too, okay?”
“Don’t you think that’s a waste of ink? It’ll be broken by the end of the week anyway.”
“I haven’t broken a one since I started clipping them to my belt loop. My record is now at nearly six weeks.”
Rolling his eyes, Tootsie said something about too little too late, but printed out the cards on the laser jet printer, and handed her the perforated sheet of thick paper. “Be careful, girlfriend,” he said, and she nodded.
“I always am.” She flashed him a bright smile meant to reassure him that the problem was in good hands, and then blew him a kiss on her way out the office door. She thought she heard him shout after her Don’t do anything stupid! but could have been mistaken. She always tried to be careful.
Armed with business cards, her cell phone, and a full tank of gas in her ‘91 silver Toyota, Harley set out for Midtown and the family of Derek Wade. He’d been forty-two, lived at home with his parents—which explained a lot—and worked as a raisin counter at the local Kellogg’s. Apparently it paid well to count raisins. She wondered how they did it, one by one, or with a scoop like in the commercials, “two scoops” in every box. That was Kellogg’s, wasn’t it? It was hard to keep up with the battling cereal corporations’ ads.
And it was much harder than she’d imagined interviewing the grieving parents. She had to remind herself it was for a good cause, finding his killer, but she still found it difficult to deal with their pain. It put real faces to the victim’s family, something she’d never had to deal with before. Statistics were cold. Grief was not. How did the police do it day after day? How did they deliver such terrible news after seeing broken and bloody bodies? No wonder so many officers retreated to emotional apathy while performing their jobs. It’d be suicide to empathize with all the victims and families they must encounter on a routine basis, and lessen their competency and effectiveness.
The interview with the Wades yielded little information she didn’t already know, and she considered avoiding her visit with the Jenkins family. But that wouldn’t get the job done.
So she steeled herself for another emotional hour and drove to the North Memphis address. It was in a shabby area of the city, the houses smaller and rundown, litter in many yards, not to mention the broken trees from the storm two years before. The media had dubbed it Hurricane Elvis, the straight-line winds fierce enough to knock down old oaks and keep electricity off for weeks in many neighborhoods. Just a few streets over in the same part of Memphis, houses were compact but neat, with fenced yards and obvious pride in ownership. Houses here still had tree rubbish piled up.
She parked at the curb in front of the house and checked the house number twice on her list. Could it be wrong? This couldn’t be the house of the recently bereaved. The front door stood wide open, and laughter and music drifted out. Maybe they hadn’t been notified yet. That thought made her queasy.
While she sat there indecisively as the sun beat down ferociously on the windshield, one of the kids running in and out of the house hollered that another cop was sitting out front. Okay, she could at least figure out if they’d been told, and if they hadn’t, make up some excuse and come back later.
A woman came to the front door and leaned against the frame. Skinny, with dirty blond hair piled on top of her head like some kind of bizarre bird’s nest, she squinted across the yard littered with broken toys and trash, a lit cigarette hanging from one corner of her mouth.
“You the cops?”
Harley got out of the car and approached the house. “No. Are you Mrs. Jenkins?”
“When it suits.” She laughed at her own joke. “Who are you?”
“Ms. Davidson. With Memphis Tour Tyme. I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”
“This
“Don’t you think that’s a waste of ink? It’ll be broken by the end of the week anyway.”
“I haven’t broken a one since I started clipping them to my belt loop. My record is now at nearly six weeks.”
Rolling his eyes, Tootsie said something about too little too late, but printed out the cards on the laser jet printer, and handed her the perforated sheet of thick paper. “Be careful, girlfriend,” he said, and she nodded.
“I always am.” She flashed him a bright smile meant to reassure him that the problem was in good hands, and then blew him a kiss on her way out the office door. She thought she heard him shout after her Don’t do anything stupid! but could have been mistaken. She always tried to be careful.
Armed with business cards, her cell phone, and a full tank of gas in her ‘91 silver Toyota, Harley set out for Midtown and the family of Derek Wade. He’d been forty-two, lived at home with his parents—which explained a lot—and worked as a raisin counter at the local Kellogg’s. Apparently it paid well to count raisins. She wondered how they did it, one by one, or with a scoop like in the commercials, “two scoops” in every box. That was Kellogg’s, wasn’t it? It was hard to keep up with the battling cereal corporations’ ads.
And it was much harder than she’d imagined interviewing the grieving parents. She had to remind herself it was for a good cause, finding his killer, but she still found it difficult to deal with their pain. It put real faces to the victim’s family, something she’d never had to deal with before. Statistics were cold. Grief was not. How did the police do it day after day? How did they deliver such terrible news after seeing broken and bloody bodies? No wonder so many officers retreated to emotional apathy while performing their jobs. It’d be suicide to empathize with all the victims and families they must encounter on a routine basis, and lessen their competency and effectiveness.
The interview with the Wades yielded little information she didn’t already know, and she considered avoiding her visit with the Jenkins family. But that wouldn’t get the job done.
So she steeled herself for another emotional hour and drove to the North Memphis address. It was in a shabby area of the city, the houses smaller and rundown, litter in many yards, not to mention the broken trees from the storm two years before. The media had dubbed it Hurricane Elvis, the straight-line winds fierce enough to knock down old oaks and keep electricity off for weeks in many neighborhoods. Just a few streets over in the same part of Memphis, houses were compact but neat, with fenced yards and obvious pride in ownership. Houses here still had tree rubbish piled up.
She parked at the curb in front of the house and checked the house number twice on her list. Could it be wrong? This couldn’t be the house of the recently bereaved. The front door stood wide open, and laughter and music drifted out. Maybe they hadn’t been notified yet. That thought made her queasy.
While she sat there indecisively as the sun beat down ferociously on the windshield, one of the kids running in and out of the house hollered that another cop was sitting out front. Okay, she could at least figure out if they’d been told, and if they hadn’t, make up some excuse and come back later.
A woman came to the front door and leaned against the frame. Skinny, with dirty blond hair piled on top of her head like some kind of bizarre bird’s nest, she squinted across the yard littered with broken toys and trash, a lit cigarette hanging from one corner of her mouth.
“You the cops?”
Harley got out of the car and approached the house. “No. Are you Mrs. Jenkins?”
“When it suits.” She laughed at her own joke. “Who are you?”
“Ms. Davidson. With Memphis Tour Tyme. I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”
“This
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