As the Wicked Watch(8)
We lucked out, and Scott and I were the first television people to arrive. Barricades were already up, creating a restricted zone. Scott got as close as a conspicuous white van emblazoned with the station logo and a satellite on top could take us. We climbed out of the van. Scott was locked and loaded, ready to aim and shoot.
“Okay, let’s go. Keep on walking until somebody tells us to stop,” I said.
At the quickstep, Scott and I moved toward the intersection. As we rounded the corner, an ambulance came into view. The next thing I noticed was how unkempt the property was, with towering weeds and trash strewn about. I was so fixated on the heap of green gore, I almost didn’t notice the cop rushing toward us, both palms facing outward gesturing for us to go back.
“This is a crime scene, and you are not allowed to cross the barricades at the top of the block!” he screamed. “You are going to have to go back!” he said as he continued to wave his arms in a “go on, get out of here” gesture.
“Officer, sir, I’m Jordan Manning with News Channel 8. I have to get closer. Here is my press pass.”
“I said back up!”
One minute the cops need us; the next they are ordering us around like children. Scott and I did an about-face and in defiance moved into a slow retreat. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out my cell phone. “I’m calling Joey,” I said.
Joseph Samuels was a Chicago police detective I’d grown close to, my “get out of jail free” card or in this case, my “get out of my way” card. We met one day at the courthouse at 26th and California and struck up a conversation outside chambers while awaiting a verdict. It’s crazy how the stress of crime can bring people together. The verdict that day was a hung jury. The guy had killed his wife, and it set me off. How could the jury ignore the evidence? Joey invited me out for a drink at one of the grimiest bars I’d ever been to. And it was an awesomely delicious night of tequila shots and beer. It was a much-needed Band-Aid to cover the wound after the foreman announced that a verdict couldn’t be reached. I considered Joey a work friend. I enjoyed our talks as much as he seemed to, and I appreciated when he praised me for my investigative instincts.
I was surprised when Joey picked up on the first ring.
“Good morning, Jordan,” he said in a tone signaling he was aware this was a favor call, not a dinner invite for later. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m good, Joey. It’s nice to hear your voice,” I said. “Listen, I’m over at a crime scene at 45th and Calumet. Police have the area barricaded about a block in each direction. But I know something’s going on.”
“You want to know if I’ve heard anything?” he asked.
“Yeah, what do you know about human remains found in a vacant lot at 45th and Calumet?” I asked.
“Hell, Jordan, you know more than I do! I just got off a double shift. I guess that’s why nobody called and told me about it yet,” he said. “Do you think it’s that missing kid?”
“I don’t know if it’s her. I got barked at by one of Chicago’s finest for getting too close to the scene. I will say that based on the tension, they think it’s her. I’m the only reporter here right now, Joey. I want to break this story. Can you confirm? Or at least find out whether it’s a man or a woman?” I asked as politely as I could, adding a lilt in my voice to try and sound less bossy.
“Anything else, your highness?” he asked.
It hadn’t worked. Or maybe it had. In either case, he didn’t say no.
“You’re funny,” I said, allowing myself to lean into the familiarity of the exchange, something I’d promised myself I’d get better at.
“Let me get on it,” Joey said. “I can’t get you up close, but I can find out more about the body.”
3
Today was shaping up to be one of those days where every ounce of me would be needed to make it through the newscast. Since Scott and I were the first news crew on the scene, that meant we’d have to wait around the longest of all the media types who would show up eventually for an update from a police spokesman.
My heart breaks knowing how this ends. It’s the little girl. I have been doing this long enough to read the room. This is an all-hands-on-deck to secure the area effort. No one from the newsroom was calling. Sources were drying up. No one wants to talk, or they see it as too risky to confirm.
It was unseasonably warm for mid-October, but Chicago weather can be funny that way. Sometimes it snows in April. Freakishly, in the summer of 1995, in a city known for its bitter cold and hawkish wind, nearly eight hundred people died here from the heat.
The jewel of the Midwest offered a taste of life in a variety of flavors. And I’d had a dose of just about all of them in the past three years. Covering violent crime was humbling and terrifying. This beat has forced me to go to the dark end of the street my parents warned me about while I was growing up near a sketchy part of Southeast Austin. It was a wasteland of two-bit liquor lounges and abandoned buildings where addicts went to shoot up and dealers went to recruit. All this took place three blocks west of our growing black middle-class neighborhood of split-level, partial brick single-family homes. Since I left Austin for graduate school in Missouri, the area has been regentrified and is home to seven-figure condominiums, trendy restaurants, and music lounges in a city already full of them.