by C. J. Lyons
“Maybe he was protecting someone else?”
“Like who? Some ninety-year-old guy rotting away in a nursing home?” She sat up. “Unless…don’t tell me the judge’s father is still alive? He did say he had blood on his clothing when he came home after this labor dispute.”
“No, he died a long time ago. Back when I was a kid myself. They had a funeral parade and big memorial service. Got us out of school for the day.”
“I didn’t realize you grew up here.”
“My folks moved here in the 1960s. Well after this mysterious labor dispute I’ve never heard of. Town lost a lot of jobs when the paper mill was closed, but after JFK took office, they got some big government contract to build radio parts for the space program. Paid decent money, so my folks moved here. Then after the Apollo missions ended, plant shut down, no more money.” He waved his hand out the window. “Town’s been dying ever since.”
“And so’s our case—both of them. We need evidence, not just speculation.”
“I’m all for evidence. But unless the arson investigator finds something on whatever ignited the fireworks, I’ve got nothing.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Lucy was only twenty minutes into their ride when she was ready to reach across Grayson, open his car door, and hurl him over one of the steep mountain cliffs as she sped away. How the hell had he survived a full day with TK without TK killing him? The kid never shut up, and most of what he said was pure racist drivel.
“I think what you’re proposing is called apartheid,” she interrupted. “Pretty much already failed. Big time.”
“Apartheid was a legally sanctioned form of racial and class discrimination. What I’m talking about is different. People choose where they live and who they live with. They choose their government and what laws—local laws, at least—they want to enact. It’s actually self-determination. Democracy at its finest.”
As much as she wanted this conversation over, she could not let that stand unchallenged. “Doesn’t sound like democracy to me. Sounds like discrimination.”
“Discrimination is about depriving people of their rights. I’m talking about giving people back their right to choose.” However wrong-minded the kid was, he was passionate, she’d give him that. “Take Greer, for example. We’re just a small town in the middle of nowhere. We used to be a quaint, pleasant small town, the kind you’d see in the movies. But we’re not anymore. So my father used eminent domain to take over some of the neighborhoods that were literally falling apart, riddled with crime and drug use, unsafe for anyone to live, much less raise a family. He sold the land to developers who will demolish them and then build the college expansion. Win/win for everyone.”
“Except the people whose homes you just stole.”
“They were paid. Now they can find new homes, better homes, safe homes. If they choose to. Like in Detroit. They’re trying to give houses away—all folks have to do is promise to maintain them. Basically just say, I choose not to live like a rat in cage, I want my own home, I promise to mow the lawn and paint the walls and not turn it into a crack house. And yet, they’re having a hard time finding anyone.” He leaned across the center console. “Why do you think they’re having such a hard time giving houses away?”
“Because who wants to live in Detroit?”
“Exactly. But…what if instead of calling it Detroit, you divided the land into communities, gave each one autonomy? Then people aren’t just getting a home, they’re getting self-determination, they get to decide where their tax dollars go, how their kids are educated. I’m not talking slums or housing projects. I’m talking real homes here. Wouldn’t that be better for everyone?”
An idealistic racist…wow, where to start? Maybe by labeling the problem? “You do know how racist that sounds, right?”
“I’m a separatist, not a racist. And how is it any different than a bunch of rich white folks getting together to build a private gated community or taking over a suburb? I’m just saying, why not give everyone an equal chance to raise their family the way they really want? Those people my father displaced when he took over their buildings for the town, do you think they wanted to keep living like that? In buildings that should have been condemned years ago, gangs roaming the hallways, drugs and guns everywhere? Think that’s how they’d choose to raise their families? I’m saying, give them a choice. That’s all.”
“Like the people shoved into the trunk of that car had a choice?” she snapped.
He flinched, his expression turning contrite. He was silent for a long moment—the most he’d gone without talking since he’d gotten into her car. “Do you really think she watched her own parents die?”
“I’m not sure. Even if she didn’t, she was a little girl whose family was ripped away from her.”
He sank into his seat, his mood somber. “I can’t even imagine. I lost my mom when I was about that age, but I always had my dad and my grandfather. I always had someone.”
From the looks of him, he’d not only had family to help him through the trauma of losing a parent, he’d also had wealth to comfort him.
“She didn’t just lose her family,” Lucy reminded Grayson, “she lost her identity. She would have lived in fear that the men who killed her parents might someday come after her.”
“Maybe they weren’t killed because they were black. Maybe there was some other reason. They were from DC, right? Maybe they made enemies, were involved in some kind of political corruption.”
“A doctor and a schoolteacher? I doubt it.” Thankfully they arrived at the address Henrietta Mann Rawling had sent before he could continue arguing. A black woman with long hair artfully arranged in a complex weave of braids stood waiting at the entrance to a townhouse.
Lucy turned to Grayson. “You will move to the back seat. You will remain quiet. You will be respectful.”
He opened his mouth, ready to protest. She snipped any mention of his first amendment rights with a wag of her finger. “No. This is not some theoretical debate. Not for this woman. Her family was murdered, thrown in the trunk of a car, disposed of like garbage. She did not deserve that. They did not deserve that. Do you understand?”
To her surprise, he suddenly couldn’t meet her gaze. Instead, his face fell, a little boy who realized Santa Claus wasn’t real. His shoulders hunched, he nodded. And then he reached for his collar, making sure it was buttoned tight.
Lucy pulled the car up to the curb and rolled down the passenger window. “Ms. Rawling? I’m Lucy Guardino.”
The woman nodded and smiled. Grayson nodded and hopped out, holding the door for Rawling before climbing into the rear seat.
“Ms. Rawling, I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” Lucy said after she’d made introductions.
“Actually, it’s Dr. Rawling. Most folks call me Henrietta, but I think maybe y’all should just call me Maybelle, seeing as that’s who you came all this way to talk about.”
Her accent was Deep South, warm and soothing. Lucy could well understand how she came to be a minister—her cadence and rich voice made you want to pay attention and reflect upon each word.
“Your Mr. Gamble,” Maybelle continued, “he told me why you were looking for me.” Lucy smiled. Wash was the youngest of their team; no one ever called him Mr. Gamble. “Amazing the power of the Internet, how it can foster and build human connections. I tried, a few years ago, to trace back my parents—my real parents—through some of those genealogy sites, but,” her sigh whispered past them, “there was nothing there. The car forums were a lark, but I figured if anything brought my daddy back to me, it’d be that car. Lord, how he loved that car.”
“Where would you like to go to talk? Is there a convenient restaurant nearby?”
“Let’s talk on the way. I want to go to where you found my parents’ bodies. I want to go to Greer.”
Grayson made a small noise at that, but Lucy silenced him with a glare in the rearview mirror. She reached past Maybelle to the glove
box and took out an old-fashioned micro-cassette recorder. “With your permission, I’d like to record our conversation. But if you say anything you regret, you can take the tape.”
“Thank you for your consideration. But I don’t believe that will be a problem. My pappy—Mr. Rawling—he was a lay preacher. I think, even though we weren’t blood relations, he shared his gift of words with me. Fitting, since he lost his son.”
“His son?”
“Henry. You don’t know about Henry? He’s how all this started.”
“What happened in Greer?” Lucy asked as she pulled away from the curb. “It was started by a Henry Rawling?”
“No. Not started by,” she corrected Lucy in a firm tone. “Started because. You see, Henry Rawling was raised to help people. He was a little slow, didn’t do so well in school, but he was kind and gentle. I never even met the boy, except when my daddy cut him open to save his life, but it was his folks and aunt who saved me, and they told me all about Henry. He was only thirteen when they killed him.”
Lucy sensed Grayson’s tension as he fidgeted in the backseat. He wanted to know if Henry Rawling could be their third body in the trunk. So did she, but this had to unfold at Maybelle’s pace, no one else’s. “Why did they kill him, Maybelle?”
Maybelle’s eyes drifted half shut as she dabbed them with a tissue from her purse. “He didn’t do anything except try to help a little girl. Her daddy was beating her and Henry helped her get away.”
“Was it you he helped? Were you running away from home, is that how you ended up in Greer?” But how did a four-year-old make it all the way from DC to a small town in rural Pennsylvania? Especially back in the 1950s?
“You really don’t know anything, do you?” Maybelle’s tone turned stern. “Greer.” She sighed the name. “I’ve been searching for that blood-soaked town most of my adult life—never knew the name until you folks came calling.”
“What do you remember?”
Maybelle settled into her seat and continued, “I was only four. My momma, she was a beautiful woman, she was a schoolteacher. And my daddy, he was a doctor. Not just any doctor, he was a surgeon. Saved lives in two wars, as a medic in World War Two and a battalion aide surgeon in Korea. I don’t remember any of that, just remember the pictures of him in his uniform, how proud and handsome he looked.”
She chuckled. “Or maybe I’m just getting him mixed up with Denzel Washington, and all I remember is how I want him to look—the mind plays tricks like that, you know. Especially when you’re trying so hard to hang onto any wisp of memory you have.”
She turned to Grayson in the back seat. “Remember that, son. You have to appreciate what you have here and now. Just never know when the good Lord has a change of plans in store for you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grayson mumbled.
“We drove to Ohio for a funeral. I don’t remember who died—someone in my mother’s family—or where the funeral was. I only remember a bunch of church ladies mussing my hair and pinching my cheeks and talking to me like I was a baby. And pie. Lots of pie—my daddy and I would sneak a piece and go sit on their back stoop where it was quiet. And then we were coming home. I was asleep most of the time.”
She stopped as Lucy turned onto the narrow two-lane highway that would twist them over the mountains. “Still can’t believe I was so close all these years. I looked it up when Mr. Gamble said where you were. Less than forty miles, and I never found it. That’s why I took the job at Penn State, you know. Spent all my life down south. The Rawlings, they had family in Alabama, near Selma. By the time the civil rights movement was going strong, I was right there with them—lied about my age more than once. Met John Lewis and Dr. King. Wasn’t much impressed at first—I started out more of a Malcolm X kind of activist. But then I came around to Dr. King’s way of thinking. But I wanted to do more than preach to a few familiar faces week in, week out, so I went back to school, got my doctorate. Taught and preached at schools like Emory and Clemson, then North Carolina, then Penn State…as if the Lord was leading me back here to where everything started. And everything ended. My alpha and omega. In a tiny town called Greer.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
TK and Karlan were brainstorming possible avenues of investigation when Karlan suddenly straightened in his chair, glancing past TK to the space behind her. She turned to see the mayor approaching, weaving his way through the desks without actually touching them. All of the officers on duty were out of the building, leaving TK and Karlan as his only targets.
“Mr. Mayor,” Karlan said, not exactly jumping to his feet, but at least making a gesture as if inviting the mayor to join them.
“Detective Karlan, Ms. O’Connor.” The mayor favored them with a hit and skip smile that barely grazed his lips before settling himself against the filing cabinet, forcing both of them to crane their necks to make eye contact. “Forgive the intrusion. I realized that as hectic as this day and these investigations must be, I should not expect you to come to me with progress reports but rather reach out to you myself.” He spread both hands wide as if to say, “here I am.”
“We were, ah, just going over TK’s statement,” Karlan said.
“Right. I understand you and a friend were there last night with Dr. Madsen. And your friend, he’s in the hospital? Is he all right?”
“Broken leg, a bit banged up, but he’ll be fine, thank you.”
“I’m sure he will.” The mayor nodded as if he had access to some arcane orthopedic crystal ball. “Perhaps, after you give your statement, you should join him? I know when my wife was ill, I hated leaving her in the hospital alone. So draining on the psyche, all that medical hustle-bustle.”
TK actually wanted nothing more than to be with David, make sure the nurses knew how to read his body language since they’d never know if he was in pain or had reached the point of exhaustion simply from his voice alone. But some contrarian impulse forced her to smile at the mayor and say, “No worries, Mr. Mayor. I’m here for the duration. I’d only drive David crazy if I stayed at the hospital, hovering over him.”
The mayor—he was about the same age as Karlan, in his mid-fifties—made a face that clearly questioned the commitment level of modern-day relationships, but then shrugged. “Very well. Please, don’t let me interrupt. I’d love to hear your statement about the tragic events of last night.”
Karlan hesitated, but the mayor slid a chair over, crowding in at the desk, giving them no room to maneuver.
“All right, then,” he said as he opened his notepad. “You left the courthouse at what time?”
“Around six,” TK answered. “I met David and we talked a bit, then went to get pizza for Dr. Madsen and her students.”
“And then you proceeded to the coroner’s office? Did you see anyone on the way?”
She hesitated. Mayor Greer leaned forward as if he already knew what she was going to say. “Yes. Franklin and his friends.”
Karlan glanced up at that. “The ones from yesterday morning?”
“Yes. We gave them one of the pizzas and had a…chat.”
“And you can positively identify them?” the mayor asked, earning a frown from Karlan for his encroachment.
“Yes, I’d met them earlier yesterday. Franklin and four other boys, I don’t know their names.”
“Did you see where they went?” Karlan asked before the mayor could butt in again.
“They walked toward the town square. I lost sight of them when they went past the police barricades.”
“So they were headed toward the government center?” the mayor asked.
“Mr. Mayor, please—”
TK wasn’t about to allow her testimony railroad anyone. “No, sir. I saw them walking north. I saw them reach the police barricade. I have no idea where they went after that.”
Karlan nodded but the mayor didn’t appear satisfied. “What time did you encounter these hoodlums?”
“We reached the coroner’s office around seven-twenty, so about fift
een minutes before then. Maybe twenty—we stopped so David could take photos of the protesters and interview them.”
“Which would give them plenty of time to set the fire and leave again before you arrived,” the mayor concluded triumphantly. He turned to Karlan. “I want these boys located and brought in for questioning as soon as possible, Detective.”
“Of course. We’ll be pursuing every angle—”
“This takes priority. I want to be able to announce at the press conference this afternoon that we have suspects in custody. The people need to know that they’re safe on their own streets.” The mayor stood, hands braced against the desk, leaning over both TK and Karlan. “I expect results, Detective.”
Karlan stood, meeting the politician head on. “Yes, sir.”
The mayor swung his attention to TK. She remained sitting, at ease, refusing to kowtow to his authority. “My son texted me that this new potential witness he and Ms. Guardino are meeting might have pertinent information. I’d like to meet with her as soon as they return.”
As if Grayson wouldn’t make sure that happened no matter what TK said. TK simply nodded, waiting to see what Greer’s true agenda was.
“It would be interesting to see how her memory of events sixty-plus years ago correlates with my father’s. After all, the girl was only, what, four at the time? Not old enough to be a credible witness. We can’t have her story getting out until we vet every detail.”
Ahh…so he planned to discredit Maybelle before he even met her. Which would leave the judge’s account as the only one available.
Now she stood, aligning her body with Karlan’s. “Yes sir. That’s our job. We’ll dig out every ounce of the truth, don’t you worry.”
His frown suggested he detected the rebellion in her tone, but he nodded without saying anything and left.
Karlan followed his progress out, and once the door had shut behind Greer, said, “Did you just declare war on the mayor?”