I woke up in an ambulance, awash in a blinding antiseptic light, a siren screaming and bouncing around my skull like a banshee straight out of hell. A blurry, muffled figure hovered above. “You’re going to be okay.”
But I was unable to respond. All I could see, feel, and smell were the moments following the initial blow. Hot breath on my skin. Hands as rough as sandpaper around my throat. A crushing weight on top of me, stunting my breathing, and that smell. Industrial, oily, like an accelerant. I gasped for air. If my arms hadn’t been strapped to my sides, I would have reached up and touched my face, felt my own breath against my skin to remind myself that I was still alive. My reliving it was broken only by the calming words “Ms. Manning, you’re safe now.”
A man with dark hair and glasses came into focus. He was wearing a navy blue collared shirt, and there was a patch on his sleeve with the American flag and the four-star Chicago flag crisscrossing a flame or a snake. I couldn’t tell which. I tried to lift my head, but a bolt of pain shot through the base of my skull and out through my forehead.
All I could hear was my attacker’s assertion: You fucked up. You fucked up. My thoughts were dizzying.
Who called the ambulance? It must have been Bass. I bet he’s freaking out right now.
My brain fog lifted, and the day’s events replayed like a sizzle reel. Yvonne confronted Manny. Manny beat up Terrence. Manny’s been violent before. The only two people who would have thought I’d fucked up were Manny and Terrence. But I’d never even met Terrence. What did Manny tell him?
My next recollection was the jarring motion as the gurney was pulled out of the ambulance and rolled through sliding glass doors, then parked in the hallway up against a wall.
Where’s my phone?
I felt around the gurney to see if someone had left it by my side. I was in too much pain to sit up and look.
Did the assailant take my phone? Was I robbed? But why would a mugger say that I fucked up?
It was cold and much, much too bright in the hallway. My adrenaline was on a sliding scale, fluctuating between extreme highs and lows. I closed my eyes, and all I could see was red behind my eyelids. I tried to turn my head, but it felt like an hourglass, heavier with sand on one side than the other. After a few minutes, someone wheeled me into an emergency room cubicle and sealed me in with a closed curtain.
Moments later, the curtain was whisked away and a woman with short blond hair and a voice so buttery smooth, I wondered whether she’d ever done voice-over work, walked in and got right in my face. “Jor-dan. Jordan Manning,” she said, speaking loudly. “Is that your name?”
I nodded and pulled down the oxygen mask as she asked me what seemed like a never-ending series of questions. What year is it? Where do you work? What city are you in?
I was sore, but my cognition returned rapidly and so did my need-to-knows. “Can I speak to one of the officers who was at the scene?”
“Just try to relax. You’re okay now,” she tried to reassure me.
“Where are my things? My purse, my phone. I need my phone.”
“Just try to relax, Jordan. It’s going to be all right.”
“No! You don’t understand, I need my phone!”
I sat up a little too quickly and my neck snapped back like I’d been lassoed. Aware of my surroundings, I didn’t want to bring attention to myself, so I gritted my teeth to suppress all parts of my body telling me to scream. My face was numb, reminding me of that strange sensation after waking up from dental surgery before the novocaine had worn off.
Is my chin still on my face? I think so.
I brought my hand up to my right cheek and was suddenly terrified of what I must look like. The last time I got punched in the face was in the fourth grade, by a boy. I went crazy and tried to scratch his eyes out. Before it was over, the teacher had to pull me off him.
There’s no way they’re going to let me on the air tomorrow. Are you actually more worried about how you look right now after what just happened?
“Ms. Manning, you need to lie down,” the nurse pleaded. “You likely have a concussion. Please! Lie back down.”
I tried, but that just made the pain worse. “I can’t. It hurts too much. Just let me stay like this. Is my phone here?”
The nurse told me my belongings would arrive soon.
“How did they find me?” I asked.
“Someone who lives in your building discovered you and a guy who works there. You were both unconscious,” she said.
“What’s his name?”
“I have no idea. I’ll see what I can find out, okay?” the nurse said, speaking to me in a soothing tone of voice like she would a child about to get her first shot. “But you need to lie down for me first, okay?”
“And please, see if you can locate my phone. I need my phone,” I said.
“Will do, just sit tight. My name is Maggie, by the way,” she said.
“Thanks, Maggie.”
After she hadn’t returned ten minutes later, my patience was worn thin.
What’s taking her so long to get the answer?
A rush of adrenaline took me from the sitting position to thrusting my legs over the side of the gurney. Before I knew anything, I was up on my feet, wobbling across the floor and clutching the privacy curtain to steady myself. I pulled it open slightly, and then I realized I was only a few feet away from the nurses’ station located in the center of the room.
“Excuse me,” I blurted as I got closer to the desk nurse tapping away on a computer. “I’m trying to find out the name of the person who was found with me.”
The desk nurse was far less congenial than Maggie. “Ma’am, what are you doing up?” she scolded me. “You need to go back and lie down.”
“Please, you don’t understand. I need to find out. Who is it?” I pleaded.
A rush of fear took hold of me that it was Bass. He probably saw me drive up to the roof on the security cameras. He had ventured upstairs to escort me down before, like the time the access door got locked accidentally. Tonight maybe he went up to check on me and ran right into the assailant. It was the only logical explanation.
Oh my God! What happened?
Tears poured down my face. I could no longer feel the pain from my injuries. A panic attack surged through my body and I felt unsteady on my feet.
“You’re not okay,” she said. “You need to be checked out. Now get back to your room, or I’ll have to call security.”
“My God! Can’t somebody tell me who it is?” I screamed.
“Ms. Manning, I’ve got a name for her,” said the nurturing voice of Nurse Maggie, appreciated far more now than before. “Harold Brantley. He works security in the building.”
Bass.
“How is he? Where is he? Can I see him?”
“He’s being prepped for emergency surgery,” Nurse Maggie said. “Apparently, he was stabbed during the attack.”
Just like that, the wind was knocked out of me for the second time tonight. I clutched my chest and my body lunged forward as I burst into an avalanche of tears.
“You know him,” Maggie said. “I’m so sorry, but you really need to lie down and let a doctor examine you.”
She took me by the shoulders, but my feet wouldn’t budge. “Do you have my phone?” I asked.
“Your belongings should be here very soon,” she said. “Okay, back to bed now.”
“I’ve gotta make a call. Can I use that phone?” I asked, pointing to the phone on the supervisor’s desk. “Please, it’s urgent!”
“Ma’am . . .” started the desk nurse.
“Ple-e-a-se!” I cried. But my sobbing and begging only made the desk nurse more strident.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go!”
She got up to walk around the desk. While her back was turned, I reached over and grabbed the phone and dialed Joey.
Please answer. Please answer.
“Samuels?”
“Joey! It’s Jordan,” I managed to say through my sobs.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m at Northwestern. Someone attacked me at my apartment—”
“In your apartment?” he asked.
“No, not in my apartment. In the parking lot,” I said.
“Ma’am! You cannot use that phone!” said my now nemesis of the ER.
“Wait!” I said, holding my hand up to her. “I’m talking to the police!”
She stood defiantly in front of me with her arms folded. Her mouth was moving, but I wasn’t focused on what she was saying. The other nurse held on to my left elbow, trying to nudge me toward my ER pod.
“Jordan! Can you hear me?” Joey said. “What happened?”
“And Bass was stabbed!”
“How badly are you hurt?”
“I’m in the ER,” I cried. “Please, get here fast!”
“Okay, that’s it,” I heard Nurse Ratched say from behind. “I need some help over here getting a patient back to her room!”
Just then, I looked up and saw Ellen rushing toward me.
“Jordan, my God, are you okay?” Ellen gently wrapped her arms around me as if I would break. “What are you doing up?” she asked.
I was determined to stay up on my own two feet, but I felt flush, faint.
“What are you doing out here?” Ellen asked again. “Oh, Jordan, look at you!” she said, placing a hand over her mouth.
“Excuse me,” the other nurse said, “if this is a friend of yours, can you convince her to get back in bed? She hasn’t even been seen by a doctor yet.”
“Sure,” Ellen said. “Come on, Jordan.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulders and guided me back to the gurney. I climbed under the sheet. Nurse Maggie cradled my head, taking the pressure off my neck, and slowly lowered me back onto the pillow.
“What were you trying to do out there?” Ellen asked. “Jesus!”
Ellen had no idea who Bass was. He’d become like a little brother to me. Learning that Bass had been seriously hurt felt more injurious than the beating itself.
“Ellen, you don’t understand. I just found out my friend who’s a guard in the building was stabbed during the attack,” I explained. “He’s one of the closest people to me in this town, and I need to know where he is right now. Where is he having surgery? What floor? This is all my fault.”
“No-o-o,” Ellen said. “You can’t blame yourself for this. He tried to save you.”
“How do you know that?”
“You know some of the best sources are paramedics and people who work at the hospital, right?” she said. “The Sun-Times got wind of what happened and called the desk to confirm that you were the victim. They probably picked it up on the police scanner. They knew even before we did. I called your mother, by the way. Don’t give me that look.”
The next-of-kin rule. When you’re unmarried, your emergency contact is none other than your mom.
I grimaced. She’s freaking out right now.
“Ellen, this wasn’t a random attack. He kept saying, ‘You fucked up.’ He was there for me. He was waiting for me.”
“But why?” she asked.
“It has to be connected to the Masey James case,” I said. “A lot has happened.” I took a deep breath and told Ellen how I believed Masey had gotten entangled with an older guy, about the fight between Terrence and Manny, and about my suspicion that either one or both of them could have been involved in Masey’s murder and tonight’s attack.
“Otherwise, this is one helluva coincidence. And I don’t believe in coincidences,” I said.
A swell of confusion floated across Ellen’s face. Frozen, half confused, half in disbelief, she lit into me. “What in the hell were you thinking?” she said, pacing the room with her hand pressed against her forehead. “If you wanted to be a cop, why did you become a journalist?”
Okay, is there a sign on me that reads “Jordan, you’re not a cop”? Because if I hear this one more time . . .
“You could’ve been killed!”
Ellen morphed into the personification of tough love. She was furious with me but at the same time deeply concerned, as was I, that someone was out to shut me up. “I know you’re dedicated, but you’ve gotta ease up. It’s no longer you might get hurt. You did get hurt!”
“Ellen, there are three little Black boys locked up right now on murder charges,” I said. “They didn’t do it. You know—”
Ellen interrupted. “Jordan, we can deal with that. But Keith was right. You put Grace in unnecessary danger, and I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. The case is important, but you’ve been reckless and impulsive. This is the second time I’ve had to call you reckless today. What don’t you get? I don’t know how much longer I can defend you.”
The curtain rustled and a woman in a white coat walked toward me. “Hello, Jordan, I’m Dr. Tina Patel,” she said, extending a hand. “How are you feeling? Looks like you’ve been through a terrible ordeal. Let’s have a look at you.”
Dr. Patel was the escape I needed from the wrath of Ellen, whose anger had gone from a simmer to a boil. She was about to explode.
“Can you excuse us for a moment?” the doctor asked.
“Can you see if you can track down my phone?” I asked Ellen. “Please?”
Ellen nodded yes as she glowered at me, trying to conceal her anger from the doctor.
It only now occurred to me that I hadn’t looked at my face. Based on Dr. Patel’s reaction, I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“Dr. Patel, if it’s all right, can I go to the bathroom first?” I asked.
“Sure. There’s one just around the corner to the right.”
I scooched across the floor in my hospital-issued nonslip socks and gown to the tiny bathroom. I felt like I was crashing, so I closed the door and leaned against it to steady myself, then reached out and grabbed the sink and lifted my eyes. I didn’t recognize the person in the mirror. My top lip was so swollen that it almost completely covered my bottom lip. A cut above my right brow dripped dried blood and my right eyelid was half closed. I turned my head and there was the literal imprint of his fist fused into my cheek, as if my skin was some type of mold. Right then, any doubt that remained that this attack wasn’t random was removed. I’d been the victim of pure rage, not simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whoever did this came for me, and he found me.
My eyes bloodshot red, all cried out, I made my way back to the examination room. I read in Dr. Patel’s face that she had sensed I was visibly more shaken when I returned than when I’d left. I’d worked hard to prove that I was more than a pretty face. But the reality was that in television, the way I look was tantamount to my ability to work in this business and advance to the next level.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
All I could do was shake my head no.
“Let me get a look at you,” she said.
Dr. Patel examined me, paying attention to every contour of my face like a sculptor. “The good news is you don’t need stitches,” she said.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God!
“But I would like to run a CT scan to rule out any bleeding or clotting on the brain. So I want to keep you overnight.”
Great.
“Beyond that, I think you’re going to be fine, at least on the outside.”
As she turned to leave, I snapped out of my own lassitude to ask her what she knew about Bass.
“Dr. Patel, there was someone brought in with me named Harold Brantley. A nurse told me he was in surgery, that he’d been stabbed. Can you get some information on how he’s doing? Where he is?” I asked.
“Yes, the nurse told me you’d been asking about him. I checked right before I came in. He’s in pretty bad shape. Worse off than you. He’s still in surgery, so I probably won’t know anything for another hour or two. Just pray for him.”
I’d never heard a doctor say pray for someone. Prior to today, I’d never been in the hospital for anything in my entire life. Every interaction I’d ever had with a doctor, other than a routine checkup, had been on my beat or during an exchange at a news conference, where information was guarded and answers were given in stark, often emotionless detail. And here she was telling me to pray for Bass. Pray for what? Was he dying? What did she know?
“So it doesn’t look good? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m not in surgery with him. I’m not his doctor and you’re not a family member. I’m just saying pray for him. I’ll be back to see you soon, Ms. Manning. Try to get some rest. Excuse me.”
Dr. Patel left and Ellen walked back in.
“I’ve got your phone,” she said, handing it to me, the Holy Grail that it was. The battery was almost dead, but I could read the long list of calls and text messages I’d missed.
“I need to call my mom,” I said. “Ellen, thank you. Thank you so much for finding my phone.” I hoped my gratitude would soften the edge that Ellen could care less about trying to conceal.
Mom answered on the first ring. “Jordan, where are you? Are you okay?”
She wouldn’t let me get a word in, stopping only to tell me that she was filling Daddy in on the other line.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I said. “There have been some robberies in the neighborhood and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I’m okay. The guy was looking to steal cars and I stumbled into him.”
“I’m flying there as soon as I can get a flight out,” she said.
“The doctor said I can go home in a few minutes. Click over and let Dad know everything is okay,” I said.
“Hold on,” she said.
Ellen mouthed, “You’re lying to your mom.”
“Shush!” I said.
Mom clicked back over. “Between you and your father trying to keep me from coming there, I’m over both of you.”
“I’ll admit it was scary. But I live in a big city. Things happen. But I promise, they’re letting me go home soon. And the Bennetts are going to come by.”
The Bennetts didn’t even know what happened, but I knew that mentioning them would back Mom off me a bit. And it turned out, I would have to cut our call short anyway, because two uniformed officers stepped into the room.
“Hey, Mom, I’ve got to go, but I’ll call you later. I love you.”
I relayed to them everything I remembered about what happened. Because I’d come in close contact with my assailant, the officers asked if I would submit to having my fingernails scraped for possible DNA evidence. In a surprise attack, it was quite possible that I might have scratched my assailant or ripped off pieces of his hair.
After they left, I wanted to call my friends, but Ellen and our unfinished business loomed over me like a helicopter parent. It would have to wait, though, because we were interrupted again on this, my unlucky lucky day.
“Jordan.” Joey moved from the curtain to my bedside at warp speed. I could tell he was visibly taken aback by what he saw. My vanity kicked in. Realizing that I wouldn’t be able to go on air any time soon was one thing, but I didn’t want a man to see me looking like this, especially one who’d earlier today gazed into my eyes, flirting with me.
Before he could comment, I launched into my theory of what happened. “Joey, this was not a random attack. This was not a robbery. This had something to do with Masey, and I think they’ve been following me. A couple days ago, a guy followed me as I pulled into the garage.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Honestly, it had just occurred to me that the car that slipped in behind me and trailed me to my floor saw precisely where I parked.
“I think I was set up. These guys all know each other, and they’re all connected to Masey’s disappearance.”
Joey said, “Jordan, you may be right. I finally got some information on Terrence. Before he lived in Chicago, he lived in Albuquerque.”
“Yeah, Yvonne told me he moved here from New Mexico.”
“Right, well, things probably got a little too hot for him out there. He was arrested a few years ago for breaking and entering. I spoke with the prosecutor, and she told me that a sixteen-year-old girl lived in the house. They believe he’d been stalking her, but his attorney struck a plea deal and he was sentenced to a year’s probation. Then he moved to Chicago after that. But while they were investigating him, they uncovered a lot of creepy behavior toward young women. They also found out that he and the girl knew each other. Now, the girl would never admit it, but her friends told the prosecutor there’d been something going on between them.”
“Was he molesting her?” I asked.
“The prosecutor believes it was more like grooming, but the girl was under his influence and never revealed much more than that,” he said. “But that’s not all I found out. That story didn’t rest well with me. So I talked to one of the detectives out there. Some years before that, he was questioned about a fifteen-year-old girl who was found dead under a bridge overpass. She’d been sexually assaulted. She was killed in a wooded area not far from her home, and her naked body was found in a fishing riverbed along a lightly trafficked trail on the outskirts of Albuquerque. No evidence was ever recovered. It’s been a cold case ever since.”
“Jesus! How’d you find this out so fast?”
“I’ve been working with a few informants. This one guy, he owes me—a lot. He told me he’d heard rumors about Bankhead and underage girls. A lot of the stuff he was mixed up in out in New Mexico followed him here. His name has come up in one of those chat rooms where folks with an ax to grind put shady characters on blast. A former cop outed him on a website. He tried to get ahead of it after he moved here, telling his side of things, but I hear a lot of guys here don’t like him. He doesn’t have a lot of friends. His circle is pretty tight. Just him and this guy Brent.”
“Did you get an address for him?”
“Not yet, but he has a little storefront office space Uptown. I don’t know what he uses it for.”
“Well, he’s supposed to have ‘connections’ in entertainment,” I said. “What about his roommate?”
“This guy’s a ghost, a real loner. I’m not even sure Brent Carter is his real name,” Joey said.
I don’t know why, but my mind went back to that bizarre conversation the day of the vigil with Louise Robinson when she talked about a Red Moley character. She said, If there’s one, there’s probably two. Louise knew Yvonne. I wonder if she knew anything about these two guys.
“This is going to sound crazy, but I was at Louise Robinson’s and she started talking about, and I’d never heard of this before, the legend of Red Moley.”
“The legend of Red Moley? You never heard of that?” Joey asked.
‘‘No, I haven’t. Must be a Midwest thing.”
But now I was beginning to wonder why Louise mentioned it in the first place. Was it possible that Masey’s involvement with these men was an open secret? Did these people know all along what was going on in Masey’s life?
* * *
National news anchor: We have a strange update in the case of three boys charged with the gruesome murder of a fifteen-year-old Chicago girl. The reporter who broke the story has been the victim of a brutal attack. We go now to correspondent Grayson Michele in Chicago.
Grayson: Last night, News Channel 8’s Jordan Manning was discovered unconscious on the upper parking deck of her apartment building. I’m told the thirty-year-old suffered severe bruising to her head, face, and neck. She is in stable condition at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. A security guard in the building who interrupted the attack on Manning was stabbed by the assailant and remains in critical condition. Both were discovered by a tenant a little after 9:30 p.m. last night. Police declined to say whether security cameras captured the attack. There are no suspects in custody, but I’ve heard speculation of ties to Manning’s coverage of the troubling murder case. The three suspects, two eleven-year-olds and a thirteen-year-old boy, remain in custody.
I awoke to more than sixty text messages and some forty missed calls, including from Justin, who’d gotten wind of the attack on the police scanner; Thomas, who grew concerned after he drove by my place and saw police cars and ambulances outside but couldn’t reach me; and my local family circle—Courtney, Zena, Amanda, María Elena, and the Bennetts. I discouraged them from coming to the hospital, telling them “I’m in a secure room, and I’ll be home later today anyway.” I won that battle with everyone else, but Courtney wasn’t deterred. I’d never known her to take no for an answer or been anyplace her physician’s credentials couldn’t get her into. Courtney had the forethought to bring me a change of clothes and slippers to wear home. The gym gear I had on during the attack was taken into evidence to test for hair and skin follicles. She also worked her contacts at the hospital to get me in to see Bass, flashing her badge to access the secure ICU wing.
Before I went in, Courtney did her best to prepare me for a new reality. Bass’s injuries were far more severe than what had been shared. He was stabbed in the gut twice by a sharp object that nicked his abdominal aorta, causing life-threatening internal bleeding.
“Closing that wound was critical. That’s why they took him into the OR immediately,” Courtney explained. “If it’d been more than 40 percent severed, he would have bled out in a matter of seconds.”
Bass is lucky to be alive.
“He hasn’t regained consciousness. It could be because they put him in a medically induced coma to give his brain a rest and a chance for the swelling to go down,” Courtney explained.
“His brain?” I asked.
“He sustained a blow to the head,” she said.
The air left my lungs, and I thought back to what Ellen had said. “He tried to save you.” No, he did save me, and now he was fighting for his life because of it.
Seeing Bass lying there with tubes coming out of his arms and body and a machine doing the breathing for him was surreal.
“Can he hear me?” I asked Courtney.
“Possibly. Just say what’s in your heart,” she said.
I took him by the hand and intertwined his long, bass-playing fingers with mine, the closest we’d ever been, our most intimate moment. I held the rail with my other hand, anchoring myself to his bedside, and leaned in close to his ashen face.
“Bass, it’s Jordan.” The tears and sobs turned on instantly. “I’m so sorry.”
A respirator covered half his face and his chest expanded, then sank at once, again and again. “It kills me to see you like this. I’m okay because of you, but you’re lying here because of me. I feel horrible.”
I’d played a dozen scenarios in my mind of how it happened. Bass opened the door, saw a man on top of me, choking me. He pulled him off, they scuffled, and then . . .
“You’re like my family, like a little brother to me, and I know I should’ve told you that before now. How important you are to me. I love you, Bass, I do. And I’m going to find out who did this, and you’re going to be okay.”
The only response was the beeping of monitors and medical machines surrounding his bed.
“You saved my life. I can never repay you. But I’m going to be there for Sabrina and the baby until you get out of here. I promise. You fight, little brother. You’re my hero.”
I wanted to stay longer, but Courtney convinced me that the best thing I could do for Bass right now was to go home. I left behind my card with a note on the back for his folks and Sabrina. ‘‘Don’t hesitate to call me if you need anything.” But I left the hospital still clinging to guilt, with more questions than answers.
Who did this to Bass and me? To Masey? And are they one in the same.