Read Online Just Kill Me by Adam Selzer - Free Book Online

cemeteries closed down. Or at least they said they did. They might have left him in Lincoln Park, for all we know. Or even down by the Water Tower.
    The guy he killed stayed buried in one place longer than he did, but in 1891 they accidentally dug up La Lime during construction and gave his bones to the Chicago Historical Society. I’m sure they must have been thrilled.
    After Rick explains all this, he says, “Now tell that story back to me, like we were on a tour.”
    And I do. I repeat the story, then he helps me refine it, and tells me how to figure out which parts are important, which parts I would only throw in if I had time, and where the “gasp” lines are, the factoids that’ll make people’s jaws drop if I tellthem just right. This one isn’t a story he tells on the regular route, but it’s good practice, and the spot where they dug up La Lime is close enough to the usual route—two blocks south of the gallows site—that we can use it as an alternate tour stop if we can’t access all the usual ones some night.
    When we’re done with that exercise, the three of us head north on the path and end up at a massive family plot with a giant statue of a bored-looking guy on a throne, staring down at a reflecting pool, some benches, and a bunch of small stone markers.
    â€œThis,” says Rick, “is the grave of Marshall Field, the department store guy, and his family.”
    â€œThe reflecting pool is full of the tears of his workers,” says Cynthia.
    â€œWith benches, so Field could enjoy the company of the sort of weirdos who hang out in cemeteries,” I say.
    â€œIronic,” says Rick, “because he hated weirdos.”
    Rick tells me some stories about how Field had helped get a group of anarchists hanged, and the mystery of whether his son’s death was really an accident, like Mr. Field insisted, or if he was killed in a brothel, like everyone else believed.
    Cyn walks up to the grave of Marshall himself and shouts “You stole all your good ideas from Harry Selfridge!”
    â€œDare you to piss in the reflecting pool,” says Rick.

    Eventually we end up on Burnham Island, a tiny wooded isle in the middle of the cemetery lake. It’s sort of eerie here.
    Rick loves it. “It looks like the spot where a guy in a folk ballad would take his pregnant girlfriend to murder her.”
    â€œMight make it more haunted,” says Cyn.
    She opens her backpack, pulls out some sandwiches and drinks, and sets us up for a graveyard-island picnic next to a boulder marking the burial place of Daniel Burnham, an architect.
    The sandwiches are made with mayonnaise and look like they’ve been in the bag long enough to turn. But Rick tears into his, and Cyn looks at me expectantly, so I take a bite of mine and smile. It’s terrible and possibly poison. But I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I nibble the edges and put the rest in my purse when she isn’t looking.
    â€œSo, you definitely want the job?” asks Rick.
    â€œHell yeah.”
    He nods. “We’ll do your real initiation after the next tour,” he says. “You make it through that, you’re one of us.”
    â€œOne of us. One of us,” Cyn chants.
    Right after the picnic, we get off the island and roam through the cemetery, past a bunch of mausoleums with the same basic aesthetic as the Couch tomb, and Cyn shows me how to see inside some of them. A couple of them aren’t locked as tight as they should be, and no one cares since the whole family has died out and no one maintains them anymore. “Good places to stash some valuables if you ever need to,” she says. “No one’s ever gonna look.”
    Good to know.
    I pull the sandwich from my purse, shudder at the thought of eating any more of it, and when Cyn’s and Rick’s backs are turned, I slide it into one of the tombs to rot away, never to be seen again.
    We do