Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

He inhaled deeply, trying to get a read on the scene, trying to figure if Dusty would be pissed about his unannounced departure, trying to shake the whiskey out of his head.

He looked to his right, up the slight incline onto Otis, and could see the Park View Recreation Center at the end of the block. The name Lana Escobar floated into his mind. That was last summer, the last time he’d written about the neighborhood. She was a working girl whose body had been found on the outfield grass of the complex’s baseball field. The police had scarcely bothered to block off the outfield. There had been no gawking crowd. It had been raining and the police tape had sagged to the ground. The mud beneath his feet, the techs lifting her into the body bag, the sound of the rain spattering on the hard plastic, Jesus.

“So how are we doing this?”

It was Chris at his elbow, the kid looping a lanyard with his photo ID badge around his neck. He had his mini-recorder and a small notebook in one hand. He looked like a fat puppy, ready to chase a tennis ball. Chris was beginning to annoy the shit out of him, and when he was annoyed and drunk he tended to be unpleasant. So the people in the Employee Assistance Program had told him. The little fuckers.

“You want to do the street, since you know people up here,” Chris panted, “and I’ll do the cops?”

Sully patted his pockets. He had his ID. Fabulous. And gum. Gum was useful, particularly to take the smell of bourbon off your breath. People had been known to misunderstand. He put the side of the notebook in his mouth and used both hands to tuck his shirttails back in. He pulled the notebook from between his teeth and popped a stick of Juicy Fruit in his mouth.

“You do that, champ,” he said. “I’ll do the vox pop.”

He looked ahead at the mosh pit of reporters clustered at the far side of the street, the television antennas rising like metal saplings. Dave Roberts was over there, setting up for a live feed, the hometown hero. Played high school ball at DeMatha before Maryland and the NFL and was now the local television reporter everyone loved.

“Here’s a thought,” Sully said to Chris. “Don’t ask it up there in that scrum. Just nudge the cops that maybe this is random. Everybody else is going to be playing up the aspect that it’s got something to do with Reese. See if there’s any intel that maybe it’s not.”

Chris looked up at him and shifted his weight from his right foot to his left. He didn’t like the idea, Sully could tell. He was looking for an inside tip on something big-a local gang member, a Colombian drug lord, or maybe one of those anti-government Idaho nut jobs-striking at the federal bench. It would be days and days of 1-A stories, the kind of boost that would shoot him up from the dredges of Metro to the exalted wonders of National.

Chris shrugged. “I’ll ask.” He started to turn into the crowd, then leaned back. “You need a ride back? Should we meet up?”

Sully shook his head. “I’ll get the cycle stuff later.”

Overhead, far above the streetlights, two police helicopters swept back and forth, shining spotlights onto roofs, alleys, backyards. Sully felt the first touch of fall place a finger at the nape of his neck, the warning note of winter about to descend. There was still the bourbon buzz tingling through his bones, and now the electric murmur of murder on people’s lips, the morbid milling around, blood on the asphalt, the dark thrill of a Friday night being turned into something big, something mean, something to talk about. The television trucks, the networks and cable news channels, they were pouring into a neighborhood they usually never noticed, beaming a bit of neighborhood D.C. into living rooms in Seattle and Chicago and Tucson. I was just coming out the store, you know, and then all these police cars come flying up, cops with guns out and shit …

He checked his watch. Fifty-seven minutes until deadline. A shell burst of adrenaline ran up his spine.

Edging through the gawkers, he could see Dave outside the television van, wrestling a tie around his neck. His cameraman was setting up a shot with the dance studio across the street in the background. Sully could see the “Big Apple” sign across the second floor. The stems of the “A” were shaped like a pair of dancer’s legs; the top of the letter was an inverted, heart-shaped ass.

Sully pushed to the front row behind the police tape, now holding his press badge up as if it were a police department shield, people giving him a little room. He caught Dave’s eye with a wave. The older man, dark skinned, broad shouldered, still looking like he could bust your ass at outside linebacker, waved him inside the tape.

“Gloamin’ of the evenin’,” Sully said, waving a hand at the falling dark, then catching himself. Put the “G” on the goddamned end, this wasn’t back home.

“I was on my way to the movies with the missus,” Dave said.

“She pissed?”

“Twenty-two years of marriage says I’m not getting any when I get home.”

“Tell her I said hello, if she’s speaking to you when you get there. Christ almighty, I think I see everybody but the East Jesus Gazette out there. D.C.’s finest coughing up anything?”

Dave saw the rearview mirror on the van, a revelation, a place to check the knot in the tie. “Just got it from a brother over in 4-D. There’s a BOLO for three black guys, teenagers, who were in the store. They’re going for them hard but keeping it low-key. You know, they can’t just say, ‘Niggas killing white girls! Whoo! Hide your women!’ But that’s what’s up. Owner of the market there told the cops there was some sort of scene between them and the girl.”

“Here we go.”

“No no no, I’m not opening up all that shit.”

“You calling the suspects black?”

“On air? Not unless there’s better ID.”

“This business,” Sully said.

There were people on porches, men with arms folded. Horns honking at the stalled traffic. A cluster of people forming along the yellow tape a dozen yards away, forming a circle around someone. He nodded to Dave and moved quickly, forcing his way back into the crowd and pressing to the outer edge of the cluster. In the center was a young woman, thin, long boned, wearing a too-big T-shirt, BIG APPLE DANCE across the front in that split-legged logo.

“-so I’s telling Gina the girls had been doing that. Sneaking over there. Something to eat, I don’t know.”

Someone asked something that Sully couldn’t hear.

“Momma calls the cops, they come running and I went upstairs. Then there’s all these sirens and I looked out the window and all them go running to Doyle’s, around to the back. Momma sees that, takes off running. Flat-out screaming .”

A lady next to Sully: “Been my baby, Jesus.”

The young woman in the circle started talking to someone next to her and the crowd shifted, losing interest. Sully pushed forward to the woman.

“Ma’am? My name’s Sully Carter. I’m-”

“I know you,” she said evenly, eyes dancing over his scars, starting to walk away. “You came around asking questions after that Spanish girl got killed last summer.”

“Did I talk to you?” he cocked his head, falling in step alongside her, handing her his business card.

She shook her head. “You just stopped in the studio.” She remembered the scars, the limp. Everybody did.

“You knew Lana?”

She had taken the card, that was good, she was looking down at it now, slowing, giving in. “Yeah, no, I don’t know. To talk to. Maybe I saw her around.”

“So you saw Sarah Reese go across the street? About what time?”

She looked at her watch, then up at him, deciding to stand for it for a moment. “After her class let out. A little after seven.”