by Jean Heller
At least Eric wasn’t bugging me about the Ryan Woods story. There had been a cataclysmic grain elevator explosion in East St. Louis on the other side of the state. The spectacular disaster burned several square blocks of the city and killed a lot of people though no one knew yet how many. Eric had sent five reporters and photographers over to cover the story, which was eating up vast chunks of the paper every day.
I wondered if Mark had been called out to help find the cause. But no one was talking about arson, so I presumed he wasn’t involved.
At the end of the week, seven days after Winona Jackson died, I found myself sitting in a rear pew at St. Mary of the Angels Catholic Church for her funeral. Because of the way she died, the medical examiner’s office didn’t release her body to her three sons until the day before the High Mass.
The historic church in Bucktown, a few blocks from Winona’s house, was a magnificent cathedral of frescos, dark wood, white marble, and gold inlay. The dome soared above, its many windows illuminating the sanctuary with natural light that gave the environment a most peaceful feeling.
The church itself dated back to 1899, though the building in which I sat was dedicated in 1920. Those who knew iconic religious architecture far better than I said the church most resembled St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. St. Mary of the Angels, built entirely of dark red brick, was considered one of the finest specimens of Roman Renaissance architecture in the United States.
None of which made me feel any better about the fate of a woman whose death and life would be commemorated this day. Winona died because she had tried to help me get to the bottom of the Ryan Woods murders. I was absolutely convinced of it. I sat in the back of the sanctuary hoping no one would recognize me and ask what right I had to be there. It wasn’t a question for which I had a ready answer.
But my anonymous presence was not to be.
A burly man who stood well over six feet and whose weight likely rose into the two-hundred-fifty-pound neighborhood, slid into the pew beside me. He had a classic Irish face: pink fair skin, a mass of freckles bridging his nose and spilling onto both cheeks, and dark red hair. The freckles extended to the back of his hands, which I noticed when he reached out to shake mine.
“Deuce Mora, right?” he said as I clasped his hand obediently. “I’m Aidan Coughlin, Winona’s supervisor.”
I froze. I didn’t know how to respond. I caught myself before I could utter the standard first-responder line, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You look like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights,” Coughlin said with a smile. “You don’t have to be concerned about me. I know Winona was helping you. And this might surprise you, but toward the end, I gave her my blessing. Didn’t she tell you?”
I shook my head.
“I did. The abuse and possible murder of children doesn’t set any better with me than it did with her. I told her to keep a low profile and be careful.” He paused and sighed. “Apparently, that wasn’t enough.”
“I don’t think the timing of her murder was a coincidence,” I said.
“Neither do I. Could you come to my office tomorrow? We need to talk.”
Winona’s funeral had been widely publicized, and I kept hoping Mark would know I was there and come to join me, not so much for Winona’s sake but for mine. He didn’t. The disappointment I felt in my gut is generally described as heartache.
I left when the service ended, not going to the cemetery or talking with family members. Despite the vastness of the church, I’d begun to feel claustrophobic. The 1,200 seats were mostly filled, so no one noticed my departure. Or if they did, they didn’t care.
I wondered during the drive home what Aidan Coughlin wanted to discuss with me. I was certain he knew more about the Ryan Woods investigation than he passed on to Winona. I allowed myself to hope he was now ready to pass that information along to me. The possibility boosted me with new energy.
24
Aidan Coughlin’s office had approximately the same view as Winona’s, but from two floors higher. His otherwise dingy walls were decorated, not with diplomas, but with stunning black-and-white photographs of impoverished and gang-ravaged areas of Chicago; of bloody sidewalks and graffiti-smeared brick walls; of young men and women, mostly black and Hispanic, loitering in doorways, in alleys, and on street corners, in handcuffs and squad cars; of grief-consumed relatives screaming and crying over sheet-covered bodies in the streets. One of the photos that affected me most was that of a brown hand lying limp on a concrete slab of sidewalk surrounded by seven spent shell casings.
Coughlin’s office walls were a silent lecture on the need to put an end to such tragedy and waste, a mute testimony to the fact that Chicago’s history of bloodletting never ended. It just changed neighborhoods.
It began with angry, out-of-work immigrant groups fighting deadly economic wars in the nineteenth century. It was adopted by Al Capone, George “Bugs” Moran, Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik, and Murder, Inc. in the years around Prohibition. Those guys spilled a lot of blood in the city and became renowned in its history. You can even take gangster tours of Chicago, by bus or on foot, and visit most of the violently historic places.
The old mugs were long gone, but new ones had become entrenched. If anything, the carnage got worse. It was no longer only gangsters killing gangsters. Innocent people were dying now. That tragic fact would become part of Chicago’s history, too.
In the not-too-distant past, Chicago police thought they knew how to put down the gangs. They tried cutting off the snakes’ heads. The theory was, if they arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated the leaders, the bodies would die.
The idea backfired badly. Instead of evaporating, the gangs came under new, younger, more ruthless leadership. The older leaders, the ones now in prison, recognized that there were lines they shouldn’t cross. Their successors never accepted the notion of limits. They knew no boundaries. They were younger, less schooled in nuance, much quicker to use their guns and knives. Their killing became indiscriminant. Miss a target and hit a child? So what. There was always next time.
Coughlin noticed me studying his photographs.
“They inspire me every day to try to do more,” he said.
“Did you take them?” I asked.
“Most of them, yes,” he said. “It’s a pretty grim hobby, don’t you think?”
I glanced at him and saw that his expression was a mixture of amusement and sorrow. And I understood.
We shook hands and sat in a corner of his office where four armchairs ringed a small, scarred oak table that held a statue of a woman clutching a child to her belly. It struck me that Coughlin was a man with a vast capacity for compassion.
It also struck me that I had been transported into a Japanese garden. The entire corner behind the table and chairs was taken up with pots of bamboo, the likes of which I’d never seen. The thin trunks were yellow and green. One segment of each stalk was yellow, the next had alternating vertical green and yellow stripes. The divisions between segments were reddish with protruding root nodes.
A small table, nearly hidden among the pots, held a small electric fountain that circulated water over four levels of what looked like basalt rocks. The clean aroma of the greenery and the soft tones of the falling water were very relaxing.
“This is spectacular,” I said.
“It’s a small version of a meditation garden I have at home. When the water runs over sounding stones, it produces remarkable music. I hung chimes that catch the breeze and ring softly. It’s where I get away from the job. Upkeep takes an enormous amount of work, but I don’t mind. I find it relaxing. Late every fall I move the pots of bamboo into my greenhouse so they don’t freeze and empty my waterfall and drain the pipes. In here, I have to keep the plants trimmed so they don’t go through the ceiling to the next floor.”
“I imagine with your job, relaxation is at a premium,” I said.
He smiled. “Sometimes people will walk in here unexpected and find me sitting
on a pillow in the lotus position, meditating. One day a group of visiting Japanese came in, and the next thing I knew, all three of them had found pillows or furniture cushions and were sitting in the lotus position next to me.” He laughed. “It does get me through the day.”
We both sat for a few moments and let the water’s melody sooth our nerves.
“Can I trust you?” he asked with an abruptness that surprised me.
“With what?” I said.
“With the truth. Your natural instincts would be to rush new information into print. I need your word that you won’t do that. If you give me your word, I can tell you a story that will blow your mind and break your heart.”
I smiled, despite the grim tenor of Coughlin’s words. “It would be pretty hard to do much writing in that condition.”
He joined me in the humor. “True. I indulge in hyperbole from time to time. Forgive me. What do you say? Do I have your word?”
“Yes,” I said. “And as long as I have your word that if you learn something new, I’ll be the first to know. If there’s a change at my end, I’ll call you before we publish. But understand that sometimes those decisions are out of my hands.”
Coughlin rubbed his palms together.
“I’ll be honest with you, Ms. Mora,” he said. “I don’t want to be included in anything you write. I’m not an official part of any of it. The overarching control of this investigation is six hundred air miles east of this room, and all the shots are being called from there. I would be shocked if the decision whether to take the lid off this Pandora’s Box came from anyone but the feds.”
“Washington. I figured.” It was a statement, not a question. “You know the feds, much as they might like to sometimes, can’t dictate what we print or when.”
“That’s true,” Coughlin said. “But if they can determine who gave you information—and I have no doubt the NSA has the means to know—I could be prosecuted for violating national security laws, perhaps even treason. The fines would be so astronomical I would lose everything and not make a dent in the debt. I could spend the rest of my life in prison. That’s not exactly the retirement I’ve planned for. So you can see my concern.”
I could.
“So why are you taking the risk by talking to me at all?”
“The walls,” he said, slowly raising a freckled hand to indicate all the photos. “The walls are my conscience. They speak to me. They tell me I must defend the rights of those who cannot defend themselves.”
Sitting here writing this, it sounds a little corny. It didn’t sound corny when Coughlin said it. It raised a small lump in my throat.
“I give you my word,” I said. “If you protect me, I’ll protect you. My dog . . .” I stopped. Murphy wasn’t my dog and probably never would be. “I was walking with a friend and his dog in Ryan Woods, and the dog found the first bone. I want this story. To be honest, if I’m beaten to it by another newspaper, it could cost me my job.”
“Even with a Pulitzer Prize on your wall?”
“Even. Believe it. Besides, I don’t have a Pulitzer yet. They won’t be announced until some time in April.”
“Okay, here’s what’s happening,” Coughlin began. I pulled out a notebook and pen. He looked over his shoulder, then got up, went to his desk and told his secretary to hold all calls. He began again even before he got back to his chair.
“I heard about the bones in the woods on the Monday after you found them. Tony Donato, the medical examiner, called my office even before I got in that morning, and I get in early, usually about seven. It’s true. I knew at that hour it couldn’t be good news. At that point, he was sure he had at least two bodies because the bones of a finger they found didn’t match the skeleton you found.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that was in my story Sunday.”
“I was out of town all that weekend,” he said. “Sorry, I missed the story.”
“You got back to work about the same time Tony quit returning my calls.”
“And I’ll tell you why. It was your own fault. It’s true. Maybe an hour after Tony called I get a call to go visit the mayor. Tony gets the same call. So does the chief of police. The mayor had been visited early that morning by the FBI and the NSA. As he told it, they got him out of bed, and he met with them in his bathrobe. They didn’t even call ahead. It’s true. Anyhow, we were all told in no uncertain terms the Ryan Woods discovery was to be kept quiet. We weren’t even supposed to talk to each other about it. The police were instructed to expunge the report made by the cops who answered your call.”
“Did they give the mayor a reason?”
“If they did, His Honor didn’t tell us.”
“So the big question. Why?”
“The FBI and the State Department are conducting an international investigation of human trafficking focused on children. I don’t know how many countries it covers, but I got the feeling it was a dozen or more. It’s true. They’ve zeroed in on one ring in Chicago because they’re not only trafficking kids in the city, they’re exporting American kids to other countries.”
“Dear God. They’re smuggling kids like it was a mail-order bride business?”
“That’s about it, yes. Only more lethal. The client specifies what he wants, they find a match, and they ship the kid in return for a boatload of hundred dollar bills American. It’s true. They ship American kids out of the United States, and they import foreign kids to the United States. All to satisfy specific tastes in depravity. Most of those kids go through this Chicago operation, which also serves a taste for degeneracy right here in the Windy City. This country isn’t immune from grim perversions, as much as we like to think we’re better than everyone else. We’re not. And that’s true.”
“How could that be done?” I asked. “You can’t snatch a kid off the street and put him on a plane without somebody noticing. In the first place, the kid would probably put up a hell of a fight, at least scream for help. Not to mention the probable absence of passports, visas, even luggage.”
“Are you familiar with the French Consulate? It’s on North Michigan Avenue, between Grant Park and the river?”
“I’ve been there,” I said.
“When you walked through the doors, what country were you in?”
The question threw me for a moment.
“Unless I was teleported to Paris, I was still in the United States.”
Then it dawned on me.
“No, I guess technically I wasn’t.”
Coughlin nodded once, sharply. “As long as you were in the consulate, you were on French soil. It’s true. U.S. authorities have no jurisdiction. They can’t get search warrants. They can’t make arrests. The same is true for vehicles. If they’re attached to the consulate, it’s hands off. Same for airplanes. It’s diplomatic privilege. We have reciprocal agreements with most countries in the world. They don’t mess with our turf, and we don’t mess with theirs. It’s done for the protection of diplomatic missions.”
“Are we actually talking about France, or are you using France as a surrogate for a country you don’t know?”
“I’m sure it isn’t France,” Coughlin said. “That’s just the first place that came to mind. The feds aren’t saying who they’re chasing.”
“So somebody from this foreign country picks up a kid on the street. Once in the vehicle with diplomatic plates, the child is, for all intents and legal purposes, in foreign territory immune from U.S. law enforcement. Then what?”
“Probably sedate the child and drive him or her directly to O’Hare where a jet flying the flag of the abducting country is waiting at a distant hangar, out of sight of anyone but air traffic control, which doesn’t care what’s going on way out there until the plane is ready to taxi. The child is carried aboard the plane, and off it goes to make a delivery. It’s true.”
“That sounds prohibitively expensive,” I said.
“All those hundred-dollar bills I mentioned? There would be enough of them to fill a freight car. And if they�
��re bringing a child into the U.S., they reverse the process. An aircraft from the homeland flies to O’Hare with its human cargo, which is transferred to an official car and delivered to the buyer. The buyer keeps the child as long as he wants, then either ships him back the way he came or disposes of the evidence. It’s true.”
“And you—the feds—think the bodies in Ryan Woods are foreign children brought here to be abused and killed?”
“Maybe, maybe not. Not all the American kids get shipped out. Most, I suspect, stay right here in the Chicago region. There are people who can and will pay the price for custom orders, but not a lot of them. We won’t know nationalities until Tony Donato finishes up his investigations, and they could take a good long time.”
“He was close to getting DNA results on the first body the last time I talked to him,” I said. “Surely he has them by now.”
“I don’t think you understand fully, Ms. Mora. Last you talked to the medical examiner, he had two bodies. He’s now up to seventeen, and counting.”
25
I don’t ever recall feeling such anger and revulsion.
Helplessness, yes. Sadness, of course. Anxiety, way more than my doctor would call heart healthy. But sitting there with Aidan Coughlin, hearing about the senseless and brutal murders of seventeen children, my mind running wild conjuring the horror that led up to their deaths, I wanted to kick something over, hurl heavy objects through windows, restore the death penalty, and inflict it myself.
“And I’ll help you all I can,” Coughlin said. “I don’t want to let this go, either.”
I took two deep breaths and realized some of what I’d heard didn’t compute.
“The first time I talked to Winona, she said if you found out she was helping me, you’d fire her. Now this? Which is the real Aidan Coughlin?”