by Carol Coffey
“Take the red-eye home – go see your kid and meet me back in Dayton.”
Mendoza stood and pulled the dressing gown around her thin body.
She reached out her hand and touched Locklear’s arm.
“Thanks, sarge. You’re a good man, no matter what you tell yourself.”
When Mendoza had packed and walked out the door, Locklear’s tension eased. Her perfume lingered in the air. He was glad she was gone. He undressed and lay down on his bed. Tomorrow he would track down Letitia Grant and hope that somehow the woman would move this sorry case forward before anyone else got killed.
Chapter 22
Locklear had hoped to avoid a visit to his old station in East Harlem but Maguire, who could tell Locklear how many times the long-term heroin user had been arrested, could not offer him the type of information he needed on Grant’s descendant. He needed local knowledge and there was only one place that he could get it. He had never been popular there – or in any station he had been based in. His aloof nature and squeaky-clean reputation made cops nervous of and ironically distrustful of him and, while this did not cause him to lose sleep, it did impact on his ability to request favours when the need arose.
He ordered the cab driver to pass the 28thPrecinct on the corner of W123rd and Frederick Douglas Boulevard so that he could check things out before deciding if he would actually enter the place where he had begun his career in narcotics and from where he had waged and partly won his battle against alcoholism.
Locklear got the cab to stop just beyond the station and surveyed the entrance from there. Six police cars stood idly outside the two-storey, grey concrete building. Save two, he did not recognise any of the cops standing against their cars, waiting for a callout.
Four of the cops were young – rookies who were probably not even born when Locklear first entered the dreary building as a young, man, fresh and armed with a naivety that saw him through the first few years in narcotics. Within two years, drink and not his moral standing helped him through each day of trying to push back the tide of illegal drugs in a city whose economy – from lawyers, doctors, high-end criminals and pimps – depended on the neediness of addicts to line their pockets. It was a battle that Locklear eventually realised would not be won on the streets but in schools, in homes, in churches, in any place where people could learn before they took that first injection, that first high, that last.
He got out of the cab, groaning as his foot hit the pavement – despite its improvement it was still sore. He walked back to the entrance.
The cops looked up. A broad smile washed over the face of a heavy-set, moustached man.
“Well, lookey who we got here!”
The cop walked forward and stopped a few feet from where Locklear stood. He leaned backwards, pushing out his large chest like a rooster competing for the attention of hens.
“It’s our old friend Locklear. Heard you were dead.”
“That’s what I always admired about you, Smith – your sharpness.”
Smith’s smiled waned. His chest deflated and he seemed to shrink before Locklear’s eyes.
“Fuck you, Locklear.”
Locklear passed Smith and walked over to Robbins who had not moved from his position. If he could have said he got along with anyone in the station it would be Mike Robbins who, apart from the slight greying of his black hair, had not changed much.
“Robbins,” Locklear said.
“Sarge.”
Robbins knew Locklear well enough to know this wasn’t a social call.
“What do you need?”
Inside the station, Locklear eased himself down beside the computer parked sideways on Robbins’ desk which was covered with unfiled paperwork and leftover meals. Two cold coffee cups hung precariously on the edge of the disorderly desk.
The room, in which Locklear had spent a significant portion of his youth, was cramped with desks and filing cabinets and the three phones on the desk rang continuously. A photo stuck on the far righthand corner of the computer showed Robbins holding a small boy.
“Nothing much has changed here,” Robbins said as he typed Grant’s name into the system.
“That your grandson?” Locklear asked.
Robbins smiled. “No. I’m not quite old enough for that yet! It’s my kid sister’s kid. He’s fifteen now. We’re buddies. Must get a new photo.”
“Linda’s a mother?”
Robbins shot Locklear a look. He was surprised that the distant man had remembered his younger sister’s name. Locklear, for his part, hoped Robbins wouldn’t ask him how exactly he had remembered the cop’s wild-hearted sister.
“She still a cop?” Locklear asked, remembering the flame-haired beauty who had shared his love for whiskey and the nights she spent in Locklear’s apartment that her brother never knew about.
“A lawyer,” Robbins replied.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Locklear joked.
“Right!” Robbins chuckled.
The computer beeped and a photo of Grant appeared in the righthand corner. Locklear leaned into the screen to get a better look at the gaunt black woman who had spent her life on the streets fighting heroin addiction and herself. Letitia Grant had huge doleful black eyes and nappy hair. She was dressed in a thin cotton blouse and equally thin cardigan. The mug shot, taken several years previously, told Locklear that the woman might not even be alive now.
“What do you know about her?” Locklear asked.
“Depends on who’s asking,” Robbins replied.
“Come on, Robbins. I’m working on a case in Virginia – the girl is somehow connected. Don’t ask. It’s a long shot but she’s all I’ve got right now – so, will you help me?”
Robbins sighed as he pressed the print button on his keyboard. He got up and collected his paperwork from the printer behind the reception desk and handed it to Locklear.
“It’s got her last known address and her rap sheet. Be careful, that bitch bit me one time – had to get shots.”
Locklear glanced quickly over the three-page document which listed the thirty-two-year-old woman’s many misdemeanours: breaking and entering, deception, prostitution, dealing, car theft, DWIs and aggravated assault.
“I’ll tell Linda you said hi.”
Locklear waved and left the station. As he passed the car park, Smith gave him the finger. Locklear returned it and hailed a cab at the corner.
“306 West 102nd Street.”
When he arrived at Saint Luke’s Halfway House, Locklear climbed the four stone steps and opened the door into the facility which had been in its former life an old New York brownstone. The large city houses had been mostly turned into businesses of some kind and could now rarely be afforded by people as a family home. He walked six feet into the facility but found the inner door locked. He rang a buzzer and waited while an overweight Asian woman made her way down the long corridor. When she opened the door Locklear smiled at the badge the woman wore on her purple flowered shirt. Don’t yell at me. I’m just the probation officer.
“Good badge.”
“The girls here got it made for me,” she said.
“I’m –”
“A cop,” she said.
“You’ve been doing this a long time!”
“Too long,” she said as she opened the door wide, allowing him entry. “I’m Ling.”
She thrust her hand forward.
“Locklear,” he responded, taking her hand.
“First name or last?” she asked.
“Last. Yours?”
“Both. Ling Ling, can you believe that? My parents must have had a sense of humour.”
“Must have had? You don’t know?”
“Long story,” she replied, ushering him into her tiny office. “Come on in.” She sat behind her desk.
Locklear settled down on the only other seat. He looked at the walls which were covered in framed photos of young women of all colours graduating from college.
“These all detainees he
re?” he asked. He stood to take a closer look at the photos. Ling was in most of them, smiling proudly.
“Residents,” she corrected him.
“Looks like they’re doing OK.”
“Yes. Some make it – some don’t.”
“I’m here about Letitia Grant,” Locklear said as he returned to his seat.
He waited as he watched the smile fade from Ling’s face.
“What has she done?”
He could see the genuine look of upset on the probation officer’s face and wondered how a repeat offender like Grant could get the woman in front of him to care so much.
“Nothing – least not that I know of. I’m working on a cold case. A relative of Grant’s was involved. I thought she might know something. That’s all.”
Ling relaxed and eased herself back into the faux-leather chair.
“How long has she been here?” Locklear asked.
“She’s been here four times in all. First three times she was taken back to prison. Kept breaking the terms of her parole. She’s been here now eleven months and she’s making good strides at getting herself straight.”
“She still using?”
“No – she went through detox in prison. We don’t take users here.”
Ling pointed to a sign on the wall above her head.
No drugs. No alcohol.
“What else can you tell me about her?”
“Well, she’s had it real tough. Spent the first two years of her life in foster care. Both parents were users. Father was in an out of jail. Mother worked as a stripper and sometime prostitute. After that she lived with her father’s mother but the old woman went into State care when Letitia was seven. She kept in contact with her though, saw her a few times a year. She died when Letitia was fifteen. Letitia still talks about her grandma. Every time her parents cleaned up their act and got her back she’d be happy to be back where she felt she belonged, but it wouldn’t be long before one or other of them would fall off the wagon and then she’d be back in State care. One time she was found alone in an apartment. Neighbours heard her crying. Reckon she hadn’t eaten for three or four days. She was eight years old, can you imagine that? It’s no wonder she took the road she did. She felt it had been all set out for her. My job is to show her that there is another path for her, if she wants it.”
“Is it OK if I talk to her?”
“If she’s happy to talk to you then it’s fine with me. Letitia’s at work but she should be back soon. She packs bags down at the Westside market and she goes to college at the local college two afternoons per week. She’s studying to be an artist. You should see how she paints. She’s a talented woman.”
Locklear leaned back in his chair and studied the woman in front of him. He found it hard to understand why someone would choose to do such a difficult job when the odds of success were so low.
“How did you end up here?” He immediately regretted the question. It had come out wrong and sounded offensive. The look on Ling’s face told him he was right.
“Sometimes a job chooses us, don’t you think?”
“I do.”
“Coffee?”
“Thanks.”
Ling left the room and returned with two stained mugs of steaming coffee. How different this was, he mused, to the reception he had received from Norma Jefferson on 5th Avenue. There were no china cups here, no maid and no gilt furnishings. These were the sort of surroundings he preferred. It was what he was used to.
“I was a resident in this very home when I was not much more than eighteen years old,” she began.
Locklear put the coffee down on Ling’s desk and shook his burning hand.
“I was brought to this country thirty-two years ago when I was eighteen months old. I’d been in an orphanage in China, the result of the one-child policy. Because I was a girl and my parents were farmers, I was no use to them and so they left me on the doorstep and walked away.”
“I’m sorry,” Locklear offered.
“Don’t be,” she replied. “It is what it is. They were in that situation and I am now in mine. A Chinese American couple adopted me and took me to California. I didn’t know I was adopted until I was almost fourteen years old. It came as no surprise to me. I always sensed it, somehow.”
“Did they have other children?” Locklear asked for reasons unknown to himself.
“No, it was just me. Unfortunately. I was twelve when my father started having sex with me. Fourteen when my parents took me out of the State for a secret abortion when I was carrying his child, fifteen when I ran away and took my first injection of heroin and sixteen when I arrived in New York to work as a prostitute to feed my habit.”
Locklear shifted on his chair. “Didn’t you tell anyone, your school?”
Ling smiled. “I’m not telling you this, Mr Locklear, to make you uncomfortable. It is simply to help you understand what it is like to come back from something like that. I want you to treat Letitia gently. You’ll get further that way.”
Locklear tried to think of something to say.
“How did you get out of ... your situation?”
“I had a daughter and my life changed. She was taken into care. I came here. Every night I kissed her photo and told her I was coming for her. I got a job, went to college and saw her as often as I could. When she two and a half I got an apartment and got her back. I graduated law school with honours and went on to further my education. I started volunteering here while my daughter was at school and when a job came up I forgot all about being a lawyer. This is where I was destined to be. That was nine years ago now and I’ve been here ever since.”
The front door opened and the bell buzzed in Ling’s office. She rose and Locklear followed her. At the door, waiting for entry, was Letitia Grant looking healthier than she did in her mug shot. She looked fleetingly at Ling and then fixed her eyes on Locklear. The moment seemed to Locklear to last a lifetime. In that one moment, something told him that this woman, hundreds of miles away from Dayton, Harrisonburg and the Mennonite community, could unlock the secrets of the Fehrs’ isolation. He saw it in her eyes. And then she was gone. Grant had dropped her shopping and had run from the porch.
Locklear instinctively gave chase to the pleas of Ling not to follow her. He chased the lithe woman to the end of 102nd and right onto Broadway, ignoring the pain in his foot. He stopped to catch his breath and rest his foot. Then he forced himself to run on. By the time he caught up with her again, all he saw was a glimpse of her bright-green shirt as she turned left onto W100th no doubt heading for the park.
He stopped and bent forward, waiting to catch his breath, then made his way painfully on foot back to the house.
“Where does she go to school?” he asked Ling.
The woman pursed her lips. “I asked you not to chase her. When these girls see a cop, they just think they’re about to be blamed for something they didn’t do.”
“Which school?” he repeated.
“Edward H Reynolds – Westside,” Ling curtly replied.
Locklear sat down and pulled his shoe and sock off. The bandage had come undone and one of the cuts on his foot had started to bleed.
“Tell her,” he panted, as his breathing slowed. “When she comes back – tell her she has nothing to fear. I just want to talk to her about John Grant – tell her that, OK?”
Locklear had barely got his breath back when his phone rang. It was Maguire.
“Sarge, you better come back to Dayton right away.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Helena Wyss is dead.”
Chapter 23
The short flight back to Richmond seemed interminable as Locklear stared out the window. Maguire had given him little information on Helena Wyss but had contacted Kowalski who had a helicopter waiting at the airport to take him to the scene. He phoned Mendoza and ordered her back to Dayton. He noticed how quiet she was when he phoned. She’d had only a few hours with her kid.
When his plane landed, Mendoza
was already waiting at the helipad in Richmond in the pouring rain, uniform on, hair pulled back tight. He reckoned her deceased cop father would have been proud of her.
Neither spoke during the flight. The helicopter landed in a clearing between the Wysses’ house and the forested area to the north. The rain had not subsided and soaked them as they followed a sodden Maguire up the twenty-minute hike through the dense forest. Mendoza marched ahead, wiping away the mascara that had begun to weep down her tanned face. Locklear was limping a little as his foot had become more painful on the short plane trip.
Soon they reached the spot where five cops, including Maguire’s new young partner Jones, stood in shock at the sight before them. Helena Wyss was hanging by the neck from a tall tree. Locklear looked at the ground and saw the snapped trap that had only days ago held his injured foot and with it, his DNA. Several dollar coins had been thrown around the base of the tree. Her cotton dress had been pulled down to her waist, baring her upper body. Rain had broken through the canopy and had washed away some of the red writing emblazoned across her naked breasts. Her open eyes bulged forward and appeared to be staring in the direction of her farm. Locklear reckoned her throat had been cut immediately after the killer had strung her up and that he or she had used Helena’s blood to write a message.
