Come to Dust

by Bracken MacLeod

  Dixon’s expression cracked for the first time since the pair had started talking to him. He knitted his brows and his lips went thin and white. He reached down and put a giant hand on Mitch’s shoulder, squeezing softly. Looking in Braddock’s eyes, the partners engaged in a moment of silent communication until Braddock finally nodded. Dixon stood up and pulled Mitch gently to his feet. He turned him around and began handcuffing him.

  “We’ll have more questions for you at the station.”

  “What? Why? I told you, it was Faye.”

  “That may be, Mr. LeRoux. But we know who you are. That means we have more questions.”

  That was the final answer. He wouldn’t be seeing Sophie again.

  Not until her funeral. Maybe not even then.

  Maybe not ever.

  7

  Dixon sat on the table in the interview room while Braddock stood in the doorway watching Mitch being led by a uniformed officer toward the elevators. The closeness of the stark, white room was designed to keep all of the participants involved in a conversation in sight of the camera in the upper corner. Unlike television, no one was standing out of the line of sight with a baton and a phone book waiting to pull the line out of the wall. Tapes with big gaps in the time stamp weren’t any good in evidence. The secondary effect of the room was that it was a little bit too much of everything. It was too bright, too cold, too intimate. Most guys couldn’t keep up the bad-ass hoodrat rap when they were squinting, shivering, and someone Braddock’s size was practically sitting in their lap asking hard questions. Michel LeRoux was no different. Except, he never tried the hoodrat shit. Neither was he quietly defiant like some guys got, making a show of how well they shut up—no snitchin’ perfected. Mitch wasn’t the average subject they had in the room. By all appearances, he was living like a citizen since being paroled. He’d lied to his P.O. about his address, which was enough to violate his parole and bounce him back to the House of Correction. Other than that failing, everything else about him checked out. They hadn’t gotten ahold of the girl to confirm his alibi yet, but his boss, the day care, the receipt for dinner and the movie ticket in his pocket all supported the story he told of how his day progressed. In six hours of questioning, his version of events hadn’t changed. On top of that, he was as broken as anyone they’d ever seen in the box. If LeRoux wasn’t actually devastated by the girl’s death, neither an Oscar nor a Golden Globe were good enough; he deserved to have a whole new award created just for this performance.

  Braddock said, “You like him for it?”

  “Nope. He’s telling the truth.” He closed a tan folder with Mitch’s criminal history in it, and rubbed his temples. They’d sweat him hard, threatening to VOP him—put him back in jail for violating the conditions of his parole. He’d accepted that idea with a sense of defeated resignation that almost made Braddock feel bad for making the threat in the first place. Aside from petty hits as a teenager for shoplifting and underage consumption, LeRoux only had one other conviction: the one he’d done three years for. Assault with a dangerous weapon. He served three-fifths of his sentence before being paroled, and now he was as mild mannered as Clark Kent. Violating a guy who’s been living clean just because he stepped up to take care of his kin would have earned both detectives extra hot pokers in Hell that no amount of contrition could cool.

  They walked out of the interview room back to their carrel. Braddock and Dixon’s desks were as similar as they were. Cluttered with files and seemingly disorganized, each man knew where everything was on either desk. Other detectives joked that if Braddock thought about beans, Dixon farted, but their cognitive overlap was greater than mere simpatico. Each one of the pair filled in whatever blanks the other missed. They had the highest clear rate in the department. It didn’t help them divine facts, though. Neither was psychic and the unknown was as lost to them as it was to any other person.

  Dixon slid a file off his desk and opened it. Faye Cantrell’s police record was considerably longer than LeRoux’s, but aside from a couple of short, month-long slaps on the wrist, she’d never done any real time. She always got a plea, a diversionary program, and a fine. She’d gotten so many bites at the apple, there was only the core left. He’d hoped that the uniforms would have picked her up by now so they could keep their momentum going, but the woman and her kid were in the wind.

  And then there was the sister. He wanted a piece of her too. He figured he could nail her with an abandonment charge, and even if it didn’t stick, the process of defending against it would serve as some kind of punishment. He might have started to sympathize with Mitch a little at the end of their interrogation, but what he really wanted was justice for Sophie. And there was more than one person responsible for her being in a cooler. The unresolved question was how to hold someone accountable who had actually done her wrong. So far, Mitch was the only one it seemed who’d stepped up for the girl. And he was the only one paying the cost.

  Interlude: Scenes from an Awakening

  8

  The child’s tiny body lay naked and pale on the autopsy table under the bright light, a small square of white cloth laid over its groin as a gesture of simple dignity in the face of the unsympathetic setting. The medical examiner in her blue paper gown and plastic face shield was not sentimental, but neither was she heartless, and she hated performing her duties on children. Her services were not meant for them, no matter how many came through her office. Her carefully maintained professional distance was lessened in the presence of a dead child. The size of the body necessitated she draw nearer, look closer, be more attentive. Everything about an infant on the slab demanded her fullest attention, and pulled back the curtain on the fact that almost every last one of us will be intimate with death before we’re ready to be. She took a deep breath and prepared to do her job.

  She bent over the body to begin work while a small group of somber people in suits stood at the far end of the autopsy theater, observing. She spoke aloud into a tape recorder held beside her face by an assistant. “Subject is a Hispanic male child approximately six years of age. Perimortem trauma to the right parietal bone a centimeter above the squamosal suture is consistent with severe blunt force impact as detailed in the state police incident report involving subject dated September 12, 2017. At first glance, the cause of death appears to be consistent with the terminal event described by witnesses that this child suffered a fall from a significant height, landing laterally on the protrusion of an uneven surface. Medical record and X-ray review, however, revealed signs of antemortem trauma to limbs and torso with evidence of healing. Although no prior head injuries were detailed in the medical history of the subject, deliberate force cannot be ruled out as a possible cause at this...”

  The pathologist straightened her back and looked at her assistant. “Excuse me. Please don’t bump the table,” she said before continuing. “Cannot be ruled out as a possible cause of death at this time. I am going to proceed to make an incision along the...” She stepped back and placed her scalpel on the tray next to the autopsy table. “Are you all right, Glenn? Do you need to take a break?”

  The assistant clicked off the tape recorder and lifted his face shield. “I’m fine. What’s the problem?”

  One of the observers, an assistant district attorney, stepped forward, eyes wide and a hand raised to her mouth. Dr. Downum had known her since she was added to the fatality review team and had grown to like the woman considerably. She was poised to head up the Child Protection Unit of the DA’s office and had seen the worst cases there were to see. As a result of the horrors she dealt with on a daily basis, Dr. Downum thought of ADA Wishnevsky as unshockable. “What? What is it?” She leaned in to take a closer look at the subject. Perhaps it was something from the observers’ point of view she hadn’t noticed.

  The child on the table raised his hand to his face and moaned weakly.

  Dr. Downum ran to the wall and slapped the emergency alarm button while the rest of the team stood in mute shock. She had
no idea whether the antique clarion would work, or if anyone would even respond. What kind of medical emergency could you have in the morgue?

  9

  The smoke from the fire reached up like a black scar marring the cheery blue sky above. Below, a team of firefighters sprayed water into the smoldering remnants of a three-story apartment building while a crowd of onlookers watched in fascination. Having started in the daytime, most of the tenants were at work, leaving twelve living people homeless and without possessions except for what they wore and carried to the office that morning. Two, however, were dead. Myrna, the retiree on the third floor, and her granddaughter, Joy, both succumbing to smoke inhalation before rescue teams could reach them.

  The EMT pushed the gurney carrying the girl’s body into the back of his ambulance, listening for the clicks of the latches on the floor of the van as they caught and held her bed in place. He both loved and hated his job. He loved the excitement and adrenaline of rushing toward disaster. Being first to race to the aid of people who needed him. Being that person they saw when they thought hope was lost. He loved riding along as his partner weaved through traffic, siren screaming, lives hanging in the balance. Lives he saved. But then, there were the ones he couldn’t save. They didn’t see him as a rescuer or a helper or even at all.

  And then there were the kids.

  He hated when it was a child. Injured was bad enough. But dead ones made him want to throw his kit in the nearest dumpster and become a librarian or a yoga instructor or something else quiet where he never had to pull another sheet over a baby’s face.

  He closed the doors of the truck and gave them a tug to make sure they were secure. He slapped on the window to signal that everything was locked down and secure. Neither he nor his partner heard the girl gasp under her sheet as they drove her body to the morgue. It wasn’t until she began to cough and cry that they turned on the lights and siren.

  10

  Pete Vitti had had enough and was hurrying home so he could fix himself an Old Fashioned and relax in front of the television a little before he needed to help Kendra with dinner. The partners had put him through his paces today and all he wanted was to feel the warm spread of whiskey in his belly and perhaps later the warm spread of his fiancée’s thighs, if one cocktail didn’t become three and leave him a little too relaxed for that. Two drinks was a guarantee, however.

  As he pulled onto his street, he almost missed the sight of the dirt-covered child emerging from under his neighbor, Kyle Bailey’s, front porch. The incongruity of the image made him take a quick second glance that wrenched his neck and caused him to nearly drive into one of the trees lining the way.

  The child clawed and scraped at the lawn, pulling itself out of the small hole broken in the side of the lattice crawlspace siding. Once free, it got up from its hands and knees and began to stagger away. Despite the filth covering him, Pete recognized the kid from the faded posters tacked up all around town. In the nine months that Byron Davidson had been missing, his parents never failed to renew the faded and weather-beaten flyers every two weeks like clockwork. They refused to give up hope that their son was still alive, despite what everyone else in the community thought, but refused to say within earshot of them. He knew that boy’s face like he knew his own reflection.

  He cursed and stomped on the brakes, narrowly missing the mailbox at the end of his driveway. He scrabbled for his cell phone in the cup holder beside the radio, fumbling against the dash and accidentally cranking the volume on the news report he’d been ignoring. He dialed 9-1-1 and jumped out of his car to intercept the kid before Kyle saw what was happening and came out of his house. Has Kyle been keeping the kid captive right under our noses? We have him over for drinks on the fucking back patio, for Christ’s sake!

  He caught up with the boy as the dispatcher on the phone asked what his emergency was. The smell of the boy up close stopped Pete dead. The child’s face sent him running in the opposite direction, crying and screaming indistinctly as the emergency dispatcher asked again, “What is your emergency?” from the phone now lying abandoned in the grass.

  The child had no eyes.

  Pete never saw the second and third children emerge from the crawlspace after him.

  Part Two: Sophie’s Life

  11

  The doorbell clanged loudly in its decaying yellow box in the hallway above the bathroom door. Mitch sat in the dark and ignored it, hoping that whoever had come would soon go and leave him alone. He had few enough friends who visited in good times, and in the last week they’d all kept their distance. It wasn’t respect that kept them away, but fear. The LeRoux house was a peste-house. They knew without coming over to see for themselves that Mitch’s despair was infectious. He was the spirit of gravity living only to pull others down and break their souls against the rocks and stones. No one had rung his bell since Sophie died and that suited him just fine. He didn’t want to be responsible for anyone else’s happiness or well-being—not anymore. He only wanted to sit and wait. For what, he wasn’t certain.

  Again, the hard, percussive clank and clang as the electric clapper struck. For anyone with a low startle threshold, the doorbell was a short road to an elevated heart-rate. Mitch sat quietly on the fraying sofa wishing whoever it was would give up and go away. He heard the doorknob rattle. For a second, he held his breath waiting for the hiss of the rubber door runner against the hardwood floor. Instead, the visitor resorted to knocking. And then pounding. And then shouting.

  “God damn it, Mitch, open up. I know you’re in there.”

  Liana.

  She waited a beat and then pounded again. “The police came to see me!”

  Mitch pushed up off the couch and inspected himself briefly in the reflection of the blank television screen. His face was sallow and sunken. He hadn’t changed his clothes, shaved or showered in days. Although he wasn’t deliberately starving himself, he had no memory of the last time he’d eaten. He figured he had an equal chance of starving to death as he did of feeling like getting up and finding something to eat, or even opening the curtains to let in light. This was suicide by inertia, just slowing down until he stopped. This was the “after.” After Sophie. After happiness. After health.

  After.

  He got up and unlocked the door, stepping back before Liana could fling it open in a rage, shaming him for not calling after they’d slept together. Except she didn’t shove it open. She cautiously turned the knob and pushed the door in a few inches, peeking around the edge. “Mitch?” she said.

  He squinted, shading his eyes with a hand. She pushed the door open the rest of the way. Sunlight poured through the open portal, making her a shrouded figure surrounded in golden light, her kinky, tight hair a black halo framing a faceless angel. She shut the door, banishing the sun, and appeared as he remembered her. Warmly radiant. The shouting and harsh tone fell away, replaced by the same kind of effortless care she showed to Sophie the night of their date. It was what drew him to her: easy compassion, freely given.

  “Jesus Christ, Mitch. What’s happened to you? What’s going on? The police wouldn’t tell me anything except that they wanted to know who I was with last Saturday.”

  He thought of saying “Come in” or “Sit down” or any other number of perfunctory noises hosts make at their guests to signal that they are welcome. But, in the end, he chose to simply say, “I’m sorry.” His voice cracked with disuse. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken either.

  She slipped her arms under his and embraced him. The memory of their night together flooded back into his mind. Her firm breasts pushing against his chest, warm breath against his neck, her hands pressed to his back all called up in him the feeling of being wanted and loved. And then it drained away at the recollection of the following morning. A week had passed by in a moment—a week spent sitting, feeling nothing but longing and loneliness. Not thinking of the woman he’d spent the night with, or his job, or anything else. And he cried again for the millionth time s
ince Braddock and Dixon left him to return to his empty home.

  “Why did the police want to know about our date? What happened?” She pulled back and glanced around the apartment. Quiet and dark and empty. She cupped his chin in her hand and lifted his face to look him in the eye. “Where’s Sophie?” she asked.

  Mitch tried to look away, but her pleading gaze held him fast. No one looked at him the way she looked at him. Instead of judgment or disinterest, she saw him and reflected back warmth and caring. He tried to find a way to tell her. “She’s...” What? Gone? Passed away? Left us? No. She’s dead. And I can’t say it. Because saying it makes it too real. She’s dead and no one comes back from the fucking dead.

  “Oh God!” Liana understood without being told. She pulled him in and held him tighter. He felt her tears dripping onto his shoulder. “How?” she asked. “When?”

  He told her everything. It didn’t take long; there wasn’t much to tell. The police explained to him that an autopsy would be done, but it’d be weeks or months before the results would be made available. Braddock had handed him a card and told him to call the minute he saw his neighbors, if they returned. That was, if he wanted justice for his niece. Justice. He couldn’t even conceive of what abstract ideas like “justice” or “closure” even meant. Deep in his grief, he’d only felt the pull of the void, asking him to dive deep and let it take him and his pain.

  “I wish I could wake up. I wish I was opening my eyes and it was a week ago. Except I don’t, you know? I kind of want it all be a dream. You. Sophie. This.” His knees folded and he collapsed to the floor. Liana followed him down. They knelt together and she held him. “It has to all be a dream, because I can’t live in a place where I win and lose at the exact same time.”