Murder on Second Street: The Jackson Ward Murders (Sy Sanford Series Book 1)

by Rebekah Pierce

  But before she left, she turned to him and Lena who had stood up from her desk and said, “Y’all sure do make a pretty couple.” And she left for the Cab Calloway Show at the Hippodrome Theatre, leaving the two rather embarrassed and deeply saddened. But none of that would matter soon.

  Chapter 4

  Later that night, as the elite Negro class of Jackson Ward was enjoying the entertainment of the infamous and flamboyant Cab Calloway and his band at the Hippodrome Theatre, and as Sy Sanford emptied the bottle of bourbon he had secretly bought from a local moonshiner into his guts back in his rented room on East Clay Street, sixteen-year old Shalesha Painter was dying from the loss of blood oozing out of the slit in her throat.

  He had met her at Libby Hill Park in Church Hill, another Negro neighborhood a few miles from Jackson Ward. She was a pretty little brown skinned girl with coal for eyes and pearls for teeth sitting alone on one of the park benches rummaging through one of those movie magazines that were suddenly very popular among young white girls. She hadn’t seen him at first, but he had been watching her sitting there so dark and lovely. He had come to the Hill to run an errand for his mother, begrudgingly, of course, and was walking back to his car when he saw her from across the street. He made up his mind that he would have her, this working girl sitting in the park alone in the middle of the afternoon in her maid’s uniform.

  She was the only daughter of a poor tomato farming family in Williamsburg, Virginia. Only having made it to the third grade, she had come to Richmond to find work and she did, working as a maid in a wealthy Negro family’s home. They lived in Church Hill a few blocks from the park where Shalesha had told him she come to dream. They were a prominent family with deep roots in Richmond having made their way up from being slaves to be founding members of the community. They paid their staff well for their service – and could afford to do so as the family business did well. So, Shalesha had been able to splurge on treats and such for herself with what monies she had left over after sending her pay home to Williamsburg.

  In fact, Shalesha had seen a picture film recently – one of those special treats for herself - and had immediately decided that she was going to be a movie star – the first Negress movie star. It didn’t matter that she was too black for the screen, Shalesha had a dream to live for now and she was more than excited that her new suitor had said he could get her into the talking pictures after she had told him of her dreams.

  “You really gonna get me into them pictures?” she had asked excitedly as he smiled down at her pretty white teeth and nodded yes.

  “But you mustn’t tell anyone about this just yet, remember? These kinds of deals are very sensitive,” he warned her.

  “Oh, I surely won’t! I promise you.” She had been so excited about the man she had met a few days ago in the park. He was clearly wealthy as he spoke so well and wore clean, new clothes. Shalesha wasn’t really used to men like him. But he was going to help make her dreams come true and that’s all that mattered to her.

  She was gonna meet him again tonight, running away to Hollywood as she had to Richmond, this poor tomato farmer’s daughter. He had told her to wait for him in the back of the Hippodrome Theatre. The sound of Calloway’s calypso voice and the roaring of the horns filled the night air as Shalesha placed her ears to the back door to hear better. It was a little cold out that night and the light sweater she had worn did little to keep her warm as she wrapped it tightly around herself leaning into the door. Beside her on the ground lay a small brown cloth bag. She had in it everything she presently owned, which wasn’t much: a dress or two, an extra pair of hosiery, hairbrush, toothbrush and three pairs of underwear. Oh, and her movie magazines! There was no way she was going to leave those behind, she had said to herself while she packed just a few hours earlier.

  As she leaned forward and tuned into the sounds of the audience give Calloway an uproarious applause, she fantasized for a second what it was going to be like to hear such applause for herself one day soon. The stars were in her eyes when he had grabbed her from behind, dragged her behind some bushes nearby, and slit her throat without hesitation. He had been watching her from a dark corner ever since she arrived at the back alleyway at the exact time he had instructed her, waiting for this orgasmic moment.

  As she lay dying, her coal eyes staring up at the stars in the dark sky with tears, he quickly stripped her body of its clothes and threw them into the back of his car, which he had parked nearby. He could hear gurgling sounds like bubbles popping coming from her open throat, but he busied himself in his work. When she was completely stripped of all identity, he looked down at her near lifeless body; she was still trying to say her lines. Cold, dead brown eyes stared back at the starlet. She saw a full grin spread across his face as she fought to get that line in. But alas, the lights faded and the screen went black for poor Shalesha Painter.

  Why did he kill this star in the making? Did she threaten him or discover his secret? No. He just wanted to – because he could. Plus, she reminded him of someone he hated more than anybody: someone else with brown skin and coal for eyes. And as the fans of Cab Calloway swung to the sounds of his swinging band and calypso groove, Shalesha’s cold, naked body was carefully laid by the trash cans near the back door of the Hippodrome Theatre. It looks like Shalesha was going to be a star after all.

  Chapter 5

  He was awakened by the sound of someone pounding on his door. As he rolled over and tried to get out of the bed, he slipped on an empty bottle and nearly fell and busted his head, “Shit!” he hollered as he grabbed onto a nearby table for support. The pounding came again.

  “Mr. Sanford – I mean Sy – open the door, please! It’s an emergency!” yelled Mrs. Perditia Jones.

  Sy opened the door to find Mrs. Jones standing before him near colorless. “Another woman’s been murdered.”

  “Wh-at!” he stammered as he stood in the doorway.

  “May I come in?” she asked.

  He moved aside slowly and ushered her into the room still hanging onto the door for support. Mrs. Jones got a good look at him then. His clothes were covered in mud and … “Is that blood on your clothes, Sy?” she asked as she stepped back away from Sy a little nervously.

  Sy looked down at his clothes just then. It was blood, but he couldn’t remember how it got there. The last thing he remembered was sitting on a rock shucking rocks into the James River. He quickly grabbed a towel lying on a chair and covered his shirt. “I must have cut myself shaving or something,” he offered as an excuse, but her eyes told him she did not believe him.

  Mrs. Jones quickly scanned the room and then returned a look of pity onto Sy. He hated that look more than anything. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. “What do you mean someone else is dead?” he asked as he began to pick up the empty beer bottles that littered his floor.

  “At the Hippodrome. I don’t know the details exactly – and I don’t want to really, but they asked me to come and get you. Something has to be done fast,” she said urgently as she clutched her high collar to her throat.

  Silence filled the space for a moment as Sy threw the bottles in a bag. He grabbed a clean shirt out of a closet and then his hat. He still had on his shoes which had dried, caked mud all over them, but he ignored it and proceeded to usher Mrs. Jones towards the door.

  By the time Sy Sanford got to the Hippodrome, they were about to load Shalesha Painter’s naked, dead body into the police truck. She was found by a waiter earlier that morning after the Cab Calloway show had ended, he had found out from folks standing around looking at the scene. Mrs. Jones had gone back to the Sessions Hotel to wait. It was all too much for her, and besides, Sy didn’t want her to see what he knew instinctively would be gruesome.

  Fog had found its way to Jackson Ward and smothered it like a white blanket. It was unusual for October. Some of those who were present – the older ones that is – saw it as a bad sign. “Something evil is here in the Ward,” said Butterball Jenkins, the old janitor of t
he Hippodrome Theatre, to the small crowd that had gathered at the scene. Butterball was originally from Jamaica, so it was not a far-fetched notion to him that evil spirits were now haunting the residents of Jackson Ward.

  Sy stood by the trashcans smoking a cigar. Even he could not escape the depth of Butterball’s ominous words. He had seen dead bodies in the war and thought he had become numb to the sight of death, but when he had arrived at the theatre before the police had completely covered her up and taken her body away, he had had a chance to see the body for himself and it sent chills down his spine.

  Whoever had killed Shalesha had a deep rage in him…or her. You have to be real up close on a person to cut their throat like that, he said to himself. The killer had also cut off one of Shalesha’s breasts. The old janitor found it in the trashcan where her body was dumped. There was no more blood left in her body and no blood near her body, so Sy knew that she had not been killed there. The fact that her body was found by the trash told Sy that the killer felt Shalesha was just another object to be thrown out.

  Sy also felt that the killer was pretty brazen to have dumped her body in the back of the theatre during a live show. They could have been caught. Perhaps that excited the killer. Sy had seen it happen to a few men in his battalion during the war.

  His mind flashed back to a man named Leroy Taylor; he was a part of the other Negro battalion in France, the 372nd. The story went that Taylor had savagely ripped the hearts out of two French prostitutes after they had laughed at him because he could not “perform.” His commander had the incident covered up, but wherever the 372nd went, the bodies of French prostitutes started to pile up. Taylor would kill them and then dump their bodies a few yards from where the battalion was camped. His commander couldn’t protect him any longer when another soldier witnessed a murder and reported it to the higher-ups.

  There were other stories of men killing without regards to being punished, and at the time, although Sy knew instinctively that murder was wrong, he had chalked the incidents up to the consequences of war. But today, after seeing the lifeless body of Shalesha Painter, Sy realized that there was no excuse for murder – war or not - and someone needed to stop this maniac.

  Even more importantly, Sy didn’t like the way the white police officers had handled Shalesha Painter’s body. They did not come to collect her body and investigate the scene right away. In fact, Preston Miller and his staff had waited almost two hours for them to arrive. Sy watched Preston Miller cuss the police from behind the bar. “If she was a white woman, they’d shut me down. There is no justice for colored folks in this town. Ritchie!” he yelled at the bartender. “Go see if they’re here yet.” And he went on pacing the floor sweating and puffing viciously on a cigar.

  “Mr. Sanford,” Miller called. “This is why you must solve these murders. These white folks want to see us closed. That’s why they’re takin’ so long to come here.” He was standing directly in front of Sy breathing smoke into his face as sweat rolled down his forehead onto his shirt collar.

  “We went to see Sheriff Mason the other day. Mrs. Jones told you that, right?” Sy nodded his head. “Told us it was our problem, not his. That’s code for he don’t give a shit ‘bout niggers dying.”

  “That ain’t nothing new, Mr. Miller,” replied Sy as he downed the last of his bourbon.

  Before Miller could respond in kind, the police finally arrived, strolling casually into the theatre as if they were just out for a leisurely stroll in the park. Sheriff Mason led the procession of Richmond’s finest.

  “Heard you gotta body needs pickin’ up,” he said as he strolled over to Preston Miller and Sy. Sy was careful to hide his drink from the sheriff. He didn’t want to cause Miller to get into any more hot water for selling illegal liquor.

  “What took you so long to get here, Sheriff?” asked Preston angrily.

  “You ain’t ridin’ up on me now, boy, is ya? We had other pressin’ matters to attend to than comin’ to see ‘bout some dead nigger woman,” and he spit tobacco on Preston Miller’s theatre floor. The other two officers laughed – uneasily, Sy felt.

  Preston stared at the black spot on his pristine floor. He could hear his ex-slave father say, “No matter how much land and respect you get, you’s always gone be a nigger to ‘em. But don’t ever let ‘em make you feel that way. They win if ya’ do that.” A knowing smile crept upon Miller’s lips then.

  “Sheriff Mason, this dead nigger woman might be the steppin’ stone to a dead white woman,” retorted Miller.

  Sheriff Mason stiffened up. “Is that a threat, Miller?”

  “More like an observation, Sheriff Mason,” Sy interjected. “If the killer’s bold enough to drop off a dead Negro woman’s body in a dumpster during a show at a theatre, what makes you think he won’t want to try his hand at gettin’ away with killing a white woman? Now, then you’d have a problem.”

  The sheriff stared at Sy with hate in his eyes. The two men did not like one another, having had run-ins with one another since Sy had returned from the war. Sy had been cited several times for being drunk in public, but he never bothered anyone and the sheriff knew that. Knowing his past service in the military, Sheriff Mason felt that Sy was too arrogant for a Negro and needed to be put in his place. It never fully crossed his mind that the reason he didn’t like Sy was because he was envious of him having served his country.

  “This ain’t France, Sanford. Niggers know their place ‘round here. And if they don’t, we have ways of remindin’ ‘em!” and he stormed out to the back of the theatre to see the body.

  Preston and Sy watched them leave, and the unspoken word that passed between them was “coward.”

  The sheriff and his men took one look at Shalesha’s body and recoiled. One of the men – Deputy Brody, in fact - ran to the other trashcans and threw up. None of them had ever seen anything like it, not having served in a war or even been police officers for a very long time. Sheriff Mason covered his mouth with a handkerchief he had removed from his pants pocket and instructed his men to load Shalesha’s body into the police car.

  “Don’t you wanna cover her up? Give her some dignity?” Butterball Jenkins asked the Sheriff.

  Sheriff Mason rolled his eyes at the old man and screamed at Deputy Brody throwing up in the trashcan to, “Move your ass and go get a sheet!” The officer returned with the sheet, laid it down haphazardly over Shalesha and then proceeded to load her body onto a gurney as the Sheriff watched from a slight distance.

  After they left, Sy walked around the spot looking for anything that might give him a direction to go in. That’s when he saw the tire tracks. The fog had made the ground so moist such that anything heavier than a feather would leave an imprint in the soil.

  Preston Miller stood over Sy as he ran his fingers over the tracks. “Any of your staff drive cars?” Sy asked.

  Preston gave a nervous giggle. “They ain’t paid that well.”

  “What about you? You park your car back here?” Sy was standing now looking directly at Preston. He liked Miller because he had made something out of himself, renovating the Hippodrome and turning it into a lucrative business and home for Negro folks in Richmond. He was about an inch shorter than Sy, and about twenty years older than he, but he looked to still be in great shape.

  “I live next door, Mr. Sanford, in the Taylor Mansion. I have no need for a car. I take the trolley or walk to where I need to go.” The two men stared at one another for a second.

  Sy let out a deep, agitated sigh. “Then it looks like our killer drives a car, which means he ain’t a poor man, Mr. Miller.”

  “You mean one of our own is doin’ this?” Preston asked incredulously.

  There was much to that word “our,” thought Sy, so he said, “If you mean “our” by way of fellow Negroes, then yes. Not too many of us in the Ward own cars, Mr. Miller. But our killer does.”

  Preston shook his head no vehemently. “But he could be a white man. I wouldn’t put it past them to do it ju
st to destroy the Ward. We’re makin’ some serious money down here and men like Sheriff Mason have been looking for ways to destroy us for years now,” he said – more to convince himself of the ugly truth than to Sy.

  “A white man can’t drive freely through the Ward without being seen and watched, Mr. Miller. The Ward is too tight for that.”

  Chapter 6

  Jeffrey Peterson was making a deposit into his savings account at the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in Jackson Ward as Shalesha’s body was being carried off to the morgue. The bank was the largest black-owned bank in Richmond and the first chartered bank having been founded by local entrepreneur and celebrity Maggie L. Walker. The Negro elite in the Jackson Ward community were proud of Mrs. Walker, as they felt their money should only be taken care of by their own. Economic independence was the spirit that thrived in the Ward and its businesses such as the bank. So, they poured their dollars into the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank located at 902 St. James Street, and felt good and proud about it.

  The Peterson family was one of those Negro elite families in Richmond who lived in Jackson Ward. They resided in an Italianate style townhouse a few doors down from Mrs. Maggie Walker herself in a part of the Ward on Leigh Street called “Quality Rowe.” Jeffrey – Jeff to his friends – was born in the house at 101 East Leigh Street, the only child of Professor and Mrs. Elijah Peterson. Professor Peterson taught history at Virginia Union University, formerly a part of Lumpkin’s Jail, a holding pen and training center for slaves; it was now one of the premier Negro universities in the country with some of the best and brightest of the Negro race claiming it as their home.

  Professor Peterson was a respected historian in the community having been one of the few Negro men in the country to have graduated from Harvard University along with his fellow alum and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. Peterson had his pulse on all things Negro, and so he was an invaluable resource to the University. He was hard-working, diligent, practical and frugal, a perfect match to the God-fearing Mrs. Katherine Peterson, president of a local quilting group and devout Christian who could be found practically every Sunday and Wednesday at church praying fervently for the sinners among them to come to Jesus.