Blood Cries; Blood Oath; Blood Work Page 2

“What?”

  “Who,” I said. “A Mr. William Butler Yeats.”

  “This about that kid?” she asked.

  Little Martin Fisher trying to make a layup on the rickety basketball goal at my old apartment complex shimmered like heat lighting on the night sky that was my mind.

  Though I knew she was talking about Martin Fisher, her question reminded me of the one Wayne Williams asked on the night he was stopped. This about those kids?

  “Everything is,” I said. “Especially Yeats.”

  The joint had a new jukebox but everything in it was old, and that was just fine with me.

  A moaning saxophone let me know another of my selections was coming on.

  It was a live version of Seger’s “Turn the Page” from the Live Bullet album. When the song came on, Seger and his band had just finished Van Morrison’s “I’ve Been Working,” and he was still out of breath when he said, “This is from ’72 also. About being on the road. It’s called ‘Turn the Page.’”

  On a long and lonesome highway east of Omaha . . .

  The song was about something I had been as yet unable to do—turn the page—and it perfectly captured my mood.

  The isolation and loneliness of a world-weary traveler being burned up by the road.

  Life is the road and it had done one hell of a number on this young journeyman, whose center was no longer holding.

  What was there to do but drink and listen to good music and try not to think?

  “Why were you askin’ an old leathery lesbian about her sweet spot?” Margaret asked.

  She had waited until the song was over.

  “You know that small, fleeting spot between dulled agony and oblivion, the one you can never sustain?”

  “’Cause the center doesn’t hold,” she said.

  I nodded vigorously. “Exactly. ’Cause the center doesn’t hold. I’m trying to find it and hold it.”

  “They say there’s no treading in the bottle,” she said. “Only drowning.”

  “To drowning,” I said, lifting my glass.

  “To drowning,” she said, raising her glass to clink mine.

  They say Margaret used not to drink the way she does now. They say it started when she lost the love of her life and business partner, Laney Mitchell.

  Margaret Hart and Laney Mitchell were happy when, inspired by the combination of their names, they started a Gone with the Wind-themed bar called what else but Scarlett’s.

  The joint was admittedly a bit kitschy and touristy, but it was a happy place, owned and operated by a happy couple, frequented by customers who quickly became friends.

  At least that’s what they say. That was all before my time.

  Now that the Mitchell was gone and there was only the Margaret, the place was dim and in disrepair, the book and movie memorabilia dingy and dust-covered, and a hint of desperation hung in the air and clung to everything and everyone who entered, but frankly, Margaret didn’t give a damn.

  “Fuck my liver if it can’t take a joke,” she said, and poured herself another.

  I had another myself, as time slowly ticked along and Atlanta’s missing and murdered children remained missing and murdered, and frankly, no one seemed to give a damn about that either.

  3

  Later when Susan, Margaret’s niece and the person solely responsible for Scarlett’s doors still being opened, stormed in, Margaret looked at me and said, “Uh oh, we’re in trouble now.”

  “What’re you doin’?” Susan asked.

  “My job,” Margaret said. “What? I can’t drink with my customers? What?”

  Susan huffed and shook her head. “I’m not even talkin’ about how far into the bag you are. You’re serving someone underage.”

  Susan wasn’t unattractive—or wouldn’t have been if she weren’t so closed and rigid.

  “Him?” she said, nodding toward me.

  “Me?” I asked in surprise.

  “He’s got one of the oldest souls I’ve ever met,” Margaret said.

  “I don’t think that’s what the authorities check.”

  “He’s twenty-one,” Margaret said. “Says so right there on his ID.”

  “Hey, it’s your liquor license, your livelihood—if you can call it that. I just work here. Drink yourselves into a stupid stupor and let the world burn down around you. Up to you.”

  “She said stupid stupor,” I said.

  “Tell her why we drink,” Margaret said.

  “Why not?” I said.

  “Because the center doesn’t hold,” she said.

  “Oh, that. Yeah,” I said. “It’s why the world is burning down around us too. Anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed.”

  “Something’s dimmed,” Susan said. “I’ll give you that.”

  “I was just trying to find my sweet spot. Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I’ll sober up and . . .”

  “I’ll pour you some coffee,” Susan said.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Drop a wee splash of Bailey’s in it, would you?”

  She sighed and dropped the cup on the counter.

  “I was kidding,” I said. “You’re not as far gone as you think I am.”

  “No,” she said, “I’m not.”

  “I said wee because Bailey’s is Irish.”

  “When you’re sober you don’t explain shit like that,” she said.

  The tinted glass door opened and Lonnie Baker, a thin, narrow-framed thirty-something black man with large tortoiseshell glasses and a slight mustache, walked in right on time.

  His arrival signified the transition from afternoon into evening.

  Lonnie Baker owned the video rental store at the other end of the strip mall, and every day at five o’clock he taped the tattered piece of paper that read “Back in Five” onto the door, locked up his shop, and came down to Scarlett’s.

  Every day he would sit on the same barstool. Every day Margaret would pour a shot of bourbon and place it before him. Every day he would stare it down. And every day he would eventually slide it back toward her without drinking or spilling a single drop.

  Lonnie Baker was a recovering alcoholic who never missed a meeting. This daily exercise of facing down his demon was part of his ritual. He had four years sobriety. What he was doing was working for him, and he wasn’t about to stop working it.

  Today, like every day, Margaret clanged the bell behind the bar, which was followed by a smattering of claps and cheers from the few patrons present who, permanently or momentarily, weren’t close friends with Bill W.

  As Lonnie stood, the front door opened again, and to my astonishment Ida Williams ambled in.

  She paused for a moment to let her eyes adjust and scan the room. When she saw me, she began making her way over, but stopped when she recognized Lonnie Baker.

  The two hugged and exchanged a few words, then hugged again, and Lonnie left to reopen his video store as Miss Ida made her way over to me.

  I stood.

  I had had only coffee since Susan arrived, but I was still a bit unsteady on my feet, and I felt embarrassed and self-conscious for Ida to see me this way.

  I started to walk toward her, but figured it best if I didn’t.

  We embraced when she reached me, each refusing to let go for a very long moment. Like the rest of her, Miss Ida’s breasts were bountiful and she held me to them as if I were her own child—and for a while there I thought I was going to be.

  In addition to being a friend and a colleague in the missing and murdered children’s group, Ida had been Jordan’s mother and the closest thing to a mother-in-law my young self had ever had.

  “How are you, son?” she asked.

  “Been better,” I said. “Not gonna lie.”

  Jordan there again, permeating my being. Small enough to be a schoolgirl. Shy green eyes. Straight sun-streaked blond hair. Smooth, unvarnished, suntanned skin. A simple, understated, graceful beauty I found irresistible.

  “What can I get you?” Margaret
asked.

  I shook my head. “She’s not here to––”

  “Jack and Coke,” she said.

  I looked back at Miss Ida.

  “You ain’t the only one what’s been better, boy,” she said.

  I nodded and our eyes locked a moment before we both teared up and had to look away.

  “Why don’t y’all have a seat at the little table over there in the corner,” Susan said. “I’ll bring your drinks over.”

  We did.

  “How do you know Lonnie?” I asked.

  “Through his sister. She’s a part of our group—or was. Her boy went missing back around the time LaMarcus did . . . back when so many were.”

  “What’s his name? Was he on the list?”

  She shook her head. “Never turned up dead or alive. Still missing. So never made that damn list. His name is Cedric. Cedric Porter.”

  I nodded and thought about it.

  Susan brought Miss Ida’s Jack and Coke, topped off my coffee, and smiled at me approvingly––whether about the coffee or talking to Miss Ida, I wasn’t sure. Probably both.

  Ida lifted her glass and made a toasting motion toward me without actually touching my cup. She then drank the darkish liquid the way someone who doesn’t drink would––not sipping or shooting but taking a large swallow, which quickly caught up with her.

  A quick intake of air, followed by a cough. Another swallow she thought would help, but didn’t. Then more of the same.

  “You okay?” I asked. “Want some water?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just been a while and they mix ’em up strong in here. I like the burn. I want it.”

  Susan appeared with a glass of water, set it on the table, and was gone.

  “Thank you,” I said, though I don’t think she heard me.

  “Nobody need to make a fuss over me. I’m fine.”

  I nodded and we were quiet a moment. “Hotel California” was playing on the jukebox. She took a sip of water––quickly, nonchalantly, as if it embarrassed her to do so.

  Hollywood’s not the only haunted hotel. Atlanta is. So is the world.

  I thought of sitting on the swings at Trade Winds with Jordan late into the night, her wiping tears as Martin walked up. They were both so small, so frail, so vulnerable in their own way.

  “‘What have we, my good friend, deserv’d at the hands of fortune, that she sends us to prison hither?’” I said.

  Miss Ida looked confused.

  “Atlanta’s a prison,” I said. “Or at least a hotel that can’t be checked out of. The world is one.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “‘Why then ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’”

  Something Mama Monroe said joined the Hamlet and “Hotel California” mashup in my head. We all doin’ time, baby. Only question is where and how.

  “You still investigating the murders?” she asked.

  I nodded. “When I’m not in school, at work, or . . .”

  “Drinkin’ yourself silly.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want you to come back to the group,” she said.

  “You still meet?” I asked, my voice full of surprise.

  “’Course we do. It’s about all our kids. Always was. Not just mine.”

  “You don’t blame me for . . . what happened?” I asked.

  “No, child, I don’t,” she said. “No part of it was your fault.”

  More relief washed over me than I had experienced since it all happened.

  “Will you come back?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “I . . . don’t think I can . . . Not yet. Not ever, maybe.”

  “We need you,” she said. “From the look of it . . . you need us.”

  4

  When I woke up I sensed someone else in the room.

  I rolled over to see Susan Daniels standing, staring at my Wayne Williams wall.

  Instantly, his soft, eerie voice echoed through my twinging head. What’s your name, boy? Just ’cause I prefer chocolate don’t mean I couldn’t go for some vanilla.

  Dry mouth, dull ache in my head, I felt stiff and sluggish.

  “It was dark when we came in last night,” she said. “Didn’t really see any of this. Probably wouldn’t have stayed if I had.”

  One whole wall, the largest in the room, was covered with case files, maps, lists, witness statements, evidence reports, crime scene photographs, fiber and other forensic records—all of which was splattered with and connected by the scratch and scrawl of my scribblings.

  The wall spoke of obsessive compulsive behavior to anyone listening. She had heard it right away. She’d had experience with it.

  “You stayed here last night?” I said.

  “My dad’s a cop,” she said, still studying the wall. “Lives in Tallahassee. Worked Bundy.”

  “Mine too.”

  “Yours too what?”

  “Dad. Worked Bundy. He’s the sheriff of Potter County.”

  “Probably know each other,” she said. “He a drunk too?”

  “More of teetotaler. You stayed here last night?”

  “Mine’s a drunk like you,” she said. “Why I’m in Atlanta. Why nothing happened last night. I just didn’t feel like driving all the way back home after I dropped your drunk ass off. And your bed looked too good and warm not to crawl into. I’d never get involved with a drunk or a . . . cop.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “Your wall argues otherwise.”

  “I’m a theology student.”

  She turned from the wall to face me for the first time. “I knew it.”

  “Knew what?”

  “Knew there was something . . . Anyway . . . you don’t have to have a badge to be a cop. And that’s three strikes.”

  “What time is it? Three strikes?”

  “Against you,” she said. “Drunk. Cop. Jesus freak.”

  “Didn’t even know I was at bat.”

  And I didn’t ask to play ball.

  “It’s early,” she said.

  “I have class this morning.”

  “You need to hydrate and shower. So what’s the deal?”

  “With?”

  “Why’re you so obsessed with this case?” she said, jerking her head back toward the wall behind her.

  “I had a confrontation with Wayne Williams when I was a kid.”

  “Oh yeah? Let’s hear it.”

  “Family trip to Atlanta. Staying at the Omni. I was in the arcade playing Space Invaders when he came in with his flyers. He approached a scrawny kid playing KISS pinball. Kid shook his head. Didn’t even look at him . . .”

  Look at me, little brother, he said.

  The kid didn’t.

  Williams laid the flyer on the glass top of the pinball machine, blocking the boy’s view and causing him to lose the turn.

  You heard of the Jackson Five, ain’t ya? You could be like little Michael.

  The boy abandoned his game and walked away with his head down.

  Williams followed.

  I stepped away from Space Invaders and in front of him.

  Said he’s not interested, I said.

  Whoa, little man, he said. What’s your name?

  I didn’t respond, just held his gaze.

  Anger flashed in his face when I still refused to respond.

  Just ’cause I prefer chocolate don’t mean I couldn’t go for some vanilla, he said.

  “Wow. No wonder you got obsessed with the case,” Susan said, “but I thought it was solved years ago. Williams is in prison, right?”

  “For killing two adults,” I said. “Not any children.”

  “Give me a brief overview,” she said. “Justify your obsession.”

  I did—the former, at least. I had no interest in doing the latter.

  The victims, as James Baldwin wrote, were visibly black and actually poor, and here’s who they were—who they are and will forever be...
/>   5

  It began in the summer of 1979, when Edward Hope Smith and Alfred Evans disappeared just four days apart. Their bodies were discovered on July 28, in a wooded area off Niskey Lake Road by a woman looking for cans.

  Milton Harvey, the next victim, disappeared on September 4, while on an errand for his mother. His remains were found off Desert Road at Redwine Road on the south side by a man picking up cans.

  All three victims to this point were fourteen-year-old African-American boys.

  On October 21, nine-year-old Yusuf Bell became the next victim when he went to the store to buy snuff for a neighbor. A witness said she saw Yusuf getting into a blue car before he disappeared. The same witness claimed the man driving the car was Yusuf’s father, John. His body was found on November 8, in the abandoned E.P. Johnson Elementary School by a former school janitor searching for a place to urinate. Yusuf was still wearing the brown cut-off shorts he was last seen wearing, though they had a piece of masking tape stuck to them. He had suffered blunt force trauma to the head, but the cause of death was strangulation.

  The first female to make the list was twelve-year-old Angel Lenair, who disappeared on March 4, 1980. She had left her house in denim clothes around four that afternoon. She was last seen watching TV at a friend’s house. Her body was discovered six days later in a wooded lot not far from where she lived, in the same outfit she was last seen in. A pair of white panties had been stuffed in her mouth and her wrists were bound by an electrical cord. Cause of death was ruled strangulation.

  The next victim, eleven-year-old Jeffrey Mathis, disappeared on March 11, while running an errand for his mother. He was last seen at Star Service Station on Gordon wearing gray jogging pants, brown shoes, and a white and green shirt. A witness said she saw him get into a blue car with two men. His body was found in a wooded area near Campbellton Road, by FBI agents with trained dogs.

  Eric Middlebrooks was the next young person to go missing and be found murdered. He was last seen at his home on May 18. He answered the phone then rushed off on his bicycle with a hammer. Supposedly, the tool was for repairing his bike and not to use as a weapon. His body was found next to his bike in a rear garage of the Hope-U-Like-It bar at 247 Flat Shoals Road. His pockets had been turned inside out and his chest and arms had stab wounds. The cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.