by Ian K. Smith
“How do you know Chopper McNair?” Officer Novack asked. He was the smaller of the two, with a muscular build that bulged out of his Kevlar vest. His dark hair had been boxed into a buzz cut. Typically, in these interrogations, the aggressive partner took the first round.
“I don’t know him,” JuJu said. “Never heard of ’im. Never seen ’im. Don’t know who the fuck you talkin’ about.”
“How can you be so sure?” Novack said. “Maybe you did a job together at some point and forgot. Maybe you both got mixed up in a deal, and you didn’t know his name.”
“Not possible.”
“Maybe you had a beef with him?”
“Can’t have no beef with somebody I don’t know.”
“Then maybe someone else had a beef with him and hired you to take care of it.” Novack made a gun sign with his hand and pulled the trigger.
“You talkin’ some crazy shit,” JuJu said. “I ain’t never killed nobody. Little weed here and there or a fight might be one thing, but killin’ somebody is somethin’ different. That ain’t me.”
“Here’s the problem,” Adkins said in a surprisingly calm, soft voice for a man of his size. He was twice Novack’s weight and almost a foot taller. He sported gray dress slacks and a white shirt that had been rolled up at the sleeves. His tie hung loosely around his wide neck. “We know shit goes down. We know people got beefs. We’re not saying you had the beef, but we need to know who had it. This is bigger than you, which is why we’re talking to you first. Killing someone for whatever reason ain’t right, but we don’t really want you. We want the person who put you up to it.”
JuJu shifted in his chair and considered Adkins’s words. His body language changed into a less aggressive posture. He dropped his head and squeezed his eyes with his fingers. “How many times I gotta tell y’all,” he said. “I don’t know this man you talkin’ about, and I didn’t shoot nobody. That’s not the shit I do.”
“You own a gun?” Adkins asked.
“Who doesn’t?” JuJu said. “It’s the fuckin’ South Side of Chicago. But that don’t mean shit. I have a permit. All my paperwork is together.”
“I’m trying to cut you some slack, bro-man,” Adkins said. “Right now, they’re testing your gun for ballistics. If they find it matches the gun that did Chopper, it’s outta my hands, and I can’t do anything to help you. But you tell me now how it all went down, and I could talk to the DA, see if there’s something we can work out.”
“Aw shit, man,” JuJu said, raising his hands. “Y’all really tryin’ to pin this shit on me?” He looked over at Novack, who had stood up and was leaning against the wall, his arms folded against his massive chest. “You muthafuckah!” JuJu said, staring at Novack. “You need somebody to go down for this, and you just pick me up randomly and tryin’ to put my name on it. This is bullshit!”
Novack walked back to the table. “Was it random that you were over on South Wallace five days ago?” he said.
“South Wallace?” JuJu said, shrugging. “I don’t even know where that is.”
“You know where Sixty-Ninth Street is?” Novack said.
“Course I do. I live on the South Side. Who don’t know Sixty-Ninth?”
“But you don’t live in Englewood.”
“So, what that ’posed to mean? I can only drive where I live? What kinda shit is this? Drivin’ to different parts of the city automatically make you guilty of somethin’?”
“So, you admit you were in Englewood five days ago?”
“I ain’t admittin’ nuthin’, man,” JuJu said. “I be all over the place. I don’t know if I was over that way or not. I can’t remember everything I did five days ago. I bet you can’t either.”
Adkins opened the envelope on the table and took out three enlarged black-and-white photographs that clearly showed JuJu’s license plate number, his turning at the intersection of South Wallace and Sixty-Ninth Street, and his car stopped at a red light in front of Paul Robeson High School. Novack and Adkins stayed silent. Silence sometimes could be its own interrogator.
“Okay, so I was there,” JuJu said, shrugging. “Big fuckin’ deal. Don’t prove I shot nobody.”
“Chopper’s body was found over on South Wallace, just south of where you pulled out,” Adkins said. “Someone dumped it in the street. Why were you cutting through South Wallace at eleven twenty-five on a Thursday night?”
JuJu looked at Adkins and shook his head slowly. “All right, you wanna know my personal shit?” he said. “I got a girl over there. We did what we had to do, and I was on my way home. I tried to go down Union, but they was towing a car, and I couldn’t get through the street. So, I backed up on Seventieth, drove toward the train tracks, and cut down the alley to get to Sixty-Ninth.”
Adkins and Novack looked at each other, then at JuJu. “Three girls in three different parts of the city,” Novack said. “You get around.”
“What the fuck?” JuJu said. “Being with a few girls ain’t no damn crime. Now you gonna be my priest?”
Adkins sat back from the table and spoke even softer. “Okay, have it your way,” he said. “You might need a priest sooner than you think. We’re just tryin’ to save you. That’s all.”
“Yeah, right?” JuJu said, leaning his head back with a tough guy smirk. “Save me from what?”
“Ice Culpepper,” Adkins said. “Chopper McNair was his nephew.”
“WHO ARE YOU?” Stanton asked. He was seated in a chair in the center of a steel-encased chamber five feet beneath a concrete basement floor. It had once been a nuclear fallout shelter in the early sixties during the Cold War. I’d had it refitted with cameras and a door thick enough it would take a Mack truck going full speed to bust through it. His arms and legs were strapped to the metal chair.
“I’m the other side of justice,” I said.
“What side is that?”
“The right side. The voice of the victims. Your victims. The voices the courts ignored.”
“What are you talking about? I was never tried for anything. I’m an innocent man, wrongfully accused. Release me and I will forgive your sins.”
“But I will not forgive yours,” I said, stepping out of the shadows.
“Why are you wearing a mask?” he said.
“I could ask you the same question. You are a sick, depraved, evil predator hiding behind a mask of spiritual purity. You are the worst of the worst. A pedophile. A rapist. A molester. Innocent children trusted and admired you. They sought your counsel and guidance. You betrayed them and their families. You destroyed them.”
“That is not true,” Stanton said. “I taught them. I showed them the way of God. Sometimes there’s a misunderstanding. I’m not perfect. No man is perfect. I never did anything against their will.”
“You seduced them. You reeled them in slowly. You got them to trust you. You made them feel comfortable and vulnerable. Then you attacked. You’re an animal.”
“You have no right to treat me like this.”
“This is kindness compared to what you did to them. Luke Bunting, José Suarez, James Lipton, Calvin Henderson, Marc Bennigan. Five innocent little boys who are now drug addicts, ex-cons, dysfunctional, and tortured. All because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants and your hands in your pockets. You stole their innocence, and in the case of Calvin Henderson, you stole his life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Henderson committed suicide three months ago. His parents found him hanging in the attic. A picture of the two of you was at his feet.”
Stanton lowered his head and dropped his shoulders.
I walked over to him, and he braced himself against the back of his chair. “It will be much easier for the both of us if you cooperate.”
“What are you going to do?” he said, a look of horror suddenly squeezing his face.
“Put an IV in you,” I said, opening up one of my father’s old medicine bags.
“What for?”
“To keep you alive.”<
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“Please don’t hurt me,” he whimpered. “Let me go.”
“I will, in due time. But first there’s some unfinished business.”
I set up the IV infusion and slid the needle in his arm. He looked away and flinched as the metal slid under his skin. I hung a bag of fluids.
“This will give you the calories you need,” I said. “It’s not filet mignon, but it has everything you need for your body to keep working.”
Stanton whispered a prayer.
I walked back to the door across the room, then turned and faced him. “Don’t bother screaming. You’ll only lose your voice. A two-megaton bomb could go off down here and not a soul would hear it.” I pushed a remote in my pocket, and the faces of the five boys were projected against the wall. They were all so young and innocent and happy until this monster stole it all from them. I wanted him to see their faces every moment his eyes were open.
“Wait!” Stanton screamed. “Where are you going?”
I stared at him as fear twisted his face. “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.”
I walked through the door, his screams rushing at my back. I slammed the metal door shut, and a vacuum of silence enveloped me. I would let his mind eat away at him slowly; then I would introduce him to some friends who would do the same to his body.
30
MECHANIC AND I HAD put in a hard hour of lifting at Hammer’s and now sat recovering in my office with the lights off, staring out the window. We had just polished off a high-protein meal of salmon and curried lentil soup from Doc B’s. Mechanic nursed a Heineken. I was sticking with root beer. My muscles were starting to ache. I was thinking of how good another long hot shower would feel when I got home. Our conversation was sparse.
I considered all that I had and all that I didn’t have, and the math pretty much added up to zero. JuJu Davis was our best prospect, but he had been released, his gun cleared, and the techs couldn’t find anything in his car that connected him to Chopper. Following Burke’s strong advice, JuJu had quickly packed up whatever he could and was now hidden at a cousin’s house in Detroit until the wind settled back in Chicago. I couldn’t help but wonder how many girlfriends he had in the Motor City.
My cell phone buzzed. It was Gordon.
“Morpheusinthesky hit me back,” Gordon said.
“When?”
“Fifteen minutes ago.”
“Where are you?”
“Just leaving work. Heading to the East Village to meet up with some friends.”
“What did he say?”
“He wants to know what’s going on.”
“Can you send him a message right now?” I asked. “Now that you’ve connected, I don’t want to break in yet.”
“Sure. He’s still online.”
“Tell him that Tinsley is missing, and he might be able to help find her.”
After a few seconds, Gordon said, “Sent.”
“Grab a photo from his page, and send it to me when you can,” I said.
“I will. He just hit me back. He said that if this is someone trying to play a joke, it’s not funny. If it’s serious, he wants to know who this is and how he can help.”
“Give him my name and cell phone number. Ask him to call it right now so that I can explain.”
“Sent.”
My phone buzzed. The call was coming in with a 203 area code. “Gotta go, Gordon,” I said. “I think this is him.” I clicked over. “Morpheusinthesky?” I said.
“Who’s this?” a voice returned.
“Ashe Cayne, a private investigator in Chicago.”
“My name is Blair Malone,” he said. “Your name is different on IG.”
“That wasn’t me on IG,” I said. “It was my cousin, Gordon. He was helping me out. Is now a good time to talk?”
“Not really,” he said. “I’m about to walk into a restaurant. What’s happened to Tinsley?”
“She’s been missing for two weeks,” I said. “I’ve been hired to find her. Have the two of you been in touch?”
“We haven’t talked in a couple of years. We follow each other on IG. She likes my posts every once in a while, but other than that, we really haven’t been in touch.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
There was a slight pause; then Blair said, “I’m not comfortable discussing this over the phone. I’d rather do it in person. No offense, but I don’t know who you are or anything about you. There’s a lotta crazy shit going on in this world.”
“I respect that,” I said. “How soon can I meet with you?”
“I can meet you in a couple of days.”
“Where?”
“I work on the trading desk at GFX Financial in Stamford, Connecticut. Will this take long?”
“Not at all. I just have a few questions.”
“Okay. I can meet you around four. I need to catch the five o’clock train home.”
“I’ll be there,” I said. And just like that, Blair Malone was off to what probably was an exquisite New England dinner.
Mechanic looked at me, puzzled.
“You ever been to Connecticut?” I asked.
“Can barely spell it,” he said.
“Well, pack a dictionary with your overnight bag. Day after tomorrow, we venture to the Constitution State.”
I TURNED ON THE APP on my phone. The camera alignment was just as I had tested. Perfect. I could touch whichever viewpoint I wanted, then zoom in close enough to see a single hair coming out of Stanton’s skin just above his lip. He was sleeping, his head down, chin just touching his chest. I pointed the camera at his hands. They were relaxed, but the wide red marks around his wrists were evidence that he had put up a mighty struggle before conceding. Even when the mind knew something was impossible, desperation would give false hope of possibility. The metal locks around his wrists were impossible to break or maneuver. They were the same type of restraints used in military holding cells for prisoners of war.
His pants had a large stain around the crotch where he had urinated on himself. It had mostly dried, but I could see the mark around the perimeter where the urine had stopped spreading. It had been three days. If he hadn’t released his bowels yet, it was likely he would do so in the next couple of days. I would wait for him to experience that indignity, still nothing compared to that suffered by his victims, who spoke about their embarrassment at being weak and trusting a man who made them feel helpless and worthless.
Victims of sexual abuse had such a difficult time, because in their minds, the abuser held all the cards. He was typically older and stronger and able to convince the abused that they would never be believed if they were to tell others what had happened. All the victims had said that Stanton told them that because he was a minister and a man of the cloth, God spoke directly to him; thus his orders were to be obeyed. So, they had kept their mouths shut and unknowingly put up walls between themselves and their families and friends. They felt different and scarred and guilty. Some of them felt worse, because during the abuse they derived sexual pleasure. They’d explained how this made them feel even guiltier. If this was such a bad act, then why were they enjoying the sexual feelings that they experienced?
All the stories were heartbreaking, but Calvin Henderson’s was the worst. He had been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder as a young adult, which I had come to learn was common for victims of abuse, particularly abuse that was sexual in nature. They started with an initial splitting between the good me and the bad me. From this split, multiple personalities developed until they were completely out of control. Henderson was a tortured man for all his adult life, and those who loved him were also scorched by the fire of his abuse. The articles I had read said that most adult victims first went through a period where they mourned their loss of childhood. This then turned into a period of self-pity. The last stage revolved around getting pas
t the guilt, which they could do by learning that they actually had control over the rest of their lives. Those who could get to this point went on to lead relatively normal lives, but not all victims made it through this last critical phase. Henderson never did.
I changed the cameras so I could get a frontal view of Stanton. He was starting to wake. I opened up another app on my phone and tapped it a couple of times. The images on the wall changed, and now a black-and-white photograph of Henderson’s lifeless body hanging from a steel shower curtain rod appeared. This was the first thing I wanted Stanton to see when his eyes opened.
31
IT TOOK ME THE better part of an hour sitting in my office with the lights out and a Luther Vandross classic politely interrupting the silence, but I finally worked out my strategy with Dr. Patel. She was a shrink, so I knew she would not be easy to reel in. I picked up the phone, connected my private line, and called the number Tinsley had given as an emergency contact at Calderone & Calderone. The first time I called there was no answer. I had meant to call again a couple of days ago, but with everything else going on, it had slipped my mind. The phone rang three times; then an automated voice repeated the phone number and sent me straight to voice mail. I didn’t leave a message. Instead, I picked up my cell phone and called Carolina.
“I was wondering when you’d call again,” she said. “Thought maybe you had gotten what you wanted and thrown me away.”
“What I really want I can’t say over the phone,” I replied. “Big Brother could be listening.”
“Promises, promises,” she said.
“Until that time, however, I could use a little help.” I gave her Tinsley’s emergency contact number and asked her to do a reverse lookup to find out who it belonged to. She told me she’d get back to me before the end of the day.
STANTON WAS AWAKE. He sat there staring at the photograph of Calvin Henderson. I pushed the camera focus into his face. I could see the salt lines where his tears had dried. I wanted to know what was going through his mind as he sat there and looked at the destruction he had engineered, the loss of a young man’s life, because his evil heart and twisted mind convinced him that it was all right to touch little boys.