Mourn The Living. Henry Perez
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the letter into the box and hurrying back to his car.
After finding his way to a major street, Chakowski had his bearings again. He decided it was time to go home.
His house was in one of Oakton’s older neighborhoods. An area that had undergone a transformation over the past decade as young couples, many with small children, had replaced the older ones. Chakowski didn’t have children, and it had been some time since he’d been half of a couple. He’d lived alone all of his adult life, and now that he was in his mid-fifties, Chakowski understood it would be like that the rest of the way. He’d planned on marrying, once upon a time, starting a family, all of it, but the job always seemed to get in the way.
No, it hadn’t gotten in the way. The job had been the way.
“You’re either a good reporter or a good family man,” Chakowski had once explained to his father. “Being both would require two lifetimes.”
His well-maintained two-story colonial near the end of a long street of nice homes with large yards had been there for more than sixty years. Chakowski slowed to a deliberate cruise as he turned onto Dwight Street. He stared into the vague shadows that gathered around large trees and near the far end of long driveways.
Slowing down to just above a crawl, Chakowski drove past his house. Then he repeated the exercise, approaching from the opposite direction. He’d never before realized just how many hiding places his neighborhood could provide to anyone wanting to do some harm.
After the third pass, Chakowski was as convinced as he could be that no one was waiting for him in the dark. He swung the Hyundai into his driveway, then sat for a moment, letting the headlights bathe the front of his garage. Everything appeared exactly as it should.
But as he stepped out of his car Chakowski heard a jingling sound from somewhere nearby—right behind him. He ducked by the rear driver’s side door, then inched toward the back of the car to get a look. Peering around the trunk of his Elantra, Chakowski saw the next door neighbor’s teenaged son getting into a beater that was parked on the street. Chakowski felt foolish, and even more certain that he just needed to get this over with. Get the story written, buckle in for the fallout, then go on from there.
The only other car parked on the street was a widow neighbor’s white Cadillac, right where the old woman began leaving it some years ago when backing out of her driveway started to become a challenge. The more Chakowski surveyed his surroundings, the more it looked like just another night in Oakton.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing out of place. Nothing to worry about.
The house was dark, just as he’d left it. No reason to leave security lights on in this neighborhood. He wanted to approach his house as he would on any other night when he came home from work at 1 A.M., or later if he stopped to grab a drink with his colleagues. Instead, Chakowski walked to his front door the same way he’d approached his car—aware and alert, searching for any movement in the dark.
But the only moving shadow was his own, spreading across the front lawn, then climbing up the thick old ivy that clung to the façade of his house. He made a final, careful scan of his front yard and the street beyond, then keyed the lock, turned the knob, stepped inside, and quickly closed the door.
Chakowski did not turn on the lights right away, choosing instead to wait for a moment in the dark, his back pressed against the front door. Gradually, Chakowski’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, and all seemed right in what he could see of his living room.
He listened for the sound of movement in his home’s creaky wood floor, but heard none. Then he recognized the low-pitched buzz of the humidifier coming from his bedroom upstairs. And the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. He waited another minute, then two, but heard nothing else.
I’m acting like a frightened fool, he thought.
That was something Jim Chakowski had never been, and he decided right then, at that moment, that he’d filed too many hard-earned stories, tangled with far too many would-be tough guys, to start acting like a child now. Lose your nerve and it’s gone forever.
This was his town, the one he’d written about and helped to define in the minds of his readers, for more than twenty-five years. And it was his life, the one he’d sacrificed to build, one byline at a time. He would not let fear enter into the equation.
Chakowski pulled back the curtain, and took a defiant look through the window at the dark, empty street beyond. Then he dropped his keys on the side table by the door and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened.
He turned back toward his living room. The light from a lamppost across the street spilled in through the window, past the curtain that he’d drawn, and reached to the far end of the room, well beyond what he could’ve seen before in the dark. But Chakowski didn’t recognize what he saw. There were papers littered across the beige carpeting, a table was turned over, and his bookshelves had been emptied, their contents thrown to the floor.
Chakowski didn’t know what to make of the sizzling sound that seemed to be moving through the walls. Then he heard a muted pop coming from somewhere in the basement.
But only his neighbors heard the explosion, an instant later.
Chapter 3
Interstate 80 connects New York to San Francisco, waving hello and then goodbye to several Midwestern cities along the way. But this particular westbound stretch between Toledo, Ohio, and the Indiana-Illinois border offered little of interest.
Alex Chapa watched the speedometer climb past seventy, then thought better of it, remembering that he was transporting precious cargo, and eased off the accelerator. He was about to sneak another glance at the backseat when his cell phone began playing “Daydream Believer.” Until recently its ringtone had been set to “Guantanamera,” the classic Cuban tune that his aunt Caridad once claimed was her signature song back when she performed at the Tropicana—before “The Beard” ruined paradise.
Chapa checked to see who it was, and saw Chicago Record on the caller I.D. He had taken two weeks off from the paper, which meant he wasn’t required to give a damn about the call. It was the first time he’d been away from his job for that length of time since the birth of his daughter, more than ten years earlier.
He chose to ignore it, wondering what could be so important that someone would bother him with it during a rare off-time. There were other writers at the paper. Few with more experience, perhaps none as accomplished, but so what? He was off the clock.
Chapa let it go, and turned his attention back to the countryside racing past in dying shades of red and brown. His thoughts melting into the lonesome notes that were cascading out of a long lost saxophone and pouring in through his car speakers, Chapa focused on the road ahead, and the unique opportunities the next few days would offer.
Again, the speedometer in his late 90s Corolla slipped into the red, a fact that Chapa was alerted to by the rattling of his driver’s side door handle. He eased off the gas, again. The car ran just fine at speeds beyond the legal limit, something Chapa tested on a regular basis. Despite its age, the Corolla didn’t have any rust on its aqua-green exterior, the air conditioning worked most of the time, and the heater always blew hot, especially in July when the car sometimes confused the two.
But on this trip, Chapa had far more important concerns than the condition of his vehicle. For that matter, Chapa didn’t much care whether he pulled into his driveway an hour early or two hours late. His priorities had shifted in a different and welcome direction.
Stan Getz was cruising through “Misty” when the phone interrupted again. Apparently, someone at the assignment desk hadn’t gotten the message that Alex Chapa was not available. But it was strange that they would call twice. One call could have been an oversight, but two suggested intent. He decided to check his messages, something he hadn’t done since stopping for breakfast that morning just outside of Erie, Pennsylvania.
Chapa immediately recognized a harried voice belonging to Matt Sullivan, the news editor at the Record.
Alex,