Scott and I had to hustle to make it to the Chicago Police Department headquarters on time to interview Bartlett. Indeed, he had nothing new to say about the investigation, but what he did say and how he said it was emotive. Sitting behind his desk, in his dress-white short-sleeved uniform shirt, he looked downright despondent when he said: “Every child’s life matters. But as someone working in law enforcement for over twenty-five years, I’ve continually witnessed the unchecked victimization of Black women and girls, and society’s failure to protect them,” he said. “Masey James was more than just innocent; she was golden.” His lower lip quivered. “She was her mother’s pride and joy. Any parent would be proud to have raised such a daughter.”
For goodness sake, Bartlett! Are you trying to make me cry?
Bartlett is an empath, which I must say is one of the things I really like about him. He had read the autopsy report. He knew as well as I did the extent of Masey’s injuries, and that only a monster would be capable of inflicting such unimaginable horror on a human being. But I do worry about him. His malnourished ego and sympathetic leanings, devoid of the machismo that’s heralded in this jewel of the Midwest and certainly within his profession, makes him vulnerable to departmental mutiny. The slightest fissure in his armor, and Fawcett would make a play for his job. I’d bet money on it.
The remorseful expression lingered on Bartlett’s flat, round face, but its effect on me withered posthaste. Bartlett’s a sweet man, but he’s also in charge of this police department. The buck stops with him. Thus I didn’t hesitate to pose the question I’ve heard again and again from people in the community while covering this story and many others.
“Superintendent Bartlett, let me be clear, there’s skepticism among Black residents that homicide and missing persons investigations are taken as seriously when the victim is Black, and that that’s the reason there have been so many unsolved murders of Black women in Chicago.”
Then I bore down. “Superintendent, this surely isn’t a surprise to you that people feel that way. So why aren’t you doing more to ease their concerns?”
Bartlett’s face turned from ashen to crimson. He began to fidget with a pen on his desk, tapping it against a brownish folder. My question must have felt like a betrayal, but it’s my job to hold his feet to the fire. And in fact I was doing him a favor by giving him the opportunity to speak directly to Black Chicagoans and calm their fears.
“I’ve spoken many, many times with black community leaders, ward leaders, and clergymen and women right here in my office about these very concerns. I share their concerns. But it’s simply not true that police aren’t prioritizing these cases. I have tremendous faith in our investigators, and I assure you, we’re giving this case everything we’ve got, and it’ll remain a top priority until we make an arrest,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said, and nodded to Scott: That’s a wrap.
I stood up and extended my hand to the superintendent. Even if he was put off by my question, he wasn’t the type of man to leave me hanging. “Thanks, Chief,” I said, flashing a warm smile.
“Anytime, Jordan,” Bartlett said, returning a firm handshake.
Scott and I passed Fawcett’s desk on the way out. The lieutenant glanced at us but quickly diverted his eyes. I didn’t go out of my way to acknowledge him, either. It’s been an emotional day already, and I still have Pamela to deal with. I’m nervous, on edge, fragile. I wondered: Am I about to get my period? Why am I such a wreck?
Scott and I have two hours to kill. Pamela told me to meet her at her sister-in-law’s house at three o’clock. But we couldn’t just show up and start filming, as we had done with Bartlett. I haven’t seen Pamela since she found out her missing daughter had been murdered. I needed a moment, unencumbered by professional protocol, to acknowledge her loss, and heck, deal with my own grief. Once more, I would have to ask Scott to remain in the news van, so soon after admitting to myself that this might not have been the correct course of action at Louise Robinson’s. Then again, once she inserted her cryptic tale about some fictionalized boogeyman character into our very real-life discussion, I couldn’t decide whether Louise Robinson was eccentric or insane.
“Who’s Red Moley?” I asked her.
“You never heard of Red Moley?”
“No . . . I . . . I can’t say that I have. Is that his nickname? What’s his real name?”
“It’s a story. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of Red Moley. Did you ever go to camp when you were a kid? Didn’t you have sleepovers?”
“Well, yeah, I did,” I said.
“Y’all didn’t tell scary stories?” she asked.
Her line of questioning began to aggravate the hell out of me. Before I could respond, she asked another: “You ever heard of Bloody Mary?”
No, I’ve never heard of any of this crap!
“No,” I said wryly. Then I remembered. “Wait, you mean the Bloody Mary of folklore? What was she? A witch, right? She lived in the woods and abducted kids or something like that.”
“Yes!” she said with excitement. “She’d put ’em under a spell and they would come right to her.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard it. It scared me to death as a kid. I haven’t thought about that in years,” I said.
Where was she going with this?
“Red Moley is kinda like Bloody Mary, except it’s a he—half man, half monster—who preys on children and takes their hearts, because children have the most loving and trusting hearts.”
What’s that got to do with Masey James?
I’d pictured several versions of the first conversation I would have with Louise Robinson, and so far this matched none of them.
“When Red Moley gets done with you, there’s nothing left of you,” she said.
Eviscerated.
I didn’t need a mirror to know that I looked perplexed. As much as I wanted to ask what she meant when she said, “If there’s one, there’s two,” I’d heard enough of her hoodoo and pushed on to another topic. Louise caught on, floated back down from Planet Strange, and snapped back to reality.
“Ms. Robinson, in the Sun-Times article, you warned of criminal activity at the neglected playground. Were there any occurrences or arrests that took place there that you know of?” I asked as a chime filled the room.
“Excuse me. That’s my cell phone,” she said, retrieving it from her skirt pocket. “Hello, this is Louise Robinson.”
Seconds into the call, I gathered that it was one of the pastors who’d be speaking at tonight’s vigil on the phone. She relayed the order of the program to him, and I discreetly jotted down the names she mentioned. Pastor Bowman, Pastor Harper, Bishop Toney. After a few minutes, their conversation drifted onto something entirely different: she brought up funding for a kids’ camp at a community center over the Christmas holiday break, which was months away. I checked my watch. It was 11:57. Shit! Louise was taking her sweet time on the phone. I held up a finger to get her attention and pointed to my watch.
“Oh, okay, Pastor. I’m sorry. Can I call you back? You’re good. We’re all set. Okay, see you this evening,” she said. “Forgive me, Jordan, we’re still adding folks to tonight’s program.”
“Sure, that’s quite all right,” I said. “Ms. Robinson, unfortunately I’m going to have to go. I’d already set up an interview at twelve-thirty with the police superintendent. But before I leave, I want to ask you about tonight at your niece’s house. Can we film a sit-down with you, Pamela Alonzo, and community leaders before the vigil starts? Just me, though. No other media.”
“Yes!” she said, so enthusiastically it startled me. “Yes! We’re on the same page! Let’s do that. I’ll be there no later than five-thirty.”
“Great! I’ll meet you there.”
I don’t know that I agree with Louise that we are on the same page, but at least I got part of what I came here for. I checked my phone and Scott had texted me a series of question marks.
“My grandson will see you out. Marcus!”
“Ma’am?” he called.
“Please see Ms. Manning out, son.”
“Yes, Grandma.”
The jury was still out on Louise, but Marcus I liked instantly. I followed the canny mini-man down the narrow hallway past framed family pictures, some in color, some weathered and faded, along the wall. There was the familiar school portrait of a younger Marcus with his two front teeth missing. He’s incredibly astute to be so young. He already has a presence.
Where will he end up in twenty years? Will he possess a fraction of the social acuity he has displayed today even five years from now?
Marcus stopped at the door, turning toward me and extending his right hand. “Goodbye, Miss Jordan. Nice meeting you.”
“Why, thank you, Marcus,” I said, smiling broadly. “I feel the same way. You have a good day.”
The instant I stepped out onto the front porch, I heard the news truck engine turn over and a thundering VROOM, the sound an engine makes when the gas pedal is floored while the car is in park. Maybe I was being paranoid, but the sound spoke to me. It sounded like “Fuck this.”
Was Scott upset that I didn’t ask him to come in?
I opened the door to the van, “Hey. Sorry about that. I just saw your text message. You okay?”
“Yeah,” Scott responded a tad too quickly.
“You didn’t miss anything here. In fact, she spent half the time on the phone talking to one of the pastors leading the vigil tonight.”
I didn’t tell him about Louise Robinson’s bizarre Red Moley story. Frankly, it made her sound like a crackpot. I’d had higher expectations of her after what Clark had shared. And if I felt that way, I could only imagine what Scott would have thought if he’d heard her. It was like Clark said, people don’t have to fight for their community. He had given Robinson credit, and for now, so could I. Who am I to rush to judgment from my West Loop address? I didn’t have to live in any of the communities she’s fighting for to respect her hustle. Even if part of her motivation is self-serving, all of it couldn’t be, and I had an obligation to protect that.
I pivoted. “Here’s the good news. We’re set to film Louise with Pam and some of the pastors and community members tonight at Tanya’s house. Just us. No other media!”
Scott let out a sigh of exhaustion and annoyance. “All right then,” and pulled away from the curb.
“Oh, sorry, I wasn’t thinking. You have to go in at six, don’t you?” I asked, remembering the union rules that restrict Scott’s hours. I got the feeling Scott had had enough of me for one day anyway.
He took his time responding. “Well, technically, I’m not working for two hours now, but I’m in the truck,” he said. “I don’t have the kids tonight, so what else do I have to do?”
“Okay, thanks. I appreciate it.”
I truly did. I didn’t want to end up with afternoon shift camera guy, George Spivey, a heavy mouth breather with some serious BO.
“I’d like to get to Pam’s sister’s house fifteen minutes early,” I said. “She’s a grieving mother. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to need the extra time.”
* * *
I should have felt grateful that the day, with all its intensity, was passing quickly. But the closer I came to interviewing Pamela, the more I was dreading it. These were real people, real lives. The psychological game that reporting such tragedy plays on you—that’s the part of the job people don’t see. On the outside, I appear to be competitive and driven, but inside I sometimes question whether this is the way I want to cover people and tell stories. The irony of a day like today—one filled with hustling, running and gunning—is that a part of me wants to end the race. I was concerned not just about Pamela’s demeanor; I was worried about my own. I had interviewed the parents of young victims many times before, but that didn’t make me immune to nervousness or reflections on trauma from my past. On our way to Masey’s aunt’s house, I could feel a low-key panic attack coming on. Ever since Masey was identified as the victim on the playground, I’d done all I could do to suppress thoughts of my cousins Stephanie’s and Jaden’s deaths at the hands of her abusive ex-boyfriend. It’s been ten years, but there are moments when that feeling of tragic disbelief resurfaces like a light switched on in a dark room.
I’ve heard people say that when they die, let it be quick, not some lingering, debilitating illness. But sudden death scars those who are left behind to grieve. As human beings, we’re keenly aware of our mortality, but it’s not something we contemplate every day. So when we lose someone we love in a terrible accident, it forces us to focus on our fragility within that mortal coil. When the victim is young, we mourn the truncation of a life. But when someone you love is murdered, it instills in you a heightened sense of foreboding that never goes away. I wondered, If I still felt it after all these years, what in God’s name was Pamela going through?
From the time a woman becomes a mother, her marching orders are to protect that child at all costs. It is her biggest responsibility, her most important job. It’s what made my cousin Stephanie run back into a burning house to try to rescue her four-year-old son, unable to accept or comprehend a world without Jaden in it, hoping against hope that the rolling flames and the excess heat from the fire that burst out the bedroom windows had somehow spared him. I wasn’t there, but I’ve imagined how that scene must have played out a thousand times.
Does Pam carry that guilt of not having protected her daughter?
This wasn’t the first time these feelings have crept up before an important interview. I wondered if Scott sensed my perturbation. He was quiet on the trip over. I was looking over my questions when he finally broke the silence.
“The GPS says we’re 0.2 miles away,” he said, pointing to the Garmin device plugged into the van’s cigarette lighter. “It should be just up here to the right.”
Cynthia’s neighborhood of modest but sturdy midsize brick homes was tucked between Racine Avenue and the Burlington Northern Railroad tracks located on top of an adjacent hill.
“This is Carpenter Avenue up ahead, so the house should be up here around the cor—” Scott paused, “Oh, nice.”
“What?” I said, looking up. A Channel 11 news van was parked outside Cynthia Caruthers’s one-story brown-and-tan brick bungalow. Scott and I looked at each other knowingly.
“Well, that answers one question,” I said, and retrieved my cell phone from my purse to call Ellen, who picked up on the first ring.
“Newsroom, Holbrook.”
“Hey, Ellen. It’s Jordan. We just pulled up to the Pam Alonzo interview, and there’s another news truck here. Is the promo set to go at four?”
“Yes, it’s ready, but I’ll let the desk know it’s not an exclusive,” she said.
“Okay, thanks.”
So much for my plan to arrive early.
Scott pulled up behind our competitor. A few minutes later, the news crew were coming out of the house. It was Pamela who had suggested we meet at three o’clock. So clearly, she had scheduled this interview before mine. Or was this her PR agent Tanya’s doing?
“Should we wait?” Scott asked. “We are early.”
“Sure, let’s give her a little time to get it together,” I said.
I checked my hair and makeup, and before I knew it, five minutes had passed.
“Do you want some time with her before I come in?” Scott asked, signaling that he was fully on board with my plan this time.
“No,” I said sternly. “In fact, come on. Let’s go.”
I stepped carefully along the walkway on the balls of my feet to keep from catching the heel of my shoe in one of the cracks. The main door was flung open, but I tapped on the screen door to announce our arrival. Cynthia Caruthers, the woman I’d spoken with the day of the news conference, answered the door. I am taken aback by how much she favors her niece—tall, leggy, with smooth dark skin and thick jet-black hair with a few early gray strands.
“Good afternoon,” I said. “Are you Cynthia?”
“Yes. Come on in. It’s nice to meet you, Jordan,” she said, and gave me a light handshake.
“It’s nice to meet you, too. This is my cameraman, Scott Newell,” I said.
“Hello. Nice to meet you, Scott,” she said.
Her salutations belied the pain etched in her face. Cynthia closed the front door behind us and led us into a surprisingly lavish dining room, with gold jacquard drapes fitted with regal valances trimmed in tassels and matching tasseled tiebacks against a red wall. The room was excessively dark for this hour of the day. The sheers were black, effectively blocking the sun from breaking through. The room was anchored by an oversize black lacquered dining table far too big for the room. It was ornate and looked expensive, but there was no chance that it was an antique passed down in the family. Clearly, though, the dining room was the most important room in the house. Pam was sitting at the head of the table, which had six full place settings with charger plates, napkins, and matching napkin rings. Two of the settings had been moved to the center of the table to make room for a photo album and a smattering of pictures. Pam had spread them out in front of her, and for the first time I noticed she was wearing a wig I hadn’t seen before—a simple bob that hit her mid-cheek with a flat bang.
“Pam,” I said gently, sitting down in the chair closest to her and placing my hand sympathetically on her right forearm. “We arrived a little early and I saw the other news crew just leaving. Do you need a minute?”
To my surprise, she said decisively, “No. I’m ready when you are.”
“Okay, um . . . this is Scott Newell. And, um, he’s going to film us today. He needs a few minutes to set up. Okay?”
Keep it together, girl.
“Yes. That’s fine. I have some pictures here that you can shoot,” she said, pointing to a manila folder on the table. “Cynthia, can you bring me a bottle of water, please? Would you like one, Jordan? Scott?”
“Uh, no thank you,” I said.
“No, but thank you very much,” Scott said.
I searched Pamela’s face for a sign of the woman I had gotten to know over the last few weeks. She simply wasn’t there and might never be again. Yet she appeared remarkably composed. There was no evidence of tears. In fact, there was something stately about her. When Pam and I first met, she was frightened and desperate, pleading for someone to pay attention to the fact that her little girl didn’t come home. I didn’t have any answers for her, but I’d always had something to say. Now I was unsure of what to say to her. I was discombobulated, thrown off my game. What do you say to someone who’s lost everything? Especially when that loss didn’t come as a result of a disease or an accident? I knew only what I dare not ask, which was “How are you doing?” It’s an innocuous conversation starter that’s appropriate in most circumstances, but not in this one.
Then it dawned on me: Pamela was wearing the blouse Masey took her ninth-grade school picture in. I decided to start there. “Your blouse . . . it looks like the one Masey wore in her school picture,” I said.
“This is it. Remember, I told you she stole it out of my closet. Well, she borrowed it. She was always in my closet,” she said. Right then, an unnatural expression froze on Pamela’s face for a few seconds. It was the first sign of emotion, and it was terrifying. Pam wore the expression of a mother who just learned that her missing daughter was dead—without sound. Then, as quickly as it came, she snapped out of it.
“I was going through some photos and I couldn’t believe it, Jordan—out of all these, I only found two pictures of me and Masey together. I guess I was always the one taking the pictures,” she said, emitting a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. She reached across the table and picked up a five-by-seven picture frame and rubbed her hand affectionately across the glass before turning it around to show it to me. It was an image of Masey and her with mountains in the background. They were both wearing boonie hats, drawstrings dangling beneath their chins, and had fanny packs around their waists, standing shoulder to shoulder, hands on hips.
“This is us at the Grand Canyon,” she said.
“Ahhh, how old was she?” I asked.
“She was eleven on this picture. We had our family reunion in Vegas that year, and a few of us took a tour of the South Rim. Malcolm was too little to go, so he stayed behind at the hotel with my mother. That was the last trip we took together before she died.”
To evoke her deceased mother’s memory in this terrifying moment without collapsing into tears—I was in awe of her.
“Where is Malcolm?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s here with me,” she said. “He’s in the basement watching TV.”
I picked up on her emphasis of here with me. When you lose one child, there’s no way you’re trusting the one you have left with anybody else, not for a while at least.
I pointed to an image on the dining table of a little girl playing on a swing set wearing a Scooby-Doo T-shirt and cutoff denim shorts. There was a man standing directly behind her and a playground full of children and equipment, a sharp contrast to the crime scene.
“Who’s this with Masey?”
“That’s her father,” Pamela said, resting her chin against her left hand. “She was about three, I think, in this picture. This wasn’t taken in Chicago, though. We were visiting his side of the family that summer in Memphis. Whew, it was hot! I remember that.”
Pamela had previously told me that Masey’s father is an electrician who lives in Seattle with his girlfriend. The two were high school sweethearts who continued to date postsecondary. He attended Dawson Technical Institute on the Near South Side and she was enrolled in Chicago State University. Pamela had just started her sophomore year when she became pregnant with Masey. They never married, but she gave Masey her father’s last name. She told me everybody in her family expected her to go back and finish college, but she never did.
Stephanie dropped out of college after she became pregnant with Drucilla her freshman year. Like Pamela, we all thought she’d go back, but just as she was planning to reenroll, she got pregnant with Jaden. I remember hearing my aunties, uncles, and older cousins lamenting her decision. “What a shame.” “She’s too smart to waste her life.” Not finishing college didn’t make Stephanie any less intelligent, but admittedly, I too, questioned her decision to put her romantic relationships above everything else in her life. Pamela reminds me a little of Stephanie. Both were naturally smart, but the breaks don’t always line up for people like them. Pam, even without a degree, worked her way up to general manager within the Omni grocery chain and helped open its Ultra Foods store in Ashburn a few months ago. She had more time to find herself. I wonder what Stephanie might have done if her life hadn’t been interrupted.
I wanted to ask Pam whether Masey’s father had been an active part of her life but felt it was none of my business and, frankly, had nothing to do with anything that mattered anymore. So, instead, I asked, “What’s his name?”
“Anthony, but everybody calls him Tony,” she said. “He gets in sometime this afternoon.”
“Is he Cynthia’s brother?” I asked.
I’d wondered about their connection, because Pam told me that she never married Masey’s father. She must have sensed my curiosity.
“Cynthia and I became best friends in high school after I started dating her brother. I’ve always thought of her as my sister-in-love,” she said.
“Ladies,” Scott said, “sorry to interrupt, but I just want to let you know I’m good to go here. I just need to get you two mic’d up. Pamela, let’s start with you.”
Just like that, the nervous energy returned. I fumbled through my purse looking for my notebook with the questions I’d jotted down, then realized I had left it in the news truck. I only wished I’d done a better job of masking my disgust with myself.
“What’s wrong?” Pam asked.
“Oh, nothing. I . . . I, uh, left my notebook in the truck. I’ll be right back.”
A freaking novice, are you?
I was half embarrassed, half annoyed with myself. My plan was to get to Cynthia’s and take control of the situation. Now it felt more like the situation was taking control of me. When the woman whose child has been murdered must ask me what’s wrong, I was clearly not the one in control.
I ran out to the news truck to find my notebook, and the heel of one of the half-size-too-big pumps I’d bought because they were on sale got stuck in a crack and came off.
“Damn it!” I retrieved the shoe, which now had a deep, ruinous crevice down the back of the heel. Nervous energy pulsed through me like an electric shock. I paused and took a deep breath. Pam had kept it together so far. I couldn’t let her see me sweat. Once the interview starts is when things can get hard.
Jordan, you cannot fall apart.
I checked my makeup in the rearview mirror and smoothed my skirt and jacket, slipping on the flats I’d brought for this evening before returning to Cynthia Caruthers’s elegant dining room.
“Sorry about that,” I said as I looped the microphone underneath my jacket and hooked the battery pack onto the back of my skirt.
“Pamela, before we get started, I wanted to ask, what do you hope to accomplish in this interview today?”
She dropped her head and closed her eyes as she thought about her answer. By the time she looked up, her eyes were filled with clarity. “I want people to know who my daughter was. But let me be clear,” she said, stabbing the table with her forefinger. “I. Want. Her. Killer.”
Pam looked down at the table and covered her mouth with her left hand, then held up her right in a gesture I interpreted as “I need a minute.”
Scott took the opportunity to ask Cynthia if there were any cell phones nearby and to turn the ringers off. “And, Cynthia, if you wouldn’t mind, the house phone, too?” he asked.
“Those are already off,” she said.
Yes, off since the previous interview with Channel 11, which I must now follow, which I hate to do, in such an emotionally charged situation.
The dining room curtains were drawn closed, and the room was dark. Too dark, in fact. I should have asked Cynthia to tie back the panels and let in some natural light. Scott flipped on the light atop his camera.
I started the interview. “When was the last time you saw your daughter?”
“Why are you asking me that? I told you I was at work. I left . . . I left that morning a-a-at six o’clock,” she stammered. “You-you-you know that!”
Pamela and I had talked about the last time she’d seen Masey at the coffee shop, but we’d never had the conversation on-camera. I should have prepped her. I should have explained to her that some of the questions I would be asking were about situations the two of us had talked about previously but were unknown to viewers. Expecting Pam, in her current state, to account for that was a rookie mistake. If I hadn’t been so lost in memories of my own trauma, I would have remembered that. Now Pam was triggered. Her face twisted and leaning forward, she said with conviction, “Why do our kids always have to be runaways? Huh? Unparented and misguided? Neglected and unloved? The police instantly go there. She was fifteen years old! She was a straight-A student invited to attend a prestigious STEM school! How did she accomplish that without a loving family to support her?”
I agreed with everything she said, but this wasn’t the reaction I had expected. I thought about asking Scott to stop filming so that I could explain why I asked the question. Instead, I let the camera roll and searched Pamela’s eyes, trying to connect with her soul. I realized she was expressing her frustration with police for falling back on stereotypes and their own biases, not with me.
“Pam, I know. I hear you, and I agree with you,” I said. “But we’ve never spoken about your recollection from that day on-camera. Okay? I should have prepared you for that question. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m just . . . ,” Pam said irritably.
“Let’s take a break,” I suggested.
“No, really. I’m fine. I’m fine,” she said.
I’m not.
“You sure?”
“Yeah,” she insisted.
I looked back at Scott. “Let’s do that take again.”
I rephrased the question.
“Pamela,” I said, “what were Masey’s plans on the day she disappeared?”
Pamela gulped hard before she spoke. “Well, it was a routine Saturday for us. Mase knew I’d be gone to work by the time she got out of bed. So the night before, she asked me if she could ride her bike over to her cousin Yvonne’s house after her aunt Cynthia picked up my son for swim lessons that morning. Yvonne’s house is pretty much a straight shot, about a mile or so from where I live.”
“And did Masey arrive at her cousin’s?” I asked.
“Yeah, she texted me to let me know she’d made it, and that her aunt Cynthia had said Malcolm could stay at her house until I got off work. She wanted to spend some time with Yvonne’s little girl . . .” She paused.
“Imani,” I said.
“Yeah, Imani. She loved that baby. She was supposed to watch Imani while Yvonne ran around and got stuff together for a birthday party she was throwing for her husband that night.”
Husband? I thought Manny was her boyfriend.
“But I told Mase to ride back home before dark. She didn’t have no business at no grown folk’s party. About an hour before my shift was over, Masey called and asked me if she could run to the mall with her cousin and said that Yvonne would drop her off at the house if it started to get dark, and she’d just leave her bike over there.”
“Masey told me, ‘Mama, the party doesn’t start till nine o’clock. I’ll be home way before then.’”
In a shattered voice, she continued, “And I told her it was okay.”
Pamela hadn’t previously shared with me the detail about Masey’s going to the mall with Yvonne. I wondered why.
“What mall did she say they were going to?” I asked.
“Evergreen Plaza over on 95th and Western,” she said.
I’d been there. Not to shop but to cover the aftermath of a violent altercation between gang members that left two people dead. That was more than a year ago.
“So, she went to the mall with Yvonne. Do you know around what time of day that was?” I asked.
“Not exactly, but it was sometime after she called me, which was about an hour before I got off work, like I said,” Pam said.
The new information about the mall threw me. If Pam could pick up Malcolm from Cynthia’s after work, couldn’t she have grabbed Masey from Yvonne’s place after she got back from the mall?
“Did Masey ride home on her bicycle that night? Or did Yvonne give her a ride home because it was getting dark, as you’d requested?”
Pamela clasped her hands together and brought them up to her mouth and breathed a deep, heavy sigh. When she took her hands away, I thought she was going to answer my questions, but she shook her head instead. “I don’t . . . I don’t . . .” Pam hesitated. “Uh . . .”
“Pam, after you picked up your son from his aunt’s house, did you hear from Masey again?”
“No, no, I didn’t talk with her any more that night,” she said.
“And did you head home after you picked up Malcolm? Is it possible Masey arrived at home before you did, or went back out?” I asked.
Pamela slumped back in the chair and closed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t . . . I’m sorry. I can’t do this right now. I thought I could, but I can’t.”
Masey’s older self, her aunt Cynthia, stepped in. “It’s okay, sis. That’s enough for one day,” she said, then turned toward me and Scott. “She’s tired. It’s been a lot and the day ain’t even over.”
I know what you mean.
“Okay, I understand,” I said, looking back at Scott with a nod.
When I turned back around, Pam was staring down at the table in a near-catatonic state. I wanted to say something. To grab her by the hand and look her in the eyes and let her know, “I’m not just here for the story; I’m here for you, too.” But Pamela was in outer space. When she finally looked up, I placed a hand over my heart and whispered, “Thank you.” But her gaze passed right through me. I had hoped to speak to Pam off-camera so that I could ask her how she hooked up with Louise Robinson, but I didn’t want to burden her with such details in her fragile condition. Still, there were some housekeeping items I needed to take care of ahead of tonight’s vigil and roundtable, so I used Cynthia as her surrogate.
“Cynthia? Can I speak to you for a moment?” I asked.
Cynthia and I stepped into the living room and I told her about the plan to film Pamela with community members tonight before the vigil.
“Okay, I’ll let her know,” Cynthia said. “But I have to tell you, I don’t know how that’s gonna go. I wouldn’t expect too much from her tonight, either.”
“I understand,” I said.
I was about to head back into the dining room when it dawned on me to ask, “Cynthia, where does Yvonne live?”
“She’s over on 71st and Peoria,” she said.
I’m not all that keen on streets on the South Side, but I could’ve sworn Scott and I passed Peoria today on the way to Louise Robinson’s house.
“Is that over by Louise Robinson’s house?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Is that close to, um, what’s that street? Sangamon? I’m bad with streets here. I’m from Texas,” I said.
“Yeah, Sangamon is in the next block,” Cynthia said.
Interesting.
“Do you know Louise?” I asked.
“Not personally,” she said.
Hmm. But something tells me Yvonne does.
I returned to the living room to say goodbye to Pam, who was still sitting at the table staring at the Grand Canyon photo. I noticed Scott wasn’t packing up. He was still filming! I might be glad for the footage of Pamela poring over the image of her and her daughter in the larger scheme of things, but right now it felt wildly inappropriate. I shot Scott a look and reached down and shoved the camera bag in his direction.
Thank God Pam hadn’t noticed.
“Pamela? I approached her and leaned down to meet her at eye level. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
She nodded and mouthed the word okay without a sound.
* * *
Scott was quiet back in the news truck. I should have been grateful he didn’t call me out for getting handled in that interview, especially after my visceral reaction to catching him filming unbeknownst to Pam.
“Look, Scott, I totally get why you were doing that, filming her, but I didn’t want to come off as disrespectful. She clearly wasn’t doing well.”
Scott shot me a look but didn’t say a word. The day had been marked by an unusual level of tension between us. But when you spend as much time together as Scott and I do, you’re bound to have some off days.
“Can you drop me back at my car?” I asked.
“Sure, but we don’t have much time before we have to be at Tanya’s,” he said.
“I know. I’ll meet you there.”
I needed time to beat myself up over the interview with Pam and get over it before I had to be back on again for the roundtable. I wanted so badly to ask Scott, “Was what I said that horrible?” but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I never would have imagined that asking, “When was the last time you saw your daughter?” would have set Pamela off the way that it did. I wasn’t questioning her attentiveness as a parent. No way! Did it sound that way to her?
Scott dropped me off in the District Diner’s now-empty parking lot. It felt good to be by myself and back in the driver’s seat. I didn’t bother to ask Scott to check in with the producer to schedule a boom mic and an intern for tonight’s roundtable. I texted the producer myself.
I had a little over an hour to kill before Tanya’s, and I knew exactly how to spend it. Pamela had said that Yvonne’s house was pretty much a straight shot from hers at 82nd Street and Damen in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. I needed to retrace Masey’s journey. If she did, in fact, ride home that night, I wanted to see what she saw just before night fell. Was it a straight shot? Did Masey take a detour or a shortcut that cost her her life?
If Masey did, in fact, ride her bike home, it would be good to know what time she left Yvonne’s. I’m guessing that if Pam was still at work when Masey called to ask if she could go to the mall with her cousin, and Pam didn’t get off that day until four o’clock, she could’ve been heading home between four and five-thirty, right around this time of day.
I typed 71st and Peoria into the GPS and jumped on the Dan Ryan southbound. On the way, the more I thought about Pamela’s outburst, the more I became convinced that her raw outrage encapsulated how I think a lot of people in her position would feel over the police’s mischaracterization of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of such a dutiful child. Once edited, her anger wouldn’t come across as directed toward me.
Traffic was thickening on the Dan Ryan just as I exited at 71st Street, aka honorary Emmett Till Road, and headed west. About a quarter mile or so down I came upon Peoria and, sure enough, a block later, Sangamon, Louise’s street, with the blue-and-white bus sign Scott had missed earlier near the corner. Cynthia said she didn’t know Louise personally. Now I am convinced that Louise’s connection to the family must be through Masey’s cousin, Yvonne.
I circled back around to Peoria. I didn’t know which house was Yvonne’s, but the street looked like so many others to the north and south of this street renamed in honor of a Black child who also was brutally murdered. About 40 percent of the houses on the block, almost all of them made of brick, were either boarded up or severely damaged by fire. I’d seen similar styles of properties on the North Side of the city that went for half a million dollars or more.
So, Masey, what route did you take from Yvonne’s house?
I entered Pamela’s address into my phone’s GPS. Within a few blocks, it directed me to turn left on Racine. I thought there were a lot of churches on 71st Street, but Racine was a whole other level of ecclesiastical landscape. For half a mile, there was at least one church per block, sometimes two located across the street from each other or side by side. Some are large, formidable structures like Shiloh Baptist and St. Sabina, but the majority are one-level storefront churches with magnanimous names such as Prince of Peace, the New Revelation of Holiness Missionary Baptist Church, and Holy Miracle House of Prayer of Apostolic Faith.
Racine is a wide but well-traveled street. Considering the volume of traffic on a Saturday evening, it was quite possible that Masey rode her bike up on the sidewalk. However, that would have been nearly impossible for her to do on 79th Street, where the GPS instructed me to make a left turn. The traffic was perpetual, both from motor vehicles pulling in and out of the White Castle drive-through on the corner or into the Dollar Store parking lot, and from pedestrians flowing in and out of retailers, restaurants, and micro boutiques selling hair extensions, cellular phones, and culturally inspired treasures. There was little room to ride a bicycle safely, not even on the sidewalk. Convinced this couldn’t be the route she took, I turned down the first residential street to my left, and circled back around to 71st and Peoria, reset the GPS, and assessed the side streets. Some homes are well kept, others boarded up or uninhabitable. Some lawns are well groomed; others are blighted patches of land dotted with abandoned cars and discarded furniture. Up ahead, there is a sign on a telephone pole that reads safe school zone. Ironically, the school I drove past looked shuttered, and not safe at all. Withered vines clung to the building’s facade and to the heavy metal bars that crossed the street-facing windows. The speed bumps on either side of the crosswalk seemed beside the point.
These tattered images of life in West Englewood provided a snapshot of the constant ups and downs of the economic circumstances of residents desperately trying to hold on to what they’ve worked hard for in communities that lack investment and access to economic opportunity.
There were fewer boarded-up, burnt-out houses the closer I came to the Auburn Gresham community, where Pam lives. I checked the GPS. I’d already traveled 2.3 miles from Yvonne’s block. Pamela had described the distance between her house and Yvonne’s as a straight shot, a little over a mile. By the time I got to the narrow turnoff for her semi-gated neighborhood at Damen at 82nd Street, I had traveled nearly 3 miles. That’s a nothing bike ride for an energetic fifteen-year-old. But if I were a mother, would I allow my daughter to ride alone through the city’s consistently most dangerous neighborhood, even during the daytime?
I don’t think so.
* * *
If I had anticipated that things at Tanya’s house would be somewhat chaotic, I would’ve been spot-on. Cars were lined up all the way down the block in front of the house. I parked about a block away just past the “L” tracks where Masey’s body was found, still cordoned off with police tape. I looked around to make sure no one could see me and moved the seat as far back as it would go, slid down and shimmied out of my skirt. I thought I was careful until I heard the familiar sound of a slight tear in the fabric as I tried to manage this uncomfortable position, praying no one saw me. That would be creepy. Pulling the pants on was much easier. I was running about fifteen minutes behind, and I didn’t see a Channel 8 news truck, though I was grateful there wasn’t a truck from a competitor present yet. Louise had so far kept her word.
But where the hell was Scott?
I surveyed the adjacent blocks, a blend of single- and multifamily properties. The number of vacant spaces stood out. There’s one directly west of the crime scene, another directly across the street, and another next to Tanya’s house. Under cover of night, I can see how someone dumping a body could’ve gone sight unseen.
At the intersection, city workers hopped out of a municipal pickup truck and set up barricades to block traffic. As I walked toward Tanya’s, two squad cars pulled up, cutting off the north- and southbound lanes on Calumet Avenue, while maintaining the throughway on 45th to MLK Drive. It’s chilling to think that just a few days ago, while Scott and I were filming my live update on King Drive in front of missing posters with Masey’s likeness, the honor student’s body lay less than half a mile away.
The community showed evidence of regentrification. Tanya’s house appeared to have had some work done on the redbrick facade. It was a nice-looking property landscaped with fresh shrubs and seasonal mums in dark purple. The house next door was mid-makeover. I steadied myself against the banister, going up the steps to the front door to face the unknown. So far I had misjudged everybody I’d dealt with today, except Superintendent Bartlett. My now-fragile ego couldn’t afford another misstep.
Tanya greeted me at the door wearing a white T-shirt that had Masey’s ninth-grade school picture printed on the front, in color, revealing the tenderness of Masey’s young skin and even the shine of her lip gloss. Tanya’s hair was pulled up into a tight chignon atop her head. Her movements made the image on her shirt come alive.
“Hey, girl. How are you?” she said, like we were old friends.
“Hi, Tanya. I’m good and you?”
“Good. Come on in. We’re ready for you,” she said.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same. Where in the hell was Scott?
Tanya led me into a bright room with light-colored hardwood floors and an open floor plan. There was a gray sectional with a matching overstuffed chair, a vintage glass-top coffee table that held fruit and vegetable trays and red paper plates with matching plastic cups. I surveyed the room, trying to figure out how to set up the interview, which is what Scott should be doing. I’d just pulled out my cell phone to text him when Louise strolled up to me without so much as a limp. The Ace bandage was gone; she’d made a miraculous recovery.
“Welcome, Jordan. Nice to see you,” she said, more amiable than earlier today. A woman stood slightly behind her. From their resemblance, I surmised she must be Tanya’s mother.
“We’re just waiting for Pamela and Bishop Toney to get here,” she said, turning slightly to her left. “This is my sister, Patricia.”
“Hi, Patricia, it’s so nice to meet you. Thank you so much for allowing us to come into your home,” I said, except there was no us, only me.
“You’re welcome,” Patricia said.
“I’m actually waiting for my camera to arrive. If you’ll excuse me for a second, I need to call him to find out how far away he is.”
I know Scott was rubbed a tad raw when I left him, but he wouldn’t stand me up for an assignment because he was pissed off. That could cost him his job. But why hasn’t he called or texted? My call went straight to voice mail. My patience worn down to a nub, I called the desk, and Ellen picked up.
“News, Holbrook.”
“Ellen, it’s Jordan. I’m at the pre-vigil shoot and I don’t know where the hell Scott is. He’s not picking up his phone,” I said. “He agreed to meet me here. He’s never done this. Do you know what’s going on?”
“Let me check the log.”
Ellen put me on hold but was back in thirty seconds. “The assignment desk pulled Scott off the clock and gave it to George. He isn’t there yet?”
“Great,” I said sarcastically. “No, he isn’t. Pamela Alonzo hasn’t arrived yet, either, thankfully. But I’m running out of time here.”
“Okay, don’t panic. I’ll see if the desk can track him down and get his ETA,” Ellen said.
“All right.”
I wasn’t panicked; I was mad. I felt as if Scott was sending me a message but couldn’t figure out what he had taken so much to heart that he would ghost on me, without so much as a text.
Tanya’s doorbell rang. My head was on swivel, but it wasn’t George, it was Pamela, locked arm in arm with a man I didn’t recognize. She was followed by Bishop Lamont Toney, pastor of one of the city’s largest megachurches; Cynthia; and a cohort of a half-dozen women, all strikingly tall with long thick jet-black hair. They’re a formidable group, representing both strength and beauty. Each one could easily be taken for either a supermodel or a WNBA star.
This family has one stunning gene pool.
They bore a resemblance to the man on Pam’s arm, and I connected the dots. He must be Masey’s father, Anthony James. Masey looked more like her dad, whose side of the family was obviously where her beautiful Kenyan features came from. Just behind the family processional appeared George’s round, bearded face.
Finally!
I was grateful the family was occupied greeting the ministers and local politicians so that I could work with George to set up the shoot. He was accompanied by an intern, a young woman who’d recently graduated from Northwestern University and joined the newsroom staff, carrying a bag of equipment.
“Where have you been?” I asked him.
“Sorry, Jordan. The desk didn’t tell us about the boom mics until I’d left the station. So I had to go back for them and get somebody to work ’em. Have you met Grace?”
The young woman sat down the clunky equipment bag and stuck her bony right hand out enthusiastically. “Hi, it’s so nice to finally meet you, Jordan,” she said. “Oh my God, I’ve watched you, like, since my sophomore year in college.”
She was practically bouncing as she spoke.
We don’t have time for this.
“You, too, Grace,” I said hurriedly, “but time’s a-ticking, so we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to set up this room.”
I pointed out Tanya to George. “See that lady? Work with her to figure out how we can rearrange this room, because the sectional is too low and the picture window is problematic.”
“Okay, will do,” George affirmed. “Oh, and we’ve got one more mic coming in. He’s assembling it in the truck,” he said.
“Awesome!”
As I surveyed the room, I started to think to myself, Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. It was complete chaos. Folks were going in and out of the kitchen, fixing plates of food and standing around eating. The noise level had subsided a bit but pitched upward again once the family arrived. Louise was hugging and saying hello to everybody. An attractive young woman with blond streaks in her short brown hair sidled up to Louise, who turned toward her and gave her a warm hug. It was so loud in the room, I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But clearly they were well acquainted.
I’ll credit George for making quick work of setting up the shoot. He even had Tanya helping him to move the dining room chairs into two rows.
“Hey, Jordan!” George yelled across the room. “How many people are going to be in the shot?”
I counted in my head but rather than shout back, I held up six fingers.
By now, it was going on six-fifteen. I walked over to Louise, who was talking to Pamela, and tapped her on the shoulder. “Are we ready to get started?” I asked.
“U-u-u-h-h, just a minute,” she said, holding up a finger. “Did Tony get something to eat?” she asked no one in particular.
“Does he have time to get some food first?” She turned to me to ask. “He just got in about a couple hours ago.”
“How long is that going to take?” I asked.
Masey’s father overheard the exchange. “Don’t worry about me. You all go ahead,” he said. “I’m not in the interview.”
Since no one introduced us, I took it upon myself. “Hi, Mr. James. I’m Jordan Manning with Channel 8. You have my deepest condolences.”
“Thank you,” he said, backing away slightly. “I don’t want to be on-camera, though,” he said emphatically.
Louise turned and asked, “Why not?” But Pamela cut off the exchange with a stern shake of her head.
“All right,” Louise said, shrugging her shoulders.
George and Tanya had arranged a seating area with six chairs, three in front and three in back, and asked everyone to take a seat. Louise made sure to cop a spot next to Pamela and ordered Tanya to remove the third chair in the front row.
“I’ll sit in that one,” I told George.
Louise quieted the room, and everyone took their seats. The two interns holding boom mics stood on either side of the group, and George was positioned far enough away from me that I wouldn’t be distracted by his heavy breathing. What ensued was nothing like what I, nor I am certain Pamela, expected. As savvy as they all believed themselves to be, this group of community activists didn’t have the forethought to unify around a common theme. So they leaned on what they knew best. Before I posed my first question, Bishop Toney asked the group to stand up and join hands with the people next to them; then he led a prayer. I shot a look at George, who was already filming, which he confirmed with a thumbs-up.
“Father God, we ask you to bless this family. Bless this mother and father, who have lost a daughter. Bless Masey’s little brother, who has lost a loving sister. And bless this community, oh Lord, so that we may go on even as we live in fear and frustration. Lord, we have suffered an unimaginable loss. Tonight we come together as a community to grieve and for a little grace, oh Lord. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.”
Once they reassembled, I started the interview. “Thank you all for taking the time to speak to me. Tonight I suspect we will learn just how deeply the community has been impacted by this stunning tragedy. What are you hearing?”
Each one had their own agenda. Pastor Charles Bowman used this time to try and solidify his reelection to the state senate by promising to fight for more resources in communities of color. Louise stood on her soapbox about the neglected park and blamed city hall and the Park District for the disrepair of the neighborhood, which attracted crime and malfeasance. As they were speaking, Pamela dropped and shook her head. I recognized her movements as a sign that she was about to blow any second.
Thankfully, her church pastor, Reverend Clement Harper, spoke up next. “When my sister in Christ, Pam Alonzo, called and told me her daughter didn’t come home one night, and that the police said she had probably run away and they wouldn’t do anything about it for two days,” he said, holding up two fingers for emphasis, “I knew then that they were wrong. Masey was an excellent student. She loved the Lord. She loved her church and she was excited about her future. If they’d known her like we knew her, they would’ve known she wasn’t no runaway. They were wrong not for a day, not for three days, but for three weeks!” His voice rose. “Stop misrepresenting our youth! Stop misrepresenting Black mothers and fathers! Listen to the parents! We know our own children! Look at the facts, CPD! She didn’t fit the profile of a runaway, period!”
The next voice, surprisingly, was Pam’s. “The police wasted precious time,” she said. “Precious time they could’ve been searching for my daughter. Outside of relatives and my church family, the only person who would listen to me was you, Jordan,” she said, looking me dead in my eyes. “That’s the only hope I had until all hope was lost.”
That was too much even for me. My fissure cracked, and the tears streamed down my face, but I didn’t care enough to try and stop them. Pamela, too. Louise put her arm around her, and the pastors formed a chain, laying hands on her shoulders.
The camera continued to roll. Pam regained her composure. “Yes, the police were wrong,” she said. “But I don’t have time to be mad at the police. I’m saying to the police right now, in this moment, I need you. I need you to find the man who did this. I cannot rest, I will not rest, until you do.”