Kiss the Girls

whose only daughter was missing. Something seemed wrong about this case.
    We entered the South at noon. I had been born around a hundred miles away, in Winston-Salem. I hadn’t been back there since I was ten years old, the year my mother died, and my brothers and I were moved to Washington.
    I’d been to Durham before, for Naomi’s graduation. She had finished Duke undergraduate summa cum laude, and she received one of the loudest, cheeriest ovations in the history of the ceremony. The Cross family had been there in full force. It was one of the happiest, proudest days for all of us.
    Naomi was the only child of my brother Aaron, who died of cirrhosis at thirty-three. Naomi had grown up fast after his death. Her mother had to work a sixty-hour week for years to support them, so Naomi was in charge of the house from around the time she was ten. She was the littlest general.
    She was a precocious little girl, and read about Alice’s adventures in
Through the Looking-Glass
when she was only four. A family friend gave her violin lessons, and she played well. She loved music, and still played whenever she had time. She graduated number one in her class at John Carroll High School in D.C. As busy as she was with her studies, she found time to write graceful prose on what life was like growing up in the projects. She reminded me of a young Alice Walker.
    Gifted.
    Very special.
    Missing for more than four days.
    The welcome mat wasn’t out for us at Durham’s brand-new police headquarters building, not even after Sampson and I showed our badges and IDs from Washington. The desk sergeant wasn’t impressed.
    He looked something like the TV weatherman Willard Scott. He had a full crewcut, long thick sideburns, and skin the color of fresh ham. After he found out who we were, it got a little worse. No red carpet, no Southern hospitality, no Southern comfort.
    Sampson and I got to sit and cool our heels in the duty room of the Durham Police Department. It was all shiny glass and polished wood. We received the kind of hostile looks and blank stares usually reserved for drug dealers caught around grade schools.
    “Feel like we just landed on Mars,” Sampson said as we waited and watched Durham’s finest, watched complainants come and go. “Don’t like the feeling I get from the Martians. Don’t like their beady little Martian eyes. Don’t think I like the new South.”
    “You think about it, we’d fit in the same anywhere,” I told Sampson. “We’d get the same reception, same cold stares, at Nairobi Police Headquarters.”
    “Maybe.” Sampson nodded behind his dark glasses. “But at least they’d be black Martians. At least they’d know who John Coltrane is.”
    Durham detectives Nick Ruskin and Davey Sikes finally came down to see us an hour and a quarter after we arrived.
    Ruskin reminded me a little of Michael Douglas in his dark-hero cop roles. He wore a coordinated outfit: green-and-tan tweed jacket, stonewashed jeans, yellow pocket T. He was about my height, which would make him six three or so, a little bigger than life. His longish brown hair was slicked back and razor-cut.
    Davey Sikes was well built. His head was a solid block that made sharp right angles with his shoulders. He had sleepy, oatmeal-brown eyes; almost no affect that I could discern. Sikes was a sidekick type, definitely not the leader. At least not if first appearances meant anything.
    The two detectives shook hands with us, and acted as if all were forgiven, as if they were forgiving us for intruding. I had the feeling that Ruskin especially was used to getting his way inside the Durham PD. He seemed like the local star. The main man around these parts. Matinee idol at the Durham Triplex.
    “Sorry about the wait, Detective Cross, Sampson. It’s been busy as a son of a bitch around here,” Nick Ruskin said. He had a light Southern accent. Lots of confidence in himself.
    He hadn’t mentioned Naomi by name yet. Detective Sikes was silent. Didn’t say a word.
    “You two like to take a ride with Davey and me? I’ll explain the situation on the way. There’s been a homicide. That’s what had us all tied. Police found a woman’s body out in Efland. This is a real bad one.”

Chapter 12

    T HIS IS
a real bad one. A woman’s body in Efland. What woman?
    Sampson and I followed Ruskin and Sikes out to their car, a forest-green Saab Turbo. Ruskin got in the driver’s seat. I remembered Sergeant Esterhaus’s words in
Hill Street