by Tracy Clark
“Did you ring the bell?” I checked the windows again. Still dark.
“No one answered.”
I scanned the parked cars, half expecting to see my father idling at the curb. Then, when I realized he wasn’t, I turned back to the kid. “Wait a minute. How’d you get here?”
“Took a couple of buses. I bought a map at a store close to the hotel.”
“Buses? By yourself?”
He looked like he didn’t get it. “I am twelve.”
“This is Chicago. Do you know how many people go missing from bus stops in this town? Where are your parents? Do they know where you are?”
He didn’t look fazed in the least. “I told them I was going to the pool. You’re turning red. That’s one of the signs of heart attack. I learned—”
I slid my keys out of my pocket. “Oh my God! Get inside. You’re going to call your parents and tell them I’m bringing you back.” I fiddled with the door, ushered him in, glancing back to give him a disapproving glare. “Buses.”
Whitford Raines, vagabond, sat down on my couch and surveyed the apartment, wide-eyed. I sat across from him on an end chair, wondering what to say to him. Whole new territory here.
“Nice place,” he pronounced as way of an icebreaker. “Big. Just you live here?”
I nodded.
“You have a dog?”
“No dog.”
His feet barely touched the floor as he sat. They dangled just a bit, the toes of his scuffed-up running shoes kissing the carpet. He hadn’t had his growth spurt yet, apparently.
“You have a phone?” I asked.
He looked at me as though I’d asked the dumbest question ever. “Yeah.”
“Call your parents.”
“I will. You got any kids?”
I shook my head.
“You like kids?”
“They’re okay.”
“Married?”
I shook my head again. I wanted to sleep, though I knew I probably wouldn’t. I was done in, my brain fried, and I hadn’t made a single bit of progress at all today.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” His brows furrowed. I could tell I was beginning to worry him. “Ever been married?”
“Do you work for the Census Bureau?”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. Tough day. A lot crammed into it. Sorry. No, I’ve never been married.”
Whit glanced around the living room; his eyes landed on an old CPD sweatshirt of mine strewn over a chair in the dining room. “You’re a policeman?”
“Used to be.”
He squinted. “What are you now?”
“A private investigator . . . like a policeman, but not a policeman.”
“You have a gun?”
I didn’t answer that one.
His eyes gleamed. “You’d have to have one, right? Can I see it?”
“No.”
He made a face. “That sucks.”
I stood, handed him my phone. “Call someone related to you. I’ll get you some milk.” I padded into the kitchen, more for a much-needed break than anything else. Maybe I had milk in the fridge; maybe I didn’t. I’d have to wait and see.
I opened the fridge and pulled out a cold bottle of mineral water and ran it across my forehead before opening it and taking a long drag. A twelve-year-old boy on my front step. Yep. That was what my day had been missing. Whitford. Weird name. I grabbed the carton of milk out of the fridge, turned, and jumped back when I found the kid standing there, all Children of the Corn.
“Jeez, kid, you scared the crap out of me.” I set the water and the milk on the counter, waiting for my respiration to normalize. “Did you make that call?”
He slid onto a barstool. “I’m thinking of what I’m going to say. They might be a little upset.”
I chuckled. “I don’t know a thing about your particular parental situation, but I can almost guarantee you they’re going to be upset. Dial their number. Do it now.” I slid the carton of milk toward him. “I’ll get you a glass.”
“Are you serious? Babies drink milk. I’m twelve.”
“So you said.” I plucked a clean glass out of the dishwasher.
“My mom let me have half a Starbucks this morning . . . without milk.”
“Congratulations.” I poured him a glass, slid it toward him.
“You’re not giving me much.”
“Excuse me?”
“I wanted to see who you were.”
“So, you’ve seen me. Who’d you expect? Rihanna?”
He watched me closely. “Not sure what I expected. You’re the adult. I thought maybe you would know.”
I put the milk carton back in the fridge, finished my water. “Nope. You lost me at ‘I’m your brother.’ ”
“Dad came to see you, but he said it didn’t go good.”
“Well,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Didn’t go well, not didn’t go good.”
He stared at me. I stared back. Standoff.
“I’d be mad, too, if he left and didn’t come back practically for my whole life.” He took a sip of milk, which he appeared to find satisfying, despite his advanced age. “You’re still mad at him. That’s why you won’t really talk to him?”
“It’s complicated.”
Whit waited, not blinking, which was a little freaky.
“Yes, that’s why, and stop stalling. Put the glass down. Call your parents, or I’ll cuff you to something and call them myself.”
His big eyes danced. Not exactly the reaction I was aiming for. “You have real handcuffs?”
I put the bottle down. “That’s it. Get up. Let’s go.” I sped through the hall, grabbed my bag and keys from the foyer table. “Unreal. Buses.”
“But it was fun.” Whit trotted behind me, trying to keep up. “A guy I sat next to wanted to sell me his pants. I said, ‘Man . . .’ ”
My stomach lurched. “Please, please, for the love of God, stop talking.”
I locked up the apartment, nudged Whit toward the stairs. “Move, Magellan.”
“Who’s that?”
“Google him whenever you get your computer privileges back. Walk.”
My father and a woman I assumed was his wife, Sylvia, were standing nervously in front of the Fairmont when I pulled into the horseshoe-shaped drive. I slowed the car, but the woman had the passenger-side door open before my wheels came to a complete stop. Whit unbuckled his seat belt, and his mother yanked him out of the seat and deposited him on the sidewalk, danger spitting out of her eyes like molten lava. I kept the car running, my foot on the brake.
“Are you kidding me, Whitford?” She held his jacket collar in an impressive vise grip. “What were you thinking?”
Whit opened his mouth to speak but obviously thought better of it and closed it again.
“Stand right there,” she barked. “Do not move!”
She couldn’t have been more than five feet two, but I would have declined any offer to tangle with her. She looked like she could more than hold her own. My father stood silently off to the side, his hands buried deep in his front pockets. He’d ditched the suit for a pair of slacks and a blue button-down shirt.
Sylvia leaned down, peered inside the car, relief on her face. “Thank you so much for doing this. I don’t know how to address you. Do you prefer Cassandra?”
“Cass,” I said.
She smiled. “Thank you, Cass, for bringing him back. I went down to the pool, and he was gone. We had practically everyone in the hotel looking for him. We were just about to call the police.” She took a breath, a long one, as though she hadn’t exhaled in a very long time. Whit had probably shaved a few years off her life. “I don’t know what possessed him to do such a thing.”
She looked nothing like my mother, I thought as I checked her out. It was funny how I automatically made the comparison. Sylvia was far shorter, rounder, in a motherly sort of way. Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners, and she seemed like a nice person. I wondered what
she did for a living, besides mother an independent-minded boy. There was no reason for me not to like her, not that I consciously looked for one.
“I wanted to meet her,” Whit said. “I had money for the bus there and back. What’s the big—”
Sylvia reeled, her eyes laying down a challenge to Whit to say one more word. He shut his mouth and kept it shut. “Do not finish that sentence. Do not blink. Do not talk. Do not breathe.” Whit looked terrified. Sylvia began to turn back to me, then thought of something else. “And you’ve seen the last of your Xbox for a while . . . and that includes that beeping thing you always carry around with you.” She held out her hand, snapped impatient fingers, and waited as Whit dug into his pocket and lifted out some sort of portable game system and placed it reluctantly in his mother’s hand. “The cell phone, too.”
“What! Awww,” Whit whined but handed that over, too.
Sylvia brushed aside a wayward curl that had fallen across her forehead, and then turned back to me and shrugged. “Kids, right?”
I smile sympathetically, having no firsthand knowledge of the species. “Well, I should get going. Nice meeting you.”
“Oh, but wouldn’t you like to come up? We could have dinner. I could thank you properly.”
Thanks, but some other time.”
She smiled. “I understand. Anytime then. Standing invitation.” She stepped back and closed the car door.
Whit angled around his mother, waving madly. “See ya, sis!”
There was no misinterpreting his mother’s glare. “Really? You won’t be seeing anyone anytime soon, Whitford Bennett Raines. Get up to that room! Now!”
The two of them disappeared inside, leaving my father alone at the curb with me. For a moment he didn’t say anything; neither did I. Finally, he leaned in through the open window, his arms pressing against the doorframe. An impatient taxi driver honked behind me. I’d idled in the turnaround too long.
I made the first move. “They seem nice.”
“He’s not shy, that’s for sure. Thanks for doing this. Sure you don’t want to come up?”
“I can’t. I’m in the middle of something. I’ll call about that dinner.”
He tapped the car with his knuckles, then backed away. “Stay safe.”
I drove off and took one final look at him through the rearview before I turned the corner.
Chapter 24
At ten the next morning, I drove out to Calumet City, to Dontell Adkins’s last address, hoping I’d find his family still there. It was a small community nestled between the expressway and another community just like it, once anchored by a busy shopping mall, now half dead and long out of fashion. There were ten-minute lube joints, car dealerships, tire retailers, and fast-food places hawking greasy sliders, fanciful chalupas, and chicken parts battered and fried and topped off with a biscuit all within five blocks of each other. The kind of community you sped right through on your way to someplace else, like jury duty. The courthouse in Markham was just up the road north.
I rang the bell at a neat, single-family two-level with a wreath of summer flowers on the door, and moments later an elderly black man opened the door and stared at me through a storm door. “Morning.”
“Yes, good morning. Mr. Adkins?”
He peered at me as though he was trying to place me. A pair of battered eyeglasses poked out of his shirt pocket, and he slid them on to take a better look. “That’s right. I know you?”
He had a thick accent, Southern, which reminded me instantly of my grandfather and Pop, who were both born and raised in Louisiana.
“No, sir. My name’s Cassandra Raines. I wonder if I could talk to you about your grandson Dontell?” I held up my license, a business card along with it. “If you have a minute.”
His face changed in an instant. It’d been just another morning just seconds ago, but now a veil of grief slid across his face, and it looked like he’d aged decades more just standing there. “We lost our Donny about four years ago.”
“Yes, sir. I know. That’s what I’d like to talk to you about. I won’t take up too much of your time.”
He eyed the card, the license, which I still held up. You couldn’t be too sure these days of anyone who came to your door unannounced. People could be cruel, evil, and the elderly were among the most vulnerable. I stepped back from the door and waited for him to decide to trust me.
After a time, he took his glasses off, slipped them back in his pocket, and opened the door. “Come on in. A few minutes are about as much as I got. I’ll be eighty-seven come April, if I live to see it.”
It was cool inside the small house, and dark, the drapes drawn. It felt close, hemmed in, as though the Adkinses had built themselves a tomb for the living inside the four walls. The furniture, old, neat, was encased in plastic covers, just as my grandparents’ furniture had been my entire childhood. When nice things were hard to come by, you did whatever you could to keep them nice.
He gestured toward the couch. “Can I get you something? A cool glass of water? Sweet tea?”
I smiled. “No, sir. Thank you, I’m fine.” I started to sit, but then an old woman, about the age of Mr. Adkins, walked into the room. I assumed she was Mrs. Adkins, and I popped up to greet her formally.
“Israel, who was that at the . . . ?” She stopped when she saw me and moved to stand by her husband. They made a handsome pair, gray hair, life experience and all, and reminded me instantly of my grandparents, who’d been married fifty-three years when my grandmother suffered a stroke and passed away.
“My wife,” Mr. Adkins explained. “I was just about to call for you, Marva. This is an investigator asking after our boy.”
Her face changed, too, just like her husband’s had—pain, loss, grief, anger, helplessness, all of it carved into the lines around weary eyes. She stepped away from her husband’s steadying arm, walked over to me, and looked me straight in the eyes, as though she were facing down Satan himself.
“You find the man who ran over our Dontell?”
Mr. Adkins went to her, placed a gentle, steadying hand on her shoulder, and then passed her my card. She read it, then looked back at me as if to say, “So what?” I rethought the offer of the sweet tea just then, thinking the break for the beverage would take some of the heat out of the old woman’s eyes, but at this point, I didn’t have the heart to ask for it.
“Why don’t we all sit?” Mr. Adkins said. “See what she has to say.” He eased down into the two-seater across the coffee table from me, leaving his wife and me standing. It was her house. I couldn’t sit until she did. He reached out for her hand. “Marva?”
She finally sat down next to her husband. I sat, too, then took a breath and started. “I read about Dontell’s accident in the newspaper. There weren’t many details.”
“Wasn’t an accident. They ran our Dontell over in the street like a dog and kept on going. When it’s an accident, a person, a human being, stops and sees about you. Four years. Now here you come. Do you know who killed Dontell?”
“No, ma’am.”
She rose from the two-seater. “Then we got nothing to talk about. I’m done wasting time going over the same information, but ya’ll, the police and such, don’t do your part.”
Mr. Adkins’s calm voice broke in. “Marva?” She eased down again reluctantly, and the look she gave me pierced right through me.
I went on. “I wanted to know if you could give me more details about what happened. Maybe there were witnesses? The paper didn’t say.”
“Why do you want to know all this now?” Mr. Adkins asked.
“That’s right,” Mrs. Adkins snapped.
In my head I cycled through what I could say and shouldn’t say. “I can’t really say too much about why I’m asking.”
Mrs. Adkins’ eyes fired anew, and I saw her husband’s hand squeeze hers tighter.
“I’m sorry. You have no reason to trust me, but I wish you would. If what I’m working on somehow connects with what happened to yo
ur grandson, I may be able to get you some answers. At least I’ll try to.”
I waited while they sat on it for a moment. Then Mr. Adkins spoke for both of them. “Go on, then. Ask your questions.”
They relayed much the same information Reesa Loudon had given me about how terrible it was working for Allen. I listened, knowing they were treading over information I already had, but believing it gave them an opportunity to loosen up some before I asked about what I really needed to know about—his death.
“What can you tell me about the day he died?”
“It was a sorrowful day,” Mrs. Adkins said. “He left out early, saying he needed to get down to his job and pick up a letter they were supposed to give him recommending him for other work. He said he had to go get it in a hurry, before they changed their mind about giving it to him at all. That’s how they were.”
“Allen’s office.”
“Hateful woman.” Mrs. Adkins muttered it, as though she were cursing the devil. “He was crossing the street, they say, on his way back. Something a person does a million times without thinking about it. The car came out of nowhere, speeding, and hit him straight on. It never stopped.”
Mr. Adkins picked up where his wife left off. “They found the stolen car a couple days later, all beat up.”
“People stopped to help,” she said. “A nice woman even held his hand while they waited for the ambulance. I thank God for that woman. I just couldn’t live if I knew our Dontell died alone and scared. After they took him, she even helped gather up his things that got scattered all over. There’s still kindness in this world.” She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. “He was all we had in the world. I miss that boy every second of every day. I won’t have a minute’s peace until I see him again.”
A letter. Why had Dontell gotten a letter of recommendation? Hadn’t Reesa Loudon told me that Allen didn’t give them? That it was her way of exacting punishment on employees she wanted to hold back? So, what made Dontell special? I asked about the witnesses.
“I expect it’s on the report they gave us,” Mr. Adkins said. “We put it with his things.”
“Israel can’t bring himself to go through the box.” Mrs. Adkins turned to her husband. “Me either. But we keep everything in his room. It’s all we got left.”