Children of Chicago Page 12

  His hand holding the pencil trembled.

  A knock at the door, and then a face, the blue face of a girl with black pools for eyes. Dark ringlets hugging her face.

  Van jumped to his feet. His chair fell behind him, landing on the concrete floor with a loud crash. He looked out the small window in the door, his heavy breathing casting fog on the glass. He looked left and then right. Nothing.

  He opened the door and scanned the empty hallway. Nothing. Then he looked down at the floor.

  One set of wet feet prints stood right at the door, nowhere else in the hallway.

  He slammed the door. He was seeing things he assured himself.

  Fin sat still in her seat, staring ahead of her.

  Van sat down. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He took it out and placed it on the desk. It was a text from Medina.

  “The hell was that?”

  “I fell,” he typed the letters quickly and then turned off his phone and placed it back in his pocket.

  The black and white streak was nothing, he told himself. Forget about it. Focus on questioning.

  “Can you tell me more about him? Where is he from? Where does he live?” At this point, he hoped the girl was just confused, that there was really a person and not her imagination behind this story.

  “Have you ever listened to the trees talk? The blades of grass sing? The rocks scatter across soil laugh. The symphony of the forest. That’s him. That’s his music.” Fin said. “He’s everywhere. You just have to listen for his song.”

  Van felt his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. His throat was dry. He asked the only question he could think of. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve read so many things about him.”

  “Where did you read these things about him?”

  “The internet. Other places,” she laughed softly to herself.

  “Can you give me a list of websites?”

  “Everything about him is on NeverSleep.”

  “NeverSleep?” He wrote down the words and underlined them.

  “His story is on there. You just have to find it. He’s hard to find. You find him only if he wants to be found. If he chooses you.”

  His shoulders felt tight. He wished he could get up and leave the room for a moment, to gather his thoughts, to get a drink of water. She sounded too confident in all of this.

  “You’ve seen him before?”

  “If he’s interested in you then you will see him in your dreams. You can see him when no one else can see him. Sometimes I see him out of my window. He stands beneath the streetlight and waves to me. He plays his song. He tells me he is going to give me whatever I want. The other people did not pay him, and so he took them all away.”

  “He took all who away?”

  “The children,” she said plainly.

  Van had managed interviews with people who were disturbed, but what struck him about Fin was how calm she was. There were no tears. There was no remorse. There was no anger. She was detached. Uninterested. The type of brutality that her and her friend had inflicted was shocking.

  So many stab wounds were not easy on a moving, fighting individual. There was clothing to tear through, skin, and fat, and bone. Each plunge of the knife brought more damage, and fight, and an attack. How could they stab a classmate so many times, and why?

  There was no regret. He had seen more remorse from teenagers when they had been called to the disciplinarian’s office when he was working as an onsite police officer at Orr High School just a few miles away.

  He looked back to his notepad and turned the page. The sound of the page flipping was the loudest thing in the room. Paper slicing through the air.

  Fin raised her head slightly.

  “Why do you need to know about him?” While she was reserved when she asked this, Van picked up a sense of defensiveness, almost protectiveness, for this person, this thing, this idea.

  “Because I think that the Pied Piper might have something to do with what is going on with you today.” He did not like saying the name, Pied Piper. It sounded archaic, and wrong. Maybe this was all just a kid’s game gone too far.

  She lowered her head back to her hands. “Oh, okay.”

  “Where did you get the knife?”

  “Mo,” she yawned.

  “And where did Mo get it from?”

  Fin placed her feet on the ground and sat up straight, stretching her arms above her head as she yawned again. “The kitchen. His house. Maybe his dad’s job? I don’t know, but it came from Mo.”

  “How did he pass it on to you?”

  “He sort of just shoved it into my hands...and there it was.” She waved a hand in the air. And then I don’t know what I did. It sort of just happened. It didn’t feel like anything really,” she said making repeated stabbing motions with her right hand. “It was like air.”

  It was then that Van really noticed her hands, covered in dried blood, splashes of paint, black and purple. Her fingers and nails were blue.

  “Been painting much?”

  “I like to paint,” was all she added, but nothing more.

  Van continued. “Who attacked first?”

  “I think Mo, and then I continued, and then Mo said, ‘Fin make sure they don’t escape.’”

  “You were afraid they would escape?”

  “If they escaped it wouldn’t work,” she shrugged.

  “What wouldn’t work?”

  Fin shook her head.

  “What wouldn’t work?” He repeated his question.

  She closed her eyes, stuck her index fingers in her ears and shook her head from side to side, shutting him out.

  Minutes passed like this. When she finally lowered her hands and opened her eyes he asked her again.

  “What wouldn’t work?”

  Fin looked at her fingers and picked at a flake of blue paint that had crusted over her fingernail. She refused to answer or to say anything.

  Van placed his pen on the pad of paper, crossed his arms and asked her again. “What wouldn’t work?” He needed this answer. What would not work? What was their motive?

  Fin’s voice was lower now. A rasp. “I want to be locked up so I can’t hurt anyone anymore. I knew this would happen. I knew we would get in trouble.”

  Van tried reading her face, but there was nothing. She was blank. He repeated the question, but Fin offered nothing new. The questioning stalled. He could not yell at her. He wanted to stand up, toss his chair across the room and scream in her face, demand to know why. What the hell did you do? What the hell were you thinking?

  But he could not do that. She was a minor, and the judge would be all over him if he tried to intimidate her.

  “Are you going to lock me up forever and ever until I die?” Fin asked sweetly.

  She was taunting him. She knew that. He knew that. Even though he had enough to take to the courts he still wanted to know precisely what occurred out in that park. He could only hope that Medina was able to get more information about why two children felt the need to sacrifice their classmates.

  CHAPTER 12

  “You should go home. Get some sleep.” Detective Washington stood over her. “You’re tutoring in the morning.” Lauren had finished digesting the notebook, making copies and taking her own series of notes. When she looked at her watch, she had to check the time again. It was past midnight.

  “I’ll sleep on the sofa here. If I’m lucky, I can get a few hours.”

  “McCarthy’s going to start charging you rent.” He looked her up and down. “You’re still in the clothes from the funeral, Medina. Go home. Shower. How are you supposed to meet with a kid in the morning like this? Smelling like a graveyard?”

  Lauren rubbed her eyes and groaned. She was tired, but there was just so much to do and not enough time.

  “I think it’s time you get out of here. Sleep in your own bed. Make coffee in your own machine. You don’t want to drink this Keurig shit t
hey have in the break room. You have to take care of yourself. No one else is going to do it for you.”

  Lauren fought a yawn and waved him over to her desk. “Before you fly off into the sunset I need your help.”

  “You didn’t listen to anything I said.”

  “I never do.”

  Washington eased down in the chair beside her desk. He moaned and his knees made soft popping noises as he stretched his legs out in front of him.

  “Do you think Frank will answer some questions for me?” She pointed to her notebook and then to her tablet. “He’s young, and everything I’m finding out online about this is that it’s part of some kid’s game.”

  “Kids’ game?” He questioned.

  “What Fin mentioned to Van, about the NeverSleep website. I did some searching and found a single story on the Pied Piper on the website. It’s more like instructions, but missing the final step.”

  The instructions were there, but not the nursery rhyme. You needed the nursery rhyme to complete the process, Fin had told Van before he wrapped up his questioning. To Van, it sounded like insanity. To Lauren, she knew it was all connected to that book sitting in Newberry Library.

  “It’s like Bloody Mary. You stand in front of a mirror and say Bloody Mary three times. She’s supposed to appear and...”

  “Kill you,” Washington laughed. “Kids have been doing that one for ages. Dumb isn’t it? Call up the very thing that will kill you. Why do people think that’s a good idea? I’m not saying I believe in any of it. I’m just saying I’m not going to risk it, that’s all.”

  “Look at these,” she grabbed her cellphone and brought up a folder of related pictures.

  Washington took hold of her phone as Lauren pointed.

  “It started at Hadiya’s shooting...”

  “Medina...” Washington started, but she cut him off.

  “This graffiti was right beneath where her body was found.”

  “I remember. I was there.” Washington said. “It’s just street art.”

  “No, it’s not just street art,” she searched through her phone for another image and showed it to him. “Then, yesterday when I drove past DePaul High School there was this.” She pulled up the graffiti scrawled across the entrance doors. “And then, last night there was this.” She pulled up the graffiti written down the trunk of the tree in Humboldt Park next to the bridge. “Pied Piper.”

  “It’s a new tagger, Medina. That’s all.”

  She put her hands on her forehead leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “No, it’s not.” She sat back up. “The writing is different in all of them. It’s not the same person. These three were written by three different people. Maybe it was Fin and Mo...”

  “OK, I’ll go with it. Who is the third person?” He folded his arms across his chest.

  “I don’t know. Maybe this Jordan kid who showed up to Humboldt Park after Hadiya was killed. There’s something more.”

  Washington sighed. “You’re reaching, Medina.”

  She ignored him, grabbed her tablet. “Here’s what else I found...”

  “Medina...I think you need to find your bed and get some sleep.”

  “No, Washington. Look at this.” She pulled up the website NeverSleep. She searched for the Pied Piper, and there it appeared. A short story, so simple, but so terrible.

  “This right here says if you light a candle, stand in front of a mirror in a dark room and say this nursery rhyme you can have whoever you want killed, by him.”

  Washington placed his hand on the tablet. “I want you to go home and get some sleep before I have to talk to McCarthy myself. Sleep deprivation is a very real thing, Medina. And you’re not well right now. Your divorce. Your dad’s funeral. It’s a lot.”

  Lauren hung her head, shaking it from side to side. “No. This is real. I feel it. I just need someone else to tell me I’m not crazy.”

  “I can tell you, you’re not crazy. You’re not even running on fumes. You have no fumes to run on. You’re tired. Take some time off.”

  “Can I talk to Frank?”

  Washington closed his eyes and shook his head. His mouth open, unaware of what exactly to say.

  “This specifically talks about kids in Chicago, in our city kids are conjuring up this thing to kill people.”

  “Why would kids even play this game, Medina?”

  “For the hope that something will get rid of their problem. For the hope that something will kill the very person making their life difficult, and for the hope that they will never be connected to that death. If you could have a person making your life miserable killed and know for certain you’d get away with it, would you do it? Look, this isn’t unheard of. Just follow me...”

  “I wish I wasn’t, but here I am diving in...”

  “People have always played these sorts of games, at sleepovers, camping. I mean, they’re more ritual than game, but people play them. They’ve gotten the instructions from siblings, friends or off in some dusty book somewhere. While people aren’t necessarily convinced they will work, they still believe that there’s a hint of a story there, an urban legend. Still, they play the game. They start the ritual. Set the candles, all because they want to look in that mirror they believe can become enchanted in that moment and see the shape of someone form. People want to believe, and maybe even them wanting to believe has driven them to act out what this ritual was intended to accomplish.”

  Washington drew in a breath of air, in through his mouth and exhaled, blowing the air out of his mouth. “Medina, you can talk to Frank if it will help you,” he said. “I want to help you. You’re the daughter of my best friend. I saw you grow up. You’re like the daughter I never had, and never wanted really. But, all I’ve wanted to do is protect you, just like your dad protected me. It’s late. Very late, but I’m sure we can wake him up.” He held out his cell phone. It was on speaker and already ringing.

  The phone rang three times before Frank picked up on the other end and mumbled “Everything alright?”

  “Yeah, sorry for waking you...” Washington said. “Medina wants to talk to you.”

  “What!?” The grogginess was knocked out of the boy’s voice.

  “Hey, Frank, I was wondering if you could answer a few things for me.”

  “Sure, Medina. What’s up? Look,” he lowered his voice. “Did I do something?”

  Washington interjected “Why? Something I should know about?”

  Lauren ignored them and continued.

  “You’re on speaker, and no, you’re not in trouble. I just need someone closer to high school age who may be able to give me some information. Or, let me know where I can get more information...because I’m...”

  “Old...”

  “Old?” Her mouth dropped. She was twenty-five. She did not think of herself as old but compared to a high schooler, or college freshman like Frank, she was ancient.

  Frank tried to recover quickly. “I mean older. It’s cool. I get it. No problem. What’s up?”

  She was the youngest homicide detective the department had seen in recent memory, but that did not matter. To Frank, and many of the teenagers she questioned, and sometimes arrested, she was old. Her colleagues at work did not see her that way. They saw her as someone who did not deserve to be here because she was too young, too inexperienced. A kid who did things her way, who did not ask for permission and took chances, no matter how treacherous her way of getting there. Maybe that is why she did not sleep, forgot to eat, and had perfected the five-minute shower because each and every minute she could be working she was, and not to prove herself to them. She was not here for her peers. She was here for the bodies in the street who needed someone to speak for them. She was their medium in a way, and she would do whatever she could to do right by the people of her city. If that meant making a deal with a demon, like the little boy made in Grimm’s “The Spirit in the Bottle,” she would. That little boy had been gifted riches and the powe
r to heal, all simply in exchange for letting the demon out of his bottle.

  Sometimes one needed to risk danger in order to save.

  “Pied Piper...” She brought herself back to her call with Frank.

  He did not let her finish her thought.

  “Whoa, you went there.”

  “I did. What do you know?”

  “It’s some game. Some, you know, Bloody Mary kinda game. You probably had that one when you were younger. Say her name three times in a mirror, and she appears and kills you. This one’s a little different. You turn off the lights, stand in front of a mirror, light a candle, and you say this nursery rhyme. The Pied Piper appears, and instead of scaring the hell out of you or killing you like Bloody Mary he kills whoever you want him to kill.”

  It was the grim reaper as a genie, she thought.

  “What’s the nursery rhyme?”

  He sighed. “That I don’t know. Lots of people don’t know, but it sounds like some people do know where to find it. I just didn’t care enough about it to go looking for it, you know what I mean? But for sure you need that rhyme. If there’s no rhyme, he won’t show. He just doesn’t show up by you saying his name in the mirror three or five times or whatever.”

  “How does he know who to kill?”

  “When he appears in the mirror you tell him the name of the person. He prefers to kill people by water.”

  “Like the Humboldt Park Lagoon?”

  “Exactly. Wherever there’s water, and a park, people say he’ll be more likely to appear. Say the nursery rhyme in the mirror, give him your target’s name, if you got it. Then wait. He’ll take care of the rest.”

  “What about the graffiti?”

  “That, no one really knows about. Yeah, we’ve seen it. Kids have seen Pied Piper writing all over town, but no one really knows who’s doing it. At least I don’t know. A warning, I guess, that he’s here, always watching.”

  “These kids are crazy nowadays,” Washington muttered. “This is all nonsense.”