As the Wicked Watch(79)

“Brothers?” “Is that true?” “Are the eleven-year-olds twins?” my colleagues asked.

I almost felt sorry for Linda. Something had compelled her to stick it out and take the beating on behalf of the men she worked for. But clearly she wasn’t authorized to tell the media what we begged to know, or she did not know herself.

“We will be issuing a statement tomorrow following the outcome of the hearings. I’m sorry but that is all I can share at this time,” Folson said, and finally exited.

Jordan’s sign-off: Diana, as you just heard, it’s unknown whether police have abandoned other potential leads in the case, like the one I reported just the other day about a mysterious driver who’d picked Masey up from school. However, my sources have confirmed that two of the suspects are indeed brothers. The thirteen-year-old and his younger brother. This is Jordan Manning reporting.



An unspeakable act committed by children. Is this what the Chicago PD wants us to believe? Want Pamela Alonzo to believe? Then Satan might as well open his mouth and swallow this city whole. I could picture it now, one high-rise after another tumbling down his red throat.

*

I don’t know why Adele Constanzo chose to tell me, and not other reporters, that two of the suspects are brothers. It wouldn’t have been difficult for an astute reporter to find that out, but it did give me a leg up to be the first to report it, though I wouldn’t have done so based solely on Justin’s secondhand account from the neighbor.

The siblings thickened the gruesome plot and spawned an unfathomable perception that two adolescents brought up in the same household could become killers before even earning a driver’s permit. That Black boys barely old enough to stay at home alone on their parents’ date night, Black boys who are endangered in ways that even Black girls aren’t, Black boys who are presumed guilty until proven innocent, are capable of being murderous kidnappers who desecrate bodies in their spare time between the school dismissal bell and church on Sunday.

“Jordan, you could fill a notebook with the mistakes and presumptions that the CPD and the prosecutor’s office have made in this case,” Adele Constanzo told me. “Can you meet me at my office today after the news conference?”

“I’ll come straight to you,” I said, “with a camera, if you’re in agreement.”

“Absolutely.”

*

After a few days away from the beat, I was happy to see that the “camera” the desk assigned to the news conference was Scott. After Folson left the room, I was just as anxious to clear out of there. A reporter from one of the local newspapers had the nerve to ask me, “Where’d you hear two of the suspects are brothers?” I smiled at him, shrugged my shoulders, and walked over to Scott.

“Let’s bounce,” I said.

In the news truck, I was reluctant to ask Scott What happened the other day? or Are we okay? I was too caught up in the moment. And after the way I’d gone after Fawcett and Folson, so was he.

“You were an attack dog!” Scott said. “Did you see the way Fawcett looked at you? And Folson. What was that about?”

“Fawcett, no surprise there. But they were all cowards to leave Folson twisting in the wind. For a minute there, I thought she might’ve grown a conscience. She’s so rigid, though, more likely she counted to ten and bolted.”

“What do you think about these kids being charged?” he said.

“It’s bullshit! But I cannot believe that police or the prosecutor’s office are satisfied they’ve found Masey’s killer. If these boys were involved in her death, they got help from someone older. Or they’re taking the rap for that person. They at least would’ve needed to have a vehicle to dispose of the body. Dr. Chan said Masey was killed somewhere else and dumped in the field. How would little boys pull something like that off?”

“I agree, it’s pretty damned desperate,” Scott said. “Where are we headed, anyway?”

“To get some answers, I hope, from the boys’ defense attorney.”

Scott looked at me curiously.

“Adele Constanzo. She called me about an hour before the news conference . . . on my cell phone,” I said.

“Wha-a-at? Someone you know?” Scott asked.

“No. I asked her how she’d got my number. You know what she said to me?”

“What?”

“‘What kind of a shitty investigator would I be if I couldn’t get the number of a reporter who wanted nothing more than to take my call?’”

“Oh, so she’s a little full of herself?” Scott said.

“I didn’t take it that way. I googled her. She’s a second-generation Cuban American. Graduated from Berkeley. She was recognized two years ago by the NAACP for her justice reform work.”

“I’m surprised I haven’t heard of her,” Scott said.

“Yeah, me, too, but she’s been pretty low-key the last two years. Her bio says she has a three-year-old son. Maybe she took some time off,” I said. “At any rate, Adele Constanzo wants to use me to advance her agenda, and I think I’m going to let her.”

We parked across from Constanzo’s Loop office building and proceeded up to her spacious yet unpretentious office on the thirty-third floor. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought we had walked into the headquarters of a children’s charity. Many images of young people decorated the walls.