The Killings (18 page)

“Remember, I’m going to be talking to a lot of people, so you can’t kill him or half the neighborhood will know.”

Henry smiled. “I’m not a fool, Robert. I ain’t tryin’ to give these White folks an excuse to lynch me. You just get me to the police station safe and sound and guarantee I stay that way.”

Robert nodded. He wanted to say, “I’ll do my best,” but thought better of it. Henry didn’t want Robert’s best effort, not when it came to his life and freedom; he wanted assurances, assurances that Robert couldn’t give. Instead, Robert simply nodded and backed out the door. He cast one last look at Lacey before he left.

“Don’t go!” Lacey shouted. “You can’t leave me here with these criminals! You’re a cop! You’re one of us! Don’t leave me!” Lacey’s voice bristled with mortal terror.

It wasn’t lost on Robert that the man had gone out of his way since Robert first joined the investigation to impress upon him that there was and never would be a colored man on the Atlanta PD. Now, with his life in peril, he was eager to include him. He wondered if it would always be that way with White folks, if colored folks would ever be accepted as equals, as brothers.

Robert wouldn’t look at Lacey. He turned to Henry and nodded. “I’ll be back.”

“You’d better be,” Henry said.

“Don’t leave! Don’t go! You can’t!” Lacey continued to whine. He looked like he was in hell, watching the gates to heaven slam shut.

Robert slowly closed the door and walked off down the street. He knew the first place he needed to go - back to Pastor Marcus.

TWENTY-THREE

August 21, 2011, Downtown Atlanta

Twin holes blossomed red in the chubby guy’s chest and stomach. He flopped over onto his face and lay twitching in a growing pool of his own life fluid. Carmen continued forward. Her momentum carried her down onto his prone form. She straddled his back and stabbed him repeatedly with the blade he’d accosted her with.

A voice behind her cut through the din. “Ma’am? You okay, ma’am?”

Carmen barely acknowledged it, determined to spend the last of her energy murdering the fat fuck who’d menaced her with her own gun. Even after it registered in her mind that she hadn’t been shot, she continued to stab him.

“Ma’am? Ma’am? I think he’s dead, ma’am. He’s dead. It’s over. You’re safe.”

Those last words got through. Carmen looked over at the security guard with the tattoo peeking out from beneath his shirt collar and then down at the profusely bleeding guy upon whom she sat. He wasn’t fighting her, wasn’t threatening her, wasn’t moving at all. He wasn’t even breathing. Carmen stood slowly. The security guard held out a hand to help her up, but she refused it. The guard simply nodded. Understanding.

“I came when I heard the gunshots and then realized no one had come out of the garage since you walked in. I was monitoring the security cameras and never saw your car leave. I called the police, but I had to make sure you were okay. Who knows how long it might have taken for the cops to get here?”

Carmen nodded. She was in shock. Two corpses lay on the concrete floor. Both had tried to assault her and both were now dead. She knew she should have felt some kind of satisfaction, but all she felt was numb and exhausted. The garage suddenly turned blue and red as police cruisers filed into the parking garage one by one.

Two officers exited the first vehicle with their hands on their guns. One was a heavyset female officer with blonde hair and a pretty face but who looked like she’d had one too many donuts, the other an older Black man with a round face and gray hair at his temples who obviously shared her addiction. They approached Carmen and the security guard as if they were both dangerous fugitives, one hand held out in front of them in a calm, non-threatening manner and the other firmly clasped on the butts of their forty caliber Glocks.

“Sir, I’m gonna ask you to place your weapon on the ground and back away from it.”

The security guard did as he was instructed without protest.

“Are you the one who called this in?” the policewoman asked.

“Yes, ma’am. I came out here right after I called. I got here just in time. That guy was about to shoot her,” the guard said, pointing down at the chubby guy on the ground who was still rapidly exsanguinating.

Carmen held her head with both hands. An intense migraine struck without warning. She wasn’t sure if it was from the stress and adrenaline, the accelerated heart rate, or if she was having some kind of stroke. It felt like her skull was cracking open.

There were six other officers on scene now. The female officer left her partner’s side, who continued to question the security guard, and walked over to Carmen.

“Are you okay, miss? Do you need medical attention? Were you injured?”

Carmen was still watching the police officers as they interviewed the guard. Half an hour ago, the man had been a stranger to her. She’d barely acknowledged him as she passed him on her way out the door. Now he had just saved her life. Funny how life works out.

The pain in her head intensified.

“Do you want to tell me what happened? Which one of them attacked you?”

“Both of them.”

Carmen was still staring at the guard when the pain suddenly became unbearable and everything started to go dark.

“Don’t hurt him, okay? He saved my life.”

The policewoman rushed forward to catch her as Carmen began to fall, but she was too slow. Carmen fell face first. Luckily her fall was broken as her head landed on her would-be-murderer’s blood-soaked back.

TWENTY-FOUR

August 21, 1911, Atlanta

Robert made it back to Pastor Marcus’s church in fewer than thirty minutes. That left him over an hour and a half to talk to the pastor, gather up every neighbor he could find, and make it to the newspaper office six miles away and convince a few reporters to follow him back to Henry’s house. He raced up the church steps, swung open the doors, and then sprinted down the main aisle to the pastor’s office.

The door was closed. Robert reached for the doorknob and paused. A large red puddle had spread from beneath the door. Blood. There was no mistaking the color or the meaty metallic smell. Robert had the sudden image of the pastor disemboweled, cut open from asshole to appetite, with his guts strewn around the room and his throat sliced down to the bone.

He was hardly surprised when he eased open the door to find Pastor Marcus sprawled across his desk, stripped naked, his internal organs no longer internal, a cascade of blood raining down onto the floor in sheets. His throat had not only been cut, but he’d been castrated, his male organ shoved into the tremendous gash yawning wide beneath his chin.

Sunlight dappled through the stained-glass windows behind the pastor’s desk, shining red, orange, and blue rays over the ghastly slaughter. Robert felt the bile rise in his throat. He looked around in a panic, worried the killer might still be inside the church. He listened but could hear nothing but the sound of his own heartbeat booming in his chest and his heavy, panicked breathing like he’d just run a marathon.

“Oh, God! Oh, Jesus! What the hell? Who? Why would someone do this?”

Robert brought his hands to his face, covering his eyes. He couldn’t bear to look at this. He couldn’t take it. As he stood there, trying to deal with the shock and horror splayed out before him, he caught the sharp, coppery aroma of blood. It was all over the room, but it was also embedded in his hands. He moved his hands away from his face. They were clean. Not spic and span clean, but clean enough. He looked down at his clothes. His trek through town had rumpled them, and his dark slacks bore a large stain that was crusty and made the garment sticky. Heart pounding, he slowly reached down into his front pocket. He could feel the familiar weight of his straight razor, though he couldn’t remember bringing it with him. His fingers touched the pearl handle. He pulled the razor from his pocket.

It was coated with fresh blood.

He dropped it to the floor and backed away from it in horror.

“What the hell is going on?”

Robert remembered the dream he’d had of the dark man in the black hat kneeling over the dead woman, plundering her organs. He’d had a strong feeling that he knew the man. It had nagged him all day long. He recalled the face now as he stared down at the bloody razor. He could see the man from his dream turning toward him with those black eyes, soulless chasms empty and infinite as a starless sky.

Robert knew that face. Had known it his entire life.

He bent down, picked up the razor, and placed it back in his pocket. He genuflected as he backed out of the room and closed the door. “Rest in peace, Pastor.”

Robert ran back down the aisle, passing rows of splintering, sunbleached wooden pews containing tattered Bibles and hymnals. He made it halfway to the exit before dropping to his knees and regurgitating on the floor. Robert vomited again and again, voiding the contents of his stomach onto the church’s wooden floor, wishing he could void the image of the murdered minister from his mind.

He turned suddenly, as if afraid the pastor would come lumbering out of his office, dragging yards of bloated purple intestines, that hideous gash in his throat still stuffed with his own cock. Instead, a crucified Christ, taller than six feet, towered above the altar. It appeared to have been carved from one enormous piece of alabaster. It was, by far, the most expensive thing in the church and was probably worth more than the building itself. Christ’s eyes were not cast heavenward as they were on most crucifixes. This one was staring down at him with eyes filled with sorrow and remorse as if he regretted sacrificing himself for such a wretched human being.

“Oh, help me, Jesus!” Robert’s stomach continued to heave long after it was empty. Tears streamed down his face. He staggered to his feet and shuffled toward the exit in a daze. He forgot all about Henry and Officer Lacey. All he wanted was to get home, get out of his bloody clothes and into a hot bath and a tall bottle of whisky. He wanted to forget everything - the killings, the Atlanta Police Department, Henry, Lacey, and, most of all, Pastor Marcus.

He swung open the doors of the church and stumbled down the stairs. In his mind, Robert continued to grapple with the mystery of the man with the black eyes. A mystery that had now revealed an answer he could not accept. It made no sense.

As he headed down the street, Robert became aware that his shirt had been stained with blood. His heart pounded as he raced from the scene. How could he have made it from the church all the way to Henry’s in this state without attracting unwanted attention? His streetcar ride to the Fourth Ward had been on the back of the car, away from most of the passengers. And when he finally arrived at Henry’s home, the shade afforded the first-floor foyer from the trees outside had helped camouflage him. Officer Lacey and Henry and Roscoe had been so caught up in the moment that they hadn’t noticed his bloodstained clothing.

This can’t be happening!

Robert peeled off his blood-soaked shirt as he hurried away from the church. His T-shirt was stained as well, but that couldn’t be helped. He walked briskly up Auburn Avenue. He passed the same cafes, restaurants, dress shops, cigar, furniture, and antique stores he’d passed on his way to the church. Many of the same people who’d been there hours ago still lingered on the street. Robert considered stopping to buy a new shirt, though it would have set him back almost a day’s pay. He paused and peered through the window of a men’s store named Woody’s. A men’s white cotton shirt adorned a mannequin in the window. There was a price tag on it, a dollar fifty. Robert reached into his pocket and found three quarters and a dime. He started to turn away when he caught a glimpse of a familiar face in the storefront window. It was the face that had been haunting him ever since his nightmare. Those same black eyes, like holes cored into his skull, stared back at him from his own reflection.

You know who the fuck you are now, Robert Jackson?

Robert turned slowly. The old man in the filthy confederate soldier uniform stood behind him, grinning a nearly toothless grin. His smile was as corroded as his syphilitic nose. He held his battered tin cup out toward Robert.

“I know who I am. I’m Wilson Allen. Who the fuck are you?” He shook his tin cup and laughed. “Who the fuck are you, Robert Jackson? Who the fuck are you?”

Robert shook his head and backed away. “I don’t know. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know!”

Robert began to run. Like a picture show, memories rolled through his mind. Robert reeled under the onslaught, swerving back and forth like a drunken man as he ran.

“Hey, Robert, you at the speakeasy a little too late last night? Look like you got the DTs!”

Robert turned to find the source of the voice. A group of men stood outside a cafe laughing at him. He recognized each of them, but their names escaped him. They were men he’d known since childhood, regulars at his barbershop, but he could not remember any of their names. Suddenly, the horrible memories and reality began to merge. Transposed over the faces of his friends was the vision of Pastor Marcus’s brutalized corpse and the faces of young, light-skinned Black women screaming for their lives. He saw them being raped and sodomized, their heads bashed in with stones, throats cut from one ear to the other, shot, stabbed. He saw them vivisected, their insides removed. He recognized each face, and some he could even name. Della Reid, Addie Watts, Lizzie Watkins, Lena Sharp. Some he’d known from grade school or from the speakeasies. Some he’d met at church, and some he’d only passed once or twice on the street. The rest he’d met only once - the day they’d died.

“The day I killed them,” Robert mumbled as he came to a halt outside his home.

I killed them all.

TWENTY-FIVE

September 1, 2011, Downtown Atlanta

When Carmen was finished telling Jacob Little everything - starting with the initial inspiration for researching a story on Wayne Williams’s case for a potential book - she honestly didn’t know how he would react. Jacob had been the first to call her at the hospital when the news broke; he’d been patched directly to her room despite orders from her doctor and the police that she was to receive no phone calls or visitors.