CHAPTER TWO

 
Detective Lee McCarrell scanned the periphery of the scene, not listening to anyone in particular: the chatter, the radio squawks, the idling engines, the occasional horn or siren blare dissolved into a susurrus of a crime scene symphony. Though he hadn't had a drop all shift, his mean, green eyes appeared liquorheavy. His protruding jaw dominated his profile followed by his high forehead. His long, slack hair threatened to bloom into a full-blown mullet, a hairstyle choice which did not combine well with his thin mustache, which made him look like he stepped right off a porn set.

  "You're up."

  "I know." As much as his last partner, Octavia Burke, put him off, better her patient brand of ballbusting than the too-eager grind of his latest one. Of course, bumping Octavia up to captain left a "brother" slot available which they quickly filled with one Cantrell Williams. African-American. Average height. Shaved bald. Clean-cut. Cigarette smoker, Kools his brand of choice. Leather hat. Leather trenchcoat. Young, smart, and arrogant – worse, he was good enough natural police to back up his arrogance. He handled each case as if it might serve as an opportunity for a grade promotion. The only things he lacked were people skills and experience. His "aggressive assertiveness" – evaluation speak for pushy – earned him a rep as a glory hound, a rep he did little to dispel. He doubleparked in front of the playground at the Phoenix Apartments, his face caught in the slightly haloed gleam in the emergency lights.

  "You ready to handle this on your own?" Lee turned off the ignition and let the engine cool for a minute.

  "Am I ready to go solo after being under your capable tutelage for a few cases? Yeah, I think I got this."

  "All you had to say was 'you're up'. Fuck me for caring."

  Moldy brown leaves puddled along the base of the black chain-link fence which ringed the outer boundaries of the apartments. Weeds and broken glass choked a sea of cracked pavement. Empty bottles of Colt 45 littered the dilapidated equipment that passed for a playground. Rust held the monkey bars together. The swings had been thrown over the top of the metal frame of the set, out of reach of any would-be user. The yellow school bus jungle gym had been tagged. RIP Alaina. RIP Conant. Nobody wanted to be here – not the police, not the media, not the paramedic, not the tenants – all equally prisoners in a cycle of well-meaning benevolence.

  "I take this seriously," Cantrell intoned a little too earnestly. Try as he did to keep an open mind about his partner, he recognized the half-a-cracker scent of festering resentment. "We speak for the dead. That's the job."

  "Screw this job. Screw the dead. Screw this neighborhood. You watch, no witnesses, nothing useful. We'll be lucky if we can even ID the vic. They don't care about these animals, even when they prey on them much less when they get killed."

  "Animals?" Cantrell arched an eyebrow.

  "You watch."

  Before he got out of the car, Cantrell muttered a prayer for the victims, the survivors, and their families. And then his partner. Though it was half-full and lukewarm, he gripped a Starbucks cup, toting it with the consciousness of an affectation.

  The city took on an entirely different pallor at night. Darkness had a way of enveloping any crime scene. No matter how many street lights, flashing lights of emergency services vehicles, the brightness of the moon, or lights from the surrounding buildings, shadows swam in deep pools around them. Where there was darkness, there was mystery. Lee studied the shadows, uncertain of the trick of the ambulance's lights on his eyes. Pairs of red dots glimmered at him. A half-dozen sets at least. Hate-tinged flecks glaring at him. He blinked. The dark remained a smooth velvet sea of ebony.

  Like red boxes in white trim, every bit like bricks in the wall of the Phoenix Apartments, three ambulances remained in front, without sound, with only their lights' intermittent flash acknowledging their presence. Police tape had been strung from tree to fence. Lee only grew irritated by the welling quiet he knew would soon settle on the gathering looky-loos. Full of sideways glances and growing stillness, as if a cloud of innocence descended on them with a spiritual anointing of silence.

  "I see angels. Snow angels." A homeless guy, in a tinfoil cap no less, waved his arms flapping in the snow only seen in his head.

  "I bet you do," a uniformed cop said as Lee and Cantrell approached the scene. "That kind of crazy had to be steeped in whiskey."

  The uniformed officer had that young cop look about him: thin, but muscular; dark sunglasses, and eager, with an arrogant bossiness to his manner. The rookie raised the tape to let them through. Cantrell ducked under. Shards of glass vials crunched underfoot. He paused to survey the remaining landscape.

  "I ain't ruining my new shoes stepping in that shit," Cantrell said.

  "You worried about this? Some of the shit you'll be walking through, you'll be begging for a scene this clean," Lee said.

  "We got a live one here," the uniformed officer said.

  "There was a survivor? He conscious?"

  "Uh, no. I meant it was a lively scene."

  "Look here, rook…" Lee rolled his eyes, the preamble tell to an apoplectic fit Cantrell usually found entertaining if not useful.

  "Why don't you stick to telling us what we got?" Cantrell cut him off and slipped on a pair of latex gloves. The red light bounced from their faces. The first body slumped against a wall. At first glance, he looked like a panhandler waiting for change. But his clothes were too new, clean-cut, fresh look. High forehead, eyes sunken in regret, thick-faced, heavy lips. Blood flared against his yellow vest.

  "Looks like multiple shooters. Don't know if these guys even got off a shot," Lee said.

  "Where are their guns?"

  "Exactly."

  "So, no guns recovered," Cantrell said.

  "Not even theirs?" Lee asked.

  "Someone needed souvenirs."

  "I doubt memories of spring break is what they have in mind." Annoyed by Cantrell's tight-assed fastidiousness, Lee strolled around the scene.

  The second body leaned out of the car, his blood mixed with a puddle that drained into the sewer. Thin, bright-eyed, the red lights caught in them making him appear possessed. His white teeth spread in a harlequin sneer across his face.

  Lee leaned over the body. At first he thought the dead boy was Juneteenth Walker, would-be assailant of Green, the former muscle for the Night organization. He had the same semi-scowl, the same years of hurt worn into his skin, worn like an ill-fitting jacket off the rack from Good Will. The images hit him all at once. The blood. The bodies. The death. Lee pictured Green lumbering toward him, holding a severed head in his hand. Bullets flying. His thigh ached, his body remembering its violation. Noting the boy's ashy knuckles and a short bus necklace, he was certain of only one thing: this mutt didn't deserve a cop standing over him.

  "What's his name?" Lee asked.

  "Don't know," the uniformed officer said.

  "DOB?"

  "Don't know."

  "So he's not going to be missed by anyone." Lee wanted to roll the body, but knew the coroner would jump his shit for weeks if he touched a body before he got there. "What else do we know?"

  "We know he was a part of a drug crew. Used to work for a dealer named Night," Cantrell said.

  "But you know they were strapped?" the uniformed officer asked.

  "Holy Virgin Mary's rotten pissflaps," Lee said. "Yeah, they were strapped. These fools can't floss without pulling out their nines like they were tugging on their junk."

  The last body had been worked over pretty good. An inelegant beating, his face punched in, jaw broken. Bruising around his chest from a close wound: execution-style, but there was no stippling. The way his body sprawled along the sidewalk, it was as if he were snuggling into a bed of concrete with the tarp serving as his only blanket.

  Cantrell hitched his pants up slightly and tucked his tie into his shirt. He imagined photos of the boys pinned by magnets on their mothers' refrigerators or framed on what passed for mantles or end tables. He humanized them to see them in schoolboy pictures full of hope and promise.

  "If I had to guess, this here was one of Night's stash houses, and from the look of things there was a firefight. Near as I can figure, an enforcer," Lee pointed to body number three then to number two, "and wheel man making a delivery or a pickup. Street soldier over there," Lee gestured to the first body. "Ambushed."

  "Tire treads?" Cantrell asked.

  "Nothing," the uniformed officer said.

  "Assailants on foot?"

  "Maybe." Lee's stomach churned – a queasy sensation that for some reason had him rubbing along his scar. To the casual observer, it appeared like he rubbed the sweat of his palms along his pants.

  "How they going to sneak up on an armed crew on high alert, take them all out, and disappear? That's why you detectives and I'm a lowly uniform. Earn them big bucks," the uniformed officer said.

  "Fuck you and your big bucks."

  Lee kicked at the tire leaning against the side of the building. "Stash's still here."

  "Cash still on the bodies." Cantrell flipped a pants pocket inside out to withdraw a roll of bills.

  "Rules out a robbery."

  "Rook, come over here."

  "What's up?" The uniformed officer saw the wad of bills. And that Cantrell saw that he saw.

  "You first on scene?" Cantrell asked.

  "Yeah."

  "See anything?"

  "What do you mean?"

"No one messing with the bodies?"

  "Not a soul on the scene." The uniform officer shifted nervously, afraid he'd missed something. Cantrell put a reassuring hand on his shoulder by way of dismissing him.

  "Bodies weren't picked clean," Lee said with mild surprise.

  "Hard to believe they were part of the same crew."

  "There was more than Night and Green holding that crew together. But you take them out…"

  "… and there's a mad scramble to…"

  "… hold the center." Caught up in the easy rhythm of Cantrell, a glimmer of hope once again flickered in Lee that he might actually be cut out to work with a partner.

  "I was going to say 'keep their shit together,' but OK." Cantrell grinned. No slack given. "How'd you know?"

  "These mooks make numbers three, four, and five to get popped."

  "Five?"

  "They caught a couple on night shift."

  "Shit," Cantrell said.

  "So let's take stock again." Lee tamped out a Marlboro and offered it to Cantrell, who waved him off as he took out a pack of Kools. "A mid-level dealer. An enforcer. A street dealer."

  "Someone sending a message."

  "New player in town. Or players. No one's safe."

  "Shit," Cantrell said. "So someone's cleaning house preparing to move in."

  "Yeah."

"How are we doing with witnesses?"

  "Why don't you canvass the Greek Chorus over there?" Lee asked.

  Hard faces glared from the fence. Lee returned their beady stares. Half-assed thugs probably with more questions than answers. A panoply of mean-mugging, concern, fear, and curiosity. In other words, the neighborhood in a snapshot. Lee decided to let Cantrell do the canvass. He'd probably have better luck with that brother-brother shit they do. And besides, Lee wasn't in the mood to bust any heads. The joy wasn't there tonight. All he could think about was the huge waste of it all. All the boys without fathers. He thought of his own father.

  Lee's old man didn't take any crap. He grew up dining on his father's stories, chewing them up and swallowing them until they became a part of him. Stories were like that. His father often wove the hard-luck tapestry of standing as his own man though he never stood a chance. His every career opportunity blocked at every conceivable turn. Better accounts handed to someone less deserving. Skipped over for promotions. Pay frozen or benefits cut back at the worst time. So much pain, bad luck, and anger could only be tempered by getting his load on in a bar. One night, the alcohol haze left him confused and he made a delivery to the wrong address, a neighborhood much like this. Robbed and beaten, his dad lost an eye. He was still a man though and made the most of his life. No excuses. In fact, soon as he got back on his feet, he went back to that neighborhood with a pipe and a few of his boys and showed them what for.

  On quiet nights, along with his thoughts, especially as he sifted through bullshit for a living, Lee was used to how people spun their particular angle on things and had learned to parse stories accordingly. Everyone was the hero in their own stories. Even his father. Lee imagined him begging for his wallet. On his knees pleading to not be hurt. For them to stop. He never lost that flicker of fear and doubt, that anxiousness when one of them neared. His father had been so larger than life, especially to Lee; to see him reduced to a helpless pile of bandages incapable of even wiping himself after soiling his bed sheets, the incident left an indelible mark of humiliation on him.

  Lee got back in the car and slammed the door.

  "Can't blame folks for not wanting to mark themselves as a witness," Cantrell said.

  "Oh, that's where you're wrong. I can blame them. And I do. They have only themselves to blame for this mess not getting any better." Lee flexed an insincere smile.

  "Not when they have crusading champions of justice like yourself for them to trust."

  "It's the white thing."

  "More the peckerwood thing." Cantrell didn't trip. He'd been handling racists all his life. At least he knew where he stood with this one. He set the coffee cup back in its holder, still half-full. "Similar to how I pretend every time you say 'they,' you ain't saying 'niggers.'"

  "I haven't said that."

  "Your lips say one thing, your heart says another."

"I bet you say that to all your dates."

 

Octavia Burke leaned back in her large leather chair. It sighed. She wore her brownish-black hair naturally. Freckles dotted her medium complexion on either side of her wide-ish nose. She shifted her broad shoulders along the seat, getting comfortable. Bridging her fingers on her chest, she enjoyed the earned authority of the seat. Captain Octavia. Her voice was fraught with an air of quiet thunder and brooked little nonsense, though most of her ire was aimed at Lee. The familiarity between them had morphed into something tense. No longer partnering with Lee meant not having to deal with his day-to-day nasty-ass attitude. Being a boss in his house meant that she still had to deal with his messes, though she was used to his brand of work ethic.

  "You said this case was a no-brainer," Octavia said.

  "Not that deep. One corner boy gets got by another corner boy. We're there to sift through the muck and paperwork until that corner boy gets got." Lee nodded at Cantrell for solidarity. Cantrell's gaze remained locked on the captain's desk.

  "So we don't have anything?" she reiterated.

  "Nope," Cantrell said.

  "The witnesses give a description?"

  "Vague. Average height. Average weight. Average age. Black. Male." Lee smirked after emphasizing the color. "You could've poked out my eye and fucked my socket after that revelation."

  "This file isn't vague. The body in the morgue isn't vague. I'm tired of vague. Get me something concrete." Octavia slapped the report on her desk. "Any ballistic matches?"

  "None." Lee leaned against the wall, his face a mix of smug and bitter. His hands fidgeted in his lap as if he didn't know where to place them to give off an air of command and control. He hated the way she squeezed into her office jacket whose buttons threatened to pop whenever she moved. He hated the way she flipped through paperwork rather than look at him. He hated the way that when she did look at him, she peered over her glasses. Stared down at him over the rims. Dismissed him with a glance.

  "Different shooter for each vic?"

  "Maybe. All the wounds were through and throughs. No shells or bullets recovered. And there were some questions about the wound tracks." Cantrell faced the captain, the desk between them a respectful gulf, his arms folded.

  "What sort of questions?"

  "They didn't specify. Said they'd get back to us." Cantrell hid his frustration with his partner's unnecessary button pushing of their boss. He'd heard they used to be partners. The smart play meant they had someone upstairs in their corner. Leave it to Lee to sour that relationship to curdled milk.

  "One other thing, this isn't just street guys," Lee said. "We're talking lieutenants, wholesalers… the infrastructure of the organization."

  "Professional and clean," Cantrell concurred.

  "For now. Only a matter of time before a civilian catches a stray bullet."

  "The problem with a street war is that someone always wins."

  "And we're left to clean up the mess." Lee shrugged to mask his disgust. He hated the power vacuum left by Night's demise and Dred having faded so far into the background, so damn untouchable he was reduced to being strictly a rumor. It felt like unfinished business.

  "What's your next step?" Octavia asked.

  "Going to tap my informant."

  "Reliable?"

  "The best." Lee grinned. A boy's gleam at being trapped in a toy store, though it had a lascivious edge to it. Though Lee had a way of making even talking about cotton candy sound lascivious.

  "Work your cases. Hard," she emphasized. "We need to see some movement sooner than later. Something to reassure the public."

  "And the bosses."

  "Them, too."

  "We'll get right on it, ma'am," Cantrell said.

 

"'We'll get right on it, ma'am.' You ever get tired of bowing and scraping?" Lee asked.

  The neon bloodshot eye logo of the Red Eye Café seared Cantrell Williams' already tired retinas. A 24hour bar and breakfast joint, though the café couldn't serve alcohol on Sunday mornings because of Indiana's blue laws. Small burgundy lights blinked along the window ledges as he stewed at his faux wood table. The place was the province of the young and used-up, as the hookers and strippers of downtown Indianapolis often strolled in here after their shifts. Cantrell ignored him as he bit into his Red Eye Chili Omelette.

  Life as a detective was mostly this: inaction as they waited for a body to fall, paperwork, and figuring out where to eat. The murders played on his mind though; despite his cynical bravado, there was a grain of truth to Lee's sentiment. Soon this would be yesterday's news. As it was, three teen males slain in a shooting in a neighborhood no one cared about only rated a page three mention. Though he had no feel for Captain Burke: in his experience, all bosses cared about was to keep things local. If feds came in, things had a way of getting stupid. A high enough profile murder or too many bodies dropping or someone gets it in their head that there was a nefarious ganger of some sort to make their bones on, all bets were off and stupidity reigned.

  Until then, Cantrell would work things his way. Build relationships with the community. A Pastor Winburn had been steadily building a rep as a community activist. Some knucklehead named King was busy taking a more direct approach, staying just this side of being a vigilante. Or at least being charged as one. Maybe he could rap with some of the local gang leaders, lean on them to lower the temperature in the neighborhood. That was Cantrell's vision.

  "… place is a toilet. Always has been."

  "Not always." Cantrell didn't even have to make the pretense of catching up on the white noise his partner's chatter usually faded to. He always came back to his favorite topic: the Phoenix Apartments.

  "Even when it was the Meadows, it was a cockroach-infested sewer filled with rats who thought of little else but eating, slinging drugs, and shitting all over the place."

  "My moms didn't seem to have a problem raising us here." Eyes at half-mast, his body knotted with frustration and anger. Cantrell planted his palm on the table and leaned toward Lee.

  "Oh, what, so… we gonna have a thing now?"

  "Ain't no thing to be had." Cantrell relaxed and let loose a long sigh.

  Lee turned away in a paranoid sulk. He wasn't racist. He didn't care how many times he was called cracker or peckerwood, he knew what he was and how he worked. Citizens got a fair shake, but animals were treated as animals. Police – true po-lice – dealt with the worst each culture had to offer and it had a way of coloring a person's view on that culture. Including his own, though, more often than not, he was summoned to black neighborhoods, not his own. That wasn't his fault, just the cold, hard real of his life. No point in bullshitting it.

  Like this one time, this black student – honor roll, track star, showed real promise – got killed by three white kids. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong side of them tweaking. Lee hunted those bastards down as if they'd killed his own kin. Didn't care how long it took, how many sessions in the box, how many times he had to pull them in, he was going to get them. And he did. He wasn't a racist.

  "Unclench, motherfucker. Damn. You let this stress get to you and it'll kill just as surely as a bullet."