Schmitty and I stood back up. “Those are disposable handcuffs,” he said. “One loop. Heavy-duty nylon. Zip it on. Impossible to get off. You can buy them at any army navy store. Police use them in riot situations or when they’re making multiple arrests during a raid.” He turned back and looked over the field of bodies. “They all had them. Hands secured behind their backs.” Schmitty started walking back the way we came. “Like I said, the guy had a system.”
He led me away from the scene and toward the road. “Now as for you, his family probably don’t like the cops too much, so we were hoping you could help us get some information about what Devon was doing before he disappeared, new people he was hanging with, rivals, anything.”
“I can try, but it means more time and probably getting the mother and grandmother to talk. Nobody has been able to tell me too much so far.” I dodged a branch from a tree, then asked an unrelated question. “Who found them?”
The tree cover over our heads started to break, allowing the Missouri heat to come back. “Hiker found them,” he said, “doing that geocaching stuff.”
Schmitty stopped at the edge of the trees, before the full sun came down, put his hands on his hips, and caught his breath. If we were going to continue talking, we might as well stay a little cooler in the shade. “Anyway, the current theory is that our perp couldn’t bury the newer bodies deep enough because of the rock in this area. So the oldest ones were in the deepest holes.”
Schmitty wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. “Some critter found Devon, or who we think is Devon. Kid got dug up, and that’s how the hiker found him. He called the cops. The local sheriff checked it out, and then this morning we were cleared by the medical examiner to poke around a little more. That’s when we found the others.”
Overhead, there was the sound of a helicopter. Schmitty stepped out into the break. I followed him, and we looked up at the helicopter and then at the cluster of vehicles down the road.
“Media bastards.” Schmitty shook his head. “Now we’re in for it.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
One of the many mysteries of Saint Louis is its absurd traffic patterns. It doesn’t matter if you’re going into the city or leaving the city or cutting across the city. Even with more than half the town’s population drained away, traffic is jammed up in every direction.
And so I found myself crawling across the county border into Saint Louis. An exit came up ahead. It wasn’t the one I wanted, but I took it. I’d rather go twenty miles an hour on a side street than sit in traffic for another thirty minutes. I cut across the highway, took a couple of turns, and found Taylor Avenue heading north.
It wasn’t bad scenery at first, filtering through the neighborhoods. There were a few churches, some nice cafés, and the Central West End’s beautiful brownstones.
Then I crossed an imaginary line, and everything dimmed. Cafés were replaced with dirty fast-food restaurants. Churches went from majestic to pop-up, and the brownstones devolved into a mix of questionable housing, pawn shops, and dollar stores.
I checked the address on my notepad again, took a couple more turns, and returned to the cluster of houses on the edge of nothing. Tanisha Walker’s little brother was in the same place, sitting in the dirt, alone in the front yard.
Yuppies and new urbanists always talk about the need for green space. Well on the north side there was plenty of green space, just not the right kind.
I walked past the little kid, but I didn’t stop. At the door, I knocked and waited. Nobody came, although I could hear noise inside. It sounded like live voices, maybe a radio in the background. I knocked again, louder. This time the stronger, faster movement of my arm hurt.
There was life from inside. “Who is it?”
“Justin Glass.” I waited a moment for a response, but nothing happened. “Tanisha hired me to look for her brother.”
“Don’t know nothing about that.” There was a little more commotion, another voice—too muffled to understand—joining the conversation.
“If you could just open the door so that we could—”
An argument had started beyond the door. It grew louder, and I stopped talking because nobody was listening to me.
I turned and looked back at the boy, who I hoped was named Deon, not Dice. He watched me with the same intensity as his sister. He didn’t smile or wave. He just watched as I stood alone on the porch, waiting for it all to play out inside. Then a deadbolt turned. A chain was unhooked, and the door opened.
Tanisha stood in front. Behind her was a well-worn older woman with her skinny arms crossed tight before her. She didn’t like the look of me. That much was clear.
I took a step back from the door. “Tanisha, wondering whether I could talk to you and your mom.”
Tanisha cocked her head to the side. “Find Devon?”
I nodded. “Maybe.”
Tanisha turned and looked at the older woman behind her. “It’s OK, Mama. See?” She touched her mother’s arm, reassuring her. “He’s just my lawyer.”
We sat around the kitchen table. I was on one side. Tanisha and her mother were on the other. Auntie and Grandma had materialized and lingered behind them, shooting me suspicious looks. A half dozen kids of various ages came in and out. The radio continued, now joined by a television in the background. Not another man to be seen.
“I don’t know if you know this, Ms. Walker, but Tanisha came to my office a few weeks ago and asked me to help her find Devon.”
Tanisha’s mom leaned back in her chair. “First I heard of that.”
“Well she’s a persistent young lady.” I looked at Tanisha and nodded, then looked back at her mother. “It wasn’t too much trouble to help out,” I lied. “Called a contact down at the police station. There wasn’t much information, at first, but then I got a phone call today.”
Tanisha’s eyes widened, excited.
“In jail, ain’t he?” Tanisha’s mother locked her arms across her thin body again. Her arms were mostly bone and bruises with a few needle marks.
“Afraid not, Ms. Walker.” I took a breath, trying to keep my upper body still while thinking about how best to phrase it. “They’re going to be running some tests, but the police think they found his body in a wooded area about an hour from here.”
Tanisha’s face tightened, but her mother’s expression didn’t change. I continued to tell her everything I knew. There were no tears or anger. No wild sobs or whispers, just acceptance, like she’d known all along this conversation was coming her way, in one form or another.
It was a safe bet, with a young man like her son.
Maybe the tears came later, maybe not.
I didn’t stay too much longer. I warned them that the police would be stopping by, and I encouraged them to cooperate. I told them that the police were going to need more information about who Devon was hanging around with and whether they knew anybody who might’ve done it.
“I already told you everything.” Mrs. Walker wasn’t interested in talking to the police, and she certainly didn’t want them to drop by. The idea that she might cooperate with the police was crazy. “Only cause more problems than I already got.”