Mara had settled into a schedule of brunch shifts Sunday and Monday, a double on Tuesdays, and dinner on Thursdays. One month in, and she could feel herself getting comfortable. Certain things were becoming muscle memory.
Her commute was a bus ride that could be 10 or 20 minutes, depending, or a walk that was reliably 30 minutes. Either way, it was a straight shot down Lawrence Ave, with a two-block stretch of brick-walled cemetery to set the mood as she entered one of the more haunted neighborhoods in the city.
Of course, today didn’t feel haunted: they were filming an episode of Chicago Investigations on one of the residential streets, and Mara had to cross over to the cemetery side, away from the lights, camera, action.
The Uptown Mara knew was a place where you could catch the bands that weren’t quite big enough for House of Blues yet; a place where you could get tacos, Ethiopian food, or any kind of East Asian food imaginable; a place where you could get tattooed; a place where you could walk among the gaudy, glittering bright lights and flashing signs of a city, but without the gawking tourist vibe of downtown. It was also a place where Fred Hampton organized, where Al Capone drank, where more than a few ghost sightings had happened.
News about the body behind Lilypad had stopped. That faucet wasn’t even a trickle, the valve was closed. Something had unlocked in Mara, though. She couldn’t devour enough local true crime. She read the Reddit threads speculating that a rash of drowning deaths were connected. She read a tabloid story of the 21-year-old arrested for killing six people in Logan Square and Hermosa in the span of 10 months. She read the Reddit thread on the suspected killer who apparently got his victims by offering rides home to people coming out of shows at the Salt Shed.
What had her more shook, though, was all the police shit she kept reading.
She read about the black site at Homan Square, where CPD regularly disappeared people, no booking, no record of arrest (or was it kidnapping?), nothing. She read about Jon Burge, the Vietnam vet-turned-police captain who ran a torture gang and to whose victims the city was still paying millions in restitution. She read about the cops with ties to the Proud Boys.
If evil left an echo, like Melissa said, then Chicago must’ve been absolutely vibrating.
In a city, people die all the time. She knew about gang shootings, everyone who saw a newspaper in a corner store knew about that. But that high-profile violence was only a fraction of the deaths in the city.
Homicide clearance rates at CPD were abysmal, and she was beginning to understand why. It was hitting her how many people who were recently alive were not now, the sheer number of small ways people could just stop being here, and how senseless continuing to live felt. But here she was: dropping her stuff in the locker room, tying her apron, stuffing a ticket book in its front, clicking her pens, and clocking into a shift.
“Hola, detective,” Amparo said, walking into the back room and reaching for new bathroom paper towels. “Any leads in the case today?”
Mara and Amparo had become fast friends, and Mara had let her obsession slip one night while they were rolling silverware. She’d been afraid Amparo would think something was wrong with her, would suggest she go to church or something. Instead, Amparo had a patient ear and a world-weariness that, in a way, was clarifying.
Mara didn’t have much motivation in life beyond making enough money to support her mom, experiencing as much music as possible, and getting by without too much pain. Talking to Amparo, who was twice her age and yet had still seen plenty of death, Mara felt, amid her anxiety, a strange calm also elbowing its way into her mind. People can’t control anything, so why try to?
“The trail has gone cold,” Mara said. “I might need to eat a few sad croissants about it.”
Amparo laughed. “Well, scarf them down. You got people on three.”
Mara pulled some waters, greeted an elderly couple in purple-and-teal windbreakers, and took an order for two coffees and two Eggs Your Way combos. Before she knew it, she’d taken another couple dozen orders, walked who knows how many miles’ worth of dining room, poured more coffees than she could count. Finally, she made it to the folding table in the server station and was rolling her first of 100 silverwares.
“Seeing any good bands tonight?” Amparo asked.
“Not tonight,” Mara said. “Movie night with Mom.”
“How’s she feeling this week?”
“Better.” Mara hoped one word was enough to tilt the conversation back. “Crystal Lake Counselors—you know, my friend Parth’s band, that I was telling you about?—they’re playing Alewives on Saturday, if you want to come.” She gave Amparo a nudge with her foot under the table.
“Ooh, don’t tempt me,” Amparo said. A retired punk girl, she had described herself to Mara. An old lady, because streaks of gray hair is still gray hair. But even though she may not look like it, she could throw some elbows in the pit back in the day, chica, you shoulda seen her. “You know I still got my spiked jacket and high boots somewhere in the closet.”
It was the third time she’d told Mara this.
“That was Parth in here the other day, right? Tall dark and handsome? And a singer, and a bass player? Woof, Mara—you need to get you some of that, while the getting’s good. Before he’s all famous, groupies in different cities, kissing supermodels on TV.” Amparo was fanning herself with rapid hands.
“Amparo!” Mara said with mock-scandal in her voice, letting mouth hang open.
“I’m just saying,” Amparo was slipping into this auntie cosplay. Mara could tell she was about to follow up this go-get-laid schtick with some genuine concern. “This is what a young woman like you should be doing: going to see bands she likes, meeting handsome men who are bad at love but good at sex, and taking care of her mother. Not all this worrying about murder.”
Mara looked across the piles of place settings. Amparo had a look on her face like she was watching a puppy learn to walk.
“I hear you,” Mara said. “And you know what? You’re right.”
“About?”
“The world’s not a safe place. The world’s a scary place. But being scared all the time is no way to live.”
“And?”
“And—I will carpe the diem, like, every day?”
“And if someone ever threatens or hurts you, you come to Amparo, and I slit their throats while they sleep.”
They both laughed. Mara believed her. The woman was five foot two, maybe. Her body was nothing but muscles that looked like telephone wires, though. Mara had no trouble picturing a younger Amparo holding her own in a circle pit or raising a brood of children or bleeding some philandering no-count in his sleep then billing his grieving family for dry cleaning the sheets. Hell, didn’t even have to be a younger Amparo, in these visions.
One of the line cooks—was his name Michael? No, Tommy—walked past holding a large cambro of raw chicken for the Sunday Fried Chicken Special.
“If I’m going to make any kind of move on Parth, you gotta be there,” Mara said. “You gotta come to a show and be my wingman.”
Amparo’s turn to look faux-scandalized. “Your love life cannot depend on dragging an old lady to Alewives. But if that’s what it takes, especially if that’s what it takes to get your mind off that dead body, then fine.”
“You know, I think I’m ready to never think about Lilypad ever again. No matter how many people get their throats slit by the garbage cans.”
Tommy was coming out of the walk-in, heading back to the kitchen. “You guys talking about that murder at Lilypad?” he asked. “Yo, that was my last day working there, can you believe it?”
They both looked at him without responding. He must’ve read something into their look, because he said: “Not, like, my last official act as a line cook there was killing some regular. Ha! No no, just happened to overlap, you know? I’d, like, put in a two weeks’ and everything.”
“That is some coincidence,” Amparo said. “You said the victim was a regular?”
“Yeah, guy came in all the time. Think his name was Paul? Peter? Maybe I don’t remember. But we all knew him. Guy could definitely be an asshole, but he was our asshole, you know? That’s how the kitchen staff thought of him.”
“That’s wild, dude,” Mara said.
Tommy took a towel and wiped sweat off his face. Scratched his chest. “It was nuts, man. Hey, sorry, I gotta get back.” Then he was gone.
A regular gets killed? On a line cook’s last day? Mara didn’t know Tommy super well, but he only seemed as capable of murder as any line cook. Which was to say, plenty capable, but thinking about a coworker that way made Mara feel like all of her veins were going to explode at once.
Mara tried to fight it, but the investigative urges were rising again. She didn’t want to, but she knew was going to read the schedule board when she clocked out. Memorize Tommy’s last name, snap a quick phone picture of it if the spelling was complicated. Then she was going to go home and Google Tommy first thing.
As she left work to walk down Lawrence Ave in a purpling dusk, she considered what Amparo might say. Tommy was a little older than Mara, but not by much. She thought maybe she should try to talk to him outside of work sometime. See what he knew, if anything. He was pretty sweaty in his denials, but Mara didn’t want to be quick to judge. Sometimes people were awkward. Awkward doesn’t mean murderer. Maybe his last day and the murder lining up was coincidence.
Passing the cemetery, Lawrence Ave was oddly quiet. No westbound—the direction Mara was going—traffic at all. Not even a passenger-less training bus. Eastbound traffic was normal, a steady stream heading towards Broadway or Lakeshore, whichever way was home. Nothing westbound, which wasn’t right. People should be getting off Lakeshore and driving west, where the streets were rows and rows of apartments and four-flats, filing cabinets for families upon families.
Mara turned to look behind her, eyes stunned by the fact that all the businesses had flipped their neon and flashing lights on since Mara had left work. She wasn’t ready for that rush of electricity.
When the blue streaks stopped dancing around, she could begin to make out what was hogging the road. It looked small and blurry, but whatever it was, it was the leader of an endless tentacle of inching car traffic. It was the cause of a cacophony of blaring horns as confused drivers got stuck behind red light after red light, blocking the intersections.
Mara stared, slack-jawed, as whatever it was started to turn into a dog, no, it couldn’t be a dog, was that a wolf, no, too small—until it was streaking past her, pumping its legs with all its might, the cars slow but this skin-and-bones thing working like a marathon runner. Mara had heard of coyotes living in the cemetery, and this must’ve been one.
Mara admired the coyote, the way the night seemed to still in the presence of its furious legs, this small re-assertion of nature’s power on a busy street.
Then the world became car exhaust smell and horn noise again.