A Dark Path

by Robert E. Dunn

  I nodded, then looked again at Sheriff Benson by the tape perimeter. I didn’t see a different man, but maybe a slightly deeper one.

  “That was probably as much a dig for Johnson’s sake as an explanation. Like I said, things were different back then. A law officer, a county sheriff like Chuck, had a lot more latitude.”

  “Latitude?”

  “Brass latitude.”

  “He carried brass knuckles on duty?” I sounded incredulous even to myself.

  Riley made an exaggerated shrug. “On duty. Off. It didn’t matter.”

  “What happened?”

  “Why do you think Johnson wears that big beard? No one’s seen the lower part of his face since Chuck took it apart.”

  “Good for him.”

  “No—what was good for him was what happened after. He had to take a good hard look at what his friend had done—and what he himself believed in. When the test came, he passed. He wasn’t nearly so tolerant after that. At least not to hateful peckerwoods. But he went even further. Chuck got to know Earl Turner as he recovered. Johnson called him a race traitor.”

  “You said Uncle Orson was there. I’m surprised I’ve never heard this story.”

  “It was Orson who showed up and pulled the two apart. He was the one who started first aid and even gave mouth-to-mouth to Earl. I don’t think it’s a story he would tell about himself.”

  “How long was Johnson put away for?”

  “Six months.”

  “What?”

  “Pled out to simple assault. It set a thorn in Chuck’s boot, that’s for sure. Johnson shows up and the pair of them go at it every few years.”

  “Now Johnson owns this land,” I said—as much for myself as for Riley.

  “Not directly, I’m betting.”

  “Then how?”

  “Through a group. The kind with a message. I doubt that Johnson has changed his feathers.”

  I stared over at the activity inside the tape perimeter. The body was up on a gurney and the CA was gingerly covering and securing it. The sheriff broke the connection on his phone and immediately dialed another number. He was angry or worried or both.

  “I need to get back to the work of investigation,” I told Riley. “I’m sorry I don’t really have anything to give you.”

  “No worries,” he answered. “I have some new ideas and some research to do. We’ll talk again soon.”

  Riley returned to his car where he leaned over the hood and jotted things into a notebook.

  I had more of my own notes and sketches to make. And there was that conversation I wanted to have with Cherry Dando. After what happened with Johnson, that was bumped up on my list. They clearly knew each other.

  I decided to return to the burn circle to draw out the scene with the body removed, but first, I wanted to have a talk with the sheriff.

  Sheriff Benson was still on the phone, or on the phone again, when I approached. He moved away, not inviting company. I took the hint and went on to my crime scene.

  Under the body were more bones. These were grouped—a few ribs, a few vertebrae, longer bones—in clusters. It made me doubly sure that the other bones had been spread out intentionally. The only reason I could imagine was to hide what they were. As I sketched out the locations and shapes, I kept casting my eyes up to where the firemen milled around their truck.

  It looked to me like the body or bodies that were rendered to bone were covered over with wood. They were definitely under the unconsumed body. It had either been placed on top of the pile or covered only slightly with brush.

  Once things were sketched out, I looked around the unburned part of the clearing. It was obvious where brush had been cut. There were stumps, mostly of red cedar, cropped close to the ground. That’s not unusual for the area. Red cedar is actually a kind of juniper. It grows like a weed on any bare ground in Missouri. Whenever you leave a field fallow for any length of time, these trees are what you have to contend with. From the size of the stumps and the standing trees, this ground had been left alone for a few years. Someone was changing that.

  In this drought, red cedar cut and piled would take no time to dry into a fire waiting to happen. The bits of evergreen branches that had been dropped and not added to the pile were like dead brown feathers on the ground. I pushed some around with the toe of my boot.

  A look at the cut stumps told me something more. The larger ones were smooth topped. They were cut with a chainsaw. Smaller ones had been axed or snipped with loping shears. That made me think there was more than one person working to clear the land. One man with a chainsaw would probably use it on everything he could. The way the work was divided, large and small, suggested something else. It could have been an adult and a younger helper—or an adult and a smaller adult.

  I put out my foot to kick aside a small branch. The motion was stopped by something solid. I had hit a rock. In Ozarks fields, rocks grow like a regular crop. Through freeze and frost cycles, bits of an ancient seabed were constantly raised to the light. When my foot passed over the top, I stumbled slightly and came down with my sole flat on the stone.

  Flat was the perfect description. The surface under my foot was unnaturally level.

  Using my toe, I cleared the tinder-like weeds and grass. What was revealed looked like no stone I had ever encountered in the Ozarks. It was grey and flat without being precisely smooth. It had a texture to it like a statue left in the weather for ages. The stone was split by three big cracks and shot through with streaks of black and white. The whole thing was peppered by green spots of lichen.

  I tried to pull it up but failed. The stone was either too heavy or too well stuck. I needed a tool.

  The rake I had borrowed from Dando worked perfectly.

  The stone wasn’t as thick as I imagined. It had simply been imbedded so long it may as well have been part of the ground. When I turned over the first piece, I knew instantly what it was. It wasn’t until I had all three pieces that I could read the name: Freeman Patee. It was a headstone.

  The name was the only information on the incomplete stone. I dug in with the rake, looking for more pieces of granite that might be in the ground. A few minutes later, I hit another stone. This time it wasn’t face down, but it was pressed into the ground. Pulling the weeds revealed a cement square about eight inches across. Formed in the surface was the word, Unknown.

  “Sheriff,” I called but didn’t shout.

  He looked.

  “Sheriff,” I raised my voice and added urgency.

  He waved me off, then pointed to the phone at his ear.

  “Sheriff.” I shouted. “I need you now.”

  He hung up as he walked to me.

  I didn’t say anything as he approached. Kneeling, I held the grass to the side—keeping the stone on display.

  He stopped about ten feet away, staring. When he raised his gaze to mine he asked, “Are there more?”

  “You know what it is?”

  “I know full well. Have you found any more?”

  I pointed to the first stone I found. It was pointed skyward now. The mud filling the carved letters of Freeman Patee’s name had already begun to dry out.

  Sheriff Benson went to it. He watched it for a few moments like it would walk away if he wasn’t looking. “Get everyone over here—all the deputies—the firemen too. Send Riley. He’ll want to be part of this.”

  “Part of what?”

  “There’s going to be more. We need to find them. Tell Riley to bring his camera.” He raised his phone again.

  “Wait,” I said before he could get drawn into another conversation.

  The Sheriff didn’t say anything, but his look was impatient. I gave him a quick outline of my suspicions and observations about Cherry Dando.

  “Then get him out here,” the sheriff said. “I’ll keep an eye on him. Don
’t let the CA van go until you have everything you need. I want you to follow it to autopsy.”

  “Follow it? Why?”

  “Because I want to do everything about this righter than right.”

  “What’s that mean? What do you know?”

  He didn’t answer. When I tried to hold his gaze and keep my questions alive, the sheriff turned away. He punched the phone and talked to Darlene, our daytime dispatcher, with his back to me.

  As I went, I heard him tell her to send out everyone not assigned and to call in everyone off-duty. More than that, he told her to ask for volunteers.

  I pulled out my own phone and called Billy. He answered on the first ring.

  “What time did you get called out?” he asked. “I was dead to the world. But in a good way.” The flirt in his voice was a nice thing to hear.

  Before he could get any deeper into it, I gave him the short version.

  “I’m on my way,” he said before I’d even finished. “I’ll call your uncle. And Clare Bolin too.”

  That was a good idea. Except for tours in Vietnam, Uncle Orson had lived all of his life in Taney County. Clare Bolin was an old moonshiner and friend of both my uncle and the sheriff. He was also a master distiller and bartender at Moonshines. That made him, technically, my employee. The bar is one of the many assets, or rather complications, my husband left me when he passed away. There was a lot of Ozarks history between those two men, not to mention a general willingness to dig in when asked.

  When I got off the phone, Cherry Dando was no longer with the group of firemen. He was standing by Johnson’s tall truck with his body half in the driver’s side door.

  Boredom dropped off the firemen’s faces when I told them the sheriff needed them to grab tools and help him search the field. One of them asked where Dando was. He would have called out to him if I hadn’t held up my hand. I wanted to see what was going on at Johnson’s truck without giving Dando time to think.

  First, I caught the coroner’s assistant and told him to wait for me. Then, I went back to talk with Dando. He never looked up as I approached. I doubt he could have heard me over the sound of wadding paper and his own cursing.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Dando froze. If it was possible to actually hear a man think I would have heard rusty gears turning and trying to sync up with an excuse.

  “Nothing,” was the gem he came up with. He followed up with, “What’s it to you?” The surly sound was an added bonus.

  “Come on out of there,” I told him, making sure to sound a little bothered myself.

  His arm moved and I heard paper tearing and crumpling.

  “Leave things where they are, Mr. Dando.”

  “Why?” he asked, finally backing out of the truck and looking at me. “You ain’t got no right—”

  “Sure seems to be a lot of talk of rights here today. All of it wrong.”

  “What are you talkin’ about? I was just going to take Johnson’s truck home for him.”

  “What’s with all the paper shuffling?”

  “Thing’s a mess.” He pointed into the cab like he had nothing to hide. “Ol’ Johnson isn’t much of a housekeeper.”

  “I bet. You weren’t trying to hide anything were you?”

  “Just gettin’ the burger bags off the seat so I could drive it.”

  I nodded like I understood, but kept my face immobile. He would know I didn’t believe him. I hoped he would feel the need to explain things further.

  He didn’t. Dando turned his head and spit into the weeds then said, “Well go ahead and look for yourself. I can’t stop you.”

  “How do you know Mr. Rath?”

  “What? Johnson?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “How do you know Johnson?”

  “You ain’t asked how I know you,” Dando fished.

  “I don’t care. I want to know how you know Johnson.”

  “We got chummy in the brig. Subic Bay.”

  “You’re not from around here.”

  “Naw. I’m a Texarkana boy.”

  “Which side?”

  “Shoot. You gotta ask? I’m a Razorback, born and bred. But I’m still the wildest and lovinest hunk ‘a manhood in either state.” He grinned like he was posing for his close-up.

  “That work with the ladies where you come from?”

  “Oh, now honey—you would be surprised the ladies it works with right around here.”

  “That’s a lot more of what I don’t care about. How’d you end up here?”

  He rubbed his jaw then spit again. It seemed to be a kind of a habit with him. His eyes, were a flattish brown. Like a bad hair dye job—they were all one color. Even without contrasts, they were bright and focused. “I came up here ’cause Johnson invited me. I get around some though—goin’ here and there the way a free man will. I come back though, cause of one of them ladies.”

  “Tell me about the bones.”

  He was surprised about the change in direction. “Bones?”

  “Over there,” I looked over at the burn circle in the taped perimeter.

  “What about them?” His eyes narrowed and his voice sounded cagey.

  I got the impression that Cherry Dando was no stranger to police interrogation. That didn’t mean he had any mastery of the process. “You moved them.”

  He spit again. “It was a fire. How was I supposed to know what was what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I ain’t telling you anything. I know my rights.”

  “How is it that you guys all know your rights, but you all spend so much time in jail?”

  “I’m not talking.”

  “No problem,” I said waving him away from the door. “I’ll pull your sheet. I’m betting you left a trail all the way back to Texarkana.”

  “They said you was a hard-ass bitch.”

  “People say a lot of things.”

  “Maybe so. But I’m thinkin’ they were right.”

  “Maybe so,” I echoed. “But I’m thinking you’re neck-deep in something you’re going to want out of soon.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve already been caught tampering with a crime scene. What say we add interfering with an investigation to that?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Oh I can, Mr. Dando. And when I reach under the seats of this truck, maybe run my fingers between the seats and back. . . Think I’ll find a little more to talk with you about?”

  “Whatever you find has nothing to do with me.”

  “Then why were you trying to hide things?”

  “As far as I know, there’s nothing to hide.” Dando sounded smug.

  “How long till all these nothings lead back to that body?”

  “What?” He was startled by the thought. “You can’t.”

  “Can’t what?”

  “I was on duty last night. Ask anyone. I was at the stationhouse when this call came in.”

  “You don’t have to be here to be a part of things. A worldly man like you knows that, don’t you, Mr. Dando?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know.” Cherry spit again. That time he didn’t turn his head far enough or put enough force behind it. The weak drizzle fell on his boot. He didn’t pay it any attention. “I know you’re picking on me because you don’t know anything. I didn’t have anything to do with killin’ that boy and you can’t show I did.”

  Two things caught me by the ear. Dando said “boy.” And he said it in a way that raised my red hair up like an angry radar.

  “Boy?” I asked.

  Dando looked at me but didn’t answer.

  “Why’d you say boy?”

  He shrugged and turned his head to spit again.

  “Stop it,” I ordered. “Keep your nasty habit to yourself
and answer the question.”

  “I don’t have to answer anything.”

  “Those nothings keep turning around to point at you, Cherry.”

  “It looks like a boy,” he said petulantly. “All right?”

  “He.”

  “What?”

  “You’re talking about a human being. Say—he.”

  Dando spit again. That time he didn’t bother to turn his head.

  To keep from getting his drippings on my boot, I lifted my foot. I resisted the urge to whip it into his kneecap. Instead, I grabbed him by the shoulder and flung him around to press up against the truck cab.

  “Hey, you can’t—”

  “Are you sure?” I asked him. “Because I seem to be doing it.” I pulled out my cuffs.

  “You got no cause.”

  “Questioning,” I said bluntly. “You’re lucky I can’t arrest someone simply for being an asshole. You would never get out of jail.” I turned him back around with his hands secured behind his back.

  “You got some hard lessons to learn, little miss—”

  He couldn’t finish his sentence after I hit him in the solar plexus. It’s hard to talk without air. I led him gasping back to where the cruisers were parked and left him in the back of one.

  Under and between the seats of Johnson’s truck were stacks of paper. Most were photocopied racist posters. They looked like Hitler Youth kindergarten art projects. Some of the papers—the ones wadded and shoved into the deepest corners of the upholstery—were recruiting flyers for the W&S. I puzzled that out to be short for Word and Sword. The combination of so many American flags and the phrase “White Power” left me feeling both charged and sick.

  I read every word then flipped it front to back looking for an address. Nothing. Meetings must be word of mouth only. No surprise there.

  A set of keys dangled from the truck ignition, along with a metal coin that had lightning bolt SS markings—rather than stars—in the blue field of an American flag. The flip side bore inscriptions in German surrounding the words Race Patriot.

  I took the keys and locked the truck—taking a couple of the flyers with me. As I walked across the cleared field back to the sheriff, I kept my eyes down looking for other grave markers. I also made a quick call to get Johnson Rath’s truck towed to our impound lot.