Читать книгу Mourn The Living - Henry Perez - Страница 7

Oakton, Illinois, present day

The next newspaper story bearing Jim Chakowski’s byline would be the biggest of his long and successful career. All Chakowski had to do now was live long enough to write it.

Chakowski knew he could not let his guard down, not for an instant. Right now his life depended on his ability to stay cool, focused, and aware. He was good on two of those three—his cool had checked out a few days ago.

Navigating through the crowded downtown street festival, Chakowski did his best to avoid eye contact, while still remaining fully in touch with his surroundings. A thousand or more people had gathered along three city blocks to listen to the REO Speedwagon cover band, drink beer, and just hang out.

Though Chakowski had grown up in Oakton—one of Chicago’s largest suburbs—worked here his entire adult life, made the place his own, it all felt foreign to him now on an otherwise pleasant October evening. He’d spent more than two decades writing Oakton’s story, chronicling the lives of its people—the powerful and the not so. But now he felt like a virus the city was determined to purge.

Like a familiar stranger, he sensed the edgy glances and heard the whispers, real or imagined, as he weaved past people who were too tuned in to the music, or engaged in their own conversations to know what was going on. The size and density of the crowd was preventing Chakowski from doing what he desperately wanted to do—run to his car, lock the doors, and drive away as fast as he could.

The sound of drumbeats and electric chords bounced off Oakton’s century-old downtown buildings along Clinton Avenue and conspired with smoke from grills to make Chakowski’s head pound and his stomach churn. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, but this was no time for small concerns.

He glanced back after every few steps. Was that guy, the one in the St. Louis Cardinals cap, following him? What about that other one, over by the beer stand? Did Chakowski recognize him?

Once most of the crowd was behind him, Chakowski started walking faster, almost running, cutting down a side street, then another. The music and crowd noises fading away into the night, he rushed to his five-year-old metallic green Elantra, scanning the dark street from one end to the other before getting in.

As he emerged from his parking space, Chakowski noticed someone standing in the shadow of an alley. He thought about driving straight to the offices of the Chicago Record, his professional home for more than a quarter century, the only place he’d ever worked since graduating from journalism school. But he was much closer to his home, five minutes away or so, and the road didn’t feel safe right now.

Chakowski would write the story at home, give it a quick revision, and email it in. Then he would drive to his office at the Record, and guide it through the editorial and layout process.

He kept his eyes on the sideview mirror. As he watched the orange glow of downtown Oakton being swallowed up by darkness, Chakowski estimated it would take him no more than a couple of hours to bang out a story that would change his hometown forever.

The business district now in the far distance, Chakowski noticed a set of headlights some thirty yards back. Lots of people in Oakton, he thought. Even more on a night like this one, when the town throws a party. That’s probably a family of four back there. Kids already asleep in the backseat.

The headlights were still there four blocks later, then six. Right turn—still there. Chakowski’s heart was trying to punch its way out of his chest. Sweat, cold and thick, gathered along his brow and washed down the middle of his back.

Chakowski gripped the wheel like it was a lifeline. No longer worried about taking the shortest way home, he turned left, sped up, then left again a block later, and fixed his eyes on the mirror.

No lights, now. The road was his, and for a moment Chakowski remembered why he loved this town.

Over the years he had turned down offers to work at bigger papers in cities that made national news much more often. He had instead dedicated himself to becoming a big frog in a midsized pond. He’d gotten to know all of the players in the city’s government and business, and in the process became something of a player himself. But the ground had shifted under him over the past year, and now he finally understood why.

He leaned on the gas and kept the car moving just a bit over the speed limit. Driving down one of Oakton’s wide, quiet streets, his pulse retreating toward normal, Chakowski began to wonder how much of this fear was the product of his writer’s imagination.

Then Chakowski realized he had become disoriented, lost track of where he was. He turned north—no wait, west. Finally, he gave in just a little and pulled over. Peeling his hands off the wheel, Chakowski wiped the sweat from his forehead and neck, and leaned back in the driver’s seat until his breathing found its natural rhythm.

As he drove off a minute later, Chakowski spotted a mailbox at the next corner. That triggered something in his mind. He pulled up next to it, popped open the glove compartment, and withdrew an envelope.

He wondered whether there was any real reason to mail it, or if the information he’d hastily cobbled together and shoved into the envelope would make any sense to anyone else. This seemed so much more important an hour ago, when Chakowski’s thoughts were rabid with fear.

But Chakowski knew his concerns were real and well justified, and the reasons behind them had not changed. He stepped out of the car, peering in all four directions down the murky streets before dropping the letter into the box and hurrying back to his car.

After finding his way to a major street, Chakowski had his bearings again. He decided it was time to go home.

His house was in one of Oakton’s older neighborhoods. An area that had undergone a transformation over the past decade as young couples, many with small children, had replaced the older ones. Chakowski didn’t have children, and it had been some time since he’d been half of a couple. He’d lived alone all of his adult life, and now that he was in his mid-fifties, Chakowski understood it would be like that the rest of the way. He’d planned on marrying, once upon a time, starting a family, all of it, but the job always seemed to get in the way.

No, it hadn’t gotten in the way. The job had been the way.

“You’re either a good reporter or a good family man,” Chakowski had once explained to his father. “Being both would require two lifetimes.”

His well-maintained two-story colonial near the end of a long street of nice homes with large yards had been there for more than sixty years. Chakowski slowed to a deliberate cruise as he turned onto Dwight Street. He stared into the vague shadows that gathered around large trees and near the far end of long driveways.

Slowing down to just above a crawl, Chakowski drove past his house. Then he repeated the exercise, approaching from the opposite direction. He’d never before realized just how many hiding places his neighborhood could provide to anyone wanting to do some harm.

After the third pass, Chakowski was as convinced as he could be that no one was waiting for him in the dark. He swung the Hyundai into his driveway, then sat for a moment, letting the headlights bathe the front of his garage. Everything appeared exactly as it should.

But as he stepped out of his car Chakowski heard a jingling sound from somewhere nearby—right behind him. He ducked by the rear driver’s side door, then inched toward the back of the car to get a look. Peering around the trunk of his Elantra, Chakowski saw the next door neighbor’s teenaged son getting into a beater that was parked on the street. Chakowski felt foolish, and even more certain that he just needed to get this over with. Get the story written, buckle in for the fallout, then go on from there.

The only other car parked on the street was a widow neighbor’s white Cadillac, right where the old woman began leaving it some years ago when backing out of her driveway started to become a challenge. The more Chakowski surveyed his surroundings, the more it looked like just another night in Oakton.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing out of place. Nothing to worry about.

The house was dark, just as he’d left it. No reason to leave security lights on in this neighborhood. He wanted to approach his house as he would on any other night when he came home from work at 1 A.M., or later if he stopped to grab a drink with his colleagues. Instead, Chakowski walked to his front door the same way he’d approached his car—aware and alert, searching for any movement in the dark.

But the only moving shadow was his own, spreading across the front lawn, then climbing up the thick old ivy that clung to the façade of his house. He made a final, careful scan of his front yard and the street beyond, then keyed the lock, turned the knob, stepped inside, and quickly closed the door.

Chakowski did not turn on the lights right away, choosing instead to wait for a moment in the dark, his back pressed against the front door. Gradually, Chakowski’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and all seemed right in what he could see of his living room.

He listened for the sound of movement in his home’s creaky wood floor, but heard none. Then he recognized the low-pitched buzz of the humidifier coming from his bedroom upstairs. And the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. He waited another minute, then two, but heard nothing else.

I’m acting like a frightened fool, he thought.

That was something Jim Chakowski had never been, and he decided right then, at that moment, that he’d filed too many hard-earned stories, tangled with far too many would-be tough guys, to start acting like a child now. Lose your nerve and it’s gone forever.

This was his town, the one he’d written about and helped to define in the minds of his readers, for more than twenty-five years. And it was his life, the one he’d sacrificed to build, one byline at a time. He would not let fear enter into the equation.

Chakowski pulled back the curtain, and took a defiant look through the window at the dark, empty street beyond. Then he dropped his keys on the side table by the door and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened.

He turned back toward his living room. The light from a lamppost across the street spilled in through the window, past the curtain that he’d drawn, and reached to the far end of the room, well beyond what he could’ve seen before in the dark. But Chakowski didn’t recognize what he saw. There were papers littered across the beige carpeting, a table was turned over, and his bookshelves had been emptied, their contents thrown to the floor.

Chakowski didn’t know what to make of the sizzling sound that seemed to be moving through the walls. Then he heard a muted pop coming from somewhere in the basement.

But only his neighbors heard the explosion, an instant later.