Dark Eyes

by William Richter

  A Person In Need of Supervision warrant meant that the girl had an active file with Social Services.

  A dirty red messenger bag lay several feet away from the body, open, its contents strewn about the ground; there were a few pairs of underwear that looked like dirty laundry, a striped woolen hat, cigarettes, and some scattered pieces of individually wrapped candy.

  “The bag,” said Greer, “it was open that way when the body was first discovered? Everything spilled out like that?”

  “Yes, sir. Money and valuables, if she had any, are gone.”

  Greer squatted down and examined the girl’s filthy fingernails, her cracked boots, her torn leggings. There was dirt behind her ears, at least a week old. The clothes hadn’t been washed in at least a month. Atley could see several old scars on her forehead and across the bridge of her nose. He pushed the girl’s sleeves up and found more scars and hardened contusions on the outside of her forearms—old defensive wounds. Plenty of rich kids in New York dressed like punked-out street urchins, studied in their griminess and disrepair, but this girl’s body and clothes told a story of authentic hardship and, somewhere in her history, physical abuse.

  “This girl is street,” said Greer, looking up at Carlin. “You ever see her around?”

  “Maybe,” answered Carlin dubiously, “but it’s hard to say for sure. A lot of them hang along Riverside Park—they all kind of look the same in their tweaker uniforms.”

  Greer put on a rubber glove and reached for the girl’s mouth, pulling her upper lip back to see her teeth; they had begun to decay from smoking meth.

  “Tweaker,” Carlin repeated his diagnosis.

  With his gloved hand, Greer closed the girl’s eyes, then rose to his feet. He scanned the immediate area, hoping to discover any detail out of the ordinary. There was random garbage scattered throughout the baseball diamond and the surrounding woods, plus the tracks of countless runners and bicycles and Park Police horses passing over every inch of the grounds.

  “We’ll do the canvass when the rest from Homicide show up,” Greer said.

  “You going to notify in person, Detective?”

  “She’s local?” Greer asked, surprised. He took the ID’s evidence bag from Carlin and confirmed it: the given address was on West 84th, half a block from Amsterdam Avenue. Was he wrong about the girl being street? If the address was legit, she had died not half a mile from home. Greer took out his cell phone, selected the camera function, and held the phone close to the girl’s devastated face. The flash ignited brightly as the camera recorded the image.

  Atley Greer badged his way past the doorman at the fashionable 84th Street address and headed toward an empty elevator car that stood open in the lobby. He pressed the button for the 27th floor, assuming that the apartment number on the dead girl’s ID was correct. As the elevator doors slowly closed him in, he saw the doorman picking up the house phone at the front desk, calling ahead to alert the Stonemans that a cop was on the way.

  At the 27th floor, Atley trekked a long hallway of plush, cream-colored carpet to reach the apartment at the northeast corner of the building. The apartment door was already open. An attractive, well-tended woman a few years younger than Atley—thirty-eight, maybe?—waited there in anticipation of the detective’s arrival, her hands clutched tightly in front of her. Her facial expression was a familiar one to any cop; over the years, this woman had met many police officers at her door, and of course they had always been bearers of bad news. There was a sense of resignation to Mrs. Stoneman, a determination to steel herself against the next, latest wave of heartbreak.

  “Mrs. Stoneman?”

  “Yes,” the woman answered. “What did she do now?”

  “I’m Detective Greer, ma’am. 20th Precinct. Could I have a moment of your time?”

  “Come in.”

  The woman’s apartment was tastefully furnished with a mix of modern and antique furniture, fine carpets, and original artwork placed throughout. On the living room wall was a large, professionally done black-and-white portrait of Mrs. Stoneman—several years younger—with her arms wrapped around a beautiful young girl: preteen, blond, smiling happily.

  Atley heard sounds from the direction of the kitchen. Someone was moving around in there.

  “Is your husband at home, Mrs. Stoneman?”

  “Not for nearly six years, Detective. I’m divorced. My ex-husband, Jason, lives in Virginia.”

  Atley was sorry to hear that—death notifications to a single parent were particularly rough, and it fell to the notifying officer to be a source of comfort. He also wondered now who the person in the kitchen was.

  “And your daughter Wallis …”

  “We call her Wally.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  Claire Stoneman hesitated, looking ashamed.

  “Three and a half weeks ago. She came on a Tuesday afternoon, for a shower and to do some laundry. I fed her lunch and we spoke for a while. She left after three hours or so.”

  She counts time, thought Atley. Days and weeks, even hours—waiting for her daughter to return. Shit.

  “What did the two of you talk about?”

  “These days, there are very few topics that don’t result in arguments between us,” she answered. “We keep the discussion light, or we stay quiet with each other.”

  “And as far as you know, her living arrangements are … what?”

  “I hate to imagine. I’ve offered many alternatives to her, none of which she will accept. She will never take more than a few dollars from me, however much I insist. She’s on her own.”

  “At sixteen.”

  “If you’re suggesting that I have failed her, Detective, you’re right.”

  “You have no thoughts about where she’s been staying or who she’s been with?”

  “No, but she hasn’t been alone, thankfully. Apparently she has a few friends in … in her same situation.” Claire paused for a moment. “I used to look for her. After she ran away. For the first few months, I would go out walking the streets to look for her and I saw her once, near here. She hadn’t run very far, it turns out. She was with others. Two boys and two other girls, I think. I wanted to call out to her, but when I tried, no sound came out. Isn’t that strange?”

  Greer and the woman stood in silence for a moment, she wrestling with regret, he dreading the next phase of the interview.

  “What has Wally done now?” Claire Stoneman repeated her question from earlier.

  Atley could see that her demeanor had changed; the woman was even more anxious now, as if sensing from Atley’s behavior that this notification would be different from the others. More serious—perhaps more final.

  A woman slightly younger than Mrs. Stoneman now appeared in the doorway to the kitchen—domestic help, from the look of it, with cropped hard hair and dressed in something like a maid’s outfit, pale green with an apron. She did not speak, but held her ground at the threshold as if waiting for instructions from Claire.

  “Mrs. Stoneman,” Atley said, “this is a personal family matter, so perhaps …”

  Claire gleaned his meaning.

  “No,” she said, and looked to the woman, imploring. “Johanna, please stay.”

  Johanna dutifully stepped over and stood by Claire as if this was not the first time she had been asked to fulfill this role. How sad, Atley thought—tragic even—for Claire Stoneman to be so completely alone in the world that she had to rely on her cleaning lady for emotional support.

  “Okay,” Greer said, and took a breath. “Mrs. Stoneman, this morning a body was discovered on the southern end of Riverside Park—”

  “Oh God …” Claire Stoneman reached out toward Johanna, clutching the woman’s arm as Atley continued.

  “The body was of a young girl, around your daughter’s age, fitting her description and carrying your daughter’s identification on her person.”

  “No …”

  Claire’s agony was quiet, turned inward upon itse
lf. She made a choking, gasping sound, which she fiercely struggled to repress. She let go of Johanna and clenched her hands into white, bloodless fists, pressing them hard into her abdomen as if punishing herself. Johanna, visibly moved by Claire Stoneman’s anguish, wrapped the grieving woman in her arms and held tight.

  Greer reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. From the menu he selected the “photo gallery” command and the young girl’s death mask appeared there immediately, battered and swollen and bloody. Greer realized then that he did not have it in him to present this sickening image to Claire Stoneman.

  “I want to see her,” Claire finally said.

  “It’s really not necessary, Mrs. Stoneman,” said Greer. “Your daughter has a file. It’s acceptable to use fingerprints to identify a victim.”

  “Victim?” She looked up at Greer, searching him, imagining for the first time the specific cause of her daughter’s death.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Stoneman. I’m a homicide detective.”

  The mother turned away from Greer, hung her head, and wept.

  Atley drove Claire Stoneman to the Kings County Hospital morgue in Brooklyn and escorted her to an observation room, where she could view her daughter’s remains on a closed circuit video monitor. Once Clare grasped the situation, however, she insisted on seeing the body in person.

  “Fine,” the coroner’s assistant agreed with an indifferent shrug.

  Greer led the mother to the gurney, gave her a moment to gather herself, then pulled the blue sheet back to reveal the dead girl. She paused, her own features in a rigor of grief, then leaned in for a closer look at the girl’s battered face, wiped clean of blood and debris. The mother paused there, inches from the body, for a long moment. Mrs. Stoneman reached out and gently stroked the girl’s hair, sobbing silently.

  “It’s not fair,” she whispered to the dead girl.

  “Mrs. Stoneman—”

  Claire turned away from the body and faced Atley, not bothering to wipe away the tears streaking down her face. “This is not my daughter,” she said unequivocally. “This is not Wally.”

  TWO

  Wally Stoneman lay on her back, waking up slowly. Morning light spilled into the huge room, illuminating the colorful mosaic on the domed ceiling fifteen feet above her: a battle scene from the Trojan War. The room was surprisingly warm, even though the heat vents had been locked shut and the night outside had been cold; the single wool blanket of Wally’s bedroll had been enough. She guessed that the building’s boiler room must be located in the basement level just one floor below what had once been the lobby of a mercantile bank; the marble floors of the room were always a little warm to the touch.

  For her private sleeping spot, Wally had chosen the catwalk along the north wall that overlooked the bank floor. The high ground gave her privacy, plus a ringside seat for the battle scene depicted on the ceiling mosaic: there were plumed helmets and tooled breastplates, charging stallions, and, of course, heroes atop their horses, poised to fight.

  Someone climbed the stairs behind her and approached along the catwalk. She could tell it was Tevin by the squeaking of his sneakers; he was less physically mature than other seventeen-year-old boys she knew, just five foot eleven, but with ungovernable size-thirteen feet that constantly scraped the ground as he walked. He wore loose army-surplus cargo pants—always—and a heavy fleece hoodie in gray.

  Tevin sat down beside Wally, and she sat up in her blanket. They leaned together against the stone wall of the walkway, gazing sleepily down through the railing to the ground floor below, devoid of any furniture now except for the row of empty teller’s windows along the south wall.

  “Morning.” Tevin yawned, his sleepy eyes still a little droopy on his handsome face. The hair on Tevin’s head was shaved close on the side, with the longer top fashioned into a frohawk that—along with the smooth, cappuccino-hued skin tone of his mixed-race parentage—gave him an exotic, otherworldly look. He had long, beautiful eyelashes, almost girlish in a way that Tevin definitely was not, and the detail was something that always gave Wally some pleasure to notice.

  “Hey,” said Wally, smiling to herself. Having Tevin next to her was always a good start to the day.

  He looked up and studied the mural on the ceiling.

  “Have you figured out yet what those guys on horses have to do with banking, or New York in general?”

  “I have not,” Wally said. “But I like it.”

  “Yeah. Not everything needs a reason.”

  Wally gave him a look. “That is so wise, Tev. Thank you.”

  “Eat me,” he answered through another yawn.

  The two of them sat quietly as some busy sounds echoed up from what used to be the bank’s employee break room.

  “Ella found some hot chocolate in one of the cabinets,” Tevin explained. “You only need water to make it. You just put it in the microwave. It’s pretty grody inside but still works.”

  “Good.”

  Now more sounds rose up from downstairs: Ella giggling, cooing. Jake laughing in response, quietly—then nothing. It was often like this in the morning between Jake and Ella—if they could steal a few moments alone—and frequently at night, of course. The two of them were in some version of love, breathless and grasping. Wally didn’t mind; it was their business, and it seemed to make them happy. But the closeness of the couple sometimes left Wally and Tevin feeling awkward with each other, on the outside looking in, confused about the lingering tension between the two of them and what to do about it. Wally and Tevin were … what? Friends and family. But … something more, maybe. Something yet to be explored.

  “What are we doing today?” Tevin asked.

  “Taking in the machines,” said Wally.

  “To the smoke shop?”

  “Yep.”

  Tevin was not enthusiastic. His childhood years in Harlem, some of them spent within a block or two of the 131st Street Smoke Shop, had consisted of one domestic nightmare after another, some perpetrated by his own family and some by the city’s Department of Social Services. Harlem was bad memories for him and nothing else.

  “You don’t need to come,” said Wally. “I’m fine with Jake and Ella.”

  “No, I’m going.” But Tevin seemed distracted.

  “What?” Wally asked.

  “We should try to find Sophie,” he finally said.

  Wally sighed, impatient. “No.”

  “It’s already two weeks now,” said Tevin.

  “We can’t trust her,” said Wally. “We can hope she gets her shit together, Tev, but she can’t come back with us.”

  “What if it was me?” He forced the issue. “What if I was the one in trouble?”

  “We’d help.”

  “Why me and not her?”

  “Because you’ve earned it,” Wally answered. “We didn’t let go of Sophie, Tevin. She let go of us.”

  Before heading uptown, Wally and Ella went through their regular makeup ritual. Standing side by side in front of the bathroom mirror, they began with fingernail polish, layering dark purple gloss without removing the previous layer, creating a chipped and trashy effect that—weirdly—made them feel out of control but in control, all at the same time.

  The two girls were almost physical opposites. Wally was fair-skinned with short blond hair and a prominent bone structure that came with her Russian heritage. Ella, in contrast, was petite and delicate-featured, an Amerasian with sleek black hair that cascaded down below her narrow shoulders. Their clothing styles had merged over time, though, to the point where they shared almost identical emo/scene kid mash-up ensembles: multiple torn leggings under tartan skirts or cutoff shorts, plus layered tops in whatever clashing materials and colors they could throw together from the bargain bins at the back of the Salvation Army shop, twenty-five cents per item or free, depending on which manager was working the floor. When the clothes got too dirty, they usually just tossed them and went back to the bins for fresh pieces. It was cheaper than
laundry soap.

  Once their nails were done, the girls started in on their eyes. They brushed a dense, crusty layer of mascara on their eyelashes, the application complete only when it was so thick that their lashes would hold no more and residue black crumbs flaked down onto the skin just below their eyes. They looked into the mirror, appraising the results—vampy, tragic, morning after. They never got bored of this routine.

  “Twins,” declared Ella, satisfied. “Princesses of the dark.”

  Jake and Tevin were mostly patient with the girls’ primping process, waiting without complaint until the girls emerged from the bathroom. All four of them pitched in to move two large cardboard boxes out through the back door—the emergency exit—and into the narrow service walkway that stood between their building and the next. They loaded the boxes into a beat-up D’Agostino’s shopping cart that they had hidden in the walkway behind one of the Dumpsters. As with all their exits and entries into the building, this process had to be carried out quickly, and only when they were certain no one was watching. The empty bank had turned out to be a good squat for Wally and her crew, and they didn’t want to spoil it by alerting any meddlesome neighbors to their presence.

  “It’s a long way to the smoke shop,” said Tevin as they moved west on 87th Street. “We could take a minivan cab.”

  “No problem,” Wally said. “We’re every cabbie’s dream fare.”

  “Here’s how we do it,” said Tevin with a sly grin. “The rest of us hide, with the boxes and all, and you stand out there by yourself, flashing your legs and whatnot. That’ll get ’em to stop.”

  “You can go ahead and stop thinkin’ about my whatnot,” Wally said, and Tevin laughed.