by Karine Green
"Look." He pointed to the screen. There was no quilt. "These photos were taken before I went and picked you up," he said to Kathy. "That means the processors were still there. The property was guarded. No one could have simply walked up and hung a bright red quilt on the railing without one of the officers seeing them."
He picked up his desk phone and dialed. "Roger! Do you remember that red quilt on the deck at the Lawrence scene? Did you collect that?"
There was a pause, "OK, gone from the photo or not, you do remember seeing it, right?"
Another pause.
"Yes, I think so," Jason nodded, yes, to Kathy. There was a longer pause, and then he turned serious again. "It's missing from evidence, too. Do you have any photos of it at all? What about the little cameras?" he said, referring to Roger's collection of cameras that he took umpteen different photographs from every angle known to man with. He must have four of them. The guy was a camera savant. The bonus of Roger handling it was that the scene was indeed photographed from every possible angle known to man. He could probably reconstruct the scene in 3-D with all the photos.
Another longer pause.
Jason sighed, "Missing from all of your cameras too? So at least four people saw this quilt, and it's just gone...like it never existed."
A long pause. Jason nodded occasionally.
"I have no idea who could have taken it, I'll have Mike and Regina go house to house, and ask if anyone has a red quilt...OK, Roger, Thanks," Jason said, hanging up. "He's going to send a notice to Internal Affairs."
Ellen wiped her face, again. "Jason, you will find whoever did this, won't you? They took everything I have. They took the only person who made me feel I was really wanted! We were going to have a family. It was so horrible...what they did to him!" She started crying again.
"I'll leave no stone unturned, that's why I asked Ms. Marconi to consult on this. She has a great deal of experience dealing with these sorts of situations."
She pulled out more tissue. "I didn't know he knew anyone north of Shreveport, let alone in New York City. How did you meet him? Was it that insane YouTube video he uploaded that drew your attention to the Caine Plantation?"
Kathy looked stunned, "No, I didn't know him. And I didn't see the video until Mike Rose pointed it out, after I bought the house."
After Ellen calmed down, she reviewed, and then signed her written statement. She hadn't noticed anyone unusual around the neighborhood. Milton didn't deal with transit clients. Everyone was local, and everyone had known him since he was a boy, or went to high school with him, including him, Mike, and their sister. The Lawrence family was probably one of the oldest in the area, despite missing a Cajun or French surname. And if he remembered correctly, Ellen was most likely right, Milton probably didn't know anyone North of the Parrish line, let alone the Louisiana state line.
One of his officers to took Ellen back to her mother's house.
He heard Kathy's stomach grumble, and smiled, "Would like to review the evidence over lunch at the diner?"
"Yes, I am starved."
He walked her two blocks to the diner. They ordered lunch. He kept the conversation to the case at hand, but he was becoming more and more distracted with wanted to know about Kathy. The Randal Bell case that lead to her partner's termination, and her earlier retirement didn't seem to match her personality. He would lay a year's salary that she wasn't a corrupt officer, there was simply more to the story than he could get his on his own. She would have to open about it by herself.
He sipped his water. "How do you suppose those movers are involved?"
"I don't." She shook her head. "The thing that puzzles me is the African American lady...trespasser, feeding and/or scaring people off my property. What is that all about? And don't tell me she is a ghost. She's just a clever squatter. Perhaps she killed Mr. Lawrence? Or, perhaps she is a witness? Regardless, she knows something, we have to find her."
Jason shrugged, "A lot of people believe in the Dark Lady." His knew his smile gave him a way. He could barely keep a straight face.
"Pffpht!" she nearly spit on him. "You do not believe that. How many ghosts have you seen?"
He shook his head silently laughing, trying not to spit out his bite of BLT. It would be even more undignified in uniform than if he did it out of uniform. He finally had to admit it, Mike was right, Kathy was perfect for him. He hoped she was ultimately cleared in the Bell case.
"What about Lauren, we need to talk to her. It would appear that she has something that was meant for me." The look on her face suggested that she might be coming around to share his assessment of Lauren.
"Lauren is a crazy bat, she probably forgot. She is obsessed with that house, and was heartbroken she couldn't buy it. We can talk to her tomorrow. She is in New Orleans with Sandy from the Museum trying to salvage what they can of the town's tiny trickle of tourist business."
"Why didn't she buy it then? It was only twenty-five bucks." Kathy looked glad Lauren didn't get the house.
He smiled, she had such beautiful green eyes. Then he remembered something she said and put a spin on it. "She's a queen of idiots, who makes idiotic decisions that further causes the sort of idiocy that only the best idiots can manage to experience."
Kathy smiled and clapped her hands, "Adorable, you have been taking notes."
They finished lunch without further talk of the murder or the Dark Lady.
"How long do you have left on your shift?" Kathy asked.
He smiled and looked hopeful, "About 2 hours, but I am Chief. I pretty much set my own hours."
"Can you drop me at the Library, and then take me home at the end of your shift?"
He tried not to look deflated, "Sure, it's the least I can do for all your help."
****
Twenty minutes later Kathy had pulled Haunted Plantations of the Deep South, Ghosts of the Underground Railroad, Quilts and the History of Quilt Design, and A History of Louisiana Law 1840-1850: Code Civil Des Francis. The Last time she visited she had focused on the house and town. Perhaps it would be easier if she focused on what the locals thought about ghosts.
She opened Haunted Plantations of the Deep South, and found a piece about the Blanc Plantation. The Blanc Plantation grew cotton and sugar cane. At the time, it was the nearest neighbor to the Caine Plantation. It was also the largest in the area with nearly 800 acres and 350 slaves.
Yeah, Yeah, blah, blah. Know it already. Kathy thought. Did these people just spin the same stuff from one book into the next? She turned a few pages of redundant facts, and then found a piece on a slave named Ridely, who had been Blanc's 'Whipper'.
Kathy read the story with interest. Whipper? Really? Blanc whipped so many people that he employed... no enslaved a man, and could further afford to devote him to whipping other people! Was that the legalese of the time period? Was there a whippee too? What about a whip bearer? She couldn't believe this was ever legal in the United States.
She read on. Ridely apparently wasn't an ideal Whipper, because Blanc sold him to the Caine's. He was treated poorly by Mr. Caine.
She wondered Who gets a bad work review for not being an ideal Whipper! What nutter wrote this? She turned the book over, hoping it wasn't another Lauren job. It wasn't, she had never heard of the author.
She read on. Poor Ridely got stuck in the mud by the edge of one of the cane fields. Instead of allowing his fellow slaves to pull him out, one of the Caine overseers ordered him left over night. When they returned in the morning, Ridely had been half eaten by an Alligator.
Hum, in Lauren's book, only bits were left. Now there was half of a body. She made a note on her tablet's file. She had created a folder on her desktop just for all this so-called...stuff. She took a photo of the article and downloaded it to the folder.
The conclusion to Ridely's story indicated that he was still angry. It is said that Ridely still haunts the area, with his whip, whipping people who dare wander around the property.
"Well, I do believe we
just found another story for the inspiration of how the Lawrence murder was carried out," she whispered in her recorder. "I am sure it is also the source of the stories that the children dare each other to cross the property with. And, I would be willing to bet that Ridely was the slave Marissa Caine rescued from the whipping post." There was no mention of Dark Lady or Marissa Caine in this story.
She turned the page. It displayed a map of the Caine plantation, from 1845, with a mark indicating where Ridely was stuck in the mud. The subdivision was located there now. She flipped to the back cover and pulled up the check-out card, and notice someone named Lee Wilson was the last person to look at this book. She took a photo of the map, and check out card. No other stories in the book related to the Caine or Blanc Plantations.
She closed the book, and pulled over, Ghosts of the Underground Railroad. The last person to check it out was also this Lee Wilson person. The card was dated two weeks ago. Prior to that the book had not been checked out for nearly six years. Kathy photographed the name and date of check out, and then turned her attention back to the book.
She almost immediately found the Dark Lady and her grandson Stable Boy, of the Caine Plantation.
Well, at least she had a name for Ethan, who calls their child Stable Boy? The story was the same for The Dark Lady. Her name wasn't used, Kathy wondered if that were their real names. She had only heard her referred to as the Dark Lady. Stable Boy...Ethan, she refused to call him Stable Boy. That had to be a cruel Caine name for him. Ethan was killed by accident when Dark Lady was whipped to death. She had been condemned to death, by William, for killing Mistress Marissa Henning-Caine. William had recorded in his journal that his son, Percy, believed Dark Lady had killed her as revenge for refusing to continue to support Dark Lady's Underground Railroad activities.
There was nothing new, except that was a direct quote from William's journal and not a repeat of what someone else said. That meant he believed it enough to write it down. She wondered if the journal still existed.
The next paragraph addressed Dark Lady 'stealing' Caine money to buy Ridely off the whipping post.
Kathy frowned. That did not make sense, even for the time period. What black slave could buy another off the whipping post? For the sake of argument, even if Dark Lady did take the money, which Kathy sincerely doubted, how could she have explained that amount of cash? This story had a definite slant toward the Caine's in it. She flipped the book over, it was written by Jessica Caine. "Humph."
She was tempted to put the book down, but read on. As a punishment for Dark Lady's part in the Ridely incident, Mr. Caine had the blacksmith permanently fit her with a slave collar, causing severe burns on her back and neck, since the collar had not cooled all the way. It wasn't red hot, but still hot enough to burn skin. The blacksmith nearly drowned her soaking her head to quell her screaming. She was chained to the whipping post every night for a month.
"OK, if she was chained to the whipping post every night, how did she kill Marissa?" Kathy whispered, making another note. She strongly suspected cyanide. It was possible for it to be delivered later, meaning the killer did not have to be present to kill. Even if Dark Lady baked it into Marissa's food, one of the many plantation children could have eaten it, or another adult slave. It was an awful risk with odds that were too high on killing the wrong person. Perhaps it was accidental, or meant for William? Regardless, if Dark Lady poisoned Marissa, she would have had to deliver it personally to make sure it reached the right person.
She checked the bibliography of the book to see where the sources came from; William's journal, the local newspapers and house accounting records were listed, as well as an interview with the author's great nephew, Arthur Caine.
She pulled over the legal book where she found a reference to the Missouri Compromise Act of 1820. Lauren had mentioned it in her book. She wanted to see the whole act, not the Lauren blurb. Apparently on March 6, 1820 The Compromise admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state. A law prohibiting slavery above the north line of the United States was also passed. It had been wildly controversial at the time. For the time, it was extremely rare for pro-slave and anti-slave activists to have such a stage for both of them to speak. The topic was just too hot. It would be like having Atheists and Christians show up together for a rally on religion. A footnote to the rule ordered states to return runaway slaves to their masters. As a result, there was a lot of follow up acts and court decisions following the Missouri Compromise. The most famous being the later Supreme Court decision regarding Dred Scott in 1857, which had in effect on all acts of congress to make slavery unconstitutional or constitution. They could only permit slavery (owning property and being secure in owning it) and not prohibit it. The old precedent of once free always free was overturned. This further inflamed the political climate.
This meant effectively that Free states would have to return the property to the proper owner, no matter anyone's feelings on the matter. And they would have to do it at their own expense. It sounded so innocent, until you considered what the property was; a human being desiring to be as free as the principles the United States was founded on. In reality, they were ordering the Free states to extradite/return runaway slaves home.
She found another piece, Lincoln had run for President, not against Douglas, but against the Dred Scott rule. And, it was a cause dear the hearts of his constituents, who obviously turned out in droves to vote for him. Or more to the point, against Dred Scott, since Lincoln had been so passionate about it.
Kathy made a note: This initial time frame of the Missouri Compromise would have been about 8 years after the Caine's moved into the Plantation. Given the level and length of national debate on the matter, Marissa would have had enough time to secure safe contacts to get her branch of what would one day become the Underground Railroad secured in this part of the South. It would have been more complicated after the Compromise, because Free states were ordered to return runaway slaves. However, the Compromise was not equally enforced in all regions, and not at all in other states. Knowing what states to send the runaways to, and not to, would have been critical to the success of her operation.
Kathy thought for a moment. Marissa was killed in 1846, she would have been middle-aged. If she took strategic advantage of the Missouri Comprise Act when it was enacted, she had twenty-six years of experience in running people to freedom.
She photographed the bibliography of the other book. She wondered if William's journal still existed. She would be interested to read his private thoughts, meant for no one else. As a bonus, he recorded what he did to Dark Lady, and what he believed about happened. She wanted to read it first hand, with no paraphrasing by the book authors.
She asked the librarian about it. It had been donated to the museum, and destroyed during the recent break-in and vandalism. Several pages had been ripped out. The other pages were sprayed painted hot pink. The curator was attempting to restore what little could be restored.
Kathy shook her head, "What a shame."
The librarian sighed and shook her head, "It was a dreadful loss. Luckily we had copies. We are having a historical replica made, but the restoration company in Boston has the copies. I am afraid it will be weeks before we can review them."
Kathy nodded. This might not be the oldest cold case in the state, but it was certainly the most complicated and convoluted one. Why wouldn't they have copied the copies before sending them off? She had a textbook at home on cold cases. She would have to check into it later, to see if there were any good ideas for generating leads in cases as old as this one.
That was funny, her cold-case book was the same one that fell on the floor, scaring her a couple of days ago. She put all of the books back. The quilt books had been a mixed bar. Two were puff-pieces about the quilt squares, blocks as they were called, and what they meant to the Underground Railroad. The third story mirrored Jason's assessment of the quilt meanings. Meaning no code could be proven, because if it had been...they would have be
en caught, further meaning, there would be no Underground Railroad. Did he say his mother was a quilter? Maybe she could ask Mrs. Rose about quilting history.
For now, Kathy stuck with her original assessment; just because something was vague didn't mean it wasn't true, it just meant it couldn't be used in court. And since, the quilts were never entered against anyone, Kathy smiled. That meant, no one else was able to decode it – not officially anyway.
As Jason said before, Traffickers weren't known for keeping logs that advertised their routes. They kept codes, and only essential eyes only people knew what the codes meant.
Even if the other two quilt books were pure puff-pieces, they brought needed attention to a forgotten atrocity, and how people coped with it. Besides, vague or not, the quilts did have meaning to someone. She just needed to figure out what they meant to Dark Lady and Marissa. All of these books were entirely different than Lauren's attempt to glamorize everything that happened at the Caine Plantation. All three books used metaphor and deduction to keep history alive and clear up as much of the vagueness as they could, without it becoming a lie. Lauren's, as Jason put it, had the equivalent of unicorns and ponies as the basis of her reasoning. The more Kathy thought about it, the more she wondered how Lauren even got the book published.
"Can you help me find a publisher of a certain book?" she asked the librarian.
The librarian nodded. "Which one?"
"Lauren Grayson's."
She smiled a tell-tale smile of polite disapproval, and pulled a copy of Lauren's book showing Kathy the copyright page with the publisher.
Kathy grinned. She was going to have to throw that book out. "Self-published, with no checks and balances for accuracy."
The librarian shrugged. "I heard she spent almost $8,000 to have a vanity press print this. She could not get past the fact checkers with traditional publishers. Regardless, we keep all local works."