by R. Jean Reid
Nell swung out of bed as she hung up. No one else was awake. As she dressed, she debated waking Jacko. Both of them couldn’t go, and Nell wasn’t about to leave Josh and Lizzie alone. She halfway hoped he would solve the debate by waking, and she also hoped she could use his sleeping as her reason to be the one to go.
Holding her shoes in her hand, she eased out of her bedroom. Let them sleep, Nell decided. She was awake and perfectly capable of driving to get Marcus. She hastily scribbled two notes, one for Jacko with a more complete rundown of what she was doing and one for her kids that she had to cover a story. She slipped the note for Jacko under his door and left the one for her kids on the kitchen table. She and Thom had both gone off frequently enough at odd hours that this wouldn’t seem too out of place to them.
Nell slipped out of the house. It was black night, with shadows, but dawn was close; it would be daylight by the time she got back. Nell hastily shifted some of the boxes out of her car to free the passenger seat.
At this pre-dawn hour, traffic was light. I-10, the conduit for the coast with its casinos, still had cars, but after Nell exited, she only occasionally saw another vehicle. It seemed to be just her and the small area illuminated by her headlights.
Nell glanced to her watch. It had been forty-five minutes since Marcus had called. She noticed the dark was beginning to turn a dense gray. She slowed; Marcus would be on the other side and she’d have to pass him, go to the next exit, and turn around, but she wanted him to see her and know his wait was almost over.
There were no trees separating the two sides of the highway, but it was still dark enough that Nell had to carefully scan the far lane for any sign of him. She slowed even further as another minute ticked away on the dashboard clock.
Suddenly, Nell felt apprehension. What if they’d found Marcus stranded by the side of the road? What would happen to an inconvenient old man in the dark of the night?
She crested another rise and still saw no sign of him. She admonished her fears, told herself to be sensible; they couldn’t spirit his stranded car away.
“It can’t be daylight soon enough,” she muttered aloud as she came to the top of another rise in the road.
Then she saw him. Sensibly, he had a flashlight and was slowly blinking it on and off. She couldn’t make out more than a murky shape, a man and a flashlight next to it. But the slow, deliberate way he moved told her it was Marcus. Nell slowed even further, flashing her headlights in answer.
He saw her and his flashlight blinked rapidly, as if saying, “Glad you could make it.”
She slowed and pulled to the shoulder, scanning the median to see if there was the remotest chance she could drive through the grass. There was a ditch in the center, too deep to risk her sedate family car. On to the next exit, then, Nell decided. But she pulled to a halt, wanting to shout at least a hello across the divide.
Suddenly looming out of the darkness, a truck appeared on Marcus’s side. Nell felt a sharp stab of fear. It’s just a truck, she told herself, but her brain interpreted what her instincts knew. This truck had no lights on, like a hunter stalking prey in the pre-dawn.
“Goddamn you!” Nell shouted, twisting the steering wheel of her car so it pointed directly where Marcus was. She hit her headlights to high beams, throwing a harsh, starkly shadowed light on the scene.
The truck slowed, and whatever last hope she had that they were good Samaritans disappeared as it swerved at Marcus. He jumped out of the way as the truck sideswiped his car. It stopped, and Nell saw the two men wearing ski masks get out.
She pounded on her car horn, making sure they knew there were witnesses.
Marcus flung the flashlight away and was running for the woods. But the attackers quickly closed the distance.
Nell shoved open her car door, still leaning on the horn. Her immediate impulse was to run across the road, to fight. But she hesitated—what were her chances against two men armed with what looked like a baseball bat?
She saw an arm arc up and then come down. Marcus crumpled to the ground.
“I’ve called the police!” she shouted. “They’re a minute away!”
The arm was raised again, but hesitated at her words.
Damn it! Nell silently cursed. Why don’t I have a gun? She frantically punched 911 on her cell phone. Her fingers slipped and fumbled.
She looked again at the median separating them, the deep ditch in the middle. She was tempted to roar her car over it anyway. It was at least some kind of a weapon.
“I can see their lights now!” she shouted.
The second blow didn’t land. Instead, the two men scrambled back to their truck. They hadn’t even turned off the engine.
They were a black ghost against the gray dawn. Then they were gone.
Nell sprinted across the highway, jumping the ditch in a leap she thought she had left behind in her twenties.
Marcus lay on the wet grass at the edge of the woods. He wasn’t moving.
“Goddamn it, old man, you’re not going to die like this!” Nell shouted, more to the gods than to him.
But she thought she heard a weak answer, a murmured “Yes, ma’am.”
Nell hastily bent down beside him. Blood was pouring from a head wound. “You’ll be okay,” she said gently, willing the anger out of her voice. She had failed Thom; she hadn’t kept him alive. She couldn’t let it happen again.
She quickly dialed 911, this time looking at the numbers.
The call was brief; someone needed immediate medical attention, the location.
“You just take it easy, I’m going to take care of you,” Nell assured Marcus.
“Um … Nurse Nell,” he muttered.
“I took care of my mother while she died of cancer, I can take care of you. Now save your breath. Back in a minute.” Nell ran to his car, looking for anything she could use as a bandage and to cover him up. She found an old towel thrown in the back seat, but that was all.
Nurse Nell indeed, she thought as she trotted back. At least I’m wearing a fairly new sports bra, she thought as she pulled off her T-shirt.
She covered him with the towel and very gently pressed the T-shirt against the bleeding. She didn’t want to risk hurting him more. He groaned softly.
“Don’t go into shock on me, okay? You’ve got a hard head and you’re going to be fine.” Nell gently eased her other arm under his head; she wanted to elevate it to help staunch the flow of blood. She slowly lowered herself beside him, so she was next to him. It probably looked odd, but she could keep him warm with her body, keep the pressure on his wound, and also cradle his head so it was off the ground.
“You’re going to be okay,” Nell softly told him. “You just concentrate on taking care of yourself.”
His eyelids fluttered; he opened the one eye that wasn’t covered with blood for a quick glance at her. “In the old days, they used to kill black men for doing less with a white woman,” was his comment.
“This is a new day.”
“Too bad I got such a headache.” Then his one good eye closed and he was quiet.
Nell heard the faint wail of a siren.
“You’re going to be okay,” she told him as it grew louder. She cocked her head up and was now able to see the flashing lights.
The ambulance jerked to a stop next to Marcus’s car.
“Over here,” Nell called. The light was still gray and dense. There was a light fog rolling in from the woods.
The two attendants quickly responded to her voice. The seemed unfazed by the sight of her without a shirt on.
“He was attacked and hit in the head. I think that’s his only injury,” Nell told them.
As they got close, Nell saw that one of the EMTs was a black man, the other a white woman. She helped them move Marcus onto the stretcher. He groaned as he was moved but said little. His silence worried her.
>
The woman EMT handed her the bloody T-shirt back.
A highway patrol car joined them. Unlike the EMTs, the two young, crew-cut men did stare at her. Nell used the T-shirt to wipe off the blood she had gotten on herself. But the shirt was too bloody to do much more than smear it around. She hoped the troopers would realize she’d taken off the T-shirt and wasn’t just traipsing around in her bra.
To avert their stares, Nell loosely held the shirt in front of her chest. Even so, they did spend most of the time staring at her upper body as she was telling them what had happened.
As she finished, she realized they weren’t unkind, just young and unsure how to react to a half-dressed woman telling them of a ghost truck that stopped in the night and attacked an old man. She hadn’t used the words “ghost truck” but she might as well have. A dark truck. Not enough light to get the make and model, let alone a license plate. Two men? Could she even be sure they were men? No, not in any rational way. Two people, medium build, wearing ski masks. She thought they were white, but she couldn’t be sure. And she didn’t know if she thought they were white because she thought they were the Jones brothers or if she’d registered their hands as light.
But why would the Jones brothers attack Marcus? They were after her. They seemed to have become her universal boogeyman.
The patrol men asked if she could identify them if they pulled over dark trucks. Nell admitted she couldn’t. They would have taken off the masks by now, probably thrown them and whatever they had used to strike with into some patch of woods.
She felt a flare of anger as she pictured them sitting calmly drinking morning coffee, congratulating themselves on getting away with it.
Other cars had pulled over, gawkers trying to see what was going on. And to stare at my chest, Nell thought cynically.
The ambulance carrying Marcus left. Nell could think of little more to tell the young patrol men. One of them offered her his jacket, but she declined. An old sweatshirt, used for a windshield rag, lived in the trunk of her car. She hoped it was still there and that Lizzie or Josh hadn’t purloined it for another purpose.
One of the patrolmen walked her back across the median, even going so far as to help her across the ditch. It was light enough Nell noticed his blush as he pulled her up and got a good view of her cleavage.
He even helped her move several of the boxes still in the trunk to find the sweatshirt. Smeared with grease and dirt as it was, Nell was relieved to put in on. The day was chilly enough that the patrolman had gotten not only cleavage, but erect nipples.
I should be a reporter, Nell thought as she realized she wasn’t sure of the highway troopers’ names. The one who had walked her to her car was Merton; his last name, she assumed. But I’m too tired to be a reporter, she realized. She slid into the driver’s seat. Her car had been running the whole time. Good thing my tank was almost full. One of the patrolmen was arranging for Marcus’s car to be towed. They wanted to check it for fingerprints on the off-chance that the attackers had touched it.
Checking her rearview mirror, Nell pulled back onto the road. She was tired, and the drive home was a long way. The coursing adrenaline and anger that had brought her here were gone, replaced by bone weariness beyond the physical.
What if I didn’t save Marcus either?
twenty-three
The alarm clock was jarring; Nell had had little sleep, barely an hour. She was more jarred at hearing Jacko’s voice in the hall; then she remembered last night. When she had gotten back, no one was up. It had seemed so improbable that the house could be quiet and serene, as if nothing had happened.
She hastily got out of bed and threw on a robe, not wanting Jacko to share too many worrisome details about last night’s adventure. Plus she had to come up with how to add her own story to his account of the burning of Marcus’s house.
When she rounded the corner on them, Jacko and Josh were talking about sharks.
“Good morning,” Nell said, trying to cover her worry. “I see you’ve noticed our overnight guest.” She gave Jacko a towel and a spare toothbrush and told him if he hurried he could get in and out before Lizzie noticed anyone else was in front of her to use the bathroom.
Nell quickly took her own shower, needing to do a more thorough job of getting the night’s sweat, blood, and worry off. After she got out, she called the hospital where Marcus had been taken. They could tell her little except he was being transferred to Biloxi Regional and should be there shortly.
Nell tried to remember if Dolan had had Marcus fill out the usual forms, including who to contact in case of an emergency. She wondered if his friends at Joe’s Corner, with the fire and him missing, had already contacted someone.
Lizzie didn’t learn that Jacko was in the house until she started down the stairs in her ratty old bathrobe. Seeing him, she hurried back to her room to get dressed, something that helped them get out the door in good time. Then they had the car dilemma; Nell’s back seat was jammed with boxes. Jacko solved things by rearranging the boxes to free up the front seat of his car. Lizzie was happy to ride to school with a cute older guy. Josh got Nell’s front seat.
After dropping her kids off, they both pulled into the alley behind the Crier. Nell’s arms were already tired at the thought of moving all those boxes again. However, Jacko did most of it, delegating to Nell the problem of where to put everything. It was more work, but the only sensible place was the upstairs conference room. It was little used. Dolan had spread out his paperwork to dry, but there was plenty of room to stack the boxes.
Dolan, Ina Claire, and Pam arrived in time to see the final box head up the stairs.
After legally reparking their cars, Nell and Jacko each explained what had happened.
“You let me sleep through it?” was Jacko’s comment on her early morning adventure.
“Marcus? They did that to Marcus?” Pam shouted in outrage. “They burned his house down and then they assaulted him?”
“How is he doing?” Ina Claire asked. It was the worry they all had.
“He’s being transferred from the small hospital up there to Biloxi Regional. That’s all I know right now. I’m going to call and see if I can get an update.” She didn’t add her fears about the silence she had watched come over him as they lay in the wet grass.
And she still had a paper to run. “Meanwhile, Dolan, can you clear a space upstairs for Jacko to sort through that stuff? Let’s find out what those men so badly wanted to burn.”
It was early, but Nell called Joe’s Corner while Dolan was looking for the sheet with Marcus’s info. Everything had been moved out of his office, so he couldn’t be sure whether it had been ruined in the fire or was at his house drying in his rec room.
“Yeah, Joe here,” a tired voice answered.
“Hi, this is Nell McGraw. I’m calling about Marcus Fletcher.”
“You heard about his house? Poor bastard, what a thing to do to an old man.”
Nell had to tell Joe they had done more harm to an old man. “I’d like to contact his family, tell them what happened.”
“I served with his son in the Marines. One of the last people to see him alive. Marcus and his wife took me in like a son, helped me get my life back together. ‘Lost one son and gained one,’ he told me. I’m part family. I was about to call his kids.”
Nell was relieved to pass the duty on to him. Her head felt tired and thick and she didn’t feel she could find the words.
After that she called the sheriff’s department, but other than acknowledging the report from the highway patrol, they had nothing to add. She called the police station, not that she had much hope they would do anything. They took down the info and promised a vague “will be on the lookout for suspicious characters.” Nell could only hope they were competent enough to notice two men wearing ski masks driving around at night without lights on.
She was tired, ang
ry, and frustrated. Two men had tried to kill Marcus and destroy the information he had. Their actions had been quick and sure, not those of men old enough to have committed the murders. The next generation of hate? Her frustration was little helped by the noise of the workmen in the main room. They were ripping up the carpet, replacing windows, and doing any repair that required making significant noise.
She finally got up and shut her door. She left a note telling people to come in, as she usually only shut the door when she needed to work on something or to talk to someone in private. Just as she sat back at her desk, the phone rang.
“Pelican Bay Crier, Nell McGraw,” she answered.
For a moment, there was just silence. Then a voice whispered, “I didn’t do it. They’re going to tell you I did, but I didn’t.”
It took Nell a moment to recognize the harsh undertone as Whiz Brown. “Did what, Chief Brown?”
“My daddy didn’t have nothing to do with it neither. Yeah, he knew, but knowing is not the same as doing.”
Nell heard the fear in the man’s voice. “I can help you, but you have to tell me what’s going on.”
“Don’t let them say we did it. They gave me five hundred dollars to call out my men on Friday night, to say some kids were messing around on the beach, but that’s all I did, I swear. Didn’t know what was going to happen. My daddy just took the pictures, but he never pulled the trigger. You leave me out of this. Anyone asks, this call never happened.”
“I believe you,” Nell said to reassure him, although she didn’t know what to believe. “What pictures are you talking about?”
“You leave me out, got that? Frieda Connor. Somewhere in her attic.” With that, he hung up abruptly.
There was a brief knock on her door and Jacko entered. He had dust on his nose and several sheets of old paper in his hand. And an excited look on his face. He handed her the first sheet. In faded handwriting it was titled “Loan Sharks” with a subheading “don’t take money or help from these men, costs too much.” Nell skimmed down the list, recognizing no names until she got to the second to last. H.H. Pickings. She guessed it referred to the father of the mayor, given the age of the document. The next sheet, in the same handwriting, was titled “Loose Men” with a subtitle that said “keep your wives and daughters away from these bastards.” Bryant Brown was on this list, as was Bo Tremble with a notation beside his name—“two children”—which Nell guessed to mean that he had fathered two children out of wedlock, probably by rape. The last list was “Klan Members” in a different handwriting. As before, most of the names were unfamiliar to her. Reese Allen, Wayne Calvin, George Bessmer, Delbert Barnett, Frederick Connor—she paused at that one—Bryant Brown, Norbert Jones; two she did recognize. The Jones boys had a heritage of hate. But they’d gained nothing in the land swindles, and Norbert Jones was long dead and beyond any prosecution. Much as she wanted it to be them, a nice tidy package of criminals, it didn’t make sense that the Jones brothers would go after Marcus. There were about twenty names in all, with one scratched out and a notation next to it reading, “died in a car accident, the fool.”