Conrad’s friendly manner disappeared in flames the next afternoon when he saw me backstage at the Mirabal school auditorium: I was standing near Hana Milcek’s dead body, giving a statement to the sergeant who’d answered my 911 call.
4
When Marcena and I pulled into the visitors’ section of the parking lot an hour earlier, I’d been depressed by how shabby Mirabal High looked. It had been old when I went there, but at least the asphalt had been in good shape. Now it had buckled and cracked; several windows were boarded up, and—true for all Chicago schools, at least in neighborhoods where people of color live—all the entrances were padlocked except for one side door.
The teachers’ lounge still occupied space adjacent to the auditorium. The space had been a greenroom when the school was new—decades before my time—and kids put on elaborate musicals. The lounge’s main entrance was via the auditorium’s backstage—there was a second door through a janitor’s closet that no one ever used. I sidestepped instruments, cables, and music stands to get to the lounge.
Marcena had arranged to meet Hana there at the end of the school day, along with Keisha Dunne and her mother. I’d suggested we bring in the cousin and the grandmother, in case there were questions about what happened the day Tyrone Elgar died, but Marcena vetoed the idea.
“The more people involved, the longer it will all take; you know that, Vic. Of course, I’ll check with the grandmother once I know Hana’s concerns, but let’s get those cleared up first.”
I eyed her thoughtfully. “You have a second tape running in your head. I’d love to listen to that along with the foreground sound.”
“Tape?” Marcena said derisively. “It’s all digital now, Vic.”
She moved away from me to greet a newcomer entering through the auditorium door, calling her “Ms. Dunne,” exclaiming how delighted she was to meet in person.
“This walkway is a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Jasmine Dunne announced. “I tripped on a music stand, and those cables are lethal.”
She was dressed in a dramatic turquoise suit whose jacket had a half cape over the left shoulder. Keisha arrived a minute or two later. With her high cheekbones and her own stylish outfit—a horizontal-striped cropped top over high-waisted leggings—I could see why Marcena wanted to film her.
“Miss Milcek said there were questions about Keisha’s essay.” Jasmine Dunne impatiently waved aside introductions. “If someone is accusing my daughter of something, I need to be here. I own a public relations firm, and I know what happens when journalists start making accusations—”
“No one’s making accusations, Ms. Dunne.” Marcena cut her off smoothly. “I’m going to every school in North America that our winning writers attend. I’m asking the same questions of each student and their teachers. It’s excellent that you arrived today; it saves me time in trying to make an appointment with you for permissions and all those things we do with underage performers.”
The posh British accent worked its usual magic on the Americans. Keisha, who’d been staring at the floor, looked up and smiled at the word performer, while her mother nodded warily but calmed down—an English journalist might not bring an American’s racial bias to the meeting.
A half hour passed with no sign of Hana; Marcena tried her cell phone, the school secretary paged her. I don’t know what made me go back to the auditorium, except some obscure thought that she might have tripped on the backstage cables on her way to join us.
Lights were kept on during the school day, but I still almost missed her: she was sprawled across a book cart that had been wheeled behind the school orchestra’s drum set. As nearly as I could tell, she’d been shot twice at close range.
My first, illogical thought was that Marcena had shot her to protect her precious Edge competition. My next thought was that Hana Milcek looked young and innocent in death.
5
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Conrad stormed over to me. “That call to me yesterday, that was a fucking setup, wasn’t it?”
The watch commander’s arrival at a crime scene makes the rank and file nervous: they know it’s a high-profile case and they can’t afford a mistake. The commander’s arrival spitting nails makes everyone from first responder to senior detective fade as far into the scenery as possible.
“You remember Marcena Love, don’t you, Lieutenant?” I said formally. “Her company is holding an essay competition on kids affected by gun violence; Keisha Dunne wrote about the murder of her uncle, Tyrone Elgar. Ms. Love asked me to be part of a conversation about the essay with her mother and with Ms. Milcek, since something in it troubled Ms. Milcek. I called you yesterday as a routine fact check; I wanted to make sure the CPD thought Mr. Elgar had been murdered.”
“My brother was most certainly murdered,” Jasmine Dunne snapped. “Are you trying to say he wasn’t?”
“We’re fact-checking all the essays,” Marcena said soothingly. “A whiff of ‘fake news’ will destroy the credibility of this important program.”
Jasmine was saying she wanted to go with Marcena when she checked facts at white suburban schools, but she was cut short by a man with a deep voice loudly demanding to know if “it was true.”
“Someone told me Hana is dead. What happened to her? We had lunch together a few hours ago. I thought she seemed perfectly healthy.”
If Marcena wanted mediagenic, she didn’t need to look further than the new arrival, a tall, square-jawed white man with a shock of dark hair. Like most contemporary teachers he wore jeans, but he also had on a blazer over an open-necked shirt. If the principal hadn’t already been in the room—an African-American woman in her fifties—I would have pegged this man for the job. He had that authoritative energy that men in power, or aspiring to power, project like a force field.
“It is true, Dex,” the principal said, “and the police are here, wanting us not to contaminate their crime scene, so please don’t come farther into the room.”
Dex ignored her. “Marcena. If I’d known you were in the building I’d have come at once. What’s going on?”
I stared as he hurried to Marcena’s side.
“This is Dexter Vamor,” she said quickly. “He was one of my—our—The Edge’s local judges. We only met in person yesterday.”
Vamor held a hand out to me. “Chair of the English and Journalism departments here at Mirabal, for my sins. Are you with The Edge as well?”
“I’m a detective,” I said.
“Private,” Conrad snapped. “She’s not with the police, she’s not going to ask any questions, she’s not going to touch evidence and prove that she’s sharper than we are.”
I prudently didn’t say anything.
The next hour was a jumble of questions about who had seen what and who was doing what in the lounge. All of us, from Keisha and Jasmine to me, and not excluding the principal or Marcena, were tested for gunshot residue and searched for weapons.
Conrad talked to the principal and Vamor about students or colleagues who might have been angry with Hana, but both were adamant that she didn’t have that kind of history.
Vamor added, “Of course, there’s always a student who thinks their work is undervalued, but frankly, our kids aren’t looking for that extra decimal on their GPA to get them into Harvard. As for her colleagues, sure, some people liked her more than others, but she’s been here twenty years without making enemies among the teachers. This must have been a random shooting. Maybe she interrupted someone selling or using.”
“Dex,” the principal said, “we’re not in the business of pointing the cops at our students or our faculty and staff. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t start speculating without any facts to back up your statements.”
Vamor gave her a mock salute. From the expression on the principal’s face, she wished it was his body on the book cart, but she only turned to Conrad to say that Hana worked hard with students who wanted to excel but didn’t neglect anyone in her classes.
“If she h
ad discipline problems, she usually sorted them out herself.”
When Conrad finally decided to dismiss us, I said diffidently, “If the lieutenant would permit me one question first?”
Rawlings looked at me sourly. “Meekness isn’t your best act, Warshawski. Ask away.”
“Mr. Vamor, I’m here because Ms. Milcek apparently had questions about Keisha Dunne’s essay. Since you were one of the judges, you probably have a sense of what she wanted to know.”
“What questions?” Jasmine Dunne demanded, hands on hips. “I am tired of you insinuating—”
“Please, Ms. Dunne,” Marcena said. “Keisha’s work is brilliant. But I still needed to speak to Ms. Milcek. Did she know your daughter?”
“Of course not. Keisha doesn’t go to Mirabal. Hana Milcek might have been my niece’s teacher.” Jasmine looked a question at her daughter, who nodded and muttered that “Fannie Lou adored Ms. Milcek.”
“Fannie Lou surely wouldn’t bad-mouth you to her English teacher,” Jasmine said to Keisha.
“No, Mama,” Keisha muttered, staring at her feet.
Vamor was annoyed that Marcena had talked to Hana without telling him.
“Milcek—Ms. Milcek—found what hotel I was in and called me there,” Marcena said. “She didn’t want to talk on the phone. Vic’s question is a good one: Did she share her concerns with you?”
Vamor shook his head. “As I said, I saw her at lunch today. We talked about the competition—like a lot of our teachers, she had kids whose lives were hit by gun violence and she’d encouraged them to enter—and she knew I was a judge, so she wondered when she could find out about her students. I told her that was up to the people in London, and of course I couldn’t release names until Marcena told us they were ready to go public.”
“But you’d already spoken to Keisha and her mother,” I said to Marcena.
“Of course,” she said. “Under oath of secrecy, since no winners can be announced until we’re dead sure of our finalists.”
“How did you come to pick Vamor as a judge?” Conrad asked. “A rust belt school isn’t exactly on international radar.”
“But Dex is,” Marcena said. “He writes a regular column for one of the best journalism school blogs and he’s on the faculty for a summer journalism program that works with teens. We knew about him even before we were sure we were going forward with the contest.”
The principal raised her brows. “Dex, that’s news to me. I’m surprised it’s not in your CV.”
He looked a little embarrassed. “Doing it on my own time, Albertine.”
“Usually we know when you’re up to something high-profile. But if there are questions about an essay submitted by one of my students—”
“She doesn’t go to school here, Albertine,” Vamor interrupted. “She’s at South Side Prep in Chatham.”
“The essay dealt with the murder of one of your students’ fathers,” I said. “Fannie Lou Elgar.”
“But Fannie didn’t write the essay,” Vamor said sharply.
“Fannie Lou, Dexter,” the principal said. “Her father named her for Fannie Lou Hamer. If her cousin’s work deals with Tyrone Elgar’s death, I’d like to read it; it might give me insight into Fannie Lou. She’s one of our most gifted students, but painfully shy inside her shell.”
“The essays are not being made public yet,” Marcena said. “And they’re the property of The Edge.”
“It’s mine,” Keisha said. “I wrote it.”
Marcena smiled at her. “The contest rules state that The Edge owns all the submissions, I’m afraid. Even the ones that don’t win awards we may want to use in some other way.”
“But you could print it out for us to take a look at,” I said.
“So you can start questioning it and tearing it apart?” Jasmine said. “I don’t think so.”
“In that case, I’ll get the state’s attorney to give me a warrant,” Conrad said. “Gun deaths on the South Side are usually about gangs, and if the lady had been shot on her way out of the building I might believe it was an initiation murder. As it is, I’m open to all ideas. Which means all of you can wait here until the state’s attorney gives me a warrant for the essay.”
6
Marcena was magnanimous in defeat. The principal took her to the school office, where Marcena printed out a half dozen copies of Keisha’s essay, including one for me.
Conrad pulled me aside for a short talk before he left: he trusted if I knew anything that would shed light on the murder that I would not be a glory hog but would turn it over to him.
“Talk to Love over there,” I said, pointing at where Marcena was conferring with Dexter Vamor. “She’s the one who pulled me down here and I’m still not sure I know why.”
Conrad looked at her, but suddenly smiled at me. “I don’t know her, Ms. W., but I know you. You may have come down here for the reasons you state, but you’re obsessed now with Milcek’s death.”
“Of course I am. Violent death is always a shock, and then, you know, we went to school together. I’m not a glory hog—since you know me, you must surely realize that—but I want to know why Hana died and who killed her.” I shivered: Hana had gotten out of bed thinking about her class schedule, or what she wanted to ask Marcena, or whether she could make her insurance payments on time—the quotidian, not the thought that she would die before suppertime.
“Are the school’s surveillance cameras working?” I asked.
Conrad nodded. “Tech teams will look at them to see if any strangers came into the school in the last twenty-four hours. Guards sure didn’t sign anyone in, but a school hall can be chaotic; someone could have blended in during a class change. Keep me on speed dial, Warshawski.”
When he’d left, I went back to the principal’s office to talk to Albertine Diaz about Hana Milcek’s next of kin. Hana had never married; she’d lived with her mother until the older woman’s death three years ago. If she’d been close to anyone with whom she might have confided her concerns about Keisha’s essay, Diaz didn’t know who that might be.
As for enemies among students or staff, Diaz shook her head. “Despite what Dex Vamor was saying in the group, he and Hana didn’t get along. She was a serious type and he’s flamboyant. No one ever put together better lesson plans than Hana, but the students gravitate to Dex. Being a teacher is half dedication, half knowledge, and all showman. Sad to say. I often thought Hana would fit in better at a university; I tried to get her to go for the doctorate, but she loved being in the classroom. And every now and then, she’d find a student who responded.
“The Elgar girl, Fannie Lou, she was one of the ones who responded to Hana Milcek’s style. She’s a studious type, too. Shy, serious, super-bright. I don’t know what Hana’s death will do to her. Her mother died in childbirth, along with the baby, when Fannie Lou was two, then her father was shot and killed. I hope the cousin told Fannie Lou she was writing about her father’s murder. It would be a nasty shock to find out about it from your English friend’s online performance.”
“Yes,” I agreed, thinking about it. “I wonder if that’s what Hana wanted to talk about with Marcena. If Fannie Lou was one of her own protégées, she’d have wanted to protect her. . . . You said Hana solved her own disciplinary problems. Did she have many? Did students gang up on her because of her scholarly style?”
Diaz smiled wryly. “The teenage mind remains a mystery to me, even though I’ve been teaching and administrating in their world for close to thirty years. Kids treated her almost like a pet, I think because she was one of the world’s true innocents. She behaved the same to everyone, to me and her peers and the janitors and the students. She thought everyone shared her interest in poetry and literature, and she’d listen to anyone’s opinion. She added writers like Audre Lorde to her curriculum, she’d let kids write on hip-hop. She didn’t try to be hip, not the way Dex Vamor does, but she listened.”
“What’s Vamor doing here, anyway?” I asked. “Seems like a guy
who wants a bigger stage.”
Diaz’s lips tightened. “Yes, indeed. He’s been here three years, came when we added a media department. He’s only thirty-two, but he had the credentials to be a department head. I’m sure he’s already planning his next move.”
Marcena came into the office at that moment, looking for me, hoping it wouldn’t be an inconvenience, but she needed to get back to her hotel so she could communicate with her London colleagues on Hana’s death and how that might affect The Edge’s competition. I’d noticed her taking pictures of Hana’s body—those would probably be on The Edge’s website within the hour. What a scoop, journalist right there when her subject’s dead body was found. I wondered again if Marcena had known anything about Hana’s death before I found her.
At home, I curled up with a glass of Amarone and read Keisha’s essay. She wrote with a high degree of sophistication, both in language and in structure. She covered seven funerals she’d attended for people dead from bullets.
Every story is different, but every story is the same: the same grief, the same incomprehension, the same anger, whether over the baby Nikwa Jonas, hit by a bullet that went through her father’s kitchen window, or for Alan Wicherly, star forward on my school’s basketball team, shot by a cop when he was putting a hand inside his pocket for his driver’s license.
These deaths create a mountain of grief that presses down on me. There are days when it scarcely seems possible to rise from my bed, because the grief mountain grew another hundred feet higher in the night.
Family and neighbors call on Jesus for help or faith, but I always remember my grandmother, kneeling next to my Uncle Ty. She called him “my baby.” It had never occurred to me that my big laughing uncle had ever been my grandma’s baby, but when he died, he was in her eyes no bigger than Baby Nikwa.
“Why, Jesus?” she cried. “Why did you bring him safe home from Iraq only to let him die in front of me? Are you the God of mercy or God of mirth, laughing at the contortions of the human heart?”
Love & Other Crimes Page 28