I’m silent for a moment. I’m not sure what to say, but I take the plunge.
“Do you need money?” I ask quietly.
“No, no thank you, honey. As I said, I’m just a little distressed to have you see me like this. I’m going to get dressed if you don’t mind. I’ll be out in a moment or two.”
She heads to the bathroom. I stick two cups of hot water in the microwave before pulling up the covers on her bed and taking my regular seat on the couch.
Adele is more subdued than I’ve ever seen her. Is it from hearing about Jasmine’s death? For the first time, I realize she’s getting up there in years. Usually, she’s so spunky I forget that she’s in her late eighties.
Dressed, Adele emerges from the bathroom and heads to the kitchen to make our tea. I’m futilely trying to push the cat away from me with a magazine when she walks in.
“He likes you. You should feel privileged. He doesn’t care for many people. I found him at the animal shelter. I think he was abused.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just not crazy about cats.”
“That’s quite alright. He had to grow on me, too. Now I’m very fond of him,” she says, picking him up and nuzzling him under her chin.
Something has been bothering me, so I decide to just flat out ask.
“Adele, you said you were too busy to marry, but nobody is really too busy to get married are they? What stopped you? I saw your picture, you must have had tons of marriage proposals.”
“Well, I did have a few, I guess, but only one that really counted.”
I wait, and she realizes I’m not going to be satisfied with that answer.
“Oh, I suppose it boils down to fear,” Adele says, and lets the cat squeeze out from under her grip. “I must admit, I only have one regret in my life. I was afraid to love.”
“Did you get hurt?”
“Oh no, it was nothing like that. It was something else. You see, I was afraid to lose myself.” Adele settles back into her chair and smiles at the memory. “Oh, Tommy. He was my boss at the hospital, and he was everything a girl dreamed about. My fondest memories are of the years I spent with Tommy, but eventually they ended because he wanted to get married. I refused.”
I raise my eyebrows to encourage her to continue.
“You have to understand that in those days, when a single girl married, she essentially lost her entire identity. It was just wiped out. I wouldn’t have been Adele Sommers anymore. I would have been Mrs. Thomas Worthington.
“Oh, yes, Tommy promised me it wouldn’t be like that, that I wouldn’t lose myself and that he would encourage me to remain my own person, but I was too afraid to believe and trust. I was too afraid to love. Some really terrible things happened to me in my life. I don’t regret them because they all shaped me and made me who I am today. But I do regret that. I regret that I shut the door on love.”
Adele stops and takes a long sip of her tea before giving me a piercing look.
“Listen to an old lady—if love comes knocking, don’t shut the door on it.”
I don’t answer but nod to be polite. I don’t tell her I’ve already blown it with the best man I’ve ever met—Donovan. I don’t tell her my track record for shutting the door on love is 5–0. Instead, I drink my chamomile tea, munch some biscotti, and say good-bye.
EVANS IS FINISHING a chicken salad at her desk when I walk in.
It is never, ever good when the editor calls you into her office on a Sunday when she should be home in her pajamas watching the Home and Garden channel or something.
After visiting Johnson and Adele, I spent the rest of the morning getting the details of the skull discovery from Roberge and trying to get a comment from Baker and Silva, who are sequestered at the police station. I hope that will make Evans happy.
It doesn’t.
“Sit down.” She doesn’t look at me until I do. That’s when I know.
I’m screwed.
The biggest story yet about Jasmine, and I missed it by a mile. I’m only grateful that Evans doesn’t know I’m dating the lead detective on the case. The humiliation would be unbearable.
Evans puts down her fork and peers at me over the top of her silver-framed eyeglasses.
“When is your review again?” she asks.
“It hasn’t been scheduled yet.”
She flips through her desk calendar and marks something down. “Let’s do that now, then. How about in two weeks?”
“Whatever.” I shrug.
“And we’ve decided to take you off the crime beat. We’ve called May in to work. She’s going to take it over, so please give her all your files. Finish today’s story; and then, when you come in tomorrow, you’ll start covering the education beat—at least temporarily. Karen is gone.”
Karen is gone? What does that mean?
“And you can consider yourself on probation. If you’ve showed improvement by your review date, we will make you the permanent education reporter. With the budget cuts, we’ve decided not to have both a night and day police reporter. We’re just having one person on that beat, and May seems better equipped to handle the job.”
I feel like I’m going to vomit, but I don’t want her to see it. I close my eyes for a half second. Think fast. I need to be able to keep visiting Johnson—if his attorney still lets me. If that’s taken away, I don’t know what I’ll do. I still need to find out about Caterina.
“Can I at least finish writing my profile of Johnson?” I hold my breath. It’s a lie. I’m not working on a profile of him. Yet. This will at least give me an excuse to keep visiting him.
“You’ve got one week.”
She purses her lips closed and stares at me above her glasses, waiting for me to thank her, I’m sure. Unbelievable. I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised that Evans would cut the crime beat down to one reporter when a huge crime story is happening right in our paper’s backyard. I walk out without saying a word.
BACK AT MY desk, I’m grateful it’s late, and all the other weekend reporters have gone home for the day. When I walk by, I glance at Karen’s desk. It is empty of her normal family photos and her coffee cup. A few weeks ago, she’d screwed up a big Sunday story on the new governor’s state budget for education. In several places, she had the wrong numbers and facts. She claimed she mistakenly mixed up some preliminary numbers she’d obtained.
Of course, it made it worse that the Trib had the right numbers. It was pretty bad, but in the past, the most the error was worth was a write-up in her file, not getting the ax. The days of smooth sailing at a newspaper job have changed. Each day, it seems like the upper-level management is less concerned with having a quality paper and more concerned with making a profit.
I bet Evans used Karen’s screwup as a way to cut staff to trim the budget. It all makes sense, I think, as I walk back to my desk.
The little darling gives me a smarmy look when I walk up.
“You’re supposed to give me all your files,” she says with her hand out.
“I’ll give you all my files when I leave later. This is my story. It always will be no matter what the editors say. You are just picking up my crumbs.”
“Whatever. It’s my story now. You couldn’t handle it,” she says, and walks off.
My eyes land on Jasmine’s missing-persons flyer taped on the wall beside my computer and the small photo of Jasmine propped against my monitor. I slide open my top desk drawer and see Caterina’s little face peering up at me from the framed picture.
Don’t worry, I think as I look at the two innocent faces. It’s not over yet.
I grab Jasmine’s picture and take it back to the photo department so Lopez can scan it and use it for my story. At first, I don’t notice him, and then I hear a big crack. Lopez is hunched over in his chair near a trash can, and his arm is moving back and forth. I realize he is
punching the metal file cabinet. It has a big indentation where he keeps planting his fist.
“Chris? What’s wrong?” Then I notice the monitor next to him has a photo of the coroner’s deputies solemnly carrying Jasmine’s skull in a body bag as they traverse a rocky hillside.
“My granddaughter, Lucia? She’s the same age as Jasmine,” he says, looking up and hastily wiping a tear onto his sleeve. “It’s cool, man. It just got to me for a second. Her skull was so little, man. So fucking little. There’s a special place in hell for people who do things like this to kids. I’m okay now. But I tell you what, I wouldn’t mind taking that fucker out by myself.”
I silently hand him the photo of Jasmine.
BACK AT MY desk, I write my story, putting in personal details about Jasmine’s life that no other reporter but me knows. I don’t get up for dinner but continue writing, trying to convey through my words the tragedy that was this little girl’s life. As I write, all the adrenaline that had been coursing through my body suddenly leaves. The whirlwind emotions of the discovery of Jasmine’s skull, the encounter with Donovan, and the fury at being taken off my beat suddenly overwhelm me.
It feels like a tremendous effort to lift each finger off the keyboard. I remember what Donovan said and the scorn in his eyes. Of course, I understand what he was saying—he was too busy dealing with the skull of a little girl to worry about my getting a scoop. But still, I trusted him.
I don’t know what is wrong with me. I’m so angry that he gave Black a scoop that I’ve lost track of what the story is really about—a dead little girl. Is that what the reporters covering Caterina’s story cared about—getting a scoop? Am I that heartless? I just feel numb. There is no way I can turn my back on Jasmine now. She deserves justice more than ever.
I quickly look around the newsroom. Nobody is paying attention. I turn my back to hide what I’m doing in case May suddenly returns. Then I slip the important files that contain the majority of my notes, my source phone numbers, and so on, into my bag. I put a few useless notes and press releases into another file, toss it onto May’s desk, and walk out.
Chapter 28
AT HOME, I shrug on an oversized peacoat and pull a navy blue stocking cap low over my ears before pounding down the stairs in my heavy boots.
Within fifteen minutes, I’m at the corner of Market and Powell, a little winded from walking fast. The squeal of buses, sirens, and cable cars nearby fades into the background as I hunt for an empty spot.
Plastic tables covered with chessboards are placed end to end in two long rows. I find a vacant table and plop down on the cold plastic chair, not looking around me.
I need to play some chess and get into the flow. I need a way to escape my thoughts and feelings right now. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to feel. I’m going to move around the black and white pieces until it grows dark and the streets are so sketchy with drug dealers, gang members, and groping drunken men that I’ll need to hail a cab back to North Beach. I want to immerse myself in the games on Market Street until I lose myself. I’ll deal with reality again tomorrow.
“Natasha.” The hearty slap on my back almost knocks the wind out of me. It’s Georges, the Bulgarian, who runs the chess games. “Where you been sweetie? We’ve missed you.”
I dig in my jeans and unearth a wadded-up dollar bill that I hand to him with a Mona Lisa smile. It costs a dollar to play for an hour. How much you bet on each game is up to you.
Nobody here knows my real name. When I come to Market to play chess, I don’t talk. The only words I utter are “check” and “checkmate.” I come to play real chess players—some are Soviet chess masters, others homeless men from the Tenderloin, and others businessmen in three-piece suits. In front of the black-and-white-checkered board, we are all equals.
Once the regulars figured out I could play, they accepted my refusal to talk.
It didn’t take me long to earn my stripes. I’ve been playing since I was six years old. It was something one of my uncles taught me during the six months after Caterina’s death, when I stopped talking. Now, when I play on Market Street, I don’t speak.
I sometimes think chess saved my life. After Caterina died, even when I wanted to talk, the words would not come. The doctors told my mother that there was nothing physically wrong with me. But I refused to interact. I went about my day like normal—doing all the things I was supposed to do—except speak.
One day, my uncle Domenic showed up with a chessboard. He set it up on the big wooden kitchen table. I watched silently as he showed me the moves. He tried to get me to play, but I only watched.
“Okay then. I’ll go ahead and move my piece,” he told me. “If you want to move your piece while I’m gone, that’s okay.”
Then he left.
In the middle of the night, I snuck into the kitchen and moved my black knight, then hurried back to bed.
In the morning, my mother set the table for breakfast around the chessboard, acting as if it weren’t even there. When my uncle came over later, he didn’t mention the game, but after he left, I noticed he had moved his white bishop. We played this way for five months. Finally, one day my uncle came over and brought a chess timer.
“I’m going to show you a new way to play—how the real chess players do it.”
I was intrigued by what real chess players did, so I sat down. I liked punching the button after I made my move. The fast-paced game was exhilarating. To my surprise, I quickly saw how to put my uncle in check.
“Check!” The word flew out of my mouth before I realized it. My silent spell was broken. Gradually, the grayness that surrounded my world also lifted. And my love for chess only grew stronger. In college, I finally achieved the rank of chess master.
Now, I don’t spend nearly as much time as I should on the game, but I play Tomas by mail and try to get down to Market Street when I can. Tonight, I feel my blood pounding, excited about the game. I hope a worthy opponent takes the seat opposite me. Georges usually shoos away anyone who isn’t serious about the game. He’s oddly protective of me even if he doesn’t know my real name.
For some reason, even though I didn’t respond to the Russian players who tried to talk to me at first, Georges assumed I was from the Soviet block and started calling me Natasha.
“Natasha, even if you don’t speak English. It’s okay. You’ll pick it up one day. If an old seahorse like me can do it, you can, too.”
They’ve never questioned why I don’t talk. They just accept me for who I am. That’s one reason I like to come here. I’m anonymous here. I am not a reporter. I am not an unmarried Italian-American daughter. I am not the sister of a dead girl.
Chapter 29
AFTER HIS RITUALISTIC wiping down of the phone, Johnson asks me if I got his message.
“No. When?”
“Yesterday. Someone else answered your phone. She kept asking me why I killed Jasmine—she asked me about ten times.” He laughs.
I bite the inside of my lip. “Let me guess. Was her name May?”
“Yeah, that’s it. I remembered it because it was a month of the year.”
I try to remain calm. “What did you say to her?”
“I didn’t. I just told her to leave a message for you that I called.”
“Well, I never received a message. What were you calling about anyway?”
“I was bored. Got me out of my cell.”
“The editors want me to write a story about your life—a profile—so I have a bunch of questions to ask you. What was your childhood like?” I ask. “Did anything happen to you that might have caused you to be who you are?”
He smiles his gap-toothed, sort of bashful smile.
“Nah. That’s what the FBI keeps asking. I had a normal childhood. It has nothing to do my choices as an adult. The feds told me if I agree to a bunch of interviews about m
y life, and they use me as a case study, they might be able to cut me a deal.”
“Are you serious?” I hadn’t realized the FBI was talking to him so much. It’s been three days since they found Jasmine’s skull. Nobody has charged him with her murder. He was right. There doesn’t appear to be any evidence pointing to him.
“Yeah, so why should I give all of this to you for free?”
“Because you want my story about you to be fair?”
That is apparently good enough because he continues. His eye wanders as he gives me details of his life, and I look down, scribbling what he says as quickly as I can.
He was born April 20, 1958, to Dean and Sharon Johnson. His father was in the U.S. Marines and his mother a homemaker. He gives an odd smile when I ask about his mother and balls his hand into a fist in his lap.
“She was Suzie Homemaker. Just like any other mother during that time. Cooked and cleaned and all that shit.”
I try not to look at the fist he has made and press him to talk more about his mother, but he changes the subject. That’s okay. I’ll come back to mother.
“We were a working-class family. I played baseball. I hunted, camped, rode motocross. My dad would wake me up at three in the morning to take me fishing sometimes. He coached Little League. Playing ball always made me happy. I used to play baseball and football in the streets with the other kids in the neighborhood.”
His life sounds mundane. Normal. I ask more questions. I’m digging. There must be something else. I want to go back to his mother. There was something there. But I’ll wait.
“Was anything in your childhood rough?”
“No tougher than anyone else’s. If I did something wrong, I got whupped with a wooden spoon or a belt. The kindergarten teacher once called up my dad to complain since it hurt for me to sit down, but he just hung up on her.”
I don’t say that nowadays, his teacher would have reported it to child protective services.
Blessed are the Dead Page 14
