Death's Echoes

by Penny Mickelbury

  And if they couldn’t have Cassie back—which they most certainly could not—then she would have to do. “Think Tank, Bobby. Tell the others. I’ll meet you there at five o’clock. But I insist you get some rest first.”

  “Thanks, Boss,” he said in so low a voice it was almost a whisper, and he went back into the hospital leaving Gianna to face the crowd of reporters.

  They started yelling questions as soon as she came into view and she raised her hands to quiet them—and they quieted. “I really and truly and honestly have nothing new to tell you,” she said. “If and when there is anything new to report, you’ll get it from the Public Affairs Office, and I promise there is no reason or intent to withhold information from you.”

  “Why was Ian Williams in handcuffs?” one of the reporters called out.

  Well, damn. That certainly was information she wanted to withhold.

  “It’s not illegal to wear a white coat and a stethoscope, is it?” another one of the reporters yelled out.

  “You could probably get a better answer from the hospital PIO, but from where I stand, wearing a white coat and stethoscope into a barely conscious patient’s room is, if not illegal, certainly unprofessional. Which one of you would do the same thing?” And without waiting to hear a response she turned and went inside to look for a quiet corner to have a quiet, if brief, conversation with Mimi. Not to talk hatred and murder—the exact opposite—and the loving, soothing words, as they always did, helped to calm and focus her. For the same reason, depleted as she was mentally, physically and spiritually, she knew calling the team meeting in the Think Tank was the right thing to do. While they were as depleted as she was, they were also bewildered and confused. Their body language and facial expressions begged for an explanation, for help understanding what had just happened to them. Gianna wasn’t that much older than most of them—Cassie had been the youngest—but she had experienced sudden, violent, tragic loss, and while that experience didn’t lessen the shock to the system, it did—it sometimes could—provide a way to manage it. That was to be her mission this evening and, given Eric’s red-rimmed eyes, she’d be pretty much on her own.

  As usual, they were seated around the long table with her at the head. She stood up and walked to the front of the room. Their eyes followed her, hopeful expectation blooming in every pair of them. “I wish I could say something to make what happened to Cassie make sense,” she said, and watched the expectation dim. “But it doesn’t make sense. There’s no sense to stupid, ugly, violent hatred, and that’s what killed Cassie, and you all know there’s no sense to be found in it. If there was, you wouldn’t have the jobs you have and I wouldn’t be your boss because I wouldn’t have the job I have.”

  They looked numb. Shocked. Then as her words took hold, the pain took over, followed by the tears. And that’s when they began to manage it. Tim broke first. He and Cassie had been best friends, and he was just beginning to get over the trauma of her beating at the hands of the neo-Nazi skinhead, the one that Tim had gone rogue to find. He could have been fired and arrested for what he had done but Gianna protected him, making certain that Detective Jim Dudley received credit for the bust. Cassie had lived with Tim while she healed, as she realized that her memory of the beating probably would never return, nor would the sight in her left eye. Tim had been there for her, and now she was gone and he didn’t know what to do. So he wept like a baby, and it was Bobby Gilliam—big, tough, macho Bobby Gilliam—who wrapped his arms around Tim McCreedy and held him and let him cry.

  Then Alice Long lost it. Smart, gorgeous, tough Alice Long who ran marathons for fun, who had more experience as a street cop than the rest of them combined—with the exception of Bobby—who came to Hate Crimes first on loan and then as the eventual replacement for Cassie; Alice, who wanted permanent assignment to the HCU more than she wanted to come in first in the Marine Corps Marathon and who would give it up in a second if it would return Cassie to them. Alice sagged and sobbed and Kenny Chang caught her. She tried to pull away but Linda Lopez piled on, wedging Alice between them, and it was several seconds before they fully understood her tear-stained words: “I’msorry, I’msorry, I’msorry,” she wailed over and over, as if any one of them could or would blame her for the loss of their Cassie.

  Bobby was crying with Tim, and Linda and Kenny were crying with Alice, and Gianna let them, waiting until they cried themselves dry. And when they did she got a roll of paper towels from the supply cabinet, and a couple of bottles of water, and rolled off bunches of towels, soaked them, and handed them out. She did this until the roll was empty, until all eyes were dried and noses blown. And as if it were timed and planned, a loud knock sounded on the door and before anyone could open it, it swung open and two uniformed patrol women entered carrying boxes and bags of food. From the Bayou.

  “A lady parked out front asked us to bring this up here,” one of the officers said, K. WILSON, according to her name tag. “She said to ask for Lieutenant Maglione?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Maglione. Was she driving a white Audi convertible?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the other officer, M.A. STEVENSON, replied.

  “Ah, ma’am? Lieutenant? We know who you are, who all of you are, and we just wanted to say that we’re very sorry for your loss,” Officer Wilson said, as she and Officer Stevenson started to back their way out of the room.

  “Thank you,” Gianna said, thinking that the two officers probably were only a couple of years younger than Cassie. And then they were surrounded by the HCU team shaking their hands and thanking them for their words of condolence, and Gianna realized that they hadn’t received many of those kind words, not from the rank-and-file officers.

  Wilson and Stevenson left, and Gianna opened the Bayou bags and the scents sprung out like a genie from a magic lantern. There were large containers of gumbo and of red beans and rice, and there were shrimp po’ boys—big ones—for everyone. Eric handed out bowls and plates and forks and spoons, and the feasting began. They ate every bite of the food Mimi very generously had delivered, and all of them asked Gianna several times to make sure to thank her for them.

  “How about I give you her number and you can thank her yourselves?” a tetchy Boss snapped, raising a grin on all their faces.

  Tim stood up and compressed his six-foot-four-inch muscle-bound body into what he called his high queen posture to deliver, in high-camp, mincing caricature, “Lieutenant, ma’am, I’d just loooove to have that sexy Ms. Patterson’s private telephone number.”

  The laughter started, but before it could really pick up steam Alice deadpanned, in a perfect imitation of Cassie at her driest, “I wouldn’t mind having that number myself.” And then they all were howling with laughter, Gianna included, though she knew full well that Alice was only half-teasing and that she already had Mimi’s telephone number.

  “Let’s clean up,” Gianna said through her laughter, not needing to remind them of the mouse problem they had despite the claim by the maintenance department that there were no more mice. They knew better. “And somebody take these bags down to the dumpster,” she added as she sprayed the room with pine-scented freshener to eliminate any mouse temptation.

  Mimi had included coffee, tea, and soda and everybody had something to drink when the door flew open without a knock and the Chief blew in. “Sit down, sit down,” he said, waving them back down as he began his customary pacing about the room. “I know there’s no point in telling you all to go home. I don’t feel much like going home, either, but try to stay focused on the positive, and yes, there are positives: We have the murdering scumbags in custody and your Cassie Ali managed to take down two of ’em. Cut short their evildoing ways.” He looked at them, met every pair of eyes. “Don’t let your hurt and anger steal these positives from you.” He turned toward the door, then turned back. “You were right, Maglione. She could have qualified at the range with sight in only one eye. Two shots to the head to both the bastards,” he said, and left them as quickly as he’d ar
rived, having put a huge dent in their sadness.

  Another knock at the door and Eric’s “come in” overrode Gianna’s “what the hell!” She shot Eric a look of thanks when Lt. Andy Page, followed by the members of his Anti-Terror Task Force, entered with armloads of pizza, followed by Detective Jim Dudley with armloads of beer. There was lots of hugging and back-slapping and Gianna felt a real sense of validation: These cops were here to pay homage, not just to another cop, but specifically to Cassandra Ali of the Hate Crimes Unit.

  The cops of HCU and ATTF didn’t really know each other, nor did their lieutenants, so while this gathering was friendly and spirited, there was a standoffish quality to it as the officers took tentative steps to get to know each other. Gianna did, however, know and like Jim Dudley and their greeting was both genuinely warm and sadly nostalgic. “How’re you holding up, my friend?”

  “I’ve got people depending on me, Jim, so I’m keeping it together. But I’d love to be able to go out to the woods and howl at the moon.”

  He gave her an understanding pat on the back. “I saw the Chief in the hallway, invited him to come back for pizza and beer but, as usual, he’s moving at a hundred miles an hour. Makes me want to take up boxing.” A mid-weight Golden Gloves boxer in his youth, the Chief regularly sparred with men half his age—and held his own according to those who knew.

  “Did he see the beer?”

  Dudley nodded. “Yeah he did, though he pretended not to.”

  “He’d never admit it out loud but Cassie was a favorite of his, too.”

  “I admired the hell outta that kid. I wish all young cops were like her.”

  Andy Page approached them in time to hear that last comment. “That’s what I keep hearing about her. I sure wish I’d known her.” He looked across the room at his own team. “And I wish to hell I had one like her.”

  Gianna looked toward Andy Page’s team, too: eight of them, two women, none appearing as young as Cassie had been and, surprisingly, all appeared to be white. Given the makeup of the D.C. Police Department, it seemed to Gianna that it would be almost impossible to put together an all-white unit—unless, of course, that’s what the head of that unit wanted. Gianna gave Page a speculative look, then told him if he wasn’t careful all the pizza would be gone before he could get a slice, and he hurried to the table where all the pizza boxes were open. She didn’t expect that any of her people would want to eat again after all they’d just eaten, but every one of them had a slice and a beer. She turned back to Jim Dudley. “What do you know about Andy Page?”

  He shrugged. “Just what I hear but nothing firsthand. Like you, he’s a lot younger than I am.”

  “You putting me in the same box with Page?”

  “Not hardly! You’re real police, Maglione. I’m not so sure about Page.” He gave her a speculative look. “You notice how homogeneous his team is?”

  Gianna laughed out loud, and a couple of her own not-so-homogeneous team stole a glance at her. “You do have a way with words, Detective. Let’s go get a beer, why don’t we?”

  He followed her to the pizza and beer with a final sotto voce comment: “I’m surprised the Chief let him get away with that.” Gianna was thinking the same thing.

  She opened a beer that she didn’t really want, but turned down the pizza. She’d be full for a week after the food Mimi had sent. It must be nerves and adrenaline, she thought, that allowed the rest of them to eat. She mingled, introducing herself to the ATTF team, thanking them for their takedown of the killers, accepting what felt like true condolences for Cassie, and confirming their homogeneous nature. Then she noticed two things: that one of the ATTF women, a very pretty green-eyed brunette, was exchanging surreptitious glances with Alice Long; and that the HUC team were talking among themselves and the ATTF team were talking among themselves. Eric Ashby and Jim Dudley were also talking with each other so she joined Andy Page, separating him from his team. The feeling of undefined unease she had about ATTF was replaced with the strong sense she had about her own team: They were going to be all right once they cleared the hurdle of Cassie’s funeral.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Mimi had begged—literally—not to be assigned to cover Cassie Ali’s funeral. Her editors wanted her to stay on the hate-based murders of the Muslim women, but Mimi wanted to be inside the mosque for the funeral service and the imam had banned reporters and cameras. Mimi had known Cassandra Ali. Not well enough to call her a friend but well enough to like her. However, her real reason for wanting to be inside the mosque was because that’s where Gianna was, Gianna who was gutted by the murder of her young protégé and in more pain than she was able to express. Of course that wasn’t saying much. Gianna didn’t express her innermost feelings on a good day without a lot of pulling and prodding, which Mimi had learned how and when to do—and when not to—and now was not the time to talk to Gianna about releasing her feelings about Cassie’s murder. She was too focused on being stoic and strong for the other members of the Hate Crimes Unit. She was their boss and had to behave like it. Still, Mimi wanted to be inside the mosque. Wanted Gianna to see her there, and when she did, know what kind of effort Mimi had put forth to be present. A reporter like M. Montgomery Patterson didn’t relinquish a big story easily.

  Though Mimi understood why the imam didn’t want the distraction that reporters and cameras too often were at solemn events, she also wished that the world could see what she was seeing: the level of honor and respect being paid by such a diverse population to a twenty-five-year-old cop who was Black, female, lesbian, Muslim. She knew that the television cameras had recorded the crowd entering the mosque: the casket, borne by three Muslim men on one side and three uniformed D.C. cops on the other—Cassie’s comrades in the Hate Crimes Unit—as it exited the hearse and entered the mosque; the two dozen uniformed Washington, D.C., police officers, led by the Chief, two assistant chiefs, two commanders, a captain, and two lieutenants (Gianna being one), sergeants, detectives and rank-and-file officers; the dozen lesbians, Cassie’s friends, led by the Phillips sisters, all of their heads covered with shimmering silk scarves; a dozen members of Black Men on Guard, known by citizens, reporters, and cops alike as B-Moggers—young Muslim men who dressed like the Black Panthers of a previous generation and, like them, who saw it as their mission to guard and protect their community. In their minds that meant from white people, an attitude that kept them on the radar of the police department in general, and the HCU in particular. A tenuous truce between cops and Moggers was born when the men came to Officer Ali’s aid the time she was attacked and beaten by neo-Nazi skinheads. That truce evaporated when, at the insistence of Cassie’s parents, cops were chosen over Moggers to help carry their daughter’s casket. Nevertheless, the Moggers showed up in force to pay their respects to a woman they admired and respected despite her choice of profession and sexual preference.

  If Mimi were the reporter this day she’d write that the mosque, though not ancient by any stretch of the imagination, was nevertheless stately and beautiful in its Moorish design and appearance, that those within were not traditionally Muslim by any stretch of the imagination but that the intensity of the emotion displayed on their faces transcended religious belief. Though they did not know the words of the Muslim prayers, she’d write, they fully understood the intent.

  At the end of the service only the Muslim men carried the casket to the hearse and only the Muslims followed it to the cemetery, as was the wish of the imam. The non-Muslims, who were grateful to have been allowed to participate at all, especially those who were Cassie’s colleagues, did not protest. Many of the more traditional and conservative members of the mosque hadn’t wanted them there anyway, but Cassie Ali’s parents were proud of who their daughter was and what she did and were unwilling to conceal or minimize it, and those who knew her were grateful.

  Most of the crowd outside the mosque following the service dispersed quickly: the B-Moggers to the cemetery, everyone else to work. A handful remained to greet fri
ends and colleagues. Mimi hugged Marlene Jefferson, aka Baby Doll, who was almost unrecognizable in a peach-colored ensemble that covered most of her from head to toe. Mimi probably was the only person there who knew that in her former life, Baby had worked the streets of downtown D.C. in so few clothes that a sightless person could have guessed her profession. “You look fabulous, Baby,” Mimi whispered.

  “I feel stupid,” Baby whispered back, “and I ain’t never wearing these clothes again!”

  “But you wore them today to honor your friend, just like Darlene did,” Mimi said, and realized, as she studied the emerald- green ensemble worn by Darlene Phillips, that Dee most likely had purchased both. Her respect for the woman increased a notch.

  Baby’s face clouded and crumpled. “You really think she was my friend? Why would she be?”

  “For the same reason I’m your friend, Marlene Jefferson, and if anybody wants to know, I’m proud to be.” And she was, but Marlene—Baby Doll—had a long way to travel to reach self-confidence. At least she was on the road.

  Baby grabbed the ends of the silk scarf that was falling from her head and wiped her face as she rushed away from Mimi to join a group of friends, most of whom Mimi had met and interviewed for a series of stories about lesbians known as Doms and Ags, women who in the past were called butches. Mimi waved at them and they waved back. Then she saw Gianna at about the same time Dee Phillips saw her, but Dee got to her before she could get to Gianna.

  “Ms. Patterson, I need to speak with you, please. May I make an appointment—”

  “You don’t need an appointment to speak with me, Ms. Phillips. Tell me when and where you’d like to talk and I’ll be there.”

  Dee seemed to think for a moment. “My office at the club? Ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ll be there,” Mimi said. Then, “that is a gorgeous dress,” she said of the dove-gray ensemble the woman wore, and she walked away leaving Dee Phillips not only speechless but a little bit breathless as well.