River of Secrets

by Roger Johns

  “So, hear me,” the man thundered, both hands pointing out over the crowd. “What’s ours is being hijacked—stolen by criminals.” He paused, his eyes becoming intense. “By a growing class of destructive America-hating agents eager to seize the levers of power for their own godless agenda.” He looked out over the crowd. His eyes were hooded, as if he was daring anyone to disagree.

  “Dangerous times are at hand, so don’t be afraid to provoke the outrage of those smug, self-righteous bigots who try to smear you and me with that label, because we won’t be bullied by their hate-mongering. Don’t be afraid to do what needs to be done, whenever and wherever that need arises. And never forget our overriding goal, our guiding light, our ultimate principle: restoration, not reparation.”

  The clapping and shouting was thunderous, and the crowd chanted the man’s closing phrase over and over. He soaked in the applause and, after several seconds, the video stopped on the image of the speaker holding his arms high, his fingers beckoning the applause.

  “Somehow I’m not surprised that Oliver Harpin is connected to this kind of crowd.”

  Mason continued to stare at the screen. “Not just this crowd, he’s connected to this guy in particular. It’s a tenuous connection, but a connection, nevertheless.”

  “Who is he?” Wallace asked, leaning forward to study the image of the man’s face.

  “Carlton Lister.”

  “Who the hell is Carlton Lister?”

  “Former sheriff’s deputy. Released for overzealous use of generally unlawful methods of physical restraint.”

  “Choke holds?”

  “Among other things. He was also a former prison guard. Again, released for similar reasons.”

  “By the looks of that video, he’s definitely found his calling.”

  “And he’s as smart and as violent as they come. College educated, from a good school. At one time he had pursued a career in federal law enforcement, but if I’m understanding the double-talk I got from the Fibbies, he was unable to get past the psych evaluations.”

  “You said this video was shot in Louisiana. Where is Lister from?”

  “Baton Rouge. He’s homegrown.”

  Wallace sagged in her chair. “Did your friends in high places happen to mention when it was that he delivered this dissertation on political theory for citizen militias?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “You’re kidding me.” She stood and took a few steps away from the desk. “How did your pal at the FBI get his hands on this video?”

  “It’s a woman. She was the camera operator. Very deep cover. According to her, Lister is about to go on tour to deliver this message to groups of the faithful all around the southern part of the state. What you saw was the warm-up round.”

  “Jesus Christ.” She dropped onto the bed and lay back with one arm under her head and the other draped across her forehead.

  “According to the FBI, Lister’s law-enforcement background, especially the fact that he was ejected for being too enthusiastic about the use of physical force, gives him a lot of credibility among the white supremacist crowd—among the party faithful, as well as the fence-sitters, the window-shoppers, and the undecided. He’s also something of a local legend among the cage-fighting crowd.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  “Probably because you’re not heavily involved with the mixed martial arts scene.”

  “I’m not involved at all. That kind of thing scares me.”

  “Sure it does.” Mason twisted his mouth into a skeptical look. “Remember who you’re talking to. I’ve seen, firsthand, what happens when you play cops and robbers for keepsies. I don’t think it’s possible for you to convince me that you’re afraid of anything. Although, in this case”—he pointed at the screen—“I would actually feel reassured if I thought you were at least a little bit concerned about the danger this implies.”

  “I think you’re underestimating my fear factor just a bit.”

  “Even tonight,” he said, “I never got the impression you were afraid for you. For me, yes. For your mother and your brother, of course. But for you, not so much.”

  “Mason, I’m not in the mood to have this debate again.” Her eyes roved over him from head to toe. “The day you got shot, you nearly died and I had to watch you nearly die. That scared me.”

  “And you, you’re still on the front lines. Still dealing with this kind of thing.” Again, he jabbed a finger in the direction of his computer. “That scares me. Every day.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “But I can’t stop. Not now. Too much is at stake.”

  “Just promise me that you’ll devote some very precise thinking to everything that’s at stake.”

  Wallace stood, a hurt look on her face.

  “That didn’t come out right,” Mason insisted, raising his hand to protest before she could speak. “It sounded like a roundabout ultimatum, but that’s not what was in my head or in my heart.” He stood and took her hands in his. “I need you to think about you. That’s all I meant.”

  She nodded. “I know.” She squeezed his hands, then pulled away. “Did your connections have anything else on Harpin?”

  “Indirectly. According to my friend in the FBI, there’s been an uptick in reported hate crimes over the last several days. And almost from the minute Eddie Pitkin’s arrest hit the news cycle, the chatter from the hate groups and the professional agitator class has risen in frequency and volume. This homicide and your investigation have inflamed groups like this. Judging by what’s in the chatter, that riot at City Hall will look like a church service compared to some of the plans being noised about.”

  Wallace moved to the window. “My investigation? Has there been anything … specific mentioned in all that chatter?”

  “If you’re asking whether your name has surfaced, the answer, as of just before we got here, is yes. That little bit of joyous news was in one of the emails I checked on our ride out here. I just didn’t want to discuss it in the car. And yes, I had asked specifically if your name was floating out there.”

  “Did your source happen to mention what was being said?” she asked, trying to maintain a stony expression.

  “You’re not being nominated for Miss White Supremacist.”

  “I assumed as much. Anything I can use?”

  “You’ve become a person of interest. Consternation is being expressed over why this investigation isn’t being closed. Why someone who is clearly guilty of murdering a white lawmaker is being coddled by the police. Whether alternative justice for Eddie Pitkin is in order, in the event he’s acquitted or goes unprosecuted.”

  Wallace pointed at the laptop. “Was it Lister who mentioned my name?”

  “He’s one.” Mason opened an email and read a list of names.

  “I’ve never heard of any of those people.”

  “There are others. Individuals whose real identities are unknown at this point.”

  “Is Carlton Lister the top of this ugly little food chain?”

  “Not by a long way.” Mason shook his head. “But his star is rising. For the moment, however, he answers to others. Folks who have managed to remain in the shadows—the people who control the money and the strategy behind a lot of this movement. Your good buddy Oliver Harpin? He’s a hanger-on around the Lister campfire. Less than an insider, but more than a wannabe. Prone to violence. Considered to be very dangerous.”

  “Where is Lister now?”

  “Nobody knows.”

  * * *

  “Boy, you guys are really quiet,” Melissa said as they drove away from the lake house. “The walls of these old places are so thin you should be able to hear a headboard banging against the wall from across the lake.”

  Wallace smiled at Melissa’s attempt to pull her out of her melancholy mood.

  “It’s possible we were on the back porch, where it would have been harder to hear.”

  “Nope. I checked.” She laughed.

  Wallace laughed wit
h her.

  “We were just talking.” Wallace looked over at Melissa. “He’s terrified for me. I’m worried that he’s terrified.”

  “What’s your next move?”

  “Disappear, stay alive, find the truth.”

  Melissa smacked the heel of her hand against the side of her head. “Stupid me. I should have thought of that.” She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. “You big-city cops.”

  Wallace leaned her head back against the headrest and stared at the ceiling. The rush of light and dark from the lights of the oncoming cars as they approached and passed played shadow games across the fabric of the headliner. The unaccustomed sense of real fear was threatening to break loose inside her. She closed her eyes, willing the emotion away.

  “I may need your help again,” she said in a low voice. “No one close to the case knows you and I are as connected as we are. An advantage for me, a danger for you.”

  “I’m a big girl. I’ll let you know if I can manage it or not.”

  After a few minutes of quiet time, Melissa broke the silence. “So what do you want me to do with you right now?”

  “There’s a car rental place in St. Francisville, which is on your way home from here. If you could drop me off at one of the chain motels nearby, that would be great.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  THURSDAY: JUNE 7

  Wallace’s smoke-free rental car smelled a lot like smoke. But at least she was invisible, for the moment.

  To stay that way, without arousing suspicion, she would need to continue her status reports to Burley and Shannon, even if it meant more fabrications and more meaningless blather. It needed to look as if she were still going about things in as normal a way as possible.

  If her name was being mentioned by the people in the video Mason had shown her and if her movements were being monitored by the person who brought her the noose, then she had to consider the possibility that all of those people were connected. And she could no longer afford to think of Peter Ecclestone’s disappearance, if it was related, as just a killer covering his tracks. It might be a movement trying to cover its tracks.

  The part that didn’t make sense was that a band of white supremacists might be responsible for Marioneaux’s death. At best, the jury was still out on whether Marioneaux’s abandonment of his segregationist past was genuine. His most recent activities and rhetoric had been tarted up with all the standard ecumenical catchphrases, but based on her research, there were still plenty of people out there who believed that deep down, when he was out of the public eye, the new Herbert was the same as the old Herbert. That, in the legislature, he was a stalking-horse, biding his time, waiting for an opening to strike a blow for whatever divisive tactics he and his kind were constantly dreaming up. So, why would the skinheads even be interested in taking down a man like that?

  She was just plugging her earpiece in when her phone buzzed. She looked at the screen. It was Craig Stephens. She knew she shouldn’t answer it, but she also knew he wouldn’t be calling if it weren’t critical.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be talking to each other right now,” she said without waiting for him to speak.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s a terrible idea. But I think you should know that somebody at the parish jail fucked up. Eddie got put where he shouldn’t have been and a few of his low-melanin fellow inmates, the ones who take a dim view of his politics, got about three unsupervised minutes to shine their shoes on his face.”

  Wallace yanked the car to the curb. She felt sick.

  “They ruined his left eye.”

  “Oh, Craig, no. Where is he?”

  “Baton Rouge General. They really messed him up. The docs are keeping him under observation for a few days.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “About two hours ago.”

  “Craig, I—

  “I don’t know where you are on this case, but I think you need to be closer to the finish line.”

  “Just listen.”

  “I’m not asking for miracles. Not asking for promises you might or might not be able to keep. Just … hurry … please.”

  Wallace could tell he was struggling to maintain his composure but failing. She had never seen him cry. When they were twelve, they had been walking home from the city park when they were confronted by a pair of slightly older white boys who thought Craig needed a tutorial on the proper relationship between black males and white females.

  They fought the boys together, but Craig took the brunt of the attack. The older kids hurt him, but he hadn’t shed a single tear. When his sister, Berna, died, it was the same—sad, hurt, but in control. Wallace couldn’t fathom why this business with Eddie—a half-brother who had caused so much trouble in the family—was affecting him so deeply, and she felt strange that, after all these years, she wouldn’t understand this about him.

  She was about to speak when she saw that Craig had already hung up. The phone buzzed again. It was Burley.

  “I just found out what happened to Eddie,” she said before Burley could say anything.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve found Peter Ecclestone yet.”

  “Still working on it. Has the press gotten wind of this screw-up at the jail?”

  “You better believe it. And the question is floating out there whether this was done intentionally.” Burley went quiet for several seconds. “There’s going to be a press conference in about an hour, to try and calm the waters. Chief Shannon wants you standing next to him when he and the sheriff take the podium. And speaking of Chief Shannon, he called to ask—very politely—‘where the fuck’ is the briefing he was supposed to get from the chief investigator last night.”

  “Can you tell him that I’m in the field and that I feel like I’m getting a clearer picture of what this case is about and that I’m still looking for Peter Ecclestone and that if I come in for a press conference I’ll lose my grip on a very important thread.”

  “Are you serious? You want me to call a man whose credibility, not to mention his career, is about to blow up in his face and you want me to feed him that pile of bull crap? Let me rephrase that. You actually want me to make that call?”

  Wallace wanted to tell Burley about the deleted picture of Eddie that Mason had found on the memory card from Peter’s camera, but she still didn’t know where that information might end up or what effect it might produce.

  If she told Burley about the picture now and news of its existence leaked out, people would start asking questions, like who took the picture and where this person was. An unavailable Peter Ecclestone would amount to a tacit admission that Wallace had found and then lost a witness who had evidence crucial to the defense. She wasn’t interested in speeding that plow.

  Plus the picture, without any time or date information, would be useless. She and the department would be accused of trying to cover up her mistake by offering a picture whose value couldn’t be supported.

  “I can’t be there for the press conference,” she said finally.

  “I’m pretty sure it was a direct order, not an invitation with an R.S.V.P. option.”

  “Would you call an undercover officer out of an in-progress field operation just as she was on the verge of nailing her target?”

  “You’re a plainclothes detective, not an undercover officer.”

  “I can’t come in. Opportunities will be missed. I’m operating under the original priorities Chief Shannon established. That’s all I can say, at this point.”

  The line went quiet again.

  “Tell me where you are?”

  “I’m not in a position to discuss that, at the moment.”

  “Are you in a department vehicle?”

  “I’m not in a position to discuss that, either.”

  Wallace and Burley had been crosswise enough times in the past that she could imagine exactly what was going on with him—an aggressive posture, a barely contained explosion building behind his eyes, an uneasy quiet that inevita
bly preceded a gathering storm.

  “I’m willing to take a beating for missing this press event,” Wallace said. “Please tell the chief I’m sorry. I have to go now.” She touched the End Call icon on her phone.

  * * *

  Her first priority was to do a quick drive-by to eyeball her house and Mason’s apartment. A break-in at either place would have triggered an alarm and a police response, but there might be lesser transgressions she needed to be aware of.

  Her personal vehicle was still parked at the curb near Mason’s apartment. As she cruised by she could see it was undisturbed. Continuing down the street, she glanced over at Mason’s apartment. Other than the cut in the screen that the noose came through, there appeared to be no damage.

  As she drove, she wondered why whoever was behind this little campaign would even be interested in intimidating her. It would do no good to frighten her off the case, because there was a long line of detectives who could replace her. Unless they thought she had some unique knowledge or ability, the same reasoning applied to killing her. The pool of state, local, and federal law-enforcement officers was too big to murder out of existence. It was another piece of the puzzle that didn’t make any sense.

  Nothing was out of place at her little bungalow in the Garden District. No pile of ashes from a cross-burning, no cut screens or broken windows or doors swinging free. She wished she could see the back of her house, but she didn’t want to go back there and look. Someone might be watching her house, and she didn’t want to blow the disappearing act she had gone to so much trouble to put in place. She had left the cat feeders full, so Lulu and Boy Howdy would be fine for a few days.