The Hunting Ground (Deuce Mora Mystery Series Book 2)

by Jean Heller

  39

  I awoke Monday morning to gray skies spitting rain onto my city where the temperature was forecast to rise to about sixty degrees, fairly normal for the middle of April. It was the eighteenth, income tax day for many people who, by the grace of a well-placed weekend, had been granted an extra three days to finish their returns.

  I was mulling over why people procrastinated, forcing them to call in sick in order to stay home and fill out their tax forms, correctly or incorrectly, and get them postmarked by the midnight deadline. Thanks to my father’s obsessive-compulsive attitude about taxes, I learned to prepare all I could in the quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. When my tax statements from work, from my broker, and from my bank drifted in at the end of January, I was ready to drop everything in my CPA’s lap.

  I think I was stewing over this so I wouldn’t have to stew over the slow progress of the Ryan Woods investigation.

  With all this stewing going on, it took me a few minutes to detect the undercurrent of apprehension dancing like electricity around the newsroom. I found it worrisome. Had the day finally come when the Journal’s management would announce the newspaper’s bankruptcy? I didn’t think so. The tension was more like upbeat expectation than dread.

  As I walked past the copy desk area, one of my friends stopped me with a question that startled me.

  “You ready, Deuce?” Pete Serrano asked.

  I frowned at him. “For what?”

  And then it hit me. “Oh, that. You’re going to laugh at me, Pete, but I totally forgot that today’s the day.”

  He laughed right on cue. “Most people don’t forget Pulitzer day when they’re an odds-on favorite to win. But with you, yeah, I guess I can believe it. To give you a heads-up. Eric Ryland’s been walking around with a shit-eating grin on his face. As you know much better than I, shit-eating grins aren’t his default expression.”

  “You think he has inside information?”

  “I’ve heard most winning organizations get an early alert,” Pete said. “Gives ‘em time to get the Champagne on ice.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  The prizes would be announced at 3 p.m. eastern time, which was 2 p.m. in Chicago. I almost wished I could find an excuse to be out of the building for a late lunch at the witching hour. Ryland would want to kill me if I pulled a stunt like that, but he had tried before. I always managed to get away with my life.

  It was after 10 a.m. when I reached my desk. I fully expected the next four hours to pass with all the speed of glue trying to flow down a concrete sidewalk in the middle of February. And they did.

  The news flashed in on the Associated Press wire at 2:02 p.m.

  I remember the time because someone printed out the first bulletin and saved it for me. But I already knew, and everyone in the newsroom already knew, that the Colangelo story had won the Public Service Pulitzer. Even before it became official, Eric Ryland was standing on a coffee table in a conference part of the newsroom we referred to as “the rec room” because it had several comfortable sofas and a half dozen armchairs surrounding three big flat-screen TVs. It was a perfect place to watch world events unfold or the Chicago Cubs win another baseball series.

  Ryland was surrounded by the paper’s top editors. Tables were being set up to accommodate the bubbly and, very likely, a big cake. I stayed at my desk and tried to keep my head down.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ryland step off the table and stride toward me. When he got to my desk, he leaned over the low partition surrounding it.

  “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, Ms. Mora,” he said, “your presence is requested in the rec room for an important announcement.”

  I looked up at him.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “Your name is no longer Deuce Mora. You will, forever more, be known as Pulitzer Prize Winner Deuce Mora. Get used to it.”

  “They notified you early?”

  “First thing this morning, yeah.” He grinned again. “And now I’m going to tell you something that nobody else in this building will tell you today.”

  “What’s that?” I honestly couldn’t think what it might be.

  “You’re getting a very nice raise,” he said. “And you earned it.”

  40

  The rest of Monday evaporated in a Champagne-and-sugar haze dotted with phone calls from well-wishers and friends. I even had to sit for a 35-minute interview with a reporter from my own newspaper and a photographer I threatened with mayhem if he made me look bad.

  Mark called, of course. He wanted to take me out for a celebratory dinner. But his restaurant of choice, Rick Bayless’s incomparable Topolobampo, was closed on Mondays. We postponed until Tuesday when he had, by some miracle, been able to get a reservation.

  That was for the best because the paper was throwing a party for me that night at Rosebud Prime, a few blocks from our building, and it would have been unseemly for me to excuse myself because I had other plans. I asked Mark if he would go with me, and he was only too eager to say yes.

  I wondered how it was that a newspaper that had laid off or bought out so many people had the wherewithal to give me a raise and throw me a party at an expensive restaurant. I wanted to ask, but I decided that would sound both rude and ungrateful. So for once in my life, I forced myself to swallow my curiosity.

  Tuesday dawned uneventful except for the pounding in my head generated by the quantity of wine I consumed at the party the night before. Wine hangovers are the worst. I had fully rehydrated myself by the time I got to work and wasn’t feeling half horrible though I saw a few colleagues who were going to need more time to get back to form. Eric Ryland saw me and wandered over, that grin still bisecting his usually scowly face.

  “Have fun last night?” he asked.

  “I did, I think,” I said. “What I remember of it. It was very nice of the paper to do that. Thank you.”

  “Well, now it’s time to go back to work. They found two more bodies.”

  The new skeletal remains, like the previous few, were located outside the original search perimeter. They brought the body count to twenty-five. Tony Donato said the new victims had been in the ground a long time and probably were among the first to be buried in the refuge. DNA samples were taken from both, but no foreign DNA was found on either. Another of the original bodies was positively identified, realizing another family’s worst fears, closing the book on another life ended way too early.

  I wrote a long story on what was known about each of the twenty-five, their identities if we knew them, their ages, the dates they disappeared, the cause of death, and the manner of death. In a few cases the children were so severely injured Donato was unable to determine which individual injury or combination of injuries caused death. Our art department did a half-page graphic depicting where each body was found. It was good reference material, but otherwise of only prurient, voyeuristic interest. We also ran photos of the children obtained from their families.

  At my suggestion, Eric Ryland called our Washington bureau chief and asked if he could get the State Department to release an itinerary for the Saudis. The answer came back quickly. Beyond the diplomatic courtesy call at the White House, the trip was private and the destination or destinations were not released. Our State Department correspondent tried to get someone to say if there would be a stop in Chicago, but his question was rebuffed.

  I kept going back to Winona Jackson’s list of the worst foster facilities in the city. As the identity of each of the Ryan Woods victims was made public, I got the child’s file from Aidan Coughlin. I checked each name to see if the child had ever been assigned to one of the foster facilities on Jackson’s list. Not a single one matched up. I was about ready to conclude the whole exercise had been for nothing.

  That often happens during investigations. A dozen leads produce a dozen dead ends. There is only one right answer. I just hadn’t found it yet.

  As April wound toward May and the Saudis’ arrival in Washington, I bega
n to wonder if they would slip through our fingers as the twenty-five dead children had slipped from their lives. If Gina Brodsky forgot to keep watch for the Saudi’s flight plan or didn’t remember to alert me until the plane landed, I would never get to O’Hare in time to follow the visitors to their destinations. When I got the exact date of their trip to Chicago, I’d call and remind her. O’Hare is the second busiest airport in the United States. If things got more hectic than usual on the day the Saudis arrived, Gina probably wouldn’t have time to keep tabs on one flight.

  There also was a chance the plane would come in on somebody else’s shift, in which case all my preparation would nosedive right into the toilet.

  To be on the safe side, I would have to drive to O’Hare and scout for places to park my Explorer where I could get a reasonable overview of the hangar area. Thus prepared, and if luck was on my side, I might see the big jet when it taxied to its assigned spot.

  The parking I chose would have to be near the hangars but outside the airport perimeter, or the airport police would chase me away. If I couldn’t find a good overview of the hangar area, I would find the guarded gate through which the limos likely would pass when they arrived at O’Hare to meet the plane.

  If none of this worked, we were screwed.

  I felt crummy.

  I knew I hadn’t been eating right.

  I wasn’t running more than once a week.

  And then there was all that red wine Monday evening.

  My body told me I was mistreating it.

  So for dinner I made myself a forty-ounce combination of fresh organic fruit and vegetable juice: kale, collards, celery, cucumber, curly parsley, lemon, apples, pears, and ginger. It was a lot of prep, but my big juicer ground through it in no time, producing a substantial pitcher of concentrated nutrients. I would drink about half of it tonight and have the rest for breakfast the next day.

  I cleaned up quickly, freezing the pulp to make a rich vegetable stock later. I carried a big jar to my sofa, turned on some music, and tried to relax.

  As I felt the smooth, sweet juice slide down my throat, I almost thought I could feel my body sighing happily as the nutrients did their work restoring my system’s balance.

  I once went on a fast for ten days, consuming nothing but a wide variety of these juices. I’d never felt as good in my life. I needed to do it more often.

  I was so focused on the juice that everything else drifted out of mind. As I pondered starting a new juice fast, something else started scratching at my brain.

  Sometimes, when you’ve been working hard to solve a problem and making no headway, turning your attention to something else for a while can clear your idea pathways. That was happening to me as I sipped juice.

  I had the jar to my lips when bricks started falling from the wall that had separated me from progress on the Ryan Woods murders. Bricks tumbled one by one, then in twos and threes. I sat still. I was afraid if I moved the wall would stop crumbling or worse, start putting itself back together. Eventually, when I got the first wide glimpse through the hole, it was the end of my relaxation.

  My flash idea involved property tax records.

  It struck me as odd that none of the bodies recovered from Ryan Woods were children who had been living in the worst foster facilities in the city as defined by the list Winona Jackson provided.

  I carried my juice to my desk and opened my computer. Sixteen of the twenty-five bodies had been identified. I had the addresses where the children lived when they vanished. I had assumed that if the children lived with their natural parents or with foster families, the names of those families would be the same as the names of the owners of the property. In retrospect, with my new view through the hole in my brick wall, that seemed an ill-founded assumption.

  The only way to identify the actual property owners was through property tax records. And thanks to the fact that I was living in Chicago, all property tax records and deed filings were public information.

  Could it be this easy?

  41

  I assembled and printed out a list of the addresses where the sixteen identified Ryan Woods victims had lived when they disappeared. My first stop would be the Cook County Treasurer’s Office to match up the addresses with the fourteen-digit index numbers attached to each property.

  Then I would head over to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, and they would pull all the information they had on the identity of the property owners.

  It was easy, yes. But fruitful? No.

  At the end of a wasted morning none of the names of the property owners was familiar. None read, “Prince Ali bin Child Abuser of Riyadh.” Frankly, the outcome left me feeling naïve for believing in miracles in the first place. But nothing ventured, as they say, whoever “they” are. Obviously, “they” didn’t know squat.

  I was finishing up a column when the phone rang. What I heard on the phone broke my heart.

  “Ms. Mora, this is Phyllis Metzger from Juvenile Court.”

  I felt my heart rate climb. “What’s wrong now?”

  “The young man who broke into your house, we’re having a bit of trouble with him.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “Something has happened to him. We’re not sure what it is, but he is inconsolable. He won’t talk about it. He won’t settle down. He’s creating havoc, or trying to. The director of Faulkner tells me the boy has barricaded himself in his room, but they can hear him crying on the other side of the door, so they don’t think this is an act. He insists he won’t talk to anyone but you.”

  “I’ll meet him anywhere.”

  “Could you come over to the Juvenile Courts building? We could use a conference room there, if it’s okay with you.”

  “Where in the building and when?” I asked.

  An hour later I was in the appointed conference room. I was nearly forty-five minutes early. I had to wait somewhere, so it might as well be here.

  I was pacing at a clip that would have made the trainer at my gym proud.

  But despite my elevated heart rate I wasn’t going for a cardio workout. I was on an apprehension high over what might have happened to Charles, how badly he’d been hurt, and what I could do about it. For starters, I could get him out of that school and take him home with me. Maybe I couldn’t and shouldn’t adopt him, but I could foster him in an environment where he would be safe.

  Would that mean another showdown with Mark? I desperately hoped not.

  Why was life so complicated?

  I was dealing with rising anxiety on several levels when the door opened and Charles walked in ahead of Phyllis Metzler. I barely noticed her. All I could see was Charles, no longer looking like a young man but more like a little boy, emotionally beaten down and broken. When he looked up and saw me, the floodgates opened.

  He ran across the room and into my arms, clinging as if he was struggling to keep from downing in a riptide. He buried his head in my shoulder and sobbed.

  I looked up at Metzler. “Could we have the room, please?”

  She glanced around as if to make sure there was no way either or both of us could escape and nodded. She closed the door behind her. I was certain she would be listening to every word from the other side.

  I sat down, half carrying Charles with me. I let him hold on until his anguish subsided, reminding myself that he was still a little boy and whatever was bothering him might not be as horrible as his distress level indicated. I would wait for him to tell me in his own good time.

  While I kept my left arm around his back, I used my right hand to massage his neck and shoulders. The muscles there felt as hard as baseballs. Finally, the sobbing subsided to sniffles. Charles mumbled into my shoulder.

  I pushed him back a little, very gently.

  “What did you say?” I asked. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “J-J-J-J-Joey’s g-g-gone.”

  “Who’s Joey?” I felt guilty, as if I should have known the answer.

  “M-M-My little brother,
” Charles said. “I tole you. He was inna foster home, too, but a different one from me.”

  “I remember,” I said. “But I don’t think you ever told me his name.”

  Charles pushed on as if I’d said nothing.

  “You gotta find him, Deuce. He could be in bad trouble.”

  I knew exactly how bad it could be, but I wasn’t going to heap that on the shoulders of a nine-year-old.

  “Can you sit down and tell me the whole story, from the beginning?”

  He backed up until his legs hit a chair. He lifted himself onto the seat so he was sitting sidesaddle, his legs dangling. He folded his hands in his lap and stared at them. He wouldn’t lift his head.

  “Charles, can you look at me?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  Silence.

  “Why won’t you look at me?” I asked again.

  “I got no right,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Nobody. I just know.”

  “Come on,” I said. “That’s not a thing you just know. It isn’t even true.”

  “Yes, it is,” he said. “One of my teachers at the school said if you wanna be able to stand up and look other people straight in the eyes, you gotta earn their trust and respect. I ain’t done nothin’ to earn no trust and respect from you.”

  I felt tears burning behind my eyes. This kid’s head was a mess, but I did like the sound of what they were teaching him at Faulkner.

  “Charles, trust and respect are mine to give or withhold. You had both before you broke into my house. When I found you hiding in the bathroom, you lost them. But then when you didn’t fight me, when you didn’t lie to the police, when you agreed to go to the special school, you began to earn my trust and respect again. And in all that, I never stopped loving you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”