The Color of Fear

by Thomas Laird

  “What happens to her happens to you. No?” he reasons.

  “Yes.”

  I take a sip of the coffee Mari has brewed for us. It’s got a scent of cinnamon in it.

  “How’s the adoption going?” I ask, trying to break away from the subject.

  “She’ll be moving in with us in three weeks if nothing hangs us up,” Doc smiles. There’s real pleasure in his face.

  He’s never had a child. His first marriage was barren. It was the ex-wife who refused to go off the pill and Doc never insisted since she didn’t want a baby. But I know it hurts him to see other people with their kids. You can see it in his eyes when he looks at Mike and Kelly, over at our house. It can be anybody and their offspring. The front passes over his face when he watches families together. He loved his first old lady dearly and that’s why it damn near killed him when she took off. And that’s why he suffered as he did when those two black girls went down on the west side.

  “We’ve got the spare bedroom all set up for her. You’ll have to crash elsewhere when you get drunk after Keesha moves in,” he tells me. He’s dead serious. Doc’s never seen me drunk. I haven’t been plastered since I gave it up early in college. It’s those sinus headaches, like I said.

  “I better get on home,” I tell them. “Thanks. It was great. Let me know what Keesha needs. I want to get her a housewarming present.”

  “You helped catch the bad guy who hurt her. That’s enough,” he smiles.

  “Oh bullcrap. I’m getting her something and you’re not stopping me.”

  He puts his hands up in surrender and Mari smiles with him, now.

  “I hope everything works itself out, partner. I hope things start to look up for you. You sure as hell deserve it.”

  He never talks about retiring, lately. I think it’s the idea that the killer of Antoine and Ronnie and Creel is still hanging somewhere on the Green. He won’t let go of some things. Like me. He gets hung on some things the way I do. Like a crossword puzzle fanatic who just can’t leave those five letter blanks be. We can’t give it up and go onto the next problem. It lingers like an odor in the air. It’s the itch in the center of your back that you can’t reach no matter what you rub up against.

  I wave to the both of them as I walk out their apartment door.

  *

  She doesn’t call at the end of two more weeks. Chaka’s been arraigned. He goes to trial in a month. Walter Evans is still his counselor, last I heard.

  The cases flow past Doc and me. The common, everyday murders. Drive by shootings — one more at the Green which is unrelated to Chaka and Bobby Wells. We catch this perpetrator in thirty minutes. He gunned down a grandmother and her twenty year old son because they’d insulted him about the colors he was wearing. The twenty year old victim wasn’t even in a goddam gang.

  Then I remember to check out those lockers in the basement at Cabrini. Doc is called to testify in court, so I go down there with two uniforms.

  Wendell is shockingly not on duty. It’s his partner Pete and some other guy I don’t know.

  I explain to the security guys what I’m up to, and I ask them to keep people clear of the downstairs for a half hour.

  When I get down there, I look at the outside faces of these storage bins. I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for until I remember Celia told me that her storage bin was number 27.

  There’s a combination lock on the steel locker.

  “Turn around,” I tell the two coppers.

  They smile when they recognize the illegal drill. I turn the lock around and I take out my master key. The one I’m not supposed to have. The lock flops open in a second or two.

  “You can watch now. I think this lock was left open.”

  I can hear one of the patrolmen snickering.

  There are toys and books and a few articles of clothing on the floor of the bin. There are also a few game boards thrown in here. ‘Candyland’ and little kid games like it.

  There is also a set of knives lying on the bottom. They’re inserted into a wooden block, but the carving knife, the largest of the set of four, is not here.

  I feel heat race toward my face. I feel a sickness gather in the pit of my stomach.

  I slam the locker shut, and then I lock it with the combination piece.

  “Let’s go,” I tell the other two coppers.

  “That’s it?” the Sergeant asks.

  “Yeah. What the fuck. You thought you’d be cooping here all afternoon?” I shout.

  He puts his hands up in self defense.

  “Shit. I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry.”

  He looks at me and my apology quizzically. The patrolman with him has his eyebrows up, a little bit.

  “Let’s go. You guys are on the clock. Remember?”

  We walk out of the basement and head up toward the lobby. I watch the two uniforms depart, and then I walk over to Pete the security guard.

  “You know who Celia Dacy is?”

  “Sure. Seen her plenty.”

  “She been back here after she left her apartment here on the Green?”

  “I might’ve seen her once or twice. Maybe more than that. She said she had some stuff to move out from downstairs.”

  Pete is an overweight black male, about six two, who comes on like your buddy who lives next door. Open, smiling, decent. You know the guy, right?

  “You ever see her talking to Mr. Wendell?”

  “She always talked to him when she came by. They were pretty good friends.”

  “How good?” I ask.

  Pete’s eyes avoid mine.

  “How good, Pete?”

  “I really don’t know, Lieutenant. They were friendly. That’s all I ever saw. He took her groceries and things upstairs now and then. I don’t think it was anything romantic, if that’s what you’re asking. Mr. Wendell is a little old for her, don’t you think?”

  I remember my own age, which is not that far removed from the absent security guard, and I swallow hard.

  “You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you, Pete? I know you’re tight with the older guy, but this has to do with three murders. So tell me the truth.”

  “I have. I did. Mrs. Dacy came back only a few times. She went down to that basement to get her stuff—”

  “Did you see what she took out of that locker?”

  “No. She had some kind of tote bag with her both times she came back.”

  “Do you remember the dates she was here?”

  “No. I don’t think so. It was a little while back. I don’t think I wrote anything down like that. People come and go around here. You know what this place is like.”

  My heart’s still sunk somewhere near the bottom of my bowels. Oh Celia. Jesus, Celia. It can’t be you. You couldn’t slice a human being up even if you thought they killed Andres.

  You’re not a murderer. You couldn’t have walked into those three apartments after you popped the nickel locks and have clocked the three of them over the head with something heavy and blunt. Something hard and heavy enough to knock them all unconscious. And you couldn’t have strapped them out, all four limbs pointing in various directions, and then slaughtered them like steers. Cutting their throats and then watching the dark black blood spray against the walls and the sheets and against your own flesh. You could not have had a long winter coat that you removed upon entering the apartments and that you put back on as you left to go to the basement each time. And you could not have cleaned the grisly blood off your face and arms and legs in the wash basins down there and then washed the clothing you wore over some kind of underclothing that you had on while the bloody garments were still in those washing machines.

  It’s far fetched. It’s ridiculous. You could not have done it.

  But if you’d only left that clean carving knife in the holder at the bottom of that locker. If it were still there when I opened that door...

  I can’t say anything about that storage bin because I opened it up illegally. Daniel Brego coul
d never use anything I saw as evidence against you, Celia. Illegal search. I broke in. No warrants, no real cause, nothing compelling me to stick my nose in your personal property.

  I think I’m about to swoon as I walk out the door of Cabrini, but I rally and carry myself out to the Ford sitting at a curb where blood has been shed twice this year.

  Oh Celia, I moan to myself.

  You’ve killed them all. All you can kill. The last one’s in jail, and the leader of his wolf pack is unapproachable. Wendell tried to throw a scare into Bobby Wells, but that was as close as this war vet, ex-copper got. A lone woman has no chance against Rashaan Abu Riad, and you have to be smart enough to realize it. You got three of them — Ronnie who was the piece of shit target that set it up in the first place. Antoine and Creel, who rode shotgun the day of the murder. And now Chaka’s going away for the rest of his life for Karen Nathan and Doc’s adopted daughter Keesha.

  I can’t testify against you, Celia, because anything I came up with would be thrown out of court. Even if Doc figures out what I found out, he can’t use me as a witness. He can’t use anything in that locker. And if you’ve got that big blade hidden in the apartment, you can clean it thoroughly or you can toss it in Lake Michigan long before anybody catches up with you and it. Your killing days are done. You don’t have anyone left to pursue. You can stop. You can. You can become another of those rare unresolved cases we put on our boards, Celia. You’re smart enough. And even if you got caught, no jury would want to put you away for life. They’d find you insane. They’d find you temporarily incapacitated. I could find you ten lawyers who’d get you off with only a little time in any joint. I could help you put yourself back together...

  Unless that knife wasn’t yours. Unless that knife was broken and discarded long ago. That could be it, too. I could be paranoid, delusional. All this could be just me thinking the worst for you. Just because you have these moments when you take off from me. Just because Doc’s wife explained ‘dissociation’ to me. There’s another explanation for all this, isn’t there?

  Celia. Oh my Celia.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Andres Dacy is buried in a cemetery on the far southwest side, courtesy of his grandmother. I’m here by myself. I have not had a word with Celia Dacy in a few weeks. So I came here on my own.

  I was at the original burial, and I was among the few who showed up besides Celia, the grandmother, and Doc. Here he lies, after these past months. He would’ve had another birthday soon enough. He might have had a happier one than he’d enjoyed previously, seeing that his mother finished her education and got a good job in nursing and eventually made her way out of Cabrini. What would a nine year old ask for for his birthday? I think of Michael, my son, and ask myself that question. Maybe a baseball bat, a baseball to swing at, a few of those “Goosebumps” books that my son always asks for, maybe a Michael Jordan basketball jersey — but the jerseys go for $40 or $50 a pop.

  What would appeal to a boy Michael’s or Andres’ age? If he understood his mortality was proximate, would he simply ask for death to step aside and give him more time to consider his options? There’s no consideration from Death. It comes along when it’s ready. Everybody knows when you’re number rolls out on the table, there’s no democracy time, there’s no consultation with the Grim Reaper. Andres Dacy never saw the bullet that took him. God only knows what he felt on the way down to that street.

  And now I think his mother took down three men with a knife. She broke into their apartments and carved them up after she caught them snoring and then knocked them out with something hard and blunt. I also think this guy Wendell was giving Celia intelligence about the whereabouts of the three homicides. I think he let her know about Creel just recently crashing in his mother’s apartment. Whether he helped her with Antoine and Ronnie is conjecture, but Pete gave me the feeling that his security guard partner was closer to Celia than either Celia or Wendell admits. I don’t know if they were lovers. But I think he’d do just about anything for her because I think Wendell would like to be closer to Celia than he lets on. Maybe his age prevents him from letting her know how he really feels; I don’t know. There’s something definite between them. That was why he decapitated the dog at Bobby Wells’ house. He was doing his gallant gesture for his lady. Wendell understood he couldn’t get to the man himself. He was just counting coup, like some Sioux.

  I’ve lost her for real this time. There’s no way to fix things between us. It makes no difference that I can’t testify against her and that I can’t use anything I found in her locker against her. I know what I saw in that bin. I don’t need to see the carving blade to know it was the one that did those three thugs from Cabrini.

  I try to tell myself it’s all circumstantial. All my fears and suspicions are groundless. All I have is motive. A motive I ignored for all these weeks because I was in love and am in love with Celia Dacy. Revenge. It’s the most obvious cause for a homicide on the books. Somebody takes away your reason to live and you take away their lives in exchange. But I couldn’t see the violence in her. I couldn’t perceive the anger in her. Until she gave me those little displays about the couch and about my badgering her to get married. I thought the wandering mentally elsewhere was just a natural reaction to the loss of her son, but it was obviously much more than ‘dissociation.’ She was seeing them dead in her mind. That’s what I’ve come to think recently. She was watching herself pop open those locks with her Mastercard or her Visa and she was walking into those rooms dead quietly. She was locating a piece of pipe or something heavy enough to knock a man out, something she had hidden in that tote bag, and she was seeing herself bury that object upside the heads of those three bangers. And then the rest was relatively simple. Not easy. Simple. Cut their throats. Make sure you sever the jugular, which is almost always lethal. Then the other cutting was superfluous, just a statement of anger. Slice and slice and slice until the rage subsides. It’s almost a sexual release. It felt good, she thought. She was the one with the power, then; she was the one with the control over life and death. And it was death for Antoine and Ronnie and Creel. Ronnie was just the warmup. He was a street punk she blamed for putting her and Andres in the middle of a war zone. That was why she cut him only enough to make him bleed to death. Ronnie was a loser and a schmuck, but if it hadn’t been for him, no one would’ve been dead that afternoon. The other two were held accountable for intent. They were on a murder raid, and Andres was simply in the killing zone. Those two dudes took the worst from her. They were the recipients of all that pent up anger.

  I sound like a halfassed psychiatrist to myself, but I can’t convince myself it went any other way. That Wendell killed the three of them. Or that loony old dude Aaron Mitchell decided to clean up Dodge on Saturday night. That this Korean vet took that bayonet and brought justice to the Green for a little boy he barely knew.

  No. It was Celia. It was Celia all along. But I got myself blinded because I love her. I can’t stop loving her even now. It seems unthinkable that I’ve gone from loving a gentle woman like Erin to being enamored with a killer. The thought shoots shivers up my back, without the aid of this cold, late afternoon, November wind.

  I can’t stand here much longer. I’ve got to go to work. I’m on the three to midnight shift with Doc today.

  Doc. He’s the guy I have to worry about. He’ll put it together about Celia if he hasn’t already. Maybe he already suspects her but won’t say anything out of respect for his partner. But Doc wouldn’t let a personal friendship between us get in the way of a perpetrator. He’d tell me face to face without blinking. Murder is where we both draw the line.

  So when do I confront her with what I know? And what if I am wrong and it’s somebody else?

  I toss the dozen carnations down on the mound that marks the spot for Andres Dacy. What’s left of him. If it hadn’t been for his color he might’ve had a long and happy life. He could’ve wound up like my Michael. They were both bright and good kids. They could’ve ma
de a contribution. Michael still can. He lives in a white neighborhood and his old man’s a cop. His father carries weapons to protect himself and to protect everyone else on the streets from the bad guys. But Andres only had Celia. She was unarmed, she was a woman, and she was just crossing the boulevard to get her son out of those fields of fire that we call the Cabrini Green Projects.

  Black kids die by the dozens in the projects and in other bad news areas of this city. Just about nobody notices. A white kid gets waxed in a driveby and there are demands for criminal legislation, bigger and more prisons. All that bullshit. A black life and a white life are not equal. Not in life nor in death. That’s no soapbox I’m standing on. It’s the browning sod I’m on top of, just in front of the grave of eight year old Andres Dacy, deceased.

  Martinson of the Chicago Tribune is trembling. He’s holding a cup of black coffee in his quivering fingers and he’s trying to explain to Doc and me how the dude appeared out of nowhere in his driveway on the northwest side and how if he hadn’t yanked his steel briefcase up in front of his chest and how if the case hadn’t been loaded with wads of paper how Martinson would be carrying three slugs from a Nine in his chest right about now.

  “You see his face at all?” Doc repeats. Gibron is staring at the Lake from my office window.

  “Too dark. He was about six feet. Medium build. Black leather jacket.”

  “You mean he looked like the Chaka prototype,” I say.

  “Yeah. He could pass for that kid, from the neck down. But I told you two, I didn’t see his face at all.”

  “We’re going to assign a man to you around the clock until we can put the wood to Bobby Wells,” I explain.

  “You think Abu Riad—”

  I look at him. He doesn’t ask again.

  “We’ll explain how he hasn’t really experienced heat until he pisses the Captain off. The Captain has been unhappy with him before, but he’s really upset now. With three unsolved slayings at the Green still on our boards and with Chaka still awaiting trial. He’s what you might call tottering on the edge of things. The Captain was used to taking care of his own problems during that War we were brothers in. He has always had difficulty in letting the courts do their end of the business, but he’s been very good about doing his job until lately. But things are getting out of hand at the Green. I think the Boss is at the end of his tether, and no, you may not quote a goddam thing I just said,” I glare at him.