by Henry Perez
Zach had printed out photos, most of which were headshots of men in their teens or twenties who were working on a hundred-mile stare they had not yet earned and now never would. But one photo in particular caught Chapa’s attention. It was a shot of an alley on Oakton’s seedy south side. The body that someone had sliced up and left there was already gone, but the Record’s photographer had decided to document the crime scene anyhow.
It was an alley much like any other in a blighted section of a town. The bricks along the building’s exterior wall were cracked and faded. Broken glass and weeds filled the countless gashes in the pavement.
The victim’s throat had been cut, probably by someone who’d come up behind him. A hell of a trick no matter how dark it might have been that night, Chapa thought, in a long alley like this one. But the fuzzy details of the crime’s how and why were not what grabbed Chapa’s attention.
Along the left side of the photo, where the wall began to taper off into the distance, a large NO had been crudely scratched into the bricks by an unsteady hand. There may have once been another word after it, perhaps PARKING or DUMPING, but that must have been covered over by grime or weeds, because Chapa could only make out a few uncertain lines.
Chapa leaned in close to get a better look at the grainy photo, hoping to confirm what he thought he was seeing inside the two-foot high letter O. But he couldn’t be sure.
Zach walked into the office a few minutes later as Chapa was getting off the phone with Dana Taylor in the art department.
“I just requested an actual print of this photo. Take a look. Do you see anything unusual inside the letter O?”
Zach leaned in just as Chapa had, stared at the image for a moment, and shook his head.
“Maybe a bug or some vines or snot or could even be a speck in the print, I don’t know.”
Chapa knew he was probably seeing something that was not actually there. Dana had promised him a fresh print within the hour, though he was starting to wonder whether that would clear up anything.
“What are those?” Chapa asked, pointing to the small stack of papers Zach was holding.
“This is why I came in here. These are letters that were printed in the ‘Common Voice’ section.”
Chapa was familiar with that page in the Record. It was where anonymous letters to the editor, or ones that were too out there for any serious news page, were printed. Letters from loonies had been around since the advent of the printing press. In the old days they were passed around the newsroom, mocked, and given the burial they deserved in the circular tomb. Today, however, they were collected and given precious column inches that once belonged to real news.
The letters Zach handed him all fit a pattern. They were written in defense of the killings of some of the area’s bottom feeders. On one level, Chapa could understand the sentiments, but on another, he was troubled by the sense of satisfaction that bled between the lines.
What would these insects have done if they had been allowed to live? They would have brought more misery to the lives of good people. The only thing Roberto whatever his name was ever did right was bleed to death.
“I wonder if the cops ever follow up on letters like that,” Zach said.
“No, they’re busy chasing legitimate leads.”
Chapa was starting to read the last of the letters when Marcie Conrad, an attractive young woman who did a bit of everything around the office, arrived with the photo. She handed it to Chapa, then smiled at Zach and left.
“How long have you two been, you know…” Chapa asked, smiling as he laid the color photo on his desk and shifted a lamp, shining more light on the image.
“We really haven’t been, you know, but there’s something about her, isn’t there?”
“Umm hmm…”
Chapa studied the picture. There wasn’t as much contrast as he’d hoped. But as it turned out, that didn’t matter anyhow.
“There’s something here, too,” he said, pointing to the small stick figure that had been etched into the brick just inside the letter O.
Chapter 40
St. Louis, Missouri, 1977
The child has had his face buried in his pillow for more than an hour. The thin fabric is sticky and cold with tears.
It started earlier, in the afternoon as the sun dropped below his window ledge. He heard the yelling in the other room, then his mother’s screams. Then silence.
Looking around his room now, he sees the Halloween costume he wore just two nights ago. He’d wanted to be Superman, but his mom brought home an old Frankenstein costume, the vinyl kind that ties in the back.
The child didn’t like it, not at all. The plastic mask that came with it was cracked along the bottom, held together on the inside by a piece of scotch tape. It smelled bad, too, like spit and sweat.
“That’s the best I can do, Sugar,” his mom explained. “But I tell you what, we’ll hop the bus and go trick-or-treat in a real nice neighborhood, where the people give out good candy.”
The child likes riding the bus, always imagines it will just keep going, won’t stop until they’re somewhere else. Anywhere else.
They were on the bus for a long while that Halloween night, and the child loved every minute of it. His mom told the child to ignore how some of the folks looked at his costume when they opened their door.
“Just say, ‘Trick-or-treat,’ and ‘Thank you,’ and ignore everything else. Those folks may be all high and mighty, but someday their kids will be working for you, looking up to you.”
He looked at his mother’s face, her difficult smile. Then he reached up and brushed aside a strand of her thin yellow hair that became darker toward the top of her head until it was almost black. And the child knew this meant a lot to her for some reason. He returned the smile and watched her face blossom, if only for an unguarded instant.
That turned out to be a magical night, as he and his mom walked up one block, then down another, until she told him they had to catch the bus back. The child stalled, hoping they would miss it and never go back, but that just made his mom angry.
He didn’t say a word to her on the way home, and right now the child was feeling very guilty about that. Things had gotten real bad between his mom and Gilley, and the child wishes he’d had the courage to call for help, or the strength to go find a knife in the sink and jab it into Gilley’s back.
But he didn’t do anything like that. The child hid in his bed, trying to make himself invisible. Like he’d learned to do.
The child finally works up the courage to go check on his mother. He knows Gilley isn’t there anymore. He heard him run out the door, lock it tight from the outside. Then the sound of Gilley’s car raging to life before it roared away.
Still, the child gets out of bed slowly, one foot on the floor, then the other. Stopping for a moment to stare at the Frankenstein costume draped over the back of a chair, its broken mask laying facedown on the seat. He tiptoes to the door of his room, and calls out.
“Mommy?”
Silence.
“Mommy, you okay?”
When there is no response, the child knows he has to be brave and walk into the other room. He closes his eyes, opens the door, and steps through.
But the child stops when he feels a thick dampness on the bottoms of his socks. He opens his eyes and sees his mother sprawled on the floor in what to his young mind appears to be an ocean of blood. Her neck has been cut so savagely that as he reaches for her the child fears his mother’s head is about to come off.
Touching her blood-smeared face with delicate fingers, the child is stunned by how cold her skin feels. He puts his arms around her and starts sobbing, then crying, then screaming. First out of fear, then out of sorrow, and finally out of rage.
The child screams for a very long time.
Chapter 41
The alley was located in what was once Oakton’s industrial corridor, back when companies still thought it was a good idea to have plants in the Midwest. It was down the s
treet from an abandoned metal works, and across from a liquor store that was still thriving the way they always seem to in places where folks don’t have a lot of cash.
Two street toughs, one sporting a black-and-white bandanna, the other weighing three hundred pounds, easy, sat on the curb in front of the store drinking cheap beer. Chapa stared at the two long enough to make it clear he was aware of them, but not long enough to pose a threat, or issue a silent challenge.
Even under the bright midday sun, Chapa felt the grip of desperation and the promise of violence it often produces. He parked on the street, just beyond the mouth of the alley. The littered corridor seemed to lead nowhere in particular, and Chapa guessed it might have once been used by factory workers as a quick route for transporting material from one end of the building to another.
The passageway itself was in even worse shape than the photo revealed. Nature had long ago taken over much of the pavement and gravel, its growth hampered only by pieces of broken glass that might’ve been there for years, and discarded paper bags and food wrappers of a more recent vintage.
At some point there had been a passing attempt to patch things up a bit, maybe in the hopes of selling the buildings. But apparently those efforts were abandoned shortly after they began. Chapa’s footsteps crunched the gravel beneath as he tried to avoid the glass and ignore the odor of waste, both human and undefined.
Walking down the alley, Chapa searched for gaps or doorways, anywhere that a killer could’ve hidden, waiting to attack. But the passageway was narrow, and its walls appeared solid and revealing. Nowhere to hide. And coming up from the far end without being heard would be nearly impossible, even if darkness had provided enough cover.
The area he had seen in the photo was about a third of the way or so into the thirty-yard-long corridor. Chapa made a point to carry himself like a man with a purpose from the time he got out of the car to the moment he reached his destination. All certainty, no fear. His don’t-fuck-with-me attitude, the one that he’d learned long ago and employed many times over, was his only weapon against anyone who would harm him. And he knew it was a piss-poor defense.
The brick wall was veined with cracks, many so small that they had not been captured in the photo. The writing was less clear than in the image, and it took Chapa several tries to locate where he’d seen the stick figure.
Was it still there? Chapa couldn’t be sure now. He compared it to the photo, and identified what he thought might have been the legs forming two-thirds of a triangle. But what he’d believed to be a head looked more like a pockmark now, and Chapa began to wonder if Warren Chakowski’s theories and Martin Clarkson’s claims had conspired with his imagination.
Did he want to believe? Why?
He stepped back, examined the photo again, then the wall. There was an area inside the O that had been scratched in a deliberate way. But the closer he got, the more the image, if there indeed was an image, became distorted and open to any number of interpretations.
“Daydream Believer” started playing in his pocket. He took his phone out and the song gently echoed off the beaten walls. The number was unknown to him.
“This is Chapa.”
“Yeah, Martin Clarkson here. There’s something I need to show you.”
“Is there?”
“I just told you there is. How soon can you get to the Fletcher Forest Preserve? Do you know where it is?”
Chapa did. As a child he’d picnicked there with friends and family. There was always something mysterious about the park. It was the sort of place that could easily spark a child’s imagination.
“I know where it is.”
“You know that big windmill on the west side of the park.”
Actually, it was closer to the center of the park, but he saw no reason to correct Clarkson. They agreed to meet in half an hour, though Chapa’s attempts to learn more about what was going on all failed.
Chapa took one last, long look at the wall. He couldn’t be certain about anything, but figured it couldn’t hurt to show the photo to Clarkson. As he emerged from the alley Chapa realized that two pairs of eyes were on him from across the street.
The duo had finished their beers, and that was bad. But they were still sitting on the curb, which meant Chapa might be able to get to his car before they made their move.
“Hey man, you find what you was looking for?”
It was the guy with the bandanna. Wiry and oozing ’tude. His narrow but taut, prison-honed muscles weaving their way down from tattered T-shirt sleeves.
“Guy got killed in the alley earlier this year,” Chapa responded.
Then he heard the big guy whisper to his buddy, “I think he’s talking ’bout Gato.”
“Lot of guys got killed there, and some got cut up, or fucked up. All of it, man. You some sort of cheap-ass cop?”
“No, I’m a reporter.”
The big guy laughed, then said, “Clark fucking Kent came to pay us a visit.”
Chapa watched as the two men then went through a series of choreographed fist bumps and complicated handshakes.
“So who uses this alley, or whatever is on the other end of it?” Chapa asked, knowing the bandanna guy would be the one who answered.
“Ain’t nothing on the other end of it, just another alley that don’t go nowhere. Nobody goes in there unless they got to.”
“And why would anyone have to?”
The big guy jumped in. “I piss in there sometimes, like this morning, right where you were standing just now.”
They laughed and went through the whole hand-slapping ritual again as Chapa headed for his car.
“Hey, you gonna put us in the newspaper?”
Chapa smiled, opened his door, then turned back toward them.
“The cops said someone had snuck up from behind the victim. Was Gato the sort of guy you could sneak up on?”
“No fucking way.” It was the big guy, and he didn’t seem interested in cracking any jokes now. “Nobody ever got the drop on Gato.” His buddy was silently shaking his head. “Nobody. Ever.”
As he sped toward his meeting with Clarkson and away from two men who under different circumstances might have ventilated his chest, Chapa thought about how that exchange would likely be the highlight of their day, or even their week. Some fucking reporter was down here, man, he talked to us and shit. He also thought about how hard his mother had worked to keep that from becoming his life as well.
With that in mind he decided to call Nikki. Just to say hi, and let her know he was thinking about her.
Chapter 42
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2002
Martin Clarkson looked up at an unblemished blue sky and decided it just wasn’t right, as he slumped in the only remaining patio chair. He’d reached the same conclusion twenty minutes and two drinks ago, but had forgotten in the process.
Nothing about the day suited his mood. Not the flawless weather, or the expensive scotch, or how the movers, like everyone else it seemed, managed to go about their work. Like nothing had happened. As though life could somehow drag on beyond this place, this moment.
Through eyes that were blurred by emotion and made unsteady by liquor, Martin stared at the empty swimming pool. Again. He could almost see Kimberly, smell the lotion on her shoulders, watch her dive in and marvel at the way her body seemed to slip inside the water leaving barely a ripple.
His wife had grown up with a swimming pool in her yard, another down the street, and one at her grandparents as well. She was not supposed to die in one.
Martin should’ve been there that afternoon. It was a scheduled day off. The sort that used to mean spending hours at the movies, or a museum, or just kicking back by the pool before and after making a mess of the sheets in the bedroom.
He should’ve been poolside, watching her, talking with her. There to help when her head somehow slammed into the side. In the water, pulling her out, before she could even begin to drift away.
Kimberly had been drinking,
not a lot, but enough. They often enjoyed a bottle of wine by the pool. But never to excess.
Martin looked at his shot of scotch and saw his own, distorted reflection in the small glass. Unshaven, unwashed, his hair a tangle of gray and black.
But he had not been there that afternoon. He was in the field chasing what turned out to be a useless lead on the stickman murders. Goddamned stickman murders. Martin wondered if he even believed in them anymore. He had to. The price he had already paid for his certainty that a serial killer had been responsible for at least two sets of murders was far too high to allow any doubt.
Having doubts would mean he’d been wasting his time chasing shadows of his own creation while his wife lost her life. For Clarkson, doubt would mean he’d been somehow negligent at best, and responsible for her death at worst.
He’d been dismissed from the Bureau after being labeled a rogue agent. He was out of work, and didn’t care. Kimberly would’ve found the right words, she would’ve told him what he needed to do next. But now there was only silence on an otherwise perfect day. How could the sky be so goddamned blue?
“Mr. Clarkson? You okay?”
It took Martin a moment to respond. Sensing that the man might’ve been trying to talk to him, he began by apologizing.
“That’s okay, Mr. Clarkson. I know this can be a difficult day, moving out of your home and with what happened to your wife and all.”
Martin nodded and willed his eyes away from the swimming pool.
“You want a drink…what’s your name again?”
“I’m William, sir, and thank you, but no, I don’t drink.”
A gut-punch smile flared across Martin’s face as he lifted his glass in a toast. “Here’s hoping you never have a reason to.” He drank until there was nothing left, then slapped the glass onto the patio table and poured himself another.