Long Bright River: A Novel (5 page)

This small act of apology, however, failed to reach its targets, and instead was pounced upon by two Hanover fourth-graders, a boy and a girl, who burst into laughter.

—Why is she wearing that ugly-ass dress, said the boy, very loudly, earning the cheap laughter of a few other students around us. And like clockwork, Kacey—slightly ahead of me—turned on him.

She had been waiting for an excuse. She wore a painful smile on her face, in fact, almost as if she were relieved to have someplace obvious to land the punch that she swiftly and accurately launched in his direction. She’d been holding it in for so long. For most of her life, maybe.

—Kacey, no, I said, but it was too late.

After what Lafferty says,
These girls,
I feel I have no other choice than to tell Sergeant Ahearn that I don’t wish to be partnered with Eddie Lafferty anymore. I am willing to explain myself; I have even prepared a speech about our differences in style that would leave us both looking all right, in the balance, but before I can continue, Ahearn exhales, lengthily.

—Fine, Mickey, he says. He doesn’t even look up from his phone.

For a week, I work solo. I’m relieved to be alone again. I’m relieved to be able to stop when and where I choose to, to select which calls I respond to. And I’m especially relieved, now, to be able to call Bethany, the babysitter, and ask to speak to Thomas. Over the course of each long call, I tell him stories, or narrate what I’m passing, or tell him about my plans for our future. And I tell myself that, while it may not be the same thing as my physical presence, at least I am able to provide him with some intellectual stimulation, in this way. Besides, he’s becoming a very good conversationalist. It almost reminds me of having Truman next to me in the car.

One morning, at the start of an A-shift, I walk into the common area where roll call is conducted and notice a stranger in the room. He is young, sharply dressed in a gray suit. Serious-looking. Right away, I like
him. He has one arm crossed around his insubstantial waist. In the other hand he holds a manila folder. A detective, I think. He says nothing to anyone. He is waiting for a sergeant.

When Ahearn arrives, he asks for everyone’s attention, and the young man introduces himself. He is Davis Nguyen, he says, from the East Detectives. He has some news.

—Overnight, says Nguyen, we had two homicides in the district.

I am relieved to hear that they have already been identified. One is Katie Conway, a Delco girl, seventeen years old, white, reported missing one week prior. The other is Anabel Castillo, an eighteen-year-old home health aide, Latina.

Both, says Nguyen, were found in similar locations and were similarly arrayed: Conway was found in an empty lot off Tioga, uncovered and visible from the street; Castillo was found in an empty lot off Hart Lane, her legs obscured beneath a burned-out car, her head and shoulders exposed and in plain sight of passersby.

Both, he says, were most likely engaged in sex work. Both, he says, were most likely strangled. And both bodies had gone unreported for hours. (The unconscious, in Kensington, are such a common sight that they often don’t receive a second glance.)

Nguyen puts pictures of Katie and Anabel up on the computer display on the wall. For a few long seconds, everyone in the room stands still, looking at the victims as they smile back on us from happier times. There is young Katie, at a party, her sixteenth birthday party, maybe, standing by a pool. Anabel is hugging a child I hope is not her son.

—All of this information, says Nguyen, is confidential. We haven’t released the names or descriptions to the media, though the families have been notified.

After a moment, he continues. Additionally, he says, we’ve reopened the case of a young woman found on the Gurney Street tracks in October, though initially her autopsy was inconclusive.

I glance at Ahearn. He won’t meet my eye.

Nguyen continues.

—She’s still unidentified. But given the events of last night, we have reason to reconsider that assessment.

Ahearn isn’t looking up. He’s still on his phone.

—What this means, says Nguyen, is that there may be a single perpetrator of multiple homicides at large in your district.

No one speaks.

—Anything you hear, says Nguyen, take a report or send them directly to us. We’ve got a couple of leads but nothing credible. We’re asking for your help.

For a while after roll call, I sit alone in my vehicle and contemplate my cell phone. The oaks that overhang the asphalt parking lot are moving wildly in a sudden strong wind. Thomas’s favorite tree.

A slow, uneasy feeling has been building inside of me ever since we found the woman on the Tracks. The fact is that I haven’t seen Kacey anyplace in the neighborhood since then. And I suppose, if I’m being honest, that I have been casually looking. It’s not uncommon for a month to go by without a sighting of my sister—sometimes, in fact, this means she is actively trying to get into recovery—but the timing of her absence from the Avenue gives me a certain amount of pause, and causes within me the same low hum of anxiety that I had as a very young child when our mother was gone from the house too long.

Officially, Kacey and I no longer speak to one another. We haven’t for five years. There have been rare occasions since then—three, to be precise—when I have been required to interact with her at work, in my capacity as an officer and in her capacity as a suspect—and during each of those times I have conducted myself with dignity, as any professional would, either processing her or releasing her, as I would do for any offender. To her credit, she, too, has conducted herself respectfully. When it is necessary to do so, I gently place handcuffs on the wrists of my sister, and I tell her the particular offense for which she is being arrested (usually, solicitation and possession of narcotics, one time with intent to
sell), and then I narrate her rights to her, then I place a gentle hand on the crown of her head to ensure that she doesn’t obtain an injury as she enters the backseat of our vehicle, and then I quietly close the door, and then I drive her to the station, and then I book her, and then the two of us sit silently across from one another in the holding cell, not speaking, not even looking at each other.

Truman was with me each time, and each time he, too, remained silent, watching the two of us guardedly, his eyes darting back and forth from me to Kacey to me again, waiting to see what would happen.

—That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, he said, as we were driving away after the first of these episodes. I shrugged, and didn’t reply. I suppose it would look ‘weird’ to someone who doesn’t understand the particulars of our history and the tacit agreement we’ve come to in recent years. I’ve never tried to explain it to Truman or anyone else.

—You look out for her, he said another time.

When I demurred, he continued:

—You would have been done with patrol years ago if you weren’t out here keeping an eye on your sister. You would have taken the detective exam.

I told him that this was not, in fact, true: it’s just that I’ve grown fond of the neighborhood, and have grown to care a great deal about its well-being, and also I find the history of the neighborhood interesting, and I like to watch it as it grows and changes. And, lastly, it’s never boring. On the contrary: it’s exciting. Some people do have trouble with Kensington, but to me the neighborhood itself has become like a relative, slightly problematic but dear in the old-fashioned way that that word is sometimes used, treasured, valuable to me. I am invested in it, in other words.

—Why haven’t
you
taken the exam? I said to Truman, at the time. Truman is one of the smartest people I know. He could easily have been promoted, and could easily have transferred elsewhere if he wanted to. When I said this, he laughed.

—Same reason as you, I guess, he said. I can’t bring myself to miss any of the action.

Ten minutes have gone by, and I’m still gazing at my phone, when I realize I’m the last car in the lot. God forbid Sergeant Ahearn come outside and see me idling there. In the last year—between moving to Bensalem, swapping Thomas’s reliable nursery school for the unreliable Bethany, and losing my longtime partner—my productivity has decreased dramatically, a fact about which Ahearn likes to regularly remind me.

I back out and drive toward my assigned PSA.

On the way, however, I make a detour toward Kensington and Cambria. If I can’t find Kacey, at least I might find Paula Mulroney there.

Paula is not, when I arrive at said intersection, immediately evident. Alonzo’s convenience store is on the same corner, though, so I stop in on Alonzo and on his favored cat, Romero, named after a long-gone Phillies pitcher. From the front window of the store, it is usually possible to see Paula and Kacey.

For this reason, Alonzo knows my sister fairly well. Like me, she is a regular customer, and has been since before we stopped talking. I know her order by heart: Rosenberger’s iced tea and Tastykake Krimpets and cigarettes, the same treats she has enjoyed since our childhood, excepting the cigarettes. On the occasions when we accidentally find ourselves inside Alonzo’s store at the same time, we studiously ignore each other. Alonzo glances back and forth between us, curious. He knows she is my sister, because if I’m being honest, I do often ask Alonzo about how Kacey has seemed lately, or if he has noticed anything, from his vantage point behind the cash register, that he thinks I should know about. This is not out of concern for her so much as out of a professional concern for the neighborhood and for Alonzo himself. Do you ever want them off your corner? I often say to Alonzo, about Kacey and Paula. Just let me know, and I’ll make sure to get them off your corner. But Alonzo always says no, he doesn’t mind them there, he likes them. They’re good customers, he says. They don’t give me any trouble.

Sometimes, in the past, I have made it a habit to linger inside the store for a while with my coffee, watching Kacey and Paula as they work, or
sometimes as they pray for work, as they begin to look sicker and sicker from withdrawal, as they become desperate. From this position, too, I can watch their customers. I see them every shift, sidling by in their cars, all kinds of men, keeping their eyes straight ahead, on the road, when they notice me or my vehicle. Keeping their eyes on the women and girls on the sidewalk when they don’t. There is something wolfish about these men, low and mean, something predatory. There is no type—or if there is, there are enough outliers to complicate it. I have seen men with children in the backseat driving slowly up Kensington Avenue. I have seen scumbags in Audis, in from the Main Line. I have seen men of all ages and races come to the Ave: men in their eighties and teenage boys in groups. I have seen heterosexual couples looking for a third. Once or twice I have seen women alone: on rare occasions, women are customers too. I don’t like them any better, though I imagine Kacey and her friends might. Or are, at least, less scared of them.

I can muster sympathy for almost any type of criminal except for johns. When it comes to johns I am not impartial or objective. Quite simply, I hate them: their physicality repulses me, their greed, their willingness to take advantage, their inability to control the basest of their instincts. The frequency with which they are violent or dishonest. Is this wrong of me? Perhaps it is my weakness as an officer. But there’s a difference, I believe, between two consenting adults making a thoughtful transaction and the kind of bargain that happens on the Ave, where some of the women would do anything for anyone, where some of the women need a fix so badly that they can’t say no or yes. People who target these women send me into a state of hot, quick rage that makes it difficult for me to look them in the eye when I have to interact with them. On many occasions, I have been rougher than I have needed to be when cuffing them. I admit this.

But it’s difficult to be levelheaded when one has seen what I’ve seen.

Once I encountered a woman, red-haired, fiftyish, weeping on a stoop with no shoes on. She was not hiding her face: instead she had turned it upward, toward the sun, and her eyes and her mouth were
open, and she was inconsolably crying. This was when I worked with Truman, and the two of us stopped to check on her. His idea. He was always kind in this way.

When we approached her, however, she put her head down on her arms so we couldn’t see her face, and another voice called out a front door nearby:
She don’t wanna talk to you.

—Is she okay? Truman inquired.

—She was jumped, said the voice, female, gravelly. We could not see its owner. The house was dark inside.

This meant different things. Usually it meant she was raped.

—Four of them, said the voice. Guy brought her to a house, three of his buddies were there.

—Shut up, shut up, said the red-haired woman—the first noise she made aside from her sobs.

—Can we make a report? Truman asked her. His voice was gentle. He was good at this, interviewing women. Sometimes, I will acknowledge, better than I am.

But the red-haired woman turned her head back into her arms and said nothing more. She was crying so hard that she could not catch her breath.

I speculated about what had happened to her shoes. Imagined she might have been wearing high heels, might have abandoned them so that she could flee. Her toenails were broken and dirty and painful-looking. There was a little patch of blood on the sidewalk next to her right instep, as if she might have cut it.

—Ma’am, said Truman, I’m going to leave my number right here for you, okay? In case you change your mind.

He handed her his card.

Down the block, another car slowed for another woman.

From Alonzo’s window, I have watched Kacey make her deals. I have watched her lean down as a slow-rolling car comes to a stop. I have
watched these cars turn down side streets, and I have watched my sister follow them, disappearing around the side of a building heading toward any number of possible outcomes. This is her choice, I tell myself; this is the choice she has made.

Sometimes, looking down at my watch, I find that I have been standing there, unmoving, for ten or fifteen minutes, waiting for her to return.

Alonzo doesn’t object: he leaves me alone, lets me watch, lets me sip quietly from my styrofoam cup. Today he is busy with another customer, and so I assume my regular position in front of the cold window, gazing through it, waiting for Alonzo to be free.

I’m still lost in my thoughts when the other customer in the store opens the front door and leaves, sounding the three silver bells that Alonzo has hung on it.

Once the store is empty, I approach the counter to pay for my coffee, and it’s then that Alonzo says, Hey. I’m sorry to hear about your sister.

I look at him.

—I beg your pardon? I say.

Alonzo pauses. A look comes over his face: the distinct look of someone afraid he has just revealed too much.

—What did you say? I ask Alonzo now, a second time.

He begins shaking his head.

—I’m not sure, he says, I probably have the wrong information.

—What information is that, exactly? I say.

Alonzo cranes his head to the right, looking around me to where Paula normally stands. Noting her absence there, he continues.

—It’s probably nothing, he says. But Paula was in here the other day telling me Kacey’s gone missing. Told me she’s been gone a month, maybe longer. Nobody knows where she is.

I nod, keeping my mouth straight, my posture upright. I make sure my hands are resting lightly on my duty belt, and that my expression projects an air of calm collectedness.

—I see, I say.

I wait.

—Did she say anything else? I say.

Alonzo shakes his head.

—Honestly, he says, Paula could be wrong. She’s been bad lately. Ranting. Going on and on. Crazy, says Alonzo, whose face has now become sympathetic, who seems to be thinking of doing something disastrous, like patting me consolingly on the shoulder. Fortunately, neither of us moves.

—Yes, I say. She could be
wrong.