I got stuck. The window frame caught me and held me as tightly as a girdle. There was nothing inside that I could grab onto. I kicked and wriggled. I even tried to push myself back out again. Nothing worked. I found myself fighting panic. What if I couldn’t free myself? I hadn’t told Maggie where I was going. Helen knew, but would she mention my interest in the cabin to anyone? What if I starved to death out here? What if—the thought sprang unbidden and unwelcome to my mind—what if a wild animal came along, a bear or a wolf or a big cat of some kind (did they have big cats down here?) and chomped on my bare legs? What if it started to eat me?
I sucked in my breath and held it, as if that would make my hips narrower. I wriggled and writhed until I was aglow with sweat. One hip bone grated against the rough window frame before finally popping through, and I fell headfirst to the dusty wood floor.
The interior of the small shed was gray and gloomy. The window didn’t let much light in for the simple reason that there wasn’t much light in the first place. The shed was surrounded by trees, and the tree canopy all but blocked out the sun. I wished I’d thought to bring a flashlight. I waited for a few moments until my eyes adjusted to the dimness, and then I searched, running my hands lightly over shelves and pieces of equipment. I didn’t want to miss a thing.
The shed was filled with rusted leghold traps—I wondered what the sheriff had trapped out here—old jars of nails and screws, a box with some old hinges in it, some tools (a pick, a shovel, two hammers and what looked like a bolt cutter), lengths of chain and some empty crates. There were no files that I could see—or feel.
Getting back out through the small window was as difficult and scary as coming in. What if I got stuck now with my head and arms outside? What if a bear decided to nibble on my head? But I writhed and squirmed my way through. For sure there were going to be gigantic bruises on my hips.
That left one other building: the outhouse. I followed the path to the little structure, sucked in a deep breath and went inside. I even felt under the seat. Yuck! No files.
And that was that. This cabin was the last place I could think of to look for the missing police files on Thomas Jefferson—if they still existed.
Clearly, they didn’t. And seriously, if you were going to commit perjury in a murder trial, why would you keep the evidence that proved you’d lied? Answer: you wouldn’t. You’d destroy it. That way no one could ever prove anything. So of course Sheriff Beale had destroyed it.
I trudged up the path back to the cabin, shoulders slumped in discouragement, knowing with certainty that I was never going to get to the bottom of what had happened. All the evidence was missing. It had happened too long ago now. And even if there had been a miscarriage of justice, no one seemed to care.
That’s when I noticed something at the rear of the cabin: a small trapdoor set at an angle in the ground. The door to a cellar.
My hand trembled when I reached for the handle. I lifted the door to reveal a set of wooden steps. My whole body felt electric with anticipation. I climbed down into darkness. The cellar was not large. It was square and just deep enough that I could stand tall and still have a couple of inches to spare over my head.
The cellar, it turned out, was also empty.
Except for five barrels along the back wall.
Barrel number one was empty.
So was barrel number two.
Barrel number three was home to a mouse that scampered up and out, startling me so that I dropped the lid.
Barrel number four was empty.
Barrel number five was stuffed with old greasy rags. I plucked them out one by one. Was there anything else in there? I reached way down, praying there wouldn’t be a snake or a rat or more mice at the bottom. My fingers made contact with something hard. A box. I grabbed it by one corner and lifted it out.
It was a metal lockbox. A padlocked box.
I carried it up the steps and into the daylight.
When I shook it, I was sure I heard papers inside. I examined the lock. It was smaller than a regular padlock. I thought about that bolt cutter in the shed and sighed.
It took a full twenty minutes to get back into the shed, grab the bolt cutter and escape once more. I cut the lock easily, opened the box and took out two file folders. I sank down onto the nearest rock and began to flip through them.
Chapter Nineteen
I FIND SOMETHING UNEXPECTED—AND HORRIFIC
THERE WERE TWO file folders inside the metal lockbox. One was thick with paper and photographs—crimescene photographs. I read everything—police reports, forms, notes, notes attached to forms, lists of people interviewed.
The second folder was so thin that at first I thought it was empty.
It wasn’t.
There was a photograph inside. Just one. Black and white. Old. With a scrawl in faded ink on the back. I stared at it and remembered Mrs. Wellington saying, I don’t have that picture. I’ve never even seen it. Was this the picture she meant? Did it have anything to do with what happened to Thomas Jefferson?
I had to take these file folders back to town. I planned to show the first one to Maggie. She would know what to do. I wasn’t sure about the second one. I wasn’t even sure that it really was what it appeared to be.
I made sure to leave everything exactly as I’d found it before I headed back down the winding path toward Maggie’s bicycle. I was almost there when I heard voices.
“Where do you think she went?” one asked.
“There’s only one place she could have gone,” another voice said.
She? They had to mean me. Someone was looking for me. But how did they know I was here? Had Helen told them? Had Mr. Selig been curious about what I was doing at the real-estate office? Had he asked her?
I retreated back up the path to think. If those men knew where I’d gone, they would be coming my way soon. I could leave the path and head into the woods. But I wasn’t confident that I’d be able to find my way out again. I knew how easy it was to get disoriented in unfamiliar woods.
I looked around frantically and spotted a fallen log a couple of feet away from the path. I ran to it and hid the file folders underneath it. Before I covered them with leaves, I took a note from the first folder and the photo from the other. These I slid under my blouse, anchoring them in the waistband of my skirt. Then I ran back to the path. I dug a medium-sized rock from the ground and set it beside a tree close to the log. I headed back to my bike.
Two men were waiting for me at the edge of the woods. One was examining Maggie’s bicycle as if it could tell him where I’d gone and when I might return. The other was smoking a cigarette and peering in among the trees. He was the one who saw me first. I recognized him as one of the men in the mob that had followed me to Maggie’s.
“Well, lookie here, Reg,” he said to his companion. He was tall with a big belly and bow legs. The underarms of his short-sleeved shirt were drenched with sweat. “What are you doing way out here, little lady?”
I didn’t answer him.
“My friend asked you a question,” the other man said. He was shorter and wirier than his partner. “It’s only polite to answer.”
Right. Like their mission in life was to teach me good manners.
“I was taking a walk. That’s my bike.”
I didn’t expect him to hand it over to me, and he didn’t.
“A girl could get lost in those woods if she isn’t careful,” Cigarette Man said.
“I think I did okay,” I said. “I got back where I started.”
“Where did you go exactly?” That was the man holding Maggie’s bike.
“For a walk. I have to get back to town. Miss Nearing is expecting me. She’ll worry if I’m late.”
The two men exchanged glances. Cigarette Man shook his head, as if I had somehow disappointed him. Bicycle Man said, “What were you doing in there, darlin’? Were you looking for something?”
I heard a crunching noise. Tires on gravel. A car door slammed, and Sheriff Hicks
appeared, his hat shoved back on his head, eyes hidden behind dark glasses.
“Do we have a problem here, fellas?” His tone was genial. His thumbs were hooked into his belt, and one hand was close to his service revolver.
“Could be,” Cigarette Man said. “If this young lady was trespassing on private property.”
I couldn’t see Hicks’s eyes, but I knew he was studying me.
“Were you?” he asked.
“No, sir. I don’t think so.”
“Terrific. So we don’t have a problem after all.” He glanced at the bike. “That looks like Maggie’s.”
“It is.”
Hicks took it from Bicycle Man. “I’ll throw it into the trunk and give you a lift home.”
I didn’t argue. I couldn’t wait to get away from here. But what about the files? Should I wait until the two men left and then go back and get them? Or should I leave them where they were for now?
Hicks looked at the two men. “Unless you have other business here…”
I guess they didn’t want any trouble with Hicks, because they shuffled off in the direction of the road, and I heard an engine roar to life.
Hicks turned to me. “What are you doing out here?”
I hesitated. If I was going to tell anyone what I’d found, it should be Sheriff Hicks. But a question nagged at me. How had he known I was here? Or had he known? Maybe he was just driving by and saw the car or the truck or whatever those two guys were driving and decided to investigate. It was possible. It was also possible that his appearance was no coincidence. I remembered that he hadn’t exactly been helpful so far. If anything, he had been downright forgetful. I decided not to tell him about my discovery. Not yet anyway.
“I was exploring the woods,” I said. “It sure beats Central Park.”
Hicks nodded as if he was satisfied with my answer, and we set off for his patrol car. He stowed the bike in the trunk and secured the trunk lid with a piece of rope.
“A person can get lost in the woods if they don’t know what they’re doing,” he told me as he turned the car around. “You have a compass?”
“No.”
He glanced at me. “Did those two fellas give you a hard time?”
“They scared me a little.” I hadn’t told him about the mob that had followed me. I wondered if anyone else had.
“That’s another reason to stay out of the woods. You run into any trouble, and you’re on your own.”
“You don’t think they would have hurt me, do you?”
“I think a girl should never go into strange woods by herself, especially if she doesn’t tell anyone where she’s headed. You never read that story about Little Red Riding Hood? You’re lucky I came along when I did.”
He was right about that.
“Do you come out here often?” I asked.
“It’s part of my patrol. And when I see a pickup truck belonging to a couple of fellas like those two, well, I stop and take a look-see.”
It made sense. But it still rankled. His timing couldn’t have been better.
When we got to Maggie’s, he unloaded the bike and said, “Your family must be missing you. Don’t you think you should be heading home?”
Chapter Twenty
A PHOTO, A NOTE AND A KILLER
I DIDN’T KNOW what to do. I had to retrieve those folders from the woods, but I wasn’t about to go back there now, not when there was a chance those two men might be lurking around. I told myself that as long as it didn’t rain, the folders would be safe where they were. I glanced up at the sky. The clouds had massed and grown taller since the last time I’d looked up. But they were white, so I wasn’t worried.
In the meantime, I needed to talk to someone about what I had found. Maggie was the only person I trusted, but she was out covering a story and wouldn’t be back for hours. Besides, she’d lived away from Orrenstown for a long time.
I grabbed the telephone directory and looked up a name and an address.
Mr. Standish lived on a street where all the houses were made of brick and had wraparound porches, gingerbread trim and lush lawns surrounded by hedges and fences. The driveway was long and led to a garage that was set back even farther from the road than the house was. Mr. Standish was standing in front of the open garage door when I got there. He was wearing safety goggles and sharpening a hoe. His pickup was parked inside. Next to it was a workbench. Tools hung on the wall, each one in its own bracket. A small door at the back of the garage gave me a glimpse of the backyard.
Mr. Standish looked up.
“What a surprise.” He pushed the goggles up over his forehead and smiled at me. “To what do I owe this visit?”
I dug in my pocket and pulled out the black-and-white photograph. I handed it to him.
Mr. Standish stared at it for a long time. “Where did you get this?”
“That’s Sheriff Beale,” I said. I pointed to a figure on the far right. “That’s Mr. Chisholm. And I’m sure you recognize your friend here.” I jabbed a finger at Mr. Selig. “They look pretty young in that picture, but that’s them.”
Mr. Standish’s nod was almost imperceptible. His eyes remained fixed on the photo for another few seconds. He didn’t say a word when he handed it back to me.
“Do you know anything about this, Mr. Standish?”
This was a shocking picture. In it, a man—a black man—was suspended from a tree by a rope around his neck. His eyes were closed, and his head lolled to one side. His hands were tied behind his back, and he was surrounded by people. I wasn’t positive, but I had a strong hunch that he was TJ’s father. The people in the foreground—there were ten of them, all men, all white—looked directly at the camera. Worse, they smiled for it.
Mr. Standish shook his head. “I heard about what happened. But I wasn’t there.”
He glanced over his shoulder. I heard the sound of a lawn mower coming from somewhere behind the house. He must have someone helping him with his yard work. Probably a local kid earning pocket money.
“It’s an old story.” Mr. Standish stared out over his front yard—the grass, the elm tree, the trimmed hedge, the stone path to the verandah. “A woman—a white woman—said she was accosted by a Negro man. She described him. He was arrested. Her husband was incensed and demanded that something be done. The next thing you know, there was a mob. This was back in, let me see, ’31, I think. The Depression had started. Times were tough. And people thought differently then.”
It definitely sounded like the story Daniel had told me.
“But you can’t hang a person for accosting someone.” The idea was shocking.
“You can’t do it legally, no,” Mr. Standish said. “It was a mob. The sheriff, Sheriff Beale, had to go out of town on business that evening. Or so he said. If I’m not mistaken, he made his getaway just about the time one of his deputies told him that a crowd was forming in the town square. The two deputies who were on duty swear they did their best to control the crowd. They claim they did everything short of shooting, and as one of them put it, there was no way they were going to shoot their friends and neighbors over something like that, by which I assume they meant over a mob trying to get its hands on a Negro man who had assaulted a white woman.”
“Was anyone arrested?”
“There was an investigation. The sheriff—when he got back to town—questioned everyone he could find. There were a lot of people there, as you can see by that picture, but it’s a funny thing. No one saw exactly what happened, no one got a clear enough look at anyone who was involved. No one knew where the rope came from or how it got around that poor man’s neck.”
“But this picture—”
“There were rumors about a picture, but it never surfaced. Where did you get it anyway?”
I dodged the question. “Who was he?”
“The man who was hanged?”
“Lynched.”
“Lynched.” He nodded as he said the word. “His name was William Jefferson.”
“T
homas Jefferson’s father.” Just as I had guessed.
“A lot of folks in Freemount moved away after that,” he said. “But not Lila Jefferson. She stayed. She made accusations—which, of course, no one took seriously. She tried to get the FBI to investigate. They declined. She wrote letters to the NAACP, telling them what happened. But nothing came of it. I think a lot of people hoped that she would pack up and leave too. But she didn’t. She stayed put. I’ll tell you, it galled a lot of people when she’d walk down the street and, instead of looking away or stepping aside when a white person approached, stand her ground and look them in the eye. You’d think someone would have shoved her aside, but no one ever did. If you ask me, I think her presence here made people ashamed of what they’d done. I could be wrong, but it’s the only reason I can think of that no one tried to force her out.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“What about Mr. LaSalle?”
“What about him?”
“Do you know who killed him?”
Mr. Standish shook his head. “I only know what came out in court. And what happened before that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The same kind of people who are in that photo didn’t take too kindly to Jefferson coming back here a supposed war hero.”
“Supposed?”
“Some people didn’t believe him. Lyle Nearing, Maggie’s father, did some research and ran an article in the paper backing up everything that Jefferson said. Some people will tell you that made things worse. They’ll say it made Jefferson puff out his chest even more and strut about like a rooster in a henhouse. Those people made it tough for Jefferson whenever he came into town. Made it tough for his friend too.”
“Do you think someone—someone white, I mean—killed Mr. LaSalle?”
Mr. Standish stared out over his lawn again for a long while before answering.
“I know that LaSalle stopped coming to town for a while before he disappeared.”
My Life Before Me Page 16
