Jonathon King - A Visible Darkness

The crime scene techs were still working the Caprice. I asked one of them for directions to the park and left.

It took me thirty minutes to get back to the zone. I could feel a tingle of adrenaline in my blood. Maybe we get lucky, I thought. The park was a small square of green along Northwest Nineteenth Street. There were a few transplanted palms and willow trees, a multicolored plastic jungle gym and three worn picnic tables. When I pulled up the place was empty except for the table in the far shaded corner. This time there were four of them.

I kept my hands out of my pockets and crossed the open grass and when I got close enough I recognized the fourth as the Brown Man.

The crew leader nodded when I stepped up. His two friends stood and took a few steps back. The Brown Man kept his head down, only looking up with his eyes.

"So, Freeman," said the leader. He had absorbed my name, filed it. "We did some of our own investigatin' an' come up wit some information might be good." He put an emphasis on the word "might" and cut a look at the Brown Man when he said it.

"The Brown here works his gig down at the dope hole, but you already know that," he continued. The dealer hadn't moved. "He been there forever an' know everybody, hear everything, ah he say nobody been talkin' bout killin' no grands over in the off-limits."

The Brown Man shook his head and said, quietly, "Tha's right."

"But he say he got somethin' on your clean bills but he need to come over here ah see who his information goin' to an' not be seen talkin' to no G by any of his dogs, you know what I mean?"

I had an idea.

"I also need somethin' in return," the Brown Man said, finally looking up at me.

All I could do was nod.

"If you after this motherfucker ah get his ass, he don't come back on my ass, right?"

I nodded again, no vocal promises.

"Cause he one scary motherfucker ah I don't need his crazy-ass trouble, right? I'm losin' steady money on this, but I might be losin' a lot more business, or so say these homies," he said, looking around.

"You have a customer who uses new hundred-dollar bills?" I asked.

He waited. Looked around, avoiding eye contact with the others.

"Junk man," he said. "Big scary lookin' dude always be pushin' his cart round town. He been buyin' dope for a long time. Dimes an' eight-balls and shit. But last year he start buyin' bundles and payin' with new Franklins. First time he give me one I had my boys run the bill down at the store see if it any good. After that, they all be clean. Most of them new."

I didn't say anything, picturing the thick figure of the man, draped in his dark winter coat, looking up into my eyes when he'd bent to pick up a can on the street that day. And I remembered the hands, huge and swollen and powerful.

"Anybody know where this junk man lives?" I asked.

"Nobody pay no attention to him," said the crew leader. "Once we start talkin' about him, everybody seen him around, but nobody know him.

"Dog here say he thinks he live with his momma somewhere's over on Washington by the river," he said, tipping his head to one of his crew. "But he ain't sure where."

The table was silent for a full minute. Nothing more was coming.

"I appreciate the help," I finally said. "You've got my cell number. If you see this junk man, call me."

"No, no, no," said the Brown Man, turning bold. "I ain't callin' nobody down on my own corner. An' that means you too, truck man. Don't be parkin' cross the street messin' wit my business no more. That's part of the deal, too."

"I'll call you, G," said the crew leader, stepping between us. "But you better come quick we find out this junk man been doin' what you say."

I was driving around the zone, aimlessly. If the dark junk man didn't know anyone was after him, maybe he'd still be on the street, doing whatever he'd been doing during the daytime for who knows how long.

I was thinking about his eyes, the dark tunnels under the shadows of his brow when he looked up and caught my own. Were they eyes that could hold the kind of remorselessness it would take to steal innocent lives for a few hundred dollars? Eyes that could look away while he crushed an old man's throat? I'd seen the eyes of killers before.

"Taking the walk" they called it in Philly, when the arrested or convicted would be walked in their shackles and cuffs from a court hearing back to the jail. They would purposely be taken across an open-air corridor so the press cameras could all get a shot. Some group of cops would always be assigned to do crowd control, holding back the TV guys who wanted to stick a microphone in the guy's face and asked the inevitable stupid question, "Why'd you do it?"

I'd been on the detail when they walked Heidnik. When he looked up to see who'd asked the question, he caught my eyes as I held back the line. Just the quick contact made a shiver flutter at the hairline on the back of my neck. Maybe it was the knowledge that investigators had actually talked of Heidnik's possible cannibalism. Maybe it was just the possibility of pure evil that made you see what couldn't humanly be there. But neither television nor the movies ever got it right.

While driving I had unconsciously taken myself back into the alley behind Ms. Thompson's house when the cell rang.

"Freeman."

"Richards," she said. "The crime scene guys got a match off some fingerprints from the doc's car. Some guy named Eddie Baines. He was in Marshack's forensics unit three years ago for a couple of months on a theft charge. We got an old home address for him, and SWAT is headed out there now. Can you meet us?"

She sounded in control, but pumped.

"Give me the address," I said.

A cop stopped me at a roadblock three blocks away from the house. I gave the uniformed officer Richards's name and he called it in over his radio.

"Somebody will have to take you in," he said.

Down the street the road was blocked again by two squad cars parked nose to nose. People who had been evacuated from their houses were milling around, talking to the cops and probably getting little answer for their questions. Another officer jogged up and told me to follow him to the command post. Richards, Diaz and two SWAT officers were working from the side patio of a small stucco house. Richards introduced me around and then filled me in.

"His place is the beige one across and to the left." I peeked around the corner. The house had a dilapidated look that followed the neighborhood trend. All the shades were down. The driveway was empty. The roof had a deep sway in the middle as if part of the air had been let out of the place.

"The phone has been disconnected for years," she continued. "Neighbors say that Eddie used to live there with his mother, but they hadn't seen either of them for quite a while."

"How old's the mother?" I asked.

"From what we know she's got to be mid to late sixties. Property records say she's owned the place for thirty years."

"What's the sheet on our guy?"

"Thirty-seven years old. Picked up a couple of times for loitering but only the one time for theft, when they say he stole some plants off a woman's carport. Low IQ. Signs of mental illness. They kept him in the forensics unit for more than thirty days to evaluate him. Nothing in the file to show they had any trouble with him there. Dr. Marshack did a preliminary workup on the guy, but when he'd served out his time they cut him loose to the streets with an appointment for follow-up at the local mental health clinic."

"And he never showed up," I said, knowing the answer. In some things, the world worked the same no matter what city you were in.

"He have any weapons charges?"

"Nothing that showed."

"So how come SWAT?"

The two guys in black never flinched.

"We got a quasi-county employee with half a bottle stuck in his neck. We got some psycho with his prints all over the inside of the victim's car. Hammonds wants this one tight and by the book," Diaz said.