by Lis Wiehl
“It was a joint effort. And not possible without a lot of help from modern technology.”
“Still, I’m impressed,” Rosalyn said. She glanced at James as if to read his reaction. “That could crack this whole thing right open. Molly Carter might have seen who really killed Gray. How will you contact her?”
Lisa picked up one of the pages she’d brought that morning. His daughter had dark circles under her eyes, as she always got when lacking sleep. James wondered if she’d been managing her hypoglycemia and how late she’d worked to find this information. He couldn’t deny that her methods had uncovered quite a find, but he hoped she’d still learn that relying solely on modern techniques and technology could fail an investigation. The old ways weren’t completely obsolete.
“I’ll try meeting her tomorrow at her church. It’s Sunday, so I assume she’ll be there. Unless you want to come as well, Dad? Or … both of you.”
Before James weighed in, Rosalyn spoke. “It might be less intimidating with only one person. But your dad or both of us can come if you want us to.”
“Dad, what do you think?” Lisa asked. She sounded annoyed with Rosalyn, and not for the first time.
But he couldn’t read whether Lisa wanted to go alone to meet this Molly Carter or not.
“It’s whatever you want. You may get more by approaching her alone,” he said.
“I think so too,” Lisa said.
James had plans of his own for the next day. Mainly, he wanted to address the issue of the person trailing them. That morning the car wasn’t parked across the street until Lisa arrived. James would find out tonight and tomorrow if his daughter was the new target. If she was, he wouldn’t delay in taking action. He wouldn’t allow Lisa to be in danger because they were trying to save Leonard Dubois.
“We need to add all of this to your dad’s walls,” Rosalyn said, studying the different bulletin boards and seemingly oblivious to the tension. James knew she perceived it; she just chose to ignore that Lisa didn’t like her. Rosalyn eventually won people over with her odd personality—it had worked with him.
But there was something else. Perhaps she was only annoyed by Rosalyn’s presence, but his gut told him that Lisa was holding something back. Did she get information from the police or from the retired archivist that she wasn’t sharing?
His daughter’s attention had moved to the bulletin boards sectioned off around the workshop.
“What’s this wall about? What’s the key?” she asked, leaning forward to read his notes.
James came to her side, studying the images on the wall. He hadn’t planned to address this part of the story, had even considered taking it down before Lisa arrived.
In the center was an image of a key, surrounded by photographs and notes about President John Kennedy and his brother Robert; President Lyndon Johnson; his own former boss of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover; Hoover’s secretary, Miss Grady; Kennedy’s assistant, Evelyn Lincoln; and numerous other notes that wouldn’t make sense to his daughter.
He’d reluctantly included a photograph of his former best friend and partner, Special Agent Peter Hughes. James hoped Lisa didn’t ask why Uncle Peter was included in this section.
“All of this is a hunch,” James said with a shrug. Lisa glanced at him, studying him in that moment, and then returned to the images. She focused on the picture of Peter longer than he’d hoped, but she didn’t ask about it.
Rosalyn moved to the other side of Lisa. James noticed his daughter tense at her closeness, but he couldn’t help but appreciate Rosalyn’s assertive chatter that bridged the gap in his awkwardness with his daughter.
“It’s more than a hunch. Your dad believes, and I do as well, that there were higher powers at play in all of this.”
“Higher powers? What do you mean ‘higher powers’?”
Rosalyn laughed. “I guess that wasn’t the correct word. Higher authority. Someone in government, or in the Bureau, CIA, or military. Someone with power, and a lot of it.”
Lisa was silent for a moment. “The man I met at the diner, Sweeney, believes that as well. He also thinks Leonard Dubois was targeted by the Fort Worth PD. So this person is the key?”
“Oh no, there’s an actual key—it goes to an antique cabinet that was in the White House. A key that’s been missing all of these decades.” Rosalyn loved historical clues. One of her side projects was a mystery surrounding a bank robbery in the mid-1800s in her hometown in north Texas. She’d dragged James along to old museums, libraries, and archives for the past two years seeking information.
“A key to a cabinet that has what inside?” Lisa asked.
“Jimmy, I’ll let you explain,” Rosalyn said. She winked at him and moved off to the side.
James wished Rosalyn hadn’t passed the baton. She’d become somewhat obsessed with the key, while he still doubted its significance.
“So there’s a missing historical key in the middle of all this?” Lisa asked.
“Possibly. It started with a rumor. I need to give some background.”
“Go ahead.” Lisa sat back on the stool in front of everything he’d compiled on the key.
“As you know, I was a young agent during President Kennedy’s three years in office. There were many tensions. We nearly went to war with Russia twice, over the Bay of Pigs and then the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Lisa nodded, but James knew she didn’t fully understand.
He frowned and tried to explain. “This kind of a war meant cities being wiped off the face of the earth. Maybe even most of the world destroyed. The USSR had a leader unafraid of using nuclear bombs. I guess everyone at the Bureau believed we were trying to save our families and everyone we knew from a horrible death.”
James wanted Lisa to grasp what he was saying. How many years had he wanted to explain it to her? He’d missed her childhood, been absent from her school events and activities. It was work, duty, but also the guilt that started the day of that civil rights rally when he’d nearly gotten his daughter killed.
“We were still in Chicago, but I was immediately relocated here when our president was killed.”
“It must have been a shock,” Lisa said.
James nodded, but he remembered his father sharing stories from WWI and his childhood. A parent’s history sounded ancient, and James wasn’t the storyteller his father had been, nor was he able to put words around the thoughts that rolled through his mind.
“President Kennedy was shot, Vietnam began, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated—all in a matter of years. The Communists were taking country after country. It seemed the world was falling apart. But that’s getting off the subject.”
James cleared his throat. He wasn’t used to this much talking, especially to his daughter, who listened to him attentively.
“The key.” He pointed to the image of an etched brass key tacked to the bulletin board. “It’s a matter of record that after JFK’s death his brother Bobby changed the locks on file cabinets in the Oval Office. It was a condition the brothers had discussed in the event of such a tragedy. They didn’t want the vice president to obtain certain sensitive information they’d compiled. Johnson became President Johnson on Air Force One before leaving Texas, just hours after Kennedy was pronounced dead.”
Lisa nodded, taking in the information. James knew his daughter might know much of this already, but he needed to go through it for her to understand his hunch.
“Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy hated one another. It was rumored that inside these file cabinets were secret documents that the Kennedys had gathered about various top officials, including Johnson. Within a week, the cabinets were removed and taken elsewhere. However, one of the keys disappeared.”
“Just one?”
“From what I’ve turned up.”
“Where are the cabinets located now?”
“In a bank vault in DC from what I can tell.”
“How do you know this?”
Rosalyn laughed wi
th her back to them as she typed on her laptop. “You are definitely James’s daughter. I can only imagine being cross-examined by you. He can show you the list of trails we’ve followed to compile the information on the wall.”
“But how did you hear about this in the first place?” Lisa pinched the skin between her eyes, just as James did when his head hurt or when he was thinking intently.
James looked away from his daughter’s probing stare.
“I first heard about it from a former friend. He was obsessed with it. After he died, I wondered about it. But only now did I return to the subject.”
“A former friend?” Lisa seemed to know that he meant his old partner, Peter, but neither spoke his name. “But how do a key and secret file cabinet of the Kennedys connect to Benjamin Gray? The president was dead and the cabinet moved a year and a half before Gray was shot.”
“That’s why it’s only a hunch. Whenever I get into investigating all of this, some connection brings up that missing key. It won’t leave me alone.”
“It seems pretty thin, but I know the importance of following your gut. That’s one thing I learned from you.” Lisa smiled then, the first he’d seen from her that day.
“There’s someone I hope can help with the key,” James said.
“Oh, oh, oh!” Rosalyn shouted.
“What now? You about gave me a heart attack,” James said.
His daughter’s irritation was obvious on her face as well.
“Sorry, I was just so excited. That photo of Benjamin Gray’s body that I found on that crime scene photo website? I found the source.”
“Go on,” James said.
“It was submitted to the site from an e-mail account at the Blackstone Corporation, a huge sort of veiled company out of Florida. The company does a lot of construction projects, but there’s a lot more to it—more than I’ve uncovered so far. The company, a family business, started in the early 1950s. They have offices in Miami and in Alexandria, Louisiana. The family comes from old Southern money going back to before the Civil War. They owned a huge plantation, which they still have, but after the war, while most Southerners starved, the Blackstones thrived. I’m not sure how, though it doesn’t look legal. The family became enormously rich, and in the past decades has continued to thrive.” Rosalyn rattled all this information off quickly.
“Wait. Why would someone at such a company post a photo of Benjamin Gray’s corpse on an Internet site?” Lisa asked.
While Lisa might suspend some of her belief for his “hunch,” James knew she wasn’t giving Rosalyn any such leeway.
“That’s what I don’t know. But the website gave me the information, and I did a bit of digging on this company. I found an article from about fifteen years ago that exposed the Blackstone family’s support of campaigns for neo-Nazi and white supremacist politicians. Stanley Blackstone is their aging patriarch. His nephew is VP of his company. There’s a string of investigations and accusations against them, but nothing that’s held up in court.”
“This makes no sense,” Lisa said. “Why would they call attention to themselves by posting such an image?”
“That’s what we need to find out,” Rosalyn said, sounding like a kid asked to go on a scavenger hunt.
James turned to the walls covered with leads and evidences. “We need answers, not more questions.”
“The plot thickens,” Rosalyn said, rubbing her hands together.
“But Dad’s right. We need definitive answers. The goal is getting Leonard Dubois free. So I’ll contact Molly Carter tomorrow. If she remembers what happened, she’d be a compelling witness, especially as a minister. But she was four or five years old. For capital murder, we need more to get Leonard Dubois released.”
James nodded. “But she might lead us to the real shooter.”
“I think we need to look at something else.” Lisa returned to her notes on the workbench. “When I’m working a trial, I look at two elements. The victim and the killer. We’ve been studying the snapshots and Leonard Dubois. But what do we know about the victim—Benjamin Gray?”
Dad’s brows lowered. “I have some information somewhere around here about him. But there’s a lot we don’t know.”
“The motive could be racial or civil rights motivated, but it might also be something out in left field.”
“This is true. Your dad has some background about him, but we haven’t spent much time on it,” Rosalyn said.
“I’ll research Benjamin Gray starting tonight, and tomorrow I’ll go see Molly Carter,” Lisa said.
“We have a lot to do.” James was overwhelmed by the sudden pride and love for his daughter flooding over him, threatening to be exposed through his emotions. When had he become such a sentimental old man?
Rosalyn jumped in with a flourish. “I’ll stay on the Blackstone Corporation and try to find out who specifically posted that photograph. But I was thinking, with such a disreputable family, we may uncover all kinds of criminal activity that our federal prosecutor here could nail them on, even if they aren’t connected to Gray. And of course, I’m still on the lookout for more clues about the key. I don’t care if you both think that’s a stretch, I know we’ll find a connection.”
James ignored Rosalyn’s mention of the key; he didn’t think it was relevant at the moment. He always went with the most pressing lead. And his thoughts had been singular—get Leonard Dubois off of death row. But there was much more to this than he’d expected. And some of it touched the deepest portions of his life. From the wall behind where his daughter sat, the face of his former partner, Peter Hughes, seemed to stare at him without compromise. Perhaps all the old secrets were ready to be revealed.
“Let’s meet again tomorrow night,” he said.
James kept the rest of his plans to himself. He’d get to the bottom of the car following him and possibly his daughter. He’d try just one lead that nagged at him regarding the key. And there were the more personal matters. James knew he wasn’t innocent in all of this, but perhaps redemption would come if all the sins were finally revealed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lisa didn’t get nervous.
With years of high-stress situations under her belt through law school, in court standing before judges and juries, in jail cells interviewing killers, and at high-class social events rubbing shoulders with celebrities and dignitaries, she didn’t have room in her schedule for butterflies, sweaty palms, or stage fright.
But as she sat in her car outside the redbrick church, her chest palpitated as if she’d had a double espresso and her jaw ached from a night of subconscious teeth clenching—a bad habit she’d previously overcome.
In the satchel beside her, a padded envelope held the snapshots of Lisa and a little black girl. In a few moments, she might meet that girl once again.
Don’t analyze, just act, Lisa told herself as she opened the car door.
Music drifted outside as she walked up the steps to the large double doors. The late morning smelled of jasmine blossoms and freshly cut grass.
Except for weddings and funerals, Lisa hadn’t been inside a church in years. She hesitated with her hands against the wood, suddenly second-guessing her decision to arrive at the end of the service. It didn’t sound like the ending, but Lisa didn’t know if music closed or only opened a church service. Perhaps the time listed on the website was incorrect.
She entered a simple carpeted foyer. Glass windows looked out into the main sanctuary full of its mostly African American congregation, standing along the rows of bench seats. The choir sang joyfully from a stage. Lisa moved to the side swinging doors, pushed through, and slid into an empty pew in back.
The song erupted into clapping and “hallelujahs” before moving into an old hymn carried by a soloist. Then Lisa saw the black woman wearing a long robe and standing on the floor below the podium.
Seeing Pastor Molly Carter brought no memory of the day they had met. Studying the woman, Lisa couldn’t be certain by appearance alone that
this woman was that little girl.
Molly smiled as if filled with a divine joy that rolled outward. Lisa shivered as unexpected emotion welled in her chest.
With her arms stretched outward, Molly said in a rich voice, “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.
“And as always, if you have any prayer needs, our prayer team is coming forward to pray with you.”
The pastor kept her arms outstretched and prayed as if talking directly to God. She concluded with a vigorous, “Amen! We have a wonderful God. Now go on and have a glorious day!”
The organ music swelled as the choir disappeared into a side door and numerous people walked forward. Several knelt on the stairs to the altar, while others formed a line around men and women who seemed to be the “prayer team.”
Lisa watched as if observing a different culture or a memory from another life. She’d attended Mass with her husband off and on, but that ended with Thomas’s death. As a single mom, Lisa fought some guilt that she didn’t take John to any religious services, knowing Thomas’s mother might curse her from the grave, but with their schedule, church was far down the list of things to do every Sunday.
The truth was, Lisa’s world revolved around law and justice. These were concrete and anchored. Churches brought up the mysteries of life and the unknowns of death. She didn’t like situations that couldn’t be controlled.
The parishioners began to leave as the service concluded, laughing and talking about their plans for the day. She remained in her seat with her eyes on Molly as she prayed with several people who remained kneeling in front. What would it be like to live in this world of prayer, Scripture, and godly devotion? she wondered.
An older couple stopped at Lisa, greeting her with smiles and handshakes, asking for her name and saying they hoped she’d return.
Finally, Lisa rose from the seat when she saw Molly approaching.
