Open Grave

by C. J. Lyons

Karlan’s lips tightened at that, but otherwise his expression remained neutral. “No need to take an attitude, Franklin. How about if you all just head on back home? And you, Grayson, can I offer you a lift?”

  “No thank you, Detective. I’m fine walking. Nice meeting you, Miss O’Connor.” TK was impressed he’d remembered her name—Karlan had only used it once.

  Grayson nodded to her and continued to stroll down the street. Franklin, aka Dead Eyes, frowned after him, then caught Karlan’s raised eyebrow and sauntered in the opposite direction, his crew following.

  Peace established, Karlan rolled up the window and pulled away from the curb, the corner boys in their rearview mirror before he released a sigh. “Gotta say, finding that damn car couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

  “Thought we were meeting at the police station?” Karlan was the detective assigned to the cold case that had brought TK here from Beacon Falls.

  “Chief wants everyone in uniform, visible presence, until the grand jury comes in on Jefferson. Had to go to the maintenance garage to pick up this junker, so when I saw you and the mayor’s son conversing with some of the city’s fine upstanding lowlife—”

  TK bristled a bit at the thought of his thinking that she needed rescuing. If she’d followed her first impulses, it would have been several of the corner boys who needed saving, not her. She found herself perversely defending the kids. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “No, not most of them. Except Franklin. Been to juvie twice. Just turned seventeen, so next time he’ll be doing real time as an adult.” He gave a shake of his head. “Boy’s a lit fuse, and those others, they’re moths dancing around his flame, seeing how close they can fly without getting burnt.”

  A cop and a poet. She bet Karlan never had trouble thinking of a comeback. “Grayson is the mayor’s son?”

  “Yep. The Greers go back to the town’s founding father. Back before the Revolution, even, when this land was a trading post on a river landing.”

  Guess that explained Grayson’s confidence. And a guy like Franklin was too smart to antagonize the mayor’s son. “This Jefferson case, I take it a cop’s involved?”

  “Officer-involved shooting. Happened last month. You haven’t seen it in the news?”

  “I don’t watch the news.” TK would never admit it to anyone, especially not David Ruiz, her investigative-reporter boyfriend, but she despised the news. Not because she didn’t want to know what was happening in the world but because she hated feeling manipulated into how to think and feel about what was happening. She preferred collecting her own information and deciding for herself, thank you very much.

  “Jefferson was totally justified, no way the grand jury will indict, but—”

  “That will just make things worse with the public.”

  “Exactly. Only reason the DA took it to the grand jury was because she’s up for re-election, doesn’t want to look like she’s coddling police officers who are simply doing their jobs. Nothing to do with the facts. Now we’ve got protesters coming in from all over; TV and news broadcasting every time a cop’s hand goes anywhere near his weapon; Staties, DOJ, and FBI talking about monitoring the department…”

  Which explained why the Greer police department didn’t run to the State Police or FBI for help with their new cold case. Although a blue-collar, down-on-its-luck city like Greer didn’t have the resources to take it on themselves. Not that TK minded—first time Lucy had sent her to lead a case. Plus, how often did you get handed an unknown case from sixty years ago and have the chance to be there during the actual initial investigation? “Sounds like a hell of a time for an unidentified body to be found, especially one that might date back to the last century.”

  “Recovery divers said the vehicle is a ’49 Dodge Wayfarer.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s a classic car lover, got lost, drove into the quarry by accident.”

  “Someone with a distinctive classic car like that and no one reported him missing?” Good luck with that.

  “Yeah, it’d be too much to ask for. If it really is an unidentified body from sixty-some years ago, then we’re up against some impossible odds. We’re a small force, understaffed, underfunded—only have twenty-three sworn officers for a town of nineteen thousand…twenty-two, with Jefferson out on administrative leave.”

  “Don’t worry, that’s what you have us for. The Beacon Group specializes in solving the unsolvable.” As soon as she said it, TK regretted the words. Cheap and cocky. Lucy would have never said anything like that. Neither would Valencia Frazier, the Beacon Group’s founder. Less than fifteen minutes into her first case as lead, and she was already screwing things up.

  TK gritted her teeth. It wasn’t cheap or cocky if you made good on your promise. Which was exactly what she planned to do. Impossible case or not.

  Chapter Three

  Karlan drove TK past a block of brick row houses dating back to the Second World War, more than a few with eviction or foreclosure notices, all covered by graffiti. At least three generations of adults sat on porch stoops or old-fashioned lawn chairs, the kind with the wide webbing that sagged if you sat too long. It reminded TK of the neighborhood where she grew up back in Weirton, West Virginia. Same blank expressions, same worn-out, faded gazes as they watched the younger generation play in the street.

  The kids, despite the heat, exuded energy. Older boys congregated at the mouths of alleys and around street corners, glaring across the pavement at each other, a silently fierce battle over contested territory. Dead Eyes’ competition, TK guessed. Most didn’t deign to raise their faces to acknowledge the patrol cruiser; the few who did spat wads of phlegm that pinged off the side of the car or raised their middle fingers. As if a single cop car was beneath their notice. They had better things to do.

  Then they spotted TK, and their expressions changed. Eyes tightened, gazes lasering in on her. She suppressed a flinch as she glanced back in the side view mirror. Despite the fact that she was in a vehicle, with a police officer, she felt more threatened than she had during her encounter with Franklin and his friends. Why was that?

  Her stomach knotted as she realized that perhaps she had totally misjudged the situation with the corner boys. She’d felt so excited about taking lead on this case, so confident in her abilities—so safe facing a few kids on a sunny street on a summer’s day.

  She started to slide her phone from her pocket then stopped herself. Now was not the time to separate herself from the world with earbuds and her language lessons—her usual recipe when anxiety closed in on her. No. She was here as lead field investigator from the Beacon Group.

  An investigation that she’d have no new details to work with until the divers raised the car. She cast around for a topic of conversation and landed back in her well of fears. “What’s the first thing you notice when you meet someone?”

  “Someone? As in one person? Because the first thing I notice is how many potential threats I’m facing.”

  Good point. “One person.”

  “Their hands. Then if they’re a man—sorry, I know it’s not politically correct, but odds are a man is going to be a person of interest a lot more often than a girl.”

  Woman, she corrected silently. “And then?”

  “I don’t know. I guess race. I mean, I know that shouldn’t matter, but it’s how I’m wired, probably how everyone is wired, right?” He shrugged. “Maybe age. Although we have plenty of eighty-year-old grannies around here I wouldn’t turn my back on.”

  She smiled at his joke but said nothing, busy mentally dissecting her encounter with Franklin and his crew. She hadn’t seen them as men, hadn’t seen a real threat, only a potential one…more of a puzzle to be solved, an obstacle course to navigate. Had her instincts been wrong? If she couldn’t trust her gut, after all her training and everything she’d been through here and overseas, what could she trust?

  Karlan kept the car moving slowly—not only to avoid accidentally hitting one of the wayward kids, but also so he could t
ake his time, making eye contact with each of them. Not a glare or contemptuous stare, but a neutral smile and nod. An expression that said, “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when you need me.”

  The younger kids, they weren’t as restrained as their older counterparts. Gaggles of boys would turn, make faces, call out taunts and jeers, while the occasional bold ones would race up and slap the car, young warriors counting coup.

  “You serve?” Karlan asked abruptly as he steered with one hand draped over the wheel. “Look like you served.”

  “Marines.”

  He made a noise of acknowledgment. “Same as our mayor. Talk is, he’s headed to Congress.”

  “From mayor to congressman? That’s quite a leap.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He didn’t sound impressed by Mayor Greer’s political success. More like suspicious. “You deployed? Iraq or Afghanistan?”

  “Both.” She didn’t elaborate. Easier to let Karlan do the talking.

  “Never understood that winning hearts and minds BS. I mean, I agree with the concept—should be the foundation of any police or military strategy. But how to do it? I’ve lived here all my life, been a cop going on three decades now, and these people need us.”

  He raised his hand to gesture at a two-story frame house, its porch roof sagging in defeat. A woman rocked in a chair near the front door while a teenaged boy wearing a pair of Beats headphones sprawled on the steps, palms drumming in time to music.

  “Saved her when the boyfriend beat her so hard she was in a coma two days. Stopped their son from going after the bum and ending up in jail himself.”

  A jerk of his chin directed her attention to the brick ranch style house across the street. “Got that old man to the hospital after he was carjacked. Caught the gangbangers who did it, but case got thrown out when he wouldn’t testify. This neighborhood, they need us. But they don’t want us.”

  TK was beginning to like the detective. She’d bet if it wasn’t for the old patrol car with its constant shimmy and recalcitrant steering requiring a firm grip on the wheel, Karlan would be talking with both hands slicing the air, to hell with the driving.

  He continued in a doleful tone, “If we can’t win hearts and minds here at home, how the hell are we ever going to do it in a place where we don’t speak the language or understand the religion or jack shit about anything?”

  TK wished she had an answer.

  Chapter Four

  May 17, 1954

  * * *

  God help him, but despite the little girl—she was a spindly thing, no more than eleven or twelve—and her plea for help, Samuel’s first instinct was to stop and look around for an ambush. His father had told him tales of men caught in similar circumstances. All ending with a rope, a tree, and a noose.

  And with the Brown decision being announced today…the newsmen had said there were already riots and protests in the South. He strained to remember if Pennsylvania was one of the states impacted by the Supreme Court’s decision.

  He glanced up and down the road. No one in sight. Ahead, the road took a sharp turn, vanished as it meandered through the streets of Greer before heading back up into the mountains.

  Then he saw the little girl’s arms. Covered with bruises—all ages, but the fresh ones were the most vicious, fingerprints red with fury against her pale skin. Her bare calves showed below her denim skirt. More bruises plus welts that could only have come from a belt buckle.

  Mind made up, he looked back to the Dodge where Jo huddled with Maybelle in the front seat.

  “Wait here,” he called.

  Jo shook her head no, her lips pursed against the idea of him getting tangled up in white folks’ business.

  Samuel helped the girl to her feet; she leaned against him as they walked back to the car.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told Jo through the open driver side door. “Just want to see her home safe.”

  “Sure her folks are going to see it like that?”

  “Can’t leave her alone in the street, can I?” He edged his gaze down to Maybelle, and Jo relented. “Lock the doors. If I’m not back in a few minutes—” He hesitated, no idea where to send his wife and daughter that they’d be safe. The girl tugged at him, already pulling him away from the Dodge.

  “Hurry. They’re gonna kill him.”

  He let her pull him through the vacant lot, her urgency forcing him into a jog despite his much longer legs. “What happened? Who hurt you?”

  “It’s all my fault.”

  Scraggly weeds tore at the cuffs of his slacks—one of his two pairs of Sunday slacks, worn especially for Jo’s family—as they cut across the vacant lot. It ran through to the next street over.

  As he stumbled over the crumbled curb, he saw that the main road intersected this street as well, two blocks farther up.

  Then he heard the shouts and looked the other way down the street, past a cluster of frame houses crowded shoulder to shoulder with no space to breathe between them. In the middle of the street, five white boys, all teenagers, were kicking and stomping someone at the center of their circle of flailing limbs.

  “Help him!” the girl cried, shoving Samuel at the white boys.

  He glanced at the houses, hoping to find another adult who could relieve him of duty. Preferably a white adult who knew these boys and their families. No one. Not even a flutter of a curtain in a window.

  Working class neighborhood like this, maybe even the mothers had jobs out of the house, no one home when the kids got off school? Pretty obvious the boys weren’t expecting any adult intervention as they continued to pummel their victim.

  Samuel stood tall and strode forward, using his best “I’m the surgeon, and no one’s going to die on my watch,” tone, and said, “Leave him alone.”

  He didn’t shout, barely raised his voice. But they heard him. All the boys froze in place except one, the leader, he suspected, who heaved all his weight behind one last vicious kick. “Now, what’s going on here?”

  The boys didn’t look up, seemed fascinated by their feet. Except the leader, a sandy-haired kid a little bigger and a little older than the rest, who slowly turned to face Samuel.

  “None of your business. You’d best move on now.” His words were a threat, his posture knife-sharp when he spied the little girl cowering behind Samuel. “Winnie, you get away from that Negro. Now, you hear me?”

  The girl shuffled out away from Samuel a step, then two, but didn’t move forward. “Is he dead? Did you kill him? He didn’t do nothing wrong.”

  “Shut the hell up!” The boy lashed out at the girl, bringing fresh tears as if he’d struck her. “You’re coming with me.” He lunged in her direction but Samuel sidestepped to block his path.

  The boy reared up, fists raised, ready to hit Samuel. And there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop him—not a white boy, not without knowing what was going on here.

  The boy’s friends, emboldened now, moved as well, edging into a circle to block Samuel’s escape. He glanced past them to their prior victim—a colored boy, young, barely a teenager himself, lying face down on the cracked pavement, not moving.

  Samuel ignored their threat. They were just boys and there was nothing he could do here except his job. “Let me through. I’m a doctor and that man needs medical attention.”

  The leader blinked at that. “I’m a doctor?” he scoffed, mimicking Samuel’s tone of command. “If this monkey’s a doctor, then I’m President of these here United States!”

  His laughter was cut short by the shriek of a siren. Only a two-second blast as a police car turned down the road, but it was enough to spook the girl, who took off faster than a deer, vanishing between the houses. The boys separated themselves from Samuel, acting innocent. Their leader strode right up to the police car as the door opened and an officer emerged.

  “That’s him,” he pointed down the road at the unconscious boy. “He’s the one who tried to rape Winnie Greer. We got him all ready for you, Archie. Unless y
ou want us to finish the job? My dad’ll be home soon; he’d love to take care of business.”

  The boy’s words were fed by anger and adrenaline—but also some strange shade of pride that Samuel hadn’t encountered since he’d left the battlefields behind. Same pride he’d heard in soldiers who’d fired on defenseless villagers, killing dozens in the hopes of killing one of the enemy. In their eyes, they were all the enemy, there were no innocent victims of war.

  He’d never understood that, not even after surviving two wars on three continents. Jo said that was a good thing. But it left him feeling sad and vulnerable, not being able to dissect what made men—of all colors and races and creeds—so damn blind, deaf, and dumb to human suffering.

  Samuel turned to tend to the injured boy. He was still alive, breathing a bit irregular, no surprise given half his ribs were caved in on one side. Pulse rapid but strong. Airway clear. No obvious spinal fractures.

  “Hey, what’re you doing?”

  Samuel looked up to regard the police officer. Archibald Thomson, his nameplate read in well-polished silver letters above the badge pinned to his chest. Beside him, the white kid stood, bouncing on his heels, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his dungarees, beaming at his handiwork.

  “I’m a doctor, a surgeon. This boy needs medical attention.”

  “Your boy needs to learn his lesson—”

  “Shut up, Philip,” Thomson, the police officer, snapped at the boy. “You run home. I’ll come talk to you later.”

  “No. I want to—”

  “Are you deaf? Do as I say. Now!”

  Philip hesitated a rebellious beat before turning and stalking away. “I’ll go home,” he said over his shoulder. “Just long enough to tell my father. He’ll want to talk to you about this, Archie Thomson.” He hurled the last as a threat.

  Thomson ignored the kid and knelt beside Samuel. “What can I do to help?”

  “Head trauma, possible skull fracture and lung contusion, multiple facial lacerations…this boy requires a hospital.”