Killing Red (5 page)

Grubb had clawed his way under Chapa’s skin, something the reporter had long ago promised himself he’d never allow.

But he knew once you bring someone like that into your life, there’s no turning back. Chapa had used cons for sources on several occasions. A few had tried to follow him into his everyday life after they got out. None had as powerful an effect on him as Grubb.

Like Charles Manson before him, Grubb had developed a cult following, a twisted reality Chapa had long ago given up trying to understand. There was something about life-takers who claimed to kill with a purpose that seemed to motivate some folks to put out the welcome mat and open their doors.

Grubb had further cultivated that by playing up his disability, and becoming something of an unlikely advocate for prisoners’ rights. Some thought this murderer of children was as much a victim as he was a criminal. Chapa would have gladly volunteered to take those people on a tour of nine small graves, each stained with Grubb’s bloody fingerprints.

To Chapa, Grubb was neither complex nor mysterious. And he sometimes wondered how any of his readers could find Grubb interesting. As far as Chapa was concerned, Grubb was nothing more than a disease with a pulse.

The image of Grubb chained and restricted to a wheelchair lingered in Chapa’s mind. The disability and the years on death row had reduced Grubb to a snarl of contempt and hostility in their purest form. Unable to act on the violence that Chapa knew still coursed through the killer. A mass of hate in the steel cage Police Officer Pete Rudman had condemned him to.

Though it struck Grubb in the chest, the bullet from Rudman’s gun did only minor damage until it reached the spinal column, strategically lodging itself where no surgeon dared cut. The small piece of lead took away all use of his legs, and left Grubb without feeling from the waist down. It had taken months for Grubb to recover enough to leave the hospital so the state could take the next step toward executing him.

An investigation determined Rudman was justified in firing his weapon, though there were no guns in the house, let alone within Grubb’s reach when the police arrived at his suburban home. As officers moved in and surrounded the wounded suspect, his blood painting the beige ceramic floor tiles, they saw his fingers curled tight around a thick dog collar, long silver tent spikes clinging to its side.

Rudman retired about a decade later, closing out a career filled with honors and citations, but one that was always defined by a single moment in a dark house on a quiet street. He and his wife moved to a planned community in Myrtle Beach and filled their days with golf, swimming, and general relaxation, until a few months ago when he’d been shot during a botched home invasion.

How tragic that a decorated officer lost his life that way, just a victim to some crackhead’s cravings, Chapa had thought as he helped write Rudman’s obit. And how unjust it was that Grubb had not died first. It should not have worked out that way, but Grubb’s attorney successfully petitioned the court to delay his client’s execution for nearly a year because of various issues relating to the killer’s disability.

Leaving Pennington Correctional, Chapa knew he would spend much of the next few days following up on the information he’d been given. Sleep was always tough for Chapa to come by, and it would be even harder until he’d dismissed the possibility that there might be anything to Grubb’s claim.

Before hitting the interstate, Chapa stopped at a library he had seen on his way to the prison. It was an older brick building, but that was just the outside. The interior looked modern and newly renovated. After walking through a well-lit entryway, Chapa found himself in a large, open area rimmed with bookcases. The place smelled of fresh paint and printer ink. Long rows of computer monitors filled the middle of the room. He was pleased to find an open public terminal and a friendly employee willing to help an out-of-towner get online.

But that’s as far as his good fortune got him. He could find no listing for Annie Sykes anywhere in the Chicago area. He expanded his search to the Midwest, then the nation. Nothing. She had probably gotten married, probably took her husband’s name. Further research would have to wait until he got back to his office.

It was an hour-long drive to any place Chapa might want to go, and that gave him time to organize his thoughts and figure out what to do next. The breezy rock of Nick Lowe’s
The Convincer
accompanied him on his trip through Illinois farm country, and by the time he passed through the toll booth in DeKalb, Chapa knew where his first stop would be.

The
Chicago Record
’s coverage area extended from the upscale towns along the North Shore of Lake Michigan, through the heart of the city, to the hardscrabble roads that led to the western suburbs and down to Joliet. During Chapa’s time working there, the
Record
had emerged as a major player in the Chicago area media market, and the newspaper that covered more ground than any other periodical in the state.

From early on in his now sixteen-year career with the paper, Chapa had become known for his profiles of regular people, and exposés of some seriously irregular ones. For a time, his stories were consistently picked up for syndication, but that had cooled a bit, as it had for many journalists.

Mergers and cost-cutting measures had taken hold throughout the industry, and newspapers were relying more on wire stories and less on their own journalists. The past five years had been especially difficult. The
Record
was slowly creeping toward a more homogenized product that emphasized the brand over the individual writer.

As far as the suits were concerned, news columnists didn’t sell papers anymore. Less than two decades into the only career he had ever wanted, Chapa sometimes felt like a dinosaur in an industry facing extinction.

Still, he knew how to conduct a one-on-one with the best of them. Understanding that the key to being a skilled interviewer is knowing how to become an active part of a one-way conversation. As he exited onto Route 59, Chapa anticipated that those skills would soon be put to the test.

Dominic Delacruz’s business had grown into a chain of six convenience stores. They spanned a thirty-mile stretch of sprawl along DuPage County’s southern edge. Chapa was certain he could find Dominic’s original store, anything else was a wild card.

In the weeks following Grubb’s capture, Chapa had done a couple of feel good follow-up stories about Dominic, his store, and his family. But as much as Chapa had tried to build up that part of the story, Dominic always refused to take credit for having done anything exceptional, and wouldn’t tolerate being called a hero.

Dominic was four years old when his family came to the United States from central Mexico. His father worked at a manufacturing plant in the Chicago suburbs, and his mother was employed as a seamstress. Unable to get a job delivering papers, or stocking shelves at the nearby shopping center, like a lot of the other kids in his neighborhood did, Dominic started mowing lawns in the summer and shoveling snow in winter by the age of twelve.

He didn’t play Little League, or go to movies, or become a Scout. Dominic spent his free time at a nearby branch of the library. With dreams of becoming an engineer, he read every book he could find on the subject. Still, he knew deep down that the money to send him to college would never be there. When his father died at the age of fifty-two, it was time to set his dreams aside and go to work.

But Dominic and his brother, Antonio, were determined to have a better life than the one they’d seen their father struggle through. So they saved their money and started figuring out what it would take to open a Mexican restaurant in the western suburbs of Chicago.

Those plans changed the day they drove past a recently closed convenience store on the way to a friend’s house on the far east end of the city’s Pilsen neighborhood. Delacruz Brothers opened three months later, and was an immediate success.

The brothers made a good deal of money, much of it from selling cigarettes and lottery tickets. But they eventually got tired of being held up late at night and chasing away gangbangers all day long.

Antonio took his money and moved to Tucson where he opened that restaurant they had always planned. Dominic, usually the more conservative of the two, believed that the convenience store business had been too good to risk trying something else.

After he had prayed for guidance and believed in his heart that he’d received an answer, Dominic sold the store and began looking for a new location in the suburbs, the sort of area where he wanted his kids to grow up. He found it in rural DuPage County, at the far end of a new subdivision.

Initially, business was slow at The Late Stop, but things began to pick up as the surrounding woods started giving way to new homes. Soon, what was once a thick forest would be just a memory as more shopping strips followed the construction of half-million dollar homes.

Dominic and his wife were happy in their new home, and he settled into a nice routine. He had five employees, including his eldest son, and worked four days, plus just one night a week at the store. But as the owner, he would have to step in on nights when one of his regular workers couldn’t make it.

One of those nights turned out to be far from routine.

Chapa had heard that Delacruz had left the area some time ago, but could not remember if that was the son, or the old man. It didn’t matter either way. There couldn’t be much Chapa did not already know about what had happened that night, but he needed a starting point, and the place where Annie Sykes found refuge seemed as good as any.

The convenience store had changed some since Chapa had last been there more than a decade earlier. The kid behind the counter wasn’t old enough to be a regular employee, so he had to be family.

“You’re looking for my grandfather, he’s in the back,” the boy said, then called out, “Papi.”

Chapa glanced back toward the door and imagined what Annie must have looked like on that night. Alone, beaten, and bruised, a fighter in need of help. Had Grubb succeeded in breaking her? Chapa had seen no evidence of that back then.

Smooth jazz flowed through the speakers overhead, and the place smelled of flowery air freshener which almost succeeded in masking the odor of cheap, over-brewed coffee. Dominic Delacruz emerged from a backroom and introduced himself. Chapa recognized the man immediately, though his face was much more weathered than before, and his thick wave of hair had turned almost entirely gray.

“Sure, I remember you. I haven’t been able to forget anything from that time, you know,” Delacruz said. They shook hands, the store owner’s fingers were hard and coarse like fine sandpaper. “You’re Latino, right?”

Chapa nodded. “Cuban.”

This was an exchange that Chapa had grown accustomed to. As a child he observed how Latin American immigrants made a habit of asking each other what country they were from. He always assumed that’s what happens when the peoples of twenty-two different nations, loosely tied together by a common language, are tossed into one large mass by their adopted country.

“You don’t have an accent. I haven’t met many Cubans, but the ones I have all sounded, well, Cuban.”

“We left Cuba when I was very young.”

Dominic gave him a once-over, offering no sign of approval.

“How old were you?”

“Barely four.”

Chapa’s mother had been determined to assimilate into American culture, deciding that it was the best way to succeed in the United States. As a result, by the time Chapa was a teenager his Cubanismo had long become something he set aside and brought out only for special occasions, or when family came up from Florida. He sometimes joked that as a Cuban living in the Midwest he was required by federal law to maintain a cadre of relatives in Miami.

On a shelf in the next aisle down from where he and Dominic were standing, alongside the Chef Boyardee Ravioli and Chicken of the Sea Tuna, Chapa spotted a can of black beans. Probably wouldn’t find one of those in any other suburban convenience store, he thought, and it reminded him of the cooking shortcuts his mother began relying on as she got older.

Each day Chapa would step out the door of his house and into a different world, one that quickly became more comfortable and familiar. Still, within the confines of the home he grew up in, Chapa was surrounded by the food and culture of his native country. But that changed over time as his mother made friends at work and around the neighborhood, and even joined the PTA.

In many ways, Chapa had found it more difficult being the kid without a father than the one whose mother spoke with an accent.

“So are you here to do some follow-up story now that they’re finally going to kill that animal?”

“Something like that.”

Chapa wasn’t trying to be smart. He really wasn’t certain where any of this was going. When he got the message that Grubb wanted a sit-down, he’d expected to do the standard death row piece—part indignation, part remorse, with the occasional guest appearance by Jesus.

“I realize it was a long time ago, but is there anything about that night you might’ve overlooked back then? Anything that you’ve remembered after the fact?”

“You sound more like a detective than a reporter.”

Chapa smiled.

“Years come and go, and you make some money, raise children, see them become adults,” Dominic said, looking at his grandson. “You take trips, see new places, and meet new people. But some of the things that you’ve seen and been through, they never go away. The worst of them stay fresh.”

Chapa jotted down Dominic’s comments in his notepad.

“What about since then?” Chapa asked. “How are things different for you or maybe this store?”

“Ever since that night, I’ve been more aware of everything that goes on when I’m here. I was in the backroom when that blue beater pulled up to the store,” Dominic said, describing the car Chapa had been driving for the past seven years. “But I noticed it the moment I walked out here. That’s just how it is.”

Chapa considered defending his car, then thought better of it.

“But, for example,” Dominic now pointed to a green sedan that was parked at the far end of the store’s lot, “the person in that car is probably on the phone, or checking a map, or changing the CD. I noticed them right away because they’re here, but maybe they don’t want to get too close. At night, I’d have a reason to be suspicious, but even now I’m on alert. Is that better? I don’t know.”

Dominic started straightening already well-organized shelves of prepackaged pastries.

“That night, I was sure someone was out there, Grubb probably,” he said. “The way it was reported, it was like I was just the guy whose store she wandered into, but it wasn’t like that.”

“What do you mean?”

He stopped lining up Ho Hos and Twinkies and seemed lost in thought for a moment.

“When that little girl walked in she drew me right into it, her fear and the terror that she had been through. There was something really special about her. If someone had come in after her I probably would have shot them.”

It was hard to imagine Dominic Delacruz ever drawing down on anyone, but Chapa sensed this conversation was taking the old man back, maybe to a place that he had spent years trying to get away from.

“Do you have any children of your own, Mr. Chapa?”

“I have a daughter.”

“Then you know what it’s like, but still, that was different. In that moment it was like she might as well have been my child. So naturally I protected her. I’ve come to believe I was put here on that night for a reason.”

“Anyone come around lately to talk to you about that night or the little girl?”

“No, not until today, not until you came in. Why did you come here? What were you hoping to find?”

“Chapa closed his notepad and stared at the door again.

“I’m not sure, really. Some inspiration? I’m trying to finish an old story and make sure that I get it right, that I didn’t miss anything.”

Dominic finished the display of pastries and turned back in the direction of his office without giving Chapa the opportunity to offer a second handshake.

“I hope you figure it out,” Dominic said just before he disappeared into the backroom. “I don’t think you did much good the first time you came around.”