Like sheep gone astray, p.30
Like Sheep Gone Astray, page 30
“Well, for starters, I think I've been investigating the wrong people, and if I'm right, there are at least a couple of people down there who are in grave danger.”
“Danger of what?”
“That's what I'm afraid of. Oh, shoot!” Kent put his foot on the brake as the cars in front of him came to a complete stop. Orange construction signs dotted the paved expanse before them.
“At this rate, we won't be home until late this evening.” He fingered through the faxed papers with Sheriff Malloy's marks over Anthony's print, and then tossed them to the backseat.
“I don't know if that will be in time.”
Kellye Porter sorted through the basket full of dark-colored clothes. The sheets and towels in another basket were newly folded, and one of the two loads of whites was in the dryer. Four loads in three hours. Bernard would have been all over her; she smiled to herself. In the early days of their marriage, he used to take freshly cleaned and air-dried clothes, hold them to his nose, and compare the captured scent of sunshine to his own captured sunbeam. “You are a ray of light that has refreshed my life,” he would whisper into her ear while nuzzling her neck. Years later, even after she finally convinced him that an electric dryer would make life easier for both of them, he still called her Sunshine every time he saw her washing clothes.
It was the day of his funeral.
Kellye looked at the white dress she had picked for the occasion hanging on a wire hanger near the dryer. Pressed and starched, it looked like angel clothes suspended in mid-air. The thought made her wonder how many angels he had seen in heaven already.
“Sunshine is always bright, not dark,” he had whispered to her so many times from his sickbed, their fingers intertwined, as a comfortable silence became their daily conversation. He made her promise never to wear black at his funeral. She never liked or wanted to continue the talks he initiated about his home-going service or the life she would live once he was gone, but now she found herself engrossed in every written and remembered detail, his final wishes followed as much as possible to a tee. Dwelling on his requests surrounding his departure gave her a sense of connection to the man she could no longer hold. She could not embrace his body, but his desires could embrace her. Knowing she was honoring his last hopes seemed to keep him alive just a little longer.
She was just about to put the last load of clothes in the washing machine when her fingers brushed against the crumpled edges of stiff paper.
“What's this?” Her fingers dug into a pocket, then pulled a terry-cloth garment out of the pile for inspection. It was the robe of her sister-in-law, Mabel.
The stiff paper turned out to be an old photograph. Kellye's fingers shook as she slowly smoothed down the edges of the worn picture. It had been extraordinarily difficult to go through all of Bernard's pictures earlier. She had let Mabel pick out the obituary photo. She must have missed this one, Kellye concluded. She blinked back a tear, and as the serious-looking faces came into focus she brought the picture closer to her eyes. These faces looked familiar, and she felt like kicking herself when no names came to mind. A younger, headstrong Bernard stared back at her from the center of the picture, flanked on either side by equally young and headstrong men. One face in particular troubled her as she searched for a name.
“I was just looking for my robe.”
Kellye had not noticed Mabel coming down the basement steps. The older woman came beside her and loosened the maroon robe from Kellye's grip.
“Something wrong?” Mabel could barely get out her words.
“I know what it is,” Kellye said, suddenly smiling. “It's the eyes.” She pointed to the picture. “This man here looks just like a young minister at my church, Anthony. Real nice young man. You met him, Mabel. He was here Saturday. If I didn't know better, I'd say this man could pass for his father.” She was still smiling as she pointed quickly at the photo before tossing a dirty dish towel into the washing machine.
“If you didn't know better?” Mabel knew instinctively she should have left it alone, but she wanted to make sure Kellye was not onto anything.
“Yeah, I know, it's amazing how everyone has a twin out there. I guess Anthony's was in another generation. That picture looks like it was taken before I even met Bernard, back when he was still living in Sharen.”
Mabel's smile and caution faded as she snatched the picture from her and clenched it in her fist.
“So you really don't remember him?”
“Remember who, Mabel?” Sister Porter did not seem bothered by Mabel's sudden change of mood. She turned the dial on the washer and poured a scoop of laundry detergent in the tub.
“His father. Anthony's father. You really don't remember who he was?”
Kellye was heading back to the basement stairs, her white dress draped over an arm.
“Anthony's father? Why would I know his father? I remember his step-dad, Harold, but beyond that I—” Kellye froze mid-step as she threw a hand to her mouth. She looked back toward the photo and then again at Mabel. The anger in Mabel's eyes was smoldering and unmistakable.
“My Jesus! He was Anthony's father? He was Anthony's father.” Disbelief and confusion locked into her face as she looked pityingly at her sister-in-law. “Mabel,” she whispered between her fingers, “are you still holding on to that after all these years? I wonder if Anthony knows that—”
“Leave it alone, Kellye.” Mabel's voice was low, almost threatening. “It's almost all taken care of. Please, just leave it be.”
“But what difference does it m—”
“Just leave it be. We have a funeral to get ready for today.”
“You're right, Mabel. But it seems to me that a casket is not the only thing that needs to be buried.” Kellye rushed up the steps with fresh tears in her eyes. It wasn't just grief anymore. It was grief plus. Something was terribly wrong. She felt it. She knew it. But trying to talk to Anthony would be too ambitious a goal to accomplish on this heavy day. She would call him tomorrow. If that man in the picture really had been Anthony's father, he had the right to know, she figured. Maybe that was the information Bernard had been trying to tell Anthony. She sighed in relief as she remembered that she had honored one of Bernard's last wishes. That box in the attic, she'd seen to it that Anthony received it. Anthony already knows the whole story, she assured herself.
But even as she went through the dreaded duty of getting dressed for her late husband's funeral, she could not shake a nagging feeling that everything was not okay.
“I'll talk to him tomorrow,” she murmured, trying to calm herself as she stared at her white-clothed reflection in the bedroom-door mirror. “I'll talk to him tomorrow and make sure he knows the whole story. Tomorrow will be fine. If Anthony has spent the last twenty-nine years not knowing about his father and what he did to the residents of Sharen, what difference will one more day make?”
It was not until she, Mabel, and Denise were sitting in the black limo from Winston's Funeral Home on their way to Second Baptist Church that she realized something else was bothering her.
“Mabel,” Kellye whispered from behind the paper fan and white handkerchief she was holding, “do you still have that picture on you?”
The dull clink of the elevator signaled its destination. The sixth floor of the building at 9705 Perkins Street. Gloria waited for the doors to slide open, and shrank back when they did. The sixth floor was an open dumping ground; chairs, trash, and furniture were spread across the large floor like the skeletons at an ancient ruin. Her heart beat faster as she tried to adjust her eyes to the dim light offered only by the erratically placed windows of the warehouse building.
She checked her watch; it was already a quarter past one. That gave her only a few minutes before she had to report back to Councilman Banks's office. He'd promised to come here himself after he finished with his session down at city hall later in the day. Maybe she should have listened and waited. She held back a scream as a wad of papers shifted in a near corner. Rats. She knew the sound.
“Don't have much time, so I better work fast to find something.” She checked her purse for the name she had scribbled down at the Office of Public Records and Recording. Razi.
“There's got to be something here that explains why this person would want this suite and what he or she is doing in it.”
She quickly scanned the room, letting her eyes do the walking before her feet began the tour. This would have been a good time to be rid of those pesky extra pounds. She frowned to herself. Covering her nose and clenching her purse, she darted through cobwebs and coughed in dust as she began a quick trot around the massive open suite.
At an upturned desk near a window, she noticed something she had not seen anywhere else in the room. Order. She stepped semi-athletically over some broken shelves, forging a path to the wooden hutch. A telephone and a stack of papers sat atop it, and a pen lay on the floor. A quiver of nervousness edged up her spine as she moved closer to investigate.
The window offered a mini flood of light onto the work space. Gloria looked out through the glass pane at a spectacular view. She could see most of Shepherd Hills from where she stood—trees, buildings, homes, land sprawled out for miles. She had never realized that the county was true to its name, hills and valleys dictating development.
She could also see unused, weed-filled railroad tracks just beneath the building. The warehouse sat on a dead end. She closed her eyes for a brief second, trying to imagine the area as it had been decades before, busy with blue-collar industry, loud, smelling like sweat, smoke, and the other stenches of hard labor. She opened her eyes and saw the desolation that had claimed the area. Even at one-thirty in the afternoon, no traffic, no pedestrians, no hints of life were around. Had she read her watch right? She needed to put a move on it.
A quick shuffling through the papers left her wondering where to begin with her jotted notes. Although there was no clear contact or identifying information on Razi, she was starting to feel like she was merely scratching the surface of Razi's wealth. Who or whatever it was, its ownership extended far beyond the sixth floor of the old warehouse. Razi's name was attached to the sales and utilities bills of several businesses and structures, including the steelworkers' hall that had been transformed into the Diamond Mount where Friday's banquet had been held. Razi held major shares of AGS Railroad, which was responsible for the expansion of the Stonymill light rail line. Many houses, lots, buildings—most related somehow to the now defunct Toringhouse Steel and its branch-offs—all had attachments to Razi.
Gloria set the stack of papers back down and walked around the desk to a metal file cabinet that had more papers sticking out of its drawers. As she went to open one, her feet brushed against a manila folder sitting like an upside-down V on the floor. Its contents had spilled out and lay scattered around it. She scooped it all up, reading the name on the folder's label.
“What is this?” she muttered to herself, freezing when she saw the first piece of paper inside. It was a photograph of a serious-looking black man with a huge afro and an orange-and-black dashiki.
“The eyes.” She took the picture closer to the window to get a better view. Anthony had said something about researching his father, and this man certainly could pass as a DNA-test candidate.
She flipped through the folder one page at a time, her eyes getting slightly wider with each read.
“This man was quite the con,” she muttered as the pages and yellowed newspaper clippings crinkled softly in her hand. She gave one last look through the stack, noting only that most of what was there either referenced or came from somewhere in South Carolina.
“There's got to be something that I'm missing.” She checked her watch. She should have left minutes ago, but one more quick look-through wouldn't hurt, she decided.
She spotted a wood stool behind the file cabinet and quickly headed for it, but it was not until she was almost completely seated that she realized it had a bad leg. Using a nearby shelf for leverage she caught herself, trying to hold on to the papers and grab the dusty ledge at the same time.
“Ouch!” A cup of hot coffee spilled onto her arm, scalding her wrist and fingertips. “Where did this come from?” She gasped, her realization that someone else was there coming a second too late. Before she could regain her balance, a strong hand clenched tightly around her mouth and heavy rope bound her arms behind her. She used all her strength to kick back with her legs, but the way she was sprawled on the floor gave her a severe disadvantage. Before she could make sense of what was going on, she was alone again, attached to a pipe that ran the height of the room. Silence filled the space and nobody else was there.
She sat shocked for a long minute, until a slight trickle of blood caught her attention. Pain thumped near her wrist, and she realized for the first time that she had been cut. Her artery had been missed by millimeters. Suddenly her mind caught up with her heartbeat, a million thoughts thundering like a high-speed train. She had to get out of there. Whoever it was was going to come back, and she knew it wouldn't be to apologize.
Though her hands were tied behind her back, there was just enough slack in the rope for her to grope the immediate floor. Good: her purse was reachable. She knew she had a nail file in there, and she convinced herself that even a dull edge could help her slice away at the thick twine.
It took her more than ten minutes just to unzip the black leather bag, and another fifteen to find the metal nail file. She began sawing away at the cord with a vengeance, her strength limited by the strained position of her arms and the pain near her right wrist. When another twenty minutes had gone by, and she had only made a slight nick in the rope, she banged her head against a shelf beside her. It fell on top of her bloodied hands.
“Jesus!” Hot tears blinded her vision. Nobody would even know she was missing yet. Councilman Banks was down at city hall thinking she was at the library, and if Anthony was back, he probably would not be trying to call her from the funeral. She had to get out of there and get in contact with both of them. If she was in danger, maybe they were as well. There was nothing she could do but feel for the nail file and resume whittling away at the rope.
Chapter 17
Anthony breathed a sigh of relief. With every change in his BMW's odometer, he drew closer to the skyline of the Shepherd Hills downtown district. It was ten after two. He would only be a few moments late for Minister Bernard Porter's funeral. The winding road that led to Second Baptist Church was a short three exits away. Figuring an hour and a half for the funeral, another hour for the burial, he should be able to drive over to the ware-house on Perkins Street by five.
He was turning on his blinkers to change lanes when he saw red-and-blue lights flashing behind him. A police car. Anthony checked his speedometer. He didn't think he was speeding. Were his lights not working? He tapped the blinkers again as he slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the expressway. He cut the ignition and put both hands on the steering wheel. No need to turn a routine police stop into a Rodney King rerun. He could see the officer approaching in his rearview mirror. It was Sheriff Malloy.
“Good afternoon, Sheriff. Is there a problem?” Anthony was courteous.
“Shut up and get out of the car! Keep your hands where I can see them!” “What's going on?”
“I said get out of the car, Murdock!” Sheriff Malloy quickly pointed a gun at him.
“Whoa, whoa, okay, I'm getting out.” Anthony stepped out, each movement slow and exaggerated as he kept his hands spread out in front of him. Cars were beginning to slow down on the freeway beside them, onlookers pointing, speeding up only when they saw the gun aimed at Anthony. “Lie facedown on the ground!”
Anthony obeyed, but Sheriff Malloy still pushed him down on his way to the pavement. Blood spattered across his teeth as he hit the black tar.
“Stay still!” Malloy continued his assault, hitting, smacking, spitting as he pulled out handcuffs, using them to whack Anthony hard just under his ear. Anthony felt like his bones were forming fault lines.
“Wait a minute, what's going on?” Anthony demanded. “What are you doing?”
“Shut up, Murdock! You know what you did. You are under arrest for public corruption, embezzlement, and bribery of state officials. You have the right to remain Silent…”
The sheriff proceeded with the Miranda rights as he roughly shoved and pushed the compliant Anthony to his cruiser, using the full force of his hands and a knee to thrust him inside. “I hope you have a good attorney, because you're looking at some serious time, Reverend Murdock!”
He watched as the sheriff dug through the trunk of his car, pulling out the bag of money that had been hidden in its belly for too long. Even as his body ached from the ruthless blows he had suffered, he felt as if a burden had been lifted off his shoulders as Malloy tossed the brown bag onto the passenger-side floor of his police cruiser. Anthony was quiet as the cruiser pulled away with him in it. A part of him had been expecting this very moment ever since the late-night “Samson” study session. For Samson to overcome, he had to go down with the enemy.
But even as a calmness controlled him, a realization put him on high alert. Malloy was driving in a direction away from the county jail.
“Where are you taking me?” Anthony demanded from the backseat, his wrists hurting from the clasp of metal around them, his head and neck aching with pain. “I have the right to know where you are taking me.”
“Shut up!” Malloy shouted through the grate that separated them. “There's a special holding cell for criminals like you, a place far away to keep you from spreading your brand of corruption any more throughout this city.”
“I want to speak to my lawyer. I don't know what you're doing.”
“I said shut up!” Malloy brandished a gun. The cruiser's lights and siren were not on, and Sheriff Malloy seemed to be driving casually to the outer areas of the city. He suddenly veered off road at some old railroad tracks. Anthony stayed quiet, alert, his mind pleading for direction, insight. Safety.
