The Snow Angel (15 page)

Bell answered the phone in the gym. Across the room, a score of angry cops was gathered around three television sets, channel-flipping. “Are they going to find this baby?” Vera asked.

“I don't know,” Bell said.

“Are you all right?”

“I'm not going to drink, if that's what you mean.”

“I'm sorry. It's just that I worry about you.”

Bell sighed. “I need to retire, I swear to God.”

“Yes. Maybe we need to start thinking about that. A second career, maybe real estate…”

“The TV even ran one of the kid's Pizza King commercials. Can you believe that?”

“Ike, everyone in the city knows who that boy is. Publicity might help find him.”

“Sensationalism, that's all they care about. Anything for ratings.”

“I love you, Isaiah,” Vera said. “I'll see you at home.”

”I don't know what time that will be.”

“Just take care of yourself. The child is in God's hands.”

“Sure thing,” Bell said. As he signed off, he hoped desperately that she was right.

Across the way, phones were ringing on the card tables. Tips were already coming in, but everyone knew that most of them would amount to nothing.

Inspector Easterly reappeared and took the microphone. She called for the troops to re-assemble. Bell walked back to join the others. He noted that Ralph Kane was not among them.

“Okay,” Easterly said. “I know you're all upset. No one is more upset than me. But the question is: what now? The media had enough sense to put our phone number on the air, not the FBI's. We're bringing in several night watch precinct people to handle the calls. The rest of you get back out on the street.”

A young detective raised his hand. “Inspector, we have a logistical problem. We don't have enough cars.”

Easterly was exhausted. She hoped it didn't show in her voice. “If you don't have a take-home car, use your private vehicle. The city will reimburse you later. Use hand-held radios. We're still operating on Tac Four.”

As the others pulled on their heavy coats, Bell approached Easterly. “Inspector, what do you want me to do?”

Easterly looked up at him as if not comprehending the question. Finally she nodded. “I hear you've been on the wagon a couple of years.”

“We don't use that term, ‘on the wagon.'”

“What term
do
you use?”

“Sober.
We say we're
sober”

“Well, see what you can do to help Ralph Kane.”

“Ralph Kane?”

“Yeah, Ralph Kane. I think he's in trouble.” She saw the revulsion on Bell's face. “I thought that's what you
sober
people do, help other nonsober people. Was I wrong?”

Without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked away, leaving Bell to stare after her, dumbstruck.

I
n the Acropolis Lounge, Kane sat alone at the far end of the bar. When drinking in public, he always sat where he could see all the doors, but as far as possible from them.

The Acropolis was a blue-collar gin mill in the Greekville section on the fringe of downtown. The joint was filled with the usual after-work crowd, but now they were uncommonly quiet. All eyes were on the overhead television monitors.

Kane was pacing his drinking, trying to maintain just the right buzz without overdoing it. He knew he might have to return to work.

He tried not to pay attention to the six p.m. news update. The smarmy chief of police, Mosely, and the crooked mayor, Webster, were appealing to the kidnappers to release little Darryl unharmed.

In Kane's estimation, both men were human maggots. Mosely was trying to cover his ass after the FBI fuck-up, and Webster was grabbing the chance to deflect attention from the grand jury investigation.
Give me an honest Mob guy any time.

Kane picked up his beer and moved to the bar's back room, where he could pretend to watch a pool game. Right now, he would give anything to shut off his brain. But he had no such luck. The pool shooters stood around yet another television. On the screen, the anguished Stephen and Louise Childress were submitting to an “exclusive” interview by a breathless, concern-faking bimbo.

The Childress couple were people in hell, of that there was no doubt. Both wept as they talked about what a wonderful boy Darryl was. They begged the public for help.

So what do you think,, Billy? What would it have been like to have parents who loved us that much?

Then the television again played an outtake from one of the boy's pizza commercials, with accompanying music— his favorite Christmas carol, “The Little Drummer Boy.” There wasn't a word about the FBI blowing the ransom drop.

“Cocksuckers oughta be dead,” commented one pool player.

“Torture them first,” said a second.

“Let
me
have the motherfuckers, just for ten minutes,” said the third, a weightlifter.

Kane went into the men's room to escape the television. He just wanted to get Darryl Childress out of his mind. Again he found himself before a mirror, staring at his image. He was beginning to look like an old man. He was never much to look at in the first place, but now he looked like shit. There were bags under his eyes and his hair was turning a yellow-gray.

You look like shit because you are shit.

Then a hideous realization hit him. He was not starting to look like an old man. He was starting to look like a corpse.

Kane shut his eyes tightly, trying to blot out the pain. In machine-gun succession, a rush of pictures came at him. He saw the long-ago incident in the alley, the Caldwell shooting. He saw the swarm of desperate Vietnamese at the American Embassy. He saw Howard Kane towering over him, screaming at him for being yellow, because he hadn't stood up to the bully next door.

You are a piece of shit because you are a coward.

Kane once again feared he was going mad. He looked at the wall, where some moron had inscribed: “God is Dog spelled backwards.”

You have that right. God is a son of a bitch.

That view was confirmed the instant he came back out of the men's room. The news anchor was breathlessly announcing more breaking news:

A child's body had just been found in a downtown alley.

K
ane arrived at the crime scene, blue light flashing. The alley was on the seedy side of downtown, in a marginal slum. The snow had stopped and the sky had cleared, leaving stars vaguely visible through all the city lights.

The corpse lay half-hidden behind a dumpster. A radio car team, a Zebra unit, had been flagged down by a homeless man. The bluesuits both were youngsters and hadn't yet seen much death, and this one was horrifying beyond comprehension. One of the young cops hastily covered the dead child with a blanket while his partner called frantically
for assistance.

The urgent call, of course, had been monitored by the news media. Homicide detectives had not yet arrived, but already three news helicopters were hovering nearby. A police aero unit kept them at bay while lighting up the alley.

Roberta Easterly, Isaiah Bell and other task force officers were also on the scene, awaiting Homicide and Forensics. Easterly stood with her hands deep in her overcoat pockets, shifting from one foot to the other, unwilling to accept this turn of events.

On her orders, everyone stayed outside the yellow tape. The snow had already been hopelessly trampled by a small army of winos summoned by the transient. Easterly didn't want any more interference with possible evidence.

Crunching through the snow, carrying a four-cell flashlight, Kane hurried up to her. His face was ashen. “Is it him?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “It's him.”

Kane ducked under the tape. Easterly grabbed his arm. “You don't need to see it, Ralph.”

He pulled away. “Yes, I do.” Despite herself, Easterly let him go.

Kane walked gingerly toward the dumpster. He went around behind it, turned on his flashlight, crouched down and gently lifted the blanket from the face of Darryl Childress.

The body was frozen. The boy's bloody right hand covered his face. The bullet had gone through his hand and into his head.

He knew it was coming! He knew it was coming, and he put his hand over his face to stop it!

The strength of his own revulsion stunned Kane. He had seen a lot of corpses in his lifetime. But he had never seen anything like this, not even in Vietnam.

He pulled the blanket back over Darryl's face. He stood up and looked over at the brightly-lit crowd watching him, barely able to see them. Dimly he made out the first arriving Homicide team walking toward him. “Officer, get the hell out of there!” a Homicide guy commanded.

He dream-walked back toward the tape and ducked under it. He was vaguely aware of Bell watching him, along with the others. So he kept walking down the alley until he was out of their sight. He stopped and pulled a flask out of his overcoat, uncapped it and took four long swallows. Then he leaned his back against the wall of a tenement and
stood there, numb.

After a few moments, Kane began to weep, softly at first. Then he thought of Billy and Pete. The tears burst forth, uncontrolled. He turned around, propped his forearm against the wall and pressed his face into it, and sobbed from the depths of his soul.

Kane did not notice Ike Bell standing in the shadows, watching him.

E
asterly sat in her unmarked car a block from the crime scene, talking to David on her cell phone. She watched the arriving television crews and the crime-scene detectives lit up by the circling aero unit. “I have to give a statement to the press,” she told her husband. “Mosely dumped the whole thing in my lap, the gutless bastard.”

“Listen, kid, I know you're upset. So be careful what you say.”

Easterly smiled bitterly. David knew her all too well. “Everything inside of me is screaming,” she said. “I want to tell the world what I think of Mosely and that FBI toad.”

“And nobody could argue with you. But the timing is wrong. What this city needs from you now is for you to catch the killers.”

“You're right,” she said softly. “As usual.”

David softened his voice. “How are you? Really?”

Easterly felt the fatigue course through her. “I have a new picture for the Horror Show. The worst one yet.” She inhaled and held her breath. “The little boy had his hand over his face. The bullet went through his hand into his head.”

“My God!”

“The corpse is frozen…” She fought nausea. “David, what kind of a
hero
can execute a seven-year-old child?”

“I trust that's a rhetorical question.”

“You still opposed to the death penalty?”

David ignored the question. “Any physical evidence?”

“We're excavating the scene, looking for slugs,” she said. “But we don't expect to find anything. We're pretty sure he was killed elsewhere and dumped here.”

”It's a good thing you have that witness.”

“Witness?”

“The sketches. I saw them on TV.”

Easterly sighed. “Yeah. The witness.”

There was a long silence as David let her feel her pain. Finally he asked, “Have I told you lately how much I admire you?”

Easterly smiled. “David, when this is over, I want to spend an entire night with you just holding me.”

“That can be arranged.”

“I'll see you at home. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend another night in the office.”

“Good.”

“But first I have to go deal with the vultures.”

“Remember to save the criticism until it will do some good.”

As she hung up, Easterly felt overwhelming gratitude for the goodness in her life. Then, walking back to the crime scene, she noticed Kane leaning against his car, alone. He was just standing there, staring off into space.

Where does a man like that find love?

B
ell stood in his son's bedroom, silently watching the boy sleep. Ikey had wanted to wait up for his daddy, Vera said, but he was just too tired. He and Cassie had been playing all day with Shawn and LaDonna, their cousins.

Bell said he hoped they weren't playing violent video games again. He also hoped he and Cassie hadn't seen the news tonight. No on both counts, Vera reported.

Now, looking down at his sleeping son, Bell said a silent prayer of thanks that his own children were safe. Instead of complaining about the expense of moving, instead of focusing on the privileges of white people, he should be grateful that they could afford to live here at all.

But Darryl Childress had lived in a safe neighborhood, too.

Bell reflected bitterly on the plight of black children in America.
Especially male black children. At this time in history, right here in the land of the free, it was so dangerous to be a black boy-child.

He quietly shut the bedroom door and went downstairs. Vera was waiting in the kitchen. Wordlessly, she handed him some hot chocolate.

“Thank you,” he said. He sipped the chocolate and looked out the window at the snow-covered back yard. “I saw something strange tonight. At the crime scene.”

“What was that?”

“Kane was hiding in the alley. He was crying.”

“Ralph
Kane?”

“He was drinking from a flask, and he was crying. He didn't know I saw him.”

“From what you've told me, I didn't think he was human.”

“He's a racist son of a—.” He caught himself.

Vera stroked his arm. “You never know about people, Ike.”

“He coulda been one of those Klansmen who lynched my granddaddy.”

“Maybe he changed.”