A Simple Act of Violence (18 page)

Man at the desk, pinched face, like someone gave him a good smack just five minutes before. Superior tone of voice - ‘Can I help you, Miss?’

‘Looking for someone . . . called earlier, was told I was gonna get a call back. Haven’t heard nothin’.’

‘And who was it that you spoke to, Miss—?’

‘Joyce. Name’s Natasha Joyce. Didn’t take the name of the woman I was dealing with, but she was in the records department.’

The man smiled understandingly. ‘I think at the last count we had something in the region of two hundred and forty people working in the records department, Miss Joyce. Perhaps if you can give me a few details relating to your inquiry I might be able to check it on our system.’

‘Was after someone named Darryl King. Died back in October 2001. Reason I’m checking up on it here is that he was found by the police back then. They came and told me he was dead. Wanted to find out who found him, you know? Wanted to find out what happened.’

The man seemed puzzled, opened his mouth as if to ask a question and then decided against it. He tapped on the keyboard, he waited, he shook his head and tapped some more.

He smiled as if now pleased with himself.

‘Your call at eight forty-eight this morning, yes. Call was taken by operator number five . . . and here we have it, yes. Darryl Eric King. A note on the system to say that there were no records here, and it seems that operator five has forwarded a request to our I.T. department—’

‘I know all that,’ Natasha said impatiently. ‘That was more than two hours ago. She said she was gonna call me back. She hasn’t called me back. That’s why I’m here.’

The man smiled sympathetically. Expression on his face was one of patience, like now he was dealing with a child, a young child, perhaps a child slightly backward for their age. Everything slowly, everything twice. ‘Miss Joyce,’ he said. He took his hands from the keyboard, placed them together like prayer time. ‘Sometimes it takes a little time to sort these things out. These records are very old—’

‘Woman I spoke to said they shoot them on over here electronically. They’re here in a flash, a second or two, that’s what she said. She didn’t say nothin’ about records being old . . . like they’re old and they gotta walk over here by theirselves or something. That what you’re saying?’ Her tone of voice was indignant, irritable. White man, pinched face; looked like he was going to get another slap before the day was out. ‘What I’m asking can’t be that hard, now can it?’ She shook her head from side to side. She was ready to start wagging her finger at the little white man. You tell me what I want to hear, little man, or yo’ gon’ get a faceful of thunder and no sunshine. Hands on her hips maybe. Enough now. Four hundred years of oppression stops right here and now motherfucker.

‘Miss Joyce. I understand your position completely—’

She was wound up good, and then some besides. ‘Understand? Understand what? What you understand and what I understand ain’t even in the same fuckin’ street, Mister—’

‘Miss Joyce.’ His voice was stern now. Now he was upset, started to rise from his chair. ‘There is absolutely no need for this kind of language. If you don’t behave in a civil manner I’m going to have to call security and have you ejected from the building . . . and believe me, Miss Joyce, you do not intimidate me in any way, shape or form. I am trying my best to assist you with your enquiry, and I have not treated you with disrespect or—’

Natasha Joyce backed up and lowered her head. ‘I apologize, ’ she said. She knew she was going to get nowhere fast if she blasted the poor white son-of-a-bitch. ‘I’m a little upset, sir,’ she said. ‘I’m a little upset, and there have been recent events that have reminded me of things that I believed I could forget, and all I’m trying to do is get some help here . . .’ She took a Kleenex from her pocket. She had the little-girl-lost thing going on, the half smile, the pitiful expression. Whatever it took, right?

The pinched-face white asshole smiled. He raised his hands in a conciliatory fashion. All water under the bridge, he was thinking. We’re starting over again. We’re backing up, rewinding this little piece of our lives, and starting all over, okay?

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Apology accepted. We are going to do what we can to help you, Miss Joyce, but you have to understand that sometimes these things take a little more time than we want. You have to appreciate our position here, dealing with the records for countless police precincts and however many thousands of officers, active, retired, even deceased . . .’ His voice trailed away. Tapping the keyboard. Reading the screen, nodding.

‘Wait here,’ he said, and he smiled, and rose from his chair.

He was gone for no more than a handful of minutes. Natasha waited patiently, and when he returned he was not alone.

 

Amanda called as they drove toward forensics.

‘Yes, of course I did,’ Al Roth was telling her. ‘I’ll speak to you when I get back tonight . . . yes, sweetheart, of course. I love you too.’

‘Trouble?’ Miller asked.

Roth shook his head, put his cell away. ‘Left here,’ he said. ‘First right at the end, it’s faster.’

Miller followed Roth’s directions, pulled up fifty yards or so from the Forensics Division building.

Once inside they identified themselves. The receptionist seemed to have been expecting them.

‘From Greg Reid,’ the guy said, and slid an unmarked envelope across the counter. ‘He’s not here. He’s out on something else. He said you’d have something for him?’

Miller nodded, handed over the plastic baggie with the newspaper clipping inside.

‘You see him, you tell him thanks,’ Miller said, and he and Roth left the building and returned to the car.

Reid had copied the photographs, all three of them, and put them through some digital process that made them clearer than the originals.

‘He look like a serial killer to you?’ Roth asked as he squinted at the man’s face.

Miller smiled. ‘What the fuck does a serial killer look like?’

Roth handed the picture back to Miller and started the car. ‘Christ almighty knows,’ he said. ‘Anyway, Columbia Street is next.’

It was just before ten by the time they reached Catherine Sheridan’s house. Roth pulled up at the curb, turned off the ignition, and the pair of them were silent for a moment. The engine clicked as it cooled.

‘We’re waiting for what exactly?’ Roth asked.

‘She walked back down this way,’ Miller said. ‘Three days ago.’ He closed his eyes, frowning tightly, deep furrows in his brow. ‘I want to know where the hell she went between the delicatessen and here.’

‘We could do a news thing,’ Roth suggested. ‘Ask Washington if they saw her.’

‘No, I don’t think so. Lassiter has maybe another two days, maybe ’til the end of the week, and then the chief will want a task force. They don’t want it on the news, believe me. Hell, you know the way these things go.’

Roth was silent. He knew when to say nothing.

‘What did she do between leaving the deli and arriving home? Was he already in the house by the time she returned? Did she put the DVD on and then he came up behind her?’ Miller turned to look at Roth. ‘I thought about that . . . about what I do when someone comes to visit, or when the phone rings and I’m in the middle of watching a movie . . .’

‘You pause it, right?’

Miller nodded. ‘Right. And she didn’t pause the movie, and what that tells me is that she was watching it and this guy was already in the house, or the other thing . . .’

‘That he did her and then he put it on.’

‘Right.’

‘That’d be fucking weird.’

‘I agree,’ Miller said. ‘That would be very fucking weird.’

‘So we’re going back in the house?’ Roth asked.

‘Yep,’ Miller replied. He reached for the door lever. ‘And we don’t come out until we know who the fuck Catherine Sheridan really was.’

 

 

 

 

I
wonder what my father would have said had he known what would become of me. Minnesota gets a Muslim Congressman, connected to Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam
.

Six years later we pulled another mighty stunt. A
U.S.-backed
rebellion fronted by the National Opposition Union forced the government out again. We persisted with our refusal to pay compensation for the damage we had done, and in 1991 the National Opposition Union, a government we had put in power by force, announced that the proceedings for American compensation would be dropped
.