Somewhere Over Lorain Road, page 4
Staring up, he noted the serrated edges of each individual leaf that combined with dozens of others to form the majestic ferns. They branched off from the center, and except for their sizes, they all looked identical, brilliant green in the sun. He closed his eyes.
When he woke, shadows covered the ferns. He sat up. The sun was across the sky.
He grabbed the book and tore through the forest. Terror seized him when he reached the empty dirt bike field. Frantic, he took off for home. Instead of taking the longer sidewalk route, he ran in the fields along the tree line, made treacherous by gopher holes, creeks and ponds and things hidden in the weeds.
He got tangled in branches once, forcing him to tunnel underneath, but he made good time. The chicken coop was ahead, and he soon spotted his parents and brothers in their backyard, their hands cupped over their mouths as they called for him.
Now that he knew what awaited, he felt calmer. He positioned himself directly behind the chicken coop, hunching, before scrambling and tossing the book inside.
His mother spotted him and came running, letting out a shriek filled with both joy and rage. The others followed.
Mom rushed up to him and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where were you?” she screamed.
“Why did you leave the field?” Tim shouted.
“You stupid idiot!” Randy cried.
Rich just looked relieved to see him.
Dad squatted and pulled him close, holding him tightly across the back. “Thank God, son, thank God.”
Mom pushed Dad aside and enfolded him in her arms.
“We were so worried.” Her voice cracked. “We found out this morning another little boy disappeared last night.” She smoothed back his hair. “They found his body in the woods behind McDonald’s on Lorain Road today.”
Chapter Five
In his rental car, Don drove down Lorain Road, a huge thoroughfare that started near downtown Cleveland and ran westward miles past North Homestead to the rural communities beyond.
Don passed McDonald’s, still in the same spot, gussied up in gray paint. Decades ago, the woods behind had been cleared to make way for a shopping center anchored by a massive grocery store. Somewhere in the parking lot lay the spot where the naked body of a five-year-old boy named Danny Miller was found in the summer of 1975.
Danny Miller had changed everything.
Don shopped by consulting his mother’s list. The echoing voices of the past came as they always did, unexpectedly and without warning:
“Your dad is a baby fucker!” “Your dad should be shot for having sex with little boys!” “Did your dad rape you before he raped those other boys?”
Even as a kid, Don knew the other kids were only repeating the things they heard at home from their older siblings and parents.
As he pulled out of the parking lot onto Lorain Road, the North Homestead police station loomed in front, and a brilliant idea formed in his mind within seconds. Why didn’t I think of this years ago? Traffic was light early on a Monday afternoon, so he drove straight across all four lanes to the police station, a boxy, gray building.
Just beyond the glass doors of the entrance, a long hallway tiled in gray linoleum stretched into the building. Portraits of the chiefs of police over the years lined the wall, identical white faces with short hair in identical black frames.
Behind a counter, two police officers chatted over facing desks strewn with papers and computer monitors. A young female officer asked, “What can we do for you?”
“I’m here about a case that happened about forty years ago.”
“What case?” the male officer asked.
“It was three little boys who were murdered around town in the summer of 1975. They only found two of the bodies.”
They looked at each other and squinted, searching their memories. This must seem like ancient history to them, those terrifying, surreal months happening twenty years or more before their births.
They directed him outside to the archive building, formerly the city’s bus shed. Don remembered a time when the shed numbered among the biggest structures he’d ever seen. It looked the same except for the light maroon paint. He couldn’t remember the original color, but this wasn’t it.
He knocked. He waited and knocked again. He waited some more and pounded.
“Hold your horses,” a woman called from inside.
Several moments later, someone unlocked and opened the door. The woman who squinted out looked every bit like someone who would say, “hold your horses.” Her face seemed molded from grayish clay, and long, straggly blond hair draped across the shoulders of her uniform. She examined him behind thick glasses. Don guessed her age at around sixty years old, and she moved with the deliberation caused by aches and pains.
“What do you need?” she asked, not unpleasantly.
“I’m here about a case that happened forty years ago. Two little boys were raped and murdered. Another went missing.”
Her eyes widened. “I remember that! God, that was unreal.” She waved. “Come on in.”
Don stepped into a small room with some chairs and a meshed window, with an office beyond.
She ticked her tongue in annoyance. “Oh, look at that,” she said, walking to a closet door to the left that was hanging open. A large ring of keys rattled from a short chain on her belt. “Either a ghost is running around opening all the doors, or this old building is held together by chewing gum.” She slammed the door.
Don said, “Officer, I’m here because…”
She flipped her hand. “Call me Dolores. I’m not an officer. They make me wear this uniform for work. I guess it makes me look official. Good thing they didn’t give me a gun, or I’d have shot my husband years ago. But what the heck, the uniform gets me half off at McDonald’s.”
She led Don to the office desk, where she lowered herself behind a computer monitor. “Take a seat,” she said, tapping the keyboard. She held out a hand. “Let me see the request form signed by the chief.”
“They didn’t tell me I needed one. They just told me to come here.”
Dolores dropped her hand. “Oh, you gotta have a signed form.”
“How long will that take?”
She shrugged. “It can be a pretty big rigmarole. Especially with files that are still officially open, like that case.” She shook her head. “Whoever did it is probably long dead. I was twenty-two when that happened.”
“I was ten.”
“Then you remember what it was like. The last one, Jeffrey Talent, lived just down the street from us. He was a nice kid, as I remember. But I’m sorry, I can’t help you if you don’t have a form.”
“I don’t really need to see any evidence. I’m just here to find out if anything was preserved that can be tested for DNA. I’d be glad to pay for the tests.”
She squinted again, breathing heavily. “Why?”
He hesitated, but he had an instinct that Dolores would be sympathetic. “My dad was considered a suspect for a while. He’s dying and he wants to clear his name. If we can test some of the evidence and compare that to my dad’s DNA, maybe he can finally put all of that behind him and die in peace. Again, I’ll pay for everything.”
“Are you talking about Rob Esker?”
Don nodded, surprised but resigned at the same time.
“His alibi held up, as I recall.”
“I’m glad you remember, but it didn’t matter. A lot of people never knew he had an alibi. They just remember the cops raiding our home and taking him away. He never shook the suspicion. If they’d arrested someone, that would have made a difference, but they didn’t.”
“But you know he didn’t do it, right?” she said, instantly getting to the heart of the issue, as far as Don was concerned.
“Everyone in my family knows he’s innocent. But now with DNA we can prove it as long as there’s something left to test.”
“We don’t hold much in the way of perishables here. We don’t have enough room in our refrigeration and freezing units. If there’s still some DNA evidence left, it would be down at the county building, but I gotta tell you they can’t hold on to that stuff forever. They probably ditched it all years ago.”
“Where’s the county building?”
“Downtown.”
“Before I go all that way, can you at least check with the county to see if they have anything? You’d save me a trip.”
Dolores nodded. “Yeah, I can do that. All of that information should be in the summary binder.” Groaning, she pushed herself to her feet. “Come on. I think I know right where those files are, but I don’t want to lug them all over this building, so if you promise you won’t tell anybody or touch anything, you can come with me. Do you have a case number?”
“No.”
She sighed. “Okay. There was a lot of stuff from that case, so there’s probably a lot of boxes with the same number. They should be easy to find.”
She unlocked the door behind the desk, and Don followed her into to a vast space filled with fenced-in cages. Shelves sagged with boxes and bags. The keys jangled and bounced against her thigh. She muttered as she walked, holding a hand to her back. “One of those kids was the son of old Chief Tedesco, you know,” she said.
“I know. Eddie Tedesco. I was best friends with his brother Billy.”
“Were you?” Her voice went high with surprise. “From what I heard, that Billy was a holy terror. His dad had no control of him. Funny thing, too, what with the old man being a Navy SEAL and all.” She gestured dismissively. “Most of the officers worshiped the ground he walked on, but I never understood why. Although it is a shame about his kid.”
She stopped at a gate and unlocked the door. It swung open with a rattling screech. The space was the size of a two-car garage, with a metal table with matching chairs in the center, bordered on three sides by shelves.
“They’re in here somewhere,” Dolores said. “As you can see, they’re all marked by the case number, the first one followed by an ‘A,’ the second with a ‘B,’ and so on.” She waved. “If you can find the ‘A’ box, there’s a summary report in a binder listing all the evidence. We had to do them about thirty years ago, right around the time I got this job.” She shook her head. “It was just busywork. It took us two years to go through everything, and nobody ever looks at them. There’s cocaine and all kinds of stuff all over this building.”
Don scanned the shelves, quickly spotting a row of old blue and white boxes with the same case number lettered to “K.”
“This must be them,” he said, pulling the “A” box from the shelf and placing it on the table. He removed the lid, and just as Dolores promised, a binder sat on top with a “Summary of Evidence” typed on a yellowing label in the italicized font of an electronic typewriter. It looked old-fashioned. He remembered when those typewriters were leading edge of technology.
He placed the binder on the table and flipped it open.
“Now hang on a sec,” Dolores said. “I don’t mind you moving things around, but you can’t be examining the files of an open case.” She sat, waving for him to do the same. “Let me just take a look.”
Holding the frame of her glasses, she removed a black-and-white photo from a slot in the inside the cover, police officers standing in a stiff line.
“This is the team,” she remarked. “Don’t know why they posed for a photo when they never caught the guy.” Her eyes suddenly lighted with delight. “Hey! There’s Chief Ladmore!” She laughed. “Look at him in his rookie uniform. Must have been one of his first cases.”
She showed him the photo, but the uniformed men in a stiff row with sober faces and clasped hands looked the same to Don.
“Eric Ladmore was deputy chief for a long time until Tedesco retired about ten or fifteen years back,” Dolores said. “He himself just retired last year.” She shook her head. “He was a looker back in the day. He could have talked me into a bit of trouble.” She snorted.
She returned the photo to its slot and squinted at the first page. She shook her head and flipped, scanning the next sheet rapidly. Then the third. At the fourth, she stopped.
“Here we go,” she muttered.
Don waited a long while, until she looked up and said, “Well, I can tell you one thing. You don’t have to go all the way downtown.”
“Did the county discard the evidence?” Perhaps it was understandable that the county had chucked the only solid evidence after so many years, but the case had been so sensational that it struck him as strange.
She looked unsure. “I don’t know how much I’m supposed to say. Like I said, technically this case is still open.”
“Come on, Dolores. Nobody has worked on this case in years. It’s just a formality to say it’s still open.”
“Yeah, I know, but I’m violating all kinds of rules to even let you back here. I’m not sure I should say anything.”
“How about if you just tell me if there’s a chance the county still has the evidence?”
“The county never held any evidence. All the evidence is in this building.” She pointed with her chin. “In those boxes.”
“Are you saying the North Homestead police department didn’t file the perishable evidence with the county when they ran out of room here?”
She leaned in. “Listen closely to what I’m saying to you. There never was any evidence that we can test for DNA. There was nothing to refrigerate or freeze in the first place.”
“The police didn’t collect physical evidence from the bodies of two boys who were raped and murdered?” That was not amateur. It was negligence of the first order.
She sighed. “You gonna make me spell it out for you?”
“I wish you would.”
“There’s nothing to test for DNA because neither of those boys was raped.”
Chapter Six
1975
Nobody understood how Danny Miller had vanished. Friday evening, the five-year-old boy was playing in his yard with his older sister and her friend. They lived far up on Porter Road, where thick woods and fields isolated the homes. The girls went inside for a few minutes, and when they returned, Danny was gone.
“He knew he wasn’t supposed to go with a stranger,” his mother tearfully said on the news.
Late Saturday morning, while Hank had been breaking Don’s heart, a few teenagers got lunch at McDonald’s and slipped away into the woods to eat. Moments later, they found the boy’s naked body. They came screaming from the trees, and at that moment, life in North Homestead changed. All over town, parents set out the new rules of life for kids: remain indoors or in yards, always within sight and shouting distance of a trusted adult, no walking or riding bicycles anywhere.
Sunday morning, Don and his brothers put on mitts and threw a baseball around in the backyard. He liked the challenge of sight and coordination, but Tim started throwing the ball with more force. Soon, all three of his brothers were hurling the ball as hard as they could, and Don left for the front yard, angry that they’d spoiled the fun of skill and accuracy. Across the street, Billy was playing with a Hot Wheels set in front of his garage. Chief Tedesco’s black squad car was gone.
Don reasoned that if he crossed the street, he would still be in full view of his mother if she decided to check on him from the living room window, so he set off running.
“Billy!” he called as he approached.
Billy’s head snapped up, and he looked at Don like he didn’t know who he was. Don stopped, and the two old friends locked eyes.
“I’m sorry about Eddie,” Don said.
Billy looked surprised. In an instant, rage transformed his face and he hurled a little metal car at Don’s feet. Don hopped out of the way as the car landed with a ping and skittered off.
“Get away from me!” Billy yelled, his face going red. “You don’t know anything!” Billy pounded across the porch and inside the house, slamming the door.
Don looked down at the discarded Hot Wheels set; cars jumbled, orange tracks scattered, a loop-de-loop on its side. It looked like an amusement park, torn apart by giants.
Filled with regret and humiliation, Don ran first to the chicken coop to get the book, then all the way to Hank’s house with tears down his face.
He knew he would get into trouble for leaving his yard, but he didn’t care. He had to see Hank, and he crashed through the giant ferns into his backyard, disappointed that it was empty. He raced to the house, and when he reached the patio the sliding glass door started to open.
“I brought your book back…” he said, but stopped in shock when Chief Tedesco emerged from the house, trailed by two police officers.
Don couldn’t move. Seeing the chief in Hank’s house was as disorienting and mortifying as the time he saw Father O’Shay in the shower at the YMCA.
“What are you doing here, Donnie?” the chief asked, sharp disgust in his voice. “Did your parents let you go running around the neighborhood all by yourself on a day like today?”
When Don didn’t answer, the chief muttered to one of the cops, who nodded and gave Don an angry glare.
“Officer Becker is going to take you home,” Chief Tedesco said.
Don imagined pulling up to his house in a police car. Without a beat, Don said, “I’ll go right home.” He raced away, ignoring the chief’s shouts. He looked back when he reached the safety of the ferns. Officer Becker hadn’t followed. Don threw Hank’s book into the woods and raced off.
Back home, his brothers surrounded him, enraged yet relieved. Their quiet rage meant that, amazingly, their parents didn’t know that he’d left.
Don spent the rest of the afternoon sulking under the huge pear tree in the backyard while his brothers huddled on the driveway lighting black snakes. Don hated the way the perfect little black pellets caught fire and spat with sparks and smoke as they oozed into a misshapen gray tube. His brothers hooted and hollered and Don thought that only the thunder of pagan drums would make the savagery complete. The result looked nothing like a snake. The ashy cylinder always broke after an inch or so, leaving a faint black residue on the cement.
