Killing Red (3 page)

Alex Chapa, just a little more than a year out of college, was hiding in a corner of the cramped newsroom. The only other writer in the office that night was playing Tetris on one of the two computers in the room. Down the hall, Betty the Layout Lady—few at the
Tri-Cities Bulletin
seemed to know her last name—was putting the final touches on section one.

Back turned to Murphy and the annoying sounds of his game, Chapa was working on a feature story that wouldn’t earn him an extra penny, but might at least help him feel better about his job. So far, the newspaper business hadn’t been as fulfilling as he’d imagined—personally, professionally, or financially.

A phone rang two desks away.

“Wrong number,” Murphy barked, refusing to break eye-contact with the monitor.

Chapa leaned back in his office chair and looked over at his colleague.

“Might be Carter checking in. He does that.”

“Not during his fishing trips, he doesn’t. Let it go, Alex.”

Ross Carter was the
Bulletin
’s lone columnist. A respected pro who had been in the business longer than the lakes he loved to fish had been wet. Chapa looked up to Carter a little bit when he first started at the paper. But over time Chapa had starting wondering if the guy was just drifting along on cruise control. Counting the days until his last byline.

Another ring.

“Oh, hell.” Chapa rolled over to Carter’s desk.

“You touch it, you own it,” Murphy said as Chapa reached for the phone, lifting the handset just before the next ring cut out.

“
Tri-Cities Bulletin
, news desk.”

“Carter?”

“No, Alex Chapa. Carter’s not here.”

“Shit.”

“Can I help you?”

“How soon will Carter be back?”

“Not till next week.”

“Shit. Do you have a number I can get him at?”

“Not really. He’s on a lake, up in Wisconsin.”

A thick sigh.

“I can take a message if you like.”

“No. It’ll all be over by the time Carter gets it.”

Chapa turned away from Murphy and lowered his voice. “Whatever it is, I’m certain that I can help you.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“Because the urgency in your voice suggests that whatever this is about, matters, and not in a selfish way, no, it’s not about you, it’s bigger than any one person, and you have the clarity to understand that, which means you also understand that it’s bigger than Carter, or any reporter.” Chapa turned away from the mouthpiece, drew a breath, heard Murphy ask him if he was all right, ignored the question.

“Yeah, okay, buddy. But Carter has to know that this came from Bulldog.”

“Bulldog?”

“He’ll know who you’re talking about.”

“So what are we talking about, Bulldog?” Chapa asked, straining to sound casual.

Silence. And Chapa feared he’d lost the guy.

“It’s a police raid. Going down in about forty-five minutes. Maybe less.”

“Where?”

More silence.

“Look, I’ll be sure and let Carter know this came from Bulldog. I’ve already written it down. Now, while it still matters, where is this going to happen?”

He gave Chapa the address, but it was hard to believe that anything criminal could be happening in that corner of Chicago’s suburbs. It was a place populated by folks with membership cards to clubs, and close ties to their church affiliations, living in color coordinated houses on clean, freshly resurfaced streets.

“It’s about that missing girl, Annie Sykes.”

Chapa knew the case. A week ago, on the evening of October 7, the ten-year-old had gone missing after she walked into Rudi’s Foods in West Chicago and was never seen walking out.

“They found her?”

“Not exactly. She sort of found them, more or less. Escaped from some psycho late last night.”

“
Last
night?”

“Yeah, she walked into some convenience store, and the owner called the cops.” There was a slight wheeze in Bulldog’s voice, leading Chapa to decide he was a long-time smoker. “Then she spent last night and all day today in the hospital for observation. The cops kept that under wraps. But now, tonight, about an hour ago, she led them to where the guy lives.”

“You know what that guy’s name is?”

“Yes, Grubb, Kenneth L. They got the house under heavy surveillance while they put a team together.”

Across the room, Murphy yelled something about finishing a level, then, “You still on the phone, Alex?”

Chapa nodded casually, rolling his eyes, feigning exasperation.

“I’ll tell you what, Bulldog, I’ll talk you up to Carter, big time, if you forget all of this right now, and no other reporter gets a phone call tonight.”

“You mean that?”

“Absolutely.”

Chapa hung up the phone, grabbed his jacket and note pads, and headed for the door like it was nothing at all.

“You got something, Alex, or just making a food run?”

“Maybe something, we’ll see.”

“I warned you.”

“That you did, Murph.”

Chapa sprinted across the parking lot and into his car. He pounded the accelerator of his old Honda Civic, tearing down country roads, quickly narrowing the distance to the address Bulldog had given him, while keeping an eye out for any squads.

Can’t afford to get a ticket. Can’t afford to lose time, either. The house was only a few miles away, but the minutes seemed to be passing by faster than the darkened Midwestern landscape.

Once he crossed Route 59 and the Grandville city limits, Chapa let rip and did fifty down quiet residential streets, confident that every available cop in town would be part of the team gathering to storm a sleepy, well-manicured neighborhood.

Chapa pulled into the Pleasant Highlands subdivision less than twenty minutes after he’d left the newspaper office. Grubb’s house was at the far end of a labyrinth of short, narrow streets near the middle of a longer center drive. Chapa tried to get as close as possible. But the cops had blocked off both ends of the wide, curving street and he had to park around the corner and a block and a half down from the house.

Choosing his palm-size notebook instead of a larger more conspicuous one, Chapa grabbed a couple of pens, took a calming breath, and stepped out of his car. He decided to try the most direct path first, and walked down a street that ran parallel to the one he needed to get to. Folks in nightgowns and sweats drifted like moths in the direction of the police activity, only to be turned away before they could get near enough to see what was going on. Chapa couldn’t afford to be turned away, couldn’t risk drawing that much attention to himself. He needed to find another way.

As he walked with a smattering of half-awake neighbors who were quietly speculating on what all the fuss was about, Chapa kept looking around for a way in. He was getting closer to the police barricade than he wanted to be, when he spotted a small park nestled between a cluster of houses.

Ducking away from the would-be gawkers, he cut down a driveway, and through a backyard, drawing a response from a set of motion sensors that rousted security lights. Ignoring the sudden unwanted attention, Chapa slipped past a row of bushes and emerged on the other side, no more than twenty yards from a jungle gym.

The park was quiet, empty. A lone light post illuminated the area around the swings. Chapa thought about the children who played in this park. Wondered if their parents would ever again feel safe there. Or if the place would now have a taint.

Locating the paved path that led from the park to a sidewalk beyond, Chapa eyed the street where all of the heavy action was going down. He knew he wouldn’t fit in with any group of officials at the scene. His faded jeans, the fabric starting to split at the cuff, and University of Iowa sweatshirt couldn’t pass as anyone’s official uniform. Except maybe that of a recent college grad trying to make it as a reporter. But Chapa just played it cool, like he had a hall pass in his back pocket, and strolled down the sidewalk and past huddles of heavily armed officers.

“How the hell did you get here?”

Officer Steven Zirbel’s voice startled Chapa, but the reporter was already working on his response before realizing who was talking.

“Steve, you’re out late tonight.”

“And you’re where you don’t belong, Alex.”

The two men had gotten to know each other a couple of months back when Chapa spent the night with a police detail at a roadside checkpoint. Zirbel, who oversaw the operation, liked the way the story turned out, and though he was always cautious, the lieutenant had become somewhat of a source Chapa could rely on.

“I understand you guys are about to bring in a very bad guy.”

“And how do you know that?”

Chapa smiled and shrugged as Zirbel moved in close.

“Look, Alex, you need to move on,” he said, his voice measured. “I’ll give you a call in the morning after the smoke clears.”

“That’s no good, Steve. I’m holding up page one right now. I’ve got to have something.”

Zirbel looked away, in the direction of the house, then to where a group of men from various jurisdictions had assembled. When he focused his attention back on Chapa, the reporter could almost hear the wheels turning inside the cop’s head.

“You keep my name out of it, unless I call you and tell you otherwise,” the officer jabbed an index finger at Chapa, who nodded. He knew Zirbel had been angling for a promotion and the right story could put him over the top. The wrong one might knock him back to the overnight shift at the evidence desk.

Zirbel laid out how twenty-four hours ago Annie Sykes walked into Dominic Delacruz’s store and everything that followed and how she had led them here.

“You’re going in awfully hard on one girl’s word, Steve.”

“She’s a very convincing little girl.”

Chapa followed Zirbel’s eyes to the three people standing by a cruiser’s open door. He recognized Roger Sykes, a man in his midthirties who dressed like the middle manager that he was.

“Is that her?” Chapa asked, pointing to the small redheaded child wedged between her parents.

“They insisted on being here when we take him. We told them to stay in the car, but they weren’t too interested in anything we had to say.”

A guy decked out in protective gear called for Zirbel.

“Go back to where you came from, Alex,” Zirbel said, then walked over to a group that looked like it was primed to go into battle.

Cloaked in as much confidence as he could conjure, Chapa walked down the sidewalk in the direction of the Sykes family. He nodded to a uniformed who was staring at him, but didn’t break stride. Making sure Roger Sykes saw him as he approached, Chapa pulled out the small notebook and a pen, then introduced himself.

“My wife and I have appreciated how the newspapers publicized Annie’s disappearance, but not the way you guys came after me and her mother.”

“I know my paper may have been off base, but—”

Michelle Sykes cut Chapa off. “It was those incompetent jerks in the police department.” She was pleasant looking in a fresh, rural Illinois way. “They couldn’t find our daughter, and I still don’t know how anyone could have thought Roger was involved. That was just a terrible thing for us. People should be ashamed of themselves.”

Annie Sykes had been looking up at Chapa the entire time. When he returned the attention she took it as a cue that it was her turn.

“I’m looking forward to going home,” her tone strong, voice driven by determination. “But first I want to see the police get that terrible man.”

“You got away from him, didn’t you?” Chapa asked, kneeling to meet her at eye-level.

She nodded, “I wasn’t afraid, not too much,” and almost smiled.

“How did you recognize the house from the outside?”

“I remembered some of the streets that he turned on when he brought me here in his van.” Then she pointed to an area of fencing that Chapa could barely make out in the darkness. “And I remember seeing that through a window in the basement. I have a really good memory.”

“It’s been a horrible time, and we’ll be talking to our attorney after all this is over,” Roger said, then put a protective arm around his daughter, as though it could shield her from everything. “But we’re just thankful that Annie’s back and we can put all this behind us. I love Annie very much. She’s a strong person, and she’s my little girl. I don’t care what anyone said about me, I’m just so glad she’s back.”

A shot exploded inside the house. Now the police were rushing around like scattered ants, ordering each other to get down, get back, get ready. Chapa got shoved aside as Annie and her parents were hustled into the squad car. He made his way around to the back of the vehicle so he could get a decent view of the house. Leaning on the trunk of the car, Chapa quickly took notes as the police rushed the house.