The Stones Cry Out (29 page)

"I hate to wake you, Sugar Plum, but napping is one of those habits that ruins your circadian rhythms."

I glanced around the room. Disoriented, I felt my heart pounding as I tried to put things in order. City Hall, landfill, Thalbrough. McDonald's for dinner. Came home, house was empty. I turned on the television in the den, laid down to digest two Big Macs and Supersize fries, and apparently fell asleep.

I glanced at the TV. A gardening show was on, the host explaining composting methods. I pushed myself up. That’s what provoked the dream, I decided. Composting. Garbage.

But those birds. And my dad?

"Where were you?" I asked.

“Wally wanted more pictures of the camp. So I got to listen to a man who lives in the jungles of the Philippines. A missionary. He lives on wild mangos and the Word."

"Great."

"He said to let you sleep.”

“The missionary?” I felt a stab of panic.

“No, silly! Wally.”

Her blouse was the color of Hawaiian lava. Her skirt ended three inches above the knee. Her heels were so high she looked like she was tiptoeing. Evening wear. The Pentecostals must have loved it.

“Wally said your boss is working you overtime, that we should let you sleep. I told him, 'A little sleep, a little slumber, and poverty comes on you like a bandit.' He just rolled his eyes and said the camp already delivered his daily allowance of Scripture." She fiddled with the beaded necklace then suddenly reached down, touching my face near the fading bruise. "Raleigh Ann, you don't look well."

"I'm fine. What time is it?"

"Nearly nine o'clock.” She straightened. “I know just what you need. Some decent amino acids. All this running around collecting rocks, hitting doors--your system is begging for protein."

She walked down the hall to the kitchen. I stared blankly at the gardening show. A bearded man who resembled an elf was extolling the virtues of nitrogen, the power of decomposition. Death to life, he said. After a moment, I got up, following her into the kitchen.

She was standing at the stove frying a slab of tofu. Using both hands, she squeezed a garlic press, scraping the pale pulp into the pan. The sizzle had a crisp almost salt-tinged scent. She stared at it, then murmured, “She’s not dating anyone.” Then tossed three more cloves into the pan.

"Mom, do you ever dream about Dad?" I asked.

She glanced over her shoulder. I thought she couldn’t hear me over the sizzling food so I repeated the question.

Still no reply.

"Mom?"

"He had red hair."

"Excuse me?"

"In my last dream, your father had red hair. It was so strange. He never had red hair in real life. Not even as a child. I thought maybe it wasn't him. You know, how that happens. People pretend to be someone you love. That’s how they convince you to do things. Be very careful." Her hazel eyes clouded, suddenly troubled. "Do you understand?"

"I understand you had a dream where Dad had red hair."

"Red. Yes. I wondered about it. Then I knew what it was. Fire."

"Fire?"

"Red. That’s the color of fire. Your father was warning me. And then that lamp blew up in the den. Remember that?”

"You dreamed about red hair. That's all."

She turned back to the stove. Picking up the spatula, she shoved the tofu.

"So," I said, raising my voice to sound cheerful, "tell me about your day."

"The doors won't open."

"Which doors?"

"At the camp. The sign says 'Alarm Will Sound.'"

I felt a chill down my spine. "Those would be fire exits." She must know that. "It’s a warning, about the alarm."

"’Alarm Will Sound’--a strange phrase, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“The words move forward and backward. You can read it both ways. 'Alarm will sound.’ Or, ‘sound will alarm.’ Even more interesting is that the words move in the same direction. Alarm will sound if you open the door. And once the door is open, the sound will alarm you. Check the refrigerator, would you, there's some rice from last night."

I couldn’t move.

“Raleigh.”

A familiar dread crept across my heart. I opened the refrigerator. That high manic spill of words. That strange look in her eyes. I felt sick, having asking about him. I crossed that boundary that shouldn’t be breached. And here came the avalanche.

Heal her
, I prayed.
Please, heal her
.

"Do you see it?" she asked. "Look for a glass bowl. I never use plastic. Hormones leach into the food and make you behave oddly. Remember that."

I placed the bowl on the counter. "I'll be right back."

Walking down the hall to the living room, I tried to breathe. In the parlor I stood at the front windows and gazed at the floodlights around Robert E. Lee. In the dark some guys were throwing Frisbees. The discs shuttled in and out of the bright light, almost stroboscopic.

"What's wrong?" Wally asked.

I turned around. He had one hand on the staircase balustrade.

"Nothing."

"Nadine."

"She mention the fire exits?"

"That forwards and backwards thing? Yeah, she mentioned it. The whole way home. Like I didn't get enough crazy talk at that camp.” He sniffed the air. “But I smell garlic so she couldn’t have cracked completely."

I stared out the window.

"Hey, that was a joke.”

I nodded. “If only I felt like laughing."

John Breit's condominium on Stafford Street was one of the Fan district's many converted residences, a grand old home chopped up into hovels for students and bachelors. The security phone box was bolted to the brick exterior, beside what used to be one family's front door. I picked up the receiver and pressed #10.

"Who is it?" he said.

"Raleigh." My breath smelled of garlic.

He buzzed the door, and I walked through the foyer-turned-lobby. The front hall had blue shag carpeting, and John stood at his open door. He wore a Braves baseball hat, wrinkled polo shirt, and baggy shorts that looked more like boxers.

“Nice of you to stop by.” He dropped into a green leather chair that was too large for the studio space, then nodded at the baseball game on the TV. "These Braves. Worst thing for my blood pressure."

I sat down in a yellow velour chair. The arms were dirty, almost black.

"Want a beer?" he asked.

"I don't drink."

"I forgot." He stared at the game. "Actually, I didn't forget. But I thought maybe you'd change your mind now that you got suspended."

“Phaup told you?”

He pushed himself out of the chair, lumbering into the kitchen that was only seven paces away. The back of his polo shirt was pressed into wrinkles from a long night of beer and baseball in the big chair.

"My first guess would’ve been Phaup, too. But she hasn’t made an example out of you. Yet. Then again, she got called out of town, so there’s still time for her to humiliate you publicly."

"So how did you find out?"

"Raleigh, it’s an office full of trained investigators." He rocked a bottle opener over the bottle, then carried it back to the chair. "The betting pool started, for why you got yanked. White Collar thinks you messed up your paperwork—typical, everything's paper with those guys. But they did put some serious cash into the kitty, and considering Phaup's devotion to bureaucracy, it's not that bad a wager. Sex Crimes says you just needed time off, after those guys at the river attacked you."

So that part was out, too.
Terrific
.

"What’s your bet, John?"

He rubbed his jaw, scratching at the ten o'clock shadow. "You're young. You’re good-looking. And idealistic to a fault. All of that ticks off Phaup. So my bet was that it was something personal between you two. Some argument. By the way, she gave me your 44."

"And you
still
managed to figure out I was suspended? Wow, you really are a trained investigator."

He grinned, tapping the bottle to his temple. "Every once in a while, I do some real hard thinking." He chugged, suppressed a belch, and said, "So, now that’s out of the way, want to stay for the game? It’s not like you have to get up early."

"Thanks for the reminder."

"Raleigh, stuff happens. I once drank a beer at lunch and got suspended for ten days. Ten days. Imagine what that did for my marriage."

"You had a beer, on duty?"

He looked as if that was the dumbest question ever asked by a trained investigator.

I said, “They told us at Quantico that an agent’s legal drinking age was fifty-seven.” The mandatory retirement age for FBI agents.

"When I signed on, back in the good ol’ days, drinking wasn't considered a big deal. Nobody got bombed. Not on duty anyway. One beer with lunch. Big deal. And after work we met at the bar. Long road trips with nothing in between, we loaded the cooler and enjoyed the ride."

"You sound wistful."

"You don't understand. We met people, real people. We made good sources in those bars. Not like your age group. All you guys do is go to the gym. No wonder we can't find the terrorists." He swiveled to the baseball game. "Never mind. It's not worth complaining. Two months and I'm out of here. Take my retirement and never look back."

The Braves pitcher walked two Orioles. The third hitter drove the ball down the third base line. John let out a sigh.

"You're dying to tell me about the 44. I can see it."

I nodded.

“Game’s over anyway." He clicked the remote, turning off the television, and set his beer on the coffee table. Water rings circled the cheap wood. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”

I began by telling him about Detective Falcon's "ghost"—the cold case he wanted to solve. I told him that first because under John’s hard shell, I believed his heart craved justice, the same way mine did. Once upon a time, he was more like me and less like the man who drowned in an ocean of paper among people who didn't care that much. I told him about Hamal Holmes paying for the dead girl’s funeral, and how he made a family with her little sister.

"Busy guy."

"John, hers wasn’t the only funeral. He paid for dozens. All murders, too. And every single one turned into a cold case.”

"So he felt bad for the families. What do you have a problem with?"

"The cold case files say every victim was either shot execution style with a .38, like the girl, or beaten to death."

“You’re out where the buses don’t run. This is a civil rights case, remember that?"

“Remember those fibers I collected from the factory wall?”

“Don’t tell me.”

“They don’t match Holmes or Detective Falcon’s clothing.”

He squinted. “What?”

“But the fibers match a nylon sweat suit that belongs to a kid at Holmes’ boxing gym. Which means that kid was there, at the factory."

Before he could say anything I barreled forward. The shoes, the soils packed with acrylamide. “It’s a synthetic mineral used in disposable diapers. Where do we keep used disposable diapers? In landfills. And there’s only one place around here to get that kind of acrylamide, with that particular soil. It’s on both of their shoes.”

“So?”

“So the question is, why would both men go to a landfill?”

John drained his beer. "That's not the question.The question is, How could you send clothing samples to the lab
after
you were suspended?"

I didn't even bother defending myself. Because what came next was worse.

"I had a dream tonight."

He groaned. “We have to go back to that factory?”

I shook my head, and described the birds and the garbage. How my dad told me to look. “John, the seagulls were tearing open the trash bags, and pulling out body parts. They were flying around with them in their beaks.”

"And your dad told you to look at that?" He stood and walked into the kitchen.

I heard a
pfff-fft
of a bottle opening.

"Let me guess,” he said. “You're going to tell me why he wanted you to see that."

"Yes."

He downed half the bottle. “Alright. Now you can tell me.”

"There's a dead body in that landfill."

He finished the rest of the beer, then placed a fist on his sternum, pressing into the belch. But when he drew a long deep breath, I knew something else was coming up.

The Senior Agent Lecture.

"Raleigh, it's great that you stuck to this case. You stuck even when Phaup tried to take you out. That tenacity shows some real character. And I'm proud of you. Really. I don’t agree with you, but I hope you never change."

"There’s another ‘but’ coming."

He nodded. "But you gotta know when to cut bait. I mean, the case is a 44. Civil Rights. What did I tell you, that first day on Southside?"