Land of Shadows (22 page)

Mom shook her head. “But she doesn't mention him in her diary.”

Still, Mom told the police about “James on the football team” and his plan to whisk Tori away. But the cops never questioned James, preferring their original idea of Tori on the lam with Terrell Jones. It didn't take long for detectives to find Terrell. He hadn't seen Tori in months—as Inmate No. 638493 since January 1988, he hadn't seen many people.

After that lead fizzled, Detective Peet returned to our apartment to interview Mom again. He tried to avoid eye contact as much as possible. “Was your daughter a virgin?”

I was peeking from the hallway and saw Mom's eyes widen with shock.

She gasped, then said, “I don't know what that question…” She took a deep breath, then said, “As far as I know, Victoria … yes. Although I still don't understand—”

“Who were her boyfriends again?” he asked.

Mom pulled out a list she had created while scouring Tori's diaries for Li'l Tee references: Lawrence Bales, Alan Dorsey, Samuel Griffith, Derrick Alexander, Royal Fisher, and Mikey Duncan. Mom had also placed football player James Kinney on the list.

Detective Peet reviewed the names, then whistled. “Your little girl got around.” He stuffed the list into his jacket pocket and considered his notepad. “Did she use drugs?”

Mom shook her head. “No.”

“Has she been in trouble before?”

“Not with the police,” Mom said. “At school … Well … She's had some trouble—”

“Did you ever hit her?” Detective Peet asked. “Punish her? Chastise her? Embarrass her for misbehaving? Do something that made her run away?”

“No.”

The detective flipped to a clean page in his notepad. “What about your husband?”

Mom clutched her neck, then dropped her gaze. “He's away.”

“Away. Of course.” Detective Peet gave Mom a stupid smile, then stood from the couch. “I'll keep in touch. I may want to talk to your husband later on.”

He had been in our house for only eight minutes.

 

32

Angie and Cyrus Darson sat silently on the living room couch. Their eyes skipped from Colin down to their tight fists, to the coffee table, then back to Colin. Their red-rimmed, hollowed eyes told me that they had not slept. Angie had lost weight overnight and seemed shrunken and skeletal in her droopy cable-knit sweater. Cyrus hadn't shaved—salt-and-pepper stubble had overtaken his face and his dreads hung at his shoulders like clubbed snakes. The house stank of burnt toast and cigarettes, which had snuffed out the more pleasant scents of the roses, lilies, and hydrangeas sitting on the mantel, on the sideboard, and on the dining room table. The mail had piled up, and a tower of envelopes and catalogs teetered on the coffee table. Other than our voices, the muted roar of the clothes dryer was the only sound in the house.

Around seven that morning, the Darsons had claimed Monique's body from the county morgue. Macie had refused to go into the building and had wept in the car.

After Cyrus told me all of this, I had started to ask questions about Monique's life … including
that
question. Neither he nor Angie had answered it yet, and now here we sat, in uncomfortable silence.

I turned to Colin. “Can you…? Umm … Can you call Dr. Brooks? He should have test results by now. Thanks.”

Colin's lips flattened and the muscles in his neck flexed. “Sure,” he growled, pissed with being dismissed from another interview
again.

I offered him a barely there what-can-I-do shrug and a comforting smile to the Darsons. Once the front door closed and Colin was out of the house, I asked
that
question again: “So, other than Derek and Von, do you know of any other men Monique may have had a sexual relationship with?”

Cyrus hunched over—talking about his dead daughter's sex life was transforming him into an armadillo.

“I told her ‘be careful,'” Angie said, taking the scenic route to a response. “I knew she was active—and she wasn't a ho about it, so don't get it twisted—but I wasn't interested in becoming a grandmother anytime soon. I ain't Renata's momma, all excited about taking care of somebody else's babies.” She rubbed her arms, then closed her eyes. “I know I'm not answering … She ain't mentioned nobody else.”

“Did you know what
type
of relationship she and Derek had?” I asked.

“She didn't
have
a
type
of relationship like that,” Cyrus said. “Not with him. We would've put a stop to that immediately—we don't allow gangbangers in this house and Monie would never be interested in boys like that. No. We didn't know.” He looked to his wife for an “amen.”

But Angie was biting her thumbnail and tugging at her sweater.

Cyrus narrowed his eyes. “You
knew
?”

She gave a hesitant nod. When Cyrus hopped up from the couch and stormed around the living room, she shouted, “What was I supposed to do, Cyrus? She's a grown woman.”

“What the
hell
, Angie?” Eyes wide, he held out his hands. “You let our baby date a
thug
? A
felon
?”

“The girls date a whole buncha people,” she shouted back. “Am I supposed to know every boy that Macie talks to? That ain't my job no more!”

“I talked to Derek yesterday,” I said. “He's no longer a suspect.”

Cyrus shook his head. “That doesn't matter.”

“For me, it does. Part of an investigation is not only identifying suspects but eliminating them as well.” Since neither parent responded, I continued. “I
do
know that Monique was seeing an older man. She called him a ‘big baller' on her Facebook page. And she talked to him on the phone at least once a day. Has an older man that you don't know visited sometime over the past several months?”

Both parents shook their heads.

“Can you keep a list for me from now on? Like, who sends a card, who shows up at the funeral service and so on?”

A zombie nod from Angie.

Cyrus had hunched over to support himself on the sideboard. He used one of his hands to rub his left temple.

“Mr. Darson,” I said, “are you okay?”

“Headache,” he muttered, with his eyes closed.

“He hasn't slept,” Angie explained. “Nobody has.” She turned to him. “Baby, you want an aspirin? Or—?”

He waved her off. “Let's just…” He groaned, stood upright. “What else do you need, Detective Norton?”

I pulled from the expandable file a copy of Monique's phone records. “Do either of you know this number?” I pointed to an entry highlighted in green.

“No,” Angie said. “Who does it belong to?”

“We don't know,” I said, “but we will soon.” I slipped the records back into the folder. “One more thing. Cyrus, you were against the Santa Barbara redevelopment efforts. You protested at the site for more than a year and attended city council meetings and—”

“He's a community activist,” Angie said. “What Crase and them was doing was wrong, bringing in outsiders to rebuild our neighborhood without hiring people
from
the neighborhood. So yeah, we picketed. Us and about three hundred other people from Leimert and Crenshaw and Baldwin Hills.”

Cyrus threw a weak glare in Angie's direction—he was still agitated that she knew their daughter was screwing a banger.

“We were influential, too,” Angie continued. “We knew we hit a nerve, cuz Crase started sending thugs to try and scare us. Throwing rocks and jumping people, late-night phone calls, sleep with the fishes BS. But we didn't back down, even though it had gone past arguing. People were getting hurt now. If there was nothing shady going on, why was Crase and them doing this to us?

“And so, other people started asking questions.
Were
they gonna hire minorities once the shops and theater and hotel opened?
Were
there gonna be black businesses?
Were
the police gonna be around to keep the knuckleheads out?
Would
our schools get some of that tax revenue?”

“And you two led all of this?” I asked.

Angie gave a weak smile. “You do what you gotta do. What's right is right.”

“And now, you, Cyrus, work at the same condo site you had protested.”

“Yeah,” Angie said, “and at least twelve percent of the guys down there come from the community.”

“I'm truly impressed,” I said with a nod. “Cyrus, where were you working before?”

He picked at a scab on his elbow. “Here and there. Whole lotta places.”

I waited for more but he didn't speak. “Like where? Who gave you a 1099 at the end of the year?”

Angie held up a hand. “Why is that important, where he worked?”

I offered her an assuring smile. “We need to consider everyone in your circle as potential suspects. Including past employers and coworkers.”

Cyrus swallowed, then said, “Can I get you that list later today?”

“Sure,” I said, “but let me just put this out there, though. I don't care if you worked under the table, that you didn't pay taxes on income. Whatever. I'm not the IRS.”

My assurance didn't offer relief—his jaw remained tight as an oyster.

“So no hard feelings from the Crase Group after the protests?” I asked. “Napoleon Crase has let bygones be just that?”

“Why wouldn't he?” Angie asked.

“Because,” I said with awe, “he and his investors had spent more than thirty million dollars on this project, and because of you, it all stalled for more than a year. He's rich, but he ain't so rich that he wouldn't notice a couple of million missing from his checking account because of a few neighborhood malcontents.”

Angie started to rebut my argument but stopped. Instead, her mouth slowly fell open.

Because with talking comes enlightenment …

“What are you…?” she whispered. “You don't think Napoleon Crase had something to do with Monie, do you?”

Cyrus gaped at me. “You're kidding, right?”

I wanted to mention Crase's address found in Monique's diary, to show that I was far from kidding. No—that discovery could possibly wend its way back to the Devil himself.

“Crase is an older man,” I said instead, counting off fingers. “He's rich. He wouldn't want his name out there as a pedophile. And Monique—”

“Would never sleep with Napoleon Crase,” Cyrus shouted. “Never in a million … That's … that's
sick
.”

“But then you thought she'd never sleep with Derek Hester, either,” I pointed out. “Never in a million years.”

“And when she was about to expose him, he killed her,” Angie murmured.

“It's certainly a theory I'm considering,” I said. “Again: everyone is a suspect.” To Cyrus, now pacing near the living room window, I said, “Have you ever seen Napoleon and Monique together? Has he ever met her? Has he ever called the house and she answered the phone?”

“No,” he shouted. “No, no, no!” He clamped his hands over his eyes. “I refuse to believe any of this. He'd never do anything like what you're suggesting.”

I wanted to put Cyrus Darson and a dish of Super Glue into one of Zucca's airtight chambers to see if Napoleon Crase had been handling him lately.

“He has a history of dating very young women,” I said, holding up a finger. “He has a history of
assaulting
those very young women,” I added, holding up a second finger.

Angie had started to whimper as the idea of Napoleon Crase and her daughter expanded like foam in her mind.

“Angie,” Cyrus said, “Nappy Crase would never … He has a girlfriend. Several girlfriends.”

“I wouldn't call Brenna Benevides a
girlfriend
,” she snapped. “She's a whore, and that's the truth.” She turned to me. “And she looks like she just stopped wearing training bras last week.”

“What numbers do you have for Napoleon Crase?” I asked. “Give me everything. Assistant's number, fax, Twitter handle, anything and everything you have.”

“I'll get it.” Angie, grateful for having something to do, hopped off the couch and hurried to the den.

Alone now with Cyrus, I said, “So how long have you known Crase?”

“Long time,” he said, then swiped his mouth.

“Was your relationship always adversarial?”

He shook his head.

“Not until you became an activist and blocked his progress?”

He said nothing.

“Your record.”

His shoulders jerked back as though I had just reined him in. “What about it? All that was a long time ago.”

“I understand. But is it possible that someone from your long-time-ago…?”

Cyrus crossed his arms.

“You get that scar during one of your stints in County?”

“Did I get it in County? Yes, that's where I got it.”

I paused, just to let the lie stretch its legs. “Is there anything else in your past that I should know about? Again, I just want to find out who killed Monique.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets.

“I know Crase is, like, your boss or whatever. And I know that he probably sponsored that television over there and your wife's brand-new Prius, but you cannot protect this man. Do you understand me?”

Cyrus folded his arms and said nothing.

“He may have killed your daughter, Cyrus. He may have murdered Monique.”

He stared out the window, as silent as a sphinx.

“When bad people don't get what they want,” I said, “they destroy. You blocked Napoleon Crase for more than a year, and now he may be trying to destroy you … starting with your children.”

“I know that,” he spat. “You don't think I know that?”