Wisdom of the Bones

by Paul Christopher

  Ray went down the hall and glanced into the press room that overlooked Main Street. There were at least a dozen reporters in the small room and lineups for the three telephones. A square-jawed reporter with smart eyes was heading out of the room. Ray thought he looked vaguely familiar. The press pass on his tweedy sports jacket said D. Rather.

  ‘You somebody I should be talking to? Somebody important?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice,’ said Ray. D. Rather made an irritated noise in his throat and slipped out through the doorway. He turned away from the open door and went into the Juvenile Bureau. Like Homicide–Robbery, the JB offices were almost empty. Millie Toombs, the fat, black bureau receptionist, was listening to a radio perched on top of a row of filing cabinets. She was wearing a billowing flower-print dress that seemed terribly out of place. Like Ewell, there were tears on her cheeks. She turned to Ray as he entered the long narrow room.

  ‘Isn’t it awful, Ray?! Just so awful!’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘I was downstairs on the steps when they went by. She was so beautiful and he was so handsome. Smiling and all and waving.’

  ‘I need some help, Millie.’

  She blinked at him, not understanding. ‘What?’

  ‘I need some help. Files.’

  ‘Files?’ She blinked again and this time lifted one hand and wiped at her face, the smeared make-up smearing even more, her eyes like a raccoon’s. It really was like a dream that he’d stepped into, out of place with everyone else.

  ‘Black children. Runaways or just missing. Eleven to thirteen, say, three, four days back.’

  ‘What do you want with them?’ The receptionist was looking at him as though he was speaking some foreign language.

  ‘A homicide,’ Ray said flatly. ‘I’m trying to identify the victim.’ The voice on the radio began to talk excitedly about a policeman who’d just been found shot beside his squad car in Oak Cliff. ‘Shit,’ said Ray, not quite believing what he was hearing.

  ‘Oh God,’ Millie moaned. Ray listened for a moment. There was no information on who the cop was or whether he’d been killed or not. Shot cops and governors, murdered presidents. Blood and brains in the hospital corridors, a little girl on a metal table, unbearably naked and torn.

  He tried to focus on what he was doing and touched Millie lightly on the arm. ‘What now!?’ She turned on him, her face flushed red, her eyes angry, as though he was intruding on some private space around her. Then she remembered and waved her hand at an overflowing wire basket on a desk beside the door. On top of the pile there was a magenta expanding file tied shut with the word CURRENT printed in large black letters on its side. ‘There!’ Millie said and turned her attention back to the radio. Ray thanked her even though she wasn’t listening, went to the desk and picked up the bulging file. He stood for a moment, listening to the newsman on the radio going back and forth between the assassination of President Kennedy and the shooting of the police officer. According to the man on the radio Johnson was now being sworn in as the new president of the United States and would soon arrive in Washington in Air Force One, Kennedy’s body and Mrs Kennedy with him.

  Putting the file folder under his arm, Ray left the JB and headed back down the hall towards Homicide–Robbery. Just before he reached the door a crowd of Stetson-wearing detectives and uniformed cops poured out into the corridor from the direction of the jail elevator and more people came around the corner from the main elevator lobby, pouring towards Ray like a thundering human flood. In the centre of it all he picked out two detectives, Charlie Walker and Gerry Hill, escorting a battered-looking man in khakis and a torn, mud-coloured shirt. Behind Ray, the press room was suddenly emptying out and he heard someone say, ‘They got him! They got the son of a bitch!’

  The corridor was now completely filled up and Ray was pushed off to one side, hanging on to the thick file, pressing it up against his chest to avoid having it torn from his hands. Walker and Hill managed to bully their way to the door of Homicide–Robbery, pushing away the reporters. They slammed the door behind them, leaving a pair of hefty-looking uniforms to block the path of anyone not authorised entrance. Realising that getting to his desk was going to be almost impossible, Ray tried to think of somewhere he could go to consult the Juvenile file. He remembered a supply room on the far side of the main lobby and pushed his way towards it.

  As he crossed in front of the stairs another crowd surged upward towards him, most of them carrying camera equipment or toting microphones. The elevator doors opened and Captain Fritz appeared, half a dozen uniforms and detectives trailing behind him. The narrow hall to Homicide–Robbery was still choked with people and the captain was brought up short. Questions were being thrown at him from all directions and suddenly there were flashbulbs popping everywhere.

  ‘Is this man a suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy?’

  ‘Now y’all don’t go saying that!’ Fritz barked. ‘He hasn’t been charged with that! He’s only being questioned about the police officer who was shot!’

  ‘What’s the policeman’s name?’

  ‘We’re not saying until his next of kin has been informed. Now if y’all will excuse me!’

  Scowling, Fritz pushed his heavy glasses up on his nose and elbowed his way down the corridor to his own office. With the tide of people heading in the opposite direction, Ray crossed to the supply room and slipped inside.

  There was a rubber doorstop on the floor and he kicked it into place at the base of the door, sealing himself in. He looked around. There were shelves on three sides filled with stationery and a sink against the back wall with a pail and squeeze mop beside it. There was a step stool in front of him and Ray sank down onto it gratefully. He slid the file onto one of the shelves and put a hand to his chest, resting for a moment before he did any more.

  He caught his breath, ignoring the faint tightness in his chest, and unwound the loop of string on the file. He opened the folder on his lap and began flipping quickly through the individual files, most of them consisting of no more than the standard single-page mimeographed Missing Persons report. Some of them had photographs stapled to them, most did not. There had been seventeen juvenile runaways since the beginning of the week, eight black, three Mexicans and six white. Of the eight Negroes only two were possibles, Alice Jane Watkiss, fourteen, and Martha Ellen Caddo, twelve. Neither report had a picture of the child in question. There was no mention of a scar in either report.

  Ray compared the two reports. The girl he’d seen this afternoon had been flat-chested and slim-hipped, the pubic area, what was left of it, bare. At fourteen, Alice Watkiss was probably more developed than that. Ray checked the name of the detective who’d taken the call. Patrick Haddon, working the four-to-midnight, and not someone Ray had ever seen, at least not to his knowledge. He thought about going back to the JB and getting Haddon’s number from Millie but then he decided against it. This was going to be a felonious freebie in Big D – nobody was going to be working on anything but Kennedy and even if they were off duty no one was going to be following up leads. Dallas, like the rest of the country, was going to be spending the night and the next few days in front of the television.

  Ray took out his notebook and pencil, then jotted down Martha Ellen Caddo’s particulars. The report was bare bones, listing name, address and lack of phone number – the initial contact had been made from a neighbour’s place. Apparently Martha Ellen had disappeared on her way home from the Paul Lawrence Dunbar Library on the downtown end of Thomas Avenue. Ray looked at the home address: Hugo Street and Woodside, which put it just off of Hall Street Park, and a good ten blocks from the library branch. A lot of distractions in those ten blocks, including a slew of bars and nightclubs and three movie theaters – and that was if she’d really been headed home. If she’d turned south instead of north she would have been downtown in five minutes. Or what if she’d taken a bus?

  * * *

  ‘She’s a victim, not the killer,’ sai
d Ron Odum, sitting in his kitchen. ‘All these what-if’s you’ve got don’t matter.’ He shrugged. ‘Whether she took a bus or not makes no never mind.’ There were no bottles of Jax on the table between them this time, only coffee. Real, not like the instant Ray made for himself. The rich smell of it wafting up from the percolator sitting on the stove filled the room.

  R. T. unfolded himself from his chair and went to fill his cup again. He came back, sat down and lit a cigarette. ‘I’m surprised you’re still at it.’

  ‘Because of the President?’

  ‘Kind of overwhelming, don’t you think?’ Ray’s ex-partner took a sip of coffee, looking across the table, smiling faintly. ‘Not your everyday run-of-the-mill Big D homicide.’

  Ray shook his head. ‘People are going to make a big thing about it but it could have been anywhere.’

  ‘Could have been,’ said Odum. ‘But it wasn’t. Just like your little girl and the bus. It happened here. It happened for a reason.’

  ‘And if this Martha Caddo turns out to be the girl I saw at Parkland today is there a reason for that?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Odum easily. ‘She’s a little black kid. According to what you found out your killer likes chopping up young girls, especially black girls. The man who killed Kennedy wanted to kill the president of the United States. The president of the United States happened to be in Dallas today.’

  ‘Then he was stupid,’ said Ray.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It was supposed to be raining today. If it’d been raining they would have had that bubble-top thing on the limousine. I saw them putting it back on at Parkland. Not much at forward planning, this assassin.’

  ‘Well, there you go,’ Odum answered. ‘You’re probably right, which tells you something about your man, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘He’s not stupid. By your count he’s killed eleven people and so far, at least until my old good friend Horatio Duval comes around, he’s got away with it. Smart.’

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘Smart. No one has good luck that long.’ Odum tipped ash into his saucer. ‘We’re back to what-ifs and coulda-beens again. If you hadn’t gone home for your daddy’s birthday you wouldn’t have found out about those other cases, now would you? Like I said, his luck ran out.’

  ‘Like the cop who got killed today.’

  ‘Officer J. D. Tippit.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Twelve hundred cops on the DPD? No.’ He took a last drag on the cigarette and butted it. ‘But you can bet your ass the guy they picked up gets charged with the President as well.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Probably don’t know yet. Just before you got here. They were shuffling the guy up to the cells and some reporter asked – turns out the guy worked at the School Book Depository. Half hour after the assassination he kills a cop in Oak Cliff who maybe just got his description from dispatch. Too much for coincidence.’

  ‘The guy I saw didn’t look like he could kill a roach with a size-twelve boot,’ said Ray. ‘Five-foot fuck all with skinny little arms and legs and pale as a mushroom.’

  ‘Lee Oswald,’ said Odum.

  ‘That’s his name?’

  ‘According to the TV.’ Odum nodded. ‘Lee Harvey Oswald.’ He paused and made a little sound in the back of his throat. ‘Strangest thing, Ray, they’re not running any commercials. Radio as well, from what I can tell. Damnedest thing.’

  ‘What do they know about this fellow?’

  ‘Not much, I don’t think. Not yet anyway.’

  ‘Well, this Lee Harvey Oswald isn’t going to help me find out who killed Jennings Price and all those little girls.’

  ‘Now that’s the part that really does stick in my craw,’ said Odum. ‘Last time you were here, it’s this Price character, so you think one way. Some kind of crazy killer, maybe this ex-boyfriend. Now you got all those girls upstate from all that time ago and you’ve got a fresh one they find not too far from the other. Hard to make up a story to go along with that.’

  ‘I already thought of that,’ Ray said wearily.

  ‘And?’

  ‘You’ve got someone killing little girls up north twenty-five years ago. The killing stops, maybe the guy gets put into the loony bin, maybe he’s in jail, maybe he just moves away, or maybe it’s like they used to say about Jack the Ripper. He was the son of somebody in the royal family or a cousin or something.’

  ‘No kings in Texas.’ Odum grinned. ‘Louisiana maybe, but not Texas.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Big shot. Governor, state senator. Someone who could cover things up. It doesn’t really matter.’

  ‘Keep going.’

  ‘Okay, so he’s out of the picture, at least in Texas. Twenty-five years goes by. He comes back or thinks enough water’s gone under the bridge to make it safe.’

  ‘So he kidnaps this little pickaninny and Jennings Price finds out?’

  ‘Doesn’t even have to be the girl I saw at Parkland. What if Price already knew, had found out about the old cases and was maybe blackmailing our killer? The killer gets fed up and turns him into chop suey.’

  ‘Which isn’t too strange when you think about it.’

  ‘I’ve got to go back and talk to Ruby again.’

  ‘Jack Ruby?’ Odum frowned.

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Of him.’ Odum kept frowning. ‘You’ve already seen him? When was that?’

  ‘Just after I talked to you last time.’

  ‘He tell you anything?’

  ‘Not a lot. He said a lot of gay guys meet each other at parties people set up for them in empty houses.’

  ‘Why would he know anything about it?’

  ‘He lives with a guy, for one thing.’

  ‘Doesn’t prove anything.’

  ‘No, but it gets you leaning in that direction.’

  ‘Who told you about Jack Ruby?’

  ‘McDonald.’

  ‘That old fart.’

  ‘He used to work Vice. Ruby’s got a nightclub. I can see him supplying those parties. Looks like a money-grubber.’

  Odum picked up his cigarettes and tapped the package against the table. ‘I was you I’d steer clear.’

  ‘That’s about all I have to go on.’ He sighed again. ‘It’s going to be a nightmare if I go back to the connection between Jennings Price and this whole antique thing. Talking to anyone in this town’s going to be screwed now.’

  ‘What about the pickaninny’s family? You talked to any of them yet?’

  Ray looked at his watch. Almost five. He glanced out the window over the sink that looked onto Ron Odum’s rear garden. It was already dark. ‘Next on my list,’ he said. There was a long silence. Odum broke it finally, his voice distant.

  ‘You remember what it was like, Ray? You remember what it was like to have a target come to you? Palm-of-your-hand stuff, solid gold, couldn’t fail if you tried.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ray.

  They’d gone hunting on a deer stand his daddy had rented not far from Lake Kiowa. No one was having any luck and Audie was particularly pissed since the Old Man had given him a brand-new rifle for his thirteenth birthday complete with a telescopic sight and a monogrammed leather case and all. Ray was using the old Garand and standing off a little to one side when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned.

  The buck was close to two hundred yards away, carefully lifting its hooves as it stepped like some kind of dainty dancer through the brush and trees and then it stopped and turned a second or two after Ray did, turning its head, big eyes staring at him. There was no shot at that range and too many trees between them but Ray knew the deer was his as surely as a sacrifice from Bible times. He lifted the Garand to his shoulder and his cheek and watched the deer take three steps to outline itself against a small rise bare of trees. It turned slowly, offering up its flank, and Ray fired, squeezing the trigger, keeping the rifle steady and watching as the buck tumbled down, first to its knees and
then sideways as it died, the feet pointing towards him.

  ‘That was mine!’ Audie screamed, his face red, the big gleaming gun in his hands, sunlight winking off the glass eye of the scope. ‘That deer was mine!’ But Ray knew it wasn’t true, knew that the deer had been his to kill long before they’d even come to the stand. Later in your life you might call it nothing more than luck or coincidence but back then Ray knew better, knew that it was magic and superstition rolled into one, destiny maybe, or fate. No matter how you looked at it, the deer had come to him, and him alone.

  ‘They’re already saying on the news that maybe there was more than one shooter involved,’ said Odum. ‘But I don’t think so. Dallas didn’t kill the President, this Lee Oswald character did. He didn’t think about it, he looked at the newspaper and he saw the motorcade was going right by the place he worked and he took a gun and he fired because he was there and Kennedy was there and that was all she wrote.’

  Ray clambered to his feet. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘One way or the other I guess he’ll have his day in court and then we’ll know.’

  ‘We’ll never know what really happened,’ said Odum, starkly, his eyes out of focus, seeing somewhere, something else. He stood himself to walk Ray out to his car. ‘You can bet on it.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Monster wept as he sat on the sagging old couch and stared blankly at the television set on the far side of the almost-unfurnished room. He’d known about the assassination almost from the time it happened. The radio he kept at the shop was always on and always tuned to KLIF so he could listen to Russ Knight, his favourite disc jockey, and Joe Long, who did the news. At a little after twelve thirty in the afternoon there’d been a flurry of unsubstantiated reports about shots being fired at the motorcade and then, shortly after one, Joe Long, already at Parkland, reported that the President was dead and that Lyndon Johnson was being sworn in aboard Air Force One at that very moment.