At the Center. Dorothy Van Soest

hurried through the bar to the restaurant area and made my way to the back. As I walked between booths with Formica tabletops and cranberry-red suede benches a forty-something couple glanced up at me with illicit-affair guilt in their eyes. On the back wall, the soft glow cast by five rows of glass-enclosed candles barely punctuated the darkness. I sank into a soft red crushed-velvet sofa, propped my feet up on a gold vinyl footstool, and closed my eyes. I wondered what Brion Kacey would say or do if he knew who I was meeting here.

      Then I sensed J. B. Harrell’s tall, slender frame looming over me and opened my eyes. The glow of the candles accentuated the sharp angles of his square jaw and high cheekbones, the whiteness of his pressed shirt inside a smart gray vest and suit jacket. I had the impression that he was all too aware of how suavely handsome he looked. He tipped his chin down and brought it back up in a perfunctory greeting. He sat next to me on the sofa, a safe distance away.

      “So, Ms. Jensen. What do you have to tell me?”

      “Nothing, I’m afraid.”

      “And yet you called.”

      “It’s not that I didn’t try,” I said. “I did. I tried to find evidence that would refute your suspicions about Anthony Little Eagle’s death. I tried to prove that another child hadn’t been injured in the Mellon foster home.”

      “So you’re here to confirm my allegations?”

      “I can’t confirm or refute them.”

      We were interrupted by the appearance of a silver-haired waiter with facial features that made him look perpetually amused.

      “Want a drink?” J. B. Harrell asked.

      “No.”

      “I didn’t think so.” He smiled ever so slightly and told the waiter he’d like a glass of their most expensive pinot grigio.

      “I’ll have a Diet Coke,” I said.

      J. B. Harrell sat back, stretched out his long legs in a relaxed position incongruent with the look on his face, and waited. Finally, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

      “I’m sorry,” I said.

      “So much for promises,” he said with a shrug.

      So much for white people’s promises is what he might as well have said. I turned toward him, weighing the lack of trust between us. The edge of antagonism in his body language came off as arrogance but something told me it was something else entirely.

      “I guess I shouldn’t have come,” I said.

      He opened his mouth and I assumed he was going to agree, but just then the waiter returned and placed our drinks on the round glass table. My eyes were immediately drawn into the pale, straw-yellow blush of the pinot grigio; my nostrils sucked in its bright, flowery fragrance. J. B. Harrell tipped his head ever so slightly and reached for the glass. I felt myself blush.

      He took a sip of wine, placed the glass back on the table, and then sat back on the sofa. “I actually believed you,” he said, staring over my shoulder at the candles on the wall behind me. “I believed you when you said you would do everything you could to find out what happened to Anthony Little Eagle and the other child.”

      I tasted his hostility on my tongue and spat it back at him. “You have no idea what I did.”

      “So enlighten me,” he said.

      I glanced at his wineglass, then down at the table. “It was a mistake for me to call you.”

      “And yet you did,” he said.

      “I’m suspicious,” I said. “Something is going on but I don’t know what.”

      He looked surprised and started to say something but then seemed to think better of it. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pen and a small notebook.

      “The agency attorney told me I should stay out of it.”

      “Brion Kacey,” he mumbled and then scribbled something in the notebook.

      “And my supervisor backed him up.”

      “Betsy Chambers.”

      The man had obviously done his homework. He looked at me, his eyebrows raised, his hand poised.

      “Brion got really upset when I told him you claimed another child had been hurt in the Mellon home. He ordered me not to talk to you again.”

      His lips curled up into a hint of a smirk. “Yet here you are,” he said. “Talking to me.”

      “They wouldn’t let me see the case record.”

      “There you have it.” He slapped the sofa with the palm of his hand. “They know Anthony Little Eagle’s death wasn’t an accident.”

      “Or maybe they’re just trying to protect the agency’s reputation,” I said.

      “Which begs the question, does it not,” he said, “what it is they’re covering up. What is it exactly that they are afraid might tarnish the agency’s image?”

      “Maybe they don’t want it to get out that another child was injured in the Mellon home...if that actually did happen. What makes you so sure?” I said. “Who said it happened on June 8, 2000? Where did you get the information?”

      “My sources are confidential,” he said. “All I can tell you is that the girl was five years old.”

      I stared at him. How could I dispute him when I knew nothing? “But...but why did you say there were others?”

      “Well,” he said, “the girl and Anthony Little Eagle make two, right?”

      “So you’re just guessing there might have been more.”

      “Why wouldn’t there be?”

      “You have no evidence.”

      “Neither do you.”

      “But to insinuate that the Mellons are murderers is outrageous. In fact, quite frankly, I find all your allegations offensive.”

      “Yet how can you know what happened to that little girl or to any other child when you weren’t around in 2000?”

      I lowered my head and looked down at my lap. Thoughts, fears, and ideas about what I might say swirled around in my head. It was a mistake to come. What did I think it would accomplish anyway? Harrell was staring at me. His face was so strong, hard, determined, so strangely unsettling.

      “You don’t know,” I said through gritted teeth. “You don’t know what I did to try to get information. You don’t know how hard I tried.”

      “Pray tell.”

      “Brion and Betsy wouldn’t let me read the case record, so today I talked to the worker who placed Anthony Little Eagle. I asked her to tell me what was in it.”

      “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said.

      “But she didn’t know anything.” I looked down again, embarrassed about mentioning my meeting with Lynn Winters at all. I’d only done it because I was defensive.

      J. B. Harrell put his pen down. “Your social worker put a child in a home...that she knew nothing about?” His words, slow and drawn out, oozed with a judgment I recognized as my own.

      “She...she screwed up. She never read the case record.”

      A sneer formed on his lips. “And you’re her supervisor?”

      It wasn’t his accusation itself that startled me most. It was the scope of its implications. I caught myself tearing up. No, I didn’t know that Lynn hadn’t read the case record. No, I didn’t know that the girl hadn’t followed other agency procedures either. And yes, I should have known. I was the supervisor. Lynn was new. She needed my guidance and coaching. I should have intervened when I saw the police bring Anthony Little