Bad Intent

by Wendy Hornsby

  “Poop-chuted?” I said.

  “Think about it.” He set the clippings aside.

  “Oh,” I said when I got it. Mike should have come with a glossary of cop-speak. “Was he in jail when you arrested him?”

  “No. He was out terrorizing the neighborhood again by the time we bagged him. It was a tough case to make; no one would ID him when he was out loose. Everyone was afraid of him, of his whole damn family—especially the kids. I told you, we helped him decide to move on.”

  “You want to explain how you helped him decide?”

  Mike yawned. “Aren’t you tired yet?”

  “No,” I said. “I just love to listen to you talk. I could stay up all night.”

  He looked down at me. “What is this? You have a recorder hidden somewhere?”

  “Sho’, you right,” I said in my best imitation of Mike.

  “Let me see.” He yanked off the covers and grabbed the front of my robe—his robe—and started to peel it off me. “I know you’ve got a bug in here somewhere. Give it up before this gets ugly.”

  “Sometimes I like it ugly,” I said, laughing, trying to hang on to the robe.

  “You called it.” His stiff little mustache tickled the inside of my thighs as he searched. And probed. I just threw off the robe and gave him access.

  Mike is a genius with his hands and his tongue—expertise that comes from vast experience. After all of the wild and crazy things we have done with and to each other, he can still amaze me, make my eyes roll back in my head. But that night, though Mike was in peak form, I couldn’t clear my mind enough to be of much help. After a few minutes he figured something was wrong and raised himself. He looked at me, his face framed between my knees.

  “Where did I lose you?” he asked.

  “I’m confused.” I reached out for a handful of his hair. “I’m trying to put things together. I have two piles of information that should flow together, but they simply do not seem to exist on the same plane of truth. They will not merge.”

  “Someone lie to you?”

  “You.” I sat up to look him square on, feeling angry and confused. “I know you lie to me all the time about things you’ve done on the job—you pretty things up so I won’t judge you.”

  “That isn’t lying. If you haven’t been on the streets, there’s no way you can understand what goes down.”

  “Maybe,” I said. I had backed up from him, out of his zone of magnetism. I tried to, anyway. As mad as I was, I still wanted to hold him. Realizing that made me even angrier. “Maybe not. Right now I need you to tell me the truth. The names of the little girl witnesses? They wouldn’t be LaShonda DeBevis and Hanna Rhodes, would they?”

  He sighed.

  “You’re using me again, Mike. I don’t like the way that feels.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You better explain.”

  He sat naked in front of me, looking shamed. And gorgeous. I think that if he hadn’t been naked I would have been a whole lot angrier. Mike doesn’t leave himself vulnerable, ever. If he could sit there completely exposed, then he felt safe with me. That is, whatever he’d done wasn’t so bad it would make me turn on him.

  “Just spill it, Mike,” I said, sitting cross-legged in front of him, our knees touching.

  “I’m under orders,” he said. “I can’t talk to anyone who was involved in the case.”

  I nodded. “The department is reinvestigating for you, but you can’t play.”

  “Not exactly reinvestigating. The department is going over procedure, making sure we did things right the first time. That’s all. But I want more. The D.A. and this asshole evangelical private eye, Leroy Burgess, are trying to get a convicted murderer out of prison on a technicality. The city doesn’t give a shit if he gets out, as long as we don’t come off looking too bad. Doesn’t anyone but me care that he’s guilty?”

  “You want me to talk to the witnesses?”

  “In the course of this project you have going, if you were to talk to them, that would be good.”

  “What is it you want me to find out from them?”

  “Just if the girls are okay. If you can find them and they’re okay, that’s enough for me.”

  “No message?”

  “No. Except maybe watch out. The D.A. said he has new affidavits from them saying they were coerced all those years ago. If they were ever coerced, it was when they signed those new affidavits. This whole thing really stinks, Mag. I worry that LaShonda and Hanna might be in some trouble.”

  “I’ll do what I can. Just don’t lie to me anymore.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You already said that.”

  “I don’t know what else to say. Problem is, I’m used to taking care of my own problems. I’m not good at asking for help, but I can’t get inside alone this time. Since you were in the neighborhood, I hoped maybe you’d knock on a few doors for me.”

  “You have to say, please Maggie, give me a hand.”

  “I just did.”

  “You’re some tough guy, Flint,” I said, softened by his anguish. “You’ve got skin like a baby, but you’re some tough guy.”

  He tried to get up an attitude. “I don’t have skin like a baby.”

  “Yes you do,” I said, nuzzling his abdomen. “And dimples on your vanilla ice cream butt.”

  “Ass,” he said, breaking into a smile, getting hard again. “And no, I don’t.”

  But he does.

  Chapter 9

  The telephone rang deep in the small hours of the night. Startled out of my sleep, I made a quick accounting of my near and dear as I rose to the surface of wakefulness: Michael and Casey were both safely tucked into bed, Mike was wrapped around me. Panic abated.

  Mike reached through the dark and picked up the phone, muttered something, then tapped me with the receiver.

  “It’s for you,” he said, and fell face down into his pillow.

  I managed, “Hello?” expecting to hear my mother or father with dire news.

  “Miss MacGowen? It’s me, Etta Harkness. You ax me to tell you if I know anything about Hanna Rhodes?”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “Hanna just got herself shot. Up on Hunnerd-twelve. Baby Boy say she still lyin’ up there on the sidewalk. The ambulance only just got there.”

  “Where is this?”

  “Hunnerd-twelve and Wilmington.”

  “Is she badly hurt?”

  Etta coughed. “She dead.”

  I was awake, but I felt disoriented, still unaccustomed to waking up in Mike’s bedroom. I reached over and gave his shoulder a nudge. “Etta says Hanna Rhodes is dead.”

  Mike took the phone from me and grilled Etta for a few minutes. He said good-bye and turned on the light to dial Southeast Division. He asked for the sergeant on duty and grilled him, too. When he finally hung up, he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the wall.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Don’t know. Southeast only got the shooting call twenty minutes ago.”

  I slipped out of the warm bed and shuffled, yawning, toward the closet.

  “Going somewhere?” Mike asked.

  “Down to 112th Street and Wilmington. I never got a chance to interview Hanna. Now it’s too late.”

  He had that deep crease between his brows. “Is Guido going with you?”

  “You aren’t coming?” I stopped and looked up at him dumbly.

  “I can’t go. I want to, but I can’t. Department orders.”

  “And you aren’t going to argue about me going?”

  “Would it do any good?”

  The answer was no, but I still wanted some argument. Even with Guido, I doubted I would feel safe about going back into Southeast. I was going, but I wanted Mike with me. I said, “What does this mean, you’re tired of me and sending me down there is easier than hiring a hit man?”

  “I’ll never get tired of you, baby.” He hugged me as a matter of punctuation. “I�
��m hiring Guido to go with you. And don’t worry, I’ll have Southeast Division watching for you.”

  “You call Guido. He loves to roll out in the middle of the night.”

  When I came back from the bathroom, more or less dressed and alert, Mike was lifting a hard leather gun case from the top shelf of the closet. He unlocked it and took out a little .38 with a two-inch barrel and the hammer filed off. He inspected it, loaded five rounds into the cylinder, and offered it to me.

  I wouldn’t accept it. “I’m not licensed to carry, and that filed-off hammer is strictly illegal.”

  “If you get into a position where you have to use this baby, the legality of it will be the last thing we worry about. It’s powerful, and you know how to use it. I filed off the hammer when I was working undercover so I could conceal it and still pull it out without snagging on everything. It’s the best thing for you to carry.” He pulled up the back of my shirt and tucked the little revolver into my belt, with the barrel lying along my spine.

  He kept talking as if I was embarking on some expedition into the war zone. “Guido’s on his way over. You’re going to take my car because it has a phone. When you get to the scene, pull in among the black and whites as close as you can. And don’t go anywhere on your own. Don’t stop for coffee, don’t walk off looking for a bathroom. Stay in tight at all times. Got it? Stay tight.”

  “My God, you’re bossy,” I said, adjusting the revolver in my belt. “I can take care of myself.”

  “And another thing,” he said.

  “Shut up, Mike.”

  “Get me a camera shot of everyone there. Try to get cars, too.”

  I smiled, looking at the misery on his face. “I know you’re being so agreeable about me going only because it’s next best to you going yourself. Right now, though, cupcake, it’s time for you to back off. You have to trust me. I’ll try not to get blown away. I’ll find out everything I can. In the meantime, don’t work yourself into a coronary.”

  He pulled me against him. “You’re such a smartass.”

  “Half right,” I said. “The part about smart.”

  I went out by the garage to wait for Guido because I didn’t want him to knock on the door and awaken Michael. I did a lot of yawning; in police parlance it was 0300—as they say it, oh-three-hundred hours. Or, as they say in civilian parlance, too fucking early.

  A light breeze stirred the early morning air, but it was still warm. The driveway and the stucco walls radiated heat, so I stepped onto a patch of lawn where it was cooler.

  Mike came outside with a Thermos of coffee just as Guido pulled up. We helped Guido transfer equipment from his car to Mike’s Blazer.

  “One thing you need to keep in mind, Guido,” Mike said, handing over his car keys. “If anything happens to Maggie, I’ll have to kill you.”

  “Fair enough.” Guido palmed the keys. “Save me the effort of doing it myself. Be too dull to live without her.”

  “My heroes,” I said, and climbed into the passenger seat. First thing, Guido handed me a loaded 9mm Smith and Wesson automatic. Feeling like Annie Oakley, or maybe Che Guevara, I took out the clip, zipped it inside my bag, and stowed the pistol under my seat. Then I did something essential for survival: I poured us both some coffee.

  Wilmington Avenue is one block west of Grape Street, nine blocks south of the Jordan Downs projects. All of the police activity was on 112th, halfway between Wilmington and Grape. We followed the coroner’s van around the corner and parked close beside it among the police cars.

  The crime scene was defined by portable floodlights and yellow police tape: an irregular Z beginning on the porch of a small woodframe house, stretching diagonally across the street, encompassing some sidewalk on the other side, and ending at the fence around an elementary school playground. Roughly down the center of this no-entry zone, in a jagged, drunken trajectory, was a trail of bloody footprints on the pavement, punctuated here and there by full hand prints and circles I suspected showed where the victim had fallen to her knees a few times. The trail ended on the porch of the house, where Hanna Rhodes lay under a pink flowered sheet.

  Guido, always hyper when he sees a cinematic scene, hopped out with a videocamera at the ready, and began taping Hanna’s route from the school to the house. There were enough people in uniform around that I decided he was sufficiently chaperoned to go off without me. I had my own agenda.

  It was nearly four when we got there, but we beat the two detectives in suits—a man-woman team that had come to take over. Right away, they went to the sergeant in charge of the crime scene to get the first report. I wanted to hear it. With my little tape recorder running in my pocket, and a 35mm camera in my hand, I sidled up beside the detectives.

  The sergeant’s nameplate said Chan.

  “We got the call at 0215 hours,” Sergeant Chan said. “The resident, Mrs. Kennedy, heard two shots fired, heard a car drive off, then a few minutes later heard someone on her porch calling for help. She looked out and saw Hanna Rhodes collapsed where she is now. Mrs. Kennedy called 911 before venturing outside. The victim expired prior to the arrival of officers or paramedics at 0221 hours. Paramedics applied CPR, but there was no victim response. They ceased efforts and declared the victim dead at approximately 0230 hours. Paramedics observed a through and through gunshot wound to the chest area of the victim, and a superficial, defensive-type wound to her right forearm.”

  “Uh huh.” The woman detective had been taking notes. “Mrs. Kennedy see the shooter, see the car?”

  Sergeant Chan shook his head. He glanced at me, but didn’t question why I was there. No one did.

  The neighbors, in various forms of nightclothes, clustered around the edges of the scene, knowing to stay back. There was some curious chatter among them, now and then some laughter. My race, or my attire—boots instead of bunny slippers—maybe the fact I had come by car and moved about with a purpose and a camera, I don’t what it was, but I was set apart from the neighbors. Without challenge, I had free access to the crime scene.

  I walked up to the porch, leaned over the police tape, and took a few frames of Hanna’s covered body, the pool of blood seeping from under her sheet and the pile of clothes the paramedics had left in the coagulating mess: yellow stretch pants, a striped tube top with a black hole through it, a cheap white cotton jacket.

  Guido followed the coroner’s people up the porch steps, recording their movements as they photographed Hanna. Any fragile evidence that might have been on her person or on the porch would have been destroyed by the paramedics. So, while they were meticulous, they were not delicate. Hanna’s shrouded corpse lay in the middle of their activity, no more honored than the pile of clothes beside her.

  When I zoomed in on Guido’s face and snapped a few frames, the woman detective decided to notice me.

  “You with the coroner?” she asked. She had a pen poised over a metal clipboard.

  Before I had figured out what to say, I felt a firm hand grip my elbow. I turned to find one of Mike’s former partners, Hector Melendez, with his detective shield showing over his jacket pocket.

  “Hey, good-lookin’,” he said to me, and winked. The woman detective still had her pen poised. To her he said, “Excuse us,” and walked me back toward the sidewalk.

  Mike often talked about Melendez and their adventures together on uniform patrol as rookie cops, and in bars after hours, then, later, when they had families, working part-time security jobs to earn enough to cover their first mortgage payments. I knew all I needed to know about Melendez: Mike trusted him.

  Melendez had a tall, spare frame that carried no excess; a distance runner, like Mike. I thought he looked awfully sharp for a middle-of-the-night roll-out, loafers with a spit polish, crisp shirt, silk tie carefully knotted, a professorial tweed jacket. Certainly a few cuts above the generic cheap suits favored by most of his colleagues.

  He took me around to the far side of his plain city car. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

&nb
sp; “Never mind,” Melendez said. He tucked a large manila envelope under my arm. “Don’t open this now. Give it to Mike. I’m going to hang around for a while. You need anything, whistle.”

  Melendez walked away into the shadows. I knew Mike had called him out to keep an eye on me. I didn’t mind being watched over, and my brief conversation with him seemed to have been sufficient to establish my credentials with the detectives.

  Various official types arrived in groups, most of them forensics lab people. They were all, like me, sleepy-eyed and casually dressed. I stayed out of their way.

  Another black and white car pulled up. The driver officer was a big woman, looked like a power lifter. She and her partner could have passed for twins in the inadequate light. They were about the same height and weight, and the body armor under their shirts gave them nearly the same chest; flattened hers, padded his. The standard police equipment hanging from their Sam Browne belts made them walk with the same heavy, wide-armed gait every uniformed cop has. I found something very sexy about their androgyny and lifted my camera to capture them.

  They had escorted to the scene a painfully thin, scantily attired young woman. She looked like a hooker, but she wasn’t under arrest. At least, she wasn’t handcuffed. Guido, with his videocamera taping, went straight to the newcomers, leading the detectives. I managed to maneuver myself in beside him.

  “Get the officers with the girl,” I said to Guido. “They look good, don’t they? Mr. and Mrs. Cerberus guarding the gates to hell. Or, in this case, guarding one tiny flower of the night.”

  The woman detective conducted the field interview. “What is your name?” she asked the young woman.

  “Gloria Griffin.” Very straightforward. This flower had been through police questioning before.

  “What can you tell us about what happened to Hanna Rhodes?”

  Looking straight into Guido’s lens, and without much prompting, this is the story Gloria Griffin told:

  “Me and Hanna been partying at a rock house on Hickory Street. We were there, off and on, for three days. She said someone was looking for her and she was laying low, you know, staying off the streets a while.”