Calumet City (35 page)

I nod and shake off the water, take three level breaths through my hands, and scan the street. My watch lights the scars on my wrist. I can’t wait sixteen hours; there’s no way I can wait sixteen hours—

Tracy notices. "Talk to me, we’ll chase this from the mayor’s wife. Her, I know we can find." Tracy starts matching up Mary Kate and Roland Ganz history like she tried yesterday at her town house. "Mary Kate sold him Gilbert Court in ’76. What else happened in 1976 that we care about?"

I lean against the storefront, processing John’s reprieve, catching breath, and scanning for the parking garage SUV. The SUV had to be a facsimile or we’d be wearing it. I need to call in the houseboat homicide—
shit,
can’t do that, my prints are all over…they’re only all over the houseboat
if
it’s still afloat. Plus there’s the rain coming down just beyond my face—there’ll be no evidence an ASA could use anyway. At least on the deck.

Tracy’s voice: "Patti. What about ’76? Or ’83 when Roland put the building into the LaSalle trust?"

She’s keeping me busy, keeping me from
doing
. I answer without thinking and mumble, "John," making sure the engine noise I think I hear isn’t the SUV returning.

"What about him?"

The engine noise belongs to a Datsun sloshing low in the street water. "John was born in ’83. I told you."

"Born…" Tracy steps back, then cocks her neck like dogs did at the kennel when they were working it out. "What about ’76? Who was born in ’76, the year Roland gets the building?"

I shrug and feel the rain. A train that has nothing to do with 1976 hits me in the heart. I go bolt-straight and flash on Delmont.
He talked
. Oh my God, he talked. Even if he kept the adoption agreement, he talked. You know he did—the missing fingers, then the hand. Then he talked. Then Roland lost it and slaughtered Delmont into cat food.

Roland is at Le Bassinet.

Tracy’s eyes go half fear and half surprise. "Patti?"

"Gimme the keys!"

She doesn’t. I draw the Smith to hit her in the face. "Gimme the fucking keys!" I grab; she slips it, runs to the street and puts the driver’s fender between us.

"
Delmont talked
. The missing fingers. He talked. Me and your car are going to Evanston. I’ll call you an ambulance," and aim at her ankle.

"I’m with you; you need me."

"Gimme the fucking keys."

I intend to shoot her, not argue. She jumps in the driver’s seat and fires the engine. Then I’m in and we’re northbound on Clark. My hands are shaking.

Call Evanston Police. Call Evanston Police…No…even if they get involved at Le Bassinet’s Ridge address, there’s no guarantee that anyone will warn John. EPD will arrest me, I’m the psycho biological mother. John’ll have no warning.

"Easy, Patti. We’ll get there."

My left hand balls. The right has the Smith. Both have been pounding my thighs. The pain is substantial, now that I notice. My mouth asks me,
"What am I gonna do?"

"Roland can’t get in that vault, Patti. He’s an accountant, not a bank robber."

I stop mid-breath and turn to stare at Tracy. In her fantasy world, accountants do tax returns. My lips slide back over open teeth I can’t feel; I see her but don’t. My eyes narrow and tighten down to their the corners as the words form. I feel the words before I speak; they’ve been forming for twenty-three years.

"He’s the guy who raped us while he prayed, and when his dick didn’t work, he used candlesticks, handfuls of candlesticks."

Tracy shies toward her door.

"He’s the guy who put his wife in the wall alive, who beat Richard Rhodes to death, and tore the legs off Delmont Chukut, a two-hundred-fifty-pound Army Ranger."

Tracy runs a light and gets horns from both sides. "Sorry, I didn’t—"

"He’s the guy who wants my son.
MY SON
."

Tracy shies again, but there’s nowhere to go. "I know, Patti, I know. We’ll get there. We will."

All I can do is rock in the seat, a mental-patient felon jacketed up tight, counting minutes in a horror movie that won’t end.

   Too much time.

Evanston can’t be this far from Diversey Harbor, can’t be. Tracy swerves past two weather-related accidents. It’s six o’clock and looks like midnight. The rain quits at Howard Street, but the Evanston side’s a mess of downed trees and power lines and pitch black the farther north we try to drive. No streetlights, no window lights. Cops and fire trucks block each of the four streets we try.

Neither Tracy or I know any back way to Le Bassinet. We’re wasting time. It could’ve been five hours since Roland was at that boat.

Tracy says, "Easy, Patti, he can’t get in until they open."

I try to believe that. But he’ll find a way.

How? How would he do it?

He’d find the women, the codirectors with the keys.

You couldn’t
.

A PI could. Delmont Chukut.

Oh my God
. "He’s got the keys."

Tracy turns onto another side street littered with branches but no power lines or squad cars. "No he doesn’t."

"He’s already got the keys!"

Tracy guns it instead of arguing. Tree limbs and street debris are everywhere. She serpentines a course at speeds that make me pay attention and stiff-arm the dash.
Roland has the keys
. SQUAD CAR. We miss T-boning it by inches. His siren slaps at us after we’re already past. Tracy hooks a left. We race away from him for three blocks. She cuts back north on a commercial boulevard. Three cars are backed up at a light. I check for the squad. She guns it across the intersection but skid-stops at the southbound driver’s window.

"Where’s Ridge Avenue?"

The guy answers instead of speeding away. Tracy floors it north, takes a right that avoids an abandoned van, then a left into water cascading as high as our axles. We slosh sideways until she mounts the crown of the street. Ridge Avenue. I remember the corner—Le Bassinet is a mile farther. A squad flashing its lights loops us before we see or hear it coming. The light in front of him and us is yellow. He brakes hard and fishtails toward the lake. The light goes red and Tracy runs it. She believes me. She knows Roland Ganz has the keys.

   Two EPD squad cars are parked outside Le Bassinet. Two is a big response to any call right now, given that a storm just tried to kill half their citizens and left the rest without power. Tracy grabs a small flashlight from the glove box and says, "Let me talk. We’ll both be reporters."

Seventeen years on the street says I’m looking at a crime scene. A homicide. Either Mrs. Trousdale or Mrs. Elliot. Getting to the vault will be close to impossible without—An EPD uniform stumbles out the front door into his headlights and pukes in the bushes. He goes to a knee with his pistol drawn and heaves again. It’s dark everywhere his headlights aren’t. Tracy and I use a high hedge for cover and run to the building’s far corner. The side door’s propped open. A second cop’s voice tells the sick one, "Jesus, Tommy, call it in. We need the dicks out here."

Tracy and I slip through the side door and into a lightless hall. I whisper to give me the light and let me lead. She does. The door being propped open isn’t right, no way the cops did it. I draw. This crime scene could be seconds old—I’m bumped from behind and lurch sideways. Tracy gasps. Either I slowed or she’s scared shitless of being swallowed by the dark after watching cops puke. Sick or not, this is a fresh crime scene to the cops—they’ll shoot us if we startle them.

Ahead of us forty feet a down-only stairway is bathed red by the EXIT sign above. Between us and the stairway are three doors, all closed, all with very bad possibilities. I shine Tracy’s tiny flashlight on each door, then the carpet leading to the next one. My heart’s ramping. The devil is here, behind those doors or down those stairs. Those dark stairs. There’s no choice. No time.

Fuck it. Just run past the doors, down the stairs, and hope.

That’s what we do. And if Roland’s trapped, he’ll see us coming, see the light beam, wait till we’re close and—At the bottom of the stairs the light catches an open door, a vault-type door. I hear a muffled voice and spin to it. Tracy takes my shoulder on her chin and grabs my shirt before she falls. She doesn’t yell. The voice is above us, up the stairs, maybe down the hall. Could be a cop, could be Roland. I cut the light and it’s instantly black; all fears become real. Tracy keeps her handful of my shirt; we’re both frozen. The voice fades; I button the light, duck, then rotate the beam from above our heads. Inside the vault the beam shines across file cabinets built into three walls, floor to ceiling. One cabinet’s open and speckled with dark stains. I edge closer. The drawer tag reads "1980–1984." My knees weaken; the air’s thicker than it was. Tracy bumps me again and reaches past my hesitation. Her hand enters the light, fingering folders in "1983."

The year is smeared. Tracy fumbles to the "B" tab, then a green suspension folder behind it. The folder’s empty. She whispers, "Shit," and grabs the next one. It has a heavy binder labeled "Duplicate-2" with a log-out sheet stapled to its face. No entries, no smears. She opens it to an empty divider, then mimeographed reports, then the front page of one I recognize. My name. And John’s. And his parents—M/M T. L. Bergslund. His address is 25071/2 Ridgeway, Evanston, Ill.

I shove Tracy out of the way and rip through the files, looking for the original. She steps back and stutters, "It’s g…gone, c’mon."

I keep searching. The dark smears flake onto the top of my hand. Flakes…? My breath catches short. Tracy tugs at my arm, but she no longer needs to, I’m with her now. I understand. Roland isn’t here anymore; he’s at 25071/2 Ridgeway. The flakes and smears are blood. Dry. He’s been there for hours.

   Tracy’s doing sixty down a main east-west artery marked Central Street.

It’s blackout dark and has to be like driving blindfolded. We’re missing most of the tree branches and trunks and other vehicles doing the same. Most of my heart’s in my throat—411 matched the address to a current phone for "T. L. Bergslund." John and/or his parents
still
live there. No one at their number answers my call. Tracy’s flashlight juggles in my hand. I try to read the file while we charge through glare, horns, and debris.

Tracy’s voice: "What’s the file say?"

"Can’t read it."

"What’s it say?"

"I said I can’t read it."

"What’s it say?"

I jerk to slap her. She’s vise-gripped on the wheel, neck jutted over her hands, face contorted into
shock mouth
. She’s probably looked this way since we left Le Bassinet, since we stumbled past the body parts. In a bucket, propping open the side door we’d entered. A gray head with a bullet hole and eyes staring up at us from the bottom, a severed hand with two fingers missing twined into the hair. Whatever the cops saw upstairs was the main massacre.

An EPD squad car flashes red-and-blue into our face. The lights snap Tracy’s shoulders into her seat. He barrels past sans siren. Her Jag slows. I flat-palm her chest. "Tracy." Her heart’s thudding under my hand. "Tracy!"

"Yeah…." She swallows and leans toward me like she’s on a couch. "What?"

"You’re driving."
I shove her upright and she brakes hard. We skid to a stop mid-street. Horns blow behind us. I jerk the wheel toward the curb. "Park. Outta the road."

She eases off the brake. We limp to the curb. She’s so white in the blackout dark she glows. I slap her. Twice, then a third time until she jolts away into her window, both hands up between us.

"Wha—"

"Lemme drive." I snatch the keys, pop my door, and arrive at hers before she moves. She handles her seat belt with three tries then shuffles through our headlights to the passenger side. Definitely in shock. Another EPD squad approaches, lights flashing and heading east. He brakes hard to eye us. I wave him off—a woman not in distress. He hits the gas and the siren.

The siren jolts Tracy. She mumbles, "Where’re we going?"

A woman in serious distress says, "The house. Ridgeway. John’s parents."

   Ridgeway’s streetlights are on when I turn, but dim, the old-style ones with the thin panes and liberty crowns. The clouds break and moonlight shadows big trees with broken branches. Small neat houses are set back from the curb. I cut our headlights and park, wishing for a shotgun. Wishing for courage too. Most of all I wish for John and his family. They would’ve never seen this nightmare bearing down on them, never imagined they could be connected to something like Roland Ganz.

Tracy follows me out of the car. Ridgeway’s as quiet as it is dark and Tracy doesn’t slam her door. I check her eyes; she’s better and paying attention. Only five cars are parked on the street; must be an alley; 2507
¹
/2 will be on the east side. Roland would have come at them from behind. He came at everyone from behind.

I stumble over a rupture in the sidewalk and into a wide tree. The bark smells smoky bitter—2507
¹
/2 is three houses down, a two-story brick with a high roof and a tree in the yard’s front corner. Where is everybody? Tracy bumps my shoulder. I realize I’ve stopped, that I don’t want to know what’s inside John’s house. I’m too late; Roland’s had too much time.

"Is that it, the house?" Tracy points at the white clapboard next door.

Deep breath.
Face it, Patti. Face it
. "C’mon, we’re going to the alley." I pull her left through a long yard, past a house with vines and a detached garage. The alley’s narrow, lined tight with garages and strung with telephone poles. We step slow with the flashlight off, crunching branches with leaves, and try to stay in the alley’s center. If Roland’s hiding here, our reaction time will be zero.

A light flickers on, upstairs on our left. Tracy and I flinch into each other. A candle? Then another in the same house. Watching us? Where is everybody?