For the first time, the man’s mouth stretched into something resembling a smile. It was not convincing.
If he had ever once smiled before that, Faye wouldn’t have been nervous enough to trot out her contracts and tools to prove she had a right to be where she was. She’d lived her entire life as a person of color, but this was the first time she’d ever worried about being considered guilty-while-black.
“I need to get back to the scene. You’re an important witness. I have more questions, so I’d like you to come with me.”
So she’d followed him back across the creek to the place where medical personnel were pulling the still-unconscious victim from the ground, preparing to transport her to a hospital. Faye wanted to go brush the hair off the woman’s dirt-crusted forehead and smooth the wrinkles out of the pale yellow dress that was emerging from the ground as the rescuers dug more dirt from the woman’s body and worked to free her legs.
Even from a distance of fifteen feet, Faye noticed a series of dark blotches on the top of a foot still shod in a silvery sandal.
“What’s that?” she asked, moving close enough to make out the tattoos. The unfriendly detective followed her closely, as if he were afraid she might do something stupid or dangerous.
Tears came to her eyes as she got a good look at the four little marks on the wounded woman’s foot. The tattoo consisted of four letters and they spelled K-A-L-I.
“I know who she is,” Faye said, wiping her eyes on the back of a hand that was shaking. “I know who she is,” she said again, and her knees went so weak that she had no choice but to sit down on the ground, hard.
Faye was the kind of person who never faltered in a crisis. It was her way to cry after the fact, when her child’s fever broke or when a friend’s funeral was done. She dealt with things as they came, as cool as if she had ice water in her veins, but everybody has limits. Eventually, the time came when adrenaline failed and she crashed. Today, this was her limit: seeing a little girl’s name tattooed on the foot of a woman who could only be her grievously injured mother.
Deep down, she had already known. While clawing dirt away from the beautifully plaited hair, while wiping the full soft lips clean of caked dirt, while doing her level best to press life back into the bleeding chest, Faye had known that this was a little girl’s mother. Knowing that there was no way to protect Kali from hearing this news, she sat on the ground and cried.
McDaniel bent over her and this time there was softness in his voice, maybe even kindness. There might also have been respect, but he had already raised Faye’s hackles too much for her to be sure.
“Ma’am. You say you know who she is. Can you tell me her name?”
Between sobs, she said, “I don’t know her name, but I know her little girl. They live right there,” and she raised her arm to point down a path worn through the woods by little feet.
At the end of the path, Kali waited for the news that Faye didn’t want her to hear. Worse than that, if she was the one who had abandoned a half-eaten ice cream sandwich, she already knew the news that Detective McDaniel would soon be bringing to her door. It was possible that the little girl had just seen something that nobody should ever have to see. She led the detective across the creek and along the path that would take them to Kali.
Chapter Nine
Detective McDaniel knocked again, hard. Nobody came to the dead-bolted front door.
He looked at Faye. “Ma’am, does anybody else live here but the victim and her little girl?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t swear that either of them live here, but I’ve seen the girl walk down the path we just walked. She said she lived with her mother, and she didn’t mention anybody else living with them. That’s really all I know.”
The curtainless windows on either side of the front door revealed nothing. No lights were on and the television was dark. McDaniel stared at the blank façade. He had to be worried that he would soon be adding a missing child to his report of the morning’s crime. The detective looked like he was wishing as hard as Faye was that Kali would miraculously appear.
Nothing of the sort happened inside the house, but a deep voice behind them saying, “Officer, can I help you?” made both Faye and the detective jump.
Faye turned, hoping that Kali was beside the owner of that deep voice. Instead, she saw an elderly man and a middle-aged woman coming up the front walk toward them. Faye was wondering how they had known to come, when the woman answered her unspoken question. She had a voice like an organ, deep, reedy, and rich.
“When the police come knocking before breakfast, that can’t mean nothing good. You people looking for Frida?”
The policeman spoke up. “Woman in her twenties, African-American? Long braided hair, tattoo on her foot?”
The woman nodded, and said, “That’s Frida,” but the old man just stood there quietly, like someone who’d gotten bad news before.
“I’m Detective Harold McDaniel. Do you know her?”
“She’s my late sister’s granddaughter,” the old man said. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m sorry, but she’s been attacked.”
Both the woman and the man bowed their heads and stood silent for a moment. Finally, the old man spoke. “Is it bad?”
Faye was trying to let McDaniel do the talking, but she couldn’t help herself. She nodded. The man held her gaze. “How bad?”
Faye looked down at the blood and dirt stains on her pants and boots, and his eyes followed hers. She could see tears welling in his eyes. Still, she let the officer do the talking.
“The paramedics
