Free Eyes of the Innocent: A Mystery by Brad Parks Page B

eyes—could she see that through the peephole?—and groped around in my head for another approach. It was hard to work my charm through a steel door, even harder when I had to compete with Mary Hart’s breathless report about the weight loss secrets of Hollywood Hunks. I couldn’t concentrate.
    “Do you think you could turn down the TV so we could talk through the door?” I asked.
    No response. I had the distinct feeling she had gone back to her couch.
    “Ma’am?” I pleaded. This was getting pathetic. I knocked again.
    “I told you, I ain’t opening the door,” she shouted from somewhere inside the apartment.
    “Could I call you?” I asked.
    “No,” she said.
    Of course not.
    “If I came back in the morning, do you think you could talk with me?”
    “You can try.”
    The emphasis was on the “try,” which was not particularly encouraging. And, sure, I could try. But it would probably just delay the inevitable. I decided if this woman was meant to talk to me, it was going to happen now. I just had to push a little harder.
    “Ma’am, I’m working on a story about Akilah Harris,” I hollered. “I understand you’re—”
    Before I could finish my sentence, I heared movement inside—it sounded like a chair slamming into linoleum—followed by a strangled cry.
    “Go away!” she wailed. “I don’t want to hear that name! Don’t you say that name to me! Go away!”
    She kept yelling, but her voice had gone something beyond hysterical, so it was impossible to make out what she was saying. Between the shredded vocal cords and the uncontrolled crying, it was pretty clear the name Akilah Harris had been enough to put Mrs. Harris into distress.
    And I wasn’t the only one aware of it. From downstairs, I could hear footsteps coming my way. A matronly black woman in slippers and a faded floral print housedress huffed up the stairs, froze me with a look of pure disgust, and brushed past.
    “I just wanted to talk to her,” I said defensively. “I didn’t mean to—”
    But she was not there to hear my excuses. She entered Mrs. Harris’s apartment without bothering to knock. The door had been unlocked all along.
    An open door. In the projects. Who knew?
    From within the apartment, I heard the new woman comforting Mrs. Harris, whom she called “Bertie.” For a while, Bertie kept crying and moaning unintelligibly. After enough shushing, she calmed down. There was dialogue between the women, though it was too muffled to hear.
    And, for whatever reason, I just kept standing in that hallway of that hellhole housing project, hoping a big reset button would descend from the ceiling so I could press it and get a do-over on this whole encounter. Why had I pushed her so hard? Clearly the woman was agitated. No one in that state is going to suddenly settle down and cooperate with a reporter. In the morning, when she was calm, she might have talked to me.
    As I cursed my lack of patience, the woman in the housedress reappeared.
    “What are you still doing here?” she said, spitting out the word “you” like it burned her mouth.
    “I just—”
    “She don’t want to talk none,” the woman assured me.
    “I know, but I—”
    “She don’t want to talk.”
    “I just wanted to apol—”
    “And I’m telling you, she don’t want to talk.”
    The woman crossed her arms and glowered at me, daring me to lob up another feeble rejoinder so she could smash it back in my face. It was Olympic verbal volleyball. But while she was Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, I was the lightly regarded team from Liechtenstein.
    “So what you’re saying is, she don’t want to … doesn’t want to talk?” I said.
    “That’s right,” the woman said. “You best be moving on now.”
    “Okay, I get it,” I said, then reached into my pocket for a business card. “Could you please just tell her I’m sorry I upset her so much? It was never my intention.”
    The woman accepted my business card without comment, and I took