The Clouds Roll Away Read online

  “Oh, my Moon!” she cried. “It’s all my fault.”

  I picked up another piece, turning it back and forth. It was a tiny rock.

  “I killed my boy’s daddy!”

  I lifted one of the rocks, holding it to the light. It looked like a pallid quartz chip, the kind that settled on sandy river bottoms. Far from pretty, a rust-colored soil covered the stippled surface. I picked up another. This one was octahedral. Eight-sided. Like two pyramids glued at the base.

  “I got his blood all over my hands,” Zennie said, whispering.

  I walked over to the window. A light was on in the chicken shack, and I dragged the octahedral stone across the corner of the glass, right next to the wooden pane. I ran my finger over the scratch.

  “What do I tell my boy?” Zennie looked at me. “What do I say, ‘Merry Christmas, Daddy’s dead’?”

  I touched my hand to the radiator under the window. The painted iron was hot, so I held the stone against it, counting to sixty. Zennie was plucking at her comforter, rocking almost catatonically, and when I lifted the stone, it felt cool. Not even warm.

  “Zennie.” I held up the stone. “Do you know what this is?”

  She had tears in her eyes. “Moon’s idea of a joke. He’s getting the last laugh now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I asked him for a ring every single Christmas,” she said. “And every year it was the same stupid joke. He’d say, ‘I got you a box of rocks.’”

  “Do you know what these rocks are?”

  “Ugly. Look at ’em.”

  “How many boxes did he give you?”

  “Four. I would’ve thrown them out, but he was always checking to see if I did.”

  I walked over to the bed and sat down. The box was in my hands. “Zennie, I need you to come down to the morgue.”

  “Uh-uh, no way. I ain’t looking at him like that.”

  “It might not even be Moon,” I said. “But if it is, and you don’t go identify him, he’ll stay on that cold metal cart for weeks.”

  “My last look at Moon is not going to be that way.”

  “Then I’ll get a court order. You want your son to see you get served with papers?”

  She looked at me with rage and despair. Her next breath was long and bumpy, as if the air was rippling over the jagged pieces of her broken heart.

  The drive into the city was punctuated by the sound of Zennie sipping from a silver flask, and by the time I turned onto Jackson Street two hours later, her words were so slurred I decided to park at the snow-packed curb and leave the hazard lights blinking on the Benz’s big tail.

  Taking her elbow, I guided her across the snow and into the medical examiner’s building. The front desk receptionist wore silver bell earrings. When she turned to look at us, the earrings produced shimmery music. I showed my credentials and signed us in.

  “You got my man,” Zennie said, leaning over the counter. Her breath smelled like butane.

  The receptionist pulled back. The bells made a sound like a question.

  “She’s here to identify,” I said.

  “My Moon,” Zennie breathed.

  I clipped a temporary ID to my coat and another to Zennie’s jacket. But I sat her down in a seat in the corner of the waiting room.

  “Stay here.” I wanted to make sure everything was ready for her.

  She pulled a second silver flask from her purse. I was about to say something but instead walked down the hall to the double swinging doors. The room smelled of death and dissection, that weird stench peculiar to pathology. Isopropyl putrification. The ME was standing at the head of a steel gurney, her rubber apron and gloves bloody. She glanced up, staring at me through the clear plastic face shield, then went back to her work.

  “We’ve got two more bullets for you.”

  I moved my eyes to the body’s face. Sid, the gold tooth.

  “Two,” she said, “both in the chest. I sent one to firearms. I saved one for you.”

  “Unmarked?”

  She nodded.

  “What about the other guys?”

  “The faceless wonders,” she said. “They have something else.”

  She stepped down from the riser giving her height over the gurney. Jabbing her elbow into a button on the wall, she called in an assistant.

  The ME described the autopsies in medicolegal terms, making them almost sound like cars. I walked over to the gurney across from Sid. A sterile evidence sheet draped the entire figure. But it was shaped like a mountain. I decided there must be a body block under his upper back, the rubber brick that caused the neck, head, and arms to fall back, making it easier for the ME to carve her Y-shaped incision down the chest.

  The assistant was a young woman with large brown eyes. She lifted the evidence sheet.

  “Look at the skin,” the ME said.

  The brown arms and belly were covered with blisters weeping with pus and blood. I turned to look at Sid, under her knife. “Is that on all three?”

  “Not like that,” she said. “This guy with the pretty tooth has a very mild case. It looks like what was on those guys at the river. Only fresher.”

  “He’s the bodyguard,” I told her. “His name was Sid.”

  “Well, Sid died of two gunshot wounds to the chest,” she said. “Probably from the handgun this nice fellow was holding.” She nodded at the body before me, and then at the other white mound. “But these two didn’t die in that cellar.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The faceless wonders. They were dead when their faces were shot off.”

  “How can you tell?”

  She looked at me through the protective shield. I rephrased it.

  “I’m not challenging your expertise, Dr. Bauer. But can you explain it to me?”

  “The circulatory systems were already down.”

  I thought back to the cellar. “But I saw blood.”

  “Under this guy, the bodyguard. He died down there, no doubt about it. But these two died somewhere else, and of something else. They were probably dragged down there. One leg’s broken, heels are damaged.”

  “When will you have something definitive?” I asked.

  “I’m working as fast as I can. Every year this happens. People like to shoot each other over the holidays.”

  I looked back at the swollen mounds, that elusive element from the cellar coming to me. It wasn’t just the brutality. I recalled walking down the gray stones, my hand on the wall.

  The wall.

  “Humidity,” I said.

  The ME didn’t look up from Sid’s open chest cavity. “What about humidity?”

  “Down in the cellar, the walls were damp.”

  “It’s underground,” she said dismissively.

  “Yes, but the injuries we’re seeing look like reactions to lewisite, possibly mustard gas. Lewisite doesn’t work in humid atmospheres. It’s one reason our military stopped using it. Which means you’re right. If these guys were gassed first, it was somewhere other than a damp cellar.”

  For once, I saw appreciation in her eyes.

  It increased when I said, “I have somebody here to identify one of the faceless bodies.”

  “I’ll cover this guy up,” she said. “Bring her on back.”

  I dragged Zennie down the hall, her rubber-soled boots squealing protests on the linoleum.

  “He ain’t in bits and pieces, is he?”

  I tightened my grip on her elbow, her butane breath mingling with the putrid antiseptic scents. When I pushed through the door, the lights had been turned down, obscuring everything except the two swollen shapes under the white sheets. The ME and her bloody apron were gone, leaving the female assistant to supervise. She stood between the two gurneys. She did not look happy.

  Zennie stopped just inside the door. “I can tell you right now,” she said. “That’s not his shape.”

  I pulled her forward. “He has a tattoo?”

  “But I don’t need to look. It ain’t him.”r />
  I glanced at the assistant. Her expression said patience had left the building.

  “Right ankle,” I said. “The letter Z.”

  “For my name,” Zennie said, staggering to a stop beside me.

  “You’re identifying,” the assistant said. “You have to look.”

  “Fine, I’ll look,” Zennie snapped. “Because it ain’t him.”

  The assistant lifted the bottom edge of the first sheet, exposing a brown right ankle.

  “I told you,” Zennie said.

  The assistant dropped the sheet and pulled back the second one.

  Zennie stared.

  She didn’t gasp. She didn’t cry. Standing like a post, she stared. Her eyes traveled up his leg, moving over the mounded sheet to where his face would have been. “Oh, baby,” she whispered, leaning down. “What they done to you?”

  “Don’t touch him,” the assistant said.

  “I ain’t about to.” She turned to me. “I saw that on him before.” She pointed to the oozing blisters on his shin. “He had that when I was pregnant.”

  I looked at the dark leg. “You’re sure it’s the same rash?”

  “I ain’t but so drunk.”

  It was true. When the sheet was pulled back, it was as if the sight of him hit her like cold water. The tragic romance was gone. Now she looked resigned and sad, even angry at the waste. And I finally saw her grandmother in her.

  “I thought maybe it was some STD,” she said. “Something he picked up over there.”

  “Over where?”

  “Africa.”

  I gazed at her, trying to gauge her sobriety. “When was Moon in Africa?”

  “Back when Zeke was in my belly. Five, six years ago. He went over on some mercy mission. He came back oozing like a leper. I told him, ‘If that’s some sex disease, you are gonna need mercy.’”

  “Was he sick?”

  “Yeah. But it went away.”

  The assistant gave the sheet a little shake, looking at me.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Dropping it over the ankle and foot, she lifted a clipboard off the stainless steel counter, checking off boxes. She glanced once at Zennie, her eyes dismissing her. I guessed it was a long assembly line of gang death in here.

  When she held out the pen, she said to me, “You’re going to help her with the paperwork, right?”

  chapter thirty-eight

  That night, Broad Street’s deserted lanes sparkled, crystallized with ice. Rather than attempt the drive back to Chopping Road, I took Zennie to the Lucky Strike building and explained to Milky what happened. I told him to keep her safe and he wrapped his arms around her, cradling her like a child, telling her this was gang life. And gang death.

  I drove slowly through downtown and parked in the alley. When I opened the patio door, the kitchen smelled amazing. My mother was in the den watching television.

  “What are you cooking?” I asked.

  “Roasted turkey. I found your grandmother’s cookbook.” She lifted the book on her lap. Housekeeping in Virginia. “Don’t you think roasted turkey is the best thing on Christmas Eve?”

  She was watching A Christmas Carol. The good one, with Alastair Sim, but I excused myself. Walking upstairs, I headed for the percussive assault of sound behind Wally’s bedroom door. I knocked loudly. There was no reply. I tried the knob. It was locked.

  I could have walked away.

  But I didn’t.

  Stepping back, I drove my foot into the door. The old iron lock cracked and the door hit the wall with a bang.

  White smoke curled inside the glass pipe. He gasped, inhaling like a man going underwater.

  When he tried to stand, I pushed him back down in the chair. A cold breeze blew through his open window, but the unctuous odor of crack was unmistakable. Words pounded from the sound system, lyrics of hate. I twisted down the volume and held out my hand.

  “Give me the pipe.”

  His eyes were molten. “You barge into a man’s room?”

  “I knocked, plenty.” I grabbed his wrist, twisting until his fingers released the pipe. The glass felt warm, sticky with saliva. “Your new friends hook you up with this garbage?”

  “Something to help me work.” He gave a dopey grin. “It’s not like I’m a junkie. My pictures are in Newsweek. Big time.”

  “You’re a pipehead.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “You need help.”

  “I don’t need nothin’.”

  “You need another place to live.”

  “Say what?”

  “The lease says no drugs.”

  His jaw fell open and I realized how emaciated he’d become. Cheekbones protruding like elbows, eye sockets cavernous, hollow.

  “You’re kicking me out—at Christmas?”

  “Or jail. Which one?”

  “You call yourself a Christian.” He hissed the last word. “You know what you are? A cop, a stupid white cop who—”

  I held out my hand. “Give me the drugs.”

  His bloodshot eyes darted, wondering if this was a bluff, whether he could keep his precious drugs. But he guessed right. He slapped a baggie in my palm.

  “Is that all of it?” I asked.

  “You want my wallet?” he said. “How about my cameras, my computer?”

  “Call me when you’re ready to get help. But I want you out of here. Tonight.”

  I turned, walking for the door.

  “Merry Christmas, you—”

  I closed the door on his last word.

  In the half-bath downstairs, my hands shaking, I opened the plastic baggie and dumped the white rocks into the toilet. I wrapped the glass pipe in layers of toilet paper, set it on the porcelain rim, and crushed it with the seat. I threw that in the small wicker trash bin, then flushed, washed my hands, and carried the trash out as though performing a helpful chore.

  My mother looked up as I walked through the den to the kitchen.

  “Did I hear something upstairs?” she asked. “It sounded like a door slamming.”

  “The wind. Wally’s window was open, so the wind slammed the door.”

  “You talked to him?”

  I nodded and she returned to her show.

  In the kitchen, I lifted the discarded Butterball wrapper and stuffed the broken pipe into the garbage can. I washed my hands again and was carrying the trash can back when I saw Wally coming down the hall. Shifting the trash can to my left side, I stood behind my mother’s chair, reaching under my bulky sweater, placing my palm on the Glock.

  “Don’t touch anything,” he said. “I don’t know when, but I’ll be back.”

  “Are you going out?” my mother said. “You could use the fresh air, Wally. You’ve been cooped up in that room for days.”

  His molten eyes fixed on me. He didn’t seem able to look at her.

  “Do you need Raleigh to drive you somewhere?” she asked. “She put chains on my car.”

  He turned without a word. I followed him down the hall. He opened the front door and stepped outside. I latched the dead bolt behind him, parting the curtain over the leaded glass sidelight. He walked across Monument Avenue, passing by General Lee, his head down against the cold. His new car was snowbound at the curb.

  In the front parlor and living room, I checked the window locks. I put the wastebasket back in the bathroom and was coming through the den when my mother said, “I just don’t know. Wally seems like a different person. Do you think he’s all right?”

  I nodded, pretending to look outside at the snow, checking the den’s window locks. Then the kitchen, where I took the phone book from under the rotary-dial phone and carried it into the front parlor. Using my cell phone, I called down the list of locksmiths until one of them agreed to come tonight after midnight, charging double his usual rate to change the door locks.

  When I hung up, my phone rang.

  The sheriff. He wanted to inform me that RPM just kicked the officers off his property. “And there’
s nothing I can do about it,” the sheriff drawled. “But maybe you got a federal law regarding stupidity.”

  When I hung up, I stared at the Christmas tree. Ornaments smothered the fir’s pale green limbs. My mother’s overdone Christmas. And yet the house felt so empty. When something brushed against my leg, I looked down. Madame stared up at me.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Don’t bark when the locksmith shows up.”

  I pretended to watch TV with my mother, wondering whether I should notify the Bureau. I tried to imagine how Phaup would twist the whole thing. I rented a room to a crackhead, who lived in the house with my mother. Then I considered calling the Richmond police. But it would sound ridiculous. Wally had no priors. Not even a traffic ticket. He wasn’t violent—yet. And I’d flushed the evidence.

  “Did you hear me?” my mother asked.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “Can you drive me to the Christmas Eve service tomorrow?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “St. John’s.”

  “It’s probably canceled.”

  “Oh no, I called. Remember how your father never missed one?”

  I stared at the television. Scrooge realized he was alive, really alive. Throwing open the bedroom window, he yelled to the boy in the street to go buy the biggest goose in the butcher’s shop.

  “I just love this part,” my mother said.

  When the movie ended, she said she was turning in for the night. I promised not to forget tomorrow night’s service.

  “Do you mind if I keep Madame down here?” I asked. “I’m going to stay up awhile.”

  “My goodness, what a refreshing night. First, Wally comes out of his room. And here you are, relaxing for a change.”

  I channel-surfed with Madame on the couch, listening to my mother’s feet pad across the bedroom floor upstairs. When she finished her beauty routine and climbed into bed, I waited another forty-five minutes, until just after 11 p.m. The house was dead silent. The security lights were on over the back patio, and I raced over the glittery snow to the carriage house, grabbing my toothbrush, geology kit, and briefcase with T-III notes.

  I was back in the big house in less than five minutes, and when I opened the kitchen door, panting, Madame was standing right where I left her, staring out the bottom pane cleared of fake snow. She was one of those dogs with the intelligence to understand certain things had greater meaning. Things like suitcases and sudden phone calls and surreptitious behavior.