by Joel Goldman
The killer was organized, turning off the power, using night-vision goggles, picking up his shell casings. Organized killers were the most difficult to catch because they left so little evidence at the scene.
But then there were the bloody footprints. The killer had stepped in Marcellus’s blood, leaving dark red footsteps going up the stairs. He’d stepped in the blood a second time, leaving another set of footprints from Marcellus’ body to the back of the house. I couldn’t be certain about which set of footprints came first, but my sequence made the most sense. Kill these three, then do Jalise and Keyshon, then out the back door.
I followed the second set of prints through the kitchen and turned on the back porch light. The rain had washed out any other footprints, though I hoped the crime scene people would find trace amounts of blood in the concrete. I walked back to the stairs, reassessing a killer who had been good enough to shoot three men in the dark and who had been organized but careless enough not to wipe his feet.
Someone on the SWAT team had also stepped in the blood, proving that it was easy to do. His ridged boot prints were easily distinguished from the ?at, rounded prints left by the killer. There were a few partial prints that were clear enough to indicate the surface of the sole. It didn’t have a pattern like an athletic shoe and it didn’t have the smooth, even appearance of leather shoes. And it was wider than a normal shoe, like it was made by something that had been slipped over a shoe. Maybe the killer had worn galoshes so he wouldn’t get his shoes wet in the rain or bloody in the house.
I hesitated before going upstairs, turning toward the front door, conjuring the killer as he entered the house, testing another assumption I’d made. There had been only one killer. If there had been more, there likely would have been another set of footprints that didn’t match those left by the SWAT team.
The smell of blood and bodies hit me as I climbed the stairs. It had been there all along, but I’d been too focused on the scene to notice. It was a too familiar stench, but I never got used to it. My stomach was churning as much from the pungent odor as the anticipation of what I would find in the bedroom.
The clothes hanging in the closet had been swept to either side like a parted curtain, exposing where Jalise Williams had been hiding. She was on her knees, bent over her child, the back of her head a pulpy mess, with two more entry wounds in the middle of her back. Keyshon’s hand was wrapped tightly in his mother’s hair, the rest of him hidden.
I crouched next to her, my chest trembling, the shakes waiting to be let loose and wanting to touch the boy’s hand. I searched for a glimpse of his face, finding it buried against his mother’s neck, and wondered in a fanciful moment if our two sons—hers and mine—would somehow find each other on the other side. Mine was not a conscious faith, born of study and contemplation. I had more hope than belief that pain and suffering and good deeds would be rewarded in some afterlife. I accepted the notion of free will but had seen enough to doubt the wisdom of a God who had bestowed it. I didn’t wonder whether pure evil existed. I had seen it firsthand. I pulled back, the mother cradling her child evidence enough of what had happened.
The rest of the room was a mess, clothes lying on the ?oor where they’d been dropped, bed unmade, makeup and jewelry littering the dresser lining the wall opposite the bed. The disarray was natural, the product of people who never cleaned up after themselves. It wasn’t the result of the killer tossing the room in search of something.
The jewelry looked real, though I was no judge. The last diamond I’d bought was for Joy’s engagement ring twenty-eight years ago. Like the drugs left on the card table downstairs, there was enough jewelry worth taking even if it wasn’t enough to kill for.
I reminded myself that this was a crack house. I’d found the drugs and jewelry. Now it was time to look for the guns and money. I tried a series of deep breaths to sti?e the shakes, glad that it worked for the moment.
Using a pen to pull open drawers without leaving fingerprints or disturbing those already there, I did a quick and dirty search of the bedroom and bathroom. I found a few hundred dollars in cash, not the stacks of twenties I would have expected. That didn’t mean money wasn’t hidden elsewhere in the house or that the killer hadn’t found it in the bedroom and decided it was the one thing worth stealing.
The guns were hidden behind a panel in the bathroom wall. A couple of sawed-off shotguns, three 9mm Smith & Wessons, and enough ammunition to make a point. It wasn’t exactly an arsenal, but it was more than one man needed to protect hearth and home. The serial numbers on the weapons had been filed off, making them untraceable and worth more than the drugs or jewelry to someone in the business of killing people. They would have been easy to find and easy to steal.
My search was interrupted by a whimpering sound coming from beneath the bed. I lifted the blanket draped over the foot of the bed, finding a dog, its paws covering its nose, peeking at me. I scooped the dog up, examining the honey-colored, curly-haired mutt, guessing its weight at around fifteen pounds, confirming that it was a she. The dog licked my face and peed, the shower just missing my pants.
“You go, girl,” I told the dog, setting her down and checking her collar, reading the name on the tag. “Stick with me until we find a new home for you, Ruby.”
The dog followed me back down the stairs. I picked her up so that she wouldn’t step in the blood, and took her outside. The rain had stopped. The yellow patio light faded to black at the edge of the concrete slab. The dog ran toward a tree on the side of the yard, disappearing in the darkness. I heard her scampering back and forth until she found a suitable spot, quiet as she relieved herself once more. Satisfied, she trotted back to me, jumping up and planting wet paws on my leg. I reached down to pet her, finding a twenty-dollar bill matted against her wet coat.
I peered into the night outside the ring of patio light, unable to see anything more than the outline of a tree. Lights were on in houses on either side and in the houses that backed up to these. It was the middle of the night, but no one was asleep. In spite of all the lights, deep pockets of darkness remained, black boundaries cutting people off from one another. The helicopter closed for another pass.
The killer hadn’t stolen the drugs or jewelry that had been left in plain sight or taken the guns he could have easily found. He’d left bloody footprints leading out the back door onto the patio, his trail disappearing either because of the rain or because he’d removed whatever he’d been wearing over his shoes. Now Ruby, the newly orphaned dog, had retrieved a twenty-dollar bill from Marcellus’s backyard. A bone, I would have believed. A double sawbuck required a leap of faith I was in no mood to take.
I retraced Ruby’s route, wet, spongy ground squishing beneath my shoes as I approached the tree, the shakes starting their drumbeat in my torso. My eyesight adjusted to the darkness enough that I could see clumps of twenty-dollar bills scattered amidst fallen leaves. I guessed there was at least a couple of thousand dollars, maybe more, lying on the ground. Maybe enough to steal. Maybe enough to kill five people for. Then why leave it out in the rain? Ruby had followed me, nosing the money, pawing at it.
The police helicopter hovered overhead, capturing me in a cone of blinding light. I shielded my eyes, squinting past the tree, catching a glimpse of a silhouetted figure running away, a ?eeting sense of recognition washed out by a shouted command from behind to stay where I was. I recognized Troy Clark’s voice over the din of the chopper, wondering why he would give me such an order. Then I knew why. He didn’t recognize me. I was bent over at the waist, my face buried against my knees, shaking so badly I could barely stand.
Chapter Eight
Latrell was smoothing Oleta’s hair when he heard the sirens. He cradled the back of her head with one hand, massaging the tangled strands of hair clotted around her face and unraveling knots with the other as he lay her head gently onto the plastic tarp lying on the basement ?oor.
Oleta’s features were smooth, her dark skin fading to a dingy gray. Any pa
in she may have felt when he crushed her throat had passed without leaving a furrow in her brow or a grimace in her cheeks. Latrell had released her from that pain as surely as he had released her from whatever torment had brought her to that place in the middle of the night, in the rain, beneath that tree, as if she had been waiting for him. Maybe she’d come there to die, he thought, and that’s why she had thanked him.
It didn’t matter to Latrell any more than it mattered that he’d killed her. She was as dead as his mother, as dead as Jalise. They were all the same. Finished with her hair, he brushed out the wrinkles in her dress, his hands and heart as steady as when he’d walked out of Marcellus’s house.
He cocked his ear toward the window well near the top of the basement wall. The rain beat against the glass, a weak accompaniment to the wailing police cars rushing toward the neighborhood. Latrell listened, calculating how long it would be before someone with a badge knocked on his door asking whether he’d seen or heard anything unusual in the house behind his.
The police would block off the streets, sneak up on Marcellus’s house like they were making a surprise attack, uncertain of who or what they would find inside. Once they knew, they’d start searching for witnesses. He had plenty of time. No reason to hurry. After they were gone, he’d bury Oleta in the basement.
Tomorrow Latrell would take the gun, goggles, and bloody galoshes to the cave and everything would be right. Until then, all he had to do was be smart. He could do that.
He unlaced his shoes, peeled off each layer of his clothes until he was naked. He tucked one edge of the tarp under her body, rolling her over, wrapping her inside the plastic, and securing it with duct tape until she was mummified.
The basement was dark, damp from a leak along the base of the west wall, with water trickling into a drain in the center of the concrete ?oor. A washtub sat on a stand, a faucet sticking out from the wall. Latrell connected a garden hose to the faucet, turned the water on strong enough to wash the ?oor but not loud enough to be heard, and rinsed his feet before he went back upstairs.
He showered, nearly scalding himself with hot water, scrubbing hard. Afterward he changed into boxers and a ratty black T-shirt he slept in, padding downstairs to wait in the kitchen. When the police came, he’d tell them that he’d been asleep, the storm mixing with his dreams. He’d say he woke to the sirens, turned on his lights, and was unable to fall back asleep, like everyone else.
He repeated it again and again, the soundtrack to the image he saw when he closed his eyes: he was standing at his front door, rubbing his chin, answering the cop’s questions, tired but polite, believing the story he told. Latrell sat in a chair at his kitchen table and waited, nodding his head with the repeated rhythm of what he would say, what he decided was true, what he would make them believe.
The window from his kitchen gave him a view of the back of Marcellus’s house. The porch light came on. A man came out the back door carrying a dog. Sat the dog on the ground. Stood still and quiet. The dog disappeared, then came back. The man bent down to the dog, then followed the dog into the shadows where Latrell couldn’t see them, though he knew where they were.
He heard the helicopter, felt the wash of the rotors breaking against his house, and blinked when the spotlight lit the backyard like it was Yankee Stadium. The man he’d seen was in the center of the spotlight, bent over. Even from where he was watching, Latrell could tell that there was something wrong with the man, like he’d had a seizure. The cops surrounded him, one of them taking him away. Latrell went back to his kitchen chair and waited.
Soon the doorbell rang. He listened, counting until the chimes had sounded five times. He shouldn’t be in a hurry to answer and he wasn’t.
He looked out the keyhole at a square-shouldered white man, the man’s dark eyes staring back at him as if he could see inside the house. A tall black woman stood at his side, her eyes studying the windows as if Latrell might jump out of one. Both of them wore navy windbreakers, FBI stenciled in yellow letters over their hearts. He smiled. He’d been right, after all. The man on the utility pole had been FBI.
Latrell eased the door open, leaving the chain latched to the frame, cautious as he should be, looking at them without saying anything, rubbing his chin. Just as they expected he would.
“Sorry to bother you,” the woman said. “I’m Agent Iverson. This is Agent Day. We’re with the FBI.”
Ammara Iverson and Jim Day held up their badges and IDs. Latrell took his time, comparing the faces on the IDs to the two people at his door. He didn’t doubt who they were, but it was important to take his time. He nodded, unlatching the chain and opening the door, still not talking.
“Something happened at the house behind yours tonight,” the woman said. “We’re going door-to-door. Trying to find out if anyone heard anything unusual, maybe saw something, heard something.”
Latrell shook his head, answering slowly. “Only thing I heard was the storm. Kept me up at first, but I finally fell asleep. Next thing I heard is the sirens. Now I can’t get back to sleep.”
This time it was Agent Day who nodded. “You know who lives in the house behind you?”
“Marcellus and his people. I know him but I don’t know him. You understand what I’m saying.”
“You know what Marcellus had going on at his house?” Iverson asked.
“Everybody knows he deals crack,” Latrell answered. “But like I said, I know him but I don’t know him. That’s what I’m sayin’.”
“You do any business with him?” Iverson asked.
“No way,” Latrell answered. “I don’t want nothing to do with that shit. I got a job. I got a house. I don’t need no trouble.”
“You ever have any trouble with Marcellus?” Agent Day asked.
Latrell shook his head. “I stay out of his business and he don’t bother me.”
“Good for you,” Day said with a tight smile. “How about the other people in the neighborhood? You know anybody had a reason to come after Marcellus?”
“Nobody except you and the cops,” Latrell answered.
“And I’m glad you finally got around to it. Hope you put him away.”
“We won’t have to,” the woman said. “Someone beat us to it.”
Latrell looked at them, his breathing steady. “Marcellus? He’s dead?”
“Yeah,” the woman said. “He’s dead.”
“It don’t matter.”
“How’s that?” she asked.
“There’ll be someone else dealin’ that shit tomorrow afternoon. That’s why.”
“Mattered to Marcellus and it matters to us,” Ammara Iverson said. “You know Marcellus’s girlfriend?”
“Seen her around, that’s all. Her and her kid.”
“You know anyone might want to hurt either one of them?”
Latrell took a shallow breath, shaking his head again. “You saying they dead, too?”
“Both of them. Rondell and DeMarcus Winston, also,” she said. “You sure you didn’t hear anything? They lived right behind you.”
“Wish now I did,” Latrell said. “That’s not right. Kill all those people. Don’t care what they did. That’s not right.”
Ammara Iverson handed him a card. “No, it isn’t. You think of anything that might be important, give us a call.”
Jim Day also handed Latrell his card. “We need your name, sir. Just to complete our report. And where you work. If you don’t mind.”
“Latrell Kelly. I work at the rail yard in Argentine, in the terminal building. And I don’t mind.”
Chapter Nine
I felt Troy’s hand on my back, heard him ask if I was okay, saw him wave off the chopper as I turned my head skyward. Time got lost, seconds confused for minutes, moments for lifetimes. The involuntary muscle contractions that had folded me in half let go, allowing me to stand, clutching my sides, still shaking. I tried to talk, but words strangled in my throat and finally escaped in a stutter.
“I’m fine, just peachy,”
I managed.
Troy cupped my elbow in his palm, guiding me past a gauntlet including my team and at least a dozen KCK cops, fresh contractions contorting my steps like I was a drunken puppet. Jim Day nodded, his chin tapping against his barrel chest, his massive arms hanging against his sides. Lani Hay-wood bit her lower lip. Ammara Iverson fought back tears. Marty Grisnik, my police department coconspirator on the fugitive warrant, was at the end of the receiving line, shaking his head like he should have known better.
“There’s an ambulance on the street,” Troy said as we cleared the crowd. “We’ll have the paramedics take a look at you.”
“Forget it. This will pass. Just let me catch my breath.”
I stopped in the darkened strip of ground between Marcellus’s house and the house to the north, easing Troy’s grip with my free hand. I tried the deep breathing again. The tremors were fading. I didn’t know whether the breathing was helping or whether the shaking had ended on its own.
“What’s going on, Jack?”
I looked at Troy, the worry obvious in his wrinkled brow and narrowed eyes. Some things were easy even for me to read in a man’s face.
I took another breath. “I’ve been having some shaking on and off for the last couple of months. It comes and goes but tonight it’s mostly been coming.”
“That was more than shaking. You were like an old man who fell and couldn’t get up.”
The shakes and the stuttering were nothing new, but this was the first time I’d lost complete control of my body. Something inside me had snapped like a mousetrap and I couldn’t stand up until the spring was reset. I didn’t want to speculate about it until I knew what I was talking about.
“I must have gotten excited when I found all that cash lying around.”
“Bullshit, Jack! What’s the doctor tell you?”
“Haven’t been. Too busy with this case.”
“Busy, hell! You’re going to get your butt in a doctor’s office when the sun comes up if I have to handcuff you and take you there myself. I ought to take you to the nearest ER right now.”