The trees, p.19
The Trees, page 19
The older trooper looked at the victims again. “They been shot?”
“Could be. All I know is there is a lot of blood. No casings around. No weapons. No nothing. Exceptin’ them testicles.”
“I hope you idiots didn’t touch anything.”
“Are you kiddin’? I ain’t about touching nobody’s balls. Hell, I feel funny touchin’ my own.”
“You touched their wallets.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that.”
86
Ed described the scene on the highway as it had been described to him and Jim by the captain. Special Agent Hind sat across the table and rubbed her temples as she listened. They were seated in the back of the Capriccio Grille in the Peabody.
Dr. Quip put down her fork and pushed away her plate of scrambled eggs, pancakes, sausages, and bacon. “I’m no longer hungry.”
“Sorry,” Ed said. “Work.”
“There is something really strange going on,” Jim said. “I realize that’s really obvious, but I mean something really, really strange.”
“Just south of Money,” Ed said. “That’s where it happened.”
“The whole works,” Jim said. “Severed testicles and everything. Solitary Black victim with challenged fashion sense. See what I mean? Everything the same all over the place. Chicago. Mississippi. California.”
They sat quietly for a moment.
“I guess we will miss the ducks,” Quip said.
“What’s that?” Hind asked.
“I read that real ducks live in the penthouse here. They walk them out at eleven to the fountain. They ride down in the elevator just like people. I was hoping to see them.”
“Maybe next time,” Jim said.
“Mama Z,” Hind said.
“What about her?” Jim asked.
“There’s something going on there,” she said. “She’s connected to something. I can just feel it.”
“Like what?” Jim asked. “She’s a hundred years old. Over a hundred years old.”
“I know, I know.”
“I think Herbie’s right,” Ed said. “Something’s not right. Okay, I will admit that the Black Power scarf is a bit much.”
“I’ll say it again,” Jim said. “The woman is a hundred years old. She’s old and she’s cagey and she’s a bit of a smart-ass, but hell, she’s earned it. And that thing she wears—just being red, black, and green doesn’t make it a Black Power scarf.”
Ed stared at Jim and raised his brows.
“Okay, it’s a Black Power scarf. So what?”
“There’s more,” Hind said.
“What?” asked Quip. “She’s too smart?”
“I’ve never heard of that as a problem,” Jim said.
“It’s not a problem,” Hind said. “It’s an observation.”
“Did you see the records?” Ed asked.
“The what?”
“The room with all the files,” Jim said.
“No, what are you talking about?”
Ed put his napkin on the table and leaned slightly back. “That old woman has, in her house, cabinets full of dossiers of nearly every lynching victim in United States history.”
“She didn’t mention this to me.”
“I’m surprised,” Jim said. “She seemed proud of it. Proud is not right word. It was obviously a lot of work.”
“Well, we’d better get rolling,” Ed said. “There’s not going to be anything left of that scene on the highway, but we need to see the bodies.”
“Before the locals lose them,” Jim said. “Him.”
“Sorry about the ducks, Doc.”
“There will be more ducks,” Quip said. “A sentence I never imagined myself saying.”
“Nonetheless true,” Jim said.
Ed drove. He did not deliver them directly to the freeway that led out of Memphis. Instead he took a circuitous route through the rundown city. “Sorry about taking the long way,” he said. “It’s just that every time I’m in Memphis I have to drive by one place, not to get out, but just to pause and look.”
“Graceland?” Hind said and chuckled.
“I’ve been there, but no,” Ed said. “Here we are. The Lorraine Motel. There on that corner of that balcony. I was ten. That’s why I’m a cop.”
“It’s a museum now,” Jim said.
“And it shouldn’t be,” Ed said.
“Why not?” Quip asked.
“It’s just a motel. That’s what it is. That’s all it is,” Ed said. “People should rent out that very room and sleep in that very bed and step through that very door and stand on that balcony and realize what happened there. People should know, understand that not all Thursdays are the same.”
“Come on, Ed, let’s go,” Jim said.
87
Delroy Digby and Braden Brady stood looking at the flat tire on Brady’s patrol car, scratching each other’s heads. At first they scratched their own heads, but that told them nothing. But as soon as Brady scratched Digby’s head, Digby said, “Maybe we had oughta change that tire.”
Digby struggled with the lug wrench, but it would not budge. “Brady, we got any WD-40?” he asked.
“I’ll look in the trunk,” Brady said. He paused on his way to the rear of the car and pointed. “What the fuckity fuck is that?”
“What?”
“Coming down this here road.”
Digby abandoned the lug nuts, put down the wrench, and stood to look. “Shit. What the fuck?”
“That’s what I’m saying. What the hell is that?” Brady said.
Moving toward them, as an undulating mass, though there was no synchronization to their jerky movements, was a mob of Black men. The sky, which had been bright and clear, was now darkened by green-tinged clouds. A wind pressed into the chests of the two deputies.
Digby and Brady stepped back, dropping their hands to their holstered pistols. Brady, then Digby drew their weapons.
The mob was perhaps thirty or forty strong. Old and young. Some walked spryly. Some nearly dragged themselves along. Moving like that they resembled an ungainly tangle of octopi. A light rain began to fall. The mob made a collective noise, chanted a syllable.
“What they saying, Brady?”
“Lawd if I know.” Brady lifted his pistol and shouted, “Y’all boys just stay right there now! Y’all hear me?”
“Rise,” the mob barked, breathy and raspy, and not all together. It was like Tuvan throat singing.
“What you boys want?” Digby yelled.
Brady reached into the patrol car and grabbed the radio. “Hattie, this here is Brady. I’m thinking we need some backup out here.”
Hattie’s staticky voice said, “Hold on, Sheriff’s right here.”
88
“What’s going on, Brady?” Red Jetty asked. He stood at front desk of the station. Hattie watched him. Ed, Jim, Hind, and Quip had just entered the building.
“Oh Lawd, Lawd, Jesus Christ!” Brady’s voice scratched through the four-inch speaker on the desk.
“What’s going on?” Jim asked.
Jetty raised his hand. “Brady?”
“Oh, Lawd Jesus!” Shots were fired.
“Brady?”
“Watch out, Delroy!”
Shots fired.
“Brady!” Jetty shouted into the handset. “What’s goin’ on? Where are you?”
“Sheriff,” Brady cried, “they’s got Delroy!”
“Who?” Jetty asked.
“They’s everywhere!”
“Brady! Brady!”
Silence.
“What the hell was that?” Ed asked.
“Hell if I know,” the sheriff said. “Hattie, what was their last location?”
Hattie was shaking in her chair, near tears. “What happened to them boys?” she asked, tugging at Jetty’s sleeve.
“Where were they, Hattie?”
“They was out on Nickelback Road, I think. I don’t know whereabouts on it. Delroy said he thought they had a flat tire. What’s happening, Red?”
“I don’t know, Hattie.” Jetty looked at the others. “Y’all want to ride out there with me?” His manner was different. He was asking for help.
“Yeah,” Jim said.
Ed turned to Quip. “Why don’t you stay here with this woman,” he said.
Quip nodded.
Ed, Jim, and Hind followed the sheriff out to his rig, where Ed sat in the passenger seat. Hind checked her .38 revolver and slammed the cylinder shut. Jetty looked in the rearview mirror at Jim and Hind and said, “Thank you.”
Hind nodded.
The sheriff drove them out of town toward Small Change, and then up an incline. At the top they looked down and could see the deputies’ car.
“I don’t see them,” Ed said as they approached.
“There,” Hind said. She pointed. In the trees.
Hanging in the trees were the bodies of Digby and Brady, their legs crazy with blood, their pants down around their ankles, their boots stopping the clothing from falling off. Jetty nearly drove into the ravine stopping the car.
“Oh Lord!” he cried.
Jim, Ed, and Hind kept some distance. Ed looked at Jim and shook his head.
“This is no good,” Jim said. “This is no good at all.”
Jetty was pacing wildly, shaking his head. He had his pistol drawn for no reason.
“Look at all these tracks,” Hind said. “It’s like an army marched through here. Everything is trampled.”
“Shoes and bare feet,” Jim said, taking a knee and touching the surface dirt lightly with his fingers.
Ed walked over to Jetty and looked at the bodies. Brady had been hung with a length of chain, Digby with a thin blue nylon cord, much like a clothesline.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” the big man said.
“Will you help me cut them down?”
“Shouldn’t we process the scene first?”
Jetty shot him a look.
“Okay, Sheriff.”
Hind turned to see Ed open his knife and approach the base of the tree. “No, no,” she said, but stopped when Ed waved her off. She looked over at the highly agitated Jetty. She nodded that she understood.
“Hurry, get them down,” Jetty said.
Ed cut through the cord, and the sheriff caught Brady’s bloody body and guided it to the blood-matted leaves.
Ed pointed. “The chain is tied up there to the branch.”
Jim looked up. “How the hell did anyone get up there?”
Jetty raised his sidearm and emptied his clip shooting at the chain. He missed. Bark rained down. He popped in another clip and fired three more rounds. The chain snapped and Brady crashed unceremoniously onto the ground. Brady’s body didn’t fall flat but landed on his knees, his rounded back and slumped shoulders giving him the appearance of a man in prayer.
While Jetty stood and stared at his friends’ bodies, the others spread out and observed the area. Ed called his captain and gave a report, asked for a team of criminalists to be dispatched.
Hind whistled for their attention. “Gentlemen, I need you over here.”
Jim and Ed quickly covered the thirty meters between them. Hind stepped back as they arrived. The three stood shoulder to shoulder and looked at the ground. Before them lay the bodies of two disfigured Black men. Clad in old clothes, dirt encrusted, and dead, they resembled the other Black corpses they had recently encountered. In their hands was a bloody something.
“Are those …” Hind started a question.
“I’m pretty sure they are,” Jim said.
The sheriff came over and joined them, looked at what they had discovered in the high grass. “You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me.”
“I think we need a bigger boat,” Jim said.
89
Today in Elaine, Arkansas, three men were brutally murdered in what is being called a racial killing. The victims were discovered in the basement of the Second Coming Baptist Church. A police spokesperson stated that they believe the victims killed each other, this because one of the men held severed parts of the mutilated men in his fist. Two of the men were White, one was Black. Authorities are at a loss to describe the crime and to offer possible motive. The White victims were members of the Baptist church and longtime friends, and it appears the Black victim was unknown to the community.
In Longview, Texas, four White men were found mutilated in the barn of a local farmer. The farm was owned by one of the victims. That man’s name was Carl Winslow. He was discovered by his adult daughter, who claimed she saw a mob of Black men exit the barn and march away across a pasture. Miss Laurel Winslow said, “I seen maybe twenty of ’em come out of that there barn. They’s ones that killed my pappy, fo sho. The was gloatin’ over it, moanin’ and walkin’ all funny, like they was pimps.” She paused to look into the camera, “Those negroes killed my pappy. And them other mens too.”
Omaha, Nebraska.
Chicago, Illinois.
Bisbee, Arizona.
Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“They wasn’t human, I tell you. The just marched through here. They was dirty and smelly and they was niggers all.”
“They walked right by me. A couple of them looked me up and down, and I just know they was thinking about raping me, but I think all the screaming scared them off. I heard they killed eight good, Christian White men right there in the Walmart. I guess the guard got him one of them. That’s what somebody said. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m scared to death.”
“I ain’t never seen nothing like it.”
“I could tell them coloreds was angry. I looked at one of they faces and I thought I was gonna die, straight up. I seen the devil, all right. And he was Black as pitch. My wife told me that the death count is up to nine. At least them boys killed themselves a couple before they got kilt. You heard what them niggers did, didn’t you? That’s some shit.”
This morning in Conway, South Carolina, a roving band of Black men rioted through the streets of the small downtown area. They killed six White males. It appears that the individuals were targeted. Several people, adult males included, who fell or were cornered by the mob were passed over, ignored, officials say. This is being called a race riot and a hate crime. Police who showed up at the scene fired shots into the mob, though it is unclear whether any of the rioters were struck. The six victims were local residents. Their killers were not recognized by any of the witnesses. Racial tensions are high, and a curfew is now in place.
The governor of South Carolina, Pinch Wheyface: We are deeply saddened by this morning’s events, good citizens of South Carolina, and in grave peril. We understand, all of us, that the actions of a few members of any group are not and should not be an indictment of an entire group. That said, all of these killers are Black men who have no regard for human life. These unknown individuals are still at large, so for safety’s sake, we are encouraging the good White people of South Carolina to be wary of any Black individuals, especially those unknown to them. I am calling in SLED and the National Guard to assist local law enforcement. Questions?
RUPA O’BRIEN, CNN: Governor, was the attack orchestrated, and if so, were there one or more individuals leading the group?
GOVERNOR: I’ll hand this over to Sheriff Pellucid.
SHERIFF CHALK PELLUCID: We has interviewed the numerous eye witnesses to this morning’s attack, and we is still in the process of processing that information. All I can tell you for certain is that the gang that done this was about thirty Negro men, and that six good White residents of Conway is dead.
BUCK ROGERS, FOX NEWS: Sheriff, what do you have to say about the fact that your men fired over a hundred rounds at these rioters and not one was hit? Does that reflect poorly on your department’s training?
PELLUCID: Who say ain’t nobody was shot? Where are you from?
ROGERS: Fox News.
PELLUCID: No, I mean, where you from?
ROGERS: I was born in Pennsylvania.
PELLUCID: Damn Yankee.
GOVERNOR: We’re hoping to have the public contact us with information that will lead to the apprehension of the dark-skinned individuals involved.
ROGERS: What do you mean ‘damn Yankee’?
GOVERNOR: Any other questions?
NANCY HIPPS, STATE NEWSPAPER: There are some reports that the assailants used barbed wire and ropes to kill the victims. And also that several of the victims were mutilated. What can you say about that?
PELLUCID: Ummm, we’re still processing the crime scene. It’s quite extensive. From one side of downtown to the other. It’s a mess. We’re pleased to see that the Governor has sent us help from the State Law Enforcement Agency.
SOMEONE OFF TO THE SIDE: Division.
PELLUCID: Division. SLED. The D is for division.
90
Ed and Jim sat with FBI Special Agent Hind in her FBI rental Cadillac Escalade outside the Bluegum. It was six in the morning. Jim held a photocopy of Chester Hobsinger’s driver’s license.
“Do you really think all of these murders are connected?” Ed asked.
“How can they not be?” Hind said.
“I know, but how? It’s so fucking crazy. Is this what they mean when the say the shit is hitting the fan?” Ed leaned forward between his partners and pointed with an open hand. “Check him out.”
The three watched a long-limbed White man get out of a Kia SUV and walk toward the door of the restaurant.
“Well, it looks like him to me,” Jim said. “And I’m not saying that because they all look alike.” He glanced at the photocopy of the license. “Would you say he’s about six three?”
“About that,” Ed said.
The man knocked with a loose hand and was let in to the restaurant by someone they could not see.
“Let’s go,” Hind said.
Ed opened his rear door and put out a foot. “I hope this guy isn’t a runner. I just hate it when they run.”
“Crazy, isn’t it?” Hind said. “All this wild shit is happening all over the country and our lead is a White guy.”
