The Stones Cry Out (13 page)

In a locked building. At night. With a convicted felon three times my size. My hand reached back under my blazer, touching the holstered Glock. Then I mentally rehearsed the worst-case scenario.

"I muh-miss you, Ruh-raleigh."

I whirled.

Milky stood directly behind me. So close I could smell the plaster minerals warmed by his skin.

I took a step back. "Helen says you're doing great."

He stepped forward and lifted his hand. A six-inch putty knife rolled between his fingers. My mind suddenly flashed to Mike Rodriguez, scraping jeans for evidence.

"Milky, don’t even think about it."

But he didn't seem to hear me. His head was bobbing, catching some deep interior rhythm playing inside his mind.

"Wuh-wuh-why don't you come see me no more?"

I took another step back. The flat of the blade caught the overhead light, blinding me. I lifted my left hand, blocking the light, and reached back with my right. "Okay. We’ll see more of each other."

"Nuh-nuh-nobody listens to me like you."

I tried to back up again but something hit my leg. A wooden platform. Pinning me in. "Milky, remember what I told you?"

He wasn't listening. He was nodding to that bass line inside his head.

My right hand curled around the Glock, lifting it. "Remember? You were surprised by people in the Bureau. How nice they were. Remember?"

He stared at me. The yellow flecks in his brown irises glowed. The gun’s butt was in my palm.

"I told you to give people a chance. Remember?"

The knife went up.

I pulled my gun, pointing at his face.

But as my finger shifted to the trigger, he dropped the blade.

I gripped the gun, feet planted.

He smothered his face with his hands. "Stu-stu-stupid." White plaster had settled into the crevices of his fingers. "Stupid."

"Somebody called you stupid?"

He nodded.

"Milky, they don't know you."

His sobs echoed through the empty studio. But I didn't lower the gun and the ghost statues watched, a grave chorus from a fallen world. The world that revealed its true self earlier today, when Eric Duncan strapped metal braces on his legs with the confused expression of a scientist who suddenly couldn't say what tomorrow would bring. And now here were the ringing sobs of a powerful black man who had done things -- horrible things -- to equally horrible people, suddenly brought down by shallow students of “art.” It was a lesson that I needed to learn over and over again. Every one of our so-called strengths eventually turned into an obstacle. Acute intelligence. Brute physical force. Every bit of self-sufficiency. It was all an illusion. At some point, each of us would feel naked and alone and the longer we had relied on our own competencies, the harder it was to surrender. I knew that; I was like that. But whenever I saw it this clearly, that old hymn rang through loud and clear.
Broken I came to thee.

There was no other way.

Still holding the Glock, my finger alongside the trigger, I reached out with my left hand, touching the arm Milky had laid across his face. The white plaster looked like a cast on his dark skin. I listed to his ragged breathing as it slowed, until finally he lowered his hands.

He stared at the gun. He was not offended. At all. In fact my experience with people like Milky was what offended them was naïveté.

For several moments, among the plaster ghosts, a hymn of silence seemed to run between us. It was broken by sirens screaming down Broad Street.

He set a heavy haunch on a wooden platform, suddenly drained.

I told him the Bureau was investigating the rooftop deaths at the Fielding factory. "Do you know anything about that?"

"Nasty."

One of his favorite words. Somehow "nasty" never tripped his tongue.

"Guh-guy was weird."

"Hamal Holmes?"

"Huh-him. And the cop."

"You knew them both?"

Milky shrugged, as if to say crime in Richmond was a quaint community of cops and robbers. Sadly, it was. Which was why I called Milky to ask questions.

Tapping the side of his face with a plaster-coated finger, he began describing Hamal Holmes, a man he said was not right in the head. Holmes, he claimed, bought crack from Milky's crew to drop weight for boxing. Later he bought it because he couldn't stop. Because nobody could stop taking that drug. I thought about Ray Frey's story involving the Coretta Scott King and wondered whether the delusions were drug-induced. And whether the drugs had anything to do with why he "disappeared."

When I asked Milky about it, he said Holmes did go away for awhile, then came back a new man. Not addicted anymore. Clean. And he started working with youth, reforming street kids through his boxing gym.

"What about the detective?" I asked.

Milky told a long story about crossing paths with Detective Falcon. The first time Milky was only eight or nine years old. Milky was already selling drugs. "I tuh-told you about that."

I nodded. Milky served less than a year in juvie. And he never talked to authorities, a silence that earned him wide stripes on the street.

"He wasn't nuh-nice like you."

"The detective?"

Milky described an angry man, a vice detective who refused to budge.

"Given the circumstances," I said, "you probably didn't see his good side. Tell me some more about Hamal Holmes."

"Nuh-not right in the head."

"You said. Can you be more specific?"

Nobody knew where Holmes went, he said. But he turned into a crusader for young black men, getting them off drugs, teaching them to fight. "Buh-but that place was still nasty."

The problem with the word “nasty" was that it covered a vast array of criminal activity. "What, exactly, was nasty about the gym, Milky?"

"You ever want suh-something done, you go there."

"Something done. You just said Holmes got off drugs. So something like . . . what?"

He picked up the putty knife, I lifted the Glock again.

But the knife wasn't coming for me. With one smooth motion, Milky drew the blade across his own throat. A slow, simulated motion of death.

"Wait--you're telling me they killed people?"

He shrugged.

"You heard this,” I said, trying to get him to clarify. “You heard that Hamal Holmes killed people?"

He shrugged again. "Suh-somebody was taking money for hits. That’s the wuh-word. Everybody knewed it. I said, nasty buh-business."

I told him he was right.

Killing people was definitely nasty business.

Outside the police department a cruiser’s flashing blue lights brushed over some teenagers getting hustled into the station. Just beyond the entrance another group of teens stood on the sidewalk, hollering obscenities at the cops.

Inside the building, the female receptionist behind bulletproof glass looked harried. I flashed my ID, then walked down the sulfuric yellow hallway to the pebble glass door marked Room 102.

Detective Greene didn't look surprised.

"Your face get that way hanging off the wall?" he asked.

"You heard about that."

"Big news around here." He closed the door behind me.

I took the wooden school chair.

"So what did that get you, beside the scratches -- oh, wait. I forgot. You ask the questions."

"I didn't write those rules."

He sat behind his desk, evaluating me. "You look . . ."

"Bad, I know. I heard it already."

"I was going to say, you look different from my idea of an FBI agent."

"Maybe you had the wrong idea."

“Don’t think so.” He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. "This civil rights case is totally bogus. But hanging off a roof by a thin rope, that takes some guts."

"Thanks." I meant it. He didn't seem the type to toss around meaningless compliments. "Did you find Detective Falcon’s notes?"

He shook his head.

“Interesting.” I gazed around the room. "One small room. Two detectives. All that night work together and long hours away from your families." I looked at him. "You had to talk to each other."

"I told you how it worked. Mike did his thing, I did mine."

"You asked what I found up there. I can’t tell you. But I can tell you what I know about Hamal Holmes. He supposedly turned his life around. Bought the boxing gym on Second Street, kept his mother's bills paid, had a wife and some kids and drove a brand-new Lexus. Paid for. So he had money. And it wasn't coming from breaking and entering. And it wasn't coming from boxing."

"Mike didn't throw him off the roof."

"But the question is, why would Hamal Holmes break into an abandoned building? Even if he wanted to steal something, he’d only get old mannequins and trash. The city's worst defense attorney can convince a jury this wasn't a breakin. And from there it's a short rhetorical hop to saying he was innocent. Next thing you know the widow Holmes will drive down here in her new Bentley to spit on the precinct steps."

His brown eyes compressed. "Where’re you going with this?"

"That’s just it. I don’t know. The pieces don’t make sense. Except for something you said about your partner.”

“What did I say?”

“He was dedicated to his work."

"Mike was a good cop. A great cop."

"Right. He didn't just sit around collecting a paycheck."

He hesitated, staring down at his desk. "I told you, I don't know what Mike was doing up there."

"But it would be fair to say he could’ve been working a cold case.”

“Fair how?”

“He was assigned to work crowd control, but he had real work to do. And was anxious to get it done."

"Mike didn't throw that guy off that building."

"Okay, I heard you. But what if he was meeting Holmes, on purpose?"

"What?"

"What if he wanted to talk to Holmes, in private, but something went wrong."

"You want me to speculate again?"

"No, I want you to fill in the gaps. You said Detective Falcon went down to death row. To interview one of the evil twins. Marvin?"

"No, Martin. T."

"Okay, what if this creep Martin, who's about to meet his maker, wants to offer Detective Falcon some real information. You know, do something good before God decides whether to fry or broil his rear end in hell."

Detective Greene stared at me. The dark mustache curled down, as if he was pursing his lips.

"And let's say,” I continued, “that T’s information involves a cold case, but he wants to make a deal. Once a con, always a con, right?”

“Keep talking.”

“T will give Detective Falcon the information if he promises to find out which inmate killed his twin, Marvin. It’s an exchange of information."

Detective Greene drew a long deep breath. “How’d you come up with this theory?”

“Bits and pieces,” I said. “But the biggest chunk was that your partner didn’t make easy deals.” I remember what Milky said, about Falcon not playing games. “I can’t see him going down to death row unless there was a very good incentive.”

The detective reached up, petting the black mustache. But he said nothing.

And I waited. I waited so long that I started counting the second-hand beats coming from the big wall clock. Seven beats later, he opened his mouth.

On the eighth beat, he asked me to take a ride.

And on nine, I was already at the door.

===============

A long time ago a Confederate hospital anchored Chimbarazo Hill. After Reconstruction the land was turned into a city park which remained until this day. But under the street lights the grass looked dry and the spindly elm trees seemed full of thirst. The one remaining building was now the headquarters for the city's battlefield parks, offering a small replica of the Statue of Liberty. Donated by the local Boy Scouts, Lady Liberty held her tablet and torch and looked over the dead grass as if expecting something to change.

Detective Greene parked across from the statue then reached into a file folder on the backseat of his pristine Crown Victoria. Opening the manila folder on his lap, he silently read the pages. There weren’t many.

"Back in 2004, somebody called the health department about a foul odor," he said, still looking down at the file. "Two bodies were found in some long grass. Over there." He pointed out the windshield, toward East Broad Street. The grass was thigh-high and the color of dry wheat. "One of the recovered bodies was male, one female. Both teenagers. The male never was identified although homicide ran dental records, fingerprints, whole nine yards. And he didn't fit any missing persons reports. So, John Doe kept his name."

"And the girl?"

"Prostitute. Her people were told. End of investigation." He closed the file.