Children of Chicago

by Cynthia Pelayo

  Much of the crime wave gripping this city was over drugs, who sold to who, who owed who what, and who could expand where. This city, with its glittering skyline and blue lake that hugged downtown, was the darkest place she had ever known. Any manner of crime was possible in Chicago. Still, what had happened out there in Humboldt Park had nothing to do with drugs.

  “Your sister...” Van started, but Lauren cut him off.

  “I was fourteen-years-old,” she made a point to roll her eyes so the he could see her frustration for bringing it up yet again. “I can’t remember anything. It was a very long time ago.” It sounded scripted—and it was, in a way.

  She’d never bothered asking Van where he heard about her case because everyone knew about her and about Marie. It had been everywhere, all of the local television stations - WGN, WLS, WMAQ, WBBM, newspapers Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, and then the national news picked it up; a little girl lost, her father finds her, her sister located just a mile away, and a mother who later killed herself in her bathtub.

  “I know,” he waved his pen in the air. “I figured you could provide some insight into the mind of a teenager dealing with something like this. Hell, I haven’t been a teen in like thirty years. I can’t remember what it was like to be a freshman or sophomore in high school.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Drugs, then?”

  “You offering?” She laughed.

  “Not this time,” he said.

  “Tests didn’t show any.”

  “Yeah, but they’ve got all these weird drugs now,” he said, scrunching up his face. “Like bath salts. What the hell is that even? Kids take this stuff and get all weird and eat people’s faces off.”

  “Look, your girl wasn’t on drugs. My guy wasn’t on drugs. Maybe they’re just bad kids,” she said. “These two have never had a disciplinary issue in high school or any priors.”

  “Copycat?”

  Lauren clenched her jaw. She knew he was going to say it eventually.

  “There’s no way. Those records only go back so far. There’s no way anyone would find anything to do with that case unless they went specifically searching for it.”

  He stood up, stretched his back, palms pressing into his lower back. It cracked straight down, popping like the last few kernels of popcorn being microwaved. “You can’t deny the book, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, being out there wasn’t odd.”

  “Kids read books. Sometimes they read that book. It’s not odd.”

  He reached for his jacket. “Guess we should go grab that coffee then.”

  “I didn’t invite you.”

  “Inviting myself,” Van walked over to a coat stand beside the door.

  “I hate you...” Lauren said.

  “I don’t care,” Van shot back.

  “Kids! Kids!” Washington called. “Be nice or I’ll tell mom you can’t go on your field trip.” He pointed a thumb over to Commander McCarthy’s office.

  Lauren felt her phone vibrate. It was probably Jordan with another request. But the message was from Officer Guerrero. She unlocked her phone and looked at the image. Her face must have deceived her because Van could see from across the room that something was wrong.

  “What’s up? Everything alright?”

  She shoved the phone back in her jacket pocket.

  “Ex-husband.” She dismissed.

  “Husband...” Washington said beneath his breath.

  “The divorce will be final in a few weeks.”

  “Mmmm hmmm,” he rummaged through his desk. “Whatever you say.”

  What she did not tell Van was that another tribute to the Pied Piper had appeared, this time on a billboard overlooking the Kennedy Expressway, the major route into downtown. It now welcomed all who came into Chicago with “Pay the Piper,” as the city’s skyline glowed in the distance.

  CHAPTER 18

  After its introduction and through much of the 21st century, Humboldt Park had been seen as an escape from city life. Author L. Frank Baum was said to spend much time at the park while he lived in Chicago, enjoying the gardens and sitting beneath any one of the large trees near the horse stables, now converted into the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture. Beneath one of those very trees Baum had written his most famous book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He had lived right on Humboldt Boulevard. His original home was razed many years ago and only a modest marker honors Baum’s time there. When he had lived here, Humboldt Boulevard had been a grand thoroughfare lined with majestic mansions. Lauren could only imagine how magical it must have looked like at night when Baum would leave his home and walk down the boulevard dotted with streetlamps. Was it here, where she walked now, that he’d dreamed up the yellow brick road? She liked to think so.

  Lauren obsessively studied Baum, Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, Charles Perrault and others in college. She wanted to know what they had done differently than the Grimms. She eventually realized that in Baum’s tales the children overcome the greatest evil of all, the Wicked Witch. In Grimm’s, the children never conquered the source of evil. Tossing the witch into her own fiery stove, killing the big, bad wolf and the wicked stepmother did not mean you had defeated all cruelty in the world. It was still there after you turned the last page.

  Lauren had grown up in this park. She’d spent many summer nights here riding her bicycle as her parents picnicked nearby, because at one time there was no Marie. It was just her and her mom and her dad. They often walked the trails, brushing past prairie grass and knee-high bright orange butterfly milkweed, or vibrant purple cone flowers. Armando would park their car in front of the boathouse, and they’d find a shaded spot under a large tree. Lauren’s favorite was a large hill where the city’s skyline fanned out in front of them. Laying on a blanket, eating a guava and cheese tart, and drinking ice-cold coconut water as she looked over her city defined the feeling of her early childhood.

  Slowly, their family picnics had become fewer. Armando’s work schedule became erratic, and eventually, there was no line to distinguish when his workdays ended and began. Tension between her parents grew. It was like a rubber band being pulled apart. She knew one day it was going to snap. It had.

  Lauren’s phone rang. The call she had been avoiding.

  “Detective Medina here.”

  The voice on the other end was soft and comforting. “Hello, this is Walter Dayton calling from Rosehill Cemetery...”

  She covered her eyes with her other hand, somehow wishing she could hide. A car honked at her, possibly seeing the pain on her face, making sure she was okay. She removed her hand and raised up her middle finger.

  “Yes, I’m sorry I didn’t return your call. I’ve been busy.”

  “I know. I can only imagine. Know that we are a family here at Rosehill, and we are thinking of you. Our condolences and thoughts are with you and your family. We spoke with your husband...”

  “Ex-”

  “Apologies. We spoke with Robert and he said that you were pleased with the service. That made me very happy to hear. I’m calling just so we can finalize the inscription on your father’ headstone...”

  She thought back to the funeral home’s previous suggestion:

  Armando Rodriguez Medina

  Husband to Diana

  Father of Lauren and Marie

  “Yes, it can read:

  Armando Rodriguez Medina.

  Husband. Father.

  You can include the Chicago Police insignia.”

  “Certainly, thank you so much, Lauren. I know this is a very difficult time.”

  “Umm...Walter...”

  “Yes?”

  Lauren rubbed her forehead. “Are there flowers? I had paid for flowers and I know her anniversary is coming up, and I just can’t be there.”

  “I will check and make sure, but I believe there were flowers on all four of your family members’ resting places when I checked this morning, but I will be sure, and I
will call to let you know.”

  “No, it’s okay. I just...thank you.”

  Now in the park, Lauren eyed each tree and wondered whether it was the one Baum had sat beneath to make his magic. Had she herself picnicked under that tree with her family? This park had been the center of her family’s life. Yes, the entire city lived and breathed within her, but this park was special. This park had the power to create. It was here she had learned about good and bad. One day when they were here on a picnic after Armando had gotten home from work Lauren had asked him what made someone so bad that they would have to go to the police station?

  He’d answered, “It’s not that people are bad. It’s that sometimes, people do bad things.”

  That did not really answer Lauren’s question, and so she asked instead, “But aren’t there some people who are just meant to be bad?” Because even from a young age Lauren had known what the fairy tales had taught her, that some were born to cause suffering.

  Armando did not answer that question.

  The good days spent at Humboldt Park faded altogether. Armando became his job. Diana grew tired and frustrated, and then there was Marie. Marie was everything Lauren was not: kind and patient. Lauren was like her father, but instead of being consumed with work she was consumed with school —always focusing on her assignments and deadlines and studying.

  One evening, Lauren had been studying for one of Mr. Sylvan’s intense English exams. When Diana had called her down for dinner, Lauren shouted from her room that she was busy.

  “You’re like your father, you know,” Diana had snapped back. “It’s always work. Maybe it will be better if Marie and I were gone, then both of you could work yourselves to death!”

  It was as if Diana had cast a spell with her own words of things to come.

  Lauren came to the bridge on Humboldt Boulevard. She stopped and looked east, the one-hundred and ten floor Sears Tower (Lauren refused to call it Willis Tower or any other name), the one-hundred floor John Hancock Center, and the dozens of other skyscrapers dark gray, black and blue that punched into the blue sky. Chicago had invented the skyscraper. The first steel-framed building to reach into the sky was the Home Insurance Building completed in 1885, and at ten stories it had been a global engineering feat at the time. She was just six miles from downtown but still, every time she saw those towering buildings, they looked like dark robed guardians of this city. Her angels in this purgatory.

  This park had been dedicated in 1869, before any of those skyscrapers stood watch.

  Lauren dug in her jacket pocket before crossing the bridge, and laughed to herself, because of a story that was told to her so long ago she could not remember how exactly it went. What she did remember being told was that trolls lived under bridges and would eat anyone who would not pay the toll. She found a penny and tossed it over the bridge and into the water as she crossed.

  She looked west, to the empty beach, and saw a man standing there with a small dog on a leash, staring at the water. She recognized him from her morning runs through the park. On boiling summer days, she sometimes would stop and buy a raspado de coco—coconut shaved ice—from the vendor who stood on the sidewalk watching the men play dominoes. Ramon stood out to her because while he was older, he was still younger than most of the white-haired retirees who played. He was easy to spot in that crowd, younger, scruffy dark goatee, and he always wore a clean, bright red Chicago Bulls cap. Ramon also still bore one of the signs of his past gang affiliated life, a cross-shaped tattoo on his hand, beneath the crease where his pointer finger and thumb met.

  Lauren greeted him. He smiled wide, shook her hand and told her he was very happy to help.

  “Show me exactly where you were standing and tell me what you saw.”

  “There,” he pointed. “She made it to the beach. I saw her as soon as I turned the path. She was laying there in the sand. Her feet were still in the water. Logan pulled my arm real bad when he saw her. I let the leash go. I couldn’t hold on to him anymore because of the pain in my shoulder, and he just took off running. It took a minute for me to realize what I was looking at. The girl was just there, not moving...”

  Ramon let out a sob. “How’s she doing? It’s so messed up what those kids did. It’s all over the news.”

  Lauren directed him over to a bench. His dog Logan jumped on his lap, and Ramon cradled him in his arms, kissing him on the top of his head. Logan returned with licking his hands.

  “At first, I thought maybe, I don’t know...maybe it was some homeless dude’s stuff. Sometimes people forget towels and shirts and things here. People leave weird shit around here sometimes. I found a tire right there, once,” he pointed close to where the girl had been discovered. “Why would someone wheel a tire here? The street’s, like, all the way over there.”

  “Did she say anything? Call out to you?”

  “No. She was quiet.” His eyes widened. “It was so messed up. I didn’t expect to see something like that, ever.”

  “And then what?”

  “Logan just started barking. He was scared. Shit, I was scared. I went to grab my phone, and then I dropped it. I picked it up and then I called 9-1-1.”

  “But then you hung up?”

  Ramon drew out his phone from his back pocket. “Yes, I was shaking so bad my phone fell again. I called 9-1-1 back and said to hurry, that I was at the lagoon and there was a girl, and she was really messed up. I stayed on the phone with them. The lady, she asked me questions, but honestly, I couldn’t tell you what she asked or what I said. It felt like it took so long.”

  “Did you see anyone nearby? Car go past?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The dispatcher said she heard your dog growling and barking, and you started shouting.”

  “Yeah, but there was no one there. Logan just started losing it. It was just a lot. The girl…the sirens coming closer.”

  “But the dispatcher heard you say,” Lauren looked down at her phone, at a series of notes from that night. ‘There’s nothing there.’ Who did you say that to?”

  “No one. Myself.”

  “What did you think you saw?”

  Ramon placed his phone back in his pocket. He pressed his lips together and then said. “I was scared. I guess I thought I saw something, but I’m getting old, and my eyes aren’t so good.”

  “What do you think you didn’t see?” She pressed.

  “It was off at the balcony, across the lagoon.” He pointed. “I thought I saw someone standing there. It was dark, but I thought I saw someone.”

  “What did they look like?”

  Lauren watched his face. It was as if he were struggling to come to terms with something.

  “There was a person there,” he pointed again and then rested his hand on the top of Logan’s head. “But, it just didn’t seem right. It was over there, standing on the little bridge there behind the lagoon. A little girl. She was in a school uniform, khaki skirt. Polo shirt. Curly, curly dark hair.” He turned to Lauren. His face looked pained. “She didn’t have a coat on. It was cold. I knew then I was seeing things. Why would a little girl be out alone like that at night? Especially without a jacket or coat? And she...I don’t know, her face looked bad, really not right...blue. When I called out, Logan started barking. I bent down to pick him up. When I looked up, she was gone.” He scratched his goatee and then lowered the brim of his hat over his eyes a little further. “Forget it. I’m tired. Old. Maybe crazy.”

  Lauren thanked Ramon for his statement, and then she watched as he walked across the park with his dog towards home. She looked over at the lagoon. It was still.

  “What do you want, Marie?” Lauren shouted at the water, but it did not offer a response.

  She felt her phone vibrating in her jacket pocket. She looked at the familiar number and answered.

  “Hey, Ruth.”

  “Lauren...”

  Lauren stood up and started jogging to her car. She knew that t
one.

  “What’s going on, Ruth? I’m on my way.”

  “Fin confessed.”

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “No,” Ruth stopped her. “She’s sedated. She had an episode in her sleep, almost like she was reliving an attack, going through the same motions, jabbing motions, flailing her arms like she was in water...”

  “Ruth, are you okay?”

  Lauren leaned on the other side of the bridge railing, feeling cold. She had forgotten to leave another offering to the troll.

  “Yes, I’m okay. I just wanted you to know.”

  “I can interview her as soon as she wakes. I can wait.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t allow that right now. She just needs time. I just thought you should know.”

  Ruth did not understand. Neither Lauren nor Fin had any time left.

  CHAPTER 19

  Mo grabbed his tray and made his way toward the table in the far back corner, away from stares. It did not matter how far he went, though. He was always being watched.

  “Did you really think you were going to kill her?” Tyler asked a little too loud, and it seemed like everyone in the cafeteria line turned to look at them.

  Calling it a cafeteria was a compliment.

  Tyler was the first person who’d introduced himself to Mo when Mo had arrived late that night. Tyler was seated in the common room watching the evening news and did a double take when he saw Mo shuffling in, restrained at the hands and ankles. The news did not show or name the perpetrators in the Humboldt Park killing, but that did not stop Tyler from running up to Mo as he was being escorted by two officers and shouting, “You’re that guy!” As if Mo were a celebrity.