The Clouds Roll Away Read online

  My hasty choice.

  Sunday morning in St. John’s Church, I sat between my mother and DeMott. The organ piped a Christmas melody. My mother hummed along about shepherds guarding and haste, haste, and I stared at the altar. My mind circled with the images of XL’s deadly eyes and Sully. Drugs, guns. Children.

  “Mac’s having an open house on Christmas Day,” DeMott said. “Would you two like to come?”

  Mac was not here, nor Jillian. My mother exclaimed her acceptance. “Isn’t that lovely? Of course we’ll come.”

  She wore the red wool suit again, the harsh fit trapping her delicate femininity. When she lifted her wrist, checking a new digital watch, the thing made me want to weep. I missed her bangles, the music they used to make.

  “Three minutes,” she said.

  DeMott turned to me. “Thanks again for coming to Mac’s party.”

  I nodded, thinking of those children. Later that night, where did they go? Who fed them? Tucked them into bed?

  The priest strode to the front of the sanctuary wearing long white vestments. He asked us to stand and open the Book of Common Prayer. My mother’s sensible flats hit the wood floor. She gave the jacket a tug, its all-business style never intended for a woman with her curves. The outfit made her look stout. Opening the book with the rest of the congregation, she recited the lyrical language, centuries old. But the words tasted stale in my mouth, and I remembered when I first learned the other meaning of the word common. In second grade, I overheard two adults discussing my family. I was backstage, hiding behind a curtain, waiting to go onstage in a play about the Pilgrims.

  “Which girl?” asked one woman.

  “The one David Harmon adopted.”

  “Oh, her. There’s also a sister several grades up. Bright girls. But I’ve met the mother.”

  “And?”

  “She’s common.”

  “Forget I said anything.”

  Then they laughed.

  Among the most violent things I saw Friday night was how XL looked at that woman, and how the children saw it, taking in another dose of shame while the good news played on a cartoon.

  The congregation sat. DeMott draped his arm across the back of the pew and I sent up another prayer for those two children. And for my selfish and willful heart.

  “Praise Jesus,” my mother whispered. Her head was bowed, eyes closed.

  The priest continued his sermon.

  “Praise his holy name,” she whispered.

  I glanced at DeMott. He pretended not to notice. But my mother continued to whisper petitions and a man in the pew in front of us turned, glaring at her.

  “Speak, Lord,” she whispered.

  After what felt like an eternity, the priest faced the altar. Holding the silver chalice of wine and the loaf of bread, he recited the new covenant.

  “Yes, Lord,” my mother said.

  The man turned, running his eyes over my mother. He glanced at DeMott.

  “How’s it going?” DeMott said.

  My face flushed. The man turned around.

  “Therefore,” the priest said, “we proclaim the mystery of faith. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”

  “Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, Lord.”

  The man spun around. I kept my eyes on the priest. But I heard DeMott.

  “Don’t worry about her,” he said. “She’s the one who’s got it right.”

  chapter twenty-two

  Pollard Durant, head of the joint task force on gangs, had the deceptive gait of a grassland leopard, a relaxed quality that disguised explosive power. I once saw him leap from a standing position and take down a running perp in one fluid motion. As Pollard slapped on cuffs, addressing the criminal as “sir,” the perp spat in his face.

  On Sunday afternoon Pollard wore dark jogging clothes with no brand-name insignias. His face was flushed from exertion and cold weather, his blue eyes luminous as opals. When I walked into his office, handing him a manila folder, he gestured for me to take a chair across from his desk. The folder contained all my documentation of Friday night’s adventure in law enforcement.

  “I spoke to Nate Greene this morning,” he said. “He wanted to be here, but I can’t take that chance. That flu’s done enough damage; we’re barely covering as it is.” He pinched the front of his jogging suit. “I’m wearing this so that when I run into Phaup, I can claim I’m just swinging by for my mail, no overtime.”

  “You want the two-minute version?” I asked.

  “Please.”

  “The first night I took the informant for the buy, he pinched. I called Detective Greene to let him know.”

  “When was that?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “This Tuesday?”

  “Yes. We both assumed it would be my first and last time out with this informant. So we let it go.”

  “But you went out again,” Pollard said.

  “You heard the guy; he sounds like he’s dying. I was available, he trusted me, the task force needed help—you want more reasons?”

  “So what happened this time?”

  “The snitch set up the buy. Looking back, I think he did it because the detective was so sick. I sensed something was wrong the minute he got in my car.”

  “In what way?”

  “He was worried I might go in with him.”

  Pollard frowned. “Yes?”

  “I was dressed up, for a Christmas party.”

  “Raleigh, the informant claims you told him you were going in.”

  I drew a deep breath. This was where it got complicated.

  “The informant’s threatening to hire a lawyer,” Pollard said.

  “I told him I was kidding,” I said lamely.

  “Why was that even a joke?”

  Because Sully was a rat and I wanted to see him squirm. Because I made a hasty, willful choice. “Because he brought up the idea and I ran with it, teasing him. It was wrong.”

  “And yet it wasn’t teasing. You still went in.” His voice sounded flat.

  “No, he went in alone. When he came back to the car, it was obvious he’d thrown in a change-up. He had one-tenth the product he was supposed to. He told me prices went up.”

  “So you decided to go in,” he said in the same tone as before.

  “That wasn’t the plan, Pollard. I just wanted to scare him into confessing. I wanted to know if he’d messed up our operation.”

  “Raleigh—”

  “It was never my intention to go inside that house. I didn’t even know where it was. I’m on phones, remember? Cell phones. They don’t have addresses.”

  He picked up the folder. All that official paperwork. And no box to check for repentance.

  “Consider this next question carefully,” he said.

  I stared at his desk. Beneath the glass were pictures of his children, his wife. The dog.

  “Answer this very carefully, Raleigh. I might be asked to testify later.”

  “All right, go ahead.”

  “Why didn’t you keep driving? Why stop and talk to them? Why get out of the car?”

  “They jumped in front of my car. I could have mowed them down—would that be better? And they saw the informant, Pollard. I had two choices at that point. Shoot it out, or go with the scenario that I got ripped off.”

  No nod, no shake of the head, nothing. When he opened the file, only his arm moved. His preternatural stillness made me feel even more anxious.

  “I hate saying this, Raleigh, but it all sounds like CYA.”

  “No kidding. But somebody needs to start thinking about the good part.”

  He looked up. “What good part?”

  “They had already pegged our informant as a narc. Now they think he’s just a thief. Since they pounded him pretty good, maybe it’s done.”

  “Except they think you’re a dealer.”

  I hesitated. “I said the good part. Singular, not plural.”

  “It was reckless, Raleigh.”

 
“With all due respect, it was a calculated decision.”

  “Calculated how long?”

  “Long as I had.”

  “A split second?”

  “Pollard, if they knew he was a narc, they’d come after him. He’s the kind of guy who would give them everything before they shot him. Identities, the task force, all of it. Then they win. We lose.”

  He skimmed the pages inside the folder, reading, suddenly stopping. “Does your sister know why they called?”

  “I told her I’m applying for credit and they messed up the names. I told her to ignore it. She’s good at ignoring things.”

  Placing the file on his desk, he leaned on his elbows. Each movement precise. “Not one thing was by the book,” he said. “On the other hand . . .” He paused.

  “What?”

  He stared at me, blue eyes almost glacial. “Phaup’s never been in your corner.”

  “That’s not the other hand. Believe me, I’ve gone over every conceivable reaction from her. Not one has helped me sleep. So I’m asking you, Pollard, please, what’s on the other hand?”

  He glanced out the window. As a supervisory agent, he had an office on the same floor as Phaup’s, but his window faced soggy wetlands and anemic cattails. “It could be argued that you gained some valuable information.”

  “Anything else?”

  “The investigation wasn’t compromised, as far as we can tell.”

  “You’ll tell Phaup?”

  “She probably won’t listen, and I can’t blame her. When I got the call from Nate Greene, I thought you went cowboy on us.”

  Cowboys were rodeo agents, bull riding solo for acclaim.

  “I even wondered if you were trying to win Phaup’s respect,” he said.

  “That’s not winnable. Not for me.”

  “Nate’s extremely angry,” he said, not bothering to disagree about Phaup.

  “I’m working on getting him another source.”

  “Given these recent developments, Raleigh, run the idea past me.”

  I told him about Zennie, that she was a girlfriend to one of the gangbangers and had a son with him. I explained that she was unhappy with the relationship, and her knowledge would make her an excellent source, for us and for the detective.

  “She’s friendly?” Pollard said.

  “She gave me this haircut.”

  He ran his eyes over it.

  “It’s not Bureau-regulated hair, I get it. But she didn’t butcher me. She gave me a nice cut.”

  Pollard closed the file.

  “I’m meeting with Phaup tomorrow,” he said. “Between then and now, load up on good ammo.”

  chapter twenty-three

  I left Pollard’s office and walked down to the main squad room on the second floor. At four o’clock Sunday afternoon, the week before Christmas, the place was a sea of empty cubicles. Only two agents were working. One typed furiously on his computer, meaning any number of things—urgent search warrant, depositions, even a meeting with Phaup, who was a stickler for details. Just not her own.

  And Stan.

  Waiting beside his cubicle as he finished a telephone call, I read the cartoons tacked to his partition walls. Garfield, every panel joking about the cat’s insatiable appetite. Apparently Garfield was some kindred spirit to Stan.

  When he hung up, he said, “Annie Oakley, how’s it going?”

  “It wasn’t like that, Stan.”

  “No?”

  “No.” I kept an ironclad unwritten vow about work: never, ever let male colleagues see weakness. Ever. No matter what. When I came back to the lab two weeks after my dad died, I managed to hold it together every day—until I got in my car and my eyes turned into Niagara Falls. There was one rule about women and crying. It was always seen as weak.

  So was groveling. But I didn’t want to get transferred again.

  “I need to ask you a favor, Stan.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What kind of favor?”

  “Can you get me a copy of the cell phone transcripts from Friday night and Saturday?”

  “What for?”

  “I’d like to know what they said after the informant left.” I paused. “After I left.”

  “Why?”

  “Stan, I can’t go into it right now.”

  “Can’t, or you don’t want to?”

  I could fight. I might even win. But what was the point?

  “I need as many facts as I can gather,” I said. “I’m meeting with Phaup tomorrow.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re lucky to be alive.”

  “It wasn’t luck,” I said.

  “Okay. So it wasn’t cowboy, and it wasn’t luck. What was it?”

  I looked at him, wondering whether he would laugh when I said it. “Grace.”

  “What?”

  “Undeserved. Without merit. No reason for it. Grace.”

  He gave me a lingering expression. A smile crept across his wide face. “Sounds like luck to me,” he said.

  The K-Car was an icebox as I drove west out of town Sunday night. To distract myself, I tried to list all the cities and towns in Virginia named for geologic attributes. Rockbridge, Great Bridge, Blue Ridge. Big Stone Gap, Copper Creek Bluff, Luray Caverns, Watts Island Rocks, White Rock Cliff . . . The game went on for half an hour, and I was still not at my destination. So I turned it around, listing places that named the geology found there. But I had to open it up to the world. Magnesia, Greece, was where magnesium was discovered. Epsom, England, was where local salts proved medicinal. And when I finally reached my destination of Mineral, Virginia, the vagueness of its name annoyed me. “Mineral” could mean anything from arsenic to zinc. It was about as creative as naming a place Animal or Vegetable.

  But I found the better-named Chopping Road, just as Milky described, and the mailbox with its large painted rooster. The grass road scraped the K-Car’s undercarriage and my headlights raked across weathered chicken coops surrounded by flocks of damaged automobiles. I saw the small white building he told me about, its square windows throwing gold streams into the cold black night.

  I parked behind a Dodge truck whose tailgate was secured by nylon rope, and listened to a confused rooster announce the dawn. The air smelled of wood smoke and grilled meat. I heard clapping, rhythmic clapping, and a voice that sounded like wind howling through a cavern.

  I opened the door to the small white building.

  Dozens of men, all wearing suits, swayed and dipped to the beat. The singer stood under a bare bulb at the front of the room, his black skin glowing with violescent hues. He strummed a six-string guitar with a fist-sized hole in its base and his shoes pounded out the blues beat, the toes curled from weather and wear. But his voice. His ragged voice crawled up his spine and bled into the air. He sang about clouds opening up and seeing Jesus standing there.

  The men called it back, pushing their hands against the viscous air.

  Milky stood off to the side, his blue button-down shirt soaked with sweat. Seeing me, still clapping to the beat, he nodded and stepped into the crowd. His sharkskin slacks were three inches too short, the material shimmering as he moved, flashing from azure to copper. He tapped a woman’s shoulder, the only woman in the crowd, and her circular shape came toward me with an oscillating movement. The walk of somebody whose hips never stopped hurting, her orthopedic shoes worn down on the outer edge. She scooped up a flashlight by the door.

  “You come with Granny Lew.” She leaned in close to be heard over the singing and clapping.

  She took my hand, her skin soft and warm as risen bread dough, and her flashlight beamed across the dark grass. We walked past the cars to a horizontal oil drum set on metal legs. Chickens roasted on a metal grate, coals beneath glowing orange.

  “Lookit this,” said Granny Lew. “That girl can’t even keep her mind on my birds.”

  She headed across the grass, leaving the grill, rolling forward and pick
ing up speed as she headed for a house behind the chicken coops. I trotted behind, trying to keep up.

  “Zennie!” she called. “Zennie!”

  A wooden ramp angled over the house’s front stairs and Granny Lew came across it like dice rolled out of a cup, her feet churning and clunking. But before she reached the top, the front door flew open.

  Zennie looked mutinous.

  “My chickens are about burned.” Granny Lew breathed hard, her wrenlike chest rising and falling. “What do you expect me to feed those men after the service—feathers?”

  Zennie grabbed a coat hanging beside the door. “Zeke had a nightmare,” she said. “That crazy music scared him again.”

  “Five years old and the boy still can’t sleep,” Granny Lew said to me. “It’s not that music,” she told Zennie. “That music’s from God. It’s on account of that no-good man says he’s his father.” She wagged the flashlight, zipping the beam around. “You listen to me, child, and you listen good—”

  Zennie slammed the door, stomping down the ramp, leaping onto the dark grass.

  “See that?” Granny Lew said. “She just scared that boy all over again.”

  Trundling down the ramp after her granddaughter, who was already passing the beat-up cars, Granny Lew murmured in front of me. I lagged behind, wondering if I should come back another time. Gray veils were rising from her mouth, disappearing in the night.

  Zennie snatched a pair of tongs from the grill and began flipping the chickens. The skins sizzled on the grate. Granny Lew was rolling up behind her, breathing heavily. When she grabbed Zennie’s shoulder, I froze, thinking the fight was turning violent. But Zennie only continued to stare down at the embers and her grandmother squeezed, a wordless gesture, summing up love and anger and laughter and argument. It was a touch that said nothing could ever diminish this woman’s bond to her family.

  “You listen, child,” Granny Lew said again. But her voice was tender now. “And you listen good.”

  She let go, rolling past. The flashlight beam swung with her gait as she walked to the building where the men were still singing.