A Simple Act of Violence Read online

  ‘Truth is,’ Miller added, ‘that if she hadn’t ordered the pizza, we might not even know she was dead.’

  FIVE

  A distance away from Washington’s Second Precinct, the kind of distance measured in class and culture and color, Natasha Joyce stood in the corridor outside her daughter’s Sunday school classroom and waited for eleven o’clock. Annexed to a run-down community hall, the Sunday School building had retained something of its character beneath the outward display of graffiti. The front door carried more dead-bolts and padlock hasps than Natasha could count, and along the internal walls, those places where childrens’ pictures and activity posters were displayed, you could still see the rough surface of the concrete blocks, the makeshift paint job, the chips and scars that came from neglect and lack of funding. It was a quietly desperate place, a sad reflection of Washington’s unknown quarters.

  From where Natasha stood she could see through the frosted window, could see the hazy blurs of color as children ran back and forth within, could hear the rush and collision of voices, the catcalls and laughter. The bell sounded, and Natasha Joyce stepped inside the room. She smiled an acknowledgement to Chloe’s school teacher, Miss Antrobus. Nice enough lady, but uptight. She was mulatto, like a mixed-race, half and half. Couple of generations back one of the white folks did a black man, something such as this. Now Miss Antrobus didn’t belong to anyone. Not to the blacks, not to the scared whites out of Georgetown. Perhaps she found her anchor in Jesus. Perhaps she was just pretending.

  Miss Antrobus looked at her again, smiled, and then made her way through the throng of kids to where Natasha stood by the door.

  ‘Might be nothing,’ Miss Antrobus said. Her eyes kind of went this way, that way. Appeared she was looking for something that wasn’t there.

  ‘I had a copy of the Post on my desk,’ she went on. ‘Article about that terrible thing . . . the woman that was murdered.’

  Natasha Joyce froze quietly. She was aware of the tension in her face but tried to show nothing.

  Chloe was by the door, itching to leave, like there was pepper under her skin.

  ‘Chloe saw the woman’s picture . . . said that she knew her.’ Miss Antrobus smiled nervously. ‘I knew it couldn’t be true . . . must have mistaken her for someone else.’

  ‘She does have an imagination,’ Natasha replied, and glanced at Chloe.

  ‘Did you hear about it?’

  Natasha frowned. ‘I’m not sure I understand . . .’

  ‘There was a woman murdered on Saturday. Her picture was in the Post. Chloe said she recognized her. She didn’t . . . you didn’t know her did you, Miss Joyce?’

  Natasha shook her head. ‘No. I can’t imagine who she thinks we might know,’ she replied, and she heard the edge of anxiety in her own voice. She tried to smile but it came out strained and artificial. She walked to the door, reached for the handle. With her left hand she waved a ‘come on’ to Chloe.

  Chloe was suddenly beside her, bright-eyed, attentive. ‘Mom,’ she piped up. ‘That lady . . . you remember? She came down with that man when they were looking for Daddy, that man who gave you the money . . . you remember when he gave you that money and we bought Polly Petal . . .’

  Natasha had the door open. She was hustling Chloe out and down the corridor, looking at Miss Antrobus and smiling as best she could.

  ‘She was in the paper today . . . that nice lady—’

  Natasha glanced back at Miss Antrobus. She was watching her, watching Chloe. Expression on her face like she was ready to start calling someone.

  ‘Someone else,’ Natasha told Chloe, loud enough for Miss Antrobus to hear, and felt confused and upset. She didn’t understand what was happening, but she knew she was lying to her daughter.

  Three blocks from the school Natasha Joyce bought the Post. She looked at the picture of Catherine Sheridan; she read the first two or three paragraphs of the article.

  ‘It’s her, isn’t it, Mom?’ Chloe said.

  Natasha shook her head. ‘Don’t know, sweetie . . . looks like her. Maybe it’s just someone that looks like her.’ She hoped to God that she was right. She hoped to God that the monochrome face that looked back at her was the face of someone else entirely. Now she’d seen it twice - once on the TV, once in the paper. She was afraid. More than afraid.

  ‘I think it’s her, Mom . . . she has the same look in her eyes.’

  ‘What look is that, darling?’

  Chloe shrugged. ‘Don’t know . . . maybe like she knew someone was going to get her.’

  Natasha laughed nervously. She remembered standing in the cold breeze with those two people. A woman and a man. How long had it been? Five years. Jesus, it really was all of five years ago. The woman’s name was not Catherine Sheridan. And the man. Chewing gum, twitching a little, like nervous was his middle name. Like he was watching for someone, someone he believed might see them.

  They’d asked after her boyfriend, Chloe’s father. His name was Darryl King, and Natasha remembered thinking, who are these people? How the hell would people like this know Darryl?

  Chloe looked up; wide-eyed sweetness and light, innocent as snow. ‘Who d’you think might have killed her?’

  Natasha laughed again. ‘It’s not the same lady,’ she said. ‘I’m sure it’s not the same lady.’ She folded the paper and tucked it under her arm. She took Chloe’s hand and started walking.

  Didn’t say a word all the way home, and when they arrived Natasha sat in the frontroom for a while. Like she was waiting for something she knew would come. Could hear Chloe playing in her room. Natasha wondered how much Chloe had figured out. She seemed cool, seemed like nothing in the world could bother her. That was the way Natasha had always wanted Chloe to feel, like nothing in the world could ever reach her. Mom could run interference between Chloe and the world. Natasha had done it with Darryl, and though Chloe had only been four when he’d died, she knew that kids were perceptive, and sometimes the youngest were the smartest of all. It had been a thing. A real thing. A full-time kind of thing. Keeping Darryl’s world out of the line of sight, out of earshot, out of Chloe’s life. Hard, almost impossible, but Chloe seemed to have survived, seemed to be okay, seemed to have remained untouched by everything . . . until the newspaper.

  She glanced at the paper again, at the face that looked back at her. She tried to remember when she’d last seen the woman. A couple of weeks before Darryl died - before Darryl King got himself killed for getting involved in things he never should have been involved in. And regardless of whether it was the same woman or not, this thing hurt Natasha. It made Natasha realize that Chloe had seen what was going on, that she had been paying attention, that she could remember all the way back to when her father died. Back to when that woman had come looking for Darryl. And the man with her, the fact that he’d taken such an interest in Chloe, like he felt guilty or something . . . Gave her twenty bucks. Just pulled twenty bucks right out of his pocket and gave it to her. And they bought that doll, the doll that took pride of place in amongst everything else for so long. Polly Petal. Stupid fucking Polly Petal doll. And now, five years on, she’d seen this woman’s face in the paper . . .

  Natasha shuddered. She felt giddy, almost frightened. She didn’t want to think about such things. She didn’t want to remember the past. She wanted the past to stay right where she’d left it.

  After a little while she walked out of the kitchen and stood in the hallway. She watched her daughter through the half-open doorway of her room. Shuddered when she saw that doll sitting right in front of her, as if the two of them were watching TV together.

  All smashed to hell, isn’t it? Natasha thought, and in thinking this she remembered how her life had been with Darryl King all those years before. How much she had loved him. How much she had believed that he was the one, the only one, the single most important thing that had ever happened to her. And then later, when he became someone else. She remembered his attitude, his arrogance, the way his life had star
ted coming apart at the seams.

  This is the Big H baby! This is the junk, you know? This is my skag, my horse, my thunder . . . I do this shit, or it does me. Who the fuck cares?

  I’m not doin’ no crack here, sugar. I got my 24-7, my bad rock, my candy, my chemical . . . I got fat bags, french fries, some gravel and hardball . . . I got hotcakes, jelly beans, prime time, rockstar, sleet, sugarblock and tornado . . .

  I got the whole fucking world in my pocket, baby. Should try this shit, you know? This shit gon’ make you hot!

  And how he would kick off sometimes, his world-has-done-me-wrong thing.

  Tell you what the world thinks about people like us? People like us don’t give a damn what it takes. We take what we need. Rob everyone blind. Steal from our own grandmothers. Fuck you mo’fucker. Fuck you! That’s who they think we are, and that’s who we’re gonna be!

  How many times had Natasha thought about giving up that life? She’d thought about it all the time . . . especially when Chloe told her that someone had called her a crack whore.

  What’s a crack whore, Mommy?

  No-one should be called a crack whore when they’re five years old.

  The truth? Ultimately Darryl King had not been the truth. However much Natasha might have loved him, and however misguided that love might have been, she knew that his vision of the world was not how it was. She did not live like an animal. She did not live in filth and shit, in squalid rooms piled high with stolen TVs and PS2s and greasy takeout cartons. Not everywhere was damp; not everywhere smelled like urine and baby puke and people dying. The corridors of her project building did not echo with the phlegm-spittle hacking rasp of tuberculoid grandfathers, the cries of unwanted newborns with colic. Perhaps, because she came from here, she was loathed and despised and undesirable, just as Darryl would have had her believe. But she did not believe it. Not all the time.

  She had a nine-year-old daughter. Her name was Chloe. She was not unwashed or unwanted. She was not named Delicia or Lakeisha or Shenayne-LeQuanda ...

  Chloe’s father was dead. His name was Darryl King. He was crazy, but Natasha had loved him - desperately, unconditionally at first, and then when it all went bad she had continued to love him for the hope that it could somehow become what it had once been. Natasha Joyce had loved Darryl King enough to give him a child and then, later, when it all turned bad, to sit with him through the blood pressure, the sweating, the nausea and hyperventilation, the hypersensitivity, the tactile hallucinations, the images of bugs burrowing under his skin, the euphoria, the paranoia, the depression and exultation, the panic, the psychosis, the seizures . . .

  Loved him enough to try everything she could to stop him taking drugs.

  But the power of his addiction had been far greater than any love or loyalty he had possessed. He’d taken everything they had, everything they didn’t.

  One time Darryl left them; hadn’t come back for two days.

  Natasha had known that one day he would leave and never return.

  Natasha Joyce knew that life was just a matter of escaping what you did not want, trying to hold on to what you did. You kept trying, or you accepted what people thought you were and decided you could not change.

  Darryl had done that: he’d become what other people thought he should be. A loser. A lowlife. A crackhead nigger.

  This had brought it all back to her. A face had looked right back at her from the front page of the Post. Natasha didn’t want it to be the same woman who’d come looking for Darryl, smartly dressed, ever-so-polite, beside her the nervous sidekick - chewing gum, saying nothing, giving her twenty bucks for Chloe when he left. Natasha had figured them for cops, but they were not. The woman had done all the talking. Seemed decent. Scared though. She’d said her name. Natasha could not now recall what it was, but she knew for sure that it hadn’t been Catherine Sheridan. And now some crazy guy, a guy they named the Ribbon Killer, had murdered her. They said it was his fourth victim. One thing Natasha Joyce knew for sure. Knew that crazy guy was going to be white.

  And that’s if they were the same people. Looked like her. Like. That was all. Lots of people looked like other people.

  It was intuition that told her. Intuition, a gut feeling, whatever the hell it was called . . .

  Chloe had seen the face in the paper and hadn’t hesitated.

  Natasha looked at her daughter, and she thought Gotta get you out of here, girl. Gotta get you outta here whatever it costs. You’re not gonna have the life I’ve had. Not my life, nor Darryl’s, nor the life those scared white folks in Georgetown think you deserve. Gonna do whatever has to be done.

  Something like that. Kind of thought she’d had before, but this time she felt it with a sense of certainty, a sense of urgency, a sense of importance.

  Thought of Darryl again; thought Darryl - whoever the fuck you were, whatever the hell you were into, whoever the hell you might or might not have known . . . your daughter, our daughter, deserves better than this . . . What d’you reckon, Darryl, you fucked-up, smashed-to-pieces, crackhead loser black asshole motherfucker? Oh God, Darryl, I don’t know that I could have loved you more. Tried everything. Gave everything I had to give while I watched you fall apart. And afterwards I made believe I could forget it all. Didn’t want to know what happened. Pretended that all this shit was behind us, but it wasn’t, and it isn’t now, and it’s true that all the things you never faced will somehow find you . . .

  And then she glanced once more at the Post, and thought Damn bitch. Why d’you have to go get yourself murdered by some crazy motherfucker.

  Natasha felt she couldn’t wait to see if scared Miss Antrobus called the cops and told tales. She figured that Miss Mulatto-What a friend we have in Jesus-interfering-bitch was just that kind of woman, and thus Natasha knew she would have to make the call herself. Tell them that maybe she knew something.

  Natasha Joyce was twenty-nine years old. Chloe’s father had been dead for a little more than five years. What little life he’d had she’d watched disappear effortlessly through a hypodermic needle. Now the police would come again. If Miss Antrobus made the call then they would come over and see her. They would want to know how Chloe had known the woman’s face in the newspaper. Natasha had never been able to lie. She would tell them that someone had come down to the projects to speak with Darryl King. Then they would want to know what Darryl King had been involved in, how he’d known this dead woman. Natasha would say that she wasn’t sure it was the same woman. They would see it in her eyes, how afraid she was of becoming involved in this. Natasha hadn’t wanted to know then, and she didn’t want to know now. But something inside told her that understanding any part of what had happened back then would make her feel better. Not because it would be good news, because after Darryl started doing heroin nothing had ever been good news, but because it might bring a degree of closure. It had been a fucked-up time, a really fucked-up time, but it had been part of her life. Part of her life that had given her Chloe, and for no other reason it made sense to understand. Why? Because then she might be able to tell Chloe the truth. When Chloe was old enough to understand, she might be able to look her in the eye and tell her that her father wasn’t a complete waste of life. That he was somebody. That he did at least one good thing. Maybe these people had been good people. Maybe they’d been trying to help Darryl. Or maybe he’d been helping them. Maybe he was even trying to get out of the life and these people had been doing something that could make it happen.

  Or maybe it was all shit.

  Maybe they were nothing but smart-suit bigshot smack dealers from Capitol Hill come down to slum it with the niggers. And then the woman had gotten herself killed. This Catherine Sheridan. And if it was the same woman who’d come looking for Darryl, then maybe the guy that came with her had murdered her. Maybe they’d argued about some deal and he’d beaten the shit out of her and choked her. Maybe he’d murdered the other three first, or he’d murdered her like the first three to make everyone think it was th
is Ribbon Killer . . .

  That would have been a smart move, Natasha thought.

  She knew she would have to call the cops, have to tell them who she was and where she lived, that the dead woman in the newspaper had come to see Darryl King five years before, that there might be a connection . . .

  Have to tell them that Darryl King went missing and wound up dead, and even now she still did not know what happened.

  Natasha took the newspaper. She tore the front page off and dropped it in the sink. She took a lighter and set it on fire, watched it curl up into a black fall-leaf.

  It burned from the edges inward - slowly, patiently, the smell of smoke bitter in her nostrils.

  Last thing to go was the woman’s face, and the last part of her face was the cold and lifeless eyes, eyes that looked back at Natasha Joyce as if Natasha was somehow responsible for her death.

  SIX

  Robert Miller and Al Roth stood in a pizza parlor near the junction of M Street and Eleventh. Miller believed that Roth’s time would have been better spent recovering all files and reports from the previous three murders, but house calls and interviews always had to be conducted by two detectives. A corroborative system had to be established and maintained regardless.

  The manager was young, no more than twenty-three or four. Pleasant face, honest-looking, fair hair cut neat. ‘Hey,’ he said, and smiled.

  ‘You’re Sam?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’m Sam.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘You called earlier, yes?’

  Miller showed his badge. ‘An order was made yesterday evening, somewhere around five forty-five, delivered to a house on Columbia around six.’

  ‘The dead woman, I know. I don’t know what to tell you. Delivery guy . . . Jesus, I don’t even know how you’d deal with something like that.’

  ‘You took the order yourself?’ Miller asked.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And how did she sound to you?’

  Sam frowned, shook his head. ‘She? No, it wasn’t a woman who placed the order. It was a man.’