“It couldn’t have been Peter Stanhope, though, right? Because he was still in the baseball field with Jon here when you heard somebody.”
Jonny and I looked at each other. We both nodded.
“You’re sure it was marijuana you smelled?”
I glanced at my dad. “I’ve never used it, but I know what it smells like.”
“Did you see this black guy that Jon talked about?”
“I didn’t see anyone.”
Wallace looked at Jonny. “You must have seen this guy, this vagrant, in almost the same place where the girls were. Right?”
“Within a hundred yards or so,” Jonny said.
“Okay, tell me more about this guy with the dreadlocks.”
“They call him Dada.”
Wallace wet his lips with his tongue. “Whoa, whoa here, you know who this guy is? You’ve seen him before?”
Jonny nodded. “He hangs out by the tracks in the harbor. Where the trains head south.”
“What were you doing down in that area?”
“It’s somewhere to go,” Jonny said.
I knew why he went there. It was his private spot, his getaway, his place to think. Jonny told me he liked to hike down there, among the wanderers who came and went, eluding the police and the railway security. In his head, Jonny felt like a traveler, too. Homeless.
“Okay, so who is this guy?”
“I first saw him a month ago. He was in the woods down near Raleigh Street, where it heads out across the Arrowhead Bridge. The others are scared of him, because he’s so big. They think he’s some kind of ghost.”
Wallace snorted. “Ghost.”
“Most of the guys down there are a little crazy. They see someone like Dada, it’s easy to believe almost anything.”
“Is he violent?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only seen him a couple times.”
“Can you show me where you saw him?”
Jonny nodded. “Yeah, I think so. He moves around, though. They all do.”
“If he killed a girl, he probably took the first train south,” Wallace said. “My guess is he’s long gone.”
He stood up. His right leg, the one that limped, looked stiff. He rubbed his knee, and I saw him grimace in pain.
“I think that’s all for now,” he said. Then he looked at Jonny. “I could use your help, Jon. Do you have time to come with me?”
Jonny looked at me, and I nodded.
“Sure.”
Wallace cinched up his slacks over his stomach. I was disappointed. He was leaping at the idea that some stranger did this, even though Laura had been receiving threats for months. Even though Peter Stanhope’s bat killed her. Money talks.
“So you’re going after this man Dada?” my dad asked.
He believed it, too. Everyone did. No one wanted to think about the alternative, because it was too complicated. Too scary.
“Nope,” Wallace said. “I mean, we will, but not yet.”
I stared at him, surprised. But maybe I shouldn’t have been. After all, he was smart.
“The first thing I want to do is get the truth out of Peter Stanhope,” Wallace said.
14
Ray Wallace.
For years, he had been Stride’s best friend. His mentor on the police force. It was as if, in the restless months he spent after losing his father, he had been waiting to find someone who could give him a new direction. Later, Stride discovered that when you put someone on a pedestal, they’re almost certain to break when they fall.
He still remembered the first question he had asked Ray when they walked out the door of Cindy’s house on July 5, 1977.
“So what’s with the limp?”
Ray stopped with his hand on the driver’s door of his Camaro. “Vietnam,” he said. “I took a bullet in the knee.”
“Oh, man.”
“Yeah, it was a bitch, but you know what? After something like that, it’s hard to get bent out of shape about any of the bad stuff that life throws at you.”
Stride would remember that comment for years.
Right up until the moment that Ray shot him.
