Roots of Murder

by R. Jean Reid

  She was silent before finally admitting, “I didn’t really get a chance to ask him. Only saw him long enough for him to wink at me.”

  “He was in his office most of the day. He had a lunch appearance at … ” Nell glanced at a schedule sheet. “The Chamber of Commerce meeting, as well as speaking at the fishing rodeo in the evening. How did you miss him in all those places?”

  “I was busy with other things,” Carrie said, pausing a beat to think of them. “I read all that stuff Aaron Dupree wrote about his goals. I managed to catch him at his speaking engagement at the college.”

  “And?” Nell pushed.

  “So, I didn’t get a chance to come back and get to Mayor Pickings.”

  “If you can’t do the story, I will,” Nell bluntly stated.

  “I can do it. I just can’t barge in and ask questions strictly on your agenda.”

  A tense silence hung.

  Nell turned to the rest of the group and said, “I think we all know what we need to be doing. Jacko, wave Marcus back in here.” He did, and Nell said as Marcus rejoined them, “Jacko, go play in the court records and archives, see what else you can find. I may team you and Marcus up, since it seems we can find a lot of things that weren’t reported in the mainstream press in his archives.”

  “My archives are a bunch of boxes up in my garage,” Marcus said. “Why don’t I spend the day asking some of the old timers what they remember? It’ll be easier to go through all that paper with a younger and stronger back than mine.” Then his eyes got a distant look and he said, “It’s hard to go through all that hate again.”

  “I’d … find it fascinating to go through those papers,” Jacko said. Nell suspected that he was going to say “I’d love to” but realized that love wasn’t a good word to use when searching for hate.

  “I want three major stories on the front page on Friday,” Nell said. “Three skeletons were found and three people were lost. If we get the dental findings in time, it’ll prove a definite link. I also want a story on the property dealings. And I want a story on the election. It’s only a week away, and the revelations about Pickings and the property are going to be incendiary. Any questions?”

  There were none. As people went to their various tasks, Nell said, “Carrie, can I see you?” Without waiting for a reply, Nell turned away and walked back to her office.

  Again, Carrie didn’t hurry, being just slow enough to be annoying without crossing to open insubordination.

  Nell didn’t sit, instead waited for the young woman to enter before shutting the door and perching on the edge of her desk. Carrie slouched down in the chair across from the desk.

  Nell deliberately let the silence build before saying, “You are not needed here as much as you seem to think you are. Yes, we’re short-handed, but Marcus Fletcher has years of experience and connections in this town that trump anything you can offer. If you can’t cut it or if you don’t want to work for me, then leave now. But if you keep up this insolent half-assed shit, I’ll fire your butt so fast you’ll barely have time to grab your purse. Is there anything that’s not clear?”

  Carrie was silent. Then she said, “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “Not especially,” Nell admitted coolly, not showing her annoyance at the young woman’s attempt to turn her job performance into a personal issue. “But I’m well aware it’s mutual. You do your job in a competent and timely manner and like or dislike will have nothing to do with it. But if you show up late to work, leave early, stretch lunch to two hours, and claim to be working on stories with nothing to show for it, we could be the best of buddies and you’d still be out of here.”

  “I thought working at a small paper like this, we wouldn’t have all those stupid rules.”

  “We don’t have stupid rules,” Nell retorted. “But, as you pointed out, we’re a small paper, and I can’t have anyone here who isn’t willing to do the work. Right now, both your output and your attitude is dragging everyone down. You change or you leave. It’s your choice.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all I have to say.”

  Carrie got up, her face flushed in anger, but she said nothing. She turned to leave, then turned back, and without looking directly at Nell, said, “Mayor Pickings is having an open citizens’ forum this afternoon. A number of teachers are going to be there to pressure him on the need for major repairs on the middle school building. They might be a good audience for those questions.”

  “Go ahead and do that, but remember you may have to ask the questions several times, push him on it.”

  “This evening he’s appearing at the fish fry for the local food bank. I thought I’d follow up there.”

  “Okay, twice in one day might be good. Did you ask Aaron Dupree about the bones in the woods?”

  “Yes, I did. I have the exact quote written down. He said more or less he hoped we’d find out what happened to them, but it was such a long time ago.”

  “Okay. Keep asking the questions.”

  Carrie nodded, still not looking at Nell, and exited.

  Nell took a deep breath and called Gwen Kennedy. She’d found Dora’s old dental records. Nell gave her the address and Gwen said she was on her way out the door to the post office. “I’d like to … finally know,” she told Nell, a trembling in her voice. It must be fifty years of accumulated grief, Nell thought as she assured the woman she’d let her know what happened as well as send copies of the stories.

  Nell then busied herself with the usual flotsam and jetsam of running a paper. She finished the story about the sheriff and his cousin. Little did he know that given everything else, there would be no chance it would make the front page.

  Shortly after she’d completed the ritual of picking up her children and depositing them at the library, Marcus returned to the Crier. He gently tapped at Nell’s door.

  As he sat down, he said, “A lot of this is no more than gossip, and old gossip at that, which means it’s had years to be embellished and added to.”

  “Tell me what you’ve heard,” Nell encouraged him.

  “When the other three, Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, disappeared, there was a national hunt and publicity. So I’ve been wondering how these three slipped so quietly away.”

  “I’ve wondered about that myself,” Nell said. “I didn’t ask Dora’s sister, but she told me anyway. Dora was sexually active, and had an abortion at a time when those things weren’t done.”

  “But she was still white.”

  “Does the name Viola Liuzzo mean anything to you?” Nell asked.

  “Familiar, can’t pull it up.”

  “I’ve been doing some reading. She was a white housewife from Detroit. Five kids. She left the kids with a friend and drove down to help with the march from Selma to Montgomery. Having a car, she ferried people and ended up taking a young black man from Selma back to Montgomery. They were spotted by the Klan, who chased them, finally pulling alongside and firing into the car. They killed her and left the young man for dead. It turns out one of the Klansman was an informant for the FBI and Hoover wasn’t pleased at the implications—the FBI not stopping a murder—so he ordered his agents to find out anything that would tarnish her name. When it came to trial, the defense smeared her with sexual innuendo. The first trial was a mistrial; the trigger man was tried again and acquitted.”

  “I do remember her now, just didn’t place the name.”

  “And why don’t we know her name, but we know King, Evers, Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman? The man she was giving a ride to survived, and there was a goddamned FBI informant in the murder car, but the best they could do to her murderers was for the feds to finally try them for violating her civil rights.”

  “A lot of people got away with murder back then,” Marcus said.

  “True. But what I’m trying to point out is that Dora Ellischwartz, like Vio
la Liuzzo, was judged, and found lesser, because of sex—both her gender and the hint they might be sleeping with black men.”

  “What about Dora’s family?”

  “Her sister told me she was a wanderer, a free spirit. She often wouldn’t write for a few months. When enough time had passed for them to get really worried, they had no idea where she was. As her sister said, she suspected Dora had met the fate that often happens to women.”

  “Raped, murdered, and left to rot in some woods,” Marcus said. He paused, then continued. “It seems that Ella Carr was mostly raised by her grandmother. Father a bit of what was called back in those times a ne’er-do-well. When she started getting active in civil rights, her family pulled away. They were scared. So, when she disappeared, it seems none of them wanted to make too big a fuss for fear they might be next. I didn’t get as much about Michael Walker. Someone said they thought he wasn’t close to his family. Had a contact who was a friend. And they were both black and that put them in the lesser category, just like Dora.”

  “Damn,” Nell swore softly. “How do we just throw people away?”

  “Two blacks and a loose white woman,” Marcus answered. Then, with a shake of his head as if clearing away the past, he said, “Still got kids? If not, a beer of your choice is waiting.”

  “Still got them, and at the age where I can’t leave them home alone long. Maybe tomorrow,” Nell said, wondering if she could get Kate to keep Josh as well as Lizzie after bike maintenance class.

  “I’ll see you in the morning and I’ll raise a glass of the suds to you this evening,” Marcus said as he left her office.

  Nell watched him walking Pam and Ina Claire to the parking lot. Dolan was still around; she could hear him on the phone, a soft drone coming from his front office. With a start, she realized that for the last few hours, she hadn’t felt the sharp stab of missing Thom.

  “Damn it, you should be here,” Nell muttered. “The biggest story the Crier has ever had and you’re not around for it.” Emotion washed over her and she hastily stumbled to the bathroom.

  I should be able to have a crying time, she thought as she washed her face, trying to get the red from her eyes before saying goodbye to Dolan and picking up her kids. Fifteen minutes in the morning, say, and get it over with for the next twenty-four hours. It’s not fair to hurt this much in the middle of a work day. She splashed her face again then patted it dry.

  Just as she was closing her office door, Jacko came back.

  “Hey, you can just go on home,” Nell told him.

  “Oh, I know, but I wanted to start the rough outline for the property scam story while it’s bubbling through my head. I’m a slow starter in the morning.”

  “Okay, don’t stay too late. Get something for supper and expense it to the Crier.”

  “I’m not going to be here that long.” Then he added, “I found out an interesting thing from someone I was talking to over in the sheriff’s department. The Jones boys covered Junior’s bail by putting up their garage.”

  “I wondered where they got the money,” Nell said shortly.

  “It’d be interesting to see if it’s actually appraised at what they claimed it to be worth,” Jacko said. “Because if it’s not really enough to cover the bail …”

  “That would be most interesting to find out,” Nell said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

  “It’s not much,” he said, “but it doesn’t seem right for J.J. to be out and …”

  “Thom cold in the ground,” Nell finished. She was starting to hate when people wouldn’t say it, would skim around Thom’s death. She realized most of this was fear of saying the wrong thing. But at times she wanted to shout, “Do you think I can forget he’s dead? That I don’t know it every waking moment, even in my dreams?” But she didn’t, and Jacko wasn’t the person to start it with.

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” Jacko said softly. Then, surprisingly, he gave her a brief hug.

  Nell almost started crying again at his unexpected gesture. She took a deep breath, then said, “Thanks. Don’t stay too late.”

  With that, she headed off to get her kids.

  Josh had a huge stack of shark books waiting for the official library card. Nell proffered it to Marion, hoping no science teacher would assign research papers on sharks in the next few weeks. Just as Marion finished with Josh, Lizzie added a few books to the stack, including, Nell noted, a racy adult novel.

  Nell picked it up, did one of those mother debates about whether she should censor her daughter’s reading, and finally decided to take a more subtle approach. She put the book back and said, “If you want to read this, we’re going to have a mother-daughter talk about the difference between fictional consequences and real life.”

  Lizzie gave a quick nod, not so much in agreement but because she was ostensibly getting what she wanted, yet also not getting what she really wanted, which was to sneak the book by her mother.

  When they got home, Nell was relieved to note the racy novel stayed on the bottom of Lizzie’s stack, and even after the required email and phone calls to friends, it stayed there. Perhaps the threat of a mother-daughter chat was enough to put her off.

  When Nell was throwing together the salad, she realized she’d put four chicken breasts in the microwave to defrost. As she took them out, she thought, goddamn it, Thom. People twine in your life in so many ways and when they’re gone, every place has to be unwoven and pulled apart. She stared at the extra chicken breast, then decided it would be her lunch tomorrow.

  sixteen

  It was now routine, dropping Josh and Lizzie and then heading to the office. Before, Josh would ride his bike and Lizzie would manage a hodgepodge of cadging rides with friends, wheedling one from Thom, as he was more of a morning person than Nell, and occasionally lowering herself to taking the bus. Nell had grown accustomed to a quiet hour at home after the kids left. Thom had called it her wake-up time, when she did minor chores like bill paying or just sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee.

  Maybe when they’re in college, I can have that time again, Nell thought as she waved.

  Back at the office, she spent a solid hour working on the story about the bones. Jacko was writing on the property dealings and Marcus would handle the three missing civil rights workers. Theirs would be intertwined stories, but he wasn’t up to speed on the bones yet and she wanted him to get a front page byline. To make up for the sins of the past? As if we can make up for past transgressions, she thought. I’m giving him a byline because he’s done damn good reporting.

  Harold Reed called in the midst of that to say he had the official okay to compare an x-ray of the skull with the dental records of Dora Ellischwartz. The x-ray had already been sent; they were now waiting on receiving the records from Gwen Kennedy.

  Just as Nell hit save, he called again to tell her that Dora Ellischwartz’s records had arrived in New Orleans and that Buddy Guy, the District Attorney, was tentatively scheduling a press conference for the next morning. “But it’s not been officially announced,” Harold told her. “It’s on only if it’s a match.” Harold must have called in a few favors to get things moving this quickly, Nell noted.

  After hanging up, she stared at the page in front of her, knowing this would be a big story, one of the biggest in her life. But the old grief of three people lost long ago mingled with her loss, and whatever exult she felt was weighted with an inchoate sadness.

  The explosiveness of these stories was brought home when Hubert Pickings burst into the newsroom while Nell, Pam, Dolan, and Ina Claire were sitting eating their lunch.

  “Nell McGraw,” he thundered. “Call your damn reporter off of me! How much is Aaron Dupree paying you for her to ask those questions?”

  “Nothing,” Nell answered, hastily putting down her sandwich, and standing so she could have the advantage of height over him.

  “Wha
t the hell kind of trash are you implying about me and my family? I got a right to privacy, you know.”

  “The property records are public. It’s not out of line to ask how your father was able to buy property appraised at over $30,000 for $3,000. Or why the appraised value changed from around $20,000 to $120,000 just in time for you to write it off as a donation,” Nell said.

  “Goddamn it!” His face was red and shiny with sweat despite the cool temperatures, the fly-away cowlick vibrating with either rage or the effort to think. “That has nothing to do with this election and you know it!”

  “I disagree, Mr. Mayor. I think swindling a poor black person and manipulating the appraisal of your property has a lot to do with who is qualified to run this town,” Nell replied, trying to keep her voice firm but calm. She didn’t want him to have a heart attack in the middle of their lunch.

  “Aaron Dupree must have a pretty big dick to get you to do this kind of stuff now,” Hubert Pickings spat out.

  “I beg your pardon,” was all Nell could think to say.

  “Hubert!” Ina Claire called out, packing more propriety into her voice than Nell had ever heard before. “Take your filth out of this office.”

  “My filth!” He turned on her. “What about the lies this woman is trying to spread about me? What about that filth?”

  “I’m reporting facts, Mr. Pickings,” Nell said coldly. “There might be a reasonable explanation for those facts, which you can address by answering my reporter’s questions. But … ” She advanced on him so he was barely a foot away. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you intimidate me into not reporting what is public record or let Aaron Dupree use me to win this election.”

  “Damn you, Nell McGraw,” he blustered. “They are lies, all lies. You might want to check your boyfriend’s property dealings. You’ll find Dupree’s hands aren’t so clean.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” Nell retorted. “And we’re looking at all the records of that time. If you have any evidence, we’ll be glad to look at it.”