The Flashback
Detective Paul Young is not the athletic man he once was. Now approaching fifty-five, he is in better shape than most, but he embarrassed himself at the annual softball game between the Knoxville Police and Fire Departments after he missed his first two pitches and threw his back out on the third, which caused him to lose his grip on the bat that went flying to injure a bystander. What he lacks in lower back integrity though, he makes up for with a keen sixth sense, a gut feeling that he has used for decades to divine the guilt or innocence of the perpetrators he has encountered over his long career. Even when he was a rookie traffic cop writing parking tickets, he had a knack for knowing when someone was more suspicious than they ought to be. Back then, he was still married to his first and only wife, Darlene, whom he’d met when he first moved to Knoxville fresh out of the academy. Darlene poured coffee at a local diner and Young was polite enough that she felt comfortable to engage him in conversation. He wooed her and they had four kids, before he got lost in his job, before he became known as one of the best detectives in the state of TN. He loved his wife and his children, but he knew that other people loved their families too, so he worked hard to give others peace of mind when a family member turned up missing or dead. And sometimes he surprised himself with the cases he was able to solve, how intricate plots could unravel by asking a simple question. Most of the murders that he worked were usually drug related, and crimes of passion — spouses killing one another over jealousy — but the case that really made his reputation involved an intricate web of deceit and exploitation and it was inconspicuously headquartered in a Knoxville suburb called Wendover.
It was hot the day that Detective Young was called to the scene of a gruesome double murder. The crime scene was off a quiet road, in an overgrown lot, miles away from any home or business. When he’d arrived, there were officers roping off the area and someone was photographing the bodies of two young kids, no more than sixteen, a boy and a girl. Both had their hands tied behind their backs and they were naked down to their underwear. The girl, who lay on top of the boy with her back burned from the sun, had obvious bruising mostly on her arms and legs. From the position, Young couldn’t tell if the boy had bruises, but he assumed, and both had gags in their mouths and were blindfolded. The morgue truck arrived and they began the delicate process of removing the bodies, careful to check for any evidence that might have been obscured or hidden by the bodies. Young watched silently, just at the line the police tape created between a couple of trees and a post that officers used to create a perimeter. The children looked Hispanic and he made a mental note, though that type of information would be noted by the morgue for the death certificates. But before there could be certificates, Young had to find out their names.
With no identification on the bodies, Young had officers check missing persons for any matches to his victims, with no success. The murdered boy and girl were obviously related, they shared many facial features and DNA tests confirmed. No one had reported a missing brother and sister in the state and Young went back to the station to call the FBI with a request for a national search. The officers who had gone out to question the owners of homes and businesses in the general vicinity of the crime scene arrived back at the station shortly after him.
“Not all that much to go on, honestly. No one said they was out that way to do, see, or hear nothing.” Young nodded at Officer Johnson who was a relative rookie, but had proven himself very enthusiastic for detective work. Young figured that he’d watched a lot of crime shows as a kid because he was always asking to do sweeps for minuscule evidence even though Young had made it clear that certain investigative breakthroughs were just too expensive for their department.
“But there was this one place, a bar out past the river. It wasn’t really nobody there but a couple of the employees. I don’t know, Detective, its like you say, sometimes your guts know things your brains don’t.”
Young almost drove right past the bar out near the river because of the condition. It had been painted white at one point, but it was chipping all over. Young noticed that one of pillars that held up the roof over the porch had long rotted through and suffered quite a bit of damage. The far end of the roof that the pillar had supported at one time, sagged noticeably like a corner of paper with no support and Young wondered if the place should be condemned. But sure enough, there were two men carrying boxes into a back door.
Young pulled around to the back. “How y’all doing today?” He asked as he stepped out of the car. Young dressed like a very neat cowboy back then, no hat, but snake skin boots and usually blue jeans that he tucked a button-down shirt into. On that day, he wore short sleeves because of the heat and he looked like a man deserving respect even without his badge prominently displayed on his shirt; he always hooked it at his waist.
The men stopped to greet Young. They were both white guys and younger than him but probably in their thirties; they looked dirty, as though they’d been working in dirt all day but Young knew that it was just as probable that they always looked mangy.
“Hot as shit,” one said and Young noticed that his teeth were rotten. “You need something.”
Young acknowledged his badge and asked about the bar, the kind of people that usually showed up.
“Bikers and locals mostly.” The man with the rotten teeth said.
Young asked to look around and the men let him inside. The interior of the bar was in much better repair than the outside and Young asked about some of the pictures and things that were on the wall. Most were locals who had made a name for themselves for the amount of beer they could drink in one sitting.
The majority of the establishment on the inside was one big room with tables and a long bar along the back wall. “Y’all heard about them kids we found, probably 20 minutes from here in a field?”
“There was a cop out here earlier asking about it.” The other man talked for the first time and the man with then rotten teeth hit him quickly, hoping that Young wouldn’t notice. But of course he had.
“I know, that cop came and told me about this place. Said it might be worth taking another look.” Young walked around the empty bar that was dark except for the light from the sun through the windows. There were a lot of pictures taped to the walls, most were white faces, but every now and then he noticed a black or brown face. There was also a banner from a local high school. “Y’all went to Wendover?” Young asked, with a chuckle.
“Hell yeah,” the man with rotten teeth replied. He looked a little nervous but he wanted to be relaxed because Young wasn’t acting the way he was used to a police officer acting when he suspected something. “This is a Wendover bar. Me and Randy here was on the baseball team that went to state. Ain’t that right, Randy?” Randy nodded, he did not share the attitude of the man with the rotten teeth. He was obviously angry about something.
“Yea, we played Wendover, but that was well before your day.” Young made his way to the bar and sat looking at himself in the big mirror that covered the wall behind it. He could see all of the years of his life on his face that was like a big mound of pasty clay with all the nooks and crannies. He was a handsome man, just not as spry, skin not as tight as it once was. “So which one of y’all gon’ offer me a drink?”
The two men looked at one another and the man with the rotten teeth elbowed Randy towards the bar.
“What can I getcha?” Randy asked, never making eye contact.
“Aww, just a beer son, it’s still fairly early.” Young smiled wide and he could see that it bothered Randy.
“So, why you think my officer said it was worth coming back out here? You think he wrong about that?” Young took the beer and then a long drink.
“Cause y’all think y’all better than us. You think just cause we live out here the way we do, you can treat us any kind of way.” Randy scowled at Young and the man with the rotten teeth decided to intervene.
“Officer,” he said smiling his black smile, “we got a lot of work to do. We been cooperative right? Is there anything specific you need? Otherwise, we should get back to them boxes out there.”
Young eyed Randy. It could have been intense, but Young refused to let Randy’s anger become infectious. “Tell me this, Randy, tell me this and I’ll be on my way. You don’t know nothing about the kids we found. You got no idea why two teenage kids, probably Hispanic, probably brother and sister, ended up dead the way they did out there? Cause it seem like you got something to say about it.”
Young smiled again and finished his beer in a long gulp. “Gimme one more before you answer that, Randy, I ain’t in no rush. And you boys look like you was handling them boxes out there. It won’t take you no time to finish up. So why don’t you have a seat,” he said politely to the man with the rotten teeth, and as he took his second beer from Randy he said, “and you, you wanna have a drink with me? We ain’t gotta be tense. I just need some answers. We best friends, now, you buying me drinks and everything.”
Randy was grinding his teeth so hard that he jaw moved noticeably. “Fuck you, man,” Randy said under his breath.
“I ain’t your enemy, you know that don’t you?” He was looking at the man with rotten teeth, then back at Randy. “I just need to know what I need to know so I don’t have to bring nobody else out here later on tonight when all the festivities start. You wouldn’t want that, would you Randy.” Young smiled again.
Randy said, “I don’t know shit, like I told the other officer, ain’t nobody seen nothing, don’t nobody know nothing.”
Young finished his second beer. He pulled out his phone and called the station. “I’m gonna need back up at the bar out past Timber and Pine, just next to the river.” He covered his phone and looked to Randy, “what’s the name of this place, Randy?” Randy answered reluctantly and Young gave the name to the person he was talking to. “I think we’re gonna need to be around later tonight when they start serving. They got an awful lot of pictures of minors on the wall and I just got the feeling that people under 21 might be out here drinking. And if we find something else, that’s just icing on the cake.” Young covered the mouth of his phone again and said to Randy, “what y’all got here, crystal meth probably, right?” Young smiled and Randy looked upset. The man with the rotten teeth was shaking his head.
“Its probably crystal meth…” Young continued and then Randy said,
“Ok, man. I don’t know nothing about them bodies, I ain’t know nothing til that officer came out here earlier, but if some Mexicans turn up dead, and they kids, then you might wanna talk to Jesus over there in Wetsville.” Young wasn’t familiar with Wetsville. “That ain’t the real name, damn. Its cause all them wet backs live out there.”
“Jesus got a last name?” Young asked looking at the man with rotten teeth.
“I don’t know no Jesus,” he said with his eyes wide, clearly clueless what Randy was talking about.
“I don’t know, they call him JJ sometimes. He talk like he wanna be a nigger or something. I don’t deal with him, but I heard things. He used to be something in whatever country he came from. Said he liked killing people and shit. He crazy enough to kill some kids.”
Young drank one more beer before he left. He asked for a fourth, but he poured it out on the floor of the bar, then dropped it, letting the glass smash out, throwing shards all over. “Oops,” he said smiling. “My ex-wife always said I was a clumsy sunnuva gun. But you know how them nigra women like to talk.” Young wasn’t smiling when he left the bar and he got back into his car and radioed for bi-lingual back up.
Young met Officer Gonzalez at a nearby gas station. Gonzalez was happy to assist Young, he was aware of Young’s reputation and he thought of it as a sort of promotion to be allowed to ride with him, even if only for an afternoon. Wetsville was on the outskirts of Wendover, and just as Randy had said, all of the inhabitants of the small, one story homes and trailers were inhabited by people from Mexico. They could have been from other Central American countries, but Young would have to ask them individually to find out that information.
The neighborhood was almost a trailer park, if not for the few homes mixed here and there, and the main road that ran through them was bright orange dirt that stirred as he and Gonzalez drove through.
“I used to have family that lived out here,” Gonzalez said looking out the window. “In some of those houses, people are packed in like sardines. But it doesn’t really ever last that long. Everybody in there work hard and save as much money as they can. Then they buy houses in the white people neighborhoods and piss everybody off.” They both laughed.
There were children running through the street and Young stopped to ask if any of them knew Jesus, or JJ. The ones that knew English looked at one another nervously, as though they knew the name but were too afraid to say so. Gonzalez got out and walked to Young’s side of the car. He knelt and talked to them in Spanish and before long, one of the young girls pointed to a trailer at the end of the road.
“Ask them if they recognize the faces of those kids.” Young asked, but none seemed to, though their dead faces may not have looked the same as they had when they were walking and talking.
When Gonzalez was back in the car, he said, “He lives down there. Most of them are scared of him, said he shot one of their dogs a couple weeks ago.”
Just as Young was starting the car, a woman came running from nowhere in particular. She looked angry, and slapped the roof of the car, yelling in Spanish. Gonzalez got out and tried to subdue her. He threatened to arrest her and she gathered many of the children and corralled them toward her trailer that was a ways off in a shadow created by a few trees. “She thought we were trying to steal them or something. She’s fine though.” Young watched her walk behind the group of kids. She turned back and Young saw a meanness in her eyes that protective mothers adopt with ease when their children are threatened.
The two continued to the trailer that belonged to Jesus. It was rusty and yellow and looked to be heavier on one side that the other, like it was sinking into the ground. There were old cars with no wheels in the small front yard and there were bullet holes in some. When Young noticed them, he got Gonzalez’s attention and signaled that he should be on alert. Both men drew their guns, holding them inconspicuously at their sides as they approached the home.
Gonzalez knocked loudly, steadily, screaming, “¡Abre! ¡Policia!” When there was no answer, Gonzalez knocked again, this time louder, and the door that was made of flimsy wood composite material smashed under the force. Gonzalez looked panicked at Young, “Aye, so sorry Detective.” Young called the station to report the accident and as he talked, Gonzalez peeked into the fist sized hole he had left in the door. And when his nose was right before the hole, he smelled the stench of death that he was not accustomed to and he vomited all over Young’s favorite boots.
“There’s a dead body in there,” Gonzalez said, wiping chunks of his lunch from his beard.
Detective Paul Young looked down, disappointed at the state of his favorite snake skin boots. “I guess I need more boots.” He had called for backup in light of the death stench emanating from the hole in Jesus’s door, and Officer Gonzalez had wandered back to Young’s car where he rested on the hood. He mostly dealt with domestic disturbances and noise complaints back then and it was a shock to his system to smell what nature did to a man when his life was over.
Young peeked through the fist-sized hole, unfazed by the smell inside the trailer. It was too dark to confirm that it was a human decomposing inside and Young waited anxiously for the go ahead to finish kicking the door down. His phone rang as he wandered back to check on Gonzalez.
“Detective, the warrant is as good as got, you can go on ahead.” It was Officer Stevens, another young officer at the precinct who was the same age as Young’s oldest daughter. Stevens was tough, she had more years under her belt than Gonzalez and she had definitely seen her share of dead bodies.
“You think you can come join us, I don’t think Gonzalez has the stomach for murder quite yet.” Young whispered into his phone so as not to offend Gonzalez who already looked embarrassed.
Stevens arrived on the scene and she accompanied Young inside the crooked trailer. He kicked in the door with little effort, and Steven swung her gun in at the darkness. The place was a mess and there was a dead man on the couch who looked to have been rotting for days. Young approached cautiously, stepping over the debris that covered the floor; old soft drink cups, wads and sheets of paper, cigarette boxes, and a plethora of other items that should have been in a trash can. Though the dead man’s features were obscured by decay, it was obvious that he was not Jesus. He looked like an average white man, he was probably even Young’s age, and for a second, Young saw himself sitting there, hunched over and forgotten.
“What you thinking, Detective,” Stevens said after she had checked the entire trailer. “Don’t look like nobody else here. You think we got another murder?”
Young shook his head slowly, “no real way for us to know til the autopsy. But this man coulda just died of natural causes, don’t look like foul play. I’m wondering where this Jesus fella is, this is supposed to be his trailer. ‘Less them kids was mistaken.”
Young left Stevens at the trailer with the dead man and took Gonzalez to the trailer where he had seen the woman corral the children.
“She’s not friendly, Detective, this might be a waste of time.” Gonzalez said, wary that they had come out for nothing (though finding a dead body was nothing to scoff at).
“It’s better than what we got now, Gonzalez. I need you to find whatever charm you got with the ladies and work some magic. This Jesus guy is the only lead I got.” Young looked stern at Gonzalez who pursed his lips dutifully and walked to the door of the woman’s trailer.
“Don’t break it in,” Young whispered earnestly.
One of the kids answered the door and Gonzalez asked for his mother. “Mi mamá es muerta,” he said sadly and Gonzalez looked back at Young in confusion. “He says his mama is dead, Detective.”
Young pushed past them both into the trailer that was small and crowded with furniture; a sofa, a row of cots in one corner. The children inside looked at him curiously. And then came the woman, with eyes wide.
She swung at Young before she said anything, and Young grabbed her fist out of the air and managed to handcuff her. She stumbled to the floor and Gonzalez leaned down to try and calm her. Young watched the woman yelling in Spanish, almost hysterical.
“She keeps saying that she’s not going to let us take anybody else. But she won’t listen.”
By that time, more officers had arrived on the scene at the crooked trailer and Young walked over in the direction. Officers were sweeping the neighborhood, asking questions about the dead man and the location of Jesus, and others showed pictures of the dead brother and sister for possible identification. Young turned back to the trailer where he’d left Gonzalez, where he was escorting the woman out in handcuffs. He put her in the back of Young’s car and jogged over.
“She recognized the bodies, but I needed her to stop swinging at me.” Gonzalez said.
“Did she say anything?” Young asked.
“She said they been missing for a day or so, but she didn’t know what happened to them. When I told her they were dead, she flipped out.”
Young eyed the trailer where the kids stood in a group in front, looking at the police car where the woman struggled in the back seat.
“No parents in that house. I’m thinking she watches them all. That means we can’t take her in unless we know what we’re doing with the kids.”
Before long, the kids were being corralled into a big police van as neighbors watched from their windows or from their doors.
“I thought they were her kids,” some of the neighbors said.
“I never really talk to her, she’s always trying to keep those kids out of trouble.”
“One of them little bastards broke my windshield and they’re supposed to be paying me back!”
“She’s the babysitter,” a young man told Gonzalez before he and Young headed back to the station. “Jesus bring a new kid by, stick ‘em with her, and then he off on his way.” The man told Gonzalez.
“So Jesus does live out there?” Young asked.
“Yea, but not really. They said when he got business he stay in that trailer, and when he don’t, he has that old man come out to watch out for his stash. I guess he was older than Jesus realized. Stevens told me it was definitely natural causes, and he been rotting there for like a week or two.” Officers found drugs in the crooked trailer, enough to put Jesus away for a long time.
At the station, Young sat at his desk, not looking at anything in particular, but racking his brain. All of the kids from the trailer with the woman were in the custody of social services and the woman was in a room waiting to be questioned. Gonzalez was eating to replace the meal he had lost at the trailer park, and when he was done, he stood with Young, peering into the room where the woman sat, hands cuffed behind her back.
“I think I got it Gonzalez, and it ain’t a pretty story.” Young said and he shook his head. Before Gonzalez could ask what he thought, Young pushed into the room and Gonzalez followed.
“Ask her if she know Jesus. And ask her name.”
Gonzalez asked and the woman looked disinterested. “Its Myrna.” Gonzalez said, “ and she said she know a lot of Jesus’s.” Gonzalez asked her something else in Spanish and they talked for a while.
“She said she’ll tell you everything you want to know if you get her a green card.” Gonzalez said and Myrna interjected,
“I want to go far from here. To other state.” Young didn’t detect any fear in her eyes and he wondered if the protective, motherly glare that he had noticed earlier in the day was actually something else.
“Ask her about the kids. She want them to come with her?”
Gonzalez translated then turned to Young, “she said you should give them green cards too and put them in an orphanage, or send them back to Mexico and El Salvador.”
Young looked at Myrna and she diverted her eyes like she was ashamed. She said something in Spanish and Gonzalez translated.
“She said Jesus will be back in TN in a couple of days. She said he didn’t kill those kids we found, but he probably told somebody to.”
“Ask her why.” Young said.
Myrna tried her English again, “They don’t hear. They don’t hear what he say, they don’t do it.” She went back to Spanish and Gonzalez turned to Young when she was finished.
“She said he owned them. He bought them, they were prostitutes and they didn’t do what they were told. He owns all of them, Detective. A few of them are related, but Jesus put her in charge because she’s the oldest.” Young looked at Myrna while Gonzalez translated and he had trouble taking his eyes off of her. He knew a little bit of Spanish, enough to ask for directions or for a bathroom, but even though he couldn’t exactly follow her, he wanted to be sure that he was hearing Myrna and the way she told her story. She seemed distant, cold, like she was too used to being hurt when she opened herself up to someone.
Young and Gonzalez excused themselves and when they were outside the room, Young asked Gonzalez to finish the interview. “Find out where the hell Jesus goes, what time we can expect him, everything. We’re locking this fucker up this week.” Young was emphatic and he left Gonzalez to finish up while he went to organize the bust that would take Jesus down.
A couple of days later, Young sat in his civilian car in the driveway of one of the trailers near Jesus’s crooked one. It was just as hot that day as the day the bodies of the two teenagers were found, but Young had his windows rolled up because they were tinted and would hide his face. There were other officers hiding out of plain sight, waiting for the signal from Young. He didn’t have to sit there long before a car came barreling down the dirt road and toward the crooked trailer. Young radioed to Gonzalez who was in a neighbor’s kitchen with Myrna, looking out the window, and she confirmed that it was Jesus. He headed straight to the house where the old man had died of a stroke and as he approached the door, Young gave the signal and Jesus was on his face in the dirt being cuffed.
Back at the station, Young was delighted that Jesus spoke English and he sat opposite him, Officers Gonzalez and Stevens watching through the one-way window.
“Just tell me who killed the kids. It’ll save you some years in jail. I mean, you going away buddy, drugs and slaves, you going away for a long time, but maybe if you live long enough, telling me what I want to know might give you a year back.”
Jesus smirked, but there was no joy on his face. His eyes looked menacing and sharp, and the tattoos on his neck and chest made him look intimidating.
“You got me right? Ain’t nothing I can say, I’m going to jail?” He asked. Young nodded. “Fuck that shit, I killed them bitches. You don’t pay what I paid for some dick suckers and have customers not pay you cause bitches don’t do they job.”
“How old were they, Jesus.” Young said, controlling his anger.
“Old enough to suck a dick man, I don’t care about nothing else.”
Young made himself leave the room before he got angry and did something that he would regret. “Throw that piece of shit underneath the jail,” he said to Gonzalez and Stevens.
“That girl Myrna is going to get her green card. She locked him up for us.” Stevens said.
Young nodded, “That’s good for her. I’m gonna call it a day.” He started to his car and before he left the front door, Gonzalez stopped him.
“Detective, I got a call from one of the neighbors at the trailer park. They said to thank you for making their neighborhood safe and for saving all those kids from that house.”
Young nodded and as he drove to his empty home he thought about Myrna and all of the other kids in that trailer. It blew his mind that slavery still existed and he thanked his God that his children never knew that kind of cruelty.
And as he went into his house, and threw his keys on the coffee table, it hit him like a ton of bricks. He called Gonzalez in a hurry.
“Why did she stay there all that time? If he leaves for days at a time, why didn’t she take the kids and go to the police a long time ago?” The protective look of a mother, Young thought. He’d seen what he wanted to see, a young woman forced into a terrible situation trying to protect the lives of innocent children. “She’s working with him, she’s just as guilty as he is.”
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