Children of Chicago

by Cynthia Pelayo

  “What school?”

  “DePaul. Freshman.”

  Students at DePaul College Prep had been busy, Lauren thought. “Good, because her mom’s freaking out, as she should be.”

  Lauren could imagine Evie’s parents getting a visit from police late this evening. A knock at the door. “Your daughter has been injured.” Her parent’s hearts crashing into their stomachs. Screams. Questions. Tears.

  Officer Torres did not move.

  “Is there something else?”

  “Detective Van said you were going to look through this.” Officer Torres handed her the book, still wrapped in plastic. The word EVIDENCE in black bold letters from the bag hung just above the title. Those stories were indeed evidence of a lot of our history, and they had been left to fade away, their meaning disintegrate across the ages into bedtime stories and bright, bold and colorful theatrical animated features. But Lauren knew their essence never really left us. True crime and true criminals slumbered between these pages and awakened on a whim, because that is how all horrific things happen, like a summer noontime breeze, unexpected, but not impossible. Of course, Van was going to push that book on her, and she was sure he was watching her right now, waiting to read her face, her body language. She was not going to give him the satisfaction of having anything to interpret. Like always, she remained calm and still.

  “Thanks,” she took the book in her hands.

  Officer Torres’ walkie crackled. “Excuse me, Detective,” he said and then walked away to take his call.

  It had been many years since she had actually read a fairy tale. Why did she need to read them now? Many had been committed to memory and for many more Lauren had at least memorized some major plot points. There were plenty of nights, after Marie, that she came out here, reading these stories aloud hoping to rattle her mind, to brush away the cobwebs and cast light on what happened here. But nothing ever happened, and so she read, she memorized, and she learned the wandering and twisting accounts of two brothers scouring rural areas of Germany for fables and myths from country people to pull into a scholarly text of traditional folktales. And it was a text intended for academics, the first edition of Nursery and Household Tales, weighted down by an extensive introduction and lengthy annotations.

  This was not a book originally intended for wide reaching audiences. Yet, by 1815, all 900 copies of the first edition sold. Wilhelm Grimm became obsessed with developing a second edition because of the intense demand, and Jacob Grimm too realized that the tales could be a great source of income. In the second edition, the preface and notes were eliminated. Illustrations were added of mothers and grandmothers reading to children, and anything that hinted at scholarship was omitted. Wilhelm fleshed out and polished the texts, in many cases doubling their original length. And the brothers both admitted that they had taken great pains to remove any and every phrase unsuitable for children. So, if they claimed to have rid the stories of content they deemed unsuitable for children, then why was violence all allowed to remain, and in some cases intensified?

  The brothers claimed that the more Hansel or Gretel or Cinderella were victimized, the more audiences would sympathize with them. Still, even though the brothers edited version two and ramped up the violence, it was still tame by comparison to the original version dictated to them by country people. Maybe the stories the Grimm brothers recorded were not really so unusual. They were not entirely uncommon at the time; the impoverished mother and father who drove their children away from the home, leaving them to starve in the woods, the cold-hearted stepmother, a fierce expert in child abuse who made her husband and his children’s life unbearable—none of these stories were fairy tales then, or now. With, or without Bobby, Lauren knew all of this. He may have his doctorate, but she had spent her life since Marie’s death researching and analyzing, and she knew that in all of those stories, as in life, the outcome was either happily ever after, or suffering and death. There was no inbetween.

  Lauren stared at the book wrapped in plastic and felt no need to open it. This was not the edition she needed. She took a deep breath and told herself she just needed to get through this. Displaying a false sense of calm, she stood up and scanned the black water in front of her.

  Van was pointing out over the lagoon. Lauren could not hear what he or the other officers standing at his side were saying from this distance, but their tones sounded urgent. Van’s mouth moved rapidly. His hands waved and pushed into the sky, and they nodded. What worried Lauren most about Van was that he did his research. He had even done his research on her—and not just the cases she had been assigned to, but the one she and her father were directly involved in. The one they had lived.

  “That case drove me nuts,” Van had told her the first time they ever went out for coffee. They were standing in line at Cafe Mustache. “You know, your dad was the first one on the scene. Later on, that made some people question things, but then you know, he was called out there by the dispatcher, and there was no way for anyone to know at the time what he was walking into. It was just a coincidence. A bad coincidence. Still, people were bothered by that, for a lot of reasons. No father should have to pull his kid out of the water like that.”

  Lauren handed the cashier some money. The extra change was dropped into a tip jar, and she took hold of her coffee and stepped aside as Van reached for his.

  “The coffee here’s strong. Fair warning.”

  “Must’ve been horrible what you all dealt with,” he said. “It must still be horrible knowing there hasn’t been movement on it.” Van reached for several napkins, pulled away the lid and poured two sugars in and stirred. “And you were out there too, huh? Found way out on the other side of the park? Mile away. And you still don’t remember anything?”

  “No,” she answered it quickly and with conviction and took a sip from her coffee cup. The liquid burned the tip of her tongue, but still, she drank.

  Van was right. There were no signs of struggle anywhere on the body. Lauren had memorized the coroner’s report. It was as if someone Marie trusted had carried her out there to the lagoon, laid her in the water to float, and the nine-year-old girl who did not know how to swim drowned, submerged in a lagoon during the day and no one saw anything.

  Marie’s body was found a few hours after school let out. A missing person’s alert had gone out for Lauren who could not be found. Divers searched the lagoon, but nothing, and then hours before the sun rose the next day Lauren was found trembling, barefoot and in another part of the park where Marie had died. She was found standing in front of the statue of Alexander von Humboldt, the German naturalist and geographer who lived from 1769-1859, and for whom the park was named. The statue of a man thousands of Chicagoans drove, ran, and walked past each day, but knew very little about, likely just his name.

  Lauren could not talk for a very long time afterward.

  With coffees in hand, both walked out to their car. Lauren had remained silent. There was nothing more to tell Van other than what she had told him in the cafe.

  “I’m sorry,” he said getting in the passenger seat. “I know it was your sister, and that your mom...well, I’d just like the case solved like I assume you’d like it solved as well.”

  He was wrong. Lauren did not want her sister’s case solved. She wanted this cold case lost among the stacks of dusty boxes in some nondescript facility, sitting alone, frozen and forgotten like thousands of others of unsolved crimes.

  Lauren had placed her coffee in the cup holder and turned on the car.

  “You really don’t remember anything?” Van pressed.

  “I don’t remember anything. It’s dissociative amnesia. Repressed memory syndrome. Basically, whatever I witnessed was too horrific for my childhood mind to hold on to. I mentally sliced it out. That memory’s gone, and it’s not coming back.”

  Van shouted, bringing her back to the dark park, with divers splashing into the lagoon. “We’ve got something!”

  The shou
ts of confusion all came crashing together. A knot tugged at Lauren’s chest. Two more people in dive gear plunged into the water. She gasped for breath. Van was swallowed by a swarm of people, and when she saw him emerge again, he was carrying a large, dripping bundle. A person. A boy. Arms limp at either side, his right arm had been hacked away at, and it was held together only by bits of meat and bone. Eyes wide open following the second quarter moon above. Cheeks blue.

  The paramedics appeared, two of them covering the boy with blankets. Their movements frantic. Checking his pulse. Blowing breath into this mouth. Pumping his chest, all as he was lifted and placed onto a stretcher and wheeled into the ambulance.

  Lauren knew this was her only moment of distraction to check. No one would be looking at her, or for her, at least not for a few seconds. She rushed down past the lagoon. It was here somewhere, watching, listening. Lauren turned off her flashlight and allowed the park lights above to guide her, because it was here. She walked down the paved pathway towards a section of tall prairie grass. She brushed against five-petaled bursting orange wild columbines, twisted green jack-in-the pulpit leaves, bottle brush grass, and oak leaf hydrangeas. Two small piercing golden orbs flashed at the bridge, and Lauren knew it had been there the entire time, a dreadful thing lurking and waiting, licking its teeth just as the Big Bad Wolf sat in wait for Little Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood, like so many of the others, based in truth but wrapped in the lie that it could never happen, that a little girl could never be snatched up in the woods by a stranger and broken. Greek traveler Pausanias who lived from 110 to 180 AD recorded the local legend of how a virgin girl would be offered to a malevolent spirit each year, dressed in the skin of a wolf, who would then rape and kill the girl. Then one year, boxing champion Euthymos slew the spirit and married the girl who had been offered up as that year’s sacrifice. Legends, myths, and lore all came from somewhere, and, as Lauren discovered, all came back.

  Lauren scanned the sidewalk benches and listened as the leaves rustled in the wind. She walked over to a small concrete bridge over a creek that overlooked the lagoon. She dug in her pocket and dropped a coin into the water before stepping foot on the bridge. There, on the bridge lay a dark mass. Lauren knelt down beside it, the only sound the trickling water of the creek beneath her, and bugs. Flies and gnats buzzed around the mound of blood, flesh and fur. A freshly skinned gray wolf pelt. Lauren dug her gloved fingers into the remains of the animal and pushed, its head appeared, eyes torn from it sockets and instead placed inside its open mouth. Lauren pushed harder, forcing the stinking, rotting mass into the water, where it fell with a splash. She removed her bloodied gloves and shoved them into her messenger bag.

  It was taunting her.

  “Where are you?” She called out to the darkness. She removed her flashlight and scanned the trees, back and forth and right when she was ready to turn back her light captured something. A splash of color.

  Gold and white. Multicolored. Pied. Spray painted across the trunk of an old tree overlooking the lagoon were those familiar words:

  Pay the Piper

  Lauren took a step back, trying to hide her fear and her pain. She leaned over the bridge railing, heaving and vomiting sour coffee and stomach acid, all that she held inside.

  It was no longer a coincidence.

  The book.

  The body.

  And now its calling card.

  There was no denying it any longer. The Pied Piper wanted his payment, and he needed it now.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I’m thirsty. How much longer?” Mo asked between gasps of air as he jogged ahead to catch up with Fin who was speed walking with no intention of slowing down.

  “Not much,” Fin answered keeping her eyes forward, fixed to a point Mo could not see.

  “Feels like we’ve been walking forever.” The sidewalk seemed to stretch out in front of him into night for eternity.

  “I told you, we are not stopping until we get there.”

  The light at the crosswalk changed just as they approached. They continued onward. After a few minutes of silence, Mo said: “My hands feel gross.” His skin felt tacky. There was pressure beneath his fingernails where dirt and debris had caked. Mo had the overpowering need to wash them. He had done a poor job back at the lagoon, quickly rinsing off, and then rubbing his hands back and forth in the grass. That did not work. The residue remained thick and sticky on his palms.

  Fin glanced over at him, still keeping in step. “Your hands look clean.”

  “They don’t feel clean.”

  “Forget about it,” Fin said as she dug her hands into her hoodie pocket.

  “How?”

  She did not answer, and they continued on. The only noise they made was of their gym shoes hitting the sidewalk.

  Mo’s clothes were damp from the struggle, but he did not mention that. He shivered as they walked. The cold, wet fabric rubbed against his skin, but what pained him the most was his left foot. He was sure a toe had been severed. But water, if he could just get some water to drink and wash his hands then maybe he could think about what to do next.

  “After we see him, we’ll go home and wash up. We just have to actually see him to know it worked.”

  “Fin, when are we going to see him?”

  Fin stopped and faced him. Her eyes manic. Her short hair wet and flattened around her head. She removed her hands from her pocket and curled them into tight fists.

  Mo was sure she was going to strike him.

  “You said that he was going to take care of it!” Mo blurted out. He waved around at the empty sidewalk and street they found themselves on. “We’re in so much trouble right now.”

  “He’s going to make this right.” She punctuated each word.

  “It wasn’t supposed to go this far!”

  “You,” Fin shoved a finger in his face “have no idea how any of this works. It’s fine. We’re fine. We’ll find him, and then we’ll go home.”

  He felt they did not have a clear direction as to where they were going. They were wandering a part of the city they had never been before. They might as well have been abandoned in a forest, searching for shelter.

  “Are you sure we’re even going the right way?” He asked.

  “I told you already, Mo!” She raised her voice but looked around the street and quieted her next words. “He’s not going to let us down. We will find him. He will appear.”

  Mo laughed to himself. “We’ve already been let down.”

  “It shouldn’t be much longer now.”

  They continued on, deeper into parts of their city they had never walked before. Familiar neighborhoods had given way to brownstone buildings with cracked and broken yellowed mini blinds, faded by the sun and time. Lawns were strewn with weather-worn frayed plastic bags and empty water bottles and food cartons. Water, all Mo longed for right now was water for his dry throat, so he could think clearly.

  Evie caught his eye staring at an empty water bottle in the street. “They walked the whole day over meadows, fields, and rocky expanses; and when it rained little sister said: ‘Heaven and our hearts are weeping together.’”

  “Where’s that from?”

  “‘Brother and Sister’ by the Grimms.”

  “The sister in that dies,” he said.

  “But she comes back to life,” she said. “Nothing ever really stays dead.”

  The people who passed them on the street at first did not seem to give them notice. As they ventured farther and farther into the West Side people stopped, stared, asked them if they needed any help, but not in the way that indicated they were really ready to offer assistance.

  Fin moved with confident steps, but Mo was unsure. The scene at the beach played back in screams, scratches, pleas, and blood. He did not know what they had accomplished other than something gruesome.

  “My foot hurts,” he said, reminding her of his injury.

  “It’ll feel better o
nce we get there and see him,” she added. “He’ll fix it. He fixes everything.”

  He wondered how Fin could know where there was. He also wondered how all of this could potentially be fixed.

  Mo rubbed his fingers together and felt the dried bits of blood crusting over. It felt as though hours passed and yet nothing was happening. His foot burned, first throbbing for some time but now the hot, sharp needles of numbness were spreading. His calf ached as he put more pressure there to keep his leg moving. He reached for his phone. He wanted to do a quick search to tell him how he could make it through this pain, but as he placed his hand on his back pocket, he remembered that his phone had fallen out in the water. Mo did not tell her that he had brought his phone with him to the lagoon, and worse, that it was lost during the struggle.

  He did not think anyone would search the lagoon, at least not right away. It would be drained in a few months anyway when the park district would clean and prepare it for spring. By then he would come up with a clear explanation as to why his phone was there if it were traced back to him. People stole people’s cell phones all the time in Chicago. He had even seen it himself, sitting on the red line train one Saturday morning with his father heading to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game. The train was packed, steaming from the July summer heat and people standing down the aisles and in front of the doorways, holding on to railings and avoiding crashing into each other at each stop. A woman had been texting, and as the doors opened at the Clark and Lake stop, a guy snatched the phone right out of her hand and dashed out of the doors, down the platform, and up the stairs towards the connecting brown, orange, pink and blue line trains. Mo would say something similar happened to him. He would brush it off being found as no big deal in the lagoon, if it were even found. He knew horrible things were left behind at the lagoon all the time anyway. His older brother Jamal told him how limbs, torsos, heads, and bodies were tossed in that same lagoon in the 1980s through to the early 2000s during a wave of increased gang violence. Just recently, a toddler’s foot had been found in the cattail reeds. No one had yet come forward to identify the dismembered remains or say they had a missing child. So, no one would be surprised with what was left there tonight. Drowned bodies and body parts were not an unusual find in Chicago’s lake, river or lagoons.