The Clouds Roll Away (13 page)

The hair salon where Zennie Lewis worked was one link in a national chain that stretched across America and boasted cheap haircuts for anyone who walked through the door. This particular franchise was located in the dullest section of Broad Street, an inchoate strip west of town where fast-food joints squeezed in with brick houses rezoned into offices for dentists and chiropractors and the occasional psychic palm reader.

When I opened the salon door Thursday morning, the air smelled of berry shampoo and hot hair. The young woman behind the cash register looked up expectantly. Purple streaks wove through her short black hair.

“Hi there!” she said. “What can we do you for? Trim, haircut?”

“Trim.”

“Great! Take a seat. I'll be right with you.”

“I was hoping Zennie was available.”

“Zennie?” She ran her eyes over me. Dark eyes lined with lavender shadow that struggled to match the hair streaks. “
You
want Zennie?”

“My friend got a great haircut, and when I asked who did it, she told me it was Zennie.”

She ran a painted nail—another shade of purple—down the calendar page on the counter. Sawing her jaw back and forth, letting me know that she was insulted or that I was some kind of idiot, she said, “Name?”

“Mary Mitchell.”

“Have a seat, Mary.”

I sat down in one of the fake leather sling chairs near the door and read gossip magazines dated a week back. Several had stories about celebrities and Thanksgiving. Actors, actresses, pop music stars. There was even a photo of RPM, described as a “rap mogul,” volunteering at a soup kitchen in New York with other famous people. Everybody talked about “giving back,” though it occurred to me that sentiment never included refunds for bad movies, and a photographer always happened to be present to capture these moments of altruism. That was apparently Wally's role in RPM's latest mission to Liberia. Publicity made the world go round.

“Mary?”

I looked up and saw a face like a golden brown cabochon. Her black hair was straightened, pulled back into a short ponytail, revealing her rounded cheeks that dimpled with her smile. Like Milky, she had amber-colored eyes, but hers were the size of buttons. And not even the plastic apron could disguise her curvaceous figure. Zennie Lewis was what Southern women meant when they said a girl was “cute as a bug.”

But when I stood, laying aside the gossip magazine, her smile faded, kidnapping the dimples.

Something had given me away, maybe something Milky had told her.

I followed her back to the shampoo sinks where she reached up and yanked a nylon smock off the shelf, snapping it open like a bullfighter. She closed it tight around my neck, then picked up the sink hose, testing the water with one hand. I eased back on the reclining chair and she leaned over me, her voice a whispered growl.

“Nice try,
Mary
.”

“You're going to scald me. Turn it down.”

Making a face, she twisted one of the knobs. The water turned cold. Very cold.

“Milky's worried about you,” I said.

Her rounded face held a mixture of pride and anger. She began shampooing my scalp, using a force that shook my entire body. I let her, hoping the exertion would wear her down.

It did, a little. The water came back on at room temperature.

“So you two share a grandmother,” I said.

“What?”

“If Milky's your cousin, you share a grandmother.”

No response.

“Is she still alive?”

“Who?”

“Your grandmother.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“What's she like?”

“She kills chickens with her bare hands.”

Throwing a towel over my head, Zennie rubbed like my hair was on fire and then tied the towel into a turban so tight my eyes had epicanthic folds. I followed her to a chair near the bubble-headed hair dryers. A woman was reading one of the celebrity magazines.

I sat down, Zennie yanked off the turban, and my long hair flopped on the nylon smock. I stared at the mirror, watching her face. What made cabochons so valuable was the radiating star of light emerging from the curved shape. On Zennie, that light emerged from her eyes, the amber color luxurious, mesmerizing. I stared into the mirror, watching her pick up a lank strand of wet hair, gently tugging it to full length. She contemplated my appearance with a certain detachment.

“You always wear it like that?” she asked.

“My hair? Yes.”

“Just hanging down around your face?”

“Well, I wear a ponytail sometimes,” I said, feeling oddly defensive.

“It does nothing for your face.”

I heard nothing harsh in her tone. She spoke with authority, a calm that comes from knowing, and not for the first time, I wondered about people's attitudes, whether half the world's agony would evaporate if each person discovered the talent God gave them instead of squandering days painting by numbers laid out according to someone else's preference. Parents. Peers. Pastors. We read books bursting with self-help, about roads less traveled and finding bliss and all these so-called secrets to life. But they all left out the most crucial factor. We fought an enemy, invisible yet definite, who diligently worked to block us from our intended purpose, keeping us from the one thing that brought joy, that connected us to each other and to our Creator. Condemned and resentful, miserable and uncertain, we filled our minds with chatter from talk show hosts, always hoping for the answer, when all the while one simple supernatural prescription waited: “Come to me.”

In the mirror, I saw Zennie move from side to side of the chair, suddenly lost in the graceful dance of her talent, her purpose. The reason behind my visit was suddenly gone. And I let it go.

“What do you suggest?” I asked.

“You need some pizzazz.”

“Pizzazz?”

“Yeah, holiday pizzazz. Milky said you were pretty, but you need to play it up.”

“What kind of pizzazz are we talking about?”

“Put your chin down,” she said.

“Not too much.”

“Keep your head down.” She began snipping the scissors, still moving from side to side, and when she walked over to the mirror, pulling a comb from the jar of blue disinfectant, I saw a picture tucked into the mirror's corner. A little boy.

“He's got your dimples,” I said. “What's his name?”

“Zeke.” She placed her small hand on my head, gently tilting. “You got kids?”

I shook my head.

“Hold still. No kids?”

“I'm not married.”

“Girl, I ain't married either, but at least I got a kid outta the deal.”

“And if something happens to you, what happens to him?”

The scissors stopped.

I looked up, our eyes locking in the mirror.

“Milky's got a job,” I said. “Going to school, putting his life together. But the other guys in that gang are behind bars. It'll be decades before they hug their kids again.”

She held my gaze in the mirror. She whispered, “Nothing's gonna happen.”

“I hope that's true. But if you love your son, you'll get away from those guys.”

“Put your head down,” she ordered.

I hesitated. I was tempted to say more, but I was dealing with a wounded creature, one who saw every offer of help as another opportunity for pain.

In those cases, it was always best to leave the plate of offered food and slowly back away.

chapter seventeen

I
t was a haircut that demanded itself. A haircut that would make headlines for an actress who worked a soup kitchen once a year after appearing in terrible movies.

No doubt about it: Zennie was talented.

But for me, the cut was a shock. I was not a pizzazz kind of gal, and when I snuck into the office on Thursday, I was only too happy to stay in my echoing hovel for a day of KKK research.

Our Bureau files showed nothing on World War I weapons caches in Virginia. Or North Carolina or West Virginia, where the KKK claimed strongholds. Mustard gas did show up in other places—Austria, Sierra Leone, Iraq—but lewisite was almost nonexistent, an arcane chemical killer. Frustrated by the dead ends, I called Nettie Labelle at the lab and asked about the explosives evidence from the car bombing.

“Pipe bomb plastique was just regular old C-4, duct-taped together,” she said. “They're running traces to see if we can track down the tape manufacturer, where it was sold. I'll let you know ASAP about what comes back. But the accelerants—”

“Let me guess.”

“Alex Trebek, Raleigh Harmon would like to answer the daily double for one thousand.”

“What is mustard gas and lewisite?”

“That's correct. You win. And you lose. All at the same time. But I did get a number for you.” She rattled off ten digits so quickly I had to ask her to repeat them, twice. The last time she repeated the numbers so slowly it was annoying. I felt like calling her Annette.

“What's the number go to?” I asked.

“Aberdeen,” she said. “As in, bang, bang.”

After the United States declared war on the Central Powers of Europe in 1917, our government decided the world wasn't getting any nicer. It was time to expand weapons testing. After a long search, the army chose several thousand acres near the Chesapeake Bay, the same land that saw Jamestown settlers warring with Indians three hundred years earlier. But the stubborn Maryland farmers refused to move. It took an act of Congress, two presidential proclamations, and finally two hundred dollars an acre for the government to relocate several thousand people and their twelve thousand animals. Even the human remains were moved from family graveyards.

Today it was doubtful that anybody would want to move back. Aberdeen employed nearly fifteen thousand scientists over as many acres that formed a literal killing field. The elite force of scientists, researchers, engineers, and technicians figured out ways to eliminate life. I'd always wanted to visit. But when I explained what I was working on, the woman who worked as the liaison to law enforcement told me to forget it. Her name was Hannah Hamer.

“Nobody's here,” she said. “And clearance to visit would take weeks.”

“I'm an FBI agent.”

“Weeks.”

“All right. What about the chemicals?”

“We had mustard gas,” she said. “But it's old news. The military never liked it. It incapacitated our troops as much as the enemy. Too difficult to control.”

“What about lewisite?” I asked.

“Nettie told me you were interested in that. We had some here, the records show.”

“The government made some?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Stored at Aberdeen?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“Why do you need to know this again?” she asked.

I went through the cross burning and car bombing a second time. Once again, it was my description of the teenager's violent death that softened her.

“I do know we kept hundreds of tons of mustard agent here,” she said.

“Kept it how?”

“In one-ton containers.”

“Any go missing?”

“Agent Harmon, it was guarded around the clock by armed forces.”

“And?”

“And we blew it all up.”

“When?”

“Last year. We didn't need mustard gas anymore. It was neutralized in the disposal plant.”

“Every last bit of it?”

Hannah Hamer sighed. “We keep vigilant supervision over our weapons. I can guarantee the mustard gas is gone.”

“Understood, but somebody down here got hold of some.”

“They didn't get it from us.”

“What about lewisite?”

Another sigh. “I'm very busy with—”

“Please. It's a hate crime.”

“I'll see what information we have. But I need to get the information's release cleared first.”

“When can I expect to hear back?” I asked.

“Monday at the earliest. But don't get your hopes up,” she said, as if this had been one big uplifting phone call. “In case you haven't noticed, it's Christmas.”

“I've noticed. But the guys using this stuff haven't. Can you call me as soon as possible?”

“I'll do what I can,” she said.