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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  In Memorium

  Family Tree

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Also by Eleanor Taylor Bland

  Copyright

  IN MEMORIUM

  Dan Drew, Mayor, City of Waukegan

  Miguel Juarez, Chief of Police, City of Waukegan

  Carl Richardson, my beloved “little” nephew

  Sterling Bland, my brother-in-law

  Phyllis Greer, phenomenal woman

  Helen Olmstead, writer and friend

  Bernice Zolkowski—wife, mother, grandmother, and a very special lady

  I BORE YOU UP ON WINGS OF EAGLES AND BROUGHT YOU HERE TO MYSELF: EXODUS 19:4

  Congratulations on their retirements to Andy Stimson, executive director, Waukegan Public Library, and Barbara Richardson, coroner, Lake County, Illinois.

  A warm welcome to Owen Neely Harris

  “Our children are not our children … they belong to a tomorrow that we cannot visit … not even in our dreams.”

  A very special happy eightieth birthday to Ed Gilbreth, a friend and supporter of Chicago mystery readers for many years.

  * * *

  This novel required a great deal of research. I would like to acknowledge the following sources:

  Bennett, Jr., Lerone, Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America, 1619–1964. Penguin Books.

  Burroughs, Tony, Black Roots, A Beginner’s Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree. A Fireside Book, Simon and Schuster.

  Clifton, James A., The Potawatomi. Chelsea House Publishers.

  Turner, Glennette Tilley, The Underground Railroad in Illinois. Newman Educational Publishing, Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

  * * *

  I would also like to express my appreciation to Nanette C. Boryc, researcher extraordinaire, for her professional research skills as well as the time she so generously provided when I became totally overwhelmed by what was “out there” on the Internet. Nanette also “rescued” this manuscript when my computer crashed.

  As always, I must express my deep and continuing appreciation to my agent, Ted Chichak, who is always there for me; to Kelley Ragland, my editor, and to Ben Sevier, assistant editor. I would also like to thank Erika Schmid, the copy editor of this book, for doing such a professional job.

  I would also like to thank my family for their patience and support with all of my endeavors.

  Many thanks to super fans Rhonda Pope, Washington, D.C., and in Illinois, Mark Dobrzycki, Keith Corbin, Augie at Centuries and Sleuths, John Doggett, Wendy Beshel, and June Zaragoza.

  A special thank you to Jack Cody, retired professor, Southern Illinois University, and to Camille Taylor, retired professor, College of Lake County. Over the years, so much of what they taught me has continued to resonate as I write.

  For technical assistance I relied very heavily on the expertise of Professor Emeritus Dr. William Bass, University of Tennessee, and John Rorabeck, assistant coroner, Lake County, Illinois, Barbara D’Amato, author, and research librarians Lourdes Mordini, Yan Xu, Eva Gracia, Patricia McLaughlin, and Peter Sprinkle at the Waukegan Public Library.

  I have discovered that in order to write as I do, I need to see good in the world. I would particularly like to thank the following individuals for providing me with that opportunity: my sister-in-law, Julia Anderson, age eighty-five, who, with selfless love and dedication, cared for her brother, Sterling, during his final illness, my church family at St. Anastasia Church, my family of lay Carmelites, Brother Benjamin, Dr. Charles V. Holmberg, Robert F. Reusche, and Phillip Carrigan.

  FAMILY TREE

  PROLOGUE

  LITTLE FORT, ILLINOIS, 1835 A.D.

  Naawe could hear the screams of the wide-winged lake birds as she hurried up to the place where Dessa was hiding. The white birds moved swiftly, flying in wide circles. Naawe was high enough above the place where the water crashed against the rocks to look down at them. Some swooped down to the Mitchigami. Others walked or ran on long legs across the sand, seeking food. She looked for the boats of the Neshnabek, her people, but there were none. Nampizha was angry today. There were many places close to land where his breath could be seen breaking the water. Not even an offering of tobacco would calm him. Perhaps, as her grandmother had once told her, it was good that the “hairy faces” came, bringing horses.

  Soon there would be no Neshnabek here, not in boats, not on horses. Already her people were traveling over land far from the waters where Nampizha lived. They would cross the great river to the land far beyond and never see this place again. The time for leaving had come, but she would not go with them. Soon she would be alone. She would have to stay away from the trails marked by her people, stay away from the kitchimokomon who said that Neshnabek land was now theirs. She would follow the lake north, to the place where it met the small river. There were other Neshnabek there whose land the kitchimokomon did not own.

  Naawe stopped and closed her eyes. She listened to the sound of the water as Nampizha thrashed beneath the surface. She listened to the screams of the wide-winged birds. She took one more look at Mitchigami, the great lake that went to where the sky began. Then she turned away, toward the tall trees that held back the sun. She stepped on the flowers that grew in the places the sun did not reach. Small flowers, green and white now, with thick, sharp leaves that were not crushed when she stepped on them.

  Once she left here, she would not see this place again. She would be far from here now were it not for Dessa, whom she had found hiding two days ago. Dessa was also running away. She was also frightened and alone. The kitchimokomon was looking for Dessa, too. Not because he owned her land, but because he owned her.

  Naawe heard Dessa before she saw her, heard soft cries and moans, then grunts and fast breathing. Naawe moved toward the sounds of pain, careful not to be heard or seen in case it was the kitchimokomon who were here and not the baby whose time it was to be born. When she reached a place of many bushes, the sounds were louder. Naawe crouched and listened. Then she heard the cries of a child, not the loud cries that she had heard before when Neshnabek women gave birth, but a quiet cry, as if the child had no strength. Naawe stood. She parted the bushes until she came to the place where Dessa lay. The baby, smeared and bloody, was on her belly. Dessa’s blood flowed, soaking into the grass. Naawe took the pouch from her back, reached in and found the pitchkosan for childbirth. She opened the otter-skin bundle and took out the root for bleeding that would not stop.

  Later, when it was the time before the stars, and the sun went to the place away from the lake and the sky became dark, Dessa put her boy child to her breast.

  “What do you name him?” Naawe asked in the language of the kitchimokomon.

  “Samuel, for his father,” Dessa answered. She str
oked the child’s dark hair. “We leave here soon, so the white man cannot take him.”

  “You should come with me,” Naawe said. “The child will grow strong with what I have in my pitchkosan.”

  Dessa shook her head.

  “Dessa, you ran away from the kitchimokomon, who you call white man. When he caught you and your people, only you got away. He has taken the others to the dark place, the place of death. Come with me, before he finds you.”

  Dessa shook her head again. “North,” she whispered. “We go north. Tonight I go to see if they have hung out the quilt that tells us when it is time to leave here.”

  The house with the quilt was the house of the kitchimokomon. Naawe did not trust any of them. She did not know why Dessa did.

  Dessa held out her sleeping child. “I will not be gone long. Will you watch him?”

  Clouds hid the moon when Dessa left. Naawe held the sleeping baby in her arms. She should go now, while the kitchimokomon expected her people to move west, but the child was not strong, nor was his mother. The medicines that would make them strong were in her pitchkosan. Perhaps if she gave them to Dessa and told her how to use them … the baby stirred, gave a few weak cries and went back to sleep.

  Naawe listened to Nampizha, stirring up the waters of the great lake and making the water crash against the rocks below the bluffs. The god of the waters was angry. He was warning her away from this place. She listened to him speak and was afraid.

  CHAPTER 1

  TUESDAY, JUNE 18

  As Detective Marti MacAlister and her partner, Matthew “Vik” Jessenovik, walked across the wide expanse of grass toward the man who had found the skeletal remains, they could here his voice rising with hysteria.

  “… looking at me … he was looking at me … he … he … he was…”

  “He didn’t have any eyes,” the uniform interrupted.

  “And grinning … he was…”

  “They all look like they’re grinning.”

  Marti could see that the man was wearing a long overcoat despite the seventy-five-degree weather. Limp brown hair fell across his forehead and hung to his shoulders. He was clutching a fraying nylon duffel bag.

  “What if I was sleeping on him? What if…”

  “You probably were.”

  The man dropped the bag and began rubbing his arms through his coat sleeves.

  “I just wanted a place to sleep.” He sounded as if he was about to cry.

  Close up, the man looked to be in his teens. Marti could smell him, just dirt and perspiration, not the sickening odor of rotting garbage or the sweet, acrid smell of marijuana.

  The uniform looked at her and Vik with raised eyebrows. He shrugged.

  “Okay, Brandon, here are the detectives who are going to investigate this.” He introduced them, then took a few steps back while they showed Brandon their badges.

  “What happened?” Marti asked.

  “Went to sleep and woke up with this head staring at me and grinning.”

  “A skull,” the uniform said. “Just a skull.”

  “Just hell. Wasn’t more than six inches from my face.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Do? What do you think? Grabbed my stuff. Ran like hell. Woke up those people in that house.” He pointed toward a large Georgian in the center of the lawn. “Sleeping on a dead body. Damn.” He shook his head. “Middle of June and I still can’t find a safe place to sleep.”

  “Nothing’s safe when you’re on the street,” the uniform said.

  Marti turned to him. He needed something to do. “Where did he find it?” she asked.

  “Down in there.” He pointed to a ridge of trees midway between the top of the bluff and the little-used four-lane roadway at the base of the bluff. From where they stood, Marti could not see the lake at all.

  “Did you disturb anything?” she asked.

  “No. Flashed my light in, saw the skull, called it in.”

  “Good. Go watch for the coroner’s van and the evidence tech. Direct them down there.”

  She turned to Brandon. “Did you see anything else?”

  He shook his head.

  “Sleep here before?”

  “Couple of times.”

  “Ever see anyone here?”

  “No. If I wanted to see people I’d go someplace else.”

  She gave Vik a small nod. It was his turn.

  “How old are you, son?”

  “Nineteen.”

  At six-two, Vik towered over him. Vik’s face was craggy, with a beaklike nose that was skewed to one side by a break. Wiry salt-and-pepper eyebrows almost met in a ferocious scowl. He seldom smiled. Now he struck what Marti called his vulture pose. Most adults were intimidated by this, kids weren’t fazed at all. Brandon didn’t seem to be afraid either.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Around.”

  “Around where?”

  Brandon shrugged. “Wherever.”

  “Where are you headed?”

  “No place in particular.”

  “Well, in that case, you won’t mind if we detain you for twenty-four hours, make sure there aren’t any warrants out on you.”

  Another shrug. “Think you could make it the hospital? Psych ward? Food’s better.”

  Vik shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “Vagrants,” Vik said as they walked away. “Strange way to live. Somebody will probably find his body someday. Or his bones.”

  * * *

  Vik whistled as he led the way through the woods where the remains had been found. It was a tuneless whistle, not a song, something he did so seldom that Marti had to think for a minute before she realized that Brandon’s age bothered him. As she followed him, she wondered what would bring anyone, especially a homeless teenager, to this place. Low bushes snagged her slacks. Tree branches scratched her arms. There was no path. The dirt was hard-packed and the undergrowth spiky and sharp. As they headed about thirty feet down to the base of the bluff, they pushed scrub and low tree branches aside, heard the scurrying of small animals, and flushed the occasional bird.

  This was all that remained of the ancient bluffs that once descended to sandy beaches and the then unpolluted, fish-filled waters of Lake Michigan. For several hundred years the Potawatomi Indians had foraged here. According to Marti’s eleven-year-old son Theo, they called themselves the Neshnabek, which meant The People. Then the French and the English brought civilization, or uncivilization, as Theo would say—and ultimately, relocation.

  As Marti and Vik descended through the woods and toward “civilization,” Marti could see the stacks of the “coker” plant, which still converted coal to electricity; the tops of concrete storage silos; gray mounds of gypsum waiting to be loaded onto ships; and the flat roofs of deserted buildings where fishing and boat-building industries once thrived. She couldn’t see the lake at all. When they reached the base of the bluff, clumps of dandelions and clusters of prairie grasses took over. There wasn’t much litter and not enough traffic to overcome the faint but unmistakable odor of a skunk.

  “The Alzheimer’s Expressway,” Vik said.

  “The Anstandt Expressway,” she reminded him. Tufts of the tough, enduring grass had sprung up in concrete cracks along the little-used road.

  “Depends on your perspective, MacAlister. It begins nowhere, ends nowhere, and goes nowhere. About the only thing it’s good for is filming car chases and drag racing.”

  Marti could understand Vik’s animosity. The roadway, two blocks long when it was built in the seventies and extended a few more blocks a couple of years ago, served no essential purpose that she could discern other than to divert some of the morning and evening commuter traffic. The Anstandt was supposed to go north, then west, and hook up with Route 173. It was also supposed to go south as far as Leebuck Road. Those links would have created a major bypass around the city. That never happened. There was a major manufacturing facility in the way, a cemetery with graves going back several hundred years, as we
ll as churches and homes that had been built in the mid-to-late eighteen hundreds. For some reason none of that had initially been taken into consideration.

  When Marti didn’t say anything, Vik said, “Alzheimer’s Expressway, like I said. This whole lakefront area should have been off-limits, just like they were smart enough to do in Chicago and Milwaukee.”

  Marti knew that was Vik’s real complaint. “That would have been nice,” she agreed, thinking of trips to the lakefront when she lived in Chicago; the beaches, the parks, museums and marinas. Here there was industrial pollution, an EPA asbestos cleanup in progress, mercury in the water, and miles of train track that could not be taken up.

  Marti stood at the verge where grass met gravel and that yielded to asphalt. She turned and looked at a place among the trees. The medical examiner and the evidence technicians had arrived. Strips of yellow plastic marked the spot where the skeletal remains had been found. It was a peaceful place, quiet, a place where few people came, and none for any good reason. Someone had been buried there, perhaps died there. It was a lonely place to die. Most places were.

  * * *

  It was after eleven the following morning when Marti parked at the coroner’s facility. Based on bits of clothing found with the remains, the medical examiner, Dr. Cyprian, estimated that the victim had been in a shallow grave for nine to twelve months. No ID had been found. Now somebody was going to read the bones. Marti wanted those bones to talk to her too, perhaps yield a few secrets that were less obvious than those a forensic anthropologist could have identified.

  “Hurry up or we’ll be late,” Vik grouched. “Our expert from the big city has been here for half an hour.”

  “So? She arrived early.”

  Dr. Cyprian, a quiet-spoken East Indian, was waiting for them, along with Dr. Elaine Altenberg, who had driven up from Chicago. Marti and Vik had worked with her once before. Altenberg was good at what she did. She was a friendly, relaxed middle-aged woman who liked to talk. Marti had requested Meline Pickus, who had helped them when a mummy was found in the Geneva Theater, but Pickus was on vacation.

  “Morning, Jessenovik,” Altenberg said. “MacAlister.”