3323 North Michigan Street, isn’t it?”
Tim nodded.
“This won’t take more than a couple of minutes.”
And that is how the Sherman Park murders were solved: by a single question and a few keystrokes.
21
This is one of the most remarkable days I’ve ever lived through, and that includes Vietnam. In the morning, Jimbo finally told me Mark’s secret, then Omar Hillyard told me the secret of the secret. In the afternoon, I “assisted” in the arrest, as the police say, of the Sherman Park Killer. One other remarkable event occurred, and it has kept my spirits afloat ever since. Franz Pohlhaus and Philip believe that the mystery of Mark’s disappearance has been almost completely resolved, the final certainty to come with the discovery of his body. (Before that can happen, Ronnie Lloyd-Jones is going to have to admit his guilt and get around to telling Pohlhaus where he buried the rest of the bodies. As of this evening, he shows no interest in doing either.) I don’t agree with them, but for once I’m keeping my opinion to myself. And even if Mark’s body turns up in Ronnie Lloyd-Jones’s backyard, his body is not all that is left of him. Mark said something to Jimbo about the part of Joseph Kalendar that was left behind, and that gives me a way to say what I know: the part of Mark Underhill that was left behind is with
Jimbo tried to run when he saw me walking up, but the combination of conscience and his mother brought him back. Margo told me he was somewhere in the house, and the slamming of the screen door brought us into the kitchen. I followed her out into the backyard. Bustling down the alley, Jimbo looked over his shoulder and knew instantly that he had been busted. He stopped moving and let his shoulders slump.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with you,” his mother said.
“Aw, I don’t want to talk about Mark anymore.”
“You get back here right now, young man.”
“I wish he’d of stayed in New York,” Jimbo muttered, already moping back up the alley and into the yard.
“You are going to tell Mr. Underhill everything you know,” Margo said. “Don’t you want to help Mark?”
“Help him do what?”
Margo thrust out a handsome arm and pushed him into the house. “Don’t you talk back to me. Don’t you remember that those boys
Jimbo slouched into the living room and collapsed onto the sofa like a broken marionette. “Okay, I give up. What do you want to know?”
I told him that he knew what I wanted to know—everything Mark had told him about his experiences in the Kalendar house.
His eyes flared.
“What were you hiding from me in the restaurant, Jimbo?”
He squirmed. “It’s not important.”
“Why isn’t it important, Jimbo?”
“Because Mark lied to me,” he said, revealing the core of his reluctance. He felt wounded by what he saw as his friend’s mendacity while wishing to keep it out of sight. This was intensely loyal, and in spite of what Philip had said, I thought Mark had been lucky to have had such a friend.
“Tell me about the lie, then. It won’t make me think any less of my nephew.”
Jimbo stared down into his lap for so long I thought he might have fallen asleep. When he finally spoke, he did not look up until he had come almost to the end of what he had to say.
“He said he could sort of feel that someone else was in the house with him. He called it the Presence. And he said it was a girl. And he was going to go back there every day and wait for her to show herself.
“The next day he said he could hear her moving around behind the walls. Hiding from him. Running away whenever he got close. The day after that, according to him, it finally happened. He said she came out through the secret door under the stairs and walked right up to where he was waiting. She took his hand, he said. Her name was Lucy Cleveland, and she was nineteen years old. According to Mark, she was the most totally beautiful girl he’d ever seen. He said it almost hurt to look at her, she was so beautiful.
“What she said was, she was hiding from her father. Her father did terrible things to her, so she ran away. This was a long time ago. Ever since, she hid out in that house and a few other empty houses in this part of town. Only she called it Pigtown, the way people used to.”
On his third visit after their initial meeting, Mark and Lucy Cleveland had sex together—made love. Jimbo used the word “screwed.” They screwed—made love—on the giant’s bed, Mark told Jimbo. He added that Lucy Cleveland had a way of finding the comfortable places on that ugly bed, and if he positioned himself just as she advised, he could have been lying on his own bed at home.
The second time they made love, Lucy Cleveland told him to put one of his wrists into one of the cuffs on the bed, and when he had done so she fastened the second cuff on her own wrist. Mark said that was fantastic, Jimbo told me. Being bound to the bed that way made the sex even more incredible. Mark said that it was like being carried away on the back of some huge bird, or being swept along by a great river.
“He wanted to spend the whole night with her,” Jimbo said, “but he knew his father would go crazy if he did. ‘Tell your dad you’re staying with me,’ I said. ‘He’ll never check.’ So that’s what he did. And the next morning he came over here from her house and my mom made us pancakes. When she left us alone, I asked him if he was bringing Lucy food, and he said, ‘She doesn’t eat.’
“‘Doesn’t eat’? I asked. ‘Everybody has to eat.’ ‘Everybody except her,’ Mark said. ‘Don’t you get it? She was
“It’s all such crap. Last year, Mark told me he had sex with this really hot girl in our class, Molly Witt? Later, he confessed he made it all up. If he did it once, he could do it again. And this time it was a girl I didn’t know, and she was older. But he was so happy! He was completely in love with this Lucy Cleveland. He was sort of glowing.”
Jimbo was wild with curiosity. To accept the existence of Lucy Cleveland, he would have to see her, and he was hungry to know if she was as beautiful as Mark claimed. Jimbo knew instinctively that he would not be welcome in the house if Lucy was there. Could she leave the house? Of course she could leave the house, Mark said. Then take her somewhere where I can meet her, or at least see her, Jimbo said. Mark insisted that Lucy Cleveland would refuse to meet him; in fact, she had told Mark that she wanted to know no one in the world but him. Another possibility occurred to Jimbo. He asked Mark to take Lucy Cleveland out for a walk. Unobtrusively, he would appear on the opposite side of the street, say nothing, and melt away again.
But Lucy was afraid to go outside, and when she did leave the house, it was always very late at night. She feared being seen by her father.
They arranged a compromise that satisfied both of them. At noon, Mark would try to get Lucy Cleveland into the living room. He would tell her something about Mr. Hillyard or the Rochenkos, and she would come near him, which meant near the window, to look at the place he was talking about. Across the street, Jimbo would do his best to conceal himself somewhere that allowed him a good view of the front window.
“I got there about ten to twelve,” Jimbo told me. “I got up beside Old Man Hillyard’s porch and sort of hunkered down to wait. Old Man Hillyard takes a nap right around then, I knew, and Skip was so used to me by then he didn’t pay me any attention at all. A couple of minutes later, I could just barely make out Mark moving around way at the back of the room. He vanished, and he came back again. It looked like he was talking to someone. I assumed he was trying to get Lucy Cleveland to come into the room and look out the window. I really felt relieved. If he was talking to her, then she was there.
“Anyhow, at just about noon on the dot, Mark came across the room and up to the window. He was talking, but no one was with him. Mark gets this big grin on his face, and he’s talking, and he’s looking next to him, and waving his hands around, and he looks really happy. Only there isn’t anybody standing beside him! This stupid
