who had bestowed it. I didn’t wonder whether pure evil existed. I had seen it firsthand. I pulled back, the mother cradling her child evidence enough of what had happened.
The rest of the room was a mess, clothes lying on the?oor where they’d been dropped, bed unmade, makeup and jewelry littering the dresser lining the wall opposite the bed. The disarray was natural, the product of people who never cleaned up after themselves. It wasn’t the result of the killer tossing the room in search of something.
The jewelry looked real, though I was no judge. The last diamond I’d bought was for Joy’s engagement ring twenty-eight years ago. Like the drugs left on the card table downstairs, there was enough jewelry worth taking even if it wasn’t enough to kill for.
I reminded myself that this was a crack house. I’d found the drugs and jewelry. Now it was time to look for the guns and money. I tried a series of deep breaths to sti?e the shakes, glad that it worked for the moment.
Using a pen to pull open drawers without leaving fingerprints or disturbing those already there, I did a quick and dirty search of the bedroom and bathroom. I found a few hundred dollars in cash, not the stacks of twenties I would have expected. That didn’t mean money wasn’t hidden elsewhere in the house or that the killer hadn’t found it in the bedroom and decided it was the one thing worth stealing.
The guns were hidden behind a panel in the bathroom wall. A couple of sawed-off shotguns, three 9mm Smith amp; Wessons, and enough ammunition to make a point. It wasn’t exactly an arsenal, but it was more than one man needed to protect hearth and home. The serial numbers on the weapons had been filed off, making them untraceable and worth more than the drugs or jewelry to someone in the business of killing people. They would have been easy to find and easy to steal.
My search was interrupted by a whimpering sound coming from beneath the bed. I lifted the blanket draped over the foot of the bed, finding a dog, its paws covering its nose, peeking at me. I scooped the dog up, examining the honey-colored, curly-haired mutt, guessing its weight at around fifteen pounds, confirming that it was a she. The dog licked my face and peed, the shower just missing my pants.
“You go, girl,” I told the dog, setting her down and checking her collar, reading the name on the tag. “Stick with me until we find a new home for you, Ruby.”
The dog followed me back down the stairs. I picked her up so that she wouldn’t step in the blood, and took her outside. The rain had stopped. The yellow patio light faded to black at the edge of the concrete slab. The dog ran toward a tree on the side of the yard, disappearing in the darkness. I heard her scampering back and forth until she found a suitable spot, quiet as she relieved herself once more. Satisfied, she trotted back to me, jumping up and planting wet paws on my leg. I reached down to pet her, finding a twenty-dollar bill matted against her wet coat.
I peered into the night outside the ring of patio light, unable to see anything more than the outline of a tree. Lights were on in houses on either side and in the houses that backed up to these. It was the middle of the night, but no one was asleep. In spite of all the lights, deep pockets of darkness remained, black boundaries cutting people off from one another. The helicopter closed for another pass.
The killer hadn’t stolen the drugs or jewelry that had been left in plain sight or taken the guns he could have easily found. He’d left bloody footprints leading out the back door onto the patio, his trail disappearing either because of the rain or because he’d removed whatever he’d been wearing over his shoes. Now Ruby, the newly orphaned dog, had retrieved a twenty-dollar bill from Marcellus’s backyard. A bone, I would have believed. A double sawbuck required a leap of faith I was in no mood to take.
I retraced Ruby’s route, wet, spongy ground squishing beneath my shoes as I approached the tree, the shakes starting their drumbeat in my torso. My eyesight adjusted to the darkness enough that I could see clumps of twenty-dollar bills scattered amidst fallen leaves. I guessed there was at least a couple of thousand dollars, maybe more, lying on the ground. Maybe enough to steal. Maybe enough to kill five people for. Then why leave it out in the rain? Ruby had followed me, nosing the money, pawing at it.
The police helicopter hovered overhead, capturing me in a cone of blinding light. I shielded my eyes, squinting past the tree, catching a glimpse of a silhouetted figure running away, a?eeting sense of recognition washed out by a shouted command from behind to stay where I was. I recognized Troy Clark’s voice over the din of the chopper, wondering why he would give me such an order. Then I knew why. He didn’t recognize me. I was bent over at the waist, my face buried against my knees, shaking so badly I could barely stand.
Chapter Eight
Latrell was smoothing Oleta’s hair when he heard the sirens. He cradled the back of her head with one hand, massaging the tangled strands of hair clotted around her face and unraveling knots with the other as he lay her head gently onto the plastic tarp lying on the basement?oor.
Oleta’s features were smooth, her dark skin fading to a dingy gray. Any pain she may have felt when he crushed her throat had passed without leaving a furrow in her brow or a grimace in her cheeks. Latrell had released her from that pain as surely as he had released her from whatever torment had brought her to that place in the middle of the night, in the rain, beneath that tree, as if she had been waiting for him. Maybe she’d come there to die, he thought, and that’s why she had thanked him.
It didn’t matter to Latrell any more than it mattered that he’d killed her. She was as dead as his mother, as dead as Jalise. They were all the same. Finished with her hair, he brushed out the wrinkles in her dress, his hands and heart as steady as when he’d walked out of Marcellus’s house.
He cocked his ear toward the window well near the top of the basement wall. The rain beat against the glass, a weak accompaniment to the wailing police cars rushing toward the neighborhood. Latrell listened, calculating how long it would be before someone with a badge knocked on his door asking whether he’d seen or heard anything unusual in the house behind his.
The police would block off the streets, sneak up on Marcellus’s house like they were making a surprise attack, uncertain of who or what they would find inside. Once they knew, they’d start searching for witnesses. He had plenty of time. No reason to hurry. After they were gone, he’d bury Oleta in the basement.
Tomorrow Latrell would take the gun, goggles, and bloody galoshes to the cave and everything would be right. Until then, all he had to do was be smart. He could do that.
He unlaced his shoes, peeled off each layer of his clothes until he was naked. He tucked one edge of the tarp under her body, rolling her over, wrapping her inside the plastic, and securing it with duct tape until she was mummified.
The basement was dark, damp from a leak along the base of the west wall, with water trickling into a drain in the center of the concrete?oor. A washtub sat on a stand, a faucet sticking out from the wall. Latrell connected a garden hose to the faucet, turned the water on strong enough to wash the?oor but not loud enough to be heard, and rinsed his feet before he went back upstairs.
He showered, nearly scalding himself with hot water, scrubbing hard. Afterward he changed into boxers and a ratty black T-shirt he slept in, padding downstairs to wait in the kitchen. When the police came, he’d tell them that he’d been asleep, the storm mixing with his dreams. He’d say he woke to the sirens, turned on his lights, and was unable to fall back asleep, like everyone else.
He repeated it again and again, the soundtrack to the image he saw when he closed his eyes: he was standing at his front door, rubbing his chin, answering the cop’s questions, tired but polite, believing the story he told. Latrell sat in a chair at his kitchen table and waited, nodding his head with the repeated rhythm of what he would say, what he decided was true, what he would make them believe.
The window from his kitchen gave him a view of the back of Marcellus’s house. The porch light came on. A man came out the back door carrying a dog. Sat the dog on the ground. Stood still and quiet. The dog disappeared, then came back. The man bent down to the dog, then followed the dog into the shadows where Latrell couldn’t see them, though he knew where they were.
He heard the helicopter, felt the wash of the rotors breaking against his house, and blinked when the spotlight lit the backyard like it was Yankee Stadium. The man he’d seen was in the center of the spotlight, bent over. Even from where he was watching, Latrell could tell that there was something wrong with the man, like he’d had a seizure. The cops surrounded him, one of them taking him away. Latrell went back to his kitchen chair and
