by C. J. Lyons
“Is this what it’s always like? Mucking about with dusty old photos and documents, searching for that nugget of gold?” Grayson seemed both disappointed by the mundane investigatory procedure and excited that he’d been the one who’d found their “nugget of gold.”
“Afraid so. Most times it’s even more boring—and you go it alone. Then we feed all the data we find back to Wash, and he works his magic with the databases. Once we have a few solid leads and as much data as we can mine, we’ll hit the ground, start knocking on doors.”
“Why not start there?”
“Because we’re dealing with cold cases, and people’s memories can be faulty, so we try to arm ourselves with as many facts as we can first. Helps to weed out the red herrings, like when people combine events thinking it all happened at the same time or when they get the date or location wrong.” As she spoke, TK yanked open a few random cartons but quickly realized the futility—especially after the last one yielded a dead rat’s carcass.
“Are they lying to you or is that just normal human behavior?”
“Both. Often they don’t even realize they’re lying—to them it’s just shading their memories in their favor. Or to tell a better story. People like stories and they want them to be logical, for there to be a good reason why things happen. Real life isn’t like that.”
He considered that as he led TK up a second set of steps out of the musty basement and into the brightly lit courthouse that stood next to the humble police station.
“This building is the family jewel,” he told her, nodding to the high ceilings with their hand-carved cornices and the large leaded-glass windows designed to pull light in from both sides of the building. The way he talked, his voice hushed so as to not echo from the marble floor and walls, he could have been inside a church. For a Greer, the courthouse probably was the equivalent of a house of worship, she thought. “When it was first built, it was the largest building in the county. Its dome stood higher than any church steeple.”
She nodded absently. Time for the grand tour later. “Where’s your father’s office? I should update him.”
“This way.” He led her up to the second floor, above the courtrooms and county offices, to a lavish set of intricately carved dark oak doors with a deceptively simple gold embossed title: Mayor’s Office.
“Has Greer ever had a mayor who wasn’t from your family?” she asked as he opened the door and waved her in with a proud flourish.
“Not sure. I don’t think so. But not all Greers were mayors. My grandfather. He was the black sheep—became a judge instead. But his father was mayor for over forty years, most terms running unopposed, until he handed the baton over to my dad.”
“And now your dad is running for Congress. A big step from small town mayor to the nation’s capital.”
“Not for Dad. If he wins, there will be a special election for mayor.” He blushed and glanced away, reminding her how young he was. “He wants me to run. That’s why I’m working for him. Learning the ropes.”
No trace of embarrassment over the obvious nepotism. Guess it was just the way the world worked if you were a Greer. No wonder the kid believed in social Darwinism and all that Nazi crap.
The mayor’s reception area was designed for intimidation. Dark oak paneling, lush carpets, antique furniture that would be impossible to get comfortable in, even the receptionist’s desk was on a dais, allowing the mayor’s assistant to look down upon the humble masses come to petition him. On the walls hung somber portraits of the Greers who’d held the position: all men, all with the same glint of destiny filling their gaze. As if they ruled a nation rather than a bankrupt town in a forgotten corner of Pennsylvania.
Grayson ignored the furnishings to glance at the grandfather clock in the corner. Almost five-thirty. “I didn’t realize how late it is. Everyone’s left for the day.”
He moved behind the receptionist’s desk to the door to the inner sanctum and knocked gently before opening it.
“It’s me,” Grayson interrupted. “We found something. Thought you should hear.”
“Well then, come in. Don’t stand there dawdling in the doorway.”
The door was yanked open wide, revealing two men. One tall with broad shoulders and hazel eyes the same shade as Grayson’s but more piercing as they raked past him to examine TK
“You must be O’Connor. I’m JR Greer, the mayor.” He waved her and Grayson into the office. The second man was older, in his seventies, with white hair and soft, blue eyes. “This is my father, Judge Greer.”
“Call me, Philip, please,” the older man said as he stepped forward to extend a hand to TK. “I’ve been retired for over a decade now.”
“Nice to meet you both,” TK said, shaking the judge’s hand and then his son’s. The three generations of Greer men stood side by side, and she couldn’t help but compare them. The judge with his warm smile, the mayor, whose smile was wider but less genuine, and Grayson, whose attention was solely focused on his father, lips parted in an unconscious imitation of an eager baby bird, searching for the faintest hint of sustenance.
“We know who was in the car at the quarry,” Grayson gushed, his body buzzing with excitement.
“You’ve already identified the bodies?” the judge asked. He stepped back—or was it his son the mayor who stepped forward, taking charge?
“How is that possible?” JR Greer snapped.
“Not all of them,” Grayson admitted. “But the man in the front. He was a Greer police officer. Named Archibald Thomson. He was on the force from 1947 until 1954, then that May, he vanished from the records. It has to be him.”
TK wondered at the quick glance that the two older men shared. She had the sudden suspicion that their news wasn’t a surprise.
The mayor spoke first. “Grayson, your collar’s undone. I do wish you’d wear a tie. Make sure that ink of yours isn’t seen by any of that mob outside.”
“I’m not ashamed of my beliefs.” Despite his words, Grayson buttoned his collar.
“Nothing to do with shame or what you believe,” his father snapped. “When you work here, you represent the entire town, not any one person. That’s why we can’t allow any of this nonsense about a Greer police officer being in that car to become public. Not until we have all the facts.”
Grayson considered that and nodded. “Like the names of the other victims we found.”
TK was still watching the grandfather. He had grown pale and now rested a palm against the mayor’s desk, leaning his weight on its gleaming polished surface. She did a quick mental calculation: Philip Greer would have been in his early teens in 1954. Just a kid. But a kid who knew something, she was certain.
“Not just who they were,” JR continued in a commanding tone. “How they came to be there. After all, just because this Archibald Thomson was once employed here doesn’t mean he was still a police officer at the time of the incident. Maybe he was fired, went on some kind of rampage. Maybe he was mentally unbalanced. We can’t tarnish the city’s reputation or those of his victims until we have all the facts. Especially not with the current unpleasantness.”
Sounded to TK as if the mayor had been working overtime on his white-washing campaign, painting Thomson as some deranged madman who happened to drive off a cliff with three bodies in his trunk. And there was nothing she could do about it: her job as a private consultant was to find what facts she could and report them. After that, she had no control over how those facts were presented to public.
The whole situation sucked eggs. Her first case as a lead investigator and stupid politicians were going to spin her findings into a twisted braid of lies. At least Lucy wasn’t here to see it—although if Lucy was here, she’d be even more angry than TK. Lucy was used to exposing lies, not helping to create them. How would she handle this, given their non-disclosure agreement?
As TK pondered, a knock came at the open door. She couldn’t help her smile when she saw David standing there, not at all cowed by his opulent surroun
dings.
“Mr. Mayor? David Ruiz from The Crime Blotter. I was hoping for a comment on why the DA decided to postpone the announcement of the Grand Jury’s findings in the Jefferson case? Also, if you’d like to comment on your feelings about the midnight vigil being held in the town square? Or the counter-protest the Klan is planning?”
Chapter Twenty-One
TK smiled as the mayor bristled at David’s interruption. Nice to know she wasn’t the only one who pissed off His Honor.
“Out, now! Come back during regular office hours. Better yet, don’t come back at all—talk with the public affairs officer; that’s what she’s there for.”
David simply nodded and left, shutting the door behind him. He’d gotten what he’d come for: a response from the mayor that proved he’d done his due diligence in attempting to get all sides of his story.
“Guess I’ll be going as well,” TK said, her mood upbeat. After all, it looked like David was free for the night. Plus, she’d been on the case fewer than eight hours and had already ID’d one of her victims; not even Lucy could have done better.
The mayor jerked his chin in dismissal, obviously anxious to turn his interrogation onto his son. TK really didn’t mind having Grayson spy on her, she just wished he’d be a man and admit that his father was using him.
She stepped outside and spotted David at the end of the hall, near the window overlooking the town square.
“I know something you don’t,” she teased him.
“If it’s that the Grand Jury declined to indict, then I’m way ahead of you.”
She pouted. Sometimes having a boyfriend who was an investigative reporter was no fun at all. “Everyone knew they would. It was a no-brainer, justified shooting.”
“Not what I heard,” David told her. “My sources say that Officer Jefferson was called to that address several times for domestic disturbances and that the last time, Eggers left the house unscathed but arrived at the county jail with multiple contusions.”
“You think Jefferson beat him?”
“Might have thought he was giving Eggers a taste of his own medicine. But it could explain why Eggers ran.”
She stared at him. “You’re not suggesting that Eggers turned his gun on a police officer in self-defense?”
“Seeing as Eggers’s dead, and the only witness is the man who shot him, guess we’ll never know.”
“No one will be satisfied by the verdict.” Outside the window, the protestors were in a war of escalating chants, both sides’ messages drowned out by the chaos. “But they knew that when they came here. What do they want?”
“Justice. Truth. I’m sure they’d start with being able to trust the men carrying lethal weapons who are charged with maintaining the peace.”
“I think the cops would start with people not judging them before the facts are in,” she retorted.
“People don’t make decisions based on fact. They make them based on emotion. And once made, it’s virtually impossible to sway them. In fact, studies have shown the more facts against their initial, instinctive position, the more they resist and create reasons to deny the facts.”
Every time David talked like this, he made her want to go back to school. She’d joined the Marines straight out of high school—the chance for a guaranteed paycheck that would support her family was too tempting to deny—but always wondered where she might be today if she could have found a way to go to college.
As she watched the factions below, so clearly divided along racial lines, an image of an old photo flashed through her mind, a mob of angry white women viciously shrieking insults at little black girls trying to walk into a school, their teeth bared like wild animals.
How monstrous she’d thought those women—but maybe they were only mothers, not monsters? “So all those people during the civil rights marches, the bombings, the assassinations—”
“Exactly. Facts didn’t matter. Nor did common sense or morality. People dug in, defended what they believed, even though it was obvious what had to be done for the nation, for humanity.”
“So many lives lost, so much hatred sown. And nothing’s changed. Nothing is ever going to change.”
He frowned at that. “You’re saying the laws, no matter how moral or ethical, can’t make a difference? That’s like saying it really is everyone for themselves. Let the mob rule.”
“No. I’m just saying that freedom includes the right to hate.” It was something she’d heard her grandfather say.
She remembered an old photo of grandpa with his VFW legion, all decked out in their uniforms and medals, standing so tall and proud. As they held a banner that said those very words. Protesting a gay rights parade. Those elderly men of valor, men who’d bled for this country, they smiled in that photo. Certain of how right they were, certain that they still served their country, protecting it from evil.
“Hate, yes. Kill, no.”
“Obviously.” She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. She hadn’t felt this drained since she was in the shit. Never during a mission or after, but before…before she’d always feel as if the desert wind had sucked her dry, devoured her whole. But then she’d lace on her boots, strap on her helmet and NVG, step onto the chopper, crowd in with her team, and they’d fill her up again. Not with vague ideas of glory or might makes right or even patriotism. Her team. Battle-worn men who trusted her with their lives as she trusted them.
Everything was so much clearer back then.
“It’s just…” She paused, trying hard to get this right, even though she knew she was doomed to fail. Minds much smarter than hers hadn’t risen to the challenge. “I feel like, where we are now, there’s no right and wrong. For either side, for any side, for any one. We ask the cops to go out there, race into unknown circumstances, ready to sacrifice their lives to protect total strangers. And so many of them don’t come home again. How’s that right? Shouldn’t their lives be worth something? Shouldn’t they have the right to defend themselves? Shouldn’t their families have the right to have them come home again after a hard day’s work?”
He nodded, listening. She liked that about him. He did so love to talk—especially with her, since his disability usually didn’t get in the way as much when he talked to her as it did with others. But as skilled as David was with words, he was an even better listener.
She continued. “And the people the cops are sworn to protect. They deserve to have some peace of mind. The ability to walk down their own streets without a gang of corner boys—”
“Not always gangs. Don’t make them out to be violent thugs just because they have nowhere else to go,” he cautioned her, a gentle reminder of his own childhood spent uprooted by his father’s incarceration.
“Not gangs,” she allowed. “Gaggle. A gaggle of corner boys, geese squawking and nipping at heels.” She told him about her encounter with Franklin and his friends that morning. “But sometimes there are weapons. Sometimes they are thugs and they choose the corner not because there’s nowhere to go but because that’s where the innocent they prey on are.”
He frowned but tilted his head in concession. “Sometimes. But not always. And what about the people of color killed by police officers who aren’t armed? Where’s the justice for them?”
“That’s the problem, right? How’s a cop, how’s anyone supposed to tell the difference? Magical x-ray vision?” She bounced on her toes, warming up to the ideas spinning through her mind as if sparring with a dozen opponents. A gauntlet of contradictions and paradoxes.
She sighed, envisioning how she reacted this morning to Franklin and his crew. “I’m sorry. I have to side with the police. Everyone’s a threat until proven otherwise. Maybe that makes me a racist bitch. I don’t know. But thinking that way kept me and my squad alive—and we had a lot more going for us than a cop all alone with no backup.”
“You’re not racist.” Despite his monotone his entire body radiated concern and warmth. “No more than any of us.”
“I don�
�t understand. I mean, I never had to really think about this. When I was part of a team, it didn’t matter where we were from or what color our skin was, we were all focused on the mission. And most of the time, I was the only woman, so I never socialized with anyone—I was the one segregated during down times.”
How she’d hated that. Even during their brief stints at larger bases like Camp Leatherneck, a base the size of a city, she and the other women quickly learned how dangerous boredom was in young, adrenaline-fueled men far from home.
They’d huddle in their cargo-container quarters, hating to admit to themselves or anyone exactly how stupid it was to go out alone, especially at night when the maze of temporary structures—the entire place was a mirage in the middle of an ancient desert, here tonight, gone tomorrow—became a stalking ground.
It was the first time she’d realized that being a Marine couldn’t protect her from anyone. Not even her fellow Marines.
Chapter Twenty-Two
May 17, 1954
* * *
Winnie glared at the men making decisions about her life. She was so damned tired of stupid men thinking they could control her. Like her father. Like Mr. Greer—she knew the real reason why he was taking her dad’s side in all this. He knew Philip liked her. Philip had once tried to kiss her, but she’d kneed him in the balls and ran.
Men. Boys. Same thing. All stupid. Except Henry. Most people called him retarded or dumb. Not Winnie. To her he was special. The only one willing to risk himself to protect her.
Of course she’d kissed him—that’s what women in the movies did when the hero saved them. Especially if the hero was cute and nice and never, ever raised his voice much less a hand to her.
Who cared what color Henry’s skin was? Winnie knew the color of his heart.
She marched past the doctor and his little girl, heading for the front door. Officer Thomson rushed after her, grabbing her arm to spin her around. Winnie yanked away and raised both fists to him.