I thought about what an odd pairing Ida and Jordan were. They were so different––from their appearance to life experience––but what they shared, loss and need and tragedy, bound them in ways that were far more profound than their deepest differences.
“Making any headway on what happened to my LaMarcus?” Ida asked at last.
I nodded. “Some. Yes, ma’am.”
“He’s got some questions I couldn’t answer,” Jordan said.
“If now’s not a good time . . .” I began.
“Now is fine,” Ida said. “There is no good time.”
I nodded, but still didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Can we start with LaMarcus’s dad?” I said eventually.
“Anthony is an immature, self-centered drug addict,” she said. “He’s no killer. And he wouldn’t kill his own son. No way. I couldn’t believe that in a million years.”
“Okay,” I said. “But addicts don’t think straight. And their minds are often altered. And they do more damage by accident than most people do on purpose.”
“We both know a thing or two about that,” Jordan said.
Ida nodded. “We do. And you might be right. But . . . I just . . . can’t believe he could kill his own . . . son . . . no matter what kind of state he was in.”
The quality of her voice was changing. A tightness and slight tremor at its edges let me know she found the discussion upsetting.
“How often did he come around?” I asked.
“Not a lot. It’d sort of go in cycles. He’d come by a few times kind of close to each other, then we wouldn’t see him for months.”
“How comfortable was LaMarcus with him?”
“Okay . . . not super.”
“Would LaMarcus have gone with him?”
“Depends when and where, but he wouldn’t go far.”
He didn’t go far, I thought.
“Did he ever take him anywhere––with or without your permission?”
“A few times. When I was sure he was clean and sober. He took him to the mall. Playground. Ball game.”
Her hands were beginning to shake a bit and the look of distress on her face was incrementally intensifying but I pressed forward.
“Ever take him or try to take him without your permission or pre-approval?”
She nodded. “One time. Said I was ruining his son, making him soft and girly. Said it took a man to raise a man and he was gonna take him and raise him up right.”
I nodded and thought about it.
“You ready for some dessert?” Jordan asked. “We have bread pudding and ice cream.”
“It sounds great but I’m so full, I––”
“You can take some home with you,” Ida said.
“Thank you.”
“You’re not leaving now, are you?” Jordan said.
I shook my head. “I’ve got a few more questions,” I said. “About Carlton Fields and the little hideout LaMarcus had.”
“Can we . . . Would you mind if we wait on them?” Ida said. “I’m not sure I can handle any more at the moment. Talkin’ about Anthony’s stirred up some stuff, and I can only talk or think about what happened to LaMarcus a little at a time.”
“Grief’s a strange thing,” Jordan said. “Sneaks up on you. You’re fine one moment and not the next. You can handle things that should make you fall apart, and be reduced to a puddle by the smallest, seemingly most insignificant things.”
I nodded.
Ida had gone to bed. Jordan and I were standing next to each other at the sink, washing and drying the dishes, our bodies touching at the side, our hands grazing as we passed plates and pots and glasses.
“She’s so strong,” Jordan said. “Can handle anything and then . . . she reaches her limit and has to shut down for a while.”
“Is it the same for you?” I asked.
She hesitated, starting to say something, stopping, sighing, starting again. “Honestly, I stay more shutdown most of the time. I’ve had to. Or thought I did. To survive . . . to keep . . . functioning . . . on some level.”
I reached down, plunging into the soapy dishwater, and took her tiny hand in mine and just held it.
And held it.
We stayed that way for a while, neither of us doing anything else but breathing.
“We’re so damaged,” she said. “I’m so damaged.”
I didn’t say anything. Just listened. Just held her hand.
That’s it, I thought. That’s what I’m called to do––help people damaged by violent crime, salve the suffering of the living while searching for some kind of justice for the dead. As both a minister and an investigator I’d be in a unique position to do both.
“But . . .” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Since you’ve come around . . .”
She left if out there a long moment. I waited.
“I’ve been less shutdown . . . and . . . sometimes . . . like now . . . I’m not shutdown at all.”
That night I dreamt of Jordan.
Jordan standing in the backyard, a dark, depraved figure tearing out of the woods, racing toward her, snatching her, dragging her back by her sun-streaked hair into the thicket, me stuck in the house, unable to save her.
Little LaMarcus playing in the backyard, unaware of the simian creature careening toward him. Jordan dashing toward him, reaching, grasping, just missing.
Jordan holding a swaddled Savannah, kissing her cheek, smelling her skin, singing her the sweetest song I’d ever heard. Wayne Williams slithering up behind her, snatching Savannah from her, darting away. Jordan pleading with me to do something. Me unable to do anything.
In a car. Jordan in the passenger seat beside me. Savannah in a carseat in the back between LaMarcus on one side and Martin Fisher on the other. Family trip. Happiness. Jordan’s bare feet on the dashboard, sun-kissed toes. Larry plowing out of a side road in a pickup, T-boning the car, sending it spinning down a deep ravine. Falling. Screaming. Crashing. Dismemberment. Death. Despair.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Dis some kinda school project?” Anthony Williams asked.
I nodded and smiled and made a mental note to try to age myself some. “How’d you know?”
“Why else a white boy be aksin’?”
It had taken several days, but I had finally tracked down LaMarcus’s dad at a huge apartment complex off Memorial Drive where he was doing day labor for a turnkey company.
He was a narrow-framed, emaciated man with very dark skin, a permanently and deeply furrowed forehead, and a wide, flat nose, below which was a black-beginning-to-gray mustache in need of trimming.
Every cell of his moist skin shined with a greasy sheen.
The apartment he was working on was hot and had the lingering stench of rotting potatoes and urine, but it was no match for the odor emanating from Anthony Williams himself.
He was patching a much marred and pockmarked sheetrock wall, the sweat pouring from him stinking of cheap booze, junk food, cigarettes, and drugs cut with something truly rancid.
The toxic body odor wafting off him stung my eyes and made me breathe very shallowly, but when he lifted his arm to reach the spots above his head it was unbearable.
“You know you’s the first person to ever talk to me about what happened to my boy.”
I shook my head.
“Po-lice aksed questions, but nobody else ever even mentioned it.”
I wondered if anyone in his life even knew he had a son.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“Whatcha needs to know?”
Since he thought he was helping me with a school report I had to choose my first question carefully.
“Do you think Wayne Williams was responsible for what happened to your son?”
He shook his head. “That pudgy nigger ain’t killed nobody. My kid or anybody else. He’s framed. Ain’t no killa of any kind. They just needed a fall guy.”
“They?”
“Cops, mayor, business owners. White people what run this town. Didn’t care if the real killer keep killin’ little black boys. Long as they got everybody thinkin’ it over.”
“Do you have any idea who killed LaMarcus?”
“Oh, it was the same killer killed those other youngins. Just wasn’t Wayne Williams.”
“Any idea who it was?”
“Don’t think we’ll ever know. Powers that be don’t want us to.”
“When was the last time you saw LaMarcus before he died?”
“It had been a while. Crazy ex old lady never let me see him much.”
“Why’s that?”
“She crazy. I mean really bat shit bonkers, man. But mostly ’cause I broke her heart.
She’s gettin’ back at me through the kid. Keepin’ him from me. Hell, punished the kid more’n me. But . . . women . . . you know?”
I nodded as if I knew.
He shook his head. “The way she treated that boy . . . like . . . he made of china or somethin’. Never let him do anythin' never let him have no fun. Made him weak and frail and . . . and then she go and marry a white man and try to make him white. No offense. Nothin’ wrong with bein’ white if you white but . . . notice she ain’t tried to turn that white girl black.”
“Did you try to stop her?” I asked. “Try to take him? Make a man out of him?”
He nodded. “Take a man to raise a man, I always say. Yeah. You get it. Yeah, I tried. Talked to him. Tried to get him to see, but he . . . she had . . . I tried to just, you know, take him with me without her knowin’, but he was too far gone. Bitch had already ruined him.”
“How’d you do it?” I asked. “With her watchin’ him all the time the way she did, with her always smothering him . . . It’d be impossible.”
“Wait ’til you’re older, ’til you have kids. Nothin’ you won’t do for ’em, man. Nothin’.”
“But how?” I said. “I don’t see how it could be done.”
“That’s ’cause you not streetwise, young brother,” he said.
“I guess so,” I said. “It’s just . . . I talked to her and I see what you’re sayin’ about how she is and the way she was over him . . . I’ve seen her old house, her yard . . . I just don’t think it could be done. I can see why you didn’t do it.”
“You gots no imagination,” he said. “There’s nothin’ to it. See the boy playin’ in the back. Knock on the front door then run around to the back.”
“But what if the girl goes to the door and his mama stays and keeps watchin’ or his mama goes and the girl keeps watchin’?”
He shrugged.
“Duck under the windows where they can’t see you,” he said. “Call the boy over to you.”
I nodded. “You’re right,” I said. “Wow. Ingenious.”
He smiled.
“But what if she’s got him so brainwashed he won’t go?” I said. “What then? How could you save him from her like only a father can if he won’t go?”
“You do anything to save your son,” he said. “Give him somethin’ if you have to.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Something like chloral hydrate?”
“What?”
“Cough syrup.”
He nodded and shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. Anything like that.”
“Anything for your son,” I said.
“Anything,” he said, nodding even more defiantly. “Anything at all.”
Chapter Twenty-six
I spent nearly all my free time over the next several days searching for a couple of subcontractors. When I wasn’t in class or working or studying or visiting or spending time with Martin, I was looking for Raymond Pelton and Vincent Storr.
I had very little time, no resources, and really didn’t know what I was doing. And it showed. For all my efforts, such as they were, I had exactly nothing.
I had nothing and I didn’t know what else to do. Except ask for help.
I called Bobby Battle at home.
It was late to be calling, nearly ten, but I wasn’t sure when I’d have another chance and the truth was I didn’t want to wait.
“Hello?”
A female voice that didn’t sound sleepy or irritated.
“May I speak with Bobby, please?”
“May I tell him who’s calling?”
“John Jordan.”
“One minute.”
“John?” Bobby said.
“Sorry to call so late.”
“It’s early around here,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I was calling to see . . . I’m having a hard time finding Pelton and Storr.”
“Good.”
“I was wondering if you could help me.”
“With what?”
“Finding them.”
“For what?”
He wasn’t making this easy.
“So I can talk to them.”
“Listen,” he said. “Let me tell you something. The last thing you need to do is go anywhere near them. Understand?”
“No, I don’t guess I do. I thought that was the whole idea.”
“Look, talking about the case, even talking to the family, is one thing, but these are real bad men. There’s no good outcome here. Best case . . . they tell you to go fuck yourself because you’re a kid with no authority or jurisdiction of any kind. Worst case . . . they hurt or kill you.”
“I’m not . . . I wasn’t just gonna . . .”
“Tell you what, you let us handle guys like Pelton and Storr. Last thing you need to be going up against are career criminals like them. You had some good ideas at the crime scene. Morgan was right about you. You got a knack for certain aspects of detection, but theory is one thing, law enforcement is another.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I ain’t tryin’ to hurt your feelin’s. I’m tryin’ to save your life. You know how many cases I’m working right now? You know how many involve violent death? These people don’t play. They will chew you up and spit you out. I got all these cases, but let me just tell you about one of them. This violent serial rapist motherfucker. He attacks this young girl, about your age, Brittany Ann. He beats her into submission and tries to rape her. When he can’t get it up, he rapes her with a hammer. A hammer. But he doesn’t kill her. That’s a relief, right? He tells her she can go. When she stands to leave, he throws her down on her face this time and rapes her in the ass with the same hammer. What would a civilian say or do to a man like that? I’d like to know.”
After hanging up the phone with Battle, I headed straight for the bottle of vodka I had hidden in the suitcase in my closet.
No orange or pineapple or cranberry juice. Just straight vodka from the bottle and keep it comin’.
I had been dismissed, belittled, treated like . . . what I was.
I was angry and frustrated, ready to burn something down––and mostly because he was right.
Who the hell was I? What could I do?
I drank myself to a point just shy of oblivion and then I passed out on top of my made bed fully clothed.
I slept. I dreamt.
Children. Sleeping. Dead.
They all looked so peaceful, so sweet in gentle, innocent repose, but they were all sleeping Shakespeare’s sleep of death.
To die, to sleep—
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ’Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come.
When I woke, I called Frank Morgan.
“Good morning, sunshine,” he said.
I mumbled some incoherent response.
“Up all night praying?”
“I had a thought.”
“Well, hold it. I checked the pattern cases’ victims on and off the list as best I could and there’s no indication any were dru
gged with that chloral hydrate stuff and none were raped after death.”
“So LaMarcus doesn’t fit in the ACM pattern,” I said. “We expected that. But what if he’s part of a different series? That’s what I dreamt last night. A series of similar victims––children all appearing to be asleep but really dead, killed by the same guy who killed and raped LaMarcus.”
“That’ll take a lot longer to find out and I’ll need to call in some favors for help searching the files, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Frank.”
We were quiet a beat, a beat in which I could feel the dull ache in my head more acutely.
“I talked to Anthony Williams,” I said.
“The victim’s biological father? What’d he have to say? How’d you find him?”
I told him.
“You got him to say that?”
“I was thinking, what if it started as him just trying to get his son back so he could make a man out of him? Would explain the use of the drug and him leaving him in the bushes for a while.”
“You’re thinkin’ the overdose was an accident?”
“Maybe. But it wouldn’t explain why he dragged him into his hideout in the bushes.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I mean that particular spot. How’d he know about it?”
“Maybe the kid told him. Maybe he watched for a while before he tried to snatch him. Maybe it was the only clearing back there.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but what none of it explains is the rape. It’s one thing to try to snatch your kid and accidentally kill him, panic and move the body, maybe even stage it to look like something other than what it was, but to rape him . . .”
“Yeah,” he said. “Would seem to rule out it being an accidental overdose or the dad being the doer . . .”
“Unless,” I said, “someone else came along, found him dead, and raped him.”
“Two crimes,” he said, his voice, rising, “two criminals. A killer and a rapist. Could be. Could very well be.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
After my morning classes, I drove down to Willie’s German Bakery in the shopping center at the corner of Flat Shoals and Wesley Chapel, grabbed a bag full of eclairs and M&M iced cookies, and drove over to Safe Haven.
INNOCENT BLOOD: a John Jordan Mystery Book 7 (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 11