Frank pulls herself out of her chair. Jill is on the phone. Frank lays a hand on her shoulder, points to her office. Jill nods and joins her a few minutes later.
'Do you want the door open or closed?'
'Open. Sit down.' She waits until her detective is perched on the vinyl office chair. 'Jill, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I guess I'm not dealing with this the way everybody would like me to. But I
There she is, Stoic the Magnificent again.
'Yeah,' Jill agrees. 'It's just that we care a—'
'Look. I know,' Frank interrupts. 'But don't worry. That's my job. Everything's gonna be okay.'
Jill nods and Frank dismisses her gently. She returns to the work on her desk, satisfied she's extinguished another fire. Frank's been pushing so much of it lately she's starting to believe her own hype.
Chapter 11
Something else the squad's probably noticed—after having spent her career practically living at Figueroa, Frank's been leaving the station promptly at quitting time. Too many ghosts wander the halls. Nor does she want to be at Gail's. There she has to pretend too hard. Pretend everything's okay, pretend she's fine. She is, of course, just not the way Gail and anyone else with half an opinion would like her to be.
Her house is empty and it echoes, but there at least Frank can spread the Pryce case across the dining room table and get lost in their world. Grim as it is, she prefers it to her own. She likes long stretches of time with the case and a full bottle of Black Label. Even on the nights she has to go to Gail's, if she leaves at two and traffic is fair, she can manage a solid four or five hours on the case.
Frank's tired at end-of-watch today; too tired to think well, but drink in hand she reaches for the binders anyway.
'Light reading,' she tells herself.
Ladeenia Pryce was killed on her way to a friend's house. The friend, Cassie Bertram, lived in a duplex three blocks away. She never got to Cassie's house. Her friend called Mrs. Pryce to ask when Ladeenia was coming. Mrs. Pryce told Cassie that Ladeenia had already left. And Trevor went with her. Mrs. Pryce told Cassie to have Ladeenia turn around and come right home when she did get there—Ladeenia had fooled around getting over there and now it was almost suppertime. That was at 4:30 pm.
At 5:30, Mrs. Pryce called Cassie to tell her daughter to get her butt home, but Ladeenia still hadn't arrived at her friend's house. That was when Mrs. Pryce started to get scared. Ladeenia was a good girl. Her daddy spoiled her a little but she minded well. Mrs. Pryce hoped she'd been sidetracked by another friend. Maybe that little Guatemalan girl that lived down Gage, or some children at the playground. Ladeenia was a friendly girl, and responsible. She took good care of Trevor. She wouldn't do anything foolish if he was with her.
Mrs. Pryce planned on giving Ladeenia a good hiding when she got home. Teach that girl to tell her mama where she was and to be home when she was supposed to be. By 8:30, Mrs. Pryce was panicking. Her husband called the Figueroa station. Adults and older teens had to have been gone for at least twenty-four hours before they were officially considered missing. It was different for a six- and nine-year-old in the middle of winter, four hours after sundown. The desk sergeant told Mr. Pryce to come down and file a report. He did so and his description of the kids was read at the next roll call. Not that it mattered. The autopsy reports would later conclude that Ladeenia and Trevor were dead by then.
At 1:12 the following afternoon a hysterical woman called the station. One of her laying hens had come up missing and she'd been searching the nearby vacant lot. She didn't find her chicken, but she did find Ladeenia and Trevor.
The suits were called, and just the luck of the draw, Frank and Noah were up. But Frank was in Ventura, stuck in a weekend empowerment seminar, so Noah fielded the call alone. He didn't leave the scene until well after dark, long after the coroner's wagon had taken the bodies away, long after the SID techs had finished bagging and tagging, long after every last picture had been snapped and every diagram sketched. Noah had walked into the darkened squad room as Frank was walking out. They'd turned the lights on and she sat and listened to him, promising to help as soon as she could. 'As soon as she could' wasn't soon enough and Noah worked the case alone.
Frank reads Noah's interviews with Mr. and Mrs. Pryce. She reads the interviews with their other children. While she reads an interview with one of Ladeenia's friends, Frank refills her tumbler. She drinks and reads, making occasional notes until the alarm on her watch tells her it's time to go to Gail's. A stone sinks in her chest. With effort, she closes the binder.
Chapter 12
A contentious lieutenant's meeting on Thursday goes well past dinnertime. Frank returns to the office for her things. The squad room is quiet, her cops long gone. It's not so bad at night. Not so many memories, no interruptions. Frank finds the stale Camels in her desk drawer. She fires one up and sinks into her chair. The smoke makes her dizzy but she drags it in anyway. She savors the weight in her chest. It displaces all the other ones. She spits tobacco off her lip and when the cigarette burns to within a half an inch of her fingers, she pinches it out between thumb and forefinger. It's a residual reflex from a two-pack-a-day habit. Now it hurts like hell because she has no calluses. Frank smells burnt skin and a fleeting, rigored grin slices her face.
If she could see herself in a mirror, she might see glimpses of the scum she's spent a lifetime trying to put away: the fourteen-year-old who raped his grandmother with a serving spoon; the father who admitted to daily intercourse with his four- and six-year-olds because that's what he had kids for; the mother who giggled when she shocked her infant with a stripped electrical cord then beat the baby because it cried; the old man who suffocated his wife of fifty-two years because he was tired of wiping her bedridden ass and changing her soiled sheets; the ten-year-old who shot her grandmother because she wouldn't let her stay up to watch
But there's no mirror in the room. Frank lights another cigarette, carrying on with the illusion that she's human. She sucks smoke in and mouths it toward the ceiling in fat doughnuts. She feels nothing. Absolutely nothing, and that's the way she wants it.
The Pryce kids whisper to her like smack whispers to a junkie. Frank swings her feet to the floor and opens the thick books. She spends her night in the mind of a man who binds a boy's wrists, hands and mouth with duct tape, them makes him watch and listen while he rapes the boy's sister, front and back, then chokes her to death. Frank spends her night in the head of a man like that and feels nothing.
It's almost one in the morning before she thinks to look at a clock. She crashes on the couch and is thickheaded the next day. She leaves work promptly at two. At home, she changes into shorts and starts working out. She's contemplating dinner, and a couple beers, when Bobby calls.
'We got a kid shot while he was waiting for the bus, and there are reporters everywhere.'
'Sure there are. Kids get shot in South Central every day but this one's a story because it's four o'clock on a slow news day. I'll be there as soon I can.'
Frank hangs up and gets back into the suit she took off less than an hour ago. She repacks her pockets and belt. The holster gets cinched back under her arm.
'Christ, I do not need this,' she mutters, slamming the front door behind her.
Traffic is excruciating and she bangs the dashboard, more in time with frustration than the hip-hop booming from her abused speakers. News vans and police cars are still clogging the scene when she arrives. The paramedics are long gone, but the coroner's people have beaten her to the site. It's a routine cap and they've already released the body. An SID technician is collecting a through-and-through in a scrawl of blood beside the boy. A man weeps behind the tape, encircled by anguished faces trying to comfort him. His nightmare is just beginning, but for Frank the scene is comfortably routine.
'S'up?' she asks Darcy.
'Sixteen-year-old black male. Vic's name is Clyde Payson. He was waiting for the bus with his friends when a male black approached him. They started arguing, got into a fight, and the suspect fired on him. A forty-four. The friends recognized the shooter. Harlan Miller.'
'Sweet. Let's get this wrapped with a ribbon. Early Christmas present for the chief, and it'll get these bastards'—she tosses her head at the reporters—'off our backs. Who's the guy crying over there?'
