Grant Park

by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

  Amy laughed. “Right,” she said. “Let’s just kick the front door open.” Then, whatever she saw in his face made her realize he was not joking. “Bob,” she said, “you can’t be serious.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “For God’s sake,” she said, “We’re reporters, not…home invaders.”

  “You’re a reporter,” said Bob. “I’m just a desperate man trying to track down the animal that took the woman I love. And if McLarty lived here til just three months ago, maybe he left behind some clue to where I can find her. Maybe it’s in there right now, waiting for me.”

  “Bob, think about it. Even if it was a good idea, which it isn’t, how do you propose to get through that?” And she pointed to the door, over which the accordion gate was closed.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll have to figure something out. Look, Amy, you’ve got a career to think about. Get in the van and drive away if you want to. Call the cops if you feel like you need to do that. I won’t be angry with you. But I have to find her. And right now, this is the only idea I’ve got.”

  He started back toward the house without another word. After a moment, Amy followed.

  He rattled the iron security gate on the front door uselessly. He peered through a similar gate that covered the windows. The curtains were drawn and he couldn’t see a thing. Amy kept looking nervously behind them.

  “I already told you,” he said, “you can bail if you want. I won’t be mad at you.”

  “This is insane,” said Amy.

  “Yep,” said Bob, hopping down from the porch.

  Still, she followed as he made his way down the tight passageway on the west side of the house. Halfway down, he stopped and pointed. Above them a curtain billowed lazily from an open window.

  “I know you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking,” she said.

  Bob had already leapt up and caught the windowsill and now dangled there. “I just want to see inside,” he told her.

  “Yeah, and what if what’s inside is a man with a Glock wondering who this is climbing through his window?”

  “Look,” said Bob, “if you’re going to stay around, could you at least make yourself useful?”

  He heard resignation in her groan. Then she put a shoulder under his backside and pushed. He pulled himself toward the open window, legs scrabbling for purchase on the bricks.

  “Watch your feet!” she cried out from below. “If you kick me in my broken jaw, I’m going to be very pissed at you.”

  “Sorry,” said Bob.

  He got first his right elbow wedged inside the window, then his left. Bob levered himself up until he got his head through. And then he saw. And then he stopped. His body went limp and he nearly fell from the window before he caught himself.

  “Bob?” Amy was hissing his name from down below. “What is it? What do you see?”

  Bob coughed. His throat seemed clogged with dead leaves and yellowed grass.

  “There’s a woman,” he began.

  Amy could not make out his dead leaves and yellowed grass whisper. “What?” she asked.

  Bob coughed again. “There’s a woman,” he said. “She’s dead. His mother, I think. She’s been shot.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  Edith McLarty’s head sagged upon her chest, eyes open, face frozen in confusion, and the front of her looked as if it had been splashed in red paint. The blood was still wet. It came from two small holes that had been drilled right through the center of her chest.

  “I’m sure,” he said.

  “That’s it. I’m calling the police.”

  “Wait. Give me five minutes to go through the place first.”

  Without waiting for an answer, Bob hauled himself through the window, landing in a heap on the floor next to the woman’s bed. “Bob,” called Amy from outside, “don’t mess with anything. That’s a crime scene.”

  “I won’t,” said Bob. But he was pawing through the detritus on the dead woman’s nightstand as he spoke. Matchbooks, lottery tickets, receipts, expired coupons, catalogues from the spring of 2005, an instruction manual for the oxygen tank on the floor by the bed. He felt panic burning in his gut like an acid. The sense of wrongness was palpable. Amy was right, he was violating a crime scene. He was desecrating the sanctity of death. He was rifling through a dead woman’s lingerie drawer as she sat not five feet from him, a remote control still clenched in her right hand, pointed toward a television that showed a soundless picture of Barack Obama playing basketball with some of his aides.

  And he was finding nothing.

  And he was accomplishing nothing.

  And he was leaving evidence of his presence at a murder scene all over the place. CSI—assuming that was a real thing and not just something on television—would have a field day.

  And meanwhile the mad dog who (he was sure of this, he was so sure) had done this thing still had Janeka, could at any moment do to her what he had done to his own mother. Maybe already had.

  That’s enough.

  Maybe already had.

  Focus. Concentrate.

  “Bob?” Amy’s uncertain voice came through the open window. It seemed far away and Bob ignored it. He opened the bedroom door (leaving DNA and fingerprints all over the doorknob, warned a small voice) and found himself in a hallway. Two bedroom doors on his left, another bedroom and a bath on the right. Bob entered the bedroom on his right.

  He didn’t find much. Clothes bulging from a dresser, a mattress on the floor, a stack of pornographic magazines lying next to the mattress, but nothing that gave him a hint about who Dwayne McLarty was or, better yet, where he might be. Panic was eating him now. Indeed, panic was corkscrewing its way through him like a worm chewing through a rotten apple. His mind was infested with unthinkable thoughts.

  He crossed the hall. He tried the second bedroom. The door was locked. He thought about trying to break it down—maybe it was locked because it had belonged to McLarty and he was no longer in residence—but abandoned the idea. Instead, he entered the last bedroom. And stopped.

  Oh, my God.

  His cellphone chirped. He didn’t hear it.

  Oh, my sweet Lord.

  His cellphone chirped again. He answered it without looking.

  “Yeah?”

  “Bob?” Amy’s voice. “Are you all right? You’ve got to get out of there.”

  “He’s crazy.” Bob’s voice was a whisper. “I found his room.”

  “Bob, get out of there.”

  “In a moment. Hold on. I’m close.”

  The room was a dingy hole, lit by the seepage of light from a torn window shade. But even standing there in the shadows, Bob knew he had found McLarty’s bedroom. It was a citadel of loathing, a temple of hatred.

  He flicked a light switch. A naked bulb came on overhead and the room leapt into sharper view. Bob gasped.

  Adolf Hitler commanded one wall. He faced the room with a stiff-armed Nazi salute, eyes fixed on some middle distance of purpose and racial purity. The legend on the bottom read, “He Tried to Tell Us!” From a second wall, what appeared to be an authentic Ku Klux Klan hood watched the room with sightless eyes. From the facing wall, Timothy McVeigh stared the Klan hood down with a gaze of steel and determination.

  But those were just the highlights. Every surface of the room, every wall, nightstand and dresser top, was covered with paeans to racial hatred. There were racist publications with headlines like “The Coming Niggerization of America,” “Ten Lies of the Nigger Obama,” “The Holocaust Did Not Happen—But It Should Have,” “Nigger Kills, Rapes, and Disembowels White Co-Ed,” and “Mongrel Nation: The White Man’s Guide to Survival in the New Order.” There were figurines—fat black mammies in kerchiefs, long-limbed, red-lipped street hustlers, a Jew with goat’s hooves. A Confederate flag depended from the ceiling. From a poster on a wall, a morbidly obese black woman crouched nude on a chair, hands splaying her massive backside as she looked over her shoulder with a leering, gold
-toothed grin.

  Bob gaped. He had known this kind of thing was in the world, yes. But there was a vast difference between knowing it in some distant, abstract sense and standing right in the middle of it, bearing personal witness to hatred so venomous and pure as to render coherence impotent. In some far corner of his mind, he was aware that he was wasting precious time. But he couldn’t make himself stop looking. He was frozen. Everywhere he turned, some new obscenity blasted his eyes.

  There was a stack of books on a desk. The Coming Race War. Will an Illegal Take Your Job? The End of White America. Victim: Facing Up to Black Racism. And many, many more.

  Focus. Concentrate.

  There were CDs filed neatly in a rack. Music of the Reich by Storm Trooper. I Have a Dream by Bobbi Jean and the Klan. Niggers and Flies by Johnny Rutherford and his Tennessee Rednecks. If the South Woulda Won by Hank Williams, Jr.

  Focus! You’re wasting time!

  There were video games. Bob examined a few of the discs. One was a first-person shooter in which the object was to guard the border against illegals. One was a strategy game in which the object was to help Germany win the Second World War. Another refought the Battle of Gettysburg, but gave the South machine guns and tanks.

  Come on, come on.

  There was a poster of three African Americans with rifle sights over their faces. Martin Luther King. Malcolm X. Barack Obama. The legend read: “Two Down. One to Go.”

  There were phone numbers.

  Wait.

  There were phone numbers!

  They were written on the wall at the head of the bed in pencil—dozens of numbers, dozens of names. Bob turned on a lamp on the nightstand, sat on the edge of Dwayne McLarty’s bed, and scanned them closely. His lips moved as he read each name out loud. His mind said the same thing over and over again, “Please, God. Please, God. Please, God.”

  And then he saw it: “Clarence,” it said, followed by a number.

  Bob hardly dared to breathe. He hardly dared to hope. He whipped out his cellphone and took a picture of the number on the wall. Checked the image to make sure. Took another shot, to make doubly sure.

  He called Amy.

  “Bob?”

  “I got it,” he said. “I’m coming out the front.”

  He clicked off without waiting for her to answer, stood from the bed, and took one last look around this chamber of hatred in which McLarty had cocooned himself. He tried not to think of the fact that the man who had slept here now had Janeka in his clutches. Bob turned off the lamp. He turned off the bare bulb. He closed the door behind him and turned left down the hallway.

  He stepped over a bunch of pictures that for some reason were lying in the middle of the floor. He reached the living room. And he saw.

  This must be McLarty’s brother. He sat with his head back, mouth a pulpy ruin, the couch pillow against which he rested sodden with blood.

  Bob’s hand came up to his mouth. His stomach bubbled like a cauldron. He felt a powerful disgust unlike anything he had ever felt—or known it was possible to feel—for another human being. What sort of man was this Dwayne McLarty?

  He had told Janeka—he had promised her—that nothing would happen to her, that he would save her.

  But he hadn’t known…how could he have known…?

  Enough. Move.

  He crossed the living room, inadvertently kicked something small and white, and looked down in time to see one of the dead man’s teeth ricochet off the leg of the coffee table. An empty cereal bowl and a box of children’s cereal sat on top.

  “Oh, my God,” said Bob. He shook his head, willing his thoughts into stillness, willing his fears into silence. He opened the front door, unlatched the security gate, and stepped out. It was nearly dark. The air had cooled noticeably. It felt like the very kiss of God on his sweating brow.

  Amy was standing there. “So?” she said. And then she saw his face. “God, you look like crap.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m sure I do. Come on, let’s go. We’ve got work to do.”

  twenty-three

  “Raintree?”

  “Yeah,” said the voice on the other end. “Carson?”

  “Yeah,” said Bob.

  “Did he call? Where are you?”

  Bob braked at the end of McLarty’s block and looked to Amy for instructions.

  “Right turn,” she told him after consulting her phone.

  “Carson? You still there?”

  “Sorry, driving.” Bob navigated the turn with his left hand, holding the cellphone with his right, straining to make sure no traffic was coming.

  “I asked you if he called.”

  “No,” said Bob. “But I’ve got something for you.”

  “I’m listening.” Raintree’s voice had gone sour with skepticism.

  “I assume you sent detectives to McLarty’s last known address?”

  “Of course. There was nobody home. A neighbor told my guys he doesn’t live there anymore, which screws us up on PC. We’re trying to get a warrant anyway. Should have it any minute.”

  “I’ve got your PC,” said Bob. “I broke into the house—me all by myself, by the way. Amy had nothing to do with it.”

  “Noted,” said Raintree. “And you realize, don’t you, that you just confessed a Class B misdemeanor to a duly sworn officer of the law?”

  “Do you want this or not?”

  “Go ahead,” said Raintree.

  “They’re dead,” said Bob.

  “Who’s…?”

  “McLarty’s mother and brother. I found them both, shot. Looked fairly recent, though of course, I’m no expert. He killed them.”

  “Uh-huh. And how do I know you didn’t kill them yourself? Maybe you got into a struggle with them when they caught you breaking in. Maybe you went berserk because they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell you where McLarty is and now you’re trying to cover your ass. In which case, your misdemeanor just became a felony. Murder two, I’m guessing.”

  “Give me a break,” whispered Bob.

  “Unfortunately,” said Raintree, “these are the kinds of questions I have to consider, since I’m dealing with some lunatic amateur running around my town trying to do my job. At the very least, you traipsed all over my crime scene, which does not make me happy.”

  “You want to be serious here?” Bob was so exasperated he almost missed a turn Amy was pointing him to. He had to brake sharply, which earned him an angry blast from the Toyota behind him.

  “I am serious,” said Raintree in a voice that, as a matter of fact, held not a scintilla of humor.

  “Fine,” said Bob. “Arrest me if you want. You’ll see me soon enough. In the meantime, maybe you’ll send somebody over there to take a look.” He marveled, distantly, at his own boldness.

  “I might,” said Raintree. “Now, why don’t you tell me whatever it is you found in there that you’re not telling me about?”

  This surprised Bob enough that he hesitated. “What do you mean?” he finally managed.

  “You ever read Spider-Man comic books when you were a kid, Bob? You know how he has that spider sense? Well, me, I’ve got cop sense. And it tells me you’re holding out. Now, why don’t you be a good boy and come clean?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Bob.

  Raintree sighed in mild irritation. “Yeah, I’m sure you don’t.”

  “I’ll call you back,” said Bob. They both knew there was nothing more to say.

  “Bob?” Raintree’s voice had shed its edge. He sounded concerned.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re playing a dangerous game here.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Bob. He broke the connection.

  Amy glanced over. “He wasn’t impressed that you found them dead?”

  “He was,” said Bob. “He was just being a cop. Said he might arrest me on suspicion of killing them myself.”

  “He had to be joking.”

  “Trying to rattle me,” said Bob, “ge
t me to head back to the office.”

  “I see,” said Amy. “Well, thanks for telling him I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Sure thing,” said Bob. “Just promise you’ll come visit me at Stateville.”

  “You bet,” said Amy with a grin. “I’ll bake you a cake with a nail file in it.”

  Gallows humor. And that, more than the nervous ticking of his heart or the bigness of Amy’s eyes, told Bob just how frightened they were. This was uncharted territory for both of them.

  Amy was watching addresses go by. “Right here,” she said, pointing.

  Bob pulled up in front of a small, neatly tended bungalow, the walkway flanked by low shrubs and autumn flowers. On the small porch, a wind chime turned idly, stirred by the occasional caprices of the air. A pair of rattan chairs sat on either side of a round-top table that would have cried out for a pitcher of cold lemonade and two glasses had this been a balmy twilight in summer and not a chilly one in early November. There was a quiet elegance to the house. It looked, Bob thought, like Martha Stewart on a budget. “Hello, Irene Funicelli,” he whispered.

  When they had plugged the phone number from McLarty’s wall into the backwards directory, they’d gotten a surprise. The address came back, not to Clarence Pym or anyone else named Pym but, rather, to this lady whose name they had never heard. “I wonder who she is?” said Amy now.

  “One way to find out,” said Bob, climbing out of the van.

  Amy followed him up the walk. Bob pressed the doorbell once and heard a three-tone chime from within the house. Seconds later the door opened and a small woman wearing a long, summery dress and a pearl necklace was peering quizzically up at them through oval glasses.

  “Yes,” she said. “May I help you?”

  She was about 60, gray hairs just beginning to streak the brunette fall that framed her face. She had a nice smile and deep dimples and you could tell that, once upon a time, she had been a traffic stopper. This had to be a mistake. What could this woman possibly have to do with the monster on that video?

  All at once, Bob realized both women were waiting for him to speak. He cleared his throat. “Beg pardon,” he said. “My name is Bob Carson and this is Amy Landingham. You are Irene Funicelli?”