Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

Peterson’s job essentially consisted of waiting for people to die. If they died of natural causes, he wrote an obit. If the cause was unnatural, he wrote a news story. It would be impossible to put an exact number on how many thousands of New Jerseyans had their demises chronicled by Peterson. But when you figure he averaged two hundred bylines a year, the numbers added up.

Yet it never seemed to grow old to him. He attacked each death with relish, eagerly ferreting out the details that would allow him to write that the deceased was beloved by all (if it was an obit) or that a death had shocked an otherwise quiet community (if it was a murder) or that the deceased met his end amid the squeal of skidding tires and the shriek of breaking glass (if it was a car crash). His penchant for cliche was legendary.

But on this night, he looked bored.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I asked.

“Pretty quiet tonight,” he said glumly. “Only one shooting.”

“Is it anything you can turn into a story?”

“I don’t think so. Just another Newark kid.”

He yawned out of boredom. I yawned because yawning is contagious and because I had been going nonstop for fourteen hours-and was starting to feel it.

“Police give you an ID?” I asked, just to keep the conversation going.

“Nope. He’s John Doe. They’re still looking for next of kin. We’ll be lucky if we get an ID in Monday’s paper.”

“Where’d it happen?”

“They won’t say.”

I cocked my head.

“What do you mean they won’t say?” I asked. If nothing else, we could always get a location.

Peterson yawned again. “They were being coy with me. Gave me the old ‘it’s an ongoing investigation’ and told me to call back later.”

“What time did you have that conversation?”

“I don’t know, an hour ago?”

“Well, it’s later now, isn’t it? What do you say you give our good friend Hakeem Rogers a call?”

“Good point,” he said, grabbing the phone and jabbing at the numbers. Peterson was from the manual-typewriter generation and therefore believed all buttons needed to be depressed with brute force, lest they fail to register.

“Rogers, it’s Peterson,” he said into the handset. “What’s going on with the kid who ate the bullet?” He waited. “I know you don’t have an ID. But you gotta have a location for me.” More pause. “Well, what gives, Rogers? How am I supposed to write a story that says someone got killed but we don’t know who and we don’t know where and we don’t know how? This is a newspaper, not a game of Clue.” Another pause. “Well, I don’t give a rat’s ass what your captain says. Tell your captain the law says the public has a right to know and I got a deadline.” Briefer pause. “Fine. Put him on.”

Peterson cupped the phone and looked at me. “I don’t know why they’re always playing these games with me. Every night, it’s like Professor Plum with the wrench in the study.”

Peterson returned the phone to his mouth. “Hi, Captain, it’s Peterson. Am I going to have to sic our lawyers on you guys or can we get a little cooperation here?”

The captain started speaking and Peterson’s hands suddenly came to life. He flipped his notebook to a blank page and began scribbling madly. Peterson was excitable by nature, so it was hard to tell if this was routine or if he was onto something big. I did my best to divine what was happening from Peterson’s half of the conversation:

“No kidding. . Unbelievable. . The exact same place?. . Against the back fence?. . How many?. . Where?. . Damn. And the call came in when?. . Any witnesses?. . You think it’s connected to the thing from before?. . Yeah, I’ll hang on.”

Peterson cupped the phone again. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said. “But they found another body in that vacant lot down on Ludlow Street.”

Ididn’t wait for Peterson to finish with the captain.

“I’m heading down there,” I told him. “Call me.”

Peterson nodded, returning his attention to his notepad. It occurred to me I should tell Tina where I was heading, partly as a courtesy and partly because she was in charge of the newspaper at the moment. But she was off in a far corner hovering over some page proofs with the copy desk chief, immersed in conversation. So I pit-stopped at her desk, grabbed a sticky note and scribbled, “Going to Ludlow St. Ask Peterson.-C.” Then I attached it to her computer screen and hurried toward the exact last place I wanted to be: back in the hood.

But there was no choice, really. I was the only one who could go. I don’t say that out of some overdeveloped hero complex. I mean I was literally the only one who could go. Between the hiring freezes, the layoffs, and the voluntary buyouts-all symptoms of the newspaper’s unceasing economic decline-our staff was half the size it once was. The days of keeping around spare bodies to throw at breaking news were long over. During off hours, we were down to one reporter, who stayed tied to the desk.

So I went back into the frosty night, barely tapping the Malibu’s brakes at red lights on the way down to Ludlow Street. I was most of the way there when my cell phone buzzed with Peterson’s number flashing on the screen.

“What do we know?” I said.

“At eight thirty-seven, a caller who identifies herself as a Ludlow Street resident hears five shots and immediately calls the cops.

“The police say they were down there in less than ten minutes to comb the neighborhood,” Peterson continued. “They were smart enough to start in the vacant lot next to the church, and they found a young black male against the fence in the back, exactly where they found the bodies earlier this week. And I mean exactly. There were fresh bloodstains on top of the old ones.”

“Hooo-lee smokes,” I interjected.

“The kid was apparently a real mess. Those five shots the caller heard? The cops think all five bullets went, bam, right in the coconut. The captain wouldn’t give much detail, but can you imagine five shots to the head? If you’re talking about a gun with any amount of punch at all, that kid probably doesn’t have much of a head left. They’ll be picking pieces of brain off that fence for hours.”

Peterson’s usual talent for embellishment wasn’t failing him in this critical moment. I just hoped that particular bit of creative writing didn’t make it into the next day’s paper.

“Anyway,” he went on, “they’re not going to bother taking the kid to the hospital. He was pronounced dead at the scene. It will be straight to the morgue for him.”

“Any ID?”

“No. Not that they’d tell us if there was. But the captain said half the reason he was giving us so much information so quickly was that they may need the public’s help in figuring out who the kid is. He wasn’t carrying a wallet and his face is so messed up they’re going to have to hope his prints are in the system. If not, it’s wait until his mama comes looking for him.”

I felt a momentary sadness for this kid’s mama, whoever she was.

“The captain say whether he thought it was the same killer from before or is it just some copycat?” I asked.

“Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” Peterson said. “The captain wouldn’t even discuss it with me. I’ll read you the quote: ‘At this point, we’re just sticking with what we know. We are not speculating as to motive or connection to other crimes.’ ”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I mean, the first thing got enough publicity that it could be a copycat. The first time it was one shot in the back of the head. This time it was five shots. .”

“Unless that signifies it’s the fifth victim,” I interrupted.