by Jeff Stetson
“Accused of strangling a black college student,” she said.
Everyone looked at Winslow, waiting for his next question.
“With barbed wire?” he asked.
Sinclair reviewed her file one last time and, without ever glancing up from the paperwork, nodded yes.
Vanzant moved solemnly to his prized chair. He sat with his head bowed, unaware of the word that escaped his lips not once but twice: “Jesus . . . Jesus.”
CHAPTER 8
FOR THE PAST twenty years Rachel had owned and operated the Red Bird Café. Her father had given it to her after he’d run off with one of his teenage part-time waitresses. Rachel’s mother tried for several months to locate the employee who’d stolen her husband, in order to give the girl a handsome gratuity. After all, the poor girl would no doubt one day need the money to escape from her youthful dalliance.
Rachel had long ago given up the possibility of escaping the inheritance bequeathed to her by an adulterous father. She put much of her life and all of her resources into maintaining the small diner. She prided herself on the reasonably priced dinner specials. And unlike some other eateries, her diner offered food that patrons actually favored, such as roast duck in season and pot roast on Thursday.
She’d forgotten the number of big-name chain restaurants that had opened and closed in the past few years, all within quick traveling distance of her establishment. She’d outlasted them by attracting a loyal group of customers. Folks felt at home whether relaxing in one of her eight booths—tastefully decorated in light maroon vinyl upholstery—or spinning comfortably on extra-plush cushions balanced atop matching silver-and-blue metal stools.
Rachel, now a shade under fifty, had never been married, although she’d known her share of husbands. She often wondered what it might be like to have her own to worry about, but in the end decided she was better off remaining mildly amused at someone else’s problem. There was, however, one frequent visitor who could have made her slip into an elaborately embroidered gown and stroll down a church center aisle to take a vow she fully believed they’d both violate. She had no way to explain her attraction other than to admit it had something to do with the way he drank her coffee, tasted her pies, and left her shop with his sparkling silver ponytail trailing behind, beckoning for her to climb his personal ladder to freedom.
“When you gonna finally let a woman take care of ya?” she asked Miller, who’d just sweetened his second cup of coffee.
“The law is my mistress, and I love her even when she’s unfaithful.” He took a sip and burned his upper lip.
“You ever want to get even with her, I’m off on Tuesday nights.” She took an ice cube from his glass of water and ran it across his wounded mouth. She removed a cloth from just inside her freshly ironed apron and dried his chin. Rachel started to say something seductive, when he commented on the increased noise level just outside the café.
“What the hell’s goin’ on out there?” He turned toward the commotion.
She released a frustrated groan, then completed the pleasurable task of drying the moisture that had dripped to his neck. “Damn students been comin’ down here every day for the last week accusin’ Arnold Rankin of killin’ some black girl thirty years ago. I’ve known that man half my life and he treats everybody decent, even the Coloreds.”
“‘The Coloreds’?” he asked in mock surprise.
“Blacks. Afro-’mericans. Whatever they call themselves. Ought to let sleepin’ dogs lie, that’s all I know.”
“Just be thankful they’re not here protesting your coffee, because I’d march with them.”
“Don’t go bitin’ the hand that feeds ya. My coffee saved your butt many a time.”
“And my butt’s eternally grateful.” He withdrew his wallet from his rear pocket and placed on the counter some money, which he tantalizingly pushed toward her. “I look forward to the time when my lips are once again singed in the unending effort to taste and, indeed, savor your deliciously hot nectar.”
Miller left the café and hurried down the street to observe a crowd mostly of college students blocking the entrance to Rankin & Son Hardware. They chanted slogans and carried signs that read MURDERER and RACIST along with a sprinkling of poorly scribbled threats.
Arnold Rankin stood in the middle of the crowd, blatantly defying their taunts. Miller remembered Rankin as one of the founding fathers of the movement to resist integration at all costs. He’d called any white man disagreeing with his ambition a “nigger lover.” Miller had forgotten the language Rankin used against anyone brazenly advocating the rights of blacks to seek redress in a court of law; however, he was certain the phrase included a promise of bodily injury.
“You want a piece of me? I ain’t hidin’ and I sure as hell ain’t runnin’!” Rankin challenged Brandon Hamilton, the leader of the demonstration. In his early seventies and with a fragile physique, Rankin appeared more ludicrous than dangerous.
“You still selling dynamite to the Klan?” Brandon shouted.
In his youth, Rankin had been nicknamed “Arnold the Mad Bomber,” and from the way he acted, he seemed to cherish the memories that went with the name. “I don’t need the Klan to rid myself of the likes of you!” Becoming more and more animated, Rankin’s arthritic fingers pointed in all directions. Miller had the distinct impression Rankin actually enjoyed all this.
“Dad, go back inside.” Rankin’s son attempted to control his father and the crowd at the same time.
“This is my store and I’ll decide when I want to go in it!” Rankin shoved his son hard in the chest.
Arnold Jr. appealed to the students. “Why don’t you leave us alone? My father’s never done anything to you.”
“He’s a murderer,” said Brandon, confronting the two men. “We’re not gonna let anyone in this town forget that.” Brandon encouraged the crowd to become more vocal.
As the atmosphere became increasingly hostile, Miller decided it was time for calmer heads to prevail. He walked directly into the lions’ den. “Mr. Rankin, why don’t you listen to your son and go home?” Miller sweetened the logic. “It’s the only way you’re gonna get rid of them.”
Rankin studied Miller curiously. Slowly a glimpse of recognition appeared on Rankin’s face, followed immediately by an expression of absolute contempt. “I remember you,” he said with revulsion, as though spitting out something foul. “This is what you and other white trash like you made possible. Look around; all this is your doin’!” Rankin grabbed Miller and forced him to assess the crowd. “You see? You see what you’ve done?”
Miller observed the faces of young black men and women exercising their constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression. So, why did his insides churn? Why was the sight of so many committed students actively participating in the time-tested political process of protest distressing? He was struggling for an answer when Rankin pushed him into the middle of the crowd.
“There! That’s where you belong!” Rankin again lunged at Miller, pushing him farther into the crowd. “Go be with your goddamn nig—”
“Dad!” Rankin’s son urgently intervened, taking his father’s shoulders and holding on until the old man relented. “Dad, I’m not asking you anymore. I’m pleading with you to go home before you get yourself hurt or you rile these people into destroying our property. Please, Dad, just leave.”
The elder Rankin’s disgust changed to resignation. “I’m goin’ home,” he uttered. “But I’m comin’ back tomorrow with my shotgun. We’ll see how much protestin’ they’ll do with buckshot in their behinds.”
Rankin approached Miller. “I oughta kill you now. But I owe a white man, even a poor excuse for one, a warning.” A large vein protruded from his forehead. He moved closer. “If you’re out here with ’em in the mornin’, I’m aimin’ the first shot at your stomach so you can die the slow death you deserve.” Rankin entered his store and slammed the door. The small overhead bell crashed to the ground, ringing its final greeting
.
The younger Rankin reasoned with Brandon. “Listen to me. Please listen! My father’s gone. All we want is some peace. If you want to come inside and talk about this, then—”
“We’ve got nothing to say to you. Let your father talk to us and admit he’s a murderer.” Brandon signaled to his fellow students to continue their protests. They immediately returned to shouting slogans that, for Miller, failed to conjure up past images of righteous indignation. In his eyes, their protest resembled a fun-filled collegiate rally held to celebrate a football game against a hometown rival. Miller shook his head and accepted the judgment that youth was indeed wasted on the young.
The noise grew louder, the voices more determined; the demonstration was now unified. Thirty years ago Miller would have held one of the signs, even orchestrated the chants, but times had changed. It wasn’t a matter of his being out of place. He simply felt unwanted. To these students he’d never be a comrade, for he was a white man, an outsider, the other.
People were more divided in this system of integration than they’d ever been under the institution of Jim Crow. The lines of separation were more deeply drawn, more permanently entrenched, and far more difficult to cross than any For Whites Only sign. He knew from personal experience that the very people who once had the passion to die for the rights of a stranger today lacked the wherewithal or moral fortitude to live next to that stranger as a neighbor, let alone a friend.
Miller’s noble experiment had failed. The war he’d waged as a young man had cost him his friends, his family, and for a long time his livelihood. But he’d kept the dream intact—a bit battered and bruised, to be sure, yet still recognizable even if it was for him no longer within reach.
He was thinking about seeing Rachel under the pretense of needing more coffee, when an explosion shattered metal and glass and moved the earth beneath his feet. He fell to the ground, either from impact or instinct, and watched Arnold Jr. race into his store. The students rushed through a narrow alley leading to the parking lot. Miller rose in time to see a frightened Rachel standing at her entrance. He motioned for her to stay, then hurried through the store, knowing full well what awaited him on the other side.
In the rear parking lot, under a large pine tree originally planted to provide shelter from the sun, an Oldsmobile sedan was being consumed by fire. The flames licked at the side door, swallowing the trapped figure behind the steering wheel.
Rankin’s son dashed hysterically toward his father, whose mouth opened wide enough to scream for help but seemed to whisper good-bye. Miller tackled Arnold Jr. to the ground. The fire reached the gas tank and caused a second explosion, which lifted the sedan into the air and suspended Rankin’s body within the inferno. His flesh melted, and his scorched remains merged with deteriorating red-hot metal.
Miller held on tightly to the man who’d been reduced to whimpering, “Dad . . . Dad . . . Dad.” His pathetic voice gave way to the muted thumps of his fists pounding the pavement, intermittently interrupted by the sobbing of the word “No” over and over again. He pounded the earth so forcefully, his hands began to bleed, the droplets spraying on Miller’s face.
Miller saw a group of students gleefully staring at the conflagration. He half expected them to exchange high fives or other congratulatory celebrations. Had it come to this? he wondered. Had the legacy of hate finally made a complete circle and confined everyone within it? He searched the faces in the crowd and found a young woman in tears. Two or three others appeared startled. Another displayed disbelief and fear. The vast majority, however—both men and women—were entertained, enthralled by the excitement of witnessing an old man’s body being reduced to ash.
He’d seen these faces before, except they’d been white and gathered around a black corpse or freshly dug grave or charred torso or half-burned head. He’d viewed photos of white men invited to a “Negro barbecue, southern style” as it so fondly had been called. Those photos, keepsakes from his heritage, had always caused him to feel ill without ever allowing him the relief of vomiting up his pain and disgust. Now he felt the urge to regurgitate it all, to disgorge a lifetime of obscenities and prejudices and fears. Miller watched as the fiery corpse in the front seat of the smoldering automobile slumped forward and emerged as a skeleton that had escaped one closet only to perish in another.
Brandon Hamilton stood silently in the distance. He removed a small pocket camera from his leather waistband, placed it near his eye, and took several pictures. The automatic flash competed with the light from the flames. He turned and walked away, prompting Miller to wonder what burden, if any, this young black man carried on his broad shoulders. Miller wanted to leave this graveyard quickly. He needed to replace his feeling of despair with the impartial solace only a courtroom could provide, regardless of its final verdict.
Miller helped Arnold Jr. to his feet, then noticed, beyond the incinerated car, that the towering pine tree had caught fire. He listened to the branches crackle and heard the sirens blare. The fire trucks finally arrived. He studied the huge pine burning in the background, fully ablaze.
CHAPTER 9
LAUREN SINCLAIR STOOD in front of a large bulletin board that had a map of the state pinned against it. She used a red Magic Marker to add a final circle, then stepped back and studied all the multicolored markings. Three areas were circled in red, two others in blue, and two dozen more in green.
“I had no idea we had this many,” she said to Reynolds, who moments earlier had completed highlighting sections of the map located in the northwest and central regions. “It’s frightening.”
“Ghosts usually are,” said Reynolds.
“Let’s ensure the ones circled in green don’t enter the spirit world before their time.” Sinclair double-checked her list and compared it to the markings on the map.
“That’s a job for the police, not us,” Reynolds pointed out.
“You don’t seem terribly sympathetic.”
“At least our office is giving them a warning. That’s more than they gave their victims.”
“They were all acquitted, remember?”
“I remember,” was as far as he’d go.
Vanzant entered the office without knocking, a privilege he abused constantly. He reviewed his master list. “Two-thirds of the folks have been notified.” He moved to the display. He absorbed it for a moment, then shook his head in disbelief. “What’s the blue for?”
“Crockett and Mitchell, assuming they’re still alive and missing,” Sinclair responded.
Vanzant quickly exhaled. “If I were a betting man, I’d circle them red.”
“Hopkins and Taylor were found a hundred twenty miles northwest, just outside Greenville,” said Reynolds. He pointed to the locations on the map as he spoke. “Sherman Banks’s body was recovered in Hattiesburg, ninety miles southeast. Rankin was local and the only one not murdered in the general locations where the original civil rights slayings occurred.”
“Any theory as to why he was treated differently?” asked Vanzant.
“Rankin’s alleged crimes consisted of a series of car bombings,” answered Sinclair. “To that extent, the pattern may not have deviated.”
Reynolds touched the display. “With all those green circles, I’d say whoever’s doing this still has a lot of traveling left.”
“Could be more than one person,” Sinclair mentioned as an afterthought.
“After tonight, it just might be.” Vanzant directed the remark to Reynolds and waited for a response.
“What’s happening tonight?” Reynolds obliged.
“Your friend Professor Matheson has a worldwide audience on CNN.”
Sinclair sighed at the revelation.
Vanzant approached Reynolds. “I want you to talk to him. See if he’ll condemn the killings or at the very least tone down his rhe-toric.”
“What makes you think he’ll listen to me?” Reynolds asked, knowing his boss would never give an honest answer.
“Just a hunch.” Vanzan
t quickly headed for the exit and, without turning back, provided his parting directive: “Call me at home tonight after you’ve spoken with him.” He was gone before Reynolds could respond.
Sinclair retrieved a used case of Magic Markers and separated them by color. “Guess we better order some more red.”
Reynolds didn’t know why September was his favorite month. Perhaps he liked the way it sounded: serene, a bit seductive. It marked the end of a frivolous summer and the beginning of something more serious. Flowers turned color. People changed jobs. For some, maybe it meant the chance to start over and recover from a romantic fling that had occurred halfway through vacation and terminated when they reentered the real world. It represented a thirty-day odyssey ideally suited for the young to write poetry and for the old to read it and, together, delight in the magic of the moment and the mystery of what endured. Whatever made September special, nothing underscored it better than a new academic year. You could stroll across the main grounds of a university campus, where the hunger for knowledge was never fully satisfied but always enthusiastically nurtured.
Reynolds savored every sun-drenched step down a magnolia-laced walkway, which wrapped around the library’s Gothic structure. It turned out to be a gorgeous afternoon, but that couldn’t compensate for the difficult task ahead. His leisurely walk through the campus was forcing him to rethink his job in the district attorney’s office. He recalled how often he’d contemplated resigning to accept a teaching position at the law school.
He remembered the first time he’d considered becoming a lawyer. He was six years old. His father had taken a drink of cold water from the garden hose in their backyard and was wiping the side of his mouth with the sleeve from his red-and-brown checkered work shirt when he asked the all-important question: “Little Jimmie, what you gonna be when you grow up?”
The boy, who preferred to be called James, took the garden hose from his father and, without a second’s hesitation, answered in a voice filled with childhood conviction. “Dad,” he announced, “I’m gonna be a lawyer.” He triumphantly placed the nozzle close to his lips to conceal his excitement.
