“This looks hot,” he said with a boyish smile.
Frank snatched it from his hand. “We don’t know yet.”
Gibbons looked at him doubtfully. “You’d let me know if you needed something, I hope.”
“Sure thing,” Caleb said as he passed by and followed Frank quickly to his desk.
“Davon Clinton Little,” Frank said to himself as he began to read the report.
Caleb stood over him, his eyes fixed on the paper.
“Uh huh,” he said, after a moment. “Lots of petty shit. Burglary in his youth, then graduating to a little personal assault.”
“He drew some time on that,” Frank said.
“Yeah, and it looks like it settled him down a little,” Caleb added. “So he switched over to flim-flams and car theft.” He smiled. “Before long we’ll be dealing with white-collar crime.”
“Slid back in eighty-two,” Frank said.
“And things got raw, didn’t they?” Caleb said.
Frank ticked off the descent. “Armed robbery, assault, attempted murder.”
“He’s not mellowing with age, Frank,” Caleb warned darkly.
Frank nodded. “Last known address was on the Southside.” He took a map of the city and spread it out across his desk. “Simpson Street.” He found the street name in the index then pinpointed it on the map. “Look at this.”
Caleb leaned forward, eyeing the map. He watched as Frank’s finger moved left about a quarter of an inch and struck the corner of Amsterdam and Glenwood, the vacant lot where Angelica’s body had been found.
“Bingo,” he whispered.
Frank stood up. “Well, let’s go see if he’s home.”
“When you get older, it’s all memory,” Caleb said as he pulled himself into the car.
Frank hit the ignition and eased the car from the curb. “What is?”
“Life,” Caleb answered. “Like since we found that girl, I’ve been thinking of all the other bodies. I can remember the first one the best.” He pulled out his pipe and began to fill the bowl. “It was on the Southside, too, and it was a young girl. But there was a difference. She’d been buried quite a while, and, you know, Frank, the thing I remember most is how she kept coming apart when they tried to dig her out. Pieces of her would just crumble in your hand.” He shook his head. “And I thought, well, the preacher back home, he got one thing right: dust to dust, Frank, that’s a fact.” He put the pipe in his mouth and lit it.
Frank glanced over at him, and for some reason his eyes lingered on Caleb’s face. It was large and jowled. Skin hung flaccidly from the line of his jaw and gathered in rounded puffs beneath his eyes. He was nearly sixty, Frank guessed, and it was as if he could see the thread of his life as it unraveled, hear each fiber as it snapped.
“Now my wife has a different idea,” Caleb said after a moment. “Sort of a Holy Roller type. She thinks she’s on her way to God.”
Frank continued to listen. He was surprised that after so many years, Caleb had suddenly begun to talk about his private life. It was as if there was something in him trying to break out, a small, trapped animal gnawing through his skin.
“She was always off to church,” Caleb went on. “Praying we could have a kid, that’s what I always figured.” He glanced over to Frank. “I don’t know why we couldn’t. We tried plenty during the first few years.” He smiled ruefully. “Then we didn’t try that much anymore.”
Frank felt himself overtaken by a deep sadness, like a fist out of the darkness, and he had to turn away quickly and fix his eyes on the street ahead in order to keep himself contained. Caleb seemed to sense it, and said nothing else. He simply sat, puffing on his pipe, and watched the line of shops and restaurants until they faded almost imperceptibly into the dilapidated service stations and fast-food joints of the Southside.
“Okay, let’s keep our eyes open for Simpson Street,” Frank said after they’d gone past the vacant lot.
“Should be on our right,” Caleb said matter-of-factly.
It was a narrow, pitted street, and the car rumbled noisily as Frank turned onto it.
“Go slow, now,” Caleb said. “We’re looking for Two Forty-one.” He peered out the window, his eyes darting from one house to the next. “There it is,” he said, finally.
Frank guided the car over to the curb and stopped. The house was small and rested on a cement foundation. The red brick facade was chipped, and even from that distance, Frank could see a large tear in the front screen door. A scattering of children’s toys lay here and there on the parched lawn.
Caleb’s eyes moved from the overturned tricycle to the rusting swings. “I don’t like kids around when we’re checking a guy out.” He looked at Frank. “Guys like Little, what the fuck do they want kids for?”
Frank got out of the car and joined Caleb on the sidewalk, then the two of them walked to the front door and knocked.
It opened immediately, and a tall thin woman with stringy blonde hair stood facing them. She was dressed in faded jeans and what Frank took to be the upper half of a flowered bikini. She was very pale, and her arms dangled at her sides like strips of white paint.
“Davon ain’t here,” she said. She raked back her hair with a single, boney hand. “I don’t know when he’ll be back.” A small child in a soiled diaper toddled up from behind and wrapped its arms around her leg. “Get away now,” the woman said. She reached down, jerked the child around and shoved it back toward the rear of the house. “This ain’t your business.”
Frank pulled out his badge. “Where is Mr. Little?” he asked.
The woman stared vacantly at the badge.
“Where is he?” Caleb demanded in a hard voice.
The woman’s watery blue eyes shifted over to Caleb. “I don’t got to say nothing to you.”
“We’re investigating a murder,” Frank told her.
A thin smile slithered across her lips. “He killed somebody? I figured he would someday.”
“We just want to talk to him,” Frank said. He pocketed his badge. “Now where is he?”
“The park.”
“Grant Park?”
“Yeah,” the woman said. “But you don’t tell him I told you so, you hear?”
“Where in the park?” Caleb asked.
“Said he was going to the zoo. Said he was meeting somebody over there. He’s a liar, though. He could be anywhere. Sometimes he don’t come home. He just leaves me with the kids, and he just goes wherever he wants to.” She stepped back from the door. “You find him. I ain’t looking for him no more.” She closed the door.
It was only a short drive to the park, and Caleb and Frank rode silently together until they reached the entrance.
Frank took out the mug shot which had been attached to the report. “Want to look at this again?”
Caleb shook his head. “Nah. Once I see a face, I got it forever.”
Frank looked at the picture for a moment, then returned it to his pocket.
They spotted him almost at once, a tall black man in a pair of bright yellow pants and a short-sleeve flamingo shirt.
Caleb chuckled to himself. “With a record like his, you’d think he’d try to look a little less conspicuous.”
Frank nodded.
“You know, when it comes to guys like Little, we got one advantage, Frank: they’re even stupider than we are.”
In the distance, Frank could see Davon Little as he slumped against the short storm fence. Beyond the fence there was a moat, and beyond that a small concrete island where two enormous polar bears yawned in the heat.
Little stared off toward a clump of trees in the distance, then straightened himself and moved on down along the storm fence, pausing for a moment at the grizzly bears.
“Swear to God, Frank,” Caleb said, “he looks like he’s here for the pleasure of it.”