She crossed the street toward the Humboldt Park Formal Gardens. Humboldt Park was part of great Chicago architect Daniel Burnham’s boulevard park system plan, Lauren had learned. Before the Puerto Ricans, there were the Polish and then Germans and Italians, and then Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. This neighborhood was a living, breathing thing, and Burnham knew this city lived and so it was part of his of his 1909 Plan of Chicago. She had studied this park, its history and the history of the people who brought it to its present condition. For his plan, Burnham envisioned several large green spaces that would decorate the city like a necklace, and Humboldt Park was one of the most magnificent parks in the city.
The park is home to several historic structures, the Boat House, the Field House, the Horse Stables, and of course, the formal gardens where the bronze buffalos stand, a place she often visited with her family. The gardens were created by famed landscape architect Jens Jensen in 1908, just a short walk down from where Humboldt’s statue stands watch.
At the entrance of the gardens, Lauren approached the two large bronze buffalos, replicas of buffalo statues that were displayed during the World’s Columbian Exhibition in 1893. The event was meant to celebrate Columbus’ arrival in the New World in 1492. The fair was so spectacular that people still talk about it today, the fourteen great buildings constructed by famous architects. There were fairgrounds of wonder and mystery, science and invention, but almost all of it was temporary, temporary buildings, canals and lagoons. Over twenty-seven million people visited Chicago in those six months during the fair and took with them to their small rural towns, cities across America and country’s far away the stories of a great city in a prairie, a great people, and all of the magic that lives there.
Lauren later heard a rumor that the buffalos were not replicas but were the actual statues from the World’s Fair. While all of the buildings at the World’s Fair burned in a massive fire, it is believed by some the buffalos survived. Their plaster bodies were then covered in a coat of bronze, or at least that is what the rumors say.
Lauren wanted to believe they were real, and so each time she visited the gardens, she would place her hand on one of the bronze statues, feeling in a way that it could connect her to this city’s past, so many years ago to 1893. That this park, Humboldt Park, somehow served as a portal back to a past when the fantastic was possible. Right around the same time, a rare and unique copy of the German Popular Stories made its way to the city, eventually finding a permanent home at Newberry Library. Within that book, there was a page that contained a passage in error. What was it? A spell? A ritual? Whatever it was, it was a way to summon something ancient and evil. A source.
“I hate that every few years the questions seem to come up, and from a different person too.” She spoke to the cool breeze and then took a sip of her drink. “It’s bad this time. I feel it. The house isn’t right. The city isn’t right. It’s like there’s this odd vibration everywhere, and I can’t turn it off.”
She looked around to the dying and dried flowers. In just a few weeks the formal garden would fade under heavy blankets of snow. Chicago’s winters had a way of hiding things, if only temporarily.
“I have to call Bobby,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll like that. It’s the right thing to do. This is all so convoluted, Dad. The graffiti. These deaths. The Pied Piper. Fin called him, but he’s not leaving until he gets what’s owed to him, and I’m not exactly sure what’s owed to him, but....” She inhaled deeply. Tension tightening in her jaw. “He’s coming, and I’m scared because I don’t know if I can do what I’m supposed to do. No officer should have to discharge their weapon.”
She looked at the time. It was nearing the time to start driving towards the South Side, but there was someplace she needed to stop at first. As she raised her coffee cup to her lips she heard it, that hypnotic, penetrating, wind-like music. She stood up and moved to the pergola, drawn to the sound—even though she knew she could not be harmed by it, it was always a threat. She walked past the crumbling concrete columns, heading towards the sound, but in many ways moving away from it.
When the music stopped, she stopped. She knew it was time to go.
A scattering of people stood on the sidewalk in front of the abandoned lot, waiting for the blue van to park. The man inside was careful, making sure the van pulled up as close to the curb as possible. He put the car in park and turned it off. He reached over to the passenger seat and grabbed a gray hat he placed on his round head. He stepped out of the car with a smile, approaching those on the sidewalk. They stood with arms crossed, harsh stares and scowls.
“We’re not going to let you put that thing out there,” one woman in the crowd spat. A man standing behind her repeated her words.
An older woman spoke softly. “It just...it’s not what we want people to think of us. All of this death. Here.”
“Right? It’s depressing,” a man agreed. “Don’t nobody want to be reminded of all that every time they walk past here.”
The man with the gray hat moved slowly. He had been doing this many years, but for some reason, the anger seemed more intense this year. The crowd continued their protestations, even as the man made his way to the trunk of his car.
A news reporter positioned himself away from the curb. It was a better shot. The crowd would make their way to the empty lot in between two crumbling buildings.
Lauren leaned on the hood of her car just a few yards down. She had taken to spending a lot of time here. An empty lot surrounded by empty, dilapidated brownstone buildings. Their broken windows boarded up with plywood, but just a few lots down were newer townhomes. Chicago knew gentrification intimately; old and abused mixed in with the new. One day there would be more dumpsters parked on the street, plaster, drywall and detailed woodwork and hand molded stone destroyed, collected, and discarded away in favor of steel, glass and harsh, cold lines.
Unlike a cemetery that closed at sunset, this place was always accessible. It was like a cemetery because of all of the crosses. A field of white-painted wooden crosses, each bearing the handwritten name of a person who had been murdered in Chicago this year.
Lauren wondered, when she died would the city ring out in a chorus of gunshots and police sirens welcoming her death? Would her death be celebrated with fireworks at Navy Pier? Colored sparks firing off from the waterfront, hovering over the great Ferris wheel? She wondered if she was now part of that great Chicago plan.
The man in the gray hat saw her and gave her a wave and a warm smile. They had run into each other a few times out here. Everyday strangers. They exchanged pleasantries, the kind that seemed second nature in a smaller community or suburb, but that jarred out here in the city.
Good morning. Good afternoon. How are you? Good to see you again.
People did not talk to each other out here. Typically when someone said, “Good morning,” she cringed, already reaching for her weapon in her mind. “Good morning” was never good morning in the city, nor was “Good evening,” “Hello,” or “How are you?” Any greeting from a stranger in the city could be an animalistic strategy, a predator inadvertently alerting prey to his presence. What most predators failed to realize was that in Chicago you could never be too sure if another predator was present.
A tall man came out of the crowd and tried to push the gray hatted man’s trunk closed.
“Leave it alone,” Lauren shouted.
The man inspected Lauren and nodded once. It did not take long to register that she was law enforcement.
“How’s that fair?” A young woman in a pink puffer jacket squealed. “This isn’t his neighborhood. He doesn’t live around here. He doesn’t own this lot. How come he can do this?”
Lauren crossed the street. “Take your opinions to the city, your alderman. For now, move aside,” Lauren ordered. “Go ahead,” Lauren told the man in the gray hat. It was time to set this cross in the ground so that the city could see a new name.
The man in the gr
ay hat slipped on a pair of workman gloves and pulled a large wooden white painted cross out of the van. He rested it on his shoulder, leaving the trunk open. The crowd on the sidewalk grew. The television reporter spoke quietly, directing his cameraman where to point the camera, following the man in the gray hat as he made his way to the field of crosses. The man in the gray hat carefully placed the cross in the ground. The name of Chicago’s latest victim written across in black lettering: Hadiya Peterson.
The reporter descended on the man in the gray hat, asking questions, nodding his head, asking another question, and giving an actor’s look of concern. This was the first time Lauren had actually been on the field when a crossed was placed. She normally watched from across the street.
“Why Garfield Park?” Lauren heard a young man ask. “Why not somewhere else?”
No one answered. It’s not like Garfield Park was the only city neighborhood that experienced homicide. Last year he’d made 780 crosses. Lauren had read about Mr. Gerald Zanis and how he had been making these wooden crosses to commemorate tragic loss for over twenty years. His crosses have stood at Columbine, in Boston, Orlando and many other places where tragedy struck. This was his city, so he spent the most time here, and he had committed to creating a cross for each person killed by violence in his hometown.
“It smells like death, don’t you think?” An old woman said as she positioned herself beside Lauren.
“They’re just displays. All it smells like is an empty lot that needs tending.”
“Do you think the crosses do anything?” The old woman asked.
“Maybe, for some people,” Lauren shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket.
“Does it do anything for you?”
Lauren turned, looking the woman over carefully. She had never seen her before. She was small and wore a red knit sweater and a heavy coat over it, unzipped.
“They’re just crosses, and nothing can be done or felt by a collection of names in a lot.”
Lauren took a step forward to head back to her car.
“Get the golden key and open the door. You can’t ignore it, Lauren,” the old woman said. “You owe him another death.”
“Excuse me?”
The woman smiled a toothless smile. “I am the Old Woman in the Woods. Open the door and reveal the splendid things.” The whites of her eyes had grown black. “Don’t worry Lauren, they’re your children, too. Call them, summon them, all of your children of Chicago, born of the prairie, and skyscraper steel and forged in the Chicago Fire.”
“Momma!”
A man ran up and put his hands on the small woman’s shoulders. He caught his breath, “Momma, I told you not to leave the house without me.” He looked to Lauren. “Sorry if she bothered you. She’s been wandering off lately.”
The old woman took her grown son’s hand. “I’m tired. Take me home.”
As they walked away, Lauren noticed some people holding up their cellphones, recording and taking pictures. After Mr. Zanis was done, he stood there a moment, took off his hat and said something quietly to himself. As there was nothing left to see, the crowd began to thin. This memorial to the dead would not be removed today.
Lauren gave Zanis a nod goodbye. They would see each other again, she was sure. Friends of the dead.
It was time to go ask for that favor. She crossed the street and opened her car door. As soon as she sat down and closed the door, her phone rang. She answered as soon as she saw who it was.
“Ruth...”
“Lauren,” she sounded distraught. “We found Fin in her room. She’s dead.”
CHAPTER 23
He agreed to meet her on campus between classes. He chose Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. It was a cruel reminder, but Lauren agreed.
When she pulled open the heavy wooden door she did not know what to expect; perhaps a service in full swing? A baptism? Or worse, a wedding? She had not been in a church except for a funeral in so long she was unsure of the protocols.
The space was empty.
Sun poured in through the stained-glass windows. All of the interior lights were on as well. Lauren took a seat at a pew near the exit.
The chapel was named after the University of Chicago’s founder, John D. Rockefeller. It was his final gift to the university, completed in 1928. Unlike most buildings of the time, no structural steel was used in its construction, rather it was made with concrete that drove down to the heart of the foundation. The modern Gothic architecture was still a premier example of ecclesiastical structures in the United States. Not only was it an immensely impressive building, it was also where Bobby had proposed.
She heard the door open, and footsteps. He did not say anything as he placed his backpack on the pew and sat down.
“I’m sorry.” Perhaps she said it first because she could feel the anger radiating off of him. She had been so short, so curt with him for so long, and when she realized that he could very well be the only person that could help her, she’d panicked. She had to set this right between them.
Bobby did not say anything. He must be incredibly furious, she thought. He was always talking, it seemed, except for now. Lauren knew she could always depend on him to fill the silence in the room, fill the gaps in a conversation. The last time she’d seen him before the funeral was at the grocery store, with a woman who looked nothing like Lauren could ever look. Smoothed hair, not a strand out of place. Fitted, structured jacket. Makeup, gleaming teeth. He was clean-shaven, pressed black suit, shined shoes and a red pocket square. She could smell him, and he smelled of fresh cedar on a summer day.
She had not realized it, but in the time they had been apart his hair had grayed in bunches all over his head.
“Thank you for saying that.” His acceptance seemed forced, and while he did not have to be here he was, and that alone meant he accepted whatever weak apology she would offer.
Although, she wondered now what he thought she was apologizing for. Being short in her text message responses? Or for letting their marriage fall apart?
“I need your help. With a case.”
“It’s always about work with you, Lauren.” He laughed.
“This is important.”
“It’s always important. What about you? How are you? Are you at least sleeping because, look at you, you’re certainly not eating. When was the last time you ate? Showered?”
“I...” Lauren could not answer that question because she did not know the answer “had coffee...”
“Lore,” he threw his head back. “You can’t do this. You can’t become what your father became after Marie and your mother...”
“Diana, was not my mother,” she growled. “She was my stepmother.”
“I meant your real mother. Lore...I just...I’m here. To help. Always.”
She wondered if she should just get up and go. This was already a disaster. The problem with Bobby, she thought, is that his life was too wrapped up in obsessing over the structure of the stories he loved so much. He felt like someone always needed saving, and in this case, it was her. Bobby’s interest lay in the remythialization of fairy tales. She had heard him give his lecture on it several times. She remembered it vividly.
“We cannot live without mythology,” he had said at a lecture at the University of Chicago shortly after they married. “It’s the way we reason. The way we survey. The way we make sense of our world. It’s just that the stories we’ve been using—mythic stories, fairy tales, legends—they’re not working for us anymore. We need something new.”
She looked down the aisle of the church, to the empty pulpit. It was an unusual but marvelously simple design, a hexagonal space visible from every seat.
“I don’t want to fight,” she said. “This doesn’t need to be hard.”
He exhaled, relaxing into himself.
Devotion to their careers had always been common ground.
“I really loved your dad,” he said.
“He rea
lly loved you, too. I think he was happy to have someone else in the house. The house felt alive, less...”
“Depressing,” he finished her sentence.
“I was going to say haunted, but yes, less depressing too. It made him happy while you were there.” She looked at him, studying his face.
He reached his hand out toward her face, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. “It’s not up in a bun,” he commented.
All she felt was this intense warmth and sadness, knowing that she had isolated herself with her dead victims, shutting out the living. Bobby had made her tremendously happy. She sometimes wondered if she loved him because of who he was. Or, did she love him because of who she became when she was with him? He allowed her to release the tension of murder and mayhem, if only for a little while. He made her feel like someone else in those moments. When she was with him, her mind did not flash to the dead. Bobby taught her about fairy tales—literal fairy tales and about heroes, villains, and ghosts.
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