The Body Box by Lynn Abercrombie Page A

yes. Open-and-shut cases.”
    â€œAnd you think the people who got convicted didn’t do it?”
    He nodded. “Yup.”
    â€œThat all sounds a little hard to swallow.”
    â€œDoes, don’t it?”
    I took a few long breaths. This all sounded like a fool’s errand to me. But what if? Seventeen missing kids. If Gooch was right, this would be the case of a lifetime.
    â€œSo what’s the first move?” I said.
    â€œSince you already opened the case, let’s talk to Tanya Prowter, Evie Marie’s mama. After that we gonna start at the beginning, start with Victim One, work our way forward.”

SEVENTEEN
    I am a product—and not an entirely happy one—of what we used to call the black bourgeoisie, though that term is a little out of fashion these days. Truth is, we bourgeois types are the biggest snobs on the planet. Even though I’m kind of a failed member of my clan, I still have its prejudices to some degree.
    People like me look down on the folks who live in housing projects at least as much—if not more—than the average white country-club Republican. All those things that you hear white people saying about the “inner city” folks—shiftless, lazy, low moral standards, and the rest—you’ll hear us black bourgeoisie saying, too. We close ranks when the white folks are around, but when the doors are closed and it’s just us sisters and brothers, we say it, believe me. We despise those bedraggled black folks sitting on the stoops of those awful rows of sad brick buildings, we despise them terribly. But it’s a complicated thing, because we know that in despising them, there’s some kind of tinge of anguish or fear, some sense of, there but for the grace of God go I.
    But a white person in a down-at-the-heels trailer park or a housing project—well, the members of my clan have a special reserve tank of disgust and hatred for them, a nice pure thing that is unmediated by any of the complications of racial solidarity. You can’t know the depth of pleasure I feel when I call somebody “white trash.” Maybe it’s not right, but it’s how I feel.
    The white woman sitting on the stoop up in Perry Homes was short and stocky, with a drinker’s flush, puffy eyes, a thin slash of mouth, and a rat’s nest of hair that hadn’t seen soap in a good stretch. She was holding a tall water glass with a fading picture of Minnie Mouse on the side. The woman matched the photo of Evie Marie Prowter’s mother in the file, a mug shot taken from a solicitation arrest.
    We pulled over to the curb, parked. Seeing the unmarked car, the white woman stood and started walking away.
    â€œHey, Tanya!” I said. “Where you going, girl?”
    â€œYo, I ain’t did nothing,” she said sullenly. She was white, but she talked black. I suppose being the only white person in a two-mile radius, it came naturally to her, but it sounded laughable to me coming out of those skinny lips.
    â€œWe’re here to talk about your girl, Tanya,” Lt. Gooch said.
    â€œWhat that li’l ho Denise done now?”
    Lt. Gooch shook his head. “Not, Denise. I’m talking about Evie Marie.”
    The woman on the stoop looked up at us for a moment with no particular expression. But her skin had gone another shade paler. “Who the hell y’all people is?”
    â€œMy name’s Detective Deakes,” I said. “Cold Case Unit. We’re reopening her case.”
    Elise Prowter looked around vacantly, then took a drink from her Minnie Mouse jelly glass. “How come?” she said finally.
    â€œWe got new information,” Lt. Gooch said.
    She looked at us for a moment. “What new information?”
    Gooch shook his head. “I can’t tell you about that.”
    â€œWell.” She gazed stoically off into the distance. “What you want, then?”
    â€œJust a couple