Murder in the Choir (The Jazz Phillips Mystery Series)

by Joel B Reed

  He nodded and waved for the jailer to take the pastor back to the cellblock. “Have they let you have a phone call yet?” I asked. He nodded but said nothing. I handed him a card. “Have your lawyer call me if there’s anything I can do.”

  “What do you think?” Dee asked me when the door to the cell block closed behind Jones and the jailer.

  “I’m not sure,” I responded. “The warrant is a surprise. I had him pegged as a straight arrow. I wonder what’s behind it.”

  “Easy enough,” said Dee, taking out his cell phone. “I’ll have our guys run his name through the system. It shouldn’t take long.

  The call back from his office in Little Rock took longer than Dee expected. Thirty minutes went by, then forty-five. At some point, the jailer brought out Luther Adams for release, and I visited with him a bit while Dee waited. When it had been an hour without word, Dee called in and was told they were having trouble getting the information out of Washington.

  We talked it over and decided to split up. It was getting to be late afternoon and someone needed to get back to Oak Grove to see what Crime Scene had found. Since it was a dead area for cell phone reception, I ended up driving Luther home while Dee waited for the call from Little Rock. We agreed to meet in Oak Grove an hour later unless something came up.

  Then I ran into another snag. When I started to take him home, Luther wouldn’t get into the car. He was docile enough when the jailer brought him out and while we visited. Yet, once we were outside of the jail by ourselves, he became anxious. “Where the pastor?” he asked. His eyes were wild.

  When I explained the pastor was going to have to stay in jail a bit longer, the old man became agitated. There was no convincing him it was all right to leave Oak Grove until he talked to Albert Jones. Yet, when we went back into the jail, the shift was changing and the jailer was reluctant to let us see Jones until he got the sheriff on the phone. At some point, I remember Dee shaking his head, raising his hands to the heavens, and rolling back his eyes.

  After talking to Albert Jones, the old man calmed down and agreed to let me drive him home. Once we were in the car, he asked to be taken to the drive-in for an ice cream cone. I suggested a burger might taste good first, and he agreed. The carhop gave me an odd look when she came to take our order, but she greeted Luther by name. He told me she sometimes came to sing with the choir for special performances.

  “You still sing in the choir, Luther?” I asked him.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, smiling for the first time. “I sing. I sing praise to the Lord!” He broke into a hymn, his baritone strong and resonant for someone who looked so old and frail. Several people sitting in cars next to us looked our way, smiling. One of them was our waitress, apparently on break. She turned and said something to the other people in the car. They all laughed.

  Luther continued to sing while we waited, and I was struck by the changes I saw in his face as he did. The years rolled away, more with each passing verse, and with them went the deep lines of sorrow. When he finished singing, Luther looked like a young man in his thirties, a dusky angel, prematurely gray. Even as we ate, I could hear him humming softly.

  When we left town, we rode in silence for a while. I took my time, driving well below the speed limit. There were some things I wanted to ask Luther, but I found myself reluctant to break the silence. It seemed to still resonate with faint echoes of Luther’s hymn: calm, sweet, and deep as the sea.

  As if reading my mind, the old man murmured, “It was Luther done it, Dr. Flips.” I didn’t try to correct his mistake. It’s one I run into all the time in rural Arkansas, maybe because so many of the folk there have such poor health care and are hard of hearing. Or maybe their ears are not tuned to distinguish some sounds, the way the Japanese have trouble hearing spoken r’s.

  I glanced at Luther. He was an old man again now, his eyes rheumy. “Pastor Jones explained to me all about that, Mr. Adams,” I said. “It was not your fault.”

  The old man’s sudden agitation took me off guard. “No! No! It was Luther done it. It was Luther! I know!”

  “All right, Luther,” I said. “All right. I believe you.” He seemed to calm down a bit when I said this. I debated for a moment before asking the obvious question. “How do you know this, Luther?”

  Once again he became agitated, but less than before. “I tole you. I seen! I seen Luther shoot him.” He jabbed a finger at his left eye and raised his arms like he was firing a rifle. “Right there! Pow! Pow!Pow!” Then he burst into tears, racked by deep sobs. “Luther done it. I seen.”

  It was obvious to me he was confusing the recent death with the older one, and I could see why. Both were people he cared about and both died being shot in the eye. I handed him a handkerchief. “It’s all right, Luther I believe you. Don’t worry. I’ll do something about it. Believe me, I will.”

  There was no sign he heard me, but after a while the sobs stopped. “Why don’t you sing me another hymn, Luther?” I asked. “That last one was nice.”

  He didn’t answer me, but after a long silence I heard him start to hum. At first I thought he was moaning, but then my ears picked up a faint tune. It was an old gospel hymn, slow and very sad, one you can still hear sung at funerals in country churches. When I looked over at him, Luther’s eyes were shut tight, and he was rocking back and forth in time to the hymn. Nor did it seem strange at the moment that the rain started again just then, not mist, but big round drops falling like tears from heaven.

  I parked by the church when we got to Oak Grove and asked Luther where I could drop him. “This fine,” he told me and refused the umbrella I offered him. Ignoring the rain, he got out of the car and limped off down the steep hill behind the church. I wondered if that was where he lived.

  I slipped on a poncho and headed across the road to the blacksmith shop. There was no sign of the crime scene team, but I did find the deputy waiting for me in the shop. He glanced at his watch. “I was just about to give up on you,” he told me. “Shift ends in a half hour, and I was about to head for the house. Guy in the crime scene team wanted me to guard this until you got here. He’s over at the community center.”

  I asked the deputy to give me ten minutes more. He was reluctant but agreed, and I headed for the center. As I stepped onto the porch, I saw why I did not see the crime scene van when we got to town. It was parked in the lot by the store, but I couldn’t see anyone in it.

  I found Ben Weaver and his technicians in the community center taking a break. When I walked in, Weaver said, “Hey, Jazz. I wondered what happened to you. Did you and Dee find a bawdy house?” The technicians laughed.

  “Fat Boy blues,” I said, then gave him a quick summary what happened with Spinks.

  “I wondered what he was up to,” Weaver told me. “I saw them busting the old man. Pushed him down on the ground and the whole bit. When the pastor jumped in, they busted him, too.” He shook his head.

  “Did either of them threaten Spinks or Kruger?” I asked.

  “Not really. When they threw the old man down, the pastor tried to pull Spinks away, but he really didn’t attack him.”

  “Where were you standing?”

  “Down by the outhouse, maybe a hundred feet away.”

  “Would you be willing to testify?”

  Weaver grinned. “Against Spinks? My pleasure. I’ve run into that piece of shit before. Damn near screwed up a chain of evidence.”

  “Thanks,” I told him. “I appreciate it. You may not have to, unless things get sticky for Dee.” I looked at the crew. “So, what do you have?”

  Weaver reached into his pocket. “We found this lodged high up on the left side of the store front,” he told me, showing me a small bullet in a plastic bag. It was long and pointed and looked undamaged, except for rifling marks on the side. “I didn’t put calipers on it, but it’s .22 caliber, probably from military ammo.”

  “In the store front?” I asked.

  “Just under the eaves on the far right side as you fa
ce the store. What is very strange is that it was not that deeply embedded. About two inches at the most. We got lucky. It plowed into the end of a rafter. Four inches higher and we would never have found it.”

  “Any idea where it was from?”

  Weaver had obviously been waiting for my question. “The shit house,” he said, grinning. “The angle of penetration points in almost a direct line to the shit house. That smudge on the door is gunpowder residue, and when we get the lab tests back, I’d bet they’ll point to military ball ammo.”

  “We’re looking at maybe a hundred and twenty-five feet,” I told him. “I’d say one fifty at most. Two inches is not much penetration for a military .223 at that distance.”

  “Unless something slowed it down,” he said. “Like a body or a skull. That would account for the slight deviation in angle, too.”

  “Show me,” I said, pointing to the back door, and the two of us headed out.

  The rain had stopped but the grass was high and wet, and I could feel my shoes soaking through as we walked to the outhouse. When we got there, I went inside and shut the door, looking out through the crescent opening. Sure enough, I could see the upper right quarter of the storefront just over the side railing of the gallery porch.

  “That’s good work, Ben,” I told him. “The angle is a little strange unless he was sitting down near the end of the porch. What about the other two shots? How would you account for them?”

  “From what we found in the blacksmith shop, there must have been two shooters,” he said. “We found gunpowder residue there, too, and I bet it matches what we found here.”

  “I can’t make it work,” I told him. “How do you see it?”

  “I had some time to think about it while we were waiting for you,” he said. “Say he was standing at the railing on this side of the porch looking toward the store. First shooter hits him in the neck, but it’s not a fatal shot. Jones stumbles toward the wall and catches himself with his hand, making the bloody print. He falls back, catching himself on the railing but sliding down. Second shot nails him through the eye with the bullet we found. Then the first shooter nails him once more, just to make sure.” He shrugged. “It would help if we knew where he was lying before he was moved.”

  We walked back to the front of the center, and I walked down the porch. Then I noticed something I had not seen before. “What’s that?” I asked Weaver, pointing to some white spots on the porch floor below the side railing. There were dark brown spots there, too, which I assumed was blood.

  He walked over to where I was standing. “Looks like bird crap to me.” He took out a small scraper and ran it over one of the spots, collecting a bit of white material when the whole spot came up suddenly. “Too tough for that,” he said, looking at it closely. “I would guess it’s some kind of wax. You suppose they burn candles out here?”

  “Maybe citronella,” I said. “It looks too white for that.”

  “There’s a yellowish tinge,” he said, smelling the wax and frowning. “I can’t tell for sure. My nose is still filled with outhouse.” He scraped up a couple more samples and placed them all into an evidence bag.

  I sensed a presence and looked up to find Robert watching us. I introduced him to Ben Weaver. “Ever seen anyone burning candles out here?” I asked.

  Robert nodded. “Yeah, sometimes. When the mosquitoes are bad.”

  “Folks sit out here?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “They smoke out here, too,” Robert told me. “Ain’t allowed inside.”

  “Was Smiley Jones a smoker?” I asked. “Did you ever see him come to the store for cigarettes?”

  Again Robert shook his head. “He didn’t smoke. Some of the other men did, but not him.” He was studying Ben Weaver carefully. He seemed fascinated by the crew chief’s vest with many pockets. “That’s cool,” he said and Weaver grinned. “You use all those pockets?”

  “Most of them,” Weaver laughed. “My girl friend says I wear my purse.”

  “Where did you get that?” Robert wanted to know.

  “Mail order,” Weaver answered, naming a major sporting goods outlet. “I had a hard time finding them anywhere else.”

  “What else did you find at the outhouse?” I asked Weaver, trying to get us back on track.

  “The usual stuff. Hair, lots of different prints. Even a little blood. None of it much good for evidence. Looks like lots of folks used the privy, then and since. The only thing tied to the shooting was powder residue and a little gun oil on the outhouse door.” I nodded, taking this in.

  “He was wearing one of those,” Robert said, pointing at Weaver’s vest.

  “Who?” I asked out of habit, distracted by what Weaver told me.

  “The old guy who got shot,” Robert answered.

  “I thought you said he was wearing a shirt and tie,” I told him. “The snake skin tie with lots of colors.”

  “Not that day,” Robert said. “It was a long time before he got shot.”

  “How long before, Robert. Can you remember?”

  He thought about it. “Five or six days. Maybe a week.”

  “You’re sure it was him?”

  Robert nodded.

  “Where did you see him?”

  “Same place. Behind that old store where you found the bullet.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. Robert looked at me and then at Weaver, but said nothing. At first I thought it was Weaver’s presence that was putting him off, but then I remembered. I took out a couple of ones and offered them to him, but he didn’t take them. Instead, he looked pointedly at Weaver’s vest.

  Suddenly, I understood. Robert was raising the ante. “Robert, that vest costs a lot more than what I’ve paid you.” He said nothing, and Weaver wasn’t helping. He was grinning. “I tell you what,” I said. “You help us out for the rest of the case and I will personally order you one of those. But no more one or two dollar deals and not until we’re done here. It may be a couple of months before you actually get it. Deal?”

  True to form, Robert thought about it before nodding. We shook on it. “So what did you see?” I asked.

  It turned out Robert was out in the woods behind the store several days before the shooting. The weather was nice and he was looking for any snakes that might still be out. I’m not sure exactly why he wanted them, but he saw a man out behind the store. The man was looking around a lot, like someone who didn’t want to be seen, and that made Robert curious. When he saw the man go into the blacksmith shop, he crept closer to see what the man was doing.

  The man was in the shop a long time, but Robert couldn’t see much from where he was hiding. He did hear something—a soft scratching— but didn’t know what it was. It went on a long time before the man came out. It was then that he saw who the man was and the vest he was wearing. When the man came out of the shop he looked around then slipped into the woods not ten feet from where Robert lay watching.

  “That fits with what we found in the blacksmith shop,” Weaver told me. “The edge of the hole you found looked like it was cut very recently, and there were shavings on the floor below it. I would guess he used a very sharp knife. It was cut clean with no splintering.”

  “What else did you find there?” I asked. Weaver didn’t answer, but looked at Robert. I made an executive decision, one I hoped would not come back to haunt me. “It’s all right, Ben. Robert knows how to keep his mouth shut. He’s the one who found the first empty case. Anything classified you can put in your written report.”

  “I won’t be sure until I get the lab results back,” Weaver replied. “We found the usual debris. The good news is that no one was in there since the tracks were laid down. There is also a clear line of fire that covers the whole porch on the community center and the powder residue I told you about. The bad news is that the soda can was clean. No finger prints. We can check it for DNA.”

  “Good idea. What about the footprints?”

  “They were all made by the same person. He wears a st
andard width size ten, and these probably had crepe soles. There were no separate heel marks, and the edges were rounded. There were no sole pattern marks, either, but the guy walks on the outside edge of his feet. The side and back of the heel are worn down in a very distinctive way. I would guess they were old shoes.”

  “Any idea what size individual?”

  “I’d say average, maybe on the small side. I would look for someone five nine to five eleven, between a hundred and forty to maybe one ninety. Or about half the men in the state.”

  “Nice of you to narrow it down so much,” I said. “What would you guess from the debris?”

  “I would guess African-American from the few hairs we found, and older, maybe, too. A couple of them were gray. They were cut short, about a quarter to a half inch.”

  “Any chance of a DNA profile from the hair?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” he answered. “I didn’t see any follicles. On the other hand, we do have enough to match general physical characteristics, and the lab may give us more.”

  “I don’t suppose there were any empty casings.” Weaver shook his head. “What about fibers?”

  “We did find some. They look olive green, like this” he pointed to his vest, “but we need to wait for the lab to tell us what they are. My guess is that they are from the vest on the guy Robert saw.”

  I looked around. The gathering clouds were quickly dimming the afternoon light and I could hear distant thunder. “Are you pretty much done here?” I asked Weaver.

  He grinned. “Unless you have another outhouse for my crew. They really appreciated that. Messy, but it doesn’t take long. Not like the blacksmith shop.”

  I offered him a twenty. “Why don’t you buy them a round on me when you find a dry county?”

  He looked at the bill but didn’t take it. “I appreciate the offer, but I can’t do it, Jazz. These new rules won’t let us.”

  “Even from someone on the team?” I asked.

  “Especially from an outside consultant,” he replied. “I can tell the guys you offered. They will appreciate that.”