The Hunt Club (2 page)

From the outside,
the large four-story San Francisco apartment building on Twenty-second Avenue near Balboa in the Richmond District was well kept up, but I had seen that before when I'd been called on complaints, and by itself it meant nothing. This building probably had forty units, each one a self-contained and discrete universe inhabited by singles, doubles, students, old folks, happy and unhappy, married and unmarried, gay and straight couples, with or without children.

On this cold and dreary morning, the mandated call had come from Cabrillo Elementary, where the kids were in sixth and fourth grade, respectively. Both of them had been absent the entire previous week of school, and no parent had called the office with an excuse. When the school's attendance officer had phoned the Dades' home for the first time last Wednesday, she'd left a message that no one returned. On Friday, she called again and talked to Tammy, the sixth grader, who said everybody had the flu, that was all. No, her mother was too sick and sleeping and couldn't come to the phone. Tammy thought that she and her brother would probably be better by Monday and she'd bring a note from her mother or the doctor. Somebody, anyway. Monday, they didn't make it, though, and the attendance officer had called Child Protective Services to check out what might really be going on. She noted on the complaint that both children appeared to be under-nourished and poorly clothed.

Now it was Tuesday morning, a little before 10:00. My partner for the call, my favorite partner in CPS, for that matter, named Bettina Keck, stood with me—Wyatt Hunt—outside the building after the first few rings from the button in the lobby went unanswered.

“Why am I not believing nobody's home?” Bettina said.

It was freezing standing there and I had already had enough waiting. I was going down the list of residents' namecards, pressing each button one after the other. “I hate when they make us do this. If anyone answers, you up for talking?”

“Why me?”

“You're smarter? Wait, no, that can't be it.”

“Funnier, too,” she said. And as if on cue, a squawk came out of the box, the voice of an elderly woman. “Who's down there?”

Bettina leaned close to the speaker. “FedEx delivery.”

“See?” I said. “Brilliant.”

Bettina shushed me and we heard, “I didn't order anything.”

“What apartment are you?”

“Eight.”

My finger went to the namecard for Bettina to read. She got it without missing a beat. “You're Mrs. Craft?”

“I am.”

“Well, you've got to sign for your delivery.”

“What is it?”

“Right now, ma'am, it's a brown box. If you don't want it, I'll just have it sent back.”

“To where?”

“Let me see. It looks like a jewelry store. Maybe you won a prize.”

A pause. Then, “Oh, all right.”

And the door buzzed, letting us into the building.

“You might be smarter at that,” I said, holding the door for my partner.

“No might about it.” She smiled at me. “Best part of the job.”

We took the stairs, through a door just inside the entrance, and came out on the third floor. The Dade residence was number 22, down the hallway on our left, and we stood in front of its door, listening to the television playing inside. Bettina nodded and I knocked. Immediately, the TV sound diminished. I knocked again. And again. “Whoever just turned down the television,” I said in a loud and authoritative tone, “open the door, please.”

Finally, a young girl's voice, thin and timid: “Who is it?”

“Child Protective Services,” Bettina said softly. “Open up, please.”

“I'm not allowed.”

“You're not allowed
not
to, honey. Is that Tammy?”

After a hesitation, the voice asked, “How do you know that?”

“Your school called us to check on you. They're worried about you and your brother. You've missed a lot of days.”

“We've been sick.”

“That's what they said.”

“We'd just like to make sure you're okay,” I put in.

“We might still be contagious.”

“We'll take that chance, Tammy,” Bettina said. “We're not allowed to go away until we see you.”

“If you don't let us in,” I added, “we may have to come back with the police. You don't want that, do you?”

“You don't need to call the police,” Tammy said. “We haven't done anything wrong.”

Effortlessly tag-teaming with me, Bettina spoke. “Nobody's saying you did, honey. We just want to make sure everything's okay in there. Is your brother with you?”

“He's okay, except he's still sick.”

“How about your mom? Is she there with you? Or your dad?”

“We don't have a dad.”

“Okay, your mom, then.”

“She's sleeping. She doesn't feel good, either. She's got the flu, too.”

“Tammy,” keeping a rising sense of concern out of my voice, “we need to come in right now. Please, open the door.”

A couple of seconds more and we heard the lock turn, and there she was. Remarkably composed and reasonably well dressed, I thought immediately, for a girl who was clearly starving to death.

Bettina went down on one knee. I heard her asking, “Tammy, honey, have you had anything to eat lately?” while I opened the door and passed behind them, half-hearing the young girl's response: “Some bread.”

In the living room in front of the television set, an emaciated young boy sat under a pile of blankets, staring with hollow and empty eyes at the silent screen. “Hey, buddy,” I said gently. “Are you Mickey?”

The boy glanced over at me and nodded.

“How are you doing?”

“Okay,” he said in a tinsel voice, “except I'm a little hungry.”

“Well, we'll get you some food right away, then. How's that sound?”

“Good. If you want.”

“I do. I do want. Where's your mom, Mickey?”

Bettina, holding Tammy's hand, heard the question as she came into the room. “She's in her bedroom,” Bettina said. “Maybe I should stay with the kids in here a minute, and you go see how she is?”

“On it,” I said.

Mrs. Dade was in her bed, all right, and sleeping. But it wasn't the kind of sleep where you woke up.

The autopsy later revealed that she had died of an overdose of heroin, probably in the form of black tar, probably on the third or fourth day the kids had missed school. While we were waiting for the unnecessary ambulance, Tammy told us that her mother had lost her job at the Safeway a couple of weeks ago because of her drug problem, which was really a disease she couldn't help. She had told Tammy and Mickey that she knew she shouldn't be using drugs, that they were bad, and she was trying to stop, but it was really, really hard. The main thing, though, was that they must never, ever tell anybody because if the police ever found out, they'd come and either take Mom away or take them away from her.

Tammy took DARE at school, and she knew that this was true. Everybody agreed you shouldn't live with people who used drugs.

Which was why Tammy hadn't told anybody.

And this hadn't been the only time with Mom. Sometimes she would disappear into her bedroom for a couple of days. This was just longer than usual. Tammy didn't want to look in because sometimes her mom would get mad if she checked up on her. She didn't want her children to see her doing drugs. She was ashamed of it. In a day or two more, Tammy thought, her mom would probably come out of her bedroom, or she would go check when they were really out of food, and then they'd go back to school and Mom would go shopping and get them something to eat. Meanwhile, Tammy just fed herself and Mickey from what was left in the kitchen. She rationed it so it wouldn't run out. She needed to protect her brother, too, along with her mom.

I went and searched. They were down to three slices of mildewed white bread, some rice crackers, and about a tablespoon of peanut butter.

I had been on the job
for five years and still didn't have my own office at Child Protective Services. I didn't really want or need one. Seventy-five to eighty percent of my work was, after all, in the field. The rest of it was writing reports of what I'd done. The supervisors got the offices, and as far as I was concerned, they could have them. Supervisors worried about closing cases and about numbers and about following established procedures. I cared about saving kids' lives. There tended to be a difference in approach.

After negotiating the gauntlet of homeless persons camped on the surrounding streets, I would arrive at the Otis Street building every morning somewhere around eight o'clock, check in for any possible true emergency calls, then most days pick up my daily allotment of “normal” cases. Every one of these was an emergency of some kind, although too often not designated as such by the bureaucracy.

To get an emergency declaration and hence the immediate attention of a caseworker or team of them, the home situation of the child had to be defined as life-threatening in the near term. Say, a woman holding her three-year-old by the heels out of a six-story window would be an emergency. Day-to-day problems were of a lesser nature and included chronic starvation or suspected physical abuse or a parent in some drug-induced or otherwise psychically impaired state. Or an uncle in a suspected carnal relationship with his eight-year-old niece.

The more or less routine call this morning was from Holly Park, a housing project near the southern border of the city. Due to its internal and conflicting gang affiliations, its grinding poverty and persistent air of hopelessness, and the astronomical percentage of its population that either used or dealt street drugs, it had the highest neighborhood homicide rate after Hunter's Point. And was undefeated for number one in most other crimes, violent and not.

I don't mind fog or rain, heat or cold, but I hate the wind, and today, a Thursday in early April, it was blowing hard. In an effort to save it from the vandalism that plagued Holly Park, I parked my already beat-up Lumina three blocks east of the project, then opened my door to a gust of Alaskan Express against which my parka was about as effective as chain mail. The day was bright and sunny, but the wind was relentless and bitter, bitter, bitter cold.

Hands tucked into the bottoms of my jacket pockets, I got to the address I'd memorized and, from across the street, stared at the tagged and scarred wasteland I was supposed to enter. I knew that fifty years ago the place had once been a showcase of sorts—the barracks-style apartment units freshly painted, with grassy areas and well-kept gardens, even trees. Residents got fined if they didn't mow their lawns, keep their individual porches and balconies clean and free of laundry or garbage. Now there wasn't one tree left, no hint of a garden, barely a blade of grass. From my vantage across the street, I picked up hundreds of glints of light in the packed tan earth surrounding the buildings—I'd been here many times before, knew that these were remains of countless discarded and broken bottles of beer, wine, liquor, anything alcoholic that came in glass. Pepsi and Coke weren't locked in combat in this arena.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, I saw no one. Of course, with the cold and the wind, people wouldn't be out to bask and frolic, but I kind of expected to see some soul passing between the pods of buildings, some woman hanging laundry, somebody doing something. But the place appeared completely deserted.

I wondered whether I should have waited a few more minutes at the office and hooked up with a partner for this call. One of the relatively new hires, maybe, who still had some fire in the gut. But finding someone in the office I could count on, with whom I could stand to spend much time, had become all but impossible.

Because the office had in the past couple of years become cancerous. This coincided with the appointment and arrival of Deputy Director Wilson Mayhew. From my line supervisors splitting hairs and playing power games, to so many of my fellow emergency response workers putting their experience to work dodging calls when they bothered to report in at all, most people in the department seemed to take their cultural cues from Mayhew. We were all county employees after all, covered by the union and essentially invulnerable to discipline. Without a motivational deputy director, caseworkers who cared about the work and about the kids tended to burn out after a few years. Now most of those who remained stayed on because they couldn't be touched—between accrued vacation and sick days and cheating on your time card in a hundred clever ways. Fully a third of the caseworker staff did nothing substantive ever. A couple never even came in to work, and it didn't seem to matter to Mayhew or the lower-ranking supes, who were then spared the hassle of having to confront them.

Bettina, still on the job, was having some substance issues herself in the wake of her divorce, and now I preferred to work alone.

Well, there was nothing for it but to go ahead. I was here now. And Keeshiana Jefferson needed help now. I had to go in and assess how bad it was. I took a step off the curb.

“Hey.”

I turned, stepped back, double-taking at the absolutely impossible sight of another white guy in this neighborhood. Then, the features congealed into something vaguely then very familiar. “Dev?” I said. “Devin Juhle?” Juhle had been the shortstop to my second base on my high school team. Before college separated us, he'd probably been my best friend.

The other man broke an easy if slightly perplexed grin, then his own recognition kicked in. “Wyatt? What are you doing here?”

“Working,” I said, more or less automatically reaching for my wallet, my identification. “I'm with CPS. Child Protective Services.”

“I know what CPS is. I'm a cop.”

“You're not.”

“Am, too.”

“You're not dressed like a cop.”

“I'm an inspector. We don't wear a uniform. I'm with homicide.”

I threw a quick look across the street. “You're saying I'm too late, then?”

“For what?”

“Keeshiana Jefferson.”

“Never heard of her.”

A rush of relief swept over me. At least Keeshiana wasn't the victim in the homicide Dev was investigating. I might be in time after all. “Well, hey,” I said, “good to see you, but I got a gig in there.”

Juhle put a hand on my arm. “You're not going in there alone?”

“That's my plan.” Seeing Juhle's concern, I added, “Not to worry, Dev. I do this every day.”

“Here?”

“Here, there, everywhere.”

“And do what?”

“Talk to people mostly. Sometimes take a kid out.”

Juhle cast a worried glance over to the projects, then back to me. “Are you packing?”

“A gun?” I chortled and spread the sides of my parka wide open. “Just cookies and chips in case somebody's hungry. I really gotta go.”

“What's the exact address?” Juhle asked me. “I'm hanging here anyway with my partner, looking for witnesses. I'll stay close.”

“No need,” I said, “but I appreciate the offer. But really, catch you later. I gotta go check the place out now.”

The wooden door to the barrack unit closed behind me, and the hallway went almost pitch-dark. Someone had painted out the long glass windows on either side of the door. I let my eyes adjust for a few seconds, then tried the light switch, which had come into view. It didn't work.

There was a stink in the hall, the familiar trifecta of mold, urine, animal. I also noted a whiff of pot and tobacco smoke, although the stronger smells predominated. The wind howled outside as it tore between the buildings, and hearing it, I thought to turn back and open the door again slightly to get some light. Just outside in a pile of rubble against the building, I spied a rock that would serve my purpose. I picked it up and propped the door with it, holding it open about five inches.

The Jeffersons lived in number 3, the back unit on the left side. I listened at the door and heard only the familiar drone of a television but couldn't really tell if it came from this apartment or one of the others. I knocked, got no response, knocked again. “Mrs. Jefferson.”

Finally, a shuffle of feet, then a woman's voice from inside. “Who's that?”

I knew a few tricks myself. You say Child Protective Services to some people, the door never opens. But you say Human Resources, of which CPS is a part, they often think it's about their welfare payments, and it's open sesame. Mrs. Jefferson opened the door a crack, the chain still on. “What you want?”

“I'd like to talk to you a minute if I could.”

“You doin' that.”

“We got a call about Keeshiana. Is she all right?”

“Who called?”

“Your mother.” Thank God, I thought. It should have been the girl's school, since she'd already missed two full weeks, but they hadn't gotten around to it by the time I called them to verify the absences. Luckily, the grandmother had come by the apartment yesterday and after leaving had called CPS. “She's worried about you both.” I shifted to another foot, keeping the body language relaxed.

“Ain't nothin' to worry 'bout. I be taking care of my baby.”

“I'm sure you are, Mrs. Jefferson, but when somebody's mom calls in and says they're worried, I'm supposed to come out and see if everything's okay.” I pulled the parka closer around me. “If I could just come in and talk to you both for a minute, I could be on my way.”

To my right, the door at the opposite end of the hallway suddenly opened all the way with a bang, and a posse of three men came inside amid a blizzard of profanity and posturing. All of them were layered up with jackets, all of them down with the perp walk. My testicles withdrew into my body as Mrs. Jefferson shut the door on me.

The back door stayed open. The leader of the gang, seeing me, stopped and looked around behind him, then down the hall behind me. “Yo, fuck.”

I nodded. “'Sup,” I said, dishing back some brilliant repartee. But I turned to face them, standing my ground.

“'Sup wi' this shit?” They'd come up close, surrounding me, all intimidation, the usual. The man's eyes looked a sickly yellow. He hadn't shaved in several days. Or, apparently, brushed his teeth ever.

I looked him in his yellow eyes. “It's no shit,” I said. I held up my ID. “CPS, guys. Just checkin' on Keeshiana in here. See she's all right.”

The front man took a beat, another look around. He swore again, cocked his head, and the posse moved past. The last man, eschewing his earlier mannerly approach, hawked and spit on the floor at my feet.

Tempted to tell them to have a nice day, I figured there wasn't any advantage in it and instead bit my tongue, then turned and knocked again on the door. “Me again,” I said.

The door opened, no chain this time. “You some kind of fool or what?” she asked.

I followed her in, the door closed again and bolted behind. It was the kind of apartment I'd seen on dozens of similar occasions before. Kitchen, living room, two small bedrooms. Neither neat nor clean, with dirty clothes strewn on furniture, paper bags littering the floor, KFC and McDonald's containers stacked in piles on end tables and bookshelves that hadn't seen a book in half a century.

She'd pulled the blinds and covered most of the windows with drapes and what looked like sheets or pillow-cases, so it was almost as dark as the hallway inside, but the corner of a sheet over the upper half of the kitchen window had fallen off and let in some daylight. “This is my baby, Keeshiana,” Mrs. Jefferson said. The child was at the kitchen table. A sweet-looking diminutive six-year-old in a red T-shirt, her arms rested in front of her, hands clasped.

I didn't put out my hand, kept everything low-key, nodding only. “My name's Wyatt.” I gave her my professional smile, and she nodded back warily. I turned to the mother. “Maybe we could all sit a minute?” And pulled out a chair. “So, Letitia,” I began to the mother, “is that what they call you?”

“Lettie.”

“Lettie, then.”

But she cut me off, suddenly angry. “My momma got no call putting you on us. I ain't done nothing wrong, just protectin' me and my baby from evil.”

“From evil?”

“Satan,” she said.

“The devil?”

“Right.”

“Is he after you in some special way?”

“He tole me. Said if she went out, he'd take her. He wants her bad.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“Couple of weeks now. I seen him, you know.”

“Where?”

She tossed her head. “Just out there.”

“In the hallway?”

A nod. “And outside, too. That's why I got the windows covered. So he can't see in, know she's here.”

I suddenly understood how the glass panes beside the hallway doors had come to be painted. I reached inside my parka, produced a bag of potato chips and a Snickers bar, and put them on the table without a word, sliding them down within Keeshiana's reach.