by Jean Heller
I raised an eyebrow and held my hands open as if to say, “So why not now?”
Cribben got the message.
He pursed his lips and frowned at me.
“So,” he said, “I sold my soul for the price of a dinner?”
“But,” I said, “it was a very good dinner.”
16
When I got off my airplane the next day at Midway—or as the airlines so inventively describe it, when I “deplaned”—I saw that I had a voice mail message from a phone number I didn’t recognize. Most solicitation and crank callers don’t leave voice mails, so I listened to it. It was from Winona Jackson, short and sweet.
“You now have my new number. Use yours to call me immediately.”
With my mind still on the events that unfolded in Washington, it took me a second to recognize the voice and realize Winona had gotten a burner phone, as we agreed. She wanted me to call her burner number on my burner phone, which I hadn’t gotten yet.
So once in my car I drove into downtown Cicero, stopped at a big Walgreen’s drug store, and took care of my end of the bargain. I didn’t want to buy the throwaway in my neighborhood from someone who might recognize me and remember the transaction. With so many gangs and other illicit activities going on in and around Cicero, nobody would give a burner sale a second thought.
I set up the phone in the Walgreen’s lot and returned Winona’s call.
“Hello?” she answered in a tentative voice.
“It’s your invisible friend,” I said. “I just got back into town. What’s up?”
“I didn’t know you were out of town.”
“I’ll tell you about it another time when we find a new safe place to meet.”
“We need to do it soon,” she said. “You decide where. I picked the last time.”
I couldn’t think of anything special so I suggested a Starbucks in a busy shopping district on South Canal Street.
Rather than fight the gridlock on I-55, I took Ogden Avenue to Roosevelt Road east to Canal and arrived only a few minutes late.
Winona was waiting, looking anxious. I apologized for being tardy.
“It’s fine,” she said, waving off my concern. “But when I’m sitting out in the open to do a deed that could cost me my job and put me in jail, I keep wonderin’ if any of the folks around me are watching. Call me paranoid. I wouldn’t disagree.”
I had to admit I knew how she felt and asked if she wanted coffee.
“I hate the coffee here,” she said. “Always tastes burned. But you go ahead.”
I said I was fine. She placed an envelope on the table between us.
“The list of the worst,” she said. “And whatever names I could find attached to each one. Nothing jumped out at me, so I don’t know if any of this will do you any good, but it is what it is. Needless to say, it ain’t for public consumption.”
She immediately stood.
“Gotta get back to the office,” she said. “You know how to reach me.”
She turned and left, forgetting to ask me why I’d been out of town.
When I parked a few doors from my house, I glanced around for the black Suburban but didn’t see it. There was a white or cream-colored Nissan Pathfinder in the space directly in front of my sidewalk, but it was unoccupied. I thought about staying in my Explorer for a bit and watching it, but that felt like a terrible overreaction. So I parked two spaces away, grabbed my overnight and messenger bags, locked the truck and headed up the front walkway.
I had my keys in my hand to unlock the house. I’d gripped the handle of the storm door when someone grabbed me from behind, pinning my arms to my sides. My keys slipped to the porch floor. My attacker used his body to push me into the door and held me.
“Make a sound, you gonna get hurt bad,” a male voice said.
A second man stooped to pick up my keys. Two-against-one. Not great odds.
“Lemme get to the door,” the second male said.
“Put the hood on her first,” the first voice said. A silky fabric bag slipped over my head. A drawstring pulled it tight around my neck. Not so tight that it threatened to strangle me, but tight enough that I couldn’t shake it off. I tested whether I could breathe through the fabric and found that, so far, suffocation wasn’t a danger, either.
I wasn’t yet dark outside, and I hoped maybe someone on the street was seeing all this and recognizing that it wasn’t normal neighborly behavior. But it was happening so fast, I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for witnesses.
The man with my keys fiddled with the door for a few seconds, enough time for me to get good and scared. I tried to get over it with bravado.
“This is like a scene from a really bad movie,” I said as they pushed me inside. They hadn’t done anything to hurt me to that point, but my smartass remark was paid back with a sharp slap to my face. It stung but did no lasting damage.
They closed the door and pushed me to the floor, face down.
The man who had grabbed me knelt beside me and kept my hands secure behind my back while he pushed my head into the throw rug to keep me immobile. The other one put a foot in the small of my back with enough weight that it hurt.
“You listen real close, and you won’t get hurt,” he said. “This crusade you’re on, you’re gonna forget about it. Nod your head if you understand.”
I nodded as best I could.
“That’s all we got,” he continued. “But just on account of the message bein’ short, don’t think it ain’t serious. It’s deadly serious, if you get my drift. Understand?”
I nodded again.
“Turn your head the other way,” the second voice said. He eased the pressure on me to allow it. I did as I was told, and one of them slipped the bag off my head. As soon as it was gone, the pressure holding my head immobile resumed.
They hadn’t turned on any lights. All I could see by the dying daylight and the streetlamp glow filtering through a window was the floor in front of my face, one shoe, black, I thought, with a slice of dark sock and the bottom of a cuffed pair of dark pants. Even shifting my eyes, I couldn’t see more. There was nothing memorable but a deep scuff on the side of the shoe.
Then, without warning, there was a hand and a piece of cloth over my nose and mouth. I struggled with all the strength I could muster. I tried to pull my head away. The pressure holding me down increased. The cloth had a faint, sweet, chemical smell. I didn’t have more than a few seconds to contemplate it before my world went dark.
17
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been unconscious when a pounding headache roused me. It was all I could do to drag myself to the couch. I didn’t even take off my coat. Fortunately, my cell phone was in my coat pocket, so I was able to call Mark. I don’t know how he did it, but he was at my door ten minutes later.
He knelt beside the couch.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Did you call the cops?”
I shook my head and winced because it hurt.
He frowned and leaned in toward my face, sniffing.
“What’s that odor?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” I mumbled. “Put something over my face that smelled sweet.”
“Chloroform,” he said. “Who the hell uses chloroform anymore?”
“Two goons who had a message for me.”
“I’m calling the cops. And the EMTs.”
“I don’t need medical help,” I said in a weak voice.
“I think you do. Chloroform is nothing to mess with.”
I didn’t argue.
The med techs confirmed I smelled like chloroform and put me on pure oxygen. They asked if I’d been vomiting or felt nauseous. I hadn’t and didn’t. While chloroform poisoning can cause organ damage, they said one dose wouldn’t do me any permanent harm. They offered to take me to the hospital for overnight observation, but I declined. I’d had quite enough of hospitals the previous fall.
The two police officers who responded to Mark’s summons called in a preliminary report, an
d not long after a detective showed up to take my statement. I told him what I could, which wasn’t much, since I’d seen neither of my assailants and could only say that one spoke with a slight Chicago accent.
“Well,” said one of the officers, “that narrows it down.”
The detective was slightly more sympathetic. “Dispatch said we answered a burglary call here not long ago. Any chance it was the same guys.”
I mind flashed to Charles.
“No,” I said. “These were full-grown men. The burglary was three kids.”
“A forensics team can dust for prints,” he said.
“They were both wearing gloves,” I said. “I could feel them.”
“You’re not giving us much to go on,” he said. “We’ll file a report. Meanwhile, if you remember anything more, I’m leaving my card on your coffee table.”
Mark helped me drink some slightly warm water to start flushing toxins from my body. My headache kept a hammerlock on my brain, but he was concerned about giving me anything for pain because it might upset my stomach. I hadn’t had anything to eat in hours and didn’t feel like eating now.
Mark was trying to convince me to try a soft-cooked egg, tea, and toast when my cell phone rang. He answered it. Eric Ryland, the Journal’s metro editor, had heard from a night police reporter about my assault. Mark assured him I wasn’t seriously injured, but Eric insisted on talking to me.
“Can’t you find a story to work on that doesn’t threaten to get you killed?” Eric asked, as close as he could get to an expression of sympathy.
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said.
I gave him a shorthand version of earlier events.
That’s when it occurred to me I’d better call Winona.
I sat up so abruptly I startled Mark.
“Eric,” I said, “I have to go. I’ll explain later.”
I looked around frantically for my messenger bag and saw it by the door next to my luggage. I tried to stand, but Mark held me down. The pain in my head screamed at me to cooperate, but my heart told me I had to warn Winona that she might be in danger.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“My messenger bag.”
“Stay right here. I’ll get it for you. I found both bags on the porch. And your keys were on the floor by the door.”
I grabbed the bag with growing fear. What if the men who attacked me had taken my burner phone and the envelope Winona had given me? I breathed a sign of relief when I found both nestled right where I’d put them. I grabbed the phone and dialed the only number in its memory. No answer.
“Come on. Come on.” I whispered.
I hung up and tried again. This time, after seven rings, a man answered.
“Yeah?” he said.
Startled and very concerned, I asked, “Who is this?”
“Who’s calling?”
Now my heart was pounding.
“I’m a friend of the woman whose phone you’re holding. Let me talk to her.”
“I need your name.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“You first,” I said. “Please. It’s urgent that I speak with Winona Jackson.”
“Detective Ronald Colter,” he said. “Now tell me who you are.”
“My name is Deuce Mora. I work for the Chicago Journal. Let me speak to Winona Jackson. Please.”
“I wish you could, Ms. Mora,” the detective replied. “She’s dead.”
18
Forty-five minutes later I was still on my sofa in a fog of shock and guilt.
Knowing my rough night was only going to get rougher, Mark had fixed a couple of slices of lightly buttered toast so I could take something for my headache without further upsetting my stomach. I managed to get the first slice of toast down. I chased it with an overdose of Aleve and set to work trying to eat the second slice. Mark also brought me a mug of my favorite green tea. Later I wouldn’t remember eating or drinking anything.
Det. Ron Colter had reached my house from the Loop traveling Code Three—lights and sirens all the way. Now he was sitting in a chair facing my couch and talking to the local precinct on his cell, confirming the story Mark and I told him about the attack on me late that afternoon. I learned that the assault happened at almost the exact time Winona was dying on the plaza outside the James R. Thompson state office building. Someone had walked up behind her, pulled her head back by the hair and slashed her throat.
Witness descriptions of the murder differed wildly. It happened at lightning speed. Those who saw it were in such deep states of shock that nothing they thought they recalled could be trusted.
Naturally, Colter wanted to know what my business had been with Winona.
“We were just friends,” I mumbled, and it even sounded lame to me.
“You were just friends, and that’s why you were callin’ her with so much urgency? Really, Ms. Mora? Are you seriously asking me to believe that?”
“I can’t tell you any more than that right now, Detective,” I said. “I can’t.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Earlier this afternoon,” I said. “We met for coffee.”
“What was the topic of conversation?”
“There wasn’t a single topic. We were catching up, the way two friends do.”
Colter put his notebook and pen down on my coffee table next to the card left by the detective who had responded to my assault. He picked up the card and put it in a pocket in his notebook’s leather cover.
“You won’t need this,” he said. “I’m now the lead on your assault and Ms. Jackson’s murder. They might be related.”
“I don’t see how,” I said, adding one more to the list of lies certain to reflect badly on my application to enter heaven some day, should such a place exist.
“The two-a you met this afternoon for reasons you won’t disclose,” he said. “A very short time later, and probably within minutes of one another, you were assaulted and she was murdered. You might not see a connection, but I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“That’s amazing,” I said. “I don’t believe in coincidence, either. Wait. That sounds like a coincidence.”
“Ms. Mora …”
I let my aching head fall back on the sofa. Something about Colter seemed familiar, but I was way too messed up to piece it together.
“Detective, I’m not trying to be obtuse. I’m working on a story that might or might not have had something to do with the attack on me. I asked Winona Jackson for her help. She declined because what I was asking her would have involved violations of the Federal Privacy Act and the secret nature of juvenile records. She had agreed at one point to find out if there was any way around either of those problems. When we met this afternoon, she told me there wasn’t. And she wouldn’t get involved. And that’s it.”
I was determined not to sully Winona’s reputation, even following her death. Once again, I felt responsible for the loss of a good human life. I hated the feeling.
“Let me tell you why I don’t believe you,” Colter said. “Each of you had a smart phone. Ms. Jackson also had a burner phone with a single number in it. It’s the same number as the burner phone you own, the one you were using when you called her and I answered. The only number in your burner phone is the number of her burner phone. Why would the two of you go to such lengths to hide your communications with one another if you weren’t working together on something and didn’t want anyone else to know?”
I lifted my head and stared at him, trying to keep my face impassive. I was sending a clear message that I wouldn’t answer his question.
“You just got back from an overnight trip to Washington, D.C.,” Colter said. I wanted to ask how he knew that but remained silent. Perhaps he would tell me. “What were you doing there? Did the trip have anything to do with today’s events?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
My iPhone rang, and Mark answered it.
I heard him say, “Yes.” Then, “Okay.” Then, “I�
�ll tell her.” Finally, “Better, yes, but pretty shaken.” End of call.
“Maybe I can speed this along,” Mark said, sitting down next to me. “That call was Deuce’s editor. He told me she could not talk to you, Detective, without the newspaper’s lawyer present. Neither he nor the lawyer, Jonathan Bruckner, want her to do anything tonight but rest and shake off the hangover of the assault.”
He turned to me. “He asked me to tell you he and Mr. Bruckner would come by in the morning but would call first, around 10 a.m., to make sure you felt up to talking to them.”
I nodded and looked back to the police detective. I held out my hands, palms up. “I guess that’s settled,” I said.
Colter nodded and picked up his notebook, slipping it into his jacket. His hand emerged with his own business card, which he put on the table where he’d removed another detective’s card minutes earlier.
“You’ll see me tomorrow morning as well,” he said. “I have no problem talking to you in front of your editor or your paper’s lawyer.”
“I don’t think you have a choice,” I said.
He shrugged. “Actually, I do,” he said. “I could take you into custody as a material witness and let you spend the night in a cell.”
Mark started to stand up.
“Sit still,” Colter told him. “I’m not going to do that. I just wanted to let her know I could. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As he turned to the door, I stopped him.
“Detective Colter, could I ask you a question?”
He turned back to me.
“Are you any relation to John Colter, the man who was part of the Lewis and Clark expedition in the early nineteenth century?”
He frowned in amusement. “Why would you ask me that?”
“I’m a fan of the history of that time,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve run across the name Colter very often.”