath and headed into the dark hallway.

  Chief Diggs was talking on the phone, feet up on his desk, a big grin on his face. He ignored me for while, talking to somebody at length about his golf game over the weekend.

  Finally he hung up and looked at me, a slightly smaller, slightly more ironic version of his usual big smile sitting on his face. He didn’t speak, just looked at me.

  “Look, sir,” I said finally. “I know I was supposed to keep you in the loop. I realize I haven’t reported to you. But we been working real hard lately and I just—”

  The chief held up one long, pale, slim, commanding finger. “Hup! Nope! Oop!” he said. Or something like that: those meaningless little syllables that people use to cut other people off when they’re talking. “You know who that was on the phone?”

  “No sir.”

  “That was His Honor, the mayor of our fair city. You know why he was calling me?”

  “No sir.”

  The little smile grew bigger. “Yeah, yeah, see, what it is, he been on the phone with his close and personal friend, Fulton County Commission Chairperson Mr. Barton C. Millwood. That name ring a bell with you? Hm?”

  “Yes, sir, I know sir, but see—”

  Up came the long, pale, slim finger again. “Woop! Ho! Nup!” His pale, regular features radiated good cheer. “I’m doing the talking here, Detective. I’m doing the talking.” He tapped the phone with his finger. “Uh-huh. The mayor been chatting with Mr. Barton C. Millwood, who been giving him a great, great, great deal of doo-doo about this bond issue. Which has implications for the building of several new educational facilities in certain neighborhoods liable to be hotly contested in the forthcoming primary, yadda yadda, we been through that already. All of which redounds to His Honor’s electability in said primary. Which redounds to the ongoing employment of yours truly, who is, after all, subject to political appointment and not protected by collective-bargaining agreements, civil service unions, etc. etc. etc. And you know what that redounds to?”