A Mother's Vow

by Ken Casper

  Catherine watched the shadow cross her friend’s face. Dante had had the same girlfriend through high school and college. Kiesha was plain, bookish and shy, and their relationship seemed more platonic than romantic.

  “He broke up with Kiesha right after Jordan died.”

  Not a good sign. Dante wasn’t effeminate, but Catherine had heard occasional snide comments that questioned his sexual orientation. If he was gay and struggling with a decision to come out of the closet, it might explain the tension between him and his very heterosexual father.

  “He doesn’t seem to have many friends anymore, spends too much time by himself.”

  Catherine sympathized. “As you said, he and Jordan were close. We all handle grief differently. Maybe you just have to give him time to work things out and be supportive of him when he does.”

  Melissa was savvy enough to understand what her sister-in-law was alluding to. She nodded despondently. “Kids don’t always turn out the way we expect them to, do they?”

  “No, they don’t.” Catherine knew she was referring to Kelsey. “Sometimes we have no choice but to trust them to make the right decisions.”

  ON HER DRIVE BACK to headquarters after lunch, Catherine thought about her comment to Jeff that there was no such thing as an ordinary family. She hadn’t always felt that way. Her own family had seemed pretty mainstream when she was growing up. A mid-level manager in a large retail company, her father was the bread-winner; her mother a housewife who cooked and cleaned, ran errands and enjoyed bingo on Thursday evenings. The crack in their perfect world came when Catherine brought Jordan Tanner home for dinner one Sunday afternoon. The uneasiness on her mother’s face and the near outrage on her father’s had shocked her. She’d anticipated surprise, but not hostility. They were civil to their guest, but the tension had been palpable.

  After Jordan left, her father showed a side she hadn’t seen before. Supporting equal rights was one thing, he reminded her, but dating a black guy was another. Her dad made his position even clearer by using racial epithets she’d never expected to hear from him. He didn’t forbid her to see Jordan again—he was smart enough to know he couldn’t prevent her from associating with him—but he did tell her never to bring him to their home again. Catherine had been crushed.

  “I don’t think we ought to see each other anymore,” Jordan said the next day.

  “What have I done?” she asked, hurt by his seemingly cavalier attitude.

  “You haven’t done anything. I just don’t want to come between you and your folks.”

  “They’ll come around.” She’d actually believed it at the time.

  “You might think so, but they won’t.”

  “So you’re just dropping me. I thought we were friends.”

  “We can still be friends,” he said, “but that’s all. Maybe someday a black guy can date a white girl without starting a riot, but not yet.”

  “And the journey will never be completed without the first step,” she snapped back.

  He’d smiled, his dark eyes softening. “I care too much for you to let you be hurt.”

  “You can’t keep me from being hurt,” she’d said. “I’m just asking you to be there when I am.”

  His eyes widened in surprise. He started to take her hand, then pulled back. “Pioneering is dangerous work.”

  Feeling bolder, she touched his arm, accentuating the contrast in the colors of their skin. She wasn’t going into this blind. “Then I guess we had better be strong.”

  The kiss that followed was the most intimate, the most passionate they’d ever shared. More than a kiss, it had been an acknowledgment of where they were headed as well as a commitment to an odyssey that would be larger than both of them. If their affair faltered, it would not be because of skin color.

  A month later she got a part-time job as a waitress to supplement the scholarship she was receiving and moved into a one-room apartment with a girlfriend. The relationship with her parents deteriorated further when she refused to come to Sunday dinners unless Jordan was welcome.

  In the last semester of senior year, she told them she was going to marry him. The news was received with tight lips and dark scowls. Her parents came to her graduation but didn’t stay for the reception afterward, and they refused to attend her wedding. She walked down the aisle alone.

  Even the birth of their granddaughter didn’t melt their hearts, but then, their granddaughter was black, so why should it? The one breach in the wall of silence was when her mother sent a sympathy card after Jordan’s death. That her father’s name was not on it spoke volumes. Maybe one day they’d reconcile, but it didn’t seem likely. Catherine was willing to overlook a great many slights by her parents, but she couldn’t forgive them for acting as if their granddaughter didn’t exist.

  In the meantime Catherine had work to do, a killer to find.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  * * *

  THE EDITORIAL IN the Monday morning newspaper was the most vicious attack on the Houston Chief of Police the Sentinel had ever printed. Tyrone catalogued the recent mishandling of evidence by the forensics division that had put dozens, perhaps hundreds of felony cases in jeopardy, and that might have sent a host of innocent people to prison, while letting the real criminals roam the streets. Not only did it call Catherine Tanner incompetent, it insinuated she was a key element in the continuing corruption within the force. Adding insult to injury, he then accused her of setting the course of women in law enforcement back thirty years.

  Catherine sipped her coffee and tried not to let the vitriol turn it to acid in her stomach.

  Her mind replayed the lecture she used to give to the women who came through the police academy.

  “There will be days when you’ll bump your heads against a glass ceiling that will feel more like a stone wall.

  “You’ll encounter verbal abuse, not just from the criminals you apprehend, but from victims who feel you aren’t doing enough. From witnesses who don’t understand legal requirements or think they’re stupid.

  From your fellow officers who resent your role, initially as their equals, and for some of you later as their superiors.

  “Every day you will have to earn afresh the respect of your male peers and superiors. You’ll have to learn to fight like men, while never forgetting you’re women. Not all of you will succeed, but I can promise that those of you who persist will grow stronger.”

  It had been a good pep talk, one she’d been obliged to learn the hard way at a time when the only women in the force had been meter maids.

  With the help of a man who believed in her, encouraged her and held her in his arms, she’d withstood the slings and arrows aimed at her.

  She would survive this assault, too. But coming from within the family made its knife edge all the more sharp, all the more hurtful. Especially when it was written by the man she’d protected.

  The mayor called her office twice. Catherine instructed Annette to tell him she was in meetings. Reporters from the city’s three TV stations as well as two national cable news networks came by, eager for her rebuttal to the charges leveled against her. Annette sent them packing. Three members of the city council phoned with demands that she contact them immediately, and a host of private individuals left messages, both supporting and condemning her as a public servant.

  Catherine kept her luncheon appointment to address the Rotary Club at the Windsor Hotel. Instead of just one or two reporters showing up for a quick photo op, she was met with a phalanx of media hounds. She considered stonewalling with “No comment,” but decided it would be better to answer their questions.

  Greeting them with smiles and easygoing rapport, she pointed out that she’d inherited the corruption mentioned in the editorial from past administrations. She took pride in the force’s honesty in addressing problems and aggressively rooting them out. She sidestepped the issue of who or what was currently under investigation. “Your brother-in-law has attacked you personally. Why is that?” asked a
reporter from the local CBS affiliate.

  “I don’t think the attack was personal at all,” she replied. “He’s doing a job, looking out for the public good, and I think it’s to his credit that he doesn’t let our family relationship influence his objectivity. He’s concerned about police integrity. So am I. Keeping the force clean is my job. My name is used in the article because I’m the person in charge.”

  “So there is no personal animosity between you?” “We’ve always gotten along very well.” She left the luncheon satisfied that for the moment she’d defused the situation. Her responses had all been accurate, though she recognized that some of them sounded like excuses. After two years as the top cop the problems were solidly hers, regardless of when they started. She’d bought some time today, but probably not much.

  Three times Monday morning Jeff tried to call Catherine—once from home, twice from the airport—to let her know where he was going and why. A courtesy he didn’t extend to other clients. But she was a professional investigator and might be able to give him some insights. Besides, he enjoyed talking to her, hearing her voice, and he took pleasure in sharing things with her.

  He also wanted to get her reaction to her brother-in-law’s diatribe in the morning paper. He didn’t doubt she could handle the situation, but a sympathetic ear wouldn’t hurt, and he’d promised her a shoulder to lean on.

  Twice he got a busy signal, the third time an out-of-area message. He was disappointed but not surprised. She’d probably been bombarded with so many calls she’d had to turn off her cell phone. He could have dialed her office number but doubted he’d have better luck getting through. Besides, this wasn’t exactly an emergency.

  He was flying to Las Vegas because Kermit Nagle had called him early that morning to say he’d found the president of the defunct Uranica Corporation. Jeff asked for his number.

  “Be a waste of time and long-distance charges,” Kermit said. “You’ll have to go there and see the guy in person. Chase Hutton’s been in the mining business since the fifties. He doesn’t trust anyone he can’t look in the eye.”

  The three-hour flight from Bush International arrived at McCarran airport at noon. Learning that Hut-ton lived outside the city, Jeff had reserved a mid-sized rental car. Since he’d brought only carry-on baggage, he was out of the busy terminal within fifteen minutes.

  The directions he’d received sent him into the hills west of the glittering desert metropolis to the end of a very long, narrow, dusty road. The house was a small, concrete-block, flat-roofed affair that even a fresh coat of white paint couldn’t have made homey. Jeff pulled up behind a dented fifteen-year-old Ford pickup under a sagging single-car overhang. He rolled down his window, turned off the ignition and stepped out into the stifling dry desert heat. Compared with the humid swelter of Houston, it felt almost bearable.

  Yellow weeds poked through the green gravel desert landscaping surrounding the house. Even the prickly pear cactus near the building was wilted. Jeff pressed the bell button beside the peeling hollow-core door. Hearing nothing and getting no response, he knocked.

  The door swung open a minute later. Jeff wondered if he might have tripped into the twilight zone, since there was no one there—until a wheelchair rolled into view from behind it.

  “Rowan?” the occupant asked in a scratchy voice. He was a scrawny cadaver of a man with oxygen prongs stuck in his crooked, vein-riddled nose.

  “Yes, sir. Jeff Rowan. I’m here from—”

  “I know where you’re from. Come in, damn it. You’re letting out all my air-conditioning.”

  Jeff stepped inside. As the wheelchair retreated, he closed the wooden door behind him.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” he said to the man’s narrow back.

  “Don’t get many visitors these days.” Hutton spun the wheelchair around, whipping the long clear tube that was connected to a wheezing oxygen machine against a side wall. “Got beer and whiskey. What’s your pleasure?”

  “I’m not used to this dry heat. What I really need is a glass of water.”

  “That stuff’ll rust your pipes.” The old man clucked his tongue, his expression one of distaste. “Don’t recommend the swill from the tap. Check the icebox in the kitchen. Seems to me there’s some of that fancy spring water there.” He snatched an empty beer can off a lamp table and held it out. “Bring me a cold one while you’re at it, will you?”

  The place was small enough that Jeff didn’t have to ask directions. At the far side of the cluttered living room was a dining area and just beyond it what passed for a kitchen. It smelled of old grease and stale cigarette smoke. According to Kermit, Hutton was dying of lung cancer, a common enough malady among old uranium miners. The man looked ninety but was only in his mid-sixties, and had, apparently, outlived just about all of his contemporaries in the business.

  Jeff found an unopened bottle of water in the back of the refrigerator, which was so ancient there were no shelves in the door. He also snagged a can of beer from nearer the front.

  Returning to the living room, he thanked his host for the H20 and handed him his brew. The old man waved the gratitude away and popped the top.

  “You live here alone?” Jeff asked, noting the dinner-plate-size ashtrays filled with cigarette butts on the end tables.

  “Gerta on the other side of the hill drops by every day to see if I’m still alive. One of these days I won’t be.” There was no hint of bitterness or sentimentality in the statement, simply an acceptance of reality.

  “I understand you used to be the president of Uranica Corporation,” Jeff said, taking the chair closest to the window air conditioner that only just competed with the blast-furnace heat outside.

  “President and CEO. Had a good run for a while, too. Lived high on the hog for a couple of years, till the bottom fell out. My partner insisted the price would go back up, that there would always be a demand for the yellow powder. He was wrong, of course. Don’t know why I ever listened to him.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Buried him in Chloride twenty years ago. Told him he should never have given up whiskey. It’s the only thing that’s kept me going this long.” He picked up the glass from the table and took a generous mouthful, chased it with a swig of beer, then poured himself more liquor from the half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s at his elbow. “Sure you won’t join me?”

  “I’m driving,” Jeff said.

  Hutton shrugged, then began rambling about his late partner with a sort of passive nostalgia. He would undoubtedly have woven a series of tales about the old days if Jeff hadn’t managed to get him back on track.

  “Sure, I still have the records. They’re in the little bedroom. Should have thrown them out years ago.” His chuckle had a grating sound. “Guess I always hoped there’d be a miracle, and I’d find myself rich again.”

  “Do you know how many barrels of yellowcake were left in the warehouse in Houston when you shut the operation down?”

  Hutton scratched his gaunt cheek. “Sixty, as in seconds per minute, minutes per hour. I always liked to use those little gimmicks for remembering things.”

  “You wouldn’t have anything to verify that, would you?”

  “You calling me a liar, sonny?”

  “Hell, no,” Jeff said, as if he’d been the one insulted. “But if I go back to Houston and tell them there were sixty barrels instead of forty, they’ll call me crazy. The only thing those bureaucrats believe is what’s written on paper, and then they go to court and fight over what the words mean.”

  The old man cackled. “Reckon you’re right about that. Them records is all there.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  He waved a bony, blue-veined hand toward the other end of the house. “Help yourself.”

  The little bedroom was down a short hallway, across from the slightly larger one Hutton used. The files were in dozens of neatly stacked boxes, but the orderliness turned out to be pure deception. There were plenty of file folders, but
most of them were empty, their contents dumped loosely in the bottom of the cardboard cartons.

  Jeff sat cross-legged on the dusty carpet in the airless room and started sorting. After fifteen minutes he was soaked with sweat, but he’d begun to discern a semblance of order and was able to hone in on the latter years of the corporation’s existence.

  An hour went by. He returned to the living room to see if Hutton was annoyed at his being there so long, but the dying miner was asleep in his wheelchair, his raspy breathing slow and steady. Jeff resumed his search.

  Another hour and a quarter elapsed before he found what he was searching for, a single sheet of faded pink paper, headed “Final Inventory,” dated the day the warehouse was shut down in 1977. At the bottom were two signatures, one belonging to an Oliver Hendricks, Site Manager, the other to William Summers, Warehouse Custodian. Among the items on the list of things left in storage were sixty barrels of yellowcake—the smoking gun.

  He folded the thin paper and put it in his pocket just as he heard someone come in the front door. He returned to the living room to find a big, brawny woman with mousey gray-streaked hair and a ruddy complexion facing him. She wore a loose-fitting print dress, and her hands were fisted at her broad hips.

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded. Jeff judged her to be in her midsixties.

  “My name is—”

  “Gerta, he’s all right,” Hutton mumbled, having been jolted awake by her raised voice.

  “Jeff Rowan,” Jeff said and offered his hand. She ignored it.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Damn it, Gert,” Hutton snarled, “I told you this morning he was coming about them old files in the back.”

  She looked bewildered for a moment and ready to fight. There had been a time, Jeff suspected, when she could have taken him on in a brawl and probably come out ahead. He sure didn’t want to mess with her now.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” Hutton asked.

  “Sure did, thanks. You’ve been very helpful.”