Trail of Echoes

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  As he handed out assignments, my gaze wandered to the playground’s twelve-foot-high tube slide just a few feet from where we stood. A piece of pink paper fluttered on the green slide’s upper platform—it had been taped to a metal safety bar, near the entry. The wind was now tearing at that pink paper, and at any moment it would fly away.

  Eyes glued to that piece of paper, I left the huddle and crept toward the slide.

  “Lou,” Lieutenant Rodriguez barked.

  I stepped into the sandbox, which was damp from the rain and littered with squashed juice boxes and empty Cheetos bags.

  “Lou!”

  I stood at the bottom of the slide’s steps.

  The wind had loosened the tape’s hold even more, and the paper lifted higher, slapping both sides now of the green plastic tube.

  I placed my right foot on the first step. Then, I placed my left foot on the second step.

  The paper was almost free from the tape’s grip.

  I climbed the next step …

  Then, the next …

  Holding my breath, I reached the second-to-last step. The pink paper broke free from the tape as my hand shot out and grabbed it. Words had been written in thick green ink.

  “Lou, what the hell are you doing?” Lieutenant Rodriguez and the search team had tromped over to the base of the slide.

  I climbed back down to the sandbox and held out the pink paper.

  My boss didn’t take it. Instead, his eyes scanned the words. “Son of a bitch.”

  “What does it say?” Colin asked.

  White noise filled my head, and I stepped back from them. “My prints are on it.”

  Colin shook his head. “It’s a substitution one again.”

  Wrw R hzb qfmtov tbn? R nvzm ollp-lfg klrmg. Gsv ervd uli olevih. Hrc nrmfgvh rm svzevm. Sz sz sz.

  “Figure it out,” Lieutenant Rodriguez shouted.

  I blinked at him.

  “Now, Detective!”

  I snapped out of the spell and stared at the substitution cipher.

  Pepe offered me a pen and pad.

  I sat on the slide’s lip, my eyes ping-ponging around the message for “E” and “THE.”

  Colin crouched in front of me, and whispered, “Faster.”

  The “R” had to be an “I.”

  “GSV” was “The.”

  “Lou,” Lieutenant Rodriguez growled.

  I ignored him.

  “Ollp-lfg” … That spelled … “look-out”?

  My throat burned with bile. I swallowed hard, sending acid back to my stomach.

  “Svzevm” had to be—

  “Lou!” Lieutenant Rodriguez barked.

  “Heaven,” I blurted. “It says, ‘Did I say jungle gym? I mean lookout point. The view for lovers. Six minutes in heaven. Ha ha ha.’”

  37

  Colin paled, and his mouth moved without making a sound.

  “Which lookout?” Pepe asked.

  “There are seven trails in this park,” Luke said. “Only trails three and five have lookouts.”

  “He’s talking about where he left Chanita,” I said. “Trail five.”

  “We’ll split into two groups,” Lieutenant Rodriguez shouted. “Gomez, stay here and block the entrance—there’s only one way in and one way out of this park by car. Grab a few uniforms and interview everybody you can.” He pointed to Gwen. “Zapata, you help him out.”

  My group would take trail 5.

  “Be prepared,” Lieutenant Rodriguez warned. “That son of a bitch may still be here.”

  After chucking my funeral boots and borrowing someone’s two-sizes-too-big work boots, I hurried northeast with Colin and two other cops up to trail 5.

  The trails were still muddy from the storms. Dump trucks and earthmovers hadn’t left their spots since yesterday, and more red mud had slid against the tires. The heavy machinery would need their own tractors to dig them out.

  In a matter of seconds, the back of my shirt was drenched with sweat.

  “Six minutes in heaven,” Colin said. “Isn’t that the game where one kid picks two other kids to go into a dark closet and kiss for…”

  “Seven,” I said. “Seven minutes in heaven, not six. Not that the one-minute discrepancy matters. Unless it does.”

  The helicopter raced across the sky above us and then circled.

  “He’s playing games with you,” Colin said.

  “Children’s games,” I said. “The ciphers, the kids’ book, hide-and-seek…”

  We walked up the steepening trail. My feet rubbed and slipped in the large boots.

  “If he beats you, then he’s king of the world.” When I didn’t respond, he continued. “Can we say ‘serial’ now? The circumstances are too coincidental. The girls’ ages, the school they attended, this park.”

  I held out my arm and stopped walking.

  Colin also stopped in his step.

  The blue tarp was gone. The stuffed animals, posters, and candles left to honor Chanita remained. And no duffel bag had been dumped on the trail.

  Colin sighed with relief. “So maybe he’s fucking with us. Again.”

  My gaze skittered from the trail to the bluff, and my right hand rested on my holstered Glock. “We’re not at the lookout point yet.”

  We walked, passing the site where we’d found Chanita Lords. My heart boomed with every step I took, and, as we neared the bluff, I slipped my gun out of its holster. The creak of leather behind me told me that others on my team were doing the same.

  We came to the bluff. A large green canvas bag sat on the lonely gray park bench perched at the bluff’s lip.

  My stomach dropped.

  Colin groaned.

  The others fanned out across the bluff as Colin and I moved closer to the bench. The closer our approach, the clearer the sound of …

  Tinkling music.

  I cocked my head.

  Colin pointed to the canvas bag.

  I took a step closer …

  A white music box appliquéd with pink ballet slippers and flowers sat atop the canvas bag. The lid was up, and a tiny ballerina en pointe slowly pirouetted to Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Theme.” A few blowflies crept over the canvas bag, but only a few.

  Colin’s arms remained extended, with his Beretta pointed at the bag.

  I holstered the Glock, then used my phone’s camera to take pictures of the music box and the canvas bag, of the windswept bluff and the lonely park bench. And then, it was time.

  I pulled on latex gloves, then slowly dragged the bag’s thick zipper.

  There she was. One hand frozen into a claw, the other in a tight, brown fist … Skin purple and green … Pink T-shirt … Glossy leaves and black berries. No bugs except for those few flies.

  Colin toggled his radio and in a small, weak voice, he said, “Found her.”

  Whistles sounded. Radios crackled. Men shouted. The helicopter roared in our direction. All came to where we stood. And then, there was quiet down here on the ground.

  Luke crossed himself.

  Pepe did the same.

  Colin covered his mouth with his hand.

  Lieutenant Rodriguez muttered, “Damn it,” then lifted the radio to his mouth. “We’re gonna need the coroner…”

  I tore my eyes away from the girl. My mind was mush—in ten minutes, I wouldn’t be able to recall any detail except for … her. Get it together, Lou. “Let’s take pictures of everything,” I croaked, “since we can’t touch her until the ME comes.”

  The music from the box stopped.

  I jerked. “He’s here.”

  “Who’s here?” Colin asked.

  I pointed to the music box with a steady finger. “He had to wind that up to play.”

  Lieutenant Rodriguez squinted at me, then his eyes widened.

  “A music box only plays for a few minutes,” I explained to Colin. “He can’t be far.”

  Lieutenant Rodriguez whirled away from me, whistling and shouting for more bodies to find the monster.

/>   Colin led the group to strip-search the hillside, looking again for a clue, any clue.

  And I stayed with the girl.

  Do the work.

  I pulled a pencil and small pad from my jacket pocket and sketched the hillside, the girl, trees and shrubs, and her proximity to trail 5. Then, I stared at those hills covered with wild sage and chaparral. Far in the distance, the Hollywood sign twinkled on another LA hillside. My eyelids fluttered, and my knees threatened to lose all strength. A part of me did collapse in the dirt, paralyzed as the smell of death overwhelmed me and forced its way into my nostrils, my skin, my clothes. But the other part of me—the tiny part that always survived—gripped her pen so tight that it creaked.

  My phone vibrated—a text from Victor Starr. Just give me a chance. I’m not a bad person. I’m trying to do better. Please. An exhausted whimper slipped from my lips.

  Lieutenant Rodriguez touched my shoulder. “You okay?”

  I stared dumbly at him, unable to respond.

  “We’ll catch him, Lou. Good call on the music box.”

  He said something else, but his voice was drowned out by the noise of car tires crunching up the gravel and dirt trails. Over the next hour, the once-quiet park swarmed again with cops, Zucca and his bunny-suited forensic techs, and, finally, Brooks and his small team. Patrol units had strung yellow tape across every bush and shrub. And Brooks’s team had erected another large blue tarp over the bench.

  Colin found me, notebook crunched in my hands, gazing down at La Brea Avenue. “Didn’t find much. More shoe prints, so they’re making casts.” He sighed. “Zucca’s beat.”

  I turned to him. “Aren’t we all?”

  Colin’s sweaty face was covered with leaves and dirt.

  I plucked a crumpled leaf from his damp hair.

  “Lou!” Brooks was calling me from the tarp.

  We joined the ME.

  “Ready?” Brooks asked.

  I pulled up Allayna’s picture on my phone, then ducked beneath the tarp with my team. I stared at the picture, then stared at the teen on the bench.

  One of these girls is not like the other.

  There’s something awesome and terrifying about the soul. It makes your plain brown eyes mischievous. Makes your smirk a smile. And once the soul returns to Whoever gave it, you become a template, an Almost-You, a Madame Tussauds replica, but not for long, because then biology changes you into less than that. And that was this girl on the bench. Almost-Her.

  “She’s wearing one of those name necklaces,” Brooks said, pointing at the girl’s neck.

  “What does it say?” I asked.

  Brooks straightened the charm of gold cursive letters. “Laynie.”

  You’ll know her by name.

  “Well?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked me.

  “We’ll need her mother to confirm,” I said.

  “But what do you say?” Brooks asked me.

  “It’s Allayna Mitchell.”

  “He left her with a music box,” Colin said.

  “Just as he left Chanita with a View-Master,” I said.

  Camera for the photographer. Music box for the ballerina.

  “He wants them to be entertained,” I said. “Entertained as they transition.”

  “Transition where?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked.

  I closed my eyes. “Into their new lives as Muses, as nymphs. As his.”

  38

  Our search had turned up six men—three over the age of sixty, one with an amputated left arm, one off-duty sheriff’s deputy with a solid alibi, and one who barely weighed 120 pounds and stood an inch over five feet. No one saw anyone lugging a green canvas bag.

  And now the sun had abandoned Los Angeles and silver fog raced over us like ghosts.

  News choppers hovered at the far edges of the park, giving the LAPD helicopter plenty of space to circle and hover. Flashlight beams danced all around the urban forest in search of the man who had slain another girl. What were the reporters up in the sky and down below saying to the public? What were we saying to the public? And was Allayna Mitchell’s mother watching?

  I needed to notify Vaughn Hutchens. My stomach twisted—I dreaded having to tell another woman that we, the LAPD, had failed. Don’t wanna do that. Not at all. So I filled out more reports, took more pictures, did everything I could to delay having that awful conversation.

  But I could no longer busy myself with the details of death.

  Syeeda texted me. Just saw news on TV. Who is she? Should I send someone?

  I didn’t respond—couldn’t. Not now.

  “I’ll go downtown with Allayna,” Colin said, following Brooks to the coroner’s van.

  As Lieutenant Rodriguez drove me back to Mount St. John’s Church, we talked on automatic about the nonsense that murder police talk about: the evils of men, the Dodgers, the Lakers, the best chili burgers in LA, the evils of men again.

  Krishna had finished processing my Crown Vic hours ago, and it still sat in the church parking lot, waiting to head to my next dragon windmill.

  “You goin’ over to the mom’s?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked as I opened the trunk of my car. “It’s dinnertime. Fucked up to tell her at dinnertime.”

  “Is there ever a good time?” I took off the too-big boots and grabbed the flats I kept handy for times like this.

  “Good luck,” he said. “See you back at the station.”

  Before I pulled out of the parking lot, my phone rang.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, “can’t talk right now, I’m—”

  And that’s when I spotted it, on the hood of the Crown Vic.

  A marble figurine.

  “I know,” Mom was saying. “I just wanted to tell you that Victor hasn’t called all day.”

  Face numb, I ducked back out of the car and gaped at the statuette. What the—?

  Mom said something, and I said, “Uh huh.” I held the phone out and snapped a picture.

  A goddess—she wore a laurel wreath and her harp rested on a pedestal. Terpsichore.

  Who put this here? The same person who put Melpomene on my car? The same person who had been playing games with me since Wednesday?

  I threw an anxious glance around the abandoned parking lot.

  “Okay,” Mom said, “I’ll let you get back to work. Love you, kiddo.”

  Heart pounding, my thoughts staggered from one thought—Allayna Mitchell—to another more menacing thought—Muses. Because those pieces meant something. But what?

  At King Boulevard, I turned right and headed west to the Jungle. My police radio chimed, this time with a forwarded e-mail from Dr. Zach.

  Haven’t heard from you—hoping to have seen you again by now. Here I am, in case you’ve forgotten me. In the attached picture, he wore blue scrubs. A stethoscope hung around his neck. He had crossed his muscular arms.

  I frowned. “Bad time for this, Zach.”

  But what did he know? Women liked men in scrubs. Even I liked men in scrubs. But not en route to a death notification.

  Allayna and her mother, Vaughn, lived on Nicolet Avenue, two blocks northwest of Chanita and Regina. I parked a block away from her apartment complex, then trudged past alleyways that reeked of urine, trash, and dead animals. Spent bullet casings and used condoms gathered in the muck near the storm drains. A filthy, one-eyed teddy bear sat on an abandoned couch like a patient in a doctor’s office.

  Rage, fatigue, and sadness pressed down on my shoulders, crushing my vertebrae against each other and slowing my already-ponderous gait.

  It was seven minutes to eight o’clock, and black and brown boys in their early teens rolled scooters and skateboards on sidewalks and in the middle of the street. Some lived in the surrounding Necco-wafer-colored apartment complexes, like the gritty yellow building wearing a large orange banner advertising rental prices that started at $449.

  I saw all of this just passing through. Didn’t wonder what I’d see if I poked around in Poverty’s medicine cabinet—because I knew.
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br />   My old neighborhood.

  Home sweet hell.

  While Regina Drummond had a park and a hillside to break up her street’s bleakness, Vaughn Hutchens only had other depressed, concrete-slabbed apartments as her view. Her building—a mint-colored, two-level complex named Baldwin Gardens—hid behind black iron security gates that sat open and secured nothing. Rusted grocery carts and torn laundry baskets littered the common area. The scent of fried meat and onions, burnt toast, and laundry dryer sheets wafted in the air.

  The Mean Girls sat in patio chairs next to a swimming pool filled with concrete. Each girl clutched a large bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and a liter bottle of orange Crush soda.

  Seeing these sullen, mouthy children again made the hairs on my skin stand.

  The cursive print on ShaQuan’s tight pink tank top spelled BITCH. “What’s up, Detective Elouise?”

  Treasure and Imunique, also wearing tank tops, turned in my direction.

  “What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

  They held up their hands. “Don’t shoot,” ShaQuan said with a twisted smile.

  “Ha, not funny,” I said.

  “I live here,” Treasure said, fingering one of her thousands of braids. “In apartment six. Is that a problem?”

  I ignored the burning in my stomach. “Nope. I came to talk to Allayna Mitchell’s mother. Y’all know Allayna, right?”

  “Uh huh,” Imunique said. “Where Detective Cutie Pie at?”

  I squinted at her. “Who?”

  “She crushin’ on Captain America,” ShaQuan said, grinning.

  Imunique kicked ShaQuan’s calf. “You trippin’.”

  “Detective Taggert is…” Standing over Allayna Mitchell’s corpse right now. “Busy with other things.”

  “Uni,” Treasure said to her friend, “maybe you can move to Culver City and become a cop and get a cute white-boy partner.”

  Imunique lifted her hands and said, “Whoop-whoop.”

  “Vaughn just got home,” Treasure said.

  Imunique rolled her eyes. “She been out looking for her precious angel.”

  ShaQuan sucked her teeth. “We get threatened every day, but ain’t no cops tryin’ to protect us. Y’all just wait ’til somebody pull the trigger and blood gets spilled. Even then, y’all just step over the blood and go to Denny’s and shit.”