This was where I first met Jordan, where we had spent so much time together, where we had fallen in love—sharing cookies from Willie’s German Bakery, sneaking glances, stealing kisses.
Even more unsteadily than before, I continued walking.
Miss Ida had joined STOP before her son was taken.
She and others had continued meeting even after Wayne Williams was sentenced. They gathered to discuss the cases and what might still be done in attempt to find some sort of justice.
Eventually, the group dwindled down to just a handful of mostly old, bored people with time and not much else.
After Brandon had been killed here and Safe Haven closed, the group stopped meeting for a while.
The first time I attended the small gathering in the back corner of Safe Haven, the group included Miss Ida, a large black man named Melvin Pryor, a tall, thin woman named Rose Lee, a squat, muscular, fireplug of a man named Preston Mailer, and Miss Ida’s stepdaughter Jordan Moore.
Mailer was a retired cop. Melvin was a retired mail carrier. Miss Ida and Jordan had operated Safe Haven, and I had no idea what Rose Lee did.
This time, as I passed through the dusty, disheveled daycare, where everything still lay where it was left when the place was evacuated, I could see the group had added a few new faces to replace the ones it had lost.
Safe Haven was not just the sacred place where I fell in love, but the profane place where my world fell apart.
I had truly believed I would never be back.
The three new members were introduced. The first was a shy young reporter working on a book about the case. He was a white guy in his late twenties with glasses and a touch of red in his neatly trimmed beard. The second was a skinny thirty-something African-American woman with the Free Wayne Williams Project. Odd and awkward, she seemed to lack the social skills even for a group as small and laid-back as this one. The last was by far the most interesting—a forty-something blond-haired, brown-eyed psychic with the youthful bearing and body of a teenager, a casual, unassuming kindness, and a gentle, maternal nature that made me want her to hug me.
The reporter, Mickey Davis, began by assuring everyone that everything said was off the record, that he was only here for background for his book.
“I’ve got somethin’ to say,” Melvin Pryor said. “I started not to come tonight, but I thought I owed it to the group to explain why I won’t be back. I don’t understand why we doin’ this no more. Nobody’s gonna do anything—not the cops, the FBI, the DA, nobody. Nobody cares. They’ve moved on. And I just don’t see the use of what we’re doin’ here anymore. Sorry, but I don’t. So . . . this will be my last meeting.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” Ida said, “but I understand. No one understands futility and frustration like we do.”
“You’re quitting?” Rose Lee said. “After all we done been through. How can you just . . .”
“What good we doin’?” Melvin said.
“We found out who killed Miss Ida’s boy,” Rose Lee said.
“We didn’t. He did,” Melvin said, nodding toward me.
“We helped,” Rose Lee said, then looking at me, added, “Didn’t we?”
I nodded.
“It’s gettin’ embarrassin’,” Melvin said. “Bunch of old people meetin’, talkin’. Not doin’ shit.”
“Why do you keep meeting?” Mickey Davis asked. “How long do you plan to? What do you hope to accomplish at this point?”
“’Cause somebody should,” Ida said. “’Cause who else goin’ to? Even if we don’t do nothin’ but not forget.”
“So you’re like a memorial group,” Davis said, “a—”
Mailer cut him off. “Not just. We’re tryin’ to . . . by sharing information, by going over everything over and over again . . . we might just . . . uncover something new . . . make a connection that hasn’t been made before.”
“So you’re still tryin’ to solve the case?” Davis said.
“Cases,” I said. “It’s not just one.”
Summer Grantham, the quiet psychic who had been gazing at me with concentrated intensity, nodded enthusiastically.
“So you don’t think Wayne Williams is responsible for all the victims he’s said to have killed?” Davis said.
“Wayne Williams,” Annie Bowers, the thin black woman with the Free Wayne Williams Project said, “was a scapegoat. The city was set to explode. The leaders knew if the Klan or a white man was arrested, what Sherman did to the city would be nothing compared to the fire set off by revealing those responsible for killing our kids.”
“I know some people believe that,” Davis said, “but the investigation into the Klan didn’t turn up anything—and it was thorough. Do you all believe that it was––”
“We don’t all believe anything,” Ida said. “It’s an open group for the exchange of ideas and information. This is Ms. Bowers first time attending. Her views are her own. No one else’s.”
He nodded.
I could feel myself beginning to panic. I needed to get out now.
“I’d like to say how happy I am to have John back in the group,” Ida added. “He’s got a really good mind for this kind of thing, and his investigation into the case—cases—is exhaustive and ongoing. I’d like to hear from him tonight. What are you working on John?”
“Connections,” I said. “I’m starting over. Going through everything again, anew, looking for connections—between the suspects, the witnesses, the victims—where they lived, where they were abducted, where they were found. I’m looking for patterns, coincidences, connections.”
“Everything’s connected,” Summer Grantham observed. They were her only words during the entire meeting.
“Maybe we could all work on finding connections between now and our next meeting,” Ida said. “That could be our focus. No tellin’ what we might come up with.”
“There’s something else,” I said. “Something I could really use some help with too.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve had a blind spot—so stupid on my part. The task force’s case was the Atlanta missing and murdered children case, but I’ve only focused on the murdered victims. What about the missing? I’m about to double down on my efforts to find out who went missing and see who still is. And I could really use some help.”
“I’ve got a list,” Mailer said. “It’s incomplete, but it’s a place to start.”
“Excellent.”
“Darron Glass was never found,” Melvin said. “Went missing on September 14, 1980. Still hasn’t been found. Both his parents were dead. He was a ward of the state. Streetwise but immature.”
“That’s great, Melvin,” Ida said. “What a memory you have. We really need you for this. I wish you would reconsider leaving our group.”
“I’m also very interested in Cedric Porter,” I said.
“His mom was a member of our group,” Rose Lee said. “Stopped coming when he started calling. Now she won’t leave the house for fear she’ll miss his call.”
“I’d like to talk to her,” I said. “And—”
“We could have our next meeting at her house,” Ida said. “She’s offered before. Said she couldn’t come to the meetin’ but if we wanted to bring the meeting to her, she’d still like to participate.”
“Then it’s settled,” Rose Lee said. “Next meeting at Ada Baker’s house with a focus on connections and missing children.”
Chapter Seven
As the others ambled out toward their cars, I hung back, lingering, until they reached the parking lot, then I sat on the bench Jordan and I had first sat on together.
I missed her so much, ached for her in ways I never had for anyone.
Memories of her and Martin and our time together swirled around me, and for a moment I could actually feel their presence here with me. The grief was overwhelming.
And then Summer Grantham suddenly appeared before me.
“You okay?” she asked.
&nbs
p; I nodded.
“Sorry to intrude. I was just worried about you.”
I stood, but didn’t make a move toward my car.
“Not ready to go home, are you?”
I shook my head.
“Me either. Wanna go somewhere?”
“I know a great little bar,” I said.
“I was thinking this little all-night diner I know.”
I thought about it.
“I can sense how strongly you want a drink,” she said. “Please come with me to the diner instead. Coffee and conversation. It’d do you so good. I promise. We could even share a waffle.”
“People are expecting me,” I said. “I should probably––”
“Please,” she said. “Tell yourself you can always drink later.”
I nodded and smiled—and told myself that very thing.
“I’ll drive,” she said.
She led me to a beige ’68 Volkswagen Beetle like the one Ted Bundy had driven. As I got in, I glanced in the backseat for crutches, plaster casts, and crowbars.
To my surprise, the car was clean and uncluttered, though I wasn’t clear on why I thought it wouldn’t be.
Still relatively new to Atlanta, there was much about it I was unaware of and unfamiliar with. She drove down dark, winding roads, most of them rural, none of them seeming to lead anywhere.
There was something hypnotic about Summer, and everything associated with her and our journey had a dreamlike quality to it. There was no traffic on the back roads, only our dim headlights hewing out a small oblong cave we could drive toward but never into.
It felt as if not only the road but the earth was empty.
The windows were down, the car noisy with wind. We rode in silence, as if knowing any words uttered into the airy whirlwind swirling around us would be lost, never arriving at their intended destination.
Eventually, we came out on a side street off of a bigger busier thoroughfare and into the back parking lot of a diner that could have been designed by Edward Hopper.
The mostly empty diner, which was all jade green and cherrywood, had that hushed middle-of-the-night quiet that had a hypnotic quality all its own.
We had coffee and conversation, and, as promised, a waffle.
There were only three other patrons in the place—an old lady with a library book dozing more than reading, and a middle-aged bohemian couple whose comfortable companionship and easy conversation indicated they had been together quite a while. Of course, like me and Summer, they could have just met.
“I sense such deep sadness in you,” she said.
“I could say the same about you,” I said. “And I’m not a psychic.”
“I’m not a psychic—whatever that is. I just get impressions. And I have the run-of-the-mill sadness most every human does, maybe a touch more, but you . . . you have a deep, dark overwhelming sadness. And it’s got guilt coiled around it.”
I nodded.
“It’s to do with the case—at least partially, but I can’t figure out how exactly. Why is someone like you so interested in the Atlanta Child Murders? What is your connection?”
“What is yours?” I asked.
“I go where I’m led,” she said. “I know how that must sound, but . . . it’s the only answer I have. You know what I’m talking about. I can tell you do. You’re feeling your way through life, being led by . . . call it God, your guts, intuition.”
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“Everyone has it. Not everyone is sensitive to it—to that still, small voice. Not everyone honors it, really listens to it, trusts it, develops it.”
“But what you’re claiming to do is more than what your average run-of-the-mill intuition every human has.”
“Not really. And I see what you did there—repeating my run-of-the-mill sadness thing. I like it. You’re very empathic.”
“It wasn’t empathy. It was humor—a little light teasing.”
“But you have to be tuned in to people to pick up on things like that. That’s all I meant.”
“But you claim to have a gift––something beyond what everyone else has.”
“Everyone has gifts. This is mine. I don’t claim anything about myself or my gift, but neither do I apologize.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“You’re so open in some ways, so closed in others.”
“So how does it work for you, your gift? Do you see visions? Hear voices? What?”
“Hear voices? Really? Maybe I was wrong about you.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m being an . . . I need a drink.”
“Maybe you need to talk about why you’re hurting so much, what you’re so angry about.”
“I’m sure I do, but for now let’s stick with how you operate in your gift.”
“Ooh, I like that. Operate in your gift. That is what we do, isn’t it? It’s just on loan to us. We use it or we don’t. We operate in it or let it lie dormant. I get impressions. Mostly images. Sometimes words. Very occasionally I’ll hear something. I just pick up on stuff in the air. Sense it. Feel it. Try to respond to it. There are these pockets of energy all around us. We can walk toward them or away from them. I try to walk toward them when I can.”
“Like with this case.”
“Like with this case.”
“So what have you picked up so far?”
“Pain. Brokenness. Disquiet and unrest. There’s an unresolved quality attached to everything.”
“That’s all pretty vague, general stuff.”
“I was just getting started, but I can only tell you what I sense. I can’t make it convincing for you.”
“Sorry. Please go on.”
“Guilt. An enormous amount of guilt. Rage restrained. Caged. Sex. Sexual . . . acts, sexual . . . Some of it’s just sex, but some of it’s violent, angry, brutal, forced. Death. Sex with the dead. Children still in jeopardy, so vulnerable, so truly helpless. A sick, sick man, trying not to do it again. A truly evil man, soulless, pitiless, without remorse, without any humanity. Dangerous. Not just for kids. For you too.”
She came out of the trance she had been in and looked at me, her deep, dark eyes delving into mine. “You’re in danger,” she said. “Your . . . drinking makes you vulnerable. Your sadness makes you vulnerable. Your . . . how closed you are right now makes you more vulnerable to . . . It keeps you from perceiving things, threats, motives—help and harm.”
I nodded.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said.
“Actually, I do.”
Chapter Eight
The next morning I actually managed to make it to class—something all too rare these days.
Earl Paulk Institute was a ministerial college started by and connected to Chapel Hill Harvester Church—a racially integrated mega church in South Dekalb County that combined aspects of traditional liturgy with certain aspects of the Charismatic movement.
I had discovered the school and the church as a senior in high school while researching the Atlanta Child Murders. Someone claiming to be the killer had contacted Bishop Paulk and asked to meet with him. Ultimately, the meeting never happened, but that connection to the case and the opportunity to study theology and ministry had led me here.
Some of the many pastors and support staff of the eight-thousand-member church served as the professors in the college.
I had biblical Hebrew and New Testament studies with Dan Rhodes, biblical Greek with Jim Oborne, math with Lesley Ferguson, and public speaking with Don Ross.
In speech class, I sat beside LaDonna Paulk, the daughter of the founding pastors of the church, and someone I had taken out a few times.
As usual, she was dressed up—long black pencil skirt, silk stockings, and black pointed toe mules. LaDonna, like her family and most of the staff, wore her Sunday best nearly every day of the week.
Beneath the table, LaDonna had her legs crossed and had slipped the heel of her front shoe partially off and was dangling it out in front of her as
we waited for class to start.
As was his custom, Don Ross, a dwarf with a flair for the dramatic and a great speech professor, said a prayer to begin class. Everyone bowed their heads, reverently, earnestly, solemnly. We were serious Bible students after all. As everyone else was praying, I slid my leg over and kicked the heel of LaDonna’s dangling shoe. When the shoe hit the floor, I pulled it over to me and picked it up. Hiding it in my coat, I secretly dropped it in the trash can when I went up to give my speech.
When I finished my speech and it was LaDonna’s turn to give hers, she limped to the front of the room on one heel and one stockinged tiptoe and removed her other shoe from the trash as the class looked on in bewilderment.
“I’m not even gonna try to explain,” she said, then gave a great speech.
After class, LaDonna said, “You got a minute?”
“Sure.”
We remained in the classroom after everyone else was gone.
“I’m worried about you,” she said.
“Because of the shoe thing? That was just—”
“No,” she said. “That was funny. I mean how much class you’re missing, how often I smell alcohol on your breath—first thing in the morning. I mean how down you seem. You have some of the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Sorry? For what?”
I shrugged.
“I’m not getting onto you. I’m worried about you.”
“I know. But I am sorry. In general. I’m sorry I’m not doing better. I’m sorry this is the best I can do at the moment.”
“What can I do?” she said.
“There’s always the sweet oblivion of sex,” I said.
Her reaction was one of surprise but not outrage. She got the humor and the harmlessness of the statement and handled it gracefully—particularly since people didn’t talk like this to her.
“That statement . . .” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Along with the shoe thing. Let’s me know you’re going to be okay.”
“I’m glad you think so,” I said. “I’m not so sure.”
I met Frank Morgan for lunch at the food court in South Dekalb Mall.
BLOOD CRIES: a John Jordan Mystery (Book 10) (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 3
