Trail of Echoes

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  Colin eyed me, waiting for the jab. When the jab didn’t come, he said, “Why are you being so nice…?” He squinted, then grinned. “Hey, now!” He held up his hand, ready to high-five.

  I cocked my head. “What?”

  “You and Sam last night, right? Explains you being nice to me, the glowing skin…”

  “Why can’t I say something kind, first of all? And, second, why are you in my bed? Sam and I didn’t hook up, not that it’s any of your—”

  Colin rolled his eyes. “Oh, c’mon, Lou. What the hell’s your deal?”

  I gaped at him. “Dude. We were at a crime scene for how many hours yesterday?”

  He smirked. “That’s when you need to get laid the most.”

  “Can we now focus on work, please?” I gazed at apartment buildings with swanky names that hadn’t changed in twenty years. Baldwin Manor. Hillside Terrace. Ocean Breeze Homes. Crumpled-up paper, aluminum cans, and glass bottles littered patches of dirt where lush grass had grown back in the eighties. A few tenants and their homies loitered on the balconies of the apartment-ground units. Everyone had noticed Colin’s and my cars, and breakfast joints had been snuffed out and the Game’s “The City” had been turned down.

  The sights, smells, and sounds of this place gave me a twisty stomach and damp palms. A small but not insignificant part of me wanted to hustle back to my car and race down the hill. But the larger part of me—the part that wore a badge and gun and owned a set of steel ovaries—refused to scamper.

  I hadn’t walked this small stretch of sidewalk since my tenth-grade year. That’s when Mom and I moved to a different, less jacked-up neighborhood, Tori-less, Dad-less.

  “Look.” Colin pointed to a nearby telephone pole.

  A yellow “Missing” flyer featuring Chanita Lords’s photo had been stapled into the wood.

  Colin yanked the paper from the pole, then handed it to me.

  In this picture, the teen’s hair hid beneath a dark-colored do-rag. She wore no makeup, but her eyebrows looked freshly waxed. Her French-tipped fingernails rested on her cheeks.

  Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.

  Colin said, “Somebody’s shootin’.”

  “I fell for that trick once,” I answered, remembering a certain storage facility and a certain crazy man named Christopher Chatman.

  “We get warrants for her bedroom and phone?” Colin asked.

  I nodded. “Luke should be sending them over any minute now.”

  “Good mornin’, Officers.”

  The overly solicitous voice belonged to a young black man stretched out on the hood of a black Cutlass Supreme. He wore red corduroy house shoes, red Clippers basketball shorts, and a white wife beater as clean as a southern grandma’s bathroom floor. Green and blue ink swirled on his arms and neck—BPS, RIP, illegible names, faces of crudely drawn females.

  “Morning.” I held up the yellow flyer. “You know her?”

  “Maybe.” He pulled a cigarillo and a lighter out of thin air, then lit up. “That’s some shit right there. I heard some Mess-cans have a hand in that. They tryin’ to take over up in here.”

  Colin cocked his head. “Why would Mexicans kidnap her?”

  “C’mon, Officer,” Dude said. “I know y’all got to pretend that shit ain’t like it is. But you know and I know that they want us gone. They tryna chase us out like they did to all the niggas in Highland Park. And please: y’all ain’t about to bust some Mess-can Eighteenth Street bangers. Nah. Y’all want us to go head to head, mano to mano.” He puffed on the cigarillo, then added, “These Mess-cans keep on messin’ with our girls, shit’s gon’ jump off fo’ sure.”

  “What you smoking in there?” I asked. “You paranoid as fuck.”

  Dude was right about the race thing, though. The Latino gang, Eighteenth Street Westside, co-terrorized the Jungle to the Black P-Stones’ displeasure. City officials tried to downplay the hostilities between the two gangs by claiming that the violence wasn’t racial but stemmed from desires for more territory and the always-expanding drug trade. Despite injunctions that prohibited members from hanging out in certain neighborhood “safety zones,” both gangs started randomly killing children who lived outside those zones. Two weeks ago, a black gang member shot and killed a three-year-old Mexican boy. Two days later, a Mexican gang member shot and killed a ten-year-old black girl. Neither child nor their parents had been affiliated with gangs, but had still been targeted. If not for the color of their skin, then what?

  In Dude’s opinion, Chanita Lords represented yet another casualty in this unacknowledged race war.

  In truth, white people were actually about to take over up in here just as they were taking over Highland Park. Developers planned to tear down the Jungle and replace it with a hospital campus, new shops for folks riding the still-in-construction metro train, and expensive apartments and condos that folks like Dude and Eighteenth Street thugs could never, ever afford.

  “You bang?” Colin asked him now.

  I clamped my lips together to keep from laughing.

  Dude chuckled. “Sound like you just learned that word yesterday, Officer.”

  Colin blushed. “Just answer the question.”

  “Naw, I don’t bang,” he said, avoiding my glance.

  I squinted at him. “So that BPS on your left bicep stands for…?”

  “Boston Public School,” he said, grinning.

  I rolled my eyes. “And the tat that says ‘Nita’ on your left wrist?”

  He gaped at it, and his brows knitted as he tried to come up with an explanation.

  “You think it’s possible that Chanita’s disappearance is related to something more … nasty and fucked up?” I asked.

  Dude studied the cigarillo between two tobacco-stained fingers. “Like Jeffrey Dahmer and shit?” He curled his lip and shook his head. “First of all, ain’t no white man without a badge gon’ come up in here and snatch no girl.” He nodded at Colin. “Y’all some crazy sons a bitches, but y’all ain’t that crazy.”

  An LAPD helicopter now buzzed overhead, and we all glanced up at it.

  “So nobody odd around that doesn’t belong?” Colin asked.

  “There’s this Chester that lives in Nita’s complex,” Dude said. “Raul Moriaga. Now he’s fucked up.”

  “So you and Chanita,” I said, eyes on Dude’s tattoo. “You were dating?”

  “I ain’t said that,” Dude spat. “She was … a good friend, know what I mean?”

  My skin crawled, and my mouth opened to reply, but then closed. Dude had to be older than sixteen. He had to be older than eighteen. I opened my binder. “What’s your name?”

  “Ontrel.”

  “Last name?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I cocked an eyebrow. Well?

  “Shaw.”

  “And how old are you, Mr. Shaw?” I asked.

  “Just made twenty-two yesterday.”

  “Well, happy birthday,” I said, scribbling his name and age onto the notepad. “I’m Detective Norton, and this is Detective Taggert.” I narrowed my eyes. “Good friends?”

  “Ain’t like we was married or shit,” Ontrel said, frowning. “We hung out, watched movies, et cetera et cetera. Ain’t no thang—Nita was mature for her age.”

  “She was thirteen,” Colin spat.

  Ontrel gave an oblivious shrug. “Age ain’t nothin’ but a number.”

  “And according to the law,” I said, “thirteen will get you four.”

  He snorted. “Like y’all give a fuck about black girls fucking.”

  “I give thirty fucks about black girls fucking,” I said. “Especially minor girls. And since that is now the topic, I’ll need your DNA.”

  Ontrel’s smile dimmed, and he sat up straighter on the car’s hood.

  “So,” I continued, “now that I have your full attention: what’s been going on around here since Nita went missing?”

  Ontrel sucked his teeth. “What you think? Regina pissed cuz y’all ain’t found Ni
ta yet. Pissed at me cuz I wasn’t with Nita to protect her. Like I said, we wasn’t no married people, so I don’t know what the fuck Gee wanted me to do.”

  I could only blink at him as my mind grappled with the monstrous age gap. Twenty-two and thirteen and Chanita’s mother approved? Had I become that bourgie since fleeing this place?

  Ontrel chuckled, more annoyed than amused. “Gotta do what you gotta do to survive. I protect Nita from a lot of these fools up in here. Give her and her fam’ money when they broke.”

  “Well, then,” I said, “the parade will be next week. I’ll be sure to bring your medal and key to the city.”

  “And she been gone for five days,” Ontrel said, scowling, “and she ain’t back yet. What you so worried about, Detective?” To Colin: “Why you standin’ here now, Officer? Neither of y’all know shit about us up in here.”

  As a former resident, I knew plenty. But I didn’t care to qualify to this statutory-rapist dope head. I wouldn’t show him my physical scars left from getting jumped in the laundry room two hundred yards away from where we now stood. Nor would I relive for him those terrifying nights when helicopters like the one above us busted up my bedroom’s darkness with their damn-bright searchlights because someone like him had been shot in the alley beneath my window.

  Anger now stuck in my throat like a hastily swallowed jawbreaker. “Where were you when she first disappeared?”

  Ontrel’s scowl deepened. “Like I told that other cop: Social Security with my moms.”

  “Folks can vouch for you?” Colin asked.

  “Yup.”

  Colin made a note in his binder. “We’ll need you to come down to the station for a formal interview.”

  “Fuck that. I already had one of them.”

  Colin shook his head. “But that was with—”

  “Thanks, Ontrel,” I interrupted, then pointed at his slippers. “Them Jordans?”

  Ontrel said, “Ha,” without humor.

  “What shoes do you normally wear?” I asked.

  “Jordans. Black and red ones.”

  “When you come to the station,” I said, “please bring three pairs of your favorite sneaks.”

  “What for?”

  “Cuz I ain’t got nothin’ to do all day except explain shit to you.”

  Ontrel leaned back on the windshield with his arms crossed. “I ain’t had nothing to do with Nita disappearing. Put that in your police report. I’m innocent.”

  Three teenage girls wearing puffy nylon jackets poured out the gates of the apartment complex next door. Their tropical-fruit-color-streaked hair matched their tropical-fruit-color tight jeans. Mango, guava, and kiwi. See me! Pick me! Someone had picked a girl their age who had come from this very place. Chanita Lords had probably been the brightest thing in the monster’s life.

  Ontrel hopped off the Cutlass (not “hopped,” since that verb took energy, and Ontrel had smoked away his energy). No. He melted off the car. “Am I free to go, Detectives, or y’all gon’ send some more cops to talk to me? Make me confess to some shit I ain’t do? Or you gon’ take me now?” He held out his tattooed wrists.

  Colin’s phone rang from his jacket pocket, and he wandered to his car to answer the call.

  I nodded up at the helicopter. “We’re here all the time. If I want you for something, I’ll come back. Right now, though, we’re just chatting. Shootin’ the shit, neighborly like.”

  The three girls closed the distance between the apartment building and Ontrel and me. Teeth snapping gum. Thighs rubbing against each other. Acrylic fingernails scratching scalps. Smelling like sour apple Jolly Ranchers, Pink hair lotion, and cigarette smoke.

  Of all the ghettos in the world, Chanita Lords had to come from this one.

  “Ontrel, who you talking to?” the girl with the natural scowl asked.

  “None of ya biz-ness,” Ontrel said. “What y’all want?”

  “Drive us to the liquor store,” Braids ordered. “We need something to drank.”

  “She look too old for you, Trel.” The chubby one who had been smoking a Parliament tossed the still-lit butt toward my loafer.

  I jerked my shoe away. “What the—?”

  The girls laughed.

  Scowler said, “You see that bitch jump?”

  “That bitch a police detective,” Ontrel growled.

  Their heads dropped.

  “Who’s the bitch now?” I asked.

  Colin returned to stand beside me.

  “You her partner?” Chubby One asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “You cute for a white boy,” she said.

  “Thanks, I guess.” To me, he said, “Got the paper.”

  Warrants. Yay.

  “Why ain’t y’all in school?” I asked the girls.

  “Teacher in-service,” Scowler said. Then, she gazed at Ontrel with fluttery eyes—somebody had a crush.

  “You can ask my mom if you don’t believe us,” Chubby One said.

  “I’ll let y’all’s PO’s handle your attendance records,” I said.

  Scowler sucked her teeth. “Why we gotta have probation officers?”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t?”

  Silence.

  I pointed at Ontrel. “See you soon, yes?”

  He gave a curt nod.

  I strode to the entry gates.

  Impervious to Kevlar, the hard glares from those three girls burned my back.

  Of all the ghettos …

  12

  With warrants to search Chanita’s bedroom and cell phone now in our possession, Colin and I marched through the courtyard toward the girl’s apartment. In my binder, I also possessed a picture of Chanita on Brooks’s table, and its sadness eked through the binder’s leather and seeped into my tired soul.

  “Sorry back there with Ontrel,” Colin said. “Forgot that nobody knows she passed.”

  Despite the ibuprofen I had popped before leaving the house, a headache was forming beneath my right eyebrow. “Just remember: we’re playing chess when we’re working a case. Not checkers with its jumping all over the board and quickness and shit. Got it?”

  Colin said something, but my thoughts had turned back to finding the goddess on my car. Who had left it there? Why—?

  “You ignoring me?” Colin asked.

  I blinked. “I’d never ignore you, Colin dear. Everything you say and do is of the utmost importance to me.”

  The magnolia trees thrived—large green leaves but no white blooms. The dwarf palms looked dry and diseased, brown fronds or no fronds. The buildings’ green paint had peeled in places and faded to white in others. Wet towels and underwear hung out to dry on every balcony.

  “We will not mention the tooth,” I said. “Nor will we mention the duffel bag.”

  “What about the needle marks?” he asked. “Or the conversation just now with Mr. Boston Public Schools?”

  “Nope. None of that.”

  Once we reached apartment 5, I took a deep breath, told myself that I didn’t have a headache—what headache?—then knocked on the door.

  Silence blanketed the complex. No televisions or stereos blasted from living rooms. No girls laughed on stairways. No women gossiped at the mailboxes. A ghost town.

  The door opened, and the aromas of fried pork chops and simmering collard greens wafted out to greet us. An older black woman with sagging cheeks and flat, tired eyes stood there. She wore a royal blue housecoat dusted with flour, pink slippers, and a pink scarf that covered the curlers in her hair. “Yes?”

  My stomach gurgled—I hadn’t eaten real food since yesterday’s pastrami with Sam. And even that didn’t compare to the meal being cooked now. Colin and I both flashed our badges.

  Before I could say, “Homicide Division,” the old woman grinned and looked to the heavens. “Thank you, Jesus.”

  The mole on the left cheek. The upper canine tooth that touched her bottom lip. The same apartment she had occupied since I was five years old.

&nb
sp; “Are you … Miss Alberta?” I asked.

  The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she cocked her head. “Yes, and you … look familiar.”

  I pointed to the apartments on the other side of the complex. “My family … We lived in apartment seven and—”

  She gasped, and her eyes widened. “Your daddy drove the 105.”

  “That’s right.” My mouth lifted, fell, and then twisted. From surprise: she was still living here? Anger: two of my laundry-room bullies, Angelique and Dominique, were Miss Alberta’s daughters. And worry: how was Chanita Lords related?

  “Are you Chanita’s mom?” Colin asked.

  “No. That’s Regina, my daughter. She’s in the shower right now. I’m Nita’s grandmother, Alberta Jackson.”

  Regina, a baby when I lived here, had been too young to join her siblings’ reign of terror.

  Alberta opened the door wider. “Come on in and sit. Y’all excuse my appearance.” She slapped the front of her housecoat and little clouds of flour puffed around her.

  Drawn curtains darkened the large living room. A big-screen television and a black leather couch took up most of the space. The latest issues of Ebony and Essence sat on the black lacquer coffee table alongside the large-as-an-atlas family Bible and television remote control. A box of yellow “Missing” flyers sat near the front door.

  Alberta beamed at me. “Just look at you. All tall and beautiful. A police officer. The Lord is good. I know your momma must be so proud, after all that.”

  All that. Days after Victoria’s disappearance, Alberta had brought over a dish of noodles, orange cheese, and probably tuna. I’m guessing, since Mom had dumped the casserole into the garbage disposal. “They smoke PCP over there,” she had explained to me.

  “Want something to drink?” Alberta asked.

  “Yes, please,” Colin said.

  I said nothing, still wary of food and drink prepared in a kitchen of PCP smokers.

  “Comin’ right up.” She trundled into the small, yellow-tiled kitchen, then shouted, “Reggie, detectives is here.” To me, she said, “Maybe now we can get some answers, since you know us and know how things go around here.” She touched her heart-spot. “And ’specially since all this happened to you and your family.”