Page 34 of Silence of the Missing

I needed to get this over with as quickly as possible, as the area was giving me the creeps. This was a place where a middle-aged white man, well dressed and probably looking more than a little frightened, would make a tempting target for robbery or assault.

When I got to the front door, there were no buzzers. There had been an intercom at one time, but it had been ripped apart, wires exposed, rust eating up what was left of the metal interior.

“Now what?” I asked the empty street behind me. “Do I knock? Yell? Does anyone even live here?” For the last question, I got a quick answer, almost as though someone was listening. I detected a small movement behind the darkened glass of the bay window to my right, on the high-up first floor.

It must have been my lucky day because I heard movement from inside, a door opening and slamming shut, a cough, followed by shuffling footsteps.

The front door opened and an old Black woman peered out at me. She wore a housedress and worn slippers, and her gray hair formed a fuzzy nimbus around a wizened and freckled face. Black-framed glasses made her dark eyes appear larger behind the thick lenses. She was no more than four feet tall and probably weighed less than a hundred pounds. She’d shoved her hands into the pockets of her faded black-and-white checkered dress.

“What do you want?” She scowled at me, narrowing her eyes.

I could have responded like a smart ass and said something like,well, hello to you too, but, given the neighborhood and its obvious connection to crime and danger, I didn’t blame her for being curt—or suspicious.

“I’m looking for a man, ma’am.”

She cocked her head and smirked. “Then you want Halsted. That’s where the men are!” She cackled. Her reference to the Boystown neighborhood was surprising, yet it put me slightly more at ease.

“Not in that way. I have an address here.” I pulled out the paper and looked at it once more, verifying I was in the right place. “For a Keith Walker. Do you know him? Does he live here?”

“What are you, some kind of bill collector? Hit man?” She laughed and the chuckle ended in a spasm of coughs.

“No ma’am. Just an old friend.”

“Liar. Walker had no friends. Least not from what I seen.”

I nodded. “So, he lives here? You do know him?”

“Livedhere. If you’re an old friend, didn’t you know?”

“Know what?”

“He got himself killed. Last night.” She shook her head, staring down at the gritty concrete at our feet for a moment. “Wasn’t covered in the news. Most of the shit that happens around here doesn’t qualify as news to the white people that run those stations and newspapers. But yeah, Mr. Walker was shot in the head a little after dark last night.” She pointed to the convenience store a couple of blocks down. “Comin’ out with some liquid refreshments. Drive by? Who knows? An ambulance took him away. I knew it wasn’t good when they didn’t use a siren or lights to head back toward downtown.”

I was about to say something more, although I had no idea what, when she decided she’d imparted all she was going to and stepped back into the shadows, closing and locking the door behind her.

Shit. A dead end that was literally that.

In the distance, a CTA bus was heading my way.

What do I do now?

Chapter 9

Now—Marc

Itwastime.Timeto do the right thing, time to tell the truth.

He’d worried Sam enough. He hated that he’d put him through such pain and anxiety, but he’d reached the end of his rope. Leaving as he had might have looked impulsive and unplanned, but the notion of walking away from his life had been with him for more years than he could remember.

He reminded himself that, although he was not as young as the anti-hero, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom in his favorite novel,Rabbit Run, he was similarly disillusioned with love and life in general. InRabbit Run, Harry leaves his pregnant wife on a whim, driving south to escape what he sees as a drab and colorless future stretched before him.

Marc reminded himself to go on Amazon and pick up a copy of the lauded Updike novel. He hadn’t read it since he was an English major at Ohio State his freshman year. Although he could recall Angstrom’s slipping the yolk of his dreary life, he couldn’t remember much more of the plot, other than a baby drowning in a bathtub near the end.

He and Sam had gone through the motions for years, perhaps even verging on decades now, devolving into little more than friends and roommates. The passion that had once been the glue that bound them had dried up, flaked off, and hadn’t even been seen for so, so long.

The change happened so gradually he barely noticed it, much like the gray hairs appearing in his hair and beard, the lines around his eyes, the paunch he’d developed. But once he did notice it, there was no ignoring it. And the more prominent it became, the less he could turn away from the notion that his relationship with Sam was over. Love could wither and die on the vine. It wasn’t anything new or unheard of.

It happened every day. It had happened to his Aunt Dee Dee and Uncle Jim after forty-some years of marriage. He didn’t want to be like them, waiting until retirement until attempting to find his true happiness. He didn’t want to look back at a life filled with regret.

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