Open Grave

by C. J. Lyons

  “Imagine growing up here,” TK said as they exited the vehicle.

  The front yard stretched out wide as a football field. The house stood at the fifty-yard line with a view of the river sweeping through the forests and down past the town.

  “The first Greer had his iron forge and trading post on a river landing decades before the American Revolution,” Lucy told her as they hiked up the front walk. “I wonder if that was near here. House looks at least a hundred years old.”

  “One hundred and fifty, give or take,” a man’s voice called to them from the front door. Judge Philip Greer stood waiting for them, dressed in a nicely fitted suit complete with vest and tie. His only concession to his retirement seemed to be his shoes, a pair of comfortable crepe-soled lace-ups suitable for the office or a quick hike on a trail.

  As they joined him on the front porch that had more square footage than TK’s entire apartment, he gestured to a tree-lined path leading to the river. “We’ve kept the original log cabin and forge as intact as possible. Teachers bring school children on field trips to see it.”

  He smiled at them each in turn, then led the way inside. The foyer was adorned with paintings of Greers, some of them life-sized. They crossed through a formal living room decorated with antiques and then reached the doors to what was obviously the judge’s private study. Here the furniture was more comfortable and showed actual use. The decor consisted of hunting trophies including an elk, moose, bear, and a twelve-point buck.

  “My first kill,” he said proudly. “I was eight.” There was a gun case in the corner and over the fireplace were photos of generations of Greer men hunting as well as pictures of the judge and the mayor in military uniforms, carrying sniper rifles. “Greer family tradition,” he said, noticing TK’s interest in the photos of her fellow Marines. “Too bad Grayson never served. First male Greer not to see combat since the Civil War.”

  He gestured to them to sit. TK chose an overstuffed chair while Lucy remained standing, slightly to one side and behind the judge. Handing the conversational baton off to TK.

  “Thank you for coming,” the judge said in a formal tone. “Ms. O’Connor, I understand you were caught in the blast. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Just a few bumps and bruises. Dr. Madsen wasn’t so lucky.”

  He nodded sorrowfully. “I know. JR told me her students are already planning a memorial.” He paced away from them, his steps heavy on the plush carpet. “This is very difficult for me. Maybe I should have said something sooner, but I’m not sure that it would have been helpful anyway.”

  “What is it, Judge Greer?”

  He pivoted and leaned against the window, the morning sun highlighting every line of his face and glinting against the white in his hair. “The policeman, Officer Thomson. Do you know…was he gut shot?”

  TK exchanged a look with Lucy. “I’m not sure. Dr. Madsen hadn’t yet found any evidence of injury other than his broken arm, where he was handcuffed to the car.”

  “Handcuffed?” He blinked at that, his posture slumping. For a moment she thought he was going to collapse.

  TK stood, stepped forward and reached for his arm. “Maybe you should sit down, sir?”

  He let her guide him to the nearest chair. “Thank you. I’m fine now. Thank you.”

  “What makes you think Officer Thomson might have been gut shot?” Lucy asked, her tone crisp and official.

  “I think my father might have seen it happen.” He licked his lips.

  TK spotted a decanter of water on a side table along with some glasses. As she poured, she realized that they were made of crystal and probably cost more than she made in a year. He drank eagerly, then handed her back the glass. She perched on the corner of the chair nearest to him while Lucy remained standing in the background. Lucy was playing bad cop to her own good cop, but it seemed so unnecessary. It was obvious the judge wanted to help them.

  “I was just a kid,” he started. “Don’t know anything about what exactly happened. But I still remember that time. How awful it was—people marching and shouting. There was a labor dispute at the paper mill. The Negroes wanted the same pay as the white men. But they didn’t do the same work, so Daddy—my father—wouldn’t give it to them.”

  “A labor dispute left four people dead?” Lucy asked.

  The judge shuddered at her words. “I don’t know. I remember there was a riot—I wasn’t there, but I heard my mother talking, worried. She said a police officer had been shot by a Negro and that fighting had broken out. Then after my father returned home late that night, I crept out of my room to see that he was all right…he wasn’t.”

  His voice trembled. “I’d never seen him like that. Frightened. Blood covered his shirt and pants, but it wasn’t his. I couldn’t hear everything. But I heard him say Archie was gut shot. I knew Archie was Officer Thomson. Then he said something about the pain being so bad they had to restrain him while they were trying to get him to a doctor.” He glanced up. “Perhaps that was your handcuffs?”

  “Maybe,” Lucy conceded. “But why would they transport him in a civilian vehicle instead of a police car? And how did that car end up in the quarry?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I remember that night and the next day being filled with worry. School was canceled, kids locked up in their homes with their mothers, shotguns brought out of closets. My father said the Negroes were rioting, that he and the other men had to stop them before they destroyed the town and killed anyone else. He changed clothes and left again that same night, didn’t return for two days. My mom cried the entire time, she was so scared he’d never come home.”

  “And he never said more about what happened?” TK asked.

  “No. Refused to talk about it. None of my friends’ fathers would talk about it either. I remember the minister’s sermon—don’t remember what he said, but I remember church that next Sunday, and about all the women and half the men were in tears. Back on the town square there were places where you could tell there’d been fires set and windows were busted on the police station, but other than that, everything looked normal. But it wasn’t normal, nowhere near normal—even a kid could see that. People walked around town, their lips tight, nodding to each other but not talking, not like usual. And the blacks—a lot of them moved away, never to be seen again.”

  He shook his head. “It was the worst time of my life. When you see your parents decimated to empty husks, filled with fear, it changes a child. Changes them forever. My father, he was never the same after that.”

  “Did Officer Thomson have any family? Do you remember if there was maybe an obituary in the newspaper? Anything that might give us more information?”

  “Newspaper back then was the Greer Gazette, came out once a week. Not even sure if the Gazette went to press that week—my father probably had all his men out helping the police with the riots. That’s how it was done back then. You took care of your town, didn’t call in outsiders like the way they handle things today.”

  He leaned back, his gaze searching the photos on the mantle. “I remember Officer Thomson. He was a nice guy. When it snowed he limped—said it was from getting shot somewhere in Italy during the war. Didn’t have any family, no wife or kids. The single women used to swarm all over him at church socials, act like a man couldn’t be relied upon to feed himself, living alone like that.” He smiled. “I remember thinking—I was only thirteen, fourteen at the time, just starting to wonder about girls—and I remember thinking how nice it’d be if some of those ladies treated me as nice.”

  He glanced up. “Sorry. I think that’s all I remember. It wasn’t anything we ever spoke about, you understand?”

  “Maybe your father kept records? A journal?” Lucy asked. “With all his business interests, he probably lost money during the riots or had to pay overtime for his men to provide extra security?”

  “He probably did keep records—he was a much better businessman than I ever was. But they’re all gone. Back in 1972, Hur
ricane Agnes flooded the whole town. Anyone who kept anything down in a basement or cellar, sometimes even the first floor for houses near the river like this one, it would have been destroyed. All I know is when I went through his papers after he died there wasn’t anything from back then. Sorry.” He spread his hands wide. “I wish I could be more help.”

  TK stood and joined Lucy. The judge made a feeble attempt to rise, bracing his hands against the arms of his chair but then fell back again.

  “I can’t believe this nightmare has returned to haunt us after so long,” he said. “This town needs time to heal, now more than ever. Rather than having memories of a long-ago scandal dragging us into the limelight.”

  For the first time, TK detected a note of insincerity. Was this all an act? Designed to convince them that there were no more leads to follow, maybe even get them to give up on the case? Without any physical evidence remaining, his story made for an easy explanation. All they had to do was accept it and walk away.

  Lucy caught TK’s gaze and gave a small nod. TK turned back to the judge. “Oh, I almost forgot. Have you ever heard of a family named Mann? A doctor and his wife and their little girl? They were from Washington, DC but may have been visiting here.”

  “Mann? No, I never met a doctor or anyone with that name. Why?”

  “Because the doctor and his wife were two of the other victims in the car, along with Officer Thomson. We’re off to talk with their daughter, now. Apparently, she saw everything that happened.”

  The last was a bold-faced lie, of course, but well worth it to see the way all the blood drained from the old man’s face.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  May 17, 1954

  * * *

  The dank mold of the courthouse basement made Winnie want to sneeze. Even though she knew there was no way the men outside could hear her through the brick walls, it felt much too dangerous. Maybelle clung to her hand, muffled tears her only sound.

  “It’s gonna be all right,” Winnie whispered as they navigated through the shelves stuffed with papers, the single bare light bulb casting more shadows than it dispersed. “You’ll see. Everyone’s gonna be just fine.”

  Her words were more to comfort herself than the little girl she was suddenly responsible for. None of this would have happened if not for Winnie. She had to find a way to make everything right.

  They reached the stairs leading up to the courthouse. Crept up them slowly, wincing with every creak and sigh the wood made. Until finally they reached the door at the top. Winnie pressed her ear against it and listened. All she could hear was Maybelle’s anxious panting and her own heart pounding. Good enough. She slid the key into the lock and turned it. Then, biting her lower lip without even being aware that she did it until she drew fresh blood from the cut left by her father’s slap, she opened the door.

  The lights were out, but the courthouse’s large windows were more than enough to illuminate the corridor, the late afternoon sunshine reflecting from the tan marble floor.

  “Let me see if it’s clear.” Winnie tried to pull her hand free of Maybelle’s, but the little girl held on tight as they walked together to the window at the end of the hall, hugging the shadows on the one side of the corridor. The windowsill was deep, and a bench stood before it. This was the front side of the courthouse, the side that faced the town square.

  She lifted the girl up onto the bench then climbed up herself. The windows soared high overhead, but the sun was setting, leaving a shadow cast on this side of the building, hiding them from sight. At least she hoped the shadows were enough. Just to be sure, she moved Maybelle down to the far corner where the fancy woodwork along the window frame created a recess.

  The men weren’t gone. In fact, now that day shift at the mill had ended, there were even more of them—seemed like everyone her father had ever met was standing, hollering at the police station. Including Philip’s father, Mr. Greer, who was the mayor and owned the quarry and the paper mill and most everything else worth owning around here. He didn’t stand at the front with the rest, she noted. Instead, he sat inside his fancy car behind his driver, window rolled down so he could watch and whisper instructions to a man in a suit at the rear of the crowd.

  The man nodded and moved quickly through the crowd, other men pausing in their shouts to listen and bow their heads. After he finished whispering to them, they’d raise their faces once more with new gleams in their eyes. Then the first rock came. Followed quickly by others.

  Mr. Greer didn’t smile, but he seemed mighty pleased as the rocks shattered the plate glass at the front of the police station. The men with him were the same ones she’d seen in the alley, taking Maybelle’s mother. But she couldn’t see the doctor’s wife anywhere—maybe she was in the car? No, Mr. Greer would never let a colored woman in his fancy car. Maybe they’d taken her somewhere else?

  Winnie had heard talk of the immigrants and Negroes trying to form some kind of union—stealing money and food from the mouths of the white workers who’d been here first, her dad complained. She had a feeling that maybe this mob with their angry fists and rocks had to do with something much, much larger than a colored boy helping a white girl escape a beating from her father.

  She clung to the idea, hoping it would ease the stab of guilt, but of course it didn’t. All she could think of was Henry’s busted face. The faces of the men below were almost as devastated, red not with blood but with rage that twisted them until they were almost unrecognizable as human.

  “Give us the boy,” her father, emboldened by the mob behind him shouted. She’d never before seen him stand so proud and tall. As if he was a different man. A stranger she’d never met.

  “We’ll come in after him!”

  “Teach him a lesson.”

  “Him and all the Negroes. Need to learn their place!”

  The shouts, accompanied by insults and slurs she’d rarely heard before in private much less ever in public, grew with a vengeance. More rocks flew, more glass shattered, sparkling ruby red in the bloody sunset, until suddenly the crowd hushed and took a step back.

  Winnie craned her neck to search the area in front of the police station. Officer Thomson stepped out to the edge of the stoop that adjoined the courthouse stairs. He carried a shotgun, holding it with casual knowledge of a soldier accustomed to violence. For a moment, her heart steadied, and she was able to draw a breath unfettered by fear. Officer Thomson was in charge, not the mob. He’d take care of things, make sure no one else got hurt.

  “Time for you all to go home to your dinners, don’t you think?” he asked as he stared down the crowd, seemingly searching out and meeting each of their gazes. “Law’s the law, and we’ve got this under control.”

  His voice was calm, not rushed. As if chatting with the men who liked to stand around outside the barbershop on Saturday mornings. Most of those men, including her father, were among the crowd. “Send Mrs. Mann back inside with me, and we’ll all call it a night.”

  But then she saw something that Officer Thomson was blind to, given that her window was much higher than where he stood. Mr. Greer leaned his head out of his car window and beckoned to the man in the suit, who went over to where a truck had just pulled up behind the car. He and two men in overalls took something from the truck bed and then divided up.

  She lost the other two in the gathering dusk that had darkened the square to the purple of a fresh bruise. But the man in the suit she could see as he leapt up to the base of the gazebo. Sidling behind one of the supports so that all she could make out was the barrel of a rifle. Aimed at Officer Thomson.

  She was too far to shout a warning—and too late, as the shot cracked like man-made thunder, followed by two more. Then more from the crowd, although the few pistols and rifles she spied were aimed up to the sky.

  The crowd surged forward, cheering and jeering, not seeming to notice as Office Thomson stumbled back, one hand trying to raise his shotgun, the other flailing for support. It wasn’t until he suddenly sat
down, legs collapsing beneath him, that she spotted the dark stain on his uniform shirt. Gut shot.

  Maybelle gasped as her father ran out of the police station, kneeling to tend to Officer Thomson. “Daddy!”

  Then the mob was on him, a mass of arms and bodies lunging and grasping and tearing him away.

  Another shot sounded, then another, muffled by the crowd—not coming from the man in the suit, she noted with a quick flick of her gaze. He’d vanished. So had Mr. Greer. Driven away to his big house with his fancy china and gourmet dinner.

  Then the men—bent over so they no longer appeared as men, but rather hungry beasts surging to tear at their prey before the other wild animals could steal it away—rushed into the police station and emerged, dragging Henry with them.

  Within a blink, the mob had devoured him like they had Maybelle’s father. She could see movement as the crowd dragged their prey into the town square, but she couldn’t see Henry or Dr. Mann at all as the other men’s bodies surged over them.

  Only Officer Thomson remained behind on the police station’s stoop. One hand pressed against his belly, blood staining his fingers. And all he could do was watch, helpless.

  Winnie tugged Maybelle off the bench and pulled the girl face first, tight against her, wrapping her arms around her as they huddled out of sight of the nightmare horror beyond the window. She held her hands over Maybelle’s ears, trying to shelter the girl from the screams, but there was no way she could protect herself.

  “Don’t worry,” she crooned, as much for herself as for the stunned little girl who whimpered with terror. “I’ll keep you safe. I promise. Nothing’s gonna happen to you. I promise.”

  A shout of triumph rattled the window as flames blossomed below the courthouse steps.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Think I was too obvious?” TK asked Lucy as they walked back to the Subaru.

  “I think he was too worried to suspect anything. Sure as hell spooked him with Maybelle’s name.”