Those we thought we knew, p.16
Those We Thought We Knew, page 16
The sheriff pushed up to his feet and stormed forward, but Vess did not see this, for her mind was blank and humming. The old woman slipped off her shoes. She took her earrings from her ears and set them on the ground and folded the chair she’d been sitting in so that she could carry it with her. She glanced down at Lula Shepherd, who sat with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap, an expression on her face as if she could see the future.
When Vess passed the sheriff, he tried to grab ahold of her shoulder but she yanked away, dismissing him the same as everyone else around her, and that fast there were people between them so that all he could do was scream after her. Vess never heard a word, and as she came upon the truck the engine thundered and she reared back and swung with all of her might into the side glass, and when the chair struck it was like watching a stick of dynamite. The window exploded and the glass shattered and fell like sand. Right then the only sound was the ringing in her ears.
She looked into the cab, where two teenage boys cowered slack-jawed, both scared shitless and silent. All of a sudden it hit her, what she’d done, her mind having been utterly empty until then. Her shoulders slumped and the chair clanked against the blacktop when it fell. The driver couldn’t have been more than sixteen, and as they watched each other his face turned ghostly white and he looked as if he might cry. Vess was so worked up she couldn’t breathe.
“Jesus, Vess.” The sheriff placed his hand on her arm, and the second he touched her she nearly fainted.
The crowd started to shift and move and chatter behind her, the diesel still rattling at idle, and all of it became too much right then, so that her legs could no longer hold her. Vess tripped a few steps backward, and when she reached the curb she collapsed with her legs folded beneath her, the world awash and blurred. It had been ages since she’d felt that sort of rage.
32
The road snaked across broken pasture, small fields of broomstraw and hay threaded together by tractor trails cut through big timber. Through the years the place had proven all but impossible for both farmers and the cattle they kept. The Cogginses had lived here in the Savannah community of Jackson County for six generations where Cowee surrendered a sliver of its grade to laurel hells and rock bluffs.
Joe-pye and goldenrod bowed along the ditch line, the weeds swaying briefly as Leah’s car shot past and the dust swirled up in her wake. The town had taken a couple days to deliver the body cam footage from the protests. To be honest, it wasn’t much help. The nice thing was that the cameras were linked, so that as soon as one officer’s started recording, every officer on scene went live. The problem, though, was that the place had been too crowded, too close quarters and chaotic, to make sense of much. What was captured was Coggins coming down the stairs at the last second ahead of the crowd.
A camera on a nearby bank building captured the rest of the story. It was angled back up the street so that it looked right at the fountain, where the fight had broken out. Sheriff Coggins stood between both groups, and the moment the mob poured off that hillside he took off ahead of them like he was running from an avalanche. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he fought through bodies and disappeared among them, and then the two crowds melded together into one pulsing swarm that was impossible to pick apart. But as the protestors thrashed, the sheriff emerged with Toya Gardner thrown over one shoulder. He carried her away from the riot to safety, and when they were clear, he let her down and the two disappeared left of frame up Keener Street.
Leah played the segment of video a dozen times—zooming in, slowing it down, panning out. The details were unmistakable. Later, when she played the footage from the Sylva Herald webcam down the street, Coggins’s pickup appeared, and as it passed she could make out someone in the passenger seat beside him. The angle of the footage made it difficult to say with any certainty, but it looked like she was with him. Coggins was the last known person to be with Toya Gardner while she was alive.
The sheriff lived in a long one-story brick rancher that ran across a shelf on a hill. The driveway came around the front of the home, as there was no room behind, the pitch as steep as a mule’s face. A short set of steps came off the front porch, and as Leah pulled past she saw Coggins’s wife beating the dust from a rug with a broom. There was a small barn around the other side of the house with a gravel lot in front, and this is where she parked.
Coggins’s wife, Evelyn, had on a pair of Key overalls with the legs rolled halfway up her shins. She was barefooted and wore a T-shirt beneath with sleeves that cut hard angles just below her shoulders. Her arms were tanned the color of cork.
“Goodness gracious. Is that Leah Green?” She had a smile as big as Memphis. “Let’s go in the house,” she said. “There’s been yellowjackets swarming all day. This time of year it’s like they lose their minds.”
In the kitchen she made them a pot of coffee and they played catch-up, neither having seen the other in a great length of time. They swapped gossip about people they knew. She told Leah how Jerry Watson had been caught cheating on his wife, and Leah told her how Watson’s wife had been caught stealing meat at the Ingles. She’d shoved a whole chuck roast under her dress and tried to keep it clamped between her thighs. The manager said she’d waddled down the aisle like a penguin.
They both laughed and sipped their coffee. Coggins was nowhere around.
“Other night he come home after all that mess at the hospital with Ernie and he’d bought a bottle of scotch.” Evelyn paused and stared at Leah with a look of concern. “Leah, he hasn’t drank a drop in almost thirty years.”
“There’s a lot on his plate right now, Mrs. Coggins.”
“I know there is. And seems like there’s more of it every day. I guess you heard what went on last night, heard about Vess breaking the glass out of that boy’s truck.”
“I was there.” Leah almost laughed as she remembered the look on that kid’s face when he stepped out of the truck. “You ask me, he got what he had coming.”
“I don’t disagree, but all I know’s John was up half the night trying to talk that boy’s father down from pressing charges. Finally got him to agree to just let her pay for the damages and call it square.”
“Hell, I bet his daddy bought him that truck.” Leah couldn’t have cared less about that kid or his father, but she did understand the stress the sheriff was under.
“And now he’s got Reverend Tillman stirring things up.”
Leah wasn’t sure what Evelyn was talking about. “I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“He’s planning a march downtown. Trying to get media coverage. And I mean, I know his heart’s in the right place, but I don’t understand why anybody would want to make this thing any bigger than it already is. What good is that going to do? Just one more thing for John to have to worry about.”
All of this was news to Leah and she wanted to know more, but right then didn’t feel like the time to press for details. Instead, she tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Look on the bright side, Mrs. Coggins. Won’t be long before he retires and the two of you can do whatever you want. He won’t have to deal with any of it anymore. Be somebody else’s problem.”
“Drive each other crazy’s what we’re likely to do.” She wrapped her hands around her coffee mug and watched something through the window over the sink. “When we first got married and he was running patrol, he was bad to drink. He always handled it fine, but as soon as he come through that door he expected me to have him one poured and waiting.” She took a sip of coffee and continued. “When he made up his mind he wanted to make a run at sheriff, he put it down and ain’t touched it since. Best thing ever happened to him.”
“Probably just all the stress right now,” Leah said. “Probably just falling back on old habits because he don’t know how else to cope.”
“I think it’s the not sleeping. He’ll go days not sleeping,” she said. “Other night when he got to drinking was the first time I’ve seen him sleep hard in I don’t know when. Was like watching a bear.” She laughed, and the screen door slammed at the front of the house. “Speaking of . . .”
Coggins stopped at the entryway into the kitchen. He looked surprised to find Leah sitting there. “Green. What brings you up this way?”
“Had something I wanted to talk with you about.”
“Well, all right,” he said. “Just give me a minute to get out of these clothes.”
When Coggins came back into the kitchen he’d changed out of the khakis and polo and into a pair of briar pants with protective chaps sewn onto the legs. A ratty T-shirt hung loosely from him and a ball cap was pulled down so that the bill shaded his eyes.
“In all my years of knowing you, Sheriff, I don’t think I’ve ever once seen you with a hat on.”
“You get to be my age and them doctors start cutting on you like a science experiment, you start doing all sorts of things you didn’t do before. You start doing whatever the hell they tell you to do.”
“Skin cancer,” Evelyn whispered, as if Leah might not have caught the gist.
“Come on,” Coggins said, motioning with his hand for Leah to follow him. “Let’s me and you take a ride.”
In the barn, they climbed into a dusty side-by-side with knobby tires and a giant suspension. Coggins hefted a couple bags of feed into the bed of the vehicle and the shocks bounced as the weight came down. He went back to his truck and returned with a Lil’ Oscar cooler, from which he took two cans of Busch and offered her one across the bench seat. She shook her head and he sucked that first one down as if he’d just spent forty years walking the desert with Moses. Coggins crumpled the can and tossed it into the back. He popped the top on the other and set two more onto the seat between them.
When they took off, the air blowing in from the open sides felt good in the heat and Leah gripped tight to one of the rails so as not to tumble out as he swerved through the switchbacks. The engine was loud and she was nearly yelling to speak.
“Why didn’t you tell me you gave Toya a ride from the protests?”
The sheriff glanced over but quickly turned his focus back to the road. His beer was situated between his legs and he took a long swallow before answering. “I did tell you, Leah.”
“No, Sheriff, I’m pretty sure I’d remember that. I’ve been chasing my tail trying to figure out where she went that afternoon. No one had any idea. Finally the town got back to me with the body cam footage. I wound up pulling the footage from the cameras downtown and saw you get her out of there.”
“Yeah, I gave her a ride, but I’m sure I told you. I’m sure of it.” Coggins looked addled. The side-by-side spun briefly sideways as he came around a bend faster than she was comfortable going. “Shit, I don’t know anymore. Half the time I can’t remember what I had for breakfast or if I even ate at all. If I didn’t, I’m sorry. I guess things might’ve just got jumbled around in my head.”
“There’s been a lot on you, sir.”
“Yeah, but that’s a shit excuse, Leah, and you know it. There’s always been a lot on me and I’ve always carried it just fine. Getting old, I guess. Losing my edge. Hard to admit, but that’s the goddamn truth of it.” He seemed demoralized by the way his mind had failed him. “I thought sure as the world I’d told you. But between being over at the hospital and running around trying to check on Vess, I guess I just got spread thin. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say.”
There was a pained expression on his face that she found hard to bear. In all those years of working for him, she’d never seen any sign of weakness. “So where did y’all go when you left town? Did you take her back to her grandmother’s?”
“No, she wanted me to drop her off there at the school. Said she wanted to go back up there where she’d dug those graves, where the old church used to be, said she’d walk home from there. I dropped her off and headed back to the office for the shit show.” He paused for a second. “She ever make it back to Vess’s?”
“No. Not according to her grandmother anyways.”
“Shit, I should’ve known better than to let her walk. I should’ve took her on home. But she’d been walking that stretch of road all summer. Didn’t even cross my mind, really. Should have, but like I said, I’m losing that edge.” Coggins shifted his weight on the seat. “I’d say whoever it was, though, likely picked her up between the college and that house.” The back window of the side-by-side was propped open and when he finished that second beer he tossed the empty can into the bed through the opening. “Hell, that could have been anybody.”
He was right about that. Tempers were high and there wasn’t a soul in the county who wouldn’t have recognized her walking down the side of that road. Leah’d lived here all her life and she couldn’t remember having ever seen the place as torn up and on edge as it had been in the days building up to the protests. Lately her mind kept telling her what had happened to Ernie Allison was somehow connected to the death of Toya Gardner. He’d been found at the Confederate Veterans Memorial Forest. She’d been killed over that statue.
“You think what happened to Ernie had something to do with what he told you?”
Coggins gripped the steering wheel casually in his right hand and clung to the roof of the vehicle with his left. “Hold on,” he said, and before Leah could get a solid grip he’d turned sharp and dropped down through a ditch.
The side-by-side bucked hard and the tires whirled briefly in the muddy bottom before catching and pulling them up a steep hill along a narrow trail. The path was crowded with brush and briars, all of it slapping and lashing at the sides of the vehicle as they drove so that Leah had to lean into him to keep from being whipped with thorns.
“How do you know what Ernie talked to me about?”
“Come on, Sheriff. The whole office knows. Lovedahl told anybody’d listen. Figured that had something to do with them getting into that fight, that and what he said.” Leah found it hard to believe he was unaware of the rumor mill. “But you can’t tell me there’s not a connection between all of that and where they found him laying. There’s just no way that’s a coincidence.”
They were at the top of the ridge now in a stand of red oak and poplar. The trail had opened up as it came to a gate. The woods were clean and the shaded ground was laced knee-high with bracken. Coggins stepped out of the side-by-side and unlatched a chain from the gate. He came back and drove through, hopped out, and shut the gate behind them. He cracked open his third beer before they went any farther. They were at the top of a pasture and a string of cattle were trotting up the slope to meet them.
“He’s a real son of a bitch, ain’t he?” Coggins said as they took off again.
“What’s that?” Leah hadn’t caught exactly what he’d said over the engine noise.
“That Lovedahl. Said he’s a real son of a bitch, ain’t he?” He finished his beers fast, and as the alcohol found him his mood seemed to lighten.
Leah chuckled and looked back at the cows chasing behind them. “Yeah,” she said. “He sure is.”
Soon they were pulled up to a pair of long troughs and Coggins cut the engine. Outside, he hefted one of the bags of feed onto his shoulder. When he was next to the trough, he cut the corner off the bag with a sodbuster from his pocket and emptied the cattle cube into the crib. The cattle were all around them now, and the biggest pushed and shoved to the front of the line to feed.
“I guess what I keep thinking, Sheriff, is that these two cases, all of this might be tied together. What happened to Ernie and what happened to Toya. If Ernie was right about what he told you, then I’d bet dollars to doughnuts we’re looking for the same people.”
“That’s a mighty big jump, Detective.”
“Come on, Sheriff. You know where he was found. And you know good and well that had something to do with what he told you. If we’re talking about the Klan, you telling me those folks wouldn’t have been the kind to have killed Toya Gardner?”
“I’m saying there’s nothing to make those connections right now but a hunch.” Coggins reached into the bed and grabbed the second bag. He fought his way through the cattle and emptied the grain into the trough. “Ideas are great, Leah, but at the end of the day ideas aren’t evidence.”
“All I’m saying is we could be working together on this.”
“That’s not my job, Detective. Work your case,” he said. “Work your case, and if those two trails wind up running together, then I’ll be there when it does. But right now you need to follow the evidence. Look at them . . .” Coggins pointed down the hill to where two calves were chasing each other through the field. The calves stopped and watched as if to judge the amusement of their audience.
Leah stepped out of the side-by-side and the shoes she wore sank into the hoof-trod mud. One of the calves was cinnamon colored and the other was black as night with a white spot of swirled hair square in the center of his forehead. The reddish-brown calf marched up the hill and Leah took a step closer, the calf rearing back when she did. The calf took a few steps closer, stopped, a few steps more. It was a matter of trust.
“I tell you somebody you ought to talk to.”
“Oh, yeah? Who’s that?” The calf was nearly to her.
“Rupert Bates,” the sheriff said. “Wasn’t two days before all this happened he stood right down there in my road and told me I should’ve kept Toya locked up for her own protection. Said it wasn’t safe for her to just be out wandering around.”
33
The church glowed like a candle in the falling blue of dusk. Inside, the pews were filled, the remainder of the sanctuary standing room only. More were gathered on the steps and in the yard. The windows had been opened to move the air and so that those outside might catch the words being spoken.
