I checked in for one night. I lay on the bed for exactly two minutes, listening to another police car’s siren in the distance. Then I got back up and went out to the truck. There was no way I’d be able to sleep.
I got in the truck and drove around the city. One more time, just to see it again. What it had become.
I went to the train station. Of course I did. I parked in the same place, got out, and walked down the same sidewalk, stood on the same piece of cracked pavement and looked up at all of the broken windows. How unnatural for there to be no lights on inside at all, not one single light in an eighteen-floor building.
Something horrible happened here, I thought, and I never really got the time to process it. I never understood it or made my peace with it, because just a month later, in that very same summer, something else happened that obliterated my entire life.
So now that I was here again, standing in this very spot where that first thing happened… It was like I finally had the chance to make some sense of it, all these years later.
I was feeling that hum again. Louder this time.
Something is not right. That’s the thing that came to me. Something is not adding up for me. Not then. Not now. Not ever.
This is why you came all the way down here, Alex. This thing that you knew deep down but could only start to put words to when you got the chance to stand here in the dark, in this exact moment.
This is why you’re here.
CHAPTER SIX
The first thing that hit me was the smell of urine mixed with sweat mixed with a dead animal or two mixed with God knows what else. It should have just been the musty stale air of a place locked up tight, but obviously someone had found the way in and a few others had followed.
It was a small vestibule in this empty corner of the train station, with a half-dozen stairs littered with cigarette butts and trash, leading up to an old waiting room. There, the big arched windows looked out over the tracks. The glass was streaked with grime, and as I turned to look around at the rest of the room, I saw all of the chairs pushed together, covered with sheets. There was an elaborate chandelier hanging from the ceiling, ringed with cobwebs. There was enough daylight coming through the windows that I could see halfway into the room, but then it all turned to darkness.
“Anybody in here?”
I took my gun out, because that’s what a cop does when he doesn’t know who might be waiting and watching.
“It’s okay if you are. I’m just looking around. If there’s anybody here, you can come out.”
I felt a low rumbling then. In the floor, coming up through my bones. Then the sound. A train was coming. I looked out the window and watched it go by. A freight train. It wasn’t stopping here at the station for any of the few passengers that were waiting. It was going southeast, toward the long tunnel that ran under the river, to Canada.
I took the flashlight off my belt and turned it on. In the dark side of the room, it showed more furniture covered with sheets. Nothing moved.
My radio squawked, startling the hell out of me. “Alex, what are you doing in there?” My partner.
“Just taking a quick look. I don’t see anybody in here right now. Doesn’t mean they’re not hiding.”
I shined my flashlight on the dusty floor. I could see my own fresh footprints. Then just a few feet away, was that another set? I crouched down low to the floor and directed the light at an angle. Athletic shoes, a little smaller than mine. There seemed to be one set of the same prints going into the room, another set going back out. That made sense. Somebody came in here and then left. That somebody was probably the kid I tried to chase down.
The incoming tracks led to another staircase. As I went closer, I had a perfect angle to see the various footprints on the treads. There were many different pairs of shoes going up and down these stairs. Some recently. Some not so recently. For a part of the station that was supposedly closed to the public, this was a surprisingly popular destination.
The perfect place for a drug deal, I thought. The perfect place to shoot up or smoke. Or the perfect place to meet up with one of the young male hustlers who hang out across the street in the park.
I started up the steps. Stone, maybe even marble, back when buildings were made to last a thousand years. I came to the landing, made the turn, went all the way up to the next level. I was standing on a balcony overlooking the waiting room. The windows cast oblong rectangles of light across the tiled floor. I went to the railing and looked down. Then I turned.
It took me a moment to process what I was looking at. In the corner. Right behind me. I saw the blood first, so dark in the shadows it was like a black void. The body was half sitting, half lying against the wall, the neck at an unnatural angle.
It was a woman. Her eyes were open. She was staring right at me from the other side of death.
I remembered how to breathe. I remembered how to speak as I keyed the radio on my shoulder.
“Code three, code three,” I said. “This is Unit Forty-one at Michigan Central Station. I have a one-eight-seven here. All nearby units respond.”
A moment of crackling radio silence. Then a voice.
“Where are you, Forty-one?”
“Around the back of the building. One female victim. Suspect as previously reported, a young black male, last seen proceeding east on Bagley Street. Repeat, young black male, proceeding east on Bagley Street. Jeans, gray shirt, black Oakland Raiders baseball hat.”
“Wait, this is the same suspect as before? Your call from a few minutes ago?”
“Affirmative. Same suspect.”
I could just imagine the confusion I was causing, how many partners were turning to look at each other, shaking their heads, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. I was already moving away from the body, back down those stairs, staying to the very edge to preserve the footprints. I went back out the same door I had come in, into the sunlight. Franklin was waiting there on the tracks.
“She’s on the second-floor balcony,” I said. “Stay here and show them where the door is. I’m going to go find my suspect.”
“Alex, wait! He’s long gone by now!”
“Yeah, probably,” I said over my shoulder, “but I’m the only one who saw his face.”
It was a purely instinctive reaction, to get back to that car, to get behind the wheel, crank that engine, take off out of that parking lot and onto the streets. He had been right there in front of me. I had just missed catching him, and then, when he was standing on the other side of that fence, I had looked right into his eyes. I had my gun drawn. I had aimed it right at his chest, then at the center of his back as he turned to run away. I could have shot him down right then.
No, don’t go there, I told myself. There’ll be plenty of time to second-guess yourself later.
I heard the sirens as I pulled out onto the street. I circled the station and hit Bagley Street. How many minutes had passed since he’d come up from the tracks?
Too many. He could have covered a lot of ground by now. But I needed to give this a shot.
I tried to put myself in his shoes. Running down this street, a long straightaway. I’m thinking I switch streets as soon as possible. Next intersection is Vermont. To the right is back to the tracks, so left.
I took the turn. I was heading north now. But now I was heading back close to the station, so another jog to the right, onto Marantette. Dead end at Rosa Parks, jog left, but stay off this main road, so jog right again.