The Dirty South - Charlie Parker Series 18 (2020)

by Connolly, John

  ‘They have no reason to involve themselves, but they’re aware of what’s been happening.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They don’t like it any more than we do, but pressure to look the other way is being applied right across the board, and it’s coming from on high.’

  ‘How high?’ said Griffin.

  ‘From Washington. Maybe not from Bubba himself, but close.’

  The liberals might have been patting themselves on the back when Clinton ended twelve years of Republican rule, but only the most naïve of souls could have mistaken him and his team for sentimentalists. This was the man who, as governor of Arkansas, had sent Ricky Ray Rector to the death chamber in ’92 just to prove to presidential voters that he was tough on crime, but old Ricky Ray had essentially lobotomized himself during a failed suicide attempt in ’81, leaving him so mentally impaired that he set aside the slice of pecan pie from his last meal so he could eat it after his execution.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Griffin.

  ‘They don’t want a murder investigation down here,’ McKenzie concluded. ‘But we knew that already.’

  Griffin felt the lassitude begin to descend. It would be easier to surrender the case to Jurel Cade, and permit him to produce a simulacrum of an inquiry. Maybe there would be no more dead girls. Perhaps whoever killed Donna Lee Kernigan had sated himself with her. But instead Griffin said:

  ‘To hell with what they want or don’t want.’

  ‘My sentiments exactly. What about this Parker?’

  ‘I’m going to do my best to persuade him to stay.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because,’ said Griffin, ‘I think he knows a lot about killing.’

  25

  Parker sat in Evan Griffin’s office, occupying a chair that rested unevenly on the floor, although whether through a fault in the chair or the surface, he could not say. His wallet, phone, and car keys lay on the desk in front of the chief. Griffin had risen to shake Parker’s hand after he was escorted into the office by Knight, and invited him to sit, but had said nothing else since then. He remained slouched in his chair, his hands folded over his small paunch, his right index finger tapping a slow regular cadence, carefully regarding the man opposite him. If he expected Parker to break the impasse, or begin showing obvious signs of discomfort – the foibles of the chair or floor apart – he was destined to be disappointed. Parker had grown used to stillness and quietude, and days could pass without his conversing with anyone but the dead. All his turmoil was within.

  Finally, Griffin spoke.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us who you were?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘I think,’ said Griffin, ‘that you might have expanded a little further on the subject.’

  ‘And what would I have said?’

  What indeed? Griffin had not considered the question in his way. How could this man have explained to a stranger the nature of the tragedy that had befallen him? Would he even have wanted to do so? In his position, Griffin thought perhaps that he, too, would have opted to say nothing at all.

  ‘I don’t know, but enough to avoid spending a night in a cell.’

  ‘I had to spend the night somewhere,’ said Parker, ‘and your cell was less depressing than my room. Incidentally, were you the one that searched it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you’re going to make a habit of it, you ought to learn how to pick a lock.’

  ‘I’ll add it to the list of life skills I haven’t yet managed to acquire, including forbearance.’

  Parker watched a truck pass, its semi-trailer loaded with logs. Fragments of bark spilled into the air before falling to earth like dying moths.

  ‘I’d really like to leave your town now,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you come here in the first place?’

  ‘You read the file in my room. I think you understand.’

  ‘Either you’re on a crusade,’ said Griffin, ‘or you’re trying to find whoever killed your wife and child. My guess is the latter. You’re interested in murders involving mutilation and display, which is what drew you to Cargill, and the Hartley case.’

  ‘Not only hers, because there was also Estella Jackson to consider. But yes, that’s about the size of it.’

  ‘You’re aware that we found another body this morning, murdered in a similar fashion to those two young women?’

  ‘I heard. If someone had investigated the Hartley killing properly, the latest girl might not be dead.’

  Griffin noted the phrasing of the reply, its avoidance of any explicit ascription of blame, even if the imputation was clear.

  ‘Do you understand how things work in this county?’ he said.

  ‘As far as I can tell, nothing works in this county.’

  Griffin didn’t bother to contradict him. Burdon County functioned, but not in a fashion comprehensible to outsiders, or those who failed to appreciate the relationship between poverty and pragmatism.

  ‘Jurel Cade, whom you’ve met, is the chief investigator for the Burdon County Sheriff’s Office, and therefore also for the county itself,’ said Griffin. ‘He decides what cases get investigated and prosecuted, aided by the coroner, Loyd Holt, who’s in Jurel’s pocket and does whatever he’s told. Any request for outside assistance – such as from the state police – has to go through the sheriff’s office. This department has autonomy to conduct inquiries of its own, up to and including cases of homicide, but it doesn’t have the resources to mount large-scale criminal investigations. We don’t even have a detective. Patricia Hartley’s body was discovered beyond the jurisdictional boundary of the Cargill Police Department, and therefore her case devolved to the sheriff’s office and Jurel Cade.’

  ‘Who then did nothing about it.’

  ‘That’s not entirely correct. I believe Jurel may have asked a question or two about Hartley’s movements, and signed off on some paperwork.’

  ‘My mistake,’ said Parker. ‘I meant to say “less than nothing.”’

  Griffin let it go. Arguing with this man would do no good, especially when all that he was saying was accurate.

  ‘As of this morning,’ Griffin continued, ‘we have another victim, same MO. The girl’s name was Donna Lee Kernigan. She was seventeen years old. This time, it’s definitely in our jurisdiction. Jurel may continue to dispute that, but he’ll be wasting his breath. So we intend to investigate, and try to find the one that killed her.’

  ‘I wish you luck,’ said Parker. ‘Now I’m going to take my possessions and continue on my way.’

  ‘We need assistance,’ said Griffin. ‘Cargill has suffered just eight homicides in the last fifteen years: three of them were domestic, one was the result of a mistimed punch in a bar fight, and one was a hit-and-run. In each of those last five cases, the culprit was apprehended within twenty-four hours. In two of them, he was still at the scene when our officers arrived, and the investigative process didn’t take much longer than the killings themselves. The other three murders remain unsolved. One of them is that of an elderly woman named Lucille Vail at her home about four years ago. Her husband, Gene, went missing at the same time, and later turned up hanged from a tree. He was our only suspect. The second is the death of Estella Jackson, of which you’re aware, since you had a copy of her case file among your possessions. The third is Donna Lee Kernigan.’

  ‘What about Patricia Hartley?’

  ‘Patricia Hartley’s death was officially determined to be accidental.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘The county coroner.’

  ‘She had sticks inserted into her mouth and vagina.’

  ‘She was found at the bottom of a rocky slope. The coroner decided that any injuries she received resulted from her fall.’

  ‘She was naked.’

  ‘It was speculated that narcotics might have been involved, but the coroner decided that, on balance, this was unlikely.’

  ‘Did the autopsy results suggest that?’

  ‘There was no autopsy.
The coroner has the authority to decide whether or not an autopsy is required. In this case, deeming the death to be accidental, he saw no cause to send the body to Little Rock for examination. Also, had he accepted the possibility of narcotic ingestion, it might have required him to authorize a proper investigation.’

  Parker stood. He removed his possessions from the desk.

  ‘You ought to find another job,’ he said. ‘Actually, a lot of people in this county ought to find another job, starting with the coroner.’

  ‘You won’t hear any disagreement from me about Loyd Holt. Speaking for myself, though, I’m too old to retrain.’

  ‘What about the Jackson killing?’

  ‘Estella Jackson? That was five years ago.’

  ‘There are similarities.’

  ‘The nature of what was done to her was widely known in this county, and a lot of time has elapsed since then. Similarities don’t mean it’s the same culprit.’

  ‘So nobody considered a link between her and Patricia Hartley, or saw fit to question the coroner’s decision?’

  ‘Nobody in a position of authority wants any of these killings investigated. They’d prefer whatever happened to Patricia Hartley – and, by now, Estella Jackson also – to be buried or burned along with the bodies. But you can change that. You have expertise that we don’t possess. I’m asking for your help, Mr Parker.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Parker, ‘but this isn’t my problem.’

  Griffin considered all the objections he might offer, all the efforts he might make to convince this man otherwise, but uttered none of them. He thought he understood. Who was to say that, in a similar position, he would have behaved any differently? Parker had lost nearly everything. The least he could be left with was his hope of revenge.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it is,’ said Griffin.

  ‘So I can go?’

  ‘I don’t see any reason for you to stay.’

  Parker’s eyes drifted away from Griffin, his gaze already elsewhere.

  ‘Before you leave,’ said Griffin, ‘I’d be interested to learn how you came by the material on Jackson and Hartley contained in that file of yours, especially the Hartley pictures.’

  ‘There are men and women in law enforcement who feel as though they owe me something,’ said Parker. ‘They don’t, but I’m not about to refuse their help.’

  ‘That may be true,’ said Griffin, ‘and the Jackson material could have come from anywhere, because there are copies of it up in Little Rock. But even I hadn’t seen some of those pictures of Patricia Hartley. I believe they might have been taken by Tucker McKenzie, our local forensic analyst.’

  ‘I don’t know the name, but not everyone in this state is prepared to turn a blind eye to murder on the say-so of a deadbeat coroner.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ said Griffin. ‘But some of us are now trying to do the right thing.’

  ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘I choose to differ. And I hope you find him, the one who did this to you and your family.’

  ‘I will, or he’ll find me. Either way, I’ll face him in the end.’

  ‘I’ll ask Kel to give you a ride back to the motel,’ said Griffin.

  ‘I’d prefer to walk.’

  And he did.

  From the office window, Griffin and Knight watched Parker cross the street and head west toward the motel.

  ‘You’re letting him go?’ said Knight.

  ‘You’re the one who didn’t want him to stay to begin with.’

  ‘I may have been mistaken. I don’t have to like him to work with him, and we need help.’

  ‘We’ll just have to do what we can without him.’

  Griffin thought of the dead girls. They deserved better, but he would try his utmost, for their sakes.

  ‘What next?’ said Knight.

  ‘We talk.’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘To everyone.’

  26

  Tilon Ward always kept a heavy-duty canvas bag packed and ready, just in case everything ever went to hell and he needed to run. The bag contained clothing, toiletries, a Beretta 9mm, and just under $15,000 in cash, along with two 1908 $20 Double Eagle gold coins that had been given to him by his father as a wedding gift, and were now worth about $3,000, give or take. The bag was usually stored behind a panel in the bathroom but right now it was sitting on Tilon’s bed, because he was thinking that the time might have come to leave town for a while.

  He should never have slept with Donna Lee Kernigan, not in a community like Cargill. He’d been careful, and it wasn’t as though her momma had objected – if nothing else, Sallie Kernigan was a practical person, and viewed her daughter’s dealings with Tilon Ward as an adjunct to a business relationship – but there were no secrets in a town this size, especially not when a teenage girl was involved. Tilon had always enjoyed a taste for younger women, although not so young as to be illegal, because he wasn’t a deviant, which was where he differed from his father, Hollis. The difficulty was that, while Tilon was growing older, the age of his women was staying more or less the same. He supposed that eventually he’d have to acquiesce to reality, and start sleeping with women in their late twenties or – God forbid – even older, but he wasn’t about to throw in the towel until he had to. Also, one of the advantages of being a meth dealer was that your product was always in demand, and often by those who didn’t mind paying for it in something other than hard cash.

  He held the Double Eagles in the palm of his right hand. His old man hadn’t left him much, apart from the coins – well, the coins, and an unshakable belief that the system was designed to fuck men over, and therefore the smart ones found a way to fuck it in return. He had no idea how his father had come by the Double Eagles, except that he probably hadn’t acquired them legally, Hollis Ward living by the conviction that only a fool paid ticket for anything, and the mark of a clever man was to pay as close as possible to nothing at all.

  But Hollis was gone now.

  Tilon’s truck had a full tank of gas. He could put three hundred miles of daylight between him and Cargill before he had to stop for a refill. From his bedroom window, he saw a red Ford Tempo pull up in the yard. His mother got out and removed a bag of groceries from the trunk. Somewhere in there would be chicken thighs, because she always made fried chicken on Mondays, with beans and mashed potatoes. She moved more slowly now, he noticed. She’d taken a bad fall a year earlier, and it had shaken her confidence.

  He restored the Double Eagles to the bag, and the bag to its hiding place behind the tub, just as he’d done countless times over the last few years. He couldn’t run, not yet, because if – or when – his relationship with Donna Lee was discovered, his absence would be construed as guilt, and Jurel Cade would as happily see him locked up for murder as for the manufacture of methamphetamine. Even to leave town so soon after coming across Donna Lee’s body would draw suspicion. But he also had certain unavoidable obligations here: to his customers, and more particularly to his employer.

  At that moment, as though his thoughts had invited the scrutiny of that very consciousness, his phone rang. He checked the number and decided it would be unwise to ignore this call.

  ‘Randall,’ he said.

  ‘I hear they found another dead colored girl.’

  Tilon decided not to clarify that ‘they’ hadn’t found her, but he had. He should have just come clean, because Randall Butcher would learn the truth soon enough. For the present, though, Tilon had decided on a policy of not admitting anything to anyone.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did you know her?’

  Careful, careful.

  ‘I knew her mother. Professionally speaking.’

  ‘Which means you also knew the girl.’

  ‘In passing.’

  The silence from Butcher was troubling. Tilon wouldn’t have dared attempt to lie like this to his face. Randall Butcher was a naturally distrustful individual. It was a depressing personal characteristic, one of B
utcher’s many.

  ‘Do we need to worry?’ Butcher said, once he was certain that the lull in the conversation, and the possible reasons for it, had registered with Tilon.

  Only about whatever Sallie Kernigan has left of her stash, thought Tilon, which I supplied, and maybe about the gun I gave her after she said someone tried to break into her house one night, and also about whatever she might have to say to the police once she discovers her daughter is dead, which means whatever she might have to say about me …

  ‘No, we don’t need to worry,’ said Tilon.

  ‘Good. Because when you didn’t show up this morning, like we’d discussed, I have to say that the possibility of worrying did cross my mind.’

  ‘Well, now you got no cause to.’

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘I think we should lay low for a few days.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  Because there’s been a murder, dumb-ass. Not even Jurel Cade can cover up this killing.

  ‘There’ll be an investigation,’ said Tilon.

  ‘There won’t be no investigation, not a real one. There wasn’t last time.’

  ‘But now there are two bodies to add to Estella Jackson’s. They can’t let that slide.’

  ‘How long have you lived in this county, Tilon?’

  ‘Somewhere between too long and far too long.’

  ‘Then you ought to know better. A lot of money is coming down the pipe, more than even dead white girls would be worth endangering. And why are you bringing up Jackson? That’s old history.’

  Tilon realized he should have admitted to Randall his role as discoverer of Donna Lee’s body, because then he could have explained his reasons. He’d witnessed her injuries, and looked upon the branches forced into her body, which sounded a lot like what Estella Jackson had endured back in the day. Instead, Tilon now had to double down on the first lie, because a confession would cause Butcher to speculate on what else he might be hiding.

  ‘I hear Kernigan had sticks put inside her, or so they’re saying. That was what was done to Estella Jackson.’

  ‘Among other things,’ said Butcher. ‘There’s whispers that Patricia Hartley might have been killed that same way, no matter what Loyd Holt says.’