A House Divided

by Donna Hill

  I tried to speak, but the words stuck in my throat. I looked around at the uniforms helping the parents and children to calm down. Other uniforms were snapping pictures and asking questions. A little girl lay out on the deck, an EMT bent over her. I stretched my neck to locate Pam. A police officer restrained her, blocking her path to her daughter. I rubbed my eyelids but failed to clear my blurred vision.

  “Muriel? You all right? You with me? Muriel?” Fran asked, as he waved his hand in front of my face. I brushed his hand away and nodded. I tried to stand with his help. Halfway up, another EMT interfered and I was back on my butt.

  “That might not be a good idea yet.” The EMT motioned Fran to move, then knelt and flashed a light in my face.

  I could see he was talking to me. The sounds were muffled, as though I was still under water. My ears popped. I covered them with my hands, a buffer against the sudden loudness of the hollow voices. “. . . a bump on your head. You’ll be fine. You’re lucky he didn’t break your neck.” The EMT turned to Fran and said, “Keep an eye on her for a few hours. Precautionary.”

  Detective Mosher, who I knew from the fifth district, stood in front of me. “What happened here, Mabley?”

  I took a deep breath. “Is the little girl . . .”

  “She’s alive. Now, what happened?”

  I settled down. “The guy . . . he was having words with the lifeguard, with Pam.” I closed my eyes and put my head down to ward off a rush of dizziness.

  “You good, Mabley?”

  I looked up and continued. “I was in the water doing my last lap. He was cursing her out. I noticed a bulge in his jacket pocket that appeared to be a gun. I got out the water, dried off . . .” Dizziness blurred my vision again. I bowed my head and closed my eyes against the desire to puke.

  “Big guy,” Mosher said.

  I took a deep breath. “Yeah, but he went for his gun.” I nodded toward the little girl. “What happened? Where’s the guy?”

  “After you went down, he pulled an officer’s weapon and tried to shoot the lifeguard but hit the little girl instead. Grazed her head. She’ll survive. She’s their daughter. Took six officers to bring him down.” He shook his head. “You had him on your own. I need to invest in some of that kung fu stuff.” Mosher moved his arms in a chopping motion.

  My fuzzy thoughts repelled the humor. “Where is he?”

  Mosher put his arms down and got serious again. “He had some kind of seizure. Hopped up on drugs, didn’t make it. I would bet some junk—heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, a mix. You know. Mother said the guy is her ex-husband. He’s an army vet. Suffered from PTSD, spazzing over custody of the daughter. She’s seven. She could have been killed.” Mosher walked away, barking orders.

  Fran helped me up. “Nice suit.” He half-ass smiled, trying to rile me. I had on one of those triathlon suits that cover everything, including thighs. I had no room for his humor either. I cut my eyes and sucked my teeth as loud as I could.

  Fran wrapped a towel around my shoulders. “C’mon, I’ll help you outta here,” he mumbled.

  I let him lead me out holding my arm, like I was an invalid unable to do or say anything but what I was told.

  “Can you handle dressing yourself? I can come in and help.”

  I pulled away from him and gave him a sideways F-U glance and leaned on the door to the locker room. “Don’t get your brain in a knot about it.”

  The locker room was quiet. Clothes, towels, flip-flops strewn in the aisles between the lockers. I sat on the bench and closed my eyes. The uneven quiet seeped in and calmed the tension that squeezed my temples.

  I was startled when Fran yelled in, “Hey, Muriel, you about done?”

  “Yeah. Out in five.”

  When I finished dressing, I met Fran back in the pool area. Parents were gathering their children and moving toward the locker room, police were leaving. Fran insisted on driving me home and picking up my car later. I conceded.

  “Why were you at the Kroc anyway?” he asked, on the way.

  “I’d rather not say, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  Fran had been my partner for three months; blond-haired, blue-eyed, Mark Wahlberg–faced Fran. Before him I had the same partner for seventeen years. Laughton McNair. Suffice it to say that Fran is at the opposite end of the spectrum of cool, color, and charisma from Laughton. Laughton and I were partners, friends, and for a time, lovers. I shake off the longing I feel every time he invades my thoughts, like now.

  We are firearms examiners in the Philadelphia Police Department. We examine, study, test, and catalog firearms confiscated from criminals and crime scenes, and testify in court about the findings.

  “My best friend, Dulcey, I think you know her; she has breast cancer. I’m doing a triathlon in her honor.”

  The few moments of uncomfortable silence made my insides boil. Really, it wasn’t the silence that had sweat dripping off the tip of my nose. While the silence was indeed uncomfortable, the heat was a part of the aging process that came on now and again and made me want to jump out of my clothes; that or punch something or someone. I glanced over at Fran with balled fists.

  “Yeah, I met her at your house. We’d just finished our first job together, remember? Damn. I’m sorry to hear that.” He hesitated. “You got a call from a Detective Burgan after you left last night. Said she had some information for you.”

  “She could have called my cell. Thanks. I’ll call her when I get home.”

  “What’s it about, Miss M?”

  “It’s a personal matter.”

  That is, unless Hamp got his butt thrown in jail, I thought. Hampton Dangervil—Dulcey’s husband, aka Hamp or Danger. You think you know a person and then you are slapped upside the head for thinking. I got slapped when Hampton confessed his transgressions to me like I was his priest and could offer him divine mercy. He said he lost some money gambling. He said he was trying to make enough money to keep Dulcey living in style. Silly man. Dulcey loves his dirty drawers no matter rich or poor, right or wrong. I asked Burgan, who runs the Mobile Street Crimes Unit, to do some checking on two characters Hamp said he owed money to. He only knew their street names—Bandit and Muddy—laughable if it weren’t for the gurgling in my gut pushing out sharp pangs, which always meant something messed up was ahead.

  “I’m not going to push, but if you need me you know I’m right here.”

  I shifted in my seat and rolled the window down.

  “I can turn on the air if it will help.”

  “Damn it, Fran. Stop trying so hard. We’re partners and that doesn’t mean you need to be patronizing about everything or try to be inside my head. I’m over everything that happened. I’m over it, despite what you heard before you decided being my partner was right for you.”

  I cringed at my outburst. I guess you could label me still in recovery. It had not been quite a year since I shot Jesse Boone. Boone was a psychopath responsible for twenty-plus murders dating back twenty years. He almost took my life and my sister’s. His death still sparked much discussion among police officers, with a positive vibe. For me it sparked emotional torment.

  Fran kept face forward and did not respond. When we pulled up to the house, Fran opened his car door to get out.

  I said, “I can make it on my own.”

  “Yes, boss,” he said in a playful subservient tone.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound so righteous.” I moved to get out and he pressed my arm, stopping me. I turned to match his stare.

  “I took this job because it is exactly where I wanted to be. I wanted to learn from the best, which I understood to be Laughton McNair, if he was still around, and you. If there’s an issue with me, either embrace it or request another partner.”

  I wanted to exit the car and slam the door. I wanted to tell him to go to hell, not because I was angry but because a rookie had put me in my place. I felt like I was moving fast down a slope that meant I had no good nerves for police work anymore.
Instead all I could muster was “I’m good” as I pushed the door open.

  “I’ll pick you up in an hour. We can pick up your car on the way to the lab. You have court at one o’clock.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said before I closed the door. I turned back and bent down to peer at him through the window. “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” he said, flashing me a cheeky grin.

  I waited until he pulled away from the curb before I limped up the walkway to the door. It opened before I got to it. My nine-year-old twin nieces, Rose and Helen, jumped out. The twins are my sister Nareece’s children.

  Only nine months earlier, the twins lived in a million-dollar home in Milton, Massachusetts, with their mother and father. Now their father was dead, murdered, and their mother was in a semi-unresponsive state at Penn Center, a long-term care facility, the result of being raped and tortured by Jesse Boone, before I killed him.

  “Hi, Auntie,” they said in unison. The twins are best described as striking. Their father was Vietnamese. Their dark skin, almond-shaped gray eyes and jet-black, crinkly hair, turns heads.

  Rose took over. “Travis left us here with Bethany cuz he said he had to go do an errand and he’d be right back, but he didn’t come back.”

  Fifteen-year-old Bethany is our neighbor and the backup sitter. The twins begin attending camp next week. Until then, Travis, my twenty-year-old son, is the designated babysitter. Travis is a sophomore at Lincoln University, home for the summer.

  “What do you mean he didn’t come back? How long has he been gone?”

  “He left at seven. He didn’t even fix us breakfast. He should have taken us with him. He left you a note on the kitchen counter,” Rose said.

  “Calm down. Nothing happened, right?”

  In unison they chimed, “Yeah. We’re big enough to care for ourselves. We are on the case to find out where he went and why.”

  My nieces took on more of me than I sometimes could handle. They started the Twofer Detective Agency in my honor. As investigators, they question, research, and detect everything, and I do mean everything. I liked that they wanted to be “like me” in that way.

  Rose said, “We know he got a phone call from Uncle Hamp. After he talked on the phone to Uncle Hamp, he left. From what we heard, we speculate that Uncle Hamp has troubles.”

  “You speculate, huh. Enough of the speculation.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said in unison, standing at attention and saluting.

  “Hi, Miss Mabley,” Bethany said, emerging from the den. “It wasn’t nothing for me to come over,” she said, sashaying her way to the front door. Bethany’s round baby face—big wide eyes and dab of a nose—made her appear younger than fifteen. She was another version of striking, having a German father and Haitian mother, both musicians. “I’m usually available anytime, so just call when you need me.”

  Bethany agreed to come back in an hour if Travis had not returned. After she left, the twins sang, “Bethany likes Travis, Bethany likes Travis, and Kenyetta’s going to be pissed.”

  Kenyetta is Travis’s girlfriend since freshman year in high school. She ran away from her foster home and was living on the street when Travis brought her home and asked for my help. We found her a better living situation. Their friendship blossomed, not surprising since Kenyetta is a beauty—dark skin, long, thick coiled hair, and curvaceous frame. They have been bound together since.

  “Enough. Besides, how do you know Bethany likes Travis?”

  “We’ve been watching them talk to each other and interrogat-in’ her and Travis, separately of course, about their associations.”

  I was sorry I asked as soon as the words escaped my lips. “C’mon. I’ll fix you breakfast,” I said, moving toward the kitchen while checking my phone. There were four missed calls from Travis. I tapped his name in my phone and waited. No answer.

  “We already ate. Bethany made us pancakes. We’re watchin’ Transformers,” they said, running back to the den. Their voices and footsteps echoed through the large newly remodeled five-bedroom Colonial that we had just moved into a week ago, which was still mostly decorated with unpacked boxes. Nareece and I had grown up in the house. I rented it out after my parents died, until the last tenants moved out a year ago. After everything that happened with Jesse Boone, I decided to remodel it so we could all live here together.

  I went to the kitchen and found Travis’s note on the floor. Bending to pick it up made me dizzy. I grabbed ahold of the counter and inched my way to an upright position.

  Moms, I’m sorry I had to leave the kids with Bethany. Uncle Hamp called and said he couldn’t reach you and he needed help. I had no choice. Travis.

  Considering Hampton’s earlier call to me, for help with his gambling debt, my feelings of relief at having arrived home curdled into worry.