The long arm of the law finally reached out and corralled another repeat offender. I grabbed Jannie off the couch and carried my little girl up to bed at eight-thirty on the dot. Law and order reigns at the Cross house.
“Where are we going, Daddy?” she giggled against my neck. “Are we going out for ice cream? I’ll have pralines ’n’ cream.”
“In your dreams.”
As I tightly held Jannie in my arms, I couldn’t help thinking about little Shanelle Green. When I had seen Shanelle in that schoolyard, I was scared. I’d thought of Jannie. It was a vicious circle that kept playing inside my head.
I lived in fear of the human monsters coming to our house. One of them had come here a few years back. Gary Soneji. That time no one had been hurt, and we had been very lucky.
Jannie and I had worked out a prayer that we both liked. She knelt beside her bed and said the words in a beautiful little whisper.
Jannie said, “God up in heaven, my grandma and my daddy love me. Even Damon loves me. I thank you, God, for making me a nice person, pretty and funny sometimes. I will always try to do the right thing, if I can. This is Jannie Cross saying goodnight.”
“Amen, Jannie Cross,” I smiled and said to my girl. I loved her more than life itself. She reminded me of her mother in the best possible way. “I’ll see you in the morning. I can’t wait.”
Jannie grinned and her eyes widened suddenly. She popped back up in bed. “You can see me some more tonight. Just let me stay up,” she said. “I scream for ice cream.”
“You are funny,” I said and kissed her goodnight. “And pretty and smart.” Man, I love her and Damon so much. I knew that was why the child murder had really gotten under my skin. The madman had struck too close to our house.
Maybe for that reason Damon and I went for a walk a little later that night. I draped my arm over my son’s shoulders. It seemed as if every day he got a little bigger, stronger, harder. We were good buddies, and I was glad it had worked out this way so far.
The two of us strolled in the direction of Damon’s school. On the way, we passed a Baptist church with angry, dark-red and black graffiti markings: I don’t care ’bout Jeez, ’cause Jeez don’t care ’bout me. That was a common sentiment round here, especially among the young and restless.
One of Damon’s schoolmates had died at the Sojourner Truth School. What a horrible tragedy, and yet he had already seen so much of it. Damon had witnessed a death in the street, one young man shooting another over a parking space, when he was only six years old.
“You ever get afraid to be at the school? Tell me the truth. Whatever you really feel is okay to say, Damon,” I gently reminded him. “I get afraid sometimes, too. Beavis and Butthead scares me. Ren and Stimpy, too.”
Damon smiled, and he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m afraid sometimes, yeah. I was shivering on our first day back. Our school isn’t going to close down, is it?”
I smiled on the inside, but kept a straight face. “No, there’ll be classes as usual tomorrow. Homework, too.”
“I did it already,” Damon answered defensively. Nana has him a little too sensitive about grades, but that probably isn’t so terribly bad. “I get mostly all A’s, just like you.”
“Mostly all A’s.” I laughed. “What kind of sentence is that?”
“Accurate.” He grinned like a young hyena who had just been told a pretty good joke on the Serengeti.
I grabbed Damon in a loose, playful headlock. I gently slid my knuckles over the top of his short haircut. Noogies. He was okay for now. He was strong, and he was a good person. I love him like crazy, and I wanted him to always know that.
Damon wiggled out of the headlock. He danced a fancy Sugar Ray Leonard–style two-step and fired a few quick, testing punches at my stomach. He was showing me what a tough little cub he was. I had no doubt about it.
Right about then I noticed someone leaving the school building. It was the same woman I’d seen in the early morning of Shanelle Green’s murder. The one who had blown me away then. She was watching Damon and me tussle on the sidewalk. She had stopped walking to watch us.
She was tall and slender, almost six feet. I couldn’t see her face very well in the shadows of the school building. I remembered her from the other morning, though. I remembered her self-confidence, a sense of mystery I’d felt about her.
She waved, and Damon waved back. Then she headed down to the same dark blue Mercedes, which was parked up against the wall of the building.
“You know her?” I asked.
“That’s the new principal of our school,” Damon informed me. “That’s Mrs. Johnson.”
I nodded. Mrs. Johnson. “She works late. I’m impressed. How do you like Mrs. Johnson?” I asked Damon as I watched her walk to her car. I remembered that Nana had talked about the principal and been very positive about her, calling her “inspirational” and saying she had a sweet disposition.
She was certainly attractive, and seeing her made my heart ache just a little. The truth was, I missed not having someone in my life. I was getting over a complicated friendship I’d had with a woman—Kate McTiernan. I had been working a lot, avoiding the whole issue that fall. I was still avoiding it that night.
Damon didn’t hesitate with his answer to my question. “I like her. Everybody likes Mrs. Johnson. She’s tough, though. She’s even tougher than you are, Daddy,” he said.
She didn’t look so tough with her Mercedes sedan, but I had no reason not to believe my son. She was definitely brave to be in the school alone at night. Maybe a little too brave.