Diane nodded.
“Thing was, he had a bag full of string licorice. Remember that stuff? I loved the red kind. So did Nicole. That was how he took her, I think. Trolled around the ice-cream truck and then used the licorice.”
“You found them?”
“I was a couple of years older. Fourteen, maybe. I guess I knew the basics of sex, but I had never seen it. Didn’t think it would be like that.”
“It isn’t, Michael.”
“At the end of the rail yards is a place we used to call ‘the swamp.’ Pretty much what it was. Ran right under the tracks. He had her sitting on a rock, head down, his hand in her hair, forcing her mouth onto him. I remember seeing him turn first toward me, then her face followed. She was crying, but there was a freight train rolling overhead so there was no sound. Well, there was plenty of sound, just nothing from her.”
I took a pull on the beer, but it had no taste. The movie played, the train rolled. No sound but plenty of pictures. Diane inched closer, knees touching mine, took up both my hands, and held them close. I didn’t pull away anymore.
“I wasn’t a big kid,” I continued, “but I was probably the toughest in a tough neighborhood. Wouldn’t have mattered. The guy was huge, would have killed me. Still, when I saw him, saw Nicole, the world went black. It used to happen when I was a kid. Things would get fuzzy, sort of a hot mist. Then just black. After that, it was like I was outside myself. Watching. Waiting to see what might happen.
“I guess I got lucky, grabbed at an old piece of board. Had a big old nail on the end. Caught him with it just above the temple. Man fell like a wall of bricks. Knees first, chest, then his head. With a slap on the ground. I was on top of him. Actually, both of us were. Me and Nicole. Beat him until we couldn’t lift our arms.”
I finished off the beer. The buzzer rang at the front door. Diane got up, paid the pizza guy, and set out plates. Then she sat down, took my hands in hers again, and waited.
“I think he was dead,” I said. “Pretty sure. I think the nail did it. It was early spring, a Friday afternoon after school, and we left him there. I remember his tongue just peeking out between his lips. Ran like hell. Left him in the swamp. Goddamn freight train was still running overhead.”
I picked up a piece of pizza and took a bite. Tasted like nothing, too.
“What about after?” Diane said.
“There was no after,” I said. “That night we had a huge rainstorm. Mudslides, flooding. Monsoon-type shit.”
I stopped for a moment and felt the rain again, black and cold, dropping straight down from the sky, hammering on the roof, tearing at my bedroom window. I stayed in there, alone, thinking someone, somewhere was angry. And I wondered at whom.
“We couldn’t even get near the swamp for a week and a half,” I said. “When we did, Nicole and I, the water was still and deep. The entire ledge where we left him was washed out. If he was still there, he was under a lot of water and a lot of mud. If he was alive … well, neither one of us ever saw him again.”
“So you really don’t know?”
“If I killed him? I always figured I did. Unless and until I see that face again, that’s how I look at it.”
I shrugged.
“Some people can kill. Others can’t. I found out early on that I belong in the first group. I’m okay with that.”
“How about Nicole?”
I shook my head.
“Hard to say. The years went by. We’d talk about it every now and then. But we mostly left it alone. Seemed easier that way.”
“Usually is. And now?”
“Now I need to talk to John Grime.”
“You think he has an answer for you?”
“Depends on what the question is. Right now, I think it’s worth a try.”
Diane urged me softly to my feet. I let her. She led me into the bedroom, closed the blinds, and put my world on hold. We didn’t have sex. Instead, we made love. For the first time. When we were done, I thought the tears were mine. Until I realized they were hers.
Chapter 43
Illinois executes its killers inside a grim pile of brick just outside Chicago called Stateville prison. Death row itself, however, is located four hundred miles away, inside an even grimmer pile of brick called Menard. I flew into St. Louis, hired a car, and drove back across the state line. Diane knew the warden down at Menard and made the first phone call. He had no problem with my request to visit Grime, but only if the killer indicated, in writing, he wanted to see me. According to the warden, Grime had not taken a visitor who wasn’t an attorney in more than five years. Still, I scratched out a note, sealed it up, and sent it down to the prison. A week later my phone rang. Grime gave the okay. So here I was.
“Empty your pockets into the tray.”
The voice bled through a wooden speaker on the wall. A plastic tray was shoved through a metal slot set in a piece of opaque Plexi. I dumped my pockets into the tray and slid it back through. A few minutes later the disembodied voice returned.
“Pass through for shakedown.”
A lock turned to my left, and a door opened. I walked into a larger room with three correctional officers: two females and one male, sitting in three cubicles and not smiling. One of the females pointed to a door on my right.
“In there. Take your pants off and wait.”
I walked into the room and waited. Kept my pants on. After a few minutes, a correctional officer with a shaved bullet for a head muscled through. He didn’t have rubber gloves on, and I felt immediately better.
“You’re supposed to have your pants off.”
“And why would that be?”
Bullet-head smiled.
“Mostly we do it just to see if people will comply. Gets boring out here. Let me just pat you down and we can go in.”
Five minutes later I was in a small holding room, a visitor’s badge clipped to my chest, waiting.
All prisons are basically the same. Some more so than others. Especially if they are old. Menard had housed more than a hundred years’ worth of human suffering. Anguish and fear, sweat, piss, and bedsprings sharpened into steel shanks. Empty shower stalls and guards who couldn’t hear the screams. Gang rape and prison bedsheets fashioned into a noose for a convenient suicide.
I heard the shuffle of footsteps and muffled voices. The turn of a key in one lock, then another. Finally, the footsteps were outside and a door opened. Bullet-head came in first. He had two officers with him. Each carried a pump-action shotgun. Bullet-head did the talking.
“All right, Kelly. Here’s the deal. The prisoner is in a cell across the hall. He is cuffed, hands and feet, with a belly chain. If you want, we can take off the handcuffs.”
I nodded. Bullet-head mumbled into a walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder.
“Okay,” he continued. “You can shake his hand if you want but that’s it. No other physical contact. If you want to give him anything, give it to me now and I’ll clear it with the warden.”
“I got nothing for him.”
“Good. Just talk and keep your distance. Everything will be fine.”
I nodded again.
“He’s got cigarettes and a bottle of water in there. He brought down a shitload of paperwork and some of his paintings. Any idea about that?”
“No.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what’s this all about?”
“You going to be in there while we talk?”
“My two friends here will be on either side of the prisoner. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Then you’ll hear it all anyway.”
“Fair enough. Don’t make a scene and get him riled up, or my orders are to cut off the interview. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
They were still taking the cuffs off as I came in. Grime was sitting in a folding metal chair, at a table stacked with material from a decade’s worth of appeals. More files lay on the floor at his feet. One of the guards unraveled
the belly chain and stepped away.
“See this?”
Grime pulled a thick brown binder off the table. It had orange, green, and yellow tabs running down its side.
“This is information I pulled on all the victims. Private investigators I paid for. Good money to find out what they could about all these kids.”
Grime pulled open a tab to reveal the face of a young girl. I didn’t catch the name, but she was smiling.
“Complete workups on all of them, who they were, who they knew, how they got to Chicago. Most of these kids weren’t saints, you know.”
Grime dropped the binder to the floor and looked at me full on for the first time. He was like any other old guy gone to seed, except worse. Around sixty-five, white hair slicked back in a bad John Dillinger and thinning, with a serious case of dandruff. His skin was the color of wet gravel and his face hung off his cheekbones. His eyes were shoehorned into swollen pockets of flesh, and his mouth dripped down toward his chin. A decade on death row had not been good to Grime. Then again, it wasn’t supposed to be.
“Why all the investigation?” I said.
“To prove who killed them.”
I sat down in a chair opposite. The men with the guns were on either side, just as Bullet-head had promised. And Grime talked, just as he had promised.
“I brought some of my sketches down.”
Grime pulled a canvas off the table.
“This is a self-portrait of me working on Michigan Avenue. I call it Michigan Avenue Mime.”
Grime grinned a row of teeth, crooked and mossy, but they were all there.
“Want to see one of my routines?”
Before I could say no, Grime had drawn both of his hands close together over his head. He looked up through spread fingers, turned his palms flat, and fought against an invisible ceiling dropping from above. Then he slipped his hands to either side and pushed against the heaviness of his imaginary walls. Finally, Grime dropped his palms in front of his face, peered through his fingers at me, and mimed fear. I wondered if this was the last thing his victims saw in their short bit of life.
“Not bad, huh?” the killer said. “I had real talent. You want to see another sketch?”
He pulled a second self-portrait off the table. This time it was Grime the Mime entertaining a group of kids.
“This is me at Brody’s Ice Cream Emporium. Get it?”
Grime coughed up a laugh and took a look around. I didn’t get it. Neither did anyone else. It was a tough room, but Grime kept on.
“Brody’s. The company with fifteen favorite flavors. I worked as their mime. Fifteen flavors. Fifteen bodies. Get it?”
I smiled.
“Got it.”
“This is one of my Disney paintings.”
Grime pulled out a painting of the Seven Dwarfs. It was winter, and the misshapen Dwarfs were sitting around a campfire, shovels tossed aside, trying to stay warm. Grime provided running commentary.
“Walt Disney was a mentor of mine. I love the Dwarfs. Sleepy, Sneezy, Happy, Doc. Every year I do a different season. This is The Dwarfs in Winter.”
“You do these in your cell?”
“Yeah. I do forty or fifty of these every year. Next up is summer.”
“Same scene?”
“Always the woods.”
“Where’s Snow White?”
Grime smiled again. Everything except his eyes.
“Not there, is she? Why are you here?”
Grime put the painting away and took a sip of water.
“I mean, I read your letter. New information about my case. You knew that would get my interest.”
I nodded.
“So how can you help me?” he said.
“I don’t think you’re innocent, John.”
Grime’s face remained flat.
“I don’t really give a shit what you think, mister. How can you help my case?”
“I think you had an accomplice. Tell me about it, and maybe I can help.”
Grime took another hit on the water and leaned back in his chair. His belly strained against the buttons of his shirt. Prison-issue blue.
“You know I serve Mass in here? Ask the chaplain. Altar boy.”
Another pause.
“You have a lawyer, John?”
“A fucking fleet of them.”
“Ask them. An accomplice changes your case. Changes the evidence. Maybe gets you a new trial. Where you sit, that’s a good thing.”
“What makes you think I didn’t do them all myself?”
“Like I said, tell me about it, and maybe I can help.”
“No, fuck wad. You tell me about it. Or get the fuck out of my jail.”
I leaned forward. Grime didn’t move.
“I’m your best chance, John. Believe it or don’t, but I can prove you had help. Now tell me about it.”
“Why should I give it to you?”
“Why not?”
“Maybe I think it’ll keep me alive.”
“Want me to show you a calendar with your execution date on it? I’m figuring sometime next December. Enjoy.”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“This is so much bigger than the murders now. I’m so much bigger.”
Grime blinked once and looked at me like a high school kid might look at a frog just before he dissects it. Kind of funny, but mostly curious.
“You know how many people die each day?” he said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Hundred fifty thousand a day. Ten thousand since you sat down here. Look it up.”
“I’m not following you, John.”
“You’re not following me. No one follows me. That’s the point. Shit, for every person alive right now, there are billions who are already dead. Billions. So where the fuck do you get off saying these fifteen are so special?”
Grime used his foot to flip open the brown binder again. It fell flat to a picture of a girl named Donna Tracey. About seventeen years old, with long, stringy hair and bad skin. Looked like a mug shot.
“Just part of the herd,” Grime said. “Millions of them, scraping along, sucking down their Big Macs, listening to their tunes, flipping through the idiot box. That’s the life, mister. Get out of the house, drink up some warm beer, then wrestle with a wannabe car mechanic in a backseat somewhere. Like they invented sex.”
Grime closed the binder with his foot.
“Get knocked up at what? Fifteen, sixteen? For what? To procreate? Propagate the species? Fuck that. Just another generation of mediocrity. Spitting out their mediocre kids. Then trudging along to a grave. These fifteen just got there a little earlier.”
“And no one really gives a damn about any of them. Right, John?”
Grime craned his neck and took a look around the room. No one had moved. Everyone was listening. The killer loved it, which was okay. As long as he kept talking, I was in the game.
“You look like a smart guy,” Grime said. “Let me ask you something. You know the name of your great-grandfather? Great-grandmother? How about we go back another generation, great-great-grandfather? That’s less than a hundred years ago, but most people have no fucking idea. Their own flesh and blood. So fucking sacred. Once you’re in the ground, you’re gone. Within fifty years. Like you never existed.”
“But not that way for you, huh?”
“Probably not, mister. Probably not. So you say these assholes are going to kill me and you have a way out. I say, so what. Kill me. I’ll live forever anyway.”
Grime looked past me. To Bullet-head.
“I’m done here.”
With that he stood up and held out his hands. The officers redid his cuffs. In front of his body. Then they began to pack up his files.
“Sorry, Kelly. Maybe you have something. Maybe you don’t. Just not enough in it for me.”
“You already have what you want?”
“Looks like it.”
I stood up and moved cl
oser. Trying to get in the killer’s space, change the dynamic.
“What if you could walk away from this?” I said. “Even a little bit. Don’t you think the legend would only grow? And if you were ever released, how big would that story be?”
Grime paused as they secured the hallways outside. He looked for all the world like a broken-down old man, one who liked to have sex with little girls and squeeze their necks until they were dead. By his own estimation, one of this generation’s immortals. Tell the truth, I figured he wasn’t that far off. Then the serial killer leaned forward and, for the first time since I entered the room, surprised me.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You do your own legwork. See if you can make the case. Otherwise, I talk and it comes right back here. Sits in my lap.”
“Fair enough. But I need something.”
A guard grabbed Grime by the elbow and began to tug.
“Time to go,” Bullet-head said.
“I’ll think about it,” Grime said. “But understand, you start down this road, you might end up under a house, too.”
He smiled when he said it. I think Grime enjoyed the notion. Then he left the room. Bullet-head stayed behind.
“Who picks up his stuff?” I said.
The guard shrugged.
“Are you kidding me? The guys fight to get to carry this stuff up to his cell. One of those paintings goes into someone’s locker. Sell it on eBay for twenty grand.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
We walked together through a couple of locked doors and back down an open breezeway. The yard was to my left, a scattering of inmates smoking cigarettes and lifting iron in the cold.
“You get what you need?” Bullet-head said.
“Not yet.”
“Yeah, well, Grime is an asshole.”
“Not well liked in here?”
“Guy like that. Rep like that. He pays to stay alive.”
“Really?”
“Sure. Carton of smokes a month or we find him in the shower with a shank in his neck.”
We came to the end of the breezeway. Bullet-head turned a key and opened another door. An officer waited on the other side.
“Here is where I get off. Good luck, Kelly. Hope you learned something.”
The Chicago Way Page 17