Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work

by Michael Lister

  Then out of my peripheral vision I saw the smaller man pick up the bigger man’s cane, pull it back like a baseball bat, and take aim at my head.

  I ducked my chin down toward my chest and prepared for impact, but as the man began his swing, Frank kicked his legs and swept the man down. Once he was down, Frank raised his right leg and brought the heel of his shoe hard down on the man’s face and at a minimum breaking his nose. The man dropped the cane and stopped moving.

  Withdrawing his .45 from the holster on his belt, Frank slid up to where we were and jammed the barrel of the gun into Tyrone’s temple.

  Tyrone immediately stopped resisting and released his grip on the revolver.

  “Shit, Tyrone,” Frank said. “All you had to say was that you didn’t want to testify.”

  10

  For a movie lover like me, Lonnie Baker’s store, simply known as Lonnie’s Video, was a special kind of magic.

  Films at my fingertips.

  Rows and rows of beautiful boxes with iconic images, each representing a VHS tape I could actually take home for the night, transforming my apartment into a movie theater, my bedroom and the small television into my own private screening room, as if I were a studio head instead of a college student.

  The shop was dusty and disorganized, crowded and cluttered, but I barely noticed. It held more movies than any store I had ever been in—more than the smallish space was designed for. It held mostly VHS movies, but there were still a fair number of Betamax boxes mixed in.

  Aging and faded boxes crammed onto shelves—often in the wrong category and covered in cat hair—meant that renting from Lonnie required a certain amount of patience and an openness to serendipity. But I didn’t mind. I liked to browse, to lift each box from the shelf and read it thoroughly before returning it, right-side up this time, or keeping it, carrying it to the register to rent, then carrying it home, possessing it for a brief period—just long enough to be possessed by it.

  When a young couple in the shop finally decided on which romantic comedy they were taking home with them and took it, presumably home, I was once again the sole customer perusing the shelves.

  As I rounded the corner from Drama to Classics, I could feel Lonnie’s gaze from behind the counter leave his book and come to rest on me.

  “What’s it gonna be tonight?” he asked.

  “Can’t decide,” I said.

  “Oh the tyranny of too many choices.”

  “I always get more than I can watch and have to check them out again.”

  “Moderation’s not one of your strong suits, my young brother.”

  “Guess it’s not.”

  From somewhere out of Comedy, Shaft, Lonnie’s black Bombay cat, landed on the top of Classics and stared down at me. His sleek black coat was taut and shiny—even beneath the dim fluorescence of the shop.

  “What do you have it narrowed down to?”

  When I looked back over toward him, I saw Foxy Brown, his other black Bombay, crossing the counter in front of him, and I knew what was about to come next.

  “Five, four, three, two . . .”

  He sneezed loudly, pushed Foxy Brown off the counter, and blew his nose.

  “Bless you,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “Tell me again why you have creatures you’re allergic to roaming around the joint.”

  “Came with the store,” he said. “Whatcha gonna do? So what all you gonna take home and not watch tonight?”

  “Think I’ll just go with Casablanca,” I said.

  “Again? How many times does that make?”

  “A few.”

  “Hundred,” he said. “I’m gonna get you your own copy. Hell, pretty soon you can just have that one.”

  “Why is that?”

  “A Blockbuster is moving in across the street.”

  “A what?”

  “Video rental superstore,” he said. “It’s a chain spreading across the country. You think I carry a lot of movies? I’ve got maybe twelve hundred. They carry over eight thousand. And tons of each one—’specially the new releases. Everything’s computerized. Huge store with lots of room. No way I survive.”

  “Ah man. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “They claim to be all family friendly and shit. No porn. No unrated films. But they offered to buy me out and let me keep running it—until they realized I had closed down my back room. Used to have an adult section in the room right behind here,” he said, pointing down the short hall that ran beside the counter. “They’ll rent that shit—just through the mom and pop shops they buy and not their Blockbuster brand. But I closed that thing down probably five years ago. Ain’t about to open it back up.”

  “How come?”

  “Don’t want to deal with the creeps it brings in. And closing it down is tied to my sobriety and Cedric’s disappearance. The world changed for me back then. Can’t go back to that.”

  I nodded. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “No idea. Stay here until I can’t anymore. Then . . . I don’t know.”

  “Anything I can do to help? We could get the word out, start a ‘support your local video store’ campaign before they even open.”

  “Thanks man, but it would only delay the inevitable. I’ve seen it happen to too many other stores. This scenario only ends one way.”

  He was resigned.

  As we fell silent, I returned all the boxes to the shelves except for Casablanca, which I carried to the counter.

  “Oh,” he said, “a classic. Good choice. I think you might just really like this one.”

  He filled out the rental form, and as I signed it, he searched for the tape among the rows of brown hard plastic cases on the shelves behind him.

  It was a slow, inefficient process, and watching him I felt the same hopelessness about the future of his shop as he did.

  “Here you go,” he said, placing the case on the countertop.

  “You mentioned your nephew and I saw that you know Miss Ida,” I said. “We’re in a group that’s trying to find out what really happened to Atlanta’s missing and murdered children. We’re having our next meeting at your sister’s house so she can participate—and we’re going to focus on Cedric and any cases similar to his. Would you mind talking to me about it?”

  He thought for a long moment. “Tell you what,” he said. “You go to an AA meeting with me, and I’ll talk to you about it for as long as you want.”

  On my way back over to Scarlett’s, I found little Kenny Pollard, the youngest son of Camille Pollard, the owner of the consignment shop Second Chances, playing with super hero action figures on the walkway out in front of his mom’s store.

  He was ten, small for his age, adorable and outgoing, and I had avoided interacting with him as much as humanly possible—not an easy feat given his extraverted little personality, the amount of time I spent in close proximity to his mom’s shop, and the fact that we lived in the same apartment complex. But his older brother, Wilbur, a sullen, angry fourteen-year-old who always eyed me suspiciously, helped.

  “Hey Mr. John,” Kenny said, looking up at me with his big black eyes—eyes so wide, so innocent, so open, I had to look away.

  “Just John,” I said before I realized what I was doing.

  Martin Fisher saying Yon, Yon echoed through my mind, and I had the urge to run.

  “Hey Mr. Just John. How are you today?”

  “I’m okay, Kenny,” I said, glancing back at him as I tried to keep walking. “How are you?”

  “Why ain’t there a black Spiderman?” he asked. “Or Superman or Batman? Do you know? Why they all white?”

  “They shouldn’t be,” I said, pausing a few feet away. “It’s not right.”

  Looking down at him, I saw Jeffrey Mathis, Yusuf Bell, Edward Hope Smith, Eric Middlebrooks, Clifford Jones, Darron Glass, LaMarcus Williams, Martin Fisher, and so many other wide-eyed young black boys without their whole lives in front of them who haunted my dreams.

  “Sure
ain’t. Do you like super heroes? I do. Wilbur don’t so much. Says they no such thing. Who’s your favorite?”

  “Probably be Batman,” I said.

  “Mine too. How ’bout that.”

  Through the plate glass window, I could see Wilbur inside the shop, sitting in one of his mom’s unsold old chairs. He appeared to be practicing his bored, disinterested look. But that couldn’t be right. It didn’t need any practice.

  When he spotted us talking, he came to the door and told Kenny to come inside.

  “Bye Mr. John,” he said.

  “Bye Kenny. You take care.”

  “You too now.”

  “Hey, you forgot one,” I said, picking up a well-worn Aquaman.

  “I know why Aquaman ain’t black,” Kenny said. “We can’t swim so good.”

  I thought of Earl Terrell and Christopher Richardson, both boys last seen at or on their way to a public swimming pool, both bodies found in a wooded area some seventy-five feet off Redwine Road.

  When Kenny started to return to get it, Wilbur grabbed him and pushed him inside. “I told you ’bout talkin’ to strangers.”

  He then stepped over and snatched the figure from my outstretched hand.

  “Listen to your brother, Kenny,” I said. “Always be very careful. There are some really bad people in the world.”

  11

  I was nursing a drink at Scarlett’s when Summer Grantham walked in.

  The drink special tonight was called a One-in-fourteen-hundred—the number of actresses who auditioned during the search for Scarlett.

  I was not having the special.

  Summer, dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and Keds, looked seventeen instead of forty-seven or whatever she actually was. She stood in the doorway until she saw me, then walked over, her long blond hair fluttering in the wake of her movement.

  I must have looked surprised to see her.

  “Surprised to see me?” she said.

  She was wearing a faded Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt that fit her girlish figure in the same way the jeans did—as if designed to do so.

  “I am,” I said, standing and offering to help her onto the barstool beside mine. “How’d you find me?”

  She didn’t take the offer of a seat.

  “I’m psychic,” she said. “Well, that and I asked Miss Ida. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all afternoon. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I just felt you were in danger earlier today. Saw a man in a white suit.”

  “Really?”

  “But you’re okay?”

  “I am.”

  “Sometimes I’m wrong, but it seemed real. I was certain––”

  “You weren’t wrong,” I said. “But I’m okay.”

  “I prayed for you.”

  “I’m sure it helped. Can I buy you a drink? Want to join me?”

  “I can’t stay. Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot. Sure you can’t stay?”

  “Take care, John. I mean be careful.”

  She then leaned in, kissed me on the cheek, and was gone.

  Immediately, I could see Susan making her way over to me. She had been eyeing us while we spoke, and now that Summer was gone, she was determined to come over and inquire, though she tried to be subtle about it. Tried and failed.

  “Who was that?” Susan asked.

  She was wearing what she always wore when waitressing here, a red halter top with white lace trim meant to resemble the top of Scarlett’s dress from the movie poster, and blue jean cutoffs with a Rebel flag patch on each ass cheek.

  “Summer Grantham. She’s part of our group.”

  “She’s a cutie,” Margaret said from behind the bar. “Got good energy.”

  When she wore it, Margaret’s uniform was a faux tux patterned after Rhett Butler’s, but she rarely wore it anymore, and didn’t have it on tonight.

  “Group?” Susan said.

  “Missing and murdered kids.”

  “You should take her out, John,” Margaret said. “She’d be good for you. I can tell.”

  “Bit old for you, isn’t she?” Susan said to me, as if only tossing it out as a casual observation.

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Looked like that to me. Looked exactly like that.”

  Lonnie walked in and Margaret moved away to make him the drink he wouldn’t.

  I expected disapproval from him, but he smiled and waved.

  This time instead of just staring at the drink, he picked it up.

  Maybe that’s why there was no disapproval. Was he about to join us in our slow, sweet self-destruction?

  He then raised the glass to me and said, “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

  I lifted my glass and smiled.

  Without taking so much as a sip, he returned the drink to Margaret and walked out.

  “What was that about?” Susan said.

  I tapped the brown tape case on the bar beside me. “Casablanca.”

  “Again?”

  “What’s your nationality, John?” Margaret asked.

  “I’m a drunkard.”

  “Makes you a citizen of the world.”

  We drank to that.

  12

  In all, I drank less than I had been. A good bit less. And though Susan offered to, I was able to drive myself home.

  Home was Memorial Manor, an older medium-sized apartment complex a block off Memorial Drive near the I-285 exit—and, actually, just a walk through the woods from Scarlett’s, though so far I had never walked it.

  As usual, my apartment was empty, my roommate at work.

  Stepping into the darkness, my surroundings felt strange and unfamiliar.

  We hadn’t been here long, and I was still getting used to the place. The bedroom was the only space in the apartment that felt in any way like mine. And it wasn’t just because the living room and kitchen were communal and very sparsely furnished. It was mainly because of how little time I spent here, and how much of that time was spent in my room—which was where I walked straight to now.

  Feeling my way through the darkness, I eased across the living room and down the short hallway to the closed door on the left that opened into my room.

  There was nothing nice about the apartment. I couldn’t afford nice. Hell, I couldn’t afford this not-nice place without a roommate. But after all that had happened, I couldn’t stay at Trade Winds and EPI’s makeshift dorm apartment any longer.

  I had turned to Randy Renfroe, the college’s dean of students and all around helpful guy. With his help, I found this inexpensive place off Memorial Drive and Rick Baxley, a roommate who worked at night. What could be better?

  Memorial Drive connected the two most significant areas of Atlanta for me. On one end, the end that represented the past, were the places where a series of missing and murdered children lived, disappeared, and were dumped. The other end, the end that held a future I knew nothing of at the time, ran into the massive intrusive igneous quartz dome known as Stone Mountain, and the Stone Cold Killer I would one day encounter there.

  I was lonely, felt more alone in this place, my supposed home, than any other, so I poured myself a drink and went to work on my wall.

  I was tempted to dive in to Cedric Porter’s file, but decided to wait to hear what his mother and uncle had to say before I looked at it any more.

  I thought again about Memorial Drive and turned back to connections between the victims of the original case, searching for a geographic pattern on the other end of this seminal street.

  I didn’t have to search long.

  There are many ways to look at victimology—and though the most common is probably the study of the psychological effects on the victims of crime and their experiences with the criminal justice system, I was far more interested in the ways in which the identities, geography, and behaviors of the victims may have led to or contributed to their victimization.

 
By focusing on the killer, the task force failed to perceive connections among the victims. This led to the erroneous perception of randomness in victim selection, the belief there was an opportunistic predator roaming the streets of Atlanta picking off those vulnerable souls separated from the herd. But this doesn’t fit with the fact that most of the victims were described as tough, streetwise young people able to fend for themselves—something they had had a lot of practice doing.

  Like most of the problems with the investigation, the lack of consideration of the victims begins and ends with the task force’s inaccurate and incomplete list. The list makes no sense. Who got on it and who was left off was random and illogical. And its parameters kept changing—morphing, evolving, contorting to accommodate some victims and not others.

  I began with Chet Dettlinger’s map.

  Chet Dettlinger was a former cop who investigated the Atlanta missing and murdered children case with a small group of private detectives. So thorough and detailed was his detecting, in fact, that he was at one point considered a suspect by the Atlanta police.

  Of the many invaluable investigative actions Chet undertook, perhaps the most helpful and revealing was the map he made of the case.

  In the summer of 1980, Dettlinger compiled the geographical data into three points per victim on a map—where they lived, where they went missing, and where their bodies were found.

  In doing so, he discovered something astounding.

  A pattern.

  A geographic pattern that revealed the Atlanta Child Murders unfolded on or near twelve major streets that actually link together to form a sort of misshapen boot.

  So the murders weren’t random after all.

  The victims lived and played and went to school in close proximity to each other, and the main road connecting it all was Memorial Drive—the other end of the road I was on right now.

  After plotting the points on his map, Dettlinger decided to drive the streets to see if the lines he had drawn on paper translated into a real pattern on pavement.

  He and Mike Edwards, one of the private investigators helping him, started at the eastern end of Memorial Drive where Christopher Richardson, the eighth victim, lived and disappeared. Driving west on Memorial, they passed the street where a ten-year-old boy named Darron Glass lived, victim fourteen, who is still missing to this day. In two more short blocks they passed the East Lake Meadows housing project where Alfred Evans, victim two, lived. A few more blocks west they reached Moreland Avenue. If they had turned left, they would have been able to drive straight to the place where ten-year-old Aaron Wyche, the tenth victim, died in what was said to be an accidental fall. Instead, they drove on to the next alley where fourteen-year-old Eric Middlebrooks, victim seven, was found near his bicycle.