Trail of Echoes by Rachel Howzell Hall

Chatman.
    â€œWe get warrants for her bedroom and phone?” Colin asked.
    I nodded. “Luke should be sending them over any minute now.”
    â€œGood mornin’, Officers.”
    The overly solicitous voice belonged to a young black man stretched out on the hood of a black Cutlass Supreme. He wore red corduroy house shoes, red Clippers basketball shorts, and a white wife beater as clean as a southern grandma’s bathroom floor. Green and blue ink swirled on his arms and neck— BPS , RIP , illegible names, faces of crudely drawn females.
    â€œMorning.” I held up the yellow flyer. “You know her?”
    â€œMaybe.” He pulled a cigarillo and a lighter out of thin air, then lit up. “That’s some shit right there. I heard some Mess-cans have a hand in that. They tryin’ to take over up in here.”
    Colin cocked his head. “Why would Mexicans kidnap her?”
    â€œC’mon, Officer,” Dude said. “I know y’all got to pretend that shit ain’t like it is. But you know and I know that they want us gone. They tryna chase us out like they did to all the niggas in Highland Park. And please: y’all ain’t about to bust some Mess-can Eighteenth Street bangers. Nah. Y’all want us to go head to head, mano to mano. ” He puffed on the cigarillo, then added, “These Mess-cans keep on messin’ with our girls, shit’s gon’ jump off fo’ sure.”
    â€œWhat you smoking in there?” I asked. “You paranoid as fuck.”
    Dude was right about the race thing, though. The Latino gang, Eighteenth Street Westside, co-terrorized the Jungle to the Black P-Stones’ displeasure. City officials tried to downplay the hostilities between the two gangs by claiming that the violence wasn’t racial but stemmed from desires for more territory and the always-expanding drug trade. Despite injunctions that prohibited members from hanging out in certain neighborhood “safety zones,” both gangs started randomly killing children who lived outside those zones. Two weeks ago, a black gang member shot and killed a three-year-old Mexican boy. Two days later, a Mexican gang member shot and killed a ten-year-old black girl. Neither child nor their parents had been affiliated with gangs, but had still been targeted. If not for the color of their skin, then what?
    In Dude’s opinion, Chanita Lords represented yet another casualty in this unacknowledged race war.
    In truth, white people were actually about to take over up in here just as they were taking over Highland Park. Developers planned to tear down the Jungle and replace it with a hospital campus, new shops for folks riding the still-in-construction metro train, and expensive apartments and condos that folks like Dude and Eighteenth Street thugs could never, ever afford.
    â€œYou bang?” Colin asked him now.
    I clamped my lips together to keep from laughing.
    Dude chuckled. “Sound like you just learned that word yesterday, Officer.”
    Colin blushed. “Just answer the question.”
    â€œNaw, I don’t bang,” he said, avoiding my glance.
    I squinted at him. “So that BPS on your left bicep stands for…?”
    â€œBoston Public School,” he said, grinning.
    I rolled my eyes. “And the tat that says ‘Nita’ on your left wrist?”
    He gaped at it, and his brows knitted as he tried to come up with an explanation.
    â€œYou think it’s possible that Chanita’s disappearance is related to something more … nasty and fucked up?” I asked.
    Dude studied the cigarillo between two tobacco-stained fingers. “Like Jeffrey Dahmer and shit?” He curled his lip and shook his head. “First of all, ain’t no white man without a badge gon’ come up in here and snatch no girl.” He nodded at Colin. “Y’all some crazy sons a bitches, but y’all ain’t that crazy.”
    An