That was not what had happened in the house on John R.
When the responding officers arrived, the child was still in its bed. By the time I entered the blue bedroom, the eyes of three stuffed animals — a bear, a rabbit, and a zebra — looked down upon an empty crib. With its broken slats, it resembled a wooden cage.
Baker nudged me, indicating I should step aside to let the photographer do his job. The camera flash brightened the blood on the yellow tangled blanket. The air smelled of sour diapers.
I heard a woman crying. Between her sobs, she whispered the name Tommy. I followed the sound back to the living room, pulling my notebook from my jacket.
The woman sat on a green sofa. When her eyes came up, she focused first on Baker, then on me, making that female-to-female connection. I knew from experience she had some vague hope that I was the one person in this group of stone-faced strangers who might understand why her baby died at the hands of her man. I resented it and I wanted to slap her. Instead, I sat down next to her.
“What was your son’s name?” I asked.
“Justin.”
“And your boyfriend’s name?”
“Tommy Freeman.” It was his name she had called out from the bedroom, not her baby’s.
“Do you know where he is right now?” I asked.
“Probably at his brother’s.”
I took down all the information in my small notebook. I wrote slowly, postponing the final part of my interview, the part that in all my years as a cop had never gotten any easier. I learned a long time ago that these woman often changed their stories when they realized that their boyfriend or husband was going to go to prison. Sometimes, they recanted everything. Sometimes, they took the full blame themselves.
I set a small tape recorder on the scarred coffee table near the woman’s knees.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“The baby stressed Tommy out. He works nights, and the constant crying …”
I nodded, my eyes closing over a burn of tears. I knew I wouldn’t cry. I had this way of absorbing tears back inside my head. Baker once told me that if I didn’t let them out once in a while, they’d back up into my brain and begin to ferment. He had meant it as a joke, but I didn’t laugh.
“Please don’t hurt him when you pick him up,” the woman whispered.
I said nothing and stood up. The creamy scent of formula was in my nose and I took a look around. A blue plastic baby bottle sat on the end table.
“You’ll need to go with the officers down to station, ma’am,” I said.
She looked to me in confusion. “But I didn’t do anything.”
“I know,” I said.
Baker was stopped at a traffic light. The heat rose in wavering vapors from the hot asphalt, dissipating into the pale yellow sky. There was a sulphurous smell in the air that pricked my nostrils even through the closed car windows.
“Can we stop at Angela’s?” I asked Baker.
He nodded and turned right, heading to an apartment building over on Winder. I had met Angela about three years ago. She was working in a strip club up on Eight Mile, trying to do the best she could for her twelve-year-old daughter. Angela had just married Curtis Streeter, a mostly unemployed construction worker with flat black eyes and the names of his two ex-wives tattooed on his bicep. As a wedding gift, he had added Angela’s name to his arm.
It was two nights after the wedding that Baker and I made our first visit to their place. We found Angela crumpled in the corner of the tiny yellow kitchen, bloody hand prints smearing the oven door. The daughter was in her bed with a split lip and her hair chopped off above her ears by dull scissors. Punishment by her stepfather for sassing back.
Angela had been strong at first, fueled by her pain and the sight of her daughter’s ragged hair. But in the days after, she began to withdraw, the pain turning to regret and self-blame. I knew that without Angela’s testimony, Streeter would walk free.
For the first time in my career, I went the extra mile for a victim. I spent nights digging into Streeter’s past, but I didn’t find anything that could send him away. Though I did find something I hoped might steel Angela’s resolve.
A few years before he hooked up with Angela, Streeter had been living with a woman who had an infant son. Six weeks into the relationship, the mother carried her dead son into an emergency room. The baby died of a head injury, like his brain had ricocheted around inside his skull, the doctors said. The mother said the baby had fallen down some stairs. No one believed her. But when Streeter’s alibi was backed up by three of his punk friends, the only thing the cops could do was charge the mother with neglect.
I pulled out the coroner’s photos of the dead child and I showed them to Angela, telling her Streeter had shaken that baby to death. A week later, Angela stood in court and begged the judge to put Streeter away. Because Streeter had a record and his battery charge on Angela violated his probation, an impatient judge gave him seven years.
In the four years I had been working the special crimes unit, I could count on one hand the number of abuse cases that came close to a successful resolution. Angela’s was one of them, and I had been keeping loose tabs on her ever since. Maybe I took a sort of pride in the fact that I had helped her turn some corner.
That’s why I had asked Baker to swing by. That, and I needed something to wipe the image of Justin’s bloody crib from my head.
The outside of Angela’s building was as bad as I remembered. But behind the triple deadbolts she had fixed up her place. Fresh mauve paint, rose-patterned curtains I knew she had made herself. The place smelled of simmering beef and green beans.
Baker posted himself at the window to watch the cruiser below. Last week on this same street a squad car had been stripped while the officer was inside taking a report.
Angela emerged from the kitchen carrying a can of Ver-nors ginger ale. She looked good, even with a few extra pounds. Her hair was bright yellow with a recent coloring. Men tipped well for blond hair, she had once told me.
When she handed me the can of pop, an odd scent drifted off her body. Someone who had given birth would have recognized it more quickly, but it wasn’t until I picked up on Angela’s expression — child-bright with a secret — that it hit me. The smell was breast milk.
“I had a baby,” she said.
I scanned the room for evidence that a man now lived here. I saw nothing except a baby seat pushed into the corner near the television.
“When?”
“Three months ago. Want to see him?”
She didn’t give me time to answer and I followed her back to the bedrooms. The first room was painted pink, adorned with posters of pop singers and kittens. The daughter’s room. She’d be fifteen or so now.
At the door of Angela’s room, I slowed, but she waved me over to the bassinet near her bed.
A halo of curls around a chubby face. Long brown lashes that fluttered with dreams. His tiny body filled only a third of the mattress.
“Who’s the father?” I asked.
Angela picked up the baby and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. “He’s out of the picture,” she said. “He was married, and I’m okay with that. He paid for everything, though. Still sends me money when he can.”
I found the news oddly comforting. “So you’re doing okay?”
Angela nodded, yet wouldn’t meet my eyes. There was something she wasn’t telling me, but I wasn’t sure I should push. Baker had said I couldn’t be both protector and friend to the victims I met. The line between the two was too thin.