Land of Shadows

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  As I started toward the cash register with my Twinkies and soda, Napoleon Crase shot from behind the potato chips stand. He grabbed Tori’s arm and shouted, “I finally caught you.” His face was pockmarked and oily. His Afro tilted left.

  Tori cried out and pulled away from him. She shrieked, “Let me go,” as two packets of Starbursts fell from beneath her shirt. “Lulu, help me!”

  Terrified, I dropped my snacks and screamed. Then, I wet my jeans.

  Napoleon Crase sneered at me, and growled, “You better get on, you little bitch.”

  I dashed out of the store. I didn’t even stop to explain to Golden and Kesha what had just happened. I ran ten blocks, passed Howell’s Bakery, the Laundromat, and the YMCA. I ran against red lights, dodged cars and buses, ignored the world and the people in it. I ran up the hill until I had reached my apartment.

  Mom came home two hours later, nerves already jangled from teaching kids who hadn’t paid attention during the regular school year. I rushed into her arms and told her everything. Leaving the apartment. Meeting up with Kesha and Golden. Buying chips and soda. Tori stealing and being caught. Leaving Tori behind and running home.

  After screaming “What? What?” and having me tell the story two more times, Mom raced toward the front door, wild-eyed. “I’m gonna drive around. Go back to the store and see if I can find her. You stay here just in case she comes back.” With that, she ran down the stairs, forgetting to close the door behind her.

  For an hour, I stood at the living room window, staring out at our apartment complex, hoping that I’d see my sister climbing out of a car or strolling past the mailboxes. For an hour, I prayed and tugged my ear and held my breath.

  Mom eventually returned. Alone. “Did she call?”

  I bit my lip and shook my head.

  Her shoulders slumped. Her purse slid off her arm and landed in the middle of the living room. Then, she trudged to the kitchen, grabbed the telephone receiver from its base, and called 911.

  An hour later, Detective Tommy Peet was seated on our couch, taking my statement about all that had happened. “Someone needs to stay by the phone in case she calls,” he instructed. “Don’t worry. We’ll find her. Girls like her disappear like this all the time. She’s probably with a boyfriend or something.” He left our apartment with a school picture of my sister in his pocket.

  For dinner that night, Mom tried to broil round steak, but it burned. I ate two bowls of Cap’n Crunch instead. Then, I helped her fold laundry as we watched a rerun of 227. At every commercial break, Mom would smile at me and say, “It’ll be okay,” even though the phone still had not rang.

  Tori didn’t come home that night.

  When questioned, Napoleon Crase said that Tori had been stealing from him for months and that he had ignored it. But today, he couldn’t let it slide, so he caught her. He threatened to call the cops, but she begged and cried and pleaded with him not to. She paid for her stolen candy and left the store very much alive. But he couldn’t explain the abandoned pack of Starbursts near the Dumpster behind his store. He could not explain Tori’s wristwatch—her last gift from our father—found on the asphalt beneath his Cadillac. Nor could he explain the single white Nike Huarache, women’s size 6, also found near the Dumpster, seemingly pristine if not for that perfect drop of blood.

  26

  At home, the damp air smelled of salt and kelp, and my skin tingled from the cold. I lingered at the open garage door. So still. So quiet. Parked cars filled the streets—everyone was home tonight. A dark-colored truck with no plates had pulled into the last open spot a few condos down from mine. I wouldn’t have noticed it, but cigarette smoke wafted from the driver’s-side tinted window toward me. The driver didn’t leave the truck, and even though I couldn’t see the face, I sensed him looking in my direction. As I stood there staring, the truck pulled back out of its space, U-turned, and rolled south, away from me and into the fog.

  Inside, I stored my guns in the closet safe and took a long hot shower. Ten minutes later, I retreated to the sun deck with my iPad, a glass of wine, and a shipping box from Amazon.

  It was almost 9:30, and a small band in the courtyard a block away was playing Bob Marley’s “Stir It Up.” The thump of bass and drums drifted on the air along with the smells of night-blooming jasmine. A heron with unblemished white feathers alighted on the grassy island across the street, in search of a last-minute snack even though the sun had already dropped behind the Pacific.

  I was off the clock but homicide detectives never stopped working—even though we tried to separate home life from casework. We lay in bed, our minds not sleeping. We sat in Adirondack chairs, our minds far from the crossword puzzle or magazine on our laps. We thought about relaxing but our thoughts quickly turned to that missing puzzle piece—who did it?

  I didn’t come out to the sun deck to think about Monique Darson and I had intentionally left her diary on my desk at work so that I wouldn’t be tempted to read it during my downtime. But I grabbed my iPad and started swiping around the dead girl’s Facebook page.

  Monique Darson knew her killer—I was convinced of that. Who was he? One of her 2,133 Facebook “friends”?

  If I visited every profile, would I find the man behind the green-highlighted telephone number?

  Had he left one of countless messages of grief that now filled her Wall?

  We miss you!

  RIP Baby Girl.

  Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.

  Monique’s last status update had been posted a little after ten on Tuesday morning, several hours before her death. Rise shine give God the glory!! She had also posted a picture of her and Butter wearing matching head scarves and similar sleepy expressions.

  I tapped on Photos and found more than twenty-five hundred pictures in her cyber albums.

  “Geez,” I said, rubbing my jaw, “where do I even start?”

  At the pictures of Monique in a choir robe? Or maybe the picture taken in front of a Red Lobster. In it, she wore a gray pantsuit and stood beside a young man, tagged as Von Neeley, who wore a bow tie and a three-piece suit.

  And then, there was the picture of Monique sitting in the bed of a glittery red El Camino, licking Derek Hester’s shoulder tattoo while he threw up gang signs. And another picture of Monique hoisting a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, faded and sloppy, with Derek behind her, his hands groping her seventeen-year-old breasts.

  Monique Darson had more lives than Garfield.

  But then, didn’t we all?

  I returned to her Wall.

  Relationship: It’s Complicated.

  It was always complicated.

  There was a back-and-forth about that status change with a girl named Renata Reese.

  Number 1 or Number 2? Renata had typed.

  Number 7, Monique had answered. Got me a big baller. LOL

  ???

  LOL!!!

  :(Plz?????

  I said its compliated. ROTFLMAO.

  Im calling U RIGHT NOW!!!!

  Monique had been tagged in a picture of seven black girls, their ghetto booties straining against the denim of their skinny jeans, hands on hips, Miracle Bras working wonders. Two Ed-Hardy-T-shirt-wearing males stood behind them, fingers in some salute that who-the-hell-knows what it was supposed to represent.

  Poseurs trying to be hard.

  “Let Derek and his BPS homies see you doing that,” I muttered.

  Whatchu claimin’, fool?

  Ladera Heights, nigga. 90056.

  Pop-pop-pop-pop.

  I clicked off the iPad and slumped in my chair. “Enough.” I reached over to the side table for my wineglass and took a long gulp of 2007 Sequoia Grove cab. The band had switched to Earth, Wind & Fire and “That’s the Way of the World.” I grabbed the Amazon box from the table and tore it open. The packing slip said that Lena had sent me this book.

  Impostress by Lisa Jackson. On the cover, there was a blonde in a Princess Leia–s
tyle dress, looking into the distance. There was a castle in a foggy background, and a glowing … lily pad?

  Exactly what I needed.

  One hundred pages later, I tossed the book on the deck and pulled myself out of that chair. I glanced at the clock on my phone—almost ten thirty—then found Greg’s hotel phone number in the recent calls directory.

  A woman answered.

  I paused, then said, “Is this Room 3133?”

  She said, “Yes. Is this room service?”

  She sounded young, Japanese.

  I squeezed shut my eyes as the Crazies started to claw their way in. “Is Greg Norton there?”

  “Yes. Hold on.”

  I had started rocking in the chair, chewing my thumbnail, tugging at my silver hoop earring.

  Greg came on the line.

  “Who was that?” I asked him, hot as Satan’s skin.

  He paused—this was not room service. “Who was who?” He paused again, then said, “Oh. No one. What’s up? I was just about to call you.”

  I knew No One. She had been with him that time in New York. She was different from Just a Friend in Toronto.

  “What’s No One’s name?” I asked.

  Greg paused a second too long. “Michiko. I told you about her.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “She’s just a friend.”

  Ah. There she was again. Just a friend. Like Angie.

  “Michiko Yurikami,” he said quickly, attempting to sound casual but coming off as cagey. “I know I’ve mentioned her.”

  “She work for M80?”

  “No. She … She designs purses. Whatever. How’s the case going?”

  I closed my eyes and gripped the phone tighter. I confessed that Monique Darson’s case had injected me with a renewed sense of purpose.

  “I know she reminds you of Tori,” he said, “but she isn’t. Remember that.”

  And then, we talked about lie detector tests, Lakers season tickets, and the leaking showerhead. I swiped my eyes, expecting my fingers to be wet with tears. But I wasn’t crying. Why wasn’t I crying? I sat there, dry-eyed, trying to figure that out, listening to my husband lie and pretend that we were okay. I sat there as anger instead of sadness poisoned my heart, as the smell of kelp and jasmine curled around me, as the band played on.

  27

  It is almost midnight and even the lights in Stevie’s and Treyanna’s house are dark. Renata glances at the clock on her cell phone again, sucks her teeth, then says, “I am so stupid.”

  She told Big Jay just yesterday that she was more than a booty call. And he had said, “You right, you right,” like he did every time. But nothing changed. She hadn’t changed because here she was, driving to see him this late at night.

  If it walk like a booty call, if it smells like a booty call …

  She climbs into the Taurus and shivers.

  Two days ago, Jalen dumped all of the milk from his sippy cup into the backseat, and now the car smells sour.

  “Just one more stink,” she mutters, shoving the key into the ignition. But she doesn’t turn. Not yet. She usually whispers a prayer before she turns the key. Lord, please let it start this time.

  Tonight, though, she pauses.

  If she wants Big Jay to treat her right, then she has to respect herself first. No more late-night booty calls, then getting tossed out of his bed afterward, kicked to the curb an hour after she arrived. She deserves better, especially now. Jalen deserves better, too. And if Big Jay doesn’t understand that, then she needs to be ghost.

  She stares out the windshield, at her pink house down the block. She and Monie used to jump double Dutch in the front yard. Sit beneath that big magnolia tree with bags of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. They would lick their red-stained fingers and talk about boys and complain about their mothers. The yard is dark now, but silver television light shines in Momma’s bedroom window. Momma had pretended to sleep as Renata crept past the bedroom door. Jalen was asleep in bed, next to his grandmother. He acted more like Momma’s son than Renata’s.

  Why hadn’t Momma stopped her? Why hadn’t she said, “Big Jay ain’t gave you nothing except a baby. He ain’t good for nothing else.” She said those words more than she said “the” and “and.”

  For Renata, the baby had been enough. Jalen was just two years old but he already knew how to spell his name. And he looked just like his daddy, with those wheat-colored eyes and those thick cow eyelashes and the freckles … She loves Big Jay’s freckles, and the times that he lets her stay in his bed while he sleeps, she counts those rust-colored spots.

  Jalen will never know his godmother. Renata will show him pictures of Monie, but that ain’t the same as Monie being there. She is alone now, friendless, and sadness sits in her belly like an anchor, pulling her deeper and deeper into the darkness.

  A tear slips down her cheek. Her heart—the part that remains—hurts. Her breathing hasn’t been the same since …

  “What the hell am I doing right now?” she whispers. She is not Cinderella, and a pumpkin is more reliable than her fifteen-year-old Ford. And Big Jay sure as hell ain’t Prince Charming. But here she is, freshly showered and shaved, sitting in her car, hand on the keys, not turning, not going anywhere.

  The world blurs as tears flood her eyes. “Oh, Monie,” she gasps.

  Tomorrow. She will tell the detective working on her friend’s case everything she knows. She’ll tell that detective about Von and Todd and—

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Renata startles at the rapping on the driver’s-side window. She dries her face on her jacket sleeve and peers through the fogging glass. “Oh, hey!” She unlocks the door and rubs her hands together as she waits for her friend to join her.

  God has answered the prayer she hasn’t prayed. He knew that she was lonely, that she needed comfort and would attempt to find that comfort in the wrong place, in the wrong arms. And so He has sent the angel now sitting beside her.

  No longer alone, Renata exhales with relief. “You scared me! You don’t know how happy—”

  The rear door opens and now the Devil sits in the backseat of the Taurus. The gun, the one pointed at the spot above Renata’s ear, makes her swallow her words. Her underarms prickle and beads of sweat pop on her nose. She moves her mouth but can only say, “Why?”

  And she thinks of Jalen and his rust-colored freckles and she wishes she had given him a bath instead of letting Momma—

  Friday, June 21

  28

  She sits on the couch and pretends to watch people her age auditioning for a dance competition. But she can’t focus. And even though she wears one of his most comfortable dress shirts—Egyptian cotton, high thread count, the softest material in the world—she is far from relaxed.

  He mutters to himself in the bathroom.

  A razor blade scrapes against glass.

  She closes her eyes and tries to block those sounds.

  Scratching. Muttering. Scratching …

  And she has to pee but she doesn’t want to step into that bathroom.

  Her mind races—nothing makes sense anymore.

  He had tried to explain but his words started to slam and melt into each other until they turned into stew.

  Lately, physically, he seems … not there. His arms and fingers jerk and jab a lot at times. He’ll be eating something, eggs for breakfast, and the fork would fly that-a-way, sending yolk into the air. And sometimes he moves really slowly, as though he would die if he wiggled a toe. As though his bones would shatter if he walked like a regular person. His speech slurs now and his eyes glaze—and it isn’t because of the coke, at least not all the time. And “Lorraine”? Who is she and why does he keep calling her by that name?

  Something is wrong.

  The door of the medicine cabinet slams shut. A second later, he lurches into the living room holding his mirror filled with white. At least he’s moving quicker. He collapses next to her on the couch, being careful not to spill. He slips the mirror onto the coffe
e table.

  She watches him but says nothing. Her bladder pushes against her belly—she really has to go, but the bathroom … He threw up and like always, he’s left it for her to clean. She jams her hands beneath her butt and takes slow, steady breaths.

  He smells sick. Sweet, but not a good, cinnamon-roll kinda sweet. More like a piece of meat inside of him is rotting.

  He touches her thigh.

  She bristles. Did he notice her flinch?

  He bends over the mirror and snorts a line. Satisfied, he sits back and flicks a finger at his nose, nods toward the table.

  She shakes her head. “Don’t feel like it.” Then she fixes her gaze on the television screen.

  On a stage in Seattle, a chubby girl rolls around to Madonna’s “Vogue.”

  He hoovers another line, then places his head in her lap.

  She lays her hand atop his head, runs her fingers through his thinning hair but avoids his ears—the hair in his ears yuck her out. Then she hears herself say, “I know you told me and everything, but why? I mean, I understand but … I guess I don’t understand. Not really. She wasn’t gonna tell. If you had just let me talk to her…”

  He doesn’t speak.

  Her heart races as though she’s done three lines. Maybe she should shut up and watch the fat girl voguing and sweating.

  He says, “You don’t trust me?” His sick breath warms her thigh. Gives her goose bumps, but not the good ones.

  She forces herself to smile. “Baby, you know I do. I just like understanding for myself.”

  He slowly sits up and stares at her. His corneas spin like pinwheels, twirling and spinning. “Come ’ere.”

  She snuggles against him, changes her mind, and climbs into his lap. She holds her breath as she kisses him.

  He strokes her hair and lets his hand fall to her neck. “My sweet angel.”

  That’s when her smile becomes true—she loves his hands. They are almost as strong as his will.

  He clasps her neck with one hand. “Don’t get soft on me.”