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

by Rebekah Pierce

  They rode along in silence with the exception of Clarissa who talked incessantly about the ball and how much money her father had spent on her gown. Peterson wished he could shut her up permanently, but that was too risky. Besides, Clarissa was good for a night’s fuck, but nothing more. He had already gotten that from her after they had left the ball. Since then, he had waited outside of Mrs. Jones’ place for a chance to see Lena. Clarissa kept asking him to take her to get something to eat, but he had quickly silenced her with a look.

  Clarissa liked Jeffrey – had hoped to be his wife one day. He was the best catch in the Ward, her mother would always say. It was a good thing he liked her. So, Clarissa made sure she always kept herself free for him and his strange ways. She had lost her virginity a long time ago, so she wasn’t afraid of sex, but sometimes Jeffrey would hurt her and ask her to do things even she was not comfortable with. But she did it anyways because she was gonna be Mrs. Jeffrey Peterson, like many of Jeffrey’s companions thought. If she had known that Peterson had no intentions of ever getting married or what he really was about, it would have killed her right on the spot.

  After Peterson walked Clarissa to her front door, and secretly promised to call on her in the next few days, much to Clarissa’s delight, he proceeded to take Lena to her home which was only a few blocks away. They rode in complete silence, Lena staring out of the window wondering what Sy was doing at that moment. Jeffrey had other more insidious thoughts on his mind.

  When she arrived safely at her home without incident, she let out a sigh of relief and quickly went inside and grabbed a few pieces of clothing and put them in a bag. A deep sigh of regret escaped from her heart as she looked forlornly around the small house. Amos was gone forever. But that wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily. She’d come back tomorrow and put his things away. “I have a new life to start,” she said to herself as she locked up the little house.

  She was sitting in the front seat next to him after having gathered her spirits and walking confidently out of her home when she saw that he was taking her the wrong way. “Um, Mr. Peterson! This is not the way to Mrs. Jones’,” she said nervously.

  “I know,” he replied flatly as he pretended to concentrate on his driving.

  “Mr. Peterson, could you please just drop me off here? I can just walk back home,” she started to say.

  A few seconds of silence enveloped the air in the car like cotton. Peterson finally spoke with pursed lips. “You don’t deserve to be treated like a punching bag. When I first saw him bring you to the hospital, I thought he had the balls of a monkey to bring you there after he beat up you like that,” and he started to giggle hysterically.

  Alarm bells went off in her head. Something was not quite right here. Lena put her hand on the door handles. She was intending to jump out of the moving car, but he reached over and grabbed her tightly by the wrists. “Don’t do that, Mrs. Johnson. I’m just tryin’ to save you.” A few more seconds of silence. She leaned back into her seat in terror as the realization of the meaning of this moment hit her like a brick wall.

  He continued. “Then, I followed him from Mrs. Jones’ house to that barber shop.” He turned and looked at Lena. Even in the dark, she could feel his cold, dark eyes on her face as her heart beat uncontrollably. “That man he set on fire - your husband Amos - he was the one beat you like that. Well, I can’t say as I blame him. His sort don’t deserve to walk this earth.”

  The air in Lena’s lungs flew out of her body. She had suspected Sy had killed Amos, but she couldn’t bring herself to accept it. There was no choice now. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Don’t cry, Mrs. Johnson. He deserved what he got. We all get what we deserve in the end, don’t we?” And he started stroking her knee.

  “What … what are you gonna do to me?” she asked between sobs. She now knew for sure who this man was and she was mortified. Her instincts had told her not to go with him, but she had silenced them. He seemed so nice, and he had Clarissa with him. She fought to find the words as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Are you gonna kill me like you did the others?” she whispered.

  Peterson laughed hysterically as he pulled into the back of a dark house. He put the car in park and turned off the engine. He leaned over toward her, and whispered in return, “Those others weren’t like you,” he said as he tried to stroke her cheek, but she had jerked her face away from him. “You’re special.”

  Next thing Lena knew, she was waking up to the sunshine traveling slowly across her face with her hands tied behind her back as she lay on a dirt floor. That’s all she remembered. The room was now bathed in the light from the basement window. She looked around the room and took in as much as she could. A small table stood in a corner with a single lamp on it and underneath the lamp was what looked like a whip. Lena’s eyes bulged out of her head. “Oh, my god!” she screamed in her head again as she continued to look around her. There were two other windows in the room, but they had bars over them, and no curtains covered them. And the walls were bare, with the exception of a mirror, which was on top of the ceiling overlooking a small bed in the center of the room.

  Lena tried to push the tape off of her mouth with her tongue, but it didn’t budge. She also tried to wriggle her hands out of the ropes, but they were too tight. Tears streamed down her face as she again surveyed her prison. The table with the lamp and the small bed were the only other pieces of furniture in the room. A horrible thought came into her head suddenly. Had she been raped? She quickly looked down at her clothes and breathed a sigh of relief to see that she still had them on and she felt okay, with the exception of a small headache.

  Exhausted and weary, Lena lay back on the dirt floor and stared up at the ceiling. Her hair and make-up were in disarray and her clothes were rumpled, but all else was intact. But what am I gonna do? she asked herself. Where’s Sy?

  Then another thought came rushing back into her memory with the ferocity of a blazing fire. Sy had killed Amos … for her. A wave of guilt ran through her body like quick fire. Part of her had secretly wished for years that Amos would die. He had beat her so bad over the course of their marriage that if she had not found work with Sy, she had planned to kill herself. She couldn’t take it anymore; she had no family and no friends to run to for safety or help, and Amos knew that. He thrived on it. She had learned of the affairs several months after the first beating he had given her, and chosen to remain silent about them, hoping secretly that one of those women would be the one he’d leave her for. But it never happened. He kept coming back – and beating her.

  Then there was the other part – the religious part – that told her in her crying hour that the Lord would carry her through. How many times had she heard her mother tell her this or heard the pastor say it during Sunday services when she went to church? Although she had not been to church in years, Amos having forbid her from leaving the house on Sundays to attend, she still remembered those sermons. It was only after recalling them did she get the strength to stay.

  A million other thoughts were going through her mind when the door to the room opened slowly. She saw a tray stacked with food and drink come through the door first, followed by Jeffrey Peterson himself. He had on a blue two piece suit with a white tie. A smile was plastered across his face as if he were happy to see her. Lena recoiled on the floor.

  “Breakfast, my love. I made you some toast and orange juice, although not freshly squeezed like I like it, but it’ll do,” and he sat the tray on the table next to the bed. He then stood over her, staring down at her with a gleam in his eyes and he stooped down to pick her up. The smell of his cologne made her gag. He carried her gently over to the small bed and laid her down. She tried to move over to the edge as far away from his as possible. He noticed this, and smiled again.

  Then, he pulled out a chair from nowhere, Lena thought, and sat down to begin feeding her. He gently removed the tape from her mouth, but not without first warning her to behave herself with the wave of his index finger, a d
ark look having come over his countenance to replace the smile that was once there.

  She shook with fear as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Don’t cry, Mrs. Johnson. I’ll make it fresh next time, I promise,” and he laughed softly at his own joke. He then broke off a piece of buttered toast and brought it to her mouth. She refused to open it, but then he said coldly to her, “Must I force you?”

  She nodded her head and then opened her mouth to receive the toast. She chewed softly as he said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve ever cooked for a woman … they usually do things for me.”

  He looked at her deeply for a few seconds as if allowing her to see into his soul. Lena saw nothing but emptiness in his eyes and turned her head to avoid it. She was a dead woman unless Sy found her, she said to herself. Then he smiled at her again, a pleasant disarming look that was probably responsible for the deaths of five other women, she thought. A cold shiver swept through her body.

  “Are you cold, Lena? I can get you a blanket,” he offered. Lena shook her head no.

  Jeffrey finished feeding her the rest of the toast and orange juice. He dabbed her mouth with a napkin and then put a fresh piece of tape back over her mouth. “I’ll be back for lunch, Mrs. Johnson. Oh! Don’t look at me like that. You’ll be just fine until I get back. I’m only going to church,” he said gaily as he gathered up the tray and turned to leave the room. “You really are beautiful, Lena.” He left her then.

  Lena stared at the closed door with her large brown eyes. Her body went lax under the pressure of trying to sit up without support for her back, and as she lay back, she began to cry again, her body shaking in intensity. Where was Sy Sanford? And how was she going to make it out of this if he couldn’t save her? Suddenly, a strong resolve came over her spirit and the tears stopped. She was going to fight for her life. All of her life, she had been someone’s victim, waiting on the sidelines for someone to save her. No more. If she was going to die, she was going to die fighting. There was just no other way.

  Chapter 33

  Sy was bleeding profusely from his mouth and nose as he lay still on his face on the concrete floor of the Richmond jailhouse. His eyes were nearly swollen shut and he had a few broken ribs, too, he knew. Every part of his body ached with ferocious intensity. The Sheriff and his men had beaten him badly over the past few hours, accusing him of not only having murdered Amos and the five Negro women, but now of killing two white women whose bodies had been discovered a month ago in The Fan. They demanded he confess to raping and murdering them, but he had refused to talk. He had been trained well in the Army and had endured worse at the hands of the Germans than what the Richmond police where doing to him now. This was just another day in the war, he kept telling himself. He felt that it was the only way he was going to make it out of this.

  What also kept him was the thought of Lena. His beautiful, sweet Lena who deserved so much more than what life had given her. His heart ached at the thought of the pain she might be going through now because of him. He had messed things up so badly. “I’m gonna save you, Lena,” he mumbled through the blood flowing out of his mouth. He tried to push himself up, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t the strength.

  He was so engrossed in his thoughts and despair, he barely heard the cell door open and Preston Miller and Raymond Turner come rushing into the cell. “My God!” screamed Turner. “Look at what they’ve done to him,” he said to Miller as he knelt down beside Sy. The old man had seen many horrible things in his day, but Sy was damn near dead and barely recognizable lying there bleeding on the floor of the Richmond jail. Anger welled up inside of Turner’s chest.

  The white police officer who had let them in the cell spit some chewing tobacco on the cement floor. “He’s real lucky if you ask me,” he responded nonchalantly.

  Turner glared at the young man with intensity; he had not yet learned to truly intimidate Negro men with confidence and fear having only just been hired last week. He had moved to Richmond with his family from out West. He simply lowered his eyes and went to wait out in the hallway.

  “Help me get him up, Preston.” The two old Negro men gently picked Sy up off the ground and sat him on a wooden bench up against the wall. He was unconscious, barely breathing. They looked closely at Sy’s face and body. His clothes had been ripped and several large spots of blood covered his pants and parts of his shirt. He had on no shoes and socks, and his chest was red and swollen, a result of savage kicks to his torso.

  “I don’t think he’s gonna make it,” Turner whispered softly, near tears.

  Preston Miller nodded his head in agreement. He stared back down at Sy and exhaled all the oxygen that was in his lungs. “Damn it! What’re we gonna do now? The killer ain’t been caught yet.”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!” Turner replied, a deep heaviness in his voice. The old man was tired having lived for nearly eighty years and fighting every day of it, it seemed. “But we might have worse problems than this comin’,” replied Turner sternly as he took out a handkerchief and began to wipe away the blood from Sy’s mouth.

  Preston’s eyebrows raised in fear. “What’d you mean?”

  “I’ve been following’ some news out of New York. Ain’t you read the headlines? Wall Street’s in bad trouble, Preston. Some predicting it’s gonna crash … and if it does, Negroes ain’t got a chance. It won’t matter no more – these murders. We gonna lose our businesses anyway.”

  Preston swore at the air. As he was ranting, Sy opened his eyes. The two men were so engrossed in their argument, they didn’t hear him at first when he said, “Where’s Lena?”

  He repeated it again as he moved to sit up. The two old men stared in disbelief having thought Sy as good as dead a few moments ago. “What’d you say, Sanford?” asked Miller cautiously.

  “He took her.”

  “Who took who?” Turner questioned.

  “The killer. He’s got Lena … my … my …” and he lay back against the wall in physical agony.

  “You mean you know who the killer is?” asked Turner incredulously. “Sanford, wake up,” he demanded as he slapped Sanford’s cheek to keep him conscious.

  Sy came to, and put his swollen eye on Turner. “Yes. You … you gotta get me out of here ‘fore it’s too late for Lena. He’s gonna kill her,” cried Sy through his swollen, blue lips.

  Just then, the cell doors opened and Sheriff Mason walked in confidently, chewing on tobacco. He put his hands on his hips and straightened his back. “What’s goin’ on here, boys? You ain’t plannin’ on takin’ him outta here. He’s a murderer. Killed Amos Johnson.”

  Raymond Turner stared hard at Preston Miller. The two men had dealt with men like Sheriff Mason all of their lives. They hated dealing with their ignorance more than anything, but they also knew how to beat them at their own game.

  “Sheriff, this man ain’t no killer,” replied Preston Miller softly as he stood up to face the sheriff.

  “Shows you how much you know, boy. We got a witness to the crime. He put Sanford here at the barbershop on the night of Amos’ murder. And we found some incriminating evidence back in his apartment.” He rocked back and forth on his heels confidently smiling at the men.

  “Well, who was it that called, Sheriff?” Turner asked meekly as he twisted his hat in his hands, “If you don’t mind me askin’, that is.”

  The Sheriff looked perplexed as he turned a slight shade of red. “Just got a phone call ‘bout it.”

  “Well, Sheriff, I don’t mean to tell you no wrong, but Sanford was with us all night that night…at a meeting,” explained Turner.

  “You lyin’ to me, boy. You just wanna save his hide from the noose,” Sheriff Mason said as he stood firmly with his hands on his hips.

  “No, sir, Sheriff. We ain’t doin’ no such thing,” replied Miller, “We have ‘bout twenty people … upstanding citizens of Richmond and the Ward would swear to ya.”

  Sy lay still as he listened to Miller and Turner lie for him. “Did he admit to
the killin’, sir?” Turner asked as a small grin found its way to the corners of his mouth.

  “No, he ain’t talked none since we brought him in,” the Sheriff confessed.

  Miller stood up next to Raymond Turner to face the sheriff. “Sheriff Mason, whoever called you was mistaken. Sy Sanford works for us. We were at a meeting the night Amos Johnson was murdered. Who knows what happened that night. Maybe a jealous husband had had enough of the man playin’ with his wife. You know how that is, don’t ya, Sheriff Mason?” whispered Turner.

  The sheriff’s shoulders stiffened. No one, black or white, in Richmond had forgotten about the scandal that rocked the city a few years back. The sheriff’s wife had been having an affair, and everyone knew it except for the sheriff. When he did find out, he shot and killed the man while he sat in his car. He covered it up by saying the man was trespassing on his property … even though the man’s car was thirty feet from his house. The sheriff had gotten away with murder and everyone knew it.

  “He killed them nigger girls, too. We found evidence in his room,” Sheriff Mason blurted out.

  The two men gave each other quick glances and then looked back at Sy who was still lying on the bench fighting to breathe. Turner turned his attention back to Sheriff Mason. “What kinda evidence, Sheriff?”

  The Sheriff didn’t feel he needed to share anything with the two old Negroes, but he wanted to shut them up and down, standing there in front of him like they was better than him.

  “Found a pair of bloody hosiery in his room,” the sheriff said smugly.

  “But Sheriff Mason, you of all people knows that things are not always what they seem,” asserted Preston Miller. “Take for example. How can a man be trespassin’ on another man’s property from thirty feet away and be shot dead?”