“I don’t really have much of an impression of them, except that I was intimidated by them, and I felt like they asked me the same questions over and over.”
“I’m sure they did. You were at both scenes.”
“Yeah, I do remember that,” Jennifer said quietly. She looked out the window as they drove away from town, further out Citrus Trail. “Does he live out in the sticks?”
“Not too far out. He’s out there on Live Oak Road, where the little Negro Hospital was.”
“I always thought that was strange,” Jennifer said. “Most of the blacks around here live in town, but if they had an emergency, they had to go four or five miles outside the city limits.”
“Yeah. It’s a vet now.”
“How well do you know Murray?” Jennifer asked, looking back over at Daniel.
“Not all that well. I mean, he just retired a couple of months ago, so obviously we’ve worked together here and there, but we were never partners or anything.”
Jennifer had been away a long time, but she recognized that tone Daniel got when he was trying to be neutral or polite, but didn’t actually feel that way.
“So, what don’t you like about him?” she asked.
He glanced over at her, then looked back at the road and shrugged. “He’s mouthy. Arrogant. He had thirty years in the department, so nobody could tell him anything.”
“Was he a good cop?”
“Actually, he was. He was Messer’s partner the last couple of years.”
“He told me.”
“Messer says he learned a lot from him. He just hated driving around with him in the patrol car.”
Jennifer gave him half a grin. “Yeah, he told me that, too.”
They were quiet for a couple of minutes. Jennifer stared at his hands on the steering wheel. It was weird; she had always liked Daniel’s hands, and she had stared at them a lot when they were young. His fingers were long and slender, but his hands were strong. They had a little more hair on the knuckles now, a little more tan to the skin. But at the same time, she recognized every bone, every angle, every scar. It was as if she’d never stopped staring.
“He’s not going to like you being there,” Daniel said.
“No?” Not that she was surprised.
“He also doesn’t know you’re coming.”
“What?” Jennifer snapped. Now she was.
He looked over at her. “He doesn’t even know why I’m coming out there. I just told him I needed to talk to him about something. Of course, he knows you’re in town, and he most certainly knows you’re a cop—they had that little thing in the paper last week about the first female police officer—and he still goes into Monty’s and hangs out with some of the guys.”
Jennifer shook her head slowly as Daniel shrugged.
“And then, you know, of course he remembers that we were together,” Daniel added.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell him I was coming!”
“Well, he wouldn’t have told me to come out there if I had, Jen!”
Daniel turned back to the road as a tan station wagon with kids, a dog and an inner tube in the back passed them going the other way.
“Why not? He was my twin brother. She was my mom,” Jennifer insisted.
“Well, for one thing, he doesn’t like women,” Daniel snapped. “Unless they’re lying down, quietly. And I just got done telling you he’s arrogant, especially about his prowess as a cop. You think he’s going to take it well that a woman cop, the teenybopper from eleven years ago, is going to come ask him questions about his biggest case? His unsolved case?”
“I don’t care what he thinks.”
Daniel huffed out a laugh that pegged her as an idiot. “Yes, you do, if you want him to talk to us.”
“Do you think he’s going to love being surprised?” she asked drily.
“Well, we’ll find out in less than a minute, ’cause there’s our turn,” Daniel said. “So maybe we should calm down and regulate our breathing so he doesn’t think we were making out in the truck.”
Live Oak Road only had a few houses on it, most of them with five or ten acres of property, and most of the homes were old cabins or shotgun cottages, so Jennifer was surprised to find that Kenneth Murray’s house looked new.
It was a log house, one-and-a-half stories, with a front porch that spanned the width of the house. It was set back from the road, with a U-shaped gravel driveway. Parked there was a blue Chevy pickup that looked to be just a few years old. There was a load of sod piled in back.
The lot around the house was largely wooded, mostly with loblolly and slash pines, some of them fifty or sixty feet tall. To the left of the cabin was a timber machine shed, with a small sawmill inside.
“This isn’t what I expected,” Jennifer said as they made their way up the driveway.
“He built it himself. He rented a duplex over on Fifth Street for the longest time, but he came out here weekends for…I don’t know, five years or something like that. Building his retirement cabin.”
The front door opened as Daniel parked behind Murray’s truck and shut off his engine. Once she saw him, Jennifer remembered him better than she thought she had. He was maybe an inch or two over Daniel’s six-one, a tall man who was starting to go to seed around the middle. He wore khaki trousers and a white T-shirt that clung somewhat to the paunch above his waistband.
He stared right at Jennifer as Daniel got out of the truck, and he had a slight smile on his face that didn’t really make him look friendly. He had one hand on the door and held a can of Schlitz in the other.
Jennifer was about to open her door when Daniel beat her to it. She got out and followed him down a short gravel path to the front steps made of three halved logs.
“Hey, Murray,” Daniel said as they started up the steps.
“Well, hello there, Daniel,” Murray said, but he was looking at Jennifer. “Hello, Ms. Sheehan. I’m sorry, Officer Sheehan, come to bring the ERA to Dismal, Florida.”
“You’re unhappy about her coming,” Daniel said. “I—”
“I have no feelings one way or the other about her being here,” Murray interrupted mildly. “But I would have expected you to be more upfront about it.”
“I thought it would be better if you met before you told me ‘no’, Daniel said.
“But we have met,” Murray said, finally looking at Daniel. He stepped back. “Come on in.”
Daniel let Jennifer go first, and when she stepped inside, she was surprised to find it was at least twenty degrees cooler in the house. The second floor covered only the back of the house, and the ceilings in the main room were two stories tall. Two long ceiling fans spun slowly from the rafters. The living area was just inside the door, and arranged around a rough fieldstone fireplace. At the far end of the room was a galley kitchen with a bar separating it from the living room.
Murray closed the door, then led them toward the kitchen. A large coffee table was covered with boating magazines and TV Guides, a large, amber glass ashtray that was empty but dirty, and a wooden duck decoy. There was a console television/stereo near the fireplace, and a record was playing. The volume was low, but high enough that she heard Roger Miller singing King of the Road.
On the walls were several animal heads and a few photographs of Murray with various men, sometimes in hunting gear and other times in light pants and polo shirts, sitting or standing in the cockpit of a fishing boat. The pictures were taken somewhere on or off the coast. He saw her looking at one that was hung near the kitchen bar.
“The Right Miranda,” he said, smiling. “A little cop humor. I got her in ’66. I keep her over in Destin.” He walked around the bright yellow Formica bar. “Have a seat.”
Jennifer and Daniel each sat in one of the yellow bar stools with lattice backs and brown vinyl seat cushions.
Mu
rray held up his beer. “Obviously, I have Schlitz. And obviously, you’re not on duty. But I also have Tab, orange juice and tea.”
“I’ll take some tea, thanks,” Daniel said.
Murray looked at Jennifer. “Tab’s fine,” she said, though she hated Tab.
“This is really nice,” Daniel said, looking around as Murray opened the fridge.
“You’ve never been out here?”
“No.”
Jennifer didn’t know whether that fact was meant to insult Daniel, or if actually meant nothing at all.
“Lot of the guys helped out now and then when I was building the place,” Murray said.
He popped the Tab open and set it in front of Jennifer, then grabbed a pitcher of tea from the fridge and a glass from the dish rack.
“So, what can I do for the two of you?” Murray asked, his back to them as he poured the tea.
Jennifer beat Daniel to the punch. “We won’t take too much of your time. I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions about my mother.”
Murray turned and set Daniel’s tea down in front of him. “You mean your mother’s case, I assume, since I didn’t actually know your mother.”
“Yes.”
“Ask away.” The light from the brown woven swag lamp over the bar reflected off his bald head. The remaining hair on the sides and in the back was neatly trimmed and still dark.
“I was looking at the pictures from the scene,” Jennifer said.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Because I was an eighteen-year-old girl at the time. Now I’m almost thirty, and a police officer. I thought I might be able to understand everything better now than I did then.”
“All right.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Jennifer saw Daniel take a sip of his tea. “In the pictures, the ones before my mother’s body was removed, the passenger side door was unlocked.”
“And her door was wide open,” Murray said. “Why does the other door matter?”
“Because my mother was bordering on paranoid before my brother and Ned were killed,” Jennifer answered. “She always pushed that lock down before she even got in the car. Or had me or Jonah do it, if we were with her.”
Murray looked at her thoughtfully, then took a drink of his beer. “Your mother was distraught after your brother’s murder. Maybe she forgot.”
Jennifer shook her head slowly. “No. I rode with her or drove her somewhere several times after my brother was killed. She never forgot.”
“Jennifer’s pretty certain that her Mom was even more careful after the lake,” Daniel said. “Even if she had no idea that her family was being targeted. The whole town was charged up after the murders.”
“I remember,” Murray said flatly. He finished his beer and tossed it into a trash can by the fridge. Then he leaned back against the sink. “We didn’t have any way of knowing she kept that door locked,” he said to Jennifer.
“I know you didn’t. I’m not saying you should have. I would have told you, but I didn’t even notice it that night. I just wanted to know if maybe someone at the scene had unlocked it.”
“Young lady, I was a police officer for thirty years,” he said slowly, folding his arms across his chest. “Decorated. I know how to behave at a murder scene.”
Jennifer breathed in through her nose, trying not to show it. It wouldn’t do her any good to smart off and make him mad. “I didn’t mean you, Sgt. Murray,” she said, tacking on the “Sgt.” to soothe him. “But maybe a younger officer, somebody new. Or one of the ambulance people.”
“Frank and I were working a robbery case together when we got the call,” he said. “We were the first ones at the scene. You were in the car with the colored woman—”
“Mrs. Tyne,” Jennifer interjected.
He just nodded. “Frank checked your mother for a pulse—not because he needed to, but because he was required to—and not one other person got anywhere near that car until I was finished taking those pictures.”
It seemed strange to Jennifer, to be here looking at the man who took the photographs she’d been staring at for days. To be in his house.
“Okay,” she said.
She took a sip of the Tab she didn’t want, to hide her nervousness and disappointment. She hadn’t realized it until just then, but she’d been hoping some patrolman fresh from the academy had unlocked that car door.
Murray opened the fridge again. Jennifer had expected him to grab another beer, but he had a little carafe of orange juice instead, one of those ones with the oranges painted on it. He got another glass from the drainer and filled it halfway. Then he leaned back against the counter and took a drink before he spoke again.
“So, if I’m interpreting your face correctly, you’re wondering if someone had been in the car with her, or if someone she knew had been waiting for her and she unlocked the other door for him for whatever reason.”
“Yes.”
He took another sip of his juice, then looked thoughtfully at the floor. “The assumption was, since she was alone when she left the Food Fair earlier, and no one was around downtown to see her pull into her shop, that somebody had been waiting for her, maybe behind that half wall that separated her lot from the house behind it. Maybe behind the trash cans.”
He looked up at Jennifer. “What it looked like to us, is that she was getting out of the car and somebody came up on her. She was only parked about ten feet from the back door.”
“That made sense to me, too,” Jennifer said. “She knew we were on our way. A couple of volunteers were going to be there soon, too.”
“Making posters for that rally up in Dothan.”
“Yes.”
Claire had set up an office of sorts on the second floor of her dress shop. Various volunteers met there to plan, to talk, to stuff envelopes or make posters or print up petitions. Lots of people knew about it, and lots of people had known that she and some of the volunteers would be there that night. There had always been a bit of theorizing, even before Claire’s murder, that one of the white volunteers was actually a “spy”.
Daniel spoke up. “We’ve always assumed that, even if the people who killed Ned and Jonah and Claire were local, they weren’t anyone we knew, really. Not well.”
Murray held up a hand. “We didn’t even know if they were local at first. People from counties all around here went out to that lake. Still do. It wasn’t until Claire Quindlen was killed that we thought the guys were local, and that the murders were connected to her, uh…activities. But that door being unlocked doesn’t mean it was somebody she knew well. It could have just been somebody she wasn’t afraid of. Could have been the kid who carried her groceries, or your mailman, or your second-grade teacher.”
“That’s true,” Jennifer said. It was something she hadn’t really thought of; she’d been so shocked to think her mother had known her killer that she’d assumed she’d known him well. It was still a possibility, but Murray’s theory was a comforting one.
“I read the file—we both did—,” Daniel said. “We saw the people who were interviewed, mainly the volunteers and the few people who were downtown. But did you ever have any suspicions or theories about anyone she knew?”
“We had heard the rumors that maybe one of the white folks that helped out was actually working for the other side, as it were,” Murray answered. “And we talked to all those people but, while they might have told someone else that she was going to be there, all of their alibis checked out, and nobody stood out to us.”
Jennifer looked over at Daniel, who was looking at her. She didn’t know anything else to ask.
“I see that colored girl from time to time,” Murray said. “Your friend that was hurt out at the lake.” Jennifer looked back at him. He had that smile again, the one that was almost a smirk. “She’s a stunner. I saw her in Pantry Pride not long
ago with a wedding ring and a couple of tots. I guess she went with a colored guy after all.”
Jennifer felt something cold in her belly. She opened her mouth, but Daniel’s voice came out.
“A decorated soldier,” he said stonily. “Missing in action.”
He stood up, and Jennifer grabbed her purse from the floor and did the same. Murray just smiled, as he pushed himself from the counter and started for the door.
They followed him, with the air between them cooler than it had been, and Roger Miller sounding way too carefree on the stereo. Murray opened the door.
“I can’t say I blame you for looking into it, but that trail is stone cold by now,” he said. “I’m surprised Ray’s even letting you try.”
“He’s not,” Daniel answered as they stepped out. “The case is closed. We just wanted to talk to you. For ourselves.”
Murray nodded and smiled, then shut the door behind them.
A few minutes later, they pulled back onto Citrus Trail and turned left toward town.
“I actually dislike him less than I thought I would,” Jennifer said.
Daniel looked over at her. “Really. I find that surprising.”
She shrugged. “He’s smoother than I expected a farting redneck to be.”
Ten minutes later, they pulled into a paved driveway and parked next to an older Impala. An even older black Ford pickup was parked on the other side of it. A porch had been built onto the front of the neat trailer home, and Frank Hamilton was sitting on it, not rocking his rocking chair.
Daniel and Jennifer got out of the truck and walked to the porch. Daniel put one foot up on the bottom step.
“Hello, Frank.”
Hamilton nodded. “Daniel. Miss Sheehan.” His tone was cool, her look stern. His reddish hair had lightened a bit, but was still there, still neatly trimmed and parted on the side. He stood, and Jennifer saw that he was about the same height as Murray, but much trimmer. He wore pressed trousers and shirtsleeves.
“Kenneth told me to expect you,” Hamilton said. “I’m not a police officer anymore, and I’ve put that case behind me, so I’d appreciate it if we could just talk out here.”
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