Trail of Echoes

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  “And then high school prom.”

  She laughed. “He sat on the couch with that fake gun when Brian and Tim picked us up.”

  “Even when you were in college,” I said, “he still called you his ‘pretty baby’ and held your hand when you crossed the street together.” Tears burned my eyes. “And that’s … wow.”

  Syeeda placed her chin on my shoulder. “Yeah.”

  “Victor Starr left us, Sy,” I said. “He left me.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I know, and I’m sorry.”

  “You and Kenny and Eva did okay because Frank died after we left Santa Cruz. Victor Starr left when I was a third grader. Tori was in junior high. He had to leave then? And leave us with Miss Alberta and her evil brood?”

  “Did you ask him?”

  “No.”

  “You need to.” Syeeda wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “You don’t wanna have any regrets, Lou. Or wonder. Hell, I wish I could talk to my—”

  “Your dad didn’t leave on his own will.”

  “I know that,” Syeeda said. “Still: don’t pass up the chance you’re given. If that means cursing out Victor Starr until only his silver fillings remain, then do it. Your ‘thing’ with Sam, or Hot Doc, or with anyone, can’t blossom until you deal with the past.”

  Teardrops slipped down my cheek, and I swiped at them. “What does he think is gonna happen between us? That we’ll pick up where we left off when I was a kid? I had to fucking … MacGyver my way out of the Jungle, and he thinks a trip to Toys “R” Us and a scoop of ice cream will just…?” I wandered to the window and peered out at the wet, dark yard.

  “He was supposed to take me wolf hunting, Sy. He was supposed to show me how to spot them, how to keep them away, how to kill them.” I rested my forehead against the cool windowpane. “If he’d been around, maybe I’d be a lawyer now. Maybe I’d have a better husband, some kids. The cops … Those sons of bitches taught me how to hunt.”

  “No, Lou,” Syeeda said. “You had survived before the LAPD—”

  “And ‘surviving’ is what we’re striving for now?” I turned to face her. “Tori died because she couldn’t spot those wolves—she didn’t know how to fight Max Crase or Cyrus Darson. And after she disappeared … well … I made myself into a tiny ball while Mom played possum and pretended we both were dead until the threat passed. I know she did the best she could, but … That may be surviving, but it ain’t living.”

  My stomach ached as I sunk back onto the couch. “If Chanita’s father had been around, and more positive than negative, would she still be here? She was a bright kid, you know? And she was…” Ice replaced the ache in my gut, and I shivered. “He’s looking for a type.”

  “He?”

  “My suspect. Smart girls. Vulnerable girls. Trina Porter and Chanita Lords were both smart. And both were artists. Trina a poet, Chanita a photographer.”

  “Both were poor,” Syeeda added. “Lived with their moms.”

  “No so-called protector in the home,” I said. Like me. Like my sister.

  “Did you talk to folks at Madison yet?” Syeeda asked.

  I grunted as my face warmed—I didn’t want Syeeda to know all that I’d learned, who I’d talked to, especially my conversation with Payton Bishop. He had counseled both girls. But I couldn’t mention him—Syeeda would grill him, and then she’d write an article. I didn’t want that. Yet.

  Saturday, March 22

  31

  The last funeral I had attended for one of my victims was two months ago, the Tuesday after the King holiday. It had been an exhaustive, four-hour affair with enough singing to fill a hymnbook and hundreds of stories about young Danny Baker, a Dorsey High School running back, a future San Diego Chargers starter with a heart of gold, quick feet, and the looks of a young Jackie Robinson. A good kid, Danny was gunned down fifty feet from his front porch. What set you from, ese, they had asked. I don’t bang, Danny had responded. I play ball at—BOOM. Dead. All because he’d gone out to his Altima to retrieve his backpack.

  Danny’s funeral had sent me down a rabbit hole. Not because the Impala full of Avenues thugs had eluded me—we caught them six hours later at PAWN4CASH with Danny’s still-active iPad pinging the Find My iPhone app. The case made me crazy because Miriam and Tony Baker, the boy’s parents, had done everything right. Danny didn’t hang out. Danny didn’t smoke out. School, practice, home, school, practice, home. Still, wolves in Dickies and beaters had found him—at home.

  Right after Danny’s funeral, I, along with several community servants, had headed to Olive Garden. There, I shared a bottle of Pinot Noir with the handsome, green-eyed assistant district attorney, the one prosecuting the Max Crase case, the one prosecuting the newly jumped-in members of the Avenues and murderers of young Danny Baker.

  Despite the drinking and the flirting with Sam Seward that afternoon, my heart ached and my mind lingered on Danny Baker’s silver casket, on his weeping mother and his catatonic father. Their dreams, their love, now buried six feet under.

  This morning, Colin rode shotgun as I drove down Crenshaw Boulevard to Mount St. John’s Cathedral and to the funeral of another child I had not met until God left her for me on a muddy park trail. I would move past the sadness and hopelessness that came with murder and hope that no one noticed my intrusion. At a church as big as Mount St. John’s, Colin and I would easily disappear behind the shadows of flowered and feathered hats. We would slip into the back pew, and no one, not even the monster, would know we were there.

  * * *

  The storms had moved on, leaving behind a troop of steel-colored clouds ready to set it off again.

  Colin coughed as he knotted his blue necktie. “It can’t rain on a child’s burial day, right?”

  “A kid’s dead. Anything can happen.” And then I deleted another text message from Victor Starr. So far this morning, he had texted me three times. Each message had been a plea for compassion and patience.

  There were now two Mount St. John’s—the original, smaller church where Chanita’s funeral would take place and, just a few blocks back, the newer, bigger cathedral, which would host Congresswoman Fortier’s jazz funeral. After weaving through side streets because of road closures for the bigger service, I finally pulled into the original church’s parking lot. A great choice of spots—not many parked cars. Colored People’s Time meant that the funeral would start at 10:45 instead of 10:30. But at 10:20, the lot only hosted two Lexus sedans, a black Ford Explorer, several Toyotas, a minivan covered with JESUS IS THE ANSWER bumper stickers, and my Crown Vic. About twenty cars in a parking garage built for a thousand.

  Colin coughed into the crook of his elbow, then frowned. “Where is everybody? There must’ve been seven hundred people at Danny’s funeral an hour before it started.”

  I reached for the drugstore bag on the backseat and handed it to him.

  He pulled out the new bottle of DayQuil and smiled. “You’re so—” He coughed, and his face turned Pepto pink.

  “I am sweet,” I said, “and you’re welcome. I need your lungs right now. And all that coughing’s gonna scare away the monster.” I pulled on my gray wool overcoat as I stared at the near-empty lot.“Maybe the date’s wrong on the e-mail.”

  Colin took a long pull from the bottle as he read the printout. “Date’s right, time’s right, everything else is wrong, including the spelling of the church.”

  I’d never seen the outside environs of this property look so abandoned—vendors usually camped about the church’s perimeter to hawk gospel CDs, sun hats, sticks of incense, and gift baskets to congregants present for Sunday services, prayer meetings, and concerts.

  A powder-blue hearse and a matching late-model family limousine were parked on the street in front of the church. A pudgy motorcycle escort and two male drivers, both wearing shiny black suits, laughed on the sidewalk. The escort shouted, “North Carolina trashed ’em.”

  Colin and I walked past them and into the courtyard, where a f
ew middle-school-aged girls huddled with their mothers. I remembered one girl who wore large, thick glasses that hid her face—I’d plucked her picture from Chanita’s locker door. Alice from Madison’s administrative office stood with other office workers. A few grade-school children wearing their Sundays ran around the fountain. The boy skidded and tripped, not practiced in the fine art of horsing around in church shoes.

  Organ music—“How Great Thou Art”—drifted from the sanctuary. Fumes of fresh paint and steam-cleaned carpet mingled with the heavy scents of lilies, roses, and other funeral flowers. My spike-heeled boots daggered into lavender pile free of muddy footprints, grape-juice stains, and water spots. An ancient deaconess dressed in white stood at the sanctuary doors. She held programs in her white-gloved hands, and she smelled of peppermint candy and Jergens lotion.

  In the sanctuary, sunlight filtered through the red, green, and yellow stained glass and reflected against the stainless-steel crucifix that hung above the altar. A tripod at the altar’s base held a large school portrait of Chanita Lords. A closed coffin the color of a seashell’s belly sat on the picture’s right.

  Lots of empty lavender-cushioned pews.

  Gwen Zapata sat on one side of the church and talked with a woman with thousands of long braids twisted high into a bun. She saw Colin and me and nodded. Also seated: a round, gray-haired woman dressed in poly blend and pearls. And Mike Summit, the assistant editor in chief at OurTimes.

  So much for disappearing.

  “The woman in braids,” I whispered to Colin. “Trina Porter’s mom, right?”

  Summit quickly left his seat to join my partner and me at the back of the sanctuary. “Detective Norton, aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  “No,” I said, sliding into a rear pew.

  “Mike Summit,” he said to Colin and offered his hand. “I’m here to bear witness and tell the world that too many of our girls—”

  “Our girls, Mike?” I asked, eyebrow cocked.

  “Just because I’m white doesn’t mean that I don’t care,” he said.

  We squinted at him, at his too-tight houndstooth blazer and at the piece of spinach trapped between his teeth. “Why don’t you head back to your seat?”

  Mike Summit took a step back. “After the service, Detectives, I’ll have questions.”

  “Have a seat, sir,” Colin said.

  The so-called journalist tromped back to his pew as the woman in braids came to stand before us. A clump of fine moles grew on her left cheek, and her foundation had failed to hide the dark circles beneath her eyes. She held out her thin hand. “I’m Liz Porter.”

  I introduced Colin and myself.

  She nodded. “Detective Zapata told me you’re in charge of Chanita’s investigation. Do you think…? Is it…?” Her lips quivered, but she swallowed and shoved sorrow aside. “Is this case related to my daughter’s disappearance?”

  “We can’t say anything for certain, Mrs. Porter.” The lump in my throat had made it hard to speak.

  She dropped her head and sighed.

  Colin placed his hand on her shoulder. “But we’re coordinating with Detective Zapata. We find something out, we’ll let her know, pronto.”

  Liz Porter whispered, “Thank you,” without meeting our eyes. She wobbled to her pew.

  Before Colin or I could say, “Poor lady,” Payton Bishop entered the sanctuary and made his way to the pews occupied by Madison Middle School staff.

  The organist changed chords. “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” A somber gospel standard played at most colored funerals and will probably be played at mine.

  Up front on the dais, the door to a side room opened, and from it emerged a minister wearing a white and purple robe along with two men in dark suits and a woman in pearls and a flamingo-colored Jackie O–Chanel suit. They sat in the velvet-backed chairs positioned behind the Lucite podium.

  “Well?” Colin whispered. “Pick one and let’s go.”

  I whispered back. “Give me a minute. Not a lot to choose from.”

  At thirty minutes past the announced start time, the pastor stepped to the pulpit and nodded to the deaconess stationed at the doors to the sanctuary. A moment later, the family of Chanita Lords trudged down the church’s long center aisle. Three deaconesses, each holding a box of tissues, flanked them.

  Regina Drummond wore a simple black dress and flats. She wept as the family male helped her walk. Brother, uncle, or cousin wore black pants and a black shirt, and his tongue kept flicking at the corners of his dry lips. The school-aged girls and boy who had been playing in the courtyard now followed Regina and her escort. Bringing up the rear was Alberta Jackson, with her large soft bosom and no-nonsense hairdo, big purse on one arm and bigger Bible on the other. A Saved and Sanctified Saint who had borne cons of every flavor.

  A deaconess directed the family to the front pew, arm’s length from that pink coffin.

  After a prayer from Elder Kimball, a welcome from Elder Smyth, and the reading of a poem by pearls-wearing church clerk Doris Smyth, the minister stepped to the podium. He hooked his eyeglass stems around his ears. “Jesus says, ‘suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of God.’”

  The organ wheezed to life again. “In the Upper Room.”

  Colin nudged me and nodded to our right.

  The park ranger who had called in about Chanita Lords’s being left on that trail high above the city had joined the congregation.

  Jimmy Boulard smiled at me and then winked.

  My nerves bristled. “Do not let him leave this building,” I whispered to Colin.

  I’d have the chance to speak with Boulard after all, to ask him myself what he saw … and to hear what he’d claim he didn’t do.

  “Chanita has gone on to be with our Father,” Pastor Evans said, “and she is happy to know that there are some in this city who have not forgotten her. Some in this city who miss her and mourn her.” He spread his arms. “Would anyone like to say something?”

  Payton stood from his pew. “I’m Chanita’s school counselor. I helped search for her when she first disappeared, and I was hoping that … praying that … We worked hard trying to find her, you know? And umm…” He scratched his temple, took a deep breath, then exhaled. “I just wish I could’ve done more for her.” Then he sat and covered his mouth with his hand.

  Alice rolled her eyes.

  I needed to have tea with Miss Alice and ask, Why the side eye?

  Liz Porter pulled herself to stand. She smoothed out the front of her blue pantsuit, closed her eyes, and clutched the back of the pew before her. “I came cuz my baby Trina was snatched back on March seventh.”

  Hot tears welled in my eyes. I held my breath, remembering how Mom had kept it together until she couldn’t anymore. And on that day she couldn’t …

  Colin took my hand and squeezed. “If you need to leave…”

  “I’m good.” I whispered.

  He gave another squeeze before letting go.

  “The police ain’t found Trina yet,” Liz said, “and I thank Detective Zapata over there for not giving up.”

  Gwen nodded to Liz.

  “But I came here today,” Liz Porter continued, “cuz I’m hoping that the Lord will have mercy—” And then, she crumpled back into her seat.

  Danielle, the middle-school girl with the thick glasses, spoke about her slain friend and her love of photography, Bruno Mars, and trips to museums.

  Alberta Jackson spoke: Jesus, photography, Jesus.

  Once Alberta sat, Rev. Evans looked to Colin and me. “Would either of you in the back like to say something?”

  Just then, Jimmy Boulard rose and shuffled out of the sanctuary.

  My neck warmed—we needed to leave. “No. Thank you.”

  Colin said, “No, thanks.”

  As Rev. Evans offered a few more words about salvation, redemption, and love, Colin and I darted out of the sanctuary.

  No one stood in the vestibul
e.

  “Check the restroom,” I told Colin.

  Gwen joined us. “Before you leave,” she said to me, “I need to tell—”

  “Can’t right now, Gwen.”

  I checked the mother’s room, the AV chamber, and the kitchen.

  No park ranger.

  My phone rang, and I glanced at the display: Victor Starr was calling. I hit IGNORE and reunited with Colin in the lobby. “See him?”

  “Nope.”

  The organ wheezed the first bars of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

  Mike Summit poked his head from behind the doors of the sanctuary.

  Before he could ask any questions, I darted out of the church and into the courtyard.

  Fragrant blue smoke wafted from the barbecue joint a block north, and the air smelled of beef brisket and pork ribs. Far-off trumpets and trombones blared. A bass drum boomed.

  Music?

  Colin rushed past me to start searching the outer perimeter of the church.

  “Y’all see a man leave just now?” I shouted to the limo driver and motorcycle escort.

  “The white boy?” the motorcycle escort asked.

  “No,” I said. “A light-skinned black guy. Looks like Smokey Robinson.”

  Both men shook their heads.

  Just like that, the park ranger was gone.

  All of me went cold and hard.

  Mike Summit stood in the breezeway. “What’s happening?”

  And I went colder and harder.

  32

  Where had Jimmy Boulard gone that quickly?

  I pulled the Motorola radio from my bag and called in a BOLO for the park ranger.

  “Detective Norton,” Mike Summit said.

  Ignoring the reporter, I turned my gaze northward, to the sound of those trombones and bass drums. That’s when I saw the worst possible thing that could happen at that moment. “You gotta be fucking kidding me,” I muttered.

  Two motorcycle escorts slowly rolled down Crenshaw with their orange hazard lights blinking. Behind them, a brass band played “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” nice and slow. Six men in tails and top hats flanked the sides of a horse-drawn carriage carrying a copper-colored casket. Behind them, a butter-colored young woman wearing a gold dress and holding a ruffled umbrella strutted, then posed … strutted … posed. Behind her, a man hoisted a large picture of a fair-skinned black woman—longtime congresswoman Barbara Fortier. Her family, friends, and constituents walked, most holding green, purple, or gold umbrellas, and many of them the same café-au-lait hue as Jimmy Boulard. Cameramen from three television news stations aimed their lenses at the spectacle while a helicopter buzzed overhead for aerial shots.