“No kidding,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this isn’t the first time I’ve found a murder victim. I guess it’s an occupational hazard for an archaeologist. Every time we put a trowel in the ground, there’s some chance that it’ll uncover a dead body. But this is absolutely the first time I’ve ever dug up somebody who wasn’t dead yet. I’ll remember the look in her eyes for as long as I live.”
Walt didn’t speak. There was horror on his face and Faye was sorry she’d put it there.
“I’ve said too much,” she said. “I’m sorry. We should focus on Kali.”
“I’m sorry I was hard on you.”
“I wouldn’t like someone who thought my people were charity cases, but I’m not like that.”
“I can see that now.”
He looked away, maybe to avoid meeting her eyes or maybe to watch McDaniel, Laneer, and Sylvia, standing at the front door and trying to coax a frightened little girl out of her lonely house.
“There are a lot of people out here who want to help you, Kali,” McDaniel was saying in a surprisingly gentle tone.
Sylvia reached into an apron pocket and pulled out a handful of candy wrapped in colorful waxed paper. She held it up to the window, and said, “Come see. I have your favorite.”
The blinds stirred, but no face appeared. The door stayed locked.
Laneer reached past Sylvia and tapped on the windowpane. “Kali, honey. You need to let us in. I know how much food you ain’t got in that house. You can’t lock yourself up in there forever without starving. Come out and I’ll make you a tomato sandwich just the way you like it. Nice soft white bread and lots of mayonnaise.”
Maybe it was the promise of candy, but Faye really believed it was the thought of Laneer’s tomato sandwich that did the trick. This was a child who liked real food well enough to hike miles for it, when she could have been eating ice cream sandwiches at home.
At long last, Faye heard the deadbolt slide open and the screech of yet another overpainted and out-of-square door. Kali stood in the open doorway, but she didn’t step out and she didn’t speak.
The minister got down on a knee next to her and said, “Kali, sweetheart, I came to tell you about your mama. She…well, she went to be with God this morning. I was with her, and her last thought was for you.”
“Somebody killed her, right?” The girl’s voice was rough-edged, but there were no tears in it, not yet. “She didn’t just go.”
The minister blinked at her like a deer that had stepped into the headlights of a Mack truck.
“And also, I don’t think God took my mama to be with him and left me here all by myself. Why would you say that?”
Her eyes darted from face to face, quickly leaving Laneer’s and Sylvia’s, as if their pain was more than she could take. They rested no more than a second on McDaniel’s and then the minister’s. Why should they? She didn’t know them at all.
They lingered on Walt’s face for more than a moment, and Faye though maybe this was the person Kali would choose to trust. After all, he was her schoolteacher, the person who had been her day-to-day parent for an entire school year. He was also the man who made sure she got two juice boxes when she wanted them, plus a weekend backpack full of food, so that she wouldn’t go hungry or thirsty. But still Kali didn’t speak. After Kali finished studying Walt, her eyes traveled on until they stopped on Faye’s face.
Reaching out a hand to grab Faye’s wrist, Kali said, “I wanna know exactly what happened to my mama. You’re the one that can tell me.”
Laneer and Sylvia took a step toward the girl and the front door where she stood, apparently presuming that they would be sitting down together with Kali and Faye to discuss Frida’s death, but Kali shook her head.
She pointed to Faye. “Just you. I don’t wanna talk to nobody else.”
Faye sat on an old brown couch, next to the window. At her left elbow, there was a single end table holding a brass lamp, its plating pitted and corroded. The carpet under her feet was rental-house tan. The walls were painted rental-house beige. The only color in the room came from a few toys lying in the corner and a few movie magazines stacked on the floor beside the couch.
She knew Laneer was standing on the other side of the window glass, straining to hear. They were all out there, behind the venetian blinds. If she pushed aside those blinds, or leaned down to look beneath them, she would see all five of the people on the porch peering in at her. But she didn’t really need to look. She knew they were there, and so did Kali.
“What happened to my mama?”
“Kali, why are you asking me? There’s a policeman out there who’s working really hard to find out what happened to your mother. He doesn’t know it all, but he’s trying to find out. He’s the one who can help you.”
Kali said nothing, but Faye could read between the lines. There was one excellent reason the child might think Faye knew the truth about her mother’s death. She would think that, if she had seen Faye find her.
“I’ve told Detective McDaniel all I know, Kali. Do you have anything to tell him?”
“Only stupid people talk to the police.”
Faye wondered who had convinced the little girl of this. In Kali’s world, it could have been anybody. And in Kali’s world, the notion that only stupid people talk to the police might even have been true.
“You still ain’t told me what happened. I ain’t got all day, Faye. That policeman won’t leave us by ourselves forever.”
Kali was right. Still, Faye stalled. How much should she say? The girl deserved to know something, but there was no way a ten-year-old should hear the unvarnished truth: “Your mother was beaten and buried alive. She must have felt a lot of pain and she must have been terrified. I don’t know how long she suffered, but it was too long.”
Instead of unloading all that truth, Faye kept stalling. “I don’t know everything that happened.”
The stern little face offered no mercy. “Didn’t say you did. You can still tell me what you know.”
Faye caved, a little. “She was beaten up pretty bad. Whoever did it buried her and left her for dead. I found her and I called the police. That’s the story as I know it.”
Kali was looking at her with a face that said, “I know there’s more to it.” And, again, Faye believed that this meant that Kali had been there, so she decided to go on the offensive, but just a little. How aggressively should a bereaved child be questioned?
Faye’s answer was “Not aggressively at all,” but she wasn’t sure what Detective McDaniel’s answer would be. She really wanted to get Kali to tell what she knew without suffering through an official interrogation that might be too harsh for a bereaved child. She decided to push her a little, gently.
“I found the ice cream you left behind and I know you were there. What did you see?”
She got no answer but silence. Silence, a steely pair of black eyes, and two lips, firmly pressed together.
“Did you see somebody hurt your mother?”
Silence.
“Did you see somebody bury your mother?”
Silence again, but there was no “No.”
“Did you see who it was? Do you know who did it?”
First silence, but then a tiny shake of the head and four words. “No. It was dark.”
“Are you saying that you were there, but you didn’t see the person who attacked your mother? Or that you did see, but didn’t know who it was?”
Try as Faye might, she couldn’t get the little girl to speak another word.
After a time spent sitting with the girl, face-to-face and silent, Faye heard a firm double-knock. McDaniel’s voice came through the door. “Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth, it’s me. We’ve got a social worker here. She wants to talk to Kali.”
Faye reached out to brush a loose curl back from the child’s brow. “This socia
l worker is somebody who knows more than I do about how to help you. I’m going to step out so she can talk to you in private.”
Kali was shaking her head at Faye’s suggestion that being alone with the social worker might help in any way, but Faye backed out the door and closed it behind her. The arrival of the social worker brought with it the looming shadow of the foster care system, and Faye was having flashbacks. Her daughter Amande had come so close to being swallowed up by that bureaucracy. Faye was still stunned sometimes to realize that the state of Louisiana had let Amande go, releasing her to Faye and Joe, who were not relatives and who lived two states away.
Perhaps she wasn’t being fair to state child welfare systems. Louisiana had been wise enough to give Amande to her. She could only hope that Tennessee would be wise enough to do the right thing for Kali, although Faye couldn’t swear that a scenario that was right for Kali even existed. The best thing for everybody was for Faye to stick to archaeology and let the social worker do what she’d been trained to do.
Thinking about the dark days when she and Joe weren’t sure Amande would ever be theirs, Faye needed very much to talk to her husband. Actually, she needed to see him, and thank God, there was a device in her pocket that would have been futuristic not so very many years before. She pulled out her phone and put in a video call to Joe.
Joe looked like he’d just gotten out of the shower, with his long hair, almost black, hanging around his strong-jawed Muscogee Creek face in wet tangles. He was saying, “Are you out of your mind?” Actually, he was kind of yelling it. Almost.
Joe’s voice hurt her ear, and that said something about how upset he was. He never raised his voice. His next words underscored her husband’s troubled state of mind.
“Get in your car and drive it home. I mean it, Faye.”
Joe never told her what to do. Well, not too often. To be fair, he knew exactly how well it usually went for him when he tried it, but he also was not dictatorial by nature. Not even close. He was the gentlest soul Faye knew.
“Our company has a contract to fulfill,” she reminded him. “With the state of Tennessee? Remember it? Do you want me to renege on that contract? If I do, we’ll never work for the state of Tennessee again. And maybe not for any other government agencies. Those people talk to each other, Joe. You know that. Every time we compete for a job, they make us list our previous government contracts, on pain of perjury, so they can check our references. I can’t just walk away.”
“There won’t be any more jobs if you get yourself killed. If all the government agencies in the world decide they won’t work with us because you quit a job that was too damn dangerous, then that’s the way it is. There was a murder, Faye.”
“And it had nothing to do with this job.”
Faye knew she was tiptoeing out on a flimsy limb with that statement, argumentatively speaking, because the dying woman had been found on the very land she’d been hired to study. Still, the job had nothing to do with Frida, and Frida had nothing to do with the job.
“I’m not stupid, Faye. You went to work this morning. First week on the job, I might add. You found a bleeding, dying woman, buried alive. Don’t tell me it didn’t have nothing to do with this job.” Joe still wasn’t quite yelling, but she could tell he wanted to.
“Fair enough. But remember that this morning was the last time for me to be here working alone. Jeremiah is bringing his crew of student workers. When McDaniel opens up the job site, hopefully soon, I’ll be surrounded by young, strong people. Truly, Joe. I’ll be okay.”
“In the daytime, you’ll be surrounded by people. What about at night?”
Faye was really not looking forward to spending her first night after finding Frida alone in her cabin. Joe knew exactly which of her buttons to push, but she pretended that he was wrong.
“Why should I be afraid? I’ll still be surrounded by all those young, strong, enthusiastic young people. That’s the best part of this job, remember? The client is putting us up in a block of state park cabins, for free. Fully furnished. Full kitchens. Jeremiah’s planning nightly campfires. I’ve been in my beautiful cabin all week and it’s like being on vacation.”
“You live on an island with a beach and three boats. I build you nightly campfires. How is this better?”
“Um, it’s not? But I’m bringing in a paycheck. And you know we need that check.”
“It scares me to think of you being alone there.”
“Everybody I’ve met has been very nice.” They’ve also been scared to death of all the men the poor dead woman ever dated or married, but never mind that.
“You haven’t met everybody. And also, did you forget that I can see you? And where you are?”
Faye turned around and looked behind her. The two houses that were serving as the backdrop for her video chat both sported heavy bars on every window. The tall man walking in front of them wore a tank top exposing arms that were fully inked. His tattoos had the simple, brutalistic look of ink gotten in prison. His tall mohawk swayed in the wind. She didn’t believe in judging people by the way they looked, but she was pretty sure this guy would still be scary if he were tattooless, mohawk-less, and dressed for Sunday School.
“Does your cabin have bars like that on the windows?”
“It has a deadbolt, just like any hotel room, and I use it. I’ll be careful, Joe. I promise.”
She hung up the phone and went looking for McDaniel. She hated to betray Kali’s trust, but it was time to tell him everything the little girl had said. The detective needed all the help he could get to find the killer who took her mother away from her.
Chapter Fourteen
“So you’re telling me that Kali was a witness. To the killing? To the burial? Both? Was she there when you found her mother?”
Walt Walker and Reverend Atkinson had left. Faye and McDaniel were standing in the street in front of Laneer’s house, giving the bereaved family a little time to regroup, but McDaniel was making good use of the time by grilling Faye. She could tell that the hot afternoon sun was bothering him.
McDaniel had the sandy-haired, florid look of a man who had spent too much time at a golf course. Or on the back of a tractor. Or at a bar. It was hard to tell.
“I want to be clear about this,” Faye said. “She didn’t tell me anything that would give me the answers to your questions. I don’t even know for sure that she was there. All she did was ask me to tell her what happened to her mother. I think it’s significant that she picked me, that’s all. Why would she do that unless she knew I was the one who found Frida, and how could she know that unless she was there? And also, don’t forget the ice cream sandwich.”
The sweater she’d borrowed from Sylvia was scratchy, and Frida’s pants were tight. Faye wanted nothing more than to go back to her cabin, douse herself with shower water, and put on clothes that belonged to her.
McDaniel rubbed at the pink skin on his face and made it pinker. “None of that means anything, not really, especially not the damn ice cream sandwich that could’ve been left by the killer, for all we know. A half-decent defense attorney would pick everything you just said to shreds. Maybe she picked you because she thought you were a pushover who’d be more likely to answer her questions without asking any of your own. Maybe she picked you because she doesn’t trust police, and she thinks Laneer and Sylvia are too old to be of much use. Maybe she just likes you. Did you think of that? Maybe she feels like she can trust you.”
He stared at Faye just long enough to make her uncomfortable. Finally, she said, “And?”
“And nothing. I was just thinking that you’re the kind of person that people trust at first sight. Steady eyes. Quiet voice. And you ask the right questions.”
This was a far cry from the borderline suspicion that McDaniel had directed her way just hours before. She may have made a bad first impression on him, but his second impression must have been ama
zing. Her first impression of him had not changed. He seemed competent and hardworking, but she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.
“She can’t possibly mistrust Laneer,” she said. “Nor Sylvia. They obviously love that child and she knows it.”
“Sure, but imagine yourself growing up surrounded by people whose whole lives have been hard times. Maybe they’ll be able to pay this month’s bills, easy. Or maybe the car will bust a belt, and fixing it won’t leave enough money to pay the light bill. The car takes your mom to work, so the money goes to fix it and the lights get cut off. Even while you all sat together in the dark, you’d know they loved you, but—” He spread his hands, palms up.
“But everything in your life would feel insecure.” Faye tried to imagine her childhood without the rock-solid stability of her mother and grandmother, not to mention their ability to always find a way to pay the bills. She couldn’t.
“Exactly. The whole world is an insecure place for a child who’s dependent on somebody like Frida—sweet, but maybe not real savvy about the way the world works. Now, just look at yourself. You’ve never once had your phone cut off for nonpayment, have you?”
Faye had spent some time living off the grid, but for all the years she’d had bills to pay, she’d been able to pay them, so she gave him a truthful answer. “No.”
“And it shows.”
“How can my credit rating possibly show?”
He spread his hands again. “I can’t explain how, but it does. I agree with you. It’s significant that Kali chose you to ask about her mother. Still, I don’t want to read too much into it.” He ran a hand through the stubble of his buzz cut hair. “It may just be that Kali saw a woman of color, full of the kind of confidence that she doesn’t see a whole lot, and she instinctively reached out to you for help.”
Faye felt suddenly guilty for having always been able to cover her phone bill. This guilt made no sense at all.
“Is there anything else I need to know, Dr. Longchamp-Mantooth?”
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