When the Day of Evil Comes (26 page)

And finally, Peter Terry his white skin glistening, whispered into a blindfolded Erik Zocci’s ear, leading him slowly, a step at a time, to the brink, shoving him over the edge of a cliff and laughing hysterically as the boy hurtled toward oblivion.

I awoke with my hands clammy, my heart pounding. Wishing for the simple nuisance of flies instead of this new plague of bizarre, terrifying images.

Weak morning light at last squeezed through the dirty wire mesh windows, rousing my cellmates one by one. As the cell slowly shook awake, communal toilets were utilized and sometimes flushed. Faucets were turned on at the trough along the wall. Women stood in front of the sinks and brushed their teeth with fingers. I stayed in my corner, huddling alone, shivering.

Occasionally a guard would rattle the cell door and call out a name, and the corresponding inmate would shuffle out behind her. These inmates did not return. Maybe they’d been assigned to cells. Maybe they’d been released. I didn’t know.

At five of nine, a burly wrestler of a guard shouted “Foster!” I jumped to my feet and hustled out of there, following her down a series of desolate hallways.

My destination, it turned out, was the county courthouse. For my arraignment.

I had no attorney. I’d never made my one phone call. Never been offered the opportunity, as a matter of fact. So I stood in front of the judge alone, the court room buzzing around me, a hive of disinterested parties, going about their business. Oblivious to my desperate plight.

The judge looked at me over her glasses. “You have no representation?”

“No ma’am.”

“Can you afford an attorney?”

I didn’t quite know how to answer that. “It depends on what you mean by afford.”

“Don’t be smart with me, Ms. Foster.” She scanned the courtroom and chose an attorney, pointing for the man to come to the bench. A skinny black man in a badly fitting suit trotted up to the defense table with his briefcase.

“You’ll be representing Ms. Foster for the purposes of this arraignment,” the judge said to him. “How does your client plead?”

I stood there mutely, convinced for once of the wisdom of keeping my mouth shut.

“Absolutely not guilty, your honor,” the man said.

“Calm down. Bail?” said the judge.

“The state requests that bail be denied,” came a voice from the other side of the aisle. I peeked around my lawyer to see yet another badly suited man standing behind the prosecutor’s table.

“On what grounds?” asked the judge.

“The defendant brutally assaulted one of Chicago’s most prominent citizens, a frail, defenseless elderly woman. Ms. Foster is not from the area and has no family here. She’s clearly a flight risk. And an imminent danger to society.”

“Counsel?” the judge said to my attorney, whose name I had never heard.

“Uh,” he said, “we deny all that. Yes. We do.” He leaned over to me. “You going to show up for trial?”

“Yes,” I whispered back.

He looked at the judge. “We request the defendant be released. Right away.”

“You want O.R.?” said the judge.

“Yes. O.R., that’s what we want,” he said.

“You want the defendant released on her own recognizance?” she said.

“Yes,” my attorney said confidently.

I wasn’t feeling too confident about my attorney.

“The people object to that,” the prosecutor said.

“Bail is set at two hundred thousand dollars.” The judge rapped her gavel, dismissing us all without another glance. “Next case.”

My attorney turned to me, his face seeming familiar suddenly, in some distant sort of way “I’ll come see you later today,” he said. “Don’t talk to anyone.”

“Okay,” I said.

He picked up his briefcase and rushed off. And I was alone again. The entire procedure had taken less than five minutes.

As the guard turned me toward the door to escort me back to jail, I caught a glimpse of Joseph Zocci sitting alone in the back of the courtroom. Just looking at me. No expression. No movement. Like a reptile. Waiting.

The guard led me out of the courtroom and through another maze of hallways, doors slamming open and closed as we walked through them. Clanging in my ears. My head pounded. I felt weak. I was hungry and exhausted.

A final door shoved itself open and I walked into a cell. Six feet by ten—I know because I paced that route back and forth like a cat—with two bunks, a sink, and a toilet The other bunk was empty which meant I had my own room. My first break in twelve hours.

I alternated between pacing my cell and sitting on my cot trying to figure out what to do.

Lunch arrived, a single slice of fatty ham on white bread, a smeared dot of yellow mustard staining the bread and reminding me of the smiley-face flag on my rental car. A plastic
cup of mushy fruit cocktail sat next to the sandwich, along with a bite-size 3 Musketeers bar and a carton of skim milk. I picked at it and paced some more.

Still I had made no phone call. I had not heard from Liz Zocci. Or my nameless attorney.

With all that time on my hands, I contemplated my situation, trying to fit the pieces together. It was like a puzzle with no solution. As though someone had thrown together the oddly shaped pieces of a dozen different jigsawed images.

If I’d had pen and paper, I would’ve tried to draw it all out, inking connections onto the page as well as into my thoughts. But since I had neither, I had to make do with my brain alone, which was filled with static and fogged by fatigue.

The last two days had been packed with characters and events. As I catalogued it all—suicides and shower curtains, my adventures at the Vendome, the disparate members of the Zocci clan—it occurred to me that I hadn’t yet finished my conversation with Mariann Zocci. I hadn’t asked her about Erik’s suicide note. Also, she’d refused to talk to me about Joe Zocci’s cruelty, which seemed to me central to the entire mystery. And she’d refused to talk about her first son’s death. Little Joseph Jr. The lost boy.

I must have fallen asleep with my head spinning like that, for I dreamed again. This time Peter Terry, instead of delighting in his cruel mischief, was wary. Restrained. In the shadows behind him, a sinewy dark figure watched him. Peter Terry seemed to fear this figure, darting away from it, looking over his shoulder as he ran away.

The jangle of metal jolted me awake. I opened my eyes to see the guard who had escorted me to court.

“You made bail,” she said without animation. “Congratulations.”

I stood up and followed her. I was getting used to following people down hallways.

She stayed with me as my captors processed my release. There were several pages of documents for my signature, verifying my address in Dallas, promising that I’d show up for trial. The last piece of paper said I’d been treated well and that my rights had been respected. I signed.

The guard led me through a swinging door and then walked away wordlessly.

A child’s voice shouted my name.

“Miss Dylan!”

I scanned the room. It was Punkin, standing there all dressed in pink, holding her mother’s hand.

She ran over to me and hugged my legs. I thought my heart was going to explode. Nothing ever felt so good to me as that nutty little kid squeezing my knees.

Liz walked over behind her.

“Okay, Punkin,” she said. “You don’t need to tackle her.”

“I prayed for you,”. Punkin said to me, releasing my legs and gazing up at me.

“I know, sweetie. I could tell.”

“Did my angel come?”

“I don’t think so.”

Her face fell. “He said he would.”

“I’m sure he meant to,” I said. “Maybe you’re my angel.”

“No, silly-bean! He looks like Mr. Martin.”

I knew better than to argue that point.

Liz grabbed her hand and looked at me. “You ready to go?”

“You have no idea,” I answered. “Thank you so much for coming for me I’m so grateful. I feel like I should mow your lawn for the rest of my life or something.”

We made our way out of the courthouse and began the walk
to the car, the late afternoon sun slanting warm against my face.

“Did you have to post bail?” I asked, guilt already sinking in on me.

“It was kind of an adventure,” Liz said, her eyes wide. “Practice for my boys some day, I’m sure, the little hoodlums. This one,” she looked down at Christine, “I’m not too worried about.”

If my sketchy knowledge of legal procedures was accurate, I now owed Liz Zocci twenty thousand dollars. Ten percent of my bail money, which had been posted as a bond. And about a million percent of my meager self-worth.

I couldn’t even let myself think about that.

“How’s Mariann?” I asked.

“She’s out. They released her this morning.”

“Did she go home?”

“She checked into the Four Seasons.”

“Not the Vendome.”

“I don’t think she’ll ever go back to the Vendome,” she said.

“Does Joe know where she is?”

“I don’t think she told him. I drove her there myself.”

We loaded into her Suburban, Liz buckling Christine into her car seat while I flicked Cheerios off the passenger seat and settled myself in. I had never been so happy in my life. A jailbird. Out on bail. Intoxicated by the luxury of riding in a car without handcuffs on.

“Where to?” Liz asked.

“My hotel.” I gave her the cross streets. I had no idea where we were. “If I don’t take a shower and brush my teeth, I’m going to come out of my skin.”

“You didn’t take a toothbrush with you?” She was incredulous.

“I lost my ability to plan ahead when the cops showed up at my door. I panicked.”

She nodded. “I could see that. Still … no toothbrush.”

“No kidding.” I waited a minute. “Do you think Mariann would talk to me again?”

“She’s in pretty bad shape.”

“I know.”

I waited. We both knew I was desperate.

“I’ll call her while you’re in the shower,” she said.

We finished the drive in silence, Christine singing gaily to herself in the backseat.

At the Best Mid-Western, while Liz and Christine waited next door at Denny’s, I took a hot shower behind a newly installed plastic shower curtain, putting myself back together slowly, luxuriating in every detail of the experience. Clean towels. A mirror. A blow dryer. Mascara/Astonishing wealth to me now.

Once I was showered and dressed, I flew around the room, shoving my things into a suitcase. Whatever the rest of this day brought, there was no way I was spending another night at the Downtown Chicago Best Mid-Western. Not only did the place have bad mojo for me, but Joseph Zocci, the Chicago Police Department, and Peter Terry had all managed to find me. It was time to move.

I locked my stuff in the Neon, checked out of my room, walked next door, and slid into the booth with Liz and Christine. They were sharing French fries and a chocolate shake. Christine was dipping the fries in the shake and drinking her ketchup with a straw.

I ordered a club sandwich and a Dr. Pepper, both of which I inhaled. Christine chattered to herself and colored on the back of a place mat while Liz and I talked.

“I talked to Mariann,” Liz said. “She said she’ll see you. She didn’t sound too good. She’s in a lot of pain.”

“Thank you for asking her,” I said.

I waited a minute and then asked the question that was tugging at me. “Why are you helping me?”

Liz jerked her head over to her daughter. “My kid has good instincts. It was her idea.”

“Thank you for posting bail. I don’t know when I’ll be able to pay you back.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “They return the bond money if you come back for trial. So I’m in good shape. Unless you move to Mexico or something.”

Little did she know. Mexico was sounding pretty good to me right about now.

“What’s Mexico?” Christine asked.

“It’s a place with blue sky and a beach,” Liz said. “Like Lake Michigan but warmer.”

Christine started drawing yellow sand and a blue sky.

“Did Mariann tell you anything?” I asked.

“She told me everything.”

“Was it who we thought?” I didn’t want to be too specific in front of Christine.

“Of course.”

“Will she leave?”

“I doubt it.”

We sat silently for a minute, listening to Christine hum. She ran out of paper, so her mother handed her another kids’ menu.

“Has he done this before?” I asked Liz.

“Many times. But I’ve never seen it this bad.”

“Grandpa’s mean,” Christine said, without looking up.

So much for shielding her from the brutal truth.

Liz smiled at me. “I told you. Good instincts.”

I watched Christine choose a brown crayon. She drew an awkward, thin stick figure, festooning it with golden wings and a silver halo.

“Mommy, how do you spell my angel’s name? I can’t remember.”

Liz said the letters slowly as Christine drew them.

I watched her scrawl the name awkwardly in purple:

E-A-R-L

L
IZ GAVE ME MARIANN’S
room number and hugged me good-bye, Christine reminding me once again that her angel looked like Mr. Martin and would I come see her tomorrow. I promised her I’d try.