The wooded area separating Memorial Manor from the shops on Memorial Drive looked like an isolated mountain forest, each limb and leaf snow-dusted and picturesque.
Continuing past the woods, I ran up behind the shops and around the corner of Scarlett’s to the front.
Eerie. Abandoned. Everything closed. No traffic on Memorial.
It was as if I were the sole survivor of a cold, harsh apocalyptic nuclear winter.
The pinkish-orange lighted letters of Peachtree Pizza’s sign shone brightly in the hazy night. I thought about the guy who now called himself Rand Nola and what he said he saw the night Cedric vanished.
Had the other little boys been among his customers? Did they collect cans, scrape up their money to buy a pie together? Did they come here for pizza while their mothers drank at Scarlett’s the way Cedric’s had? Had Vaughn Smith’s busy working mom stopped here for pizza on her way home? She probably let him rent a video too—something Lonnie would have a record of.
I had to get in to check. But how?
I walked over and pulled on the door, trying to figure some way to break in without breaking the glass and letting snow in.
The door rattled but didn’t give.
“Whatta you doin’?” Rand Nola asked.
He had just come out of his pizza place and was locking the door.
Think fast.
“You saw how Lonnie was drinking earlier,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Wanted to feed his cats,” I said. “Maybe even take ’em home with me in case it gets too cold. What’re you still doin’ here?”
“Same thing,” he said.
“Really?”
“Not literally,” he said. “When it snows or gets real cold I let Reuben Jefferson Jackson sleep in the back room.”
“He’s in there now?” I asked. “Not in back, not in the woods?”
“Yeah. I was just checking on him. I live within walkin’ distance. I’ve got a key to Lonnie’s shop for emergencies. I can let you in.”
“That would be great,” I said. “But I hate for you to wait. Can I borrow the key and give it back to you tomorrow?”
“I know what you’re doin’,” he said.
“You do?”
“You’re gonna pick out some movies to ride out the storm with,” he said. “I did the same thing earlier. Sure man. No worries.”
“Thanks.”
“I just hope Lonnie won’t be off the wagon for long.”
“Me too.”
He removed the key from his ring, asked me to make sure it was the right one, then crossed the street and disappeared into the darkness on the other side.
48
The shop was warm and dim. The only illumination came from a single nightlight behind the counter.
From some unseen place in the semidarkness, Shaft and Foxy Brown purred contentedly.
Quickly making my way over to the counter, I grabbed the small metal index card box, moved closer to the nightlight, and began flipping through the cards with the membership information on them.
It didn’t take long.
All the victims and their moms were members.
Another confirmation. How many do you need before you get truly bold?
I think that was it.
I returned the box to its spot beneath the counter and started to walk out when a still-drunk Lonnie pressed the barrel of a revolver to the back of my head and cocked the trigger.
“Son a bitch think you gonna loot me . . . not during this or any other storm.”
“Lonnie,” I said. “It’s me.”
“John? John, what’re you doin’ here?” he said, stumbling across the words and pulling back the gun.
“Came to check on your cats,” I said. “Thought you were passed out somewhere sleeping it off.”
“You’re not here to rob me?”
“I’m not,” I said. “I may take a movie, but I’ll bring it back. And I’ll pay for it.”
“You don’t have to pay me anything for it, buddy, no sirree.”
“Thanks man.”
“What were you doin’ in my membership box?”
“Huh?”
“What were you doin’ in my membership box?”
I drew a blank.
“Ah, oh . . . seein’ if you had an address for Margaret’s niece Susan,” I said.
“Shouldn’t you be lookin’ for little Kenny Pollard instead of tryin’ to dip your wick?”
“You’re right,” I said. “I should.”
“’Less that’s what you’re really doing here,” he said, suddenly sober. “How’d you know?”
“Know what?”
“Playtime’s over, John. Tell me what you know. It’s just us. The whole city’s shut down. And I’ve got a gun. How’d you figure it out.”
“Sobriety,” I said.
“Sobriety?”
“Yeah. I’ve used the principles of AA and the Serenity Prayer a few times recently to help with things other than alcohol.”
“Yeah?”
“Made me realize someone could use them to quit something other than drinking—like compulsive killing, say. I remembered your sobriety happened around the time Cedric disappeared—which was the time the killings stopped. What happened to Cedric sobered you up, changed you. It was your moment of clarity that led to sobriety. You were able to stay sober, to stop killing by using AA.”
“Was until you started stirring all this shit up again. Compulsive is right. I’m not a bad man. I’m not some kind of monster. I’m a man—a man like every other man, with two wolves inside him. You’ve heard the old Cherokee legend of the wolves, haven’t you?”
Everybody has, I thought, but if it keeps you talking, if it gives me time to figure out what to do . . .
“One evening an old Cherokee man told his grandson about the war that wages inside all souls. The battle is between two wolves, he told him. One wolf is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, ego, even evil. The other is goodness, joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, faith, even God.”
He paused but I only nodded encouragingly.
“The boy thought about it for a while, then asked, What determines which wolf wins? The old man simply replied, The one you feed. I’ve been feeding the good wolf since Cedric disappeared. I have a compulsion, but I’ve been controlling it with the Twelve Steps.”
“Tonight I remembered you drinking this afternoon and how that coincided with Kenny’s disappearance. At first I had thought the killer might have gone to prison for another crime or moved and was committing the murders somewhere else, then it occurred to me you might be using AA in the way I was.”
“Don’t ever let anyone tell you AA doesn’t work,” he said. “It works.” He then added with a demented smile, “If you work it. Or until you stop working it. Think about what I did. I stopped. I used AA to stop killing. Has anyone else ever done that? Ever? And I couldn’t tell anybody. I knew something that could change the world, but had to keep it to myself.”
“I kept asking who or where Cedric was running to,” I said. “But when I turned it around and asked who or what he could be running from, I had to go back to where he was going in the first place. Here. To you. He was running from what he saw you doing.”
“Guess he was, but I never saw him. Didn’t know he had even come in. Thought I had the door locked. And maybe I did. He sometimes snuck in the back. When I realized he had been here, that this was the last place he had been before he vanished . . . it brought me up short.”
I nodded.
“What it is you think he saw?” he asked.
“You raping or killing the final victim, Jaquez Anderson,” I said. “My guess is your little meeting room back there wasn’t just an adult room, but your playroom where you raped and killed and what? Recorded? Did you make videos of the boys? Did you rent t
hem?”
“I never raped anyone,” he said. “I’m a . . . I have a compulsion to kill, sure enough, but I never forced myself on anyone. I paid them boys to let me touch and film ’em, and to touch and do sex stuff to me, but I never forced ’em.”
“That’s a distinction without a difference,” I said. “The very kind of stinking thinking AA deals with.”
“And it did. Right up until you forced your way into my life and kicked the shit out of my serenity. Don’t you get it? I stopped. I used the program to stop myself. I worked the shit out of it and was able to stop—until you had to dredge it all back up.”
“Always someone else’s fault,” I said. “Big part of that same mentality.”
“You act like you know somethin’, for some punk kid who just started the program.”
“I don’t know anything,” I said. “Except where Cedric is.”
I knew that really meant something to him.
“Do you? You do, don’t you? You son of a bitch.”
“How’d you lure Kenny?” I asked. “Comics?”
“And coloring books. Easiest thing in the world. Find a boy without a father. Thing he wants most in the world is some mature masculine attention. Where is Cedric?”
“Where is Kenny?”
“Where are any of the boys?” he said.
“In your walls,” I said.
“How the hell did you—”
“That was something else that coincided with your sobriety and Cedric’s disappearance. Your remodeling of your back room.”
“Been tryin’ to figure out what to do with them when I shut the place down,” he said. “Couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t involve me gettin’ caught.”
“And why keep cats around when you’re allergic to them?” I said. “Because you use the kitty litter on the bodies. It has a desiccant and odor-absorbing agent—and you can buy it in bulk without looking suspicious. But it would be suspicious if you didn’t have cats. So you have Shaft and Foxy Brown and sneeze your way through every day and have bags and bags of kitty litter in your storage-meeting-burial chamber room. Wayne Williams reminded me that John Wayne Gacy hid his victims in the walls and floors of his house. Is Kenny already in there? Is that what you’ve been doing?”
“I’ll tell you what I been doin’, boy,” he said. “I’ve been battlin’ with demons you couldn’t begin to understand, to keep from so much as touching that boy. Two wolves wagin’ war inside me the likes of which you couldn’t imagine. That’s it. Worse thing I did to him so far is drug his Kool-Aid so he fell asleep before he got to finish his first comic. That’s it.”
“Let that be it,” I said.
He laughed. “And what? Turn myself in? I’ve already done more than what any prison could do. I rehabilitated myself. I used the only program known to work for addiction and I stopped my addiction. Whatta they gonna do for me? Cage me? What’s that gonna do? No, sir. I don’t think so. Think instead I’ll set you up for what’s about to befall Kenny.”
“By planting some of his clothes and comics in my apartment or car?”
“That was a nice touch,” he said, “but an unnecessary one. Cops didn’t care. Especially when they’s havin’ a new body every week. Missin’ ain’t murder. Missin’ don’t make it into the paper. Missin’ don’t come with no political pressure. Biggest mistake Wayne ever made was dumping them bodies.”
“Let me see Kenny,” I said.
“Let me see your brain,” he said, holding up the gun a little higher. “It’s pretty impressive. I want to see it.”
“Did you kill Laney Mitchell?”
“Laney Mitchell? Now I’m a hit-and-run killer too?”
“Thought she might have seen something or found out something and had to be silenced.”
He shook his head. “Sure it was just some drunk. Like you and me. Didn’t mean no harm. Didn’t stop him from doin’ plenty, though, did it? Okay. Time to die.”
“Wait. I know you want to know what happened to Cedric,” I said. “I know you want to see him. Let me see Kenny. Let me take Kenny home and you can go see Cedric.”
“No way he’s alive,” he said.
“He’s very much alive,” I said. “I swear it. I’m telling the truth. Put it to the test.”
That reminded me of Lonnie passing a polygraph in relation to Cedric’s disappearance. Of course he did. He had nothing to do with it. Had he been asked about the other boys, that would’ve yielded a very different result.
“How?”
“You can ask who helped take him,” I said. “She’s close by.”
“She?”
A jingle at the door then—someone opening it, triggering the bell—Lonnie’s attention momentarily diverted. Me lunging, grabbing, falling.
We hit the ground, the gun between us, both of us vying for control over where the barrel was pointed.
Then Susan there. Spraying him with mace. Him releasing his grip, pawing at his eyes. Me grabbing the gun. Jumping up. Pulling her back out from behind the counter.
“Check the back room,” I said to her.
As she did, I pointed the revolver at Lonnie and blocked his exit from behind the counter. Not that he was trying to exit. He was still rolling around on the floor writhing in pain, spitting, crying, coughing, choking.
“It’s empty,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
Light from the room spilled out into the hallway.
“Positive.”
“Check the bathroom.”
She did.
“He’s here,” she yelled. “He’s alive. Seems okay. Just sleeping I think. John, he’s alive. He’s okay.”
49
What’re you doing here?” I asked Susan.
“I felt bad for all the pressure I had put on you. I was going to come to your apartment to surprise you and see if I could help.”
We were waiting for the police to arrive.
Lonnie was still lying on the floor, but now he was crying, appearing to literally be wallowing. His self-pity was as pathetic as it was predictable.
“I had just finished cleaning and locking up,” she said. “Already had my mace out. Saw Rand crossing Memorial and you come in here. Decided to take a look. I was feeling paranoid.”
“Glad you were. Best surprise in a long time. Thank you.”
“Did you really find Cedric?” Lonnie asked between snobs and sniffles.
“He didn’t kill Cedric too?” Susan said.
“Just the others.”
“Where are the bodies?”
“In the walls of the back room,” I said.
“Oh my God. Right in there? Where you sent me to look for Kenny?”
“I didn’t send you into the walls.”
“Still.”
“Did you really find him? Is he okay?” Lonnie said.
I nodded. “I think so.”
“Where is he? Who took him?”
“I haven’t decided whether or not I’m telling anyone,” I said, “but I’m certainly not telling you.”
With an inhuman growl, he lunged at me.
Unable to shoot him, I hesitated just long enough for him to be on me, tackling me to the ground, the gun falling out of my hand and skittering across the floor, disappearing beneath a video shelf.
Susan screamed.
Lonnie began beating me about the face, neck, and shoulders, his tears and snot falling down on me as he did.
Susan went for the gun, running past us, momentarily drawing Lonnie’s attention.
I bucked him up off me and kicked him hard with both feet.
He went sailing back toward the back room, flailing as he did, and crashed into the large bookcases holding the thousands of video tapes in their hard plastic cases.
The shelves fell over, Lonnie following behind on his back, and knocked a hole in the sheetrock wall behind them, a hole out of which dropped a small, ashen, mummified hand along with a rain of white sheetrock dust, paper particles, and kitty litt
er.
Eventually, the cops came, Bobby Battle and Remy Boss among them.
“Looks like we owe you an apology,” Remy said as Lonnie was being taken away.
“And that’s the extent of it right there,” Bobby said. “So enjoy it. And don’t be a dick about it.”
A crime scene tech had already begun to open the walls behind the shelves and movie posters in the back room.
We had moved to the front of the store to be as far away from it as possible. I had no desire to see any more of the mummified murder of innocence I would never be able to unsee. The hand and all my imaginings were enough, were too much. Susan seemed to feel the same way.
“I have one favor to ask,” I said.
“You and your goddamn favors,” Bobby said.
“It’s just because I’m young and have no authority and can’t do them for myself. If I could, I’d never ask for anything. Believe that.”
“I’ll be glad when Frank is better and can get back to doin’ them for you himself. He woke up a few minutes ago, by the way. He’s gonna be okay.”
Tears stung my eyes. “Thank God.”
“What’s the favor?”
“Let me and Susan take Kenny back to his mom.”
“Seems the least we can do,” Remy said.
“Which is what we try to do when we can,” Bobby said. “He’ll have to be taken to the hospital and checked out right after, but you can take him to the mom first.”
“Thanks.”
Camille Pollard burst into tears the moment she opened her door and saw us.
Her hair wasn’t fixed. Her casual, comfortable clothes were worn and faded, and the light skin of her face held no makeup. It was the first time I had ever seen her not fixed up, not stylish, not made up, and she looked more youthful and more attractive than she ever had previously.
“Is he . . .”
“Just sleeping,” I said.
Lights from the cop car that had brought us over flashed on the door and walls and still-falling snow.
I added, “They’re going to take him to the hospital to check him out, but he’s gonna be fine. An ambulance will be here in a minute.”
Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work Page 19
