A Dark Path

by Robert E. Dunn

“Mr. Turner?”

  When he looked back at me, gears were turning behind his old-copper eyes. He started to say something but stopped.

  “Earl?”

  Sometimes you can see someone rewriting their thoughts. Cops see it all the time in suspects. They try to edit every word. Usually it’s so obvious you can’t help but catch them in the lies. With victims and witnesses it’s different. Everyone lies. Everyone holds things back. Often, it’s just an honest attempt not to make things worse. Even more often, it’s about not letting yourself look like an idiot. In his head, Earl Turner was running back a tape and thinking through what was on it. “I want my truck.” The anger had become evasion.

  He wanted his truck. I believed that. I didn’t believe that was why he’d come here. “What’s going on?” I hoped the generic question would allow him to lead himself to the truth.

  “It means a lot to me.”

  “I know. It’s a beautiful truck.”

  That thawed his chill slightly. Turner allowed himself a small smile. “It took a lot of work. One day it was going to be Tyrell’s.” Saying the name put the hurt back into his face.

  “Why didn’t you tell me it was gone when I asked?”

  “Tyrell had it.”

  “I believe so.”

  “He took it without askin’. I didn’t want anyone thinking he stole it. He’s a good boy. He’s the best kid a man could ask to raise.”

  I took note of the slip into present tense and the fatigued slump of his body. The fact of his loss had become real for Earl Turner.

  I pointed to a chair in front of my desk. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

  He did. Then he turned to look out the open door. I though he was going to open up. I was wrong. Earl stared then fiddled with the phone in his hands.

  “You have a cell phone?” I asked trying to prod him into talking.

  He looked at the device in his hands as if he was seeing it there for the first time. “It’s not mine. It was Elaine’s. I keep it going for emergencies.” His attention and voice faded again.

  I waited hoping he would come to the decision to talk to me. I noticed that his hands no longer fidgeted with the phone. Instead, he had it pressed into a tight grip that paled the thick brown skin at his knuckles. When waiting reached the point of wishful thinking, I got bolder. “You didn’t come here about your truck.”

  “No?” He didn’t look at me.

  “No. You have something else on your mind.”

  “I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Yes, you do. But you have something specific to share with me.”

  “I may not have learned every lesson life sent my way. But I have learned one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “No one is as smart as they think they are.”

  Chapter 11

  Neither Cherry Dando nor my mother showed up at my office that morning. Not that I’d really expected them to. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t be hard to find. I wasn’t in the kind of hurry I had been earlier in the morning. I still believed that Dando probably killed Tyrell Turner and burned the body—because somehow the kid had interfered with the grave robbing. But belief is just that. I didn’t have real evidence.

  After Earl Turner left my office, I had additional worries. The tangled string was messier and longer than I thought. Earl was hiding more than he said. I wasn’t sure if Duck was hiding anything: but the men who visited me that morning were reacting to pressures I couldn’t see. The problem with that was my inability to judge their understanding of the forces that moved them. Were they planning or reacting? Desperation was a powerful motivator. Duck and Turner would not be the first men trying to cast off the weight they carried—without understanding how it got there in the first place.

  Our evidence tech showed up with a small box. I signed the chain of custody receipt for the contents of Earl Turner’s truck. There wasn’t much. Two books were sealed in individual plastic bags. Both were about the search for secret silver in the Ozarks. Two other bags contained sheets of paper. One was a wrinkled red copy of the same New American Covenant flier Dando had tried to hide in Johnson Rath’s truck. The other was a bill of sale for the truck—listing Tyrell as the seller and Cherry Dando as the buyer. In terms of transferring ownership, it was worthless. As evidence, it was almost perfect. It wasn’t an official state of Missouri form. In fact it wasn’t official anything. The bill of sale was the kind of generic paperwork you can download from the internet. I was no expert, but I was pretty sure that—for a rebuilt and restored vehicle like the Chevy—the bill of sale needed to be notarized. What it did have were signatures: Tyrell’s and Dando’s.

  Also bagged were a single key attached to a plastic fob, a cigarette butt, and a business card. The card was interesting. The name on it was Landis Tau. It said he was a lawyer with the Midwest Center for Civil Rights Justice.

  Was it possible that Cherry Dando and / or my mother were working against Rath and his New American Covenant? I honestly didn’t care about Dando, but if there was any chance my mother was more than she seemed. . .

  I logged out of the office and got on the road back to Springfield.

  * * * *

  The offices of the Midwest Center for Civil Rights Justice were downtown—not far from the federal building. I called ahead and asked Agent Birch to meet me. Jurisdiction was always an issue between local cops and federal officers. This time, I wanted him on my side. If you’re making a visit to a lawyer who regularly takes on the feds, you want to show you can play on his turf.

  That thinking made me feel silly once we were ushered into Mr. Tau’s office. Not only was he a gentleman, but he was one of the nicest men you could ever meet. He was less than imposing physically. Mr. Tau was a little person—a politically correct term that I can’t help but think foolish—not that I have a better idea. At least there was no reason I could see to bring up the issue.

  Agent Birch went ahead of me into the office and extended his hand to Tau. His position made it appear that he was bowing. Birch didn’t have any kind of reaction to the man’s height—and I hoped I could do as well.

  “Thank you for seeing us,” Birch said.

  “Of course.” Tau turned to me and raised his hand to mine. “It’s not every day I get a visit from the DEA and the Sheriff’s Department.” His eyes were greenish, and a good match for the red remaining in his graying hair. He kept his pale jade gaze on me and his grip tightened.

  “Really?” I asked—surprised as much by the scrutiny as the statement. “I would have thought that your kind of work would at least bring the feds here regularly.”

  Tau smiled. He grinned, still holding my hand. “I said it’s not every day. That doesn’t make it rare.” His grip tightened and he pulled me closer to him. “I know you.”

  “You do?” His hand fell away from mine. “How?”

  “Hurricane.” The nickname was both a statement and an explanation. “Who, in Ozarks law enforcement, hasn’t heard of you?”

  “Good things, I hope.”

  He laughed as if I had made a joke. “You are not known for your light step on civil rights.” Tau went back to sit behind his desk. “But you’re not known for abusing them either. People say you deserve the moniker.”

  “He’s got your number, Hurricane.” Birch added.

  “Well, we’re not here to talk about me.”

  “Now that’s a pity,” Tau said sounding sincere. “I imagine you have stories. Please—” He gestured to the chairs in front of his desk. “Sit. Tell me how I can help.”

  We sat and Birch nodded at me, “It’s your show.”

  “I was hoping you could help me understand what interest Cherry Dando would have in a civil rights attorney.”

  “Cherry Dando?” Tau laughed again. “Now that’s a name. It reminds me of the gun hand in Red River. Did you ever
see that one? John Wayne. Montgomery Clift.” He looked disappointed when we both shook our heads. “Well, it’s a great name. But I can’t say I know him. Or is it a him? That would be a great stripper name too.”

  Birch snickered.

  I said, “Maybe you know his wife, Carmen Dando?”

  “Still no.” Tau answered. “Can you say what the investigation involves or what brought you to me?”

  I knew without asking that things had gotten even more complicated. “Tyrell Turner.” It wasn’t a question.

  The answer came in the lawyer’s face first. Then, “What’s happened?”

  “He was your client then?”

  “Was?”

  “He’s been killed.”

  “Those fuckers.” The quiet expletive was like a shout. “Those racist, hateful bags of pus.”

  Tau was reminding me more and more of the sheriff.

  “Exactly which racist, hateful bags of pus are we talking about?” Birch asked.

  “Ordinarily I would say that’s privileged information.”

  “Ordinarily?” I would have given anyone else a few moments to think. With an experienced lawyer, I thought I needed to keep the urgency fresh.

  “That young man would not have wanted me to stand behind legal walls. He wanted the truth out there. In fact, he wanted a big splash. Lots of publicity. Tyrell wanted to pull back all the curtains and stamp his whole life on those people.”

  “Pulling back curtains can be dangerous,” I responded. “And it probably was. But we need to know which curtains exactly.”

  “Did you know he wanted to go to law school?” Tau took Birch and I in with the question. “He would have made it too. He was the kind of kid who wanted to write Justice on the walls in red letters, ten feet high.”

  “After my own heart.” The admiration in Birch’s voice was real.

  “Do you know about his mother?” Tau asked him.

  “I do,” I answered. “I’ve talked with Tyrell’s grandfather, Earl Turner. I don’t think Agent Birch knows about the abduction or rape.”

  “Or her suicide?” Tau added.

  “Detective Williams and I are working on different but intersecting cases.” Birch explained. “Mine is a federal investigation into drug trafficking, criminal racketeering, and. . . uh. . .” His reluctance was clear. Birch didn’t know Tau or his clients. He couldn’t give too much away. “Interstate gang activity,” he finished carefully.

  Tau laughed again—like a man who already knows the answers. “You’re investigating the local triangle of white shame, the New American Covenant, the AB, and the Ozarks Nightriders.”

  “How do you know that?” Birch’s voice tightened to match the narrowing of his eyes.

  “That’s what we do here. We track the gangs, the militias, the false front churches, and the lone wolf internet voices who spread hate and peddle race war. We have files on all your bad guys.”

  I was confused. Or perhaps I had been blinded by my own situation. I had really been thinking the connections were only about Dando and my mother. The search for buried silver and the family connection to Tyrell was how I had been piecing things together. The Nightriders had my vote for weapon of choice: hired thugs to do the dirty work. I may have been wrong. “How does Tyrell Turner figure into all that?”

  Tau leaned back in the chair with a thoughtful, storytelling look. Again I was reminded of the sheriff. For the first time I noticed his chair. It fit him perfectly. That made sense I guess. A large office chair might have made him look small. I already had the impression that small was not a definition to Landis Tau’s life.

  “Tyrell doesn’t figure into it so much as it figures into him. And his plans.” Tau reached to his throat. He pulled his tie lose and unbuttoned the collar button. “He brought most of it to me. He had files full of clippings and case histories of how the Southern Poverty Law Center had used civil litigation against groups like the Klan.”

  “He wanted to sue these guys?” Birch asked.

  Tau shook his head. “More than that. He had an original idea and wanted to crush them.”

  “What idea?” I was hooked.

  “Tyrell claimed that his mother was abducted and raped by men who were jointly members of the Ozarks Nightriders and The New American Covenant–The Sword and The Word. His claim was that they acted as a group under the direction of Johnson Rath.”

  “He wanted to pursue civil rights charges.” Birch was hooked as deeply as I was.

  “More,” Tau answered, “he wanted to sue the organizations for paternity and a life time of child support.”

  “Could that work?” I was amazed at the thought.

  “As far as we could tell, there was no reason why not. Corporations and nonprofits are held responsible for their actions every day. If we could show it was an organizational decision to violate the civil rights of Elaine Turner—and that those actions led directly to Tyrell’s birth and his mother’s eventual suicide—we had a good shot.”

  “What good would it do?”

  “Good?” Tau looked at me and I half-expected him to put dirty boots up on his desk. Or in his case, expensive oxfords. “More than anything, Tyrell wanted to own a piece of them—just as he felt they owned a part of his life. Beyond that. . . Well it depended on what the courts would allow us. We felt pretty sure of the civil rights issue. The paternity thing?” He shrugged. “But any way you look at it—things were going to be very public and extremely embarrassing. That was going to have a big impact on the alliance between The New American Covenant and the AB.”

  “You think any of them knew about Tyrell’s plans?”

  “Tyrell was not a leave-well-enough-alone kind of kid.”

  “You mean he got in the middle of things,” Birch said.

  “I warned him. . .” Tau looked and sounded like a man regretting things. “Hell, I begged him. Tyrell said he had someone giving him information.”

  “Who?” I leaned in, eager for a name.

  “He never told me the name.” Tau answered. “I asked. The kid seemed to think he was protecting sources or something. He didn’t think much of the guy, I can tell you that. Tyrell called him a treasure hunter—like it was a big joke.”

  “That’s Dando.” I looked from Tau to Birch and back. “Cherry Dando is looking for Yocum silver dollars—buried in an abandoned black cemetery. The graves are located on the land owned by Rath and the New American Covenant.”

  “Yocum dollars?” Tau asked. “I thought those were just a legend.”

  “Me too,” I told him. “But Dando thinks they’re real. And he thinks they’re buried on that land.”

  “Johnson said he’s getting a lot of pressure from his AB friends to get his compound built.” Birch jumped in. “Ever since Waco and Ruby Ridge, the FBI is touchy about getting involved in these groups that cloak themselves in religious freedom.”

  “I thought the militia movement and separatist groups were a high priority.”

  “Only if they show up as a domestic terrorism concern.” Tau explained. “Your general haters and pure, white, Christian, Nazis are left to groups like ours.” He pointed at Agent Birch. “You said the FBI was touchy about it. You’re not FBI.”

  “No.” Birch grinned broadly. “I am not.” He didn’t say it, but I got the feeling that he wasn’t touchy about dealing with these groups at all.

  I thought things had reached a conclusion. I was about to say so when Tau asked me, “What do you think of what we do here?” He must have seen me trying to puzzle out the motive in his question. “Personally, I mean. Not as a law enforcement professional.”

  “I think you’re trying to empty a lake with a teaspoon. But it’s good work.”

  Tau laughed again. It came easy to him. “Right on both counts,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I think you wou
ld make a good fit on our board of directors.”

  That caught me off guard.

  “Me?”

  “A perfect fit really. I hope you will think about it.”

  “Why?”

  “We can do a lot of good together.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “You’re evading.”

  “Every chance I get.”

  “Why—me?”

  “There are two kinds of board members for nonprofits. Those with connections and those with cash. You have both.”

  “I think you overestimate me on both counts.”

  “Your estimated net worth is 4.5 million. You founded and funded your own charity to help those Peruvian girls caught up in trafficking last year. It’s impressive that you recruited Congresswoman Whilomina Tindall to be on the board in that project. But the most impressive thing is that you’ve never quit your job.”

  “I need the job more than the money.”

  “Do more with the money. Then you won’t feel that way.”

  “You know a lot about me.”

  “I guarantee every worthy cause in a hundred miles knows a lot about you, Hurricane.”

  * * * *

  In the parking lot outside the offices of the Midwest Center for Civil Rights Justice, the first thing Agent Devon Birch said to me was, “Four and a half million dollars?”

  “That was the value of the estate my husband left when he died,” I told him. Then I winked. “It’s more now.”

  “More?”

  “He was an artist. The value of all his work went up. So did the licensing fees and sales of prints, t-shirts, calendars, mugs, that sort of thing. I own a restaurant with a great bar too. You should come have a drink and dinner sometime.”

  “Oh, you know I will.”

  I closed the door of my truck and turned both the air conditioning and the radio way up. I drove back to Taney County—bouncing my thoughts off the oldies. I didn’t gain any new insights. On the bright side I didn’t feel like drinking myself blind or beating anyone senseless—so I was calling it a win.

  A few miles outside of Forsyth, my phone rang. Tau’s offer to be on the board of the Midwest Center for Civil Rights Justice was on my mind. I didn’t really want to set my consideration aside for an unknown caller. Unfortunately, a cop doesn’t have the luxury to ignore calls. “Detective Williams.”