by Cameron Judd
“It’s already a subject of great interest to Melinda and me,” Eli said. “We even explored the lodge building recently. Pretty much everything we’ve learned about the place, and the organization, is disturbing, though.”
“My great aunt has some interest in that place,” Ledford said. “She has a display devoted to it in her Hall of History.”
“Been there, seen it,” said Melinda. “A bit cryptic, but what she shows seems to match up, in general, with other things we’ve heard.”
“This press conference … is it a tape you’ve got?”
“Yeah. I’d recorded an old western movie one afternoon on VHS while I was out, and when the movie was over, the news came on. Right after that there was one of those public affairs special programs news departments do. There had been a big interstate drug bust the day before, and they interviewed the federal attorney about it. He referenced a press conference he’d given some years back, because it was relevant to the subject, and the station showed it as part of the program.”
“And you’ve got it on tape.”
“I do. In my car.”
Melinda made a fast decision and hoped Eli wouldn’t object. “Tell me, Ledfords: do you like meatloaf sandwiches?”
“Love ’em!”
“And do you know where my house is? Up in the block behind my family’s video services shop.”
“We know.”
“Be there at seven and you can join Eli and me for some meatloaf sandwiches and oven fries, and we can watch your video. And I’ve got one to show you, too.”
Eli looked at his fiance with perplexity. “What video?”
“You’ll see. If I have the courage to show it. It’s a little bit … unusual.”
Ledford elbowed his wife. “Sounds like Melinda’s been visiting the back room at the video store.”
“Oh my gosh, no! No! It’s nothing like that!” Melinda objected, then reminded herself that it was a little like that. Very little, though. Mild, almost quaint stuff.
“I know, Melinda. I know. I’m just poking a little fun, that’s all. Speaking of fun, how big would the resulting explosion be if I showed up at your house with a case of beer tonight?”
Melinda smiled. “No explosion at all. Dad’s not there … he and Mom went off on a little business trip, and they’ll not be back until sometime tomorrow night. They’re spending the night in Knoxville tonight, then visiting Gatlinburg tomorrow. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if they spent tomorrow night in Gatlinburg and drove in Thursday morning to get here for the July 4 parade. My little sister is dancing with her dance group in the parade, backup for the Crosswaites.”
“I’ll bring the beer, then. You can clean up the evidence before the prohibitionists get back home.”
“It’ll be nice to visit with you two,” Melinda said. “But first I’ve got video to edit and a story to put together. Off to Johnson City for a few hours!”
Eli walked her to the Bronco, parked on a nearby street.
“So much for an evening alone,” he said.
“I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have invited them, but it seemed the thing to do. They’ve hosted us before and we never did anything for them in return.”
“I don’t mind it. But what is this video you’re going to show?”
“Something I think might be relevant to our Harvestmen investigations … but I’m not sure. Something in it caught my attention, but just subconsciously. I want to see tonight if I can figure out what it is. Oh, and Eli … ”
“Yes?”
“It came from your grandfather’s cellar.”
“Oh my gosh. Now I know I’ve got to see it. Uh … hey, is that why you asked me if my granddad had a Super 8 camera?”
“It was.”
“Was it … is it … well, pornographic?”
“I wouldn’t be planning to openly show it if it was, would I?”
“I wouldn’t think you would.”
“It’s not pornographic … at the same time, it tends enough toward the risque that it’s not what I would have expected to find your grandfather having in his possession, based on what you’ve told me about him. Dancing girls, in front of a group of men. Clothed, but a little on the hoochie coochie side.”
“Sounds like Grandpa Will might have had some hidden history.”
“I have the impression there’s a good deal of that in this county.”
Chapter Forty-Six
RAWLS PARVIN HAD NEVER BEEN prone to be a deep thinker. He’d always been the kind to act rather than ponder. His time in prison had changed that, to a degree. Behind bars, sometimes time was all a man had, and his thoughts were his only worthwhile company. Pondering was done there in abundance.
Since drinking beer and eating barbecue with Lukey at Rollie Flatt’s place, Rawls had been doing plenty of pondering again. Lukey had gotten plenty drunk that night at Rollie’s, and his tongue had gotten way too loose. For a man who’d so fervently warned of the dangers of betraying the criminal ring of which he was a part, Lukey had given Rollie, an outsider, plenty of information. Too much of it. If Rollie had been listening closely and his own mind wasn’t too beer-numbed, he now knew pretty much what Lukey had been up to for the past few years. And not just the cameraman work for pond-scum dirty movie producers; the other things, too. The so-called Flower Garden about which Rawls had learned uncomfortably much in his research at the library. Rollie knew far more than he should, all because Lukey couldn’t keep his mouth shut when he was drunk.
Rawls had fluttered back and forth on the proposition that Lukey had made to him, the chance to become involved in the so-called Flower Garden and maybe become rich. That last part held a lot of appeal; Rawls realized every morning, when he put his feet on the floor and winced at that little stab of crippling pain in his leg, just how much he’d lost when Ben Buckingham shot him. What Lukey had said earlier was true: he could have become a rich and happy man, had he been able to take his football promise and prowess into the NFL. A lot more than a high school football career had been killed by that bullet.
Football was in his past, but what about his future? Lukey’s offer of a lucrative career as part of a worldwide trafficking ring might be able to more than replace what football might have brought him, if everything had gone right. It made perfect sense, on one level, to simply say yes to Lukey and see if the best happened.
What had Rawls surprised at the moment, however, was just how strong a sense of morality he possessed. He’d done plenty of wrong things in his still-young life, and knew it. He’d even persuaded himself that he was willing to go through with the “work” required of him if he did enter in with Lukey into the Flower Garden network. He was wavering, though. Money would be great, kicking life in the teeth because it had kicked him first … all this held its appeal.
But to involve himself in supplying little girls to be vended to a global community of sickly depraved individuals … was that where he wanted to find his life success? Rawls was no saint, no “born again” religionist, no one likely ever to throw up his hands and shout hallelujah to any divinity of any name. But he had his standards.
He walked over to a mirror hanging on the wall of the rough, rusted old camping trailer he’d been using for a home since he was freed from the penitentiary. It was tucked away into a Parvin-owned stand of woods west of the old Winona Court Motor Lodge. He looked his reflection in the face.
“Hell, no,” he said. “I told you I would, Lukey, but hell, no, not me. Because when I think it through to the end I find out that I do have my standards, even if you don’t. By God, I do!”
The cheap phone he’d bought at a drug store gave a squeal, startling him. With his unlisted number, prison record, notorious reputation, and unflattering family connection, calls were few, and mostly from his own kin.
This was one of the latter, but the family member calling was one who had not done so before, not since Rawls had been back in Kincheloe County.
“It’s your daddy, Rawls,” Cale Parvin’s weak voi
ce said into his ear.
“Daddy? Is that really you?”
“Don’t you even know your own old man’s voice no more, son?”
“It is you. I can tell now. It’s just been a long time since I’ve heard you through a phone.”
“You got to come see me, boy.”
“I know I should have been by there, Daddy, but you know how it is.”
“You gotta come tomorrow, Rawls. If you don’t there won’t be another chance.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Just come by, hear? Don’t you forget it, neither. Need you here by noon.”
Rawls was getting quite an unpleasant, worrisome feeling from this phone call. His father’s voice sounded strained, tense. And why this push for a visit?
“You coming, then?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I’ll come.”
“Don’t you forget, and don’t you be late.”
“What’s going on with you, Daddy?”
“Just be here.”
The phone clicked and Cale Parvin was gone.
LEDFORD’S VIDEO PLAYED FIRST. IT was visually bland, just men in suits and a couple of equally official-looking women in conservative business attire, standing on the steps of a federal building behind microphones. They were faced by members of the press and various others. With minimal introductions and no fanfare, the U.S. Attorney, standing dead center, told his listeners that a significant number of arrests and indictments were soon to come in Northeast Tennessee, and that this circumstance stemmed in large measure from geographical and cultural aspects of the region.
“This corner of Tennessee is physically situated along or near routes making it conducive to the trafficking and movement of illegal drugs and alcohol, of stolen goods, even of human beings. Culturally we possess a populace that is perceived as lacking in sophistication, literacy, and education relative to some other portions of the country. These perceptions are not fully justified, but there is more validity to them than we might wish to acknowledge. The crucial aspect is that these perceptions are widely held and believed elsewhere in our nation, and that perception attracts certain criminal elements involved in the sorts of crimes I just referenced. Their idea is that this is a region where they can engage in criminal enterprises with less likelihood of being caught.”
The further comments went on in a similar vein, and in response to a press question, the federal prosecutor made a veiled reference to a possible regional link to “a ring involved in the most horrific kind of human trafficking,” victimizing young women who were turned into an “international human commodity that strips them of all freedom, dignity, and, ultimately, hope.”
Despite pleas from the reporters for more explanation, he had little more to say on specifics, but as Melinda listened, she realized how the content of the press conference video and the one she was about to show might possess a connection.
“WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE you showing to us?” Micah Ledford asked Melinda a few minutes later as the skirt-tossing high kicking began on the television screen. The television was large and of good quality; Ben Buckingham believed that, as a family working in video services, it was fitting they should have good home technology.
The image quality of the videotape itself was, however, poor. A transfer from old Super 8 film, it had a sporadically murky quality made all the more so by the constant motion of the billowing dresses worn by the dancers.
“This is crazy!” Eli said. “Why would my grandfa – ” He cut off.
“Why do you have this, Melinda?” Ledford asked. “And where did you get it?”
Melinda cut her eyes toward Eli for a second, stricken with guilt over how she’d come by the film and not sure how much she should say. “I … found it. Someone had hidden it somewhere.”
“And you thought your old buddies the Ledfords were just the kind to want to watch a bunch of can-can dancers, huh?”
“No, no,” Melinda said. “What is interesting to me about it is my suspicion as to where the film was made.”
“And where’s that?”
“Keep watching … especially you, Eli, because in a few moments the dancers will be more off to one side and you can see the room they’re in.”
Eli saw no reason to abandon his fiance to any unnecessary awkwardness if he could help it. “Micah, this film was something Melinda found hidden in the cellar of my grandparents’ home. It’s empty now and we kind of sneaked in and explored the place recently. Grandpa had always been adamant with me, when I was little, that I not go into the cellar. So of course, Melinda and I went down there. Somehow she stumbled on an old Super 8 film cartridge and got it out of there without me realizing she’d found anything. Later on she made a transfer onto VHS, and here we are, watching it.”
“Where do you think this was made, Melinda?” Nancy asked.
“I think it was – there! Look!”
The phonograph music to which the dancers were bounding about skipped, then skipped again, over and over. The performance came to a stop for a few moments while someone not seen on film corrected the record player problem. During the time the performance was interrupted, most of the dancers moved randomly to one side, allowing the camera to take in the audience of men, a group who appeared mostly drunken.
Evidently the camera used to make the film had been stationary, either mounted on a tripod near the rear of the stage, or maybe on a surface such as a shelf or table. Maybe a secret camera recording, given that no one shown acted aware they were being filmed.
“I’ll be … I see my uncle in that audience!” Ledford said. “Uncle Hamilton! Shame on you, man!”
“Eli, did you see the room?” Melinda asked.
“Yeah. Definitely. This clip was filmed inside Harvestman Lodge. No doubt about it. I could see the part of the wall where – ” He quit talking abruptly, staring wide-eyed at the screen. “Melinda, I just saw – ”
The typically reticent Nancy Ledford finished Eli’s thought. “A famous face is on that piece of film.”
“Yes. I can’t believe it! Mr. Family Values Advocate himself, a lot younger than now, but Benton Sadler, without a doubt! Right there in Harvestman Lodge with a bunch of rowdy men and ribald dancing girls!”
“What do you know!” Melinda said. “I hadn’t even noticed him.”
NANCY LEDFORD’S NEXT WORDS GAVE another twist to the situation.
“I didn’t notice him, either,” Nancy said. “That’s not the famous face I was talking about. There’s one a lot more widely known than his that’s there.”
“Can we run it back and see that last part again, Melinda?” said Micah Ledford. “I did see Sadler, but I think maybe I saw that other face Nancy is talking about, too.”
Melinda ran the videotape back briefly and they all drew in closer, gazing intently at the screen, looking for the smallest of details. Fortunately the image quality at this section was less murky than at some others.
They all spotted Benton Sadler this time. He was at the rear of the room, showing no evident sign of being drunk like so many in the front part of the crowd. He had a serious, evaluative expression on his face, and was talking to a man beside him, who was nodding and replying and also looking concerned.
It took Eli a couple of moments to realize that the man beside Sadler was his grandfather, Will Keller. With his face a little more in shadow than that of Sadler, Eli hadn’t noticed him the first time through. He didn’t point him out now, either, not sure how to feel about the presence of his own grandfather in such a controversial location.
Nancy asked Melinda freeze the video for a moment and moved to the screen. She pointed at a particular part of the image, also in the rear but to the left of where Sadler and Keller were. “Keep your eye on this area,” she said. “That’s where you’ll see the face I’m talking about.”
Melinda punched the remote button again and the group fixed their eyes on the spot Nancy had indicated.
They saw it. But for Eli it was difficult to identify j
ust whom he was seeing, despite the “famous face” talk. He had to admit, though, that there was something familiar in the face Nancy now pointed out.
“Who is she?” Eli asked.
“I know who she is, but I can show you easier than tell you,” Melinda answered. “Let me run out to the car and get something.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
ELI’S BREATH CAUGHT IN HIS THROAT as he looked at the image on the magazine advertisement Melinda brought in. Like almost everyone else in America, he’d often seen the face of the dark-haired child known simply as “Broken Flower.” The real name of the girl and where she had come from were unknown.
The image of her tear-stained, big-eyed countenance, the one that had become famous and ubiquitous, was actually a still from one of the horrific child sexual exploitation films in which the little girl had been forced by her captors to “star.” That film, and several other similar underground productions in which she’d been featured, were nothing more than filmed, violent child sexual abuse.
Once the heart-breaking image of the unidentified crying child began being used by law enforcement and government agencies as an icon illustrating and symbolizing the evils of child exploitation, the Broken Flower’s face had become famous across the North American continent and even beyond. The pleading and terror in her eyes were so palpable it was emotionally wrenching to see. The Broken Flower became the human face of child abduction and exploitation much as the face of a blonde little Boulder, Colorado girl would become the symbol of child murder in a decade yet to come. The Broken Flower’s tear-lined visage appeared on thousands of billboards, television screens, magazine and newspaper advertisements and stories, “over-the-shoulder” images displayed behind newscasters, and on posters in schools, hospitals, and police stations. Ironically, even as her face became familiar across America, the mystery of her actual name, origins, and whereabouts lingered, despite continued efforts by law enforcement agencies, social workers, and other investigators to learn who she was, and most of all, to rescue her.
