Skies of Ash

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  “That’s my job,” I said. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “I am, too. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  I took a step back to the paper towel dispenser.

  She glided to the middle stall like a swan across a pond. Before disappearing behind the locked metal door, she tossed me a smile so bright it fed the sun.

  9

  THE HOT, DISEASED BREATH OF THE HOSPITAL WAS WAITING FOR COLIN AND ME AS we returned to the main lobby. We rushed toward the exit for the parking lot, lips clamped together as the sick lurched and coughed and spat into tissues. Outside, the air smelled of exhaust and cigarette smoke, the regular carcinogenic stink that caused domestic diseases like lung cancer and COPD.

  After inhaling a few pounds of poison, Colin said, “So Christopher Chatman.”

  “What about him?” I opened the Crown Vic’s driver’s-side door and slipped behind the steering wheel.

  “All that ruckus and the waving arms and all that. Really?”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “You’re such a cynic, Colin.”

  “You don’t get the impression that he’s puttin’ on?”

  “Would you rally back quickly if a beautiful woman was at your bedside and tending to your needs?”

  “Hell no.” Colin chuckled. “My ass would be an invalid at all the right times, but strong and potent when it mattered.”

  My fingers tapped across the car’s computer keyboard. “Looks like we were never called out to the Chatman house for domestic drama,” I said, scrolling through the address’s history. “Just the burglary back in 2009.”

  Colin leaned into the car. “Any priors for him or her?”

  I typed in Juliet Chatman’s name. “A speeding violation last year.” I typed in Christopher Chatman’s name. “And he’s totally clean. He’s even an organ donor.”

  “The man’s a saint.”

  “I wanna go back to the house,” I said. “See if Pepe and Luke found a MacGuffin.”

  The temperature around the Chatmans’ property had cooled some, and heat no longer pulsed from the ground. Melting plastics and paints had hardened into stalactites, opaque orbs, and swamp things.

  In the front yard, now lit with halogen lamps, firemen clomped in and out of the house, checking for hotspots, tearing venting holes into walls. On the perimeter, the last news crew reported live from the scene. Pepe was hunched over a crimson-brocaded couch. Luke was snapping pictures of all the items we had collected throughout the day.

  “What’s up, ladies?” I asked.

  Pepe wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his forearm. “People own a lot of shit. That’s what’s up.”

  “We need some good food after this,” Luke said.

  “It’s Pepe’s turn,” Colin said.

  Pepe scrunched his eyebrows. “I got food on Friday.”

  “AM-PM is not food, amigo,” Luke said. “I’m talkin’ six-pound Hollenbeck burritos with enough cheese and guacamole to constipate a walrus.”

  “You are a walrus,” Colin cracked.

  Luke flipped Colin the bird and said, smiling, “Vete y chinga a tu madre.”

  Pepe groaned, then laughed.

  “That’s illegal, Luke,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What he say?” Colin asked. “Something about my mother? What was that other stuff?”

  “Changing the subject,” I said. “Find anything good?”

  “Remember the piece Miss Lady was packin’?” Luke asked. “We ran the serial number. It legally belonged to Juliet Chatman. She picked it up last Thursday at a gun store in Duarte.”

  “Duarte?” My eyes narrowed. “That’s, like, fifty miles east of here. Why not buy a gun at the store over in Culver City? That’s three miles away.”

  “Did she fire it?” Colin asked.

  “Nope,” Luke said. “Oh, and we never did find Mrs. Chatman’s car keys.”

  “Think someone took them so she couldn’t leave?” I asked.

  The men shrugged and nodded and shook their heads.

  “Y’all are as sharp as marbles.” I swiveled and pointed to the SUV in the driveway. “You search it yet?”

  “Not thoroughly,” Pepe said. “Zucca sprayed the inside, but he didn’t find any blood. Nothing but old soda spills, Skittles, and hard-ass french fries.”

  “Let’s take another look,” I said, pulling gloves on as we stepped over to the car.

  “We did grab a few things from Chatman’s Jag,” Pepe said as we walked. “A CVS drugstore receipt from December tenth, which was yesterday. A botanical-gardens ticket from December tenth, which was yesterday. And a charger and cell phone hidden in the compartment beneath the driver’s seat.”

  “Ooh,” I said. “Secret cell phone stashed in the secret seat cache.”

  “We found some pain meds in the Jag’s glove compartment,” Pepe continued. “Hydrocodone prescribed for Mr. Chatman. And we found an EZ-Mail invoice for personal mailbox service for November. And that’s about it.”

  “That phone gets me hot,” I said. “We’ll need warrants to pull phone bills, to get voice-mail messages and texts.” I popped the truck’s rear compartment to see those three suitcases.

  “Were they going on a trip?” Pepe asked.

  I opened the hard-shelled, hot-pink Hello Kitty suitcase. “Girls’ shirts, panties, calf-length Cons, skinny jeans. Chloe, I’m guessing.”

  Next, I opened the battered black piece covered with shoe prints and skateboard bumper stickers. “Games for a Nintendo DS, checkered skinny jeans, three pairs of clean socks, and… a Bic lighter.” I pointed at the Bic. “Cody.”

  “Oh boy,” Pepe said, taking pictures of that lighter.

  Then, I opened the last suitcase, a newish Louis Vuitton piece with no nicks or scratches. “Obviously Mrs. Chatman’s. Designer blue jeans, stiletto boots, two bras, lots of panties, T-shirts, and… a box of bullets for the Smith and Wesson.”

  More pics taken of the bullets.

  My eyes combed the rest of the SUV’s compartment. “Do y’all see what I don’t see?”

  Pepe, Luke, and Colin scanned the cabin.

  “Two kids and a lady,” I pointed out. “Where’s his bag?”

  We searched the SUV again.

  No suitcase for a man.

  “Anybody see a suitcase in the house?” I asked. “Maybe he hadn’t put his in the trunk.”

  Luke shook his head. “We would’ve noticed that.”

  Pepe turned the key in the ignition. “The gas tank is full. Wherever she and the kids were going, she wasn’t planning on stopping soon.”

  “Or for Daddy Bear to come along,” I said.

  “Oh boy,” Luke and Pepe said together.

  “Okay, so let’s backtrack,” I said. “ ‘Something, something kill me.’ And she died holding a gun.”

  “She had been scared of something,” Colin said.

  “Or someone,” Pepe added.

  “So scared,” I said, “that she purchased that gun, filled the car’s gas tank, and packed up the kids. But before they could escape, before she had a chance to fire that gun and drive four hundred miles east to wherever, she had been stopped.”

  “By what?” Luke asked.

  “By whom?” Pepe wondered.

  “The fire?”

  “Her husband?”

  My body went cold. “Or both.”

  10

  BENEATH THE DECEMBER MOON, BENEATH A SKY STILL SMOKY FROM FIRE AND ASH, the Chatman house resembled the War of the Worlds plane-crash movie set found on the Universal Studios lot—random wood boards strewn across the property, plaster and wallpaper hanging off walls like dead, burned skin, dirty insulation dripping from the eaves like broiled intestines. All of this but without the crashed 747 on the front lawn. Hard to believe that a family had lived here. But as I surveyed the destruction, I found it easy to believe that a family—three-quarters of it anyway—had perished.

  As a homicide detective, I regularly entered the homes of slain victims. There, I
smelled tobacco caught in the curtains; smelled spilled beer and whiskey fumes in the rugs and wafting from the mountain of empties in the trash can. I noticed walls dented by doorknobs, fists, and skulls; crimson-colored splatters on ceilings and floorboards; teeth stuck in carpet.

  With the Chatman house, I saw nothing personal like that. Just groups of big men swinging axes, wielding chain saws, shouting “Whoa whoa whoa” over the crackle of radios. Mops, water vacuums, and chamois cluttered the lawns and sidewalks. The business end of death.

  “I wanna go back into the main house for a moment,” I told Luke and Pepe. “To make sure there ain’t a packed suitcase for Mr. Chatman.” Then, I pointed to Colin. “Then, we’ll check out the back house.”

  The electricity to the property was still shut off, so we clicked on our flashlights to navigate through the darkness. But we didn’t find a suitcase—not in the foyer, den, or home office.

  No suitcase in the laundry room, either. “Looks full,” Colin said, peering through the window of the swanky dryer. “Maybe he was washing the clothes he planned to pack.”

  “Maybe.”

  He opened the dryer door, then pulled out pink shirts, white shirts, jeans, and girls’ swimsuits, a few bath and hand towels, and soccer socks—all of it covered in glitter. “Nothin’ but girl. What the hell’s bells is all this?” He brushed glitter from his clothes, but the flecks only multiplied.

  “Looks like a stripper threw up all over you,” I said, grinning.

  “Is that a thing now? Putting glitter on clothes?”

  I nodded. “But you wash it first, to get off the excess. The rest gets caught in the lint filter. See?” I lifted the filter from its slot.

  Clean.

  “That’s strange,” I said with a frown. “Usually…”

  Colin rubbed his left eye. “Think some of that shit flew in my—”

  “Where’s the lint from this load?” I wondered. “There should be some of the usual gray stuff along with glitter from Chloe’s shirts.”

  “Does it matter?” Colin blinked to be sure that the glitter had left his eye.

  Uncertain if it mattered or not, I stared at the filter. “Just find it strange.” I plucked the digital camera from my pocket and snapped pictures of the clothes, the clean filter, and the machine itself.

  Flashlights in hand, Colin and I crept out of the service porch door, stepping over boards, debris, and leaves, all soggy from drizzle and fire-hose water. Our beams of light led us to the Chatmans’ Away Place. And except for a plywood sheet covering the busted bay window, the converted garage had escaped disaster.

  Colin clucked his tongue. “Crazy how some things survive.”

  I tossed a cone of light up and down the structure. “Take this.” I handed him the Mag so that I could snap pictures.

  A moment later, flashes of light from the camera popped in the darkness. I took one more picture, then tilted my face to the misty rain, closing my eyes as my skin tingled and tightened.

  Colin wiggled the doorknob.

  Unlocked.

  The darkness hid the room’s detail. But it felt close and damp. If the air, the Persian rug, and the sofa didn’t dry out soon, mold would come and that would be that—another claim form for Christopher Chatman to submit. The walls were light-colored, and three dark wood beams traversed the ceiling.

  “Mice in here?” I whispered.

  “Fire probably scared ’em away.” Colin chuckled. “You scared of critters?”

  “Nope. Scared of vermin.”

  We wandered around the room in silence.

  Something scurried and scratched behind a piece of furniture.

  I went rigid and stopped in my step. “Vermin?”

  “Big ones, too,” Colin kidded.

  I swung the light: a bookcase stocked with books, a desk strewn with papers, and a glass mug filled with tea, the tea bag resting on a coaster. A book of stamps sat near that glass of tea. A planning calendar had been opened to January.

  “She was sitting here yesterday,” I said. “Started doing something—writing a letter, planning that getaway—and the doorbell rang or the kids called her to the front.”

  “Didn’t get to come back and finish her tea,” Colin added, his voice tight, his flashlight trained on the mug.

  Next to the planning calendar sat a daily planner opened to December 10. In neat print, someone (Juliet?) had written “APPT @IMG @ 2:30,” and on December 11, “FUP w/Dr. K @10.”

  I flipped to the past week: on Thursday, December 6, she’d had an appointment with Dr. Kulkanis at ten o’clock. A business card from the obstetrician-gynecologist had been stuck in the journal’s crease. Three appointments, just days apart.

  Sarah Oliver had mentioned Juliet being sick. And Juliet was supposed to visit her doctor this morning. A baby doctor.

  How many women died each year after visiting baby doctors and then sharing the news with their significant others? Too many.

  I took the journal and the calendar and then opened the top drawer—pens, pads, clips. In the large bottom drawer, I found letters bundled together with strands of raffia.

  As I browsed through the envelopes, Colin drifted over to the bookcase.

  I found nothing obvious in the first couple of letters—notes from friends and from her mother—but I took them all anyway. I stepped over to the coffee table: a Self magazine with Heidi Klum on the cover. A pen and two slips of paper. I shone light onto the words of the first note, written in neat cursive.

  Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Our life is a lie. It will be over soon and what we are will no longer be.

  Hunh.

  Then, I read the second note. “Found something.” My stomach clenched as I took pictures of both documents.

  Colin stood beside me and read the first note under his breath. “Suicide?”

  I shrugged. “Read note number two.”

  His eyes skipped across the page. “Shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “May not mean anything.”

  “You just said may not.”

  He gazed at me, glanced at the notes, then pulled two evidence bags from his pocket.

  Those notes weren’t teeth lost in carpet, banged-in walls, or pools of blood on bathroom linoleum. Nothing hard like that. But the family’s pathology—secrets and fear and betrayal—were starting to poke out and stink.

  11

  THE DRIZZLE HAD STEPPED UP ITS GAME, AND NOW, THIN RAIN, THE KIND THAT destroyed hair and made driving more dangerous than skydiving, fell from those Hollywood clouds. Colin and I left Juliet Chatman’s Away Place as the fire company loaded equipment back onto the engines and as two patrol officers wrapped new stretches of yellow tape across the front yard. Pepe and Luke had beat it back to the station with boxes of evidence crowding their cars’ trunks and cabins. At Ruby Emmett’s brick bungalow across the street, a group of neighbors huddled on the lawn.

  Colin smiled. “Looks like everybody’s home. Be a shame to leave right now.”

  “It would.” I winked at him. “Ready, partner?”

  “Always, partner.”

  “No mention of the gun or the suitcases or the 911 call.”

  “Got it.”

  Interviews are usually conducted in isolation—you and the witness in a locked room, knee to knee. But after finding that second note on the coffee table, I wanted the women of Don Mateo Drive in one room, clucking like pissed-off hens. A dangerous game? Certainly. But the potential payoff…

  All group discussion came to a halt as Colin and I approached.

  “Evenin’,” Colin drawled.

  No one responded.

  Delia Moss, the playwright, clutched an iPad to her chest. A chubby, balding white guy stood behind her and rubbed her shoulders. Round Ruby put her hands on her hips as Nora the real estate agent readjusted the plastic bonnet that protected her weave from the rain. A hatchet-faced black man and Ben Oliver smirked at me.

  “I know it’s dinnertime,” I said, “but we’d
like to talk to anyone who’s willing.” I smiled and nodded at Ben Oliver.

  He didn’t smile back.

  My face warmed, and my jaw tightened so much it creaked.

  “I’m tired of all this pokin’ around,” Ruby said. “Y’all, the reporters, everybody.”

  “We don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Delia Moss added. “You’re only interested in placing blame on the victims.”

  “Not true,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m interested in the truth.”

  “We’ve told you everything we know,” Ben Oliver said.

  I forced myself to remain smiling. “The sooner you talk to us, the sooner whoever did this is brought to justice. If you folks won’t do this for Juliet and the kids, who will?” I turned to Ruby. “ ‘Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.’ ”

  Ruby waddled to the front door. “Come on in, then. I’ll talk. Ain’t got all night, though.”

  Those three years of Sunday school memory verses had just paid off.

  A minute later, Colin and I found ourselves hunkered on a low love seat with sunken cushions in a stuffy living room crammed with an upright piano, an overdecorated Christmas tree, and brass elephant planters filled with peacock feathers. We were joined by the others who had stood with Ruby on her lawn—including Ben Oliver.

  Ruby’s kids, thirteen or fourteen years old and just as round as their mother, had been splayed on the carpet in front of the large-screen television, playing Left 4 Dead on the Xbox. “Y’all need to take that noise upstairs,” Ruby told them.

  “But—” both started to say, but stopped once Ruby gave them The Look.

  Obedient children, they huffed out of the living room, throwing me sullen gazes as they retreated up the stairs.

  “My husband should be back soon,” Delia said. The white guy, Eli Moss, had run next door to grab his video camera.

  As we waited, my stomach rumbled—Ruby had fried some type of meat for dinner, and I hadn’t eaten since that smashed, three-o’-clock Snickers bar.

  Ben Oliver sat in the armchair across from Colin and me. He considered me coolly as though I had planned to sell him expired Amway products.