Darktown

by Thomas Mullen

  Boggs pushed open the metal double doors, revealing a narrow hallway: cement floor and cement wall and a few lightbulbs dangling overhead. Boggs knew the way because he’d spoken to a few civilians who had made this walk before. They came to another set of double doors, and beyond that was the morgue, at the front of which sat an old white mortician who looked confused by his dark visitors.

  Boggs held out his badge, realizing that he was pushing deeper into forbidden territory. “We’re here to identify the colored Jane Doe.”

  The man raised his right eyebrow. “You aren’t a detective.”

  “That’s correct, sir. My name is Officer Lucius Boggs.”

  “You know the rules, boy.”

  “This gentleman is here to identify his daughter.”

  The ID of a body whose murderer had not yet been identified was supposed to be conducted by a detective. But Boggs wanted to be there when Ellsworth saw her, wanted to be able to read the man’s expression and glean whatever information was available at that awful, visceral moment. He had hoped the mortician would see that a colored cop was best for a colored Jane Doe. And he had hoped that even in a bigot’s heart, some inner humanity would respect the sight of a grieving father. He had been wrong about both.

  The mortician picked up a phone and dialed one number. “I need a detective in the morgue immediately. Preferably two.”

  Attempting to save face, Boggs turned to Ellsworth. “It will be just a minute, sir. A detective needs to be present.”

  The mortician rose and walked to one of his file cabinets, removing the paperwork on colored Jane Doe. Then he stood at his desk and waited. Boggs did not make eye contact with him. Ellsworth shifted on his feet, and Boggs felt an additional bit of guilt for drawing out his experience.

  They heard footsteps in the hallway, approaching the double doors. Ellsworth’s face was blank. Boggs wondered what this tiller of the land would usually be doing now, harvesting cotton or spreading cow shit over someone else’s property. He’d noticed Ellsworth’s fingers, how long they were, lined with scars and old wounds and age and hard, painful use.

  Two white detectives entered, one of them with gray hair, wearing a crisp blue suit like some insurance salesman, and the other in his thirties, dark hair parted like Superman and a chest just as imposing. They passed Boggs without acknowledging his presence. Which was a better reaction than he’d been expecting. The insurance-salesman detective took the folder from the mortician and flipped through it. Boggs could tell these men knew nothing about the case and had simply been sent down because they were the only ones available at the moment.

  Superman finally said, “We’ll take it from here.”

  Boggs took one step back, as if to leave, but no more. Meanwhile, the salesman detective brusquely asked Ellsworth’s name and address. After getting the answers, he asked, “And what leads you to believe you might know the deceased, Otis?”

  Ellsworth’s voice was even smaller than before. “Our daughter moved out to Atlanta a few months ago, sir. Haven’t gotten a letter from her in a while. We saw the note in the newspaper, sir, and wondered if it could be her.”

  “Note in a newspaper?”

  Boggs broke in, “The Atlanta Daily Times ran a sidebar asking if anyone might have information about a missing woman, Detective.”

  The detective looked vaguely insulted to have been addressed by the colored cop. He said, “Let’s have a look, uncle.”

  The mortician and the detectives walked into the morgue, Ellsworth a step behind. Then Boggs followed Ellsworth.

  The older detective—Boggs wished he was surprised that they hadn’t bothered to identify themselves—was standing next to the mortician as the proper cooling board was identified, on the left-hand side, where the colored bodies were kept away from the white ones. Superman had taken up the fainting-prevention position, standing closer to Ellsworth than either man was probably comfortable with. The mortician reached underneath the corner of the blanket, pulling out the toe tag and double-­checking the number.

  Boggs slowly moved to his left, circumnavigating the scene until he was in position to see Ellsworth’s reaction. He stopped when he was in a good spot, the mortician now pulling the cooling board all the way out, the various bumps and ridges of the blanket like some topographic map of pain.

  “There will be severe discoloration and bloating, especially of the face,” the mortician said, “so if possible you should look to birthmarks or scars.”

  Only now did the younger detective seem to notice that Boggs was still there. They made eye contact, and Boggs could sense the man’s rebuke, but Boggs looked away without acknowledging it. If they wanted him to leave, he would at least make them say it out loud. If nothing else, his time with the police had taught him that the best way to be allowed to do something was to do it with authority and put the onus on someone to stop you. Momentum had a way of swaying lazy minds.

  Like a horrible magician, the mortician pulled back the blanket.

  For many reasons, Boggs kept his eyes on Ellsworth and tried to ignore the grayness at the bottom of his vision. Ellsworth was looking down, and the air seemed to leave him for a moment. The point at which he would normally inhale again came and went, and seemed never to return.

  He said, very quietly, “That’s our Lily.”

  The white detectives told Ellsworth they needed to ask him a few more questions upstairs. The younger detective walked first, the farmer next, and the older detective behind. Boggs followed as they walked down the hall.

  “Whose case is this?” he asked the older detective.

  “Why are you shadowing us?” the detective replied, stopping to face Boggs while the other two continued on. “Why are you even in this building?”

  “I thought it would be wise to have a colored officer present. I thought he might betray something if he felt more comfortable.”

  “Betray something? Fascinating. And what did he betray?”

  “I’m not . . . I’m still putting things together.”

  At the other end of the hallway, the younger cop and the farmer had stopped at the next set of double doors, watching them.

  “Well, us real cops will take it from here. Run along now, boy.”

  “What are you going to do with him?”

  The detective smiled. “We’re going to ask questions, and he’s going to answer them.”

  Then the white men led the farmer through the double doors, and Boggs was alone in the hallway.

  Or so he thought. A moment later, the mortician’s voice came from a ways behind him. “Nigger, you’d best get out of this station fast or I’m gonna have a new body to treat.”

  In the sixty seconds it took to exit the station, Boggs passed the hostile eyes of dozens of cops. His presence there had been broadcast, either by the mortician or the detectives. He heard epithets and threats, some whispered and some not, and in the background some primate hooting and hollering as he made his way to the colored door. Sweat ran down his back despite the air-conditioning.

  Outside again, a new reason to sweat as the heat slapped him in the face, leaned on his shoulders. He walked around the building, still unsure of his next move. Calm down, calm down.

  He was in front of the building when he heard his name.

  “Hey there, Boggs.” It was Rakestraw, walking toward the building. Boggs still had no read on this fellow. Rakestraw had not taken part in Dunlow’s beating of the stabbed man the other night, but he hadn’t done anything to stop it either. There were plenty of white folks like that, happy to define themselves as not-quite-as-bad-as-some, conveniently surrounding themselves with awful people in contrast to whom they looked good. He wore a benign expression, almost smiling, as he asked, “What brings you here?”

  “The colored Jane Doe’s been identified. Lily Ellsworth, formerly of Peacedale. Her father’s in an interrogation
room, I think.”

  “Who with?”

  “Two detectives. Didn’t share their names.”

  “They think he did it?”

  “I don’t know,” Boggs said as he walked away. “But he didn’t.”

  10

  RAKE STEPPED INTO the observation room. Because of the dim light, the first thing his eyes could make out was Otis Ellsworth, on the other side of the glass in the interrogation room, sitting at a bare table. Rake had seen several people in that room over the last few months, and none of them necessarily looked any more alone than another. Aloneness wasn’t something you could compare or even quantify. But the gaunt Negro was certainly alone.

  Then Rake’s eyes adjusted and he saw, here in the observation room with him, two other cops.

  “Here to watch the fireworks?” Rake recognized the voice of Dunlow’s friend, Brian Helton, though he couldn’t make out the face, as Helton was sitting in front of the two-way mirror.

  “Here to see a case get closed, hopefully.”

  “Oh, it’ll be closed.” That was spoken by an older plainclothes cop. Big nose, red cheeks, black suit. “You are?”

  “Denny Rakestraw, sir. I’m partnered with Officer Dunlow.”

  “Have a seat and watch how an interrogation’s really done. Sharpe’s great at getting confessions. Especially when he’s got Clayton with him.”

  “Clayton played for the Dogs, didn’t he?” asked Helton.

  “Middle linebacker,” the big-nosed cop said. “I remember seeing him play. Hell of a hitter.”

  There were three metal chairs in the room, so Rake took the empty one.

  “Peacedale PD says he doesn’t have a record but that he’s an odd duck,” Big Nose said.

  “Good-looking girl, I heard,” Helton replied.

  Where had he heard she was good-looking? Rake wondered. From whom? She sure as hell didn’t look good now. Only Boggs and Smith had seen her the night she’d died.

  “I say he talks before they lay a finger on him,” Helton wagered.

  “Not when it’s kin. He’ll deny it for a while.”

  A moment later, the door to the interrogation room opened and the two detectives, Sharpe and Clayton, entered. Ellsworth sat up straighter.

  “Keep your hands on the table,” Clayton, the linebacker, commanded. Ellsworth obeyed.

  “Tell us about your daughter, Otis,” Sharpe said.

  Ellsworth stared straight ahead, avoiding eye contact. “What . . . What would you like to know, sir?” His voice so quiet Rake could barely hear him over the mike.

  “When did she come to Atlanta?”

  “Believe it was February, sir.”

  “Why’d she leave home?”

  “Well, sir, she . . . wanted something new, you could say. I think she’d heard too many stories about life in the city, sir.”

  “Lots of your people have been coming here, that’s true. Running out of places to put you all.”

  “The irony is that they often wind up on the chain gangs,” Clayton added, “which operate outside the city limits. So, in a way, they come here only to get sent out again.”

  “But you don’t get a chain gang for murder, you get hung for that.”

  Rake could see the sweat running down Ellsworth’s cheeks. He was sitting in the hottest room in the building.

  Sharpe leaned forward. “Now let me explain something straight off, Otis. I don’t know what kind of police you’re used to dealing with out there in Peacedale, but we see a lot of murders here. We see these sordid things quite a bit. I’ve seen so many things I wish I hadn’t. And there ain’t a colored boy gonna pull one over on me in my own station, understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right.” Sharpe stood up straight again. “What was she doing in Atlanta?”

  “She was a maid, sir.”

  “And she learned how to do such things on your farm?”

  “No, sir. I mean, she helped at the farm as a little thing, but as soon as she got to be a bit older she took work as a maid at some white people’s houses in Peacedale. Did that four, five years. They weren’t happy when she left.”

  “And how about you, Otis? How did you feel when your girl left?”

  Ellsworth paused. “I was worried for her, sir.”

  “Why’s that, Otis?”

  “She wasn’t learned in city ways. We were very worried for her.”

  “But you let her come out here anyway, all by her lonesome?”

  “No, sir, my wife has an aunt here. She helped Lily find a rooming house run by good people, and she said she could help her find work. But, ah, I believe she moved out at one point.”

  “And then you came to take her back, didn’t you, Otis?”

  “You didn’t like your daughter running off and making her own money and not helping the family back home, did you?” Clayton added.

  “That’s not so, sir. This is the first time I been in Atlanta in about two years.”

  Clayton slapped the back of Ellsworth’s head, hard enough for it to snap forward. The farmer kept his head lowered for a moment, expecting another blow.

  Sharpe exhaled with theatrical impatience. “Don’t try to be clever, Otis. We can double-check these things, you know. Police in Peacedale been keeping an eye on you.”

  Ellsworth wiped the sweat from his brow, his hand shaking. Then he wiped his hand on his pant leg before seeming to remember the cops’ instruction to keep his hands in view.

  “You can ask Mr. Timley, sir. He’s the white man owns the land we work. He’ll know I never left town ’til today.”

  “Oh, you got friends in high places, that right?” Clayton mocked.

  “Let me cut right to it, Otis,” Sharpe said. “We know you did it. We know you did. It couldn’t be more obvious. You haven’t shed a tear since you got here, not even after seeing that bloated, awful, smelly body down there. I know it when I’ve seen someone grieving, Otis. Especially nigras, my goodness you people are demonstrative! And you ain’t grieving, uncle. Not one bit. You’re sad, I’ll give you that. Sad you got caught, maybe a bit regretful, too. But you ain’t grieving.”

  “Are you regretful, Otis?” Clayton asked.

  Ellsworth seemed to be trying to swallow saliva, or maybe blood if he’d bit his tongue when he’d been hit in the head. It took him a moment to say, “I regret a lot of things, sir.”

  Ellsworth’s fingers seemed to be clawing at the wooden table. They looked strong enough that Rake wouldn’t have been surprised if he peeled off a layer of oak with a fingernail. Rake realized his own stomach muscles were tense, and he, too, was sweating.

  “Lily and me never got on too well, and I’m regretful for that.” Ellsworth had dropped his sir s and his eyes were watering and his throat was thick. “But mostly I feel broke up for my wife. This is gonna kill her.”

  “But not you?” Clayton asked. “You ain’t all that broke up for yourself, after your own daughter got killed like that?”

  “Maybe I would be more, if she was my own blood. She’s my wife’s by another man.”

  “Ah-ha!” called out Helton, here in the observation room. “There’s the bull’s-eye.”

  “Horny devil, you,” Big Nose said, wagging his finger at the glass.

  The two detectives in the interrogation room were only slightly less excited to hear this news. They made eye contact with each other, relishing this, and then Clayton deferred to Sharpe.

  “Well now, that certainly is an interesting piece of information, Otis. Very interesting. And rather disappointing that you kept it from us so long.”

  “We told you not to act clever.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’ll be hard for her,” Sharpe said. “But not much harder than it’s always been for her to see the way you looked at her daughter. Must have been very hard on
your wife to see your eye wander, in her own home to boot.”

  Ellsworth had closed his eyes to fight back the tears, and now he seemed to realize where the cops were going. He opened his eyes again, red and streaky.

  “No, no, sir, that ain’t the case.”

  “How old was she when you and your wife got together, Otis? Old enough for you to catch her scent, or did that take a few years?”

  “I never touched that girl.” He sat up straight now, his head moving to one side and then the other, the colored approximation of eye contact, safely aimed at the white men’s chests. “I helped raise her like my own.”

  “I told you we’ve seen it all, Otis. Loose woman has a child out of wedlock, she brings in a new buck to help her out, but that buck can’t keep his eyes off the little girl. Things happen.”

  Rake knew he was no genius at police work, but he found it hard to imagine that Ellsworth was lying. Maybe it was from his unfortunate tendency to side with the bullied. Maybe it was because the lack of professionalism from the two interrogators galled him. Why aren’t you asking about Underhill, the last man seen in her presence? he wondered. Do you even know his name? He wasn’t sure if he was surrounded by shoddy police work or something worse.

  “We heard she was a very good-looking girl, Otis.”

  “And you left her out with the garbage.”

  “Haven’t even asked us how she died. Innocent parents usually ask that.”

  If Rake’s mouth was dry, Ellsworth’s was no doubt parched. The farmer again seemed to stammer before he could say, “I saw the bullet hole.”

  “You know bullet holes?”

  “I hunt.”

  “So you own a firearm?”

  “I have a hunting rifle.”

  “You a good shot?”

  Ellsworth turned his head and, for the first time, looked Sharpe in the eye. “I did not hurt her.”