by Terry Shames
His eyes have a pleading look to them, and then I realize: He doesn’t want me hanging around on his front porch where the neighbors can see me talking to him. I realize that if he won’t talk to me, then no one will, and I don’t have much of a chance of finding out what was going on out in the woods. “Mr. Bennett, I don’t want to impose on you, but can I ask you a question?”
His wariness increases. “What about?”
“I think you know. I’ve got to have some help, or there’s no way I’ll find out what happened to those young people who died.”
He looks me up and down, and it’s almost like I’m looking in a mirror, seeing what he sees: a tall, lanky white boy who could as easily be working on a farm somewhere. The only difference is I’ve got a badge and not a bit of experience. “I don’t know a thing about those people back there,” he says. His voice is so soft I can barely catch the words.
“Tell me who might.” I can’t help the pleading sound in my voice. “You have a young daughter, don’t you? Maybe she knows something.”
“Best leave Alva out of it,” he says. “She working over in Bobtail at the Motel 6. She not hanging out with no lowlife. Sorry I can’t help you. I got things to do. Now you go on.”
He steps back into the house.
“You’ll tell Truly I came by?” But the door is closed gently, but firmly, in my face.
I stand on the porch for a minute, bamboozled. It never occurred to me that people would turn their backs on me. “You’re a fool,” I mutter to myself. Back in the pickup, I ponder my next move. I could go door to door asking questions, but something tells me I wouldn’t get anywhere.
Chapter 10
Since I’m out near Cato Woods anyway, I’m drawn back to the crime scene. A black Cadillac Eldorado is parked off the road near the house. You don’t see cars that fancy around here.
When I arrive at the house, I find two men standing with their arms crossed, gazing at the damaged structure. One is a white man dressed in a western-style black business suit with wide lapels and flared-bottom pants, a ruffled white shirt, and bolo tie. The other man is black with a tight, curly Afro and a goatee. His clothes grab my attention. The soft, pleated pants and black silk T-shirt are expensive. Like some rock stars I see on TV, he’s wearing a clutch of gold chains around his neck and one gold earring. What kind of work must he do to be able to afford those clothes? What are these two dandies doing here?
“What can I do you for, Sheriff?” the white man asks. He’s trying to be cute.
He’s got my title wrong, but at least since I wore my uniform today he knows I’m a lawman. I introduce myself and tell him I’m the police chief. “Thought maybe the forensics people would be here by now. Since this was arson, they’ll be sending out a team from Austin.”
“We haven’t seen them.” Up close, the white guy has a seedy look to him, his eyes with pouches under them and broken veins around his nose. The signs of a hard drinker. “Barton Dudley,” he says, sticking out his hand for me to shake. “They call me ‘Blue.’ I’m the insurance man for this property, and this is Freddie Carmichael. He owns this house.”
I try not to show that the information startles me. I assumed the people who lived there owned it or rented it from the Cato family. “Shame what happened here. A tragedy. But I’m glad you’re here. Can you tell me the names of the people who were living here?”
The two men exchange glances. Carmichael’s lips lift in a sneer. “Until this fire, I wasn’t aware that anyone was living in the house. It appears that they were squatters. Of course I’m sorry for what happened, but they had no business being here.”
His voice startles me. I haven’t run into a black man with his smooth way of talking. “You sound like you’re not from around here,” I say.
“I live in Houston, but I’m originally from Chicago.”
“How long have you owned this property?” I ask.
“Is that an official question? Should I have my lawyer here?”
The question throws me off. What would somebody like Curren Wills, the Texas Ranger, say? John Sutherland would probably have him in cuffs by now for having an insolent attitude. “I don’t know why that would be necessary,” I say. And then I add, “Do you?”
“No, but it has been my experience in Texas that the law doesn’t always work the same for white men and black men.”
“That’s not the case in Chicago?”
“There are some differences,” he says. “But as for your question, I bought this house about a year ago.”
“Who did you buy it from?” I’m genuinely curious. It’s like a whole different world out here in this part of town, people owning and selling property I didn’t know existed.
“I didn’t deal with him personally, so his name slips my mind, but I can find out for you if it’s important.”
“Did you go through a realtor here in town?”
He strokes the side of his cheek as if making sure that his goatee has been properly groomed. “You know, I wish I could be of more help, but that has slipped my mind as well.”
I could list the names of all the realtors in town and jog his memory, but it would be futile. I don’t know exactly why he’s lying, but he is. Did someone else actually sell the house to him, or did he have it built? Were squatters living here, or did he know who they were? Maybe he doesn’t even own the house and both of them are lying.
I’m going to have to get to the truth from someone else. But I learned in college that acting like a rube can sometimes work to my advantage. I may run into them later and it would be best if they think I haven’t got much of a brain. “Never mind,” I say. “Your friend Blue here can tell you that in small towns we’re always nosy. Anything you tell me wouldn’t be of use to me anyway. The highway patrol will be investigating this, and I sure don’t want to step on their toes. They know I’m wet behind the ears.”
Blue laughs and claps me on the side of my arm. “You stick to catching teenagers pulling down the goalposts after a football game.”
“I think that’s about my size,” I say, with a big grin. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to leave you to it. Nice meeting you, Mr. Dudley, Mr. Carmichael.” I turn like I’m going to walk away and then turn back. “Blue, would you happen to have a card on you? I know somebody who might give you a good price on clearing out this damage and fixing it up.”
Blue Dudley hands me a card, which I stick in my shirt pocket. I nod to both of them. Neither of them gives me a particularly friendly look in return for the small-town-hick smile I bestow on them.
I’m walking back toward my truck when two men pull up in a panel truck.
One of them, a grizzled, red-faced man with white hair in a military-style buzz cut walks over to me.
“I’m Kelly Place,” he says. “I’m the regional fire inspector with the state. This is my partner, Johnny Carson.” He waves his hands. “I know, I know, not that Johnny Carson.” His partner grins and ducks his head. He probably gets tired of that old joke from his boss.
“I assume we’re in the right location.”
“You are.” I introduce myself and he seems satisfied. It’s a relief to run into the occasional person who doesn’t seem bothered by my youth.
“You been inside the crime scene?” he asks.
I tell him I have. “I didn’t get much out of it, though. I’d like to shadow you, if you don’t mind. I’ve got a lot to learn.”
“That’s a breath of fresh air. Most people turn tail and leave it to us. Ours is not the exciting part of the job.”
“There’s one thing I want to mention,” I say. I tell him about Dudley and Carmichael. “I don’t have any reason to be suspicious of them, but I’ve never heard of them around here.”
“Let me take care of it. You’d be surprised how often you get real-estate people trying to make a quick buck off a tragedy.”
He directs his assistant to bring some equipment and then follows me toward the house. Halfway there, we meet Dudl
ey and Carmichael.
“Mr. Carmichael is the owner of the house,” I say.
“Not exactly the owner,” Dudley says. “Mr. Carmichael is the owner’s representative.”
“What does that mean, exactly?” Place smiles, but that doesn’t quite smooth away the steel in his question.
“The owner is not from around here,” Carmichael says. “He has a lot of interests, and I take care of the details for him.”
“Mr. Carmichael,” Place says, “I don’t know who your employer says he is, but I looked up all the relevant information on this property, and it’s part of a large tract of land called Cato Woods. If the man you’re working for isn’t named Cato, he’s putting one over on you.”
“Sorry for the confusion,” Blue Dudley says, “It’s all on the up and up. The Cato family leased the property out.”
“If you say so. But I want to be sure who I’m dealing with here. Somebody has to be responsible for the property if it’s declared unsafe. Plus, the highway patrol is in charge of this investigation, and they’ll need to get in touch. I’d like to see some identification and get your contact information.”
Carmichael leaves the matter to Dudley. I can tell that Place is not totally satisfied with the exchange, but like me he can’t think of any reason to bear down.
After Dudley and Carmichael leave, we head on over to the house.
Place stands for a couple of minutes with his hands on his hips, surveying the damage. “It’s not as bad as I expected.”
We go in through the back door and I see he’s making the same kind of assessment I did. “Beans and greens and cornbread,” he says. His voice is so matter-of-fact that I don’t have a clue what he’s thinking. Poor folks’ meal? Same kind of food he likes to eat? Food he hates? Hard to tell.
We start to walk away, but then he stops. “There were five bodies found and I count seven plates. Who else ate here?” He looks at me. I’m stunned because I didn’t notice that the first time I came through.
“Good question,” I say.
“Lord have mercy,” he says. “Could the killers have got up from sharing a meal with them and then shot them? If not, why weren’t they killed along with the other five? Or maybe the killers took them out of here and we’ll find more bodies somewhere else on the property.” He’s talking low in a monologue, thinking out loud. I’m soaking it in, mad that I didn’t see all that myself when I went through yesterday. I can learn, though. A mistake like that won’t happen again.
“There’ll be fingerprints on the plates. I’ll get them bagged up and send them off for printing, although I doubt anything will come of it.”
“Why is that?”
“This is likely to be a local dispute, not done by somebody with a criminal record.”
I shrug because I don’t know how to judge it.
“Let’s see how far we can get into the fire area.”
It takes the rest of the afternoon for the fire inspectors to do their work. They are thorough and careful, and he’s right, it’s not the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen. Even though he quickly agrees that the gasoline cans tossed out front were the cause of the fire, he still does all kinds of measurements and assessments of exactly what the sequence of events must have been. A lot of it seems to consist of standing and staring at charred areas. What I learn from the experience is that in the future, I’ll leave fire evidence to the experts.
I head back to town to do some research. At city hall I find no record of any such place having building permits out in Cato Woods, which means it was an illegal dwelling. As to whether Freddie Carmichael or his “employer” actually owns it, since the place doesn’t actually exist on paper, there’s no evidence of who owns it.
Cato Woods is a huge tract of land, and it could contain many of these types of dwellings without anybody being the wiser. The Cato family lives in Dallas. I don’t know that I’ve ever set eyes on any of them. There is a farmstead on the Cato land directly south of Cotton Hill. It’s worth a drive out there to find out what the farmers might know, if anything, about the house.
Back at the station, as I’m walking out the door, Truly Bennett drives up in his old pickup. I wait for him to come to me. “Let’s go inside where it’s a little cooler,” I say. He looks at the door as if he really doesn’t want to come inside. I ignore his reluctance and hold the door for him so he can’t very well refuse.
Inside, I offer him a seat, but he’s says he’ll stand. He wears a straw hat and he takes it off and clutches it in his hands. “Daddy said you wanted to talk to me?”
“I’d like to hire you to do something for me. I’ve got to go to Austin tonight. I’m going to observe the autopsies of those young people killed in the fire. Can you feed my cows for me?”
He nods. “I’ll see to it,” he says. “Is there anything else?”
I let a little sigh out. “Truly, I’ve always thought we got along okay, but recently I’ve had a feeling you’ve got a problem with me. Have I said something to offend you?”
He looks at me for the first time today, startled. “Oh, no, sir. I’ve got some things on my mind, that’s all. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”
“No need to apologize. I just don’t want there to be bad feeling between us.”
“No, sir.” He’s back to staring at his feet.
“Did your daddy tell you I was asking about the people who lived out there in the woods?”
“He told me that.”
“Do you know any of their names? If I’m going to attend their autopsies, I ought to at least know who they are.”
I can tell he’s thinking over his answer, so I stay quiet. Finally he says, “Folks don’t want anybody talking.”
“They don’t want the people who did this horrible thing arrested? Did you know that one of the victims was a young girl who was shot while she was trying to put out the fire on her clothes? Do you know that somebody trapped them in the front hall so they would burn to death? And nobody wants whoever did that to be punished?” I don’t mean to be yelling, but my frustration has taken over.
At my words, his chest starts heaving. “It’s not that,” he says.
“Then what is it? Why won’t anybody talk to me? I promised I’d track down who did it, but if everybody clams up, how am I supposed to investigate anything?”
“You best leave it alone,” he says. He claps his hat on his head and starts for the door. When his hand is on the knob, his head drops. I think he’s about to say more, but he apparently thinks better of it.
I say thank you, but I’m speaking to the door. I hear his truck start up and he drives away so fast, he spews gravel.
Chapter 11
The Cato farm is up on a hill. The lawn in front of it is lush and green even after the heat of summer, making it look like a model place. They must have sprinklers going for hours every day. The land below the lawn and house is farmed with cotton almost ready to pick.
It’s a long drive up the hill. What kind of people live in a place that looks like a magazine idea of a farm? Whoever it is, I doubt they have the slightest idea that a bootleg house exists on the opposite end of their thousand-acre plot.
As I drive up to the front porch, a rowdy black-and-white farm dog comes racing around the side of the house, barking like he means business. But his tail is whipping from side to side, as frenzied as he is. I get out of the car and tell him to calm down, which he does. The screen door opens and a tall, bony woman wearing khaki work pants, a long-tailed man’s shirt, and work boots walks out. “Scout, hush!” She’s a little late. The dog is frisking around me like we’re old friends.
“Can I help you?” Her expression is stony. “If the dog bothers you, I’ll put it away.”
“I don’t mind dogs,” I say. I advance to the bottom step of the porch. “I’m Samuel Craddock, police chief over in Jarrett Creek. I wonder if I might have a word with you?”
“About what? We’re a busy farm.”
“I didn’t get yo
ur name.”
“Judy Montclair.” She gives up the name like she’s handing out gold.
“I’m investigating an incident that happened yesterday on the Cato farm property. I need some information.”
“I don’t know what I can tell you. We don’t own the farm. We’ve got a lease on it.”
I lean forward. “Do you know how I can get in touch with the owner?”
“I don’t see why you can’t get it from the county records.”
A tall man wearing blue jeans and a well-worn, faded shirt walks from around back. He glares up at the woman, but she answers the hard look with one of her own. He turns the glare to me. “What is it you want?”
“Owen, this is Mr. Craddock. He’s chief of police in Jarrett Creek.”
He nods, but his expression tells me he doesn’t care who I am, I’m in the way.
“I was telling Mrs. Montclair I’m hoping to get some information. There was a fire yesterday at a house on the edge of the Cato property over in Jarrett Creek.”
“We don’t get much gossip out here. We work a long day.”
I begin to understand that their grim behavior toward me isn’t personal. They’re half dead from hard work, trying to keep up this farm. I wonder why they don’t let some of the cosmetic work go.
“I understand,” I say. “I wanted to know if you were aware of the house and if you know who has been living there.”
The man gives a snort. “Way you’re describing it, it must be Darktown. That’s the only part of the property that’s in Jarrett Creek. I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but I wouldn’t have anything to do with that type of person.”
“Do you know how I can get in touch with the owner?”
“Judy, will you go in the house and get this man what he wants so I don’t have to track my muddy boots inside?”
She gives him a hateful look, then turns without a word and heads into the house.
Trying to think of something friendly to say, I remark, “You sure keep the place up nice. How often do you see the owner?”