“She wasn’t just a little behind him. I don’t know where she was or what she was doing or why she doesn’t want to say, but . . . she wasn’t on this path just a little behind Cedric.”
I nodded. “Anything else?”
“That’s the only deception I picked up on during the entire meeting. Everything else she said and everything else everyone else said was told truthfully.”
“Does that mean she is getting calls from her son?”
“Means she genuinely believes she is.”
I thought about it.
“Did being there help you pick up on anything else?”
She stopped walking and nodded.
I stopped and looked down at her.
“I’ve gotten shock, terror, fear, and safety. I think wherever he is, he’s safe but worried.”
“You believe he’s alive?” I asked in surprise.
“I sense that he is.”
“Really?”
She nodded and started to say something, but before she could, a dark figure stepped out of the trees to our left.
“Hey man, you spare some change so I can get somethin’ to eat?”
He was an old black man with bloodshot eyes and a nappy gray beard. He wore rags and smelled so bad it burned my eyes and made them water.
“Sure,” I said, taking Summer by the hand and pulling her in the direction of Scarlett’s.
When we were a few steps away and I could see he was by himself, I said, “I’ll be back with some food in a few minutes. You like pizza?”
“’Bout all I gets ’round here.”
“What kind you like?”
“Cheese. Just cheese. And God bless you, brother.”
We walked faster, me pulling Summer by the hand, glancing all around us as I did.
“See how easily someone could’ve stepped out of the woods and snatched Cedric?” she said.
“Or his dad could’ve been waiting there or . . .”
“So many scenarios,” she said.
After tucking Summer safely away in Scarlett’s, I walked next door to Peachtree Pizza and ordered a medium cheese.
“Just cheese?” Rand Nola, the owner, asked. He glanced up at me with icy aqua eyes from the pizza he was preparing and gave me a quick smile of large, impossibly white teeth. “No sausage, bacon, pepperoni?”
“Not tonight.”
He nodded as he worked, which made what he was doing look almost like dancing.
“This for Reuben Jefferson Jackson the third?”
“Who?”
“Smelly old black guy in the woods.”
“Yeah.”
“His is already ready,” he said. “I just haven’t had a break to take it to him. Figured he’d be banging on my door any minute. ’Course, he’d have to be very hungry to do so. He doesn’t like coming out of those woods. If you don’t mind taking it to him, you can just go through my back door, walk about fifteen feet into the woods and yell for him. He’ll come running.”
Later, back at Scarlett’s, Summer and I sat a table in the back corner drinking and talking. I was attempting moderation with vodka cranberries. She was sipping on a dry white wine.
“You seem to be open to my gift,” she said.
I didn’t understand what she meant and gave her an expression that told her so.
“I’ve met very few people that are, and your lot usually alternate between burning me at the stake and trying to save my damned soul.”
“My lot?”
“Religious. Christians. Ministers. I don’t know.”
“I don’t either,” I said.
She looked confused.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Don’t know much of anything. Don’t know enough to be . . . Don’t have many answers, don’t have a corner on the market on truth. Try to remain open.”
“The irony is I’m a Christian,” she said. “I just have a gift. Like my grandmother did. It’s a gift from God. I don’t do anything to benefit from it, don’t use it in any way except to help when I can, when I’m allowed to.”
I started to say something, but Margaret walked up, pulled out a chair, and joined us at the table.
“Susan, who’s jealous as hell, by the way, said you wanted to talk to me. Now a good time?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Tonight, for no apparent reason, she was wearing her Rhett Butler tuxedo outfit.
“What’s up?” she said.
“Wanted to ask you about the night Cedric Porter went missing.”
“Figured that might be it. Don’t know how much I can tell you.”
“Do you remember what time Ada came in?” I said.
She shook her head. “But it was late. It was sometime after ten. It was after the video store was closed—quite a while after. Pretty sure he closes at nine. Anyway, I ain’t tryin’ to tell tales out of school, but—and I ain’t tellin’ you anything I didn’t tell the cop who interviewed me—but she was in a state. Upset, distraught like. You know? And high as hell. I’m not sayin’ she did anything to her kid. Hell, I don’t think she did. But I know for a fact she wasn’t where she said she was when he went missing.”
“Anybody strange or creepy hanging out here that night? Anybody leave around the time Cedric was supposed to be outside?”
“Something like this happens and you look back and begin to get suspicious of everyone. You know? The most harmless things cause you to question and suspect and . . . Something like this changes everything and everybody. All you got to do is look at Lonnie.”
“Whatta you mean?”
“He was my best customer until that night. Hasn’t had a drink since then. Shit like this either drives you to drink or sobers you up. Did it to everyone involved. Made most of us drink more. Anyway, there were two guys. Again, I ain’t tryin’ to point the finger at anyone, and I ain’t saying they did anything. Just telling you what I told the cop at the time. They felt wrong. Never seen ’em before. Never saw them again. Don’t know their names or anything about them. Don’t know if they were together or . . . hell, I can’t even remember what they looked like. But at least one of them, and I think both, left around the time Cedric was supposed to be out there. You want more than that, I’ll have to dig out the notes I wrote down that night.”
“Would you please?”
“Sure.”
“What about the college kid who said he saw Cedric out back? What was his name? Ronald Nolan?”
“Why don’t you go ask him?”
“I’d like to.”
“Out that door, hang a right, one door down.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Peachtree Pizza,” she said.
“He work there?”
“Used to,” she said. “Now he owns it. He changed his name a little. A religious thing I think. Now he goes by Rand Nola.”
16
He ask you for another?” Rand Nola said.
I was in Peachtree Pizza. I had come alone. Summer was still nursing her wine, waiting for me at Scarlett’s.
“Huh? Oh. Reuben? No.”
“He reminded you how good they are and you have to have one for yourself?”
“Yep.”
“What can I get ya?”
“Medium sausage and bacon,” I said.
I hadn’t planned on ordering a pizza, but knew it couldn’t hurt. I loved pizza and his were passible.
“It’ll be my last pie of the night.”
As Rand busied himself preparing my pie, I took a closer look at him. He was tall and athletic looking, with baby-fine blond hair, bright white teeth he flashed often, and aqua eyes I associated with suffering for some reason. He wore straight-legged light-colored blue jeans, leather sandals, and a pink Peachtree Pizza T-shirt.
“Okay if I talk to you while you work your magic?”
“No worries.”
“I belong to a group of amateur detectives working on the disappearance of Cedric Porter, and Margaret at Scarlett’s said you were the Ronald Nolan fr
om the witness statements.”
He nodded. “Changed it a couple of years back—my name. Not much, but enough. Underwent an awakening and wanted to be called something different. Wasn’t trying to hide or anything.”
“Didn’t think you were.”
“Man,” he said, “that whole thing—that time, what was happening in the city, then for it to hit so close to home. Losing little Cedric like that completely rocked my world, man. I’ll never get over it.”
I nodded.
“It was hard enough, but then to be . . . There were people who suspected me, questioned why I was back there, didn’t buy my story. It was a nightmare. To be honest, it’s a big part of why I changed my name.”
“I hear ya, brother,” I said. “I’ve had a few experiences like that myself. Why don’t you think they believed you?”
“Everybody suspected everybody back then anyway. It was crazy the way the city was at the time.”
“Do you mind telling me what you were doing back there and what you saw?”
“Nah, man, I don’t mind, but that’s the thing—I’ve never been completely honest about why I was back there. That’s the biggest reason I became a suspect.”
“Okay.”
“I was one hundred percent honest about what I saw, just not why I was out there.”
“Why’s that?”
“I couldn’t be. I was with a woman—one I shouldn’t’ve been with, or who shouldn’t’ve been with me.”
“Why can you say now?”
“Things have changed a bit. I still can’t say who it was, but I am at least willing to say that’s what I left out. It was hard as hell, man. Somebody who could corroborate my statement, and I could’ve used ’em.”
“If you still can’t, it leaves you in the same position,” I said. “Just makes it sound like you’re changing your story again.”
“I know, but . . .”
“Are you still seeing the woman?”
He shook his head. “Wasn’t really then. We just got together to fuck. She was in a relationship with someone else.”
“Was? She isn’t any longer?”
He shook his head again.
“So why can’t you say who she is now?”
“Her . . . who she was with is a friend of mine.”
I nodded. “So what did you see?”
“Just what my statement said. Cedric, who I knew from his uncle’s store next door, running toward the woods.”
“Did he have anything?”
“Have anything?”
“A video? A—”
“Nah.”
“Was anyone with him or chasing him?”
“No. Not that I saw. Just saw him. He ran past, then disappeared into the woods. That’s all I saw. I just thought he was running back home. Didn’t think anything of it at the time. ’Course I was gettin’ some of the best head I ever have. Least I was until . . .”
“Until what?”
“Until he ran by.”
“Y’all stopped then?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “I . . . shouldn’t . . . I’ve said too much already.”
“Could you at least ask your . . . partner from back then if she would talk to me. I’d never say anything to anyone. She’d be safe. I’d protect her identity.”
“I just can’t. Sorry. I would actually do that if I could, but I can’t. I wish I could. I really do.”
When I got back to Scarlett’s, Summer, Susan, and Margaret were having an animated and inebriated discussion about God.
Aunt and niece had joined Summer at our table in the back corner, oblivious to the other patrons in the bar and the exasperated expressions being directed at them.
“Here he is,” Margaret said. “Now we have an expert to ask.”
I laughed at that. And not only because there were no experts, but because I was someone who had a spiritual awakening, began seeking, and had only completed one quarter of study at a new and questionable Bible school.
“What is God?” Margaret asked. “I say he’s a watchmaker who made this intricate timepiece and then stepped back and is watching but not participating in what is happening. Susan says . . . What is it you said again?”
“God is our father,” Susan said. “He provides for us, takes care of us, disciplines us. Involved with the world, not aloof or distant or—”
“Hey, Margaret,” an older man sitting on the opposite side of the bar yelled, “can I get a drink over here?”
“Get it yourself. See how hard my damn job is. Don’t mix it too strong neither, Fred, or I’ll know.”
“Suddenly, a fuckin’ self-service bar up in here. I could make my own drinks at home.”
“Summer says God’s a . . .” Margaret began but trailed off and took another slug of her drink.
“God is energy,” Summer said. “In us, around us, in all things. We can ignore him or we can draw from him.”
I nodded.
“Well?” Margaret said.
I raised my glass. “Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man.”
We all drank to that.
“Seriously,” Susan said. “Weigh in. What is God?”
“God is love . . . or . . . nothing else matters much.”
17
I met Mickey Davis the next afternoon at Second Chances.
He was watching Camille Pollard’s shop and her kids.
We sat at a secondhand dining table that had yet to sell, notes and case files spread out on the marred wooden tabletop between us.
The table was in between a small, faded recliner and a country-blue couch with a couple of prominent cigarette burns on it, in what constituted the sparse store’s furniture section.
Opposite us, surrounded by a handful of sad toys and a couple of mismatched shelves of children’s books, Kenny and Wilbur were lying on the floor working on their homework.
“I appreciate you meeting me here,” Mickey said. “Camille’s at a job interview. Gonna shut this place down if she gets it.”
The afternoon sun shone through the plate glass windows in front and caused both his paleness and the red in his beard to be more pronounced.
“How long you two been seein’ each other?”
“Only a few months,” he said, avoiding my eye. “First black woman, older woman, and single mother I’ve dated, but so far so good.”
He spoke softly and seemed a little embarrassed.
“How’d you meet?”
“Blind date set up by a mutual friend. Met at Scarlett’s for a drink.”
There was no obvious reason I should distrust the man, but I did. Probably because he was a reporter and the only member of the group profiting from the case, but whatever the reason, I wanted to get his thoughts about and reactions to various aspects and elements of the case without doing much in the way of reciprocating.
“What’d you think about what Ada said last night?” I asked.
He narrowed his smallish eyes and twisted his lips into a frown. “Felt wrong. Didn’t add up, but I can’t say why.”
Waves of hostility emanated from Wilbur and wafted over us. I’d catch him staring at us in unadorned anger, but when I held his gaze, he looked away. Oblivious, Kenny continued coloring intensely.
“Is Cedric’s case going into your book?” I ask.
“Only if we find out what happened to him and tie it to Williams or whoever the Atlanta Child Murderer is.”
Hearing him say it aloud reminded me again that the Atlanta Child Murders were a series of murders surrounded by a much larger set of related and unrelated murders.
Don’t forget that, I reminded myself. Don’t lose sight of the saplings for the forest.
Then another thought occurred to me. Are the adult victims on the list connected to each other the way the children are? What about the female victims?
“Where’d you go?” Mickey said.
“Huh? Oh, sorry? Just think
ing.”
“Well?” he said.
“Well what?”
“Do you think Cedric could be with his dad?”
I shrugged. “Could be.”
“Think we should take a closer look at him?” he asked.
I thought about all the various absentee fathers of all the various victims and how one witness claimed that Yusuf Bell got into a car with his father before he disappeared and was found murdered. I thought about how John Bell, Yusuf’s dad, failed a polygraph.
I nodded. “I certainly do.”
“I think so too. I’ll tell you what else I think . . . I think we need to look at all the other similar missing kid cases from around the same time.”
“Before and since too,” I said. “If they continued after Williams went to prison . . . If they stopped . . .”
“You think all Williams’s victims haven’t been found?” he asked.
“I think it’s likely that all the victims haven’t been found—whether they belong to Williams or someone else, or Williams and someone else.”
“I think it’s Williams,” he said. “And I’ll tell you why. I found four other cases like Cedric’s. I mean so similar they could be the same case. They even look like Cedric. All vanished. Never seen again. Never found a body or any evidence of any kind. It’s a serial. I’d bet my life on it. And . . . it stopped when Wayne Williams was arrested.”
I thought about it. If he was right . . . if Cedric was part of a pattern . . .
“The Atlanta Child Murderer didn’t hide his victims,” I said. “He dumped them. Most were found fairly quickly.”
“I know. So if it’s not Williams, it would be somebody else—a killer who went undetected during that time, a serial killer overshadowed by another serial killer. But if so why’d they stop?”
I thought of Jamie Brooks.
Of all the suspects considered besides Wayne Williams, Jamie Brooks was the strongest—at least for the murder of one of the victims attributed to Williams.
Twelve-year-old Clifford Jones, in town visiting his maternal grandmother and out looking for cans, disappeared on the afternoon of August 20, 1980.
Clifford’s siblings had seen him go into the laundromat in the Hollywood Plaza Shopping Center, where, according to a nineteen-year-old boy, he was raped and killed by the manager James “Jamie” Edward Brooks, and two other men.
Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work Page 7