Disembodied Bones (4 page)

“No, I don’t think so.” Roosevelt shook his
head. “This is some little stupid game to you. I’m gonna go call
your daddy and he’s gonna come down here and explain why you’re
doing this, and when that’s all settled maybe you won’t go to
juvenile detention for a few weeks for making a false police
report, but it won’t be because I didn’t recommend it.”

Leonie’s lips flattened into a grim line.
This was why the family didn’t trust outsiders. Then she sighed.
She would have to do it herself. She didn’t know if she were strong
enough. She could call some of the family. They might help her, but
this was outside their normal capacity for the family’s gifts. She
wasn’t quite sure if they would believe her either. Her mother
hadn’t the day before. She hadn’t been quite sure if she believed
it herself, until she read the headlines and saw Douglas Trent’s
photograph on the front page of the newspaper. So that left her and
only her. She wasn’t weak but she wasn’t a match for a full grown
man.
Somehow
, she thought unflinchingly,
I will find a
way to rescue Douglas.

“You stay right here,” Roosevelt instructed
gruffly. “I’m gonna have the gal up front keep an eye on you, so
you don’t go anywhere. You got that, little lady?”

Leonie nodded.
Go ahead, turn your back
for a moment. I’m pretty fast for my age. And I’m skinny enough to
slip through all kinds of narrow gaps.

Roosevelt kept an eye on Leonie until he
reached Eloise Hunter. When he reached the counter, he turned away
to say to the older woman, “You watch that little girl.”

Eloise rebelliously glared up at Roosevelt
and then she tilted her head to look around his large body. The
expression faded away in puzzlement. She said, “Uh, Dee-tective
Hemstreet.”

“Yeah?” snarled Roosevelt, aggravated already
because he’d wasted twenty minutes he could have been putting
something in his empty, growling stomach, when he knew he’d be
spending the rest of the day making cold calls to surrounding
parishes about the Trent boy until his ear felt like a slice of
warmed over cauliflower. The worst part was that he had a gut
feeling about the kid. The child was already dead, and they were
just doing a search and recover now. They could only hope that the
perpetrator left enough evidence to put him under Angola for the
rest of his natural born life. Compared to Roosevelt’s empty
stomach, that feeling by itself was enough to really piss him off,
and he didn’t need crap walking in off the street trying to feed
him a line that no one in their right mind would ever believe.

“Ah don’t see that little girl,” said
Eloise.

“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Roosevelt
snapped and turned back abruptly. “She’s right there. Are you blind
or something-”

But Leonie Simoneaud was gone. She wasn’t
anywhere in the waiting room and the electronic doors to the
outside were slowly sliding shut, as if someone had just passed
through them. However, no one was within sight.

-

It lies behind stars and under the highest
hills,

And empty holes it solidly fills.

It comes first and follows after,

Ends life, and kills laughter.

What is it?

It is darkness.

This is a thing all things devour:

Birds, beasts, trees, even a simple flower;

It gnaws iron, and bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal.

It slays all in its path, and will ruin many a
town,

And it will beat the mighty mountain down.

What is it?

What am I? I am buried so deep, piled over
with heavy stones…
The words continued to clatter inside
Leonie’s head. It spun around like the little pieces of paper on a
record player upon which small children drop globs of paint. A
little bit of red here, some blue over there, spiraling in an
unending circle, a mess of paint left on a white sheet.

A shaking voice said tremulously, “You want a
banana, little girl?”

Leonie opened her eyes and discovered a stop
sign in her line of sight. The car she was sitting in had briefly
paused at a four-way intersection. It was an old Impala with its
engine rumbling like the ramshackle purr of a battle-scarred
tomcat. The seats were once red leather but now were orange strips
held together with green duct tape. It smelled like an animal had
been peeing in the car and a large plastic Jesus hung from the rear
view mirror overseeing his meager domain. His eyes twinkled
intermittently with faint red lights and Leonie was a little
disconcerted until she realized it was battery operated.

A cocoa colored hand that also showed its age
held out a bright yellow banana with a Chiquita sticker and Leonie
also realized she was starving. She hadn’t eaten breakfast and
lunch had passed while she was waiting on the policeman. She said
politely, “Thank you.”

The driver was an elderly black woman. She
had a red scarf wrapped around her head that covered up snow white
hair. The scarf matched the red linen dress she wore and the flat
red leather pumps on her feet. Her features were drooping with
time’s eternal march but her black eyes held an intelligent gleam.
She shook the banana impatiently at Leonie.

Leonie took it quickly and the woman said,
“My name is Pamonda McCully, little miss thing. I gots to get to
church right quick because they counting on my green bean casserole
to save the congregation. That’s the smell you be smelling.” She
indicated the back, but all Leonie could smell was cat piss, even
though she could see an aluminum-foil wrapped dish sitting on the
rear bench seat. Pamonda went on as if Leonie had answered, “I was
going to et that nan-noo, on account I got the diabetes, but I
plumb forgot and I be thinking you need it more than I do.”

“I need to get to Sugarberry Lane,” said
Leonie. It was the second time she had said it to the older woman.
She carefully peeled the banana and all but stuffed it whole into
her mouth, only then comprehending how hungry she was. The peel
went into a plastic garbage bag attached to the glove box.

Pamonda chuckled and almost lost her
dentures, absently stuffing them back in with shaking fingers. “I
done heard you the first time. And I told you I’m going down that
way but I cain’t take you all the way there.” She tut-tutted. “A
little girl like ya’ll, taking rides from strangers. I’m good folk,
but you just cain’t tell who be driving around. I mean, Jack the
Ripper probably be driving a van ifin he was alive today, and we
all heard tell about that white boy up to Washington. Some of those
gals ain’t never been identified.”

But Pamonda McCully had arrived, offering a
ride in her ancient Chevrolet and all Leonie could feel was relief
that she was moving toward Douglas Trent again. There was relief
and then there was guilt at having wasted her time at the police
department. She thought she could convince them, but all the
detective had been convinced of was that she was the guilty
one.

“Sure ‘nough, you a hungry little chile.
Don’t they feed you at home?” Pamonda continued as if they were
both participating in an active conversation. “You lucky I went to
see my daughter. She be sixty this year. She be getting old, I tell
you what. Talking about getting her social s’cur’ty and retiring to
a trailer home near Alexandria to be near her daughter. Oh, silly
woman. She don’t have ‘nough money for that.”

Pamonda went on about her daughter for almost
ten minutes before they reached her church. Leonie wasn’t sure but
she thought she was about two or three miles away from where she
needed to be. She thanked the old woman and jogged off down the
street. Pamonda stopped to watch her go, saying, “And they say
things about black folks being different. Huh.” She looked around,
immediately sighting another elderly black woman climbing out of a
Lincoln Continental. “Latrenda Humphrey! You git your wide, couch
sitting butt over here and git my green bean casserole out for me!
I know ain’t nothing wrong with your back!”

The other woman laughed at Pamonda. “Oh shut
up, Miz McCully. Ain’t nothing wrong wit’ your back neither. And
what you doing wit’ a little white girl?”

Pamonda considered. The little girl with the
long black hair and the haunted face had vanished around the
corner. “I don’t rightly know. That chile, she don’t say much.”

•

Roosevelt Hemstreet sat at his desk, staring
at his phone. He wasn’t quite sure why he was staring at his phone,
only that he was, and he didn’t like where his thoughts were taking
him. What was particularly troubling him was that he had a vague
recollection of riding somewhere with his wife in her VW Jetta and
cursing loudly because he couldn’t find a Kleenex. There always
seemed to be an overabundance of dust in that car and he sneezed
each and every time he got into it. But that time, there wasn’t a
Kleenex to be found and he’d had to use that old tried and true
method of nose cleaning, the shirttail.

His wife, Rowena, had been indignant. “I know
your aunt raised you better than that.”

And he had said, “You got to use what you
got, and I got a shirttail.” But not after he had forcefully rifled
through all of his pockets just to make sure, and then he had
turned his head to make sure Roosevelt, Jr. and baby Stephanie
didn’t see him do it. He certainly hadn’t wanted Junior to repeat
his offense and then speedily offer up the excuse that he had seen,
“Daddy did it!” as if were written in stone and carried down from
the holiest of mountains.

Roosevelt stared at the telephone. But he’d
done it, pretty much the way Leonie Simoneaud had said. How can
that little girl know about that? The Lake People are supposed to
be real different. All those rumors. They know things. I’ve heard
it a dozen times in the last three years. They keep to themselves
because they have secrets. All kinds of secrets. He looked up and
saw three detectives walk inside the offices. They nodded at him
but all looked preoccupied. One of them hit the coffee table
immediately and proceeded to stuff half the last chocolate éclair
into his mouth.

Roosevelt sighed and picked up the phone.
Rowena answered on the third ring. When she realized who it was she
said, “Rosy, you find that little boy yet? Roosevelt, Jr. wants to
go to the mall to play in the arcade and I just don’t know what to
say to him.”

“Ro, honey,” he said. “Would you do me a
favor? Is the baby down?”

“Sure, she just fell asleep and Junior’s in
the backyard with the neighbor’s kids. I told them no playing in
the front unless an adult is with them-”

“Would you put the phone down and go see if I
dropped my gold pen in your car.” Roosevelt closed his eyes for a
moment. “I seem to recall I was fooling around with it when I was
in your car a few weeks ago. Maybe it fell in between the
seats.”

Rowena didn’t say anything for a full fifteen
seconds. “Okay, Rosy. I’ll be right back.”

It took her five minutes, but Roosevelt
tapped his fingers on the desk and listened absently to the other
detectives discuss various known pedophiles in the area and how
they were planning to shake them down for information about Douglas
Trent. He picked up a Bic and doodled on the desktop calendar.
First he wrote down the name, Whitechapel. Then he wrote down,
Leonie Simoneaud. Then he wrote the address she had said. Somewhere
on Sugar something Lane.
But it’s all bullshit. Of course it is.
Not gonna need this. Nope.

Ro came back on with a husky laugh. “Very
funny, Roosevelt. I’m surprised you didn’t arrest the whole family
for stealing your gold pen. What did you want, for me to spend an
hour digging through my car? Is this some kind of joke?”

He wasn’t sure exactly what to feel. Relief
or anger? Relief that he hadn’t scared off a little girl who had
valid information about a missing child or anger that such a young
woman would try to fool a police officer.
Which one? Oh, hell, I
don’t know
. “No, it wasn’t a joke. I thought maybe you’d find
the pen out there. I mean, I’ve looked everywhere for it and you
know how much my aunt meant to me.”

“But Rosy,” Ro’s voice was quizzical and
amused at the same time. “It was there. Way down deep in between
the seats. I thought you were pulling my leg…”

“You found my pen?” Roosevelt dropped the Bic
on the table. It rolled to the edge and clattered onto the floor.
“My gold Cross pen?”

“Sure, baby. Larger than life. Glad to see
it, but I don’t see how you could have known it was there. Unless
you suddenly remembered it falling out of your pocket?”

“I’ll call you back later, Ro. Love you.”

Roosevelt put the phone down before his wife
could answer. He looked down at the doodles and the names he’d
written.

Another patrolman entered the offices and
announced loudly, “All right, Eloise is pissed off at someone up
here.” He glanced down at a piece of paper in his hand. “Some
detective talked to a little girl earlier. A Lee-Lee
Simon-something or other. And her daddy is waiting downstairs, and
boy is he mad. I ain’t going down to explain to Miz Eloise
that-”

“Hey, Gerald,” Roosevelt called to one of the
detectives. “You know anything about a guy named Whitechapel? Maybe
some kind of kiddie-molester?”

Gerald Ritchie was a detective sergeant and
ten years older than Roosevelt. He’d lived in Shreveport all his
life and had been a police officer for half that life. For all
intents and purposes he knew just about everything about
Shreveport. And he knew a lot more about the criminal element in
the town. “Whitechapel?” he repeated, a frown wrinkling his
bulldog-like face. “Whitechapel. It seems to me like I’ve heard
that name somewhere. Lemme think about it. Why, Rosy, what you know
about it? This guy has something to do with the Trent kid?”