THIRTY-NINE
I’d like to say I spent the rest of the afternoon working the case like a dog. But the truth is, I didn’t. I went home and I sat down on the couch, and the next thing I knew it was dark outside. I looked at the clock. Four in the morning. I’d finally crashed, slept for thirteen solid hours. Didn’t seem much point in getting up, so I turned off the TV, got in bed, and slept until the alarm went off at six.
I woke feeling wonderful. I put on some old Al Green and juked around the apartment while I was dressing. I was dancing and smiling at myself in the mirror when the phone rang, still dancing and smiling when I heard the voice I had now come to recognize as Chief Biggs’s hatchet man, Captain Goodwin: “Hold for Chief Biggs.”
I held for while. Now I wasn’t smiling or dancing anymore. The line was silent for a while, then Chief Biggs’s voice came on. “Detective?”
“Yessir.”
“Get your silly lying black ass down to my office right this minute.”
“Um, sir, what’s the, ah—” But I was wasting my breath on a dead line.
When the gorgeous Captain Goodwin led me into the Chief’s office, Diggs was not wearing his customary smile. He glared at me. “Sit down,” he snapped.
I sat. I could see there was no percentage in being chatty, so I kept my mouth shut.
Diggs’s assistant left, closing the double doors behind him. The massive desk was empty, as usual, except for three pieces of paper, all of them lined up in a row so perfect it looked like it had been squared off with a ruler. Diggs’s skin is light enough that there was no mistaking his face was flushed with anger. He stared at me for while.
“You sat right there in that seat, girl,” he said finally, “and you damn well lied to me.”
“Sir?”
His voice rose and he slammed his hand down on the table. “Don’t you dare play little innocent-ass girl to me. Don’t you dare.”
Obviously he’d found something out. The question, I supposed, was how much.
“You a very attractive girl,” he said. “I mean, is that it? Am I thinking with my dick? What? How come I’m being so indulgent with you?”
I just sat there with my knees clamped together.
“You go out there to Cobb County smoking crack, I help you.”
“Uh, not crack sir. Methamphetamines.”
Now I got the smile. “Oh! Oh! Excuse me! Crystal meth. Okay, so instead of getting hopped up and breaking the law and dishonoring your badge on some niggery-ass drug like crack, you going for the drug of choice among America’s great population of shiftless, worthless, no-teeth, dumbass white trash. I stand corrected. Thank you for that clarification. Thank you so very much.” The smile was gleaming suddenly. “Anything else you’d like to straighten out for me?”
I decided not to repeat my mistake and kept my mouth shut.
“No, seriously, young woman. I’m asking you right this minute what else you’d like to straighten me out on.”
I looked at the floor.
“See, reason I bring this up is that where you’re at right this minute, is you’ve reached that speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-piece type of arena. You with me? I asked you to keep me apprised. And you lied to my face.”
I nodded.
His eyes widened. “Do you honestly think you’re the only person in this department that I’ve asked to keep me apprised of little bits and pieces of information? Huh? You think you’re the only person in this city? This state? Girl, my gracious sakes alive! I got people everywhere!”
“Sir, why don’t you just tell me what you found out?”
He laughed. Now that he was feeling in control, the old genial Chief Diggs was coming back. “Nah, see it don’t work that way. How it works is, you tell me everything you know, and maybe if I’m feeling relaxed and at peace with my soul, I don’t make that phone call to the Cobb County DA, the one where I recommend they drag out that indictment they got hid in the desk drawer, and send your pretty ass to the penitentiary.”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
“Start, how about, with why you just asked a CID special agent to run a DNA test on the rape-kit evidence found on Lt. Hank Gooch’s murdered daughter.”
My heart sank. If he knew that, God only knew what else he’d found out. So that was where I started. I told him about all those murdered kids. I told him about the calluses and the bone decalcification. I told him about the DNA test that the Army was running, about the test I was running on Gooch’s saliva. I told him about the one child who still sitting somewhere in a box waiting to die. I told him that there was a connection between Gooch and this case that he should have revealed but never did. I told him that I didn’t know for sure, so I went ahead and ran the DNA just in case.
When I was done, I felt wrung out as an old dishrag. The Chief beamed paternally at me. He’d been nodding the whole time, like nothing I’d told him was news. I must admit I was surprised at how little shock he displayed at the fact that we’d been secretly freelancing a fifteen-year-old serial killer investigation.
“See?” he said. “How easy that is? Don’t it make you feel all warm and gushy inside? Maybe if this law enforcement thing don’t work out, I’ll go into the priesthood. I seem to have what your Catholics would call a confessional manner.”
“Sir, what are you going to do?”
But of course the Chief wouldn’t be rushed. He leaned back in the chair and smiled. “Nothing makes me feel better than helping out a young person such as yourself. Lot of folks think that the fun of police work is putting bad guys in jail. Hey, that has its appeal. But what I really enjoy, what plays the deep and resonant chords of my soul, is giving back, reaching down, extending a helping hand to a troubled young individual.”
“Yessir.”
Big smile. “Don’t feel obliged to patronize me,” the chief said. “I enjoy this whether you kiss my ass or not.”
I slumped back into my seat and just hoped this would be over soon.
“I’m on the board of directors of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, did you know that? Oh, yeah. Go around the state giving speeches, raising hopes, extending a hand, etc. etc. Very rewarding work. Especially being able to show the young black folks that being a successful black man is not synonymous with basketball or drug dealing. You know what I mean?” He leaned forward. “That, girl, is the fundament, the mudsill, the very basis of my success. Reach down and help out. Then when necessary, maybe I ask for a favor in return. That’s all.”
“Look, I don’t want to go to the penitentiary,” I said.
“What I’m trying to tell you, is that you ain’t the first person in this department to mess up. Human nature being what it is, we got flawed human beings all through the ranks. And a lot of them owe their livelihoods and their reputations to me. Strictly to me. So here it is, your big opportunity.” He took one of the pieces of paper off his desk and handed it to me.
“What’s this, sir?”
“See, once word got back to me that you been running DNA tests down at Fort Benning, I started putting things together. While you were sleeping off whatever it was you’d just put up your nose yesterday, I was spending time on the phone, expediting things.”
“I didn’t put anything up my nose. I had a little caffeine, that’s all.”
“Not interested, Mechelle. Bottom line, that’s an arrest warrant for soon-to-be-ex Lieutenant Hank Gooch.”
I stared at it. “And those other two pieces of paper?”
“What I’m saying, I expedited those two DNA tests—the one you did over at the GBI, and the one from Fort Benning. Had the results forwarded directly to my desk.”
“You’re saying the DNA matched?”
“You goddamn right, the DNA matched. Your boss raped and killed his own little girl. Cut off her head with a sword. No doubt he did the same thing to all those other innocent little kids. So what you gonna do right now, you gonna head off to Hank Gooch’s shitass little apartment along with a troop of big crazy SWAT team members, and you gonna place him under arrest.”
“Yessir.”
“And, Detective Deakes?”
“Yessir?”
“Pencil in an hour at about four o’clock. I got a press conference, then I’m gonna give you a citation for bravery or deductive brilliance, steadfastness, some bullshit, and promote you to head of the Cold Case Unit. How’s that sound?”
I stared at him.
“The two words you’re looking for, Detective,” he said. “Are thank and you.”
“Thank you. Thank you, sir.”
“Why it’s my pleasure. Yes, indeed. The pleasure’s entirely mine.” He stood and pointed at the door. “Now go arrest that pederast monster before he kills another kid.”