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

by Rebekah Pierce

  The next day, the Richmond Planet reported that Mrs. Katherine Peterson had died of a heart attack in her sleep. No one save Mr. Peterson saw the empty pill bottle on the dressing table. No one even got a chance to read the letter Katherine had left for Elijah telling him to watch over their son for he was “beguiled by a darkness that you cannot save him from.” No one knew the truth of her death. They just martyred the woman of God and buried her quietly the following Sunday morning.

  Jeffrey took the news of his mother’s death much as that of a stranger, well at least while not in the company of his father. In his father’s presence, he was tears and strength, agreeing to take over the planning as his father was too grief stricken and plagued by the letter his lovely wife had left him. He had Price Funeral Parlor and the members of Mount Zion Baptist Church send his mother home in style a few days later, and the elite Negro community marveled at and praised his love for his mother. The Elks Lodge even threw a special parade in her honor. Everyone in town came out to celebrate Katherine Peterson, even Sy.

  He had read of her funeral in the Richmond Planet and reflected back on the death of his own mother. She didn’t receive a fine funeral like this woman did. No, his mother was buried quietly in a small plot out in Hollywood Cemetery away from her people in Petersburg because the Army wouldn’t let him come home to bury his momma. He had overheard one white officer say when he thought Sanford was out of ear shot that “niggers didn’t have mothers.”

  The parade was a grand affair indeed. Dressed in their finest regalia and their militia counterparts, the Negro men of Jackson Ward paraded gallantly down Second Street directly in front of the Hippodrome Theatre whose doors were wide open to welcome in the people to get a drink or to have a seat to rest, then turning onto Leigh Street where they were met with a roaring applause and cheers from viewers lined up on Quality Rowe.

  Then, they marched up First Street and turned right onto Marshall Street. Drums and horns packed the air with their cries as what seemed like every Negro in the area packed the streets like sardines to pay their respects. Little children sat atop their parents’ shoulders to get a glimpse at the colorful buttons and ribbons that adorned the uniforms of the men as well as the stalwart horses that a few of the Negro men rode with obvious pride.

  Mr. Peterson strode in front of his lodge family, head held high as Jeffrey walked beside him with a blank stare upon his face. As the parade came by where Sy was waiting for them on the corner of First and Marshall Street, he briefly caught a glimpse of the younger Peterson and the blank look on his face. It immediately reminded him of the expression shell-shocked soldiers had when they returned from the battlefield. Young Peterson was putting up a brave front it appeared.

  But what truly impressed upon Sy was the unity of the community in this dark time. Although the newspaper had reported the parade as a celebration of the beloved Mrs. Peterson’s life, word amongst the people was that it was also in celebration of the life of the four young women who had died so viciously. There was a heavy feeling in the air as the people now realized that a killer was hunting in their community, and the pressure on Sy to bring the killings to an end was beginning to weigh heavily upon him as he watched the women in white follow behind the parade of regal men. They sang loudly and passionately as they fanned themselves marching down Marshall Street in unison.

  What was also noticeable were the couple of white police officers standing on the periphery of the parade. Sy immediately recognized Deputy Brody as his tall frame towered over the other stoutly officers. His blue eyes caught Sy’s green from across the street as they nodded towards one another. Clearly, even Sheriff Mason was becoming a little anxious about the murders to send over his white officers to keep an eye on the parade.

  As the parade drew to a close and the good folks of the Ward returned to the relative safety of their homes, Mr. Elijah Peterson retreated into his private study. There had been no words spoken between him and his only son that day. The letter Katherine had left him haunted him with its cryptic message, and he now retreated into his study to review it for the hundredth time since he had found her – and it.

  But at home alone at his place on East Clay Street, Jeffrey only thought of Miss Sara. He had finally figured out a way to get her alone with him. He smiled to himself as he sat in front of his fireplace sipping on his brandy. There was nothing – no one - in his way now.

  Chapter 9

  He was having another one of those nightmares. Bullets whisked past his ears as he directed his men to dig in deeper in the trenches. The 369th had been on the frontlines now for more than one hundred days and things were worse than ever. The Germans had outnumbered them by three to one, but Captain Sy Sanford never gave up or in. His men fought back with all they had, sometimes having to leave the trenches to fight hand-to-hand combat so as to gain ground offensive.

  On one particular move, Private Brito, a seventeen-year-old farm boy from South Carolina, was shot in the head as he tried to pull his wounded friend back into one of the trenches. Captain Sy watched in horror as Brito’s body collapsed over the wounded soldier. The fire from the Germans was too heavy to send out reinforcements, so all the captain and his men could do was watch as the Germans trod over the dead man and his fatally wounded friend like trash. Private Brito had orders to return home next week. His momma had died and he was going home to the funeral. The irony was too much for Captain Sy and he found himself shooting uncontrollably at the advancing Germans, and his men, loyal to the captain, followed suit.

  Sy woke up screaming in his office. He had gone there to think about his next move after having left the parade the day before. His body was soaked in sweat. His shirt clung to his chest like glue and his trousers felt heavy like lead. Sy sat up on the couch and put his head in his hands. He then rubbed his eyes and looked up. For a minute there, he was not in his office on Jackson Street in Richmond, Virginia. He was back in France on the battlefield. He could see the smoke from gunfire. It enveloped the land like a blanket. Sy reached out to touch the smoke, but it had disappeared. He was back in his office, back in America…back in the South.

  He stood up and rubbed his long legs to get the circulation back in them. Sy walked over to the mirror he kept on the wall to shave in and stared at cold, green eyes that had seen too much for a lifetime. He needed to shave his growing beard, but he just didn’t have the energy. His mind was too busy trying to add things up about the murders.

  Four women had been killed in the last two weeks. Each woman was a working girl who either lived in the Ward or in neighborhoods around it. Two had no family in the immediate area, as far as anyone knew. Or at least, that’s what the Richmond Planet had reported.

  Lena brought in the newspaper every day and would often read from it to him. She mostly read the society pages as if that interested him. Sy knew she read that section more for herself than anyone. Lena, like a lot of poor young Negro women in town, wanted to be a part of something special. They wanted to live in the houses on “Quality Rowe,” married to successful businessmen and attending the balls that were held on the third floor of the A.D. Price Funeral Home. They wanted to rub shoulders with Negro entertainers like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Duke Ellington who always found their way to the Ward to perform for their people or to just relax and have a good time. Anything was better than the life of drudgery and service they now lived, they felt. That’s what Shalesha Painter and Annie Hilks – and Mary Pollard - had clearly been looking for.

  Lena would read the society pages to him and he’d watch her as she’d become lost in her fantasies. “Wow! Listen to this!” she’d coo. Or, “I sure wish I could have been there to see that!”

  “I guess if I were married to a dog like Amos, I’d get lost in another world too,” he’d often say under his breath as Lena’s eyes grew big like saucers behind the newspaper. But this said a lot about life in the South for Negro women. Although the community of the Ward felt itself equal in all things, that is, money was
the great un-equalizer. Although maids could live next door to their bosses, a spirit of entrepreneurism filled the air to the point of intoxication.

  And no one knew better than Sy what it felt like to be your own boss. Sure, the business wasn’t making a lot of money, but Sy had learned the hard way while serving in the war that it was better – safer – for Negroes to make their own living. Working for white folks was like walking through a mine field with your eyes stuck on open. You see yourself about to step on the bomb, but there’s nothing you can do about it.

  He opened the refrigerator; it was empty. There was no more beer. He looked back at the table and an empty bottle of bourbon stared back. He closed the door and wiped his mouth. He needed a drink, but he also knew he couldn’t waste any more time today. Before he had fallen asleep finally after a few nights of insomnia – walking the streets of the Ward in an effort to bring on sleep, he had managed to write down some of his thoughts about the murders. The one thing all three women had in common was their skin color: they were dark skinned. Sy had learned in the Army to look for patterns in the enemy’s strategy, and this pattern, albeit small, was still something to look into.

  But Sy needed more than just skin color to go on. He needed a break in this case; he also needed to get out there and start talking to folks. This made him a little nervous. Sy was a loner – always had been. He kept to himself and only spoke when it was necessary. He avoided talking or seeing people on his late night walks choosing to creep in and out of the shadows of various streets of the Ward. But things had suddenly changed. His mind strayed to Lena. A warmth spread down his back. He let out a deep sigh and rubbed his chin. If he wanted Lena, he was going to have to solve this case.

  Chapter 10

  Sy was brushing his teeth when he heard Lena come in the office. She was unusually early.

  “Lena, why you here?” he demanded urgently from the sink.

  “Lord, Sy, you like to scare the britches off of me. I always comes in before eight. You just never knew because you sleep in until ten.”

  Sy put his head down in shame. She was right, of course. He was passed out most times from drinking the night before, so his recollection of time was almost always off. He watched solemnly as Lena took her place behind her desk and put the paper she was carrying under her arm on the desk.

  “Is that the Planet?” he asked as he rinsed out his mouth with a cup of water and then spit it out.

  “Yes,” she said. “I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, though.” Before Sy could get to her, she let out a bitter sigh.

  “No dead body today, thank god! But they’s still talking about the last victim, Shalesha Painter. She was a maid for the Robinson Family in Church Hill. Sy, what is going on?”

  “I don’t know, Lena, but I intend to find out. Does it say anything else about the other three women killed?”

  “No, but I still have the other papers from last week that talks about them.”

  Sy had an idea now. “Could you get them for me? I want to read ‘em.”

  Lena pulled the papers from out of a drawer behind her desk. “Here you go. Do you need my help?”

  Her big brown eyes were staring at Sy intently. She had applied too much make-up to her face this morning in a vain attempt to hide the remnants of a black eye Amos had clearly given her. Sy wanted to kiss her and take her away from her pain, and he reached out to her to touch her face and do just that, but she backed away like a scared rabbit.

  “No,” she exclaimed. “It’s nothing. I’m alright. Do you want me to read the papers to you?”

  Sy nodded his head in agreement. He felt empty and weak, and Lena’s strength made him feel worse. He began to feel that his dreams of taking care of her were just that – dreams, and perhaps he had taken on this case for nothing. Then, Lena’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

  “The first one was named Annie Hilks, a nursing student at the St. Philip School of Nursing. That’s the school for Negro women, you know,” Lena said with pride in her voice. “She must have been one smart young lady to get into that school.”

  “Go on, Lena,” Sy urged as he leaned back in his chair and lit his cigar.

  “She was from South Boston. That’s all it says about her. Oh, and they not sure if her death is related to the others. They got a picture of her here, her nursing picture. She looks kinda sad. I wonder what she was thinkin’ when they took this?” Lena reflected.

  Sy watched Lena stand there reflecting on the life of a dead woman. He had had his fair share of those moments during the war. “Lena, what else it say?”

  “Huh? Oh! Mary Pollard was from Caroline County. A flour girl at the local cookie factory for only a week, they say. Poor girl! I wonder if anyone’s notified her family.” A sadness had filled her voice again, Sy noticed. But one couldn’t help but to be sad when reading about dead people, he thought.

  “Sheritha Bills, now I do remember hearing about her at the salon. Her mother was widow Bills…lived around Chamberlayne Avenue, married to Franklin Bills.”

  “The same Franklin Bills who played in Negro Southern League?” Sy sat up in his chair. His interest was piqued. Baseball was the only form of entertainment Negroes had then, especially for the boys overseas. They always waited in earnest for news back home about their hometown baseball leagues. It kept morale high most days.

  “Yes. He was killed in a wagon accident about five years ago. Left Mrs. Bills nothing but bad debt from his gamblin’ problem, I heard,” and she looked up from the papers then and looked at Sy. He was a gambler and many times since coming to work for him Lena had to tell creditors he was “not available” to them at the moment. His eyes got lost in the cigar smoke, so she went back to reading the papers.

  “That’s why she had to work for them white folks up in the Fan.”

  “Who, Mrs. Bills?”

  “No, Sheritha Bills,” Lena snapped impatiently.

  “Oh! Go on then.”

  “It says here in today’s paper that Shalesha Painter was also a maid in Church Hill and she was from Williamsburg.”

  “It say anything else?” he asked.

  “Only that she had no family here to speak of. With the exception of Sheritha, all these women were not from here. It could all just be a coincidence, I guess.”

  Now it was Sy’s turn to roll his eyes impatiently. Women, he thought to himself. “There ain’t no such thing, Lena. There’s only the here and now. This guy must have known them somehow and knew that they were here alone. I gotta talk to their friends and employers,” he said as he put out his cigar, snatched the paper from Lena and grabbed his rain coat from off a chair.

  “Where you going?”

  “Like I said, I gotta talk to folks. Ain’t you been listening’?” he teased and left.

  Sy stood outside the St. Philip School of Nursing building waiting for the nursing students to come out for a break. He had decided to start his investigation where the murders began – with Annie Hilks. He had talked to her landlord earlier that morning and what he heard about Miss Hilks was not very favorable. Sy had found him sitting on his front porch rocking away in an old, rickety rocking chair. “She was a nice, quiet girl,” the toothless old landlord named Mr. Bakker murmured, “but she sho’ had a lot of men comin’ to see her.”

  “There’s nothing’ wrong with courtin’, Mr. Bakker. “She was a young, pretty lady, right?”

  Bakker’s wondering eye found its way to Sy’s. Its steady gaze made Sy’s skin crawl. “She weren’t the courtin’ type. ‘Sides, too many mens come late at night…too late for me.”

  “Well, was there one man in particular that came too often late at night to see her?” Sy asked cautiously. He suspected that this old man had been watching Annie Hilks more than he should have been.

  Bakker was silent for a moment. His wandering eye left Sy and went back to its normal course. “She too young to do such things,” he stated with a twinge of anger in his voice. “One man come by at the same time every n
ight for a few weeks.”

  “You know who he was?” Sy was intrigued.

  The old man’s shoulders tensed up as he chewed on some tobacco. He spit it in a can that sat on the floor next to his rocking chair. Sy waited patiently as the old man rocked in his chair and spit in his can yet again. “He weren’t no poor man…not working man, neither. Dressed too nice, and brought her stuff.”

  “Stuff like what? Can I go and see her room? Maybe something’s there—“

  “No!” the old man stated. “I done rented out that room. I don’t want to spook my tenant,” he responded firmly.

  Sy was ready to ask more questions when the old man’s wife came stomping up the porch steps. Old man Bakker’s mouth shut up like a glue trap. His wife, a towering thin woman with unusually dark eyes, stood warningly at the door with her thick arms crossed and dark eyes glaring at Sy. He knew it was time to leave and he’d get no more information out of Bakker, who had quietly disappeared into the house by the time Sy turned around to say thanks.

  Annie Hilks had no family in the area for him to talk to, so he had decided that the next best thing were her schoolmates. It was obvious that Annie had some secrets that perhaps her friends could shed some light on. He thought about what he had learned from Bakker as he waited. Annie was clearly prostituting herself which was not strange or unheard of for young women in her position to do. She was in a big city by herself, going to school to learn a profession that would provide for her. She probably needed money to take care of herself as she had no family. That’s what happened to a lot of the women who left home for better, Sy thought. This was the byproduct of the industrial revolution and what was being coined The Roaring Twenties because of the politically, sexually and socially carefree generation which now inhabited the big cities in the North.