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  Across the expressway was the house where Eric lived and was last seen alive.

  The two men continued west, and just before they reached Atlanta Fulton County Stadium and the state capitol, they could see E.P. Johnson Elementary School where the body of nine-year-old Yusuf Bell, the fourth victim, was found.

  Memorial Drive ended and they made a slight left. At the next traffic light was the block from which Yusuf disappeared. In two more blocks, they took a short detour to the dumpster where nine-year-old Anthony Carter, the eleventh victim, was found stabbed to death.

  Just beyond these two places was the grocery store where Yusuf went on an errand to buy snuff for a neighbor, and beyond the store on Georgia Avenue was Cap’n Peg’s, where JoJo Bell was employed and the place he left from on the day he disappeared, and where Michael McIntosh, the twenty-fourth victim, did odd jobs. It was also where Fred Wyatt, in possession of twenty-fifth victim Jimmy Ray Payne’s prison ID, was arrested, and the address Wayne Williams used as his business location address on his flyers.

  Within the next five blocks, Dettlinger and Edwards passed the homes of Anthony Carter and two other victims. In another moment they were staring at a silver fireplug where Jeffrey Mathis, the sixth victim, disappeared.

  Gordon Street then merged with and became Martin Luther King Drive. Approaching the intersection of Martin Luther King and Hightower Road was the first time they had to use their turn signal. They turned right, and off to their right, just one block away, was the apartment where seven-year-old LaTonya Wilson, victim nine, was kidnapped. It was also the apartment building where the twenty-eighth victim, Nathaniel Cater, one of the two adults Wayne Williams was convicted of killing, lived.

  The two men then proceeded north on Hightower Road to the location where Clifford Jones, the thirteenth victim, was seen entering a laundromat and behind which his body would later be discovered.

  Then after crossing US-278, they passed the Bowen Homes housing projects where a young boy named Curtis Walker, the twenty-first victim, shared an apartment with his mother and uncle.

  Hightower Road broke into two streets at this point—Jackson Parkway and Hollywood Road. They chose Hollywood Road because it was closer to the points where Clifford Jones lived, disappeared, and was found dead.

  Once on Hollywood Road, they passed the apartment where victim nineteen, Terry Pue, lived with his family. A short distance later was the small shopping center at Perry Boulevard and Hollywood Road, where the body of Clifford Jones was found.

  Just before Hollywood Road ended at Bolton Road, they turned left and drove into the parking lot of a Starvin’ Marvin store at Bolton Road and Jackson Parkway. Just six-tenths of a mile north on Jackson Parkway was the Jackson Parkway bridge where Wayne Williams would be pulled over after a loud splash was heard in the Chattahoochee River below.

  Soon after Bolton Road dipped south and merged with Fairburn Road, they were passing the intersection of Nash Road where Milton Harvey, the third victim, lived, and just a block west was the parallel-running Kimberly Road, off of which was the entrance to the housing projects where fourteen-year-old Edward Hope Smith, the first victim, lived.

  Soon they were at the intersection of Campbellton Road (Georgia 166) near the home of twelve-year-old and fifth victim Angel Lanier. Farther east along Georgia 166 were the Lakewood Fairgrounds and South Bend Park where convicted child molester John David Wilcoxen lived. South Bend Park was also where eleven-year-old Earl Lee Terrell, the twelfth victim, disappeared from the swimming pool.

  Both Wilcoxen and Terrell, along with Jamie Brooks, would be suspects—suspects I was convinced should have been looked at much, much more closely.

  They drove on for several more miles—the longest stretch without encountering a location pertinent to the murders. Finally they came to where Redwine Road merges with Fairborn Road. This took them within fifty feet of the remains of two more victims—Christopher Richardson, who was last seen headed for the swimming pool, and Earl Lee Terrell, who was last seen after being kicked out of one—lay in the woods close together near a cluster of large boulders.

  Unbeknownst to them at the time, Dettlinger and Edwards had also driven by the locations where seven more victims—all alive that day—lived, would disappear from, or would be found dead. Their death map drive had also taken them within a block of the house of Wayne Williams.

  13

  The next afternoon, I attended an AA meeting with Lonnie Baker.

  The meeting took place every day during lunch in the back of his video store, in the fifteen by eighteen room that had once housed his Adult titles.

  Now a storage room, the walls were fronted by metal shelving filled with rental VCRs, video tapes, movie posters and other promotional materials, bulk kitty litter, paper towel rolls, office supplies, cleaning supplies and disinfectant, catalogs, clear plastic protective video box sleeves, and AA books and materials. Though mostly covered by shelves, the unpainted sheetrock walls were covered with movie posters. Behind the shelf directly in front of me were partially exposed promotional posters for The Boy Who Could Fly and Top Gun.

  A circle comprised of ten folding metal chairs was in the center of the room, a coffee pot on a small wobbly wooden table between the first shelf and the door. Three men sat on the chairs, each with a paper cup of coffee in his hand.

  I wasn’t a coffee drinker, but evidently that didn’t matter.

  Like Lonnie, the other two men were black and looked to be in their thirties. Unlike Lonnie, they were big men—one short and round, the other tall and thick everywhere including his hands.

  “Hi, I’m Lonnie and I’m an addict. I want to welcome John Jordan with us today,” Lonnie said. “Welcome John. We’re glad you’re here.”

  If the other two men were glad I was there I couldn’t tell. Neither said anything.

  “Roy, will you read the preamble for us?” Lonnie said.

  “Hi, I’m Roy, and I’m an alcoholic,” the large, thick man said in a deep, thick voice. “‘Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership; we are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.’”

  I shouldn’t be here, I thought. I have no desire to stop drinking. Not really.

  “Thank you, Roy,” Lonnie said. “Jerry, will you read how it works?”

  “Hi, I’m Jerry, and I’m an alcoholic,” the short, rotund man with large, gold glasses said. “‘Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest. Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it—then you are ready to take certain steps. At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely. Remember that we deal with alcohol—cunning, baffling, powerful! Without help it is too much f
or us. But there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now! Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon. Here are the steps we took, which are suggested as a program of recovery:

  “‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.’”

  “Thank you, Jerry,” Lonnie said.

  The readings were dry and stilted, the coffee lukewarm and bad, and I didn’t want to be here—I didn’t know if I was an alcoholic, but I did know I didn’t want to stop drinking—yet there was something affecting about the paltry gathering, something true and transformative about the words being so badly read, and when we said the Serenity prayer I felt a faint stirring of something curative at my core.

  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

  14

  That night our nameless group met at Ada Baker’s apartment.

  To my surprise it was in the same complex as mine.

  Like the victims and suspects of the Atlanta Child Murders, members of our group had far more connections, geographic and otherwise, than any of us had realized. Preston Mailer, the squat retired cop, lived in the apartment complex across the street. Melvin Pryor, the retired mail carrier, who was back despite quitting the group the last time we met, lived in a small house less than a mile away. But most surprising of all was the fact that the reporter and new member of the group, Mickey Davis, was seeing Kenny Pollard’s mom Camille, my neighbor who owned the consignment shop next to Scarlett’s, and had walked over from her apartment.

  Our connections made a certain sense. Scarlett’s became my bar because of its proximity to where I lived. Camille lived close to her shop. Ada used to walk to Scarlett’s, and her missing son Cedric Porter, who we were here to meet about, used to walk to his uncle’s video store.

  There was nothing surprising in any of it, though I found Mickey Davis’s involvement with Camille Pollard suspicious.

  Everyone in our lives is connected by an unseen web of geography, interests, and relationships. So why didn’t the task force search for the connections between Atlanta’s missing and murdered children and the suspects surrounding them?

  Ada Baker’s apartment was clean and tidy, but everything in it, what little there was, was worn, faded, and frayed.

  She was, like her brother Lonnie, slender and soft spoken with an essential sadness at her center.

  “Sorry I got nothin’ to offer y’all,” she said, “but . . .”

  “We didn’t come here to eat or socialize,” Ida said. “We’re here to help if we can. We just appreciate you havin’ us.”

  “Cedric ain’t called in a while,” she said. “He’a do that. Call every week for a while, then a few’a pass ’fore I hear from his again.”

  We were all sitting around the small living room, Melvin, Mailer, and Rose Lee on the couch, Ada in the recliner by the phone, Ida in the one opposite her, and the rest of us—me, Summer, Mickey, and Annie Bowers, the woman from the Free Wayne Williams Project—in wooden chairs pulled in from the dining table.

  “Do you mind if we ask you some questions?” I said.

  She shook her head. “Thought that why you here.”

  “Just wanted to make sure,” I said.

  “Rather than all us firing questions at you,” Ida said, “I asked John to ask the questions.”

  Ada nodded.

  “How certain are you that it’s Cedric calling you?” I asked.

  “Hundred percent. I know my boy, even with his voice changing, even with him growing into a man.”

  “How soon after he disappeared did the calls start?”

  “Not long. Day or two. He knew I’d be worried the killer got him so he call soon as he could.”

  “Has he ever said why he ran away, where he went, why he calls but won’t come back?”

  “Say he wasn’t safe no more. That he had to. He sorry but he had to. I tol’ him his safety all I care about. Say he’a come home when he can.”

  I nodded.

  “Would you mind taking us back through what happened the day he disappeared?” I asked.

  Before she could respond, there was a knock at the door.

  It was followed by Lonnie letting himself in carrying two brown paper bags of groceries.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I got soda and snacks.”

  “They’s just asking about the day Cedric disappeared,” Ada said.

  He nodded, sat the groceries down on the dining table, grabbed the remaining chair, and slid it over to join us.

  “Cedric wanted to watch a video,” she said. “I told him he could go straight up there and straight back.”

  Lonnie winced a bit, but she didn’t see it.

  Our eyes met and he gave me a small frown and the slightest shake of his head.

  How could a mother let her eleven-year-old son walk anywhere alone when a serial killer was killing boys who looked just like him?

  “I knew he’d be okay,” she said. “He was smart as a tack and wise to the streets. It just a short walk through them woods. Knew Miss Margaret and Miss Pollard keep an eye on him, not let anybody bother him. Knew his uncle look out for him once he got there, but he never did. He’d done it so many times before, but . . . he didn’t make it this one time.”

  One time is all it takes.

  “And nobody saw nothin’,” she said.

  Somebody did, I thought.

  “I was worried at first. Seen some strange ones at Miss Margaret’s place, but then he called and let me know he was okay.”

  “Were you at Scarlett’s when it happened?” I asked.

  “I was gonna go, went a little later, but he couldn’t wait. Wanted to get his movie and get back and watch it. So I let him go on ahead. I wasn’t too far behind him.”

  “And you never saw him?” I asked Lonnie.

  He shook his head. “Never came in. It was close to closing time. I could’ve already been gone or in the process of locking up, but . . . I never saw him.”

  I opened the file Frank Morgan had given me and glanced inside.

  “I was at home when the police called me,” Lonnie said. “I came back to the store. We searched all over—all the businesses inside and out, all around the building, in the woods, in the apartment complex. Ada and I were both given polygraphs. Cedric’s dad refused to take one.”

  There was one witness statement in the file. A college kid outside behind the bar said he saw Cedric running back toward the apartments, not toward the video store.

  “I see there was a witness who claimed to see him,” I said.

  Lonnie nodded. “Ronald Nolan. Never gave a good reason for being behind the bar, but said he saw Cedric running back toward the apartments. At first, I thought he tried my door but it was locked so he went home. But if he had he would have run into Ada on her way to Scarlett’s.”

  Unless he was lying and didn’t see him, or Ada was lyi
ng and wasn’t where she said she was.

  “There’s something suspicious about the guy—Ronald,” Lonnie said. “Something not quite right. I don’t trust him. And his story kept changing. Said he was on his way to his car, but that wouldn’t have taken him to the back of the building. Then he said he was smoking, but he was doing that inside. Why go outside to do it? Then he said he wanted some fresh air. None of it added up.”

  “But it don’t matter ’cause Cedric’s okay,” Ada said. “That’s all that matters.”

  15

  After the meeting, Summer and I walked to Scarlett’s, taking the same route Cedric had.

  By car, Memorial Manor was several blocks and minutes away from the little shopping center that held Scarlett’s, but by foot it was maybe a two-minute walk.

  Only a small wooded area separated the back of Memorial Manor from the back of the building that housed Lonnie’s Video, Peachtree Pizza, Second Chances, and Scarlett’s.

  It was a dark night and we walked slowly along the narrow but deeply hewn path.

  “What’d you think?” I asked.

  “It’s so sad,” she said. “Just a little supervision and . . .”

  “Did you pick up anything?” I asked.

  “Probably no more than you,” she said. “It’s obvious she’s lying.”

  “About?”