by Gene Riehl
“And there’d be a child somewhere, obviously. On Brenda Thompson’s personal security questionnaire for sure.” She turned the wiper speed up, the heater down a bit. “Unless she left the baby in Brookston.”
I nodded. Abortion had been my first thought as well, but like I’d told her, I wanted to let it come out of our investigation, not go down there just to prove it. I told her that, but she continued to press her case.
“Let’s say she was six weeks pregnant at Cal, found out from an off-campus doctor, that way there’d be no university medical record to check. She makes a quick stop in Brookston to have an abortion, takes a couple of weeks to get her head straight again, then moves on to New Haven.”
“She’d know in six weeks? That she was pregnant, I mean?”
“If she had a reason to worry, yeah. Things happen. Sometimes a girl starts checking awfully quick.”
“Nineteen seventy-two,” I said, thinking out loud. “July. Roe v. Wade … Seventy-two or seventy-three, wasn’t it?”
“Seventy-one for the first arguments, reargued at the end of seventy-two, I think, then decided in January seventy-three.”
“But everyone knew how it would be decided.”
“Doesn’t matter, it was still illegal. If that’s what happened to Thompson, she’d have missed being legal by a couple of months.”
“You know what they say about close.”
She was quiet for a minute.
“Got to be it, though,” she said. “Abortion’s still a pretty hot item for a Supreme Court nominee … so hot that David Souter wouldn’t even admit to talking about it.” She shook her head. “Had the nerve to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee he’d never even discussed the issue. Hard to imagine Thompson getting away with actually having one, an illegal one to boot.”
I nodded. It was hard to forget about Justice Souter’s ludicrous assertion, and how willing the senators had been to believe it, to do anything rather than face up to an issue that still topped the list of litmus tests for new nominees to the high court. Even with a legal abortion on her sheet, Brenda’s nomination would be dead before it got started.
I stared past Lisa and out the driver’s window. Rain slanted past us, from clouds low enough to touch the treetops.
“And that brings us straight back to motive,” I said. “With stakes that high—the Supreme Court—you can throw out the rule book. The Greeks launched a thousand ships for one face. Compared to that, Thompson lying about her past to save her one chance at immortality seems downright reasonable.”
Lisa slowed as we approached a logging truck, stacked high with telephone-pole-size logs. She edged into the oncoming lane, looking for an opening to pass, then slid back into line.
“Miscarriage,” she said. “There’s miscarriage to consider as well. Or a stillbirth. Maybe even sudden infant death after a normal birth. If Thompson had a baby who died within minutes or hours, she might have chosen to leave it out of her personal history altogether. Might have been too painful to take with her into a new life.”
“That’s why I don’t like to guess. Her time in Brookston might just as easily be unrelated to any kind of pregnancy. She might have been an alcoholic, or a pothead. She was sure as hell at the right college for that, at the right time as well.” I paused. “Maybe she stopped in Brookston to dry out, to get her head together for law school.”
She nodded. “You’re right, that could be exactly what we’re looking at. I suppose she could even have gotten herself arrested in Brookston. Stopped for speeding maybe, with an ounce of grass in her car. Cops took that stuff pretty seriously back then.”
“I like the idea, but if that happened she’d have a rap sheet. Our NCIC check would have picked it up.”
“A 1972 arrest? There was no National Crime Information Center back then. Gotta be a bunch of records never got transferred over to the new system … especially from rural departments like Brookston.”
“Can’t eliminate the possibility, that’s for sure.”
“So what’s the plan?” she asked. “Down there in Mayberry, I mean.”
I reached for the last doughnut, took a moment to eat a bite. “Let’s start with the sheriff’s department. Hit the county clerk’s office, then maybe the hospital. That should give us some idea what we’re up against.”
She nodded and we fell silent, stayed that way until we crossed the line into Cobb County. The Pontiac’s digital clock read eight-ten when we left the highway and drove down Main Street, a solid stretch of classic small town one-story buildings that could have been lifted directly from the back lot of a movie studio.
The Cobb County Courthouse was a mile or so down Main, and carried out the same nostalgic motif. Green lawns, white brick construction, red-shingled roof. Parking was out back. The lot was empty except for three green-and-white patrol cars along with a couple of unmarked units, the stripped-down Fords and Chevys that fool no crooks anywhere. Lisa parked our bucar next to one of them and we grabbed our briefcases.
It continued to rain as we hiked up the long flight of steps, swung the twelve-foot high oak door out of the way and entered the sheriff’s office. Inside it was all wood and fresh varnish. The smell reminded me of the front pew I’d grown up in back in California, and I tried not to inhale any more of it than I had to. Behind a chest-high counter, a uniformed woman smiled at us.
“What can I do for y’all?” she asked.
I showed my credentials. “The sheriff around?”
She lifted a phone, spoke into it briefly, then turned back to us. “Sheriff Brodsky should be with you in a few minutes.” She waved toward a couple of plain wood armchairs against the nearest wall. “Y’all can sit right over there until he comes.”
We retreated to the chairs. Above them, on the beige-colored wall, hung the green-and-gold official seal of the sheriff’s department.
Ten minutes later we were still sitting there. Four more minutes passed before I coughed politely and made a show of looking at my watch. The officer at the counter smiled.
“Shouldn’t be but another minute or two.”
I nodded, then told myself to relax. We’d come without an appointment. Not many people kept us waiting like this, but sheriffs were among the few who did.
A door behind the counter opened suddenly, and a powerfully built man wearing the same uniform as the receptionist emerged from it. He moved to a small gate to the right of the counter, opened it, and approached us. We stood to meet him.
“Edward Brodsky,” he said, his voice blunt, his brown eyes reflecting the wariness FBI agents become accustomed to seeing from the locals.
I showed him my creds, introduced Lisa, then gave him the opportunity to extend his hand. He didn’t.
“My office is just down the hall,” he said, then turned and strode back through the same gate and doorway from which he’d just come. Lisa and I had to hurry to keep up.
I inspected the lawman’s back as we walked down the long corridor. Brodsky was as much a descriptor as a name. The sheriff was wide enough across the shoulders to show home movies on, his brown hair short and sprinkled with gray. A perfect stereotype, I decided. Life imitating art. A man whose friends probably called him Bull.
Inside his office I saw that I was wrong.
ELEVEN
The sheriff was no stereotype, that was for damned sure.
From the upscale furnishings in his office to the pipe rack on his desk, the David Hockney reproductions on his walls to the soft classical music—Haydn, I was pretty sure—Edward Brodsky was anything but what he looked. A bull of a man he might be, but I was willing to bet nobody’d ever stuck him with the name.
His big desk was a nice grade of dark maple and the dove-gray carpet looked like wool. Behind the desk was his “glory wall,” the framed documents and photographs he’d accumulated through the years. The one that caught my eye went a long way toward explaining his abrupt demeanor. Wood-framed, it featured a dark-blue background on which were mounted the disti
nctive gold badge of the L.A.P.D. and a chrome-plated pair of handcuffs. On a gold plate fastened to the bottom of the frame were the dates, 1966–1996.
I thought for a moment about the years of conflict between FBI-LA, and the Los Angeles Police Department. All the way back to Hoover himself. From the Black Dahlia case to the 1984 Olympics, the Rodney King beating to corruption in the infamous Ramparts Division. Cases the bureau didn’t want any more than Parker Center did, but had no choice about investigating. Christ, no wonder Brodsky didn’t like us.
The sheriff circled the desk to a high-back leather chair, sat, gestured toward the matching black leather armchairs down front. We sat. He stared at us for a moment.
“What brings you to Brookston?”
I almost mentioned the badge and cuffs on the wall behind him, but decided not to. Sleeping dogs and all that. No point making it any worse than it appeared to be.
“We’re working on the president’s latest nominee for the Supreme Court. Judge Brenda Thompson. She told us she lived here in Brookston for a few months in 1972. I’d like to run her name through your records department.”
“You could have done that on the phone. Surely you didn’t drive all the way down here for a records check.”
I looked at him, then argued with myself. Old habits are hard to break—his attitude was proof of that particular bromide—but I could probably afford to take the high road. Probably had to, as a matter of fact. Whatever Brenda Thompson had been up to in Brookston, we had little chance of finding out without Sheriff Brodsky’s help.
“Actually,” I told him, “there is something else.”
“Thought there might be.”
“Adoption records, Sheriff. Any way to see them?” Not a real lead, but a good way to test our new relationship.
“Got a court order?”
“No court order, but a release form. From Judge Thompson herself.”
“She’d be the mother?”
Shit. Not a great way to start. Now I had to say the words I’d been trying to avoid.
“I’m afraid I can’t say anything more, Sheriff. I mean no disrespect, but it’s just not possible to tell you that.”
He grinned without a trace of warmth. “The more things change …”
He didn’t bother finishing. Didn’t need to.
“No court order,” he continued, then leaned forward with his big forearms on the desk. “That’s the problem. Adoption records are more protected than anything we deal with. Nothing but a court order will even get you in the door.”
He looked away for a moment, then back at us.
“You’d want to look for abortion records, too, I imagine.”
I shook my head. “We’re talking 1972 … a year before Roe. Not likely there’d be any records before that.”
“Hard to know for sure until you look.”
I nodded but didn’t say anything. I looked at my watch, then at the sheriff.
“Can you point us toward the county clerk’s office?”
He pointed upward. “Next floor. Right above our heads.”
We started to get up, but his voice stopped us.
“How long you plan to be around?”
“Hard to say. We’ve got some other routine stuff to do, but we’ll touch base with you before the end of the day.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourselves. Call me if you need any help.”
It was one of those things you say, I realized, but it was the friendliest he’d been since we’d come through the door.
“We’ll do that, Sheriff. Thanks.”
We rose and left his office. He didn’t bother to show us back to the reception counter but we didn’t need the help. In the stairwell to the second floor, Lisa turned to me.
“What the hell was that all about? The attitude, I mean.”
“Retired cop, Lisa. L.A.P.D.”
“Of course. I saw the badge and cuffs, too. But Jesus …”
“Get used to it, partner.” I started up the stairs. “After a while you’ll stop caring.”
Upstairs, the customer service counter at the Cobb County Clerk’s office had been recently varnished, the smell even stronger than in the sheriff’s department. A young man wearing a white shirt and black string tie stepped up to help us. I flipped my creds open and he nodded.
“We need to verify a death record,” I told him. “The name is Sarah Kendall. Died in 1972. June 1972.”
He scribbled on a pad at his elbow. “Just give me a minute,” he said, then grabbed the pad and hustled away to an oak filing cabinet, slid out a narrow drawer and removed a small white card, brought it back to the counter.
“Sarah Kendall, yes, right here.” He glanced at the card and frowned, then at his pad. “Wait a second, though,” he said. “Did you say 1972?”
“June 1972 … probably late in June.”
He held out the card. I took it from him, examined the fading typescript, then nodded at the 1991 date, satisfied at having confirmed what Lisa had been told over the phone. It’s never a good idea to trust information you get over the phone. Now it could go into our report.
“I’ll need a copy of this,” I told him. “Certified and exemplified.”
“Of course.” He started away, then came back. “It’ll take a few minutes. Is there something else you’d like to see while I do it?”
I nodded. “Marriage records. For 1971 and 1972, please.”
The clerk moved to another oak file cabinet, this one closer to his desk, opened the middle drawer, pulled out a spool of microfilm, and brought it to us.
“You’ll need the reader for this stuff,” he said. He pointed at a battered machine in the corner, then led us to it and strung the spool into the machine. “Just turn this crank,” he began, but I cut him off.
“I’m an old hand,” I told him. “We’ll call if we need you.”
I waited until he was gone, then began to crank.
I felt Lisa move up close and watch over my shoulder. Her hair smelled even better than it had the other day, the wildflower scent even more inviting out here in the country. Her shoulder felt warm where it was touching the back of my left arm, and I had to force myself to concentrate on the task at hand.
I started with marriage records from June to December 1971, but saw almost immediately there was no point. Twenty names before the middle of July alone, twenty young black women who had married in Cobb County. At that rate we would have at least a hundred names, and there was no way to work with that many. Not at this stage anyway.
“Not a chance,” Lisa said, her mind as close to me as her body.
I went back to where the clerk was working on the death record. He looked up at my approach. Lisa stayed behind but I knew she was listening.
“Sarah Kendall,” I said, “have you got anything else on her? Who she was, who she was married to? Maybe what she did for a living?”
He chewed his lower lip for a moment. “She’d be in fictitious names registration if she ran any kind of business here.”
“Would you mind checking?”
The clerk went to a second file cabinet, came back empty-handed.
“Nothing,” he said.
I glanced at Lisa and she came over to us. “What about churches?” she asked. “If she were a regular churchgoer, where would we start looking?”
“Our records wouldn’t have that … church stuff, I mean.” He paused. “Come to think of it, we might could have that. Her marriage certificate would show a church, if she was married in one.” He went away and came back, showed us the certificate. “Baptist,” he said, his voice proud. “Same as me. She was married at my church, the one I just started going to. Emmanuel Baptist, out on Falls Lane.”
I studied the certificate. Copied the data into my notebook. “How do we get to the church?” I asked.
“I can save y’all a trip by calling Brother Johnson, if you want.”
It would save time as well, I thought, but once again the telephone was not the way to go. The ki
nds of questions we would be asking had to involve eye contact and body language, so I asked for directions instead, got them, and headed with Lisa back to the parking lot.
Halfway to the church my brain began to turn heavy again.
I’d never seen Brother Johnson’s Emmanuel Baptist Church, but I’d spent the first third of my life there nonetheless. I knew what it would look like, smell like, sound like, and I didn’t want any part of it. Besides, Lisa didn’t need me along just to ask a few routine questions. She could drop me off by the side of the road, go ahead on her own to interview the reverend, come back and pick me up. It sounded like a good plan until I realized what would happen. That Lisa would stare at me in surprise, demand to know what the hell I thought I was doing. That I didn’t know her at all well enough yet to tell her.
Fifteen minutes later we were there.
The church building lay at the end of a wooded lane about two miles from the courthouse and turned out pretty much as I’d pictured. Not much larger than a single-family home. White shingles, faded blue trim, same color blue on the double doors leading inside. What it didn’t have that I’d expected to see was a steeple. The only thing that distinguished Emmanuel Baptist Church from the grange hall we’d just passed was the plain wooden cross above the front doors.
Lisa parked the car out front and we went up the walk to those doors. I turned to her. “You do the talking this time. I want to watch the preacher.”
Which wasn’t the whole truth. I did want to watch him, but I needed to watch myself as well. My track record with preachers wasn’t good, my fuse far too short with the clergy. A lot safer to keep myself out of it.
“Sure,” Lisa said, as she grabbed the brass handle on the right-hand door and pulled it open.
An eighty-something black man looked back at us from the front of the church. A tall man with a short ring of curly white hair around his mostly bald head. His eyebrows were white as well, but as we approached him I saw something I couldn’t remember seeing before. His eyes were dark brown, but the lashes were just as white as the rest of his hair, and the effect was startling. He straightened up from the work he was doing on the church’s old-fashioned organ, smiled with a full set of perfect teeth as he walked up the aisle to greet us.
