They twist down two flights of steps and knock on her mother’s apartment. The door opens right away. Thomas walks inside.
“Rosa, you need to dry your hair.” “When will you grow up?” is perpetually left unsaid. “You’ll catch cold if you go out with a wet head. How will you work?”
Rosa is mildly wounded but has no time for an emotional break. She says, “Thanks for taking him. He needs lunch for school. Sorry. Ran out of time.” Her mother’s lips go tight. Rosa keeps talking, “He has a spelling test. Try to go over his words. Okay? We made flashcards.” Inside, Thomas turns on Clifford the Big Red Dog.
They won’t go over the flashcards.
At the bus stop a boy who once had a crush on Rosa is on his way to work. He glances up from his phone to say, “Bus is late.” He doesn’t give her a second look.
“If it was on time, I’d have missed it.” The boy, whose name she can never remember, gives her a minimally courteous smile while watching his phone screen. She’s disappointed. She would never date him, doesn’t have time to date anyone. Still, it would be nice to know she could turn his head.
The Chicago Transit Authority bus makes a slow turn two blocks up. The familiar slash of red over the front bumper reminds Rosa of badly applied lipstick. Fifteen minutes later, she steps off the bus and walks down the alley to the back door of Coffee Girl.
She pats her pockets for keys. Can’t find them. Panics. She remembers her bag. After a frantic rummage, she finds her keys covered by a stack of loose napkins. She huffs out a breath, works the keys, and uses her hip to knock the stubborn door open. She quickly types the code to turn off the alarm: Thomas’s birthday. She kicks the back door shut, snaps on lights, bumps up the AC, and sticks her purse on a shelf amid cleaning supplies. The mop and broom handles slide sideways. She catches them before they can fall, props them back in place.
She pulls her slightly damp hair into a ponytail and ties it with a band she wears around her wrist. There is a small mirror on the wall next to the swinging door. She checks her hair and picks a piece of lint from her shirt. She slips some ChapStick from her front pocket and uses it. There’s dry skin under her nose and she greases that with a swipe of ChapStick as well. Lastly, she takes her apron from its hook and ties it. Here we go.
She pushes the swinging door open and twists on the espresso machine. She turns on the drip coffee machine, pries the lid from a container, and scoops beans into the grinder, letting it rumble. When the coffee is ground, she whacks the grinder to knock the last sticky bits into the waiting filter. She drops the filter in a metal basket and slides it in place. She assembles a pump thermos from clean parts on the drying rack, pushes it under the grounds, and repeats the process twice more, once for medium roast and once for dark.
While she waits for the machines to heat up, she stocks milk from the refrigerator in the back. She charges the stainless steel cylinders with CO2 so they are ready to express whipped cream. Finally she gets the first pot of coffee brewing. In the café, she straightens chairs and stocks sugar, napkins, and wooden stirrers. She brews the next batch. At the front window, she looks into the dark, the horizon blocked by tall buildings, no sign of Calvert coming for his prework coffee. She snaps the neon sign to “Open” and unlocks the door.
Behind the counter, she empties the used grounds and drops the last filter into the basket, gets the last pump pot brewing. She opens the espresso container, sticks her face over the oily beans and smells. I’ll feel better after coffee. The beans seem different from usual. A floral note. Maybe the ChapStick on my nose.
A sound draws her attention to the back room, a scrape of something hard sliding over metal. She imagines the wooden handles of the mop and broom shifting along the shelf’s edge again. She listens for the handles to hit the floor. Hears nothing. Must have caught on something.
She packs espresso into a firm puck. She toggles the button that forces hot water through the grounds. Her mouth waters. She grabs the shot glasses and places them carefully to catch every dribble of the creamy espresso.
There’s a loud sound and a rush of movement. She yelps. Flinches. Tries to turn. She’s struck from the side before she can see what’s coming. An unstoppable force has her by the throat. She crumples behind the counter. Her body bounces like a ball, but only once. Her temple grinds against the floor mat. Her ribcage loses shape under the body weight of her attacker. All the air goes out of her. She scratches at the hands clamped to her throat, digs her overlong nails into gummy-feeling fingers. Her nails bend painfully. She sees his calm face, recognizes him. She tries to scream. Tries to inhale, no room in her body for her burning lungs to expand. Over the staccato pounding of her heart, she hears the espresso machine running. She has a desperate urge to turn it off. She thinks of Thomas. Her eyes bulge wet in their sockets. Everything turns black.
* * *
Sunlight strikes the espresso machine and illuminates the warm depression at the notch of her collarbones. It’s damp. The man takes his thumb and rubs the perspiration. The Latex of his glove slides smoothly. He rubs, back and forth. He longs to feel more of her. Instead, he pulls her hair loose, lets the elastic band roll over his hand and onto his wrist.
The Heroic Dead
Whistler walks on careful cat feet from the break room, again, having overfilled his “Crafty Ass Bitch” mug with a touch too much tap water. He settles at his desk and rests his shoes on the edge of his city-issued trash can. He sips coffee. He’ll need the caffeine to comb through the pile on his desk. So far, the hotline tips have been plentiful, but not helpful. The phrase “comb through” makes him think of Ruther’s mustache. He smirks and sips more coffee.
The desk phone sounds loudly: RING-BRINNG. There must be a way to turn that thing down. His cell phone gives a muted chirp in his front pants pocket: vzzzzt-vzzt. He’s careful not to move abruptly because he’s been given a trick chair as part of his hazing. He learned the hard way that if he leans too far, too fast, the chair will tip him on his head. RING-BRINNG. Vzzzzt-vzzt. He’d taken a tumble twice in four days. Ruther claimed to have requisitioned a new chair, but his mustache looked shifty when he said it.
Whistler sets his perfect coffee between stacks of tip-line leads. He shifts his weight forward, spreads his stance as wide as possible until his shoes reach the floor. RING-BRINNG. Only then does he grab for the desk phone. Vzzzzt-vzzt.
“Detective Diaz,” he says.
“Detective. This may sound strange, but I think I have information on the girl killed near the lakeshore a week ago. The one in the news. The Magnificent Mile victim.”
Vzzzt-vzzt. Whistler fumbles his cell phone from his pants. “Uh-huh. Yes. That’s my case. Hold on, please.” He checks the screen of his cell, the desk phone clamped between his jaw and shoulder. The incoming call on his cell is from Ruther. Vzzzt. The ring stops midway. Ruther has hung up. Whistler sets that aside and grabs a pen. “Let’s start with your name.” There’s silence through the receiver. He readjusts the phone. “You still there?”
“Yes. Still here.” She sounds young, cautious, a hint of an accent he can’t place, but solemn and sincere.
“Okay. What’s your name and a number where I can reach you if the call is dropped.”
“Mimi. But this is anonymous. No last name. Is that okay? Please? I’ve never done this. I’m sorry. I want to tell you what I know. That’s it. Can I tell you and go?” Whistler’s cell blips to tell him he has a voice message. The screen reads “Ruther.”
“Go ahead. Tell me what you have.” He’ll track Mimi through the incoming number. He wonders what Ruther wants. Maybe there’s been a break. He could use a break. The case has gone fully cold. Ezekiel found security footage of Anna Beth walking into the conference hall in heels; riding the elevator with the overhead camera at a poor angle to catch her feet; and, later, walking to her room barefoot minutes after her panel discussion ended. No explanation. But no real leads. There wasn’t enough time for a romantic tryst in the few minutes s
he wasn’t on camera. Fortunately, the news outlets have started to move on, with the exception of Moe’s digital paper, which no one reads. The mayor’s office is slightly less agitated about immediate results. Ruther is starting to lighten up. The tip hotline was manned for a few days. He and Suzuki have slowly been sorting through hundreds of bogus tips.
“The killer has an agenda,” Mimi says. Her voice sounds distant. “There is a plan. Maybe instructions.”
“What do you mean? Like a how-to guide? Like Strangulation for Dummies? Something on the internet? A dark web chat room, or 8chan, or some kind of angry incel manifesto?”
“I know it’s strange. I don’t know the answer. They are telling me he will kill again. I see a white van. I see black latex over white skin. Strong hands. He’s leaving bodies in a trail. But the trail is to mislead. They are showing me the card game with three cards. What’s it called?”
“Three-card Monte.” Whistler stops taking notes. He was hopeful about the call. Mimi’s voice has a devout quality, like the few remaining sisters teaching at Dominican. There is an authority that comes with commitment to a belief, and this girl has it. Saints and the insane. At the mention of the white van, he was momentarily convinced Mimi had a real tip. But that detail had been in the press. Another waste of time.
“That’s it,” Mimi confirms. “That’s the card game I’m seeing. I’m not sure why I’m seeing it, but my sense is of the killer shuffling for misdirection. That’s all I know.”
“When you say you see a white van, do you mean you are an eyewitness? Are you looking at the van? Can you give me a license plate? Even a partial plate may be helpful.” Whistler’s internal bullshit-o-meter points to the red zone. He suspects another gag from his coworkers. They’re a bunch of immature kids. A woman is dead. My first case! “Or do you mean something else?” he asks, letting anger and exhaustion color his tone. “Like you have a crystal ball or can read tea leaves or sheep entrails? Is it entrails?”
“Spirits show me things. This morning I saw an attack that hasn’t happened or was about to happen.” His phone on the desktop lights up and displays a text from Ruther: an address.
“Mimi-who-spirits-show-things? I’ll write that down. Thanks for the call.” Whistler drops the receiver in its cradle and takes up his cell. He taps and swipes and plays the voicemail: God damn it, Diaz. There was another attack. You caught a break. We may have a witness or two. Our guy was caught in the act. I’ll text you the address. Get there and call me as soon as you assess the situation. And goddamned pick up your fucking phone when I call.
Whistler can hear Ruther’s ’stache rubbing against the phone’s mouthpiece. He gathers his things, leans too far, and goes over in the chair. He rolls with it, leaves it where it lies, and keeps moving.
It doesn’t take long to reach the crime scene. Whistler swings the car around a double-parked news van and creeps down the block, honks at three lookie-loos edging out to survey the commotion. They move back. He parks behind two angled patrol cars that cordon off the end of the block. Whistler slips out and walks to his trunk.
He pops it and stares at a picture taped to the underside of the trunk lid. The image is of him from last Thursday. He’s on his back on the floor, stuck like a turtle in his chair, wearing a frightened expression. He found others like it this morning, one inside his desk and another rolled into a scroll to greet him in his coffee mug. He remembers Wendell pitching him the key on his way out the door, “Take number six.” He had been not abrasive. Whistler had attributed it to Wendell warming to him. I should’ve known better.
He removes his coat and lays it in the trunk. He rolls his shirtsleeves and plucks a couple rubber gloves from the top of a box. The white gloves remind him of what Mimi said: “Black latex over white skin.” They had found evidence of black latex. Ted Majors suggested the killer wore gloves. The public statement hadn’t mentioned the gloves or the color. Could Mimi know something? He dismisses it. Gloves are an obvious guess.
He closes the trunk and retucks his shirt as he walks. He doesn’t know the beefy patrolman who eyes him as he ducks under the yellow tape, but he has his badge and a purposeful stroll. The patrolman nods respectfully.
“What’s the situation?” Whistler asks, looking into the larger man’s face.
“Woman from that coffee shop was attacked.” He points over cars to a storefront four doors down. “She’s alive but unconscious. They say it might be the Strangler. That guy over there”—he points toward a crowd of cameramen and reporters pressing toward one glum figure—“chased the attacker off and carried the woman out of the building. When I pulled up, he was rocking her in his lap, sitting on the sidewalk. Looked like he was trying to get her to wake up. He was making this croaking sound—crawk crawk.”
“I get it,” Whistler says.
“He was making that sound, but no tears. Like he was all dried up.”
“You were first on the scene?”
“Two units pulled in about the same time.”
“And the suspect?”
“Bolted out the back. We got a description. But it’s generic. White male. Medium height. Medium build. Nothing to go on. You could be the killer—I could. Practically anyone could. The guy could have driven away, caught the L, or grabbed an Uber. Who the hell knows? He could be sitting at that breakfast joint on the corner, eating a honeybun.”
Whistler looks at the upscale retro breakfast place down the block. The plate glass window is lined with customers eating giant artisan short-order fare and watching the crime scene like an episode of Chicago PD. “Okay. Thanks.”
“I’m Officer Mann.”
“Detective Diaz. Who gave the description? We have another witness?”
“Yes, sir. Apparently a guy saw part of it go down.” Officer Mann scans around. “That guy with the hair,” he says, nodding at a scraggly character with lank blond hair, thinning on top.
Whistler cranes around until he spots a van. White. Vinyl letters read “Bug Off” down the side. His wheels start to turn. He sees the crowd around the primary witness begin to shuffle. “That’s a big help, Officer. See ya around.” He walks toward the press scrum, gets close enough to hear a curvy woman from Action 13 frame the pitch. She looks good. He immediately forms a small crush. He doubts Moe knows her, but he intends to ask.
The TV reporter says, “We are in Printer’s Row, where Calvert Greene is being hailed as a hero for his quick action thwarting an early morning attack on a local woman,” She turns to the sickly-looking man in stiff coveralls. Whistler sees the “Bug Off” logo sewn over the heart of the man’s uniform. “Mr. Greene, can you describe what happened?”
The sad man looks at the microphone pushed in his face, confused. He speaks softly and plainly. “This is where I meet my ride. Rosa makes me coffee.” The reporter rips the microphone away. The man looks worried, as if he’s done something wrong.
“Rosa is the woman who was attacked?” The reporter shoves the mic back at Greene. He looks at it uncertainly. The reporter shakes the microphone to speed his response. “Yes,” he says.
“And Rosa is a friend of yours?”
Again the microphone is shoved at Greene and waggled. He’s beginning to understand his role. He speaks more quickly this time. “I walked in. I didn’t see Rosa. I called for her. A man stood from behind the counter. I said, ‘Hey.’ He ran out the back. I found Rosa. I thought she was dead, but she was breathing. I carried her. Allen called the police. I should go to work.”
“Did you get a good look at the attacker?”
A head waggle. “No. Not very good. He moved fast.”
“The authorities have been unable to apprehend the person who strangled Anna Beth Harpole ten days ago. Do you think you stopped the Magnificent Mile Strangler from killing another victim? Do you think you did more than the CPD has managed?”
Another head waggle. “I don’t know about that. Should I know that?”
“People are calling you a hero for your quick ac
tion. What do you say?”
“I’m not a hero.”
The reporter faces the camera, leaving Greene’s mouth moving mutely in mid-thought “There you have it,” she says. “A humble hero.” She throws it back to the channel 13 news desk. The cameraman turns off his spotlight, and the duo walk away without thanking Mr. Greene.
Whistler gets his tablet working and searches until he finds the initial crime scene reports just posted to the system. He gives them a quick scan. He’s halfway through when Moe appears beside him.
“You believe that shit?” she asks. “They don’t even know if he’s a suspect. That guy is off.” She nods toward Greene, who is now answering questions from several print reporters. “I don’t like him.”
“Hey, cuz.” Moe’s comment puts him in action. He doesn’t ask about the channel 13 reporter; he’s less interested after the manipulative performance. Besides, he has work to do.
“You got anything to tell me? On the record?” Moe asks.
“No.”
“Anything off the record?”
“No, Moe. Shit. I just got here.” He stretches himself tall to look for Ezekiel. Spots him down the block, arms crossed over his chest, big biceps straining the parameters of his sleeves.
“Sorry,” Moe says, not sounding sorry. “Listen. I found something you need to look at. I texted you.”
“I’ve been swamped.”
“Remember our deal? I find something concrete, you give me an inside lane. I found a connection.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m publishing my fourth strangling story. The vic was working a fancy hotel. A hotel like the one your Harpole woman was a guest in. And my victim, she died only a month ago. Her body was found on its side next to a dumpster.”
Half Dead Page 15