Dream With Little Angels

by Michael Hiebert

  I’d seen the jail a couple times. There’s a photograph in my bedroom of me and Dewey locked inside, gripping the bars and trying to push our faces between them. The jail was very small. I could almost reach from front to back, and probably if me and Dewey touched fingers, we could reach across the other way. A single lightbulb lit the room very dimly and the walls were an ugly mustard color. Being locked up was fun for the fifteen minutes Officer Jackson kept us there for, pretending we were legendary train robbers, but I figured for most people, the fun started running out pretty quickly after that. It would get a mite depressing.

  The thick metal door (that from this side looked like a normal door) hid the claustrophobic cell pretty near completely from the rest of the station. Fluorescents in the ceiling brightly bounced off the white office walls and tiled floor. Compared to the jail, everything out here was cheery.

  At the other end of the room from the jail door was Police Chief Ethan Montgomery’s office. It had glass walls covered by venetian blinds. I had only been in Chief Montgomery’s office a few times. It seemed to me much too small for his large cherry desk and high-backed burgundy chair. They pretty near filled most of the whole thing. I’m not even a hundred percent sure how that desk came in through his office door.

  Chief Montgomery’s office had everything, even satellite television. The TV hung from the ceiling. Chief Montgomery rarely missed a game. It didn’t matter which sport it was, he followed everything.

  Today was Friday morning. Mary Ann Dailey had been gone exactly one week, and me and my mother picked up Dewey for school twenty minutes earlier than usual on account of my mother having to go to the station first and talk to Chief Montgomery. He had called bright and early and woke us up. I heard my mother take the call just as Uncle Henry came back in from walking Carry to her bus stop.

  The Mary Ann Dailey incident had thrown everybody’s life into a twist and nobody’s life was more twisted than my mother’s. I rarely saw her anymore. Even though, from what I could tell, the trail to solving the case dead-ended days ago, she still spent most nearly all her time at work. I didn’t know when she slept. By how she looked, I guessed she didn’t do it much. Her eyes had dark rings beneath them and there were creases in her face that weren’t usually there. In one week, she seemed to have aged ten years. And she had grown irritable. So much so that, even those times when she was home, I tried to stay out of her way. Last night she had even snapped at Uncle Henry.

  I had been in bed maybe thirty minutes when I heard my mother come home. Barely ten minutes after that, she went off on him.

  “You’re investin’ way too much personal emotion in your work, Leah,” I had heard him say. Uncle Henry had a deep voice that reverberated through walls, so I could always hear him from my room. Normally, I wasn’t privy to my mother’s side of the conversations, but lately she talked in a raised, clipped voice that sailed across floors and down halls like a sparrow going through barn rafters.

  “What do you suggest I do, Hank?”

  “I suggest you take a break. Get some sleep. Get some distance.”

  “Well, tomorrow that little girl will’ve been gone one week,” my mother said. “Do you understand how much lower our odds of finding her are now than they were five or six days ago?”

  “I understand your odds are lower with you looking like shit and not sleeping,” he had responded. Hearing Uncle Henry curse surprised me.

  “Every day I don’t find that girl is one day closer to her becoming a statistic, Hank. I’m not gonna have that on my conscience again.”

  “You’re taking this whole goddamn thing personally, Leah. You can’t do that. You’re not responsible for that girl.”

  “Then who is? If I’m not responsible, who the hell is? I’m the person everybody’s expectin’ to find her. Look around you, Hank. Ain’t nobody else searchin’ her out. You told me not to give up. Well, guess what? I ain’t givin’ up.”

  “I didn’t tell you to become obsessed.”

  “I ain’t obsessed.”

  “Leah, listen to me. This whole thing has clutched you by the throat. It’s dredged up emotions still lingerin’ from what happened to Ruby Mae Vickers. You are obsessed, you just don’t see it. You’re trying to settle a twelve-year-old score with yourself for what happened to Ruby Mae. But you didn’t let that happen.”

  “Then who the hell did, Hank? Who did? I had three months to find her. Three goddamn months. Then she gets delivered to me, and I still couldn’t figure out who did it. You saw the autopsy report. You know what that girl went through those three months I failed to find her. Whoever had her used her every way they could think of. By the looks of things, she became part of their daily schedule.” My mother’s voice had started cracking, but even still she was on the verge of hollering it had risen so loud.

  “You did your best, Leah.”

  “Well, my best wasn’t goddamn good enough, was it? I think about Ruby Mae and then I think, what if the same thing’s happenin’ to Mary Ann Dailey? What if every day I don’t find her is another day of her havin’ to endure . . .” Then my mother had begun crying, unable to finish her sentence.

  “See?” Uncle Henry said, with no compassion in his voice. “You’re obsessed. You’ve been obsessed for twelve years. And no matter what happens. No matter if you find Mary Ann Dailey, or if she never turns up, or if she turns up the same way Ruby Mae did. None of it’s gonna change what happened twelve years ago.”

  My mother choked back her tears. “She won’t end up the—”

  But Uncle Henry cut her off, loudly and angrily. “She might! She goddamn very well could, and you better be prepared for that. It’s your job to be prepared for that. At this point, from where I’m standin’, odds are lookin’ in favor of her either not turnin’ up or turnin’ up dead.”

  “Go to hell!” my mother said. And I heard her stomp down the hall into her room and slam her door. She reminded me exactly of Carry, only Carry had been happy yesterday because she came home to find a note from my mother magneted to the fridge saying it would be fine for her to go to Satsuma for a movie and pizza with her friends, so long as she made sure to get home by five in time for supper.

  Earlier is better, my mother had written at the bottom.

  All I knew when I turned over and pulled my blanket up to my chin was that I sure hoped this case would be over soon. I didn’t know if any of us were going to survive it much longer, never mind Mary Ann Dailey.

  But, this morning as we drove to the station, my mother seemed to have gotten over all her agitation from last night, though I could tell it hadn’t gone very far. It was just behind her eyes, looking for any chance to pop out again. I hoped for Dewey’s sake that chance wouldn’t come. I was growing used to having to treat the women of my household as though they were crates of dynamite, but I had the feeling Dewey would be awfully surprised to see my mother blow up.

  “You guys stay in here and don’t touch anything on the desks,” my mother said. Chris Jackson wasn’t at work yet, so the office was empty. The door into Chief Montgomery’s office was open and I could hear him shuffling about, but couldn’t see him on account of the blinds being closed over the windows.

  Along with the desks, the office had a photocopier, and a table with a coffeemaker and stuff like that on it. A potted palm sat beside the table. There was also a watercooler.

  Dewey immediately started playing with the watercooler, pulling out one of the paper cups that nobody ever used and filling it in spurts. Sometimes it amazed me how easily amused he was. But then we both liked balancing rocks on sticks, so what did I know?

  My mother pushed Chief Montgomery’s door closed, but it didn’t close all the way, so I wandered across and pretended to be fascinated with the coffee machine while I did my best to listen to their conversation. I missed all the formalities and came in straight on what was the crux of the matter, I figured.

  “I’m thinkin’ I made a mistake givin’ you this case,” Chief Montgomery
said.

  “You never gave me this case,” my mother answered. “Mrs. Dailey called me directly at home. She gave me this case.”

  “Well, you know what I mean. I’m thinkin’ maybe you should step back and give this one to Jackson.”

  I heard my mother let out a loud huff. “What is it with you people? Why does everyone think my tryin’ as hard as I can to find this Dailey girl is a bad thing?”

  “I don’t rightly know who us ‘people’ are, Leah, but it’s not what you’re doin’ that’s worryin’ me, it’s how you’re doin’ it.”

  “I’m taking responsibility.”

  There was a squeak. I guessed Chief Montgomery sat back in his chair, probably to take a sip of coffee. When he spoke again, his voice was low and calm. “You take too much responsibility. You always have. Ever since . . .” He drifted off into a whisper.

  “Oh, don’t start that shit, Ethan. Don’t go not mentionin’ things just because you think they’re gonna wind me up.”

  “That’s not what I’m doin’, Leah. Trust me, you’re upset enough. I don’t know if you could get much more upset.”

  “Yeah? Well, start tellin’ me how I’ve taken on too much responsibility since Billy died and just watch. What did you expect me to do? He left me alone with a brand-new baby and not even a pot to piss in, and you’re tellin’ me I took on too much responsibility? Give your head a shake. I didn’t see anybody else stepping up to the plate.”

  “First, it’s almost like you still blame Billy for dying and leaving you alone to raise those kids, Leah. You’ve got to get over that. Shit happens. And second, your parents were there for you. You could’ve leaned on them much more than you did.”

  “It wasn’t their job to be there for me, Ethan. I’m the one who got pregnant at seventeen. It was my mess. It still is.”

  “I’m just saying you take on too much because you’re used to taking on too much.”

  Across the room, binders were stuffed into shelves that ran along one of the office walls. I had no idea what sort of things were in the binders. Dewey finally tired of the watercooler and moved on to them. Starting at the left, one by one he pulled them out halfway and then pushed them back in with a clunk. I wished he could find something quieter to entertain himself with.

  “Yeah,” my mother said, “well, look at my life, Ethan. It hasn’t really been full of consistent support for me and my children. And when I finally did find a guy who didn’t run out on me? We have two babies, and then two years later he’s killed in a car crash. Then Ma goes. Then Pa goes. There comes a point where you kinda stop and realize there ain’t nobody you can depend on for the long haul ’cept yourself.”

  “Your pa was there for you right up until the end, Leah,” Chief Montgomery said. “He may have had to retire from the force, but he never retired from his responsibility to you and those kids.”

  My mother sighed. “Yeah, it was great, Ethan. Abe got to spend the first six years of his life falling in love with his grandpa, while watching him deteriorate away to nothing. I think I would’ve rather had Pa go quickly the way Ma did.”

  Chief Montgomery said nothing.

  “I think in some ways he did go the day mom did,” my mother said. “At least part of him did.”

  “Of course that’s true,” Mr. Montgomery said. “Christ, Leah, they were married for near on their whole lives. All they had was each other.”

  There was another pause, then my mother said, “Until I came along and messed it all up.”

  “Now, how in your mind did you mess everything up? Sometimes I wonder how you think.”

  “I got myself pregnant at seventeen, Ethan.”

  “Sure you did. And your pa was right pissed about it. I remember him telling me he was gonna shoot the little bastard who did that to his daughter. But you know what? He didn’t. And that little bastard turned out to actually be a decent guy. Billy did right by you. And, even though you don’t need me to tell you how dead set against you marrying Billy your daddy was, both your ma and your pa showed up at your wedding, and they smiled like they was proud as peacocks to see their little girl looking so beautiful. On account of they was, Leah. And I ain’t never seen a man love his grandchildren the way your pa did. That man would’ve redirected the Mississippi if he thought it would’ve put a smile on little Caroline Josephine’s face.”

  “You’re right. They was even nice to Billy after the wedding.”

  “Of course they was. That’s the way your folks were. Your pa only hated Billy on account of he reckoned he was taking you away from him.”

  “You think?”

  “I do. When it came down to it, your pa would always be there for you, no matter who you married. I remember how concerned he was for you when Billy died. It was real concern, Leah. He worried about you and those kids constantly. You could’ve relied on him much more than you did.”

  “He was in no shape to worry about me,” my mother said. “I should’ve been worrying more about him.”

  “He got sick, Leah. There’s nothing you could’ve done differently to save him. Be happy Abe got to spend as much time with him as he did. He has good memories of his grandpa. Happy ones. Nobody can ever take those away from him.”

  Silence followed and I had to come in close to hear my mother when she spoke again, because her voice was so quiet. “You’re right, Ethan. I know you’re right. It’s just so hard. Sometimes I miss him so much.” I heard tears in my mother’s voice. I always hated it when she cried, and lately she’d been crying more than ever.

  But Chief Montgomery didn’t let up. “And your pa made certain you were financially okay,” he said. “He made damn sure of that. Christ, Leah, he got you this job.”

  “Yeah, but you know? It’s not always about the money, Ethan. And even if it was, when you’re blindsided a half dozen times in as many years, you learn to look out for yourself. And your kids. And if that’s taking on too much responsibility, well, then I guess I’m guilty.”

  I heard Chief Montgomery’s mug settle onto his desk. “Leah, nobody’s ever gonna accuse you of not being a good mother to those kids. That’s not what I’m talkin’ ’bout and you know it. I’m talkin’ ’bout the way it’s all spilled over into this case. I’m talking about Ruby Mae Vickers. And don’t you even try to tell me you don’t think Ruby Mae had nothin’ to do with your pa dyin’.”

  There was a pause and then my mother’s voice rose a good octave. “What the hell are you talkin’ ’bout now?”

  “You’ve never forgiven yourself for Ruby Mae because she was your first big case and you’ve always felt you let your father down. You were promoted to detective and you botched your first case and never got over it. I was there, Leah, remember ? I know you thought you disappointed your pa, and that disappointment put some distance between you. Distance I know now that you regret.”

  “You’re crazy. There was no distance between us.”

  “There was so, and that’s why you were so hellbent on raisin’ them kidss yourself.”

  “No, Leah, I’m not crazy. What you tend to forget is that you ain’t really no detective. Alvin is too small for a detective. You were given this position only so that we could raise your salary, not because anyone expected you to suddenly be some kind of super crime solver. If it weren’t for the county regulations, you’d just be a cop like the rest of us. You are just a cop like the rest of us. You have no extra responsibilities, so stop pretendin’ you do.”

  Another long pause and then I heard my mom sniffling. “I miss Dad a lot sometimes.”

  Chief Montgomery’s chair squeaked again as I heard him get up and come around his desk. “Oh, honey, we all do. Your dad was a great cop. And a great father. And he’d be nothing but proud of you. I know you don’t believe that, but I knew your dad better than anyone. For over twenty-three years I worked with Joe. I was there for him when you got pregnant with Carry. Had you been my daughter? I’da been swearing a side off a greased-up hog, but your pa? He never once s
aid a bad word about it. He was nothin’ but proud.”

  I heard more crying from my mother.

  Chief Montgomery continued talking. “Oh, he was ready to hunt down and kill that Billy Cunningham kid, don’t get me wrong. I had to talk him down a few times. But not because he didn’t love you or Carry. See, you come by this responsibility thing naturally. Your pa never once left a mistake without fixing it up one way or another. But if he were here right now, I can promise you this: He’d tell you it’s time to stop blaming the world on yourself. There are things you can control and things you cannot. Focus on the right ones, cuz the others are like bashing your head against a wall of bricks. You follow?”

  I heard more sniffles.

  “I’m serious, Leah. If you don’t understand this, I’m pullin’ you off this case.”

  “I understand,” my mother said quietly.

  Dewey finished his game with the binders and came over to where I stood. “What’re you doing?” he whispered.

  I shushed him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Listenin’,” I said.

  “What’re they sayin’?” he whispered back.

  I shushed him again. That’s when we both looked up and found Ethan Montgomery standing over us with the door open.

  He leveled his eyes directly at me. “You boys need to learn to mind your business,” he said. I could tell he was mad, but not real mad.

  “My mom tells me that all the time,” I said.

  This almost made him smile, but he held it back. “Your mom’s a smart woman. Do you good to listen to her instead of eavesdroppin’ on our conversations. You got that?”

  I said I most certainly did as I tried to look around the doorway to where my mother was standing holding a Kleenex up at her face, but Chief Montgomery stepped sideways, blocking my view. “What did I just tell you?” he asked.

  I was about to question why my mom wasn’t my business, but Dewey interrupted, pointing to the gun on Chief Montgomery’s hip. “That real?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” I asked him back. “Now why would the chief of police carry around a fake gun?” I looked up at Chief Montgomery and smiled.