Killing Red (4 page)

A chaotic minute passed. Then a guy wearing a flak jacket over a gray suit appeared on the front porch. “It’s all over,” he said, then signaled for paramedics to move in.

Chapa was also on the move. Getting as close as he could without drawing attention, he stopped just beyond the reach of a streetlight. He waited there until Zirbel walked out of the house and was crossing the front yard.

“Steve, who got shot?”

“Didn’t I tell you to get out of here?”

“And I was doing just that when I heard the shot. You can’t hold this back now.”

Zirbel appeared to take stock of the situation.

“I assume one of your officers shot the suspect, let’s start with that, Steve.”

“One shot, in the chest.”

“So the suspect was armed?”

“When we entered the house we found Kenneth Lee Grubb in the dining room. The moment the suspect saw us, he put down a piece of bread he was eating and appeared to reach for a weapon even though he’d been told to remain still, that’s when the officer fired.”

Chapa’s hand was racing across the yellow tablet, as he made certain he didn’t miss a word.

“What kind of weapon?”

Zirbel hesitated for a moment as he surveyed the immediate area.

“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. A large animal collar with long metal spikes sticking out of it.” Zirbel leaned in close to Chapa and used his height advantage to cast a shadow over the reporter. “But I’d appreciate it if you kept that detail to yourself for the time being.”

“I will, Steve,” Chapa said, drawing a large oval around the last part of Zirbel’s statement, then writing the word
No
in large letters next to it.

“Do right by the department, Alex,” Zirbel added, then turned to a uniformed and told him to escort Chapa to his vehicle.

Once he was back in his car, it took Chapa a moment to regain his bearings and find the fastest way out of the subdivision. Then he quickly drove away, stopped at a pay phone six blocks later, and called the office. It took some coaxing to talk Betty the Layout Lady into delaying the printing of page one, even more to convince her to do a redesign.

“You got eight hundred words, young man, give or take a dozen, no more, and one hour to get them to me.”

He thanked her, then dialed information and got a home number for Dominic Delacruz. The store owner didn’t sound like he’d been sleeping, but he wasn’t anxious to get media attention, either. Still, Chapa managed to squeeze a solid, if reluctant, quote out of him.

Winded and running on high octane, Chapa had just sat down at his desk to write his story when he got a call from Zirbel, who gave him the okay to use his name and filled in a few more of the details.

“After we secured the rest of the house, we cautiously headed for the basement, and found evidence that someone had been kept down there,” Zirbel said. “We believe that at least one other child had been held there.”

“Why, what did you find?”

After another hesitation, Zirbel said, “Children’s snacks, a boy’s T-shirt, and a dozen or so comic books in a small room in the basement.”

“There was more than one room?”

“Several. Each appears to have been used for a different purpose. It’s going to take a while to sort everything out, but we believe that some of the victims may have started out in a makeshift guest room before being transferred to other parts of the large basement.”

He told Chapa that the officers removed several bottles of a liquid that had yet to be identified.

“We’re waiting for the lab results, but we’re reasonably certain the bottles contain whatever drug the suspect used on his victims,” Zirbel said.

“So if there were other kids down there, where are they now?”

“We don’t know yet. Grubb is considered a suspect in at least four other disappearances over the past three months,” Zirbel said. “But that’s the first question I’m going to ask him when the son-of-a-bitch comes out of intensive care.”

The story came in at 844 words, and Betty the Layout Lady forgave him for that. It would be one of the last Chapa would ever write for the
Tri-Cities Bulletin
.

The reporter didn’t sleep that night as he waited for the morning’s
Bulletin
to arrive. Sleep would become precious and uneasy in the days and months that followed. For a while he took comfort in the certainty that it would all pass in time. But he was wrong.

Sixteen years and millions of printed words later, spanning hundreds of topics, the story that launched Alex Chapa’s career still dogged him.

The heavy door closed as tightly as the lid of a casket. But the sliding of large metal bolts that secured it in place was never as loud as Alex Chapa expected. There was no echo, and the sounds from the rest of the world were immediately shut out, leaving this most secure cage within a cage in the grip of a stifling silence.

The reporter had visited Pennington Correctional a number of times before, always in a professional capacity, but it never got any easier. Beneath the well-crafted illusion of order and security, but never too far from the surface, lay a pit of anger and violence populated by men who had long ago discarded whatever tattered humanity they ever possessed.

Chapa had to remind himself that he would be leaving, and could go whenever he chose. That was comforting, but not as much as the knowledge that Kenny Lee Grubb did not have any of those options.

It had been an hour’s drive to the prison from the
Chicago Record
’s main office in Larkin, a midsized town about thirty miles west of Cook County, nestled among the city’s largest suburbs. The drive had given Chapa a chance to gather his thoughts, but all the time in the world would never be enough to fully prepare for something like this.

The uniformed guard escorting him through the prison was built like a thick rectangular dining table that had been stood on one end. Chapa listened to the man’s stories about the three riots he’d survived during his eighteen years at Pennington.

“But I don’t think we’re due for one anytime soon,” the guard added.

Things started looking familiar once they turned a corner and headed down a narrow hall. They passed a con working broom detail. The guy looked up and locked eyes with Chapa, who instantly knew he’d been sized-up and judged in a fraction of a second. Chapa didn’t break eye contact, he just stared through the guy like no one was there. He had no fear of this asshole in prison garb. Wouldn’t show any even if he did.

The mirror by the door to the special visiting room was covered with a month’s worth of finger marks. Chapa used it to straighten the collar of his navy blue shirt, but didn’t give a damn about anything else the mirror showed him. His early forties were passing by without leaving any new marks. Most of his hair was still naturally dark brown, and he’d determined earlier that morning that he didn’t look a day over thirty-nine.

“This is as far as you go.”

The guard’s badge identified him simply as Harker. He had a well-traveled face punctuated by an overgrown mustache that contrasted with his cleanly shaved head. Harker opened the door and ushered Chapa into the cramped but clean space.

“You sit there,” Harker said, pointing one of his callused fingers to the only chair on Chapa’s half of the room. “Keep on your side of the table, and don’t hand him anything.”

Chapa did as he was told, then reached into his black leather satchel and pulled out a notepad, two pens, and his black, lighter-size digital recorder.

“You can’t use that here,” Harker said.

Chapa slipped the recorder back into the case, discreetly pushing the record button as he tucked it into place. He took a quick inventory of how many weapons Harker had on his person. Four—that Chapa could see.

He hadn’t spoken with Grubb for six years. That was when the paper asked him to do a piece on the ten-year anniversary of the capture of one of Illinois’ most notorious mass murderers. It wasn’t an assignment that Chapa had welcomed, but he knew it was coming. Every time a new Kenny Lee Grubb feature needed to be written, Alex Chapa was the
Chicago Record
’s logical choice to write it.

The original story had fallen to Chapa when he was still a newbie at the smaller
Tri-Cities Bulletin
, and it helped him make a name for himself. A few weeks later he was introduced as the
Chicago Record
’s newest columnist. The new job with the Chicago area’s number two paper brought Chapa more than a significant boost in salary. But nothing matched the notoriety he gained from the Grubb story. There had been book offers, which Chapa had turned down because they would detract from the day-to-day reporting that he loved. He did short appearances on the ten o’clock news during Grubb’s trial, and even considered an offer to host a cable network show before coming to his senses and getting on with his newspaper career.

It had been a very good career so far, and Chapa was confident his best work was still ahead of him. He had spent the years since trying to put some distance between himself and Grubb, and much of what had come with that early success. He had grown weary of the references to a sixteen-year-old story every time he was introduced at a speaking engagement. In the same way that musicians sometimes grow to despise that breakthrough single their fans demand they play at every concert, so it was that Chapa had become tired of being identified with his first big hit.

But in the quietest moments, Chapa understood that if he had been anywhere but at that news desk when the tip came in about Grubb’s arrest he might still be a grunt reporter, covering restaurant openings and board meetings. Instead, he was able to devote his time and column inches to the subjects he cared about—the street gang infestation of the Midwest and the best efforts to solve the problem, failing schools and inspiring success stories, the struggles of immigrants and the plight of displaced American workers. There had been awards, as well as the resentment from some of his peers that often follows success. He’d been lucky, then good.

Chapa’s head was pounding from not getting much sleep the night before. He’d spent most of it in the dark, staring at his ceiling and wondering why the murderer of nine children had asked to see him, and only him, just six days before his execution.

Getting face time with anyone on death row wasn’t easy, even harder when the subject is the prison’s most infamous resident. But Chapa had been in the game long enough to know how to get meetings arranged and things done.

The small room had a heavy detergent smell, and there was something grotesque about that antiseptic odor in a place like this. It wasn’t the room usually reserved for visits with the irredeemable. That one had thick glass between visitor and con, and communication was strictly through telephones. Here, Chapa and Grubb would be face to face with nothing but a four-foot, white laminate–top table and Officer Harker between them. Apparently, the warden was pleased with that series of stories the
Record
had run about Illinois’ successful prison system.

Opening the notepad to a fresh page and uncapping each pen, Chapa laid it all out the way he wanted. Part of him knew this was just an attempt to feel like he was in control of a situation that he wasn’t sure he wanted any part of.

Chapa was thinking about the murderers and rapists who shared the same secondhand air now snaking through his lungs, when the door leading to the rest of the prison squealed open and Grubb appeared. He was dressed in a bright orange jumpsuit, his expression as blank as a dead man’s mind. The silver metal handcuffs that bound Grubb’s wrists matched the frame of his wheelchair.

A heavy chain connected the cuffs to the thick shackles around the killer’s ankles, even though Grubb’s legs were useless to him. His pasty skin and sharp features were capped by jet black hair and underscored by a chin that looked like it had sliced its way down from the rest of his face.

Grubb invaded Chapa’s personal space with a long stare that seemed to have no origin or intent. Trying to stay cool, or at least create the impression that he was, Chapa reached for his pen without taking his eyes off Grubb, but came up empty and instead knocked one of them to the floor. Grubb’s demeanor suddenly changed as a smile knifed across his waxy face and cut its way into that narrow space between Chapa’s skin and everything that lay beneath.

“I killed her.”

“You killed a lot of
hers
, Kenny.”

Ten minutes into the interview, Chapa had not yet heard anything worth writing down. That was unusual. Grubb was many things, virtually all of them horrible, but he had never been a bad interview subject. This, however, was not turning out to be a typical interview.

“I mean the talker, the cheater, the one who gave you your career,” Grubb said, and captured Chapa’s eyes with his own. “I killed Red.”

This was how Grubb described each of the children he had murdered, even at his sentencing when he was supposed to deliver something in the way of an apology to the families of his young victims. There were nine bodies in all, seven girls and two boys, and nine families that no longer had the pieces to put it all back together.

The children’s parents had named them Ellie, Ryan, Shelly, two were named Heather, another was named Maria, and there was also a Mary, and a Carson, as well as his first victim, a frail but happy nine-year-old named Stephanie. But Grubb reduced them to physical attributes, so the shattered parents had to hear about
Dark Eyes, Little Knees
, and
Short Fingers
.

Chapa knew every one of the perverse nicknames their executioner had given them, but he had also made damned sure to never forget their birth names. This was especially true with Annie Sykes, the girl who Grubb called “Red.”

It was Annie who escaped and somehow gave the police a perfect description of Grubb’s house, his neighborhood, and enough landmarks that they were able to find it within a few short hours.

“I know when a piece of meat has been rendered,” Grubb said, inching closer before looking over to see if Harker was watching from where he sat, some twenty feet away, then slowly easing back into his chair.

His killing technique had varied somewhat from victim to victim, though all but two were drugged using a mixture of depressants and barbiturates including Rohypnol. In Grubb’s harrowed mind, each child deserved to be killed in a way that was specific to them.

In Annie Sykes’ case Grubb explained, “I was sending her back to where she came from.”

Those were the only words he spoke about Annie at the trial. The parents of other children were not so fortunate. They sat there, in that indistinct courtroom, as Grubb coldly described what he had done to each child, and how their sons and daughters had died.

He had not publicly spoken about Annie since that one instance at his trial. Until now.

“Red belonged in the sacred ground where I planted her. I never trusted the little bitch, so I gave her more of the medicine than any of the others. She was no longer of this world.”

“Well, I tell you what, Kenny, for a ghost she sure did a hell of a job of leading the cops to your house.”

Grubb smiled broadly and Chapa could see that the killer had fewer teeth than when he arrived at Pennington.

“Alex, can I call you Alex? It’s been some time since we last spoke, but I feel like we’re brethren.”

Chapa did not respond.

“You see me here, a cripple, my wrists and ankles chained together, and that helps you and your readers feel safe, don’t it?”

“Shouldn’t it?”

“Perhaps,” Grubb said. His arms had become thick from years of working out, but remained free of prison ink.

Chapa looked down at his blank notepad and felt an urge to write something, but so far this was looking like nothing more than a disturbing waste of time. That was about to change.

Grubb just sat there and stared at him for a few seconds, and out of the corner of his eye Chapa saw Harker was getting ready to bring the meeting to an end.

“If I tell you the truth, will you print it?”

“We always print the truth,” Chapa said picking up the only pen that was still sitting on the table.

“The hell you do. If you did, all of those sleepwalkers out there would take up arms and fortify their homes.”

“Would they?”

“You bet they would. Because the truth is, my work continues. Right now, just beyond these walls.”

Chapa started taking notes, knowing that at any moment Harker, or any one of the other four guards who were standing outside the doors, could decide that time was up.

“What are you talking about, Kenny? You’re not going to go into some diatribe about the violence in society or crap like that, are you?”

Grubb forced out a deep laugh.

“No, asshole,” Grubb lowered his voice so it was just above what would be a suspicious whisper. “I’m talking about what you folks mistakenly refer to as a copycat killer.”

Chapa stopped writing. While, contrary to common belief around the profession, he had no deep fascination with killers like Grubb, Chapa did keep an eye out for reports of pattern killings from around the country. It was a habit he had fallen into after the Grubb case. He was relieved when months passed and none turned up.

He chose to not respond to Grubb’s last comment, knowing that the killer would not be able to stand the silence for long. It worked.

“If you think about it, Alex, the term
copycat
is insulting to both the original and the disciple. I prefer the word
tribute
. You know, like bands that expertly recreate another band’s music. Because that’s what’s been going down across the Rust Belt during the past few months. Somebody is replaying my greatest hits.”

Grubb had to be blowing smoke. A desperate attempt to generate some attention for himself in the few remaining days he had left. What Chapa expected to hear next was an offer of assistance in exchange for more time. An offer he figured the authorities had already turned down.

“You shouldn’t try to bullshit me. I’m not the one who’s trapped in a cage. I read the news reports online and on the wire. I would’ve noticed anything like that.”

Grubb settled in, folded his arms, and said, “Pick up your pen, not the one you’ve been using, the other one, the better one. I wouldn’t want you to miss this.” Then Grubb winked at him.

Chapa ignored the suggestion. He knew some experts believed the best way to deal with a person like Grubb was to act subservient and give his ego some room to stretch out and move around. But Chapa had never been able to do that during any of his interviews with the killer, and he wasn’t interested in starting now. Knowing what Annie looked like on that night, what she and her family and all the other families had gone through, Chapa could never show anything but contempt for the man on the other side of the table.

A look over at Harker resulted in the guard giving him the five minute signal.

“This pen will do just fine.”

Grubb slowly leaned forward. So casual.

“I’ll tell you where to find everything you’ll need for your story, but I want you to report the truth, that’s why you were summoned here.”

The reporter nodded, matching the killer’s ease.

“Check out what happened in Grand Rapids in February, Zanesville, Ohio in late August of last year, down in Jackson, Tennessee this summer, and Marion, Iowa more than two years ago.”

Chapa wrote down each location, though he felt more than a little uneasy about taking information from Grubb.

“Look up a boy named Mike Connor who took his last breath a week before Christmas in Ortonville, Minnesota. You can find the rest on your own, Alex.”

“How many more?”

“Eight total for sure, but I think number nine has already been rendered.”

Chapa tried to ignore the obvious pleasure the monster in front of him was getting from this. If by some chance Grubb was right, then this was anything but a simple death row rant.

“All innocent children like the ones you murdered?”

“Those animals that I rendered were bad to the core.” He had gotten under Grubb’s skin, and this pleased Chapa, though the raised voice brought Harker to his feet.

“Look newsman, I didn’t want to believe it at first, either. They were so small and soft, but I tested them and learned the truth. I knew the things they would’ve done once they grew and became powerful. Now I know I’m not the only one who understands that.”

Signaling to Harker that it was okay, Chapa silently pleaded for just another minute. The guard nodded, but did not sit back down.

“Maybe you don’t believe me yet, but you will when my disciple gives me his greatest gift.”

Chapa thought of his own daughter. Nikki was beyond Grubb’s reach, but predators were everywhere, always hunting for innocent prey.

“So let’s hope that if there is some vile creature out there doing this he’ll run into a tough little kid like Annie. Just like you did.”

Grubb laughed silently as Chapa felt what sparse warmth there might have been in the room disappear into the killer’s gaping smile.

“Don’t you see? He’s leaving
her
for last. Before they put me out of all of you people’s misery he’s going to finish Red for me.” Grubb wasn’t smiling now. “And then the circle will be complete.”

“She’s not a child anymore, Grubb.”

“No, but she’s still mine and I want her back,” Grubb said, and Chapa could see he was barely keeping it together. Something that came from a place no light could ever sneak into was seeping to the surface, threatening to betray the killer’s façade.

“What makes you think I won’t go to the cops? Turn this all over to them, and let a bunch of feds tear into the last few days of your worthless life?”

“Because you won’t, not right away. Because you’re never satisfied trailing a story when you can get ahead of it. Because that’s who you are. It’s the one thing you’re good at.”

Harker walked around to the back of the wheelchair and wrapped his heavy hands around the grips. Grubb tried to wave him off, and when that didn’t work he clutched the tabletop and strained to pull himself forward. The chair did not budge.

“You know, Alex, ninety-nine out of a hundred reporters would have written that story without using her name, without interviewing Red’s parents. They might have mentioned that a child tipped-off the police, but after that their discretion would’ve taken over. But not you.”

Harker reached forward and gradually put the squeeze on Grubb’s shoulder, while sliding his other hand to a holster that cradled a taser.

“And, Alex, do allow yourself some personal satisfaction when the news comes that everything has been put right. After all, you will have had a hand in it. You made her famous enough to be worth rendering a second time.”

With that, Grubb pushed away from the table, forcing Harker to take an abrupt step back. Grubb then turned the wheels and rolled away, as though the decision was his and Harker had no say in the matter. A loud buzz sounded, and the guard opened the door.

“I’m hoping to see the story in print before they kill me in six days. But that’s really not what’s important, is it?”

Grubb disappeared into the rest of the prison as Chapa was still working on a comeback.