Cassian nodded. “You want me to take care of it, and you can wait in the car?”
Train couldn’t tell whether his partner was kidding, and there was part of him that was tempted to take him up on his offer, but he knew he couldn’t. He shook his head. “Let’s get this over with.”
They ambled up the front walkway, only to be drawn up short by a high-pitched call from the front porch of the house next door. “Darius Train!” came the voice, startling them both.
Train looked over and smiled as he recognized the face. He made a motion for Cassian to relax for a moment, and he strode across the burnt-out grass to the little house, its yellow paint chipping away. “Is that Miss Thelma Thornton?” he called out in a deep, resonant voice.
“Oh, you know it is, child.” The woman on the porch laughed. Darius could barely see her over the solid wood railing. She was a frail slip of a woman, her hair thinning a bit on top, her shoulders bent forward with age. “Lord, it has been too long since we’ve seen you ’round here, son. A body might begin to think that you’d forgot where you came from.”
Train leaned his huge frame over the railing and took the woman’s tiny hand in his, kissing it as though meeting a queen. “No, no, Miss Thelma,” he said, letting a slight drawl slip into his voice. “You know there ain’t no chance of that. I live over closer to center of town since I transferred to the station on Capitol Hill.” He gave her a huge smile. “I don’t get down around here quite as often as I like, but you know I could never stay away from you for too long.”
Thelma Thornton chuckled lightly at that. “Oh, you always were the smooth child, but you shouldn’t be wastin’ it on an old hag like me.” She smiled brightly, revealing a gap where her two front teeth had once been. Then she noticed Cassian behind Train and her smile dimmed slightly. “Have you lost your manners, Darius?” she scolded Train. “Who’s your friend?”
Train looked over his shoulder and flushed. “That’s my partner, Jack Cassian,” he said, looking guilty.
“Nice to see you, ma’am,” Jack offered.
“Humph,” the old woman grunted, turning her attention back to Train. “You boys here on official business, then?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Well . . .” Darius sputtered, caught off guard by the question.
“Never mind,” Thelma said. “I don’t want to know. My business is my business, and yours is yours.” She cast a quick glance over toward the Washington house, where the detectives had clearly been headed before she stopped them. “The same goes for everyone else in this neighborhood.” She bowed her head a moment, as if in mourning. Then she raised it again and her smile had returned, though Darius thought he saw a tinge of sorrow in the corner of her mouth. “I’m just glad to see you, son,” she said. “It’s people like you that have given a lot of us hope.” She looked over his shoulder again, toward Cassian. “You know you’re riding with a legend here, right, mister?” she called out.
“He’s mentioned it,” Cassian replied, smiling, enjoying Train’s embarrassment at the attention.
“Best damned athlete this city’s ever produced in any sport— least this corner of it. An’ one of the finest people, too.”
“Yes ma’am,” Cassian said. “We’re still debating where to put the statue down at the station.”
She looked at Train again and nodded toward Cassian. “Smart mouth on that one, huh?” she said quietly.
Train looked over at his partner. “Yeah,” he admitted. “You’d like him.”
She nodded slowly. “Probably would, at that.” She looked down at her hands. “I won’t keep you anymore, son,” she said, “but I sure am glad to see you.”
“Thank you.” Train took her hand and kissed it again. “Me too.”
“Now you git,” she ordered, and Train turned and walked with Cassian back toward the house where Shantal and Jerome Washington lived.
T
HE DOOR SWUNG OPEN
on the second knock, and Train won
dered whether the woman standing at the threshold had been watching the exchange at the house next door. Shantal Washington had aged significantly since Train had seen her at Jerome’s sentencing. Although he’d been the arresting officer, his testimony at the hearing had been muted, and he’d argued for leniency, telling the judge that he’d known both Jerome and his family for most of his life, and that he believed there was still something worth saving in the young man. Shantal Washington’s attitude toward Train hadn’t softened, though, and she still blamed him for the two years her son had lost in prison.
“Shantal,” Train said, nodding at the woman in the door. “How you doin’?”
“What’re you doin’ here,
D-Train
?” Shantal’s voice was full of anger as she spat out his high school nickname.
Train sighed, realizing that there was no way to ease his way into the encounter. “We need to talk to Jerome,” he said.
“What fo’?” Shantal Washington demanded. “Ain’t you done enough to him yet?”
“I think it’d be better if we left that between him and us,” Darius answered. “He here?”
“No.” She shook her head. “He ain’t.”
Train frowned at Cassian, then turned back to Jerome’s mother. “This is the address he listed with his parole officer. If he moves, he’s supposed to let them know down there. If he doesn’t, it’s a violation of his parole.”
Jerome’s mother looked nervous. “He still lives here, he just ain’t here right now.”
“Is he at work?” Train pressed.
Shantal Washington bit her lip. “He got fired,” she finally admitted, shaking her head. “His boss said you couldn’t trust no convict.” She shot a glare at Train. “That’s what you did to him.”
The muscles in Train’s jaw clenched as he fought back the urge to defend himself. It wouldn’t do any good, and it would only make things more difficult. “We need to talk to him, Shantal. It’s important.”
“Yeah, well then I guess you gotta come back later, ’cause he ain’t here now.” She shook her head and looked like she was going to cry. “Why don’t you just leave him alone, Darius?” she said after a moment, her voice pleading. “You ain’t taken enough of his life?”
Train considered their position. They had no warrant, and couldn’t force their way in to check the place out without facing charges later. Besides, looking at Shantal he could tell she wasn’t lying; her son wasn’t there. “All right, Shantal, we’ll come back later. You tell him we’re lookin’ for him, though, okay?”
“Yeah, I will,” Shantal said. She glared at the two officers as they turned and walked away. “He’s a good boy!” she called after them. “You leave him alone now, you hear?”
Train heard, but he was already down off the porch and headed back toward the car.
z
“What now, boss?” Cassian asked as they climbed back into the car.
Train flipped open his notebook. “I’ve got the address of the place where Jerome’s parole officer got him a job. We could head over there, but I’ve got a feeling that’ll be a dead end. Shantal’s got no reason to lie about him getting fired.”
“Might be worth a shot anyway,” Cassian said. “Sure beats the hell out of sitting here waiting for him to come home, sweating our balls off in this goddamned car.” He looked over at Train. “Too bad we don’t have a neighborhood watch pro
gram set up out here,” he joked. “Somebody might have seen the man recently.”
Train thought for a moment, and then suddenly opened the door to the car again. “We do,” he said as he got out. He walked up the lawn toward Thelma Thornton’s house, right toward the old woman, who was still sitting on her porch.
She saw him coming and started shaking her head. “Don’t you do this to me, Darius Train,” she said as he neared the porch.
“Do what to you, Miss Thelma?” He tried to force a smile.
“You can gimme that fool’s grin all you like, but I can see the look in your eyes. You want me to say something that’s gonna get somebody in trouble.” She shook her head again. “Good Lord, son, don’t you know I still gotta live here?”
Train held up his hands. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I won’t ask you to say anything that’ll get anybody into trouble. We’re just looking for Jerome, next door, and his mother doesn’t know where he is. I just thought, maybe, y’know, because you always seem to know everything going on in the neighborhood, you might have an idea where we might find him.”
Thelma Thornton shook her head once more, though less forcefully this time. “Just like the police to use an old lady for information.” She looked at him. “I’d have hoped you’d be better,” she said.
Train returned her look, his own eyes deadly serious. “It’s important, Miss Thelma,” he said. “A young mother was murdered yesterday. I’m not lookin’ to jam Jerome up for something he didn’t do, but we gotta talk to him. And the longer it takes for us to find him, the worse it’s gonna be for him.”
She sighed and let her needlepoint fall onto her lap. She leaned in and spoke quietly. “Now I don’t know for sure, you understan’,” she said reluctantly. “A lot of what I hear is nothin’ more than rumor.”
“We’ll take anything we can get, Miss Thelma. Even rumors.” Train knew that Thelma’s rumors were generally more accurate than anything printed in the daily papers.
“I heard he’s running a shack down on G Street—you know, the one near Eighth? My guess is that you’d find him there,” she said. Then she added quickly, “You know him, though, Darius. He was a good boy once. It’s just the damned drugs that changed him.” She looked him in the eyes again. “And prison.”
Train felt as though he’d been slapped, but it was worth it. He’d gotten the information he needed. “Thanks, Miss Thelma, I appreciate it.”
“If you really appreciate it, you’ll go easy on that boy, Darius. An’ you’ll remember who you are an’ where you come from.”
C
ASSIAN KNEW THE
“
SHACK
” Thelma had referred to. It was a run
down, boarded-up townhouse on G Street between Seventh and Eighth—only blocks from Elizabeth Creay’s house—that harbored, at any given moment, between five and twenty lost souls who used the shelter to indulge whatever particular demons plagued them. It was mainly crack cocaine, but crystal meth and heroin were not unusual either.
The prospect of raiding this particular type of spot was never appealing; by nature it was a dangerous, unpredictable task, made all the more so by the reality that any number of the residents could be armed—and high. As a result, Cassian and Train called in two squad cars for backup so they could mount a full-scale assault on the dwelling.
They met up with the squad cars a few blocks from the house and parked in back of a gas station off Pennsylvania. Train quickly mapped out their strategy. “Kiper and Halston,” he said, pointing at two of the officers. “You go through the alley and block any escape out the back. Minnelli and Jackson, you’ll go in through the front with me and Cassian.” All four of the cops nodded. “Remember, we’re looking for one guy in particular—Jerome Washington—we’re not looking to clean the place out as a matter of policy. Detain all those inside until we know whether we’ve got our guy. If you see anything obvious—weapons or drugs actually in the possession of anyone you pat down—we’ll take them in, too, but that’s purely a secondary issue. Hold your fire unless you face an affirmative threat. I want to get out of this without anyone getting hurt.”
The four officers nodded again.
“Okay, Kiper and Halston, you two take off. We go in exactly five minutes.”
The two officers headed out, and Jack took a moment to check his weapons. Like most police officers, he carried two, one in a shoulder holster and one strapped to his ankle. He looked over at his partner, who had unlocked the shotgun from underneath the front seat of the car. “That may be a little overkill, don’t you think?” Cassian asked. “Remember what Miss Thelma said: ‘You gotta take it easy on the boy.’ ” He mimicked Thelma Thornton’s high-pitched voice.
“If you knew what was good for you, you wouldn’t disrespect a woman like that. She’s seen more shit than you’ll ever hear about, and she still keeps her life wired tight.” He nodded toward the shotgun in his hand. “As for this, it’ll let the people inside know we’re serious. If they get the idea we’re being tentative, this thing could get out of control pretty fast.”
“Speak softly and carry a twelve-gauge?” Cassian asked.
“Something like that.”
Cassian shrugged and walked around to the back of the car. He popped open the trunk and took out two Kevlar vests with
POLICE
stenciled across both the front and the back. He took off his sport coat and threw it in the backseat. Then he slipped his arms through the straps in one of the vests. After he’d buckled himself in, he took the second vest and tossed it on the hood of the car in front of Train. “You forgetting something?” Cassian
asked, nodding at the vest.
“Nope,” Train said, shaking his head.
“Come on, Sarge, the city shelled out millions of dollars so we could each have one of these. The least we can do is wear ’em.”
Train scowled as he picked up the vest, holding it up in front of his huge torso. “This thing doesn’t even cover me,” he pointed out. “It only works for skinny little white boys.” He tossed the vest back on the hood.
“Let’s not make this a racial thing,” Cassian cracked. “I don’t want any of our people mistaking you for one of the bad guys and taking you out by accident.” He pointed to the yellow lettering on his own vest. “See? This makes clear which team you’re on. And like you said, we’re better off going in with a strong message.” Cassian picked up the other vest and held it out to his partner. Train could be stubborn, he knew, but he generally gave in to reason.
The huge man rolled his eyes as he slipped off his suit jacket. It was a struggle for him to get the vest around his frame, and once it was on it looked comical, the protective padding covering only a small portion of his chest. It was all Cassian could do to suppress a smile.
“Don’t fuckin’ start with me,” Train warned his partner, sensing the younger man’s amusement without even looking up.