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  I bounce-passed him the ball.

  He tried to shoot too quickly, before he even had the ball, and lost it as he went up.

  “You’ve got to catch it first,” I said. “Catch it. Gather yourself. Go up strong.”

  “I ’ow,” he said. “I ’ot ’is. Do it a’ain.”

  We did the same thing again. We got the same results.

  The next time, he caught and gathered, but was too small and weak to get the ball up over the rim.

  “Practice the right form,” I said. “Elbow straight, arch the ball, follow through. Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t go in. Just shoot it the right way.”

  “It ’oes ’atter, Yon,” he said.

  I shook my head, took a dribble and then a step-back jumper from about twenty feet.

  He squealed when it fell through the rim without touching anything until it hit the asphalt below.

  “Get your form right now,” I said. “Size and strength will come later.”

  I passed him the ball and he began dribbling. Unable to dribble between his legs, he lifted one and went under it to approximate the same move.

  “What’s for ’inner ’oonight, Yon?”

  I didn’t know a lot about Martin’s situation, had no idea what life was like for him once the apartment door closed behind him. He lived in the unit directly next to ours and I had seen several people come and go, but had yet to identify or meet anyone who would pass for parents.

  Of the little I had been able to gather, two constants had emerged. He seemed to never be supervised and to always be hungry.

  Lately, we had been taking to the kitchen to find something to feed him following our hoop exploits.

  “Whatta you want?” I asked. “You can have fish sticks or I could whip up some fish sticks.”

  He laughed. “Yon,” he said, holding out the ball.

  Since I rarely cooked, I kept very little food in what was the community kitchen of the EPI dorm apartment, but after Martin identified them as his favorite, I had maintained a large bag of fish sticks in the small freezer.

  “You decide buddy,” I said. “It’s up to you.”

  “’ish sticks,” he shouted.

  “Okay,” I said. “Make ten layups on each side and we’ll adjourn to the kitchen.”

  As he began his layup attempts, Frank Morgan pulled up in an unmarked.

  I smiled. I had called his office and left a message but had not told him where I was living.

  As Martin worked on his layups, I walked over to where Frank was parking.

  “How’d you find me?” I asked as he got out of the car.

  “Only white face in Trade Winds,” he said. “Wasn’t hard.”

  “Haven’t see a lot of those in here,” I said toward his car.

  “Kind we send in here are far more unmarked,” he said. “The hell you doin’ livin’ in a place like this?”

  I told him.

  “Your dad says y’all aren’t speaking.”

  “I’m speaking. Just not doing exactly what he wants me to right now. Pretty much a first. Least on anything that really mattered to him.”

  “We’ve got a spare bedroom,” he said. “Welcome to it long as you like.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot. But this is where I’m supposed to be.”

  All around us the desultory sounds of poverty, of idleness, of listlessness, and waste, rose and fell, ebbed and flowed, sat still and swelled.

  Grown men gathered around conversations of no consequence. They had no job, no purpose, nowhere to be. Women too-early old sitting on front door stoops, fanning themselves, watching the world spin by, spin away from them. Always away. Young men working in vain on vehicles that would never run again. Other, younger young men dealing substances to escape the disappointment and misery. Competing radios and game shows on too-loud TVs.

  Ragged, rundown buildings around an asphalt parking lot dotted with a billion black stains from careless spills, discarded trash, and oil-leaking low riders, waves of shimmering heat rising up from all of them in the suffocating, will-breaking afternoon sun.

  Martin continued attempting layups, his lack of success not from lack of effort or enthusiasm.

  “When’d you adopt him?” Frank asked.

  I laughed.

  He shook his head. “Looks an awful lot like the little faces on the list.”

  He was right. He did. I hadn’t consciously made the connection. Why hadn’t I? What was my subconscious up to?

  “Speaking of . . .” I said. “Why didn’t LaMarcus Williams make the list?”

  He smiled knowingly. “There it is. That’s why you called.”

  “Yon, Yon,” Martin yelled when he finally got one to go. “You ’ee ’at?”

  “I did. Very nice. Keep it up. Just like that. Same way every time.”

  “LaMarcus Williams,” Frank said. “That’s the kid snatched out of his backyard on Flat Shoals. Too much was different from the others to make the list.”

  “There are a lot of differences between the ones that made the list.”

  “Told you. The list is arbitrary.”

  “Forget the girls and adults,” I said. “Forget all but the true pattern cases of asphyxiated young boys. LaMarcus fits their profile, right? Why’d they make the list and he didn’t?”

  “He wasn’t a poor inner city street kid. He was snatched from his backyard. He wasn’t taken far. Found pretty soon after he was killed. And there were differences in the way he was killed. Can’t remember what exactly, but . . .”

  “Were there suspects? Was Williams looked at for it after he became the prime suspect in the other cases?”

  “That I can’t tell you,” he said.

  “Can you put me in touch with the lead detective on the case?”

  He nodded. “That I can do.”

  15

  We ain’t much,” Ida Williams said. “But we are faithful.”

  I knew where the faithfulness came from. I knew why this small group continued to meet some four years after Wayne Williams was sentenced to serve two life sentences. They had seen what a small group of passionate people could do. If not for the three victims’ mothers––Camille Bell, Willie Mae Mathis, and Venus Taylor––forming STOP and pressuring the police, politicians, and the white power structure, who knows how long it would have taken for a task force to be formed.

  “Mule headed more like it,” Melvin, a large black man, said.

  “We surely are that,” Ida agreed.

  The gathering of the faithful took place in the back corner of the Safe Haven daycare center and included Ida, Melvin, a tall, thin woman named Rose Lee, a squat, muscular, fireplug of a man named Preston Mailer, and to my delight and surprise Jordan Moore.

  Mailer was a retired cop. He along with everyone but me and Jordan were black.

  “Wanna welcome our new member,” Ida said. “This is John Jordan. He’s new to Atlanta but has been followin’ the case a long time. He’ll be a real asset to the group.”

  “Thank you for havin’ me,” I said. “I’ve been interested and invested in this case since childhood and I look forward to being involved in the work y’all are doin’.”

  “By way of introducin’ John to our group and for us to hear from him, I thought we’d do one of our round robin brainstorm sessions tonight,” Ida said.

  Everybody indicated their assent.

  “We learn by sharin’, by aksin’ questions––of each other and ourselves. Nobody got to agree with anybody on anything. Only rule is be courteous.”

  “That means you, Preston,” Rose Lee said.

  “Never been anything but,” he said.

  “Anything but a butt,” she said.

  It was said in good humor and everyone laughed.

  “We’re a diverse group, John,” Ida said. “Some believe Wayne Williams was set up, that he’s completely innocent.”

  Preston raised his hand.

  “Some think he’s guilty of all twenty-nine on the list plu
s some.”

  Rose Lee raised her hand and smiled.

  “Others, like myself and Jordan, think it possible Wayne Williams did some of ’em but just as possible he didn’t. We just ain’t convinced either way. What we think more likely is if he did ’em, he didn’t do ’em all.”

  I nodded.

  “Why don’t we start with what John thinks,” Jordan said.

  “Good idea,” Ida said. “John?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve studied and studied the case against Wayne Williams––and I’ve had access to a lot of task force documents and information the general public hasn’t––but I just––”

  “How?” Preston Mailer asked.

  “Let the young man talk, Preston,” Ida said.

  “How what?” I asked.

  “How’d you get task force documents and information?”

  Preston Mailer was a large, fleshy, light-skinned black man with thinning and receding gray hair on top of his huge head. His thick, swollen-looking skin was the color of river clay, a hint of red hue in it, his face dotted with dark freckles and moles the size and shape of the small black specks deposited in the filter of a faucet connected to an old copper pipe.

  “My dad’s in law enforcement,” I said. “We had a friend on the task force.”

  “Who?”

  I shook my head. “Won’t tell you that.”

  He huffed, frowning and shaking his enormous head.

  “So you’ve had access to this information the general public doesn’t have . . .” Jordan said.

  “And I still don’t know. I go back and forth. Sometimes I think in spite of the weak case against Williams, he really is the killer––the main serial killer who killed with a certain pattern. Other times I think he’s innocent not only of what he was charged with but the other murders as well. The fibers are compelling . . . but there are some problems with them.”

  “Such as?” Preston said.

  “Trace evidence––hair and fibers and other substances exchanged during contact––should work both ways. Hair from Williams’s dog and fibers from his carpet shouldn’t just be found on the victims, but some of their hair and fibers should’ve been found on him––or in his home or car.”

  Everyone nodded, including Preston.

  “There are other problems too,” I said. “The fibers they found on some of the victims and tied to Williams aren’t as rare as the prosecution claimed. And in at least one case, the prosecution matched fibers found on one of the victims to a car the Williams didn’t own at the time.”

  I had everyone’s attention, but most enjoyed Jordan’s.

  “What about there not being such a thing as a black serial killer?” Preston said.

  “That’s been the conventional wisdom,” I said, “but it’s just not true. There have been others before Williams and the more data the FBI gets, the more they see it’s far more common than anyone knew.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t buy it. Serial killers are white males, eighteen to thirty-five.”

  “Most are,” I said. “But not all.”

  “What else?” Jordan said. “Keep on.”

  Was she reconsidering going out with me? She was certainly responding to me in a way she hadn’t before.

  “You started by saying the fiber evidence is compelling,” Rose Lee said.

  “It is,” I said. “The sheer volume of it is staggering. And that it can link Williams’s environment to so many of the victims.”

  “His environment,” Ida said. “Exactly. Did anyone ever look at his dad? Could Homer Williams have committed the crimes?”

  “Or Faye?” Jordan said.

  “Good questions,” I said. “I don’t know the answers.”

  “But what else makes you suspect Wayne Williams?” Rose Lee asked.

  “There’re a lot of things. I don’t put a ton of stock in them, but I don’t totally discount the eyewitnesses who testified they saw Williams with some of the victims. The way in which he lies and exaggerates. His behavior in general, but after he began being followed by the police in particular––calling a press conference and the things he said, leading police to the houses of people connected to the case, failing lie detector tests, his interest in law enforcement.”

  “Which you and I share with him,” Preston said.

  I nodded. “But we were never busted for impersonating an officer.”

  “He was?” Jordan asked.

  “He was. He also showed up at one of the crime scenes offering to take pictures for the cops.”

  “Really?” Preston said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “His outbursts on the witness stand,” I continued. “The way he changed so drastically. But more than anything else except the hairs and fibers is the entire bridge incident. During the weeks of river and bridge stakeouts, Williams was the only one to ever be stopped. What was he doing there? Why did he turn around and cross over the bridge again? He lied about what he had done earlier in the evening. It was three o’clock in the morning and the reason he gave for being there was bullshit. He said he had an audition the next morning with Cheryl Johnson and he had driven around trying to verify where she lived and when he couldn’t, he went in search of a pay phone. No one, not the police, not the FBI, not the press, not the defense team has ever been able to find this Cheryl Johnson. This was the biggest, highest profile case since . . . maybe ever. You don’t think if she existed she would’ve come forward by now?”

  Everyone seemed to be pondering what I was saying––even Preston.

  “Then there’s the report that a small piece of rope and a change of clothes were found in his station wagon the night he was pulled over on the bridge,” I continued. “There were also drops of blood found in the station wagon that were the same type as at least two of the victims. Witnesses say he and his dad were seen burning clothes and papers and other things that could be considered evidence in their backyard once he became a person of interest in the case. And I know a lot of people don’t, but I put a lot of stock in the profile––and the fact that the two FBI profilers who worked the case, Roy Hazelwood and John Douglas, believe Williams to be guilty. All that said, I still can’t be certain––which probably has more to do with the way the evidence was handled than questions about the evidence itself.”

  As was often the case, when I finished going through the case against Williams, I was convinced he was responsible for the killings. Unanswered questions would eventually cause doubt to creep back in, and I would never be convinced he killed everyone on the list, but in that moment I believed him to be the serial killer responsible for the serial killings within the greater list of victims.

  “What about the killings that’ve happened since Wayne was arrested?” Preston said. “How can you explain those?”

  “Same way you explain the ones that weren’t part of the pattern while Wayne was out,” I said. “Someone else is doing them. Probably several someone elses. To me, the serial killer––whether it’s Williams or someone else––killed serially, as part of a distinct pattern in a particular way. I’d say the young black males who were asphyxiated were part of that pattern. The others, and there were and still are many, were done by others for other reasons. That means the famous list is wrong. That means that you have to exclude females and adults and the young males who were stabbed or shot. And what you have following Williams’s arrest are mostly stabbings and shootings.”

  “You may be right,” Preston said. “But if you are that means the two victims Wayne was actually convicted of killing shouldn’t’ve even been on the list to begin with.”

  I nodded.

  “And that my brother should’ve been,” Jordan said.

  “Your brother?” I asked in surprise.

  “LaMarcus,” she said.

  “My boy,” Ida said. “She’s his sister. Me and her daddy married when the kids were still little.”

  I nodded.

  “So why ain’t he?” Ida asked. “Why ai
n’t my son on the list?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but it’s the first thing I intend to find out.”

  16

  Wow,” Jordan said. “You really breathed new life back into our little group.”

  We were walking down the breezeway after having locked up, the others milling around the parking lot, making sure not to leave her alone with the new member obsessed with murder.

  “They’re lingering,” I said, nodding toward them.

  “They’re protective,” she said.

  “I get it,” I said. “What they’ve been through, what they’ve seen. I’m glad they are.”

  “They’re sweet,” she said. “They’ve been with me through a lot over the years.”

  “I had no idea LaMarcus was your brother,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “No way you could’ve known.”

  The diamond in her wedding set glinted in the light of one of the overhead Fluorescent bulbs.

  “I also didn’t know you were married when I asked you out,” I said. “Sorry. You weren’t wearing your ring and . . .”

  “Please don’t apologize,” she said. “It was the kindest, most flattering thing to happen to me in a long time. I take them off at work. They snag on everything.”

  “The truth is I saw the tan line and asked anyway. I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s just an excuse,” she said.

  “Huh? What is?”

  “Work.”

  “I’m––”

  “I don’t just take my rings off because they snag,” she said. “I . . . I’m . . . It’s not your fault. I’m sure you were just pickin’ up on . . . my . . . I’ve said too much already. You’re too easy to talk to.”

  “Please,” I said.

  “I’m in a situation I’ve needed to be out of for a very long time,” she said. “I just haven’t been able to find a way out and . . .”

  “And?”

  “And I’m sure you were pickin’ up on my attraction too. I’ve never . . . I can’t remember it . . . it’s never been quite so immediate or . . .”

  “Come on, slowpokes,” Preston called. “I’m ready to go home.”