As the Wicked Watch(111)

Just as April asked me, “Where and how did you get these?” I looked up and saw Pamela bouncing toward us with her hands shoved in her pockets and her shoulders up around her ears.

“Whew! The Hawk is out today,” she said.

Pamela unraveled a huge scarf from around her neck and sat down in the booth next to April. I could not miss a new accessory laying along her collarbone, revealing a delicate but poignant gold necklace with letters that spelled out Masey. The message was clear: Masey would not be a forgotten girl.

“How are you doing, Jordan?” she asked with genuine sincerity.

“Much better, Pam. Thank you for asking,” I said.

We ordered coffee and I waited until Pamela sank into its warmth before getting to the point of her being here.

“Terrence Bankhead is in custody,” I said.

Pam froze mid-sip and set her mug down.

“For what?” she asked.

“He’s a person of interest. Pam, I confirmed it—he was the man picking Masey up from school.”

Pam went somewhere else in her mind for a moment, then finally spoke like her words had been on back order. “But those boys have been charged,” she said, which reminded me that they hadn’t been yet the last time I saw her.

“Pamela, you don’t really believe they’re guilty, do you?” April asked.

“Is this what you asked me to come down here for?” Pamela asked.

I didn’t know how I knew it, but this was exactly the way I thought Pamela would react. She was still in the first stages of grief—denial. I couldn’t judge her for it. I understood she was trying to do in death what she had been unable to do for Masey in life—protect her virtue and safeguard her reputation. She wanted Masey to be remembered as the flourishing honor student, not the girl who got killed because she was out here “being fast.”

With a lawyer’s precision, I made the case against Terrence, unsure of whether my words were landing or bouncing right off her until I said, “If you file a complaint against him, they could hold him a little longer. Pam, the picture of Terrence with Masey is—”

“You know what, Jordan,” Pam interrupted, “all due respect, but that’s not for me.”

“Pam, three innocent boys are in jail,” I said.

“Who said they were innocent?”

“Don’t you want the person who did this—”

“Listen to me,” she interrupted again. “Those kids discovered my baby’s body and came back to poke at it with sticks like they’d found a dead animal. I couldn’t give a damn about them!”

I hated what this was doing to her, and I hated being the one doing it. There were no guarantees any of my efforts surrounding Pamela would matter. Joey warned me that even if she filed a complaint against Terrence for inappropriate contact with a minor, he could potentially bond out the same day. But surely murder raised the stakes, so I kept pushing.

“Have you seen the photo? I have it on my phone.”

“I don’t want to see it!” she yelled. Then she stood up abruptly and wrapped the giant scarf around her neck.

“Pam, please,” I said.

“Come on, hon, sit back down,” April pleaded. “We’re not against you, we’re here for you.”

Before I could drop the hammer about Brent’s molesting Monique, the girls around Masey’s age I saw at the studio, Terrence’s threatening demeanor toward me, and the CPD’s unwillingness to pursue other leads, she walked out without saying another word, and I knew then we’d lost her.

*

Despite Nussbaum’s predilection to split the crime beat, I didn’t presume that my special assignment status had ended. So I avoided him and the newsroom. Back at my apartment, my cell phone blared a ringtone so distorted the call sounded like it was coming from the other side of the world.

“Hello?”

“Jordan!” said a familiar voice.

“Dr. Chan!”

It’d been a couple of days since I’d emailed him, and I wondered why I hadn’t heard back. “Where are you?”

“I’m still in Switzerland. I think my emails got delayed. I just got yours with a bunch that showed up this morning.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Today. In fact, I’m in the airport. You know I would have called you by now,” he said, apologetic. “What happened? You said you were attacked. By whom?”

The background noise at the airport threatened to drown me out.

“Dr. Chan, I think I know who killed Masey James, and I was attacked for getting too close to the truth,” I said.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, but that tissue sample you took from beneath Masey’s nails is missing and no one can find the results.”

“That should’ve come . . . ago . . . it . . . and I . . . matter . . . self,” Dr. Chan’s line was breaking up.

“I can’t understand what you are saying. Dr. Chan?”

The call dropped.

“Damn it!” I tried to call him back and I got his voice mail!

Seconds later I got a text from Dr. Chan.

Boarding. Home tomorrow. Will track results. Don’t get your hopes up. Might be nothing.

*

Just like that, Louise Robinson reemerged, piggybacking off Adele’s stinging rebuke of the police and the prosecutor’s office to incite the community’s anger, using her bully pulpit to stay in the news and keep the focus on Terrence. Whether she knew it or not, I wasn’t sure, but Terrence’s alibi in the Mosley murder had turned the spotlight on Brent as a suspect.