Titus got up from his chair and walked around to the front of his desk. He crossed his arms and looked down at Scott.
“The population of Charon County is fourteen thousand two hundred and eighty-seven people. Sixty percent of those people are Black. Folks who never thought they’d have a chance to vote for a sheriff who wouldn’t pull them over and feel up their wives or daughters or beat their sons or husbands within an inch of their goddamn lives. Add to that a large number of white folks who don’t carry water for Robert E. Lee or worship at the shrine of Ronald Reagan, and that gives me a pretty good little coalition of voters. I’m betting they would love to walk past that Confederate statue in the county square and cast their votes for me … again. So you start your little recall. Meanwhile, I’m going to be catching this killer. A killer who tortured those Black boys and girls right along with Jeff Spearman and Latrell Macdonald. You remember Jeff Spearman, right? Your old golfing buddy,” Titus said.
Titus leaned forward ever so slightly.
“I’m going to find him, and you’re going to stay out of my way. We are not having this conversation again. And the next time you see me, you address me as Sheriff Crown. Now get the fuck out of my office,” Titus said.
Scott held his hands up in mock surrender. “Titus, I just want—”
“Scott, if you don’t leave right now on your two feet, you’re going to end up leaving on a stretcher,” Titus said. Scott must have sensed the lack of hyperbole, because he got up and walked to the door. He paused, started to say something else, saw Titus’s face, and thought better of it. Titus kept standing until he saw Scott walk out the front door, then he walked into the lobby.
“Cam, I’m heading out for a while. Going up to Maryland. It’s eleven now; I should be back by four P.M. Check in with Trey if you can’t reach me if anything comes up,” Titus said.
“What’s in Maryland?”
“A mother who doesn’t know her child is dead.”
* * *
The traffic on 301 was sparse until he crossed over into Maryland. Then it became a Mad Max–like dystopia of distracted drivers, harried bureaucrats, and D.C. commuters desperate to beat the noonday rush. Titus got off 301 and got on the equally congested 95 to take him into Baltimore. He drove down narrow streets flanked by row houses and corner stores until he reached Yasmin Michaels’s house. Titus parked in front of the tiny one-story building. He got out of his SUV and knocked as gently but firmly as he could. He didn’t want to give a grieving mother the “cop knock,” but his heavy hands made that a near impossibility.
He had called ahead to make sure she still lived here, so he knew she was home. But she didn’t immediately respond to his knocking. Titus couldn’t say he blamed her. After all this time, she had to know, in some intrinsic way, that he wasn’t here to deliver joyous tidings. Who would rush to their door for such devastating news?
Eventually, after two long minutes, the door opened and a slim woman with a mini-’fro answered the door.
“Hi, I’m Sheriff Crown,” Titus said.
“I kind of figured that, with the badge and the Smokey the Bear hat. Come in,” Yasmin said. She turned, and Titus followed her into a small but neat living room. She sat down in a weathered recliner. Titus could have sat on an equally distressed sofa or a more severe bamboo chair with a threadbare cushion in the seat, but he decided to stay standing.
“You want a drink? Water?” Yasmin asked as she fired up a Newport cigarette.
“No, ma’am, I’m fine, but thank you for asking,” Titus said.
“You miss that traffic out near College Park? It gets bad around lunchtime. I don’t even leave the building for lunch anymore. Too congested,” Yasmin said.
“You said you work at a medical facility?” Titus asked.
Yasmin shook her head. “Nah, I work for a company that makes first-aid kits. For the Army and shit. Been there for a year. When Tavaris … didn’t come home it was kind of a wake-up call for me. I don’t know. I stopped getting high. Just quit. Got this job. I think I thought I had to be in a better place when he came back than when he left. I thought … I guess I thought it would make a difference. Seeing you here, I guess it don’t,” Yasmin said.
Titus steeled himself. He needed to say it. Say it now and not let it linger between them. The longer he did that, the harder it would be for Yasmin.
“Ms. Michaels, I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but we found the remains of your son in Charon County two days ago. It appears he died as the result of a homicide,” Titus said. The sentences felt like bullets in a gun as he spoke. Each one aimed right at Yasmin’s heart.
Yasmin inhaled deeply, then expelled a cloud of smoke from her nostrils like a dragon awakening from its thousand-year slumber.
“My mama used to say he was in a better place. When we was little she made us go to church every damn Sunday. You go that often, you can’t help but believe. For a while anyway. It’s like believing in the Easter bunny or some shit. And I believed. I used to believe so damn hard,” Yasmin said.
Titus noticed the faded outline of a crucifix on the wallpaper over Yasmin’s left shoulder. The indistinct outline reminded him of jailhouse tattoos.
“Faith is a fragile thing, Sheriff. Do you know that? They like to talk about mustard seeds and not walking by sight and all that shit, but the truth is it don’t take much to break your faith. Get sick, get broke, or lose your only son. Your faith will run out of town faster than a deadbeat daddy,” Yasmin said. Tears rolled down her smooth brown cheeks.
“I used to pray every night for him to come back. Every single night. Then one day I just stopped. I knew it won’t doing no fucking good. Guess me and him getting pinched was kinda a good thing, huh? That’s how you found out who he was?” Yasmin said. Sobs played on the edges of her voice. Titus thought he had a few seconds before she either started screaming or crying.
“Sheriff, who hurt my baby?” Yasmin said, and now she was crying in earnest. Great howling cries that wracked her thin body. Ash from her cigarette fell to the floor and she trembled in the depths of her sadness.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. I promise you that,” Titus said. The words felt full of presage and foolishness. He knew he shouldn’t make promises. He was setting himself and Yasmin up for disappointment. The poor woman was broken enough already. Yet it was those shards, the pieces of her heart, that cut into his own broken covenant of faith and made those words bleed from his mouth.
FOURTEEN
Titus got back later than he had predicted. The traffic had gotten exponentially worse in the thirty minutes he’d stood in Yasmin Michaels’s home. Titus knew he probably wouldn’t be able to notify every parent of every victim they identified, but this felt right. It felt like another step in his own path of penance. A path that was as long and twisted as a winding sheet.
Other than her grief, Yasmin Michaels didn’t have much to share about her son.
“We was both using when … he left,” Yasmin had said.
“He left?” Titus had asked.
“Yeah. We got into a bad fight and he went down to the Inner Harbor. He used to hang out there with those college kids. He used to say he liked pretending he was a college kid. He’d hustle them for drinks, playing pool, doing other things,” Yasmin had said. She and Titus silently agreed not to investigate what other things actually meant.
Titus had made several notes, but the one that stood out the most was that Tavaris was probably last seen at the Inner Harbor, Baltimore’s row of bars and restaurants that catered to tourists and those college students Tavaris admired so much.
Might be nothing, might be everything. Titus thought that summed up the startlingly random nature of most police investigations.
* * *
“Hey, Titus, sorry I had to run out the other night,” Kathy said when he walked into the station.
“No worries,” Titus said. He didn’t want to make things awkward by asking Kathy how Brent was doing, but a part of him did want to know how committed the man was to getting revenge. Or whether the whooping Marquis put on him convinced him to take up a new hobby of minding his own business.
“Was that Cole Marshall y’all found in the woods?” Kathy asked. No beating around the bush about that particular piece of gossip.
“We don’t know yet. Gonna probably take a few days,” Titus said.
“I heard they … they cut his stuff off and put it in his mouth,” Kathy said, her face pinched into a pained scowl.