Avengers of Blood

by Gae-Lynn Woods

  “There’s too much sadness for him to bear. That’s all it is. Otherwise, your dad is pretty nice.”

  She tilted her head and regarded the man so many people discounted. “That’s about the smartest thing anybody’s ever said about my dad’s situation, Goober. How did you figure that out?”

  He picked up a dish cloth. “Mrs. Keller told me. She had a lot of sadness, too.”

  “You’ve had a fair amount, Goober,” Cass said softly. “So have I. But we don’t drink.”

  “We’re different, Cass. You and me, we’re made different from other people.”

  She thought about that. “I guess you’re right, Goober.” Cass locked the kitchen door and flipped off the overhead light. “I’d better go take care of Harry’s cut and get to bed. You should, too. We’ve had enough drama for one night.”

  CHAPTER 97

  THE AIR IN THE motel room had grown warm and Joseph turned on the air conditioner beneath the window. The unit groaned to life and the curtains undulated to the musty stream of air. “What are you talking about?” Joseph asked.

  Emmet sighed. “What do you know about how your dad died?”

  “A brain aneurysm.”

  “Not Homer Radcliffe. Your dad. Charles Franklin.”

  “He died when we were about three.” Joseph shrugged. “A heart attack, maybe? Momma never talked about it.”

  “You were barely two years old, Joseph, and he was lynched by five white men. They strung our daddies up and roasted them. They shot Donna’s daddy in the leg first, because he kept trying to get away. But he got cooked, too.”

  Joseph’s smile was small. One of Emmet’s gifts was his ability to weave stories that could either entrance or horrify. Sometimes both. Joseph and Moses had encouraged him to take up writing when they were younger, but Emmet was a pragmatist. He pursued a nursing degree after leaving the military, stating that personally, he liked to eat and he’d never met a fat writer. “Come on, man. If my real daddy was lynched, don’t you think Momma would have told us at some point? How do you keep that a secret?”

  “People react differently to something as horrific as murder. One thing I know about your momma, Joseph, is that she loved peace above all else. The woman couldn’t even kill a spider. If one got in the house, she’d scoop it onto a piece of paper and dance and squeal until she tossed it out the door.”

  “She could flatten a cockroach.”

  “Too true. But her heart was gentle. Maybe because of the way your daddy died, or maybe that was just her nature. She wanted nothing more than for you and Moses to have peaceful, productive lives. It’s very easy to see why she wouldn’t have told you what happened to your daddy.”

  Joseph’s bottom lip poked out. “If Moses knew, he would’ve told me.”

  “He couldn’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “You two grew apart when you were up North. He didn’t know how you’d take it. We did tons of research to find these men, and it took a long time to finally act on the decision to kill them. We didn’t murder the first man until after you were arrested.”

  “Me and Moses didn’t grow that far apart. If he found out something like this, Moses would’ve told me, New York or not, and regardless of whether I was in prison.”

  Emmet sighed. “How would he do that? He couldn’t write it in a letter. Or call you. Moses thought it would be cruel to drop something like that in your lap.”

  “I’ve been home for weeks. He hasn’t said a word.”

  “By the time you got out, it was too late.”

  Joseph leaned forward, his face fierce. “Too late to tell me how our father died? Why?”

  “You’re on parole, man. It was too risky for you to be involved.”

  “There is no way Moses would kill a man. Unless he had to for his job. And what does any of this have to do with Donna Moore? She’s white.”

  “Her real daddy’s name was Silverman. He was a Jew.”

  The tone in Emmet’s voice told Joseph that he was deadly serious. Joseph dropped his head into his hands and looked down at the floor, rubbing the toe of his shoe on a bare spot in the carpet. “Who told you?”

  “Granny. Y’all never went back to Alabama, did you?”

  “No. I don’t even remember Alabama.”

  “All three families left not long after the lynching. We went back almost every year. But I didn’t know until 2006. Granny told me before she died.” His face wrinkled in thought. “Are you carrying Moses’ wallet?”

  Joseph nodded.

  “Take it out.”

  Joseph pulled it from his hip pocket.

  “There’s a little zipper, inside where the cash goes.”

  Joseph found the zipper and pulled it open. A piece of paper was inside. Joseph extracted and unfolded it, eyes widening as he read.

  “Believe me now?” Emmet asked.

  “Where did he get this?”

  “I got a copy from the newspaper in Thayerville after Granny told me what happened.”

  “You didn’t believe her?”

  Emmet lifted the gauze bandage and ran his fingers lightly along the stitches in his upper arm. “I wanted to know what the public record said.”

  “This is all?” Joseph asked, holding up the paper. “This is the only article they printed about a lynching of three men?”

  “There were a few more. All bullshit. The last article said that they were out of clues and the case would remain open until they had new evidence.”

  “Which never came.”

  “Which never came,” Emmet agreed.

  “Strange fruit,” Joseph whispered, running a finger over the image of their fathers’ charred bodies dangling from branches. “Like Billie Holiday sang.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Joseph thought for a moment. “Donna didn’t have a problem with roasting these men alive?”

  Emmet snorted. “She was the one who wanted to torture them before they died.”

  “I guess I can understand wanting that kind of vengeance. At a distance. But this was face to face. Why was she so brutal?”

  “Maybe it’s an Old Testament thing. Donna called us avengers of blood. Said we deserved a life for a life.” Emmet tilted his head to one side. “Donna was a few years older than us. So she remembered her daddy better than we remember ours. She had actual memories of him. I think my memories of my father come from photographs.” He shrugged. “Maybe she had even more to be mad about, because Moore diddled her.”

  “He what?”

  “Messed with her. Abused her.”

  “Her stepfather?”

  “Yeah. She was pretty screwed up when you look at everything. I mean, she was smart and very good with money. But once we told her what happened to our daddies, she was the one who wanted to go after the men.”

  It was Joseph’s turn to snort. “Come on, Emmet. It’s easy to say that now that she’s dead.”

  “I’m serious. Once we told her what had happened, all these memories came back to her. Somehow, she watched what happened.”

  “She was there?”

  Emmet nodded. “And saw it all.”

  “Did they know she was there?”

  “It’s possible. She must’ve been about five years old. Granny said everybody knew Donna because she would slip out of the house and go looking for her daddy.”

  “By herself?”

  “Thayerville was a small town. Granny said kids ran around all the time, so nobody thought anything about a little girl that they recognized wandering around, if they even bothered to notice.”

  “And she found her daddy at a lynching,” Joseph whispered.

  “She suppressed the memories. That happens sometimes with severe trauma. Once we told her, she tried working her memories out through art, by painting pictures and drawing sketches of what she saw. They’re hanging in her office and her house.”

  “Didn’t that scare the customers off? Paintings of a lynching?”

  Emmet s
miled. “They’re kind of abstract. Donna was a good artist. She painted the actual burning in bright colors. Then sketched the aftermath in charcoal.”

  “But that wasn’t enough for her?”

  “Donna blamed them for what happened to her. She said that if her daddy had still been alive, her mother never would have left Thayerville and married the first man she came across, and Donna wouldn’t have been abused.”

  Joseph pondered this. “I guess there’s some logic in that.”

  “There’s a hell of a lot of logic in it.”

  “Why did you go along with her?”

  Emmet looked down at his hands, motionless in his lap. “I did it for my momma. She never stopped grieving for our daddy.”

  “And Moses? Why did he do it?”

  “At first, Moses wanted to track them down and let the law handle it. But the more we talked, the more we realized that if justice hadn’t happened in over forty years, it wasn’t gonna happen.”

  Joseph stood and paced the small room. “I can’t see Moses as a killer.”

  “In fairness, Joseph, Moses changed a lot after we found this out. And that’s one of the reasons his wife left him.” He looked down at his hands. “That’s why Celia’s gone. I’ve changed and can’t go back to who I was.”

  “Changed how?”

  “We were both more cynical. Moses was always kind of upbeat and happy-go-lucky, you know? Like whatever was wrong with the world would get sorted out eventually.” When Joseph nodded, Emmet continued. “He lost that when he found out how his daddy died. Not entirely, but his view of things changed.”

  “Changed enough that he was willing to kill these men?”

  “Not only kill them, but find them and plot their deaths. Planning and executing a murder is not something you can share with your spouse. The secrets eat at you. They get bigger and a wall grows up between you.”

  Joseph digested this. “Why did everyone leave Thayerville? Back in the day?”

  “Granny said Mrs. Silverman was stirring up trouble. She hated that woman. Granny always believed she lost her family because Mrs. Silverman couldn’t keep her mouth shut,” Emmet said. “I guess she thought that being white entitled her to some sort of justice for her husband.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She wouldn’t let it lie. She kept calling the sheriff, wanting to know how the investigation was going, and then contacting the press when the police stonewalled her.”

  “But why did they leave?”

  “In the end, the families didn’t have a choice. They burned the Silvermans out.”

  “What?”

  “They set the house on fire with Mrs. Silverman and the children in it.”

  Joseph gaped. “Children?”

  “There was a boy. Older than Donna. She was sleeping with her momma that night and they both got out. He died in the fire.”

  “Dear God.”

  “After that, all three families packed up and moved.”

  “Who set the fire?”

  “Probably the same people who did the lynching.”

  Joseph sat and ran both hands over his slick, bald head. “How many have you killed?”

  “All of them. All five.” He seemed to reconsider. “Well, one was dead before we got to him. His trailer house burned to the ground. We killed the last one this week. He was living right here in Arcadia, big as life. Can you believe it?”

  Horror filled Joseph’s face. “Calvin Whitehead? I saw those pictures. You hung him and burned him to death?”

  “Damn straight we did. He was Klan. All of them were. They were evil, Joseph. These weren’t the first men they lynched. Or the last.”

  Joseph swallowed. “The swastika? Who did that?”

  “Me.”

  “He was shot through the leg. Was that Donna?”

  Emmet nodded.

  “If those men are all dead, then who killed Momma, Donna, and Moses? Who’s trying to kill you?”

  Emmet flashed a weary smile. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  “You mean all this vigilante shit is what got Momma killed? The man who killed my mother was avenging the death of somebody that he loved?”

  “That’s the only scenario that makes sense.”

  Joseph shook his head. “This has to stop, Emmet. Enough people have died. You almost died. We need to take this to the police.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Joseph.”

  “Seriously. You need protection. Maybe I do, too.”

  “What do we tell them?” Emmet asked, grimacing as he pushed himself higher against the headboard. “That me, Donna, and you – ’cause you’re Moses now – have been plugging white men all over the South for the last three years? And that somebody figured out who was doing the killing, and has come to kill us?”

  Joseph stared at him.

  “See what I’m getting at? Maybe they’ll find this guy and put him in jail for killing your mom, Moses, and Donna. But they’re gonna put us in jail for killing those white men.”

  “What do we do?” Joseph whispered.

  “We turn the tables. We find him, and we kill him.”

  “How?”

  “You have to keep track of what they know. When they get close to the shooter and figure out who he is, we take him.”

  Joseph dropped his head into his hands again and rubbed his temples. “Good Lord. Where does it end?”

  Emmet touched his wounded arm. “This is serious, man. It doesn’t get more illegal than this. I don’t know what will come afterward, but I intend to be the last man standing. Are you gonna stand with me?”

  Joseph opened his mouth to answer as a bullet smashed through the window and thunked into the wall over the headboard. Emmet slid off the bed and yanked the lamp’s cord from the wall. Joseph sat frozen in his chair until Emmet kicked him.

  “Give me your gun,” Emmet yelled as the window crashed open and a rock bounced off the bed.

  Joseph struggled to pull the gun from its holster and Emmet snatched it from him. He fired three times at the window and the men heard a high pitched yip and the sound of scraping across gravel, and then running.

  Emmet lowered the weapon, plucked the brass casings from the carpet, and then motioned Joseph to his feet and held out a hand for help up. He lifted the curtain and peeked out. “Get everything in the bags. Everything. We gotta get out of here. Now.”

  Joseph shoved medical supplies into the kit and food wrappers and cans into the plastic bags. Emmet grabbed his duffel bag and disappeared into the bathroom. Joseph heard the squeal of hinges and saw Emmet dropping the bags through a window. Joseph realized that a small alley ran between the two motel buildings. Emmet wanted Joseph to park on the building’s south side to provide an escape route.

  “Come on,” Emmet said. “I think he’s gone, but we’ll go around the back way to check. Once we’re clear, get out of here as fast as you can and meet me at that strip center on the Loop. Park near the trees.”

  Joseph scrambled through the window behind Emmet. “That’s too public, somebody’ll see you.”

  “We’ll just look like two black men with car trouble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I should’ve known after he found me last night,” Emmet answered. “That’s devious. He put some sort of tracking device on my truck, and maybe your car. We’ve got to find them and get them off.”

  CHAPTER 98

  KADO LET THE MEMORY of Cass’s upturned face fill his mind for a moment and reveled in the sound of her voice speaking the word ‘handsome’. Then he opened his weary eyes and surveyed the nasty motel room. Martinez stepped out of the bathroom and shook his head. “Everything’s gone. All the linens. Even the liner from the trash can.”

  Kado studied the bullet hole in the wall. “You know who was in this room, right?”

  “That’s a .308 slug?”

  “I’d bet breakfast from The Golden Gate that it is.”

  “Emmet Hedder was here? Why here?”
<
br />   “And how did the shooter find him?”

  “One thing at a time,” Martinez said. “Get that piece of lead out of the wall and see if it matches the others.”

  Kado lifted an eyebrow. “What? Don’t go with my gut? Use science to confirm my hunch?”

  Martinez widened his stance.

  “I’m not complaining,” Kado said. “You and I might find common ground after all.”

  An Asian man and a slip of a girl struggled to lift a piece of plywood into place over the empty window frame. Kado motioned to Martinez and the two took over, securing the board with a hammer and nails.

  “Sir,” Martinez said. “Is this your motel?”

  The Asian man shook his head, his stringy hair flying. “My parents own the place. I’m Sam. I cover the night shift.”

  “Who’s registered in this room?”

  “Eddie Vedder.”

  Martinez began jotting a note and Kado stopped him. “As in the Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam?”

  Sam nodded. “We get a lot of that. Not Vedders in particular, but false names.”

  “You don’t check ID?” Martinez asked.

  “Not if they’re paying cash.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “Light colored black man. Shaved head. In his thirties, maybe forties.” Sam shrugged. “It’s hard to tell with black people.”

  “Anyone with him?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  “Do you remember his eye color or any unusual characteristics? Scars? Tattoos?”

  Sam pursed his lips. “His eyes were kind of funny, a light brown with yellow specks in them. And he had freckles. That should help. You don’t find many black men with freckles.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He seemed to favor his right arm.”

  “How so?”

  “It moved slow when he lifted it to sign the register.”

  “Thank you,” Martinez said, flipping his notebook closed. “We’ll be in the room for a while, dusting for prints.”

  “Whoa,” Kado said. “Let’s try something else first.” He jogged from the room and came back a moment later with a photograph. “Is this Eddie Vedder?”