As the Wicked Watch(9)

My mother, Eleanor, a brave and fair-minded woman, was convinced I’d become a lawyer. She would have lost all her bingo money winnings on the bet. But her sage advice has gotten me through way too many gut-wrenching moments in which I questioned whether there were any good people left as I stared at a body being loaded into an ambulance at a crime scene. She’s warned me not to linger in the dark places for too long.

“You’ll fall into despair if you keep trying to step into the shoes of the people going through this kind of trauma. I raised you to be empathetic, sweetheart, but God doesn’t require all this of you. Leave it at the office.”

But there was no office for me to store the heavy emotional baggage I lug around to do this job. I never understood why colleges and universities stuck courses in journalism and marketing/advertising in the same schools. The disposition my job requires is more akin to a surgeon’s or a psychiatrist’s. I must constantly remind myself to turn away from other people’s despair and move toward the light that glows in my own life. It’s a fragile balance; it’s made me hard at times, but just as often, softer than I needed to be.

My cell phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Joey. “Hey, Joe-Joe, what you got?” I asked.

“You still at the scene?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’ll be here all day, most likely,” I said.

“Well, I don’t know much yet. One of my guys did confirm that a body was recovered from a weed-infested lot over there. And I got an email about a news conference at 45th and Calumet today at one-thirty,” Joey said.

I immediately called Ellen to let her know that I had confirmed the tip with a source inside the police department.

“Did they say whether it was a man or a woman?” Ellen asked.

“No,” I responded. Neither of us stated what we feared and tried to remain positive, as if the mind could simply erase the body lying nearby, or will it not to be the person we already suspected it was.

“Okay, I’m heading into the news meeting now,” she said. “Good work, Jordan. Keep an eye on your phone. I’ll text you when I get out of the meeting.”

Down the block, I noticed a crowd had gathered across the street from the crime scene. Neighbors, I imagined. One woman was crouched down on a stoop. I turned back toward Scott.

“I’m going to walk down there and try to talk to them,” I said.

“The cops are gonna stop you,” Scott warned.

“They can try,” I said.

As I gained on the police barricades, an officer who looked all of fifteen years old spotted me and approached swiftly to head me off like a Bears defensive tackle.

Okay, rookie, settle down.

At that moment, I caught the attention of the woman on the stoop, and I waved to her like we were old friends. I stopped in my tracks and waited for the young officer to approach.

“Ma’am, we’re not letting anyone past this point,” he said, far more politely than the cop had earlier.

“I can appreciate that,” I said with a slight smile. “I’m just trying to get to my friend’s house over there. See? She just waved at me. See?” I said, and waved again at the stranger, who waved back.

“Okay, but you have to stay on that side of the street,” he said.

“No problem,” I said.

I walked toward my unknown but willing accomplice, who’d stepped away from the group gathered near the corner. In her mid to late thirties, the woman wore her hair braided with a detailed precision that must have taken hours, pulled into a ponytail that hung down her back.

I surveyed those around her. It was a quarter after nine.

Most of these folks just climbed out of bed.

I extended my hand and introduced myself and instantly got the feeling this woman was glad to see me.

“Hi, how are you? Thanks for your help back there. I wasn’t sure they’d let me by,” I said. “I’m Jordan Manning with Channel 8.”

“I know who you are,” she said shyly. “Tanya. McMillan,” she said, breaking her name into two distinct parts the way Mama says JOR-dan when she is exasperated with me. “So, what’s going on over there?”

I wasn’t about to tell her that a dead body had been found across the street from her house, not before I tell the rest of Chicago.

“I’m not sure, but police are calling it a crime scene,” I said. “Do you live here? Did you see or hear anything overnight?”

“Yeah, I live here with my mother,” she said. “I didn’t see anything going on last night. Everybody is saying they found someone dead. This morning, a bunch of orange jumpsuits was over there at about seven-thirty. I guess that’s who the city finally sent out here to clean up that lot. They worked a good forty-five minutes, and next thing you know, the place was crawling with cops.”

“Orange jumpsuits?” I asked. “Did they say Cook County Jail on them?”

“Yeah . . . they did,” she said in a tone and with a shrug of her shoulders that let me know she thought I’d asked a naive question. “You know how you see those guys out on the expressway picking up garbage? It was that kind of crew.”

“Ms. McMillan, have you told anyone else about this?” I asked.

“No, other than my neighbors and my moms. You’re the only person I’ve talked to today,” she said.