by Matt Coleman
Their brother, though, he never straightened his path. Couldn’t pull his head out of the clouds, as they say. Or maybe he couldn’t pull the cloud out of his head. When they were little, their momma bought him a shitty video camera from a pawn shop for Christmas. He ran all over the neighborhood filming every move they and their friends made. They recreated more movies than Shelley could count. And he kept at it all the way through high school and into a couple of failed attempts at college.
Kids in the neighborhood took to calling him Spike Lee, and then Do the Right Thing, and, finally, Do Right. Dante loved it. He never went anywhere without a camera in his hands. Shelley used to call it his albatross. Film was supposed to lift Do Right out of his own shit and to a better life. But he ended up obsessed with filming the shit he was living in. And now she started to fear the same conclusion Marlowe had reached: Do Right’s obsession might have gotten him killed.
Chapter 19
Officer Doyle had worked three nights in a row. She planned on sleeping through the afternoon. But instead she was fishing through her laundry room for a shirt and a pair of jeans. Living alone meant laundry at her own pace, and her pace was smell it before you wear it. She managed to dig up a dingy blue T-shirt and a gray hoodie. She could throw on a cap and look as inconspicuous as she could as a young black woman. The gala didn’t start until 7:00, so she had hours to track down Cary before then.
But those hours whittled down to nothing. She tried any and everywhere Cary might go, but to no avail. Tired and starving, she sat outside Roosevelt High School and watched the police elite file in looking uncomfortable in black suits. She was on the verge of dozing off when a car pulled close to the main doors and dropped off a lone woman. Although the woman cleaned up and dressed for the occasion, Doyle knew immediately she had found Cary.
Doyle parked in a visitor lot between two SUVs, staying out of sight. Checking to make sure she had her gun tucked into the back of her pants, she jumped out of the car and took several quick breaths to steady herself. The entrance was a good thirty feet to her left, so she darted up to the side of the building, far from the madding crowd. As she searched for a way in, a voice barked from over her shoulder sending her flipping around with a hand under the back of her hoodie.
Mark Thompson walked up, laughing at her. “Holster it, Doyle. What the hell are you doing here?”
Doyle tried to avoid eye contact. “I caught sight of Cary Trubody. I’ve been following her ever since.”
Detective Jolly walked around the side of the building. “She’s in there?”
Doyle looked around, startled. “Yeah. Yes, sir. She is.”
Jolly nodded, looking around her at the crowd.
Thompson ducked his head and cut his eyes at Shelley. “You realize we need to talk to this young lady. Right, Doyle?”
She nodded. “Yes, sir. I made an attempt to confirm her whereabouts and then I planned on calling you.”
Thompson curled a lip and sucked at his teeth. “Good, Doyle. Makes me happy to hear that.”
Jolly stepped between them and past Shelley to get a better look at the crowd. “What’s she doing in there?”
She looked back and forth between them. “I’m—I’m not sure, sir.”
Thompson shrugged. “Don’t matter. We need to stop her.”
Doyle cocked her head. “With all due respect, sir, how can we do anything with this many officers around?”
Thompson sighed, “I don’t know. But we gotta.”
Jolly spoke away from them, “What we need is for all of them,” he pointed toward the crowd, “to want this bitch as bad as we do.”
She shuddered. “And how do we do that?”
Jolly looked over his shoulder at her.
She closed her eyes and swallowed. “Sir.”
Jolly grinned. “Leave it to us, sweetie. You just help us find her.”
Thompson said, “Jolly and I will head around to the side entrances up front. Doyle, you guard the main doors. Make sure she doesn’t slip back out the way she went in.”
Doyle pointed up and down at her clothes. “I’m not exactly dressed for an event like this, sir.”
Thompson laughed. “Looks a hell of a lot better than the dress you’ll wear to your brother’s funeral, Doyle. Now, help us find this bitch, unless you want to go ahead and start picking it out.”
Chapter 20
The beauty of being a computer programmer was not getting any harsh looks for holing up in an office and doing weird shit. Sameer proved to himself he couldn’t go back to an empty home. Instead he took the notes from Seamus’ desk Margaret copied for him and went up to his office.
The building always hummed with the buzz of computer monitors and the clickety-clack of keyboard taps at any hour. Coders worked when they worked, and management let the work happen in whatever fashion those coders chose as long as everything got done.
Sameer wheeled a large corkboard on casters into his office and retrieved colored note cards and push pins from the storage closet. He cleared his work table and laid out the Xeroxed notes so every page was visible.
He started by seeking out names. Seamus had horrible handwriting, but after twelve years together Sameer knew the scribblings as well as his own. He fished through his stack of notecards for all the red ones and put one name on each card with a black Sharpie. When he found it, he would add a title or position next to a name—usually judge or senator or district attorney and the like. After he fished out every name, he pinned them to the board, spread out from the center.
He used green note cards for places, like the Hill Street Cafe and something called Graffiti Creek, among others. One note stumped him: a Post-it with “Thompson and Jolly” scribbled on it. They might be names or the name of a place, maybe a bar or a law office. He set “Thompson and Jolly” aside along with a confusing note reading “Bright New Day = Bright Hudson,” with a phone number. Sameer uncovered several phone numbers. He put them on yellow cards and pinned them near the names, when a name linked up with a number.
After pinning up all the cards he could make sense of, Sameer fished a spool of yarn out of his desk. He had found the yarn when he took the job and always found it too odd to throw away. Sure enough, here he was with a legitimate use for it. He began winding fuzzy thread from push pin to push pin, associating names he had connected together.
Hooking the string around the Booker card, he pulled it tight around the Do Right card. He added a phone number, which he did call, but it went straight to voicemail. Using a blue card, he wrote “Story about saving sex worker from judge or politician.” He collected all the red cards with names he discovered to belong to judges or politicians. With a handful of pins, they fanned out in a cluster under his new blue card along the thread between Booker and Do Right. Sameer had only begun and his head already spun. He continued connecting whatever he could (not much) until he ran out of information. Then he went to his computer.
Sameer Googled one name after another, adding information as he found it—this guy is a state senator, this one is a federal court judge, and so on. Bright Hudson ended up being an attractive blonde police detective, but he couldn’t find the meaning of Bright New Day.
There was an old, shut-down bar called Thompson and Jolts, as well as a law office called Thomas, Jolly, and Jones. Sameer made a red and green card for the names. He added some information about the bar and a phone number for the law office, along with basic details about long-time partners Bradley Thomas and Angelica Jolly.
On the third page of search results, he found one last possibility—an old article about a robbery investigation which quoted two police detectives named Mark Thompson and Richard Jolly. He went ahead and added a red note card for each of the men, placing them in the corner of the board with other disconnected cards.
The Bright Hudson card stymied Sameer. Seamus had scribbled a phone number along with the name. Most of the phone numbers appeared to belong to contacts. And Margaret said Seamus claimed to have
a police contact. However, he was also investigating police corruption. So Bright Hudson may either be the first call Sameer should make, or the last.
For the time being, he put the card in the inside pocket of his jacket. He also pocketed a yellow card he made for a phone number from a disposable phone. Margaret copied the number alongside a receipt for one, so Sameer assumed they connected. He didn’t want to call this number yet either. If it rang in Seamus’ pocket at the wrong time, a simple phone call would prove disastrous. Besides, it might be months old or may rest in the hands of someone other than Seamus.
Another mysterious note not placed on a card was a hyperlink to a YouTube video. Sameer settled in at his computer and typed in the link. The channel belonged to one of the filmmakers from the coffee shop—Sameer recognized his picture. The video was a thirteen minute, overly artistic film set to some sort of industrial punk music. Snippets of interviews popped up every few minutes with locals sermonizing about the steady decline of culture in the city. Sameer couldn’t connect the propaganda film to anything.
Until the end.
In the final seconds, as the closing credits flashed up intermittently on screen, there was one long shot of a homeless man on the steps of a museum. Sameer hit pause on a closeup of the man’s face. The small black man with glasses had to be Booker. Sameer printed the screenshot and pinned it under Booker’s card. Finally, he made a green card for the Parker Building, connecting the location to Booker and adding the address he found online.
Chapter 21
Cary clutched at Mrs. Webster, shaking and pressing against the spouting wound behind her ear. She pleaded, Hang on and Help is on the way and Please. But it was no use. Karen Webster had been reduced to a gurgling plash of blood. Her eyes lost focus and her breaths turned into whistling coughs—final and all expelling her initial gasp.
Cary let her lie back onto the tile floor. She stood and looked around at the blood. So much of it. More than should have been in one person. Cary surveyed herself in the mirror. Took in her blood streaked arms, the smears across her face, the sticky dark mass across the front of her dress. She was showered in blood. In the moment, it hadn’t felt like it.
Her mind was steadily blocking out pieces of what happened. The corners of her eyes filled with flashes of white. Loud shouts and footsteps started their stampede down the echo chamber of a hallway. The knife. Mrs. Webster—now still—a body. The blood still flowing, running in rivulets down a drain in the floor. Noises grew louder. Tears sprung to Cary’s eyes, clearing paths in the blood on her face.
She ran. Her feet slipped on the bloody tile, and she crawled for the door. Scrambling to her feet, Cary started for the hallway leading into the darkened school. Her heels made sharp clacks on the linoleum floor, so she hopped forward, pulling them off one at a time. Wielding them by their straps, she sprinted down the hallway.
Voices shouted, screamed, wailed. Someone bellowed out Karen’s name in a horrible wail. More footsteps. Cary slammed into doors and slapped at door handles. Everything was locked. She came to an open stairwell and took a sharp left into it.
The stairs led up into blackness. Her bare feet smacked out a reverberating pattern of a woman on the run. A cadence of pure terror. She bounded out of the stairwell onto the second floor. Classrooms stretched out down a dimly lit hallway. The edges of the ceiling had soft fluorescent lights glowing every few feet.
Cary hit more doors until one gave. It opened with a whoosh, rattling a door on the far side of the room. It was a science room, with lab tables spaced out instead of desks. The lab tables jutted out from the walls on both sides like kitchen islands. Stools clustered around each one.
Cary ran to one and cleared out the stools. She crouched into the cave beneath an overhanging workspace and pulled the stools back around her. They made a honking sound as they raked across the floor, and Cary cringed. She tensed and leaned into shadow.
Footsteps pounded outside in the hallway. Cary held her breath. She had been practicing it since she was five. Her dad played hide-and-seek with her all the time. He would creep around her and growl. When she was still a novice, she would pick the laundry hamper every time. Her dad would lurk around it for a requisite amount of time and then rip it open to her delighted squeals. As she got older, she learned. And she would always double-back on him, waiting for him to check one spot before running to hide there.
Police voices, confidant and authoritative, rang out up and down the hallway. Shouts of Clear! came from empty rooms. Cary trembled, wet with blood, holding her shoes and her purse like stuffed animals. Her ears locked on the door to the classroom, but sound erupted right in front of her.
The door on the far side of the room rocked open and a flashlight beam shot across the room. Cary bit a finger to keep from screaming. The light scanned the room. Cary glimpsed the outline of a man from where she hid. He held the flashlight along the sights of a handgun and swept the room with soldier precision. The light scoured one side of the room, above table tops, then the other. The man took three shuffling steps forward and kicked a stool out from in front of the lab table at the back of the room. He shot light under the table and continued, noisily scattering stools and checking under tables.
One by one by one. The gun jabbing under them with each stop of movement. He was fluid, efficient. And he was across from Cary, on her row. The empty table next to her had an extra stool, and it spun in the center of the floor. He crab walked over to Cary. Stood in front of her. Took a stance of action. And he kicked, sending a stool touching the tip of her foot careening off into an adjacent table. The light leaned down.
Another noise brought his focus up and away, swinging his flashlight beam toward the door to the hallway, which popped open with a shout of, “Hey! Martin! You got a flashlight? We need to clear under the stairs!”
Martin snapped to react, running toward the voice with a, “Yes, sir!”
In front of Cary was open space leading toward the far door where Martin had entered. It opened to a room. A room which had been cleared. She pushed up onto her knees and crawled to the open door. It led to a common space connected to several science labs. Cabinets of equipment and chemicals lined the walls.
Cary eased the door closed behind her and scooted on her ass back into a storage space. She edged her way along a table, wedging herself in a dark crevice between the work table and a storage cabinet. A tall box sat on the table, and Cary positioned herself behind it. She could peek around the far side of it, but, other than her legs under the table, she couldn’t be seen.
She held still until her muscles ached. In the distant reaches of the hallway, more calls of Clear! rang out. A cop game of Marco Polo. How long would it take? At what point should she move? And where would she go?
The thoughts were lonely. And the only company they found were soft, creaking footsteps. Someone was near. They prodded around the science storage room, moving boxes and opening cabinets.
Cary snuck a peek. Detective Dick. She made out his profile by the soft light from the chemical cabinet. He came closer, making his way, table by table, across the back of the room.
Cary had no emergency exits. No back doors. She found herself cornered, pinned into a dark crevice and hoping for the best. She made no plan for the worst case scenario, but it arrived regardless.
Dick stood at Cary’s table. He drummed his fingers on the side of the box. The big, meaty hand planted itself right in front of her. Dick used it to brace himself as he grunted and leaned down to check beneath the table.
Cary had one chance. She took a high heel and came down hard onto the back of Dick’s hand. It went deep. Found bone, or maybe even the table below. Dick let out a heaving grunt and his knees buckled. Cary swept the box aside with one arm and rolled over the top of the table. She landed on Dick’s back and kept rolling until she was on her feet and past him. He made a swipe for her with his good hand, but he was still reeling. It was feeble and fruitless.
Cary landed in a full ru
n, but made it only three steps. The looming shadow of Mark Thompson was blocking her straight ahead. He chuckled, the round outline of his stomach bouncing. There were doors on either side of her. To her left, the classroom where she first hid. To her right, another class which should lead to the other hallway. But both doors stood ten feet off. Mark could close on her before she reached either escape.
She whipped her head around. Dick was working his way to his feet behind her, cursing and whimpering. Mark took a lumbering step forward. Cary found to her right a row of chemicals in corked bottles arranged in a neat little line, each with a yellow sticker warning of some hazard or another. She gripped her shoes and purse in the same hand like a baseball bat. And she swung. Connecting with the first bottle, she followed through as hard as she could, sending chemicals and shattered glass raining onto Mark Thompson’s face. He squawked and recoiled into the darkness before her.
And Cary wasted no time. She bolted to her right and through the door into another science classroom. Hiding was over. It was time to run. She burst out of the classroom into the hallway. Cops roamed around, scattered in both directions.
In less than a second, one called out, “Spotted!” Other voices followed. Shadows danced on both ends of the hallway.
Cary whipped around and scanned the walls around her. To her right was a fire extinguisher encased in glass which read, In case of emergency, break glass. Cary mumbled, “Well, it’s worked so far.” And she hit at it three times with her shoes until it gave.
What followed was an absolute eruption of sensory overload. An alarm howled in chirping barks. Overhead sprinklers blasted a shower of freezing water. And emergency strobe lights throbbed and blinded everyone in the hallway. Cary stumbled forward, pawing at the wall for an exit. She found another stairwell, leading back downstairs. Her hair matted to her face and her teeth chattered. She slipped and toppled down the stairs, landing in a roll on the midway landing. The next flight she took in almost one leap.
