Out of the Blues (7 page)

“A thousand people shop that market in a day. At night some worker mops the aisles, a manager locks the doors, turns out the lights, and sets the alarm, that little blinking red button. And Shiva sits there, extra arms extended, and Ganesha, his trunk lifted.” She raised her arm elephant-like.

Inside, the timer on the clothes dryer buzzed. “Your clothes are done, sweetie.” Wills put his hands on his thighs to stand. “Back to reality.”

The dog stuck his nose in her lap, pushing under her hand, the onyx of his eyes crowding out the amber irises.

—

W
ILLS
AND
W
ONDER
watched from the front room window until the taillights of her car disappeared down the road. There were nights when he slept over at Salt's—better to leave in the early morning after a good night's sleep. “Okay, buddy.” Wills rubbed the dog's shiny fur, kneaded the lean flank muscles underneath, and followed him to the couch where they both drew deep breaths and began to nod. Wills was soon asleep on the sofa. The dog lay beside him on the floor, ears twitching up when he heard a car on the road, down when it was not her car, his eyes, blinking reflected moonlight, only partially closed, then open.

V
ibrations from the gigantic pipe organ came through the shiny ceramic tile flooring to the soles of her shoes and up to her knees. The auditorium of the colossal Big Calling Church reverberated with bass notes of something in a minor key. Salt began to walk toward the back of the space, looking up in order to locate the position of the organist somewhere high in the sanctuary above. The pews, walls, floors, and even the windows were all finished in shades of beige and pastel pinks. Enormous columns down the sides of the aisles were filigreed with plaster cherubs and doves.

“You're not supposed to be in here.”

Salt startled. “Damn.”

The two men were sitting together in the otherwise empty nave, less than three feet from where Salt had stopped to look up toward the front. She immediately recognized one of the men as Reverend Midas Prince. His dark features and broad nose were ubiquitous at any and all significant events in the Atlanta public forum—celebrations, televised services, civil rights holidays—wherever the
media gathered. He was wearing a suit that perfectly blended with the décor.

“Get Madison,” he said to the light-complexioned young man beside him who immediately scurried from the pew.

“I apologize, Reverend Prince. I was startled. I didn't see you there.”

“So you don't normally curse? Or just not in the presence of others? Or in God's house?” He stood and buttoned his suit coat over a collarless light pink shirt.

“I'm sorry.” Salt retrieved her badge case from a back pocket. “Here's my identification. I'm Detective Alt.” She had to raise her voice above a crescendo from the organ.

The preacher took the ID wallet and opened it, and then took his time looking back and forth between her photo on the laminated card and her, his nose and mouth scrunched as if he smelled something bad. “How did you get in? All the doors are supposed to be locked.” He leaned toward her so he could hear her answer over the organ, which was rising to a flourish.

Salt waited for the music to finish, but the organist kept building to what now seemed an ever-distant climax.

“Enough, Karl.” Prince yelled with all his famous oratorical force.

The silence was immediate, a vacuum in contrast with the previous sonic bombardment.

The young man returned followed by an Atlanta police officer, dressed in the green fatigues of the SWAT team, their footsteps echoing as they came down the aisle. “Hello, hello, hello, little lady,” hailed Sandy “True Grit” Madison, a square-jawed walking cliché. Even his fellow team members made fun of him, mocking his affected John Wayne walk anytime they could play it for a laugh either behind his back or to goad him. She knew him mostly by his all-hat-and-no-cattle cowboy reputation. But he'd also been with the SWAT when calls on her beat had escalated and procedure required a SWAT response,
more manpower and equipment than were available to beat officers—some barricaded gunmen, hostage situations, a couple of suicide and bomb threats, suspicious packages, and explosive materials. He completed his greeting by wrapping her into his six-foot-five bear hug.

“So you know this woman?” Prince asked him.

“Sure, Reverend. Everybody knows Salt. She's kinda like, uh, Wonder Woman, that's it. Fightin' the bad guys all by herself. She shot and killed one last year, didn't you, Salt? And you just made detective, right?” He play-punched her on her bicep.

“That's why I'm here, Reverend. I've been assigned a case you may be able to shed some light on.”

“You couldn't call and make an appointment?” said Prince.

“Yeah, Salt,” said Madison. “You should come to me first with anything related to Reverend Prince and law enforcement.”

“You're right, Madison, but I was out anyway and just stopped by, hoping I could get a few minutes with Reverend Prince. You know how it is.” She turned to the preacher. “Mike Anderson's parents said you were very busy and hard to get an appointment with, but like I said, I took a chance and now here I am and here you are.”

“‘Mike Anderson,'” repeated Prince.

“Mike Anderson. I loved his music when I was a kid,” said the young man from behind the preacher and previously excluded from the conversation.

“You can be excused,” Prince said over his shoulder. With a pout, the young man turned toward the exit.

“Yeah, but Salt, Reverend Prince is a busy—”

“Why would anybody be interested in Mike Anderson after all these years?” Prince cut Madison off and stepped toward Salt. “He killed himself on drugs.”

“We've gotten new information.”

“‘New information.' What kind of new information?”

As Prince came closer, Salt realized that he was her same height and remembered that she'd always thought he wore lifts in his shoes or stacked heels. “A witness,” she said.

Prince made a dismissive, flapping noise with his lips. “What kind of witness?”

“We're trying to corroborate, or disprove, his allegations, Reverend. I'd like to ask you about your interventions with Mike before he died.”

Prince shook back his coat cuff and looked down at the large-faced watch on his wrist. “I have an appointment I need to get to.”

Prince was already striding up the center aisle as Madison took a business card from the leg pocket of his fatigue pants and held it out to Salt. It had a camouflage background with black lightning lettering for his name and phone numbers. “I'll walk you out. What door did you come in? I need to check the schedule. Somebody musta screwed up, leaving a door unlocked. I give these guys these cushy extra jobs, and then they do me like this.”

“Good EJ?” Salt asked, referring to the off-duty job. Most cops worked some kind of extra job in order to supplement their pay. Their law enforcement and jurisdictional powers were active no matter if they were on or off duty.

“It's real cushy, Salt. Want me to get you on?” He put his arm over her shoulder as they walked toward the door. “Directing traffic on Sunday is the most work we do. Otherwise it's just hangin' around, doing whatever the Rev needs doin'.”

“'Fraid I can't. I have all I can do to keep up with the new assignment and my home life.” She slipped from under his arm. “Thanks, though.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, pardner.” He slapped his leg with a flat palm.

“What other things do you do for him?” she asked.

“What?”

“You said you do whatever the preacher needs. Like what?”

He stood in the doorway with his arms stretched up to the top of the sill, as if in preparation for a pull-up. He squinted at her for a second. “Now you sound like Internal Affairs. I thought you were assigned to Homicide.”

“Just askin'. Just askin'.” Salt turned and walked out to her unmarked car parked in the vast lot. When she looked back, Madison was still hanging in the doorway.

S
alt had laid out the eight-by-ten scene photos sequentially, left to right, spread over her desk, far shots on the left, close-ups on the right. She'd had to take care removing them from the envelope because humidity had crept in, causing some of the photos to adhere to the backs of the others.

Mike Anderson's car had been found parked in the wide intersection of Elizabeth Street and Waverly Way facing the wrong way with the left front wheel in a street grate. It was an old 1950s Pontiac wagon, green and cream, funny, funky. According to the reporting party, the friend who found him, Anderson was supposed to have come by his girlfriend's the night before. When he hadn't shown up by the next morning, the girlfriend, Melissa Primrose, called the friend, Dan Pyne. There were no statements from either Pyne or Primrose transcribed for the record. After the medical examiner ruled the death “accidental,” no investigation would have been required, and there was no documentation in the file that any had been done.

Salt picked up one of the medium-range photos. Michael was leaning from the middle of the front seat and slumped against the passenger window, left foot turned, heel up against the carpeting of the drive shaft hump. One bedroom slipper, mate to the other on his right foot, had come off and was on the driver's floorboard. He was wearing a navy-and-gray-striped terry-cloth robe, open, the belt missing. He didn't have on any jewelry. His hair was cut in a medium 'fro, slightly uneven at the left back and with what looked to be a small sprinkling of pink glitter where his hair was flattened. Both hands were in his lap, palms up, fingers slightly curled, a receiving gesture. Below his left eye was a spot of whitish dust, maybe salt from dried tears.

“Sad.” Picking up one of the close-up photos, Felton sat down across from Salt's desk in the chair from the empty cubicle. “Handsome, vulnerable-looking.”

“Do you by any chance have a connection in the city's business licensing department? I'm trying to find out who the individuals are that own a couple of businesses.”

“Good luck with that. The bureaucrats are plentiful there and all knee-deep in pissed-off.”

“Any advice?” Salt asked. “I don't want to impose. I'm sure you're constantly asked for help.”

“You might be surprised.” Felton drew the photo closer to his right eye. “Prophet in your own land and all that.”

“Oh, come on, with your clear-up rate they must come to you for help.”

Felton handed the photo to her. “You'll find that each of us has our strong suits in how we work a murder, Salt. Take the Wild Things, for instance, please.” He smiled at his own punch line. “They're terrible with paperwork and documentation. The DA hates to get their cases. But together they work the streets like geniuses and put the cases down.”

“You're not going to tell me your secrets, are you?” She leaned back and smiled at him.

“My dear.” He bent over and looked up from under his brows. “If my instincts are still intact, they're telling me that you are probably best left alone with no one to get in the way.” He touched her shoulder as he stood and left.

Salt gathered the photos, slid them back into the envelope, and turned to the inventory of the car and Mike's effects. Other than the bathrobe and slippers, he'd been wearing only a pair of blue plaid boxer shorts.

As she ran her finger down the inventory sheets, she became aware that she was humming. The report of the first uniform officer was brief and perfunctory, listing the reporting person and the responding homicide detective, followed by the detective's very brief supplementary report.

Dan Pyne's and Melissa Primrose's contact information was included on the now ten-year-old preliminary report. Salt hummed “Step Into the Light,” a Mavis Staples song, as she began entering names into the various Internet and law enforcement search engines.

“Hello,” she said in response to one return.

C
edar. Salt drew in another breath, confirming what her nose told her: she'd fallen asleep reading on the library floor. She peeled her cheek from a page of the open book, a Sherlock Holmes that had served as a pillow, and briefly scanned the paragraphs, searching as if she could get a clue there to the origin or impetus of a dream that was quickly evaporating but leaving her with rapid, shallow breaths and a fluttery anxiety.

Felton's advice aside, she wished she could make better use of the scientific method, be more Holmes-like rather than having the dreams, dreams that produced flashbacks and mixed with reality. Sometimes it was music or just being in a particular place, like at Westview or Fort Walker, some vision would worry its way to her consciousness. Last year after recovering from the shooting, she'd expected the dreams and intrusive images that came afterward to stop. Instead, the dreams continued but had also given her insight that helped her solve the case that led to her promotion. She looked
over at the shelves that held the books on mental illness, their titles unreadable in the low light.

The heavy navy brocade drapes were pulled tight and no light shone from behind the panels or up at the top. The overhead fixture surrounded by its crumbling plaster medallion hadn't worked since Salt could remember; she was reminded to worry about the wiring in the whole house. A floor lamp was her only light source, its weak cone doing little to displace the dark, casting just enough light to throw shadows on the shelved walls.

She pushed up, her palms to the prickly wool and worn, bare spots of the patterned rug, some of its fringed trim missing. The green indicator light on the recorder was on. The tape could have played out an hour ago or three. She touched the crease on her cheek left by the book and judged her nap to have been a longer one. She hit the eject button and the lid flipped up with the cassette tape that had accompanied her into the dream. “Mike Anderson and the Old Smoke Band, featuring—” She turned the plastic casing over. On the other side, her father had used a heavy-point felt-tip pen, the words and letters blurred. But the first letters of the two words looked like P's and the words were the right shape and length to be “Pretty Pearl.”

“Put the boogie on, Daddy,” she'd beg. “Put on the boogie-woogie. Put it on, please,” jumping in a circle around him, hopping and wiggling her bony pelvis. She loved it best when he'd boogie—his goofy, hilarious dance—flinging his limbs like a cartoon goon.

“Leave it alone. Do not touch the radio without asking,” his other voice said. She didn't want to listen, didn't want him to hear the wailing voices as he drove. It scared her and she couldn't think of how to get him to not listen. The singer sounded like he was crying. Her throat tightened so she wouldn't cry. The guitar strings strained like the singer, like her throat; she tightened and tightened and squeezed her eyes shut but she
couldn't squeeze her ears shut and didn't want to cover them or he would know. She couldn't let him see her sad or scared.

“Play the boogie, Daddy.”

She slipped the tape back into its case, closed the lid of the recorder, and put the tape back with the others in the box. The recorder was still warm. As she turned it between her hands, the cheap plastic parts made little loose clicking sounds. Grime dimmed the indicator lights. There were nicks and dings in the silver-tone finish.

With her adult knowledge she understood that her father must have struggled with and tried to understand his mental illness—the books spoke to his attempts at self-treatment. But why did he feel he had to do it alone? Why didn't he get help? And why commit suicide—on her birthday?

She put the recorder away, then fished the Anderson/Pearl blues back out of the box and put it in her shirt pocket.