Danny sat in silence in the hospital lobby, waiting to see Janis. She’d survived Cal’s gunshot but had needed surgery. He hated hospitals and their clean smells, which covered sickness, pain, and death. Still, he had to be here.
Danny and Vinny had spent a busy night at home talking and making love. Robert had told her everything about Danny’s mother and the diary. That had brought Vinny back to him. Maybe it was a little pathetic, he thought, but he was not about to ruin it.
Vinny for her part was sweetly silent about everything. All she really said was that she missed him. Danny had a thousand questions on his mind about their separation but he would get to them. It seemed that they had time now.
Danny decided to keep seeing Gordon. He’d called and set up a session for next week. There would be much to talk about.
Bellva had gone into rehab after the incident with the Bady brothers. The close brush with death had scared her back to normal thinking. Danny had escorted her to the facility himself. He watched her go in and it hurt him to know that her chances of making it through were not good. Most addicts failed their first attempt to clean themselves up. Danny hoped Bellva would be the exception.
Cal Stallworth was in custody. Danny didn’t think he’d ever stand trial. He was obviously insane. Cal kept talking to the doctors about being himself as well as his dead brother and being some kind of avenging angel.
Cal confessed to questioning all of the victims about his mother’s plan, trying to find out what she was up to and how she would make it happen. All he wanted to do was hurt Virginia. Cal didn’t know about John Baker’s money and he didn’t care.
While he’d been at a mental health facility in Grand Rapids, Cal had had a roommate who’d killed an orderly by stabbing him with a kitchen knife and taping up the wounds. Cal had gotten his method of killing from a proven practitioner. He told the police that he’d learned to spoil the crime scenes from watching a forensics reality show on cable TV.
Virginia Stallworth was in intensive care. The image of her holding on to her son while he tried to literally chew off her fingers would be with Danny for the rest of his life. Her devotion to saving her son in that moment was only matched by her failure as a mother in the early part of her life.
The SCU reopened the case of Colson Stallworth’s accidental drowning, but it remained inconclusive. Oscar Stallworth was leaving his wife for the second time in twenty-seven years. No one thought he’d change his mind this time.
The police found Virginia’s speech for the convention. Danny was allowed to read it and was stunned and saddened by it all. Virginia was not so different from his own mother, he thought. People’s feelings about color ran deep like subterranean rivers. Now he knew it was a force that, if not checked, could destroy.
The mayor was told about Virginia’s speech and the tapes Danny had found in the dog’s grave. The mayor turned them over to Hamilton Grace. No one in the NOAA would acknowledge being part of Virginia’s scheme. So the speech was burned, and all of Virginia Stallworth’s plans for a new race disappeared. Hamilton Grace was reelected NOAA president unanimously.
Danny asked Hamilton Grace what his son Jordan had been doing over on Joy Road the day Janis and Danny had spotted him. Grace confessed that he’d dispatched Jordan to find Logan, his errant half-brother, who had shacked up with what he called an “undesirable” girl. Hamilton was unsuccessful in getting Logan to come back to the family, which seemed to suit Jordan just fine.
When Reverend Bolt regained consciousness, he made a full confession to all of his crimes and confirmed that the Bady brothers were his sons, who had come to Detroit to kill him. Bolt was being extradited to Texas to stand trial for murdering his wife. His church was taken over by one of his deacons, who said his ascension to the mantle of pastor was a sign from God.
The skin color of the victims was significant on the one hand, and on the other it was not. All of the members of Virginia Stallworth’s secret committee were multi-ethnic and fair in complexion. She thought this would make them more agreeable to her grand scheme. Conversely, Cal didn’t care what color his victims were. He would have killed anyone to hurt his mother and spoil her plan.
At that moment, a doctor came out of Janis’s room and motioned Danny to go inside. Janis was sitting upright and had a bandage on her neck.
“You look like shit,” said Danny, sitting down.
“At least I have an excuse,” said Janis, smiling.
“You know that was a lucky shot he got off,” said Danny. “One in a million he would have hit you.”
“Just my luck,” said Janis. “It severed an artery, but I’ll be okay. And when I’m good to go, I’m leaving. I’ve been called to a case in Baltimore.”
“That’s great,” said Danny. He took a moment to consider his third partner and what they’d been through. He felt a little sorry to know she was going. “Look, I know we didn’t get along too good, but I’ll miss you.”
“Same here,” said Janis. “Hey, I’m going to write a paper about the killer for the FBI. Cal Stallworth just might be our first verified black serial killer.”
“You’ll excuse me if I don’t celebrate your discovery,” said Danny. “And how can you be so happy about it? He tried to kill you, remember?”
“Nothing rare comes without a price. Say, I’m going to call him The Angel because of what was on the picture of the boys and their mother. I’m hoping I can turn it into a book.”
“That’s cool,” said Danny. “Just make sure you describe me as tall and handsome.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Janis. “Good-bye, Sherlock,” she said sweetly.
Danny placed a hand on her shoulder, then she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. It was a mild surprise to Danny, but certainly welcome.
Danny left, got into his car, and drove back to his old elementary school. He took just a second to look at the hard playground. Ghosts of friends and tormentors floated in his mind, and he was struck by how much of what we are is memory, and how much is forever unchangeable. He was who his life had made him and it was too late to worry about it.
Danny saw himself walking along with Marshall, a white face in the ocean of black ones. Then the kid with the red hair stopped and turned. Danny looked into the memory of himself and saw that he was truly happy back then, happy as only a kid can be.
Danny watched as his memory faded into the red brick of the school itself and was gone.
He got back into his car, drove back downtown, and walked to the stairs of thirteen hundred. As he got to the top of the steps he stopped and looked out on to the city beyond him. He was acutely aware of people moving around him, rushing in the service of his chosen occupation. A couple of cops passed by, glancing at him strangely.
He remembered his father’s words: “…the job is life.” Robert was right, as usual. This place was part of him and he could never let it go.
Danny considered the color of all the people he saw and wondered if Virginia Stallworth wasn’t right in her assessment of our society. Maybe if there was no color, people would have to invent it or find other ways to be biased against one another. Perhaps society needed these petty differences to be human. Virginia had been torn apart by a slavish devotion to these differences, and in the process, she’d created a monster.
He thought of Fiona and how nature had taken all of her color away. He never thought of Fiona as black or white, just as the person she was. Suddenly, he didn’t think of her as afflicted.
Vinny and Danny were separated not by race but by class and divergence of aspiration. But what brought them back together was that thing which is colorless and bigger than the petty differences of individuals.
Danny was a man divided internally by external notions of color and perception. He thought about all that had happened, then what the psychologist had said about him and the two guns of different color. Quietly he accepted it.
He had Vinny back, but he had lost his mother and a part of his heart had gone into the grave with her. The memories of Lucy would make the days and nights a little harder.
Sure, he was keeping score, but didn’t we all?
Danny turned back to police headquarters and left these heavy thoughts behind him. He walked in and went back to the job, the only thing he could never lose.