Trial by Fire

by Terri Blackstock

  The radio volume lowered as he continued to the driver’s door, staying back as he’d been trained. He shone the light into the window.

  “We didn’t do nothin’,” the driver said.

  In the flashlight beam, Sid saw three white guys and a girl. They all looked relatively clean-cut. The driver was blond and more tanned than normal for this time of year. He had the look of one of those action-movie stars who hit celebrity overnight.

  “Can I see your driver’s license, please?” he asked through his teeth.

  The driver pulled his billfold out and thrust his license at him. “What did you pull me over for?” He sounded weary and fed up.

  “For going sixty in a thirty-mile zone, runnin’ a stop sign, and disturbin’ the peace.”

  “Disturbin’ the peace?” the driver asked. “You’ve got to be kidding me. And I wasn’t speeding.”

  “I say you was. And since I’m the cop, it’s my word that counts. See, they listen to me down at headquarters, not to a vanload of punks with hate signs stuck on their windows. Besides, I got a couple dozen witnesses back there. Stay right here.”

  The driver opened his door and started to get out.

  “I told you to stay there,” Sid said.

  The kid continued to get out of the van. “I don’t take orders from people like you.”

  Sid laughed bitterly, thinking how much he would enjoy putting this kid in his place. Yeah, these white supremacists were superior, all right, with their smart mouths and stupid rebellion against authority. Real intellectual.

  It occurred to him that he could show this little coward who he’d take orders from, but he decided to savor the moment. He needed backup, just to make sure he didn’t lose them. Since they very well could be the killers and arsonists, he wanted to keep them here as long as he could. He put his hand on his weapon. “You got a choice. You can either get back in your van until I say you can get out, or you can stand here, provin’ your superiority with a pair of handcuffs on your wrists, or you can come sit in the back of my squad car with those handcuffs on, since that’s probably where you gon’ wind up, anyway.”

  After trying to stare him down, the kid slowly got back into his car, as if it was his idea and had nothing to do with Sid’s suggestion. Sid grinned and leaned down into the window. “There now. You are an intellect, ain’t you? A veritable genius. Now you just stay there while I go back to my car for a minute, because if you so much as start your engine, you won’t have to worry about gettin’ arrested. I’ll take care of you myself, before you even have time to turn that steerin’ wheel. Now why don’t you give me your driver’s license?”

  He left them sitting there and went back to his car. Keeping his eyes on them, he radioed in. “Three-three-two to Midtown. I just pulled over four punks for speedin’ and disturbin’ the peace, but I have reason to believe they could be suspects in Ben’s murder and the church burnin’. Witnesses saw a swastika sticker on the getaway car, and this one has one. Need backup and a search warrant, fast as I can get it. And run this name through, see whatcha got.”

  After a moment, the dispatcher radioed back. “Sid, that Jason Cruz is the one Stan’s been looking for. He said to tell you he’s the one threatened Nick Foster.”

  “Score!” Sid sat still for a moment, feeling no joy that his nephew’s murderer might be in that car in front of him.

  “We have a search warrant on the way. Judge DeLacy was still at the courthouse. Vern Hargis is bringing it.”

  In moments, they had all four kids out of the van being frisked, while Sid and the others searched it for any clues that they had played a part in the burning or the murder. They found stacks of white supremacy and Aryan nation propaganda, but no gas cans or guns, no blood on the seats or in the carpet, no drugs or alcohol, nothing that would make it appropriate to impound the van and throw them in jail.

  Nothing, except for the hunch that Nick Foster had had about Jason Cruz getting even. They had been looking for him, wanting to bring him in for questioning, but hadn’t caught up with him until now. Sid Foster wasn’t about to let him go.

  “Okay, now, here’s how it’s gon’ be,” he said, trying to temper his voice so he wouldn’t sound like a vengeful uncle. “Jason, here—”

  “Cruz,” the kid cut in. “They call me Cruz.”

  “Okay, Cruz. Cruz here’s gon’ come to the station with me. We got a few things to talk about, like where he was in the wee hours of yesterday mornin’, what he knows about Ben Ford’s death and the church burnin’…”

  “Wait a minute,” Cruz said. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  “Well, now, you can come peaceably, or I can handcuff you and drag you in. I prefer the latter, but we’ll let it be your choice.”

  Cruz swallowed and looked back at his sister. “Jen, go back and tell everybody that we’re being persecuted. That they ran us down on the road without probable cause and are taking me in without an arrest warrant. Tell Granddaddy to call his lawyer.”

  The girl flung her hair back over her shoulder and took a bold step toward Sid. She was almost as tall as he, and as skinny as a runway model. He could see that she didn’t have much fear in her. “You ain’t got anything on him.”

  “We have witnesses,” Sid said. “Witnesses who saw some punks comin’ out of that church just before they noticed the fire. Witnesses who saw a swastika and KKK emblem on the bumper. And the curiosity that had you drivin’ by the church grounds tonight, what with the sticker on your van and your smart mouth, make you prime suspects, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe you’d like to come in with your brother and answer a few questions too.” He pulled out his pad as if to write. “No problem to add Cruzette to our little party tonight.”

  “I go by Jennifer,” she bit out.

  “You can see how I’d be confused. That’s J-e-n-n—”

  “No,” Cruz cut in. “Jen, you go back and tell them. Tell Granddaddy. I can take care of this until he gets there.”

  Jennifer didn’t like it, but she nodded to the others and went to get in on the driver’s side. Before she got in, she gave him a worried look over the door. “Cruz?”

  “It’s okay,” he said, almost gently. “Don’t worry. Just do what I said.”

  As Sid escorted Cruz to the backseat of his squad car, he watched that van drive away. He wished he could lock up the whole bunch. Eventually, he vowed that he would, if they had anything at all to do with Ben’s murder. As soon as he took care of Cruz, he’d get a rap sheet on each of them, assign someone to tail them, find out who else they hung out with, what they did in their spare time, where they worked, what their agendas were. If they were involved in the killing of his nephew, Sid Ford was going to make sure they paid.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Because the Cain and Addison Funeral Home expected record numbers of mourners for Ben’s visitation, they convinced Susan and Ray to have a four-hour visitation. That would help with traffic in the parking lot and through the building, they were told. It was simply a matter of convenience.

  There had been some debate as to whether to open the casket, but the undertaker had promised that he could cover the bullet hole. There had been no significant burns to Ben’s face, so Susan saw no reason to deprive his friends of the closure the viewing would bring them.

  By the third hour, Susan and Ray were still on their feet, hugging tearful friends who’d lined up to pay their respects. Susan wasn’t making sense anymore, and Ray wished he could call a halt to the rest of it and take her away where she could sit down and take her shoes off and let go.

  But as many words of comfort were offered to them, Ray found that Susan was trying to offer just as many in return. She clung to each mourner, as if she knew their hearts were broken with hers. She told them each what precious friends they’d been to her son, even if she’d never seen them before in her life. She made them each feel that their presence here had made all the difference in her level of grief. He didn’t know how she did it. He knew she h
ad not slept last night. He had heard her sobbing in Ben’s room, and had gotten up to see about her. The door had been locked, so he’d respected her need to be alone. He had gone out to the backyard then and wept his heart out under the stars. He wasn’t sure anymore if God heard.

  Someone whispered something to her, something Ray hadn’t heard, and Susan burst into tears again and clung to that person as if he were Ben’s best friend. She wept openly, without any stoic acceptance, without that glow that some were able to have in the face of tragedy, declaring God to be sovereign and all-knowing, and trusting in him. Instead, he knew that trust would be a long time in coming. She would have to work that out with God on her own…just as he would.

  Lord, I can take the pain, he thought. But help her with hers. She’s so fragile. She can’t take it, Lord.

  He watched, broken and weary, as they came one by one. And each time someone approached the casket, he saw Susan stiffening slightly, looking that way, as if desperately wanting to tell them not to touch him, that she didn’t even want them looking at him long. He knew how she felt. He felt it too. It was all he could do last night not to come to the funeral home and insist on sleeping on the floor next to his son.

  The fact that Ben was in heaven, and not lying in that casket, provided little comfort. He had searched his heart for all the Scripture he had ever learned about heaven and death, but it failed him now. He needed someone to quote it to him, remind him what it said. But he didn’t want to hear it from Nick, because part of him blamed the preacher.

  He blamed him and Mark and Dan, and all the guys who’d fought the fire that morning. He blamed Stan and the police force for letting lunatics run the roads and kidnap innocent victims and murder them. He blamed the paramedics who couldn’t bring him back to life, and he blamed the coroner who must have seen Ben as just another job, even though it hadn’t been obvious.

  And if he were honest, he had to admit that he blamed everyone in line here, for not being aware enough of the evil in their community to call it what it was and purge it from their town. If someone, anyone, had seen them take Ben…if one person had made a phone call…turned someone in…Ben might be alive.

  He knew it wasn’t rational, but he didn’t care. And now he blamed the funeral home for a visitation that stretched beyond human endurance, and for the mourners who dared to smile in the halls and talk about things other than death and Ben.

  And most of all, he blamed himself, for not being there when his son needed him, for not coming to his aid, for not protecting him as he had always tried to do. The big fire chief of Newpointe, the big rescuer, who couldn’t even save his own son.

  The irony almost buried him.

  But still the people came, and whispered, and wept, and Susan kept clinging and crying and chattering empty phrases over and over…

  Ray just wanted it all to end.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jennifer bolted into the house, all fury and rage, and slammed the door with an authority that silenced the dozen kids there. “They arrested him. Took him to jail without probable cause.”

  “Who?” Jake asked.

  “Cruz, that’s who!” she shouted like he was a fool. “Took him in handcuffs like a criminal, when he didn’t do nothing wrong. We were just driving through town minding our own business…”

  Jake decided it wouldn’t be a good time to point out that Cruz had done something wrong. There was that little matter of murder, but everyone seemed to have forgotten it.

  “I got my granddaddy to call his lawyer in Slidell, but the idiot is out of town and won’t be back until morning. So Cruz has to sit there all night, in a jail cell, and he ain’t done nothing wrong!” She waved her arm at the group as a thought came to her. “You know what this is about. It’s about who we are. The grandchildren of the grand wizard of the KKK. But you know what? This is a free country, and you don’t get to arrest somebody just because they’re related to somebody you don’t like.”

  “Did they say anything about the fire and the shooting?” Benton dared to ask.

  Jake was proud of his friend’s courage. He wished he’d managed to get that question out.

  “Oh, yeah, that came up,” Jennifer said. Her cheeks looked as if they’d been slapped hard, and she paced back and forth, back and forth, in front of them, like a caged tiger trying to find an escape. “We’ve got to intervene, that’s all there is to it. We have to do something to divert suspicion.”

  “We should pray for him.” The guy who came up with that was what Jake would have called a fanatic. Roy Decareaux had dropped out of high school in the ninth grade and worked at the Burger King for minimum wage. His dream had been to be an evangelist, until Cruz gave him a greater purpose.

  “Okay,” Jennifer said, almost as if humoring him. “Let’s pray.”

  “On our knees,” Roy said.

  “Right. On our knees,” Jennifer said, then flashed her eyes to the others. “Get down, everybody. Now!”

  Jake looked around, feeling awkward, and realized that everyone else did too. Some of them stood on their knees, with hands clasped in front of them like toddlers beside their beds. Others sat back on their heels, balancing themselves with a hand on the floor on either side of them. Only Jennifer failed to kneel, but she stood at the front of the room with her hands raised high, and began to yell her prayers, as if God was hard of hearing.

  Jake wondered if a real God would like to be talked to like that. Would he really want some raving girl, pretty as she was, spouting out confusing things like “confound the enemy” and “curse those who persecute us”? Or was that just what God wanted from them? Did you have to know his language to approach him? What if some ordinary Joe like him ever wanted to pray, and didn’t know those phrases? Would God still hear? Would he hear now?

  Jake looked up at Jennifer from his crouch on the floor, and saw the tears streaming down her face. His heart softened, and he realized her prayers were genuine. It broke his heart. He didn’t like seeing her cry. He fought the urge to get up and put his arms around her and let her cry on his shoulder. It probably wasn’t a good idea.

  So he kept pretending to pray, wondering if there really was a God up there who was listening to their pleas to hide the murder they’d committed, and helping them get away with burning one of his churches. Was it true that God really favored white people? Wasn’t Jesus from the Middle East? Wouldn’t his skin have been dark?

  But Jennifer seemed to think God was listening. Who was Jake to question it? After all, he knew nothing of God. She’d been raised from birth to believe. She knew tons of Scripture by heart, and Cruz, the most spiritual person he had ever known, had memorized the entire New Testament. If anyone knew God, he supposed they did.

  He thought about the first time he’d seen Jennifer Cruz, a couple of years ago when he was fourteen and she was sixteen. She and Cruz had been at the ballpark after a game one night, when kids congregated on the dark field to smoke cigarettes and drink wine coolers. They had walked onto the field like some kind of rock star and super model, and had gotten everybody’s attention. Especially Jake’s.

  He’d had a crush on Jennifer ever since, and unless he was mistaken, the feeling was mutual.

  After all, she’d recommended him as drummer for their band, hadn’t she?

  Plus, Cruz was the most likeable guy he’d ever met, and had accepted Jake right into his group. What a relief to be taken for who you were after being labeled an outcast in high school, since he wasn’t a jock or a junior politician. Jake felt like he was part of something important. The Twelve Disciples, Cruz called them, leaving himself and Jennifer out of the count. Jake and Benton had nothing but respect and admiration for all of the “brothers and sisters” of the group, from the illustrious “inner circle,” consisting of Cruz, Jennifer, Redmon, and Graham, to Grayson and LaSalle who constantly lobbied to be among the favored few. And he respected the couples—Decareaux and his girlfriend Blair, Butch and Meg, and Drew and Kaye. They were all unif
ied in purpose, and accepted without question.

  When Jake and Benton had told Cruz about Benton’s dead grandmother’s house, they had suddenly become heroes. They needed a place to gather until they could start converting Cruz’s grandfather’s old deer camp into a compound in which they could all live. Cruz told them that God had sent them, because he knew they needed a place to hold their meetings and their band practices. Since this house was vacant and Benton’s family had no plans to sell it for a while, it was perfect.

  Suddenly, life got interesting. Though Jake still drifted home for a couple hours of sleep each night, he had bought his way into Cruz’s following by donating anything he owned that they could sell. It seemed to be for a good cause. Cruz and Jennifer had goals, and he was part of them. He didn’t think he’d ever had a goal before.

  But now he wondered if it was getting out of hand.

  Jennifer finished praying, then wiped her face and took the stool that her brother usually occupied. “It came to me during prayer,” she said. “God revealed to me that we have to do something to divert attention from Cruz. If they think he was involved in the church burning and the killing, and that the others of us were…me and Redmon and Graham…then we have to give ourselves an airtight alibi tonight, and do it all again.”

  “Do what again?” Jake asked.

  “Another church burning, and another black killing.”

  The crowd of kids roared out its disapproval, but she raised her hands and quieted them. “Just listen. This is a holy war. Rahowa. Say it with me.”

  All twelve followers muttered the word that had become a chant, symbolizing the racial holy war that Cruz said they were engaged in.

  “Again!” she cried.

  “Rahowa!”

  “Like you mean it!”

  “Rahowa!”

  “We’ve had one taken captive,” she went on. “If we’re really what we say we are, then we can’t stop now. We have to prove that Cruz ain’t the one responsible for the killing. Something has to happen while he’s in police custody, and while we’re busy somewhere else. We have to throw them off. I need volunteers to do this for us. For Cruz…for me.” She waited, and no one came forward.