He hung up the phone, muttering obscenities to himself, but precisely whom or what he was cursing, he didn't know. He started to dial the number for the city editor, then stopped. What could he tell him? Just then he heard a noise at the door and looked up to see Bruce Wilcox. The detective seemed pale.
'Where's Tanny?' he asked.
'Around. He left me here to wait for him. I thought he was looking for you. What did you find out?'
Wilcox shook his head. 'I can't believe I screwed up, he answered.
'Did the lab find anything?'
'I just can't believe I didn't check the goddamn shithouse back then.' Wilcox tossed a couple of sheets of paper onto the desk. 'You don't have to read them,' he said. 'What they found was material resembling blood residue on a shirt, jeans, and the rug. Resembling, for Christ's sake. And that was looking through a microscope. All had deteriorated almost to the point of invisibility. Three years of shit, lime, dirt, and time. There wasn't a hell of a lot left. I watched that lab tech spread out the shirt and it, like, almost fell apart when he started to poke at it with tweezers. Anyway, not a damn thing that's conclusive. They're gonna send it all off to a fancier lab down in Tallahassee, but who knows what they'll come up with. The technician wasn't real optimistic'
Wilcox paused, taking a slow, long breath. 'Of course, you and I know why those things were there. But getting up and saying they were evidence of anything, well, we're a long ways from being able to say that. Damn! If I found them three years ago, when everything was fresh, you know, they just dissolve that shit and stuff right off and there's the blood.' He looked up at Cowart. 'Joanie Shriver's blood. But now, they're just a couple of pieces of tired old clothes. Damn.'
The detective paced the office. 'I can't believe how I screwed up,' he said again. 'Screwed up. Screwed up. Screwed up. My first goddamn big case.'
He was clenching his fists tightly, then releasing them before tightening them once again into a ball. In, out. In, out. Cowart could see the detective's muscles shifting about beneath his shirt. The high-school wrestler before a match.
Tanny Brown sat in a recently emptied office at a vacant desk making telephone calls. The door was shut behind him, and in front of him was a yellow legal pad for notes and his personal address book. He had to leave messages at the first three numbers he tried. He dialed a fourth number and waited for the phone to be picked up.
Eatonville Police.'
Captain Lucious Harris, please. This is Detective Lieutenant Theodore Brown.'
He waited patiently before a huge voice boomed over the receiver. 'Tanny? That you?'
'Hello, Luke.'
'Well, well, well. Long time, no hear. How's it goin'?'
'Ups and downs. And you?'
'Well, hell. Life ain't perfect by no means. But it ain't terrible, neither, so I guess I got no complaints.'
Brown pictured the immense man on the other end of the line. He would be in a uniform that would be too tight in the places where his three hundred pounds made no pretense toward muscle, and around his neck, so that his head seemed to rest on the starched white collar with its gold insignia. Lucious Harris had a big man's hesitancy to anger and a constant, bubbling outlook that made his entire life seem a feast on which he was continually dining. He'd always enjoyed calling the big man because no matter how evil the world had seemed, his response was always energetic and undefeated. Tanny Brown realized he no longer made those calls.
'How're things in Eatonville?' he asked.
'Ha! You know, we're actually becoming something of a tourist trap, Tanny. Folks coming to visit because of all the attention we got because of the late Miz Hurston. Ain't gonna compete with Disney World or Key West, I guess, but it's kinda nice to see new faces around town.'
Brown tried to picture Eatonville. His friend had grown up there, its rhythms were in the locutions of his voice.- It was a small town, with a singular sense of order about it. Almost everybody who lived there was black. It had gained some notoriety in the writings of Zora Neale Hurston, its most prominent resident. When she had been discovered first by the academicians and then the film people, Eatonville had been discovered as well. But mostly, what it was, was a small town for black people, run by black people.
There was a small pause before Lucious Harris asked, 'So. You don't ever call me no more. Hard to tell we are friends. Then, of course, I see you got yourself a bunch of publicity, but it ain't the sort that folks naturally go out of their way to acquire, right?'
'That's true.'
'And now, some more time passes, and you're on the phone, but it ain't to talk about how come you ain't called. And it ain't to talk about anything other than something special, am I right?'
'Just taking a wild shot, Luke. Thought you might be able to help.'
'Well, let me hear it.'
Tanny Brown breathed in deeply and asked, 'Unsolved disappearances. Homicides. In the last year. Children, teenagers, girls. And black. Anything like that in your town?'
The policeman was quiet. Brown could feel a sense of constriction coming over the line.
'Tanny, why you asking me this now?'
'I just got…'
'Tanny, you tell me the straight truth. Why you calling me with this now?'
'Luke, I'm just shooting in the dark. I got a bad feeling about something, and I'm just poking around.'
'You poked something solid here, my man.'
Brown felt instantly frozen inside. 'Tell me,' he asked softly. He noticed that the booming voice on the other end of the line had tightened, narrowed, as if the words suddenly carried more freight.
'Wild child,' Harris said slowly. 'Girl named Alexandra Jones. Thirteen. Part of her still be eight, part of her eighteen. You know the type. One minute she be all sweetness and polite, come baby-sit for
5sus Harris and me, the next minute I sees her smoking a cigarette outside the convenience store, acting all grown-up and tough.'
'Sounds like my own daughters,' Brown said inadvertently.
Xo, your gals got a hold of something, and this little gal didn't. Anyway, she got some confusion and this makes her wild, you know. She starts to think this little town be too small for her. Run away once, her daddy go find her couple miles down the road, dragging along a little suitcase. Daddy be one of my patrolmen, so we all knows about it. Run away twice, and this time we find her all the way in Lauderdale, just outside, on Alligator Alley, thumbing rides from the semi drivers that passes that way. Trooper spots her, and they brings her home. Third time she run is three months back. Her momma and daddy driving every road they can to find her, figure this time she's heading north to Georgia where they got relatives and the gal's got a cousin she sweet on. Put out a BOLO. I talks to departments all over the state. Flyers out, you know the drill. Only she never shows in Georgia. Or Lauderdale or Miami or Orlando or any damn place. Where she shows is in Big Cypress swamp, where some hunters find her three weeks ago. Find what's left of her, which is just some bones. Picked clean by the sun and little animals and birds. Not a pretty sight. Gotta make ID through dental records. Cause of death? Multiple stab wounds, the M.E. figures, but only 'cause there are nicks and cuts in some of the bones. Not even that be conclusive. And not even any clothes laying about. Whoever done her stashed the clothes someplace else. I mean, it ain't too damn a mystery what happened to her, now, is it? But figuring out who did it be a different matter for sure.'
Brown said nothing. He heard Harris take a deep breath.
'… Ain't never gonna make this case, no sir. You know how many interviews we've logged on this one, Tanny? More'n three hundred. And that's been me and my chief of detectives, Henry Lincoln, you know him. A couple of major-crimes guys from the county put in some time, too. Don't mean shit. No
