Killing Red (19 page)

The three-mile drive to Erin’s house took much longer than usual. Chapa avoided a direct route in favor of the side streets and wide open avenues that offered a long look in the rearview mirror.

A couple of times along the way, a set of headlights a few blocks back seemed to mimic his turns. But they eventually went their own way, and Chapa would then continue to narrow the distance to his destination. Chapa had a feeling the person in his house was probably the same one who left the note on Erin’s door. In which case, all of his deceptive moves would only serve to give them an advantage if they got there first.

When he was certain no one was following him, at least as certain as he could be, Chapa slowed down to just a mile or two above the limit and headed toward Erin’s. Her house was dark, and there were a couple of newspapers resting near the front steps. It almost seemed like a repeat of Chapa’s arrival at his own house. He hoped the similarities ended there.

Erin’s house had a simple but effective alarm system she’d had installed a few years earlier after her ex capped a night of drinking by showing up at her door. Chapa figured that the broken window in his kitchen meant that whoever was doing this had not made copies of his keys or hers during the hours he had been unconscious.

He would know for sure soon enough.

The simple ranch had very little landscaping, for which Chapa was grateful at that moment. He kept his distance from the house as he walked across the front yard, trying to get a look behind the smattering of shrubs that decorated the left corner. The streetlight directly across from Erin’s house projected his elongated shadow against the beige aluminum siding.

A car was parked on the street three houses down, but Chapa hadn’t seen anyone inside when he had driven past the vehicle. Otherwise, the neighborhood looked deserted. When he was satisfied that no one was hiding anywhere near the front door, Chapa picked up the newspapers and quickly slipped the key in the lock, then stepped inside without looking back. He locked the door behind him and reset the alarm.

Another dark house. He took stock of his surroundings, even though he’d been there many times, then turned on the lights. Mikey’s green aluminum Little League baseball bat was sitting in an umbrella rack by the door. Chapa pulled it out and started searching each room and closet in the house.

Erin’s tastes were simple, but not crass. With the exception of Mikey’s room, the place had a definite feminine feel to it. She kept it cleaner than most stay-at-home moms could ever dream of, and there wasn’t much clutter. That would make Chapa’s task easier.

After checking the back door and searching each room, Chapa decided he was alone. He made sure that no windows were broken, and that the house was secure, then returned the bat to where he’d found it.

Chapa took off his coat and pulled his cell phone out so he could call Erin. But first he had to lock his car door, something he’d intentionally avoided doing when he got there just in case a quick getaway was needed. He searched his coat for the keys, then looked on the living room coffee table and various places in the dining room, but came up empty.

Now Chapa realized that in his haste to get inside he could’ve left his keys in the lock. He gave the door a nudge with his shoulder, which brought a jolt of pain to the back of his neck, but it also told him what he wanted to know when he heard the jingle on the other side.

He turned off the alarm, unlocked the door, and opened it. Retrieving his keys, Chapa opened the screen door and took two steps in the direction of his car before he saw the man standing in the yard.

Chapa froze, then asked, “Can I help you?”

No answer.

“Who the hell are you?”

Chapa waited for a response, but none came. The guy was tall with wide shoulders framing an imposing torso that rested on thick legs, neither of which was moving.

This was not a friendly neighbor coming over to make sure everything was okay. Maybe he was a distraction, there to give someone else the opportunity to creep up along the side of the house, or break in around the rear.

A chill moved in on Chapa and vise-clamped on the muscles in his back. He ducked inside, closed the door behind him and locked it before turning the alarm on. If Chapa’s heart had been equipped with teeth it would have chewed its way out of his chest. He was so tense his ribs ached, and the back of his neck felt as though someone had lit a series of small fires just below the skin.

If another door was open or a window had been broken the alarm would have been screaming right then, but it wasn’t. He thought about turning the lights off, figuring that he knew the house well enough to navigate it in the dark, and that could give him an advantage over someone who’d never been there. But Chapa was starting to sense that whoever was outside was acting alone. Maybe it had been just one creep all along.

Coaxing a front curtain open just enough, he got a look at the area where the figure had been standing. No one there. Chapa moved to the other side of the window and scoped the rest of the yard. It was empty.

From that vantage point Chapa’s visibility was limited and he could not see the corners of the house. He moved into the dining room and looked out through a side window. Except for his car, the driveway was empty and quiet. What the hell?

Chapa wasn’t going to just let this ride, he wasn’t the sort to cower behind locked doors and windows. He remembered Mikey’s bat. It was small, just a little more than a couple of feet in length, and Chapa would have gladly traded it in for a full-size AramisRamirezmodel, but it would have to do. The other guy had a size advantage, but Chapa knew that would change if he could connect just once.

Up until now, guns had not been part of the equation, and Chapa believed there was a reason for that. Like Grubb, his followers preferred the intimacy that more up close and personal forms of violence offered. He was counting on that particularly twisted preference when he bolted through the front door and raced for the middle of the yard, the bat cocked and ready for a swing.

He appeared to be alone. Still, Chapa kept looking back toward the front door in case someone emerged from the shadows and made a dash for it. He moved slowly from side to side, as he had done when he first got there, but saw no movement that wasn’t caused by the wind.

The street remained quiet, apparently none of the neighbors had noticed the strange goings on in Erin’s front yard. One thing was different. The car that had been parked a few houses away was gone.

Chapa had not told Erin about the night before, or this night, or what someone had done to Jimmy. Even without that information, it was a struggle to convince Erin that it was best for her and Mikey to stay away for just a few more days.

“I feel like I belong next to you during all of this.”

Those words lingered long after the conversation had ended. Chapa felt guilty that he had not told her the truth about everything. Not only was he deceiving her, but he also felt a need to share it with her, the way partners are supposed to do. But more than anything, Chapa knew his life and the sort of people who populated the professional end of it, had now invaded hers. He had to find a way to keep that from ever happening again. Chapa already knew how to best deal with the problem, but he didn’t like the solution.

She had offered to take Mikey to her mother’s house in Rockford, then drive back to be with him. Chapa knew if he told Erin much more about what was happening there would be no stopping her.

As they said their goodbyes he surprised himself by adding, “I miss you.” Then he realized the connection was gone. Had she heard it? When she did not call back he assumed she hadn’t.

Two more unread copies of the
Chicago Record
had been discarded near the umbrella rack by the door. Chapa added those to the ones from outside. Erin had confessed that she was never into newspapers before they met. She now subscribed to the
Record
because she liked reading his column and seeing his picture above it.

Chapa took a four-day-old newspaper off the small stack. He opened to page two of the first section, where his column had been located for the past seven years. After all that had gone down he could barely remember the story about a local landmark that was scheduled to be bulldozed in the name of progress, even though it had only been a week since he’d written it.

The next day’s paper carried a reprinted story he had written several months earlier, preceded by:
While Alex Chapa is on assignment, we invite you to enjoy this story he wrote earlier in the year.
This was standard procedure when a columnist was working on a longer piece, or off on vacation. Chapa wasn’t sure why they picked this particular column over others, and wished someone had asked for his input.

He opened a two-day-old paper. No column this time, just his standard photo above the words:
Alex Chapa is on assignment.
They must have sold more ad space than usual and did not need to use one of his columns. But when Chapa flipped to his usual page in yesterday’s edition he did not see his name or photo. He rifled through the rest of the paper. Nothing. For the first time since he started working there, more than a decade ago, Alex Chapa’s name did not appear anywhere in a weekday edition of the
Chicago Record
.

The same was true for that day’s paper, and Chapa knew then that it was over. He was like a stiff no one had yet bothered to bury. He wondered how Erin would react once his firing became official, then felt like a heel for thinking it might make a difference in the way she felt about him.

Rather than wasting any time worrying about whether anyone would ever run the story he was working on now, Chapa’s thoughts returned to his to-do list for the meeting with Andrews. But instead of accumulating information to pass on to the feds, Chapa was editing, trying to determine what he would and would not tell Andrews.

The process had the same effect on him that counting sheep has on others. It wasn’t long before Chapa was asleep in his dress clothes, with all of the lights on, and Nikki’s letter pressed against his chest.

Chapa’s underwear had wedged itself into places where it didn’t belong. It took him a few partially conscious minutes to remember where he was. Erin’s house, hopefully alone. He looked at the clock on the mantle, it read
6:55
. Chapa was fairly certain it was
A.M
.

When he sat up, the muscles in his lower back let him know he was past the age where crashing anywhere other than a bed would be easily forgiven. Chapa showered, though not as quickly as he knew he should, and that meant he would be fighting traffic all the way into the city.

At that moment, he didn’t care. As his thoughts drifted away from the events of the past several days, Chapa remembered the note from Nikki, and that spurred him into moving on to the rest of his day.

A couple of Chapa’s shirts were hanging in a hall closet, right next to a pair of pants. They had been there since August, when the three of them had gone camping. Leaving extra clothes at her house had been Erin’s suggestion.

“You never know what can happen.”

She had no idea.

He passed on a Big Dog T-shirt, and settled for a simple dark gray polo. Chapa wasn’t quite dressed for success, but good enough, he figured. After he’d read Nikki’s letter again, Chapa folded the note and tucked it into his wallet. Then he flipped past his credit cards and press credentials to where he kept her photos so he could add the one Nikki had cut out for him.

It had been more than a year since he’d received a new photo, and in that time he had memorized everything about the last one. The sweater Nikki was wearing—purple with small red apples—and that tiny little gap between her two front teeth, as well as the way her long hair was down, covering one shoulder but not the other.

That photo had become extremely important to him, a direct link to his daughter. He flipped past the cards and credentials a second time. The photo was gone.

Fist clenched, Chapa fought to harness his anger, sensing that if he lost control, it could be a while before he got it back. They must have taken it while he was unconscious. Chapa could only imagine why, and knew it was best not to.

It was one of those October days that remind Illinoisans of why they love living in the Midwest. Dead leaves crunched under Chapa’s feet as he walked to his car. The neighborhood was quiet except for a couple of people at either end of the street who were getting in their cars.

Chapa checked to make sure the Corolla was still locked, then used the automatic key. He was about to turn the ignition when he noticed something taped to the middle of the steering wheel. It was the old photo of Nikki.

He quickly stepped out of the car and surveyed the area for anything out of the ordinary. Chapa was getting better at this than he ever wanted to be.

Even standing outside, in the brightest of autumn mornings and just a few dozen yards from the kind of neighbors who would respond to a call for help, Chapa felt no sense of comfort or safety.