The Overnights by Smith Ian K

Author:Smith, Ian K. [Smith, Ian K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, thriller
ISBN: 9780063253711
Amazon: 0063253712
Goodreads: 62365900
Publisher: Amistad
Published: 2023-05-30T07:00:00+00:00

32

I sat on my couch reading the police shooting team’s report. Something about it just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t say exactly what it was, but it had my gut tingling. Maybe something wasn’t adding up with the officers’ stories or the sequence of events didn’t mesh. I circled the time Reece had been shot: 7:15 p.m. It was mid-June, so there still would’ve been some daylight, but dusk was quickly approaching. I looked outside my window. The light was probably similar. I picked up my phone and called Mechanic.

“How about a little field trip?” I said when he answered.

“When?” he said.

“Now?”

“Where to?”

“Auburn Gresham.”

“Been a while since I rode those streets.”

“Well, strap up and let’s go.”

MECHANIC AND I JUMPED ON the expressway and turned south. I had read somewhere that if a visitor to Chicago wanted to understand the demographics of the different neighborhoods, all they had to do was watch the changing cityscape. Starting from the luxury high-rises and shiny new developments crowding downtown, then traveling through the trendy South Loop before passing into the working-class neighborhood of Bronzeville, the towering skyline of downtown progressively shrunk with every passing block as the named skyscrapers gave way to squat mixed-income apartment complexes and scattered vacant lots. Sprawling shopping centers filled with discount stores and old row houses with carpet-size patches of grass as front lawns told a story of hardship and stark disconnection to the more affluent neighborhoods farther north.

We exited at Eighty-Third Street. Street vendors crowded the road, selling everything from caramelized walnuts to knockoff Bears and Bulls sweatshirts to motorists waiting at the traffic light. Tinted-window cars and trucks drove by, the bass of their music so loud it shook cars standing at the intersection. We drove west and passed a couple of enormous shopping centers with big-box retail and home improvement stores. We finally reached a forked intersection with Vincennes Avenue, a long diagonal road that predominantly ran north and south.

“There’s Simeon down there to the right,” I said. The gigantic orange brick building perched gloriously on an enormous plot of land, completely incongruous with its squalid surroundings.

“Never heard of it,” Mechanic said.

“Some of the greatest basketball players never to make it to the NBA played there. Had a guy named Benji Wilson back in the early eighties. Better even than Derrick Rose and some of the other Chicago greats.”

I took a left and drove in the direction opposite of Simeon. About a hundred yards down, I turned onto the Eighty-Third Street extension that ran on the other side of Vincennes. As soon I took a right, the park was in full view. I pulled off on a crumbling road adjacent to the park and kept the motor running. The basketball backboards were the old kind—clamshell shaped and made of old metal. There were no nets hanging from the rims, and most of them were rusty and tilted slightly from too many players dunking the ball and hanging on too long afterward. The park was completely empty.

We

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