The Stones Cry Out (18 page)

Later that night the rain came. It was a delayed fury, soaking the ground and pounding the carriage house's tin roof with a sound like strafing bullets. I stood at my kitchen window watching rivulets slide down the windows, running like tears.

But Richmond’s summer rains were Napoleonic -- short, tempestuous -- and during the final rumbles, I pulled on a baseball cap and drove down Monument Avenue, winding the K-Car around the statue of J. E. B. Stuart. The cavalry hero rode a rearing horse and waved a sword.

I helped put myself though Mount Holyoke working for the state’s mapping project, and working for the college’s geology department. My senior year I taught the lab portion of Introductory Geology, a course nicknamed nationwide as Rocks for Jocks. Among my science-challenged students was a girl named May-Ling Lee. She was from Richmond, which gave us a connection, and after graduation she took a job with the Richmond
Times-Dispatch
. Like most new hires, she started out writing obits. She wrote my father's obituary. Then, with good southern manners, she attended his funeral. But May-Ling showed her heart of gold by coming through the receiving line with a piece of staurolite in her hand. In the far reaches of southwest Virginia, where people spoke in a dialect that sounded like Elizabethan English, staurolite crystals were integral to country baptisms. The pale crystals formed perfect white crosses. The geologic description for it was "twinning," when a rock crystallized identically at right angles. Scientists proposed some chemical theorems to explain how staurolite’s crystals could make perfect white crosses, but Virginia's mountain people believed the rocks fell directly from heaven. To this day, after hard rains, the white crosses could be found scattered across the ground. Legend has it the rain comes from crying angels, weeping over the death of Christ.

Last year May-Ling was finally promoted from obituaries, though in my mind the night cop beat wasn't much of a bump up. She had called me periodically with law enforcement questions. And I answered but only as deep background, never to be attributed.

In the Media General building on South Franklin, I found May-Ling in the newsroom. Her desk was a mess, like mine. An authentic fire hazard of notebooks, police manuals, paper coffee cups, and press releases. She was typing, her slight overbite giving her a guileless expression. That look helped in her line of work.

"Got a few minutes?" I asked.

She looked up, surprised. Then she assumed the worst.

"Did somebody die?"

I shook my head. "I need to talk. It’s about the Richmond PD."

She waited for more, then glanced across the room. Most of the desks were empty, except for a barrel-chested man throwing peanuts into this mouth while talking on the telephone.

"My editor," she said.

"My condolences. Can you give me ten minutes?"

===============

Outside, the pavement was sending up that peculiar scent of hot wet concrete, a salty aroma that smelled like summer swimming pools. We walked down Fourth Street to the corner diner and took a secluded table on the second floor. May-Ling was carrying a police scanner and set the radio next to the ketchup bottle, adjusting the volume until the crackle could be heard above the jukebox. A waitress took our order and stomped away, then came back with two glasses of Coca-Cola, plunking them down on the table. May-Ling politely asked for a straw and the waitress gave her a look, stomped back downstairs, then back up, and threw the straw on the table. Before leaving, she slapped down the tab.

May-Ling sipped. "So what brings you here, Raleigh, at almost midnight?"

In the vaguest terms possible, I explained the civil rights investigation, that the Bureau was looking into the rooftop deaths.

"It was you," she interrupted. "On the building? With the rope?" She laughed, slapping the table. "I knew it!"

I nodded. "Did you ever come across Detective Falcon on your cops beat?”

"Raleigh..." She stabbed the straw into the crushed ice. It sounded like "sh-sh-sh."

"No, May, it's my turn. And you can answer with the same terms. Deep background, off the record, no attribution."

"You swear on Mary Lyon's grave?"

Mary Lyon, the woman who founded Mount Holyoke. In 1837, education was supposedly "wasted" on females. I raised my right hand.

"I swear on the grave of Mary Lyon."

She glanced out the diner's window. So much grease was on the plate glass that the traffic light at Fourth and Main was a smear of primary colors. "People speculated Falcon was dirty.”

"Dirty?"

"On the take."

"What kind of people said this--cops?"

"I can't say who. But he bought a new house in Hanover County. And a new boat. You know cops don't make that kind of money."

"Maybe he inherited it."

"Or not," she said. "There was a rumor he was even considering early retirement. Meanwhile his wife just had a kid. Cops with expenses don't cut out early."

I had read the file on his private security firm. He budgeted $150,000 in billing for the first-year. "Maybe he was going into another profession.”

“I've made good sources, Raleigh. People who know things." But then she shrugged. "It doesn't really matter now. Nobody’s ever going to say anything bad about that guy. Not now. He's a hero."

"You ever meet him?"

She rolled her eyes. "You don't read my stories, do you?"

"Nothing personal. Newspapers give me heartburn."

"I wrote a feature story about the cold case unit. With Detective Greene?"

"We've met."

"It was like interviewing two walls, but their clearance rate’s incredible. Do you know they've solved almost eighty percent of the re-opened cases?"

"That could mean the cases shouldn’t have been closed." I was thinking of Phaup. Somewhere in the Richmond Police Department, she probably had a clone, or two. And I was thinking of my father’s case. “Back to the accusations about Falcon. Could it be professional jealousy?"

She shook her head. “I doubt it. These were good sources. And cops sometimes go bad. Even good detectives can turn.” She stabbed her soda again. “Not that I really blame them."

"How's that?"

“They don't make a lot of money. If they mess up, reporters like me swoop in and write big stories about how they goofed. It’s a hard job."

"You're sorry?"

"No," she said, firmly. "The press keeps the cops honest. I'm just saying, the temptation is real."

When she glanced at her watch, I took the hint and laid two dollars on the table. She picked up her radio scanner.

Outside the midnight humidity felt soft as sea foam. The empty street glistened from the rain.

"What was your opinion of Falcon?" I asked. "Not the sources. You."

She turned up the volume on her scanner. "He seemed like your basic veteran cop."

"And what's that?"

"Tired. Didn’t like reporters. Sort of angry."

"But dirty?"

She was walking faster now, listening to the radio crackle out a police call. "You're too late, Raleigh."

The dispatcher was calmly reporting an armed robbery in progress on South Jackson. Two cruisers heading over.

May-Ling said, "I gotta go."

"You didn't answer my question."

She jogged for the newspaper building, calling out in the dark. “I told you, the guy's a hero now. You're too late."

Early the next morning I drove my mother to the Pentecostal camp in the old Mercedes Benz. She was humming to herself. Madame stood on her lap, keeping her nose out the window.

At this early hour, the worship service was sparse. A wiry man stood with his family on stage, speaking about obedience and grace. My mother sidled over to the electric organ, swaying with the melody. Madame ran into the fields, and I sat in the row farthest from the stage. After fifteen minutes, when the man still talking and my mother was still dancing, I snuck out of the tabernacle, running across the campground like a refugee.

But when I got to the big black car, Madame was there.

I stared at her. She was uncanny.

"No," I said, opening the door. "You have to stay here."

She jumped into the driver's seat.

"Madame. Out."

She lifted her paw, placing it on the steering wheel.

"Fine, all right, you can come. But stay close. Understand?"

We headed north on Route 1 and five miles later turned right, driving directly into the morning sun. Another two miles passed until we reached the Bull Island Paper Plant, followed by a narrow overpass bridging the river. I parked the car on the soft shoulder.

“No running off,” I told Madame.

An ancient river, the South Anna was riddled with twisting turns and deep oxbows, a river that moved sideways as much as forward. Kudzu vines smothered the banks and climbed the gum trees, reaching across the muddy water like leafy bridges leading to nowhere. I walked down the concrete boat ramp. Madame followed me to the water's edge. Sure enough, the stone was crumbling where it touched the acidic soil. Taking out a film canister, I collected some of the colluvium of rock fragments then filled another canister with soil. Trailer wheels had cut creases in the dirt, and at the water's edge, I filled two more canisters. Rubbing the sediment between my fingers, I felt the fine-grained texture. Creamy, almost sensuous. I took off my tennis shoes, waded into the water and plunged several more canisters to the river bottom, scraping for samples, then waded back to the boat ramp. I checked my watch, waiting for Madame to finish her own investigation.

A blue Chevy truck was coming down the road, hauling an aluminum fishing boat. The driver pulled a four-point U-turn across the narrow two-lane road then backed toward the ramp. He leaned out his window, and the fishing lures dangling from a faded green hat glinted in the sunlight. When he threw the truck into Park, and jumped out, he said, "How ya doin'?"

"Good.” I smiled.

He bustled to the back of the trailer, unlatching the boat.

"Nice and quiet,” I said.

He nodded. The lures danced. "And I want to keep it that way. Know what I'm saying?"

"Sure do."

He touched his hat, almost a salute, then floated the boat onto the muddy water.

Just the way I imagined Detective Falcon might do.

===============

When we got back to the tabernacle, my mother was sitting in the front row facing the stage. Her black curls looked limp, sagging beside her pretty face. The air felt saturated, leaden and sticky from last night’s rain.

"It's too hot to dance," she said.

I drove her home, changed my clothes, then motored the K-Car to the office and was back in my cattle stall before noon, dialing the mineralogy lab in Washington. I told Eric to expect some soil comparison samples, arriving via Bureau mail.

"How’s it going?" he asked.

"I'm working on it. Can you transfer me to Hairs and Fibers?"

I waited for Mike Rodriguez to pick up, glancing over my shoulder. Something told me Phaup was lurking.

"I didn't send you that report?" Rodriguez said.

"No, Mike, you didn't. And I needed it two days ago."

Five minutes later, the preliminary report from Hairs and Fibers arrived by fax. I snapped the pages from the machine, scurrying back to my desk like a mouse that hoped the cat didn't wake up. Rodriguez’s report said the strands lifted from the exterior of the Fielding factory came from several different origins. The wiry black strand was indeed hair "most likely of African-American descent." The soft tissue from the scalp attached at the follicle could provide a DNA profile—"further instructions needed."

The blue fibers were nylon and the red fibers were heavily treated leather, “perhaps suede.” I typed up another request for Rodriguez, asking for a nuclear DNA profile on the hair, and was picking up the phone to tell him when I noticed someone standing to my right, where the cattle stall opened into the B squad yard.

Phaup.

"Raleigh, did you get that declination?"

I waved the phone receiver. "Calling the attorney's office right this minute."