Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders (Sy Sanford Series Book 1)

by Rebekah Pierce

  “Whatcha want?” a booming voice demanded from behind the door.

  “I’ve got some money to burn,” responded Sy as he flashed a bill in front of the dark pair of eyes. A few seconds later, the front door was opened by a gigantic Negro with shoulders bigger than Sy’s whole body it seemed.

  “Downstairs,” the man ordered and pushed Sy in that direction.

  “Yes, thank you,” Sy replied as he stumbled down the stairs. He didn’t like being pushed around by bullies, but he kept his mouth shut because he was there for other things.

  Into a dark smoke-filled room he entered. He had to squint to get a good look around him, to see who was there. A bluesy tune played in the background; it was Charley Spands, “Rock and Rye,” a humorous comparison to a woman and hard liquor. Sy and his men had loved to play that song as well on the nights they were able to gamble when the white officers had gone to town to fraternize. Looking around, he saw a few faces he recognized – men who were married to their addiction. Some were slumped in the corners waiting for their luck to change or crying hysterically at the blackjack tables. Slowly taking off his hat, Sy swallowed hard and then fingered the money he had in his pockets: $20, some of the money they gave him to solve the murders. Then he walked further into the room.

  Over the next few hours, Sy gambled and asked questions. Jeffrey Peterson was more than twenty thousand dollars in debt to the club and had until next week to pay up, Sy had learned. That was motive enough to kill his father, thought Sy. With the older Peterson now dead, Jeffrey was probably going to come into a lot of money. Sy also discovered that Peterson had been a regular at the club, having come there almost every night for the past ten years. But yet he wondered why he had never seen him. Or maybe he had, but couldn’t recall, often leaving the place in a drunken haze himself.

  The owners and fellow gamblers found him to be strange as he often talked about devil things when he was liquored up to the gills, as one man said. “Things like what?” Sy had cautiously inquired. He had already had a little too much to drink himself and did not want these people to know that he was investigating Peterson, so he only asked questions here and there in a nonchalant manner.

  “Oh, like hurtin’ ladies when they was tied up,” whispered another drunken gambler who was wearing brown bags on his persons. His name was Crawly and he had been at the club for three days straight and had gambled even his clothes and jewelry away. Because he owed the house, he was not allowed to leave until he won his money back and paid his debt. That was the house rule; of course, it didn’t apply to men of Jeffrey’s status. He didn’t have a rich daddy like Peterson to come and bail him out, so he had no choice but to stay put.

  “So he liked it rough, eh?” confirmed Sy as he downed the last of his bourbon and lost his last dollar at the craps table.

  “Yeah! That kid’s weird, the way he look at the women in here and talk ‘bout what he can do to ‘em. Scare some of ‘em so bad, they refuse to come near him. Strange fellow, man,” finished Crawly shaking his head.

  Bessie Smith rolled on in the background with her “St. Louis Blues.” Her deep, rich voice cast a pallor over Sy. He dug around in his pant pocket hoping to find more money to buy a drink, but they were both empty. It was time to leave, which was a good thing for Sy, he felt. He had gotten what he needed, and tomorrow, he was going to report his findings to his clients and then go get Lena and leave Richmond for good.

  Chapter 30

  By the time Sy wobbled out of the Source Club, it was four in the morning. How he made it home, he did not know. But when he awoke a few hours later, the sunlight was shining savagely over his face through the window over the couch. At first he thought the warmth of the rays was an annoying fly, but when it wouldn’t go away after trying to shoo it away several times, Sy was forced to open his eyes to a bright sun. “What the…?” he started to say, but the words hurt his head, which he quickly grabbed and held between his hands as if it were about to fall off if he didn’t hold it there.

  He was working his way off the couch, when a knock beat savagely on his door. The noise rang against his head like someone beating a bell tower two feet away from him. Grabbing his head tightly, he yelled out, “Who…who is it?”

  “It’s me, Mr. Sanford. Is Lena with you?” asked the shaking voice of Mrs. Perditia Jones.

  The question didn’t register at first. He thought he heard the voice say Lena was with him, but then it hit Sy with the force of a runaway train. “Lena? No … no!” Why was Mrs. Jones asking him about Lena? She was with her, right?

  Sy barely made it over to the door having to stop every few seconds it seemed to let the room stop spinning; he had to catch his breath as well. He reached for the door – it seemed like it kept moving every time he reached for the doorknob. “Stop movin’,” he screamed at it.

  “Sy!” Mrs. Jones cried out nervously.

  Sy felt his lungs closing in on him, grabbing his chest and giving one final tug at the doorknob. He opened it slowly. The creaking door sounded like thunder in his head at that moment. He had to adjust his eyes to see Mrs. Jones and her large frame standing before him like an eclipse.

  Mrs. Jones sucked in her breath from surprise. To her, Sy Sanford looked like he had fought his way out of hell. His breath reeked of hard liquor, and his bloodshot green eyes were bulging out of their sockets like he’d seen a ghost. His tuxedo shirt was ripped wide open to his belly button and soiled with liquor. He had no pants on, but black socks barely covered his feet as she stood in the doorway with a lost look on his face. My God! she said to herself as she clutched her shirt collar to her throat.

  “What is it ‘bout Lena, you say?” he slurred as he leaned against the door for support.

  “She wasn’t in her room this mornin’ when I went callin’ on her,” whispered Mrs. Jones almost inaudibly. Sy had to lean forward which was not helping him with his balance in order to hear her.

  “Well, um … come in,” said Sy as he waved Mrs. Jones into his room.

  She looked at his room over his shoulders and thought better of it. It was completely trashed, clothes and bottles everywhere. Again, she clutched at the collar of her shirt at her throat. “No, Mr. Sanford. No, thank you. Listen, when I saw that she wasn’t in her room, I called on Robinson. He said Lena went out last night and she never came back.”

  Sy’s head was spinning. Where’s Lena? kept repeating over and over like a scratched record in his head. “Let me get my clothes on,” said Sy as he went back into his room.

  Mrs. Jones waited at the open door for a few seconds and then hollered into the room after she heard a noise like something falling on the ground. “Mr. Sanford, are you alright? Do I need to get someone for you?” she asked with a little trepidation in her voice.

  “What? No!” he hollered back from the bathroom. He had dropped a small bottle of rubbing alcohol on the bathroom floor as he had reached for a towel to dry off his face. His hands shook uncontrollably as he tried to pick up the broken glass. He gave up.

  A few seconds later, he came out of the bathroom, having quickly washed his face and brushed his teeth. He had put on a clean shirt and a pair of pants. He looked better than he had a few moments ago, thought Mrs. Jones whose heart had been palpitating on and off since finding Lena gone this morning.

  Sy was putting on his shoes. “You don’t think she went back to her house, do you?” asked Mrs. Jones nervously. “There’s no one there.”

  He looked wearily up at Mrs. Jones and swallowed hard. “I guess she needed to get things in order now that ….”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Sanford. All I know is that my servant said he saw her go out the door and that he thought he heard a car door slam a few moments later.”

  Sy Sanford stood frozen in his tracks, what color he had left slowly draining from his face. The image of Jeffrey leaving the ball flashed before his eyes. “What time did he say that was?” his voice quivered.

  “Oh, I don’t know …“bout ‘round midnight
, I think he said.” Mrs. Jones thought Sanford was about to cry as he started dry heaving right in front her. She had never seen a man break down so bad in her life. She dropped her cane and rushed into the room to aid him. “Sy! Mr. Sanford. What’s the matter? You’s scarin’ me somethin’ awful right now?” she cried as she pushed him down into a nearby chair. She grabbed a towel from off another chair and then proceeded to wipe his face which was nearly covered in sweat – or tears. She couldn’t figure out which one it was.

  Sy managed to catch his breath after a few seconds. He gently moved Mrs. Jones’ hands from his head. Green eyes implored her to be wrong. “A car door, you say?” Could it be? He saw Jeffrey leave the ball around close to midnight, but he was with a young lady, not alone. Sy jumped out of his chair. He had to find Lena.

  “Mrs. Jones, do not worry yo’self. I’m gonna look for Lena right now! I’m … I’m sure she’s just home packin’ some clothes or somethin’ like that,” he reassured her as he grabbed his coat and hat and ushered the big, nerve-racked old lady out of his room.

  She grabbed her cane by the door as she turned and said, “Well, please bring her back to the house when you find her, won’t you Mr. Sanford? She’s a sweet young lady and I’d hate to see somethin’ happen to her after all she’s been through.” Sanford said he would and then walked her down to a waiting car. He helped her get in and then watched painfully as the car drove away back towards Second Street.

  It was another cold October day, but the sun was shining. It had been several days since he or anyone in Jackson Ward had seen the sun; it was as if it had been playing a cruel game of Hide ‘n’ Seek for the past week. The heat from the sun should have warmed Sy’s body, but a coldness had dug into his bones like a tick on a dog. Sy’s heart was heavy and his mind raced a million thoughts a second. He looked around anxiously; the Ward was waking up. He had to find Lena.

  Lena and Amos lived in a quiet neighborhood known as Church Hill. Small, but well-built brick homes lined the sidewalk. Porches with awnings provided protection against a bright sun or falling snow. They also provided a place to sit on a cool summer’s day in Richmond. Willow oak trees and dogwoods towered over many of the houses like protective parents with their arms extended in what appeared to be a warm embrace.

  Sy felt out of place as he searched for the address of Lena’s home with Amos. He had taken the streetcar, barely able to contain himself as it slowly made its way up the hill, stopping every few blocks to pick up or drop off Sunday morning passengers. Many of them were wearing their Sunday best as they were on their way to church. A few had on their work clothes, the unfortunate who did not have the Lord’s Day off.

  His footsteps felt heavy like lead as he walked down North 21st Street. He kept telling himself that he’d find Lena at home cleaning or something, maybe even packing. At that thought, he felt his stomach jump into his throat. He hated that feeling, often having experienced it right before going into battle, and sometimes throughout the fighting. Instinctively, he grabbed his stomach as his eyes searched out the address for the Johnson home.

  He finally came to it. Sy practically ran to the front door. But when he banged viciously on the door for what seemed like the tenth time and no one answered, his brain shut down as well as his body. He collapsed onto a chair sitting on Lena’s porch, fighting to catch his breath. A few seconds later, he got up again and this time he looked through several of the windows, but either curtains or darkness inside the house prevented him from seeing inside.

  He stood there and contemplated his next move. Suddenly, a little old black lady wearing a thick black robe and a bonnet on her head came out of the house next door. “Young man, can I help you?” inquired the aged and irritated voice.

  Sy smiled eagerly. “Yes! Has Mrs. Johnson come home? I am her employer, you see. She didn’t report in this mornin’.”

  The old woman smiled ruefully. “I ain’t neva heard of no real decent woman workin’ on the Lord’s Day.”

  Sy stood stone still. He was too disturbed by his thoughts to give a comeback, but the old woman let him off the hook. “Mrs. Johnson done finally got some sense and left that bad man,” the old woman proclaimed confidently with a wide, toothless grin.

  Sy looked at her through a gray haze. He wanted to ask her some questions, but his tongue would not move and his brain couldn’t seem to form any questions in a coherent manner. The old woman went on anyways, happy, it seemed, to have someone to gossip with.

  “Yes sir! I done told her for years to leave that no good man. A man ain’t supposed to hit a pretty young woman like that. She tried to hide it from me – from er’one, but we all knew. Yes, she too pretty for that Amos. And I read ‘bout what happened to him in the Richmond Planet. I ain’t tryin’ to speak no ill of the dead, but the Lord exacted his revenge for what he did to his angel. Yes sir, that’s what Mrs. Johnson is! An angel.”

  Sy was still staring out at the street, motionless as his brain tried to find words to piece together. Again, the last image of Lena in Mrs. Jones’ hallway came back to haunt him. Then the old lady said something that finally flicked his brain on. “What did you say?” he asked quickly.

  A toothless smile spread across her face as she realized she now had someone who was actually listening to her. “I said, I wished I had told her that when I seen her come home last night in that nice car.”

  Sy jumped out of his seat and ran over to the old lady’s porch, hopping over the small gate in between the properties. When he reached her, she grabbed a hold of her robe and held it close to her body as if protecting herself from an oncoming advance – something she had not experienced in over thirty years, three weeks and six days, she said to herself.

  Breathing rapidly, he leaned in towards the excited woman. “Listen, ma’am. This is very important, ya’ hear? What kind of car was it?” Sy asked urgently his hands shaking as they reached for her, but she backed away. “Ma’am, please. This is a matter of life and death,” he begged.

  The talkative old lady sniffed the air. “You’s been drinkin’, ain’t ya? I can smells it all over ya’?” she said with disgust in her voice and she slowly backed away from Sy into her house regretting having been so needful of company to gossip with. The wild look of this young man with the wild-looking green eyes was beginning to scare her.

  Sy saw her backing up and began to fear that he might not get the answer he so desperately needed. “No, ma’am, please!” his voice softened. “Yes, I been drinkin’. I can’t help it sometimes. It … it helps me to forget some things that … I … I don’t want to remember I did.”

  The old lady eyed him closely behind the screened door now. She knew pain that melted into the bones and settled in like permanent glue. She had lived a long time, having been born into slavery and seen all ten of her thirteen children sold away from her like chattel. When they were freed, she went in search of her children, but she only found one, the rest having disappeared into oblivion. But the one she had found, he had died long before she stood over his unmarked grave on a plantation in South Carolina. It had hurt her unbearably to know that she lost him and all of the others. Now, as she looked at this young man who had also seen some loss, her heart ached for him.

  “Well, I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout them things you call cars. When I was young, we only had horses … but I can tell ya’ it was pretty. A kind of red I ain’t never seen and fancy like … like one of them things they call limousines. Big and fancy it was,” she gesticulated wildly from behind the screened door.

  Sy stared at her like she had stabbed him in the heart while he watched helplessly. “You alright, young man?” she asked.

  Sy whimpered, “Yeah!” and he walked away quickly before he had a complete meltdown in front of the ex-slave who had seen her children sold off into bondage.

  The cold air flew out of Sy’s mouth like it was chasing fire as he got to the end of the block and then ran past moving cars and hard at work Negroes all the way to Mrs. Jones’ house
on Randolph many miles away. And all he thought about as he ran past street vendors and horse buggies was that Jeffrey Peterson, a cold-blooded killer, had Lena – his Lena.

  Sy barged into Mrs. Jones’ front door screaming at the top of his lungs for her. The old manservant tried to stop him from advancing further into the house, but it was useless. Sy pushed him aside like a rag doll. Robinson landed against the hall wall with a thud.

  “Mrs. Jones!” Sy yelled at the top of his lungs. “Mrs. Jones, please!” He ran quickly to each room on the bottom floor including the reading room where he had first sat when he came to ask her to take care of Lena for him. “Where is she?” he screamed at the old servant who was still standing against the wall in fear and pain.

  “It’s Sunday, sir. She at church,” he winced. “Sir, I gonna call the Sheriff if you don’t leave.”

  “What church is she at?” Sy asked as he now grabbed the old man by his shoulders and shook them violently.

  “Bethel A.M.E. on Third Street, sir,” Robinson cried out. His back was in desperate pain now.

  Sy let the old man go just as quickly as he had grabbed him and ran back out the door from which he had just barged in through. He ran straight to the church which was many blocks from Mrs. Jones’ house. He didn’t stop, couldn’t stop no matter how much his legs and lungs hurt from running. His heart beat wildly and he was covered in sweat as he finally came upon the church just a block up. He was about to cross Jackson Street when a red Chrysler Imperial drove slowly past him. It was as if time had stopped instantly and then started again but in slow motion.