Days of Rage: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “It depends on what you want to do,” I said. “If you want to clear them out and give them a decent burial, no, we don’t need anyone other than a funeral home.”

  “Smokey,” she said loudly. Then she took a deep breath and lowered her voice so much that I had to lean forward to hear her. “These people were most likely murdered. Someone did something bad in that place. Isn’t it our responsibility to find out who?”

  “Why is it our responsibility?” I asked, more to hear how her thoughts went than to challenge her. My natural inclination would be to find out what happened as well, but I also knew there were times you just let things fade into the past.

  “We found them,” she said.

  “I found them,” I said.

  “And you don’t feel responsible for them?”

  I shook my head. “I do feel curious, however.”

  Her lips thinned and she leaned even closer to me. Our faces were practically touching. “What if the person responsible is still alive?”

  I leaned back. I felt as if our very posture was calling attention to us. A lot of people in Chicago didn’t like blacks and whites at the same table, let alone sitting so close.

  “I think it’s possible, but not likely, that the person responsible is still alive,” I said. “Those bodies are so well hidden that only a handful of people could have even known about them. Baird, Hanley, your father maybe, or—”

  “Someone else at Sturdy,” Laura said. “My father’s been gone a long time now.”

  “You’re thinking Cronk and the bastards,” I said.

  “Cronk and the bastards” was Laura’s term for the team her father had appointed to run Sturdy Investments after his death.

  She opened her hands, a simple gesture that meant the implications were obvious.

  “That would solve some problems for you, wouldn’t it?” I said. “If you can show criminal activities under their watch, activities that occurred after your father died with no benefit to the corporation.”

  “I can get rid of all their cronies,” Laura said. “I can do a clean sweep of Sturdy without getting in trouble with the stockholders or any of our clients.”

  I took a bite of pie. It was sweet, with just the right amount of cinnamon. “And here I thought you were being altruistic.”

  “I am.” She spoke loudly again.

  The students stopped their arguments over which chapters to study and looked at us again. When we glanced at them, they looked away.

  Laura sighed as if she were exasperated at me. “I wouldn’t be able to sleep, knowing we just left them there. And I’d want to know what happened, not just because of my family connection, but also because they were people. Someone loved them once. Someone cared. Someone probably still wants to know what happened to them.”

  I followed my second bite of pie with a sip of coffee. I was stalling before I answered her. She really wasn’t aware of all that this entailed.

  “If we discover that this happened after your dad, and we bring it to the proper authorities, then we could get into trouble,” I said.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Tampering with a crime scene,” I said.

  “An old one.”

  “Not that old,” I said. “Not in this kind of case.”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “If it predates your father, then the authorities might not care that we’ve been digging around down there. But they might, particularly if they want to go after you for some reason.”

  “Shit,” Laura said.

  I raised my eyebrows at her. She rarely swore.

  Her cheeks flushed slightly. “It’s damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”

  “Yes, it is,” I said.

  “But you said you’d think about it,” she said. “You said you’d have a plan.”

  “It’s risky,” I said. “But here’s what I think we should do.”

  Laura listened while I laid out my plan. It was based on things I’d seen in the South before the Civil Rights Movement had gotten national attention.

  Often murders of blacks, particularly in rural counties, got covered up or were committed by the law enforcement agencies in the area. Sometimes the families and friends of the victims were able to do some investigating themselves. They soon learned that no one would pay attention the investigation if it wasn’t conducted properly — with documentation, correct evidence-handling procedures, and accurate autopsies.

  Soon white law enforcement learned to restrict access to those crime scenes, but for a brief window, a number of higher-profile cases had got northern newspaper coverage because the victims’ families had photographic or physical evidence that contradicted the stories the authorities told.

  “Emmett Till,” Laura said, citing a famous case from 1955. Till, a fourteen-year-old Chicago boy, had been visiting relatives in Mississippi when he supposedly whistled at a white woman. I never believed that part of the story. I always figured he had just looked at her and smiled, with that directness most Northern children had and all black Southern boys had learned to avoid.

  For his crime — whatever it was, smiling or whistling or just plain being in the wrong place at the wrong time — Till had been kidnapped and brutally murdered. His mother, outraged that Mississippi law enforcement had done nothing, got her son’s body back for the funeral and, contrary to all advice, held an open-casket funeral so that the world could see what had happened to her son.

  Emmett Till became a cause célèbre, part of the budding Civil Rights Movement. When his funeral was held here in Chicago, Laura would have been sixteen — only two years older than Till had been. No wonder she remembered it.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Like Emmett Till. Only a lot of cases got more evidence. Enough to attempt bringing those cases to trial. We wouldn’t be going for a trial. We’d just document everything in case we needed to bring this to someone’s attention.”

  “I have no idea how to go about that,” Laura said.

  “I know the kind of people we need,” I said, “and if we were in Memphis, I even know who I’d hire to help. But I don’t have those contacts here yet, so I’m going to have to bring Franklin into this.”

  She nodded. “I suspected as much.”

  “It would be better,” I said, “to hire some of these experts from out of state. Just in case.”

  She bit her lower lip again. The lipstick was completely gone now. “This is going to get expensive, isn’t it?”

  “Probably,” I said. “And we have another problem.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “I’m going to have to oversee everything. I’m the only person with the time and the ability. But if we do take the case to the authorities, we’ll have to leave me out of it. Anyone we hire is going to have to swear they won’t mention my involvement.”

  “If they go to court, that can be a problem,” Laura said.

  I nodded. “We might be worrying about something that’ll never happen.”

  “Then again,” she said, “this could be a bigger problem than we think.”

  SIX

  Franklin knew a local funeral home director who occasionally did autopsy work and some forensic investigation, mostly of corpses. Franklin swore that the man was trustworthy. I took the name and decided to do a little investigating of my own. I wanted someone so incorruptible that I didn’t have to worry about him at all.

  When it came to actual forensic investigation, however, the kind that police departments did in actual murder investigations, Franklin knew no one.

  I couldn’t use my own past contacts, because they all knew me as Smokey Dalton, and even if they were trustworthy, they would know where I was. I had long ago decided that no one outside of Jimmy, Laura, Franklin, and Althea would know that I had moved to Chicago. Even Henry Davis, who managed my Memphis home for me and was one of my closest friends, had no idea exactly where I lived.

  So I used the only other contact I could think of. I called Laura’s attorne
y, Drew McMillan. McMillan was based in New York. He promised to have some names for me in the next few days.

  We were proceeding slowly, and while I knew there was a need for caution, I still worried that something might happen while we were planning. I was afraid kids would break into the house or squatters would notice that no one was there and make it their own.

  I had locked up the basement, but I still didn’t want anyone else inside. I worried about that clipboard, sitting at the top of the stairs, and I hoped no one from Sturdy’s rental agency would go in to check on the place.

  Even though I was worried, I resisted the urge to drive by the house. I had to stay as far from it as possible until we started work in the basement. Even then, I had to figure out a way to be inconspicuous while doing what was needed.

  By the time the weekend came, I had spoken to Laura a few times, played phone tag with McMillan, and had barely had time to start my research on the funeral director. I tried to save my weekends for Jimmy, and that Saturday we’d lounged around the house, watching the Mets soundly beat the Braves.

  Jimmy had chosen the Mets as his team once both Chicago teams were out of the post-season, saying he had to be a Mets fan because we had lived for a short time in New York. I chose the Braves, not just to be contrary, but because I had been born in Atlanta, something I wasn’t sure Jimmy had known before that afternoon.

  Baseball proved a nice diversion — it was something we were both interested in, and I hoped by next spring I would have enough extra cash to buy us an occasional ticket to the ballpark. Chicago had two teams, the White Sox and the Cubs, and it was a shame we hadn’t been to see either of them play in person.

  We had a pleasant weekend, which was good, because I had a hunch I wouldn’t have a pleasant week.

  Drew McMillan called first thing Monday morning. I sat bleary-eyed in my office, staring at a cup of coffee that I’d had to set aside twice — once to get Jimmy ready for school, and now for the phone call — and pulled a yellow legal pad toward me.

  McMillan had the name of a forensic criminalist. I had never heard the term before, and said so.

  McMillan chuckled. “It’s what you asked for, Bill. Someone who investigates crime scenes.”

  “I need someone who’ll actually work this scene,” I said.

  “He has. He’s worked half a dozen cases that the police wouldn’t touch, mostly in New York State. But he’s reputable, and expensive.”

  “Have you cleared the costs with Laura?” I asked.

  “I quoted his rates when I first talked to her,” McMillan said. “I figured if we got him, we’d be lucky.”

  “What about confidentiality?” I asked.

  “He’s being hired by us. Which puts him under lawyer-client privilege. I have a list of credentials and cases he’s worked. You want them?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and used my teeth to pull the cap off my pen.

  McMillan listed nearly two dozen cases going back five years before I finally told him I had enough. I would be spending most of the day at the library looking up this information, and McMillan knew it.

  “Okay,” I said when he finished. “Now tell me the downside of this guy.”

  “He’s fair,” McMillan said.

  “So?”

  “If the evidence points to something the client wants hidden, he doesn’t flinch. He works it.”

  “I have to be there with him,” I said.

  “You can’t,” McMillan said. “It’ll taint the investigation.”

  “I have no stakes in the outcome here,” I lied.

  “You’re a Sturdy employee. That taints you automatically.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I contract with Laura. I’m an investigator, just like your criminalist is.”

  “Hmmm.” McMillan paused, clearly thinking. “Let me check with him. That might make a difference.”

  “It better,” I said. “Because I’m going to be at his side, examining everything right along with him, just like a police detective would do.”

  “At some point, they leave the evidence sifting to the professionals and go after the bad guys.”

  “I’m not sure there’re going to be any bad guys to go after.”

  “You know what I mean,” McMillan said.

  I did. He meant that I would have to see where else the evidence led. I wasn’t willing to concede any point on that, at least not yet.

  “See if he’ll work with me,” I said. “You have a backup on this if he won’t?”

  “A few,” McMillan said. “But Laura insisted time was of the essence. I’ve already got a flight booked to Chicago on Wednesday. She wants a meet with the whole team.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. Sometimes Laura got too formal. “She gave me the right to approve everyone. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”

  “You got it,” McMillan said. “But that might muddy the lawyer-client thing.”

  “You get to check that out,” I said, looking at all the names and dates I’d scrawled across that legal pad. “It looks like I’ve got quite a bit of digging to do.”

  I finally got to my coffee — now cold — and made two slices of buttered toast as a late breakfast. Then I stared at the legal pad and contemplated my next move.

  Going to the library would take me to the Loop. Even though I’d be blocks from Civic Center Plaza where most of the activity was, I would be close enough to make me nervous.

  The hoopla around the trial continued. The violent branch of the SDS, which called itself the Weathermen, were planning later this week an action they were calling The Days of Rage.

  They actually had posters up for it on telephone poles around the city. The one I’d seen most had a fist extended in a Power-to-the-People symbol, with the words Bring the War Home — Chicago along the sides. The dates ran along the bottom: October 8-11.

  I’d already told Jimmy that he had to come directly home those days. I had no real idea what the Weathermen were planning, but I’d met a few of their kind last summer, and I knew they were dangerous.

  They were already in the city. They’d had a few demonstrations, and made some speeches downtown. Another branch of the SDS, the supposedly peaceful side, were also giving speeches denouncing the Weathermen.

  And all of this was supposedly in support of the Chicago Eight, as the media was calling the members of the Conspiracy Trial.

  Still, I had to research the criminalist. I couldn’t go to the University of Chicago libraries. Lately, they’d been asking for university identification to use anything unusual like the microfiche viewers. The University of Illinois Circle Campus was clamping down as well. In response to the violence and unrest that had become part of campus life all over the nation, universities were increasing security in the most unexpected places.

  I hadn’t tried Northwestern, but its location in Evanston meant that I would have to drive through the trouble areas. Besides, most of the student demonstrations so far had either happened in the Loop or in Lincoln Park, and I didn’t want to go near either.

  So I opted for the main library. I took the El rather than fight for parking downtown. The library filled the entire block between Washington and Randolph Streets. This was one of my favorite buildings in the entire city — a good thing, since I had spent a lot of time in it over the years.

  The building had been built just before the turn of the century in a classic Chicago Beaux Arts style. The old stone façade had character, but it didn’t reveal what was in the interior — two Tiffany domes, a sweeping staircase that led up to the second floor, and lots and lots of marble.

  It smelled like a library too, dusty and rich, promising all kinds of delights.

  Only I wasn’t going for the delights. I was heading to the microfiche room to look up old newspaper articles. I started with the New York Times for the dates McMillan had given me, going through badly scratched photographic film of each newspaper, trying to find articles about the various trials, hoping for a mention of the crimi
nalist.

  After three hours of work, I had found a few, most of them having to do with his testimony. They all cited the same credentials, which had to be the ones he was using when asked about his background on the stand.

  I finally gave up. There wasn’t a lot I could learn this way, unless he had gotten into trouble. And since McMillan was promoting him, I doubted that I would have received any of the case citations that went badly.

  I was about to return the last microfiche of the New York Times when I realized I had another option. I went back through the trial materials in the paper, getting the names of the attorneys on that trial. Then I made a note of which attorney had hired the criminalist.

  When I had a substantial list, I went into the public records room and found the phone books for various metropolitan areas. Manhattan’s was prominently displayed. I had more trouble finding the smaller cities, but after another hour had passed, I had the phone numbers of nearly a dozen attorneys, all of whom had contact with the criminalist.

  I didn’t feel as defeated. I left the library with plenty of time to take the El back home and to pick up Jimmy at the after-school program.

  I stopped on Washington and peered west. If I walked just five blocks that way, I would be at Laura’s offices. A knot of people had gathered in Civic Center Plaza near the spectacularly ugly 50-foot-tall Picasso sculpture. I couldn’t tell who the people were, but from their attention, it looked like someone was either giving a press conference or a speech.

  That convinced me to stay away. I walked to the El, and headed home. I had phone calls to make anyway and questions to be answered before I hired someone to help me excavate what might become Laura’s most important secret.

  SEVEN

  By the time I got to the apartment, I only had an hour before I had to pick up Jimmy. It was after five in New York: most of the law offices were closed, although I knew many lawyers worked later than that. I figured I’d have better odds of catching people early in the morning.

  Instead, I drove to the funeral home off East Sixty-third, where the mortician that Franklin had pointed me to worked.