Children of Chicago

by Cynthia Pelayo

Lauren took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She pressed the palms of her hands against each eye, and she listened as the girl continued. She listened, but she could see now, bright, sharp flashes of memory bursting before her. Her head throbbed. Her stomach hardened.

  “Where’s the page you tore out of the book?”

  “It’s safe.” Evie laughed. “Under my bed at home.”

  “I’m going to your house, and I’m going to destroy that damn thing,” Lauren said through her teeth.

  “I mean, you can, but I already took a picture of it,” Evie turned her laptop screen towards Lauren. “I posted it online at NeverSleep.” Evie’s eyes beamed. “It’s all over the internet.”

  Lauren’s mouth dropped, horrified. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  Evie laughed. “He’s everywhere now. He’s never going to stop. It’s never going to stop.”

  Lauren stood up. Her back was to Evie and before her was the big, blue Lake Michigan. It looked like it stretched out onto forever, but it did not. It ended somewhere.

  There was no point in wondering if Evie knew what she had done, and the conditions of the deal that she had struck. Evie was no victim in this. Evie was lucid. Evie was complicit. Evie had conjured a thing from another world, and she was pleased with the results.

  “I hope you realize your deal with him will never be over,” Lauren said as she stood up.

  There was nothing she could do to save this girl. Evie was like her, beyond the possibility of salvation.

  “I hope that you know what you’ve agreed to by murdering Daniel.”

  “Where?” Van shouted. It was getting dark now. The sun had set over the city, and the last few minutes of light were fading. He pressed the gas, pulling the car into a U-Turn, flipping on the siren and accelerating. Lauren watched as he turned off a major street and sped into a residential neighborhood.

  Van pressed on the horn as he approached a stop sign, warning others that he had no intention of slowing down.

  The dispatcher repeated the address.

  “The hell is going on in Humboldt Park?” He shook his head and then murmured to himself. “It’s gotta be a gang war, something,” he tried to reason, but there was no reasoning here. “This is just too much weirdness in too few days.”

  “CIs haven’t mentioned anything about a gang war,” Lauren said. And her confidential informants did not need to. She knew what was going on. It was like water starting to boil, you did not see the bubbles at the bottom, but you knew things were getting hot, and soon the surface would erupt.

  “You hear anything from that Jordan kid you’re tutoring? Maybe he knows something?”

  She eyed him with that are-you-serious look. “Are we friends now, Van? Best friends? Do you really expect me to tell you everything about my personal life?”

  Van laughed. “You’ve got a lot of secrets, Medina.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He pressed on the gas, and she reached up and held onto her seatbelt.

  “Look, you’ve got to be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I’m a mentor. He’s my mentee. He’s not a gangbanger. He’s a kid whose best friend was shot and killed on the swings in the park. He doesn’t know anything about the mess going on in these streets. He’s a good kid. He’s going to be somebody. Better than me.”

  “Medina,” he gave her a pointed look, taking his eyes away from the road. “People out here, don’t forget.”

  “I don’t remember what happened,” she shouted.

  He raised a hand. “I’m not talking about your sister. I’m talking about LaShaun Donahue. I’m talking about Edgar Cruz. I’m talking about Madeline Kline. I’m talking about Hugo Jones. You’ve been on the force a handful of years, and you’ve shot and killed four people, besides those you’ve beat up badly. There are officers out here who have been on the force decades and have never discharged their weapon.”

  “I’ve been cleared in all of those cases. I was undercover and attacked in most.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t look right and people out here, they’re angry, and they don’t forget, and then your mother, your real mother, sister, and your dad being on the force at the time, it’s just,” he shook his head. “It looks bad. That’s all I’m saying, and that’s why people out here don’t like you. It’s why these guys on the force don’t like you. It’s suspicious.”

  “About Marie, I was a kid and did nothing. About my job, it’s my job to take down the bad guys.”

  Lauren turned away from him, looking out of the window, watching the reflection of the pulsating blue and red lights. It was hypnotic in a way. There was no way she was going to take life advice from Van.

  The car began to slow. A firetruck was already on the scene when they arrived. An officer was securing the area with tape. The smell of burnt plastic stung Lauren’s nose when she opened the door.

  Van stood in front of her. “Lauren, we are the good guys, and bad guys live for taking us down. Just be careful, that’s all I’m saying.”

  Alderman Rosa was standing in front of one of the police cars blocking the entrance of the alley. His hands were at his sides. Hands balled in fists.

  “He’s the last person I want to be dealing with right now,” Lauren reached back into the car and grabbed her coffee cup.

  “Do you really have to bring coffee into every single call?”

  “It’s for your benefit, Van.”

  “How so?”

  “If there’s something in one hand I’ll be less likely to punch Suarez in the face with the other when he comes charging at us. Doubt you want your partner out on suspension.”

  “Your hot head is going to get you in real trouble one of these days, Medina.”

  “Hasn’t yet,” she took a sip.

  “What the hell, Detective!” Alderman Suarez raised his arms up, motioning over to where the fire department was packing up a hose. The alley was sprayed down with water.

  “You tell me, Alderman.” Van said. “It’s your ward. You live here. I don’t. I live on the North Side. You know, the safe neighborhood.”

  “That was pretty good, Van” Lauren added.

  “I’m going to call McCarthy,” Suarez yelled after them as they crossed over the police tape.

  “I don’t care,” Lauren said without looking back.

  She covered her face for a moment, shutting away the smell of chemical thick in the air. The house where her real mother had grown up was just a few doors down. This she did not mention to anyone. It was not relevant.

  Lauren had fond memories of visiting her grandparents in that house. Their red and white sofas protected in clear vinyl, lace white curtains hung in the windows, and the constant, soft soundtrack of salsa music from another time.

  She remembered spending summer nights in this very alley, her grandparent’s garage door would be opened, their cars would be parked in front to make room for the tables and white lawn chairs. Hot dogs and hamburgers would be on the grill, and her grandpa’s requisite bottle of Bacardi would be sitting next to a two-liter of Coca-Cola. Neighbors would stop by, grab a hot dog, trade frustrations over the Cubs’ floundering season and then head out to other parties.

  Today, the alley looked different. Many of the new owners had installed six-foot tall wooden privacy fences. “Beware of Dog” signs hung prominently on gates. Many of the garages looked worn, paint chipped and cracked with broken siding. For those houses that had not had an enclosed porch built in the last decade, old furniture, brooms, mops, and toys took up what little space their porch held. The neighborhood felt changed, and it had been so many years since Lauren had even driven down this block that she could not say if asked what the most significant change from the old neighborhood was. It just felt…different.

  “Who’s our victim?” Lauren asked, slipping on her plastic gloves.

  Van watched as she maneuvered, holding her coffee cup while putting t
hem on. “Impressive,” he said.

  “Male. Hispanic. Young adult.” The officer handed Lauren a fabric wallet. “Found this behind the garbage can. Must have fallen off when he was placed inside.”

  “Do we have any idea if he was alive when he was placed inside?” She flipped open the wallet and found herself looking at a high school junior’s ID. “DePaul College Prep. Fabian, Thomas.”

  A few neighbors appeared at their back gates. One of them opened their garage door to get a clearer look at the chaos. He was in a thin black jacket, pajama pants, and slippers.

  “I called three times already,” the man shuffled toward Officer Guerrero. “These kids keep writing crazy stuff all over our property. Gangs. That’s what this is about. Those over there, they weren’t set on fire at least.” The neighbor pointed across the alley to a collection of garbage cans pushed together.

  “I don’t see any graffiti.”

  “Just turn them.” He pointed, directing his finger back and forth. “The neighbors have been turning them around, but if you turn them around, you’ll see.”

  From where she stood, she could see that the old man was right. A letter “E” was written on the side of one. “Officer, can you help me?” Lauren shouted.

  Two officers approached and proceeded to turn around the garbage cans, one by one, like tiles on Wheel of Fortune, they revealed the valued phrase, “Pied Piper.”

  This was a small detail that Lauren had kept hidden from Van, the recurring signature, but there was no hiding it anymore. Evie was right. He was everywhere now, and Lauren did not know how she was going to contain this monster.

  “Same thing at my last case with Washington,” she turned her back to the name, hoping to diminish its power. “Just some new tagger getting his name out there.”

  Van remained quiet.

  Without him by her side, she proceeded to do her job. She ordered fingerprints be checked at the garage where the fire had been set. She took names of several people, and witness statements, and tried not to ask where Van was, or go looking for him. For some time, he stood there at those garbage cans, looking at the name, and then something on his phone. He disappeared someplace, she assumed it was to the car. When he returned, she had spoken to every neighbor who was outside.

  In the car on the drive back to the station the light late evening traffic morphed into early morning traffic. The only words that had been shared since the alley was Lauren telling Van that she would drive.

  “Driving over to Passion House Coffee,” she told Van as she drove around the roundabout in Logan Square with its towering monument, the Illinois Centennial Monument that was installed in 1918. Just knowing that that structure had stood here, and seen the neighborhood shift, grow, and change, for over a hundred years made her feel as though people’s stories who came and went, that their accounts were being witnessed by that eagle perched atop that Roman column.

  “Another coffee shop?”

  “This isn’t just another coffee shop, it’s the best coffee shop in Logan Square, and I’d argue the city.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Small batch coffee. They source beans from around the world and roast the beans by hand on a vintage 1957 German Probat cast-iron roaster. They offer coffee blends, combining coffees with profiles that complement each other, single-origin coffee…it’s fancy. Trust me.”

  A parking spot was open right in front. Directly across a CTA bus let off a mass of people who descended into the Logan Square Blue Line station.

  “Don’t need anything fancy. Just a cup, black, for me.”

  As Lauren unbuckled her seatbelt and reached for the door, Van finally told her what had been on his mind. Anxiety rose in her stomach, acid rising in her throat.

  “Pied Piper, does that mean anything to you?”

  “It appeared at my last call. I thought I told you that.”

  Van crossed his arms across his chest. “No, you didn’t, but does it mean anything else to you? Further back?”

  Before she could say no, he continued.

  “I mean, I studied that case extensively. I was obsessed with that case. Your mother goes missing. Then your half-sister? How could a small kid go missing like that, especially when she was supposed to get picked up by her older sister after school? Her father being a pretty respected guy in the force and her stepmother being a stay at home mom who otherwise had an eye on her kids’ each and every moment of each and every day. It was bizarre. Then, the little sister shows up floating in the lagoon. Her body unharmed otherwise. Drowning. Accidental, they said. But I didn’t think so, because that little girl, maybe she was with her older sister that day, and then all of a sudden, her older sister went missing too, found eventually by her father’s partner in the same park. Remembering nothing. Nothing about how she got there. Nothing about being with her sister earlier that day. Nothing about the lagoon. Then your stepmother? Suicide. That’s a lot of tragedy for such a small family. Very strange. All very strange.”

  Lauren clenched her jaw so tight she was sure she would crack a tooth. “You’re sick, Van,” she slammed her hand on the dashboard.

  Van didn’t move.

  “You’re crazy. You’re obsessed and you need to stop! It’s disgusting that you’re bringing this up. It’s insanity that you keep bringing up my family trauma like it’s some kind of fucking fun case study for you. You studied it in the academy. Well, you’re not in the academy anymore. These are real fucking people out here dealing with loss. Me, I’m a real fucking person dealing with loss.”

  She pushed open the car door, exited, and slammed it shut. Hard.

  As she pulled the door open to enter the coffee shop, Van rolled the passenger window down. “I lied. Make it a latte.”

  “Go to hell, Van!”

  “Already there, it’s called Chicago.”

  Her phone rang as she stepped inside. She picked it up with a shout, “What?!”

  Everyone in the cafe turned to look at her and Lauren closed in on herself, looking down and lowering her voice as she walked to the far back of the space. “Just a sec,” she said to the caller whom she could not yet hear because of the music. A generic coffee house jazz record played in the background, but it was not loud enough to silence the espresso machine, which roared.

  Lauren turned around and looked out of the windows, making sure Van could not see her. She didn’t want him watching her, scrutinizing her body language. She moved to the furthest back corner and stood to look out a window that faced into an alley.

  “Medina, it’s Ruth. I don’t know what’s happening with these kids...”

  “Is everything alright?”

  “No, Medina. Everything’s not alright. It’s Mo. He’s dead.”

  The music went quiet, and the buzzing of the espresso machine ceased. Lauren could feel eyes on her, and when she turned around, everyone was staring at her. Everyone was grinning wildly, madly at her.

  “It’s time, Lauren,” the barista called from behind the counter. On the counter before him was Mo’s head, split open and rotting. Curved horns jutted out from his eye sockets. His mouth hung wide open, a single gold coin lay on his black, swollen tongue.

  As she opened her mouth to scream the door beeped. It was Van. Generic music once again filled the space and Van motioned he was going to the restroom.

  The head was gone. The counter was clear.

  “Lauren,” Ruth said on the other line. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, I’m fine. What happened?”

  “We just don’t know yet. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

  Lauren thanked Ruth, placed her order, and returned to the car. Van was already back from the restroom. As she pulled her seatbelt on and looked back at the coffee shop as they pulled away, she saw a familiar person waving to her from the window. A man in a black suit and black hat. His face obscured, except for his grin.

  CHAPTER 30

  Children’s Memorial
was an old Chicago structure, and that gave her a sense of something she could hold on to, but this place, too, would soon be gone. The city was changing, and she was changing with it, and she was not sure how much of herself she would lose. Children’s Memorial Hospital had saved a lot of kids, but also a lot of them died there as well. Lauren knew that Children’s is where they had brought Marie when she was found.

  Lauren had taken in heaving sobs of strangers as they watched on in horror; the white sheet, the slow-moving ambulance, the silence, and the finality of that door closing. She was too familiar with the reactions of mothers losing their children, but when it was her own father screaming and crying, begging for Marie to wake up, those cries disrupted something deep within her.

  The first wrecking ball struck at 12:18 p.m. The ground rumbled beneath her, and it unlocked something she had long ago buried. Lauren let out a cry and furiously wiped at her eyes. She had not even cried at her father’s funeral, and here she found herself sobbing, saying goodbye to the shell of a building where her father mourned his child—a child who maybe should have been Lauren.

  In the case of Lauren’s missing mother, dead sister, dead stepmother, and now her dead father, there was no reassurance that the bad guys, or the bad guy, in this case, would ever find themselves behind bars. Her sister’s murderer would never be caught. She was more than sure of that. As the wrecking ball struck again, Lauren turned. She gave the building one final look and watched as glass and steel and concrete crumbled. The ghosts of those who died at Children’s no longer had a home to haunt. She watched as rubble from the top of the building filled a windowless room below.

  She was not surprised to see him there.

  He removed his hat again and bowed his head. Always in your service, she thought.

  “Medina, some kid out there with his father says he wants to talk to you,” Officer Bauer said.

  “Me?” Lauren stood up from her desk. The precinct was especially loud today.

  “That dad and his son are eyewitnesses from the shooting the other night. Kid says he wants to tell you something.”