Schmitty paused, waiting to see whether I had a question, which I didn’t.
“Nothing exactly shocking about him vanishing,” he continued. “Not at all uncommon for kids like him to cross over to East Saint Louis or take the bus over to Kansas City or Gary or up to Chicago. There are usually relatives or gangbanger friends who are willing to let a kid like this crash for a while. Eventually they get kicked out, come back here, and we pick ’em up.”
“So you think he’ll come back?”
“Maybe.” Schmitty glanced at Sammy and then turned back to me. “Or maybe he’s just gone.”
“Like, forever?”
“Also not uncommon,” Schmitty said. “And, frankly, not too many people around here are going to be shedding a lot of tears for Devon Walker if that’s the case.”
“Understood.” I nodded, hoping that would be enough information to satisfy his sister. “Thanks for looking into it.”
“Well”—Schmitty bowed his head—“when the royal family requests a favor, I comply.” He then reached into his desk drawer and removed a file. He set it on top of his desk. “This is an extra copy of Devon Walker’s juvenile record and incident reports. Because he’s a minor and there are ongoing investigations, it’s all confidential. Theoretically his family might be able to get it with a court order, but I’m not so sure about that.” He stood. “I have to go to the bathroom. You can see yourself out.”
“I will.” I stood up and shook Schmitty’s hand. “Thanks again.”
“Not a problem.” Schmitty walked around his desk. He left, leaving me and Sammy alone in his office.
“OK.” I opened my briefcase, then leaned over and picked up Devon Walker’s file. I slid the file into my briefcase and turned to Sammy. “You ready to go get that milk shake?”
Sammy didn’t respond. She didn’t move.
“Come on now.” I motioned to the doors. “Time to go.”
She stood up slowly. “Does that man know you’re taking his file?”
I smiled. “Yes and no.”
CHAPTER SIX
We sat in Daddy’s Booth in the back of Crown Candy. Sammy referred to it as “Daddy’s Booth” because my name was listed on a plaque hanging on the wall above the table. The honor was given to any person who had consumed five large malts in thirty minutes, which was actually the equivalent of drinking about eight regular malts.
The rules required a challenger to drink both the malt in each glass and the remaining mixture in the stainless steel cup that accompanied it. I had accomplished this goal as a teenager. My brother, Lincoln, had bet me his prize Ozzie Smith rookie card that I couldn’t do it, and, well, that was all the incentive I needed.
Sammy and I ordered our chili dogs and milk shakes. Then Sammy removed a thick book from her backpack. I had lost track of all the books that she was reading. She usually had three or four going at once, most having to do with a dragon, a supernatural cat, or a kid wizard.
As she started to read, I pulled Devon Walker’s file out of my briefcase. Part of me didn’t want to know. I would have rather sat back and just enjoyed the hustle and bustle of one of the country’s longest-operating soda fountains. Reading about Devon Walker’s doomed life was only going to make me depressed. Tanisha, however, was coming back to my office that afternoon. I wanted to show her that I had made an effort. Then maybe she’d see that there was nothing more that could be done and leave me alone.
I flipped through the file. It was in reverse chronological order. The most recent contacts with the police were on top, and his earliest contacts with the police and the court system were near the bottom of the file. Interspersed throughout were about a dozen photos.
I skipped the reports initially and just looked at the pictures. Near the top, there was a series of photographs taken by the police’s gang unit. The first two were mug shots. Devon Walker stood in front of a blank wall like it was a driver’s license photo. His expression was blank. His eyes were dead. He didn’t appear afraid, nervous, or angry. He was only sixteen, but getting arrested had become a way of life.
Then there were photographs of Devon’s tattoos. There were a few that appeared to be the names of girlfriends, which I’d mention to Tanisha and see whether she knew who or where they were. Most were gang references and symbols of the lifestyle. On his neck was a tattoo of a pair of dice. On his arm there was a gun, above it the words Blood Money.
The gang references were to three small cliques that had been terrorizing the north side of Saint Louis for the past seven years. These were not organized street gangs established to sell crack cocaine or other drugs, like the Bloods and Crips of the 1980s. They were just groups of three to ten kids who robbed, beat, raped, and got high because that’s what gangsters did. It was their destiny. A cop in Northern Ireland once coined the phrase recreational violence. That pretty much summed it up. The cliques filled a void.
Devon was one of the growing number of kids who were bored, uneducated, and disconnected. Violence was something they just did, because there was nothing else to do.
I turned to the next set of photographs, a little deeper in the stack, and the tattoos were gone. Then I found the next set, and then another. Devon was getting younger.
The pictures transported me back in time.
Eventually I got to the end. It was a picture of a six-year-old boy. He still had some of his baby fat. His eyes weren’t dead. They were wide and alive. He smiled for the camera, because that’s what a first grader does when his photograph is being taken. Didn’t matter that this picture was being taken by a cop.
The shock of seeing a picture of a little boy in a police file gave way to curiosity.
I flipped the page in order to figure out why he was arrested. The report was from a school resource officer. A classmate had told the officer that Devon threatened to “cut his lips off” on the playground, and the officer found a hunting knife in Devon’s backpack. Criminal charges were dropped because it was ridiculous to prosecute a child that young with the possession of a dangerous weapon on school property. But, under the school district’s zero tolerance policy, Devon was expelled for a time.
I flipped back to the photograph.
Devon Walker didn’t look much different than I did at his age—or much different than any other six-year-old black boy. I tried to imagine how somebody that young would know that stabbing or cutting another person with a knife was even an option. What had he seen others do? What had he heard?
Then I thought of Devon’s little brother, sitting alone in the front yard of their house.
“You OK, Daddy?” Sammy asked.
I looked up from the file. “I’m fine, tiger. Don’t you worry about your pops.”
CHAPTER SEVEN