Open Grave

by C. J. Lyons

  “Oh, you’ll pay all right.” He jerked his head and another man appeared, along with a young boy. “Was she with him, Philip? The Negro who laid hands on you?”

  The boy shuffled forward, eyed Jo with an expression of disdain. His eyes were lit with primal cunning instinct, and she knew he was debating which answer would help his own cause the most, no matter the cost to her.

  “I think so.” He straightened, nodded. “Yeah. She was with him.”

  “I’ve never seen you before, young man,” Jo protested.

  “You calling my son a liar?” The man’s hand swept through the air so fast Jo didn’t see the blow coming until it was too late. His slap sent her sprawling to the ground. Before she could crawl back to her feet, the other men grabbed her arms and hauled her up.

  “Go home, Philip,” the man told the boy. “You’ve done enough. Go home.”

  The boy started to protest but then sped off, running down the alley without looking back.

  The man regarded Jo, his gaze empty of anything except cold calculation. “Anderson, get the men. Tell them we’ve caught a couple of Commies trying to indoctrinate our Negroes. They attacked a white girl and now the whole lot of them are going to pay. Tell them to bring their bats and pistols. You know the drill. Make sure they’re wanting blood.”

  “What do we do with her?” one of the men holding Jo asked.

  “Do what you want, but keep her close. We’ll feed her to the crowd, once they’re riled up and ready to go.” The man nodded as if he’d just completed a particularly satisfying business transaction. “Won’t be any more union talk around these parts. Not after tonight.”

  The two men began to drag Jo away. “You can’t do this,” she protested. “Stop. I’ve got rights!”

  Her only answer was a blow to the face. She felt her nose crack, the pain so sharp that tears gushed from her eyes. A second blow followed immediately, this one snapping her jaw out of socket and rocking her head back so hard and fast she felt as if she was falling, tumbling down a black well of pain.

  She tried to scream a warning to Samuel and Maybelle, but her words were choked by blood gushing down her throat.

  Then darkness swallowed her whole and she wondered if she’d ever see the light again.

  Chapter Sixteen

  They turned onto the street where TK had met Franklin and his friends earlier today. Now she understood their reluctance to engage with Grayson—not only was he the mayor’s son but also a neo-Nazi. Although, to his credit, he’d yet to show any violent tendencies. In fact, he’d disarmed Franklin and his bunch with only his cell phone. Did neo-Nazis espouse Gandhi-style protests? Was that even possible?

  She didn’t see any sign of Franklin or his cohorts. Instead, the street was crowded with TV news vans and a small group of curious onlookers.

  “Still waiting for the verdict,” Grayson said as he steered them down a side street. “Dad said he’d ordered the block around the town square cordoned off for the protesters. It’s okay, though, they’ll let us through.”

  “Where is the police garage?” TK had envisioned a large lot with impounded cars.

  “All the town offices including the coroner’s are in the government center, an old Woolworth’s building behind the police station. The police garage is in a warehouse beside it. Makes everything convenient.”

  “Your city hall is an old Woolworth’s building?”

  “No. Well, kind of. The mayor has his offices in the courthouse along with the judges and county offices. Seems only fitting since it was a Greer who founded both the town and the county, and we built the courthouse along with everything else around here.” Pride laced his voice as he waved his hand to include everything in sight—a boarded-up hardware store, a dingy newsstand-slash-sandwich shop, and a barber shop.

  Grayson didn’t seem to notice, just as he didn’t seem to realize he was using the royal “we” to talk about events that had taken place over two hundred years ago. Modern-day Greer hadn’t quite held up to the promise of its legacy, TK thought.

  She glanced at the buildings across the town square. There was the courthouse, regal with its dome gleaming in the afternoon sun. Beside it was a red brick, squat building with bars on its windows: the police station.

  Right now, the swath of green space that was the town square was a swirling mass of humanity separated mainly by skin color and the signs they held overhead.

  White people and swastikas on the left, black and brown-skinned people with signs reading “We can’t breathe!” and “Hands up, don’t shoot,” on the right. Both sides had a scattering of American flags; each co-opting the symbol of democracy and free speech for their own cause.

  They turned down a narrow street—an alley, really—behind the courthouse. Here the buildings crowded together with no breathing room between them. The rear entrances to the courthouse and police station were on one side of the alley while on the opposite stood the employee entrance to the government center—a faded Woolworth’s sign visible on the bricks above the first floor’s row of windows—and the secured entrance to the police warehouse.

  Grayson pulled into a parking spot marked “Reserved for G. Greer” behind the town’s government center. Like the police department and courthouse across the alley, the old Woolworth’s building and the warehouse beside it butted up against each other, their outer walls touching.

  TK had seen similar construction back home in West Virginia, usually in cities that had begun life as company towns, where every square inch was designed with profit in mind. She’d never liked it. It made the buildings, no matter how lovely their architecture, feel as if they were looming, shouldering in on each other, fighting for the light. And, other than the courthouse, Greer was distinctly lacking in any lovely architecture, so these buildings in particular suffered from the antiquated urban design.

  Grayson led her through the open garage doors of the warehouse. The tow truck with the Wayfarer had already arrived; it now held the place of honor in a fenced-off service bay. Even covered by its protective tarp, you could tell it was a unique car with distinctive lines.

  She smiled at it as if it was an old friend. TK wasn’t usually a car person—she’d never owned one, used an old Harley she’d bought off a Vietnam vet for transportation, mainly because it was cheap to maintain and she could do most of the work on it herself—but she liked the Wayfarer. Despite its gruesome cargo.

  There weren’t any other cars in the warehouse, but she saw the familiar cages of an evidence storage area behind a counter at the rear, and there was a flatbed truck laden with several pallets of wooden crates parked against the wall.

  “Oh good, they finally made it,” Grayson said, strolling over to examine the truck’s cargo. The crates were all stenciled with a Chinese dragon cradling two large firecrackers in its talons, ready to hurl them to earth. “The fireworks for the Fourth. We launch them from the river.” He turned to smile at her. “Hopefully you’ll still be here to see it. We may not be a large city like Pittsburgh, but it’s going to be amazing.”

  “Let me guess. Your dad let you plan it?”

  He nodded. “Don’t tell anyone, but I even used my own money to throw in an extra special surprise at the end. A five-hundred-gram finale called the Black Dahlia.”

  Behind the truck, she spotted the coroner’s ambulance and realized why the two buildings had been designed the way they had: the warehouse must have serviced the store. A large set of double doors, big enough for a small truck to drive through, connected the warehouse with the old Woolworth’s. Right now, the ambulance was backed up into the doorway, but there was room for her and Grayson to pass through.

  They emerged into a large storage area that had several dumbwaiters and a set of old-fashioned wooden conveyer belts, one leading up to the floor above and one leading down to the basement. All appeared as if they hadn’t been used in decades. The doors immediately across from them were open and led into a tiled area. Grayson led her through them, and she r
ealized they were in an industrial-sized kitchen.

  “You turned the kitchen into the morgue?”

  “Not just the kitchen,” Marcia Madsen said, turning to greet them from where she and two students were cleaning bones at the old dishwashing station. She gestured past the stainless steel exam tables to the old pass-through windows. Through it, TK glimpsed the other students seated and hunched over microscopes and laptops. “The entire lunch counter. Genius, isn’t it? I can use the old walk-in refrigerator and freezer, I even have a separate decomp room. When I took over as coroner, I moved some of my equipment here and used grant money to help with the upgrades. Considering what most county coroners have to deal with in terms of budget, I think we’ve done quite well for ourselves. I get more privacy and room than my lab on campus, the students get a better real-world experience, everyone wins.”

  “Except the corpses,” Grayson chimed in with a chuckle that fell flat as everyone turned to stare at him.

  “Especially the people we serve,” Madsen corrected. “We’re able to do a proper examination and give their loved ones the answers they need. Most of the time, at least.”

  “Speaking of answers, got any for me?” TK asked as she watched the students form an assembly line, one person pulling bones out of a warm solution that had a faint chemical solvent smell, the next gently wiping the greasy adipocere from the bones with a paper towel, and the third taking them to a steel prep table and placing them in their anatomically correct position.

  Madsen stripped free of her gloves and protective gear and led them through the swinging doors to the lunch counter. Here the students were examining bones already cleaned as well as the other artifacts found in the car.

  “Answers? A few. First, the badge you found. Once we got it under the microscope, we realized that on the back,” a student handed TK an evidence bag with the badge, now clean of debris, its brass shining, “there were some faint scratches. Initials. A. T. Might help with identification.”

  TK peered at the back of the badge, could just barely make out the markings. “It’s a start. Anything else?”

  Madsen frowned. “Not sure. I want to verify my findings—they’re preliminary speculation at most.”

  “Now you’re sounding like a professor, professor. If you have anything that can start me in the right direction—”

  Madsen led them over to a far corner where they couldn’t be overheard. Grayson leaned in toward her while TK merely waited. “I’ve been doing this for some time, so I think I’m right. But…”

  Before she could say anything, Karlan barreled through the outer door, his arms filled with food containers.

  “Thought you guys might need some provisions,” he called out jovially. “Where do you want them, doc?”

  The students all looked up eagerly—and hungrily, TK noted. She’d only had a protein bar for lunch, and it was now almost three in the afternoon, but food was the last thing on her mind, especially with the stench of decomposition that had permeated every breath ever since she’d opened the car door back at the quarry.

  “No eating in the lab,” Madsen said. The students fled out to the warehouse, grabbing the food from Karlan’s arms like locusts stripping a field bare.

  He laughed and turned to Madsen, hands empty. “Guess I’ll have to escort you to lunch personally. Can’t let our county coroner go hungry.” He smiled and nodded to TK.

  “Aren’t you on duty?” Grayson asked, his tone officious.

  Karlan rocked back on his heels, ignoring Grayson. “What do you say, doc?”

  “What about the verdict?” TK asked.

  Karlan’s smile widened. “Grayson didn’t tell you? The grand jury found no grounds for an indictment. Jefferson’s in the clear. For now, at least.”

  “The crowd seemed pretty quiet when we got back. Why aren’t they protesting?” Madsen asked.

  “DA and mayor decided to wait and make the official announcement tomorrow morning. They’re bringing in reinforcements from the State Police tonight for crowd control.” He grew serious. “Not a moment too soon. Our guys have been pulling overtime since this damn thing started. Unfortunately, that also gives the protesters—on both sides—time to bring in more bodies as well.”

  “We made some progress as well,” TK told him. “Looks like our front seat passenger was a Greer City police officer, initials of A. T.”

  “We’re headed over to the station to check their records,” Grayson said.

  “Doubt you’ll find much from that far back. Whole place flooded back in ’72 with Hurricane Agnes. Flooded again a few years ago with the winter melt.” Karlan thought for a moment. “You might try the library; they have archives of the old Greer Gazette. Or the courthouse.”

  “The courthouse?”

  Grayson snapped his fingers. “Of course. If there’s one thing people never destroy, it’s tax records.” He turned to the door. “C’mon, TK. They close at four; after that we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

  “Let me just get freshened up first.” TK made it sound like some mysterious female undertaking, but really, she wanted to hear what Madsen had started to tell them before Karlan arrived. The anthropologist had clearly been uncomfortable talking around Grayson.

  “Okay. I’ll be right outside. I want to check the fireworks inventory.”

  Once he’d left, TK turned back to Madsen and Karlan. The two were discussing possible dinner plans. They made a cute couple with their matching gray hair and intense personalities. “Dr. Madsen, what were you going to tell me earlier? About your preliminary findings?”

  Madsen’s smile faded. “Not for public consumption, just between us…”

  “Want me to leave?” Karlan asked, surprising TK with his sensitivity.

  “No. Just don’t mention it to the mayor or his son. Or anyone. Not until I finish my calculations.”

  “Calculations? You mean to tell if the victims were male or female?” Madsen had mentioned a variety of measurements she’d need to perform to verify the sex of each set of remains.

  “That and…” Madsen blew her breath out, lowered her voice even more. “Look. Here’s what I think. We have one Caucasian adult male in the front seat.”

  “Our presumed police officer.”

  “Right. And in the trunk…” She paused again. So unlike the forceful certainty she’d exhibited at the crime scene. “In the trunk, we have one set of adult female remains, one adult male, and one juvenile male. All African-American.”

  TK blinked. But it was Karlan who spoke first. “A black man, woman, and kid? All together? From the 1950s? Doc, do you realize what you’re saying?”

  Madsen nodded. “It gets worse. In the victims from the trunk I found evidence of a severe pre-mortem injuries consistent with beatings. And all three had traumatic fractures at C-2. What laymen call hangmen fractures.”

  Everyone was silent.

  “No,” Karlan protested. “No way. Not here. I don’t believe it. It must have been some weird serial killer fetish. Like a, what do the feds call it in their profiling classes? A family annihilator. That’s it. Because nothing like that ever happened here.”

  He couldn’t even use the word they were all thinking, TK noted.

  Madsen’s lips thinned. “I won’t be sure, not until I finish my examination. But I thought you should know. Be looking for three missing African-Americans along with your police officer.”

  Karlan shook his head and started for the exit.

  “What about lunch?” Madsen called after him, a wistful tone coloring her voice.

  “Sorry, doc. Lost my appetite. Rain check.” He turned back. “I promise. Figure my time’s better spent helping these two figure out who our victims are so we can figure out what really happened.” He nodded to TK. “I’ll get a start on the old tax records, you and the kid can start with the police archives. Meet you over there.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lucy’s throat was tight and raw from answering the Randalls’ questions,
but she refused to leave until she was certain she’d given them everything she could. Her discomfort felt like small penance for not bringing their child home alive.

  Finally, as the afternoon sun began to peek through the tops of the drapes, silence fell upon the gathering. Lucy waited, now focused not just on Jennifer Randall but the entire family. The daughter had retired to a bedroom, her husband leaning against the banister at the base of the staircase, head tilted as he listened for her. The father paced between the kitchen and the fireplace. Lucy couldn’t help but notice the way his gaze stretched toward the back door when he reached the far end of his loop and then the front door when he reached the living room, searching for an escape.

  The grandparents had collapsed on the sofa and chairs while Jennifer had left her seat to bustle around the room, offering drinks and snacks that no one took, her nervous energy buzzing through the air in her wake. Valencia stood silent at the far wall, watching, waiting for any chance to help.

  The noise of Lucy’s phone vibrating startled them all. Jennifer froze and released a gasp of fright, drawing her husband to her. Lucy jumped—she was already on the edge of her seat—and slid the phone free from her pocket. She was about to ignore it when she saw it was David Ruiz calling.

  “I’m sorry, I’ll just be a moment.” She walked into the kitchen, their stares following her. It was a relief to leave their sight—the first time since she’d arrived. Her shoulders ached with anxious tension as she leaned against the window facing the patio and the rusted, lonely swing set standing at an awkward angle in the backyard. “Guardino here.”

  “Lucy, did you send TK to Greer? Alone? Do you know what’s going on here?”

  “I can’t talk about—”

  “Not your case. The protests. I was sent here to cover them.”

  “What protests?”

  “Don’t any of you read the news? The grand jury is coming back on an officer-involved shooting case today. Blue on black. We’ve got everyone here from the BLM to the KKK.”