Atlanta Georgia
7th March, 2022

DAISY

The voices had began as hushed whispers, gaining fervor by the minute and now they were full on raised, the tension and anger emanating from the perky receptionist and the regal black woman who looked to be in her late seventies so fierce that it was difficult for Daisy, who had been dosing, scratch that, who had been sleeping in the reception area of the Atlanta PD headquarters, not to wake up and eavesdrop on their conversation. This was tea. And the hot kind. The good kind, too.

Normally, Daisy liked to wake up in phases. First, she roused herself to semi consciousness, then slipped off her sleep mask, allowing for her eyes to open at their own pace, then she gathered the energy to kick off the covers. This was the hardest part of all. After some more energy gathering, she would sit up, put her legs on the cold hard floor and stand up. All this took about thirty minutes. Forty on a bad day. This time, however, she awoke at once, ears poised and listening, eyes analysing, body unmoving —the perfect eavesdropper.

"Mrs. Carmichael." The receptionist  stopped what she was doing, giving the old woman her full attention. "I've said this more than ten times already. Dr. Rebecca Griffin is currently in a very important meeting and cannot be disturbed."

Why the old woman was dying to see the chief of police was a wonder to Daisy. Was she here for a job orientation like Daisy was? Of course not. She was way,way, way passed the retirement age. So why? Was she here to report a crime, provide information on a case? But crimes are not reported directly to the chief, right? Unless maybe if you are a high profile citizen. The woman —Mrs. Carmichael— looked regal enough to be high profile with that navy blue pin striped pant suit that seemed that it was made for her body alone, the loose shiny gold Rolex, red pumps and fox charm on her neck that glowed purple when the sun hit it at a certain angle. Maybe she was high profile.

Mrs. Carmichael looked at her nails as if contemplating whether to claw the bitch's eyes out. Her voice came out slightly muffled and strange because of the face mask she wore. "Believe me I'm really tryin' to be civil here. This here is important. It's about my daughter."

"Well, then you can file a report with any of the cops at the front desk. They will be more than happy to help. Or you can wait along with her." The receptionist pointed at Daisy with her middle finger. Rude much.

At that, Mrs. Carmichael lost it. "Listen girlie. I been filin' reports since 1981  and none of those worthless bitches ain't done nothing to help my daughter! So if you do not get me a private audience with your chief, I'm going to create a scene. A big one. Don't say I didn't warn you."

To the receptionist's credit, she didn't even flinch, didn't react at all to Mrs. Carmichael's comments. She just began paying too much attention to the blue stapler at the corner of her desk, twisting a lock of her red hair. The same red hair as Ronnie's new wife.

Mrs. Carmichael leaned over the dark oak desk, grabbed the receptionist by the collar, tearing two buttons off in the process, raised her to a standing position so that they were the same height and gave her a good firm shake like you would do to a tree to get some fruit to fall. "Now do we see eye to eye?"

Daisy fought against the urge to laugh at the pun and had the good sense to intervene. "Ma'am. You don't want to do that. This is a station."

"Oh really? I thought this was a mental hospital. Sure are a lot of sick people around here." Mrs Carmichael said, the sarcasm dripping like peanut butter down a wall.

"I'm serious." Daisy said, making her voice loud, authoritative, big. She reached for her gun, remembered she was yet to receive one and stopped. Damn, she would look so much more threatening with a gun.

Mrs. Carmichael looked at the receptionist who was cowering into her collar, tears coalescing in her eyes, her shoulders heaving in a silent wail, the police officers gathering behind her, and reconsidered. She let the receptionist go and adjusted her blazer. Daisy watched the receptionist flee to the bathrooms, clutching her shirt closed, no doubt to do more than just powder her nose and her heart gradually returned to a normal pace. You had to hand it to Mrs. Carmichael. The woman knew how to create a scene.

Daisy moved towards Mrs. Carmichael who had began to sniffle into a handkerchief, the soft mewling sounds like a knife being wedged in Daisy's lungs. Mrs. Carmichael looked like a woman who was so used to hiding her grief that she could no longer cry normally anymore. She couldn't let it all out. She had a facade to maintain —the strong, powerful, regal black woman.

"Mrs. Carmichael?" Daisy tried.

The sniffling stopped. "I'm fine. I done made a mistake coming here. You along with all your cops are all the same. It ain't like any of you listened to me forty years ago. Why would I expect you to listen to me now?" She pocketed the handkerchief, preparing to leave with shaking hands, her pumps soundlessly touching the floor as she left.

Impulsively, Daisy went after her. "Wait. I'm new here. Why don't you try me? Maybe I'll listen. You never know. Can't hurt to try. I've been listening in and I gathered you want justice for your daughter? Tell me about her."

Mrs. Carmichael paused mid step, her desperation tethering her to the spot. She turned back and looked at Daisy, her eyes so wet, so red and filled with grief that Daisy felt her heart break for the second time that day.

"Samantha. Her name was Samantha Carmichael. I know every parent says this about their girls, but Sam was such a lovely girl. Loved acting, loved dancing, loved singing —she loved to perform. She took the adage, all the world's a stage too literally. Everything she done did was dramatic. Her eating was dramatic, her laughing was dramatic. You should have seen her walk. It was drama personified. I use past tense because, well, I am no optimist. I don't expect that she's alive. You can't disappear for forty one years without a single trace and still be alive."

Daisy knew that much to be true. The longer a person —especially a woman— stayed missing, the harder it was to find them alive. It was a fact universally acknowledged. Usually, if a missing persons case was not solved in the first year, the hope and the media attention and the resources put into finding that person dwindled. There were no more search parties, no more press releases, no more persons of interest, no more updates, no new leads to follow, the interrogations halted. Everything just ended.

Everything except the grief.

Mrs. Carmichael smiled. "I did everything for her you know? Me and Jeremy; Jeremy is her father. We scraped together everything we had to send her to that white school. Nearly made us broke, but we had to give her the best. She had to get the opportunities we didn't have because of our skin color."

"So what happened to her?"

"Honestly honey, I don't know. She was supposed to attend the Atlanta Film Festival that year. Her drama teacher was making some movie about a black man and a white woman falling in love. It was supposed to be romantic." Mrs. Carmichael laughed. "It ended up being a point of controversy. Near about destroyed the whole school. 1981 wasn't a good year for controversy in Atlanta. The John Maynard protests were bad enough. Add that to an attempt for equality among races and there is anarchy."

John Maynard had been elected the first black mayor of Atlanta which had caused public uproar among the white folk who believed they were too superior to be led by a black man. Daisy had read about those protests in highschool. Now to be hearing from someone who had witnessed them? This was gold. Told you this was good tea.

Mrs. Carmichael toyed with the headscarf on her head. "I told Sam to quit. She refused to listen. Do you think that someone did something to her because she was part of that movie?"

Daisy was highly doubtful of that but as a representative of the police force, which by the way is the most political organization on earth, she had to be politically correct lest she screw things up. "As an investigator, you can't go around making assumptions, but I will pursue all angles objectively and make sure that whoever hurt Sam is punished. Tell me more about Sam. Did she have friends, enemies?"

"If she did have friends or enemies, I did not know. With Sam, you could never tell what was truth or lies. She liked to make things up so that her life would become more interesting than it really was. She could tell you she had a boyfriend and tell you about a best friend she'd made, and then you would ask her the next day and she would say, she'd been lying. She liked to say she was adding spice to her rather boring life. Besides, helicopter parenting wasn't my style."

Daisy didn't know what to say about that. She thought about her own mother —God rest her soul— and wondered whether she would have been this concerned about her disappearance. She shook her head. Focus. Mrs. Carmichael was still talking.

"Towards the festival, I got the impression that Sam was fighting with someone. I don't know over what. I caught her on the phone once yelling at someone to leave her alone and she brushed it off, saying she was practicing for a scene. Now I think back on it and. . ."

"It's not your fault."

Mrs. Carmichael smiled. "You are pretty for trying to console me, but we all know that there is no parent who doesn't blame themselves when their child goes missing. You wonder whether you should have been more attentive? Whether you should have loved her more. Whether. . ." Mrs. Carmichael burst into tears.

Daisy passed her a Kleenex from the receptionist's desk and she sneezed into it. Daisy was unsure of how to act. She sucked at comforting people. Tears, like blood, had a way of bringing out the awkward in her. And you wonder why she joined the police force. Back in San Francisco, she didn't do death notifications for these very two reasons.

The crying finally stopped and Mrs. Carmichael took off her navy blue headscarf to reveal her bald head. "I look like one of those women from Wakanda right?"

Daisy didn't know whether it would be offensive to agree with her so she simply smiled.

"Pancreatic cancer. Before the diagnosis, I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors say it's stage three, but I feel like I'm on a precipice. Like I'm about to begin my long arduous descent to death."

"Let's not be pessimistic."

"It's not being pessimistic. It's being realistic. Sometimes you just knew when death has come knocking and you can't just ignore. Eventually, you have to open the door. You know what I really want, though? I want to bury my Sam before I am buried."

Daisy spoke without thinking. "And I promise I'll do that for you."

Mrs. Carmichael laughed bitterly. "You don't learn, do you? Don't make promises you cannot keep."

Watching Mrs. Carmichael walk away, putting the navy blue headscarf back on her head, adjusting the fox charm on her neck, Daisy wondered what kind of royal shit she had just gotten herself into.

First day in Atlanta and she was already knee-deep in shit. Way to go, Daisy.

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The author gifts you chapter Six as well. Just scroll and enjoy!