Those Bones Are Not My Child (41 page)

“I suppose so.” Zala wondered if B. J. was working up to say something about the lie-detector test. Had someone sent her to demand a retesting?

“We’ve got to have room to turn around in. That’s what I tried to explain to that woman your husband sent to interview me. Which I didn’t appreciate worth a damn, okay? I’m not interested in spotlights, Marzala. I leave that to the egomaniacs. I’m good at my job. I’ve had to be.” She crushed out another butt.

Zala had heard it all before, of course—how female applicants were shunted off into typing pools or into juvenile services; how a woman officer, until recently, had to have a college degree and background in social work; what an uphill battle it had been to be issued uniforms, and equipment, to get training, and be assigned to details like the men.

“Yes, I know,” Zala said.

“Once a case blows open, all the chuckleheads come out of the woodwork. It’s hard enough trying to shake something loose from informants, but if they can’t come and go on the q.t.…” She took a slow drag. “You don’t know. Wide open, everybody jumps in, and we’ve got to cover our ass ’cause city hall got to look good, the high command got to look good, and nobody gives a shit for those of us bustin’ the bricks. We’re the dirty dogs coming and going. If we’re on the scene, we’re harassing the innocent. If we ain’t on the scene, the public’s up in arms. And who backs us up? Hell, the high command’s loyalties are to the administration and all them other politicos. So when they bear down, it’s
our backs chat catch it. And who’s gonna chance asking for help? You look like a fool if you do. And don’t think colleagues eager to move up a rung won’t stab you in the back if you’ve got the ball. Dammit, I could do this job if these flakes would stay out of my hair.” She jabbed the ashtray for emphasis, and gray sifted out onto the table.

“I hear what you’re saying, B. J., but I don’t know why you’re telling me all this.” Zala leaned over and buffed the table with her sleeve, embarrassed when she caught herself doing it.

“That Eubanks woman—your husband’s friend?—she said you were bringing in the TV networks to blow the case open. I thought we had an agreement to keep each other informed. This morning I find out through the grapevine that you parents got a medium stashed in a hotel here in town, some woman who’s been making headlines up north with cases that supposedly have the authorities stumped. If you knew how much work has been done on this case—no, listen, don’t interrupt me. Then I find out—and not from you—that some of you parents are planning to tour the country cracking on the investigation. That’s not too smart. And you should have told me.”

“Now wait a minute. You act like the case belongs to you. No, you let
me
finish. You’ve thrown a lot of things at me, B. J., and I listened.” Zala tried to stand up, but B. J. wouldn’t move to give her room. “I know about the psychic. I assumed you did.” Zala didn’t know much about Dorothy Alison. She’d only gotten a glimpse of the energetic Italian woman when one of the parents suggested Zala bring by some of Sonny’s personal items for the woman to “scent.” She had only a smattering of the woman’s background—the Patty Hearst case, five honorary badges from police departments who’d benefited from her help, particularly on the Debbie Kline case in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania.

“One of the volunteer investigators brought her down from New Jersey,” Zala said, shoving her chair back to make B. J. move. “But I haven’t called anybody in.” She scanned the room again for her notebook. At the tenants’ meeting, Speaker had given her the name of a network newsman in D.C.

“Let me get this straight,” B. J. snorted. “You’re telling me that you don’t plan to use this TV contact to get on the air?” Her lips curled. “I don’t think I believe that. Your husband’s friend was pretty damn sure about that point.”

“Since when am I answerable to you? I haven’t called anybody. But
what if I had?” Zala stood up and backed the officer away from the table. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. All this time you’ve been bugging me to speak up, get pushy, try to get the help of the media to open the case. Now what are you saying—sit down and be quiet? Why?” she demanded.

“I’m trying to put a flea in your ear, Marzala.”

Something about the way the phrase was whispered made Zala soften her tone. “Is this about the lie-detector test I took?”

B. J. chewed on her lips. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” She seemed about to say something more but didn’t.

“No?” Zala waited for an explanation, for exoneration. Maybe she had passed the test and they’d lied to her. Zala reached under her skirt and tugged her turtleneck down. “I don’t know what you’re telling me, B. J., I really don’t.”

“I’m telling you, among things, to be careful. And you can tell Mr. Spencer that if he wants to know something about me, to come ask me himself. I want that tape. And another thing,” she added, cutting Zala off. But then she stopped and tipped the chair back and forth. “These outsiders come in,” she said, heating up again, “and don’t take time to get to the nitty-gritty, so to liven things up they turn the cruds into heroes and we’re the bad guys.”

“I know you’re not telling me that the media hasn’t had time to dig into the real story. You can’t be telling me that—not you, not to me.”

“I meant outsiders, okay? As for the press here, they’ll get to it. I’ll see to that. But your contact, for example—how much can he accomplish? He’ll come into town, on the weekend naturally, when half the offices are closed, so what good can he do? Make up shit. And next thing you know he’s got the public rooting for the criminals.”

“Not this, B. J. A bank robbery maybe, or a stickup at a fancy jewelry store. But not this. Thugs that don’t even soften up for Mother’s Day cringe about this case. I know what I’m talking about, so don’t sigh that sigh at me. I’ve tacked up handbills and talked to all sorts of people. And I know. Not this.”

“You don’t know how media works, Marzala. They’re after a story. You think they give a good goddamn about the facts? We get a suspect, catch ’em dirty even, and what do they say in the paper? Social misfit, rotten childhood, temporarily nuts because of junk food—like that creep out in California who shot up the mayor’s office. The criminal’s a
misunderstood victim and we’re a bunch of shits for making the collar without a please and a may I.”

“Maniacs that attack children? No way. They’ve got to ask for protection in jail from other prisoners. You’re talking off the wall. I’ll get you the tape from Leah Eubanks, if that’s what all this is about.” Zala brushed past B. J. and headed for the hall closet. “Heroes,” she snapped. “You must think you’re talking to a two-year-old. You may have more experience with media, but I’m not stupid. To hell with it anyway,” she said, swinging hangers back and forth. “Should I go with you down to the telephone company?” She yanked a sweater from the closet.

“You know that this out-of-town contact of yours is not going to get any cooperation from us. And neither is that fortune-teller. And how do you think folks’ll feel reading about you all blasting the administration? Don’t be too quick to accept invitations to speak around the country. You don’t know. All those reporters are interested in is whipping up a good story. They’ll have things coming out of your mouth you don’t even mean. Then how will you feel when you try to correct something and get mad and they spring your polygraph on page one?”

“I see.” Zala elbowed her way past and got into her sweater.

“Why are you catching an attitude with me? I’m trying to tell you something. They can’t get very far on what you know, so they’ll make up the rest, and you’ll take the fall. You can travel all you want, but you’ve got to come home sometime.”

“I see.”

“All I’m saying.” B. J. pleaded, following Zala back to the phone, “is that there are a million things the police are privy to that the public never learns, can’t. You’ve had fringe access to information at best. Mostly what I’ve been willing to give you.”

“Fine,” Zala said, raising her right hand. “I swear I won’t mention your name or what you’ve spilled. And I’ll get the tape. Satisfied?”

“There you go again.”

“That’s right, ’cause it’s crazy, B. J. Now that you’re finally in position to really help us, you tell me you can’t afford to be associated with us. That is what you’re saying, isn’t it? Tell me that’s not crazy. Agreement? You come in here and I hear three kinds of ‘we’ and ‘us’ and none of them include the people you’re supposed to be helping. If I had the time, B. J., I’d laugh, I really would.”

“You’re not listening,” B. J. said, shoving the ashtray aside with her hip and sliding onto the table. “Let me break it down for you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t know what’s bothering you, but I’ve got problems of my own. And seesaws ain’t my thing, never was. Always hated getting bumped down hard. I wish you’d get those papers working,” she said, and unlocked the door. But B. J. had hiked one pants leg up and was talking again, explaining how things had to be done by the book sometimes to assure maximum control so the job could get done. Her words tumbled out with the smoke, lost on Zala, who was shoving the door back over the carpet. Sergeant B. J. Greaves was sitting on her furniture, turning her house into a squad room, and refusing to be shown out until she’d finished sermonizing and patronizing. Zala heaved the door back till the knob banged the wall. Nobody was going to pull rank in her home.

“Get the tracer put on my phone, please.”

Sliding off the table, B. J. looked like she might pitch forward onto the floor. She pulled herself up straight, then patted the leather case on her hip. “You can count on it,” she said, and moved through the door.

“And thanks,” Zala called out. B.J. paused, as if there were something further she would say; then she unlocked her car door and patted her hip again in a gesture of reassurance. It would probably be, Zala thought, B. J.’s last act as B. J.—hooking her up before cutting her off.

By 9:30, the house was upside down, but the notebook and the slip of paper with the phone number were in Zala’s hands. Perched on the arm of the sofa, she chewed on the paper, wishing the phone would ring and give her another chance, though she wasn’t sure she was up to anything stark yet. Maybe a call from a storm-window salesman first asking to speak to the man of the house. She could hear her niece Gloria—“The man of the house? Ooooh, sir, he died this morning, my daddy did. Washing the upstairs windows, he fell off the ladder and broke his neck. And I dunnoknowhawegonnadooo.” Or maybe a market researcher would call asking after Zala’s brand of brassiere and how much snap it had left after twenty-three washings. Or better yet, the Board of Ed informing her once more that Sundiata Spencer was truant and that things would go hard for the Spencers if she didn’t bring in a
sworn affidavit verifying the story she’d offered last time. Then she could let loose for five blazing minutes, discharge all the feelings jamming her system; then, calm, she’d wash her face and fix a cup of tea sweetened with the home brew Mama Lovey had sent up by Greyhound to make the fruitcakes drunk. Maybe then she’d be up to a phone call that mattered.

She peered through the macramé curtain when she heard a tapping in the street. She half expected to see legs sticking out from under her car, the back of her Beetle thrown open, its innards exposed, and Spence down on the ground by the fender, handing tools underneath to the mechanic. Months in the shop, untouched till she could come up with a deposit, the car had been towed home by Spence’s new friend, who promised to give her an estimate of an installment plan. The tapping went past. It wasn’t someone Simmons had sent to bring her to work, but a taxi, one of the old gents who hauled shoppers back and forth to the A&P at West End, its tailpipe bouncing in a bent-hanger girdle and sparking against the ground. Once, while sitting here waiting, she’d been startled by Sonny hopping out of a cab. He’d come strolling in blasé blasé, leaving her on tenterhooks until Kenti nagged the story out of him: he’d sassed Aunt Delia, who sent him home in a cab. How he’d bragged about beating Delia out of cabfare—how he’d boasted about beating the driver out of a tip!

“Obnoxious chile,” she heard herself say before she could censor it. “And I tried so hard.” The counterfeit of the whimper shamed her all the more. She clamped down on the paper till her teeth hurt.

She went over the call of earlier that morning foraging for some morsel of information that could settle her stomach. Had there been background noise? No, no Ping-Pong, no traffic, no machine sounds or music. Cora? Sonny? An anonymous tipster encouraged by the handbill, then scared at the last minute to get involved? All that the handbills had yielded thus far were calls from people who prayed for her, or people who warned that God was putting her whippings on the shelf. The intelligent thing to do, she told herself, running her hand over the upholstery, was to call Cora. But she couldn’t get her legs to move. Her hand snagged where the fabric had lost its texture, then tore. A knobby weave that used to give her a tactile pleasure on lonely nights, its threadbare state only reminded her now of her own. She noticed that a
corner of the sheet had gotten caught on the mattress strap when she’d folded the sofa bed back in. She looked at it and stopped chewing, trying to gauge how she felt about the night’s lovemaking. She plopped the notebook down covering the telltale sheet and turned her attention out the window again.

There was no one on the street and no other sound now but the yapping and straining of Mean Dog tethered and pacing in the Robinson yard. The Griers’ cat on the walk was slowly moving its head, tracing the dog’s path.

“Can’t pay the phone bill anyway,” Zala said, trying to rouse herself, “so why not call D.C.?” Before inertia set in. In another minute paralysis would take over, locking her joints. Her mind would thrash about, but she’d stay stuck in the nightmare with the it, the thing, the them gaining on her. She tried to think of nasty names to call B. J. to fuel herself, but lacked the reserves necessary to even begin.

Zala turned on the arm of the chair. The trees along Thurmond were just beginning to mottle. They promised bright vermilions soon, burnt orange, golden-tinged russets.