Читать книгу Some Choose Darkness - Charlie Donlea - Страница 27

CHICAGO

August 1979

ANGELA MITCHELL SPENT TWO HOURS AMONG THE LIBRARY SHELVES, pulling books and skimming pages. She sat at the microfilm station and spun old rolls of newspaper articles that dated back to the summer of 1970, nearly a decade earlier. She scribbled notes until her uncanny mind saw clearly the pattern she suspected existed. She spent thirty minutes plotting her findings onto graph paper and creating a line chart that translated her findings to paper form so others might understand her discovery.

She organized her notes, returned the microfilm to the shelf, and hurried from the library. Catherine’s house was just two blocks from her own, and at 3:00 P.M., Angela pushed through the wrought iron gate that led to the front stoop. Even before Angela could knock, Catherine opened the door.

“Woman, it’s ninety degrees outside,” Catherine said as Angela walked up the front steps. “Why are you covered in denim?”

Angela looked at her jeans and button-down shirt. She was less concerned with how her fashion choices would react to the sweltering heat as she was with hiding the scabbed-over claw marks that covered her arms and legs.

“I’m behind on laundry,” she finally said.

“Come into the air conditioning.” Catherine pushed open the screen door and waved Angela inside.

They sat at the kitchen table. “So what got you so sick? Stomach bug?”

“Yes,” Angela said, glancing quickly into Catherine’s eyes, her first bit of eye contact, then back down to the table. “But I’ve been over it for the last few days. You know how Thomas worries.”

Thomas had pushed hard during the first year or two of marriage for Angela to mix with his friends’ wives. But Angela had always felt judged by them. They whispered about her when they thought she wasn’t listening, and treated her like a child when she didn’t respond to their boisterous ways. Catherine Blackwell was different. Angela felt accepted when she was with Catherine, who never asked foolish questions or gave confused looks when Angela grew quiet with anxiety. Catherine had always made her feel comfortable, and stood by her whenever anyone treated Angela badly. The first time the two ventured to lunch together, a condescending waitress had scolded Angela for not speaking loudly enough.

Speak up, honey.

Her name is Angela, not Honey, Catherine had said. And she’s almost thirty years old, not twelve.

From that moment, Catherine Blackwell was not only her protector, she was Angela Mitchell’s closest friend.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, no,” Angela said. “Thanks, though.”

“So what’s so urgent?”

“I know this is going to sound crazy,” Angela said, pulling a folder from her purse. It held newspaper clippings and her biographies of the missing women, in addition to the reams of paper from her latest research trip to the library. “But I’ve been looking into the women who have gone missing.”

This caught Catherine’s attention. “Looking into them how?”

“I’ve been collecting bits of information about them from the papers and from newscasts.”

Catherine pulled one of the pages across the table. It was a Chicago Tribune article about Samantha Rodgers, the latest girl who had disappeared from the streets of Chicago. Catherine had watched one of the news reports about the missing girl with Angela when they all had dinner together the week before. The girl’s picture was at the top of the article, a crease bent through her photo, where the clipping had been folded and stashed in Angela’s binder.

“Why are you collecting all this?” Catherine asked.

Angela looked up.

“I’m obsess—” Angela caught herself. Speaking the word “obsessed” out loud would be confessing to her friend the dark affliction that had plagued her life. It was unlikely, Angela understood, that Catherine hadn’t already recognized the signs of her condition, but Angela stopped herself, nonetheless.

“I can’t stop thinking about them,” she finally said.

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain. When my mind gets focused on something, it’s hard for me to . . . let it go. So I started collecting information about the girls, and I think I’ve found something.”

Angela spread the information across the table. She had printed articles from newspapers and microfilm at the library, as well as pages from the books she had referenced, and her own notes that filled the first third of her spiral notebook.

“Five girls have gone missing since spring. Here are the dates each disappeared.” Angela pointed to a different page. “Here is a list describing each victim—age, race, ethnicity, occupation, and physical characteristics, like hair color, skin tone, eye color. You get the idea.”

Angela pushed the handwritten list to Catherine.

“The police say each disappearance is random. They believe the same man has taken all of these women, but they believe there is no connection between each woman. From what I can tell, they’re right about that. The women, in relation to one another, have no association. But the police say The Thief strikes unsystematically. That’s not true.”

Catherine looked at Angela. “How long have you been working on this?”

“All summer. Since the women started to go missing. It’s all I do, really. All I’ve been able to think about. But in reality, I realized this morning that I’ve been working on it much longer than just this summer. I just wasn’t aware of it until now. Until I put it together.”

“What did you put together?”

Angela lifted a random sheet of paper from within the scattered Xeroxed pages. “Look at this. I categorized all the characteristics of each missing girl—age, race, occupation, physical qualities—all the things on that list you’re looking at—and then I went back to look not just at missing persons cases, but also homicides in and around Chicago that involved women who match those characteristics.”

Angela produced the handmade chart she had created at the library.

“Look here.” She pointed at the graph paper. “On the bottom of my graph are years starting in 1960 and going all the way through to today, the summer of 1979.” Angela ran her finger from left to right across the bottom of the page. “On the vertical axis is the number of homicides of women who fall into the category of these missing women. Again, age, sex, race, physical characteristics. Now look, from 1960 to 1970, the number of homicides that involved women who match these descriptions was flat.”

On the graph, a horizontal line ran from 1960 to 1970 without any substantial spikes or dips.

“But in 1970,” Angela said, “there was a sudden uptick in homicides involving these types of women.”

On the chart, Angela’s handwritten line spiked upward dramatically in 1970.

“These are all the homicides in Chicago?” Catherine asked.

“No. In 1970, there were more than eight hundred homicides in and around Chicago. This graph only represents homicides involving women who match the characteristics of the five women who have gone missing this summer.” Angela tapped the page again, tracing her finger over her graph. “The increase in homicides begins in 1970 and continues until 1972, then tapers out but stays high relative to the entire decade of the 1960s. Then, this year, 1979, there is a sudden drop again back to levels equal to the sixties.”

Catherine was nodding her head as she listened. “I see the increase and the decrease. But what does it mean?”

“Here’s my theory,” Angela said. “The same person who is taking women this summer has been killing these types of women since around 1970. Between 1970 and 1978, he was careless and brazen. But since the beginning of this year, he’s been more diligent. Instead of the police finding a body some weeks after a girl goes missing, now the women just disappear with no bodies being discovered.”

Catherine squinted her eyes as she began to see Angela’s theory come together. “You’re saying this person’s reign of terror spans, not just to this summer, but for the entire decade.”

Angela made eye contact again. Her second time. “Yes.”

Catherine sat back in her chair. “This is some crazy stuff you’re telling me.”

“But you see how it’s possible, right?” Angela asked.

“When you present it to me this way, yes. That’s assuming all your facts are correct.”

“They are.”

“And you got all this information from the library?”

“It’s all there for anyone to find. You just have to look in the right places and with the right ideas in mind. This guy, The Thief, he has a type. And he’s been preying on a specific type of woman for ten years.”

“So why has this guy suddenly become so careful this year? Why is he hiding the bodies so much better?”

“Good question,” Angela said. “What happened last year? What was the big story around here?”

Catherine shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Angela pulled more pages from her folder and passed them to Catherine. “Out in Des Plaines?”

Catherine’s eyes widened slightly when it came to her as she read the headline: KILLER CLOWN CLAIMS 33 AS MORE BODIES DISCOVERED.

“John Wayne Gacy,” she said.

“Correct. The police discovered a serial killer named John Wayne Gacy, who killed more than thirty young men and buried them in the crawl space of his home.”

“And what? The Thief got spooked by Gacy’s arrest?”

“Correct. Police activity picked up. The public was more diligent. And if the authorities had any ability to see patterns, they would have picked up on this one.” Angela tapped her homemade chart again. “So he changed from a killer to a thief. He still kills these women, I’m certain of it. He just hides their bodies better.”

“Angela, sweetheart,” Catherine said. “I don’t really know what to say. If this is correct, even if it’s only partially accurate, you need to take this to the police.”

Angela looked at Catherine again. “That’s why I need your help.”

“Anything.”

“I can’t go to the police. They’ll look at me . . .” Angela made brief eye contact again. “You know what they’ll think.”

“Bring Thomas with you.”

Angela was already shaking her head. “I can’t tell Thomas about this. He’s already worried about how I spend my days. If he knows I’ve been obsessing—”

The sound of her own voice uttering that word again caused Angela to scratch her shoulder through the fabric of her shirt. Frustration flared when her benign fingernails, clipped to the nubs, were unable to produce the searing pain she hoped for.

“Thomas would think this is an unhealthy way for me to spend my time.”

“But if it’s true, Angela. If what you’ve discovered is true, this transcends what Thomas thinks about how you spend your time.” Catherine tapped the graph. “If this is true, then telling the police could save lives.”

The front door opened and Catherine’s husband yelled into the house.

“Catherine, you home?”

“In here, hon.”

In a panic, Angela began gathering her research and stuffing pages back into the file folder as Bill Blackwell walked into the kitchen. He wore dirty jeans and a shirt covered in bits of concrete. Angela immediately recognized the appearance, since it was how Thomas often came home after work. Catherine’s husband wore a bandana, which hung loose around his neck. Angela remembered the red marks on his skin and his remarks from the other night about mosquitoes and an allergic reaction and his foreman quitting, which forced Bill to run the crews. Angela hadn’t even been aware that night, preoccupied as she was with her thoughts of the missing women, that she had comprehended Bill Blackwell’s words. Angela’s mind worked that way, absorbing everything around her and storing it all in the deep recesses of her brain. The catalogued information randomly floated from her subconscious until she was aware of its presence. It happened to her often. Her mind would whisper to her that she was aware of something, even if she didn’t quite grasp precisely what it was she understood. Then, later, the stored image or nugget of knowledge would break loose from the anchor in her mind and rise to the surface. But there was something else that caught her attention now. Angela tried not to look, tunneling her vision to the task of organizing her papers so she could leave as quickly as possible.

“Angela,” Bill said. “How are you? I didn’t know you guys were getting together today.”

Angela smiled and offered a quick glance at Bill Blackwell. Then the other image that had caught her attention came into focus. She saw another man in the background.

“This is Leonard Williams,” Bill said as the man walked into the kitchen. “He’s been working up at the Kenosha shop for me. I stopped home for a quick bite to eat before heading out to a job on the west side.”