“You ain’t done nothin’ wrong, Lena. You ain’t done nothin’ wrong!” he repeatedly stated over and over as he continued to stroke her hair until she had stopped crying and shaking.
She now lay still in Sy’s arms. Although her clothes were soaking wet, and now he and his sheets were as well, he could still feel the warmth of her body emanating from underneath her clothes. The room was still except for the humming sound of the rain outside his apartment window. It felt so right, he thought to himself, she being here in his arms.
He looked down at Lena who appeared to be asleep now, and as he went to get up and let her sleep off the trauma of the night, she suddenly grabbed him tight around his waist.
Large, scared brown eyes stared hard into green, weary eyes. “Don’t leave me, Sy,” she implored.
He looked long and hard at Lena. He had wanted her ever since the day she had walked into his office looking for work. But she was married, and he had to respect that. But now, laying here with her, he couldn’t fight what he felt so strongly in his heart anymore. Lena Johnson belonged to him. Amos didn’t deserve her.
His emotions getting the best of him, he leaned in and kissed her full on the lips. Their tears mingled as they held one another in an embrace meant to protect and heal. Passion ignited the tender moment sparks into a flame.
Thunder raked through the skies as they made love. For a few hours, each was lost in the passion of the other’s desire and need to forget the reality of their world. When it was over and Sy lay on his belly snoring contently, Lena quietly and slowly removed his arm from around her waist and proceeded to put on her still-wet clothes.
She then walked to the front door, and staring forlornly at Sy, whispered into the air, “I’m so sorry,” and gently closed the door behind her.
Sy awoke a few hours later; he rolled over to find the space where Lena once lay empty. He quickly jumped up out of the bed and ran around the room calling her name, looking in the bathroom to find her gone. He stood in the middle of his room naked, breathing raggedly and sweating. His eyes made their way to the kitchen table where the bottle of whiskey stood like a soldier waiting for his marching orders.
Sy walked hurriedly over to the bottle, ripped the cap off and took another large drink. It had stopped raining long ago, but the ominous stillness of the early morning lay like a black cross upon the room and Sy’s spirit.
***
Sy spent the rest of morning drinking and waiting for Lena to come into the office, but she didn’t show up. He was delirious with worry now. He couldn’t go to Lena’s house in search of her. It was out of place, and he had already stepped over the line with her. Guilt racked over him like hot coals. His actions may have just cost Lena her life, and the more he thought about this, and the more time that went by where he hadn’t heard from her, the more he drank.
He was passed out on his couch, the empty bottle of whiskey and a freshly opened bottle of beer on the floor beside his dangling arm, when someone pounded on the door. “Messenger!” a child’s voice yelled as a note was slipped under the door.
It took Sy a few minutes to gather his thoughts and his eyesight. He rolled off the couch and onto the floor, knocking over the bottle of beer. “Shit!”
Not having the energy to stand up and walk, he belly crawled over to the letter in a helpless, drunken heap. His eyes focused in on the paper just as his bloody hands reached for it. Clutching it tightly in his hands, he managed to crawl over and lean himself up against a chair. He cleared his throat, wiped his mouth and opened the letter.
“I’m okay,” it read. Sy stared at the words for a few seconds. Then he crumpled it up and threw it across the room as far as he could. His mind turned. He looked back down at his hands slowly and then at the front of his shirt. Blood was everywhere. He jumped up so fast he nearly passed out. His hands shook as he fought hard to remember about the blood. “What happened?” he yelled. Did he hurt Lena? “No, no! The letter.”
He ran to pick up the crumpled letter. His bloody fingerprints were everywhere. He smoothed it out as best he could and reread her words. Sy hugged the letter to his chest as tears rolled down his face. Lena was safe, she said so, but where did this blood come from? It wasn’t from him. There were no cuts anywhere on his body, he thought as he searched himself.
Sy fell back onto his couch; his breathing was heavy like the thunder that rattled the windows in that moment. Something was trying to reach out from behind the fog in his head, but it couldn’t get through. Outside, the clouds packed the sky and thunder began to roll into town again.
Chapter 15
A few blocks away, Miss Sara had to close the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank by herself that evening. She had done it a few times before, so she had no concerns or worries about being by herself. After all, this was the Ward and she had grown up here. She felt that this was the safest place in the world, even though she had never been outside of Richmond.
It was dark outside, being that it was late fall and evening emerged quickly. She locked the doors and put the bank key in her coat pocket. Sara wrapped her scarf around her neck as a slight breeze hit her neck and a shiver went down her spine. She scanned St. James Street with her soft brown eyes and then headed towards the streetcar stop. She was halfway down the block when he pulled up in his Chrysler Imperial. At first, she just kept walking having often been approached by men who mistook her for a prostitute because she walked by herself.
But then she recognized the voice when it said, “Can I offer you a lift, Miss Young?”
Sara stopped and turned to look at the voice. White teeth flashed in the dark, in an effort to offer comfort, but it reminded Sara of a wolf and she felt for a slight moment as if she were the prey. Grabbing her coat and purse to her body, she said, “No thank you, Mr. Peterson. The street car is just a short ways up,” and she started walking again.
He followed her with his car. “But it’s rather cold out here and I would hate to hear of your getting sick when I could offer you warmth.” But she kept walking, a little faster than before, keeping her eyes straight ahead of her.
Jeffrey Peterson parked the car and got out. He ran to catch up with Miss Sara Young, and then proceeded to walk beside her. There was no one on the street that mid-evening, which Sara found strange as she normally encountered many of the bank’s clients and other locals. She was wishing that her feet could fly when he gently grabbed her arm and turned her around to face him.
His cold breath struck her instantly. “Miss Young, I asked you a question. It’s rather rude not to speak to someone when they are talking to you.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Peterson. I was ... just thinking. Can you please repeat the question?” She tried to be sincere, but the coldness of the wind vibrated on her voice and so she sounded cracked.
He stared at her with dark eyes and then said slowly, “Are you afraid of me, Miss Young?”
She was, but Miss Sara refused to let him know. “No I am not,” and she squared her shoulders in defiance. “Why should I be?” she further challenged, although her knees were shaking.
Peterson liked what he saw and decided that he would have her right then and there. “Then won’t you let me take you home?”
Her instincts screamed at her to say no, but Miss Sara Young was always a strong-headed one. She didn’t like for people, especially men, to think her weak or to dismiss her because she was a woman. That’s why she had marched with Mrs. Perditia Jones and her lady’s clubs – for her rights to herself. So, she raised her chin and her eyes glowed with a fire.
“How kind of you, Mr. Peterson! I accept your offer.”
He grinned from ear to ear as he walked her back to his car and opened the door for her. He looked around to see if anyone might be watching as he walked to his side of the car. No one was and he smiled to himself again. This was good. Thunder popped the air as he closed his car door.
The next day, the headstrong Miss Sara Young did not show up for work at the bank. She was suppose
d to have opened the bank up at nine that morning, but when Mr. Higgins, an old banker and the head teller, walked up to bank, he was greeted by two of his employees sitting on the steps of the sidewalk. They told him that Miss Young had not arrived yet. He took out his pocket watch attached to a long, gold chain. It was 9:15.
Mr. Higgins became immediately concerned as she was his most trusted supervisee. She was well trained and always reliable, punctual and trustworthy. “Where is she?” he said more to himself, but the others heard him and the concern in his voice. Luckily, he had an extra key on his persons, so he opened the bank and the employees got to work instantly. Mr. Higgins went directly to his office to wait for Miss Young, but by noon, she had not shown up.
He sent for the police, then, and called Mrs. Walker to let her know of the problem. Of course, the police did not take it seriously as plenty of young women came and went in the city. Besides, she was just another “Negro” girl. By close of business, Mr. Higgins sent word to Miss Young’s family. By midnight, word had traveled through the Ward.
Sy Sanford stood in the middle of his room with an illegal bottle of bourbon in one hand and the Richmond Planet in the other. It had reported on the cries of the stock market being in trouble. “Credit was overrunning the country,” it said.
Sy slumped in his chair with the bottle. He dropped the paper on the floor by his chair and took a drink. Thunder roared in the air and lightning split open the sky, releasing a downpour of rain that assaulted the window of Sy’s room. His green eyes fell to the paper and zeroed in on the headline: Is the Market in Trouble?
He laid his head back on the chair and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. He hadn’t left his room to go to his office all day. He had spent the night trying to recall how he got blood all over him, but it was useless. He did find something else on his person, though, and it rocked his soul. Sy put down the bottle and reached over the couch to pick up a ripped pair of women’s hosiery. He swallowed hard. He had found them in the pocket of his rain coat. Sweat rolled down his forehead as lightning suddenly crackled in the sky and lit up the room for a brief second. A shadow fell on the wall by the window, causing Sy to jump.
He quickly put the hosiery in a trashcan in the kitchen, burying it beneath the bottles of beer and food. He stared at the trash for a moment, the realization of his actions wearing on his spirit. Sy walked back over to the couch and picked up the paper. A deep moan escaped from his cracked, dry lips as he laid his head back on the couch and dropped the paper on the floor.
“Mo’ trouble comin’ to the Ward,” he moaned softly as his eyes gave way to alcoholic exhaustion. And he was right in the thick of it, his mind screamed. He had to see Lena, but he knew that wasn’t possible at the moment. He put his hands in front of his face; they shook slightly. He had killed in the war with these hands, but that had been a matter of survival. Hadn’t it?
Chapter 16
Trapped: that’s what many people in the Ward were thinking that afternoon as they waited for news of Miss Young. The normally thriving and lively neighborhood was now held prisoner in their homes, waiting for the killer to come for one of them. Doors were shut tight and peeping eyes stared out the windows at any strange sound. News had spread fast about Miss Young.
And on this dark morning, a group of men came together at Prometheus Jackson’s barber shop and decided to create a sort of neighborhood watch to protect its women.
“We’re gonna put a man on every corner of the Ward from Chamberlayne to Marshall Street to Lombardy at all times,” barked Prometheus Jackson. He was pacing his shop’s floors, shaking with rage and fear.
“No one, especially women, will be allowed to walk alone on the streets from here on out until we catch this monster,” shouted Butterball Jenkins to the men in the room. A growl of approval went up into the air.
The men huddled even closer as they took in the events of the past few days. And Miss Sara Young was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. She was known by many of the men in the room who had gone to the pretty teller to make their deposits or withdrawals. For the younger men, there was a hope that she might take notice of them and their deposits. For the older men, she was a reminder of how beauty still remained in this bleak world. She was their daughter, their wife, their sister, their hope. And someone had taken her.
“Gentlemen, we have a man on this,” inserted Jackson into the silence. “Sy Sanford. But we need to do more. Starting today, we’s gonna make sure that no one comes into the Ward that we don’t know – Negro or white. The sheriff don’t care nothin’ ‘bout us – never has. That’s why we take care of our own.”
“What about guns?” asked a young man from the back of the room.
It was a big question. Negroes were not allowed to carry guns in the city even though the Second Amendment had given all American citizens the right to bear arms. But men like Sheriff Mason had argued that poor Negroes were incapable of being responsible enough to own and carry guns. So they made it de jure – a local law. However, the residents of Jackson Ward were neither poor nor irresponsible. They weren’t foolish either, so they kept their guns. The massacre in Rosewood in 1923 had taught them a hard lesson.
But guns were to be used in defense. If they brought them out in public now, were they ready to pay the price that must surely be paid once Sheriff Mason got word of Negroes in the Ward carrying guns? He hadn’t even come down to the Ward himself to investigate the disappearance of one of the most prominent young women the community had. Instead, he had sent Deputy Brody to ask the “good folks of Jackson Ward” to let the police handle the situation: to stay calm. Even Brody didn’t believe the message he had been assigned to deliver. He had practically gone door to door to deliver it, and each time he spoke it, his stomach turned over violently. He finally gave up around mid-morning and decided to go back and tell the sheriff that he had told everyone.
At that same time as the men pondered the gun issue, and as Deputy Brody told his lie to the sheriff, a few of the women of the neighborhood had gathered at the monumental River View Baptist Church to hold a prayer vigil for Miss Young. Like Ms. Bills, Mrs. Young had taken to her bed upon hearing the news that her daughter was missing.
“Poor thing won’t stop crying,” whispered one young woman who was huddled up in the pew next to her best friend whose tearful, big eyes darted from one woman to the other in fear. But Mrs. Young was not crying alone. There were plenty of tears spilled on this early morning.
River View was a marvel to see in Jackson Ward, the brainchild as well of architect Charles T. Russell. The church had been built of reused materials from the local quarries which operated along the edge of the James River. Its parthenonian appeal made the members of the congregation feel safe and more connected to God as they had been the recipients of his bountiful blessings heaped upon them for such a noble building.
On this cold morning, the walls of this noble building vibrated with the sounds of women – young and old, dark, brown and light, poor, working and rich. The women were praying fervently on their knees before the elaborate altar in the grand sanctuary for Miss Young. They sang songs of joy to the Almighty for her safe return to her family as they wailed unto the heavens, and as the men of the Ward went home to get their guns. It appeared that the Ward was preparing for battle – of the spirit and the body.
Chapter 17
It was almost noon and the businessmen who had hired Sy Sanford waited for him in the restaurant of the Sessions Hotel. A dark mood had settled in the room and in the hearts and minds of its occupants. Miss Sara Young had still not been heard from and it ate through the hearts of everyone like a worm in an apple.
Lena had finally come into the office that morning and Sy was never more happy to see her. But she kept her distance from him, avoiding eye contact and only speaking polite, but distant conversation. Too much had happened between them and neither knew what to do with it. The silence in the room was tense and became even more so when the newspaper boy del
ivered the newspaper.
Sy heard a gasp escape from Lena. “What?” he asked nervously as he rose from his desk. He prayed it wasn’t what he thought it might be.
“A woman is missing: Sara Young,” she answered softly.
It’s a good thing she wasn’t looking directly at Sy. All the color had left his face. He stood there pale as a ghost, the image of the ripped hosiery smothered at the bottom of his trashcan dangling in front of his eyes.
His voice quivered as he said, “What else does it say?”
Lena noticed the change in his voice and slowly looked over at Sy. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. What does it say?” he asked again more emphatically.
“Nothing, really! She works for Mrs. Walker’s bank. She was last seen closing it yesterday evening. I hope she’s alright.”
Sy jumped up quickly from his chair. “I have to go to a meeting.” He grabbed his black rain coat and fedora, and left the office as if fire were chasing him out of the room. Lena stared after him, a cold chill rushing down her spine.
Once outside, Sy doubled over and threw up. His head was spinning uncontrollably, and when he finally was able to stand up again, the world around him was covered in gray. He saw dead soldiers all around him and smoke rising up from the open ground dancing like demons reaching out to get him. It was so real that he closed his eyes instantly, jumping back; he fell on the steps of the building. Folks walking by looked at him in concern, and when one man offered to help him up, Sy refused him. “I’m fine,” he sputtered, his eyes still closed so as to not see them.
I have to get myself together, he said to himself as he opened his eyes. They were gone – the bodies, demons. He got up and leaned against the building. He looked down Jackson Street; he only needed to walk up a block and turn onto Second Street. The Hippodrome was two blocks up from there. Could he make it in time? “Maybe I should just get my things and leave,” he heard his frazzled voice say out loud. No. What would happen to Lena?
Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders (Sy Sanford Series Book 1) Page 9
