My mind was tangled with thoughts of death and loneliness.
My plan to ask Alderman Flores some uncomfortable questions had been a bust. As usual, the guy never seemed to be in his office, and the primary qualification of his frontline staff seemed to be their skill at shooing away pesky people like journalists.
Feeling frustrated, I now found myself back in front of the home on Pierce, standing on the sidewalk and consumed with dark thoughts. Why was I feeling this compulsion over Zoe’s death? Of course it was tragic, but I hadn’t even known she existed just days ago.
This young woman’s death wouldn’t leave my mind. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something stuck there for me. The image of her decaying body spotlighted in that dark space was ever present in my mind. Was it the cross drawn on the mirror? The smudge stick? Or the sheer tragedy of self-destruction? My therapist would probably tell me it was my own subliminal fear of dying alone, but I wasn’t willing to write it off that easily.
Everything I knew at this point told me the facts of the case were likely going to conclude this poor young woman had tragically overdosed, perhaps even been helped along by a little fentanyl. But there was something about the space, the place that she had died, that felt staged to me, for lack of a better way to explain it.
Someone had to have seen or heard something, even if they didn’t realize its significance at the time. The immediate neighbors flanking Lane’s property were the obvious starting points. The boyfriend Michael had mentioned would also need to be located. Lifting the latch on the gate, I moved toward the house, pausing on the walkway to look more closely at the surrounding homes. They were showing their age—a roof past its prime, several in need of a fresh coat of paint— but they were generally tidy. Developers had not yet infiltrated this particular stretch of homes, knocking down the old three-story structures in order to build some silly glass box that had no connection to the history of the neighborhood.
Given the faulty lock on the back door, Zoe would have used the more hidden access point to come and go. I followed the path around to the back of the building, curious about who might have been able to see her movements. I stood surveying the space, calculating the sightline from the back door to nearby properties. Garages, tall trees, and an alley added to the distance between buildings and the obstructed view. Anyone could have come and gone largely unseen via the back door.
The lock was a cheap piece of garbage that most ten-year-olds could pick with a light jab of a screwdriver. One more item for Lane’s to-do list. I let myself in, wondering why scavengers hadn’t stripped the home of its copper pipes or everything else of salvage value.
Drawn again to the basement, I stood in the dank, depressing space feeling the tragedy of Zoe’s death, feeling her young, sad spirit crying out in pain as if she were calling to me. Or was it just me projecting? Wondering how long it would be before anyone came looking for me if were in trouble?
As I’d noted on my last visit, many of the boxes contained the essentials of life without a kitchen or shower. But there were far too many unless Zoe had been running a food pantry out of the space.
I retrieved house keys from my bag and began slicing open some of the additional boxes. The first was heavy and the light was dim, so I dragged it over to a spot where the light from the single weak bulb was more direct. Lifting open the flap, I found bundles wrapped in cellophane. Pulling one out, I tore open the plastic. A stash of brochures from a place called the Renacido Center stared back at me. Brochures that matched the one I’d found in the upstairs closet for the addiction treatment support group. Ten boxes in total, thousands of brochures. Why were they here?
The answer wasn’t obvious, nor was any rationale for a young woman overdosing alone in a chair in a basement with no drug paraphernalia to be found. All the more reason to find the boyfriend.
I left the basement and went outside, planning to knock on doors of the surrounding properties, hoping someone had seen Zoe’s movements. If I could put together a timeline of when she had started squatting in the home, maybe I could ease my own mind about her death.
The boarded-up basement window well was ten feet in front of me and fairly concealed. But the weak illumination of the light coming from below might have been visible at night. I bent down, noticing textured glass though the makeshift plywood covering, which only hid part of the window. The boarding appeared to be a homemade job. The cuts on the wood were rough and the board imperfectly attached. As I looked closely, I could see the pane of glass was broken beneath and a crack ran from the upper edge, but the glass was fully intact.
“You looking for something?”
I jumped at the unexpected voice, then turned to see a man, well into his seventies, watching me over the chain-link fence separating the adjoining properties. His white T-shirt was stretched out at the neck, and his baggy jeans were supported by Chicago Bears-themed suspenders. Thin white hair barely covered his scalp on top but brushed the edges of his shoulders, as if he couldn’t be bothered with a trip to the barber.
“Oh, I didn’t see you there,” I said, getting to my feet. “I was checking on the window. My sister just bought this property. She’s out of town, and I’m helping her out a bit.” I wasn’t sure how much the man knew about the recent police activity, so I kept my response vague.
“And what’s she going to do with it? Knock it down?” he asked, his tone indicating his low opinion of the idea.
“I’m not entirely sure, but I believe she has plans to renovate it and then rent it out.”
“I guess that would be okay.” He nodded, considering the idea, setting the rake in his hand against the fence. “As long as she ain’t going to knock it down. We don’t need any more cement block hipster pads around here. This was a family neighborhood before all these kids started coming in with their tattoos and their pot.”
“So this is a pretty quiet neighborhood, then?” There was nothing like nosy neighbors when it came to sources. Their conclusions weren’t always accurate, but if something suspicious was going on, the nosier the neighbor, the better.
“Yeah, it is. And she better keep it that way,” he said, giving me a look that told me Lane was in for some challenges with this guy. She might be able to sweet-talk a potential buyer into a deal by playing fast and loose with information, but a guy like this, set in his ways, was a phenotype Lane would have a hard time finessing. I chuckled to myself and smiled back at him.
“What do you know about the previous owners of this house? I understand my sister bought it at a foreclosed property auction.” I brushed the dirt off my hands and shoved them in my pockets, preparing to keep this conversation going for as long as the guy was willing to talk.
“It’s been sitting empty for a couple years. Every now and then I’d see somebody poking around. Always looked like contractors or developers, those types. They wander around with their digital measuring devices and cameras, like they was trying to figure out a plan. Based on what’s been going on around here, I always assumed they were another one of those predatory developer types.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Those guys have been flooding the neighborhood the past year or two. I get at least one flyer slipped under my door every week saying they’ll pay cash for real estate, as if I’m some crotchety old daft-in-the-head idiot who doesn’t know any better. Those guys are just trying to line their own pockets.”
He humphed and shook his head, galled by the vultures looking for deals.
“I take it you have no interest in selling.”
I couldn’t help but glance at his property, one of the hazards of my remodeling hobby, and curious about the upside potential. His backyard was well kept, if uninspiring, and the windows were in need of replacement, but overall the exterior wasn’t in bad shape. Doing a rough calculation in my head, he could probably sell for enough to make his retirement dollars stretch for quite a while.
“Hell no, I’m not selling. I lived in this house for forty-five years.” He nodded his head at the clapboard three-story behind him. “The only way I’m going out is in a box. But these developer types, they don’t care about any of that. And what gets me the most is they all think we’re just a bunch of stupid old people. That we don’t know what our property’s worth. They think they can come in here and dangle a couple hundred thousand in front of our noses and we’ll take the money and run because it’s ten times as much as we paid for it originally. While that may be true, some of these guys just come in, slap some paint on the place, spruce up the landscaping, swap out the kitchens with granite and stainless steel, then turn around and flip it for two million, and I’m supposed to be happy with two hundred? I may be old, but I didn’t get old being dumb.”
Not only was this man not dumb, but he knew enough about the real estate game to understand the flippers’ play book.
“It must be difficult to see your neighborhood changing around you. Aside from the contractors you’ve seen poking around, have you seen anyone else? Maybe somebody staying here for a while? Any signs of lights or people coming and going?”
“This about that body they found?”
“Oh, you heard about that.” I should have known. He’d probably been watching out the window the whole time CPD was onsite.
“Course I did. We all did, at least those of us that are still part of the old guard. The new ones, they just keep to themselves, go about their business, hanging out in their coffee shops and their music clubs. We don’t exactly mingle.”
“Did you ever see anyone? Did you ever see the woman who died?” I asked, hopeful that a piece of the timeline could be confirmed.
“No lights or anything, if that’s what you mean. I noticed that broken window a while back and I boarded it up. Didn’t want any critters or hoodlums taking advantage of the break. Did smell pretty funky, though. Thought maybe there was a dead animal back in the bushes. You know that stink. Something rotten but you can’t quite place where it’s coming from. Called animal control out a couple times, but they never found nothing either.”
“Do you remember when that occurred, when you called?”
“Let’s see.” He ran a hand across his chin, contemplating. “That broken window, I’d say that was back in November. We’d had that early cold spell, and I thought it would be good to take care of it before the snow got started.”
“Is that when you called animal control?”
“Yeah, probably, the first time was around then, but I called after that too. Never thought it was anything more than a dead rat or maybe a raccoon. Never imagined,” he said with a sigh. “I just never imagined. They know what happened yet?”
“No. They’re still working on it,” I said, seeing no reason to share any of the details with the man right now.
“Okay then, I better get back.” He picked up his rake and turned toward the house. “Oh, wait. There was this one guy poking around out back. Saw him once or twice walking through here, probably last December. Twenties. Had a backpack and ripped jeans. Couldn’t see his face much because of the hoodie. Figured he was looking for a place to get his fix. So tell your sister to watch out for needles.”