She led us to a corner where an old couch and several stuffed chairs sat around a hooked rug. She snapped on a table lamp, sat down, opened the tin of snuff and popped in a pinch.
“My sanctuary,” she announced and motioned for us to sit.
“You were the one who told us that De Sto was a bad place, that Raeford Watson was a mean man,” Bullock began. “We know he was in the Klan. We know that he gouged the community and we found a police report about how De Sto was firebombed the night before Wallace was shot. We wonder if the shooting might be related.”
“Why?”
“Maybe retaliation. Possibly even self-defense.”
“Wasn’t no self-defense. The boy had no weapon.”
“We also know that Wallace was not shot by Raeford Watson. He was in the hospital at the time. So if he wasn’t there either to protect the store or to avenge the firebombing, who was? Who would have cared?”
Mary Pell spat into an empty soup can on the floor beside her chair. “I don’t know nothin’ about the shooting. But you’re wrong about the firebombing of De Sto.” She took another dip of snuff. “Everyone knew Raeford Watson was a Kluxer. He gouged, that’s for sure. But that ain’t why De Sto was firebombed. If it was, it’d happened long before.”
“Then what was it?”
She eyed me carefully. “What went on in back. There’s another room in the building, behind the part where the store is.”
“We saw that,” Bullock said. “We went in there.”
She looked surprised and sat forward. “What’d it look like?”
“Like somebody lived there,” Bullock said. “It had beds, a sink. It was decorated.”
Mary Pell considered that for a moment and then asked, “Do you know what jumpers are?”
“Paratroopers,” Bullock said.
“Workers at the bomb plant.”
“The Savannah River Nuclear Plant up at Barnwell,” Brad explained. “They call it the bomb plant because the government makes plutonium there.”
“They started runnin’ girls out De Sto,” Mary Pell said. “Black girls. Worked out of that room you saw in the back. I always wondered what it looked like. Jumpers was the main customers.” She spat into the can. “De Sto gouged the community, but I ’spect jumpers is where the real money came from.”
Brad was stunned. “I never knew.”
“The community knew. We’d see the cars show up with license plates from all over and we’d know it was pay day down at the bomb plant.”
“So someone tried to firebomb it,” I said. “It was an affront to the community.”
“I don’t know if it was that. But it hurt to know what was going on.”
“Did Raeford Watson run both operations?” Bullock asked.
“He was the one that collected the money and paid the girls.”
“Mary Pell, how do you know?” Brad asked. “We need to know how you know.”
Mary Pell looked at me. “You promise you won’t use my name? Not in the newspaper and not to anybody, even the police?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She closed her eyes and was quiet for a long time. “My daughter worked over there,” she said after a while. “She was an addict. She did it to support her habit. She did it for two years.”
“I’m so sorry,” Brad said.
“Don’t matter. She’s dead now.”
Brad slumped back as if he’d been hit in the chest with a rocket. “Mary Pell, when did that happen? Why didn’t you tell me? How could you not say anything about this?”
“About five years ago. And I ain’t in the habit of talking ’bout my family with the boss man. Plus, she was already grown.”
I thought back to our conversation with Reverend Grace.
Bullock changed the subject. “Mary Pell, did Raeford Watson work with anyone or have a partner? Is there anyone else who would have wanted to retaliate for the firebomb?”
“I don’t know anything about the shooting.”
“Then who threw the firebomb?”
“It don’t make no never mind,” she said. She got up from the stuffed chair. “Now I need to get back to work. I’ve told you everything I can that could help you.”
I thought about pressing harder but we had made some progress. We’d be returning to Hirtsboro tomorrow anyway to try to talk to Olen Pennegar and we could always come back to Mary Pell.
“One more question,” I said. “Why do they call them jumpers?”
“The government has rules about how much radiation nuclear workers can absorb,” Brad answered. “Some of these guys absorb their annual limit in a month or six weeks and they’re done. No more work. They can’t make the same money doing anything else so they jump to another nuclear facility, get a job under a new name and start again. Jumpers.”
I pulled out my notebook and dashed a reminder to tell Walker Burns about another potential South Carolina prize-winner.
“Come on,” Bullock said impatiently. “We have three and a half hours to get back.”
Three hours and forty-five minutes later—fifteen minutes late and out of breath—we burst through the newsroom door.
My first break came when Walker didn’t notice my late arrival. My second came when I learned there was no news.
“It’s as dead as an armadillo on the exit ramp to a truck stop,” Walker advised when he finally swung by my desk. “I got a feelin’ we’re gonna get stuck roundin’ up local inserts tonight, so just hang out and be ready to make some phoners.”
Ordinarily, I would have groaned. Writing local inserts meant chasing down information that could be added to a national or international story to make it more relevant to the local community. They were unglamorous and unrewarding. They were often stupid. One reporter had been asked to produce a paragraph on the likelihood of a volcanic explosion in the Carolinas for insertion in a story about an eruption in the Philippines. Even worse, local inserts produced no byline that could be counted when reporter productivity was measured. And those were bylines I desperately needed.
But today chasing local inserts was perfect. I’d been up since 4:00 a.m. and was operating on two hours sleep. My heart was in Hirtsboro, not in the newsroom. All I wanted was to coast through the evening, maybe get out a little early and slide into bed. Then get up at 4:00 a.m. and do it all over again.
I was almost dozing at my desk when one of Walker assistants came by with word that a man in a trailer park had taken a hostage. Police had him surrounded, TV cameras were already live from the scene, and I needed to be on my way.
The park was six miles away in a tough part of town. I pushed the Honda as fast as I dared but by the time I arrived, the reporters were packing up. The man had passed out, a cop told me, and his wife—the hostage—was unsure if she wanted to press charges. I phoned in a couple of paragraphs for the briefs column and headed for home.
Chapter Twelve
It seemed like only seconds went by before I was awakened by the bleating of the horn on Bullock’s Dodge. “Your turn to drive,” he said, flicking away a cigarette. “I’m whipped.”
“You’re whipped? What about me?”
“You’re young.”
“Since when did you consider that an advantage?”
“Since now. I’ll drive this afternoon. You can sleep then.”
I didn’t really mind. There are times when I am my own best company.
Bullock eased his seat back and turned on his side. His left pants leg hitched up and I could see the glint of the derringer by the dashboard light. I kept the radio off and the windows up as we sliced through the dark hours before South Carolina’s dawn. In moments, he was snoring.
We were running out of strings to pull, by my way of thinking. We needed to take another run at Olen Pennegar Sr. He had to know about what went on in the back of De Sto. And we needed
to go back by the town hall, only this time to look at the real estate records instead of police reports. Watson operated the business but did he own the building? Today and one more day of reporting, I figured. After that, we’d either have more leads or we’d be out of luck.
Fatigue pushed my chin to my chest. My mind played tricks and I kept imagining deer darting from the shadows by the side of the road. I struggled to keep my eyes open and the Dodge between the white lines. I felt my eyelids close. My mind started to drift until fear shocked me awake. I clenched the steering wheel. When we arrived on the outskirts of Hirtsboro at 8:30 a.m., I was so tired it hurt.
“Brad’s gonna meet us at Town Hall,” Bullock said, emerging from his cobwebs. “We should find out who owned the store building before we go see OP senior.”
“Let’s hope the property records are in better shape than the police reports.”
Lights gleamed inside the cinderblock building but the parking lot was empty except for our Dodge. The doors were open but inside, the clerk’s desk was empty.
“Miss Patty?” Bullock yelled. Then louder. “Anybody home?”
“I am.” I whirled around to see Brad Hall. “What are you guys doing here? It’s Friday. Town Hall’s supposed to be closed.”
That’s right, I thought. I’d forgotten. “But the door was open,” I said. “The lights were on.”
Brad shrugged.
Bullock eyed Brad, who wore hiking boots, shorts, floppy hat and had a knapsack slung over his right shoulder. “What the hell are you dressed for, a geriatric nature walk?”
“I’ve been collecting specimens,” he said.
Bullock yawned. “Exciting.”
“It can be.” Brad unslung his backpack, unzipped a pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie, which he held to the light. From it he carefully extracted a leafy green vegetable matter attached to a long root. “Cnidoscolus stimulosus,” he said proudly. A natural aphrodisiac that grows in the woods here. Country people call it the Courage Plant.”
“What’s it do?” Bullock wondered.
“Makes you feel like a teenager. Twenty minutes later, you’re ready to go again. So I hear.”
“Lemme see that,” Bullock grabbed for the plant.
“Careful. The leaves are covered with little hairs that will sting you. The magic is in the root.”
Bullock took notes as Brad explained the identification and proper processing of the Courage Plant but my attention drifted. I strolled around the room studying the paper trail of a tiny town’s bureaucracy—faded faxes about federal mandates, three-by-five cards with the new garbage pickup schedule, and the maintenance bill for the Hirtsboro police car.
I noticed a set of file cabinets apart from the ones containing the police reports and started pulling the file drawers. I didn’t think about it. It’s just something I do. Closed doors make me nervous. Closed drawers make me curious. The files were in alphabetical order. I skipped to the Ps and began thumbing through them. Payroll. Pension, Personnel, and then the one I was looking for: Property Taxes.
The youthful voice of Olen Pennegar Jr. sent my stomach to the floor and stopped me cold. “Freeze!” he shouted. “Hold it right there!”
I started to turn around.
“I SAID FREEZE,” he shouted. “PUT YOUR HANDS OUT TO YOUR SIDES WHERE I CAN SEE THEM.”
I did as I was told.
“Now turn around.”
Slowly I turned and realized Olen Pennegar Jr. wasn’t talking just to me. Bullock and Brad stood with their hands in the air. Pennegar swung his gun back and forth between the two of them and me. He was taller than I remembered. He might be a rookie cop, I thought to myself, but he looks pretty comfortable with a gun. For a while, we were all too shocked to speak.
“Just what the hell are you doing in here?” Pennegar demanded.
“We just came by to say hey to Miss Patty,” Bullock said. “But no one was home. Jeez, put the gun down.” He dropped his hands and took a step toward Pennegar.
Pennegar pointed the gun at Bullock’s head. “Hold it right there! You’re all under arrest.” Bullock stopped in his tracks. “Patty don’t work Fridays. Town Hall is closed. You knew that.”
“The door was unlocked,” Bullock said.
“I doubt it but it don’t matter. It’s Friday. You’re not allowed here.”
“So what’s the charge? Some big crime like trespassing on public property?” I avoided looking at Bullock and Brad, whom I knew would disapprove of my sarcasm.
Pennegar’s face boiled. “Attempted theft of government property, pal. A felony. Get over here and spread ’em. Hands on the wall.”
“Theft!” Bullock protested. “That’s bullshit.”
“I saw him going through files,” Penneger said, meaning me. “You were attempting to steal something.”
I put my hands on the wall and assumed the “get frisked” position, just like I’d seen on the TV shows. I couldn’t read the young cop to tell if he was just jerking us around or if he really believed we’d come to commit a crime. “This is crazy. I wasn’t stealing. I was trying to figure out where some real estate records might be. They’re public information. You can’t steal something that’s already yours.”
Pennegar pointed to a desk. “Over there. Sit down and keep your hands where I can see them. Now you.” He motioned Bullock to the wall and I realized we had bigger worries than Pennegar’s understanding of the public’s right to know—namely the derringer strapped to Bullock’s calf. I expected Bullock to volunteer that he had a weapon. But he was silent, and Pennegar’s search was cursory as he struggled to pat one of us down with one hand while keeping the pistol trained on the other two at the same time. The derringer went undetected.
Brad was next to face the wall and he tried his best to defuse the situation.
“Olen, why don’t we forget this morning ever happened,” he said. “We didn’t mean to break in. Honest. We won’t come back until Miss Patty’s here. And we’ll only look with her permission.”
Pennegar didn’t respond but when the frisking was finished, I could see him relax. He holstered his gun.
“Olen,” Brad said, “There’s been no harm done. Nothing’s been stolen. Nothing’s missing.”
“It’s still a crime.”
“A misdemeanor,” Brad deflected. “How about if we bring Judge Buchan into this? If you arrested us, we’d be entitled to a hearing. Better to find out beforehand if it’ll hold up.”
As Pennegar wavered, Brad pressed his edge. “He’s going to need to know what happened anyway.”
“Might be right,” Pennegar conceded. “It’s his day off but I’ll get him down here. You all sit around that desk and keep your hands where I can see them.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Magistrate J. Rutledge Buchan was a good ol’ boy who had collected every penny he could from us when we faced him over the speeding violation. But he seemed like someone who could be reasoned with and, better yet, he was unlikely to send Everett Hall’s son to jail or charge him with a felony.
Pennegar dialed Buchan’s number and turned away. Bullock used the opportunity to take his hands off the table and scratch his nose.
“Huntin’,” Pennegar said when he hung up. “Be back directly.”
“What’s directly?” I wondered.
“’Fore too long,” Pennegar said. “Lunchtime at the latest.”
I breathed another sigh of relief. It was clear that this day of reporting was going nowhere. The best we could hope to accomplish was to get out of town without being charged with a crime—and to do it in time to beat it back to the newsroom for the night shift. To do that we would need to get this cleared up and be on the road by 12:30 p.m. I hoped Buchan bagged his quota early.
When Bullock asked if we could take our hands off the table, Pennegar said yes. “Stay seated, though. No looki
ng through documents and no trying to get out of here. I’m going to make coffee. You boys want any?”
Bullock and I said yes and a few minutes later Pennegar returned with three cups of coffee.
“Better than the newspaper’s,” Bullock said. “But then, that don’t take much.”
Pennegar laughed and took a sip. The conciliatory approach taken by Brad was working. “Let me ask you something, Mr. Hall. You’re a nice person. You come from a big rich family. Why are you out to make trouble?”
Brad was taken aback. “Why do you think we’re out to make trouble?”
“Well, you have been making trouble.”
“I don’t see how.”
“That article in the Reporter, to start. Dragging up stuff that don’t matter no more. Bringin’ them down here, too.” He nodded at Bullock and me. “The judge says you’re stirrin’ up all the blacks.”
“All we’re trying to do is find out who killed Wallace Sampson,” I said. “We’re doing the same thing you do. Trying to solve a crime. It’s just like police work.”
Pennegar looked me in the eye. “I don’t go around making sick old men cry.”
I winced, embarrassed at the memory of my impudence. “I’m sorry. We just wanted to talk to him. Still do.”
“No chance,” Pennegar said. “How would you like it if some reporter wanted to write something about your daddy and he didn’t want it? Imagine what you would feel like then?”
For the next two hours Bullock leafed through a stack of magazines, trying to find something of interest in City Manager Monthly and Public Works Today. Brad poked around in his knapsack and compared plant samples to pictures in the pages of South Carolina Wildflowers. Pennegar sipped coffee and did paperwork. I counted the tiles in the ceiling while my stomach tightened in a knot. At 11:30 a.m. I suggested that we call the magistrate’s house again.
“No point,” Pennegar said. “He’ll get here when he gets here.”
“Officer Pennegar,” I said, “Mr. Bullock and I need to be back in Charlotte by 4:00 p.m. We’re hoping to get this thing resolved in time to make it back by then.”
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