Her eyes filled with tears again. “And that’s it. I swear. It was just like every single other night.”
Now the hard part. “Then what?”
“I woke up at six, like always. Some mornings I get me and Mikey dressed and go to the nine o’clock AA meetin’ at St. Monica’s. Sometimes I just stay here. But by ten thirty he has to be at Dazzle’s so I can get to work.” Ashley’s day job was as a waitress, from eleven to four. “I didn’t go to a meetin’ yesterday ’cause I needed to go do laundry. I went into Mikey’s room to get him up and sort his dirty clothes, and he wasn’t in bed.”
She inhaled through her rising emotion. “So I came out here, and he wasn’t on the couch, so I looked in the kitchen.” She glanced toward the galley-style room behind us. “He was on the floor. He was blue. Oh, Claire, he was so blue. I tried shaking him, but he wouldn’t wake up.”
I could feel my own heart racing and my throat was tightening again. I swallowed back tears and glanced at Mac, whose face was unnaturally still.
“I called nine-one-one. There wasn’t nothin’ they could do. The police came. Lots of them, lookin’ at everything. Taking pictures and videos. Then the guy from the coroner came.”
“Did Michael eat anything? Maybe he had a reaction to something. Like an allergy.”
“He didn’t have no allergies, and I don’t think he ate nothin’.”
“He couldn’t have gotten into anything?”
“I babyproofed this house just like you showed me.”
That was true. All the sockets were covered, and the last time I’d looked, all the cabinets were fitted with those little plastic gadgets that kept the doors from being pulled open. The cleaning supplies and chemicals were as hidden as possible. Medications, even the over-thecounter ones, were put away in Ashley’s bedroom.
“Well, I guess the police will give us more answers.” I deliberately avoided the word autopsy. “Why don’t you go get dressed? Mac and I can wait for you, and then I want to take you to Nona. I don’t want you to be alone today. Or tonight.”
I looked at Mac for confirmation. “That seems like a good plan.”
Nona Richardson was the director of St. Monica’s Home for Recovery where Ashley had lived for her first three hellish months of rehab. She and Nona shared a special bond. Nona would make sure Ashley didn’t run off and get high again. I’d hate for Ashley to blow her sobriety, and if she were ever going to, it would be today. And I couldn’t say I’d blame her.
Mac and I waited while the shower ran. I began to wander around the apartment, still shaky and restless. Except for a quick peek, I didn’t go into the kitchen. It didn’t look any different than usual. The avocado counters were wiped down and clean dishes drained in the sink. I don’t know what I expected to see. A chalk outline. Michael’s ghost, maybe. Some sign he had died there.
I paced over to the hallway, pausing by the door to Michael’s room. It was closed, and I left it that way. I walked the length of the living room again. On the wall above a metal cart that supported a small TV were two collage-style picture frames for photos, the kind sold at Wal-Mart for about seven bucks. One was dedicated to Michael. His first picture was there, the one they’d taken at the hospital just after birth. Another was at his first birthday party, taken by his foster mother as he blew out a candle on a cupcake. She’d sent me a copy too. The rest were more recent snapshots of him playing in a small plastic pool. Ashley had been absent for so much of his young life, these were probably all the memories she’d been able to capture of him. And now he was gone forever.
In the second collage were some people I recognized. One picture was of Dee, Ashley’s mom, sitting in a white resin chair underneath a tree. Another was of Ashley’s best friend. In the third, two girls I’d never seen before leaned on the hood of a car. A fourth showed three guys about Ashley’s age sitting on her couch, laughing. The reminders of how happy Ashley had been before last night made me uncomfortable, and I started pacing again.
Mac said, “Sit down, you’re making me nervous.”
“Shouldn’t we be nervous?”
“Right now, it looks like a very unfortunate accident. Nothing anyone could have prevented. What’s your schedule look like today?”
I pulled my day planner out of my satchel. “I have an intervention meeting at two, then I have to write a court report. I was planning to catch up on other paperwork this morning.”
“Reschedule the IM. This is going to take up the rest of the day.”
“To say the least.”
Ashley rejoined us, dressed in faded jeans and a T-shirt, her stillwet hair tight in a ponytail.“I have to call work.” I knew she meant the restaurant.
“Want me to do it?”
“No, it’s okay.” She uncradled the cordless phone and went into her bedroom, closing the door. A few minutes later, with evidence of fresh tears on her face, she emerged. “I’m ready.”
She had packed a small overnight case, which she carried in one hand. In the other was Michael’s blanky. My throat did that thing again.
Mac’s expression still revealed little emotion, but now I had the feeling it was taking more effort. “I need to head back to the office,” he said. “Are you okay to drive once we get there?”
I nodded. “I’m fine. Really.”
As we made our way to Mac’s Cadillac, I couldn’t help but notice a car parked alongside the curb across the street. An old Dodge Charger, painted a garish lime green, with chrome twenty-four-inch rims. Ashley glanced at it, once, then twice, quickly. The driver slouched, a sideways baseball cap low over his forehead. He cranked the engine and roared away as we buckled up.
It was a mostly silent ride from Avondale to downtown. Mac dropped us off in the parking lot of our four-story office building, a former department store. “You coming in?”
“No, I think we’ll just go to St. Monica’s.”
The heat was stifling in my seven-year-old Honda Civic. I cranked the AC up all the way, but felt myself beginning to perspire again under my thin blue shirt. Birmingham, trapped in a valley between two mountain ridges, was hazy from the constant smog that hovered from June through September. A cool breeze would’ve been nice.
Ashley leaned her head against the passenger window. She looked worn out. I turned onto Fourteenth Street and drove to the south side of the city. St. Monica’s Home for Recovery sat halfway up Red Mountain, overlooking downtown. A boardinghouse built for steel workers in the 1800s, it was a mammoth place with an old-fashioned front porch, columns and all. The surrounding area had morphed from middle class to slum to upper class. The Catholic Church had been lucky to purchase the house during its slum phase and could make serious money on the property if they wanted to move the home. Nona, however, wasn’t about to let that happen. She was there for life.
I parked in the small alley that bordered the house. One of the residents was sweeping the steps. Ashley and I entered through the leaded glass door into the living area. Four or five women relaxed on couches, engrossed in a courtroom show on a console television. A woman at a small secretary said Nona was in her office. Ashley and I made our way down the hall to a small enclosed area in the back that had once been a screened porch. Nona was behind her massive, cluttered desk. She lifted her over-two-hundred-pound frame out of the chair and immediately put her arms around Ashley, who started to cry again. “There, baby, hush now.”
Nona was proud of her African heritage and wore flowing mudcloth dashikis and headwraps. I watched as Ashley’s face sank into the soft folds of Nona’s earthy tunic. Nona knew how to handle tragedy. She was no stranger to it herself. Raised in segregated Birmingham, she dropped out of Parker High School when she was seventeen. Kicked out by her tyrannical father, she began drinking and lived from flophouse to flophouse until a priest found her and straightened her out. Father Clark ran St. Monica’s until Nona took it over upon his death several years ago. Although there were a number of good treatment facilities around, St. Monica’s was my
first choice because of Nona.
After several more minutes of “Hush, baby,” Ashley’s tears ceased, and she dried her face on the tissue Nona handed her from the box on her desk. “You and I are going to stay together tonight,” Nona said to Ashley. “Why don’t you take them things up to my apartment?” The third floor of the boardinghouse had been converted to a twobedroom apartment when Father Clark founded the home, and now Nona lived there. “Here,” she flipped through a chunky ring of keys until she found the right one. “I’ll be up in just a minute and make us something to eat, okay?” We watched Ashley retreat to the staircase off the hall.
“How’d you find out?” I asked.
“Dazzle called me. Poor woman.” Michael’s babysitter and Nona had known each other for years through the A.M.E. Zion church. “She’s in a right state. The police are at her house.”
“I’m going over there now.”
“I wonder what in the world could’ve happened to the poor child?”
“The coroner will do an autopsy, probably tomorrow.”
“You think it was an accident?”
“God, I hope so.”
Nona walked me out to my car. On the way, another one of my clients, Cheyenne, spotted me.
“Oh, shit. We didn’t have an appointment today, did we?”
“No, I’m here on another matter.”
“Good.”
As Cheyenne stormed into the house, I asked Nona how she was doing. “She’s angry. Arguing with the staff. Doesn’t want to do her chores. Doesn’t want to be here.”
“She’s not going to make it, is she?”
“No, I wouldn’t think so. Not this time.”
I sighed. It was sad for Cheyenne’s three kids, who would go up for adoption.
I was halfway to Dazzle’s house when Mac called my cell phone. He summoned me back to the office, stating that Dr. Pope had cleared her schedule for the afternoon.
This was the meeting I was dreading. Dr. Pope was relatively new in the position of director. She was the best one we’d had in my five years with the agency and I had a lot of respect for her. Despite the chaos that happened on a daily basis, she was always calm and wellspoken. I’d never seen her get angry, and I hoped I wouldn’t now.
`
CHAPTER THREE
On my way back to the office I called poor frantic Dazzle to tell her I wouldn’t be over. “Oh, Claire, what a mess. The police are here, going over everything. Taking pictures and videos. What in God’s great world could’ve happened to him?”
“I don’t know. Listen, I want to come see you, but I’ve got to go meet with my supervisors. Can I stop by tomorrow?” Probably best not to get in the cops’ way, either, I thought.
“You know you can. Lord have mercy, you’re not in trouble over this, are you?”
“Too early to tell.” My stomach tensed at the thought.
She wailed a long cry. “Oh Lord, what a mess.”
I tuned through all my favorite radio stations on the way to the office and in the end just shut it off. After finally finding a parking space, I dumped my stuff in my cubicle where I ran into Russell.
“Hey, I’m going out to get lunch,” he said. “You want something?”
I didn’t, but I knew he’d harass me about not eating if I didn’t order something. “Sure. Whatever.” I handed Russell a ten out of my wallet and spent the next twenty minutes distractedly canceling meetings and checking my voice mail. I picked at the sandwich Russell delivered to my desk, then retrieved the Hennessy’s chart and went to find Mac.
He was in his office, on the phone, with an empty Tupperware container at his elbow. He finished his call and asked, “You ready?”
We made our way up to Dr. Pope’s fourth-floor corner office, decorated in a serene fashion that suited her personality. Soft taupe carpet and a large, cherry-finished desk and table. Peaceful landscapes on the walls. Through the windows I could see the towering glass and masonry buildings of the financial district.
Mac and I joined Dr. Pope and three men at the round conference table. One of them, Brian Shoffner, I already knew. Nice guy, and a competent lawyer. He’d been the attorney for the agency on the Hennessy case. Dr. Pope introduced the other two suits, an attorney and a representative from the state office in Montgomery.
Let the “cover your ass” begin, I thought. As if Michael’s death alone wasn’t tragic enough, there was the fallout at DHS. Right now, Michael’s death appeared to be an accident. But just in case it wasn’t, my superiors were going to make damn sure I’d done everything I was supposed to, from the moment I’d received the initial report two years ago to the moment last night when Michael took his final breath. I’d gone over the case in my head a million times already today, and I thought I’d done everything right. Still, my palms were sweating. I wiped them subtly on my pants.
For the next three and half hours the team dissected the case. I felt like I was being interrogated; the only thing missing was a bright spotlight shining in my eyes. Both attorneys took notes as I answered question after question. They scrutinized every form, every narrative, every court report, and every court order. We discussed the timeline of the case, Michael’s birth and health history, and Ashley’s past. I’d missed only two objectives during the years I’d worked with the family and everyone agreed they were minor oversights. The representative from the state office requested a copy of the entire chart.
When the meeting was over, Dr. Pope concluded with, “I’ll be making a statement to the press that we don’t comment on investigations. We’ll try to keep names out of it if we can. I can’t promise that though. Claire, I don’t have to remind you that you’re not to comment on this, either, right? No matter how ugly it gets.”
“I know.”
I had a pounding headache. It was four thirty. Russell was out on a home visit. I picked up the phone, hung it up, and called it a day.
Outside hunkered satellite vans from both the FOX and ABC affiliates. Any death of a child would be picked up by the press on the police scanners. From there it only took a phone call to a source or one of the victim’s family members to find out whether DHS was involved. Our cases were supposed to be kept confidential, but it didn’t always work that way. If Michael’s death was an accident, we’d be the feature story tonight and the whole thing would blow over. If my brewing fears were true and Ashley had a role in Michael’s death, then this was only the beginning. If the slightest hint existed that DHS could have prevented this, every news outlet was going to play that angle. The public would demand that someone take the fall, and the blame game was the media’s favorite sport. Too much bad press and I’d be gone faster than a losing Alabama football coach. And maybe Mac too. Maybe even Dr. Pope. I’d seen it happen before. DHS had been in the spotlight before for some poorly handled cases, and it seemed like reporters were always waiting for us to screw things up.
A familiar-looking reporter from FOX bounced on the balls of his feet and swung his arms in impatience, waiting to broadcast live for the five o’clock news. As I sneaked to my car, he spotted me. I sped up, racing to my Honda and slamming the door in his face just as he cried, “Hey!” I threw the car in reverse and backed up recklessly, speeding to the exit of the lot.
My headache intensified. In crawling traffic I made my way to the on-ramp of I-65, and for the next forty minutes did what the locals called the sixty-five shuffle: the long, slow drive to the suburban communities south of downtown.
I exited the interstate at the summit of Shades Mountain and wound through serpentine streets to my neighborhood. I’d bought a small house in Bluff Park only four months earlier, after years of saving and months of searching for the right place. Built in 1953, it needed a lot of updating. I spent every spare hour away from work fixing it up myself. So far I’d peeled acres of stubborn wallpaper and polished the hardwood. Tonight I planned to work on the small bedroom I was converting into an office, painting it a soft yellow. Normally I relished the thought of chang
ing into my paintsplattered T-shirt and shorts and loading up the roller, but right now it just seemed like work.
I pulled into my carport and sat there, trying to force myself to go inside and watch the news. I didn’t want to hear what they had to say. After a couple of minutes with my throbbing forehead on the steering wheel, I backed out and drove toward Shades Crest Road. Within five minutes I parked in the driveway of the sprawling red-brick, ranch-style house where I’d grown up. This nut hadn’t fallen far from the tree.
My father’s Toyota hybrid was there, covered in political bumper stickers and telling me he was home. A blast of cool air greeted me as I opened the door. “Dad?”
“In here.”
I walked through the foyer to the living room. Virtually nothing in the house had changed since I was a kid. An oil portrait of my late grandfather hung above the fireplace. His Dutch features, including his square jaw, fair skin, and summer sky blue eyes, had been bequeathed to my father. And to me. And to my younger brother, Chris.
On this same green carpet I’d taken my first steps and held slumber parties in junior high school. In this room lived the memories of my mother before she died of breast cancer when I was thirteen. Memories of me and my brother joking and roughhousing. It was a home built on laughter and love. What all my clients should have had, but didn’t.
The furniture was still the same, too, except now the tweed sofa and chair were shoved against a cream-colored wall so my father could practice Tae Kwon Do. Dad was dressed in his gi, with a yellow belt tied around his waist. His milk-blond ponytail was longer than mine and touched with gray. He was flushed from the exercise, making the crescent-shaped scar on his left cheekbone stand out white on his face. The story behind the scar was one I’d heard frequently growing up, about how he and the other Freedom Riders had been beaten and arrested in May of 1961, trying to get to New Orleans to support the desegregation of the interstate bus system. He’d been twenty years old and spent two months in jail.
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