The desk officer approached cautiously. Stynes saw her coming out of the corner of his eye, but he didn’t look up. He was hoping she wouldn’t notice him and would just walk past. She was a new recruit, kind of timid, and Stynes didn’t know her name yet.
“Detective?”
“I died and didn’t leave a forwarding address.”
“Excuse me?”
Stynes looked up. The girl was pretty, but so, so young. Another reason to retire. When the new recruits looked like high schoolers, it was time to go. “Wishful thinking on my part. What is it?”
“There’s a woman here, and she needs to see a detective.”
Stynes pointed to the computer. “Does this promise to be as fascinating as yesterday’s stolen purse or last night’s vandalism at the school?”
“She says she has a complaint about Dante Rogers,” the young officer said.
“Dante Rogers?”
“Yes, sir. You know, he’s the guy-”
Stynes held up his hand, cutting off the rookie’s words. “I know who he is.”
Stynes had spent the past two days going about his business as a cop, all the time trying to reassure himself that there was nothing to what the reporter had said, nothing to Janet’s nervousness and doubts. But here was Dante Rogers-again-and he seemed to be falling into Stynes’s lap, insisting on being heard.
The day did just get a little more interesting, he thought to himself.
Stynes drove east out of downtown, taking High Street, one of the four spokes off Memorial Circle. For a short time he passed businesses-a pizza parlor, a Laundromat, a bike shop-then his car rattled over an uneven set of railroad tracks, traveled down an incline, and-presto-he entered what passed for a black neighborhood in Dove Point. Literally and figuratively, at least in the minds of most of the town’s white citizens, the wrong side of the tracks.
There was truth to back up the belief. More crime happened on the east side-East Dove Point, as some had taken to calling it. A public housing project as well as a collection of run-down low-rent apartment complexes meant a lot of transients, a lot of comings and goings and drugs. A murder was still rare, but assaults and gun-related crimes were up. What was that movie? The one with the crazed killer-
Stynes made two turns, a right and a left. He knew everyone in their yards and on the street corners made him out as a cop. Even the little kids. The shiny car, the white man in a shirt and tie. They looked at him like he was an alien, the contempt dripping off their faces. Stynes stopped in front of the Reverend Fred Arling’s First Church of Zion, a low brick building with an overgrown yard that looked no more like a church than Stynes’s car looked like a fighter jet. A sign out front advertised the upcoming sermon: WHO IS YOUR BROTHER? WHO IS YOUR NEIGHBOR?
Before Stynes climbed out of the car, his cell phone rang. He recognized the number and answered.
“I was just thinking of you,” he said.
“Why?” the familiar voice answered.
“I was thinking about being old and retired, so naturally I thought of you.”
“Fuck you.”
Terry Reynolds was Stynes’s first partner. They’d worked the Justin Manning murder together. Stynes would never say it out loud-certainly not to Reynolds-but he owed his former partner a great deal. He learned more about being a cop just from watching Reynolds work than from anything else. Reynolds had been retired for close to eight years. He’d remarried and spent his days playing with his grandchildren and digging in his garden.
“Guess where I am?” Stynes asked.
“A home for bald-headed perverts?”
“I’m at Reverend Arling’s Zion Church.”
“Jesus. Did you do something wrong in a previous life?”
“You know who works here, right?”
“Did you get a message saying I wanted to play Trivial Pursuit over the phone?”
“Your boy, Dante Rogers.”
A long pause. Stynes could hear Reynolds breathing. “Really,” he said. “Shit, I saw in the paper he was working in a church, but I didn’t put it together that it was that one.”
“Someone came in today and filed a complaint about him.”
“What did he do? If he violates, we can send his ass right back-”
“That’s what I’m here to find out, boss.”
“I never understand why these guys don’t move out of state. Everybody in fucking Dove Point knows who he is. If he sneezes on somebody they’re going to call the cops.”
“I was planning on calling you when I was done here,” Stynes said. He looked out his window. Two kids went by on the same bike. One of them pedaled while the other perched on the back. They laughed when they saw Stynes. “I was going to give you an update on Dante, and I wanted to talk to you about some other stuff. You have any time?”
“I have nothing but time, unless Jeannie sends me to the store for a loaf of bread.”
“Or more adult diapers.”
“I saw that story in the paper yesterday, the one with you and the Manning woman.”
“Yeah?”
“Nice of the reporter to make the whole town look racist.”
“She’s a kid.”
“I don’t miss that shit, I tell you.”
Stynes gathered a pad and pen from the center console and slipped them into his jacket pocket. “I’ve got to go in here now,” he said. “But I’ll call you later. We can get together.”
“Sure,” Reynolds said. “And give Reverend Fred a message from me.”
“What would that be?”
“Tell him I said, ‘Fuck you.’ ”
The Reverend Fred Arling stood six feet tall and was rail thin. His mostly gray hair had receded half the distance across the top of his large head. He opened the side door wearing a black suit, white shirt, and narrow black tie. He looked at Stynes over the top of small gold reading glasses and smiled.
“Detective.”
“Reverend.”
“Here to be saved?”
The reverend stepped back and showed Stynes down a short hallway into a small room that served as an office. The room was surprisingly clutter free-as opposed to Stynes’s own desk, which swam in paper-and smelled like it had just been cleaned. A new laptop sat open on the desk, and next to it was a well-worn, leather-bound Bible.
“Are you running a special?” Stynes asked.
“Always.”
The two men sat on opposite sides of the desk. The reverend’s posture made him seem even taller than he was, and Stynes wondered what it was like for a member of his flock to sit down in this room seeking guidance or forgiveness.
“I understand you have Dante Rogers working here,” Stynes said.
“Let me guess,” the reverend said. “A woman named Letitia Myers came to see you.”
“Go on.”
“Sister Myers read the newspaper story about Dante, saw that he was working here in my church, and-how do you white folks say it-had a cow?”
“She doesn’t think a convicted child killer should be working in a church around small children.”
“Did she accuse Dante of something?”
“Not directly.”
