Trail of Echoes

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  I didn’t know why I wanted that picture—I didn’t believe in voodoo or premonitions. But this picture … There was something about this picture.

  13

  It was almost eleven o’clock by the time Colin and I reached our desks in the Detectives’ Bureau of the Southwest Division Community Station.

  Pepe stood at the copier, watching INFORMATION WANTED flyers with Chanita’s picture whoosh into the tray. Luke, goofy grin in place, held court with formerly sexy secretary Ruthie, who loved cops and all things leopard print. Her thick hip butted against the arm of Luke’s chair—and Luke didn’t mind that hip or her obnoxious perfume.

  Someone had appropriated a whiteboard and had gridded names of basketball teams in the NCAA Championship: Duke, UCLA, Kentucky, and on and on. The handcuffed suspects seated here and there talked smack with detectives—not about their arrests but about the teams that would make it to the Final Four.

  The red voice-mail light on my phone blinked. Neither of the two messages had been left by Brooks or Zucca, but I could save fifty dollars on my family phone plan or make another donation to the Los Angeles Police Memorial Foundation. My iPhone chimed—an e-mail from Dr. Zach. Good morning! Just wanted you to have my email and a picture. It really was great meeting you yesterday. Hope your wrist is better. You followed doctor’s orders right? He had attached a selfie, taken at a nurse’s station.

  My stomach gurgled and pulled my attention away from the e-mail—Alberta Jackson had gifted Colin and me with a plate of corn muffins. I had gobbled my six on the drive back to the station, and now, corn meal, butter, and PCP sat in my stomach like cement.

  “I’ve never seen anybody eat corn muffins like that,” Colin said, chuckling.

  “I’ve never eaten muffins like that.” I sniffed the vase of red-and-yellow-striped roses placed near my computer monitor. Yesterday, before our lunch date, Sam had sent me these roses, and this morning they still looked fresh and young. Simple beauty in my jacked-up world.

  Colin took a long gulp from a near-empty DayQuil bottle, then shivered.

  “Your poor liver.” I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the figurine.

  He blew his nose, and it sounded like fluid between his ears was being vacuumed. “What’s that?”

  “No clue.”

  “Why do you have it?”

  I placed the piece on top of my monitor. “Someone put it on my car this morning.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t know. It was just … sitting there.”

  Colin grunted.

  “Let’s see.” I took a picture of the figurine with my phone, then used Google image search. “Here she is.”

  Colin rolled over to my desk and stared at my monitor.

  “Melpomene,” I said. “The Muse of tragedy.”

  Colin chuckled and pointed to her feet. “Those boots look like yours.”

  I pointed at the head she clutched. “Mask of tragedy.”

  He pointed to the knife. “And a deadly weapon. She is you.” He rolled back to his desk.

  “Melpomene.” I tore my eyes away from the Greek gods Web site and held up the list of Regina’s ex-boyfriends. “I’ll start on this.”

  “Have at it,” he said. “What the hell’s up with that family? No men, too many men, but not the right man. Nobody married? Nobody living … normal?”

  “Tell me, Detective Cleaver, what is ‘normal’?”

  “C’mon, Lou.” He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I’ll play. What is ‘normal’? Mom, dad, kids. Or mom, mom, kids. Dad, dad, kids. Everybody together for dinner. Church and parks and bikes and chores and shit. One parent tucks you in at night; the other makes you waffles in the morning. Or quinoa or flax or whatever the fuck you all eat out here for breakfast. That progressive enough for you?”

  “Your father wasn’t around much to make you waffles or take you bike riding.”

  “He’s air force.”

  “He tuck you in at night? He go to church with you on Sundays?”

  Colin twisted his lips.

  I said nothing and let silence complete my argument.

  He said, “Fine.”

  “We need to find out where Chanita was stolen on Friday,” I said.

  “ID a place that may have video? Which can be anywhere.”

  I nodded. “And…” I pulled the case file from my bag and found Chanita’s missing person report. “Murder book—I started completing reports last night, and Gwen probably has a few things that can go in.”

  Colin rolled his chair over to my desk. “Is she working the other missing girl?”

  “Let’s see.” I typed “Trina Porter” into our database. “Gwen Zapata listed as lead.” I skimmed Trina’s report. “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “Trina lives on Santo Tomas. A few blocks west of Chanita.”

  “Connected?”

  “Too early in the case for such dramatic statements.”

  He opened his binder, flipped pages, then jabbed the numbers on my phone. After three rings, the voice-mail lady announced that the mailbox for this number—Chanita’s—was full.

  “Probably Regina and Alberta calling her all night,” Colin said.

  My turn: I punched in a number I now knew by heart.

  Ringing … ringing … The voice-mail man told me to leave a message.

  “Hi, Vanessa,” I said. “This is Detective Norton again. I really need to talk with you.” I left my number, then ended the call.

  Pepe came over and held up a flyer he’d created. “I’ll get a few cadets to pass these out. Oh, I e-mailed you the shots Luke took of the crowds yesterday.”

  I peered at the flyer. “Only ten thousand dollars for a reward? That’s stingy.”

  “Lot of missing girls,” Pepe said with a shrug. “And they just upped the reward for the Porter girl to fifteen K.”

  I turned back to my computer. Along with the missing person report, the database also contained pictures of Trina Porter. She was a brown-skinned girl, pretty, long braids in one picture, and a short, slick bob in the second. Missing since Friday, March 7.

  “Gone thirteen days,” I said. “Taken on a Friday, just like Chanita.”

  “And she lives in the same area as Chanita,” Colin told Pepe.

  “Get the map,” I said, my gaze still on Trina’s picture. “The big, wipeable one.”

  According to the information we had, Trina had been last seen at the bookstore down in Leimert Park. She wore a pink hoodie, purple jeans, and purple Nikes.

  Colin pinned the wall map that showed our policing area.

  “Where was Chanita last seen?” Pepe asked.

  “School,” I said, “except she wasn’t—”

  Laughter interrupted our conversation. Luke and Ruth.

  “He still work here?” Colin asked.

  Pepe and I gave each other looks.

  “He’s finding himself right now,” Pepe said.

  I returned my attention to the map. At Nicolet and Hillcrest, I pushed in a blue pin. “Any other girls we want to include?”

  Pepe sat at my desk and clicked around on the computer. “Maybe, but these two dates are a little older. Bethany Wilson, fourteen, missing since November seventeenth, lives on Parthenon.”

  I push-pinned Parthenon Street.

  “Tawanna McFuller,” Pepe continued, “thirteen, went missing on November twenty-fifth. Lives on Gelber Place.”

  “Same neighborhood?” Pepe asked.

  I nodded.

  “Connected?” Colin wondered.

  I stared at the map, at the proximity of each blue pushpin to another. So close. Too close. In age. In race. In residence. Still, I said, “Too soon.”

  “So now what?” Colin asked.

  I turned to him. “Now, we take a field trip.”

  14

  The field trip was down the hall, to the left, and into the tiny corner cubicle of a baggy-eyed lady detective who had been working missing persons cases for too long. Gwen Zapata, pe
wter-skinned and hunched, had already been slumped and defeated when she transferred from Seventy-seventh to Southwest six years ago. And, now, she blinked at me from behind her desk. “You’re fuckin’ joking, right?”

  I gaped at Colin, who stood in Gwen’s cubicle entryway. Then, I looked back at Gwen. “Missing people do get found. Elizabeth Smart, those three women in Cleveland, and…” My words caught in my throat as I took in the walls of her little office—every space had been covered in rainbow-colored flyers. HAVE YOU SEEN HER?

  Gwen snatched her blue LAPD stress ball from the desktop and squeezed as she swiveled in her chair. “Those girls you named? Exceptions to the rule. You know and I know that every hour that passes, the chances of finding any of these girls—”

  “Especially brown-eyed girls with melanin issues?” I snarked.

  She snorted, then waved to the flyers. “Black, white, plaid. The chances are slim to none. And I’d put my money on none every time. Speaking of which”—she turned her attention to Colin—“are you the one collecting?” She opened a desk drawer and grabbed her wallet.

  “Lou is,” Colin said.

  Gwen handed me a twenty-dollar bill. “Michigan State.”

  I pocketed the money. “So when Chanita’s folks called—”

  She raised a hand. “Hold on. If you’ve come over here to blame me—”

  “Why would I do that? You do something or not do something?”

  Gwen rolled her eyes. “They were holding out on me, okay? I did the best I could.”

  Detective Peet had thought the same of my mother—she’s holding out—and so he hadn’t searched for Tori as hard as he should have. “Girls do shit” had been his philosophy. And, now, I wanted to scream at Gwen, Bullshit on you doing your best. But I couldn’t isolate her—we needed as many helping hands as possible.

  “So no one knows where Chanita was taken?” I asked.

  “A Mrs. Watson,” Gwen said, “who lives on King, not far from the school, says she saw Chanita at the bus stop in front of Krispy Kreme. But we haven’t been able to confirm that yet.”

  “You talk to anybody in Eighteenth Street?” Colin asked.

  Gwen smirked. “Why would I talk to them?”

  “Because they’re one of the most violent gangs in the city,” I said, my voice tight. “Because rumors abound that they did it.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says everybody we’ve talked to.”

  She waved her hand. “Bah.”

  “Well,” I said, “we’ll talk to them since, you know, we wanna solve the case and all.”

  “I did question Ontrel Shaw,” Gwen said. “He sometimes beats the girls he dates.”

  “Says who?” I asked.

  “Rumors abound,” Gwen cracked.

  “He been arrested for a domestic?” I asked.

  “Bunch of other misdemeanors but not that one,” Gwen said. “Give him time, though.”

  “What about Trina?” Colin asked.

  Gwen’s ears reddened as she tossed the stress ball back onto her desk. “I don’t appreciate you two comin’ at me like I’m sitting here cuttin’ coupons all fucking day.”

  “I see no coupons,” I said. “So Trina—any similarity to Chanita?”

  “Trina’s just like Nita,” Gwen said. “She ain’t your typical missing girl. Neither kid did drugs. Neither were runaways, nor did they trick. They got good grades in school. Hell: they went to school. Trina’s family, though. They’re very different from Nita’s.”

  “How?” I asked.

  Gwen shrugged. “For starters, Regina got out on the Tuesday or Wednesday before—”

  “Got out?” Colin said. “As in got out of jail?”

  “You surprised?” Gwen asked. “The woman’s got sticky fingers and a quick pen. Chanita was tired of her fuck-ups, and they fought, Chanita and Regina, up until that Friday morning when Regina gave in about those tight-ass jeans.”

  “And Trina’s family?” I asked.

  “Mom—Liz—is hardworking, some type of legal secretary. Husband was killed in Afghanistan last summer. Church folks. Nobody in jail. No men hanging around. Not a day goes by without six phone calls from her. At this point, I don’t know what to tell that poor lady.”

  “But you are still looking,” Colin said.

  “No, I’m not looking.” Gwen rolled her eyes, then met mine.

  “I saw that Trina Porter also attended Madison,” I said.

  “Uh huh.”

  “What about Bethany and Tawanna?” Colin asked.

  “View Park Prep over on Slauson,” Gwen said. “And to answer your original question: do I think Trina’s case is related to Chanita’s?”

  “Or to Tawanna’s or Bethany’s?” I added. “Cuz if so … you know what that means.”

  “You do your job,” she said, turning away from us, “and let me do mine. Now if you’d both get the fuck outta my office…”

  “So, I guess we’re done?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she said without a glance back at us.

  As we stomped back to our own squad room, Colin tapped me on the shoulder. “Zapata’s been doing this too long. It’s kinda like when you can’t smell skunk anymore. It’s not that tomato juice works, but it’s olfactory exhaustion.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re gonna have to compartmentalize,” he advised. “Distance yourself. Say that Tori’s case—”

  “Watching Dr. Phil and reading National Geographic Kids won’t make you a yogi, Colin. Don’t psychoanalyze me today.”

  “Just wanna help.” He ambled over to the March Madness whiteboard.

  “Noted. Thank you.” I sank into my chair.

  A postcard sat in my mail tray. It was of an oil painting of nine naked young women bathing in a lake. A man kneeled on the nearby shore, his hand dipped into the water. Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896.

  No stamp. No return address. My name had been written in green-inked, block letters. There was a message:

  QLRM GSV DROW IFNKFH. BLF ZIV DVOXLNV.

  Weird shit. I always got weird shit. Santa got mail from preschoolers, and I got postcards. And when Colin returned to his desk, I held it up. “This was in my tray.”

  He rolled over to my desk and stared at the message.

  QLRM GSV DROW IFNKFH. BLF ZIV DVOXLNV.

  He shrugged. “Weird shit.” When I didn’t agree, he cocked his head. “No?”

  “Oh, it’s weird,” I said. “I’m just curious, since it doesn’t smell like pee or weed. So it’s not from one of our regular nuts. The more I stare at the letters … It looks like a puzzle maybe.”

  He grunted. “Okay.”

  “The most frequently used letter in the English language is E.”

  “And you know that because…?”

  “I’m smart.” I grabbed pens and a pad. “But the lonely Q that starts the message is not an E. Probably a T or an M most likely.”

  “Most likely,” he mocked.

  I ignored him. “The most frequently used three-letter word is ‘the.’”

  He pointed to GSV. “Right there.”

  “Let’s solve it, shall we?” I copied the message onto the pad in black ink, then, in red pen, wrote T above the black G, an H above the black S, and E above the black V.

  “My brain hurts,” he complained, “and I’m bored.”

  “Shh.”

  “You do this a lot?”

  I nodded. “Grew up doing puzzles. My mother likes those big books of crosswords, cryptograms…” I slipped letters in, crossed letters out until …

  JOIN THE WILD RUMPUS. YOU ARE WELCOME.

  I chuckled like Ralphie from A Christmas Story decoding his secret message from Little Orphan Annie. Except my postcard and secret message weren’t an Ovaltine commercial.

  “Is this a marketing piece?” Colin asked. “For one of your ex-hubby’s video games?”

  “A game with nymphs? Maybe. He told me that he’s working on some … Wait. Wild rumpus. Maybe he’s doing steam-
punk meets Greek myth meets Where the Wild Things Are.” I slipped the card and its translated message into my binder.

  “I liked that story,” Colin said. “But steam-punk makes me nervous.”

  “Women who can spell make you nervous.”

  Join the wild rumpus. You are welcome.

  What was Greg selling now?

  No time for fake puzzles, though, when I had a real puzzle to solve.

  The intercom on my desk phone beeped. “Lou.” It was Lieutenant Rodriguez.

  “Yep?” I said.

  “Get over here. Now.”

  15

  I sat in the chair on the other side of the big man’s battered oak desk, which was piled high with stacks of aging manila folders. Hunched over, my chest almost hit my knees, not because he had torn into me—we were still in the trailers before the feature had started—but because no heat from the sun snuck past the iron grating on his windows and because he kept his office at ten degrees. And I’ve never thrived in the cold.

  “You’re stepping on toes,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said. He rearranged the collection of Dodgers bobbleheads shadowed by all the dead-people folders. “You’re stepping on toes and you haven’t even had the case for a whole two days yet.”

  “She’s half-assing it,” I complained, “and she’s a tattle-tell in addition to being lazy.”

  “You can’t compare Chanita’s case to Trina’s, okay? It’s too soon for that.” He twisted in his high-backed chair as his gray vampire eyes burned into mine. “Stay the hell away from Zapata. She’ll bring you down with her ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter’ bullshit.”

  My stomach tightened as the Matt Kemp bobblehead on my boss’s desk nodded in agreement. With the only light coming from a desk lamp, the toy’s shadow played on the wall. And I thought of that episode of Twilight Zone, the one that—

  Lieutenant Rodriguez snapped his fingers. “Hey. You listening?”

  I gave him a practiced smile.

  He waited for me to speak, but when I only continued to smile, he asked, “Worried?”

  “Not yet, but I’m driving to the station to board the train.”

  “You’ve worked harder cases. The eighty-year-old Jane Doe in the alley. That murder-suicide right after Christmas. And then there’s crazy-ass Christopher Chatman and crazy-bitch Sarah Oliver. She still hiding down in Venezuela?”