Page 49 of Go Under

“Well, whose call is it?” Darnell snapped.

“Mine.”

The stern voice belonged to an equally stern-looking fire crew chief. He nodded at Darnell, not angry but firm and hard as a stone wall. “I’m not moving my vehicles, sir.”

“You understand there’s a life at risk.”

“There are three lives at risk here,” the crew chief replied. “Two in the Hyundai and one in the panel truck. All three have spinal injuries, and the panel truck driver is bleeding from his head. We need to hurry, which we can’t do because of the damage to the vehicles, the weather, and the injuries. So, we have less than zero time to let you through.”

Darnell looked through the accident. He could almost see Hampton Court. Two blocks north and four east. Once more, they were near the center of the maze only to run into a wall. “Sir, we’re pursuing a serial killer. We have good evidence to believe that she intends to kill a woman tonight.”

The crew chief lifted his hands and let them drop. “I have good evidence that three people are a few minutes away from being declared dead on the side of the road. It’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen. I know that you have a job to do, too, and I know that it’s an important job, but so is mine.”

Darnell pushed his lower lip out and frowned, a petulant expression he hadn’t worn since the eighth grade when his parents told him he couldn’t go to a party thrown by a college sophomore.

“I’m sorry,” the crew chief said, his tone gentler than before. “I really am. It’s just the way it is.”

Darnell’s lips thinned. His face hardened. “I understand,” he told the crew chief.

Then he ran through the scene, ignoring the calls of the police officer and the crew chief behind him. He avoided the clusters of people around the overturned Hyundai and the panel truck, but he didn’t stop, not even when he was past the scene.

His phone buzzed. Marcus. He answered and said, “Take the car. Find a way to get to the house. As soon as you find it, tell the police you’ve found it and get them to come with you.”

“What are you doing?” Marcus demanded.

“The roads are blocked everywhere, and PD says they can’t get through. I don’t accept that, but we don’t have time to just run around. I’m going to Iris Doyle’s apartment. Get there as soon as you can.”

“Darnell, don’t do this. Damn it, the last thing we’re supposed to do is go off by ourselves.”

Darnell smiled briefly. “I think I understand now why you still do.”

Marcus didn’t answer for a long moment. When he did, his tone was resigned. “We’ll get through as soon as we can. Stay alert, Darnell.”

“I will.”

So, saying, Darnell hung up and continued his sprint to fulfill his responsibility to the threatened life that no one else could reach.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Nora fingered the handle of the awl lovingly as she climbed the steps to Iris Doyle’s apartment. She’d learned the use of a great deal of tools during her time in the Peace Corps, but the awl was by far her favorite.

She chuckled softly as she imagined Daniel watching her in the Swazi village where she plied the trade her group had assigned her. Shoes? Are you making shoes?

“Yes, Daniel, I’m making shoes.”

Her voice echoed back to her, and she stiffened. She remained still for several heartbeats, not moving until she was certain no one had heard her. Then she let out a breath and continued.

Daniel would have loved to see her then. He would have been so proud of her. She’d found a purpose, despite the world’s insistence on denying her any future after his false incarceration. She’d helped people. She’d saved lives.

And for a while, she was happy. She could forget that her parents had taken the settlement, had forever announced that their son’s death mattered less than their material wealth. She returned home ready to leave the past behind, to honor Daniel’s memory by leading the life he should have lived.

She had tried. God knew she had tried. But the world wasn't getting better. People weren't getting kinder. Racism wasn't growing smaller. Black people were still persecuted, still shot every day, still imprisoned every day, still looked down on everywhere they went. Second chances granted to white people all the time were denied to Blacks. The nation that touted the God-given right to freedom for everyone on Earth still treated minorities like second-class citizens.

It ate at her. Little by little, it stripped her happiness away. The looks she'd get in the supermarket. The way mothers would instinctively pull their children closer when they saw them. The security officers hovered nearby when she was shopping at jewelry or clothing stores (but never the white women; no, they were left alone).

She'd tried, but when her parents died, and she came to terms with her own morality, she realized that she had lived half her life and seen nothing change for the better. The world that had sent her brother to prison to be beaten to death was the same world she lived in now.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.