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A camera phone had captured ShaQuan and Imunique kicking Allayna Mitchell, now curled into a tight ball on the asphalt. The person recording—sounded like Treasure’s laugh—was cheering on her friends. ShaQuan grabbed Allayna’s hair bun and yanked her head out from the protective ball. Bloody cuts covered the dancer’s already-swollen face.
What the hell?
Kids got jumped back in the day, but never this vicious or this … celebrated. And the beat-downs were never caught on tape.
The recording left me breathless, and a headache was forming behind my eyes. As a cop, I’d seen many jacked-up things throughout my career—and this video was now in the top ten.
“I showed the video to them bastards at the school,” Vaughn said, taking back her phone. “And they didn’t do not one thing. The principal said cuz it didn’t happen on school grounds.”
“And the police?”
“Laynie was too scared to talk, so it wasn’t worth getting the police involved.”
“The girls said you took out a restraining order.”
“I lied to them,” Vaughn said. “I typed up some bogus letter just so they’d stay away from my daughter.”
“But you saw that she’d been assaulted,” I said. “And so … Allayna returned to Madison? The same school the girls who beat her also attended?”
“Oh. So it’s my fault?” She scowled and pointed again to the courtyard. “Them little heifers, they’re the ones responsible for all this.”
And I told her that those little heifers saw Allayna climb into a dark SUV. “Do you know any adults who may own a dark SUV?”
“Nuh uh.”
“You know anyone who may have interacted with Allayna without your knowledge?”
“No.” With a shaky hand, Vaughn stuck the cigarette into her mouth.
“I’ve been told that Allayna’s attempted suicide in the past,” I whispered.
She shook her head as her eyes filled with tears. “More drama than what it deserves.” She sighed. “Laynie took some Tylenol PM. You can’t die taking Tylenol PM.”
My face warmed as I pushed back anger. “But she wanted to harm herself.”
Vaughn shrugged.
“Was she seeing a therapist or talking to a pastor or someone about her feelings?”
Vaughn stared at the burning end of the cigarette. “I didn’t see a need for that. She was healthy. She was fourteen.” A teardrop rolled down her cheek, and the cigarette bobbed in her fingers. “Every girl is crazy at fourteen.”
“I also heard that she’s run away—”
“Oh my lord.” Vaughn shoved the cigarette into the water bottle.
“When she left those times—?”
“It was only once,” Vaughn snapped.
“When she left that one time,” I said, “who did she run to?”
“I don’t know, but she came home and—” She glared at me with wet eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. If I can move now, why didn’t I move us two months ago? It’s cuz I ain’t got it like that. You think I’d be living here if I did? And New Mexico just happened cuz of a job opportunity, and I didn’t think … I was taught not to run away. I wanted Laynie … I thought this was one of those life lessons. I didn’t want her to be a coward, okay? I didn’t want her always needing me to solve her problems, okay?”
I nodded since she needed me to nod.
She rose from the couch on weak legs and stumbled over to the kitchen counter. She rummaged through her Coach purse and pulled out a piece of folded pink paper. “I didn’t give this to Detective Dean cuz I didn’t think…” She stared at the square. “Did Laynie do it herself?”
“We’re conducting the autopsy at this moment,” I said.
Vaughn returned to the couch to hand me the paper.
I unfolded the square: pink Sharpie ink, and the round letters of a fourteen-year-old girl with good penmanship.
Vaughn, it’s your fault that I’m writing this. It’s your fault that I’m dying slowly every day. It’s your fault that I’m dead now. I hope you get your promotion. I hope you get that office with a window. I hope you get everything that you dreamed of and always put before me.
Allayna, Your Dead Daughter
My hands shook—Allayna hadn’t put herself into that canvas bag and left herself on that bench. Still, this note told me something else—she wanted, no, needed to be rescued.
Vaughn shook out another cigarette from the dwindling pack.
“Did you know she felt this way?” I asked.
“No.”
“You think Allayna knew the person responsible for her death?”
Without hesitation, Vaughn said, “Yes. She didn’t go off with strangers.”
“What about the two men out there?”
“Warren and Kwame?” She shook her head. “They’re like my brothers.”
“I’ll need to talk to them. And Justin. What do you think about him?”
“Laynie and Justin were back and forth. I love him; I hate him.”
“Do you think he could’ve hurt her?”
Vaughn stared at her knees. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Did he help in the search?”
“His mom wouldn’t let him. She’s very protective.”
“This is Treasure’s mother?”
Vaughn smirked. “Right?”
“And you said Allayna had her own cell phone?”
“Yes. A Droid Mini. And like I said before, I kept calling and calling. And like I told Detective Dean yesterday, there isn’t a family locater app for that phone.”
“Have you noticed any strange numbers on the bill?”
Vaughn shrugged, probably numb now.
“Will you give me permission to pull your phone records? Maybe we’ll be able to identify the cell towers that were close or—”
She nodded, then signed the waiver I slid before her. The name I read there could’ve said “Vaughn Hutchens” or “Genghis Khan.”
Thinking about the state in which we’d found Chanita’s body, I asked Vaughn, “Has she broken any bones lately? From dance or … wherever?”
“Back in November, after getting jumped,” Vaughn said. “No injuries since then.”
“And have all her baby teeth fallen out?”
She shook her head. “Took her to the dentist during Christmas vacation. She still had some back ones that needed to go.”
“Did she keep a diary or journal? Something that captured her inner thoughts?”
Vaughn trudged back to the kitchen, then returned with a box filled with pink binders and journals. She dropped the box at my feet. “Some stuff’s in here.”
I thanked her, then said, “Mind if I look around her room?”
She zombie-walked down the hallway, just as Chanita’s mom had, just as Monique Darson’s mother had, just as every mother had once I told them the news.
Allayna’s bedroom walls were covered with posters and pictures of dancers—from Debbie Allen and Mikhail Baryshnikov to Savion Glover and Josephine Baker. Her desk held countless music boxes of every size—no empty space for the box we’d found on the park bench. A student planner sat in between stacks of magazines and DVDs. Three pairs of toe shoes dangled from the desk shelf.
I flipped though the planner: Allayna had a precalculus test on Monday, a paper on Catherine the Great due Wednesday, and a doctor’s appointment at four o’ clock on Thursday.
When I returned to the living room, Vaughn plucked an eight-by-ten photograph from a photo album’s sticky page. She studied the picture for a moment, then held it out to me. “Use this.”
It was a black-and-white photo of Allayna wearing a dark leotard and sitting in a sea of polka-dot tulle. “Will you offer a reward like you’re doing for the other girl?” Vaughn whispered.
I took her sweaty, weak hands in my sweaty, strong ones and squeezed. “Yes. But more than that: I’ll do my best to catch him. I won’t stop until I do.”
; 40
Denial: Vaughn Hutchens was now being cruelly punished for living in it for so long. Even when faced with the truth—Allayna needed her more than ARCO needed her—Vaughn still refused to believe and adapt.
And despite my skill in getting time-hardened thugs and baby-faced murderers to confess, and despite my sorority-girl-sista-friend-shoop-shoop credibility, I still couldn’t convince Vaughn Hutchens to accept that all had not been right in her home for months, maybe even years, before Allayna’s death.
So, at almost nine thirty, I told her that I’d call her soon, hopefully with more news. The box of Allayna’s notebooks in my arms, I left the grieving mom with Warren and Kwame. Shoulders tense, I hurried across the empty courtyard, out the gate, and down the block to my car. I dropped the box into the trunk, then started back to the apartment complex.
The thunder from the roving helicopter and its bright searchlight kept the street clear and kept me from having to explain my existence to a different kind of neighborhood watch. On the way back to Baldwin Gardens, I called Pepe and told him that Vaughn had signed the waiver to allow us to pull Allayna’s phone records. “And maybe 2BT will show up soon.”
“About that,” Pepe said. “DMV computers are down.”
Because of course they were.
“And,” Pepe said, “no prints except yours on those little statue things.”
Because of course there weren’t.
Behind the closed door of apartment 6 came the televised roar of sports fans.
I knocked.
Inside, a woman shouted, “Turn dat down. You deaf?”
The television’s volume dropped.
The door opened, and a draft washed over me—curry and onions. A tiny, dark-skinned woman wearing silver-rimmed glasses and teddy-bear-printed scrubs stood before me. She rolled her eyes. “You here ’bout Laynie?” She had an accent, Trinidad or Antigua.
“Yes. And you are…?”
“Oria Abraham, Justin’s mother.”
“Treasure’s mother, too?”
She gave a curt nod. “Who you wan’ talk to now?”
“Justin, please.”
She frowned, then turned her head. “Come, now.”
The television muted, the leather couch squeaked, and a tabletop lamp clicked on, filling the room with soft yellow light.
I spotted Jesus and Mary candles and small icons of various saints on shelves alongside pictures of a tall kid holding a basketball, taken with and without the bundle of sass standing in front of me. There were no pictures of a teenage girl.
That tall kid came to tower behind his mother. He wore a white CROSSROADS basketball jersey and clutched a gallon of red Gatorade. At six foot five, he was strong enough to carry a girl, especially a dancer like Allayna, up a trail.
“Hi, Justin,” I said. “I’m Detective Norton and—”
Over on the other side of the courtyard, at Allayna’s apartment, a man wailed. His cries were soon joined by the cries of a woman, and then another woman’s screams of, “No, God, no.” Doors started opening, with people poking their heads out, murmuring, whispering, and shouting.
Oria Abraham stared at neighbors creeping toward Vaughn’s apartment. Then, she gaped at her son.
“May I come inside?” I asked.
Justin’s breathing came fast, as though he had been running up and down a basketball court. “Oh no,” he said, backing away with tears bright in his eyes. “Oh no, no, no.”
“Dat girl on de news,” Oria Abraham said, “was dat Laynie?”
“Yes, it was Allayna Mitchell,” I said. “Justin, I’m gonna need you to sit before you pass out.”
Justin sank into the armchair and groaned.
I sat on the couch.
Oria Abraham stood behind her son, arms crossed.
And UConn continued to beat Villanova.
“How old are you, Justin?” I asked.
“Sixteen.”
Shit. A minor. Oria had to stay.
“You dated Allayna, correct?” I asked.
“Kind of.” A tear rolled down the bridge of his nose. “We broke up, and then we got back together again.”
I pointed to his jersey. “You go to Crossroads?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“On scholarship,” Oria Abraham added.
As though I couldn’t figure out that a kid who lived here couldn’t afford tuition to a school that cost almost thirty thousand dollars a year.
“And we don’ wan’ no trouble,” Oria warned me. “No commesse, understand?”
“That’s up to Justin,” I said, then added, “and Treasure. Justin: why did you and Laynie break up?”
“Cuz Tre’s friends made life hard on us.”
“Friends, meaning ShaQuan and Imunique?”
“Yes, sir, I mean, ma’am.”
“Are you aware,” I said to Oria Abraham, “that your daughter and her friends assaulted Allayna Mitchell back in November?”
The woman was shaking her head even as I spoke. “Treasure didn’t assault her—she recorded da fight.”
Awed, I could only gawk at her. “Fine. Treasure didn’t touch Allayna,” I said, “but she certainly rejoiced in the poor girl getting beaten. I heard Treasure laughing. I could play the video for you if you’d like.”
Oria Abraham’s mouth snapped closed, and she glared at me.
I turned back to Justin. “So you broke up with Allayna because…?”
Justin kneaded his hands. “I thought it would be easier if we just—”
“Treasure’s just wit’ dem badjohns,” his mother interrupted, “because … protection. She and Laynie were padnas, real close like.”
Needles prickled up and down my left arm—this woman was killing me. “Please, Miss Abraham—”
“It’s Mrs.,” she spat. “I’m no babymomma. My husband, he died of a heart attack.” She crossed herself.
“My apologies, then.” To Justin: “So Treasure’s friends broke you apart?”
“That wasn’t the only reason. Allayna…” He dropped his head, and his wide shoulders slumped. “She had some … issues.” He looked up at me, and now tears rolled down his cheeks.
“What kind of issues?” I asked.
“She was vexing him,” Oria Abraham said. “All da time. She—”
“Mrs. Abraham,” I said in my CAPS LOCK voice.
“She had mental issues,” Justin said. “Always depressed. Always wanting me to run away with her. I felt bad for her cuz she mostly lived by herself. Her mom worked late and…” He dried his face with his jersey. “So I stayed around mostly cuz I was scared she was gonna hurt herself again or run away for real this time.”
“Justin tall for his age,” Oria Abraham said, “but he still just a fella. He shouldna worry ’bout t’ings like dat.”
“A personal question, Justin,” I said, leaning forward. “Were you and Laynie sexually active? There may be … DNA on her, and we’ll need to know whose DNA it is, understand?”
Oria Abraham’s simmering anger heated the room.
But Justin didn’t flinch. “We weren’t, Detective Norton. I have my basketball career to think of first—I don’t want a baby messin’ that up.” And my mom would kill me, his wide eyes said.
“Did you know Chanita Lords?” I asked.
His eyebrows furrowed. “Who?”
“What about Trina Porter?”
He tapped his mother’s elbow. “That’s the missing girl. I see her mom on the news all the time. She came to speak at Mass. Remember, Ma?”
Oria Abraham didn’t nod, nor did she shake her head.
“When did you see Allayna last?” I asked the kid.
“On Monday, after I got home from practice. She showed me her solo out there in the courtyard and…” He smiled, then bit his lower lip. “She’s … incredible. She’s so happy when she’s dancing.”
“And where were you on Thursday afternoon, say, around three thirty?”
“I was playing ball. A game against
Brentwood.”
“Did you help search for Allayna yesterday or today?” I asked.
He dropped his head. “Nuh uh.”
“Why not?”
Oria Abraham lifted her chin, then placed her hands on Justin’s shoulders. “I wouldn’a let him. He too young for all dat. School and basketball, dat’s what he should worry ’bout.”
“One last thing,” I said. “I’d like a DNA sample to compare—”
“No.” The woman shook her head. “Nuh uh.”
Justin twisted to look up at his mother. “Ma—”
“Boy,” she said, “don’t be screwin’ up your face—”
“I don’t mind, Ma. I didn’t do—”
“I want a court order,” she told me.
“Ma,” Justin shouted, “I—”
“Mrs. Abraham,” I said, “I’d only need—”
“Court. Order.”
Justin opened his mouth and leaned toward me, ready to offer as much spit as possible.
Oria puckered her lips but said nothing.
I closed my binder and stood from the couch. “Your mother has that right, Justin.” To Oria, I said, “I’ll get a court order—for Justin and Treasure. Just to make sure your daughter wasn’t recording again when Allayna took her final breath.”
41
After leaving Oria and Justin Abraham, after listening to the angry cries and heartbroken wails coming from Vaughn Hutchens’s apartment, I needed joy, positivity … I needed Sam.
But he wasn’t answering his office phone or his cell phone. So I texted him: You around? Need to talk. Long hard day.
Heavy-hearted, I trudged back to the Crown Vic and threw a glance at the sky—no helicopter. Just a bright white moon and a star. When had been the last time I’d glimpsed a star?
With one hand clutching the steering wheel and the other clutching my phone in anticipation of Sam’s response, I drove east to the dance school.
Allayna had walked Marlton and Santa Rosalia to get home. Two worlds coexisted here—the ordered one at the Baldwin Hills Mall, protected by thick black gates and security guards, and the wild one, Santa Barbara Plaza, abandoned, overrun, and run-down with weeds, trash, and crumbled concrete. A graveyard.
Treasure had claimed to see Allayna climb into the dark SUV near the corner of Marlton and Santa Rosalia.
Trail of Echoes Page 22
