Trail of Echoes (7 page)

“Just made twenty-two yesterday.”

“Well, happy birthday,” I said, scribbling his name and age onto the notepad. “I'm Detective Norton, and this is Detective Taggert.” I narrowed my eyes. “Good friends?”

“Ain't like we was married or shit,” Ontrel said, frowning. “We hung out, watched movies, et cetera et cetera. Ain't no thang—Nita was mature for her age.”

“She was
thirteen,
” Colin spat.

Ontrel gave an oblivious shrug. “Age ain't nothin' but a number.”

“And according to the law,” I said, “thirteen will get you four.”

He snorted. “Like y'all give a fuck about black girls fucking.”

“I give thirty fucks about black girls fucking,” I said. “Especially minor girls. And since that is now the topic, I'll need your DNA.”

Ontrel's smile dimmed, and he sat up straighter on the car's hood.

“So,” I continued, “now that I have your full attention: what's been going on around here since Nita went missing?”

Ontrel sucked his teeth. “What you think? Regina pissed cuz y'all ain't found Nita yet. Pissed at me cuz I wasn't with Nita to protect her. Like I said, we wasn't no married people, so I don't know what the fuck Gee wanted
me
to do.”

I could only blink at him as my mind grappled with the monstrous age gap. Twenty-two and thirteen and Chanita's mother
approved
? Had I become that bourgie since fleeing this place?

Ontrel chuckled, more annoyed than amused. “Gotta do what you gotta do to survive. I protect Nita from a lot of these fools up in here. Give her and her fam' money when they broke.”

“Well, then,” I said, “the parade will be next week. I'll be sure to bring your medal and key to the city.”

“And she been gone for five days,” Ontrel said, scowling, “and she ain't back
yet
. What you so worried about, Detective?” To Colin: “Why you standin' here
now,
Officer? Neither of y'all know shit about us up in here.”

As a former resident, I knew plenty. But I didn't care to qualify to this statutory-rapist dope head. I wouldn't show him my physical scars left from getting jumped in the laundry room two hundred yards away from where we now stood. Nor would I relive for him those terrifying nights when helicopters like the one above us busted up my bedroom's darkness with their damn-bright searchlights because someone like
him
had been shot in the alley beneath my window.

Anger now stuck in my throat like a hastily swallowed jawbreaker. “Where were you when she first disappeared?”

Ontrel's scowl deepened. “Like I told that other cop: Social Security with my moms.”

“Folks can vouch for you?” Colin asked.

“Yup.”

Colin made a note in his binder. “We'll need you to come down to the station for a formal interview.”

“Fuck that. I already had one of them.”

Colin shook his head. “But that was with—”

“Thanks, Ontrel,” I interrupted, then pointed at his slippers. “Them Jordans?”

Ontrel said, “Ha,” without humor.

“What shoes do you normally wear?” I asked.

“Jordans. Black and red ones.”

“When you come to the station,” I said, “please bring three pairs of your favorite sneaks.”

“What for?”

“Cuz I ain't got nothin' to do all day except explain shit to you.”

Ontrel leaned back on the windshield with his arms crossed. “I ain't had nothing to do with Nita disappearing. Put
that
in your police report. I'm innocent.”

Three teenage girls wearing puffy nylon jackets poured out the gates of the apartment complex next door. Their tropical-fruit-color-streaked hair matched their tropical-fruit-color tight jeans.
Mango, guava, and kiwi
.
See me! Pick me!
Someone
had
picked a girl their age who had come from this very place. Chanita Lords had probably been the brightest thing in the monster's life.

Ontrel hopped off the Cutlass (not “hopped,” since that verb took energy, and Ontrel had smoked away his energy). No. He
melted
off the car. “Am I free to go, Detectives, or y'all gon' send some more cops to talk to me? Make me confess to some shit I ain't do? Or you gon' take me now?” He held out his tattooed wrists.

Colin's phone rang from his jacket pocket, and he wandered to his car to answer the call.

I nodded up at the helicopter. “We're here all the time. If I want you for something, I'll come back. Right now, though, we're just chatting. Shootin' the shit, neighborly like.”

The three girls closed the distance between the apartment building and Ontrel and me. Teeth snapping gum. Thighs rubbing against each other. Acrylic fingernails scratching scalps. Smelling like sour apple Jolly Ranchers, Pink hair lotion, and cigarette smoke.

Of all the ghettos in the world, Chanita Lords had to come from this one.

“Ontrel, who you talking to?” the girl with the natural scowl asked.

“None of ya biz-ness,” Ontrel said. “What y'all want?”

“Drive us to the liquor store,” Braids ordered. “We need something to
drank.
”

“She look too old for you, Trel.” The chubby one who had been smoking a Parliament tossed the still-lit butt toward my loafer.

I jerked my shoe away. “What the—?”

The girls laughed.

Scowler said, “You see that bitch jump?”

“That
bitch
a police detective,” Ontrel growled.

Their heads dropped.

“Who's the bitch now?” I asked.

Colin returned to stand beside me.

“You her partner?” Chubby One asked him.

“Yeah,” he said.

“You cute for a white boy,” she said.

“Thanks, I guess.” To me, he said, “Got the paper.”

Warrants. Yay.

“Why ain't y'all in school?” I asked the girls.

“Teacher in-service,” Scowler said. Then, she gazed at Ontrel with fluttery eyes—somebody had a crush.

“You can ask my mom if you don't believe us,” Chubby One said.

“I'll let y'all's PO's handle your attendance records,” I said.

Scowler sucked her teeth. “Why we gotta have probation officers?”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You don't?”

Silence.

I pointed at Ontrel. “See you soon, yes?”

He gave a curt nod.

I strode to the entry gates.

Impervious to Kevlar, the hard glares from those three girls burned my back.

Of all the ghettos …

 

12

With warrants to search Chanita's bedroom and cell phone now in our possession, Colin and I marched through the courtyard toward the girl's apartment. In my binder, I also possessed a picture of Chanita on Brooks's table, and its sadness eked through the binder's leather and seeped into my tired soul.

“Sorry back there with Ontrel,” Colin said. “Forgot that nobody knows she passed.”

Despite the ibuprofen I had popped before leaving the house, a headache was forming beneath my right eyebrow. “Just remember: we're playing chess when we're working a case. Not checkers with its jumping all over the board and quickness and shit. Got it?”

Colin said something, but my thoughts had turned back to finding the goddess on my car. Who had left it there? Why—?

“You ignoring me?” Colin asked.

I blinked. “I'd
never
ignore you, Colin dear. Everything you say and do is of the utmost importance to me.”

The magnolia trees thrived—large green leaves but no white blooms. The dwarf palms looked dry and diseased, brown fronds or no fronds. The buildings' green paint had peeled in places and faded to white in others. Wet towels and underwear hung out to dry on every balcony.

“We will
not
mention the tooth,” I said. “Nor will we mention the duffel bag.”

“What about the needle marks?” he asked. “Or the conversation just now with Mr. Boston Public Schools?”

“Nope. None of that.”

Once we reached apartment 5, I took a deep breath, told myself that I didn't have a headache—what headache?—then knocked on the door.

Silence blanketed the complex. No televisions or stereos blasted from living rooms. No girls laughed on stairways. No women gossiped at the mailboxes. A ghost town.

The door opened, and the aromas of fried pork chops and simmering collard greens wafted out to greet us. An older black woman with sagging cheeks and flat, tired eyes stood there. She wore a royal blue housecoat dusted with flour, pink slippers, and a pink scarf that covered the curlers in her hair. “Yes?”

My stomach gurgled—I hadn't eaten real food since yesterday's pastrami with Sam. And even that didn't compare to the meal being cooked now. Colin and I both flashed our badges.

Before I could say, “Homicide Division,” the old woman grinned and looked to the heavens. “Thank you, Jesus.”

The mole on the left cheek. The upper canine tooth that touched her bottom lip. The same apartment she had occupied since I was five years old.

“Are you … Miss Alberta?” I asked.

The woman's eyes narrowed, and she cocked her head. “Yes, and you … look familiar.”

I pointed to the apartments on the other side of the complex. “My family … We lived in apartment seven and—”

She gasped, and her eyes widened. “Your daddy drove the 105.”

“That's right.” My mouth lifted, fell, and then twisted. From surprise: she was
still
living here? Anger: two of my laundry-room bullies, Angelique and Dominique, were Miss Alberta's daughters. And worry: how was Chanita Lords related?

“Are you Chanita's mom?” Colin asked.

“No. That's Regina, my daughter. She's in the shower right now. I'm Nita's grandmother, Alberta Jackson.”

Regina, a baby when I lived here, had been too young to join her siblings' reign of terror.

Alberta opened the door wider. “Come on in and sit. Y'all excuse my appearance.” She slapped the front of her housecoat and little clouds of flour puffed around her.

Drawn curtains darkened the large living room. A big-screen television and a black leather couch took up most of the space. The latest issues of
Ebony
and
Essence
sat on the black lacquer coffee table alongside the large-as-an-atlas family Bible and television remote control. A box of yellow “Missing” flyers sat near the front door.

Alberta beamed at me. “Just look at you. All tall and beautiful. A police officer. The Lord is
good
. I know your momma must be so proud, after all that.”

All that
. Days after Victoria's disappearance, Alberta had brought over a dish of noodles, orange cheese, and probably tuna. I'm guessing, since Mom had dumped the casserole into the garbage disposal. “They smoke PCP over there,” she had explained to me.

“Want something to drink?” Alberta asked.

“Yes, please,” Colin said.

I said nothing, still wary of food and drink prepared in a kitchen of PCP smokers.

“Comin' right up.” She trundled into the small, yellow-tiled kitchen, then shouted, “Reggie, detectives is here.” To me, she said, “Maybe now we can get some answers, since you know us and know how things go around here.” She touched her heart-spot. “And 'specially since all this happened to you and your family.”

I gave a curt nod, then turned my attention to the framed photographs hanging on the walls. These pictures captured Chanita, Regina, and Alberta in different versions of Fabulous. But there were also shots of Malibu's foggy seaside, downtown Los Angeles nightscapes, and an older woman's gnarled hands. Pictures a collector would professionally mat and hang.

“Ain't much changed since y'all left,” Alberta said. “Remember Michi, the little Japanese lady who'd trim the bushes up front like bonsai trees? She still in nine. And Miss Candy from up front? She dead, but Lamar and Quinton still livin' there. How's your momma doin'?”

“Good,” I said.

“Still in LA?”

“Yes, not far from the Ladera Ralphs.”

Alberta laughed. “She didn't like me much back then. But we all had our struggles. Tell her I say hi.” She returned to us with two glasses of grape soda. “Nita took those pictures,” she said, handing me a glass. “That girl got a good eye, don't she?”

“She certainly did.” I bristled.
Shit. Just used past tense.
I peered at the shot of a homeless man and his mutt walking past a parked Bentley. Sorrow set in—these photographs, just like the autopsy picture, made my stomach ache.

“Wanna see her awards?” Another woman's voice.

She stood in the doorway separating the living room from the bedrooms. She looked close to vanishing in her red and black kimono. Her head had also shrunk, and the red scarf around her hair shadowed her expressionless, blemished face. She hadn't slept since forever—the bags beneath her eyes testified to snatches of sleep and crying when she wasn't sleeping.

I knew that look—Mom had worn the same expression for ten years.

And this woman had to be Chanita's mother.

I held out my hand. “Hi, Ms. Drummond. I'm Detective Norton—”

“She used to live over in apartment seven,” Alberta shared. “You probably too young to remember. But the news story last June—remember they found them bones down in the plaza? That was Detective Norton's sister.”

Regina sighed, then retreated down the hallway.

Colin and I excused ourselves from Alberta, taking the glasses of soda with us.

Photographs lined the hallway walls: stray dogs, homeless men, prideful gang-bangers …

Regina stood at a bedroom's doorway.