I MET THE KIDS at the front door of the school and walked them to the van. They seemed subdued, except Norene, who couldn’t be subdued if she tried. Jonathan had walked over from the nearby high school, like he did every day. He usually acted as the kids’ guardian for the walk through gang territory. On this day, he had help besides me. Keith held Norene’s hand, keeping her close. He looked fierce.
Jimmy stayed beside me, and he probably would have taken my hand if we weren’t so close to the school.
Once they were all tucked in the van, I drove them to the after-school program. The church which gave us the rooms free of charge wasn’t far away. Even in the deep cold, the kids could safely walk there.
But I didn’t want to chance it on this day.
I promised them all I’d be back later to pick them up. As they filed out, I caught Jonathan’s arm.
“Stay a minute,” I said to him.
He glanced at the door, watching until the kids went inside.
Then he turned to me.
I hadn’t realized how much he had grown in the past year. He would be sixteen in the summer, and he had grown as well. His face was angular, like his father’s had been when I met him in Memphis, almost twenty years ago now.
“I spoke to the principal,” I said. “He told me just how dangerous this junior high is. He mentioned drug deals in the hallway. Is that true?”
Jonathan shrugged. He looked at the door of the church as if it provided answers. A few other kids straggled across the shoveled sidewalk.
“Jonathan, please,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out what happened.”
“Why my sister got raped?” he asked.
My cheeks flushed. I hadn’t realized he knew the details.
“I figured it out,” he said. “It’s not hard. Everybody knows what goes on in that hotel. And you let her go there.”
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“Yes, you did,” he said. “Jimmy says he told you everything.”
I nodded. “I didn’t understand him. I didn’t realize how big the danger was.”
“You’re always so concerned with other people, Uncle Bill,” Jonathan snapped. “You never have time for the people you claim you care about.”
The words hurt, probably because I’d been thinking the same thing. I’m sorry wasn’t the right response. There wasn’t a right response. Not on this, anyway.
“I’m making time now,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jonathan said. “After the crisis. You’re good after a crisis, aren’t you, Uncle Bill?”
I took a deep breath, and handed him the folder that Decker had given me. “Do you recognize any of these girls?”
“Why?” Jonathan asked without opening it. “So you can focus on someone else’s kids again? Because what happened to Lacey isn’t bad enough for you?”
I pivoted slightly in the driver’s seat. Jonathan held the folder so tight that it bent.
“I’m actually trying to figure out who did this, and stop them, Jonathan.”
“Jimmy said you already did.” Jonathan still wasn’t looking at me.
“I think there’s an entire operation hurting girls in that hotel,” I said. “I want to shut them down. I want to shut the hotel down too.”
Jonathan finally turned toward me. “You can make them go away?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I can try. But first I need to know the extent of this thing. That’s why I want you to look at the flyers.”
“Flyers,” he said, flipping open the file. He stared at the top one. “What are these?”
“Girls from the school who went missing,” I said.
He bit his lower lip. “Missing. You mean they were killed?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“If Jim and Keith hadn’t stepped in, Lacey could have died?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think so. I think she would have been put to work.”
He shook his head slowly. “That doesn’t make any sense, Uncle Bill. She would have come home.”
“They would have moved her out of the neighborhood,” I said. “Maybe even lied to her about her family, said that her family didn’t want her anymore.”
“We wouldn’t—.” He stopped himself. “Lied. Okay. I get it. This is some kind of recruiting station?”
“For lack of a better way to put it.”
“Jesus.” He thumbed through the flyers slowly, then started to hand me some. He would add commentary with the ones he handed me. “She moved out” or “She ain’t never going home again” or “She got a boyfriend who took her north.”
He gave me a dozen flyers. Then he slowed down and stared at one flyer in particular.
It was printed by some kind of printing press. The photo of a pretty girl, her head tilted, a wide smile on her delicate features, looked like a school portrait or a professional shot.
“You know her?” I asked after a minute.
He nodded. “Donna Loring. She—her brother—it was awful.”
“What was?” I asked.
A small frown creased his forehead as he looked at me. “She, um, you know, to her family, she was like a thirteen-year-old Norene. Everyone loved her, and they all thought she was going to be someone. They fought to keep her in school, even when she tried to quit.”
“Why would she try to quit?” I asked, not completely understanding.
“Her brother—he um—he’s one of Jeff Fort’s right-hand men.”
I let out a small breath. Jeff Fort was the leader of the Blackstone Rangers. I’d met him more than once. He was a dangerous man, who was getting even more dangerous as time went on.
“No one wanted her near the gang,” Jonathan said.
“Then she disappeared.”
He nodded. He ran a hand over her image. He had known her well, then. Maybe even cared for her.
“Her brother was furious. He thought maybe someone had taken her to teach him a lesson. He tore the school up.”
“When was this?”
“October of ’68 maybe? Before you had the gang run-in stuff.”
“That was last April.”
“Yeah, before that. In the fall for sure.”
“So,” I said, looking at his hand, the way his fingers kept touching the edge of the photograph. “Did they ever find her?”
“No. Her brother kept looking. He probably threatened someone for the flyer or something. I mean, it looks professional. Word was around school that she was dead, but I never heard how.”
I reached for the flyer. Jonathan set it beside him on the seat, out of my reach. Then he continued to go through the file.
“Do you believe she’s dead?” I asked.
“There was no retaliation,” Jonathan said. “So if she was dead, no one got blamed.”
Which, in gang terms, was very unusual.
He continued to look at the flyers. He set several others with Donna Loring’s flyer.
Then he handed me that pile. “I know nobody knew what happened to these girls. And if they figured it out, then no one told me.”
He had given me almost an inch of paper. My heart twisted.
“What about those?” I nodded toward the flyers remaining in the folder.
“They’re not anybody I know,” he said. “Maybe Lacey….”
He let his voice trail off. He closed the file folder.
“My dad say how she is?” he asked.
“I haven’t spoken to him since this morning. I was going there next,” I said.
Jonathan squared his jaw as his gaze met mine. “If you hear something about these people hurting girls like Lacey, you tell me. I want to help, okay?”
“It’s not my decision, Jonathan. Your father—”
“I don’t give a damn about my father. I’m old enough to help you,” Jonathan said. “I should help you. I should have helped yesterday.”
I didn’t want to make him that promise. I didn’t dare. I couldn’t be responsible for yet another of Franklin and Althea’s children.
“I promise you,” I said, “I’ll ask for your help when I need it. Like I just did.”
He pressed his lips together, as if he was trying not to be angry at me. He hadn’t been talking about looking at flyers. He’d been talking about going after the criminals, like I had gone after Voss last night.
I would pretend to misunderstand him as long as I could.
“I’m gonna do something no matter what,” he said.
That was what I was afraid of. “We’ll do it together,” I said.
“I’m gonna hold you to that,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”