The Clouds Roll Away Page 4

  “You don’t look happy to see me,” I said.

  “I’m surprised,” he said. “They let you come back?”

  Since the last time I saw Detective Greene, his thick mustache had sprouted gray and new lines etched his brown face. Though not yet forty, he looked old, especially around the eyes. Six months ago his partner, Detective Michael Falcon, plunged six stories to the sidewalk. Another man fell too, both killed on impact. The detective was white, the other man black, and the city divided on race. The mayor called in the FBI to decide if the white cop threw the black man off the roof or the other way around. I was the agent heading up the civil rights case. I was suspended while working it.

  “Got a minute?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I stepped inside.

  He sighed. “Nothing’s changed.”

  I sat down in a chair so old the wood cried. The cold-case detectives had furnished the small office by diving into Dumpsters behind city schools, and the concrete block room was just big enough for two dilapidated desks.

  “Do you have any old files on the Klan?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  I told him about the cross burning at Rapland and my visit with Hale Lasker. “Lasker’s the last thing in our files on the KKK. He went to prison eight years ago. I was hoping you had a cold case with a newer name.”

  “You need it right now?”

  “It’s a hate crime.”

  He nodded, wrote a note, and pushed it over by his phone. It was an old phone, the numbers rubbed off. “How was Oregon?” he asked.

  “Washington.”

  “Whatever. Now you’re back. Working another civil rights case. Really moving up in the world.”

  “I’m working a task force too.” I felt pride rising to my defense. And I felt stupid the moment the words left my mouth.

  “Which task force?”

  “Southside gangs.”

  “I’m working that.” He frowned. “I haven’t seen you at any briefings.”

  “I just started. What’s your connection to our task force?”

  “Gangbangers create half my cold cases. Nail these guys, I might close twenty cases. Plus I’ve got the informant you Feds need.”

  Richmond’s cold cases numbered in the hundreds. The files were stored in dented metal file cabinets that stretched behind Detective Greene’s desk. One of those files was my dad’s unsolved murder and every time I walked in here, I tried to forget it. And failed.

  “What part are you working?” he asked.

  “Surveillance.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  I stared at the floor. It was the cheapest vinyl, scuffed. “Okay, I’m on the phones.”

  “Man, she really doesn’t like you,” he said, referring to Phaup.

  I didn’t trust my voice, or my words, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Okay, Klan info,” he said, changing the subject. “That it?”

  “I also need a dictionary.”

  “For what?”

  “For what I hear on the phones.”

  He pawed his mustache, considering the geometry of things. Finally he said, “You wind up in Poughkeepsie, leave me out of it.”

  “Totally unofficial translation.”

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “I heard something last night that sounded like a prayer. But it was twisted.”

  “Did it go, ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, two shotguns folded at my feet’?”

  I nodded.

  “We think the local gang’s getting recruited by a national group. Something called the Gangster Disciples. Thirty years ago some prison degenerate started lifting pieces of the Bible for his ‘book of rules.’ Today it’s run like a corporation and they pick up local gangs like franchises, do some kind of profit sharing. The locals funnel drugs into small towns and schools. You might hear stuff that sounds like Proverbs but believe me, it’s not. And some stuff Gabriel said about respect and freedom.”

  “Gabriel—the angel?”

  “The slave. As in Gabriel’s Rebellion?”

  I shook my head.

  “There was a slave named Gabriel Prosser. Back in the summer of 1800, he planned to attack Richmond, slaughtering every white man, woman, and child. But another slave ratted him out. They hanged him. But this gang worships him. Or they used to. Now it’s all about cash. We think the money’s coming from the Gangster Disciples, but we can’t say for sure. Yet.”

  “Drugs?”

  He nodded. “My snitch buys from them. Who are you reporting to on the task force?”

  Shame washed up my throat. Under normal circumstances, I’d report to the agent in charge of phone surveillance, who then reported to the agent in charge of the task force, a guy named Pollard Durant. Pollard reported to Phaup. Normal chain-of-command stuff.

  “I report directly to Phaup. On everything.”

  “That’s some tight leash,” he said.

  I feigned nonchalance. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Sure you will,” said the detective. “Eventually.”

  chapter seven

  On a cold Saturday morning in December, the monoliths that lined the streets of Washington, D.C., looked like Advent panels nobody would want to open. The frosty wind off the Atlantic Ocean tunneled down streets choked with dirt-caked yellow cabs that honked as black limos slithered past with darkened windows and diplomatic license plates.

  I made my way through the maze of a declining capital and parked under the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, between Ninth and Tenth. After passing through security, I rode the employee elevator to the Materials Analysis Lab.

  My old stomping grounds.

  I felt a twinge of envy passing the lab’s toys. X-ray defractor. Ion scanner. Mass spectrometer. At one time I thought it was the world’s greatest job. Hunt for answers, plug in data, fight crime.

  And minerals didn’t have personality disorders.

  At the far end of the lab a young woman waited for me. She wore a white lab coat with faded jeans and wool socks with Birkenstock sandals.

  “You must be Annette.” I extended my hand.

  “No. I’m Nettie,” she said. “Don’t ever call me Annette.”

  Her firm grip felt callused as a rock climber’s. She had replaced my favorite colleague who retired while I was in Seattle. Last night she left a message on my cell phone. She had results for the cross-burning soil; she worked Saturdays.

  “You said the soil was peculiar,” I said.

  “No, I said there were two compounds within the soil that were peculiar.”

  I smiled. She was exactly what you wanted in a lab tech. Not just accurate, but precise.

  “Can you take me through it?”

  Nettie Labelle pulled on safety goggles and rubber gloves and picked up a sterile syringe. My paint can containing the soil from Rapland sat on a steel table. She inserted the syringe’s tip into a small puncture hole in the can’s lid, drawing a sample of air, and turned to the large instrument set on the steel table. Its Plexiglas panel revealed an extended capillary tube. As she injected the syringe’s invisible contents into the machine’s capillary tube, I heard a starting gun go off in my head.

  The great race of Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometer.

  “This is my fourth run on these volatiles,” she said. “Just so you know I didn’t pull these results out of thin air, so to speak.”

  “Four runs?”

  “I thought something was wrong.”

  Inside the instrument a small furnace heated the vapor within the capillary tube, exciting the compounds and breaking their bonds. As they separated into individual molecules, the smaller elements sprinted through the capillary tube, while the larger molecules lumbered for the finish line. Nettie pushed the safety goggles up on her forehead and keyed up the computer monitor.

  Within moments colored bar graphs started rising and falling on the monitor, showing individual weights and speed of travel for each molecule. Call me a ner
d; I loved how GCMS was like a track race with no names on the runners. Like being told there’s a 119-pound female who does the hundred-yard dash in thirteen seconds. Your job was to figure out her name.

  Back in the early days, we matched molecules by combing through chemistry textbooks. These days computers did all the work.

  “That’s what I’m talking about,” Nettie said as the mass spec painted its final graph, tossing names on the monitor. “The accelerant used to light that cross was mustard gas. And something called lewisite.”

  “Mustard gas?” I leaned forward, staring at the results. “From what, World War I?”

  But she was already walking back to her desk down the hall from the instrument room. The smallest forensics department in the lab, mineralogy was tucked into the building’s north side. Nettie dropped into a swivel chair, stubbing her Birkenstock into the floor to pivot and reach under her desk, pulling out a folder.

  “Mustard gas isn’t even the most peculiar compound,” she said. “Wait until you meet lewisite.”

  “Mineral?”

  “Deadly chemical compound,” she said cheerfully. “All by itself, lewisite is nasty stuff. But add in some mustard gas and the toxicity goes off the charts. Whoever used these chemicals wanted to make sure that cross burned.”

  She flipped the folder open so I could see.

  The clinical photographs magnified five and ten times showed angry rashes that oozed blood and pus.

  But Nettie seemed unfazed.

  “In addition to the skin trauma,” she said, “lewisite produces convulsions, vomiting, and catatonic states. Sort of like what happens to me when somebody hands me a Barbie doll. Mustard gas does about the same. Burns, blinds people. But it smells like geraniums.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I read. Who knew? I take that back. Whoever put this stuff on the grass knew. Or they’re dead from contact.” She tossed me the folder. “Your copy, all the data.”

  Opening the file, I glanced over her notes. Her penmanship surprised me. Scrolled and flourishing, as feminine as a wedding invitation, somehow it made the medical photos even more gruesome. “I appreciate the quick turnaround. Thank you.”

  “But you’re going to tell me something’s wrong.”

  “This happened in rural Virginia. See what I’m saying?”

  She nodded—a quick, excited gesture—and combined with the spray of freckles across her nose and the faded jeans, she looked all of fifteen. “I wondered about that too. So I went through the lab’s back files on cross burnings. To check accelerants.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing’s even close.”

  “Nothing?”

  “They mostly use gasoline and lighter fluid. For all we know, these yahoos are drinking it too. Cross burnings aren’t rocket science. At least, not until this one came along.” She cocked her head, her long braid of brown hair dangling to the side. “What else are you thinking?”

  “The Klan’s in its fifth and sixth generations. Is there a way to figure out if these compounds are fresh?”

  She sat up, excited. “You mean, if they came from somebody’s great-grandfather who fought in World War I? Then the questions would be, can mustard gas dating from World War I still work, and if so, what conditions are needed to preserve it and keep it flammable?”

  So young, so eager. So much like myself when I started in the lab, thinking science would solve the big puzzle of human cruelty.

  “Those are good questions,” I said.

  “Are you asking me to look into it, officially?”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “You got it,” she said, as if I’d done her a big favor.

  chapter eight

  Sunday morning I drove my mother’s 1966 Mercedes Benz sedan down the city’s silent Sabbath streets. Flicking my eyes between the rearview mirror and the road, I watched Wally, who sat in the backseat staring out the side window. His ebony eyes were bloodshot and jaundiced. His skin bloated from interrupted sleep.

  But something else, something I couldn’t quite name, bothered me more.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  The bloodshot eyes glanced at the mirror. “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You look tired.”

  “Working late, that’s all.”

  My mother sat in the passenger seat and reached over, patting my leg. “He’s nervous about going to church.”

  “I’m not going in the church, Nadine. I told you, I’m taking pictures of that boneyard. That’s all.”

  She smiled. “That cemetery’s close enough to get touched.” Her voice filled with defiant cheer. “Wally, there’s nothing to be afraid of. God loves you.”

  “Talk about being afraid,” he said. “Look what you’re wearing.”

  She was wearing a red boiled wool jacket, a color that nearly matched the leather inside the antique Benz. The jacket’s brass buttons shone like badges but the matching skirt dropped three inches below her knees and the low-heeled shoes were incapable of offense, the footwear a candidate’s wife takes on the campaign trail. This was not a good sign.

  She turned all the way around to look at him. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

  “You didn’t check it out?”

  “I’m wearing church clothes.”

  “Church uniform,” he said. “That looks nothing like you.”

  It was true. My mother usually wore exuberant prints, heels like stilts, and skirts one inch embarrassingly short.

  “You look afraid of not fitting in,” Wally said.

  “Hey,” I said. “Take it easy. Nobody’s forcing you into that church.”

  He glowered out the side window as we passed downtown’s old department stores. Thalhimers and Miller & Rhodes, closed years before, abandoned for free parking and food courts at the suburban malls. On either side pawnshops sprouted up and furniture stores rented sofas for 20 percent interest monthly. Steel bars covered the windows.

  But this was my city. Richmond. Noble and sad. Heroic and fallen. Forever on the verge of turning around. So much potential it hurt.

  I glanced over at my mom. “You’re not nervous?”

  “Whatever for?” she chirped.

  For the memories, I wanted to say. For the anticipatory ache I already felt ten blocks away. My father’s church, the church for generations of Harmons, all the way back to 1775, when Patrick Henry stood up and delivered his ultimatum on liberty and death. St. John’s was also where we had his funeral.

  After that, I couldn’t go back. Neither could she.

  But now my mother asked to return and my goal was to make her happy, so I parked the Benz on East Broad Street where sloping porches made the wooden row houses look drowsy and walked around the front of the car to open her door. Wally ignored his usual courtesy and headed down the sidewalk carrying a large new Nikon. The church bell bonged with unalloyed tones, reverberating down the long white steeple.

  “Nadine?” the greeter called out. “Nadine Harmon—is that you?”

  Wally immediately stepped off the brick path and headed for the cemetery.

  “LaRue?” my mother said.

  “Nadine, bless your heart,” the woman said. “It’s been ages!”

  They gave each other hugs while I turned to watch Wally, his thin legs lost inside the baggy black jeans. He stumbled on the undulating grass where soil had settled around the graveyard’s guests. He kneeled beside a gray marble headstone and brushed his long dark fingers over the stone’s front where weather and time had erased names and dates. His face remained remote.

  “LaRue, you remember my daughter, Raleigh Ann,” my mother said in her new singsong voice.

  Suturing a smile to my face, I shook her hand. She said something I couldn’t hear because DeMott Fielding was coming toward us from inside the church. Far, far away, I felt the woman releasing my hand. My heart thumped in my chest.

  He stood beside the woman. “Hi, Raleigh.”

  My resp
onse was ready—I’d practiced it all day yesterday. But when I opened my mouth, my heart beat even faster, turning my words into an incoherent mumble.

  “DeMott!” my mother exclaimed. “Raleigh, look, it’s DeMott.”

  As if I didn’t see him. As if my face wasn’t crimson. As if right here on the front steps of St. John’s Church I wasn’t having a myocardial infarction.

  DeMott smiled and took my mom’s elbow, leading her inside.

  Feeling numb and confused, I followed and tried to breathe. But the odors of wool and mulberry and perfume choked the narthex. People streamed past us, hurrying as the pipe organ bellowed its prelude to worship.

  “Come sit with us,” DeMott said. “We have plenty of room in our pew.”

  “Thanks, but—”

  “We would love to,” my mother gushed.

  He guided her down the crowded aisle. She chattered away. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed men with manners. Seattle certainly is beautiful, but the men? They have no earthly idea of chivalry. I had to open all my own doors. Can you imagine? And poor Raleigh. She could not wait to get home.”

  DeMott turned, grinning again. “Is that right?”

  I looked away, heartbeat racing, telling myself it was some kind of homesick reaction. Nothing to do with DeMott Fielding. Calm down. But my mind refused to cooperate. It kept conjuring up his words from last summer, when he told me he knew the perfect guy for me and opened his arms wide and said, “Someday you’ll figure it out.”

  He opened the box pew. The Fielding sisters, Jillian and MacKenna, sat on the dark wood bench and my mother settled in beside them. I stepped in after her and suddenly realized my mistake. DeMott closed the short door and sat next to me.

  A tight fit.

  I wiggled out of my coat. In 1741 when the church was built, these wooden box pews retained heat when parishioners carried hot bricks and stones to St. John’s services. My mother tried recreating the sensations, scooting closer, pushing me into DeMott. I tried to sit back. DeMott shifted, stretching his right arm across the back of the pew, and heat bolted across my shoulders.

  No way would I make it through this service.

  “So you met Stuart,” he said.