Land of Shadows

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Mom poked her head from behind the curtain to look at me. She frowned at what she saw: a thirteen-year-old girl with red eyes and a runny nose, in a tight ball. “We’re going out to dinner,” she told me. “We need to get out of this place. I need to … Go get dressed.”

  We ate at Sizzler that night. Mom gave me her cheese toast and the pineapple slice that came with her Hibachi Chicken. She asked me about school and friends, my latest journal entry and visit to Dr. Sherrod. As we drove home, she kept the patter light and trivial. Before we climbed out of the car, though, she turned to me. Her eyes glistened with tears as she tried to smile. “I’m sorry, Lulu,” she whispered. “Please forgive me.”

  Unsure of a proper response, I nodded.

  We never mentioned those pills, the dark, or her tears ever again.

  37

  After Macie had flitted away to buy dresses at Neiman Marcus, I sat and drank a cup of coffee: tall drip, lots of sugar, nothing fancy. A silver Range Rover rolled past with Lena behind the wheel. An Old Playa in an Adidas tracksuit who had climbed out of his Corvette thirty years ago, and was finally making his way out of the parking lot, passed my table. He winked at me and said, “Why is a fine young lady like you sitting out here all alone?”

  “Just enjoying the sun.” I stretched so he could see my badge and gun.

  Nothing to see here, old man, keep it moving.

  His eyes widened and he nodded his farewell as he shuffled to join the crew at a chess table.

  “Elouise!” Lena, dressed in a zebra-print skirt and matching sunglasses, a black tank top and silver python stilettos, click-clacked to where I sat.

  I lifted my sunglasses just to appreciate all of her shine. “Looks like you were baptized in the River Beyoncé this morning.”

  “And you, ma chérie, look like stir-fried shit. Extra-crispy.”

  We hugged.

  She settled in the chair abandoned by Macie, then used my napkin to wipe down the table before setting down her Birkin bag. “My ex-mother-in-law is sick. Diabetes. Or, as she calls it, the Sugar. She begged me to drop by since she’s convinced that she’s dying of the Sugar.” She sat back in her chair and fanned her face. “She hasn’t talked to Chauncey since his wedding. Not that she accepts that he’s, once again, a married man.”

  Lena’s ex-husband, Chauncey, a former sports agent, had fallen in love with someone else. And now Chauncey and his husband (a personal trainer ridiculously named Brando Gooch—who smartly took Chauncey’s last name of Meadows) owned a gym in Connecticut. He had found his happily-ever-after and Lena had been left with baseball jerseys, a few signed basketballs, and accidentally discovered love letters written by the man who had stolen her husband’s heart. Lena had made millions in the divorce, but that hadn’t mattered—she had loved Chauncey and he had dogged her after they had been together for fifteen years.

  “What’s going on with you?” she asked. “And what’s the deal with all of this?” She waggled her fingers at my face. “You got the Sugar, too?”

  “Oh. Lots of stuff goin’ on.” I twisted my wedding ring and tried to smile.

  Lena folded her arms. “Spill it.”

  I waved my hand. “Nothin’ new to spill, really. Just same ol’, same ol’. Did you send Chauncey and Brando Gooch Meadows a gift?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I still refuse to believe that they sent me an invitation. Fuckers.” And then she launched into a medley: her ex-mother-in-law’s weekly dialysis treatments, selling a signed Derek Jeter jersey on eBay for three times its worth, Chauncey’s wedding pictures on Flickr, which then led back to the pitiful health of her ex-mother-in-law.

  Lena sighed, then said, “Chauncey’s always acted like he was the center of the universe, but when he was with me, he treated her better. When he was with me, I would have made him move her into the house. When he was with me…” She stopped, puffed out air, then bit her lip. “N’importe quoi.”

  But with ragged breathing, misty eyes, and a twitching nose, Lena’s feelings for Chauncey were far from “whatever.”

  I drew in air, then said, “How…? When Chauncey did what he did, how did you feel? I know: I was there and saw you and how everything exploded and you threw books and phones and everything at him and then he filed the restraining order … But that was then. Looking back now, how…?”

  Lena didn’t speak for a moment, then said, “Bamboozled. Didn’t see it coming. You didn’t see it coming. This man had never flirted with another woman, so another man?” She tapped the table with her fingernails and chuckled to herself. “And when I found out that his mistress was a ‘mister.’ Again: you were there. And you were there when the Santa Monica Police Department came to the house.”

  Humiliation. Fear. Anger. And five stitches for Chauncey above his left eyebrow.

  “You didn’t want to give him a second chance?” I asked.

  She smirked. “Did he ask for one?”

  “If he had asked, what would you have done?”

  Lena gazed out to the parking lot, then gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I would’ve forgiven him. I wanted what my parents had back in Brooklyn. You know: church on Sundays, taking the kids to ballet and karate on Wednesdays, pizza night Fridays. And he had promised me all of that. And even after … everything, I still wanted him to keep that promise.”

  “But he didn’t keep that promise.”

  She forced herself to smile. “But he’s keeping it with someone else. Doesn’t matter that it’s a guy he’s keeping it with. I just care that he ain’t keeping it with me.”

  I leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin in hand. “I think that Greg—”

  The Motorola squawked from my hip. “Lou, you there?” It was Colin.

  I grabbed the radio and toggled the switch. “Yeah, one minute.”

  Lena gaped at me. “You think that Greg is what?”

  I squinted at her but didn’t speak.

  Her eyes widened. “Oh, shit, Lou!”

  “But I can’t talk about it right now.”

  “When can we talk about it then?”

  “Soon. Swear.” I toggled the radio as Lena continued to gawk at me.

  “How was your coffee date with Macie?” Colin asked.

  “She came half-naked, and I think I caught a cold by proxy.”

  “The girl has a crush on you.”

  “I’m a sexy beast. Who can resist? Check a name for me?”

  “Yep.”

  “Max Yates. Y-a-t-e-s.” To Lena I said, “This may take a while.”

  She pointed at me. “You will tell me what Greg is up to.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I think you already know what he’s up to. And/or into.”

  Kiss-kiss, hug-hug, and she click-clacked back to the parking lot.

  The radio squawked, followed by Colin’s voice. “A trio came up with that name. Two are old white guys. One is African American.”

  “The black guy,” I said. “How old is he?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Got any priors?”

  “A couple of parking and speeding tickets. Nothing serious. So who is Max Yates?”

  “Macie Darson’s boyfriend. Works at Crase’s car dealership.”

  “The Darson girls certainly like the guys with the cars that go boom.”

  “Don’t they? He’s the one who hooked Monie up with the baby Lexus.”

  “Great. Mystery solved. So: Renata Reese.”

  “Monique’s BFF.”

  “Want me to go over and talk to her? It’ll give you some time to breathe.”

  “I tried breathing once. Highly overrated. Don’t think I’ll try it again.”

  He said, “Ha,” but didn’t mean it. Something was up.

  “Sure,” I said. “Go talk to Renata Reese. Anything else?”

  “You got a delivery. From your hubby.”

  I tugged at my earring. “Yeah? What is it?”

  “The fanciest muffin basket I’ve ever seen.”

  “Hunh.”
>
  “Luke wants to know if he can have one.”

  I said, “Sure,” again, then added, “And you take one, too, and anybody else who wants one.” Nothing says, “I’m boning a Japanese girl at this very moment” like a basket of fancy muffins.

  Colin shouted back to Luke, “She says you can have one.” Then he came back on the line. “So, Renata Reese.”

  The world had blurred before me and I swiped at my eyes. My lungs filled with air and I pushed it all out in a single huff. Also, I had been sitting in one space for too long. “I’ll go with you,” I said, standing. “Watch you work. See if you’ve learned anything.”

  Moving again, and filled with caffeine and sugar, I drove to meet Colin at a dingy pink house around the corner from the Darsons. Another homicide detective stood with him on the sidewalk. Thomas Jefferson (mother had high aspirations for her little black boy) was taller than me and had skin oilier than a skillet in a soul food joint. Neither he nor Colin was smiling.

  “Hey, Jeff,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Hello, Elouise.” Jefferson glowered at me as though I had been shopping for shoes as the levees broke and the city flooded.

  “Renata’s gone,” Colin said.

  I cocked my head. “By your tone, it doesn’t sound like her departure was planned. And with Jeff here…” I peered at Jefferson with new eyes. “Oh, crap. Is she dead?”

  “Don’t know,” Jefferson said. “My LT sent me out since your team is all over the city. Anyway, the girl’s mom can’t find her. Her car’s still parked here but she’s been missing since around midnight. And it looks like there may be blood inside the car. The mom saw that and called it in.”

  “So there’s blood but no body,” I said.

  Jefferson nodded. “I’ll show you.”

  Colin and I followed him down the block to where two patrol officers kept a small group of onlookers at a distance. A mint green Ford Taurus, as beaten as a gypsy cab in Beirut, was now surrounded by yellow tape. There were scratches in the paint. Black scrapes on both fenders. A missing left headlamp. A dent the size of a man’s foot in the driver’s-side door. And several drops of blood on the inside of the driver’s-side window.

  “You look in the trunk yet?” I asked Jefferson.

  “I was just about to when Taggert drove up,” he said, pulling on latex gloves. “The mother is looking for the extra set of car keys.”

  And we stood there, staring at the beat-up Taurus, not saying much but hoping that the congealed red droplets on the window had come from a cherry Slurpee and not from Renata.

  A thin black woman in an emerald green pantsuit hurried from the pink house. She had keys in one hand and the tiny fist of a butterscotch-colored toddler wearing a diaper and a Raiders shirt in the other.

  “That the mom?” I asked Jefferson.

  “Yeah. Her name’s Nova West, and that’s Renata’s son, Jalen.”

  Nova West looked too young to be a mother but was obviously old enough to be somebody’s grandmother. She held out the car keys long before she reached the yellow tape. Jefferson thanked her and patted the top of Jalen’s head. Nova threw a look at me and then an anxious look at the Ford Taurus. She smelled of soap and flowery perfume—I’m sure she had been expecting to go to work like she probably did every Friday morning.

  Jefferson unlocked the car door and pulled an inside lever. The trunk sprung open and we clicked on our flashlights and huddled around to look inside.

  A plastic bag of bottled water. Old Vibe magazines. Fast-food containers. Clothes …

  I stepped back and said, “Okay.”

  Jefferson sighed, relieved to find trash in the trunk instead of a dead girl.

  I peeked beneath the car and threw light on the slick asphalt. “Did it rain last night?”

  “Fog,” Colin said, “but no rain.”

  “Maybe the sprinklers kicked on this morning,” I said, staring at a dark puddle that should not have been there—especially since the rest of the asphalt was dry.

  Colin peered beneath the car, noticed the puddle, and whispered, “Fuck…”

  Jefferson was clearing out the trunk and placing all of the contents on the sidewalk. “Nothing’s here.”

  “Unfortunately, I think you’re wrong.” I returned to stand at the trunk. “Let’s move that rug.”

  Jefferson pulled out the black square of carpet and then the plank that hid the spare tire compartment. He took a step back and muttered, “Oh, shit.”

  No spare tire. Just a young black woman curled into a fetal position. She was a beauty-shop blonde, a tiny girl who had been so cute in those photos on Monique’s Facebook page. Now, though, the freckles on her nose and cheeks lay flat and lifeless. Now, those twinkling green eyes stared dully at her knees. Her mouth was open and the inside of her lower lip was crusted with darkened blood. There were brick-colored holes the size of salt tubs above her right ear and the middle of her neck.

  “What is it?” Nova West shouted from the perimeter. “What? Tell me!” She sounded far away—like she had been hollering at us from the Darsons’ porch around the corner.

  We heard Nova’s shouts but didn’t answer her. We stood there in silence, staring at Renata Reese, who had been stuffed in the back of her car like a bag of old clothes. After we had all thought about that and had said a prayer to whichever deity had allowed this to happen, Jefferson toggled the switch of his Motorola and said, “I’m gonna need the paramedics and the coroner out here.”

  Ten minutes later we were joined by three more detectives, more uniforms, an ambulance, and an air unit.

  Even though this was Jefferson’s murder, Colin and I still needed to talk to Nova about a dead girl not her own. But the grieving mother had collapsed on the sidewalk. A neighbor lady cuddled Jalen as she carried him back to the dingy pink house.

  “We’ll talk to Nova later,” I told Colin as we moved away from the crime scene.

  There had been so many questions I had wanted to ask Renata. Why was Monique at your house on Tuesday night? What time did she leave? What was her mood? Did she say who she was meeting that night? Was it any of the guys on this list her sister made? What do you know about Todd? Do you recognize this phone number highlighted in green? Those questions would now probably go unanswered.

  “When do you think it happened?” Colin asked.

  “Last night. When no one was around.”

  “Wouldn’t someone have heard?”

  “Oh, yeah. Because gunshots in this part of Los Angeles are precious and rare things.”

  Colin chewed on that for a moment, then said, “Think her murder is related to Monique’s?”

  I glanced at the helicopter now making tight circles in the sky. “I don’t wanna think that, but I will if I have to.”

  Colin glanced back at the Taurus. “Maybe Renata knew something. Maybe she was planning to tell us but he—”

  “He?”

  “Mr. Green Ink. Maybe he wanted to stop her before she talked to us.”

  “Maybe.”

  There was nothing more for Colin and me to do on Sutro Avenue. Jefferson had his own team, and I had my own murder. I told Colin to hang around for a moment, just in case the other detectives needed context, then climbed into my car. It would be a twenty-minute drive to Cal State Los Angeles, and I would spend each of those moments holding my breath.

  After my visit, I would slowly drive back to the squad room, my speedometer never moving past thirty-five. Maybe the muffins would be eaten by then. Maybe the cellophane would be stuffed in the trash can and the crumbs swept from tabletops and Luke’s mustache. Maybe then I would get to pretend that those muffins never came.

  Maybe.

  38

  Before I crossed the threshold of the Evidence Storage Unit, I switched my phone to vibrate and slipped it into my jacket pocket. In many ways, this place was a cemetery—parts of the dead were stored here, and that demanded respect.

  It was freezing in this room where cold cases c
ame to get colder. Not because they had been forgotten but because DNA and biological specimens like blood, spit, and semen degraded in heat.

  Janice Feinberg, the unit’s civilian manager, looked up from the computer monitor. “Good afternoon, Detective.” She regarded me without a smile; but then, she never smiled. Probably because she had watched over these boxes of Dead People’s Things since 1966—from Robert Kennedy’s murder to the infamous forty-four-minute North Hollywood shootout. With no break in the action, why would Janice Feinberg smile?

  Since making detective, I came to the unit once a month to check on the status of evidence for any of my open cases: the spit on a coffee cup, the splash of semen on a dead nurse’s smock, that perfect drop of blood on my sister’s shoe.

  And each time I visited, Janice Feinberg was seated at the same desk, with the same pair of glasses on the end of her nose, her slate blue eyes on the computer monitor, which had been the only change in her world.

  My phone vibrated and I pulled it from my pocket.

  Zucca had texted me. Hair in desk is Monique Darson’s.

  My response: Great & awful news.

  Phone tucked away, I started the familiar trek to row KK.

  There were so many boxes. Too many. How were we supposed to right all these wrongs?

  Back in my patrol days, I had asked then-Sergeant Rodriguez that same question and he said this to me: “You eat an elephant one bite at a time.”

  I reached row KK and found Tori’s box on the third shelf from the bottom. It was lighter now and fingerprints had been left on the dusty lid. I pulled off the top—the white Nike Huarache was gone. The unopened packet of ancient Starbursts and the gold wristwatch had been left behind.

  Hope burst in my chest and I grinned, even though I was surrounded by Dead People’s Things.

  Maybe now I would know.

  Maybe now Napoleon Crase would be charged with Tori’s murder and then connected to Monique Darson’s death.

  Maybe now I could give Greg that space I had saved for my sister.

  And then?

  Then, I would live happily ever after.

  I considered the log sheet taped to the front of the box.