The US attorney was a jolly, rotund man who courted media coverage and loved attention. He was forever in search of a baby to hold or a hand to grasp. He wore his smile like others wore a belt.
Cristwell escorted his guest around the town square in a leisurely stroll, introducing Rush to an eclectic assemblage of locals. He addressed many passersby with outsized gestures and exhibited a politician’s mastery of names despite never having sought or held elective office.
After the walking tour, Rush—the only prosecutor on the cross burnings investigation, because Cristwell had deferred assigning anyone from his office—followed his host through a pair of massive double doors with elaborate carved handles. More than anything else, those handles gave the private dining club—officially named the Governor’s Club, but usually just called “the Governor”—an air of significance.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cristwell, sir. Your table is waiting.”
“Thanks, George. This is Mr. Rush from our nation’s capital,” Cristwell said by way of a pleasant but wholly ceremonial introduction. “Mr. Rush’s visitin’ with us. I’ve informed him that after this lunch, he will desire never to leave.”
“Of course, sir, that is very true. But he will have to leave Lynwood so he can miss us dearly and wish to come again.” The US attorney and the Governor’s maître d’ had starred in the same banter for years, delivering a whimsical dose of gentility with smooth, if shallow, humor.
Once seated, Cristwell played the gentleman host. “Adrien. You Scottish?” he asked. The two sat opposite each other at the table covered in white linen, with a preferred view of the town square.
“Irish.”
“Well, that’s a tribe to be reckoned with,” the US attorney said. “The Troubles and all.”
Rush had no idea whether the US attorney was making a joke, delivering an insult, or offering a more esoteric commentary within the southern social repertoire. Rush had spent his youth deflecting snide comments about his phonetic twin—Adrienne. At the start of every school year, it had taken weeks for his teachers and months for his classmates to be satisfied he indeed had a boy’s name.
When the pleasantries lost their momentum, a waiter appeared in perfect sync with need. In dark formal attire, matching tie, and a pure white mane, he hovered in a deferential orbit.
“Mr. Cristwell, sir. An honor to see you as always.” The waiter was of some seniority, and he perfectly complemented the old-line décor. Rush observed the choreography with unexpected fascination, enough that he started to enjoy the town’s strange, ornamental charms.
“As always, I’m delighted to be here on the occasion of a meal,” Cristwell proclaimed, as if he were a celebrant in some special culinary ritual. He hadn’t ordered a drink, but one was delivered within three minutes of arriving. He preferred bourbon—Woodford Reserve—with a twist of lemon and two small ice cubes. Ordinary folk imbibed because it smoothed over the rough edges, but Cristwell had no need for that. His daily drink was not a habit, like taking a shower, but a ritual, like a priestly offering.
“Now, what have we got ourselves into with those fires?” the US attorney asked. “This town doesn’t rightly deserve to be labeled a haven for racists these days.”
Rush—unclear whether the we included him or just Cristwell and his town—responded, “The bureau says it’s the Klan. No surprise there. But nobody really knows, and no one’s talking. We had one possible flipper, but nothing came of it.” He suspected Cristwell had an agenda for the lunch, but it wasn’t his place to upset it.
“We don’t know what miscreants to jam up, do we?” the US attorney asked.
“We don’t even know who’s in the state Klan,” Rush said. “We reached out to the Southern Poverty Law Center. They’ve got a good database on extremist groups, but even they don’t have much about the Klan here. Same thing for the Anti-Defamation League.”
“Did you know that my long-ago predecessor, the exalted US attorney Thornton Mansfield, was, in fact, a dues-paying member of the Ku Klux Klan?”
“No sir, I had no idea.”
“History, Adrien, is just stories about people.”
Rush had no rebuttal to that pronouncement.
Cristwell played his first card. “The agents want to raid what they think is a Klan house and see if there are records or a member list hidden there.”
“A raid?”
“I asked them how they reckon they got the probable cause for the warrant.”
The US attorney apparently wanted to appear reasonable, even cautious. Rush knew he was being played but couldn’t figure out why.
“Sir, we don’t have probable cause to get a warrant for membership lists,” Rush said. “Even if we did, it’s dubious that we could get the list just because we want to know who’s on it.”
Assuming Cristwell was being truthful, Rush was angry that Mercer had sought out the US attorney for a subpoena and hadn’t come to him. He realized Mercer likely didn’t ask him because there was little chance he would have approved of it, but Mercer should have raised the issue directly, not gone over his head.
“Now, I reckon”—Cristwell let the words dangle between them—“an instanter subpoena might just get us where we need to be without too much fuss, and we’d get it right away.”
“Sir, the use of an instanter subpoena would get us the list—if one exists—only if the person we served didn’t lawyer up to fight it,” Rush said. “It seems like an aggressive move without the cover of a warrant. I don’t need to tell you it also would open us up to a monumental First Amendment challenge.”
“We possess the levers of brute power, don’t we?” The US attorney had switched to warlord mode. “Why not use every available weapon—maybe tool is the word we’d use in public, but it’s really weapons, right? Why not use every available weapon at our disposal to find these bastards?”
“We don’t know who the local Klan leader is or who keeps the records, or even if any records exist.” Rush was reluctant—afraid even—to engage a sitting US attorney in a full-on debate regarding the appropriate use of prosecutorial powers to catch violent racists in his district. Such an exchange might be welcomed by the DC lunch table, but here his sparring partner wasn’t the professorial type and didn’t appear to change his mind often, if ever. Rush had to kill the subpoena idea, but he couldn’t do it over lunch at the Governor.
“Well, finding one Klansman to get the rest is easier than tripping over them one at a time in the dark,” the US attorney announced. “As for a court challenge, maybe we should ask for forgiveness instead of permission. Son, I want you to turn over every rock, and stick your hand deep into every hole to find the troublemakers in my district. I trust we have a clear understanding of the situation.”
“I will. I mean, I do.”
And with that, lunch arrived even though they had not yet ordered.
8
LYNWOOD MEMORIAL
Rush and Mercer planned to visit Nettie Wynn after she was released from the hospital, but medical complications twice extended her stay at Lynwood Memorial. And after the doctors finally discharged her, she returned home for only two weeks before being readmitted for acute shortness of breath. With no good news to share—still no word from the titan—and continuing uncertainty over her condition, they had put off the formal meeting. But apologies and excuses were not the stuff of federal law enforcement, and the time had long since passed for Rush to introduce himself to Wynn, so Mercer finally made an appointment.
They arrived at the hospital thirty minutes before the scheduled meeting. As they were escorted to Wynn’s private third-floor room, Rush fidgeted with his tie and combed his mop back with his hand. Mercer had interviewed Wynn two days after the fiery night, but the session lasted less than ten minutes, with Wynn answering only the preliminaries. The attending nurse had intervened, worried that more questioning would stress her patient’s already weakened heart.
“Mrs. Wynn, do you remember me? I’m Special Agent Lee Merc
er.” By force of habit and bureau policy, he displayed his credentials.
“Yes, pleased to see you again.” Wynn sat upright in her hospital bed, and instead of a patient’s gown she wore the clothes brought from the Crescent Street home for the occasion.
“Ma’am, this is Adrien Rush. He’s the prosecutor for the case.” Mercer moved to one side so she could see him. “He’s from the Department of Justice in Washington, DC.”
Rush stepped forward. Wynn had white gauze bandages taped to the back of her right hand and an IV tube inserted underneath, so he took her left hand instead.
“Hello, Mrs. Wynn. I’m very happy to finally meet you,” Rush said as if he were speaking into a microphone. “I hope you’re feeling better.”
“She’s doing much better,” said a woman standing in the far-left corner. Mercer and Rush had completely missed her when they entered the room.
“Hi. I’m Special Agent Lee Mercer with the FBI.”
“I know, you just mentioned that.”
“This is my granddaughter Nicole,” Wynn announced. “She works in New York and is a famous journalist. You might have heard of her.”
DuBose extended her hand to Mercer, then Rush. “I’m Nicole DuBose, and I’m decidedly not famous.”
“I’m Rush—Adrien—I mean Adrien Rush.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Rush—Adrien.”
Rush’s face flushed as he pivoted back to Wynn to avoid meeting DuBose’s gaze. Mercer caught Rush’s wide-eyed stare mid-swing.
“I’ll need to get your full name and an address for our file,” Mercer said. “Spell it out if you would, please.”
“Yes, of course. Nicole DuBose, D-U-B-O-S-E. I live at 34 West Sixty-Ninth Street in Manhattan. It’s an apartment number—1507.” Mercer missed the full address, but he didn’t ask her to repeat it.
Rush said to Wynn, “I’ve read about your interview with Agent Mercer, the one you gave awhile ago, so I—”
“I haven’t had the chance to hear the full story,” DuBose interrupted. “I’d like to listen, if that’s OK.”
“We want to hear more about the night in February, but I want to make sure you’re up to talking to us about it.” Rush held the railing to Wynn’s hospital bed as his anchor in the room.
Mercer had seen Rush looking at DuBose. Rush’s gawk was incriminating but understandable. DuBose’s skin possessed a natural smoothness, as if it were the finely sanded surface of beechwood. The dark irises of her eyes sparkled like they were releasing tiny bursts of light. Her angular face descended and ended in a small crescent chin. Her figure was a series of fluid, seamless curves. She was elegant but not stiff. It was no surprise that the two men in the room were enthralled with her.
Rush kept glancing over at DuBose as they listened to Wynn’s story of confusion and collapse. Rush presented himself as the consummate professional, but Mercer was witnessing something else. They both knew the basic facts from the 302 reports, but the trust between agent, prosecutor, and victim doesn’t come from a case file—it would be the result of making her cause their cause. In the hospital room, a compromised Rush risked reducing his presence to embarrassing and irrelevant, and it left Mercer vacillating between annoyance and anger.
Wynn was still speaking when the duty nurse—the same one from the first abortive interview weeks before—entered the room and saw her patient’s drawn face. “Folks, my lady needs her afternoon checkup and rest, so that means everyone needs to leave.”
Mercer and Rush glanced at each other, wondering whether to relent and forego the interview or force the issue. A quick wag of the nurse’s finger settled the issue.
“Of course,” Mercer responded. “We appreciate your time.”
“Yes, thank you for meeting us, Miss Nettie. We’ll visit you again soon, but next time it’ll be in your own home,” Rush said.
“I look forward to that.”
“Me too, ma’am,” the young prosecutor added.
The three moved toward the door as if exiting the stage during dress rehearsal.
“Nettie Ma, I’ll be right outside. I’m not leaving. Promise.”
“Thank you, dear.”
Wynn smiled and ironed down her clothes with her free hand, but she let out a defeated gasp when the nurse moved in with the hospital gown.
Once outside the room, Mercer asked the duty station nurse if Wynn’s attending doctor could be found. After ten minutes, a short, busy man wearing his white coat like an officer’s uniform walked up and asked for Mercer.
“I’m Dr. Deshpande. How may I help?”
“I’m Special Agent Lee Mercer.” He again took out his credentials. “This is Adrien Rush, from the Justice Department, and Nicole DuBose, Mrs. Wynn’s granddaughter.”
“Yes, I’ve spoken with Ms. DuBose before several times. Again, how may I help?”
“How is Mrs. Wynn doing?” Mercer asked.
“As I’ve told Ms. DuBose, her grandmother’s progress is slow and uneven, but she’s improving. She should be released again to go home, or at least to a rehab facility, in several days.”
“Any insight you can share about her prognosis?”
“Mrs. Wynn suffered a significant cardiac event, but the heart attack wasn’t caused by blockage of an artery. It likely was triggered by the trauma of that night. She was physically at some risk, given her age and a preexisting heart condition, but it’s my medical opinion that the shock of seeing the cross is what induced the cardiac event.”
“She was frightened into a heart attack?” Mercer asked, pulling out his notepad.
“It’s referred to in the medical literature as a takotsubo cardiomyopathy. It can be a startling event, something that triggers an extreme response, including an atypical ballooning of the left ventricle. The bulging looks like a tako-tsubo, a pot used in Japan to catch octopuses.”
“Rare?”
“Yes. But as I’ve told Ms. DuBose, we’re also picking up an arrhythmia, or an abnormal heart rhythm.”
The doctor paused to allow the group to catch up.
“So yes, her condition is serious, but I remain cautiously optimistic we’ll see improvement. She’s got something else going for her. Despite the shock of that night and all that’s happened, she has a calmness that’ll serve her well.”
“She’s always had an inner peace,” DuBose said. “I wish some of it would rub off on me.”
The doctor continued: “The long-term prognosis is less clear. The heart muscle was already weak, and combined with her age—”
“But she can recover from this, right?” DuBose asked with renewed fear in her voice.
“She remains admitted so we can monitor her condition. We’ll know more soon.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Mercer said. Mercer had heard too many doctors’ explanations not to pick up on the deep uncertainty of Wynn’s condition.
Rush hovered around the nurse’s station after the doctor left. “Ms. DuBose—”
“It’s Nicole.”
“We’re going to catch the bastards who did this.”
It then was Mercer’s turn to add some substance to the statement.
“We believe the Klan is responsible for burning the crosses, but we haven’t identified the individuals involved. We’ll get there. We want Mrs. Wynn to know that.”
“She does, but I’ll tell her.”
“Do you have any questions for us?”
“Not really. Well, I do have one. There’s still a Klan in Lynwood?”
Rush jumped in to respond, despite being a new arrival to the place. “They’re still around. The Klan takes advantage of economic stress, like the closings of plants and factories, to recruit new members. It’s cyclical—there’s more Klan activity in tough times, and in periods of significant change.”
Rush’s words cascaded forth like an open hydrant flooding the street. Mercer tried catching Rush’s attention by shuffling around to the back of the nurse’s station and frowning.
“It’s my job to tr
avel all around the country and prosecute these groups when they commit crimes,” Rush continued.
“It’s scary you still have to chase these people.”
“Please, take my card. One for you, and if you’d give the other to your grandmother.”
“Of course.”
Rush’s preening was too much for Mercer. Rush was showing off to DuBose, and while Mercer wasn’t immune to her allure, he didn’t want to watch the clumsy dance. Even more, he didn’t much like that Rush was pontificating about race relations and civil rights. He would likely prove to be just another empty suit from DC, and his behavior in the hospital was only reinforcing Mercer’s prediction.
It was late enough in the day that Mercer could go home to his wife and two young children instead of back to the office. He’d write up the interview in the morning. Once in the bureau car, he voiced his displeasure.
“Don’t call her Miss Nettie,” Mercer admonished.
“Did I say that?” Rush asked.
“You did. It’s Mrs. Wynn to us.”
“Didn’t mean to say it, really.”
“And why’s a pale white guy from DC coming on to a Creole woman of color?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Rush said, blushing for the second time in under an hour. “What’s Creole, anyway?”
9
THE LIST
“Why you callin’ me?” the surly detective sergeant asked. “The Klan? We ain’t had a Klan here in over twenty years.”
“The Klan received a permit to march back in ’90,” Mercer responded.
“Then you already got what you want to know,” the sergeant snorted.
Mercer pushed on despite the sergeant’s lack of interest in helping. “Does your department maintain any files on local extremist groups?”
“We can’t keep track of our own damn overtime,” the sergeant responded. “We got nothin’ for you.”
No Truth Left to Tell Page 5