The Body Box (8 page)
TWELVE
The next morning when I walked into the office, Lt. Gooch wasn't at his desk. I was a little surprised. Usually he had been coming into the office at a ridiculously early hour. I figured he'd given me a week of show and now he was going to start malingering in a more conspicuous way.
I had nothing to do, so I skulked outside and hung a bunch of the MISSING posters of Jenny Dial on telephone poles up and down Ponce de Leon Ave. I figured the Chief couldn't fault me for that. Anyway, who would even notice? The poles were covered with tattered ads for rock bands. I wondered if anybody in the entire history of the universe had ever looked at anything stapled to a telephone pole. After a while, the whole business started making me feel depressed. So I went back to the office.
Around ten-fifteen Gooch walked in and dropped a brown manila envelope on my desk. It had the logo of the GBI Crime Lab in the corner.
“Congratulations,” he said.
“What.”
“You just solved your first murder.”
I stared at him dumbly, not getting what he was talking about.
“Vernell Moncrief,” Gooch said. “The DNA from the semen found on Marquavious Roberts. It matches the mouth swab you took off him yesterday.”
I squinted at him, then opened the envelope. Inside was a DNA reported dated and time stamped nine-fifteen
AM
today. “How'd you get this?” I said. “The tech over there told me only God himself could get next-day service on DNA.”
AM
today. “How'd you get this?” I said. “The tech over there told me only God himself could get next-day service on DNA.”
“Making the world in seven days, that made me sweat a little. Getting some DNA run overnight, that's nothing.”
“You just made a joke!” I said. I walked to the door and yelled out into the empty, echoing hallway. “Listen up, people! The Lieutenant just made a joke!”
“Who says I'm joking?” he growled.
I looked to see if he might crack a smile, but he all he did was spit tobacco juice in his Dixie cup and lock the cup back in his desk. I reviewed the report carefully. The DNA from Vernell's mouth swab was a clear match to the semen found on Marquavious Robert's body over a decade ago. Finally I looked up. “I guess we better go pick him up, huh, Lieutenant?”
“I want SWAT involved,” Lt. Gooch said. “Full felony takedown.”
I raised one eyebrow. Back in Narcotics we didn't use SWAT unless we absolutely, positively had to. Calling SWAT was the sissy play. You'd get a reputation as being a hairstyle if you couldn't close your own busts.
Gooch must have seen what I was thinking. But as usual, he didn't say anything.
SWAT is a blunt instrument. Rapid entry, rapid takedown. That's what they're good at. Anything more subtle, and their value starts to drop.
Unfortunately the bust didn't go the way it should have, and we ended up trying to fix a Swiss watch with a hammer.
We got some intel at the last minute, a CI of Gooch's, who called twenty minutes before the bust was supposed to go down and said that Vernell wouldn't be home that night, that he would be at a motel down on Stewart Avenue, the sleaze strip on the south side of the town. As a result we had to change plans inside the SWAT van itself, go in without a clear tactical plan.
How hard could it be, though, right? A motel room has a front door and a back door. You clear the rooms next door, you drop the flash-bang, you bust the door, you go in. Simple.
Only someone got their wires crossed.
SWAT piled out of the van first, sending three guys around back beside the empty swimming pool, and three guys to go through the front door. Lt. Gooch and I joined the stack on the front door.
As always, I felt the strange mix of prebust emotionsâhalf pleasure, half terror. I could feel the sweat on my palm against the grip of the Glock, smell the cologne radiating off one of the SWAT guys in front of me.
Then everything else closed down, and my whole mind focused on the door.
The lead man had the door basher in his hand, hefting the steel handles, getting ready to pop the door, when I heard something behind me. It took me a moment to process the sound. A sort of click. Like a door lock.
I guess the SWAT guys were so focused on the door that they didn't notice it. But Gooch and I turned in unison, like our heads were attached to the same little motor. Behind us, I saw someone walking out of the room next door.
“Who cleared the rooms next door?” Gooch snapped.
But it was too late for an answer.
The captain in charge of the SWAT team screamed, “Go!”
As the door basher hit the wood, the man coming out the next door room swivelled around, spotted us. He was a young black guy, ghetto fabulous, a white Sean John suit, white shoes, yards of bling. “Five Oh!” he yelled. It wasn't clear who he was yelling to, but it must have been somebody in the room next to Vernell's.
And then his gun came out.
Before I could even get my gun up, Gooch had double-tapped him, two shots that came so fast they almost sounded like one.
The kid with the gun staggered against the wall and went down, a shocked expression on his face.
“Go, go, go!” the SWAT captain yelled.
The three SWAT men disappeared into Vernell Moncreif's room.
“With me,” Gooch said, gliding swiftly to the open door of the next room. He kicked the dying boy's gun away, then peeped quickly into the room.
I reached down to feel for the boys' pulse.
“Forget him,” Gooch said. “He's gone. There are two men in the room. You take the one on the left, I'll take the right. Go.”
Then he was in the room. I followed immediately.
The two men inside the room were on their feet, unarmed, panic in their eyes. On the table between them was a small mountain of baggies full of something that looked like brown sugar. I recognized it as Mexican heroin cut down to street weight. Apparently we'd walked into a drug deal between Vernell and the men in this room.
“Yo! What theâ”
“Get down, get down!” Gooch yelled.
The door to the adjoining room was open. Apparently Vernell and whoever these guys were had been renting both rooms. Which meant the SWAT guys couldn't see what we were doing, and we couldn't see what they were doing. This was a disaster.
A man in a red track suit backed through the door to the adjoining room, slammed it shut, locked it, turned around.
“Aw, man!” he said, seeing us. “Y'all
again
?” It was Vernell Moncrief. He had one hand under the tail of his track suit. Reaching for a gun? Probably. But I couldn't tell for sure. A puzzled look ran across his face. Like he was wondering why Cold Case cops were doing a drug bust.
again
?” It was Vernell Moncrief. He had one hand under the tail of his track suit. Reaching for a gun? Probably. But I couldn't tell for sure. A puzzled look ran across his face. Like he was wondering why Cold Case cops were doing a drug bust.
“Everybody on the floor!” I shouted.
The two drug dealers complied, but Vernell just kept standing there staring at us, his hand still hidden under his track suit.
“Get your hand out!” Gooch yelled.
But Vernell's hand didn't move. “What y'all want?” he said.
Gooch's voice was quiet now. “Get your hand out of your pants, or I'm shooting you.” Would he? I wasn't sure. If he popped Vernell and there was no gun under that track suit, it would be bad news for Gooch.
“Is y'all Narcotics or not?” Vernell said. “I'm confused. I thought y'all was Homicide or something.”
“Show your hands, Vernell,” I said.
Vernell's eyes widened. “This about Marquavious?” he said.
“The hands. Now.”
“I ain't touch that boy! I loved that boy!”
I could hear the footsteps of the SWAT guys, coming around to the door of the room we were in. They piled in behind me, immediately started shouting at their top of their lungs, “Down on the ground, asshole!” and all the usual stuff.
“Guys,” I said. “Y'all aren't helping.”
They kept yelling, though, until Gooch, without taking his eyes off Vernell, said, “Shut up.”
I don't know what it was, but there was command in his voice. It wasn't loud, but it just made you sit up straight somehow. The SWAT guys all went silent.
Gooch inched forward. “Vernell, don't do anything silly.”
“This about Marquavious?” Vernell said again.
“Yeah, Vernell,” Gooch said. “It's about Marquavious.”
“I gave y'all that DNA!” Vernell said. “Why I'd of give y'all that DNA if I'd kilt that boy?”
“Vernellâ”
“I ain't just fell off the turnip truck, man,” Vernell said. “I'd of lawyered up! I'd of made y'all get a warrant!”
“Vernell. You need to get your hand out of your jacket.” Gooch's voice was so soft now, it was like he was talking to a woman in bed.
“Y'all done frame my ass. Because my DNA ain't on no Marquavious body. Not no way. I loved that boy like he was my own son! Who'd of kilt a boy like that? Done them sick things on him? You
know
I couldn't of did that!”
know
I couldn't of did that!”
“Then you'll prove it to a jury of twelve,” Gooch said. “If it wasn't you, then you'll walk. But right now, you need to give me that gun.”
Vernell stood there for what seemed like a long, long time. I could see the sweat running off his face, running down by his ear, a bead of it tracing the knife scar across his throat.
“I know I ain't no good man,” Vernell whispered, pleading. There were tears in his eyes suddenly, mixing with the sweat, running down his nose. “But please! Come on, Mr. Po-lice. That boy, Marquavious, he like my own son.”
Vernell's hand underneath his jacket was starting to shake. But he just kept standing there, starting at Gooch.
And then there were two quick bangs. I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye, then Vernell fell against the door frame. There was another bang, and blood sprayed out of Vernell's face. He fell forward like a puppet with its strings cut. As he fell, his hand came out from underneath his jacket, a cheap little .25-cal auto slipping from his grasp, clattering to the floor.
“He moved,” the SWAT guy next to me said, his submachine gun still pointed at Vernell Moncrief. “Y'all
saw
it! He moved.”
saw
it! He moved.”
Gooch turned and looked at the SWAT officer. “Son,” Gooch said, “why you think I brought you people in here? So this wouldn't happen. If I'd of wanted to execute him, I could of done it myself.”
“Execute!” the SWAT guy said. “Execute? He was fixing to draw down on you.”
Gooch looked into the SWAT guy's eyes until finally the officer couldn't hold his gaze anymore. The officer turned away, muttering something that I couldn't make out.
THIRTEEN
Instead of doing my paperwork, I drove my eight-year-old-piece-of-crap Chevrolet Lumina up to Alpharetta, sat in the parking lot of a lowrise industrial park, and waited until a man in a golf shirt and pressed chinos came out. It was David Drobysch. The adoptive father of my little boy. He climbed into a BMW 735i and drove off.
I followed, keeping back a couple of car lengths.
We crawled through the horrible traffic, driving past strip mall after strip mallâPublix supermarkets, Borders Books, Blockbuster Video, one after anotherâsubdivision after subdivisionâBentwood Terrace, Windward Heights, The Meridian, Country Club of the South, Sheltering Farmsâme and my son's father, and all the other happy and prosperous white folks in their imported cars, windows rolled up, air conditioning blasting. It was five-lane roads mostly, or seven, plus the turn lane in the middle.
Eventually David Drobysch turned into one of a thousand subdivisions out there, between two giant pretentious stone gates and a huge faux-brass sign that read,
ROSEMONT ORCHARDS II, A TENNIS COMMUNITY.
We wound down a bunch of identical streets, not a right angle in sight, curving in and out till you lost track of where you were, past one 5,000-square-foot house after another, all built from one of seven plans, all brick, all two stories, all tricked out with the same palate of stale architectural trickery: eyebrow windows, mansard roofs, plantation shutters, copper flashing, copper downspouts, copper gutters.
ROSEMONT ORCHARDS II, A TENNIS COMMUNITY.
We wound down a bunch of identical streets, not a right angle in sight, curving in and out till you lost track of where you were, past one 5,000-square-foot house after another, all built from one of seven plans, all brick, all two stories, all tricked out with the same palate of stale architectural trickery: eyebrow windows, mansard roofs, plantation shutters, copper flashing, copper downspouts, copper gutters.
Kids played in the streets everywhere. White kids, white kids, white kids, most of them dressed like little gangsters from the 'hood, pants drooping, their small thick-ankled legs sticking out of baggy shorts.
The BMW pulled into the concrete driveway in front of one the huge brick houses. An eyebrow window in the middle of the sloping roof gave the place a faceâthe perplexed, vacuous expression of a giant cyclops.
I drove past the house without stopping, my heart beating way too fast. It took me ten minutes to find my way out of the subdivision.
Â
Â
When I got home I logged on to the computer to look at my boy. Or I tried to, anyway. But when I hit the button for his Web page, an error message came up.
Error 404, page not found.
Error 404, page not found.
Suddenly I was fuming. Had they put some sort of trap on the page so that if I tried to dig past the firewalls, they'd find out and yank the page on me? Did that mean that David and Nancy Drobysch now knew that I knew who they were? Did it mean. . . . There was no telling what it meant. Maybe nothing. Maybe they were updating the page. Maybe their server was down. It could be any of a thousand things. I sat there in a rage, staring at the white, empty screen.
Finally I cut my Internet connection, started typing up a report for the Marquavious Roberts murder. When I was done, I went in the kitchen and microwaved myself a bowl of Chicken Voila!, then sat on my exercise bike, riding and riding as I ate the bland dinner.
When I was done, I felt unsatisfied in a thousand tiny ways.
Marquavious Roberts. I'd solved a case, at least. That was something. Maybe that poor child would rest better now that his killer had gone down.
But still, something nagged at me. Solving the Marquavious Roberts case had seemed so easy. Maybe too easy. I realized I'd never absorbed the facts of the case, not to the level I had with Evie Marie Prowter's case, anyway.
So I went back and sat down with the file, going through it page by page. It was amazing how many things I hadn't noticed the first time around. Like for instance it was the same detective, Lt. Roy Bevis, that would go on to work Evie Marie's case four years later. The autopsy had been done by the same person, too, Dr. Vale Pleassance, MD, Assistant Medical Examiner, Fulton County, Diplomate of the American College of Forensic Pathologists.
But when I got to the ME's report, read it over a second timeâand then a third and then a fourth and then a fifthâI started to get a sick feeling. Sick and angry and ashamed all at the same time.
I picked up the phone, called a number. When the person I was calling picked up, I said, “You knew! How did you know, you son of a bitch?” I said. I could hear breathing, but no answer. “You creepy sick diseased liar.”
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