“Georgie!” Maria hollered. “Hurry on home!”
George waved back and picked up his pace. “I'm coming.” He started running.
Maria put her hands on her hips and watched the little guy hurry up the street. She had always loved George and he was easy to work with. Mary wasn't. Maria always found her granddaughter to be on the belligerent and difficult side. She'd argue and try to act like she didn't hear when Maria asked her to do something. Well, George wasn't that way and she liked working with him. He made being a grandparent fun.
“Hi, Grammy. Looks like you're already hard at work.”
“Not really, George. I've been sort of rearranging some of the mess out here.” She bent over and whispered. “I was actually waiting for you to come home.”
“Great!”
“We've got lots to do.”
“I'll put my books and stuff in the house. Gimme a minute.”
“You do that. I'll get a few other items in order.”
George disappeared through the garage door into the house. Maria watched him hustle off to his room like a good boy. Maybe she shouldn't have favorites, but George came close to being her number one grandchild. Of course, Matt off at Northwestern University still remained a top contender for the number one spot. Matt was such a thoughtful boy.
“What do you want me to do?” George bounded out of the back door.
“I see you changed your pants in about half a second. That'll keep your mother happy.”
“Got to make Mom smile.”
Maria smiled at his thoughtfulness. “What'd you learn at school today?”
“We learned about biology.”
“In elementary school?” Maria shook her head. “My, my. Isn't that something. How everything has changed. To an old woman like me, it's almost unbelievable you learn such.”
George smiled. “But we do!”
“Sure.” Maria pointed to the workbench. “Now you start by helping me clear the trash off the top. Most of that stuff is nothing but leftover trailings of your projects.”
George grinned. “Maybe Jeff did it.”
Maria raised an eyebrow. “Jeff's too small too much at that workbench, young man. Takes somebody your size.”
“Can't ever tell,” George teased.
“George.” Maria stopped and looked through the open garage door. “You didn't see anybody standing outside when you came walking up? A man maybe?”
“What d'you mean?”
“A bum was standing out there.” Maria pointed across the street. “Did you see a such a feller?”
George shook his head. “Nope. Why?”
“I saw a man across the street. We use to call em panhandlers. And… well… him standing over there bothered me.”
“Maybe he was looking for a girlfriend.” George grinned.
“Now, don't you get smart with me.” Maria shook her finger in her grandson's face.
George kept grinning. “Come on, Grammy. Be honest.”
Maria hugged her grandson. “Okay. Okay. Maybe I'm overreacting.”
“Yeah, I think you are. I didn't see anybody. Maybe the guy was nothing but somebody hanging around from last night in a Halloween suit.”
Maria snickered. “George, I swear to goodness! You've got the biggest imagination I ever saw.”
“No! You've got the imagination, Grammy. Don't kid me.”
“My, my, what a household I live in. Okay, George. Let's see how much we can get done. Time is flying.”
“Grammy,” George said more thoughtfully. “I overheard you talking about evil last night. You really believe in it?”
“Why would you ask me such a strange question?”
“Nobody in my school believes in such stuff. I think the devil is just a big joke.”
Maria frowned and looked perplexed. “Don't believe? I'm sorry, George. I still live in a world where evil really means something.”
George shrugged. “Well, it was just a thought.”
“You're a good boy.” Maria patted him on the shoulder and turned away. She didn't feel comfortable saying much on this subject and Maria didn't want to upset her grandchild Better leave it alone.
The back door suddenly swung open and hit the wall with a bang. “Don't move!” a man demanded.
Maria stared. The same person she had seen standing across the street stood there in his unwashed look. Only then did Maria realize he was holding a 9mm pistol.
“Make a noise and I'll kill you,” the man growled.
Maria stiffened and grabbed George, pulling him close to her.
“Who are you?” Maria demanded.
“Shut up, you old fool. I'm hungry and I want your money.”
“Get out of here!” Maria demanded.
“I ain't goin’ nowhere.” The man motioned with his gun toward the house. “Keep your voice down. I don't like loudmouthed women.”
Maria pushed George behind her. “Listen, you punk. I'm not afraid of you. Don't think you can scare us.”
The man raised the pistol to shoulder level. “Don't mess with me, grandma freak. You get me riled up and I'll kill you.” His hand started to shake.
Maria watched his eyes. The man looked terrified and high on something. But for some odd reason, she didn't feel particularly afraid of him. The bum seemed more intent on frightening her than anything else.
“You better get out of here,” Maria threatened. “Our house is filled with people who could walk out here at any second.”
“I don't think so,” the man said. “Ain't nobody in there.”
“You don't know about the upstairs!”
The intruder blinked his eyes nervously “I didn't need to know about the upstairs. Ain't nobody up there either.”
“Yes there is!” Maria insisted.
“Then, I'll take their money too.” The man gestured with his gun toward the house. “Go on in or I'll kill all of you out here.”
“Listen!” Maria shook her finger in his face. “I'm not afraid of you. You're trying to scare us. Well, get this straight. I'm not giving you a dime.”
“You want to die?” He cocked the pistol.
“Watch out!” George warned his grandmother. “He's crazy.”
“You give me that gun.” Maria took a step forward. “I'm not going to put up with this nonsense any longer.” She abruptly thrust her hand straight toward him.
The bum's eyes widened and suddenly he fired. The booming explosion echoed through garage with a deafening roar. The large pistol jerked straight up and the burglar stepped backward and fired again.
Maria felt pain rip through her abdomen. For an instant it felt like a knife had struck her stomach and gone on through her back. In the next second, she knew her abdomen was filling with blood. Never in her life had she felt such sensations, but she knew life was running out of her. In a matter of seconds Maria felt horrible lightheadedness. The garage filled with a blinding whiteness that quickly turned into blackness like someone had turned off all of the lights in the world. Maria felt her knees buckle. Her reeling fall was the last thing she experienced. The crunch of her knees smashing against the cement floor never registered in her mind and neither did any pain when she fell face forward into the cement.
George couldn't move. Every muscle in his body froze and his feet melted into the cement floor. The intruder took a couple of steps backward. He didn't say anything, but turned and ran out the back door. George could hear him rushing across the backyard and hitting the back fence. A crashing, crunching noise erupted off in the distance and then silence.
“Grammy?” George reached out, but was afraid to touch her. Two crimson stains spread across the back of her blouse. He reached out again to touch her, but drew his hand back.
“Grammy?” George said louder. She didn't move.
George opened his mouth but nothing would come out. The last thing he remembered clearly was his feet breaking loose from the floor and running out of the garage toward a house, any house. Somewhere halfway out
in the street his voice returned and he couldn't stop screaming. He didn't remember anything else until long after the police arrived. Mary was holding him then. They both kept crying, but that's all he could remember except that strange men in blue uniforms kept going in and out of their house.
CHAPTER 10
WHEN GRAHAM and Jackie peck pulled up in front of their house on Crown Point Street, police cars were everywhere. The front lawn around the entry to the house was sealed off, but the garage door was still open and parked police cars blocked the driveway. From his car he could see a crumpled form lying on the garage floor under a sheet. Graham opened the car door slowly and walked halfway up the driveway. He stared at the figure under the shroud.
A policeman stepped in front of him and grabbed his arms. “Please, sir. You can't go in there.”
Graham nodded, but didn't move. He muttered, “She's my mother.”
“Of course,” the policeman said. “We've identified the body. This is a sight you certainly don't want to see. She's been shot a couple of times and the situation is difficult. Please come inside and talk to your children.”
“We understand.” Jackie clutched Graham's arm. “We're deeply concerned about our kids.”
For a moment Graham's head spun and a flash of blinding light obscured everything around him. Slowly the whiteness dissipated and his breath returned. “Yes,” he resolutely agreed.
“The coroner's officials will here shortly and they'll take your mother away,” the policeman said. “That's standard procedure. You'll need to tell us the name of a funeral home where they can take her after their work is done.” He started pulling Graham toward the front door. “Let's go inside”
Graham's feet kept moving, but his legs seemed like pillars of wood inching forward, plodding toward the front door. The distance felt like miles and miles.
“Please go on in,” the policeman said, pushing the front door open.
Cops were everywhere. Police kept walking back and forth, in and out of the room. In one corner Mary was sitting in an overstuffed chair, holding George in her lap. Jeff was huddled up in a ball at her feet.
“Oh my children!” Jackie gasped and rushed across the room. “My babies!” Jackie knelt beside them, hugging, clutching, weeping.
Graham sank down on his knees beside Jackie and pulled all of them toward him. They cried with a passion beyond anything that any of them had ever known before. All sense of time had disappeared.
“She's gone,” Mary finally said. “Grammy's gone.”
“I know,” Graham said. “I know I can't believe it.”
“A man shot her,” Mary said. “For no reason except to rob us. He killed Grandmother.”
Graham reached out for George. “You were there?”
George didn't look up or answer. He kept shivering and holding his arms together.
“You were with your grandmother?” Graham asked again.
George squinted his eyes together with fierce intensity as if he were trying to squeeze the memory out of his mind or erase what he couldn't stop seeing. He only nodded his head slightly.
“George… George… can you talk?” Graham said.
George didn't answer. Tears ran down his cheeks again and he appeared to be frozen to Mary's side.
“Son, we're going to get through this,” Graham said. “We can make it together.”
“Mr. Peck,” a plainclothes detective said from behind them. “May I speak to you for a moment.”
Graham pushed himself up from his family and turned. “Yes sir.”
“Let's walk back here to the kitchen.” The detective gestured for Graham to follow him into large kitchen area. “My name is Smith. Mac Smith, and I'm a homicide detective.”
Graham stumbled and sank into one of the chairs around the deacon's table. “Yes sir,” he barely mumbled.
“Your older son was in the garage when the shooting occurred,” the detective said. “We haven't been able to get him to say anything, but we know he saw the shooter. Your boy doesn't seem to be able to talk right now.”
“I understand,” Graham said.
“We need him to help us identify the killer.”
Graham nodded.
“I want to give you my card. I need you to call me the moment you think the boy is ready to identify pictures. Our computerized system will allow us to move through thousands of pictures quickly, but we need his help.”
“Of course.”
“Kids today see so much killing on television and at the movies that many of them seem to absorb violence better than your boy has done, but…”
“We don't watch violence on television,” Graham interrupted him. “George is in no way prepared for what happened today. I'm sure he's going to have a difficult time. You see…” Graham bit his lip and stopped talking for a moment.
“I understand,” the detective said. “Well, he's severely traumatized right now.” He rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “It may take a while before…well…before he's ready to talk with us.”
“Probably,” Graham said.
The detective stopped and looked out the window. “The ambulance is here now. They will remove your mother and then we'll probably be on our way. We checked the grounds thoroughly before you arrived. We don't have much left to do.”
A policeman walked up. “Detective, we're sure the man went over the back fence and ran down the other side of the street. We've got a couple of eyewitnesses over there.”
“Good!” Smith nodded his head enthusiastically. “We need to make sure we've got police chasing anyone running down that side of the street.”
“Already got it covered, sir.”
“Excellent! Good!” Smith said. “I'll be out there in a few minutes to join the chase.” He turned back to Peck. “Anything you want to ask me?”
Graham shook his head.
“We know who you are, Mr. Peck. You're an important person downtown. Don't worry. We pay attention to the people working with Mayor Bridges.”
Graham blinked several times. The detective's words startled him. “Don't you take care of everybody?” he snapped.
“Sure,” Smith said. “But there's so much crime these days we can't keep up with it all. Since those millions of people disappeared the world's gone crazy. Frankly, some of these cases slip between the cracks. Don't worry. We won't let that happen in this situation.”
Graham thought the police were on top of everything in Chicago, but this man had told him quite the opposite. The admission was staggering. It was wrong, but this wasn't the time or place to take up that problem.
The detective walked away and Graham took a look a long, deep breath and walked back into the living room where the police were starting to thin out. Jackie still lay huddled over the children.
Graham sat down on the floor to be on eye level with George. “Son? Can you talk to me?” He looked straight into George's eyes.
George didn't answer. His eyes looked empty and he didn't move his head.
Graham stared. His son was acting more like a patient coming out of a post-trauma stress crisis. The boy seemed to be completely detached. George couldn't speak and looked like a person in a dissociative state.
“Son…” Graham reached out for him, but George didn't move. Graham took his son in his arms and hugged him close. The boy didn't resist, but neither did he respond. George's body felt like it was hanging in suspended animation, limp like a worn-out inner tube. “Oh George,” Graham whispered in his ear, “I'm so, so sorry.”
George could faintly hear his father's voice, but it sounded like it was coming from the other end of a long tunnel. George felt locked in a soundproof room where a straightjacket bound him tight and secure. Voices buzzed around his head like gnats circling in the summertime. He tried to understand even though nothing made any sense.
A terrible, roaring noise returned over and over again. Like two blasts from a car backfiring, the sounds came in rapid succession. The explosion would occur and then die down sometime
s for as long as a minute. After the blasts had almost faded away, suddenly the cracking and popping would happen again. Two short staccato bangs repeated in the same time sequence. Over and over, over and over, the sounds ricocheted around in his mind.
Everything happening around George moved in slow motion as if all the clocks in the world had geared down to a slow ticking where every second lasted a minute. People walked in long extended strides like giants taking slow steps. George watched the men in blue uniforms who came went through his house but he didn't know who they were. Most of the time he didn't understand anything they said. Their voices slurred together in a long blur of sound.
And then there was something out there in the garage…he couldn't…grasp. Some strange…event had unfolded out there, but George couldn't…quite… remember what it was at that moment. He let his mind wander in that direction, but he could only go so far…and then a horrible noise exploded in his ears again. The sound turned into a ringing roar that drowned out every other intonation. The crashing blurred into a frightening racket that made it impossible for him to think.
George knew that he needed to see what was out there in the garage, what was lying on the floor, and as if struggling through a moss-filled swamp, he tried to get closer, but the explosion erupted again. Blackness fell over everything and a deafening silence settled around him as if a thick blanket had been wrapped around his entire body and over his head. Then fear suddenly gripped him like a vise, squeezing his life out.
And then world swirled out of control and George felt like he was falling, and falling, and falling into oblivion. The emptiness drank him in like a catfish swallowing a minnow. Once the hollowness devoured him, George knew his voice was completely gone. He couldn't talk or think. All that was possible in the silence was to stare into the blankness that held him captive.
CHAPTER 11
SEVERAL HOURS PASSED before anyone ran Matt down, but he turned up studying in the university's library. Matt jumped in his small hydro-coupe automobile and drove like a maniac to Arlington heights. The traffic was fierce and it took him longer than he anticipated. Attempting to avoid the crowded freeways, Matt took several back roads that proved to be even worse. Bewildered, frightened, confounded, angry, nothing seemed to be fitting together right and only increased his bitterness. The only message the student gave him in the library was a handwritten note saying, “Your grandmother's been shot. You need to get home as quickly as you can. She's gone.”
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