The Tercel was dusted for prints. The car had been wiped down but not thoroughly. Its glove box yielded a registration in the name of Olivia Elliot, with an Anacostia address. Prints on the car would be matched to the prints of the corpse, and a photo ID of Elliot, in the system, would be matched to her body as well. When this was done, a homicide detective would notify family and next of kin. The notification would also serve as the initial investigation into the case.
This would fall to homicide cop Nathan Grady, formerly of the Fourth District. His territory now, in the aftermath of the recent duty realignment, was citywide. Grady, like most of the men and women who shared his kind of shield, hated this part of the job. It would be a while, but not too long, before the final identification was made, but his gut told him that the woman found in the woods was the owner of that Tercel. Once he knew for sure, he’d go tell the husband, or the kid, or whomever, that their loved one was forever gone.
ULYSSES Foreman had scored Ashley Swann a real nice gun for Christmas, a piece she had been wanting for a long time. The revolver had come from that retail gun store down in Virginia, his most frequent source. As was his usual practice, he had paid a commission to a clean Virginia resident to make the buy.
Ashley sat on the edge of their bed in her pajamas, having changed back into them after Long and Jones, Dewayne Durham’s boys, had come, bought that pretty blue Taurus .38, and gone. She had taken her gun out of the drawer of her nightstand, which is where she kept it all the time. Ulysses had instructed her that this would be its most useful spot; he kept his, the 9mm Colt, the one with the custom bonded ivory grips, in his own nightstand on his side of the bed.
She was giving the gun a good inspection. She liked the weight of it in her hand.
It was the Smith & Wesson 60LS, the LadySmith, a .357 stainless-steel revolver with a speed-loader cutout and smooth rosewood grips, specially contoured to fit a woman’s hand. The grips were smooth and carried the S&W monogram; Ashley oiled them often, and she used her Hoppes kit to clean the chambers and barrel at least twice a month. It was a beautiful gun. She had her eye on a similar model, the 9mm auto, manufactured in frosted stainless with matching gray grips.
“Ulee?”
“Huh.” He was lying on his back on the bed, his head propped up on pillows, his eyes on their flat-screen Sony.
“You know that LadySmith nine, the pretty one I seen in the magazine, all gray?”
“Yeah.”
“I want one.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Foreman was watching ESPN Classic. Ashley didn’t know how men could stand to look at some old basketball game, had been played years before, when they knew how it was gonna end. But she did like to see him lying there, one arm behind his head, his bicep rounded, that rug of tight, curly hair covering the upper part of his chest.
“I’m thinkin’ on goin’ to see my daddy down in Port Tobacco,” said Ashley.
“Go ahead.”
On the tube was game 6 of the Bulls-Jazz finals from ’98, played in Salt Lake. He watched Karl Malone take a dish from Stockton—white boy had to do something about those tight drawers, but he could orchestrate the shit out of some ball—and go underneath for a one-handed reverse dunk.
“The Mailman,” said Foreman with admiration.
“Ulee?”
Foreman thought about how Malone was wastin’ hisself out there in Morman land. Handsome man like him, going home to his dull-ass family after the games, listenin’ to country music and shit, when he could be playing in a real city like New York, spending his dollars in clubs, gettin’ fresh pussy every night. To Foreman it seemed like Malone wasn’t having any fun. Playing with Stockton and his short shorts, and that other white boy, wiped his face like there was somethin’ runnin’ down it every time he got to the foul line. Lack of fun was probably the reason why Malone had never won the ring.
“Ulee, come with me.”
“Huh?”
“To Port Tobacco!”
“Maybe I’ll meet you down there,” said Foreman. “I got business to attend to.”
The truth was, he was a city boy and wasn’t cut out for no farm. Also, her father, had one of those lantern-holdin’ negroes set on his lawn, made Jesse Helms look like Jesse Jackson. Pop wanted to bite right through his tongue every time Foreman came to visit. There was this other thing, too, bothered him some. Black men down there, deep in southern Maryland, some of them acted like they was back in 1963. Yessirin’ and all that, walkin’ down those country roads in the summertime, scratchin’ at the top of their heads.
Ashley put the gun back on the nightstand. She picked up the glass that was sitting there and had a sip of chardonnay.