Those we thought we knew, p.20
Those We Thought We Knew, page 20
Out in the river, the car was burning.
40
The church owned no parsonage. Instead, the reverend rented a white vinyl-sided house off Chipper Curve from a member of his congregation. The home had no gutters, and the heavy rain had left a knee-high stain of red clay around the house’s perimeter.
Leah stepped onto the stoop and wiped the soles of her shoes on a welcome mat. The front door was open and she could hear him stirring inside through the torn mesh of a dull aluminum screen door.
“Reverend Tillman,” she muttered, the screen door rattling against its frame as she tapped with one knuckle, trying not to startle him.
Appearing around a corner with a dishrag in his hands, he pushed the bridge of a pair of wire-rim glasses to the peak of his nose as he came to the door.
“Reverend Tillman, I’m Detective—”
“Yes, ma’am. I know who you are.”
“I was wondering if you had a second.”
Tillman eyed her skeptically, then opened the door with the back of his hand without speaking. He scanned the yard as if trying to see if anyone was with her or watching, but the only things behind her were passing cars and the steam from the paper plant rising to meet the clouds.
There were no lamps on inside, the rooms lit only by midmorning sun sifted through dusty windows. He led her into the kitchen and pulled a chair out from a small wooden table, finished drying his hands, and tossed the rag onto the counter.
“I was just washing some dishes,” he said, sliding out a chair of his own so that he was directly across from her when he took his seat. “So what is it I can do for you?”
“I’ll cut right to it,” Leah said. Instead of talking to the sheriff about what Evelyn had mentioned, she’d decided to speak with the reverend directly. “I heard you’re trying to get some broader media attention for the case.”
“We are,” he said. “I actually just got off the phone with Frank Stasio. He hosts ‘The State of Things’ for North Carolina Public Radio, but he was saying he could share the story with some colleagues at NPR. I’m still waiting to hear back from some folks. Got a lot of irons in the fire.”
“I guess what I’m wanting to ask is what you’re hoping this will accomplish?”
The reverend stretched his eyes wide as if aggravated or amused, she could not tell. “We want the same thing as you, Detective. We want the person responsible for Toya’s murder found and brought to justice.”
“Well, I can promise, we’re doing everything we can. I’m doing everything I can.” Leah took a deep breath. “I’m going to find who did this, Reverend. But in the meantime, I don’t understand how this helps me do that.”
Tillman placed his hands together as if he were about to pray and tapped his lips with the edges of his index fingers. He seemed to be searching for the right words.
“Here’s the truth, Detective, and I seriously doubt this is something you can fully understand, but our lives tend to be worth a twenty-four-hour news cycle. That’s if we’re lucky. And in the case of most Black women, it’s not even worth that. So you ask me why, that’s why. Because otherwise Toya Gardner will be a name that burns off this mountain like fog. And the vast majority of folks would prefer it that way.”
Leah sat there, unsure how to respond. She understood his intent, but that did not ease her concern.
After a minute or two, Tillman patted his palms against the walnut tabletop. “What are you so afraid of, Detective? What is it you’re afraid will happen?”
Leah’d been staring off at the wall and her focus returned now. “I’m afraid it’ll hinder the investigation.”
“How?” Tillman shouted. He was visibly annoyed by her response.
“Reverend, over the last month I’ve watched this county split in two. Not once in my life have I seen people this on edge, and what I fear is that bringing folks in from the outside . . . Look, you know how this place is. You know how mountain people are. Strangers show up and start asking questions and these people are liable to shut down entirely. They’re liable not to say another word.”
“Detective, this place has always been split in two. That’s not something just happened over the last month. That’s not anything new. Now, maybe you don’t see it because you don’t have to. But I know the world I live in and I know what I am in that world. Every thought I have, every decision I make is governed by those facts. Even so much as letting you into this house, sitting at this table with you alone. There’s not a second in my life I lose sight of that because that would be a mistake. For you it’s a luxury not to see it, but for me it would be a grave mistake.”
Leah had not come to argue and she tried to sit for a moment with what he was saying. Right then she found herself staring at her hands, nervously massaging her right thumb into her left palm like a mortar and pestle. When she looked up, Tillman was staring straight at her as if waiting for her to speak.
“Okay,” she said. “But if that division’s always existed, if it’s always been this way, how do we bridge—”
“Whoa,” Tillman interrupted, “let me stop you right there, Detective.” The reverend shook his head and briefly chortled before his expression fell flat and stern. “Now’s not the time for you to come and ask me how to bridge the gap.”
Leah felt her cheeks flush, her face glowing red. She was taken aback, unable to understand how her question had offended him.
“Here’s what I want you to ask yourself, and I want you to take this home with you. Live with it for a while before you try to answer.”
Tillman’s hands were balled together and pressed to his lips. His chin was down, eyes up with lines creasing his forehead. He moved his hands away from his mouth so that his words would not be muffled.
“Why did it take Toya’s murder for you to come here and ask me about bridging the gap?” He paused. “Why did it take Toya Gardner losing her life for you to so much as admit that the gap exists?” He pounded the table to emphasize those words, and that sound and those questions made the house seem to shake around her.
“The truth, Detective, is that it shouldn’t take a Black life for you to have some moment of insight, some moment of clarity. And yet time and time again, that is what this world requires,” Tillman said. “So like I said, there are questions you need to ask yourself. And until you do, I don’t have any use for bridges.”
41
Cars lined both sides of the long gravel drive so that Leah had to park off the main road. She pulled through a ditch against a barbed-wire fence where field grass stood knee-high. Out in the pasture Angus cattle grazed and loafed like always.
Her mind was still churning from that morning’s conversation with Tillman. Those questions had settled deep into her and she hoped Ernie Allison’s homecoming party might offer some reprieve. When she approached the house she saw Ernie Allison’s brother, Larry, lift the heavy lid of a giant smoker with both hands like he was opening the hood of a school bus. The smoke rolled out around him, and when the air cleared a whole hog was splayed flat on the top rack.
Larry traveled all over the southeast to barbecue competitions, lugging that smoker behind his pickup and sleeping in the cab to skate motel costs. There were at least fifteen chickens spatchcocked and sizzling on the bottom rack, all of the drippings from above crisping those birds to a deep golden brown. He mopped everything on the smoker with a thin vinegar sauce, tossed a dry rub like he was sowing seed, then lowered the lid back closed.
Ernie lived in a white clapboard house on a block foundation. Two massive white oaks out front kept most of the sun from ever reaching the house. A bed of moss covered the asphalt shingles and there was a tinge of green over the painted block. A couple folks Leah didn’t recognize lounged in rocking chairs on a poured-slab porch. The front of the house was square and even, the door centered and a window off to each side. Lichen bloomed on the shutters like pale gray roses.
Everyone from Ernie’s church, all his family and friends, and the entire Jackson County Sheriff’s Department had shown up on Caney Fork to welcome him home. At least a hundred people were spread all over the property. Kids ran screaming and playing in the creek, the whole scene chaotic and loud. Leah came around the side of the house and almost ran face-first into Sheriff Coggins. He was twirling his truck keys on his finger.
“Heard you had a wild night, Sheriff,” Leah teased, and slugged him in the shoulder. She’d heard about the car chase and the water rescue from a half dozen people. “You retire, you can get you a summer job playing lifeguard at the Sylva pool.”
“I might just do that,” he said with a stoic expression she found hard to read. Coggins shoved his keys in his pocket, and in the other hand he held a Dixie cup that he lifted to his mouth to search for one last drink. “I’m glad you come out, Detective. It’s good to have everybody here supporting Ernie.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it,” Leah said. She had more than one reason to be there. Just minutes after she left Tillman’s, the initial autopsy report for Toya Gardner had arrived from the state and she desperately wanted the sheriff’s take. “Hey, if you got a minute there’s a couple things I wanted to run by you.”
“I was just headed out. Came back to say goodbye right fast, but Evie’s already waiting at the truck.”
“The report came back from the state.” She hoped that news might pique his curiosity but he appeared to be in a hurry to get gone.
“That’s good,” he said. “Fast turnaround for the state. A lot of times these things get held up forever.”
“I’d love to sit down and talk it over if that’s all right.”
“Of course,” Coggins said. He shoved his hands in his pockets and jingled his keys inside against his leg. “I should have a copy waiting for me on my desk. Come by tomorrow and we’ll look it over. Just got to get Evie to the pharmacy before they close or she’s going to have my hide.”
Leah couldn’t help but press him. Maybe it was that it was her first big case, or maybe it was just how much she respected his experience and opinion. “I had this odd hunch the other day and I went to talk with Silas Crane,” she said. “He said for you to come by and see him.”
“Oh, yeah. What made you go talk to Si?” Coggins was looking over her shoulder toward his truck.
“Just a story I remembered Dad telling one time,” Leah said. “But there was something Silas said about how it’s always been the same families. Made me think that if I took some still shots from the footage down there at the protest and let him look at who all was there, maybe he could piece together someone who might be active.”
Coggins rattled the ice in his Dixie cup, took a cube into his mouth, and crunched it loudly. He tossed what was left out into the yard.
“What I’m saying is that if we can start building a list of anyone we know is active, that’ll at least give us a starting place. That’ll at least give us some people to question. But that’s why I keep saying we need to be working together on this, Sheriff. These cases are connected. They’ve got to be.”
“No, Miss Green, these two cases don’t have to be connected at all.” It struck her that he’d stripped her of her title right then. He’d almost always made it a point since her promotion to call her Detective. “It’s like I told you. You’re making a whole lot of leaps without having your eye on where it is you’re going to land. There’s some big differences between the case you’re working and what happened to Ernie, and one is that the fellow sitting back there told me that the men who put him in the hospital were standing at a cross in white robes and hoods. That’s not speculation. That’s not a hunch. That’s a fact.”
His aggravation made her shrink inside herself. Once again, he’d quickly brushed her off and not even taken the time to consider what she was saying. Leah did her best not to take it personally, but between Coggins’s reaction and her conversation with Tillman, her typical thick skin had been worn soft as suede. There was a lot going on and perhaps the sheriff just couldn’t afford to spare any mental energy at all. Right then he seemed to recognize that he’d upset her and his face relaxed.
“Look, I know what you’re wanting, Leah. I know. But I can’t help you with that case. I just can’t.” He stared at her with a pleading look in his eyes. “I’m too close to it. I’m too close to Vess and the rest of that family. It was all I could do just to sit there with her and Dayna at that house the other day. Took everything I had.”
Suddenly she understood why he’d been so standoffish. She remembered how worn out and empty he’d looked the night of the vigil.
“Like I said, though, you come by the office sometime tomorrow and we’ll look over that report together. Okay?”
She nodded and dropped her eyes to the ground. Coggins squeezed Leah’s shoulder and strolled off toward his truck.
This death had eaten her up and she hadn’t known Toya Gardner at all, couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like to be that close. Digging into the details was unbearable with that sort of history. Coggins had dived headlong into Ernie’s case, and she wondered if that was his way of coping, of keeping himself busy so he wouldn’t have to deal with the loss. As he disappeared from view, she felt bad for hounding him.
Behind the house a small outbuilding made of brown-painted tin rested in direct sun, and there was a trail worn to bare dirt from the back steps of the house to the shed, then on to the stream. Off near the wood line a picnic table was tucked in the shade of a willow along the creek, and that’s where Ernie sat with his mother beside him. The folks who’d been crowded around the table speaking to him headed off with empty plates in their hands and Leah figured now was as good a time as any to speak.
Ernie had a patch over his left eye and the side of his face was still yellowed with bruising. He wore braces on his lower back and wrists, a ball cap and a navy blue T-shirt with tuckasegee trading company printed over the breast pocket. His movements were stiff and somewhat robotic.
“Leah Green, is that you?” Ernie’s mother, Clara, stood and came over to hug her.
“How are you doing, Mrs. Allison?” Leah squeezed Clara and was overcome with the smell of perfume and bug spray. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in a year.”
“Last fall.” Clara kept her hand on Leah’s shoulder. “Mountain Heritage Day.”
“That’s right,” Leah said. “I couldn’t remember if it was there or out thrifting.”
“Liable to find me anywhere there’s a deal, hon. You get you something to eat?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
“I’ll get you a plate,” she said. “I was just about to go grab another one of those deviled eggs Doreen Stroup brought.”
“I’m okay,” Leah said. “I’ll fix me a plate here in a little while.”
“Mama, grab me another one of these Busch Lights out of the cooler on your way back, would you?”
“How many is that, Ernie? You’re not supposed to drink on those pills.”
“And you’re not supposed to be worrying about me no more.” Ernie shook his head and smiled. “I’m twenty-eight years old.”
“And stubborn as the day you was born,” Clara mumbled over her shoulder as she shuffled off toward the house.
“Come sit over here beside me.” Ernie brushed the bench off as if clearing her a spot. “Be nice to have a pretty woman to sit beside for a minute or two.”
Leah was more than ten years his senior. He was an absolute doll baby, but she was too settled in and set in her ways to go breaking horses. She took a seat, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek. “You saying your mama ain’t a pretty woman?”
“She’s going to drive me crazy before this is over with. Got a heart of gold and I wouldn’t trade her for nothing, but I’m about ready for some alone time, some peace and quiet. I can’t wipe my ass without her knocking on the bathroom door.”
“How you feeling?”
“Oh, I’m all right. Stove up, but I’m getting better. How you like this eye patch?” He leaned in close and stretched his good eye wide until she laughed.
“It’s very becoming.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I look about like a goddamned pirate.”
“Well, if nothing else we’ll get you a peg leg and set you out front down at the fish camp. You can make some side money on the weekends.”
“You wasn’t such a sight for sore eyes, I’d take offense to that.” Ernie polished off the last swig from a brown glass bottle on the table. He’d completely peeled off the label. “Sore eye,” he joked.
There was something nice about sitting there with him. Ever since they’d found Toya Gardner’s body she’d been absolutely sick with work, and for one split second her mind wandered off to someplace different.
“How’s your case coming?” Ernie asked.
“Just got the initial report back from the state.”
“Anything jump out at you?”
“Not exactly. I mean, she was shot three times in the chest, and one of those bullets passed through both hands, like she must’ve had her hands up trying to protect herself. I was hoping there’d be some DNA under her fingernails, something, but there wasn’t. Just dirt from where she clawed at the ground where she fell.”
“They know what kind of gun was used?”
“Thirty-Eight Special.”
“So I guess they recovered bullets from the body?”
“They did,” Leah said. She stared off into empty space as they spoke, the world seeming to go silent around her as her brain chewed over the details. “Two of the bullets shattered to bits, the jackets just completely separated altogether, but one was still in pretty good shape. Bullet held together and stopped against her spine.”
