“Guess he was, but I never saw him. Didn’t know he had even come in. Thought I had the door locked. And maybe I did. He sometimes snuck in the back. When I realized he had been here, that this was the last place he had been before he vanished . . . it brought me up short.”
I nodded.
“What it is you think he saw?” he asked.
“You raping or killing the final victim, Jaquez Anderson,” I said. “My guess is your little meeting room back there wasn’t just an adult room, but your playroom where you raped and killed and what? Recorded? Did you make videos of the boys? Did you rent them?”
“I never raped anyone,” he said. “I’m a . . . I have a compulsion to kill, sure enough, but I never forced myself on anyone. I paid them boys to let me touch and film ’em, and to touch and do sex stuff to me, but I never forced ’em.”
“That’s a distinction without a difference,” I said. “The very kind of stinking thinking AA deals with.”
“And it did. Right up until you forced your way into my life and kicked the shit out of my serenity. Don’t you get it? I stopped. I used the program to stop myself. I worked the shit out of it and was able to stop—until you had to dredge it all back up.”
“Always someone else’s fault,” I said. “Big part of that same mentality.”
“You act like you know somethin’, for some punk kid who just started the program.”
“I don’t know anything,” I said. “Except where Cedric is.”
I knew that really meant something to him.
“Do you? You do, don’t you? You son of a bitch.”
“How’d you lure Kenny?” I asked. “Comics?”
“And coloring books. Easiest thing in the world. Find a boy without a father. Thing he wants most in the world is some mature masculine attention. Where is Cedric?”
“Where is Kenny?”
“Where are any of the boys?” he said.
“In your walls,” I said.
“How the hell did you—”
“That was something else that coincided with your sobriety and Cedric’s disappearance. Your remodeling of your back room.”
“Been tryin’ to figure out what to do with them when I shut the place down,” he said. “Couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t involve me gettin’ caught.”
“And why keep cats around when you’re allergic to them?” I said. “Because you use the kitty litter on the bodies. It has a desiccant and odor-absorbing agent—and you can buy it in bulk without looking suspicious. But it would be suspicious if you didn’t have cats. So you have Shaft and Foxy Brown and sneeze your way through every day and have bags and bags of kitty litter in your storage-meeting-burial chamber room. Wayne Williams reminded me that John Wayne Gacy hid his victims in the walls and floors of his house. Is Kenny already in there? Is that what you’ve been doing?”
“I’ll tell you what I been doin’, boy,” he said. “I’ve been battlin’ with demons you couldn’t begin to understand, to keep from so much as touching that boy. Two wolves wagin’ war inside me the likes of which you couldn’t imagine. That’s it. Worse thing I did to him so far is drug his Kool-Aid so he fell asleep before he got to finish his first comic. That’s it.”
“Let that be it,” I said.
He laughed. “And what? Turn myself in? I’ve already done more than what any prison could do. I rehabilitated myself. I used the only program known to work for addiction and I stopped my addiction. Whatta they gonna do for me? Cage me? What’s that gonna do? No, sir. I don’t think so. Think instead I’ll set you up for what’s about to befall Kenny.”
“By planting some of his clothes and comics in my apartment or car?”
“That was a nice touch,” he said, “but an unnecessary one. Cops didn’t care. Especially when they’s havin’ a new body every week. Missin’ ain’t murder. Missin’ don’t make it into the paper. Missin’ don’t come with no political pressure. Biggest mistake Wayne ever made was dumping them bodies.”
“Let me see Kenny,” I said.
“Let me see your brain,” he said, holding up the gun a little higher. “It’s pretty impressive. I want to see it.”
“Did you kill Laney Mitchell?”
“Laney Mitchell? Now I’m a hit-and-run killer too?”
“Thought she might have seen something or found out something and had to be silenced.”
He shook his head. “Sure it was just some drunk. Like you and me. Didn’t mean no harm. Didn’t stop him from doin’ plenty, though, did it? Okay. Time to die.”
“Wait. I know you want to know what happened to Cedric,” I said. “I know you want to see him. Let me see Kenny. Let me take Kenny home and you can go see Cedric.”
“No way he’s alive,” he said.
“He’s very much alive,” I said. “I swear it. I’m telling the truth. Put it to the test.”
That reminded me of Lonnie passing a polygraph in relation to Cedric’s disappearance. Of course he did. He had nothing to do with it. Had he been asked about the other boys, that would’ve yielded a very different result.
“How?”
“You can ask who helped take him,” I said. “She’s close by.”
“She?”
A jingle at the door then—someone opening it, triggering the bell—Lonnie’s attention momentarily diverted. Me lunging, grabbing, falling.
We hit the ground, the gun between us, both of us vying for control over where the barrel was pointed.
Then Susan there. Spraying him with mace. Him releasing his grip, pawing at his eyes. Me grabbing the gun. Jumping up. Pulling her back out from behind the counter.
“Check the back room,” I said to her.
As she did, I pointed the revolver at Lonnie and blocked his exit from behind the counter. Not that he was trying to exit. He was still rolling around on the floor writhing in pain, spitting, crying, coughing, choking.
“It’s empty,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
Light from the room spilled out into the hallway.
“Positive.”
“Check the bathroom.”
She did.
“He’s here,” she yelled. “He’s alive. Seems okay. Just sleeping I think. John, he’s alive. He’s okay.”
Chapter Forty-nine
“What’re you doing here?” I asked Susan.
“I felt bad for all the pressure I had put on you. I was going to come to your apartment to surprise you and see if I could help.”
We were waiting for the police to arrive.
Lonnie was still lying on the floor, but now he was crying, appearing to literally be wallowing. His self-pity was as pathetic as it was predictable.
“I had just finished cleaning and locking up,” she said. “Already had my mace out. Saw Rand crossing Memorial and you come in here. Decided to take a look. I was feeling paranoid.”
“Glad you were. Best surprise in a long time. Thank you.”
“Did you really find Cedric?” Lonnie asked between snobs and sniffles.
“He didn’t kill Cedric too?” Susan said.
“Just the others.”
“Where are the bodies?”
“In the walls of the back room,” I said.
“Oh my God. Right in there? Where you sent me to look for Kenny?”
“I didn’t send you into the walls.”
“Still.”
“Did you really find him? Is he okay?” Lonnie said.
I nodded. “I think so.”
“Where is he? Who took him?”
“I haven’t decided whether or not I’m telling anyone,” I said, “but I’m certainly not telling you.”
With an inhuman growl, he lunged at me.
Unable to shoot him, I hesitated just long enough for him to be on me, tackling me to the ground, the gun falling out of my hand and skittering across the floor, disappearing beneath a video shelf.
Susan screamed.
Lonnie began beating me about the face, neck, a
nd shoulders, his tears and snot falling down on me as he did.
Susan went for the gun, running past us, momentarily drawing Lonnie’s attention.
I bucked him up off me and kicked him hard with both feet.
He went sailing back toward the back room, flailing as he did, and crashed into the large bookcases holding the thousands of video tapes in their hard plastic cases.
The shelves fell over, Lonnie following behind on his back, and knocked a hole in the sheetrock wall behind them, a hole out of which dropped a small, ashen, mummified hand along with a rain of white sheetrock dust, paper particles, and kitty litter.
Eventually, the cops came, Bobby Battle and Remy Boss among them.
“Looks like we owe you an apology,” Remy said as Lonnie was being taken away.
“And that’s the extent of it right there,” Bobby said. “So enjoy it. And don’t be a dick about it.”
A crime scene tech had already begun to open the walls behind the shelves and movie posters in the back room.
We had moved to the front of the store to be as far away from it as possible. I had no desire to see any more of the mummified murder of innocence I would never be able to unsee. The hand and all my imaginings were enough, were too much. Susan seemed to feel the same way.
“I have one favor to ask,” I said.
“You and your goddamn favors,” Bobby said.
“It’s just because I’m young and have no authority and can’t do them for myself. If I could, I’d never ask for anything. Believe that.”
“I’ll be glad when Frank is better and can get back to doin’ them for you himself. He woke up a few minutes ago, by the way. He’s gonna be okay.”
Tears stung my eyes. “Thank God.”
“What’s the favor?”
“Let me and Susan take Kenny back to his mom.”
“Seems the least we can do,” Remy said.
“Which is what we try to do when we can,” Bobby said. “He’ll have to be taken to the hospital and checked out right after, but you can take him to the mom first.”
“Thanks.”
Camille Pollard burst into tears the moment she opened her door and saw us.
Her hair wasn’t fixed. Her casual, comfortable clothes were worn and faded, and the light skin of her face held no makeup. It was the first time I had ever seen her not fixed up, not stylish, not made up, and she looked more youthful and more attractive than she ever had previously.
“Is he . . .”
“Just sleeping,” I said.
Lights from the cop car that had brought us over flashed on the door and walls and still-falling snow.
I added, “They’re going to take him to the hospital to check him out, but he’s gonna be fine. An ambulance will be here in a minute.”
I handed him to her.
As soon as I did, Wilbur pushed past her and hugged me.
I bent down and hugged him back.
“Where was he?” Camille said. “Who had him?”
I told her.
“Oh my God. Are you sure? Right next door all this time. Is he the . . . Did he kill the others?”
I nodded.
From the building across the way I could see Annie Mae Dozier open her door and look out at us.
“I actually was beginning to think it might be Mickey,” she said. “Thought he might be doing this for his damn story. Where is he?”
“McDonough. He’s fine. Was looking for Cedric. Now he’s just waiting until the storm passes and the roads open again.”
An ambulance pulled up.
“Come on,” she said to Wilbur. “Let’s get your brother to the hospital.”
Chapter Fifty
Over the next several days, I spent a lot of time prayerfully pondering what I should do about Cedric. Turn over what I knew to the authorities in an attempt to find him and bring him home, or leave him where he was?
I didn’t feel adequate to the task of deciding the fate of this little boy who had been through so much. I wasn’t adult enough, mature enough, wise enough.
Who was I to say what was right or best for this child?
And yet . . .
Fate had made the decision mine to make, and Mickey had agreed to go along with whatever I decided.
Was he better off where he was or back with his mother?
I didn’t want to decide, but more than that I didn’t want to abdicate the responsibility I had been given.
In one sense, Annie Mae Dozier and her daughter were criminals—kidnappers who had stolen a child. In another, they were two caring women who had acted heroically in an attempt to save an abused and neglected child. Who knows, maybe the actions they took ensured that another isolated and traumatized child wouldn’t turn to dark fantasies that would lead to much darker actions.
I realized I didn’t have enough information to make the best decision possible, which let me know what I needed to do.
I went back to Annie Mae Dozier’s.
“Figure I see you again,” she said through her open door. “Heard you caught the killer. Tol’ you that family was no good for Cedric.”
I nodded.
“Why you here?”
“Trying to decide what to do,” I said.
“’Bout?”
“Cedric.”
“Leave the boy be.”
“I’m inclined to,” I said. “And I think you should be with them too.”
Tears filled the old eyes behind the big glasses, and she stopped blinking.
Suddenly, this ancient, freckled, narrow, emaciated, parchment-covered thing before me was younger, more vibrant, and bent over no more.
“Y’all can be together,” I said. “No running. No looking over your shoulder. All I want to do is talk with Cedric and your daughter. That’s it. I have to make sure he’s good before I can let it go. If you agree and he is doing well, no one will ever know and I’ll be out of it forever. If you don’t, I’ll be forced to go to the authorities and . . . your daughter can be found. It wouldn’t even be that difficult. You know it’s true.”
She nodded. “I do. Know somethin’ else true too. That boy couldn’t be any better or any happier. You’ll see.”
And I did.
And that was that. And like Kenny, a positive result was achieved for Cedric—something far too infrequent in what had become my work.
Susan and I started dating a little later. She had saved my life after all. It seemed the thing to do.
I still missed Jordan and I still felt conflicted about it.
I still missed Martin and I felt no conflict about that.
I stopped going to the missing and murdered children group. I never saw most of the members again, including Summer, who seemed more like a specter than anything else. Miss Ida and I stayed in touch. We had shared too much not to. Most often we’d meet at Jordan’s grave.
I never found any evidence that Laney Mitchell’s death was anything but a tragic, senseless, preventable accident. Maybe Lonnie was right. Maybe it was just a sad, sorry drunk like us.
Mickey continued calling and coming around while he was working on his book, but not much after that.
Frank got out of the hospital and made a full recovery. He continued to be the person in Atlanta I could count on most.
Two people who never got out of the hospital were Daryl Lee Gibbons and his mother—his mother because she died after a little less than a week inside and Daryl Lee because, when he was eventually able, he was sent straight from the medical hospital to a psychiatric one.
In the end, Martin’s mother dropped her lawsuit for the most unexpected reason imaginable. Bobby Battle told her if she didn’t he was going to arrest her for killing her own son and a hundred other charges besides, and that he could make them stick. She must have believed him. I never heard anything out of her again.
I found a new AA group and continued going. I stopped drinking.
I got back in school—the first day back after the snowstorm in fact, and dug i
n to theology and my studies in a way I hadn’t before.
And the reason I was able to do all this was because I was able to make a certain imperfect peace with the Atlanta Child Murders.
There were things I would never know and I was learning to live with that.
Were the victims connected? Yes. Many of them were intimately connected. Were there geographical and social relationships between victims and suspects? There were. Many.
Was there a child sex ring and more than one killer? I believe so.
I suspected John David Wilcoxen, Jamie Brooks, and others of all manner of evil—including murder of one kind or another—but because of the nature of such cases and the mistakes made by the various law enforcement agencies involved, there is much we will never know or be able to prove.
I believe that poor, at-risk, vulnerable street kids—the type of kids Wayne Williams called drop shots—were crushed by those streets and the predators lurking on them. I believe some kids sold their bodies and certain sexual services for money and attention and affection. I believe others were just available prey, children whose ancestry and geography sealed an impossibly cruel fate for them.
When people learn of my fascination with and investigation into the cases, they always ask me the same questions. Is Wayne Williams guilty? Did he do it?
It has taken a while, but I finally have an answer.
I believe Wayne Bertram Williams is the Atlanta Child Murderer. I still have many questions, but I am convinced by the evidence against him. There’s simply too much of it, particularly trace evidence—the combination of fibers and human and dog hairs too unique, the probabilities against it being him too low—for it not to be Williams.
Wayne Williams also failed a polygraph three times.
But it’s not just all of that. It’s that he had such a ridiculous story about why he was on the James Jackson Parkway bridge the night he was stopped, or that the person he claimed to be looking for never came forward, or that he burned evidence, or that he had so many connections to so many of the key places, people, and victims, or that eyewitnesses claimed to have seen him with some of the victims, or that the relatively rare trilobal green carpet fibers from his bedroom as well as nearly twenty other fibers and hairs from his home and vehicle were found on so many of the victims, or that he used Cap’n Peg’s as the address on his flyers, or that his flyers turned up in so many of the areas where the victims lived and were taken. It was Williams himself.
BLOOD CRIES: a John Jordan Mystery (Book 10) (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 19