“I just got you a week’s worth of this pill, to tide you over until you get home to your own pharmacy.” Gesturing with the pill box toward the sign reading Silver’s Pharmacy and Sundries, she said, “I don’t know why I still come here. Probably because my folks shopped here and their folks before them. Daddy gets all upset whenever I do something different from what he’s used to. When Walgreens opened a store near our house, I tried to transfer all his prescriptions there. I thought it would make life a little easier if I used a store closer to home. That was a joke. Daddy wouldn’t get out of the car, then he wouldn’t take the pills. I guess I’m stuck with Preston Silver as my pharmacist for the rest of my natural life.”
Faye reflected that this wasn’t strictly true. Neely was only stuck with Silver for the rest of her father’s natural life, but it wouldn’t be kind to split hairs and point that out.
Neely handed the pill case, filled and up-to-date, to Mr. Judd. “Every time I come here, Preston Silver stands there and looks at me with those nasty lizard eyes while he counts my pills. Gives me the creeps.”
“I’d say he’s more dragon than lizard,” Judd said quietly. “Everybody knew he was big in the Klan, even back when I lived here. He’s bound to be some kind of Grand Dragon by now.”
“I infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan once. Well, I guess it would be more accurate to say I did some informal spying,” Neely said.
“I’m not sure I’d be talking about that,” Judd said. “They’re not completely toothless, even now.”
“Um…Being the only white person in the car, I guess it’s okay for me to say that none of you look like folks who are likely to be card-carrying members,” she pointed out. “Besides, it was years ago, when I was young and stupid. Eighteen, maybe. I was dating a guy who was a member, and he sneaked me in. There’s an upside and a downside to wearing hoods. I couldn’t tell who else was there, but they didn’t know who I was, either. All they knew was that I was there because a member had vouched for me. But you know what? A hood can’t cover your voice.”
Judd put a hand over his eyes, and Faye remembered that his attacker had pulled a hood over his face before beating him. Neely didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. She kept talking.
“I heard an impassioned speech introducing a particularly high-ranking bigot, and there was no mistaking the voice. Preston Silver was there that night, and he was not a casual attendee. He wasn’t there just because he hoped his membership would help him professionally, like some kind of perverted Rotary Club. He was a true believer. The things he said turned my stomach. Actually, they changed my life. Even looking back at myself with the harshest eye possible, I wouldn’t say I was ever a racist. I wasn’t taught it at home.” Her right hand wandered upward to her badge and gave it a little stroke. “Little girls were shielded from that ugliness in a lot of ways. But I just never gave a second thought to the fact that white people and black people lived their own separate lives, and that some people thought it was okay for us white people to make their lives miserable. I left the meeting before Preston finished spewing garbage, and I broke up with my idiot boyfriend, the Klansman, that very night.”
Judd had dropped his hand from his eyes. Those eyes were fastened on her face.
“It took me four years of college to decide to come back home,” she went on. “Here’s what I figured. It’s true that there were a lot of people at that meeting—I counted them—but there’s a whole lot more people living in this county that weren’t there. It’s not right to let a few evil people run things. The Klan has lost a lot of power since then, and it’s because of people like me who didn’t leave. We stayed and made our home a better place.”
“Do you think Silver might have been the man who attacked me?” Judd asked quietly.
“He would be at the top of my list, but he wouldn’t be the only one,” Neely said. She cranked the engine, signaling to Faye and Joe that it was time to get out of the car. “We need to get you back to the hotel, so you can get some rest.”
“Thank you,” Judd said. “It’s nice to know that somebody like you is taking care of things.”
Faye was glad to see Mr. Judd looking a lot stronger as she, Joe, and Neely escorted him back to his room. There was a survivor’s swing to his walk that said a little angina and high blood pressure couldn’t get him down.
It was slow going, making their way through the slot machine obstacle course in the hotel lobby. The narrow aisles between the one-armed bandits were thronged with people who wanted to wish the former Congressman well. Though no one knew how ill he had been barely an hour before, everyone knew by now what had happened to him in 1965.
Several hotel employees left their posts and rushed to shake his hand. Many of them were Choctaws and, thus, not just employees but co-owners of the sprawling casino/hotel complex. Their guests joined them in crowding around the sick man, each of them saying that they personally had no idea who had attacked him, but surely someone else would know.
Sheriff Rutland finally barked, “Back off! The man needs to breathe.” At her signal, Joe gently fended off the worst offenders by sheer physical intimidation. Faye just stood close to Mr. Judd and let him lean on her arm. The three of them formed a protective bubble around Judd and rushed him across the lobby. Ever the politician, Judd smiled, waved, and shook hands, even as he was being hustled away from his fawning constituency.
Only one person had the tenacity to stay with them until they reached the elevator. Faye guessed that Neely had better sense than to let anyone know where Judd’s room was, and Faye was right. When Joe reached out to press the button, Neely stayed his hand and turned to face their follower.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“I have an urgent request for Congressman Judd.”
Faye was in the mood to tell him to write a letter to his own congressman. That mood passed when she looked up into the man’s face. He had the strong, proud, ebony-dark features of west Africa, the homeland of virtually all Americans of African descent, and he had the rangy, powerful body a face like that demanded. He was also the most handsome man Faye had ever seen. Excepting, of course, Joe.
His face and form seemed to have the same effect on Neely as it had on Faye, because the sheriff did nothing to stop him from making his pitch. Judd, himself, did nothing to stop him. In fact, he encouraged him, reaching out a hand and responding like a man who truly believes in his party and what it stands for. “Nice to meet you, son. May I presume that you, too, are a Democrat?”
“I will support any political party who gives my people their due. I haven’t seen one of those yet.”
“I’m listening. But why don’t you tell me your name, first?”
“My name is Ross Donnelly.” Spreading well-muscled arms sheathed in a well-fitting business suit, Donnelly flung his hands outward and said, “Look around you, sir, at this fine hotel. It makes money for the Choctaws, every day. What does black America have that can compare with this?”
Judd’s brow grew a bit more furrowed. “You think we should build some casinos?”
The outstretched hands clenched into fists, and Donnelly’s low voice boomed as strongly as if he were the one who was a politician. “No. I think we deserve compensation for historic wrongs. Native Americans were surely mistreated. They were herded onto reservations, and even the income due them from the use of those lands was misused by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Stolen. But they at least had some land, and they had their sovereignty. Some of them were lucky enough to find oil or minerals on that land. Some of them have built casinos, where the rest of America lines up for the chance to hand over money, every day and every night. Some of them, like the Choctaw, have built an empire on the scrap of land that nobody else wanted. That land was a form of capital. I just think my people deserve the capital they need to build a better life.”
Judd nodded, as if it had taken him a moment to gather the gist of Donnelly’s argument. “You’re talking about reparations. That’s a hot topic, Ross.”
“Why shouldn’t we be compensated for the wealth we left behind in Africa? Why shouldn’t we inherit the payment our enslaved ancestors didn’t receive for their labor? Why shouldn’t we have the chance to claw our way up society’s ladder, like the Choctaws have? Don’t you think we’re due something, sir?”
He gazed into Judd’s eyes, which were unreadable. Then he turned his attention to Faye. “Don’t you?”
Faye, who had relentlessly pursued regaining the lands stolen from her African-American ancestors during the Jim Crow years, wasn’t sure she agreed with Ross, but she couldn’t bring herself to say no. She broke the festering silence by introducing herself, instead. Extending a hand, she said, “My name’s Faye Longchamp. You make an interesting argument.”
Donnelly reached into his breast pocket and retrieved a sleek case full of business cards. His dark eyes communicated something different each time he handed out a card. When fastened on Faye, their expression suggested that he had more than business on his mind. When directed at Joe and Sheriff Rutland, his expression was more perfunctory, as if he’d rather not give personal information to law enforcement, nor to a man whose allegiance might be elsewhere. If Joe were wearing his customary Native American garb, instead of continuing his odd campaign to look like a white man, Donnelly might have guarded his words still more carefully.
Turning his attention to Judd last, he looked at him like a man approaching an equal for help with a cause that concerned them both. As Ross extended the card in the older man’s direction, Judd turned and pressed the elevator button, saying, “I’d like to hear more of your thoughts, Ross. I’m feeling a little tired right now, but there’s no reason you can’t come up and talk to me while I relax a little.”
Would it take a coronary to make Mr. Judd rest? Faye thought Neely was going to roll her eyes in frustration. She wanted to tell her to just let it go. Some people simply can’t be protected from themselves.
Waving good-bye to Neely after they’d left Mr. Judd and Ross in Judd’s suite, Faye led Joe toward the grill where the hotel’s cheaper lunches were to be had. “Let’s grab a bite here. I want to talk to Mr. Judd, and I don’t want to do it in front of his new friend Ross.”
“You mean your new friend Ross.”
Faye smirked instead of answering him.
“I’ve been thinking,” Joe said, nodding his thanks to the waitress for his burger and fries. “I noticed that you’ve been fretting over the sheriff suspecting that somebody on Dr. Mailer’s team might have killed Mr. Calhoun.”
“Well, I don’t like to think about somebody who’s innocent being accused of murder.” Faye didn’t point out that her biggest fear had been that the sheriff would focus on Joe as a suspect. Looking out for her other friends had always been secondary to protecting Joe. She wasn’t sure whether he understood that.
“So you helped the sheriff figure out that the murder weapon was old, which took some focus off any flintknappers. Mostly off of me, I guess.”
Okay. So maybe Joe had understood how desperate she’d been to keep him off Neely Rutland’s suspect list.
Joe was still talking. “You said it bothered you to tell her that Bodie was a champion atlatl thrower. But how well do you know Bodie, anyway?”
“Well, he was the teaching assistant in my lithics lab last semester. A bunch of us went to happy hour a couple of times, and he was in the group. I went to a party at his house, once. And…well, that’s about all. But he seems like a nice guy.”
“That’s what they said about Ted Bundy. You don’t know anything else about him?”
A dim memory surfaced of harsh words between Bodie and another classmate that mushroomed into the kind of barroom argument where the arguers are told to take it outside. And the more she thought about it, the more sure she was that Bodie was passed out on the couch before she left his party.
“He drinks. And when he drinks, he has a temper.”
“Plus, he has a lot of skill with a deadly weapon,” Joe pointed out. “Just like I do. What about Toneisha?”
“She was in a couple of my classes last semester. We had lunch once after class. That’s about all. But I like her.”
“Me, too. Not that it makes much of a difference. I wouldn’t know a killer if they bit me.”
“Toneisha, on the other hand, likes Bodie. A whole lot. He has no idea.” An unwelcome thought entered Faye’s mind. “Didn’t Toneisha and Bodie give each other alibis for the night Mr. Calhoun died?”
Joe nodded. “I was waiting for you to notice that.”
Now and then, Faye still found herself surprised by the logic of Joe’s thought processes. Then she found herself surprised by her own prejudices. If anyone should see past his lack of a formal education, it should be her. Joe possessed the equivalent of a Ph.D. in ancient weapons, but he worked as a lowly technician because learning disabilities and school don’t mix. After six months of intensive tutoring, he was nearly ready to take his high school equivalency test, except for that pesky math requirement. Every time Joe shot an arrow at a moving squirrel, he did sophisticated calculus in his head. But instead of getting a good grade, he got dinner.
“Since Toneisha and Bodie provided alibis for each other,” she said, “I don’t think we can say for sure where either of them were that night. Toneisha would do anything for Bodie.”
“And then there’s Chuck and Dr. Mailer and Oka Hofobi,” Joe continued relentlessly.
“Oh, Oka Hofobi is so quiet. He’s like you, in some ways. Dr. Mailer is such a gentle man, and Chuck is weird and all, but I just don’t think…”
Joe’s green eyes glinted in amusement. “But they’re all dead serious about archaeology. You’re really so sure none of them killed Mr. Calhoun to save that mound? Think back. You knew some people who killed other folks. Did you see it coming?”
The answer was no. She’d looked two cold-blooded murderers in the face and never suspected a thing. Her obliviousness had nearly gotten her killed, twice. Joe had saved her both times…but both times he’d had to kill somebody to do it. Granted, both of those somebodies had needed killing. Still, if asked beforehand whether Joe had it in him to kill, even in self-defense, her answer would have been no. Clearly, she was a rotten judge of character.
She admitted defeat. “When will I stop needing you to protect me from myself?”
“Probably never, which is okay by me.”
They chewed on their lunches in silence for awhile, but Joe wasn’t through with her yet.
“You sure have been worried about Mr. Judd today.”
“He was really sick. What’s your point?”
“How well do you know him?”
Faye beckoned the waitress for their check. “Now don’t tell me you think he killed Mr. Calhoun. He looks a little frail to overpower a man that size.”
“So he does. I’m just pointing out how dead-set you were on making sure he was okay.”
“This is wrong?”
“No. It’s just that you take care of everybody but Faye. You made sure that Neely doesn’t suspect me of killing Mr. Calhoun. Any fool could see what you were up to. I did, and Neely probably did, too.”
“Why wouldn’t I want her to know you’re innocent? You are. We were together the whole day and night that Mr. Calhoun was killed.” Faye charged their meals to her room and rose to leave. “Isn’t it okay for me to presume you’re innocent?”
“Sure. Since I am, and you know it. But there’s no point in running interference for the whole crew, when you don’t know they’re innocent and nobody’s asked you to.”
Faye glared at him and stalked toward the elevator. Joe, with his long easy strides, kept up with her easily.
“I think I finally figured out why you try to take care of everybody, Faye. I think it’s because you need a baby.”
It crossed Faye’s mind to snap back at him by asking, “You offering to help with that?”, but there was no telling what honest Joe might say.
Instead she
retorted, “I’ve got time,” in a tone of voice that didn’t invite further conversation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Congressman Judd answered their knock promptly, saying, “I thought you’d be back.”
“I heard the sheriff discouraging you from trying to find that old cemetery,” Faye said as she and Joe entered the suite. She looked around for Ross Donnelly, but he’d had the social finesse not to overstay his welcome. She wasn’t surprised. “The sheriff may be right. It may be dangerous for us to go trekking through the woods, and there may be nothing to learn there about your attack, even if you do find the cemetery. But I know a way to get to it without trespassing on anybody’s property.”
“I’m listening.” Judd backed away from the door and gestured at two chairs, settling himself on the sofa. Faye wished he would cast good manners aside and rest on the bed. For a moment she wondered whether Joe would think she was being overly solicitous if he knew what she was thinking. She decided she didn’t care. Much.
“Are you familiar with the concept of ‘Waters of the State’?” she asked the congressman.
“I understand that it means that nobody can own a body of water, so nobody can keep you out of it. One time, my friend took me for a boat ride on the Silver River in Florida. We rode that river right up to the headwaters at Silver Springs, and just sat there for a while, looking at all the people who paid to get into the theme park. The glass-bottomed boats floated around us, doing their tourist thing, and I’m sure they wished we’d go away, but there wasn’t a damn thing anybody could do to make us leave. Waters of the State. The phrase has a populist ring to it. I like that. But how does it get me where I want to go?”
“Yeah, I love to run my john boat up and down the coastline and look at all those million-dollar houses,” Joe said. “Me and my old boat don’t do much for their million-dollar view, but it’s as much mine as it is theirs.”
Effigies Page 11
