Disembodied Bones, page 3
“It couldn’t hurt you any to check out Whitechapel, M’su Detective,” said Leonie plaintively. “Just go and talk to him some. Look and see does he have a record of…hurting little children. That’s not too much to ask and you don’t have to tell anyone who told you this.”
Roosevelt’s eyebrows drew together into a scowl. A sneaky suspicion was beginning to form in his mind. It was the kind of suspicion that cops got often, that they were being lied to, and that the liar didn’t care what they said in order to get something they wanted. “I get it. You got some kind of gripe with this Whitechapel dude? Maybe your papa has some kind of money problem with him? So you point a finger at him and he goes away for a while and your problem is solved? Is that it? I don’t know how you found out about my gold pen. Well, hell, I guess I asked enough people about it, so that’s how, but this kind of stunt isn’t going to get you jack-diddly-squat.”
Leonie folded her hands together on her lap and waited for him to pause. When he did she said, “It’s in the passenger seat of your wife’s car, I think it’s called a Jetta and it’s this pretty green color. You were riding with her somewhere and looking for a Kleenex, when it fell out and got in between the seats. Call her. She’ll go out to look at her car and find it.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Roosevelt shook his head. “This is some little stupid game to you. I’m gonna go call your daddy and he’s gonna come down here and explain why you’re doing this, and when that’s all settled maybe you won’t go to juvenile detention for a few weeks for making a false police report, but it won’t be because I didn’t recommend it.”
Leonie’s lips flattened into a grim line. This was why the family didn’t trust outsiders. Then she sighed. She would have to do it herself. She didn’t know if she were strong enough. She could call some of the family. They might help her, but this was outside their normal capacity for the family’s gifts. She wasn’t quite sure if they would believe her either. Her mother hadn’t the day before. She hadn’t been quite sure if she believed it herself, until she read the headlines and saw Douglas Trent’s photograph on the front page of the newspaper. So that left her and only her. She wasn’t weak but she wasn’t a match for a full grown man. Somehow, she thought unflinchingly, I will find a way to rescue Douglas.
“You stay right here,” Roosevelt instructed gruffly. “I’m gonna have the gal up front keep an eye on you, so you don’t go anywhere. You got that, little lady?”
Leonie nodded. Go ahead, turn your back for a moment. I’m pretty fast for my age. And I’m skinny enough to slip through all kinds of narrow gaps.
Roosevelt kept an eye on Leonie until he reached Eloise Hunter. When he reached the counter, he turned away to say to the older woman, “You watch that little girl.”
Eloise rebelliously glared up at Roosevelt and then she tilted her head to look around his large body. The expression faded away in puzzlement. She said, “Uh, Dee-tective Hemstreet.”
“Yeah?” snarled Roosevelt, aggravated already because he’d wasted twenty minutes he could have been putting something in his empty, growling stomach, when he knew he’d be spending the rest of the day making cold calls to surrounding parishes about the Trent boy until his ear felt like a slice of warmed over cauliflower. The worst part was that he had a gut feeling about the kid. The child was already dead, and they were just doing a search and recover now. They could only hope that the perpetrator left enough evidence to put him under Angola for the rest of his natural born life. Compared to Roosevelt’s empty stomach, that feeling by itself was enough to really piss him off, and he didn’t need crap walking in off the street trying to feed him a line that no one in their right mind would ever believe.
“Ah don’t see that little girl,” said Eloise.
“Oh, for the love of Christ,” Roosevelt snapped and turned back abruptly. “She’s right there. Are you blind or something-”
But Leonie Simoneaud was gone. She wasn’t anywhere in the waiting room and the electronic doors to the outside were slowly sliding shut, as if someone had just passed through them. However, no one was within sight.
-
It lies behind stars and under the highest hills,
And empty holes it solidly fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, and kills laughter.
What is it?
It is darkness.
Chapter Three
This is a thing all things devour:
Birds, beasts, trees, even a simple flower;
It gnaws iron, and bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal.
It slays all in its path, and will ruin many a town,
And it will beat the mighty mountain down.
What is it?
What am I? I am buried so deep, piled over with heavy stones… The words continued to clatter inside Leonie’s head. It spun around like the little pieces of paper on a record player upon which small children drop globs of paint. A little bit of red here, some blue over there, spiraling in an unending circle, a mess of paint left on a white sheet.
A shaking voice said tremulously, “You want a banana, little girl?”
Leonie opened her eyes and discovered a stop sign in her line of sight. The car she was sitting in had briefly paused at a four-way intersection. It was an old Impala with its engine rumbling like the ramshackle purr of a battle-scarred tomcat. The seats were once red leather but now were orange strips held together with green duct tape. It smelled like an animal had been peeing in the car and a large plastic Jesus hung from the rear view mirror overseeing his meager domain. His eyes twinkled intermittently with faint red lights and Leonie was a little disconcerted until she realized it was battery operated.
A cocoa colored hand that also showed its age held out a bright yellow banana with a Chiquita sticker and Leonie also realized she was starving. She hadn’t eaten breakfast and lunch had passed while she was waiting on the policeman. She said politely, “Thank you.”
The driver was an elderly black woman. She had a red scarf wrapped around her head that covered up snow white hair. The scarf matched the red linen dress she wore and the flat red leather pumps on her feet. Her features were drooping with time’s eternal march but her black eyes held an intelligent gleam. She shook the banana impatiently at Leonie.
Leonie took it quickly and the woman said, “My name is Pamonda McCully, little miss thing. I gots to get to church right quick because they counting on my green bean casserole to save the congregation. That’s the smell you be smelling.” She indicated the back, but all Leonie could smell was cat piss, even though she could see an aluminum-foil wrapped dish sitting on the rear bench seat. Pamonda went on as if Leonie had answered, “I was going to et that nan-noo, on account I got the diabetes, but I plumb forgot and I be thinking you need it more than I do.”
“I need to get to Sugarberry Lane,” said Leonie. It was the second time she had said it to the older woman. She carefully peeled the banana and all but stuffed it whole into her mouth, only then comprehending how hungry she was. The peel went into a plastic garbage bag attached to the glove box.
Pamonda chuckled and almost lost her dentures, absently stuffing them back in with shaking fingers. “I done heard you the first time. And I told you I’m going down that way but I cain’t take you all the way there.” She tut-tutted. “A little girl like ya’ll, taking rides from strangers. I’m good folk, but you just cain’t tell who be driving around. I mean, Jack the Ripper probably be driving a van ifin he was alive today, and we all heard tell about that white boy up to Washington. Some of those gals ain’t never been identified.”
But Pamonda McCully had arrived, offering a ride in her ancient Chevrolet and all Leonie could feel was relief that she was moving toward Douglas Trent again. There was relief and then there was guilt at having wasted her time at the police department. She thought she could convince them, but all the detective had been convinced of was that she was the guilty one.
“Sure ‘nough, you a hungry little chile. Don’t they feed you at home?” Pamonda continued as if they were both participating in an active conversation. “You lucky I went to see my daughter. She be sixty this year. She be getting old, I tell you what. Talking about getting her social s’cur’ty and retiring to a trailer home near Alexandria to be near her daughter. Oh, silly woman. She don’t have ‘nough money for that.”
Pamonda went on about her daughter for almost ten minutes before they reached her church. Leonie wasn’t sure but she thought she was about two or three miles away from where she needed to be. She thanked the old woman and jogged off down the street. Pamonda stopped to watch her go, saying, “And they say things about black folks being different. Huh.” She looked around, immediately sighting another elderly black woman climbing out of a Lincoln Continental. “Latrenda Humphrey! You git your wide, couch sitting butt over here and git my green bean casserole out for me! I know ain’t nothing wrong with your back!”
The other woman laughed at Pamonda. “Oh shut up, Miz McCully. Ain’t nothing wrong wit’ your back neither. And what you doing wit’ a little white girl?”
Pamonda considered. The little girl with the long black hair and the haunted face had vanished around the corner. “I don’t rightly know. That chile, she don’t say much.”
•
Roosevelt Hemstreet sat at his desk, staring at his phone. He wasn’t quite sure why he was staring at his phone, only that he was, and he didn’t like where his thoughts were taking him. What was particularly troubling him was that he had a vague recollection of riding somewhere with his wife in her VW Jetta and cursing loudly because he couldn’t find a Kleenex. There always seemed to be an overabundance of dust in that car and he sneezed each and every time he got into it. But that time, there wasn’t a Kleenex to be found and he’d had to use that old tried and true method of nose cleaning, the shirttail.
His wife, Rowena, had been indignant. “I know your aunt raised you better than that.”
And he had said, “You got to use what you got, and I got a shirttail.” But not after he had forcefully rifled through all of his pockets just to make sure, and then he had turned his head to make sure Roosevelt, Jr. and baby Stephanie didn’t see him do it. He certainly hadn’t wanted Junior to repeat his offense and then speedily offer up the excuse that he had seen, “Daddy did it!” as if were written in stone and carried down from the holiest of mountains.
Roosevelt stared at the telephone. But he’d done it, pretty much the way Leonie Simoneaud had said. How can that little girl know about that? The Lake People are supposed to be real different. All those rumors. They know things. I’ve heard it a dozen times in the last three years. They keep to themselves because they have secrets. All kinds of secrets. He looked up and saw three detectives walk inside the offices. They nodded at him but all looked preoccupied. One of them hit the coffee table immediately and proceeded to stuff half the last chocolate éclair into his mouth.
Roosevelt sighed and picked up the phone. Rowena answered on the third ring. When she realized who it was she said, “Rosy, you find that little boy yet? Roosevelt, Jr. wants to go to the mall to play in the arcade and I just don’t know what to say to him.”
“Ro, honey,” he said. “Would you do me a favor? Is the baby down?”
“Sure, she just fell asleep and Junior’s in the backyard with the neighbor’s kids. I told them no playing in the front unless an adult is with them-”
“Would you put the phone down and go see if I dropped my gold pen in your car.” Roosevelt closed his eyes for a moment. “I seem to recall I was fooling around with it when I was in your car a few weeks ago. Maybe it fell in between the seats.”
Rowena didn’t say anything for a full fifteen seconds. “Okay, Rosy. I’ll be right back.”
It took her five minutes, but Roosevelt tapped his fingers on the desk and listened absently to the other detectives discuss various known pedophiles in the area and how they were planning to shake them down for information about Douglas Trent. He picked up a Bic and doodled on the desktop calendar. First he wrote down the name, Whitechapel. Then he wrote down, Leonie Simoneaud. Then he wrote the address she had said. Somewhere on Sugar something Lane. But it’s all bullshit. Of course it is. Not gonna need this. Nope.
Ro came back on with a husky laugh. “Very funny, Roosevelt. I’m surprised you didn’t arrest the whole family for stealing your gold pen. What did you want, for me to spend an hour digging through my car? Is this some kind of joke?”
He wasn’t sure exactly what to feel. Relief or anger? Relief that he hadn’t scared off a little girl who had valid information about a missing child or anger that such a young woman would try to fool a police officer. Which one? Oh, hell, I don’t know. “No, it wasn’t a joke. I thought maybe you’d find the pen out there. I mean, I’ve looked everywhere for it and you know how much my aunt meant to me.”
“But Rosy,” Ro’s voice was quizzical and amused at the same time. “It was there. Way down deep in between the seats. I thought you were pulling my leg…”
“You found my pen?” Roosevelt dropped the Bic on the table. It rolled to the edge and clattered onto the floor. “My gold Cross pen?”
“Sure, baby. Larger than life. Glad to see it, but I don’t see how you could have known it was there. Unless you suddenly remembered it falling out of your pocket?”
“I’ll call you back later, Ro. Love you.”
Roosevelt put the phone down before his wife could answer. He looked down at the doodles and the names he’d written.
Another patrolman entered the offices and announced loudly, “All right, Eloise is pissed off at someone up here.” He glanced down at a piece of paper in his hand. “Some detective talked to a little girl earlier. A Lee-Lee Simon-something or other. And her daddy is waiting downstairs, and boy is he mad. I ain’t going down to explain to Miz Eloise that-”
“Hey, Gerald,” Roosevelt called to one of the detectives. “You know anything about a guy named Whitechapel? Maybe some kind of kiddie-molester?”
Gerald Ritchie was a detective sergeant and ten years older than Roosevelt. He’d lived in Shreveport all his life and had been a police officer for half that life. For all intents and purposes he knew just about everything about Shreveport. And he knew a lot more about the criminal element in the town. “Whitechapel?” he repeated, a frown wrinkling his bulldog-like face. “Whitechapel. It seems to me like I’ve heard that name somewhere. Lemme think about it. Why, Rosy, what you know about it? This guy has something to do with the Trent kid?”
Roosevelt frowned. “I dunno. Just a name that came up.” He stood up and took the paper from the patrolman. “I’ll talk to Mr. Simoneaud.”
•
Leonie didn’t know what the time was, because she’d forgotten to put on the little Timex watch with the Minnie Mouse on it. It was sitting on her nightstand next to a book about dreams that she’d borrowed from Michel Quenelle who was going to medical school in the fall. He never minded answering her endless questions about the family’s abilities.
But Michel was certainly smart enough that he would have remembered to put on his watch. He had already finished a pre-medical degree, summa cum laude, and Leonie knew what that meant because she’d looked it up in the school dictionary. However, now she had neither the watch nor Michel. Instead she looked up at the sun and judged that it was close to three o’clock. She’d wasted so much time, but she could still feel Douglas inside the large house. Alone in a dark room, he was so frightened. He was trying to keep his eyes open but he was becoming so very tired.
Her hands rested on two wrought iron bars of the fence that surrounded the Whitechapel house. There didn’t seem to be a way into the fence other than the main gate, so she slowly circled the exterior, looking for something that would aid her. There might be a tree that she could climb or some bit of broken fence that would allow her through. Or she could simply ring the bell on the buzzer that she saw next to the gate. She could, but why would the man let her in? Furthermore, she had the feeling that for the moment Douglas was the only living thing inside.
The chain and padlock were still on the front gate and Leonie decided that the road just inside the gate was little traveled. There were blades of grass and weeds springing up in the cracks of the pavement as if no car regularly drove along its uneven surface. A house this big, she thought, might have…two entrances? And I’ll find the other one.
Half way around the large perimeter, Leonie found a tree growing next to the fence. If all the branches within ten feet of the ground had not been trimmed, it would have been a good way to get inside. But someone was conscious of this fact and neatly cut the canopy so that it was far above her head. She chewed on her lower lip in concentration and was unaware that she’d made it begin to bleed.
But there was another tree a full fifteen feet away from the fence that someone had dismissed as a potential avenue of entry for thieves and would be rescuers. Its lower limbs were intact, Leonie noted with no little amount of pleasure. What they hadn’t perceived was that Leonie, who was undeniably the queen of all family children in the art of tree climbing, could easily scale it. And from the furthermost tree’s taller, outstretched limbs she could access the tree closest to the fence. She would simply lower herself from a limb drooping over the inside of the fence until she was hanging by her hands and drop onto the private property where she so desperately needed to be.
As Leonie did just that, she didn’t think about how she might get back outside the fence.
•
“Leonie was here and you simply let her walk out the door, n’est pas?” the irate Jacques Simoneaud asked heatedly, spreading his arms wide in an unmistakably Gallic manner. He turned to the younger man who had introduced himself as Louis Padeaon, a name Roosevelt Hemstreet recognized as the one Leonie had mentioned as having driven her there. Jacques rattled off a stream of angry bastardized French and Roosevelt didn’t need translation to understand that Jacques was berating Louis soundly for allowing Leonie to get out of his sight.
