The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (24 page)

His obvious pride doesn't seem manufactured; besides, there's no way anybody else can hear them: the din's almost enough to stop their conversation in its tracks.

“Oh,” James says.

Moultrie leans over. “Look at him,” he whispers abruptly, with a jerk of his chin indicating a young guy sprawled out in a chair. The guy's girlfriend or wife or lady or whoever she is leans solicitously toward him. James recognizes her as the one at the front of the line who'd carried in the drawing that looked like something she'd done at her desk at the back of math class. The envelope of photos that held up the whole line must've made it through somehow, because she's handing each of them over and then taking them back like a handful of cards she's been dealt.
Bee-Bee, she say tell you hey,
she says.
Over there's La-Keisha.
The names ride the current of noise toward them.
Coconut cake for dessert,
she adds.
Wish I could've brung some.

“Let me tell you, that fucker was
on
my ass when I first came in,” Moultrie says. “This might as well be his living room or something. He'll be here his whole fucking life. In and out.”

Unlike Moultrie, who just last Christmas looked mainly like some placid hippie type and now has lost it all—his supply, his beautiful long braid, his dirty house so comfortable for hanging out in—and doesn't even have anybody to visit him every weekend like these other guys do.

“What about you?” Moultrie says. “What's going on in Houston? Got a girlfriend?”

James shakes his head.

“What about that little brown-eyed girl, what was her name, that one you brought home that time us three drove down to New Orleans for the weekend?”

“May-Beth?” James says repressively. “You know her name, man. Shit, I ain't seen her in two years.”

When May-Beth had come to Baton Rouge with him, she and James and Moultrie had stood in the wind on the observation platform at the top of the state capitol and stared at the muddy Mississippi. James still remembers the way her curly brown hair had escaped from its ponytail, the way she pushed it away from her face with her fingers.

“That's right,” Moultrie says. “May-Beth.”

Such a typical Moultrie move, to pretend he doesn't remember. May-Beth had joked that she wanted to touch her fingers to a bullet hole left from the barrage fired at Huey P. Long, so they'd taken the elevator, all three of them, down to the basement, and after that Moultrie had driven them on what he called his guided tour of the city, which consisted mostly of slowing the car at houses where he got stuff. That night, when May-Beth folded herself into the narrow twin bed in James's old bedroom with him, she'd sleepily pronounced Moultrie
a trip and a half,
and James should have known what was coming. The next night, she'd danced with them both in turn in the Quarter, Moultrie more than him. And then she had linked arms with them both as they stumbled their way back, tipsy, through the empty streets toward their car.

And that, as they say, had been that.

“So who all's come to see you?” James says pointedly. He knows from his quick glance at the guard's clipboard that the answer's
Nobody.

A girl he'd been sort of dating when he went in, Moultrie says without much regret in his voice. She came once at the very beginning.

“I asked her to pack up the rest of my shit and get it to Mom. Did she do it? She hasn't ever wrote me.”

“What shit?” James asks.

“Huh? I got somebody to hold on to all the furniture, but this was like, little things. Books and pictures. Stuff you could fit into a suitcase. You know.”

“You didn't figure out what to do with it before? It's not like you didn't know you'd end up here.”

“Mom,” Moultrie says, ignoring him. “Mom was somebody who came to see me. I couldn't let her come again after the first time. Just couldn't take it, the way it made her so upset.”

“That was nice of you,” James says. “Of course it made her upset.”

Moultrie takes a quick, furtive look around. “Hey, James, chill,” he says. “I didn't think I was going to end up here.”

“Where the fuck did you think you were going to end up?” James hisses. “No way was some junkie ever going to pack up your shit and get it to Mom's house.”

“It wasn't like that,” Moultrie says, looking affronted.

“Like what?” James says. “You mean it was all hearts and flowers?”

“Hey, James, take it easy,” Moultrie says again, simply. He pauses. “Let's not fight. You and Mom are just about all I got now.”

“Cut the sad song and dance,” James says, standing up. “I already know what you want to ask. Mom already said. How you need me to tell the parole board I'll let you live with me once you get out. That you've turned over some new leaf.”

“Hey, calm down, it's cool, bro',” Moultrie says, looking stricken.

It's just another family squabble, business as usual for this place. The girl who drew the portrait of herself in ballpoint pen is crying, fat tears running down her face. The scarred linoleum on the floor beneath James's feet, the folding chair he's sitting on, the thump and clank of the vending machines, all enrage him.

“Just admit it for once,” he leans over and hisses to Moultrie. “Okay? Just admit you were so fucking dumb you had a backpack full of heroin lying there on your living room floor and the front door unlocked. That's all I'm asking.”

“Huh?” Moultrie says.

“Are you fucking deaf?”

“Yeah,” Moultrie says simply. “A little. It gets to you, in here. The noise.”

“Jesus,” James says. “Why bother lying to
me
? What's the point?”

“No,” Moultrie says stubbornly. “I don't know how that stuff got there.”

He looks away.

Nobody here is guilty of anything. Everybody was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. All it was was bad luck or circumstance. Connections that went bad, and deals that went sour.

“Aw, shit,” James says. He sits back down. “You dumb fuck.”

 

In the end, he retraces his steps out of the gravel lot and past the field shored up with barbed wire. Past the stand of curving pines, and then along the corridor of strip mall—Home Depot and the KY Fry, and all the other buildings Moultrie hadn't listed in his directions, a Citgo and a yogurt shop and a place for to-go Chinese food. The road in front of James is glinting wet windshields from the afternoon rain. Everybody in this town seems to be going somewhere, and the wide flat lots in front of all the restaurants are starting to fill up. With couples, and families stopping for their big meal of the day, still so country that behind the big plate-glass windows they're clasping their hands and bending their heads to bless the food set on the plastic tablecloths in front of them.

The interstate is a looming comfort he can spot from the trajectory of the access road. The coffee he stops for at the last-chance McDonald's wedged into the on-ramp is hot enough to scald him back to Houston. It makes the car smell like home.

All the newness he remembers from the morning has burned off the day, and the two right-hand lanes are clogged with truckers, not a single good citizen among them. The trucks are all chrome and heat and glow, impatient to get somewhere before dark, and it's just as easy for them to box James in as not to.

All it was was a suitcase, Moultrie said when he turned to leave; and there were just a couple of places it might be.

These trucks are never going to let James merge without a fight; they'll never give him a courtesy blink to remind him that in the rain that's started beating down again he ought to put his lights on.

“So what am I looking for?” he'd asked, turning back to his stepbrother, jingling the change left in his pocket.

“Some other stuff's in there, too,” Moultrie had said, looking pained. He cleared his throat. “If nobody found it. Just flush it.”

The trucks press close on either side of James in a dangerous lumbering embrace. Green-and-white reflective signs Moul­trie could've painted nudge at his right shoulder. He forces his way into the middle lane. How quick your reflexes have to be, he thinks as he merges, rejoicing. A moment's hesitation and all might be lost.

FROM
New Jersey Noir

 

I
N CERTAIN PLACES
there exists a permeating pointlessness to life, with an aura of despair so acute that its inhabitants come to be unafraid of or, at the very least, indifferent to the inevitability of death. Camden City is just such a place.

Camden is a torn-down, ravished ghost of a city, blighted by poverty and corruption, violence, drugs, and disease. Its residents wallow amid the decay which lies like a sickened, dying animal prostrate in the sun's heat.

Within this city, in stark and ironic contrast, the modern glass and steel complex of Cooper University Hospital rises awash in bright, artificial light, a towering monument to mainstream mankind's fierce desire to live. The hospital exists on sprawling acres of urban renewal, restored row houses lining its borders, a false oasis of promise in a true desert of desperation.

Frank Cash, senior partner of the distinguished Haddonfield law firm of Cash, Collings and Haver, slowly turned his shiny new BMW into the hospital's enclosed parking garage. He stopped just short of the barrier arm as the dashboard digital flickered: 4:01 a.m.

As the driver's window lowered silently, a cold dampness from the dark November morning intruded into the car's warm interior. Cash shuddered slightly against it, reaching a hand to the automated ticket machine and pressing a manicured finger against the glowing green button. He frowned unconsciously at the cheerful computer-generated male voice which accompanied the dispensed parking stub.

Welcome to the Cooper University Hospital parking facility.

Tucking the stub into his pocket, Cash swung the car left and accelerated quickly up the smooth concrete ramp of the nearly deserted garage. It occurred to him that perhaps it would have been more prudent to use the family minivan as opposed to his 750. He noted a small cluster of parked vehicles at level two, centered around the elevator bank. He parked quickly and strode to an elevator.

Ten minutes later he stood facing a window in a small consultation area located within the emergency room. He gazed out across Haddon Avenue and eyed a squat building in the near distance. Emblazoned across the top, the words
Camden Police Department
gave fair warning to anyone in and around the hospital to behave themselves. Cooper had been as effectively isolated from the surrounding city as possible, Interstate 676 and parkland to the east, police headquarters to the north, renovated housing used as residences for hospital staff and medical offices to the south and west.

It had been a rather profitable project, Cash mused as he scanned the scene, absentmindedly scraping a bit of soot from the sill before him, sleep stinging his eyes. Quite profitable.

As he waited, Cash's thoughts returned to the events of last evening: the quiet dinner with family in his sprawling Victorian home in Moorestown, some reading, the late-night news, sleep, and then the phone call.

“Hello?” he had whispered into the mouthpiece, glancing to his sleeping wife as she gently stirred beside him.

“Mr. Cash?” a tentative voice had begun. “It's Ken, sir, Ken Barrows.”

Jesus Christ, Cash had thought, what could the most junior member of the firm possibly want at this hour? “What the hell, Barrows, it's almost three-thirty in the morning.”

“Yes sir, I realize that. It's just that . . . well, I'm on call tonight. For the FOP, you know, the police union. It's my week to be on call.”

Cash frowned into the mouthpiece, again glancing to his wife. She seemed resettled, her nightly sleeping pill working its wonder.

“And?” Cash asked harshly.

Barrows paused for a moment, perhaps suddenly rethinking the wisdom of the call. “There's been a shooting, sir. A fatal police shooting. One person is dead, but no police were injured. The union rep called me from the scene a few minutes ago. He wants me down there.”

Cash's frown turned to a scowl. “Of course he does, Barrows. That's the purpose of having a lawyer on call twenty-four-seven. It's mandatory when you represent the unions. But why in God's name did you feel it necessary to—”

“I thought you'd want to know, sir,” Barrows interrupted, a new confidence in his tone. “You see, the shooting was in Camden City. It was a white officer, the dead man is black. And the officer involved, the one who shot the perpetrator, was . . . it was that new officer.” He paused here for effect. Barrows, despite his youth, was a good lawyer. “It was Anthony Miles.” Another slight pause. “I thought it best you knew, sir. Of course, I can handle it if you'd like . . . but I thought you should know.”

Now Cash sat upright, indifferent to whether or not the movement would further disturb his wife. “Oh,” he said, his mind shifting sharply from disgruntled employer to defensive lawyer. “Oh,” he repeated.

After a brief silence, he spoke again. “Call the union rep at the scene. Tell him to put Miles into a radio car and get him over to Cooper ASAP. I'll call ahead and get hold of whoever is in charge of the emergency room. I want Miles sedated. Tell the union rep to convince the kid that he's stressed out and needs to see a doctor. Once the doctors get a drug into him, the law says he can't be interviewed. It'll buy us some time. I can be at the hospital in less than thirty minutes.”

“Yes sir, I'll call the rep. Shall I meet you there?”

Cash considered it. “No. Just make sure the rep gets Miles to the ER immediately. I'll grease the wheels. I don't want some intern refusing to sedate.”