Bones of the Lost: A Temperance Brennan Novel

WHEN I FIRST STARTED WORKING for the MCME, the Charlotte Police Department had not yet merged with its Mecklenburg County counterpart. CPD headquarters was an unremarkable beige building at the corner of Fourth and McDowell.

Today the CMPD is located in a four-story Dixie neoclassic at the intersection of East Trade and Davidson. Ten minutes after leaving my town house, Slidell and I were walking through the doors. After presenting ID, we rode an elevator to the second floor. He led me past a row of interrogation rooms to one marked A.

“Creach is in C.” Slidell popped the door. “You watch from here.”

The small cubicle held the usual table and chairs, AV setup, and wall phone. As I sat, the small screen came to life in grainy black-and-white. Metallic sounds sputtered through the speakers.

CC Creach sat on a metal and gray plastic chair similar to the one I occupied, elbows on the table, chin resting on his fists. His long dark hair was pulled into a braid bound by elastic bands spaced inches apart.

I heard a door open. Creach’s head jerked up and spun toward the sound.

Footsteps, then Slidell came into view. Creach followed his progress, lower arms upright like long skinny poles, eyes wide and skittish.

Slidell tossed a file onto the table. It landed with a sharp click.

Creach’s hands dropped, allowing a better view of his face. The harsh fluorescent lighting turned the white patch on his cheek a pallid blue.

“Hey, man.” Creach flicked a nervous grin. “What’s happening?”

Slidell stared down at his subject, silent and unsmiling.

“Guess I got a little worked up.” Creach made an odd giggling sound.

Slidell pulled out a chair.

“Dude has no sense of humor. I’ll apologize. No harm no foul, right?”

Slidell sat. Opened the file. Slowly sorted and organized the contents.

Creach sat back. Sat forward.

Slidell checked that the AV equipment was on and working.

“This interview will be recorded. For your protection and for mine. Do you have any objection to that?”

Creach shook his head.

Slidell hit a button. “Present at this interview are Detective Erskine Slidell, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Felony Investigative Bureau/Homicide Unit, and Cecil Converse Creach.” Slidell provided the date and time.

As Creach watched nervously, Slidell drew a paper from his stack and pretended to read. I knew what he was doing. And why he’d left Creach waiting so long. He wanted Creach anxious, vulnerable. More likely to make mistakes.

Slidell laid down the paper. “Class is now in session.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You ever go to school, CC? Maybe ride the special bus?”

“School of hard knocks.” Creach giggled in a way that made me think of Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider.

“You think this is funny?”

“I thought you was joking. You know, that shit about going to school.”

Slidell just stared.

Creach’s right foot started pumping, sending one bony knee bouncing like a piston.

“I didn’t do nothing.”

“That’s what we call a double negative, CC. If you didn’t do nothing, then you done something. Which is why you’re sitting here stinking up my interrogation room.”

Some interviewers like to put their subjects at ease, gain their trust, then take advantage. Not Slidell. He believes in going straight for the kill.

“You’re on parole, ain’t that right?”

Creach nodded.

“A drunk and disorderly violates. Am I right again?”

No reaction.

“You don’t cooperate, CC, your skinny black ass is back in the joint. I hear you’re a popular guy inside.”

Creach’s eyes began jumping around the room.

“Look at me, dipshit. You lose focus, I lose patience. You don’t want that.”

“You got it wrong, man.”

“Do I? Let’s try this. Passion Fruit Club.”

Creach looked genuinely confused.

“Ever get your pipe cleaned at the Passion Fruit?”

“What?”

“You need I should spell it out real slow?”

Creach opened his lips, but said nothing.

“I asked a question, asshole. You get your joystick tuned up at the”—Slidell hooked quotation marks—“massage parlor?”

Creach couldn’t sit still. His fingers picked at the table edge. His sneaker went rat-tat-tat on the tile.

Slidell sighed and began gathering his papers.

Creach’s hands flew up. “Fine, then. Yeah. I been there.”

“When?”

“Couple times. Maybe three.”

“When?”

“Like, a date?”

“Yeah, dipshit. Like a date.”

“I’m not so good with dates.”

“Dig real deep, CC.”

Creach’s eyes stilled as he thought about his recent timetable.

“A few weeks ago, maybe.”

Slidell tipped his head.

“A Monday? Yeah. I remember. Two weeks ago Monday. I was with this guy Zeno. Zeno said they got fresh stuff dancing at the Bronco Club.”

I grabbed my iPhone and opened the calendar. Two Mondays back. The day our Jane Doe died.

“What do you mean, ‘fresh stuff’?”

“The owner brings new dancers in the first Monday of every month. When we’re flush, Zeno and me go to check out the titties.”

“How old are these titties?”

“I don’t know.”

Slidell drilled Creach with a look.

“The ones come those special Mondays, they’re young.”

“Kids?”

“Look, man. I don’t ask their IDs.”

“And sometimes these young ladies rock your world.”

“No way.” Creach’s head wagged too fast and too many times. “One of them complained about something, it wasn’t me. Or if they’s underage or something.”

“Uh-huh. Let me guess. You can’t afford poontang at the Bronco, so you go down market to the Passion Fruit. What, the chicks a little older there? Maybe got all their molars?”

“No. They’s young, too.” Creach was too thick to catch Slidell’s sarcasm. “I don’t like old pussy.”

“You’re a real discriminating guy, CC.”

Slidell sounded as revolted as I felt. After pausing a moment, he pulled a photo of Jane Doe from his assortment and whipped it across the table.

“You know her?”

Creach scratched an ear as he eyed the image. “Yeah.”

Slidell’s eyes rolled up to the camera.

I held my breath.

“What’s her name?”

“Candy.”

“Tell me about her.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Dead serious.”

“The Passion Fruit’s not a place for shooting the shit.”

Slidell crossed his arms.

Creach shrugged. “She didn’t speak no English, man. None of them did. They talked Spanish or some shit.”

Slidell slid Ray Majerick’s mug shot across the table.

Creach studied the face but said nothing.

“I’m gonna say something here maybe I shouldn’t.” Slidell inhaled deeply, exhaled through his nose. “I think you’re trying, CC. But so far, it ain’t enough. You give me something to work with, I’ll do what I can to make the drunk-and-disorderly beef disappear.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Creach tapped the photo. “This guy was always there.”

“At the Passion Fruit.”

“Yeah.”

“He work there?”

“I don’t know. Honest to fuck, I don’t. The girls called him Magic. Acted scared of the dude.”

“Why?”

“No fucking clue.”

I hadn’t noticed the pumping foot go quiet. Until it started again.

“This shit’s all confidential, right? It gets out I talked to you, it’s my balls to the wall.”

Slidell flipped a pen and tablet across the table. “Write it down.”

“I gave it up. Come on. We’re talking my ass!”

Slidell was already heading for the door. He turned.

“Do yourself a favor. Calm the fuck down.”

“Hey! Wait! What happens to me?”

I met Slidell in the hall.

“What do you think, doc?”

“His story seems to track.”

“So we got Candy for our Jane Doe’s street name. Maybe Majerick for her pimp.”

“You figure Majerick works alone, or as a handler for someone else?”

“Magic’s too mean and too crazy to run a string. If that’s what we’re looking at.”

I thought about Creach’s words. Young girls arriving every month.

Arriving from where? Small towns? Middle-class burbs? Big-city ghettos? By buses? Trains? Vehicles in which they’ve thumbed free rides?

A revolving carousel of women, moving in young and naïve, then sliding down the ladder to places like the Passion Fruit, addicted, broken, youthful optimism gone forever. It was a dispiriting vision.

Suddenly one of Creach’s comments clicked with something D’Ostillo had said.

“Show him Dom Rockett’s photo.”

“Why?”

“Will you just do it?”

“Why the hell not.”

On-screen, I watched the third photo slide across the table, not sure myself what reaction I hoped for.

“Yeah. He was there.”

“At the Passion Fruit Club.”

“Yeah. Totally freaked the chicks out.”

“They were afraid of him?”

“Scared shitless.”

“Who is he?”

“Hell if I know.”

Slidell placed Rockett’s picture beside Majerick’s. “Did these men know each other?”

“Same answer.”

Slidell flicked impatient fingers.

“Hell if I know,” Creach repeated himself.

“Did you ever see them talking to each other?”

Creach shook his head.

The monitor receded. The room around me. Facts were clicking together fast.

Dominick Rockett frequented the Passion Fruit Club. Our Jane Doe worked at the Passion Fruit using the street name Candy. Rosalie D’Ostillo saw Candy and other girls in the Taquería Mixcoatl. The taquería was near the intersection where Candy died. D’Ostillo and Creach thought Candy and the other girls spoke Spanish. Dom Rockett was an importer, probably a smuggler, who made frequent trips to South America.

I heard Slidell’s footsteps click the tile in Interrogation Room C. The door open, close.

Creach began whining about his rights. His deal with Slidell. His safety.

The video and sound cut off.

I stood in the musty little space, a cold hollowness filling my chest.

Dear God.

Could that be it?