by Jean Heller
“I-I think so,” he said.
“So look at me, and tell me what happened to Joey.”
The story came out slowly, punctuated with hesitation and more tears.
When the brothers were first assigned to foster care, Charles went to a home in Bronzeville, a community bounded by Interstate 55 on the north, Lake Shore Drive on the east, and Interstate 90 on the west. It stretched south all the way to the tony neighborhood of Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago and a historic example of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style houses. The tony aspects of Hyde Park didn’t bleed north into Bronzeville.
Joey had been sent to a home in Bridgeport on the south side of the South Fork of the Chicago River. Bridgeport sat about half way between Charles’s home and mine.
“That’s how come I was up on your street lots of times,” he said. “I’d go visit Joey, then come up and visit some friends, like you.”
“And how do you know Joey has disappeared?” I said.
“I got word,” he said. “One of the kids at Faulkner had a visit with his mother. His mother knows Joey’s foster mother. Joey’s foster mother told the other mother that Joey went missing. She told her kid. He told me.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked the people at the school to find out what happened. They got pissed off cuz I wasn’t supposed to have contact with people outside, and they were going to punish me until the kid who told me about Joey explained how I knew.”
“What did the people at the school do?”
“Nuthin’. Just nuthin’. They wouldn’t call the po-leece. They wouldn’t call Joey’s foster mother. They didn’t care. They said I was their responsibility, not Joey. That’s when I asked to see you, but they wouldn’t let me until today, after I started screaming and swearing and breaking things.”
“I’m so sorry, Charles. I don’t know what I can do, but I’ll try. I promise.”
I asked him for the address of Joey’s foster home and the names of the people who ran it. He readily agreed.
When Phyllis Metzler came back into the room to collect her charge, I asked if she knew anything more about how Charles learned of his brother’s disappearance.
“I think he’s telling the truth,” she said. “Like prison inmates have grapevines that keep them informed about what’s happening on the outside, these kids have the same sort of system. It’s rather remarkable when you think about it.”
So I asked Charles to behave when he got back to school. I promised I would work on finding Joey and let him know if I made any progress. I looked up at Metzler.
“Ms. Metzler will make sure it’s okay for you to get information about your brother. Won’t you, Ms. Metzler?” It wasn’t a question.
She nodded.
Charles turned and walked out. I had no idea if he actually believed me.
42
Joey had been living in a neat but aging shotgun-style house on South Throop Street across an alley from an auto repair yard. The house, only one room wide, stood four or five rooms long and three stories high. It was a style that became a symbol of poverty in some regions of the country, possibly because the way the rooms lined up made the dwellings suitable for multiple families cramming themselves together to save rent money.
The house I came to visit was in moderately good repair, though tricycles, small bicycles, toy baby trams, and other paraphernalia of young children littered the yard. I stepped up on the concrete stoop and rang the bell. I heard children yelling inside, apparently trying to alert an adult that someone was at the door.
A few seconds later a Hispanic woman who appeared to be in her 40s, opened the door as she balanced an infant on one hip. She looked at me with suspicion.
“Are you Mrs. Ramirez?” I asked.
“Who’re you?” she said.
I introduced myself and added, “I’m here looking for a boy named Joey, a foster child who lived at this address for the last few years. Is he here?”
“No here,” she said. “He disappear las’ week. I report him missing.”
“Where did you make the report, Mrs. Ramirez? Who did you call?”
“Child services. They ask me where he goes. How do I know where he goes? If I know where he goes, he wouldn’t be missing. Maybe to live with his older brother.”
“No,” I said. “He’s not with his older brother.” I realized then I didn’t know Charles’s and Joey’s last names. I asked Mrs. Ramirez.
“Joey’s las’ name is Russell,” she said. But is not the same as his brother. Different fathers I thin’. Don’ know the brother’s name, just that he came ‘round sometimes to visit.”
“Has Joey ever run away before?”
She shook her head. “No. He always come right home after school. He is no problems. Good boy.”
“Do you have a photograph of him?” I asked. “A picture?”
She thought about it a moment, then she smiled. “Ah, si,” she said. “You wait.” She closed the front door and disappeared for no more than a minute. When she returned, she had a photo in her hand. “Las’ summer,” she said. “Cuatro de Julio.” The Fourth of July.
The boy in the photo was captivated by a sparkler in his hand. An adult hand was wrapped over the child’s, probably to ensure Joey didn’t draw the stick too close to his face. He didn’t look like Charles, but he had a sweet face too. His skin was lighter. I wondered if perhaps Joey’s father had been Caucasian.
“May I borrow this?” I asked. “I promise to bring it back.”
“Si, okay,” she said.
I handed her my card. “Would you call me if you hear from him?”
“Okay, si,” she said. “I hope he okay.”
As she started to close the door, at least five children ranging in age from maybe four to nine started vying for her attention. It wasn’t a glimpse of foster care that gave me a great deal of assurance I had the patience for it.
When I was settled back in my car, I called Aidan Coughlin at DCFS.
“Hey, Deuce,” Coughlin said. “What’s up?”
I told him about Joey.
“Any chance you’ve got any information on him?”
“It doesn’t sound familiar,” he said. “It was ‘Joey Russell?’ Joey, as in Joseph?”
“Not sure,” I said. “I presume so.”
“Can you hold, or should I call you back?”
“I’ll hold,” I told him.
It was more than ten minutes until Coughlin returned to the phone.
“Sorry it took so long,” he said. “We have a record of the foster family reporting him missing. The case is under active investigation. Since he’s never run away or been reported missing for any reason in the past, I’m going to red-flag this to create some urgency. Under current circumstances, I think we need to give cases like this one special attention. If we were dealing with a chronic runaway, it wouldn’t be so ominous. But I don’t like this at all. Thanks for the push.”
Coughlin said he would stay in touch and call if he learned anything.
I was still sitting in the car in front of the Bridgeport house when a phone rang in my messenger bag. It wasn’t my regular ringtone, so it had to be my latest burner phone. Only two people had that number, my air traffic controller friend, Gina Brodsky, and former FBI agent Carl Cribben.
It was Cribben.
“What’s new?” he asked without introducing himself.
“I’m trying to find a missing child,” I said. “Naturally, my mind is taking me all sorts of places I don’t want to go.”
“Is there a police report on him, or her?”
“Him. I don’t know about a police report, but the foster mother did report him missing to DCFS. They’re on it.”
“What makes you think this child was snatched up?”
“He’s never run away before.”
“Yeah,” Cribben said, “that’s not a good sign.”
“Anything new at your end?”
“You found the s
tory about the visitors from abroad?” Cribben asked.
“I did. Thanks for the tip.”
“Flight into the U.S. is confirmed for May 9.”
“Any clue when they’re coming on to Chicago?”
“May 11.”
“Really?” I was thrilled to get the date to give to Gina.
“Unless they have a change of plans. If I hear of a change, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks again,” I said.
“Good luck finding that child before those bastards do.”
I sat down at home that evening with my two lists again, the “Worst List” that Winona Jackson had given me, and the list of foster homes in which the identified dead in Ryan Woods had last lived. How could none of them match up? If bodies were being buried in Ryan Woods, they had to come from a location fairly close by.
I’d come to that conclusion weeks ago. Nobody would risk driving farther than necessary with a dead body in the trunk. If the children had been killed on the North Side, the bodies would have been disposed of on the North Side. Or even north of the city limits, in the Evanston area, or Skokie. There was plenty of forest up there more remote than Ryan Woods.
I had another thought. I assumed all along that the dead children were killed inside one or more foster homes. But there was no reason to believe that. It wasn’t logical. There would be too many potential witnesses. The children might have lived in foster care, but like Joey Russell, they had disappeared from those facilities. Then they died. It made more sense that they were abused and killed in some facility set up as a theater of horrors for the sick amusement of pedophiles.
And after that idea, I had another.
And then another.
And together, they sent me to my computer to do some research. The computer had been swept and cleared of bugs, and it hadn’t been out of my sight since. At this point if the NSA was still looking over my shoulder, I couldn’t have cared less.
I stuck my tongue out at the screen, in case they were still watching.
43
With dawn breaking outside my bedroom windows there was no reason to try to sleep. I had spent the night rolling my theory around a mental track, trying to trip it up. In the harsh light of day, some theories reveal flaws that had remained hidden in the dark, and those flaws reach out and slap you upside the head. Not this time. Morning told me my theory still had legs.
It was 8:20 a.m. when I got to my desk. The newsroom was virtually empty. I looked up the number for the State Department in Washington, D.C. It was 9:20 on the East Coast. The person I needed had probably been at his desk for an hour.
When I got the operator, I asked to speak to Zack Harrison, the press officer on the Middle East Desk. I told her it was a newspaper inquiry. She put me through, which I took as a good sign. The man who answered the phone definitely was not the Zack Harrison I’d spoken to the last time I called. His name probably wasn’t Zack Harrison at all. His accent was distinctly Arabic.
I identified myself and asked for Harrison.
“I’m sorry, he’s on the phone at the moment,” the man said. “Perhaps I can help you. I’m the assistant press officer for the Middle East Desk.”
“Maybe you could,” I said. “But I started this inquiry with Mr. Harrison, and no offense to you, I’d like to keep the continuity.”
“No problem,” the assistant said. “I think he’s almost finished with his call. I didn’t catch your name. I’m sorry.”
I told him, and he put me on hold.
Again, there was no music. I wondered what the State Department had against tunes. The least they could have done was play a little Prince in honor of the artist who had recently died. A few bars of “Purple Rain” would have been a nice way to start the day.
“Good morning, Ms. Mora,” the familiar voice said. “How can I help you?”
“When did we get so formal?” I asked. I didn’t wait for an answer. “Are there any official Saudi offices in Chicago? I looked on the Internet. It’s kind of confusing.”
“Hmmm, I don’t believe so,” Harrison said. “Let me double check that.”
I went to hold again. Again, no music.
Harrison was back in less than a minute.
“No offices, no,” he said. “There used to be a mission of some sort, but the Saudis closed it. I think they moved it to Houston.”
“Closer to the oil,” I said.
“That’s your assumption,” Harrison said. “It might be a bit simplistic since the Saudis really don’t need to be close to American oil. They have plenty of their own.”
“Not for nothing,” I said, “but I was joking. The bottom line is that the Saudis have no official representation in Chicago.”
“Right. New York, Houston, Los Angeles and, of course, the embassy in D.C. That’s it. May I ask why it matters?”
“You may ask, but I can’t answer. Thank you. I’ll give the Mag Mile your best.”
Okay, this was not a setback. In a way, it was helpful.
If the traffickers had nowhere official to commit their crimes, it would make them easier to deal with when the time came. If they operated out of a consulate or other Saudi government facility, American authorities would have no jurisdiction to enter and search. If they operated on private property, they were vulnerable.
So my next step was to find property in Chicago owned by Saudis.
I knew the Cook County Treasurer couldn’t track property owners by nationality. But they could track them by name. I needed names.
I knocked on Eric Ryland’s open door.
“Hey, Deuce,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I need some help,” I said. I brought him up to speed.
“So what do you need?”
“I need the Washington bureau to ask the White House for the identities of all the people in the visiting Saudi contingent and their titles. The Saudis didn’t release the names of the delegation members, and the State Department already turned me down. Since the delegation is visiting the White House, the White House will definitely know who they are.”
“I’m sure members of the royal family travel with significant staff.”
“Let’s try for the names of everyone on that plane,” I said. “Trimming the list to the official delegation can be our fallback position.”
Ryland nodded. “We can only try.”
The following day, Friday, the White House press office promised an answer.
We got it early that very afternoon.
There were eighteen names on the list.
“This doesn’t include everyone on the plane,” Ryland said when he handed me the printout. “But it’s everyone important. All the members of the official party are there—seven of them, all highlighted. The other eleven are top staff and security. These eighteen are the ones who will be at the White House.”
“Any others are, what, trusted personal servants?”
“Or family members, though I can’t feature an Arab prince on a mission like this bringing his wife along.”
I had to jump on it. There was only one more week until the Saudis were scheduled to land in Washington and be in Chicago two days later.
I called my air traffic controller buddy, Gina Brodsky, and gave her the information about the Saudi arrival. She said she would be working the day shift the following week, the airport’s busiest time, but she would keep an eye out for the flight and tip off the other shift supervisors to let her know if the plane showed up on their watches.
“It’s possible,” she said, “they’ll come in during off hours when there’s less chance of getting caught in a holding pattern.”
I thanked her, but what I thought was, “too many ifs.”
My list of Arab names set off alarms in the Cook County Recorder of Deeds office. Because it was Friday, I needed to hurry because I wanted this search before government offices closed for the weekend.
The office was government boring and colorless, with rows of plastic seats designed to give you
a serious case of numb butt before your number was called.
The little tab of pink paper in my hand said I was No. 67. When that number finally came up, I was almost too stiff to stand.
The clerk wanted nothing to do with me. She didn’t even listen to my request. As soon as she saw my list of names, she said she needed to call her boss.
His name was Luca Petrilli, and he was none too thrilled with all the Arabic names, either. He looked at the list, then at me, as if trying to see into my brain.
“Look,” I said, “is there somewhere we could talk privately?”
He nodded once and motioned me behind the counter with a jerk of his head.
We sat in his small, colorless, windowless office with the door closed, though I wasn’t sure why. I introduced myself, and his face softened a little in recognition.
“I thought you looked familiar,” he said. “So, what? This is a news story?”
“It is, yes.”
“Are these guys terrorists?”
“Not of the type you’re thinking,” I said.
He nodded. “Okay then. Whatcha need?”
I told him.
“You wanna run each of these guys to see if they own any property in Cook County, right? Commercial or residential?”
“Either,” I said. “Both.”
“Big job,” he said, “but easier than if their names were Bob Smith. But ya know, a lotta Arabs buy vacation homes here, mostly condos on the Gold Coast. I guess they like to get away from the desert in the summer, ya know?”
“Wouldn’t you?” I said with a smile.
“I’d rather get away from the snow in the winter,” he said. “But not to the Middle East. Florida, maybe. Arizona. But whatta you gonna do?”
He assigned a clerk to help me. Even with eighteen names he didn’t think it would take long.
It didn’t.
Two of the names struck gold.