Her Last Scream (3 page)

Harry and I spent the next few days working the Jane-Doe-from-the-dump case – we’d started calling her butterfly Lady – but the body remained unidentified. Though we’d put out a description via the news media, the only calls had been from earnest folks wanting to help but having little to add, and cranks convinced it was the work of space aliens or terrorists.

We did get three confessions from men who were at the department within hours of the first broadcast. Sad, fidgety men who showed up whenever a woman died violently and we were seeking suspects. Their confessions were made with angry eyes and hands clenching and unclenching as they described their victim’s last minutes.

“
I killed her, Detective Ryder. She was a conniving, castrating bitch and had to die.
”

“
How did you kill her, Randy?
”

“
I used a knife. A hunting knife with a serrated blade. I told the slut she’d never be able to spit on me again and I stuck that knife in her filthy heart.
”

“
How many women have you confessed to killing in the past decade, Randy? Eight? Ten?
”

“
I really killed this one, Detective Ryder, I swear I did. She was too dirty to live.
”

I never understood what made these men confess, except they seemed desperate to explain evil things women had done to them and describe the killings in lavish, though incorrect, detail. They made Harry angry and they made me sick, but there was nothing to do but listen until assured it was the usual situation, then show these babbling and broken machines the door, gone until the next grisly murder of a woman.

Saturday arrived: Harry’s family reunion. We drove to a church nestled in the pines in backwoods Mississippi. Beside the white church was a picnic area on gently rolling land, folding tables set in the sun-dappled shade of live oaks and sycamores. A line of slash pines ran to a distant grove.

I got crushed in the iron-hard hug of Harry’s older sister, Molly, a big-boned woman with a yodel for a laugh and a way of making you feel like her day wasn’t complete until you stepped into it. Like Harry, Molly went for color, her dress resembling a canvas from one of Jackson Pollock’s happier days. We joked around until Molly went to yodel and hug some new arrivals into submission. I leant against the church to sip a cup of overly sweet lemonade and cast an eye over the laughing, backslapping throng, the loose-limbed gaits of relaxation, eyes-wide joy at meeting others in the clan. The children were happy and polite, the families tight, everyone exuding an air of comfort in their skins which, taken as a whole, seemed prosperity in its richest form.

“Hello, Detective Ryder. I heard I’d see you here.”

I spun to see the young cop who had led me across Mobile like I was welded to her rear bumper. The uniform had been traded for white hiking shorts and a safari-style blouse with bright mother-of-pearl buttons. Long café au lait legs ran to sleek pink-and-red cross-trainers. Atop her short natural was a blue ball cap stating
MPD Police Academy.
My mind raced to place the face, again drawing a fat blank. After our bizarre meeting I’d figured on looking up my preternaturally informed rescuer, but the savaged woman from the dump had stolen my time.

“You’re sure we’ve met?” I said. “Before the race to the morgue?”

“Positive.”

“You made mention of us, uh, kissing,” I said. “You were making that up, I take it?”

“We kissed and hugged,” she proclaimed. “It was lovely.”

I stared, feeling like I’d been pasted in a Dalí painting. A strand of handholding children raced past, stretched out like a line, and it hit me that a family reunion was a string that led into the past. I studied my companion, searched my memory, and finally saw mayhem centered around a pin-the-tail game taped to a wall.

“A party on Baywell Avenue,” I laughed, relieved at finding the answer. “Two dozen screaming kids running in circles and wearing party hats. You wore a princess-model topper, a pink cone and veil.”

She grinned. “You kissed my hand, gave me a hug, and said I was the prettiest princess ever.”

“Forgive me if I don’t recall your name, Princess …?”

She extended her slender hand. “Reinetta Early. Reinetta Nautilus Early. It was my twelfth birthday party. Uncle Harry stopped by and brought you along. You were in uniform and couldn’t stay because you had to get back to work.”

“Now it’s making sense,” I said. “The other stuff you mentioned …”

Intuition v. logic. Poetry. The ladies.

She smiled. “Must have been overheard at the Police Academy. Or elsewhere.”

“Like good ol’ Uncle Harry?” I suggested.

She did the lip-zip motion.

“Harry never mentioned a niece in the department,” I said.

“He was respecting my wishes. Our family connection might lead to me getting special treatment.”

It took me aback. Most recruits with kin in the department would have used the connection like a backstage pass. I was getting to like this kid when the object of our conversation walked up, slapped a hand on my shoulder, and presented me with a can in a foam insulator bearing the logo of the New Orleans Saints. Beer, bless my mind-reading partner.

“I discovered your secret, Harry,” I said, aiming the can toward Reinetta Early. “An empire of Nautilae is usurping the MPD.”

“You had to find out sometime,” Harry said, sotto voce. “Just keep our kinship under your hat. Rein’s afraid it’ll –”

A chubby, jolly woman by the picnic tables yelled “
Rein!
” and beaconed our comrade to view a photo in one of the many albums scattered across the white tables.

Reinetta Early touched my hand, said, “See you gentlemen later.” She winked and spun away.

“You could have told me,” I said to Harry, “that you had a niece enrolled at the Police Academy.”

Harry looked into the trees, shaking his head.

“I probably would have, Carson. If I’d known about it myself.”

It was Saturday, sneaking-into-Boulder-day. Treeka crouched in a stand of trees beside the two-lane highway until she saw the bus cresting the hill in the distance before jumping out and waving it to a stop.

The door closed and Treeka made a fast check of the passengers, though she had scant fear of recognition: the only people Tommy allowed Treeka to befriend were bible-thumpers from their church. Boulder had stores that sold marijuana, restaurants that didn’t believe in meat, and couples of the same sex kissing right out on the street. Everyone at the Parch Creek Pentecostal Church held that the Devil had poked his finger up through his roof one day and it broke through at Boulder. The congregation went to Denver instead, which was bad, but not a vent pipe from Hell.

Treeka made her way to a seat, happy for the locale’s wide-ranging public-transportation system. Tommy had sold Treeka’s red Corolla one month after the union, saying too many bad things happened to women out on their own. After three months of a straitjacket existence on the eighty-acre ranch, Treeka had steeled up her courage and caught a bus into Boulder, eighteen miles away.

Today would start like usual, Treeka figured. She’d wander Pearl Street, enjoying the happy faces of the tourists and listening to the street musicians playing guitars and trumpets and didgeridoos, long Australian horns with low, sad voices. Or she’d walk up to the Hill, the university area, and watch the faces of young college girls, their eyes bright and hopeful.

It was on the Hill where she’d seen the words on that little white sign outside the brown house:

W
OMEN’S
CRISIS
C
ENTER OF
B
OULDER

Can I do it today?
Treeka wondered as the trees flowed by the side of the bus.
Can I walk to the door, turn the knob, and step inside?

“So your very own niece joins the academy, goes through all the training, and becomes a Mobile cop?” I asked Harry. “All without telling you?”

He rolled his eyes. “She was in Oxford, last I’d heard. Going to the University of Mississippi, pre-law. Then I find out she got an address in Mobile to fulfill residency requirements, applied to the academy. Naturally, I discovered all this after she was on the force for two weeks.”

“Congratulations. You must have been a helluvan influence.”

He grunted. “She’s a kid, Carson. She should be in college.”

Harry looked across the lawn. I followed his eyes to Reinetta Early. There was something coltish in her motions, gangly but graceful, framed in laughter as she carried a bowl of salad to a table, chattering with the women. But she seemed to appear a lot older to me than she did to Harry.

Harry was summoned by a group of men beside the horseshoe court for arbitration on a leaner. I found a sturdy live oak to rest against, sipping beer and watching women trade photos, pointing at the pictures with bright smiles on their faces as snippets of conversation blew past.

“
… look how she’s grown in just a few short …
”

“
… Teri and Shaun’s new house in Memphis has a …
”

“
… so handsome in his graduation gown. Where will he …
”

My childhood photos were mainly in my mind, portraits dark with tones of fear. My father was a civil engineer who specialized in building bridges, an irony, since his pathological insecurity and anger cut chasms between everyone in our family. My mother was a mouse of a woman who pretended to a storybook life; when my father began his insane rants she would shuffle to her room to sew wedding dresses, the grinding of the sewing machine obscuring sounds beyond her door.

My brother Jeremy, six years my elder, was my hero, loose-limbed and blond, with a piecing intellect and gentle demeanor behind his blue eyes. But he bore the brunt of our father’s savagery and, at age sixteen lured the man into a nearby woods and tore him apart with a knife. Jeremy escaped detection and went to college, but was later implicated in the horrific murders of five women. Judged insane, he had been institutionalized, escaping under mysterious circumstances three years ago.

I was mulling dark thoughts when a voice arrived at my shoulder, Reinetta Early.

“I suppose Harry’s been telling you what a screw-up I am, moving to Mobile and joining the police force instead of continuing with school.”

I took the diplomatic route, smiling and saying nothing.

“He thinks I’d have graduated college, spent two years as a female Clarence Darrow, then ascended to the Supreme Court. The truth is I’d be sitting at a desk surrounded by a gaggle of other lawyers.”

“Gaggle?” I asked. “Is that the collective?”

She stuck a finger toward the back of her throat. “
Gag-
gle.”

“Studying law’s not for you?”

“When I was growing up Harry told me a hundred stories about being a cop. It was like watching heroic movies in my head: good guys and bad guys, the good guys not always winning. Starting eight or so years back, you co-starred in the movies. After seeing you guys in my mind for so long, everything else seemed tame.”

“The money’s better in lawyering,” I said.

She laughed. “Then I’ll be a cop a few years, write a book, become the next Joseph Wambaugh.” The laugh faded, turned serious. “I don’t think you know my history, Carson. If you did, you’d realize I have a lot to pay back. Being a damn good cop – like Harry – is the best way I can think of to return all I’ve been given.”

I had no cogent reply. Reinetta Early’s smile returned. “So whatever Harry thinks of my decision, it’s done and he’ll adjust. I just don’t want to become known in the department as Harry’s niece,
that Nautilus girl
.” She gave me a lifted eyebrow. “Can I trust you’ll be discreet about my secret?”

“Mum’s the word,” I said, zipping my lips, thinking
Is this a bad decision?

The reunion ended two hours later, wrapped and bagged for another year. I said my farewells and found Harry in the driver’s seat of the Volvo, leaning forward, head on the steering wheel. He didn’t look up when I opened the door.

“Moping?” I asked.

“I’m tired,” he said, pushing from the wheel. “You drive.”

I retraced our path back to Mobile. Harry stared out the window, not even tuning on his stereo system. I saw a deserted filling station at a lonesome crossroads, a corroded Hadacol sign hanging from the sun-bleached wood. I pulled in beside the rusted pumps, keeping the engine running for the AC. It was ninety-five outside, the sun a white ball in the corner of the sky.

“What’s here?” Harry asked.

“The story.”

“What story?”

“Rein said she owed a lot to people and I didn’t know the story. Tell me a story, bro.”

Harry dry-washed his face in his palms, looked out the window for a long time, like arranging things in his head. “Reinetta lost her parents seventeen years ago,” he finally said. “Her parents, Johanna and Bayliss, were on a small boat that went down in a storm on Lake Michigan. A freak thing, blew in out of nowhere. They were visiting friends in Muskegon, Rein staying back with her granny in Greeneville.”

“Jesus,” I whispered. “How old was –”

“Ten. Granny was getting feeble, so the family met to decide who would raise the girl. Everyone wanted to step in, so a committee was created to vet the choices. It came up with a half-dozen possible couples.”

“Who was Rein staying with at the time?”

A pause. “My sister, Molly. I was around a lot, too. It was for six months, to give Rein some stability. She went through tough days, but was resilient. Her parents were spiritual, passed their faith on. Rein didn’t see them as gone forever, so that helped.”

“The couples?”

“The question was put to Rein, who did she want to live with? She said, ‘Can I live with all of them?’ So Rein lived with a bunch of folks over the years. A high school coach whose wife is a chemist. My cousin and her husband in Raleigh. He’s an attorney, she’s an accomplished regional actress. Then with relatives in Chicago – you met them, James and Twyla …”

I nodded. “The trumpeter and dance instructor.”

“Rein lived with musicians, businesspeople, athletes, science types. They’re all part of her world.”

“Talk about raised by the village.”

“She went on to study law and law enforcement at Old Miss. Great grades. Played on the lacrosse team. Acted in plays, musicals, everything … a reflection of everyone she lived with.”

“But Rein didn’t become an actress or a chemist or a lawyer or a dancer, Harry,” I said. “She became a cop.”

Harry closed his eyes and blew out a breath. “When Rein was a kid she carried a plastic gun and badge and arrested people. Called herself Harriet Nautilus, girl detective. I never figured she’d get stuck that way.”

“You’re talking like Rein’s got an affliction.”

“She was on a good, safe road, Carson. College, law school …”

“I was on a good safe road myself ten years ago. Studying to be a psychologist.” I patted my mouth in a yawning motion.

“It was different for you. You were older and a …” he paused.

“A guy?”

“That’s not it,” Harry snapped. “Not it at all.”

“It’s Rein’s life, Harry,” I said quietly. “She’s a grown woman.”

Harry stared at me like I was speaking Mandarin. “You know the kind of people out there on the streets. It’s just too damned dangerous.”

I started to re-state my position, realized it would be like talking into a hurricane. I pulled out of the station, rolled through the crossroads and aimed toward Mobile. Harry was silent on the return trip, staring out the window and watching the phone poles blow by like measurements of time and space.

Treeka had changed from the regional bus to a Boulder local and was now heading toward the women’s center. She felt her stomach go hollow and her heart start to race.
Can I do it?

She exited the bus and angled toward the center, veering away at the last moment, circling the block instead. Again in front of the center, she made herself stop where the center’s walk met the sidewalk.
Turn!
her mind screamed and she turned toward the building.
Walk!
her mind yelled. She walked to the door. Heart beating like it was about to tear from its hinges, she willed her hand to clasp the doorknob.

The door opened and Treeka stepped inside. It was a tiny space, darker than outside, and Treeka’s eyes adjusted slowly, seeing chairs against the wall and a table scattered with magazines. Across the room and behind a desk sat a square-built woman in her forties with red hair and friendly eyes. She was folding blue paper into a shape.

“How can I help you?” the woman asked, paper dancing through her fingers.

Treeka hadn’t prepared for questions. “I’m s-sorry …” she stammered. “I thought this was s-someplace else.” Treeka backed away, hand grabbing wildly behind her for the doorknob.

“What did you think it was, dear?” the woman asked.

Treeka remembered the sandal shop down the block. “I-I thought it was a shoe store.”

“Really … a shoe store?” the woman said, head canted in mock puzzlement. “Even though there are no windows displaying shoes, and the sign by the door makes no mention of footwear?”

“I, uh, yes … I mean, no. I’m sorry, I have to be go—”

“I think you know exactly where you are, dear,” the woman said, setting a little blue bird on her desk beside a paper giraffe, swan, and grasshopper. “Let’s talk.”