Six or seven of the jurors nodded, but Rush was certain the room would ignore his instruction.
MR. RUSH: Any other questions for the detective?
The youngest grand juror, #5, a sophomore studying political science at the state university’s local branch campus, raised his hand from his seat in the back row, left corner.
GRAND JUROR#5: Yeah, I do.
MR. RUSH: Yes. Go ahead.
GRAND JUROR#5: Did you have a police radio with you? And if you did, did you call for help?
DET. BATISTE: I had a handheld. No one would be available.
GRAND JUROR#5: I thought you called for transport.
DET. BATISTE: I didn’t call for backup. I didn’t need it.
MR. RUSH: Why not have a uniformed officer make the traffic stop?
DET. BATISTE: Like I said—
GRAND JUROR#11: I would have run the guy over!
MR. RUSH: I instruct the witness not to respond. You need to judge the facts and the law based on reason, not emotion.
GRAND JUROR#11: Sorry.
MR. RUSH: Detective, you’re excused.
Despite his admonition, Rush knew the game. Grand jurors were the final word on whether to charge felony crimes in federal court, but the prosecutors were the criminal justice system’s real apex predators. They molded grand juries into compliant sidekicks, reliable partners in accomplishing whatever the prosecutors wanted or needed. And the session had been a success. The detective served up a Klansman and a confession. The grand jurors left looking like they had just consumed a gravy-laden Thanksgiving meal.
“How’d it go?” Mercer asked.
“As expected. They ate it up.”
“I’m not going to tell you how to do your job, but I am telling you how the job gets done. It’s time to indict the bastard.”
During his questioning of Batiste, Rush kept wondering what else had happened during the traffic stop that the detective wasn’t saying to the grand jurors, or him. He knew officers could get away with telling a prosecutor—or a jury—what they wanted to hear, not what they needed to know. In the end, however, he left his doubts behind with the jurors’ notebooks in the room of secrets because the victims’ voices in his head filled the void.
17
LOCALS
The daily gathering of section lawyers in the DOJ basement was packed and unusually spirited. The rare alignment of prosecutors’ travel schedules resulted in most of the section regulars being in DC at the same time.
“Adrien, you chasing skirts down south or just the Klan?” Al Haynes asked, starting off another mealtime exchange.
“I don’t kiss and tell.” As soon as Rush answered, he regretted saying anything, as it just invited more questions.
“Any new pennants to hang?” asked Haynes in a pivot. Years before, he had issued an office-wide edict—one that became an odd rite of passage—that the junior prosecutors had to bring back minor league baseball pennants from the cities they traveled to while working on cases.
“Forget the pennants, bring us some goddamn spirits!” demanded Jack Hall, who was Rush’s closest friend in the section. “Pennants gather dust, but a decent Cajun rum, well, we can enjoy that offering.”
The early banter faded with the arrival of the last diner, Holly Boggs, a former state court homicide prosecutor from Brooklyn.
“Mind if I join you boys?” Boggs asked, sitting down at the table before anyone responded. “I’m in the mood for war stories with my chow.”
Boggs could spit out the roughest, most off-color jokes, and the lunch group had no intention of being on her target list today. Too many participants to witness the blood splatter.
“What about you?” Boggs asked Rush, her interrogator’s quiver now aimed. “Rush—Adrien.” Rush wasn’t allowed to forget his quirky habit of introducing himself backward when flustered.
“The locals in Lynwood have been smacking me around like I’m an abused pet,” Rush said.
“Tell more,” Boggs ordered.
“I wanted the local DA to keep the grand dragon detained while we worked the federal angle,” Rush explained, “and to dismiss the state charges if we made a federal civil rights case.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“I was told to mind my own business—that it’d be charged as a straight state crime and resolved in the normal course—and that there was no reason to repackage it as a civil rights case.”
“Who told you that?”
“The assistant DA.”
“The locals actually tell you that?” Boggs asked.
“The assistant had no interest in coordinating much less deferring to me. He wasn’t buying the civil rights label. Worse, the case agent warned the local office likely will plead it out as a misdemeanor.”
“Who was the ADA?” Hall asked. “Was he—”
“Or she,” Boggs interjected.
“A yearling?”
“Experienced enough. The phrase civil rights was like a toxin to him.”
“There are over two thousand local prosecutor offices,” Hall said. “And guess what—they’re not overflowing with cerebral Ivy Leaguers like at this table.”
Rush wasn’t mollified. “If the state prosecutor had just taken the time to meet the victims, he’d have seen what I saw—the hurt and the fear. The case needs to be charged for what it is—the victims’ rights being trampled on by a racist.”
“Sounds like a closing argument,” Boggs said, “after it’s cleaned up.”
“We don’t have thousands of cases to handle like they do. Locals want to get to court on time and hope the system doesn’t collapse,” Hall said. Like Boggs, Hall had been a big-city prosecutor before joining the section.
“The locals can’t linger on one case, because there’s dozens more needing the same attention. The sexual assaults and the homicides might be exceptions, but locals got enough challenges besides doing extra spade work,” Hall explained. “We, on the other hand, write missives, discuss issues like we’re professors debating the finer points of constitutional law.”
“Adrien, you can’t take it personally,” Boggs added. “You’ve got to develop a thick skin.”
Haynes said, “It’s like they—we—take oaths to different gods.”
Rush and his lunch companions stared at Haynes as if he were an oracle who had just emerged from a cave after decades in the dark.
“We’re members of different tribes,” Haynes added. “Every tribe has its own truth.”
“The only truth in my case is that whoever burned the crosses should be punished,” Rush declared.
“That, Adrien Rush, Esquire,” Boggs declared, “is why the Criminal Section exists and you’re a part of it. You’ve got a federal civil rights case against the Klan, so run with it.”
18
HIT & MISS
After the detective arrested Daniels, the local district attorney’s office charged the grand dragon with making threats, but the judge set bail low enough that he remained free on bond pending the state trial. During the defendant’s initial appearance, no one—not the prosecutor, not the judge, and certainly not the defense counsel—mentioned the damage to the home on Crescent Street in Mooretown or its occupant. It was as if a tacit understanding existed that the incident would wilt with time, like a stripped stalk in a field. After the hearing, Daniels’s wife picked him up at the courthouse, and they drove away in the Taurus.
With Daniels out on bond, the feds scrambled to charge him by the end of November. The urgency was not just a matter of Rush wanting to make it a federal case. Daniels would likely obstruct the ongoing investigation. Mercer again warned Rush that Daniels—like a bully insulted—would rally the Klan, and bullets in the air would replace flames in the grass.
Rush needed to draft the indictment, schedule a special grand jury session, submit the indictment to the jurors, and get the judge to sign off on the arrest warrant. Mercer told Rush he wanted to arrest Daniels at his home so they also could execute a sea
rch warrant with the hope of finding and seizing additional evidence. But before they could do any of that, Rush had to get the section chief to sign off on the plan.
Section Chief Kay Tipton crinkled her nose and raised her eyebrows, as if she were surprised or doubtful, or both. A smart, no-nonsense master of DC’s bureaucratic puzzle, Tipton expected the section’s lawyers to come to her, where she held court in an expansive seventh-floor office. She positioned her desk at an angle in the corner so she could get a quick, unobstructed look at all who entered her domain. Her command of the federal civil rights laws was encyclopedic, her manner stoic (often a raised eyebrow was the only sign of her displeasure), and her interrogation tactics Harvardworthy Socratic. Young section prosecutors prepared for the obligatory quarterly case-status meetings like final exams. A prosecutor could spend years in the section and not hear or see her laugh.
“I take it we don’t have enough evidence to charge anyone other than Daniels?” the chief asked. She squeezed and tortured the prosecution memo in her hands as if the response would jump out of the pages under pressure.
“That’s correct,” Rush replied. “As you know, it’s been tough going. The agents interviewed a dozen suspected Klan members and a slew of other possible witnesses, but no one—except Daniels—has implicated himself or anyone else in the cross burnings. Daniels gave us several names, but they’re fake.”
The chief listened, not betraying how the meeting would end.
“The bureau’s been piecing together leads, but we’ve hit the wall. Forensics didn’t produce much. The accelerant used to ignite the crosses was gas available at any Chevron station in the South. We couldn’t find any eyewitnesses, other than guards at the courthouse and a Mrs. Nettie Wynn, one of the victims, but she didn’t see anyone. Others heard bumps in the night, but no descriptions. Maybe we’ll get more in time, but we’ve got Daniels, and he’s the big catch.”
“We work up the chain of culpability, not down,” the chief said, invoking the prosecutor’s axiom. “Approach the low-level conspirators, then get the more culpable players.”
“But the way it’s played out,” Rush replied, “Daniels gave us Daniels. How can we tell Lynwood, ‘The Klan leader confessed, but we’re not charging him because we want others to cooperate first’?”
The chief again raised her eyebrow, making it obvious she didn’t much care for Rush’s tone. “I take it you’ll seek a superseding indictment when we get more evidence against others?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The section chief lifted the packet. “Does this prosecution memo include the draft indictment? I didn’t see one, but I wasn’t finished reading.”
“It does—the second tab after the memo,” Rush answered, hoping specificity would be seen as thoroughness.
“Does it include a conspiracy charge? How will you prove the conspiracy with just a confession?” the chief asked but didn’t wait for Rush to respond. “I suppose you go with some initial charges and add more based on what you develop later.”
“Yes, that’s what we would do.” Rush understood he needed to stay out of his own way.
“What about the pending state case? You know the policy is to encourage the state prosecutors to handle these.”
“The guy easily made bond in the state case, so the locals don’t see it as all that serious, and the prosecutor didn’t even charge it as a hate crime.”
“That’s not the type of encouragement I was thinking of.”
“The US attorney spoke to the DA, who agreed to dismiss the state case if we indicted. I don’t know what Cristwell said, but the message to me was clear—a green light.”
“Make sure the US attorney is involved in drafting the press release,” the section chief said. “Also, let the assistant attorney general in the front office know when the arrest is imminent, and include a quote from him in the release.”
The chief promised she would look at the draft indictment by the end of the day. It wasn’t the chief’s habit to compliment her prosecutors, and the Klan case was no exception. Rush and his colleagues were all too familiar with the chief’s view that excellence and success were expected outcomes, not exploits to be heralded. Like all the faithful, section lawyers accepted the belief that the work was the reward. The chief’s trips and organizing efforts in the deepest parts of the South during the 1960s gave her tough-love approach its authenticity. Her quick approval of the indictment was compliment enough.
. . .
The federal grand jurors met in secret and returned an indictment—a true bill—charging Frank Daniels with violations of 18 USC §245 (violent interference with protected activities) and 42 USC §3631 (interference with housing rights). At Rush’s request, the federal judge sealed the indictment and also issued an arrest warrant for Daniels. The same judge also signed a separate search warrant for the property, including seizing Daniels’s pickup truck.
. . .
In another case, Rush might have called the target’s lawyer and allowed a self-surrender instead of an arrest, but the feds had a story to tell, and an arrest with handcuffs would help tell it. Fourteen federal law enforcement agents in blue jackets with FBI printed in yellow on the back gathered at the designated spot before seven a.m. on the Monday after Thanksgiving. The staging area was thirteen miles southeast of Lynwood and two miles from Frank Daniels’s two-story house.
The house hid easily among scrappy pines, swirling dirt, and false indigo. It was possessed of nothing to catch the attention of drivers as they passed on their way to or from somewhere else. The yard resembled discarded dead flowers, and the dirt driveway formed a crooked spine from the street to the house. A shed occupied the boundary of the backyard and the field beyond.
Seven bureau vehicles careened up the dirt driveway and stopped in a wide arc. The agents abandoned their vehicles and swarmed the property, fanning out at the edge of the lawn near Daniels’s house. Mercer approached the house and vaulted up the ship-gray stairs that connected the dust below to the porch landing. A painted metal screen door with hinges covered the thick inner entry door. The main door had a four-inch square glass window allowing for a clear view in and, to a lesser extent, out.
Mercer propped the screen door open with the heel of his left wing-tip shoe and knocked hard. As he squinted to look through the glass, he noticed someone inside dart to his right just beyond the dining room threshold.
“Open up! This is the FBI. We need to speak with Frank Daniels.”
Mercer put his hand on his firearm and reached for the doorknob to see if it was locked. His foot still held the screen door open.
“If we don’t see you right now, we’ll come in by force!” Mercer yelled. “Now!”
A woman poked her head out from the corner that separated the dining room from the small kitchen.
“I hear you!” the woman said. “I’m his wife.”
She sounded more irritated than scared.
“Mrs. Daniels, I need you to show your hands and open the door,” Mercer said.
“All right already, I’m comin’.”
She stared Mercer down through the frame of the glass and raised her calloused palms up in front of her wide chest.
“Where’s your husband?”
“He’s probably in his beloved shower upstairs.”
“Open the door. We’ll go get him together.”
“Where’s your warrant? I ain’t opening nothin’ ’til I see some papers.”
“I have an arrest warrant for Frank Daniels and a search warrant for this place. I also got a gun in one hand and the door in the other. So for the last time, Mrs. Daniels—”
“All right, goddamn it. You don’t have to be all pissy. I got rights.” She opened the door but stood her ground, blocking Mercer’s path.
He took her by the arm and pushed her inside. But once in, he changed his mind about taking her along during the search for the grand dragon. He handed Mrs. Daniels over to the agent who had followed him in the front door.
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He headed upstairs. Daniels was shaving at the sink in his birthday suit, with both the shower and Johnny Rebel music at full blast. He apparently hadn’t heard the commotion downstairs.
“I gotta finish my shave,” Daniels protested.
Mercer leveled his weapon, took Daniels’s razor, and threw it in the trash bin.
“You can finish at the jail,” Mercer said.
“Goddamn Gestapo.”
Mercer told an agent to get Mrs. Daniels to the bedroom and bring some clothes for her husband.
“We’re moving to the hall where you’re going to put your hands on the wall while we wait for clothes,” Mercer said. Mercer was disgusted at the sight of a naked Klansman, but he liked the possibility that the Klansman was even more upset being arrested by a black special agent of the FBI.
Mercer handcuffed Daniels and put the Klansman in the waiting bureau car. Other agents put the wife in a separate car until they finished searching the home, and then they released her. The feds scoured the house and also seized Daniels’s truck that was parked near the listing shed. It was the second time within six months Daniels had sat handcuffed in the back seat of a law enforcement vehicle.
The agents also searched the shed, but not the field beyond. Mercer paused before he got into his car and looked out to where the thick milkweeds twisted any and all pants caught trying to pass by. He felt unsettled, like he was missing something. When he heard the other car engines come to life, it broke the spell, and he drove off with his prize.
19
PRESS CONFERENCE
Ever since the grand dragon had made his initial appearance on the charges in state court and been released, enterprising reporters plumbed their police sources for any new developments in the story. It came as no surprise when the US Attorney’s Office issued a media advisory that a press conference would take place the next morning, at nine a.m. on the state courthouse steps, just yards from where a cross had been lit up.
No Truth Left to Tell Page 11