I phoned Curry near midnight, at his home. Curry does a reverse commute, ninety minutes to our suburban office from the single-family his parents left him in Mt. Greenwood, a working-class Irish enclave on the South Side. He and his wife, Eileen, have no children. Never wanted any, Curry always barks, but I’ve seen the way he eyes his staffers’ toddlers from afar, what close attention he pays when a baby makes a rare appearance in our office. Curry and his wife married late. I guessed they’d been unable to conceive.
Eileen is a curvy woman with red hair and freckles that he met at his neighborhood car wash when he was forty-two. It turned out, later on, that she was a second cousin of his childhood best friend. They married three months to the day they first spoke. Been together for twenty-two years. I like that Curry likes to tell the story.
Eileen was warm when she answered the phone, which was what I needed. Of course they weren’t asleep, she laughed. Curry was, in fact, working on one of his puzzles, 4,500 pieces. It had all but taken over the living room, and she had given him one week to complete it.
I could hear Curry rumble to the phone, could almost smell his tobacco. “Preaker, my girl, what gives? You okay?”
“I’m okay. There’s just not a lot of headway down here. It’s taken this long just to get an official police statement.”
“Which is?”
“They’re looking at everyone.”
“Fah. That’s crap. There’s got to be more. Find out. You talk to the parents again?”
“Not yet.”
“Talk to the parents. If you can’t break anything, I want that profile on the dead girls. This is human-interest stuff, not just straight police reporting. Talk to other parents, too, see if they have theories. Ask if they’re taking extra precautions. Talk to locksmiths and gun dealers, see if they’re getting extra business. Get a clergyman in there or some teachers. Maybe a dentist, see how hard it is to pull out that many teeth, what kind of tool you’d use, whether you have to have some sort of experience. Talk to some kids. I want voices, I want faces. Give me thirty inches for Sunday; let’s work this while we still have it exclusive.”
I took notes first on a legal pad, then in my head, as I began outlining the scars on my right arm with my felt-tip pen.
“You mean before there’s another murder.”
“Unless the police know a damn lot more than they’re giving you, there’s going to be another, yeah. This kind of guy doesn’t stop after two, not when it’s this ritualistic.”
Curry doesn’t know a thing firsthand about ritualistic killings, but he plows through a few low-grade true-crimers a week, yellowed paperbacks with glossy covers he picks up at his used bookstore. Two for a buck, Preaker, that’s what I call entertainment.
“So, Cubby, any theories on whether it’s a local?”
Curry seemed to like the nickname for me, his favorite cub reporter. His voice always tickled when he used it, as if the word itself was blushing. I could picture him in the living room, eyeing his puzzle, Eileen taking a quick drag on his cigarette while she stirred up tuna salad with sweet pickles for Curry’s lunch. He ate it three days a week.
“Off record, they say yes.”
“Well, dammit, get them to say it on record. We need that. That’s good.”
“Here’s something strange, Curry. I talked to a boy who says he was with Natalie when she was taken. He said it was a woman.”
“A woman? It’s not a woman. What do the police say?”
“No comment.”
“Who’s the kid?”
“Son of a hog worker. Sweet boy. He seems really scared, Curry.”
“The police don’t believe him, or you’d’ve heard about it. Right?”
“I honestly don’t know. They’re tight here.”
“Christ, Preaker, break those boys. Get something on record.”
“Easier said. I kind of feel it’s almost a detriment that I’m from here. They resent me carpetbagging back home for this.”
“Make them like you. You’re a likable person. Your mom will vouch for you.”
“My mom’s not so happy I’m here, either.”
Silence, then a sigh from Curry’s end of the line that buzzed my ears. My right arm was a road map of deep blue.
“You doing okay, Preaker? You taking care of yourself?”
I didn’t say anything. I suddenly felt like I might cry.
“I’m okay. This place does bad things to me. I feel…wrong.”
“You keep it together, girl. You’re doing real good. You’re going to be fine. And if you feel unfine, call me. I’ll get you out.”
“Okay, Curry.”
“Eileen says be careful. Hell, I say be careful.”