Roots of Murder

by R. Jean Reid

  “Sometimes I think ‘historical’ is code for lousy plumbing,” Nell said.

  “And my final request, before we embark on the tour of your historical lousy plumbing: this Saturday is the gala and silent auction for the Historical Preservation Society. My sister was going to go with me, but she can’t. It’s going to be quite the political show; I thought a keen observer like you might enjoy it. See us pols when we don’t think we have to behave.”

  Nell almost said “are you asking me on a date?” but she caught herself. As a reporter covering the election, she could go. As the recent widow of Thom McGraw being asked out, she should say no.

  “Thank you for thinking of me, Mr. Dupree. Are you sure you want to give a reporter with loaded guns that kind of target?”

  “I flatter myself to think I won’t be the best target. Will you go?”

  “I’ll have to make arrangements for something vaguely adult to be with my kids, in a way that doesn’t scream babysitting, but yes, I’ll go.”

  “My campaign is having an envelope-stuffing party that evening. Two young and energetic hands would be welcome.”

  Nell calculated for a moment. Lizzie, having been dazzled by Aaron Dupree at her school assembly, would go. Josh wouldn’t think it a great evening. They could always go to their grandmother’s and get Nell some points for letting the grandkids come visit. She’d decide when it got to the point of having to make a decision.

  “You politicians are all alike. Now I see the real reason for your offer—a slick plan to trap my children into an evening of free labor to further your political ends.”

  “I’m abashed at how easily you see though me.”

  “As long as we know the terms. Now, why don’t I show you our historical plumbing?”

  The building tour was perfunctory and didn’t include any actual plumbing. The real purpose of his visit, beyond what had happened in her office, appeared to be for him to meet the staff without handlers at his elbow. Nell had to admit it was an astute move, to drop by and establish connections with the staff on the local paper.

  Jacko came upstairs just as Aaron Dupree was listening to Ina Claire recall him being a young high school boy. He discreetly laid several print-outs of the photos on his desk, face-down, and shook Dupree’s hand with a coiled excitement Nell recognized. There were some good pictures there and he couldn’t wait to show them to her.

  When Ina Claire had finished her story, Aaron Dupree seemed to sense a shift in the room—or perhaps he had other places to go. He said, “I’ve taken enough of your time and I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than listen to me.” The truth was he’d been doing most of the listening and her staff had been doing most of the talking, from both Ina Claire and Dolan remembering the younger Aaron Dupree to Pam discussing cleaning up the beach.

  Nell walked him to the front door.

  He turned to her and said, “The gala starts with cocktails, so for us to arrive properly late, I should pick you up on Saturday around seven.”

  “That’ll be fine,” Nell agreed, and Aaron Dupree gave one final wave to the still-gathered staff and headed down the stairs.

  “Saturday at seven?” Dolan asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “To a political function only,” Nell answered. “Good Lord, Dolan, I’m not ready to … I’m not … He just had an extra ticket and all the candidates will be there.” Dolan wasn’t the only one who had overheard and they were all watching her. “Should I get an extra ticket and have you come along as a chaperone?” Immediately she regretted her words and quickly added, “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. I guess I’m … touchy on this.”

  “It’s your paper, Nell. You get to run it how you want to,” Dolan said, his eyes not quite meeting hers. “And it’s your life, same rule applies.”

  “I’m not ready for … anything other than going to an event explicitly as a reporter,” she replied softly, wondering if it was as true as she wanted it to be. “And we all run this paper. I just pay the bills.”

  Dolan nodded, then allowed himself a slight smile. Meeting Nell’s eyes, he said, “Maybe I’m a little overprotective of Thom’s memory.”

  “I can’t stop being a woman. And I’m going to have to deal with a lot of men.” Nell wondered if she should remind Dolan that one night ago she went by herself to a political rally. Had he not been worried because the men she was with were black? On the other hand, none of those men had picked her up and escorted her there.

  Whatever else she might have said was cut off by Carrie showing up. On seeing everyone in the newsroom and all of them watching her, the young woman mumbled, “I was off working on a story.”

  In your dreams, Nell thought; Carrie’s puffy eyes clearly revealed what she’d been working on. “Do a quick write-up of what you’ve got. I have a few gaps that need to be plugged,” Nell told her, although there were certainly no gaps she expected to fill with what Carrie was putatively working on. Her real purpose was to call Carrie’s bluff. “Then I need you to cover the Harbor Commission meeting that starts at two this afternoon.” Nell also knew that covering bureaucratic meetings was scut work Carrie despised. The Harbor Commission was going to have a fun-filled afternoon on the problem of dumping oil and trash fish in the harbor. “When you’re done with the Harbor Commission, come back here. We may have last-minute chores to make sure the paper gets out.”

  Carrie had a habit of leaving for a meeting and not coming back to the office. It was one of the unspoken rules of the Crier: if a boring meeting ended around four, you didn’t have to come back. But Carrie had pushed the rule; if she left for anything after one o’clock, she didn’t return. Thom had even had to go to the extreme of talking to her about it.

  Nell turned from Carrie, gave Jacko a nod, and returned to her office. He followed her in with his stack of pictures. He didn’t say anything, just spread the print-outs across her desk and pointed out the pictures he thought were the best.

  Nell took her time slowly studying them. Jacko did have a good eye and had picked several dramatic shots: a close-up of the skull with the bullet hole clearly showing; one of Ellen holding up a skull, her expression sober and focused, sad around her eyes. Another photo showed one of the graduate students almost prostrate on the ground, digging out a femur.

  Nell took a long time looking at the pictures. I have to make this decision, don’t I, she thought. In the past, even when she decided, it had never been her sole responsibility. Sometimes the best picture was obvious and if it wasn’t. Thom was always there to second her or point out something she’d missed. Jacko was good, but he wasn’t Thom. He didn’t—and couldn’t—know the town the way Thom did, or have years of shared sensibility like she and Thom had.

  She finally chose the shot of the graduate student. It was dramatic, although the shot of Ellen and the skull was even more so. But the student’s face was turned away from the camera and Nell’s instincts told her it would be better to keep anonymity for this story. The other picture she picked was a wide view of the dig, a good shot of the site but not the best. It just showed the most turned backs or side views.

  “These two,” Nell finally said, and she pointed them out to Jacko.

  He gave her a puzzled glance.

  “You’ve got a good eye, and the others are nice shots. But Ellen gave me a great scoop and I think she’d prefer not to have her face and name all over the paper. Yes, we could leave her name off, but it would seem odd with such a clear and distinct portrait. Although go ahead and print a couple, I think she’d love to have copies and it’s a good way to say thank you. The grad student has his face away from the camera, so we don’t have to name him. We’re probably going to be running this story for a while, so I want to save the skull picture. And part of the story is about the land and who it belonged to, so I wanted a picture that gives a sense of location.”

  “And you choose the one where no one
is facing the camera,” Jacko observed.

  “Precisely,” Nell said. “And you did a great job with the source at the morgue. I got a lot of it from Ellen, but having more than one source is a very good thing—it allows cross-checking and it also covers our tracks better.”

  “You really think that’s so necessary for this? They were murdered, but it had to be decades ago.”

  “Hatred strong enough to do this doesn’t easily go away. I’d rather be safe.” Nell paused a moment for the implications to sink in, then told Jacko, “Now get to these pictures. We’ve got a paper to put out.”

  Jacko saluted, grabbed the print-outs, and headed back to his desk.

  Nell pulled up the story to reread, see if she wanted to add anything. She looked at the screen for a moment, then decided to check her email. Sometimes it was a way to avoid work, but occasionally a break from staring at the screen gave her brain time to do its subconscious sorting. Amid the usual junk email was a reply from Marcus Fletcher.

  “Good, brave story. You tell it straight without losing the weight of it,” he wrote. “I’ve taken the liberty of doing a little editing. Attached is my version. Respectfully yours, Marcus.”

  Nell opened his attachment. Had she more time, she would have waited. Editing is a tricky business and she had known many disappointing editors in her career. She didn’t want Marcus Fletcher to be one. His praise mattered to her. In the past, all she needed was Thom telling her it was a good story. His admiration—and judgment—cancelled out everything else. Nell realized she needed those strokes; they told her she was going in the right direction and would find her path. Now she felt lost in a way she never had before. Until she’d met Thom, she’d always been the one to go it alone. Now she was alone again and she couldn’t seem to remember how she’d done it before. Thom had been her equal in many ways; he meant his compliments because he also didn’t withhold criticism, but even his red marks weren’t there to cut her down but to push her to do better, to go a little further than she thought she could.

  With a harsh shake of her head, Nell told herself she had to get a paper out. The last few issues had been mostly filler, stories taken from the wire or minor pieces, drifting ink. Dolan and Jacko had cobbled them together, doing the best they could; she was only floating in the background. This would be the first real paper with Nell in charge.

  She started reading his edits. There weren’t many; two typos, a query about an unclear point. A suggested rearrangement of sentences and an idea for a better opening line. He was right; every single one of them made it a better, tighter story. Nell felt a quickening, like she was again finding her path. He hadn’t disappointed her and she trusted his instincts enough to believe his praise. She started to write Marcus a thank you, but didn’t. He’d see the story tomorrow; somehow she knew that would be enough. She made his changes and saved the file, then read over one last time what would appear on tomorrow’s front page.

  A recent storm took the life of a tree, uprooting it and disturbing the ground it had stood on for several decades. Not an uncommon occurrence in an area known for hurricanes and sudden rumbling thunderstorms. But this tree, half a mile along a rarely used trail in the state park, had secrets hidden in its roots. The disturbed ground and a hiker passing by finally brought an unmarked grave into the open. The hiker, experienced in anthropology, knew enough to recognize the bones as human.

  Forensic experts, taking over from the hiker’s quick survey, have excavated the location. What they have found is even more disturbing than the mere sight of a human skeleton. Three bodies were piled into one grave and indications are that all three were murdered. According to several sources, two of the bodies were female, one African-American, one white; the third body was an African-American male. All were young adults, in either their late teens or early twenties. From the condition of the skeletons and coins found in the grave that were likely in the victim’s clothing, experts guess that this lonely grave has remained undisturbed for close to fifty years.

  The land now belongs to the state park. It was donated in 1985 by Hubert Horace Pickings, Pelican Bay’s current mayor. The mayor’s family held the property for over twenty years before turning it over to the state. Once part of a vast tract of woods and farmland, today it is divided into the parkland, which is left to its natural state, and land on the Tchula River that was the location of the paper mill that closed in 1992.

  The sheriff’s department is handling the investigation and said that as of yet they are unable to answer questions as to whether these murders could be tied to the civil rights violence during the 1960s. The inquiry is ongoing and authorities are seeking any information about the identity of the bodies or about the murders.

  Nell gathered the rest of the stories. Carrie, as she suspected, didn’t turn in anything related to a story she might have worked on during the morning. Dolan did get Ina Claire’s cooking column into reasonable shape.

  “The reason I do the business side is because I can’t write,” he had gruffly said as he handed it to Nell.

  “No, the reason you do the business side is that you write well, you just manage better,” she replied. He rewarded her with his brush-off wave of the hands and the slight pink in his face that told her he appreciated the compliment.

  For the next few hours the office had a purposeful hum. Pam was starting to do more of the graphic design and she and Nell had a running dialogue as they sized things into the proper format. Ina Claire did a deli run for lunch, giving precise instructions on sandwich preparation, which resulted in something better than the usual tired roast beef or ham and cheese.

  Dolan, as business manager, didn’t have many direct duties in getting the paper to press but was usually around. Today he seemed more around than normal. First Nell just thought of the cliché—he like a father expecting a baby—but as she watched him help Ina Claire distribute the lunch sandwiches, she realized it would be more apt to call him a father who is watching his son put a car back together for the first time. Will it start, will it run? Nell amended her metaphor further: like a father watching his daughter put the car back together. Dolan had started out with Thom’s father, and in some ways his life was more invested in the paper than hers was.

  They made the deadline, with little to spare. Kane Printing knew that the Crier was going to arrive around three on Thursday afternoon. Nell let Jacko and Dolan have the honors of delivering the words and images that would turn into tomorrow’s newspaper. They could send it electronically, but there was a relief in the ritual of getting in a car and going, as if the paper deserved the effort and movement.

  Nell didn’t retreat to her office, instead hung out in the newsroom with Pam and Ina Claire, content to simply sit and let Ina Claire give Pam cooking tips, or actually sandwich tips: special mustards, a variety of lettuces, Brie instead of cheddar.

  Nell suddenly glanced at her watch. “Damn. School’s out.”

  Just as she remembered her responsibilities, the phone rang and Pam picked it up.

  “Hi, Lizzie, she left a minute ago,” Pam said into the receiver. Nell quickly retrieved her purse while Pam continued. “We just put the paper to bed; she managed a bathroom break and headed out the door.”

  Nell’s actions matched Pam’s words, albeit a little off on timing.

  Press day was always hectic, and Nell had been the one who usually pulled it all together. If either of them had to go on a kid errand, it was Thom more often than not. As she braked for a light turning red, Nell felt an abrupt heaviness at all the little changes, the details, routines that worked before and would no longer, all the small places that would have to change and would add up to huge changes. Time to throw out the jar of sweet pickles in the refrigerator; only Thom liked them. She felt a pang at taking one minor thing off the grocery list.

  The light changed and she drove on. As she came to a stop sign, a red truck slipped through the intersection,
honoring the octagonal sign with the barest of slowing. Nell watched as it drove in the direction of the school.

  Her stop probably wasn’t perfectly legal. As fast as she dared, she drove to where Josh and Lizzie were to be waiting. To her relief, the truck didn’t turn into the schoolyard but kept on going.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Nell called as she pulled in beside her waiting children. Josh had his bike with him. As she got out to help stow it in the trunk, she added, “It was hectic getting the paper out and I couldn’t get away sooner.”

  “That’s okay. I got to tell half the football team that, yeah, my little brother knows better than to pick on me,” Lizzie said.

  “You did not,” Josh rejoined, his beloved bike secure. “You just used me as a show and tell to flirt with them. Hey, I get the front, I’m the injured one,” he said as they both converged at the car door.

  “You can spread out in the back seat. I’ve got seniority.”

  “Accident of birth,” Josh replied, but let Lizzie have the front seat.

  Nell was glad to see them in their usual sparring match, teetering on the edge between affection and annoyance. She usually let them go unless things ended up too much on the annoyance side. As Josh got in, she watched him in the rearview mirror. Location made the scrape on his chin the most noticeable, but there was a bruise behind it, and Nell could also see part of the abrasion and bruises on the hurt arm.

  “Do you want to go back to the office with me or to your grandmother’s?” Nell asked.

  “It’s afternoon, can’t we go home?” Lizzie whined.

  “Did I mention that as an option?” Nell returned.

  “I need to do some stuff on the computer,” she argued.

  “We have computers at the paper. You can use one of them,” Nell answered, deliberately playing the dumb mother. She knew Lizzie wanted to be on the computer to check her email and chat with friends, not do the research she was implying she had to do.