Hold Still (2 page)

TWO

October 4th

Anita Grant cranked the bathroom
window open and blew smoke outside. Footsteps sounded in the hallway as she took
another drag. She waited for the footsteps to continue down the hall, but they stopped near the bathroom. Even though she knew it was coming, the knock at the door startled her. Quickly, Anita ran her cigarette under the faucet. Her daughter Pia’s voice came from outside the door. “Mom? What are you doing in there?”

Anita flushed her cigarette butt down the toilet and sprayed some of her mother’s perfume. “I’m goin’ to the bathroom, baby. What do you think?”

Her mother’s footsteps followed behind Pia’s. Anita always recognized the sound of her mama’s footsteps—distinct from those of her own children. At ten and fourteen, Anita’s children had heavy feet—they trudged and clomped; her mother’s step was lighter.

“She’s smoking,” her mother told Pia. “Go get in there and do your homework.”

Pia plodded off. Anita’s mother rattled the doorknob. Anita opened the door and confronted her. Lila Grant seemed shorter, smaller than ever. The skin over her cheeks had hollowed out, making her face look sunken. Where they met at the hollow of her throat, her collarbones were two unnaturally large knobs, the skin shiny and taut around them. The cancer treatments were wasting her down to nothing.

“Mama,” Anita said, her voice softening at the sight of her mother. “I’m thirty-four years old. If I want to smoke, I’ll smoke.”

Lila raised an eyebrow and sniffed the air, leaning slightly into the bathroom. “Long as it’s just Newports.” She took in Anita’s clothes and makeup and folded her arms across her middle, her eyebrow a perfect steeple. “Where you goin’?”

Anita sighed and gathered the cosmetics she’d left on the counter. She swept them into her purse. “Out,” she said.

Lila blocked the doorway. She stared at Anita hard, the look in her eyes popping the cork on Anita’s long-held bottomless well of guilt. Lila glanced down the hall to where they could both hear Pia talking to her brother, Terrence. Their voices were whispers, barely audible over the sound of the television in the background. The smell of roasted chicken wafted down the hallway, mixing with the antiseptic scent of her mother’s Cetaphil lotion.

“Nita,” her mother whispered, the word something between a plea and a warning.

Anita looked at her feet, swallowed, and looked back at her mother, steeling her resolve. “It’s not what you think, Mama.”

They stared at each other for a long moment. Anita knew her mother didn’t believe her. A thousand justifications flew through her head, but she said nothing. She pushed past her mother, kissed her babies good-bye, and hurried out into the waning daylight.

It was warm for October. She wished she hadn’t worn her lace-printed leggings beneath her black miniskirt. Sweat gathered in the creases of her flesh—behind her knees and where her legs met her rear end. After shedding her thin leather jacket, she slung it over her arm and hurried down West Chelten Avenue. The heels of her black stiletto platforms clacked on the broken pavement.

The Dunkin’ Donuts on Germantown Avenue was crowded as usual. Anita liked to meet prospective clients at places like this for exactly that reason. So many people came and went—no one noticed her or whom she was with. Usually she met her clients at a Starbucks in the heart of Center City, Philadelphia, but the clients she was meeting today had suggested something closer to where she lived in the Germantown section of the city.

She scanned the tables and saw LJ9124 immediately.
LJ9124
had been the first part of his e-mail address in the messages he had sent her. As promised, he was thin, black, and in his midforties with short, graying hair. He sat at a table with a younger, much larger, light-skinned black man. LJ9124’s eyes darted around. The friend had a similarly wary, almost predatory look about him—like two men in a prison yard. Neither one of them had ordered coffee. A slow tingle started at the base of Anita’s spine and snaked its way up to her neck. A dull ringing began in her ears. Her old self said,
Turn around and leave now
.

Then her mama’s turbaned head flashed in her mind. She remembered the clumps of hair in the tub and on her mother’s pillow. Since their apartment was so small, Anita and her mother shared the foldout bed in the living room so that both of Anita’s children could have their own bedrooms. Anita was responsible for putting the foldout bed away each morning and had noticed her mother was losing more and more hair each week. Plus, Terrence needed new football equipment. Anita’s day job as a receptionist kept the roof over their heads and some food on the table, but that was about it. Cancer meds and football equipment were extras they couldn’t afford.

It couldn’t hurt just to meet with LJ9124 and his friend. Maybe her instincts were wrong. She’d been off the street for over four years. The tingle could be wrong.

Anita made her way to the table, smiling insincerely—the tingle growing stronger and choking off her voice at first.
Relax
, she told herself.
It’s just coffee. You don’t have to go anywhere with them.

LJ9124 stood and shook her hand briefly. His palm was warm and dry. “You Anita?” he asked.

He could have been someone’s father—a factory worker, a bus driver, a regular guy—plain and unassuming. Why did his eyes give her the creeps? She studied him until she realized it was the deadness in his eyes that bothered her. They were flat and unemotional.

Anita took a seat, clutching her purse in her lap.

“I’m Larry,” he said. “This is Angel. He don’t talk.”

Angel nodded at her, his dark eyes vacant. His enormous frame barely fit into the metal chair. For the first time, she noticed just how big he was. He seemed entirely made of fat, but she knew he could crush her like a bug if the impulse took him. His eyes drifted away from her, toward the front doors. Neither one of them was appraising her, she realized. They hadn’t looked at her—checked her out. She wondered momentarily if they were cops.

“So,” she said, forgoing the pleasantries she normally engaged in. “It would be you and Angel, then?”

Larry glanced around the crowded dining area—over one shoulder, then the other.
Definitely not a cop
, Anita thought.
Too jumpy
. He cleared his throat and looked at her. “Yeah.”

“What are you interested in?” Anita asked, trying to remain calm and professional even though the tingle had reached her fingertips.

Larry’s gaze left her again. He talked from the side of his mouth. “Uh, you know, me and Angel, we both do it. Straight. Nothing unusual.”

Anita fidgeted with the strap of her bag. “How long?”

“Two hours.”

“Can you host the gathering?”

His eyes darted back to her. “What?”

She gave him a tight smile. “Can you host? Do you have a place where we can go?”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah.” He exchanged a look with Angel and met her eyes again. “How much?”

Nonplussed, Anita shrugged. Things were moving too fast. Usually there was a getting-to-know-each-other period—coffee and conversation. A chemistry check. This was too fast, too street. She racked her brain to come up with a way to get out of it. She wasn’t doing this job.

“Fifteen hundred,” she said.

For the first time, Larry’s expression livened. His eyes widened; his lips twitched. “Fifteen hundred? For two hours of straight fucking?”

He looked at his partner, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Okay,” Larry said, scratching the side of his nose. “But we only got three hundred in cash. We’ll have to make a stop to get the rest.”

Her entire body was abuzz. “I’m not—I’m not comfortable with that,” she stammered. “Why don’t we just meet again when you’ve got all the money?”

They stared at her, as if waiting for something. Then they exchanged another look. The flood of silent communication between them went on too long. Something wasn’t right. She stood and smiled. “Well, it was nice meeting you gentlemen.”

She left and didn’t look back. Her breath came in huffs as she hurried down West Chelten Avenue, her heels clickety-clacking at machine-gun speed.

“Jesus,” she mumbled. It hadn’t gotten cold in the five minutes she’d been in the Dunkin’ Donuts, but she pulled on her jacket anyway. She thought about the old days—all the times she’d been raped and beaten on Philadelphia’s Kensington Stroll. Back when she was just a street hooker and a raging junkie. She thought about her babies and her sick mama.

She didn’t even hear the car pull up.

By the time the large hands closed around her throat, it was too late to scream. She flailed her arms and lashed out with her purse, struggling silently as rough hands pushed her into the back of a car.

THREE

October 4th

No one on the street
approached Jocelyn. They hung on their porches, watching the spectacle, mumbling among themselves,
their words an indistinct rumble. The boy at Jocelyn’s feet groaned and rolled onto his back. He slung a pale arm over his eyes. Blood streaked his forearm. She had definitely broken his nose.

Finally, a marked unit pulled up behind Jocelyn’s Explorer. Officer Kyle Finch stepped out of the patrol car.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jocelyn muttered under her breath.

Furtively, she wiped her eyes and face, trying to compose herself.

Kyle Finch had been in the Thirty-Fifth District for six months, but it had been long enough for him to piss off just about everyone he worked with, especially Jocelyn. He had managed six years in the Northeast despite a series of small infractions. He’d been transferred to the Thirty-Fifth after accidentally shooting another patrol officer in his old district. He was a substandard cop, showing up late for urgent calls, spending an inordinate amount of time on simple tasks, and often leaving his fellow officers hanging. Many of the female patrol officers had crushes on him—he was handsome in a high school jock kind of way in spite of being over thirty—until he left them solo on a difficult call or dumped several hours’ worth of paperwork on them while he flirted with witnesses.

Three months earlier, Jocelyn had been called out to a bar to investigate an armed robbery. After being attacked by a drunken patron outside the bar, she had called for backup. Finch hadn’t answered the dispatcher, and Jocelyn had watched in horror as he cruised past the scene, leaving her to put down her attacker on her own and wait for a marked unit that was much farther away. In the time it had taken for the second unit to arrive, her assailant sliced her arm open with a broken beer bottle. It took ten stitches to close up the gash. A permanent scar was a constant reminder of the incident.

Without bothering to secure the scene, Finch sauntered up to the Ford Explorer and put his hands on his hips. He surveyed the scene as if he had all day, as if he were browsing in a goddamn department store. A smirk snaked its way across his chiseled face.

Behind him, another patrol car pulled up, lights blazing. Relief washed through Jocelyn as she saw Inez’s compact frame emerge from the car, one hand on the butt of her gun. Inez approached them, the smooth brown skin of her face creased with worry lines. She shot Finch a look of disdain. “Your shift was over an hour ago, Finch. Get out of here.”

Finch gave her a dirty look but didn’t respond. He turned back to Jocelyn and gave a low whistle. “Well, well, well—Detective Rush—what do we have here?” He nudged the carjacker with his foot. “This looks like a case of police brutality.”

Jocelyn stood up and straightened her clothes. Her right wrist throbbed like a heartbeat. “Fuck off, Friendly Fire. I’m not on duty.”

Finch bristled at the nickname that had followed him to the Thirty-Fifth District. Inez muscled him out of the way and knelt next to the carjacker. She checked him over and secured his wrists with plastic ties. “EMTs are on their way,” she said. “Finch, your shift is over.”

His eyes snapped from Jocelyn to Inez, a flush creeping from his collar to his cheeks. “I’m the responding officer.”

Inez stood and faced him. Even though she was shorter by more than a foot, her body seemed to fill up the space between them. She poked a finger at Finch’s well-muscled chest. Jocelyn noticed he wasn’t wearing his Kevlar vest.

“The hell you are,” Inez said. “Get out of here. I got this.”

Finch stared down at her. The tips of his ears flamed red, and his upper lip twitched just a little. Jocelyn could feel the indignation rolling off him. She didn’t hear the unmarked car pull up or the footsteps of her unofficial partner, Kevin Sullivan, but then he was beside her, one hand gripping her elbow as he looked her over, assessing the damage. He was slightly out of breath. Midway through his inspection of Jocelyn, his eyes widened. “Olivia,” he said. He pushed Jocelyn out of the way and poked his head inside the car.

“She’s okay,” Jocelyn said. “She slept through it.”

Although the Northwest Detective Division didn’t assign partners, she and Kevin almost always worked together. Kevin turned to Finch and motioned in the direction of the crowd gathered on the sidewalk. “Canvass,” he said. “Get some statements, and I want cell phones confiscated too. I don’t want footage of whatever happened here on the goddamn eleven o’clock news.”

Finch rolled his eyes. “My shift is over.”

Inez scoffed. “Of course it is, now that there’s work to be done.”

“Piss off, Graham.” Finch pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, fingers sliding across the screen rapidly as he trudged off, apparently having lost interest in the entire incident.

“You guys got here fast,” Jocelyn said.

“What happened?” Inez asked.

As Jocelyn recounted the events, she fought off a fresh wave of tears. She glanced back at Olivia, who stirred briefly. Jocelyn wanted to scoop her out of the car seat and squeeze her, smell her hair, and kiss her little face. Now that it was over and Olivia was safe, her mind raced through all the possibilities, all the things that could have happened to Olivia had she not caught up to the car. Her heart hammered so hard it felt as though her whole body was shaking.

“EMTs are here,” Kevin said. “Why don’t I drive you and Olivia to the hospital?”

Inez nodded. “Get them out of here before the press gets wind of this. We’ll try to keep this quiet.” She waved her hand toward the crowd. “They don’t know you’re a cop.”

Kevin ushered Jocelyn toward the car. “Cell phones,” he reminded Inez.

Jocelyn pulled the back door open once more. “I want to sit in the back with Olivia.”

Kevin nodded. Inez signaled for the additional patrols that had responded to make way for them to leave. “I’ll meet you at the hospital.”