Killing Red (18 page)

Chapa sensed that no one else at the bar had heard him when he called out to Annie Sykes, or at least the four other drinkers had chosen ignore it. He eased back onto the stool and motioned for the bartender to come over.

“That server, will she be coming back?”

The bartender’s features had been chiseled by an uncertain hand, giving him something of a 40’s tough guy look beneath his shoulder-length hair. He shook his head without making eye contact and continued wiping the bar.

“Nope. She just closed her money out,” he said in a barrel-deep voice.

“Let me pay for my drink.”

The guy looked up from what he was doing. He probably knew Chapa had already paid, but said nothing about that when a twenty dollar bill appeared on the counter.

“Could you ask her to come back out for a minute.”

He studied Chapa for a moment.

“Sure, unless you’re her father, or a cop, or something.”

“No, I just know her from way back.”

The twenty disappeared from the top of the bar, then the guy vanished through the same doors that had swallowed up the woman a couple of minutes earlier. Chapa could hear voices coming from the other side, not yelling, but loud enough to suggest an intense discussion.

When the bartender returned he had a much less accommodating expression on his face.

“She’s left already.”

Chapa looked over at the doors and wondered if Annie was standing on the other side, listening.

“Will she be working tomorrow?”

“No idea, sport, why don’t you stop by and find out.”

Chapa thought about asking for his twenty back, but knew there was no point in it.

“Can you tell me her first name?”

The bartender looked around like he was worried someone was watching him.

“C’mon buddy, it wasn’t that great of a drink,” Chapa said.

The guy checked out his immediate area a few more times then leaned across the counter and wiped its front edge.

“Angie.”

Chapa finished his drink in one quick tilt, thanked the bartender with a silent nod, and made for the door. He noticed how the bouncer’s gaze followed him. When Chapa stepped outside, the thick steroids case in the undersized black muscle-T was just a few casual but calculated steps behind.

The sun had ducked beneath the buildings, and dusk would soon give way to night. Chapa walked around the side of the building in the general direction of his car, but also toward a door he had seen on his way in that was labeled
SERVICE ENTRY
. As Chapa casually glanced back to check if the bouncer was still hanging around, he heard the door squeal open.

By the time he saw her, the woman was already headed in the opposite direction at a steady clip. She was wearing the same navy blue outfit that all the female servers had on. A large purse dangled from one shoulder. Though she walked like there was somewhere she needed to be, Chapa sensed that the woman hadn’t seen him standing there.

“Angela.”

The woman paused without turning, just as she had back inside. Chapa watched as she slipped her hand inside the baggy denim purse. Then she turned, but continued digging around in the bag.

“What do you want?”

Chapa assumed that she was trying to get her hand on some mace or pepper spray. He kept his distance.

“I’m Alex Chapa, I did a story about you a long time ago, back when you went by the name Annie.”

She had stopped searching, but her hand was still inside the purse.

“That’s ancient history. Why are you here now, and how did you find me?”

Her makeup brought out the most dramatic aspects of her face. Though only in her midtwenties, Annie’s eyes, green and framed by full lashes, were those of a person who knew more than most.

“I need to talk to you.” Chapa didn’t have to turn around to know the bouncer was moving in their direction. “One of your friends, Langdon, helped me find you.”

“You need any help, Angie?” Now that he had expanded his vocabulary, the bouncer spoke with a Caribbean accent that did not fit his light features.

“Not yet,” she answered without taking her eyes off Chapa.

“I’ll stick around just in case you change your mind.” The glow from a nearby lamppost was reflecting on the guy’s shaved head, giving him the appearance of a bloated flashlight.

“Look, Angela, or Annie, what would you like me to call you?”

She didn’t respond.

“Have you noticed anyone hanging around, here, or near where you live, anyone?”

“You mean, besides you?” She smiled a little which took several difficult years off her face. “Not that I’ve noticed. Why?”

This was not going as Chapa had imagined it would. He handed her his card, and was pleased when she took it and slipped it into a front pants pocket, even though she hadn’t bothered to look at it.

“I have a very good reason to believe that with Grubb’s execution—”

“Oh no, this is about some story you’re doing.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“You’ve come a long way for a whole lot of nothing.”

Chapa again tried to explain himself, but she had checked out on him.

“Hey Chico,” she said, raising her voice, the bouncer already on the move. “This gentleman might need some help finding his car.”

With that, she withdrew an empty hand from her purse, turned and walked off into the rest of the city.

On his way out of town Chapa replayed his encounter with Annie Sykes. He couldn’t believe how poorly it had gone down. What had he expected? The woman had survived the kind of experience that keeps parents awake deep into the night, and makes therapists wealthy.

The first time Chapa had seen her was the night of Grubb’s capture when he managed three vital minutes with Annie and her parents. A few days later, he stopped by the family’s house to interview the parents for a follow-up story. Chapa had not spoken to her then, he did not want to. Though he had not quoted her directly in his original story, or at any other time, his brief conversation with Annie had blown his comfort zone of detachment.

He remembered everything about that visit to the Sykes. Annie stood in the doorway of the kitchen as Chapa interviewed her parents. She never spoke a word, never appeared tempted to join in the conversation. But Annie didn’t look away, either. She stared at him in a way that was intense, but gentle somehow, without a hint of anger, hostility, or fear.

There was something different about Annie Sykes, even then. She seemed stronger than most. Not just tougher and more resilient than any other child Chapa had ever met, but emotionally stronger than most adults as well. But now that strength and the independence it produced might get her killed. Chapa was not about to let this go. He would approach her again, but next time he’d have to be much better prepared.

He gave himself twenty-four hours to get Annie’s confidence and figure out what sort of trouble she was in. After that, he’d make a phone call to Andrews and let the feds take it from there.

Chapa lowered his window and let in a slap of crisp autumn wind. Old brick buildings and city traffic had started giving way to strip malls and the open road when Chapa’s cell phone started serenading him. He picked it up out of the cup holder he’d dropped it in and checked to see who was calling.

Unknown

He closed his window and flipped the phone open.

“This is Chapa.”

“Mr. Chapa?”

The voice was small but steady.

“This is Angela, you know, Annie Sykes. I expected to get an answering machine.”

Chapa took the next exit, wanting to give himself the opportunity to pull over quickly if he needed to write something down.

“I’m never home, and my cell is always with me even when I’m at the office, so it’s the number I had put on my card.”

“I need to apologize to you, I’m not usually like that, but you caught me off guard.”

“You don’t need to apologize,” he said, pulling into the parking lot of an old movie theater that had closed down a few years earlier. “But you need to listen to me, there could be some trouble for you.”

She sighed, like it was all old news.

“I know there are a lot of creeps out there, Mr. Chapa, but I live a very private life.”

“I found you.”

Silence.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be having this conversation on cell phones,” she said, and Chapa sensed he’d gotten through to her. “Do you have time tomorrow to have lunch with me here in Chicago?”

They agreed to meet at a restaurant on Clark, around 12:30. That would still give Chapa time to sit down with Andrews in the morning.

“Miss Sykes, I need you to understand that you must take some precautions. I will explain more of it to you tomorrow, but please believe me, my concerns are well founded. Don’t hesitate to call the police if you see anything or anyone unusual.”

“I live in Chicago, sometimes it’s not easy to figure out what
unusual
means,” she said. “I understand, but I ask that you let me be the one who makes that decision for myself.”

“Okay, Miss Sykes, tomorrow then.”

“Call me Angela.”

He signed off, then spent the rest of the drive home trying to determine how much information to hold back from the feds.

Chapa’s house was as dark and still as the rest of the neighborhood. He turned off the car radio in the middle of Billy Joel’s claim that only the good die young, and tried to recall whether he’d left any lights on. It had been such a long day that he could not remember either way.

He made a habit of leaving a lamp lit in the living room, and sometimes wouldn’t bother to turn off the kitchen light for several days. Chapa didn’t like walking into dark empty houses. They always felt lifeless and cold.

The newspaper was resting in the middle of the yard. He picked it up, knowing that he should have done so earlier in the day, then retrieved a handful of letters from the mailbox. Usually when he got home, Jimmy would greet him with a song, but with the house being dark the parakeet had probably fallen asleep.

Chapa flipped the three switches that were by the door, and light filled the living room, entryway, as well as the landing at the top of the stairs. He dropped his keys on a small table by the door and flipped through the letters, stopping when he got to an envelope with a Boston postmark. It had been addressed by a very young hand.

He tossed the rest of the mail on the table, and carefully opened the letter from Nikki. The lined pink paper had been folded, not too carefully, into thirds. As Chapa opened the letter, a small photo slipped out. It was a school picture that he had not seen before. It had been cut in such a way that he knew his daughter had been the one holding the scissors.

She was smiling, which always brought her cheeks out. But the child’s eyes told him something else, and at that moment Chapa missed Nikki so badly that he had to lean against the front door to keep from crumbling to the floor.

He opened the letter and immediately recognized Nikki’s handwriting from the all too few other times he had seen it.

Only fifteen words in length, Chapa had the letter memorized after he’d read it a second time through. But he read it again anyhow. Part of him wanted to respond,
Ask your mother
, but he knew he too had failed Nikki, and he saw no point in passing off his share of the blame.

He decided right then that getting so caught up in Annie Sykes’ problems had been a mistake, considering how many of his own issues remained unresolved. The best solution at this point was to turn everything over to Andrews and let the feds do their work. Maybe he could still salvage his job. Chapa had a feeling that Macklin was the sort of guy who would get a kick out of seeing one of his highest paid writers begging on bended knee.

Chapa was creating a mental to-do list as he walked toward the kitchen. Jimmy didn’t like dark rooms any more than he did, and the poor parakeet had been alone in that kitchen for much of the past three days. As he approached the door, Chapa heard a rustling sound. Jimmy was awake. But when he turned on the lights Chapa noticed that the curtains from a large window against the back wall were flapping in the wind. The countertop below it was littered with broken glass. When he shut the window Chapa saw that someone had broken the glass above it so they could flip the lock open.

His senses on overdrive, Chapa knew this wasn’t a random break-in. He needed to call Andrews first, then maybe the local police, though he feared they might bring him in for questioning. The phone was on the wall near Jimmy’s cage, but Chapa never reached it.

At first he thought the bird had gotten himself tangled up in the string from a toy, but that was not the case. Jimmy was hanging in the middle of the cage, strands of bright red hair had been twisted together and tied around his neck like a noose.

His feathers were badly tangled, as though the bird had been abused before it was killed. Maybe Jimmy had fought back, that’s what Chapa hoped. A small spot of something on Jimmy’s beak might have been dried blood, and Chapa imagined the parakeet taking a piece out of the bastard’s hand.

The cage door was open, and as Chapa reached in and cupped his hand around Jimmy he could see that the hairs had been tied so tightly they had cut into the bird below the feathers. Whoever had done this probably tied the hairs around Jimmy’s neck, then watched as the bird strangled itself trying to get free.

The parakeet felt rigid and cool, his feathers stiff and brittle. Chapa realized he’d have to cut him down, there was no way to untie the knot. He was fighting to not think too much about that, when he heard what sounded like someone walking around upstairs.

Chapa was not alone in the house.

He hesitated for a moment, and listened. But the noise was gone. How many sets of footsteps had he heard? Chapa tuned out the ambient sounds of a typical house, and waited.

Nothing.

As he took a cautious step out of the kitchen he heard another sound, then several more. He concluded there were probably two or more people moving around upstairs, or a single large one. A showdown had some appeal for Chapa. He was in the mood to kick the shit out of someone, and whoever had broken into his home and killed his pet seemed like a perfect candidate.

But Chapa remembered the heavy hand pressing against his neck. The terrible feeling of helplessness. After his confrontation with Grubb earlier that day, it was a safe bet that whoever was up there didn’t stop by to negotiate. They were here to inflict some pain.

His house was starting to feel like a trap. They had heard him come in, and seen the landing lights turn on, but did not rush downstairs because Chapa was exactly where they wanted him. He didn’t own a gun, and there were too many ways to trump a kitchen knife—the best weapon available at the moment. As hard as it was for him to accept, Chapa understood that his house offered him no tactical advantage.

He heard the footsteps moving across his bedroom and into the hall. They were heading for the stairway.

Chapa raced through the dining room and into the foyer, then heard another noise from above, this one much closer to the stairs. He grabbed his keys off the table, spilling the bills and junk mail on the floor. Still clutching the letter from Nikki, he opened the front door as a shadow appeared in the landing at the top of the stairs.