She’d become a target of the hate fringe that finds exposés of gun violence a visceral threat. I guess that wasn’t a surprise, but it was thoroughly depressing.
It also explained why it was hard to dig up her home address or any phone numbers. It took me two hours and a lot of fees to private search engines, but, in the age of Google and Apple, unless you’ve never used a credit card or had a bank account, you are ultimately traceable. Elisa Palurdo lived on Edgebrook Terrace in the Forest Glen neighborhood on the city’s northwest side.
12
Quicksand in the Valley of Regret
Technically, Forest Glen is part of Chicago, but when I drive through the streets that wind between the Chicago River and a forest preserve, I feel as though I’ve stumbled onto a film set for Norman Rockwell’s America: old trees shade well-kept homes. Many are standard Chicago lots with small houses, but just as many are big enough to be called mansions. A lot of the city’s power brokers have homes here—it’s sometimes called the City Hall annex.
Maybe if Donna Lutas made the condo board evict me, I could move here. The houses are about two hundred thousand above my price point, but perhaps someone in the city, maybe Parks Superintendent Taggett, needed a live-in investigator.
Although Elisa Palurdo lived in a small brick home, she had plenty of security herself. The lot was covered with motion sensors. She had a dog who didn’t bark but growled with credible menace when I rang the bell. No one answered. I rang a second time, then noticed the security camera over the door.
“My name is V.I. Warshawski.” I spoke to the camera’s live red eye. “I am trying to find Lydia Zamir, who disappeared from Provident Hospital yesterday morning. If you’d call my cell phone, I’ll explain why I’m looking for her. If you know where she is, I will not betray her confidence. My website lists references.”
I stuck my hand into my handbag, slowly, so any watchers could see I wasn’t reaching for a weapon, and slowly extracted a business card, which I put through the mail slot, to the dog’s increased rage. I felt its breath on my fingers and quickly removed my hand.
“I’ll drive a few blocks away to keep people from paying attention to my car or your house. I’ll wait half an hour in case you’re willing to speak to me.”
As I drove away, it seemed as though my sardonic thought about the parks superintendent had conjured him: a block from the Palurdo home, he emerged from one of the great houses and headed toward a black Lexus SUV. I stopped to see what my tax dollars were paying for. The SUV included a chauffeur, who sprang from the driver’s seat to open both rear doors. Taggett paused with one hand on the door and another on his device.
In a moment a man whose silver hair matched his summer suit came out of the house and strolled to the car. The chauffeur tucked the two inside and headed out. I hadn’t seen the second man’s face clearly, but I was pretty sure he was the Off Duty guy who’d been with Larry Nieland last night at the SLICK meeting.
I parked in a grocery store lot, where I read some of Elisa’s blog posts from the time of her son’s death.
I watched my son die. Not in person. I, his mother, was not there to cradle him in my arms as the Virgin could do for her son. No, I watched him die a thousand times. On television, on the Internet, on my phone. His death was a titillating circus-show for the world.
He and his partner, Lydia, were speaking and singing to raise money for the land and the people who work on it when a man opened fire and murdered him, along with sixteen other mothers’ children. Fifty-two others suffered serious wounds.
Thirteen months after his death, I can write of the pain in my heart that won’t go away. I can write of the pain of the other families. I can write of those wounded by those bullets. I can write of the damage to the mind and voice of Hector’s nightingale, Lydia, who lost her voice. All these things I can write, but instead I will tell you the story of the AR-15 that the murderer used.
She went on to detail a visit to the Orestes factory in Utah where the gun that killed her son was manufactured. She followed it to its first buyer, and then managed to trace it through several online sales: she was a dogged and skillful investigator.
I was engrossed, reading about the day the killer—whom she refused to call by name; I will not add to his quest for glory—when my phone rang: blocked caller ID, but it was Elisa Palurdo on the other end.
“Why are you looking for Lydia?” she asked, after we established that I was me and she was Elisa.
“To make sure she’s safe. If I can see her and know that she’s where she wants to be, and that she’s not abused or exploited, I will protect her privacy. If not, I will try to get her to people or a place where she feels safe.”
We both knew Elisa wouldn’t have called if she wasn’t willing to see me. After a few more perfunctory questions, she told me to meet her at a branch of the public library on Devon Avenue.
Palurdo arrived on foot about five minutes after I pulled into a parking space. She was in her sixties, with gray hair piled onto her head by a wide clip. The early photos I’d found of her had shown a striking woman with humor lines at the corners of her eyes. Those had gone. She looked about warily when I approached her, and gave a perfunctory smile that did nothing to ease the deep lines around her mouth.
“We are reasonably safe here,” Palurdo said. “Schools are the most dangerous locations for shootings in America. Then malls and places of work and worship. So far libraries have mostly been exempt. Not completely.”
She led me into the building, nodding and exchanging greetings with staff at the main counter. I followed her to an alcove that had a view of the front door. A woman sitting on a bench there was frowning over her phone while a toddler grabbed at her pant leg, whining in a soft miserable voice—the child wasn’t expecting attention.
Elisa took two padded chairs and turned them so that we had a semblance of privacy. “Every time I see something like that, I want to shake the mom—or dad—and say, ‘Look at your child, you don’t know how precious your time with that child is.’ I remember all the times I didn’t pay attention to Hector when he was little, all those ‘Mommy, Mommy, Mommy’ moments that drive you mad—and after your child is dead, you think—what would it have cost me to be patient for twenty seconds?”
“I never had children, but I have had plenty of impatient moments. And regrets. My mother died when I was sixteen and I have all those regrets of disappointing her—when she was alive and even now, when I think of her dreams for me. The valley of regrets can pull you down into its quicksand bottom: it’s best not to linger there.”
Palurdo produced her unhappy smile again. “That could be a good title for an article—‘Quicksand in the Valley of Regret.’ Lydia—I have worries about her, as well—especially after seeing the news.”
I asked the last time Palurdo had seen or spoken to Lydia.
“Maybe eight or nine months ago.” Palurdo frowned, thinking back. “She had come completely unraveled. She spent a few months with me—she’d been to her parents and felt they didn’t or couldn’t grasp the magnitude of the horror she’d been through. She was standing behind him, you know, behind him on the stage, and his blood was all over her.