Land of Shadows

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  “Baby,” she coos, “I’m—”

  His grip tightens. “We needed to, all right?”

  Tighter now …

  Her body trembles. “Yes.”

  “You wimping out on me now?” he asks. “After all I’ve given you? Thought you loved me.”

  Tighter …

  “I do,” she squeezes out.

  The room whirls and something in her neck cracks. Her bladder threatens to release.

  “Can I trust you, Lorraine?” he asks.

  She nods—her head is pounding.

  He releases her and chuckles. “My sweet angel.” He bends over and snorts another line.

  Air scrapes against her throat and it still feels as though his hands are clenching her neck.

  By now, the fat girl on the television has left the building in tears.

  He sits back and nods toward the table.

  The coke will dull her pain. Clutching her own neck now, she bends over glass too messy to reflect. She takes one long snort and sends that numbing powder into her blood.

  29

  I startled awake in my dark bedroom, breathing hard and sweating. On the nightstand, the clock’s red numbers blinked 3:15. My damp tank top stuck to my skin, and my heart pounded as though I had been running through the Grand Canyon. Someone too short and too lean to be Greg lay in bed beside me, hidden beneath the sheets. I stared at the sleeping figure, at the rise and fall of its breathing. I reached over and pulled away the comforter.

  Tori lay there. Her skin was black and leathery, and her fingers were clawed. Creamy white moths fluttered around her body.

  I couldn’t move. Heat spread like brushfire across my face, and my scalp prickled. I needed to look away, but I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move.

  Tori pointed at me and whispered, “Lulu, help me.”

  My eyes popped open.

  Clang-clang-clang.

  I sat up.

  Pinballs.

  I touched the empty spot in my bed. No Tori. Just a dream.

  Clang-clang-clang.

  Greg was calling.

  I grabbed my iPhone from the nightstand and climbed out of bed.

  It was Friday.

  After our good mornings and a rundown of the past ten hours (and no mention of Michiko Yurikami), Greg asked, “Breakfast with Mom today?”

  “As is custom.”

  “Tell her that I bought her a couple of kimonos for her cruise.”

  “She’ll like that,” I said. “She’s really into this Martin guy.”

  “Everybody needs somebody.” Then, he paused and said, “I miss you, Lou.”

  My response: “I … weruisfdakldsj.” Or something.

  Then, as I grabbed a crisp white shirt and khaki Calvin Klein pantsuit from the closet, Greg and I talked—about the extraordinary time difference between Los Angeles and Tokyo, about going on vacation to Hawaii or Jamaica once he returned, somewhere with lots of rum and lobster. His promises of a romantic getaway pushed me deeper into the sad little sinkhole I had spent the night in. And despite my designer gear, I didn’t feel fly. And no matter how much eye makeup and lipstick I found in my makeup bag, I wasn’t Max Factor and therefore not skilled enough to hide the train wreck of emotion dogging my face.

  During breakfast with my mother, I decided to say as little as possible about the Monique Darson case. I also decided that I would not utter the words “Monique” or “the Jungle” or “Napoleon Crase.” Instead, I would let her jabber on about her upcoming trip to the Bahamas, about shenanigans in water yoga class, and about the stray pit bull that had been terrorizing her Inglewood neighborhood.

  And so it was.

  “That’s when I told Carol that we should just shoot the dumb dog ourselves.” Mom smiled to herself and brought the coffee cup to her painted lips.

  Mom was as tall as me, but she had been a wisp of a woman since the Bad Time. The big smile she’d worn before then, the one that had shown strong, perfect teeth, had been shelved for ages, only making appearances with the Hale-Bopp comet. But on this morning, there it was, speckled with toast crumbs and slick with melted butter.

  “By the way,” she said, “I think I’m going to retire from the school board next year. The thrill of being a paper-pushing administrator has lost its luster.”

  I sipped my coffee. “Paper cuts getting too dangerous?”

  “You laugh, but remember what’s-her-face Cecilia? She got flesh-eating bacteria after stapling her pinkie.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin in her hand. “So how is Gregory? Still in Japan?”

  “Still in Japan.” I faked a smile, then used my fork to jab at the square of hashed browns on my plate.

  Mom tugged her right earlobe—a habit I had inherited—and said, “How are you supposed to be trying to have a baby if he’s always traveling?”

  I eyed her, then gathered potatoes on my fork.

  “Is there a new way I don’t know about?” she asked, a smile in her voice. “Internet conception or some such thing?”

  I lifted my eyes but not high enough to meet her curious gaze. “It takes time,” I said to her silver-polished fingernails. Then, I stuffed my mouth with potatoes.

  She waited for more, but when I didn’t speak, she sat back in her chair. “He’s not stepping out on you again, is he?”

  I didn’t dare move, not a bit. Just hoped that the T. rex named Georgia would move on and find new prey.

  “Somebody has to sacrifice—”

  “So it’s my fault again?” I shot. “I’m the reason he has a pecker problem?”

  Mom narrowed her eyes, not caring that the couple at the next table was now clutching their pearls. “Do you want a family or not? Or do you plan on playing cops and robbers until you die? I wish your father—”

  “I wish, you wish, if wishes were fishes, just stop, Mom.” Something inside of me burned, and by the end of this soul-killing experience, I would be a half-pound lighter.

  Mom reached inside her purse and pulled out a folded newspaper. She opened it, then slid it before my plate. She tapped the story below the fold. Southland Teen Found Strangled to Death.

  I shivered as my eyes skipped over a story I had already read.

  “Some things stuck out as I read,” she said. “First: the girl was found in the Jungle. Second: Napoleon Crase’s name. And last: this is your case and you didn’t tell me.”

  Now, my eyes met Mom’s—she was seconds away from crying. I swallowed, but the lump in my throat remained. “I didn’t … It may be a coincidence.”

  “Elouise—”

  “And I didn’t want to give you false hope.”

  That bright smile she had worn earlier had died. But then, she had come to breakfast to ask about the Bad Time, so maybe the smile had never been meant to stay.

  She reached across the table and grabbed my wrist. “Tell me the truth, Elouise. Did he kill this girl, too?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came.

  Those tears quivered in her eyes, waiting for the right word to force their fall.

  “I’m working on it, Mom,” I said. “Every single day, I’m working on it. Twenty hours a day. As I sit here with you, I’m thinking about it, looking at it in every way possible. I told you that I’d fix everything and bring Tori home, that he’d hang for it. And…” Now, my eyes burned but I forced that smile I gave whenever she was about to lose it. “I got this, okay?”

  A single teardrop tumbled down her bronzed cheek. She squeezed my hand and let go. “Okay.” She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin, then exhaled.

  “As much as I would like to stay here and gossip,” I said, “I gotta get going.” I pulled two twenties from my wallet and dropped them in the center of the table.

  “What’s on your to-do list for the day?” she asked, now checking her makeup in a compact mirror.

  “Playing cops and robbers, what else? You staying for a while?”

  She nodded and gazed out to the marin
a. “It’s always so beautiful here. I’ll just sit and watch the boats for a while.”

  I leaned over and kissed her cheek.

  She tugged a lock of my hair and told me that she loved me.

  Guilt ate at my heart as I left her there. Strange. Didn’t think there were any good parts of me left.

  30

  As I left the marina, I committed myself to scheduling a come-to-Jesus heart-to-heart with Greg, a state-of-the-union conference call to determine whether we should remain married or … do something else.

  Would I actually follow through and have this difficult conversation, though? Really: how many of these talks had I planned and had then postponed? Jesus was probably tired of receiving appointment notices, only for me to send cancellations five minutes before the meeting’s start. Fortunately, as I was committing and then doubting myself, my iPhone rang and pulled me from My Personal Problems and into a world of Somebody Else’s Problems.

  Two minutes later, I ended my call with Angie Darson and trudged into the squad room at half past eight.

  Colin was already seated at his desk, talking on his cell phone.

  Seeing him there, smiling and fresh-faced, sent fire and ice crackling through me. “Angie Darson called,” I told him, even as he continued to talk to whoever it was. “We need to drive over to the house.” I grabbed Monique’s diary from my desk and lumbered to the garage.

  Colin caught up with me at the Crown Vic and offered to drive. “Sorry about that. I was talking with Jen.” He slipped behind the steering wheel, which he started to tap. “Jen’s the fox from Whole Foods, remember?” Tappity-tappity-tap. “After I left Jerry’s last night”—tappity-tappity—“she called and we hooked up. And now I can truly say that Jen is all woman. Whoop-whoop!” He glanced at me and his smile dimmed. “What’s wrong, partner? You okay?”

  I studied the single blue bird on the cover of Monique Darson’s pink satin diary. “Are we gonna leave the garage anytime soon?”

  He waited a beat, then started the car. “You wanna talk—?”

  “No, I don’t wanna talk about it.” And no matter how many times Colin looked at me as we drove, I refused to discuss all that was bothering me.

  At every other stoplight, he’d say, “You’ll feel better if you do.”

  But I kept my mouth shut. Even though I wanted to cry and throw things and curse, I couldn’t bring myself to talk about Greg, about last night’s phone call, and about Michiko Yurikami.

  Because with talking came enlightenment, and with enlightenment came acknowledgment, and I didn’t want to acknowledge that right then. And so I thumbed through Monique’s diary as Colin drove, looking for any trace of Napoleon Crase—his initials, pictures of him, telegrams from him, something—as the Big Baller in the girl’s life.

  The pages were filled with Typical Teen Girl font—big loops, circles, and sometimes hearts over every i and j, leaning-to-the-left cursive that made the eyes of anyone older than twenty cross and fall out.

  June 1. Can’t believe I’m almost done with high school! Woo hoo!… to celebrate, He told me that He’ll take me to whatever restaurant I want. I’m thinking Gladstones in Malibu b/c I want LOBSTER! For real tho? Don’t know how that dinner will happen since we are a BIG SECRET! Ssh.

  June 12. Dress from Nordstrom. Mom put it on the card and told me not to tell Daddy and Macie. It’s not like I don’t deserve it. How many times does a girl graduate as valedictorian from high school? And Macie doesn’t need OUR money anymore so she needs to SHUT UP and enjoy Max as long as she can.

  June 17. I love Him. He scares me sometimes. He’s just so passionate about things. But I love Him. I do! I want to be with Him all the time but I can’t and so I keep finding excuses to call Him, to stop by His office, to touch Him, to sit in empty parking lots in the middle of the night just to be with HIM. I read that the human brain isn’t fully developed until the age of 25. For me, that’s 8 years from now, so the part that tells me, ‘Don’t do that! it ain’t all there yet,’ and I know it’s not there bcuz it’s getting a little crazy-intense with Him but I refuse to back away, to run back home to Mom and Dad and church … And this whole situation with Mom … tired of it, over it. Not going to spend ink writing about it. But I will say this: I’m soooo hungry!! My stomach is seriously rumbling right now and I want a double-double animal style and a chocolate shake but I don’t want to smell like grease and onions. And He likes me skinny. Tiny tits. Small ass. Narrow hips. Derek is always telling me to “eat a sammich.” I want to tell him, Nigga, learn to say the word. SAND-WICH. If tonight doesn’t go right, if He tells me what I THINK He’s going to tell me, and say those words I’ve been dreading since our first time together, then I don’t know what I will do. That’s a lie. I know. And if my plan doesn’t work? Then Life will never be the same. FOR ANYBODY.

  I turned to the next page, bookmarked with a slip of torn paper.

  73881 Don Tomaso Drive. An address in Baldwin Hills, an affluent African American neighborhood that overlooked the Jungle.

  Who did Monique know at this house?

  My fingers flew across the car’s computer keyboard as I typed in the address.

  A few seconds later, the results blinked on the screen.

  “Well, gee whiz.” I think I said this aloud—my heart beat so loudly in my ears that I couldn’t hear anything else. “So I just found something interesting: an address in Monique’s diary. I just looked it up. Guess who lives there?”

  “Attila the Hun.”

  “Also known as Napoleon Crase.”

  “Get the fuck outta here,” Colin shouted, wide grin on his face. “Let’s go on over there and kick his ass, man.”

  I studied the torn slip of paper. “Now, why would a seventeen-year-old girl have an old man’s address in her diary?”

  “Girl Scout cookies? Magazine drive?”

  “Mister, can I paint your curb for ten dollars? Oh, and I’ll wear my cheer uniform if you say yes.” I slipped the address back into the crease.

  “What the hell are we waitin’ for?”

  I took a deep breath, then said, “I need more than this.”

  Colin gawked at me.

  Before he could protest, I held up my hand. “If I screw this up, shoot my wad just cuz I found an address in this girl’s diary and he and his lawyer come up with a reasonable explanation, then he’s gone. And I’ll go back to hunting for something else to get him on, but by now, he’s in Venezuela or someplace, laughing at me and beating up the high school girls of South America.”

  Colin didn’t want to, but he nodded.

  “I will have Napoleon Crase lying on a stainless-steel table,” I said. “Trust.”

  Colin parked in front of the Darsons’ house. Before he opened the car door, he touched my arm and said, “We’re partners, correct? We got each other’s back, right? I know we just started workin’ together and, technically, you don’t know me from a jackrabbit, but you can trust me, okay?”

  I forced a smile to my face and squeezed his hand. “It’s too early in the day to talk about bullshit, Colin, and we have a killer to find right now.” I squeezed his hand again, then dropped my smile as he climbed out of the car.

  31

  Police theorized that Tori had intentionally run away from home because she had fallen in love with Li’l Tee, a Piru Crip wanted for a homicide in Compton. My mother, willing to believe anything if it brought her daughter home, had searched through Tori’s diary to support the cops’ theory. She found only one reference to Tee, a.k.a. Terrell Jones. November 16, 1987. Tee is the most ignorant, backwards person in the whole world. I wish he’d just GO AWAY!!

  I tried to help and told Mom, “She liked this guy named James. She always talked about him on the phone with Golden.”

  “Do you know him?” Mom asked, her eyes bugged. “This James? Do you know him?”

  I shook my head, then added, “But he’s on the football team.” I showed Mom a picture of James in the student newspaper. Broad-
shouldered, cornrows, hazel-colored eyes—Tori’s type. “She talked to him on the phone, like, a couple of weeks ago,” I continued. “She told Golden she was in love with him. That he was gonna take her with him when he made it into the NFL.”

  Mom shook her head. “But she doesn’t mention him in her diary.”

  Still, Mom told the police about “James on the football team” and his plan to whisk Tori away. But the cops never questioned James, preferring their original idea of Tori on the lam with Terrell Jones. It didn’t take long for detectives to find Terrell. He hadn’t seen Tori in months—as Inmate No. 638493 since January 1988, he hadn’t seen many people.

  After that lead fizzled, Detective Peet returned to our apartment to interview Mom again. He tried to avoid eye contact as much as possible. “Was your daughter a virgin?”

  I was peeking from the hallway and saw Mom’s eyes widen with shock.

  She gasped, then said, “I don’t know what that question…” She took a deep breath, then said, “As far as I know, Victoria … yes. Although I still don’t understand—”

  “Who were her boyfriends again?” he asked.

  Mom pulled out a list she had created while scouring Tori’s diaries for Li’l Tee references: Lawrence Bales, Alan Dorsey, Samuel Griffith, Derrick Alexander, Royal Fisher, and Mikey Duncan. Mom had also placed football player James Kinney on the list.

  Detective Peet reviewed the names, then whistled. “Your little girl got around.” He stuffed the list into his jacket pocket and considered his notepad. “Did she use drugs?”

  Mom shook her head. “No.”

  “Has she been in trouble before?”

  “Not with the police,” Mom said. “At school … Well … She’s had some trouble—”

  “Did you ever hit her?” Detective Peet asked. “Punish her? Chastise her? Embarrass her for misbehaving? Do something that made her run away?”

  “No.”

  The detective flipped to a clean page in his notepad. “What about your husband?”