Caprice; McKenzie grew pale under his already light complexion.
“Ignore them. They’re just playing.” But she put the window up.
“It’s not that. How can people live like this?”
Taylor glanced at him. “Do you think they have another choice?”
“Yes. They could try. They could get a job instead of having babies so they can collect more food stamps for beer. Have you ever been inside one of their apartments? They’ve got better electronics than most yuppies. Where’s the money coming from? Certainly nothing legal. And if they have enough to trick out their homes, why in the world would they choose to live here? I’ve never understood it.”
That was quite a speech.
“To use a terrible cliche, McKenzie, it’s not that black and white. I want all of them to get jobs, as well, to stop running crack and heroin, to clean this shit place up and try to make a better life. You give them driveways and pretty houses, the crime rates dwindle. Look at what HUD did with the Hope IV grants-John Henry Hale, Preston Taylor, Vine Hill are all clean, safe places. It’s amazing the difference architecture and bright colors can make. But down here, they’re still in the land time forgot. The power of a few overrides the desires of the many. They’re scared. They’ve been brainwashed not to trust anyone who wants to help them. The dealers and pimps threaten the women, rape them, force them into this life. They terrorize the children, conscript them into the game by making them run the drugs from the buy to the sale. I agree, they should want out, and I applaud the ones who try. It’s sad, but it’s out of our hands. All we can do is enforce the law to the best of our abilities.”
Father Victor’s Chevy Lumina slid in behind Taylor’s Caprice. She and McKenzie got out of the car and met him by the trunk. It was department policy that a clergy member attend all death notifications. It was a welcome policy; having a spiritual guide along certainly helped.
“Ready?” she asked the chaplain.
“As I’ll ever be. Detective McKenzie? I’m Father Victor.” The two men shook hands. The chaplain’s blue eyes were sad, and Taylor realized that he’d started to go gray. His predecessor, Father Ross, had been stolen away by a diocese in Maine just two weeks earlier. Father Victor had been the backup chaplain. But Taylor knew the Father from around town. He’d been a fixture in the archdiocese for years, was a priest at the Cathedral. She knew he was in his late forties, but didn’t know his exact age.
“It’s good to meet you, sir,” McKenzie replied. Taylor glanced at him sharply. He seemed deferential to the priest. Catholic, maybe? With a name like McKenzie, it was a good chance.
They turned to the building that hopefully housed some answers about Allegra Johnson.
Taylor ignored the rude gestures, the propositions and threats. She walked through the manufactured similitude of the run-down buildings to the front door. The screen was cut. The wooden door stood open. The homes had been renovated just a few years earlier; they were already falling in on themselves again. No one cared enough to worry about upkeep.
They knocked. A cracked voice yelled, “Come in.”
Taylor rested her hand lightly on her weapon, just force of habit entering a strange building. They entered the cramped ground-floor apartment. The walls were paneled with dark walnut. Lace curtains, yellowed with cigarette smoke, hung limply over the window. Taylor could see a bullet hole in one pane. The carpet was a dirty orange shag, about a million years old, that didn’t quite reach the four corners of the room. Fetid despair hung from every corner like deserted cobwebs.
Wrinkling her nose, Taylor took the four steps that led her into the kitchen. Small things scuttled away from her feet-mice, roaches, silverfish? Taylor didn’t know, didn’t want to know. She immediately realized why the home was such a mess-there was an old woman sitting at the tiny, unstable kitchen table. Her eyes were milky white, made more opaque by the contrast with her blue-black skin. She was old, very, very old. Her blind eyes searching for her guests. Taylor bit back a curse. The woman should be in a home with people to take care of her, not living on her own.
There was something akin to recognition behind the woman’s blank eyes. For a moment, it seemed they were alone, just the two of them in the putrid little kitchen. She looked right into Taylor’s soul. Taylor got goose bumps, rubbed her hands up and down her arms to shake off the creepy feeing. She stopped a foot away and didn’t stretch out her hand to shake.
“Ma’am? I’m Detective Jackson with Metro Homicide. This is Detective McKenzie, and our chaplain, Father Victor. Do you know a young woman by the name of Allegra Johnson?”
“She dead?” the woman asked.
“Ma’am, are you related to Miss Johnson?”
“She my grandbaby. She dead?” she asked again.
“What’s your full name, ma’am?” Father Victor asked softly.
“Ethel Johnson. My girl’s dead,” she said with finality, then started to cry, silent and haunting, tears slipping unchecked down her mahogany cheeks.
Taylor recognized the tone in the old woman’s voice. Despair, tinged with irony. With the knowledge that there would be no other reason for a police officer to be in her home other than to inform with bad news. Her shoulders slumped a little, and Taylor moved closer. She hated that she had to bring a lonely old woman so much pain, but she had to press on, needed to get as much information as she could.
“Yes, ma’am. We found Allegra’s body late yesterday. We matched her fingerprints to prints in the system this morning.” Taylor had brought a picture to do the notification, a morgue shot, but that was a moot point. “Is there any way we could do a formal identification? A picture of Allegra, perhaps? We want to be absolutely sure we’re talking about the same girl.”
“Gots a picture in her bedroom down the hall. That should do it for you. That Tyrone finally beat her to death, huh?”
“Who is Tyrone, ma’am? Her boyfriend?”
“Haw,” the woman spit out. “Boyfriend. Girl, child like that, she got herself a pimp. A sugar daddy. Tyrone Hill been whoring her out, give her the drugs. Allegra been acting a fool for a while now. I told her it would come to no good. I told her that man would kill her, one way or the other. She don’t listen to her Gran, though.”
“Do her parents live close by?”
“Her daddy’s in Riverbend. Three strikes. Her momma done died when she was ten. I been raisin’ her since. Best I can, leastways. The good Lord don’t always give us the right tools to do His bidding.” She waved a hand toward her face. Prophetic blindness, it seemed.
A young woman, probably in her late teens, came through the front door into the kitchen with a baby on her hip. Curiosity was obviously getting the better of the neighborhood.
She stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. “Miss Ethel, what’s dis about? Why da police here?”
The grandmother just snorted. Taylor reintroduced herself.
“May I ask your name, miss?” Taylor said.
The woman regarded her suspiciously for a few moments, then said, “D’Andra. I’m her cousin. Allegra be dead?”
“Yes,” Taylor answered.
“She hurt bad?”
Taylor glanced at the grandmother, who was leaning forward a bit. She had no intention of going into detail, but she still hated this part.
“Allegra was very, very thin. We don’t have all the answers, but it seems she starved to death. Did she ever have any issues with anorexia?”
D’Andra just looked at her like she was an idiot. The baby started to squirm, and she set it down on the filthy floor. It scooted under the table on all fours. Jesus.
“Let’s back up. When was the last time you saw Allegra?”
“She been gone for ages,” D’Andra said.
“How long is ages? Weeks? Months?”
“’Bout three weeks.”
“And you didn’t report her missing?” McKenzie asked.
This time both women laughed joylessly. D’Andra spoke first. “Why would we go and do something like dat? Din’t know if she were off with her man, or what. Like you’d ever even give a shit to look for her? Come on, brother. I weren’t born yestaday.”
