I thought about it—about how this black woman who was dating a white man and had straightened her hair and dressed and spoke in a way many would describe as white, was speaking so eloquently of self-hating black people.
“But,” she added, “we did mention Creepy to the police back then—both when Jamal and Cedric went missing. Don’t know what they did about it. Then he vanished too. One day he was here. The next he was gone. Nobody knew where he went.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said.
“Let me tell you a dirty little secret,” she said.
“What’s that?”
As usual, her shop was empty, but she still lowered her voice.
“All the kids who got snatched back then . . . all those poor missing and murdered children . . . went missing and got murdered ’cause nobody was watching them like they should.”
Blame the victim, I thought. It’s what Job’s so-called friends did. It’s what far too many people do. Who’s practicing self-hating now?
“I’m not sayin’ they should’ve been taken or killed, just that if they were where they were supposed to be and being watched like they should’ve been, it wouldn’t’ve happened.”
I remember hearing Wayne Williams say something just like that.
“But Cedric’s is a special case. His mom’s the worst. Sorry as the day is long. So what if she had a rough childhood. So what if she been abused or mistreated or . . . whatever. It’s no excuse. It’s no reason to . . . be like she was with her boy. She’s as self-hating as anyone I’ve ever seen—and not without reason. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if she didn’t kill her own boy.”
“What can you tell me about Daryl Lee Gibbons?” I said.
Lonnie frowned, shook his head, and looked down.
I waited.
“How’d you find out?” he said.
“Find out what?”
“What I did. That’s not why you’re asking?”
“His name came up. Just trying to find out what I can about him.”
“He didn’t take Cedric,” he said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because . . . I thought he did.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“I beat that boy bad. Real bad. Back when Cedric went missing. Creepy was the first place I went. Searched his apartment. Questioned him. I was convinced he had taken Cedric. I was out of my mind with . . . I was real messed up. Convinced Creepy had hurt and killed him and buried him in the woods between here and the apartment complex. I beat him so bad I believed he’d’ve told me if he had done anything to my boy.”
I nodded.
“I’m ashamed of what I did, but I can’t say I wouldn’t do it again.”
“I understand.”
We were quiet a moment.
“Did he report you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Have no idea why.”
“Guilty people avoid the cops,” I said.
“You think he . . . and I . . . let him go?”
I shrugged. “Not saying that. Just that it might be a possibility. Or that he was guilty of something else.”
“Or that his life was such shit he just expected treatment like that,” he said.
I remembered the movies in my hand and set them on the counter.
“Keep ’em. I know you ain’t watched ’em yet.”
“You sure?”
He nodded.
“Thanks.”
“Be good to see you back at a meeting,” he said.
“I will be soon,” I said. “Soon as I can. It helped. I’m doin’ better. I’ll be back. Count on it.”
“I will, then.”
“I hear Daryl Lee just disappeared,” I said. “Here one day. Gone the next. Do you know why or where he went?”
He shook his head. “No idea. Hope it wasn’t ’cause of what I did to him or, even more so, because of something he did and I let him go, but . . . it was around that same time.”
“Sorry to have to ask this,” I began, then paused.
“What?”
“Your sister.”
He shook his head. “Don’t hold back. Finding Cedric is all that matters—and I know how she . . . what a mess she is.”
“I think she’s lying,” I said.
“She definitely is,” he said. “It just has nothing to do with Cedric’s disappearance—least not that I could ever find. She’s lying about where she was and when she finally made it to the bar because she was scoring some dope or turnin’ a trick. Probably is indirectly why Cedric got snatched—’cause she wasn’t tendin’ to him—but I never found anything to say she was directly involved. And believe me I looked. And if I had, I wouldn’t cover it up. She had her chance to grow up and become something, to change and be better, and she didn’t. Cedric didn’t get his.”
“You got yours and you took it,” I said. “And AA is a big part of it, isn’t it?”
“The biggest. Ada is lost. Nothin’ I can do about that. But Cedric . . . I was gonna make sure he made it out, made something of himself. I was gonna . . . He was gonna have a good life.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Mickey Davis and I were at the Varsity to see Cedric Porter, Sr.
It was late, and the world’s largest drive-in was mostly empty, its large rooms vacant, its tables in need of bussing.
We had arrived a little earlier than planned, and it would be another half hour or so until Cedric Sr. finished his shift. And though we hadn’t come to eat, since we were here with a little extra time on our hands we agreed we’d be fools not to.
“What’ll you have?” the large African-American woman behind the counter asked.
She wore a red shirt, white apron, a red Varsity paper hat, and the weariness of a woman needing a break from her life.
I had a cheeseburger, fries, a fried apple pie, and a Coke. Mickey had a couple of chili cheese dogs, onion rings, and a Frosted Orange.
While we waited, I read a few statistics about this unique place from a plaque on the wall. It’s the world’s largest single outlet for Coke. It can hold six hundred cars and eight hundred people. Every single day it serves more than two miles of hotdogs, one ton of onion rings, five thousand fried pies, and twenty-five hundred pounds of potatoes. On Georgia Tech game days some thirty thousand people come here to eat.
I thought about Rudy’s little roadside diner in Pottersville and said aloud, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“No we’re not,” Mickey said.
We carried our red trays of food up some stairs and into one of the empty rooms, and ate the way men do when women aren’t around.
That thought made me miss Summer and long to be with her in my bed again soon.
“Guess who’s got a record?” Mickey asked, his soft voice hard to hear in the empty, open space of the room.
“Who’s that?”
“Creepy Gibbons. Took less than ten minutes and two calls to turn up.”
I hadn’t mentioned Daryl Lee to him. Camille must have.
“For what?” I asked.
“A little L and L.”
He had started making a little more eye contact with me, but only a little. He still mostly had the eyes of a shy and insecure child.
Lewd and lascivious acts are any touches to the genitals, breasts, or butt of a minor—clothed or not.
“No details yet,” he said. “Have no idea what he did, where, or when, but should know tomorrow.”
What if he was responsible for what happened to Cedric and the others? What if that’s why he moved right after? What if the murders didn’t stop, just changed locations? What if he was missed somehow in the original investigation?
Eventually, Cedric Porter, Sr. joined us.
He was still wearing his red paper hat and white apron. The apron was soiled with grease and smeared with ketchup—which looked like dirt and bloodstains.
Beneath his paper hat, he was bald, his lar
ge head smooth and gleaming. Below it, the rest of his body was big and round like his head.
“Tired and ready to go home,” he said as he collapsed into the booth with us. “What this about?”
“Cedric, Jr.,” I said.
“What about him?” he asked, defensive. “Whatta two white boys got to do with a missin’ black boy?”
“We’re tryin’ to find him,” I said. “Reinvestigating his case along with some other similar ones.”
“Coulda save you a trip,” he said. “Never had nothin’ to do with that boy. Didn’t take ’im. Don’t have ’im. Don’t know nothin’ about who did.”
Not quite sure what to say to that, we were all quiet a moment.
I glanced over at Mickey. He shrugged. He had yet to offer anything to the conversation. Why start now?
“Look,” Cedric said. “His mama crazy. Okay? She gave that kid my name ’cause she wanted to give him a name other than her own. He wasn’t my kid. I got kids. I take care of ’em. Why I work this lame-ass job. Why I’m too tired to talk about this shit. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with him ’cause he wasn’t mine and his mama a crazy-ass bitch tryin’ to run a con on me. That’s it. That’s all I know.”
He began pushing his enormous girth up out of the booth, the table and bench creaking from the strain.
“One more question,” I said.
“If it quick,” he said, standing over us now.
“Do you have any idea who his actual father was?”
“No. Not really. Lots of candidates. Why?”
“Because,” I said, “maybe that’s who took him.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
All day I had hoped to hear from Summer.
Since I had no way of getting in touch with her, no idea where she lived or what her number was, my only option was to wait and hope to hear from her.
I had come straight back to my apartment after leaving the Varsity, hoping she’d be here waiting for me.
She was not.
I hung around for a while, trying to do homework and work on the cases while waiting for her to call.
She did not.
After a while I gave up and walked to Scarlett’s.
The dark path was spooky and seemed dangerous, and I wondered if Cedric was buried somewhere in these woods.
I heard something a few feet off the path and turned.
Through the bushes I could see a middle-aged white man leaning against a tree, his trousers down around his knees, a young black woman kneeling in front performing fellatio on him.
Were Ronald Nolan and Laney Mitchell doing something similar when little Cedric ran by? Is that the way it really happened? Why was Cedric headed back to the apartments? Had he forgotten something? Did he see something or someone who scared him? Was Nolan telling the truth?
“Make mine a double and keep ’em coming,” I said to Margaret as I reached the end of the bar and the stool I thought of as mine.
“I’ll join you,” she said. “It’s been a day.”
“Wait,” Susan said, walking up behind me. “You’ve been doin’ so well.”
“I’m still doin’ well,” I said, climbing onto the barstool.
“Then don’t blow it by jumpin’ down this particular rabbit hole. There’s nothin’ good at the bottom of it. You’ve got to know that better than me.”
I looked at Margaret.
“I could just as easily pour you coffee,” she said.
“Et tu?”
She shrugged. “Let’s both have coffee tonight.”
“I’ll talk about the case with you,” Susan said. “You can ask me anything you want. And when I get off in a little while I’ll even go back to your place and watch a movie with you. Whatta you have?”
“Sixteen Candles—”
“My favorite.”
“Oh sexy girlfriend,” Margaret said in her best Asian accent.
“Lots of sugar,” I said.
They both voiced their approval.
Margaret poured the coffee and shoved cream and sugar toward me as Susan climbed up on the stool beside me.
I had not mentioned Laney Mitchell to either of them again. As far as I knew neither of them had any idea she had run after Cedric the night he disappeared or that doing so might be connected to what happened to her. And they weren’t going to hear it from me—not until I found out if there was anything to it. So I decided to pursue another line of questioning with them instead.
“What do y’all know about Creepy Daryl Lee Gibbons?” I said.
“He scared Cedric,” Susan said.
“I know Lonnie beat the shit out of him tryin’ to find Cedric,” Margaret said. “Don’t blame him. He was the most likely suspect we had. If there was even a chance he had taken Cedric, that he could still be alive, he had to try to find out . . . no matter what it took.”
“What it took was twenty-three stitches and a lot of bandages and pain meds,” Susan said.
“I don’t think Creepy was the only one Lonnie pummeled tryin’ to find out what happened,” Margaret added.
“You don’t remember him being around here that night, do you?” I said. “Could he be who Cedric was running from?”
“Didn’t see him. Don’t think he was around. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve wondered and worried if it was someone coming in or going out of here that night that killed him.”
A thought occurred to me—one I couldn’t believe I hadn’t had before—one I had to act on immediately.
“Can I borrow your phone?” I asked.
“Sure,” Margaret said, “but be a lot quieter to use the payphone outside. Here’s a quarter.”
“Thanks.”
It was late, but this couldn’t wait. I was sure I would wake him—him and his sweet wife, but I couldn’t not call him right now.
The phone booth was at the end of the lot down near the sidewalk on Memorial Drive.
I walked directly to it, stone cold sober, light but steady traffic streaking by on Memorial.
Dropping the quarter in, I dialed the number I had long since memorized.
Frank Morgan answered trying not to sound like I had just woken him up.
“I want to meet with him,” I said.
“John?”
“Sorry, yeah.”
“You okay?”
“I am.”
“You sure?”
“I want to meet with him, Frank.”
“Who?”
“You know who. Can you set it up?”
“It’ll take some doin’, and I’ll have to be there, but yeah, if you can pass a background check, I can set it up.”
“Would you?”
“I will.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Not sure if I’ve told you lately, but you’ve been a grace to me—one of the few since I’ve been here. And ’less you think that’s drink talking, I haven’t had one in awhile.”
I started to hang up.
“Before you go,” he said. “I spoke with the attorney representing Martin Fisher’s mother. Told him how good you were to the kid, how bad the mom was, how you took care of him and never even saw her the entire time they were your neighbors. Told him to reconsider.”
“What’d he say?”
“That if he didn’t take the case someone else would. I told him we’d produce credible witnesses to refute everything the absentee mother said and that supported everything you said—including law enforcement officers.”
“What’d he say to that?”
“Says that’s the way it works. We produce witnesses and they produce witnesses. Wouldn’t back down. I told him the only thing of value you owned was a VCR—and that it wasn’t worth that much. And that’s when he let it slip.”
“What?”
“Since you were living in what was technically a college dorm, he thinks they can get EPI and Chapel Hill Harvester Church to settle for a sizable chunk of change.”
“Oh my God,” I said.
The blow was deva
stating—the embarrassment alone was more than I could handle, but to have the church and college on the line for something I was involved in?
“It’s the way people like this think.”
“I . . . I can’t . . . I don’t know what to say. It’s too much.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I haven’t given up on this. We’ll get it straightened out.”
After hanging up, I was too upset to go back into Scarlett’s right away.
For a while I just paced around the mostly empty parking lot.
“You okay?”
I turned to see Lonnie locking the front door of his video store.
I shrugged.
“What is it?”
I told him. Not in detail but enough to give him a sense of what I was dealing with.
“You know what to do,” he said. “Don’t need me to tell you. Let go of what you can’t change anyway and change what you can. Breathe in peace. Breathe out worry and stress. You can do it. Say the Serenity Prayer with me.”
I did.
“Again.”
This time he took my hand in his as we prayed the prayer together again.
“God grant me the serenity to accept thing things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You gonna be okay? I can call the guys over and we can have a meeting right now.”
“I’m okay. Thanks.”
“Not thinking about drinking, are you?”
I shook my head.
BLOOD CRIES: a John Jordan Mystery (Book 10) (John Jordan Mysteries) Page 10
