The Gone Dead Train

by Lisa Turner

  Frankie sat in a booth at the back of the bar, her hand wrapped around a club soda, a file laying on the table in front of her. On the wall behind her hung a private collection of Tina Turner photographs, spontaneous shots of Tina swinging her long hair and flexing her strong thighs.

  Frankie wore a sky-blue cotton dress that showed off her legs and sparkly earrings that made her short haircut look sexy without being too obvious. It struck Billy that she’d never mentioned a man in her life, not that he was interested. But he was curious.

  He took a seat across from Frankie and ordered a beer he didn’t plan to drink. She opened the file and handed him two typed pages stapled at the top left.

  “Notes from the funeral,” she said.

  Her clarity of detail impressed him as he read through it, but the punch line was missing. The report wasn’t conclusive about Cool Willy’s presence.

  “You had a mug shot,” he said, pointing to the photo in her file.

  Perturbed, she handed over her iPhone for him to flip through shots of several black men who were all wearing similar suits.

  “That looks like him isn’t the same as that’s him,” she said. “The mug shot is three years old. If he dropped a hundred pounds and cleaned up his act, Cool Willy could be one of those guys.”

  She took the phone, scrolled to a shot of a black Escalade with Louisiana plates, and handed it back to him. “This vehicle is registered to a limo service in New Orleans. The service has two owners. One is William Cooley, aka Cool Willy. The way I see it, someone leased the car to drive to the funeral. Or Cool Willy gave the car to a stand-in to check out the funeral for him.”

  “Or Cool Willy was there,” he said.

  “Or he was there, and I missed him.”

  She frowned, clearly upset at the possibility she’d screwed up. In this line of work, you are wrong 40 percent of the time. The secret is to know when to switch to the 60 percent side. Mz. Police Goddess, the complex human being that she was, needed a change of attitude if she was going to survive.

  The server came by with another club soda and a coveted bowl of honey-roasted peanuts. Frankie ate a few nuts while he ran through the photos from the funeral, some of Sid Garrett giving the eulogy. Garrett looked drawn but in full command of the stage.

  The last photo was of a Hispanic man wearing dark glasses who was standing at the back of the chapel. “Who’s that?”

  “Sergio Ramos. Nice looking for a witch doctor, don’t you think?” Frankie took a sip of soda and batted her lashes.

  “Did he give a reason for showing up?”

  “He admitted that Red and Little Man were his clients. He offers pro bono counseling at Robert House. Several of the men are Santerían believers.”

  “What’s your read on this guy? Kindly doctor or killer showing up to gloat?”

  She gave him an impassive look. “When I figure that out, I’ll let you know. He did pick up on something useful . . . a possible family member showing up for the funeral.”

  She pulled another page from the file for him to read. As far as Billy was concerned, anything to do with Ramos was questionable, but he had to admit the vague description of the young woman he’d given Frankie sounded familiar.

  He handed the report back. “A woman arrived at the funeral home by car service on Monday afternoon and went straight to the director’s office. She was young, slender, well dressed. I walked by the office on my way out. She had the waterworks going. That mortuary is a busy place, so I didn’t connect her to Davis and Lacy.” He also didn’t mention that he’d nearly come to blows with Augie moments before.

  “Ramos said he thought he heard the name Jones.”

  He scoffed. “Jones. Yeah. That narrows it down.”

  “Didn’t you work with a TBI agent named Jones?”

  “No relation, I’m sure.” The accuracy of Frankie’s recall surprised him. Otis Jones had been on loan to the homicide squad by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation last summer. Jones had partnered with him in the Overton investigation after Lou’s death. It was a hard case and a difficult time. Jones had reined him in, kept him from overreacting.

  “That’s all I’ve got on the funeral,” Frankie said and dug a handful of nuts out of the bowl. “Tell me what happened with Dunsford.”

  “The interview ran long. I hated having to miss the funeral,” he said, hoping to put off her questions.

  She nodded and focused on lining up peanuts on a cocktail napkin. “Did Dunsford push you?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  She looked up from the peanuts. “Your involvement in Poston’s murder is troubling at best.” Her gaze didn’t waver. She wanted an answer.

  “You’re asking if Dunsford cleared me. He didn’t. He’ll stay on my back until he arrests me or the killer is caught. You’re having drinks with a murder suspect. If you feel a need to cut ties, I’ll understand.”

  “Before you kick me out of the booth, why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  He drained half the beer and gave her the rundown. The more he talked, the more her features darkened with concern.

  “I went by the DeVoy to check the cameras,” he said. “Dunsford was right, they’re dummies. And the taco vendor who witnessed the fight is gone. My alibi has a big damned hole in it.”

  She opened the file and began to flip through pages.

  “One last thing,” he said.

  She looked up.

  “I went in early to ask Middlebrook for an immediate reinstate so I could help Dunsford with the case.”

  She gave a short laugh. “That’s not going to happen.” She pulled a sheet of graphs from the file. “I did a risk-benefit analysis of your situation. The percentages aren’t great, but I’m willing to chance the exposure and hang in with you.” She pushed the paper to him and chose a peanut from the middle of the line. “Take a look.”

  The graph meant nothing to him. He handed it back, wondering how a person could be so logical and so unpredictable at the same time. He would take her word that she was on board for now.

  He went through his conversation with Edgar Kellogg about the FBI agent and Freeman’s father’s suicide. “They ruined the man. No wonder Freeman hates cops.”

  Frankie flinched. Good cops hate to hear about bad cops. “Go on,” she said.

  “I tracked down Leland Grant and called his house. His daughter answered. Grant died eight months ago of lung cancer. His wife had a stroke not long after. The daughter is getting the house ready to sell.”

  “And you had a sympathetic conversation with her about what it takes to clean a loved one’s possessions out of a house. I’ll bet you were good at that.”

  He grinned. “I got the information. She donated Grant’s clothes to Goodwill two months ago. Red bought his jacket and found the photos.”

  “Is it possible Grant put them in the pocket years ago?”

  “Doesn’t sound like something an FBI agent would do. Chemo does funny things to a person’s mind. Maybe he put them there during his illness.”

  “How about his partner, the one in the photos?” she asked.

  “The daughter said he died twenty-seven years ago in a car accident.”

  “So that’s the end of that.” She frowned, thinking it through.

  A server passed by carrying steaks and sides of fried green tomatoes and buttermilk grits. Downstairs, the house band was cranking up its first set. The bass and drums thumped through Itta Bena’s floorboards. Across the room, Di Anne Price warmed up the crowd at the piano with a sweet jazz instrumental.

  He’d been working through the idea that the photographs somehow connected Davis’s and Lacy’s deaths with Augie’s murder. He wanted to hear what Garrett might add.

  “Freeman said Garrett could give us background on the photos,” he said. “He agreed to meet with me tonight.”

  “He had two bodyguards at the funeral. What’s that about? You think it’s post-traumatic stress from the shooting?”

 
“I’m sure. The guards chauffeur him around in a black Caddy with Garrett sitting in the back wearing Ray-Bans. Very Hollywood. He wrote a best seller about the civil rights era after the shooting. The book tour led to his TV commentator career.”

  “I heard him tear into a radio talk show host for getting the facts wrong,” she said. “Impressive stuff. Why did he choose civil liberties for his law practice?”

  “His brother got caught up in the Freedom Riders protest. Black and white students rode buses through southern states to force the issue of segregated public transportation. They were pulled off the buses, beaten, and jailed. One bus was burned in Alabama, but the riders kept coming. Robert joined them. He turned into a real crusader for the cause.

  “After the Freedom Riders, he worked with sharecroppers in Mississippi who were being kicked off the property by their white bosses for registering to vote. Garrett’s brother was smack in the middle of it.”

  “You’ve read Garrett’s book,” she said.

  “I know people who were beaten because they tried to vote. Yeah, I read his book.”

  “Why didn’t his brother write the book?”

  “Robert went out one night to meet with a voter-registration worker in Mississippi. The next morning a farmer found his car on a back road. His body was never found.”

  “So little brother felt obliged to take up the cause,” she said.

  “With a vengeance. Garrett went to an all-black law school in Washington, D.C., then worked for the only black law firm on Beale Street. That gave him credibility and connections with the black community.”

  “What did their parents think about this?” she asked.

  “They died early. When Robert disappeared, he left young Garrett an orphan.”

  “Jesus,” she said and took a drink of her soda, thinking. “There was something about Garrett’s eulogy that bothered me. He made it sound like he hung out with Red all the time, swapping stories. I don’t know that I believed him. Could’ve been literary license. By the way, who footed the bill for that spectacle?”

  “Augie did. Garrett may have agreed to pitch in. I saw him nearly choke when he got a look at what had to be an estimate. By the way, what’s your general assessment of him?”

  “He seemed really out of it. An addiction to scripts wouldn’t surprise me. He’s in a lot of pain.”

  “Yesterday, he insisted Augie was doing meth. He thinks a dealer may have killed him.”

  “Is that likely?” she asked.

  “I’m looking into it, but I’m skeptical.”

  “I’d say Garrett is the one who’s hooked.” She ate another peanut. “Anyway, he knew a lot of people in the crowd. And he brought a busload of guys from the shelter with him. We’ll take a look at those guys, right?”

  Billy nodded. He heard laughter. Women in cocktail dresses and men in sports coats walked into the club with Sid Garrett leading the way. He spoke with the hostess, who ushered Garrett’s guests to a secluded table tucked into a private room.

  Frankie stood and picked up her soda. “I’ll wait at the bar. Good luck.”

  Chapter 35

  Garrett raised a hand as he came over, gesturing toward Frankie, who now sat on a stool half turned from the bar. She really did look fantastic in that dress.

  “Your friend over there was at the funeral this morning. Would she like to join us?”

  He’s fishing, Billy thought. Wants to know Frankie’s part in this. “You have guests. We’ll keep this simple.”

  “Fine by me.” Garrett took a seat. “It just came to me that you were caught up in that mess last year with Buck Overton. You were partners with Lou Nevers. God, that was a shock. I never pegged Lou for . . .” He shook his head. “You left town, didn’t you? So you’re here in an unofficial capacity.”

  He wondered why Garrett was working so hard to bust his balls. Could be a lawyer’s habit, or could be something else. “I’ve been on leave. I’ll be reinstated in a couple of days.” He placed the photos on the table between them. “I was curious what you might know about these.”

  Garrett picked up the photos and shuffled through them. His hands slowed as he went along. After close consideration, he laid the stack on the table and settled into the depths of the booth.

  “James Freeman thought you’d find the photographs interesting,” Billy said.

  Garrett’s chin lifted. “I just left Freeman at the museum fund-raiser.”

  “I wondered if you recognized anyone in these shots. Or if you have an opinion about why they were taken.”

  Garrett regarded him, his features shadowed by the club’s blue lighting. “These were taken thirty feet from where you and I were standing yesterday.” He separated out two photos, laying them side by side at an angle so Billy could see them, shots of a woman and a man, both African Americans.

  “The men behind the camera are law enforcement,” Garrett said. “I’d say FBI, but I’m sure you know that. The subjects are either informants or people who’ve been intimidated into giving information. Some of the people put in that position gave up trivial stuff to get the agents off their backs. Others were snitches, traitors to the cause, people who helped the FBI disrupt lives and destroy careers.” He waved a finger over one photo. “You can see the difference between those who were snitches and those who were coerced. This woman appears to be angry, but her body language says she’s frightened. The cops probably put her son in lockup as leverage. The man in this photo, you can see he’s checking the street for anyone who might be watching him. But he looks confident, almost chummy. He’s a paid informant.”

  Garrett spread the stack over the table. “These were taken to blackmail informants in the event they ever tried to step out of line. Times were difficult back then, dangerous. The cops were nervous. Bad things happened to people who didn’t play along. The pictures were taken as insurance.”

  “And do you recognize anyone?”

  Garrett shrugged. “I was a kid. Most of these folks have passed. But my brother told me stories of FBI intimidation of the black community, how they tried to get people to spy on each other. Hoover created an atmosphere of paranoia. The agents felt they could lean on people to get whatever they wanted. They were good Americans, doing their job.”

  “I heard what happened to Freeman’s Bar,” Billy said.

  “My point exactly. The man killed himself.”

  “You may know about Dahlia Poston. Augie believed his mother was caught up in the investigation after King’s assassination. She died under questionable circumstances. A fire.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that.” Garrett grew still. “The Klan murdered my brother a year before Dr. King’s assassination. We never found his body.”

  “I read your book. A compelling story.”

  “Robert’s disappearance was front-page news in every major publication for two weeks. He gave a victim’s face to the atrocities in Mississippi.” Garrett’s eyes dimmed. “At least his death made a difference.” He touched the photos. “Are there more?”

  “Why do you ask?” Billy wanted to avoid the subject of Augie stealing one of them.

  Garrett nodded. “I have no interest in how you came by these photos, but I will ask that you donate them to the museum, all of them, if there are more. We have nothing like them in the collection. And please, if it works out, let me handle the transfer. An intern might not understand their importance.”

  “I can’t promise, but I’ll try to make it happen.”

  Laughter came from the private lounge, the voices of women in Garrett’s group cutting through the noise in the bar. Garrett glanced in that direction. “Well, my friend.” He braced both hands on the tabletop, preparing to stand.

  “A manuscript was taken from Augie’s apartment the night he was murdered,” Billy said. “It concerns the civil rights era. I wondered if Augie told you about it or mentioned the author’s name.”

  Garrett sat back down. “You think this person was involved in Augie’s murder?”
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  “Let’s say I’d like to have a conversation with him.”

  “You’re well aware that Augie was in bad shape at the funeral home that day. We didn’t discuss books.”

  Billy nodded, remembering Augie’s out-of-control behavior. “By the way, I wasn’t able to attend the funeral, but my friend said it was quite a send-off.”

  Garrett rolled his eyes. “Unfortunately, I’m responsible for the costs until Augie’s estate is settled. He died intestate. His assets are frozen.”

  They rose together and shook hands. “It’s been interesting, Detective. Here’s my card. My mobile number is on the back. When you’re ready to release those photos, please give me a call.”

  Billy took the business card and stared down at it. A light clicked on in his brain. He kept his voice even. “You said Freeman was at the fund-raiser tonight. Did he mention having any plans afterward?”

  “He was in the company of a beautiful woman. I’d say he has plans. When I left the museum I saw a light on in his office across the street.”

  Billy glanced across the room at Frankie. She caught his eye and slipped off the bar stool. “Thanks for your time. I’ll get back to you about the photos for the museum.”

  Frankie jostled through the crowd at the bar to meet Billy in the hallway entrance.

  “From where I sat, Garrett was stunned by those photographs,” she said.

  “They brought up memories of his brother’s disappearance. Otherwise, he didn’t add much to what we already know.” He pointed toward the door. “Right now I have to find James Freeman. I have a hunch to pursue.”

  “Let’s go,” she said as they eased through people waiting to be seated. She had that scent-in-the-wind look cops get when they’re up for the chase.

  “It’s better if you don’t come,” he said, moving ahead of her. “I’ll explain later.”

  He walked to the door and realized she wasn’t behind him. He turned to see her glaring at him, not pouting—no way a cop like Frankie would pout—but her arms were crossed over her middle and her back was pressed against the wall. An older couple brushed past. The woman giggled, aware of a spat in progress. He walked back.